Blanche, The Original Calloway

One more Women's History Month post: 

I was surprised to learn of late that Cab "Reefer Man" Calloway had an older sister Blanche, who was also a musician and a big influence on him. 

"Before swing-era singer, actor, and bandleader Cab Calloway was a household name, he wasn’t even the biggest name in his household. That distinction went to Blanche Calloway, his vocalist older sister and the first woman to lead an all-male jazz orchestra," begins a 2022 article Harvard Magazine. 

"Blanche was known to be an incredible, charismatic performer, with a big personality. Her style and flair onstage was a huge inspiration for her younger brother, Cab Calloway, and she paved the way in show business for Cab," says an article in Opera Baltimore about the Baltimore-raised performer.  

Women's Herstory Month: Equity and Inclusion

This year, both Women's History Month and International Women's Day (March 8) have chosen equity, diversity and inclusion as their themes. It's a good time to look at equity in the cannabis industry, and honor those women who are a part of it. 

Kim Cargile of A Therapeutic Alternative in Sacramento, who is a leader in empowering women to run cannabis businesses, recently posted a list on Facebook of, "Women who have gone to great lengths to push this industry forward, who have sacrificed everything while working on the front lines of the War on Cannabis. Women that are often overlooked by the corporate takeover of our industry and we should all know there names and if we know them, thank them."

PHOTO: Larry Utley

Inviting others to add names to the list, Cargile included on her list Elvy Musikka, a Columbian-American who was the first woman in the federal IND medical marijuana program, which sends monthly tins of 300 joints to participants. Musikka stumped for our rights (in both English and Spanish) for over a decade with the Cannabis Action Network, which toured the country raising awareness. 

Another inclusion is Yamileth Bolanos, who hails from Costa Rica and founded the Los Angeles cannabis dispensary Pure Life Alternative Wellness Center. Bolanos was instrumental in the passage of California's law protecting organ transplant patients from discrimination over their use of medical marijuana. 

A Valentine for Valentina Wasson

Those in the know about the discovery of psilocybin mushrooms by Western civilization are hip to the 1957 Life magazine article written by banking executive and author R. Gordon Wasson about his experience taking mushrooms with curandera Maria Sabina in Mexico. 

What is not commonly known or appreciated is that Gordon's wife Valentina Pavlovna Wasson lead him to become interested in mushrooms, and that she published an account of her own experience with psychedelic mushrooms six days after Gordon's article. Valentina's account of her psychedelic journey appeared on May 19, 1957 in This Week magazine, a nationally syndicated Sunday magazine supplement that was included in American newspapers between 1935 and 1969.

"The walls suddenly receded and I was carried out—out and away—on undulating waves of translucent turquoise green," she wrote. "My mind was floating blissfully. It was as if my very soul had been scooped out and moved to a point in heavenly space, leaving my empty physical husk behind in the mud hut. Yet I was perfectly conscious. I knew now what the shamans meant when they said, 'The mushroom takes you to a place where God is.'" She traveled in her mind to the Caves of Lascaux and to 18th century Versailles, where, "I was struck again by the magnificence and intensity of the colors. Everything was resplendently rich. I had never imagined such beauty."

Anslinger Censors 1946 Canadian Film "Drug Addict"

Having occasion to look up a list of films banned in the US, I noticed that the 1946 Canadian film Drug Addict was banned by then-drug "czar" and head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics Harry Anslinger due to its depiction or drug addiction as a medical problem, and of addicts and traffickers as white people. 

According to a 1998 article published in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, "The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) attempted to intimidate sociologist Alfred Lindesmith, a long-time advocate of medical treatment of drug addiction, from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. In addition, the US banning of the 1946 Canadian film "Drug Addict" may have been a pivotal event in a pattern of censorship and disinformation carried on by the FBN under the leadership of Harry Anslinger."

Mexico’s weed "nuns" aim to take the plant back from the narcos

PHOTO: Raquel Cunha/Reuters 

As reported by Al Jazeera, a group of Mexican women have joined a worldwide movement of activists dressing as nuns to reclaim the holy herb. 

“We want to take the plant back from the narcos,” said one of the "nuns," who uses the moniker “Sister Bernardet” online and asked not to give her name for fear of reprisal. "In a country ravaged by drug war and embedded in Christianity, the image of a marijuana-smoking nun is an act of rebellion," writes Al Jazeera. The nuns argue that "the fight against drugs in Latin America has been a failure, leading to widespread violence and mass incarceration."

The Sisters of the Valley started in 2014 in California's Central Valley, and media attention followed. According to the article, the Sisters "fashion themselves after a lay religious movement, the Beguines, that dates back to the Middle Ages. The group, made up of single women, devoted itself to spirituality, scholarship and charity, but took no formal vows."

Censorship of Santa's Pipe from "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" Continues on Its 200th Anniversary

Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, 1/1/1881

"'Twas the Night Before Christmas," the beloved Clement Moore poem that was first published as "Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" on December 23, 1823, celebrated its 200 anniversary this year.

Describing first seeing Santa Claus, Moore wrote: 

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, 

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; 

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, 

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. 

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! 

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! 

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, 

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow; 

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, 

And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath

Those last two lines were edited out of a version of the poem published in 2012 by Canadian author Pamela McColl, an anti-smoking advocate who "believes that her non-smoking Santa will prevent new smokers." McColl spent $200,000 of her own money printing 55,500 copies in English, Spanish and French and hired an illustrator to redraw Santa without his pipe. 

“It’s denying access to the original voice of the author, and that’s censorship,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone of the American Library Association told the New York Post. She likened McColl’s alteration to an Alabama publisher’s controversial purging of “indecent” language in “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The National Coalition Against Censorship said, "Readers of the new version will note Santa is still overweight, at least for now."

This year, McColl is back with a new book “'Twas The Night: The Art and History of the Classic Christmas Poem,” and is appearing at events to celebrate the bicentennial of the poem she altered.  (That book does contain the original, uncensored version of the poem, along with art work depicting Santa with his pipe. But when my nephew's public library offered a reading of the poem last month, it was the censored version.)

Chelsea Handler Named Tokin' Woman of the Year: Tokey Awards 2023

Winners: Write Here to claim your prize: A Tokin' Women book.

TOKIN' WOMAN OF THE YEAR - Chelsea Handler

I've wanted to make Chelsea Handler the Tokin' Woman of the Year for the past several years, but current events (Sha'Carri Richardson losing her Olympics slot for testing positive for marijuana, Britney Griner bring imprisoned in Russia for carrying it across the border, Kamala Harris being nominated for Vice President and talking about weed....) intervened. 

In Handler's 2019 book Life Will Be the Death of Me, she relates how after the Trump election she found that her rage at the political situation was exacerbated by alcohol, and so she began learning more about marijuana as a substitute, starting as an aid to meditation. 

"I think the world needs cannabis more than it's ever needed anything," she announced at an appearance that year at the Hall of Flowers trade show in Sonoma, CA. "Alcohol is not doing it.....if we want a kinder, softer and gentler place, then we have the answer."

"So many users aren't out because of shame," she lamented, adding, "But I have time to be here and be a New York Times #1 bestselling author...We need to highlight that cannabis can be used to function, to create, to contribute." 

Handler won a Tokey award in 2016 for her episode "Chelsea Does Drugs" in which she took ayahuasca on camera; in 2018 she took a Tokey for a Top Tweet. In 2021 she curated her favorite cannabis products into an "America is Back" kit for Inauguration Day, with the proceeds going to support Cage Free Repair, a cannabis reform nonprofit. This year she appeared in a 4/20 "Pardons to Progress" video urging action to free cannabis prisoners. 

She's continued to speak out across the country about her love for marijuana, so that, for example, an interview from Alabama where she appeared on her recent comedy tour begins, "Chelsea Handler is sitting on her sofa, smoking a joint and reading a book." She recently told Kind Magazine, "I just want to be a high vibe passing through this world so every time I leave an area, it's better." 

In this clip from The Tonight Show, Handler makes a case for women dominating the world, or at least late night talk shows, while wearing a necklace with an Amanita mushroom shape and an emerald green gemstone. She'll be touring Canada and the US starting in January 2024.