By the time I got back to sunny California I was dressed like someone who was colorblind and had been given a gift certificate to a goodwill clothing store that was going out of business.
Read More

My marijuana story starts with a woman named Martha Lupton Schneidewind. She was my high school journalism teacher in West Covina, Calif. – a tall, birdlike woman who wore wool suits and ladylike scarves and had a quick, scampering walk. She was kind, loquacious and, to my insensitive teenage self, amusingly absurd with her chirping voice, outdated phraseology and fussy attire.

During the mid-1960s, teenage drug use was a huge bugaboo in the suburbs. Marijuana in particular. One day Mrs. Schneidewind entered the journalism lab and announced that several West Covina policemen had just spoken to the high school faculty about marijuana – a presentation that included the lighting of a joint. If teachers could detect the whiff of weed, the reasoning went, the school could more readily deliver student miscreants to the cops and boost the city’s anti-pot crusade.

“It’s unusually fragrant,” Mrs. S. remarked without irony when a fellow student journalist asked about the weed. “Not at all unpleasant.”

Within a few days I was assigned to write an editorial about marijuana for our campus paper, the Spartan Shield. Mrs. Schneidewind didn’t indicate an angle or point of view the editorial should take, so I figured I had free rein.

I hadn’t smoked weed yet – that wouldn’t happen until the spring of my senior year – but my brother Dan had already been busted for possession and, like most teenagers, I was intrigued by anything that could make masses of grown-ups so freaking scared. There was a naïve glamour that accrued to drug culture in those days, an excitement that even drug virgins like myself could appreciate just from listening to the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” or Grace Slick’s piercing vocal on “White Rabbit” (“Remember what the door mouse said! Feed your head!!!”).

To write the editorial, I referenced a booklet I’d found at the Free Press Bookstore, a hipster haven in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles. The booklet had a glossary of terms about marijuana (“bomber” was a big fat joint, “pinner” a thin joint), and I clumsily incorporated those terms in my editorial to simulate a streetwise, insider’s perspective.

It didn’t occur to me at the time, and I have no proof, but I now suspect the marijuana assignment originated with the West Covina Police Dept. I say this because when I finished the editorial and submitted it to Mrs. Schneidewind, she sent it to the assistant principal Barbara Buch for approval. Miss Buch, I came to believe, was deputized by the West Covina P.D. to arrange the editorial.

Miss Buch (rhymes with “spook”) was a bizarre lady. Although it was her job to monitor the dress code of girls on campus – skirts had to be no more than an inch above the knee – her own sartorial style would have to be described as Aging Stripper. She wore buckets of makeup, shaped her eyebrows like caterpillars, and favored sexy blouses and wide patent-leather belts that emphasized her oversized bosom. According to a persistent campus rumor (never proven), Miss Buch was a former Playboy Centerfold.

I never spoke with Miss Buch, but a day or two after submitting my marijuana editorial I was taken aside by Mrs. Schneidewind. From her desk drawer, she pulled out my typewritten copy and showed me the additions Miss Buch had made to my editorial – additions that totally altered what I’d written.

Among her gems was this unforgettable line: “The casual marijuana user may embark on his drug experiment innocently enough, only to emerge from his ‘high’ with needle marks in his arm.”

I’d never smoked pot or tried drugs of any kind, but I recognized this as anti-drug hysteria. “That sentence needs to come out!” I said. “I didn’t write that and it’s not true.”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Schneidewind replied. “But this is final. The editorial will run this way.” Worse yet, it ran that way with my byline attached.

Looking back, I imagine Mrs. Schneidewind felt trapped — that if she had resisted Miss Buch’s edict and defended my integrity as a journalist, her job would have been at risk. I never knew Mrs. Schneidewind to be dishonorable or heavy-handed on any other occasion – in fact, we remained friends and stayed in touch until she died — so I’m certain this is true. But my sense of betrayal at the time was sharp and painful.

A few months later, I smoked my first joint with Flip Farrall, another member of the Spartan Shield newspaper staff. Most weed came from Mexico back then, and when you bought an ounce it was mostly seeds and stems. Very weak. I remember taking long draws on the stuff, trying my best to inhale properly. It took a while to get the hang of it. And no, fergawdsakes, I never woke up with needle marks in my arms.

Today, I still occasionally get high and also use cannabinoid-based medicine for sleep and pain. I feel grateful that marijuana prohibition has finally come to an end in California. I only wish Fraulein Buch had lived to see the day.

I like history. When I read (now I have eye problems that limits my ability), I read biography. So my husband and I always wanted to tour Normandy and better understand what happened during the beginning of the liberation of Europe. The Americanization of Emily is one of my favorite movies and we agree that the opening of Saving Private Ryan is among the best depictions of the horror and heroism of war ever committed to celluloid.

So we looked forward to our trip with a high-end company that specializes in golf cruises. Dan gets to play some of the great golf courses in the world and the touring is top notch. We have traveled with the company twice before and eagerly signed up for this trip more than a year before the actual dates. It fills quickly and is a small cruise; about 120 people, serviced by a staff of about 60 on the ship and perhaps 8 from the golf company. Everything is top drawer from accommodations and food to the people who provide the history and tours.

We began on May 28 in a beautiful chateau in Chantilly, France. Spending two days there, Dan played golf while the non-golfers did various tours of local sites. The next day we toured the gardens and home of Monet in Givenry, where he painted his famous water lilies. The gardens remain glorious. We were overwhelmed by their beauty.

.

We continued on and took a quick tour of the historic port town of Honfluer, boarded our ship, unpacked and crossed the English Channel, arriving in Dover the next morning, crossing into a different time zone in the process.

Over the next few days, we went from port to port in Southern England. In Dover, I saw the tunnels where the evacuation of Dunkirk was planned and executed, as well as Canterbury Cathedral, seat of the Church of England and the spot where Thomas Becket was murdered (another favorite movie). Southampton was a highlight, as we had a private tour of Highclere Castle, the actual site where Downton Abbey was filmed. We were greeted in the Great Hall with tea and biscuits (so refined), then broken into two groups and taken on a small private tour. In rooms where filming took place, large photos from the show were on easels. But most interesting were the real, family photos, showing close relations to the royal family (the Queen at a family christening, Diana at a baby naming, and so on). Just fascinating. The furnishings were more plentiful and more beautiful than in the TV show, as much had needed to be removed to make room for the large cameras. We were not allowed to take any photos inside (they had a wonderful gift shop and I bought the guide book to remember everything). We all took photos of ourselves outside.

Portsmouth led us to Stonehedge, which was crowded, with endless lines. But in the afternoon, we went to the historic port and saw a Tudor era ship, the Mary Rose, brought up to the surface and restored. It was fascinating, a modern museum depicting life during the time of Henry VIII.

We went back across the channel that night and began our tour of Normandy in earnest the next day. In all, Dan and I spent four days touring various sites associated with the invasion (the French refer to it as the Liberation and remain grateful to us for our sacrifice and efforts to save them from the Nazis, even 73 years later).

It was now June 2, 2017. We began with Utah Beach, which has a museum. Since we had the time (and Dan chose to not play golf on one day), we saw several British and Canadian landing beaches as well. All have some sort of markers, flag poles, monuments, but there is little to let one know that monumental struggles happened here. The beaches are quiet now.

On nights before we would see something of great significance, our on-board historian, Alex Kersaw (a British ex-pat, now living in the US and author of several books about episodes that take place during WWII) would tell us what we would see the next day and give us hand outs to orient us. His books are well-researched, honing in on personal stories, giving a personal face to the war.

On D-Day eve, a large group decided that we wanted to be on Omaha Beach at 6:32am the next day, just as our own troops actually put boots on the ground. Dan and I decided we had to experience that, so we got up at 4:30am, grabbed the little breakfast provided (our tour people were fantastically accommodating), got on a bus and arrived on Omaha Beach at 6:28am. There was one jeep of re-enacters. It was raining and windy, just as it had been 73 years ago. We stood on the site where our troops landed and observed a moment of silence. Alex led us up the beach, had us form a line, holding hands. He told us how many of us would have been mowed down by German guns at that point. I am not sure I have ever been so moved or grateful for our servicemen in my life. Eventually, everyone on our tour would get to Omaha Beach, but being there at that moment felt sacred.

Ponte du Hoc was a German long gun battery pointed at the American landing beaches. It needed to be bombed before the invasion could begin. The bunker remains, as do the craters in the ground from the huge bombs that fell. The bombing was successful, though Army Ranger had to scale the sheer cliffs, grappling ropes to throw grenades into the bunker to wipe out the remaining Germans, so D-Day could commence. We visited this during a wild wind storm, walking out on the sheer cliff to look over and marvel at our Rangers’ amazing feat. Our group was afraid the wind would take little me right over the cliff and someone held onto me! The next day, we visited Longues-sur-Mer, which has the last surviving German canons. The Americans did knock them out of commission, but left them as a reminder of what we faced. On June 5 and 6, we came across a British and a Canadian veteran at sites, come over for the anniversary. They were both in their 90s. We shook their hands, thanked them for their service. They wore their medals proudly and were amazingly spry. The Canadian told us he fought from Normandy all the way to the Rhine. Amazing.

Later in the day, we went to the American Cemetery, where those who fell in the invasion are buried. My featured photo is of the grave of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr, a Medal of Honor winner (hence his cross has the gold star), buried next to his brother, Quentin, who died overseas during World War I. The rows go on forever. My reaction was similar to that of seeing the Vietnam Memorial…it drives home the terrible loss that occurs during war. The cemetery also has a lovely chapel and statue. There was a ceremony going on, since we were there on D-Day, with many wreaths being placed. Our group had also brought a red, white and blue wreath. Our tour leader asked all veterans to come forward and place the wreath at the foot of the statue. Again, I was very moved. Both my father and father-in-law fought in World War II and were very proud of their service.

Alex led us to Ranville on June 7. It holds the British cemetery. His grandfather is buried there. He was on a ship, sunk on D-Day by a German U boat. Alex’s grandmother was 7 months pregnant with his mother at the time. He told us she never got over it. The grave had a card from his mother with a prayer for the father she never knew. More tears from me. I well up even now as I write this, the terrible price of war. We found the British cemetery much more moving than the American cemetery. Instead of long rows of marble with just name, rank and date of death, these graves listed ages and personal messages from loved ones, “We’ll never forget you, Johnny”, “Known only to his maker”. We were particularly struck by the youth of the deceased.

We saw Pegasus Bridge, a strategic point, captured and held by the British for hours so that the troops coming off the beaches could march on into the heartland, battling all the way to liberate Paris, eventually. Of great interest to me was the Caen Memorial, now housing a library, excellent exhibits and a movie, showing the run-up to the war, the reasons, what happened. A very good take. We came away feeling like we learned much about what had gone into the invasion and liberation of Normandy from many perspectives. We continued on to London and a wonderful visit with our son David. It was a great way to start the summer.

 

 

Thanks to a program that no longer exists, I was able to attend the local college while still a senior in high school. After filling out the necessary paperwork and expressing my urgent need to study Italian—a class not offered at my school—I was approved to begin classes on campus in the fall of 1968. That local college? The Berkeley campus of the University of California.

My TA was a young woman with long blonde hair and big round glasses, who moved constantly in class, waving her cigarette in the air. Back then, there were actual ashtrays in the classrooms, and many of the students smoked. Including me, on occasion. To this teenager, it felt very sophisticated to sit among upperclassmen and practice blowing smoke rings.

One day, a male classmate invited me over to his dorm to get high. Demonstrating my full complement of street smarts and good judgment, I agreed to go. Once in his room, with the door closed and locked, he brought out a joint and lit up. We passed it back and forth and waited for something to happen. When we heard footsteps in the hall, he panicked. “If that’s the RA. . . .” We both knew the trouble he’d be in if we got caught getting stoned. I quickly assessed my options: hide under the bed, or fly out the window of the fifth- floor dorm room. The bed was too low to the floor, but that window . . .

Luckily, the footsteps passed the room where we both stood, frozen, hoping the smoke hadn’t somehow slipped out under the door and into the hall. By this time, I was feeling the effects and was hungry, thirsty, and paranoid. We waited a few moments to be sure, then left his room quickly. Back on the street, he offered to buy me a milkshake. That sounded like an excellent idea. It tasted wet and cold, but the two sensations were separate. As I drank it, I noticed the cold and the taste, but not simultaneously. Weird. And then I started to see the tiny colorful acrobats doing cartwheels ahead of me on the sidewalk. “Do you see that?” I asked him. His reaction told me he didn’t.

I think he walked me to my bus stop, but by then I was too enchanted by the sights and sounds that weren’t there to notice him. I’d been stoned a few times before, but I’d never hallucinated or felt so out of my body as I did then. He left, I guess, and I got on the bus. To get home from Berkeley I needed to transfer to a second bus, so when my first ride ended, I stepped off slowly and tried to maintain. But at this point, on a busy corner of University Avenue, I sank to my knees and uploaded that milkshake into the gutter. Did anyone notice? Would a passing policeman grab me for being a vagrant? Paranoia had me in a panic.

The bus I wanted came and went. The signal to cross the congested street changed several times while I waited, rooted to the sidewalk, certain that if I stepped off the curb I’d be flattened by a truck. Time slowed down as I pondered the best way to get across the street and not get run over. I thought I was stuck there forever, unable to cross four lanes of traffic safely.

Just in time, a friend from school happened by and led me across. We were catching the same bus, and once we got settled in I said, “I am so stoned. I can’t possibly go home now. My mom would kill me.” She said, “Come home with me, sleep it off, and we’ll figure something out.”

We walked to her house from the bus stop, a short walk that seemed to last forever. Her father was home, but she waved him off with a story about my terrible headache. I collapsed gratefully on a bed, and fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up and felt a little more like myself, I called home and told my mother I’d been invited to stay for dinner at my friend’s house, and would get a ride home later. All was well, or almost well. My friend’s dad may have picked up on the real story, but he didn’t let on. I am grateful for these acts of kindness to this day.

A couple of days later, back in class, I told my TA what had happened and pointed out the guy who’d offered me that laced-with-who-knows-what dope. She called him over, made him apologize, and read him the riot act in two languages. She was livid as she stuck up for me, knowing full well that I was still basically a high school kid and presumed innocent. If good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment, I learned a lot more than Italian that quarter.

For years afterward, the smell of marijuana set my teeth on edge and made my stomach flip. In those days, in Berkeley, it was hard to avoid that unmistakable acrid aroma. It seemed to be everywhere when young people gathered together. I would hold my breath and try to move away from the smokers, but it wasn’t always possible at an outdoor concert or an anti-war demonstration.

It’s been interesting to reflect on this experience now that the legalization law in California—where I still live—has taken effect. I doubt I’ll be tempted to light up any time soon, though. In recent years I’ve nibbled a brownie or two with mixed results, to be honest. Legal or not, I’m not sure the appeal is there anymore. I won’t be smoking, that’s for certain.  The truth is: The days when I would eagerly inhale ended on a long, strange trip during a sunny spring afternoon in Berkeley nearly fifty years ago.

Season after season, he perfects his crop amidst civilization's sturm und drang.
Read More

I walked into my college alumni party on my birthday last month; a cold day in December, which also happened to be my 65th birthday. I was greeted by many from the Brandeis administration whom I knew. While chatting with one, she said, “Do you recognize him from your class, Betsy? He’s doing an interesting new venture.” With his warm outer clothing and winter cap still on, I didn’t in that moment. He pulled off his cap and I could see the features of a classmate who lives less than a mile away from me in Newton. He’s a surgical oncologist and keeps Shabbat, so rarely comes to our reunions because he won’t drive on the sabbath. I said hello, asked if he still lived down the block from an old friend of my older son and what was this new venture.

He looked sheepish, so the Brandeis person piped up. “He’s opened a pot dispensary!” I’m sure my mouth flew open. He quickly explained it was in conjunction with pain management for his patients. Pot became legal in Massachusetts on January 1, 2018, and has been legal to own in small quantities for a year. Using it for pain management makes all the sense in the world. That a devote Jewish doctor would be prescribing it (and dispensing it) for pain relief, I found fascinating.

We are in the midst of a huge opioid crisis in Massachusetts, much of it brought on by the over-use of pain pills. Professional athletes all claim that weed helps with post-game pain, but is illegal in all the leagues, so they pop pills, given them by their doctors. Many also have drinking problems…a bad combination. Some wind up as headlines when they wreck their cars or beat their companions. The system sets them up for this toxic brew.

Cancer patients are often given pot to ease the pain and distress from chemo. They get a gentle buzz and the munchies are good for them to counter balance the nausea. I remember seeing the old movie “Reefer Madness” at Brandeis on my 18th birthday. It was a hoot. ’50s teenagers in crew cuts and bobby socks get high and do terrible things while under the influence of reefer. Have we not progressed since those days?

Law enforcement officials say vehicular deaths will go up because there is no way to measure how stoned one is (unlike with blood alcohol levels), yet people still drink and drive and horrible accidents prevail. Yes, of course, stoners will drive and accidents will occur. But using weed responsibly for pain management makes so much sense. As it becomes legal in so many states, it is humane, inexpensive, can be regulated, and can hopefully help to mitigate this terrible opioid crises that is raging throughout the US.

When my husband and I bought our first house after years of being renters, we were excited but a little bit terrified. The night before we made our offer, neither one of us got any sleep. We had looked and looked, and then one day the mother of one of our daughter’s kindergarten classmates told me she was putting her house on the market. “Why don’t you come and take a look?” she asked. “It’s the blue one across the street.” So we looked at the house, took a deep breath, and decided to proceed.

Our family of four–which included our three-year old son, six-year old daughter, and two cats–moved into the big blue box of a house in February of 1984. The house was perfect for us in terms of size and location (right across the street from my daughter’s elementary school), but less than perfect in others. A few examples: the clashing wallpaper in the entryway and powder room (1970s-era day-glow orange and lime green flowers which competed side-by-side with a busy pink and green floral pattern), the Noah’s ark wallpaper and dark blue trim in our son’s room, and the eye-crossing plaid on the walls of our daughter’s room. The master bedroom was significantly orange: the color of a ripe cantaloupe, with pumpkin trim. The carpeting on the stairs looked like banana bread gone past its use-by date, and the dark wood cabinets in the kitchen created an air of gloom in the confined cooking space. There were other things, too, which we made mental notes to change later on. Yes, the house was perfect, and we decided to change everything.

After five years in the house, with new wallpaper calming things down a bit, we decided to remodel the kitchen. When our third child was born, we added another bedroom and a family room for our growing family. We replaced the flooring in the entryway, and added some lovely wallpaper in our dining area. The house had become ours, and we’d survived two remodels with no real drama. And at this point, we began to wonder what it would be like to build a house from the ground up–to plan and build a house from scratch instead of tweaking and re-doing what we had. But we lived in an area where there wasn’t much available property to build on. Still, my husband and I allowed ourselves to daydream about a house we could truly call our own creation. We wished for the chance to build that house someday.

And here’s the be careful what you wish for part: in October of 1991, our now nearly-perfect house burned to the ground. Not just our house–over three thousand homes were lost in the Oakland Hills fire that raced down the hills, jumped the freeways, and devastated the entire area. We left almost everything behind, just taking photo albums and a few other things of sentimental value.

Once we realized our situation–that our house was reduced to ash and rubble— my husband and I agreed that we wanted to rebuild on our same lot. We would be starting from the ground up, but not in the way we had imagined.

I know my wish to start fresh and design a house to fit our family’s needs had nothing to do with what happened. I’d never have wished to go through the process of building in the aftermath of such a loss. The way I’d imagined it, creating a plan for our custom-built house would be undertaken at a leisurely pace, with plenty of time to do research and reflect on each individual choice, down to the drawer pulls, doorknobs, and light fixtures. I had a friend who took a year choosing her bathroom tile, and I knew I would not have the patience or wherewithal to dither at such great lengths over such a thing myself. On the other hand, making snap decisions was never my strong suit.

But when we lost our house, we had to scramble: to find a place to live, to furnish a rental house, to start picking up the pieces. Once we decided to rebuild on our same lot, we began by talking to the contractor who did our kitchen remodel, who recommended an architect, who guided us gently, but firmly, toward building the house we wanted. The process of rebuilding was far from leisurely; it was a moderately paced progression of construction that saw us back in a home we loved by February of 1993.

So, yes, be careful. In our case, we did get the home we wished for, but it came with a price–and a lesson: arising from the ashes, with feelings of loss and sorrow–but built on a strong foundation of resilience we didn’t know we had.

 

Reluctantly I did a second career report, but my heart wasn't in it ... I began to wish to be a writer.
Read More

As much as my family loved Christmas, we loved Christmas Eve more.
Read More