Jack Herer

[suffie63 3]

Jack and I moved into a rental house in a remote area of Lake County, California about two or three years ago. Chuck Jacobs moved in shortly after that. He said he needed a place to stay and our home has always been open to just about anyone. I’d never met Chuck before we moved to Lake County but he seemed to be an okay guy.

 

Roland A. Duby was living with us, too, and was Jack’s driver/assistant/friend. He decided to go back to Kentucky to run for sheriff and Chuck took over his job. Jack and Chuck started spending more and more time on the road, while I stayed home and took care of websites. I post cannabis news on Jack’s website, MySpace, Facebook, Current, Twitter, WeedTracker, and a few others.

 

I’ve been expressing concern for a long time about Jack’s work schedule being so hectic because he had a major stroke 10 years ago and major heart surgery about five years ago. But he started taking Rick Simpson’s hemp oil and was getting stronger and stronger. Earlier this year, he broke six ribs when he fell in a bathroom in a motel he and Chuck were staying in. His ribs healed up completely in one month. I believe this is because of the oil.

 

In July of this year, I found another house closer to town with a guest house in the back where Chuck could have his own bachelor pad so Jack and I could finally have some privacy. It was OK with the landlord to grow in the yard. We’re all legal patients. The day Jack and Chuck paid the deposit on the new house is the same day I found out that Chuck had arranged for friends of his to come out from Indiana to live in the house I thought we were going to move out of, and take care of our garden which was supposed to be going to the new house where I would be watering it. We only had a few small plants at the time. Instead we would be paying rent on two houses and supporting four more people for the next several months.

 

We never did move into the new house. We both knew we couldn’t afford it so I asked Jack if I should just give the new landlord 30 days notice and get the deposit back. He said yes and apologized for messing things up with it. He told me we’d work everything out and give up the old house after the harvest.

 

The week before we rented the house in Lower Lake that we never moved into, my nephew, who lives in Carson City, Nevada, called and said he was scheduled to get a serious operation and asked me if I could come out and help him for a month. At first I said I wouldn’t be able to because I was the only one home to take care of the garden, but when I found out Chuck’s friends would be there, I told him I would come out and help him. Shortly after I got to Carson City, his operation was postponed because of insurance problems.

 

I lived in Carson City when I was a teenager and have only been back a few times since then. I’ve always loved the old west feeling and told Jack how I had forgotten how much I liked it. He said I should look for a place there for us to open up a head shop. I was surprised he would think of opening a store there. I love Carson City but I can’t stand cold winters. Plus I don’t have any experience with running a store.

 

He told me he wanted me to go to Portland, Oregon for a couple of weeks and work at the store his kids and Captain Ed’s kids own there, so I could get some experience. In the meantime, I started looking at shops with realtors.

 

I dropped off copies of Jack’s books and video at the Sheriff’s office and donated copies to the library. I set up a blog for Jack on the Nevada Appeal website and updated it with hemp news every day. Then I met an ex-policeman who asked me what I was going to do when the police planted a pound of pot on me because I was an activist trying to change the laws. I finally decided this was not the right time to go to prison and told Jack I was going to look for us a house in Santa Rosa.

 

I found a place on Craigslist that seemed great. Two chefs looking for 420 friendly roommates. (I’m not much of a cook.) They both work a lot so we’d have plenty of time to have some privacy for the first time in years. It was a big house where we had our own bathroom, huge room and lots of extra storage.

 

I looked for Chuck a place nearby and found a couple of 420 friendly roommate situations for him that I told Jack about but I don’t know if he ever told Chuck or not.

 

During this time, a couple of more people moved into the old house. Eve Lentz was one of them. Jack told me she was there to help edit the mushroom book. I was glad to hear it because he’d been working on it since before I met him and I knew how important it is to him. There are some major problems with the book, though.

 

Jack and Chuck left to go to the Seattle, Olympia and Portland hemp festivals. I started looking for a job in Santa Rosa because I didn’t want Jack to have to work so hard to make a living for us. The rent on the new place was only $750 a month so I figured he’d be able to slow down a lot.

 

Then I got the call that Jack had a heart attack in Portland. Right away friends started telling me that Jack had been taking acid and ecstasy at the festivals and was worn down and tired. I was so angry because Jack’s health isn’t good enough for him to be taking those kinds of drugs anymore. I’ve seen him have some very bad experiences with them in the past and had asked Chuck to please make sure he didn’t take acid.

 

Then I got a call that my dad had a heart attack in Tulsa, Oklahoma on that same day. Thank God, he survived it and is back at home now.

 

I flew to Portland and asked a nurse if I could use Rick Simpson oil on some diabetic sores he had on his legs. They said no but I kept telling them about it and how great it is for Jack. He’s been taking it for over a year. I'll write more about this part later.

 

At some point, the social worker told me a woman I’d never met or heard of before, Joy Graves, had shown up with a medical power of attorney that Jack allegedly signed right before his heart attack, making Joy and Chuck the people in charge of his medical decisions. Their legal department said it was incomplete and probably forged and wanted to talk to Joy about it but she never did go talk to them. They decided it wasn’t a legal document.

 

When it was time for Jack to be released from the hospital, I wanted to take him back to California but was told it would cost me $6,000 to transport him there because his insurance didn’t cover it. We get by month to month and don’t have savings or property so instead I paid $600 for him to be moved to Eugene, where his daughter and some of our good friends live.

 

He went to Hillside Rehab but they weren’t ready for him when he got there. They didn’t have his insulin or diabetic food for his tube. His blood sugar was over 400 for two days. On the third day I asked them to take him to a hospital. When he got to Sacred Heart Hospital his blood sugar was 488.

 

They wanted me to sign a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) form. The doctor explained that if he had another heart attack, he wouldn’t be able to survive it but if I didn’t sign the paper, they would still have to pound on his chest and possibly crack his chest and also shock him, which they had already done at the festival and he still had burn marks on his chest. He said that when people die a natural death, endorphins are released that make them more comfortable at the end but not when you do that.

 

So I agreed that if he had another heart attack while he was in there, they were not to torture him that way. But in all other ways, they were to take the best care and do everything they could to save him if something happened. There are several parts to a DNR and you can customize it how you want it.

 

Joy Graves refuses to return my calls but I’ve heard the reason she’s doing this to Jack is because of the DNR. I don’t know what the truth is.

 

After three days in the hospital he was stable again and moved to Avamere Riverpark Rehab. A few days later he fell out of bed about 4:00 in the morning. He had lumps on his head and bruises on his eyelids. He seemed pretty traumatized for about three days and then started feeling better.

 

After being here with him every day since September 13, I needed to go back to California, clear out the Santa Rosa house, get some paperwork I needed for Jack’s insurance, get our cat, my computer and some clothes because I knew we were going to be in Eugene for a few months at least. I went to do this last weekend.

 

I asked Elvy Musikka and Sharon Cohen to please check on Jack a few times while I was gone for three days. They called me when I was driving back and said the nursing home had kicked them out because Joy Graves had shown up with the paper and they accepted it as being legal and there was a list of people who could see Jack and they weren’t on it. I called the nursing home and they confirmed it and said I wasn’t on the list either. Despite this, they agreed to let me see him yesterday and the day before.

 

After Jack’s heart attack, several people said to me that he recently told them he was heartbroken that I had left him. But I hadn’t left him. I was waiting for him to come home after the Portland festival and he knew that.

 

Now Eve is saying that’s not what he wanted and he planned to break up with me. She is trying to get me to believe that Jack talks to her at the nursing home when I’m not there. As far as I can tell, Jack is still trying to talk but isn’t able to yet. The people who run the nursing home won’t tell me if this is true or not. I just want Jack to get better so I can find out what he really wants. I love him very much and he’ll always be my hero.

 

Jack gave me a purpose in life. He made me believe that we can really change the world with hemp and everyone will be happier and healthier for it. I believe that and I’ll keep working for it, no matter what.

 

 

Bron

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wat a story,

moeilijk zeg, via via communicatie

afstand, van horen zeggen,

 

face to face contact

is a missing link.

 

Ik hoop dat dingen in een ruistiger vaarwater komen

want dit verdient de dame niet