HinesSight

What happened to the Oregon legal marijuana horror show?

The title of this blog post came to mind while driving around this afternoon listening to Classic Vinyl on satellite radio when I heard one of the greatest rock songs of all time, Cream's Sunshine of Your Love from 1967.

If you're too young to recollect the brilliance of Cream, here's a video of a 2005 performance. 

I smoked a lot of marijuana during my days at San Jose State College, 1966-71. Cream was one of our go-to groups to listen to while high. So listening to the song got me thinking both about how us pot heads used marijuana back then, and how it is being used in Oregon now.

A big difference, of course, is that weed is legal in my state. It also is considerably stronger, from what I've heard, than the marijuana available in the 1960's. 

My fellow hippies and I used to drive around stoned. We drove motorcycles stoned. We played pool stoned. We traversed the freeway to San Francisco and back again at night stoned. We played frisbee stoned. In fact, we did just about everything stoned. 

And not once, not ever, did we have any sort of accident while stoned. Try doing all that we did while drinking heavily. Likely the result won't be pretty.

Which goes a long way toward explaining why there have been so few reports of "stoned driving" accidents or deaths here in Oregon since marijuana was legalized in 2014. Nor have there been significant reports of under-age marijuana users suffering from ill effects of the Demon Weed.

All of that and more was prophesied to occur by opponents of Measure 91, the marijuana legalization initiative. Supposedly Oregon would become a cannabis hellscape -- stoned drivers killing themselves and other people, teenagers becoming zombies, increased use of hard drugs once people got a taste of being high.

When I go in to buy some Indica from my favorite store (the strain I like for relaxing in the evening), I'm given a Seasoned Smoker discount. I like that term, even though from age 21 to shortly before marijuana became legal in Oregon I didn't imbibe a single toke.

But that sure wasn't the case in my college years -- where I ended up graduating "With Great Distinction" from San Jose State, having written some of my best essays while high. Thus it doesn't surprise me that marijuana has caused so few problems in Oregon. The reason is simple:

Marijuana has few negative effects, especially when compared with alcohol. And CBD, which I take three times a day for general health promotion, has essentially zero negative effects, just a bunch of positive effects. 

One thing I can say, though, is that the positive side of getting high sure is a lot different for me now that I'm almost 72, as compared to when I was 19.

I think a large part of ehe difference can be attributed to the famous "set and setting" notion. Set refers to the mindset of a psychedelic drug user, while setting refers to the physical and social environment. 

After my fairly staid freshman year, my life at a college in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960's was thoroughly suffused with hippie ideals. Flower Power. Summer of Love. Jefferson Airplane. Haight Ashbury. Make Love, Not War. Don't Trust Anyone Over 30. LSD. All that stuff.

When we smoked marijuana, we were also inhaling an entire lifestyle.

Plus, we were young, crazy, uninhibited, carefree. Now, I use a PAX vaporizer, because I'm concerned about my lungs. I sit in a warm bath, checking my iPhone, then reading a thriller book. Getting high has a whole different feel from when, back in college, we'd spontaneously decide to drive to Santa Cruz in the middle of the night so we could see the sun rise over the ocean.

Now I struggle to stay awake through the KGW TV evening news that ends at 11:35 pm. 

What hasn't changed, though, is my appreciation for marijuana. It relaxes me. It resets my frazzled mind, especially now when the upcoming election is causing nightmarish visions of four more years of Trump to dance through my head. It makes me feel more at one with the world, less ego-centered and anxious. 

So many thanks to those who paved the way for legal marijuana in Oregon, especially the tireless advocates for Measure 91. In November I'll celebrate the six-year anniversary of Measure 91's passage with some fine Oregon-grown cannabis. And hopefully also celebrate Joe Biden's victory.

Wildfire good deeds need to become Covid good deeds

People here in Oregon, as elsewhere on the West Coast, have been wonderfully generous with their time, money, and effort in helping others affected by the massive wildfires burning in our forests.

The nightly local news is filled with stories about meals being prepared for firefighters, livestock being cared for after homes were destroyed, donations of clothes and other household goods being used to aid the newly homeless, and other acts of kindness. 

Such isn't surprising. Most people are generous. They feel empathy and concern for those in need. They want to make things better when suffering is rampant. 

I've been wondering, though, how it is that our nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been so splintered and controversial when the response to West Coast wildfires has been so cohesive and praiseworthy.

How is it that Americans are so willing to risk their lives to save homes threatened by wildfire, yet often so reluctant to wear a mask in indoor public spaces or outside when six feet of physical distancing can't be maintained?

Covid has killed hugely more people than the wildfires have. The cover of the current issue of TIME magazine contains a large 200,000, the number of those killed by COVID-19 since the virus started to ravage the United States. 

The cover story is called An American Failure. There are many reasons for the failure to contain the virus, including the willful incompetence of Donald Trump. But other factors are at play, according to the story.  Such as:

Americans today tend to value the individual over the collective. A 2011 Pew survey found that 58% of Americans said "freedom to pursue life's goals without interference from the state" is more important than the state guaranteeing "nobody is in need." 

It's easy to view that trait as a root cause of the country's struggles with COVID-19; a pandemic requires people to make temporary sacrifices for the benefit of the group, whether it's wearing a mask or skipping a visit to their local bar.

...Absent adequate leadership, it's been up to everyday Americans to band together in the fight against COVID-19.

To some extent that's been happening -- doctors, nurses, bus drivers and other essential workers have been rightfully celebrated as heroes, and many have paid a price for their bravery. But at least some Americans still refuse to take such a simple step as wearing a mask.

Why? Because we're also in the midst of a epistemic crisis. Republicans and Democrats today don't just disagree on issues; they disagree on the basic truths that structure their respective realities.

Half the country gets its news from places that parrot whatever the Administration says, true or not; half does not. This politicization manifests in myriad ways, but the most vital is this: in early June (at which point more than 100,000 Americans had already died of COVID-19), fewer than half of Republican voters polled said the outbreak was a major threat to the health of the U.S. population as a whole.

So how is it that Republicans, along with Democrats and independents, are so willing to work hard to help evacuees threatened by wildfires, yet so many aren't willing to wear a mask or do other things to prevent people from suffering the nasty effects of COVID-19?

One reason is that it isn't possible to deny the reality of the wildfires, while there is plenty of misinformation circulating about COVID-19. If it were possible for Trump to spew falsehoods about wildfire damage being "fake news," likely a quarter or more of the population would agree with the Liar in Chief. 

Instead, reporters here in Oregon have been doing a great job communicating wildfire news via newspapers, television, social media, and other ways. This shows the importance of local journalism, which is more trusted than national news outlets. (I trust both, but I'm a news junkie.)

Another factor relates to the American individualism cited in the TIME cover story.

Volunteering to help those displaced by the wildfires is up to each person. Nobody is forcing them to do this. But orders to wear masks in public places come from elected officials. So there seems to be a reluctance by many to do what should be done to save lives just because someone else is telling them to do this.

That reminds me of a childhood retort. "I'm doing it not because you told me to, but because I want to." It's disturbing that adults would extend that to "I'm not doing it because you told me to, even though it is the right thing to do."

At any rate, I'm hoping that the compassion evident in the response of people to wildfire victims -- both those who lost their homes and those who had to evacuate -- will carry over to an increased willingness to wear a mask, physically distance, avoid crowded indoor places like bars, and do other things necessary to prevent death and disease from COVID-19.

With life, it's a truism that we're all in this together. And while no one gets out of life alive, death coming to everyone, we should do our best to help others get through difficult times in their life, whether this be dealing with a wildfire or avoiding infection with the coronavirus.

Ricky Gervais' Humanity show is wonderful dark humor

If you're looking for something to take your mind off of the West Coast wildfires, COVID-19 crisis, systemic racism, global warming, Trump vs. Biden, and other serious things that leave you less than smiley-faced, my wife and I have a suggestion.

Fire up Netflix and watch Ricky Gervais' Humanity show, a 78-minute stand-up routine that dates from 2017.

Now, if you watch it and blame us for recommending this piece of tasteless trash, keep in mind that Laurel and I enjoy dark humor. And Gervais is so dark in Humanity he easily beats out a black cat in a completely lightless room.

He starts off by spending considerable time telling transgender jokes at the expense of Caitlyn Jenner, daring to speak the name that mustn't be spoken, according to transgender purists -- Jenner's original name, Bruce.

After that the show descends (or ascends, in my opinion) into taking jabs at other sensitive topics, like children with cancer. Moments of more traditional levity are interspersed here and there, such as how dogs got their special gifts.

The breed that hunts lions wasn't wild about their gift. 

We watched Humanity a few days ago. Rather bizarrely, now and then I've found myself thinking, What would Ricky Gervais do in this situation?

That's the power of comedy, and of dark comedy in particular. Gervais finds humor in subjects that are thoroughly unfunny to most people. Yet from a certain perspective, such as the twisted mind of Gervais, they are funny. 

And Gervais makes fun of himself also. Just not as often as he takes digs at others.

He demonstrates the virtue of not caring overly much about what other people think, so long as what you think rings true to you. At one point he recites the cardinal rule followed by his family, or maybe just his brother and him, I can't remember exactly.

"If you think of something funny, you must say it." Maybe somebody will laugh. Maybe they won't. No matter. What matters if that you expressed your creativity. There's a lot of power in that comedic philosophy.

Here's some You Tube videos of clips from Humanity, including the dog bit. It's the first one. Also, the least offensive one.

Troy and Lori Anderson land use applications to Marion County

Because neighbors here in rural south Salem, Oregon are interested in the plans by Troy and Lori Anderson to build a farm dwelling on 80 acres of their 217 acre property just north of our Spring Lake Estates neighborhood, here are the documents related to their land use application to Marion County.

(1) Below is a PDF file of the application submitted to Marion County by Lori Anderson in March 2020 for a primary farm dwelling on 80 acres north of Spring Lake Estates.

Download Application

(2) Below is a PDF file of the April 2020 Marion County decision on the application. It was denied because the applicant didn't prove that the required farm income came from the 80 acre property.

Download AR20-009 Decision

(3) Below is a PDF file of the March 2020 Marion County request for comments on the application.

Download RFC-1

(4) Below is a a PDF file of the second application to Marion County by Lori Anderson in July 2020 for a primary farm dwelling on 80 acres north of Spring Lake Estates. My understanding is that this application has been withdrawn.

Download Second application

Wild is what we're wishing will end

For most of us, wild has generally positive connotations.

We like to be out of civilization and trekking into a wilderness. Being called a "wild thing" made for a popular song. We're more excited to see an animal in the wild than in captivity. 

But while a bit of wild is a good thing, too much leaves us exhausted, scared, anxious, uncertain.

That's where the West Coast of the United States is at the moment. Sure, other parts of the country also are suffering from an excess of wild. Oregon (where I live), Washington, and California just have wild to an astonishing degree.

Currently we're suffering through the worst wildfires in memory -- and likely in the entire history of our states. About 40,000 Oregonians have had to leave their homes under a Level 3 "GO NOW" evacuation order. The air quality in Salem, a few miles from my house, is off the chart.

Believe me, it doesn't take long after having a bunch of very large wildfires in your part of the world to make you think, "That's enough wild for a while. Like, forever."

After a week of heavy smoke, I went looking for HVAC filters today. In Salem they've become the new toilet paper, unavailable at the two stores I checked.

Global warming is largely to blame.

Forests are exceptionally dry after an extended drought. Political gridlock, caused in part by repeated walkouts of Republican legislators in Oregon who objected to a climate change bill, preventing a quorum, have stifled attempts to thin trees and create defensible spaces around forest communities.

Our power went out last Monday night.

High winds caused a utility pole to catch fire, leaving electrical wires in the middle of a nearby road. In the Santiam Canyon to the east of Salem, downed power lines caused fires that decimated entire towns. Underground utilities would eliminate that risk. 

But our country isn't investing in infrastructure. We've been lavishing money on the military and giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to giant corporations instead. Of course, by "we" I mean Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. 

It feels like nobody sensible is in charge of the United States because that's the truth.

So wild proliferates unchecked far beyond the bounds of what citizens are comfortable with. The COVID crisis is another obvious example. There has been no effective national leadership, just posturing, lies, and false reassurances from the Commander in Chief of Wildness.

Trump adores chaos. He revels in conflict.

This makes him utterly incapable of being the cool, calm, collected leader who could guide us through a pandemic that has caused almost 200,000 deaths in the United States, many or most of them preventable given how much better other comparable countries have dealt with the novel coronavirus. 

Then there's the Black Lives Matter movement.

A week doesn't go by, it seems, without another disturbing example of how a person of color has been wrongly killed by police. Here too, national leadership is lacking. Some good things are happening at the state and local level, while Trump focuses on a few protesters who cause trouble rather than the systemic racism that's being protested.

"I can't breathe" is a common denominator that links all three manifestations of excessive wild.

That's what George Floyd said as a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck. Millions of people are enduring wildfire smoke that is unhealthy for everybody, and especially hazardous for those with asthma and other breathing problems. A prime COVID-19 symptom is pneumonia and damaged lungs.

However, there's also a psychological breathlessness afflicting our nation -- the exhausting feeling of climbing a Mount Wild where one steep challenge follows another with little opportunity to rest. Worse, the person who is supposed to be guiding us is clueless about what needs to be done to reach a place of ease.

This is why it is so important that Joe Biden be elected this November. He's the calming anti-wild president that we so sorely need and long for.

Evacuation checklist a good way to relieve wildfire anxiety

Right now Oregon is suffering though a wildfire perfect storm of longstanding drought, high winds, and many fires burning across our state. 

My wife and I lost electricity in the early evening yesterday, along with about thirty of our neighbors. Apparently the windy conditions caused a utility pole to catch fire, with electrical lines lying in the road. 

I fired up our generator, so we had a fairly normal night -- aside from the fact that because of the smoke from wildfires in the area we didn't want to open any windows, and our air conditioning wasn't working because of the electrical outage.

Thankfully, the power came on when we were waking up.

But as shown in the photo above, at nine a.m. it was still very dark outside our house. The gusty winds had spread the Beachie Creek fire rapidly in the Santiam Canyon to the east of Salem. With the winds coming out of the east, our area was hit with dense unhealthy smoke that obscured the rising sun.

Since we've lived on ten mostly natural acres in rural south Salem for the past thirty years, wildfire is on our minds every summer. We have cleared vegetation for quite a ways around our house, but there still are plenty of trees surrounding our home. 

So even though it is quite unlikely that the Beachie Creek fire could reach our neighborhood, the high winds yesterday and today were a reminder that a wildfire could be sparked locally at any moment and spread like, well, wildfire. My anxiety was pretty high up until noon, when I decided to do something that had been on my mind for a long time.

Prepare an evacuation checklist. And even better, to actually do some of the things on the list.

We have emergency bags in our cars filled with things we'd need if stranded somewhere. However, that wasn't my concern as I envisaged how I'd feel if we got a notification that a fast-moving wildfire was close by and we only had a short time to evacuate our home.

I like to think that I'd be calm, cool, and collected. But almost certainly I'd be frantic, heated, and scattered. What do we take in our cars?! What do we leave behind?! 

I had imagined the answers to these questions. Yet I also had imagined how easy it would be to forget something important in the course of running around, getting ready to evacuate, knowing that our house might be a smoldering ash heap the next time we saw it.

So I Googled "evacuation checklist."

Just doing that made me feel better. Preparing for something that hopefully wouldn't ever happen provided an outlet for the nervous anxious energy that came with the electricity outage, red sky, smoky air, and high wind. I started by printing out this Fire Evacuation Check List.

It was a way to get me going. Later today I found a couple of other checklists that I like, here and here. 

I've got more to do, as does my wife. But it didn't take me long to mostly fill up a couple of suitcases with clothes, treasured personal/family items, health needs, and such. I also jotted down reminders about what else I need to put into a ready-to-go backpack that is sitting in my office -- my laptop, charging cables, iPhone charger, other things.

Naturally we'd never forget our dog or dog food. But we might forget essentials like the chew sticks that she enjoys for a doggie dessert after she has her dinner. So those now are part of a dog go-bag.

It pains me to see images of the homes and businesses that have been destroyed in the Santiam Canyon. When it is safe for people to return there, I'm sure the devastation will be even more horrific. But as people often say when they learn their house has been lost, "We can rebuild. And we're thankful we're safe."

Exactly. If Laurel and I ever have to flee our home in the face of a wildfire, that will be hugely stressful. After preparing some for that eventuality today, I'm feeling a bit more confident that we could do this without losing our minds -- too much. 

Current photos of my childhood home in Three Rivers stir memories

Aside from college and my baby years, I've lived in six houses during my lifetime. They all have meaning for me, but the house in Three Rivers, California that was my home from about age eight to eighteen holds the most intense memories.

I think it's because those ten years marked my transition from a child to an adult. Everything was fresh and new. Changes -- physical, mental, social -- were happening rapidly.

So it was a delight to get an email from the couple who had recently purchased the Three Rivers, California house where I grew up. Finding me via Google, they had questions about who had designed the house. I responded with some recollections.

I knew that my mother had the house built a few years after she moved to Three Rivers in 1955, I think it was, which is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains at the gateway to Sequoia National Park. My grandmother helped pay for it, since my mother had gotten divorced and didn't have much money.

A few days ago I heard from the new owners again. They had closed escrow and shared some photos of the house. I was surprised at how emotional I got upon seeing the photos. There's no way I can explain those feelings, but I'll make a very partial attempt.

This shows the previous owners standing next to the one-car carport. It was all a divorcee needed. My mother's 1957 VW Bug fit in the space nicely. I spent many hours hitting tennis balls against the far wall, when the VW wasn't in the space, naturally. I also spent a lot of time chasing tennis balls down the hill when I mishit them.

Above the heads of the couple was where our television antenna was attached to the roof. Our TV was in the room with shades drawn behind the previous owners. No cable television in those days. Hardly any television at all. 

On a good day, or night, we could get a fuzzy picture from stations in Fresno. The signal would bounce off rocks near the top of hills in the Kaweah River valley where Three Rivers is located (the Kaweah has three forks, hence the town's name). To change a channel, I'd climb a ladder, get on top of the roof, and rotate the antenna while my mother yelled through an open window. 

"Getting better. Keep going. No, now picture is getting worse. Go back a bit. There, stop!" We also had a black dial telephone that was on a party line. Meaning, you'd have to pick up the phone to tell if a neighbor was talking on it. If the day was boring, maybe because no decent television signal was available, you could listen for a while, stealthily, and learn some gossip.

Ah, the living room. It seems to have shrunk. Or, more likely, my memories have. Regardless, my mother was wise to have the large picture windows, as you'll understand when you see a following photo.

The bookcases on the far wall have been altered over the years, unsurprisingly. My mother had one shelf made to order to perfectly fit the full width of the Great Books of the Western World. I still have that set, as shown below.

The used brick fireplace got a lot of use during cold weather. I spent many hours as a child starting a fire, then making up stories as the flames consumed twigs and branches that my mother and I collected from the rural countryside for kindling. "Watch out, jump, the fire is about to get you! Oh, sorry, too late, you just got burnt to a crisp." Fun stuff like that.

This is the view of the High Sierras (in the distance) with foothills in the foreground that the living room picture windows looked out on. Alta Peak is in the left center. Moro Rock in Sequoia National Park also is visible, barely. It's a large granite dome that, as a kid, I worried would be jarred loose and come rolling down the canyon to squish me in my sleep.

Never happened, thankfully.

I'm also thankful that I was able to grow up in such a beautiful place. My friends and I loved to play around in the (cold) snow-fed central fork of the Kaweah River, which ran by near our house. We'd grab inner tubes and have a great time, once I got over the initial freezing feeling.

I quickly became a strong swimmer, once I learned to swim, because that's the only way you survive in a fast-flowing mountain river.  After graduating from college I've lived in city houses in Portland and Salem, Oregon. For the past 30 years my wife and I have lived in rural south Salem on ten natural acres. 

It feels more like home, probably because the first home that I can distinctly remember, in Three Rivers, was so rural. Can't remember the exact population of Three Rivers at the time. I believe the full-time residents numbered about 400, scattered over a large area.

This is the backyard of the house. One of the new owners is on the right, with the previous owners on the left. The rock on top of a rock is a nice touch. My mother just had some minimal landscaping, since water is precious in dry Three Rivers. She'd try to grow strawberries, watering them judiciously. But deer would eat most of them, I recall.

The hill behind the couple on the left was one of the places my friends and I played. We'd use cattle trails to avoid the worst of the stickers, poison oak, and brush. It took some hot hiking (in the summer) to reach the top of the hill, which featured some large granite rocks. 

Not like Moro Rock, but big enough to climb up and sit atop with great views. One memory I'll never forget is crawling through a rocky passageway that led to the top of the rocks and hearing a rattle. That sound spurred a rapid backwards retreat, since running into a rattlesnake was drummed into us kids as not a wise move.

Gopher snakes were good, though they look a lot like rattlesnakes. Minus the rattlers. And the venom.

This photo elicited some especially strong feelings, because it is so reminiscent of what I and my friends did -- ride our bikes all over, including on the gravel driveway that led to our house and passed by two other houses on our shared road. 

Of course, we didn't have ten-speeds, just one-speeds and then three-speeds. Our big thrill was to attach playing cards to the spokes with clothespins (outdoor drying on a line was how it was done back then). Then we could sound like motorcycles, to our child ears, at least. 

It's wonderful to see that while much has changed in the world over the past sixty years, or so, the Three Rivers house I grew up in is much the same. And that children are still enjoying the countryside, just as I did way back when.

If you're a glutton for old man memories, here's links to some blog posts I've written about my days in Three Rivers.

My memories of growing up with books in the 1950's and 60's
How I was blown away by a nuclear bomb
Boxing up books reminds me of a beautiful book, freely given
A Christmas memory of my mother
My grandmother taught me the power of "I like it"