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MODERN-DAY MUSE Americana meets hip hop in the music of rising talent Lillian and the Muses
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FEATURE
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Lessons of a Digital Nomad Here’s what we learned from living on the go—and what we would change if we did it again.
DEPARTMENTS
13 EDITOR’S NOTE 36 THE SCENE Hot happenings and hip hangouts around town 14 THE BUZZ NEW AMERICAN MYTH News, tips, and tidbits to keep you in the loop GOOD BUDS Quality, Affordable Cannabis MAINE EVENT NECANN Portland BEYOND WORDS Trippy Art BANISH ANXIETY CBD From Iceland SINNERS AT SEA Boston Halloween Party Cruise STORY xxxx
20 THE LIFE Contributing to your
health and happiness THE WONDER OF DOGS For
many of us, a life without animal companions would be a lesser life.
Here’s a peek into the process of musician Lillian Seibert, aka Lillian and the Muses.
46 THE END Some locals believe this beaux-arts mansion in Bennignton, Vermont, is haunted.
ON THE COVER
Lilian Seibert is a breakout musician defining the new era. PHOTO BY HOLY SMOKE PHOTOGRAPHY / HOLYSMOKEPPHOTOGRPAHY.COM
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ADVISORY BOARD
NATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD NCRMA Risk Management COLORADO Agricor Laboratories Testing Lab Aspen Cannabis Insurance Insurance Services Canyon Cultivation Microdosing Cartology Corporation Cartridge Filling Equipment + Hardware Colorado Cannabis Company THC Coffee Concentrate Supply Co. Recreational Concentrates Emerald Construction Construction Green Edge Trimmers Trimmers Higher Grade Boutique Cannabis Hybrid Payroll Staffing & HR Benefits Jupiter Research Inhalation Hardware Lab Society Extraction Expert + Lab Supplies marQaha Sublinguals + Beverages Monte Fiore Farms Recreational Cultivation Northern Standard History of Cannabis PotGuide Cannabis Culture Source CO Wholesale Consulting Terrapin Care Station Recreational Dispensary Toast Mindful Consumption Uleva Hemp Products Wana Brands Edibles Witlon Inc. Payroll Processing
MICHIGAN Aronoff Law (Craig Aronoff) Licensing Law Firm Cannabis Counsel Cannabis Law Firm Etz Chaim Attestations Grapp Lerash Accounting/CPA Services Great Lakes Natural Remedies Lakeshore: Provisioning Center Kush Design Studio Cannabis Facility Design & Build MRB Solutions Human Resources Northern Specialty Health Upper Peninsula: Provisioning Center Oh, Hello Branding Promotional Marketing Perry & Drummy Inc. Commercial Insurance Pure West Compassion Club Caregiver Connection & Network Rair Medical Flower Solutions by Dr. Dave West Michigan: Hemp CBD Helping Friendly Hemp Company Hemp Topicals NEVADA Eden Water Technologies Water System Technologies Green Leaf Money Canna Business Finanacing GreenHouse Payment Solutions Payment Processing Ideal Business Partners Corporate Law & Finance Jupiter Research Inhalatation Hardware Matrix NV Premium Live Resin Red Rock Fertility Fertility Doctor Rokin Vapes Vape Technology This Stuff Is Good For You CBD Bath and Body
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 365 Recreational Cannabis Dispensary: Recreational, Santa Rosa Green Unicorn Farms CBD Hemp Flower Humboldt Grow Tech Smart Ag Tech Red Door Remedies Dispensary: Cloverdale Southern Humboldt Royal Cannabis Company Mixed Light Farming Sonoma Patient Group Dispensary: Santa Rosa Strictly Topical Inc./Sweet ReLeaf Pain Relief Topicals Uleva Hemp Products Vaper Tip Vape Supply & Consulting Wana Brands Edible Gummies SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Accucanna LLC Desert Hot Springs: Dispensary EventHI Events Flourish Software Distribution Management Helmand Valley Growers Company Medical Infrastructure Specialist HUB International Insurance Hybrid Payroll / Ms. Mary Staffing Staffing & HR Benefits Ikänik Farms Cannabis Distribution Red Rock Fertility Fertility Doctor Wana Brands Edible Gummies Witlon Payroll
NEW ENGLAND Corners Packaging Packaging Green Goddess Supply Personal Homegrown Biochamber The Holistic Center Medical Marijuana Evaluations Revolutionary Clinics Medical Dispensary Royal Gold Soil Tess Woods Public Relations Public Relations Vantage Builders Construction
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EDITORIAL
Stephanie Wilson Co-Founder + Editor in Chief stephanie.wilson@sensimag.com Doug Schnitzspahn Executive Editor Tracy Ross Managing Editor, Michigan Emilie-Noelle Provost Managing Editor, New England Debbie Hall Managing Editor, Nevada Jenny Willden Managing Editor, California Will Brendza Managing Editor, Colorado Robyn Griggs Lawrence Editor at Large Radha Marcum Copy Editor Bevin Wallace Copy Editor
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Growin g the Industr y.
Upcoming shows: Chicago, IL August 6-7 Virginia Beach, VA November 19-20 New York, NY January 7-8 Oklahoma City, OK March 31-April 1
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October in New England
is known for its stellar weather,
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harvest festivals, apple picking, and, of course, Halloween. There’s much to look forward to this month, but it’s also a time of change. September’s brilliant foliage turns brown, falling to the ground and leaving the trees bare. After wearing short sleeves at the beginning of the month, we often find ourselves scraping ice from our windshields by its end. This October also brings changes to my family. After living away from home for the last five years, Madelaine, our grown-up daughter, is living with my husband and me again. It’s been a difficult transition at times. We’re all different people than we were when she left for college in fall 2016. Learning to regard one another as adults and respect each other’s space has frequently been a challenge. But there has been joy as well. Having the opportunity to sit with Madelaine in the evenings, when she comes home from her job at an educational nonprofit, and talk with her about her day often makes the domestic challenges we’ve been facing seem trivial. I couldn’t be more proud or feel more satisfied as a parent, knowing the hard work we invested in raising her has resulted in a talented, passionate adult who is working toward making the world a better place. I’m also reminded that growth is the ultimate outcome of many of the challenges we successfully tackle. (As my mother used to say, “A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor.”) And whether it’s getting vaccinated for COVID-19 or cleaning out a closet to make space for someone else’s things, our efforts to take care of one another and ourselves often pay off in ways we never imagined.
Learning to regard one another as adults and respect each other’s space has frequently been a challenge.
All the best, TWITTER Follow @sensimag for need-to-know news and views from Sensi headquarters.
I N S TAG R A M Pretty things, pretty places, pretty awesome people: find it all on @sensimagazine
Emilie-Noelle Provost @Emilie_Noelle
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Good Buds In partnership with cultivator Revolutionary Clinics, Bud’s Goods dispensaries (with locations in Worcester and Abington, Massachusetts) recently launched an affordable cannabis product called Lil’ Bud’s—an eighth of an ounce of pre-packaged cannabis for only $30. Referred to by the company as “the people’s eighth,” the high-quality small buds feature the same cannabinoids and terpenes as many of their best-selling strains, without the high price tag. budsgoods.com
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF BUDS GOODS & PROVISIONS
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Emilie-Noelle Provost, Stephanie Wilson
BEYOND WORDS
This trippy art tackles spiritual and social issues.
BY THE NUMBERS
105 DAYS The approximate amount of time it takes to grow a mature sugar pie pumpkin from seed SOURCE: Wildroseheritageseed.com
PHOTOS (FROM LEFT) COURTESY OF CANMAN CREATIONS, VONA
2,294 POUNDS Visual art has always had the power to make us think critically about the world around us. Michael Cannistraro, founder of Canman Creations—an art and design firm in Medway, Massachusetts—uses his creative skills to draw attention to cannabis-related and other social issues, including the negative social and economic impacts of drug laws. Cannistraro, who describes his style as “modern psychedelicism,” also designs product packaging and creates digital illustrations for use in media. canmancreations.com
The weight of the heaviest pumpkin ever recorded in New England, at the Topsfield Fair’s 2019 New England Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off SOURCE: Topsfieldfair.org
500 SEEDS The average number of seeds found in a fully grown carving pumpkin SOURCE: Theheartofnewengland.com
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I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
—Lucy Maud Montgomery, 20th century Canadian author
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THE BUZZ
BILITIES BY STEPHANIE WILSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF
1 STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS STORY: The first time I ever got high, I went to a haunted house.
2 TRUE STORY: The girl who drove my friends and me that night had a last name pronounced doo-bie.
3 MS. DOOBIE [NOT HOW IT’S REALLY SPELLED] had borrowed her mom’s car that night and picked up me and two other girls on the way to the haunted house on the other side of town. On the way there, one of the girls convinced her to pull off into a cul-de-sac so her three passengers could smoke a joint in the woods all stealth-like—my puff-puff right of passage.
4 THE HAUNTED HOUSE IN OUR TOWN WAS NO JOKE. Kids and adults alike would line up at the spooky house on the hill outside of town to be subjected to fits of terror. Whether they knew it or not, they were there to get high on fear.
5 WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE FEAR, your body’s natural fightor-flight response triggers the release of endorphins and dopamine into your system. When that happens in a safe environment (like a haunted house or while watching a scary movie), the pleasure response is heightened even further. That’s why safe-but-still-so-scary attractions exist: We’re just seeking our next dopamine hit. 6 IN MY FIRST-TIME-HIGH STATE, my inhibitions were lowered and my guards were down. I let myself be scared—terrified—at every turn, as did my friends, and the three of us found ourselves huddled in a pile together in the corner of one dark room at the end of the tour, giggling and crying good tears, and giggling some more.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NECANN
7 TURNS OUT, getting safely scared with friends is a bonding experience. Science says so, as does my anecdotal experience: Twenty-five years later, those two girls remain my bestest of friends, although I don’t know whatever happened to the girl named Doobie.
THE MAINE EVENT
Celebrate the Pine Tree State’s emerging cannabis culture at this annual convention in Portland. Returning to the Portland Sports Complex in Portland, Maine, on October 16 and 17, the sixth annual Maine Cannabis Convention will feature a variety of vendors and exhibitors from throughout the state, including Cold War Organics, Atlas Seed, and MCR Labs. Sponsored by the New England Cannabis Network (NECANN), the convention, last held in 2019, is Maine’s largest networking event for cannabis industry professionals and consumers. Attendees can take advantage of educational programming covering topics such as best practices for growing cannabis, marketing skills and techniques for dispensaries, and the latest research on cannabis’ medical potential. The Maine Cannabis Convention is open to anyone age 21 and over. Get tickets (from $20 to $35 per day) via the event’s official website. necann.com
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THE BUZZ
VOX POPULI
Question: What was your favorite Halloween costume?
MARCIA CASSIDY
MEG WILLIAMS
ANNETTE LANGKOPF
ROBERT HAMILTON
SALLY BING
PR rep Lowell, MA
Financial analyst Nashua, NH
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Sales executive Sunderland, MA
Receptionist Pawtucket, RI
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My favorite was Grapes of Wrath. I wore purple balloons (grapes) with scowly faces on them, and my husband was Tom Joad.
Maleficent! She’s just a great character.
I was a pair of dice Braveheart. It was fun once. Cute, but not at all to wear a kilt. practical.
I was Bubbles, one of the Power Puff Girls. It was a kids’ costume, but I made it fit!
Sinners at Sea
PHOTO COUTESY OF SINNERS & SAINTS HAUNTED PARTY CRUISE
Start Halloween weekend off right on this haunted party cruise.
Put on your favorite Halloween costume and enjoy spooky cocktails, ghoulish treats, and tunes spun by a live DJ while sailing Boston’s inner harbor. The 21+ Sinners and Saints Haunted Party Cruise, held on the 500-passenger Provincetown II, will set sail on October 29 at 7 p.m. from Commonwealth Pier off of Seaport Boulevard. The cruise includes a costume contest. Tickets range from $20 to $40. Note that food and beverage sales on board are cash only. eventbrite.com
THE FARTHER WE'VE GOTTEN FROM THE MAGIC AND MYSTERY OF OUR PAST, THE MORE WE'VE COME TO NEED HALLOWEEN.” —Paula Curan, October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween
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The Wonder Of Dogs For many of us, a life without animal companions would be a lesser life. TEXT LELAND RUCKER
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PHOTO BY RITA KOCHMARJOVA, ADOBE STOCK
I had a dog once that played music. Really. Any time my friend Gil and I got out our guitars, Ricky grabbed a squeaky toy, planted himself between us, and started making noise. He had no sense of time or rhythm—it was pure skronking jazz—but this Belgian Tervuren was into the music. Whenever he heard the Cheers theme on TV, he began, uh, singing along. We have many audio tapes, but alas, no video of him while he wailed. He would be a viral sensation today. It’s been more than 20 years since Ricky died, but I think about him a lot. I think often about all the dogs that have graced my life. No other canine has shown any degree of musical aptitude, though I have tried mightily. But each one has been a good friend, and each has taught me something about myself. I couldn’t live without a dog. They are my companions, friends, and teachers. Humans, especially Americans, are animal crazy. As of 2018, according to Statista, a statistics portal for market data, 60 percent of US households included a dog, and 47 million had a cat. That’s 80 to 90 million dogs, give or take a
few million. Many have both, and that doesn’t count the multitude of fish, rabbits, ferrets, iguanas, snakes, birds, guinea pigs, mice, hamsters, and other animals we keep. Maybe we’re not all Leona Helmsley, the hotelier who left most of her inheritance to Trouble, a Maltese who lived in luxury until she died at age 12, yet we managed to spend almost $70 billion on our companion animals in 2017, half of that on food and treats, and we’re on target to spend more this year. I was afraid of dogs as a child and grew up with the general belief that non-human animals— we are all animals, after all—acted solely by instinct. The difference between humans and other animals, we were told, is that we humans are sentient, conscious, emotional beings, and other animals aren’t. Animals belong to us, the reasoning went. Not being around them, I didn’t give it much thought until I got my first dog at age 27. I’ve never been without one since. A big part of the disconnect about whether animals are conscious beings is that they can’t tell us what or how they’re feeling or how O C TO B E R 2021
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THE LIFE
intelligent they are in a language that, as smart as we are, we can understand. Their “intelligence,” such as it is, might not resemble ours, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s not hard to find YouTube videos that show ravens and crows making complex decisions to get food. Border collies have been trained to distinguish between hundreds of words. Watching the famous video of Robin Williams and Koko the ape interacting, it’s hard not to suggest they are showing genuine empathy for each other while rubbing each other’s bellies and laughing. We can put GoPros on their heads to see the world from their point of view, and The New York Times reported recently that a canine researcher
is performing MRIs on dogs to try to see inside their brains, but there is still no way we can experience life as animals do. That’s a secret they keep to themselves, and it drives us crazy. When I once suggested to a researcher in Yellowstone it would be cool to be inside a coyote’s brain for five minutes, he replied that he would give anything for just one second inside there. Dominion vs. Domination The way we look at animals has changed a lot, especially over the last 50 years, and we are finally coming to terms with animal sentience, or at least the concept that animals have feelings, too. The Biblical injunction comes early, in its first chapter. “And
superior species, and we are allowed to do what we want,” he says. “But dominion doesn’t mean domination.” Religion has played its role, he explains, in passages like the one above that claim only humans have souls. “Another reason is that if you distance yourself from other animals,” Bekoff says, “it allows you to do what you want.” This kind of detachment allows us to control animals, whether God said, ‘Let us make that means shooting man in our image, after them for trophies, keepour likeness,’” Geneing them in zoos, or prosis 1:26 reads. “And let ducing them for research them have dominion purposes. “In terms of over the fish of the sea, industry, you can unand over the fowl of the derstand where people air, and over the cattle, come from,” Bekoff says. and over all the earth, Allowing that animals and over every creeping have feelings changes thing that creepeth upon that dynamic considerthe earth.” ably and begs even more That one word in questions. there—dominion—has That humans are proved problematic. unique was accepted What does dominion dogma for most of hureally mean? Does it man history. Charles mean we humans must Jonkel, the recently exert control over all deceased bear bioloother creatures or be gist, grew up poor but their caretakers? Marc learned to trap and hunt Bekoff is an ethologist at an early age as part (someone who studies of a subsistence famthe science of animal ily. When he went to behavior) and research- school in the 1950s, bear er who has been workbiology was a relatively ing with animals his new field. Jonkel already entire life. “A lot of this knew a thing or two is driven from the view about animal behavthat as humans we are a ior, but he also knew to O C TO B E R 2021
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THE LIFE
PHOTOS (FROM TOP) BY ALEKSANDR MATVEEV; POLOLIA, ADOBE STOCK
CBD 4 K9s CBD is all the rage these days—and not only for humans. More and more veterinarians are learning about this compound and are now suggesting it to their canine patients for pain relief, anxiety and behavior issues, and inflammation, especially in older dogs. A clinical study from Cornell released earlier this year suggests that CBD oil can help increase comfort for dogs with osteoarthritis. My local humane society now stocks CBD products, and my vet says she hasn’t found any real downsides, although she suggests talking with a doctor about medications the dog might already be taking before starting a CBD protocol. There are lots of choices, but one place to start might be Mary’s Whole Pet, a new farm-to-table line from Mary’s Medicinals and Elite Botanicals. All plants used for the oil are grown on an organic, chemical- and pesticide-free family farm in Colorado, and the list of products includes drops (in two potencies based on weight), capsules of different dosages, and a transdermal gel pen for fast-acting relief for dry skin, cracked nose or paws, or surface wounds. One warning: THC, the compound generally associated with the cannabis high, should never be given to dogs. Keep your edible products away from your canine companions. Because it’s federally illegal, no scientific tests have been done on dosage levels for animals. As suggested with humans, start low and go slow to find the right dose. And always remember that every animal is different; what works for some won’t work for others.
keep his opinions about animal intelligence and sensitivity to himself because, as he explained it, that wouldn’t help get you a degree. In those days, he said, you didn’t talk about that kind of stuff out loud, and it wasn’t until he graduated that he was able to pursue his real studies. Bekoff has worked with and written books with Jane Goodall, perhaps the best-known ethologist for her work with apes. When they started writing about animal sentience, they ran into the same kind of resistance for questioning established beliefs. “For a long time, Jane and I were kinda sideshows,” he admits. “We got heavily criticized for talking about the emotional lives of animals. But I basically really believed in what I was doing and kept doing it.” Bekoff ’s view of dominion has more to do with stewardship than domination, based around the concept that humans, the dominant species, are charged with taking care of what we have. And though humans might consider themselves more intelligent than animals, we really have to try and see things from the animal’s perspective. “It’s not how smart an individual
animal is, it’s what they feel,” Bekoff says. “We’re all smart in some ways, but there are different types of intelligence. Rats are really smart. Maybe not as smart as humans, but they have emotional lives just the same.” Companion Animals What does this have to do with the way we interact with our dogs? I scoffed originally when the city of Boulder, Colorado, changed the word “owner” to “guardian” in its ordinances almost two decades ago. It’s nothing more than a symbolic gesture, one of those “only in Boulder” things, I told myself, agreeing with a city attorney who at the time called it “social engineering.” I have since come to appreciate the distinction. Ownership, as noted above, suggests that you can do whatever the hell you want, and, at its worst leads to behavior that obliterates all distinctions and leads to atrocities like dog- or cockfighting. Thinking of yourself as a guardian instead of an owner suggests a different way to approach your responsibility toward your animal companions. One of the best places to learn about dog behavior is dog parks, the O C TO B E R 2021
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PHOTO BY SERGII MOSTOVYI, ADOBE STOCK
THE LIFE
fastest growing segment of city parks these days. Most major US cities have at least one, and they have become a kind of a cultural phenomenon. In his new book, Canine Confidential: Why Dogs Do What They Do, Bekoff says dog parks are like rich petri dishes of dog culture, working classrooms for human/ canine understanding and citizen science on the subject. “They’re gold mines for learning about both dogs and people,” he writes. “Visits can serve as myth breakers or icebreakers. For hours on end, the interactions never stop: dogs are watching dogs, people
are watching dogs, dogs are watching people, and people are watching one another as they care for, play with, and try to manage their dogs.” I’ve spent some time in dog parks in the last few years, and Canine Confidential, which is written in a casual, conversational style, reinforces the things I’m learning and pushes me to learn even more. “Life is very vivid to animals. In many cases, they know who they are,” says Carl Safina, whose Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel is a scientific and observational study of elephant, wolf, and whale interaction and societies. “They
know who their friends are and who their rivals are. They have ambitions for higher status. They compete. Their lives follow the arc of a career, like ours do.” Thinking about animals in that context provides a much better way to look at my dog. Rather than drag her away when she wants to spend time sniffing at a certain spot or chastising her every time she gets into a scuffle, I try to see it from her point of view. It’s taken me a long time to realize that, if we just allow them, dogs can be our teachers and not just our pets. We can learn a lot from them. I have had an exceptional-
ly difficult time with my dogs’ deaths. But I have also come to realize that, hard as they are, those deaths are a reminder that life is precious and that grieving is a part of it, too. It’s their final lesson for us, and it’s a big one. Though I’m still looking for another dog that can make music like Ricky, I’ve learned that every dog is unique and special in its own way. We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go, and it can never come too quickly for Bekoff. “The bottom line,” he says, “is that if we’re going to make change, we need to recognize sentience.” O C TO B E R 2021
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TEXT ROBYN GRIGGS LAWRENCE
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LESSONS FROM THE UNEASY HIGHWAY
PHOTOS OF AIRSTREM BY LEE STONEHOUSE
What I learned as a digital nomad—and what I’ll do differently next time.
from San Francisco, and families from Seattle—younger adults with full-time jobs and no interest in pickleball or water aerobics. Watching the rain pelt the couple next to me as they wrestle with their sewer lines, all I can think about is how these new nomads (“newmads”) are going to make finding a place to park the Flying Cloud—already next to impossible because RV infrastructure hasn’t kept up with the number of vehicles on the road—impossible. Even before this influx, reservations at state parks and desirable RV resorts needed to be made months in advance. It’s the week after Memorial Day. I’m screwed. On the radio, Kenny Loggins sings “Celebrate Me Home,” a ballad lamenting the uneasy highway.
PHOTO COURTESY OUTSITE.CO
My summer gig on Orcas Island just fell apart after a week. I don’t know where to go. I’ve parked my Airstream at the Deerwood RV Resort on the outskirts of Eugene, Oregon, so I can figure things out. It’s raining. I know that’s what it does here, but every drop feels personal. I’ve been on the road for two years, traveling from San Diego to the San Juans, with detours to Spain and Mexico and Michigan and a few stops to see my kids in Denver. I’m gritty. Campgrounds have just reopened after the early pandemic lockdowns. A startling number of Cruise America rentals are filing into Deerwood, tentatively driven (and more tentatively parked) by a whole new class of RVer: techies from Silicon Valley, gay couples
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PHOTOS (FROM TOP) COURTESY OF AIRBNB; BY MARTAKLOS VIA ADOBE STOCK
As I sing along, “and I never know where I belong,” I start crying. I don’t want to do this anymore—ricocheting from place to place; retreating to hotels and Airbnbs when living in a trailer gets claustrophobic, then moving back into the trailer when other people’s rules get claustrophobic; bunking with friends to ward off loneliness; falling in love with other people’s dogs and having to leave them. I need a home to go home to again. I’ll sell the trailer to one of these newmads and settle down near my kids for a while. Think about what mortgage I’d been paying on an just happened. Figure out how I’ll appreciating home in Boulder. A Sprinter van would have givdo this better next time. en me a lot more freedom and Here’s what I know. mobility, and I hope to try one I WON’T BUY ANOTHER for an extended trip (they’re too AIRSTREAM (OR ANY RV). small for me to live in full time, This is hard to admit, because my though lots of people do). I can nomad dreams were so wrapped rent one for somewhere between up in romantic ideas about tour$70 and $700 a night, meaning I ing around in an Airstream, but could journey for two weeks in a the shiny trailer never sparked the basic wagon for around $1,000 or kind of joy it should have for all the most tricked-out, badass mothe money it cost—and kept on bile out there for about $10,000. costing—in aftermarket products, Either way, I’ll spend a fraction of ongoing maintenance, licensing, what it would cost me to buy, outinsurance, gas (my truck avefit, license, insure, and maintain a raged about 13 mpg when haulvan of my own. ing), and hookups at campgrounds and RV resorts (when I’LL EXPLORE CO-LIVING. I could get them). On the West RVing wasn’t for me, but I did like Coast, the minimum per night in a how easy it was to meet people campground where I felt safe was in RV parks and campgrounds. $55, and the nicest parks run well There’s instant community when over $100 a night. When I was travelers circle their wagons (and lucky enough to book a parking there’s a hot tub). I didn’t realize spot for a month, it cost around how much I needed that camara$1,600—about the same as the derie until I spent a month in an
Airbnb on Bankers Hill in San Diego, where I knew no one. I made a couple unsuccessful attempts to connect with humans—a coworking space, Tinder—and spent a lot of time alone. (Loneliness, it should be noted, is consistently the number-one thing that causes digital nomads to give it up and go back home.) O C TO B E R 2021
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Digital Newmads
My mood and perspective changed completely when I moved to a co-living house on the beach in Encinitas, the surfer paradise just north of San Diego. I got to chat with fellow travelers over coffee in the morning and share sunsets with them in the evening, and everyone was respectful of each other’s work needs during the day. It felt like college again, but with people who have been to cool places and done inspiring things. As more people discover co-living, its popularity has soared— even through the pandemic. Rates at Outsite and other companies that offer private and shared rooms in houses around the world have skyrocketed since I stayed in early 2020 (like everything, I guess). Coliving.com, a sort of Airbnb for co-living houses, offers some more-affordable options.
I’LL STAY LONGER IN FEWER PLACES. In two years, I spent a week or more in 24 locations. That’s not 32
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the way to do this. According to a survey conducted this year by the website A Brother Abroad (abrotherabroad.com), digital nomads overwhelmingly prefer to stay in one place for about six months at a time. Longer stays let you relax and get to know a place, embed in the community. They’re also easier on the body (travel takes its toll), a lot more conducive to getting work done, and more affordable (long-term stays are cheaper, and getting from place to place always costs something.) I’m working through my commitment issues. Next time, I’ll stop and stay a while.
I’LL BUDGET. I recently read the average digital nomad spends $1,875 per month, or $22,500 per year—and I was incredulous. I consistently spent double that, sometimes triple in expensive California. I wasn’t prepared for how much everything cost. Next time, I’ll be more responsible. It’s not that
PHOTO BY HALFPOINT VIA ADOBE STOCK
Digital nomads (aka digital gypsies) are people who use technology to do their jobs from anywhere on the planet. According to the Jerusalem Post, you have to move locations at least three times in a year to qualify. And workers are doing it in increasing numbers. • The number of digital nomads in America has gone up by 49 percent, from 7.3 million in 2019 to 10.9 million in mid2020, a study by Emergent Research and MBO Partners found. • There are 35 million digital nomads of every nationality living and working across the globe, according to a 2021 survey by the website A Brother Abroad. • While vacation paradises from Anguilla to Bermuda to Costa Rica to Dubai are all attempting to lure remote workers with year-long visas and incentives, Mexico is home to the most (14 percent), followed by Thailand and Portugal, A Brother Abroad found.
restrict their citizens’ rights, though, so I doubt I’ll ever check that box.
I’LL BRING MY OWN WI-FI.
hard—I don’t even have to learn QuickBooks. Apps like Destigogo and The Earth Awaits are available to help me calculate where I can afford to travel based on my time frame and how much money I have. Radical.
PHOTOS (FROM TOP) BY CMOPHOTO NET, PEGGY ANKE VIA UNSPLASH
I’LL GET MAIL SERVICE. I never got counted in the 2020 Census. I was having mail sent to a friend’s house in Boulder when it happened, and the letter with the code I needed to get counted online never made it to me. There was a lot going on at my friend’s house, and forwarding my mail wasn’t a priority. I get it. I chose to use my friend’s address not because I was worried about my mail—I pay my bills and do most transactions online anyway—but because of all the things attached to an address, from health insurance to vehicle and voter registration. I like having Colorado plates and voting in a blue state. But next time, I’ll spring for a professional mail service like PostScan Mail or Earth Class Mail
Finding reliable Wi-Fi is digital nomads’ number-one complaint. Being able to hotspot my phone was a lifesaver when I started traveling in 2018, but it never gave me all the bandwidth I needed to work and watch Netflix. I was constantly data starved. The good news is, portable Wito sort, scan, and shred my mail, Fi technology (like all technolothen send digital copies and forgy) has improved exponentially ward important documents (like over the past couple years, and the Census letter) and checks (I now I can buy a high-speed pormay have missed a few of those, table hotspot like the Skyroam too). Most of these companies are Solis, which can handle unlimited in Texas and South Dakota, which data and up to 10 devices. have low income tax rates and I’ll also research Wi-Fi speeds loose residency requirements, and before I plan an extended stay in they can also help me become a another country because some citizen of one of those states even don’t have the bare minimum to if I never live in them. I’m not support remote work, and this down with the way those states is beyond frustrating. The Digi-
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I’LL BRING MY OWN COFFEE. If coffee doesn’t matter to you, you can skip this section. (I’ll never understand you.) Too many times, while staying at Airbnbs or dog sitting or visiting friends, I found myself in a kitchen in the morning without a way to make coffee. It seems unfathomable to me, but apparently some people are not caffeine junkies and they overlook this morning ritual. I put together this kit to make sure I never have to wake up without caffeine again: • An Aeropress (a plastic tube with a plunger that makes an excellent cup of coffee) • A stainless steel reusable filter for Aeropress • A portable immersion heater (a
little clip you put inside a cup to heat water) • Ground coffee • Powdered milk (I like my coffee brown)
didn’t fit into my Airstream. That wasn’t entirely true. I stashed furniture with my kids and friends, and I had to rent a storage unit for the bins full of memorabilia and photographs I couldn’t let go. I cursed my sentimentality every I’LL BRING MY DOG. month when I paid that bill. My Catahoula died right before I Even after spending months hit the road. I borrowed a friend’s purging almost everything I toy poodle for the first leg of my owned, I still carried around journey, but when I had to give him back after four months, lone- things I didn’t need and never used, detritus that weighed liness set in. Not having a pet me down and cost me—in gas to makes traveling easier and gives haul my overstuffed trailer and in you more options—just watch baggage fees when I transferred how many available rental propclothes I never wore into a big erties drop out when you filter for “pets allowed”—but extended pink suitcase to travel by air. Everything I need to live my travel without a best friend was life, full stop, can fit into a carunbearable for me. The first thing I did when I land- ry-on suitcase and a backpack. That’s what I’ll take next time, ed in a home again was adopt a no matter where I go. Unencumsenior Shih Tzu. He’s grumpy but adaptable enough to travel. I’ll plan bered. No excuses. my next journey around his needs.
I’LL BRING LESS STUFF.
I’LL WORRY LESS, APPRECIATE MORE.
Before I set out, I bragged about getting rid of everything that
At least, I hope I will. I’m always working on this one.
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Lillian Seibert, aka Lillian and the Muses, is bending genres, combining Americana and hip hop to craft songs for a new sensibility. And in the midst of the pandemic, the Vermonter hit the road for California in search of endless spring, collaboration, and new visions. Here’s a peek into the process of a musician who is breaking ground for a generation on the rise. TEXT DOUG SCHNITZSPAHN
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PHOTO BY GOLD WING PHOTOGRAPHY
New American Myth
PHOTO BY HOLY SMOKE PHOTOGRAPHY / HOLYSMOKEPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
After drivinig 10,00 miles and spending three months on the road, Lilian Seibert found her muse—make that Muses. A musician, photographer, and videographer who was raised in rural Vermont and studied at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, the 24-year-old Seibert records and performs as Lillian and the Muses, but the pandemic hit the up-and-coming
talent hard, as it has so many performers. And like so many other musicians faced with the isolation of COVID-19, Seibert created art in the midst of it all. Lillian and the Muses combine song and sight; Siebert often sees the visual narratives of songs as she writes them. So the Vermonter headed to the sunny sands of Los Angeles to film videos of “Cigarettes” and “Devil
in the Details” from Lillian and the Muses new, eponymous EP. The plan was to collaborate with Alissa Lise Wyle, a friend from Berklee who creates as Holy Smoke Photography (holysmokephotography.com) and chase spring across a country slowly awakening from the pandemic (“Spring” is also the title of Lillian and the Muses first single, which features a video shot back home in Burlington, Vermont). So Seibert and her father converted a van, and she was off to California for a few months before chasing spring back to Vermont. O C TO B E R 2021
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PHOTOS BY HOLY SMOKE PHOTOGRAPHY / HOLYSMOKEPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
THE SCENE
Lillian and the Muses may just be hitting the scene, but the music hinges on the crest of a wave of young artists who are not afraid to mash up genres. Trained in opera, Seibert centers herself in Americana and is influenced by a line of Green Mountain State stars she saw growing up, including Grace Potter and Anais Mitchell. But the new EP puts hip hop beats down under multi-layered vocals. It’s a unique sound representative of Gen Z’s streaming and genre-bending sensibilities but grounded enough to be an ear worm for any genera-
tion. Seibert took the time to talk to Sensi about her art, process, and, of course, muses. You are a musician, a photographer, and a videographer—how do the visual and the musical come together in what you do? I see them as intertwined. I can’t really have one without the other—at least in my mind. When I’m writing, I’m doing it from a place of a vision or a story, and, to do that, I need to be picturing it. So when we are making music videos, it’s a process of bringing that initial vision back to life. The video is very important to me—almost as much
as the music. I grew up with a lot of Americana and outlaw country, so I am heavily influenced by stuff like John Prine and the glam of Dolly Parton. Then there are current artists I’ve always been into like Rachael Price from Lake Street Drive and Lana Del Rey, and there’s a great Norwe-
gian singer Aurora who I really love. A lot of those groups focus on pretty dramatic retellings of music through a video. How do you think about transforming a song into a video? It usually takes the form of sitting down and listening to the song on repeat with my eyes closed until I can picture every second of every frame. Then I just write it down like a crazy person. I just start scribbling. I have a tendency to know exactly how I want the shot to be done because I’m familiar with lenses and framing. So I usually come in with an O C TO B E R 2021
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THE SCENE
You are a videographer yourself, but you hired LA-based Alissa Lise Wyle of Holy Smoke Photography to make videos for the songs “Cigarettes” and “Devil in the Details” from your new EP. Why? So this is funny. Alissa and I have completely opposite styles when it comes to video. But I absolutely adore that; it’s why I hired her. I wanted what she can do, and that is not my specialty. It was one
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of those things where I could outsource to someone who’s awesome. And I was happy to do that because I appreciate her work. As far as shooting my own stuff goes, I’m a big proponent of anybody who can do everything on their own—make their own beats, sing their own stuff, shoot their own video—but I’m really focused on community. I would so much rather have specialists and people who are invested and excited in my work to create something you can all be proud of instead of trying to go it alone. It was exciting be-
cause I was going to be able to give Alissa more wiggle room with a narrative. I’m always trying to structure everything perfectly, so that everything’s cohesive and the little nods to each moment make sense in a storyline—but with “Devil in the Details,” there’s a lot more room for metaphor. It’s much more aesthetically driven, loose, with imagery that can be interpreted however the audience wants to interpret it. That gave Alissa a lot more freedom. I said, “Okay, these are the scenes that I’m picturing. You go crazy and
have fun.” That was great because, I really want to give the artists I work with a chance to make something that they are proud of, not just something to which I’m looking forward. Who are the Muses? Are they your band? So I am Lillian and the Muses. The Muses name is derived from Greek mythology, and the idea of different muses for poetry, music, art… I’m very much of the mind that the world around you influences your work. So I think of myself as Lillian and the music is something omnipresent. That being
PHOTO BY HOLY SMOKE PHOTOGRAPHY / HOLYSMOKEPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
Excel spreadsheet with a second-to-second time code. Then we take it from there.
THE SCENE
PHOTO BY HOLY SMOKE PHOTOGRAPHY / HOLYSMOKEPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
said, it’s also great when I have people on stage with me; they suddenly become the muses. The music takes on a more acoustic, soft Americana country sound to it, much truer to my roots. You say you are influenced by Americana but, in the studio, you’re bringing a new twist with hip hop. How do you see that working, and how do you like to meld those very different influences? I try to not be too precious with each song that I write. I think a song can be produced by so many different people and have a completely different sound. On the EP I just released, the beat maker is Jarv, a rapper and producer based in Vermont. He had been intrigued by the idea of taking my acoustically written, pretty, country-inspired music and seeing if we could make it kind of classic hip hop and see where that would go. So we just started playing around with it, and we found stuff that we really liked. We started mixing in a lot of my layered vocals, which added a completely different texture. It maybe pulled us a little bit away from classic hip hop, but much more into
my own sound. I’m just trying to do my best to pay homage to what I know is my sound and also try on different hats while I’m doing it. I’m not afraid to try a new genre or a new producer because who knows? It could sound awesome. It could sound awful. It’s like cooking—give it a try, add something. It might seem weird, but I’m sure the first person who put salt on chocolate said, “This has gotta be nuts.” And, to spread out the influences even more, you studied opera in college. Is that still a big part of your music? Opera prepared me for my work now, but it’s definitely not where my heart ended up. That being said, you can definitely hear it in the layered vocals in some of the work I’ve done. There are some pretty high operatic things happening in the background. There’s a sweet spot in my life for opera, but specifically choral music has always been something that I adore. I started it in middle school and didn’t stop all through college. I was so inspired by the layering of many, many voices, which is reflected in my music when I do all this vocal layering. I love that O C TO B E R 2021
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THE SCENE
feeling of a choir, how it can be so immersive like an ocean, an overwhelming presence. When I’m writing, I write almost everything a capella in lieu of instruments, with vocal melodies that I just layer on top of each other. Sometimes, I take that to some of my bandmates and they’ll just interpret it into chords and play instruments instead of the vocal melodies. In some cases, like in “Spring,” we just keep the vocal melodies and that’s the heart of the structure of the song.
PHOTOS BY HOLY SMOKE PHOTOGRAPHY / HOLYSMOKEPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
What do you most want listeners to get out of your work? The music has to speak
for itself. You can talk music all day, but you can’t really explain a sound or a feeling. So I’m excited to fi nally have this debut project out so that people can get a feel for it. I’m excited to incorporate more live instruments in the future as well. The sound of the pedal steel is something that I’ve been dreaming of for years, and I’m so excited to integrate it into my music. What’s next? I’m going to be putting out more music, more singles that are going to accumulate into an album. I’m excited about exploring some more
of this kind of acoustic space and tracking some of that music, because, you know, muses are flying in and out. I want
to make sure that Lillian and the Muses continues to be a malleable voice that grows and changes. LISTEN UP Check out Lillian and the Muses’ EP on Spotify and catch the videos for “Spring,” “Cigarettes,” and “Devil in the Details” on Lillian and the Muses YouTube channel or on the website. Follow Lillian and the Muses on Facebook and Instagram.
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orn in Nigeria, Dr. Lola Ohonba has a unique perspective on plant medicine. She understands traditional uses—that deep knowledge passed down through generations—but she’s also a Western-educated pharmacist, a biologist and chemist, trained in hard science. Her desire to share that perspective spurred her to found WCI Health after a successful career in the mainstream pharmaceutical world. “After the passage of the Farm Bill,
you saw CBD everywhere,” she says, “and I felt like there needs to be education in the space. Education is the key.” WCI Health does just that, drawing on the experience Ohonba (Dr. Lola, as she’s known) has in both worlds to help dispensaries, who want to use botanicals, cannabis, and psychedelics as medicine make the right decisions. And she has become a prominent voice in the effort to destigmatize plant medicine as a public speaker as well as the author of the bestselling
book A Pharmacist’s Guide to Cannabis: Perspectives of a non-conformist clinician and the host of the podcast Let’s Talk Plant Medicine: Cannabis, Psychedelics, and Pharmaceutics. Beyond advocating for new perspectives on alternative medicine on these platforms, Dr. Ohanba is seeking to bring diversity and inclusion to the space. “I preach equity,” she says. Dr. Ohanba suffered from a disability that limited her movement as a child, and that experience gave her a unique empathy for those who feel as if they have no hope when it comes to finding relief from debilitating conditions. She’s especially focused on those with disabilities and those who served in the military and suffer from mental health related disorders like PTSD. She defines equity as making sure anyone in need is equipped with the knowledge to find healing. “Very few people have the background of knowing how plant medicine works and how conventional medicine works,” she says. “I’m able to break it down to the average person’s level without the medical jargon. I can say, ‘This is medicine, and I have science to back it up.’”
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THE END
Home of the Glass Bottle King
Some say this early 20th-century Vermont Beaux-Arts mansion is haunted.
In 1915, wealthy Ohio businessman Edward Hamlin Everett, owner of The American Bottle Company, precursor to Owens Corning, built the Everett Mansion in Bennington, Vermont. Everett’s former 500-acre estate served as the campus of Southern Vermont College from 1974 until 2019, when the college closed. Not long after construction on the house was complete, Everett’s wife, Amy, died under mysterious circumstances. Her obituary states that she died 46
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following a long illness, but many people at the time, including her three daughters, believed she was murdered. Reports of strange phenomena began almost as soon as the college purchased the estate, the most frequent of which was the appearance of a woman in white roaming the mansion and grounds. Today a popular wedding venue, the Everett Mansion is thought to be the inspiration for Vermont gothic novelist Shirley Jackson’s 1959 classic, The Haunting of Hill House.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SOUTHERN VERMONT COLLEGE
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