CHASING RAINBOWS

I ran into Charlie DeRose this week. He owned the first hot air balloon I ever handled. I haven’t seen him in years but recognized him immediately. “I’m sure you don’t remember me Mr. DeRose,” I said, “ but in 1978 you changed my life”. It was a golden moment; we had a lovely chat.

There used to be a little annual balloon rally at a farm in Cummington, MA, maybe 15 balloons. The second year I attended, I was tripping on mushrooms. We came in a group of six people and we were so blissed out that we found a big flat granite rock on the outside edge of the field and just watched with that impossibly wide psychedelic grin and laughed for the sheer joy of the beautiful visions.

It was a foggy morning. The balloons never lifted off but they all stood up and stayed inflated for two hours, the roaring burners of the propane tanks succeeding only in dissipating the white air into layers thin enough to see the colors through. The photos of that rally were unearthly.

So anyway, here we are tripping on this rock and grooving on the colors when this guy walks up and says, “My crew didn’t show up. Anybody want to help”? It was Charlie. No one knew him. There was a long moment of silence. I looked around the group and stood up, followed closely by Joe, my husband at the time. No one else did.

Charlie told us what to do and we stood that balloon up and gave tether rides for two hours. Joe got to do most of the flying; I mostly got to work the ropes, not really an unattractive task. It feels like holding a giant party balloon and in the many years I ended up crewing later, it never stopped amazing me that I could change its direction, all by myself, simply by yanking on the rope.

It’s been years since I’ve touched a balloon but I’ve been thinking about the parallels between flying one (in the pre-radio communication days) and the fight against the WOUND. Both require a leap of faith, particularly in the chase. The balloon in the climate of the ambient physical atmosphere and the other in the socio-political climate but both require reading the currents and making a judgment for action based on the relevant factors. You have to consider the weather and on that basis, make split second decisions on what route to take. If you guess right, you find your balloon. In all the years I worked that circuit, I only failed to get there before they laid it down, twice.

I don’t know, call me giddy from yesterday’s morning blitz on 2086 but I think we’re on to something here and it’s going to work in my lifetime.

Living in hope,

LA Stone

GOOD WEEK FOR THE WOUNDED

It’s been a good week for HEALin the WOUND. This morning, the collective energy of the anti-prohibition movement convinced our legislators that HR 2086 was a bad idea. Had it passed, the taxpayers of the US would have granted John Walters, everyone’s favorite drug czar, $1,000, 000, 000.00 (that’s a billion kids) to continue a failed media campaign to convince teenagers that marijuana is BAD. This at a time when schools are cutting programs and staff because they are struggling for money to enact unfunded federal mandates like No Child Left Behind. The bill died in committee and the volume of public outrage registered in the Beltway embedded press. Cheered me up no end.

But that’s not all. Marijuana is currently legal in Ontario thanks to a courageous court decision, a province in Australia just instituted a government sponsored four year trial of medical marijuana and the US state of New Hampshire established jury nullification as a legislative act and as I recall, Republicans brought this forward. Gives new meaning to the state motto, “ Live Free or Die”.

Seeing Light,

LA STone

FLOTSAM & JETSAM

Flotsam: Goods lost in a shipwreck.
Jetsam: Goods thrown off a ship to ease it’s peril.

I’d meant this weblog to be only about the War on Drugs. The trouble is, I’m interested in everything so I end up with a lot of ideas that are related only in the greater web of worldly thought. So, today I’m starting a new section – for those moments when I have to shake the loose ideas out of my head in order to better focus on the task at hand.


***
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MAKES ME HAPPY


It had been a pretty rotten week. I was rather cranky by the time I took a break on Friday afternoon. When I got to the street I discovered an anti-war demonstration. Well, it was actually anti-Pentagon.

“There’s a demonstration”, I announced as I returned.

Karen replied , “Oh good, that always cheers you up”.

We laughed. It’s true of course. I read Thoreau and Emerson at twelve years old and completely identified even at that tender age. There’s something in me that loves rebels. I like seeing the younger generation active in a cause, questioning the wisdom of the status quo, getting interested enough to get educated and becoming sufficiently outraged by the knowledge to act - to participate in the process.

Great costumes. There was a Statute of Liberty with big paper tears on her face and words in duct tape all over her costume. It was exactly the right color green. She was playing a fiddle. There was a huge mouth that opened and closed and other participants fed it money and other symbolic items, like the heart of the country. There weren’t many of them, maybe two dozen and they took stations on each corner. At every crosswalk cycle they would all march across the intersection, pausing in the middle for a little street theater. They all held signs that said the pentagon spends 45 million every minute of every day.

I hung out at my corner in mute solidarity. More people honked in support than shouted in derision and I defended them when someone I knew walked by and raised his eyebrows in disbelief.

“I love it.” I said. “My heart is totally with them. They’re doing the right thing”.

I think some of them heard me.


***
JUXTAPOSITIONS

I so enjoy irony. I love incongruous pairings. I’ve seen a few great ones on bumper stickers lately.

At the intersection, two cars side by side:

KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY beside PRO CHOICE = PRO DEATH.

THERE IS NO WAY TO PEACE, PEACE IS THE WAY beside I LOVE MACHINE GUNS.

One car had three stickers.

AMERICA RULES THE WORLD, HAPPY NOW? , an upside down flag in the middle, and GREED IMPERIALISM and WAR, NO THANKS GEORGE.

Beside

PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN, JUSTICE and VENGANCE and VIET VET.

I saw three in row on parked cars also:

I LOVE MY COUNTRY BUT I THINK WE SHOULD SEE OTHER PEOPLE.

HAVING GIVEN UP ON SEARCHING FOR THE TRUTH, I’M NOW LOOKING FOR A GOOD FANTASY.

I’m NOT LOST, I’M EXPLORING.

It takes a lot to get me riled up enough to fight and I have had enough. Today, with a nod to Franklin D. Roosevelt, I'm declaring war.



STATEMENT OF THE WOUNDED

Our government, pursing its course of conquest and control of our personal bodily decisions has declared War On Users of Natural Drugs. These forces endeavor to enslave us; they rend the fabric of civilized society with unjust incarceration policies and destroy the ecosystem by irresponsibly saturating vast stretches of earth in Latin America with herbicidal agents.

Rapid and united effort by all citizens who are determined to become free of policies that destroy this planet and regulate control over their person will insure a victory by the forces of reason and sanity against these forces of oppression and perdition.

We therefore request that all citizens who would uphold the freedom of choice for natural medicines, to recognize a state of war exists between Civilized Society and the policies embodied in the War On Users of Natural Drugs.


THE WAR RESOLUTION

Declaring that a state of war exists between Civilized Society and the perpetration of the War On Users of Natural Drugs and making provision to prosecute the same, we the citizens who have suffered injury in this conflict declare War On Unwise Natural Drug Eradication Doctrines.


Whereas our government has formally declared a War On Users of Natural Drugs and all of Civilized Society who would support their cause:

Therefore, be it Resolved by the WOUNDED assembled, that the state of war has been thrust upon us and is hereby formally declared. We can no longer stand isolated in mute outrage for fear of the consequences. The WOUNDED are hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire force of their knowledge, experience and will to bring this conflict to a successful termination.

SIGNED on this 5th day of May, 2003:

On Behalf of the WOUNDED

LA Stone