Sunday, January 01, 2017

From Veterans For Peace-Build Peace-Join The Resistance

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Happy New Year From Veterans For Peace-Join The Resistance

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A Mother’s Story-Of Sorts-Ashley Judd And Tommy Lee Jones’ “Double Jeopardy” (1999)-A Film Review

A Mother’s Story-Of Sorts-Ashley Judd And Tommy Lee Jones’ “Double Jeopardy” (1999)-A Film Review





DVD Review


By Sam Lowell

Double Jeopardy, starring Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones, 1999

The film under review Double Jeopardy was/is billed as a suspense thriller and at a certain level that is true with a few scenes that qualify for that title. But in the end, literally in the end, this is essentially a mother’s story wrapped up in a thriller. A mother’s story of never giving up that primordial bond between mother and child (and as the film postulates child and mother). The film shows in extremis what a mother will, and will not do, to cement that eternal bond.         

Here’s how that idea played out in this film. Libby, played by fetching Ashley Judd, is married to Nick, a financier, and they have a son. They are wealthy residents in an up-scale community on an island in Washington. Nick suggested at one point when they were having some marital difficulties they “get away” on a sailboat. Libby, a lover of boats and the sea, agreed. During that weekend though all hell broke loose. After making love one day Libby woke up from her sleep to be confronted with much blood, including on a knife, the presumed item that caused the scene –and no Nick. The whole set-up looks like Libby murdered him, especially after the authorities found out that Nick was on the financial skids-and had a two million dollar life insurance policy payable to Libby (although I am not altogether sure that she could collect on a murder to grab the dough as suggested by the film-in any case any insurance company would fight that battle with that much dough at stake.   

Frankly, I think that Libby had a good case for ineffective assistance of counsel on appeal since not only did the authorities try her for murder but a jury convicted her on pretty flimsy evidence-and no body. That aside Libby drew a long sentence at the women’s prison-and “lost” her son-has a friend adopt him to avoid the trauma of knowing his mother was in stir for murder. This is where the mother’s story begins to play out. While in jail she was in contact with her son via the phone. One day when talking to him he let the cat out of the bag by saying “Daddy” when Nick entered the room. Yeah, Nick was not dead, far from it, had flown the coop on the financial difficulties with that staged blood bath. Libby, now wised up, went into overdrive (literally at some points) and sought and received a parole after having spent six years in prison.

Parole though meant she had to stay in a half-way house and keep to a stringent set of rules laid down in the person of the parole officer, Lehman, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Needless to say in search of Nick (or whatever alias he was using at the time as it turned out) she would break those rules and run into serious controversy with the hard-nosed Lehman. Libby through foul means and fair eventually caught up with Nick’s trail in New Orleans with Lehman in hot pursuit behind her since she had escaped his clutches at one point when he was trying to bring her in. Before too long she caught up with Jonathan (Nick’s new moniker) and tries to negotiate with him for her son. No dice. No dice until the final confrontation with Lehman in the room where she shoots her already dead husband to death.              


That last sentence is what double jeopardy is all about in the context of this film. See she had already been tried and convicted for “killing” Nick on the boat. Although this may strain credibility under Anglo-Saxon law once you have been convicted of a crime the authorities can’t double-down on you. For Libby that meant that even if her intention to really kill Nick happened, and she had plenty of good reasons to, good case for self-defense could be made as the shoot-out played out though, she would “walk.” Lehman made sure she was pardoned for the original “crime” and she got her son back. Interesting film               
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*****The Struggle Continues … Four Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Chelsea Manning

The Struggle Continues … Four  Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Chelsea  Manning

*Sign the public petition to President Obama – Sign online http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/chelseamanning  “President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning,” and make copies to share with friends and family!

You  can also call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) to demand that President Obama use his constitutional power under Article II, Section II to pardon Private Manning now.
*Start a stand -out, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, in your town square to publicize the pardon and clemency campaigns.  Contact the Chelsea Manning SupportNetwork for help with materials and organizing tips http://www.chelseamanning.org/

*Contribute to the Chelsea  Manning Defense Fund- now that the trial has finished funds are urgently needed for the pardon campaign and for future military and civilian court appeals. The hard fact of the American legal system, military of civilian, is the more funds available the better the defense, especially in political prisoner cases like Private Manning’s. The government had unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Private Manning at trial. And used them as it will on any future legal proceedings. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.chelseamanning.org/

*Write letters of solidarity to Private Manning while she is serving her sentence. She wishes to be addressed as Chelsea and have feminine pronouns used when referring to her. Private Manning’s mailing address: Chelsea E. Manning, 89289, 1300 N. Warehouse Road, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-2304.

Private Manning cannot receive stamps or money in any form. Photos must be on copy paper. Along with “contraband,” “inflammatory material” is not allowed. Six page maximum.

*Call: (913) 758-3600-Write to:Commander U.S. Detention Barracks 1301 N Warehouse Rd
Ft. Leavenworth KS 66027-Tell them: “Transgender rights are human rights! Respect Private Manning’s identity by acknowledging the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ whenever possible, including in mail addressed to her, and by allowing her access to appropriate medical treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT).” (for more details-http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html#!/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html
******

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30   


Updated-September 2015  

A while back, maybe a year or so ago, I was asked by a fellow member of Veterans For Peace at a monthly meeting in Cambridge about the status of the case of Chelsea Manning since he knew that I had been seriously involved with publicizing her case and he had not heard much about the case since she had been convicted in August 2013 (on some twenty counts including several Espionage Act counts, the Act itself, as it relates to Chelsea and its constitutionality will be the basis for one of her issues on appeal) and sentenced by Judge Lind to thirty-five years imprisonment to be served at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. (She had already been held for three years before trial, the subject of another appeals issue and as of May 2015 had served five years altogether thus far and will be formally eligible for parole in the not too distant future although usually the first parole decision is negative).

That had also been the time immediately after the sentencing when Private Manning announced to the world her sexual identity and turned from Bradley to Chelsea. The question of her sexual identity was a situation than some of us already had known about while respecting Private Manning’s, Chelsea’s, and those of her ardent supporters at Courage to Resist and elsewhere the subject of her sexual identity was kept in the background so the reasons she was being tried would not be muddled and for which she was savagely fighting in her defense would not be warped by the mainstream media into some kind of identity politics circus.

I had responded to my fellow member that, as usual in such super-charged cases involving political prisoners, and there is no question that Private Manning is one despite the fact that every United States Attorney-General including the one in charge during her trial claims that there are no such prisoners in American jails only law-breakers, once the media glare of the trial and sentencing is over the case usually falls by the wayside into the media vacuum while the appellate process proceed on over the next several years.

At that point I informed him of the details that I did know. Chelsea immediately after sentencing had been put in the normal isolation before being put in with the general population at Fort Leavenworth. She seemed to be adjusting according to her trial defense lawyer to the pall of prison life as best she could. Later she had gone to a Kansas civil court to have her name changed from Bradley to Chelsea Elizabeth which the judge granted although the Army for a period insisted that mail be sent to her under her former male Bradley name. Her request for hormone therapies to help reflect her sexual identity had either been denied or the process stonewalled despite the Army’s own medical and psychiatric personnel stating in court that she was entitled to such measures.

At the beginning of 2014 the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington, General Buchanan, who had the authority to grant clemency on the sentence part of the case, despite the unusual severity of the sentence, had denied Chelsea any relief from the onerous sentence imposed by Judge Lind.

Locally on Veterans Day 2013, the first such event after her sentencing we had honored Chelsea at the annual VFP Armistice Day program and in December 2013 held a stand-out celebrating Chelsea’s birthday (as we did in December 2014 and will do again this December of 2015).  Most important of the information I gave my fellow VFPer was that Chelsea’s case going forward to the Army appellate process was being handled by nationally renowned lawyer Nancy Hollander and her associate Vincent Ward. Thus the case was in the long drawn out legal phase that does not generally get much coverage except by those interested in the case like well-known Vietnam era Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, various progressive groups which either nominated or rewarded her with their prizes, and the organization that has steadfastly continued to handle her case’s publicity and raising financial aid for her appeal, Courage to Resist (an organization dedicated to publicizing the cases of other military resisters as well).   

 

At our February 2015 monthly meeting that same VFPer asked me if it was true that as he had heard the Army, or the Department of Defense, had ordered Chelsea’s hormone therapy treatments to begin. I informed him after a long battle, including an ACLU suit ordering such relief, that information was true and she had started her treatments a month previously. I also informed him that the Army had thus far refused her request to have an appropriate length woman’s hair-do. On the legal front the case was still being reviewed for issues to be presented which could overturn the lower court decision in the Army Court Of Criminal Appeals by the lawyers and the actual writing of the appeal was upcoming. A seemingly small but very important victory on that front was that after the seemingly inevitable stonewalling on every issue the Army had agreed to use feminine or neutral pronoun in any documentation concerning Private Manning’s case. The lawyers had in June 2014 also been successful in avoiding the attempt by the Department of Defense to place Chelsea in a civil facility as they tried to foist their “problem” elsewhere.

 

On the political front Chelsea continued to receive awards, and after a fierce battle in 2013 was finally in 2014 made an honorary grand marshal of the very important GLBTQ Pride Parade in San Francisco (and had a contingent supporting her freedom again in the 2015 parade). Recently she has been given status as a contributor to the Guardian newspaper, a newspaper that was central to the fight by fellow whistle-blower Edward Snowden, where her first contribution was a very appropriate piece on what the fate of the notorious CIA torturers should be, having herself faced such torture down in Quantico adding to the poignancy of that suggestion. More recently she has written articles about the dire situation in the Middle East and the American government’s inability to learn any lessons from history and a call on the military to stop the practice of denying transgender people the right to serve. (Not everybody agrees with her positon in the transgender community or the VFP but she is out there in front with it.) 

[Maybe most important of all in this social networking, social media, texting world of the young (mostly) Chelsea has a twitter account- @xychelsea

 

Locally over the past two year we have marched for Chelsea in the Boston Pride Parade, commemorated her fourth year in prison last May [2014] and the fifth this year with a vigil, honored her again on Armistice Day 2014, celebrated her 27th birthday in December with a rally (and will again this year on her 28th birthday).

More recently big campaigns by Courage To Resist and the Press Freedom Foundation have almost raised the $200, 000 needed (maybe more by now) to give her legal team adequate resources during her appeals process (first step, after looking over the one hundred plus volumes of her pre-trial and trial hearings, the Army Court Of Criminal Appeal)

Recently although in this case more ominously and more threateningly Chelsea has been charged and convicted of several prison infractions (among them having a copy of the now famous Vanity Fair with Caitlyn, formerly Bruce, Jenner’s photograph on the cover) which could affect her parole status and other considerations going forward.     

We have continued to urge one and all to sign the on-line Amnesty International petition asking President Obama to grant an immediate pardon as well as asking that those with the means sent financial contributions to Courage To Resist to help with her legal expenses.

After I got home that night of the meeting I began thinking that a lot has happened over the past couple of years in the Chelsea Manning case and that I should made what I know more generally available to more than my local VFPers. I do so here, and gladly. Just one more example of our fervent belief that as we have said all along in Veterans for Peace and elsewhere- we will not leave our sister behind… More later.              



Markin comments (Winter 2014):   


There is no question now that Chelsea Manning’s trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that her case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity, including in the New York Times, a newspaper which while recoiling at the severity of the sentence in the immediate reaction did not question the justice of the conviction, and has several legal moves going from action to get the necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity (which the Army has stonewalled on and which even the New York Times has called for implementing) to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to Google Amnesty International and sign on to the online petition to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.                   


I attended some of the sessions of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial in the summer of 2013 and am often asked these days in speaking for her release about what she could expect from the various procedures going forward to try to “spring” her from the clutches of the American government, or as I say whenever I get the chance to “not leave our buddy behind” in the time-honored military parlance. I have usually answered depending on what stage her post-conviction case is in that her sentence was draconian by all standards for someone who did not, although they tried to pin this on her, “aid the enemy.” Certainly Judge Lind though she was being lenient with thirty-five years when the government wanted sixty (and originally much more before some of the counts were consolidated). The next step was to appeal, really now that I think about it, a pro forma appeal to the commanding general of the Washington, D.C. military district where the trial was held. There were plenty of grounds to reduce the sentence but General Buchanan backed up his trial judge in the winter of 2014. Leaving Chelsea supporters right now with only the prospect of a presidential pardon to fight for as the court appeals are put together which will take some time. This is how I put the matter at one meeting:


“No question since her trial, conviction, and draconian sentence of thirty-five years imposed by a vindictive American government heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning’s has fallen off the radar. The incessant news cycle which has a short life cycle covered her case sporadically, covered the verdict, covered the sentencing and with some snickers cover her announcement directly after the sentencing that she wanted to live as her true self, a woman. (A fact that her supporters were aware of prior to the announcement but agreed that the issue of her sexual identity should not get mixed up with her heroic actions during the pre-trial and trial periods.) Since then despite occasional public rallies and actions her case had tended, as most political prisoner cases do, to get caught up in the appeals process and that keeps it out of the limelight.”            


Over the past year or so Chelsea Manning has been honored and remembered by the Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade in Boston in such events as the VFP-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, the Memorial Day anti-war observance, the yearly Gay Pride Parade, the Rockport July 4th parade, the VFP-led Veterans Day Peace Parade, and on December 17th her birthday. We have marched with a banner calling for her freedom, distribute literature about her case and call on one and all to sign the pardon petitions. The banner has drawn applause and return shouts of “Free Chelsea.” The Smedley Butler Brigade continues to stand behind our sister. We will not leave her behind. We also urge everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to pardon Chelsea Manning


http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30  


Additional Markin comment on his reasons for supporting Chelsea Manning:


I got my start in working with anti-war GIs back in the early 1970s after my own military service was over. After my own service I had felt a compelling need to fight the monster from the outside after basically fruitless and difficult efforts inside once I got “religion” on the war issue first-hand. That work included helping create a couple of GI coffeehouses near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down at Fort Dix in New Jersey in order for GIs to have a “friendly” space in which to think through what they wanted to do in relationship to the military.


Some wanted help to apply for the then tough to get discharge for conscientious objection. Tough because once inside the military, at least this was the way things went then, the military argued against the depth of the applying soldier’s convictions and tended to dismiss such applications out of hand. Only after a few civil court cases opened up the application process later when the courts ruled that the military was acting arbitrarily and capriciously in rejecting such applications out of hand did things open up a little in that channel. Others wanted to know their rights against what they were told by their officers and NCOs. But most, the great majority, many who had already served in hell-hole Vietnam, wanted a place, a non-military place, a non-GI club, where they could get away from the smell, taste, and macho talk of war.


Although there are still a few places where the remnants of coffeehouses exist like the classic Oleo Strut down at Fort Hood in Texas the wars of the past decade or so has produced no great GI resistance like against the Vietnam War when half the Army in America and Vietnam seemed to be in mutiny against their officers, against their ugly tasks of killing every “gook” who crossed their path for no known reason except hubris, and against the stifling of their rights as citizens. At one point no anti-war march was worthy of the name if it did not have a contingent of soldiers in uniform leading the thing. There are many reasons for this difference in attitude, mainly the kind of volunteer the military accepts but probably a greater factor is that back then was the dominance of the citizen-soldier, the draftee, in stirring things up, stirring things up inside as a reflection of what was going on out on the streets and on the campuses. I still firmly believe that in the final analysis you have to get to the “cannon fodder,” the grunts, the private soldier if you want to stop the incessant war machine. Since we are commemorating, if that is the right word the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I check out what happened, for example, on the Russian front when the desperate soldiers left the trenches during 1917 after they got fed up with the Czar, with the trenches, with the landlords, and the whole senseless mess.


Everyone who has the least bit of sympathy for the anti-war struggles of the past decade should admire what Chelsea Manning has done by her actions releasing that treasure trove of information about American atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. She has certainly paid the price for her convictions with a draconian sentence. It is hard to judge how history will record any particular heroic action like hers but if the last real case with which her action can be compared with is a guide, Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, she should find an honored spot. Moreover Chelsea took her actions while in the military which has its own peculiar justice system. Her action, unlike back in Vietnam War times, when the Army was half in mutiny was one of precious few this time out. Now that I think about she does not have to worry about her honored place in history. It is already assured. But just to be on the safe side let’s fight like hell for her freedom. We will not leave our sister Chelsea behind.              
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Chelsea supporters greet Obama during Hawaii vacation-Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Chelsea supporters greet Obama during Hawaii vacation

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US Army Col. Ann Wright (ret.), along with a small group of activists, greeted President Obama during his recent vacation in Kailua, Hawaii. Photo above: Carol Murry holds “Clemency for Chelsea Manning” sign, while Obama’s motorcade passes.


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*****Reflections In The Aftermath Of The 40th Anniversary Of Bruce Springsteen’s First Album Born To Run- And More


*****Reflections In The Aftermath Of The 40th Anniversary Of Bruce Springsteen’s First Album Born To Run- And More






From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Last year, 2015, I like a billion other citizen-music critics meaning no more than that I wrote a small sketch about the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s iconic first widely admired album, Born To Run (“iconic” a word now attached to every half-baked event and fully-baked person that has ever come to the surface with the slightest bit of renown but until the fever flavor of the month gets replaced by a more sober assessment like enigmatic I will follow the herd on this one) and placed my assessment in various blogs that I follow and other relevant social media sites but also no less than I had the same right as professional music critics to commemorate a milestone event in my own trek through life.

 
Since then I have been thinking about what I said back then and I have some additional things that might be of interest to “Bruce Springsteen nation” even though we will presumably not be commemorating the anniversary of the first distribution of that album for about another ten years. Part of the impetus for reflecting on the album was that one night my old Carver High School friends Bart Webber, Sam Eaton and Jack Callahan were discussing my sketch at one of our periodic get-togethers at the Rusty Nail, a bar we hang out in of late near Kenmore Square in Boston, now that we are all retired or semi-retired and have time to philosophize over some high-shelf scotches and whiskeys. (For those who do not frequent bars, are tee-totallers, or are just curious that “high-shelf” designation is important especially to four guys who grew up “from hunger” down in Carver, then the cranberry capital of the world or close to it who when young and thirsty drank Southern Comfort, low-shelf whiskeys like Johnny Walker Black, no scotches high-shelf or low, and if pressed hard drunk Thunderbird or Ripple wines.)
 
That night we got, as we have been doing since those high school days when we hung out in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys pining away, into a dispute, although we always called it a beef back then about the virtues of Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics on stuff like Thunder Road and Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out. Their collective wisdom was that Bruce “spoke” to that Saturday night “chicken run” everything is all right down at the far end of the beach as long as you have your honey on board, take your baby for a ride, see the sights but get the hell out of Carver at all costs unless we wanted to wind up like our parents tied by a million cords to the freaking bogs. Me, well me, I thought they all had had too much to drink that night, maybe too much to dream too since while I am willing to give Bruce plenty of simpatico for merely having survived his youth in Jersey a few years after us that we were driven much more by guys like the literary on the road Jack Kerouac, the poetic mad monk Moloch-hunter Allen Ginsburg, and muse musically by Bob Dylan. They raised a collective sigh and then made the inevitable comment that covers all our disputes these days that I had probably done too much grass/ cousin/speed/hash or any combination thereof and the chickens have finally come home to roost. Here in my updated version of that sketch from last year reflecting that conversation with my friends. I hope it will hold everybody’s tongues until mid-2025 when we have to think through the damn thing again:                               
 
“I got my ‘religion’ on Bruce Springsteen ass-backward (something unkind souls of my acquaintance, that trio of corner boys who still think I am addled by the acid trips of my youth and therefore feel free to discount everything I have said for the past forty years, would say was a more generalized condition), meaning, my meaning anyway, was that I was not an E Street Irregular back in the day, the day we are commemorating with this little sketch, the day when Bruce Springsteen busy in the subterranean world around New York City trying to catch on well after the folk minute and acid rock moments had played out sprung his sweet baby everything is all right Saturday night Jersey boy of a different kind magic on the rock and roll scene with the album Born To Run on a candid world. You see I was in a monastery then, or might as well have been, and did not get the news of the new dispensation, that a small stab was being attempted to create a “new breeze” after the previous breeze had played out a few years before, that there was a new “max daddy” rock and roll star out in the firmament and so I let that past. (As will be explained presently there were reasons for that, reasons that the in-tune Bart, Sam and Jack did not have to deal and they could track the rise of Springsteen in the normal progressive of their rock musical interests.)  
“Here comes reason for that ass-backward part though. See I really was ‘unavailable’ in that 1975 year since I was one among some guys, really a lot of guys although that was something I didn’t know until many years later, some Vietnam veterans who were living under bridges, along the riverbanks, along the railroad tracks of the East Coast from about Boston in summer (the area which I had come from since Carver is about thirty miles south of Boston) to D.C. maybe a little further south as the weather got colder trying to cope as best we could with the ‘real’ world when we got home. The post ‘Nam ‘real’ world that just wasn’t the same as before we left from home and our standard dreams of marriage, white picket fence houses, kids and dogs after whatever we left of ourselves in burning, shooting, napalming, molesting a whole race of very busy people with whom we had not quarrel, no quarrel at all. Plenty of guys, most probably if anybody took a survey on the subject of post-war adjustment, got back and just went to their standard dream lives. Others of us, me and my brothers under the bridge, took a detour, a wrong detour but a detour and so the old hangout with the buddies world of high school chatting about girls with didn’t have or if we did have didn’t have dough to take out properly, about cars we didn’t have either and mostly just hung out talking about music, about what we talk about since we always had a spare quarter to play the latest tunes on Jack Slack’s jukebox, or our leader madman Frankie Riley did, seemed very far away. The fight to keep warm, to keep doped up, to keep from jail except when we wanted to be “vagged” to get indoors and some food and a shower, and most of all to keep moving, something that I still feel even today at times, is what drove our sullen dreams.      
“So we, me, were not doing a very good job of getting along with our lives, mostly. Not succeeding against the drugs (my personal problem from cocaine to meth and back depending on when you ran into me, if you dared), the liquors (my boy Seaside Sean from up in Hampton Falls in New Hampshire who gathered a fistful of medals in Vietnam and who tossed them over the fence at the United States Supreme Court building in that famous VVAW demonstration earlier in the decade unlike me who only survived because a couple of black kids from Harlem saved my ass a couple of times although later not their own, whom I couldn’t save one night when the DTs got to him so bad he went down into the Hudson River from the nearest bridge he was so lost), the petty robberies (Jesus, holding up White Hen convenient stores with my hands so shaky I could barely keep the gun from jumping out of them and if the young girl behind the register had decided to take a stand I probably would not be writing this, at least not as a free man), and the fight to stay away from the labor market. Work which seemed so irrelevant then, work for what purpose if your dreams were not of white picket fences,  the curse of the ‘lost boys of the bridges,’ the boys who wanted no connection  with Social Security numbers, VA forms, forwarding  addresses, hell even General Post Office boxes just in case some dunning repo man, or some angry wife was looking for support, support none of us could give for crying out loud why do you think we worked the stinking garbage strewn rivers, rode the dreamless smoke streams trains, faced the rats mano y mano under the bridges. Work if pressed up against the wall only at some day labor joint giving false social security numbers, pearl-diving where no question were asked as long as the dishes and pans didn’t pile up, or in-kinf for a few nights reprieve from the bridges at some Sally (Salvation Army) harbor lights mission. Not the time to be worrying about grabbing that girl heading to Thunder Road.  
“Yeah, tough times, tough times indeed, and a lot of guys had a close call, a very close call, including me, and a lot of guys like now with our brethren Afghan and Iraq soldier brothers and sisters didn’t make it, guys like Sean who if you looked at him you could not believe how gone he really was with that baby-face of his I still see now, still see as he trogged his way to that night bridge and just let himself free fall I hope somebody up in Hampton Falls claimed him for we, I, couldn’t do so since I was on the run myself, didn’t make it but are not on the walls in black granite  down in D.C.-although maybe they should be.
“Of course Brother Springsteen immortalized the Brothers Under The Bridge living out in Southern California along the arroyos, riverbanks, and railroad tracks of the West in a song which I heard some guys playing one night when I was at a VA hospital in the early 1980s trying to get well for about the fifteenth time (meth again, damn I can still feel the rushes, still want my sweet jesus high, when I say the word) and that was that. I cried that night for my lost youth, for Sean, for the guys who played the song over and over again, Saigon, long gone… no way long gone. The next step, after a few more months of recovery,  was easy because ever since I was kid once I grabbed onto something that moved me some song, some novel, some film I checked out everything by the songwriter, author, director I could get my hands on. 





“Once I did grab a serious chunk of Springsteen’s work, grabbed some things from the local library since my ready cash supply was low I admit I got a bit embarrassed. Admitted to myself that I sure was a long gone daddy back in 1975 and for few years thereafter. How could I not have gravitated earlier to a guy who was singing the high hymnal songs about the antics of the holy goof corner boys who I grew up with, the guys out in the streets making all that noise, trying to do the best they could in the hard working class neighborhood night around Harry’s Drug Store on windless Friday nights  without resources after all the grifter, sifter, and especially midnight shifter stuff was said and done (and where are they now, Frankie, Markin, Jack, Jimmy, Tiny, Dread, and a few other who faded in and out over the high school years, I know where Jimmy Johnson and Kenny Bow are, down on a black granite stone in D.C. still mourned, mourned since they never got to graduate from the corner boy night like the rest of us one way or another).

“Yeah, singing out loud about the death trap small town that kills the spirit of the young (mine spent up in Carver down Massachusetts way), especially in the close quarters of the working class neighborhoods like the small shack of a house I grew up in(along with four brothers if you can believe that looking at the house today which is owned by a new ramshackle generation caught on the low-down) along with all the other stuff that went with it about keeping your head down, about not making waves, about not bringing public shame, about going along to get along. Yeah, the whole nine yards. The worse part though was to do your duty, do the right thing when your freaking country called, called for any reason. You know what I say-fuck that, get the hell out of Dover, Auburn, Saratoga, Naples, Oceanside, Fayetteville, Steubenville and a million other Carver-like towns before the bastards eat you alive. That was the message, or one of the messages, Brother Bruce laid down.

“Here is another part to consider too, the constant hanging around with nothing to do looking for the heart of Saturday night and maybe a date with Lorraine who had been promising to take me “around the world,” (I’ll let you smart people figure out what that meant on your own) when we got married and settled down after I got out of the Army (which was in our stink-hole of a town considered automatic, double automatic as the war clouds heated up in Vietnam as we were getting ready to graduate). Lorraine, if you can believe this and you should, lived in an even more ramshackled shack of house than I did, even more run down because her old man was a drunk and her mother had some kind of mental problems that nobody could ever figure out (she would years later be “put away” as the saying went so there was truth to her problems, maybe that old man drinking and belting her around added to the pain in her head and she just nodded out into her own world, I guess). Lorraine maybe dirt poor, maybe not the best dresser since her clothes came out of the local Bargain Center that she was afraid to admit to me until I told her my stuff was strictly hand-me downs from my older brothers and my mother made her purchases for us at that same store, was the smartest girl in her class (she was a year behind me), was in the College Prep classes while I was in some dink General Ed track. But here is where having too much time on your hands, and too much “from hunger” too got in the way.

“Not so sweet Lorraine was two-timing me, she was two-timing me with a guy from Hingham in the back of his Chevy half bare-assed, taking him “around the world,” which I figure that you have figured out by now what it means, as my friend Jack found out from his sister who was dating the guy’s younger brother and passed on to me, the bitch. Yeah, I took it hard, took it harder when she lied to me that they were “just friends,” that our thing was real. I dropped her like a hot potato, gone (although not forgotten obviously since I still have a slow burn about that situation, hell, she was my first love). I heard later when I was in ‘Nam from that same Jack that she went with this Hingham guy out to California for a while, that the guy had treated her right, that they had been on the same wavelength about getting out of Podunk, getting out of that public shame stuff too. Jack said he heard she had become a “flower child” or something but then his sister stopped dating the guy’s younger brother and she kind of just faded from the earth.        

“The guys were right, my corner boys were right, right as hell, live fast, live very fast and don’t look back because there ain’t nothing to look back to. Just keep looking for some new Lorraine to break your heart, you know you will so you don’t have to take it from me, to take you “around the world” if she decides not to two-time you for some new Jimmy. Just keep looking and moving, that’s the ticket. Yeah, it’s a sad, cold world so damn you had better run, run as hard and fast as you can. That’s the score, Jack, that’s the score.
 
 
“Bruce though singing about getting out on that Jack Keroauc-drenched hitchhike highway that I dreamed of from my youth, of hitting the open road and searching for the great American West blue-pink night that before ‘Nam every one of my corner boys dreamed of and Sam, Sam Lowell even did, did hit that road, of hitting the thunder road in some crash out Chevy looking for Mary or whatever that dish’s name was, looking for that desperate girl beside him when he took that big shift down in the midnight “chicken run,” in taking that girl down to the Jersey shore everything is alright going hard into the sweated carnival night. Later getting all retro-folkie, paying his Woody and Pete dues looking for the wide Missouri, looking for the heart of Saturday night with some Rosalita too (and me with three busted marriages to show for those dreams), and looking, I swear that he must have known my story for my own ghost of Tom Joad coming home bleeding, bleeding a little banged up, out of the John Steinbeck Okie night, coming home from Thunder Road maybe dancing in the streets if the mood took him to that place that you could see in his eyes when he got going, coming home from down in Jungle-land the place of crashed dreams out along the Southern Pacific road around Gallup, New Mexico  dreaming of his own Phoebe Snow. Yeah, thanks Bruce, thanks from a brother under the bridge.”

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