Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King OF The Beats" Jack Kerouac-***From The Atmosphere- Not Class Struggle, But Kali Ma- What?

Click on the headline to link to a Kali Ma entry culled from Boston Indymedia  Web site that has the class struggle approach to reality beat six ways to Sunday.

Markin comment:

I, and not I alone, have spilled much cyber-ink over the last several years bemoaning the low level of class struggle in America (by our side, the other side has gone full throttle) in the face of permanent war, bloated military budgets, rampant unemployment, housing foreclosures, social welfare budget cuts and general social ugliness from questions of race, sex, and ethnicity to public mores. Of course, that bemoaning has been done under the rubric of trying, desperately trying, to organize the laboring masses to rise up and smite the oppressor. The real, namable, oppressor- the mad imperialist-driven capitalist bourgeoisie.

Apparently those efforts have been nothing but a fool’s errand as the linked entry culled from the Boston Indymedia Web site testifies to. All that is necessary to smite that oppressor is to chant to Kali Ma, and, someone, someone from California, naturally, has come up with the idea to do just that. On the old grounds of People’s Park in Berkeley where some very real, and bloody, battles against that self-same oppressor and its local agents were fought in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Be still my heart though. I am as willing as the next guy to evoke the shades of om-master, mad beat poet Allen Ginsberg in order to change society- if it works. Unfortunately, for all the chanting, for the bell-ringing, for all the mantra-evoking it took the Vietnamese liberation armed forces to end the Vietnam War. It took plant occupations and picket line street battles to gain trade union recognition in America. It took taking to the streets and the taking of many casualties to gain black civil rights. And all those battles, as today’s social scene bears witness to, were only partial and reversal gains. So, no thank you, I will continue the “old-fashioned” way, the old fashioned chanting- fight for a workers party that fights for a workers government. Let old evil Kali Ma take her chances against that.

***Out In The Be-Bop Night- The Push For The Great 1960s Breakout- “Harold and Maude”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) performing Where Do The Children Play?

DVD Review

Harold and Maude, Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon, directed by Hal Ashby, 1971


Some films, especially coming of age films of either the political or social kind, do not age well. That is the fate of the early 1970s cult classic of sorts, Harold and Maude. This was a film that some friends of mine in Cambridge would queue up for on a weekly basis, and gladly, at one particular theater that played the film and only that film for about a year. See, that was the time of the great attempted late 1960s break-out from the confines of bourgeois society and the tracked career path by all kinds of people and Harold seemed a kindred spirit, and was then. Maude, needless to say was everybody’s grandmother dream, if only compared to harsh mother reality, and if you liked little old ladies in tennis sneakers. And you should.

The premise of the film certainly had appeal, teen angst, big time teen angst by the distraught Harold (Bud Cort) trying to, against his class background and his monster mother’s well-laid plans for his future, fight for his place in the world (or the next world in his faux fascination with death and funerals) and old age angst (happy angst, if that is not an oxymoron) by the bubbly Maude (Ruth Gordon). By the end of the film old Ruth is able to bring Bud around to seeing that life, his life, is worth living. Well, ho hum for the premise now, now that some of us are approaching old Maude’s age.

What is false here, maybe not as false as some things we have learned along the way but false nevertheless, is Maude’s aged wisdom. The truth, the bitter truth, is that the wisdom we acquired was done so in our youth and we have been living off that, chipping away at the edges, ever since. What still holds up, and holds well, is the sound track of Cat Stevens’ (now Yusuf Islam) great songs like Wild World and Where Do The Children Play? Wordsworth had it right- to be young was very heaven.
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Where Do The Children Play? Lyrics
Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam)


Well I think it's fine, building jumbo planes.
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train.
Switch on summer from a slot machine.
Yes, get what you want to if you want, 'cause you can get anything.

I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass.
For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas.
And you make them long, and you make them tough.
But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can't get off.

Oh, I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you've cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air.
But will you keep on building higher
'til there's no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?