Vintage News Articles & Finds

[billycw]

1949 actor Robert Mitchum, center right, and actress Lila Leeds, left, were sentenced to 60 days in jail on charges of conspiracy to possess marijuana cigarettes

Watched this film again not too long ago...kind of a "Reefer Madness II" only 13 years later. This poster is much better though' more artsy.

The lead role was played by Lila Leeds, who was arrested with Robert Mitchum for marijuana possession in 1948. She spent 60 days in jail. Rumor has it her role in the film was part of her community service.

Never put that together Betterhaff, funny the posters make sense with the real life backstory. Have been sitting on a couple funny articles from that case, the oj case of 48'. Thank you for the history


Madera Tribune, CA newspaper
September 30, 1948
Article: Mitchum loses court appeal

 

[billycw]

“My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day.

I told them this story:
In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.”

― Tom Waits

Pine Trees at Sunset - Van Gogh - December 1889

 

[bombadil.360]

that quote/story is not original to that Tom Waits guy, whoever he is. Plagiarism much? shame on him.

The original story has some guy saying the crooked tree was used for wood for fire since it does not need to be any specific shape to burn

can't remember the original source, want to say something Chinese or Indian... not sure if Buddhist or Hindu, too long ago...

 

[billycw]

that quote/story is not original to that Tom Waits guy, whoever he is. Plagiarism much? shame on him.

The original story has some guy saying the crooked tree was used for wood for fire since it does not need to be any specific shape to burn

can't remember the original source, want to say something Chinese or Indian... not sure if Buddhist or Hindu, too long ago...

You can bet I'll be reading, History always appreciated

 

[billycw]

“Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet."

- William Shakespeare

A Bravo Smoking - Hendrick Terbrugghen - 1626


"Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their, birth, and where they did proceed?
O know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument,
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told."

-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 76


Smoking Shakespeare

Have you ever sat through a Shakespeare production and thought to yourself he must have been high, well...

Whenever the subject of what is being smoked in the pipes of artist throughout time is brought up, Tobacco is echoed over and over. But is this true or just the winning victor of histories milkshake?

The question has to be asked whats in those pipes of old?

A South African Residue Study of clay pipes from the Stratford-Upon-Avon area dating to the 17th century was completed in 2001.

Originally the study wasn't enough evidence to say "unequivocal evidence of cannabis" use in the pipes... But latter researchers realized the presence of cannabibiol (the chemical presence of burnt cannabis) was the evidence...

11 of the 24 pipes tested had cannabibiol residue...

So did Shakespeare smoke cannabis? We may never know for sure but we are sure the pipes around him did...

South African Journal of Science, January 2001

"I carouse each day, from Pype of Loame and for
thy saike
I souke the flegm-attractive far-fett Indian
smoke"

- Alexander Craig, The Poeticall Essayes 1603

17th century clay pipes from the South African residue study

 

[Green Squall]

I never knew Mitchum was arrested for weed. He was a very talented actor now we know why. Here's a quick excerpt from an article that made me laugh.

The actor said he had trouble finding the home on Ridpath Drive, which one narcotics agent described as “ideally situated to be a ‘reefer resort.’ It is perched on a hillside, with no near neighbors, and well-screened by shrubbery,” The Times reported.

A "Reefer Resort"

 

[billycw]

Early 1900's postcard

 

[billycw]

'Cordage and cordage hemp fibers', book
by T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
published 1919

2 males and a female

cross section of hemp stem "A is the cuticle or outer bark, B is the woody part, C is the Pith, D the fibrous layer is between the two dark circles, a few groups of fibres in this layer are indicated by the letter E"

 

[billycw]

Epulu Pygmy village,
Okapi Wildlife Reserve, Congo
1982


"A Pygmy women smoking bhang. The pipe is so long that she had her kid light the bowl with a coal from the fire."

 

[billycw]

"To-morrow the grim battle smoke will curl;
To-day, in spite of it, we'll feast, my girl!
While waiting glory, pleasure we will take,
Nor care the future's gloomy seal to break!
Come-guard my tinder-box and take my pipe,
And, if my evil hour at last be ripe,
It will be something, love, that you alone
In all the regiment call that pipe your own."

- from The Secret Memoires of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour

Madame de Pompadour with one of her 300 plus pipes


A royal pipe collection

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson did not start her life in the royal court but she would find herself there in the end...

Educated in her early life, she made her debut to the world at "The Yew-tree Ball" a masquerade wedding party in 1745.

Louis XV, the king of France was looking for a new mistress, which was widely known at the time. The Yew-tree Ball would make a great opportunity for Louis XV to go unrecognized and observe the women at the party.

Louis XV dressed as a tree to fit in unnoticed, when he spotted his choice, 23 year old Jeanne dressed as a shepherdess... The two are said to have disappeared from the party together moments latter and her carriage was seen parked outside his house the next morning...

The two never separated in life again even after he chose a new mistress later on. He soon gave her the title "Madame de Pompadour" with estate as his chief mistress.

“Toilette of Venus” - Francois Boucher (Madame de Pompadour as Venus)


"Après nous, le déluge."
(After us, the deluge.)

- Madame de Pompadour

Socializing with the likes of the greatest poets, writers and painters of the time Madame de Pompadour found herself friends with thinkers like Voltaire.

She had many passions in life, one was the love of smoking the pipe...

Her collection ever greater was said to number more then 300 at the time of her death.

Sometimes the story is not whats in the pipe but the pipe itself...

 

[billycw]

"It is necessary to cultivate our garden"

- Voltaire

White House conservatory earliest photo 1857 (photo taken right after construction, the green house had a wood frame which burnt in a fire in 1867)


When the White House was Green

John Adams was the first President to plant a vegatable garden at the white house in 1800. A year latter and Thomas Jefferson was already making improvements to the same garden.

Andrew Jackson took it a step further in 1835 by constructing a orangery. He grew tropical fruit trees and flowers including the famous Jackson magnolia...

“INDIAN DELEGATION IN THE WHITE HOUSE CONSERVATORY DURING THE CIVIL WAR with Mary Todd Lincoln.”
Photograph taken by Mathew Brady on March 27, 1863. (Library of Congress) Southern Plains Delegation 1863This first group photo of the Southern Plains delegation to Washington in 1863 is well known and shows the Cheyenne and Kiowa delegates including front row, left to right: Lean Bear, War Bonnet, Standing-in-the-Water (all three Cheyennes). Mary Todd Lincoln standing far right, Standing at left: Interpreter William S. Smith and agent Samuel G. Colley. Cheyenne cheif's War Bonnet and Standing-in-the-Water would be murdered a year later in the Sand Creek Massacre...


In 1857 under President James Buchanan, the orangery was demolished to make room for the Treasury Department wing.

President Buchanan had a wood framed Greenhouse built as a replacement for the orangery right where the west wing now sits.

Hand-colored view of President Abraham Lincoln's secretary John George Nicolay (far right) and three other unidentified men posing in the interior of the White House Conservatory, Washington, D.C., c. 1863. By E. & H. T. Anthony & Company. Animated stereoview.

 

[billycw]

The White House Conservatories 1890


In 1867 a fire burned the wood framed conservatory to the ground...

President Andrew Johnson approved plans by architect Alfred B. Mullet designed and built a more fireproof iron frame and wood sash replacement the same year.

Lucy Hayes, son Scott, daughter Fannie and a friend stand in the conservatories, c.1879.

Lucy Hayes poses with her children in the White House conservatories, c.1879.

In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt destroyed the conservatories to make way for the West Wing...

Alice Roosevelt in the White House Conservatory by Frances Benjamin Johnston 1902

Roosevelt's wife Edith planted the 'colonial' garden in replacement of the conservatories... The colonial garden now sits at the present day White House Rose Garden.

Edith Roosevelt's 'colonial' garden replacing the Conservatories 1903...


Self dependence sends a strong message in itself...

 

[billycw]

Hemp for Victory in Minnesota 1944

ad in The Jackson County Pilot (Minnesota) on MAY 18, 1944

Man in hemp field

Harvesting

Turning the hemp

 

[billycw]

Hemp for victory Minnesota 1944 continued...

Stacked hemp field

Workers with hemp bale

Workers with hemp bundles

Hemp production plant, 1944

Hemp production plant, current

 

[billycw]

The daily exchange, (Baltimore, Md.)
April 02, 1861
Article: Chloroformic Visions


"My last sane recollection is of the surgeon applying the handkerchief to my mouth"

"So swift are the evolutions of thought when sense is subdued, and when the phantom monarch of dreams leads the soul through the endless avenues, swifter in its journeying then the short-lived fire which falls from the womb of an overburdened cloud."


The daily exchange, April 02, 1861

workers on their way home - Edvard Munch - 1915

 

[billycw]

"It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away."

-Charles Dickens

Young Woman Admiring a Miniature - Pierre-Alexandre Wille 1778

 

[billycw]

 

[billycw]

Hemp fields in Seney, Michigan 1920

 

[billycw]

1915 Pharmacist's Federal Order Form for Opium, Ect - Johnson Pharmacy - Henderson, KY

Turkish Opium Inspectors, Ottoman Empire 1907

Students at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, puffing away on a ball of opium. 1900

A police officer poses with opium pipes, opium lamps, and other paraphernalia confiscated at opium den raids in San Francisco. 1900

 

[billycw]

The violet house section of the White House conservatory, pre 1902, by Barnett McFee Clinedinst