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It's been nearly a year since Colorado made recreational marijuana legal, and since then, pot has become a billion-dollar business in the state. And some growers have made it a mission to make it legitimate and mainstream.

"Change the face," says pot entrepreneur Brooke Gehring. "But really, not to be the stereotype of what they think is stoner culture, but to realize they are true business people that are operating these companies."

Gehring, smartly dressed in a business suit carrying an iPad and briefcase, runs two businesses, Patient's Choice of Colorado and Live Green Cannabis, and they are about as transparent as they come.

Parallels

Legal Pot In The U.S. May Be Undercutting Mexican Marijuana

Her marijuana is grown in a converted furniture warehouse in an industrial district in Denver. Tucked in with a Safeway distribution center and landscaping company, the growers here permeate the air. The smell of fresh marijuana is everywhere.

And you know you've gotten to Gehring's grow house when you see a police station across the street.

"Where most people may have said, 'No, we don't want to grow marijuana around the police,' for us it's another security measure," she says.

Gehring spent $3 million just to retrofit her warehouse.

There are about 5,000 plants in here — part of about 50,000 companywide. Gehring expects to reach $10 million in sales this year. So you can see why security is such a big deal. It should also be no surprise that this is a tightly regulated business.

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Marijuana plants at a grow house in Denver are ready to be harvested. Ed Andrieski/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Ed Andrieski/AP

Marijuana plants at a grow house in Denver are ready to be harvested.

Ed Andrieski/AP

"These are our RFID tags, and this essentially goes onto the plant once it goes into our tracking system. This is how the state monitors us to know our plant counts," Gehring says.

Even the shake that falls on the floor gets scooped up, weighed and reported.

This is how Gehring wants it — she knows that tough regulations are the only way this industry will continue and even thrive. It's one of the reasons why she has a key seat on a state advisory panel that's helping write the regulations.

"We have a state that supports us, and we have a government that is willing to work with the industry, work with law enforcement, work with the Department of Public Health and Environment and try to come up with a system to which they can collect taxes and revenues, and we can operate, create jobs and also make profits as a business," she says.

But the federal government could come in any day and shut all of this down if it wanted to. And given that, Gehring has a lot of reservations about how fast this industry has grown.

"I guess as an industry, I worry that people will overproduce, and the people that overproduce and don't have an outlet to be able to sell it, they might consider the option of selling it outside of the regulated market," she says.

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Uruguay Tries To Tame A 'Monster' Called Cannabis

Think about it: Every Coloradan is allowed to buy up to an ounce per transaction — tourists a little less — but there isn't really a limit. People also can grow their own plants. It's not hard to imagine how quickly a lot of product could move into the wrong hands.

Gehring isn't the only one worrying about this.

"I think it's pretty safe to say that we are becoming a major exporter of marijuana," says Colorado's Attorney General John Suthers. "You go to some of these warehouse districts and there's maybe four or five grow operations, and I think some people are counting on the fact that nobody's going to notice that this particular one isn't licensed, no one's going to particularly notice that a lot of marijuana's going out the back door."

Suthers says his office and the DEA recently seized from a warehouse district an undisclosed amount of pot that was bound for out-of-state markets. There's no telling how far the black market takes legally grown marijuana from Colorado, or who's doing the taking. But as NPR reported on Monday, a DEA official confirmed that the Mexican cartels are buying Colorado pot and bringing it into Mexico for sale there. It's triple the potency of marijuana grown outdoors in Mexico.

"All this activity of course is undermining the regulatory system in Colorado, where we're supposed to be collecting taxes," Suthers says.

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Even Gehring knows this could be her undoing, and it's one of the reasons she originally opposed Colorado's recreational pot ballot measure two years ago. She thought it was premature and worried that the controls just weren't there yet. Gehring says she could be producing more under the licenses that she currently holds, but she wants to make sure all of the internal controls are in place so everything is accounted for.

"I view the black market as our biggest competition and could be the biggest, I would say, roadblock to really having the federal government on board with legalization," she says.

But being here, you get the sense that entrepreneurs like her are more excited than they are nervous. They see themselves as being on the frontier, like the early wildcatters in the oil business, staking their claim early, helping write the rules, taking on all this risk.

"We do have the entrepreneurial spirit, we do see the opportunity of being true pioneers in what we're doing," she says.

And Gehring is used to balancing opportunity and some risk: Before she got into the pot business in 2009 she was a commercial banker.

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NBC devotes all three hours of its prime-time lineup Thursday to a new production of the musical Peter Pan. It will be performed and broadcast live, nearly 60 years after the first live telecast.

Author J.M. Barrie created his classic characters — the ageless Peter Pan, the little girl Wendy, whom he whisks away to Neverland, and the villainous pirate Captain Hook — in short stories at the turn of the 20th century. Those stories led quickly to a play, then a book. But Peter Pan, in America, really took off in the '50s. Walt Disney's full-length animated Peter Pan movie came out in 1953, there was a Broadway musical production in 1954, and the first live telecast of that production aired in 1955 on NBC.

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On Dec. 7, 1960, when David Bianculli was 7 years old, he wrote in his diary how "tickled" he was that Peter Pan was going to be on TV. Courtesy of David Bianculli hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of David Bianculli

On Dec. 7, 1960, when David Bianculli was 7 years old, he wrote in his diary how "tickled" he was that Peter Pan was going to be on TV.

Courtesy of David Bianculli

That TV version, like the Broadway show, starred Mary Martin — Larry Hagman's mother — as Peter Pan. It was such a hit on TV that it was performed all over again the following year, a rare event for television. And then it was performed live once more, four years later, this time in color.

The date was Dec. 8, 1960 — and I know that because my diary entry for Dec. 7, 1960, when I was 7 years old, reads, "Today I am too tickled because tomorrow PETER PAN is on." And before I went to bed the following night, I wrote what I consider to be one of my earliest surviving pieces of writing as a TV critic: "Was PETER PAN good today."

And it was. Back then, NBC referred to its ambitious TV specials as "spectaculars." And that version of Peter Pan, with Martin suddenly lifted into the air by wires I never noticed, certainly qualified.

NBC, the network that presented the original live Peter Pan musical telecast, is about to do it again. NBC is still flying high from last year's live telecast of The Sound of Music, an experiment that drew mixed reviews for Carrie Underwood in the central role but was an unqualified success at attracting viewers. An estimated 22 million people watched that production, which was overseen by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. They've already had a hand in reviving the movie musical, thanks to Chicago in 2002 and the big-screen version of Into the Woods coming later this month. But on TV, what they and NBC are doing isn't just reviving the form — it's reviving the medium.

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Allison Williams, who has fans who watch her on HBO's Girls, plays Peter Pan in the new live version. Virginia Sherwood/NBC hide caption

itoggle caption Virginia Sherwood/NBC

Allison Williams, who has fans who watch her on HBO's Girls, plays Peter Pan in the new live version.

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

Casting Christopher Walken as Captain Hook in this new Peter Pan is a genius move. Relatively few people know him as a song-and-dance man, or saw him in the film version of the musical drama Pennies from Heaven — but he has the kind of credibility and audience base that should draw people to this live telecast. And in the title role, Allison Williams should, too, not because of her ability to carry the leading role in a musical, which at this point is a question mark, but because she has fans who watch her on HBO's Girls. Add in the pre-teens, who should be excited about watching Peter Pan fly through the air, and you have three generations of viewers with good reasons to tune in.

And it's live. When I was a kid, if you missed Peter Pan on TV, you really missed it. No DVDs or home video, no cable marathons and — for those first few telecasts — no reruns. That's why it was so diary-worthy.

In 2014, things are different. Record it yourself, or watch highlights on the Internet or the eventual home-video release, and you can enjoy this new Peter Pan whenever, and these days wherever, you want. But there's something extra special about watching live TV, knowing that millions of others are doing the same thing at the exact same time. In the '40s and '50s, TV had to broadcast live. Today, except for sports, news, award shows and late-night comedy shows, it's a rarity. And the success of The Sound of Music last year suggests there's an appetite for more.

I can't wait to see this new Peter Pan. But I'll have to, because it's live. New songs are being added to the familiar ones, and the script is being adapted somewhat for modern times — but the magic is in the pixie dust, and that ought to be as potent in 2014 as when NBC first broadcast Peter Pan in 1955 and when I watched it in 1960. "Dear Diary, PETER PAN is coming on TV again ... and I'm still tickled."

David Bianculli is founder and editor of the website TV Worth Watching.

By a 44-5 vote, Chicago's City Council set a minimum-wage target of $13 an hour, to be reached by the middle of 2019. The move comes after Illinois passed a nonbinding advisory last month that calls for the state to raise its minimum pay level to $10 by the start of next year.

The current minimum wage in Chicago and the rest of Illinois is $8.25. Under the ordinance, the city's minimum wage will rise to $10 by next July and go up in increments each summer thereafter.

The legislation includes several findings of a focus panel that examined the wage issue in Chicago earlier this year.

The bill states that "rising inflation has outpaced the growth in the minimum wage, leaving the true value of lllinois' current minimum wage of $8.25 per hour 32 percent below the 1968 level of $10.71 per hour (in 2013 dollars)."

It also says nearly a third of Chicago's workers, or some 410,000 people, currently make $13 an hour or less.

The timing of the vote reflects a political reality, as Emanuel and other Chicago leaders are maneuvering ahead of the next election cycle.

"Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to pre-empt state action on local minimum wages," Northern Public Radio reports, adding that among those who approve the pay hikes, "Officials are worried business groups will push for Springfield legislation that prohibits municipalities raising their minimum wage higher than the state's."

As NPR's Marilyn Geewax reported after the midterm elections, voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota approved binding referendums that raise their states' wage floor above the federal minimum.

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minimum wage

For young people who don't succeed in high school, joining the military can seem like a good option, particularly when there are few other job prospects.

But Dejanique "Daisy" Armstrong, a young, gay woman from Stockton, Calif., never planned to enlist in the Army. She ultimately made that choice as a last resort.

Armstrong had a lot of problems as a teen. At one point, she lived in a shelter with her mom. She really didn't like school.

"There were few teachers that I felt like cared about me, and those teachers got all of my attention, got all of my energy," Armstrong says. "But the ones who didn't, I gave no effort."

She switched schools six times to find the right fit. It didn't work. Her GPA hovered around 2.0 and she began cutting class.

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Armstrong is now a military police officer stationed at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. She recited her poem "My Soldier's Creed" at her basic training graduation. Courtesy of Anita McMillan hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Anita McMillan

Armstrong is now a military police officer stationed at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. She recited her poem "My Soldier's Creed" at her basic training graduation.

Courtesy of Anita McMillan

Her mother, Donna Armstrong, didn't approve, but she understood where Daisy was coming from.

"She felt like, you know, 'What am I going to school for if I'm really not learning anything? And if no one's passionate about me and who I am, then why does any of this matter?' " Donna Armstrong says.

And then one day, Donna Armstrong says, she "was looking through one of Daisy's journals, and saw that she was writing poetry."

She dragged Daisy to With Our Words, a youth poetry collective in Stockton. Armstrong quickly became a slam poetry star, winning first place in local and national competitions.

One of her prizes was a two-week poetry tour in the fall of 2012. She worked out a system for turning in her work online, but when she came back to school, her teacher had bad news.

"He just told me, 'You didn't do enough,' " Armstrong says. "And I was like, 'What? You dropped me from the program? Like, I'm not in high school? You're telling me I'm a high school dropout?' I felt so lost. I felt like I had no purpose."

Armstrong eventually got a high school diploma, and even housing, through a job training program — but then the funding was cut.

She didn't want to ask her parents for help, she says. "I didn't want to be anyone's burden. So the Army was the next step." Armstrong enlisted in March 2013. "I went straight to the recruiter and I was like, 'Yo, sign me up. Let's go.' "

Armstrong was afraid of going to war and of not belonging in the military because she was gay. But the Army promised a stable job and help with college tuition.

But first, she had to get through basic and technical training — more than four grueling months of physical tests and getting yelled at.

When she started, she says, "I couldn't do a pushup. I could not do one pushup, joining the Army. "

"We'd call her Army Strong, which is really funny, because when she first got there she struggled a lot," says Elizabeth Rogers, who trained with Armstrong.

To get through it, the recruits would write letters to family at night when they were supposed to be sleeping, Rogers says. Armstrong wrote letters, too — but she was also working on her poetry.

Daisy Armstrong performs her poem, "My Soldier's Creed" at a church she attended while serving in South Korea earlier this year.

"We'd pull out all our flashlights, and if the drill sergeant came through, we'd shove everything under our pillow and pretend to be asleep," Rogers says. "And I think while a lot of us were writing our letters home, [Daisy] was writing poems."

Typically, about 7 percent of Army recruits don't make it through basic training. And when Armstrong failed to pass a practice running test, she thought she might not make it, either.

"I stopped running and I started crying, and I was like, 'I'm not gonna graduate; we're four days away and I'm not going to graduate. Period.' "

Ultimately, though, Armstrong did pass all her tests, and she did graduate. To celebrate, she wrote a poem based on the Soldier's Creed: "Some say I'm army strong, I say the army made me strong," she wrote. "Like David with rock in hand I'm ready for giants."

Soon, lots of people on the base were talking about it, and a drill sergeant asked Armstrong's commander, Rachel Morgan, if Armstrong could perform it at graduation.

Morgan says she was initially a little concerned by the request. "In the military, we place a high amount of reverence on the Soldier's Creed and what it says and what it means to us," she says. "And I didn't want there to be any appearance that that might be disrespected."

But after hearing the poem, Morgan gave her approval.

"It wasn't about me standing out," Armstrong says. "It was about me finding my own groove and fitting in."

Armstrong is now a military police officer stationed at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. She doesn't know how long she'll stay in the Army, but she hopes to one day go to college and study psychology. In the meantime, she says, she'll keep writing poems.

This story was produced as part of Raise Up, a project of Youth Speaks in collaboration with AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio.

U.S. Army

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