Sadly, this page will be updated throughout 2023.
Ana Ofelia Murguía (12/31)
Known for voicing Grandmother Coco in the 2017 Pixar/Disney film Coco, Murguía was an acclaimed Mexican actress. In 2010 she appeared in Las Buenas Hierbas (The Good Herbs), where she plays an herb dealer with Alzheimer's.
Tommy Smothers (12/26)
The Smothers Brothers' groundbreaking television hour ushered in the topical comedy of Laugh In and Saturday Night Live, and so much more. David Bionculli's book Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour reveals that some of the comedy on the show was fueled by weed. Tommy said in the 2002 documentary Smothered that he and headwriter/"Classical Gas" composer Mason Williams would "sometimes torch a joint" while working on scripts. Singer Jennifer Warnes recalled one road trip on which she and Tom dropped acid, and Williams remembered mistakenly eating a batch of cast member Leigh French's "specially enhanced" brownies. During the trial that resulted in a settlement for breach of contract after the show was cancelled by CBS, French's skit where she played country singer "Kentucky Rose" who said, "I used to play bluegrass, but a couple of weeks ago I started smoking it" was entered into the court record. Tommy testified at the 1968 trial of impresario and restauranteur Frank Werber who was accused of possession and cultivation of marijuana, saying he'd known Werber for years and "before he started smoking pot, he was a real a-hole." Smothers played the second guitar on John Lennon's song "Give Peace a Chance," performed at Lennon's honeymoon/war protest and mentioning Tommy in the lyric.Alice Parker (12/24)
Parker was a composer, arranger, conductor and teacher who authored over 500 pieces of music (operas, cantatas, choral suites, hymns) along with a wealth of arrangements based on folk songs and hymns. Her 1984 composition "Songs for Eve" is from an Archibald MacLeish poem; her "Echoes from the Hills" and "Heavenly Hurt," among others, are inspired by Emily Dickinson. In the 2020 documentary Alice: At Home With Alice Parker she tells how, when she was born in 1925 she was held up to the window for the neighbors to see on Christmas Eve. She died on that day at the age of 98.
Ruth Seymour (12/22)
A broadcasting executive known for her innovative work in public radio, Seymour's first venture into radio came at KPFK in Los Angeles from 1961 to 1964. From 1971 to 1976, she worked as program director there. She was fired in 1976, after the FBI raided the station in search of a tape KPFK had aired from Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, which the station manager refused to turn over. Seymour broadcast the raid live, as it occurred. She joined the staff of KCRW at Santa Monica College in 1977 as a consultant and was named manager a few months later, in 1978. She retired from there in February 2010 after having helped the station "transcend its basement location to shape the culture in Los Angeles," bringing programs to the station such as "Le Show" (hosted by Harry Shearer); "Left, Right & Center"; "Morning Becomes Eclectic"; and "Which Way L.A.?" In 1996, KCRW became the first station other than Chicago's WBEZ to air "This American Life." She also supported programs that brought literature to the radio, including airing radio dramas adaptations of Babbitt and Ulysses. Known in Washington, D.C. as a fierce defender of public broadcasting funding and issues such as licensing and royalties for streaming, in 1997 she received Amnesty International's Media Spotlight Award.
Rose Ann Fuhrman (December 2023)
When few were covering the topic, Sonoma CA-based author Fuhrman wrote lively and accurate articles like “Cliffhanger in California” about Prop. 215, the 1996 initiative that made California the first state to legalize medical marijuana. When Prop. 215's spear-Head Dennis Peron died in 2018, she wrote on her Facebook page: "The passing of Dennis Peron feels like the closing of one chapter as another one struggles to write itself....A little less than 30 years ago I learned that marijuana prohibition was based on racist and other lies and had nothing to do with public safety. I hadn't given it much thought prior to that and had never tried it, automatically defaulting to the common view. Being a passionate advocate for justice, my new knowledge made activism for decriminalization or legalization inevitable.... I don't remember what led to my writing for Cannabis Canada (now Cannabis Culture) but a friend and neighbor took me to the original Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco for a meeting, which was my access point. Intelligent, peaceful people who did (and many still do) great work."
Cari Beauchamp (12/14)
I had just written to Beauchamp after re-reading the Vanity Fair article she co-wrote with Judy Balaban about Hollywood's experimentation with LSD. I also picked up her book, Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood and found a couple of marijuana references there. Beauchamp was an award-winning author and historian who was a resident scholar at the Mary Pickford Foundation. She also wrote books about screenwriter Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and Joseph P. Kennedy's influence on Hollywood, as well as editing and annotating Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s by Valeria Belletti. She wrote and co-produced a documentary film in 2000 based on Without Lying Down, also wrote the documentary film The Day My God Died about young girls of Nepal sold into sexual slavery, which played on PBS and was nominated for an Emmy in 2003. Before becoming a full-time writer in 1990, she worked as a private investigator and a campaign manager, and served as Press Secretary to California Governor Jerry Brown.
Ryan O'Neal (12/8)
The cocaine/meth/alcohol monster got him, leading to accusations of abuse from his kids and spouses, but in the end his daughter Tatum, who remains the youngest actor to win an Oscar for "Paper Moon" in which she starred with her Dad, had nice things to say about him, as did co-stars Ali McGraw, Barbra Streisand and others. Born on 4/20/1941, O'Neal was married to Leigh Taylor-Young, who baked pot brownies in "I Love You Alice B. Toklas," and was with Farrah Fawcett when she died of cancer, an even sadder Love Story. 
Norman Lear (12/5)
Prolific screenwriter and producer Lear was most known for the breakthrough sitcom All In the Family. Its spinoff, Maude, was about a liberated woman (Bea Arthur) who, in one episode, protested a young man's marijuana arrest by scheming to get herself arrested too. Lear also produced One Day at a Time about a divorced woman living on her own with her two daughters, and its recent reboot with a Latina cast starring Rita Moreno (shown), which aired a thoughtful episode about cannabis. Lear filed a First Amendment lawsuit against TV's "family hour" censorship, and founded People for the American Way (PFAW), a progressive advocacy organization formed in reaction to the politics of the Christian right.
Sandra Day O’Connor (12/1)
The first woman to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice, O'Connor was born Sandra Day in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of a cattle rancher. In her youth, she participated in cattle roundups as the group's only female rider, latter calling it, "my first initiation into joining an all-men's club, something I did more than once in my life." Day enrolled at Stanford University at the age of 16 and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in economics in 1950. At Stanford Law School she served on the Stanford Law Review with future Supreme Court chief justice William Rehnquist, who proposed marriage to her (she declined). After graduating from law school, because of her gender, she could only find employment as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo, California after she offered to work for no salary and without an office. She eventually became a judge and an elected official in Arizona, serving as the first female majority leader of a state senate as the Republican leader in the Arizona Senate. While serving on the Supreme Court from 1981-2006, she was one of three co-authors of the lead opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Court upheld the right to have an abortion as established in Roe v. Wade, and argued in favor of President Obama naming a replacement for conservative justice Antonin Scalia (before the Senate scandalously held up Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland, until Trump could be elected and name Neil Gorsuch, assuring the Court's conservative majority). She also joined the dissenting opinion in Gonzalez v Raich, in defense of state marijuana laws. After retiring, O'Connor succeeded Henry Kissinger (who died two days before her) as the Chancellor of the College of William & Mary. In 2003, she wrote a book titled The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice and in 2005, a children's book, Chico: A True Story from the Childhood of the First Woman Supreme Court Justice, was named for her favorite horse. In 2009, Justice O'Connor was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Shane MacGowan (12/30)
Born on Christmas Day in 1957, the "peerless and fearless" MacGowan was the co-founder, frontman and chief songwriter of the Pogues, which brilliantly and energetically combined punk rock with traditional Irish music and politics. In 1972, MacGowan was expelled from the school he was attending on a literary scholarship after being caught smoking pot in public, and at age 17, he spent six months in a psychiatric hospital due to drug addiction, where he was also diagnosed with acute situational anxiety. He struggled with drugs and alcohol throughout his life, and was dismissed from the Pogues for unprofessional behavior after missing concert dates, including opening for Bob Dylan. "Fairytale of New York," which MacGowan co-wrote and performed with Kirsty MacColl, remains a perennial Christmas favorite. Sadly, he died of complications from pneumonia at age 65 just as the Christmas season started this year. At the end of his life, “We used to go to Shane’s house and roll joints for him. We would watch Netflix with him,” said Andrew Hendy of Dundalk balladeers. "Shane will be remembered as one of music’s greatest lyricists. So many of his songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them," said Ireland's President Michael Higgins in a statement.
Clay Jones claytoonz.com
Henry Kissinger (11/29)
Paul Sorvino brilliantly plays Kissinger in the Oliver Stone movie "Nixon," nailing indelibly the scene in which he prays on his knees with Nixon on the eve of impeachment. In the opera "Nixon In China" Kissinger is shown whipping Chinese workers into submission to the semiconductor. “People are a little shocked when he appears as the sadistic overlord,” director Peter Sellars told the New York Times. “But obviously he’s the man who’s responsible for Chile and for the secret bombing of Cambodia — the list of atrocities and acts of unspeakable violence is long. And that lurid stuff is behind the jolly and well-spoken diplomat. The surprise is, as always, no one is just one thing. That is one reason you make operatic characters.” My first political act, at the age of 14, was to campaign for George McGovern against Richard Nixon in 1971. After Tricky Dicky with Kissinger at his side won by a landslide, and bombed Cambodia by Christmas, I was disillusioned for decades. That Kissinger lived to be 100 while chewing on the cud of human misery just adds to the sickeningness of it all.
Dale Spender (11/21)
Australian feminist scholar Spender was co-founder of Pandora Press, the first of the feminist imprints devoted solely to non-fiction, committed, according to the New York Times, to showing that "women were the mothers of the novel and that any other version of its origin is but a myth of male creation." Her book Man Made Language (1980), based on her PhD research, argues that in patriarchal societies men control language and it works in their favor, drawing parallels with how derogatory terms are used to maintain racism. She was a co-originator of the database WIKED (Women's International Knowledge Encyclopedia and Data) and associate editor of the Great Women Series (United Kingdom). Particularly concerned with intellectual property and the effects of new technologies, for nine years she was a director of Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) in Australia and for two years (2002–2004) she was the chair. Spender consistently dressed in purple clothes, a choice she initially made for its symbolic reference to the suffragettes.
Rosalynn Carter (11/19)
Asked by Katie Couric what was the most exciting moment in his life, winning the Nobel Peace Prize or being elected President, Jimmy Carter replied that it was when Rosalynn said she would marry him. The couple were married for 77 years, and the former president called her “my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished.” The eldest of four children born to a bus driver/farmer father and teacher/dressmaker mother, Rosalynn helped raise her younger brothers after her father died when she was 13. After helping Jimmy win the governorship of Georgia in 1970, she was appointed to the Governor's Commission to Improve Services for the Mentally and Emotionally Handicapped, and mental health became a lifelong cause. As the first of all First Ladies to have her own office in the White House, she attended Cabinet meetings and major briefings, served as the President’s personal emissary to Latin American countries, and led a delegation to Thailand in 1979 to address the problems of Cambodian and Laotian refugees. She was honored by the National Organization for Women with an Award of Merit for her vigorous support for the Equal Rights Amendment, and joined other First Ladies at the Houston conference celebrating the International Women's Year in 1977. In 1982, she co-founded The Carter Center in Atlanta to promote peace and human rights worldwide. Her autobiography, First Lady From Plains, was published in 1984. She and her husband contributed to the expansion of the nonprofit housing organization Habitat for Humanity, and they received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999. 
Maryanne Trump Barry (11/13)
Donald Trump's trusted elder sister, Barry was was first assistant United States Attorney from 1981 to 1983, placing her, at the time, among the highest-ranking women in the office of a federal prosecutor. She was appointed as a judge by Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, and served on the federal bench in New Jersey. Judge Barry rejected a plea bargain that would have freed two detectives accused of protecting a drug dealer, and in 1985, she recused herself in a drug-trafficking case due to her brother Donald's relationship with the accused trafficker. In 2000 she wrote the majority opinion in an appeals court decision striking down a New Jersey ban on late-term abortions, saying it placed an undue burden on a woman’s constitutional right to privacy in medical decision making. In 2004, when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor presented her with an award given by the Seton Hall University School of Law to women who excel in law and public service, Judge Barry said, “I say to the women out there, remember how difficult it was for women like Justice O’Connor starting out. Even though she graduated with top grades, she had to take a job as a legal secretary. Remember how far we have come.” Barry retired in 2019 after she became the focus of a court investigation into the Trump family’s tax practices, the same year author Mary L. Trump released recordings of her aunt saying of the president, “All he wants to do is appeal to his base. He has no principles. None. None....The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying....It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel....You can’t trust him.” Source.
Matthew Perry (10/28)
After becoming addicted to painkillers following a 1997 Jet Ski accident, Perry was taking 55 Vicodins daily plus downing alcohol, Xanax and other drugs while making $1 million every week as the nebbish character Chandler on TV's "Friends." Chandler's "sarcastic rhetorical question asked in a tone of mock disbelief" such as, “Could she be more out of my league?” was brought by Perry to the popular show and became part of Americans' speech patterns. He wrote (without a ghostwriter) a witty memoir laying bare his experiences in drug rehabilitation in 2022, and was found dead at his home at the age of 54. Source. UPDATE: High levels of ketamine were found in Perry's body, along with buprenorphine. Perry also had coronary artery disease. 
David Mitchell (10/26)
Mitchell was a muckraking reporter whose tiny California newspaper The Point Reyes Light exposed the violent drug rehabilitation cult Synanon and, as a result, became one of only a handful of weeklies to win a Pulitzer Prize. In 1980, when Mitchell published the book “The Light on Synanon: How a Country Weekly Exposed a Corporate Cult — and Won the Pulitzer Prize,” a reviewer for The Christian Science Monitor wrote that it “should be required reading for anyone who thinks a small newspaper can only serve a small purpose or that all the important news is in Washington or abroad.” The book inspired a CBS-TV movie, “Attack on Fear” (1984), which starred Paul Michael Glaser and Linda Kelsey as Mitchell and his second wife and co-publisher Catherine. In his last blog post in June, Mitchell wrote, "I’ve just started a course of a dopamine-producing medicine. Parkinson’s is associated with lower dopamine production in the brain, so I’m hoping the new med will be as effective as it’s been described by optimists and medical personnel.
In the meantime, I’ll let the curtain close." 
Dusty Street (10/21)
Street got her start in the radio business in San Francisco in the late 1960s, working at KMPX, KTIM and KSAN first as an engineer and then as as one of the country’s first female FM DJs. When she started "The Chick Show" with her fellow female engineer/DJs she was given this advice by DJ Bobby Dale: "It's just like you're sitting down on a couch smoking a joint with your buddies." In 1978, she landed at L.A. rock station KROQ, where she anchored the station's evening programming from 1981 to 1989. Canned from KROQ for being too much of a renegade, Street became a longtime DJ for SiriusXM, on the Deep Tracks and Classic Vinyl stations. She was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2015 and earlier this year, she was one of the main contributors to the documentary, “San Francisco Sounds: A Place In Time,” covering the rise of The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and many more. "We were all hippies," she said. “It was never about the money, it was never about the acclaim, it was all about the freedom," she told DJ/writer Liz Ohanesian in 2007. After over 50 years on the air, Street died at age 77 at her home in Eugene, Oregon. 
Christina J. Visco (10/19)
The first woman to receive a medical marijuana license in Pennsylvania, Visco founded TerraVida Holistic Centers in 2017, opened the first of her several dispensaries in 2018, and was at one time the state’s dominant retailer of medical marijuana. She later acquired distribution permits in other states and sold the company in 2021 but remained as an executive with the new firm.
Committed to assisting cannabis users as well as selling to them, Visco opened education and registration centers near the dispensaries and established the VOWD Project — Victims of the War on Drugs — a nonprofit designed to “improve the lives of those victimized by cannabis prohibition. “Chris understood from the beginning that the marijuana business is, aside from whatever else it might be, a business,” former State Sen. Daylin Leach told The Inquirer in 2018. “And as such the basic rules of business apply: Provide a good product at a reasonable price and market yourself aggressively.” Source.
Joanna Merlin (10/15)
Merlin originated the role of Tzeitel, the oldest daughter in "Fiddler on the Roof" on Broadway. She left the show after her daughters were born and was replaced by her understudy, Bette Midler (who was also her kids' babysitter). Producer Hal Prince suggested Merlin move into casting and she became a casting director for several Stephen Sondheim/Hal Prince plays as well as casting and appearing in films and TV, as well as teaching. In 1986, Merlin was a founder of the Non-Traditional Casting Project (now the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts), which seeks more opportunities for actors of color and actors with disabilities. In the foreword to her book, “Auditioning: An Actor-Friendly Guide” (2001), Prince wrote: “Her taste is impeccable. In no instance can I remember her recommending anyone less than interesting for a role.” Source.
Suzanne Somers (10/15)
Somers was fired from the sitcom "Three's Company" after asking for equal pay with her co-star John Ritter, who was making $150,000 per episode, five times what she was paid. Her later TV work included "She's the Sheriff," (1987-89). Somers wrote dozens of books, including, Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (2006) and Knockout (2009), promoting alternative cancer treatments she used for decades. Somers died the day before her 77th birthday after her cancer came back. She will always remain the elusive blonde in the T-Bird from "American Graffiti" who Richard Dreyfus calls "a vision, a goddess" and "the most perfect, dazzling creature."
Dianne Feinstein (9/29)
Feinstein became mayor of San Francisco following the tragic deaths of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay SF Supervisor, and SF Mayor George Moscone, who sponsored California's marijuana decriminalization measure in 1975. Just days before she took office, 56% of San Francisco voters approved Prop W, directing the D.A. to stop prosecuting marijuana offenders, but Feinstein promptly ignored Prop W and saw to it that its proponent Dennis Peron's Big Top marijuana store was closed.
In the U.S. Senate, Feinstein went on to become the leading Democratic drug warrior on the Judiciary Committee, where she championed tougher laws and opposed marijuana reform, medical or otherwise. Feinstein opposed California’s pioneering medical marijuana law, Prop. 215 (1996) and its recreational one, Prop. 64 (2016). She voted to deny welfare benefits to misdemeanor pot offenders; evict families from public housing if one member was convicted of drug use; criminalize writing about drugs on the internet; bar student loans for drug possession; apply the death penalty for nonviolent drug offenders; and spray herbicide and intervene militarily in Latin America. One of her last accomplishments as senator was to water down a bill to promote federal marijuana research, so as to keep it illegal for researchers to work with state-legal, DEA-unapproved cannabis. (Pictured: Protest at Feinstein's DC office at the 2003 NORML Conference.).jpg)
Molly Holzschlag (9/5)
Nicknamed the "Fairy Godmother of the Web," Holzschlag wrote or co-authored 35 books on web design and open standards, including The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web. In 2011, she worked for "Knowbility," teaching classes on Open Web technologies such as HTML5 and ARIA, with a strong emphasis on using inclusive design to overcome accessibility barriers. Diagnosed with aplastic anemia in 2014, she spoke about the problems with health care funding and raised over $70,000 through GoFundMe in 2013 to fund her chemotherapy. She died at age 60 at her home in Tucson.
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Edith Grossman (9/4)
Known for her work translating Latin American and Spanish literature to English, Grossman's translation of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, published in 2003, is considered one of the finest English-language translations of the Spanish novel by some authors and critics, including Carlos Fuentes and Harold Bloom, who called her "the Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note." In 1990 Gabriel García Márquez said that he preferred reading his own novels in their English translations by Grossman and Gregory Rabassa. In 2016, Grossman received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Civil Merit awarded by King Felipe VI of Spain, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her its Thornton Wilder Prize for translation in 2022. She's one of the rare translators whose name often appears on the covers of books, along with the author's. Steve Harwell (9/4)
As the powerful lead singer of Smash Mouth, Harwell sang these lyrics to their hit "Walkin' on the Sun": It ain't no joke, I'd like to buy the world a tokeAnd teach the world to sing in perfect harmonyAnd teach the world to snuff the fires and the liarsHey, I know it's just a song, but it's spice for the recipe....
Twenty-five years ago, they spoke out and they broke out
Of recession and oppression and together they toked
And they folked out with guitars around a bonfire
Just singin' and clappin', man, what the hell happened?...
Of recession and oppression and together they toked
And they folked out with guitars around a bonfire
Just singin' and clappin', man, what the hell happened?...
Bill Richardson (9/1)
Governor Richardson became the first presidential candidate to advocate for medical marijuana in 2007, the year he signed a bill to make New Mexico the 12th state with a medical marijuana program. “So what if it’s risky? It’s the right thing to do,” he said.
He served as UN Ambassador and Energy Secretary in the Clinton administration, and after leaving office completed a number of private humanitarian missions via the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, including working to release journalist Danny Fenster from Myranmar in 2021 (pictured), and traveling to Moscow in 2022 to advocate for the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner after she was imprisoned in Russia for marijuana possession. Shortly before his death, Richardson was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by four Democratic senators for his role in hostage diplomacy. “We feel lucky to have been introduced to the Richardson Center and will forever be grateful for them. I am confident that without their experience, commitment, and passion for the work to reunite families, I would not be home today,” wrote Griner and her wife, Cherelle Griner in support of the nomination. Jimmy Buffett (9/1)
Buffett's Parrothead fans are more known for enjoying their margaritas than their marijuana, but Buffett was a Pothead too. He named his son for Bob Marley and launched a marijuana brand named "Coral Reefer" after his band in 2018. This live version of his hit song about a pot smuggler, "A Pirate Looks at 40," ends with a bit of Marley's Redemption Song, complete with a steel drum accompaniment. Read more. 
Robbie Robertson (8/9)
Starting with backing Canadian-based rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins, Robertson and The Band went on to back Bob Dylan and have hits with Robertson-penned songs like "The Weight." In 1965, he and his fellow band members faced a marijuana-smuggling charge for allegedly bringing pot into the Toronto airport, until Miss Fanny got them out of it. Robertson's solo song "Fallen Angel" was written for bandmate Richard Manuel after he committed suicide in 1986. "If you're up there, can you reach me? Lay a flower in the snow." Robertson's score for "Killers of the Flower Moon" won him a posthumous Oscar nomination. Sixto Rodriguez (8/8)
The Mexican-American, Detroit-born singer/songwriter Rodriguez achieved cult status in Australia and South Africa, where the messages in his songs inspired anti-apartheid activists, and bootlegs of his recordings were sold by unscrupulous businessmen. The 2012 documentary Searching for Sugar Man starts with the myth of Rodriguez killing himself onstage in the 1970s, doubtlessly promulgated by those who profited illegally from his music. The filmmakers tracked Rodriguez down and found him working construction, raising a family, and being politically active in Detroit, seemingly unperturbed by his unknown popularity abroad and the huge rip-off of his musical legacy. He was a "solid 70" years old when he began to tour again. An 81th birthday celebration was held for him in July, with a special appearance by John Sinclair.
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| Mural seen in Oakland, CA |
Angus Cloud (7/31)
Cloud, a native of Oakland, CA, was recruited into acting after being spotted on a NYC street by the director of the HBO drama Euphoria, in which played a "kindhearted" drug dealer to teenagers. At the end of season 2, Cloud's character was wounded and arrested. The Alameda County coroner determined that Cloud accidentally overdosed on meth, cocaine, fentanyl, and benzodiazepines.
Paul Rubens (7/30)
The unique comic talent that brought us the delightful "Pee-wee's Playhouse" also appeared in Cheech and Chong movies. He died after a six-year battle with cancer.
Helen Williams (7/26)
Often described as the first Black supermodel, Williams broke racial barriers with her beauty and style, appearing in magazines like Ebony and Jet, and in ads for companies like Bulova and Budweiser, paving the way for other models of color to follow. After retiring from modeling in the 1970s, Williams continued styling for photo shoots and co-founded a company, H&H Fashion.
Patricia Ann Goldman (7/26)
A progressive Republican, Goldman began working in government as a senior at Goucher College in 1964, and led poverty and workforce programs for the US Chamber of Commerce from 1967 to 1971. She was appointed by Jimmy Carter and re-appointed by Ronald Reagan to the National Transportation Safety Board, where she served from 1979 to 1988, most of that time as vice chair. She was one of the few Republicans present at the founding meeting of the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971, and at the 1976 Republican National Convention she helped NWPC secure the continued endorsement of the Equal Rights Amendment and tried to prevent the party platform from opposing Roe v. Wade. In 1995, she became the president of the WISH List, a political action committee raising funds for female Republican candidates in favor of abortion rights. After surviving ovarian cancer, in 1997 she co-founded and was the president of the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance. "I don't think a Republican feminist is an oxymoron," she said. Sinead O'Connor (7/25)
I'd just read and written about O'Connor's 2021 book Rememberings, in which she talks about her use of weed and its effect on her music. I nearly heard her perform live when I spotted her name (misspelled) on the marquee at San Francisco's August Hall while attending ICBC 2020, but the show was sold out. I swore I wouldn't let that happen again. But now I've lost my chance; we all have. She had a lot to heal from in her life, and has died at age 56 of as-yet-unknown causes. Tony Bennett (7/21)
The beloved, iconic crooner refused to record gimmicky songs and instead devoted himself to The Great American Songbook, bringing it to new generations starting with duets with Elvis Costello and k.d. lang on MTV's Unplugged. Recording this Grammy-winning duet with Amy Winehouse, Bennett calmed her down by bringing up Dinah Washington, noticing her influence on Winehouse's singing. Bennett was a lifelong liberal Democrat who participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march in 1965; Viola Liuzzo, a volunteer from Michigan who drove him to the airport after the march was murdered later that day by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Source. As reported by CelebStoner, Bennett used marijuana and other drugs, and spoke up for drug legalization days after Whitney Houston died, mentioning Winehouse and Michael Jackson also. “I witnessed that in Amsterdam,” he said. “It’s legal, and as a result there’s no panic in the streets. There’s no deals, there’s no ‘Meet me at the corner and I’ll give you something.’ You’re always afraid you’re going to get arrested. You have to hide. Why do that?”
Eleanor Vadala (7/19)
Chemist, materials engineer and balloonist Vadala was director of research and development at the Naval Air Development Center in Pennsylvania, where she helped to develop light synthetic materials for use in aircraft. One of her jobs was the testing of fabric in existing balloons to ensure they could be used safely. Vadala was the third woman in the United States to be FAA-certified as a balloon pilot and as member of the Balloon Club of America, she participated in 66 balloon flights, 47 flights in gas balloons and 19 flights in hot air balloons. In 2019, she was inducted into the Balloon Federation of America Hall of Fame, at the National Balloon Museum in Indianola, Iowa. She died at the age of 99. Jane Birkin (7/16)
The British-French singer, actress and fashion icon is perhaps best known for the "Birkin bag," which came about in 1984 when she sat next to a Hermes executive on a plane and complained as a young mother she couldn't find a bag to carry baby bottles. Though ultimately she found the bag too heavy to carry, and she objected to the company's use of crocodile skin, the bag has, over the years, become a status symbol, with prices ranging from $10,000 to $500,000. As a child, Birkin demonstrated in the streets of London against capital punishment, and in the 1970s, she appeared at the Bobigny trial, in support of four women accused of having helped a high school student to have an abortion following a rape. Birkin campaigned against the far-right in France, participating in a protest denouncing Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002. In a 1970 interview she expressed her surprise that the sexy hit song she recorded with Serge Gainsbourgh, "Je t'aime... moi non plus" was banned by the Vatican. Known for her frequent collaborations with Gainsbourg, her work
with Agnes Varda in the ’80s produced “films that are as artistically
audacious as they are original in their approach to sex and the female
body,” Richard Brody wrote in 2016.
Evelyn M. Witkin (7/8)
During her senior year at New York University in 1941, Witkin (neé Evelyn Ruth Maisel) joined a group of students protesting the university’s policy of benching Black athletes whenever its sports teams played opponents from segregated schools, causing her to be suspended and sending her to Columbia instead of NYU for graduate school. There she studied the nascent field of genetics and "her discovery of the process by which DNA repairs itself opened the door to significant advances in the treatment of cancer and genetic defects." Witkin won the National Medal of Science in 2002 and in 2015, the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the highest honor in the medical sciences after the Nobel Prize. In 2021, on her 100th birthday, the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers renamed one of its premier research laboratories for her. Her son Joseph is a doctor and a founding member of the rock ‘n’ roll group Sha Na Na. Source.
Tara Heiss (7/7)
A 5-foot-6-inch point guard who played college basketball for the Maryland Terrapins from 1975 to 1978, Heiss was the first women's basketball player to score 1000 points. Maryland won the first Atlantic Coast Conference tournament in 1978 and Heiss was named Most Valuable Player. A member of the 1980 US Olympic team, she was unable to compete due to the United States boycott of the Olympics in Moscow that year. Heiss played for the Allentown Crestettes in the Amateur Athletic Union and the New Jersey Gems in the short-lived Women's Professional Basketball League. Many consider her the best point guard in the history of US women's basketball.
Marlena Spieler (7/6)
Coco Lee (7/5)
Lee was a musician, actress, dancer, and singer from Hong Kong. She released 18 studio albums, two live albums, and five compilation albums, including her first English-language album, "Just No Other Way." Her single "Do You Want My Love" received international attention, entering the top 50 of the US Billboard Dance Club Play chart. Lee performed "A Love Before Time" from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at the 73rd Academy Awards, becoming the first Chinese American to perform at the Oscar ceremony. She was also the first Chinese ambassador for Chanel. In 1998, her song "Colors of the World" was used for the opening of the Football World Cup, and she sang the theme song "Reflection" (shown) and voiced Fa Mulan in the Mandarin version of Disney's Mulan. Her death came after a suicide attempt at the age of 48.
Catherine Burks-Brooks (7/3)
In 1961, it been 15 years since the Supreme Court ruled that segregated seating on interstate buses and trains was unconstitutional. Yet Southern states continued to float the ruling. The Freedom Rides pushed back, organizing teams of riders, Black and white, to board buses and challenge Jim Crow laws. Burks, a 21-year-old student, joined a ride and challenged Bull Connor, the notoriously bigoted public safety commissioner who dumped the riders by the side of the road in rural Alabama near the Tennessee line, telling him they would see him in Birmingham by high noon. The students sought shelter at the home of an elderly Black man who was too frightened to let them in, until Burks asked to see the lady of the house, who gave them entry. After completing two more rides and enduring weeks of imprisonment at Parchman, Mississippi's infamously brutal state penitentiary, she reenrolled at Tennessee Agricultural University, earning a degree in education and teaching into her 70s. Source.
Dr. Susan Love (7/2)
Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book, originally published in 1990 and now in its
sixth edition, has sold nearly half a million copies. A seventh edition is
scheduled to be published this fall. "In an era when surgeons were overwhelmingly male and deference by their female patients was still expected, she exhorted women to ask hard questions about their treatment." She advocated lumpectomy followed by radiation over mastectomy when possible, and questioned the utility of mammograms in detecting cancer in younger women. Her negative appraisal of hormone replacement therapy, then routinely recommended to treat menopausal symptoms, was vindicated some years later, when the therapy was found to increase the risk of breast cancer, heart disease and strokes. Dr. Love was a founder of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, and was chief visionary officer of the Dr. Susan Love Foundation. Source.
Alan Arkin (6/29)
In his brilliant eight-decade career, Arkin was memorably comedic (The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming), sarcastic (Catch-22), and quietly tragic (in the 1968 adaptation of Carson McCullers's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, where he plays a deaf man). Arkin starred opposite Rita Moreno in Popi (1969) and menaced Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark. He capped his career with an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as the unapologetically heroin-using grandpa in Little Miss Sunshine (pictured), and two consecutive Emmy nominations for the Netflix series The Kominsky Method with Michael Douglas.
Christine King Farris (6/29)
The eldest and last surviving sibling of Martin Luther King, Farris endured both her brother's 1968 assassination and that of their mother six years later. Like her mother and grandmother before her, she attended Spelman College in Atlanta, where she earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1948. After earning two master's degrees in education, she taught at a public school before returning to Spelman as director of the Freshman Reading Program in 1958. Farris held a tenured professorship in education and was director of the Learning Resources Center for 48 years. Farris was, for many years, vice chair and treasurer of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and was active for several years in the International Reading Association, and various church and civic organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She published a children's book, My Brother Martin, as well as the autobiography, Through It All: Reflections on My Life, My Family, and My Faith.
Frederic Forrest (6/23)
Forrest played the love interest to Bette Midler's Janis Joplinesque character in the 1979 film The Rose (pictured), earning him both an Oscar and Golden Globe for best supporting actor. In that same year, he starred as Jay “Chef” Hicks in Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now. During the 1960s, he appeared in a number of countercultural Off-Broadway productions, including Viet Rock and Futz! One of his first film roles, When Legends Die, earned him a 1973 Golden Globe nomination for most promising newcomer. Midler tweeted, "He was a remarkable actor, and a brilliant human being, and I was lucky to have him in my life."
Diane Rowe (6/19)
Along with her twin sister Rosalind, the left-handed Rowe was an English table tennis champion. In 1955 they published a book The twins on table tennis. In 1966 Diane married German table tennis player Eberhard Schöler, and from that time on competed for West Germany. From 1951 to 1972 she won several medals in single, double, and team events in the Table Tennis European Championships, and in the World Table Tennis Championships, as well as 17 English Open titles. She retired from competition in 1973 and until 1997 worked as a table tennis coach.
Daniel Ellsberg (6/16)
While working as a Pentagon consultant at the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg began dating Patricia Marx, a reporter and antiwar activist who became his wife. In 1971, he smuggled out the Pentagon Papers, which ultimately helped to take down President Nixon, and turn public sentiment against the War in Vietnam. The Nixon administration went to extraordinary lengths to silence and punish Ellsberg, including breaking into his psychiatrist’s office (as depicted in the new HBO Max series "The White House Plumbers"). Ellsberg remained a leading critic of U.S. militarism and U.S. nuclear weapons policy, as well as a prominent advocate for other whistleblowers. Source. Seymour Hersh published a tribute to Ellsberg that spoke of them smoking Thai sticks together, prompting journalist Fred Gardner to ponder, "It would be interesting to know when and where Ellsberg started smoking the herb and to what extent the absurdity of prohibition accelerated his transition from hawk to dove." (Photo: Donal F. Holway, NYT)
Glenda Jackson (6/15)
Born into a working-class household where her father was a bricklayer and her mother a cleaning lady, Jackson became one of the few performers to achieve the American Triple Crown of Acting, winning two Academy Awards (for Women in Love and A Touch of Class), three Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award. She also won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Sunday Bloody Sunday. In 1980, she appeared in Robert Altman's ensemble comedy HealtH about a health food convention co-starring Carol Burnett, James Garner, and Lauren Bacall. Jackson ceased acting to take on a career in politics from 1992 to 2015, serving as a Labour Party MP and a junior transport minister. She returned to the stage at the end of 2016, playing the title role in William Shakespeare's King Lear at the Old Vic Theatre in London and on Broadway, where she appeared in Edward Albee's Three Tall Women in 2018 (pictured).
Treat Williams (6/12)
Williams starred in the lead role of Danny Zuko in the original Broadway run of Grease in 1972, and on film went from playing a hippie in Hair (1979) to a tough-guy narcotics detective bringing down corruption in Prince of the City (1981). "After years of cop reporting, Prince Of The City was the only film that made me believe anyone else knew the truth about the drug war," tweeted The Wire creator David Simon. In 1995, Williams said: "[My film career] was stopped by my lack of focus and use of cocaine. I wanted to party more than I wanted to focus on my work." But he came back and his performance as Michael Ovitz in HBO's The Late Shift opposite Kathy Bates earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor. Williams was a farmer in his home state of Connecticut and died in a motorcycle accident at age 71. He had life, mother.
Astrud Gilberto (6/5)
Brazilian singer Gilberto accompanied her husband, bossa nova guitarist João Gilberto, to a recording session with saxophonist Stan Getz where her impromptu English language version of "Girl from Ipanema" turned the song into an international hit. After she and João divorced, she toured with Getz, who mistreated her and robbed her credit and royalties for the song, which has since become the second-most recorded song in popular music, just behind the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Source.
Pat Robertson (6/8)
Conservative televangelist and politico Robertson had a lot of goofy ideas, but was right on when he had this to say on a Christmas Eve 2010 airing of "700 Club" in the course of discussing his prison ministry: "We're locking up people that take a couple of puffs of marijuana, and the next thing you know they've got ten years, but mandatory sentences, and these judges just say, they throw up their hands and say there's nothing we can do, it's mandatory sentences. We've gotta take a look at what we're considering crimes, and that's one of them. I mean, I'm not exactly for the use of drugs, don't get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot and that kind of thing, it's costing us a fortune and it's ruining young people." Two years later, he said on the “700 Club” that marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol because the government’s war on drugs had failed.
Françoise Gilot (6/6)
Gilot was drawn to art from an early age, tutored by her artist mother. Her father, however was an authoritarian who forced her to write with her right hand, though she was left-handed, and persuaded her to study science at the University of Paris, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1938 at age 17. Gilot began studying painting privately and also began a 10-year relationship with Pablo Picasso, 40 years her senior, in 1943. Her memoir, “Life with Picasso,” was published in 1964 and became an international best seller, providing much of the material for the 1996 Merchant-Ivory movie, “Surviving Picasso." In 1970, she married Jonas Salk, the American medical researcher who developed the first safe polio vaccine, and lived part of the time in California, becoming chairwoman of the fine arts department at the University of Southern California, a post she held until 1983. With her work in more than a dozen museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, her paintings have fetched as much as $1.3 million. She died at age 101, survived by her children Claude Picasso, the director of Picasso Administration, and Paloma Picasso, the fashion and jewelry designer best known for her perfumes. Source.
Cynthia Weil (6/1)
Lyricist Weil and her husband Barry Mann co-wrote a string of seminal songs, starting with "On Broadway" for the Drifters and “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’” and “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration” for the Righteous Brothers, followed by “We Gotta Get Out of this Place” for the Animals and the cautionary "Kicks," a hit for Paul Revere and the Raiders (above). For Dusty Springfield she penned, “Just a Little Lovin’ (Early in the Mornin’” and Dolly Parton had a hit with the Weil-Mann song “Here You Come Again.” In 1980, the Pointer Sisters hit with “He’s So Shy,” which Weil wrote with Tom Snow. These and many other of Weil's songs sold an estimated 200 million records.
James Watt (5/27)
As President Ronald Reagan’s first Interior secretary, Watt "tilted environmental policies sharply toward commercial exploitation, touching off a national debate over the development or preservation of America’s public lands and resources." (Source.) After taking office in 1981, Watt was asked at a hearing of the House Interior Committee if he favored preserving wilderness areas for future generations. The born-again Christian replied, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.” He soon transferred control of many of the nation's resources to private industry, and opened most of the Outer Continental Shelf — nearly all of America’s coastal waters — to drilling leases by oil and gas companies. He widened access to coal on federal lands, eased restrictions on strip-mining, and increased industry access to wilderness areas for drilling, mining and lumbering, among other "reforms." Environmental groups called for his dismissal and some secretly lamented when he resigned because having him in office helped with their fundraising efforts.
Tina Turner (5/25)
"We don't need another hero, we need more heroines like you," said Oprah Winfrey at the 2005 ceremony featuring Queen Latifah, Melissa Etheridge and Beyoncé bestowing Turner with a Kennedy Center Honor. The singing and dancing powerhouse and Queen of Rock and Roll survived a physically abusive relationship with her husband and musical partner Ike Turner before escaping with 36 cents in her pocket and divorcing him in 1978. She gave up all the couple's assets in her divorce settlement so that she could continue to use her stage name launched a solo career. A series of 1980s monster hits like the empowering "Better Be Good to Me" followed, along with a film career and a lucrative modeling contract for Hanes pantyhose after a poll revealed she had the most-admired legs in the US. Like her fellow dancing/singing phenomenon Josephine Baker, Turner was wildly popular in Europe and expatriated to France, then Switzerland. A devout Buddhist, Tina the Acid Queen believed she was the reincarnation of the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, who was associated with Seshat, Goddess of Knowledge and Cannabis. Her biography I, Tina says that although the Ikettes were known to sneak an occasional joint, she only tried weed once. But she let Ike give her Benzedrine to get through lengthy recording sessions; they recorded a song called "Contact High." This performance (above) was recorded in 2009, the year she turned 70. We can't wait for her next incarnation.
Kathryn Jones Harrison (5/21)
Harrison was one of five Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon tribal members who testified before the U.S. House of Representatives on Oct. 18, 1983, in support of restoring the tribe to federal recognition, which had been terminated 29 years earlier in 1954. After the tribe was restored, she served on Tribal Council from 1984 to 2001, becoming the first woman to serve as tribal chair, all while raising 10 children. Harrison received honorary degrees from Portland State University, the University of Portland, and Willamette University. Her name, which honored her her great-great-aunt Molalla Kate, is inscribed on the Wall of Honor at the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and grade school in Corvallis, Oregon was named for her in 2022. She walked on at the age of 99. Source.
Gloria Molina (5/14)
The oldest of 10 children, Molina became a breadwinner to her family after her father died, working as a legal secretary while in college, where she became involved in politics. Shortly after, as chair of the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional, she sat next to a tearful Dolores Madrigal at a news conference in 1975 announcing a class-action lawsuit alleging that L.A. County-USC Medical Center had coerced Mexican American women into sterilizations (pictured). She also headed Latino outreach in California for former President Carter, and joined his administration’s Office of Presidential Personnel, tasked with diversifying the ranks of thousands of commission seats. In 1982, Molina became the first Latina elected to the California state assembly. In 1986, she was the first Latina to be elected to the L.A. City Council. And in 1991, she was the first Latina to become an L.A. County Supervisor who served the people of East L.A., Pico-Union and the San Gabriel Valley for 23 years. In that capacity, she voted in favor of allowing medical marijuana dispensaries in LA County in 2006. Molina also quilted, founding the East L.A. Stitchers and frequently knitting with the group until her announcement of terminal cancer three years before her death. Source.
Grace
Bumbry (5/7)
Bumbry, a "barrier-shattering mezzo-soprano whose vast vocal range and transcendent stage presence made her a towering figure in opera and one of its first, and biggest, Black stars." Source. Growing up in St. Louis in an era of segregation, Bumbry came of age at a time when "African American singers were a rare sight on the opera stage, despite breakthroughs by luminaries like Leontyne Price and Marian Anderson." She performed in Verdi’s “Aida” at the Paris Opera in 1960 when she was at 23, and was acclaimed as "The Black Venus" when she portrayed Venus in a modernized version of Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” at the storied Bayreuth Festival the following year. Here she performs as Carmen.
Gordon Lightfoot (5/1)
Canadian singer/songwriter Lightfoot saw US acts like Judy Collins and Peter, Paul and Mary make hits with songs he wrote like "Early Mornin' Rain" until he got airplay himself with his haunting "If You Could Read My Mind." His song "Sundown" was inspired by his then-girlfriend Cathy Smith, also the inspiration for The Band's song "The Weight." She sings backup on this song, titled "High and Dry."
Tangaraju Suppiah (4/26)
Suppiah, aged 46, was executed by hanging in Singapore after being found guilty of "aiding and abetting" the smuggling of 1 kg (35 oz.) of cannabis. Human rights activists, the United Nations, and Richard Branson protested the death sentence, especially since no drugs were found in Suppiah's possession. Singapore is one of 35 countries and territories in the world that sentence people to death for drug crimes, according to Harm Reduction International (HRI). Last year Singapore hanged 11 people, all on drug charges - including an intellectually impaired man convicted of trafficking three tablespoons of heroin. Singapore's neighbor Malaysia abolished mandatory death penalties earlier this month, saying it was not an effective deterrent to crime. Neighboring Thailand has decriminalized cannabis, and is encouraging its trade. Source.
Harry Belafonte (4/25)
Singer, actor, and activist Belafonte brought Island music to the mainland with songs like "Day-O" and "Jamaican Farewell." He appeared in the film "Carmen Jones," an all-black remake of the opera "Carmen," in which a soldier is lead astray by a Gypsy drug smuggler. Belafonte was an ally of Martin Luther King and major figure in the civil rights movement, remaining active in various causes all his life. In the 1980s, he helped organize a cultural boycott of South Africa as well as the Live Aid concert, and became UNICEF’s good-will ambassador. In 2002, he accused Secretary of State Colin L. Powell of abandoning his principles to “come into the house of the master.” He called George Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world,” the Koch brothers "white supremacists," and Donald Trump “feckless and immature.” In 2014, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in recognition of his lifelong fight for civil rights and other causes. Source.
Emily Meggett (4/21)
Meggett, who never once used a cookbook or recipe, shot to national fame last year when she published her own cookbook at the age of 89. Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes From the Matriarch of Edisto Island, her first and only publication, went on to become a New York Times bestseller. Meggett was born on the South Carolina island of Edisto, and lived there for her entire life. A descendant of the Gullah-Geechee people, she learned to cook from her grandmother and spent half a century cooking in the vacation homes of wealthy white families, with her side door was always open to feed friends and family. "A lot of times, we has a treasure in our head. And we will die and go to heaven, and take that treasury with us,” Meggett told WFAE back in 2022. “And why can't we just share it with somebody else here?" Source.
Norm Kent (4/13)
As well as being a prominent LGBTQ activist and longtime board member and board chair for NORML, Kent was the attorney who got Elvy Musikka off on a marijuana charge in Florida in 1988 due to her glaucoma. The judge ruled her pot garden was a “medical necessity” and found her not guilty in a case that made headlines internationally. Afterwards, Musikka became one of a handful of people and the only woman supplied with federally-grown marijuana for her for medical needs under the IND program. Here is Norm in his signature fedora with me in my hemp hat at a 2016 NORML conference.
Blair Tindall (4/12)
Oboist Tindall's book Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music blew the lid off the classical music world, and the Amazon series based on it won the Golden Globe in 2016 for best television series, comedy or musical. Two female members of the orchestra (shown) bond over a pipe in the series, where the drummer (natch) is the peddler. Tindall earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Manhattan School of Music and played in the pit orchestras of “Miss Saigon” and “Les Misérables.” After earning a masters in journalism at Stanford, she wrote for various newspapers, pieces like Better Playing Through Chemistry and Psychedelic Palo Alto. She her fiancé, the photographer Chris Sattlberger, planned to marry on May 1. Tindall died at the age of 63 of cardiovascular disease.
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Jessica Burstein (4/11)
Burstein was the first female photographer hired by a network TV station, something for which she credited affirmative action. In the 1990s she photographed often-unwilling celebrities as the official (and unpaid) photographer at Elaine's, the posh and popular Manhattan night spot, and later became the staff photographer for "Law and Order." Born with a "wandering eye," she underwent surgery and treatment at the age of 8. Given a Brownie camera as a therapeutic tool, she began photographing obsessively, influenced by Life magazine, Margaret Bourke-White and the Vietnam war resistance. She joined a group called "The Concerned Photographers," realizing she could make a difference with her camera, and was also a labor leader, serving as executive board of the New York chapter of the International Cinematographer's Guild. Shown: Self portrait with Arthur Ashe.
Alicia Shepard (4/1)
A writer and media observer who served as ombudsman of NPR, Shepard examined the lives of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in a book about the legacy of the Watergate investigation, and chronicled her adventure sailing across the South Pacific with her infant son in tow. She spent the early years of her career as a general-assignment reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, and freelanced over the years for publications including The Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today and Washingtonian magazine. She later taught journalism at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and media ethics at the University of Arkansas. Source.Virginia Norwood (3/27)
Norwood's school guidance counselor suggested that she become a librarian, advice that she ignored. Instead she applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was one of about a dozen women in her entering class. She became an aerospace pioneer who invented the scanner that has been used to map and study the earth from space for
than 50 years, and is known as the Mother of the Lansat. Relying on her invention, the United States Geological Survey's Landsat satellites orbit the earth every 99 minutes and have captured a complete image of the planet every 16 days since 1972. These images have provided powerful visual evidence of climate change, deforestation and other shifts affecting the planet’s well-being. She died at the age of 96 at her home in Topanga, CA.
Gloria Dea (3/18)
Gloria Metzner began working as a magician at the age of 7 alongside her father, a paint salesman and part-time musician.
Interviewed by The Oakland Tribune when she was 11, she said she had an arsenal of 50 tricks and was adding more. She is now thought to be the first magician who ever performed in Las Vegas, under her stage name Gloria Dea in 1941. Along the way, she developed dancing, modeling and acting skills, and appeared in some films, including Ed Wood's “Plan 9 From Outer Space." By the time her 100th birthday arrived last August, David Copperfield had proclaimed a Gloria Dea Day, she was given a “Key to the Las Vegas Strip,” and magicians of all stripes turned up for her birthday party. Source.
Pat Schroeder (3/13)
In 1972 Schroeder became the first woman from Colorado elected to Congress, where she served 12 terms. One of her biggest legislative victories was a family leave bill in 1993; she was also instrumental in laws that protected women from being fired because they had become pregnant, and that expanded roles for women in the military. When one congressman asked how she could be a House member and the mother of two small children at the same time, she replied, "I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both." She once chided Pentagon officials that if they were women, they would always be pregnant, because they never said "No.″ In 1998 she published, "24 Years of Housework...and the Place Is Still a Mess: My Life in Politics," which chronicled the frustration she experienced with the men who dominated Washington. Source. 
Raphael Mechoulam (3/9)
Israeli researcher Mechoulam was the first to discover the main active component of cannabis—THC—in 1964. He also isolated other cannabinoids, and worked our the structure of CBD (cannabidiol). After the cannabis receptor CB1 was discovered in the brain by (female) researcher Allyn Howlett in the 1980s, Mechoulam's team identified an endogenous cannabinoid that binds to it and called it anandamide, based on the word “ananda” in Sanskrit, which means “supreme joy.” Author Michael Pollan, who describes the discovery of anandamide in his bestselling book The Botany of Desire, has said that Howlett and Mechoulam should be considered for the Nobel prize. Read more.
Robert Blake (3/9)
Blake began performing at 2, when his abusive father would take him and his brother and sister to New Jersey parks to dance for money. By age 5 he was a regular in the “Our Gang” film comedies (pictured) and went on to a career in film (In Cold Blood) and television ("Baretta"). He was acquitted in 2005 of killing Bonny Lee Bakley, whom he married after a one-night stand left her pregnant with his child. At the trial, author and UCLA professor Ron Siegel (Intoxication) testified that the use of meth and cocaine by the former stuntmen who testified that Blake hired them to shoot Bakley could have made them delusional. The trial and subsequent civil suit left Blake bankrupt. I met him at a Hollywood party in 1999 where everyone was ignoring little, non-famous me until he looked at me and said in his tough-guy Baretta accent, "So, what do you do for a buck?" When I said I was an activist he said he'd done some marching himself. Reportedly, he took an eight-year break from acting, supporting union leader Cesar Chavez and opposing nuclear energy.
Judy Heumann (3/4)
The "mother of the disability rights movement," Heumann lost her ability to walk at age 2
after contracting polio. She grew up to become an activist who, through protests
and legal actions, helped secure legislation protecting the rights of
the disabled, including the federal Americans with Disabilities Act,
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Rehabilitation Act. She was featured in the Oscar-nominated 2020 documentary, "Crip
Camp," which highlighted Camp Jened, a summer camp in New York's
Catskills for people with disabilities, where Heumann was a counselor. Source.
David Lindley (3/3)
Lindley was a founding member of the 1960s psychedelic band Kaleidoscope and also founded the rock band El Rayo-X. He scored and composed music for film, and worked as a musical director and instrumentalist with many other performers including Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Dolly Parton, Warren Zevon, David Grisman, and Curtis Mayfield. Lindley mastered such a wide variety of instruments that Acoustic Guitar magazine referred to him not as a multi-instrumentalist but instead as a "maxi-instrumentalist." On stage, Lindley was known for his humor, and for wearing garishly colored polyester shirts with clashing pants, gaining the nickname the Prince of Polyester. He often played in Humboldt County, CA, part of the pot-growing Emerald Triangle. May he cruise his Mercury straight to heaven.
Orrin Bolton (3/2)
When I petitioned for the 1992 Colorado Hemp Initiative at a Michael Bolton concert, it was a bust: everyone was drunk and rude. Apparently, I had the wrong Bolton. I learn now from CelebStoner that Orrin was a marijuana legalization advocate, a board member of Connecticut NORML, and a musician as well. His more famous sibling tweeted, "My brother, my mentor, my introduction to my love of music. We've shared songs, sports, long hair and the stage. Forever the traveler, I know your music guides you into your next journey. RIP." Here Orrin sings his song "Freedom" about the weed.
Jean Faut (2/28)
A pitcher for the South Bend Blue Sox, one of the teams that made up the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during and after World War II, Faut was the league's all-time ERA leader (1.23) after eight seasons, and was second in career wins (140). She also threw two no-hitters, as well as two perfect games – a feat no Major League Baseball pitcher ever matched. She also competed in tournaments of the Professional Women's Bowling Association. Among the jobs she held after her playing days was running the mosquito biology training program at the University of Notre Dame. Source.
Simone Segouin (2/21)
Also known by her nom de guerre Nicole Minet, Segouin was a French Resistance fighter during World War II. Among her first acts of resistance was stealing a bicycle from a German patrol, which she then used to help carry messages. She went on to take part in large-scale or otherwise dangerous missions, such as capturing German troops, derailing trains, and acts of sabotage. On 14 July 2021, she was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honor, France's highest order of merit. She died at age 97.
Richard Belzer (2/19)
In a 2010 interview with AARP Magazine, Belzer described his character Munch on Law & Order as “Lenny Bruce with a badge.” Belzer served in the army, and worked as a truck driver, salesman, dockworker, reporter, and drug dealer before turning to stand-up comedy, doing his signature crowd-work warm-up for Saturday Night Live. An advocate for medical marijuana after using it to counteract the effects of radiation treatments for testicular cancer in 1985, Belzer was featured in High Times magazine in the '80s and '90s, where he said, "For God's sake, it's a plant. It's been around for thousands of years and been used in many forms. It's heartbreaking that anyone would deny someone the use of such a harmless substance." Interviewed by Hemp Times magazine in 1998, he sported a black hemp sweater and jacket, and shades, for his cover photo. In this video Munch signs off, after teaching his grandson an important lesson.
Raquel Welch (2/15)
When Playboy in 1998 named the 100 sexiest female stars of the 20th century, Welch came in third — right after Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. This iconic poster of her in a deerskin bikini from One Million Years B.C. (1966) adorned at least a million teenagers' walls in the 60s and 70s. She won a Golden Globe for her comedic role in the 1973 adaptation of The Three Musketeers, written by Very Important Pothead Alexandre Dumas. I loved her for her inspiring and encouraging book Raquel: The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program (1984) which details in photographs her 28-pose yoga routine, which she teaches in this video.
Jeff Blackburn (2/7)
Blackburn began practicing law in 1983 and spent his decades-long legal career representing underserved people, often for free, in criminal and civil rights cases around Texas. He was a major player in significant criminal justice reform after taking on the cases of 38 people in 2001 who were arrested on drug-related charges in Tulia. Over the next few years, during which he formed and led a national coalition of lawyers, his clients were exonerated in the largest mass pardon in US history. Blackburn went on to contribute to developing subsequent criminal justice reform legislation, and co-founded The Innocence Project of Texas.
Lisa Loring (1/28)
At the age of 6, Loring originated the role of Wednesday Addams on TV's The Addams Family (1964–1966). Afterwards, she joined the cast of the ABC sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton with Phyllis Diller. In the 1980s she played the character Cricket Montgomery on the soap opera As the World Turns and appeared in a few B slasher movies. In 1987, she married an adult film actor after meeting him on the set of the 1987 film Traci's Big Trick, on which she was a make-up artist and uncredited writer. Christina Ricci played the role of Wednesday in two movies in the '90s, and Jenna Ortega said she paid homage to Loring's groovy dance moves (above) while playing the role on the new smash Netflix series "Wednesday."
Cindy Williams (1/25)
Williams appeared as an American girl who turns on a staid British bank manager to pot in Travels With My Aunt, just before she played the quintessential American girl in American Graffiti. She went on to be paired with Penny Marshall
as a writing partner, leading to a guest shot on "Happy Days" and their
spin-off "Laverne and Shirley" (1976-1983). The show has a 1981 "lost
episode" titled "I Do, I Do" in which the girls get stoned on pot
brownies. David Lander, who played Squiggy on the show, was an MS sufferer and advocate for medical marijuana who told producer Garry Marshall that
instead of patrolling the halls during the show he ought to put
marijuana in the budget.
David Crosby (1/19)
NORML Advisory Board member, activist and musician Crosby stayed full of life and passionate about reform until the end, weeks before his 82nd birthday. "He was always, I repeat, always present for me, to defend my character and politics. He was funny, clever, and refreshing to be around," said Joan Baez, whose portrait of Crosby is on his last album cover. He's higher than Eight Miles High now. Read more.
Renée Geyer (1/17)
Bonnie Raitt called the Australian Geyer, "One of the greatest singers I’ve ever known....Her husky, powerful and deeply soulful voice and phrasing has blown me away since I first heard her." Geyer had hits with her cover of James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's World," and "Difficult Woman," a song written for her, and sang back up for Sting, Chaka Khan, Toni Childs, Neil Diamond, and Joe Cocker, among many others. Her Ready to Deal (1975) was the first album co-written and co-produced by a woman in Australia. Asked once if she thought she would emulate the international success of fellow Aussies Helen Reddy and
Olivia Newton-John, Geyer replied: no, because “I’m not a very
well-behaved person.” Her memoir titled Confessions of a Difficult Woman is open about her alcohol and drug use.
Lupe Serrano (1/16)
Trained in Chile and Mexico City, Serrano joined the American Ballet Theatre in 1953 when "American audiences had rarely seen a female dancer achieve the soaring jumps, fleet footwork and swift turns that Ms. Serrano executed with aplomb." On a 1960 stop in St. Petersburg (then known as Leningrad), the audience was reported to have been so enthralled by her performance that they insisted she repeat her solo turn rather than simply take a bow. One who noticed was Rudolf Nureyev, who invited Serrano to dance with him after his defection in 1961. The two perform here the pas de deux from Le Corsaire, based on a poem by Very Important Pothead Lord Byron. Source.
Gina Lollobrigida (1/16)
"She makes Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple," said her co-star Humphrey Bogart. Italian actress Lollobrigida overcame Howard Hughes's interference in her film career and won the Henrietta Award (World Film Favorite) at the 1961 Golden Globe Awards. She had a second career as a photojournalist in the 1970s, photographing, among others, Paul Newman, David Cassidy, Ella Fitzgerald, and Fidel Castro, publishing several books of her photography. Lollobrigida was an active supporter of Italian and
Italian-American causes, particularly the National Italian American
Foundation (NIAF). In 2013 she sold her jewelry collection and donated nearly $5 million from the sale to benefit stem-cell therapy research.
Lisa Marie Presley (1/12)
Lisa Marie's parents Priscilla and Elvis Presley divorced when she was four, and her father died when she was seven. Starting in her teens, she was reportedly sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend and experimented with alcohol and drugs. She credited Scientology for ending her addictions, and along with fellow Memphian Isaac Hayes, founded their Literacy, Education and Ability Program before renouncing the cult in 2014. In 2002, she testified before Congress against children being forced to take a "cocaine-like stimulant" (probably, Ritalin) for ADHD rather than a drug-free approach. Presley was a recording artist, and on the 30th anniversary of Elvis's death in 2007 she released a "duet" with her dad of "In the Ghetto" (shown), with proceeds benefiting the Presley Place Transitional Housing Campus in New Orleans, a project of The Elvis Presley Charitable Foundation that Lisa Marie chaired. Her death of a heart attack at the age of 54 was determined to be a result of complications from gastric bypass surgery she'd had years before. She died two days after Austin Butler lovingly thanked her in his Golden Globe acceptance speech for his portrayal of her father in Elvis.
Jeff Beck (1/10)
Among his many accomplishments, guitarist extraordinaire Jeff Beck really knew how to back up a woman, shown here with Imelda May. A member of the influential Yardbirds, Beck pioneered the use of the "talkbox" (here on the Beatles' "She's a Woman") and toured this year with Johnny Depp. "I loved him since I was 14," wrote Tokin' Woman Chrissie Hynde. "Sadly,
he couldn’t influence my primitive skills on guitar - but my hair style
was all his." Beck backed up Hynde on her 1999 pot anthem "Legalise Me."
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