RIP

Tim Tabbert was known as the singing farmer with very deep ties to the NFU

Forester’s Falls – A solitary tractor stood guard outside the cemetery not far from Tim Tabbert’s farm on the Queen’s Line as a reminder of a man with a deep love for farming, passion for karaoke, a penchant for old tractors and an irrepressible twinkle in his eye.

“He was known as the singing farmer,” his cousin Christine Tabbert said while delivering his eulogy at the cemetery on Monday morning. “He loved karaoke. He loved the attention and the music.”
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Mr. Tabbert, 62, passed away on July 6 at Renfrew Victoria Hospital with family by his side. He had been diagnosed two months before with Glioblastoma, the same brain tumour which took the life of many others before him including Canadian singer Gord Downie.

Born and raised in the farming community, he was the eldest son of five and came from a large extended family, including 33 first cousins.

“The values Tim learned on a farm growing up lasted a lifetime,” Christine said.

As an adult he moved into the Broome homestead of his maternal ancestors and farmed there. He also did custom fieldwork and had a business spreading liquid manure.

“Tim became known up and down the Valley for his hard work and his antics,” she said.

He was also a man of faith, who could be heard telling others “the Lord will provide” when there were the farming concerns of too little rain, too much rain and other issues.

A father of three, she said her cousin showed his love and affection through action and service. He was the dad who would make the ice on the rink at Queen’s Line and took great pride in the quality of the ice and making sure there was a fire for the children to warm up to. After this he also made sure there was a rink at the farm for them too, she added.

Readers of the Leader and the Cobden Sun are familiar with the by-line of Connie Tabbert, who married Tim in 2008 and the two have been inseparable since. Their love was so strong Connie gave up most of her journalistic efforts for farming and milking, joining her husband in his farming life and passion for farming issues. Their love story and wedding in which the happy couple left on one of Tim’s tractors – he had 13 – still captivated the imagination of those who were at the event many years later. They were both deeply involved in the National Farmers Union (NFU) where Tim served in executive positions as director, vice president and president of the local branch as well as regional director and was active at provincial and national conventions.

“He loved going to protests in Ottawa with his manure truck or one of his tractors,” Christine recalled.

One time he filled the manure spreader with water and close to Parliament Hill decided to spread the water. Unbeknownst to him, a police officer was right behind him and it appears Mr. Tabbert did not do a complete job of cleaning out the manure spreader before filling it with water, so the officer was showered with a smelly liquid. The officer started writing up every ticket he could think of, only to be told by his commanding officer no tickets were to be given to protestors.

Known for his white “Santa Claus” beard, he shaved it off for Hospice Renfrew and raised $270 in the proceeds. He was also known for his smoked sausage and loved making it with extended family using the traditional recipe.

His local NFU colleagues recalled a sharp, quick-witted man who was a loyal member and passionate about farming issues.

Lauretta Rice pointed out since Mr. Tabbert grew up on a dairy farm and then raised beef cattle he had a good understanding of various aspects of farming. She also laughed as she recalled his spirit of fun.

“He was always playing tricks,” she said. “He was the joy of the national convention every year. He was up till 4 o’clock having fun and up again at 7.”

She also pointed out she never heard him say a derogatory word about anyone. “He was complementary regardless of who you were,” she said.

Marshall Buchanan, the president of the local NFU chapter, said he appreciated while Mr. Tabbert was a committed farmer, he never let his business take over his life.

“Tim learned he wanted to make a success with his relationship with his friends,” he said. “He spent a lot of time supporting his friends.”

Despite strong opinions, Mr. Tabbert never lost his temper at meetings, he said.

“He would deliver his opinions carefully,” he said. “He did not lecture you. He had dignity in the way he conducted himself.”

He is survived by his wife Connie, children, Christopher (Amy), Amanda (Alain) and Shaun and grandchildren, Henry and Veronica, as well as his mother, Eleanor and siblings, Terry (Jennifer), Bonnie (Kent), Danny (Lynda) and Linda (Vivian) and many nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and cousins.

Debbi Christinck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Eganville Leader

Two endangered right whales entangled in fishing gear in Gulf of St. Lawrence

FREDERICTON — A New Brunswick-based whale-rescue team says two North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are entangled in fishing gear, a dangerous situation experts say risks killing the endangered animals.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Mackie Greene, director of the Campobello Whale Rescue program, said Wednesday the group tried last week to free Snow Cone, a female who had been originally spotted entangled off Cape Cod, Mass., last spring. Greene said an American crew removed some of the rope at the time but had to call off their efforts because of bad weather, adding that the whale continued north into Canadian waters.


"She was spotted in May in the Gulf and we responded and were able to get 30 feet of rope off of the whale, but she still has rope wound in her mouth, in her baleen and some trailing lines," he said.

Greene said his team was able to remove three pieces of rope last week, adding that the animal appears healthy and is feeding; however, he said, more rope needs to be removed. "Snow Cone has a pretty sad story," Greene said. "She's a female, born in 2005. The year before last she had a calf and was coming north and the calf was run down and killed."

He says a larger, mature whale that's also entangled in gear has been spotted about 80 kilometres northeast of Shippagan, N.B., in an area where all the right whales appear to be congregated. Unlike Snow Cone, Greene said it appears the whale likely became entangled in the Gulf — perhaps the result of fishing gear that had been lost.

The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans issued a statement Wednesday saying the whale is a five-year-old male and the first entangled North Atlantic right whale reported in Canadian waters since 2019. The whale, it said, appeared to be badly injured, according to a report from a crew aboard a New England Aquarium research ship operating in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

A satellite tag was attached to the gear, the department said, adding that it will continue to track the whale. Greene said his group will try to free that whale this weekend with the help of the Fisheries Department.

As for Snow Cone, Greene said rescuers put a lot of strain on the whale last week and want to give her a bit of time to recover. "We are going to try again to see if we can cut those lines closer to her mouth," he said. "Unfortunately, that's about all we can do. The mouth is always the hardest part to get at. When you get close to them, they'll dive."

Last month, scientists reported a troubling reduction in the length of North Atlantic right whales, suggesting their stunted growth could be the result of hauling around fishing gear. Since June 2017, an unusually large number of the whales have died, reducing the population to fewer than 400 animals — a number that has some experts warning that the species is on the brink of extinction. Ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements account for most of the deaths.

The Canadian government has imposed a series of measures over the past four years to protect the whales, including periodic fisheries closures and mandatory speed limits. At least 34 North Atlantic right whales died between 2017 and 2021 — 21 of them in Canadian waters.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 14, 2021.

Kevin Bissett, The Canadian Press

IT WAS A FALSE ARREST ALL THE SAME
Officers cleared of misconduct in takedown of Alberta teen in 'Star Wars' costume

LETHBRIDGE, Alta. — Three southern Alberta police officers have been cleared of misconduct after a restaurant worker in a “Star Wars'' storm-trooper costume and carrying a plastic gun ended up with a bloody nose when she was forced to the ground.© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Lethbridge officers had already been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing for the arrest in May 2020, but were being investigated by the Medicine Hat Police Service for professional misconduct under Alberta's Police Act.

"There is no doubt that this incident was extremely stressful for the woman involved as she likely did not understand what was happening and was not able to see or communicate well through her helmet," Lethbridge police Chief Shahin Mehdizadeh said in a statement Wednesday.

"Firearm calls like this are also very stressful for officers who are trying to process everything very quickly, while protecting themselves and other people in the area from a potentially lethal weapon."

The owner of the Coco Vanilla Galactic Cantina in Lethbridge has said the 19-year-old employee had agreed to carry a toy blaster and wear the elaborate white uniform to get the attention of people celebrating May 4. The day is popular among fans of the movie franchise because of the famous line “May the force be with you.''

That day, two separate 911 calls came in to report a person dressed as a storm trooper was carrying a real firearm, Lethbridge police said.

Three officers responded and saw the person was carrying "what appeared from a distance" to be a black gun, police added.

In the statement, police said two of the three officers drew their weapons and the woman was told to move away from the gun and lay face down on the pavement.

"While the person did drop the weapon, step back and eventually kneel down, they appeared non-responsive to subsequent demands, and there was a belief the person might be searching for a path to escape," the release said.

Brad Whalen, the restaurant owner, said police forced his employee on her stomach, she hit her face and her nose started bleeding.

A video of the encounter, shared on social media, shows an officer standing by the blaster while Whalen yells from the restaurant door that it's fake. A woman can be heard crying.

Mehdizadeh said he reviewed the 250-page report from the Medicine Hat investigators and concluded no officers were guilty of misconduct. He said they saw the subject of the 911 call with what looked like a weapon "alone in the parking lot with no signs, music or activity to suggest the officer should not take seriously the potential threat that was reported."

The police chief also said the officers' actions were consistent with use-of-force policies, the encounter was less than three minutes long and they offered to help the women once they realized there was no threat.

"We do acknowledge the stress and confusion endured by the young woman in the costume, through no fault of her own," he said.

"I am satisfied, however, that our officers, operating in the face of their own stressful circumstance did everything in their power to minimize the impact of this event."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 14, 2021.

— By Daniela Germano in Edmonton

The Canadian Press

ENDANGERED WHOOPING CRANES SUMMER IN ALBERTA

Rare whooping cranes raised for wild as COVID rules relax

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A year after pandemic precautions all but halted work to raise the world’s most endangered cranes for release into the wild, the efforts are back in gear.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Fourteen long-legged, fuzzy brown whooping crane chicks — one more than in 2019 — are following their parents or costumed surrogates in facilities from New Orleans to Calgary, Canada.

“We are thrilled to have bounced back in the wake of the pandemic,” said Richard Dunn, assistant curator of the Freeport-McMoRan Audubon Species Survival Center in New Orleans.

Adult whooping cranes are white with black wingtips and red caps, and at 5 feet high are the tallest birds in North America. Only about 800 exist, all descendants of about 15 that survived hunters and habitat loss in a flock that migrates between Texas and Alberta, Canada.

Last year, zoos and other places where the endangered birds are bred had to cut staff and reduce or eliminate use of artificial insemination, which requires close work by two or three people, and of having people in shape-disguising costumes raise chicks.

“One chick hatched out at the Calgary Zoo,” Dunn said. “And it had to stay in Calgary because they couldn't cross the border" to get it into either of two U.S.-only flocks.

Both a flock based in southwest Louisiana and one taught to migrate between Wisconsin and Florida by following ultralight aircraft were created in hopes of mitigating disaster should anything happen to the original border-crossing flock, now about 500 strong. The original flock is the only one that can survive without human assistance to increase its numbers.

Seven chicks hatched this year at the Species Survival Center.

Aurora, a male produced there by artificial insemination, is being brought up by his mother and “stepfather,” though his mother is temporarily hospitalized after chipping her beak on their enclosure's chain-link fence.

The other six — five hatched from eggs taken from the wild in Wisconsin and one from an egg bred at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin — are being raised by staffers.

Video: Rare cranes raised for wild as COVID rules relax (The Canadian Press)

The Milwaukee Zoo is raising one chick from an egg received from the crane foundation, and the foundation and the Calgary Zoo are each raising three chicks. The Milwaukee Zoo's chick will remain captive for breeding, Dunn said.

Dunn said Audubon and the crane foundation are the only facilities that use costume-rearing as well as having mated crane pairs bring up babies, and this year only Audubon did so.

Pandemic prospects were still uncertain and vaccines not yet readily available in February, when the foundation had to make its decisions, crane foundation aviculturist Kim Boardman said in an email. “We expect to costume and parent rear again in 2022,” she said.

Audubon’s keepers do checkups and other tasks the chicks won't appreciate while wearing regular clothes, to teach them that humans are to be avoided.

When teaching the chicks to hunt and other crane behaviors, they dress in baggy costumes with the neck of a crane-head hand puppet holding in one loose, black-tipped “wing.” The puppet demonstrates how to pick up insects from the ground, then passes the tasty morsels to a chick.

Although the chicks will be given identifying numbers such as L1-21 when they're released as mottled brown-and-white juveniles late this year, at Audubon they have names: Blizzard, Fog, Hurricane, Lava, Lightning, Tornado — the only female — and Aurora.

It's been a good year in the wild, too — Louisiana's 68 adults included a record 24 nesting pairs. They hatched a record 14 chicks. including two in Texas, and five have survived into July, said Sara Zimorski, a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Youngsters that live long enough to fly get numbers starting with LW and the number assigned at hatching. One of Louisiana's five has been seen flying, and, along with a yearling is counted in the 70-member flock. If all five become fledglings, that will tie a record from 2018.

The Wisconsin-Florida flock numbers about 80, with about 120 birds in captivity. Seven eggs were taken from Wisconsin's flock to be raised in captivity, at least 14 more hatched in the wild and six of those survived through June.

Eggs are collected from early wild nests because parents will lay a second if the first doesn't hatch or the chicks die. Collections not only increase the number of chicks per year but in Wisconsin, help keep wild chicks from hatching when bloodsucking black flies are at their worst.

One of Louisiana's Texas-nesting pairs also hatched a chick last year — the first documented since the early 1900s, Zimorski said. Texas is the original flock’s winter home but those birds nest in Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park.

This year's Texas survivor was hatched by first-time parents and is still very young, Zimorski wrote in an email. “It has a long ways to go!” she said.

Janet Mcconnaughey, The Associated Press

IN EGYPT THE WHOOPING CRANE IS KNOWN AS AN IBIS

Psychedelics Could Be a Medical Game-Changer—So I Tried Them for My Debilitating Headaches
Katherine Ellison

© Julien Pacaud Hallucinogenic drugs are showing promise in treating various health conditions. One writer explores their history and tries one for cluster headaches.

The beefy armed guard at the door of the Church of Entheogenic Plants chuckled at the sight of me, and I guessed what he might be thinking: What’s that 60-something lady doing here?

It wouldn’t have been unreasonable to wonder—and not just because everyone else waiting to pass through the metal detector that day last winter was roughly 40 years younger than I. Vice News has called the Oakland, CA, church, also known as Zide Door, America’s “most prominent ‘magic mushroom club,’ ” implying that its religious decor is a ruse to evade state and federal laws against selling psychedelic drugs. In accepting “contributions” for strains of ’shrooms with names like “Blue Meanies” and “Penis Envy,” Zide Door claims the same exemption that lets the Navajo legally ingest peyote, a traditional sacrament.

Ruse or not, that hasn’t offered much protection. In August 2020 police raided the premises and seized about $200,000 worth of cash and drugs. Pastor David Hodges told me he planned to sue the city government for violating his congregants’ religious freedom.

Potentially breaking the law was not my only concern when it came to trying magic mushrooms. I was an unusually suggestible child in the 1960s, when well-meaning parents scared their kids straight with stories about acid trippers who went blind from staring at the sun, mistook a baby for a turkey and stuffed it in the oven, or woke up convinced they’d turned into a glass of orange juice. In the late 1970s, when many of my college pals were experimenting, I declined even to smoke weed.
The pain in my brain

But last February, I was standing in front of the church out of desperation, hoping that psilocybin, the active ingredient in mushrooms, would relieve my excruciating pain. I was in my 12th week of a siege of cluster headaches, and I felt as if a Lilliputian with a tiny ice pick were jabbing at the back of my right eye for an hour each day, starting at 5 a.m.

Cluster headache is a rare disorder, estimated to affect roughly one or two in 1,000 people (migraines are at least 120 times as common). They’d plagued me for a month or so every two years since 2005, and usually prednisone knocked them out. But this time the only thing that brought even brief respite was—no joke—snorting cayenne pepper, which made me sneeze until I felt as if I might pass out. I also worried that it might be corroding the inside of my nose.

I’m far from the only person seeking out these long-demonized drugs for medical reasons. Using LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA (Ecstasy) to relieve suffering appears to be on the rise. While most self-experimenters use psychedelics to enhance well-being, a portion “self-medicate preexisting mental health conditions,” wrote psychiatrist Adam Winstock, M.D., in the Global Drug Survey. His annual polls of more than 500,000 people suggest that the use of LSD and psilocybin among respondents has roughly doubled over just the past five years. An honorary clinical professor at the Institute of Epidemiology at the University College of London, Dr. Winstock joins other experts in comparing the drugs favorably with prescription antidepressants. “The benefits are really clear for patients,” he says. “They want things that work, work quickly, and don’t require them to take medications every day.”

Americans’ interest in hallucinogens was supercharged by Michael Pollan’s 2018 best seller, How to Change Your Mind. A year later, Johns Hopkins launched a $17 million center to study a variety of illicit-drug therapies that showed promise in treating disorders such as depression, trauma, anorexia nervosa, tobacco addiction, and even post-treatment Lyme disease. Researchers are excited, even as psilocybin and LSD continue to be classified as Schedule I substances, which are seen as having no medical use, a high potential for abuse, and unacceptable risks even under professional supervision.

But if you’ve ever had cluster headaches, you know why they’ve been called“suicide headaches.” People in the midst of an attack are believed to die by suicide at roughly three times the rate of the general population, and sufferers describe the attacks as more painful than childbirth, gunshot wounds, and kidney stones, according to University of West Georgia psychology professor Larry Schor, Ph.D., who has conducted a large survey of cluster-headache patients (and suffers from them himself). On average, cluster-headache patients take more than five years to be properly diagnosed, after which even prescribed drugs may fail. Early on, I tried taking sumatriptan, a drug for migraine headaches, and at first it was helpful, but then made my headaches worse, sending me to an emergency room three times. As this latest attack stretched on, I knew I had to try something new

.

© Julien Pacaud woman with a headache on a bench

From hedonism to healing

Researchers first investigated the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs in the 1950s and 1960s, when hundreds of Americans, including actors Cary Grant, Rita Moreno, and Jack Nicholson, joined a series of supervised experiments in California. (Grant credited acid with helping him control his alcohol use and cope with the long-unexplained disappearance of his mother when he was a child.) The backlash began after Harvard lecturer Timothy Leary and psychologist Richard Alpert (who became known as Ram Dass) championed wider use of LSD and psilocybin, with Leary’s call to “turn on, tune in, drop out” becoming a slogan of the counterculture. President Richard Nixon branded Leary “the most dangerous man in America” and in 1971 launched the war on drugs.

These days, the hope is that psychedelics may help the many millions of Americans who suffer from depression and other serious mental disorders, particularly when nothing else has worked. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 17.3 million U.S. adults have at least one major depressive episode each year, while up to 30% don’t receive sufficient help from mainstream anti-depressants. PTSD affects nearly 8 million people, including more than half a million U.S. veterans, while 40 million adults have anxiety. (Some of these rates were higher during the pandemic.) Researchers have been studying psychedelics to alleviate cluster headaches since 2006, but I learned of them through an activist patients’ group called Clusterbusters, which has touted their use since 2002.

Amid all the hoopla, some people may get a boost from just the idea of psychedelics: More than 60% of participants in a 2020 study said they’d experienced mind-altering effects after taking a placebo. Still, researchers have gathered sufficient evidence of psilocybin’s power to convince the FDA in 2019 to classify it as a“breakthrough therapy” for two types of severe depression. That fast-tracked it for approval, similarly to how esketamine (related to ketamine, an illegal party drug) was OK’d for treatment-resistant depression that same year.

Video: We're bring back these psychedelic drugs, 'but as a medical treatment against various forms of mental health issues': atai Life Sciences Founder (Yahoo! Finance)

The treatment of PTSD may be the next potential boon: Some scientists have found MDMA both safer and more effective in treating trauma than conventional antidepressants. In May, a major study published in Nature Medicine provided new evidence along these lines, and late last year Rick Doblin, executive director of the nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), predicted that MDMA-assisted psycho-therapy for PTSD could win federal approval as soon as next year.

It’s not clear just how psychedelics might supply mental and emotional benefits—or, in my case, relieve physical pain—but scientists have some ideas. Studies suggest that psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs affect levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter and hormone involved in regulating mood. MDMA is believed to activate receptors for oxytocin, a peptide linked to trust and bonding, possibly helping soften trauma sufferers’ defensive shells. So far the explosion of discoveries has involved small studies that need to be expanded and replicated. Yet the drumbeat of positive developments has likely helped increase official tolerance in some parts of the nation.
Risky business

Many jurisdictions are considering rewriting their laws on psychedelics. In May 2019, Denver became the first U.S. city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms, and Oakland, CA, followed suit. Voters in Oregon and Washington, DC, have approved the therapeutic use of psilocybin, while California lawmakers recently took up a bill to decriminalize some hallucinogens. The trend is familiar: Whereas barely 20 years ago cannabis was outlawed everywhere in the United States, today 36 states and four territories have legalized it for medicinal purposes. (Decriminalization doesn’t make a drug legal. It simply reduces penalties associated with it. Selling psychedelics is still illegal everywhere, and possession of them can lead to federal prosecution that could result in up to a year in prison and $1,000 or more in fines.)

Of course, breaking the law isn’t the only risk involved. Some recreational magic mushroom users have reported frightening bad trips, panic attacks, seizures, and hospitalizations. Scientists and drug aficionados alike warn against casual use, and participants in psychedelic studies to date have all been carefully screened and supervised, with researchers rigorously excluding subjects with preexisting conditions such as heart trouble, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. “I really worry about people in a time of crisis choosing to take psychedelics without supervision and making themselves worse,” says Dr. Winstock, whose surveys indicate that approximately 8% of LSD and psilocybin users had a bad experience over the past year.
Targeting my headaches

Still, in reporting a story for the Washington Post, I learned that many scientists regard psilocybin as one of the least toxic and addictive of all recreational drugs, and that the reports of bad trips involved much larger doses than the therapeutic amount for my cluster headaches. In severe pain, I decided to give it a try.

“Psilocybin’s chemical structure is similar to melatonin’s,” says Yale University neurologist Emanuelle Schindler, M.D., Ph.D., referring to a hormone that regulates circadian rhythm and is taken supplementally for insomnia as well as headache prevention. It is also akin to triptans, which are prescribed to treat one headache at a time. “Psilocybin has a longer-term effect, though,” notes Dr. Schindler, who is currently working on a study on its effects for cluster headaches.

Over the years, Clusterbusters members have offered invaluable support to Dr. Schindler and other scientists, recruiting patients for their studies and providing them with information from their self-treatment with psychedelics. In 2004, the group convinced Harvard researchers to conduct a pioneering study on psilocybin and LSD. The Harvard team gathered testimonies from 53 cluster-headache patients, most of whom said the drugs had helped. John Halpern, M.D., a psychiatrist who led the Harvard study, told me he has since seen many patients go from being “incapacitated” to “having as close to a functional cure as you can get.” The two drugs may prove to be “the best we have to offer” to cluster-headache patients, he adds, “although legally we can’t offer them.”

I followed Clusterbusters’ recommended protocol of taking small amounts of psilocybin—more than microdoses, but short of what would lead to tripping—brewed in a multi-ingredient tea containing lemon, honey, vitamin C, and a little instant coffee, with three doses spaced five days apart. The first time I didn’t feel anything remarkable until the next

morning, when I had a more-awful-than-usual headache: the “slap-back” side effect the website had warned me to expect. Over the next five days, however, I noticed that there were two days when I didn’t have a headache at all.

Maybe a little overconfident, I overestimated with my second dose. Twenty minutes after sipping the tea, I found myself staring for half an hour at our backyard pistache tree, which seemed to have grown beckoning silvery branches. I felt as if I could see the tree breathing, which was wondrous. I was back to myself within a couple of hours, and the next morning I had another slap-back headache. But the two mornings after that—nothing. For the rest of the week, the headaches were milder.

Then I took my third dose, measuring carefully this time. The only psychedelic-ish effect that I noticed—really noticed—was that my dog’s face was utterly gorgeous. Then I fell asleep next to my husband. I woke up to yet another fierce headache the next morning, but the morning after that I had zero pain. Zero again the next day, and the next. Two months have now passed without my having a single headache.

© Julien Pacaud scientist researching psychedelics

Increasing availability

As the psychedelic-therapy revolution matures, there have been calls to ensure that its potentially powerful benefits are accessible to all. That will require some significant change considering that Black people are much more likely than white people like me to be arrested for possession of any drug, even after decriminalization.

“Equity of access to these drugs will address the burden of disease we know is greatest among people of lower socio-economic status, who have higher rates of depression and PTSD,” says Dr. Winstock. MAPS has trained scores of therapists of color to prepare for the time when treatment with them becomes legal.

In the meantime, research continues. “It doesn’t strike me as weird that the same molecule used by someone in a bedroom listening to Pink Floyd can also be a healing drug,” says Dr. Winstock. He says that psychedelics’ capacity to “disrupt existing brain networks and allow new pathways and new ways of thinking is why they can have wide potential in so many different conditions.”

As for me, I can’t say whether my cluster-headache siege ended on its own or whether using ’shrooms really did do the trick. But I do know that I’ve got a plan if the headaches return—and that I’ll never look at our pistache tree the same way again.

This article originally appeared in the August 2021 issue of Prevention.

Watching for birds & diversity: Audubon groups pledge change


BOSTON (AP) — When Boston socialites Minna Hall and Harriet Hemenway sought to end the slaughter of birds in the name of 19th century high fashion, they picked a logical namesake for their cause: John James Audubon, a naturalist celebrated for his stunning watercolors of American birds.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Now, 125 years after the founding of the Massachusetts Audubon Society for the Protection of Birds, the organization and the nearly 500 Audubon chapters nationwide it helped inspire are reckoning with another side of Audubon’s life: He was also a slaveholder and staunch opponent of abolition.

In the year-plus since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, Audubon chapters have pledged to do more to atone for the past, including diversifying their staff and finding ways to make natural spaces more welcoming to people of color. It’s part of a broader reckoning within the wider environmental movement, which for years has faced criticism for its racist origins and lack of diversity.

“At this point, if people are not part of what they’re trying to protect, that’s an issue,” said Debbie Njai, an Illinois resident who founded the outdoor group BlackPeopleWhoHike.

The Mass Audubon published an essay last fall acknowledging how Audubon’s family's wealth came in large part from running a Caribbean sugar plantation. It has also pledged to have people of color make up 25% of its board of directors, and hopes to open more wildlife sanctuaries in communities of color.

The National Audubon Society, which is based in New York and is separate from the Mass Audubon, has similarly delved into its namesake’s legacy in a series of essays.

And the Sierra Club publicly apologized last July for the racist views of its founder, John Muir, who openly dismissed American Indians as dirty savages. The Oakland-based group has also committed $5 million to boost its environmental justice work and recently voiced support for Black reparations.

Environmental groups understand the future of their movement hinges on changing their white, elitist reputation, said David O’Neill, president of the Mass Audubon.

“If we don’t get younger and we don’t get more diverse, we’re not going to have people to advocate on behalf of nature, and that’s not good for anyone,” he said during a recent visit to the group’s Boston Nature Center, an urban wildlife sanctuary in a majority Black neighborhood that it hopes to replicate in other Massachusetts communities of color.

Green organizations appear to be making progress on improving staff diversity, but their leadership remains predominantly white, said Andres Jimenez, head of Green 2.0, a Washington, D.C., group that puts out an annual report card on diversity in the environmental sector.

In its most recent report, Green 2.0 found that the nation’s largest green groups added, on average, six people of color to their staff, two to their senior management and one to their board of directors between 2017 and 2020.

“We need to see that change up top to move the ball in an accelerated way," Jimenez said.



Bird conservation brought the country’s latest racial reckoning to the environmental movement’s doorsteps, and, in many ways, it’s where the calls for change are most acutely felt.

There's a growing campaign, for example, to drop the eponyms of birds that honor slaveholders and white supremacists — Bird Names for Birds.

The catalyst was a dispute between a Black birdwatcher and a white woman with her dog in New York’s Central Park that went viral last summer, sparking #BlackBirdersWeek and other similar efforts to highlight Black nature enthusiasts and the discrimination and other challenges they face in the outdoors.

Christian Cooper, the birder at the center of that controversy, stressed organizations like the Audubon have been taking steps to address diversity long before his viral moment, even if some have yielded mixed results.

A board member with the New York City Audubon Society, Cooper said his chapter has been trying to draw more diverse members through modest events like last month's Juneteenth birdwatching and potluck picnic.

“The organizations that are having the most success are those that are trying new things,” Cooper said. “The reality is that fixing centuries of ingrained racial bias as it manifests in the environmental movement is hard and uncomfortable work."

At the National Audubon Society, the racial reckoning has boiled over into staff unrest.

Spurred by complaints of a toxic workplace, an outside audit concluded in April that a “culture of retaliation, fear, and antagonism toward women and people of color" existed at the organization. Longtime CEO David Yarnold swiftly resigned.

Tykee James, who serves as the organization’s government affairs officer in Washington, is among the staffers pushing to form a labor union to address diversity and other workplace problems. He also wants the Audubon to be more vocal in publicly advocating for environmental justice causes.

“The culture that we’ve had in this organization hasn’t been one for workers of color, hasn’t been one for women, hasn’t been one for nonbinary folks,” James said.

Matt Smelser, a spokesperson for the Audubon Society, referred to a May statement from the group, which said “bullying and other bad behavior” won't be tolerated going forward. The organization also continues to search for a permanent CEO and has committed to remaining neutral in the unionization efforts, he added.

Back at the Mass Audubon, O’Neill says the organization’s board has added new members so that 17% of them are people of color. The staff of more than 950 is about 65% white.

Scott Edwards, an ornithologist at Harvard, said the jury’s still out on whether these early steps are enough. Some green groups will have to re-imagine their mission and pivot to more urban populations, he said.

“Organizations will have to think creatively about how to get communities of color more connected with nature,” said Edwards, who is Black. “Show them that their voices are needed and wanted. Make them feel included in the larger effort of conservation.”

Mamie Parker, who worked for decades at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and was its first Black regional director, advises environmental groups to approach racial equity like a conservation challenge.

“When you plant a tree to restore a forest or take care of bald eagles to rebuild their population,” the retired biologist from Dulles, Virginia, said, "it takes years before those efforts bear fruit.”

Philip Marcelo, The Associated Press

ALBERTA 

THE P IN UCP IS FOR PURITAN

Advocates say detox centre move to city's edge puts people at risk

AHS leaders made the decision without consulting clients, families or employees.

Janet French 

© Craig Ryan/CBC News AHS plans to move the Addiction Recovery Centre out of downtown Edmonton into Alberta Hospital on the northeast outskirts of the city

A plan to move one of Edmonton's two downtown detoxification centres to Alberta Hospital Edmonton indefinitely is troubling to some advocates for people dependent on drugs and alcohol.

Alberta Health Services (AHS) says imminent construction of the west leg of the Valley Line LRT will have a negative effect on patient care at the Addiction Recovery Centre (ARC) at 103rd Avenue and 107th Street.

The city is building a new station steps away from the centre, where staff supervise and treat up to 38 people going through addiction withdrawal.

Although a statement from AHS said there are benefits to moving the service to the hospital in Edmonton's far northeast, advocates say they have grave concerns.

Angie Staines said she felt "absolute fear" when she heard of AHS's plans to relocate the service this fall.

Her son Brandon, 26, has been an opioid user for nine years. She's lost count of the number of times he's overdosed. She's tried to get him into ARC before, and says he was turned away every time due to lack of space.

There's a daily one-hour window when potential clients can line up outside for assessment to see if they qualify for a bed.

She said it's illogical to move the service out of downtown, where vulnerable people and many of the agencies who serve them are located.

She said many clients would have no way to get to Alberta Hospital, which is north of 167 Avenue on 18th Street NW.

"It makes absolutely no sense," Staines said. "People will die because of this decision."

She said AHS leaders made the decision without consulting clients, families or employees.

"We need to meet these people where they are at," Staines said. "They are human beings. And frankly, I am sick and tired of my son's life not mattering because he is a drug user."

The George Spady Centre, about one kilometre from ARC's present site, also runs a 35-bed medical detox service.

An AHS statement says ARC takes both scheduled admissions and walk ins, and that many clients are transported to the centre by friends, family or organizations. Alberta Hospital also has shuttles the program could use.

Clients come from all over Edmonton and beyond city limits, AHS said — nearly a fifth are homeless.

The new space in Alberta Hospital's Building 12 would allow the program to run up to 55 detox beds on the same budget, give clients more privacy and permit more intake time flexibility, the statement said.

An ARC employee who works with patients said there are also risks to the move. CBC is not identifying the employee for fear she will lose her job for speaking out.

Colleagues have used Naloxone kits while people were standing outside hoping to be accepted, she said.

"I can't tell you how many lives we've saved during those admission times."© Craig Ryan/CBC News Spaces in the ARC detox program are limited. People line up outside every day to see if they can be admitted to the program.

Although not a drop-in centre, ARC is a safe place people can turn to in a crisis, she said. People come to ask for blankets or for a staff member to call 9-1-1 during emergencies, she said.

Relocating the detox centre to a psychiatric hospital may also exacerbate the stigma of seeking help, she said.

"It's very frightening to think, 'They're sending me to a mental institution because I'm an alcoholic,'" she said. "Most people won't go."

AHS said the move is for an undetermined period of time. Construction on the west LRT line is expected to continue until 2026 or 2027. The organization's statement was also unclear about whether the service will return to its current site.

"AHS is conducting an analysis to determine future locations for this program," it said.

Ousted Alberta MLA Pat Rehn invited back into UCP fold

3

© Facebook Pat Rehn, the MLA for Lesser Slave Lake, was also criticized for travelling to Mexico during COVID-19 travel restrictions last winter.

Lesser Slave Lake MLA Pat Rehn has been invited back into Alberta's United Conservative Party caucus five months after he was kicked out for being absent from his constituency.

Caucus chair Nathan Neudorf announced the decision in a press release Wednesday.

"Since his removal from caucus, Rehn has worked tirelessly to rebuild trust with local families, businesses, elected officials and Indigenous leaders," Neudorf said in the release.

"[Rehn] has been doing an incredible amount of work to rebuild trust and get things done in his constituency."

Neudorf said the UCP received letters from several municipalities and the Lesser Slave Lake Constituency Association, requesting Rehn be allowed to rejoin caucus

When CBC News asked for the letters, UCP caucus spokesperson Tim Gerwing sent a list of individuals who supported the decision.

The list includes reeves, councillors and local businesspeople but no municipalities as a whole.

Slave Lake Mayor Tyler Warman said neither he nor his council was consulted about the decision. They did not send a letter of endorsement.

"We found out just the same time as everybody else did," Warman said. "And so, a little bit of shock for sure, a little bit of puzzlement."

Warman had called for Rehn's resignation in January, saying Rehn was absent for meetings with local leaders and UCP cabinet ministers about important regional issues.

Rehn has been sitting as an independent MLA since Premier Jason Kenney kicked him out of caucus in January for frequently being absent from his constituency.

Rehn's expense claims for the first part of 2020 showed he spent more time in Edmonton than in Lesser Slave Lake.

His per diem expenses showed he bought meals in Edmonton for most of May, most of June and every day in July, including weekends. The legislature only sat for five days in May.

At the time, Rehn said on Facebook that an assistant had made some errors in recording meal allowances, which he wasn't aware of. He apologized and said he wouldn't claim any meal allowances in 2021.

In the press release Wednesday, Rehn said he was humbled to be given a second chance in Lesser Slave Lake.

"The past six months have been eye-opening to me, as I worked to regain the trust and confidence of my constituents. It was clear that I was not living up to expectations in representing Lesser Slave Lake, and for that I am sorry."
Premier supports decision

In January, Kenney had strong words of reprimand for the MLA, stating that Rehn would be barred from running for the UCP in the future.

Kenney's press secretary Jerrica Goodwin said Wednesday the premier supports the caucus decision to invite Rehn back. Goodwin did not answer whether Rehn will be allowed to run in the next provincial election under the UCP banner.

Rehn was also caught going to Mexico over the winter holidays despite COVID-19 travel restrictions in place. He was one of six Alberta MLAs who travelled outside the country during this time.

Opposition NDP deputy leader Sarah Hoffman rebuked Kenney and the UCP for letting Rehn back in to caucus.

"He billed taxpayers for months' worth of expenses for extended stays in Edmonton," Hoffman said in a press release, adding that Rehn had failed to show up to serve his electorate.

Hoffman said Rehn's behaviour undermined health orders and the government's response to the pandemic, calling the caucus decision another example of Kenney's inability to lead

Humphrey Bogart’s Son Addresses Similarities Between ‘Jungle Cruise’ & ‘The African Queen’

"But 70 years later, they probably won't be doing a rerelease of 'Jungle Cruise'."

Brent Furdyk 

Ask any film buff to identify the title of a movie in which a macho boat captain is hired by a prim, educated woman to take her to a remote destination up perilous river on run-down steamboat and the answer that's likely to be given is "The African Queen", the 1951 classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

© Disney+ / The Everett Collection/CPImages Jungle Cruise - The African Queen

Disney's upcoming "Jungle Cruise" shares a similar storyline, with "intrepid researcher Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt)" enlisting the "questionable services" of "wisecracking skipper Frank Wolff" to "guide her downriver on La Quila — his ramshackle-but-charming boat."

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bogart's son, Stephen Bogart, addresses the similarities between the two movies, particularly given that "The African Queen" will be returning to the big screen this year for a special rerelease in honour of the film's 70th anniversary.

RELATED: Dwayne Johnson & Emily Blunt Ride The ‘Jungle Cruise’ In New Disney Trailer

"The Rock is fine. He's got a great personality. He seems like a very good person. I think he works hard; he cares about it, and I'll go see the movie. It'll be fun. But I never thought of it as a continuation, nor do I think Dwayne Johnson is trying to be Humphrey Bogart, that'd be tough," Bogart told EW.

"I don't want to disparage [anyone]," he said diplomatically when asked to compare the two films. "But 70 years later, they probably won't be doing a rerelease of 'Jungle Cruise'."

Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” releases in theatres and on Disney+ with Premier Access on July 30.

Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer has called "cryptocurrency an inherently 

right-wing technology."

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© Yuriko Nakao/Getty DogeCoin co-creator Jackson Palmer has called "cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing" technology. In this photo illustration, visual representations of digital cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin and Bitcoin are arranged on January 29, 2021 in Katwijk, Netherlands.

"After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity," Palmer wrote in a Twitter thread posted Wednesday afternoon.

"Despite claims of 'decentralization'," he continued, "the cryptocurrency industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures who, with time, have evolved to incorporate many of the same institutions tied to the existing centralized financial system they supposedly set out to replace."

Palmer went on to say that the cryptocurrency industry uses "shady business connections, bought influencers and pay-for-play media outlets" to create a cult-like belief that one can "get rich quick" from the currency. This allows the industry to "extract new money from the financially desperate and naive," he added.

He added that the industry's use of technology prevents others from auditing, taxing or regulating the industry in ways that could prevent corruption, fraud and inequality. "This is the type of dangerous 'free for all' capitalism cryptocurrency was unfortunately architected to facilitate since its inception," he wrote.

Palmer also wrote that he no longer engages in public discussions about cryptocurrency because powerful leaders and retailers in the industry will "smear" any "modest critique" of the technology rather than engage in a "good-faith debate" or "grounded conversation."

While he said that new technology can make the world a better place, he said it cannot when it is "decoupled from its inherent politics or societal consequences."

Palmer and Billy Markus began the Dogecoin cryptocurrency in 2013 as a joke. The two software engineers sought to poke fun at cryptocurrencies by naming the currency after "Doge," a popular meme. The meme uses an image of Kabosu, a real-life Japanese Shiba Inu dog, and superimposes broken English exclamations in multicolored Comic Sans font on top of it, usually to humorously express admiration or discomfort.

While other cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, were created to only be available in limited quantities, Dogecoin was created to be widely available. Nearly 10,000 new Dogecoins are mined every minute, according to Coinbase, one of the United States' five most popular exchange websites.

Dogecoin has fallen in price over the past couple of months following its all-time high of $0.73 on May 8, CoinMarketCap data shows. As of July 14, Dogecoin has a price of $0.197.

Newsweek contacted Markus for comment but did not hear back before publication time.

IT IS PRONOUNCED DOGGIE NOT DO-GEE