An Encore Presentation-In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute- With Tom Rush’s No Regrets In Mind

An Encore Presentation-In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute- With Tom Rush’s No Regrets In Mind 

I know your leavin's too long over due
For far too long I've had nothing new to show to you
Goodbye dry eyes I watched your plane fade off west of the moon
It felt so strange to walk away alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

The hours that were yours echo like empty rooms
Thoughts we used to share I now keep alone
I woke last night and spoke to you
Not thinkin' you were gone
It felt so strange to lie awake alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

Our friends have tried to turn my nights to day
Strange faces in your place can't keep the ghosts away
Just beyond the darkest hour, just behind the dawn
It feels so strange to lead my life alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

From The Pen Of Zack James 

A few years ago, maybe more like a decade or so, in an earlier 1960s folk minute nostalgia incantation fit Sam Eaton, who will be described further below, had thought he had finally worked out in his head what that folk moment had meant in the great musical arc of his life. Had counted up, had taken up and put value on its graces, did the great subtractions on its disappointments, that lack of beat that he had been spoon fed on in his head having heard maybe in the womb the sweats of some backbeat that sounded an awful lot like a band of the devil’s bad ass angels giving battle to the heavens, and got his head around, his expression, its clasps with certain young women, some absolute folkie women met in the Harvard Squares of the heated horny sex night and loves too not always with folkie women but just the muck of growing up and taking what came his way. So he had taken a back-flip, his expression, when he was required not out of his own volition like that great prairie fire burning before in his youth about why he felt after all these years that he needed to go back to what after all was a very small part of his life now that he was reaching four score and seven, going back over the terrain of a small part of the musics that he had cultivated since early childhood.

Some of those musics from his parents’ slogging through the Great Depression and World War II be-bop swing big band Saturday night get your dancing slippers on imposed on his tender back of brain not to be revived and revisited until many years later when he had heard some ancient Benny Goodman be-bop clarinet backing up a sultry-voiced Peggy Lee getting all in a silky sweat rage because her man like a million others was not a "do right" man but had been chasing her best friend the next best thing when he got his wanting habit on and Peggy turned ice queen when he ran out of dough after shooting craps against the dealer and decided he had been wrong to dismiss such music out of hand. Some of the music along the edges of his coming of  age from that edgy feeling he got when he heard the classic rock that just creeped into his pre-teen brain and lingered there unrequited until he found out what in that beat spoke to his primordial instincts, what caused his feverish nights of wonder, of what made him tick, of what he had missed.

Folk, the folk minute he deeply imbibed for that minute, at least the exciting part of the minute when he heard, finally heard, something that did not make him want to puke every time he turned on the radio, put his ill-gotten coins, grabbed from mother’s pocketbook laying there in wait for his greedy hands or through some con, some cheapjack con he pulled on some younger kids in Jimmy Jakes’ Diner jukebox to impress a few of the girls in town who were not hung up on Fabian or Bobby, heard something very new in his life and so different from the other musics that he had grown up with that he grabbed the sound with both hands. He thought that sweating a decade ago where he done a few small pieces to satisfy his literary sense of things and put them in a desk drawer yellow, frayed and gather dust until he passed on and somebody put the paper in a wastebasket for the rubbish men, thought he had ended those thoughts, closed out the chapter.

Recently though he did another series of short citizen-journalist sketches of scenes from that period for various folk music related blogs and social media outlets. Sam had done that series at the request of his old time friend, Bart Webber, who will also be described in more detail below, from Carver, an old working-class town about thirty miles south of Boston which at the time was the cranberry capital of the world or close to it, and close enough to Boston to have been washed by the folk minute that sprouted forth in Harvard Square and Beacon Hill in Boston.

Sam and Bart, who in their respective youths had been very close, had been corner boys together when that social category meant something, meant something about extreme teen alienation and angst combined with serious poverty, dirt poor poverty as in hand-me-down older brother clothes, as in no family car for long periods between old wreak of cars, of many surly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, many Spam suppers, all fashioned to make these young men forever talking about big break-outs, about getting something for them and theirs but also for big candy-assed dreams too all put paid to, as one would expect of sons of “boggers,” those who cared for and harvested those world famous  cranberries, but also close because that was the way that corner boys were then, “having each other’s backs” was the term they used which confused even the best of the social scientists who investigated the phenomenon when that corner boy life meant juvenile delinquency, meant some unfathomed anger, some lack of socialization, some throwback to primeval muds, to some rising of the unkempt heathens they were payed to watch out for. Meant as well worry to those in power who were trying to weld society as one piece of steel to fight the internal and external red scare Cold War fight against the faithless, fang-toothed Ruskkie reds wielding nuclear weapons from the hip.

Like a lot of high school friends the cement that bound them in high school, that alienation, that comradery, those best left unsaid larcenous moments, the “midnight creeps” in Bart’s words when somebody asked him later what had made him and the corner boys put their reputations at risk for such small gain, a fact which also played a part in that “having each other’s back” broke apart once they graduated, or rather in their case once they had sowed their wild oats in the 1960s, those wild oats at the time meaning “drugs, sex, and rock and roll” combined with drifting the hitchhike road west in what one of their number, the late Pete Markin, called the search for the great blue-pink American West night.

Sam had stayed out in the West longer than the others except Markin and Josh Breslin whom he and Markin had met on a yellow brick road merry prankster bus before he drifted back East to go to law school and pursue a professional career. Bart had returned earlier, had gotten married to his high school sweetheart and had started up and run a small successful specialty print shop in hometown Carver based on the silk-screening tee-shirt and poster craze. They would run into each other occasionally when Sam came to town but for about twenty years they had not seen each other as both were busy raising families, working and travelling in different circles. One night though when Sam had been sitting in Jimmy Jakes’ Diner over on Spring Street in Carver having a late dinner by himself after having come to town to attend the funeral of a family member Bart had walked in and they then renewed their old relationship, decided that some spark from high school still held them together if nothing else that they both had been deeply formed, still held to those old corner boy habits toward life whatever successes they had subsequently enjoyed.

Along the way to solidifying there new relationship they would alternate meetings, some in Carver, some in Boston or Cambridge where Sam lived. On a recent trip to Boston to meet Sam at the Red Hat at the bottom of Beacon Hill Bart had walked pass Joy Street which triggered memories of the time in high school when he and his date who name he could not remember but she was a cousin of Sam’s “hot” date, Melinda Loring, who they went to school with and whom Sam was crazy to impress even though Melinda was not the daughter of a “bogger” but of school teachers and so from among the town’s better element and he was constantly on eggshells that she would toss him aside once she had figured out he was just another Fast Eddie corner boy trying to get into her pants, had taken them on a cheap date to the Oar and Anchor coffeehouse which stood at the corner of Joy and Cambridge Street to hear Lenny Lane. Lenny was an up and coming folk singer whom Sam had met on one of his clandestine midnight trips to Harvard Square on the Redline subway to hang out at the Hayes-Bickford.

That "cheap" part of the cheap date thing was important since Bart and Sam were as usual from hunger on money in the days when around Carver, probably around the world, guys paid expenses on dates, girls just looked beautiful or if not beautiful glad to not be forever hanging around the midnight telephone waiting for some two-timing guy to call them up for a date, and so short of just hanging at the Hayes for free watching weirdoes, con men, whores plying their trade, drunks, winos and occasional put upon artists, poets, writes and folk-singers perfecting their acts on the cheap, for the price of a couple of cups of coffee, a shared pastry and a couple of bucks in the “basket” for the performer you could get away with a lot especially when Bart was doing Sam a favor with that cousin (and worse could have gotten in trouble if Besty Binstock, his high school sweetheart. found out he was two-timing her although the two-timing involved the possibility of some off-hand sex with that cousin who was supposed to be “easy” but that in another story although come to think of it the situation could serve as another  prime example of “having each other’s back” when one of them was up against it).

Bart remembered that he had been very uncomfortable that night since he had had some feelings of guilt about two-timing (and lying to) Betsy starting out, had had trouble talking about anything in common, school, sports, the weather, with that cousin since she said she was doing Melinda a favor in order that she could go to Boston with Sam which Melinda’s mother would have balked at if she had told her they were going into Boston alone, going into Boston with a “bogger” alone. Moreover she knew nothing, cared nothing for folk music, didn’t even know what it was, said she had never heard of the thing, was fixated on Bobby Vee, dreamy guys, or something like that. What made that date worse was that Bart too then could hardly bear the sound of folk music, said repeatedly that the stuff was all dreary and involved weird stuff like murder and mayhem done on the banks of rivers, in back alleys, on darkened highways just because some woman would not come across, Jesus, strangely thwarted love reminding him of Sam’s forlorn quest for Melinda which seemed like some princess and pauper never the twain shall meet outcome, or hick stuff about home sweet home down in some shanty town in some desolate cabin without lights or water which sounded worse than Boggertown, singing high holy Jehovah stuff that made him wince, and of the hills and hollows in some misbegotten mountains made his teeth grind. So not a good mix, although it did turn out that the cousin was “easy,” did think he was dreamy enough to have sex with (with their clothes mostly on which was how more than one quicky one night stand wound up down by the boathouse near the Charles River after they had split from Sam and Melinda after the coffeehouse closed and that helped but had been the result of no help from the folk music they half-listened to but more some dope that she had in her pocketbook after she had passed a joint around to get things going.            

After telling Sam about his recollections of Joy Street and that cousin, whose name was Judy Dennison Sam told him and who Sam had gone out with and agreed was a little sex kitten once she was stoned, Bart started asking some questions about folk music. Sam said he was not finished with that Judy story, told Bart that fling was after the thing with Melinda had passed due not to class distinctions but to that hard fact that she was saving “it” for marriage, and had been very glad that he had that run around with Judy and was not sorry he did. Bart started in again and asked Sam a million questions about various folk-singers and what had happened to them, were they still playing, still alive since Sam although he did not have the same keen interest of his youthful folk minute still kept small tabs on the scene, the now small scene through his long-time companion, Laura Perkins whom he met one night at the Café Nana several years before when Tom Tremble was playing there after Sam had not heard him in about forty years.

The reason for Bart’s interest given that above he had said that the genre made his teeth grind was that after that night with Judy Bart did go on other double dates with Sam and Melinda, and later Suzanne when she was Sam’s next flame and a real folkie, to folk places and while he still would grind his teeth at some of the stuff he did develop more tolerance for the genre, especially if the date Sam set up was a real foxy folkie girl (thinking on it now he couldn’t believe how unfaithful he had been to Betsy in those days but she too was saving “it” for marriage and some of those young women were very willing and had apartment or dorm rooms too).

The upshot of all of Bart’s questions was that Sam found that he was not really except for Tom Tremble who had lost his sweet baby James voice, forgot lyrics and had “mailed it in” that night he had met Laura and was cold “stonewalled” by the audience but possibly motivated by that old folkie feeling, or maybe just feeling sorry for a guy who had a big local following back in the day when the “basket” went around everybody put some dough in, Sam and Laura included, and a couple of other guys up on what had happened to the old-time folkies since for years he had merely listened on radio station WCAS and when that station went under WUMB out of U/Mass-Boston or listened to records, tapes or CDs. (Sam got big points from Laura that first night when he panned Tom, who Laura had never heard before being enough younger not to have been bitten by the folk minute craze and she agreed that Tom had “mailed it in”.) Since Sam was not all that familiar with what had happened to most of them he thereafter did some research, asked Laura some questions to lead the way and wound up writings that series of sketches. One series entitled Not Bob Dylan about the fate of prominent male folk-singers was a direct result of the Sam and Bart conversation. Here’s what he had to say about Tom Rush who back in the day he knew best from hanging around the old Club 47 on Mount Auburn Street:     

“…Other than enigmatic Bob Dylan who is the iconic never-ending tour male performer most people would still associate with that folk minute period they would draw a blank on a list of others who also were aspiring to make names for themselves in the folk milieu. I am not talking about guys like Lenny Lane who had one hit and then went back to graduate school in biology when he couldn’t get another contract, when his well ran dry, or like Tom Tremble who had a big local following around the old Club Nana when it was on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge not where it is now on Brattle Street but who did mainly covers and just never broke out or Mike Weddle who had good looks, a good stage presence, had the young women going crazy but who just walked away one day when some good looking woman from Radcliffe came hither and he “sold out” to her father’s stockbroking business.

I’m talking about people like Tom Rush from New Hampshire who lit up the firmament around Cambridge via the Harvard campus folk music station, Dave Von Ronk the cantankerous folk historian and musician who knew more about what happened in the early, early days in the Village at the point where “beat” poetry was becoming passe and folk was moving in to fill in the gap, Phil Ochs who had probably the deepest political sensibilities of the lot and wrote some of the stronger narrative folk protest songs, Richard Farina who represented that “live fast” edge that we were bequeathed by the “beats” and who tumbled down the hill on a motorcycle, and Jesse Collin Young who probably wrote along with Eric Andersen and Jesse Winchester the most pre-flower child lyrics mid-1960s hippie explosion before folk got amplified of the bunch.

My friend Bart had just seen a fragile seeming, froggy-voiced Bob Dylan in one of stages of his apparently never-ending concerts tours up in Maine and had been shaken by the sight and had wondered about the fate of other such folk performers. That request turned into a series of reviews of male folk-singers entitled Not Bob Dylan (and after that, also at Bart’s request, a series entitled Not Joan Baez based on some of the same premises except on the distaff side (nice word, right, you know golden-voiced Judy Collins and her sweet songs of lost, Carolyn Hester and her elegant rendition of Walt Whitman’s Oh Captain, My Captain, Joan’s sister Mimi Farina forever linked with Richard and sorrows, and Malvina Reynolds who could write a song on the wing, fast okay, and based as well on the mass media having back then declared that pair the “king and queen” of the burgeoning folk music minute scene).

That first series (as had the second) had asked two central questions-why did those male folk singers not challenge Dylan who as I noted the media of the day had crowned king of the folk minute for supremacy in the smoky coffeehouse night (then, now the few remaining are mercifully smoke-free although then I smoked as heavily as any guy who though such behavior was, ah, manly and a way to seen “cool” to the young women, why else would we have done such a crazy to the health thing if not to impress some certain she)  and, if they had not passed on and unfortunately a number have a few more since that series as well most notably Phil Ochs of suicide early, Dave Von Ronk of hubris and Jesse Winchester of his battle lost over time had come, were they still working the smoke-free church basement, homemade cookies and coffee circuit that constitutes the remnant of that folk minute even in the old hotbeds like Cambridge and Boston. (What I call the U/U circuit since while other church venues are part of the mix you can usually bet safely that if an event is scheduled it will be at a U/U church which is worthy of a little sketch of its own sometime in order to trace the folk minute after the fanfare had died down and as a tribute to those big-hearted souls at radio stations like WCAS and WUMB and in places like Club Passim whose efforts have kept the thing going in order to try to pass it on to the younger generations now that demographics are catching up with the folkies from the 1960s heyday). Moreover, were they still singing and song-writing, that pairing of singer and writer having been becoming more prevalent, especially in the folk milieu in the wake of Bob Dylan’s word explosions back then. The days when the ground was shifting under the Tin Pan Alley Cole Porter/Irving Berlin/ Jerome Kern kingdom.   

Here is the general format I used in that series for asking and answering those two questions which still apply today if one is hell-bent on figuring out the characters who rose and fell during that time: 

“If I were to ask someone, in the year 2005 as I have done periodically both before and after, to name a male folk singer from the 1960s I would assume that if I were to get any answer to that question that the name would be Bob Dylan. That “getting any answer” prompted by the increasing non-recognition of the folk genre by anybody under say forty, except those few kids who somehow “found” their parents’ stash of Vanguard records (for example, there were other folk labels including, importantly, Columbia Records which pushed the likes of Dylan and John Hammond forward) just as some in an earlier Pete Seeger/Weavers/Leadbelly/ Josh White/Woody Guthrie records in our parents’ stashes. Today’s kids mainly influenced by hip-hop, techno-music and just straight popular music.

And that Dylan pick would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Dylan was (or wanted to be since he clearly had tired of the role, or seemed to by about 1966 when he for all intents and purposes “retired” for a while prompted by a serious motorcycle accident and other incidents) the voice of the Generation of ’68 (so named for the fateful events of that watershed year, especially the Democratic Convention in America in the summer of that year when the old-guard pulled the hammer down and in Paris where the smell of revolution was palpably in the air for the first time since about World War II, when those, including me, who tried to “turn the world upside down” to make it more livable began to feel that the movement was reaching some ebb tide) but in terms of longevity and productivity, the never-ending touring until this day and releasing of X amount of bootleg recordings, the copyrighting of every variation of every song, including traditional songs, he ever covered and the squelching of the part of the work that he has control over on YouTube he fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other male folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Dylan, today continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review, Tom Rush, is one such singer/songwriter.”

“The following is a question that I have been posing in reviewing the work of a number of male folk singers from the 1960s and it is certainly an appropriate question to ask of Tom Rush as well. Did they aspire to be the “king” of the genre? I do not know if Tom Rush, like his contemporary Bob Dylan, started out wanting to be the king of the hill among male folk singers but he certainly had some things going for him. A decent acoustic guitar but a very interesting (and strong baritone) voice to fit the lyrics of love, hope, and longing that he was singing about at the time, particularly the No Regrets/Rockport Sunday combination which along with Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm and Joshua Gone Barbados were staples early on. During much of this period along with his own songs he was covering other artists, particularly Joni Mitchell and her Urge For Going and The Circle Game, so it is not clear to me that he had that same Dylan drive by let’s say 1968.

I just mentioned that he covered Joni Mitchell in this period. A very nice version of Urge For Going that captures the wintry, got to get out of here, imaginary that Joni was trying to evoke about things back in her Canadian homeland. And the timelessness and great lyrical sense of his No Regrets, as the Generation of ’68 sees another generational cycle starting, as is apparent now if it was not then. The covers of fellow Cambridge folk scene fixture Eric Von Schmidt on Joshua Gone Barbados and Galveston Flood are well done. As is the cover of Bukka White’s Panama Limited (although you really have to see or hear old Bukka flailing away on his old beat up National guitar to get the real thing on YouTube).”

Whether Tom Rush had the fire back then is a mute question now although in watching the documentary, No Regrets, in which he tells us about his life from childhood to the very recent past (2014) at some point he did lose the flaming “burn down the building fire,” just got tired of the road like many, many other performers and became a top-notch record producer, a “gentleman farmer,” and returned to the stage occasionally, most dramatically with his annual show Tom Rush-The Club 47 Tradition Continues held at Symphony Hall in Boston each winter. And in this documentary appropriately done under the sign of “no regrets” which tells Tom’s take on much that happened then he takes a turn, an important oral tradition turn, as folk historian. 

He takes us, even those of us who were in the whirl of some of it back then to those key moments when we were looking for something rooted, something that would make us pop in the red scare Cold War night of the early 1960s. Needless to say the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge gets plenty of attention as does his own fitful start in getting his material recorded, or rather fitful starts, mainly walking around to every possible venue in town to get backing for record production the key to getting heard by a wider audience via the radio and to become part of the increasing number of folk music-oriented programs, the continuing struggle to this day from what he had to say once you are not a gold-studded fixture.

“Other coffeehouses and other performers of the time, especially Eric Von Schmidt, another performer with a ton of talent and song-writing ability who had been on the scene very, very early on who eventually decided that his artistic career took first place, get a nod of recognition.  As does the role of key radio folk DJ Dick Summer in show-casing new work (and the folk show, picked up accidently one Sunday night when I was frustrated with the so-called rock and roll on the local AM rock station and flipped the dial of my transistor radio and heard a different sound, the sound of Dave Von Ronk, where I started to pick up my life-long folk “habit”).

So if you want to remember those days when you sought refuse in the coffeehouses and church basements, sought a “cheap” date night (for the price of a couple of cups of coffee sipped slowly in front of you and your date, a shared pastry and maybe a few bucks admission or tossed into the passed-around “basket” you got away easy and if she liked the sound too, who knows what else) or, ouch, want to know why your parents are still playing Joshua’s Gone Barbados on the record player as you go out the door Saturday night to your own adventures watch this documentary and find out what happened to one Not Bob Dylan when the folk world went under.   

   

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I Continues (Remember The War To End All Wars) ... Finally, An Armistice

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I Continues  (Remember The War To End All Wars) ... Some Remembrances

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman  

The events leading up to World War I from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources to the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those parties in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20^th century history. Also decisive although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International although not for long), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experience in Russia and Europe in the 19^th century), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of progressive capitalism, and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as the sinkhole trenches of Europe are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.   

The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20^th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last war. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.

The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.

A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s  prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war) and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “club fed” and ran for president in 1920 out of his jail cell),  were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.

Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well as the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. So imagine in 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.                   

Over the next period as we continue the last year of the long night of the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.      

Russiagate Indictments: Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Reality Winner?

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Russiagate Indictments: Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Reality Winner? If there was any doubt left that Reality Winner is being singled out for severe mistreatment by her prosecutors, this week’s indictments against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates should put that to rest. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates are charged, among other things, with “Conspiracy Against The United States”. Their offenses against the United States, and the harm they did, are spelled out in great detail -- they were paid millions of dollars by a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party to lobby the U.S. government on its behalf. They lied about acting on behalf of foreign interests and about receiving the payments. They then laundered the money to hide its source and avoid paying taxes. And Federal prosecutors recommended that the men merely be placed on house arrest. Meanwhile, Reality’s prosecutors argued, with a straight face, that her life savings of $30,000 and a short vacation to Belize earlier this year makes her a “flight risk,” and that two or three sentences from her private conversations are proof that she “hates America” and is a “danger to the community”, requiring her to be held in jail. Manafort and Gates are charged with doing clear, explicit, quantifiable harm to the United States. Manafort had three passports, travelled using a fake name, and did business with multiple countries notorious for acting as tax shelters. He spent more than Reality’s entire life savings in illicit, laundered money at a single Florida art gallery, and the only imposition on his freedom is an ankle bracelet. All of this is already an outrageous injustice. But what makes it so much worse is that Reality’s alleged “crime” is exposing to the public details of the conspiracy that led to the charges against Manafort and Gates in the first place. Read the rest of the article here. TAKE ACTION: Help get Reality's name back in the news. Send a letter or an email to your favorite news outlet and ask them to give Reality the fair hearing she deserves, and send us a copy of your letter atconnect@standwithreality.org.

STAND WITH REALITY WINNER ~ PATRIOT & ALLEGED WHISTLEBLOWERc/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610 ~ 510-488-3559 standwithreality.org ~ facebook.com/standwithreality

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Once Again On Armistice Day Reflections- I Don’t Need A Good Conduct Certificate As An Anti-War Veteran-With Frank Jackman In Mind

Once Again On Armistice Day Reflections- I Don’t Need A Good Conduct Certificate As An Anti-War Veteran-With Frank Jackman In Mind

By Fritz Taylor

Frank Jackman was still incensed by the treatment he had received from a fellow anti-war veteran. I knew Frank’s story, knew the details behind what was making him furious since I had grown up with him down in Carver, down in cranberry bog country. Moreover I had known him as one of the guys who tried to help me out when I came back to the “real” world from ‘Nam, Vietnam during that war and had a horrible time readjusting (and still suffer a little. Known that Frank despite our very different approaches to our inductions into the U.S. Army had come out to California to try and find me when I had left Carver one night with the idea of never going back, never going back to the faultless wife, and faultless kids, when my head was full of too much drink, too much dope, too much cousin. Had found me out with what would later be called “brothers under the bridge,” guys that tried to create and alternative life under the bridges, along the railroad tracks and out in the arroyos and brought me back after a while. F.T.]         

This is Frank’s take as told to me on what bothered him enough to yell out to me one night the words mentioned in the first line:   

“I don’t need a good conduct certificate from Norm, National VFP, Smedley VFP, the gods, history, or anybody else to carry high the banner of VFP as an anti-war veteran,” Frank Jackman kept thinking to himself as he tossed and turned in the middle of night after he had looked at an e-mail from his old nemesis Norman Gordon. (Frank would also use that sentiment as the headline title of an e-mail that he would sent to the members of the Executive Committee of his local Veterans for Peace chapter, VFP, the Smedley Butler Brigade responding to Norm’s “charges.”) What had happened was that good old curmudgeon and guy who would rain on anybody’s parade but his own Norm Gordon had been up to his old tricks trying cause dissension in the ranks of the local organization. It would not have been the first time the two had locked horns over some organizational matter. The last time had been over whether the local chapter should carry as a matter of course the American flag in any public functions they attended. They both agreed on the matter that the chapter should not but Frank had been furious that Norm had not attended the meeting where the issue was discussed and had left him to carry the burden of the argument alone while Norm had attended to some private business of his own. (Their position lost and would have anyway if Norm had shown up but that was just one more example of his stirring the waters up and then leaving everybody high and dry).        

This time the issue was personal, was about Frank’s status as an anti-war veteran, about whether he was in fact a veteran which was how acrimonious Norm could be when he got his fangs up. Frank had joined the local chapter of Veterans for Peace six or seven years before, recruited by Paul Sullivan the chapter coordinator, after having worked with the organization off and on for a number of years previous to that time. The crucial event had been his participant in an Armistice Day parade and program where he had proudly carried the black and white dove-emblemed VFP banner for the first time (Armistice Day also known as, officially known as Veterans Day, but the original intent had been to designate the day as a day of peace after the end of the huge bloodbath that was World War I). Frank’s position about joining organizations after a lifetime of belonging to many socialist and peace organizations, large and small, ad hoc and permanent, sometimes active, sometimes as a “paper” member was that he would not join a group these days unless he planned to be active. That decision had been solidified by his carrying that Armistice Day VFP flag that year.

What Frank had joined, and what he thought he had joined was the Boston chapter, the Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 of VFP and he had paid his chapter dues accordingly (and would in subsequent years as well). (The chapter named after the famous much decorated Marine Corps general who once he got “religion” on the war issue famously said “war is a racket”-and said much more as well look it up in Wikipedia for the full text.)  His understanding and the understanding codified in the by-laws of the chapter was that you could be a member of the local chapter without being a member of the national organization. Since he was actively working with the local chapter and would have been a mere paper member of the national organization all through his membership he had never joined, never thought to join the national organization.

Enter Norm and his late night e-mail. In that e-mail Norm had mentioned that somehow he had found out that Frank was not a member of the national organization and by his lights not a member of VFP having not paid dues or submitted a DD214 ( military discharge papers which are the signal that you have in some way, shape or form completed your active duty) as required to be a member of the national organization (how and why Norm got that information from somebody at headquarters in Saint Louis he would never answer despite Frank’s repeated questions).

In additional and this is the point on which Frank blew his stack Norm questioned whether Frank had ever been in the military since he had not produced a DD214 for the local as required by the local by-laws.  At the time of his recruitment, and he later asked Paul Sullivan about it and Paul was not sure whether back then proof of service was necessary for full membership, nobody had, including Paul, asked him for any documentation. Under ordinary circumstances challenging a member’s military service would not have been a “red flag,” hot button, seeing red issue by the local but only a few months previously there had been an ugly confrontation with people taking sides over what turned out to be bizarre case involving “stolen valor” (a term which signifies that somebody who may or may not have been in the military claims a lot of hot air combat bravery stuff like you would hear at an American Legion bar room). So Frank, who had been deeply embroiled in the controversy, was beside himself when even the hint of a challenge like that to his credentials came up, and it would not have had to be somebody as professionally antagonistic as Norm to have Frank seeing red.

Here is how Frank initially responded to Norm’s e-mail after a fitful night of tossing and turning over the issue:                      

“Frankly Norm you are by your accusations now the primary reason why I do not choose to join National and had been one reason ever since you were treasurer badgering me to join -or as you say the “real” VFP-I am a proud member of Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9, VFP if that is not "real “VFP well I can live with that. By the way you should check the chapter by-laws like I did which do not require national membership for Smedley membership.

“The other reason I choose not to join, and had once been the primary reason was that I do not when I join an organization want to be a paper member-I would only be a paper member of National and obviously I am not a paper member of Smedley- I still want to know why you would be interested in why I am member of national or not and how you would have access to information about whether I was or not.

“More pressing though is your libelous remark about whether I was a veteran or not-I am right now putting in a request to the State Adjutant General's Office to get a copy of my discharge but I have other things on this accusation to say and will be sending out an e-mail about it if you can't wait to heard that I submitted my DD 214 to the Executive Committee. Later Frank Jackman “       

Norm’s answer to that e-mail, his not unusual sniveling answer was that Frank had mistaken his intent, he was just trying to get an active member of Smedley who moreover had attended various national events like the convention to join up with others in National. On the military service question he totally backed off saying he was sure that Frank had done military service. That sniveling made Frank more aware than ever that he had to tell people associated with the local chapter what his real military service was like and put some egg on Brother Gordon’s face.

Frank had not mentioned much about his actual military service in part because for a very public man, for man who believed in his role of as a street anti-war activist he was very, very private about his personal life, about things that had happened to him in the past. That challenge by Norm had got him to thinking about something that had been in the back of his mind for a while about being a little more forthcoming about that aspect of his past. As part of trying to settle himself down over the whole Norm flare-up he had sent an e-mail to his ex-wife with whom he was still on friendly terms and he still counted on to give him counsel when he had what he called “a fire in his head.”  Here’s what he had to say to Moira:

“Pea [pet name for Moira]-I want to tell you about this Norm character who called your house expecting that I was still living there. I already mentioned [in a previous e-mail] that he is some weird curmudgeon that wants to rain on everybody’s parade but his own. What he wanted to talk to me about and which he sent me an e-mail about last night when I had not called him was why I was not a member of VFP. This may sound odd but there are two parts to VFP-the National which has its own organizational structure and local Smedley which is part of and is subordinate to National. The point is that you can belong to Smedley without belonging to National and can run for local office as I have an idea to do this year without joining National. I have seen no reason except as a paper member to be a member of National. You know when I join something it is for real and not just for the resume. What’s a resume by the way? [Private joke between them because Frank has never assembled a resume having been in the right place at the right time on such matters as jobs and educational opportunities most of his working life.] Norm’s position is that because I am not a member of National I am not a member of VFP and therefore should not hold office which is what I want to do come the next election cycle, and he probably thinks I am not be a member of Smedley although our by-laws do not require it.      

“The more serious allegation though is that he questions whether I am a veteran at all (like in the Bill Fuller case with all his fake “stolen valor” stuff). What this all means is that I feel honor bound not to him since I don’t need a good conduct certificate from him or anybody to prove I earned my spurs as an anti-war Veteran who did stockade time for his beliefs but to Smedley to clear the air. That means I have to bring up my military history which I have only told you the details of recently and which I have kept a low profile on with Smedley. You know I have earned my right to carry the VFP banner high the hard way and I know you are proud of me for that.

“Funny though you know, or if you don’t know I will tell you, I am a very private public man if you get my drift and only tell about my personal life when I am up against the wall. This fall has been “outing” season for me. First having to talk about my cancer in public when I couldn’t put together that Peace Walk to Boston. Then I had to reveal to others the problems we were having in our marriage once I moved out and now this. I know you have my back on this-and maybe this will make me a better or more open person and you can be proud of me for that too.       

“Thank goodness though I am doing meditation because I really needed to do some after all that noise of this Norm thing -thanks for bringing me to see the virtue of that idea-kudos. 

“Please if Norm calls either hang up or just say I don’t live there anymore but don’t give him my cellphone number.”

Moira’s response was that she supported Frank in his efforts to clear his good name and that he should write a detailed explanation to the local Executive Board [whom he in any case as a precaution had CC’d  his various exchanges with Norm]of why he need not be challenged on his military service. Before that he had sent an e-mail telling the local leadership what he had already done and where he was heading:  

“Thanks to everybody for the support- I just put in a request for my DD214 with the State Adjutant General’s Office (that is the place in Massachusetts you can get a copy of your discharge for certain veterans from periods when you got a State bonus for military service).

I will be writing more about that in an e-mail (actually two e-mails) later  but for now since I am under a “cloud” about whether I am a veteran or not I want to know if the Committee thinks I should Emcee the Armistice Day program as I am expected too [Frank had volunteered to do that task as part of his stepped-up commitment to the local.] I will understand either way. I am more than willing to do it but will abide by your judgment. If I am not going to it I probably would not attend the parade/program so I have attached a copy of the Sam Adams Park permit [the place in downtown Boston where the program was to be presented] permit for somebody to print up and have when they set up. Remember the hassle last year. The cellphone number at the bottom 617-678-4114 is Laura Morris’ number in case of trouble- Later Frank”           

In the event the Committee had begged him to avoid dealing with Norm as a fruitless task for while they had already suffered many wounds. That evening he took up Moira’s suggestion and wrote a statement:     

“I Don’t Need A Good Conduct Certificate That I Am An Anti-War Veteran  

“I don’t need a good conduct certificate from Norm, National VFP, Smedley VFP, the gods, history, or anybody else to carry high the banner of VFP as an anti-war veteran. This issue has come up because of Norm’s erroneous insistence that I am not a member of VFP because I am not a member of National. I have addressed that elsewhere. What I find I need to defend myself against is his libelous insinuation that I am not a veteran. Comparing me by inference with the unfortunate Bill Fuller. I have today put in a request to the State Adjutant General’s Office, the place that has the DD214s for certain classes of Massachusetts veterans who received bonuses during various war periods.  I checked this morning and they still have mine (they moved from the State House to Milford). They have e-mailed me the request form which has to be returned by snail mail and they will return the DD214 by my requested e-mail delivery. That process shouldn’t take long and I will submit the document to the Ex Committee via e-mail when I get it.     

“But there is a faster way to check on my military service. Norm, since you seem to have plenty of time on your hands for checking stuff for no apparent purpose other than some private nefarious purpose of your own why don’t you go down to the Moakley Federal Courthouse in Boston or wherever they keep the older federal decisions in the next couple of day (who knows maybe you can find it on the Internet these day since it is a public record) and ask to see the decision in Private Francis J. Jackman (it may have been Joseph rather than the initial but the last time I looked, needed to look was in1976 so I am not sure of that) v. the Secretary of the Army (and others including the commanding general of Fort Devens and some underlings) around early February 1971 (I am not sure of the exact court order date but it was several days before my discharge). In that case old cranky Judge Francis Ford, no friend of G.I. resisters, ordered on a writ of habeas corpus my discharge from the Army for “arbitrarily and capriciously” denying my conscientious objector application. I was given a discharge under honorable conditions.

“By the way that discharge by the Army was directly from the Fort Devens stockade where I was serving a six month sentence from a Special Court-Martial for refusing to wear the Army uniform. That was the second of two Special Court-Martials where I received a stiff sentence (the first, also six months, was just after they turned down my C.O. application where I, in uniform, attended an anti-war rally at the Main Gate of Fort Devens during “duty hours”). So altogether between confinement to barracks, periods of house arrest, stockade time including time in solitary (for “my own protection’’) I did well over a year in confinement.  In a later e-mail I will detail the pertinent facts and my reasons for keeping this information “on the low,” but for now you can understand that I am not going to take any noise from anybody about my status as an anti-war veteran who has paid his dues and can carry the VFP banner high, very high.

“Although I don’t need witnesses to my anti-war Army good conduct Sally Rand from the Friends Meeting up in Cumberland, Maine who used to be at the Cambridge Meeting then was one of the organizers of the rally I attended in uniform in front of the fort. And of several rallies in my defense before that first court-martial. You can also ask Sev to ask his wife Lana if she remembers going to Fort Devens for some rallies for a G.I. resister. I know I got a letter of support from her while I was in the stockade.

“Like I said I will give details and my reasons later for not speaking about this matter but actually Norm and Nancy already know this story-they just don’t know they know it.  Last Spring I think at Edward’s Midnight Voices at Friends Meeting House I read a short piece which I titled Jack Callahan’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters Of War in Mind. I have been thinking about speaking about my military past for a while and now this situation has forced my hand. That piece was a slightly fictionalized, and slightly embellished, run through of my own situation from that time. Now you can understand better why the Chelsea Manning case is so close to my heart.           

“So the hell with anybody who has a problem with me not being a member of National, I have earned my right to carry the VFP banner without a lot of noise about it.”

A few days later Frank sent the Executive Committee the following to fill out the story:

“Pertinent facts and reasons for keeping low on my military career

“I am as I have recognized more clearly this fall a very private public person.  I have tried until recently to keep the two separate. But the need to go public, to be “outed” one way or another about my battle with cancer when I couldn’t put together the Peace Walk to Boston, my impeding divorce once I was no longer in Watertown and now a question about my military service have required me to be more open about the private side . As I stated in an earlier e-mail about my military status brought on by Norm’s e-mail inquiry about why I am not a member of National, and more importantly in impugning my status as a veteran not having produced a DD 214 for Smedley. A process which as far as I know was not required for local membership until we created the by-laws this year although there might have been some requirement that I had not been aware. I was certainly not asked for one when I joined. Now events have forced me to come forward on this issue as well. That questioning of my veteran status in light of the recent Bill Fuller “hot button” situation by Norm had as a matter of protecting myself and my anti-war reputation required me to speak out. Below are the pertinent facts and reasons for my previous silence.  

“I received my draft notice in the fall of 1968, took a physical which I passed and was called for induction in January, 1969. At that time I was fairly anti-Vietnam War but not enough to decide not to accept induction and either go to jail or Canada. My anti-war thought processes at that stage had not developed that far. While I thought vaguely about not going into the service nothing in my past headed me in that direction, including any support from family or friends for that kind of decision so that was off the radar. So I was inducted at the Boston Army Base and sent to Fort Gordon down in Augusta, Georgia for basic training. After about three, maybe four days down there I realized that I had made a horrible mistake. But I was down in Georgia far from home and so whatever thoughts I had about doing anything stayed with me until I was able to get home. At least that was my idea.

“Now in 1969 all the Army cared about for the most part was replacing the “cannon-fodder” loses on the battlefields in 1968 through Tet and other battles so having no other specialized skills I was assigned to Infantry AIT (11Bravo, “grunt”, “cannon-fodder”) at Fort McClellan in Alabama. The only possible assignment for me after that designation and training was in the bloody rice fields of Vietnam.   At AIT a few of us from around Boston talked about refusing to take machine gun training but nothing came of it once the company commander read us the riot act and threatened the stockade which I feared quite a bit then. I thus decided to wait until I got home to see what I was going to do once I actually did get those orders to report to Fort Lewis in Washington for transit to Vietnam.      

“Once I got back to Boston I went over to Cambridge to the Friends Meeting House where they were doing both draft refusal counselling and G.I. rights counselling as well. One counsellor advised me to file an application as a conscientious objector. He also “advised” me that servicemen who went AWOL were dropped from their assigned places after about thirty days in case I wanted avoid going to Fort Lewis and put the C.O. application at a fort closer to home which would turned out to be Fort Devens. I did not believe under the standards in effect then that I qualified as a C.O. since I was not a Quaker or one of the historic religious objectors to war. So I went to Fort Lewis.            

“During that period I was reading like crazy, anti-war stuff and Catholic resister stuff like with the Berrigans at Catonsville, some G.I. resistance stuff and began to form a more definitive idea about what I had to do. Although I did not in the end wind up going to Vietnam as an infantryman then I was beginning to form the idea of refusal to continue my military career. As part of that idea I did wind up going AWOL back to Boston for over thirty days (almost two months really). I then turned myself into the FBI (after they had called my family’s house looking for me) and they turned me over to the State Police in Concord who turned me over the MPs at Fort Devens. There I was placed in a Special Detachment Unit (for AWOLs and other assorted misfits) to serve my punishment and also to put in my C.O. application.

“In short order that C.O. application was “arbitrarily and capriciously” denied out of hand (words that would be used later to characterize the Army’s action) since I was stating my objection on general anti-war moral and ethical grounds not at that moment reason enough to be granted. (Some Supreme Court and lower federal court decisions would shortly thereafter broaden the scope of objection which would be germane in my case) and in early 1970 I was to be re-assigned to Fort Lewis this time again for transport to Vietnam as an infantryman. Before that happened my civilian attorney (provided through AFSC by the way) was able to get into federal court in Boston and get a temporary restraining order from a federal judge so that he could present a writ of habeas corpus that the Army had unjustly denied my application. That action would keep me at Fort Devens until my federal case was resolved. That granting of the TRO had also been a close thing because during my stay at Fort Devens I had begun to agitate against the war among my fellow soldiers and the very day that I got that TRO there was a general search around the base looking for me (I had been warned by a sympathetic clerk what was up and so was hiding on the base) to take me to Fort Lewis handcuffed and under guard for transport to Vietnam.

“Once I learned that fate was what the Army had wanted to do to me something snapped in me. My feelings of resistance grew exponentially. That was when I began to get the idea of greater resistance. I had during that short period of freedom headed to Cambridge (only forty miles away) to work with the Quakers who were planning to rally at Fort Devens to end the war (that is where I met Sally Rand from up in Maine who was then the organizer of the event). I told them I was willing to join them during “duty hours” in uniform to protest, to support the call bring the troops home. I did so and when I went back to the base after the rally I was immediately arrested by the MPs and placed in the “hole” (solitary) for a few weeks before my first Special Court-Martial where I drew my first six month sentence. During that time, and this is important, Sally and others would rally outside the base in solidarity with my action (and to make sure through publicity that I was safe since the MPs who manned the stockade were mostly Vietnam veterans).             

“When I finished that sentence (minus good time) I was released back to that Special Detachment Unit. But the stockade had hardened me in my resolve to resist. (Plus a lot of reading along that line helped.) A few days after I got out of the stockade the first time I showed up at morning call out on the base parade field in civilian clothes with a sign around  neck calling “Bring the troops home.” That brought Special Court-Marital number two also six months. Toward the end of that sentence the Inspector-General showed up in my cell one afternoon and told me that the Federal Court in Boston had granted my writ of habeas corpus and that I was to be released in a few day (the Army decided not to appeal). Otherwise today I might still be serving six month sentences-who knows.

“Now there is obviously nothing in the above narrative to be shy about, at least not in VFP.  Hell, somebody called military resisters the only real heroes one time I remember (and I have done so in the Chelsea Manning case). Moreover under the more liberal standards of the times I deserved that C.O. status and have no problem with having pursued that course. Sometime after that whole Army experience had been settled I got a little more sophisticated about imperialism and its inevitable wars and about how to effectively organize as best we can against it. Under the influence of left-wing socialist thought (and basically Bolshevik practice in World War I) I came to see that doing individual actions like mine that only got me put out of the struggle had been less than effective. The long and short of it was, and still is to some extent, is that I believed I should have gone to Vietnam and helped organize the resistance there. With the Army half in mutiny who knows what I could have done. That is why I have been very hesitant to acknowledge my full military “career.” And still probably would have been if the issue had not been forced. So like I said in an earlier e-mail I earned my anti-war spurs the hard way and I can proudly hold the VFP banner up high and nobody can take that away from me. Frank Jackman.”

Yeah, Frank doesn’t need any good conduct certificate-thanks for “your service,” your anti-war service that it took me a long time to get to  as you well know Brother.