Happy 70th birthday Ringo Star

Thank you for all the great music.

Dennis Hopper dies; actor, director's 'Easy Rider' became a generational marker

Dennis Hopper, 74, an actor and director whose low-budget biker movie "Easy Rider" made an unexpected fortune by exploring the late 1960s counterculture and who changed Hollywood by helping open doors to younger directors including Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, died May 29 at his home in Venice, Calif.

1970 Kent State Shootings Recalled 40 Years Later

KENT, Ohio -- The words Kent State helped define a generation.

The date May 4, 1970, is forever etched in the minds of 50 and 60 somethings who were college students at the time.

That was when Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of students demonstrating against the escalation of the Vietnam War with the April 30 invasion of Cambodia.

Four students were killed. Many others were injured.

"May 4 is one of those days like Nov. 22 and Sept. 11," said Cincinnati attorney Tim Burke, who was Xavier University's Student Body President in 1970.

Though the gunfire occurred in Northeastern Ohio, the shock waves quickly reached the Queen City.

"It was just unimaginable that these students would be gunned down that way," recalled Gus Perdikakis, a University of Cincinnati senior at the time. He's now President of Gus Perdikakis Associates in Symmes Township. "It was a very tense time -- a lot of concern among the students."

That led to an escalation of anti-war activities on both the UC and Xavier campuses.

At Xavier, Burke recalled a Midnight Mass being held in the middle of the Evanston campus.

"A number of the Jesuit faculty members came down and concelebrated that Mass," Burke said.

Xavier students also participated in a march from their campus to Clifton, where they joined UC students and the women of Edgecliff College for a silent walk Downtown and back Uptown.

"I recall the crowd being estimated at 10,000 people," Burke added.

Retired UC history professor Herb Shapiro said opposition to the Vietnam War grew geometrically.

"It was really a decisive turn in the road as far as the war was concerned and also, I think, in the seriousness of students," said Shapiro.

Within days the UC Administration Building was occupied by protesters. Many carried signs indicating they were part of the SDS -- Students for a Democratic Society.

Throngs gathered on "The Bridge" outside Tangeman University Center to listen to speakers.

Several hundred people ventured Downtown and gathered in the intersection of 5th Street and Walnut Street.

Shapiro, who had just gotten back into town, joined them and was arrested.

"We went down to the holding pen, which was in City Hall at the time," he recalled. "Then, all of those students and two faculty members, we went through the city court. It was all rather short."

Members of UC's Student Senate held lengthy open meetings about whether to continue to hold classes or cancel the remainder of the Spring term.

Student Senator John Schneider recalled very large crowds and a very tense atmosphere.

"You could cut the tension with a knife," said Schneider, now President of First Valley Corporation.

UC's Board of Trustees eventually decided to shut down the school.

"It was wise, I think, to close the university," Schneider stated. "It would have been very difficult to restart classes at that point."

However, the closing meant that many young men faced the possibility of being drafted into military service.

Perdikakis was one of them.

"I was married at the time -- just had our first child," he said. "So, the thought of having to pick up and go and be drafted was looking over my head."

Burke recalled that Xavier remained open with student leaders pushing for a strike against violence.

"We encouraged people to choose if they wanted to go to class," he said. "That was fine if they did, but many of us were going to do other things."

Forty years later, the memories of those turbulent times seem as fresh as ever.

"I think it should really be remembered as a symbol of the breakdown of responsive institutions which were supposed to take into account the feelings that people had," Shapiro stated. "That was this war had lost what degree of public standing or acceptance it may have had at one time."

Schneider took it one step further.

"I think that whole period was when people lost a lot of trust in government, had started to have a lot of doubts about its competence and I think that continues to this day," he theorized. "It probably explains a lot about the attitudes that are out there today."

However, both Schneider and Burke said the Kent State shootings changed them as people.

"I think it did tend to focus me more on being a good citizen," said Schneider. "That period of activism has focused me more on trying to be a good citizen in the city and being more involved in neighborhoods."

Burke said it was a life lesson learned early.

"I was already an activist, but probably as much as another other single social event that encouraged me to remain active in helping to do things that changes in our society," he said.

What was the message to the college students of 1970?

"It said to be careful, but not stop speaking out," Burke stated. "Four kids died in a very tragic and unnecessary way and all they were trying to do was stop a needless war."

When UC closed in 1970, many seniors weren't able to attend commencement. So, the UC Alumni Association decided to hold both a 40th Reunion and a special graduation ceremony for them on June 11, 2010.

The Class of 1970 had 4,979 members that the UC Foundation has tracked the past four decades. Most of them, 2,404 or 48 percent, live in the greater Cincinnati area. Seventy-five have been UC faculty or staff members, 63 work in medicine, 49 are employed in the legal field, 21 are architects and three are college Presidents or Chancellors. In addition, 46 are Presidents or founders of their own firms and 160 hold the title of Senior Vice-President or higher in corporations.

Jack Herer, father of marijuana legalization movement, dies at age 70 in Eugene

Jack Herer (left) with Dennis Peron (right), founder of the Cannabis Buyers Club, in San Francisco in 1996.

Writer and activist Jack Herer, whose 1985 book "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" ignited the modern marijuana legalization movement, died Thursday from complications from a September heart attack that felled him moments after speaking at a Portland rally. He was 70.

Herer had been recuperating since March in Eugene. His wife, Jeannie, was at his side at the house the couple had rented when he died.

"I never accepted that he was really going to go," Jeannie Herer said. "I'm sad that it happened, but I'm glad that it happened in Eugene. Everyone has been wonderful to us here."

Fellow activists expressed sorrow at losing the man who racked up hundreds of thousands of miles crossing the country for nearly 40 years campaigning to restore the hemp plant to American agriculture.

"He was one of my personal heroes," said Madeline Martinez of Portland, executive director of the Oregon chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Herer died just as the movement is gaining momentum. Oregon and 13 other states plus the District of Columbia now permit medical marijuana. Last fall, the Obama administration said it will not prosecute for possession in medical marijuana states. In November, California residents will vote on a legalization initiative; activists in Oregon and Washington are gathering signatures now for similar initiatives.

That political advance grew from Jack Herer's crusade.

He was living in Portland in the early 1980s when he wrote "Emperor," now in its 11th printing.

The book says the government banned hemp in 1939 as part of a campaign to eliminate the scourge that went by the Mexican slang marijuana. But few people, Herer wrote, realized that marijuana was the dried flower of the female hemp plant, which humans had used as medicine for thousands of years.

The rest of the hemp plant, Herer argued, could do nothing less than save the world. For millennia, he said, people made fiber, clothing, rope, fuel, high-protein food from the fast-growing, easily cultivated plant, and they could again.

And Herer loudly proclaimed the right to get high, arguing that in fact, people ought to get high, morning, noon and night. He found medical research showing that marijuana can protect the body against cancer.

Born in New York City, Herer grew up in Buffalo, N.Y, the youngest of three children. He dropped out of high school and joined the Army, serving in Korea. After his hitch, he picked up work as a sign painter.

In the early 1960s, he moved his wife and family to Los Angeles. A short time later, he divorced but stayed close with his children. He married and divorced twice more before marrying Jeannie Hawkins in 2000.

Herer came to marijuana relatively late in life, smoking his first joint at 30. He chucked the sign business and opened a head shop on Venice Beach, then made a lifelong friend in "Capt." Ed Adair, another head shop owner and a longtime marijuana advocate in Los Angeles.

In 1973, the men pledged to campaign until marijuana was legal, everyone imprisoned for possession was freed or they turned 84. Adair died in 1991 and Herer fought on.

Herer was arrested in 1981 for trespassing on federal property while collecting signatures for a California ballot initiative. He served 14 days in prison and started writing, "The Emperor Wears No Clothes."

After his release, Herer moved to Portland to open a head shop called The Third Eye, now a fixture on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. He completed the book in Portland, got it printed on hemp paper and began his years-long travels across the country.

In 2000, at a hemp festival near Eugene, Herer suffered a stroke and endured a long, agonizing recovery. He had improved in recent years and resumed his speaking schedule. He attributed his better health to daily use of a highly concentrated marijuana oil.

He resumed his heavy travel schedule, which included a Sept. 12 speech at Portland's Hempstalk at Kelley Point Park. He delivered a tub-thumbing speech, walked offstage and fell over from a heart attack.

He survived and eventually his wife rented a house in Eugene, where she cared for him until his death.

Herer is survived by his wife, six children, a brother and a sister. Funeral arrangements are not completed.

'Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World' by Nicholas Schou - latimes.com

'Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World' by Nicholas Schou - latimes.com

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Hawaii Senate Votes To Tax Pot $30/Ounce, Allow Dispensaries

Medical marijuana would be taxed $30 an ounce and sold at county-licensed "compassion centers" that would grow and sell marijuana to qualified patients and caregivers under a bill passed Tuesday by the Hawaii State Senate.
The bill to allow the sale and taxation of medical marijuana, Senate Bill 2213, was passed by lawmakers as they try to add up enough money to stop the state's projected $1.2 billion budget shortfall, reports Richard Borreca at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
The marijuana bill, after provoking debate on the Senate floor, eventually passed 20-4.
"I don't think this is helping to alleviate the drug problem," said Sen. Norman Sakamoto (D-Salt Lake/Foster Village), who had evidently wandered into the wrong debate.
Windward Oahu Republican Sen. Fed Hemmings said the FDA should test medical marijuana before people sell it.
Gary Hooser (D-Kauai/Nilhau) defended the bill, calling the arguments against it "offensive to many in our community whose only relief from cancer or HIV is through the use of marijuana."
"These votes show that Hawaii's Senate supports sensible marijuana policies that will serve the best interests of state citizens," said Eric M. McDaniel, a legislative analyst with the Marijuana Policy Project.
"Hawaii's most vulnerable citizens deserve safe and reliable access to their medicine, and no Hawaiian deserves to go to jail simply for using a substance that is safer than alcohol," McDaniel said. "If House members agree, I would strongly encourage them to pass these measures as well."
The Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, headed by Pamela Lichty and Jeanne Ohta, and the Peaceful Sky Alliance, headed by Matt Rifkin, played crucial roles in getting these measures through the Senate, according to MPP.
The bill, with its special $30-an-ounce tax, now goes to the House for further consideration

Hippie busses forever

Hippie buses began in the 1960's and the tradition never went away. There are still people out there decorating buses in the '60's hippie style. The most famous bus was Furthur, the bus that Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters drove across the country. This journey was made famous in Tom Wolfe's book, "Electric Kool-aid Acid Test." The original bus is rotting away in a swamp on Ken Kesey's ranch in Oregon. In the late '80's they got their hands on another bus and Further II went on the road.

I knew a couple of people, in the '70's when I lived in Fullerton, California, who were bus nomads. One guy, Silverbear, would come by most years on his annual migration from somewhere in Oregon or Washington down to the desert of Arizona. His bus, "Patchs", got its picture in a 1979 book called Rolling Homes by Jane Lidz. The book has been out of print for awhile and it has become a collector's item. I understand Patchs might be still on the road. Another friend, Arthur, converted a step van into his home, and I visited another guy who owned a school bus with a couple of VW buses welded on top.

People are still converting buses to motor homes and some of them paint them wildly. I have seen several of them at the Burning Man Festival over the last ten years and they still regularly appear at Rainbow Gatherings. I found a few websites that have collected photos of these. One of them has about 40 photos of colorfully painted Volkswagen buses. Another one has pictures of various hippie buses.

My Gypsy Caravan project is an extension of the love affair I have had with buses and do-it-yourself mobile living for over 30 years.