Background: Originally published September 20, 2006. During the time that I spent operating the KOBI-TV news bureau inside the Grants Pass Daily Courier, there were some unique stories that had a somewhat humorous side to them. I consolidated some of them that occurred in the same time period into one of my columns for the North County News.
GINGER SNAP OR MOLASSES WITH YOUR MARIJUANA?
Grants Pass resident Rycke Brown admits that she handed out ginger snap or molasses cookies laced with marijuana. After standing on the street corner the past six years handing out literature in favor of legalizing all drugs, Brown wasn't getting the attention that she wanted. That's when Brown, in early 2005, began handing out pot cookies to passersby who wanted them.
Brown was prepared to go to jail for her act of civil disobedience. She figured that possession of a controlled substance was not that serious of a charge. However, Brown bit off more than she could chew (pardon the pun) when people began accusing her of handing out pot cookies, without mentioning the secret ingredient. The Josephine County district attorney attempted to prosecute Brown on the more serious felony charges of delivering a controlled substance to a minor and forced ingestion of a controlled substance.
Brown acted as her own attorney during the trial, and responded that some of the cookie recipients were residents at the nearby mission, who only said they didn't know about the pot, in order to avoid getting into trouble during random drug tests. During her closing arguments, Brown said her accusers were casting her in a false light:
"I'm a crazy woman giving pot cookies to unsuspecting little kids, handing them out willy-nilly to all comers. Michelle Davis tells a story of me handing them out to crowds of people. Here, have a cookie. Get nice and high and come back and beat me to a pulp for putting you through it. How much time and money do people think I have for baking cookies with expensive ingredients,?" stated Brown during her closing argument. (Brown acted as her own attorney.)
The twelve-person jury returned a guilty verdict on one count of possession, and not guilty on all other charges.
PENNIES FOR CABLE
Grants Pass resident Robin Fay only receives some $600 a month in disability pay. Tired of Charter Cable TV continually increasing its rates, and at the same time removing popular channels from the basic cable tier, Fay decided to make her own political statement.
A friend of hers carried $61.13 in pennies to pay her monthly cable TV bill at the Grants Pass office of Charter Communications. Charter office workers quickly evicted photographers from the Daily Courier and KOBI-TV, before spending 45 minutes counting and labeling 122 rolls of pennies.
Fay is encouraging other dissatisfied customers to also pay in pennies, in hopes that Charter will restore more channels to the lower tier. "They are taking channels on a lower tier and they are putting them on the higher tiers, so that people who can only afford basic cable can not get the channels that they want to watch. And on top of that, they're putting more paid programming on and they're putting other bullcrap on, that people don't want to watch," said Fay.
FUNERAL DIRECTOR STEPS OUT OF THE BOX
My favorite quote of the month was from the owner of a new funeral home in Grants Pass. "We're here to serve the community, give the community something that they haven't experienced at another establishment. We're willing to step out of the box in funeral services, in cremation services," said Kevin Stephens.
Actually, Stephens Family Chapel has reason to make those claims. The funeral home has a cupola to let in extra light for a bright and airy look in the lobby. The chapel has a large-screen television to allow for special tribute videos during memorial services. And, instead of a display room for caskets, customers select the casket that they want online from a computer.
Until now, Grants Pass had been served by only two other funeral homes in town. One was founded in the late 1920s and the other opened in the early 1970s. Stephens worked for one of the other two chapels in town, but decided he wanted to run his own family business, instead of working for a corporate-owned funeral home.
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