***The Intellectuals Or The Jocks?

For Fredda Cohen, North Adamsville High, Class Of 1964

 

 

From The Pen Of Phil Larkin

Click on the headline to link to a letter written by the late American writer, Norman Mailer, and printed in The New York Review Of Books, detailing his choices for "must reads" in the American literary canon. What would your ten choices be? See below.

Phil Larkin guest comment:

I did not then, nor do I now, know Fredda Cohen, a fellow classmate at North Adamsville High, Class of 1964. I don’t remember if old track buddy Markin, Peter Paul Markin, who prompted me to write some teary-eyed thing for him knew her or not, but it was with her in mind that I wrote the following. I, today, strongly believe that I could have learned a lot from her and maybe Markin believes that  too but you will have to ask him that yourself. No way, no way on god’s good green earth in the year 2013 and while I am still breathing, old time “jock” buddies or not, am I going to vouch for that maniac. Here goes:

Every September, like clockwork, I am transported to a place called the beginning of the year. No, not New Year’s Day like any real person would expect, but the school year for most students, younger or older. That is a frame of reference that I have not changed in all these years. And every year, or many years anyway, my thoughts come back to the road not taken, or really not taken then, when I ask myself the following question that I am posing in such a way here so that you can ask it to yourself as well: What group(s) did you hang around with in high school?

This question is meant to be generic and more expansive that the two categories listed in the headline. These were hardly the only social groupings that existed at our high school (or any public high school, then or now, for that matter) but the ones that I am interested in personally for the purpose of this thing. Corner boy devotees and wanna-be gangster hoods, social butterflies, teases (actually that is covered that under social butterflies, girl social butterflies), school administration “brown noses,” science nuts, auto mechanics grease monkeys, Bolsheviks, hippies, beats, hip-hop nation devotees, could-care-if-school-kept-or-not-ers, school skippers, drop-outs, and religious nuts can speak your own piece for your “community.”

You, fellow alumni from Anyway U.S.A. High, can also feel free to present your own extra categories in case I missed anything above like S&M or B&D devotees or stamp club members or both intertwined, if your you were aware of such types. However, for this writer, and perhaps some of you, here were my choices. The intellectuals, formerly known as the "smart kids.” You know, the ones that your mother was always, usually unfavorably, comparing you to come report card time in order to embarrass you or get you to buckle down in the great getting out from under the graying nowhere working class night and make something of yourself that she (and dad) could be proud of. Yes, those kids at the library after school, and even on Saturday, Saturdays if you can believe that, and endlessly trudging, trudging like some Promethean wanderers about forty- six pounds of books, books large and small, books in all colors, mainly, and here is the kicker, well-thumbed, very well-thumbed. Or, on the other hand the jocks, the guys and in those days it was almost exclusively guys (girls came in as cheer-leaders or, well, girlfriends-sometimes the same thing). You know, mainly, the Goliaths of the gridiron, their hangers-on, wannabes and "slaves." The guys who were not carrying any forty-six pounds of books, although maybe were wearing that much poundage in sports gear. And any books that needed carrying was done by either girlfriends or the previously mentioned slaves. Other sports may have had some shine but the “big men” on campus were the fall classic guys. Some sports such as the old buddies, Markin and Larkin’s, track and field events didn’t usually rate even honorable mention compared to say a senior bake sale or high school confidential school dance.

Frankly, although I was drawn to both groupings in high school I was mainly a "loner" for reasons that are beyond what I want to discuss here except it very definitely had to do with confusion about the way to get out from under that graying working class nowhere night. And about “fitting” in somewhere in the school social order that had little room for guys (or girls for that matter) who didn’t fit into some classifiable niche. And for guys, 1960s shorts-wearing track guys, running the streets of old North Adamsville to the honks of automobiles trying to scare us off the road (no share the road with a runner then) and jeers, the awful jeers of girls, that space was very small. The most one could hope for was a “nod” from the football guys (or basketball in winter) in recognition that you were a fellow athlete, of sorts. Yah, times were tough but we survived.

But now I can come out of the closet, at last. I read books. Yes, I read them, no devoured them endlessly (and still do), and as frequently as I could (can). Did you see me though carrying tons of books over my shoulder in public? Be serious, please. Here is the long held secret (even from Markin). I used to go over to the library on the other side of town, the Adamsville side where no one, no one who counted anyway (meaning no jock, of course), would know me. One summer I did that almost every day. So there you have it. Well, not quite.

In recent perusals of my class yearbook I have been drawn continually to the page where the description of the Great Books Club is presented. I believe that I was hardly aware of this club at the time but, apparently, it met after school and discussed Plato, John Stuart Mill, Max Weber, Karl Marx and others. Fredda Cohen ran that operation. Hell, that club sounded like great fun. One of the defining characteristics of my life has been, not always to my benefit, an overweening attachment to books and ideas. So what was the problem? What didn't I hang with that group?

Well, uh..., you know, they were, uh, nerds, dweebs, squares, not cool (although we did not use those exact terms in those days). That, at least, was the public reason, but here are some other more valid possibilities. Coming from my 'shanty' background, where the corner boys had a certain cachet, I was somewhat afraid of mixing with the "smart kids." The corner boys counted, after school anyway, and if they didn’t count then it was better to keep a wide, down low berth from anything that looked like a book reader in their eyes. I, moreover, feared that I wouldn't measure up, that the intellectuals seemed more virtuous somehow. I might also add that a little religiously-driven plebeian Irish Catholic anti-intellectualism (you know, be 'street' smart but not too 'book' smart in order to get ahead in one version of that graying working class nowhere night) might have entered into the mix as well.

But, damn, I sure could have used the discussions and fighting for ideas that such groups like that book club would have provided. I had to do it the hard way later. As for the jocks one should notice, by the way, that in the last few paragraphs that I have not mentioned a thing about their virtues. And, in the scheme of things, that is about right. So now you know my choice, except to steal a phrase from something that madman Markin wrote honoring his senior English teacher, Ms. Lenora Sonos- "Literature matters. Words matter." (I wish now that I had had her as well). I would only add here that ideas matter, as well. Hats Off to the North Adamsville Class of 1964 intellectuals!

*****

Norman Mailer

Ten Favorite American Novels

U.S.A. John Dos Passos

Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

Studs Lonigan James T. Farrell

Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe

The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald-1st  P.L.

The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway

Appointment in Samarra John O'Hara

The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain

Moby-Dick Herman Melville

This would be my list, as well, except instead of Moby Dick I would put Jack Kerouac's On The Road

 

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Report from Socialist Alternative’s First Ever National Summer Camp Printer-Friendly E-Mail This Jun 3, 2013 By Chris Gray, Minneapolis This Memorial Day weekend, Socialist Alternative hosted its first National Summer Camp in Minnesota's St. Croix State Park. The camp drew nearly one hundred members from over a dozen branches around the United States and was the largest gathering in the organization’s history. Many came from SA’s newest branches: Mobile, Alabama; Tampa Bay, Florida; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was an inspiring example of the growing energy and openness to socialist ideas and proof of the opportunities to build Socialist Alternative and expand the Marxist movement in the United States. The first discussion centered on international politics. Bart Vandersteen spoke for the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), representing socialist organizations in 34 countries and on every continent. Bart reported on the devastating austerity measures being carried out in Southern Europe and the powerful mass movements that have erupted in response. These struggles have shaken the ruling class but have not yet posed a clear alternative to the destructive policies of the European Union and capitalism itself. “If successful revolutions were the result of sheer energy and effort, the Greek working class would have overthrown capitalism a half-dozen times already,” said Bryan Koulouris of the Boston branch. Greece has been rocked by more than twenty general strikes in this period, and the Greek population is thoroughly disillusioned with the pro-austerity ruling class parties, PASOK and New Democracy. SYRIZA, a broad left-wing party has challenged the capitalist narrative of austerity, scoring historic electoral results. Members spoke of the instability of new left-wing parties like SYRIZA, which could rise and fall quickly in the political turmoil. SYRIZA has failed to articulate an alternative to the crisis facing Greece, and its future is uncertain. In such a political vacuum, the neo-fascist party Golden Dawn is also gaining ground on a platform of nationalism, xenophobia, and racism. The ongoing crisis is spreading to other countries in Europe, where austerity and recession have had a profound effect on both living standards and consciousness. Italy and Spain are quickly falling prey to record rates of unemployment, especially among youth, who distrust mainstream political parties and classic trade unions, which have been discredited by the crisis. In Spain, many young people are simply leaving the country in hopes of better opportunities elsewhere. In Portugal, workers and youth are taking the streets, singing revolutionary songs and relearning their country’s revolutionary history. In Cyprus, a tiny economy’s banking collapse sparked a regional crisis. In the midst of the global economic crisis - capitalism’s ongoing failure to meet the needs of ordinary people - is the looming threat of environmental catastrophe. Jess Spear from Seattle spoke about the dramatic effects of global warming and environmental degradation, the result of capitalist production being based on fossil fuels. Some geologists have now declared that the world has entered a new geological era, the “Anthropocene,” meaning that human beings are now the driving force behind environmental change. Many social orders have fallen because of environmental mismanagement, and profit-driven capitalism seems unable to avoid catastrophe. In order for human society to advance, economic production must be planned in an environmentally sustainable way, meeting both the material needs of humanity and the needs of the environment. During a rally, different branches spoke of their work and campaigns. Grace McGee from Mobile, Alabama, and Christian Brooks from St. Petersburg, Florida, talked about the rapid development of branches and the opportunities for the socialist movement in the South. Eljeer Hawkins from Harlem, New York, described the work of the New York branch and new initiatives to build among people of color. Ginger Jentzen of Minneapolis, Minnesota, spoke of Occupy Homes MN and its newest project, the Eviction Free Zone. Marty Harrison of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, described the branch’s leap from two members to eight in less than a year and the decisive role of socialists in rebuilding a fighting labor movement. One entire afternoon was devoted to defining and discussing the role of an organization like Socialist Alternative. Many on the left argue that forming groups of conscious revolutionaries who debate strategy, analyze events, and coordinate action together is a dated formula from a bygone era that has no use in today’s world. The discussion drew out how the current political situation actually highlights the importance of building distinctly Marxist organizations alongside working to build broader mass movements. Finally, we grappled with the transitional program, a method used by Trotsky and the Fourth International to build a bridge between contemporary struggles and the need for socialist revolution. Lifelong members of Socialist Alternative sat alongside people who joined the day before, discussing how socialists use a transitional approach to social movements, electoral politics, trade unions, and revolutionary situations. The weekend also hosted nearly 20 workshops on issues ranging from immigration and Marxist feminism to German history and anarchism. There was also a People of Color Caucus meeting and a financial appeal for our South African cothinkers, as well as numerous sing-a-longs and sporting events. All in all, Socialist Alternative’s National Summer Camp will mark a turning point in the organization.

Free Lynne Stewart Now!

(please forward widely) WED-THUR-FRI: ALL OUT EFFORT: MAKE CALLS TO SAVE LYNNE STEWART'S LIFE Please take time Wed-Thurs-Fri, June 12-14 to make calls for Lynne. An all-out effort is needed NOW! Your calls are having an impact. AND IF YOU CAN, JOIN RALPH POYNTER AT NOON ON MONDAY JUNE 17 IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE. Add your voice urging immediate Compassionate Release for imprisoned human rights attorney Lynne Stewart who is suffering with Stage 4 cancer in her lungs, chest and lymph nodes. Lynne needs immediate specialized medical care. CALL: Attorney General Eric Holder - 1 202 514 2001 White House President Obama – 1 202 456 1414 Federal Bureau of Prisons – Director Charles Samuels – 1 202 307 3250 Please click here to sign or re-sign the petition for compassionate release for Lynne Stewart. Keep the pressure on! LYNNE'S PARTNER RALPH POYNTER SAYS: Greetings to all and many many thanks for this show support... If Lynne's not home Friday or Saturday,.....I plan to make a stand in Washington D.C. starting Monday...in front of the white house... Hope those who can will join me.. Ralph Poynter We urges everyone who can to join Ralph in front of the white house at noon on Monday with signs and banners CALL: Attorney General Eric Holder - 1 202 514 2001 White House President Obama – 1 202 456 1414 Federal Bureau of Prisons – Director Charles Samuels – 1 202 307 3250 Please click here to sign or re-sign the petition for compassionate release for Lynne Stewart. Keep the pressure on! For more information and latest updates, go to LynneStewart.org Dr. Aafia Assaulted in Prison to Point of Unconsciousness

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night -The Girl With The Brown-Hazed Eyes

From The Pen Of  Frank Jackman   

He desired her from the first minute that he saw her that sunny summer night  on the Cambridge Common in that strange odd-ball year of 1967, the year of his high school graduation summer, the summer of a topsy-turvy world gone mad, gone mad with hubris, fights  breaking out over everything, and nothing. The summer of love in some quarters, all flowers and angel halos, a little of the flow over on Boston Common but mainly in Frisco and points west. But his mind was not focused on such exotic flowery dream-infested things that day, at least not before he met her to hang his desire on and maybe form some cosmic charge with that sweet summer after all.

Back to reality though, the hard reality, the fighting words hard reality of 1967. He had been mulling over this or that thing while walking around the paths of the park nodding, as if in some unspoken solidarity, to the various mainly American Revolutionary War  and Civil War dignitaries holding memorial forth  in that historic space. Strangely his mulling seemed in deep contrast to the heroic  mold of the statues before him since he was trying to order his small wedge-shaped universe to see what it would look like, would look like now that he was coming of draft age. Draft age and  not going to college just yet, and maybe never, since his family had no dough and hadn’t had any for a long time, as least for frills like college, having eked out a working poor existence in one of the low rent North Cambridge tenements and, truth too, his marks in school had not scholarship worthy. So he had to decide whether to enlist in the Army and make the best of it while that bloody war in Vietnam was blazing and blasting everything in sight, turning that whole country to cinders from the look of the nightly news, and the body bags coming back, including a few from the neighborhood, having been all chewed up in some rotten jungle. Maybe if he enlisted he would finally draw a break, maybe he would wind up as a clerk in some German outpost, some NATO frontline waiting out the Russkies with hands on triggers but with no bloody treks through some exploding countryside and death right there at every step.  Hell, he thought maybe he would just wait it out and allow himself to be drafted (quaint way to put cannon fodder) when his number came up. Or maybe just chuck it all and drift to Canada and exile. That last option was against all ingrained family, neighborhood and working -class ethos probabilities but the times were desperate.

But enough of his military options, or lack of options, because this sketch is not about his military problems but about his big eyes, no, that is not exactly right, his big eyes for her big eyes. Yes, that’s better, closer to the nub.  He just flat-out desired her the girl that he would dub –before he met her up close, “the girl with brown hazed-eyes” for even at a distance of one hundred feet or so he could see that she was a rare find- and trouble, trouble with a big T. He didn’t mind a little trouble since the aforementioned military things on his mind was real trouble and so he would play, or try to play this scene out.

It wasn’t that she was beautiful, not in the Norte Americana beautiful all blonde and thin-boned waspy ice cold beautiful that caused him some restless lonely nights with a forsaken sweaty pillow trying to figure some angle to defrost that vision. Nor beautiful either in the boyhood neighborhood red-headed or brunette Irish Catholic frail (girl, okay, frail used in the corner boy hanging night in the neighborhood practically since there was a neighborhood because he had first heard it used by his grandfather who was an original denizen) and loaded up with that frail-hood about a million years’ worth of novenas and rosary beads to etch the fine Irish features into hard desire. No this was something different, something new, something new in the trouble line. Clearly she was from the south, south of the border, probably Mex (which is what she turned out to be), maybe with a mix of a thousand years (he wasn’t exactly sure of that number but it sounded about right) of Spanish conquistador rapes mixed in with ten thousand years of Indian thumps. All brown as a berry (not beachfront hotel tan brown like those Nordic ice queens of his dreams all tanned up at some walking daddy’s expense, father or “uncle” in Saint Tropez or the Bahamas and not red brown tanned like those fair-skinned Irish girls soaking up sun on plebeian beaches filled up with nearby from hunger amusement parks).

Brown down to her nipples is what he thought, Black and long straight hair (straight to envious Nordic girls desperately trying to iron their locks to be fit in hair company fashion around Harvard Square) worn with a becoming single red rose aslant her head. Wearing jeans, tight, and the most colorful blouse, a peasant blouse some girl had told him when he had asked about such things of an old flame the first time he saw one blazing up the Square night, colorful in the way things were colorful in those crazy years, purples, maizes, magentas, off-oranges things like and topped off with big ruby red lips that only highlighted that dark skin. Well those lips did not exactly top thing off because what did were those sparkling laughing black eyes of her. Eyes that would when lit like he observed at that first glance would send many a man before some gallant firing- squad with not a murmur for just one kind look. And hence the focus of his desire.           

So he determined to go up to her, to find out about her, to look for trouble if he could find it was the way he thought about it. As he approached her she gave him a huge smile and so he thought things were looking good. Then straightforward she asked him what he needed, what he wanted, what he desired with those dancing eyes of hers. Eyes that up close he realized were dancing not only because that was their natural state but because she was high, high on something, some drug of choice in that good night. He was sure it wasn’t marijuana (grass, herb, tea, or whatever it is called in your neighborhood) because that tended to had a dulling effect on the eyes (that stoned effect everybody called it) that he knew from his own experience. And it was not some LSD or mescaline because she was far too together for that so maybe coke, morphine, or something else not really widely used in the Norte Americano night, something exotic from down south. He decided not to foul things up by caddishly saying he desired her so he asked what she had in mind.      

And then she, Rosalita when he asked her name although that could have just been a street moniker to avoid hassles since she looked very much like a Rosalita to gringo eyes, laid her trip on him. Seems that she was involved in some student exchange program between her school, her college or some kind of school,  down in Sonora, Sonora, Mexico and Harvard University and while she was here she figured that she would do some “business” for her brother. That business was selling various drugs of choice to the gringos starving for good weed, good sister, and a little morphine for those with more exotic tastes. So what did he want? Hell, he said to himself, she was just a little drug dealer, just like about half the kids in Cambridge these days, and probably more than a few others on the Commons (most of the others there, the ones with the short hair and colorful dress were just gut-busting cops trying to make some easy collars), and so her big smile and those now somewhat dimmer eyes were just good business practices.

He asked her what she was using, and she slyly said a little of this and a little of that. Then he noticed some track marks, made darker by the brownness of her skin, marks that could only mean one thing-heroin, horse, H, boy, bad stuff, bad stuff he remembered from seeing a movie about drug addiction in school, about the hell of cold turkey, about what the ghost of H does to you, stuff that was plentiful down south, but was fringe man with a golden arm Nelson Algren stuff up here. Up Norte. Stuff used by white hipsters hanging around the Square trying to “walk with the king,” they said. They kept on the low but he would see them on his two in the morning jaunts into the Hayes-Bickford constantly rubbing their noses. Or used by low-lifes in downtown Boston, mainly hookers and their cheapjack walking daddies trying to get kicks on Route 66 they said. He asked her about it, about why she was using the stuff but she was non-committal jut saying “different strokes for different folks.” And as she asked him again what he wanted he noticed that those eyes of her were getting muddier, getting more subdued, and he sensed although he did not know this for sure that she would need another fix shortly. He waved her off with a “later” and she went in the other direction to hawk her wares.           

As he walked to Harvard Station grab the bus to head home he thought about those brown-hazed- out eyes, thought about those tracks, and thought that  what she told him about being an exchange student was just so much fluff, was just talk. What he figured to himself was that she was strung out enough to need dough badly for her habit, for her kicks, but not strung out enough to lower herself to doing back alley street tricks like those hookers downtown yet. Then he remembered that thing she said “that different stokes for different folk” thing when she also said that  “hey, the world is tough to deal with, tough for a Mexicana chick to deal with, and so I need a little something to keep the world from breaking my will, something I am in charge of. ” When he smirked a slight smirk of some deep-seeded  disapproval at her (mainly because he felt that he would have seven levels of hell to pay for hanging with a junkie) she said this- “ I can’t go into your world hermano, I have got to be real, and being real takes a lot out of you, okay amigo.”

Yes, he thought the world really does take a big piece out of you, and maybe she was right to shut out the blues anyway she could, find any port she could find to put a break on her sorrows. Then he thought, thought almost out loud as his bus headed into the station that he desired her, desired those brown hazed –out eyes, and he would like some demon junkie seek her out again tomorrow, seek her out in the golden blaze night and take his chances…     

Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- "America, Where Are You Now...."-Stepphenwolf's "Monster" –For The Fighters Of The International Working Class

 

 

Markin comment on the lyrics here:

Steppenwolf was one of the most political of the rock groups brought forth by the new musical sensibility of the counter-cultural movement in the mid to late 1960s. The narrative here in Monster reads like a capsule history of the American experience up until the 1960s. And a powerful call, a call that should resonate today, for the older generation (now us) to come and help the young fight against the monster of American imperialistic capitalism that is driving us all to the bottom. A theme song for all the movements springing up around this wicked old world.     

 

************

Monster/Suicide/America Lyrics

Steppenwolf

Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom

(Monster)
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches

But from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

Then once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog

And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey

(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem "friendly" and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they were paying no mind
'Cause the people "got" fat and "grew" lazy
now their vote "is like a" meaningless "Tune"
"You know they talk about law "about" order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'

Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching

(America)
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster

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