tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87307681885516982382023-07-17T21:37:07.353-07:00WITCHGRASS: A pipe dreamWITCHGRASS: A pipe dream, a novel by Dave Wilkinson portrays shattered lives and conflicted families as a New England town splits apart.
This blog is to create community around a book that tells a different story about the Drug War.Dave Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14099114773857492601noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8730768188551698238.post-41777009377280210342010-06-24T18:27:00.000-07:002010-06-27T07:29:13.906-07:00<div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"But they're ridiculous. They have no support. Barely a hundred, and half of them students on a lark," Finn countered.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mathers looked up at the tin ceiling.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"But you know, Bud, the hell of it is that they're right about most of their facts. It's true that marijuana isn't a peril to western civilization. Nasty obnoxious stuff, but nothing like cocaine or heroin. And they might even be right about hemp agriculture and the trees and all. I'm no expert. They aren't either, but it wouldn't be the first time the government has been proven wrong. Those people could put Drug Enforcement out of business in this state."</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mathers reflected. A sobering thought.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">But it didn’t sober the sheriff.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"Fat chance. Drugs are Public Enemy Number One. We've got a War going. The public wants a Drug-Free America. We're going to give it to them." Jake Lincoln was always running for election.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">So was Mathers.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">--Excerpt from WITCHGRASS: a pipe dream</span></span></div>Dave Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14099114773857492601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8730768188551698238.post-17100670631190926002010-06-21T09:14:00.000-07:002010-06-21T20:34:32.502-07:00<div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"As in Jamaica, work and ganja have become an ingrained culture. Reggae bands can always find work in Maine. There is even some direct cross-fertilization through the Jamaican apple pickers who visit the state every fall. Real Lamb's Bread ganja, though, is only a memory of the serendipitous seventies. Other world-class strains of ganja now proliferate in the woods.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This culture seems to exist, in some variant, in every Maine town. Other places too, maybe, but everywhere in Maine. Along the coast, in the back counties, in The County itself. Little towns, mill towns, farm towns surrounded by green woods. Hard work, trees, opportunity.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">An ethnicity of work in the warrior mode. Agricultural Entrepreneurship that even some legislators have admired. Taking back old farms marked by endless stone fences. Taking back the land to make green gold."</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span> </span></div><div style="font: 11.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 18.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">-- Excerpt from WITCHGRASS: a pipe dream</span></span></div>Dave Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14099114773857492601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8730768188551698238.post-76214673451186885502010-06-14T22:17:00.000-07:002010-06-29T07:22:51.427-07:00New novel lampoons Drug War<div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">WITCHGRASS: A pipe dream, </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">a novel by Dave Wilkinson portrays shattered lives and conflicted families as a New England town splits apart.</span></b></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">What if a Vietnam helicopter suddenly landed in your back yard? The town of New Salem, Maine faces an invasion of military operations, secret spies and child-parent betrayal that sets a peaceful rural county spinning.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Carolyn Chute, author of best-selling </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Beans of Egypt, Maine</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, “cry-laughed and laugh-cried through a book more important than most of what they give kids to read in school.”</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Witchgrass: A pipe dream</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> sweeps the reader into a quiet world turned upside down by the War on Drugs. An afternoon invasion becomes a multi-faceted dramedy as helicopters cause confusion and panic one summer during the early 1990s.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">School children, sheriffs, professors and prosecutors play their parts in a story about one of America’s major social issues. Emotions boil in the culture clash over cannabis, a matter which divides parent from child, employee from company, husband from wife.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As the story comes to its unexpected and riotous climax, Maine in the Bush One era becomes a positive vision of future enlightenment. In its non-judgmental portrayal of cannabis users, this novel could be an image breakthrough for much-maligned pot smokers.</span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 12.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 11.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Witchgrass: A pipe dream</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> is available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels, also at selected bookstores in July.</span></span></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br />
</span></div>Dave Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14099114773857492601noreply@blogger.com1