The Washington Post article on the link at the end of this entry was written years after the ethnographic present I delineated in my book on the counter-culture in southern Humboldt County, the area I now call the Land of Shum. Writing as a field anthropologist studying a particular group, I was constrained to define the group in time and space, following the long-established method of participant-observation as developed by anthropologists studying traditional cultures. Journalists have different constraints, something I learned well when, after comparing journalism unfavorably to ethnography at one point in my book, I was then forced by circumstances to become a journalist myself. And, I specify journalist, not reporter, because in addition to straight news stories, I often also wrote features and opeds. Journalism includes all three whereas reporter reports straight news, avoiding as much as possible biases, slants and opiinions. The article below has the great benefit of being written by someone with no connections at all to Shum or my ethnographic research, in a well known national magazine by a well known and respected journalist. It thus presents a view of the marijuana industry in Shum and the efforts to eradicate it that originates from outside Shum and not constrained by ethnographic priorities. I present it for its historical value and as an informatiive contrast to materials emanating from me.
NOTE: Because entries show up in reverse order, latest first, this is the last part I have of the play. Links to the earlier scenes are at the very bottom of this page under “related links.” To read about Pure Shmint, search on Pure Shmint Introduction if the various links don’t get you there–I’m not sure the tags are working correctly.
Jack’s House
(Jack is seen with a CB radio)
Jack: Yellow dog to Darth Vader, you got a copy? Yellow dog to Darth Vader, you got a copy?
Darth Vader (from offstage): This is old Darth Vader, here, Yellow dog. I gotcha five five five, now come on back.Jack: You still selling the VW bus?
Darth Vader: 10-4, good buddy.
Jack: Uh huh. Sounds really good. But the thing I don’t know about is me going back nine miles just to check the bus out. Is there a way you can bring the bus down to the end of the road, I can check on it and get back to you later?
Darth Vader: Big 10-4, Yellow Dog. I think I can slap some tread on her and roll her down to the bottom of the road today. Tell you what, you keep your ears on and I’ll get back to you.
Jack: Yeah, I’ll be 1010 on this side.
(Enter Larry)
Larry: Hi, Jack
Jack: Hey, how ya doin’ Larry. What’s happening?
Larry: Hey, you wanna play some ping pong?
Jack: No. I got no time. Hey, anyway, you got the time?
Larry: Time? You wanna know what time it is? Hey, I got a great way of finding the time. All you need is a stick.
Jack: Not another one of these stick things, again, Larry. C’mon, huh, where’s your watch?
Larry: Hey, here, hold this, Jack. That’s great. And hold that like that. No,no, no this way, like that. That’s it. Hold it up near thewindow, that’s right. Now lift your foot. That’s it. Lift it up, lift it up, oh, that’s great, that’s perfect. That’s it.
Jack: Oh, c’mon.
Larry: You see the sun’s rays go over the stick, hits the ping pong racket, hits your toe and forms a yin/yang mish/mash on the floor. Tells you exactly what time it is. It’s exactly, ah, four thirty one and 27 seconds.
Jack: Really? That late? How can it be that late?
Larry: 11:30 (looking at watch). Can’t understand it. I got it right out of the Idiot’s Guide to Woodsmanship.
Jack: Hey, Larry. You know what I can’t understand is the fact that there’s no water in the water tank, Larry. Three hundred gallons of water is missing.
Larry: Hey Jack, let’s go play some ping pong. Huh. What do you say? I’m really getting into it today.
Jack: You don’t understand how serious this is, Larry. The plants are drooping, do you understand what I’m saying?
Larry: Well, it’s awfully hot out. You know, maybe somebody took a shower.
Jack: What are you talking about, somebody took a shower. We just had a land group meeting yesterday. It’s drought season. You know that.
Larry: I know, but you know sometimes taking a shower is a matter of life and death. Like my grandmother. She never used to take a shower. She used to sweat all over the place. Finally nobody went to her house and she died of lonliness.
Jack: Larry, I got a feelin’, I got a funny feelin’, that you took a shower. Right?
Larry: Well, an itsy bitsy little shower, one of those little ones.
Jack: Jesus Christ! I can’t believe you. You’re up here for three years, you don’t know anything, Larry. Nothing, nothing. Three hundred gallons of water on a shower?
Larry: Hey, hey, hey Jack, wait, wait, calm down, man, calm down. I did not use three hundred gallons of water to take a shower. I attended that land meeting. And I ain’t that irresponsible. I really feel bad that you accuse me of that. I took an itsy bitsy shower. I still have soap on me, smell.
Jack: Huh. Hey, I’m sorry, I don’t know. You know….what happened to the water, Larry?
Larry: Well, the water will be back tomorrow anyway, so you shouldn’t. . . .
Jack: What, what did you say?
Larry:Hey, backhand, let’s practice our backhand today.
Jack: The water will be back tomorrow. What the hell are you talking about?
Larry: Well, ah, ah, I’ll level with you, Jack. I’ll level with you. You know this morning I got up, you know. I was lying in my bed and I just realized that my mattress is lumpy. Boy, it’s got these little buttons in it and it just makes you feel…you get up and you got these little marks all over your body. You feel like a radio.
Jack: Larry, what does this have to do with the water?
Larry: Well, I’m getting to that, Jack. I’m driving into town and I just realized that there was a flea market. So I went into the flea market and I’m looking around and there it was.
Jack: What Larry?
Larry: The answer to all my problems.
Jack: Larry, what. What did you see, Larry?
Larry: You’ll never guess. Wanna guess, Jack?
Jack: Larry, tell me.
Larry: Wanna guess?
Jack: No
Larry: It was a water bed.
Jack: A water bed.
Larry: Yeah, I got a water bed. Man, I’ll be the most popular guy in the hills with a water bed in my cabin.
Jack: A water bed. You took the water from the tank and put it in a water bed. Right? Right? Right? Ohh, Larry, I cannot believe…. I cannot believe…. arghh, arghh…. I’m gonna kill you, Larry.
(Jack grabs hatchet from wood stove and begins to chase Larry with it. Larry defends himself with ping pong racket. Fight moves over the room,on the bed.
Finally Larry manages to get ping pong racket between Jack’s teeth. Jack bites down.)
Larry: Count! One , one,
Jack: (through racket) One
Larry: Two, two, three, four
Jack: Two, three, four
Larry: Five’s next five, six
Jack: Five, six
Larry: Seven, there’s a seven in there,too
Jack: Seven, eight
(Exit Jack, counting through paddle)
Larry: I can’t understand the guy. Just a little bit of water and he gets upset. Man! He just ruined my ping pong paddle, too. How would HE like sleeping on an empty water bed?
END OF TRANSCRIPT, SEE BELOW
Sad to say, for nearly a quarter of a century, I have believed that I had a fully transcribed copy of this play in a manuscript binder, waiting for the internet to be invented so I would have some place to put it, only to find that I, in fact, have two fully transcribed copies of most of Act One. So my promise to upload the entire play cannot be kept at this time, although in my frantic search for the rest of a transcript I was sure I had, I did discover that I have portions of other Pure Shmint plays that theoretically could be uploaded at a later time. At the end of this entry are links to audio files of the rest of the play and some rehearsals.
For now, I will post my remaining photos of the dress rehearsal of this play and explain the plot as best I can remember it. Although I am saddened by this turn of events, I will console myself with the thought that, given the climate of Shum and the vicissitudes of my personal life, involving the constant storage and restorage of my field notes, it is a miracle this much has survived.
The CB broadcast to “Darth Vader” about the bus is overheard through static by Larry, listening to his own CB. He then becomes convinced that it was a warning about an imminent bust. Sometime after the fight scene above, he rushes into Jack’s house with the rumor that a bust will happen any minute. Jill freaks and begins running around trying to think what to do next.
Jack attempts to calm Jill down.
At some point, Jack is either actually dead or is dreaming he is dead. He encounters a sequence of post-death characters, including a tailor who looks and sounds like Larry. Here, set in the laundromat, this character measures Jack for either a coffin or a suit, I can’t remember which.
The final act takes place at what Shummians call a “boogie.” The banner on the wall says “Harvest Boogie” and there usually actually is a Harvest Boogie sometime in the late Fall and it does look very much like this, only much more crowded and with a lot more people dancing alone, though very much together with the entire group. In the old days, there used to be a somewhat magic phenomenon at boogies, one that I noticed many and many a time, wherein a group consciousness formed that allowed dancers to be packed together very closely and yet never bump into each other.
When the current Mateel Community Center was built, it included a balcony. I used to stand on the balcony and observe a wave pattern of movement one could see in an aerial view, that was produced by the dancers, unconsciously, without changing their position on the floor. I can’t explain it, except to refer interested parties to the writings of E.T. Hall, quoted extensively in my book. I noticed that it became less and less observable throughout the 1980s, until by the time I went to my last boogie, I could not see it at all and there were more instances of people bumping into each other. It was one of the signs that made me feel less bad about it when circumstances led me to move from the community.
Rehearsals and performances of Vibram Soul took place in what was then called Fireman’s Hall and is now referred to as the “old hall.” When it burned down in an arson fire, many saw it as the end of an era. It had started out being owned by the Garberville Fire Department, whose engines were housed in the adjoining barn. It was then rented for years by Shummians for their activities and eventually bought by the Mateel Community Center organization. For some, the new hall built after the fire was never quite as homey as the funky old hall had been.
One of the dancers in the dream and death sequences is made up, with the help of one of the many children to be found at any rehearsal.
Below, it is Standing Room Only in the old hall as the audience awaits opening night.
A dancer, before dress rehearsal, the make-up artist and, I believe, her son share a moment.
Although many people arrived in the Land of Shum as refugees from activism and ready to sit down on a rock and think for several years, the need for activism soon engulfed them, ready or not. From environmental issues such as preservation of ancient forests, advocating for alternative forms of energy and reviving and preserving rivers to civil rights and peace issues, many of the new residents organized quickly and continued their quest for social change.
The Citizens Observation Group was the outcome of a community meeting called anonymously by a community member in response to the out-of-control, dangerous and probably illegal activities of the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, abbreviated CAMP. The abbreviation was a play on the name of the then-CA Attorney General, John Van de Kamp.
Anonymous flyers were circulated in the community announcing a meeting at Beginnings to discuss the situation. This was the idea of the late Jed Sherman, who handed me a bunch of the flyers to post, which I did, leaving them in the laundromat and stuffing them into locked gates. Many people showed up at the meeting. There was no agenda but, as often happens in the Land of Shum, spontaneous leaders appeared and, after a period of general bellyaching and storytelling, we broke into workgroups. I immediately joined the workgroup discussing legal concrete actions that could be taken. I have no recollection what the other groups were.
After an hour or two of brainstorming, we came up with the idea of a group of volunteers, trained in non-violence and in taking declarations, who would follow CAMP teams around on public roads and private lands where invited, videotape their activities, take declarations from witnesses as to their activities and provide these materials to the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project, a group of lawyers working on the civil rights issues presented by CAMP. I am going to take credit for naming the group, though another COGer has done that for years. This male person, leading the discussion in the group, called for ideas for a name. I yelled, “we are citizen observers.” I had in mind the “fair witnesses” described by sci fi writer Robert Heinlein in his book Stranger in a Strange Land (or Kurt Vonnegut in The Sirens of Titan, I tend to mix up those two). These were members of a society on a far planet who were trained from birth to do nothing but observe what was happening around them, without personal biases, so that there would always be good witnesses in any crime or dispute. I explained the idea to the group.
The group leader, said great, let’s turn that into a name with a good acronym, how about Citizens Observation Group. That was unanimously accepted, we came up with a motto, “Observe, Record and Report” and COG was born. There followed in subsequent days, many workshops on non-violent procedure, many run by members of the improvisational drama group Pure Shmint, who used improvisational techniques and actual scenes so that everyone had a chance to act out the kinds of scenes that might occur. Community members were urged to call particular numbers, including CLMP, anytime CAMP teams appeared in their neighborhood. COG members would then be contacted to form teams of preferably three, to go to that area and document events. If more than one area was being visited by CAMP, more than one COG team would be sent out.
General COG meetings were held frequently during CAMP season to compare notes, refine techniques, decide policies, etc. These all followed consensus procedure and there were non-CAMP situations in which COG teams were used, including efforts by state entities to spray ALAR, a spray with environmental questions attached to it, on private orchards to eradicate the apple maggot. Aided by the documentation of civil rights violations on the part of CAMP, CLMP was able to obtain legal limitations on their activities, including the establishment of a 500 ft “bubble” around homes and curtilages. If CAMP helicopters or ground teams entered this 500 ft area without a search warrant or probable cause, they would be in violation of, I believe it was an injunction. (For legal details, contact CLMP).
In response to detractors who feel that COG was overkill, I would point out that before COG, helicopter pilots were buzzing schoolchildren getting off the school bus; deliberately buzzing livestock and running them into fences where some were injured; entering and searching houses at gunpoint without search warrants and sometimes holding small children and pregnant women at gunpoint for hours for no apparent reason other than to terrorize them. The perception was widespread that CAMP was merely a thinly disguised attack on back-to-the-landers.
Jentri Anders in the field on a COG mission.
Above, the armband worn by COG members in an effort to clearly identify themselves to CAMPas such. COG representatives met with representatives of the Humboldt County Sheriff and with the sheriff himself, on occasion, to explain what we were doing and keep lines of communication open. One of the complaints made by CAMP, through these county reps, was that if growers in the area were to try to get away from CAMP teams they might meet on the road by claiming to be COGers, they would have no way of knowing it. The armbands and, later, T-shirts, were a response to that complaint. In fact, we may have anticipated the complaint with the armbands, I’m not sure.
Below, a letter to the editor of the Fortuna Beacon, in response to an inaccurate article about COG. Ironically enough, some years later, I became a full time stringer for the Redwood Record in Garberville, a subsidiary of The Humboldt Group, which owned the Record, the Arcata Union and the Fortuna Beacon, along with many other businesses.
The Record and the Union, both longtime newspapers, were incorporated into the Beacon while I worked for the Record, after we had been scolded for covering too many environmental stories. What that really meant is that both papers were precipitously shut down with no warning whatsoever, throwing about 25 newspaper workers into the Humboldt County job market all at once.
I was in Ukiah, covering a story from northern Mendocino County, when Estelle Fennell, news director of KMUD, covering the same story, asked me how I felt about the paper closing. I was flabbergasted, came back and found myself locked out of the office. Have since wondered if anyone at the Beacon had ever put me, the reporter, together with me, the author of this letter. If not, it might be because it never ran. I can’t remember if it did or not.
Garberville CA, April 26, 1985
Editor, Fortuna Beacon:
Your article in Tuesday’s issue about the Citizen’s Observation Group contains a number of misleading statements from you pen and the mouth of Sheriff Dave Renner which we would very much like to publically correct, as follows:
Members of C.O.G. are not “foes of marijuana eradication” as your paper describes them. Our only concern is the preservation of constitutionally guaranteed civil rights, including the right to privacy and due process of law. Our means of doing this is through observing, recording and reporting any possible violations on the part of law enforcement representatives.
2. As Sheriff Renner knows perfectly well because we have stayed in close contact with him, we haven’t the slightest desire to interfere with law enforcement or to trespass. C.O.G. only comes when called by land owners, goes nowhere without permission from land owners except areas which are clearly public rights of way. Land owners who invite C.O.G. to their premises need not be members of C.O.G., as your paper inaccurately suggests.
3, Renner’s use of the word “raiders” to describe C.O.G. is inaccurate, misleading and unnecessarily provocative. C.O.G. has not, does not, and will not “raid” anything. C.O.G. is a civil rights organization interested in preventing and counter-acting police abuses such as those
described in Judge Aguilar’s injunction and recently up-held by the federal appeals court. We have a constitutional right to do so.
4. C.O.G. has no intention of “intimidating” anyone. Can the use of this word be a classical case of what psychologists call “projection”?
Since C.O.G. is an organization based upon the consensus method of decision making, this is a consensual letter and is therefore most accurately signed by the group.
Sincerely,
Members of Citizen’s Observation Group
P.S. If your editorial policy requires individual signatures for publication, they are: Marsha Lewis, Michael deLeon and Jentri.
Below are instructions I wrote at the request of CLMP after COG had been in existence for several months. I had to cut pages in two to blow them up big enough to read, so there is some overlap from one image to the next.
The letter below was written before CAMP, when raids were conducted by the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Marijuana Eradication Team (MET). From the point of view of the community, CAMP was simply a state-level expansion of MET, doing raids in any CA county, with the addition of helicopters. It also is an indication of the kind of discussions that went on about marijuana growing in general and presents one viewpoint from the growing side of the discussion. I do not have the date of this letter, but it was written after actual violent criminals began to arrive in the community, for no other reason than to grow. Also, many members of the mainstream community, former loggers and ranchers and their supporting businesses, less and less able to make a living that way, had also by this time begun to grow marijuana as a cash crop. There had, at this point, been at least one marijuana-related murder, at least one shootout between growers and urban gangs, but not enough of such events yet to discourage small-scale growing by back-to-the-landers.
The final question in this letter was being asked by many people at that time, the upshot of which, in general terms, was a proliferation of environmental organizations and the gradual rise of environmental activism.
Below are documents relating to a CAMP raid in which I and another COGer became a test case for CLMP. CAMP had been arguing that if COG members went onto land where a raid was taking place, even at the request of the owners of the land (who may or may not be at that time on the land), they could be charged with trespass. The CLMP attornies, Mel Perlston and Ron Sinoway, were telling us that if there was a relevant charge, it was not trespass. What occurred on this particular day is all described in the documents below, except for a few crucial details.
When we first went on the land, there were only two of us that day, we drove right up to the house where CAMP and MET were inside and all over the yard. Humboldt County officer Tim McAllister came up to the car and spoke to us through the window before we got out, ordering us to leave, we were trespassing. I surreptitiously turned on my voice activated recorder and taped that entire conversation. We turned around, drove back to the phone and called Ron Sinoway, who asked if we would become the test case for the trespass issue.
When we went back, we stopped down the road, in sight of the house and my partner began videotaping the scene. When we were noticed, several officers piled into two vehicles and sped down the road towards us. About half a dozen cops, initially, more later. The vehicle they were in sped down the road, my partner and I did not move, the cop slammed on brakes and stopped his vehicle with the bumper about two feet from my knees. It may have skidded, I’m not sure, but the tape showed the vehicle filling up the screen, an indication of how close they came to running us over. My partner got all that on tape, but when the officers got out of the cars, he pointed the video camera at the ground (he said later, “it wasn’t a situation where you’d want to point anything at anybody”) but did not turn off the audio. The camera continued to audiotape the entire bust, including McAllister’s screaming in my face “I told you not to come back, I told you not to come back. You’re in my crime scene. You’re in my crime scene. You’re trespassing.” When McAllister grabbed my camera, slung around my neck, without asking me to remove it, I grabbed the strap to prevent him from catching the strap on my pierced earrings and ripping my ear lobe. This shows up on the audio tape, whereafter, I notice, the tone simmers down abruptly. Think that shook him a bit. I carefully removed the camera from around my neck, as I would have been pleased to do had he asked me to, cursing myself for forgetting to not wear pierced earrings on a COG run, lest I be busted. Very unprofessional on his part and mine, as well, but his is what counted to the DA.
The camera continued to record until, presumably, the battery wore out. I don’t think they ever turned it off. As soon as we got back to a phone after the scene described below, we called Ron, told him about the tape, he called the DA and warned that the tape better not disappear, the DA dropped charges immediately upon hearing the tape, realizing it would not sound very good in court, Sinoway sued for false arrest and won. Claim is below.
Here is the tape I made from the videotape my partner got of our bust, by not turning the camera off but pointing it at the ground as if it were off. The important part is the bust itself, indicating how freaked out McAllister was. There’s a longish period of weird sounds, squeaks, paper rustling after that, indicating that the cops were unaware they were being recorded as the camera lay in the trunk of a cop car. It was much longer, I shortened it, but l left the last part in to further indicate that what I have is actually from a videocamera audio and the difference between the demeanor of the cop documenting the confiscated equipment and McAllister first stating he was arresting us, then, after a radio conference with a superior, issuing us tickets instead. I’ve never figured out what my partner means at the end when he says “I’ve not been agreeing with you” to the cop, but I think he was saying “I’ve not not been agreeing with you” and I think he probably was sucking up to the cop to keep his attention off the camera so it could keep recording.
I was, sometime later, busted again for treehugging, at which time I again encountered McAllister. Officer Jiminez, running me down a steep slope with my hands handcuffed behind me, through whitethorns and poison oak (I was, luckily, not allergic) spotted McAllister a little way off, yelled, “You owe me a case of beer for this one.” Laughs all around among the officers. McAllister then came down the hill to the van where I had been placed along with other bustees that day, all of us nursing bruises, and leaned in and said to me “Sue me for a million bucks, willya” as if he were about to do something bad to me. He didn’t, unless it was something I never knew, but it was certainly an attempt to scare me.
Years later, when I was a reporter in Sonoma County, I encountered an attorney bringing a case against McAllister (Humboldt County client or else McAllister had moved to Sonoma County) for brutality and I was able to provide him with my audio tape of both the original conversation at the house and part of the bust.
The Washington Post article on the link at the end of this entry was written years after the ethnographic present I delineated in my book on the counter-culture in southern Humboldt County, the area I now call the Land of Shum. Writing as a field anthropologist studying a particular group, I was constrained to define the group in time and space, following the long-established method of participant-observation as developed by anthropologists studying traditional cultures. Journalists have different constraints, something I learned well when, after comparing journalism unfavorably to ethnography at one point in my book, I was then forced by circumstances to become a journalist myself. And, I specify journalist, not reporter, because in addition to straight news stories, I often also wrote features and opeds. Journalism includes all three whereas reporter reports straight news, avoiding as much as possible biases, slants and opiinions. The article below has the great benefit of being written by someone with no connections at all to Shum or my ethnographic research, in a well known national magazine by a well known and respected journalist. It thus presents a view of the marijuana industry in Shum and the efforts to eradicate it that originates from outside Shum and not constrained by ethnographic priorities. I present it for its historical value and as an informatiive contrast to materials emanating from me.
Sojourn in the Land of Shum 