RIP Cassie Gaines, One of Lynyrd Skynyrd's Honkettes

The Honkettes: JoJo Billingsley, Cassie Gaines and Leslie Hawkins

A new documentary is out on Lynyrd Skynyrd, the rockin' Southern Rock band that lost its singer/songwriter Ronnie Van Zant along with band members Cassie & Steve Gaines in a tragic plane crash on this date in 1977.

Lynyrd Skynyrd: If I Leave Here Tomorrow interviews surviving members of the band and reveals how Cassie and her fellow Honkettes classed up the group as its back-up singers.

Cassie Gaines joined the band in 1975 and later recommended her younger brother Steve join in as a guitarist. She was mentioned in stories recounted in the film as the band member who always had marijuana, and it was said of Steve that he "was no farmer, but he could grow some bud." When the band opened for the Rolling Stones, Very Important Pothead Jack Nicholson smelled Cassie's weed and asked if he could take a toke.

Of Beer, Boofing and Bar Mitzvahs: How We're Failing Our Young Men and Women

The Kavanaugh showdown this week raised questions to many about our culture and how it fails to instruct boys on how to treat women. Instead, as the book Raising Cain notes, we're letting boys figure it out for themselves, to everyone's detriment.

Cain is, of course, the evil older son of Adam and Eve, who was jealous of his younger brother, the kind and good Abel. Growing up, I had a Cain and Abel in my neighborhood. One day when I was about five years old, the elder brother pinned me to the floor and pulled my underwear down, despite my crying and pleading. Sadistically, he demanded I stop crying, then start again. He wouldn't let me up until I promised not to tell anyone. I never did, until the incident popped out of my subconscious in my college years (with the aid of my blessed plant teachers).

Like Dr. Ford, I don't remember how I got to his house, or how I got home. But I do have a very clear memory of what happened to me. And I remember the sick feeling I got when I heard that my former neighbor, who by then had moved away, was implicated in the death of his younger brother. I might have saved him, I thought, had I the words to talk about something that was never talked about in those days. Years later I volunteered at a rape crisis hotline and almost all of my calls were about incidents that had happened years earlier, but the caller was just then able to start grappling with it. We must talk about these things so that we can end them.

Kristen Bell: "Weed Rules"

UPDATE 10/20: Bell appears in a kooky new commercial for her CBD skincare line. One benefit not mentioned: a recent study found CBD is protective against UV rays. 

I guess there's a reason Kristen Bell played Mary Lane in "Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical" (2005).

The talented actress said on the podcast WTF with Mark Aaron, “I like my vape pen quite a bit," adding that it doesn't bother her sober husband when she uses it occasionally. "Weed rules. Weed's my drug of choice, for sure.”

The 38-year-old mother continued, “I can’t do it around my kids, which is a phenomenal amount of hours each week. Once a week, if I’m exhausted and we’re about to sit down and watch 60 Minutes, why not?”

Finding Your Feet (and a Phatty)

Celia Imrie and Timothy Spall share a joint in British bohemia in Finding Your Feet. 

More news reports are coming out about how baby boomers (aka seniors) are turning back to marijuana, whether for medical or recreational reasons. And popular culture continues to follow suit.

The 2017 British film Finding Your Feet features actresses Celia Imrie (Kingdom, Nanny McPhee) and Imelda Stanton (Vera Drake, Harry Potter) as senior citizens Bif and Saundra, who join a dance troupe and re-discover life, and love.

Bourgeois Saundra shows up at her bohemian sister Bif's doorstep after leaving her cheating husband. Bif lives in the projects, rides a bike, is politically active, and smokes pot with her handyman/dealer friend Charlie (Timothy Spall).

Minuscule Amounts of THC Found in Breast Milk - Is it Harmful?

The headlines are reading, "THC Found in Breast Milk!" but like previous studies, a new study in the journal Pediatrics found THC in breast milk only at the nanogram level (on average, 9.5 ng/mL). Since an adult dose of cannabis is 10 mg, and babies take in about 750 mL daily, this level is about 1,000 times less. The most THC found was 323 ng/mL, 30 times less than an adult dose.   

An oral absorption level of 6% was used to calculate plasma concentration in infants by the authors, who confirmed that blood levels in infants would be 0.040 ng/mL, or ~1000 times less than an adult dose. Still, they worried about accumulation in infants exposed daily. Using cannabis less often, and using methods other than inhaling, reduced levels in milk. 

"The question is, does it matter? ... Is it possible that even low levels in breast milk may have an effect on a child's neurodevelopment? And we don't know the answer to that," study author Christina Chambers of UCSD told CNN. 

The authors hope to follow up with neurobehavioral testing on the infants to help determine whether these levels of THC in breast milk are safe. (Too bad that NIDA refused to fund a follow-up study on Melanie Dreher's Jamaican study on marijuana-using mothers and their children.) 

The study was funded by NIH and The Gerber Foundation. Gerber makes infant formulas "inspired by breast milk." The US recently attempted to derail an international resolution supporting breast feeding at the behest of infant formula manufacturers.

Women's Equality Day Honors The Struggle for Our Right to Vote

On Women's Equality Day, we celebrate suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul.

It was once said in Washington that there were two signs of spring: the return of Congress to the nation’s capital and the sight of Susan B. Anthony’s red shawl as she also returned to lobby congressmen. I got to see the shawl (pictured) at the Smithsonian, just before NORML's annual Lobby Day in DC this year.

Born in 1820 into a Quaker family committed to social equality, Anthony collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17, and in 1856 became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1866, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton initiated the American Equal Rights Association, which campaigned for equal rights for both women and African Americans. They went on to publish a women's rights newspaper called The Revolution and co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Source.

Of Harold and Maude, and Hal

Maude turns on Harold

It's probably no accident that Cameron Diaz's favorite movie as the title character in There's Something About Mary (1998) is Harold and Maude (1971), since Mary and Ted (Ben Stiller) smoke a joint together after they reunite. In Harold and Maude, Ruth Gordon (as Maude) plays an 80-year-old woman who turns a young Harold (Bud Cort) onto marijuana, enabling him to finally open up to someone about the source of his strange behavior, and learn to love life.