The Facts of Life about Humboldt’s Cannabis Industry

I heard a report from that stupid conference the HIIMS held last week about the so-called “impacts” of the Netflix miniseries Murder Mountain. From what I heard in the report, people in the cannabis industry worry a lot about their image. Instead of prosecuting the violent criminals in our community, it’s more important to the industry to convict the media for drawing attention to the murders they’d rather sweep under the rug. It seems shocking, but non-events like this recent conference, and the “SoHum Values Conference” that happened a couple years ago, offer incontrovertible objective evidence that the cannabis industry cares a lot about the image it projects. I don’t ever remember having a conference like this to address the problem of violence within the marijuana industry? As I noted last week, the industry obviously cares more about how they are portrayed in the media than they do about real murder and violence within their community.

One should remember that the people who built the marijuana industry, built it on top of an enormous mountain of dead bodies called “The War on Drugs.” To this day, most Humboldt growers refuse to acknowledge that the price they were able to demand for their product on the black market had anything to do with the human costs of the War on Drugs. They’ll tell you that the price they get is all about the quality of their product. This kind of delusional thinking pervades the industry here, and while this denial of reality allows growers to ignore the dark side of this business and helps them cope with the stress of the War on Drugs, it does not help them evaluate their business plans realistically.

Blood stains every single dollar of black-market marijuana money. The bloodbath called “The War on Drugs” makes the Manson murders look like innocent children finger-painting by comparison, and Humboldt County’s marijuana industry was born of it, and in the middle of it. People get killed every day, all across the country, to keep the price of cannabis high, and a lot of those people died right here in this community. The War on Drugs wounded us all in some way. We all lost family members, friends and loved ones in it, and it continues to destroy people’s lives today. At least four people, working in the cannabis industry, were murdered in SoHum in 2018.

Those are the facts of life about Humboldt County’s marijuana industry, because that’s the truth about the War on Drugs. We all know how much blood there is in that marijuana because it is our blood! That’s why the marijuana industry cannot just reinvent itself as “the cannabis industry,” all innocent, clean and new. Anyone who associates the name “Humboldt” with marijuana remembers the War on Drugs. We know! We all know the truth about the War on Drugs in our bones!

 

For us, cannabis is sacrament. That’s why we found it more valuable than gold, and why the risks you took were rewarded so handsomely. Cannabis is more valuable than gold, because only fools worship gold, but cannabis is not rare, nor is it difficult to produce, so there’s no excuse for high prices. We are not impressed by your expensive display cases, slick marketing lingo or environmentally egregious packaging. That stuff just reminds us that you still make too much money from our blood. We might buy your weed, if it’s the best we can find for the money, but we don’t buy your bullshit.

Try as growers might, to “tell their own story,” that story will remain nothing but a fairy tale from Never Neverland if it doesn’t connect to the facts of life, and the facts of life about Humboldt County’s cannabis industry are intimately entwined in the deadly branches of the War on Drugs. The only real option for Humboldt County’s cannabis industry is to face facts, admit to, and take responsibility for the murder, violence and trauma that the black-market marijuana industry brought to our community and the toxic environment it created here, and in communities all over the country. If Humboldt’s cannabis industry wants to lay claim to the back-to-the-land ideals of their hippie elders, they also need to take responsibility for the war crimes of the outlaw black-market marijuana industry that followed.

It’s going to take real effort to make amends, restore justice and heal wounds to show that the cannabis industry acknowledges its origins and stands willing to take responsibility for its past. If the industry did that, even a little, in a tangible way, they could promote those efforts widely, and use them to rehabilitate their image and their heritage.

That is how you show the world that Humboldt County’s cannabis industry has a conscience and cares about making the world, and our community, a better place to live. But it all starts by facing up to the harm that the War on Drugs has done to our community, and accepting responsibility for it.

HSU Blew the K out of KHSU

I love radio. Radio is magic. You can build a radio transmitter with one transistor, and power it with a 9v battery. The magic of radio is a natural phenomena. Radio requires a little bit of technology, but the near effortless propagation of radio signals through space is nothing less than a miracle of nature. Nikola Tesla discovered it first, but Marconi patented it as an invention, and sold it as a product.

More than 100 years later, radio still seems like magic. Your smart-phone is as much radio as it is computer, and radio allows all of your “wireless” devices to communicate with each other. If you ask me, radio is still the coolest thing about technology. The internet, on the other hand, is not magic at all.

The internet is all sleight of hand. The internet relies on huge racks of high-tech machines concealed from view in windowless concrete bunkers. These machines, as well as the machines users buy and use directly, are far too complicated for most users to understand. They work millions of times faster than anyone can perceive, and the user has very little control over what they do. The internet would not exist at all if it weren’t for the power of capital and empire working together on their shared ambitions to control, exploit and monetize everything on planet earth, including its human inhabitants.

From inception, the internet has been expensive, sneaky, and dishonest. It is constantly looking for new ways to suck you in and take advantage of you. I use the internet, but I do not trust it, and I do not consider it a friend. Neither should you! The internet was designed for universal surveillance, political oppression, and to facilitate the command and control of military assets all over the world, from anywhere in the world, and that’s exactly what it does today.

The internet is a contrivance, an invention of man that consumes enormous amounts of energy, requires constant maintenance, and generates a ghastly amount of waste. The internet squeezes the life out of you by constantly pushing you to upgrade your equipment and pay for new services. In other words: The internet sucks. It sucks resources and it sucks away your life.

Radio, by contrast, is a gift. Radio shares information, indiscriminately, over long distances and through barriers, at the speed of light, for free. Radio is your friend. Radio exists by the graces of the same forces that put stars in the sky and fish in the water. For local communication, nothing beats FM radio. Cops use it. Firefighters use it. Weather reporting buoys at sea use it. Here in Humboldt County, we depend on FM community radio stations for important and timely information about our far flung rural community.

That’s why I’m very concerned about recent developments at KHSU, the community radio station at Humboldt State University. Recently, the university has taken actions that lead me to believe that Humboldt State University intends to close down, or radically diminish KHSU’s function as a community resource. The firing of Programming Director Katie Whiteside, despite her excellent record of service and strong community support, was the equivalent of putting a bullet through brain of KHSU.

Humboldt State University recently announced plans to dismantle the organs and bones of KHSU, it’s studio equipment and office space, allegedly for the purpose of seismic retrofitting, but they have announced no plans for a new permanent home for the station. KHSU’s management team also canceled their next pledge drive. A slaughtered animal no longer requires food.

There was no warning to listeners. As in any good slaughterhouse, KHSU stepped around a blind corner and “blam!” Threats from listeners to withdraw support for the station have had no effect on the University’s decision. HSU may no longer care that much about the needs of its host community. After all, HSU is a university, and universities get their money from the tuition that students pay to take classes and learn skills that will help them pay off their student-loans, not from their host community.

Obviously HSU no longer feels that radio offers enough career opportunities to justify the expense of maintaining a station like KHSU. Instead, they will probably focus on their computer science and digital communications offerings, and encourage their students to do the same. Universities no longer offer students a place to broaden their horizons and expand their consciousness. Today’s university is a high-stakes casino where students gamble with their lives, and university administrators always want a bigger slice of the pie.

FM radio may seem arcane and obsolete, but radio is nature, and nature is alive and nature is never obsolete. Radio is still the most reliable and efficient medium for up to the minute information on local conditions in an emergency, and KHSU remains an essential asset to our community. To remain an essential asset to the community, however, KHSU needs to continue to produce local programming and have local people in control of the station at all times.

Radio is a gift, and because it is a gift, it will not offer many financial opportunities that would interest greedy people or those with a heavy debt load. The phenomena of radio propagation is a gift. Radio programming is offered as a gift to listeners, and in community radio stations like KHSU, gifts from the community of listeners keep that programming on the air. It takes a giving spirit to produce good local programming, and it takes a culture of generosity to support that programming and keep it on the air.

People like Katie Whiteside, and dearly departed Vinny DeVaney made KHSU a pillar of our community because they gave so much of themselves to this community through that station, as so many of the staff and volunteers at the station continue to do. Radio only works when people give more than they take. That’s the nature of radio.

As the internet continues to suck dollars out of people’s pockets, and people out of reality, apparently Humboldt State University has come to the conclusion that the values that built and supported KHSU for many decades, no longer apply in our modern internet-driven world, and they no longer wish to cultivate them within their host community nor instill them in their students. This does not bode well for this community, or for humanity in general.

Vote NO on Measure Z

I just googled “Measure Z Humboldt County,” and discovered that this blog ranks higher than any other site that opposes Measure Z. Right behind the official Support Measure Z site, the county’s Measure Z page, and a LOCO story about Measure Z, my piece, No Wifi in SoHum Means No on Measure Z ranked fourth, and was the only “No on Z” site to turn up on the entire first page of results.

Fuck! Somebody needs to stand up to Rob Arkley and Lee Ulansey’s plan to screw the poor and working people of Humboldt County. It looks like everyone else is busy with the Eureka Fair Wage Act and the County-wide GMO Ban. Personally, I don’t even garden, let alone farm, and I don’t live in Eureka, so those issues don’t effect me much.

On the other hand, Measure Z, if it passes will hurt me, and a lot of other people in Humboldt County like me, who barely make ends meet, and have neither the time nor the resources to launch a political campaign. I don’t have money for campaign literature. I don’t even have a phone to call other people to help organize a fundraiser. I have a blog. That’s it. That’s what makes Measure Z so unfair. It specifically targets the people who have the least resources to fight it. It’s like taking candy from a baby.

I make my living as an artist. The key to survival as an artist is not talent or hard work, because God knows I lack the former, and avoid the latter like Ebola. The key to survival as an artist is finding creative ways to spend even less money than you make. There is no minimum wage for artists, nor do we get any raises, cost-of-living increases or bonuses. Keeping costs down is critical to my survival, and Measure Z, if it passes will raise my cost of living, and it will definitely hurt.

If Measure Z passes, I will have to pay more for things like shoes, clothes, shampoo and toilet paper, basic necessities of life that everyone needs and has to buy. Everyone who buys anything in Humboldt County will have to pay this tax to county government. Measure Z will raise the price of everything from tampons, condoms and diapers to beer wine and cigarettes for everyone who shops in Humboldt County, but it won’t effect everyone equally.

People who have plenty of money will just shrug it off without a second thought. Land-owners think it beats paying property tax, so they won’t complain. Merchants think they are going to get something for it, namely more sheriff’s deputies tasked with the job of removing unsightly poverty from our business districts, so you don’t hear them complaining. For work-a-day stiffs, low-income families, disabled people and retirees on a fixed income, Measure Z could easily become the straw that breaks the camel’s bank.

The injustice of a county sales tax is that the primary purpose of county government is to protect the property rights of property owners. If you own property, then county government works for you, but if you don’t own property, but instead rent your home, county government are the people who evict you. That’s why, until now, your landlord paid for county government. That’s why a county-wide sales tax is unfair. Everyone pays it, but it primarily benefits land-owners, and hurts renters.

The landlords in Humboldt County have gotten so greedy that they want to make poor and working people pay for their own eviction every time they buy shoes. Listen closely to the way land-owners talk about “transients, ” because when land-owners say “transients” they mean everyone who doesn’t own land. If you’re a renter, they’re talking about you. They’re not satisfied with the exorbitant rent they already charge you. They want more. If Measure Z passes, it will be like giving your landlord an extra nickle every time you spend $10 in Humboldt County.

Your landlord takes too much of your money already! Measure Z is a shameful attempt by rich ranchers and greedy real estate developers like Lee Ulansey and Rob Arkley to steal from the poor and working people of Humboldt County. Measure Z steals from the poor and gives to the rich. We must stop it NOW. Vote NO on Measure Z

…And don’t forget to register to vote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Following letter appeared in this week’s Independent and Redwood Times:

Dear Editor,

The only thing that looms larger on the landscape of Humboldt County than the majestic redwoods for which we are rightly famous, is the unmitigated greed of some of it’s richest residents. Today, that greed has a stranglehold on county government, and stands poised to reach into the pockets of this county’s poor,

young,

low-income,

and working people.

Measure Z, the countywide sales tax, will make bare necessities, like clothing, shoes and toiletries, more expensive for the people who can least afford them: single mothers,

working families,

disabled people,

and retirees on fixed incomes.

Measure Z steals from the poor, and gives their hard-earned money to Lee Ulansey’s hand-picked Board of Supervisors, who then give it to rich ranchers and greedy developers in the form of subsidies and tax breaks.

The Board of Supervisors, and the puppet-masters who pull their strings, know that poor people are the most generous, community minded people in the county, and they intend to play us for suckers.

The county has not promised to do anything to help poor or working people. Quite the contrary, the county has promised to use the money to harass homeless people, speed up evictions, and to make room in the county jail for people accused of petty crimes.

If the county is broke, it is only because it has so consistently pandered to the desires of rich land-owners, and failed to tax them sufficiently.

If measure Z passes, the county will begin collecting sales tax from everyone who spends money in Humboldt County, including many local residents who can ill afford it.

That money will pay for subsidized infrastructure to support new McMansion developments.

It will pay for subsidized pest control for ranchers, through Wildlife Services, an expensive and outdated agency notorious for cruel, inhumane practices and for indiscriminately killing millions of wild animals every year,

and it will pay for thousands of little perks for land-owners, like subsidizing the cost of hazardous materials inspections at agricultural businesses.

Measure Z will be a windfall for Humboldt County’s richest and greediest 1%.

I urge each of you to stand together with the 99%. Tell the county to tax the rich, not the poor! Make the 1% pay their fair share. Please, vote NO on Measure Z.

Sincerely, John Hardin

Big Photo Finish to Our Summer Tour (This is gonna suck if you have a dial-up connection)

Last weekend, my partner Amy Gustin and I performed at North Country Fair in Arcata.

We had a terrific time playing for an appreciative and generous audience.

We performed a couple of pieces from Amy’s album, The Big Picture, and one from my album Um… Uh…Gum Eh? as well as several new works-in-progress.

After a busy Summer, we expected to conclude our season of live engagements with our performance at North Country Fair, one of our favorite venues, before taking some time off to record a new album.

Most bands that play North Country Fair don’t bring a full, theater-scale, light show, but since it was the last show on the tour, we decided to go all out.

It did take a rather extraordinary effort to set up 50,000 watts of lighting and four floors of scaffolding for a 45 minute set, but I think all who were in attendance would agree, it was worth it.

As a band, Amy and I sound pretty good, but our light show will blow your mind. You really need to experience it first-hand.

Photographer Bob Doran turned up for the event, and took all of these great photos.

After our set, we chatted a bit with Bob.

In addition to being a music writer and photojournalist, Bob Doran is also associate producer of my favorite radio music show in Humboldt County, Fogou, with host Vinny Devaney from 2-4pm Weds on KHSU.

Bob invited us to perform on Fogou the following Weds. Of course we were honored and delighted to play for KHSU’s listeners on Fogou.

We met Bob at his exquisitely decorated home in Arcata, and met his lovely wife Amy.

Before we went to the station, Bob showed me some of the photos he took at North Country Fair. Bob has a great eye, and his photos were not only well composed, but they captured the energy of the event as well as our personalities.

I really appreciate that he came out early on a Sunday morning to catch our set.

When we got to KHSU, we set up on the floor of the studio.

We had some technical difficulties with the Theremin, which took a while to work out, but we played four pieces from our repertoire and did our best to help them raise money during their pledge drive.

Bob Doran took several photographs of our performance on Fogou.

I had a great time, and it was a real kick to be a part of my favorite radio show.

Hear us on KHSU 2-4pm Today, Weds. Sept. 24

This afternoon, my partner Amy Gustin and I ( aka The Big Picture, Tin Can Luminary) will perform, on Theremin and electric didgeridoo, on my favorite radio music show, Fogou, from 2-4pm on KHSU.

The show’s host, Vinny Devaney, and co producer Bob Doran play the most diverse, and eclectic music you will hear anywhere.

We’re very excited to play on Fogou, and I hope you will tune in.  If you don’t know the frequency, or the web address where you can stream the show live, google that shit.  I’ve got to get some lunch.  This week’s regular post will be up later this afternoon.

No Public Wifi in SoHum Means No on Measure Z

I’m getting tired of this. I mean, I enjoy writing. That’s not quite right. I love putting my thoughts in your head. That really means a lot to me. The fact that you are reading this right now totally turns me on. I want to keep you coming back for more. That’s why I go to the trouble of writing an essay every week, and then spend three or four hours stealing pictures to illustrate it. I’m happy to share what I have to offer, free of charge, but it sure isn’t easy. Believe it or not, we have no free public wifi anywhere in SoHum. There’s no wifi at the library, none at the Garberville CR campus, neither the Mateel nor KMUD nor any of the county buildings offer an open router. In order to use public wifi, in SoHum, you have to get on a bus, bound for Eureka, which costs money. I’ve done it, but working on the bus makes me nauseous. That only leaves two cafes, in all of SoHum that offer wifi. One of them makes sadistically bad coffee, and requires patrons to spend $5 an hour. At the other, I linger much too long over coffee and a cookie, and try to avoid the owner’s hairy eyeball. The staff is great, and always make me feel welcome, but both places have loud music or TVs blaring, making concentration difficult at best. Neither are good places to work. I’m really sick of it. So Hum needs a public internet connection at least as much as we need a library or a post office. I can’t even pay the sales tax I owe, as a small business owner, without an internet connection. If the government is going to require me to use the internet to pay my taxes, they damn well better provide someplace where I can get online to do it. I’ve written to my Supervisor about it, repeatedly, to no avail. I’ve even pointed her in the direction of a federal grant program to provide broadband service to rural communities. Nothing. Meanwhile, our Board of Supervisors hands out a $16,000 subsidy to local ranchers, so they don’t have to pay the full cost of their hazardous materials inspections. Just a couple weeks ago it was $67,000 a year, for the next four years for subsidized pest control, through a notoriously inhumane and environmentally destructive agency known as Wildlife Services, again for ranchers, and other rich people living in country estates. Before that, they let developers off the hook for the costs of infrastructure to serve new subdivisions, another huge giveaway for land speculators and developers. Every week, at the Board of Supervisors meetings, all of their rich rancher and developer friends whine about how hard it is to make a living on 1,600 acres in Humboldt County and why they need more subsidies, and our Board of Supervisors practically weep in sympathy for them. Meanwhile 2,000 or more Humboldt County residents sleep outside, under bridges behind stores, or anywhere they can find because they have no place to live, and the Supes want them arrested. It’s sickening. Wifi at the fucking library, that’s all I ask. I know that the library is only open four days a week. I can deal with that. Just don’t make me sit in that goddamned cafe all day. I come to town once a week, and once a week, I have work to do online. Out where I live, internet access costs about as much as I pay in rent, and half of the year, I don’t even have the electricity to use it, so an internet connection at home is out of the question for me. Allegedly, this is the birthplace of the back-to-the-land movement (don’t get me started). These hills should be full of people like me, who live simply, close to the earth, without a lot of luxuries, who need to get online from time to time, just like they need to go to the post office once in a while. I know that a lot of people need a public wifi connection in town. I see them at the cafe. I see them try in vain at the library, and I hear them complain about it. I sympathize. It sucks. I know a lot of people say we need more sheriff’s deputies. That’s bullshit. The cops around here are violent, corrupt and out-of-control. The last thing we need is more of them. Local merchants who call the cops every time they see a group of people hanging out on the sidewalk don’t want more sheriff’s deputies, they want subsidized bouncers, so they can treat Garberville like their own private country club. Now our teary-eyed Board of Supes wants to play Santa Claus to them too, and they want ME to pay for it. They want YOU to pay for it too. They want to raise the sales tax, so that every time we buy anything in Humboldt County, Lee Ulansey’s cronies on the Board of Supervisors skim the cream to finance big giveaways for rich developers and welfare ranchers, not to mention fat pensions for overpaid, crooked cops. They call it Measure Z, and they’re hoping you’ll sleep through it. Don’t! Measure Z puts Humboldt County’s richest hands, into it’s poorest’s pockets. Measure Z would make homeless alcoholics pay for utility hookups in new McMansion devos. Measure Z would make HSU students pay for that guy who kills a hundred raccoons every year for no good reason. Measure Z would make me pay someone to harass my friends on the streets of Garberville. Sales tax is a regressive form of taxation that unfairly burdens the poor. The rich have internet access at home, and can order stuff online, avoiding sales tax altogether. A lot of rich people own businesses and can buy what they need wholesale, at Costco, tax free with their merchant ID number. Poor people pay retail prices, at local shops. Poor local people will pay most of that tax. Single mothers will pay it when they shop for back-to-school supplies for their kids. Working people will pay it when they buy work clothes, shoes, furniture, and appliances. Homeless people will pay it when they buy prepared food because they have no kitchen to cook in. This new proposed sales tax will help Humboldt County’s richest and greediest suck more blood from underpaid workers, overcharged tenants, and poor families just struggling to survive. Not only that, a new sales tax will turn Humboldt County into one of those special sales tax districts. I hate those special sales tax districts. Those fucking special sales tax districts make it that much harder and take that much longer, to file my taxes, which really pisses me off when I’m trying to do it in a fucking cafe on my third cup of guilt-coffee, with teenage techno beats pounding in my ears. Well Fuck You Very Much Humboldt County Board of Supervisors.

Yet Another Letter to the Editor

Yet Another Letter to the Editor

I wrote the following letter to the Editor of The Independent in response to a letter written by Dr. Jentry Anders, the author of Beyond Counterculture, a book that describes the modest beginnings of the “back to the land” movement in Humboldt County, and reveals, more than anything else, just how infatuated Baby Boomers are with themselves. Beyond Counterculture remains a central text of the “back to the land” mythology even though not that many people have actually read it. More about the myth of the “back to the landers” next week.

Dear Editor,

I always enjoy hearing from Dr. Jentry Anders, but I must take exception to her most recent letter to the editor. Her explanation of the concept of carrying capacity, and the ecological function of limiting factors as regulators of population were accurate, succinct, and well supported by scientific evidence. However, her contradicting statement, just a few paragraphs later, “It is far too late to apply the concept of carrying capacity to human behavior in most situations.” has no such basis in fact.

Only by the special “magic” of our political and economic system was it possible for some humans, like college professors, politicians, lawyers, judges, cops and drug dealers to temporarily live as though the concept of carrying capacity did not apply to humans, and that limiting factors did not exist for them. The special “magic” of our system comes from the belief that civilized humans are superior to nature, and not bound by its laws. The belief that civilized humans are superior to the rest of nature is a cornerstone of our culture, and it continues to guide and shape our society.

This firmly held belief, backed up by systematic, institutionalized violence, justified the extermination of Native Americans, the liquidation of old-growth forests, and the wholesale replacement of natural habitat, at every turn, with simplified man-made environments. This belief continues to appeal to humans, especially those who have come to enjoy having the Earth’s bounty stripped, rendered and served to them on silver platters, and it perpetuates the unmitigated, destruction of nature to serve the whims of some privileged humans.

In the process of expressing their perceived superiority, these privileged, civilized people, with their superiority complex, their brutal violence and their insatiable appetites, manufactured an environmental crisis of unparalleled gravity, and dumped it in our laps. Their activity has dramatically reduced the overall carrying capacity of planet Earth for all creatures, and led to an explosion in human population. However, carrying capacity and limiting factors still apply to humans, just as they did to the countless species driven to extinction by the relentless, expropriation of all natural resources for the benefit of some humans. Apparently, Dr. Anders believes it “far too late” to challenge this elitist attitude, regardless of the scientific evidence refuting it.

It’s easy to “have nothing but compassion for individual people who are now suffering because humans had exceeded their carrying capacity, globally.”, if one remains unwilling to challenge the system responsible for this disaster. As long as this system goes unchallenged, more and more people can expect to share that “nothing”, and that “compassion”, for what it is worth, gets spread thinner as well. Personally, I have nothing but contempt for people who have enough education to understand how the system works, yet remain unwilling to challenge it.

Every homeless person understands the concept of limiting factors on a visceral level. Not only do they understand natural limiting factors, they understand artificial, man-made, limiting factors, and they didn’t need a Pell Grant to afford the tuition to learn it. It’s only the privileged class, a small minority, globally, for whom limiting factors have become an alien and repugnant concept, and it was for them that the Earth’s bounty, as well as countless millions of human lives, have already been sacrificed. It is for these privileged few, that our future has been mortgaged, and Dr. Anders suggests, it is for these privileged few that the last remaining natural resources, be more carefully managed.

When Dr. Anders states, “The only thing I can do is crusade for family planning and choose my decision-makers by their willingness to admit that limiting factors for humans exist…”, I’m reminded that the system of empowering privileged “decision-makers”, always backed by soldiers and lawmen with guns, even when guided by the scientific knowledge of college professors, has failed us spectacularly, completely, and irreparably. In addition to our current environmental crisis, privileged people, and their “decision-makers”, gave us genocide, slavery, poverty, and the horrors of technological warfare, among other gems. They also gave us marijuana prohibition, which artificially drives both agricultural and population expansion, locally.

Not only does our current political and economic system guarantee “the grimmest of futures” for even the privileged, or at least their progeny, this system has already dealt the grimmest of pasts to Native Americans, African slaves, and many millions of others, not to mention most of the non-human creatures with whom we once shared this marvelous blue marble. Today, all you have to do is look around, to see entirely too many people facing a very grim present.

This crisis won’t be solved by electing the right people, or by enacting thoughtful policy at the national, state and local level. That’s what got us into this mess. As dire as our ecological crisis surely is, we should see it as a symptom of a cultural crisis, a cultural crisis with immeasurable consequences for every living thing on Planet Earth.

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New College Courses HSU should Offer

New College Courses HSU Should Offer

Since Humboldt State University has dropped its nursing program, perhaps the only program HSU offers in which students can confidently expect to find good paying jobs after graduation, they really should offer these courses to better prepare the rest of HSU’s students for the challenges of the real world:

 

Espresso Machine Operation and Maintenance All liberal arts students should know at least the basics of how to use and maintain the tools of the trade.

 

Educational Economic Strategy Default or defer? How to handle your student loans. You got to know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em. Know when to take the installment plan and know when to change your name and move to another state.

 

Consumer Choice Adviser Training Course analyzes the economic and ecological impacts of the difference between paper or plastic shopping bags, as well as advice on when to shut up about it, when you ask: “Paper or plastic?” a question you will ask many times in your career.

 

Techonomics Understanding why Mark Zuckerburg made 10 billion from Facebook, and Rupert Murdoch lost 500 million on myspace, even though no one pays a cent for either service, but more importantly, why you will mostly spend money online rather than make it.

 

Immediate Architecture Learn to construct a comfortable livable space from a refrigerator box or a few yards of plastic sheeting. This is architecture to serve your immediate needs. At least something in your college education should.

ROTCPTSD Sure, joining the military gave you the money for college, but PTSD sure makes it hard to study, doesn’t it? Taking this class about a dozen times just might help the world start to make sense again.

 

Cannabis Cultivation This class should be part of the core curriculum for all majors since, regardless of major, most HSU student eventually find jobs in this field.

 

Exotic Dance While the few remaining ballet troupes in the U.S. struggle to sell enough tickets to survive, thousands of exotic dance clubs in every state in the union offer well paying jobs to qualified exotic dancers.

 

Inter-generational Conflict Management This course will give you the tools you need to get along with your parents well enough that you can tolerate living under the same roof until they croak.

 

With the addition of these few courses, HSU could dramatically improve the chances of survival and prosperity in the real world, for their remaining students.