#5: May Day, The Weed Witch Manifesto and Earthly Delights for Beautiful Minds
Plus: Virtual Escape, NOW! That's What I Call Weed Witch Vol. 2
This is The Weed Witch. Feeling stuck somewhere between the real world and the spiritual world? Where truth is stranger than fiction? This is a magically pragmatic, cannabis-fueled newsletter dedicated to lifestyles of the credit poor and unfamous. For the healers and dealers, saints and sinners. Inspired by Depression Era grandmothers and time- and space-traveling mystics. Stream-of-consciousness tales, scrappy DIY craft ideas, and divine wisdom from free-thinking societal outliers, a.k.a. the weed witches. An idea sampler platter and content wildcard for your inbox.
Just like NPR, content for this newsletter is viewer-supported thanks to folks like you, along with limited affiliate links from vetted partners to ensure quality, original content.
How To Support The Weed Witch
Forward this newsletter to a coworker/friend. Also, make them follow me on Instagram and Twitter. And probably my Facebook page. Also, whatever happened to Vine? I still have a SnapChat, MySpace*, Friendster, and MakeOutClub account somewhere out there if you want to go find it.
*If you find the MySpace account, you will be rewarded with the treat of my old band, Ovarian Trolley, a rag tag feminist band circa 2004 consisting of myself and Born Days. Please email me if you find this.
Can’t commit to an ongoing subscription right now? Make a one-time donation via PayPal or Venmo.
Become a paid supporter of the newsletter on an ongoing basis.
Dearest coven,
It has been a bit of a restless month in the Weed Witch Cave, and I had been taking some time to lean into my self-imposed isolation and feelings. Blame it on the new Fiona Apple record, which makes me cry every time I listen to it or the fact Pluto went into retrograde on the 25th, intensifying underlying issues, but these are tender times. Lean into it.
I feel grateful for the company I keep, specifically the universal healers providing spiritual guidance and also my friends still rooted firmly in the “real world” helping me stay grounded, whatever that expression even means anymore. Ideas of money, worth and reality are confusing in a world where over $150 trillion exists within an imaginary space while artisans, makers, farmers, artists, musicians, philosophers, educators, writers, chefs, laborers, naturalists, social workers — human beings — require metrics and analytics to justify value. When multi-million dollar companies qualify for a small business loan while countless restaurants, media outlets, and small businesses are forced to shutter.
Also, have you seen Elon Musk and Grimes’ respective Twitter accounts? It pays to be weird, I guess. Mazel tov to their anticipated birth of the first child and Musk’s sixth spawn on Monday, by the way. Really missing 2015 Grimes “REALiTi.” That was such a banger. To be fair, it sounds like she’s missing it, too. Millennials! We truly are nostalgic and old now.
Makes me feel less “out there” with my “radical” philosophical ideas of social justice, humanitarianism, non-dogmatic spirituality, art, poetry and love. It’s wild how these ideas are still so threatening to the status quo.
It makes me optimistic that May Day is happening today. Watching workers stand up for their rights and insist on livable working conditions should remind everyone that it is important to know where everything comes from. These are the unintentional perils of innovation, snd why it is important to stay in check with your personal sense of values, a genuine sense of reality, and create your own sense of community where you can find it.
It’s becoming extraordinarily transparent where a company’s values lie. This was particularly important to me as a journalist and activist who has covered cannabis the past few years and spent 15 years covering restaurants, labor, hospitality and other people- and labor-oriented, experience-based industries. Is it so much of a shocker that chefs are among the biggest stoners on the planet? Obviously: we all love the enhanced feeling of getting high and eating delicious things.
Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, I admit that I was already feeling burned out, irritable, and completely detached from my sense of self and others. Creative fatigue is a thing, and it is generally terrible when you are expected to do it for a living. You start feeling like a one-trick pony, becoming resentful that you’re more than a “target demographic” waiting to be bought.
We so easily lump people into categories to help make sense of one another, which I find not only boring but also dangerous. It’s reductive, because it assumes that we are all monoliths, stemming back to high school labels and stereotypes: “Which table do you want to sit at?” Are you a popular, pretty girl? A jock? A nerd? A burn out stoner? An art kid? A weirdo? Are you defined by your ethnicity or your gender? Society always makes you choose.
What if you’re somewhere in between? An outlier?
The Birth of The Weed Witch
Healers and dealers. When I started covering edibles for Merry Jane, I was simultaneously covering cannabis astrology for Leafly and recovering from trying to wrap up my first book that just came out a couple weeks ago on Hudson Valley & The Catskills (which you should definitely absolutely buy, by the way). I didn’t expect to go down a topical k-hole that resulted in self-discovery, but the two topics really changed my life. I wasn’t sure where I fit anymore — everyone really seemed to know what their “brand identity” was. I honestly stopped thinking about myself for awhile. That’s the thing about being a journalist: you’re trained to tell everyone else’s stories, not think about your own.
I have always struggled to fix a "tagline" defining my form of intersectional feminism within the cannabis space, primarily because I always considered myself a Riot Grrl, journalist, poet and artist at heart, and cannabis was something that just happened to be along with me during that creative developmental process. I was always inspired by angsty, unapologetic women of all shapes, sizes, colors, and binaries, and when it came to the cannabis space, specifically, I was never quite seeing where I fit.
Historically, women have always struggled to hold space and economic power within the "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll" movements (especially women of color). As someone who spent most of their adolescent life entrenched in chaos as a wandering Jew and ratchet intellectual moving among various communities across state lines, I always struggled to find my "tribe." The thing really changed my life and really empowered me was DIY culture; feminist punk bands like Bikini Kill, The Slits, and The Raincoats. And, eventually, weed. To get weed, after all, required hanging out with the “bad girls” who hung out with “the cool guys” who went to raves, punk rock shows, hippies, art kids, the jocks, and all the other druggie types. You know, because as it turned out, of course, everyone smoked weed.
Last year, I started using the word "weed witch" after finding myself drawn to ancestral ritualism, self-care, star gazing, plant-based medicine, etc. Aside from the fact it felt like a very accurate description of the users I kept coming across, I also felt that if you weren't weirded out by the terms "weed" and "witch," it often signaled to a more open-minded individual—at least in my mind!
It seemed so elicit then, I guess, and even now, it's still so stigmatized. That confuses me because I feel like I'm a pretty good example of a teenager who smoked weed, maintained good grades and was considered a "good kid" and a pretty upstanding, volunteer-oriented, sex positive, empowered, ballsy, community-oriented independent woman who continues to use it medically for mental health and overall well-being, which includes having a fucking sense of humor about these things sometimes.
It was really important to me as someone who really cares about social justice initiatives to try to be visible in a way that didn't seem overtly fringe or pharmaceutical or entrenched in some fixed uniform, tagline or "persona" because I think I'm kind of in a gray area and maybe that's where I hope to inspire others who don't know where they fit.
I feel like more than one thing can be true at once and cannabis is symbolic in that respect: it's a weed. It grows in many climates, in many forms, with so many hidden powers. I think societal outliers still struggle in that way to define themselves and find connectivity. It doesn’t necessarily make you a good or bad person for those reasons, but I like to believe optimistically in the future of humanity.
As a result of my work as a writer and advocate, I found that those who are canna-curious routinely reach out to tell me that my visibility and information made them feel relief, like they weren't judged for the first time. People just want information, access, and transparency so that they know that where they're buying from is safe, high quality and goes back into repairing communities impacted by the War on Drugs.
Researching the political, cultural and economic challenges, conducting due diligence, parsing all of this into tangible bits of content for everyone to understand and making it look simple takes work, requires time and funding. It was becoming a financial strain on me, and additionally, I was having a hard time ethically separating keeping up with the national landscape, which had become oversaturated. Sometimes a product was excellent, but the company producing it was laden with ethical problems or there were distribution challenges; likewise, language and messaging were messy and complicated to weave through.
I like to trust where my information is coming from, so I just did a lot of research and am excited to share that with you. Journalism has been hit hard, editors furloughed and most freelancers were already barely scraping by. Many editorial teams have been impacted at major publishing houses and are organizing union strikes. I am still collecting these stories and creating a new home for that on the future Weed Witch website (which your continued support through donations and subscriptions are funding, by the way. Thank you).
In the meantime, please enjoy these handpicked earthly delights until the next episode!
Love,
The Weed Witch
NOW! That’s What I Call Weed Witch Vol. 2
NOW! That’s What I Call Weed Witch Vol. 2 playlist features “the most angsty babe hits from yesterday, today and tomorrow.” A slice of mix CDs I would make in high school, when I’d smoke Chronic supposedly grown with orange peels (unlikely, though I appreciated the sale pitch). The weed may have changed, but swooning over the frosties and french fries at Wendy’s when you’re high is a pastime that has never changed (and I hope it never will!).
Fun fact: When I was 16, I had my own radio show for the morning and afternoon drive called “Carly’s Riot Grrl Power Hour (And A Half).” I also once temped at LOVE FM in Chicago for one afternoon as an administrative assistant when Smashmouth happened to be in the studio for a live acoustic set. It was among my favorite C List celebrity encounters because “All that glitters is not gold/Only superstars break the mold.”
Weed Witch of The Week: Fiona Apple
Do you like crying? Do you need to? Fiona Apple’s new album, “Fetch The Bolt Cutters,” is a perfect 10 on Pitchfork, a rare accomplishment from a place I would normally not give much consideration to save for the fact it was doled out by Jenn Pelly, who is also the author of The Raincoats’ 33 1/3 book that you should absolutely buy (in addition to my book, which I will shamelessly plug once again, just in case you have not picked that up already).
Chill Shit
Always wanted to go to a soundbath meditation but all of your dipshit friends couldn’t get it together in time to eat peyote in a desert? Me too! Good news: Lord Jones is having a free Sound Bath Experience tonight at 6:30 P.M. PST/9:30 P.M. EST, which should be easy for y’all to clear your dance cards considering they were already empty.
Virtual Poetic Escape To The Mythical Land of Antiquities: Chania, Crete
This is an excellent time for edibles and escapism, so I have been engaging in a bit of some daydreaming and turning to my memories.
Chania, 2015. When I dream of Crete, I think of sardines, cuttlefish and bottomless carafes of wine. While everyone was packing into Santorini and Mykonos, I wanted to visit the Greek gods in Crete, the island of antiquities and ruins and mystics and sun worshippers.
We careened around the mountains and sea westbound to Chania from Heraklion, which felt larger than life. It makes sense how only mythical gods could explain such beauty. Food was plentiful and cheap; everyone was smiling and so kind. The light was so intense it instantly burned flesh. We selfishly ate honey, rusk and cheese until our bellies were full and swam in the crystal clear aquamarine waters, jumping from the cliffs of Matala in the South where Joni Mitchell and Cat Stevens used to run wild through the caves. Scaled the mountains to find hidden vintners growing alien varietals of grapes, still pushing through the soil and desperately trying to find a place in the outside world, just like all of my favorite things and people: outliers.
The land was less traveled here and I didn't want anyone to know, because like all good journalists, I specialize in secrets. I keep all of my favorite ones buried in books. Catch me, if you can. Besides, no one wanted it. "Utility content." I wrote about the places I never would waste my money in because when I go off the grid, I bury my memories in books. The internet will never have the "content" anyone craves.
When you plant a seed, you know that it will grow in the wild. And when you listen to self-proclaimed deities, know they are false gods. I dream in poetry and color and metaphor and love, not SEO. I dream of the offline world, and I look forward to being in it again.