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The Return of Pot
California gears up for a long, strange trip.
By Hanna Rosin
Opening day at San Francisco's Cannabis Cultivators Club, and the line at the door eats up the whole block. It is a well-mannered line, considering who is standing in it: a bunch of homeless men streaked with grime, a very large and fierce-looking woman in a wheelchair, a gaggle of mulatto transvestites. Near the front of the line, a woman with pronounced buck teeth is straining, with slow and deliberate jabs, to place a feather earring in the ear of the man standing in front of her, a difficult task given that the man has no ear, merely a gnarled nub of cartilage. She giggles; Van Gogh smiles. A tall, gaunt man guards the door. He checks to see that each person has a letter of diagnosis from a doctor, legally qualifying him or her to buy marijuana. The gatekeeper is calm, composed, and so are the men and women that file silently past him. There is a sense about the scene of something captured in negative. It is as if the rotting of late '60s San Francisco described by Joan Didion in Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been preserved in reverse; the characters are the same, but the center was holding.
Inside the club, order seems to reign, as well. The computers are up, the phones are ringing. Reporters chase down sick people in wheelchairs. The reporters are here because today is a news event: the relaunching of the mothership, as the club is known to its grateful patients, marks the coming out of California's medical marijuana movement after years in hiding. Founded in 1992, the club existed in an uneasy truce with the city of San Francisco, selling pot to some 12,000 customers designated as medical patients. It grew to become by far the largest medical marijuana club in the state, serving as many patients in a day as the other seven or so clubs together might serve in a week. Then, in August, 1996, state narcotics agents raided the club and shut it down on a host of marijuana possession and distribution charges. Three months later, California voters, by a margin of 56 to 44 percent, passed Proposition 215: The Medical Marijuana Initiative, making it legal to smoke marijuana in California with the approval or recommendation of a doctor. A local judge promptly gave the club permission to reopen and designated the club's owner, a former (and often-convicted) marijuana dealer named Dennis Peron, as a caregiver (which is to say, pot provider) for up to 12,000 patients.
Today is the first day of the new era, and Peron is eager to make a good, caregiving sort of impression. Dressed in an argyle sweater and blue oxford with a pinstriped tie, he glides to the middle of the room, climbs up on a coffee table ringed with doting patients and speaks: "If we can't get in touch with your doctor we can't sell you marijuana. We are law makers, not law breakers." He then adds, with a mixture of melodrama and mock asides, "We will never abandon you. We will save the people in pain. Once you get your card, you will see the marijuana smoke. Just like the old days. Oh, that smell...."
A cynical listener might discern here an attitude that seems less like that of the nurturing caregiver, and more like that of, how to put it, an old pothead eager for the good times to roll again. The cynical listener would be on to something. Late in the afternoon, when all the reporters have cleared out to meet their daily deadline, Peron hushes the crowd again. "I know a lot of you have waited a long time and you are sick and you have to go through this bullshit. And it is bullshit. Today we have to go through this bullshit for a thousand years of love. I've missed you so much. One week of bullshit, a thousand years of love." One of Peron's deputies rushes outside to carry the message to those who did not make it in that day. "Don't worry," he eases them. "It will be just like before. Just come back tomorrow. Today is the first day so things are a little, you know. Just come back tomorrow."
The passage of Proposition 215 surprised even its most zealous supporters. In the months before the November election, they fought what they thought was an uphill battle against an enemy that tried to portray them as a front for the seedy drug dealers on Market Street. Tough-talking law enforcement officers like Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates warned that the initiative "would legalize marijuana, period!" But the pro-215 activists knew better than to engage in that argument. They stuck to their line: the referendum was simply about limited, medical use of the drug, and then only in extreme cases. They made the debate one of compassion versus suffering, plastering billboards across the state with images of the hollow-faced sick and dying, the bloated and bald Helen Reading, 43, breast cancer; the furrowed and frowning Thomas Carter, 47, epilepsy. "you have just been told you have terminal cancer," reads one poster. "now for the bad news: your medicine is illegal."
Of equal importance in their electoral victory, the pro-215 activists tailored their image midstream; they hired a pinstriped professional, Bill Zimmerman, to run the campaign, and to run it at a conspicuous distance from people like Dennis Peron: "He was pictured on election night smoking a joint and saying, `Let's all get stoned and watch election night returns,'" Zimmerman recalls. "That kind of behavior supports the opponents' view that we are a stalking horse for legalization.... He could ruin it for the truly sick." Zimmerman's images stuck. The New York Times ran a sympathetic portrait of "an arthritic, HIV-positive cabaret performer," under the headline "marijuana club helps those in pain." Sympathetic, and gullible. With its breathy, tenderhearted reporting, the intrepid Times reporters implicitly tried to correct Sheriff Gates. See, the article said, these people smoking these joints are cripples, real ones, and cancer patients, real ones. They are merely looking for a little easing of their pain, not fronting for the de facto legalization of pot.
The truth about the medical marijuana movement is much simpler, and blindingly obvious after a day in Peron's club. The movement is about the compassionate extension of relief to sick people--THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, offers some sick people a cheap, effective surcease from pain--but it is also very much, and primarily, about legalization. The movement may feature billboards of the infirm, but in the offices of its activists you are more likely to find a different poster, a stoner classic: the declaration of independence and the u.s. constitution were written on hemp paper.
Both the hemp poster and the sad faces of Helen Reading and Thomas Carter are, in different ways, part of an overall campaign to make pot wholesome--to turn it into something as legitimate as, say, over-the-counter cough syrup. The medical marijuana movement and the legalization movement share a common language and common idea. Most of the medical marijuana clubs that have sprung up in California in the past seven years are much stricter than Peron's, which represents the outside edge of respectability and adherence to the law. These more proper establishments run would-be clientele through the checklist of rigid protocols a patient must submit to--a signed doctor's recommendation, a detailed health questionnaire, follow-up visits to the doctor. But, if you talk to the people who run the clubs for any time at all, you will notice that mostly what they talk about is not medicine but legalization--the same standard jargon of hemp and drug wars and government oppression and narcs. One of the strictest clubs in the state is in Oakland, a small place run by a righteous young man named Jeff Jones, who is rigorous in following the letter of the law. The law says, basically, that marijuana may only be sold to people who have a legitimate medical need for it--people, in other words, who could be made to feel better by a toke or two. "But wouldn't marijuana make anyone feel better?" I asked Jones. "Now you're getting the point," he answered, approvingly.
Legitimation through medicalization is not a novel tactic in drug history. In their times and places, opium, laudanum, cocaine, nicotine, alcohol and LSD have been packaged as cures. At the turn of the century, middle-class medicine cabinets were stocked with doses of morphine, codeine and laudanum. The tincture of opium in spirits was known as "God's own medicine." Fussy baby? Try Children's Comfort, or Mrs. Godfrey's soothing syrup, a healthy shot of opium in wine. Public health officials estimated at the time that one in every 200 Americans was a drug addict, most of them happy (giddy, even) housewives. And now, we have pot, the medicine.
The medicalization of marijuana is an attempt to recapture something lost, the brief moment of status pot enjoyed in the 1970s. It is hard to recall now how very near it seemed marijuana was to national legalization then. That year, a government lawyer named Keith Stroup launched the first serious effort to mainstream pot, a group called, aptly, norml--the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. With his charming lisp and velvet bowtie, Stroup succeeded in making marijuana normal, even banal, a trajectory wonderfully documented in Dan Baum's Smoke and Mirrors. Within two years, Stroup had convinced eleven states to make marijuana possession the legal equivalent of a parking violation. School drug abuse books "dismissed marijuana as less harmful than tobacco," writes Baum; "one advised kids to use a water pipe to cool the smoke and avoid burning holes in their clothing."
Then Jimmy Carter picked a drug czar, Peter Bourne, who was the Beltway version of Timothy Leary. Bourne convinced Carter to take the first crucial step toward legalization--replacing criminal penalties with civil ones. The president announced his decision in a speech; every sentence on drugs was written by Keith Stroup. "I support legislation ... to eliminate all federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana," Carter announced.
The end came suddenly, crashingly, with Ronald Reagan. The new president picked up Nixon's War on Drugs and added the force of the U.S. Army, the FBI and the CIA. His wife warned parents to "Get Involved," their kids to "Just Say No." The new official drug abuse pamphlet called Parents, Peers & Pot asked, "Is your child keeping late hours? Has his schoolwork suddenly gone bad? [D]oes she look sloppy or dirty?" and blamed this teenage epidemic of sloth and bad hygiene on marijuana. "The mood toward drugs is changing in this country, and the momentum is with us," Reagan thundered in a radio address. "Drugs are bad, and we're going after them." The culture retreated, with a large dose of self-flagellation. For years, the prophets of marijuana lay holed up in dim, seedy head shops, muttering about the narcs. But now, once again, California is sending them a signal.
The excitement of a new dawn is felt on this opening day of the club, and it is hardly dampened by the dim, fusty interior. The place is divided into three spacious, though windowless, rooms and looks like the messy common room of a college dorm, with bits of origami and amateur "art" hanging from the ceiling, mismatched couches placed askew, ranging in color from bruised to rust to dung. The first person I run into is Andrew, a middle-aged black man with clipped dreads. "You're a journalist," he observes, when he sees me taking notes. "I keep a journal." Having established this common bond, he feels comfortable showing me some of his work. "Before I started writing, life wasn't worth two puffs of coke," he explains as a prologue. I expect to see some more revelations in the journal, maybe some bad poetry. But all I can make out on the first page is "shorts suck" with a crude drawing of Andrew in boxer shorts.
I try to change the subject, and ask him why he's here. He suffers from a disease not mentioned in the posters, but which turns out to be a relatively common ailment among the club's patients. "I have insomnia," he explains. "Also, I get migraine headaches." Before I can ask Andrew's last name, my arm is grabbed from behind by a woman I soon find out is Pebbles Trippet, a Berkeley activist who wants me to listen to an on-camera interview she's doing with the TV equivalent of High Times.
Pebbles is a woman who once was conventionally lovely, with clear blue eyes, a straight nose and long blond hair. She has preserved these features of young beauty--the eyes, the long hair--but added a layer of must and cobwebs and wrinkles. She is draped in what looks like an old rug with pockets, a tattered rainbow lei, cracked leather sandals and mismatched socks. The effect is jarring, like a skeleton with pretty hair. "I am a medical marijuana user," she declares to the camera. "I have self-medicated for decades. They have tried to jail me in three cities--Contra Costa County, Sonoma County, Marin County."
I ask her what's wrong, trying to sound sympathetic.
"I get migraine headaches."
How does smoking marijuana help?
"I use it as prevention. I have not had my weekly headache since childhood. It has to be really good bud, and it relaxes me. It takes me to a higher spiritual place. It's part of my religious belief; it's a sacrament. Herbs and humans need each other. I'm a nature worshiper, and I can sanction anyone who uses Mother Nature's herb."
Pebbles introduces me to her friend Buzzy Linhart, a roly-poly, balding man with stiff whiskers the color of straw. Buzzy is wearing an eye patch. "If not for marijuana, Buzzy might well be blind," says Pebbles.
I ask Buzzy if I can see his doctor's note.
"I have to update my doctor's letter. I gotta go back to Berkeley and see if he's, uhhh, in the country."
Pebbles presses him, "Tell them about your disease."
At this point Buzzy launches into a dialogue I have great difficulty following: "I found my old pal marijuana saved my life ... the love herb ... gather the earth back together ... Reagan ... prostitution laws." Suddenly, he says, "This is important. Write this down," giving me hope I will get something useful. "Do you know who was the co-author of Bette Midler's `Got to Have Friends'?"
Uh, no.
"Buzzy was the co-author. Tonight, she's opening in Las Vegas. People like her should not forget the people who launched their career."
I make a mental note. Buzzy and Pebbles have taught me an important lesson. People who get high are very difficult to interview, for several reasons: (1) They can't complete a thought. They speak in strings of non-sequiturs; they dig for socially heavy meaning but can only come up with verbal scraps--snatches of movement jargon from the summer of love, stoner observations overheard in the parking lots at Dead shows, stray dialogue from "Gilligan's Island." (2) They are paranoid. During our interview, Pebbles often strays out of the camera's range to stand very close to me and look at my notes. This is distracting because I do not want her to see, say, my description of her outfit. I resolve to write in very small letters. It is also distracting because it affords me an uncomfortably close view of her teeth, the kind of teeth I will see many more of in the days to come--brown and rotted with smoke, the color of dead flowers, and covered by a slimy film.
I decide to move on, determined to find out how the process works, how one gets a doctor to write a note and then procures a coveted membership card from the club. I move to the back room. Everyone here is smoking, although smoking is forbidden on the first floor, and none of them has a membership card yet. I sit down next to Lily White and Billy Swain, two friends who met at the club three years ago. Lily says she has eye problems and sciatica, a pain in her leg and thigh. I ask how she got her doctor's note: "I asked my doctor to prescribe marijuana. He didn't want to do it. But all he needs to know is that I need it. I'm the patient. The doctors should know it's our life, it's in our hands, not the doctor's hands. Why, are you thinking about becoming a patient?"
I tell her I have no serious problems.
"The majority of people are facing something, anxiety or depression," she comforts. "You know what problems you got. Even if you just want to hang out. You got to approach it as honest as you can. Do you like what you see, or don't you?" Billy Swain agrees: "It's not so much that you have to get your doctor's permission. They have to say yes to you. The doctors should cater to you. You have to figure out if you're bored, if you need a social outlet. This is a happy place; there's a lot of hugging."
A burly ponytailed man named Fred Martin joins the group. "Can I have a toke?" he asks Lily, and a toke is offered. A former Hell's Angel, Martin lost the bottom half of his right leg in a motorcycle accident. Now he works as a professional activist, usually across the street from the White House, where he yells at President Clinton as he jogs by, "Hey, I'll inhale for you." Fred offers his opinion on how I can join the club. "You women have a way of persuasion," he says, grinning, so I can admire his fine, mossy brown teeth. He picks up a pamphlet called Medical Marijuana: Know Your Rights put out by Peron, and reads it aloud: "`Talk with your doctor. Marijuana has been shown to: aid in stress management.' Don't you ever get stressed out?" he asks me. I look at him blankly, and he takes advantage of the silence to launch into the potspeech, something about Thomas Jefferson getting high, the Constitution on hemp paper, the War of 1812, Nancy Drew ....
At this point I had to stop. Total objectivity is a futile goal for all reporters, I realize. But there are times when personal circumstances so intrude on a reporter's judgment that they must be revealed. In this case, it could be that I have a boyfriend who drives me mad with his marijuana ravings, or that my uncle eased his cancer pains with marijuana, or that Dennis Peron is my best friend. As it happens, none of those things is true. What this reporter must admit is that at this point, I was very, very high. I had been sitting in this back room for quite some time and a cloud of smoke had risen level with my nose, giving me an acute case of contact high. I was not exactly hallucinating, but it seemed to me that everyone had stopped what they were doing and were staring at me. That Billy, Lily, Fred, even Van Gogh, were watching to see what I would do next. I decided it was time to go.
The next morning I returned to meet Dennis Peron. His office is behind a bolted door with no door knob, in a corner of the building. Inside is the combination of seedy and healthy living peculiar to California hippies--bits of weed and papers strewn about the stained carpet, alongside organic kemp meal and bottles of Arrowhead spring water. Dennis is like that, too, tanned but wrinkled, a wiry face and neatly combed white hair. I ask him why he started the club, and he begins, instantly, as if a switch had been thrown, to spin a heart-wrenching tale: "The club is a eulogy to my young lover Jonathan, who died of aids. We were lovers for seven years, and I miss him every day of my life. He died a very painful death. He had KS lesions all over his face, and we would go to a restaurant and people would move away from him. I always dreamed of a place Jonathan could go and smoke pot and meet people with aids and not feel such stigma. It started out as a eulogy and has turned into a mission of mercy for the most powerless and gentle members of society."
The story is completely rehearsed, emotionless. As he tells it, Peron flips through Post-it notes on his calendar, stops to shout to his coworkers to find out when his next radio interview is. It is only when I ask him who is responsible for Proposition 215 that I get his attention. "Me. You're looking at the guy. I am not an egomaniac, but it was my pain that changed the nation. My loss inspired me to do something for this country."
Like most tearjerker myths, Peron's leaves a few things out. Such as the fact that he was a notorious San Francisco drug dealer for decades before he started the club; he ran the Big Top supermarket, a one-stop drug emporium, and the Island Restaurant, which served pot upstairs and food downstairs, and was in and out of jail several times.
Later, when I tell Zimmerman about Peron's version of the story, he laughs for a good ten seconds before he explains Peron's role. "After two months it became clear that Dennis was going to fail miserably, that he wasn't keeping up with projections." They needed 800,000 signatures in five months to qualify the proposition, and Peron only had a few thousand. "By the time we were finished he had provided less than 10 percent of the signatures. There is no limit to that man's ego."
Peron does seem to be driven by an egotist's perverse, almost pathological need to shock. He believes he is infallible. He believes, actually, that he is literally a saint. He says things with no regard to the consequences, or perhaps too much regard. The most famous example is a quote he gave to The New York Times last year, a quote that was folded into the opponents' commercials, and cost Zimmerman countless hours of damage control: "I believe all marijuana use is medical--except for kids," he said. I ask Peron now if he regrets that quote. He stands up and glares at me. "no way do I regret it," he shouts. "I believe 90 percent to 100 percent of marijuana use is medical."
Needless to say, this attitude makes Peron's medical judgments less than scientific. He seems to judge medical need haphazardly; his only guiding principle is deference to the patient. For example, drug czar Barry McCaffrey, in his hostile December press conference, held up a chart he attributed to an ally of Peron's listing the medical uses of marijuana, including such dubious ailments as writer's cramp, aphrodisiac and recovering lost memories. "Aphrodisiac, that's ridiculous," Peron says, recalling the list. "They are just so uptight they had to throw in some sexual thing." What about the lost memories? "That's all right with me. Some people have demons, and they have to chase them away."
Narcotics agents busted him in August precisely for this laxness; among other things, they sent in an undercover female agent with a diagnosis of a yeast infection, and Peron sold her marijuana. He still does not understand why that's a problem. "I said to her, `I'm kind of embarrassed, this is a woman's thing, but maybe it helps the itching.' I'm not going to second guess a woman. I'd be putting down every woman in the world if I denied her medicine."
By the end of our talk, I have a better understanding of the process, although I'm not sure I have more faith in it. Peron is more careful than he used to be, more out of concern for narcs than for his patients. At his press conference, McCaffrey threatened to prosecute doctors who recommend the drug. This threat has ironically provided Peron with an easy excuse. "Everybody's being tricky," Peron says. "It's a semantic game forced on us by the federal government." The club operators ask only the minimum level of cooperation from the doctors: they check that the doctor is registered with the state licensing board, call the doctor, identify the club and check that the letter of diagnosis is real. Only if the doctor voices an objection will they deny the patient a membership card. It's an excuse, but not a great one. The other clubs still require a signed recommendation from the doctor. They also check with the doctor every six months or so to see that the diagnosis is still valid. Once a patient has a membership card from Peron's club, he has it forever.
The doctors who cooperate fall into three main categories. (1) Serious illness doctors. In cases of aids, cancer, glaucoma and epilepsy, there is substantial anecdotal evidence, although no thorough scientific research, that marijuana helps. For aids patients, it stimulates appetite; for cancer, it eases nausea associated with chemotherapy; for glaucoma, it relieves eye pressure; and, for epilepsy, it helps prevent seizures. (2) True believers. There are a handful of doctors who believe in marijuana's capacity to ease a myriad of symptoms. Most do independent research and monitor their patients carefully. (3) The skeptical but convinceable. Here is where the practice gets fishy.
Some doctors are wary of marijuana's effects, but willing to defer to their patient's wishes. Ironically, Proposition 215 permits them to cede control over marijuana much more than they could over, say, allergy medicine. An allergy medicine prescription has to be signed and numbered and tracked, with the number of refills designated. Marijuana merely has to be approved, and an oral approval will do. Dr. Barry Zevin runs the Tom Waddell Clinic in San Francisco, serving the poor and underserved. He says hundreds of his patients have asked him for letters of diagnosis to use at Peron's club. In 10 percent of the cases, mostly aids and cancer, he hands them over confidently. In 10 percent he advises against it, such as when the patient is severely psychotic. And for the rest he is not sure. But he will never deny a patient, even a psychotic one, a letter of diagnosis, and he is not sure he would ever make clear his objections. Because of his uncertainty, Peron's laxness suits him: "I try to educate my patients. I say, `The last thing in the world you need is marijuana. The last time you smoked it you became psychotic.' But if they still want a letter, it's a dilemma.... I prefer it to remain a gray area, where I don't need to make a decision." Even if Zevin persists in objecting, he may be won over. "Knowing them, they would have some advocacy," he says of the club operators. "They would call and say, `Would you reconsider? We have some research that shows marijuana helps hangnails, and I think this person ought to get it.' It's a process of negotiation."
But the real future of the wholesome marijuana movement is not in the hands of the sick; quite the opposite. People like Pebbles and Buzzy and, for that matter, Dennis Peron, are what they seem to be, relics of the past. I also met the future, and it was Starbucks. All over California, a new breed of young entrepreneur is busy these days opening up a new kind of head shop--excuse me, water pipe gallery--clean, safe, family-friendly places, with track lighting, juice bars and cafe lattes. In these places, what used to be known as a bong is now called art. And it costs as much.
In West Hollywood there is a street called Melrose that is determined not to ever, ever, not even on its worst hair day, look anything like the stretch of lower Market where Pebbles and Buzzy and Dennis get high. If Melrose met lower Market in an alley, it would call for a cop. On Melrose, trendy couture shops and MAC lipstick counters and retro diners ache for the B-list kitsch stores in their midst to disappear. So the merchants of Melrose must be thrilled by a store called Galaxy. With Galaxy, owner Russ Ceres has managed to turn something cheesy into class. Galaxy is the new wave of head shop, a place where smokers (ostensibly of tobacco) buy the finest of paraphernalia in the most dignified of settings. Gone are the Harley T-shirts, scorpion rings, fake silver chains; gone is the dimly lit bong room in back. In their place is a fluorescent-lit studio space, juice and coffee in front, water pipes displayed lovingly in glass cases, piece by precious piece, each accompanied by an embossed placard bearing the proud artist's name. Finally, bong pipes have reached equality with art, something deserving a room of its own (and a little wall space, and good lighting and maybe one day soon a show at the Whitney). "We are striving for a new level of intelligence," explains Ceres. "We want to take the Beavis and Butthead out of the image."
Ceres has a vision, and the core of his vision is bye-bye to Buzzy and Pebbles. With his sandy hair and J. Crew good looks, Ceres is a 27-year-old picture of healthy living, a younger, fitter version of Dennis Peron. "My worst nightmare is a seedy hippie place with tie-dyes that attracts the kind of crowd that crawls out of the woodwork," he explains. He pauses to frown, briefly but sharply, at his Thai iced coffee. Too much milk. "We are trying to upscale the atmosphere, to create more social acceptance for smoking. This is a positive place, where lawyers and doctors can go and wear nice clothes, like a cocktail lounge." He leads me over to the water pipe display, to show off some of his finest pieces--a rose and teal swirled eighteen-inch glass pipe, a twenty-one inch fashioned to look like the human aNATOmy. "People who know nothing about smoking are amazed at the artwork," he confides. "Sometimes they'll buy a piece just to display it on their coffee table."
The amazing thing about Ceres's vision is the total absence of rebellion. For those of you who suspected that the counterculture was really just a mass, commercialized culture masked, Ceres is the culmination of your theory. He does not reject middle-class norms, or even pretend to. In fact, he embraces all the modes of mainstream life--money, status, power. In his ideal America, marijuana would be anodyne, better than medicine. More like one of those cheerful balms that help take a rough corner or two off life--like a latte grande with skim, or a Disney theme park. It's not about revolution and sensual experiment. It's about family values. Drug laws bother him not because Big Brother is tying us down, but because "they break up families. They prevent children from communicating with their parents." In fact, his most cherished customer is "a 60-year-old man who came in and looked at me sternly and said, `Son, it's about time a place like this opened up. I'm tired of the tension this creates between families.'" Perhaps it's because the man reminds him of his own father, a white-collar vice president who, Ceres is pleased to report, "is very proud of me. He thinks it's great."
Part of Ceres's plan is to promote young entrepreneurs like him, people with a "sense of vision." One such person is the L.A. craftsman John Brown, the hands behind the Homemade brand of handcrafted water pipes. Brown works out of his parents' house in Brentwood, in a spotless room with hardwood floors, rattan furniture and a fish pond out front. On the day we meet the place hums with domestic tranquility, a lawn mower, a caged bird chirping somewhere. Brown is of the surfer school, buzzed yellow hair, slouchy jeans, says he's 21 but looks 16. He, too, began his business after a personal encounter with hippie sloth. "My old partner was a great kid but a real hippie. He followed the Dead shows and became real lazy and irresponsible, living on the road, spending all our capital. I have nothing against hippies, but I wouldn't want to work with one."
The experience seems to have left him with a bad taste for all things natural. Despite the company's crafty name, Brown prefers only synthetics. And he approaches his work with the enthusiasm Alexander Parkes must have felt when he discovered the myriad uses of plastic. "I consider myself a master of acrylics," he says, with deadpan pride. "I believe in the durability of acrylics. I use only the highest-quality acrylics, and I've experimented with the acrylics until it worked at perfection. I have made the perfect pipe." He demonstrates, by dropping the pipe on the floor, banging it on the table, showing how the stripes on the base look different if you view them at different angles.
Like Ceres, Brown believes he is onto something much larger than water pipes. "I got into it because of the age," he says, launching into MTV-speak. "I can feel the energy around me, how important it is. It's not a '60s thing anymore, it's not weed, it's not grass, it's the chronic. It's got a new name, a new lifestyle. It didn't go away. It just became modern."
Modern lifestyles require modern comforts and modern designs, and lucky for Brown and Ceres, they can find all they need, conveniently, in the new line of hemp products. While Brown was perfecting his acrylics, a parallel industry was sprouting nationwide to fill all his other worldly needs. Displayed in full glory in Hemp Times, the upscale improvement on High Times, the industry is dedicated to proving "an eco-friendly philosophy can equal big money." This month's issue, for example, features an inside look at the fashion show at Planet Hemp, New York's hemp megastore, where looks range from "Evening Elegance" to "Campus Classics." There is some attempt at a rebel yell--in one ad, a barefoot Keanu Reeves look-alike in an open hemp shirt squints dangerously from a busy street, as an army of blue suits passes him by. But mostly, the magazine is dedicated to proving you can tune in, turn on and cash in. "America's hemp products industry doubles its multimillion dollar grosses every year," the magazine's editors chirp.
There is hemp oil ("a `taste delicacy,' says Daniel Claret, one of North America's premier gourmet chefs"), hemp plaid ("and stripes too!"), hemp housewares and a hemp portfolio ("organize your life with hemp"). In the Hemper's Bazaar, you can find all the latest hemp fashions; women in bias-cut skirts cock their hips with Kate Moss haughtiness and tease each other's hair to prepare for a night out in their spaghetti-strap Corona hemp dresses. There are profiles of winning entrepreneurs, like Mitch and Jill Cahn. "Fed up with the whole Wall Street thing," Mitch explains, they turned to making hemp hats, and found they could "gross over two and a half million."
When all the buzz has faded, there is something a little bleak about the new pot atmosphere. Not that it might lead to legalization; that doesn't much bother me. But the air of sanctimony; the puffing up of marijuana into something more than it is. Jill and Mitch Cahn are annoying not because they are hucksters, but because they insist on believing that they are something more, that they're saving the earth by doling out hemp hats at Phish concerts. In the end, a head shop is just a head shop. The woman behind the counter at Galaxy looked as zoned out and faded as any bong salesgirl I've seen; and as Ceres was showing off his display of art pipes, one of his new intelligent clients was stealing my wallet.
For the sick, this blithe reverence for the herb seems especially grim. I suppose if you are a terminal aids or cancer patient, smoking pot every once in a while, even every day, can't hurt much. But knowing, even with medical certainty, that THC stimulates the anandamide neurotransmitter says nothing about what it does to your general well being. Pot may be medicine, but getting high every day is still getting high every day. And it can't be good for Dennis Peron's depressed stragglers and veterans on SSI to sit around getting high every day.
Spend a few days hanging around Peron's club, and you can get awfully sad at the pretense that all the wretched souls--the sick and the sick at heart--can be fixed by a hug and a toke. "There, there," said one of the nurses, stroking the arm of a woman who seemed hysterical and confused, maybe even mildly retarded. "I have a great idea. Let's go upstairs and have a smoke." It was a blind idolization I came to associate with something I saw in Peron's office: a framed photo of a robust, blooming pot plant propped up against an actual plant, withered and dying. My favorite patient at Cannabis Cultivators was Miguel Ciena, a 42-year-old with bone cancer, liver disease and aids. I liked Ciena because he was straight with me about what he was doing. He searched for no rationalizations, either for himself or the movement. He said he needed the medicine, but that he could do without it. He offered that he'd been smoking pot for twenty-eight years, long before he'd gotten sick. He didn't think it was too much to ask for patients to get a real recommendation from a willing doctor. And he thought the state was crazy to give Peron back his license after he'd failed them so badly the first time. I liked him most because he articulated what I had begun to feel: that human compassion was a complicated thing, different from giving a hungry kitten some milk. "They smile at you, but I wouldn't say they were caring," said Ciena. "Compassion is telling it like it is."
Legalization, Drugs, California, Culture, Marijuana


Change their habit - Contemplation: Happen to be people thinking about in creating changes?
Posted on 04.01.2018 04.01.2018 by PHEBE C.
Unfortunately, it's certainly not continually straightforward because of Duhigg's publication just how everyone should really boil down these kinds of good examples to any prescription to get change, as he combines significantly various behaviours, with the particular personal in addition to social quantities, directly into any rubric associated with lifestyle. Inside typically the 1st point he reveals a new easy system named "the practice loop," wherein an enviromentally friendly cue conveniently brings to help a new behavioral program that will outcome around a good praise.
He or she stays to make sure you this specific layout around, working with the item as a structure in order to have an understanding of this sort of numerous manners because why individuals obtain the specified product for toothpaste, end up hooked to make sure you smokes along with alcoholic beverage, and additionally want specified new music about all the airwaves. The possibility for making an attempt to help you express thus a lot of together with a particular construction is normally transformation his or her's routine it again sidesteps really important differences related to the reason why most people take action "mindlessly," dissimilarities eye about that tempest article need to help you know in cases where people choose to be able to alter some of those behaviors.
One means habits may well turned out to be chronic, as spotted, can be as a result of repeating.
What time from improve happen to be most people in?
In cases where many of us attain some sort of terrible habit it manner it again is actually really complicated to help switch, since her grooves are actually for that reason effectively placed around much of our intellects. You have that will carefully training a improved response who wears an important fresh groove.
Duhigg provides any example with fast foodstuff enterprise analysis financial success associated with any previous N.F.L. teacher Tony a2z Dungy, whom, with a lot and a lot in apply, educated this members a good compact telephone number for significant actions these people can complete while not thinking, perhaps even during the actual many necessary stage with a performance.
Poor behaviors are actually triumph over by means of figuring out brand-new actions together with exercising individuals over and additionally finished again.
But therefore at this time there can be compulsions and even addiction, symptoms that will demand reliance about some sort of inorganic compound, for example cigarette smoking or booze, as well as manners which possess come to be which means that profitable which will they're nearly impossible to help you reject (e.g., gambling).
For the reason that various wrecked families might tea act, these types of improve his or her routine are a undesirable to make sure you alter. Regrettably at this time there is normally hardly any powerful topic, despite the fact intense treatment methods not to mention communal guidance could work.
Other manners really are regular mainly because these follow community norms — norms this everyone not often question or even feel pertaining to.
Many of us jitters palms if everyone meet many people, be dressed in socks about the actual equivalent color selection along with have with the help of a fabulous pay simply because those happen to be that traditions we contain come to understand.
Like habits usually are possibly not well-worn grooves for our imagination, yet activities all of us might quite simply alter should all the legislation or maybe practices that influenced individuals have to change.
In the not-so-distant last, to get situation, People in america repeatedly bad that will slip on his or her seating belts — articles on linguistics research 1984, 86 per-cent was not able to be able to buckle " up ".
As a result of 2010 this "habit" got made, this sort of that 85 percentage point associated with people today these days used seat belts. This approach improve had not likely need grasping an important brand new workout, simply because takes place if people pay hundreds in time knowing a good musical technology the windshield wonder. Subsequent to almost all, people now was confident the way in order to capture this belt together with add the particular buckle towards all the container.
Fairly, the item appeared due to the fact connected with altering norms for our own culture academic magazine report summary upon as a result of legal guidelines inside numerous states).
In fact, interpersonal psychologists currently have shown which will an powerful option about transforming a large number of unresponsible manners is definitely to adjust people's ideas of any norms that will rule these products, arising for minimized drinking alcohol on institution campuses, for the purpose of occasion, together with lowered electric power make use of for all the home.
There can be a second design associated with recurring patterns which will require extra cognitive adventure, which is people's interpretation from a new scenario in respect to make sure you the things this would mean just for these individuals as well as how that works with within the actual narratives individuals notify them selves.
These kinds of symptoms are continual throughout the actual feeling that will persons have long-term strategies in interpretation all the country. Some modify their own routine secondary education student's "story," pertaining to model, may perhaps end up that will your lover doesn't are supposed to be from the actual majority-white school the girl attends, which often results in the towards fall into a fabulous routine about disengagement plus educational catastrophe.
Exploration modification their addiction which will adjusting charcoal students' reports pertaining to his or her feeling for belonging improves his or her instructional overall performance not to mention health and wellbeing around college.
The time is certainly which regular manners can come throughout countless unique methods, and also squeezing these individuals into a person structure misses a few about that ins and outs from the simplest way to make sure you alter action comfortably.
Inside brand-new a long time ethnical psychologists include constructed countless powerful surgery that will enable men and women make improvements to their particular political economy, exclusively some from which unfortunately need bursting damaging methods during the method Duhigg describes.
Nonetheless, "The Electric power connected with Habit" is without a doubt a good pleasant arrange, together with people is going to acquire advantageous recommendation regarding just how that will shift at smallest certain about his or her's lousy methods — perhaps even any time some people need to always keep their particular salt.
371 pp. Well known Residence. $28.


text:
Town Hall to be topped-off, cupola frame lifted into place
Risland Homes Reaches Agreement with Prosper ISD to House Two Campuses Within Its Legacy Gardens Development
Community Invited to Celebrate Newest Prosper Chick-fil-A Opening on January 22
Prosper ISD Hires Head Football Coach for Rock Hill High School.
Meet Your Prosper Town Council Candidates!!
Superintendent Dr. Drew Watkins Retires After 18 Years of Service in Prosper ISD
Prosper's Pride in the Sky 2020 – Presented by Children's Health
PROSPER Person of the Year
PROSPER MAGAZINE
Prosper Schools
Hawk HYPE
Eagle HYPE
Prosper HYPE
DISCOVER PROSPER
Pride in the Sky coming soon
Pogue Construction, the contractor erecting the Prosper Town Hall and Multi-Purpose Building, in conjunction with the Town of Prosper, will conduct a topping off ceremony, including the placement of the framing which will form the cupola of the building at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, June 27. The ceremony will not include any formal speeches and should conclude no later than 9 a.m.
Mayor Ray Smith and members of the Town Council will add their signatures to the final beam being added to the building's steel frame. The beam will then be hoisted and put in place.
The site of the new Prosper Town Hall and Multi-Purpose Building, on south Main Street, is between Broadway and First streets in downtown Prosper. The site is approximately a half-mile west of Preston Road and Broadway Street.
The Prosper Town Hall and Multi-Purpose Building is set for an early 2018 opening and will house the Community Library as well as many of the Town's departments and personnel.
Parking is available curbside around the area, which is an active construction site, and safety personnel will be on hand to ensure that non-construction personnel remain confined to appropriate areas.
THE PROSPER INSIDER
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Just letting y'all know that I am enjoying the American Idol Season 10 ride. This voice blog will inform you of an important change to the Vocal Masterclass Evaluations. It is a temporary but necessary alteration to the normal schedule.


Ken "Shorty" Carson was born Hubert Paul Flatt on November 14, 1914 in Centrahoma, Coal County, Oklahoma. He was raised partly by his mother and stepfather, and partly by his grandparents. His parents played guitar and fiddle. Even as a child Ken found pleasure in seeing people enjoy music, so he picked up the Jew's harp and a harmonica. His mother gave him a guitar one Christmas and a legend was born.
His career started with playing harmonica accompanied by a fellow by the name of Red Barton on KGFJ radio. He went on to perform with all sorts of notables such as Stuart Hamblen, the Beverly Hill Billies (not to be confused with the later TV show of the same name), the Ranch Boys, and the Sons of the Pioneers. He appeared in 22 of Roy Rogers' movies as a member of the latter group. Ken was a regular on the Garry Moore Show from 1951 to 1958 and was also a successful solo artist.
He had a voice that was sweet, soulful and pure, unlike any other. He could cover any variety of genre, and his tenor voice was well suited for the harmonies of trios and quartettes. Bob Nolan of the Sons of the Pioneers took a liking to him when they met in Chicago and Ken kept in touch with them over time. When Lloyd Perryman was drafted into WWII, Bob brought Ken in as Lloyd's replacement. Ken was in two of the groups' most famous recordings Tumbling Tumbleweeds and Cool Water. On the latter tune, Ken's was the voice echoing "Cool, clear water." Although Ken was only with the Pioneers for four years (from 1943-1947), his impact on the group was tremendous. He added the voice that hit. He added the whistle which became a classic Pioneer sound to this day, though no one has ever been able to do it as well as Ken did!
Ken was master of over six instruments. He was the only one of the group who could write musical scores. He took down many of Bob Nolan's compositions over the years, including Halfway 'Round the World.
At age twenty three, Ken rode from Los Angeles to Chicago, and from Chicago to New York on horseback along with Curley Bradley and Jack Ross. The three, who comprised the group called "The Ranch Boys", did it as a publicity stunt for their sponsor, Miles Laboratories (the producer of Alka-Seltzer). The trip took three months. "I always tell everybody it's 3975 miles on horseback," he used to say, "and I've got the calluses still to prove it!"
Ken Carson's parents were Herbert Flatt and Bessie Marie Jessee, whose marriage date was October 6, 1913, in Stafford, Yell County, Arkansas. His mother was born on April 7, 1896, in Mill Creek, Chickasaw Indian Territory, OK.
When Ken was 1 month old, they moved to Drumwright, Oklahoma, which was a brand new oil town that was just starting. Bessie recalled that they lived in a tent there, and ate in the big tent with everyone else in the small town. She described one incident that firmly impressed itself into her memory:They were eating breakfast one morning and suddenly there was a big explosion. The gas stove in the meal tent had exploded, and the escaping gas was on fire, burning up everything. She does not write more about it, but it doesn't leave much to the imagination to fathom just how terrifying that would have been to a young mother.
Ken's father, Herbert, fell ill with typhoid fever some time after that, and his sickness resulted in their move back to Centrahoma. They moved into a small, two room house that the neighbors had built for them, and Herbert recovered slowly. Then, in Bessie's words, "My mother and father, Floyd and Martha Jessee lived east of Centrahoma on the old John Scott farm which my Dad raised corn, cotton, sweet potatos[sic], and peanuts. During that winter, my Dad and one sister, Dovie come down with pneumonia and Herbert and I went and stayed with Mother and Herbert would ride into town most every day for medicine and let the Dr (Cody) know how they were. This one day that he went to town it was sleeting and snowing all day and when he got home he was so wet and cold he took a hard chill and ear ache all night. The next morning we sent for the Dr (Cody) and right away he said Herbert had spinal meningitis and give him the seruim but he never gained consciousness and died 3 days later (Jan 1918) as well as I remember now."
Hubert Flatt (Ken Carson) and his mother, Bessie (Jessee) Willburn. Date Unknown.
Bessie married Bill Willburn in 1919 and bore him three children: Vestal (who probably died at age four), Vernon (who also died young--about age two) and V Opal, born in November, 1920. Her father, Ken's stepfather, was abusive and after he and Bessie divorced, he took V Opal at gunpoint from Bessie and she was raised by her paternal grandparents in Anson, Texas. She lived in California all her adult life, married twice and died in February 2011. She had no children.
Ken's maternal grandmother, Martha Flatt, was 1/2 Cherokee Indian (according to Ken's mother), making Ken 1/8th Cherokee. The rest of his ancestors were mainly from the South and Virginia, going back as far as the early 1700s. The Indian blood explains Ken's 'exotic' features.
Much of Ken's childhood was spent living with his mother's parents, Floyd and Martha Jessee. His mother worked as a hotel maid and housekeeper, and Ken had as playmates his four child aunt and uncles. After the Jessee family moved to Wichita, Kansas, he and his uncle Herman (four years his senior) went to school together there, using the more adventurous mode of transportation: they would hop the freight that ran close to the house and ride to school by train!
Ken's grandparents Floyd and Martha Jessee, and Herman (13 yrs), Ken's uncle. Speculated date 1924.
Ken with two of his uncles, Herman and Bob Jessee.
Ken standing beside what looks to be their house in Wichita, Kansas.
Ken was a Boy Scout by age 9, and "worked hard to make good", as his mother put it. He also worked as a golf caddy at the Wichita Golf Course about 3 or 4 miles across town, and he would thumb a ride or walk to get to the course in time for the early morning game on Saturday and Sunday. It was during that time that he acquired his lifelong love of the game of golf, and went on to win many competitions and championships.
At the age of 12 or 13, Ken got "Bitten by the musical bug", as he termed it. He played both guitar and harmonica very well, and during those years in Kansas he organized his own musical band: 9 harmonicas and 1 guitar. They played for churches, halls, small theaters, and earned a little money now and again.
Bessie, Ken Carson's mother, moved to California in March of 1939, and the next year her parents and Ken followed. Ken--his mother called him "Sonny"-- attended Puente and Garfield High Schools. Most of the students were Mexican and spoke Spanish. Ken said that this was where he picked up the little Spanish he knew. Contrary to rumor, Ken was not a fluent speaker of Spanish. He knew a little, and his accent was perfect, but he didn't speak enough to converse in the tongue.
Ken Carson (Appearing under his real name, Hubert Flatt), and a friend named Red Barton performed on Bob Schuler's program for a while, playing guitar/harmonica duets. In 1932, Ken auditioned and won a place in Stuart Hamblen's radio program "Family Album", where he then played the seven-to-nine morning slot three times a week. He was with the group for about nine months.
Stuart Hamblen's Family Album, 1932.
Left to right, top row: Skipper Hawkins, Stuart Hamblen.
Middle Row, L-R: Vince Engel, Sue Willie, Rubye Blevins [Patsy Montana], Ruthy DeMondrum, Lorraine McIntire.
Bottom Row, L-R: Norman Hedges, Hubert Flatt (Ken Carson, age 17).
Photo courtesy of Kevin Coffey.
His career had begun. In 1933 he joined the Beverly Hill Billies (not to be confused with the later television series of that name), a notable and extremely popular group. The history and configurations of the Beverly Hill Billies is very convoluted and difficult to research, but we know that Ken was with the group at least two separate times. The first time, according to his mother, he was with the Beverly Hill Billies (earliest found mentions of him are dated in January 1933). That group was headed by Glenn Rice. Ken performed harmonica and guitar, sang, and danced. They may have been performing on radio, but it is certain that they were playing the theater circuit as well.
They were based in San Francisco and it was only because of the promise of Shug Fisher to the 17 year old Ken's family that he would watch over the boy that Ken was allowed to leave home and join them. As was the custom with the Hill Billies group, the members assumed 'hillbilly' names, so Ken called himself "Caleb Winbush" (Not "Kaleb"), while Shug became "Aaron Judd".
Ken and Shug Fisher became good friends for life, and it was Shug who looked out for Ken during their stay with the Hill Billies. He was more like the older brother that Ken never had, and remained so through all the years that they worked together.
L-R: Ken Carson ("Caleb Winbush"), Shug Fisher ("Aaron Judd"), Jerry Green (top), Squeek McKinney, Curley Bradley.
Ken also did a little rodeo riding during his time with the Hill Billies, riding in the Saugus rodeo, among others. After a time with that group, Ken joined Jack Ross and Joe "Curley" Bradley - the latter whom he had met in the Hill Billies - and formed The Ranch Boys. The year was 1933 but the details on how the Ranch Boys met and formed are still being researched.
Shortly after forming, in 1934 the Ranch Boys decided to take their career elswhere. In Ken's words, "I was just a child. We decided to try for better things, so we drove from L.A. to Chicago." The three, crammed into their little 1931 Chevrolet car, drove the long journey of about 2016 miles.
A Chevy 1931, probably similar to the one the Ranch Boys drove to Chicago in.
Upon arriving in Chicago, the three trooped into the office of the NBC radio station and asked for a job. They were told, "We can use you, but not for another two weeks. That's when the fellow you're replacing gets off." The boys replied that that was fine but did the man know of any place they could get a slot at whilst waiting?
In Ken's words, the answer was, " 'There's a place up there called Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They have a big resort up there.' So we went up there and we asked the hotel manager if we could sing for our supper, so to speak. [W]e didn't ask for any money or anything, and he said, 'Sure.' So we stayed there for two weeks and he invited us back every time we could come for the next year or two, to sing for him at Lake Geneva at the hotel."
The Ranch Boys in Chicago.
The autograph reads "To the swellest little girl in all the world - I wish you happiness, - Hubert "Shorty" Carson"
The Ranch Boys signed a one-year contract with NBC which in the end turned out to be five and a half years. They played on Garry Moore's radio show titled Club Matinee, performed on the popular morning show "Breakfast Club" hosted by Don McNeil, and had various other singing engagements. They sang on WENR and WMAQ, as well as recording many numbers with Decca, like "Call of the Canyon". They sang Western songs; traditional cowboy songs that any fan of the Sons of the Pioneers would quickly recognize. As were most Western groups, they were influenced heavily by the pioneering Southern California Western group, the Beverly Hill Billies. The three young voices, blended in their unique and easily identifiable harmony, were a success. If this was any indicator, the careers of the three young men were getting off to a wonderful start.
During their career in Chicago, The Ranch Boys were cast "The Fitch Bandwagon" (a variety show) and "Don McNeil's Breakfast Club", a largely popular morning variety show. The Ranch Boys teamed up with the three Morin Sisters for the latter show It was there, under the mentorship of Eddie Ballantine, the band leader, that Ken studied harmony and composition in music, which skill became a great asset to him throughout his life.
Eddie Ballantine, the man who taught Ken musical structure and harmony.
Picture on right,lockwise from top: Ken Carson, Jack Ross, and Joe "Curley" Bradley.
Ken was shorter (5"10) than the other two Ranch Boys (see second picture). Perhaps they were the ones who gave him the nickname "Shorty."
The cover to one of The Ranch Boys' song books that they made while in Chicago.
The clothes they wear here were their 'uniforms' for NBC radio while they were on the Breakfast Club.
We first find Ken calling himself "Shorty Carson" during his Ranch Boys days, though he may have begun earlier. He was billed as "Ken" now and again, though it is unknown why he introduced the name at that point. He was the youngest of the Ranch Boys. Curley was four years Ken's senior and Jack a full decade. Not much has yet been uncovered about Jack Ross. After his career with The Ranch Boys, he dropped out of the public eye.
The Ranch Boys started out on the radio show "Happy Go-Lucky Hour" hosted by Norman Nielsen. In 1934 they were on a show titled "Pinto Pete and His Ranch Hands" and The Ranch Boys provided much of the dialogue, instrumentals and singing. The show consisted of mainly music with a little dialogue, teasing, philosophizing, and poeticizing in between - the latter two usually being done by the actor who played Pinto Pete. Many of the cast for the show were ex-members of the Beverly Hill Billies, such as Ken, Curley, and Shug Fisher (cast, as usual, as the stuttering comic relief), accompanied by a fiddler named Jerry Hutcheson (who sometimes was replaced by Shug, who also played fiddle). There was also an accordionist named Dooley. Ken played guitar and harmonica on the show and Shug played bass fiddle. Shorty was the most low-profile member of the Ranch Boys, having very little dialogue and solos, but played a large part with his guitar and harmonica, and singing high tenor. As the Pinto Pete shows progressed, he developed more of a standing in the cast, and took on solos like "Oh My My, It's Almost Courtin' Time".
The cast of the Pinto Pete radio show.
Ken is seated on the hitching post with the guitar. Curley Bradley is standing beside him, and Shug Fisher is on the Bass fiddle.
Jack Ross may be on the far left.
They were on that program for 82 episodes in 1934-35. In 1934 (Ken was 19), The Ranch Boys appeared in a movie starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The movie was the watershed "It Happened One Night". The Ranch Boys had an appearance about 40 minutes into the film, singing "The Old Oaken Bucket" / "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" on the bus.
In 1935 they became cast members for the very popular Tom Mix radio program. They played bit parts (Curley played "Pecos", the sidekick) and sang the commercial for Shredded Ralston.
Curley Bradley was reportedly born Raymond George Courtney on September 18, 1910, in Coalgate, Oklahoma. He worked as a range cowboy with his two brothers for his pioneer parents. Curley was six foot one at age 16. He was a stuntman in silent films but said that he preferred singing to being strapped down in a hospital bed so he quit and joined the Ranch Boys. In 1944, three years after the Ranch Boys had disbanded, Curley Bradley became the radio voice of Tom Mix - the last of seven actors who had done so. He held the role until the radio show went off air, in 1950.
Very little is known about Jack Ross, except that he was born Paul Victor Ross on May 19, 1901 in California. He was married to Margaret and in 1930 he had a 4 year old daughter, Margaret Ann. That same year he was employed as a mortgage broker. He died on October 19,1969 in Orange County, California.
Joe "Curley" Bradley as Tom Mix.
His shirt bears the Tom Mix "Ralston Straight Shooters" logo on the right breast pocket.
The checked pattern on his shirt reminds his fans of the sponsorship of Shredded Ralston.
Date estimated in the mid to late 40's (after The Ranch Boys broke up).
In the spring of 1938, Jack Ross, the leader of the Ranch Boys, suggested that they ride from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York - this time on horseback. The other two agreed and they submitted the idea to the sponsor of the National Barn Dance, Miles Laboratories (Alka-Seltzer), who also agreed. They planned the ride as a publicity stunt and the event was well publicized. Starting on May 10, 1938, They rode along the highways on horseback. They were preceded by the supply truck, which carried three spare horses, and set up camp.
Ken with his cousin, Georgia, who was very close to him and whom he regarded as a sister.
Ken claimed jokingly that he had a callus for every town they passed through, and that "it's 3975 miles on horseback, and I've got the calluses still to prove it!" The three young men were well outfitted, with customized chaps to boot. Their names ("Jack", "Curley" and "Shorty") were emblazoned on their chaps, and, typical of Ken, he had a heart on the hips of his pair.
The ride took them about three and a half months in total. They had many adventures along the way, some pleasant, some not. They had to ride along the highways, and even though it was only 1938, the age of the horse had passed and the automobile ruled the highways. While most automobile drivers were polite and careful, there were a few nasty incidents. One time, they were crossing the Donner Pass in California when a truck driver deliberately backfired his vehicle to scare the horses. They reared and would have fallen to their deaths carrying the three young men had not the Ranch Boys skillfully regained control and brought them about.
The Humane Society investigated their outfit twice but both times admitted that the horses were in excellent condition. Even Curley's horse, Lucky, who was only two years old at the time and had to be hand-fed (because he hadn't his teeth yet), was doing well.
Every morning the young men would rise at 4:30 AM, cook breakfast, ready the horses, break up camp and be on the road by 6:30.
Later, they would stop for lunch, switch their tired horses for the fresh ones in the relief truck, and resume the trip. They rode the old stagecoach trails into San Francisco, through Sacramento, and then on through Nevada, Utah, and up into Denver, Colorado. In many of these cities, parades greeted them. Autograph seekers and fans hailed them and newspapers all over the country ran updates on their ride. The Ranch Boys broadcast over WLS every Saturday, and if they couldn't, the radio station gave listeners an update on the boy's progress. The Ranch Boys made thirty-two broadcasts during their trip.
They rode through Nebraska and Iowa, finally crossing the bridge over the Mississippi River and riding triumphantly into Chicago. Upon arriving in Chicago, as Ken said, "[We] got a big reception there, and we said 'Shucks, why stop now? We might as well do the whole thing.' We rode from Chicago into New York, rode right up on the steps of City Hall and delivered a big plaque to Mayor LaGuardia." Although Ken's words give us the impression that going to New York was a spur-of-the-moment decision, it probably was not. Newspapers documenting the trip give us the information that the Ranch Boys were, indeed, planning to go all the way to New York from the start.
Clip from the Ada Weekly News (Ada, Oklahoma), May 12 , 1938.
Contrary to publicity, Jack Ross was not from Oracle, Arizona, but rather from California.
To add to their filmography, The Ranch Boys made an appearance in the Gene Autry film "In Old Monterey". They appeared as singing ranch hands, performing Bob Nolan's "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" with Gene. The film's release date was August 14, 1939. Ken said that Gene was "One swell fellow".
On October 6, 1939, the 24-year-old Hubert Paul Flatt (Ken Carson) was united in marriage to little, 5'2" Coy Maxine Wade in Cook County, Illinois. I say 'little' because Ken--although nicknamed "Shorty" - stood a good five foot ten inches tall and could boast of about a hundred and forty pounds of slim weight. Coy was a brunette, and with Ken's dark hair and green eyes, they must have made a lovely pair.
In about 1941, The Ranch Boys split up and went their separate ways. Their career together had spanned eight long years together, and the three were probably ready to branch out on their own. Curley went on to become the Tom Mix of radio, Jack Ross departed the spotlight to live quietly, and Ken got his own radio program on WGN starting at ten o'clock PM. He did very well with a rating of 7.8 on the 'Hooper Scale', which was the commercial rating of radio artists. The highest rating was 10. At one point, Ken's station was sending out a thousand pictures a day to fans. He got fan mail from 48 states, and all but one province in Canada. He sang everything from popular music to standards to cowboy music, and of course, songs from South of the border. There was a "Hugh Carson Fan Club" in Chicago with over a hundred members. He also appeared on television a number of times a week, remarking that he thought that television would "Go to town" after the war. And he was right.
Left to right, Ken Carson (age 26), two unknown ladies, Edna Ruth Ellison, and Unidentified.
The ladies were the "TWA Promotional Quartet", for which Ken wrote the music to the song "A Treasure In the Sky" (lyrics by Jack Ross, Ken's friend from the Ranch Boys).
Courtesy of Joyce Bethune, this picture is dated as April 8, 1941.
Ken had a good job with his own show on the radio five days a week when the Sons of the Pioneers called him up. It was April, 1943, and Ken was just 28 years old. They requested him to come to California to fill in for Lloyd Perryman who had been drafted into the army. Ken, although he had kept himself in touch with Bob Nolan and the Pioneers since they first met in Chicago, was hesitant to leave his position at the radio station. He knew that the job offered by the Pioneers would be rather temporary and his position in Chicago was a comfortable one. But in the end he decided in favor of California and he and his pregnant wife, Kitsy, packed up and headed West.
L-R: Tim Spencer, Bob Nolan (Standing), Roy Rogers, Hank Bell, Pat Brady, Karl Farr (standing), Hugh Farr, Ken Carson.
Ken and Coy (or "Kitsy") had a son, Paul Scott (born in 1943) and Coy Brooke (born in 1945). It was at this house that Roy Rogers and Dale Evans would visit while they were courting. "They'd just go outside and smooch awhile," Ken remarked in his later years. " [Roy Rogers] was just one of the boys. He never made any big deal about being a big Western star."
The current appearance of the house. Ken and his family resided here during most, if not all, of his years with the Pioneers.
Top row: Hugh Farr and his brother, Karl. Bottom row: Ken Carson, Tim Spencer, Bob Nolan, and Shug Fisher.
Photo courtesy of the Calin Coburn collection.
Ken Carson and Tim Spencer in New York City, 1943.
Ken was part of the Pioneer group that recorded with RCA and Decca. They did hundreds of recordings together during the years Ken was with them, many of which became 'got-to' Pioneer material for fans, past and present. Bob Nolan noted that they had a hard time adjusting to Ken's voice in their trios. Ken Carson had a gorgeous, clear-as-a-bell voice, which was wonderful, but didn't suit the close Pioneer harmonies as well as Lloyd Perryman's more mellow tenor did. In an interview with Ken Griffis, Bob remarked "You couldn't blend with [Ken's voice] like Lloyd or when Roy was with us and Tim's voice. There was a mellowness that was missing and it was one of those voices that it was just impossible for us to hold our same tone quality and get a blend with. His voice would stand out and that's what we'd tried to eliminate was any one voice standing out."
He had a radio show as well, called both "The Ken Carson Show" and "Music With the Accent On Romance". It ran somewhere from May to September 1945. The Sons of the Pioneers remarked that Ken was a better singer than Frank Sinatra - neither the first nor the last time that that opinion was expressed!
Tim Spencer, Bob Nolan, and Ken Carson singing Ken's "Cowboy Jubilee" in the Republic film "Lights of Old Santa Fe" (1944).
The Sons of the Pioneers recorded hundreds of songs in the years that Ken was recording with them, including Chant of the Wanderer (1946), Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma (1947), I Wear Your Memory in My Heart (1946), Wind (1946) Bunkhouse Bugle Boy (1946) Stars and Stripes over Iwo Jima (1947) Cowboy's Lament/Streets of Laredo (1947), Yellow Rose of Texas (1946), Timber Trail (1945) The Last Roundup (1947), Song of the Rover (1947) and Cowboy Camp Meetin' (1946).
During the war, Ken worked a full 8-hour swing shift at the Lockheed Vega war plant, assembling P-30 heavy fighters. He passed his physical and was awaiting a summons from the Navy but was never called into service.
Interestingly, the factory he worked in which was located in Burbank (5 miles from North Studio City, where he lived), was camouflaged to deceive enemy aircraft. The entire factory was covered with a giant tarp constructed of burlap, and painted to resemble an average semi-rural neighborhood. It even had three dimensional fake trees and shrubs (created from chicken wire), rubber cars, fire hydrants and buildings to complete the effect. Such camouflaging was also done at Boeing, the Washington State aircraft plant.
Overhead view of the Lockheed factory, before and after camouflage.
View of a parking garage in the Lockheed plant where Ken worked. Notice the burlap 'ceiling'.
P-38 "Lightning" heavy fighter, an example of the plane that Ken may have been assembling.
Ken Carson, although he was a member of the Pioneers for only four years, was a vital chord in their success. He had a distinctive, warm and gentle voice experienced in the group's harmonies, and his musical skills were instrumental in many of their song's arrangements. He was an accomplished songwriter and he could write out music on paper whereas most of the Pioneers could not even read it. He would take down songs for Bob Nolan as Bob couldn't write out the musical scores he composed.
"I received your nice letter recently and therefore I'm forwarding a few thoughts & trivia that you might enjoy. The man: Bob Nolan!! To know Bob Nolan was to know a very special piece of history. Those of us who were privileged to know him and be as close as I was to him is a most treasured period I shall long cherish.
"Bob was a special 'one of a kind' man, a loner to some who really never knew him. A silent man, thoughtful in every respect toward his fellow man. Never once did I ever hear an unkind, malicious word from the man who composed two of the greatest all-time western songs, "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and "Cool Water".
"One thing I discovered about Nolan; he had no aspirations toward becoming a great Star though I know he had at one time been considered ... as a potential candidate for a series of his own.
"Bob and I got along extremely well. He could not write the music to the songs he composed and that's where I was able to help him, having studied harmony & composition before I joined the group. When he got an idea for a song he had dreamed up, he'd get on the phone & say, "Hey, Carson, bring your guitar & some paper and come on over" even if it was 1:00 a. m. and I had been in bed three hours. "Oh, this won't take long," he'd say. Well, three hours later, we had it down on paper.
"One song I especially remember I wrote down for him was "From Half Way Round the World" [sic] which Lloyd later recorded ... and what a beautiful rendition he did of the song. Bob was a master of utilizing words that made the perfect marriage of music and lyrics come together.
"There won't be another Bob Nolan around in this or any future lifetime. He truly was one of a kind. I still treasure a picture taken in Madison Square Garden on one of our trips to the rodeo there, of Bob and myself. Ah, memories."
Right to left: Shug Fisher (comic, bass fiddle), Hugh Farr (fiddle), Bob Nolan (vocals), Roy Rogers, Tim Spencer (vocals), Karl Farr (guitar) and Ken Carson (guitar and vocals), Date 1944.
Ken was a natural musician. He could teach himself to play just about any instrument in a matter of weeks. Instruments which he played included Jews' Harp, banjo, guitar (Spanish, Hawaiian Steel, Acoustic, Electric), bass fiddle, harmonica, and bugle. He was the rhythm player for Karl Farr's galloping guitar numbers, and could pick out a pretty swell little tune alone, too.
One of his very favorite songs, and one he was best known for, was Cowboy Camp Meeting by Tim Spencer. Ken did the vocal arrangements on the song which showcased the extreme low bass of Hugh Farr while counterparting it with Ken's high tenor. The song is acclaimed as one of the real masterpieces of the Pioneers.
1944 at Big Bear Lake, CA.
The boat belonged to Bob Nolan.
"Lights of Old Santa Fe" (1943), L-R: Hugh Farr, Tim Spencer, Bob Nolan, Ken Carson, Shug Fisher, Karl Farr.
Ken recorded with the Pioneers, even after Lloyd returned from the war, into 1947. "Lloyd would do lead and I'd do tenor, and vice versa." They recorded songs like Santa Fe, New Mexico and Down Where the Rio Flows, the latter being an excellent example of Ken's Spanish pronunciation. He said that he sang the words phonetically. His accent was perfect - though he could not speak the language.
Ken always spoke very highly of Lloyd, both as a man and as a singer. "I admired Lloyd's vocal prowess very, very much. He was my inspiration, really."
Much has already been documented on this site about the years that Ken spent in the Pioneers so I have touched on it only lightly while encouraging readers to discover for themselves this magnificent resource.
Ken Carson left the Pioneers in late 1946, but continued to record with them into '47 and made appearances with them even longer (such as two Melody Hour episodes in 1949 where they performed, among other songs, Cowboy Camp Meetin'. Even during his Pioneers years he did not stick exclusively to performing with the group as some members did. In March and April of 1947, Ken appeared on two episodes of the popular radio comedy The Great Gildersleeve. The first time, he was cast as a crooner, and had no dialogue. This episode is rather frustrating to any fan of Ken's because all we hear are tantalizing snippets of his singing, muffled to give the impression of a gramophone playing, and overlapped by noisy dialogue. The second time they brought him in was more satisfying. This time he appeared in the latter half of the show as a courteous dinner guest who is talked into singing a tune - again rudely cut off by dialogue.
Disney released a hit live-and-animated film in 1948 by the name of So Dear To My Heart. Ken Carson was the voice of the animated Wise Old Owl, who sang "County Fair", "It's What You Do with What You Got" and "Stick-To-It-Ivity". " Ken said that "I sang 'Stick-to-it-ivity' like an owl should sing it." He also appeared with the Pioneers in the Disney live-and-animated film Melody Time. He provided the whistle in "Blue Shadows", as well as singing tenor but we do not see him appear in the live film sequences of the Pioneers.
Ken was a performer on Tom Brenneman's "Breakfast In Hollywood" (a restaurant radio show) in '48. For that program, Ken was the "Ivory Flakes Troubadour" who sang the praises (literally) of one of the sponsors of the show. It was there that Ken renewed his friendship with Garry Moore. They had first met on Moore's show "Club Matinee" in about 1940 when Ken was with the Ranch Boys Trio. Breakfast in Hollywood was replaced by the Garry Moore Show shortly after Tom Brenneman died, and Ken became a cast member. When the show was transferred to CBS television in New York, Ken left California and moved to New York.
Ken did another advertisement in the spring of 1948, this time singing the catchy "Dream Girl" for the Lustre Cream Shampoo company. This commercial was aired on the popular Dennis Day comedy show, A Day in the Life of Dennis Day. Singing commercials was a very lucrative business and Ken did a fair bit of it during his career.
On the Garry Moore Show, Ken and three other cast members (Garry Moore, Durward Kirby and Denise Lor) provided a packed and popular variety show with everything from skits to songs to comedy. It was an easygoing, creative and enjoyable program where you never quite knew what was going to march on stage at any given moment. Even the commercials were enjoyable!
The director of the Garry Moore Show was Clarence Schimmel, one of the brains behind the program. He could keep up with the lively Moore's antics on camera, and Schimmel was the one who thought up many of the gags that the cast pulled while on air. At one point in the show, he improvised two cameras to create the illusion that Ken and Denise were walking on a tightrope above the audience, a trick that was well appreciated. Ken, being the accomplished horseman that he was, sometimes sang across the theater stage on a white horse. There was a reason they called it a 'variety' show - the unexpected was normal!
Another time, Garry Moore informed the audience, slightly hesitantly, that "it isn't often that they [Ken Carson and Denise Lor, the show's singers] do the more....sophisticated type of numbers, but today they've got a really...beautiful song, and it's called 'Unconditional Surrender'." With that introduction, out onto the stage strutted Ken. Kenny was dressed in a very loud suit, complete with false teeth, wig, and a straw hat perched jauntily on his head. Closely following on his heels (nearly literally), trotted his compatriot Denise Lor, who was no less fitted out, with a rope tied around her waist as a sash and a floral horror of a hat strapped atop her curls. The two, armed with washboard and guitar, proceeded to deliver their number!
Denise Lor and Ken Carson Decked out in style for their number "Unconditional Surrender" on the Garry Moore Show, February 23, 1955.
But Ken Carson didn't get just fame from the Garry Moore Show. It was during his work there that Ken met his wife, Gretchen Jane Lynch. They met when Gretchen was a member of the audience one day, and they were married on May 14, 1959 in San Francisco, California. They remained married until Ken's death.
There is some mystery surrounding the name of Ken Carson - so far little is known as to why Ken changed his name. He was born Hubert Paul Flatt and the first documentation we have of him calling himself "Hubert Carson" is with the Ranch Boys (beginning in 1934). He appears as "Ken Carson" now and again with the Ranch Boys (on records and in Gene Autry's movie In Old Monterey, for instance) but didn't use it much, from what I can tell. But he was "Hugh (known as "Shorty") Carson" up until he joined the Pioneers. It's my speculation that it was upon joining the Sons of the Pioneers that Ken began calling himself "Ken" instead of "Hugh". The fact that the Pioneers already had a "Hugh" (Hugh Farr), would necessitate that Ken go by another name. The same thing had happened to Pat Brady back in 1937. When he joined the Pioneers, he was "Bob Brady". But the Pioneers already had Bob Nolan, so Bob Brady became Pat Brady--"Patrick" was one of his middle names.
Ken, on the other hand, seems to have pulled 'Ken Carson' out of the blue. He was not related to any Carsons, nor Kens either, for that matter. But it was a catchy stage name, and fit him well. He legally changed his name from Hubert Paul Flatt to Ken Carson in 1946.
Ken Griffis wrote a very insightful book called Hear My Song: the Story of the Celebrated Sons of the Pioneers. In the book, he included short biographies of each of the members, structured around interviews with the men themselves. Griffis is revered as one of the best historians of the Pioneers, and justly so. He was able to amass a great deal of information without the modern conveniences that we have today, such as computers and online archives. However, as many researchers and historians do, he failed to double-check the stories and facts of the men he interviewed. A very easy mistake to fall into as one often assumes that the interviewees know their own history (or is telling the truth), and doesn't go to the trouble of digging to find the real story. So it was natural that there are errors in Griffis' book. The chapter on Ken Carson has a number of small ones.
Ken Carson was an artist of great variety. Of course we know him for singing Western songs, but he was very adept at diverse other genres as well. He could pull off just about any sort of song and make it sound good. He did a lot of singles in the fifties; recording songs such as Hide and Seek (from the album "Rock'n'Roll Dance Party", which was quite popular, Daniel Boone (the Daddy of them all), Just One Of Those Things (the latter recorded on the Garry Moore Show, 1955) and (New) Streets of Laredo.
After his long stay with the Garry Moore show, Ken recorded for various labels, sang commercials, appeared on various television shows, et cetera, but so far not much has been uncovered after Ken's Garry Moore Show career. Ken was a cast member of the "Sheriff Bob Dixon" aka "Chuck Wagon" show on WABD channel 5, and also WCBS-TV, but at this point research has not come this far into his career, so very little is known for fact.
While in New York, Ken spoke with one of the producers at the Longines Symphonette Recording Society. The fellow suggested to Ken that he collect a bunch of uncopyrighted country and western songs to record. Ken was doubtful at first but started researching songs, finally reaching the grand total of about 65 numbers. He hand-picked the musicians and singers, rented a recording facility in an old church, and went to work recording The Treasury of the Golden West, a six-record box set (which included songs like Empty Saddles, Pearly Gates, and Twilight on the Trail), and America's Favorite Campfire Songs (featuring songs such as Nancy Till and Goodbye Old Paint). The latter was a record that was given as an incentive to buy the box set. Ken, who did essentially all the work producing, directing and singing, was awarded a Gold Record (an award for reaching five hundred thousand sales of an album). He was very proud of the project, and the gold record held a place of honor on his wall for years.
Ken said that one of the highlights of his career came in 1972 when he was invited to sing at the wedding of Tricia Nixon Cox. He sang a song that he had composed with Bill Harrington, entitled "From Now Until The End Of Time". He called Gretchen from the White House, and she reacted with "Are you crazy?" "I just wanted to hear your voice," Ken told her.
Left to right: Gretchen Carson, Bessie Simpson (Ken's mother), Ken Carson, Georgia Cogburn, Ken's cousin who was a sister to him.
In 1979, Ken and Gretchen moved to Delray Beach, Florida to 'retire'. Ken didn't understand the term, of course, because he kept right on doing what he had always done--performing. He did different community events, benefit dinners, private parties, and put together various trios and quartettes. The latter did fairly well but weren't particularly successful, Ken said, but "It pays the rent once in a while." He was the musical director of the Hunters Run Golf and Racquet Club in Boynton Beach, Florida, for many years. He loved performing and he loved to see people enjoying good music. He considered modern "Country" music as more country pop than anything else, and he wasn't terribly fond of it. During his performing years in Florida, he performed music that ranged from Tumbling Tumbleweeds ("Everybody wants to hear Tumbling Tumbleweeds," he explained), to the music of Gershwin and Porter and Rodgers & Hammerstein, to the mellower songs of Billy Joel and Stevie Wonder. He said that he also liked the more traditional country music by Randy Travis, Clint Black and George Straight.
One of Ken's great hobbies for much of his life was golfing. In 1937 (age 22) he won the NBC golf tournament, one of many tournaments he triumphed in. His mother wrote "I saw that excited game and loved every minute of it." She added, "I used to walk for miles with him [when he would go golfing] and carry his clubs just to get the fresh air and sunshine......I was in bad health at that time. He was so good and understanding with me."
He was left handed, and consistently shot in the 70s, which put him in the top 10-15% of all golfers, and maintained a 2 handicap, hitting a 0 several times. HE was a member of the notorious Lakeside Golf Club in Toluca Lake, California. In 1949 he felt that he'd hit a rut in his golfing-- he was so good that there was little challenge in the game for him. So, at the suggestion of professional golfer Harry "Lighthorse" Cooper, Ken switched from shooting with left handed clubs to right handed, and newspapers all over the area gave the event coverage. Imagine trying to shift your writing hand, then transfer that to golf. He was an expert with his left handed shooting, then started all over again!
He enjoyed traveling cross-country to visit friends and attend events. He was a very social person who enjoyed people, was the perfect host, and could cook a steak like nobody's business. He made his guests and people he met feel important, no matter who they were. He was attentive, kind and cheerful, and always singing. He couldn't help but sing. He had a lively sense of humor, was passionate, articulate, vivacious, adventurous, talkative and always smiling. He was well received as a performer in Florida, and did a great deal of private performances, which he enjoyed.
Ken and Gretchen, whose birthdays fell on the 14th and 15th of November, respectively, celebrate what proved to be Ken's last birthday. November 1993.
In the last six months or so of his life, Ken began to fail physically. Gretchen became concerned but the doctors could not figure out what was wrong with him. Even in the midst of the uncertainty, Ken never lost that optimism and cheer that was his. During the last two weeks of his life he was in an extremely weakened condition, but he refused to succumb to his weakness and continued to entertain, even though it meant that he had to be carried on and off the stage. Once he drove himself to the pharmacist to pick up his medicines, and the druggist told him sternly to never do that again. Finally, doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville diagnosed Ken's illness as Lou Gehrig's Disease and it was only a matter of a day or two after the diagnosis that Ken met his Maker.
At the very end, in the hospital, he was still cheerful..... and still singing. "He never wanted to quit singing." Gretchen said. "Even in the hospital, he had the nurses and the doctors and everyone in the whole place singing."
79-year-old Ken Carson died on April 7, 1994, in St. Luke's Hospital, Jacksonville, Florida. A funeral and viewing were conducted in Florida, but he was buried in the Sunshine Terrace of Rose Hills Cemetery, Los Angeles, California.
He left behind his wife, Gretchen Jane (Meyers) (Lynch) Carson, his sister V Opal (Willburn) Berry, his son and daughter, Paul Scott Carson and Coy Brooke (Carson) Scobie, his son's three children and his daughter's daughter.
With the loss of Ken Carson, the world of Western music lost yet another of its masters. No one had ever been able to match the quality and tone of tenor voice that Ken possessed, nor has anyone ever yet. He was a musical genius and an exceptional gentleman, who was always ready to serve others. He was a humble man. He performed for the enjoyment of others and in that gained joy for himself. He was a favorite of all who knew him, for he was kind, modest, gracious, and engaging - not to mention an astoundingly good singer. He shan't be forgotten.
Questions, corrections, suggestions, additions, stories and anything-else-related-to-Ken are always welcome! Contact me --do!


1. Appreciate the people who makes you happy and feel loved, drop the ones that make your life complicated. Friends come and go. Be in a circle of people who respect you.
2. Meet as much people as you can because once you are in your twenties, your circle would get smaller, so take as much as life lessons from everyone you met.
3. Trust your guts and get out from your comfort zone as soon as you can.
4. Don't be afraid to fall in love. It's scary at first but you find yourself slowly opening up to someone and you'd experience emotions you never knew existed within you.
5. Have as much fun as you can, try new things in life and stop worrying about too many things just because you're afraid of the future.
6. Be more chill toward everything/everyone and get rid of your intimidating/annoying careless aura that scares people off. Focus on building up your character as an individual with warm and kind hearted.
7. Failure isn't a one-way street and don't forget that you can always reframe anything to get what you want when you put more efforts and sincerity. You might be an underdog years ago but this is life, sometimes you're in the highest point of your life but you can also be in the lowest and deepest hole of your life.
8. Never mind the haters both in real life and social media, you're just doing what you love; blogging and taking photos.
9. Choose what your heart says but never ignore what your mind is saying. Just say no to the things that you don't want to share or do.


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Photography has always been a central purpose of my journeys, whether short or long, near or far. I strive to show artistic elements in my landscape photos. I am a biologist and a birder, and my wildlife photographs show birds in their native habitats. I am intrigued by barns, lighthouses and other structural artifacts of society, and I try to capture those images from unique perspectives. I currently shoot with a Canon 70D, using a Canon 24-105/f4 L IS lens for most landscapes. For birds, I use a Canon 400/f5.6 L lens, as well as a Canon 70-300/f4-5.6 IS lens, which I enjoy for its portability and ease in hand-holding. I use a Canon G1X Mark III for street photography. I print most of my own photographs on an Epson wide-format printer. I use the images featured in my galleries, and others not included here, to create note cards, matted prints, calendars and other gifts. I sell my work at artists' cooperative gift shops, craft fairs and farmers markets. I also use these images to produce the work shown on my Design Projects pages.


The Fourth of July is right around the corner and many cities will feature a variety of celebrations.
Run Crime Out Of Roseville! 5K/10K Fun Run/Walk will begin at 7:20 a.m. and the Independence Day Parade will take place at 9 a.m. at the Intersection of Riverside/Vernon/Douglas. Stick around for more fun at Royer Park from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Details about the day can be found here. The City of Roseville will not be hosting fireworks this year.
Destiny Community Center is presenting the 10th Anniversary of Celebrate America. Check out one of the regions most anticipated summer events with special guests retired Naval Petty Officer, 1st Class, Generald Wilson and Preston Sharp who started the Flag and Flower Challenge honoring Veterans across the country. Admission and parking are free. The event is at Twin Oaks Park in Rocklin. Gates open at 4 p.m. For more information, go to loveourcity.com.
Join the Lincoln Community Foundation for an exciting Independence Day celebration at McBean Park. Activities include the annual pancake feed and a full day of events including swimming, tournaments, a kids zone and live bands. Details are still pending, so keep updated about the event here.
Celebrate our country's birthday at the 74th annual firework show on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe. The show will take place at Commons Beach, 400 N Lake Boulevard, Tahoe City, CA 96145. Fireworks start after dark.
The Fourth of July Celebration starts at Gold Country Fairgrounds at 4:30 p.m. and ends around 9:30 p.m. with a fireworks show.
The community will gather for a free City-coordinated festival in Community Park on 14th and F Street to hear music, have picnics and to view the fireworks finale. The evening's exciting musical lineup has been assembled with assistance from the Davis Live Music Collective.The 9:30 p.m. City-produced fireworks display on July 4th in Community Park is the only safe and legal use of fireworks that is allowed in Davis. For public safety, a City ordinance prohibits the use or discharge of fireworks or any substances designed for pyrotechnic display. The sale of any type of fireworks within the City of Davis boundaries is also prohibited.
Celebrate Independence Day 2018 with a River Cats vs. Fresno Grizzlies game. This game promises USA pride with special patriotic jerseys. This night will end with a bang thanks to a fantastic fireworks display. See details here.
The annual Fourth of July Family Blast will include kids activities, live music and food and beverages. Fireworks will begin after dark. See details for July Family Blast here.
The 9th annual fireworks and freedom concert will take place on Tuesday, July 3 from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. at the El Dorado Hills Town Center. Fireworks will begin at 9:30 p.m.
The Red, White & Brews Bar Crawl will make stops at Pour Larry's, Bay Street Blues and many more. It will end at Savannah Smiles for an after party. Here are details for this year's Red, White & Brews Bar Crawl.
Watch the fireworks from Raley Field over the Tower Street Bridge while enjoying a one-hour cruise on the Sacramento River. Seating is first come, first serve and you can book your reservation online here.
Cal Expo's Miller Lite Racetrack Grandstands in Sacramento is hosting a 4th of July Celebration. The event starts at 5 p.m. and fireworks start at 9:30 p.m. There is free admission or reserved seating for $10 and parking is $10.Ticket available online here.
A downtown parade will start at 9:30 a.m and an All American festival will take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 10th Street Plaza.
California State University, Stanislaus is partnering with the City of Turlock to host a fireworks celebration on its campus.
The event will start at 7 p.m and end at 9:30 p.m. at Stanislaus State, corner of Geer Road and Monte Vista Avenue, Turlock, CA.
Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors presents the 23rd Annual Fireworks Celebration at Woodward Reservoir. The show will start at 9:30 p.m. and costs $25 per carload the day of the event. The park will be closed to inbound traffic if capacity is reached. No personal fireworks are allowed.
There will be a free 4th of July Celebration at Mandeville Tip County Park from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.
There will be a 4ht of July Celebration at Lincoln Park from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will be a hot air balloon lift off, pancake breakfast, Kid Zone, parade, eating contests and carnival rides. Fireworks will be at Tracy High school. The stadium opens at 7 p.m. and the show begins at 9:30 p.m.
Manteca will celebrate Independence Day at the Big League Dreams Field. From 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., there will be vendor booths, a softball tournament, live family entertainment, children's rides and a teen zone. Fireworks conclude the evening's activities. Children ages 13 and over are $2 and children 12 and under are free. Bring a blanket or low chairs to sit upon during the fireworks display.
The 16th annual Children's 4th of July Parade sponsored by the City of Yuba City's Fire and Parks and Recreation Departments will begin at 10 a.m. Children ages 0-12 years old are welcome to participate in this free event by dressing up, decorating their bike or wagon. The parade will start at C Street in front of Gauche Aquatic Park, located at 421 C Street, Yuba City. No animals or motorized vehicles will be permitted, although battery operated vehicles are permissible. Safety helmets are required by all participants. For additional information, please call 822-4650 or 822-4725.
Nicole Camarda compiled this list.


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