Tokin' Women and Others We Lost in 2022

Anita Pointer (12/31)

Pointer was the last surviving member of the original Pointer Sisters trio that had a string of hits starting in 1973 with the Allen Toussaint funk anthem "Yes We Can Can" featuring Anita's lead vocal. With her brother Fritz she penned the 2020 book Fairytale: The Pointer Sisters' Family Story about the sisters' roots in the Oakland, CA Black Power movement and their rise to fame. Of their early days of success, she wrote, "We were having fun, but not what I'd call getting wild. We drank, smoked cigarettes, and occasionally had a little pot." But saddled with debt and a grueling touring schedule, both younger sisters June and Ruth succumbed to hard drug addiction (cocaine and crack), and Anita also lost her only child Jada to cancer in 2003. The Sisters, who started their career singing backup vocals for acts like Grace Slick and  Betty Davis, had a number two hit in Belgium in 2005, covering the Eurythmics/Aretha Franklin song "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" with Belgian singer Natalia. In December 2017, Billboard ranked The Pointer Sisters as the 93rd most successful Hot 100 Artist of all-time and as the 32nd most successful Hot 100 Women Artist of all-time.

The lyrics Anita sang should inspire us all as we enter 2023:

Now's the time for all good men
To get together with one another
We got to iron out our problems
And iron out our quarrels
And try to live as brothers

 

And try to find peace within
Without stepping on one another
And do respect the women of the world
Remember, you all had mothers

 

We got to make this land a better land
Than the world in which we live
And we got to help each man be a better man
With the kindness that we give

 

I know we can make it
I know darn well, we can work it out
Oh, yes, we can, I know we can, can
Yes, we can, can, why can't we?
If we wanna, yes, we can, can 

 

Barbara Walters (12/30)

A chapter in the new book, The Activist's Media Handbook by David Fenton is titled, "How Barbara Walters Saved Abbie [Hoffman] From a Long Prison Term" and describes how in 1980, Fenton was able to arrange an exclusive interview with Walters and the infamous Yippie! activist Hoffman, then underground after being arrested for selling three pounds of cocaine to undercover agents. Fenton convinced Walters to get into a plane without knowing where she was going, lest the FBI would be alerted, and describes how she interviewed Hoffman "like a Jewish mother meets her long-lost Jewish son" for a full hour, which aired on ABC's 20/20 (pictured.)  "As a result, a week later when [Hoffman] turned himself into the Manhattan district attorney, he served only fifty-four days in jail," writes Fenton. That's the kind of clout Walters had. Yes, she blazed many trials, broke many barriers, and started The View to give women a voice, but this—and the time she got Bing Crosby to say that he was for marijuana legalization, and asked President Obama about the topic after Colorado and Washington legalized in 2012—are my favorite stories about her.

Ian Tyson (12/29)

Canadian folk music legend Tyson was, according to Suze Rotolo, the one who turned Bob Dylan onto marijuana. In her memoir A Freewheelin' Time, Rotolo writes, "I swear it was Ian Tyson who offered up the first taste of marijuana when Bob brought him to the flat one afternoon. Ian had a friend back home who had introduced him to their stuff you could smoke that would get you high. Bob didn't think I should try it until he had tested it, but later on I did." Writing about sitting around with Tyson and his partner Sylvia listening to records, Rotolo wrote, "We reveled in the joy of discovering something we had never heard before. And this wasn't just for music; it was about books and movies, too. We were a young and curious lot." Tyson wrote "Four Strong Winds" the day after he heard Dylan introduce his new song "Blowin' In the Wind" in 1962.   

Vivienne Westwood (12/29)

“I don’t think punk would have happened without Vivienne," said Tokin' Woman Chrissie Hynde, who before forming the Pretenders, was an assistant at Westwood's London shop. “I was about 36 when punk happened and I was upset about what was going on in the world,” the influential fashion designer and activist told Harper’s Bazaar in 2013. “It was the hippies who taught my generation about politics, and that’s what I cared about — the world being so corrupt and mismanaged, people suffering, wars, all these terrible things.” Westwood wardrobed The Sex Pistols and Boy George, and created Oscar gowns for Kate Winslet in 2006 and Zendaya in 2015, for a look (pictured right) that prompted Giuliana Rancic to comment, “She looks like she smells like patchouli oil and weed.” 

Jo Mersa Marley (12/27)

The grandson of Bob Marley was a recording artist and DJ who was aiming "to do something new with my roots," as he once told Rolling Stone. He began performing onstage at age 4 with Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers — his father Stephen, his uncle Ziggy, and his aunts Cedella and Sharon — during that group’s concert finales. He moved to Florida at age 11, where he studied studio engineering and observed his father and uncle Damian Marley working in Stephen’s Lion’s Den studio before starting to make his own music. He died at the age of 31, reportedly of an asthma attack.    

Franco Harris (12/20)

When he made the Immaculate Reception, his Italian mother was reportedly praying the Rosary and listening to Ave Maria. Harris died three days before the 50th anniversary of his most famous play, to commemorate which there is a statue in the Pittsburgh airport (pictured). Harris told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2017, "I feel in any state that has approved medical marijuana (as 28 states hosting 20 of the NFL’s 32 teams have), the league should remove medical marijuana from being a banned substance....I will tell you this, if it ever comes to a point where I do need pain management, I’d feel very lucky and happy now that we have medicinal marijuana in Pennsylvania.”

Shirley Eikhard (12/15)

Canadian singer/songwriter Eikhard is most known for penning the Bonnie Raitt hit, "Something to Talk About." Her song "It Takes Time" was recorded by Anne Murray when Eikhard was only 15 years old; her songs were also recorded by Cher, Kim Carnes, Emmylou Harris, Chet Atkins, Alannah Miles and Rita Coolidge. An allergy to cigarette smoke lead to throat problems, hampering her performing career.  She had a hit with a cover of Christine McVie's "Say That You Love Me." 

Billie Jean Moore (12/14)

The first women's basketball head coach to lead two different schools to national championships, Moore coached the California State-Fullerton Titans from 1969-1977, and the UCLA Bruins from 1977-1993. She was the head coach of the first US women's basketball team to compete in the Olympics, coaching the team to a silver medal in the 1976 Montreal games.  

Kirstie Alley (12/5)

Kansas-born Kirstie Alley moved to Los Angeles to pursue Scientology and interior design, appearing on TV game shows to earn extra money and moving into acting. She won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her role as an insecure corporate ladder-climber on Cheers, and later starred in Veronica's Closet (a takeoff on Victoria's Secret). Playing a famous and spoiled Broadway actress in Kirstie (1993-94), she smokes a vape pen in the series premiere just before Michael Richards, playing her driver Frank, comments on holding her weed for her at airports. In the same episode Kristin Chenoweth playing her understudy tries to drug her with tea, Frank lights up a "medicinal" joint, and Alley expresses interest in his brownies that take you on "the psychedelic express." In real life, she admitted to having had a cocaine addiction and went through Narconon, a Scientology-affiliated drug treatment program, when she joined the sect.

Jill Joliffe (12/2) 

Joliffe, an Australian war correspondent and author, witnessed the first Indonesian military incursions into Timorese territory in September 1975, and reported the death of five journalists that were killed in a clandestine operation by Indonesian special forces in preparation for the invasion of the territory. She directed her first television documentary "The Pandora Trail" in 1992 which exposed European prostitution rackets and Spanish, Portuguese and third world women enslavement. She reported on East Timor again In 1994, when she entered East Timor mountains from Indonesia to meet guerrilla leaders. She was captured by Indonesian military but despite that she was able to complete her documentary "Blackade."

 

Julia Reichert (12/1)

Dubbed "the godmother of the modern documentary" by Michael Moore, Reichert was a four-time Academy Award-nominated director, for Union Maids (1977), Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists (1984), The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant (2010) and American Factory (2020), which won the Oscar and was the first film acquired by Barack and Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground Productions. With her then-partner Jim Klein, Reichert produced Growing Up Female (1971), which chronicles the socialization of women at six different ages, and Methadone – An American Way of Dealing (1974), founding New Day Films to distribute their work. In 2020 she co-produced 9to5: The Story of a Movement, chronicling the real-life activist movement that inspired Jane Fonda to produce the film 9 to 5.

 

 

 

Dorothy Pitman Hughes (12/1)

In 1966 Pitman Hughes founded the West 80th Street Day Care Center in Manhattan, at a time when, "Day care for working parents was a revolutionary idea in itself, but the center was much more than that — it soon expanded to offer job training, legal assistance and community organizing." In 1971, she and Gloria Steinem embarked on a college campus speaking tour, and released this iconic feminist image. When the state of New York attempted to impose income restrictions on child-care benefits in 1970, Pitman Hughes led 150 day-care workers in a sit-in at the city’s Department of Social Services. She closed her center in 1985 after new rules required day-care operators to have college degrees and government licenses, neither of which she possessed.  Source.

 

  

Christine McVie (11/30)

McVie wrote or co-wrote half of the 16 tracks on Fleetwood Mac’s 1988 “Greatest Hits” anthology, which sold eight million copies. Her hits included “Say You Love Me,” “You Make Lovin’ Fun,” “Over My Head” and “Don’t Stop” (which became the theme song to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign). “I don’t struggle over my songs,” McVie told Rolling Stone in 1977. “I write them quickly.” An exception was "Songbird," known simply as "The Song" as she worked on it for years before she performed and recorded it. It's the title of a solo collection CD she put out earlier this year, containing this orchestral version set to her original vocal track. 

Aline Kominsky-Crumb (11/29)

Kominsky-Crumb, born Aline Goldsmith, first got into underground comix at the University of Arizona in the late 1960s. She moved to San Francisco in 1972, and soon met underground icon Robert Crumb after mutual friends noted her resemblance to a character Crumb had created several years previously named “Honeybunch Kominsky.” The couple were married in 1978, and had a daughter, Sophie, in 1981. Aline contributed to the Wimmen's Comix series, and collaborated with Bob and later Sophie on a series called called "Dirty Laundry," a comic about the Crumb family life. After moving to France, she focused more on painting and in February 2007 she released a book entitled Need More Love: A Graphic Memoir.

Eleanor Jackson Piel (11/26)

Piel practiced law for seven decades, until she was in her early 90s, including a famous Florida death-row case. At midcentury — a time when few women went into law and fewer still took up criminal law —  Piel helped win victories for clients as diverse as interned Japanese Americans prosecuted as World War II draft resisters; a teenage girl / math prodigy determined to attend Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan (then for boys only); and, in a case argued before the United States Supreme Court, a white teacher denied service at a Mississippi lunch counter because she was with a group of Black students. She died at age 102. Source. 

Irene Cara (11/25)

Cara appeared on TV's Fame and sang its theme song, which became a hit, as did the theme to the movie Flashdance ("What a Feeling") for which Cara shared an Oscar for songwriting. Her career was derailed by an unscrupulous manager who ripped off her royalties, forcing her to sue. It's sad that the soaring voice of female empowerment should have been so overshadowed. She died at age 63 of (as yet) unknown causes. 

Lee Bontecou (11/8)

According to the New York Times, Bontecou's use of what one critic called “a three-dimensional form that was neither painting nor sculpture” earned the kind of praise typically reserved in the 1960s for male art stars. She was one of the first women shown at the influential Leo Castelli Gallery, when she was living and working in an unheated loft in the East Village, where she had drilled holes in the floor to capture the excess heat from the laundry below. Her enormous wall-mounted constructions, assembled from industrial materials, saw blades, helmets and gas masks, include a 21-foot-long wall relief for Lincoln Center commissioned by architect Philip Johnson. 

Brandon Coats (10/31)

A quadriplegic, Coats became paralyzed when he was seventeen after breaking his vertebra in two places in a car wreck and began using medical marijuana to treat back spasms. He gained national attention in 2010 after he was fired by DISH Network over a failed drug test. Since he was never accused of being impaired on the job and had scored high on his work evaluation reports, Coats appealed his termination and went on to become a face of workers' rights in Colorado during a five-year court battle. Read more.

Julie Powell (10/26)

Powell's determination to make every recipe in Julia Child's 1961 book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and blog about it lead to her becoming an internet sensation, a book author, and the inspiration for the 2009 Nora Ephron movie "Julie & Julia" starring Meryl Streep as Julia and Amy Adams as Julie. Powell died at age 49 of cardiac arrest. 

Joanna Simon (10/19) / Lucy Simon (10/20)

Carly Simon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame days after her two older sisters both died.  Joanna was a distinctively "smoky-voiced mezzo-soprano" who performed regularly in operas and concerts internationally from 1962 through 1986. She worked as the arts correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour from 1986 to 1992, winning an Emmy award for her work, and was the companion of Walter Cronkite from 2005 until his death in 2009. Lucy performed with her sister Carly as the folk music duo The Simon Sisters in the 1960s, and went on to win two Grammys for the children's recordings In Harmony and In Harmony 2. She won Tony Award and Drama Desk Award nominations for composing the music for the Broadway musical The Secret Garden, and also composed a musical version of Dr. Zhivago. 

 Carmen Callil (10/17)

Australian publisher, writer and critic Callil spent most of her career in the United Kingdom. In 1973 she founded Virago Press (originally Spare Rib Books), a publisher of women's writing and books on feminist topics.Virago branded itself as a commercial alternative to the male-dominated publishing industry and sought to compete with mainstream international presses. Callil was also responsible for the creation and development of the Virago Modern Classics list, which brought back into print many hundreds of the best women writers of the past. Notable Virago authors include Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Kate Millett, Daphne du Maurier, Willa Cather and Edith Wharton.

Angela Lansbury (10/11)

Lansbury was a formidable actress from her start as the cheeky, cockney maid in Gaslight, a tavern singer in Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, and the older sister of Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet. Distinguishing herself on film in roles like the scheming, politically minded newspaper publisher in State of the Union and the ruthless mother in A Manchurian Candidate, she won five Tony awards, originating the roles onstage of Auntie Mame and the evil Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. Many knew her for her portrayal of the intrepid and unflappable novelist in TV's Murder, She Wrote, a role she took on at age 60, or as the voice of Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast. In the delightful Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) she played a plucky apprentice witch who seeks spells in a book from Astoroth, doubtlessly based on the Goddess Astarte, and sang this sweet song to an 11-year-old boy. In the 60s, she moved her family from LA to Ireland and stopped working for a year in order to save her children from cocaine and heroin addiction. 

 

 

Rick Jones (10/7)

Jones was "a sort of surrogate uncle" to British children in the 1960s and early 70s as host of BCC pre-school TV shows Play School and Fingerbobs. Jones later revealed the scale of marijuana use at Play School after it was alleged that he and another presenter were "stoned out of their minds" before filming a nativity scene during the 1970s. Speaking in 2012, he told The Sun that "Marijuana was like cornflakes" at the time. Fired by the BBC after a fan sent him two cannabis spliffs at the corporation's address, Jones subsequently had success as a musician fronting the British country rock band Meal Ticket.

 

Judy Tenuta (10/6)

The self-appointed "Love Goddess" and “Aphrodite of the Accordion,” Tenuta could be as off-the-wall as Andy Kaufmann and as funny as anyone. I thought she should be included on Rolling Stone's 2017 list of top 50 comedians (on which only 11 women were named). Upon accepting 1988′s American Comedy Award for best female comedy club performer, the "gold lamé-wrapped, gum-chewing" Tenuta wisecracked, “I would trade it in a minute, if I could just be a wife and mother.” 

Lenny Lipton (10/5)

Lipton was 19 when he wrote a poem that was adapted into the lyrics for the 1963 Peter Paul and Mary hit "Puff, the Magic Dragon." He spent decades denying that the song was about marijuana and believed that the myth was created by columnist Dorothy Kilgallen. In the 1960s, Lipton shot several experimental films, including Let a Thousand Parks Bloom about Berkeley's People's Park, which continues this year to fight for its existence against development. 

Loretta Lynn (10/4)

Singer/songwriter Lynn, who grew up in the coal-mining region of Kentucky, married at 15 to a womanizing bootlegger and had six children with him. Meanwhile, she broke through the male-dominated country scene and gave voice to women with songs like "The Pill" (1975) and "We've Come a Long Way, Baby (1978)." Her 1966 song "Dear Uncle Sam" is written from the perspective of a woman whose husband was killed in the Vietnam War. Lynn's autobiography Coal Miner's Daughter was made into a movie starring Sissy Spacek (the same year she played Carolyn Cassady in Heart Beat). When writing songs with Todd Snider in 2022, Lynn told him, "Smoke one of your doobies and go thru those [notes she'd made]. See if anything jumps out at you."

Sacheen Littlefeather (10/2)

Littlefeather was the actress sent by Marlon Brando to refuse his Academy Award for The Godfather in 1973, citing the mistreatment of Native Americans in film. Her death came weeks after the Academy issued her an apology for the abuse she took from the audience that night, and the damage the incident did to her career. In 2016, when the 88th ceremony of the Academy Awards drew criticism for lack of diversity in nominations, actress Jada Pinkett Smith—who boycotted the ceremony— cited Littlefeather as inspiration to do so. Littlefeather's sisters have disputed her claims that their family was Native American.

 

 

Stephanie Dabney (9/28)

Dabney started dancing at age 4 at Ballet Western Reserve, a dance school in Youngstown, Ohio. First seeing black dancers perform when the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater came to Youngstown, she received a scholarship to study modern dance at the Ailey School, but switched to more traditional ballet when the Dance Theater of Harlem also offered her a scholarship. She joined the company when she was only 16, and shot to fame in their 1982 production of Stravinsky’s “Firebird.” When she performed the role in Russia in 1988, Raisa Gorbachev told the choreographer, “The woman who danced your Firebird, she was wonderful, as if created for this role.” Dabney died at age 64 after battling AIDS for many years. Source.

Hilaree Nelson (9/26)

Nelson was an epic ski mountaineer who made a career climbing the world's biggest peaks—and skiing down them. She was recognized as a National Geographic adventurer of the year after summiting and skiing down Papsura, known as the Peak of Evil, in India and then doing the same on Denali in Alaska. A mother of two, she was the first woman to summit Mounts Everest and Lhotse within 24 hours and the first person, along with her partner, Jim Morrison, to ski down the Lhotse Couloir. She died on Manaslu in Nepal in an avalanche at age 49. Source. 

 

 

Pharoah Sanders (9/24)

Known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of "sheets of sound," Sanders played a prominent role in the development of free jazz and spiritual jazz through his work as a member of John Coltrane's groups in the mid-1960s, and later through his solo work. He released over thirty albums as a leader and collaborated extensively with Alice Coltrane, among many others. His last album, Promises, with Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra, was named the Beyond Album of the Year in the 2021 DownBeat Critics Poll. A newly released Coltrane recording, A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle, which features Sanders, was named Historical Album of the Year in the 2022 DownBeat Critics Poll. I knew a guy in Humboldt who was his pot dealer (and a fan).

Louise Fletcher (9/23)

In 1974, Fletcher starred in the crime drama Thieves Like Us, directed by VIP Robert Altman. Reportedly, a falling out with Altman lead him to cast Lily Tomlin in the role created for Fletcher in Nashville (1975), leaving her free to take the role for which she won an Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe: the dastardly Nurse Ratched in the 1975 film adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. She said she based the character on the way she saw whites treating blacks in Alabama where she grew up. When she accepted her Oscar, she used sign language to thank her deaf parents. She died at age 88 while living at at the Montdurausse commune in France. 

 

Dave Foreman (9/19)

Foreman was a leading figure among a generation of activists who in the late 1970s grew frustrated with what they saw as the compromises and corporate coziness of many mainstream environmental organizations, including the Wilderness Society, where he worked as a lobbyist. Drawing inspiration from the Wobblies, the Luddites, and  Edward Abbey's 1975 novel, “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” Foreman co-founded EarthFirst!, a group that advocated sabotage against the clearcutting of forests and other environmental crimes. The F.B.I. planted a mole within Foreman’s circle, and in 1989 federal agents arrested him and four others on charges of conspiring to sabotage power lines in Arizona. It soon emerged that the F.B.I. agent had encouraged the sabotage, essentially trying to entrap Earth First! in a felony, and most of the charges were dropped. Source.

 

Irene Papas (9/14) / Martha Karagianni (9/18)

Papas was a Greek actress who gained international recognition through such films as The Guns of Navarone (1961), Zorba the Greek (1964) and Z (1969). She played Helen of Troy (she of the nepenthe, pictured) in The Trojan Women (1971), for which she won the Best Actress award from the National Board of Review. Karagianni, one of the most popular Greek actresses of the 1960s, starred in Marijuana Stop! (1971) (pictured), a musical comedy about cousins who inherit a mansion and turn it into a pot party palace. In 1957, she was photographed in a bikini for the cover of “Woman,” the first women’s magazine in Greece.

Maria Wittner (9/14)

Wittner was an orphaned 19-year-old during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 when she stood among youths who assembled in front of the Hungarian Radio Building demanding that their points be read on the air. After the ÁVH secret police fired upon the crowd, she participated in a series of protests and suffered a shrapnel wound during a Soviet counter attack. She was convicted of “participating in armed organizing to overthrow the government," and sentenced to death; a higher court reduced her sentence to life in prison. She was finally freed in 1970, and was elected a member of parliament in 2006, serving until 2014. She was awarded the Grand Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in 1991. 

Elias Theodoru (9/11)

Mixed martial arts fighter Theodorou, who suffered from bilateral neuropathy, was the first professional athlete in North America to receive an exemption for medical marijuana use, and very likely was the first in the world. “What I’m trying to strive for is an even playing field,” he told Forbes in 2021. “Anyone with the same kind of injury would be able to take a handful of Vicodin to go and fight and it wouldn’t be an issue.” As a model and actor, Theodorou appeared on the cover of 11 Harlequin romance novels and had small roles on Canadian television shows. According to the New York Times, "In place of the usual scantily clad ring girl who holds a sign announcing the next round in a match, he did the same by moonlighting as a 'ring boy' at several events held by Invicta, an all-female mixed martial arts circuit." Theodorou died at the age of 34 of colon cancer that had metastasized to his liver.

Queen Elizabeth II (9/9)

As depicted in the Netflix series The Crown, Elizabeth's 1952 coronation ceremony included an anointing with "holy oil" made with an ancient, secret mixture going back to King Solomon, meant to bring her into direct contact with the divine. In the Bible, Moses is directed to make a holy anointing oil including the "fragrant cane" (which some think was cannabis). Elizabeth's death allowed the ascension of her son Charles to England's throne. In December 1998, Charles surprised a Multiple Sclerosis sufferer by suggesting she try medical marijuana.

Marsha Hunt (9/7)

IMDB writes, "Stardom somehow eluded this vastly gifted actress. Had it not perhaps been for her low-level profile compounded by her McCarthy-era blacklisting in the early 1950s, there is no telling what higher tier Marsha Hunt might have attained." In 1971, she appeared in the film Johnny Got His Gun, written by fellow blacklist member Dalton Trumbo, playing the mother of the title character. After retirement she devoted herself to civil rights causes and such humanitarian efforts as UNICEF, The March of Dimes, The Red Cross, and the United Nations. In 1998, she was the recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award for her many selfless efforts. She died at age 104. 

Lance Mackey (9/7)

Mackey was three-time and reigning champion of the grueling Iditarod in 2010 when the sled-dog race officials implemented drug testing for marijuana aimed at their champ, who had been open about his medical marijuana use to treat his cancer pain. Mackey then faced a misdemeanor count of marijuana possession after being found with a small amount at the Anchorage airport in January. Competing with knees injected with synthetic cartilage and a right arm still healing from a major operation to fix a staph infection, he went on to win that year's race, making him a four-time winner and earning a commendation from Sen. Lisa Murkowski. In 2020, Mackey was still racing, and announced he gave his dogs CBD to help with their recovery time. On Sept. 23 of this year, the World Anti-Doping Agency announced it would be keeping marijuana on the list of banned substances for Olympic athletes, following a determination that cannabis use "violates the spirit of the sport." 

Helen Matthews Lewis (9/4)

Known as the "grandmother of Appalachian Studies," sociologist and activist Matthews Lewis's work has influenced a generation of scholars who focus on Appalachia. Her 1949 thesis, "The Woman Movement and the Negro Movement: Parallel Struggles for Rights," linked those two causes. In 1976, she left formal academia over issues with powerful coal corporations, and worked for the Highlander Research and Education Center, a progressive group that encouraged social justice organizing, while writing books like Mountain Sisters: From Convent to Community in Appalachia (2003). She died at age 97.

Barbara Ehrenreich (9/1)

Author and NORML boardmember Ehrenreich book's Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers and For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women are essential reading for women everywhere. She wrote about ecstatic rites in her 2007 book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, and the famous atheist came clean about some mystical experiences she had in her adolescence in Living With a Wild God (2014). For her most well known book, Nickel and Dimed, she went undercover as a minimum wage worker and wrote about enduring pre-employment drug screening knowing she was a marijuana smoker. She died at age 81 on the day that California's legislature enrolled a bill to end job discrimination based on urine testing.   

Mikhail Gorbachev (8/30)

"For many, the funeral was a vivid reminder of the rights that Russians have lost under the leadership of President Vladimir V. Putin and as a result of the almost complete dismantling of Mr. Gorbachev’s legacy, culminating with the six-month-old war that Russia is prosecuting in Ukraine to take back former Soviet territory. 'For so many of us in Moscow, his death seems the death of democracy,' said Veronika, 32, an art consultant," wrote the New York Times, which used only first names to protect the Russians in attendance at Gorbachev's memorial from possible retaliation. On a lighter note, a Pizza Hut ad featuring Gorbachev (shown) went viral after his death. 

Lily Renée (8/24)

Austrian-born artist Renée was one of the earliest women in the comic-book industry, beginning in the 1940s. She escaped from Nazi-occupied Vienna to England at the age of 14, and later joined her parents in New York City, where she found work as a on such features as "Jane Martin," about a female pilot working in the male-dominated aviation industry, and "Señorita Rio" (pictured), about a South-of-the-border adventuress doing wartime espionage for the US government. Later, she wrote children's books and plays, and designed textiles for Lanz of California and jewelry for Willy Woo. Renée died at the age of 101. (Source.) 

Virginia Patton (8/18)

Though she shattered Jimmy Stewart's dream of getting out of Bedford Falls by marrying his brother in "It's a Wonderful Life," it was impossible not to immediately love her. A niece of Gen. George Patton, Virginia appeared in a few other films, including playing the female lead in The Burning Cross (1946) about the Ku Klux Klan, before retiring to Ann Arbor, Michigan to raise a family and serve as a docent at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, among other activities. She was the last surviving member of the adult cast of "Wonderful Life" when she died at age 97. 

Anne Heche (8/12)

Heche won a Daytime Emmy for her portrayal of somewhat schizophrenic twins on the soap opera Another World (1987-1991) and had an impressive career in independent films and television, plus interesting movies like Wag the Dog (with Willie Nelson, Kirsten Dunst, and Woody Harrelson) and Six Days Seven Nights (with Harrison Ford). She's best known as being Ellen Degeneres's girlfriend at a time when few gay couples or actors were out of the closet (1997-2000). Following their separation, Heche had a breakdown after taking MDMA, showing up at a stranger's house and saying she believed she was "God, and was going to take everyone back to heaven in a spaceship." In her 2001 memoir Call Me Crazy she revealed that the incident and LSD therapy helped her deal with the fact that her father sexually molested her repeatedly, starting when she was an infant. She gave one of her strong, no-nonsense performances as a doctor treating Christina Ricci in Prozac Nation, whose author Elizabeth Wurtzel died in 2020 at the age of 52. Heche died at 53. 

Jenifer "Stoney Girl" Valley (8/11)

Valley came down with thyroid cancer at the age of 11, but wasn't diagnosed until she was 21, by a public health doctor who was more interested in documenting her "drug-seeking behavior" due to her marijuana use than in curing her. Attempting to prove that cannabis oil couldn't arrest her cancer, she took it and discovered that her cancer was suddenly gone in 2011. She began growing cannabis for other patients at her Stoney Girl Gardens, ran a dispensary in Clackamas OR, and and taught at Portlandsterdam University. She died at age 54 after being diagnosed with advanced lung cancer in February 2022. 

 

Olivia Newton-John (8/8)

The fresh-faced Australian singer and actress Newton-John, who played a high schooler in Grease at the age of 29, surprised the world when she announced in 2017 that she was using "legal and easily obtained" medical marijuana in her home state of California to treat her cancer. “I use medicinal cannabis, which is really important for pain and healing,” she said. “It’s a plant that has been maligned for so long, and has so many abilities to heal." She added, "I will do what I can to encourage it. It’s an important part of treatment, and it should be available.” ONJ keynoted the 2019 Cannabis Science West Conference in Portland and founded the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre in Melbourne.

Judith Durham  (8/5)

The Australian singer Durham studied classical piano and vocals, and performed blues, gospel, and jazz before joining the folk group The Seekers, which had a string of hits starting with "I'll Never Find Another You." Durham's vocals are featured on the #1 hit  "Georgy Girl," the theme song to the 1966 Lynn Redgrave movie about a young woman who learns to "shed those dowdy feathers and fly--a little bit."

Melissa Bank (8/2)

Bank's 1999 collection of linked short stories, The Girls' Guide to Hunting And Fishing took twelve years to write, while Bank worked as a copywriter, focusing on the novel in her spare time. The book spent 16 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list; the LA Times wrote, "Banks writes like John Cheever, but funnier." Bank was the winner of the 1993 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and taught in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. She gave this interview in 2011 talking about the difficulties of focusing on writing while, "your husband wishes you'd spend more time cooking dinner." Two stories from The Girls' Guide were adapted into the 2007 romantic comedy "Suburban Girl,'' starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alec Baldwin; Francis Ford Coppola owns the rights to another story. 

Bill Russell (7/31)

Considered by many to be the greatest-ever basketball player who also became the NBA's first black coach, Russell is "remembered as well for his visibility on civil rights issues." He took part in Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington and traveled to Mississippi after Medgar Evars was murdered, working with Ever's brother to open an integrated basketball camp in Jackson. He supported Muhammad Ali's refusal to participate in the Vietnam war, and after Trump called for NFL owners to fire players who took a knee, he posted a photo on Twitter in which he posed taking a knee while holding his Presidential Medal of Freedom. Source. 

Nichelle Nichols (7/30)

Nichols studied ballet and Afro-Cuban dance as a child and began her career at 15 as a dancer; she also toured as a singer with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton. When she wanted to quit Star Trek, Martin Luther King asked her to stay in groundbreaking role, which included performing the first interracial kiss on television. In the Star Trek parody, "The Wrath of Farrakhan" on TV's "In Living Color," Farrakhan says to Uhura, "My Nubian princess... I watch the show every week and all I see is the back of your nappy wig," leading her to revolt. Uhura was promoted to lieutenant commander and then full commander in the Star Trek films. In 1992, Mae Jemison, the first Black female astronaut to enter space, called Nichols to thank her for her inspiration. President Joe Biden was among those who paid tribute to Nichols after her death, calling her “a trailblazer of stage and screen who redefined what is possible for Black Americans and women.” Source. 

Pat Carroll (7/30)

In the late 1970s comedienne Carroll's successful one-woman show Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein earned several major theater awards, and her recorded version won a 1980 Grammy. She had a long career on TV variety shows, sitcoms, and game shows, and doing voices for cartoons, like the magical-potion-concocting sea witch Ursula in Disney's The Little Mermaid, who sings "Poor Unfortunate Souls."

Pauline Bewick (7/28)

“For Pauline art is about freedom, the freedom to imagine all that is possible, to create worlds without boundaries, unconditional landscapes where anything is conceivable. Her work is, as a result, expression in its truest form, unburdened by purpose or expectation, pulling us away from the everyday and towards alternate existences.” –Ireland's President Michael D. Higgins in a statement issued after prominent Irish artist Bewick's death.

Tony Dow (7/27)

From 1957-1963, Dow played the quintessential older brother Wally in TV's Leave It To Beaver. The wholesome show occasionally had scenes like Wally asking his dad about community property laws (responding, "What a gyp!") and his mother, who wore pearls to clean the house, commenting about the effect of Horatio Alger stories on the men in her family. Dow, the son of Muriel Montrose, an actress and stuntwoman, branched into directing TV shows and later became a sculptor.  In 2008, his work Unarmed Warrior, a bronze figure of a woman holding a shield, was chosen to show at the Société National des Beaux-Arts exhibition in Paris (founded in part by Club des Hashischins members Theophile Gautier and Eugene Delacroix). 

Mary Ann Beauchamp (7/26)

Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and an American father in the military, Beauchamp lived in Italy, California, North Carolina and Alaska, learning about local cuisine everywhere she went. Before founding the restaurant chain Café Yumm!, she was fond of giving tastings of her signature sauce to patrons of the Wild Rose Café restaurant in Eugene, Oregon. The guest's reaction was always, "Yum, what is this?" The reaction lead to the name of the sauce, and the business Beauchamp started with her husband Mark, which now has over 20 locations in Oregon, Idaho and Washington, following the company's slogan to "nourish humanity and the world." Read more. 

Paul Sorvino (7/25)

Best known perhaps as the gangster who steadfastly refused to peddle drugs in Goodfellas, Sorvino showed his softer side when he wept watching his daughter Mia Sorvino accept her 1996 Oscar for embodying Mighty Aphrodite by saying, “When you give me this award, you honor my father, Paul Sorvino—who has taught me everything I know about acting.”  Asked for his reaction to the #MeToo revelation that his talented daughter's career was railroaded by Harvey Weinstein for refusing his advances, Sorvino said he'd like to kill Weinstein before softening it to, he wished he'd die in prison. The multitalented actor, also a painter and an opera singer, was pitch perfect as the corrupt evangelist in "Oh, God!" with Very Important Pothead John Denver. 

Claes Oldenburg (7/18)

Oldenburg, often collaborating with his wife Coosje van Bruggen (who died in 2009), had a long artistic career making the ordinary extraordinary with whimsical public sculptures, such as the "Giant Binoculars" at the Frank Gehry-designed Chiat/Day building in Venice, CA and "Cupid's Span," a 70-foot bow and arrow at the Embarcadero in San Francisco. 

Ivana Trump (7/14)

A Czech champion skier and Manhattan model turned businesswoman, Ivana was a partner in creating the Trump real estate empire and brand. As a VP in the Trump Organization, she oversaw the gilt and gaudy interior design of Trump properties, and she ran the Plaza Hotel. Choosing to divorce her cheating husband, Ivana emerged more glamorous than ever and became a shero to divorced wives, including becoming the original "cougar" when she married a much younger Italian man. She appears here in The First Wives Club (1996) offering the advice, "Don't get mad. Get everything." 

Lourdes Grobet (7/15)

Famed Mexican photographer Grobet is most known for her photos of masked Lucha Libre wrestlers and the women like La Briosa who also wrestled. Her work was exhibited all over the world and she won many awards, including the Best Monument Award for commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre. (Photo: La Bruja, La Briosa by Lourdes Grobet.)

Ann Shulgin (7/9)

A psychedelic pioneer, therapist, and teacher, Shulgin co-wrote PiHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved) and TiHKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved) with her chemist husband Sasha Shulgin, telling both the story of their romance and of their experiments with consciousness. Speaking at the 2019 Women's Visionary Conference, Shulgin, then 88, stressed that we must come to terms with the feelings and impulses that we have denied and repressed in our shadow selves in order to become whole. A skilled therapist can use psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to "take a person to step inside their monster and see out its eyes," enabling them to transform, she said, but the therapist who attempts this practice must have completed it themselves first. Shulgin died this year a few days after her wedding anniversary (July 4). 

Barbara Thompson (7/9)

Prominent British jazz saxophonist and composer Thompson worked closely with Andrew Lloyd Webber on musicals such as Cats and Starlight Express, his Requiem, and 1978 classical-fusion album Variations. She was awarded the MBE in 1996 for services to music; the following year she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The documentary Barbara Thompson: Playing Against Time documents her struggle against the disease and her 2001 farewell tour. Her final band was called, "Barbara Thompson's Paraphernalia." 

James Caan (7/6)

Besides his signature role as Sonny Corleone in the Godfather movies, Caan was terrific in the heartfelt TV movie Brian's Song about an interracial friendship among NFL players, and in the fascinating film Rollerball taking professional sports to the limit. He played a Bob Hope-like role opposite Bette Midler in For the Boys, and was also notable in Cinderella Liberty with Marsha Mason, Misery with Kathy Bates, and opposite Barbra Streisand in Funny Lady. His first film appearance was an uncredited role as "soldier with a radio" in Irma La Douce, and his final role was in Queen Bees (pictured) opposite Ellen Burstyn, who smokes pot in the movie with Loretta Devine.

Margaret Keane (6/26)

Keane's famous "big eye" paintings were panned by the critics but loved by the public, selling first at the Big I comedy club in San Francisco. Keane famously won a court case after her abusive husband Walter claimed the paintings were his work. At a 1986 trial where Keane sued Walter and USA Today for repeating the claim, the judge ordered a "paint-off" between the couple, which she won. The jury awarded her $4 million in damages and her life was dramatized in the 2104 movie Big Eyes where she was played by Amy Adams. Image: “Dust to Dust” (1963) by Margaret Keane. Keane Eyes Gallery

Mark Shields (6/18)

Best known as the kindly and wise liberal counterpoint to conservative David Brooks on the PBS Newshour, Shields was a longtime political columnist and commentator who also worked on campaigns for Democratic candidates like Robert F. Kennedy and Edmund Muskie. I couldn't find any reference to Shields writing about marijuana, but in 2021 he wrote, "Raising campaign contributions taught me an important theological truth: God gives money to the least interesting, least appealing and, often, the most irritating of Her creatures." 

Arnold Skolnick (6/15)

Skolnick was a freelance designer “more ‘Mad Men’ than ‘Easy Rider,’” when he took on a last-minute job to design a poster for Woodstock. He came up with iconic "bird on a guitar" design in only a few days, inspired by the paper cutout works of Henri Matisse. The poster has become a much-imitated image, such as a poster for a Memphis barbecue competition for which in place of the guitar there was a fork, and instead of the dove there was a pig. Source. 

Jeffrey Stonehill (6/13)

Musician, student/teacher of languages, and lover of plants and freedom, Stonehill was instrumental in producing the first hemp expos in Santa Cruz, CA, before his house there burned down and he moved to Lopez Island, WA. Compared to Mark Twain or Lord Buckley, his poetic performances featured a patter no one could match and he was much beloved by the hemp movement. 

Jim Seals (6/6)

Seals and his musical partner, Dash Crofts, were still teenagers when they were asked to join an instrumental group, the Champs, which had had a No. 1 hit in 1958 with “Tequila.” By the mid-1960s they had tired of the band and of the loud, sometimes angry strains that were infusing the hard rock of the time. Adherents of the Baha’i faith, they sought to make a calmer brand of music, mixing folk, bluegrass, country and jazz influences and delivering their lyrics in close harmony. The result was hummable tunes like "Summer Breeze," "Hummingbird," "Diamond Girl," and "Get Closer." Source.

Sophie Freud (6/3)

Psychosociologist, educator, and author, Freud was the granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and a critic of psychoanalysis, aspects of which she described as "narcissistic indulgence." She wrote a book titled, Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family where she observed how all of her female relatives, including her mother and aunt Anna, were negatively impacted by Sigmund's harmful claims about women and their internal experiences. She pushed for women's rights in academia and fought against the presumption that a woman who became pregnant would be unable to continue with education or, in her case, professional social work activities. Source. 

Ray Liotta (5/26)

Liotta was memorable as Shoeless Joe in Field of Dreams and starred in movies like Something Wild and Dominick and Eugene before being forever known as the mobster in Goodfellas who endures craziest, most heart-pounding sequence of drug smuggling ever filmed. 

Bob Neuwirth (5/18)

"Like Kerouac had immortalized Neal Cassady in ‘On the Road,’ somebody should have immortalized Neuwirth. He was that kind of character," said Bob Dylan of his collaborator and promoter. Neuwirth taught Janis Joplin to play Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" and was a co-writer on "Mercedes Benz." He was also instrumental in the career of Patti Smith, who said, " I think he immediately recognized something in me that I didn't even recognize in myself, and he took me under his wing."

Régine Zylberberg (5/1)

Abandoned in infancy by her unwed mother, Régine was left alone at age 12 when her Polish father was arrested by the Nazis in France. In 1957 she opened a basement nightclub in a Paris back street where she pioneered the dual-turntable discotheque. Chez Régine built an empire of 23 clubs in Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, including the swanky and popular Régine’s in Manhattan.

Vangelis (5/17)

The Greek composer Vangelis began his musical career as a member of the rock band Aphrodite's Child, whose album 666 (1972) is "now recognized as a progressive-psychedelic rock classic." His solo debut album was inspired by the 1968 French student riots, protest songs and graffiti. Best known for his Academy Award-winning, electronic-based score to Chariots of Fire (1981), he also scored films like Blade Runner and Missing, as well as the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Very Important Pothead Carl Sagan and his wife/NORML board member Ann Druyan. Vangelis also collaborated with Irene Papas (d. 9/14, see above) on two albums of Greek traditional and religious songs.

Kathy Boudin (5/1)

A member of the Weather Underground who was convicted of felony murder for her role in the 1981 Brink's robbery, Boudin won an International PEN prize for poetry she wrote in prison in 1999. She was released on parole in 2003 and became a criminal justice advocate and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Boudin was a model for the title role in David Mamet's play The Anarchist (2012). Her son Chesa Boudin was the progressive District Attorney of San Francisco.

Naomi Judd (4/30)

Judd, who worked as a nurse to support her family while building her musical career, suffered trauma from childhood sexual abuse and struggled with severe depression and anxiety, as well as hepatitis C.  Tragically, Judd took her own life the day before she and her daughter Wynonna were honored by the Country Music Hall of Fame. The week she died, studies were released finding that both cannabis and psilocybin are effective against depression. 

Judy Henske (4/27)

Henske was a powerful singer once dubbed "The Queen of the Beatniks." Known for her 6-foot-tall physique and her humorous patter onstage, her 1963 recording of "High Flying Bird" was influential on folk rock, and her 1969 album Farewell Aldebaran was an eclectic "fusion of folk music, psychedelia, and arty pop." Henske's relationship with Woody Allen partially inspired his pot-smoking character Annie Hall, who, like Henske, was from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. 

Fernanda de la Figuera (4/24)

Known as "Abuela Marihuana," Fernanda was a cannabis grower and activist since 1973. In 1995 she was prosecuted for growing cannabis and obtained the first acquittal registered in Spain. This led to the foundation of A.R.S.E.C.A. (Asociación Ramón Santos de Estudios sobre el Cannabis de Andalucía) in Malaga in 1996 of which she became the honorary president. In 2002 Fernanda co-founded the Cannabis Party of Valencia and the F.A.C. (Federación de Asociaciones Cannábicas). She later represented the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies (ENCOD) in Spain and started a cannabis social club by and for women in Andalusia called Marias X María. She was included in the "We Are Mary Jane" exhibit in Barcelona in 2019. 

Orrin Hatch (4/23)

Hatch, a longtime Senator from Utah, was an advocate for loosening regulations on herbal supplements like ephedra. He wrote a forward to a booklet published for parents in 1998 by the Salt Lake Education Foundation that included "excessive preoccupation with social causes, race relations, environmental issues, etc." as a warning sign of marijuana use. Hatch "evolved" a bit on medical marijuana, after making a pun-filled speech about it upon introducing a research bill in 2017. He told a group of women protesting Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court to "grow up."

Cynthia Plaster Caster (4/21)

Rock groupie extraordinaire Cynthia Albritton became known as "Plaster Caster" after she started making casts of rock stars' erect penises, starting with Jimi Hendrix. Ultimately she made 50 casts, and branched out into casting women's breasts. Doubtlessly an inspiration for The Banger Sisters, in which former groupies Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hahn look at pics they took of their conquests (after getting stoned), Albritton also inspired the character of "Juicy Lucy" in the 2017 TV series Good Girls Revolt.

Robert Morse (4/20)

The devilishly impish Morse, who won his first Tony award for "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," played Bert Cooper on Mad Men while in his 80s. In this scene, Bert appears after he dies to Don (who has been smoking pot and having visions in other episodes). Morse won a second Tony for portraying Truman Capote in "Tru." Maureen Arthur, who played Hedy La Rue in "How to Succeed," on Broadway and in film, died on 6/15. 

Patrick Carlin (4/17)

The older brother of, and influence on, comedian (and Very Important Pothead) George Carlin, Patrick was a marijuana fan who wrote the words to this ultimate pot poster (pictured). "My dear Uncle Patrick has moved onto the spirit world. He’s currently spinning tunes, smoking a jay w/my Aunt Marlane and shooting the shit w/ his brother," tweeted George's daughter Kelly, who co-produced the 2022 Tokey award-winning documentary series George Carlin's American Dream, which is dedicated to Patrick.  

Liz Sheridan (4/14)  / Estelle Harris (4/2)

Sheridan, known for her role as Jerry Seinfeld's mom on TV, wrote a book titled Dizzy & Jimmy about the time, as a young actress and dancer in NYC, she dated James Dean, whose marijuana use was confirmed by Ann Doran, the actress who played his mother in Rebel Without a Cause. Sheridan died two weeks after Estelle Harris, the actress who played the mother of Seinfeld's sidekick George Costanza, as well as voicing Mrs. Potato Head in the Toy Story movies and playing "Easy Mary" on TV's "Night Court."

Shirley Spork (4/12)

Spork, one of the 13 founders of the LPGA, wanted to play golf after high school, but was discouraged by her parents. At college, she won the 1947 national individual intercollegiate golf championship, playing in between final exams. Spoke's 2017 autobiography, From Green to Tee, describes teaching other women and celebrities like Bob Hope her "Sporkisms"—her signature golf instructions. She found out just two weeks before she died at the age of 94 that she and her fellow league co-founders would be inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame.

 

 

Donald "Tabby" Shaw (3/29) / Fitzroy "Bunny" Simpson (4/1)

Three days after The Mighty Diamonds lead singer Tabby Shaw was killed in a drive-by shooting in Kingston, Jamaica, his bandmate Bunny Simpson died after a long illness. The prolific reggae band, formed in 1969, penned and had a hit with "Pass the Kutchie," about sharing a marijuana joint, before the song was covered by Musical Youth in 1982.

 

 

 

Nancy Milford (3/29)

Milford "brought the chaotic, troubled Zelda Fitzgerald and her world to vivid life in Zelda (1970), which spent nearly 22 weeks on The New York Times’s hardcover best-seller list, sold more than a million copies, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It took Milford 31 years to complete her next book, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, another bestseller. Asked about the long gestation of the book, she told The Los Angeles Times: “Pish posh. Who cares? It’s my life, and I can do with it what I want.” Source. 

Madeleine Albright (3/23)

Our first female Secretary of State, Albright was a chief delegate to the United Nations and foreign policy advisor to Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run for vice president. Born Maria Jana Korbelova in Prague just before the outbreak of World War II, she did not learn until she was nearly 60 that both of her parents were Jewish. In addition to Russian, she spoke Czech, French, German, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian, and her brooches, which were part of her diplomatic language, were displayed at the Museum of Art and Design in NYC. She clued Samantha Bee into speaking to female heads of state about sexism in this clip (above) and took flack for saying while Hillary Clinton was running for president, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other." Her last book was, Fascism: A Warning (2018).

Adriana Hoffmann (3/20)

Chilean botanist, environmentalist, and author Hoffmann was Chile's Environment Minister in 2000 and 2001. She advocated for the sustainable management and protection of Chilean forests, leading opposition to illegal logging in her role as coordinator of Defensores del Bosque Chileno (Defenders of the Chilean Forest) since 1992. Hoffmann authored over a dozen books on the flora of Chile and 106 botanical names, mostly realignments of species and infraspecific taxa of cactus.

Don Young (3/18)

Rep. Young (R-AK) was one of just five GOP members of the House of Representatives to vote in favor of a bill to end marijuana prohibition in 2020, and was a Cannabis Caucus co-chair. First elected in 1973 during the Nixon administration, Young was in his 25th term and 49th year in Congress when he died at age 88. Born in California in 1933, he was drawn to Alaska as a young man by Very Important Pothead Jack London's book Call of the Wild.  

Oksana Shvets (3/17) 

Beloved Ukranian actress Shvets—a 67-year-old veteran star of stage, film and TV—was named a Merited Artist of Ukraine. She was killed in a Russian shelling attack of her residential building in Kyiv. Also killed in the shelling: Ukrainian ballet star Artem Datsyshyn (43); and Pavlo Li, a 33-year-old actor who dubbed the Ukrainian voice for characters in South Park, The Lion King and The Hobbit. He was killed on 3/6 after signing up for Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces. Also: American journalist and documentarian Brett Renaud (Meth Storm), who was killed on March 13 by Russian soldiers while covering the invasion.

 William Hurt (3/13)

Hurt's film debut was in the Altered States (1980), where he played an academic based on John C. Lilly who explores his consciousness with sacred mushrooms and deprivation tanks. He also played the druggie, nonconformist friend in The Big Chill, wherein he and Mary Kay Place shared a joint (pictured), and was the cheating husband whose wife (Mia Farrow) escapes with the aid of magical herbs in Alice. Hurt was superb in films like Body Heat, Children of a Lesser God, and Broadcast News, and won an Oscar playing a transvestite prisoner in Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1985.

Jessica Williams (3/12)

Jazz pianist and composer Williams could see each note's color as she played it, which must have contributed to her extraordinarily precise, inventive and playful technique. Influenced by Very Important Pothead Thelonious Monk, she played at Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festivals, and many more festivals and venues worldwide. She was a guest on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, where her music can frequently be heard between interview segments.  

Bobbie Nelson (3/10)

"Without my sister, I wouldn't be where I am today," wrote Willie Nelson in the 2020 book, Me and Sister Bobbie: True Tales of the Family Band. Bobbie wrote, "When it came to pot smoking, I could never match Willie—literally no one can—but I did experience the benefits. Anxiety softened. Anger erased. Music was made to sound even more haunting. As a high-strung person, I found pot to be a relaxant." Read more.

Kellerman on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" 

Sally Kellerman (2/24)

Best known for her comedic portrayal of "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the Robert Altman–directed movie M*A*S*H, Kellerman wrote in her memoir Read My Lips about smoking grass, and being considered a stoolie after police tried to pin the accidental death of her friend Tom Pittman on marijuana. Read more. 

Shelia Benson (2/23)

Benson was the principal film critic at the Los Angeles Times from 1981-1991. Of Sylvester Stallone's 1986 movie "Cobra," Benson wrote, "Lordy, how Stallone’s world is choked with wimps. And undesirables. Like the marijuana-smoking, hairnet-wearing Latino who takes his parking space. Boy, does Stallone show him. Rips his sleazy undershirt. Tosses away his joint. Sneers right at him." Of Peggy Sue Got Married, she wrote, "Also fine is newcomer Kevin J. O’Connor [with whom Kathleen Turner as the title character smokes pot] as the burning-eyed class rebel, afire with self-absorption and bad Beat poetry." Of Cheech & Chong's 1981 film Nice Dreams, she opined that it "sure doesn't work if you're straight.”

 

Betty Sembler (2/16)

Sembler, along with her husband Mel, was a high-profile antidrug crusader for decades. Reportedly, Betty was among those who suggested Nancy Reagan take on drugs as her pet cause, and Reagan gave her stamp of approval to Straight Inc., the Semblers' discredited program that sought to reprogram marijuana-using teens in the US from 1976 to 1994. Read more.

 

 

P.J. O'Rourke (2/15)

The National Lampoon editor turned conservative columnist like no other was full of wit, humor and charm, as displayed in his writing and his many appearances shows like NPR's Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me. A 2020 New York Post column slamming millennials for embracing socialism contains the line, "Kids were thinking these exact same sweet-young-thing thoughts back in the 1960s, during my salad days (tossed green sensimilla buds)."  On Real Time with Bill Maher during a discussion of California's legalization measure Prop. 19 in 2010, O'Rourke mused, "My back taxes on that," while taking an imaginary toke. At a Commonwealth Club appearance in San Francisco that year, he supported full marijuana legalization, saying, "This is a drug that makes 18-year-old boys drive slow".

 

 

Betty Davis (2/9)

According to Rolling Stone: A model by profession, Davis first began making music under her birth name Betty Mabry, including her 1964 single “Get Ready for Betty.” An influential figure in the New York music scene in the late-Sixties, she would pen the Chambers Brothers song “Uptown (to Harlem),” which enjoyed a recent resurgence when it featured in Questlove’s Oscar-nominated documentary Summer of Soul. In 1968, she became the second wife of Miles Davis, and she is credited with introducing Miles to the rock music of the era. Davis gained a cult following for her sexuality-laden lyrics, and her candid, liberating attitudes trailblazed a path for artists like Prince and Madonna. The focus of a 2017 documentary (Betty: They Say I’m Different), Davis died in Homestead, Pennsylvania, where she grew up.

Robin Herman (2/1)

Herman was a groundbreaking sports journalist who was one of the first two females to interview male players in a professional sports locker room in North America when she was given access after the NHL All-Star Game in Montreal in 1975. She wrote for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune and The Washington Post, and served as the assistant dean of communications at Harvard University’s School of Public Health from 1999 to 2012. 

Joan Bello

Bello's book, The Benefits of Marijuana: Psychological & Spiritual was part of the hemp activists' toolkit in the early 1990s when I became involved in the movement (and few were talking about the benefits of cannabis, only the risks).  Bello, trained in Eastern medicine, began her marijuana mission when she observed that it helped treat her five-year-old son's epileptic seizures in the early 1970s. Becca Williams, who became acquainted with Bello after reading her book The Yoga of Marijuana, reports that Bello died in February. "She was the perfect role model for her theory that regular, responsible use of marijuana – with meditation – balances the Autonomic Nervous System," Williams wrote. "Joan was one of the most balanced people I know."

Cheslie Kryst (1/30)

Kryst, our Miss USA 2019, was tragically found dead at the age of 30 after apparently committing suicide. A complex litigation attorney who supported marijuana legalization and worked pro bono with clients who served excessive time for low-level drug offenses, Kryst wowed the crowd at the Miss Universe pageant with a costume (pictured) that paid homage to Lady Liberty, Lady Justice, Rosie the Riveter and Tokin' Woman Maya Angelou. The oldest-ever Miss USA when she was crowned, Kryst, who was a correspondent for TV's "Extra" at the time of her death, endured criticism over her age and body type, and fretted about turning 30 in an essay she wrote last year. I first learned of Kryst's untimely death in a horrid (now deleted) tweet from "Parents Opposed to Pot" which demanded, "Since she was an outspoken advocate of marijuana legalization, we think a toxicology screen should be taken and released to the public." 

 

Howard Hesseman (1/29)

Hesseman, who began his career with San Francisco's The Committee improv troupe, played perhaps the first hippie depicted on TV: rock and roll DJ Johnny Fever on "WKRP in Cincinnati" from 1978-82. Busted for selling an ounce of pot in 1963, did 90 days in SF County Jail. Seen above is Hessman in the WKRP episode that took on the issue of General Admission seating at rock concerts after 11 people were crushed to death trying to get into a Who concert in Cincinnati in 1979.  Johnny begins his set with "The Wait" from Tokin' Woman Chrissie Hynde. 

 

 

 

Meat Loaf (1/20)

His duet with Ellen Foley, "Paradise By the Dashboard Light," and the "Bat Out of Hell" album, is THE rock opera for the ages (sorry, The Who). I want Jack Black and Miley Cyrus to perform it at his tribute. Meat Loaf's writer and producer Jim Steinman died nine months earlier, on 4/19/21. May they both ride like a Bat Out of Hell straight to heaven, and may Johnny Fever spin for us there forever.

 

Yvette Mimieux (1/17)

Mimeux's dreamy character Melanie in Where the Boys Are (1960) goes astray with too many college boys, while uttering lines like, "Mystic!" and "I must have been really smashed—stoned!" When the boys teach her to smoke cigarettes, she reassures her friends, "I don't inhale, though." She was too-often cast in roles that played only on her Barbie-doll beauty, like the vapid Weena is The Time Machine (1960) or the brain damaged, childlike creature wooed by George Hamilton in Light in the Piazza (1962). She turned in a powerful portrayal of a falsely imprisoned woman raped by a prison guard who escapes with Tommy Lee Jones in Jackson County Jail (1976), which that was chosen by Quentin Tarantino for his first film festival in 1996. She retired from acting and turned to other interests, like writing, starting a business selling Haitian products, traveling, studying archaeology and selling real estate. "There’s nothing to play. They’re either sex objects or vanilla pudding,” she told Deadline.com. 

Ronnie Spector (1/12)

Spector and her girl group The Ronettes had a string of monster hits (Be My Baby, Baby I Love You, Walking in the Rain) in the 1960s, featuring Ronnie's soaring vocals. After she married the abusive Phil Spector in 1968, he forbade her to perform and continued to fight her for royalties after she divorced him; she rebuilt a career with the help of friends and admirers like Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and Billy Joel. Spector battled alcoholism, and in 2011, after the death of fellow Beehive Queen Amy Winehouse, she released a tribute version of Winehouse's "Back to Black." Her final 2016 album English Heart contained a heartbreakingly beautiful "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" and this Keith Richards collaboration, "I'd Much Rather Be With the Girls." 

 

Rosa Lee Hawkins (1/11) 

Along with her sister and cousin, Hawkins was a member of The Dixie Cups, whose big hit was "Chapel of Love," which was ranked No. 279 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The group's fifth and final hit came in 1965 with "Iko Iko," a traditional song the girls heard their grandmother sing in their native New Orleans. Rosa stands out in this performance "moving her motor to the beat of the music" leading to the lyric, "See that guy all dressed in green / he not a man, he a lovin' machine."

Dwayne Hickman (1/9)

Hickman played the title role in "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" which featured Bob Denver as TV's first beatnik. Maynard and Dobie's father, who owned a grocery store, were in a continual struggle for Dobie's soul, with Maynard convinced life is for enjoying and Dobie's Dad only happy when Dobie was behind a push broom. By the end of the happy half hour he would generally come around to Maynard's point of view. Read more.

 

Bob Saget (1/9)

The comedian best known as the Dad on TV's family-friendly "Full House," Saget was hilarious playing against his persona in on TV's "Entourage" and in the 1998 Dave Chapelle movie Half Baked (shown). He gladly gave an interview with High Times magazine in 2008 where he was asked, "You live in California. How do you view the pot scene there?" "You just have to order in," was the reply.  

Marilyn Bergman (1/8)

Along with her husband Alan, Bergman wrote lyrics to many popular songs for the movies ("The Way We Were," "In the Heat of the Night," "The Windmills of Your Mind") and also the theme songs to the feminist TV shows Maude and Alice. The Bergmans won three Oscars, three Emmys, and a Grammy, and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Marilyn appears in this video with frequent collaborator (and Tokin' Woman) Barbra Streisand singing the Bergmans' song "Fifty Percent." 

Peter Bogdanovich (1/6)

The prolific and respected film director and actor Bogdanovich had a small uncredited role in Jack Nicholson's trippy 1967 movie The Trip and also appeared in the weedy 2008 film Humboldt County (above). He refused to direct The Godfather because he was "not interested in the Mafia," but did direct Running Down a Dream where members of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers talked about their marijuana use. 

 

  Sidney Poitier (1/6)

Poitier, the first black actor to win an Academy Award, was also a giant in political activism in his native Bahamas and elsewhere. Poitier also wrote and directed films, including 1980 film Stir Crazy which begins with Richard Pryor losing his job as a waiter when the cook adds his marijuana instead of oregano to dinner. 

Steve Levine (1/1)

Longtime activist and Hemp Industry Association president, Levine got himself arrested in October 2009 (pictured) as part of a group of farmers and hemp industry leaders who planted hemp in protest at the DEA headquarters. Steve interviewed me in 2002 for HIA's radio show "Hemp: Lifeline to the Future" on KMUD radio at a time when few women were being heard from in the hemp space.