Willie's Weed-Filled 90th Birthday Concert on Film

Margo Price performs with Bob Weir at the concert. 

UPDATE 12/23: The concert (or parts of it) is now viewable on CBS. 

The concert at the Hollywood Bowl celebrating Willie Nelson's 90th birthday is the subject of a film now in limited release across the country. It's the next best thing to having been there, with crowd shots and a good theatre's sound system recreating that concert vibe, although lacking the doobies that were smoked at the event, both by the crowd and the performers (offstage). Not all of the performances from the two-day concert are included, but there's plenty to enjoy for pot lovers, music lovers, and the many who appreciate Willie Nelson. 

Billy Strings started it off by getting the crowd rocking and demonstrating his amazing virtuosity on the guitar, which he also displayed and backing up Bob Weir on “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain.” Strings joined Nelson toward the end to perform his song "California Sober," which he recorded with Willie earlier this year. 

Marijuana is first mentioned by Willie's son Micah, who sang his song inspired by a statement his Dad made: "If I Die When I'm High I'm Halfway to Heaven." Jack Johnson, wearing a "Have a Willie Nice Day" T-shirt, sang his song "Willie Got Me High and Took All My Money" about a poker game gone wrong. 

Intros for the acts were provided by Helen Mirren, Ethan Hawke, Jennifer Garner, and Owen Wilson. Wilson, a Texas native, spoke about how popular Nelson was in Austin, bringing together hippies and rednecks alike, and thanked Willie for "always inspiring us to take the HIGH road." A seriously stoned, grinning Woody Harrelson got to effusively introduce Nelson, acknowledging his inspiring humanitarian work for farmers and "our blessed Saint Mary Jane." 

Nelson started his set with Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" before dueting with Sheryl Crow, who noted that Willie was the only person to ever offer her dad a joint, and recently said from the stage that vinyl and weed would save music.

Margo Price was a High-light, rocking out wearing white go-go boots and a green jacket adorned with silver pot leaves. Price introduced a marijuana line with Nelson's Willie's Reserve in 2019, and recently launched a CBG line in conjunction with Mom Grass. On Day 2 of the concert, she dueted with Nathaniel Rateliff on "I Can Get Off on You." 

Of Cicely and Sinéad, and Marijuana

Browsing in the biography section of my local library, I came upon two somewhat bald-faced books published in 2021 by shaved-headed women: Cicely Tyson and Sinéad O'Connor. Both books address marijuana. 

Tyson, who rose from youthful poverty to a brilliant career as a model and actress, chose an arresting portrait with a shaved head taken by photographer Lord Snowdon in the early 1970’s for the cover of her memoir, Just As I Am. Raised with a strong influence by her church, Tyson married Miles Davis, whose drug use was beyond her reckoning. 

"Whatever he smoked or shot up, he usually reeked of it. I knew the scent of marijuana, but other than that, I couldn't tell the difference between coke or heroin or any other drug," she wrote. "He tried to cover it with cologne (he loved his collection), but I could still smell it. And when I did, I stayed as far away from him as I could, because I knew I wouldn't be having talking to Miles anymore. I'd be having a conversation with the person he became when a substance had taken him over. The drugs. The wandering eye. The outbursts. I dealt with it then by not engaging it. I suppose it was my way of reconciling the Miles I knew, the poor soul bearing a hurt-filled past, with the Miles he became in quelling his pain."

Later Tyson helped him clean up from drugs, including alcohol and cigarettes, but Davis, who she describes as being consistently furious over racism, ultimately succumbed to them. According to Tyson, he altered his autobiography to be critical of her after she refused to reunite with him. She published her book two days before her death at age 96. 

O'Connor, who suffered physical and sexual abuse growing up in Ireland, chose a shaved-head hairstyle partly as protection against predation. Growing up in a different time than Tyson, she used marijuana and tried other drugs, which she now denounces. 

In the forward to her book Rememberings she claims she can't necessarily remember all the details of her life because she wasn't "present" for them; she blames this in part on weed, writing, "I was actually present before my first album came out. And then I went somewhere else inside myself. And I began to smoke weed. I never finally stopped until mid-2020. So, yeah, I ain't been quite here." 

However, the book is quite detailed, so somehow she remembered much of her life. She adds, "Making music is hard to write about. I was present then. In the place deep inside myself that only I know." And she writes about how much of her music was made while she was on weed.

Tokin' Women and Others We Lost in May 2023

 

James Watt (5/27)

As President Ronald Reagan’s first Interior secretary, Watt "tilted environmental policies sharply toward commercial exploitation, touching off a national debate over the development or preservation of America’s public lands and resources." (Source.) After taking office in 1981, Watt was asked at a hearing of the House Interior Committee if he favored preserving wilderness areas for future generations. The born-again Christian replied, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.” He soon transferred control of many of the nation's resources to private industry, and opened most of the Outer Continental Shelf — nearly all of America’s coastal waters — to drilling leases by oil and gas companies. He widened access to coal on federal lands, eased restrictions on strip-mining, and increased industry access to wilderness areas for drilling, mining and lumbering, among other "reforms." Environmental groups called for his dismissal and some secretly lamented when he resigned because having him in office helped with their fundraising efforts. 

Tina Turner (5/25)

"We don't need another hero, we need more heroines like you," said Oprah Winfrey at the 2005 ceremony featuring Queen Latifah, Melissa Etheridge and Beyoncé bestowing Turner with a Kennedy Center Honor. The singing and dancing powerhouse and Queen of Rock and Roll survived a physically abusive relationship with her husband and musical partner Ike Turner before escaping with 36 cents in her pocket and divorcing him in 1978. She gave up all the couple's assets in her divorce settlement so that she could continue to use her stage name launched a solo career. A series of 1980s monster hits like the empowering "Better Be Good to Me" followed, along with a film career and a lucrative modeling contract for Hanes pantyhose after a poll revealed she had the most-admired legs in the US.  Like her fellow dancing/singing phenomenon Josephine Baker, Turner was wildly popular in Europe and expatriated to France, then Switzerland. A devout Buddhist, Tina the Acid Queen believed she was the reincarnation of the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, who was associated with Seshat, Goddess of Knowledge and Cannabis. Her biography I, Tina says that although the Ikettes were known to sneak an occasional joint, she only tried weed once, but let Ike give her Benzedrine to get through lengthy recording sessions, and they recorded a song called "Contact High." This performance (above) was recorded in 2009, the year she turned 70. We can't wait for her next incarnation.

Jewish American Heritage Month and Marijuana

President Biden has proclaimed May 2023 as Jewish American Heritage Month, calling upon all  Americans to "learn more about the heritage and contributions of Jewish Americans."

So being a patriotic (actually, more matriartic) American, I looked at my list of cannabis connoisseurs at VeryImportantPotheads.com, as well as this blog, and came up with an impressive list of Jewish Americans who have contributed to society while taking the THC molecule that was discovered by Israeli scientist Raphael Mechoulam.  

Maybe it's true that the Burning Bush that spoke to Moses was cannabis or his anointing oil contained it, because President Richard Nixon (strangely) observed to his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman on May 26, 1971, "You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."

As revealed by Boston Globe writer Dan Abrams, Nixon had been briefed that morning on the book Marihuana Reconsidered by Jewish psychiatrist Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a Harvard professor. The landmark book "helped launch the contemporary movement to legalize the drug, lending Ivy League credibility to a cause more associated with hippie counterculture than serious medical research," wrote Abrams. 

But psychiatrists are not the only Jewish Americans associated with marijuana. 

Tokin' Women and Others We Lost in April 2023

Tangaraju Suppiah (4/26)

Suppiah, aged 46, was executed by hanging in Singapore after being found guilty of "aiding and abetting" the smuggling of 1 kg (35 oz.) of cannabis. Human rights activists, the United Nations, and Richard Branson protested the death sentence, especially since no drugs were found in Suppiah's possession. Singapore is one of 35 countries and territories in the world that sentence people to death for drug crimes, according to Harm Reduction International (HRI). Last year Singapore hanged 11 people, all on drug charges - including an intellectually impaired man convicted of trafficking three tablespoons of heroin. Singapore's neighbor Malaysia abolished mandatory death penalties earlier this month, saying it was not an effective deterrent to crime. Neighboring Thailand has decriminalized cannabis, and is encouraging its trade. Source. 

UPDATE: Three weeks after Suppiah's killing, an unnamed 37-year-old man was executed after his last-ditch bid to reopen his case was dismissed by the court Tuesday without a hearing, said activist Kokila Annamalai of the Transformative Justice Collective, which advocates for abolishing the death penalty in Singapore. The man, who was not named as his family has asked for privacy, had been imprisoned for seven years and convicted in 2019 for trafficking around 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) of cannabis, she said. “If we don’t come together to stop it, we fear that this killing spree will continue in the weeks and months to come,” she said. Some 600 prisoners are on death row in the city-state, mostly for drug-related offenses, she added.

Harry Belafonte (4/25)

Singer, actor, and activist Belafonte brought Island music to the mainland with songs like "Day-O" and "Jamaican Farewell." He appeared in the film "Carmen Jones," an all-black remake of the opera "Carmen," in which a soldier is lead astray by a Gypsy drug smuggler. Belafonte was an ally of Martin Luther King and major figure in the civil rights movement, remaining active in various causes all his life. In the 1980s, he helped organize a cultural boycott of South Africa as well as the Live Aid concert, and became UNICEF’s good-will ambassador. In 2002, he accused Secretary of State Colin L. Powell of abandoning his principles to “come into the house of the master.” He called George Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world,” the Koch brothers "white supremacists," and Donald Trump “feckless and immature.” In 2014, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in recognition of his lifelong fight for civil rights and other causes. Source.

Emily Meggett (4/21)

Meggett, who never once used a cookbook or recipe, shot to national fame last year when she published her own cookbook at the age of 89. Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes From the Matriarch of Edisto Island, her first and only publication, went on to become a New York Times bestseller. Meggett was born on the South Carolina island of Edisto, and lived there for her entire life. A descendant of the Gullah-Geechee people, she learned to cook from her grandmother and spent half a century cooking in the vacation homes of wealthy white families, with her side door was always open to feed friends and family. "A lot of times, we has a treasure in our head. And we will die and go to heaven, and take that treasury with us,” Meggett told WFAE back in 2022. “And why can't we just share it with somebody else here?" Source. 

Salma Khadra Jayyusi (4/20)

Palestinian poet, writer, translator and anthologist Jayyusi was the founder and director of the Project of Translation from Arabic (PROTA), which aims to provide translation of Arabic literature into English. In 1960, she published her first poetry collection, Return from the Dreamy Fountain and 1970, she received her PhD on Arabic literature from the University of London. She went on to teach at universities across the Middle East and the US, and publish and translate several books and anthologies. In "April Woman," she wrote to her son:

And I gave you

love's ecstasy

the will to conquer

passionate devotion

and the enchantment of the spirit

in the presence of holy fire.

 

Ahmad Jamal (4/16)

Miles Davis once said, “All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.” Born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Jamal began playing piano at the age of three and "made a lasting mark on jazz with a stately approach that honored what he called the spaces in the music" with an output of albums that "was as prodigious as his light-fingered style was economical." (Source.) Awards bestowed on Jamal included the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award, a lifetime achievement Grammy, and induction into France’s Order of Arts and Letters. 

Norm Kent (4/13)

As well as being a prominent LGBTQ activist and longtime board member and board chair for NORML, Kent was the attorney who got Elvy Musikka off on a marijuana charge in Florida in 1988 due to her glaucoma. The judge ruled her pot garden was a “medical necessity” and found her not guilty in a case that made headlines internationally. Afterwards, Musikka became one of a handful of people and the only woman supplied with federally-grown marijuana for her for medical needs under the IND program. Here is Norm in his signature fedora with me in my hemp hat at a 2016 NORML conference.

Mary Quant (4/13) 

"I think I always knew that what I wanted to do was to make clothes....clothes that would be fun to wear," wrote the influential fashion designer in her autobiography Quant by Quant. Saddened and embarrassed by the ornate and formal clothes she was made to wear as a child, she started her revolt at the age of six by cutting up her aunt's colorful bedspread with nail scissors to make a dress from it. Encouraged to sew for economic reasons, she invented her own school uniform. Admiring the short-skirted costume of a girl who took tap dancing lessons lead to her later being crowned the Mother of the Mini Skirt in the early 1960s in London. An international fashion empire ensued and when I look at pictures of her clothes, I realize how much they influenced what we all wore in the '70s. 

Megan Terry (4/12)

Terry was a prolific feminist playwright and a founding member of the Open Theater group and the Women’s Theater Council. While supporting herself by working as an actress in television serials, she wrote plays like "The Magic Realist" (1960), which explored the inequity of a capitalistic economic power structure on individuals, families, and criminal justice, and "Ex-Miss Copper Queen on a Set of Pills," the story of an ex-beauty queen who has begun working as a prostitute to support her drug addiction. Terry's “Viet Rock: A Folk War Movie” (1966) was both the first rock musical and the first play addressing the Vietnam war. “Approaching Simone” (1970), about Simone Weil, the French activist philosopher, won the Obie Award for best Off Broadway play. By the end of her career, she had written 70 plays.

Blair Tindall

Oboist Tindall's book Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music blew the lid off the classical music world, and the Amazon series based on it won the Golden Globe in 2016 for best television series, comedy or musical. Two female members of the orchestra (shown) bond over a pipe in the series, where the drummer (natch) is the peddler. Tindall earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Manhattan School of Music and played in the pit orchestras of “Miss Saigon” and “Les Misérables.” After earning a masters in journalism at Stanford, she wrote for various newspapers, pieces like Better Playing Through Chemistry and Psychedelic Palo Alto. She her fiancé, the photographer Chris Sattlberger, planned to marry on May 1. Tindall died at the age of 63 of cardiovascular disease.

Jessica Burstein (4/11)

Burstein was the first female photographer hired by a network TV station, something for which she credited affirmative action. In the 1990s she photographed often-unwilling celebrities as the official (and unpaid) photographer at Elaine's, the posh and popular Manhattan night spot, and later became the staff photographer for "Law and Order." Born with a "wandering eye," she underwent surgery and treatment at the age of 8. Given a Brownie camera as a therapeutic tool, she began photographing obsessively, influenced by Life magazine, Margaret Bourke-White and the Vietnam war resistance. She joined a group called "The Concerned Photographers," realizing she could make a difference with her camera, and was also a labor leader, serving as executive board of the New York chapter of the International Cinematographer's Guild. Shown: Self portrait with Arthur Ashe.

Al Jaffee (4/10)

One of my favorite features of Mad magazine was the Jaffee's Fold-In that appeared at the back, in which the reader would fold the page to answer a riddle. Jaffee, who also wrote the "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" feature for the magazine, worked for Mad for 65 years, retiring at the age of 99 a few years before he died this year at age 102. This was the final Fold-In he drew.

Jane LaTour (4/3) 

LaTour was an American labor activist, educator, and journalist who advocated union democracy and documented the role of women in traditionally male-dominated trades. She was the author of Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City. A two-time recipient of the Mary Heaton Vorse Award for labor journalism, she was an associate editor for Public Employee Press, the publication of District 37 of AFSCME, and contributed to numerous other publications. For many years, she was the director of the Women's Project for the Association for Union Democracy, and served on the boards of the New York Labor History Association and the Women's Press Collective. 

Alicia Shepard (4/1)

A writer and media observer who served as ombudsman of NPR, Shepard examined the lives of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in a book about the legacy of the Watergate investigation, and chronicled her adventure sailing across the South Pacific with her infant son in tow. She spent the early years of her career as a general-assignment reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, and freelanced over the years for publications including The Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today and Washingtonian magazine. She later taught journalism at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and media ethics at the University of Arkansas.  Source. 

Positive Cannabis Test Strips US Long Jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall of National Title

UPDATE 8/9/2024: Davis-Woodhall has won the Gold Medal at the Paris Olympics. Sha'Carri Richardson took the Silver medal in the 100-meter and won Gold as part of the women's 4x100-meter relay with Gabby Thomas, Melissa Jefferson and Twanisha Terry. Brittney Griner and the U.S. women’s basketball team soared past Australia 85-64 to advance to Sunday’s gold medal game.

PHOTO: Patrick Smith

Another black woman track star has been penalized over a positive cannabis test. 

US long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall has been stripped of her recent national indoor title and hit with a one-month suspension after a positive test for cannabis, the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) announced yesterday.  

According to the agency's statement, Davis-Woodhall, 23, tested positive for 11-nor-9-carboxy-tetrahydrocannabinol (Carboxy-THC), an inactive urinary metabolite of the psychoactive chemical Δ9-THC, above the urinary Decision Limit of 180 ng/mL. Her urine sample was collected at the 2023 USATF Indoor Championships in Albuquerque New Mexico on February 17, 2023, the same day she had won the title with a jump of 6.99 meters.

Inactive metabolites can be detected in the urine days or months after use, and apparently Davis-Woodhall's use was deemed "out-of-competition," meaning she had only a one-month suspension, but had to forfeit all titles she won on and subsequent to February 17. 

Despite public outcry over the 2021 suspension from the US Olympic team of champion sprinter and Tokin' Woman of the Year Sha'Carri Richardson, cannabis remains prohibited in-competition under the United States Olympic Committee National Anti-Doping Policies and the World Athletics Anti-Doping Rules. 

Mary Lou Williams: Rolling 'Em

On my way to the art show in Pittsburgh, PA highlighting the Russian imprisonment of schoolteacher Marc Fogel over marijuana, I happened to spot this sign honoring the American Federation of Musicians, with Tokin' Woman Mary Lou Williams getting top billing. 

The stunning 2015 documentary Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band, now viewable on Kanopy via your local public library, presents the huge talent, prominence, and lack of acceptance of this pioneer jazz pianist, arranger and composer. 

Born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in Atlanta, Mary Lou Williams grew up in Pittsburgh, where she taught herself to play the piano at the age of four and began playing publicly two years later, to much acclaim and popularity. In 1924 she began touring on the Orpheum Circuit and the following year she played with Duke Ellington and the Washingtonians. 

In 1930 Williams traveled to Chicago and cut her first solo record, "Drag 'Em" and "Night Life," which was a national success. Soon she was playing solo gigs and working as a freelance writer arranger for such noteworthy names as Earl Hines and Tommy Dorsey. 

In 1937 she wrote "Roll 'Em” (1937) for Very Important Pothead Benny Goodman, which was recorded for Goodman’s “When Buddhah Smiles” LP, featuring Fletcher Henderson and VIP Gene Krupa on drums. All told, she wrote more than 350 compositions. 

The documentary says Williams broke up with her first husband over her infidelity, but Morning Glory, a biography of Williams by Linda Dahl (University of California Press, 1999), says it was over "the taste she had acquired for marijuana." Dahl wrote, "Kansas City was a major railroad hub of the nation, distributing drugs along with corn and wheat, so it was easily available in the nightclubs there." Unable to handle liquor, pot "agreed with her." 

John said Mary Lou had been turned onto reefer by a fellow bandmate in the Clouds of Joy, a group that recorded Earl Thompson's song about reefer, "All the Jive Is Gone" in 1936. Williams "found marijuana calming, useful for reflecting and relaxing at times" (Dahl). By 1941 Mary had developed a lifestyle that disdained alcohol and developed "a taste for gambling, marijuana, and men." 

Making the transition from stride piano to bebop, Williams played regularly at the famous Café Society in New York City, started a weekly radio show called "Mary Lou Williams's Piano Workshop" on WNEW, and began mentoring and collaborating with many younger bebop musicians, most notably Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. 

Barney Josephson fired her for smoking pot one night at Café Uptown, even though as Doc Cheatham put it, "everyone in that group smoked pot. They had a little room off the bandstand and some, including Mary Lou and Billie [Holiday], would smoke pot in there. They would put me outside the door in a chair smoking a pipe that would cover the fumes of the pot." 

Artists “Make a Marc” to Bring Marc Fogel Home from Russian Prison for Pot

Portraits of Marc Fogel by Sasha Phillips, Tom Mosser and others at the 4/1 "Make a Marc" Show 

Nearly 100 artists contributed works to a well attended “Make a Marc” art show in Pittsburgh on April 1 to bring attention to the case of Marc Fogel, a 61-year-old high school history teacher from Oakmont, PA who is serving a 14-year sentence in Russia for bringing ½ oz. of medical marijuana into that country in August 2021.

In attendance were family and friends of Fogel, including his 94-year-old mother; his attorney Aleksandra “Sasha” Phillips; faculty from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies; and Field Representative Robbie Matesic of Sen. Bob Casey’s office, who read a statement from the Senator about his ongoing commitment to bringing Fogel home, calling him “a passionate and talented educator and a devoted husband and father.”

Marc’s sister Lisa Hyland said the family speaks to the US State Department weekly and they tell her every week how many letters have been received in support of Fogel’s release. Supporters are asked to write to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken asking for Fogel to be designated as “wrongfully detained” in the way that WNBA star Brittney Griner was designated after she was imprisoned for bringing cannabis vape pens into Russia, before her release in a prisoner swap late last year. You can also Sign a Change.org petition to Free Marc Fogel.

The event happened just as Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gerhkovich was detained in Russia on espionage charges, leading the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to publish an editorial titled, “Reporter arrested in Russia should remind White House of Marc Fogel." Last month, the Best Documentary Oscar went to “Navalny” about the imprisoned rival to President Putin.

Tokin' Women and Others We Lost in March 2023

 

Virginia Norwood (3/27)

Norwood's school guidance counselor suggested that she become a librarian, advice that she ignored. Instead she applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was one of about a dozen women in her entering class. She became an aerospace pioneer who invented the scanner that has been used to map and study the earth from space for than 50 years, and is known as the Mother of the Lansat. Relying on her invention, the United States Geological Survey's Landsat satellites orbit the earth every 99 minutes and have captured a complete image of the planet every 16 days since 1972. These images have provided powerful visual evidence of climate change, deforestation and other shifts affecting the planet’s well-being. She died at the age of 96 at her home in Topanga, CA. 

Keith Reid (3/23)

In the 1991 movie "The Commitments," a  young Irish keyboard player is caught by a priest playing the Bach-inspired opening chords to Procol Harum's iconic "A Whiter Shade of Pale" on the church organ (above). A discussion about the song's enigmatic lyrics ensues. Those lyrics were written by Reid, a founding member of the band who did not sing or play an instrument, and wrote his songs as poems. His father, who was fluent in six languages, had been a lawyer in Vienna but was among more than 6,000 Jews arrested there in November 1938, and fled to England upon his release. During the 1990s, Reid wrote for Annie Lennox, Willie Nelson, Heart and many others, and released two albums by The Keith Reid Project, including this song with vocals by Maya Sazell.  

Gloria Dea (3/18)

Gloria Metzner began working as a magician at the age of 7 alongside her father, a paint salesman and part-time musician. Interviewed by The Oakland Tribune when she was 11, she said she had an arsenal of 50 tricks and was adding more. She is now thought to be the first magician who ever performed in Las Vegas, under her stage name Gloria Dea in 1941. Along the way, she developed dancing, modeling and acting skills, and appeared in some films, including Ed Wood's “Plan 9 From Outer Space." By the time her 100th birthday arrived last August, David Copperfield had proclaimed a Gloria Dea Day, she was given a “Key to the Las Vegas Strip,” and magicians of all stripes turned up for her birthday party. Source.

Charity Scott (3/18)

Scott was among the earliest lawyers to apply antitrust law to hospitals. This experience was an inspiration to develop programs on health care law after her switch to academia at George State University, where she introduced many innovations into the teaching of law, including the incorporation of techniques from improv comedy in the legal classroom and designing courses on mindfulness and the law. GSU's health care law program is notable for community involvement with hospitals and with Georgia Legal Services through a clinic called The Health Law Partnership (HeLP) founded in 2007, and for the academic Center for Law, Health and Society.

Pat Schroeder (3/13)

In 1972 Schroeder became the first woman from Colorado elected to Congress, where she served 12 terms. One of her biggest legislative victories was a family leave bill in 1993; she was also instrumental in laws that protected women from being fired because they had become pregnant, and that expanded roles for women in the military. When one congressman asked how she could be a House member and the mother of two small children at the same time, she replied, "I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both." She once chided Pentagon officials that if they were women, they would always be pregnant, because they never said "No.″ In 1998 she published, "24 Years of Housework...and the Place Is Still a Mess: My Life in Politics," which chronicled the frustration she experienced with the men who dominated Washington.  Source. 

Raphael Mechoulam (3/9)

Israeli researcher Mechoulam was the first to discover the main active component of cannabis—THC—in 1964. He also isolated other cannabinoids, and worked our the structure of CBD (cannabidiol). After the cannabis receptor CB1 was discovered in the brain by (female) researcher Allyn Howlett in the 1980s, Mechoulam's team identified an endogenous cannabinoid that binds to it and called it anandamide, based on the word “ananda” in Sanskrit, which means “supreme joy.” Author Michael Pollan, who describes the discovery of anandamide in his bestselling book The Botany of Desire, has said that Howlett and Mechoulam should be considered for the Nobel prize. Read more. 

Robert Blake (3/9)

Blake began performing at 2, when his abusive father would take him and his brother and sister to New Jersey parks to dance for money. By age 5 he was a regular in the “Our Gang” film comedies (pictured) and went on to a career in film (In Cold Blood) and television ("Baretta"). He was acquitted in 2005 of killing Bonny Lee Bakley, whom he married after a one-night stand left her pregnant with his child. She had nine former husbands and a dozen aliases, and was on probation for fraud. At the trial, author and UCLA professor Ron Siegel (Intoxication) testified that the use of meth and cocaine by the former stuntmen who testified that Blake hired them to shoot Bakley could have made them delusional. (Others said it was Christian Brando who ordered the killing.) The trial and subsequent civil suit left Blake bankrupt. I met him at a Hollywood party in 1999 where everyone was ignoring little, non-famous me until he looked at me and said in his tough-guy Baretta accent, "So, what do you do for a buck?" When I said I was an activist he said he'd done some marching himself. Reportedly, he took an eight-year break from acting, supporting union leader Cesar Chavez and opposing nuclear energy.

Traute Lafrenz (3/6)

Lafrenz was the last known survivor of the White Rose, a group of students who resisted the Nazi regime in Germany during World War II. Born in Hamburg, Lafrenz moved to Munich to study medicine. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, she was freed by American troops in April 1945, during the final days of the war. She emigrated to the United States, completed her medical training in San Francisco, and headed a school in Chicago before retiring in South Carolina. On her 100th birthday Lafrenz was awarded Germany's Order of Merit, citing her as one of the few who, "in the face of the crimes of national socialism, had the courage to listen to the voice of her conscience and rebel against the dictatorship and the genocide of the Jews. She is a heroine of freedom and humanity." Source.

Judy Heumann (3/4)

The "mother of the disability rights movement,"  Heumann lost her ability to walk at age 2 after contracting polio. She grew up to become an activist who, through protests and legal actions, helped secure legislation protecting the rights of the disabled, including the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Rehabilitation Act. She was featured in the Oscar-nominated 2020 documentary, "Crip Camp," which highlighted Camp Jened, a summer camp in New York's Catskills for people with disabilities, where Heumann was a counselor. Source. 

 

David Lindley (3/3)

Lindley was a founding member of the 1960s psychedelic band Kaleidoscope and also founded the rock band El Rayo-X. He scored and composed music for film, and worked as a musical director and instrumentalist with many other performers including Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Dolly Parton, Warren Zevon, David Grisman, and Curtis Mayfield. Lindley mastered such a wide variety of instruments that Acoustic Guitar magazine referred to him not as a multi-instrumentalist but instead as a "maxi-instrumentalist." On stage, Lindley was known for his humor, and for wearing garishly colored polyester shirts with clashing pants, gaining the nickname the Prince of Polyester. He often played in Humboldt County, CA, part of the pot-growing Emerald Triangle. May he cruise his Mercury straight to heaven. 

Orrin Bolton (3/2)

When I petitioned for the 1992 Colorado Hemp Initiative at a Michael Bolton concert, it was a bust: everyone was drunk and rude. Apparently, I had the wrong Bolton. I learn now from CelebStoner that Orrin was a marijuana legalization advocate, a board member of Connecticut NORML, and a musician as well. His more famous sibling tweeted, "My brother, my mentor, my introduction to my love of music. We've shared songs, sports, long hair and the stage. Forever the traveler, I know your music guides you into your next journey. RIP." Here Orrin sings his song "Freedom" about the weed. 

More US Women Are Smoking Weed But They're Still Reluctant to Admit It

Multistate cannabis retailer MedMen decided to poll women for International Women's Day and Women's History Month this year. 

The survey, conducted online by The Harris Poll, found that more than one-third (37%) of American women aged 21+ consume cannabis, and more than one in four (28%) say they use cannabis once a month or more often. 

Two thirds (65%) of the women who answered that they use cannabis say there are people in their life that still do not know they use it, including their parents (26%), children (22%), and coworkers (21%). 

While 27% of female cannabis users cited "no concerns" regarding their cannabis use, 20% said their biggest concern is drug testing, which continues to happen nationwide by employers and doctors, despite some state laws protecting workers or medical marijuana patients. I don't know if the women were asked about concerns that their parental rights would also be interfered with for using cannabis. 

The top three reasons women said they use cannabis are to relieve anxiety (60%), to help them sleep (58%), and to relieve pain (53%). It's possible women still don't want to admit that they use cannabis recreationally.

“March is a meaningful time to celebrate women and create awareness around issues that matter to them,” said Karen Torres, Chief Product Officer at MedMen. “We know first-hand from our female-identifying employees and customers that women are increasingly turning to cannabis for their health and wellness needs. However, it’s clear that stigmas persist and inhibit us from sharing our experiences freely.” 

RIP Raphael Mechoulam, Discoverer of THC

 

Israeli scientist Raphael Mechoulam, who died on March 9 at the age of 92, was the perfect person to discover the main active component of cannabis—THC—in 1964. Small of stature, soft-spoken and plain-speaking, he was insatiably curious, with a little bit of a kindly, mischievous twinkle in his eye at all times. 

CBD (cannabidiol) had been isolated by Roger Adams in the 1930s and by Alexander Todd at about the same time, but the structure wasn’t known. A natural products chemist, Mechoulam and his team unraveled the structure of CBD, and isolated THC, along with several other cannabinoids. 

As illustrated in the film The Scientist, his first experiment with humans and cannabis involved his wife Dalia baking a cake containing THC, and a placebo cake without the special ingredient, which were fed to two groups of the couple's friends. All of the people who had the THC-laced cake were affected, in different ways: some got introspective, some got giggly, some anxious—effects that are familiar today but were then almost unknown. 

At the time, the mechanism of cannabinoid action in the body was not understood. After the cannabis receptor CB1 was discovered in the brain by (female) researcher Allyn Howlett in the 1980s, Mechoulam's team went looking for endogenous (natural in the body) compounds that activate those receptors, because, as he told an interviewer from the International League Against Epilepsy in 2019, "Receptors don’t exist because there’s a plant out there; receptors exist because we, through compounds made in our body, activate them." 

When his team identified an endogenous cannabinoid in 1992, they called it anandamide, based on the word “ananda” in Sanskrit, which means “supreme joy.” Author Michael Pollan, who describes the discovery of anandamide in his bestselling book The Botany of Desire, said that Howlett and Mechoulam should be considered for the Nobel prize. 

Women's History Month: Celebrating Tokin' Women Who Tell Our Stories

The theme of this year's Women's History Month is "Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories" and the photocollage of such women on the National Women's History Alliance website depicts at least two, and possibly three, Tokin' Women: Maya Angelou, Lillian Hellman, and Gertrude Stein. 

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. She recounted that after smoking grifa, "I lost myself in a haze of sensual pleasure....The shapes and forms melted until I felt I was in a charcoal sketch, or a sepia watercolor." 

Playwright and author Lillian Hellman was reportedly a bit of a cougar in her later years, enjoying the company of young single men in New York in the mid-1970s "with a leaning towards the sort of outrageousness that produced the hearty Hellman belly laugh," sometimes induced by smoking marijuana. "Lil said she used mj when she was around people who used it. As in 'Whenever I'd be at a dinner with Gene Krupa...'" said journalist/activist Fred Gardner, who used to supply her in the 60s. 

Gertrude Stein co-hostessed a salon in Paris that fostered artists like Picasso. She also was a stream-of-consciousness writer who wrote "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" about her longtime lover, whose cookbook features a recipe for hashish fudge, "which anyone could whip up on a rainy day." An interesting character by the name of Jenny Reefer appears in "The Mother of Us All," a 1947 opera about the life and career of suffragette Susan B. Anthony for which Stein wrote the libretto. 

A disc depicting Enheduanna (second
from left) overseeing a ceremony.

Cannabis and storytelling have long been interwoven. Terence McKenna connects the expression "spinning a yarn" to hemp's dual purpose as a fiber and an intoxicant leading to flights of fancy in his book Food of the Gods. In Fitz Hugh Ludlow's influential 1857 book The Hasheesh Eater, he describes a hashish-induced vision of a crone knit of purple yarn. 

It's now come out that the first known storyteller was a priestess named Enheduanna, who was the subject of a "She Who Wrote" exhibition at the Morgan Library last year. Her poem, "The Exaltation of Inanna" was written around 2300 BCE to the goddess and "Queen of Heaven" known later as Ishtar.  

Below are more storytelling Tokin' Women we celebrate this month, by their era. Read more about these remarkable women by clicking on their names.  

Tokin' Women and Others We Lost in February 2023

 

Jean Faut (2/28) 

A pitcher for the South Bend Blue Sox, one of the teams that made up the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during and after World War II, Faut was the league's all-time ERA leader (1.23) after eight seasons, and was second in career wins (140). She also threw two no-hitters, as well as two perfect games – a feat no Major League Baseball pitcher ever matched. She also competed in tournaments of the Professional Women's Bowling Association. Among the jobs she held after her playing days was running the mosquito biology training program at the University of Notre Dame. Source. 

Simone Segouin (2/21)

Also known by her nom de guerre Nicole Minet, Segouin was a French Resistance fighter during World War II. Among her first acts of resistance was stealing a bicycle from a German patrol, which she then used to help carry messages. She went on to take part in large-scale or otherwise dangerous missions, such as capturing German troops, derailing trains, and acts of sabotage. On 14 July 2021, she was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honor, France's highest order of merit. She died at age 97. 

Richard Belzer (2/19)

In a 2010 interview with AARP Magazine, Belzer described his character Munch on Law & Order as “Lenny Bruce with a badge.” Belzer served in the army, and worked as a truck driver, salesman, dockworker, reporter, and drug dealer before turning to stand-up comedy, doing his signature crowd-work warm-up for Saturday Night Live. An advocate for medical marijuana after using it to counteract the effects of radiation treatments for testicular cancer in 1985, Belzer was featured in High Times magazine in the '80s and '90s, where he said, "For God's sake, it's a plant. It's been around for thousands of years and been used in many forms. It's heartbreaking that anyone would deny someone the use of such a harmless substance." Interviewed by Hemp Times magazine in 1998, he sported a black hemp sweater and jacket, and shades, for his cover photo. In this video Munch signs off, after teaching his grandson an important lesson. 

Ellen Hovde (2/16)

Hovde was one of the directors of “Grey Gardens,” the groundbreaking 1975 movie that examined the lives of two reclusive women, relatives of Jackie Kennedy, that inspired both a Broadway musical and a 2009 HBO film starring Drew Barrymore. Hovde was an editor on “Gimme Shelter,” the documentary that captured a Rolling Stones tour (including the Altamont concert), and on "Gilda Live," a Gilda Radner concert film directed by Mike Nichols. She was a director on “Christo’s Valley Curtain,” the 1972 Oscar-nominated short documentary about an environmental art project from artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. In 1978 Hovde and collaborator Muffie Meyer formed Middlemarch Films (named no doubt for the George Eliot novel), which went on to make scores of documentary features and videos in various styles and on a wide range of subjects. One of those, a television mini-series about Benjamin Franklin, won an Emmy for outstanding nonfiction special in 2002. Hovde grew up in Pittsburgh and earned a degree in theater in 1947 at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1950 she married Matthew Huxley, son of psychedelic author Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception), to whom she remained close until his death in 1963, sometimes reading books into a tape recorder for him as his eyesight began to fail. Source. 

Raquel Welch (2/15)

When Playboy in 1998 named the 100 sexiest female stars of the 20th century, Welch came in third — right after Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. This iconic poster of her in a deerskin bikini from One Million Years B.C. (1966) adorned at least a million teenagers' walls in the 60s and 70s. She won a Golden Globe for her comedic role in the 1973 adaptation of The Three Musketeers, written by Very Important Pothead Alexandre Dumas. I loved her for her inspiring and encouraging book Raquel: The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program (1984) which details in photographs her 28-pose yoga routine, which she teaches in this video. 

Huey "Piano" Smith (2/13)

Born in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans, he was influenced by the innovative Professor Longhair and became known for his shuffling right-handed break on the piano that influenced other players. In 1955, Smith became the piano player with Little Richard's first band in sessions for Specialty Records. In 1957, his band Huey "Piano" Smith and His Clowns recorded "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu," a song that's been covered by artists from Johnny Rivers to Deep Purple. "Li'l Liza Jane," a folk song Smith's band recorded in 1959, was performed by Nina Simone at Newport in 1960; Alison Krauss won a best-country-instrumental performance Grammy for her recording of it in 1989. Steve Huey of AllMusic noted that, "At the peak of his game, Smith epitomized New Orleans R&B at its most infectious and rollicking, as showcased on his classic signature tune, 'Don't You Just Know It.'"

Burt Bacharach (2/8)

Bacharach became Marlene Dietrich’s musical director in 1958 and toured with her for two years in the United States and Europe. He discovered Dionne Warwick, a gifted young gospel-trained singer from East Orange, N.J., singing backup at a recording session for the Drifters. A string of hits followed, among them “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Walk On By,” “Alfie,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” and “I'll Never Fall In Love Again.” Among the other artists who had hits with Bacharach's songs written with lyricist Hal David were Jackie DeShannon (“What the World Needs Now Is Love”), Dusty Springfield (“Wishin’ and Hopin’,” “The Look of Love”), Tom Jones (“What’s New Pussycat?”), The Carpenters ("Close to You), and B.J. Thomas ("Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.") “The Songs of Bacharach & Costello,” a boxed set including Elvis Costello’s recordings of Bacharach songs and songs they collaborated on, is scheduled for release next month.

Jeff Blackburn (2/7)

Blackburn began practicing law in 1983 and spent his decades-long legal career representing underserved people, often for free, in criminal and civil rights cases around Texas. He was a major player in significant criminal justice reform after taking on the cases of 38 people in 2001 who were arrested on drug-related charges in Tulia. Over the next few years, during which he formed and led a national coalition of lawyers, his clients were exonerated in the largest mass pardon in US history. Blackburn went on to contribute to developing subsequent criminal justice reform legislation, and co-founded The Innocence Project of Texas. 

David Harris (2/6) 

Harris was a Vietnam War protester who was elected student body president on a platform focused on righting the unequal status of women at Stanford, and made national news when a group of pro-war Stanford students grabbed him and shaved him bald as punishment for his activism. A gifted orator, he toured with Joan Baez, and did 20 months in prison for refusing the draft, just after marrying her. In prison he led hunger strikes to improve conditions for inmates. When he got out in 1970, he began writing for Rolling Stone, starting with a profile of Ron Kovic, whose story was told in the movie Born on the Fourth of July. He also contributed to The New York Times Magazine and wrote several books, including, Our War: What We Did in Vietnam and What It Did to Us (1996) and My Country ’Tis of Thee: Reporting, Sallies and Other Confessions (2020), a collection of his newspaper and magazine articles. His son with Baez, Gabriel Harris, is a percussionist who studied with Baba Olatunji and his daughter Sophie Harris is a filmmaker. Source. 

No, Woody Harrelson Didn't Say He Gave Up Smoking Pot on SNL

In spite of some misreporting going around, Very Important Pothead Woody Harrelson didn't say he'd given up marijuana while hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend. 

It would be a strange thing to have happened, since Harrelson has just opened up a cannabis dispensary and consumption lounge in West Hollywood. He famously did give up pot for a time in 2017, but Bill Maher and Willie Nelson nudged him back to starting again.

What he said on SNL is this, while telling a story about what he did after he hosted the show three years earlier: 

I went walking the greatest part of this city, Central Park, leaning against a tree, and started to read the craziest script. Full disclosure, I smoked a joint first. 

The reason I like herb more than alcohol is because it makes me feel good, no hangover, and I never wake up covered in blood. But regardless, I have decided to quit smoking pot altogether, and I’m sticking with it...until after the show.