Joel Ezra Solkoff

Oct 12, 1948–May 3, 2022

“If I am not for myself,
   who will be for me?
And, if I am only for myself,
   what am I?
And if not now,
   when?”

–Hillel, the great sage.

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  • LSD Goddess Joanna Harcourt-Smith

    LSD Goddess Joanna Harcourt-Smith

    Timothy Leary wrote me from his jail cell. The adjoining cell contained Charles Manson. Shortly after I received the letter, I visited Timothy next to the vending machines. I had spent months squiring around the beautiful, French speaking socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith who was next to Timothy in Kabul, Afghanistan when G.Gordon Liddy, on urgent orders from Richard Nixon, arrested Timothy. I regarded the interview as one last chance for Timothy to demonstrate that he was not a total and complete horse’s ass. The only reason I had stayed around the Leary entourage was Joanna with whom I was head over heals in love. Joanna and I had made love while peaking on Owsley’s LSD. After that, there was no turning back. It was Timothy or me. Foolishly, Joanna picked Timothy.

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  • Ani Ma’Amin: This is what I believe

    Ani Ma’Amin: This is what I believe

    Most recently, my “expertise” has resulted in my efforts to affirm Eli Weisel’s insistance that being a Jew ( surrounded as I had been in the 1950s by tattooed survivors of the Holocaust) requires us as Jews to end genocide of whatever form; specifically in Yemen, the Mayanmar region of what used to be Burma, Venezuela ( most especially on the Western border in Colombia) the Sudan, and ….

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  • New column speaks to disabled, elderly issues–from Voices of Central Pennsylvania

    New column speaks to disabled, elderly issues–from Voices of Central Pennsylvania

    July 2017. State College/University Park, PA. Years later, this reflection on the Sandusky scandal still rings true: ++++ “As a former graduate student at Penn State with a disability and as one who is part of the elderly community, the focus by powerful officials on football-above-all has also been used to cover up exploitation of […]

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