Farm News 09-09-07

Geezers! To the Barricades!

All the talk of terrorists has just been a smoke screen to hide the government's real goal: eliminating geezers! In the past few months four geezers I know have been arrested and put in jail, all of them charged with possessing marijuana with intent to sell. These guys are all retired, they aren't trying to sell anything, they just want to enjoy retirement.

What if I develop cancer of some sort? I want to go back to smoking pot if that happens, and to hell with the DEA. I can't imagine going from jail to the hospital every week for chemo. At least, if they put me in jail, they'll have to pay for the chemo.

The drug laws in this country are crazy. I always thought their primary purpose was to put young black men in prison, but now they are going after geezers, too. We probably should try to stage a revolution, but most of the geezers I know would forget what they were doing before we even got started. The young black men won't be any help because most of them are in prison, they tend to trip over their own trousers trying to run to the barricades, and think a Black Panther is some sort of cool drink. We can't count on the women for help because they now see a chance to elect one of theirs to be President and won't rock the boat. Without women to remind us of what we're supposed to be doing, and young black men to help do it, I don't think we could pull off a good revolution. Maybe it's time to move to Denmark.

Here is one geezer's account of being arrested for pot possession. I've known this geezer for many years and have seldom known him to lie for more than three or four sentences in a row. Using that formula, you can assume that 25% of it is true and 75% is probably true, also.

On a Wednesday morning, I was working outside when I noticed a black unmarked high performance helicopter flying in a crisscross pattern over the hill area just to the north of here. It was in a search pattern, and stopped and hovered over several residences for several minutes at each place, then fly off to continue the pattern, then return to a few spots, and hover some more, the whole time less than 500' off the ground. Occasionally, it landed and I lost sight of it, then it would take off, and I could see it again. This went on about one and a half to two hours. Just around noon, it flew back toward the airport.

Later that day, around 2 PM I was working in the shop when I heard the helicopter again. It was again in a search pattern only it was circling around the residences in my area, going up the side of the main road. Then it came over my place, and began circling over my shop where I was. I stepped out the door and watched it hovering about 200' ft up. Just then, five or six official looking vehicles came down my road and stopped at the edge of my place. There were two county Police cars, two heavy State Police 4wd vehicles, a National Forest Service Truck, and I think, a Fire Marshal, also there were two four wheeler back coutry bikes w/troopers wearing assault rifles and shot guns driving them.

I stood there watching this as the helicopter thrashed away overhead. Then all these guys, at least two per car, got out and started spreading out. At the end of my driveway, about 75 feet away from me, two or three Official guys were standing, flanked on each side with two more troopers holding AR-16 assault rifles. One of the dudes motioned for me to come over.

So I walked over.

As I walked up, I was surrounded, two of them holding machine guns on me. I was wearing jeans and a T shirt, nothing in my pockets, my hands were empty. At the same time all the rest of the troops started walking around the place, looking behind the shop, the house, looking inside the board fence, etc.

Then this guy says they're from the State marijuana eradication force and wanted to know what was in my green house, (I have a small plastic covered room over my water tank with some extra space to get out of the wind, also a few of those very plants were growing there). "Mind if we look around?" he says. As I'm surrounded, I turned around and looked at all these guys all over the place poking around. I didn't have much to say except "I guess so".

Nancy Reagan is quoted as saying "Never give consent to an illegal search".

Then this dude arrested me, handcuffed me, and put me in the back of a squad car. I sat there for an hour or more while the helicopter went to town to get a search warrant, and watched them triumphantly remove 18 plants. They booked me, charged me with possession of over 8 oz, and threw me in jail at around 11 PM.

It was absolutely a bad experience.

After 3 days, I was able to contact a friend outside (in jail, a person is completely isolated with very limited ability to make outside contact). My friend had just received a pay check, and gladly came right down and posted $2,000 bail, took me home, and fed me a steak dinner! I was over whelmed and thankful for the support.

My "problems" I suppose, are that I have no respect for unjust laws created and held through lies and deception, and I'm willing to risk the consequences of doing what I think is my right, there being no other victims. I guess the real victims are those prosecuted under those laws.

My attorney maintains that I was "illegally busted". The sticky point is that I gave consent, but it was given under intimidation. The enforcement operations were, and are, way out of line. The police were using illegal practices in all other cases (they raided several other greenhouses with no probable cause), doing illegal search and seizures, breaking and entering, trespassing, and in my case, raiding at gunpoint, with no probable cause except that I had a green house. I have several witnesses to the official misconduct in the episode here, and in the other places, and are willing to testify. Around six cases were all part of the same operation, and show a clear pattern of law enforcement miss-conduct in each case. There is talk of a class action suit against the storm trooper tactics.

The next action to occur sometime in Jan. or Feb. In the meantime, my attorney is moving to throw out all evidence as it was illegally obtained. The State has offered a plea-bargain. We are turning it down and fighting the case.

Perhaps what we need is a Geezer's Mutual Pot Bust Insurance, an insurance policy that helps pay bail and legal fees for member geezers who get busted. By spreading around the costs to all of those at risk, we can greatly reduce the catastrophic financial effect of being arrested. Using the Geezer's Mutual Pot Bust Insurance Co. as source of capital, we then enter the derivatives market and make so much money that people will want to get busted because the insurance payouts are so high. With all the geezers turning themselves in for possession, the city and county detention facilities would rapidly fill up with old geezers in need of immediate health care, cracking apart most local funds for prisoner costs.

Geezers and old bags, Medicare eligible people with attitude, are you at risk of being arrested by a bunch of otherwise nice young men who ought to know better? Don't wait, hobble to the barricades! Sign up today to volunteer to help form the Geezer's Mutual Pot Bust Insurance Co. You can either click on that link or write your name and address on a $20 bill and mail it to me.

Geezer's Book Club

A reader suggested I try Term Limits by Vince Flynn. It's a great page-turner for people who like warrior stories. I read it and liked it, so I decided to tell everybody. Then I thought, “Geezer, there is a net 2.0 way to handle this.” That led to proposing Geezer's Book Club. Six or seven years ago my bed partner suggested that I keep track of what I have read, writing down the title, author, and date each time I finished a book. I did that for three years, perhaps, and then somehow quit keeping track.

I want to start keeping track again, and think that the internet is a good place to keep the list. If you click and go to the Geezer Forum, you will find the start of my new list. You are welcome to keep your own list in the same place. The help file for the software creating the forum is excellent.

Teach Search Tactics in High School

We need to teach our kids something about search tactics, the skills needed to carry out practical use of the google advanced search page and search pages in governmental and business web sites. Online searching with computers has suddenly moved the basic search from looking through a card catalog to the nearly instant searching of hundreds of millions of files. Twenty years ago the skills needed to find information were concentrated in heuristics, methods for minimizing the amount of work to be done in going through what is available. With computer powered searching the necessary skill set migrates to those skills used in both writing algebraic statements and dictionary definitions.

The set of those who are responsible for teaching adolescents the art of writing algebraic statements and the set of those who are responsible for teaching them the art of writing definitions seldom intersect, yet the skills needed to use google effectively seem to reside right at the intersection of those two arts. If students in the first and second years of high school were exposed a week or so of instruction on the tactics of developing search statements, then a few of them might remember, use, and understand what they were taught. A few of those students who use what they learned will probably remember the teacher who taught them the skills and be grateful.

A Neighbor's Question

A neighbor asked why I keep the radio playing in the barn around the clock. The barn radio is tuned to KCUR, the NPR outlet in Kansas City. KCUR has an announcer from England, and also runs BBC news from midnight to 6:00am. The ducks think the English accent is very cool and try to imitate it. They try hard but end up still sounding half quacked.

On Friday and Saturday evenings KCUR plays The Fish Fry, a mix of blues, jumpin' jive, and other such stuff. The ducks rock on jumpin' jive. They waggle their tales, bob their heads, and quack loudly whenever they hear a particularly good riff. Later, when the BBC comes on, the ducks sit quietly in small groups, muttering with phony English accents, discussing world events. The ducks definitely prefer KCUR to KANU.

In the house I listen to KANU, the NPR outlet in Lawrence. KANU plays mostly classical and jazz, neither of which pleases the ducks. I listen to NPR news, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, which both KANU and KCUR carry. The ducks, though, claim that NPR news is biased against ducks, an accusation that seems to have some basis in fact, as NPR news often goes for six months or more without carrying a story about ducks.

During the day I listen to internet radio. When writing, I enjoy background music, usually Cliq-Hop from www.soma.fm, good music for writing. Rumors of the broad range of internet radio have been reaching the barnyard, and the ducks are wondering why they don't have internet access. There are several old computers out there, complete with monitors, printers, keyboards, and mice, discarded remains from alongside the trail of progress.

The ducks seem to think I should set one up in the barn. Then I could attach a web cam to it so that everyone could see cute baby ducks in the Spring. They outnumber me, so I didn't remind them they had not produced a single baby duck this year. Then I started thinking about the possibilities of using older computers running Linux to handle web cams and host an X-10 controller, all connected on a wireless household LAN. The computer could provide a live feed of the the web cam sources of the day: baby bunnies, chicks, baby goats, goslings, beans growing in the garden, wherever you want to deploy a wireless web cam. So, even though it was suggested by ducks, I think I will start looking at wireless web cams.