"Up until just a few years before Oregon and Colorado legalized, the consensus was that full legalization was still a far-off dream. But then states started falling like dominoes. What changed?" Dan Mitchell asks NORML founder Keith Stroup in this week's 'Chronic Town' "Stroup said it was simple demographics. 'The real reefer maniacs have died or retired,' he said, referring to scare propaganda like the 1936 film 'Reefer Madness'."

"Understory also provides pop-up opportunities for local chefs through their partner organization Oakland Bloom," writes Jeffrey Edalatpour in our Taste feature story.

"Widowed mother Patience Portefeux (Huppert) works in the intelligence section of the Paris police as a translator, interpreting the wiretap recordings and social media posts of Arabic-speaking drug dealers, and occasionally assisting in street busts. In an ordinary, fish-out-of-water cop movie, someone like her would face on-the-job sexism, and disarm with charm, en route to a station-house romance. Patience’s story is a little more complicated," writes Kelly Vance about 'Mama Weed'.

"'This Is Your Mind' isn’t simply an excuse for Pollan to get tripped-out and talk about it, or to display his rocketing curiosity and considerable intellectual energy," writes Lou Fancher. "It is a book that presents, and leaves for readers to consider, valuable questions: about presumptions they may hold, and embedded taboos relative to a sedative—opium—that has in recent history been transformed by a pharmaceutical company into a destroyer of human lives."

“‘Little Wheel’ is one of my all time favorite songs,” [Spellling] said. “[Sainte-Marie] does everything I wanted to do on this album in that one song. The theme of ephemerality of time and how special it is to be here, on this planet, as a human. Trying to grasp these big moments we get to share with each other while here and trying to hold onto them. She can speak to grandiose concepts, but the words are so detailed. My album is about that.”

Shana Bull writes, "The East Bay is a hub for businesses that give back to the local community. Whether it’s TCHO Chocolate or Third Culture Bakery—both in Berkeley, with a location in Walnut Creek opening soon for the latter—working with farmers who pay their employees living wages, or Rubicon Bakers in Richmond providing employment to those in need of a second chance, many East Bay business owners understand that their company culture, and how they treat their employees, vendors and community, matters.".

Janis Hashe waxes eloquent on the abundance of figs in the East Bay and her ongoing competition for them with starlings, "the trashy relatives of the bird kingdom, as they start another round of Starling Wars."

Jeffrey Edalatpour dines at Oakland's latest pizza innovators, Soul Slice, and speaks with owner Karter Louis about adding a touch of soul to the traditional pizza from crust to toppings.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In his poem “Litany,” Aries poet Billy Collins testifies that he is “the sound of rain on the roof.” He also claims to be “the moon in the trees, the...

"In January, all cannabis products came under Prop. 65, which requires companies to add warnings to products containing any one of about 1,000 chemicals the state has determined might cause reproductive harm," reports Dan Mitchell in this week's "Chronic Town', "The section of the law that covers packaging is long, and such a morass that it can’t be succinctly described. Hence the need for lawyers."