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Showing posts with label Maya Angelou. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maya Angelou. Show all posts
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Saturday, January 11, 2014
My, Oh Maya
UPDATE 10/15: Angelou is included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.
Revered author Maya Angelou, the first poet since Robert Frost to read a poem at a Presidential inauguration, wrote about her experiences with marijuana in Gather Together in My Name, the second installment of her autobiography after the acclaimed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Angelou, who started life as Rita Johnson from Stamps, Arkansas, was raped at the age of 7, and had an illegitimate child in her teens. Working as a waitress to support her son in San Diego, 18-year-old Rita met two lesbian prostitutes who frequented the bar where she worked. One night, the women invited her to their house for dinner. Angelou recounts:
"Let's have a little grifa before dinner." Johnnie Mae gave an order, not an invitation. She turned to me.
"You like grifa?"
"Yes. I smoke." The truth was I had smoked cigarettes for over a year, but never marijuana....I was prepared to refuse anything else they offered me, so I didn't feel I could very well refuse the pot....
I inhaled the smoke as casually as if the small brown cigarette I held were the conventional commercial kind.
"No. No. Don't waste the grifa. Hand it here....try it like this..."
I opened my throat and kept my tongue flat so that the smoke found no obstacle in its passage from my lips to my throat....
The food was the best I'd ever tasted. Every morsel was an experience of sheer delight. I lost myself in a haze of sensual pleasure, enjoying not only the tastes but the feel of the food in my mouth, the smells, and the sound of my jaws chewing.
"She's got a buzz. That's her third helping."
...I decided to dance for my hostesses. The music dipped and swayed, pulling and pushing. I let my body rest on the sound and turned and bowed in the tiny room. The shapes and forms melted until I felt I was in a charcoal sketch, or a sepia watercolor. (pp. 52-55)
By the end of the evening Rita had arranged to rent the women's house, putting them to work for her as prostitutes, with her barganing for their services with cab drivers and taking a cut. Meanwhile, she read Dostoevsky and studied dance. Soon the arrangement turned sour and she had to flee back to Stamps, where drinking Sloe gin "numbed my brain" and she had to make herself sick to get rid of the poison.
Rita went back to the West Coast and tried joining the Army in San Francisco, but was turned down because the The California Labor school, where she'd studied dance and drama, was deemed a Communist organization. So she started waitressing again, and smoking pot.
Smoking grass eased the strain for me. I made a connection at a restaurant nearby. People called it Mary Jane, hash, grass, gauge, weed, pot, and I had absolutely no fear of using it. In the black ghetto of the forties, marijuana, cocaine, hop (opium) and heroin were only a little harder to obtain than rationed whiskey. Although my mother didn't use anything but Scotch (Black & White), she often sang a song popular in the thirties that at its worst didn't condemn grass, and at its best extolled its virtues.
"Dream about a reefer five foot long
Vitamin [sic] but not too strong
You'll be high but not for long
If you're a viper..."
I learned new postures and developed new dreams. From a natural stiffness I melted into a grinning tolerance. Walking on the streets became high adventure, eating my mother's huge dinners an opulent entertainment, and playing with my son was side-cracking hilarity. For the first time, life amused me. ...
I disciplined myself. One joint on Sunday and one on the morning of my day off. The weed always had an intense and immediate effect. Before the cigarette was smoked down to roach length, I had to smother my giggles. Just to see the falling folds of the curtains or the sway of a chair was enough to bring me to audible laughter. After an hour the hysteria of the high would abate and I could trust myself in public. (p. 154).
After a brief stint dancing professionally, she met a married man who told her her, "It's gauge that's breaking my marriage....My silly dilly wife stopped letting me have any and she goes around laughing and giggling all the time." She flushed her pot for him and soon let him lead her into prostitution herself, where she was told if she was good she'd be given some "white girl" (cocaine) but, "They won't let you smoke hemp, though. They say it makes a 'ho too frisky. 'Hos get their heads bad and forget about tending to business."
At the close of the book, another man named Troubador shows her how he shot heroin, and makes her promise to keep her innocence. He gives her his clothes to sell so that she can escape and head back to her Mother's house.
In the following autobiographical installment, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Rita is discovered while dancing at a strip club in San Francisco and develops a Calypso singing act, changing her name and eventually finding her way to activism with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, as well as writing with the encouragement of James Baldwin and others.
Maya Angelou received over 50 honorary degrees and three Grammys. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000 and the Lincoln Medal in 2008.
PS: During the outpouring of tributes from everyone, including President Obama, after Angelou's death, I learned that she was the first African-American woman to operate a cable car in San Francisco (in her teens!) Cable cars use hemp fiber in the center of their steel cables. Another cannabis connection.
PPS: Angelou isn't the only revered US poet to sing the praises of pot. In his book of Haiku She Was Just 17, former poet laureate (2001-2003) Billy Collins wrote:
So many nicknames for you
But none as lovely as
marijuana
NOW AVAILABLE: Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.
Revered author Maya Angelou, the first poet since Robert Frost to read a poem at a Presidential inauguration, wrote about her experiences with marijuana in Gather Together in My Name, the second installment of her autobiography after the acclaimed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Angelou, who started life as Rita Johnson from Stamps, Arkansas, was raped at the age of 7, and had an illegitimate child in her teens. Working as a waitress to support her son in San Diego, 18-year-old Rita met two lesbian prostitutes who frequented the bar where she worked. One night, the women invited her to their house for dinner. Angelou recounts:
"Let's have a little grifa before dinner." Johnnie Mae gave an order, not an invitation. She turned to me.
"You like grifa?"
"Yes. I smoke." The truth was I had smoked cigarettes for over a year, but never marijuana....I was prepared to refuse anything else they offered me, so I didn't feel I could very well refuse the pot....
I inhaled the smoke as casually as if the small brown cigarette I held were the conventional commercial kind.
"No. No. Don't waste the grifa. Hand it here....try it like this..."
I opened my throat and kept my tongue flat so that the smoke found no obstacle in its passage from my lips to my throat....
The food was the best I'd ever tasted. Every morsel was an experience of sheer delight. I lost myself in a haze of sensual pleasure, enjoying not only the tastes but the feel of the food in my mouth, the smells, and the sound of my jaws chewing.
"She's got a buzz. That's her third helping."
...I decided to dance for my hostesses. The music dipped and swayed, pulling and pushing. I let my body rest on the sound and turned and bowed in the tiny room. The shapes and forms melted until I felt I was in a charcoal sketch, or a sepia watercolor. (pp. 52-55)
By the end of the evening Rita had arranged to rent the women's house, putting them to work for her as prostitutes, with her barganing for their services with cab drivers and taking a cut. Meanwhile, she read Dostoevsky and studied dance. Soon the arrangement turned sour and she had to flee back to Stamps, where drinking Sloe gin "numbed my brain" and she had to make herself sick to get rid of the poison.
Smoking grass eased the strain for me. I made a connection at a restaurant nearby. People called it Mary Jane, hash, grass, gauge, weed, pot, and I had absolutely no fear of using it. In the black ghetto of the forties, marijuana, cocaine, hop (opium) and heroin were only a little harder to obtain than rationed whiskey. Although my mother didn't use anything but Scotch (Black & White), she often sang a song popular in the thirties that at its worst didn't condemn grass, and at its best extolled its virtues.
"Dream about a reefer five foot long
Vitamin [sic] but not too strong
You'll be high but not for long
If you're a viper..."
I learned new postures and developed new dreams. From a natural stiffness I melted into a grinning tolerance. Walking on the streets became high adventure, eating my mother's huge dinners an opulent entertainment, and playing with my son was side-cracking hilarity. For the first time, life amused me. ...
I disciplined myself. One joint on Sunday and one on the morning of my day off. The weed always had an intense and immediate effect. Before the cigarette was smoked down to roach length, I had to smother my giggles. Just to see the falling folds of the curtains or the sway of a chair was enough to bring me to audible laughter. After an hour the hysteria of the high would abate and I could trust myself in public. (p. 154).
After a brief stint dancing professionally, she met a married man who told her her, "It's gauge that's breaking my marriage....My silly dilly wife stopped letting me have any and she goes around laughing and giggling all the time." She flushed her pot for him and soon let him lead her into prostitution herself, where she was told if she was good she'd be given some "white girl" (cocaine) but, "They won't let you smoke hemp, though. They say it makes a 'ho too frisky. 'Hos get their heads bad and forget about tending to business."
At the close of the book, another man named Troubador shows her how he shot heroin, and makes her promise to keep her innocence. He gives her his clothes to sell so that she can escape and head back to her Mother's house.
In the following autobiographical installment, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Rita is discovered while dancing at a strip club in San Francisco and develops a Calypso singing act, changing her name and eventually finding her way to activism with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, as well as writing with the encouragement of James Baldwin and others.
Maya Angelou received over 50 honorary degrees and three Grammys. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000 and the Lincoln Medal in 2008.
PS: During the outpouring of tributes from everyone, including President Obama, after Angelou's death, I learned that she was the first African-American woman to operate a cable car in San Francisco (in her teens!) Cable cars use hemp fiber in the center of their steel cables. Another cannabis connection.
PPS: Angelou isn't the only revered US poet to sing the praises of pot. In his book of Haiku She Was Just 17, former poet laureate (2001-2003) Billy Collins wrote:
So many nicknames for you
But none as lovely as
marijuana
NOW AVAILABLE: Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
OOOOOOOOOOOprah!
This year's a little better, with 11 women included and Oprah Winfrey coming in at #2, between Presidents Obama and Clinton.
Winfrey was asked when she last smoked marijuana on Bravo's "Watch What Happens Live" on August 16 and replied "Uh...1982." Host Andy Cohen then said, "Let's hang out after the show" to which she replied, "Okay. I hear it's gotten better."
At age 17, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant and began doing the news part time at radio station WVOL. She was then both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV. She moved to Baltimore in 1976 to co-anchor the six o'clock news at WJZ-TV where she became co-host of WJZ's local talk show People Are Talking.
By her admission, Winfrey did much of this during the time she smoked pot, until the age of 28. In 1983, she began to host AM Chicago, taking the show from last place in the ratings the highest-rated talk show in Chicago. The rest is herstory.
According to Kitty Kelley's unauthorized biography, drug use was so prevalent at the Nashville station when Oprah worked there that management removed a vending machine "after they discovered it had been rigged to dispense marijuana." On a special pre-taped show in January 1995, Winfrey tearfully admitted she did cocaine in her past, according to Kelley to stave off a lawsuit by a former boyfriend who alleged she addicted him to coke. Oprah's book club endorsement of former heroin addict James Frey's A Million Little Pieces blew up when it was uncovered Frey fabricated most of the book.
Like Obama, Winfrey is lucky she never got arrested for a youthful pot offense, or she might have had a much lesser career, like 2008's Miss Teen Louisiana Lindsey Evans.
Showing up next on MPP's list is Lady Gaga at position #20. Last year, Gaga missed the cut, coming in at #52 (even though she was probably more influential last year). Jennifer Aniston (last year's #38) follows at #25, and Angelina Jolie dropped from #24 to #28 (maybe because she says she doesn't like pot). Sarah Palin dropped the furthest, from #14 on last year's list to #39 this year.
Martha Stewart is new to the list, coming in at #29 after she also joked with Cohen about knowing how to roll a joint. The venerable Susan Sarandon joins the list at #33, with an early admission uncovered by VeryImportantPotheads.com
Also newly added are Madonna (#42), Miley Cyrus (#45) and Rhianna (#47). Maya Angelou, who was the top woman on the MPP list last year at #21, dropped down to #37, and Whoopi Goldberg, who made last year's list at #44, has dropped off entirely.
Some obvious omissions to the list are: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway, Melissa Etheridge, Joan Rivers and Roseanne Barr. I sure hope someone asks Hillary Clinton soon if she smoked.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Black Herstory Month
Born to a large, poor family in Chatanooga, Tennessee, Bessie joined a traveling minstrel show at age 14. Bessie was soon performing on stages all over the country as The Empress of the Blues. In 1933, Smith recorded "Gimmie a Pigfoot," featuring Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden, for John Hammond's Okeh record label. In the last verse Smith sings, "Gimmie a reefer" in this video.
"[S]he was more than merely famous, she was a living symbol of personal freedom: she did what she liked; she spoke her mind, no matter how outrageous her opinion; she flouted bourgeois norms and engaged in alcohol, drugs, and recreational sex," wrote Buzzy Jackson in A Bad Woman Feeling Good (2005, W.W. Norton & Co., New York).
On September 26, 1937, weeks after the Marijuana Tax Act made marijuana effectively illegal in the US, Smith was in a traffic accident on US Highway 61 and died from her injuries. Some say Smith was turned away from a "whites only" hospital for treatment. Her funeral was held in Philadelphia on October 4, 1937 and was attended by about seven thousand people.
Louis Armstrong wrote of her, circa 1929, "I shall never forget her, and her Dance. She was so wonderful in her 'Shake dance she would take 5 and 6 Encores."
In his 1974 autobiography, Berle says of Cook, "She was known as one of the greatest belly dancers in the world, and her act was sensational, with everything going like a flag in a hurricane. She was one of those rare women that men had only to look at to want. And that was even standing still. She was slender, and light-skinned like the color of coffee with too much cream in it, and she had her hair in an Afro, which wasn't standard gear then. When she worked, she covered her body with oil that made it shiny and sexy-looking." Cook is the featured dancer in this clip.
World-famous dancer and activist Josephine Baker indulged in marijuana, according to Josephine: The Hungry Heart by Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase. Phillip Leshing, who was then a 23-year-old bass player in Buddy Rich's orchestra, recalls in the book, "I remember once Josephine invited several of us to come to her dressing room and try some very good reefer. I went down with Harry 'Sweets' Edison, the trumpet player, and Buddy Rich, and we smoked pot with Josephine Baker...but the marijuana didn't affect her performance. Never." (p. 295)
According to Leshing, Baker "had this gorgeous gold loving cup made for Buddy and the band, a trophy, like an Academy Award, with our names engraved on it. And it was filled with marijuana. She gave it to us after the last performance at the Strand [the New York club at which they were appearing in March 1951]." The authors speculate that Baker may have first smoked marijuana with her lover Georges Simenon, who used to mix hashish with tobacco in his pipe, or with the Prince of Wales in Paris, in the days when he would come to Le Rat Mort had to be taken out "feet first every night--dead drunk and stoned," according to another lover, Claude Hopkins.
Baker adopted more children than Angelina Jolie and was decorated by France for her work for the Resistance. See a video of Baker's famous banana dance.
Modern Tokin' Women include Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Grace Jones, Rihanna, and Queen Latifah. And when dancer Carmen de Lavallade was bestowed a Kennedy Center Honor in 2017, Stella Abrera performed "Soul Bossa Nova/Dear Quincy" (with pipe) in tribute.
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