Novem­ber 2, 2007 Inter-Media Arts Cen­ter, Hunt­ing­ton, New York
Moon­al­ice poster by David Singer

Accord­ing to Moon­al­ice leg­end, the great patriot George Wash­ing­ton was a mem­ber of the tribe. Every­one knows he was a Mason and our first pres­i­dent, but his role in the Moon­al­ice leg­end has been obscured by the pas­sage of time. It turns out that after chop­ping down the cherry tree and not lying about it, George was sent off to spend some time with the Moon­al­ice tribe in North­ern Vir­ginia. They taught him how to be a farmer — a hip­pie, if you will — and George went on to a dis­tin­guished career as a plan­ta­tion owner. Con­trary to pop­u­lar wis­dom, the Wash­ing­ton plan­ta­tion was devoted the cul­ti­va­tion of America’s most impor­tant indige­nous crop, hemp. Given the crit­i­cal nature of hemp in the econ­omy of the period, it was nat­ural that a hip­pie such as Wash­ing­ton would be put in charge of first the army and then the coun­try as a whole. While peo­ple were less uptight in those days than they are today, they nonethe­less used a code to let the gen­eral know when they were in need of addi­tional hemp prod­ucts. The code, which is still in use today, was bril­liant in its sim­plic­ity. If you needed sup­plies, you put up a sign that said, “George Wash­ing­ton slept here.” Judg­ing by the signs around Hunt­ing­ton, demand for hemp prod­ucts appears to be very strong.

M32