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Last Tuesday, I attended a presentation by Maui Grown Therapies titled "How Cannabis Works." A few nights later, I was in a test audience for "Paradise Found," Bob Stone's newest version of the documentary he directed, shot and edited about the Taylor Camp community of surfers, Vietnam vets and hippies on Kauai in the '60s and '70s.
Now we're off to Santa Cruz and the Bay Area for a few weeks, where the 50th anniversary of The Summer of Love is in full swing.
Do we detect a theme emerging here? A collective AARP flashback? Not exactly. While there's something wistful in realizing the flower children of yesteryear have become the grandparents of today, there's something reassuring about it, too. Especially since fantasies of re-enacting a love-in from that era don't make for a pretty picture.
It just adds an exclamation point to the Grateful Dead's observation: What a long, strange trip it's been.
Maui Grown Therapies is one of two companies recently licensed to dispense medical marijuana in the county. (Pono Life Maui is the other one.) At last week's event, Maui Grown presented speakers Michael Backes, author of "Cannabis Pharmacy, The Practical Guide to Medical Marijuana"; and Kristin Wohlschiagel, a registered nurse specializing in oncology, hospice and palliative care and research. The two were on-island training Maui Grown staff in preparation for dispensing to begin, once the final bureaucratic hurdles are crossed.
In the audience were health professionals, journalists and folks curious about the subject, including pharmacist Carl Marsh; Maui No Ka Oi Editor Rita Goldman; and Sharon Drayer, the saint who kept chaos at bay backstage at the Celestial Cinema at the recent Maui Film Festival. Many attendees were prospective patients, seeking treatment for conditions from knee replacement surgery pain to melanoma and other forms of cancer.
With Maui Grown's director of community relations and patient affairs, Teri Freitas Gorman, ably running the lively session, Backes presented clinical data about the components of cannabis and how they interact with human physiology. Maui Grown's focus is scrupulously medical, emphasizing the plant's CBD cannabinoid components, which seem to have the widest healing potentials, and downplaying the THC, which produces the psychotropic "high."
Wohlschiagel movingly described the often dramatic effects cannabis has had in treatment for herself and others. Considering that the plant is still an illegal substance as far as the federal government is concerned, experimentation has been limited, but is now rapidly increasing to find the most effective strains, formulas and dosages to treat a spectrum of symptoms.
Like other researchers and physicians familiar with the subject, their presentations were enthusiastic about the potential of this new therapy, but cautious and conservative about overstating the benefits. Consultation with a physician is the first step to decide whether cannabis is appropriate for any given patient and situation, they agreed. The course of treatment might involve using it in conjunction with other conventional medication or in micro doses.
That's a far cry from the all-encompassing role pot played in Taylor Camp, a hippie community of wondrous treehouses and clothing-optional, free-spirited attitudes that sprang up on land owned by Howard Taylor (brother of screen icon Elizabeth Taylor) in the late '60s.
In the anti-authority spirit of those times, Taylor bailed out Kauai's first wave of the hippie invasion, who had been jailed for vagrancy, then drove them to his idyllic north shore property to set up housekeeping.
This was the 20th presentation in "Akaku Upstairs," Maui Community Media's free Thursday night salon series coordinated by Nicole Fisher. Lou Diliberto, master of all media, was filming it for Akaku. In the audience giving the film an enthusiastic thumbs-up were friends including Cindy Paulos, Barbara Trecker and Stone's longtime collaborator Tom Vendetti, who curated the movie's superb musical score.
Converted to HD, Stone's film is gorgeous. Produced by John Wehrheim, who also shot "Paradise Found's" soulful black-and-white still photos, it's funny, poignant, always fascinating. The '60s counterculture's impact on U.S. society is familiar film territory, but this documentary uniquely recalls the movement's arrival in the fragile ecosystem of paradise, including the inevitable clash with local culture in those early years of statehood.
Taylor Camp lived from 1969 to 1977. An earlier version of the film, which screened at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, emphasized telling the story of how it was then. This version gains resonance remembering that moment of history from a contemporary perspective.
The point isn't so much that the innocent flower children of the '60s became "the Establishment" of the 2000s, but that they -- we -- managed to do it without entirely sacrificing our ideals along the way.
A strange -- and wonderful -- trip indeed.
* Rick Chatenever, award-winning former entertainment and features editor of The Maui News, is a freelance journalist, instructor at UH-Maui College and documentary scriptwriter/producer. Contact him at rickchatenever@gmail.com.