'LEGAL MEDICINE BLUES' IS BACK

THREE YEARS ago this month, at a pro-medical marijuana benefit at
Mother Fool's on Willy Street, singer-songwriter Rick Harris, who
played the benefit, met Jacki Rickert of Mondovi, a celebrated
advocate of medical pot.

A year earlier, Rickert, who is in a wheelchair and weighs less than
100 pounds due to a debilitating bone and muscle disease, had her
Buffalo County home raided by police, who found and confiscated
marijuana. The charges were eventually dropped.

That March night in 2001 at Mother Fool's, Harris was taken with
Rickert. "I suspected she was having a tough time physically," he
recalled later, "but she had such warmth and radiated a certain kind
of strength."

A couple of days later, at home and thinking about Rickert and the
medical marijuana issue, Harris wrote a song, "Legal Medicine Blues."
Next week Friday, March 19, Harris will play a benefit for Rickert's
organization, Is My Medicine Legal Yet?, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the
Cardinal Bar. Jacki Rickert will be in attendance, and along with
performing "Legal Medicine Blues," Harris will have available his new
CD "Jukebox Refugee," which also features the song. ...