From The Pen Of Frank Jackman- Malvina Reynolds’ “On The Rim Of The World”

On the Rim of the World
Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1973 Schroder Music Company, renewed 2001.


She inches along on the rim of the world,
Always about to go over,
How she can manage I never will know,
To get from one day to the other.
Scrounging a buck or a bed
Or the share of a roof for her head,
This nobody's child, this precarious girl,
Who lives on the rim of the world.

She looks like a princess in somebody's rags,
She dreams of a world without danger,
Climbing the stairs to a room of her own
With someone who isn't a stranger.
But now she eats what she can,
And accepts what there is for a man,
This nobody's child, this precarious girl,
Who lives on the rim of the world.

She inches along on the rim of the world,
Always about to go over,
How she can manage I never will know,
To get from one day to the other.
Scrounging a buck or a bed
Or the share of a roof for her head,
This nobody's child, this precarious girl,
Who lives on the rim of the world.


Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:---- The Malvina Reynolds Songbook

Malvina Reynolds recording(s) on which this song is performed:
---- Held Over---- Ear to the Ground

Recordings by other artists on which this song is performed:
---- Rosalie Sorrels: Be Careful There's a Baby in the House (Green Linnet Records GLCD 2100, 1991)
---- Rosalie Sorrels: No Closing Chord; The Songs of Malvina Reynolds (Red House Records RHR CD 143, 2000)
---- Jane Voss and Hoyle Osborne: Pullin' Through (Green Linnet SIF 1044, 1983)

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http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/MALVINA/mr126.htm
This page copyright 2006 by Charles H. Smith and Nancy Schimmel. All rights reserved.

… she, Clara this week, maybe Clarissa or Claire next week, or after the next bust, thought for a moment, for just a moment, no more, she had no time for much more, what with her name, her birth name, Clementine, Clementine Barrows, placeof birth Northbridge, Kentucky down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, some nineteen years ago, coming up next on the court docket. What was it for this time, solicitation, no, lewd and lascivious behavior, whatever that was. She just tried to please the guy, when she, like always with the guys, approached him looking for a drink, or drinks, and asked him what he was looking for, and if it was her, give him what he asked for, or maybe what he needed, what he wanted in the back of the Red Top Grille. How did she know he would have buyer’s remorse, or whatever he told the cops, to get out from under his own rap and walk, respectable john walk, when somebody complained and yelled copper after they had finished. She thought though, that minute thought, that she was due for a break, a break from having to pay attention to any man who would give her a look, from any guy who thought he could go around the world on the basis of a few cheap scotches (not even good stuff, Haig &Haig maybe, stuff that a lady should expect of agentleman and that she had developed a taste for), some fast talk and some fast hands.

She could hardly believe that it was only a couple of years before that she had headed west, headed for Los Angeles. Headed out to be a Hollywood star (everybody back home had said that she had the looks to make it, back in Northbridge and around the hills and hollows after she won that Miss Eastern Kentucky beauty contest, the Jessica Lange looks , Jessica Lange who just then was making a big splash with a monkey, uh, oh a gorilla, who was all goggle eyes over her in the re-make of King Kong ) or at least a starlet, on that Trailways she picked up in Prestonsburg after that incident with her father, his drunken midnight creep up the stairs one night which she could not understand , and then that big blow-up with Lem, Lemuel Bass, when he asked her to marry him. Christ she was only seventeen, only finishing high school, only starting out with her dreams. She would probably have had two kids and one in the oven by now if she had stayed.

Yah, she had no regrets about leaving that scene as hard as things had been once she got out here and found that fistfuls, bushels full, hell, acres full of other young girls from Steubenville, from Decatur, from Moline, from Fargo (all the Dakota cities it seemed like) were looking to be stars, or at least starlets. Once she learned the ropes, knew the score, she got that job as a drive-in waitress, a car hop, until that night manager (really just a trainee night manager) thought that putting her on the side of the drive-in where all the valley guys sat their cars down on Friday and Saturday night to feast of burgers and fries delivered by a short shirt and halter tip-worthy young waitress meant that he could roam his hands all over her, Then, after he fired her, that foolish job (as she country girl, country high Baptist girl brought-up before her mother died, still blushed an innocent blush thinking about it) so-called, modeling, well not really modeling but showing herself naked, in the buff, for guys to look over at private parties. She just couldn’t do it after that first time, couldn’t have a bunch of strangers, strange men, eyeing her and thinking whorish thoughts. Then nothing, no jobs, no money, finally no room, and tough times even keeping herself fed, nothing for a month or so. The streets.

Desperate, forget blushes (except private look back country girl properly Christian brought up blushes), forget man stares, forget everything except trying to get off the streets after she had nearly been molested, raped, one night when she slept out on the edges of Venice Beach and a couple of guys had held her down before some guy called them off and they ran. Then a few days later she met Trudy on the Santa Monica beach as she was trying to get a little sun to make her look less like some midnight troll, Trixie from Norman, Oklahoma who had taken her own Trailways ride west a couple of years before her and knew the score, and knew that she couldn’t go back to Norman. Trudy was, well she called herself a bar maid but what she was a prostitute working the better bars in Santa Monica, the ones near the pier.

And so she, Clementine Barrows born, now Clara, learned the ropes, learned how to take a man’s money without public blushes. Learned how make a man pay for his around the world pleasures. It had been tough, like now with this soft bust soon to be taken care of by Artie and then back to work, and some of these guys were a little wacky, wacky in their sexual dreams, their quirky wants that she could write a book about, but she had gotten herself a room before long, a room of her own, a nice room she was fixing up, got off those damn streets, and got used to what men had to give, which wasn’t much.

…yah, as her name was called to go before the judge she thought she needed a break, needed it bad.

From The American Left History Blog Archives(2002) - On American Political Discourse –A CALL TO ALL ANTI-IMPERIALIST WORKERS/YOUTH: HAVE NO ILLUSIONS-WAR AGAINST IRAQ IS COMING!!! (2002)

A CALL TO ALL ANTI-IMPERIALIST WORKERS/YOUTH: HAVE NO ILLUSIONS- WAR AGAINST IRAQ IS COMING!!! (2002)

 

Markin comment:

 In 2007-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.

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A CALL TO ALL ANTI-IMPERIALIST WORKERS/YOUTH: HAVE NO ILLUSIONS-

WAR AGAINST IRAQ IS COMING!!!

THIS IS NOT OUR WAR -DEFEND IRAQ AGAINST U.S./UN AND ALLIED IMPERIALIST ATTACK!

SUPPORT EFFORTS BY IRAQI LEFTISTS, WORKERS, PEASANTS, KURDS AND OTHERS TO OVERTHROW THE HUSSEIN REGIME!

DOWN WITH THE UN STARVATION BLOCKADE!

As the United Nations Security Council vote on November 8, 2002 graphically points out the war-crazed Bush-led United States government is leading the world to war. Tens of thousands of American and British troops are getting positioned for a full-scale attack on Iraq, while other powers from Australia to Turkey elbow each other for a role in the slaughter and share of the loot. The White House has already revealed plans for a post-Saddam military occupation of Iraq. One look at the war chest of nuclear weapons that the United States has and threatens to use today and it is clear that the fate of life on this planet is threatened by the continued existence of this American led “ world disorder”.We must act.

In the coming war against Iraq working people and anti-imperialist youth in the United States and elsewhere we must stand for the military defense of Iraq without giving any political support to the Hussein regime. Hussein is a bloody oppressor of Iraqi workers, leftists, Shiite Muslims, the Kurdish people and others. As such he was in the past a close ally and client of the American government for a full two decades before he made a grab for Kuwait in 1990. Now the American government wants a more pliant regime and tighter control of the oil spigot, not the least to put economic rivals like Japan and Germany, who are more dependent on Near East oil, on rations. However, every victory for the American government and its allies in their predatory wars encourages further military adventures, every setback serves to assist the struggles of the working peoples and the oppressed of the world.

Historically, in wars between the imperialist predators and plunderers and their colonial and semicolonial victims anti-imperialists have a side. As Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 which stands as one the greatest antiwar movements ever, stressed in his 1915 pamphlet SOCIALISM AND WAR: “If tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on France, or India on Britain, or Persia or China on Tsarist Russia, and so on, these would be ‘just,’ and ‘defensive’ wars irrespective of who would be the first to attack; any socialist would wish the oppressed, dependent and unequal states victory over the oppressor, slave-holding and predatory ‘Great Powers.”We must continue that tradition.

The tremendous military advantages of the United States against neocolonial Iraq- a country that has already been bled white through 12 years of United Nations sanctions which have killed more than one and one half million civilians- underscores the importance of class struggle in the imperialist centers as the chief means to give content to the call to defend Iraq. Every strike, every labor mobilization against war plans, every mass protest against attacks on workers and minorities, every struggle against domestic repression and against attacks on civil liberties represents a dent in the imperialist war drive. To put an end to war once and for all, the capitalist system that breeds war must be swept away. However, our immediate task is to stop the imperialist war drive.

The American ruling class manipulated the grief and horror felt by millions at the criminal and demented attack on the World Trade Center to wage war on Afghanistan. But the patriotic consensus in the United States is wearing thin and elsewhere there is massive opposition to a war against Iraq. War demands

civil peace and from Los Angeles to London the imperialist war makers are revealed as vicious union-busters and strikebreakers. Declaring that a strike could “threaten national security,” the Bush administration has brought down the force of the capitalist state to coerce the powerful American dockers union, the ILWU, to work under the dictates of the union-busting employers association. Across the seas, British firefighters are threatened with strikebreaking by the army. Plunging stockmarkets rob millions of workers of their pensions while public scandals expose insatiable corporate greed. Tens of thousands of working people, including the entire workforce at a number of Fiat auto plants in Italy, face a future of crisis. Civil liberties have been shredded and the capitalists have intensified their assault on social welfare and other gains wrested through decades of workers struggles.

In the United States, not even the dizzying flag-waving or the heavy fist of state repression has induced the masses to embrace war with Iraq. In Europe, hundreds of thousands of workers and anti-imperialist youth have demonstrated their opposition to this war. The problem is that the anti-war protests in Europe have generally l been channeled into a national-chauvinist direction of getting one’s “own” rulers to stand up to the Americans. In America, many antiwar liberals and leftists plead, “Money for jobs, not for war” and so fuel the notion that fundamental priorities of the capitalist rulers can be altered to serve the interests of working people. The time for such illusions ran out long ago.

The truth is that this whole capitalist system is based on the extraction of profit for the owners of the means of production through the exploitation and subjugation of the workers who produce the wealth of society. War is a concentrated expression of this, as competing capitalist ruling classes scramble to steal natural resources and to carve out new markets for export of capital and fresh sources of cheap labor. Therefore, it is necessary to draw a distinction between bourgeois pacifism, which lulls the masses into passivity and embellishes capitalist democracy, and the yearning for peace of the masses.

Over the past period there have been opportunities to organize class struggle in opposition to imperialist war and for the international workers movement to break out of narrow nationalist and economist limits. During the 1999 U.S./NATO war against Serbia, Italian COBAS unions organized a one-million-strong political general strike against that war. Fiat workers, who today battle plant closings in Italy, organized a campaign of material aid- a campaign supported by all partisans of the international working class- for the workers of the Yugoslav Zastava auto plant, which had been bombed by the imperialists. In 2001, Japanese dockworkers at Sasebo pointed the way forward by “hot-cargoing”(refusing to handle) Japanese military goods for the war in Afghanistan. These types of actions here can concretize our opposition to this war.

Moreover, U.S. military bases across Europe and Asia, as well as high-tech spy installations such as Australia’s Pine Gap, have become deserving targets of antiwar protests by leftists and trade unions. It would be a good thing if the U.S. were deprived of its international launching pads for war against Iraq. For all of German chancellor Schroder’s electioneering against war in Iraq, it is highly unlikely that he will interfere in any way with the key American air bases and military installations across Germany which house some 70, 000 American troops. What we need is not an “antiwar movement” of social-chauvinist support to one’s own ruling class but an internationalist working class opposition to U.S./NATO bases

What is essential is to draw the class line and unshackle the working people and anti-imperialist youth from capitalist politicians, their agents in the trade unions and others who channel their justified hatred of war into illusory calls for parliamentary reforms of the profit-driven system that breeds war and, in West Europe, into support for their own ruling classes against the Americans. Here, in the heart of the beast the workers and anti-imperialist youth united front can point the way forward building an internationalist perspective in the antiwar protests. Our demands should be: Struggle against the bosses and their government here at home- “the main enemy is at home”! Defend Iraq against imperialist attack! Down with the United Nations starvation blockade! All U.S./ UN and allied troops out of the Persian Gulf and Near East!

JOIN AND BUILD THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST WORKERS/ YOUTH UNITED FRONT AGAINST THE COMING UNITED STATES/ UNITED NATIONS ATTACK ON IRAQ!

THE COMMITTEE FOR AN ANTI-IMPERIALIST WORKERS/ YOUTH UNITED FRONT AGAINST UNITED STATES/ UNITED NATIONS ATTACK ON IRAQ

CHECK BOSTON. INDY MEDIA. ORG CALENDAR MA-ACT SECTION FOR ANNOUNCEMENTS OF MEETINGS AND EVENTS

Labor Donated

Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM -Update

Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM -Update 

 

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. For A Stand-Out For Bradley- Wednesdays From 5:00-6:00 PM

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The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward an early summer trial now scheduled for June 2013. The news on his case over the past several months has centered on the many (since  about April 2012) pre-trial motions hearings including defense motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial (Private Manning’s pre-trial confinement is now at 900 plus days and will be over 1000 days by the time of trial),  a motion still not ruled on, dismissal as a matter of freedom of speech and minimal effect on alleged national security issues (issues important for us to know what the hell the government is doing either in front of us, or behind our backs), a motion also not ruled on and now the subject of  prosecution counter- motions,  and dismissal based on serious allegations of torturous behavior by the military authorities extending far up the chain of command while Private Manning was first detained in Kuwait and later at the Quantico Marine brig for about a year ending in April 2011. In December Private Manning himself, as well as others including senior military mental health workers, took the stand to detail those abuses.

 

The results of that last motion are now in, as announced at an early January pre-trial hearing, and while every Bradley Manning supporter should be heartened by the fact that the military judge ruled that he was subject to illegal behavior by the military during his pre-trail confinement her remedy, a 112 days reduction in any future sentence, is a mere slash on the risk to the military authorities. No dismissal and, alternatively, no appropriate reduction (the asked for ten to one ratio for all his first year or so of confinement) given the seriousness of the illegal behavior. And a deterrent to any future military whistleblowers, and others who seek to put the hard facts of future American military atrocities before the public.       

 

Some other important recent news, this from the November 2012 pre-trail sessions, is the offer by the defense to plead guilty to lesser charges (wrongful, unauthorized use of the Internet, etc.) in order to clear the deck and have the major (with a possibility of a life sentence) espionage /aiding the enemy issue solely before the court-martial judge (a single military judge, the one who has been hearing the pre-trial motions, not a lifer-stacked panel). Also there has been increased media attention by mainstream outlets  around the case (including the previously knowingly oblivious New York Times), as well as an important statement by three Nobel Peace Laureates  (including Bishop Tutu from South Africa) calling on their fellow laureate, United States President Barack Obama, to free Private Manning from his jails. Check the Bradley Manning Support Network for details and future updates.

 

Since September 2011, in order to publicize Private Manning’s case locally, there have been weekly stand-outs (as well as other more ad hoc and sporadic events) in various locations in the Greater Boston area starting in Somerville across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop on Friday afternoons and later on Wednesdays. Lately this stand-out has been held on each week on Wednesdays from 5:00 to 6:00 PM at Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. (small park at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street just outside the Redline MBTA stop,  renamed Manning Square for the duration of the stand-out) in order to continue to broaden our outreach. Join us in calling for Private Manning’s freedom. President Obama Pardon Private Manning Now!  

A whistleblower salutes Bradley Manning

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Thomas Andrews Drake is a former senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency and a decorated U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy veteran.

By Thomas Drake. January 14, 2013. This article was originally published on Politico.com
When President Barack Obama signed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act on Nov. 27 of last year, actual whistleblowers were notably absent from the event. Traditionally, supporters are invited to witness the signing of legislation, so where were the whistleblowers? The sad truth is that the “Whistleblower Protection” statements issued by the Obama administration are more public relations than actual practice. Despite Obama’s promise to create the most transparent government in U.S. history, the number of annual classifications continues to skyrocket and a record number of government whistleblowers have been charged under the Espionage Act.
Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 25-year-old soldier arrested in May 2010 for revealing documents via WikiLeaks, is a victim of this war on whistleblowers. I attended Bradley’s December pretrial hearing at Fort Meade, Md., in which the defense sought accountability for the unlawful pretrial punishment Bradley endured at the Quantico Marine brig in Virginia. For nine months, Bradley was held isolated in a 6-by-8 cell, and allowed only 20 minutes of sunlight and exercise per day, in violation of Navy instructions and also, as Judge Denise Lind this week determined, in violation of military law.
The U.N. Chief Rapporteur on Torture called these conditions “cruel, inhuman and degrading,” and any reasonable person would see them as torture. Brig staff knew that their actions were under intense scrutiny from three-star Gen. George Flynn and the Pentagon, leaving no doubt that the command structure exercised undue influence over Quantico’s “poor” decision making.
I would be more shocked by this egregious treatment of a U.S. soldier were it not for the malicious prosecution I experienced. Just before Sept. 11, I was hired by the National Security Agency as a senior change leader. However, when I disclosed how NSA officials perpetrated fraud with the multibillion-dollar Trailblazer program and exposed NSA as the White House executive agent for the illegal secret surveillance of U.S citizens with the Stellar Wind program (when a superior, legal and far cheaper alternative existed), the government came after me as an enemy of the state. I was subsequently targeted by the Justice Department in 2006 as part of a “leak” investigation. In November 2007, I was unceremoniously visited in a dawn raid by a dozen agents from the FBI and indicted in April 2010 by the Department of Justice.
Deplorably, the Obama administration has dropped whistleblower protections at the door for intelligence and national security issues. The words “national security” alone should not exempt any person or program from public scrutiny and questioning. But as I saw firsthand, the U.S. intelligence community today remains plagued with over-classification, the politics of personal ego among high-ranking officials and a willingness to trample on human rights and civil liberties for negligible benefit.
When I joined the military, I took a solemn oath to defend the Constitution. I have always operated with that principle in mind, and I believe Bradley did as well. In Iraq, Bradley came face to face with the dark underbelly of U.S. activities around the world. He saw activists in Iraq detained and tortured with tacit U.S. support, and when he brought his concerns to his chain of command, they told him not to bother. He found evidence in Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the video of indiscriminate killing of civilians, unpunished torture and corruption. He saw the diplomatic cables detailing the State Department’s role in suppressing minimum wage legislation in Haiti and supporting corrupt authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. As a former veteran, I believe this critical information regarding our government is in the public interest.
Bradley, like myself, placed his conscience above his career. Yet those whose careers were embarrassed by the truth targeted the messenger with a chilling vengeance. As in my case, the government is unable to show any evidence of actual harm or advantage to a foreign nation or enemy as a result of Bradley’s actions. Also, as in my case, the prosecution has tried to prevent the defense from referencing any evidence of Bradley’s good intentions. Bradley stated prior to arrest, “I want people to see the truth, regardless of who they are, because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” For his honorable actions, Bradley faces life in prison.
An informed citizenry is the bedrock of democracy. Absent transparency in government operations, the executive increasingly rules through secrecy and propaganda, shielding its conduct from the press and public accountability. By condemning and vilifying Bradley so extremely, the prosecuting authority Gen. Karl Horst, and others in the Pentagon and State Department have merely highlighted their misplaced priorities. The aggressive persecution and prosecution that Bradley has experienced are not the result of his connection to WikiLeaks; it is part of a larger pattern, and increasingly the norm for how our government reacts to whistleblowers and truth tellers. Dissent is the highest form of patriotism — and for that, I salute Bradley.
Thomas Andrews Drake is a former senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency and a decorated U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy veteran.

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman- Down In The Hills And Hollows- “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah”

… he, Caleb Jones, woke up that early, very early, day break early Sunday morning with a headache that could have reached clear to Morgantown and that was saying something since he was not even in that state, West Virginia, but was be-straddling a twin bed, there was no other way to put it, shared in a room with Hobart Jones, no relative (no kin as they say in those hills and hollows parts) at Ma Oates’ roadside inn in downtown Prestonsburg, that’s Kentuck, on that cold, clear winter morning in the year of our lord 1933. None of which helped him in the least to explain why his head hurt so badly. He had poked his head around to see if Hobart had come in, and saw that empty twin bed made up just as it has been when the boys had hit town the previous afternoon.

That could only mean one thing, one damn blessed thing, Hobart was right then sharing some pillow space with that young widow woman, Peggy Radley, whose husband had been killed in a coal mine accident a couple of years back and who had eyes for Hobart, from the local gossip, even before the late Mr. Radley (Pete) went to his great reward. Well, good luck brother, good luck (although Hobart, six foot four, lanky, muscular lanky, make no mistake, longish blonde hair and blue eyes, fierce blues, what the women, among themselves, called bedroom eyes with a titter, and who knows what else, didn’t seem to need luck, need it where it counted, in the women department).

Of course Caleb’s own good luck would depend very much that cold crisp morning on whether he could bestir (nice word he thought) from Ma Oates’ comfortable bestraddled bed in order to meet Miss Daisy Bailey for the eight o’clock service at Lord’s Worship Baptist Church. That “date” was to be the prelude to, perhaps, his own sharing of some pillow space in the very near future with Daisy, who working as a clerk for the Peabody Mining Company, had her own cozy apartment (so he had heard) and had the previous night given him every indication that he might get to see the inside of the place if he proved to be a good and observant god-praising (maybe fearing too but she specifically said praising) Christian man.

And while Miss Daisy Bailey would not give Miss Bette Davis or Miss Gloria Swanson a run for their money in the looks department she was pretty enough and had something, something that made Caleb (and a few other Prestonsburg young men, including bunk mate in absentia Hobart) have some restless mountain wind nights as he had found out when they got to talking about the local women, local eligible women. Just that moment though he was deciding, seriously deciding whether his three thousand pound head could tolerate Preacher Birch’s long-winded sermons (two per service, Jesus), Daisy promise or no promise. And then he ran the previous day’s, the previous night’sreally, events through his as he mulled his options.

Once a month, at least in winter, the good citizens of Prestonsburg gathered together at Farmer Duane’s old red barn for a Saturday night hoe-down, a dance really. That event formed the main social calendar for the plain-spoken, plain-living, god-fearing (and maybe praising too), hard-scrabble farmers and hard-bitten coal miners who dotted the hills and hollows around the town and had done so since as far back as anyone could remember (since 1866 he looked it up, started by the original Farmer Duane just back from war, the Civil War, Yankee side like most in the hills and hollows around there who hated slavery and nigras in equal amounts. It was only later that they came to appreciate Mister James Crow like their other southern brethren). And they would pay, and pay well, to hear some good old time mountain music to weep over, maybe some funny rural life songs to laugh over, and some sentimental songs to help the spooning along, especially late in the evening (pay, by the way, cash money, room and board for the night at Ma Oates’ inn and throw some liquor in, which is how the inn stay first got included as part of the arrangements).

Caleb Jones, no modesty in him when it came to his music, was the best damn, excuse the language, mandolin player around the valley, and maybe farther. Hobart Jones (remember, no kin) was the best damn (same on language, okay) fiddle player around. And so the pair had gotten together with a banjo player, a mountain harp player, and a bass player (really wash tub but he, Gary White, played the thing like a big old sad old bass and kept beautiful time to boot) and formed the Prestonsburg Sheiks (a moniker then in use by every southern group, and some Yankees too, he had heard the Ohio Sheiks on the radio one night and they sounded great). And so the previous few months, after Mr. Griffin from the town council had heard them over in Hazard when the tore the barn down (figuratively), the Prestonsburg Sheiks were the band for the monthly red barn dances down at Duane’s farm.

Caleb then thought about that liquor part of the deal which was the proximate cause for his big head (and for his now foolish decision to have that damn, don’t excuse the language, church date. What the hell had he been thinking?) See the deal was that Ozzie Desmond, the main man moonshiner, would provide the liquor, white lightning, in dry county Kentuck (everybody went to Ozzie, no big deal). What happened though was that he and Hobart had run into Ozzie the previous afternoon early while they were heading for the old barn to set up and maybe practice a little. Ozzie, knowing his customers, immediately gave them some jars of his nectar and that was that. Both men, drinkers, but not hard, hard drinkers were blasted by show time. That night though the liquor must have had some angelic portion because the band really did blow the place away (figuratively) with three great sets, song all mixed up, but really great on Turkey in the Straw, Cripple Creek, Poor Wayfaring Stranger, Pretty Polly, a salacious version that only the young got of K. C. Moan, some spooning stuff like Come All You Fair and Tender Maidens, and Storms Are On The Ocean.

And that music magic and liquor elixir was how Miss Daisy Bailey was drawn to one Caleb Jones (and probably why Peggy Radley decided to make her big move on Hobart as well). During the second set intermission she had come over and started talking to him about this and that, mainly about some Carter Family covers that they had just done and that she was thrilled by. One thing had led to another so by the end of the evening they had agreed that she would wait for him to pack up and he would walk her home. Easy street, he thought, except wait up. She, as she made clear on their way to her home, was no pushover, she had been unlucky in love before, and besides she was looking for someone who was a church-going man, important in that non-once a month red barn dance kick over community, especially for a single woman with her own apartment. And so the test, this date that he was almost positive his head could not take.

About seven forty-five though after going downstairs to Ma Oates’ kitchen and having her hair of the dog fix him a raw egg and tomato juice concoction he revived. He was going, what was he thinking about in not going when he thought about it. So he trundled himself the six blocks over to Lord’s Worship as Preacher Birch was greeting one and all, many, many of the men anyway, who looked more beaten down by that white lightning than he. And there at the entrance he spied Miss Daisy Bailey all dressed in virgin white, prayer book in one hand and choir song book in the other. She waved to him, waved kind of non-committedly it seemed to him, and as they greeted each other she said that she would see him after the service since she had been drafted as a replacement in the choir that morning.

A few minutes later he entered the church a little crestfallen over his decision to keep the date as the choir began to sing with pious gusto Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah. He had, not having been in a church for a long time, heard that song sung so well as this morning. He thought too that at that hour all over the valley, and beyond as well, that all the little white churches and all the little nigra churches too, were probably singing that same praise to Jehovah. Not god, not some weak-kneed rarified old god like a million other gods, pagans or whatnot, but Jehovah, some great grandfather figure, some figure like he had seen one time in an art book of Michelangelo paintings all flowing hair, beard, and robes dispensing justice to the good, and thunder bolts to the wicked.

He thought that in those long ago days when this valley was first settled and everybody was scared, scared of injuns, scared of floods, scared that the food would not last, and scared that crops might not come in that when they built that first piney cabin church and brought forth their first preacher man that such a song would fortify them in their resolve. He thought too about his parents right now probably over at Lord’s Word Baptist a few blocks away singing this very song, his pious, frowning parents who were forever warning him about the wages of sin, the lusts of liquor, woman and gambling and on and on. And about their forbears on both sides who were among those first settlers, those settlers who stayed while others moved west when the soil ran out, and who built this town from slender pickings. Finally he wondered, seriously wondered as much as his poor misbegotten head would allow, whether in those olden times he would   instead of being a half-heathen have lustily sang the song that was now being sung to the high heavens. He thought yes, and maybe would have led the damn thing.

Just then he looked over at Daisy behind the preacher’s lectern, Daisy in high white dress rapture as the song pushed on through another verse, and she looked over at him, looked at him and his fierce blues eyes fixedly and she started to blush, crimson red maidenly blush from what he could tell which even in that humble plain board meeting house meant he had passed some test. Yah, she had that something and he was going to find out about it come hell or high water and stick to it until he found out what that something was, stick it out just like those pioneers.

GUIDE ME, O THOU GREAT JEHOVAH

Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer

“By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud…and by night in a pillar of fire.” Exodus 13:21

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John Hughes (1873-1932)

Words:Will­iam Will­iams, Hal­le­lu­iah (Bris­tol, Eng­land: 1745) (Arglwydd, arwain trwy’r anialwch). Trans­lat­ed from Welsh to Eng­lish by Pe­ter Will­iams, Hymns on Var­i­ous Sub­jects (Car­mar­then, Wales: 1771); Will­iams pub­lished an­o­ther Eng­lish trans­la­tion in La­dy Hunt­ing­don’s Col­lect­ion, cir­ca 1772. Music: Cwm Rhon­dda, John Hughes, 1907 (MI­DI, score). Hughes wrote this tune in Tonteg (near Pontypridd), Wales, to commemorate a music festival held in nearby Ca­pel Rhon­dda, Hop­kin­stown. It was first per­formed No­vem­ber 1 that year to Welsh words by Ann Grif­fiths; in the ear­ly days it was simp­ly known as Rhondda, but within a year he changed the name to Cwm Rhon­dda, used Pe­ter Will­iams’ trans­la­tion, and the rest is history Al­ter­nate tunes (some use slight­ly diff­er­ent end­ings to the lyr­ics): Guide Me, George W. War­ren, 1884 (MI­DI, score) Oliphant, ar­ranged from Pierre M. F. de S. Baillot, 1830, by Low­ell Ma­son, 1832 (MI­DI, score) Pilgrimage, George J. El­vey (1816-1893) (MI­DI, score) SegurJo­seph P. Hol­brook, 1862 (MI­DI, score) Turner, Wal­ter O. Wil­kin­son, 1895 (MI­DI, score) Zion, Thom­as Hast­ings, 1830 (MI­DI, score)

William Williams (1717-1791)

This hymn was sung, in Welsh, in the Acad­e­my Award win­ning mo­vie How Green Was My Val­ley (1941). It was sung in Eng­lish at the fun­er­al of Di­a­na, Prin­cess of Wales, in West­min­ster Ab­bey, Lon­don, Sep­tem­ber 6, 1997.

If you have ac­cess to a pic­ture of Pe­ter Will­iams that we could put on­line, please click here.

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Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, [or Guide me, O Thou great Redeemer…] Pilgrim through this barren land. I am weak, but Thou art mighty; Hold me with Thy powerful hand. Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven, Feed me till I want no more; Feed me till I want no more. Open now the crystal fountain, Whence the healing stream doth flow; Let the fire and cloudy pillar Lead me all my journey through. Strong Deliverer, strong Deliverer, Be Thou still my Strength and Shield; Be Thou still my Strength and Shield. Lord, I trust Thy mighty power, Wondrous are Thy works of old; Thou deliver’st Thine from thralldom, Who for naught themselves had sold: Thou didst conquer, Thou didst conquer, Sin, and Satan and the grave, Sin, and Satan and the grave. When I tread the verge of Jordan, Bid my anxious fears subside; Death of deaths, and hell’s destruction, Land me safe on Canaan’s side. Songs of praises, songs of praises, I will ever give to Thee; I will ever give to Thee. Musing on my habitation, Musing on my heav’nly home, Fills my soul with holy longings: Come, my Jesus, quickly come; Vanity is all I see; Lord, I long to be with Thee! Lord, I long to be with Thee!

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman- The Memphis Jug Band’s “K.C. Moan”

…he hadn’t been to K.C. in six years, he, Jason Albert Moore, in case you are interested ran under the moniker Three River Blackie when he was on that six year road, well, not all of it on the road, the freedom road, but six years if you count that ninety day stretch in the Clay County Jail (no good time, but don’t ask why) and that deuce in Joliet (years, minus the good time, it was to be up to a nickel, okay) for that armed robbery rap he took the fall for by being just a little too slow up by the Loop one night when he needed dough bad, about as bad as a man with a thirst and a jone needed dough, and the coppers nabbed him going over a back alley fence down over in Illinois, Chicago to be precise. Yah, he was heading home just as fast that old Illinois Central and whatever other connections he could make to the Missouri line and on to K.C. got him there. He had gotten a letter from his baby, his sweet Minnie, his sweet brown woman, while he was up and she had a nest waiting for him, waiting for him, no questions asked. Just get home, and get home quick. And as he settled himself down on the flat that he had just hopped (and almost didn’t make, he had lost a step or two since the days when he could back into a flat turning down against theengine with his eyes closed) he started thinking about what drove him out those six years ago.

Yes, part of it was Minnie, of that he had no doubts. Minnie and her wanting ways, wanting to get married, wanting him and them to leave the club circuit (hell, club was too fancy a word most nights, bowling alley, juke joint, barbecue pit, movie theater, somebody’s rent party house, a bus station in the colored section of town, any place that could hold a crowd of more than twenty or so) leave the showboat slow and easy life that he had been practically born to (his Pa had taught him the one- string guitar attached to a post on the cabin he grew up in down in Biloxi when he was five and he never looked back, from one to twelve strings, he could play it all, and had played every venue in the south until the music, the making money music, started drifting west to places like Cairo, Decatur, and Kansas City), wanting him (and maybe her too, she threw that in sometimes like a man throws a dog a bone) to get a steady regular job (doing what, picking cotton, heaving dockside barrels, fetching for Mister somewhere, he asked, he who never even finished sixth grade), and most of all wanting to have his child (and he figuring that child meant a house, a bringing up house, and fixing up house, and cleaning up house, and painting a house and maybe growing tulips or something to give some color). No, he was not interested. Thank you Miss Minnie, thank you a lot, but no thanks.

Part of it though was what happened that night, that night he hightailed it from old K.C. See, he had first met Minnie at Pistol Pete Johnson’s old barrelhouse down in the bottoms a couple of years before (niggertown, to the white folks, okay, or what did some white guy from New York call him one night, thinking he was being respectful, oh yah, nigra, yah nigratown), Pete’s being a big stop on the circuit, where she, K.C. born and bred, was busting forth with some wicked great blues stuff covering Bessie (Me and My Gin, Hustling Dan, Bed Bug Blues, really good stuff),some Ma Rainey, and some gal who just blew into town, Memphis Minnie (doing Minnie’s Girlish Days better than Memphis Minnie because she actually was more girlish). He was then playing with a couple of guys (different guys in different places depending on who was sober enough to make the next stop) who called themselves the Biloxi Sheiks (everybody was using that moniker in those days after the Mississippi Sheiks, made it big, made it big with a record contract so everybody wanted to be a sheik something, sheik of araby, maybe).

They were going nowhere and so, after some cooing and doving with Miss Minnie, he proposed that they work as a team, and they did. And for a couple of years, until Minnie got her wanting habits on, that list he thought about before , they made dough, big dough, big, ha, nigra dough. Then, after about twenty fights about settling down, Minnie just up and quit, left the circuit, and left him flat. He started drinking, drinking high- shelf whiskey and smoking reefer, sweet dream reefer to take the edge off as he went on the road solo. One night, drunk and stoned, in Clarksville down in the Mississippi Delta at Harpoon Harry’s juke joint a guy, a young punk, called him out, said he played like some old pappy grandpa and to move over and die. They stepped out back as was the custom to settle such blood words and he cut that young brother up, cut him up bad. And so, taking nothing except what he had on with him, he fled, fled for his life, fled north, north to Chi town, north and troubles.

As he thought about that time he also realized that part of it was that he wanted to be a drifter, wanted to be a rolling stone. He had had some good times, some bad times, had made some money on Maxwell Street, had lost some, had had some fine women, some fine high yella women, and some as dark as night, and then moved on. He had been his own man, and as that old train started heading its way west, he determined that he wasn’t going to K.C. after all, maybe to Detroit or New York, yah, New York where they would just call him nigra…

Send "K.cc. Moan" Ringtone to your Cell

Well, I thought I had heard that K C when she moan
Thought I heard that K C when she moan
Thought I heard that K C when she moan
Well, she sound like she got a heavy load

Yes and when I get back on the K C road
When I get back on the K C road
When I get back on the K C road
Gonna love my woman like I never loved before

(From: http://www.elyrics.net)
Well I thought I heard that K C whistle moan
Well I thought I heard that K C whistle moan
Well I thought I heard that K C whistle moan
Well she blow like my woman's on board

When I get back on that K C road
When I get back on that K C road
When I get back on that K C road
Gonna love my baby like I never loved before

Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM

Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. For A Stand-Out For Bradley- Wednesdays From 5:00-6:00 PM

***********

The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward a late - winter trial now scheduled for March 2013. The recent news on his case has centered on the many (since last April) pre-trial motions hearings including defense motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial (Private Manning’s pre-trial confinement is now at 900 plus days), dismissal as a matter of freedom of speech and minimal effect on alleged national security issues (issues for us to know what the hell the government is doing either in front of us, or behind our backs) and dismissal based on serious allegations of torturous behavior by the military authorities extending far up the chain of command while Private Manning was detained in Kuwait and at the Quantico Marine brig for about a year ending in April 2011. In December Private Manning himself, as well as others including senior military mental health workers, took the stand to detail those abuses.

Some more important recent news from the November 2012 pre-trail sessions is the offer by the defense to plead guilty to lesser charges (wrongful, unauthorized use of the Internet, etc.) in order to clear the deck and have the major (with a possibility of a life sentence) espionage /aiding the enemy issue solely before the court-martial judge (a single military judge, the one who has been hearing the pre-trial motions, not a lifer-stacked panel). Other news includes the increased media attention by mainstream outlets around the case, as well as an important statement by three Nobel Peace Laureates (including Bishop Tutu from South Africa) calling on their fellow laureate, United States President Barack Obama, to free Private Manning from his jails.

Since September 2011, in order to publicize Private Manning’ case, there have been weekly stand-outs (as well as other more ad hoc and sporadic events) in various locations in the Greater Boston area starting in Somerville across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop (renamed Pardon Bradley Manning Square for the stand-out’s duration) in Somerville on Friday afternoons and later on Wednesdays. Lately this stand-out has been held on each week on Wednesdays from 5:00 to 6:00 PM in order to continue to broaden our outreach at Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. (small park at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street just outside the Redline MBTA stop, also renamed Manning Square for the duration of the stand-out). Join us. President Obama Pardon Private Manning Now!

Dear Everyone,

On December 17, Starbucks Coffee abruptly informed "shift supervisors," also known as shifts, in MA that they would no longer receive any income from customers' tips as of January 7. Shift supervisors have extra responsibilities, but start at just $11/hr. The loss of tips represents a cut of up to 10-20% of their income! Shifts comprise roughly one third of Starbucks' MA workforce. The company has said it will not provide any immediate raise to make up for the effective salary cut, and that any future increase shifts may receive won't be retroactive. For years, Starbucks has essentially arranged for customers to subsidize shifts' low pay with tips, but the MA courts have ruled this illegal.

Shifts are demanding that their huge, profitable employer ensures no Starbucks worker loses income from the court ruling on tips. They want a $4/hour raise, and transparency from the company, which has been maddeningly opaque in its dealings with employees, refusing to say anything about any possible raise until a petition by shifts called attention to their plight.

The IWW stands in full support of all workers, including shift supervisors at Starbucks. We will hold an action to raise public awareness about this important labor issue this Friday, December 18, starting at 12 noon, at the flagship Starbucks store, 1380 Mass. Ave. Cambridge, right next to the Harvard Sq Red Line T stop. Please join us! A map is here.

In Solidarity,

Geoff for the Industrial Workers of the World
http://www.iww.org/

Sun Jan 13, 2013 2:41 pm (PST) . Posted by:

"Susan Serpa" sue4thebillofrights

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: wytheholt@cox.net>
Date: Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 3:34 PM
Subject: [Bush_Be_Gone] SF federal judge rejects government's secret no-fly
evidence
To:

**

Secret no-fly evidence rejected by judge
Bob Egelko
Wednesday, January 9, 2013

A federal judge in San Francisco has indignantly rejected an attempt by the
Obama administration to use secret evidence to derail a former Stanford
student's challenge to her apparent inclusion on the government's no-fly
list.

The government must halt its "persistent and stubborn refusal" to follow
the applicable laws, said U.S. District Judge William Alsup.

Rahinah Ibrahim's name on the confidential no-fly list has barred her and
one of her four children from returning to the United States for nearly
eight years. She was a Stanford graduate student in January 2005 when she
was first stopped at San Francisco International Airport and prevented from
boarding a flight to her native Malaysia.

She was arrested and jailed briefly by San Francisco police but was allowed
to take the flight the next day, with her 14-year-old daughter. When
Ibrahim tried to return two months later, however, she was again stopped
and told she was subject to arrest. The U.S. Consulate later said her
student visa had been revoked under a terrorism law.

Ibrahim, now 47, eventually earned her Stanford doctorate from abroad and
is a university professor in Malaysia. She settled claims against police
and others involved in her arrest for $225,000 in 2009, but is still
challenging her inclusion on the no-fly list.

'Hard to swallow'
In the latest development, President Obama's Justice Department privately
contacted Alsup last fall and said an agent would arrive shortly carrying
evidence for dismissal of the suit. According to the judge's description of
the phone call, the agent would then retrieve the evidence and take it back
to headquarters while Alsup wrote his ruling -- all without notice to
Ibrahim's lawyers.

Alsup, who had dismissed the suit twice before and had been overruled both
times by a federal appeals court, said the government's actions this time
were "too hard to swallow."

Legal precedents "favor maintenance of our traditional system of fair play
in which both sides have notice of the arguments and evidence being used
against them," Alsup said in a ruling dated Dec. 20.

He also criticized the Justice Department for arguing that Ibrahim's
lawyers couldn't be "trusted to handle sensitive information," noting that
federal agencies had cleared the lawyers to review confidential material in
the case years ago.

Alsup said he had refused to look at the department's secret evidence. "It
is time to resolve this case on the merits," he concluded. Ibrahim's lead
attorney, James McManis, said the judge has scheduled the trial for
December of this year.

The Justice Department's approach to Alsup "smacks of secret government and
star-chamber proceedings," McManis said.

Thousands on list
The Department of Homeland Security maintains lists of hundreds of
thousands of passengers who allegedly pose a risk of terrorism or air
piracy, information it shares with airlines. Those on the no-fly list are
barred from boarding. Those on a larger "selectee"; list can fly but are
subject to additional searches.

Government audits since the lists were established a decade ago have
acknowledged thousands of errors. After receiving complaints of mistaken
listings, however, Homeland Security officials respond with letters that
refuse to disclose a complainant's status and merely declare that any
errors have now been corrected, said an American Civil Liberties Union
lawyer who has sued the department.

"It doesn't make anyone safer for innocent people not to be allowed to
fly," attorney Nusrat Choudhury said Tuesday. She said the ACLU suit,
pending before a federal judge in Oregon, was filed on behalf of 15
Americans who suddenly found themselves barred from flying in 2009 or 2010
and in some cases have been stranded overseas.

In response to Alsup's ruling, the Justice Department filed papers Jan. 3
that again sought to dismiss Ibrahim's suit while declining to say whether
she was on the no-fly list or to discuss criteria for placing or removing
names from the list.

"Disclosing this information would reveal or tend to reveal information
that is classified," government lawyers wrote.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail:
begelko@sfchronicle.com

Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Secret-no-fly-evidence-rejected-by-judge-4180923.php#ixzz2HtDYhBoY

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