EASTMAN HONORED IN LA

MY LOS ANGELES WEEKEND, PT 1 –

BSC, CA - LA is a magic town. You don't have to be that way, but it helps a lot. A case in point is my latest assignment for BSC, the city honoring Richard Eastman for his contribution to the illness of HIV/AIDS. This honor is also a declaration and tip o' the hat to Mary Jane Green, aka, marijuana or 'cannabis', in the curing of the disease. The sign below is for all the people who weren't at City Hall to witness and hear the official declaration made to Richard Eastman, resident of West Hollywood.

In this country and all over the world even, there is a huge market in just treating people for their medical symptoms related to various illnesses. Now imagine a world without all that crap. Imagine seeing happy people because they have their health, instead of dragging around looking dismal. Richard Eastman represents a person who should be dead, or at least depressed. Instead, he is the opposite. This is all due to cannabis, or Mary Jane, what cannabis was called back in the '30's, according to the WEEDMAPS Museum of Weed, but I'm skipping ahead.

Knowing where Richard is going to be isn't the same thing as being where he is. This time I at least had advance notice of where he was going to be for a minute. I had a narrow window to get the story and my personal copy of #WOW2019 signed by Richard, the author [reviewed here]. By the time I found the correct spot [after getting turned around, a common occurrence in LA], the council meeting was under way with different cancer victims.

RUBIDOUX ROUGHNECKS

IS CANNABIS MAGIC? -

BSC, CA – First off, I hope you had a happy Labor Day. Here is my Labor Day tale. It starts out like any other quest for me, I am looking for weed. Lately around my neck of the woods, the sesh I usually go to, is gone. No web presence and no tickets to get in. I can read the writing on the wall, it's been shut down. The replacement sesh was a Christian open mike music session the night I went, so there I was, down to my last dab of wax. And a little dab won't do ya.

Remembering the last time I went through the little burg of Rubidoux and some recent small talk with an acquaintance led me to believe that little Rubidoux, being primarily Mexican, was going its merry little way, not getting much notice from the man. The picture below which shows a vacant lot, used to be a dispensary. The Rubidoux Roughnecks [my nickname] tore the place down after robbing and cleaning it out.

“The local gang are the ones who sell pot around here and they don't like outsiders coming in because then their sales drop. They shot two people at a shop [about a mile north down Rubidoux Blvd] just three or four days ago. With the city asking for 5-15 thousand for a license to operate, no gang is going to pay that. The cops shut down all the other places.” This was the word I got from someone who knows the local scene. So I waited for the bus ride back to Riverside.

UCR DEMOLITION BEGINS

NEIGHBORHOOD GIVEN INDIAN TREATY -

BSC, CA – The demolition of the north east end of UCR's campus for the STEM High School Project noted in the last School Board Meeting by the Oversee Measure O Committee seems to have started, as per instructions from the out-of-control Chancellor at UCR. The first stirrings of demolition started around July 22^th as tarp fencing was thrown up to obscure the view. Still, it is hard to mistake the sound of heavy equipment bustling around.

Looking southward across Blaine St.

As a way to give the neighborhood the finger and keep the students too busy with fall admissions, the illegal Measure O project commenced on the side furthermost from any student activity and closest to the neighbors, to show the neighbors who is in control, the University; not the people who will be disrupted by the extra traffic brought in. if you could see the aerial view of the neighborhood, you would see just how dense this area is. Plus the hood is backed up against the hills. It's a box canyon.

Of course none of this is surprising to any observer to UCR's back history with this neighborhood. In fact, the neighborhood took UCR to court, and won; except somebody forgot to tell UCR that news. Or maybe like today's Dems and the 2016 elections, they just didn't except the news. When you narrow down the driving force behind this project and the egos involved, well, there seems to be only one recourse left for the folks being treated like Indians. Where is Perry Mason, oh wait, that's the made up world where morality exists. More pictures after the jump.

READ A LABEL, THANK A MOM

IT'S YOUR RIGHT -

BSC, CA – Back in the day the original mandate was, a) you have the right to know what is in your food, and b) you have the right as a consumer to healthy ingredients over corporate profits. The second part of this mandate was trickier, mainly due to the distance between the people who control those decisions and the people who consume, like cattle, hence the buying public. The middle cattle prod – Moms Across America. Read a label, thank a Mom.

This original mandate was and is a freedom, the freedom for you to be able to do the aforementioned things, especially from the giants. Pictured above are two label pictures taken just a few weeks ago, at a Ralph's showing Heinz products. When the Moms started, those labels didn't exist because the public didn't know and didn't care such things. I was one of those people.

Today I still run into people who either don't know or don't care. There will always be that. You just can't convince everyone of the truth, but that was never the purpose or plan. The plan was to reach the people on the inside. We wanted to reach the people inside the walls that we couldn't reach, face to face, and say, 'Hey, feed us the good stuff because we deserve this as people of a free society. We deserve this because we are people just like you. We want to know what's in our food.' Above and following are examples that show the companies heard and are hearing our voices. Now it is up to the people to act on the listed ingredients and improve their waist lines with more than nutrition.

EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE SEASON START

ALSO NEW STARBUCKS IN RIVERSIDE -

BSC, CA – After almost perfect weather through the start of summer here in Riverside, it seems that our good luck may have morphed into having two California seasons at once this year. In an ordinary year, you have your four seasons in California. There is mudslide season [late fall-midwinter], earthquake season [midwinter-mid spring], if the Lakers win, riot season [late spring], and fire season [summertime-early fall]. This year for Riverside, two seasons started almost back to back.

With a wildfire happening just two days before the Fourth of July at Sycamore Canyon, the fire truck pictured above, heads out that way to help stop a brush fire that peaked at 201 acres, more pics after the jump. On the 4^th before the fireworks came out, there was a 6.4 'foot massage' [earthquake] that friends back in Iowa asked me about. I hadn't felt that one but friends down in Murrieta and San Diego did. Then today just two days later and less than an hour ago, another earthquake hit. This time I felt it shake the place for about a minute, kind of up and down and back up, in intensity. This time friends in SD didn't feel the shake, indicating a completely different earthquake area.

If it were two fires and an earthquake, that wouldn't be so strange, but two earthquakes two days apart in fire season is not usual. Also two seasons running concurrently is unique, even for California. Makes you wonder what's up?