LEGALIZE!

Massachusetts voters are being asked whether or not to legalize the recreational use and sale of marijuana. You have no doubt seen the commercials from both sides.  We thought that today would be a good time to drop some knowledge on the matter.

- Marijuana is the least harmful drug out there that is used recreationally, incuding legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco.

- Alcohol, which is legal and regulated, is a far greater killer of Americans than marijuana, both suddenly (overdoses and accidents) and long-term. Alcohol kills about 15,000 Americans a year just in OUI accidents.

- Much of the fight against the end of marijuana persecution is being paid for by both Big Al (alcohol suppliers and distributors) and Little Al (bars, retail alcohol stores), in a direct effort to avoid losing market shares for their far more dangerous product to a less harmful alternative like marijuana.

- The same can also be said about Big Pharma, who are to blame for the Oxycontin plague killing our children right now.  They want the status quo, with doctors pushing their pills onto people who will get hooked and turn to heroin when their prescriptions run out... while US soldiers are dying in a mountain hell defending Afghan poppy fields.

- You are in far more danger of a drug-related death from visiting a doctor (and his/her hook-you-on-painkillers prescription pad) just once with a broken bone than you are from a lifetime spent making weekly visits to the den of even the most shadowy purveyor of black market marijuana.

- Every instant that a Massachusetts cop spends focusing on marijuana (and even in  decriminalized Massachusetts, cops spend countless hours pursuing the black market marijuana trade, and rabidly consider anything more than a sandwich bag full of the stuff to be a crime worthy of a murderer's jail time) is an instant that he/she is not pursuing far more dangerous and harmful criminal activity.

- Police are safer in a world with legalized marijuana. They will be freed from the raids which get them shot by drug dealers. They will lower their number of citizen confrontations, which also gets them (and some citizens) shot.

- While some cops will tell you that maarijuana should stay illegal, you have to remember that they have worked their whole lives as the foot soldiers in the failed War On Drugs, and consider the fact that people are voting to legalize weed as disrespect to their brave (if misdirected) efforts. It ends up as an Us vs Them scenario where it is almost impossible to expect a balanced view.

- Even then, and even with intense inter-profession pressure for law enforcement people to be anti-pot, it is sort of funny to see the main pro-marijuana commercials on TV featuring calm policemen speaking about the benefits of legalized marijuana, while the main anti-marijuana commercial is a ridiculous paranoid fantasy production.

- Note that the commercial that I speak of, the one where the sheltered soccer mom awakes to a world with legalized marijuana, is contemptible. The only scenario shown that doesn't exist already is the daughter grabbing for the edibles (from a window in a shop that she wouldn't be allowed into), and the son buying weed legally from a licensed, regulated purveyor. The increase in crime inference is a lie exposed by states where marijuana is leglized. The man shown in the commercial billowing smokestack-style clouds of smoke would most likely be doing so with weed being either legal or illegal.

- What the commercial doesn't show is Mom drinkng  bottle of wine and backing the car over the daughter, hubby drinking a 12 pack and smacking Mom, the son getting post-concussion syndrome from organized sports and becoming hooked on the pain medication that the doctors provide him, the cops- freed from pursuing harmless weed- chasing actual dangerous criminals, and the pot shop paying taxes that pour money into the schools and law enforcement apparatus of the town that they serve.

- Weed shops will take the sale of marijuana out of the hands of a drug dealer who would happily sell it to a child and put the sale of marijuana into the hands of a licensed, regulated businessman who will then diffuse tax money into the community. A child would be persona non grata in a weed shop, a potential business-wrecking failure.

- I can only speak for Buzzards Bay, but if I could take one of those several dozen empty stores on Main Street and replace it with a guaranteed winner of a business sporting a pre-existing and sizable in-town client base... you'd better come up with a better argument than some 1930s Reefer Madness nonsense when telling me why not.

- A vote for Legalization immediately takes about a quarter to a half million of our harmless citizens from Outlaw status to the status of respectable, revenue generating lawful citizens. This vote will also inflict immense damage on the actual harmful drug people, the guys running and selling it.

- If legalized marijuana is not overtaxed, it will indeed slaughter the black market. Overtaxed, it will generate a black market.

- A legalized marijuana society with a mortally wounded black market will make it much more difficult for children to acquire marijuana.

-  Home-grown weed, not subject to taxes, will generate income for the state via sales of gardening materials. It's a piddling sum, granted... but it is more than we take in under the status quo, with people potentially facing years in prison for growing marijuana in-home.

- You are in far greater danger of being killed in a mass shooting by someone really into alt-right conspiracy or religion than you are by someone who has been driven to kill by his marijuana use. Marijuana has a mellowing effect, and her users are more likely to kill a box of Pop Tarts than they are to kill everyone in an elementary school.

- States with legalized marijuana yield interesting stats on weed and driving. 66% of road fatalities involving marijuana also involve alcohol, with alcohol being the far more likely culprit for the crash.  A lesser % involve other, harder drugs. Of the remainder, Causality becomes an issue. Was the weed responsible for the crash? It's a tough sell in a snowy, mountainous state like Colorado. It's also a tough sell when the stats consider a stoner driver stopped at a red light who is then plowed into and killed by a drunk driver to be a "road death with marijuana present in the bloodstream."

- The fun part about the weed/driving stats is that, once you eliminate the drunks and the blizzard deaths, you have a number of deaths in the teens/single digits, from among a population of 10 million or so. Any insurance agent will tell you what the pro-persecution commercials won't tell you... the driver with weed in his blood is statistically less likely to get into a fatal road accident than a guy without weed is. We're not saying that the stoned driver is safer, as stats can vary year to year and a stoner bus accident could raise the % in a given period. We're just saying that the present information doesn't suggest that persecution is warranted.

- Legalized marijuana will pour millions and eventually billions into the state's coffers, money which can be used for better schools, better roads, better (and, via legalization, more efficient/useful) police... just a better life in general, and that's just for the non-smokers. It will be a considerably better life for the hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts smokers who are currently Outlaws under these Jim Crow-era laws.

- Understand that an anti-legalization vote wont make marijuana go away. It was out there before, and usage is widespread. It will just keep smokers in the black market, untaxed, unregulated, pursued endlessly by costly and mis-utilized police squads.

- If your views on marijuana have evolved past the colored people water fountain-era paranoid fantasies about armies of zombie stoners stumbling down Main Street, and if you accept that millions of people are already smoking it nationwide, you will basically see this ballot question as a vote on whether marijuana should be regulated and taxed.

- If legalization is batted down, don't goof on your local stoner too hard. The general effects he will suffer include "Not being able to buy it in a store" and "Not being able to grow it at home," moves that will feed the black market that awaits the stoner if his legal persecution is voted for. The modus operandi of the stoner will just continue as it was... untaxed, unregulated and persecuted by a costly legal system.

- Just don't complain to the stoner when the information presented in your daughter's aging History books cuts off at the Nancy Reagan era, or when a cop gets shot in a town which couldn't afford to properly armor him. We were offering tax dollars to pay for those things, but you chose to Just Say No.

- The stoners are tired of persecution, and they number in the hundreds of thousands in Massachusetts. They aren't going anywhere, no matter how you vote. The police have better things to do, as do the courts. The towns and state need the tax revenue. You're choosing between legal, regulated, taxed marijuana on one side and our police fighting a losing battle against both the black market and hundreds of thousands of harmless citizens on the other side. Get off of Mary Warner's back.

It's time to evolve, my friends. Stop the persecution of harmless marijuana smokers. We urge you to vote for the legalization of marijuana in Massachusetts.

Cape Cod (and some Plymouth) Fall Foliage

Cape Cod is pretty much the last in line for autumn foliage in New England. We don't really start peaking until November. I was down there last week, I thought that I missed peak time, but I was actually too early. I went out yesterday, and things were more fall foliage-ish.

Our basic route for today's foliage drive was up Route 6A, from Bourne to Brewster. I was going to run through the whole Cape out to the tip, but I got a call in Brewster that I was supposed to be at a meeting in Hyannis.. so I had to bang a U.

I'll sacrifice some Clarity if the picture has some bright red. I also blocked some traffic for this shot (this blurry, wasted shot), so I was going to use it even if my thumb was over the lens.

Blurry cameras make it look like the tree is on fire, not something that you worry about if you own a house made of stone. The third little pig planted whatever he wanted, an ease of landscaping not afforded to the little pigs who made their houses of sticks and straw.

I probably should have fired off a few of these, maybe got a pic that isn't all blurry. That's a good burst of color, however... especially for Cape Cod.

This is in the Ponds of Plymouth, which made it into a Cape Cod article because we needed some Marylou's for the trip, and we went to the Cedarville one.

All of the basketball games at the University of New Hampshire should be played in this setting.

This looked redder when I was driving by it... but was less so when I got out of the car. I immediately thought that it might be a trick, maybe a Yeti or the Blair Witch, but I got out of the area safely.

The first time that I ever stopped the car in Brewster.... nothing against Brew Town, just how things shook themselves out. I'll be back!

This must have been a tough Ask at the tree-selling store or wherever you go to get trees... "In October, I want a single tree, and I want it to be green, yellow, orange, maybe a touch of red..."

A lot of Cape Cod foliage tripping involves single trees in some dude's yard.

Fear not this November date if you are worried about missing out on Cape Cod's peak foliage season. They don't really peak until after Halloween,. and you can see quite a bit of color if there hasn't been a mean October wind storm to knock the leaves off of the trees. By mid-November, you're lit out of shuck, player.

I'm a trailblazer in the "leaning out of the car window with a shabby Wal-Mart camera" photojournalist motif.

I like when the tree moves past Aquaman-style orange into more of a near-red scenario.

Cape Cod was bangin'... so we may be back. Be sure to check out our leaf-peeping on the South Coast and South Shore from previous articles.

Happy Halloween From Cranberry County Magazine!

As we await the Great Pumpkin, let's check out some Halloween decorations.

He's actually breathing fire, but my camera was frightened into blurriness.   

Witches are considerably more cheerful the further south you get from Salem.

Our Halloween special was shot in broad daylight and will be published close to the Witching Hour.

I was going to wear my twenty foot electric blue avenging angel costume, but this guy beat me to it.

Mayor McPumpkin of Wareham

They say that, during zombie apocalypses, the guys who tidy up cemeteries are the first to die.

"The line to get at them jugs on her starts at the left.... in fact, you're the first guy in it."

Let's see... a coward, a dummy, some trash, a girl leading them.... Hillary rally?

A couple o' guys wearing sheets, led by some strange orange-tinted evil creature.... Trump rally?

Some decorations get a forward lean if October is trending windy.

You can open a cemetery in your yard even if you have a small lawn, but you can only cater to midgets.

Same to you!

Yeti pretty much have to dress as Frankenstein. It's tough to play a witch or a princess when you're 8 feet tall and furry.

Most people go Scary when they decorate for Halloween, but this house went Cute.

I'd hit that...

When you're as famous as Frankenstein is, you can just grab girls by the pelvic bone,no consent needed.

That's pretty much how it works when I need a lawyer...

South Coast Fall Foliage

A lot of people think that the South Coast isn't a Player when fall foliage in New England is discussed. You may be one of them... and don't try lying to me, because I can see you. Stop looking at me like that!

I'm here to tell you that the South Coast represents hard every Autumn. You may have to wait longer than you would with Vermont, and you may not have any mountain vistas like New Hampshire does... but you can have a nice foliage drive if you keep your expectations realistic. 

Like any Natural Beauty scenarios, it's best if you get out of the cities and into the sticks. This is pure Tree Math, folks... cities tend to not have a lot of trees. We'll discuss that a few pictures down from this one, but know that I love and respect New Bedford and Fall River. One of my favorite views in Massachusetts is when you're heading west on 195, you round the corner, and New Beddy is laid out before you. It's just not my favorite view when I'm writing Fall Foliage articles.

When whoever that guy in the Veteran grave there was earning his resting place the hard way back in 1863 or so, there was almost no chance of him knowing that- one day- his grave would end up in a look-at-that-rain-falling picture on an obscure regional website written by a stoner with a bad camera. It'd be like going back 100000 years and having a caveman say "Take the Patriots and the Over." I don't know what the people of 1863 did for fun, but I bet it didn't involve driving around taking Foliage pictures. The Internet must have sucked in the Civil War. 

I would have 100% stopped to pick blueberries if they were open... I get pulled over by the police a lot, and it'd be fun to see the cop get to my car window and be confronted by a friendly photographer with dyed-blue lips/teeth/cheeks/fingers. "Uhmmmm.... you're all set, guy... the town line is over there, why don't you go cross it?"  

Weather was all over this article. I went out during a tropical rainstorm (I think it was when Tropical Storm Nicole was getting sucked up into a trough and all of her rain hit us last Saturday), which isn't the best time to shoot pics of tree leaves... but it was when I had the free time to do so. The rain also kept people off of the roads, which makes things easier for me.  The preceding drought did me no favors, as droughts tend to hurry up the peak of the season. I'll discuss that whenever the Middleboro 4H picture comes up. It also kept me from getting out of the car for pictures, like it did here in New Bedford. Nice tree, though... especially for a city.

Fall River has trees with foliage, too... but, being Fall River, that tree appears to be incarcerated. Note that I am applying the Apocalypse Now method to my driving-in-a-car-style photography... "Never get out of the boat." My photography is better if I'm not soaked. 

I got out of the car for the Mattapoisett River shot. Mattapoisett is where the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts went down, but I was safe this far up the river... especially because I was standing on Route 6 and shooting down from a little country-road bridge.

Not the best shot in the world, but the article needed some Red. I was impressed that I managed to crop the bank out of the picture in a snap-shot while I was driving. 

Power lines are also the bane of the in-the-car photographer. This was another shot out the window, one where I failed to crop the power lines out. You can also sort of see the sun, so I can only blame laziness. 

The basic route was out of Bourne, through Wareham into Marion, and then up Route 105 until I was more Plymouth County than South Coast. Think I'm lying? There's the 105 sign... and you can't fake that. 

I hooked down Route 79, cut through the Freetown State Forest (I drove into the 4WD part in a Dodge Stratus standing about 3 inches off the ground, passed a man in a truck with huge tires leaving that area, and briefly saw him just smiling at the about-to-get-stuck Dummy... fortunately, I grew up on a beach with 4WD-only areas, recognized his Look, and banged a U). I then made it to Route 6, and have this photo as proof. I took 6 back into Buzzards Bay.

I think this shot is from a South Shore article, and may actually be southern Pymouth. See for yourself in this South Shore foliage article, or maybe in this Early Season South Shore article. We may also do a Cape Cod foliage article, they haven't peaked yet. Ignore the dates on these pictures, my camera is funny. These pictures are from about 8 days ago. Sorry, I was busy.

The South Coast was heavy on the Orange and Yellow. I had trouble finding Red, and came to regret passing on some Wareham/Marion red foliage while being overconfident that I would find more in my travels.

This tree is a certified MVP candidate. It's a shame that I drove up on it during a Biblical downpour. Look, even the leaves fell off of it in a cool manner! I pulled off the road and blocked a side street to get this pic, and the tree was so lovely that the guy who I didn't realize I was blocking drove around me, rolled down his window and- instead of cursing me- said "She's a beauty, huh?" I think it was in Freetown... if you think otherwise, let me know. You most likely know better than I remember.

Marion, home to both this picture and the first picture in this article, was laid out by someone who was into fall foliage. Every street has a Fall Foliage canopy. I detoured into Marion because a girl at the Trowbridge Tavern heard I was shooting foliage and said "You should go into Marion, the stuff is hanging over every street." Marion, Middleboro and Halifax easily could support their own articles if I decided to go By Town instead of By Region

This one is from the Freetown State Forest, an undisputed corner of the spooky-as-f*ck Bridgewater Triangle. This was just before I ran into the 4WD guy smirking at Trish, my Dodge Stratus. If I had snapped a picture of his smirk, he'd be in a million "So, you're really about to do that?" Internet memes by this time next year. He'd be like that Willie Wonka meme pic, or the one with Kermit the Frog drinking his tea.

Gotta love this tree... it's like Paul Bunyan or Shaq took up Bonsai as a hobby.

The non-orange trees nearby are very jealous of this bright orange one that gets all of the media attention. They should stop hatin' and try to foliage harder or something.

One of the supposed benefits of living in a city is that you don't need to buy a rake... and then this happens.

I was all psyched as I pulled up on this bright red tree, which hs been the MVP of previous foliage articles. The sun even came out. However, Massachusetts had a bad drought all summer, and droughts do to foliage season what smoking does to smoker life spans... sort of shaves X amout of days off of it. I missed this tree's peak by a short enough time span that the leaves under it hadn't blown away yet. To make things worse, some carpenter was parked in front of the building!  

Working in some more red here, although there's a small chance that this might be Duxbury. I do a lot of driving, I take a lot of pictures, and misunderstandings occur.

I'm pretty sure that this is Acushnet, and is that not one spooky-looking motheruffing tree? It looks like it was used to hang witches. The homeowners- who I like already, for both the tree and the stone wall in the foreground- should have gone All In and had some Amityville Horror attic eye-windows installed. I honestly don't know if I would trick-or-treat that house.

While lacking red (red leaves may fall off earlier, I don't know), the South Coast has plenty of Orange, which is the main Autumn color anyhow.

I could have gone into the guy's yard to get a shot without the power lines, but I'm already imposing myself on him by aiming a camera into his yard. While I'm not even 5% tough, I'm not a small man, and most non-tough people would want to have a gun when confronting me... which is No Problemo on the ol' South Coast, especially in the sticks. The homeowner deserves his/her privacy, and a guy shooting pictures of Pretty Trees doesn't deserve to catch a slug... so I just snap pics out of the car window, thank you. 

I think this is just me zooming in on the same foliage from the Southern Plymouth shot, but if you've read this far... why not have some more foliage?

Here is me having some Level Horizon problems that hack photographers encounter as they learn their craft... but dude has a stockade fence, a stone wall, a foliage tree and Ol' Glory, so he's in this article, hater. He's in there like swimwear. OK, it looks like the tree has a pet house, but my man made up for that with some pure Stone Wall Patriotism.

As we have pointed out in our South Shore foliage articles, the South Coast doesn't really have any moutains that I can get those Vermont-style calendar shots from. This is Sea Level foliage, player. We're doing the best that we can for you.

This tree rocks a nice Jamaica-flag style green/yellow mix, and we'll throw it in the article.

This is either Carver or Plymouth, out in the Myles Standish State Forest area. The MSSF was a little weak for foliage, as Pine dominated. Lovely ride, though... the kind of road where you see a man walking down the street with a shotgun, and you just sort of nod hello to him. I decided not to snap a picture of him, sorry...

This is one of my Chill Spots, aka Little Sandy Pond in Southern Plymouth. Although I left my house to do this article, the true starting point was here.

I ascribe my "Never get out of the boat" theory especially hard around cemeteries. I didn't even stop the boat, let alone get out of it. I try not to f*ck around anywhere near Bridgewater Triangle cemeteries.

I had to go length-wise to get this tree.

Here's another house I won't be trick-or-treating at. Frodo Baggins might answer the door wearing the One Ring. This looks like the Shire, but it's actually Dartmouth, and the spookiness is lowered by the proximity to the Mall. You can never get too scared by a haunted house when you know that you can be at the Chuck E. Cheese in a good five minute panic run.

I'll tolerate some Blurry if it gets me some more Red, and I hope you will too.

Let's not resent a little Green as the main course for a picture in the foliage article.

I like that someone clustered these trees, you see a cool burst of color as you speed by in the Trish Stratus. I was working with poor light, but it was a nice bunch of trees, trust me.

I was gonna ask the guy if he would move his beater car out of the way so I could get me some Big Leaf/Barn House action, but that laooks like the house of a man who owns a shotgun. It adds character, I suppose...

Much love to the South Coast!