Vivian Cash Harassed Over Race After Johnny's Drug Arrest

Vivian Liberto was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, where she and her siblings grew up in Sicilian-American Catholic culture and attended white schools in the segregated state. At age 17 the young beauty met 18-year-old Johnny Cash while he was stationed in San Antonio as an Air Force radio operator. Johnny was soon sent to Germany, where the young soldier began a long and loving correspondence with Vivian. 

The couple married in 1954 and had four daughters. Cash's signature song "I Walk the Line" was inspired by the rhythm of the Morse-code messages from the Germans and the Soviets his job was to intercept, and his intention to stay true to Vivian once he became a touring musician. 

In 1965 Johnny Cash was arrested in Texas for bringing amphetamine pills into the United States across the Mexican border, and Vivian flew to El Paso for his court hearing. A widely circulated photograph of them leaving the courthouse in which Vivian appeared to be Black brought her to public notice. 

The Thunderbolt, a newsletter published in Alabama by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader J.B. Stoner and distributed by the White supremacist National States' Rights Party, ran an inflammatory article titled, "Arrest Exposes Johnny Cash's Negro Wife." The paper warned, "Money from the sale of (Cash's) records goes to scum like Johnny Cash to keep them supplied with dope and negro women." 

Emile Bernard's "Fumeuse de Haschisch"

Émile Bernard. Fumeuse de Haschisch, 1900

French post-impressionist painter and writer Emile Bernard (1868-1941) was part of the Cloisonnism and Synthetism movements, and had artistic friendships with Paul Gaugin, Paul Cézanne, and in particular, Vincent Van Gogh. Bernard's literary work comprised plays, poetry, and art criticism as well as first-hand art historical information on the period of modern art to which he contributed. He was a great admirer of the poems of Baudelaire. 

After the death of Van Gogh, Bernard became despondent and moved to Egypt in 1893, where he would remain for eight years. He returned to Paris on the heels of successful showings of the paintings he completed there, including Fumeuse de Haschisch (1900), depicting a female hashish smoker. 

According to the article "Fumeuse de Haschisch: Emile Bernard in Egypt" by Paige A. Conley, "The power of this simple composition lies within its evocative and ambiguous elements: the androgynous qualities of Bernard's female subject and her direct gaze that solemnly invites the viewer to engage with her sizable nose ring and her narghile, a pipe designed for the consumption of hashish or other disorienting substances."  The article questions "whether the gender-ambiguous subject and the strong association of the Fumeuse with hashish were deliberate artistic references to two distinct cultural trends found within France at the end of the nineteenth century: a fascination with androgyny and the idea of extase or creative ecstasy." 

On Pentecost: Why Was the Holy Ghost Ghosted?

Stained Glass in the Basilica of Vysehrad in Prague, Czech Republic,
depicting the Descent of the Holy Spirit as a Dove over Mary and the Disciples.

Today is the feast of the Pentecost, marking 50 days since Easter and the resurrection of Jesus in Christian doctrine. Based on a Jewish harvest festival, it's the day when Jesus's disciples were imbued with the spirit of their faith's evangelism. "The three most important Solemnities on the Church’s calendar (and the three most important mysteries in her life) are Easter, Christmas and Pentecost," says the National Catholic Register (giving the Church a feminine pronoun, although its gods are all male).

On the Pentecost, it is written in the Bible (Acts 2), that Jesus's apostles were all gathered together to pray, along with "the women" and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Suddenly, there came "a mighty rushing wind," a common symbol for the Holy Spirit—the third godly member of the divine trinity of Christianity, along with the God the Father and the Son (Jesus).

Brittney Griner's "Coming Home"

WNBA star Brittney Griner has released a book, "Coming Home," about her ordeal of imprisonment in Russia after being caught with two cannabis vape pens while entering the country in February 2022. 

The book, co-written by celebrity biographer Michelle Burford, starts with a description of Griner hastily packing to travel to Russia, where she played basketball for seven years, earning much more than she did in the US and—as revealed in the book and her interviews about it—being treated like a star. In her haste to pack her luggage, Griner neglected to remove two nearly empty vape pens containing cannabis, for which she had a doctor's recommendation in Arizona. 

As she tells it, at the airport, a screener gestured to her to unzip her bags. She writes.

"I'd worked my way through the backpack when I opened one last zip. I slid in my hand and felt something inside. The agent stared as I slowly lifted out a cartridge with cannabis oil. Fuck. I'm a licensed cannabis user in the United States, with a medical marijuana card issued by my doctor. He prescribed [sic] cannabis years ago, to help me cope with my debilitating sports injuries. In Arizona cannabis is legal. In Russia it's forbidden. I knew that. Honest to God, I just totally forgot the pen was in my bag. The moment I felt it in that pocket, my stomach sank." 

Griner doesn't write about her use of cannabis or how it helps her, but she does give some insight into how she was treated as an "addict" in Russia, where she was sent to be interviewed by a psychiatrist, who asked her, "When did your drug problem begin?" The book continues: