FREE Zig Zag Mandala Artwork - You May Pirate these Images and Use them to Make your Own Decorated BLING! or Buy My Christmas Ornaments for Sale at Zazzle Gregvan -

Like a Tie Dye but Digital! 

Link to Buy This Ornament - Click Here!

Link to All My Christmas Ornaments!

Remember: You May Add Words if You Want To. 

Zazzle has a Wide Variety of Typefaces... 

If there isn't enough room to write your MANIFESTO... Write a 

MINIFESTO Instead!

and then on FaceBorg a Zen Buddhist Said:

As much as we would always love to be positive and upbeat, the truth is that this is not realistic. Tough times will happen, but that's just the natural course of life.

Without tough times, you would never appreciate the good, so it's natural you will go through periods with a negative mindset. The problem arises when that mindset becomes constant as it will ruin your life.

One of the biggest causes of a negative mindset is fear.

The trick is choosing what you allow into your mind, and what can influence you. This means you might need to turn off the news or avoid people who only bring you down.

But as we mentioned, a negative mindset is nothing but a habit, and any habit can be broken.

Look at negative thoughts like spam email. You wouldn't take a spam email seriously, you just delete it.

One thing Dad told me was: "Scots Wah Hey, We Wallace Bled." In English: We are Scots. Men of William Wallace. (Braveheart-Mel Gibson)

He also bought me a book: "Born Fighting" by Jim Webb about the history of the Scots/Irish in America. Remember the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd? That's our people!

Toy Fire Truck in Oak Meadow Park in Los Gatos, California...  My Wife and I...

In the 1990's I often drove around with my Dad. One time we were cruising down Vista Ave near our home and he said "At least I raised you right, that man's son became a "Merry Prankster"...and he pointed to a neighbor's house. I have forgotten who the boy was but I'm sure he was older than me... more like my big brother's age. And definitely NOT Neal Cassady. He lived in a Different part of Los Gatos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Cassady

I was living in Willow Glen at that time and Working at Radio Shack and he would often come over an we would get a cup of coffee and sit on a sunshiny bus stop and "solve the problems of the world". He often wrote letters to the editor and they usually got published in the San Jose Mercury News. One letter recommended putting a stop light on Almaden Expressway at a dangerous intersection and soon the city installed one there. Saved some lives...

Copies of the Famous Sculptures of THE CATS
in LOS GATOS, California

My mom's family lived in "The Heart of the Willows" and I remember going to Christmas Parties there. My uncle made apricot white lightning and I would eat an apricot, get drunk and then dance with my cousin. The adults thought it was funny to have small children experience sexual desire before puberty... HA HA! The way he made the liquor was to fill a mason jar with pitted apricots and rock candy (sugar) then pour in vodka. Set that jar on a shelf for a year and the liquid was nearly 100% alcohol.

He also went to a bar named "Chick Letty's" during prohibition. Willow Glen was an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County just outside the border of San Jose. The laws were not enthusiastically enforced in the County... Decades later I went to the same bar and purchased illegal marijuana in the parking lot. SO, nothing has really changed... He bought illegal booze and I bought illegal reefer...

Mom's grade school has been recycled as a Senior Center and Dad went there to participate in their bus trips to Eureka. It was a voyage to the Bear River Casino in Lolita but he just used it as a handy way to travel to see me.

One time when he visited we went on The Hammond Trail in McKinleyville to look at the Mouth of the Mad River. It is visible from a park bench there. We had a long and meaningful talk about Mom. I'm really glad that I got sober and became my Dad's friend in the last years of his life. I was drinking heavily when Mom died and missed that event. OOPS! Mom worked as a secretary in Fisher Junior High School Library in Los Gatos and Lexington Elementary School. The kids loved and respected her. Dad proposed marriage to mom on the top of the hill behind the Novitiate in Los Gatos. There is a trail that goes to Lexington Reservoir and from the top you can see all of Santa Clara Valley. (Filled with apricot trees).

I did experience Aunt Alberta's last years. Dad bought a Television at my Radio Shack store and we drove over to her house and installed it in her bedroom. She had a TV in the living room but when she became bedridden she spent her entire time in the bedroom. I remember that I wanted to explain to my Cousin Dian how to use the remote control but she said hat it didn't matter because Aunt Alberta couldn't tell one station from another. She was taking morphine at that time but hated it. Too much nausea...

Grandpa Malek worked as a carpenter (general contractor). He would build entire houses. Mom's family would live in the houses while they were being built and then move on to the next house when grandpa sold it. Our family house on Hedding Street in San Jose was built by grandpa. We had to move because it was under the flight path for airplanes to the San Jose Airport and the entire neighborhood became uninhabitable when JET airplanes were invented. We moved to Los Gatos and the house was put onto a truck and moved to Almaden. The house was valuable enough to justify moving it instead of simply tearing it down. Grandpa became a carpenter right after the 1906 earthquake. He was living in Oregon when the call went out for all able bodied men to go work rebuilding the city of San Francisco. He also built a house on "The 17 Mile Drive" a neighborhood of palatial mansions in Carmel. Mom, Dad and Grandpa built a Redwood Deck on the back of our house in Los Gatos in 1960. The deck is still there today. https://www.pebblebeach.com/17-mile-drive/

Grandpa Vanderlaan worked as a minister. During the 1930's the people that attended his Church had NO MONEY to put in the collection plate. Ministers feed their families with the money from the collection plate. Grandma, dad and uncle Marc went camping on the Trinity River because there was good fishing, hunting and NO RENT. Dad and Uncle Marc were very good at fishing and hunting during the 1930's because that was a major source of food. During the great Depression Grandpa came to the realization that God did not exist. So he quit his job with the Church and became a math teacher. He also was a founding member of the Humanist Society. It's an alternative to Christianity. My dad was an atheist until the day he died. My brother became a Unitarian and I became an Acid Head. Grandpa Vanderlaan wrote a book about Religion... I tried to read it a couple of times but got bored in the early chapters and never finished it.

We went to Christmas parties at Dorothy and Leland Lea's home in the hills behind Oakland. My cousin Gary and I would play guitars and sing. Gary also played the family piano and the drums in a rock band of his friends from high school. Leland had a huge collection of tiny liquor bottles. The size they give you on an airplane... Surprisingly, after Leland passed away Gary sold the collection to someone on the internet. Before he shipped them to the customer he emptied all the bottles and poured the booze down the sink. It's illegal to ship liquor across state lines but empty bottler are Legal...

Gary Lea taught me about the Visual Mantra he used to quit smoking tobacco. Whenever you had an urge to smoke, think of the O'Neil Surf Shop Logo and remember that if you don't smoke you will have a longer life and more opportunities to go surfing... Good Idea!

We went to Sacramento on Thanksgiving to Uncle Marc and Aunt Peg's home. They had two daughters, Robin and Jill. Uncle Marc became a criminal defense attorney in Sacramento and Aunt Peg was a Social Worker. Jill became a lawyer and moved to Seattle and Robin went to work at Uncle Marc's Law office. One time a client of Aunt Pegs did a Bank Robbery and was holding hostages. The police called her and said that the only person he felt comfortable talking to was his social worker... She negotiate the release of the hostages.

Martin's wife Patti took me to my first AA meeting at Lake Tahoe. Thanks! It allowed me to live a lot longer.

I remember going to Martin and Adrienne's wedding on a Boat in Long Beach Harbor. We wore funny hats (Yarmulke) and I danced holding up a chair the she sat on.

I remember going to Nicole's Wedding in Laguna Beach. No chair dance that I remember... It was at a really elegant Golf Course and we had a lot of regular dancing... We met Brodie's Family for the first time. Martin bought us a Hotel Room at the fancy Hotel... it was where Hollywood Film Stars wen to party in the era of Charlie Chaplin. Big Fun! I also got to go to an Anti Iraq War protest march at the Beach. Every year we had protest marches in Eureka and I was afraid that I'd miss out if I went to Laguna Beach... But the people there hated the Iraq War Also!

Anti-Iraq War Protest in Laguna Beach, California

Gregory Vanderlaan and a Sculpture of the Laguna Beach Greeter

Read more of my autobiography at: http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html 


Link to ALL My Trippy Hippie ART for Sale at My Webstore.
https://www.zazzle.com/store/gregvan/products?qs=Trippy

End Iraq War Peace Sign Button
by gregvan

Music Video: The Hare KRSNA Chant sung by me... with "Merry Christmas" and "Mary Wanna" verses... Oh, that's RUDE!

https://youtu.be/oEeldv31ASY

Hare KRSNA, Hare KRSNA, KRSNA KRSNA, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare... Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Christmas Christmas, Merry Merry
Mary Wana, Mary Wana, Wana Wana, Mary Mary I wanna some Marijuana...

As Phil Lesh noted in his 2005 memoirs, Searching For The Sound: My Life With The Grateful Dead, “We were at the first Acid Test not to play, but just to feel it out, and we hadn’t brought any instruments or gear.”

https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/grateful-dead-acid-test-1965/  The band members in attendance did eventually pick up some Prankster instruments and mess around. As Ken Babbs, Kesey’s Prankster lieutenant and host of the fateful party, recalled to Rolling Stone in 2015, “I remember the band, the guys who later became the Grateful Dead, showing up and playing on our instruments … and us playing on our instruments, and [Neal] Cassady being there and [Allen] Ginsberg and [novelist] Bob Stone and being up all night lying on the floor with microphones rapping stuff into tape machines until dawn.”

Today marks the 53rd anniversary of the first time the Grateful Dead, still known as The Warlocks, attended one of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters‘ Acid Tests, where like-minded individuals would take LSD and enjoy “permissive bedlam” and untethered visual and, eventually, musical displays. This was the first Acid Test opened to the public, and the members of the Warlocks attended not necessarily to perform, but rather to check out the scene. However, the Warlocks would soon become the Grateful Dead, the Grateful Dead would soon become the Tests’ house band, and the weekly gatherings would become the training ground that allowed them to evolve into an improvisational force the likes of which had not been seen before.

Millions of Votes go to The Candidate that Supports Legalization of Cannabis.

Hillary is "OPEN" to Legalizing Recreational Cannabis

WE WAITED AND SAW THAT LEGALIZATION OF RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA WORKED GREAT IN COLORADO AND WASHINGTON STATE...

"On recreational, you know, states are the laboratories of democracy," Clinton said. "We have at least two states that are experimenting with that right now. I want to wait and see what the evidence is." Source: CNN

Will Hillary collect the Millions of Votes from People that Support Legalization of Cannabis? Or will She Simply Lose the 2016 Election... The Time has Come to take a Stand for Legalization... Not Only is it The Morally Right Position, It's Popular with The Voters.

Bill Clinton did a great job as President... The Economy was Booming... Sadly we cannot elect him again... However, there IS a loophole... His wife can be PUSA and Bill can make all the back room deals!

That's a Smart Approach to Marijuana

Legalize Marijuana: The Laws are an Obvious Injustice with an Obvious Solution.

I feel that Doctors and Patients ought to be making medical decisions... Doctors spend years studying medicine and have a better knowledge than elected politicians... With our "Nanny State", people in Congress make policy decisions about medicine and often those people accept campaign contributions from pharmaceutical corporations.... the opportunity for corruption is obvious... recommending medicines that "just happen" to be made by the people that help get the elected representatives elected... Quid Pro Quo?