"The essence of what's happening is that people are getting educated," Downing said. "People are learning. The rest of the nation is finding out that they have been lied to about cannabis by their government for many decades."

This week, Colorado became the first state to sell marijuana for recreational use. Hundreds of buyers waited in line for hours to be a part of opening-day history. Sales were brisk.

Now, Colorado's historic legalization policy is being touted as a springboard for the other states.

In 2012, Colorado voters approved the sale of recreational marijuana, as did voters in Washington state. But Colorado is the first to have the pot shops up and running under regulations recently established by state and local governments. Colorado voters' approval in effect amended the state's constitution to allow for the retail sale of recreational pot. The state already allowed medical marijuana.

The entire state is not implementing the law, however. A community can decide not to allow the shops, and in fact, most areas of the state have not, including communities such as Greeley and Colorado Springs.

In November, Portland, Maine, followed Washington and Colorado's lead and legalized recreational use of the drug, while the Michigan cities of Lansing, Jackson and Ferndale resoundingly voted to let people older than 21 possess an ounce of marijuana on private property.

MORE>>>KBZK

Jenna Caplette migrated from California to Montana in the early 1970s, first living on the Crow Indian reservation, then moving to Bozeman where she owned a downtown retail anchor for eighteen years. These days she owns Bozeman BodyTalk & Energetic Healthcare, hosts a monthly movie night, teaches and writes about many topics. 

Where are most of your photos right now? Stockpiled on your camera’s memory card? On your phone? Stored in boxes stacked in a closet? Don’t let your family images languish when you could be enjoying them. 

The long dark of winter night offers a perfect opportunity to organize your images. The essentials of the process are as simple as the ABC's: A is for Album -- your very best images that you want to have in an album or book; B is for Backing up (more on that in a moment); C is for Can -- toss it or delete it. There is one more: S is for Story. If an image is part of a larger story, you need to keep it whether it's a great image or not.

Get moving on your photo projects. A motivating question for yourself might be, what photo album do you wish you had to look at, but don’t? Or, what photo gift do you wish you could give to someone, but only have a print of the image you want to use.

If negatives are not available, get the prints themselves scanned. With F-11 Photo’s “Shoebox Scanning Kit” fill the box with as many as 2000 pictures and they are scanned for only $159.99. The scanned images are high resolution and can be used to make new pictures larger than the original prints. Imagine the time you save by letting someone else scan those images, even if you did have a scanner this good at home. The scanned digital pictures on DVD can be used to back up your photo collection and make all of the creative photo product options available to digital photographers. Get duplicate DVDs to share the entire photo collection with family members. 

Next, make sure your prints are properly stored. PrintFile offers archival storage boxes for photographs that will extend the life of a print and allow you to organize at the same time.

To make an off-computer back up of digital images (essential!), try the Picture Keeper Photo Backup. Plug the Picture Keeper into the USB port on your computer and let it do the work of searching photo files and creating backup copies. For just under $30, the 4GB model holds up to 4,000 photos. That should serve your storage needs for just a little while. When you fill one, it’s small enough to store in a safety deposit box; and it is a great choice if you want to use those images on a photo kiosk to make prints.

There is also a Picture Keeper app for your phone. It sends uncompressed images to a folder on the computer desktop to be backed up with the rest of your pictures. If you have an iPhone, be sure to turn on iCloud as another means of backup and sharing.

Investing a few hours this winter means you’ll be able to create a year’s worth of 100% personalized gifts in 2014.

—- PS: Marsha from Bozeman's F-11 Photographic Supplies says that family movies can be transferred to DVD as well. Video tape has a short life compared to still photos. A correctly stored video tape loses 20% of its upper end video signal in a relatively short 10 - 25 years. How old are the video tapes in your closet?

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