Arija et al.,

“While we are on this topic, I am curious to know if kanepes are still grown, harvested and turned into the same butter today in Latvia?  Is it sold in food stores and under what label? “

I believe kaņepes were grown for the fiber and the “butter” was just a byproduct made from the seeds.

Visu labu,

Kaņepu sviests is still available. I bought some not so long ago at Matīšu tirgus (market). It was as good as anything I had more than half a century ago. Most of the time, however, it is sold mixed with butter or margerine for the sake of the added taste.

IMO one of the problems with selling this cannabis delicacy to foreigners is the failure of dairy companies and others to experiment and come up with a variety of products, flavors, that may be more suitable to the taste buds of tourists. The extreme propaganda employed against cannabis by the Latvian government and media is a major hindrance and amounts to shooting one’s self in the foot. 

Latvians have a similar problem selling “nēģi”. This delicacy (yes, you have to develop a taste for it) continues to be packed with the head attached, thus, triggering immediate unpleasant associations in the minds of tourists. The result: No sale.

The Latvians dairy industry also has a variety of yogurt products, but almost none without sugar, and nothing that would resemble yogurt that is “hard”. To get the latter, I must travel to Riga, visit one particular Sky supermarket, and buy a German product. I have no idea why this country where milk products are a tradition and is currently experiencing a crisis of milk products there are no cultures to produce more saleable stuff.

The name “zāle” (grass) is the generic Latvian name for medicine, and, thus, puts the Latvian grower of medicinal cannabis a step ahead of the competition. However, again, the Latvian government and media are so full of pietisms (a la 1930s) with regard to Do and Don’t that it kills initiative. While there are exceptions, the chief initiative of many Latvians seems to be to cut down their forests, which is of course a product of wild nature, and has nothing to do with the creation of a sustainable industry or products.

One of the chief problems in Latvia is capital accumulation. It is not happening. It did not happen during the past 18 years of independence, and it will not happen in the next 18 years with a government that knows how to grab but not how to unleash creativity.

Hi All
Interesting discussion that I have just caught up on here.  Suggesting that Latvia could make a hemp led recovery is not such a silly idea.  My beloved completed his master’s degree on uses of hemp fibreboard in the building industry.  His research showed that boards made from hemp fibres are stronger and more water resistant than chipboard made from wood chips.  In spite of some interest from various people (including a chipboard manufacturer who unfortunately was killed in a plane crash), nothing has ever gotten off the ground here, probably because the industry here is already comfortably chipping away at our forests.  So how about it?  Latvia could lead the way in a new building product, save it’s farm economy and perhaps chop down fewer of its own forests.

Cheers!

PS My mother and other old Latvians I know said that back in the old days, hemp in Latvia was always the low THC variety. 

PPS I think the story about the old lady and her plants is an urban myth.  There once was a version of it circulating here in Australia too.

Oh, and by the way, I doubt the traditional health benefits of hemp were because of the THC either, whatever some of you potheads are hoping.  I don’t know the exact details, but I believe that hemp products have health benefits unrelated to THC content.  I’ve heard of naturopaths recommending people make salad dressing using hemp oil etc.

Cheers!

Indra, your inuendu implicit in “some of you potheads” is the kind of moralizing that is responsible—in Latvia at least—for eighteen years of misrule by a government that has little or no loyalty to its own. Absentee Latvians, with their failure to appreciate the realities of Latvia, which manifest themselves as the effects of Shock Therapy administered by a liberal democratic government and resulting in a collapse of the agricultural industry, are responsible for some unintended, but surely therefore not any less painful wrong economic decisions and directions. Yes, indeed, a nation cannot think creatively (or rarely so) if all the advice it gets comes in a moralizing tone, presumes itself to be on a world scale of “right-think”, and has Drošības Policija (Security Police) for an additional factor of intimidation.

The economic disaster zone in which Latvia finds itself in is likely to be a decade long, never mind the government’s rhetoric that next year, or the year after, or surely by 1212, better times will be here again. Therefore, all forward looking strategies as to how to survive the economic catastrophy are welcomed for discussion, even the heretofore unthinkable ones.

Cannabis has been claimed by many scientists (you can look it up by using your “search” buttons) to be the likely basis of many medications in this century. The stories of low THC cannabis in Latvian hemp are likely correct, but the word “low” does not eliminate it altogether, and the stories of its healing qualities are not ascribable to anything else. To reach for some other mysterious ingredient in cannabis is to participate in and to perpetuate misinformation, and to lose much valuable folklore.

Latvia is in an emergency situation. It’s government has low or no credibility, its economy functions on the basis of a few industries and wholesale logging of what is left of its forests. Indeed, I am for the government declaring an emergency situation, which may give Latvians some breathing space in the bag stuffed over our heads by our “baleliņi”. the IMF, and all those Scandinavian lenders of last resort. There is such a thing as an economic sword (as the woman in my neighborhood experiences it, when she sometimes has nothing to eat) and many people are feeling it. So, how will you feed them? By having them turn to drink?

Indra’s reference to “potheads” was a joke, and in context supported your views.  Good grief.

As to your references to harsh laws - if you’ve got kanepu sviests legally sold at the market, obviously Latvian laws aren’t as harsh as those in the US.  Can you please cite the provision(s) that upset you?

Thanks.

It’s not really fair to expect others to undertake business endeavors when one is herself unwilling.  So…while I won’t go to Latvia to grow hemp or plant trees on empty acreage in Latgale, I can’t help but wish some young Latvians living in Latvia would be inspired to develop these ideas for sustainable, broad-based business.  My father in his gentleman-farmer retirement years in northern Michigan single-handedly planted his 40 acres with pine and other evergreen seedlings to create a forest. 

I’m not sure I understand what appears to be helplessness and defeatism on the part of many who just can’t seem to take advantage of the ideas and opportunities that exist and just get out there and do the work.  Without doing any research but just recalling articles I’ve read about the value of hemp for a great variety of reasons, as suggested by Indra even in construction material, why isn’t more being done to develop this idea and others that would provide sustainable business in the empty and depopulated countryside?  Maybe I need to do more research myself and see what already is being done before I make speculative assumptions. 

I see incredible problems in Latvia everywhere I look. Perhaps individual initiative and effort needs greater community support.  Are there activist community, church, environmental, youth, etc. groups?  Just like here in the U.S., they could pitch in to volunteer some labor and assistance to struggling individual efforts or old people to get things stirring and energized in the countryside.  Civic activism seems underdeveloped and underutilized in Latvia.  Am I wrong in feeling that there is just too much “can’t do” attitude in Latvia?  That - and (over-)consumption of alcohol.  Jandz, why give the man money for booze?  If you’re feeling generous, reward the wife instead who no doubt is at home making dinner rather than drinking.  She, at least, deserves to drink after a long day of thankless work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp

http://www.matternetwork.com/2008/10/sustainabile-construciton-materials-made-from.cfm

Ambersun, I left Latvia when I was eleven years old. Now I am back fourteen years. So I have lived in Latvia a quarter of a century all put together. That makes me young in Latvia, but not so young, say, in America.

Latvia is one of the least patriotic countries of Europe. This is because of the mill the people have been put through—all the way from brutal and demoralizing Christianization to almost too many foreign occupations one can count. One should also not forget the failure of the Latvian government to advance education.

Latvia may be described as a two-tier society—the country folk and city people. Once Latvians arrive in the city, they believe that they can forget their country cousins, stop buying their bread, milk, potatoes, and sugar and buy cheaper products made elsewhere. I believe that there ought to be a law that exempts food products from free market forces. Latvians in Riga tend to be overambitious copiers of foreign cultural goodies. Naturally, this demoralizes the country people, who look forward to escaping to a job in Ireland or England or wherever the living conditions are better than at home. Just a few minutes ago, I translated a job resume into English for a friend of a friend of mine.

As for giving a lats or two to someone one knows to be an alcoholic, well, that is something one plays by the ear, because there are quite a few factors one has to consider. These are not bums in a New York alleyway, but one’s neighbors. As for my wife, when I was married, I did most of the cooking. Blame the cooking thing on mothers, not on men or women as such. I know quite a few women who know enough to boil water and boil an egg and no more. No doubt, there are also many such men.

One last thing. Civic activism is long gone and done for the world over. If you do not believe it, you are buying someone’s disinforming advertisement. In any case, this is why I am promoting Jānis-John, the one spiritual force that Latvians have heard of, but which all too many factors are repressing—because with John more than a big black Zero, the Latvian people may again become self-assertive.

eso~ john or jaanis is not latvian, but an import by the hated black knights.
why are you promoting symbols oppression?

Writers of the first half of the last century, the time when Latvia fought for and gained independence, did know something about Jānis-John, even if Latvia then as now was poor and did not have a proper chair at the university that looked into these matters. Unfortunately, even today the Latvian University offers no such courses, nor does not have the money in its coffers to have master’s or doctor’s degree candidates scour the libraries of the world for material about the origins of John. Nevertheless, writers like Rainis, Skalbe, Jaunsudrabins, Virza, Brastins, and others when they wrote about Jānis-John were not promoting the Catholic Teutonic knights. If someone believes otherwise, he or she surely must be from the edge of a yet flat world.

Since the first half of the 20th century much new scholarship is available—if not in Latvian, then in English and other languages. Most of my material comes by way of books in the English language. The perspectives with regard to mythology, anthropology, religion, and other subject matters, have also changed. Above everything, Latvia today is at a critical stage with regard to its survival, with liberal democracy apparently finishing the job begun by princes and knights in the 12th and 13th centuries, who had a liberal business orientation, and who joined the crusades—against the Balts including—for the sake of acquiring land and booty.

jandzs,

If you don’t want “liberal democracy,” what do you want other than the return of your John to power?  You rejected with nary a pause the suggestion of really radical thinking and change - by throwing out patriarchal orders that look for saviors in bloody alpha males who think war is still the solution, promote winner/loser competition, embrace cutthroat hierarchy, create failed political systems such as Communism, Socialism, Democratic Socialism, National Socialism maybe even Democracy - according to you. You tell me what male-created system has been successful in providing lasting peace and prosperity to the minions? 

Real change will not happen in my lifetime and will happen only if testosterone poisoning is cured.  That’s from the male guru Deepak Chopra.  Democracy, as it exists, is tied to capitalism and capitalism, as it exists, depends on risk-taking.  Our current problems in the U.S. happened because the risk was taken out of capitalist financial systems and testosterone-driven greed went wild. 

The unfortunate alternative to a real cure is to destroy the world with male-engineered financial disasters just like the current international bank crisis that leaves Bernie Madoff in his seven million dollar apartment and Kargin in his luxury home in Jurmala while your (our) unemployed neighbor walks in despondence without even the prospect of a real job; to destroy the world with climate-changing energy systems that create obscene wealth for a few oil/coal etc. alpha-male families but floods, droughts, hurricanes, glacier-melts and dead polar bears and dead seas, like the once-beautiful Baltic, in part - devoid of fish and other life -  for the rest of the praying-for-deliverance, throw-away chaff. 

It appears too late for radical change since the momentum is accelerating in the doomsday direction and men are not embracing their own liberation.  Male-chauvinism is alive and well, certainly in Latvia, and, obliviously or even derisively here on LOL.  For those who care not only about polar bears but also about the rest of us, I don’t see anyone biting the bullet of radical thinking and change.   

Nothing you write suggests a positive and healthy integration of those ancient Latvian matriarchal, nature-centered, life-affirming, peace-making principles unless they lend themselves to your obsession with the restoration of janis to his rightful male-Latvian place as lord of the Latvian manor.  What is that going to do to help Latvia rise out of its despondence and helplessness in the face of “liberal democracy” or whatever other male-system is at fault?

Ambersun, is it not not always so—those who have ears do not hear, and those with eyes do not see, of course, looking at things from our personal perch? Just what is your really radical thinking if not empty rhetoric?

You claim that matriarchy has the solution. I do not know that this is so, and I doubt it. This does not mean that I think that men have the answer, but gushing sentiment by either men or women has never solved anything in the past and will not in the future. It is often the sign of an idle bourgeoise exercising its hubris.

I have written at great length about Jānis-John at the “Latvians on Faith” site under “All About the Jānis Festival….”, some fifty entries over a period of six months or more. If you go over that material, you may begin to see some sense and logic to what I write, even some radical thought. Otherwise, we both are treading water, and this unique time to create out of the cultural and economic chaos in Latvia a new perception of the past, which is a precondition, a foundation for a differently perceived future goes unrealized. Given as things stand now, death will come to the Latvian community without the community ever having the opportunity to create for itself the elements necessary for its survival.

A book that I highly recommend is by Karen Armstrong, and it is called A History of God. The book gives an overview of how the nature of God has changed over periods of time and how God is different from culture to culture. What I call the arch-Christians, too, had a different view of God from what I call neo-Christianity. The arch-Christian view has its tap root reaching deep into antiquity and pulling up from its cathonic depths an understanding that self-sacrifice of self (and God) unto death is a necessary precondition to the creation of a community. Some anthropologists have argued that this represents a matriarchal outlook, as men are likely to sacrifice the one they have picked a fight with rather than themselves. Certainly, if the Sumerian Iananna originally was the Sun, and if her name echoes to Ianna-Yanna (etc.), then Jānis-Yahnis-Iahnis-et all are names of the Sun’s sons. Of course, Iananna the Sun had daughters, but it is significant that in the myth it is the male who takes on the self-sacrificial function, because females are busy birthing and tending to children.

Neo-Christianity is a copy of arch-Christianity with one difference—it is based in rhetoric and sets no example of works. Neo-Christianity took John-Jesus and removed him to heaven to sit on his hands there. Arch-Christianity, however, left God live in human beings until the moment came to prove that he-she was really there, which is the moment when self-sacrifice (or assumption of great risk, or death defying courage, or old age) must consummate itself in an act. This is the essence of John or Joan, which is demanded of both if they are to have relevance.

Jānis-John is important to Latvians, because Latvians are a community, a community that has been violated by external forces over and over again, is being currently demoralized by its politicians, is deprived of its spiritual core by neo-Christianity coming as a raging “savior” to save Latvia from nothing relevant to us, etc., etc. Jānis-John is a native Latvian, at the same time as he is a universal presence, because communities the Earth over start from a self-sacrificial effort and maintain themselves by institutionalizing that effort. Latvians institutionalized their self-sacrificial Gods in Johns Day or Johns Eve, who was then taken from them and renamed Grass Day, Summer Solstice Day, Lihgo Festival and so on.

In any event, since women have brought onto Earth 4.5 billion more people since I was a teenager, you are invited to entertain that the time has come for women as well as men to offer themselves in self-sacrifice to their communities and the Mother Sun.

Hi all! 
Thanks Anita for pointing out that my pothead remark was meant good humouredly.  In my flippancy,  I don’t, for a moment, wish to make light of Latvia’s problems.  Bushfires and floods nothwithstanding, I realise I’m still better off here than my cousins in Latvia.  Don’t take my jibe so personally Jandzs, and tell us what you think of my hemp idea.  If there is anyone out there interested, I’m sure my partner would only be too happy to share his knowlege that may otherwise go under-utilised.
Cheers!