Author: islandword

by Danny Zanbilowicz The federal government has promised that it will soon legalize marijuana in Canada. The current time line is for legislation to be in place next summer. In the meantime, the transition to legalization is proving confusing, murky, and frustrating to legislators, citizens, and cannabis activists. The Village of Cumberland’s recent exercise is a case in point. On Monday March 27 Village council members voted three to two to not accept any of the four submitted applications to run a marijuana dispensary in downtown Cumberland, ending, for now, months of work on the part of the applicants,...

by Serena Patterson I have always been a romantic about Iowa. I blame this on a number of things, including my father’s profession. Rural pastors in that part of the world are so revered that it is commonplace for their children to mistake them for God. In my pre-adolescent years I breathed in the benevolence of my dad’s congregation like sweet, clover-scented air, and I played under the attentive gaze of adoring old women who dispensed lemonade, peppermints, reprimands and local history lessons from front porches. I also blame the understated beauty of the place. I looked out my...

Every Sunday- St. George’s Church, Courtenay, 2 pm to 4 pm by Danny Zanbilowicz Food Not Bombs was founded in 1980 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by anti-nuclear activists. Members have provided free good food over the years at many antiglobalization, anti-poverty, and anti-war events including Occupy Wall Street. It is a loose network of hundreds of chapters around the world. Ernie Yacub has been involved locally with FNB from the beginning. He says- “It started here about ten years ago, outdoors in front of the court house for a couple of years, in the basement of St. George’s Church for...