Chelsea Manning’s New Lawyers Will Challenge ‘Frightening’ Espionage Act Charges on Appeal
By: Kevin Gosztola Monday April 14, 2014 10:01 am	Tweet411

Chelsea Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander

At an event at Georgetown Law Center last night, Chelsea Manning’s new lawyers provided a preview of what they expect to happen during the appeals process in her military case.
Nancy Hollander, a defense attorney who has defended various individuals accused of terrorism or national security offenses, and Vincent Ward, a former JAG lawyer with a background in the military justice system, both said they were at the “beginnings” of the appeal. They have not seen the record of Manning’s trial yet, however, they wanted to offer the public, especially Manning supporters, the opportunity to hear what their thoughts are on the legal process which lies ahead.
The “misuse of the Espionage Act,” the over-classification of information, the selective prosecution of individuals by the government for leaks, “unlawful command influence,” “unlawful pretrial punishment,” and violations of “speedy trial rights” will all be issues raised during the appeal.
Hollander said Manning’s convictions for violating the Espionage Act set a “dangerous precedent.” She added, “If this case stands, along with some other recent cases, whoever leaks a single page of classified information or even non-classified information runs the risk of prosecution under this act.”
Manning was found guilty of five Espionage Act offenses, which is quite significant in the war on leaks and whistleblowers that has been waged by President Barack Obama’s administration.
“The Espionage Act was meant to punish spies and saboteurs and people who steal things from the United States and take them to foreign countries to benefit that country or to specifically hurt the United States. It was never meant for whistleblowers. It should never be used in these kinds of cases,” she said.
“It is frightening that the Espionage Act has essentially become a strict liability crime, that intent required is the intent to disclose and we simply cannot let that continue.” And, “the lack of criminal intent is frankly horrifying to me as a lawyer, that Chelsea was convicted and is going to spend 35 years in jail without any burden on the government whatsoever to prove that she intended or had reason to believe that this disclosure would harm the United States or advantage a foreign government.”
Hollander drew attention to the over-classification of what the government calls “national security information,” even noting that at Guantanamo Bay prisoners’ “thoughts, perceptions and observations” (including of their own torture) have been classified by the government.
“This kind of over-classification is wrong. It’s illegal. It’s a violation of the executive order that creates classified information. The government cannot classify information solely to prevent embarrassment to itself. That’s right in the executive order and that’s exactly what it is doing more and more.”
Hollander even argued that by calling more and more items “national security” information and engaging in over-classification the government was making the “reach of the Espionage Act” even greater. It was also lowering its burden to prove someone violated the law.
“The Espionage Act is a draconian act. It has hardly ever been used in the history of this country. And it’s been used more by this administration than it has altogether. It has to stop if we’re to have any freedom of speech, if the First Amendment is to exist at all,” she further stated. “We cannot prosecute people who tell us what our government is doing and remain a free society.”
Hollander suggested that Manning had been punished enough already. “The months of solitary confinement were outrageous. They were unnecessary. They were completely punitive. No other country in the world uses solitary confinement exactly the we do; certainly, none of the European countries,” and then she stated, “It destroys the mind. It destroys the body and there was no excuse for it in this case.”
Ward, during his presentation, called attention to the amount of time that Manning spent in detention prior to even being charged. “She spent not days but months and months and months waiting for a charge sheet while the military tried to figure out what to charge [her] with.”
He argued that Article 10, a part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), grants soldiers rights that are “greater than the Sixth Amendment when it comes to speedy trial.”
In regards to “unlawful command influence,” he said it is “very controversial” that a commander has the level of control that he typically has over a case. There is no prosecutorial discretion because that belongs to one military commander. So, the appeal would go to the core of the military system itself.
Ward also argued, “The role of military justice is to promote good order and discipline. And so one of the tensions I believe in the military system is this notion that the Uniform Code of Military Justice exists for the purpose of maintaining good order and discipline, which by definition sounds as though it’s contrary to due process rights. Now do we really believe that a 35-year sentence is necessary to maintain good order and discipline in the military?”
Manning is currently imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. She was credited with 1,162 days of pretrial confinement credit and 112 days of credit for “unlawful pretrial punishment” by the military judge during her court martial.
Technically, both Hollander and Ward cannot take action on the case yet. Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, the Convening Authority in this case, is still going through the process of acting on the record of trial and responding to the decision of the court. The Convening Authority can choose to overturn or change the sentence and, when he is done, the case will be passed on for appellate review.
“We have a very long road to go and an uphill battle,” Hollander told supporters of Manning. “This appeal will take a long time. We have a bunch of courts to get through. We have two appellate courts. We have the Supreme Court of the United States. We have a possible habeas [case]. We will stay with this case until there are no more courts and nowhere else to go on behalf of Chelsea.”
In her more than thirty years of experience practicing as a defense lawyer, Hollander recalled giving speeches about the First Amendment or the Fourth Amendment and recognizing each time that rights for Americans were being chipped away. But one right the government has not managed to whittle away is the right to be represented by a lawyer.
“Chelsea has the right to have a lawyer stand between her and the awesome power of her own government and that government is projecting everything it has against her,” she concluded. “Vincent and I will stand between the government and Chelsea. And they’ll have to get past us to get to her. That’s the stand we’ll take.”
Photo of Nancy Hollander courtesy Law and Dissorder radio

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Tags: WikiLeaks, Leaks, Classified Information, Espionage Act, Chelsea Manning, Military Justice, Nancy Hollander, Vincent Ward

Chelsea Manning to Take a More Active Role in Her Case During Appeal
By: Kevin Gosztola Tuesday April 15, 2014 9:55 am	Tweet45

Artist sketch of how Chelsea Manning sees herself as a trans woman

During her trial, the only time the public heard from Chelsea Manning was when she made statements in court. But according to Emma Cape, a lead organizer for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, Manning will be taking a “somewhat more active role” in the case during appeal.
Cape, along with Manning’s new lawyers and whistleblowers who support Manning, spoke at an event at Georgetown Law Center on April 13. She reported that Manning has provided feedback on the work of the Support Network and communicated how she would like some of the organization’s messaging to be. She has also expressed interest in publicly sharing her thoughts on freedom of information, government transparency and restrictions on press access.
Cape also says that the military continues to deny Manning medical treatment for gender dysphoria, with which Manning has been diagnosed. They refuse to allow her to have hormone therapy and are forcing her legal team to exhaust all administrative and legal remedies before approving or denying her request.
Unfortunately for Manning, Cape also informed supporters at the event that President Barack Obama’s administration has made the decision to not respond to a request for a presidential pardon until the appeals process is entirely exhausted.
It will be possible for Manning to take a  more public role now because the appeal is restricted to what is in the trial record, and possibility of military prosecutors using her statements against her is far more diminished.
Yesterday, a general court martial convening authority, Maj. General Jeffrey Buchanan, approved a military judge’s verdict in Manning’s case, findings and her sentence of thirty-five years in military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Buchanan also approved the record of trial, which means Manning’s appeal can now officially proceed.
Well-known defense attorney Nancy Hollander, who has much experience with terrorism and national security cases, and Vincent Ward, a former JAG lawyer, are representing her. They can now start their review of the record immediately.
“The record is huge — 110 volumes,” Hollander told Firedoglake. “It will be an enormous task.” She declined to provide details at this stage on when the legal team hopes to file the first brief in the appeal.
Manning’s appeal will focus on the misuse of the Espionage Act, over-classification, selective prosecution of leaks by the government, “unlawful pretrial punishment” and speedy trial rights violations in the case.
During the April 13 event, Ward said after visiting Leavenworth once to see Manning that he had recognized that she had “figured out a way around that place. She knows where to go, what to do, what to get to stay engaged and actively involved.” Manning has been researching a variety of issues in prison, and according to Ward, she sends him materials related to her case before anyone does.
“I fully expect throughout this process Chelsea will probably be the greatest resource for her own defense,” Ward declared.
Manning worked with the Support Network to develop a portrait of how she sees herself as a trans woman (above). She is seeking a legal name change in a Kansas district court from “Bradley Manning” to Chelsea Manning.
Manning is planning to enroll in college. She hopes to specialize in pre-law and political science. She was also recently named an Honorary Grand Marshal for the San Francisco Pride Parade, an honor which the organization’s leadership rescinded last year a month before her trial was about to commence.
The appeal process could take over a decade, as the case goes through two appellate courts, potentially the Supreme Court and then maybe to another court as a habeas case.
Clemency was also denied by Buchanan on April 14. Over 3,000 letters had been submitted by supporters as part of a “clemency packet” yet apparently none of the material was important enough to influence a different decision by the military, such as a reduction in sentence.
“The role of military justice is to promote good order and discipline,” Ward explained at Georgetown Law Center. “And so one of the tensions I believe in the military system is this notion that the Uniform Code of Military Justice exists for the purpose of maintaining good order and discipline, which by definition sounds as though it’s contrary to due process rights.”
“Now do we really believe that a 35-year sentence is necessary to maintain good order and discipline in the military?”
Both Hollander and Ward plan to represent Manning until there are “no more courts and nowhere else to go on behalf of Chelsea.”
Image produced by the Chelsea Manning Support Network and created by artist Alicia Neal in cooperation with Chelsea Manning herself.

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Tags: WikiLeaks, Espionage Act, Chelsea Manning, Military Justice, Clemency, Leavenworth

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Ulalume (1847)
by Edgar Allan Poe

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll—
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole—
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
Our memories were treacherous and sere,—
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)—
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here)—
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn—
As the star-dials hinted of morn—
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn—
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said: "She is warmer than Dian;
She rolls through an ether of sighs—
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies—
To the Lethean peace of the skies—
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes—
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said: "Sadly this star I mistrust—
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Ah, hasten! -ah, let us not linger!
Ah, fly! -let us fly! -for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust—
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust—
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied: "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendour is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty tonight!—
See! -it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright—
We safely may trust to a gleaming,
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom—
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb—
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said: "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied: "Ulalume -Ulalume—
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere—
As the leaves that were withering and sere;
And I cried: "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed -I journeyed down here!—
That I brought a dread burden down here—
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon hath tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber—
This misty mid region of Weir—
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

{Said we, then — the two, then —" Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls —
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls —
To bar up our way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds —
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds —
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
From the limbo of lunary souls —
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the Hell of the planetary souls ?")

********
Johnny Silver comment:

My old pal from North Adamsville high school days and before that down in the old- time Adamsville housing project (the infamous “projects”) where we went to elementary school together, Peter Paul Markin, recently asked me to write about my take on his “love affair,” his first time puppy-love affair (from afar to boot) with Margaret Gilbert in fourth grade down at Adamsville South Elementary School. I accepted with the proviso that whatever I wrote was not to be “edited” by him. See, I know he is a fast man with the delete button when things don’t come out just right in his rose-colored glasses world. So I am “trusting” him, as a man of honor, some old-time corner boy man of honor anyway, or rather I am holding certain information that he would no like to see in the public eye to make sure I get my say.


Why he is suddenly inflamed by the desire to stir the ashes of the past is beyond me. What he asked me is anybody’s guess. We hadn’t seen each for years until several years ago and I had, almost, well kind of almost, forgotten her name when he mentioned it. I guess he figured that since I went through the experience with him that I would tell the truth. Well, the truth of the matter was that while he was doing his mooning act, getting all misty-eyed every time she came within fifty yards of us, and endlessly “crying” on my shoulder about whether he should approach her, you know boy meets girl stuff that has been going on since Adam tried to date up Eve, I was holding the “torch” for her myself.

As was true of every non- juvenile delinquent guy in the school with enough sense to come in out of the rain on Tuesdays (jesus, I haven’t said that old-time schoolboy expression in ages, well since elementary school). Ya, she was like that, ten-years old like that, with that what was it, damn, gardenia scent or some exotic soap thing that drove me crazy any time she came within fifty yards of me. Had me mumbling to myself, mumbling distractedly. But see Markin, sweet old goof Peter Paul, couldn’t see I was hurting, hurting bad myself. Now some fifty years later turnabout is far play so I am just going to turn his little “in lieu of” around as my own valentine to Margaret Gilbert. Margaret, did you later drive half the men who came within fifty yards of you to distraction without even meaning too. The worst part not even aware of it. Lordy, lordy.

The best way to read, really read Peter Paul’s screed is wherever the idea seems to suggest some action (or inaction) by him just think old Johnny Silver. You too, Margaret Gilbert if you every see this. The asides “speak" for themselves:


“I make no claim to any literary originality [christ, the guy use to carry around index cards all through school with ideas on them, all unattributed, although none of us knew that at the time we just though they were all his ideas. It was not until later when I started to get serious about reading and would run across certain Markinisms I got hip to what he had done.] I will shamelessly ‘steal’ any idea, or half-idea that catches my fancy in order to make my point. [See aside above.] That is the case today, as I go back in time to my elementary school days down at the old Adamsville South Elementary School in the Adamsville projects. Part of the title for today’s entry and the central idea that I want to express is taken from a poem by the great Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky. [Everybody and his brother knew Markin was crazy for Russian writers like Dostoevsky and poets like Pushkin in high school. We just thought he was a “red,” some kind of bolshevik creep who would get caught by the FBI soon enough. They never got him, I guess, and I ain’t a squealer, no way. Old Coach Duffy had his number in high school though. He called him a Bolshevik with a capital B right in front of the whole history class one day.]

So what do a poet who died in 1930 and a moonstruck kid from the Adamsville projects, growing up haphazardly in 1950s have in common? We have both been thrown back, unexpectedly, to childhood romantic fantasies of the “girl who got away.” [I already mentioned that I was clueless about why he is in a craze mode now about it so that covers me on this.] In my case, Margaret G. [nee Gilbert], as the title to this entry indicates. [See, that is where Markin’s weird sense of honor, romance, or just plain fear of girls got him nowhere. Fifty years later he is playing the gallant by not divulging her name like it was some state secret or like she hadn’t gotten married (if some guy was brave enough to get within fifty yards of her and survived the enveloping fragrances, lucky guy) or something.] I do not remember what triggered Mayakovsky’s memories but mine have been produced via an indirect North Adamsville Internet connection seeing her last name mentioned on a profile page. In this instance, damn the Internet. I do not know the fate of Margaret G., [Gilbert, okay for the slow-witted] although I fervently hope that life has worked out well for her. This I do know. For the time that it will take to write this entry I return to being a smitten, unhappy boy. [Ya, sometimes, every once in a blue moon, Markin catches a hold on the truth, the bone-dry truth. Margaret G., ah, nee Gilbert, Johnny Silver wishes you well too. Ya, he is a little unhappy too]

Mayakovsky would, of course, now dazzle us with his intoxicating use of language, stirring deep thoughts in us about his unhappy fate. I will plod along prosaically, as is my fate. Through the dust of time, sparked by that Internet prod, I have hazy, dreamy memories of the demure Margaret G., mainly as seemed from afar through furtive glances in the old schoolyard at Adamsville South (which is today in very much the same condition as back then) . This is a very appealing memory, to be sure, of a fresh, young girl full of hopes and dreams, and who knows what else. [Ya, Markin is on fire here, go brother speak some truth, speak some Margaret Gilbert truth.]

But a more physical description is in order that befits the “real time” of my young ‘romance’ fantasies. Margaret G. strongly evoked in me a feeling of softness, soft as the cashmere sweaters that she wore and that reflected the schoolgirl fashion of those seemingly sunnier days. And she almost always wore a slight suggestion of a smile, working its way through a full-lipped mouth. And had a voice, just turning away from girlishness to womanhood, which spoke of future conquests. I should also say that her hair… But enough of this. [Thanks, for stopping, stopping right there Brother Markin] This is now getting all mixed up with adult dreams of childhood. Let the fact of fifty plus years remembrances speak to her charms.

Did I ‘love’ Margaret G.? [Did you love her more than me, Peter Paul?]That is a silly thought for a bashful, ill-at-ease, ragamuffin of a project boy and a ‘princess’ who never uttered two words, if that, to each other, ever. Did I ‘want’ Margaret G.? Come on now, that is the stuff of adult dreams. Did Margaret G. disturb my sleep? Well, yes, she was undoubtedly the subject of more than one chaste dream, although perhaps not so innocent at that. But know this. Time may bury many childhood wounds but there are not enough medicines, not enough bandages on this good, green earth to stanch some of them. So let’s just leave it at that. Or rather, as this. For the moment it takes to finish this note I am an unhappy man and… maybe, for longer. [Ditto, Brother].”

I guess I didn’t turn the tables on Markin after all. Sweet dreams, Margaret Gilbert wherever you landed. Johnny Silver blows you a kiss.

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Patsy Cline performing her very appropriate (for this entry, just reverse it) She's Got You.
CD Review

Patsy Cline: The Definitive Collection, Patsy Cline, MCA, 1991

Rick Roberts wanted to cry, wanted to just go into a corner and cry. Of course, as a man of the 1950s, of the hard-hearted Cold War shoulder-to-the-wheel, no prisoners taken love wars of the 1950s that was impossible. Impossible as well because although he felt himself a man in many ways, large, strong, virile and smart enough to make it to sixteen without too many mishaps he was still a boy, a Clintondale High junior boy. And that was the crux of the matter. No self-respecting boy (and, maybe, no self-not respecting boy if it came to it) would dream of going to a corner, or anywhere else, and cry, or let it be known that he was about to cry, or that he had cried at all past the age of six, maybe earlier . But Rick still wanted to cry. And it took no deep thought, no deep insight, no nothing to know the reason- a woman, well really a girl. June Davis, his "June Bug" (his pet name for her, although he would be the first to tell you do not, under any circumstances, call her that, or else-the “or else” part related to his being large, strong, virile and sixteen).

And, of course, if it’s a woman driving you to tears then it is almost a certainty that there is some guy behind the scenes stealing your time. And the name of the thief in this case is one Freddie Jackson, June’s elementary school flame, or something like that, but back a while ago. For christ sakes. And the way that Freddie did it was not so sneaky, well not sneaky, backdoor sneaky, but right in front of Rick at the last school dance. Freddie, for old time’s sake he said, asked Rick if it was okay for him to dance with June Bug when they played Patsy Cline’s I Fall To Pieces. Rick didn’t think anything of it, he wasn’t much of a slow dancer and June liked the song and wanted dance.

What Rick didn’t know was the song was something like “their” song, their song for christ sake, along with Patsy’s Always and So Wrong. Rick thought Patsy was okay but not enough to make her songs “their” songs. Jerry Lee’s Breathless, for very private reasons, don’t ask or else, was their song (and for fun, as joke between them, since they met at the Wash-All Laundromat, Leader of the Laundromat). And now he is poring though every Patsy record he can find like Crazy, She’s Got You, Why Can’t He Be You, Back In Baby’s Arms, and Sweet Dreams Of You to figure out where he went wrong, and how to get his June Bug back. Back from that Freddie Jackson, for christ sakes.

***“The Next Girl Who Throws Sand In My Face Is…” Johnny Silver’s Sad Be-Bop 1950s Beach Blanket Saga

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman:

No question that my corner boy comrades from the old Frankie Riley-led Salducci’s Pizza Parlor hang-out and me from the day high school got out for the summer drew a bee-line straight to the old-time Adamsville Beach of blessed memory. Did we go to said beach to be “one” with our homeland, the sea? No. Did we go to admire the boats and other things floating by? No. Did we go to get a little breeze across our sun-burned and battered bodies on a hot and sultry August summer day. No. Well, maybe a little. But come on now we are talking about sixteen, maybe seventeen, year old guys. We were there, of course, because there were shapely teeny-weeny bikini-clad girls (young women, okay, let’s not get technical about that pre-woman’s liberation time) sunning themselves like peacocks for all the world, all the male teenage North Adamsville world, the only world that mattered to guys and gals alike, to see.

And they were sunning themselves and otherwise looking very desirable and, well, fetching, in not just any old spot wherever they could place a blanket but strictly, as tradition dictated, tradition seemingly going back before memory, between the North Adamsville and Adamsville Yacht Clubs. So, naturally, every testosterone-driven teenage lad who owned a bathing suit, and some who didn’t were hanging off the floating dock right in front of said yacht clubs showing off, well, showing off their prowess to the flower of North Adamsville maidenhood. And said show-offs included, of course, Frankie Riley (when he was not working at the old A&P Supermarket), his faithful scribe, Peter Paul Markin, and others including the, then anyway, “runt of the litter,” Johnny Silver. It is Johnny’s sad beach blanket bingo tale that gets a hearing today. If it all sounds kind of familiar, even to the younger set, it is because, with the exception of the musical selections, it is.
*********
“The next girl who throws sand in my face is going get it,” yelled Johnny Silver to no one in particular as he came back to the Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boy beach front acreage just in front of the seawall facing, squarely facing, midpoint between the North Adamsville and Adamsville Yacht Clubs. As the sounds of Elvis Presley’s Loving You came over Frankie Riley’s transistor radio and wafted down to the sea, almost like a siren call to teenage love, one of those no one in particulars, Peter Paul Markin replied,

“What did you expect, Johnny? That Katy Larkin is too tall, too pretty and just flat-out too foxy for a runt like you. I am surprised you are still in one piece. And I would mention, as well, that her brother, Jimmy Jukes, does not like guys, especially runt guys with no muscles bothering his sister.”

Johnny came back quickly with the usual, “Hey, I am not that small and I am growing, growing fast so Jimmy Jukes can eat my… " But Johnny halted just in time as one Jimmy Jukes, James Allen Larkin, halfback hero of many a North Adamsville fall football game came perilously close to Johnny and then veered off like Johnny was nothing, nada, no thing. And after Jimmy Jukes was safely out of sight, and Frankie flipped the volume dial on his radio louder as the Falcons’ You’re So Fine came on heralding Frankie’s attempt by osmosis to lure a certain Betty Ann McCarthy his way, another standard brand fox in the teenage girl be-bop night, Johnny poured out his sad saga.

Seems that Katy Larkin was in one of Johnny’s classes, biology he said, and one day, one late spring day Katy, out of the blue, asked him what he thought about Buddy Holly who had passed away in crash several years before, well before he reached his potential as the new king of the be-bop rock night. Johnny answered that Buddy was “boss,” especially his Everyday, and that got them talking, but only talking, almost every day until the end of school. Of course, Johnny, runt Johnny, didn’t have the nerve, not nearly enough nerve to ask a serious fox like Katy out, big brother or not. Not until this very day when he got up the nerve to go over to her blanket, a blanket that also had Sara Bigelow and Tammy Kelly on board, and as a starter asked her if she liked Elvis’ That’s When The Heartache Begins. She answered quickly and rather curtly (although Johnny did not pick up on that signal) that it was “dreamy.” Then Johnny’s big moment came and he blurted out,

“Do you want to go to the Surf Dance Hall with me Saturday night Crazy Lazy is the DJ and the Rockin’ Ramrods are playing?"

And as the reader knows, or should be presumed to know, Johnny’s answer was a face full of sand. And that sad, sad beach saga is the end of another teen angst moment. So the to the strains of Robert and Johnny’s We Belong Together we will move along.

Well, not quite. It also seems that Katy Larkin, tall (too tall for Johnny, really), shapely (no question of really about that), and don’t forget foxy, Katy Larkin had a “crush” on one John Raymond Silver if you can believe that. She was miffed, apparently more than somewhat, that Johnny had not asked her out before school got out for the summer. That more than somewhat entailed throwing sand in Johnny’s face when he did get up the nerve to ask. So on the first day of school, while Johnny was turning his radio off and putting it in his locker just before school started, after having just listened to the Platters' One In a Million for the umpteenth time, Katy Larkin “cornered” Johnny (Johnny’s term) and said in a clear, if excited voice, “I’m sorry about that day at the beach last summer.” And then in the teenage girl imperative, hell maybe all women imperative, “You are taking me to the Fall All-Class Mixer and I will not take no for an answer.” Well, what is a guy to do when that teenage girl imperative, hell maybe all women imperative, voice commands. So Johnny is now re-evaluating his attitude toward beach sand and maybe, after all, it was just a girl being playful. In any case, Johnny grew quite a bit that summer and now Katy Larkin is not too tall, not too tall at all, for Johnny Silver to take to the mixer, or anywhere else she decides she wants to go.

***Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s- Penny’s Brand New Phonograph

Scene: Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which graced a CD compilation in The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll series that I recently reviewed. The photo on this CD, as might be expected, shows the ubiquitous, highly coveted, then and today, old time LP (and 45s convertible) record player and the family radio, probably RCA, both weapons in the 1950’s teenage wars to have our own music, and to be able to listen to said music 24/7 without parental interference, or knowledge. Of course, not everybody, teenage everybody, and that’s what counted, including rock dizzy Penny had one or the other and that is the struggle we are to presently witness.

“Good night, Mr. and Mrs. Dodd, the kids were no problem and thanks again for the money.” “Whee,” Penny Parker whispered under her breathe, as she went out the door. Those kids were nothing but monsters, refusing to go to bed unless, and until, they watched Maverick on television, she played checkers with Bobby and Billy Dodd (sister Laura was satisfied to be a spectator), and they each (all three on this one) got not one, but two scoops of ice cream before surrendering to Penny’s demands. And all for a lousy seventy-five cents an hour. Those were slave wages, slave wages even for a thirteen year old girl who had never even heard of a guy named Karl Marx or another rabble-rousers like that, and Penny, Parker proud if not Parker bright, bright yet anyway thought for just a minute to give up this monster-sitting, well, baby-sitting really, up. “No,” she yelled into the Clintondale night, “No way after all I have put up with from those beasts am I giving up my dream record player now, no way.” And that was that.

Penny, Parker bright or proud notwithstanding, was a creature of her times, as we all are more or less. And the times, the 1950s red scare cold war night understood or not by Penny, called for every self-respecting teenager, and teenagers were all that counted in Penny’s universe, to have his or her own private, up in his or her bolted shut room, phonograph to play his or her favorite music, rock ‘n’ roll music, naturally. Not some lame Benny Goodman or Doris Day mumble that her parents listened to on the radio downstairs and drove Penny up a wall, maybe up more than one wall. And drove her right out of the Parker door down to Bop Benny’s Record Shop to play the jukebox there when the newest of the new records came out.

See, Penny did not have her own record player like every other girl, every other teen-age girl that counted in her class at Clintondale Junior High School. Even Pammy Fuller had one, and Pam’s parents had them practically living on the county farm. But Peter Parker, father Parker, was adamant that he would not pay for anything that was connected with rock ‘n’ roll. Not out of religious principles, or anything like that, but he just hated the sound. Yes, I know, Peter Parker, square, square cubed.

So that left Penny down at Benny’s throwing nickels, dimes, and quarters in that old juke box. Many nickels when Kathy Young’s A Thousand Stars was hot, or when she had a crush, a big crush, on Zack Smith and she “broke the bank,” playing Earth Angel by the Penguins and When We Get Married by The Dreamlovers whenever Zack was in Benny’s and she wanted to draw his attention to her. Or the time when “Foul-Mouth” Phil Jackson dared her to play Eddie My Love by the Teen Queens when he was trying to date her up, or what passed for a date at twelve.

One day her brother, Paul, a year older than Penny but seemingly about a million years wiser saw that she had put at least fifty cents in the box when she was feeling all sentimental about Jimmy Kelly, her ex-beau, or as ex-beau as any thirteen year old girl is allowed to have, and was playing I Love How You Love Me by the Paris Sisters like crazy. He just flat-out told her after dinner that night that it would be a whole lot easier and less expensive to just get her own record player and play up in her room to her heart’s contend. Penny stood there in disbelief, not in disbelief about the idea but that dear old dad would go for it. Well, the long and short of it, was that dear old dad did go for it, with the usual provisos that there would be no loud or late night playing. Sure daddy.

And that prospect, that record player of her very own, with her own platters to spin (records, grooved vinyl records for the current squares), and no bother, except maybe to invite Jimmy or Zack over bother, is why this night as she walked home she is muttering about wage slavery, the injustices of the world, the teenage world, the only one that counted in case someone might have forgotten, and other communistic sentiments, if anybody had hear her. Penny figured after that night that another twelve hours of drudgery, another nine dollars and she could get that cool one that she saw in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue.

But then Penny, Parker bright just then, looked pensively down at the sidewalk when she realizes that she would have to buy records to feed that record player and that she would have to continue baby-sitting for slave wages forever with Dodd monsters to get all the 45s that she absolutely needed. And then, horror of horrors, what if Jimmy liked Sixteen Candles by the Crests and Zack didn’t but liked Rockin’ Robin by Bobby Day (and he probably would) and she had to buy both records. Well, what was a girl to do but, Penny, Parker proud just then, thought she would be able to figure it out.

In Honor Of Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s Birthday (April 1870-Janaury 1924)-The Struggle Continues-Ivan Smilga’s Political Journey-Take Five       

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

For several years I have been honoring various revolutionary forbears, including the subject of this birthday tribute, the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin architect (along with fellow revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky) of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 each January under the headline-Honor The Three L’s–Lenin, Luxemburg , Liebknecht. My purpose then was (and still is) to continue the traditions established by the Communist International in the early post-World War I period to honor revolutionary forbears. That month has special significance since in the month of January leftists honor those three leading revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in his sleep after a long illness in 1924, and Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin.

I have made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I on previous occasions. I have also made some special points in previous years as well about the life of Rosa Luxemburg, “the Rose of the Revolution.” This month, the month of his birth, it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find a few good heroes, to highlight the early struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, as he attempted to define himself politically. Below is a sketch of a young fictional labor militant, although not so fictional in the scheme of the revolutionary developments in Russia under the Tsar toward the end of the 19^th century and early 20^th century. This sketch should help define the problems facing the working-class there then, and perhaps now as well.

Ivan Smilga did not know when he resolved to go after his lover Elena Kassova who was being prepared for deportation to Siberia and either aid her escape or share her fate. Ivan needed to deal with the question of Elena’s fate after returning to Saint Petersburg shortly after New Year’s Day 1900 and finding that his “engaged” Elena Kassova had been arrested for political crimes and was being held for trial prior to deportation to Siberia, All he knew was that he was ashamed that he had left the city in a huff after several quarrels about Elena’s leadership role in political demonstration proposed for that New Year’s Day. A day when the bloody sabre-wielding Cossacks had wreaked havoc on the small demonstration before it even stepped off before the Winter Palace. He was ashamed first that he had not been there to share her fate and secondly that Elena had been right, right all along that, something more than getting better wages and working conditions needed to be done to bring Mother Russia into the new century.

Ivan reddened as he thought about how he had constantly belittled Elena (and her friends and associates, mostly sparsely-bearded radical students from Saint Petersburg University and a smattering of young workers, some from his own Putilov Works) around what Mother Russia did or did not need. Mainly that the fight for wages, for shorter hours and for a union was enough to carry the day. He could begin to see that even those demands could not be met without more political organization than that necessary for shop floor issues. Ivan wasn’t sure what that might be but he knew he had been wrong to rattle Elena’s confidence by dismissing her notion that a party was necessary to fight the Tsar and his minions. He cringed when he thought about how he had laughed out loud and said that Russia had too many political parties already.       

But politics, or finding out what politics would serve the ends desired, was not really what drove Ivan to distraction. Ivan loved Elena in the old-fashioned way like a wayward backward peasant boy. He had wronged her and therefore it was his responsibility to right that wrong and hence his resolve. Maybe by going to Siberia he would win back her respect. Maybe even join her and her comrades in their quixotic fight against the massive Tsarist repression. He was not looking forward to going back to Siberia after his prior tour there a few years back when he had served his own two year sentence for political crimes (a scatterbrain scheme involving holding responsible governmental officials hostage in return for some political action) but he needed to go. Who knows what the future held but all he knew was that whatever Elena’s fate was his as well.              

From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Victor Serge-The Class Struggle in the Chinese Revolution

 

YEAR ONE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by Victor Serge

Book Review 

Present At The Creation 

I have read several books on subjects related to the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge and find that he is a well-informed insider on this subject although the novel rather than history writing is his stronger form of expressing his views. See his The Case of Comrade Tulayev. This book can be profitably read in conjunction with other better written left-wing interpretations of this period. Sukhanov's Notes on the Russian Revolution (for the February period), Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World come to mind.

The task Serge sets himself here is to look at the dramatic and eventually fateful events of first year of the Russian Revolution. Those included the Bolshevik seizure of power, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the struggle by the Bolsheviks against other left-wing tendencies in defining Soviet state policy, the fight to end Russian participation in World War I culminating in the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany and, most importantly, the beginnings of Civil War against the Whites. In short, he investigates all the issues that will ultimately undermine and cause the degeneration of what was the first successful socialist seizure of state power in history.

Serge's history is partisan history in the best sense of the word. It is rather silly at this late date to argue that historians must be detached from the subject of their investigations. All one asks is that a historian gets the facts for his or her analysis straight. And then stay out of the way. Serge passes this test. Serge worked under the assumption that the strategic theory of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky was valid. That premise stated that Russia as the weakest link in the international capitalist system could act as the catalyst for revolution in the West and therefore shorten its own road to socialism. The failure of that Western revolution, the subsequent hostile encirclement by the Western powers and the inevitable degeneration implicit in a revolution in an economically undeveloped country left to its own resources underlies the structure of his argument.

The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the defining event for the international labor movement during most of the 20th century. Serious militants and left -wing organizations took their stand based on their position on the so-called Russian Question. At that time the level of political class-consciousness in the international labor movement was quite high. Such consciousness does not exist today where the socialist program is seen as, at best, utopian. However, notwithstanding the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92 and the essential elimination of the Russian Question as a factor in world politics on a day to day basis anyone who wants learn some lessons from the heroic period of the Russian Revolution will find this book an informative place to start.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 
******** 

Victor Serge

The Class Struggle in the Chinese Revolution

(1927/28)

---

From Revolutionary History, Vol. 5 No. 3.
Transcribed by Alun Watson.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.

---

Introduction from Revolutionary History

Victor Serge
Bolshevism and Asia
(January 1927)

Victor Serge
First Letter: The Class Struggle
in the Chinese Revolution
(April 1927)

Victor Serge
Second Letter: The Communist Task
(June/July 1927)

Victor Serge
Third Letter: The Strength of the
Agrarian Revolution – The Red Spears
(August 1927)

Victor Serge
Fourth Letter: The Outcome of an Experience
of Class Collaboration
(August 1927)

Victor Serge
Fifth Letter
(September/October 1927)

Paul Sizoff
Canton, December 1927
(Start of 1928)

---

Introduction from Revolutionary History

One of Serge’s responsibilities as a supporter of the Left Opposition was to sit on the sub-committee it set up to frame a policy on the Chinese Revolution (Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 216). Since their prime source of information was the Comintern press itself, they were not always very accurately informed (or at times even informed at all, such as when they were not even told of the opposition of the Chinese Communist Party to its subordination to the Guomindang), and it is surprising how clear their analysis of the situation turned out to be.

Although this account has been reprinted as a full-length book in French (Savelli, 1977), Italian (Samonà e Savelli, 1971) and German (Verlag Neue Kritik, 1975), and the fifth and last items in Documents sur le mouvement révolutionnaire en Chine (part 2, Cahiers du CERMTRI, no. 55, December 1989), this is its first appearance in English. Apart from the last piece on Canton, which appeared over the pseudonym of ‘Paul Sizoff’ in La Lutte de Classes (no. 1, February-March 1928; cf. Memoirs, p. 239), they originally came out over Serge’s name in Clarté magazine, the first, Le Bolchevisme dans l’Asie, as a separate article (new series, no. 7, 15 March 1927), and the rest as five letters in a collection entitled La Lutte des classes dans la révolution chinoise (Clarté, nos. 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14, May-October 1927). The editors of Clarté since it resumed publication in June 1926 were sympathetic to the ideas of the Left Opposition, for amongst them were the future French Trotskyist leaders Pierre Naville and Gérard Rosenthal, who had been introduced to Trotsky by Serge at the tenth anniversary celebrations of the Russian Revolution. The magazine changed its name to La Lutte de Classes in the spring of 1928. The publication of these articles may have been the final cause of Serge’s arrest, though as he points out, this would have happened in the long run anyway (Memoirs, pp238-40).
As the ‘select bibliography’ appended to the 1984 Writers and Readers edition of Serge’s Memoirs reminds us, the text we print below was planned to appear some years ago. The original project to translate and annotate Serge’s writings on China was begun by Greg Benton, but pressure of work and the uncertain state of left-wing publishing at the time obliged him to relinquish his task when he had drafted out three of the chapters. Al Richardson had independently worked on two other chapters when Dr Benton was kind enough to hand over the texts of all the French originals and his own preliminary translations. The whole was then finished off and annotated by Al Richardson and checked against the original French by Harry Ratner, Ian Birchall and Greg Benton, who also helped with the footnotes, which as a result are far richer in our version than the simple reproduction of Serge’s own notes appearing in the modern French, German and Italian reprints. Except in the very few cases where Chinese names are so familiar in their previous Wade-Giles forms that changing them would only have added to the confusion of the reader, all proper names have been given in the modern Pinyin mode of transliteration (a brief table showing the differences can be found in Revolutionary History, Volume 2, no. 2, Spring 1990, p. 1). Again to avoid confusion, all quotations from the Marxist classics or from Stalin and Mao have been reproduced in the wording of the familiar Russian or Chinese-produced English versions.
Whilst the main thrust of Serge’s analysis has held up remarkably well over the years, not all of his opinions on these events have received confirmation from the further development of our knowledge. For example, his favourable verdict on Mao Zedong (repeated in his Memoirs, p. 220), whom he discusses as if this Chinese Socialist Revolutionary had Bolshevik politics, has not been endorsed by the development of the state Mao set up. Trotsky’s own views on these events can be followed in Leon Trotsky on China (New York 1976), and some of the opinions of the other Russian leaders can be consulted in the appendices to the New Park edition of Problems of the Chinese Revolution (London 1969) or in Pierre Broué’s La Question chinoise dans l’Internationale communiste (Paris 1965). For the overall historical background, the first edition of Harold Isaacs’ The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (London 1938) is still required reading, and Workers News has performed an invaluable service by reprinting Max Shachtman’s original preface to the Problems of the Chinese Revolution in its supplement for May-June 1992 (no. 38). Subscribers to Revolutionary History should also refer to the collection we brought together in Volume 2, no. 4 (Spring 1990). For first-hand reminiscences, Wang Fanxi’s Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary should be consulted in its second edition (New York 1991), whilst Peng Shuzhi’s L’Envol du communisme en chine as yet only exists in a French version edited by Claude Cadart and Cheng Yinxiang (Paris 1983). Greg Benton’s history of the Chinese Trotskyists is promised to appear later this year.

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***Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Great American West Night Ghost Dance- Magical Realism 101

 

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night -When Be-Bop Bopped In The Doo Wop Night-The Classics Til Then

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Sure I have plenty to say about early rock ‘n’ roll, now called the classic rock period in the musicology hall of fame. And within that say I have spent a little time, not enough, considering its effect on us on the doo-wop branch of the genre. Part of the reason, obviously, is that back in those mid-1950s jail-breakout days I did not (and I do not believe that any other eleven and twelve-year olds did either), distinguish between let’s say rockabilly-back-beat-drive rock, black-based rock centered on a heavy rhythm and blues backdrop, and the almost instrument-less (or maybe a soft piano or guitar backdrop) group harmonics that drove doo-wop. All I knew was that it was not my parents’ music, not close, and that they got nervous, very nervous, anytime it was played out loud in their presence. Fortunately, some sainted, sanctified, techno-guru developed the iPod of that primitive era, the battery-driven transistor radio. No big deal, technology-wise by today’s standards, but get this you could place it near your ear and have your own private out loud without parental scuffling in the background. Yes, sainted, sanctified techno-guru. No question.

What doo-wop did though down in our old-time working-class housing projects neighborhood, and again it was not so much by revelation as by trial and error, is allow us to be in tune with the music of our generation without having to spend a lot of money on instruments or a studio or anything like that. Where the hell would we have gotten the dough for such things when papas were out of work, or were one step away, and there was “max daddy” trouble just keeping the wolves from the door. (Worse, worse when papas could not take it anymore and just split, long-gone daddy split with or without some barroom frill.)

Sure, some kids, some kids like my corner boy elementary school boyhood friend Billy, William James Bradley, were crazy to put together cover bands with electric guitars (rented occasionally), and dreams. Or maybe go wild with a school piano a la Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, or Fats Domino but those were maniac aficionados. Even Billy though, when the deal went down, especially after hearing Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers was mad to do the doo-wop and make his fame and fortune.

The cover art on a doo wop compilation I once reviewed made that poor boy and girl point beautifully. The cover showed a group of young black kids, black guys, who looked like they were doing their doo wop on some big city street corner. And that made sense reflecting the New York City-derived birth of doo-wop and that the majority of doo-wop groups that we heard on the AM transistor sister radio were black. But the city, the poor sections of the city, white or black, was not the only place where moneyless guys and gals were harmonizing, hoping, hoping maybe beyond hope, to be discovered and make more than just a 1950s musical jail-breakout of their lives. Moreover, this cover art I speak of also showed, and showed vividly, what a lot of us guys were trying to do-impress girls (and maybe visa-a-versa for girl doo-woppers but they can tell their own stories).

Yes, truth to tell, it was about impressing girls that drove many of us, Billy included, Christ maybe Billy most of all, to mix and match harmonies. And you know you did too (except remember girls just switch around what I just said). Yah, four or five guys just hanging around the back door of the old South Adamsville Elementary School on hot summer nights, nothing better to do, no dough to do things, maybe a little feisty because of that, and started up a few tunes. Billy, who actually did have some vocal musical talent, usually sang lead, and the rest of us, well, doo-wopped. We knew nothing of keys and pauses, of time, notes, or reading music we just improvised. (And I kept my changing to a teen-ager, slightly off-key voice on the low, on the very low.)

Whether we did it well or poorly, guess what, as the hot sun day turned into humid night, and the old sun went down just over the hills, first a couple of girls, then a couple more, and then a whole bevy (nice word, right?) of them came and got kind of swoony and moony. And swoony and moony was just fine. And we all innocent, innocent dream, innocent when we dreamed, make our virginal moves. But, mainly, we doo-wopped in the be-bop mid-1950s night. And a few of the songs from that previously mentioned in that reviewed CD compilation could be heard in that airless night. The stick outs: Deserie, The Charts; Baby Blue, The Echoes; Till Then, The Classics; Tonight (Could Be The Night), The Velvets.

Yah, bop the doo wop

 

In Honor Of The Centennial Of The Birth Of Bernard Malamud-  Slim Jenkins’ Dream- Take Two

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

…He, Slim Jenkins, now twenty years old, long, tall, wiry rather than bulkily built like many a slugger, did not know when he had picked up his grandmother’s household broom, had taken it outside and ball-less  begun to swing that instrument into the fierce Indiana farmland winds. Probably when he was five and had seen the Cosgrove Hens, the farm team for the Chicago Cubs, come to town and whip, severely whip an All-Star team of his Evansville neighbors and swore, swore as much as a five- year old could that he would someday avenge that humiliating defeat if he had to do it single-handedly. And so he had started with all the fierce determination of a five year old to do it right with what was at hand. (Little did he know as poor as they were that Grandma had many a fierce ruining fight with Grandpa over Slim’s ruining a perfectly good broom. And maybe that is where Slim got his own fierceness from) Yes, he swung that broom, that faux Louisville Slugger of his dreams. That was what he called the handle from the first swings, no fiery superstition nicknames like Wonderboy or the Bomb just Louisville Slugger as expected from a no-nonsense, no frills world, for all it was worth. At first, if anybody had been looking and they were not out in the toiling farmlands of summer too busy to look up for boyish inspections,   slapdash as one would expect from an ageless farm boy. Slim had picked up that slap-dashery from watching the farm hands carrying on the merciless fall harvest where every blade was whacked to perdition, no prisoners taken.

Later, later Slim had seen balls, not baseballs, Grandpa’s homemade pellets thrown at high speed at him to be swished at by a real bat. (Grandma had “won” that battle and Grandpa sent to Sear& Roebuck for a bat for Slim after he noticed that he had good moves at the bat for his age). Later still, later after he had taken his, maybe ten thousandth swing, when he was seven, just turn seven that summer of his decision he would hoist that bat to his shoulders from the left side for he believed, fervently believed that his life entailed an ability to hit baseballs from both sides (left or right, right or left depending on his mood and the day) and make a memory of where the ball would land in Wrigley Field. Yes by then he had the bug, the dirt farmer’s son and grandson bug to get that hell out of dirt-rich Indiana and make himself the king of diamonds just like the Babe, just like Joe, just like the Kid.

And so Slim whiled away his childhood, becoming strong, farm boy harvest strong, practicing every day after school (and on some school hooky days all day fro as good as he was at the diamond he resisted “book learning with that same fierceness) and always wondering where that damn ball would land in Wrigley Field, although he had never seen the field. All he knew, after catching up with the National League standings printed weekly in the Evansville Gazette, was that they needed help and that he was destined to be the savior of the club and bring back the gold ring that every Hoosier around would be willing to pay big money just to peek at, although he had determined not change for that privilege. At about twelve he began to get picked for pick-up games over in Emmetsville by the bigger boys who saw the power of his wrists, the steadiness of his eyes and his ability to hit their fast balls and change-ups. (A “scout” for the Cosgrove Hens had even made a small note in his notebook to watch out for him as he came up.)   

In the fall of his sixteenth year, after leaving school the previous spring (he had had enough of “book-learning” school he had called it too young to be wise to school of life thoughts) Slim headed to Indianapolis to find a job in a factory, the Sims Steel Plating plant, to support himself and to get himself ready to try-out off for the Indianapolis Wolves, the big step farm team for the Cubs. And so his new life started as Slim proved very competent at his place of work welding everything in sight and mixing it up with other guys at night in the pick-up games that each factory sponsored as part of an informal industrial league among the working stiffs of the town. He also began to tentatively hang around the barrooms after the games to toss down a few with the boys and to ogle the girls who hung out their looking for prospects. Slim could never quite figure whether it was marriage prospects or baseball prospects they were looking for as he was too shy and backward to ask.

It was in that industrial league that a scout for the Cubs, maybe working off a note from that Cosgrove scout it was never clear, noticed Slim’s power, his ability to lay off bad pitches and to drop balls into spots when nobody could caught them. One day the scout showed up at Slim’s workplace with an offer for him to go to Florida that following spring and try-out with the Cubs. Slim was as happy as he had been since he first started swinging old grandma’s broom (now deceased). One night in early February just before he headed south for his try-out in order to celebrate his good luck Slim’s factory mates and a couple of others went to Jimmy Slatton’s Lounge over on Fourth Street for a party.

It was there that he met Maggie Mason, Maggie of his dreams, Maggie of his now awakening sexual desires. Maggie, petite, pretty if not beautiful, and a rabid baseball fan hung out at Jimmy’s because that is where the baseball players were. Maggie had a reputation (earned as it turned out) of “putting out” for the next best thing in baseball that was being touted. Slim was unaware of that hard fact as he was unaware that night that Maggie had drawn a bee-line to toward him once she entered the lounge. Slim was easy pickings, succumbed to her without a fight really and a couple of days later after they emerged from the Daisy Day Motel Inn Slim gathered himself to get ready to head south but his mind was not on baseball, not at all. Yes, Maggie of his…