***The Moment–For Laura, Class Of 1968 Somewhere  

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

 

A while back, a couple of years ago, my old friend, Peter Paul Markin, my old merry prankster yellow brick road “on the bus” 1960s summer of love, 1967 version, friend came over to Cambridge to visit me. While we had met on Russian Hill in faraway San Francisco and had spent plenty of time on that blessed coast getting to know each other (and learning to stay clear of each other’s love interests of those moments) we were both New England boys, he from North Adamsville on the other side of Boston and me from up in Olde Saco in Maine. We additionally were    both rough and tumble working-class guys and so had drifted after what seemed a lifetime of roller-coaster rides back to eastern shores.

We had in earlier times lost touch for a while, although we never really lost contact for any extended period, but since we now had the time and the inclination to “cut up torches” we have met often lately to speak about the old times. At the last meeting Markin told me (I never called him, and I do not believe anybody else did either except his mother and maybe his first wife, anything but Markin foregoing the pleasure of paying deference to that three-name Mayfair swell moniker he tried to hang on a candid world back in the days) that he had recently gone up to my old home town to take “the waters.” He had been going up to Maine periodically when he was on the East Coast since I had introduced him to Perkin’s Cove down near York in the summer of 1969  (where he met that first wife) so that was no surprise to me . 

Of course any reference to Olde Saco automatically brought back memories for me of Olde Saco Beach, and of Jimmy Jakes’ Diner where my old- time corner boys and me hung out looking, well what else do corner boys do, looking for girls. Especially girls who had a little loose change in their pocketbooks to play Jimmy Jakes’ be all to end all jukebox with all the latest platter from Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, and Bo, Bo Diddley don’t you know. But that is not what I wanted to talk to Peter Paul about just then, although I said we might get back to that subject, the subject of what is now called, if you can believe this, classic rock and roll, some other time. What I wanted to discuss with Peter Paul, why I had asked him over, was how he had, happily, stayed with Laura, his soul mate, all these years. (Laura, decidedly not being that first wife met up in tourista York which is really not Maine but a suburb of Boston if you want my opinion.     

Now this was no abstract question to him on my part for I had just completed the final proceedings on my third divorce. (I won’t even list the number of other non-marital arrangements that I have been part of over the years. I only count the official ones, the ones that cost me dough.) So I was frankly jealous/perplexed that Peter Paul and Laura had survived through thick and thin. And here is what he had to say on the question to the best of my recollection:

 

“Josh, you know as well as I do that in the old days, the old California care-free days that we were nothing but skirt-chasers. Yah, we might have been “on the bus,” might have been hip, might have seen “the woman question” a little better than most guys what with the divvying out of equal work on the upkeep of the bus. Might have been down with Captain Crunch and the “new age” and all that stuff, But I don’t remember a time when a good-looking woman passed by, young or old (old then being maybe thirty, as we both laughed), that we didn’t do a double-take on. And wish we had been fast enough to come up with a line to enhance, enchant, or whatever it was we thought we had in those days. I don’t know about you but I still do those double-takes and I bet you, you old geezer, do too.  [Josh laughs] Jesus, remember Butterfly Swirl when you and I first met and how you “stole” her right from under my nose, Or that high time drug night when the Captain “married” the pair of you and gave you the electric kool-aid acid test as a wedding present. [After the Butterfly Swirl incident, fast New England boys friends or not, we both agreed to avoid future turf wars.] You just never got over the rolling stone thing. And before Laura I was strictly a rolling stone too.” 

“I have already told you a few times about how Laura and I met, met in high civilization Harvard Square, down in some lowdown cellar bar when I was in my vagrant lonesome cowboy minute and we connected from the start. From the Ms. Right start I called it. And about that first handshake that sealed, sealed maybe for eternity, that we were going to stick. Stick like glue. You know that part, that ancient history part, so unless you want me to repeat it I want to talk about sometime  more recent that will give you a better I idea of what I mean. You’ll like this one too because it involves that last trip up to Olde Saco”   

“As you damn well know ever since you brought me up there when we drifted back East after the bus broke up every once in a while I have to journey to the ocean, back to our homeland the sea. It’s part of my DNA, just like yours. It is in the blood and has been since childhood. Usually, over the last several years, I have headed farther up to Olde Saco for a couple of days at a time alone as a change of pace. When I announce that I am going Laura usually asks, “Is it a retreat or a vacation (probably meaning from her, and the cats)?” We usually laugh about it. This time I was going an extra day since we were not going to take a week’s vacation in Maine this summer.”

 

“You also know that Laura had just retired so I figured that she would appreciate the time to collect her thoughts (in between playing 24/7 duty playing house servant to the cats). A couple of days before I was set to go up she said she wanted to come up for a day. I don’t remember whether she said it sheepishly or not, this short-haul Maine thing being “my time” but I said, straight up, “come on up.”  And she did. No big deal; we walked Olde Saco Beach which she liked (new to her since we usually went to Wells together on Maine trips), went to have a seafood dinner and then had our traditional ocean ice cream.”

“That last stop, that ice cream parlor stop, was at Dubois’ on Route One. Was that there when you were a kid? [Josh: no]. Do you know what the place had? It had an old jukebox that played all the old tunes from the 1950s. So naturally we had to, or rather Laura had to, play a few memory lane tunes. I don’t remember them all, except some dreary Rickey Nelson thing, she insisted on playing to rekindle some school girl crush she had on the guy.”

“And that experience, or rather one moment in that experience, explains why we have stuck, stuck like glue, all these years. There we were sitting in some white plastic chairs eating our ice cream (frozen pudding, good frozen pudding for me, butter pecan for her) Laura, looking like a school girl, swaying gently back and forth to the music with a great big winsome smile on her face, a relaxed smile that said it all. I ask you what guy in his right mind would give up that smile, or the possibility of that smile, short of eternity.”               

***For International Women’s Day-Lucy On The Edge Of The World

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman  

People, ordinary vagrant night owls, hung-over refugees from the now closed bars and cabarets that dotted high Massachusetts Avenue and low Brattle Street, average vagabond wanderers of the Harvard Square night afraid to go home to face some wrath, the shiftless, the toothless homeless lacking that benighted nickel for subway fare or having made an erroneous judgment in favor of sweet sickly Thunderbird wine, came into the all-night Hayes-Bickford seeking, like him,  relieve from their collective woes with a cup of weak-kneed coffee and steamed, steamed everything. They, whatever their condition, whatever their motives, did not bother Lucy (the first name Lucy was all anybody ever found out about her as far as he knew, at least that was all he turned up upon later  inquiry) sitting alone at her “reserved” table in the back of the cafeteria toward the rest rooms. There she held forth in if not splendor then in quietude as she plied her nightly musings, and as he watched in awkward silence.   

Lucy Lilac, nicknamed that last part by some ancient want-to-be fellow bard perhaps and it stuck. At least she would brighten up and answer to that call when a midnight friend called it out (that moniker’s genesis like her real surname also undisclosed to him by the other regular tenants of the night when he asked around for more information about her). She spent her youthful middle of the nights just then hunched over a yellow legal notepad filling up its pages with her writings. (She was perhaps twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, had just finished college, he had heard through the grapevine, so that age seemed about right). Occasionally she would speak in a melodious sing-song voice some tidbit she had written out loud, not harmful out loud like some of the drunks at a few of the tables, or some homeless wailing banshee cry against a benighted world,  but just out loud.

Some of what she spoke of he thought was beautiful the words glued together in such a way that brought forth images of serious and thoughtful labors, and some was, well, doggerel, words strewn about in fashionable if haphazard free verse, about par  for the course with poets and other writers, But all of her work, whatever he heard of it, was centered on her plight in the world as a woman torn, as a woman on the edge, on the edge between two societies, on a see-saw between her membership in the generic human race and her ragamuffin fate as a woman reduced to second-class human citizenship in a white- bread male dominated world. She spoke of kinship to the fate of the black masses.

Caught between, as one professor put it whom he had asked about it later, two cultural gradients if that term has any meaning beyond the academy. And maybe she had been stuck that way like she said but let’s let him try to reconstruct what it was all about, all about for Lucy Lilac night owl. He had become so fascinated by where she was going with her muse in those 1962 summer nights, about how she was going to go about struggle to resolve that battle between “cultural gradients” and about the gist of what she had to say to a callow world in those days that he turned up many a “two in morning” to try to figure her dream out. He had more than a passing interest in this battle since he was also spooked by those same demons that she spoke of.    

[Oh, by the way, for the curious, Lucy Lilac, was drop-dead beautiful, with long black iron-pressed straight hair as was the style then, alabaster white skin whether from her odd hours of sleep or by genetic design was not clear, big red lips, which he did not know whether were in style then or not, the bluest eyes of blue, always wearing dangling earrings. Usually as well wearing some long dress so it was never really possible to determine her figure or her legs, important pieces of knowledge to him, and not just to him, in those sex-obsessed days, but he would have said slender and probably nice legs too. Since neither her beauty, nor the idea of sex, at least pick-up sex, enter into this sketch that is all that needs to be pointed out. Except this, her beauty, along with that no-nonsense demeanor, was so apparent that it held him, and others too, off from anything other than an occasional distant forlorn smile.]               

What Lucy Lilac would speak of, like a lot of the young in those days, was her alienation from parents, society, alienated from just everything to keep the list from getting out of hand, but not just that. On that she had kindred spirits in abundance. She was also alienated from her race like lot of the young, him included, were in those days as well. Alienated from her nine-to-five-go-by-the-rules-we-are-in-charge-trample on the rest of the world, especially the known black world white race. Part of it was that you could not turn open a newspaper or turn on a radio or television without having the ugly stuff going down south in America (and sometimes stuff in the north too) confronting you headlong. But part of it was an affinity with black culture, mainly through music, through be-bop jazz, electrified blues and flat-out rock and roll blastings  and a certain style, a certain swagger in the face of a world filled with hostility. “Cool,” to use just one word. 

Now this race thing, this white race thing of Lucy’s had nothing to do, he did not think, at least when she spoke that thought never came through, with some kind of guilt by association with the rednecks and crackers down in places like Alabama and Mississippi goddams. It was more that given the deal going down in the world, the injustices, the not having had any say in what was going on, or of having been asked about it either made her feel like she was some Negro in some down trodden shack some place. Some mad priestess fellaheena scratching the good earth to make her mark.

As Lucy expanded her ideas each night (and began to get a little be-bop- edged  flow into her voice as she spoke, a flow that he secretly kept time to), he got a better sense of what she was trying to say. (He later learned though one of her poems, that she had been, as he had, very influenced by Norman Mailer’s 1950s essay in The Partisan Review The White Negro, a screed on what Mailer called the white hipster, those who had parted company with their own culture and moved toward  the sexier, sassy black cultural gradient.) And while Lucy and he were both comfortably ensconced in the cozy Cambridge  Hayes-Bickford  (well maybe not cozy but safe anyway) and had some very white skin to not have to Mister James Crow worry about he began to see what she meant.

And Lucy Lilac really hit home when she spoke of how she had been, to his surprise since she gave every indication of being some cast-off Mayfair swell’s progeny, brought up under some tough circumstances down in New Jersey. She spoke about being from poor, very poor white folks somewhere around Toms River, her father out of work a lot worrying about the next paycheck and keeping him and his under some roof, her mother harried by taking care of five kids on two kids’ money, about being ostracized by the other better off kids, about seeking solace in listening to Bessie Smith, Billie, Muddy Howlin’ Wolf and a ton of other blues names that he recognized. And he too recognized a fellahin kindred since his own North Adamsville existence seemed so similar.

Yes, those nights he knit a secret and unknown bond with Lucy Lilac. Lucy who a few months later vanished into thin air from the Hayes-Bickford night. Lucy from the edge of the world, and wherever she wound up he knew just what she meant by the white Negro hipster-dom she was seeking, and that maybe he was too…

And hence this International Women’s Day contribution.                   

Medea Benjamin Detained, Brutally Attacked & Deported In Egypt

Resist! CODE PINK, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Police abuse
By Staff, www.codepink.org
March 4th, 2014

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Updates from @CODEPINK Medea Benjamin “sustains a fracture & torn ligament in shoulder from Egyptian authorities; in Istanbul now after violent deportation”; and “headed to hospital to receive treatment for shoulder. Flying to US tonight.”  And, “Thank you for messages of solidarity w @medeabenjamin, plz keep in mind point of trip, to visit #Gaza: read more, http://gazasolidarity.com“

CODEPINK Co-founder Medea Benjamin Detained, Brutally Attacked and Deported from Egypt en route to Gaza with International Delegation of Women

On the night of March 3, 2014, co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK Medea Benjamin was on her way to Egypt to join an international delegation of women going to Gaza when she was detained by border police in the Cairo airport, held overnight in a cell, and then brutally tackled (her arm badly injured), handcuffed, and deported to Turkey. During her time in the detention cell she had access to a cell phone, from which she contacted colleagues at CODEPINK about the poor conditions of the cell and chronicled her ordeal via Twitter. When the Egyptian police removed her from the detention center, they used such excessive force she sustained a fracture and torn ligament in her shoulder.

Calling from Istanbul, Benjamin gave the following statement: “I was brutally assaulted by Egyptian police, who never said what I was being accused of. When the authorities came into the cell to deport me, two men threw me to the ground, stomped on my back, pulled my shoulder out of its socket and handcuffed me so that my injured arm was twisted around and my wrists began to bleed. I was then forced to sit between the two men who attacked me on the plane ride from Cairo to Istanbul, and I was (and still am) in terrible pain the whole time.” Doctors in the Cairo airport said she was not fit to travel because of her injury, but the authorities forced her to board anyways.

She is currently in Istanbul, Turkey, receiving medical attention at a hospital before she returns to the US. It is still unclear why the Egyptians deported her. Medea’s colleagues at CODEPINK are appalled by the unnecessary use of force by Egyptian authorities.

In response to a call from the women of Gaza, Benjamin was traveling through Egypt to be a part of the CODEPINK contingent of an international coalition of 100 women traveling to Gaza to witness the hardships facing the 1.7 million residents, deliver humanitarian aid, and call attention to the need for a longer-term strategy to achieve peace and justice for Palestinians.

Related Posts:

• AIPAC Protest: For Palestinian Rights, No War On Iran March 1, 2014
• More Immigration Activists Deported November 14, 2013
• Anti-Drone Movement Speaks: ‘End the Secrecy, No to Kill… November 17, 2013
• Video: Professor Turley: “Obama Is At War With The Rule Of Law!” December 11, 2013
• Anti-Drone Summit Kicks Off In DC With Protest November 16, 2013

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Boston March 16th Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade

    Fundraising Appeal

 

Hi Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Supporters

 

The 4^th Annual Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, the alternative people’s parade for Peace, Equality, Environmental Stewardship, Jobs, Social and Economic Justice is just around the corner. In a few days we will gather once again in South Boston for the only “Peace Parade” in the country. Our parade has been growing every year. We have wonderful bands, floats, vehicles, drummers and a couple thousand participants.

 

We do not charge anyone to be in our parade

We do not have big corporate sponsors giving us money for our parade

We don’t sell advertisements

We don’t have rich benefactors or underwriters

We do not have a trust fund supporting our parade

 

One thing we do have is YOU.

 

We also have a lot of expenses and would like to ask our friends to help us with a small donation. Our parade is not a high budget item but it still costs us several thousands of dollars.

 

We would like to ask our friends to help support us with parade expenses.

 

If you are able to contribute, please take a moment and consider writing us a check, to help defray some of our expenses.

 

Checks can be made out to:  Veterans For Peace

Mail you check to:

Veterans For Peace

P.O. Box 1604

Andover, MA 01810

 

On behalf of the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Organizing Committee,

THANK YOU

Erin Go Bragh

 

Pat Scanlon (VN 69’)

Coordinator, Veterans For Peace, Smedley D. Butler Brigade

 

Note change: Form Up At 1:00 PM For A 2:00 PM Step-Off

 

Off The Road With On The Road

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

 

We will always have fugitive memories (second-hand fugitive memories having been just a little too young to have been word-blasted at the time) emerging out the fog-horn Frisco town night in the late 1940s ready to take refugees, car-borne refugees out of Route One, Route 66, Route 20, hell, even up and down the Pacific Coast Highway, hell, maybe especially up and down that highway, coming in from the cold war red scare Denver/Chi Town/Jersey Shore/Village/Lowell/Hullsville American dreaded night. Later once the horde gathered in North Beach sweeps listening to some homoerotic scatological son of Abraham howling forth the new dispensation, the new beat, the new blessed, we would add that factor as well. And of course we unto the umpteenth generation of those who seek their own open roads will always have Jack Kerouac’s novel, On The Road. The Sal-Dean stream dream out in some desperate smoke-hazed night novel that sent one, maybe the next two generations, on the road, on the road to some mystical discovery thing, some search for language to explain our short existence, to make sense of things in the modern world that has no time for reflection on the big cosmic questions.

We will always have Kerouac’s finely wrought be-bop word plays jumping off the page out in the desolate 1950s a-chicken-in-every- pot-and-two-cars-if-not-three-cars-in-every-garage, in every suburban ranch house sub-division garage. Speaking out in the fellaheen world about lost adventures, about lost time, about lost remembrances but mostly about the desolate life for the dusty bedraggled fellahin without words. Cool be-bop words reflecting the total mass anxieties of a long-gone daddy world.

 

We too will always have Sal (a.k.a Jeanbon Kerouac) and Dean, Dean Moriarty (a.k.a. Neal Cassady), the father we did not know, could not know, while we were vicariously sitting on those Jersey shores, sweating out in those Ames cornfields, hell, even sitting on the seawall down in those old Hullsville beach fronts looking for the great blue-pink great American West night.

We will always have Charlie, Sonny, Slim, Big Red, the Duke, blowing out, trying to reach and sometimes making it, that high white note, after hours, after the paying customers, the carriage trade, went home to bed and they blew to heaven, or tried to, with the boys, with the guys who knew when that note floated out of some funky cellar bar door winding its way down to the harbor, down to the turgid bay seeking passage to the Japan seas. With more blows at that dark hour before the dawn to get the hemp squared, to be right with that tangled mass of brethren who constituted the beat-down, beat around world.

We will always have Sal, Carlos, Bull, Dean and an ever changing assortment of , well, women, women, mainly, at their beck and call, riding, car-riding, riding hard over the hill and dale of this continent searching, well, just searching okay. We will always have the lost father and son (odd since they could have been brothers), Sal and Dean, playing off of each other’s strengths (and weaknesses) as they try to make sense of their world, or if not sense then to keep high, keep moving, and keep listening. And we will always have a great American novel to pass on to the next wanderlust generation, if there is another wanderlust generation.           

We will always have that novel, praise be.              

 

 

 

 

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In The Adventure Car Hop Night-Elvis –One Night Of Sin 

 

 “I hate Elvis, I love Elvis,” I can still hear fifty years later the echo of my old from nowhere down and out low-rent public assistance  “the projects” corner boy, William James Bradley, also known as Billie. Not Billy like some billy goat, like some damn animal, as he declaimed to all who would listen, mainly me toward the end when the better angel of his nature fled in horror at his fresh-worn path after the umpteenth failure to get what he thought was his due legally. Billie from the hills, born out in some mad night, born out of some untamed passion in New Hampshire to newly-wed parents just before the shot-gun, some father’s shot-gun, called out in the wilds of Nashua up in live free country New Hampshire. Billie Bradley a mad demon of a kid and my best friend down in the Adamsville South Elementary school located smack in the middle of that from-nowhere-down-and-out-low-rent-the-projects of ill-fated memory. We grew apart after a while, after those Billie hurts grew too huge to be contained this side of the law, and I will tell you why in a minute, but for a long time, a long kid time long, Billie, Billie of a hundred dreams, Billie of fifty (at least) screw-ups made me laugh and made my day when things were tough, like they almost always were at my beat down broke-down family house.

You know fifty some years later Billie was right. We hated Elvis, we young boys, we what do they call them now, oh yes, those tween boys, especially at that time when all the girls, the young girls got weak-kneed over him and he made the older girls (and women, some mothers even) sweat and left no room for ordinary mortal boys, “the projects boys” most of all, on their “dream” card. And most especially, hard as we tried, for brown-haired or tow-headed, blue-eyed ten, eleven and twelve year old boys who didn’t know how to dance. Dance like some Satan’s disciple as Elvis did in Jailhouse Rock every move calculated to make some furious female night sweats dreams. Or produce a a facsimile of that Elvis sneer that sneer that only got them, the girls, more excited as they dreamed about taking that sneer off his face and making him, well, happy. We both got pissed off at my brother, my older brother who already had half a stake in some desperate outlaw schemes and would later crumble under the weight of too many jail terms, because, he looked very much like Elvis and although he had no manners, and no time for girls, they were all following him around like he was the second coming. Christ there really is no justice in this wicked old world.

And we loved Elvis too for giving us, us young impressionable boys at least as far as we knew then, our own music, our own "jump' and our own jail-break from the tired old stuff we heard on the radio and television that did not ‘”speak” to us. The stuff that our parents dreamed by if they dreamed, or had dreamed by when their worlds were fresh and young. If they had had time for dreams what with trying to make ends meet and avoiding dunners and repo men by the score each and every day.  We loved him for the songs that he left behind. Not the goofy Tin Pan Alley or somewhere like that inspired “happy” music that went along with his mostly maligned, and rightly so, films but the stuff from the Sun Records days, the stuff from when he was “from hunger”. That music, as we also “from hunger,” was like a siren call to break-out and then we caught his act on television, maybe the Ed Sullivan Show or something like that, and that was that. I probably walk “funny,” knees and hips out of whack, today from trying way back then to pour a third-rate imitation of his moves into my body to impress the girls.

But enough of Elvis’ place in the pre-teen and teen rock pantheon this is after all about Billie, and Elvis’ twisted spell on the poor boy. Now you know about Billie dreams, about his outlandish dreams to break-out of the projects by parlaying his good looks (and they were even then) and his musical abilities (good but the world was filled with Billies from hunger and on reflection he did not have that crooner’s voice that would make the girls weep and wet) or you should, from another story, a story about Bo Diddley and how Billie wanted to, as a change of pace, break from the Elvis rut to create his own “style.” That was to emulate old Bo and his Afro-Carib beat. What Billie did not know, could not know since he had no television in the (nor did my family so we always went to neighbors who did have one or watched in front of Raymond’s Department Store with their inviting televisions on in the display windows begging us to purchase them ) and only knew rock and roll from his transistor radio was that the guy, that old Bo was black. Well, in hard, hard post-World War II Northern white Adamsville "the projects" filled to the brim with racial animosity poor unknowing Billie got blasted away one night at a talent show by one of the older, more knowing boys who taunted him mercilessly about why he wanted to emulate a n----r for his troubles.

That sent Billie, Billie from the hills, back to white bread Elvis pronto. See, Billie was desperate to impress the girls way before I was aware of them, or their charms. Half, on some days, three-quarters of our conversations (I won’t say monologues because I did get a word in edgewise every once in a while when Billie got on one of his rants) revolved around doing this or that, something legal, something not, to impress the girls. And that is where the “hate Elvis” part mentioned above comes in. Billie believed, and he may still believe it today wherever he is, that if only he could approximate Elvis’ looks, look, stance, and substance that all the girls would be flocking to him. And by flocking would create a buzz that would be heard around the world. Nice dream, Billie, nice my brother.   

Needless to say, such an endeavor required, requires money, dough, kale, cash, moola whatever you want to call it. And what twelve-year old project boys didn’t have, and didn’t have in abundance was any of that do-re-mi (that’s the age time of this story, about late 1957, early 1958) And no way to get it from missing parents, messed up parents, or just flat out poor parents. Billie’s and mine were the latter, poor as church mice. No, that‘s not right because church mice (in the way that I am using it, and as we used it back then to signify the respectable poor who “touted” their Catholic pious poorness as a badge of honor in this weaseling wicked old world) would not do, would not think about, would not even breathe the same air of what we were about to embark on. A life of crime, kid stuff crime but I'll leave that to the reader’s judgment.

See, on one of Billie’s rants he got the idea in his head, and, maybe, it got planted there by something that he had read about Elvis (Christ, he read more about that guy that he did about anybody else once he became an acolyte), that if he had a bunch of rings on all his fingers the girls would give him a tumble. (A tumble in those days being a hard kiss on the lips for about twelve seconds or “copping” a little feel, and if I have to explain that last in more detail you had better just move on). But see, also Billie’s idea was that if he has all those rings, especially for a projects boy then it would make his story that he had set to tell easier. And the story was none other than that he had written to Elvis (possible) and spoke to him man to man about his situation (improbable) and Elvis, Elvis the king, Elvis from “nowhere Mississippi, some place like Tupelo, like we were from the nowhere Adamsville projects, Elvis bleeding heart, had sent him the rings to give him a start in life (outrageously impossible). Christ, I don’t believe old Billie came up with that story even now when I am a million years world-weary.

But first you needed the rings and as the late honorable bank robber, Willie Sutton, said about robbing banks-that’s where the money is-old Billie, blessed, beatified Billie, figured out, and figured out all by himself, that if you want to be a ring stealer then you better go to the jewelry store because that is where the rings were. The reader, and rightly so, now might ask where was his best buddy during this time and why was that best buddy not offering wise counsel about the pitfalls of crime and the virtues of honesty and incorruptibility. Well, when Billie went off on his rant you just waited to see what played out but the real reason was, hell, maybe I could get a ring for my ring-less fingers and be on my way to impress the girls too. I think they call it in the law books, or some zealous prosecuting attorney could call it, aiding and abetting.

But enough of that superficial moralizing. Let’s get to the jewelry store, the best one in the downtown of working-class Adamsville in the time before the ubiquitous malls. We walked a couple of miles to get there on the one road out of the peninsula where the projects were located, plotting all the way. As we entered the downtown area, Bingo, the Acme Jewelry Store (or some name like that) jumped up at us. Billie’s was as nervous as a colt and I was not far behind, although on this caper I was just the “stooge”, if that. I’m the one who was to wait outside to see if John Law came by. Once at my post I said- “Okay, Billie, good luck.”

And strangely enough his luck was good that day, and many days after, although those days after were not ring days (small grocery store robberies later turned to armed robberies and jail terms the last I heard). That day though his haul was five rings. Five shaky rings, shaky hands Billie, as we walked, then started running, away from the downtown area. When we got close to home we stopped near the beach where we lived to see up close what the rings looked like. Billie yelled, “Damn.” And why did he yell that word. Well, apparently in his terror (his word to me) at getting caught he just grabbed what was at hand. And what was at hand were five women’s rings. At that moment he practically cried out about how was he going to impress girls, ten, eleven or twelve- year old girls, even if they were as  naïve as us, and maybe more so, that Elvis, the King, was your bosom buddy and you were practically his only life-line adviser with five women’s rings? Damn, damn is right.

 

 

The Class Struggle Continues

Capitalist Economies in 7 steps:

1.  Corporations take out loans from banks.

2.  Corporations then extract materials from the earth, labor from people and/or animals (killing many people, plants, trees and animals in the process).

3.  Corporations pay some people some money for their labor.

4.  Corporations make products with those materials.

5.  Corporations sell those products to people who have money.

6.  As this cycle is repeated, the extraction of materials from the earth (and all its human and non-human inhabitants) leads to a BIGGER AND BIGGER HOLE OF INDEBTEDNESS TO THE EARTH. One example of the hole of indebtedness:  global warming which is causing unpredictable, catastrophic climate change

7.  Because human and all other species are dependent on earth's healthy ecosystems for survival, and the earth's ecosystems are in increasing states of degradation, the corporations' collective debt to the earth is leading to the end of human life (and the lives of many other species) on this planet. (note: climate change has already resulted in the deaths of thousands of people and unlimited deaths of animals and plants and the extinction of thousands of species)

Summary statement:  The dominant, global capitalist economic system relies on destruction of our own home--the earth--in order to continue.  If we want to save our home, we must abandon this destructive economic system of capitalism.  We must replace it with sustainable modes of living which are in harmony with the rhythms of our home: EARTH. 

Please see my recent presentation: "Permaculture:  A Viable Alternative to Imperialism" to learn more about healthy ways of inhabiting our planet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN7dECPNAEM

hugs o love,
deb

Images from February 26: A Day of Outrage and Remembrance for Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis More at stopmassincarceration.net New York City, Union Square Photo: Cat Watters Atlanta, Five Points MARTA Station New York City, Times Square  Photo: Joel Simpson Hundreds of people in 20 cities and campuses marked the 2 year anniversary of the killing of Trayvon Martin with Protesters observe five minutes of silence with their fists in the air during a Day of Outrage and Remembrance for Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis.  The theme was NO More! Stopmassincarceration.net has reports and will be announcing further plans to change how U.S. society views mass incarceration.  MORE PHOTOS and even more.

Share this message: March 6th Conference Call We'll be talking about project to commemorate the invasion of Iraq in 2003. When will the U.S. destruction of Iraq end? New participants welcome. Register for dial-in info. New T-shirts & Hoodies! Humanity & the Planet Come First Logo-Style Shirt Humanity and the Planet Come First - Stop the Crimes of Your Government Back includes 19 languages $25.00Show Details & Purchase Humanity & the Planet Come First Logo-Style Hoodie $40.00Show Details & Purchase Calendar: Thursday March 6 12 - 2 pm Student film series at York College opens with Outside the Law: Stories of Guantanamo. We are glad to be a part of a new initiative at York College, where military recruiters are preying on students at this large public university.  The public is invited. Room 4D01 All Classroom Building York College / CUNY 94 - 20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd Jamaica, NY 11451 Saturday March 8 International Women's Day events Find out more at stoppatriarchy.org.

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When will the U.S. destruction of Iraq end? This month, as we're speaking to students who were in middle school, or younger, when the Bush regime invaded Iraq 11 years ago, we're launching a crowd-sourced effort to tell the story of more than 20 years of U.S. aggression against the Iraqi people. Crowd-sourced means we're calling on you to help ask the right questions, and search for the answers. Why did the US invade Iraq? Will the U.S. destruction of Iraq ever end? How did the occupation affect Iraqis? You can contribute to this project via email, Facebook or Twitter. Send your suggestions for the best articles; films, books, posters, and analysis, going back to the Persian Gulf War of 1990, through the sanctions and Clinton's bombing of Iraq; the Bush regime's invasion & occupation, and the Obama era's "dirty wars." We're also calling for content and designers for a series of posters on the theme:  From the U.S. government to Iraqi people: Bombing, sanctions, occupation, destruction of a whole society Please join in now with your initial ideas. Examining and Understanding the Arrest of Moazaam Begg, Former Guantanamo Prisoner and Human Rights Activist by Jill McLaughlin Moazaam Begg was captured in 2002 in the western imperialist “war on terror”. The British citizen of Pakistani descent was held for a time at Bagram Airforce Base in Afghanistan and then transferred to Guantanamo Bay Detention Center where he was detained without charge or trial for three years before he was released and repatriated to the U.K. Since his release Begg has spoken out about his ordeal, but has also courageously spoken out on the abuses of the U.K. Government in numerous other cases of alleged torture and abuse. Most recently Begg had been investigating and writing about abuses of the U.K. government in Syria. Begg had gone to Syria to talk to victims who claim that the U.K. government had sent prisoners to Syria to be tortured. In a recent article by Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain it is noted that Begg was repeatedly harassed by the U.K. Government with repeated interrogations and having his passport taken from him in December 2012. Begg’s arrest for terrorism related reasons now is suspicious and dubious given his history as a former Guantanamo detainee and now human rights activist investigating the U.K. government involvement in torture in the endless U.S. led war of terror. Continue reading... Chicago Discussion on The Ethics of Hunger Strikes & Forced Feeding On February 27, World Can’t Wait Chicago was part of a coalition effort to screen Doctors of the Dark Side  and host a panel to discuss it. February marks the one year anniversary  of the hunger strike at Guantanamo so the Chicago Coalition to Shut  Down Guantanamo wanted to dig more deeply into the ethical and legal  questions it poses. The event surpassed many of expectations. All three  speakers added depth and specific information to what was already a  powerful film.                        Continue reading... Images from February 26: A Day of Outrage and Remembrance for Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis More at stopmassincarceration.net New York City, Union Square Photo: Cat Watters Atlanta, Five Points MARTA Station New York City, Times Square  Photo: Joel Simpson Hundreds of people in 20 cities and campuses marked the 2 year anniversary of the killing of Trayvon Martin with Protesters observe five minutes of silence with their fists in the air during a Day of Outrage and Remembrance for Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis.  The theme was NO More! Stopmassincarceration.net has reports and will be announcing further plans to change how U.S. society views mass incarceration.  MORE PHOTOS and even more. Share this message: March 6th Conference Call We'll be talking about project to commemorate the invasion of Iraq in 2003. When will the U.S. destruction of Iraq end? New participants welcome. Register for dial-in info. New T-shirts & Hoodies! Humanity & the Planet Come First Logo-Style Shirt Humanity and the Planet Come First - Stop the Crimes of Your Government Back includes 19 languages $25.00Show Details & Purchase Humanity & the Planet Come First Logo-Style Hoodie $40.00Show Details & Purchase Calendar: Thursday March 6 12 - 2 pm Student film series at York College opens with Outside the Law: Stories of Guantanamo. We are glad to be a part of a new initiative at York College, where military recruiters are preying on students at this large public university.  The public is invited. Room 4D01 All Classroom Building York College / CUNY 94 - 20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd Jamaica, NY 11451 Saturday March 8 International Women's Day events Find out more at stoppatriarchy.org. Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait

Video, from 2008: "Obama’s foreign policy is to have a global showdown with Russia and China” – Historian Webster Tarpley

[as if it makes a difference who has/is/was/will/could be elected in imperialist america; but will democrackers,  repuglicans, greenies, righties, lefties, etc etc, never learn?] This warning was issued in 2008….BEFORE Obama was elected! “The project of the next administration, if its Obama, is to smash both Russia and China. People in Europe had better wake up. That sill romantic illusion that they have about Obama is going to be suicidal… Obama’s foreign policy is to have a global showdown with Russia and China” – Historian Webster Tarpley watch the video

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With Wendy’s protest in Louisville, KY, Campaign for Fair Food will come full circle on Day 5 of “Now Is the Time” Tour! Louisville Fair Food activists brought home first-ever Fair Food agreement with Taco Bell in 2005; Today they are ready to remind then-Taco Bell CEO/now-Wendy’s CEO Emil Brolick of his words on that historic day: “We recognize that Florida tomato workers do not enjoy the same rights and conditions as employees in other industries, and there is a need for reform. We have indicated that any solution must be industry-wide…” When the CIW secured its first-ever Fair Food agreement with Taco Bell’s parent company Yum Brands in March, 2005 it marked the beginning of a process that led, in just five short years, to the launch of the Fair Food Program, a program that today is setting the global standard for the protection of human rights in corporate supply chains. It has been an extraordinary journey, the first step of which was taken nine years ago on a cold, cloudy day in Louisville (right). Outside of Immokalee itself, there is arguably no community in the country that should be more proud of that landmark victory than that of Louisville’s Fair Food activists. Louisville’s diverse, committed, and relentless group of faith, student, and labor allies pressed their neighbors at Yum Brands headquarters until they did the right thing and set new standards for the protection of human rights that the rest of the fast-food industry leaders would have to meet in the coming years. The rest of the fast-food industry leaders with the exception of Wendy’s, that is... Don't miss Louisville's full Fair Food story at the CIW website!

Speak up today for peace with Iran Don't meet AIPAC's aggressive lobbying push with silence. Tell Congress not to do anything that could jeopardize talks with Iran. Dear All, Congress needs to hear from you now. Today, the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has 10,000—yes, 10,000—supporters on Capitol Hill pushing a hawkish, misinformed position on Iran diplomacy. Don’t let this be a one-sided debate. Tell Congress not to undermine talks with Iran. AIPAC has been the main proponent of the dangerous Senate sanctions bill that President Obama threatened to veto because it could jeopardize talks with Iran. If talks fail, we could be headed down a path to war with Iran. You and thousands of people around the country heard the warning call and bombarded Congress with messages opposing this bill. The outpouring was remarkable, and we put AIPAC back on its heels. They backed off and said they didn’t support a vote on the bill at this time. But they’re not giving up. They’re still pressuring senators to cosponsor the bill, and to sign a similar letter that tries to micromanage the diplomatic process. Show Congress the political stakes of jeopardizing this opportunity for peace. Take action now. We have allies in Congress who are standing up for diplomacy. But they can’t withstand intense pressure from AIPAC and groups like them if we meet their aggressiveness with silence. Pro-peace groups around the country are mobilizing today, and we need your voice.  Take action. Thank you. Shelagh Foreman Program Director Massachusetts Peace Action

Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership today!   Dues are $40/year for an individual, $65 for a family, or $10 for student/unemployed/low income.  Members vote for leadership and endorsements, receive newsletters and discounts on event admissions.  Donate now and you will be a member in good standing through December 2014!  Your financial support makes this work possible! Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 617-354-2169  • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter