Deathiversary.

[ed: this was written for us by Jim’s wife, Bo]

 

Hi Friends, 

We are coming up on the first anniversary of Jim’s death. It is confusing times for all of us amidst a pandemic, one display after another of horrifying social injustice, and the ongoing assault on our democracy.

Yet ordinary things are happening too, birds are singing, the breeze is blowing, a full moon will rise in the sky tomorrow.

 

Please help me in remembering James Frederick Dowd and how he could hold all of it with wisdom, humor and action.

 

SHORT VERSION:

 

June 5th, 2019. Jim Died.

It’s almost June 5th again.

We want to honor and celebrate Jim. 

At 8:45 PM EST we’ll be Toasting Jim 

[We’ll put a link up on the Clam, Jim’s FB page and Caringbridge early evening June 5, 2020 so you can join us]

 

MEDIUM VERSION:

This is what the kids and I will do:

 

Friday, June 5, sunset is at 8:17 PM EST

 

At 8:30 PM, Rebecca, Treely, and I are going to have a brief private ritual near water 

We will light luminaria around 8:40 pm

We’ll raise a glass (or more likely a water bottle) to the one and only Jim Dowd

Then our friend will play The Decemberists’ Sons and Daughters on the bagpipe

Then we will spin some fire (think giant sparkler) as a symbolic act of untethering.

Then we will walk home .

 

I wish we could all be together in one place, warming each other in story and song.

But as we cannot gather in large groups here in Massachusetts, 

we’ll each do our part wherever we are. 

Here’s how to honor Jim’s deathiversary.

 

Take these three elements:

 

Find yourself a place that is meaningful. 

It could be on a beach, near a beach, by a water feature, standing over a cactus in a pot, or in front of your kitchen sink. Put the plug in and run the water.

Bring some fire into your life. Carefully.

A candle, a fire-pit, the damn weed you were trying to give to Jim to smoke (or perhaps you’ve got a newer stash), even the lighter you held in the air at that Grateful Dead show.

At 8:45 PM EST we’ll be Toasting Jim [*We’ll put a link up on the Clam, Jim’s FB page and Caringbridge  in the early evening June 5, 2020 so you can join us]

Listen to Sons and Daughters 

 

That’s it.

Beautiful or ironic as you choose.

IMPORTANT: If you live on Cape Ann

 

If you discover other Jim Dowd rememberers (Dowdists?), do a special social distance wave (or a fist-bump across the ethers) and go find a spot – with them in heart – but definitely physically away from them in a show of loving, scientific caring. 

ESPECIALLY since Rebecca just wrote THIS opinion piece.

 

EITHER WAY

 

Tune in for the toast by 8:45ish pm EST.   *check back! 

Or make one of your own and post it on Jim’s FB page

You can provide your own version of Sons and Daughters

Or listen to ours.

 

Hey Bo, I get what you all are doing but what if I can’t get to an idyllic mountain stream?

 

Yep. I hear you. 

My mom, who lives in a community that does not allow flame, has this very same challenge.

Her plan is to boil a pot of water on the stove and yell “DIRIGIBLE” as she fist pumps the air. 

Well, actually she’s found a lovely virtual image of a fire by a beach, but feel free to do the boiling water scenario.

 

VERY VERY LONG RAMBLING REFLECTION WITH BACKSTORY AND POTENTIAL THINGS TO DO IN THE FUTURE

June 5th 2020 will be one trip around the sun since James Frederick Dowd took his last breath.

Crazy, right?!

 

Someone suggested I call this day Jim’s “Angelversary”.  I can tell you if Jim made a list of the top 10 things not to call the anniversary of his death. Angelversary would be at least number two.

I’m pretty sure the Edward Gorey angel had a thick yiddish accent, nu?

 

In Judaism we have a word for the anniversary of a death, it’s a yahrzeit, it’s yiddish and it translates to something like “year-time”. 

Because  year + time. 

Which is really the same as anniversary which comes from annual + return.

 

Still I have been caught up in the idea of using this word that doesn’t feel right.

I mean it should be fine. Anniversary. We have come back around to the time of year and there’s nothing in it that says “the annual return to a happy day”  but since mostly in my life it’s been used for joyous occasions,  saying “the Anniversary of Jim’s death” feels a bit like bait and switch. 

Anniversary = happy, festive, celebratory

Death = Dead, no life, kaput. 

I feel tricked. 

So since Jim loved smushing two words to make one better word and “Angelversary” has been nixed, I will henceforth call this day JIm’s deathiversary. My feeling? It’s better to know up front.

 

So why am I caring so much about what this day is called?

I don’t know

Way back in Pre Pandemic times, Clam Nation had been planning a big memorial celebration for Jim’s first deathiversary. We were going to call it Jimapalooza.

A live Band, Video of Jim shooting Sir Patrick Stewart. Delicious beer. Powerpoints. (what’s a memorial celebration without a few well curated slides?!) But the emergence of a novel zoonotic disease made it seem like a batty idea to bring a few hundred of Jim’s loved ones together in a room.  Even if it was a very big room.

 

As restrictions and Covid-19 cases piled up I lost track of pretty much everything except how many rolls of TP were left.

How many toilet paper angels does it take to change a light bulb?

 

About three weeks ago it occurred to me Jim’s deathiversary was going to arrive and I did not have a plan.

Sidenote: It’s a weird thing to lose your spouse and get a pandemic.

 

Then some very fine people started gently asking how I was, if I had any ideas.

I didn’t. Then I did.

 

Symbolism, things burning up, letting go, 

Ooooh,

I got the idea that the fire should be in the form of 100s of flaming flying lanterns leaving the earth individually but altogether. Those who could meet on Cape Ann would but Jim’s people everywhere around the world could also light and send off (ecologically safe, of course) flaming lanterns into the moonlit sky. I started thinking maybe we could have someone play Sons and Daughters on the bagpipe.

We could livestream it from Flatrocks up in Lanesville

Or a beach. 

At sunset.

 

PROBLEM ONE: Flaming flying lanterns, even the ecologically safe ones, aren’t really all that good for the environment or the fishies and even if they were, if you’ve ever spent time on the coast you know that the breeze during the day pretty much always blows people’s umbrellas AWAY from the water and into the dunes and, according to our fire marshall, rooftops. 

 

So not that. 

I think it would have been fine but since my friend looked up the city codes and lighting those lanterns is illegal and we aren’t supposed to be on the beach at night or gather in groups of more than ten, I said fine. No Flaming Floating Lanterns. 

 

Then life got busy for the living. 

The kids had things that required my help. The house had issues. The dog got diagnosed with a possible brain tumor.

Seriously. Let’s just wait to discuss that another day

 

A week passed. Clamnation came to the rescue again.

Well what if we all lit luminaries instead. They stay on the ground.

 

Yessss, Perfect.

This is a solid alternative

Everyone can easily make a luminary!

All ya need is a paper lunch bag and some sand and a tea light and we’ll all meet on the beach and…

That’s when someone pointed out

 

PROBLEM TWO: 

And by someone I mean everyone in the virtual room. 

“Um Bo, We can’t gather in groups over ten”

 

FUCK.

The idea of this day passing without some kind of connected honoring/celebration/global rant felt fucking awful. 

So much for my wish to be with all of you.
I would have sulked a bit more but Thisbee having just been diagnosed with vestibular disequilibrium syndrome and her massive wobbliness made it seem like a bad time for me to get off balance. But hell if watching your dog veer to the left and then overcorrect doesn’t remind you of watching your beloved husband try to walk from the living room straight into a wall.

 

So yet another new plan was made and now we have:

TAH-DAH!

An OYO deathiversary celebration. Just in time for FRIDAY, JUNE 5th.

(notice the excellent depiction of social distancing)

 

 

OYO is On Your Own.

This is a favorite Outward Bound tradition that Jim and I carried forward. 

It means dinner won’t be served, you have to go to the fridge and look for whatever is available.

Be resourceful.

Clean up after yourself.

In this case I think you’ll find

FIRE, WATER and SONS AND DAUGHTERS 

And I know you won’t leave a trace if you go to some special place.

 

(rhyming was incidental, not intentional, but hey.)

 

So here we are.

We’ve made this circle round the sun without Jim and the only thing you really need to do to honor him is to be your best self.

 

But if you want to create some fire, near some water, 

By land, by sea, by dirigible

We’ll gladly leave our tracks untraceable 

Maybe not near you. 

But with you.

 

————————–

The planet, designated Kepler-413b, precesses, or wobbles, wildly on its spin axis, much like a child’s top or Thisbee when she tries to do anything with forward motion.

Naming Conventions

[Author: Bo Abrams]

My husband, the wonder-man Jim Dowd, was a naming savant. 

He named bands. He named blogs. He named bikes. 

From the day I met him I realized he had an uncanny sense of what would work and what wouldn’t in a name. 

As you might know, the trick is you can’t choose willy nilly (although he seemed to be able to) you have to have guidelines and rules. You have to be willing to free associate and at the same time be ready to cull what might be cherished. Even before Jim was naming things professionally, he instinctively understood constructs were necessary for success.

 

Before Rebecca was born Jim and I were pondering what we might name our soon to be offspring. We’d been calling the in utero creature Saugus, because place names are sexy!

But we needed a name for someone going to public school.

We chose these rules:

 

  1. You have to try it at the top of a resume. 
  2. You have to be able to yell it off the back porch easily.
  3. You have to be able to say it the same in Massachusetts as elsewhere.

(Because of the whole “In Boston you take the “R” off the Chair and put it on the Sofa” thing -it gets you Chayahs and sofers.)

 

All three have to work. 

For example, I worked at Carter Notch Hut in the White Mountains and I thought Carter would be a terrific name. Did I mention place names are sexy?

Anyway, It looked good at the top of a resume. Carter Dowd. It had a nice ring to it. Strong. Simple. Check one.

So Jim yelled it off the back deck into Lanes Cove. 

“CARTER” it carried. It soared.

Until the “In Boston you take the “R” off the Chair and put it on the Sofa” test. 

Total fail.

Sure enough when Rebecca was in kindergarten there was a boy in her class whose name was spelled  C A R T E R.

Through the entirety of elementary school not one person pronounced the R at the end of his name. EVAH.

 

Over the years, Jim’s regular rants and random titling of pets, cars, political campaigns, etc… fostered naming savvy in Treely and Rebecca, so much so, when they heard we were getting a kitten they immediately created a shared google Doc: 

They made one rule: No people names.

 

If you wonder how Jim lives on in his children I offer this:

 

Potential Kitten Names for the Kitten formerly known as Anderson

Lemon

Spoon

Spoo

Lemon Spoonful

Penguin

Dandelion (dandy for short)

Vegetables (veggies for short)

The Goat

Assweasel!

Alf

Lechuga

Mantequilla

ALL the TS Eliot cats

Bumblebee

Pyramus

The Wall

Tigger- only kidding 😉

Uncle Deadly

Colin Meloy 

Dirigible

Scallion

Zucchini (zukey) 

Wham!

Fingies (short for fingers)

Tequila

ÆëîLçæ

Mortimer

Cthulhu (short for Cthulhu Saves the World: Super Hyper Enhanced Championship Edition Alpha Diamond DX Plus Alpha FES HD – Premium Enhanced Game of the Year Collector’s Edition) 

Almond butter

Almond

Musk (short for Elon musk)

Elon (short for Elonian Armor from the game Guild Wars 2)

Bee

Ronald McDonald

Dick Turpin

Cat

Damn Cat

Cut that out!

Pedant

Mr. Meow

La la la Linoleum

—–

Also please note these clarifying questions: If this kitten has an honorific will it be Senator or The Honorable?

Answer: Senator

 

Question: Does the name need to be gender neutral?

Answer: Gender is a human construct

(not recounted here but there was also an extended pedantic discussion about if it’s not a person name how can it be gender based.)

 

Question: What about the name he was given by the foster family.

Answer in slightly pontificatory tone: Cats have more than one name. We can have that be his first name.

 

Question: Shall we tell everyone what we named the kitten?

Answer: Fuck No, Make them guess.

 

Anyway. Clam friends. Jim’s legacy lives.

 

 

 

Introducing Senator Anderson Lemon Zucchini Abrams Dowd

10 weeks old and weighing in at extremely adorable.

 

Zukey. For non resume purposes.

And easy to yell off the back porch. 

 

The Blast Crater In Our Lives

KT here. I’ve been away from the Clam for a bit – had to take a break, have a baby, buy a house, adult stuff like that. But, I am back at you today.

For the worst reason.

Our beloved leader, Jim Dowd, who made up so much more than half of the Clam, has shuffled off this mortal coil.  He is no more. He has ceased to be.

We knew it was coming, he told us goodbye, but there’s only so much emotional preparation you can do in advance. The weight still hits you like a sack of dead seagulls. 

Fuck. Extra fuck. Like super fuck, for the fuck of shit, yabba dabba fucking shit, a pantry full of dicks.

Now that I’ve offended the most delicate among us by getting the majority of the profanity out of the way (IT’S WHAT HE WOULD HAVE WANTED), let’s talk about how much this sucks (spoiler: it sucks major ass) and more importantly, Clam-eulogize Jim in a way he deserves. Snarkily and with no holds barred, but with all the love in the world.

James Dowd, EGS Santa. Because you’re gonna want a Jewish Santa.

 

“Don’t say I had a brave battle with cancer,” he messaged me a few weeks back. “I just sat there and did what they told me.” And that’s basically the truth of the matter. Jim believed that we are all just along for the ride on this planet. There’s no battle of inward steeliness that can change the outcome of any random cell mutation, it’s a team of doctors throwing everything at their disposal at the problem. There’s no amount of willpower that can be mustered to overcome an aggressive brain tumor that will keep coming back. I hate that premise as well, that surviving cancer is because someone successfully drew from some well of inner strength to somehow combat cell mutation, and the rest- the ones unlucky enough to have types of cancer where the survival rates are miniscule – just laid down and died. It’s chance.

 

Jim hated the generic and ultimately useless platitudes, sorries and condolences, nearly as much as he hated Facebook comments from well-meaning acquaintances and strangers that asked if he’d tried CBD oil. In Jim’s world (and in the world of so many others around him and like him), science and the best medical staff in the US were always the answer, and if they had no answer, that was that.

 

I told Jim that when I wrote something for him, it would be full of sports references and also talk about his lifelong passion for NFL football. That guy definitely never missed a Superbowl and will absolutely not haunt me from beyond by having me miss the last stair on my trek downstairs for coffee fortnightly until I apologize for saying that.

 

But the truth is, I don’t even know where to start in explaining who Jim was as a person or what he meant to me and my family. We ended up becoming friends over a Good Morning Gloucester rant about his stolen bike wheel, and partnered up for so many things over the last 6-7 years – Snotbot, the Gloucester Clam, marketing projects for diverse clients. And we both were prolific Facebook messengers. It was rare that more than a day or two went by without a message back and forth unless one of us was out of the country (and even then), tens of thousands of them over the years, from snarky to serious, mostly about the Clam, but also advice about starting companies, buying houses, launching careers, managing friendships, and dealing with high-energy redheaded sons and the school system that tries valiantly to keep their penchant for building rockets, massive robots or trebuchets headed in a positive academic direction. 

and this. remember this?

 

I got a message on vacation last August that he was spending time with my mom, and not for a good reason. For background, my mom has worked at MGH as a Neuro ICU nurse since before I was born, and Jim was transferred into her unit. He assured me the mass they found in his brain was most likely  just a breach in the Lord of the Rings trivia containment unit, and not to worry. The surgery would remove the mass, and he also requested they remove the area that held knowledge of the Star Wars prequels.  I don’t handle things like normal people, so my course of action over the past 9 months was to keep speaking to him like nothing was wrong, and not to treat him any differently. We joked about death a lot. 

After he told me he was starting home hospice care at the end of April, the messages kept up, but as weeks passed, got harder and harder to decipher. He mused that at the end, Keith Richards and Bob Dylan appear in the room, ostensibly to explain the meaning of life and their secret to keep death at bay. He told me that once he slipped into unconsciousness, Morrissey jokes were fair game. I joked that I would keep pinging him like the Opportunity rover, until his battery was low and it got dark. And then the messages stopped.

I will forever miss having someone that i could text at basically any time of day with “ugh, these assholes” and not only would Jim immediately know which assholes I was talking about and what the assholes had said in particular, but also launch into a diatribe about why, exactly, the assholes were wrong, what they failed to grasp about this argument in particular, and how eventually they’d be replaced by robots anyway – so joke’s on them.  

There was no one in the world, no one I will ever meet again in  my lifespan, like Jim. Jim was such a larger than life person. Come to think of it, louder than life may be a better descriptor. While most humans learn to modulate the volume of their voice when they are a preteen, Jim never truly grasped that concept, much to our community’s delight and consternation. The last time I saw him in person was at the O’Maley production of Mary Poppins, where we inadvertently ended up sitting next to each other and I had to whack him to be quiet when he loudwhispered about the numerous set changes. Jim was the kind of guy Sefatia would need to tell to take it down a notch. 

Jim was a one of a kind friend – and I know everyone who has ever had the pleasure of him diving headfirst into their lives, loudly and without apology, feels the same. We’ve lost so much with his passing. He doesn’t leave holes in our lives, he leaves blast craters.

 

 

One of my favorite and most unexpectedly wholesome things about Jim was his unwavering belief that humanity could still solve the climate change crisis. During our trip to LA to film Patrick Stewart for the Snotbot Kickstarter, we ended up at a taco bar around the corner from our hotel, and the conversation over a nightcap turned to how our planet is a sauna and we’re over here squeezing our waterbottles over the coals. Myself as well as Iain, the head of Ocean Alliance, were of the opinion that this is it for us, that humanity has another 100 good years at most, that despite the brilliance of our species and the incredible feats and inventions we’ve accomplished, we won’t be able to work together to keep ourselves alive – despite all of us still trying our best. Jim, however, firmly believed that even if leadership lagged, the incessant research of the scientific community would eventually solve the issues enough to minimize the effects of global warming to continue our species beyond the next century. It’s ironic in an Alanis Morrissette sense that he got to peace out before the ending got spoiled for him.  

Jim’s ability to weave a narrative was unbelievable. I don’t know which type of posts were my favorite – angry screeds with snarky photos, or less angry, but still tough-love filled essays about how Gloucester gets to where it needs or wants to be. Jim dunked on Gloucester sometimes, but what a lot of people didn’t understand was the nuance. Jim LOVED Gloucester, and when you love something, you want what’s best for it. You have opinions about where it goes and what goes into it. Sometimes those opinions are peppered with profanity, but they’re just as valid. Thankfully, thousands of people understood his message, and those who didn’t were usually the type of person who has their profile picture wearing sunglasses in the driver’s seat of a lifted truck. Nuance is lost on them, anyway.

 

One of my favorite No Snark Sundays was a story he retold about hosting his septuagenarian aunt’s wedding to a high school sweetheart and realizing his back porch was completely rotted and filled with larvae. He had two choices: the easy way, to just block the back porch off so no one stepped through a rotted floorboard and push the repair off to some other future time, or the hard way, to completely pull up the rot and fix the deep-rooted problem. And he somehow seamlessly compared this dilemma to our country’s problem with police brutality and accountability when it comes to murdering unarmed POC. And he did it so well.

 

And so, I’ll leave you with this, from the master himself.

 

I know we say this here a lot, but it’s important to stress that we are not a frightened people. We are not afraid of terrorists, though they attack our city. We are not afraid of Ebola even though it’s foreign and scary-sounding. We’re not afraid of our kids mixing with new ideas and different social classes and cultures because this is what will make them real people not just another set of clones blithering around a mass-produced consumer culture. We are not afraid because each of us is descended from brave people who risked everything at one point or another. We owe our civilization to those who pushed back against the darkness. Who stood for justice and equality in the face of what then looked like insurmountable odds. Their blood flows in our veins and their DNA is what 3D printed us out into this crazy place and time. We have the tools. We have the people who know what needs to be done.

So take a breath. Roll up the sleeves. This is going to be hard.

But the fucking door stays open.”

 

I hope he got to see Keith Richards on his way out the door.

 

If you have a story about Jim you’d like to share, his family would love to hear it and keep these memories for his children to read. Email heyjimdowd@gmail.com with funny observations, memories, and so on. JUST NO CONDOLENCES. You don’t want to be haunted by someone that loud. 

Respect is Earned, Not Given. Trump Hasn’t Earned It.

So our local GOP chairwoman Amanda Orlando Kesterson, as well as her brother Joe, who is running for re-election to the council, caught wind of a gravestone at the West Parish halloween party that said “Don Trump.” (UPDATE: It apparently according to a few local parents, was part of a game that first appeared at a Boy Scouts party – Kesterson is heavily involved in the local Boy Scouts, for what it’s worth.) And then they ran to the media with it, immediately bypassing the school’s principal and superintendent. I was told becoming massively offended about a tiny thing was what “liberal snowflakes” do, but I guess it’s more bipartisan than they’d care to admit. Was it in bad taste? Probably not the best taste, but there’s some serious melodrama about how terrible and disgusting it was from the same people who “hate PC culture” and whose predecessor in her chairwoman job, Angela Hudak, posted photos of Obama as Osama Bin Laden IN FRONT OF THEIR RESIDENCE. Take a look. 

 

No,  Amanda, you’re wrong. We shouldn’t teach our children that the office of the President always deserves respect. It’s sad, but until November I did not imagine I would need to type that sentence. We should teach our children to think critically about what a person worthy of high respect and honor looks like and does, so that they grow into people of high respect and honor.

Each previous president, even the ones against my particular political views, were worthy of respect. They spoke with honor, chose their words carefully (even if written by another person), understood the gravity of their office and the job they sought out. I was not a fan of George W Bush, as it just cemented the idea of “failing upward,” but I respected him just as much. Perhaps begrudgingly at the time, but in hindsight, I now respect him more than I did then. It was only the most respected of men that sought the highest office, to represent us as a people, a nation united.

And along came Trump to garbage up the Oval Office. A man who left in his wake of a career bankruptcies, racist policies that kept people of color out of his rental apartments, broken contracts ruining small businessmen, serious allegations of sexual assault,  cheap steaks, and lies. The fact that the man ascended to presidency is an anomaly. He chews respect up and spits it out, daily.  So, here’s a list of things our president has said that the local GOP wants our children to show respect for:

“Marlee, is she retarded??” (about deaf actress Marlee Matlin).

“If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened.”

“I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.” (Rally in Virginia, August 2, 2016, upon receiving a Purple Heart medal from a supporter.)

“She [Alicia Machado] was the winner and she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”

“Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long [to kick out protesters] is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.”

“He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK?”

“Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican Illegals because of his wife.”

“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

“Heidi Klum. Sadly, she’s no longer a 10.”

“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”

“I’ve done it [filed bankruptcy] four times out of hundreds, and I’m glad I did it. I used the laws of the country to my benefit.”

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

“Wow! Just think—in a couple of years, I’ll be dating you.” (To two 14 year old girls)

‘Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that.” (so awful I had to include the source)

“You have to treat ’em [women] like shit.”

“[Arianna Huffington]  is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man- he made a good decision.”

“Bad (or sick) guy!” (a tweet about Obama)

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Maybe Amanda wants her kids to grow up thinking this is an appropriate way to gain respect and act in your daily life, but I will never teach my children that a man who has said these things is to be respected just because he was voted into office. I respect people who fight for our country. I respect people who run into a burning building. I respect people who give up everything they’ve ever known just to get to our country for the smallest possible chance to build a life here. But until Donald Trump does something that commands respect – literally, ANYTHING – no one should teach our children that this is what a leader who commands respect sounds like.

 

Clam Politics Guide: Yes On Four, for Frick’s Sake

Here at the Gloucester Clam, we’re voting YES on Question 4. It’s a no-brainer to us, even if we’re not ourselves users (or are we? who knows). The pros by far and away outweigh the cons, and it means an end to irrational fear over a drug that is overall safe for adults to use, and has a ton of benefits. So to clam-dig ourselves further into why we’re GUNG HO FOR WEED YO, here’s some good reasons why.

One of the main pro-legalization talking points revolves around the benefits of bringing the marijuana industry itself – the entire supply chain- above-board. Bringing it from the streets to downtown businesses by voting yes on four accomplishes several things that aren’t in place with the current quasi-legal status of pot in Massachusetts.

we feel you otto

we feel you otto

First, the industrialization makes it safer. Some of the opinion pieces on Question 4 have denigrated it as too focused on making the industry attractive to big business interests. While the question isn’t worded perfectly and we’d all like to see local shops entering the market instead of conglomerates, making pot an industry isn’t a bad thing on the whole – and we can make further changes to the laws down the line. The alcohol industry, for instance, is closely regulated, and the ABV is noted on your can of good ol’ Amuricabeer. You know what you’re getting, how strong it is, and that’s not only safe for you (or some dumb teenager drinking Alize in back of 7/11), but for the people around you. Driving cars. Because you’re not drinking moonshine anymore, you’re expecting the company selling you a product to sell you a safe one. It’s not a gamble.

It’s not like you can overdose and die of too much weed, but the difference between Indica and Sativa mean that if you’re just going to Joe Weedguy who lives in his mom’s basement selling ditch weed, you don’t know what you’re getting and you could either fall asleep or spend the whole day polishing your N64 cartridges. You’re taking the word of someone who posts memes on Facebook about how the Clintons are totally responsible for killing like twelve people.

tumblr_m2oezbfmvt1ru3lomo1_500

 

When it’s legal, and you follow the source from your local shop to the distributor, there’s a chain of responsibility there. Correct labeling, intended dosage – these are important for all humans. It’s incredibly rare, but pot you get off the street can also be laced with uncool stuff. Again, incredibly rare. But pot smokers deserve better than this chance. They’re our friends, neighbors, kids, parents, and doctors.

Secondly, legalization and regulation also means that gang involvement and criminal activity surrounding weed dealing will lessen greatly. Of course, it won’t be extinct. I’m not going to blow pot smoke up your ass. But take this article from the Independent Journal Review that reports a 10% DECREASE in the statewide violent crime rate, and 13% drop in the murder rate. A study in the journal Psychology and Addictive Behaviors found that couples who smoked were less likely to engage in domestic violence. And in Colorado, the estimated legal vs illegal pot sales is, astonishingly, 90% to 10%. Legalizing it absolutely worked to destabilize the underground drug market. Full goddamn stop.

The important thing to realize is that money that used to go to violent drug dealing rings now is going elsewhere. Even if most of the Joe Weedguys in our community are actually decent people, sometimes with regular families and lives, the supply chain in many cases is traced back to violent drug cartels, which are estimated to lose billions by the WA and CO legalization.

So now big swaths of cartel money goes to taxes – the third huge benefit of legalization. Taxing marijuana, as Colorado has done, has been successful in bringing in new tax revenue that would have otherwise been borne by all taxpayers. In 2015, the industry (medical and recreational) brought in nearly $1 billion (FRIGGIN BILLION), and $135 million was collected in taxes – with $35 million of that total earmarked for school construction projects. In Washington State, lawmakers had estimated about $36 million would be raised from taxing weed in 2014, the first year that licensed shops opened up. It turns out they underestimated. They brought in $70 million.

Fourth – legalization brings jobs. Maybe Joe Weedguy will be out of a job (let’s face it, most weedguys I know of actually work real jobs anyway), but new, actually tax-paying, jobs will be created. Like, in the case of Colorado, 18,000 IN ONE YEAR. ONE YEAR.

So what’s the downside? Are the fears rational?

I’ve heard some folks, parents especially, voice their reasons for their “no” vote. I understand those reasons, but I don’t agree. Some are misinformed or don’t understand the nuance of the issue, others are just naive.

“I don’t want my kids to have access to it or think it’s normal.” Your kids already have access to it. Don’t delude yourself on that front. Every kid in every town in America will have access to pot in their high school years. This study shows that 80% of 12th graders, as well as 40% of 8th graders, reported marijuana is easily available to them. Sorry to poke holes in this logic, but facts are facts, whether we want to acknowledge them or not. Funny, these same parents have no problem whatsoever with beer ads during football games. Huh. 

your kid already, basically

your kid already, basically

And as far as thinking its normal? Cat’s out of the bag on that as well. It’s not that legalizing weed for consenting, informed adults is what has normalized it – it’s that the inroads into medical marijuana helping patients (it stops constant seizures in kids in some cases), a huge policy shift across multiple states, and media actually reporting on how gee golly it doesn’t kill anyone after all that has normalized it. Sorry, parents. When I was a teenager it was pretty normal and we quickly realized DARE had overblown (pun intended) the dangers of pot, and it was a pretty big letdown.

literally the worst outcome of weed usage is making cringeworthy facebook posts.

the worst side effect of weed usage is making cringeworthy facebook posts.

And In the case of Colorado, where marijuana has been legal since 2009, legalizing it not only didn’t lead to the hand-wringing “let’s think about the children who will start smoking now that it’s legal and easy to get,” the opposite happened.

In 2015, 21 percent of Colorado youths had used marijuana in the past 30 days. That rate is slightly lower than the national average and down slightly from the 25 percent who used marijuana in 2009, before legalization. The survey was based on a random sample of 17,000 middle and high school students in Colorado.”

17,000 is a pretty big sample size, and that matters. Legalization opponents had been harping on a Federal survey that showed use by teenagers had remained flat, and that Colorado’s teen usage was a bit above the national average. But that survey only involved 400 teens, and wasn’t nearly as accurate as the larger-scale study.

The reduction is good to hear. Pot isn’t safe for teenagers long-term (which is why the legal age to procure and smoke would be 21), and it was a reasonable argument that legalization might lead to more teenagers with access to pot and therefore, more smoking. But, it’s looking more and more like that isn’t happening, at all, in any state where it’s currently legal.  A study in the medical journal Lancet shows similar findings.  And again, pot isn’t safe for teenagers, but it won’t kill them, like underage drinking can. In a heartbeat, I’d tell my kids that smoking pot is a much better alternative to drinking, and if they’re at a party where they feel pressured to try one or the other, I’d rather they smoke so they don’t end up dead of alcohol poisoning. 

The anti-legalization folks recently put out this amazingly bad reefer-madness style ad, complete with absolutely false assertions (pot that looks like fucking candy will not be sold in windowsills you dumpsters, and it will still be illegal to smoke on the street, for god’s sakes you bags of ham). This is how ridiculous they look trying to scare the bejebus out of the middle-aged suburban mom voting bloc, but it works.

There are other, non “but my children” reasons against legalization, as well. Some people think there will be increased instances of driving while high, and this is absolutely something to consider. But, again, this is illegal already. Drunk driving is a much more deadly occurrence. Driving while high isn’t as unsafe as drunk driving, but still, no one’s saying it’s ok. But, I have faith that our law enforcement can deal with this problem since they won’t be busting kids for having 1.1 ounce on them now, or spending days staking out teen pot dealers. 

What the anti-question 4 folks don’t bring up is that pot is safe, far safer than drinking, and helps a lot of responsible adults feel relaxed, blow off stress, and enjoy themselves. It’s not just dumb kids, it’s folks from all walks of life – lawyers, doctors, EMTs, Rick Steeves on PBS, construction workers, and more, who are able to enjoy it occasionally and responsibly, and they deserve to have the right to purchase pot legally and consume it in their own home.

Or they're motherfucking astronauts.

Or they’re motherfucking astronauts.

So let’s do it. Let’s make some tax money, reduce gang activity, and stop incarcerating and ruining the lives of mainly People of Color for being in possession of weed at the same damn time. Let’s admit we’ve been wrong for a long time in this and finally make it right instead of clinging to notoriously flawed arguments.