Things to do with a sociology degree

My step-daughter Hanna texted me this morning with the news that she'd just served Marc Emery a hot-dog. Apparently the plucky Persian had one of his food "trucks" towed to Queens Park today for the Global Marijuana March. Shrewd call, Hoonan!

Which is what brought Emery to the scene, logically enough. I told her to put a Wally-burger on the menu in honour of the original Prince of Pot, Wally Tucker. 

So Hanna is slinging hot-dogs with her soc degree. But that's not the only road open to a recent graduate. You could be an Uber driver. Many soc grads find meaningful work in retail.

Hey, the sky's the limit!

There's no such thing as too much education...

Personally, I found my sociology degree hardly held back my welding career at all. Sure, the other folks on the shop floor will view you with a degree of suspicion at first, but one thing sociology grads understand is how to blend in.

Hanna in Hoonan's food truck.

Me in Irving's shipyard.

There's always the option of more education, of course. Go for the graduate degree. Go all the way and get yourself a Doctor Phil. Your Uber clients will be massively impressed when you drop that tidbit. 

Even thirty years ago the job market was tight for soc grads. I remember a sessional at UGuelph wingeing about the lack of tenure-track opportunities back in the early eighties. He'd been on the sessional track with his Ph.D. for ten years at that point, and the problem has gotten exponentially worse since. He often expressed his regret at not having become a high-school teacher instead.

Which is not to say there are zero tenure track opportunities. Who gets a crack at them though is a mighty sketchy business. White males would be pretty much SOL. White females perhaps slightly less so. What's required, beyond a visible identity as a member of an oppressed subset of society, is an appetite for political correctitude and advanced ass-kissing skills.

Hanna has more people skills when she's sleep-walking than I could ever conjure on my best day, but I'm afraid she shares my skills deficit in the ass-kissing department.

But lets not forget that a university education isn't intended as job training. Unless you're in medicine or engineering, of course. It's about building character and building a network, don't ya know!

I shared many a pint with my various profs over the years in the interest of building a network. One of the folks I really liked was a guy named Ian Currie. He was a sessional, and if I recall correctly, he didn't even have a Doctor Phil to wave around, but he had a best-selling book out at the time which I suppose, in the eyes of the hiring committee, made up for that short-coming.

Alas, he took himself to his reward before my budding networking skills had a chance to fully blossom. 

And Hanna met some illustrious mentors whilst doing her degree at York, including a couple of folks I'd studied with thirty years before. The most illustrious by far was Mel Watkins. I didn't realize the old pinko was still alive till Hanna nonchalantly mentioned that he often walked her home after his evening class. Don't know if a letter of recommendation from Mel would still open many doors.

Whatever else he is or was, there's no getting around the fact that he's still a white male.

I've suggested to Hanna that she should consider a law degree. Sure, there's plenty of folks with those who are under-employed too, but Hanna has the smarts and people skills to stand out in the crowd.

She's all in if I pay for it.

Well kid, I've got a lovely batch of seedlings that I'm planning to put in just over the fence-line just as soon as I'm sure the danger of frost is over for good. The way Justin is going about his legalization gambit will ensure a healthy grey-market for ganja for years to come.

There's hope with dope, even when you have a sociology degree.

RIP Mike Baldasaro

When Wally went to his reward not too long ago, we wondered how long Mike was gonna keep on ticking without his long-term partner in "crime" by his side.

Not very long, as it's turned out. Yup, last week Mike joined Wally in that great hemp garden in the sky. Mike and Wally, or Wally and Mike, were pioneers in the legal pot movement for most of my lifetime. They've faded from memory a bit since younger and more media-savvy marijuana advocates joined the fray, but let's never forget their contribution to the battle!

I personally never met either of them, but we had mutual acquaintances, and by all accounts these guys were solid down-to-earth folks who would do anything for anybody they considered a friend. They say Mike was a little bit over-protective of Wally, but over the long term that was a good thing. Wally was just a little too trusting. He'd give interviews to random reporters and the narcs would be knocking on his door the next day. He needed an interlocutor.

That would be Mike.

They've both gone to a better place, and when you look around, you'd have to admit they made it in the nick of time.

RIP, boys!

The prince of pot and the king

The news that "the prince of pot" has survived his ordeal in the US prison system and made it back to Canada was certainly welcome.

Incarcerated on bogus trafficking charges and left to twist in the wind by the Harper regime, Marc Emery has vowed to invest his considerable energies in the Justin Trudeau election campaign, as revenge on the Harperites.

Vengeance is not a virtuous motivator, my friend.

The Harper regime is entering the election cycle caught on the back foot. Its single economic initiative, promoting tar sludge at all costs, isn't going anywhere.

It is further discombobulated by the continuous stream of revelations about its connivance in the wanton abuse of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

The nitty-gritty of the Harper legacy since 2006 rests on two pillars; promoting environmentally degrading and unsustainable tar sands development, and screwing Canadian workers.

That's why the Harper gang is working overtime to change the subject, and the subject they're really keen to change it to is Justin Trudeau's promise to legalize marijuana.





That's from some anti-Trudeau pamphlets Harperites have been mailing out.

Yup, we haven't seen such silly scare tactics since the Reefer Madness era.

But no matter; hard-core neanderthals in the Harper cabinet are mailing out this kind of anti-pot, anti-Trudeau propaganda, hoping to scare little old ladys into talking this topic up at their church socials.

"Oh did you see where that whipper-snapper Trudeau wants to sell marywanna to the children at the candy counter in the corner store, Mildred? My gosh, what's this world coming to?"

Ya. So I don't think this is a climate wherein overt support from Emery is going to help Trudeau.

Emery should ask himself, what would Wally do?

Wally is of course the late and much-lamented Wally Tucker. If Marc Emery is the Prince of Pot, Wally is the undisputed King.

Wally had established the Church of the Universe long before young Marc twisted up his first doobie. And the holy sacrament of the Church of the Universe was the weed of wisdom.

So do the right thing, Emery. You can help Trudeau by shutting up for awhile. You've been in the slammer for five years; get caught up with your family or something, at least till the election is over.

What would Wally do?

Happy 420!

Not sure where this 420 stuff originated.

Originally I couldn't figure out why the pot-heads were celebrating Hitler's birthday. Just doesn't add up. Pot-heads... Hitler?

Lets twist one up and celebrate the Fuhrer?

Then they told me it was also Bob Marley's birthday.

OK, that makes a bit more sense.

Not that pot and making sense necessarily go together all the time...

But for the think tank here at Falling Downs we're a little more comfortable with some birthdays than with others.

At Falling Downs we like to celebrate 420 more than once a year. As you know, 4:20 comes around every 24 hours.

And whether you fire one up once a year or once a day, don't forget to celebrate the folks who have brought the weed of wisdom into the mainstream.

Kipling.

Wally Tucker.

Marc Emery.

Willie Nelson.

Now turn off your computer and go twist one up...

Kipling and the Prince of Pot

No, I'm not talking about Marc Emery.

Emery, as far as I know, is cooling his heels in a Mississippi prison, getting three nutritious meals per day and a roof over his head courtesy of the American taxpayer. All for the crime of sending marijuana seeds through the mail from his home base in Vancouver.

I'm talking about the real Prince of Pot, Wally Tucker. I'm not sure what Wally is up to these days, but I'm sure he's fired up the bong a few times while he plans it. Compared to Wally, Marc Emery is a mere pretender to the throne. If Marc is the Prince, Tucker is the King of Kings.

About forty years ago Wally started his own religion. The Church of the Universe. Made the weed of wisdom the official sacrament of his church. Every pot bust after that Wally and his faithful sidekick would show up in court and claim their case was a violation of their religious freedoms.

Usually they'd show up in court naked. That was another pillar of his religion. Thou shalt toke. Thou shalt show up in court with your billy-bong waving around. Hey, you start your own religion, you make up whatever rules you want. You go Wally!

That's a staple truth for anybody who starts their own religion. Isn't that the whole point of starting your own religion? If you're happy with the status quo, why bother? Would Brigham Young have started his cult if he was happy just to be another Christian? Would Jesus Christ have started his cult if he was happy just to be another Jew? Of course not.

That's the thing with religions and cults. A cult needs to acquire a certain critical mass before it's generally accepted as a religion. That's where David Koresh missed the boat, and Jimmy Jones too. And Wally Tucker. They never acquired the critical mass.

So Wally would show up in court, pecker hanging out, faithful sidekick, also naked, in tow. Half a dozen court employees busy throwing blankets over them to hide their unmentionable parts, and the judge never ever gave them the respect that he would give, say, the pope. In the eyes of the judge ( hangin' Hank in most cases) Wally was just another wacko pot-head trying to get his own cult off the ground.

So what's all this got to do with my pal Kipling? Well, for the longest time I thought he was just a fringe member of Wally's cult. After all, he was taking that holy sacrament more times in a day than my Muslim friends bow to Mecca. I actually thought for many years he was trying to recruit me. Trying to build that critical mass as it were.

Then I'm talking to him the other day and he tells me he just saw Wally at the family reunion. What? Ya, me and Wally are second cousins.

"He's spread more pot around than Marc Emery and he gets away with it by calling it a religious sacrament. Emery's in jail and Wally's at the family reunion!"

Saluting Wally Tucker; the original Marijuana Messiah

When Marc Emery was just a twinkle in his daddy's eye, there was already a Prince of Pot. His name was Wally Tucker.

My buddy Kipling is a relative of Wally, much as I am a relative of Captain von Trapp. And while I'm fairly tight with Kipling, I have to say he's never invited me to a family do where the Tuckmeister is in attendance. He's never actually invited me to anything, come to think of it.

In the event, Walter Tucker started a religion. He started it just around the time he was going to court for his first possession offence. The "Church of the Universe". Even if you never heard of it, you're a member, at least if you live in this universe. He did a nice job scoping out his territory. Get's in front of Hammered Hank down in Guelph, and pulls out this achingly compelling yarn about how he is a minister at the Church of the Universe, where the sacrament just happens to be the weed 'o wisdom, and he's being persecuted for his religious beliefs.

You have to admit, not even Marc Emery could top that one.

Hangin' Hank pondered the merits of Wally's defence for about ten seconds, then gave him the same sentence he gave every pot peddler who appeared in front of him. Five years of free room and board at Millhaven. Not what Wally had in mind.

So Wally circles the religious freedom wagons and gets the funding from wherever to take his case all the way to the supreme court. Long story short, at least it delayed his Millhaven vacation for about 15 years. The wheels of justice do turn really really slow up here in the Great White North.

We've come a long way in our attitude to the weed since the seventies. There have been many champions along the way. Marc Emery is certainly one of them. But the next time you twist one up, remember Wally Tucker.