Ma Peace Action- Peace Calendar October 2016

Peace Calendar October 2016

 

Peace Calendar October 2016

[MAPA nuclear disarmament] Peace Calendar October 2016

 

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9/29/2016 2:58 PM

Cole Harrison

To  Mass Peace Action update,    MAPA Board,    MAPA Ed Fund Board,    MAPA Nuclear Disarmament,    MAPA Palestine/Israel Working Group,    MAPA Middle East working group,    MAPA peace and climate group,    Boston Downwinders,    UJP planning group,    act-ma,    b4a-cc@googlegroups.com   and 9 others

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Command and Control September 30 @ 11:30 am - October 6 @ 11:30 pm Kendall Square CInema,  355 Binney St Cambridge, MA, MA 02139 United States  + Google Map From the director of Food Inc., COMMAND AND CONTROL tells the story of a deadly accident in 1980 at a nuclear missile complex in rural Arkansas in the form of a documentary  which is based on a the best-selling book by Eric Schlosser. Fashioned as a thriller, the film exposes the terrifying truth about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal, and the danger that it poses - not only to potential enemies but also to our local communities. Showtimes: Dates: Friday 9/30 - Thursday… Find out more »

Muslim Voices in an Election Year: Compassionate Listening October 1 @ 10:00 am - 5:00 pm Agape Community,  2062 Greenwich Rd Ware, MA 01082  + Google Map Annual Francis Day Celebration!  Francis Day celebrates the life of Francis of Assisi who met with Sultan Malik al-Kamil of Egypt in 1219: a model for nonviolent witness.  Program begins promptly at 10:00am: Nadia Alawa, founder and president, Nu Day Syria, 2016, (after 2015 Ted Talk), project for re-making the lives of Syrian mothers and children; recipient of inaugural Humanitarian Award, James Foley Legacy Foundation.  Dr. Hisham Moharram, second generation Muslim, founder of Good Tree Farm, PhD in agriculture and plant… Find out more »

Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) by Abbas Fahdel October 1 @ 7:00 pm - October 2 @ 9:00 pm Harvard Capenter Center for the Arts,  24 Quincy St Cambridge, MA 02138  + Google Map The Harvard Film Archive is pleased to present HOMELAND (IRAQ YEAR ZERO) BY ABBAS FAHDEL from October 1 – October 2, 2016 with filmmaker Abbas Fahdel in person. $12 Special Event Tickets.  Abbas Fahdel in personSaturday October 1 at 7pm, Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) – Part 1. Before the FallSunday October 2 at 7pm, Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) – Part 2. After the Battle Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) is a riveting home-movie chronicle of life in Iraq before and after… Find out more »

Greening the Global (and Massachusetts) Economy October 5 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Cambridge Friends Meeting,  5 Longfellow Park Cambridge,  + Google Map We can stop climate catastrophe  If we are up to the challenge!  Here’s How:  An Open Forum with Dr. Robert Pollin: Co-director, Political Economy Research Institute and Professor of Economics @ UMASS-Amherst;  Author: Greening the Global Economy (M.I.T. Press);   Come hear Robert Pollin lay out his economic plan for how we can meet the carbon reduction targets that will actually avert climate catastrophe, generate vast numbers of new jobs and protect those employed by fossil fuel energy companies. Great… Find out more »

America’s War for the Greater Middle East October 6 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Westminster Unitarian Church,  24 Kenyon Street East Greenwich, RI  + Google Map On October 6 at 7:00 p.m. Andrew Bacevich, a noted scholar, author, and critic of U.S. imperialism, will be speaking on U.S. policy, or lack thereof, in the Middle East. The venue will be Westminster Unitarian Church at 24 Kenyon Street in East Greenwich, RI. This public presentation will be based largely on his most recent book: America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. Among his eight other books is the important Washington Rules: America’s Path to… Find out more »

Rock Against the TPP October 7 @ 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm Spontaneous Celebrations,  45 Danforth St Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 United States  + Google Map Rock Against the TPP is a nationwide uprising to stop the biggest corporate power grab in history: the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The tour comes to Boston on Friday, October 7th with an all-star lineup of musicians helping sound the alarm about this toxic deal. Featuring: Mirah, Debo Band, Taina Asili y La Banda Rebelde, Foundation Movement, bell's roar, + more TBA! FREE! All ages. RSVP for your free tickets here: https://www.rockagainstthetpp.org/boston-ma Find out more »

Ending the Many Wars in Syria October 11 @ 7:00 pm - October 13 @ 7:00 pm across Massachusetts Talks by Phyllis Bennis:  Is the war in Syria a civil war? Is it a proxy war between the US and Russia ? Is it also a proxy war between Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey? Can ISIS be reined in? Should Assad go? Or stay?  Should the US "do more"?  Or is it already doing too much by arming and training rebel groups? What will be the likely outcome of the current cease fire negotiations?  How can such a complex set… Find out more »

Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Dialog among Resistance Movements October 14 @ 5:00 pm - October 16 @ 3:00 pm Agape Community,  2062 Greenwich Rd Ware, MA 01082  + Google Map You are invited to the 31st Annual New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Their Supporters Friday–Sunday October 14–16, 2016 Agape Community 2062 Greenwich Road  ·  Ware, MA 01082 SATURDAY PROGRAM: Dialog Among  Resistance Movements with Mandy Carter First Congregational Church (UCC) 165 Main Street  ·  Amherst, MA New England War Tax Resisters and supporters traditionally gather each fall for a weekend of sharing stories and strategies, and supporting one another in our nonviolent resistance to militarism. At… Find out more »

Climate Change and the Growing Risk of Nuclear War: A Health Care Perspective October 15 Tufts University School of Medicine, Sackler Auditorium,  145 Harrison Ave Boston, MA 02111 United States  + Google Map Climate Change and the Growing Risk of Nuclear War: A Health Care Perspective-- Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility invites all to attend a one-day Symposium to examine the catastrophic public health consequences of climate change and the ways that climate change will increase the risk of conflict, including nuclear war.  Program: 9:00 Welcome;  9:15 Panel I—Climate Change and the impact on public health:      A)    Expected climate change globally and in S stephenAsia and Middle East—Speaker to be announced B)   … Find out more »

$10 - $35 Music for Peace: An Evening of French Music October 15 @ 7:30 pm Harvard-Epworth Methodist Church,  1555 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA United States  + Google Map An Evening of French Music: October 15, 2016. Ayano Ninomiya, violin;  Carol Ou, cello;  Mana Tokuno, piano;  Poulenc, sonata for violin and piano;  Pierné, sonata for cello and piano;  Chausson, piano trio. Benefits Massachusetts Peace Action Education Fund; part of the Music for Peace Series. Single concert: seats $25 in advance for Mass. Peace Action members, $35 for non-members, $10 for students, $35 at the door. Series of 3 concerts: member $65, non-member $80, student $25. To reserve, write a… Find out more »

The genocidal mentality of nuclear weapons – a Christian and feminist response October 16 @ 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, UCC,  11 Garden St Cambridge, MA 02138 United States  + Google Map A talk by Rev. Dr. Renate Rose Most statesmen of the past who were involved in US foreign policy (as George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry) consider the threat of a nuclear war today to be greater than ever before. Why is this topic not on the front page of every newspaper and TV channel every day? Following the book by Robert Jay Lifton and Eric Markusen, The Genocidal Mentality, Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat (Basic Books, NY, 1990), Renate will… Find out more »

Noam Chomsky: Extinction or Internationalism October 19 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm Old South Church,  645 Boylston Street  Boston,  + Google Map A Chomsky Legacy Event presented by the Wallace Action Fund "the world's top public intellectual" - the guardian Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus), at  MIT, Noam Chomsky is a revolutionary thinker whose principal linguistic works include Syntactic Structures (1957), Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (1964), Language and Mind (1972),  and Knowledge of Language (1986). Noam was an early and outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and he has written extensively on political issues. Among these writings are American… Find out more »

Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection October 19 @ 7:00 pm - October 22 @ 9:00 pm Medea Benjamin’s national book tour comes to Boston Oct. 19-21 Author and activist Medea Benjamin will give four talks in the Boston area on her new book, Kingdom of the Unjust: Beyond the U.S.-Saudi Connection.   Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange. Wednesday, October 19: First Parish in Framingham, 24 Vernon St., 7pm.  Admission Free.  Sponsored by Metrowest Peace Action and Progressive Democrats of America. 508-376-8495 Thursday, October 20: Boston College, Gasson Hall, Room 305. Free;… Find out more »

$15 - $40 Pax Christi 2016 State Assembly October 22 @ 8:30 am - 3:00 pm St Susanna Parish,  262 Needham St Dedham, MA United States  + Google Map Ending the Nuclear Nightmare: Faithful Witnesses and Non Violent Strategies.  A presentation by Marie Dennis and Jonathan Alan King, Saturday, October 22nd, at St. Susanna Parish, 262 Needham Street, Dedham MA. For directions: www.saintsusanna.org Registration begins at 8:30 am – Program 9:00 am to 3:00 pm; Parish Mass at 4:00 pm for those who wish to remain.  Marie Dennis is a leader in the movement, “Catholics for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.” She is the co-president of Pax Christi International since… Find out more »

National Priorities Project: Annual Fall Party October 27 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm Smith College Conference Center,  49 College Lane Northampton, MA 01063  + Google Map Find out more » BDS and anti-BDS

October 29 @ 10:00 am - 1:00 pm Central Sq Branch,  45 Pearl St. Cambridge, MA 02139 United States  + Google Map A Forum - Save the Date!  What is Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)? Why is it important?   What is happening nationally and in Massachusetts to suppress BDS?   Why is it important to oppose these efforts? What have we done to date?  What more can we do?  Sponsored by the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace - Boston, and Massachusetts Peace Action.  More details forthcoming.   Find out more » The Next Four Years: Building Our Movements in Dangerous Times

December 3 @ 9:00 am - 5:00 pm Simmons College, Paresky Conference Center,  300 the Fenway Boston, MA 02115 United States  + Google Map Featured Speakers Bob Wing Social and racial justice organizer; Founder of Color Lines and War Times; Co-author of "Organizing on Shifting Terrain" Mariama White-Hammond Pastor, Bethel A.M.E. Bethel Church, Jamaica Plain; convener,  Massachusetts Moral Revival Paul Robeson Ford Pastor, Union Baptist Church, Cambridge Mike Connolly Attorney; State Representative-Elect; endorsed by Our Revolution Joseph Gerson Peace and Disarmament Coordinator, American Friends Service Committee Bernie Sanders’ campaign ignited a widespread hope that our corrupted democracy, where money and power rule, could be taken back and transformed into… Find out more »

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Cole Harrison

Executive Director

Massachusetts Peace Action - the Commonwealth's largest grassroots peace organization

11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138

617-354-2169 w

617-466-9274 m

www.masspeaceaction.org

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Twitter: masspeaceaction

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Fight Deportations-Join Veterans For Peace At The US-Mexico Border In Nogales-October 7-10, 2016

Fight Deportations-Join Veterans For Peace At The US-Mexico  Border In Nogales-October 7-10, 2016

Fight Deportations-Join Us At The US-Mexico Border In Nogales-October 7-10, 2016

Fight Deportations-Join Us At The US-Mexico  Border In Nogales-October 7-10, 2016

 

*Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-Professor Robert Service's "Trotsky: A Biography "

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Leon Trotsky, leader of the Red Army.



Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By and Films To While Away The Class Struggle By-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin



Book Review



Trotsky: A Biography, Robert Service, Belknap Press Of The Harvard University Press, 2009



I have, on more than one previous occasion, noted that the spirit of the great Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, animates the political material reviewed in this space, and is some ways the materials presented makes no sense without acknowledging that hard truth. I have also noted, as well, that of all the biographies, sketches, memoirs, etc. concerning the life and times of this extraordinary revolutionary that Isaac Deutscher’s three volume Prophet series done in the 1950s and 1960s still, to my mind, is the definitive such study of the man. After reading this Trotsky biography and another more specialized volume that centers on the last period of his life and his subsequent assassination by a Stalinist agent down in Mexico in 1940, both which have the benefit of the latest in archival, particularly Soviet archival, material I still hold to that opinion. However, the present book under review, gives a fairly decent exposition in one volume of Trotsky’s life, warts and all, from a liberal anti-communist academic perspective.

I admit to being somewhat surprised by Professor Service’s book. Not, as mentioned above for its expected liberal disdain for the Soviet experiment, that kind of expectation comes with wading into liberal academic territory. That disdain has been, moreover, telegraphed by Professor previously in his biographies of Stalin and Lenin. What is surprising is that Professor Service felt the need to write a biography of the fallen revolutionary Leon Trotsky in the year 2009 long after his ghost, and that of the Soviet Union, that he was instrumental in creating, especially its military structure, have left the scene and apparently no longer, according to his remarks at the end of the book animate world politics. Furthermore, while I believe this book has a certain merit as a contemporary Trotsky primer it certainly has not revealed much new in the way of biographical material despite the opening up of the archives. That is the sense, or one of the senses, that I mean when I say I continue to stand in awe of Isaac Deutscher’s exhaustive study.

For those not familiar with Trotsky’s life Service details his Ukrainian Jewish childhood, his early pre-revolutionary activities, his immersion into the Russian revolutionary milieu in Russian and in exile, his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905 and after its defeat its defense , the pre-World War I free agent period, the struggle against World War I, the 1917 February and October revolutions where he links his fate with the Bolsheviks , the civil war to defend that October revolution, and Trotsky’s key role in creating the Red Army and the Communist International. He also details the post-Lenin inner-Bolshevik Party struggle where Trotsky’s star started to fate, his internal and then eternal exiles after his defeats at the hand so f Stalin, his fight to create the stillborn Fourth International to replace the Communist International in the fight for world socialist revolution and his assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent in 1940. Along the way he also gives scope to Trotsky’s wide ranging literary and intellectual interest that permitted him to continue to make his mark on the political world after his exile, to make a living and to fund his various political projects.

In one sense it is hard for a biographer, any biographer, to say something new about such an open book political man as Leon Trotsky. Both because he wrote much, including his memoirs, My Life, self-serving as Professor Service believes or not, about his political life and positions from early on well before the Russian Revolution of 1905 and because the events that he was associated with left little room for not previously making it onto the pages of history. So what is left for a biographer, Robert Service or Isaac Deutscher included. Well, since no one has scoured the archives and found that Trotsky really did take German gold during World War I. Or that he really, as charged in the Moscow trials, was an agent of the Mikado, British imperialism or Hitlerite Germany then what is left is speculation, now apparently endless speculation, about his personal character flaws.

This is actually the ground that makes Service’s book interesting as he, like others before him detail Trotsky’s prickly personality, his failure to suffer fools gladly (or at all), his aloofness and haughtiness that made him less than the perfect choice for leadership of political factions in the struggle for power. Service’s Trotsky comes out loud and clear as being primarily one of the last of the free agent revolutionaries that while, perhaps, belonging to revolutionary organizations set their own agenda. That, in the end, was a key to Trotsky’s political undoing. Service also details more extensively than I have seen elsewhere some of Trotsky private traits like his late life affair with the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, his health issues and his strained relationships with most of his kin folk.

For those who have not read a previous Trotsky biography and who understand that Professor Service is one of those liberal academics who see Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin as basically all part of the same anti-Western democratic political original sin, Bolshevism, then there is much that can be gleaned from his work. But, I always come back to this hard fact when dealing with the life of the much maligned, besmirched, and denigrated revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky, warts and all, comes as close as any historic figure that has come out of bourgeois society to being the proto-type for the new communist man that humankind has products thus far. In that sense Leon Trotsky is in need of no certificate of revolutionary good conduct from Robert Service, Mikhail Gorbachev, this writer or the reader. Enough said.

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access

 

 Frank Jackman comment:

 

One of the great struggles on college campuses during the height of the struggle against the Vietnam War back in the 1960s aside from trying to close down that war outright was the effort to get the various ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps, I think that is right way to say it) programs off campus. In a number of important campuses that effort was successful, although there has been back-sliding going on since the Vietnam War ended and like any successful anti-war or progressive action short of changing the way governments we could support do business is subject to constant attention or the bastards will sneak something in the back door.

        

To the extent that reintroduction of ROTC on college campuses has been thwarted, a very good anti-war action indeed which had made it just a smidgen harder to run ram shot over the world, that back door approach has been a two-pronged attack by the military branches to get their quota of recruits for their all-volunteer military services in the high schools. First to make very enticing offers to cash-strapped public school systems in order to introduce ROTC, junior version, particularly but not exclusively, urban high schools (for example almost all public high schools in Boston have some ROTC service branch in their buildings with instructors partially funded by the Defense Department and with union membership right and conditions a situation which should be opposed by teachers’ union members).

 

Secondly, thwarted at the college level for officer corps trainees they have just gone to younger and more impressible youth, since they have gained almost unlimited widespread access to high school student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do their nasty work. Not only do the recruiters who are graded on quota system and are under pressure produce X number of recruits or they could wind doing sentry guard duty in Kabul or Bagdad get that access where they have sold many young potential military personnel many false bills of goods but in many spots anti-war veterans and other who would provide a different perspective have been banned or otherwise harassed in their efforts.  

 

Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of the high schools-military recruiters out as well! Let anti-war ex-soldiers, sailors, Marines and airpersons have their say.         

Shakespeare In Love-Or In Love With Shakespeare-With The 400th Anniversary Year Of The Bard’s Death In Mind

Shakespeare In Love-Or In Love With Shakespeare-With The 400^th Anniversary Year Of The Bard’s Death In Mind

 

Who knows at this point how many expressions, terms, words, playwright ideas, throwaway ideas, mousy idea, idle chatter, barroom fisticuffs, flights of fancy, lost hours of imitative work, faded romance, ill-fated romance, bewitched love-craft, homages, just sayings, bon mots, revels, idle chatter, oops I already said that, murderous intentions, incestuous desires, kingly horses, betrothals, beheadings, beddings, binges, oops same as barroom fisticuffs, groundling up-swells, pixie midnight madnesses, rancorous reconnoiters, plough and stars séances, heterosexual dalliances, homosexual dalliances(remember all those boys in girls’ uniforms, philogists banter, etymological discoveries, runes, druid pithiness, and shear humbug can be laid at the Bard of Avon’s door after 400 plus years but no question plenty can. And in the next one hundred solemn years about ninety percent of the items expressed above things will continue to be thrown at that self-same door. So be it. We are richer by some nth magnitudes for the works.        

Adding their two pence worth is a series on Shakespeare’s influence on the development and neglect of language-the English language mainly but the not unimportant fact that at one time “the sun never set on the British Empire” makes that a much bigger historical fact than a simple national language the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) has been running an episodic year-long project about the Bard’s effects.

Here’s the link-and get ready for 2116 now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/shakespeare/

*****Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night-Elegy For Tom Waits

An Encore -Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night-Elegy For Tom Waits

From the pen of the late Peter Paul Markin who fell by the wayside, fell to his notoriously monstrous “wanting habits” accumulated since childhood looking too hard, looking to hard in the wrong places down among the weeds in Mexico, looking for train smoke and dreams if you really thought about the matter, looking for his own heart of Saturday night-RIP, Brother,RIP.     

****** 



If you, as I do, every once in a while, every once in a while when the norms of today’s bourgeois-driven push, bourgeois a better term than capitalist or imperialist if you are in America since it gives a better view of the unhindered social norms, the ethos rather than the sheer grab for filthy lucre; you know grab goods, grab the dough, grab every cheap-jack convenience like it was God’s own gold, grab some shelter from the storm, the storm that these days comes down like a hard rain falling, to get ahead in this wicked old world have to step back and take stock, maybe listen to some words of wisdom, or words that help explain how you got into that mess then you have come to the right address, the address of Mister Tom Waits if you missed the headline or missed who is writing this thing. (Or better "wrote" since this piece is being edited posthumously by Zack James who found this and three companion pieces in the attic of Josh Breslin's Olde Saco family house in Olde Saco, Maine when they were looking to dispose of whatever could be disposed of in preparation for selling the place so Josh and Lana could move into smaller quarters and Josh told him the long and at the end the sad story about Josh's and Markin's meeting out in San Francisco in the summer of love 1960s times and about Markin's awful fate down in Mexico. That story drove Zack to the editing job in order that a genuine mad monk writer could some forty years after his death receive a small recognition of his ambitious talent.) 



Okay, okay on that bourgeois-driven today thing once I describe what was involved maybe it didn’t just start of late. Maybe the whole ill-starred rising went back to the time when this continent was, just like F. Scott Fitzgerald said way back in the 1920s when he made up the Jazz Age and reeled back in dismay once he saw how those coupon-clippers devoured all good sense and sober ethos, just a fresh green breast of land eyed by some hungry sailors, some hungry Dutch sailors who took what they wanted back the homeland and made a grave attempt to fatten their own chests. Just check out any Dutch master painting to see what I mean.



Going back to Calvinist Puritan avenging angels times with John Winthrop and the Mayflower boys and their city on the hill but you best ask Max Weber about that since he tried to hook these world-wise and world weary boys were no longer worrying about novenas and indulgences against some netherworld to the wheel of the capitalist profit. Profit (grab the dough, grab the goods, grab stuff cheap) for "you at the expense of me" system with the new dispensation coming out like hellfire from Geneva and points east and west. The eternal story of the short end of the stick if you aren’t ready for sociological treatises and rely on guys like Tom Waits to wordsmith the lyrics to set you right about what is wrong. But you get the point.



If all that to-ing and fro-ing (nice touch, right) leaves you wondering where you fell off the edge, that edge city (edge city where you danced around with all the conventions of the days, danced around the get ahead world, grab the dough, grab the goods, grab stuff cheap,  with blinkers on before you got stuck in the human sink that you have still not been able to get out of) where big cloud outrageous youthful dreams were dreamt and you took risks, damn did you take risks, thought nothing of that fact either, landed on your ass more than a few times but just picked yourself up and dusted your knees off and done stick around and listen up. Yeah, so if you are wondering,  have been pushed off your saintly wheels, yeah, pushed off your sainted wheels, and gotten yourself  into some angst-ridden despair about where you went off that angel-driven dream of your youth, now faded, tattered, and half- forgotten(but only half, only half-forgotten, the wisp of the dream, the eternal peace dream, the figuring out how to contain that fire, that wanting habits fire in your belly dream sisters and brothers), and need some solace (need some way to stop the fret counting the coffee cups complete with spoons to measure that coffee out as the very modernist poet once said making his modern statement about the world created since the turn of the 19th century that while away your life). Need to reach back to roots, reach back to roots that the 1950s golden age of America, the vanilla red scare Cold War night that kicked the ass out of all the old to make us crave sameness, head down, run for cover, in order to forget about those old immigrant customs, made us forget those simple country blues, old country flames, Appalachia mountain breeze coming through the hills and hollows songs, lonely midnight by the fire cowboy ballads, Tex-Mex big ass brass sympatico squeezes Spanish is the loving tongue, Irish desperate struggles against John Bull  sorrows and cautionary tale Child ballads, plucked out early by a professor over on Brattle Street back when the Brahmins very publicly ruled the roost, or Cajun Saturday night stewed drunks that made the people feel good times, reach back to the primeval forest maybe, put the headphones on some Tom Waits platter [oops, CD, YouTube selection, etc.- “platter” refers to a, ah, record, vinyl, put on a record player, hell, look it up in Wikipedia, okay-Zack James] and remember what it was like when men and women sang just to sing the truth of what they saw and heard.



If the norms of don’t rock the boat (not in these uncertain times like any times in human existence were certain, damn, there was always something scary coming up from the first man-eating beast to the human race-eating nuclear bombs, brother even I Iearned early that it was a dangerous world, yeah, learned very early in the Adamsville projects where you got a very real taste of danger before you got too much older than five or six), the norms of keep your head down (that’s right brother, that’s right sister keep looking down, no left or rights for your placid world), keeping your head down being an art form now with appropriate ritual (that ritual looking more and more like the firing squad that took old Juan Romero’s life when he did bad those days out in Utah country), and excuses, because, well, because you don’t want to wind up like them (and fill in the blank of the “them,” usually dark, very dark-skinned like some deathless, starless night disturbing your sleep, begging, I swear, begging you to put that gun in full view on the table, speaking some unknown language, maybe A-rab or I-talian, maybe gibberish for all you know, moving furtively and stealthily against your good night) drive you crazy and you need, desperately need, to listen to those ancient drum beats, those primeval forest leave droppings maybe, that old time embedded DNA coda long lost to, oh yes, civilization, to some civilizing mission (think of that Mayflower gang and that fresh green breast of land  and that city on a hill that drove them cross-eyed and inflamed or ask Max Weber, he footnoted the whole thing, put paid to any idea of otherworldly virtue), that spoke of the better angels of your nature when those angel dreams, half-forgotten but only half-forgotten remember, ruled your days. Turn up the volume up another notch or two on that Tom Waits selection, maybe Jersey Girl or Brother, Can You Spare A Dime (can you?), Hold On, or Gunn Street Girl.



If you need to hear things, just to sort things out, just to recapture that angel-edge, recapture the time when you did no fear, you and everybody else’s sisters and brothers, that thing you build and from which you now should run, recapture that child-like wonder that made you come alive, made you think about from whence you came and how a turn, a slight turn this way or that, could have landed you on the wrong side of the fence. And I have the list of brothers and sisters who took that wrong road, like that time Jack from Carver wound up face down in some dusty back road arroyo down Sonora way when the deal went bust or when she, maybe a little kinky for all I know, decided that she would try a needle and a spoon, I swear, or she swore just for kicks and she wound up in Madame LaRue’s whorehouse working that sagging bed to perdition and worse losing that thing she had for sex once she started selling it by the hour. Hey, sweet dreams baby I tried to tell you when you play with fire watch out.



So if you need to sort things out about boozers (and about titanic booze-crazed struggles in barrooms, on beaches, in the back seats of cars, lost in the mist of time down some crazed midnight, hell, four in the morning, penniless, cab fare-less night), losers (those who have lost their way, those who had gotten it taken away from them like some maiden virginity, those who just didn’t get it frankly in this fast old world taken in by some grifter’s bluster), those who never had anything but lost next to their names, those who never had a way to be lost, dopesters inhaling sweet dream snow in solitary hotel rooms among junkie brethren, gathering a needle and spoon in some subterranean dank cellar, down in dark alleys jack-rolling some poor drunk stiff out of his room rent for kicks (how uncool to drink low-shelf whiskeys or rotgut wines hell the guy deserved to be rolled, should feel lucky he got away with just a flipped wallet), out in nighttime canyons flame blaring off the walls, the seven seas of chemical dust, mainly blotter, maybe peyote (the sweet dreams of ten million years of ghost warriors working the layered canyon walls flickering against the campfire flames and the sight of two modern warriors shirtless, sweaty, in a trance, high as kites, dancing by themselves like whirling dervishes   ready to do justice for the white man's greed until the flames flickered out and they fell in a heap exhausted) if that earth angel connection comes through (Aunt Sally, always, some Aunt Sally coming up the stairs to ease the pain, to make one feel, no, not feel better than any AMA doctor without a prescription pad), creating visions of long lost tribes trying, trying like hell, to get “connected,” connected in the campfire shadow night, hipsters all dressed in black, mary mack dressed in black, speeding, speaking be-bop this and be-bop that to stay in fashion, hustling, always hustle, maybe pimping some street urchin, maybe cracking some guy’s head to create a “new world order” of the malignant, always moving, fallen sisters (sisters of mercy, sisters who need mercy, sisters who were mercifully made fallen in some mad dash night, merciful sister feed me, feed me good), midnight sifters (lifting in no particular order hubcaps, tires, wrenches, jacks, an occasional gem, some cheap jewelry in wrong neighborhoods, some paintings or whatever is not saleable left in some sneak back alley, it is the sifting that counts), grifters (hey, buddy watch this, now you see it, now you don’t, now you don’t see your long gone John dough, and Mister three card Monte long gone too ), drifters (here today gone tomorrow with or without dough, to Winnemucca, Ogden, Fresno, Frisco town, name your town, name your poison and the great big blue seas washing you clean out into the Japan seas), the drift-less (cramped into one room hovels, shelters, seedy rooming houses, hell, call them flop houses, afraid to stay in-doors or to go outside, afraid of the “them” too, afraid to be washed clean, angel clean), and small-time grafters (the ten-percent guys, failed insurance men, repo artists, bounty hunters, press agents, personal trainers, need I go on). You know where to look, right.



If you need to be refreshed on the subject of hoboes, bums, tramps (and remind me sometime to draw the distinction, the very real and acknowledged distinction between those three afore–mentioned classes of brethren once told to me by a forlorn grand master hobo, a guy down on his luck moving downward to bum), out in the railroad jungles in some Los Angeles ravine, some Gallup, New Mexico Southern Pacific  trestle (the old SP the only way to travel out west if you want to get west), some Hoboken broken down pier (ha, shades of the last page of Jack Kerouac’s classic), the fallen (fallen outside the gates of Eden, or, hell, inside too), those who want to fall (and let god figure out who made who fall, okay), Spanish Johnnies (slicked back black hair, tee shirt, shiv, cigarette butt hanging from a parted lip, belt buckle ready for action, leering, leering at that girl over there, some gringa for a change of pace, maybe your girl but watch out for that shiv, the bastard), stale cigarette butts (from Spanish Johnnie and all the johnnies, Camels, Luckies, no filters, no way), whiskey-soaked barroom floors (and whiskey-soaked drunks to mop the damn place up, for drinks and donuts, maybe just for the drinks), loners (jesus, books, big academic books with great pedigrees could be written on that subject so let’s just let that one pass by), the lonely (ditto loners), sad sacks (kindred, one hundred times kindred to the loners and the lonely but not worthy of study, big book academic study anyway), the sad (encompassing all of the above) and others at the margins of society, the whole fellahin world (the big mass of world sweated field braceros, sharecroppers, landless peasants and now cold-water flat urban dwellers fresh from the played out land, or taken land) then Tom Waits is your stop.



Tom Waits is, frankly, an acquired taste, one listen will not do, one song will not do, but listen to a whole record [CD or download okay-Zack] and you won’t want to turn the thing off, high praise in anyone’s book, so a taste well worth acquiring as he storms heaven in words, in thought-out words, in cribbed, cramped, crumbled words, to express the pain, angst and anguish of modern living, yes, modern living.



See he ain’t looking for all haloed saints out there, some Saint Jerome spreading the word out to the desert tribes, out on the American mean streets he has pawed around the edges, maybe doesn’t believe in saints for all I know, but is out looking for busted black-hearted angels all dressed in some slinky silk thing to make a man, a high-shelf whiskey man having hustled some dough better left unexplained that night going off his moorings feeding her drinks and she a liquor sponge (who left him short one night in some unnamed, maybe nameless, gin mill when she split, after she split her take with the bartender who watered her drinks, hell, the thing was sweet all she needed to do when he leaned into her was grab his sorry ass and get the damn wallet). Looking too, a child of the pin-up playboy 1950s, for girls with Monroe hips (hips swaying wickedly in the dead air night, and enflaming desire, hell lust, getting kicked out of proper small town hells by descendants of those aforementioned Mayflower boys for promising the world for one forbidden night), got real, and got left for dead with cigar wrapping rings. Yeah, looking for the desperate out there who went off the righteous path and wound up too young face down in some forsaken woods who said she needed to hold on to something, and for all the misbegotten. 




Tom Waits once you get the habit gives voice in song, a big task, to the kind of characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). The, frankly, white trash Okie/Arkie Dove Linkhorns and Frankie Machines of the world who had to keep moving just for the sake of moving something in the DNA driving that whirlwind, genetically broken before they begin, broken before they hit these shores (their forbears thrown out of Europe for venal crimes and lusts, pig-stealing, deer-pouching, working the commons without a license, highwaymen, ancient jack-rollers, the flotsam and jetsam of the old world, damn them, the master-less men and women, ask old Max about them too), having been chased out, cast out of Europe, or some such place. In short, the people who do not make revolutions, those revolutions we keep hearing and reading about, far from it, the wretched of the earth and their kin, the ones who the old blessed Paris communards were thinking of when they hanged a sign saying “Death to Thieves” from the Hotel de Ville balcony, but those who surely, and desperately could use one. If you want to hear about those desperate brethren then here is your stop as well.



If, additionally, you need a primordial grizzled gravelly voice to attune your ear to the scratchy earth and some occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Hey, let’s leave it at this- if you need someone who “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. Keep looking for the heart of Saturday night, Brother, keep looking.