Hi-ya Earthworms,
Welcome back! If you haven’t yet, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to this, our digital rag. For a measly $5 a month, you get perks, and you help to support something cool and weird! Eternal thanks!
UPDATES & ANNOUNCEMENTS
New rags and plants have arrived at our little bazaar in the cloud. Score your mommys some new duds for Mother’s Day!
NYC: Lots of exciting new programming is happening in NYC this spring/summer. GO HERE to see it all on Eventbrite.
LA: Come to our 150th annual spring greenhouse cleanout parking lot sale at our private studio/greenhouse in Atwater this Saturday (4/27) from 11 to 3 pm, 3209 Fletcher Drive, 90065.
THE EARTH DAY LSD CONNECTION
Glorious April! A time when bees are abuzz and everyone seems to be mating. April is also when we celebrate two of our most hallowed holidays: Bicycle Day and Earth Day.
Celebrated on April 19th, Bicycle Day marks the anniversary of when Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first discovered the brain-bubbling properties of LSD.
The story goes that while researching ergot fungus derivatives at Sandoz Laboratories in 1938, Hoffman stumbled upon lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25). Initially, this compound showed no significant medicinal effects on animals. However, after accidentally absorbing a teensy amount through his fingers and experiencing glimmers of non-ordinary consciousness, Hoffman decided to intentionally ingest 250 micrograms before hopping on his bicycle (that's 5x a single blotter dose) just to see what happened. And on April 19th, 1943, Hoffmann was the first human ever to blast off into LSD hyperspace.
What Hoffman didn’t realize at the time was that this fateful bicycle ride would open the floodgates to a deluge of cultural and countercultural shifts by inspiring an entire generation of “heads” to challenge social norms and to break on through to the other side. The list is long and includes Aldous and Laura Huxley, Alexander Shulgin, Allen Ginsberg, Amanda Feilding, Anais Nin, Ansel Adams, Cary Grant, Diane di Prima, Francis Crick, George Carlin, Gloria Steinem, Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Morrison, Joan Baez, John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey, Mary Ellen Mark, Nina Graboi, Ram Dass, Richard Feynman, Robert Crumb, Roland Griffiths, Stanislav Grof, Steve Jobs, Susie Bright, Terence McKenna, Timothy Leary, et al. Two Nobel laureates on this list alone, and it’s only the tip of the iceberg!
Anyway, last week in LA, we caught up with our friend Erik Davis, scholar of all things trippy and author of Techgnosis, High Weirdness, and a new book on the history of LSD blotter art called Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium. And having just celebrated Bicycle Day, LSD is on the tip of everyone’s tongue.
This legendary mental detergent is also implicated in the advent of Earth Day. The story of Earth Day is actually kinda berserk. It involves war-weary, idealistic hippie youths, social upheaval, and a psychopath known as the Unicorn Killer.
Celebrated each year on April 22nd, Earth Day originated as a response to growing environmental concerns of the late 1960s and early '70s. The idea was first proposed by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, who wanted to enshrine a day for raising environmental awareness, with the first one being held on April 22, 1970, which mobilized millions of Americans in demonstrations, rallies, and educational events across the country. This historic moment is also credited with kickstarting the modern environmental movement and eventually led to the passage of landmark environmental legislation including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.
But Earth Day also has major skeletons in its closet, particularly around one of its founders, Ira Einhorn, known as the "Unicorn Killer.” Einhorn was a charismatic eco-evangelist who helped organize the first-ever Earth Day rally at Fairmount Park in Philadelphia.
But Einhorn’s involvement in eco-activism was eventually overshadowed by his later arrest and conviction for the murder of his girlfriend, Holly Maddux, in 1977. Turns out Einhorn was also a conspiracy nut who believed Maddux was an FBI informant working for alien overlords, so he killed her and composted her remains in his closet compost bin.
More tarnish on the holiday came from the massive pigsty left by activists after everyone had gone home from the rallies. The resulting litter, vandalism, and damage to public property provided local media with ample ammunition for casting aspersions on dirty hippies.
Additionally, there were tensions between factions within the movement, with disagreements over priorities, strategies, and messaging. Some activists focused on traditional conservation efforts, such as protecting wild areas and habitats, while others emphasized social justice, including environmental racism and the impacts of pollution on marginalized communities. These divisions led to debates and conflicts within the movement itself, reflecting broader ideological and political tensions of the time, many of which we have inherited.
Another complexity of Earth Day involves its use as propaganda by political elites who want voters to believe that they actually give a damn. So, while Earth Day was initially conceived in good faith as a grassroots movement to raise awareness and ultimately to move the needle on environmental issues, it quickly got co-opted by neo-libs as a way to tip their hat at a problem without actually doing anything about it.
Furthermore, the legacy of the first-ever Earth Day is intertwined with broader social and political dynamics of the era. The 1970s were a time of intense social upheaval, marked by protests against the Vietnam War, civil rights demonstrations, and growing environmental activism. In this context, Earth Day became a focal point for expressing discontent with the status quo and advocating for systemic change. But again, the idealism and optimism of the early movement were tempered by neoliberal forces such as corporate interests, empty promise politics, and bureaucratic inefficiencies, highlighting the complexities and challenges of effecting meaningful change on an Earth that only gets one day.
But despite all of this, there’s still something so special about Earth Day that the turds can’t touch. It’s a day to love your sweet mother.
Over the years, Earth Day has evolved to address a range of issues, including climate acceleration, pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss, mass extinction, ozone layer depletion, the privatization and monetization of every goddamn thing in creation, sea level rise, ecosystem precarity, habitat loss, and the ever-growing list of anthropogenic stressors being levied against our ecosphere. Yet, notwithstanding the complexity of it all, today’s green-wash elite prefer to lump it all in with “climate change,” an anodyne generalization that takes an insanely complex multi-pronged problem and reduces it all to something as nonthreatening as change, as if to say that every flavor of catastrophe, the colonization and industrialization of nature, ecocide caused by war, the fossil fuel monster, soil depletion, decimation of the Amazon, etc., aren't nearly as fucked up as they seem to be. That it’s all just “change.” Meanwhile, the same bad actors continue to burn it all down for profit. Same as it ever was, but Earth Day wasn’t meant for them. You can’t expect turds to become diamonds.
More than a platform for advocacy, education, and inspiring individuals to “start anywhere” or to “do something,” Earth Day shows us that our relationship with Gaia can be a daily, mindful, and intentional practice. If you’re reading this, I'm guessing that you're already on that wavelength.
Back to the psychedelic stuff, there’s no question that LSD and the counterculture movement of the 1960s and 70s played a role in shaping the ethos of Earth Day. During that era, the growing awareness of interconnectedness and environmental stewardship was no doubt fueled, at least in part, by the impact that psychedelics had on the cultural headspace; “interconnectedness” being one of the central cliches of the psychedelic experience, which also happens to be a central thesis of the science of ecology.
And, it’s not lost on anyone that Earth Day (4/22) follows Bicycle Day (4/19) and International Cannabis Day (4/20), making LSD and cannabis obvious Earth Day pregame sacraments.
So, while Earth Day itself isn’t about psychedelics, the broader cultural shifts of the time simply can’t be separated from the expanded consciousness of psychoactivated Aquarian age idealism that emphasized peace, love, social justice, environmental harmony, and drugs—all of which contributed to the ethos of Earth Day and the environmental movement as a whole.
Gosh, what a different Earth we’d have if Hoffman hadn’t eaten that acid and hopped on his bicycle!
TEES & THINGS
We’re proud to officially endorse a candidate for President: Orca 2024!
With a brain 5 times the size of a human’s by weight, Orca's are more intelligent, psychic, and suitable for office than we are! Impeach humans, vote Orca!
BANANAS IN BORNEO ARE BANANAS!
We designed this tee to coincide with an event that we organized with Anthony Basil Rodriguez and Princeton’s S.C.R.A.P. Lab, at Princeton University.
Anthony Basil Rodriguez is a filmmaker, photographer, and ethnobotanist whose work focuses on the banana. He explores Earth’s remote tropics to sample and photograph some of the world’s most unusual bananas and the natural and social ecologies they support. Anthony will present an overview of his work and travels while exploring the complex social histories around global colonial agriculture and how it has helped shape the contemporary palette and landscape.
Slime molds are bonafide weirdos. Despite not having muscles or a brain, they can crawl along surfaces and engulf their food, solve puzzles, make decisions, and they have amazing names: Dog Vomit Slime, Wolf's Milk, Chocolate Tube Slime Plasmodium, Witch's Butter, Yellow Brain Fungus, Stinky Squid Slime, Alien Snot, Ghost Droppings, Gummybear Slime, Goblin Fungus, et al.
The official shirt for our cactus and succulent soil: STONE EATER'S
The vast majority of desert plants are "stone eaters". They don't like organic-based soil, they like minerals. Xeric plants live amongst boulders and rocks, in sand, on cliff faces, in lava fields, etc., to be close to their favorite food... stone.
Stone Eater's, because desert plants eat rocks... not dirt.
What if we decided that all pre-extant natural entities deserve to exist? What if we stopped making it our job to decide that for other beings? What if the golden rule applied across species?
Of course, there’s no simple solution for complex ecological issues that we're entangled with and implicated in, but we gotta start somewhere. Maybe compassion is a good place to start.
"Life is a maze of doors, and they all open from the side you're on."
— Yusuf / Cat Stevens, "Sitting"
Happy World Labyrinth Day
And, as is our custom, some plants and more for you and yours!
EVENTS IN NYC:
Best-selling author Susan Orlean with New Yorker staff writer Naomi Fry; filmmaker John Wilson (from How To with John Wilson, HBO); social ecologist and author of The Cactus Hunters, Jared Margulies; author and ecological storyteller Sophie Strand; composer and 2x world whistling champion Molly Lewis; ethnobotanist/filmmaker Anthony Basil Rodriguez; Princeton’s S.C.R.A.P. lab; musician/musicologist Corey Fogel; human chimera/professional “freak” Erik (the Lizard Man) Sprague; filmmaker/merman George Greenough; classical Javanese gamelan orchestra Gamelan Kusuma Laras; Nine Orchard; The planetarium at the Lower East Side Girls Club; and Princeton University…
Brought to you by Nonhuman Teachers!!!
PARKING LOT SALE IN LA THIS SATURDAY (4/27)
We’ve got plants coming out of our ears! Come help us thin out our collection this Saturday in the parking lot of our private studio and greenhouse. Tees, pots, and other things that we make. Mastica will be there to fill ye bellies. Billy’s best pal, Luis, the tarantula breeder guy, will be slinging gentile arachnids that grow to gargantuan proportions. Lots of clean, wholesome fun.
Saturday, 11-3 pm, at 3209 Fletcher Drive in the Atwater neighborhood of our fair city of Angels.
Thank you for reading The Specimen Monthly!