June, 19, 2017
My singing group, Spirit Voices, recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, with a concert at Nissi’s night club in Colorado. I’m the oldest member of the group, and the only one who, in 1967, spent time in both the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco and New York’s Lower East Side–the twin poles of psychedelia. I was a reporter for the Boston Globe, my first job, and because I was in my early twenties, they sent me out across the country to report on what we called the counter culture. […]
Read MoreJune, 6, 2017
In the winter of 1999, Dr. Allan Frankel, an internist who now treats people with microdoses of marijuana, suffered a viral infection of the heart. Doctors told him he had six months to live. He’s rarely tried marijuana, but several of his cancer and AIDS patients urged him to use it for his heart. A year later, his heart was normal. Frankel, now 66, says he can’t be certain that cannabis healed his heart. “I’d been depressed and cannabis stopped the depression,” he says. “It gave me something to look forward to. My […]
Read MoreApril, 5, 2017
When in despair with the fortune of our country, I began reading High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic, by Glenn Frankel. His thesis is that Carl Foreman, the screenwriter, created High Noon as a parable about how he was abandoned by friends and community when he stood up to the House Un-American Activities Committee for what he believed in—freedom of thought and speech. I was surprised to learn that when the Blacklist arose in the late ‘40s and ‘50s, a Democrat, Harry Truman, was President, we had […]
Read MoreFebruary, 22, 2017
Can CBD curb your appetite? Quash anxiety? Protect your heart and brain? Anecdotal evidence for these and other health benefits has created a surge, a potential tsunami of demand for CBD products. While the FDA recently declared CBD an illegal, Schedule 1 drug, it’s being sold in states where medical cannabis is legal, and some companies are shipping it across state lines. I’d been hearing about the healing properties of CBD for years, but I had not heard that it cuts your appetite until I spent time with Dr. Allan Frankel, a renowned […]
Read MoreOctober, 5, 2016
I read my friend the first line of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” “Perfect,” she said. “Only we’re somewhere on the edge of the Rockies and our drugs are Synthroid and hormone replacement.” I was heading to Denver to cover the Cannabis Cup last year, and my friend, Tina, was my 300-pound Samoan attorney. Actually, she’s small, a dynamo who lets no one get in her way when she’s creating Victorian homes, silk gardens, […]
Read MoreSeptember, 15, 2016
Sativa with fish? Indica with steak? Or is it the other way around? Welcome to the world of pairing strains of marijuana with specific foods to enhance their flavor—the hot trend in states where marijuana is legal. Pot to be paired photo by Maya Dooley This is not like eating food cooked with cannabis, which people have been doing at least since Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas served their guests in Paris hashish fudge. “It should be eaten with care,” Toklas wrote in her cookbook. “Two pieces are quite sufficient.” That’s the […]
Read MoreJuly, 19, 2016
I found the video on YouTube: Bobby Kennedy speaking to a rally of black people in Indianapolis in 1968, on the night Martin Luther King was shot. Bobby had been informed about King’s death by the mayor, who told him not to go to the black neighborhood because riots could break out. Bobby had replied, “Don’t tell me where I can and cannot go.” In the darkness, standing on a flatbed truck, he spoke, unrehearsed, from his heart. “If you’re black, and you’re tempted to be filled with feelings of hatred and mistrust,” […]
Read MoreMarch, 9, 2016
It’s hard to tell in Honolulu that a Presidential election is happening. The only evidence of the upcoming Democratic caucuses, on March 26th, is near the University of Hawaii and other spots, where, at rush hour, young people and a few retirees stand at intersections, grinning and waving signs for “Bernie 2016” to get drivers’ attention. Since the nineteen-twenties, Hawaii has banned billboards and other forms of outdoor advertising. Legend has it that, in 1968, Charles Campbell, a schoolteacher who was running for Honolulu’s city council, made a sign and waved it on […]
Read MoreFebruary, 22, 2016
Every so often, I come across a human story that rivets me. Here’s one. Nayla Tawa, a lanky brunette with large blue eyes, was an extreme snowboarder. She flew to Kyrgyzstan to go boarding in uncharted mountains, and to make a film about villagers who were trying to create a winter sports center to bring much-needed income to their town. On the first day , however, she had a car accident that broke her back in three places and stopped the film in its tracks. Ultimately, it set the stage for a different […]
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