Where've You Been? and My Marijuana.com Link-A-Rama

Berkeley, CA

I flew up to the San Francisco area for the weekend and spent some wonderful time with one of my oldest and best friends, Jody. We sat in her kitchen for hours talking and laughing so hard that I now feel positively purged of any bitterness, fatigue, confusion, despair, encroaching old age, neuroticism,  dedicated overthinking, anxiety, sadness and melancholy. What we talked about is entirely private, but Reader: Laughter.

On Sunday night we met Sally and Lisa in Berkeley, ate a delightful dinner (my favorite mussels and fries, along with a cocktail made with bourbon and lemon and jalapeno) and then went to Zellerbach Hall to hear Billy Collins and Aimee Mann do a really interesting and unique performance of music and poetry. It was the first time that I'd ever been to Berkeley and quite thrilling. I've long held fantasies of going to school there and am a bit gobsmacked by its hippie history. I didn't really get a chance to see much of it, but I loved the name of that bookstore and my favorite site was a man sitting on the street, cross-legged with a MacBook on his lap that was plugged into the building behind him. His belongings appeared to be scattered around him, including clothes and toiletries and foil-covered food containers. I have no idea whether he was a student, homeless or just a Berkeley hippie of the twenty-first century.

What else?

The Virgin terminal at the San Francisco airport is exactly what I imagined the future to look like when I was a child. Really. Exactly.




This is my last week at Marijuana.com, so I'm tying things up and will have a new interview posted at some point. Below you'll see a list of the articles, features and interviews that I did while at Marijuana.com -- such a great opportunity while it lasted, and a somewhat devastating and certainly unexpected end. I don't feel free to discuss those details, but it's Big Business, ya'll. Marijuana is officially Big Business, and you know how many of us who frequent a moon, worn as if it had been a shell feel about that:

Better go down upon your marrow-bones   

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones   

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;   

For to articulate sweet sounds together 

Is to work harder than all these, and yet   

Be thought an idler by the noisy set 

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen   

The martyrs call the world.’ 

That's a bit of Adam's Curse by William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet. It's one of my favorite poems and the reason for the blog's rather cumbersome title. Check it out here if you need diversion, but please come back and read the next line.





I am now officially LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB.

Did you hear that?

I am now officially LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB.

Are you Ten Thousands Minds On Fire? If you send me a lead, I will be of service to you in some significant way.


Cannabis Medicine and Autism: An Interview with Ana Maria Abba
How to Talk to Your Teenager About Marijuana: An Interview with Dr. Bonni Goldstein
Vaccination Injury, Seizures and Cannabis Medicine: An Interview with Georgia Smithson
The Literal Beating Heart
Keeping Monkey Neurons on Their Toes: An Interview with Allison Jackson
Purple Day
The Wisdom in the Room: A Cannabis Community for Women
Cannabis as Totem and Connector: An Interview with Allison Ray Benavides
A Passionate Mother's Reluctant Path to Lobbying
The Beginning - March 8, 1995
Making THCa At Home: An Interview with a Mother

On looking for a job, unease, and more Jeneva Stone

So, I've been waking every morning with a vague sense of dread, and it's not the usual will Sophie have a lot of seizures today? Will Sophie be alive this morning? Will Oliver be in a good mood or bite my head off? Will Henry make it through high school without sex, drugs and rock and roll? or Will I make it at all, today? Yes, that's the usual, a million worrisome thoughts that generally disappear by the time my eyelids are fully raised and my cheery morning self slips into my body. Lately, though my dread has continued on into the morning, and that's because I'm looking for a job. The work that I've been doing for many years has come to an end -- no more federal dollars for the projects that I've participated in, and the non-profit I am currently under contract with has little to no steady work. The problem with getting just any job is that I have very little flexibility and need flexibility. I have to be ready to deal with Sophie if she has a bad day and can't go to school. I have to make at least $20 an hour to break even and pay for childcare for her to begin with, and then there's Oliver who is at a time in his life where he needs me to be with him, particularly after school. Given the amount of stress in our home -- some of it bloggable and some of it not -- and the ongoing struggles that siblings of the disabled face, I feel that it's paramount that I am readily available for my boys. While I'm perfectly aware that we're fortunate to have one decent income and have had some help from my parents and my up to now steady part time work, I'm also perfectly aware of what I might have earned, might have contributed, might have been doing if my first baby hadn't developed this devastating disorder and been so disabled by it. Let's face it: I'm the CEO of Sophie, Inc., and it's a volunteer position that has reaped many, many rewards but it has also made it extremely difficult to do anything else.

Better minds have grappled with this and are better able to articulate it, and one of these is my friend, the writer Jeneva Stone. Here's an excerpt of her most recent thoughts with a link following to the complete post.

This bit of data changed my self-narrative. I had been grateful and continue to be grateful for the medical assistance Robert receives and the nursing care for which we're now eligible. But had these supports been available sooner, I might have been able to earn more money, pay more taxes, spend more and stimulate the economy, participate at my child's school, and otherwise enrich my community. 

 Instead, I had been cowering and avoiding reading the comment threads that follow news stories about children with disabilities--comments that blather on about families and choices, children who are burdens to society, people who don't want to pay for the needs of disabled children because their parents chose to have them and foist them on the rest of us, people who are concerned about their tax dollars being wasted. How to respond to this? Whine about paying for the incarceration of children some of you out there abandoned and/or failed to parent properly, or your ER costs because you won't pay for health insurance? Hmmm. 

But now I know that by being a responsible parent, I saved taxpayers $7 million dollars at tremendous cost to my family's financial well being. I feel good about that. I've made a real contribution to society, even if unrecognized. Now, please, stop talking trash about me, my kid and my family. 

Jeneva Stone, from Busily Seeking 2.0: The Costs of Caregiving 

Read the rest of it, here. 

Reader, if you are the primary caregiver of a disabled child or children, how do you balance work (the paying kind) with your duties (the non-paying kind) and if you don't balance them, what does it look like? If you are not the primary caregiver but, rather, an innocent bystander, I'm interested to know what you think about this dilemma.

Bill Clinton called me today

dedicated to my good friend Mary Beth

So far, I've had a very productive day with some really good possible employment leads. I'd be tempted to say that Jesus was involved (especially after that chain email from last night), it was so positive, but unless Sophie spontaneously stops having seizures at some point today, I'm going to attribute my progress to luck and a bit of perseverance rather than the mysterious workings of the Lord. What actually made me the most excited, though, were two things. I discovered an old Tiffany's merchandise credit that was too small for anything Tiffanyish but large enough for a pair of pretty earrings that I ordered online and that will come in a Tiffany box which is really what I like best, anyway. I figure it's a Mother's Day gift for myself. Ahem. The other great thing is that Bill Clinton called me on the land line today. I picked up the phone and when he said, Hi, there. It's Bill Clinton, I felt that old faint, shuddery feeling. I clicked off my computer and settled down to talk. That man can talk. His breath traveled through the wire and right into my ear, and while he talked the whole time about another woman, some woman who is running for mayor in Los Angeles, I was just happy that he'd call at all. Good golly, Miss Molly, as those of us who keep the man a special place in our hearts, say. Good golly, Miss Molly.