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It's weird for a guy from the
sixties to read about my beloved Minnesota on

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the verge of legalizing marijuana, allowing
possession of a pound and a half for

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people twenty one and over, opening
an agency to license shops, setting an

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eight percent sales tax erasing the convictions
of old dopers. When I was in

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college, I went to parties where
people sat in dim apartments, doors locked

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an eye out for the cops.
The grateful dead on the turntable and illegality

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was a big part of the appeal. We were rebels in the cause of

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higher consciousness. Soda lacked the reliable
criminal element to supply quality refer and our

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stuff was like mulch. And the
euphoria was mostly the stupefaction you get from

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holding your breath. We would have
gotten more euphoria by riding a good roller

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coaster. The big thrill was looking
around the room and wondering who might be

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an undercover cop. I'm not opposed
to legalization. I think it's crazy to

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lock people up for wanting to be
stupid. And if your doctor prescribes marijuana,

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goodie gum drops for you. But
when I smell marijuana smoke, I

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get away from it as quickly as
possible before some pothead on a skateboard and

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wearing headphones comes crashing into me.
Getting high lowers alertness. Go back and

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read beat poetry written in dim,
smoke filled rooms, and most of it

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is less interesting than the average computer
manual. Alan Ginsberg was a very sweet

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man, and I went to a
couple of his readings, and I learned

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that it was good to sit near
the exit, that fifteen minutes of allan

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chanting was sufficient. I preferred beer
parties, which often led to hilarity and

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camaraderie and guys singing surfer songs and
the sloop John B. And I saw

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her standing there, whereas marijuana led
to pretentious inwardness and contemplation of oneself as

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a rainbow or a rubber duck or
rhubarb. This is an old man talking,

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and my experience tells me that introspection
is short sighted, and that the

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great thing is to make yourself useful
to other people. I saw an ophthalmologist

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last week whose waiting room was full
of rambunctious kids and who does surgery to

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repair crossed eyes, and it was
clear how much she loved kids and their

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noise, and it was the happiest
waiting room I ever was in. I

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went to see her about my double
vision, which caused me to take a

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bad fall and bang up my knee
and have to walk around with a cane.

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And when I walked into the waiting
room of laughing children, I felt

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a sort of blessedness. And then
she put me through the eye chart drills,

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and I looked at a light which
I saw as doub on and she

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experimented with strips of lenses to make
two lights one and pasted a plastic prism

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on my right lens that made the
world clearer. And now I can walk

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down the street and see the world
whole. The world is as beautiful as

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ever, though we live in a
strange time of outrages, political fevers,

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a dysfunctional Congress intent on partisan thwacking, while basic governmental obligations go unaddressed because

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they don't make life its flash,
and Bell's ding House. Republicans seem focused

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on paranoid conspiracies, compared to which
Richard M. Nixon was an honest and

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upright public servant worthy of having a
statue of him in a public square if

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I thought ahead ten or twenty years. I could easily despair for the country,

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But at my age, one lives
in the present, and so the

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encounter with the ophthalmologist looms large in
my experience. She is smart and funny

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and kind, and she accomplishes good
in this world. And I doubt that

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she got there by having out of
body experiences. She paid attention in school

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and somehow became fascinated by the human
eye and attained skills to make a huge

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difference in the lives of little kids. Clarity, I am grateful for aunt.

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I don't need head trips or expansion
of consciousness. The best minds of

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my generation were not destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical naked, angel headed

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hipsters looking through a fix. Some
of them became heart surgeons and ophthalmologists,

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and thanks to them, I walk
in the park and look at the beautiful

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people and love America for the goodness
and fascinating varieties of individualism all all around.

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Thank you, doctor science. Cheerfulness
it's a simple virtue that can turn

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the tide in gloomy times. It's
also the title of Garrison Keeler's new book,

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Funny, thought Provoking, Whimsical It's
an uplifting read and a great gift

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cheerfulness. Check it out at Garrisonkeeler
dot com