Tokin' Women and Others We Lost in 2025

So sad to start this year's list with the unspeakably tragic deaths of Rob and Michelle Reiner. Along with luminaries like Diane Keaton, Jane Goodall, Robert Redford, Bill Moyers, Brian Wilson, Sly Stone, Tom Robbins and Marianne Faithfull, this year's tributes include cannabis activists Juhlzie Monteiro, Ann & Richard Lee, Pamela Javid Haymes, Louise Vincent, Wade Laughter, Amanda Feilding, David Watson and Michael Rose, and entheogenic authors Jonathan Ott and Jay Stevens. Rest in Power to them all.

Rob and Michelle Reiner (December 14)

The amazingly accomplished actor and film director (The Princess Bride, Stand By Me, A Few Good Men, to name a few) Reiner proudly told an AP reporter that his mother Estelle, one of the founding members of the group Another Mother For Peace, helped design the famous poster “War is Unhealthy for Children and other Living Things,” and was the parent who inspired his activism.  She also uttered famous the line, "I'll have what she's having" in When Harry Met Sally, a film Reiner altered the ending to after he met his wife-to-be Michelle on the set. “Originally, Harry and Sally didn’t get together,” he told the Guardian in 2018. “But then I met Michele and I thought: ‘OK, I see how this works.’” Michelle, a photographer whose mother survived Auschwitz, was involved in Rob's movies and his political causes. As a photographer, she took the portrait of Donald Trump for the cover of “The Art of the Deal,” his 1987 book. (“She has a lot to atone for,” Mr. Reiner joked to The Guardian.) In 2024, Michelle and Rob earned an Emmy nomination as producers of the documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life” and she was a producer on this year’s “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” their final film that revisits Rob's original one.  He was also married to Penny Marshall for 10 years, during which time she said she would roll joints for him and his friends. 

Frank Gehry (February 28, 1929 – December 5, 2025)

Read his tribute. 

Jimmy Cliff (July 30, 1944 – November 24, 2025)

In 1972, Cliff played an outlaw ganja dealer and struggling musician in the film, The Harder They Come, the soundtrack to which was a huge success, bringing reggae to an international audience for the first time. Cliff was an instrumental figure in Bob Marley's career, having brought him to producer Leslie Kong in 1962 to record his first singles. "I really love Jimmy because he always tries to help people out,” Marley told a reporter. Jerry Garcia was another fan, who "always carried a deep love for his songs, and you could feel it every time JGB played 'The Harder They Come' or 'Sitting in Limbo.' When Jimmy joined the band at the Greek in 1989, it felt like worlds colliding in the best way." Source. Cat Stevens/Yusef also posted a tribute, calling Cliff, who recorded his song "Wild World," a "powerful presence in my life....GOD BLESS HIM, his songs always had some message of peace - may he find it now and forever." Merriam Webster reported a spike in searches for the word "reggae" the week Cliff died.

Todd Snider (October 11, 1966 – November 14, 2025)

Read his tribute.

Juhlzie Monteiro 

Beloved cannabis nurse and activist Montiero was mourned by her community in Las Vegas and beyond. Professionally known as “Nurse Juhlzie” or “Ask Nurse Juhlzie,” she was Board President of Compassion Center and Integrative Providers Association, and founded the woman-owned consulting firm, Medical Cannalyst Consulting Group (MCCG), among other groups. Nurse Juhlzie worked tirelessly in legislative action in Oregon, Nevada and DC, and in clinical education, plus publishing a nursing magazine and establishing a cannabis nurses’ network. At the time of her death, she was pursuing a Doctorate in Education and a Master’s in Global Business Management. Juhlzie wrote in her final Facebook post, "Things change. Humanity will change. Yet you fight old tradition. Sometimes you miss the beautiful message. When you finally hear it, It will feel like messages from ‘Home’. That is when you know. You know you are on the right path. Never give up. For you are source. You are a soul that is perfect! Keep being the light on this planet. For others need to see your light to know that the message is true and bright! Never doubt. Just, Keep Shining Bright!"  

 Sally Kirkland (10/31/1941 - 11/11/2025)

Named for her mother, a fashion editor at Life and Vogue, Kirkland was a member of Andy Warhol's The Factory, during which time she "was an active drug user until an attempted suicide frightened her into improving her life via yoga and painting." She appeared in more than 250 film and television productions during a 60-year career, and was an acting teacher whose students included Sandra Bullock, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, and Roseanne Barr.  Kirkland was memorable as the stripper who dates Robert Redford in The Sting; her performance in the independent comedy-drama Anna (1987) earned her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. In 2024, she starred as herself in the independent comedy film, Sallywood, a parody about a longtime fan of the actress who becomes her assistant.  Kirkland was an advocate for women harmed by breast implants; she founded the Kirkland Institute for Implant Survival Syndrome in August 1998. When the New York Times asked her in 1968 why she gets naked onscreen so much, she replied,  "Look, you can't carry a gun on a naked body. I'm opposed to the war in Vietnam....That was very real. So it was all about tearing down the establishment. My mother was the establishment. She was telling people to put clothes on. I was telling them to take them off." 

Pauline Collins (September 3, 1940 – November 5, 2025

The British actress who won a Tony for playing the unflappable Shirley Valentine reprised the role on film. While in her 70s, Collins appeared in two back-to-back films with cannabis themes: In Dough (2016), she played a widow who owns a bake shop that suddenly becomes popular when they add a special ingredient. And in The Time of their Lives (2017), as a pensioner housewife smokes a joint for her arthritis with Franco Nero (pictured). 

Diane Ladd (November 29, 1935 – November 3, 2025) 

The lovely Ladd was memorable as the wisecracking waitress Flo in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), a role for which she won a BAFTA Award and an Academy Award nomination. She was also Oscar-nominated for Wild at Heart and Rambling Rose, both of which co-starred her daughter Laura Dern. Ladd's long film and stage career included appearances in Chinatown (1974), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) and Primary Colors (1998). Polly Holliday, who played the role of Flo on the film's spin-off TV series Alice, died on September 9 this year. When Holliday left the series, Ladd succeeded her as waitress Isabelle Dupree and picked up a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination for her performance.

Donna Godchaux (August 22, 1947 - November 2, 2025) 

The only-ever female member of the Grateful Dead, Donna Jean Thatcher was born in Alabama where she worked as a session singer in Muscle Shoals on songs like Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman" and Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds." Her vocals were featured on recordings by Boz Scaggs, Duane Allman, Cher, Neil Diamond and many others before she moved to California and met future fellow Grateful Dead member Keith Godchaux, who she married in 1970. The band's drummer Bill Kreutzmann wrote on Facebook, "She was very much woven into the Dead’s tie-dyed tapestry during the '70s — and some of those years remain my all-time favorite of the Grateful Dead. Which means that some of my favorite music that I ever made with the Grateful Dead was made with Donna.... Donna, may your body rest in peace and your spirit soar, as the four winds do their thing. Love will accompany you every step of that infinite journey — and not fade away."

 

Mary McGee (1944 - 10/28/25) 

 

According to the Irish Times, When Mary 'May' McGee was 24 in 1968, she gave birth to the first of the four children she would have in just 23 months. She experienced pre-eclampsia and severe complications with each pregnancy, nearly dying after her second and falling into a coma for four days after her third. After her doctor warned her that another pregnancy could put her life in danger, he prescribed a diaphragm with spermicidal jelly. But when the McGees attempted to import the contraceptives from the UK, customs seized them. The couple were told that if they attempted to import contraceptives again, they could be prosecuted. Ireland had banned contraception in 1935 under the Criminal Law Amendment Act, and the McGees took their case to the High Court in 1972, where it was rejected. But on December 19, 1973, Ireland's Supreme Court ruled 4-1 in their favor, determining that married couples have a constitutional right to make private decisions on family planning. 

 

 

 

Ann Lee (9/9/29 - 10/25/25) 

Three months after the death of her son Richard Lee, the activist and Oaksterdam University founder who sparked her activism, we also lost Ann Lee. She spoke eloquently in her speech at Cal NORML's 2013 Ending the 100 Year Drug War conference in San Francisco about her support for Richard's marijuana use and the injustices of the drug war. "The Drug War, in my view, goes against every principle of the Republican party in which I believe," she said. "The Republicans believe in smaller government, fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility, and above all, freedom. Shouldn't you have the freedom to use the medicine that your doctor thinks is the best for you?" She spoke about Pauline Martin Sabin--for whom the NORML Award for Women organizers is named--who approved of alcohol prohibition until realizing it was far easier for her children to get alcohol from unlicensed sellers. Having grown up under Jim Crow laws in southern Louisiana, Ann came to realize that the drug war "was Jim Crow all over again." As a Republican party precinct captain, she wouldn't give her endorsement to judicial candidates until they read Michelle Alexander's breakthrough book, The New Jim Crow. "The drug war does nothing but promote bad law, disorder, and above all injustice," she said in closing, quoting theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "The greater the injustice, the louder we must speak, and the more passionately we must live."

June Lockhart (June 25, 1925 – October 23, 2025)

Between the TV shows Lassie and Lost in Space, June was America's mom in the 50s and 60s. “I applied my own maternal instinct in both of these shows,” she explained. “I am that lady who talks it through if there is a problem and comforts if someone is upset.” She did get to suit up in a spacesuit (above), then got to play one of the first career women on TV as a doctor in Petticoat Junction. June's father Gene and her mother Kathleen were also actors; all three played Cratchits in "A Christmas Carol" (1938), June's film debut (in which her sweetness shined). She then won a Tony award for playing the ingénue in the comedy "For Love or Money," when she got a standing ovation on opening night. I recently spotted her in "Meet Me in St. Louis" as the out-of-town gal Judy Garland wanted to hate, but couldn't help loving. “So smart, quick, and funny — she filled her 100 years with curiosity, laughter, and rock ’n’ roll,” Angela Cartwright, who played her daughter on “Lost in Space” posted on Facebook. “I can only imagine she’s feeling right at home as she steps off this planet and into the stars.”

Samantha Eggar (March 5, 1939 – October 15, 2025)

The exquisitely beautiful and classy British Shakespearean actress Samantha Eggar appeared in the US film "The Molly Maguires" and "Dr. Doolittle." She voiced the Goddess Hera in Disney's Hercules (1997), in which the muses take over the story telling. 

Susan Stamberg (September 7, 1938 – October 16, 2025)

Stamberg, one of the "founding mothers" of NPR, was the first woman to anchor a national nightly news broadcast in the U.S.  In 1972, at a time when women had few opportunities in broadcast journalism, Stamberg became the trailblazing host of NPR’s afternoon program “All Things Considered.” While NPR’s other “founding mothers” – Linda Wertheimer, Nina Totenberg and the late Cokie Roberts – spent most of their careers covering politics, Stamberg’s reporting often focused on culture. Her notable interviews included civil rights figure Rosa Parks, PBS children’s television host Fred Rogers and writer Joan Didion. In 1987, Stamberg became the first host of “Weekend Edition Sunday,” where she launched the Sunday puzzle, a weekly on-air quiz with Will Shortz, and she discovered Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers: Tom & Ray Magliozzi who hosted NPR's "Car Talk." Source. 

Diane Keaton (January 5, 1946 – October 11, 2025)

Keaton won an Oscar for playing a pot smoker in "Annie Hall." Read our tribute. 

Jane Goodall (April 3, 1934 - October 1, 2025) 

Goodall said no to the offer of a private jet and wouldn't take "greenwashing" money from corporations either.  Netflix posted this video of her final interview, but omitted the part where she said she'd like to see Elon Musk and others sent to another planet, which can be seen here. 

Patricia Crowther (10/14/1927 - 9/24/2025)

After being initiated into Wicca in the UK, Crowther "sought to set the record straight about witchcraft on television news programs, in more than a dozen books and, most memorably, in a six-part series on the craft that she wrote and produced for BBC Radio in 1971," according to the New York Times. “I wanted the Goddess to be recognized again because we had this patriarchal religion for such a long time,” Ms. Crowther told The Guardian in 1999. “From this came women’s liberation, equality for women and feminism, all that sort of thing. But the Goddess had to be recognized first.”

 

Robert Redford (August 18, 1936 – September 16, 2025)

 

Redford starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the anti-McCarthy "The Way We Were" and with Meryl Streep in "Out of Africa," written by Tokin' Woman Isak Dinesen. As reporter Bob Woodward he dramatized the Watergate scandal and politics in "All the Presidents Men" and "The Candidate," addressed prison conditions in "Brubaker," and was a symbol for rugged environmentalism in "The Electric Cowboy" and "Jeremiah Johnson." And so much more. His Sundance institute and festival nurtured young filmmakers, and he lamented its commercialization. In 2014, he narrated Dying to Know, a documentary about psychedelic researchers Timothy Leary and Ram Dass.

Pamela Javid Haymes

A former Professional Clown in Texas and a Hostess/Cashier at Santa Monica pier, Haymes studied at the Houston School of Massage and went on to become moderator of the Cannabis Oil Success Stories Facebook group. Justin Kander,  R&D Coordinator at Aunt Zelda's, wrote, "Pamela was an incredibly loving, supportive, and uplifting person. She was one of the first to ever speak up about cannabis's anticancer potential. I will always be thankful for how much she contributed to the cannabis movement. But beyond that she was an emotionally supportive force that eased a lot of suffering." Grand Dame Michelle Aldrich wrote, "Pamela supported me in my cannabis cancer journey....she became a friend and co-conspirator....She helped many people....and was so special...she will be greatly missed in the cannabis community....Rest in power Pamela!!!!" On September 14, Pamela posted on her Facebook page, "I’ve known most of you a very long time, and I want you to know that you have meant the world to me.... It appears I might be the first of us to go. See [you] on the other side....I wished I could have loved you more."

 

Bobby Hart (February 18, 1939 – September 10, 2025)

I remember getting a special pass to stay up late and watch "Bewitched" on a school night because my favorite songwriters, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, were on performing their new song, "I'll Blow You a Kiss in the Wind.” Boyce & Hart penned many hits for The Monkees (like "Last Train to Clarksville") and also wrote hit songs for Chubby Checker,  Jay & the Americans ("Come a Little Bit Closer") and Paul Revere & the Raiders ("I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone). Hart also co-wrote "Hurt So Bad" for Little Anthony and the Imperials and "Peaches 'N' Cream" by the Ikettes. 

Charlie Kirk (October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025)

Kirk's opinions about marijuana weren't good, nor were most of his other ideas. That doesn't mean he deserved what happened to him, even though he said some gun violence was better than gun control. His widow publicly forgave his killer, and we should all use that as a jumping off point to start healing the horrible divisions in our country.  

Giorgio Armani (July 11, 1934 – September 4, 2025)

When fashion designer Armani died, commentators noted how influential the Armani suits were as worn by Richard Gere in the 1980 film "American Gigolo" (pictured). The plot had Gere's character, a male prostitute, framed for a murder after he begins an affair with the wife of a California senator and his handler sends him on a kinky sexual assignment. It has overtones to the political situation today. 

Louise Vincent (3/15/1976 - 8/31/2025)

A heroin user who overcame multiple overdoses, the amputation of her leg and her daughter’s death from opioids, Vincent helped lead a movement promoting expanded access to needle exchanges, naloxone and other methods of reducing harm to drug users. “Louise was kind of the embodiment of the spirit of harm reduction,” said Maia Szalavitz, the author of Undoing Drugs (2021). “The idea is that we need to care about people who use drugs, whether they use drugs or not.” In 2021, the Biden administration announced several initiatives supported by the harm-reduction movement, including funding the purchase of test strips to identify fentanyl impurities. Source. 

Tom Shipley (4/1/1941 - 8/24/2025)

Shipley was born in Youngstown, Ohio, the child of a high school principal father and a mother who worked sterilizing instruments at a pharmaceutical laboratory.  He and his folk music partner Charles Brewer released eight albums starting in 1968, with songs addressing social issues like civil rights and the Vietnam War. But it was their novelty song "One Toke Over the Line" that became a hit, and a stoner anthem so powerful that Nixon's VP Spiro Agnew called radio stations and asked them not to play it. The "B" side, featuring Jerry Garcia, was "Mommy, I Ain't No Commie." Charles Brewer died on December 17, 2024; the band kept its billing intact until the end.  

 

Ann Fagan Ginger (July 11, 1925 – August 20, 2025)

At 100, Ginger was among the last of a generation of lawyers and activists who weathered McCarthyism and the Red Scare, and then helped train a new cohort during the 1960s and after. Her death was announced by the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, a legal nonprofit she founded in 1965. Over her long life, she involved herself in the legal side of many of the major progressive movements of the past century: labor activism in the 1930s, civil rights in the 1950s, antiwar marches in the 1960s, feminism in the 1970s, nuclear disarmament in the 1980s and, in the 2000s, the excesses of the war on terror. Keeping a busy schedule suited her, she told The Salt Lake Tribune in 1988. “Occasionally, I do some folk dancing,” she added. Source.

Loni Anderson (8/5/1945 - 8/3/2025)   

She was originally hired to play a "dumb blonde" receptionist on the CBS sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati," but Loni Anderson wanted something different. "I liked the show, but I didn't like the role, and so I refused," she told Australia's Studio 10 in 2019, describing the character of Jennifer Marlowe as window dressing. When asked how she would do it, Anderson replied, "Let's make her look like Lana Turner and be the smartest person in the room." Blonde, but not dumb. Anderson starred on "WKRP" from 1978 to 1982, playing a receptionist whose efficiency kept the sagging station up and running. The role earned her two Emmy nominations and three Golden Globe nominations.

Tom Lehrer (4/9/1928 - 7/26/2025) 

A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math degree from the institution at age 18), Lehrer soon turned his very sharp mind to old traditions and current events. Accompanying himself on the piano, his songs included “The Old Dope Peddler” (set to a tune reminiscent of “The Old Lamplighter”), "Elements," in which he names all the elements in the Periodic Table, and "A Christmas Carol," which lampoons the commercialization of Christmas. Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format, without any fee in return.

Cleo Laine (10/28/1927 - 7/24/2025) 

An acclaimed jazz singer from England, Laine appeared in a "memorable Broadway turn" as Princess Puffer, the proprietress of a London opium den in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," a nightly murder mystery based on a Dickens novel. Source. Here she sings in tribute to Very Important Pothead Hoagy Carmichael. 

Connie Francis (12/121937 - 7/16/2025)

Singer Connie Francis was the first woman to have a #1 record. "Where the Boys Are," the theme song of her 1960 film debut (in which she dates a jazz musician named Basil played by Frank Gorshin), was recorded by Francis in other languages (including Italian, Spanish, German and Japanese), and topped the charts in several other countries. "Turn on the Sunshine" (above) was also from that movie. 

Despite having 16 gold records before she turned 25, Francis' 1984 autobiography, "Who's Sorry Now?," touched on much of the sadness and tragedy she experienced, such as the breakup of her romance with singer Bobby Darin, failed marriages, and the death of an infant son. Her singing voice was dramatically affected by cosmetic surgery on her nose in 1967.

In 1974, while appearing at the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island, a man broke into her hotel room and raped her at knifepoint. She sued Howard Johnsons for a lack of security, and advocated for laws requiring bars on sliding doors that we all benefit from now. The fallout of the attack halted her singing career, and in 1983 her father had her committed to a Florida psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed as manic-depressive. Three more surgeries corrected her singing voice, and she returned to work, since and producing music into her 80s. In early 2025, seven years after she retired, her recording of "Pretty Little Baby" became a social media sensation, streamed 10 billion times on TikTok.  

Jonathan Ott (1/6/1949 - 7/5/2025) 

Psychedelic author Jonathan Ott was one of the inventors of the term “entheogen,” which he preferred to “psychedelic” because it indicated the inner manifestation of something divine. He published Pharmacotheon in 1992, with a preface by Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD.  Hofmann drew attention to Ott’s method of self-experimentation (something he also espoused). Ott was an enthusiast of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) extracted from the tree jurema-preta, and popularized the recipe for what he called “anahuasca” (ayahuasca analogues) using jurema-preta. Read more. 

Carolyn McCarthy (1/5/1944 - 6/26/2025)

Following a mass shooting on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train that left her husband dead and her son, Kevin, severly wounded, McCarthy, a nurse, became a crusader for gun control. In 1996, she was elected to Congress as a Democrat, defeating Republican incumbent Daniel Frisa, who voted to eliminate the ban on semi-automatic weapons. She served a total of nine terms and was described as "the doyenne of anti-gun advocates in the House." In the biographical 1998 television movie The Long Island Incident she was played by Laurie Metcalf. Read more. 

Bill Moyers  (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025)

As an aide to LBJ, Moyers supervised the drafting of the legislation that created the Peace Corps, and at age 28, became the second in command of the Corps. In his four decades as a television correspondent and commentator, Moyers, an ordained Baptist minister, explored issues ranging from poverty, violence, income inequality and racial bigotry to the role of money in politics, threats to the Constitution and climate change. His documentaries and reports won him the top prizes in television journalism and more than 30 Emmy Awards. 

His 1988 PBS series, “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth,” Moyers and Campbell had this exchange: MOYERS: Do you ever think that it is this absence of the religious experience of ecstasy, of joy, this denial of transcendence in our society, that has turned so many young people to the use of drugs?
 CAMPBELL: Absolutely, that is the way in.
 MOYERS: The way in?
 CAMPBELL: To an experience.
 MOYERS: And religion can't do that for you, or art can’t do it? 
 CAMPBELL: It could, but it is not doing it now. Religions are addressing social problems and ethics instead of the mystical experience.

Rep. Melissa Hortman (May 27, 1970 – June 14, 2025)

Hortman, a former Minnesota House speaker who championed the passage of ambitious progressive policies in the state, was assassinated at her home along with her husband and dog; Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) state chairman Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot by the same gunman. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in 2022, Minnesota emerged as a key access point for abortion as other Midwestern states moved to ban the procedure. In 2023, Hortman led the Minnesota House in passing the PRO Act, legislation that codified the legality of abortion and other forms of reproductive health care in the state. In a 2024 interview with the Minnesota Reformer, Hortman cited a paid family and medical leave program as “the most rewarding” piece of legislation she passed. The legislature also enacted paid sick leave and paid safe leave for survivors of intimate partner violence, to help them find temporary housing or seek relief in court. Read more.

Brian Wilson (June 20, 1942 - June 11, 2025)

“We laugh, we cry, we live then die.” 

Brian Wilson in his autobiography "I Am Brian Wilson" writes about the influence marijuana had on his life, and his songwriting, revealing he wrote "California Girls" after taking LSD, and hit upon the refrain to "Good Vibrations" after smoking pot. Read more.

Sly Stone (March 15, 1943 – June 9, 2025) 

In his memoir "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," Sly writes of his time as a DJ in San Francisco: "I went on the air and introduced myself as Sly Stone. I was cooking with a bunch of ingredients. It sounded right. I was already smoking marijuana." Read more.

Wade Laughter June 4, 2025

"Beloved within the cannabis community as the odest, softspoken, regenerative horticulturist with a big heart and a great last name, Wade is one of the unsung heroes of botanical CBD that took root in northern California in the early 2010s." Source. Laughter went from US Navy service to organic strawberry farming in North Carolina, before growing his first cannabis plant in a Bay-Area closet to treat his glaucoma, "armed with only 15 minutes of instruction, a single 'Genius' clone, and the indomiitable optisis he drew from The Little Engine That Could, his favorite book as a child." Source.

Loretta Swit (November 4, 1937 - May 30, 2025)

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Swit graduated from Katharine Gibbs School in Montclair, New Jersey, in June 1957, then was employed at a variety of clerical jobs, including secretary to Elsa Maxwell and the ambassador from Ghana to the United Nations. Trained to dance by a Rockette classmate, Swit began developing her acting career and earned 10 Emmy nominations and 2 wins for playing Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan on the TV series M*A*S*H. Alan Alda wrote, "She worked hard in showing the writing staff how they could turn the character from a one joke sexist stereotype into a real person -- with real feelings and ambitions. We celebrated the day the script came out listing her character not as Hot Lips, but as Margaret." 

Amanda Feilding (January 30, 1943 - May 22, 2025)

Amanda Feilding, the Countess of Wemyss and March, has been called the ‘hidden hand’ behind the renaissance of psychedelic science, and her contribution to global drug policy reform has also been pivotal and widely acknowledged. Amanda was first introduced to LSD in the mid-1960s, at the height of the first wave of scientific research into psychedelics. Impressed by its capacity to initiate mystical states of consciousness and heighten creativity, she quickly recognized its transformative and therapeutic power. Inspired by her experiences, she began studying the mechanisms underlying the effects of psychedelic substances and dedicated herself to exploring ways of harnessing their potential to cure sickness and enhance wellbeing.

Feilding founded the Foundation to Further Consciousness, changing its name to the Beckley Foundation in 1998. Through the Foundation, she set about using cutting-edge brain imaging technologies to examine the neurophysiological changes underlying altered states of consciousness. Bringing together a network of leading international scientists, politicians and drug policy analysts, she was among the first to begin creating a scientific evidence-base to help reform global drug policies, in order to better protect health, reduce harms and economic costs, and uphold human rights. 

Through the Beckley Foundation’s Policy Programme, Amanda commissioned and published over 40 books, reports, and policy papers which have analysed the negative consequences of the criminalization of drug use, and laid out possible alternatives which could protect public health, diminish violence and governmental costs, and protect human rights. Over the years, her advice has been sought by presidents and governments, and in 2011, she wrote the influential public letter calling for drug policy reform, which was signed by presidents, Nobel laureates, and other notables. Source. 

 

Ruth Buzzi (July 24, 1936 – May 1, 2025)

Buzzi is best known for playing Gladys Ormphby on TV's "Laugh In," a spinster in a hairnet who wielded her purse as a weapon. An accomplished stage actress, she based the character on one she developed to play Agnes Gooch in Auntie Mame.  Buzzi appeared with Nancy Sinatra and Goldie Hawn in a "Farewell to the 60s" segment on Laugh In, and in a hilarious video for Kinky Friedman's song "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven & Your Buns in the Bed." Funny until the end, her Twitter/X feed recently featured jokes like, "I just heard they have a new dating system for people my age. Carbon dating." 

Pope Francis (Dec. 17, 1936 - April 21, 2025) 

Francis "frankly discussed topics that were controversial within the Church, including gay priests and the role of women in leadership." He also offered a more welcoming tone to the LGBTQ community, saying, "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" He spoke out to address the danger of climate change, criticized the global financial system, and favored the opening of borders not just for refugees from conflict but also for economic migrants. His charisma and humility earned him the label "the People's Pope.” 

Patrick Adiarte (August 2, 1942 – April 15, 2025) 

Filipino actor and dancer Adiarte shone in films like "Flower Drum Song," whose star Nancy Kwan said the film's choreographer Hermes Pan was so impressed with Adiarte that he expanded his role. Born in Manila, Adiarte and his mother and sister were imprisoned by the Japanese and suffered burns when the Japanese lobbed grenades at them when the family tried to escape. A month later, their father, working as a captain for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was killed. In June 1946, the family came to New York through Ellis Island so that his mother Irene could have what would be the first of several surgeries to remove the extensive scars on her face caused by the grenade fire. While the Adiartes faced threats of deportation, Patrick (and his mom, as a dancer) would wind up in "The King and I." With the help of Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy, Congress finally granted the three American citizenship in 1956.

Jean Marsh (July 1, 1934-April 13, 2025) 

Marsh won an Emmy for her performance as Rose Buck, a Cockney parlor maid, in the British TV series "Upstairs, Downstairs," a show she co-created with fellow actress Eileen Atkins depicting aristocrats and their servants long before "Downton Abbey" was dreamed of. The show ran from 1971-75 and was an international hit. Marsh and Atkins also created a 1990s BBC series, "The House of Eliott," and co-starred in a 2010 "Upstairs Downstairs" revival series. Asked once about royalties she may have earned from creating and starring in the franchise, Marsh noted the differences between Hollywood and British TV: "If it had happened in America, I'd be Mary Tyler Moore. As it is, I'm Mary Tyler Less," she told UPI in 1982. 

Val Kilmer (December 31, 1959 - April 1, 2025)
 

Kilmer did a damn good imitation of Jim Morrison in The Doors and was best (I thought) in Thunderheart; he was part Cherokee.  Along the way he played Batman and Doc Holliday, and is perhaps best known as The Iceman in Top Gun. He was quite memorable as the wildman Mad Martigan in Willow, and portrayed Mark Twain in a one-man show he wrote called Citizen Twain in 2012. Diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015, he underwent surgery that damaged his vocal chords, and chemotherapy. His memoir I'm Your Huckleberry (2020) and the 2021 documentary Val detail his career and health struggles. Kilmer's co-star in Thunderheart, Graham Greene, died on September 1 of this year. 

Richard Chamberlain (March 31, 1934 - March 29, 2025) 

The dreamy Chamberlain won all our hearts as TV's Dr. Kildaire in the '60s and went on to a long film and TV career. He portrayed Lord Byron in Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) and played Aramis in a film trilogy based on Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask. He also portrayed Dumas's hero in The Count of Monte Cristo. Chamberlain never married and had no children. He was not open about his homosexuality for most of his career, during a time when his acting opportunities would have been severley limited by such an admission. He was outed as a gay man by the French women's magazine Nous Deux in December 1989, but did not confirm that he was gay until the publication of his 2003 autobiography Shattered Love: A Memoir.

Herb Greene (April 3, 1942 – March 3, 2025) 

One of the first to shoot the Grateful Dead, Greene also memorably chronicled many of the other bands that were on the scene in the late 1960s. He shot the group portrait of Jefferson Airplane that became the cover of the band’s second album, “Surrealistic Pillow” (1967), Grace Slick giving the finger, and Janis Joplin wearing a top hat (shown). In January 1967, Greene photographed the Human Be-In, the countercultural gathering attended by thousands at Golden Gate Park that came to be seen as a preview of the Summer of Love, which bloomed later that year in the Haight-Ashbury district. Greene told the California Historical Society’s commemorative Summer of Love website in 2017 that everyone at the Be-In appeared to have been smoking marijuana or taking LSD, and that a parachutist’s arrival from the sky was viewed by the crowd “like a latter-day miracle.” Source. 

Jesse Colin Young (November 22, 1941 - March 16, 2025) 

The Youngbloods hit big with their recording of "Get Together," written by Chet Powers aka Dino Valenti, who had to sell the rights to it to pay for a lawyer after he was busted for marijuana.  His songs Ridgetop and Morning Sun made me want to move to Northern California that he sang about. 

Gene Hackman (Sept. 1, 2023 - Feb. 27, 2025) 

As well as memorable roles in Bonnie & Clyde, Mississippi Burning, The French Connection (pictured), The Conversation, Another Woman, The Birdcage, Antz, etc., Hackman brilliantly played the crooked cop in Cisco Pike, starring Kris Kristofferson as an ex-recording star released from jail for dealing in drugs who tries to go strait until Hackman tries to force him to move a kilo of marijuana. 

Michelle Trachtenberg (Oct. 11, 1985 - Feb. 26, 2025) 

Trachtenberg made her acting debut in a TV commercial at the age of 3, and by the time she was 8, she was appearing regularly on the Nickelodeon series "The Adventures of Pete & Pete." (Given the recent revelations about child abuse at Nickelodeon, one wonders what effect this may have had on her.) She starred in the title role as "Harriet the Spy," co-starred in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and did two years in the recurring role of the autistic child Lily Montgomery on the ABC daytime drama "All My Children." For the film "Ice Princess," she trained for eight months and did much of her own ice skating.  

Trachtenberg was a spokesperson for DARE America, and she helped President Clinton launch The Coalition for Drug-Free America campaign at an event in Atlanta. (One wonders....) She said her protective mother kept her from drugs and alcohol in her youth. Yet in "Gossip Girl," she played a bad girl just out of rehab, and on "Weeds" she played Nancy's son's girlfriend who leaves a "Thanks for last night" note on a pack of rolling papers. Trachtenberg underwent a liver transplant for unknown reasons in 2024 and died shortly afterwards at the age of 39; her primary cause of death as was determined to be complications of diabetes, which is sometimes a side effect of organ transplantation. 

Roberta Flack (Feb. 10, 1937 - Feb. 24, 2025) 

Known for her emotive, chart-topping singles "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," "Killing Me Softly with His Song," and "Feel Like Makin' Love," Roberta Flack grew up in a large musical family and began taking formal piano lessons at the age of nine. She often provided piano accompaniment her church choir and placed second in a statewide competition for Black students aged 13, playing a Scarlatti sonata. In 1952, at the age of 15, she won a full music scholarship to Howard University in Washington DC, and was one of the youngest students ever to enroll there. She graduated from Howard at 19 and began graduate studies in music there, but after the sudden death of her father she had to find work to support herself. She took a jobs teaching music and English and gave private piano lessons while honing a nightclub act on evenings and weekends. Her break came in the summer of 1968 when she performed at a benefit concert in Washington to raise funds for a children's library in the city's ghetto district and was seen by soul and jazz singer Les McCann. He arranged an audition with Atlantic Records in which she performed 42 songs from her nightclub repertoire in three hours. In November 1968, she recorded 39 song demos in less than 10 hours.

Raul Grijalva (February 19, 1948 – March 13, 2025)

 

The son of a Mexican immigrant father who labored on Arizona ranches, Mr. Grijalva as a young man was an activist in the Raza Unida Party, a hard-left movement to gain political power for Mexican Americans. He eventually mellowed and became a Democrat, moving up in Tucson politics for nearly 30 years before running successfully for Congress in 2002 at age 54. In Washington, Mr. Grijalva co-sponsored several marijuana legalization bills, was an advocate for tough labor and environmental protections, earned an “F” rating from the National Rifle Association, and opposed a fence on the Mexico border. He was known for an informal style that favored bolo ties over neckties, and he once offered in jest that his campaign slogan should be “Grijalva: Not just another pretty face.”  Source. 

Francisca Viveros Barradas (April 2, 1947 – February 17, 2025)

Known professionally as Paquita la del Barrio ("Little Francis of the Ghetto"), Barradas was a Mexican singer. She was a Grammy-nominated performer of rancheras, boleros and other traditional and contemporary Mexican musical genres. Her songs were often characterized as a female empowering against Mexico's sexist and "macho" male culture and as criticizing Latino men for causing problems in relationships. This theme was present in some of her most notable songs, such as "Rata de dos patas" (Two-legged rat), "Me saludas a la tuya" (You greet me at yours) and "Tres veces te engañé" (Three times I deceived you), which became feminist anthems in Mexico. In 2021, Paquita was honored with the Billboard Latin Music Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Peter Bensinger (March 24, 1936 – February 11, 2025)

If you've ever lost a job or a job opportunity because you failed a marijuana piss test, one of the people you can "thank" is Peter Bensinger.  Read more. 

Jay Stevens (November 11, 1953 – February 19, 2025)

Stevens is best known for Storming Heaven, in the minds of many (including me), the best book on the modern history of LSD. He also wrote, with Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, Drumming at the Edge of Magic, and was the ghost writer of Candice Pert's bestselling Molecules of Emotion. Prior to his death, he was living at his family farm in Vermont, where he produced maple syrup. His friend and collaborator, author Robert Forte, wrote, "Jay was not just a great writer and poet, he was one of the most knowledgable people on psychedelic history and American history....My collaborator has left for the other world. I await his inspiration and encouragement from there."

Virginia Halas McCaskey (January 5, 1923 - February 6, 2025)

McCaskey was the principal owner of the Chicago Bears from 1983 until her death. She was the daughter of team founder George Halas, who intended to pass the team to her younger brother until he died in 1979. During her tenure as owner, the Bears won Super Bowl XX in 1986, two seasons after "Papa Bear's" death. It was part of a run of five consecutive NFC Central titles from 1984 to 1988. In 1986, she disbanded the team's cheerleading squad, the "Honey Bears," after ten years, arguing that their field performances were "sexist and degrading to women".

Tom Robbins (July 22, 1932 - Feb. 9, 2025) 

Read his tribute. 

]

Tony Roberts (Oct. 22, 1939 - Feb. 7, 2025)

Roberts was perfect in everything he did, including pronouncing a joint "real good shit" when he and fellow cops smoked it in "Serpico," after which he raids a potato chip vending machine in a fit of the  munchees. 

David Edward Byrd (April 4, 1941 - Feb. 3, 2025)

Byrd provided poster graphics for artists like The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Traffic, Ravi Shankar, The Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Prince along with posters for the Broadway musicals like "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Follies," "Godspell" and "Little Shop of Horrors." He also designed the movie poster for the 1975 film version of Nathanael West's "The Day of the Locust." One admirer described Byrd's work as "kind of like Art Nouveau on acid." Born in Tennessee and raised in Florida, Byrd studied at the Boston Museum School and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He later taught at the Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Beginning in the 1980s, he served as the art director for The Advocate. He published an autobiography, "Poster Child," in 2023. 

Marianne Faithfull (12/29/1946 - 1/30/2025) 

Read her tribute. 

David Watson (1/27)

Nicknamed "Sam the Skunkman," Watson "revolutionized homegrown gardening globally, built the foundations of today's most popular sinsemilla varieties, and spawned the steadily advancing international cannabis industry. Read more. 

Michael Rose 

In 1984, Portland-based attorney Rose argued Sajo v Paulus, which got the Oregon Marijuana Initiative on the ballot. Along with John Sajo, Jack Herer, and Leland Berger, he co-founded Voter Power, the group that spearheaded signature gathering for the measure. Berger wrote, "As far as I am concerned, there wouldn't be legalized weed or a legal weed industry in Oregon if it weren't for him. "

Cecile Richards (July 15, 1957 – January 20, 2025) 

The daughter of former Texas governor Ann Richards, Cecile opposed the Vietnam War in her youth and was sent home from school for wearing a black armband. In January 1971, at the age of 13, she was named an honorary page to the 62nd Texas State Legislature. At the age of 16, she helped her mother campaign for Sarah Weddington, the attorney who won Roe v. Wade, in her bid for the Texas state legislature. After graduating college, Richards became a labor organizer for service workers across several states and in Guatemala, running union campaigns for garment workers, nursing home workers, and janitors. She was one of the founders of America Votes, a 501(c)4 organization that aims to co-ordinate and promote progressive issues, was deputy chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi, and worked at the Turner Foundation. In 1996, she founded the Texas Freedom Network, a Texas organization formed to counter the Christian right. She served as the president of both the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliated Planned Parenthood Action Fund from 2006 to 2018, and in 2019 she co-founded Supermajority, a women's political action group. Her book, Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead mentions having a roommate in college who smoked a lot of dope. 

Jules Feiffer (Jan. 26, 1929 - Jan. 17, 2025)

Feiffer produced a long-running comic strip, plays, screenplays and children's books in which he chronicled childhood, urban angst, politics, sexism, war, and other topics. I particularly loved his "dance" cartoons. 

 

Joan Plowright (October 29, 1929 - January 16, 2025)

Plowright studied at the Old Vic Theatre School before acting at the Royal National Theatre in roles like Shaw's Saint Joan, and Maggie Hobson in Hobson's Choice. She played 22-years-older Laurence Olivier's daughter in "The Entertainer" (pictured) and soon became his wife, and eventually Lady/Baroness Olivier. Among other awards, Plowright won the Tony Award for A Taste of Honey (1961) and Golden Globes for Enchanted April (1991) and Stalin (1992). Her film debut was as Starbuck's wife in Moby Dick; among many roles she played were memorable matriarchs in Avalon (1990) and Widows Peak (1994). In Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (2005) she played an elderly woman who, abandoned by her family,  develops a closeness with a young man who cares for her when she falls on the street. As Sonya in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at the National, her delivery of Sonya’s final speech – “When the time comes, we shall die without a murmur … we shall see a light that is bright and lovely and beautiful … we shall rest” – had "a resilient optimism that left a whole audience shaken and stirred (Source.)

Peter Yarrow (May 31, 1938 – January 7, 2025)

Yarrow was member of the popular 1960s activist folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, who performed Bob Dylan's “Blowin’ in the Wind” at the 1963 March on Washington at which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Yarrow co-wrote (with Lenny Lipton) one of the group's best known hits, "Puff, the Magic Dragon," and always denied the song had marijuana references, saying, "What kind of a mean-spirited SOB would write a children’s song with a covert drug message?“  After recording their last No. 1 hit, a 1969 cover of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the trio split up, and in 1970 Yarrow pleaded guilty to taking "improper and immoral" liberties with a 14-year-old girl. He resumed his career after serving three months in jail, and was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1981. Over the decades, he apologized repeatedly. “It was an era of real indiscretion and mistakes by categorically male performers. I was one of them. I got nailed. I was wrong. I’m sorry for it,” he once said. “I fully support the current movements demanding equal rights for all and refusing to allow continued abuse and injury - most particularly of a sexual nature, of which I am, with great sorrow, guilty,” he told The New York Times in 2019 after being disinvited from a festival over the incident.

Will He or Won't He? (Reschedule, That Is)

Trump's immediate reaction to a question about rescheduling on Monday. 

The Washington Post reported last Thursday that President Trump was planning to issue an executive order directing federal agencies to move ahead with cannabis rescheduling. The outlet also said the president met last week in the Oval Office with marijuana industry executives, Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., and Medicare Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. During that meeting, Trump phoned Mike Johnson, the House speaker, who reportedly expressed his opposition.

Trump is also interested in pushing Medicare to allow for the reimbursement of CBD products, a person with direct knowledge of the meeting told WP Intelligence. It’s a priority of Trump’s longtime friend and Mar-a-Lago club member Howard Kessler, who was among those in attendance at the Oval Office meeting. In September, Trump posted a video created by a group Kessler founded that endorsed Medicare coverage of CBD. 

Other industry execs who were part of the discussion at the White House were Kim Rivers, a Trump donor from the cannabis company Trulieve, and Jim Hagedorn from Scotts Miracle-Gro. Also present was Trump chief-of-staff Susie Wiles, who has ties to Trulieve, and whose daughter Caroline is reportedly dating "King of Gas Station Weed" Bret Worley. 

According to Marijuana Moment, there’s been mixed reporting about the timing of a possible rescheduling action, with CNBC reporting that the executive order would be issued as early as Monday (yesterday), and Axios reporting that the reform is expected to come early next year. 

The right wing is pushing back hard, with the prohibitionist group SAM making a six-figure advertising buy against the move, the drug testing industry pissing themselves, and the Wall Street Journal running a series of opeds on the topic, asking if MAHA means "Make America High Again." However, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) favors rescheduling, arguing that marijuana possession crimes have harmed minorities in particular in his home state and that there’s been “an injustice” when it comes to mass incarceration of drug possession. 

Asked about it at a press conference yesterday, Trump looked flummoxed for a second, then confirmed rescheduling was being considered, saying, "A lot of people want to see it, the reclassification, because it leads to tremendous amounts of research that can't be done unless you reclassify, so we are looking at that very strongly." 

Hiding behind researching rather than legalizing is a bogus dodge: NORML just reported in its post "Cannabis Rescheduling: Separating Fact from Fiction" that cannabis is already among the more well-studied psychoactive substances, with researchers publishing more than 37,000 scientific papers about cannabis since the beginning of 2015. Although the approval process for these trials is "unduly onerous," rescheduling alone won't change that. 

As to the often-asked question, "Will rescheduling make cannabis legal as an FDA-approved medicine?" NORML concludes the answer is No. Rescheduling would be an acknowledgment from the federal government that cannabis possesses “currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” This recognition is distinct from it being formally endorsed by the US Food and Drug Administration, which requires an altogether different approval process. As a result, rescheduling would not likely mandate the sale of cannabis in pharmacies, which is required for FDA-approved scheduled substances.

Wiles In the News

Meanwhile, the blockbuster news today is the release of a pair of Vanity Fair articles based on 11 interviews with Wiles, who said teetotaler Trump has "an alcoholic's personality" and questioned many of his actions, like his retribution (her word) prosecution of Letitia James, defunding USAID, and pardoning the January 6 rioters. She tried to deny that she called Elon Musk "an avowed ketamine user" until the reporter provided a tape to the New York Times of her saying just that. 

When asked about the administration bombing boats in the Caribbean and killing everyone on board, Wiles is quoted saying, “The president believes in harsh penalties for drug dealers, as he’s said many, many times…. These are not fishing boats, as some would like to allege....I’m saying that this is a war on drugs.” 

Marco Rubio told the article's author Chris Whipple in October, “These are not alleged drug dealers. These are drug dealers. Where are the YouTube videos of the family saying my poor innocent fisherman son, you know, was killed?” [Um, like this one?] 

When asked about Trump’s increasingly frequent verbal attacks on women, as when, in November, he snapped “Quiet, Piggy!” at a female reporter from Bloomberg, Wiles replied: “He’s a counterpuncher. And increasingly, in our society, the punchers are women.” She sure threw a few. 

The Reason for Targeting Venezuela Revealed

Instead of taking action on cannabis yesterday, Trump signed an executive order declaring fentanyl a "weapon of mass destruction." This could set the stage for what he really wants to do: invade Caribbean countries and steal their oil. He seized a Venezualean oil tanker on Monday and today, he ordered a blockade of all "sanctioned" oil tankers into Venezuela, alleging that the oil is being used for drug trafficking. 

"For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION," Trump said. The New York Times has noted that Venezuela isn't involved in the fentanyl trade.

Last month, Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) said: "We're about to go in ... We need to go in ... Venezuela for the American oil companies will be a field day.” Or as Sanho Tree at the Institute for Policy Studies put it (weeks ago): "Trump never met a petrochemical he didn’t covet.” 

RIP Frank Gehry, Whose Architecture Soared High (and So Did He)

I can't believe I am so soon writing another RIP post for a Very Important Pothead, this time architect Frank Gehry who has died at the age of 96. 

Gehry re-made architecture in Los Angeles and beyond with mind- and form-bending buildings crafted from materials like plywood and chain-link fence. Among his many worldwide accomplishments, he won the coveted commission to design the Walt Disney Concert House in downtown LA (pictured). Among his many awards was the including the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

In 2014, Tommy Chong said on the cable TV show "Getting Doug with High" that he smoked pot with Gehry. Others have claimed that Gehry was a stoner over the years. 

A 2015 biography of Gehry by Paul Goldberger, former architecture critic for The New Yorker, confirms that Gehry can be counted amount the many Successful Stoners that populate the arts and other fields. According to Goldberger’s book Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, in 1967 Gehry visited Paris with his office manager Babs Altoon, when "high on some marijuana they had brought along, they went to the Eiffel Tower, took the elevator to the top, and ran all the way down the stairs." 

Later, before fellow architect Philip Johnson came by to see a house in Malibu that Gehry had designed for artist Ron Davis, Gehry and Davis got stoned and were "somewhat giddy" by the time Johnson arrived. [I interviewed Gehry for a story I wrote for the LA Reader about the Malibu house; he was very personable, humble and kind, like most potheads.] 

David Whitney, Johnson's partner, "regularly provided Frank with marijuana, and he invariably brought some to share on the water" in the 1990s when Gehry co-owned a sailboat with colleagues Jim Glymph and Randy Jefferson. According to Goldberger, "Not the least of the pleasures of their sails was that it gave him and Glymph, who smoked a great deal of marijuana, a pleasant place to get stoned." Glymph recalls in the book that he and several others smoked weed in Gehry's hotel suite before the opening of Seattle's Experience Music Project in 2001, but that Frank, "worried that word would get out that he was hosting a pot party, shooed them out." 

In 2008, Gehry's daughter Leslie used cannabis during her battle with uterine cancer, and she and her brother Alejo "had the happiest time they have ever had together when Leslie invited her brother to share some of the medical marijuana she had been given." The actor Lawrence Fishburne is also quoted in the book saying he worried a bit when he took Frank on motorcycle rides because "sometimes I'd, you know, smoke a bit of marijuana." 

Gehry's career was championed by Progressive Insurance mogul Peter Lewis, who contributed to marijuana-reform measures including California's Proposition 215, the nation's first medical marijuana law. 

In Hillary Clinton’s farewell speech as secretary of state, she said, “We need a new architecture for this new world, more Frank Gehry than formal Greek.” California Governor Gavin Newsom and First Partner partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom released a statement upon Gehry's death, saying, "His work encouraged imagination and freedom of thought, and recognized the value and the beauty of working people and neighborhoods, seeking to make room for everyone in this world – especially the misfits like himself. Frank will be missed, but his legacy – in California and beyond – stands as tall as his finest creations.”

 

UPDATE: Nice obituary from the Associated Press on Gehry, also from the New York Times, who called him a "titan" of architecture.  

RIP Todd Snider, the "Alright Guy" who left us "High, Lonesome and Thensome"

Sadly, singer songwriter Todd Snider has died at age 59 following an incident in Utah where he was assaulted and then arrested for a creating a disturbance when the hospital where he was being treated insisted on releasing him. 

Snider titled his last album and tour "High, Lonesome and Thensome." In the video for the title track (my new favorite song), he enjoys a sesh before the session. The tour was cancelled on November 3 following his attack. 

Snider was known to fans of John "Illegal Smile" Prine, for whom he often opened. The two had similar song-writing styles: simple and straight to the point, yet beautifully poetic and universal. And always amusing, if not downright hilarious. NPR reports he modeled himself on — and at times met and was mentored by — artists like Prine, Kris Kristofferson and Guy Clark. Jimmy Buffett was a fan who produced his first two albums. 

Looking online for Snider's hit "Alright Guy," I could only find a video version with the word "dope" censored from the line, "Now maybe that I'm dirty, and maybe I smoke a little dope / It ain't like I'm going on TV and tearing up pictures of the pope" [a reference to Sinead O'Connor calling out the Catholic church's child-abusive ways long before anyone else did]. 

In his popular singalong song "Beer Run" he sings;

A couple of frat guys from Abilene 

Drove out all night to see Robert Earl Keen ...

They wanted cigarettes, so to save a little money 

They got one from this hippie that smelled kinda funny 

And the next thing they knew they were both really hungry 

And pretty thirsty too

According to CelebStoner, in 2014 Snider formed the supergroup Hard Working Americans with Dave Schools, Neal Casal, Chad Staehly and Duane Trucks; in the video for "Blackland Farmer" from their self-titled album, a struggling farmer switches to marijuana. 

The Acid Queen: Rosemary Leary

A new biography titled The Acid Queen sheds light on Rosemary Woodruff Leary, who was arrested with her husband Timothy Leary for carrying marijuana over the Mexican border, and during the infamous G. Gordon Liddy Millbrook raid, both in 1966.

The book's author Susannah Cahalan became interested in "mind opening" and psychedelics after her brain disorder autoimmune encephalitis was misdiagnosed as mental illness, spawning her bestselling book, Brain on Fire. 

Cahalan appeared by Zoom at a recent event in Berkeley, CA sponsored by the Women's Visionary Congress, a group that highlights psychedelic women who "often disappeared behind there more famous and florid male partners." She drew on Rosemary’s autobiography Psychedelic Refugee and her archives at the New York public library (where there are 400 boxes in Timothy's archives and only 25 for Rosemary, largely redacted FBI files).

Rosemary Woodruff, Cahalan writes, had her first mystical experience in 1943, the summer after her eighth birthday. Walking alone near her home, "she felt a tingling sensation rise up from her spine. The trees crackled with energy. She had plugged herself into the electrical grid, and the whole world flickered in confirmation of her sudden second sight: everyone and everything were connected. It happened for a second, a nanosecond, but that shining moment of divine union would stay with her....Other realms called. She longed to return to that blissful state."

The statuesque beauty worked as a model and a stewardess, professions in which "uppers" were regularly handed out to young women to keep them slim and active. In 1959, she had a small role in the film "Operation Petticoat" starring Tony Curtis and Cary Grant. During publicity for for the film, Grant went public for the first time about his use of LSD, telling a reporter that it saved his marriage to Betsy Drake (who lead him to try it). 

Living a Bohemian life in New York City, Rosemary dated jazz musicians and downed diet pills by day and marijuana at night. She "learned to find pleasure in the sensation of her heart beating in her ears when she smoked cannabis in jazz clubs. And how to portion out correct dosing of the hash fudge she baked from Alice B. Toklas’s famous 1954 cookbook. Like a growing number of Americans, Rosemary was joining an emerging drug subculture, not for medical or spiritual use, but for pleasure, identification, and belonging," Cahalan writes. A peyote experience made he realize she needed to leave her junkie boyfriend, packing her bags and leaving him the next day. 

Trumpty Dumpty Dumps on Us All

Humpty Trumpty by Barbara Kelley

Apart from watching our country's comedians (when they are permitted to air), about the only solace I have in these dark authoritarian days is attending peaceful protests like the huge No Kings Marches that happened on Saturday all over the nation. The camaraderie, the clever signs, and the knowledge that the resistance is alive, bolstered my spirits for another day of living in the USA. 

But nothing quite prepared me for the uber-infantile, incredibly nasty and undemocratic AI video that Trumpty Dumpty posted on his social media after an estimated seven million Americans marched in protest of his administration's autocratic actions. 

In the video, he sports a crown and flies a plane named King Trump that dumps massive shit bombs on protesters, including young left-wing influencer Harry Sisson (just after giving Charlie Kirk the Medal of Freedom). As the Turkish proverb goes, "When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace becomes a circus." 

It was bad enough that the day before the rallies, Trump freed from prison and released from paying restitution the convicted fraudster George Santos, perhaps pandering to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has surprisingly become a critic of the Trump administration and is ready to vote to release the Epstein files. 

RIP Diane Keaton, Who Played Charming Potheads on Film

UPDATE: CA Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statement, saying: “Diane Keaton was a true Californian. She was a self-described oddball, uniquely stylish, deeply creative, funny, and an acting legend who could steal the screen in comic and dramatic roles alike. She was in a class all her own, an icon."

Art: Alejandro Mogollo

The sad news hit today that Diane Keaton, who won an Oscar in 1977 for playing a charmingly ditzy pothead in Annie Hall (1977),  has died at age 79. 

Keaton, whose last name at birth was Hall, was doubtlessly an inspiration for her character in the film, which also picked up Oscars for Best Director (Woody Allen), Best Writing and Best Picture. 

The original title was Anhedonia, meaning the inability to experience pleasure. Allen's character suffers from the condition until he meets Annie, who with all of her fumbling and self-consciousness is a beautiful vessel of pleasure.

Alvy tells Annie that her whole body is an erogenous zone, and soon it is revealed that she insists on smoking pot before they make love. When Alvy objects, comparing it to a comic getting a laugh too easily, Annie tells him if he'd only smoke with her, he wouldn't have to see a therapist. Cinemablend ranked her at #6 as only woman on their list of top 10 movie potheads on the strength of her performance.