Celebrating famous female cannabis connoisseurs throughout herstory to the present day.
All contents copyrighted. "Bright Leaf" artwork by Jean Hanamoto http://www.camomoto.com
It was September 2003, and Tommy Chong was being sent to prison for selling bongs.
I'd written so many articles about people being caught up in our unconscionable war against a plant over the years, I just couldn't bring myself to write one more. There were so many injustices involved, including the fact that Chong was targeted because of the irreverent Cheech and Chong movies he'd made, in a country that is supposed to revere freedom of speech.
So I decided to write a song instead.
Because the "Operation Pipe Dreams" that took Chong down involved 1200 officers in raids of head shops and distributors across the country, leading to 55 arrests, the lyric began:
While the terrorists were knocking on our front door Twelve hundred policemen didn't have much more To do than round up 55 in their dragnet For sellin' a giggle on the internet We can't find Bin Laden and we're stuck in Iraq But we've got Tommy Chong under key and lock
Tommy Chong, Tommy Chong Servin' nine months in prison for selling bongs To you I sing this song
Asked by the New York Times if she smokes pot, Bates replied, "Yeah, I do. I’ve had a prescription for some time for chronic pain. I’ve really become a believer. I find it just as, if not more, effective than other pain relief." She also said she supports legalization "even more so now that I’ve become more educated about what its properties are" and mentioned meeting NFL players in the Gridiron Cannabis Coalition.
Gotta say, though, having just seen Bates in "The Great Gilly Hopkins" (2015), it made me wish the writing for cannabis-themed movies and TV could approach a great film like that one.
Peachtree NORML founder Sharon Ravert (pictured at right with members of the NC Women and others) lobbied to bring the Drug Policy Alliance conference to Atlanta this year. Just before the event, Atlanta, which had the worst-in-the-nation record for arresting blacks over whites for marijuana, passed a decriminalization measure. NORML is working to pass more reform measures throughout Georgia and Sharon produces a segment on 420radio.com highlighting the stories and work of other women in the fight to end marijuana prohibition.
Honorable mentions
It's a bittersweet year when our top Tokin' Woman was sentenced to serve nine years in a Russian penal colony, despite international outcry about her arrest for the petty crime of having a couple of vape pens in her luggage at a Moscow airport.
Brittney Griner, 32, a seven-time WNBA All-Star center for the Phoenix Mercury, won Olympic gold medals with the U.S. women’s national basketball team in 2016 and 2021. She played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg for several years, as do many WNBA stars who are not paid anything like their male counterparts in the US.
President Biden announced on December 8 that Griner has been freed. She was exchanged for Viktor Bout, an arms dealer accused of supplying Al
Qaeda, the Taliban and rebels in Rwanda. (Apparently, on the world stage,
carrying a couple of vape pens is equated with arms dealing. But then, of course, the US is arguably the largest arms dealer in the world. Convicted arms smuggler Oliver North never did jail time and is a longtime Faux News host and commentator; he was briefly head of the NRA until he ousted for extortion in 2019.)
Many think Griner was taken as a political prisoner, just days before Russia invaded Ukraine in March. The announcement of her arrest came on the heels of a ruling
whereby an Israeli court froze the Russian government ownership of a
Jerusalem church, reportedly part of a deal struck in 2020 for the
release of American-born Israeli citizen Naama Issachar,
who was convicted for smuggling 10 grams of hashish through the Moscow
airport. She had been sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison.
Griner, who said she noticed an inordinate amount of customs agents at the airport the day she was arrested, never denied carrying the vape pens, only saying it was an oversight that she packed them. On the witness stand, she said that she used cannabis to deal with the pain from injuries she's suffered during her career. "The benefits from medical cannabis definitely outweigh the painkillers that they prescribe," she said. "The painkillers have really bad side effects. Medical cannabis, there are honestly no side effects that harm you."
Very Important Pothead and top all-time NBA scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote in support of Griner (the day after we Tweeted him, asking him to). NBA champ Steph Curry gave a shout-out to Griner on her birthday at the Warriors Ring Ceremony in October. He and Megan Rapinoe—the soccer star with a Portland-based CBD company—spoke of Griner's plight at the ESPY Awards in July, the same month that Rapinoe was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom wearing a blazer
with the initials ‘BG’ and a flower embroidered onto the
lapel in tribute to Griner.
Biden called Griner "an incomparable athlete" who "endured mistreatment and a show trial in Russia with characteristic grit and incredible dignity" at the press conference. He mentioned US Marine Trevor Reed, who was brought home from Russia in April in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in the US in a cocaine trafficking conspiracy. Not mentioned was Marc Fogel, a Pittsburgh native who was sentenced to 14 years after airport workers found half an ounce of marijuana in his luggage when he went to Russia to teach in June. Free Marc Fogel.
Carmen began his musical education with violin lessons from his aunt Muriel, who played with the Cleveland Orchestra. After hits with The Raspberries like "Go All the Way" (in which it is the woman who makes the suggestion), he had a pair of solo hits—"All By Myself" and "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again"— playing the piano on two borrowed Rachmaninov melodies.
Juli Lynne Charlot
October 26, 1922 – March 3, 2024
Singer and actress Charlot sang with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra performed with the Marx Brothers in their act at military bases during World War II. But she is best known as the inventor of the poodle skirt, a '50s phenomenon that celebrated the return of prosperity and the availability of lots of fabric. Unable to afford a dress for a Christmas party, Charlot, who refused to learn to sew so that she wasn't a drone like her embroiderer mother, took a large piece of felt and cut a circle in it, adding appliques that soon tended towards poodles, and a phenomenon that twirled at many a sock hop was born. Charlot also designed contemporary renditions of traditional Mexican wedding dresses and died at age 101 at her home in Tepoztlán, Mexico.
Richard Lewis
June 29, 1947 – February 27, 2024
Lewis, who called himself "The Prince of Pain," made a career being hilariously upfront about his neuroses and his struggles with addictions to alcohol, cocaine, and crystal meth. In his 2000 book, The Other Great Depression, he joked that in college, "I didn't smoke a lot of pot because I was too paranoid to begin with and strong grass made me think I was stalking myself." Of his early days in stand-up comedy when he sipped wine and "occasionally smoked a joint" he wrote, "it was a real pleasure to get a nice buzz... and to be in a head space where I felt so loose and self-confident that I actually might have been legitimately relaxed and happy." His former girlfriend Debra Winger and co-star Jamie Lee Curtis wrote tributes to Lewis on on Instagram, with Curtis adding, "He also is the reason I am sober." (Photo: Bonnie Schiffman, who brilliantly put him in Munch's painting "The Scream.")
Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt
February 8, 1932 – February 26, 2024
Employed as an office manager, Wolf-Rehfeldt was a self-taught artist working under a regime of strict surveillance in the former German Democratic Republic. She turned herself into a typist—a stereotypical female job—and is known particularly for a period of geometric and poetic typewriter graphics art that she called "typewritings" produced between the 1970s and 1990, mostly as part of Mail Art collaborations, which allowed artists living under totalitarian regimes to communicate and form networks, even as they engaged with conditions of official surveillance. Her work addressed cybernetics, environmental issues and human rights. Photo: Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Information, 1970s.
Aaron Bushnell
(1998 - February 25, 2024)
Images of the horrific event weren't able to be shown on TV, but social media broadcasted 25-year-old Bushnell's video wherein he self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC to protest the war in Gaza. An active-duty member of the US Air Force, Bushnell grew up in a religious community on Cape Cod called the Community of Jesus, whose former members have come forward alleging abuse and a rigid social structure. He repeatedly yelled, "Free Palestine!" during his protest. Days later, President Biden announced (while eating an ice cream cone with Seth Meyers) that he expected an agreement on a ceasefire within a week.
Nancy Udell (1973 - February 24, 2024)
Longtime Empire State NORML co-director and treasurer "loved to march in the annual NYC
Cannabis Parade and spent many lobby days in Albany prior to
legalization," wrote Steve Bloom of Celebstoner. Born in Atlantic Beach, Udell was a graduate of NYU and
the University of Denver and worked for many years as a paralegal. She was often quoted in stories about marijuana legalization in New York, always arguing for equity, reason and fairness. Photo: Luna Rouge
Alexei Navalny
(June 4, 1976 – February 16, 2024)
Navalny’s death at age 47 has deprived the Russian opposition of its most well-known and inspiring politician less than a month before an election that will give President Vladimir Putin another six years in power. Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He was later convicted three times, saying each case was politically motivated, and received a sentence of 19 years for extremism. He died at a remote Arctic penal colony, reportedly two days after he was put in a "punishment cell" there. Over 400 people were detained in Russia while paying tribute to Navalny. The film Navalny won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2023. Souce.
Bob Moore
(February 15, 1929 – February 10, 2024)
Moore and his wife Charlee "developed a passion for whole grains that coincided with parenthood," and opened a flour mill in Redding, CA. "The first whole grain loaf of bread that came out of my wife Charlee’s oven on our five-acre farm back in the ‘60s was the most delicious loaf of bread I can ever remember smelling and eating," Bob later recalled. After moving to Milwaukie, Oregon to attend seminary school and read the Bible in its original language, the couple founded Bob’s Red Mill in 1978, and grew it into a leading global food brand offering 200+ products in more than 70 countries. On his 81st birthday, Moore established an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), transferring ownership of the company to its 700 employees, saying, "The Bible says to do unto others are you would have them do unto you." The Moores were named honorary Beavers for their significant donations to Oregon State University, where they helped fund the Moore Family Center for Whole Grain Foods, Nutrition, and Preventive Health. Charlee died in 2018, when Bob retired; he remained a Board Member of the Red Mill until his death at just before his 95th birthday.
Pointer was the last surviving member of the original Pointer Sisters trio that had a string of hits starting in 1973 with the Allen Toussaint funk anthem "Yes We Can Can" featuring Anita's lead vocal. With her brother Fritz she penned the 2020 book Fairytale: The Pointer Sisters' Family Story about the sisters' roots in the Oakland, CA Black Power movement and their rise to fame. Of their early days of success, she wrote, "We were having fun, but not what I'd call getting wild. We drank, smoked cigarettes, and occasionally had a little pot." But saddled with debt and a grueling touring schedule, both younger sisters June and Ruth succumbed to hard drug addiction (cocaine and crack), and Anita also lost her only child Jada to cancer in 2003. The Sisters, who started their career singing backup vocals for acts like Grace Slick and Betty Davis, had a number two hit in Belgium in 2005, covering the Eurythmics/Aretha Franklin song "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" with Belgian singer Natalia. In December 2017, Billboard ranked The Pointer Sisters as the 93rd most successful Hot 100 Artist of all-time and as the 32nd most successful Hot 100 Women Artist of all-time.
The lyrics Anita sang should inspire us all as we enter 2023:
Now's the time for all good men To get together with one another We got to iron out our problems And iron out our quarrels And try to live as brothers
And try to find peace within Without stepping on one another And do respect the women of the world Remember, you all had mothers
We got to make this land a better land Than the world in which we live And we got to help each man be a better man With the kindness that we give
I know we can make it I know darn well, we can work it out Oh, yes, we can, I know we can, can Yes, we can, can, why can't we? If we wanna, yes, we can, can
Barbara Walters (12/30)
A chapter in the new book, The Activist's Media Handbook by David Fenton is titled, "How Barbara Walters Saved Abbie [Hoffman] From a Long Prison Term" and describes how in 1980, Fenton was able to arrange an exclusive interview with Walters and the infamous Yippie! activist Hoffman, then underground after being arrested for selling three pounds of cocaine to undercover agents. Fenton convinced Walters to get into a plane without knowing where she was going, lest the FBI would be alerted, and describes how she interviewed Hoffman "like a Jewish mother meets her long-lost Jewish son" for a full hour, which aired on ABC's 20/20 (pictured.) "As a result, a week later when [Hoffman] turned himself into the Manhattan district attorney, he served only fifty-four days in jail," writes Fenton. That's the kind of clout Walters had. Yes, she blazed many trials, broke many barriers, and started The View to give women a voice, but this—and the time she got Bing Crosby to say that he was for marijuana legalization, and asked President Obama about the topic after Colorado and Washington legalized in 2012—are my favorite stories about her.
Ian Tyson (12/29)
Canadian folk music legend Tyson was, according to Suze Rotolo, the one who turned Bob Dylan onto marijuana. In her memoir A Freewheelin' Time, Rotolo writes, "I swear it was Ian Tyson who offered up the first taste of marijuana when Bob brought him to the flat one afternoon. Ian had a friend back home who had introduced him to their stuff you could smoke that would get you high. Bob didn't think I should try it until he had tested it, but later on I did." Writing about sitting around with Tyson and his partner Sylvia listening to records, Rotolo wrote, "We reveled in the joy of discovering something we had never heard before. And this wasn't just for music; it was about books and movies, too. We were a young and curious lot." Tyson wrote "Four Strong Winds" the day after he heard Dylan introduce his new song "Blowin' In the Wind" in 1962.
Vivienne Westwood (12/29)
“I don’t think punk would have happened without Vivienne," said Tokin' Woman Chrissie
Hynde, who before forming the Pretenders, was an
assistant at Westwood's London shop. “I was about 36 when punk happened and I was upset about what was going on in the world,” the influential fashion designer and activist told Harper’s Bazaar in 2013.
“It was the hippies who taught my generation about politics, and that’s
what I cared about — the world being so corrupt and mismanaged, people
suffering, wars, all these terrible things.” Westwood wardrobed The Sex Pistols and Boy George, and created Oscar gowns for Kate Winslet in 2006 and Zendaya in 2015, for a look (pictured right) that prompted Giuliana Rancic to comment, “She looks like she smells like patchouli oil and weed.”
Jo Mersa Marley (12/27)
The grandson of Bob Marley was a recording artist and DJ who was aiming "to do something new with my roots," as he once told Rolling Stone. He began performing onstage at age 4 with Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers —
his father Stephen, his uncle Ziggy, and his aunts Cedella and Sharon — during
that group’s concert finales. He moved to Florida at age 11, where he
studied studio engineering and observed his father and uncle Damian
Marley working in Stephen’s Lion’s Den studio before starting to make his own music. He died at the age of 31, reportedly of an asthma attack.
Franco Harris (12/20)
When he made the Immaculate Reception, his Italian mother was reportedly praying the Rosary and listening to Ave Maria. Harris died three days before the 50th anniversary of his most famous play, to commemorate which there is a statue in the Pittsburgh airport (pictured). Harris told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2017, "I feel in any state that has approved medical marijuana (as 28 states hosting 20 of the NFL’s 32 teams have), the league should remove medical marijuana from being a banned substance....I will tell you this, if it ever comes to a point where I do need pain management, I’d feel very lucky and happy now that we have medicinal marijuana in Pennsylvania.”
Wells, the perky and petite brunette who played Mary Ann on TV's Gilligan's Island, was caught with a stash box and several half-smoked doobies in her car in 2007. Wells claimed the pot was not hers, but she was rumored to be the person who mailed a package of pot to Bob Denver (Gilligan) at his West Virginia home. Wells died at age 82 due to complications of COVID.
Patricia Ann Steward (12/30)
Known as "The Duchess of Hemp," Steward was an activist, entrepreneur, and compatriot of Jack Herer (The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy). We corresponded after John Prine died this year, with her reminiscing about smoking pot with Prine at the club she owned in Arizona.
K.T. Oslin (12/21)
Oslin made music history by becoming the first middle-aged woman to rise
to stardom in Nashville. She was 45 years old when she scored a hit with “80’s Ladies” in 1987. The song made her the
first female songwriter in history to win the CMA’s Song of the Year
prize, and she was the CMA Female Vocalist of the Year in 1988. (Source.)
We were the girls of the 50's. Stoned rock and rollers in the 60's. Hunny, more than our names got changed As the 70's slipped on by.
Now we're 80's ladies. There ain't been much these ladies ain't tried.
David Lander (12/4)
Lander, who made us laugh as Squiggy on "Laverne and Shirley," was an MS sufferer and advocate for medical marijuana. Lander said he and his partner Michael McKean (Lenny) created their characters for the show while high.
Known for voicing Grandmother Coco in the 2017 Pixar/Disney film Coco, Murguía was an acclaimed Mexican actress. In 2010 she appeared in Las Buenas Hierbas (The Good Herbs), where she plays an herb dealer with Alzheimer's.
Tommy Smothers (12/26)
The Smothers Brothers' groundbreaking television hour ushered in the topical comedy of Laugh In and Saturday Night Live, and so much more. David Bionculli's book Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour reveals that some of the comedy on the show was fueled by weed. Tommy said in the 2002 documentary Smothered that he and headwriter/"Classical Gas" composer Mason Williams would "sometimes torch a joint" while working on scripts. Singer Jennifer Warnes recalled one road trip on which she and Tom dropped acid, and Williams remembered mistakenly eating a batch of cast member Leigh French's "specially enhanced" brownies. During the trial that resulted in a settlement for breach of contract after the show was cancelled by CBS, French's skit where she played country singer "Kentucky Rose" who said, "I used to play bluegrass, but a couple of weeks ago I started smoking it" was entered into the court record. Tommy testified at the 1968 trial of impresario and restauranteur Frank Werber who was accused of possession and cultivation of marijuana, saying he'd known Werber for years and "before he started smoking pot, he was a real a-hole." Smothers played the second guitar on John Lennon's song "Give Peace a Chance," performed at Lennon's honeymoon/war protest and mentioning Tommy in the lyric.
Alice Parker (12/24)
Parker was a composer, arranger, conductor and teacher who authored over 500 pieces of music (operas, cantatas, choral suites, hymns) along with a wealth of arrangements based on folk songs and hymns. Her 1984 composition "Songs for Eve" is from an Archibald MacLeish poem; her "Echoes from the Hills" and "Heavenly Hurt," among others, are inspired by Emily Dickinson. In the 2020 documentary Alice: At Home With Alice Parker she tells how, when she was born in 1925 she was held up to the window for the neighbors to see on Christmas Eve. She died on that day at the age of 98.
Ruth Seymour (12/22)
A broadcasting executive known for her innovative work in public radio, Seymour's first venture into radio came at KPFK in Los Angeles from 1961 to 1964. From 1971 to 1976, she worked as program director there. She was fired in 1976, after the FBI raided the station in search of a tape KPFK had aired from Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, which the station manager refused to turn over. Seymour broadcast the raid live, as it occurred. She joined the staff of KCRW at Santa Monica College in 1977 as a consultant and was named manager a few months later, in 1978. She retired from there in February 2010 after having helped the station "transcend its basement location to shape the culture in Los Angeles," bringing programs to the station such as "Le Show" (hosted by Harry Shearer); "Left, Right & Center"; "Morning Becomes Eclectic"; and "Which Way L.A.?" In 1996, KCRW became the first station other than Chicago's WBEZ to air "This American Life." She also supported programs that brought literature to the radio, including airing radio dramas adaptations of Babbitt and Ulysses. Known in Washington, D.C. as a fierce defender of public broadcasting funding and issues such as licensing and royalties for streaming, in 1997 she received Amnesty International's Media Spotlight Award.
Rose Ann Fuhrman (December 2023)
When few were covering the topic, Sonoma CA-based author Fuhrman wrote lively and accurate articles like “Cliffhanger in California” about Prop. 215, the 1996 initiative that made California the first state to legalize medical marijuana. When Prop. 215's spear-Head Dennis Peron died in 2018, she wrote on her Facebook page: "The passing of Dennis Peron feels like the closing of one chapter as another one struggles to write itself....A little less than 30 years ago I learned that marijuana prohibition was based on racist and other lies and had nothing to do with public safety. I hadn't given it much thought prior to that and had never tried it, automatically defaulting to the common view. Being a passionate advocate for justice, my new knowledge made activism for decriminalization or legalization inevitable.... I don't remember what led to my writing for Cannabis Canada (now Cannabis Culture) but a friend and neighbor took me to the original Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco for a meeting, which was my access point. Intelligent, peaceful people who did (and many still do) great work."
Cari Beauchamp (12/14)
I had just written to Beauchamp after re-reading the Vanity Fair article she co-wrote with Judy Balaban about Hollywood's experimentation with LSD. I also picked up her book, Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood and found a couple of marijuana references there. Beauchamp was an award-winning author and historian who was a resident scholar at the Mary Pickford Foundation. She also wrote books about screenwriter Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and Joseph P. Kennedy's influence on Hollywood, as well as editing and annotating Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s by Valeria Belletti. She wrote and co-produced a documentary film in 2000 based on Without Lying Down, also wrote the documentary film The Day My God Died about young girls of Nepal sold into sexual slavery, which played on PBS and was nominated for an Emmy in 2003. Before becoming a full-time writer in 1990, she worked as a private investigator and a campaign manager, and served as Press Secretary to California Governor Jerry Brown.
Ryan O'Neal (12/8)
The cocaine/meth/alcohol monster got him, leading to accusations of abuse from his kids and spouses, but in the end his daughter Tatum, who remains the youngest actor to win an Oscar for "Paper Moon" in which she starred with her Dad, had nice things to say about him, as did co-stars Ali McGraw, Barbra Streisand and others. Born on 4/20/1941, O'Neal was married to Leigh Taylor-Young, who baked pot brownies in "I Love You Alice B. Toklas," and was with Farrah Fawcett when she died of cancer, an even sadder Love Story.
Norman Lear (12/5)
Prolific screenwriter and producer Lear was most known for the breakthrough sitcom All In the Family. Its spinoff, Maude, was about a liberated woman (Bea Arthur) who, in one episode, protested a young man's marijuana arrest by scheming to get herself arrested too. Lear also produced One Day at a Time about a divorced woman living on her own with her two daughters, and its recent reboot with a Latina cast starring Rita Moreno (shown), which aired a thoughtful episode about cannabis. Lear filed a First Amendment lawsuit against TV's "family hour" censorship, and founded People for the American Way (PFAW), a progressive advocacy organization formed in reaction to the politics of the Christian right.
Sandra Day O’Connor (12/1)
The first woman to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice, O'Connor was born Sandra Day in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of a cattle rancher. In her youth, she participated in cattle roundups as the group's only female rider, latter calling it, "my first initiation into joining an all-men's club, something I did more than once in my life." Day enrolled at Stanford University at the age of 16 and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in economics in 1950. At Stanford Law School she served on the Stanford Law Review with future Supreme Court chief justice William Rehnquist, who proposed marriage to her (she declined). After graduating from law school, because of her gender, she could only find employment as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo, California after she offered to work for no salary and without an office. She eventually became a judge and an elected official in Arizona, serving as the first female majority leader of a state senate as the Republican leader in the Arizona Senate. While serving on the Supreme Court from 1981-2006, she was one of three co-authors of the lead opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Court upheld the right to have an abortion as established in Roe v. Wade, and argued in favor of President Obama naming a replacement for conservative justice Antonin Scalia (before the Senate scandalously held up Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland, until Trump could be elected and name Neil Gorsuch, assuring the Court's conservative majority). She also joined the dissenting opinion in Gonzalez v Raich, in defense of state marijuana laws. After retiring, O'Connor succeeded Henry Kissinger (who died two days before her) as the Chancellor of the College of William & Mary. In 2003, she wrote a book titled The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice and in 2005, a children's book, Chico: A True Story from the Childhood of the First Woman Supreme Court Justice, was named for her favorite horse. In 2009, Justice O'Connor was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Shane MacGowan (12/30)
Born on Christmas Day in 1957, the "peerless and fearless" MacGowan was the co-founder, frontman and chief songwriter of the Pogues, which brilliantly and energetically combined punk rock with traditional Irish music and politics. In 1972, MacGowan was expelled from the school he was attending on a literary scholarship after being caught smoking pot in public, and at age 17, he spent six months in a psychiatric hospital due to drug addiction, where he was also diagnosed with acute situational anxiety. He struggled with drugs and alcohol throughout his life, and was dismissed from the Pogues for unprofessional behavior after missing concert dates, including opening for Bob Dylan. "Fairytale of New York," which MacGowan co-wrote and performed with Kirsty MacColl, remains a perennial Christmas favorite. Sadly, he died of complications from pneumonia at age 65 just as the Christmas season started this year. At the end of his life, “We used to go to Shane’s house and roll joints for him. We would watch Netflix with him,” said Andrew Hendy of Dundalk balladeers. "Shane will be remembered as one of music’s greatest lyricists. So many of his songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them," said Ireland's President Michael Higgins in a statement.
Paul Sorvino brilliantly plays Kissinger in the Oliver Stone movie "Nixon," nailing indelibly the scene in which he prays on his knees with Nixon on the eve of impeachment. In the opera "Nixon In China" Kissinger is shown whipping Chinese workers into submission to the semiconductor. “People are a little shocked when he appears as the sadistic overlord,” director Peter Sellars told the New York Times. “But obviously he’s the man who’s responsible for Chile and for the secret bombing of Cambodia — the list of atrocities and acts of unspeakable violence is long. And that lurid stuff is behind the jolly and well-spoken diplomat. The surprise is, as always, no one is just one thing. That is one reason you make operatic characters.” My first political act, at the age of 14, was to campaign for George McGovern against Richard Nixon in 1971. After Tricky Dicky with Kissinger at his side won by a landslide, and bombed Cambodia by Christmas, I was disillusioned for decades. That Kissinger lived to be 100 while chewing on the cud of human misery just adds to the sickeningness of it all.
Dale Spender (11/21)
Australian feminist scholar Spender was co-founder of Pandora Press, the first of the feminist imprints devoted solely to non-fiction, committed, according to the New York Times, to showing that "women were the mothers of the novel and that any other version of its origin is but a myth of male creation." Her book Man Made Language (1980), based on her PhD research, argues that in patriarchal societies men control language and it works in their favor, drawing parallels with how derogatory terms are used to maintain racism. She was a co-originator of the database WIKED (Women's International Knowledge Encyclopedia and Data) and associate editor of the Great Women Series (United Kingdom). Particularly concerned with intellectual property and the effects of new technologies, for nine years she was a director of Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) in Australia and for two years (2002–2004) she was the chair. Spender consistently dressed in purple clothes, a choice she initially made for its symbolic reference to the suffragettes.
Rosalynn Carter (11/19)
Asked by Katie Couric what was the most exciting moment in his life, winning the Nobel Peace Prize or being elected President, Jimmy Carter replied that it was when Rosalynn said she would marry him. The couple were married for 77 years, and the former president called her “my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished.” The eldest of four children born to a bus driver/farmer father and teacher/dressmaker mother, Rosalynn helped raise her younger brothers after her father died when she was 13. After helping Jimmy win the governorship of Georgia in 1970, she was appointed to the Governor's Commission to Improve Services for the Mentally and Emotionally Handicapped, and mental health became a lifelong cause. As the first of all First Ladies to have her own office in the White House, she attended Cabinet meetings and major briefings, served as the President’s personal emissary to Latin American countries, and led a delegation to Thailand in 1979 to address the problems of Cambodian and Laotian refugees. She was honored by the National Organization for Women with an Award of Merit for her vigorous support for the Equal Rights Amendment, and joined other First Ladies at the Houston conference celebrating the International Women's Year in 1977. In 1982, she co-founded The Carter Center in Atlanta to promote peace and human rights worldwide. Her autobiography, First Lady From Plains, was published in 1984. She and her husband contributed to the expansion of the nonprofit housing organization Habitat for Humanity, and they received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999.
