At least 600 attend Statehouse rally

Stephanie Davis fresh from A Prairie Home Companion

Part of the Basin contingent

From the Helena Independent Record:

An estimated 600 people from throughout Montana rallied at the state Capitol at noon Monday to show their anger with legislative proposals that they believe would harm the environment.

Denise Juneau, superintendent of public instruction, fired up the crowd when she motioned to the statehouse and said that legislators inside were "introducing unconstitutional laws that make the state I love the laughing stock of the country. They're making public employees punching bags. They're inside, slashing and burning MEPA (the Montana Environmental Policy Act). They're saying climate change is a good thing. They're gutting the Endangered Species Act. They're attempting to change the constitutional mandate for a clean and healthful environment," Juneau said.

The rally was brought together from a wide range of environmental and wildlife organizations, according to Ed Gulick with the Northern Plains Resource Council. The impetus for the gathering came from the feeling that the fundamental beliefs many Montanans hold dear are being trampled during this session, and they want the legislators to know people are upset. After the rally they filled the Senate gallery in a show of support for environmental protections.

It was a fun day.  From the floor during this President's Day event, a legislator noted that the gallery was filled every day in a bygone era and that only the radicalism of this session brought voters to their own Capitol this year.

T-Shirt: Revised Sermon on the Mount

The revised Christo-Fascist Sermon On The Mount. And Jesus said: "Your poverty disgusts me. Get a job, you losers."

Color: blue on sand

This one made me laugh like hell:

Pacacho Peak

odd goddess spotted on the trail to Pacacho Peak

Moon over White Rock Canyon

The walk into the Colorado River in Lake Mead Recreation Area to Arizona Hot Springs is other-worldly.  One can almost feel the eyes of the wildlife looking down at you while you hike.  Most annoying, however, was the steady stream of airliners on approach to Las Vegas just thirty miles away as the vulture flies.

Salaam aleikum

Hello.

On a gorgeous Arizona day, our most excellent South Sudanese housekeepers (one putting sons through university, one a husband) were nearly giddy over the possibility of democracy coming to Egypt as they giggled then patiently taught a few words of Egyptian to a scruffy gringo hunched over a computer flabbergasted as the War Toilet turds turn on one of their own as he decries the use of the xenophobicism, "anchor babies."

Nedah

Nurlyv

Bees bumbling by blooms

Scottsdale: 67 degrees

Hohokam petroglyphs

Etched into the rhyolite on Signal Hill in Saguaro National Park about 800 years ago, likely by ancestors of the modern-day Tohono O'odham, this rock art may be directions to water sources and hunting.

Of course, some people do go both ways

don't take it the wrong way, weirdo

ip photo, day 6

Rock stacking

never tell a man he has a little stack

Yeah, THAT Safeway

We had been planning this for months.  The goddess has a public health conference in Scottsdale on Thursday.

Bizbee's human, Kim, convinced us to stay at Catalina State Park for at least one night (we spent two) where hiking trails at the foot of the mountains just north of Tucson would give us ample opportunity to explore before tackling traffic trying to find Joani's niece's condo on the other side of town.  The Mapquest directions took us off I-10 onto Ina Road at about 7:30PM and after a bite to eat at a Subway (because there was a line out the door of a Mexican Restaurant, our first choice) we headed east.

After misreading the Mapquest directions we crossed Oracle Road where a Safeway entrance looked eerily familiar in the dark.  It struck us as just an odd coincidence before it hit us two days later.

ip photo

Desert respite

 Our most excellent guide and the hu man with whom he lives
Bizbee, the guide; Kim, the hu man

a goddess, her starship, and the hu man with whom she travels



This desert sentinel might be 300 years old

W cancels Switzerland trip under arrest fear

Bush43 has cancelled a scheduled trip to Switzerland as the Center for Constitutional Rights and other human rights groups prepared to submit a 2500-page indictment of the former President of US.  A publicist for the former Dick-puppet cited concern that the visit might trigger violent protests. 

Yeah, right.  Wave bye-bye, W.

ip photo; Day 3.

On the Road #1

Dillon, day 1. 

Skyscraper to be adapted

This may be the most beautiful building in Butte.  The Montana Standard reports:


Fresh off the renovation of the Sears Building, Nick Kujawa is tackling a taller, albeit much skinnier, project.  Kujawa purchased Hirbour Tower, located on the northeast corner of Broadway and Main, earlier this month with plans to turn it into seven upscale condominiums. The building, erected in 1901, is known as "Butte's first skyscraper" because of its internal construction of vertical steel girders. He had been talking with the Hirbour's previous owner, Jeff Francis, for more than three years about acquiring the 110-year-old building. Earlier this month they finally completed the transaction, and Kujawa said he hopes to get started with construction this summer and be finished by spring 2012. He said the cost of the renovation would be "in the millions." Plans call for one condominium on each floor of the building, approximately 1,500-square-feet with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Kujawa said prices will start "in the low 200s."

This news comes just as Butte becomes the home of the Montana Folk Festival after hosting the national event for the past three years.

It's about time.  I wept upon first seeing this building.

Two-below honey

Basinites gather to support artists

Thirty patrons gathered at Joani's for chili then went uptown Basin to the Hewitt Building (about half a city block away) where Burke Jam, played as Churchmouse, then 2/3 of AM String Band, Johanna Davis and Adam Nordell performed.  The three artists, former residents of the Montana Artists Refuge, played in the front downstairs studio while the wood stove crackled.

What a sweet, intimate treat!

Happy New Year, Pagans!

Uptown Comet, Montana

Cannabis science influencing Montana law

As Montana's legislature prepares its agenda for the upcoming session, the state's medical cannabis law settles into the crosshairs. Initiated law and its inherent clumsiness makes legislators wring their hands at the power wielded by an electorate angry with gridlock.

Matthew Frank at the Missoula Independent brings a science-based report from a researcher's perspective. This excerpt from his lengthy study begins with Dr. Noel Palmer:

"It's the dosing," says Palmer, co-founder of Montana Botanical Analysis, located in the Bozeman Medical Arts Center. "That's one area where I feel like our work has really impacted physicians and the general public. Those are concerns that seem to be fairly common. How do you dose this stuff? But you can. We're here and we're doing it right now...We can talk numbers. It's not just some dude who makes cookies in a kitchen."

Palmer does indeed talk numbers. He thumbs through a stack of files and pulls out a printout of a recent analysis. The liquid chromatographer detected a handful of cannabinoids—the active constituents of cannabis—with the biggest blip on the chart corresponding to THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive and analgesic substance in cannabis.

Sen. Jim Shockley, R-Victor, who drafted a bill for the 2011 legislative session that would repeal Montana's voter-approved Medical Marijuana Act, says the cannabis labs' work makes him more likely to embrace the burgeoning industry.
Palmer becomes giddy when his explanation of cannabis' biosynthetic pathway reaches CBD, a cannabinoid with no psychoactive effects that, therapeutically, may be more promising than THC. He refers to it as "the silver bullet of the modern cannabis movement."

"It's not about THC anymore. It's about everything, the blend. It's all of these in there," Palmer says, pointing to the cannabinoids written on his whiteboard. "We think of them working symbiotically."
"Law enforcement needs a clear protocol," Palmer says.

More to the point, law enforcement needs a medical marijuana law that better reflects how medical marijuana is being used. Mark Long, chief of the Montana Narcotics Bureau, points out that cannabinoid quantification matters little to his colleagues because the law defines usable marijuana only as its dried weight.

Credit the cannabis labs then for at least providing a service it appears most Montanans, no matter their position on medical marijuana, can support. As the Legislature will surely prove when it tackles the topic in January, consensus ends there.

The South Dakota legislature will be seeing some lobbying by advocates of medical cannabis. Who will listen?

Photo: Chad Harder.

Check out this photo!

This photo appears in Wildfire Today. Courtesy National Geographic and Sean Heavey.