Did my pot cookies kill Jimmy Carter?
Call it cosmic connection, confirmation bias, or conspiracy; in this life strange things are bound to happen.
As 2024 drew to a close, my partner Lisa and I were deep in the throes of holiday preparation. Her daughter was coming to visit us the Friday after Christmas, so we had a couple extra days to buy presents. It was also the deadline for me to finish remodelling our house. After scraping our garish popcorn ceilings off, I had to re-mud the ceilings, paint the hall and living room, install lights, and then clean everything up.
To add to the madness, I had decided to make a vegan cookbook zine for our friends and families. This I did in the late evenings after our bodies were too exhausted to mud, sand, and paint. I get a little carried away with my design projects, and was adding photos, clip art, and stories to each of the recipes.
Somehow I always get myself into impossible situations. If I could afford therapy I would try to figure it out, but I am just too busy (and trying to keep up with my bills) to ever create a situation where I can indulge in self care. If I had a therapist they would disagree with that sentiment. Someday I will get the help I need.
In 2016 I was living in Brooklyn and working at the Jivamukti Yoga Center in Union Square. Marijuana was still illegal in NYC, but I enjoyed getting high sometimes. There were lots of underground delivery services, but I had some connections upstate and would go up and bring back enough to cook down into coconut oil. I found a really great recipe for vegan peanut butter cookies and made batches of them. I had a roommate who loved them, and a few other people around the city who bought them from me, so it was a little side hustle.
The thing about the cookies is that they are so delicious they are hard to stop eating once you have a bite. Sometimes I would make a second batch just to satisfy that craving without getting too stoned to walk. Usually I just practiced self-restraint. Maybe I don’t need therapy after all.
As Lisa and I chose our favorite recipes for the cookbook, I knew I had to include the peanut butter cookies. I wrote a funny version of the story above and had it all ready to go. Lisa looked at it and asked, “are you going to give this to your parents?”
I was. I thought to myself, “I am a grown ass man, its OK for them to know I partake in the kind bud sometimes.” After all, I had been busted in high school and then in the Marines, so it wouldn’t be a complete shock. I also wanted to let my friends know they could make the pot cookies with this recipe.
On the morning of December 29th, I had a change of heart. I could let my friends know without writing about it in the book. So I set out to write a different story to go with the recipe.
I brainstormed all of my connections to peanuts and peanut butter. In my mind I travelled back in time to when I was a young boy, and Jimmy Carter was president. He famously was a peanut farmer, and it was talked about often. All of the political stuff about him went over my head, but the peanuts spoke to me. The president and I loved peanuts.
And so it was that I began writing about Jimmy Carter on the morning of his death. I assume that since I Googled him and nothing about him dying came up, he was still alive at the time (or his death had not been announced at least).
Jimmy spent nearly two years in hospice, taking his time to say his good-byes. He was waiting for the opportune moment, transitioning through the bardo states towards the dissolution of body and mind that ends this round of incarnation. Perhaps his soul was seeking some final acknowledgement in order to let go. He was having an out-of-body experience checking out the devastation from Helene in Asheville when he floated by my house and saw me writing about the Jimmy Carter Peanut Statue in Plains, GA. He knew it was his cue to let go.
I know, it’s a sign of megalomania for me to think this way. Did I mention that I need therapy?
Another theory I have about his dying is that he couldn’t go through another Trump presidency. The two men could not be more different.
Unlike Trump, who stirs up race wars and anti-immigration tropes, Carter was a champion of racial integration in schools in America. He negotiated a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in the Middle East with the Camp David Accords. He was known for telling the truth, even though his honesty and compassion probably kept him from a second term. He did not get us into any wars, and transitioned out of office peacefully.
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his “decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development"
It is my hope that he transitioned out of this life peacefully, surrounded by people who loved and cared for him. Maybe one of them brought him one of my peanut butter cookies.
I found out about President Carter’s passing after the cookbook was finished and on its way to the printer, so I did not mention his death in the book. It’s just one of life’s funny synchronicities. The news coverage has brought up a lot of memories of my childhood. I remember the long lines for gas and the Iranian hostage crisis that brought down Carter’s presidency. I remember Reagan taking over, and his ramping up of the tragic war on drugs that put thousands of non-violent people behind bars, mostly people of color. I don’t think we have had as honorable a president as Carter since then.
I finished the remodelling of our home the just in time for Lisa’s daughter to arrive, and got the cookbook printed in time to share it with my family during our New Year’s visit. I am going to send a copy to all of my paid Substack subscribers, you can use the form below to sign up. I have big plans for content this year, and hope you will stay connected. Happy New Year!
