smoke em if you got em

19

the first days of dope... of reefer as it was called... with joints thinner than a needle and paranoia larger than Texas.... i was reminded of this because a very uptight friend of mine just opened a marijuana store in Marin County... she was an executive of a well-known and oft-cursed computer company (whose initials are Microso*t)... retired, she's gone back to her roots...or rather...
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ferkixlll:
Wisdom wasted on the old, youth wasted on the young. *And a deal was a 3 finger nickel bag that cost $5.00. "Those were the days my friend......"
francy:
wanderful

lost and found and lost and found again

11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luAqu8VX5wo

was there then, missing there now!

(sg won't let me post the video... you'll just have to open it to find out) -- i was there, am still 'there' in that i bought a farm around then which we still live on, though it's mostly leased out at this point to younger backs and stronger arms... the town itself has lost most of its...
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ferkixlll:
What a distant time $6.50 tickets!!!

Tyrant-O-Soreus Wrecks

8

after the news--if it can be called that--of late, songs like America by Steppenwolf are often in my ears, and the grittier protest songs of the 60s, including Helter Skelter...

reading Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire, seeing patterns repeat of course, or form and suggest repetition...he observes that Christianity came to the fore because of the hypocritical brutality and dissipation of the Roman elite......
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oldernow:
@ferkixlll yeah -- as an active protester in the 60s (and later until my health broke), we undertook to either actively and substantively disrupt 'normal operations' or to do a fifth column thing and work from the inside! - at one point my wife as working for personnel for the corporation we wanted to protest, so that when we got folk to sit in, she was able to fire off the security lock-down protocols *after* the protestors were inside and the corporate geeks were outside... ... the whole "Occupy the park across from Wall Street" really bothered me... why not actually occupy Wall Street? repeatedly??  ... at this point I don't see any other result than the splitting of the country into three or four sub-groups (in 50 years perhaps): the northeast, the southeast & central states; and the far west--oh, and Texas will probably go its own ultra conservative way.  // the other point you make, that the world's governments are paralleled by the multinationals is more true in the West; I don't see the mega rich Chinese businesses that independent of the government... but in either case we are back to the mid-19th century robber-barons, and that worked out great! ...after a few world wars and decades of horrible poverty...
ferkixlll:
A book from the late '80's ( that you might have come across ) "The 9 Nations of North America" ( I'd have to find it to post the author ). Premises is that the regions are more similar, than the State Lines would predict.

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

8

...Something Wicked This Way Comes... --said the witch in Macbeth, and said Mr. Bradbury some time later... of the two, in this case I must own that I prefer Bradbury... here's a quote from his novel about two boys and a truly unworldly, dangerous circus - "

So there they go, Jim running slower to stay with Will, Will running faster to stay with Jim,...
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ferkixlll:
I think that the Witch had the right of it. The time of small towns where boys could break windows and the exotic circus came, passed away as it happened in Bradbury's youth. Now wickedness has become the norm.

A note from another time:

11

This is from Edward Gibbon's lil 5-tome treat "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" - Book 1, Chapter 3 -- and really, he is so eloquent throughout I cannot but recommend him to the doughty reader! -- and note the date of publication --

The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of· a state, in which a single person, by...
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oldernow:
@ferkixlll  point.  that quote of JFK's (dark irony that) is really out of date! my point is that holding a positive attitude which is patient and poised for the moment when an action can be quite powerful--not 'it's all good" (it's not), or "it will all work out" --maybe maybe not-- but there will be a moment.. it may come at too high a cost, or it may be rejected by the other person... -- i recall the moment my first wife chose to reject my forgiveness of her cheating--that was really what ended not only our marriage but any connection with her thereafter-- i saw that she could have acknowledged her own darkness and we might have at least ended on a civil note...  ... i ramble... enough on this for now
ferkixlll:
Being able to forgive is one action, being able to accept being forgiven a different action and sometimes they don't happen at the same moment of Space/Time: to the sorrow of all. **Entropy wins, the game is to postpone it winning for as long as possible. Finding a clear vision that doesn't vear into utter nihilism or Pollyannaist denial is the tightrope. "I am but an egg".

not bad for a flashback

12

kinda makes my jaw ache and a particular sort of biting on aluminum flavor in my mouth...

oh yes indeedy... gotta watch them rabbits runnin in the ditch...

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oldernow:
@ferkixlll yeah, I never did buy in to the "tune in, turn on, drop out" thing - or the whole "all war is bad" thing either - my dad and both my uncles went through WWII as POWs from Bataan... not a lotta love of the Orient in our house...  they made it, but with physical and mental scars .. // I did enjoy the 60s and the creative energies, the willingness (for a while) to confront a moribund status quo... but it was clear to me that my friends weren't so much "anti war" as "anti-getting-my-ass shot off"... so when their ass ceased to be in wind... their values reverted to type.   Meanwhile, up here in Ithaca, some of us have persisted in trying to move the political needle a bit more to the left as a counterpoint to the current misuse of the right...   ... welp, it'll all be over soon anyway I suppose...
ferkixlll:
Those young whipper snappers are going to have to cope with the mess. I wish them luck.

another bit of light

8

i suggest taking a moment to watch "Grateful Dawg" documentary... a time gone and come again gods willing...

also the documentary "The Other One" touches a little of the spirit of the 60s before it became a thing... (for that matter a documentary that REALLY catches San Francisco before Time Magazine invented Haight Ashbury is "The Cockettes"...)

i do miss those years sometimes... and i...
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oldernow:
@ferkixlll "vote like your life depends on it" - you said it!  I live in a county of 16,000 people... more than once a local office has been decided by less than 20 votes with substantial consequences (Formula 1 used to race here and doesn't due to a single counselman in the 70s...)  ... and so on up the line... yes both parties are crap, but unless and until the Left gets its too-too individual and elitist head out of its gooey ass the Hard Right's ability to anticipate, plan and deploy effective power grabs will persist... the Left cannot admit to itself that it too wants power, but it had better start doing do - we need to take several steps back towards checks and balances before we try anything fancy like a multi-party system or, who knows, a democracy!
ferkixlll:
We are a Representative Democracy. We elect people to be representatives. Unfortunately too much of their time is spent dunning money for their reelection, so The Peoples work takes a back seat. *We have gotten so far from "We are one", that failing any of a groups litmus test rules one out of the group. If not inclusive how to form coalitions? The Rebel Groups in "Life of Brian" come to mind. The bigger the fractures the easier to wedge apart. ** So kind of screwed is the diagnosis.

some people may think

10

this has no place here... but then, this is no place! or time... or any other place... and trust me, His Holiness is unperturbed and by no means "offended" by any image or discussion here... I have met with him over 30 times in the past 50 years... sometimes for days of discussion, so I am not making this up....

take 15 minutes = it...
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