Meet author Tom Robbins and support sensible marijuana policy!

Marijuana Policy Project Alert: Mass. July 25, 2007


Meet author Tom Robbins and support sensible marijuana policy!
Bestselling author Tom Robbins, who has penned such classics as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy (CSMP) invite you to attend a VIP reception hosted by Woody Kaplan and Wendy Kaminer at their beautiful home overlooking the Charles River in Boston's Back Bay. This event will raise much-needed funds for the signature drive to place a binding marijuana decriminalization initiative on the November 2008 state ballot.
Find out more about this event and purchase tickets here.
The signature drive, which must begin on September 19 and end on November 21, will cost approximately $350,000. If we can raise the money for the signature drive this summer and fall, CSMP will be able to concentrate the next stage of fundraising on money for voter outreach and educational TV and radio ads. The initiative would change Massachusetts state law so that personal possession of a small amount of marijuana would be a civil fine instead of a criminal sanction and would be the first-ever statewide ballot initiative to remove all criminal penalties for the possession of marijuana.
Who: Woody Kaplan, Wendy Kaminer, and special guest author Tom Robbins will be joined by MPP's Rob Kampia and CSMP's campaign manager Whitney A. Taylor
What: VIP reception to support the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy
Where: 2 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
When: Friday, September 14, 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $250 in advance or $350 at the door.
Purchase tickets here.
Please join us for this VIP reception and learn about how CSMP intends to pass the first statewide ballot initiative to decriminalize marijuana anywhere in the country!
For questions about ticketing, please call CSMP campaign manager Whitney A. Taylor at (617) 901-7765. Help fund MPP's projects
MPP hopes that each of the 100,000 subscribers on our national e-mail list will make at least one financial donation to MPP's work in 2007. Please click here to donate now.
MPP will be able to tackle all of the projects in its 2007 strategic plan if you and other allies are generous enough to fund our work.
Popular Links:
• MPP's home page
• FAQ
• State-by-state medical marijuana laws
• MPP news releases
• 2006 strategic plan
• Download hand-outs
• About the Marijuana Policy Project
• MedicalMarijuanaProCon.org

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Page 203 of Cowgirls

Posted by Dale

Most cultures have said it -- perhaps with the exception of Attila the Hun’s people—and it doesn’t take cosmic wisdom to realize that if we treated people the way we would like to be treated (this is in general and doesn’t apply to our impulse to get pleasured by every hottie that comes along) then the world would be a pretty good place. Robbins reminds me of the potential we as humans have to live such beautiful lives and instead we so often get mired in all the base emotions. As Robbins writes, “mankind [is] a royal fuck-up”. With that understood how can we live the best lives we can imagine?

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Happy Birthday "Tom Robbins" from the blogosphere.

Google Blogs Alert for: "Tom Robbins"

On this day in History, July 22
By geri
And today is the birthday of Tom Robbins, the American author and master of the sentence, -- who wrote two of my favorite novels, Jitterbug Perfume (1984) and Still Life With Woodpecker (1980) -- born in 1936.
Good News Network - http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org

Reader's Almanac: 7/22
By bpeschel@earthlink.net(bpeschel@earthlink.net)
Tom Robbins, who was born today in 1936 LINKS OF THE DAY RETURN TO LAOS: From Detectives Beyond Borders, a review of a novel set in Southeast Asia with the evocative title "The Coroner's Lunch." Why authors deliberately choose bland ...
Bill Peschel - http://www.planetpeschel.com/index

Interversity: The Saturday Knights
By pmmasterson(mpardaiolo)
Barfly: I like reading Tom Robbins, Chuck Palahniuk, Hunter S. Thompson et al. I definitely get motivated off that stuff. Caddyshack, Big Lebowski are a couple movies I can't burn out on. Tilson: Wild life ... wild people ... wild ...
Audiversity - http://audiversity.com/

Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins
Acceptable: Worn cover, creasing to a few leaves. $3.25.
Lorem Ipsum Books New Arrivals - http://www.loremipsumbooks.com

On this day in history- Jul 22
By looking4good(looking4good)
1936 - Tom Robbins was born. American author. 1937 - New Deal: The United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. ...
Nothingandall - http://nothingandall.blogspot.com/

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The Duty of Superior Men and Women, Cowgirls, p. 201

Posted by: Monkey Wrench Mary
In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relieve the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption. ~The Chink~

Well now, has there ever been a more concentrated soup of superior minds and monkey wrenches than right here on the afTRlife? I mean, who else can loose a flock of red-headed woodpeckers (in all their forms), tribes of Clockwork shamen, troups of tightrope walking arialists, battalions of baboons and cans o' beans, conch shells and dirty socks?

In celebration of the Birth of Our Tom, perhaps tomorrow would be an appropriate day to launch our Monkey Wrench Revolution. The time to get out our most creative arsenal of pranks, hijinx, capers and monkey wrenches and fling them with all our might, in tandem and with great joy, into the machinery.

I've recently learned (news sometimes travels slowly to the northwest wilds) that people in Japan (or was it Hong Kong?) take the day of Buddha's birth off from work. I propose that we all call in well on Monday to allow for recovery from tomorrow's celebration of Tom's birthday. It's the least we can do.

With bowed head and raised fist, I cry~
Revolution, Sisters and Brothers!

~ PEACE ~
Nonconform Freely

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Nothing Worth Dying For; Cowgirls, Page 197

Posted by Mary

Here it is, then. Right here on page 19, at the end of the third full paragraph, spoken by the Chink (Himself):

"There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for."

These simple and elegant words should be carved in stone above every capitol building, every temple, every courthouse around the world. They should be scrawled in every alleyway, tattoo'd in every parlor and embedded in every backstreet dream. They should be shouted from mountaintops, whispered sweetly in little ears, tapped out in morse code and rapped hip-hop style in song. And certainly they should be inscribed on every coin.

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They say it's your birthday.

Posted by Dale
Happy Birthday Tom! July 22 is the magical day.
Snail mail to PO Box 338, LaConner, WA 98257
Email to aftrlife@gmail.com (send voice or video files if you like
Phone it in to (805) 754-2441

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In Honor of National Kissing Day

by MaryW

Today, July 6, is National Kissing Day (at least here up over). To commerate this tingling bliss that "calls the nymphs and satyrs back to life," let's turn to page 99 in Wild Ducks Flying Backward. As you read, dear afTRlifers, let the words form in a soft, North Carolina drawl and kissing becomes a hot honeyed bourbon...kisssin'. Ready? Here we go:

Kissing is our greatest invention. On the list of great inventions, it ranks higher than the Termos bottle and the Airstream trailer. Higher, even, than room service, possibly because the msain reason room service was created was so that people could stay in bed and kiss without going hungry.

...Kissing molded the face into a brand new shape, the pucker shape, and then, like some renegade scientist grafting plops of sea urchin onto halves of ripe pink plumns, it found a way to fuse the puckers, to meld them and animate them, so that one pucker rubbing against another generates heat, moisture, and a luminous neuro-mmuscular friction...

...The best kisses...are those between lovers, because those are the consequential ones, the risky ones, the transformative ones, the ones that call the nymphs and satyrs back to life, the many-layered kisses that we dive into as into a fairy-tale frog pond or the murky gene pool of our origins...

No other flesh like lip flesh! No meat like mouth meat! The musical clink of tooth against tooth! The wonderful curiosity of tongues!

A toe-tingling, lip-smacking happy kisssin' day to you all!

MaryW

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Fourth of July

by MaryW

Today is the Fourth of July; America's birthday. Putting aside for now my personal feelings regarding the arrogance and brutality surrounding the birth of this nation, tonight might be an appropriate time to recall Tom's thoughts as expressed in a Seattle Weekly interview in 2003:

Quite probably the worst thing about the inevitable and totally unjustifiable war with Iraq is that there's no chance the U.S. might lose it. America is a young country, and intellectually, emotionally, and physically, it has been exhibiting all the characteristics of an adolescent bully, a pubescent punk who's too big for his britches and too strong for his age. Someday, perhaps, we may grow out of our mindless, pimple-faced arrogance, but in the meantime, it might do us a ton of good to have our butts kicked. Unfortunately, like most of the targets we pick on, Iraq is much too weak to give us the thrashing our continuously overbearing behavior deserves, while Saddam is even less deserving of victory than Bush.
~ Seattle Weekly, March 5, 2003 ~

What's to be done with this violent child? Fratboy counselors advise that violent behavior stems from low self esteem; but could it be that our own bully boy suffers from too much self esteem?

How to deal with this bully that is us? True, it might do us good to get our butts kicked, teach us a lesson...but isn't there another way? A time-out?

What if...what if each of us in this country assumed parental responsibilties for our out of control child. What if... all of us together took a clue from Mr. Robbins--neutralized hatred with love, tears with laughter, violence with play, brutality with gentleness, theivery with generousity, horror with joy. What if...we taught this child that is us--to write an epic poem, one that would take a hundred years (or two) to set down in rhyme; that the power of idyllic metaphor is so vivid it can become our reality. What if... we sat this unruly child down in a roomful of fingerpaints and let him paint his way out of the corner, taught him to share his milk and cookies and play niclely with others.

Tom said in another interview (can't remember the cite just now) that "there are some things worth fighting for, few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for." Good to remember and a vital lesson to teach our children.

Especially the bullies.

Have a wonderful Fourth of July. Celebrate your independance--nonconform freely.

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