To the People of Westfield, Massachusetts (more specifically, the people who read my article in the Westfield Evening News, and most specifically the people who wrote letters to my editor after reading my article, causing me to be fired):

I’ve been misunderstood.

In my article, “Nature’s First Gold is Green” published in the May 17th issue of the Westfield Evening News, I covered the drug bust that occurred on May 14th on Orange Street. At this encounter, over four hundred lush marijuana plants in six different stages of growth were seized (and later destroyed at a bonfire that I was not allowed to cover, even though I asked many, many—maybe too many—times to attend).

Being only one year out of college and still considered a grunt around here, when I was assigned the story I was eager to do the best job I could. After visiting the site of the bust, I went directly to the Westfield Athenaeum to learn as much about this “marijuana” as possible. That is why the article seemed so well-informed. That is how I knew that the soil composition was approximately 30 percent peat moss, 30 percent worm castings, 20 percent sheep compost, and 20 percent bone meal (bone meal, incidentally, contains many of the nutrients used to grow hardy “pot” plants--4% nitrogen, 21% phosphorus, and 0.2% potassium, but you don’t want to overdo it with the bone meal, or the plants will suffocate, or so I hear). In short, I had done my research.

That said, I still feel that some of the slang I used caused obvious confusion throughout the community.

First, when I referred to the Walker family’s growing room as “super-fucking beautiful”, what I meant was, “illegal”. Sometimes I forget that the slang used on the streets is not something the rest of you are necessarily hip to. In the same way that youngsters mean "good" when they say "bad," I, too, reversed terms when I said the nearly neon buds were “totally awesome”. As you can guess, what I meant by that was “totally not awesome”.

I'd like to specifically address Officer Carlson who implied in his letter that I knew way more about “weed” than the experts at the police station did. Honestly, I just got lucky. I was just making up names for things. I thought “hydroponic Jamaican fine red-thread sticky booger buds” just sounded catchy. I didn’t realize it was exactly what was confiscated and later burned. Truly! And when I mentioned that the Walker weed was known for “smooth pulls that were easy on the lungs” and “a mellow rush-buzz that comes in controlled waves like a perfect chemically-engineered coated time-release tablet of goodness that helped me to truly understand the latest Flaming Lips album,” I was simply trying reiterate my thesis statement: Don’t do drugs.

Thank you for your time, and I'm sorry for any misunderstanding.

Steve Caldes

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