Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 2:47 pm | By: Radical Russ
I am so excited to break the news that we have four new contributors to help bring you the Daily Audio Stash! In response to my call for volunteer music editors I received a lot of applications and picked from the best of them to give you our new lineup:
Weekday
Editor-in-Charge
Roots Monday
(Blues / Country / Folk / Jazz)
Cannabis Karri
Electric Tuesday
(Dance / New Age / House / Electronica)
Sahra Kant
Irie Wednesday (Reggae / Ska / Calypso / Latin)
Johnny Reeferseed
Groovin’ Thursday
(Rap / Hip-Hop / R&B / Funk)
John Doe
Rockin’ Friday
(Rock / Metal / Punk / Jam)
“Radical” Russ
These fine Stashers will be finding the best 420-friendly music on the web and bringing it to us each week. You already know me and Cannabis Karri. Sahra Kant joins us from Massachusetts; I met her up at the Boston Freedom Rally this year. Johnny Reeferseed’s music has been featured on the Stash before. And John Doe is the man behind John Doe Radio, another fine internet podcast.
But just because we have music editors that doesn’t mean you can’t still be involved. If you have a band or have found a tune that you think should be on the Stash, just email it to me at stash@norml.org and I’ll pass it along to our editors.
Also join me in welcoming Amanda Bannon to our lienup of contributors. Amanda is getting college credit as an intern working for me in NORML Chapter Outreach. She will begin by reviving our dormant “Politicians on Pot” series, where you send us the replies you get from your elected officials when you write to them about ending marijuana prohibition. If you haven’t written to your elected officials, visit our Take Action center and get started. Now that the AMA has reversed its position on smoked cannabis as medicine, many of these congresspeople will need to update their form letter! Write your congressperson and send that reply back to us at stash@norml.org.
Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 9:05 pm | By: Radical Russ
The last thing "Radical" Russ ever did...
That’s Toby “Tigerheart” Grear, 155 lb. mixed martial arts champion and me backstage on the Boston Common at the Freedom Rally September 19. I wrote in my previous post that I was back from the NORML CON, but really, I’m back from Boston Freedom Rally, two days of working in DC and crashing at Keith Stroup’s guest bedroom, and five days of San Francisco NORML Conference.
Plenty of photos are now uploaded and face-tagged at http://picasaweb.google.com/radicalruss. It’s been good not to talk for a day. Heading over to Urb’s place to watch the DVR of my #5 Boise State Broncos (Go Big Blue!)… Holy shit, did I read that right? #5!?! What a mensch to record my college’s game while I’m on the road?
Tomorrow, Fresh Stash with highlights from Boston and San Francisco. Plenty of budly nugs of audio for your listening pleasure over the next two days. Then Thursday I’m back in the air (ugh) to Madison for the Harvest Fest, so no Stash, and off to Lambeau Field on Friday, so no Stash then, either. But on Saturday you get live audio from Madison at a time to be announced with the benefit of me figuring out some of the audio difficulties.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 7:49 am | By: Chris Goldstein
Boston: 30,000 smoke pot, celebrate decrim
9/20/2009 - Chris Goldstein
An estimated 30,000 people were crowded onto the Boston Common at the peak moment of the 20th annual Boston Freedom Rally on September 19th 2009.
That moment was 4:20PM ET.
The thousands celebrated freely under a landmark victory for cannabis prohibition reform. In 2008 Massachusetts decriminalized marijuana possession of less than 1/4 ounce by adults with a Ballot Initiative, Proposition 2.That means you can only get a NON-criminal ticket with a $100 fine for a pot violation. The decrim effort was won because of the hard work of the very same folks who organize the rally: MASSCANN/NORML.
A Parks Services officer (who strangely had a thick eastern European accent) agreed that 30,000 seemed a likely estimate of the peak attendance.
A police officer, who did not wish to be named, said the department does not officially release crowd estimates for any event. But Boston Police confirmed that there were 3 arrests for distribution and over 100 citations issued for marijuana possession.
Keith Saunders, MASSCANN’s president, told me that over 50,000 people had probably walked through the grounds over the course of the day and encountered the message of marijuana legalization.
Overall, the police were civil although I saw numerous random searches and heard stories of many more. At past events there have been more than 150 arrests for pot possession… but not on Saturday. Without fear of arrest the crowd was polite and almost everyone I saw was openly enjoying marijuana.
An impressive line-up of bands and speakers appeared on two stages. Styles P, a big time reform supporter showed up and did a surprise set thanks to High Times Magazine. Because of some juggling to accommodate the last minute act, the countdown to 4:20 got squeezed. A sea of people were gathering before the main stage and filling in the large hill.
Steve Bloom of CelebStoner corralled the final 60 seconds holding a clock up on stage and pointing as the hands came together. Looking out from the stage you could see huge clouds of smoke rise up from the crowd. There were dozens of spontaneous circles formed in a surreal organic collage of people. They cheered from across the rolling hills as giant 6-foot long joints were passed around.
Everyone smoked. There really was a quite visible haze over the entire crowd at 4:20. The sweet and fragrant odors of a wide variety of plant strains and hash drifted by, offering this interesting quilt of cannabis.
The crowd was extremely well behaved. There cannot be a finer exhibition of the positive effects of human cannabis smoking than large crowds of people doing it together. Without alcohol available at the event there were no fights, pushing or shoving. But with free cannabis consumption there was dancing, conversation and a genuinely happy atmosphere.
Personally, this was the most wonderful day for prohibition reform I have witnessed. The event itself; all of the people I met for the first time and friends to spend time with made this trip heartening, empowering and just plain fun! The locals really did treat me very well too.
Our country deserves this freedom that Massachusetts already enjoys.
I have seen Victory for Cannabis in Boston. It is sweet and green. It needs to be nationwide.
The first two pics were from my cellphone, this last one is from Derek at PhillyNORML. I’ll have some more blogging about the bands, speakers, backstage and social events from the Boston Freedom Rally tomorrow. Then its off to San Francisco for the NORML conference as I continue my Green September.
Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 7:43 am | By: Chris Goldstein
Included that day was an exclusive interview with NORML’s Founder Keith Stroup and Associate Publisher at High Times Magazine Rick Cusick … just after their arrest for a minor marijuana violation on the Boston Common.
Play 9-17-07 AudioStash MP3
Also included: Speeches from the Freedom Rally Stage from Keith Saunders of MASSCANN/NORML, Danny Danko of High Times, Steve Hagar of High Times, Keith Stroup, Steve Bloom of celebstoner.com and music from Ben Scales.
I took this shot of Keith Saunders of MASSCANN in ‘07
Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 3:41 pm | By: Radical Russ
"The Death of Dr. Thompson" - To Keith: The Wicked Accuse, The Godly Defend
There’s a certain surreal part of this job. I’m typing this post from Keith Stroup’s place in Virginia, watching the San Diego Chargers play the Baltimore Ravens. Ten feet away he’s catching up on email and I’m snapping pics of his framed pictures on the wall. One is a signed personal pic photo of Hunter S. Thompson firing a shotgun at a photo of Ronald Reagan in cowboy gear. Another is a shot of Keith and Willie from long ago. Another is a drawing of Keith from a piece in the New Yorker. “Sometimes I feel old,” I tell Keith, “especially when you’re around these young people at these rallies. Then I think of the great people and great music I missed by being as young as I am. Growing up in the Eighties sucked.”
Keith had picked me up from the CVS at 7th & Pennsylvania in DC. I’m lugging my two overstuffed carry-ons full of studio gear (which TSA loves to make me completely unpack and repack at every security checkpoint, so ixnay on our secret stoner plan to bring down Babylon by disguising soundboards and wireless keyboards as explosives to bring down the Boston-DC shuttle) and my literally bursting at the seams hanging bag that the baggage handlers have been abusing for the modest fee of $15. And I’m wearing my Packers t-shirt, because it’s game day, and it is horribly old and tattered, and my Concordia University sweats, because I don’t wear anything metal while flying.
Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 7:49 am | By: Radical Russ
Hey, Stashers, just getting ready to head out to the Boston Freedom Rally. I’m rescheduling NORML SHOW LIVE to fit the time frame; they only run Freedom Rally from Noon to 6pm out here, and then from 9pm on there is a special invite-only party I have to go to that won’t be conducive to a live broadcast.
Our special backstage studio has been set up and the show starts at 3pm ET / Noon Pacific. You’ll hear 4:20 live here from Boston. Guests include Keith Stroup, Keith Saunders, MikeCann, Danny Danko, Chris Goldstein, Dr. Frank Lucido, and anyone else we can round up backstage.
Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 3:05 pm | By: Radical Russ
So I am in my room at the La Meridien when Keith Saunders of MassCann/NORML calls me. “Where are you?” After I tell him, he says, “Hey, we’re in the room right next door!”
Tonight’s podcast is gonna be short. In fact, it will just be my interview with the Keiths to preview the Freedom Rally. Gotta get ready for the party tonight. Oh, and I haven’t eaten today, better take care of that. I’ll get plenty of audio at the awards tonight and post as many TwitPics and TwitVids as I can. — “R”R
Update: Oh, of course the voice recorder software won’t load! OK, so I’m uploading the Keiths Interview on Cinch – check the sidebar on the right. I’ll send more tonight from the party.
Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 8:50 pm | By: Radical Russ
I don’t mean to keep leading you on, really. I was all packed and ready to go with a podcast recording tonight. Just one last task – to create the photo wall backdrop for our NORML Conference media room. Had to be turned in tonight, so fix that up real quick…
…and of course, this would be the time my computer goes on the fritz. The studio PC, that is, which is the only machine where I have my Adobe CS3 software that includes Illustrator for making that huge 8′ x 10′ graphic. So I troubleshoot and fix the problem and get the machine booted up and build the graphic and FTP it off to San Francisco. Great. Now just sync up my BlackBerry one last time before I record the show…
…and of course, the BlackBerry Desktop Manager picks this time to crash in the middle of a sync operation, wiping out the data in my BlackBerry address book. This requires a reinstall of the program and moving my Outlook file back to its previous location. Now that’s fixed and my BlackBerry is back…
…which leaves me just enough time to schedule a NORML SHOW LIVE test so that Karri and I can practice her call screening in Astoria while I’m on the road, and then maybe get six hours of sleep before catching the 7:30am flight from PDX to Logan, during which I’ll go through my over 1,200 unread emails from the past two weeks.
But I will have to set up NORML SHOW LIVE in my hotel room in Cambridge, so that will allow me to record a podcast tomorrow for a Boston Freedom Rally preview. I’ll get some of the MassCann guys on the show to tell you all about it. Plenty of tweets, pics, and vids will show up all these next few days, so watch the sidebar.
Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 2:50 pm | By: Radical Russ
As I gear up for Saturday’s Fire On The Mountain Buffalo Wings El Hefe Hot Wings Eating Contest to Benefit the Red Cross, 2009 Winner of the Long Event Title Award, I have Stashers asking “Are you going to video / audio / take pictures?” Absolutely I will!
I have already been using Twitter, the “micro-blogging” service that allows me to send 140 characters of text and hyperlinks live from all the events I attend. You see those “tweets” up in the cloud of smoke in the header and the last five on the lower right sidebar. You can also follow them all at http://twitter.com/radicalruss and you can even have them delivered by text message to your cell phone if you choose.
Then came TwitPic. This service lets me take pictures with my cell phone camera and post them on the web at http://twitpic.com/photos/radicalruss. TwitPic delivers those pictures via a hyperlink in a tweet, so everyone who is following RadicalRuss on Twitter automatically gets those pictures, too. (I can just hear my dad, “Twits and tweets and blog and pods, what the hell are you talking about?”)
Now comes Cinch. This is a feature included with our new NORML SHOW LIVE BlogTalkRadio platform. It’s like an “audio tweet”. All I do is call the dial-in number and talk (646-200-0000 – you can dial it if you like, but warning; there is no “delete”). Whatever I say gets posted to http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/norml as an MP3 file. (And if you call, it goes to cinch.blogtalkradio.com/########## where the #’s are your phone number.) You can hear my introductory “cinch” down the right side of the sidebar. When I have the time I’ll craft the PHP to put those in handy Flash audio players… and I hope soon they’ll integrate it with Twitter.
Starting September 5 we’ll be using BlogTalkRadio to stream NORML SHOW LIVE, which you’ll find on players here and NORML.org, or on the main show page at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/norml. The first show will be from NORML West Coast Media HQ with my fancy-schmancy studio, but for the following four weeks, I’ll be doing live remote broadcasts from Portland Hempstalk, Boston Freedom Rally, NORML CON 2009, and Great Midwest Harvest Fest using just a laptop, a small Mackie board, and a couple of mics.
So if it is happening in the world of NORML and I’m there, you will read it, see it, and hear it here first!
SneakerPimp: im estatic and excited for NSL today.
SneakerPimp: mountain time wake n bake
SneakerPimp: oh yea also wake n bake
SneakerPimp: its central im high as a kite everybody
SneakerPimp: ill grab that WUD
WakeUpDead: @Russ, I dont think that wireless is going to work out for the show, it was choppy and studdered just like last week. Hardline may be the only way. Puff [...]
WakeUpDead: A MINI Spof, Lock up your Weed, in 18 years that is. Really Man congrats! Greatest days of my life when my kids were born, hell yeh, great news [...]
BenJaMin: Late night Stash!!!
SneakerPimp: heres a bong rip for spof
RevRayGreen: errr test over....
RevRayGreen: on hold..
RevRayGreen: @RR I'll try and lob a call to you.....
SneakerPimp: where is the first field of cannabis gonna be?
SneakerPimp: !
Radical Russ: Breaking News: MrSpof's wife's water just broke! A MiniSpof is imminent!
SneakerPimp: oh russ its not my fault that i dont understand choppy word:stoned:
SneakerPimp: @Mrspof congratulations tell us all about it tommrow
Radical Russ: OK, test over. Sorry. Only needed a half hour. Be back tomorrow afternoon.
slash5city: don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west
thaistik: Local Crime Stoppers notice.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pot shop burglars sought
Crime Stoppers is looking for information on the suspects who police say burglarized a medical marijuana dispensary and stole cash, drugs [...]
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Announcing New Contributors to your NORML Daily Audio Stash
Boise State Broncos (Go Big Blue!)… 
on Friday, so no Stash then, either. But on Saturday you get live audio from Madison at a time to be announced with the benefit of me figuring out some of the audio difficulties.
Boston: 30,000 smoke pot, celebrate decrim
Steve Bloom of 
mountain time wake n bake 
don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west 
Fresh Stash V RSS Feed
Loading ...
; is she incognito like me 
, or can...
