Loud Thoughts Zine: The Discovery Issue

Dear Reader, Thank you for following our stories this past year, we are incredibly grateful for your support. In the Discovery Issue, we will dig deep into cannabis creativity, medicine and entreprenurship with three personal stories. I hope this issue will lead you to new and interesting discoveries about the plant.

Over the course of 2023, we have had the privelage of covering the amazing legacy of Frenchy Cannoli, the development of global cannabis trading platforms, the stoner adventures of Cannacticut and so much more.When I started publishing Loud Thoughts, I knew that there was an urgent need for compelling cannabis storytelling. It was created with the idea that, from the very beginning, the only thing that mattered was what was on the inside. For me, this meant creating a publication with a creative, loud voice and journalistic integrity. After a year of publishing, I can confidently say that Loud Thoughts is preserving plant history while staying true to our core values.

As 2024 arrives, let us look forward to an industry capable of sparking personal growth, true equity and transformational branding. It is important to remember that the world of cannabis is only beginning!

- Jack Porcari

At our core,

Our mission is to expand cannabis-infused storytelling through human narrative.

@LoudThoughtsZine @TheCannaProfessor

www.loudthoughts.online

©2023 Jack Porcari All words and media property of author unless otherwise noted

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Pot, paint and pandemic: A portrait of Klien Goousseff The French artist who uses line, light and feeling to grow his cannabis artwork

Jack Porcari

The Seed

K

lien Goousseff* says Berlin changed his life. “I’m a French guy, and I lived most of my younger years alone with my mother since my father passed [away] from cancer when I was really young,” he said in an interview with Loud Thoughts. “I was used to moving a lot but really changing from country to country was a big thing and discovering Berlin was another big thing because there was really this freedom culture.”

At the age of 14, his mother landed a position as a Historian at an international research center in Germany, prompting a relocation from Paris to Berlin. This new culture and perspective created a philosophy of life that would enter creative realms for Goousseff. As a teenager in Berlin, he was finally able to participate in city life—not merely exist within it.

“There were just more places and less people than [in] Paris.

Everything was cheaper and you could smoke weed in public without getting in so much trouble,” he said. “What I love is just that we live so close to each other; we are forced to experience each other’s culture.”

Goousseff, who has seen Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia and Argentina, loves the study of history like his mother. He still remembers the exact moment he began drawing. “I was 16 or 17 and my mother’s friend’s daughter was visiting us,” he said. “She was drawing and I kind of fell in love with her but she was just there for five days,” he said.

They quickly became friends, writing each other letters from France to Germany.

“She would send me drawings you know, with the letters and so I would send drawings too and that’s how I began to draw really.”

A sunny Goousseff in the French countryside.

In college, he studied history and his technique further developed at Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, an incredibly selective art school in the region. “I had another friend visiting in Germany who saw my drawings and as I came back to Paris, she brought me to the art school,” he said. “Even though I wasn’t legally a student, I would go to the nude fest; they had a lot of models and it was like eight hours a week.”

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“I went there for maybe two or three years and it gives you a solid background because human bodies are a really good basis as it’s academic,” he said. “What is funny is you draw someone naked for four hours and then as they leave the scene and say goodbye to get their clothes on, you feel some kind of shyness and really like ‘oh…I’m so sorry!’”

Goousseff always carried a sketch pad with him. “I would draw every time I was moving: in the subway, in Les Beaux-Arts, in the parties also,” he said. “There was a time in my life where I would consider it a bad week if I didn’t draw 20-30 hours a week.”

Studying in France came with many perks, including the fact that police did not have the authority to enter student grounds. “Any campus is a safe haven for smokers,” he said. “I would go there twice a week and meet with students, do parties, smoke joints and draw a lot.”

His style started to take root and years later, around 2020, he switched his subject matter completely. “I started off doing landscapes from Mixed media sketch of a wandering cannabis cola. memory and then adding cannabis wasn’t really hard and it was also for @Cannartoon on IG me, after the lockdown, a free way to travel,” he said. “As I get across a lot of things, I think we can’t travel everywhere if we want to sync up with the planet…with war right now it’s really difficult to cross let’s say Ukraine, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, other places.”

“So I imagine myself sometimes in those countries and marijuana gives me an anchor, a base to go to and imagine myself. I will teleport myself to another country and being the plant, I will change my phenotype; it’s still the same plant, if you think of the plant as a character.”

“As I grew [cannabis], I saw the plant every day and because I drew from memory and optical reference and not so much from photography, I began to enjoy it a bit and that was it. It was really pleasant and I could experiment a lot with technique.

“Staying with the same subject; it limits all the questions you have as an artist.

The plant is an infinite fractal structure as you look at it—like it’s always the same thing only smaller and smaller. You’ve got these nine panel leaves and then 7-5-3-1. It’s this fascination you can have with symmetry, dissymmetry and things you find in cannabis.”

“As a drawer when you are high, it’s really great to draw it. You can’t really miss yourself because if you just follow the structure, it gives you all the answers and then you are committed to yourself…Between this really botanical approach and this really psychedelic approach, I think there is something other than the photorealistic approach and my approach is also questioning where our mind can go and whether or not we need the AI.”

Translation in Russian and Ukranian: “No to War”

Goousseff’s likes to quite literally get inside the mind of each plant he is drawing. “You have to think, is the plant happy?

Is it well fed? Isn’t she too hot? What’s moisture content? How is she feeling? So it’s not just like drawing something, expressing colors and forms is also an incarnation of a body even though it’s just a plant,” he said. “They are what they are even though they might not be conscious, they just are.”

The Flower As a cannabis grower, processor, aficionado and artist, Goousseff has started to collaborate with events, brands and businesses across the globe. In Thailand, where 4,000 cannabis prisoners were recently released, the 1st Ganja Cup has been running since May. It was started by Prempavee in an effort to spread awareness about locally-grown cannabis products that can be difficult to locate

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in dispensaries. The event, which is broken down into indoor and outdoor categories, is currently on tournament number seven, with over 350 growers and 21 judges participating each month. “Goousseff is very nice, I like his drawings and after chatting with him we came out with the idea to make the logo for the Cup by hand,” Prempavee said.

Aside from doing handmade commissions for other French cannabis brands, Goousseff has designed merchandise for exotic cannabis cultivator, Captain Nemo Cannabis. Operating out of Fort Collins, Colorado, the company is on a mission to grow rare plants and help animals along the way. Last Thanksgiving, they raised $240 for the SPCA. “The next strain that I’m most excited about is White Christmas. It is a cross between The Captain Nemo Brand began in 2019. It was six years after Nemo’s first grow, inspired by a High Times ’79 Christmas Dooligah, a large article about SubCool’s SuperSoil. leafed expression of the Australia Bastard Cannabis (ABC) variety from Binchickenspicks and The White x ABC, a high terpene variety with a legendary high from Humboldt CSI and Painted Forest.

Because they both carry the ABC leaf type gene, I’m hoping to isolate the vigor and shape of the 79 Christmas Dooligah, while upping the cannabinoids and enhancing the flavor in the final product. This will also be the subject of our second hoodie project,” Nemo said. “Highlighting the obscurity of the ABC leaf type is something that I believe Goousseff will be able to do with great talent. This project is expected to be released in July of 2024.”

“The creative process with Goousseff has been collaborative and exciting. We are creating two projects that will be printed on hoodies…The bold imagery of the plants in a field gave the hoodies a feeling of life that was missing.” **For the publication of this story, the identity of the individual is deliberately concealed to ensure privacy and confidentiality. This measure creates a candid exploration of the narrative while respecting the subject’s need for anonymity.** To support Klien Goousseff and view more of his new work, go to ko-fi.com/cannartoon

Daily references

“Old Man Hashishin” made with Goousseff’s handmade resin

“The French Connection”

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From recovery to reform: Jane’s transformative path in cannabis activism

by Jack Porcari

J

ane McPartland’s journey with cannabis began at a roller rink in the 1970s. At 14 years old, her dad caught her smoking a joint in the night air with friends. “The scary part was my dad because if I was a boy I would have had a grand physical altercation, and I would have lost tremendously,” she said. “You shouldn’t do it. You don’t touch it. They put you in jail. So it was not a good time in the 70s.”

“The draft was involved with a lot of people’s lives,” she explained. “It was just a different time. You understood that, you know, the government owns you more than your parents.”

“Everybody else kind of sat around so that’s why I didn’t like doing it; I liked smoking cigarettes. And I didn’t smoke, I didn’t have any you know, real desire doing any of that stuff,” McPartland says. “I had medical issues.

I’ve had four successful pregnancies and four children. All through that time I had different physical ailments and if I describe them to the doctor, or a medical person, they would assess my situation, look at me physically, and they would give me the reason why I felt the way I did and I kind of accepted it because I was like, ‘Okay, you’re in the white coats, you seem to know.’”

McPartland was born with a backwards left clubfoot and had roughly 20 Sun kissed cannabis grown in Downstate New York.

X-rays by the time she was two years old. “Twice a month my mom would take me to the doctor and he would gently break my ankle and then recasted it; from what I was told, I went through three playpens and four extra casts.” She was formally diagnosed with sarcoidosis of the lungs and was prescribed steroids after her first child in 1992.

“I’d have other ailments,” she said. “I had something with my jaw, my face would blow up, go back and forth. Doctors would say certain things and whatnot, but life would go on anyway. In 2008 I had an incident and it escalated very quickly. It started out in a dentist’s office, it went to an oral surgeon and I went to an EMT…The doctor that I was seeing at the time, her name was Dr. Zubernick. She was a lifesaver. She was my quarterback.”

In October 2008, McPartland was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and began taking Rebif, an interferon-based FDAapproved injectable designed for Multiple Sclerosis.

Just three months into treatment, her body started to crash. “I feel like I had a large fish hook through my heart stabbing me from behind,” McPartland said.

After three separate ambulance rides to the local hospital, she was admitted on April 22, 2009. “One of the side effects [of Rebif] is heart damage—I didn’t know that at the time,” she said. “I wasn’t getting those instructions and the internet was not as good as it is now. So I stopped taking Rebif, but unfortunately, my whole body was systematically shutting down.”

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McPartland was brave enough to withstand multiple invasive medical procedures, including a brain biopsy. “The next biopsy that they wanted to have of me was my heart. But they would have to go through my chest…all the damage is on the back of my heart,” she said. “So I said no and I stopped being on the medical roller coaster.”

Then cannabis came back into the picture again. “The 70s, 80s and 90s go by and by 2009, I’m back living down on Long Island on the same street that my parents live on and, you know, I started to have all these words start to shoot at me and one of them was Multiple Sclerosis, which registered with my dad and he understood what that meant for his daughter,” McPartland said. “I guess he had a turn of heart and would have done anything to help his child and he found out through me through researching things that cannabis can help the nerve pain that I was going through. He was witnessing all the stuff that I was dealing with and he was the one who actually brought me to the hospital at Mount Sinai, one of the first times.”

Jane McPartland says that her dad could grow anything. At a young age, she was growing tomatoes, playing in the dirt and learning how to adjust the beds when Fall came. “By July they were like six feet and unfortunately, they started to smell and neither one of us knew that; we didn’t really have the internet at that time yet…So I thought I was being on the down-low growing this and then if you came into my backyard, there was an amazing smell of cannabis. And you could smell it, I mean—it was very pungent,” she said. “It was very pretty until I realized I was in Nassau County and that was a felony. So we had to pull it.”

“And that’s why I want to be an advocate because I did learn. I know how to grow it. But I also realize the benefits that it had on my body and I can only speak about my reaction and how it had helped me,” McPartland said.

Even though she couldn’t grow cannabis, McPartland thought of ways to use her passion and story to touch the community. “My heart is with tomatoes,” she says. “You can’t capture it, everybody wants a red tomato.”

“I always grew tomatoes, but I grew tomatoes with a purpose and I named her Peacock Tomato for charity.” Their slogan is “we go from black to white to green and all colors in between.” In 2012, McPartland began raising funds for a boy named Charlie who suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. “The Peacock Tomato Company was started to help a little boy and he’s, you know, a young guy now and he goes to college and everything.

So I mean, he’s one of my inspirations, and it’s hard to get on my inspiration list,” she said.

Over the years, McPartland remained driven and applied her growing skills in search of the right strain for her unique endocannabinoid system. After obtaining her New York State medical cannabis card in 2016, she had access to oils and edibles. However, it wasn’t until 2018 that something truly life changing came along. McPartland was in sunny California when she first smoked a strain called Gelonade.“I took a few hits of this and first of all, like the taste of it, it was lovely…My system liked it very much and then all of a sudden, I just felt like I wanted to get up and dance—literally, I got a song in my head and started to bop.”

The Peacock Tomato Company has raised funds for Charlie for over ten years.

She felt like she was given 20 extra years of life as well as a newfound sense of fortitude and conviction. “Cannabis got me off the couch. I specifically am are my heroes besides veterans who a Gelonade person in that kind of way because I smoked different ones. Blue “Children protect me and they have no idea of who I am…

Dream was really good. Jack Herer. You know, when I went out to California I when children are affected, that’s a motivating factor for me. “ was able to start putting names to strains and the budtenders were very good about giving their opinion,” she said. “Laws are changing and that’s why I’m opening my mouth. So this way, people can walk into a legal dispensary and have an intelligent conversation with someone who knows what they’re talking about.”

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Each harvest season, McPartland hopes to destigmatize the plant further while discovering more “neurological helpers” for patients just like herself. This August, McPartland completed 10 certificates from the well-known Cannabis Training University, allowing her to become a Certified Cannabis Consultant in New York State and Canada. Additionally, she recently finished her coursework at the Cannabis Holistic Institute, further solidifying her knowledge of the applications of cannabis medicine. As a student of Dr. Pepper Hernandez, McPartland says that she was taught to respect the plant with organic practices and artisan techniques. “The most impactful thing [she gave me] was allowing me to understand what medicine truly is for me,” McPartland said. “This whole advocacy thing—it’s like I want to hold someone’s hand—and I won’t let go.”

McPartland’s certificate from the Cannabis Holistic Institute.

Jane’s Gelonade notes

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La Casa Lola ushers in new era of cannabis collaboration, consumption

Inside Annette Fernandez’s journey of grief and growth in the cannabis industry.

by Jack Porcari

S

ometimes, all it takes is a simple hike to put things in perspective. For Annette Fernandez, Founder of Women’s Walking Crew, La Casa Lola and High Exposure Agency, the path ahead could not be clearer. Through loss, the pandemic and spending time walking the neighborhood, she realized just how much her home of Washington Heights means to her. In 2018, Fernandez attended a Women Grow meeting that would change the course of her career forever. Surrounded by activist entrepreneurs, she soon dove head first into the industry she loved.

“When I finally left finance and decided to do this full time, I came in with like, real rose-colored glasses around how this could be very different,” she said. “And I think 19 months later, yes, the community is different, but the structure and the system that we’re operating in is still the same.”

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She was embarking upon a self-described “spiritual journey” and it was “liberating” for her to break away from the expectations that came with being a Latina mother, working to provide for her daughter. “Money is not the important thing in this process,” she explained. “The structures and the systems are not built for us. And when I say ‘us’ I mean, women of color and single women of color. I had all the odds stacked against me.”

Two years after the inspiring Women Grow meeting, pandemic stressors were beginning to take shape. Banker’s hours meant Fernandez was an essential employee in the face of a global pandemic. “They always wanted us online or they were calling us on video to make sure we were at our desk. It just got really awful. And then when George Floyd was murdered I think it really pulled the veil off of Corporate America in terms of like diversity, equity and inclusion,” she said. “That was a really traumatic experience for me in the company.”

For many people, including Fernandez, legalization presents an “extra burden,” or a “responsibility” to follow the equitable goals highlighted in the MRTA. “That’s always the tension for me, like I want things to be different, and they’re not,” she said. “But then I realized that it’s the individuals that make a difference.”

“When I entered into this activism field and entrepreneurship in cannabis, I really had a different mindset. And 19 months later, I think the mindset is a lot more curious and more open to feedback and more open to discussion, because there’s so many intersections because there’s so many different stories…I think that creates a lot of tension, but also a lot of excitement for what’s possible.”

New York State’s Office of Cannabis Management set a goal to award 50% of licenses to Social and Economic Equity applicants hailing from CDIs(Communities Disproportionately Impacted) like Washington Heights.

“I think it’s gonna be tough in Washington Heights,” Fernandez says. “We still don’t have a dispensary up here, we are inundated with unregulated stores and we have a robust legacy market.”

“It’s a lot in a neighborhood where the Harm Reduction Center is just a couple blocks away from a major school corridor,” she said. “These kids are now being faced with people injecting themselves, needles on the floor, people that sleep around schools, people that congregate to buy drugs, it’s just not a good situation for kids; we’re normalizing things that we shouldn’t normalize for for our kids and our kids honestly should not have to deal with the issues that they’re dealing with right now on the East Side. Even my daughter’s like ‘Mom, I want to move,’ and I’m like, ‘nah, we gotta hold on, it’ll get better.’”

“I feel connected to it [Washington Heights]. I feel empowered by it,” she said. “I just feel like it’s a beautiful community. Folks that are raised Uptown that are native to Uptown have a very particular sensibility.”

This sensibility created a help mentality that everyone in the community would feel: “The folks that are moving into the neighborhood remark about how they just can’t believe how people just help each other and it’s true. It’s part of who we are,” she said.

Fernandez views these realities—good and bad—as the natural evolution of her experience as a woman in business, in family and in community. It is a healing journey that only she could initiate. “The fact that I’m a cannabis user has also led me down a more spiritual path of recovery and healing,” she said. “You know, I think I’m a person that needs recovery in terms of my mental health and that has been hard for me to admit, even to my family. I think they were surprised because I was always the one who was like, ‘together.’”

One way she learned how to keep it together was from her parents, who led by example. “I think Latinos also have a tendency to assimilate because we can, and our parents want us to be American and my dad was always really concerned

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with how we dressed,” she said. “Even when he went to my father daughter dances at the Hewitt School for Girls, he was dressed to the nines, you know?

It was just something that we were always conscious of because it tells you I just envisioned that this is a your position in the world constantly.” space that then creates this center where folks can be empowered to As licensure rolls out in New York State, Fernandez hopes to positively learn about cannabis. shape the position of her own community with La Casa Lola. The feminineforward consumption lounge, creative space and community hub will provide education and incubation for women in the cannabis industry. “I imagine that when we open our doors, it’ll feel like a tribute to my grandmother and my father,” she said.

“

”

Grandma Lola lived to be 101 years old and smoked tobacco every day. “I’m not saying that because my grandmother smokes tobacco is why I started, but in this journey that I’ve had in the last 19 months and thinking about what it is that I want to do and how I want to build these businesses, it does feel like all these parts coming together,” she said.

“It is part of my family’s culture and our tradition— they were tobacco farmers.”

Fernandez looks to establish vibrant green traditions that have not been explored yet in New York City. “I think women are craving those spaces and the events that have been my favorite events in New York have been hosted by organizations like the CannaDiva, where it was primarily women in the room and it just feels different.

“There’s just a different approach even to how we’re smoking, you know, we’re not ripping 10 dabs in a row or like trying to get the highest in the room.” she said.

“I think that there’s a lot of different sensibilities in cannabis and building La Casa Lola is to support this more feminine, softer, more balanced approach to cannabis.”

Pink joints for a rejuvinating sesh.

Looking ahead, Fernandez is determined to take up space in her community while building the market she wants to see.

“I really don’t think any of this is an accident. I really do feel like I have been prepared. Not only educationally, not only professionally, not only culturally,” she said. “I’m really prepared to be a part of this miraculous market and I’m prepared to make a difference Uptown.”

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