This is one of the best pieces of writing I have ever been privileged to read. And, even more so, it is a testament to a worthy life.

Although I hope to never need Marijuana, when you couch all the arguments – societal, business, personal – in the ways you do, there is a strongly built case and clarion call, which I hope will globally reverberate.

I find total agreement in your assessment, which is rare for me, on any topic, and I completely understand all that is in constant jeopardy. I am shocked by how much money is already on the Medical Marijuana scene and see a new way can be built from these resources. I applaud your thinking-outside-the-box, and encourage you to go forward!

The Arts are the crowning-glory of what we, as Humans, are capable of. Yet, our current general society neither strives to express whatever natural gifts they have or to truly honor them in others, whose passions are so strong that they opt to be-true-to-themselves and their Gifts, regardless of their personal monetary peril.

What a sad state and totally unacceptable state of affairs. Not even the top-paid, lauded (and jaded?) Big-Time Artists make even a moderately-comfortable life of opportunity happen for their shadowed peers.

In our family, I know my youngest sister’s rich poetic voice was quieted, years ago. Does she remember she has it? She dabbles now and again in the visuals, but her strength was in that rarified language of the poet.

My own journey is varied. Without a strongly defined, single artistic gift, I do an admirable job in many parts of the artistic spectrum, but, as I never gave any of them the decades of study and action that you have, to hone your craft, I will never know if one was more outstanding than the other.

My love and interest defined what I did, and photography was there from the time I first held my mother’s Brownie box camera about 57 years ago, and saved for my own first camera, a small Kodak, at age 11 (I still have it).

Then, at age 13, my father supported me and bought me my first SLR camera, with an auto-light meter and everything. He showed me his confidence in my Gift, by buying me the finest camera, a Zeiss, albeit their simple version, without exchangeable lenses. I still have it, and treasure it, even more than the complex ones I bought later.

That act of confidence, support and acknowledgment from my father still means the world to me. He also offered to help me go to Slade, in London, the best art school he knew at the time, but my left-brain won the argument.

I didn’t want to be a “starving artist”. Why, at 15 did I “know” that artists starved? Well, my self-taught art-history reading showed me the struggle (after all, who got classes in Art History, in High School, then or now). Even my favorite Impressionists were not immune. Most lived lives in the shadows, dependent on far lesser, moneyed-men.

Instead, I resolved to help Heal people, and thereby honored and tapped into the deep-well and Gift I had there. So, Daniel, I understand how these 2 Gifts merge and truly compliment each other.

The need is great for both the Art of Healing and the Art of our Soul in the world.

Now is a time of greatest crisis, and we are being choked and dogged by callous, crass, supremely-aggressive, unrelenting greed for Power and Control. Whether it has the face of Governments or Big-Pharma (legal or illegal), Global Big Business or Big-Media, it all comes from the same secretive, shadowy source, and they don’t care what happens to billions of people, at all.

And, danger lurks in the somnambulance or herd-mentality of those billions, especially the slavish-idolatry towards people who are in show business, who are hawking themselves into other areas “easily” by trading on their “celebrity”, pushing in before more talented people in those genres, but gleefully-supported by Big Publishing, Big Media etc.

What you say now, here, about what has NOT been birthed in the world is so true. What gifts were still-born; what visions were held hostage and died from being unloved?

I have formed a totally new textile craft, a meld of ancient long-lost (archeological)techniques and modern ideas, and it has been lying fallow out of fear of rejection on the one hand and how to get it more widely-fielded and taught on the other. The usual see-saw, as it would be a highly speculative, personal journey, that, again is so monetarily risky, so I stepped back.

The same with my poems. I keep them on my hard-drive. Brava! Bravo! to the poet who has the courage to speak those words, aloud, to others, for they come from the deepest part of Soul-Self that I know.

The same for my engineering inventions, which I think have their root in the same Creativity, and are then transferred to left-brain for completion. They languish for the hard-journey needed to find venture capital, and in worrying about the greed and control-mind of those who have capital who would likely try to cloud my vision and my desire to help my Planet and my People, instead of just monetizing my Idea.

So, I wish you well on your Journey and I applaud you, Daniel, for finding an equally-High Purpose to that of Healing, for which your monies can go to Better the World.

I am so proud of you.

Meg