Tuesday, April 20, 2010

...4 20 blackbirds


Hi. Or should I say high? Today is a special day for all you potheads out there as April 20th has become an annual celebration of a ritual of sorts that began
at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California,in 1971. The term originated from a group of teenagers who would meet after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur statue.
According to an April 2009 article on the The Huffington Post, the group called itself the Waldos because its members hung out by a wall after school. Writer Ryan Grim, citing interviews with anonymous Waldos, claims that the group met by the statue at 4:20 p.m. to begin a search for a crop of abandoned cannabis growing near Point Reyes that they had heard about. They never found the stash, Grim writes, but smoked plenty of marijuana while looking for it. As a child I would smoke the good stuff while reciting a poem which, apparently blackbirds also partook. I never put the two together, probably because I was so damned high. Enjoy.

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?
The king was in his counting house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes;
When down came a blackbird
And pecked off her nose.
"I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own." Andy Warhol