IRISH SPRING

I've lived in Chicago all my life. I grew to love Winter when I found the solace of state & national parks on camping trips in January & February during my high school years. I really learned to love the Winter when I began skiing when I was 19. Being a jock, I now had baseball in the Summer, basketball in the Winter, and ski trips to look forward to during the dark days. It was years before I allowed any day with sunshine & green grass remind me that I suck at golf.

I've always loved the seasons, and I've always found joy in all of them.

But it's mid-June in Chicago after the coldest Winter in 75 years & the wettest Spring on record. The White Sox are going nowhere, the Cubs soap opera is already tiresome, Bears fans are already insufferable, and I can't get out to play golf because it's always raining!

Enough to turn a tough guy into a cry baby.

But then a phone call comes in late on a rainy Sunday night. The kind of call you're not surprised to get; the reason why you keep your shoes on late at night long after everyone else has taken theirs off.

If you're one of the lucky or smart ones who receives the calls about the people who weren't so lucky or smart, the ringing phone never surprises you. Neither does the news that you receive. You switch to autopilot. You remember your mom's words about creating chaos when everything's OK and remaining calm when everyone else panics.

It's in these moments that you find peace. It's in these rainy moments when you walk out into the dawn rain and see the flowers you planted for the first time. You walk to the street just so you can walk back toward the house and see the colorful explosion of life you've planted.

In an instant, your complaints about the wet weather fall to the wayside. You look up at the flower boxes you built with your neighbor last Spring, and all the flowers bursting out of them, and realize he'll never see them again. He's gone.

You think about all the people you loved who died young from bad decisions or bad habits. You're too old to be angst ridden anymore, and too young to want to join the crew. You're working against the clock, trying to write it all down before your number comes up.

You look up into the cool rain. You look around and see everything bright & green, waiting for the sun. You've been thinking about how you don't want to go to Ireland until you know how many days on this planet you have left.

No sense in seeing Paradise till you're ready to stay.

But then you see it standing in front of you, and it's the place you live with the Irish girl you always hoped you'd find. You've got blues people and musicians and missionary priests coming for dinner in your yard Sunday afternoon.

The rain falls softly on the flowers growing in the boxes you built with your departed friend. The birds dance in the puddles. The dogs shake out under towels in the kitchen, and the grills in the yard stay cold as soup is reheated in the kitchen.

Irish Spring.

LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

Why is marijuana illegal?

Ever since Eve fed Adam an illegal apple, people have been looking for ways to alter their consciousness. Religious rituals, rites of passage, rites of celebration and even the pause at the end of a busy day are all centered around something designed to wind ourselves up or wind ourselves down.

Half a million Americans will die in 2009 directly from the effects of alcohol and tobacco use. Zero people will die from the effects of marijuana use. Tobacco use alone is directly responsible for an overwhelming percentage of the cost of hospital stays, surgeries, and in-home long term care. Marijuana use has never, in the history of human civilization, ever been tied to any debilitating health care costs.

Why is marijuana illegal? As with any question, follow the money to get your answer. The alcohol and tobacco lobbies spend billions of dollars a year to influence the votes of governments worldwide on marijuana legislation. The social costs of these lobbyists and legislators conspiring to keep people drunk & tired & cancer ridden are enormous.

None of us can look at the world with clear eyes anymore; all of us are so indoctrinated into a world of hypocrisy that we accept clergy members sworn to celibacy raping our children. We accept police officers and city officials and congressmen and senators and governors and even Presidents who lie to us and wink at us at the same time.

It's only fitting, then, in this world of hypocrisy, that the half breed son of a black African deadbeat father and a white Kansan mother be the one faced with the conundrum we're face with.

The Current Occupant of the White House bragged in a book about his audacious use of marijuana during his high school and college years. He wrote about a few of his exploits with cocaine. Now he's faced with a worldwide economic collapse, and a growing majority of people who are saying that legalizing marijuana and freeing nonviolent drug offenders from prison are logical steps in the economic recovery.

There's no reason it had to come to this. The labor unions, alcohol & tobacco lobbies, church groups who preach intolerance and ignorance, and the fearful sheep that hide behind too many of our homes & institutions have all conspired to bring us to this day.

Gays believe that by behaving like freaks and dressing like clowns at so-called "Pride Parades", they're advancing their cause of achieving equal rights. Nothing could possibly be further from reality. "Headly People", as Dead Heads and other advocates of marijuana legalization call themselves, are sometimes guilty of marginalizing themselves as well.

It's always easy to wave off the freaks.

It's never as easy to wave off reality. Reality is screaming at us, and here's what it's saying: Legalize marijuana. Find a way to institute the same type of packaging, marketing, taxation and regulation already in place for booze & cigarettes. Find a way to test for operating vehicles and other equipment that's as effective as those in place for alcohol. Make the penalties for abuse severe in severe cases, but in most cases, make the penalties for abuse be education & treatment, not incarceration.

We have a real drug war to fight in Afghanistan; the Taliban and al-Qaeda use opium & heroin as their cash crops to fund their war against the United States. Most marijuana used in the USA is grown locally and in Mexico. Most people who smoke pot or use it in recipes or for medicinal use are the furthest thing away from drug cartel criminals as one can get.

And nobody's ever confused a hippie Dead Head for a terrorist.

In order for the world to change, we have to change. Before we can change, we have to change the way we think.

I hope I live to see the moment of clarity come thru the foggy thinking of marijuana prohibition.

GREETINGS !!

This is my first blog at blogspot. I was actually looking to comment to Dennis Byrne on his blog about how to release the stranglehold Mike Madigan and John Cullerton have on the Illinois legislature in Springfield.

This is a trial run to see what kind of folks are here and who's talking about what.

I've posted blogs elsewhere, only to be dismayed at the ignorance, stupidity, and hatred I've seen. If I see it here, I'll be gone with the breeze.

I'm interested in corresponding with sane, rational adults who are able to state a premise, argue their stance, and exit with a coherent thought. It's really not that hard, folks!

All the best,
JMc