April 28, 2024
# 1655
Not sleepy.ma!
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Cover Story
The Road to Medical Marijuana
One recent night, a friend suggested a gummy containing 5mg of THC. I took it.
A whole gummy proved far too powerful. I woke in the middle of the night and went through five minutes of overheating and deep breathing. My pajamas were sweat-soaked pajamas. Despite that incident, the bottom line was that I slept 6 hours. an amazing sleep for me.
The next night i took 1/3 of that gummy. It was perfect. i slept another 6 hours, without the overheating of the night before. I don’t remember EVER feeling this good.
I asked my PCP to qualify me as having a debilitating condition that is appropriate to receive a medical marijuana card. I will be meeting him for an interview on April 26.
Meanwhile, I’m using the hemp gummies at a very light dosage of only 1/3 of the typical gummy which contains 5mg THC.
When a Massachusetts primary care physician (PCP) evaluates a patient’s eligibility for a medical marijuana card, several factors come into play.
Specified illnesses including:
Chronic pain
Epilepsy
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Anxiety
Depression
Cancer
Insomnia
Glaucoma
HIV/AIDS
Hepatitis C
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
Crohn’s disease
Parkinson’s disease
Multiple sclerosis
And other conditions determined by the certifying healthcare provider.
Remember that each patient’s case is unique, and the PCP will assess individual needs and medical history to determine eligibility for a medical marijuana card.
Common qualifying conditions include a debilitating medical condition that could benefit from the use of medical marijuana, in my case, a decades-long losing battle for a decent night’s sleep.
i have a medical record of terrible sleeplessness going back 60 years. I’ve tried melatonin which worked for a year and then required dosages so large that I couldn’t bring myself to take it.
Before and since my connection with melatonin, many days I am forced to function on just 1 or 2 hours sleep, plus three or four fifteen-minute naps. I know i'm going to get hurt one of these days. I’m eighty-two years old and have to be careful under the best of circumstances. Add in my sleeplessness and I am an accident waiting to happen.
I told the dispensary that my only purpose of taking the gummy was as a sleep aid, not to induce hallucinations.
They recommended these, a light mix of key ingredients.
These are the first gummies i’ve ever tried.
Ten days into them, i have the best ten days of sleep on my life, with no drowsiness and no hallucinations.
I’m ecstatic.
I know nothing about cannabis and gummies. A complete novice. So I found this website:
Gummy Edibles 101: A User's Guide To Dosage, Types, And Effects – BATCH (hellobatch.com)
Here are a few notes from that website.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Precise Dosing: Gummy edibles offer a controlled and precise way to consume cannabis, making them ideal for both beginners and experienced users seeking consistent effects.
Variety of Options: There's a wide range of gummy edibles available, including THC and CBD varieties, full-spectrum to isolates, and an assortment of flavors to cater to personal preferences and dietary needs.
Responsible Use: Understanding responsible consumption practices, such as starting with a low dose, ensuring safe storage, and being aware of legal considerations, is crucial for a safe and enjoyable experience with gummy edibles. To begin your journey with confidence, explore BATCH's carefully crafted CBD Gummies, designed for both purity and potency.
Gummy edibles have become a popular choice for consuming cannabis and CBD, thanks to their convenience and variety. Understanding their types, dosages, and effects is crucial for safe and enjoyable use. This guide aims to equip you with essential knowledge on these aspects, along with safety and legal considerations, ensuring you make informed decisions whether you're new to gummy edibles or seeking to expand your understanding. For those interested in exploring CBD options, BATCH offers a selection of CBD Gummies crafted with care and quality to ensure a delightful experience. Discover more and find your perfect fit at BATCH's CBD Gummies collection.
UNDERSTANDING GUMMY EDIBLES
Gummy edibles are cannabis-infused candies that provide a discreet and convenient way to consume THC or CBD. They are favored for their ease of dosing, as each gummy contains a fixed amount of the active ingredient. Gummies are available in various flavors and potencies, making them appealing to a broad audience. Unlike smoking or vaping, gummies offer a smoke-free alternative, which is a healthier option for the lungs. Understanding the basic properties and effects of gummy edibles is crucial for safe and enjoyable consumption.
Another type of gummies.
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Commentary
I had a great trip to New York City. Took the train, met up w daughter, granddaughter, and Will, Kat’s other. We hung out at her lovely apartment.
They have a really lovely place, central to so much wonder.
And we said hello to Uma
Kat whipped up some bowls of ramen noodles. They hit the spots. Then we went out to the Cloisters.
My favorite room in the museum.
The tapestries are extraordinary.
Will and Kat at the Cloisters: My favorite people.
After the Cloisters we met more family and fifteen of us had a lovely dinner at Perry Street.
Next day we went with Bob the Birder in Central Park. The weather was fabulous.
Kat took these pictures, this of a ruby-crowned kinglet.
Another view.
After the birding we had a vegan dinner and then took granddaughter to her train back to Swarthmore.
On Monday we walked around Hudson Yards and had a final meal: lunch at Grammercy. Lovely.
Then cousin Lauren and I took the Acela back to Boston.
A Day in the Life
Highlights of Last Week
- Watching Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli in Enemy of the People, one of the better Broadway shows I’ve seen in a long while. My friends and I stayed by the stage doors to meet them, which I’ve never done before and was a fun experience.
- Taylor Swift’s new album. I got 4 hours of sleep the night it came out because I could stop listening to it and still can’t. I have read every review, analyzed every lyric, greedily consumed every Twitter thread related to this album, which I love.
- I bought a membership at Blank Street, a coffee chain in NYC, which costs $20 / week for up to 14 drinks per week. I like the fancy drinks like matchas and chais, plus I’m allergic to dairy (+$1 surcharge for milk), so this has been a lifesaver. Call me a dumb Gen Zer or a genius!
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Tucker’s Corner
On The Radio - Rock music in the late 1960’s
The mid to late 1960’s saw some key shifts in rock music. One major shift was that artists began focusing on releasing entire albums as cohesive artistic statements rather than releasing collections of singles. Another was that this period birthed the idea of the guitar hero, that is the idea of guitar players who ability to play riffs and solos made them stand apart from the band they were in. Guys like Eric Clapton and Jimi Page are just 2 examples.
Jimi Hendrix
This half decade also saw basically every avenue of rock music being explored. By 1970 bands had cemented subgenres like heavy rock, metal, punk, folk and country rock, as well as psychedelia. All of these would be fleshed even more in the following decade. The biggest note though is probably how closely rock music was tied to the social changes of the era. The music reflected and influenced the protest movements, civil unrest, alternative lifestyles, and growing drug use across American culture. An incredible time for music!
Robert Plant and Jimi Page of Led Zeppelin
The great horror director Wes Craven once said that horror movies aren’t one of a kind. No matter what their approach nor what insanity they might portray they aren’t the only horror film to do it. At the time he was referring to the success and widespread nature of what horror had become in the wake of 9/11 and America’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Many films in the mid 2000’s were horror directors exorcising their demons at witnessing the images coming out of those parts of the world. I would say the same cultural reaction is happening right now where two separate horror films have been released in which American nuns go to Italy only to discover a plan by a faction of the Catholic Church to impregnate women - one with the biological heir to Jesus Christ in the film Immaculate, the other with the Antichrist in the film I’ll be reviewing this week. With the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade it’s no surprise that storylines about women’s bodily agency are making themselves known. America is trying to make its anxieties tangible and horror is the chosen genre yet again. This is The First Omen.
The First Omen
First and foremost, The First Omen is a prequel to Richard Donner’s Gregory Peck led 1976 classic and First is proudly an “Omen” movie with all its symbolism, ‘70s vibes and earthy color palette and insidious scares intact; ones that will linger and multiply once you turn your lights off at night. So, if the idea of a legacy-prequel to a classic made you roll your eyes at first, think again. Not only does Stevenson, alongside her co-writers Keith Thomas and Tim Smith, remind us what made the line “It’s all for you, Damien!” so chillingly iconic back in 1976, they also instantly justify the need for an origin story for Damien, the Antichrist parented by an American diplomat and his wife, played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick. (The new film’s homage to Peck is both wonderful and a cue that you can run straight back home, and press play on Donner’s film for an experience as seamless as watching the first two Halloween movies back-to-back.)
The story is of Margaret Daino (an incredible Nell Tiger Free), a fresh-off-the-boat American novitiate in Rome, tasked to work at an orphanage prior to taking her vows. She arrives at the Italian capital all wide-eyed and innocently excited as if she is the Suspiria dancer pirouetting into her dance academy. To Margaret, the wows of chastity and poverty she is about to take is her existential purpose, especially at a time when there is political unrest everywhere and people are turning their backs to the church. Still, she does let a fellow novitiate—the enthralling Maria Caballero’s Luz—dress her up in seductive clothes and take her to a dance club. Why cover their bodies and give up on adventures sooner than they need to, Luz believes. Perhaps a little tempted, and definitely too timid to challenge the confident authority of Luz, Margaret follows her lead, and wakes up alarmingly not recalling what happened with the guy she met the night before.
Elsewhere, Margaret immediately forms a bond with Carlita played by Nicole Sorace, an unforgettable newcomer we’ll hopefully hear more from, delivering a performance both vulnerable and terrifying. An eerie troublemaker like Margaret used to be during her problem-child days, Carlita gradually settles into Margaret’s affection and protection, something that doesn’t sit well with the orphanage’s elders like the strict and intimidating Sister Silva (Sonia Braga). The other elders in the film range from Bill Nighy’s high-ranking Cardinal Lawrence and Ralph Ineson’s Father Brennan, a character who looks like he just walked out of the set of the 1976 film and arrived at Stevenson’s prequel. Also in the mix is Father Gabriel, a young priest Margaret befriends before finding herself stuck deep inside a bone-chilling conspiracy where no one can be trusted.
The most exciting thing about The First Omen is how Stevenson is an evident scholar of the supernatural horror genre, unmercifully playing with our perception and orchestrating an escalating sense of paranoia with ease. In that, rather than unsettling the audience with subtle, suggestive scares and overloading the story with trauma-based angles (a trap many of the recent genre outings sadly fall into), she gives us a first-rate motion picture in the old-school way: smartly agile, elegantly filmed and damn scary, with a stunning period production design and costuming, as well as touches of Neorealist mis-en-scène as immersive as they come.
But that doesn’t mean her film is sans contemporary meaning—far from it. In that, it’s a pleasant surprise how The First Omen plays like a more serious companion piece to Immaculate in spotlighting the hypocrisy of religion, one that rings timelessly true both in the narrative’s decades-old period and in today’s post Roe v. Wade world. In fact, the painful and political loss of one’s bodily autonomy is so top of mind in The First Omen that it unleashes onto the world one of the most shocking birth scenes of cinema … perhaps ever, confronting the audience with what that pain looks like, and how demonic it just might feel. The whole thing is provocative, beautifully cinematic and in touch with its head-decapitating roots. When the credits roll, and you can finally take a breath, you’ll feel the slightest twinge of sadness that it’s over. This excellent film is worth the trauma it will leave you with.
My friends,
Last week my first edition of this article was published.
Here is the finish edition. My friend and myself went over the grammar for fifteen hours. I feel it made a big difference:
blob:https://outlook.live.com/34bd796f-1cfb-4873-8d4a-7b079969beec
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Chuckles and Thoughts
"I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me."
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Six Word Stories
“Wanted wings. Settled for roots instead.”
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts, including links.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
text to 617.852.7192
This from friend Tommy D:
Dom,
Your Shrimp on squid ink pasta and Clams and Mussels Creamy Saffron Soup looked incredible! And the view! I remember is perfect!
Tommy
Dom replied:
Italians love food. i said that in my TED x talk at Babson: “the dinner table is so important to pass on millennia of whispered recipes..."
To which Tommy said,
My whole life I was blessed with the best Italian cooks. It was my task to sit there and tell them how fantastic their cooking was!!
And Dom replied: I had the same job.
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Last Comment
Donald Trump is old, overweight, a liar, and a nasty person, none of which are conducive to your health. Now, he is on trial for committing criminal acts that could possibly land him in jail. Whether that happens or not, each moment spent in the Court room, or even thinking about having to go to court, each of these moments takes a toll on a person. It’s possible that the Presidential race will be thrown into a turmoil due to a physical/mental collapse of the defendant. He looks more and more poorly every day.
"Trump appears to have fallen asleep in court again. It happened several times just now. His eyes were closed for extended periods and his head dropped down twice," The N.Y. Times' Maggie Haberman reported from the courtroom.
This man lacks a joie de vivre.
As the final jurors were being vetted, a man set himself on fire outside the courtroom after throwing anti-government pamphlets in the air. He is in critical condition, per NYPD.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!