#18. Weed Witch Halloween Starring Juliette Gordon Low, Angela Lansbury Masturbating in a Bathtub + Trapping The Vote in Georgia with Killer Mike
Plus: The Meaning of Life
(Pictured: Lansbury rubbing one out in a bathtub; Killer Mike + ELP of Run The Jewels proving you can be Georgia and New York at your core but still B.F.F.)
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Dear coven,
HAPPY HALLOWEEN. Samhain. National Trick or Treat Day. National Doorbell Day. National Caramel Apple Day. National Magic Day. National Knock-Knock Jokes Day. And Girl Scout Founder's Day.
Speaking of Girl Scout Founder’s Day and Halloween, if you’re New York City, Higher Standards has teamed up with the first pop culture inspired ice cream brand, Mikey Likes It for exclusive ice cream flavor inspired by the most popular cannabis strain of all time, Girl Scout Cookies. They’re giving away free scoops of the limited edition GSC ice cream in front of Higher Standards at Chelsea Market on 15th Street at 9th Avenue today while supplies last. Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but here we are. It’s been a rough ride this year, and I also got a flu shot the other day that made me think I was going to die as I sweated it out. Worth it, though. Get your flu shot free at CVS!
It should also be noted that they didn’t choose Thin Mint! Instead, they opted for the obviously better choice of Samoas featuring caramel ice cream with pieces of sugar cookies, milk chocolate swirl, and toasted coconut flakes. They’re also hawking a limited edition Higher Standards x Mikey Likes It glass spoon pipe that looks like an ice cream scooper. Adorable.
A few years ago, I paid a visit to the Juliette Gordon Low House—founder of the Girl Scouts—in Savannah, Georgia with a fellow weed witch. As a former Girl Scout, I was honored to pay tribute to the woman who formed my love for being a Brownie Scout, instilled a sense of entrepreneurship selling cookies, and ultimately inspired one of the greatest cannabis strains of all time that I enjoy baked within brownies or eating aforementioned cookies.
She was born on Halloween, hence, why we celebrate her birthday today. Sexy Scorpio! Low founded The Girl Scouts of America in 1912. She defied convention by gathering a small troop of 18 culturally and ethnically diverse girls, “reaching across class, cultural, and ethnic boundaries to ensure all girls, including those with so-called disabilities, had a place to grow and develop their leadership skills. Using her innate talent for fundraising and public relations, combined with her vast network of friends and supporters, she led Girl Scouts with passion and determination—ensuring it was, and always would be, an experience that was “girl led.” Basically, Juliette Gordon Low was an intersectional feminist ahead of her time.
More reading: Juliette Gordon Low x Lou Henry Hoover: “An Oak in a Flower Pot”
Low died after a long and private struggle with breast cancer, and when I think of a cannabis strain that pays homage to someone so beautiful who deserved weed so much, it was her. What a fitting honor to have your legacy immortalized in such an amazing plant.
We got stoned, walked around the riverfront, had dinner, and bought a huge bag of candy to take along for a haunted Savannah trolley ride. Afterwards, we went to the steps of her gorgeous Savannah estate, where we sat with our vape pipes, discussing all of the ghosts of Georgia. Savannah is such a spooky city with such a long history that its ghosts have become their own tourist attraction. When we left, we accidentally left behind the bag of candy—gasp!—which we could only assume was taken by the ghost of a friendly weed witch Girl Scout. Or maybe some Savannah tweaker, who knows. That’s not really the point. Oh, right: Happy Halloween and Happy Juliette Gordon Low Day!
Two Travel Shows, One Joint
(Pictured: Patron Saint of Pot Rick Steves trying to destigmatize weed through wine glasses, being a dad and Chopin)
As travel is still in Restricted Times mode that prevents us all from soaking up the sun topless on the beaches of Spain with joints in our hands, our only recourse is social media influencers and resurfaced clips from noted longtime NORML advocate, aging hippie and legendary travel expert Rick Steves is back to promoting the franchise of his PBS show.
He is so calming to watch and I definitely will be watching some of these episodes this winter, along with Kellee Edwards’ show “Mysterious Islands.” Here’s to hoping that this travel ban doesn’t last as long as the Cold War, because America will have too many pissed off people! We love our freedoms in this country, like getting as far away as possible only to remember why we come back.
I ended up finding an article on NJ.com that just came out at the beginning of the month regarding New Jersey’s legalization efforts through the lens of his work as a travel writer. But what we really want to know is whether Rick is a heavy hitter.
Q: Do you have a particular favorite strain of cannabis yourself?
A: No, I’m not that sophisticated of a pot smoker. I smoke casually. Actually until this pandemic, I’ve never actually paid for marijuana, friends just give it to me all the time because of the work I do. Strangers come up to me and put a joint in my pocket and they say thanks for legalizing. So I don’t really have a favorite strain. I just wish I did. I smoke, occasionally, just socially, and I really like it when I do. I love to play the piano high.
Angela Lansbury's Witchy Self-Love in a Bathtub as Lowkey Form of Resistance
(Pictured: A Broad in a Bath)
Please give a huge standing applause to Dame Angela Lansbury who recently turned 95 on this past new moon! So many trips around the sun. The past, present and future, all rolled up into one.
Lansbury is a Libra and in great company among other October 16 birthdays, including Oscar Wilde, Nico of the Velvet Underground, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, sports athletes Manute Bol and Naomi Osaka, and actress Kelli Martin, who whose show “Life Goes On” has already faded from social consciousness.
Aside from the fact I feel it is my duty to immortalize Lansbury’s legendary cultural contributions that include a talking teapot in “Beauty and the Beast,” and the iconic role of polite-but-no-nonsense spry octogenarian detective Jessica Fletcher in the hit television show, "Murder, She Wrote" (a series that inspired my formative years as a young writer, feminist and longstanding devotion to Lifetime true crime), I wanted to reveal Lansbury's more clandestine, subversive, and sensuous side during a time of political upheaval. A true stealthy self-care weed witch!
Pro-tip: Invest in a Lifetime and Criterion membership this winter. If you’re going to watch trash TV, you might as well be funneling money back into throwback network
In 1988, as America prepared for war with Russia, Lansbury was among the many celebrities who decided to create a fitness tape* called “Angela Lansbury’s Positive Moves: My Personal Plan For Fitness And Wellbeing.” What was amazing about Lansbury's tape is that she decided to focus on body positivity, tackling ageism and self-love, including this steamy moment of her touching every inch of her body in a bathtub to encourage masturbation and self-expression. Get you, girl!
Part of her daily routine is using aloe lotion get in touch with her body, and then dancing around her sunny Los Angeles courtyard like a whimsical Kate Bush. Oh, Angela. I hope you have all of the aloe bathtub massages for your special day. What a gift this woman is to our world.
Lansbury actually has a pretty wild life story filled with so much endless drama, heartache, betrayal, drugs and alcoholism. She’s 95, so it’s worth remembering that this is a woman who rubbed elbows with Joan Crawford in her heyday. So, she has seen it all. At some point, her kids had gotten wrapped up in heroin after falling in with Charles Manson’s crowd. It’s kind of amazing how Charles Manson was sort of an O.G. social influencer if you look at how many famous people he got involved in his cult. Come for the free love and drugs, leave before it turns to heroin and Helter Skelter.
In 2014, she finally received Dame Commander (DBE) medal of recognition from Queen Elizabeth II, which was somehow kind of a lowkey backhanded jab to Hollywood. Despite the fact her television show Murder, She Wrote, was wildly popular and ran for 12 seasons, she was never awarded an Emmy for her performance.
Though the role brought monetary gain, and viewers and fans embraced the character both during its initial run and over subsequent decades in syndication, Lansbury believes the show and her character were not always given the recognition they deserved. At the annual Primetime Emmy Awards, the Hollywood establishment was not quick to bestow a statuette on the already Oscar- and Tony-winning actress. Each year Murder, She Wrote ran, Lansbury was nominated in the lead actress in a drama series Emmy category. Each year she lost.
“It pissed me off!” she told the Radio Times in 2017 of the lack of recognition. “Because I just didn’t add up at all in Hollywood. Everywhere else in the U.S., Murder, She Wrote was huge, but not in Hollywood — no, no, no, they didn’t want to know. I wasn’t upset… well, I was upset, really. It rankled me. I can’t say it didn’t.”
Which just goes to show, you can be supremely talented, extraordinarily wealthy, and also still get snubbed by your peers. Fame and success are relative, says the woman trapped in her studio apartment in New York City during a pandemic as a newsletter writer on Substack.
When I think about the contemporary wellness space turning into this digitalized “360-brand experience,” I can’t help but feel tepidly nostalgic for a simpler time when doing light exercises to decompress from the bullshit of the world and acknowledging that even at 65-years-old that you don’t have to be a dried up sexless vessel waiting to die was somehow still a subversive act. I mentioned this to an older woman recently who said, “Just you wait.” Yikes!
Yes, Lansbury was a selling a tape as the “Lansbury brand,” but it wasn’t about products. It was just about rethinking the way you live and see yourself within the world around you. I fuck with the Lansbury brand because she fucks with herself. Literally. In a bathtub.
On that note, shout out to Aurore + NSFW for continuing to create inclusive, safe spaces for sexual expression during a time when so many accounts have been banned on social media. Please consider enjoying sexy time with a weed lube from Ananda Hemp Bliss Oil and Foria Wellness. (BreadxButta's bhang butta is out). I hope Lansbury rubbed one out 95 times because she deserves it as a hero among women.
The fact I just somehow connected Angela Lansbury, masturbation, ageism, and the Cold War deserves a clap. Please give this newsletter a heart and share if you enjoy it. And consider upgrading your membership to a paid version!
Trapping The Vote in Georgia
If you are feeling completely disconnected, afraid, useless, lonely, angry, or just want to do something different and not sure where to start, I have been having such an amazing experience phone banking with Showing Up For Racial Justice’s initiative to help Swing Georgia Left in collaboration with New Georgia Project. Here’s more information on this. There’s still a few days for a last minute push
The organization is useful in that you can send your less outspoken friends who want to do something, but might feel intimidated by more radical left-wing organizations to learn how to support racial equity for the long-term. This is where you “call in” your well-meaning ignorant friends who have a bunch of questions you don’t feel like answering. Believe it or not, even after all of these conversations we had this year, a lot of people just did not even get the message.
The nice part about phone banking was it gave me a chance to speak candidly with strangers from all over the country who were thrilled to be involved in any effort to end this nightmare. Racism is such a complicated issue in this country, especially how we talk about race, class, sexual identity and gender. Identity politics are, in fact, a problem when our respective identities do not always neatly fit together.
No one knows what anyone is going through. That’s why we just help people and treat them as equals in spite of our differences. Ignorance is assuming that you know better someone without giving someone a chance to learn.
Georgia is one of the poorest states in the U.S., which means there are a lot of uneducated white people out there who might not necessarily be a straight up Nazi or Klansman, but are apathetic after being underserved by both political parties. Because of this, these people will be mobilized, either by white supremacists (certainly not by call out culture!) or by people reaching out across state lines to say, “Hey, I know you probably don’t want to hear from people you think aren't like you, but we have working class people here, too—and most of us came from these homes as well. Collectively, we should be working together as a country to pool our resources and uplift our many talents and communities.”
I think this was kind of the point with Queer Eye: to use style and empathy to give people a better sense of self while also humanizing people who are different than them to find commonalities. Because in the words of RuPaul, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?” Amen.
Still, once the Queer Eye guys and camera crews leave, these places still need work. There are too many places that need work, and this should explain they don’t care about issues that impact more culturally diverse cities. The issues of farmers in Wyoming aren’t necessarily going to hit Georgia, just like Georgia’s problems aren’t going hit outside of their state or resonate with people in New York City who might have similar issues.
It’s also super condescending to talk about people this way, but there’s no other way to explain it. We’re all part of the same country going though different things. This is also why I prefer talking about food, wine, cannabis, and experiences through the lens of travel because it’s the only way you can break these stigmas through immersive educational experiences.
That’s the thing: some of my Christian white friends had never even met a Jewish person until they met me. I met people in college who said I was the first Jewish person they met, and proceeded to look for horns. It was kind of a fucked up experience that I kept having to reduce as people diminished my experience and had to choose to brush it off.
If I judged every individual who doesn’t know my culture or ethnicity and insulted me in the process, I would never get anything done. It was easier back when I didn’t have to feel like this air traffic controller just trying to communicate among so many frustrated people. I am frustrated, too. United States of Frustration.
In our country it is so normalized that you be acutely aware of Christian customs at all times that no one even thinks about it. You have these guys sitting in their cars martyring themselves over the triviality of seasonal Starbucks cups while erecting enormous manifestations of crucifixes in the country. Meanwhile, I think, “Who cares? Is the coffee fair trade and sustainable? Are the cups using recyclable materials?” You can’t exactly have a Christmas coffee to put up your cross if the earth and all of our natural resources are depleted. That’s ignorance for you.
When we talk about race, it conflates the fact that we “other” based on what we were taught. If you were raised in a church among other ignorant white church-goers, it’s the only view you see on the world until you leave. Even in metropolitan cities, people are still ignorant, which is why the denial of anti-Semitism is extraordinarily frustrating. We conflate race, class and gender all of the time, and I’m pretty sure that will never change.
Calling up complete strangers who I know nothing about and had zero interest in talking to based on my own perceived ignorance gave me more fulfillment than trying to directly communicate with some people in my own life who had all tapped out into isolation. Considering how many miscommunications and painful falling outs this year as people showed their true colors, fell apart in a crisis or couldn't adequately keep up with the non-stop cycle of pain and trauma, there is understandably a lot of healing that needs to happen beyond this election. Some people never even tried.
I don't think the past should be erased, but lingering too long means you'll never move forward. I'd like to be part of the future that brings people together, including the people that seem easy to hate. I would rather try to help them learn how to love. Hate is usually bred from a sense of weakness stemming from a lack of love, or an education molded by ignorance.
When I called, I had a truly amazing experience because I had real conversations with strangers. Two strangers, two voices. North and South. I spoke with a former New Yorker who had moved to the South, and told me the election the first time had made her want to pick up the needle or the bottle again as a recovering addict. Instead, she threw herself more into volunteer work to mentor youth and was inspired by young teens who could use activism to shape the world they wanted to live in because the world listens to young people and abandons them when they get older. She wasn’t wrong, and I think that’s why I did the same by taking care of the old and young.
Taking the first step towards being more inclusive and admitting ignorance is never easy, especially if you don’t know where to start. This is a united effort to help Swing Georgia Left. This initiative has proven something amazing: through the act of one-on-one conversations, they’ve managed to get 14,000 committed voters to show up and are trying to close the 55,000 person gap needed to help swing Georgia to the left—a notoriously conservative Christian state with massive gerrymandering problems in predominantly black areas. Case in point: on October 12, black voters has been waiting in lines of up to 11 hours while white neighborhoods were reported to have one-hour turnaround.
Which essentially proves what I was saying all along and proactively trying my damnedest this year: to get people to talk to each other with human voices and faces. The fact of the matter is: many things just do not come off well in text, including and especially complex ideas about race, gender, and spirituality.
Trigger Warning With Killer Mike
In other Georgia news, Killer Mike, unofficial weed smoking mayor of Atlanta and one-half of the duo, Run The Jewels, has a show on Netflix called Trigger Warning With Killer Mike. It actually aired last year, but there has been too much content that some may have missed out on, so I’m not afraid to resurface good ideas. I recommend watching the whole thing, as it has a lot of amazing and subversive ideas with a humanizing and often irreverent touch.
Among them: using porn stars to do trade school training videos. Helping Crips and Bloods gang members unite forces to start a legit cola operation. The episode where he tries to buy everything from black owners and realizes he can’t smoke weed because even on principle, he still refuses to smoke shitty Mexican brick weed still makes me laugh so hard every time.
Speaking of, a heads up to a couple recent cannabis social justice initiatives that have made me super happy, including:
The “Justice Joints” program with Canndescent x Last Prisoner Project.
A Golden State partnership with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) to raise awareness regarding voter rights, criminal justice, and drug policy reform. The brand will donate 3% of sales to ACLU SoCal’s efforts from every jar (one-eighth of an ounce) through Tuesday, November 3rd (Election Day) and assist the ACLU's virtual outreach program to raise awareness surrounding voter suppression, voting rights, deadlines and locations.
Illinois is still struggling to keep up with their license commitments while handing off to Republicans and ex-cops, which sounds about right for Chicago.
One farm I have been following closely is Perception Farms, a social equity cannabis incubator that looks incredibly promising and hasn’t been getting much attention anywhere as everyone focuses on these big V.C. pharma-backed operations.
I think Killer Mike is an incredibly progressive and enlightening man, but I actually don’t always agree with everything he says. I think that's OK, and generally worry about those who cling too much to the dogma of any individual, including myself. Which is why I found it weird that he needed to “approve” of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life on Instagram as statement on her death because of some off-handed comment about Colin Kaepernick kneeling as “rude.” I found it so incredibly reductive this was the statement that needed to be made on her entire career, as if anyone should be canonized as perfect saints and sinners.
The entire history of the NFL is, by nature, problematic, including why the military is pumping so much money into a multi-billion dollar leisure organization in the first place. For that reason, I've always supported Kaepernick as a man of ethics and principle and understand the importance of him taking a knee, and also thought, “Yeah, but also, fuck the NFL.” So, I think it’s a little narrow-minded and rude to lump her lifelong career into some flippant comment that had nothing to do with her overall legacy as a Supreme Court Justice.
When did we all get so narrow about how we look at things where we can’t see these gray areas where more than one thing can be true at once? Not only did she apologize for her statement, but is fair to say that she can also see it as both rude and also respect him as an individual/exercise his rights without it needing to lump into these neat categories of “good” and “bad.” Her view of Kaepernick’s right to protest had zero bearing on her judicial considerations as compared to, say, being a U.S. Circuit Court Judge replacing her who is incapable of naming the five freedoms or a noted rapist or sexually harassing your employees. The fact that so many people saw that comment and liked it really drove me up the wall because Kaepernick has fuck all to do with Ginsburg’s legacy protecting the rights of bodily autonomy.
To Killer Mike's credit, his hashtags acknowledge this and is all about getting out the vote, and I will forever cherish his “I’m Glad Reagan Dead” tank I bought a few years ago at Pitchfork Music Festival. As an activist, he has been actively leading the charge in Atlanta to uplift black communities through innovative ideas in capital by rethinking equity and local entrepreneurship in real estate given that banking institutions are notoriously discriminatory against black entrepreneurs, especially legitimizing formerly illicit operations such as cannabis.
For example, let’s say that you have a pretty great operation going as a gang member for the past 20 years because it is the only enterprise you can run that isn’t a shitty fast food job in your impoverished community and want to go legit, but have no credible paper trail experience in an industry that didn’t really exist, or a financial/credit history—because the thing you were doing illicitly that is now legal wasn’t, it sets up a precarious Catch 22 that has continued to keep low income populations dependent on handshake deals instead of entrepreneurship, feeding the prison complex and the cycle of ancestral trauma. It should be noted that cannabis is still considered a Schedule I felony, which means all business is technically federally illegal, even in legal states. I know, it’s a real head scratcher. That part will be moot soon, as federal legalization is inevitable.
To that point, Killer Mike is currently doing something amazing: launching a digital bank called Greenwood, “named after the Tulsa, Oklahoma business district known as Black Wall Street, where the 1921 race massacre occurred -- in an effort to rebuild its legacy in modern times.” (I can’t believe I found this on TMZ, and kind of sad that’s where I found it—but hey, glad he’s doing it!). It also points out on there that Ice Cube has been working with President Trump to pump $500 billion dollars into Black communities and improve access to jobs and education. I actually think this is fine, and even smart. Taking money to invest in positive changes is great.
Still, the gender pay gap is still a problem. Which means to be truly intersectional, men of all colors should be advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment to ensure fair pay for fair work, regardless of gender, race or sexuality. Women of color shouldn’t have to be forced to choose between their gender and race because neither should be an issue for equity.
New data released by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that, between 2018 and 2019, no progress was made on closing the overall wage gender gap, with the average full-time working woman still earning just $0.82 for every dollar earned by men.
When broken down racially, White women’s pay gap remained unchanged at $0.79 for every dollar earned by White men, while Asian women’s pay gap widened from $0.90 to $0.87, according to an analysis from the National Women’s Law Center. Native American women and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander women saw their pay gaps close slightly from $0.57 and $0.61 in 2018, to $0.60 and $0.63, respectively, in 2019.
For Black women and Latinas, NWLC reports that the pay gap closed by just one penny, moving from $0.62 and $0.54 in 2018 to $0.63 and $0.55, respectively, in 2019.
When lockdown started, I sat in on a grant writing seminar that was filled with black women who had multiple masters in their various communities, all wanting to open up salons, childcare services, or help other women learn how to secure funding to start community-centered businesses. This is how we should be operating as a society.
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