Mumia: Urgent action needed for lifesaving medical treatment

Mumia: Urgent action needed for lifesaving  medical treatment Dear Friends: Please see email below from Prison Radio.  Mumia is still being denied life-saving health care by prison authorities, and his situation is increasingly grave.  Action is needed to keep up the pressure to save Mumia’s life.  Please see Prison Radio’s Action Guide below for ways you can help.  Share with friends and urge people in your networks to support. Watch the video appeal below here. PAYDAY

Mumia Abu Jamal

We are in court demanding immediate lifesaving medical treatment for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and we are going to win. Yesterday, Mumia's lawyers Bret Grote, Legal Director of the Abolitionist Law Center, and co-counsel Robert Boyle filed a preliminary injunction in Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes with Judge Robert Mariani of the Middle District Federal U.S. Court (see link below). The injunction seeks a federal court order to ensure that prison medical staff provide immediate lifesaving treatment to Mumia. Hear from Emory Douglas on how you can fight for Mumia. The prison administration is simply denying Mumia all treatment. Let me be clear: Mumia is weak, his lower extremities still swollen, his skin still severely compromised and raw, and his hepatitis C active and damaging his organs. Given the severity of Mumia's organ failure (his skin) and indications of additional potential organ damage, our legal action states that withholding treatment is causing immediate and irreparable harm. Prison officials have refused to conduct additional viral load blood panels, reveal or conduct additional organ damage assessments, and they are refusing to prescribe simple medications to reduce Mumia's painful and dangerous skin eruptions.   And in an effort to further delay treatment, attorneys for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections have filed briefs opposing the class action lawsuit for hepatitis C treatment filed in June. We expect they will oppose our injunction filed yesterday as well. Treatment for hep C has a 95% cure rate. By withholding medication, the DOC would like to see this become a death sentence.  In addition to the hepatitis C antiviral cure, we are demanding that prison medical personnel re-proscribe Protopic ointment and the mineral supplement  Zinc (220 mlligrams per day) as recommended by his physicians to provide immediate relief to Mumia's skin rashes- which have become open wounds. As Mumia's legal team fights tirelessly for Mumia's life, we more than ever need your assistance. We need to raise $5,317 in the next 5 days to make it half-way to our goal for this stage of Mumia's legal and political campaign.  We are amplifying the call for: 1. Immediate treatment of Hep C with the latest Anti-viral drugs that have a 95% cure rate. 2. Treatment of Mumia's skin condition by re-proscribing protopic cream and zinc supplements. 3. In-person medical exams by Mumia's independent physicians. Help us make these demands reality by giving to Mumia's medical and legal fund now, and by calling the numbers listed in our Action Guide. Every action and every gift makes a difference. bit.ly/fight4mumia See the preliminary injunction filed yesterday here. Facebook Twitter Website You can also give to Mumia's fund through our website, Paypal, or check: PO Box 411074 | San Francisco, CA 94141 Luchando por la justicia y la libertad, Noelle Hanrahan Director To give by check:  PO Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141 Stock or legacy gifts: Noelle Hanrahan (415) 706 - 5222

Okay, Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails

Okay, Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Every hobo, tramp, and bum and there are social distinctions between each cohort recognized among themselves, and subject to fierce dispute including some faux fists, if not quite so definitely by rump sociologists who lump them all together but that is a story for another day has seen starlight on the rails. I probably would have also not drawn the distinctions in my youth, before I hit the hitchhike road heading west at one time in search of the blue-pink great American west out there somewhere and had on one more than one occasion along with the late Peter Paul Markin who led the way among the North Adamsville corner boys on that trail been forced to stop along a railroad trestle “jungle camp,” under a cardboard city bridge, or out in the arroyos if you got far enough west.

The hobos of the “jungle” were princes among men (there was no room for women in such a male-dominated society, not along the jungle although at the missions and Sallys, Salvation Army Harbor-lights, that might be a different story) as long as you did not ask too many damn questions. Shared olio stews, cigarettes, cheap rotgut wine, Thunderbird or Ripple whichever was cheapest after crapping the day’s collective pennies together. Later when my “wanting habits” built up from the edges of that sullen youth got the better of me and my addictions placed me out in that same “jungle” for keeps for a while that distinction got re-enforced.  

But hobo, bum or tramp each had found him or herself (mainly hims though like I said out on the “jungle” roads) flat up against some railroad siding at midnight having exhausted every civilized way to spent the night. Having let their, our, collective wanting habits get the best of them, us. Maybe penniless, maybe thrown out of some flophouse in arrears and found that nobody bothers, or did bother you out along the steel rails when the train lost its luster to the automobile and plane and rusted and abandoned provided safe haven from the vagaries of civilization. So has seen the stars out where the spots are darkest and the brilliance of the sparkle makes one think of heaven for those so inclined, think of the void for the heathen among them. Has dreamed penitent dreams of shelter against life’s storms, had dreamed while living for the moment trying to get washed clean after the failure of the new dispensation to do the job (hell, what did they/he think just because the drugs or alcohol flowed freely once, just because the fixer man fixed, fixed fine, that that was the Garden of Eden, that was Nirvana, hell, those ancient forebears all after they were expelled saw that same starlight as they/he did). 

Maybe this will explain it better. An old man, or at least he has the marks of old age, although among the iterant travelling peoples, the hoboes, tramps, and bum, who have weathered many of life’s storms bottle or needle in hand, panhandled a million quarters now lost, old age, or their marks wear a soul down early, white beard, unkempt, longish hair, also unkempt, a river of lines in his face, deep crow’s feet setting off his vacant eyes, a second-hand soiled hat atop his head, a third-hand miner’s jacket clipped off some other lonesome traveler, shredded at the cuffs chino pants of indeterminate hand, and busted up shoes, soles worn, heels at forty-five degree angles from crooked walks on crooked miles and game legs is getting ready to unroll his bedroll, ground cloth a tablecloth stolen from Jimmy Jack’s Diner’s somewhere, a blanket stolen from a Sally Harbor Light house in salad days, rolled newspapers now for a mattress for the hundredth, hundredth time against the edge of the railroad trestle just outside Gallup, New Mexico. Do not ask him, if you have the nerve to approach him, and that is an iffy proposition just ask a guy going under the moniker of Denver Shorty how he got that deep scar across his face, where he is going or where he has come from because just that moment, having scratched a few coins in the town together for a jug of Thunderbird he is ready to sleep his sleep against the cold-hearted steel of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks just ten yards from where he stands.      

And this night, this starlit brown, about eight colors of brown,   desert night he hopes that he will not dream, not dream of that Phoebe Snow whom he left behind in Toledo when he had no beard, no longish unkempt hair, and no rivers of lines on his misbegotten face. Not dream as he always did about whatever madness made him run from all the things he had created, all the things that drove him west like a million other guys who needed to put space between himself and civilization. Dream too about the days when he could ride the rails in the first-class   cars, and about the lure of the rails once he got unhinged from civilization. About how the train pace had been chastised by fast cars and faster planes when a the speed of a train fitted a man’s movements, about the days when they first built the transcontinental, this line that he was about to lie his head down beside, about the million Chinks, Hunkies, Russkies, Hibernians, hell, Micks, Dagos who sweated to drive the steel in unforgiving ground, many who laid down their heads down to their final rest along these roads, and later guys he knew on he knew on the endless road like Butte Bobby, Silver Jones, Ding-dong Kelly, who did not wake up the next morning.

As he settled in to sleep the wine’s effect settling down too he noticed the bright half- moon out that night reflecting off the trestle, and the arroyos edges, and thought about what a guy, an old wizard like himself told him about the rails one time when he was laid up Salt Lake City, in the days when he tried to sober up. The guy, a guy who had music in his soul or something said to him that it was the starlight on the rails that had driven him, rumble, stumble, tumble him to keep on the road, to keep moving away from himself, to forget who he was. And here he was on a starlit night listening down the line for the rumble of the freight that would come passing by before the night was over. But as he shut his eyes, he began to dream again of Phoebe Snow, always of Phoebe Snow.         

  

But not everybody has the ability to sing to those starlit heavens (or to the void if that is what chances to happen as the universe expands quicker than we can think) about the hard night of starlight on the rails and that is where Rosalie Sorrels, a woman of the American West out in the Idahos, out where, as is said in the introduction to the song by the same name ripping some wisdom from literary man Thomas Wolfe who knew from whence he spoke, the states are square (and at one time the people, travelling west people and so inured to hardship, played it square, or else), sings old crusty Utah Phillips’ song to those hobo, tramp, bum heavens. Did it while old Utah was alive to teach the song (and the story behind the song) to her and later after he passed on in a singular tribute album to his life’s work as singer/songwriter/story-teller/ troubadour.         

Now, for a fact, I do not know if Rosalie in her time, her early struggling time when she was trying to make a living singing and telling Western childhood stories had ever along with her brood of kids been reduced by circumstances to wind up against that endless steel highway but I do know that she had her share of hard times. Know that through her friendship with Utah she wound up bus-ridden to Saratoga Springs up in the un-squared state of New York where she performed and got taken under the wing of Lena from the legendary Café Lena during some trying times. And so she flourished, flourished as well as any folk-singer could once the folk minute burst it bubble and places like Café Lena, Club Passim (formerly Club 47), a few places in the Village in New York City and Frisco town became safe havens to flower and grow some songs, grow songs from the American folk songbooks and from her own expansive political commentator songbook. And some covers too as her rendition of Starlight on the Rails attests to as she worked her way across the continent. Worked her way to a big sold out night at Saunders Theater at Harvard too when she called the road quits a decade or so ago. Sang some nice stuff speaking about the west, about the Brazos, about the great Utah desert which formed Utah a little, formed him like his old friend Ammon Hennessey, the old saint Catholic Worker brother who sobered some guys up, made them take some pledges, made them get off the railroad steel road. Sobered me up to, got me off that railroad track too, but damn if I didn’t see that starlight too. So listen up, okay.           

Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart-With Blues Queen Janis Joplin In Mind

Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart-With Blues Queen Janis Joplin In Mind  

 

It was never stated in so many words by anybody Sam Lowell knew, never given some academic jargon mumbo-jumbo like it was when the sociologist, social historians and cultural anthropologists got their hands on the work long after the high tide of the 1960s had ebbed, had turned into a remnant rear-guard action by the ragged stragglers who would just not let go but they had lived under a certain sign, a certain way to navigate the world and seek out kindred. Perhaps being young and carefree Sam’s “youth nation” could not articulate it that that way, maybe too afraid to speak of it out loud fearing to unleash some demons that they could not control. (Let’s call the phenomenon “youth nation” a term that today’s youth nation generation can relate to better since the advent of the great social media blast has elements of that older camaraderie rather than the more restrictive “hippie” or counter-culture generation since when the deal went down the numbers of hippies, the hip, did not have enough of a critical mass to keep everything going against the counter-offensive by those who were in charge yet many, many more of the young took snippets of what was offered, while not testing the limits of bourgeois society [Sam’s words for what bothering him at the time]).

Those, like Sam who had initially gotten caught up in the doings (dope, politics, life-styles, a new ethos) by the late Peter Paul Markin, one of the corner boys from around Jimmy Jack’s Diner in growing up town Carver and an early Janis Joplin fan having seen her out in Monterrey on one of his hitchhiking trips to Big Sur when that place mattered in the youth nation configuration and who despite his many contradictions had a preternatural bead on what was coming down, who had been washed clean by the fresh new breeze that came through the country in the early 1960s lived under the sign of “live fast, die young and make a good run at it.” Some later cynics, or maybe the too candid made the third part “and make a good corpse” but that was when all hope that the “newer world” was upon us had faded like a tissue in the wind. A time too when the overwrought pile up of corpses from overdoses, crashed cars, suicides, and just plain “from hunger” wanting habits like Markin’s being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the deal went down, went down badly made that part of the mantra more explicable.

Nobody said it all in so many word, although Sam and the surviving corner boys hinted at that very idea, that living fast idea, one night after the definite word had come up from down in Sonora in late 1976 that Markin had cashed his check when they gathered at Jimmy Jack’s to mull things over and Frankie Riley, who had called Markin “the Scribe”in the old days had said some guys are “dead men on leave” and nobody contradicted him. But mostly nobody could articulate it that that way, maybe too afraid to speak of it out loud fearing to unleash some demons that could not be controlled lived under that certain sign in sullen wonder. To be old, old being over thirty to youthful twenty something eyes who saw the getting ahead career, wife and family in some leafy suburb drinking elegant wines writing on the wall, reflecting the phrase of the time taking direct aim at parents “don’t trust anybody over thirty,” meant “square,” a residue expression for the tail end of the “beat” generation which whether Sam and the guys knew it or not was their launching pad as they  came of age in that 1960s red scare Cold War night. That was Markin’s time really, the time of sensing the breeze not the mud of the breeze itself.  Meant too, meant as a signal far greater than Markin’s reach that if one did not imbibe in whatever one desired by the time they did get to thirty it would be too late, way too late.     

So Sam, Markin, Frankie, all the guys who stayed around long enough who had not been inducted into the service or to have married their high school sweethearts pursued their  outrageous appetites moved from the traditional working class neighborhood fashion dress statement , winter flannel /summer plaid shirt, chinos, black winter or summer, loafers or engineer boots (saved for rumbles, or threats of rumbles when turf was an issue way before dope smooth such silliness out and hair (boys’ regular Lenny the barber called it without  a whiff of irony) and liquor addictions (cheap rotgut wines, smoother Southern Comfort once the cheap wines lost allure, low-shelf whiskeys when some town wino would buy for underage them) to the new ones of the era (new at least to young mostly white eyes not familiar with old-time Billie Holiday New York café jazz needles and “beat” Village high tea time) with the emerging hip “drugstore” of every imaginable medication to salve the soul. Tried every kind of living arrangement as long as it drifted toward the communal (even on church-friendly floors and bedraggled Volkwagen bus campsites) and every kind of love, including the love that could not speak its name (this well before GLBTQ times). Tried every way to take dead aim at old bourgeois society and turn it upside down. Wanted to, desperately wanted to, listen to new music that reflected the new drug-induced karma that matched the chemicals spinning in their brains. No more rock and roll music, or any music, from Bobby Vee/Rydell/Darin, Fabian, Brenda Lee, Leslie Gore, Patsy Cline, that our parents might like, might even tolerate. Everything had be acid- etched.          

Sam had pegged it exactly right one night not long ago when he and some of the old gang who went through the 1960s experience were preparing for a Carver High class reunion when he told the gathering that “we sought to ‘live free,’ to break from convention and we expected out musical heroes (actually all of our heroes which in retrospect seemed of a piece with the outrageous appetites of the time) to partake of our newly established ethos, to lead the way. (That bit of wisdom despite the fact, to his occasional regret whenever he thought about what he could have done to “save” Markin,    he had eased out of the “hippie” life-style in the early 1970s and snuck back into law school and that career track while Markin had held out to his visions for much longer.) They had expected their heroes like their slightly older brothers and sisters who went wild over brooding Marlon Brando, sulky James Dean, and moody Elvis to live high off the edge. And so they did, so anyway did what became the holy trinity come concert night, come party time, Jim (Morrison), Jimi (Hendricks), and Janis (Joplin). They lived hard, lived out there on the edge subject to their own doubts, subject like the rest of us to those rat ass things that formed our childhoods and would not let go and they needed release just like us. So Jim twirled the whirling dervish shamanic dance, Jimi fired up his grinding guitar and Janis, little Janis with the big raspy voice sang like some old-time barrelhouse blues mama reincarnate. Sang like the ghost of Big Mama Thornton had her back, like Bessie Smith was holding her place in the devil-is-going-to-get you blues pantheon. Gave us down-hearted blues to fill the heavens, gave us, well, gave us whatever she had to give with every little beat of her heart. Yeah, and they, she lived fast, and died, died way too young not matter what our ethos stated. Markin would have understood that, understood it in aces.      

From The "HistoMat" Blog- On Ralph Milibrand

Click on the headline to link to a HistoMat blog entry on the British historian (and father current Labor party leaders)Ralph Milbrand.

Markin comment:

In the old days (the early 1970s) when The New Left Review (out of Britain) was closer to the cutting edge of world left-wing politics than its current more academic and ethereal presence I religiously read the journal, and always looked forward to anything Ralph Milibrand had to write in its pages.

A Frank Jackman disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out was the freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. Those jackboot theories, mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power, were theories that I earnestly adhered to sometimes more than one at the same time. Nevertheless by our exclusionism we were replicating the worst habits of the old Old Left (those who came of political age and fought the great class battles of the 1930s when kept their generation above water for a long time but which now despite the importance of studying have run out of steam). That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

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 various blogs and other networking media. 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 on. 

The Latest From The British Leftist Blog-Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

 
Click below to link to the Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism blog  

http://histomatist.blogspot.com/
 

Markin comment:

While from the tenor of the articles, leftist authors featured, and other items promoted it is not clear to me that this British-centered blog is faithful to any sense of historical materialism that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky would recognize I am always more than willing to "steal" material from the site. Or investigate leads provided there for material of interest to the radical public-whatever that seemingly dwindling public may be these days.

Since 2014 the site of necessity had taken to publicizing more activist events particularly around the struggle to defend the Palestinian people in Gaza against the Zionist onslaught in the summer. That is to be commended. However, in the main, this site continues to promote the endless conferences on socialism, Marxism, and Trotskyism that apparently are catnip to those on the left in Britain all the while touting the latest mythical "left" labor leader who is willing to speak anywhere to the left of the Milibrands. I continue to stand willingly with the original comment above about "stealing" material from the site though.      

No question since the demise of the Soviet Union as a flawed but vital counter-weight to world imperialism and the rise of the basically one-superpower American world theories and politics based on socialism, communism, hell, even left radicalism as poles of attraction except in spots (like South Africa or Greece) to the working and oppressed masses of the world has taken a serious hit. Have become seen something like “utopian” schemes by pro-labor leftist militants in the world despite the desperate situations today in many parts of the world, including America and Great Britain, which cry out to high heaven for socialist solutions.

As the weight of that demise has set in there has been a corresponding demise in the level of programmatic and theoretical understandings by those who still espouse the good old cause. The events and works by socialist commentators emphasized by this Histomat blog amply demonstrates the proposition that in the post- Soviet period (if not before) there has been a dramatic tendency to throw out all the experiences since the Russian Revolution of 1917 and try to begin anew as if that event never occurred. Unfortunately that means generally to go back to pre-World War I theories of revolutionary organization (and in some cases to forgo the necessity of revolution as if capitalism were the permanent condition of humankind). The main organizational form to face the scrap heap is Lenin’s theory, a theory many times honored more in the breech than in the observance, of the “vanguard party” of conscious revolutionary intellectuals and advanced workers working as full-time professionals revolutionaries.           

The clearest example of this is the revival of certain pre-World War I theorists like the “Pope of Marxism,” Karl Kautsky, although interestingly not back to Marx and Engels of the post-1848 period. A main organization concept of Kautsky’s German Social-Democratic of which he was a leading theorist was the “party of the whole class,” a concept which denied, or muted the differences in the working class movement in the interest of numbers (numbers of votes in parliamentary elections really) that would somehow be worked out in the course of the revolution. Well life itself, with many, many examples, has shown how worthless that type of organization was when the deal went down. The date August 4^th 1914 when the German Social-Democrats piled onto the Kaiser’s bandwagon by voting for his war budget should be etched in the brain of every serious leftist militant. There are, granted, many new concepts necessary in the 21^st century to reach the masses in order to revive the socialist message with the new technology, the new urgency, and the new allies necessary to fight for socialism but the threadbare theory of the “party of the whole class” is not one of them.        

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

One of the great sins of Stalinism (which the latter-day Social-Democrats of various stripes have honed to a fine art as well) was to silence both internal dissent inside the party and try like hell to keep other tendencies silent outside the party. Instead of letting various positions and programs be fought out to see who had something to add to the revolutionary arsenal the “word” came down (sometimes changing overnight) and that was that. It looks to be from this great distance that the very much still Stalinized Greece Communist Party is saddled with some of those old-time attributes when there should be in the Greek situation a bubbling up of discussion and clash of programs. Else the capitalists will once again prevail in a situation where they should be sent to the dustbin of history as Leon Trotsky once said.   

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 various blogs and other networking media. 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 on. 

In Boston-On Labor Day, Join the "Invisible No More" Rally & March! The Fight for $15 Goes On!

REMINDER: This Labor Day, join hundreds of janitors, fast-food workers, homecare workers, adjunct professors, security officers along with community supporters, elected officials and labor leaders as we take the streets once again. The Fight for $15 goes on -- we are #InvisibleNoMore! On Labor Day, Join the "Invisible No More" Rally & March! The Fight for $15 Goes On! Monday, September 7th 11:00 AM gathering; Noon rally begins; March to follow @ Parkman Bandstand, Boston Common,  Tremont St, Boston, MA 02108 Take the MBTA to Boylston Street or Park Street stations! Check out the Facebook event for more information and to RSVP! Please note:   President Barack Obama is scheduled to address the annual Greater Boston Labor Council breakfast on Monday morning. As a result, parking and road access may be moderately impacted. Use of public transportation is recommended.   Rally and March speakers include: Roxana Rivera, Vice President 32BJ SEIU; Darius Cephas, McDonald's worker, National Organizing Committee of Fast Food Workers; Rev. James Flavin, Episcopal Vicar of the Central Region in the Archdiocese of Boston; State Representative Steve Ultrino, Malden; Councilor Nadeem A. Mazen, Cambridge City Council; Janitors, Airport Workers, Homecare Workers, Fast-food Workers. Save the date!  Rally to demand $15/hour, respect, and dignity for workers in Massachusetts! Tuesday, October 13th, 10:00AM @ Massachusetts State House Contact teenamarie@massjwj.net and visit massjwj.net for more info. Proposed legislation includes $15/hour wages for employees of Large Retail and Fast Food; fair scheduling; raising the tipped minimum wage; raising wages for state and contracted employees; upholding rights for pregnant workers; and an Act to Strengthen the Massachusetts Home Care program.

In The Twilight Of The Folk Minute- Peter Seeger And Arlo Guthrie In Concert In The Late 1980s

In The Twilight Of The Folk Minute- Peter Seeger And Arlo Guthrie In Concert In The Late 1980s

“Jesus, they charged me fourteen dollars each for these tickets to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie and I got them by coming over here to the box office on my lunch hour instead of being gouged by Tick-Pik for three extra bucks apiece for god knows what purpose since it is not like this concert thing was a “hot ticket” like the Stones or Springsteen. Remember Laura about ten or fifteen years ago when we saw Pete for five bucks each at the Café Nana over in Harvard Square.” (Laura nodded her head in agreement.) “That was when Hank, the owner, used to bill all the big folk acts for cheap because the folk minute was over and they were “from hunger” and didn’t want to work for the “basket” like when they were kids on the way up so would jump at the opportunity to play and I guess he treated them okay from what Dave Von Ronk said one night when he was featured there. Those were the days when just because it was the Square you could still draw a crowd of people like us who used to “cruise” the folk minute scene in to hear those guys play.” (Laura laughed at that mention of “cruise” since it a new term not used back in the day when it was just hanging out they were doing.)

“Oh yeah, and the price of an expresso coffee each for two people and I think maybe we shared a piece of carrot cake was maybe another three bucks. You had to have something in front of you to keep your seat or unless it was a slow night Hank would scowl at you and make you think that you had done something criminal by taking the seat of a customer who would buy some wine and maybe a light meal which they served then. Beside the carrot cake was good, I think his wife, Stella, made it from scratch and Laura would eat a fork-full and I would have the rest as you can tell from my slightly expanded form.” (Laura laughed the knowing laugh of too many latter carrot cakes after he stopped jogging a few years back when his knees started giving out from the pounding he took over on the asphalt at Fresh Pond where he used to run.) “We had been on a cheap date since I was still in law school over at New England, maybe second year so it was probably 1972 (Laura corrected him saying 1973), a cheap date when I didn’t have much cash and at that time, just at the cusp of the women’s liberation movement taking wider hold, a guy was still mostly expected to pay. No “Dutch treat,” no Laura Dutch treat expected anyway especially on a first or second date, and definitely not that one when I had been intrigued by you early on and wanted to continue to see you.” (Laura’s face reddened and then she put on a bright smile).

“Around that same time, that same Spring of 1973, Arlo gave a free concert out on Concord Commons, remember” said Sam Lowell to his date Laura Peters and the couple they were standing in line with, Patrick Darling and Julia James, in front of Symphony Hall in Boston waiting for the doors to open for the Pete-Seeger-Arlo Guthrie concert that evening.

Laura once Sam came off his soap-box as she always called it, especially when he was in a “folk minute” frame of mind and wanted to impress everybody within hearing distance of his arcane knowledge of lots of folk history including remembering the wrong dates and usually what they ate, or didn’t eat, but spot on when it came to the acts and their play lists for the evening then rather sheepishly, for her, nodded that she remembered the Café Nana event since she had been entirely willing, knowing that Sam was in law school and broke and she had already gotten a job as a CPA at John Hancock and was making money, to go “Dutch treat” that night but Sam had insisted he pay and she did not press the issue since she too had been intrigued by him.  That sheepish part was because she recalled that back then, back before she got involved with the edges of the women’s liberation movement and tried to change was perfectly willing to let the guy pay, expected him to pay even if he was from hunger. So Sam was not that far off but she never liked to let him play that “from hunger” thing too strongly and so she had her say. Yeah, she thought to herself that was the way her father had done it with her mother and her mother had passed on that wisdom to her.

Laura had failed to mention, failed to mention under the circumstances that they were standing in a public place with friend who did not need to know Sam “forgot” that she had not gone with him to see Arlo on the Commons since Sam had taken his ex-wife, Josie David, to that concert at a time when Josie and Sam were trying to reconcile or get divorced but she did not want to bring that up although Julia had looked in her direction when Sam mentioned that Commons concert since she and her date, some guy from Sam’s law school had gone along and had witnessed reason two hundred and twenty-seven why they eventually got divorced when Josie had badgered Sam about buying a house when he got his first job and would not let it go. With another year in school and bar exams in front of him she was thinking about that stuff. Yeah, so long Josie.  That tense moment passed with the men both oblivious.

This in any case would be the first time Pete and Arlo had appeared together since Newport a number of years back. This also the first time this foursome had seen either of them in a good number of years since Pete Seeger had gone to upstate New York and had been spending more time making the rivers and forests up there green again than performing and Arlo was nursing something out in Stockbridge. “Maybe, Alice,” Patrick said and everybody laughed at that inside joke. 

 

Sam continued along that line of his about “the back in the days” for a while, with the three who were still also something of folk aficionados well after the heyday of that music in what Sam always and endlessly called the “1960s folk minute” nodding their heads in agreement saying “things sure were cheaper then and people, folkies for sure, did their gigs for the love of it as much as for the money, maybe more so. Did it, what did the grizzled folk historian cum folksinger-songwriter Dave Van Ronk call it then, oh yeah, for the “basket,” for “from hunger” walking around money to keep the wolves from the doors. To piece off the landlord or roommate for another week or month. For a room, a small room usually giving the economics of coffeehouse ownership, to play out whatever saga drove them to places like the Village, Harvard Square, North Beach and their itch to make a niche in the booming folk world where everything seemed possible. Everything seemed possible if you had any kind of voice to the left of Dylan’s and Van Ronk’s own, could play three chords on a guitar, or a la Pete work a banjo, a mando, or some other stringed instrument, and write of love, sorrow, some dastardly death deed, or on some pressing issue of the day.

 

After being silent for a moment Sam got a smile on his face and said “On that three chord playing thing I remember Geoff Muldaur from the Kweskin Jug Band, a guy who knew the American folk songbook as well as anybody then, worked at learning it too, as did Kweskin himself, learned even that Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music stuff, all eighty some songs, or the ones customers would listen to, stuff which meant you had to be serious, saying that if you could play three chords you were sure to draw a crowd, a girl crowd around you, if you knew four or five that  meant you were a serious folkie and you could even get a date from among that crowd, and if you knew ten or twelve chord you could have whoever and whatever you wanted. I don’t know if that is true since I never got beyond the three chord thing but no question that was a way to attract women, especially at parties.” Laura, never one to leave something unsaid when Sam left her an opening said in reply “I didn’t even have to play three chords on a guitar, couldn’t then and I can’t now, although as Sam knows I play a mean kazoo, but all I had to do was start singing some Joan Baez or Judie Collins cover and with my long black hair ironing board straight like Joan’s I had all the boys come around and I will leave it to your imaginations about the whatever I wanted part.” They all laughed although Sam’s face reddened a bit at the thought of her crowded up with guys hanging over her although he had not known her back then in the folk minute since she had lived in Manhattan then and he had grown up and lived Carver about thirty miles south of Boston but had only met her later in the early 1970s when the Josie thing was going bad and she had brought smiles to his face when he needed somebody to do that.                      

 

Those reference got Julia thinking back the early 1960s when she and Sam went “Dutch treat” to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue. (Sam and Julia were thus by definition not on a heavy date, neither had been intrigued by the other but folk music was their bond and despite persistent Julia BU dorm roommate rumors what with Sam hanging around all the time had never been lovers). She mentioned that to Sam as they waited to see if he remembered and while he thought he remembered he was not sure. He asked Julie, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” Julie had replied yes and that she too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing like something out of the sea, or like the cry of the banshees.

 

Club Blue had been located in that same Harvard Square that Sam had mentioned earlier and along with the Café Nana, which was something of a hot spot once Dylan, Baez, Tom Rush and the members of the Kweskin band started hanging out there, and about five or six other coffeehouses all within a few blocks of each other (one down on Arrow Street was down in the sub-basement and Sam swore that Dylan must have written Subterranean Homesick Blues there). Coffeehouses then where you could, for a dollar or two, see Bob, Joan, Eric (Von Schmidt), Tom (Rush), Phil (Ochs) and lots of lean and hungry performers working for that “basket” Sam had mentioned earlier passed among the patrons and be glad, at least according to Van Ronk when Julia had asked him about the “take” during one intermission, to get twenty bucks for your efforts that night.

 

That was the night during that same intermission Dave also told her that while the folk breeze was driving things his way just then and people were hungry to hear anything that was not what he called “bubble gum” music like you heard on AM radio that had not been the case when he started out in the Village in the 1950s when he had worked “sweeping out” clubs for a couple of dollars. That sweeping out was not with a broom, no way, Dave had said with that sardonic wit of his that such work was beneath the “dignity” of a professional musician but the way folk singers were used to empty the house between shows. In the “beat”1950s with Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg, and their comrades (Dave’s word reflecting his left-wing attachments then) making everybody crazy for poetry, big be-bop poetry backed up by big be-bop jazz the coffeehouses played to that clientele and on weekends or in the summer people would be waiting in fairly long lines to get in. So what Dave (and Happy Traum and a couple of other singers that she could not remember he had mentioned) did was after the readings were done and people were still lingering over their expressos would be to get up on the makeshift stage and begin singing some old sea chanty, some obscure Child ballad (those ballads later a staple in the folk world because you could cover them as public domain items and frankly because they were usually long and filled up a short playlist if you were not feeling well or were pressed for something to perform), or some slavery day freedom song in that raspy, gravelly voice of his which would sent the customers out the door. And if they didn’t go then he was out the door. Tough times, tough times indeed.             

 

Coffeehouses too where for the price of a cup of coffee, maybe a pastry, shared, you could wallow in the fluff of the folk minute that swept America, maybe the world, and hear the music that was the leading edge then toward that new breeze that everybody that Julia and Sam knew was bound to come what with all the things going on in the world. Black civil rights, mainly down in the police state South, nuclear disarmament, the Pill to open up sexual possibilities previously too dangerous or forbidden, and music too, not just the folk music that he and she had been addicted to but something coming from England paying tribute to old-time blues with a rock upbeat that was now a standard part of the folk scene ever since they had “discovered” blues guys like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Bukka White, and Skip James. All the mix to turn the world upside down. All of which as well was grist to the mill for the budding folk troubadours to write songs about.

 

Julie made her companions laugh as they stood there starting to get a little impatient since the doors to the concert hall were supposed to open at seven and here it was almost seven fifteen (Sam had fumed, as he always did when he had to wait for anything, a relic of his Army days during the Vietnam War when everything had been “hurry up and wait”). She had mentioned that back then, back in those college days when guys like Sam did not have a lot of money, if worse came to worse and you had no money like happened one time with a guy, a budding folkie poet, Jack Dawson, she had a date with you could always go to the Hayes-Bickford in the Square (the other H-Bs in other locations around Boston were strictly “no-go” places where people actually just went to eat the steamed to death food and drink the weak-kneed coffee). As long as you were not rowdy like the whiskey drunks rambling on and on asking for cigarettes and getting testy if you did not have one for the simple reason that you did not smoke (almost everybody did then including Sam although usually not with her and definitely not in the dorm), winos who smelled like piss and vomit and not having bathed in a while, panhandlers (looking you dead in the eye defying you to not give them something, money or a cigarette but something) and hoboes (the quiet ones of that crowd  who somebody had told her were royalty in the misfit, outcast world and thus would not ask for dough or smokes) who drifted through there you could watch the scene for free.

On any given night, maybe around midnight, on weekends later when the bars closed later you could hear some next best thing guy in full flannel shirt, denim jeans, maybe some kind of vest for protection against the cold but with a hungry look on his face or a gal with the de riguer long-ironed hair, some peasant blouse belying her leafy suburban roots, some boots or sandals depending on the weathers singing low some tune they wrote or reciting to their own vocal beat some poem. As Julie finished her thought some dressed in uniform guy who looked like a doorman in some foreign castle opened the concert hall doors and the four aficionados scampered in to find their seats.                 

 

…as they walked down the step of Symphony Hall having watched Pete work his banjo magic, work the string of his own Woody-inspired songs like Golden Thread and of covers from the big sky American songbook and Arlo wowed with his City of New Orleans and some of his father’s stuff (no Alice’s Restaurant that night he was saving that for Thanksgiving, he said) Sam told his companions, “that fourteen dollars each for tickets was a steal for such performances, especially in that acoustically fantastic hall” and told his three friends that he would stand for coffees at the Blue Parrot over in Harvard Square if they liked. “And maybe share some pastry too.”