Highest greetings from Amsterdam, where I’ve just returned for the summer (if all goes well) to continue my efforts to set up my personal foundation called Stichting John Sinclair in order to make a proper repository for my life’s work, my intellectual properties, copyrighted writings and albums, and artifacts of my creative endeavors including my poetry and book manuscripts, master recordings, and related materials. I’ve always preserved the materials created by my work as an artist and activist with an eye to the future when I’m no longer here, and in the past I’ve created an archive at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan for most of the…
free the weed
Free The Weed 62 by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from Detroit, where I’m spending my last week before crossing the ocean to appear at a Detroit Artists Workshop exhibition in London and then on to Amsterdam for as long as I can get away with it. April is always a great time for me to be in Michigan, and except for the day-long snowfall at the Hash Bash in Ann Arbor at the top of the month, which didn’t really seem to dampen too many spirits out on the Diag and on Monroe Street for the festivities, I’ve had a great time celebrating the sacred weed in various settings all month. Following the Monroe Street Fair there was…
Free The Weed 60 by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from New Orleans, where I was greeted for Mardi Gras with the splendid news that the New Orleans City Council is about to pass an ordinance virtually decriminalizing marijuana possession in the Crescent City, largely due to the work of Kevin Caldwell and the organization called Legalize New Orleans and to Council member Susan Guidry, who introduced the measure. “Under the proposed municipal law change,” nola.com reports, “a first-time offender could get off with a verbal warning. A second-time offender could get a written warning, then a $50 fine the third time” and a $100 fine any time after that. “Police will now be able to use their discretion,”…
Free The Weed 59 by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from Amsterdam, former marijuana capitol of the world, although I intend to be in New Orleans for the Mardi Gras by the time you’re reading this column. Sad to say, Louisiana is one of the most backward sectors of the USA in terms of its marijuana laws, and I’ll go back to a life of full-time criminality as a toker during my up-coming six weeks in the Crescent City. Here in Amsterdam the attack on the cannabis culture by the Dutch authorities continues to rage, with another round of forced coffeeshop closings completed in the busy Warmoestraat on January 1, including the mammoth Grasshopper shop and the popular Baba.…
Free The Weed 58 by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from the south of England at the end of 2015 and highest wishes for the New Year, which may indeed be the one that brings us legalized marijuana in Michigan and takes us closer to our goal on the national level: FREE THE WEED! Dear friends, let us pray that 2016 will be the year that begins to blow away the web of distorted myth from the topic of marijuana and starts the process of according full recognition and respect to the reality of marijuana and its many beneficial uses in our sick social order. This whole process of demonizing marijuana and its users in order to forge a…
Free The Weed 57 by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from Amsterdam at the beginning of the traditional Cannabis Cup week, where for the first time since 1988 there will be no High Times Cannabis Cup in the marijuana capitol of the world and no Thanksgiving Day awards for the best weed grown in Holland. I first came to Amsterdam for the 11th Cannabis Cup in 1998, where I served as High Priest and performed at the Melkweg club nightly with my band of Blues Scholars from New Orleans. I had such a good time that I begged High Times to bring me back the next year, and that’s when I fell in with Michael Veling of the 420…
Free The Weed 56 by John Sinclair
Hi everybody and highest greetings from the northeast sector of Detroit where I’m recovering from foot surgery with my daughters and granddaughter waiting on me hand and foot to keep me from going stir crazy while I sit here and heal. While in Detroit for the past two months I’ve been delighted to read page after page of coverage in the daily papers of the proliferation of medical marijuana outlets in the city and several serious think pieces about the burgeoning of the cannabis industry and the imminence of legalization for recreational use as well. My position is clear: For those like myself who spent 40 or 50 years copping in…
Free The Weed 55 by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from the northeast side of Detroit, where I’m visiting with my daughter Sunny and granddaughter Beyonce and waiting right now to schedule a required foot operation that promises to restore much of my personal mobility that’s been shackled for most of the present year by a diabetic wound on my left foot that has refused to heal. My several doctors say that portions of infected bones in my foot—sadly including my small toe—must be removed so that the flesh may heal, and then I’ll be off my feet for another month of recovery time. I’ve had to cancel all my potential performance work and my entire trip to Chicago,…
Free The Weed 54 by John Sinclair
I’ve been talking in this space all year about my forthcoming book from the MMM Publishing Company called IT’S ALL GOOD—A John Sinclair Reader, and our hope was to have it available for the Cannabis Cup in Clio. But that proved impossible, and now it’ll hit the streets right around the first of September. I’ve been running excerpts from the book to try to pique your interest in what’s coming, and here’s an excerpt from the lead number in the book: On The Road…. Although this writer has followed faithfully the bardic path for fifty years, I waited a long time to hit the road as a poet. There were so…
Free The Weed 53 by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from Amsterdam, where I’ve been spending my summer so far working with my pals Steve The Fly and Sidney Daniels to try to open up a temporary autonomous zone of our own called the Bohemian Embassy somewhere in the city of Amsterdam this fall. At the same time I’m working on completing the final stages of production so my new book, IT’S ALL GOOD—A John Sinclair Reader, can go to the printer under the careful hands of my publisher, Ben Horner. My daughter Celia, who’s designed and produced the book for me, was in Detroit working with me on making the book and now is back in New Orleans…
Free The Weed 52 by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from Amsterdam, where I’ve just returned for the summer until it’s time to come back to Michigan in August for the Michigan Medical Cannabis Cup festivities in Clio and around the Flint area. As a native of Flint I take great pride in the long strides made there by the medical marijuana community to establish itself and secure its existence under the law, and in the citizens of the city itself for voting to enjoy legalized recreational marijuana in their community. When I smoked my first joint in Flint sometime in 1961, I could barely comprehend that weed was illegal. It seemed like such a good thing—how could anyone…
Free The Weed 47 by John Sinclair
As my readers will remember, last November marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Detroit Artists Workshop, a seminal collective of cultural workers I’m proud to have been a part of. This coming June will mark the 50th anniversary of the Artists Workshop Press, which published my first books of poetry. And to celebrate my half a century as a poet and writer I have collected 25 poems & 25 writings for Its All Good: A John Sinclair Reader, which I hope to see published in an American edition this year, and hopefully by the publisher of this magazine for which I’ve written a column each month for the…
Free The Weed 46 by John Sinclair
Highest holiday greetings from Amsterdam and Happy New Year to everybody. I’m writing from my favorite spot, the 420 Café, where I landed a month ago from New Orleans to find that the 27th Annual High Times Cannabis Cup has been seriously disrupted by the local authorities who claimed that the Cup’s organizers had failed to obtain the proper permits for its five-day exposition of cannabis and weed-related products and shut down the affair. It’s no secret that the Netherlands and its business partners in America and the European Union have been increasingly unhappy with the relatively wide-open public availability, vendition and smoking of weed in Amsterdam and in towns and…
Free The Weed 45 by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from New Orleans, where I’m completing the last leg of my fall visit to the United States with a whirlwind of activity involving 9 performances in 7 days, most of them with the Carlo Ditta Trio & friends and the last one with pianist Tom Worrell. That’s why they call me the Hardest Working Poet In Show Business. I’ll get a good break in the action when I get back to Amsterdam for the Cannabis Cup, a full week of good clean fun in a temporary environment created by 2000 or so young American potheads who will have descended upon the city to sample as much good weed as…
Free The Weed 43 by John Sinclair
I’d like to take a turn away from our usual conversation to commemorate the once-in-a-lifetime experience I’ll enjoy next month when we celebrate the founding of the Detroit Artists Workshop 50 years ago. This month I’ll celebrate my 73rd birthday on October 2nd, so I was 23 when we started the Artists Workshop as Detroit’s bohemian outpost and gathering place for a renegade artistic community that was creating a new way to make art and live and work together with other fellow seekers like ourselves. The Detroit Artists Workshop was a beautifully organic thing that grew directly out of the nexus of a wildly disparate group of creative individuals in their…
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