What Made the Etruscan Women Smile?

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

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

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

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

"The Odyssey" and The Goddess

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

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

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

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

Bill Maher and Mark Twain: Both Inspired by Cannabis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's Restore the Hemp Riggings on the USS Constitution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne (and Hemp)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Eve Babitz Testifies For Marijuana and LSD

Eve Babitz photographed by Julian Wasser

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

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

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

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

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