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Browsing: Culture

Humboldt Stories: Housesitting A Marijuana Grow

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By on Culture, Growing

Sharon Letts

“It’s Not Weeds, It’s Real.”


By Sharon Letts
Nick took the leash down from the hook on the wall. “Here, boy!” he said to the carefree mutt, galloping toward him. “Let’s go for a walk!”
Walking Buster was the hardest part of watching his friend’s house. It meant he had to walk around the neighborhood with the dog, without making eye-contact with the neighbors.
“Just don’t offer any information,” Jake lectured. “I don’t even know their names,” he added. “And they don’t know mine, and that’s the way we all like it.”
Jake said there were a lot of grow houses here in Cutten. The town was an old, established neighborhood in Humboldt’s County seat, and still considered a family neighborhood with parks, a school and a town center. 
This was just one of Jake’s houses and no one lived here. A four-bedroom California ranch-style, with four grow rooms for the ladies and a false room in the garage for growing babies. Nick was just one of several house-sitters keeping watch at any given time.
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‘Mary Jane: The Musical’ Reflects Northern Cali Marijuana Scene

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By on Culture, Growing, News, Products

Sharon Letts
“Mary Jane: The Musical” is led by DAI’s founding artistic director Joan Schirle as first-generation grower, “Mary Jane, The Diva of Sativa.”

Mary Jane: The Musical, illuminating the weed culture of Northern California’s Emerald Triangle, is returning to the stage, playing three weekends June 21 through July 8. The show, presented by Dell’Arte International, now features four new songs, reflecting current changes in community attitudes on the price of cannabis, cultural divisions, and who benefits from the black market and who benefits from making it legal.

What began as a back-to-the-land movement after 1967’s Summer of Love has morphed into a hot topic of national interest. Cannabis has become the economic engine of Northern California, with $2.6 billion following annually through the Emerald Triangle, comprised of Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino counties. Environmental norms and local law enforcement have been challenged by the explosion of marijuana cultivation.
Humboldt County has been home to Dell’Arte International (DAI) for 38 years. Its theatre ensemble is known internationally for the development of “Theatre of Place,” bringing the community closer to the stage, and the stage closer to the community.
Mary Jane: The Musical premiered in 2011, exploring the role of cannabis in its own back yard, through songs by a dozen composers and staging by longtime director Michael Fields. The musicals reveals the positive role of cannabis in the local economy, as well as its medicinal value. But it also shares the dark underbelly of the industry, where grow houses, violence, and polluting cultivation methods have become a scourge to the Green Belt of Nor Cal.
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Marijuana Book Will Feature 100 Authors – Maybe Including You

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By on Culture, Products

VibeNation MultiMedia

So you’ve always wanted to write a book about cannabis? Here’s your chance.

You’re invited to participate in an iBook project intended to change perceptions about marijuana by telling 100 short stories by 100 real people, in a fun and easy-to-read format.
Each page will be formatted the same way. The top of the page will have your name, or a title if you prefer. Then there is space for an image, a gallery of images, a video, a Powerpoint presentation, an HTML widget… “The possibilities are endless,” said Susan Soares, president of VibeNation MultiMedia, which is sponsoring the project, called Marijuana & Me.

“The purpose of the book is to change the perception of what the typical marijuana consumer is like,” Soares told Toke of the Town Thursday afternoon.

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Meghan McCain: I’m Not A Cannabis User… Frequently

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By on Culture, News, Products

CrackpotPress.com
Meghan McCain: “I decided to come out publicly in support of it”

Meghan McCain, daughter of Arizona Senator and 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain and now something of a media darling herself, supports the legalization of marijuana — that’s something many learned with the publication of her new book, America, You Sexy Bitch. But she also apparently smokes the stuff, at least occasionally, based on her Wednesday morning interview on The View — and her famous dad knows and accepts that she tokes up.


Voicing her support for cannabis legalization on The View, McCain added that she’s “not a cannabis user … frequently,” reports Evan Lambert at People.
When Barbara Walters joked that her “father’s going to be so proud,” Meghan responded, “He knows everything … and he loves me.”
Meghan’s Wednesday morning appearance on The View followed her Tuesday night Tonight Show interview with Jay Leno, in which she strongly endorsed the legalization of marijuana and admitted smoking weed in New Orleans on at least one occasion.
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Goodbye, “Weeds”: Show’s Last Season Begins July 1

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By on Culture, News, Products

Senses Lost
“Weeds” star on a Golden Globe Award in 2006 for her portrayal of pot-dealing suburban mom Nancy Botwin

Showtime’s envelope-pushing television series, Weeds, will come to an end after this season, the cable network announced.

The comedy series, covering the adventures of suburban-mom-turned-pot-dealer Nancy Botwin, will conclude after eight seasons, reports James Hibberd at Inside TV. Created by Jenji Kohan, Weeds helped open the door for other daring and innovative programming, and made Showtime a force in the creation of original series.
“There were two shows, Weeds and Dexter, that really got Showtime taken seriously for cutting-edge original programming,” said Showtime Entertainment President David Nevins. “How they get brought home is really important, in this case, both for the sake of the two women [series creator Kohan and star Mary Louise Parker]and an audience that’s really invested in the show.
“TV fans love nothing better than to complain about how shows end and we really want to end this one the right way,” Nevins told Inside TV.
Kohan admitted she is “sad” about the end of Weeds, saying “sometimes ignorance is bliss,” but the writer said she does appreciate the rare opportunity to wrap up a series properly.
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Marijuana Activists Kick White House’s Butt In Softball

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By on Culture, News

Anastacia Cosner
The One Hitters were already kicking the Drug War’s ass — now they kicked the White House softball team’s butts, too.

The White House softball team was unceremoniously smoked by the One Hitters, a team of pro-marijuana activists, in softball last week by a humiliating score of 25 to 3.

The Softball Team of the U.S., its official name, didn’t do so well against the cannabis reformers, but at least the White House team showed up for the game. Last year, the Czardinals, from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP, the Drug Czar’s office), cancelled on the One Hitters, claiming they had a scheduling conflict.
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Yippie Dana Beal Fights For His Freedom On Marijuana Charges

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By on Culture, News

Free Dana Beal
Dana Beal: “I’m not a run-of-the-mill drug runner. I’m a medical advocate. I had to do it.”

Dana Beal was one of the original Yippies back in the late 1960s, helping organize the radical counterculture group which disrupted the 1968 and 1972 Democratic conventions, advocating a society powered by people rather than profit. Years later, Beal organized marches in New York City calling for the legalization of marijuana, and helped open a clinic which dispenses cannabis to AIDS patients in the Big Apple.

But Beal, 65, says he’s now fighting for his life from a Nebraska jail, reports Paul Hammel at the Omaha World-Herald. Just nine months after a serious heart attack, he faces up to five years in prison after a 2009 arrest near Ashland, Neb., riding in a van holding 150 pounds of marijuana.
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A Middle-Aged Widow’s Awakening to Love and Cannabis

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By on Culture, Growing, Products

Laurel Dewey’s Betty’s (Little Basement) Garden Raises Awareness Of Medical Marijuana
 
Laurel Dewey, the Colorado author best known for her Jane Perry mystery series, has written what her publisher is calling “the first mainstream novel to take a serious look at medical marijuana.”
Betty’s (Little Basement) Garden introduces a dynamic heroine — 58-year-old Betty Craven, elegant former beauty queen and recent widow– who finds herself getting involved with medical marijuana as well as with an intriguing and independent man.
Betty Craven is the epitome of elegance, class, and perfection. Her prize-winning garden is the envy of her neighbors; he impeccable manners and epicurean skills have made here the “hostess with the most-est.” But all is not what it seems.
The truth is that Betty’s idyllic world is quickly disintegrating. Widowed and left with a modest income, Betty’s gourmet chocolate shop in Colorado has gone belly up, leaving her floundering for purpose and meaning. Tied to a house in disrepair that she can’t sell, and mired in paralyzing grief for her dead son (lost to a drug overdose five years before), this patriotic former Texas beauty pageant queen comes to the shocking and debilitating conclusion that her entire life has been wasted.
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