Enlightenment Can Be a Tricky Process

Enlightenment can be a tricky process. You make some progress forward and you slip back a bit, then go forward again, then maybe sideways some.

Several years ago, voters in Colorado decided that legalizing marijuana for medical use was a good thing.

So then lots of people invested time and money and went to work and started growing, some put their savings together to open shops where marijuana products would be legally sold.

New jobs were created in towns all over the state. Green jobs. Local jobs. Sales taxes were generated.

Then some towns decided that they didn't want any of those businesses in their town. Last night, Longmont became one of them. Conservative city council members decided that if people need to go to dispensaries, "they can just drive over to Boulder."

Some people got relief from health problems jobs were created, taxes were paid, local people were employed and yet, the council members just decided that they didn't want these kinds of businesses here.

Win some battles, lose some battles. I predict that eventually the laws will change and we will just have legal marijuana period, not just medical.

It is just foolish that it has taken this long. The experiment with banning beer and liquor didn't last for 80 years. After about 10 years, they admitted it was a mistake and repealed the law, let businesses open legally again and then taxed them.

I think that some people know that the enlightened approach would be to just do it that way, it's just that they have been stuck in their anti-drug position for so long that they choke on the idea of saying "oops, we made a mistake, so let's correct it."

But one of these days, the tide of public opinion and votes will sweep them aside. Too bad we wasted so much time haggling over it, and they will finally come out and admit that they know it is a beneficial plant and people want it, so let's just go ahead and sell it and tax it.

It will be like the day when naysayers in the field of green energy finally get up and say "yes, let's just go ahead and build more solar, wind and geothermal energy generators and run more power lines to them so that we are not so dependent on fossil fuels. It takes time for stubborn people to come around, but one of these days you will see the turn of the tide.

They will get up and say "yes, it will work. Let's do it." I am hoping this agreement comes sooner than later. I keep holding that thought.

Validation

In some of the old ways of doing things, it was harder to get validation for what we were creating. You had to find an agent to represent you and then they would try and find a publisher or gallery or music label that might be interested in making your creations more visible to audiences, customers, readers.

Today, we can write what we want and post it and then try and draw people's attention to it. We can post photos of our art and videos of our music.

Then it is just a matter of getting other people to take a look at it. With all the billons of websites out there, finding things can be real hit or miss.

But at least it is possible to get validation of our work sooner rather than later. That vote of confidence might be all it takes for someone to be encouraged to continue on with their work.

Of course, that is not to say that a person would not like to see their books published and sold, their art sold or reproduced or their music being bought and listened to by appreciative audiences. Who wouldn't like greater success?

At least the chaos of the Internet is a place to start. We no longer have to wait for a middleman for at least some people to consider our creations. For that, I am grateful. Aren't you?

Curve Balls, Curve Balls

Even for those of us who are comfortable using computers and know some shortcuts and things, there are still times when getting something done seems more cumbersome than it needs to be.

So I am trying to set myself up with one of those companies that will email your newsletters and manage your email list for a reasonable monthly fee. It is a great idea. Some people I know use them and they look very organized and polished.

See, the thing is that once you have more than a couple hundred names on your email list, it becomes difficult to keep in touch with people. Web based email services generally only let you send 200 emails a day, and after that they will block you from sending any more messages for 24 hours because they suspect you are spamming.

Of course, the problem is that just going by the numbers like that, they have no way of knowing that I have more names than that on my list because people gave me their emails so that I could keep in touch.

And here I am trying to upload my address book to this mail manager. Except that they say they cannot just tap into my email account to load the addresses. Facebook was able to do that. But apparently the email management firm can't, so we have to load our address book onto an Excel spreadsheet.

I did that, and the mail manager still wants me to provide it something so that it can do the download. Except that I have no idea what it wants and the help desk is closed for the night.

And here I thought I was going to be more efficient. Maybe I will get lucky and they will have a quick fix for this. One can only hope.

Why do they always ask me the questions I don't have answers for? I know all kinds of stuff they are not asking me.

Even though you keep your eye on the ball, they will still throw you curves.

Guidance to Grab a lead and Go for It

When we need to make changes, we frequently alternate between moving as fast as we can and taking time to look everything over.

As we tune into our spirit guides who are intimately connected to our survival instinct, and they serve us well, and that is where we get that inkling that this path would be better for us than that one. Or that spending time on this is better than that.

It is where that voice comes from that says it is time to get back in shape. So even though we might feel like being laid back again, we decide it is time to get up anyway and get a move on.

When once again choosing our next move along the career path, spirit guides are the voices that suggest this or that is our best choice.

A deck of tarot cards can be very useful in these rapid fire situations that we find ourselves in. The cards can react rapidly and point us in the right direction. Once again, of course, it is our choice what direction we want to take.

We see the energies moving in the areas around us. There is that swirling energy that
suggest to us wonderful choices are available if we will just stop and make use of them.As these options get straightened out,

So we find out parth again and settle into a groove,then we tade note and act, and once we have moved in the direction where we seeour greatest opportunity and we start gettig traction with them, we feee more assured, Our instincts will guide ups to our most productive opportunity. This can mean utilizing an approach we had not seriously considered before.

And yes, these new approaches are revealing ssuccess or at lest promise of success.

Now the immediate need is to take it our for a road test. How well does the idea fly. It can get to a point where we don'r recognize it as our own, but still it works, and we carry on with it and it gets better, Once we think it over, take a lead and jump on it. This shifting around and chaos will shift our next success into great.

Right now it is messy. People restless. they are hunting, Soon will come openings staffed by performers who really want it to happen. Necessity is the mother of invention once again.

Magic in Action

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" said Arthur C. Clarke.

It is easy to see how that refers to cell phones, computers, ipods, TVs, and other things that represent a quantum leap forward to an older generation, although less amazing to a younger generation.

People can easily agree on this.

Yet, when we look at less physical aspects of our lives, it seems more magical. For example, have you ever noticed how when you are thinking of things, they just seem to manifest? You think about a subject, and here is a book on it, found in an unexpected way, and unexpected place.

Many people have had the experience of thinking of someone, then suddenly they call. How about thinking that you would like to do something, and here is an opportunity to do it?

Yet, when it comes to bigger things, like creating a more satisfying way of getting income, our belief is often that the results are in someone else's hands.

How funny. One person imagines a new product, creates it and makes money from it, and we do not see that as magic. It is simply hard work. Another person imagines a piece of writing, or a picture, or sculpture and creates it, and it seems amazing that someone could have created music or art that beautiful, a product of imagination, rather than hard work. Why is it different?

Maybe we should quit thinking of it as work. Think of it as something we would like to do that we could make money from. Our income would grow simply from doing something we would enjoy doing anyway.

I don't mean just the obvious easy choices like mattress tester or marijuana taster.

I mean someone has fun walking dogs for other people. Someone else has fun by doing custom woodwork. Someone has fun by tuning up cars. Someone has fun by doing psychic readings or energy healing. Someone has fun by designing computer programs. Someone has fun being a landscaper or a farmer. Someone has fun cooking.

How many times have you come across a new product or service and thought, "I wish I would have thought of that." Maybe you did think of it, but you didn't do it.

So let the magic play out. Think of what you can do or would like to do and focus on it and see how much support the universe provides. All magic starts with imagination, then the rest flows from there.

Information Is Not Knowledge

We get so much information that it even scanning through it takes an enormous amount of time. The only way to cope with it is to choose what parts of the information flow are really useful or interesting to you.

The Internet has changed the world profoundly, giving us access to tons of information. It is like having our own personal reference librarian at our fingertips, yet search results can be bewildering. You know that feeling when you search for something and google comes back with thousands of pages that relate to your search?

Yet, the very speed and ease of circulating information makes it easy for someone to put up information that is false or misleading, and if it circulates widely and rapidly enough some people will accept it as truth simply because they see references to it in lots of places.

So it is up to the person who is searching to survey vast amounts of data to try and determine what is actually true. It often takes a sharp eye and a perceptive mind to distinguish hype from reliable data.

In among the facts will also be some very thought provoking opinions, and there are times when these will be valuable to us.

It is tempting to confuse information with knowledge. Here is how I differentiate. If you have real life experience of how something works because you have the experience you have done it yourself, or you have used a product or gone to an event, this is knowledge. It is information that is combined with your real life experience.

There are times when information is enough, and there are times when it really is knowledge we seek. Have you ever thought about this? Are you aware of when one will suffice and when only the other will do?

Small Food, Big Food

Half a billion eggs from just two farms have been recalled because of the recent salmonella outbreak. Although they are packaged under a variety of brand names, the recent problem has been traced back to just two farms that produce half a billion eggs.

What kind of farm is that? Interesting how egg cartons frequently picture a barn and chickens running around in the yard. That's the kind of places our chickens and eggs used to come from, but nothing that looks like that picture will produce a half a billion eggs. That's similar to the images of cows in grassy open fields with a barn and a farmhouse in the background, where much of our diary and meat comes from cattle that actually live much more confined lives than that.

Those of us who can remember as far back as the 1960s and 1970s know that massive recalls of contaminated food because of illness and death were a very rare event.

However, since the 1980s, it has become almost commonplace. Beef, chicken, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, peanuts. Lots of foods have been recalled for contamination.

How did this happen? Two main reasons. One, larger farms and processing plants kept getting larger while many small family farms, slaughterhouses and processing plants went out of business.

Two, politicians let lobbyists persuade them that industry could do a good job of inspecting itself, even though the FDA was created and government food inspectors were hired about 100 years ago because of public concern over the quality of food processing facilities and slaughterhouses. These recent outbreaks of food borne illnesses certainly indicate that need more food inspectors, not less.

All the modern problems and controversies in agriculture revolve around one thing. In making farms into factories, shortcuts are necessary in order for fewer people to produce more food. In the worst case scenario, that pressure produces people like the guy who ran the peanut warehouse and shipped moldy peanuts even though he knew they were moldy. In the best case scenario you can have someone working very hard who simply does not take the time to wash up between chores.

Perhaps we should consider whether smaller might be better in farming. How can two farms produces a half a billion eggs?

Supporting small family farms, organic farms, and producers of heirloom foods through CSAs (community supported agriculture is buying a subscription for a farmer's produce) and farmers markets is increasingly popular. Sometimes, smaller can be better than larger. Even taking small steps in that direction as consumers will make a difference, both to us and the farmers.

Pizza and Peanut Butter

I saw a post from someone asking if they knew of a place that had gluten free, lactose free, vegetarian pizzas. I thought to myself, wouldn't it just be easier to order something else? I mean what is a pizza without the bread dough, meat and cheese? Then again, I am the kind of guy who will opt for a glass of ice water if the only kind of beer you are serving is something called lite or light. No matter which way you spell it, it can't pass for a beer around me.

Oh, I know, the poor people with allergies still want to eat something that looks like their favorite food. And some people just want to be seen drinking something that looks sort of like a beer.

All this leads me to wonder though. Is this some sort of evolution or aberration going on? From the time I was a kid eating peanut butter sandwiches until about ten years ago or so, I never heard of people who were allergic to peanuts or wheat.

Is it that these were in existence all this time, but everybody thought it was something else? Or is it that so many additives have been added to all kinds of foods that this stimulated new allergies?

I don't know. I think it is just another one of those weird things that is happening in our world. Curious how something like peanut allergies or gluten allergies just all of a sudden pop up on the radar. Curious to see how that happened or how it will evolve.

Cosmic, Curious, Connected

One of the reasons that many people feel so dislocated in adapting to new realities is that we just look back at our parents generation and they had one job or worked for one company for their whole working life. Then that shifted during our lifetime.

How many jobs have you had? I know that I have had many. Some I tried just out of pure curiosity. That cat characteristic keeps surfacing as part of my cat (Leo) personality. I got interested in tarot, reiki, past lives, dowsing and so much more just out of curiosity. And that took me in unexpected directions.

My career path has not been linear for the same reasons. Oh, yes, for periods of time it was linear, but overall, not.

I remember when Grandpa retired, that was just sort of the end stage. Just relaxing, nothing special to be done. No more goals to achieve. Just a state of rest and a very easy going pace until death.

Today, however, we look around and see people in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s taking up new challenges and starting new careers.

Part of what I think now is that after 40 years of farm or construction work they were just worn out. Those were the kinds of work my family did. Oh eventually they branched out into other things, but still it was many years of hard work whether they worked in factories, offices, as teachers or salesmen. And the women got worn out from having and raising 4,5 or a dozen kids. Back then, family planning meant figuring out where all the kids would sleep.

Today, lots of jobs consist of sitting in front of computers and using phones to do our work which not only doesn't wear us out in the same way, it also leaves the opportunity to get up and do something else physically.

In some ways, all these changes seem chaotic. I am working on creating a transition into my next full time career, and when I look back, it had absolutely nothing to do with the career I was involved in 20 or 30 years ago, although you could see it as a tangent branching out from what I was doing 10 or 15 years ago.

Focusing on what is next is plenty to do for now. I am not even extending my vision forward another 10 or 20 years. Curiosity and surprises have led me inexorably forward until now, and no doubt they still will, for as long as I live.

UFOs and Understanding

What if UFOs are simply waiting for us to continue beating each other up in wars and pollution before they swoop down while we are weak? By the time they announce that the are taking over and subdue us with their superior technology, we may feel like the Indians, Africans and aboriginal tribes facing the European armies and armadas. It will be a change so radical that it will be difficult for many of us to attend.

That is one scenario. Perhaps the second one is that we continue our space program and eventually we meet the inhabitants of other planets and make friends with them. Perhaps trade is developed and we become aware of the multitude of other ways of living out there. Our adventure opens our eyes.

Isaac Asimov once said that any technology sufficiently beyond our current capability will appear to be magic. We have a magical world here and now. There are even more out there.

We take time to absorb shocks. Those who grew up when every home did not have their own phone, are now using cell phones. Those who had some of the first black and white TVs with their constantly distorting screens and fuzzy reception now have big flat screens at home as good as the ones in theatres.

People can get as much information out of their laptop as they could out of a reference library. Although this is true, going to the library was an experience. Photo processing places, which were a fixture on our landscape, are now not needed. Video rental stores are getting hollowed out due to the success of online sources of movies. CD sales have been free falling as people download onto digital players. Writing letters used to be an art form, something special when it arrived, put in a drawer for reading again and again at later times. Now we email.

All of this has been radical for us. But what if something like creating a crop circle was done with the flick of a light switch? What if we could understand each other using telepathy, bypassing all language blocks and education deficits?

There is more that I cannot see right now, but these seem to be the two predominant scenarios.

But wait, here is a third. What if we enter a stage of evolution where we all become as gods and goddesses in the great stories?

The war scenario has been dominant because war has always figured heavily in our stories. But what now if new stories arise and become dominant where there is some sort of trade and cultural exchange that melds us?

How would we live through a ginormous change like that? Crop circle photos always prompt me with questions like this, as do photos of Stonehenge, Newgrange, the pyramids of Egypt. People are still trying to retell new versions of the ancient myths as a way of digesting them and reconciling them with what we know and our sense of reality.

What happens when we tell new stories? Do we get closer to understanding?

Is It Really Radio?

I was approached recently by one of those companies asking if I would like to have my own Internet radio show. Bottom line is that for a contract fee of only $6,000-$8,000 a year (or something like that) I could have my own show. Lucky me.

Which means that if sponsors don't buy that many ads, then I would pay that much for the pleasure of streaming audio through a website, which is the accurate description of what is happening. It is really a misnomer to call it a radio show or a radio station if you cannot pick it up on a radio receiver.

Radio advertisers always buy ads based on how many people listen to a show. That is the first question they always ask. The follow up questions will be about what kinds of people listen to the show.

Magazine and newspaper advertisers want to know how many people read those publications. TV advertisers want to know how many people watch those shows. Even when people buy ads on a website, they want to know how many people go to that website.

If you were the advertiser, wouldn't you ask the same question? Would you be willing to pay thousands of dollars for an ad without knowing how many people listen to a show?

Ask yourself. How many hours a week do you listen to Internet talk radio shows?

The person selling the concept will tell you that being on an Internet talk radio show is a great idea because the whole world can tune into your show.

Yes, and the whole world can read our blogs and websites, but how many people do?

Success on the web is dependent on two things. Creating a great website is step one. Getting people to come to it is step two.

While being the host of your own radio show certainly appeals to a person's vanity, before shelling out your money, ask the usual questions. How many people listen to this Internet talk radio station? How do you know?

Personally, when I want to listen to the radio, I turn on the radio. When I am researching things on the web, writing emails or writing my blog, I am focused on my task. I do not want some talk show to be broadcast out of my computer while I am doing these other things.

If you really like the idea of having your own talk show, make your own podcasts and make them available on your own website, since you are already promoting your own website and trying to get people to come to it. Even if you have to hire someone to teach you how to make a podcast, it will be far, far less than buying one of those contracts.

And you won't have to try to persuade people to buy ads or listen to you by going to somebody else's website. You can simply invite them to listen to your podcasts and visit your website, which is what you really want them to do anyway.

Just some things for you to consider when you get that call.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Alice in Wonderland used to say that. Does anybody else feel that when they look around everyday? Curiouser and curiouser.

Curious can be a good thing. It is that playful child part of us that exhibits the joy of living by looking at things and wondering why it is that way. Curiosity has led me to learn a lot of what I know. I picked up my first tarot deck and started to work with it just to see how it works. I also decided to find out what past lives were about because I was curious. And Reiki. And dowsing. And magic. And so many other things.

I wanted to live in different parts of the country, just to see what it was like to live there. And so I did. I wanted to see what it was like to have a large garden full of flowers, vegetables and herbs, and so I did. At one time I wanted to see how much satisfaction I could get out of refinishing furniture. So I did.

I have not kept on doing all of those things. Some things I did just for the experience, and then moved on to other things.

Many of the different jobs and career changes I have had in my life came out of that same curiosity. Some of those things I was curious enough to try included advertising copywriting, advertising sales, driving a cab, tending bar, being a waiter, being a security guard for the Chicago Cubs baseball team, custom picture framing for an art gallery, organizing blood drives for American Red Cross, editing a metaphysical magazine, editing a literary magazine, teaching creative writing, and working in a call center for a computer company, being a professional tarot reader. I may have forgotten a few things, but if you get that life can be not just an evolution, but an adventure, you get the point. Curiosity always stimulated me to try new things and I am happy I did that rather than spend my whole career in one type of business. I had fun doing most of these jobs.

Wondering what it would be like to do this or that for a living, wondering about all the different things that people do has always been a fascinating topic for me.

So far curiosity has added a lot to my life. Kids are more uninhibited in their curiosity than adults, so they try things just to see what it is like. They also ask questions which often strike adults as funny because they are not aware of social conventions and do not censor themselves. When many adults settle into patterns, they often lose their sense of wonder, and censor themselves, because they want to be seen as serious and important and so they tamp down their playful spirit. But of course, you can bring that playful spirit into the workplace too, although how you let it loose will vary according to the environment.

Kids like to see how things work, and that is why although they make a mess, sometimes they might even leapfrog ahead of adults and learn to do something like make a web page, which their parents might not know how to do.

The Alice in Wonderland effect is about a different aspect of curiosity. Frequently when I look at or listen to the news it seems surrealistic. Look at the top Google searches on any given day, and what most people are interested in seems curiouser and curiouser. If the top Google search for the day is about some minor TV celebrity who got a DUI, what does that say about the searchers?

This morning while I was half awake and having my first cup of coffee, I heard something about attacking and boarding some boat and I thought it was going to be another incident about Somali pirates, when it turned out to be about Israel and some Turkish ship, I think. It used to be that talk of pirates usually referenced Long John Silver, Jean Lafitte, Bluebeard or Captain Hook.

I saw an article about research in Columbia about preventing dementia, and I thought, isn't that the place where most cocaine comes from? Are they trying to use cocaine to prevent dementia? Really? Or is it just a coincidence that both these things are coming from the same country? Curiouser and curiouser.

One other morning I thought I heard some reporter say that BP was going to try and hoover up their oil spill onto some ship, and they were somehow going to be able to filter the water out from the oil and take the oil to a refinery. Or maybe I was just dreaming that's what I heard. Curious. I wonder if that can be done?

Sometimes listening to a news report after just waking up can seem as otherworldly as a funny novel or a funny movie. Sometimes even when I am wide awake, the world gets curiouser and curiouser.

The Velocity of Hi Tech

At big outdoor festivals, sometimes parents will bring their children to me for a reading. Interesting how perceptive some kids are and what kinds of questions they come up with.

Yesterday, I read for a 10 year old boy who says he has his own website. It is altogether possible that this boy knows something about computers and websites that I don't. Kind of a stunning thought for me. When I was 10, all I knew about was baseball and bicycles. I didn't even know about girls yet. That is still in this boy's future too.

Amazing how rapidly all this changes. Just 10 years ago, IT was still a sort of prestigious job that paid well. Today, the giants in the computer industry are busy remaking it into another minimum wage job. They are paying around $10 an hour for new contractor hires. By comparison, you can get paid $10 an hour for walking somebody else's dog, cleaning houses, being a clerk in a retail store, or working in some fast food restaurants. It's all just a grind on the same income level.

Since the housecleaning, dog walking and fast food jobs can't be shipped to India, they have more job security than somebody who works in IT. Ironic, eh? People usually have the impression that I make a lot more money than I do when they hear what company I work for, but that is an impression left over from when they used to have mostly American employees and actually pay them well. Layoffs and pay cuts among the experienced, better paid people are the norm now. And there are people further up the food chain whose jobs are going to India too.

So next time you call someone because you are having trouble with your computer, if they speak English as a first language, don't be surprised if they ask you if you want fries with that. It is simply a reflexive response left over from their last job or their second job. Some of the new hires have never done anything but hamburger work or burrito work before. Initially, they think that this is pretty cool, but it takes a while for them to see the big picture. The guy sitting next to me supports his family by delivering pizzas after he finishes his shift on the glorious Global Services Team for the day. On that job, he makes more than he does here, but not many people want to spend their whole life delivering pizzas.

The thing the company likes best about the new global economy is that they can hire people in India for about $4 an hour. That is what is meant when you hear about a company called India Business Machines. We have seen IT jobs run the cycle from good paying, prestigious jobs to minimum wage whatever jobs in the space of just 10 years, the life span so far of the young man at the beginning of this story.

Who knows what the world will be like when this 10 year old Bill Gates look alike enters the world of work?

Then again, the discovery of girls may alter his course one day. Who knows what will happen then?

Petty Tyrants as Great Teachers

Carlos Castaneda once said that petty tyrants can be our greatest teachers. For a lot of us, learning how to use the Internet to develop our business is a constant learning experience.

We buy ads on websites hoping for the best, but not knowing until later whether that brings us new business. The same is true of print publications. Exactly the same. You pay your money and you take your chances. And the same is true of buying a booth or a table at a special event. What is certain is that you will pay the publisher, website owner or event producer. What is not certain is what you will get out of it.

We try using social networking websites to see whether that brings us new business, but they may have their own bizarre ideas of proper behavior, and we still do not know until after investing many hours in them, what works and what doesn't. If they consider you guilty of improper behavior, and you wish to disagree, good luck finding an actual person to talk to about it so that you can straighten it out.

Some of the social networking sites have gone under, and others are starting to charge fees for participation in something that has been free up until now.

Our email services have many efficient features, but they also have limitations. For example, if one day you were to send out emails to everyone you have done business with this year, and that number is more than 200, their robots will consider you a spammer and block you from sending any more emails today,and perhaps for the next couple of days. These robots do not know or care that you have these email addresses because people gave them to you and they do business with you. Try and get in touch with a real person so you can explain that.

Blogs seem to be one of the best methods going, because we can write whatever we want, whenever we want, and anyone who is interested can read it. The challenge with this, as with everything else, is to reach out there and find ways to grab people's attention. You can have a great blog or website, but so do millions of other people. So we have to be creative to get people to visit ours.

These setbacks are always a nuisance, and within them, there is always a lesson to be found, a more efficient way, a loophole.

Right now, I am going through one of those setbacks which I will not detail here, but the upshot of it, is that it may actually clarify and strengthen some connections, and that will probably improve my business. It is not the first time I have had to reinvent one of my wheels.

Sometimes a petty tyrant enforcing their rules will help us to see something we had been overlooking and by kicking dirt around they might uncover some gems for us.

Carlos Castaneda was right because those people who always agree with us can lull us into complacency. Those who present us with obstacles can inspire us to learn how to dig deeper, do things better and find alternate routes to our goals.

The Bloom Is Off the Bud

You have to ask yourself why Colorado people who voted in favor of medical marijuana suddenly needed House Bill 1284 which effectively kills a lot of small businesses and sets up a system that only favors people with very deep pockets. The bill was signed into law by Governor Ritter recently.

Amendment 20 which made medical marijuana legal in Colorado, did not even mention dispensaries. Originally, it only named caregivers who would raise the plants would provide the medical marijuana to patients.

Obviously, since not everyone who would be a patient for medical marijuana personally knows a grower, storefront dispensaries sprang up, providing a place for these patients to get their stuff.

It was an entrepreneurial boom in Colorado for a couple of years after the passage of Amendment 20. People who have a green thumb decided to grow medical marijuana as a way to make a living. Some of them became caregivers who sold directly to patients, and some growers sold to dispensaries.

Given that so many businesses around here have been having a hard time due to home foreclosures, bankruptcies and such, and with businesses like IBM keeping busy with laying off American workers in Boulder so that they can hire more people in India to take over their jobs, it was a breath of fresh air to see something happen to stimulate new business start ups and create new employment.

Senator Chris Romer suddenly introduced and promoted the bill to regulate all these new businesses. What are the new rules?

Well, it clearly favors big operators.

Bill 1284 limits caregivers to five patients. That will certainly limit a person's ability to be a caregiver.

Growing plants is a full time job. They require constant attention to control temperature, moisture, humidity, nutrients, keeping clean of bugs, pruning, trimming, curing and so on. Being a caregiver is not the kind of thing you can do well as a part time hobby. So it makes sense to let caregivers have more patients and raise more plants, to give them more of a margin to make a living.

The new law also requires dispensaries to grow 79% of their own product and buy what else they need from other dispensaries. Up until now, small dispensaries have been buying product from independent growers.

How much money do you think it would take to set up both a dispensary and a growing operation and pay these fees?

A lot of the independent operators spent their savings and everything they could scrape together to invest in this new legal business opportunity, leasing property, buying equipment, hiring help. And now the playing field is tilted by who? Dispensary licenses could cost $18,000. Add to that the requirement to have a dispensary and growing facility that is properly equipped and has all the licenses, and you are looking at pretty hefty investments.

One aspect of the new law may reveal who is behind the changes to force many small operators out of business. The new law will permit one person to have multiple licenses for multiple locations.

I wonder if Senator Chris Romer, the primary sponsor of the new medical marijuana law, received substantial campaign contributions from individuals who will benefit from this unique aspect of the new law?

Interestingly, in Colorado, one person cannot have more than one retail liquor license. This is the stumbling block that prevents grocery store chains from selling liquor in Colorado.

So the new law says caregivers cannot serve more than 5 people, but one person could own a chain of dispensaries. Does anyone else smell something funny here? And I do not mean the bloom on the bud.

Too Much Efficiency

Being efficient is a good thing, but there can be such a thing as too much efficiency. As we observe some of the changes in our world, going for too much efficiency can backfire on us.

One example is the latest development relative to farming. After years of using their marketing muscle to sell farmers on the idea of using Roundup Ready seeds so that they can saturate their fields with greater quantities of Roundup, their patented weed killer without killing the corn, cotton and soybean crops, mother nature did her usual thing and responded by developing bigger, tougher weeds that are immune to Roundup. So now new poisons are needed.

One of the reasons for such a strategy is so that ever fewer people can farm ever larger tracts of land.

So the observant person will be even more encouraged to support local farmers and organic farmers who grows their crops in healthier ways, and these will probably be relatively smaller farms. Now that the farmers market season is about to begin again, there will be plenty of opportunities to choose healthier foods and support small farmers and ranchers.

The oil spill on the gulf coast is another example. Those people who argue that we should stick with depending on fossil fuels rather than renewable energy sources do not include in their calculations that the dirty byproducts of fossil fuels. Not just the oil spill and how it is spoiling the fisheries and the beaches. Mining coal causes miners to get black lung. And in places where lots of coal is burned to fuel development, more people have emphysema and other diseases of the lung. The amount of oil we burn produces clouds of smog over all our cities. Perhaps it is true that one big oil well or one big coal mine can produce more energy than a bunch of solar panels or windmills. My answer would simply be to build more solar panels and windmills.

Solar, wind and other renewable sources have no such deleterious effects. People don't get sick just from building windmills and solar panels. Nor do they make our air and water dirty. Nor does the building of them ever cause catastrophic accidents.

Another negative aspect of being too efficient is the multitasking that many employers insist on. Creating situations where people are making phone calls and trying to do emails while driving, while eating their meals, while they are vacationing or spending personal time with family and friends is all about trying to get one person to do more than one person's job. Workloads of this type diminish the quality of life in many respects. Keeping a person on an electronic tether just burns them out faster, decreases their ability to focus, intrudes on and interferes with personal relationships.

Our quality of life is often better when we are operating a smaller scale, rather than a bigger one.

Bottled Water

Yes, drinking water is a healthier choice than drinking soda, but even though I have bought bottled water at times, I have always felt it was a frivolous industry. After all, more than half the bottled water sold is not mineral water or spring water, but simply filtered tap water bottled by the big soft drink manufacturers. For them, it was simply a way to expand their product line, so they used their marketing and advertising to get us to buy something which we could already get for free.

Well, OK, we do pay for the water that comes out of the tap at home, but compared to everything else we buy, it is very reasonably priced, and we figure it into our cost of housing, since virtually every residence in this country has running water.

The answer to getting good quality drinking water is not found in buying bottled water. If we really feel like the quality of our tap water needs to be better, we need to see to it that our cities and towns do a good job of providing that service to us.

Now people are also noticing that although plastic water bottles are recyclable, they are not really recycled that much. So in order to get drinking water, we throw away tons of plastic bottles every day that are made from oil, thus in another way, increasing our demand for oil and expanding our dependency on it.

The alternative is very easy. Get bottles that are good quality metal or glass and refill them. I drink tap water all the time. I also cook with it, make coffee and tea with it, drink whisky with it. Oh yes, I also bathe in it, straight from the tap. I don't insist on anything special. And it works just fine.

It's kind of funny how something that is marketed as good for us really is not really much improved over our tap water, while it creates more garbage and uses more oil. Another victory of marketing over substance.

Curious, isn't it? Just another one of the ironies of modern life.

Oil and Water

Some people say that we need to continue to depend on gas, oil and coal because solar, wind and other sources do not produce more than a small percentage of our energy use. Yes, that is true so far, but we have to have the will to change that equation. The technology is already here.

Example. If every new home and most older homes were outfitted with solar panels, how much of a percentage of our energy would that produce? If the panels were manufactured in America, and obviously installed by workers in this country, how many jobs would that create?

Here's another little example that could produce big results. Hot water heaters. Systems have been on the market for a while now that can provide hot water without a hot water tank. It simply heats the cold water as it runs through the pipes where the heating element is.

Benefits? You not only never run out of hot water, you also never have to deal with replacing a hot water heater. Most of us have had that experience a few times in our lives, haven't we? You go to take a shower one day and there is no hot water. Then you notice that the carpet is all soggy. You never seem to get a warning when this happens.

A friend of mine was looking at a new house and the agent was telling him how great it was that there was a hot water heater in the upstairs next to the master bathroom as well one downstairs. My friend said "Great. So when the hot water tank breaks, which they all do eventually, I can have a ceiling problem as well as a floor problem."

So he bought the house, but removed the hot water heaters and put in a tankless system. They cost more to install, but you will never have to worry about replacing a broken tank.

Energy wise, think of this. How much natural gas do we burn every year to keep a flame under every hot water heater in every home? So let's just say that a great portion of the hot water heaters were replaced with tankless systems, how much less natural gas would we need?

Once again, if more buildings were fitted with this technology, how many people would this employ? How many people would be employed manufacturing these systems?

Just a thought. We could save materials by using tankless systems. And we could save energy using tankless systems. And for the homeowner or property owner, over time, not replacing tanks and not keeping a flame lit under it 365 days a year will balance out the cost of installing the new system. So why not do this?

We have made transitions like this before. There was a time when everyone bought black and white TVs, but over time, everyone bought color TVs. Why? It was better, so people bought the better product. Now everybody wants big flat screens, and they are getting rid of their old sets.

Perhaps more people are not aware that such things exist. If the technology is already developed, then it is simply a matter of will to go ahead with it.

This is just one example. How many other examples are there? We could decrease the need to drill more wells while still enjoying the same standard of creature comforts. Actually, a higher standard if you consider that you never run out of hot water when you have guests, and never again have to deal with a broken hot water heater and you don't have to have a gas bill just to keep it warm.

While the invention I am mainly referring to here uses gas, not oil, there are other inventions that would also decrease the need for oil. Part of our vision has to take us from getting our energy from below the ground to getting more energy from above the ground.

Just back in the 90s when cell phones were as big as a suitcase, only some people wanted to lug them around. When they got to be pocket sized, almost every one got one, to the point where a lot of us no longer bother having a land line. How many of us now use laptop computers with wireless connections rather than big desktop setups?

If we were to take a look at how to use technology to achieve energy savings, there are many inventions that could improve the quality of our life while using clean, renewable energy.

Since more efficient technologies already exist, why not use them to live a greener life? If we can see a better future, why not use our will to act on that vision?

Another Plus for Alternative Energy

I don't think that the oil spill in the Gulf is a decisive sign that we should not drill for oil any more, nor would I jump to any conclusion that it was anything other than an accident.

Here is one simple perspective to consider. The risk factor.

When was the last time that we heard about some tragic consequence from using solar panels or windmills? Why not build state of the art furnaces to burn our garbage to generate electricity?

We will probably need to keep some oil in the mix since we have so many different mechanisms that use it, so I think that it is impossible to get away from, but we can replace it with other means of generating power.

The question about nuclear power is the same one that has existed since the beginning. What do you do with all that radioactive waste? I don't think that many people really believe that just burying it somewhere is really a solution.

Yes, my suggestion is simple. But if we simply ask ourselves the question about what are the risks of using any of these technologies, then the alternatives certainly are more positive in nature.

Alternative energy is simply more sensible.

Green Fire

in talking about green energy, most attention goes to solar and wind. Denmark, for example has highly efficient plants that turn waste into electricity and heat, and have filters that catch harmful substances like mercury and dioxin. Today's incinerators are much cleaner than earlier versions, capable of filtering out, scrubbing or trapping hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, dioxins, and heavy metals — as well as small particulates. And some of the by products of the process, extracted metals, gypsum and acids, can be sold to construction and manufacturing companies. Quite green, isn't it?


Burning waste also decreases the need for landfills, both preserving nature and cleaning up waste at the same time. The fact that big cities like New York export garbage to landfills in other states is a good indicator of how incinerators can solve two problems at once. By converting garbage into fuel, they change a smelly unsightly mess into a valuable resource and decrease their dependence on oil.

Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands are also using this technology and they like it so much that they are building more plants. In Germany they only burn materials that cannot be recycled. After all, we don't want to have to keep cutting down trees just to make paper, do we? In the big picture of using renewable resources, there are other solutions on the horizon.

As people become increasingly aware of the fact that industrial hemp is different than marijuana, we can once again have a renewable source of material for making paper without decimating our forests. We used to do this all the time, making paper, rope, oil and fabric out of hemp. Farmers all over the US were growing it. then when the anti-marijuana mania hit, industrial hemp was lumped in with marijuana, its psychoactive cousin. You cannot get a buzz smoking industrial hemp.

Hauling garbage to an incinerator saves the burning of the fuel needed to haul it to distant landfills, and instead of just dumping it and letting it rot, it is turned into electricity.

In Denmark, between recycling and the trash to energy incinerators, very little of their waste goes into landfills. Once again, if we would get busy building such plants, people would be employed in construction and maintenance, our environment would be cleaner and we would be less dependent on coal and oil. All good results.

Fire is a great way to purify. When my time here is up, I want to be cremated. Makes a lot more sense to me than being buried in a box and continuing to set aside endless acres of land to keep burying people in boxes. I will gladly return to ashes and leave the rest of the world have the room it needs to work and play.

See, our alternative energy choices are not just limited to wind and solar. There are more options. We still have time to clean up our act. Fire can help green our world.