What Made the Etruscan Women Smile?

Sarcophagus lid in The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy exhibit in SF

The Etruscans, who thrived in Italy between the 9th and 2nd centuries BC before they were slowly conquered by the Romans, invented so-called "Roman" numerals and the famous "Roman" sewers, and pioneered winemaking in Italy, among their many accomplishments and innovations. Wealthy traders, they were among the three main powers in the ancient Mediterranean, along with the Greeks and the Phoenicians. 

Nearly all of their written records were destroyed, but a current exhibit at the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco tells their story in the form of over 200 amazing Etruscan artifacts from museums around the world, including finely crafted pottery, metal work, and statuary. Household objects like mirrors and vases depict parties or (s)heroic scenes, and both Etruscan women and men are depicted on funeral urns and sarcophagi. 

The Etruscans were people who loved to party, it seems. Banquets were very important to them and banquet scenes are found on painted the walls of their tombs, since they felt death was more a transition than a finality. There's such a thing as the "Etruscan smile," and many of the pieces in the exhibit recorded these, particularly on the women, whose eyes look rather dreamy as they give a kind of knowing Mona Lisa smile. 

Balsamarium (perfume jar) in the shape of a
female head, late 3rd‒-early 2nd century BC. 

According to the exhibit catalog (listenable here), adapted from the essay “Customs and Social Practices: Women in Etruria” by Lisa Pieraccini and Alexandra Carpino:

Etruscan women held a singular position in the ancient Western world, earning them a reputation for being among the most modern and independent of their time. Their material culture reveals they were respected and had more privileges than their Greek and Roman counterparts. They were among the most literate women; they could inherit family property and participate in public life, including banquets and religious rituals; they could play essential roles in family and social life.

Etruscan women were in charge of craft production in numerous media, and they held significant roles in religious and funerary activities. After death, many were honored with elaborate burials that celebrated their status and importance not only in relation to their families but also in relation to their own social and civic identities. 

Unlike other civilizations, where inscriptions identifying women featured the husband’s name, Etruscan women used a distinctive double-name system, which included their first name and family or maiden name. It was only in later inscriptions, from the 3rd to 1st centuries BC, and possibly influenced by the Romans, that they added their husband’s to their own. As the Etruscans were absorbed into the Roman world, Etruscan women became increasingly aligned with the more restrictive Roman laws and culture, and they lost the independence and empowerment that was unique to ancient Etruria. 

Etruscan incense burner depicting
the goddess Turan and Atunas (detail).

The Etruscans worshipped many gods and goddesses, some uniquely their own and others adapted from neighboring cultures, which were often assigned different meanings or roles. 

Turan, the Etruscan goddess of love, fertility and vitality, is identified with the Roman Venus and the Greek Aphrodite. The Etruscan goddess Uni is equated with the Greek goddess Hera, who is often painted as a jealous wife that persecuted Heracles, the son of Zeus and a mortal woman. But on an elaborate bronze Etruscan mirror from 300 BC in the exhibit, Uni accepts Heracles as an adopted child by suckling him. "Here the goddess has the power, giving him strength and immortality," the audio guide states. Uni is also equated with the Phoenician goddess Astarte on gold plates from Pyrgi (c. 500 BC) (Source: Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend by Nancy Thomson De Grummond).

Several Thymiaterion (meaning: smoke; an incense burner) are in the exhibit, one depicting Turan and Atunas (Adonis). The exhibit notes say the objects were used "to burn incense to the gods, especially during banquets and symposia." What the Etruscans were burning in their Thymiateria does not seem to be known, although some theorize the kaneh bosm incense in the Bible is cannabis. The Greek historian Herodotus recorded cannabis use at Scythian funeral rituals ca. 440 BC. 

Statue of Vanth from the facade
of a tomb, ca. 310-300 BC

Vanth, a "benevolent Etruscan winged female god who accompanies the deceased to the underworld" makes "regular appearances in funerary art." Vegoia or Vecu is "a sibyl, prophet, or nymph within the Etruscan religious framework. She is identified as the author of parts of their large and complex set of sacred books, detailing the religiously correct methods of founding cities and shrines, draining fields, formulating laws and ordinances, measuring space and dividing time; she initiated the Etruscan people to the arts, as originating the rules and rituals of land marking, and as presiding over the observance, respect, and preservation of boundaries. She also is indicated as having established the laws relative to hydraulic works."

The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley, CA houses over 800 artifacts collected from the Vignaccia Temple in the acient Etruscian city of Caere, most of which are female votive heads. "The abundance of female terracotta heads and figurines discovered at the Vignaccia demonstrates its importance as a female sanctuary. The temple’s female deity was honored by the offerings of votive heads." Recent excavations at Caere point to possible worship of a divine couple, a pattern observed at other Etruscan sites, notably Pyrgi, where vases frequently occur in pairs. Pyrgi was founded around 273 BC as a port city after Caere lost much of its coastline to the Romans. 

Greek claims that the sons of the Greek warrior Odysseus had once ruled over the Etruscan people date to at least the mid-6th century BC. That sounds like a myth to me. 

"The Odyssey" and The Goddess

Despite its tepid reviews, I did see "The Odyssey" because it seemed like it might have some strong female characters, especially considering the casting. Co-produced by the husband-and-wife team of Emma Thomas (who gets top producing credit) and Christopher Nolan (who wrote the screenplay), it's said to be inspired by a fresh 2017 translation of the Homeric epic by Emily Wilson, the first translation into English by a woman. 

I was hopeful when the Goddess Athena is bestowed as protectress to the warrior Odysseus (Matt Damon) by his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway). Athena, portrayed by Zendaya, briefly visits Odysseus throughout the film. Her best lines came when assuring Damon that gods are not hard for mortals to understand: "Who doesn’t understand thunder? Fire?" Zeus and Poseidon are the gods that seem to have the most effect on the characters. 

In the film, only Odysseus makes it to hang out with the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron) in the Land of the Lotus Eaters, and the lotus flower is rather abused by him, only blunting his memories. (Scholars think the Lotus may have been the psychedelic Egyptian blue lotus, or opium.) The scene in which Circe, played by Samantha Morton, turns Odysseus's men into pigs is inventively portrayed, but gone is the holy moly herb given to Odysseus by Hermes that protects him from Circe's magic potion. Even the Sirens are not seen or heard, only Damon's screaming reaction to them. 

Helen of Troy (Lupita Nyong'o) is demoted to launching only 500 ships by her abusive husband, and half of her face is horribly disfigured. There is no mention of nepenthe, Helen’s drug of forgetting one’s sorrow, which Homer depicts she serves to Telemachus during his search for his missing father Odysseus. Scholars speculate nepenthe was a mixture of opium, mandrake, henbane, belladonna and hashish. In a 2023 profile of Wilson in The New Yorker, Judith Thurman calls the queen "semi-divine Helen, Zeus' daughter," with "a witchy seventh sense, a ventriloquist's voice, and a pharmacy of magic potions." Also absent from the film is Zeus' wife Hera, about whom Wilson says, "Nothing beats Hera, dressing up with super-chic earrings and skin creams to mess with Zeus' plans." 

Circe turning the Greeks to pigs
with her magic wand. 

In a review of the movie in the London Review of Books, Wilson calls the $250 million action film "a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth."

"There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem," Wilson writes. Nyong’o’s double part as Helen and Clytemnestra is "hugely underwritten" and Athena is a "vulnerable victim of war," hardly the "scheming and bloodthirsty war goddess" Homer paints. Mentor (Ryan Hurst) who helps Telemachus (Tom Holland) is not the disguised goddess Athena but "a helpful guy with a beard." 

Theron as Calypso "looks gorgeous, but she's reduced to being an unpaid therapist, soothing the soul of the bedraggled, PTSD-ridden Odysseus with drugs, and graciously listening to his disjointed tale of woe." In Homer's text, the demi-goddess has "a wonderfully outraged, operatic speech about divine double standards: male gods can kidnap and rape any mortal woman they desire, but when a goddess tries it, Zeus and his cronies scupper her chances."

Wilson notes that the "magical year" Odysseus spends having sex with Circe is also omitted. New York Times art and culture critic Maya Phillips was particularly offended by the depiction of Circe and her pigsty of a home. She notes that in Wilson’s translation, it is a place of “polished stones, on high foundations,” where "nymphs carry fancy cloths, gold cups and silver bowls for guests and where wild animals fawn around her like house pets." Circe was "a character as wily as the hero, and more knowledgeable."

"In Homer’s telling, Odysseus becomes so enamored of her that she becomes a kind of substitute wife," writes Phillips. "When she changes Odysseus’ soldiers back, Homer notes that they’re even more handsome than before, and are bathed in oil and dressed in nice clothes. Odysseus and his men spend a year living happily with Circe and her nymph servant girls, as Wilson writes in her translation: 'Then every day / for a whole year we feasted there on meat / and sweet strong wine.'” 

Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell is quoted in Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine saying, "The Iliad represents the male-oriented Indo-European world and Zeus, Apollo, and the Olympians in general figure in it the most prominently. Following The Iliad, we come to The Odyssey, where we have the return of the Goddess. It was Samuel Butler [in The Authoress of the Odyssey] who said that The Odyssey was probably written by a woman.  The change in mode and mood from The Iliad and its the male war- and achievement-oriented psychology to that of The Odyssey, where learning about life from the goddess, is very important."

Odysseus and his men go ashore on the way home, and "there they rape the women and ravage the town just for fun," said Campbell. "But when they return to their ships the gods say, 'This is no way for a man to return to his wife!' He needs to be reintroduced, or as they would say today, debriefed. So for ten days the gods blow the ships about until they come ashore at the Land of the Lotus Eaters. From then on they are in the realm of dreams and visions, the world of myth. Odysseus will encounter three nymphs, and not one of them can be pushed around, because he must meet the female principle on her own terms." Campbell says Circe is the temptress, Calypso the wife, and Nausicaa (absent from the film) the virgin. 

"Now, think back on the cause of the Trojan War: three goddesses, Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena, are competing, with Paris as the judge, for the beauty prize....When Paris is asked to judge the three goddesses, says Jane Harrison in her wonderful book Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, it amounts to a male put-down of the Goddess. For here were the three major classical goddesses, the three aspects of the one Goddess who is manifested in these three modes, and here is Paris, a languid young man, judging them as though in an Atlantic City beauty contest! And they are vying for his vote by giving him bribes and promises."

Oh well, what can you expect these days from a movie starring actors from the Marvel universe (Spiderman Tom Holland and his MJ/wife Zendaya, who also stars as a teenage drug user in TV's Euphoria). The emphasis is on battles with giants, like the Cyclops and the "overdressed" Laestrygonians. The most poignant moment for me was, during the taking of Troy, when Athena/her statue are beheaded. It reminded me of the destruction of the Temple of Artemis and the defacing of goddess statues everywhere. 

"At the end of the day, this is a man’s story of greatness," writes Phillips. "Even in Odysseus’ questionable moments, there’s never any question that he is still the noble warrior, the honorable leader. As for the women — the lovers, the betrayers, the goddess and, of course, the witch — they’re no more than the trimmings on our hero’s armor."

We're living in a country where our newly dubbed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has announced he will begin testing soldiers for their testosterone levels, amid a larger effort by the Trump administration to promote and expand public access to testosterone replacement therapies. Tech bros and our Secretary of Health RFK Jr. have managed to get FDA approval for dubious injectable peptides being used for "looks maxing" and goddess knows what else, even as athletes compete on steroids, growth hormones and Adderall in the Thiel-verse, MAGA-backed "Enhanced Games." 

Veterans everywhere report that cannabis helps with pain and PTSD symptoms, including recurring nightmares. VA doctors still don't recommend cannabis, although several bills have been introduced allowing them to do so and now that medical marijuana has been moved to Schedule III, that may change. Meanwhile, the VA is involved in 20 active clinical trials focused on psychedelic therapies to address mental health and high suicide rates among veterans. 

We've got to get a handle on our over reliance on male dominance and the drugs that fuel it, and restore the male/female balance with better healing plants. Meanwhile, Wilson ended her tirade with thanks for the movie sending folks to read translations of Homer (including hers, by the millions). 

UPDATE: Dr. Carla Ionescu, author of She Who Hunts: Artemis, the Goddess Who Changed the World and hostess of The Goddess Project podcast, contributes a thoughtful piece titled, "Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey': I Can't Believe I'm Defending Homer." Meanwhile, male-stream media is stirring up controversy around Wilson's critique of Nolan's film, which seems to have begun with a tweet about interpretation and translation from Joyce Carol Oates. 

Bill Maher and Mark Twain: Both Inspired by Cannabis

Before Bill Maher took his summer break from HBO's Real Time, he did his usual "Future Headlines" segment, including one that said, "Bill Maher Turns Prestigious Mark Twain Prize Into Bong." 

The mock headline alluded to the fact that Maher would soon be the well-deserved 27th recipient of comedy's biggest prize, named for the US's most revered political humorist. The awards ceremony at the newly, properly renamed John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in DC is now airing on Netflix. 

Maher has been a longtime champion of marijuana legalization, admitting that he sold it in his youth, and enjoys smoking it, including during his podcast Club Random. 

Comedienne Whitney Cummings lead off the Twain award tribute with lots of snark, and pot jokes. "Bill is loyal a fighter for equality and justice," she intoned. "Day in and day out, he has committed his life to make sure that women, people of color and the disenfranchised all have equal access to the opinion of unmarried, childless white millionaire for only $23/month." (If ABC hadn't cancelled him, his show would still be free to all. It is watchable now on CNN on Saturday nights.)

Maher, Cummings continued, is like that cool stepdad who tells kids, "If you drink, as long as you call me, I'll come pick you up, no questions asked....but I am stoned so it's going to take me a while." 

"Bill embodies the essence of Mark Twain in more ways than you even know," Cummings noted. "Both men: very shrewd investors. Twain put all of his money into new technology including the revolutionary Paige typesetting machine. And Bill just went halfsies on a weed store....with Woody Harrelson" (camera goes to Woody, one of the night's presenters). 

Like Maher, Twain tried his hand at a drug business. After reading William Herdon's Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon: 1841-1852, the young typesetter still calling himself Samuel Clemens was struck by Herndon's description of the coca plant and the effect it had on the Inca people, enabling them to cheerfully work long hours with a suppressed appetite. Twain considered the plant "miraculous" and set out to start importing, talking up the idea with associates and jumping on a boat to New Orleans, hoping to get to South America. That's as far as he got, as he had almost no capital and means to transporting himself to the continent. 

Maher's been making the talk show rounds talking about how cannabis inspires his work, and this seems to be something else he has in common with Twain. 

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an item on September 18, 1865 saying Twain was spotted on the previous day walking up Clay Street under the influence of hasheesh. At the time, concentrated cannabis in tincture or solid form was commonly available in drug stores, such as Richards & Co., which stood at the corner of Clay and Sansome streets and advertised "Hasheesh Candy" in the Chronicle. 

While in San Francisco, Twain met Fitz Hugh Ludlow, well known for writing "Confessions of a Hasheesh Eater," published in 1857. Ludlow suggested that Twain should focus on his humor rather than straight news writing and in October 1865, one month after Twain took his stoned stroll in SF, he wrote to his brother Orion: "I have had a 'call' to literature, of a low order - i.e. humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit." Weeks later, Twain's humorous piece, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" made him nationally known. 

Let's Restore the Hemp Riggings on the USS Constitution

The USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides") giving a 21-gun salute on July 4 in Boston Harbor

As part of the country's semiquincentennial celebration this year, Boston Harbor is hosting a Sail 250 Tall Ships parade July 11- 16, lead by the USS Constitution, the world's oldest commissioned warship, which was originally outfitted with tons of hemp sails and ropes. 

The Constitution is the only survivor of the United States Navy’s original six frigates. Undefeated in battle, her mission was to "keep the sea lanes open for commerce, fight pirates, land Marines in trouble spots (...to the shores of Tripoli...), and prevent the slave trade." 

As part of what became known as the Barbary Wars, the ship was sent to Tripoli in 1803, after President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay an increased "tribute" to pirates for the protection of commerce at the Libyan port. The United States prevailed after a combined naval and land assault by the US Marine Corps. 

Britain continued to oppose American trade and navigation in the Mediterranean – a stance that would contribute to the War of 1812. It was during that war that the Constitution earned its nickname "Old Ironsides" after defeating the British warship HMS Guerriere and sailors watched as enemy cannonballs bounced harmlessly off the hull.

The ship went on to win additional battles before embarking on a world cruise in the 1840s, sailing more than 52,000 miles and visiting over 25 countries while protecting American commerce and gathering intelligence on foreign waters. By 1860, it was no longer needed as a frontline warship and instead served as a training vessel for midshipmen at the Naval Academy. The Constitution’s primary mission has now become education and public outreach, and since the 1930s, the vessel has been stationed at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, where it was built in 1797.  

Bales of hemp being unloaded onto Navy Yard railroad 
for rigging of the USS Constitution (March 1927). 

As one of several restorations the vessel has undergone, a restoration that began in 1927 used several tons of hemp, as recorded in The Frigate Constitution and Other Historic Ships by F. Alexander Magoun and reprinted in The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy. According to the USS Constitution museum, "All of Constitution‘s rigging for the 1927-1931 restoration was made at the Charlestown Navy Yard ropewalk....only hemp was used for the standing and running rigging, bolt ropes for the sails, cables, and other miscellaneous small lines." About 67 tons of hemp rope of various sizes was manufactured at the Boston Navy Yard for the restoration. 

Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne (and Hemp)

Coming up on the 250th birthday of the USA, I looked up Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne, Nathaniel's older sister and co-editor with him on "The American magazine of useful and entertaining knowledge" (1834-37), a compendium of all sorts of information designed to "give to the public a work descriptive, not merely of subjects, scenes, places, and persons existing in distant climes, but also of those which are to be found in our own fine and native country."

In it pages, "The American magazine" states that hemp is “a native of Persia and India; whence it was introduced into Europe. In the United States it has become naturalized; but not so extensively cultivated, as to supply the wants of the manufacturers. Large quantities are exported to America from Russia....It is a matter of wonder with some, that both hemp and linen are not more generally cultivated in America."

"The stem of this plant is erect, simple, herbaceous, and grows four and six feet high," the entry continues. "It possesses narcotic properties; and in eastern countries it is common to mix the leaves with tobacco for smoking." A drawing or engraving of a hemp plant opens the entry. 

It's interesting that the Hawthornes knew about the "narcotic properties" of cannabis, and how to use it. Also, that they lamented it wasn't more widely cultivated in the US. Thomas Paine, in his revolutionary 1776 pamphlet "Common Sense" listed hemp first among the natural resources the land offered, writing, "In almost every article of defense we abound. Hemp flourishes even to rankness, so that we need not want cordage." Thomas Jefferson smuggled hemp seeds out of France and George Washington grew it at Mt. Vernon, where it is still cultivated and processed.

Hemp is mentioned elsewhere in "The American magazine" as encompassing both male and female plants, substituting for mulberry to feed silkworms, and luring wild ducks to their death by spreading hempseed on pond water. 

It's possible that Elizabeth is the editor who contributed the hemp information to the magazine: Her nephew Manning Hawthorne thought that while topics on literature or colonial history in the magazine were mainly written by Nathaniel, "the bulk of the useful and entertaining knowledge was furnished by Elizabeth."

Barack Obama Talks About Taking the Higher Ground on "All the Smoke" Podcast

It's been wonderful to be able to watch the intelligent and articulate Barack and Michelle Obama as they inaugurate his presidential library while we approach the USA's 250th birthday, instead of just the Madness of King Gorge and his fetid reflecting pool of corruption and crime.

 

 I caught a video clip of Barack inaugurating the library's basketball court with some NBAers and spotted "All the Smoke" co-hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. Obama sat down for an interview for the podcast, which doesn't shy away from talking about cannabis, but covers so much more about basketball and life. 

Of course I wondered if they would ask Obama, who admitted to smoking pot as a teenager growing up in Hawaii, saying, "Of course I inhaled. That was the point." Instead, our former president brought the topic up himself. 

During a discussion of Barack coming to terms with his biracial heritage, he said, "Part of the thing that I figured out around 19, 20 was ...there's no one way to be Black. I remember in college, because I was trying to be—I won't say a roughneck, but...look, in my high school years I was getting high a lot, and partying a lot" before going into how he evolved from playing the Fresh Prince to something more like Carlton during that time. He then talked about taking the Higher Ground. 

Eve Babitz Testifies For Marijuana and LSD

Eve Babitz photographed by Julian Wasser

After celebrating "Tram Day," marking the first time a woman—Susi Ramstein—took an LSD trip on June 12, 1943, I just discovered another reason to celebrate women's contributions to psychedelic movement this week.

Sixty years ago, on June 15, 1966, the young artist and writer Eve Babitz testified along with her employer Walter Bowart of the East Village Other newspaper about their experiences with LSD and marijuana before the US Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.

The New York Times article by Nan Robertson, “Senators Urged to Take LSD ‘Trip,’ ” appeared in the paper on the following day, saying, “Eve Babitz, 23, a strawberry blonde, remarked of marijuana: ‘It’s not fattening, you don’t get a hangover, it’s not addicting… Everybody I know uses it except my grandmother.’ Asked after the hearing why she had not persuaded her grandmother to try, Miss Babitz replied: ‘She’s turned on already.’ ”

Babitz testified that she had been a hypochondriac but that LSD had "freed her from her fears." Presaging the "Set and Setting" lessons around LSD trips, Babitz told the committee, "The best way to take it is with a friend, or two trusted friends, in the country." She suggested setting up park "reserves" staffed by doctors as "vest-pocket launching pads for LSD users."  

Bowart suggested that a member of the committee should have an LSD session and report back to the other members. Paula Sherwood, 26, a senior at New York University, also testified, saying along with Babitz that they would continue to take the drug even if it were made illegal. (This didn't happen until the 1970 Controlled Substances Act.) 

RIP David Hockney, Cannabis Legalization Supporter

David Hockney photographic collage, 1986  J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

British-born, California-residing artist David Hockney has died at age 88, making him another long-living, productive marijuana smoker. 

His death came nine months after the close of a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, reports the NY Times. "But even at that point, he was not finished. Working out of his studio in London, using a wheelchair, his health failing, he continued to paint." Best known for his poolside scenes and double portraits that celebrated the Southern California scene and sunlight, Hockney worked in many media, including photography and iPads. 

Born in 1937, the year marijuana was effectively made illegal in the US, Hockney earned a scholarship to a local art school at a young age and in 1959, he enrolled at the Royal College of Art in London. Seeing a major Picasso exhibition at the Tate Gallery the following year cemented his interest in art, and cubism (which was developed after Picasso tried cannabis). 

Hockney came out as gay when he was 23, seven years before Britain decriminalized homosexual acts. He took the occasion of his exhibit at London's Royal Academy of Arts in the summer of 1999 to call for the legalization of marijuana. "I remember Jack Straw [UK's home minister] in 1968 saying 'you can't legalise marijuana as we haven't got enough information.' Thirty years later, he's said exactly the same thing. I don't know what life has taught him, I've learnt quite a lot. I've smoked a lot of marijuana. It hasn't harmed me."

The artist said he smoked a regular "joint" with a glass of whiskey in the evening. But, he hastened to add, he had never indulged in stimulants when working because "drugs and art don't mix…You have to be very clear-headed." Drugs made you "too pleased with everything," he said, and to create great work "you have to struggle." (Source: Dalya Alberge, HOCKNEY SAYS DRUGS ARE FINE BUT NOT FOR ART, The Times (UK), May 27, 1999.) 

"He is a big supporter of California’s decision to legalise cannabis," says a 2020 The Times article that interviewed Hockney saying, “I always assumed they kept marijuana illegal because of the power of the alcohol lobby. That’s their competition. But the alcohol lobby has become less powerful, and of course there are lots of people now in their seventies or eighties who’ve smoked marijuana for 40 or 50 years. And they know it’s harmless.” He told The Times he smokes it himself, "not when he works, but in the evening to relax." Reportedly, he had a California Medical Marijuana card. He was also a chain cigarette smoker and staunch pro-tobacco campaigner. In 2005, he fought to stop a ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants. 

Etana Launches "Herbs" Cannabis Brand at Her Berkeley Birthday Party

Reggae singer/songwriter Etana introduced her women-grown, organic cannabis brand Etana Herbs at a concert celebrating her birthday at the intimate Chapel of the Flowers in Berkeley, CA on Saturday May 23. Hot off the presses and flown in from LA for the event was her packaging, featuring a fearless image of the musician, now available on a T-shirt at her website. 

Wearing a glittering jacket and luminous "high" heels, she commanded the stage and conjured up much enthusiastic dancing / swaying with joy in the crowd of Reggae fans, who had just feasted on an authentic meal of jerk chicken, oxtail, veggies and plantains. 

Stopping her concert to make her ganja brand announcement, she noted, "It's all natural, organic, just the way we like it," and named some of the strains/flavors, like  papaya.

The artist then treated the crowd to some of her songs from "Etana - The Ganja Collection," her 4/20/26 digital release,  a "soulful 7-track tribute to the Sacred Herb, Roots Reggae & Jamaican culture." 

She began with "Sensemilla":

I have found a tree that heals inside of me
Changes everything, everything that I've been told....

It's the herb that calm my nerves
It's the herb that will heal the world

And moved into "Gimi De Weed": 

This one is for all ganja lovers around the world
All ganja boys and all ganja girls...

No more youths in the jail house for weed...
Oh what a day when ganja man get free

Colbert and Cannabis: A Farewell Tribute

As we approach the final days of Stephen Colbert hosting CBS's The Late Show this Thursday, we follow CelebStoner's lead and look back at our favorite moments when Colbert celebrated cannabis. 

In a January 2006 City Arts and Lectures interview in San Francisco, Colbert said he smoked "a lot of pot" for a period of time in high school. That would explain a lot. 

On his 2007 The Colbert Report debut, during a (mock) interview with Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, Colbert demonstrated that he knew what "shake" is. Nadelmann commented that while viewers surely must get drunk to watch Fox host Bill O'Reilly, probably half of Colbert's audience got stoned before watching. On his January 18 show that year while introducing O'Reilly, Colbert announced, "You're not high, Bill O'Reilly is really here. You might also be high." 

That July, he showed a clip of the USDA's 1942 film Hemp for Victory film before introducing Marijuana Policy Project's Aaron Houston. Later, he asked Ben & Jerry about their flavor named for VIP Willie Nelson, "What's his made of, shredded tax forms and hash?" 

During a 2008 interview with Carole King, Colbert pulled out his Tapestry album and noted it was a double, briefly demonstrating how this allowed people to clean their pot on it in the 70s. On his premiere Colbert Report of 2014, after Colorado started selling legal pot, he took on columnists Ruth Marcus and Davis Brooks with the line: "I applaud Marcus and Brooks for taking a stand against legalizing the pot they smoked." 

Since The Late Show with Stephen Colbert premiered on September 8, 2015, the pot jokes continued. 

A 2016 segment, "Stephen Colbert Gets All Up in Your Faith" had him commenting on the first cannabis church while pantomiming a killer bong rip. That year, he interviewed Whoopi Goldberg when she introduced her Whoopi & Maya cannabis product line, designed for women. In 2017, he introduced Kathy Bates as "an Academy Award–winning actress who terrified us in Misery, inspired us in Titanic, and now she sells us weed on the Netflix show Disjointed." Bates demonstrated her technique for using a vape pen.

The Late Show won a Best Video Segment Tokey Award in 2023 for "The Ganja Girls: Seniors Smoking Weed." For 4/20 that year, he opened with a "Yes We Cannabis" segment from the "dank, grooved-out wonder planet known as Chillaxia." 

Is Ethel Kennedy's Experience with LSD Therapy Informing Current US Policy?

Health Secretary RFK Jr.'s parents Robert and Ethel Kennedy

As the federal government moves to legalize psychedelics, particularly ibogaine, at the urging of Joe Rogan and in hopes no doubt that his and other drug-peace loving minions will look kindly on Trump and his coattail brigade of brigands in the upcoming midterm elections. Standing with Trump and Rogan at the policy announcement was HHS Secretary RFK Jr., whose support for psychedelics may stem from his mother Ethel's clinical experience with LSD in the 1960s while her husband was a US Senator.

Michael Pollan spoke about Ethel's LSD experience and RFK Sr.'s Congressional-floor comments on the topic during a Fresh Air interview about his new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness. According to Acid Dreams by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, "The decision to curtail LSD research was the subject of a Congressional probe....the inquiry in the spring of 1966 was lead by Senator Robert Kennedy (D-NY), whose wife Ethel reportedly underwent LSD therapy with Dr. Ross MacLean." (p. 93). 

A SPIN magazine article "When Bobby Kennedy Defended LSD" reprinted in a newsletter from MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), says that the conservative Sen. Thomas Dodd (D-CT), an alcoholic who was later censured by the Senate for political corruption, convened The Special Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency for three hearings on LSD and other psychedelic drugs in 1966. 

"RFK, whose wife had been treated with LSD and benefitted from the experience, adopted a quite different tone in his questioning of FDA and NIMH officials in his own subcommittee hearing on LSD," says the article. "He was curious as to why so many LSD research projects were getting scrapped. When the officials evaded the questions, RFK got straight to the point. 'Why if they were worthwhile six months ago, why aren’t they worthwhile now?' he asked repeatedly."

The article quotes Kennedy saying, "Perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that (LSD) can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly.”

Women's Biographies on Film

Inspired by a post on a Turner Classic Movies Facebook fan group that noted it's Women's History Month and asked for readers to send in their favorite costumes worn by women(!), I started coming up with this list of women who have been portrayed in film instead, and it's quite an impressive one: 

Greta Garbo lead the way in Queen Christina (1933). Just the way she runs up the steps for her entrance hooked me. And Katharine Hepburn was a fine Mary of Scotland in 1936. 

Greer Garson played orphans' advocate Edna Gladney in Blossoms in the Dust (1941) and Marie Curie Madame Curie (1943), a role played by Rosamund Pike in the 2019 film Radioactive. Garson was Oscar-nominated for playing Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960); Jane Alexander played the role in the miniseries Eleanor and Franklin in 1976 and Jean Stapleton did in the 1982 TV movie Eleanor, First Lady of the World. 

Bette Davis portrayed Queen Elizabeth I in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). Jean Simmons played the young Queen in Young Bess (1953), as Cate Blanchett did (more realistically) in Elizabeth (1998).

Deborah Kerr starred in a fictionalized account of governess Anna Leonowens in The King and I (1956).  In 1959, The Diary of Anne Frank premiered; Shelly Winters donated the Supporting Actress Oscar she won for the film to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Susan Hayward won an Oscar for her portrayal of Barbara Graham in I Want to Live. (Jazz, and marijuana, are blamed.) Patty Duke was named Best Supporting Actress for playing Helen Keller in A Miracle Worker (1962).

Cleopatra (1963) starred Elizabeth Taylor, the first actress to make a million dollars for a role. (The Queen of Egypt was also portrayed as smoking something in the 2005/07 HBO series Rome.) Debbie Reynolds played The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1964; Kathy Bates played the role in Titanic (1997).  In 1965, Julie Andrews played a version of Maria von Trapp (without the yodel) in The Sound of Music.

Women's History Month 2026 - Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future

The theme of this year's Women's History Month is “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future,” encompassing "financial sustainability, community resilience, leadership succession, and intergenerational equity." 

"Whether developing green technologies, advancing economic justice, strengthening education systems, or building civic power – women are designing blueprints for sustainable transformation," says the National Women's History Foundation. "This theme affirms that shaping a sustainable future means fostering systems that support both people and the planet." 

The cannabis, psychedelics and environmental movements have many women to honor who have advanced sustainability. 

One is Tina Gordon of Moon Made Farms, in Southern Humboldt, California. In her sustainably grown garden, Gordon incorporates "aspects of nature, native soil, and on-site composting, we introduce forest and plant material to our gardens to ensure the best and healthiest product. We want to encourage the genetics, and ultimately epigenetics of the plant to carry through an expression of this unique geographic environment."

Sophia Buggs—also known as Lady Buggs—is an urban farmer, medicine woman, and community leader in Youngstown, Ohio. Through stories, blessings, and reflections, she explores themes of ancestral connection, Indigenous practices, food justice, and the challenges and joys of negotiating community partnerships. Her talk at the Women's Visionary Congress 2023 is both a celebration of cultural heritage and a call to honor the unseen forces and generational wisdom that guide us toward collective healing and empowerment. 

Winona LaDuke (pictured), the Native American activist who ran for Vice President on Ralph Nader's ticket in 1996 and 2000, is growing hemp and other crops in Osage, MN, where she operates a hemp market store and coffee shop. "I want to scale up and join the 400,000 other horse powered farming operations in North America, understanding the sacred relationship between life, power and the future," LaDuke writes. "I would like to live well, I am interested in decoupling food and hemp from fossil fuels, and I am also interested in the quality of life which small-scale farming creates." 

Paul McCartney: Man on the Run

The new Amazon Prime documentary, "Paul McCartney: Man on the Run" charts McCartney's marijuana arrests and their affect on his music, and life. 

Through archival film footage and interviews, the film follows McCartney's musical journey, starting with the breakup The Beatles. Criticized for putting out apolitical albums of what he later called (unapologetically) "silly love songs" with his band Wings—featuring his wife Linda on keyboards—the band and Paul's songwriting gained an edge when he faced jail time for growing five marijuana plants on their family farm in March 1973. 

According to a TV interviewer in the film, it was said in court that, "McCartney had a considerable interest in horticulture, and many of his fans sent him seeds to grow. The cannabis seeds, it was said, came to him in such a way."  He admitted he had knowingly growing the plants, but claimed he didn't know what they were. 

The film does not mention the statement McCartney made in court regarding cannabis's legal status. “I feel that there should be legislation on the use of cannabis," he said. "Drink is a much worse drug to my mind than cannabis.” 

Later that year, Wings hit their stride with the release of their album "Band on the Run." The album was recorded in Nigera, where McCartney said he smoked the strongest weed he ever had in an interview with Marc Maron where he noted that "for the creative process it was required." 

Alysa Liu: From Oaksterdam to the Olympics

I've always loved figure skating, maybe since watching the graceful and glorious Peggy Fleming winning the Olympic gold medal in 1968 when I was just a girl. Where I grew up in Pennsylvania we skated in the winter, on ponds at our local mall that had an ice skating rink where scenes from the movie "Flashdance" were filmed. 

At this year's Olympics I fell for Alysa Liu during her short program, which placed her third going into her final triumphant free skate. Liu has blossomed into an entirely different kind of skater, one more focused on her art than the competition, resulting in a relaxed and joyous presence on the ice that's captivated the world. 

Liu trained at the public rink in the city of Oakland, CA, just a few blocks away from the area known as Oaksterdam for its preponderance of Amsterdam-style cannabis shops that started springing up after California voters legalized medical marijuana in 1996. She gave a shout-out to her home city, pointing to an Oakland flag that a fan had brought, after her lyrical short program. “I’m just glad,” she said, “that I could bring Oakland to Milan.” Her championship long program skate that was set to Donna Summers's disco version of "MacArthur Park," a 1970s song about a park in Los Angeles. 

Liu's father, who (as everyone knows by now), fled China after organizing protests against the government there, saw promise in his oldest child and paid for skating coaches, taking her to winning her first US National Championship at age 13 (the youngest female champion ever). At the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, she came in sixth despite the extra pressure of the Chinese government attempting to "naturalize" her, after sending spies to gather information on her and her father. Doubtlessly traumatized by that, and tired of the regimented life of a competitive skater, she quit the sport that year at the age of 16, so that she could have more of a normal teenage life, going to concerts, taking her first vacation, and getting her driver's license. 

Describing going on a ski trip with friends in 2024, Liu said it "was such an adrenaline rush, to get down the mountain when your legs are that tired. It's hard, and you had to tap into that part of you that fights, and I hadn't felt that since I quit skating.....and I was like, if I can get what I'm feeling from skating, I should just do that." 

Liu told 60 Minutes that she initially went back to skating for "quick hits of dopamine." She told ESPN, "I have ADHD and I love situations that I'm not expecting. It gives me a dopamine rush. With little mistakes, I love working through it. I have to think. And although it's not ideal to make those mistakes in competition, it was made and my brain still was releasing those chemicals and I had to think, 'What next? I have to add a combo here and here.' It was a little bit of fun and a nice little challenge."

It's Time for the NYT To Admit It Has an Editorial Problem

A discussion titled, “Marijuana is Everywhere. That’s a Problem” with New York Times editorial writers Emily Bazelon, David Leonhardt and German Lopez, who co-wrote Monday’s NYT editorial calling for greater regulation of cannabis, focuses on theory rather than practicality, except when used for prejudicial purposes. 

The conversation starts with the clarification that, like the famous NYT editorial series of 2014, theirs is pro-legalization, due to the harms of cannabis prohibition—namely huge numbers of arrests, disproportionately for people of color. They pointed out that they say in the editorial that they oppose the current ballot measure in Massachusetts that would re-criminalize cannabis. 

During the discussion, both Leonhardt and Lopez went right away to the fact that things are too loose now because marijuana can be smelled walking down the street. In Lopez’s case he says he was offered a hit on the street in his native Ohio, and Leonhardt talked about the streets of NYC and DC, where he spends time. Leonhardt also seemed distiurbed by the proliferation of cannabis shops in Colorado. 

Lopez expressed concern that legalization has increased use, drawing on his perspective reporting on the opioid crisis. He was also alarmed that we have “culturally embraced" cannabis. “You see Gwyneth Paltrow investing in Big Weed in CA,” was an example he used, picking up on the prohibitionist organization SAM’s drumbeat about Big Weed.  

Other issues like increasing numbers of people in polls saying they have problems with marijuana, and emergency room visits for CHS, were mentioned. Also mentioned, as in the editorial, were names of products that sounded like cookies and were marketed to kids (something that isn’t permitted by licensed vendors in California and elsewhere). 

Much was made of the 2024 NSDUH survey finding that more people smoke cannabis daily than use alcohol, with everyone assuming this meant people get totally stoned all day long. Leonhardt said twice that he “very much likes” alcohol or his martini, and Lopez said he “partakes" himself. But apparently everyone else who uses cannabis does so problematically in their eyes. People who have a problem with pot aren’t productive, and create problems for society, is Lopez's opinion. "We’ve gone way too far it glorifying its use,” he said.

On medical marijuana, while it was acknowledged that some people in pain or with specific ailments might benefit from it, cannabis hasn’t gone through the rigorous studies and government oversight needed to establish it as a true medicine, and we should re-think a system by which cannabis dispensaries sell a product claiming medical use, the speakers said. 

It's a Green Day in the Bay

Lost in the controversy about Bad Bunny appearing at the Super Bowl halftime show is the fact that the cannabis-loving band Green Day will kick off the music portion of the Super Bowl with a performance at the game's opening ceremony.

In 1987, guitarists Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt, both 15 years old at the time, along with bassist Sean Hughes and drummer Raj Punjabi, a fellow high school student from Pinole, CA, formed the band Desecrated Youth, later renamed Sweet Children. 

After signing with Lookout! Records in 1988 and before releasing their first EP in 1989, the group adopted the name Green Day. In the Bay Area, where the band was formed, "green day" was reportedly slang for spending a day doing nothing but smoking marijuana.

The band's name "was absolutely about pot," Armstrong told Bill Maher, adding, "We were trying to be the Cheech & Chong of punk rock." Armstrong went on to say that he stopped smoking weed after he had children, and then described a gravity bong to Maher. "I like burning the substance" as opposed to vaporizing, he said, because he "it smells good, it fills the room." Vaporizing felt like "one more reason to hide the fact that it should be legal." 

"Join the Club" Film Tells the Story of Dennis Peron and Medical Marijuana

"Join the Club" is a powerful documentary about Dennis Peron and the origins of the medical marijuana movement, set in the gay rights movement and the AIDS crisis in San Francisco. The tactics of the US war on drugs that began with Richard Nixon and was carried on by successive US presidents is also presented in the film, making the DEA and its multi-jurisdictional forces look like the ICE of its day. 

Filmmakers Kip Andersen and Chris O'Connell were able to conduct the last interview with Peron just before he died in 2018, and his story is told in flashback with remarkable footage of Peron's historic Cannabis Buyer's Club, including police video from an officer who infiltrated the club, news reports, and interviews all skillfully edited together. 

Born in the Bronx, Peron was drafted into the Vietnam War where he recounts seeing 1000 dead soldiers the month that he arrived. Eschewing alcohol as "the war drug," Peron smoked his first joint instead, and the filmmakers do a wonderful job of depicting how that changed his life. Bringing back three pounds of marijuana when he returned from Vietnam launched his career as a pot dealer and activist in San Francisco. 

Peron began his political involvement as a supporter of Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay man elected to public office in California when he became a San Francisco supervisor. The assassination of Milk and Mayor George Moscone highlighted the terrible ongoing prejudice against the gay community, as did the arrests and police shooting of Peron. 

The film does an excellent job of taking us to the origins of the AIDS epidemic and the relief that patients were getting from cannabis. The death of Dennis's young, beautiful lover Jonathan West from AIDS catapulted him to begin distributing cannabis to AIDS patients and operating what was described as the first AIDS hospice, where patients could gather and support each other in community.

A "Jewel Robbery" with a Marijuana Twist

Kay Francis is offered a marijuana cigarette by William Powell in "Jewel Robbery"

In the pre-Hayes Code film "Jewel Robbery" (1932), William Powell ("The Thin Man") plays a suave jewel thief who romances a bored, jewel-grubbing Baroness played by Kay Francis. "In my own eyes, I'm shallow and weak," says Francis. "I fly about all day, pursuing furs, jewels, excitement....In the morning, a cocktail, in the afternoon, a man, in the evening, Veronal [a barbiturate]."  

After invading a jewelry store where Francis and her elderly husband are picking out a large diamond ring, Powell congenially holds everyone hostage and robs the store's inventory. He then takes the unusual step of offering the shop's owner a marijuana cigarette, saying, "Do smoke one of my cigarettes. Now, inhale deeply...." 

Despite having just been robbed, the man begins giggling so vociferously that Francis asks Powell, "What did you give him?" Powell replies, "A pleasant, harmless smoke. He'll awake in the morning fresh and happy, with a marvelous appetite."  

He then offers her a cigarette, saying, "They're harmless, really. Two puffs, and you'll be hearing soft music. The world will begin to revolve pleasantly. Three, a beautiful dream." She asks, "How do you know this?" and he replies, "Experience. I assure you, all the ladies fall asleep happily." "So that you steal their jewels in peace, I suppose," she replies. Refusing to smoke, she says, "I prefer to keep my wits about me, thank you" (which, considering her circumstances, was rather wise). 

Powell then hornswoggles a security guard into carrying his loot out to the getaway car, and gives him as a tip his box of marijuana cigarettes. The guard fully enjoys smoking one of the joints, inhaling deeply. When he is questioned by the police, he offers the chief one of his stash and the two are soon yukking it up fully. Francis of course falls for Powell, but never gets a chance to try another of his cigarettes. 

Cannabis in the Epstein Files

The DOJ's online searchable (and heavily redacted) Epstein Library reveals that convicted sex trafficker / financier Jeffrey Epstein seemed to be tracking marijuana legalization globally, and may have invested in a cannabis company in the US Virgin Islands months before he was re-arrested and died in his prison cell in 2019. 

Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute, and was given a sweetheart plea deal that didn't seem to affect his business or other activities. He soon had some lighthearted exchanges with his correspondents about marijuana and the potential to "cash in" on it. 

An MD with a redacted name wrote to Epstein on 9/5/2010, "AND do you know WHO aside from the Israelis owns most of the water capture technology.... Hint...I adore him and he just cut off all his hair and I will see him in concert at the state fair on the 16th... (scroll down) WILLIE NELSON! Maybe marijuana does make you a better you." (Nelson played the Puyallup, WA state fair on 9/16/2010. His hair did look shorter in photos from the fair. Reportedly he did own a water capture company.) 

On Sep. 21, 2013, [REDACTED] wrote: "[REDACTED] suggested perhaps medicinal weed for me ;)" Epstein replied: "Yes, my 2nd great idea after Zombie Porn! They say these things come in 3's So we should all cash in on the next one!" Hong Kong based academic and tech bro Gino Yu sent Epstein a link on August 23, 2016 to an article titled, "Researchers find lab rats on marijuana just can't be bothered" with the comment, "Roaches on dmt next?" One of Epstein's attorneys Erika Kellerhals wrote in an email on September 7, 2016,  "All these marijuana guys are stuck using credit unions because no banks will take their money. IBE angle..." probably referring to International Banking Entities. In December 2018, Epstein received a pitch about a cannabis investment fund.  

Bye Bye Bobby

Some deaths hit you hard. Bob Wier, who was still in his teens when he hooked up with Jerry Garcia to start making music, passed on January 10 after a brief illness, and Deadheads everywhere mourned and celebrated his life. 

I first saw the Grateful Dead on their "Live at Last" tour in the late '80s, after Garcia came back from a coma to re-learn the guitar. I thought, "This is where the 60s went" when I saw the parking lot scene: hippie selling colorful crafts, grilled cheese sandwiches and other goodies in a makeshift community that followed the band from show to show. I saw them play with Bob Dylan and several other shows back in the day when you could send in for tickets as part of a lottery for big shows. 

Bill Clinton float with a phattie at the 1993 Grateful Dead Mardi Gras show.

My hemp activism started when a cute hempster guy invited me to the 1991/92 New Year's Eve show at the Oakland, CA colosseum he'd pulled tickets for. It was an unforgettable show, with Baba Olatunji starting it out drumming through the crowd, and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones blowing us away with a drummer whose kit looked like a guitar. It was the year the band's manager Bill Graham died, and since he would traditionally come out as Father Time at midnight at their epic NYE shows, film of him playing Father Time year after year was shown instead. 

I also got to their Mardi Gras show in 1993, when one of the floats depicted the newly-elected Bill Clinton with a saxophone in one hand and a huge burning joint in the other (pictured). As a hemp activist, I wo-maned a table selling tie-dyed hemp shorts and shirts at a string of shows in Sacramento and at Shoreline amphitheater in the Bay Area. The band's keyboardist Vince Wellnick stopped by the booth and picked out our most colorful shirt, which he wore onstage. I ran into Wellnick later on his way to Wier's wedding in Mill Valley. 

Elaine Pagels, Gnosis, and LSD

Elaine Pagels, the classical and biblical scholar who was among the first to translate and interpret the Nag Hammadi manuscripts writes in her 2019 book Why Religion? A Personal Story that she tried LSD shortly before feeling impelled to write her bestseller The Gnostic Gospels (1979). Gnosis, the direct experience of God, is something often powerfully enhanced by entheogens like LSD. 

Pagels grew up in Palo Alto, the child of academic parents (who were horrified by her dabblings into religion as a child). She had an early fascination with the trippy Gospel of John, which was also Emily Dickinson's favorite Bible book. In high school, she hung out with a group of artists, and writes that she knew the (years older) Jerry Garcia, and attended his first wedding (to a very pregnant young woman). In high school, he dated Garcia's friend Paul Speegle, who died in a car crash that Jerry, also in the car, survived, and she surmises that the name The Grateful Dead “must have resonated from the crash he’d survived five years earlier.” The car crash also caused her to leave her new-found religion when born again Christains told her her Jewish friend would burn in hell. 

“Many of us, of course, have left religious institutions behind, and prefer to identify as ‘spiritual, not religious,’” she writes at the outset of Why Religion? “I’ve done both – had faith, lost it; joined groups, and left them....What matters to me more than whether we participate in institutions or leave them is how we engage the imagination – in dreams, art, poetry, music – since what each of us needs, and what we can engage, obviously differs and changes throughout our lifetime.”

After graduating Stanford, Pagels applied to a Harvard doctoral program in the study of religion, and was rejected by Prof. Krister Stendahl because, he wrote, “women students have always quit before receiving a degree.” However she was encouraged to apply again the following year if she was “still serious," and after completing a Masters in classics at Stanford and continuing to study advanced Greek and Latin, she re-applied and was accepted. There she studied the “secret” gnostic gospels discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, written in Coptic around the 2nd - 4th century AD.

Her husband Heinz, a physicist and author of The Cosmic Code who was interested in consciousness, took part in an LSD experiment at Palo Alto Veteran's Hospital while in graduate school. What he took "wasn't a placebo," he told Elaine later, "saying how astonished he was to see stars and galaxies being born and dying, while others emerged, through what felt like innumerable ages." The summer they married (1969), he encouraged his new wife to try it, "promising to cope with any difficulty that might arise." 

Pagels writes she "anticipated that what would happen might involve what I was writing about, some kind of Christian vision. Instead, as I sat in the apartment, looking out at the sky, the trees in light wind, and the garden, I saw everything alive as fire, gloriously intertwined. Watching, ecstatic and speechless, for about five hours, I finally managed to say, 'I guess that solved the dying problem.' What horrified me before, when [her high school friend] Paul died—that a beloved person could simply disappear, and disintegrate—now seemed to resolve into a deeper unity of the whole." 

Bread and Roses, and Mayor Mamdani

AOC and Letitia James spoke, and Bernie Sanders swore the new mayor in, just after Lucy Dacus and Sarah Goldstone performed "Bread and Roses" today at NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's Inauguration Ceremony. 

As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day, 

A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray 

Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses, 

For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses." 

As we go marching, marching, we battle, too, for men— 

For they are women's children and we mother them again. 

Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes— 

Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses. 

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead 

Go crying through our singing their ancient call for Bread; 

Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew— 

Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too. 

As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days— 

The rising of the women means the rising of the race. 

No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes— 

But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.