I’ve been a skeptic of marijuana as a medical miracle for almost as long as I’ve been doubtful the Easter Bunny lays eggs in my stocking once a year and the Cleveland Browns are someday going to the NBA Finals.
Marijuana cures cancer? Ho ho ho. Marijuana is the answer for those suffering from glaucoma? Ha ha ha. Marijuana, the weed that gives me headaches when I smoke it and hallucinations when I eat it, is capable of making the blind to see and allows the crippled to cast aside their crutches? Oh stop. You’re killing me. I’m laughing! No, I’m crying!
Also: chanting Om will bring world peace, aromatherapy will cure bunions and chakra absorbers will keep your Subaru’s front end aligned. And the next great medical breakthrough will come from listening to wind chimes.
So yeah, add me to the Skeptics column if the question has to do with pot being able to cure anything other than ambition and motivation. The notion that cannabis is a magic healing agent never gets raised except prior to another “Legalize Weed Now!” campaign. But since that memorable day when we began to smoke whatever we want (as long as it isn’t tobacco) anywhere we want (as long as it isn’t your mother’s living room) all the righteous nonsense about marijuana as the biggest deal since the Salk vaccine has withered and died.
Well, not completely. Mostly it’s gone but not in some remote corners of obscure pharmacological experimentations. My medicine cabinet, for instance.
A few years ago my legs and feet and their ligaments and tendons started going all electric on me, causing shock-like jolts through what had previously been the most serene of all my bodily precincts. Aside from a random stubbed toe my extremities have always seemed content.
Then came the zapping jolts, the restless legs and the troublesome notion that if my foot hurts this much in 2022, what will it feel like in 2032? Next: doctors, exercises and reflexology. After that: more pain.
I was blubbering about my po’ footsies one day and an ex-cop told me to try CBD salve. Sure thing. Why not Chanel face cream, STP or olive oil?
But I did. I tried Mama’s Medicinals, from a downtown Ukiah shop run by Emily Held. For a few days nothing improved. Yet within two weeks my feet waved a white flag and sought a truce. My 50 volt zaps disappeared.
Thank you, Emily!
I realize rubbing salve on my feet has positive effects that might also improve if I rubbed butter or Brylcreem on them. But I’m not going to try those unproven substances.
I’m sticking with good old tried-and-true marijuana juice.
No Dewey Decimal System Needed
Next time you’re in Hopland, ask directions to the Thatcher Hotel. It’s the big dark building in the middle of town and perfect for a jolly good Martini or a fresh-brewed pint of honest-to-Michael Laybourne Red Tail Ale.
Nice comfy bar, easygoing bartenders and patrons all polite and civilized. I stopped in a week or two ago with J and Kip; you probably know who they are, and maybe the bartender did too. We were treated like nice people anyway.
But what’s puzzling and insane is the old hotel’s library. And you think to yourself: How can a library go bizarre or nonsensical?
If the Thatcher Library was limited to cookbooks only from Calpella chefs, or poetry composed solely by French zookeepers, it would merely be odd.
And if all book titles only started with the letter “G” it would be weird, yet you could explain it, sort of, to anyone who asked. I hope the Thatcher library is both A) one of a kind and, soon to be dismantled and B) rearranged in compliance with standards from the American Librarian Association.
The Thatcher library: Some books stand in rows, all shelved with spines facing rearward. The book titles are lined up backwards. Think that over.
The edges of pages are all you see when choosing a book, and choosing a book is impossible when you can’t read the book’s title because it’s facing backwards. That’s just the start.
Other shelves house books only having green covers, regardless of subject matter. One shelf above, the volumes are stacked like bricks, all horizontal, except for those aligned vertical. On a nearby shelf all the books are blue. Or red. Or yellow, black, brown or have their covers removed.
There is no attempt to differentiate novels from biographies, nor poetry from dictionaries. Ancient history might be in the attic, graphic novels in the Men’s Room. It’s all a mad mess compiled by someone whose understanding of “library” is nowhere apparent.
Have we reached “incomprehensible” yet?
What’s funny, sort of, is that this monstrosity is probably the work of a “Library Curator” as if it’s the work of a sniffy, stuffy, pretentious museum intellectual. Maybe it is.
Regardless, it’s laughable and pointless.
(Tom Hine thinks the hotel “library” should host reading groups that place random printed words and fragments in a blender set on high, pluck them out, swallow them and challenge one another to explain the 34th paragraph in James Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake.’ TWK will moderate.)
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