A good time was had by all at the 17th Annual Seattle Hempfest. Once again I’m just amazed that at a two-day festival with four stages and hundreds of vendors, attended by hundreds of thousands of people, I saw no disturbances, aggressiveness, violence, or arrests. I overheard two folks who must’ve been attending for the first time complain about the lack of a beer garden. Hello? That’s the point. We show how ludicrous are the claims of “reefer” as a social danger. By our very existence, we refute their number one talking point.
This week’s Stash is going to be a lot of me unpacking audio and video and photos from the Hempfest. These next couple of weeks of podcasts will be shorter than usual and not as packed full of interviews, as I am also going to be driving to Denver for next week’s Democratic Convention and won’t be able to access my studio equipment. (I’m experimenting with a laptop, a headset mic, a cigarette-lighter adapter, and a Verizon broadband modem card. Maybe you’ll hear me literally podcasting from the road. That’s so 21st century, dog.)
Big thanks and howdies to the Stash fans who took the time to seek out the Oregon NORML Multimedia Booth at the South Entrance and say, “hey , I listen to the Stash”. You don’t know how much that means to me. Podcasting is weird; I’m old bar-band club musician. I’m used to immediate feedback. So to record news and interviews day after day, not knowing who’s listening, well, it’s just weird. You Stashers were very cool and very complimentary… and very young! Not really, I’m just getting old..er. There’s a little grey on the temples, but still a whole lotta green left in the bowl!
I got to speak on all three stages this year – Main (Parker) Stage, McWilliams Stage, Seeley Stage, and I moderated a panel on Marijuana in the Media (which I’ll post once I clean up the audio.) The panel was fun because I got to question Dominic Holden and Mason Tvert, both of whom I’ve met before and interviewed on the Stash, as well as David Holt from the Reason Foundation, whom I’d never met. Most of all, I finally got to meet, face-to-face, with Steve Bloom from CelebStoner.com.
This year I focused my talks on the stories of drug war carnage that I report here at the Stash, particularly that story of Rachel Hoffman. I looked out from those stages and saw so many Rachels in that crowd. Good young people, celebrating freedom of speech and expression, enjoying live music and smoking some weed, not harming anyone and, through their environmental awareness, are probably helping everyone. As they picked up our flyers on Marijuana Facts (with Constitutional Rights on the reverse) and watched our presentations of “Busted”, I hoped that Hempfest reached people and will lead to this young generation being the ones to stand on the shoulders of the giants before them and finally overturn this ridiculous prohibition on marijuana.
