Well, it’s certainly been a long time since I last updated this section of the site. I know our kids and older grandkids will be very confused about with the last post on my high school, which contained a reference to Facebook. They know how much I absolutely loathe FB because of my belief that it amplifies and distorts all of the divisions that are currently destroying our nation. Social media, especially FB and Twitter, are a catalyst for the degradation of U.S. society.
So how in the Hell did Daddy/Dad/G-pa/G-G-pa get sucked into the abyss of social media?
It was a photo of my 50th high school reunion that sucked me in. I had registered on FB many years ago because of what I was doing with cannabis development. Quite a few growers/developers had IG pages and it was easier to just register with FB, since they owned IG, and use it for seeing what others were doing with cannabis. I had always vowed to stay off FB because back in the early 2000’s, one of our kids is very tech oriented and told me all about FB. In my initial exploration, I viewed one of our daughters FB Home page, scanned down at the posting and read something to the effect… “I guess it’s time to go home and ride the wild stallion….”
TMI, I decided then and there to never utilize FB again!
When the photo of the reunion showed up when I accidently went to FB, I clicked the link and have been down the social media whirlpool ever since. But I never, ever view anyone in the family who has a FB page… ever, for obvious reasons. The Groups feature on FB is very reminiscent of Usenet but with severe moderation. And right now, that’s a good thing because the FB groups I’ve gotten the most pure, unadulterated joy from have been the Louisville Kentucky’s Past and Sunny Isles The Way It Used To Be. Pure, unadulterated nostalgia and the mods absolutely prohibit any posts that are even close to political in nature. So it’s been quite the trip in the Wayback Machine, without the frustration of having politics rammed down my throat. I discovered people who I went from first grade to graduation with in the Highlands that I haven't thought of in over 50 years, photographs of my house from the 1930's with a kid riding down the hill the same way I did, people who I worked with at The Beachcomber down in Sunny Isles. I've even communicated with the bouncer/doorman of Thee Image!!!
I’ve written before about visiting various cannabis fora (plural for multiple forums) to stay informed about new technology, especially lighting. I lurked primarily on Roll-it-Up, MrNice and IC Mag. I was active on RIU during a couple of timeframes but had a tendency to get kicked off because of my caustic reaction to various Millennials who were disrespectful to my postings. Here’s a couple of screenshots of how I interacted in a cannabis forum and yeah I got “asked to leave”. Here’s a couple of illustrative screen shots:
In my first post to every fora I’ve joined, I always state that I don’t do well in moderated environments. Keeping the political bullshit out of view in this election year is the prime directive for my online life for the next year. You’ll immediately notice I am so very different in my online communicative style than I am in real life. I learned a long time ago from the “wise guys” who stayed at The Beachcomber…” the loudest kid in a group is the weakest, look at the guy who aint’ sayin’ a fuckin thing, but everybody stops talking when they say something. That’s where the power is.”
That’s _not_ how things work on an Internet forum. Everybody posts shit, all the time and it gets overwhelming at times, because you can’t read facial expressions, body language, etc. My job when participating in a forum is to wade through all the shit, find out who knows what they are talking about, who doesn’t, what I can learn from the non-morons and what I can teach to intellectually curious newbies. That is the _only_ reason I participate in cannabis fora, to learn what I don't know and teach things I do know.
Which brings me to the purpose of this Journal entry. I’ve found an online home for cannabis discussion and it’s IC Mag. The depth and breadth of cannabis knowledge that is archived on the site is simply astounding. It’s been online since 2004 and some of the most knowledgeable and experienced people in the history of cannabis have utilized the site. The Moderators of ICM are not only knowledgeable about growing and cultivating cannabis, they have no axe to grind about people like me, who have more Internet and cannabis development experience than they do. All they ask is for participants to treat each other with respect, obey the very few forum rules there are, and don’t make new users feel intimidated. Moderation like that I can easily adhere to.
I have recently been concerned that since this site has a 6+ year history, all of it is not going to be archived at archive dot org. I have no earthly idea how sites like this will be accessed in the future, so I'm trying to make the information accessible in other ways. In addition to the hard drive images I create on my computer that contain this site, I wanted another venue to store what I write concerning cannabis… what I’ve done, how I’ve done it, and why I’ve done it, so you kids will understand me a bit better.
I’ve also had some severe problems with the current website displaying photos and content correctly, especially on Android devices. I just don’t have the time, patience and technical knowledge to troubleshoot all the issues. Even though I’ve always concentrated on how this site is viewed on an actual, large monitor PC, I do realize it now looks like Hell on small phones/tablets. There's no telling how you all will be viewing what I've written in the future, when you're reading this. I can't even begin to imagine how you interpret it.
To assure what I’m trying to communicate will be available in the future, I’ve decided to direct my writing to an additional platform and that is going to be ICMag. My participation there will provide another option to view what I’ve written about cannabis, in case archive dot org goes down and you all can't access this website.
On ICM, I think I’m known as the Cussin’ Grandpa. I have no doubt you all will understand why!
Wayback Machine Set To 1973
Nothing to do with cannabis today kids, g-kids and g-g-kids. This is more about life, and the how and why of how you all were raised. This was a post on Facebook I made recently, after a pic of my 50th high school reunion showed up on my Facebook feed. It was one of the very few times I’ve ever actually got on there, read or posted anything. This was my post to the Atherton High School Alumni Association Facebook group:
Strap in extra tight Sherman and the rest of you grads from 73, Mr. Peabody and Chuck U. Farley are taking you on a journey in the Wayback Machine to Atherton High School in 1973. Fifty years after high school graduation and we’re still _alive_. Most of you wouldn’t know me anyway because I was pretty quiet, shy, not popular, but I could be funny and make you all laugh at times. I abhor Facebook as well. I could tell a very funny story involving my daughter, a “riding the wild stallion” post and my promise that I would never go on Facebook again, but that’s another story. Anyway, let’s go on a trip.
We're the gene
We are a generation that, unfortunately, was too young to be hippies and thank God, too old to be Yuppies. Forever scarred by Viet Nam (my lottery number was 25), our graduation year ended with the First Oil Embargo and our retirement years began with the Covid pandemic. In between those years we dealt with; an impeachment, Three Mile Island, the Iran Hostage saga, record high unemployment with inflation and interest rates even higher, Challenger, Black Monday stock crash, the Gulf Wars, Waco and Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, OJ, another impeachment, Y2K… and we’re not even in the New Millennium yet.
Things were not as easy for us as those pesky Millennials seem to think they were.
I’m going to mention names of people I grew up with, and I mean no disrespect to anyone I mention, because it’s is who we are and what made us what we are. The Highlands area of Louisville was such a fantastic place to live for a kid. By walking to elementary, junior and senior high school, we were exposed to a wide variety of economic and social realities. From the low income, shotgun shacks on Speed Avenue to the million dollar mansions on Spring Drive, the kids who grew up together in this area share a common experience. Not only did the rich, intelligent kids from Spring Drive learn stuff from us lower and middle income kids on Speed Avenue but we learned things from them as well.
That made _all_ of us better kids.
I was a lower income, white boy who went to Deer Park Baptist and heard C. Carmen Sharp rain down hell, fire and brimstone about how if you “didn’t accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior”, you were going to Hell. But I also went to school with African American, Jewish and Arab kids (Teddy Shunnarah,) along with Catholics, other Protestants and a bunch of atheists as well. Did prejudice and racism exist? Most assuredly. But when you hear racist epitaphs from parents and grandparents on a daily basis, yet see how gentle and nice Rhonda Behr or Annette Grundy are to someone like you, any reasonably intelligent kid will eventually realize, or at least I did, that all the racial and religious stuff doesn’t mean anything when you’re a kid just trying to pass Dolly Sturman’s Algebra class and need help. Because of the educational and cultural environment of the Highlands in the 60’s and 70’s, racism in my family stopped with _me_. My kids and grandkids are testament to that. The Longfellow, Highland, and Atherton area kids taught me, through their actions, that if you treat people with dignity and respect, they will probably treat you the same way. Not always, but usually. It doesn’t matter if you are poor, shy or aren’t as “cute” as you think everyone else is, as long as you treat people the way you want to be treated, things will work out the way they are supposed to.
Racism is such a difficult topic to discuss for our generation because we witnessed and endured true, blatant, violent racism, not the micro-aggressions that people whine about now. The first inter-racial relationship I was aware of was Bridgett Wempe and I know for a fact she caught literal hell for it, as she lived in my neighborhood. Pretty much kept me from even thinking about asking Patti McHenry, one of the most beautiful and smart girls at Atherton, out on a date. She’s Black and I’m White.
That was my loss because I was not as brave as Bridgett.
I’ve got to write about social/economic class as well. My father was a mechanic and my stepmother didn’t work but somehow we could afford to live in the Highlands and not the Fincastle or Bowman Field projects. I went to school with the kids of doctors, lawyers and various other rich families but I _never_ felt looked down on by Robbie Nolan, Dickie Bell, Kevin Collins etc. Kevin was even gracious enough to invite me to a Graduation party at his parents’ house on Spring Drive and I _so_ was not in his social circle. These were nice guys, even though their families were very rich. They didn’t treat kids from my kind of background like shit, even though some of us were dirt poor, though were didn’t realize it at the time. Time to wind this Wall of Words down, unbuckle the seat belt and exit the Wayback Machine… for good.
This will be my last post as I’m very much a “Be Here, Now” kind of guy and I don’t dwell on the past or worry about the future and Facebook isn’t about that… at all. I’m only on FB to help and communicate with other cannabis developers and by some bizarre quirk of FB’s algorithm, I saw Charlene Elam’s FB post about the 73 reunion and was astounded so many attended. My only info about our reunion was from Classmates.com and just 15-20 people had signed up, so since I haven’t been back to Lou Ah Vull in decades, I didn’t plan to attend. When I saw the pic, I poured over it to see if my “first love” came back. Like me, I’m pretty sure she didn’t. Jenni, at that time, you were truly the music to the story in my eyes, who knows what life would have been like if we stayed together and I never moved from Louisville.
If only you hadn’t of screwed my best friend.
The last time we saw each other you said, “Have a nice life”... I have. Been married a very long time now, have 4 kids, 7 grandkids, 3 great grandkids and I’m more madly in love with my wife now than I was when we got married. I cannot imagine how any of our fellow 73 classmates could be happier than I am now.
I hope you are too.
So that’s what led me here to the Atherton Reunion group of FB and trying to join the 73 private group. Like Groucho said, I guess “I’ll never be part of a club that would have me as a member”. I hope Betty Miles knew what a great teacher she was. I certainly need her as an editor now. As you should be able to tell by my writing, she knew how to reach and teach difficult students like me.
Take care,
Chuck U. Farley