After Massachusetts' Leap Forward Voting to Decriminalize Marijuana, Why Take a Step Backward With Salvia Divinorum? My first experience with an hallucinogenic substance was decades before I'd ever heard of salvia divinorum or the recent efforts to criminalize it. Though, at that time, I didn't have the sense or experience to know what I was getting into, I was with people I trusted in a safe, comfortable environment, and I had an immensely pleasurable experience. After the drug had been administered, I remember lying back in the Naugahyde recliner and staring at a poster featuring a collage of 1930s movie stars. Before I could focus on any one image, the previously bland music they were playing became a thumping roar. Clark Gable, Boris Karloff and Judy Garland began to swirl, and even though my eyes were open, I began to see stars. Millions of brilliant points of light shot past me as if I was going into hyperdrive, and then my body began to lift from the chair and elongate. Like a rubber band powering a propeller in a toy airplane, my legs felt as if they were twisting about time after time, wrapping themselves into a coiled rope. [continues 1985 words]
The Extravaganja festival may survive another year on the Amherst Town Common, but one organizer believes some town bureaucrats are trying a new tactic to derail the event. After last year's Extravaganja festival on the Amherst Town Common, event organizer Terry Franklin stayed up late picking up garbage and assembling the full plastic bags where he could easily pick them up when the dump opened in the morning. When he came back the next morning, though, the dozen or so bags were gone. A few days later, Franklin received a bill from the town for disposing 8,000 pounds of garbage. [continues 1016 words]
