Women Get Short Shrift in Hank Williams and Leo Tolstoy Biopics

So, finally women's stories (aka herstories) are being told, but often through the lens of men. Two biopics I tuned into of late tell the story of women married to famous men, and the miserable lives they lead trying to steer their husbands away from their demons, and have their own ambitions squashed. 

First I watched I Saw the Light, the 2015 biopic of Hank Williams, who penned an astonishing number of great country songs in his short life.  Bob Dylan has named Williams as a key influence in his work (just after Woody Guthrie). Nora Jones and Dylan are among the many artists who have covered Williams songs. 

Tom Huddleston as Williams is sufficiently lanky, and does a fine job singing and moving like Hank did onstage, even on "Lovesick Blues," with the characteristic yodeling that earned Williams the moniker "Lovesick Blues Boy." The song's performance at his 1949 Grand Ole Opry debut is depicted, without showing the six encores he earned that day. 

We see precious little of Williams's performances in the film, which instead focuses on his turbulent relationship with his first wife, Audrey Sheppard—well played by Elisabeth Olsen—and his mother, played by the always-excellent Cherry Jones. As depicted, Sheppard, a singer/songwriter herself, did much to advance Williams's career, and wanted to share the spotlight with Hank, but she wasn't considered an asset to his career by the (male) musical hierarchy. Hank's alcoholism and womanizing, along with the usual life-on-the-road challenges, helped to tear their marriage apart just before his tragic and untimely death in a car accident in 1953, at the age of 29. 

Using her married name Audrey Williams, Sheppard did have a recording career, starting with "Leave Us Women Alone," where she seems to have had her say at last. 

Next I watched "The Last Station," depicting the last days of Russian author Leo Tolstoy, in an Academy Award-nominated performance by Christopher Plummer. Playing his wife Sofia "Sonya" Tolstoy is the also-Oscar-nominated Helen Mirren, depicted largely as a money-grubbing shrew objecting vehemently to the machinations of his acolytes, who encourage him to give away his personal property and the copyrights to his books, instead of leaving them to his wife and children, (The couple had 13 children, 8 or 9 of whom survived into adulthood.)

Raised in wealth and privilege, Count Tolstoy enlisted in the Army after gambling debts ruined him. Horrified by the death toll and brutality of war, and inspired by Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, he wrote the sweeping War and Peace, considered by many to be one of the best novels ever written. At one point he went to live among the Bashkirs, a Turkish sect associated with cannabis. 

Tolstoy became a "spiritual anarchist" and pacifist, and his ideas on nonviolent resistance, influenced by the teachings of Jesus in the Bible—as expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894)—were an important influence on Mahatma Gandhi, among others. In his last novel Resurrection (1899), the nobleman Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov realizes that the earth cannot really be owned and that everyone should have equal access to its resources and advantages, hinting that Tolstoy had such a view. 

The daughter of a court physician and named for Sophia, the goddess of wisdom, the Countess Tolstoy's maternal great-grandfather, Count Pyotr Zavadovsky, was the first Minister of Education in Russia's history. On the eve of their wedding, the 34-year-old Tolstoy famously shared with his 18-year-old bride his diaries, detailing his many previous sexual relations, and the fact that one of the serfs on his family's estate had borne him a son. 

Mirren is shown acknowledging this in "The Last Station," and lamenting the fact that while she was an early editor on her husband's writing (copying the lengthy "War and Peace" six times), now she "didn't matter." Sofia was left to shoulder the burdens of running the family farm and raising their children, while dealing with Tolstoy’s disciples showing up and living on the family estate. She contemplates killing herself with an opium overdose, and when Leo leaves her at the very end of his life, she tries to drown herself and is kept from seeing him before he dies. A tragedy as great as the fate of Anna Karenina. 

Sofia's diaries weren't published until 100 years after her death, reportedly because Russian authorities did not want negative press on Tolstoy. Her plight brings to mind the famous quote by Karl Marx's mother, who reportedly said, "If only Karell had made capital instead of writing about it." 

Both stories made me think of the memoir of Carolyn Cassady, the wife and mother Neal left behind while he took off On the Road. I'll be reading Sofia's diaries and listening to more of Audrey's music. 

Pitcher Tug McGraw on Smoking Grass (not Astroturf)

I did some investigation after spying a meme purporting that pitcher Tug McGraw once said, when asked if he preferred grass or Astroturf, "I don't know, I never smoked Astroturf." Turns out, it's true, and there's more to the story. 

Sly's Stony Name and Brian Wilson's "Good Vibrations"

It's a sad week when we lose two musical luminaries: Sly Stone and Brian Wilson. 

Sly & the Family Stone's Greatest Hits was one of the first albums I selected from the Columbia Record Club my family belonged to just after my 13th birthday. It opened with, "I Want to Take You Higher" and was full of positive, uplifting messages like, "You Can Make It If You Try" and "Everybody Is a Star." 

"Everyday People," the band's first #1 hit, was a perfect transition for me from nursery rhymes to rock and roll,  in the rhythm of a jump-rope rhyme with a funky twist: 

There is a blue one 

who can't accept the green one 

For living with a fat one, 

trying to be a skinny one 

Different strokes for different folks 

And so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby 

Ooh, sha-sha 

We got to live together 

 

The man who became known as Sly Stone was born as Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, and raised in the Bay Area city of Vallejo in Northern California, where he performed gospel music starting at the age of 4 or 5 with his siblings (and future bandmates) Freddie and Rose. Already a successful songwriter and music producer by the age of 19, he produced Grace Slick's song "Somebody to Love" for her original band The Great Society. He soon became a popular D.J. at the San Francisco radio station KSOL.

In his memoir "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," he writes of that time:

That was when I completed my name. Back then, when they added a new on-air voice, they usually made up a DJ name. I was already using the Sly from the blackboard, but I didn't know the rest yet. "Sly Stewart" didn't sound quite right. Someone at the station, maybe Tom Johnson, tried to pin "Sly Sloan" on me. That didn't work at all-you couldn't even get it out of your mouth right. "Give me a few days to think of something better," I said. It didn't take that long. 

I went on the air and introduced myself as Sly Stone. I was cooking with a bunch of ingredients. It sounded right. I was already smoking marijuana. And there was a tension in the name. Sly was strategic, slick. Stone was solid. (Ray Charles would even have a song called "Let's Go Get Stoned," too, but that wouldn't come out for a few years yet.) Once I had my name, I started making up little rhymes around it and putting them on-air. I'm Sly Stone of KSOL, goodness for your mind, body, and your soul. 

The Wide and Wild World of Nancy Kwan

Upon the publication of her memoir, "The World of Nancy Kwan," acting legend Nancy Kwan was interviewed, partly in Cantonese, by Ronny Chieng on The Daily Show. Noting that she worked with and hung out with some of the top Hollywood icons of the 1960s, Chieng asked her, "What kinds of drugs were they doing back then?"

The 85-year-old actress cleverly turned the tables on Chieng, asking him, "What drugs do you do?" When he said he didn't do drugs, she assented, "Well, I don't do drugs either." Chieng joked that she could tell him the answer later in Cantonese, and she laughed.  

Kwan Tells the Opium War Tale

Born into a prosperous Hong Kong family with a British actress and model as her mother, Kwan begins her book by describing the Opium Wars, by which Britain gained control of Hong Kong and forced the importation of opium to balance trade. 

"The island's natural harbor made it a convenient stopping place or British trading ships (the ones from other Western countries) sailing to and from Southeast Asia," she writes. "These merchants were unhappy about their commercial dealings with China because they were at the wrong end of a trade imbalance. There was a high demand for Chinese imports such as tea, silk, and porcelain in European countries, but the Chinese were less interested in Western goods. The British East India Company solved the problem by licensing private traders to operate a market guaranteed to become a booming business: the opium trade."

"Opium was used for medicinal purposes in China but not for recreation until these foreign merchant ships provided a steady supply—and collected hefty payments in gold and silver. Predictably and as planned, a large percentage of the Chinese population became addicted to the drug. When the emperor saw the negative effect that opium addiction had on his country, he tried to ban it and destroyed a large shipment, causing British merchants to lose a fortune. They cried foul, and and the first of two 'Opium Wars' ensued in 1839. England was a stronger military power than China and easily won the war, then demanded more favorable trade terms."

As a child escaping the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during WWII, Kwan writes that she contracted an unspecified illness and, lacking access to a doctor, was treated by her aunt with traditional, medicinal herbs, and recovered. 

At Its 40th Anniversary, "The Breakfast Club" Cast Says Pot-Smoking Scene Was Improvised

UPDATE 8/25: In honor of its 40th anniversary, "The Breakfast Club" will be shown in cinemas nationwide on Sept. 7 and again on Sept. 10.

The reunion of all five "The Breakfast Club" cast members on the 40th anniversary of the film is kind of hilarious, because they were still the characters they played.

In the iconic 1985 film that was said to define Generation X, Molly Ringwald played Claire The Good Girl against Judd Nelson as Bender The Rebel. Ally Sheedy played The Freak, Emilio Estevez The Jock and Anthony Michael Hall The Brain. Forced to serve high school detention together, the disparate characters bond after they smoke a joint together. 

Speaking of the film's writer/director John Hughes, Nelson said, "He was the first writer who could ever write someone who was young, without them being less," Nelson said. "Except less old." 

Telling the story of watching Hall perform his hilarious, stoned, "chicks can't hold deir smoke" routine, Nelson said that, "In the middle of close-camera coverage of the routine, the camera runs out of film but Hughes doesn't say, 'Cut.'... It's something I've never seen since. It's a reflection of his affection for the characters that he created."   

When the interviewer asked Hall how he managed to play being stoned because, "Surely, you'd never been stoned at 16 years old," the actor was quick to quip, "If I may, don't call me Shirley," an Airplane reference the crowd appreciated. Then in true Brainy fashion, looking down, he said, "Uh, was I stoned at 16, yeah maybe." Bender chimed in, "Some people start late." 

Easter/Ishtar Falls on 4/20 Once More

Once again, as in 2014, Easter Sunday falls on 4/20. This time, cannabis retailers seem to be co-celebrating the dual holiday, with Easter-themed decorations and events. 

Easter, the celebration of Jesus's resurrection, is the most sacred day of the Christian year. In ancient Babylon, around the spring equinox, people celebrated the resurrection of their god Tammuz, who was brought back from the underworld by his mother the fertility goddess Innana, known in Akkadia as Ishtar, pronounced “Easter” in most Semitic dialects. Flowers, eggs, goats and rabbits, among other agricultural products and animals, were the symbols of the holiday then, as now.

Ostara (1884) by Johannes Gehrts

Ishtar/Ostara and Her Connection to Easter

"In ancient Sumeria, Ishtar was held in high esteem as a heavenly monarch," writes Jeanne Achterberg in Woman as Healer. "Her temples have been found at virtually every level of excavation." The Ishtar Gate to the inner city of Babylon was considered one of the ancient wonders of the world.

Also called the Queen of Heaven, Ishtar was a compassionate, healing deity. Her medicine kit likely included plant allies, and one of them, known as the "aromatic of the Goddess Ishtar," was likely cannabis. 

As the land of Sumer became a perpetual battlefield, Ishtar
became the goddess of war and destiny, and became more
sexualized, even as women were restricted from education
and the healing arts.

In mankind’s first written story The Epic of Gilgamesh
(circa 2000 BC), the cruel king Gilgamesh calls Ishtar
a predatory and promiscuous woman, and rebukes her
advances, just before taking off with his buddy Enki-
du to chop down the great cedar forest. Gilgamesh’s
repudiation of Ishtar, some scholars say, signifies a rejection
of goddess worship in favor of patriarchy in ancient times.

One of the interpreters of the Epic of Gilgamesh, discovered in tablets at the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh in the 1850s, was Leonidas Hamilton, who published a translation in 1884 that gives Ishtar top billing over Izdubar (Gigamesh), subtitled "The Babylonian Goddess of Love and the Hero and Warrior King." Hamilton writes, "Ishtar... may be identified with Eostre of the Germans, or Easter. To this goddess our Saxon or German ancestors sacrificed in April...from thence arose our word Easter, which the Saxons retained after their conversion to Christianity, so that our Easter-day is nothing more nor less than Ishtar's day." Hamilton cites the Hebrew and English lexicon from John Parkhurst. 

Some have tried to debunk the Ishtar/Easter connection, saying the holiday is named only after the German goddess Ostara (pictured), "the divinity of the radiant dawn" (Grimm), doubtlessly a reincarnation of Ishtar, who the Babylonians called "the morning star" and "the perfect light." 

Art Show Kicks off San Francisco's 4/20 Week "Space Walk"

The “Higher Visions: Art of the Plant” and “Keep Glowing” blacklight poster exhibition at the Haight Street Art Center in San Francisco served as a fine and fitting opening party for this year's SF Space Walk today. 

A High-light is the brilliant “Stoned Wars” poster series from Emek, who I am told designed the poster for the concurrent Coachella Music Festival this year. Emek’s work includes take-offs on Star Wars characters and the Peter Tosh “Legalize It” album cover. I also liked the clever, feminist-minded digital collages from Alexe Reyes.

Female-run Moon Made Farms and Sonoma Hills Farm were collaborators on the exhibit. Plants grown by Moon Made are presented as in a herbarium, beautifully pressed and framed. In the blacklight poster exhibit, my favorite was the irreverent “Pink Jesus” poster designed for Sonoma Hills, featuring a female figure and the banner, “SHE HAS RESIN.”

Outdoors on the patio, stunning portraits of female growers from the Emerald Triangle are presented as part of “The Farm and Feminine” project from GrupoGreenlit. 

Inside, the wonderful documentary Tending the Garden was shown. It interviews couples practicing regenerative agriculture to grow cannabis and other crops in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, bucking the trend of corporatization that is squeezing out craft cultivators in California and elsewhere.

The exhibit, I am told, will be up through mid-May. The Center is open Thursday–Sunday, 12-6 PM.

The party kicked off a week's worth of daily events in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. On Wednesday 4/16 Snowtill will drop their living soil indoor "Mirage" strain drop at 7 Stars in Richmond. And on Thursday 4/17 is a hand-picked sun-grown flower showcase at Solful in Irving St. in SF.  

The event will culminate in a 4/20 (Easter Sunday) reception at Mirus Gallery in SOMA featuring 10 brands. While you're in the city, you might want to check out the annual "Hunky Jesus" contest from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.  

The Great Gatsby at 100

Let's raise a glass--and a J--to the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby, the jazz-age classic from F. Scott Fitzgerald that may be the first novel about a drug dealer. 

Fitzgerald had a distant cousin, Mary Surratt, who was hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. But he was named for his ancestor Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to “The Star Spangled Banner.” 

Raised in a middle-class family with an alcoholic father in Rochester, NY and St. Paul, MN, he excelled in the Catholic schools he attended and became one of the first Catholics to attend Princeton University.

Apparently, he was a bit of a rebel. The protagonist of his second novel The Beautiful and Damned (1922) has this exchange with a friend:

“Did they ban cigarettes? I see the hand of my holy grandfather.”
“He’s a reformer or something, isn’t he?”
“I blush for him.”

Anthony Patch, who stands in for Fitzgerald in the story, is the grandson of Adam J. Patch, a reformer in the mold of Anthony Comstock (for whom Patch is named). In 1873 Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public Patch speaks disdainfully of the “shocked and alarmful eyes” of “chroniclers of the mad pace of America.” 

Fitzgerald wrote his third novel,  The Great Gatsby, published on April 10, 1925, while living in Europe and friendly with fellow Lost Generation authors Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and others.  Known to be a serious drinker, in 1929, he contributed to the New Yorker an autobiography of a life spent drinking. Since while he was partying and writing marijuana "reefers" will still legal and available, I wonder if he did more than drink, and if The Great Gatsby reflects this.

Sidney Bechet and the Steppenwolf

In 1926, novelist Herman Hesse attended performances of the Revue Nègre featuring Josephine Baker and Sidney Bechet. Steven C. Tracy, professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, writes that the character of Pablo in Hesse's novel Steppenwolf was "inspired by Bechet's playing."

The novel's narrator Harry (Hesse) is older than more staid than the free-wheeling Pablo, who plays music ecstatically. (Hesse was 20 years older than the Creole musician Bechet.) Harry is introduced to Pablo by a character named Hermine, an androgynous creature named it seems for Hess and perhaps Hermes, the god who transports souls to the underworld. With a face "like a magic mirror to me," Hermine seemed to know all about Harry, though he muses, "Perhaps she might not understand everything of my spiritual life, might not perhaps follow me in my relation to music, to Goethe, to Novalis or Baudelaire."  

Harry tries conversing with Pablo about classical music, but their conversations lead nowhere. Hesse writes: 

His business was with the saxophone in the jazz-band and to this calling he appeared to devote himself with love and passion.... Apart from this, however, he confined himself to being beautiful, to pleasing women, to wearing collars and ties of the latest fashion and a great number of rings on his fingers. His manner of entertaining us consisted in sitting beside us, in smiling upon us, in looking at his wrist watch and in rolling cigarettes—at which he was an expert. His dark and beautiful Creole eyes and his black locks hid no romance, no problems, no thoughts.....

Once when I showed a certain irritation, and even ill-humor, over one of the fruitless attempts at conversation he looked in my face with a troubled and sorrowful air and, taking my left hand and stroking it, he offered me a pinch from his little gold snuff-box. It would do me good. I looked inquiringly at Hermine. She nodded and I took a pinch. The almost immediate effect was that I became clearer in the head and more cheerful. No doubt there was cocaine in the powder. 

Hermine told me that Pablo had many such drugs, and that he procured them through secret channels. He offered them to his friends now and then and was a master in the mixing and prescribing of them. He had drugs for stilling pain, for inducing sleep, for begetting beautiful dreams, lively spirits and the passion of love...."

Sidney Bechet: Viper Mad

Watching "Finian's Rainbow" for St. Patrick's Day, I was reminded that Don Francks, who played Woody in that movie, was a Canadian Native American who gave up alcohol at the age of 21 and liked to sing a medley of "Smokin' Reefers" and "Viper Mad." 

From what I've been able to uncover, "Viper Mad" is a Sidney Bechet composition that was first recorded as "Pleasure Mad" by the likes of Blossom Seeley, Whitey Kaufman, and Ethel Waters starting in 1924. Bechet's co-author was composer and lyricist Rousseau Simmons. But in 1938, just as the Marijuana Tax Act took effect, Bechet recorded the tune as "Viper Mad" with lyrics like: 

Wrap your chops
'round this stick of tea
Blow this gage
And get high with me
Good tea is my weakness
I know it's bad
It sends me gate and I can't wait
I'm viper mad

Jasmine Crockett and Cannabis

While most Democrats are wringing their hands over the Trump/Musk takeover of our democracy, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas has been telling it like it is. PBS's Evan Smith introduced her as someone who has "emerged as the raised voice and clenched fist" against Trump/Musk in an "Overhead" interview a few days ago.  Asked by Smith about her fellow Democrats' response to Trump, she said, "Resistance means different things to different members of the caucus. For me, it's to get a little rowdy."

The NRCC has homed in on Crockett, after she spoke at the Democratic National Convention last August, when she praised Kamala Harris for holding police to account over the death of Brianna Taylor in a botched drug raid. 

Now I see under the headline, "How a marijuana case fuelled Jasmine Crockett's rise to presidential critic" that during her time as a public defender, "a black juvenile caught with a brownie laced with marijuana in small towns was granted a mandatory felony conviction." Reportedly, Crockett refused to accept a plea bargain for a 17-year-old black client being tried as an adult as an accomplice to murder. Facing 47 years in prison, he was offered 10 years instead for pleading guilty to a drug possession charge. Crockett maintained there was no evidence for her client's crime and got the case dismissed. 

In 2021, Crockett filed House Bill 1233, to make it easier to prescribe low-THC cannabis under the Texas Compassionate Use Program. “What’s a medical refugee? One of the countless folks leaving Texas for a state with medical marijuana so they can receive the lifesaving treatments they need. We can not let stigma and politics interfere with medicine and evidence-based treatments. That’s why I filed HB 1233,” Crockett wrote in a series of tweets on 4/20. “Doctors know what’s best for their patients — not the government. HB 1233 gives physicians full discretion over medical cannabis treatments including the dosage, potency and route of administration. Medical marijuana isn’t just used to treat uncomfortable conditions — physicians rely on this to treat deadly ailments and see great results not achieved through traditional pharmaceuticals.”

Women's History Month 2025: Women Educating & Inspiring Generations

The theme for Women's History Month 2025 is “Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations.” In honor of women educators, here are some from this blog who deserve mention this month. 

The first woman educator I thought of is Ina Coolbrith, who I imagine had no time to enjoy hashish or anything like it in her day, so busy was she taking care of her family and other's children while working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week at the Oakland Free Library in California, where she was librarian. 

The hardest part of her arduous life was not finding the time to write, and watching her compatriots like Very Important Pothead Mark Twain and Joaquin Miller (whom she named) have successful writing careers. She even cared for Miller's daughter while he went off and laid a wreath of California laurel she had made at Lord Byron's grave, something she longed to do. 

In 1886, she befriended and mentored the 10-year-old Jack London, guiding his reading in her librarian role. London called her his "literary mother." Coolbrith also mentored the young dancer Isadora Duncan who later described Coolbrith as "a very wonderful" woman, with "very beautiful eyes that glowed with burning fire and passion."

Another educator was French existentialist author Simone de Beauvoir. While on a literary lecture tour of top women's colleges in the US in 1947, Beauvoir tried marijuana in New York City, after which she had the revelation that lead to writing the blockbuster feminist treatise The Second Sex, an eight-hundred-page encyclopedia of "the folklore, customs, laws, history, religion, philosophy, anthropology, literature, economic systems, and received ideas." Among those influenced by the book was Marianne Faithfull, who went on to influence the Rolling Stones.

In a rare television appearance from 1975, Beauvoir states (in translation): "In the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance, the female physician had much power. They knew about remedies and herbs, the 'old wives' remedies which were sometimes of great value. Then medicine was taken away from them by men. All of the witch hunts were basically a way for men to keep women away from medicine and the power it conferred." In her book The Ethics of Ambiguity, she argued that our greatest ethical imperative is to create our own life's meaning, while protecting the freedom of others to do the same. She wrote, "A freedom which is interested only in denying others freedom must be denied."

Modern academics include Professor Sherry L. Ackerman, who pioneered women’s education in the Classics, earning her doctorate in Ancient Greek Philosophy back when it was still a field populated largely by men. She went on to become a recognized author, speaker and professor, and a strong advocate of Classical Education. She was Professor of Philosophy at College of the Siskiyous in Weed, California for 20 years.

An internationally recognized scholar of Lewis Carroll, she wrote in Alice and the Hero’s Journey, “Alice's being repeatedly instructed to eat or drink various intoxicating substances, after having descended into the underworld, was reminiscent of the function of kykeon in the Eleusian mystery schools. The Wonderland mushroom, suggestive of the Amanita muscaria, takes a central position in this context, as the caterpillar instructs Alice to eat it in order to change sizes. Interestingly, the caterpillar is a principal symbol for transformation…the foreshadow of the chrysalis. Thus, the symbol for transformation sits atop the transformational agent, the psychoactive mushroom.”

Ackerman also distinguished herself as a notable Classical Dressage instructor, teaching riders from all over the world and writing Dressage in the Fourth Dimension (New World Library), which became a classic among the equestrian press. Her book The Good Life, based on her own homesteading experience in Mt. Shasta, CA, points the reader toward a simpler lifestyle “that values freedom, interdependence, caring, community and our connectedness with nature.”

In her book The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World, Stanford Classics Professor Adrienne Mayor presents new archeological and DNA evidence for the existence of the once-mythical Scythian Amazon Women. She puts them at the funeral fires, inhaling hemp smoke and also availing themselves of other intoxicants like fermented milk or honey and haoma/soma, which may have been mead, cannabis, Amanita muscaria, other mushrooms, ephedra or opium (or a combination).

As Mayor tells in her Google Talk on the subject: whereas Ancient Greek women were confined indoors to sew and weave, Scythian girls learned to ride horses, hunt and fight with bows and arrows, and their women fought with swords and battle-axes alongside their brothers. Like men they could revel in their physicality, with freedoms including wearing trousers and choosing their own sexual partners. Mayor points out that burial mounds found in the Altai region housed both male and female warriors, along with weapons, hemp clothing, and "personal kits for smoking hemp."

The Amazons was awarded the Sarasvati Prize for Women in Mythology 2016. Mayor's work has been featured on NPR and BBC, the History Channel, and other popular media; her books are translated into Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hungarian, Polish, German, Italian, Turkish, Russian, and Greek. Mayor's research is featured in the National Geographic children's book The Griffin and the Dinosaur. 

Professor and "meme queen" Dr. Susan Blackmore is the author of the bestselling book The Meme Machine. Her TedTalk on "Memes and Temes" has nearly a million views.

Blackmore appeared at the 2005 Cheltenham Science Festival to discuss whether drugs can teach us anything about ourselves. A version of her talk was published in the Daily Telegraph on May 21 of that year. In it, she says, "Some people may smoke dope just to relax or have fun, but for me the reason goes deeper. In fact, I can honestly say that without cannabis, most of my scientific research would never have been done and most of my books on psychology and evolution would not have been written. . . . In just about every human society there has ever been, people have used dangerous drugs – but most have developed rituals that bring an element of control or safety to the experience." 

Asked by Scientific American in 2020, "Have psychedelics given you any enduring insights into the nature of existence?" Blackmore replied, "Yes. The emptiness of self, the underlying nonduality or nonseparation, the wild and endless realms discoverable in a single mind, the ready availability of mystical experience through chemistry, and the vacuity of the 'consciousness beyond death' theories when psychedelics can provide all this through effects on a living brain."

Someone who educated all of us about the racial injustices of the drug war is Professor Michelle Alexander, author of the 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

"More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at the turn of the twenty-first century, and millions more were relegated to the margins of mainstream society, banished to a political and social space not unlike Jim Crow, where discrimination in employment, housing, and access to education was perfectly legal, and where they could be denied the right to vote," writes Alexander. "Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the current political climate. The New Jim Crow was born."

The Chronicle of Higher Education called The New Jim Crow, “One of the most influential books of the last 20 years.” It spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and won numerous awards, including the 2011 NAACP Image Award for best nonfiction. The book has been cited in judicial decisions and adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads, and has inspired a generation of racial justice activists. The 10th Anniversary edition contains a new preface by the author and an organizing guide inspired by the book is also available.

Professor Dorothy Roberts in her book Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World covers the ways in which Black parents who use marijuana are more likely to be judged unfairly by child welfare systems than are white parents.

She writes, "Even as some states are liberalizing their drug laws, including legalizing marijuana use and allowing its sale, child protective authorities continue to treat drugs as a reason to tear families apart. It is widely acknowledged today that the war on drugs has been a war on Black people, helping to drive the explosion of the prison population over the last forty years. The discriminatory impact of the child welfare system's drug policy is similar. Although drug use has become a ubiquitous excuse for investigating families, CPS directs its drug surveillance disproportionately at Black communities."

Prof. Roberts continues,"State-level child protective services agencies investigate the families of 3.5 million children every year, with one in three children nationwide subject to investigation by the time they reach 18. Most Black children (54%) experience an investigation from child protective services (CPS) at some point while growing up. [For white children, it's 28.2%.]"

Finally, a nod to the Women's Visionary Council (WVC), which was formed after founder Annie Oak attended a GAIA conference in Switzerland where 80 of the speakers were male and only 4 were female. Following the logic, "If you want to change the world, make a better party," she started inviting women to speak at events and now has seen women's voices amplified at other conferences as well.

The WVC presents conferences and workshops throughout the US and Canada which are open to people of all genders, including the Women’s Visionary Congress, a gathering of women researchers, healers, artists, and activists who explore different forms of expanded consciousness. WVC workshops also provide information on risk reduction and about the benefits and challenges of altered states. 

WVC also raises funds to provide grants to women whose work engages these topics and encourage their inclusion in scholarly discourse. It seeks to amplify the voices of people of color and support the transfer of knowledge among generations and cultural traditions. The group is building an archive of presentations by women in our community which includes more than a decade of research, activism, and personal stories of cognitive liberty – a body of knowledge that will benefit future generations of investigators. 

Other women who have educated and inspired us: 

In music: Blanche Calloway and Mary Lou Williams

In literature: Diane De Prima and Anne Waldman

In science: Valentina Wasson and Jocelyn Elders

In art and action: Judy Chicago, Tere Arcq and Aleksandra “Sasha” Phillips

And for those interested in doing a little educating yourselves, join the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon: Enhancing the Discoverability of Women’s History on Tuesday, March 25, 2025, 11 am – 2 pm EDT. 

Mothers Using Medical Cannabis Report Positive Parenting Outcomes

A new study from New Zealand, Motherhood and medicinal cannabis, found that mothers using medicinal marijuana found it helped make them better parents, by relieving their pain or other symptoms, including helping with their mental health. Yet, single mothers in particular worried about the financial and society price of using their medicine. 

The study's authors, from Massey University, noted that despite women emerging as a key demographic for the use of medical cannabis (MC), research on mothers' experiences in many US States remains limited beyond studies on perinatal outcomes. "This newly released study explores mothers' diverse experiences of consuming medical marijuana products in New Zealand under the legal medicinal cannabis scheme," they wrote. 

Conducting 25-question interviews with 15 mothers who had children aged between 4 and 18 years, researchers found that, "Mothers consumed MC to relieve their physical health symptoms such as spasms, aching, and cramps. Without the distraction of pain, they believed they could be more present for their children and attend to their needs. Similarly, mothers with mental health and mood conditions such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress-disorder, and pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder felt MC made them calmer, more relaxed and less overwhelmed, which in turn aided their ability to communicate and better connect with their children."

"A few respondents said consuming MC improved their overall functioning and ability to meaningfully engage in their lives. As a result, they expressed that their kids received better parenting, that is, more ‘happy, funny’ and ‘empathetic,’ rather than being ‘grumpy’ prone to ‘snap’ at them." One mother said, "Using cannabis helps me communicate better with my kids. It allows me to manage my emotions and not get so worked up over little things, which in turn opens up conversations with them that might not have happened otherwise." Another said, "If I'm not in pain, and I'm well-rested, I can be the type of parent that I aspire to be, which is patient, empathetic, fair, firm, all of those things."

Peter Bensinger, DEA Chief Who Profited from Drug Testing, Dies at 88

Cartoon: John Trever for the Albuquerque Journal

If you've ever lost a job or a job opportunity because you failed a marijuana piss test, one of the people you can "thank" is Peter Bensinger, who has just died at the age of 88.

After serving at the Illinois Director of the Department of Corrections, Bensinger became chief of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) in 1976, appointed by President Ford. He held that office through Jimmy Carter's administration and for the first several months of Ronald Reagan's. 

After leaving office, Bensinger and former NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) chief Dr. Robert DuPont formed the company Bensinger, Dupont & Associates (BDA), to provide corporations with “a full-service solution to drug testing with management and training.” Bensinger emerged as "the most outspoken proponent of mass testing, appearing regularly in the media as an 'unofficial spokesman',” according to Abbie Hoffman in “Steal This Urine Test.” 

Trump Names Former Drug Prisoner Anne Marie Johnson As ‘Pardon Czar’ While Continuing to Appoint Prohibitionists

Johnson at a celebration of the First Step Act in 2019 

During a press event marking Black History Month held even as his administration worked to dismantle DEI, President Trump announced that Alice Marie Johnson will serve as "a designated pardon official" at the White House. The announcement comes on the heels of Trump making a show of securing the release of schoolteacher Marc Fogel after he spent 3 1/2 years in a Russian prison on a minor marijuana charge, and taking criticism for not doing the same for US prisoners. 

Trump made a public spectacle in 2019 of granting clemency to Johnson, a black grandmother who had served almost 22 years for a first-time, nonviolent drug crime until she was advocated for by Kim Kardashian. On her reality show, Kim is shown meeting about Johnson with Trump, who only wants to talk about her suck-up then-husband Kanye West. 

Johnson, who appeared in a SuperBowl ad to tout Trump's criminal justice record, responded to Roger Stone's 2020 commutation by Trump diplomatically in the Washington Post. Stone “is not one that I have personally advocated for, but that there’s movement on clemency makes me hopeful that there will be more,” Johnson said. “The people I am advocating for have spent years in prison and have proven that they rehabilitated themselves.”

Johnson and Weldon Angelos of The Weldon Project, who was granted clemency by Trump along with Stone and Paul Manafort, were instrumental in securing dozens of commutations for drug-war prisoners on Trump's last days in office. Johnson's organization "Taking Action For Good" works for clemency and pardons for prisoners. 

Fox News’s Brett Baier tripped Trump up during a 2023 interview where Trump brought up Johnson, who he said “got treated terribly” and “unfairly,” equating her treatment to his own. “But she’d be killed under your plan,” Baier pointed out, alluding to Trump's repeated calls for executing drug dealers.

As U.S. Schoolteacher Marc Fogel Is Released from Russian Prison for Pot, Injustices Continue

After spending 3 1/2 years in a Russian prison for bringing a small amount of medical marijuana into Russia, Pennsylvania-born international schoolteacher Marc Fogel landed on US soil this week and was greeted by President Trump and a group of government officials and lawmakers at the White House. 

Standing next to the president in the Oval Office, Fogel—a history teacher—invoked Winston Churchill's famous phrase, "Never was so much owed by so many to so few," saying that in his case, "Never has one owed so much to so many." He spoke of "the superorganism of people that came to my support," mentioning his fellow Pennsylvanians, and his family & friends.

Indeed, Fogel's release is a testament to the power of activism, starting with his 95-year-old mother Malphine, who met with Trump when he spoke in Butler, PA last July, just before he was shot in the ear by a gunman before he could say Marc's name onstage. Fogel's sisters, other family members, friends and former students mounted a sustained campaign to have Marc designated as "wrongfully detained" in the way that WNBA star Brittney Griner was before the Biden administration secured her release for the same "crime" that Fogel committed in exchange for arms dealer Victor Bout.

Also contributing to the effort were PA lawmakers, who passed a Senate resolution calling for Fogel's release and kept up the pressure, including questioning presumptive Secretary of State Marco Rubio at his confirmation hearing. On their side was the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, which published a series of articles and opeds calling for Marc's release, as did the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as well as local papers in the Butler area and the school paper from Marc's alma mater, Indiana University of PA. 

Some think the turning point came via the "Make A Marc" art exhibit that I got to attend in my hometown of Pittsburgh in April 2023. Pittsburgh-based artist Tom Moesser, reading about Marc in a local paper, noticed that his attorney was Sasha Phillips, a painter he knew from local art circles. He reached out and together he and Phillips planned the show, at which over 100 local artists contributed portraits of Marc to put a face on him and his plight. 

RIP Tom Robbins: Our Boomer Petway

Robbins in 1981

I'm not ashamed to say I was pretty much in love with Tom Robbins, who died yesterday at the age of 92. The only personal ad I ever wrote said, "Ellen Cherry Charles seeks Boomer Petway," naming two characters from his novel Skinny Legs and All. (The paper refused to run the ad because I wouldn't say how old I was, or was looking for. They missed the point.)

The author of nine wild and wonderful novels like Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Robbins also penned a memoir titled Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life, which describes in a series of stories his “lifelong quest to personally interface with the Great Mystery (which may or may not be God) or, at the very least, to further expose myself to wonder.”

Born and raised in the South, Robbins worked as a copy editor for The Richmond Times-Dispatch, a job he continued after graduating with a degree in journalism in 1959. But, according to the New York Times, "he chafed under the restrictions of Jim Crow-era Richmond, including a prohibition at the newspaper against printing photographs of Black people — a transgression he nevertheless committed several times."

He moved to Seattle and worked at the Seattle Times, where he wrote art reviews and unusual headlines for Dear Abby columns during what he calls “that nondescript period between the end of the beige '50s and the beginning of the Day-Glo '60s.” He read about Gordon Wasson’s sacred mushroom experiments in Life magazine and—having explored Zen, Tantric Hinduism, Sufism and the Tao—he sought Wasson’s experience, but was lead to LSD instead.

Describing his first LSD trip in Tibetan Peach Pie, Robbins wrote that the session ended with his consciousness entering a daisy’s, described “like a cathedral made of mathematics and honey.” He credits this life-changing experience with enabling him to lose his “terror of the eternal,” and finding the connection between modern painting and the psychedelic sacraments:

Each…offered humanity a new way of seeing, an enlarged and deepened definition of reality, a freshened and intensely sensual awareness of what it means to be a cognitive mammal on a tiny planet spinning precariously in the backwash of an infinite universe…

He wrote of visiting Amsterdam “to take the waters,” and recounts his participation in the historic 1963 LeMar (Legalize Marijuana) event organized by Allen Ginsberg at the Women’s Detention Center in Greenwich Village, “to protest that the prison was crowded with females of all ages whose sole criminal act was the private, orderly, nonviolent inhalation of tiny plumes of smoke given off by a smoldering weed.”

Bob Dylan Biopic "No Direction Home" Misses the Politics -- And the Pot

For a moment, I loved it. 

Watching Timothée Chalamet step off a bus in Greenwich Village on a quest to find Woody Guthrie, wearing that classic Dutch boy cap and looking for all the world like a young Bob Dylan, I almost felt like I was there. In "A Complete Unknown," Chalamet does an amazing job capturing Dylan's voice while performing some of his greatest songs. 

But in the end, the film ends in a muddle of mixed non-reasons Dylan abandons his folkie roots, mistreats his women, and questions his own talent and importance. 

It wasn't just sudden, huge fame that changed Dylan. His fame was such that people almost thought he was the second coming, our society's savior. More than anyone, his lyrics nailed his times, when the civil rights, environmental, and anti-war movements coalesced, all fueled by music—and marijuana. 

Yet, not only is there no pot smoking at all in "A Complete Unknown," there's practically no discussion or presentation whatsoever about the politics of the time in the film. In one scene, Dylan watches the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold on TV and is sought out by Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) while playing his masterful song "Masters of War" in a coffeeshop, after which they (rather inexplicably) make out in the stairwell and sleep together. But despite Baez's strong political beliefs and activism, and the fact that she and Dylan performed together at the 1963 March on Washington, the two never talk politics in the film. Yeah, right. Instead, he's shown acting out on stage when the two tour because he's tired of performing "Blowin' in the Wind." 

Marianne Faithfull: She Walked in Beauty

Marianne Faithfull, the honorary Rolling Stone who was central to the drug-fueled rock music scene in 1960s England, has died at age 78. Faithfull had a hit singing the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards composition "As Tears Go By" at age 17, and a few years later, left her husband for a relationship with Jagger that inspired several Stones songs. 

Faithfull spoke candidly to an interviewer about LSD as a Door of Perception (Aldous Huxley's phrase). She went to take the drug with her friends The Stones one weekend and famously covered herself with only a fur rug when police raided the place and arrested Keith and Mick on drug charges. The incident "destroyed me," she later said. "To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother." 

In 1969, Faithfull released "Sister Morphine" a song about a man in hospital following an accident that she co-wrote (uncredited) with Jagger and Richard. The song was banned as pro-drug, something that didn't happen when The Stones recorded the same song. 

She struggled with cocaine and heroin addiction, and homelessness, and made a stunning comeback in 1978 with the album Broken English, with a voice that had gained a world of hurt and experience. She sings a heartbreakingly beautiful version of VIP Shel Silverstein's "Ballad of Lucy Jordan," and invites women to a "magic greet" on "Witches' Song." On "Why'd Ya Do It" she sings with authority the Heathcote Williams lyric: 

Why'd ya do it," she said, why'd you let that trash
Get a hold of your cock, get stoned on my hash?

Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas Hallucinates with Mandrax in "Maria"

Angelina Jolie is winning acclaim and award nominations for her portrayal of O.G. opera diva Maria Callas in the movie Maria, which follows Callas through the last seven days of her life, with fuzzy flashbacks to her earlier days. It is the third and final film in a trilogy depicting iconic 20th-century women from Chilean director Pablo Larrain, following Jackie (2016) starring Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy and Spencer (2021) with Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana. 

In Maria, Callas is shown taking Mandrax, a combination of the hypnotic sedative drug methaqualone (Quaaludes) and the anti-histamine/sedative diphenhydramine (Benadryl). Popular in Europe in the 70s, commercial production of Mandrax was halted in the mid-1980s due to its widespread abuse and addictiveness.  

An imaginary young filmmaker whose name is Mandrax appears to interview Callas, setting up a conversation between her and the drug, or her hallucination while taking it. By this strange conceit Maria's life is revisited as she works on recovering her largely lost etherial singing voice just before dying. 

To prepare for her role, Jolie spent seven months training to sing opera. Mostly she lip-synched to Callas's divine recordings, but she did that well. The film premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival where Jolie received a "rapturous" eight-minute standing ovation towards the end of the screening.

Jolie has said she doesn't enjoy marijuana, but that by the age of 20, she'd used "just about every drug possible," including heroin. Episodes of depression and two suicide attempts, plus a nervous breakdown at age 24 lead to her being institutionalized for 72 hours at the UCLA Medical Center psychiatric ward. Her breakthrough role, for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, was as a wild child institutionalized with Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted. She won Golden Globe and SAG awards for playing model Gia Carangi, a heroin addict who died of AIDS in 1986. "Playing the madness and insanity, hearing voices, there's my wheelhouse," Jolie said of her approach to the role as Callas. 

Presidential Medal of Freedom Winner George Soros (and Me)

George Soros

Well, now I can say I've met, and worked for, a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner. 

Among those bestowed last week with this "highest" civilian honor in the land was George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist whose Open Society Foundation funds human rights projects internationally, with $32 billion of his personal wealth. Soros also funded the Drug Policy Alliance, for which I worked in San Francisco around the turn of the millennium. 

I met George only once, briefly, and said something stupid like, "Thank you for my job." By then I'd been a volunteer activist for over a decade, and working at what was then called the Lindesmith Center was my first real paying gig in the field. I'd received a few Soros dollars while petitioning for Prop. 215, California's pioneering medical marijuana law, but ended up turning in most of my signatures as a volunteer to bolster those numbers in the funders' eyes.

"I'll See You in My [Pipe] Dreams"

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

Rhea Perlman and Blythe Danner in I'll See You in My Dreams

In I'll See You in My Dreams (2015), Blythe Danner plays Carol, a retired schoolteacher whose husband Bill, a lawyer, died in a plane crash 20 years before the film begins. Carol lives a tranquil existence in a comfortable home in Southern California. Her usual activities are watching TV while drinking wine, and playing golf or bridge with her gal pals who live in a nearby retirement home. 

The film begins with Carol putting her dog down, leaving a hole in her life. A rat soon appears in her house, leading to an encounter with her young pool guy Lloyd (Martin Starr), whom she enlists to scout out her unwelcome visitor. The mismatched (age-wise) couple bond over a shared love of music, and he rekindles her interest in singing, taking her out to a karaoke bar where she sings "Cry Me a River" while her young friend looks on adoringly. Meanwhile, another Bill, played by Sam Elliott, appears to sweep her off her feet with fancy wine-filled dinners in a restaurant or on his boat. 

June Squibb takes a toke from a vaporizer

All this seems to cause a re-examination of life by Carol. When her bridge buddy Sally (Rhea Perlman) asks if she wants a refill on her chardonnay, Carol instead asks, "Do you have any more of that medical marijuana?" Sally brings out a vaporizer and the gals indulge, lead by the game-for-anything Georgina (June Squibb), who announces she knows how to use the device, takes a big hit, and remarks, "Oh man, oh jeez, that's great." The brash-yet-timid Rona (Mary Kay Place, who smoked a joint with William Hurt in The Big Chill) also joins in the fun, boogying down to "Groovin" while Carol has a stare-down with an owl-shaped cookie jar in the kitchen, and Sally acts as the down-to-earth shaman/guide. The foursome heads out to the local minimart for a junk food run, and while heading home with a shopping cart, encounter a cute young cop (Reid Scott) who lets them go despite their strange behavior.

WATCH: Jason Carter Mentions His Grandfather Jimmy's Support for Marijuana Decriminalization at His State Funeral

Emerging as a breakout star at President Jimmy Carter's state funeral is his grandson Jason Carter, whose eulogy has been praised as moving as well as humorous. The Irish Star said Carter "blew funeral-goers away" with his "powerful" speech, after which commentators urged him to run for President or some office. 

Joking that his down-to-earth grandparents had a rack by their sink to dry rinsed Ziploc bags, Carter said in all his 49 years, he never perceived a difference between his grandfather's public face and his private one. He continued,

As you heard from the other speakers, his political life and his presidency, for me, was not just ahead of its time. It was prophetic. 

He had the courage and strength to stick to his principles even when they were politically unpopular. As governor of Georgia half a century ago, he preached an end to racial discrimination and an end to mass incarceration. As president in the 1970s, as you’ve heard, he protected more land than any other president in history. Fifty years ago he was a climate warrior who pushed for a world where we conserved energy, limited emissions and traded our reliance on fossil fuels for expanded renewable sources. 

By the way, he cut the deficit, wanted to decriminalize marijuana, deregulated so many industries that he gave us cheap flights and, as you heard, craft beer. Basically all of those years ago, he was the first millennial. And he could make great playlists, as we’ve heard as well…. 

Peter Yarrow, "Puff, The Magic Dragon" and Marijuana?

 

Peter Yarrow, a member of the popular 1960s activist folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has just died, leading me to take another look at him and his song, "Puff, The Magic Dragon." 

Yarrow co-wrote what became a universally loved children's song with his Cornell University classmate Lenny Lipton in 1959. Despite calling their dragon "Puff" and setting the tune in what sounds like the marijuana-producing region of Honalei, Hawaii, both authors repeatedly denied the song was inspired by marijuana until the day they died. 

In the video above, recorded January 18, 2016 at Paste Studios in NYC, Yarrow strums the chords to "Puff" singing along with an intro claiming that rumors the song contains marijuana references are "spurious." At the time he and Lipton wrote the song at Cornell, he says/sings, "There were no drugs at all. Weed had not come from the West Coast to be with us there. The worst thing we did was go on a panty raid, or have beer in the dorms, or a girl," he added, laughing. 

Ginsberg at a LeMar protest in 1963.

I wondered if this was true. Yarrow had that Beatnik look with his sunglasses and close-trimmed beard, and The Beats had access to grass in the 1950s in New York. Allen Ginsberg wrote in his 1966 “Bringdown” manifesto: "I must begin by explaining something that I have already said in public for many years: that I occasionally use marijuana in preference to alcohol, and have for several decades." Jack Kerouac's “On the Road” was written in 1957, and I think by then Lester Young had turned Kerouac onto “tea.” 

I checked with pot historian Michael Aldrich, who wrote the first-ever PhD dissertation on marijuana and co-founded the pro-legalization group LeMar along with Ginsberg in New York in the early 70s. "I believe it’s possible that there was little or no pot available at Cornell in mid-60s," Aldrich said, adding that when he was at SUNY Buffalo from 1966-1970 "it was difficult to get raw marijuana."

He adds, however, "Hash from New York was often available including Nepalese temple balls. The first issue of Marijuana Review (a magazine that published availability and pricing of cannabis at the time) doesn’t list Cornell, but Buffalo reportedly had “icepack and gold, $24 an ounce. Influx of several keys expected soon @ $125. Some Lebanese hash available, $15 per gram.”

In "Thelma," June Squibb is "America's New Action Hero" at Age 94

 

Based on the experiences of writer/director Josh Margolin's 104-year-old grandmother, and marking June Squibb's first leading film role of her 70+ year career, "Thelma" has made Squibb "America's new action hero at the age of 94," according to Jimmy Kimmel. 

A longtime stage actress, cruise ship performer, and supporting actress in films, Squibb won an Oscar nomination for the 2013 film "Nebraska" at the age of 84. She played Lena Dunham's grandmother on "Girls" and voiced Gramsy in "Little Ellen," based on the childhood of Ellen DeGeneres. 

The 2015 movie "I’ll See You in My Dreams" featured a pot party followed by a munchie run with gal pals played by Squibb, Blythe Danner, Rhea Perlman and Mary Kay Place. The gals are playing cards at their retirement community and not thrilled about drinking more beer or wine, when Danner asks, "Actually, do you still have any of that medical marijuana?" Perlman pulls out a vaporizer and Squibb comments, "It's like pre-heating an oven," then takes a big hit and enthuses, "Oh man, oh jeez, that's great." Giggling ensues.