HAPPY NEW YEAR AND LET'S WELCOME 2016 !!

Wow! What a year!! 2015 was.

Started the year off with two friends, who are still friends, threatening to call the sheriff to evict me from my room. I had lived with my friends in that room for about 8, maybe 10 years.

Bought a house - my first at age 60. Same state as Stephen King.

Wonderful summer that found me learning to sit outside in my yard and enjoy that, along with my cat.

A year unlike any other. My mother, whom I have a jaded past with, diagnosed with cancer only to find out now it's not cancer and they don't know what it is. My mother with a mysterious illness. Of course.

And I have my illnesses... matters not, not that it matters.

A full year on FaceBook. Maybe not something to write home about. But at 61, looking back, it's extraordinary how things have changed. No more phones. Chat online or even make a call with video online. Had a video Christmas in fact with my family. 700 miles a part and we were together while unwrapping presents.

A difficult year.

New Year Goals:

1) Get exercising.
2) Resolve issues at current job of 16 years or find a new one.
3) Relax while still being productive.
4) Get out and meet people. Or decide to become a recluse.
5) Work on improving the new house.

I would like to write again, like fiction to publish, and found a place to do that: Nelson Algren Literary Awards. It would be a good thing to write again.

Have a Hppy new year :)

BobKat

REFLECTIONS BEGINNING AGE 20

I'm 61 now. I was born in 1954. Milk was delivered to your door. Phone numbers were composed of 5 numbers and a Phone company operator. Much of the area that is now heavily over-run with construction and houses was then woods. That's where I often went, there and many places by age 8.

Age 20 I was renting a room with 6 others my age in a rooming house. We shared the bathroom and the kitchen. Overall not a bad experience... great women, music and good drugs in those days. The house was at the edge of the campus for the local city community college. I got a job with the college as custodian at the Fine Arts Building, called "FACE". As an artist myself, or interested at least, it was the cornucopia of my life. I worked 3PM to 11PM. A 3 story old brick building. I was responsible for the top floor, and one half of the basement.

Often I feel myself back then. I feel the confusion, the unknown sense of uncertainty. I discovered magic - true magic.

I took courses there too, and began to write a lot. Two alliances I call my mentors happened. Both happened to be English professors. Actually they became my surrogate parents, as my own were acting nuts. Doug turned me onto Henry Miller - "The World of Sex", like "The Rosy Crucifixion", a trilogy. Most know or have heard of the author from writing "Tropic of Cancer", which Jimmy Steward famously used in one of his movies.

Then there was Virginia. I had a crush on her though she was 10 years older. What the reason was why she became my mentor, was I heard rumor she was a "white witch". Religion fascinated me, as I'd been brought up by a devoted mother. But I wanted to know something and more about all religions. Virginia helped me learn all I could. Enough to satisfy my craving to understand.

There would be a year I'd have a lot of sex. Every time it mystified me and seemed paranormal. Feeling awkward, except during the actual sex, was beyond enduring. Blue balls are real... yeah I know you women think it's a myth, but at that age many men suffer aching balls, called blue balls, and there's only one real remedy. Sex. So a lot of time goes into what today are called "hook-ups".

I'm still single. I remember it all.

APOLOGY MY FRIENDS!

I live in America. In the NE. I have a BA in English and many minors, skills and talents. I have been at my current job over 15 years - software technical support.

I cannot go into detail. Too few workers, too many managers.

Was threatened with the rest of the small dept that unless we did the impossible, we would all be fired, that the boss/captain work not take the fall. Not very noble of him.

This tension at the company has been growing in the past two - three years. I've been through drama and threats before. Many good people have quite, and one very good tech was fired, and as I'm the senior tech I would know. Management obviously has other ideas.

I did buy my first house, it needs work, but the work will wait. A lot will have to wait including my blog, and I'm sorry for that because I was just getting the hang of it.

I'll try not to be long... just wanted to say I appreciate all the views and especially the comments.

BobKat

MARIJUANA'S 2800 YEAR HISTORY - IT WASN'T INVENTED IN 1937!!

History of marijuana prohibition and supportive documentation that it wasn't invented in a lab in 1937:

1) Marijuana wasn't invented in 1937 by drug cartels from Mexico and I present, what to some might be shocking documentation, evidence of this fact.

2) Marijuana as a medicine and psychotropic plant has been used by humans for at least 2800 years.

It's ironic how successful marijuana prohibition was... how successful the propaganda was demonizing the use of a medicinal plant used safely by humans for several millennia.

Marijuana is so bad that it is a Schedule 1 drug under the control of a federal agency called the DEA, that without the propaganda, would likely not even exist. President Richard Nixon created the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) largely based on his paranoia towards marijuana. Although the DEA today seems to control the manufacturing and distribution of all pharmaceuticals, it's primary task as established by President Nixon was control of marijuana, a plant that was banned in 1937 under the guise of the Marijuana Tax Act. The law is infamous based on a Yellow Journalism movie called reefer Madness:

"Reefer Madness (originally made as Tell Your Children and sometimes titled as The Burning Question, Dope Addict, Doped Youth, and Love Madness) is a 1936–1939 American propaganda exploitation drama drug addiction film revolving around the melodramatic events that ensue when high school students are lured by pushers to try marijuana..."

Still today over 75 years later non-violent people are subject to arrest and alienation from society based upon use or possession of this plant. They are deprived of their freedom, chances for a job that they might excel at, and ostracized. Although several states have now legalized it for use by adults, the federal government digs in and refuses to accept that use or possession of marijuana does not constitute "crime". It's "illegal" yes, but why?

I meet people occasionally that tell me marijuana is bad because it was invented by drug cartels back during alcohol prohibition. Mexican cartels seeking to exploit our children and taking advantage of alcohol prohibition.

"Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933."

So much for that!!!

However the focus then turned upon marijuana, the "destroyer of youth", illegal Mexican immigrants, Negroes seducing White girls with marijuana. The Great Depression was happening... what jobs there were belonged to Americans, not illegal immigrants. Outlawing marijuana seemed to be the simplest solution to arresting undesirables. By demonizing marijuana it solved not only that problem, it also solved the corporate problem of hemp (marijuana) trumping chemical, petroleum and pharmaceutical developments. The age of cannabis as a criminal activity had arrived.

Marijuana was invented... laws against manufacturing it went on the books. Growing it was equivalent to producing it in a lab. Wild hemp became a manufactured product and hemp production for clothing, fuel, bio-products was equated to murder. Nationwide, all hemp was obliterated, burned and destroyed.

Elvis Presley, The King of Rock asked President Nixon if he could become a NARC, believing strongly as the President did that marijuana was a scourge. Parents told stories of marijuana addicts jumping out of window, off from roofs. Other drugs became tied into use of marijuana - heroin, cocaine, opium... "marijuana use led to hard drugs", ironic as marijuana was considered the "hardest drug" of all.

How many people have died of marijuana consumption? Zero. Compared to alcohol use how many brains and bodies have been destroyed because of it's use? Some people honestly have or open mental issues due to cannabis use, however in truth, for every marijuana psychological problem there are 1000 alcohol related problems. And as far as deaths go, Zero/10,000, marijuana/alcohol.

A rare treat for you perhaps. I own Volume X of the US Pharmacopceia, published in 1926. This was the American Medical Association's Bible for medicine. It includes every medicine and how to compound it known by medical science as of 1926... well after snake medicine became a thing of the past in the early 1900's.