Herb Fields

Herb Fields (Dmin,A#,A)


Secret that my Mamma used to hide from me
I man must have been born in a Herb Field (x3)

Signs of how Babylon hard
They wanna stop INI now from grow I man Herb Farm
And even when a Natty growing fruits and herbs gwaan
I know the Babylon them a spray pesticide
Dem a try fi poison my meditation
So I’m feeling just a little bit under the weather
Cause I don’t have my marijuana (x3)

Secret that my Mamma used to hide from me
I man must have been born in a Herb Field

See a sign of how Babylon hard
Is like everywhere I go nowadays I seem to run up inna road block
And when you stopped by the cops you think of something clever yow
Cause ‘rude bwoy what you charge I for?”
So they took mi down to the station inna mi marina
So I'm feeling just a little bit under the weather
Cause I don’t have, I don’t have my marijuana(x3)

Mix:
Mi she mi haffi wait til Tuesday just fi give a judge a talk
Cause dem lock we up inna negril for a little herb stalk
And now incarcerated on the police station yard
Said I don’t know why they want to make the singer life so hard
Still I have to wait til Tuesday just to get a draw
Don’t know why they want profile I as a outlaw
But I’d rather be an outlaw than to bow to Babylon law (X2)
I got a little message for police commissioner
I wrote a detail letter to the legislator
There’s receptors in your brain for THC Jah man
So don’t you try and fight the herb from Jah land
Or else you end up end up you gone down in Babylon (x2)
When INI a hold a meditation
Cause the senseimilla a Just the healing of the Nation now.

Secret that my Mamma used to hide from me
I man must have been born in a Herb Field

I listen to a lot of reggae these days and this group, Rootz Underground, has got my attention. They sound old, but clearly they are pretty young.

I think it's interesting that the chorus of the songs is "secret that my momma used to hide from me" and the rest of the song is about the authorities (cops) criminalizing marijuana. Is this yet another example of young men blaming their moms for upholding the patriarchy? Another instance where mothers uphold patriarchal law in order to keep their children safe from the kind of system that has the capability to rip families to shreds? Mothers do what they need to do in order to ensure that they have their children in their lives and when the children grow up and see with open eyes they have the nerve to point fingers at their mothers who are between a rock and a hard place their entire lives.

I made a different choice in my life. My son isn't being lied to. We do not go into a different room to smoke marijuana because I am not about to feed into the lies that are propagated by the cops and the two-faced politicians about the effects of marijuana. Who are they to say that I can't safely medicate myself? I'd rather be a stoner who can function happily in society than to be a drunk who operates on a more violent and less functional level. Alcohol is "legal" in my culture, marijuana is not. I don't ever really wonder why my culture is more violent than not due to this fact. Cigarettes, which have been proven to have hundreds of toxic chemical additives in each little death stick, are legal, too. Yet, because we need to be protected from ourselves, we should not smoke marijuana because it could......well, it could get us into legal trouble. Only because of the legal system. It's the end here that justifies the means. Marijuana is less of a health issue than alcohol and cigarettes (no one has ever over-dosed on marijuana nor has ever died due to only smoking marijuana)....but we need to be protected from it, for some reason. Maybe because if the majority of the people smoked marijuana instead of drank alcohol, our culture might be happy and communities might get along and politicians would be in BIG trouble if the people bonded together so.

I've grown marijuana a couple of times through the years, and it's a really good feeling to be able to cultivate your own medication. As with all other herbs that serve to better our health, I believe that marijuana is not just an ordinary herb but an herb for the soul. We've heard of soul food, and soul food feels good and tastes good and is best enjoyed with loved ones. Well, marijuana is soul herbs. Marijuana doesn't antagonize urges to harm or degrade yourself or others. Marijuana makes people feel good. The only reason why so many people get paranoid is because of the legal system. The end justifying the means again. Take away the criminalization, and the people won't feel so PARANOID about feeling GOOD!

There is legislation that is going to be going through congress (again) sometime that is about to protect the states that have already voted for medical marijuana decriminalization laws. Since the feds keep busting into the states' scenes and raiding the the little herb shops for everything they've got, the activists and a few reasonable politicians have gotten together and created legislation that will serve to protect the growing number of people within those states. Since the legislations' creation in 2001, even more states have voted for medical marijuana laws to protect the people. This should be a sign for congress that this bill is not going to go away. It's going to keep coming back until it passes. This issue has grown to the point where politicians are going to start losing their jobs if they don't represent the people on this issue. People are starting to wake up and learn that all the supposed harms of marijuana have been lies for the most part and that marijuana can actually improve the quality of one's life.

I have a feeling that all it's going to take is for some old and outdated dudes to die off and make room for the up and coming generation to take the reins. My generation loves all kinds of drugs. A lot of us have gone through the experimental phases of our lives having felt like we'd been lied to about marijuana, we handled ourselves using pot, and so we went on experimenting with other more dangerous substances. Some of those more dangerous substances have even been legal. My generation has stumbled through addictions like rites of passage. What my generation has learned will translate into leaps and bounds of progressive politics for our future generations. My generations' children are going to rebel against conventional education because we are going to teach our children that they have to seek out the truth for themselves. You can't be alive today and not know that if you watch mainstream teevee you're being brainwashed. Even my son at 4 years old knew that commercials were made to make you want to buy things. He understood at a young age that everything he sees on teevee tries to make him feel a certain way. He would tell me that a certain commercial would make him feel like he wanted something instead of just saying to me that he wanted that something. I can imagine many mothers and fathers of my generation explaining how the teevee permeates the brain to their children because otherwise our children would never stop demanding that they want the crap they see on teevee.

All the signs of change are here. Awareness will take it's toll on outdated laws.

FWD: Continued....

Another email pushed on me by my dad. He sends me a lot of patriotic propaganda like this. Notice the misogyny in that the unpatriotic person in this story is an Iraqi woman.

HELL YEAH!

Love This Comeback

One of my sons serves in the military. He is still stateside, here in
California He called me yesterday to let me know how warm and welcoming
people were to him and his troops everywhere he goes, telling me how
people shake their hands and thank them for being willing to serve and
fight for not only our own freedoms , but ! so that others may have
them also.

But he also told me about an incident in the grocery store he stopped
at yesterday on his way home from the base. He said that ahead of
several people in front of him stood a woman dressed in a burkha.

He said when she got to the cashier she loudly remarked about the U.S.
flag lapel pin the cashier wore on her smock. The cashier reached up and
touched the pin, and said proudly, 'Yes, I always wear it and probably
always will.'

The woman in the burkha then asked the cashier when she was going to
stop bombing her countrymen, explaining that she was Iraqi.

A gentleman standing behind my son stepped forward. Putting his arm
around my son's shoulders and nodding towards my son, he said in a calm
and gentle voice to the Iraqi woman:

'Lady, hundreds of thousands of men and women like this young man have
fought and died so that YOU could stand here, in MY country and accuse a
check-out cashier of bombing YOUR countrymen. It is my belief that had
you been this outspoken in YOUR own country, we wouldn't need to be
there today. But, hey, if you have now learned how to speak out so
loudly and clearly, I'll gladly buy you a ticket and pay your way back
to Iraq so you can straighten out the mess in YOUR country that you are
obviously here in MY country to avoid.

' Everyone within hearing distance cheered!

IF YOU AGREE____ Pass this on to all your proud American friends.

I just did.

I've never been one to call this land "MY country" because I believe that a higher power owns this land. No matter what religion, even atheism, people believe that there were forces beyond human capabilities that formed this habitable rock we call Earth. Something Else made us. This forwarded email exposes men's double-standard between religion and patriotism. It's no doubt that the male in this story who stood up to the Wicked Iraqi Witch of The East was supposed to represent a red-blooded christian good ol' boy. This man, since his dialog was described as being in a "calm
and gentle voice," is supposed to be read as a church-goer if not christ-like. There's no need to mention any of that in this email, since it can be assumed with just a few select words in conjunction with Defending The Troops and American Freedom. So, in this email, we have a christ-like man standing up to the Wicked Muslim of The East who is obviously not speaking from her Place. Even though the christ-man says she has the freedom to speak as she does, he makes sure that she isn't allowed the freedom to speak by putting her back in her place. He verbally abuses her in a calm and gentle voice (he'll buy a ticket for her to go back where she belongs sounds an awful lot like sending african americans "back to where they came from") because that's what good ol' boys have to do make sure those uppity women don't get their heads swollen. Especially so if you're a woman who is from another country. This is so racist and so sexist it makes my head spin. It's hard to separate the racism and the sexism in this story. It's hard to separate racism and sexism in american culture...period.

I really hate getting these emails from my dad especially when he will concur that Bush is a disaster and that this war is a disaster. But he will perpetuate the rhetoric about supporting the troops and how americans have more freedom than any other humans on Earth. Well, mostly because he believes he has the right to have guns, and lots of them. But I don't. I am married to someone who used to have a non-violent felony, and even though it has been expunged (at a pretty penny) he still is not allowed to have a gun, and neither am I since I am married to him. He can purchase an antique black powder pistol or rifle, but if he is caught shooting it or in possession of it, then it can be taken from him and he can be charged with some bullshit. We already went over this very thoroughly with people who would have rather sold us a gun than not. You know those white male NRA types that want all the other white males to have arms to bear. Oh, I just realized how close NRA is to MRA. Anyway, my dad will always get sucked in by the patriotic rhetoric. And then he thinks that it's okay to push this kind of shit on me via email. Just when I thought I'd gotten away from his constant patriarchal voice, it comes right into my own home through the modern wonders of the internet. I had been just deleting anything he sends me, but it's been at least somewhat amusing critiquing these emails after being infuriated by them for so long.