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Inside this issue
My birthday: a cake, ice cream, and just one hit
Exploring a little drug history with books by Alia Volz and Michael Pollan
How to help an author when you can’t afford the books
Saying goodbye to a guilty pleasure
But first, a question:
What was the best birthday you ever had? What made it so memorable?
My Big Fat Medicare Birthday
A significant birthday is coming up for me on Tuesday and I wanted to celebrate my eligibility for Medicare by smoking weed for the first time in decades. I also wanted to make a chocolate cake with an inch of frosting which I planned to smash into a bowl of homemade ice cream, flavor to be determined.
Thanks to various personnel changes and other administrative issues in the Social Security office, my Medicare has yet to come through. Strangely, my desire for the cake has waned and I’m not really in the mood to make ice cream, at least not as of this writing. The only thing that remains on my wish list is the pre-roll I bought a few months ago when I visited the local herb shop to pick up some drops and balms that we use for sleep and pain.
I don’t want to treat pain or worry about sleep right now. I just want to experience what it’s like to get stoned again after all these years. I want to see what it feels like to do it free of any outside concerns like legality, childcare, or getting caught by my parents. I have a vague plan involving a few hits in the evening air while sitting on our deck followed by a nice hot bath surrounded by lavender scent and the sounds of the Thee Sacred Souls and others who pop up when I set my iPod to shuffle and soak.
In high school, smoking pot was kind of a crap shoot. Sometimes it made me giggle uncontrollably. Other times, just sleepy. Then there were the times when my mild every-day paranoia escalated into something that took the fun right out of the experience for me and everyone who was with me. In college, I couldn’t afford it and was hypervigilant: I had a small child and was so worried that one false move on my part would be all it might take to lose him or hurt him. Ironically, he makes his living growing the stuff now. He’s been growing it for years, first as a lucrative sideline in the shadows of the law and then legally, facing all the problems farmers face.
There was one night in Amsterdam back in the late 90’s when my now-husband and a work colleague decided to visit a cafe after a work meeting was over. It had been years since I’d gotten high, same for Grace. As for my love - he’d never once smoked a joint. And even though Grace and I had, we’d never rolled one. The guys did that. So we prevailed on the man behind the bar who showed us a menu and then, after much pleading and possibly a tip, rolled us a joint. My companions laughed as we walked through the Red Light District back to our hotel and into the little restaurant outside it where we ate a bushel of french fries. I giggled a bit but mostly I worried about getting lost, getting rolled by pickpockets seeking out stoned tourists, and watching out for the others. It wasn’t until we got to our room that I relaxed. That part was fun.
I don’t know why, at 65, I want to try it again. I think it is because my mindset and surroundings are different now. I’ll be in my own home with someone I love without the pressures I imagined or felt when I was younger. I’m not looking to go back in time. I’m looking to see what this experience offers me now, if anything. I guess in the end, I want to smoke weed because I can. And because this birthday is reminding me that I don’t have endless opportunities to try things.
Maybe I should make that cake though. I may want it more than I think.
This week’s Reads
In keeping with the theme of this week’s newsletter, I give you two nonfiction books to think about.
Just finished…
Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco by Alia Volz
This is a memoir of a family, a time, and a city all rolled into one. The city is San Francisco, the time is the mid-70s through the 80s, and the family revolves around Volz’s mother, the “Brownie Lady” who supported them all by selling upwards of 10,000 marijuana edibles a month to the residents of San Francisco. As I read, I found myself revisiting and contrasting the life I ended up living with the one Volz’s artist mother, Meridy who was close to me in age, ended up living.
The book starts in 1975 when my son was born and when illegal substances more or less receded from my life. For Volz’s artist mother, Meridy, however, it was the year she moved from Wisconsin to San Francisco where she followed her art, made a little money, and continued the relationship with weed and various psychedelics she’d begun in college. Her new business fell into her lap when a friend who’d been doing it, decided to move on. No cook herself, Meridy found a baker to follow the recipe and then, using her own natural charm and instincts, proceeded to build a network of customers among the workers who kept San Francisco humming. Later, when the AIDS epidemic hit, Meridy, along with others, played a key role in helping to supply edibles for those in pain and wasting away after losing their appetites.
Her daughter, Alia Volz, brings the period to life and does a masterful job of showing how politics, racism, the unique culture of the times and the city, all contributed to the growth and success of Meridy’s underground business. Volz did her research but she was also a witness even though much of what she witnessed was through the eyes of her childhood self. Although she alludes to the impact that growing up in a family with a clandestine business had on her youthful social life, she focuses more intensely on her parents and the city itself. I found myself wanting to know more about this child who was exposed to so many rich and varied experiences and yet was also fashioned into an unwitting accomplice, someone who grew up knowing she could not speak freely about her parents to outsiders yet, reportedly, always felt loved and safe. Maybe there is another memoir in the works? If so, I’d read it. Volz writes with wit and insight and knows how to tell a great story.
Just started…
How to Change Your Mind: What the new Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by MIchael Pollan
I bought this book a couple of years ago for my husband’s Christmas present but I’ve wanted to read it since coming across his 2015 essay about the use of hallucinogens in cancer patients facing death. I started it this week and am totally engrossed. I’ve long struggled with how drugs are talked about, used, and studied in our culture. For one thing, I’ve never understood why substances as different as marijuana, heroin, and LSD could be lumped together in the eyes of the law as they have been and still are in many parts of the country. And I don’t understand why they generate more fear among many of us than alcohol or tobacco, two other plant-based substances that have done lots and lots of documented damage. Let’s not get started on how OxyContin was able to legally wreck entire towns thanks to the magic of capitalism and our for-profit healthcare system. The whole subject seems to require a more thoughtful, nuanced approach than the bludgeon of “just say no.”
Reading Pollan’s book on the heels of Alia Volz’ memoir, is reminding me of the role politics and fear have played in both science of drug study and as a mechanism for policing certain populations with drug laws. With all of these laws getting another look combined with the renewal of research into how drugs such as cannabis, psilocybin, LSD, or MDMA can be used for beneficial purposes in both the ill and the well, I am curious about what it could mean for me, for all of us.
I will want to talk about this book when I’ve finished it. I’ll also be reading Pollan’s recently launched book, This is Your Mind on Plants.
Shorter reads by Michael Pollan on this subject include this op-ed, “How Should We Do Drugs Now” , from the New York Times which contains a link to short Q&A with the author as well. If you do not subscribe to the Times and can’t access the article, let me know. I get 10 free “gift” articles a month and will happily send you the link in an email.
Let’s Talk About Reviews & Other Low-Cost Ways To Support an Author
Do you, like me, sometimes forget to write reviews of books we’ve liked on Amazon, Goodreads, the local library or all the other online places where books are available? Sometimes readers are shy about leaving reviews - remember, a review can be as short as one or two sentences plus the stars you want to give it. Just think about what you would say to a friend about the book and keep it short and simple. It is one of the ways a reader can help support a book whether you’ve paid for a copy or borrowed it from the library. As a writer, I can tell you, each review a reader took the time to leave meant a lot to me.
Another way to support a book and author you like without spending a lot of money? Ask your library to stock it. And tell your friends. If you are social media person, let folks know about the book. Here’s a little list of all the ways we can help support the books and writers we like without breaking the bank.
A Quick Birthday Request
I’ve been trying to rebuild my Instagram relationships ever since my original account was wiped out over a year ago. It’s been a longer and lonelier process than I thought it would be. So here’s my request: if you are on Instagram, let’s follow each other. You can find me here: @egmarro_spark. Thanks in advance!
Goodbye to a Guilty Pleasure: Good Girls
One of my favorite guilty pleasures during the pandemic was watching Good Girls while I pedaled the recumbent bike which sat unused in our bedroom until Covid came along. I was sad to hear that it would not be renewed but you can still watch all four seasons on Netflix, Prime, Hulu, etc.
The good things: real women - beautiful in all kinds of untraditional ways -- good women -- rise up and take control over their lives. It has everything: women friends, real women, funny and yet realistic assessments of the way women make do.
The question at the center of the premise: if we do bad things for good reasons can we escape being really “bad”? And what if we find we like doing the bad things? It’s fun to watch these women with powerful motivations grapple with these issues. It’s interesting to see how, when they try to retreat back into their lives, they can’t. Along the way there are lots of interesting tidbits: from competitive cupcake decoration to the power of an ordinary garbage disposal when it comes to destroying physical evidence. A thumb, for example.
There are little message bombs throughout about good versus bad, the gray areas, the ways humans fool themselves and how our image of ourselves shifts as we discover what we are capable of. It has some maddening men -- even the “good guys” are fury-inducing and what makes each of them particularly maddening is that they never stay dead. Just when you thought you wouldn’t have to put up with that smirk one more time, each man rises from the grave like descendants of Lazarus.
Honestly, I was shocked at how I kept watching even when the women disappointed me utterly with some of the decisions they made and the writing that sometimes failed to keep up with the story -- I couldn’t believe Beth, for example, took so long to realize that Rio saw her as work and that Annie was so willing to spill her guts to random men who even to the untutored eye were obviously FBI agents out to deceive her.
Flawed women. Flawed flawed women. That I couldn’t help but love a little.
Coming soon:
A psychic keeps sending me horoscopes for my novel’s character
How to talk to animals and others who don’t speak our language
That’s it for this week. Whatever your next week holds, I hope it brings at least one memorable moment, a good book or two, and a little fun along the way. Let me know how you are and what you are reading and what you think about any of what you’ve read here today. I love hearing from you. If you know anyone who might like this post or any others from Spark, share away. Here’s a button to make that easy:
And remember, if you are looking for a book, browse the Spark Community Recommendations Page at bookshop.org where we list all the books mentioned in this and past issues of Spark. Every sale helps to support local bookstores and a literacy program or two of our choice once we raise enough.
Ciao for now,
Gratefully,
Betsy
P.S. And now, your moment of Zen...when were young and cleaned up nice
My brother was born July 10, not quite a year after me which makes “Irish twins.” For years, we celebrated our birthdays together. He liked coconut cake which I hated and I liked chocolate which he liked just fine. We both ended up liking each other a lot. Today is his big day: Happy Birthday, Pete!
Bonus Moment of Zen: Thee Sacred Souls Sing “Can I Call You Rose?”
Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”
What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.
Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.
I can’t wait to see what you send!
(And if you’ve gotten here, liked something, and still haven’t hit the heart below, now’s your chance! )
Finally, I was able to link in only to see a "Grace" mention. Hilarious! One of my funniest memories!
OMG we have SO MUCH in common! We need to talk!! 😄