Thursday, February 02, 2017

An Encore -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.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-She-In Honor Of Rita Hayworth


From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-She-In Honor Of Rita Hayworth




Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Rita Hayworth. You are forewarned.

[Dream sequel: An obviously very worn out (mainly visible through the telltale rings around the eyes) young working-class lad just off the boats, maybe having just worked the banana boats off the Central American coast or some oil tanker steaming to some South American city port, lands on all four’s in Rio at Faro Jack’s Casino half-drunk, half-dazed and half-crazed with lust, woman lust. Darkly good-looking, a woman’s man, a woman’s man for sure in that good-looking young working- class minute way before the hard labor and hard drink take their toll. Cleaned up, shaved-up, white Panama-suited up against the tropical sweats, some manly fragrance lightly splashed for effect, he has left the stink, the rot, and the rut of his previous travels behind and for just that minute he was standing on the rim of the world.

As he walked the long entrance way to the bar (the sound and sights of the gaming tables and slots over to the right telling him that the real play here was gambling not tight-fisted drinking), the smoke almost making it impossible to see. Impossible despite the elaborate lighting that makes the place seem like daylight 24/7, although it was almost midnight. And despite his own cigarette, a Lucky, perched in his mouth adding to the smog (his mother, his damn French-Canadian mother, always trying to make him stop that nasty Protestant habit as she called it).

Suddenly he stopped in his tracks, or rather took a series of side-steps, hearing some half-forgotten tune from a woman’s sultry voice as he looked up at the outlines of the empty bandstand. There she was. Sitting on a piano bench alone which seemed to hold her well enough as she methodically strummed her guitar and sang, laconically torch sang there was no other way to put it, If I Didn't Care, to no one in particular. He was/is transfixed for the moment, from that moment.

She raised her head a bit in his direction, still singing laconically, and gave him a smile, no, the essence of a smile. A smile that promised adventure, hardship, romance, and hell and back but it promised something. He moved toward her, stopping the waiter on his way to order a scotch, best house scotch, straight up, and whatever she was having. He continued to walk toward her, noticing her flaming reddish-brown hair, noticing her well-turned legs and ankles, noticing her deep-cleaved dress (and thoughts of undress and it pleasures), noticing her ruby-red lips built for nothing else but love, noticing…]

He awakens from his semi-trance, or rather is startled out of it by the waiter’s plea for him to take his drink and pay the tab, noticing like some déjà vu mind trick that there was something very familiar, very childhood familiar about her, about the look of her, some cinematic she vague mist remembered look. In a second, as he continued, relentlessly, if more slowly now toward her he had it. The last time that devilishly sweet-smiling, buttery-voiced, long-legged, big-haired (heck, that's the best I can do, the way he described it to me, I don't know what they called that style but other "hot" 1940s women stars like Lauren Bacall and Veronica Lake wore it that way too), been around the block and is still standing, femme fatale, relentlessly sexual, very relentlessly sexual. Rita Hayworth, that’s it.

Rita’s name came up from the time when his mother (now estranged, very estranged, for the past few years, father long gone, long seven seas gone, maybe explaining his own sea chases) took him to the Strand over on Elm Street just off Main Street (really U.S. Route One but everybody called it Main Street) in his ocean edge hometown of Olde Saco up in Maine). That was when her photograph, just her big blow-up photo nothing more, was used to cover (literally) actor Tim Robbins’ escape route in the film, The Shawshank Redemption. Of course, that flash had him thinking about the film Gilda which he had to see at some art house festival in his the old ‘Frisco road days before he headed out on to the China seas.

Thinking back to that Gilda plot he looked around quickly trying to make out forms, male forms, mainly in the smoke-besmirched room. Trying to make out some down and out American expatriate fellaheen, some Johnny Farrow who found himself in Buenos Aires doing, well, doing the best he can. And Rita came with the best- you- can package, strictly private property. Sometimes though doing the best one can, as he himself well knew from a few bumps and bruises he had suffered along the way when down and out at the lumpen edges of society is risky, very risky, and not just in Buenos Aires, as the French writers Genet and Celine can tell you too. He saw a couple of guys, a couple of dressed up tux guys, but decided that they were strictly hired help, strictly bouncers, paid by the hour (or maybe, the scotch, best house scotch, was going to his head a little and his judgment was off a little ). He thought to himself no Johnny yet so he was ahead of the game.


He took another look, a hard look in her direction again as she smiled at him again, lifted her his bought drink to him and gave a silence “Cheers” that spoke unmistakably of adventure, maybe tonight, and danger. His look, his hard look by the way, was induced by that careful (lump and bump careful) check point about her possibly being married. And in his mind up stepped a “savior” candidate, a Ballin, illegal night club owner of Rita yore, power-monger and all-around megalomaniac. Maybe Faro Jack himself, although he had no proof there was even a real person named Faro Jack. He looked around again, and made a special point of looking toward the back of the house, toward the offices where some evil genie might reside. No white-haired devil on the premises. Still ahead.

As he made his final approach (thinking furiously, as furiously as that best house scotch would permit, some snappy line to break the ice, or bring that smile, that essence of a smile once again, as he thought about it later) a guy, a guy in a white Panama suit too against the oppressive Rio heat bumped into him. Half-drunkenly bumped into him but with just a touch of purpose and began to harangue him on the subject of women, and other subjects, most importantly, on the advice front, that gambling and women don’t mix, especially for up-and-coming guys like him. She gave the half- drunk one fierce look, and he returned to his seat at the bar, mumbling. Mumbling some number scheme and, well, to make the story short, with this Johnny (his Rita name for the bumper) denying on three (maybe more) bibles that he is over, done with, finished with, couldn’t care less about, is not smitten with, she. [Turned out, he found out later, that the bumper and she knew each other and had previously held the "torch" for each other.]

He thinks through the plot of Gilda again. As he knew, having sat through many lonely no money double features in odd-ball waterfront old timey movie houses in far flung ports of call, it was very routine in 1940s “boy meets girl” films in the end for things to work out, although it was close for a while in that film. Ballin (Faro Jack?), despite his off-hand desire to rule the world, was so smitten with Gilda that he could not think straight. Johnny (Bumper?) was so smitten with Gilda that he could not think straight. The 1940s male audience was so smitten with Gilda that they could not think straight. He was so smitten with she/ Gilda that he could not think straight.

Finally he was standing just in front of her, he went to open his mouth to speak but she cut him off with a smile, no, again no, with the essence of a smile, and with her hand, her wedding ring-less hand, directed him to the back door, that same back door which he had canvassed before looking for the ghost of Ballin. His heart started to beat rapidly, drink heart rapidly, adventure heart rapidly, hell and back heart rapidly. For a split second, maybe less, maybe some Nano something or whatever they call it when it is less than a second he hesitated, then moved forward following her swaying hips to meet his fate…

***Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes- With The Negro Speaks Of Rivers In Mind

***Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes- With The Negro Speaks Of Rivers In Mind   




From The Pen Of Frank Jackman



February is Black History Month






The Negro Speaks of Rivers



… she, sable in a stable born or some such as Mister would provide for a fecund mother and maybe his “wife” she, daughter of the Nubian civilized night in times when old Pharaoh and his ilk (and his damn slaves too) up in Egypt land were still trying to figure out how to turn that straw into bricks and that reed weed in paper, daughter of the long flow Nile mother of waters in ancient times she, daughter of ancient Mother Africa, Africa before the international slavers came to breakup tribal bonds, break up families and cast seed to the winds, she, Hattie, Aunt Betty, Sarah, Lettie, she, no proud names now but some sour Missy given, she/they now of the Yazoo in the dark Mississippi night (dark for her not giving a damn about Mister’s best 28,000 acres of the best bottomland in the state and his night time crawls), sat washing sheets (and other dirtied wear too but sweated, unfurled sheets first made of fine cool linen as she could feel as she braced the two gentle stones between the folds), riverbank washing sheets (washing sheets for Mister, Missy, Mister Luke, Miss Sarah and old rowdy Mister’s high yella in Jackson, Mona, damn she was the worse by far wanting two sets of sheets to bounce Mister’s lusts) like one thousand generation washing womenfolk forbear crashing ancient stones to bleed the dirt from some exertions she, and wistfully dreaming freedom dreams, small town freedom dreams like Cousin Eddy escaped and followed the Northern star, followed his dreams away from tortured rivers, and away from white sheet sprawls. Dreaming, back to Africa dreaming heard around sullen camp fires with too little wood to keep the devil away and a body dry and warm and in broken down cabins not fit for Mister’s horses (little knowing that some Mister up North and his brethren were chain slaving thoughts of shipping her brethren, Cousin Eddy in that small town for one, back to that strange land that disturbed her sleep, dreaming fourth, or was it fifth generation dreaming of breaking out of Yazoo mucks, of endless dawn to dusk toils, and of unspoken, unspeakable Mister riverbank wants.

But mostly she dreamed of Toby, of freedom river Toby, her oldest, now this night six months fled, now river fled north, north by the guiding light, north from what the tom toms called, what that other Mister, the train conductor Mister called, the underground river, the river up from Yazoo mucks, up from Mississippi Delta stilts, up to Cairo town waters, yah, up that freedom river like some ancient Nile freedom from pharaoh lashes, from hot suns, from dusty, white, white until you hated the sight of white, bottom land cotton and then move.

And now, just now while daydream wondering where in this wicked old Mister world her beloved Toby was, her thoughts turned to Bob, her thirteen year old come summer Bob standing not a hundred yards from her putting those damn sheets to dry, singing softy about old pharaoh times, about Red Sea parting times, about, and this caused her panic, following the drinking gourd, following she knew the guiding light north, away from Yazoo mucks, and Mississippi silts. She knew, knew deep in her bones that some night, and it would not be long, her Bob too would be other Mister- headed Cairo town bound and that she would have two wonders, two wonders to think of every time she came, one thousand womenfolk generation washing, washing Mister’s sheets in Yazoo mucks.

Little did she know, Miss Hattie , Aunt Betty, Miss Sarah, Miss Lettie know, that not far from Yazoo rivers, one Toby X (let’s not call him some Mister name, some misname, but know he was the son of those sweet Yazoo River washings, and so know a man had been born, was part of the crew on a pilot boat attached to old Mister General Billy Sherman’s bummers and was raising hell with Mister’s kindred and that before long, all Union blue-capped and uniform yellow-striped, he would be heading toward Yazoo rivers too.



Negro Speaks Of Rivers

I've known rivers:


I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Langston Hughes

Send A Donation To Veterans For Peace-Exposing The Cost Of War Since 1985-Now Is The Time To Join The Resistance

Send A Donation To Veterans For Peace-Exposing The Cost Of War Since 1985-Now Is The Time To Join The Resistance   









d
For Immediate Release Monday, January 30, 2017
CHARLES CLEMONS MUHAMMAD SUPPORTS IMMIGRANT AND MUSLIM RIGHTS
Roxbury (January 30, 2017) – Charles Clemons Muhammad, a candidate for the Boston City Council's District 7, led a march and rally last Thursday in Boston to show solidarity with Boston's immigrant and Muslim communities.
Muhammad organized the rally in response to President Donald Trump's executive order reinstating the government's Secure Communities Program utilized by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target undocumented immigrants for removal.
"Many of our neighbors, children, friends, and loved ones are living in fear. Children are scared that their parents will be removed," Muhammad said to residents and Muslim leaders at the rally.
Bill Wright, campaign manager for Muhammad, said Bostonians need to defend immigrants, particularly recent immigrants. "Boston - and America - was built by immigrants. We all have an obligation and a duty to stand up for new immigrants in our country - the greatest land of opportunity on this planet," he said.
Roxbury's population of nearly 60,000 residents is made up of over 25 percent immigrants.
Trump's order directs the state department to withhold visas or take other measures to ensure that nations agree to take back immigrants removed from the United States. The order also threatens to deny federal grant money to the nearly 300 Sanctuary Cities throughout the United States, including Boston, that provide a safe haven for undocumented immigrants and refuse to comply with government policies that tear apart families.
"We must not fear, but stand together. No child should be in fear of losing their parents and we must stick together with our Muslim Community," said Muhammad, who, in addition to his support for Boston's immigrant and Muslim communities, is advocating for affordable housing, quality education, community engagement, and Boston's elderly and senior citizens.
Muhammad, a former Boston Police officer, said he intends to open a district office in Grove Hall and train children to become civically engaged.
www.charlesforboston.com • (857) 284-8445

4/22 March for Science (Boston)

This is the Boston, MA rally being held in parallel to the Scientists
March on Washington DC. This page is simply an event page so you can get
time, date, and location updates. Please JOIN OUR GROUP for discussion,
calls to action, volunteering opportunities, and other ways to be
involved. 😊
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1283459638410385/
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/1283459638410385/>

We are working on permits to determine a venue. Stay tuned for more
updates on logistics.

We have also updated our mission statement in solidarity with the D.C.
organizers (now updated in the group's description, and included below).

We would like to again emphasize that the focus of this event is a
non-partisan support for science. While we understand that politics may
be a motivator for involvement by some participants, the core goal of
this event will continue to be the show of support for science.

Mission Statement:
The March for Science champions publicly-funded and
publicly-communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and
prosperity. We unite as a diverse, non-partisan group to call for
science that upholds the common good, and for political leaders and
policy makers to enact evidence-based policies in the public interest.
This group is inclusive of all individuals and types of science!

Sat. 12 PM - 5 PM

Boston Common

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In Boston-Iraq Veterans Against The War- Drop the MIC

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) are bringing the Drop the MIC
(Military Industrial Complex) campaign to Boston on Thursday Feb 9, 2107.
Maggie Martin and Matt Howard of IVAW, Mike Prokosch of Dorchester People
for Peace and Karlene Griffiths Sekou and Didi Delgado of Black Lives
Matter will be hosting a discussion on militarism and its effects on our
communities at the First Baptist Church, , 633 Centre St. Jamaica Plain,
7-9 pm. Boston is the sixth city on IVAW's national tour so let's turn out
for IVAW.
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The Cold Civil War Has Started- General Strike Against Trump-Facebook Page-Build The Resistance!

The Cold Civil War Has Started- General Strike Against Trump-Facebook Page-Build The Resistance!  




The Cold Civil War In America has started (maybe has been going on, brewing, for longer than the start of the Trump regime but this is where the social fault line lies now) -Which side are you on? Build the Resistance! Build the International Solidarity Front! Build the General Strike! All Out On The 17th.


Check out this Facebook link to the General Strike Against Trump Page-Which Side Are You On? 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1756631744665376/

JOIN US FOR A GENERAL STRIKE!!!

WEBSITE: http://f17strike.com/
FACEBOOK GROUP: https://facebook.com/groups/1816330771961327

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On February 17th We SHUT IT DOWN!

We will have day of general strike and non-violent civil disobedience and demonstration.

Our Demands:

1. No Ban, No Wall. The Muslim ban is immoral, the wall is expensive and ineffectual. We will build bridges, not walls.

2. Healthcare For All. Healthcare is a human right. Do not repeal the ACA. Improve it or enact Medicare for All.

3. No Pipelines. Rescind approval for DAPL and Keystone XL and adopt meaningful policies to protect our environment. It's the only one we've got.

4. End the Global Gag Rule. We cannot put the medical care of millions of women around the globe at risk.

5. Disclose and Divest. Show us your taxes. Sell your company. Ethics rules exist for a reason and presidents should focus on the country, not their company.

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In his first week in office President Trump has trampled on human rights at home and around the world. He has banned legal immigrants and refugees from entering the country, defunded critical health initiatives for women in developing nations, dismantled the EPA and environmental protections, approved the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines, and directed the government to begin to dismantle the Affordable Care Act without any plan for covering the millions who would be left uninsured.

Trump has put our foreign policy and our very democracy in peril. He has purged the Joint Chiefs of Staff director of national intelligence and put them on invitation only status for future meetings. Meanwhile Trump added his political strategiest and extreme right media executive, Steve Bannon, on the National Security Council. These are troubling decisions and signal a move away from democratic governance.

His actions are being felt around the globe as legal immigrants are detained and deported. The Muslim ban is immoral, illegal, and un-American. He is not making America safer, he is hurting our economy and damaging our reputation with his racist policies and rhetoric.

Trump is not draining the swamp in Washington. He and his billionaire friends ARE the swamp. He refuses to divest from his company, creating a massive conflict of interest the likes the presidency has never seen. His cabinet is worth more than $9 billion and comes from ExxonMobile, Goldman Sachs, and predatory mortgage investment firms. These are the wrong people to lead our country.

On February 17th we will show Donald Trump and his cronies in Washington that our voices will be heard. No work will be done. No money will be spent. We will not support his corrupt government. We will STRIKE!!

Right now we are putting together a coalition of people and groups that are interested in organizing the strike. If your group would like to help let us know! To be successful we need buy in from a large number of political organizations and labor groups across the country.

#GeneralStrike #StandUpFightBack #BlackLivesMatter #NoBanNoWall#NoDAPL #NoKeystoneXL #StopTrump #RefugeesWelcome #Resist#WomensMarch

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/30/travel-ban-airport-protests-disruption

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/293981/could-a-general-strike-succeed-maybe-with-social.html

Wednesday, February 01, 2017

****From Veterans For Peace In Massachusetts-Stop The Damn Endless Wars

****From Veterans For Peace In Massachusetts-Stop The Damn Endless Wars

What VFP Stands For - 



Some Numbers To Consider 




 
 

Revelations-From The Sam Eaton-Ralph Morris

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Ralph Morris had always considered himself a straight-up guy. Straight up when he dealt with customers in his high-precision electrical shop in Troy, New York inherited from his father after he retired before he himself recently retired and turned it over to his youngest son, James, who would bring the operation into the 21st century with the high tech equipment precision electrical work needs nowadays. Straight up when he confronted the trials and tribulations of parenthood and told the kids that due to his political obligations (of which more in a minute) he would be away and perhaps seem somewhat pre-occupied at times but he would answer any questions they had about anything as best he could (and the kids in turn when characterizing their father to me, told me that he was hard-working, distant but had been straight up with them although those sentiments said in a wistful, wondering, wishing for more, a lot more manner like there was something missing in the whole exchange and Ralph agreed when I mentioned that feeling I had about his kids' responses to him that I was probably right but that he did the best he could). Straight up after sowing his wild oats along with Sam Eaton, Pete Markin, Frankie Riley and a bunch of other guys from the working class corners who dived into that 1960s counter-cultural moment and hit the roads, for a short time after the stress of eighteen months in the bush in Vietnam. Meaning sleeping with any young woman who would have him in those care-free days when we were all experimenting with new ways to deal with that freaking sexual issue that tormented our souls and getting only slightly less confused when we got all that god-awful and usually wrong information in the streets where most of us, for good or evil learned to separate our Ps and Qs. Straight up after all that wild oat-sowing when he promised his high school sweetheart to marry her, Lara Peters, who had waited for him to settle down to be her forever man and did so. And straight up with what concerns us here his attitude toward his military service in the Army during the height of the Vietnam War where he did his time, did not cause waves while in the service but raised, and is still raising, seven kinds of holy hell once he became totally disillusioned with the war, with the military brass and with the American government (no “our government” for him but the "American government" like he was in exile in some far off island and that monster came into view which is his way of saying it not mine) who did nothing but make thoughtless animals out of him and his buddies.             

Giving this “straight up” character business is important here because Ralph several years ago along with Sam Eaton, a non-Vietnam veteran having been exempted from military duty due to being the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters after his ne’er-do-well father died of a massive heart attack in 1965, joined a peace organization, Veterans For Peace (VFP), in order to work with others doing the same kind of work (Ralph as a  full member, Sam an associate member in the way membership works in that organization although both have full right to participate and discuss the aims and projects going forward) once they decided to push hard against the endless wars of the American government (both Ralph and Sam’s way of putting the matter).

Without going into great detail Sam and Ralph had met down in Washington, D.C. on May Day 1971 when they with their respective groups (Sam with a radical collective, hell a "red" collective for they all considered themselves some kind of red in those day from Cambridge and Ralph with Vietnam Veterans Against the War) attempted to as the slogan went-“shut down the government if it did not shut down the war.” Unfortunately they failed but the several days they spent together in detention in RFK Stadium then being used as the main detention area cemented a life-time friendship, and a life-time commitment to work for peace. (Sam’s impetus the loss of his best corner boy high school friend, Jeff Mullins, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1968 who begged him to tell everybody what was really going on with war if he did not make it back to tell them himself. He didn't but Sam has honored his blood oath request ever since).        

That brings us to the Ralph straight up part. He and Sam had worked closely with, or had been member of for several years in the 1970s, VVAW and other organizations to promote peace. But as the decade ended and the energy of the 1960s faded and ebbed they like many others went on with their lives, build up their businesses, had their families to consider and generally prospered. Oh sure, when warm bodies were needed for this or that good old cause they were there but until the fall of 2002 their actions were helter-skelter and of an ad hoc nature. Patch work they called it. Of course the hell-broth of the senseless, futile and about six other negative descriptions of that 2003 Iraq war disaster, disaster not so much for the American government (Sam and Ralph’s now familiar term) as for the Iraqi people and others under the cross-fires of the American military juggernaut (my term). So they, having fewer family and work responsibilities were getting the old time anti-war “religion” fires stoked in their brains once again to give one more big push against the machine before they passed on.

They started working with VFP in various marches, vigils, civil disobedience actions and whatever other projects the organization was about (more recently the case of getting a presidential pardon and freedom for the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle –blower soldier Chelsea Manning sentenced to a thirty-five year sentence at Fort Leavenworth for telling the truth about American atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan). Did that for a couple of years before they joined. And here is really where that straight up business comes into play. See they both had been around peace organizations enough to know that membership means certain obligation beyond paying dues and reading whatever materials an organization puts out-they did not want to be, had never been mere “paper members” So after that couple of years of working with VFP in about 2008 they joined up, joined up and have been active members ever since.        

Now that would be neither here nor there but Ralph had recently been thinking about stepping up his commitment even further by running for the Executive Committee of his local Mohawk Valley  chapter, the Kenny Johnson Chapter. (Sam as an associate member of his local chapter, the James Jencks Brigade is precluded as a non-veterans from holding such offices the only distinction between the two types of membership.) He ran and won a seat on the committee. But straight up again since he was committed to helping lead the organization locally and perhaps take another step up at some point he decided this year [2015] to go to the National Convention in San Diego (the geographic location of that site a definitive draw) and learn more about the overall workings of the organization and those most dedicated to its success.

So Ralph went and immersed himself in the details of what is going on with the organization. More importantly he got to hear the details of how guys (and it is mostly guys reflecting the origins of the organization in 1985 a time when women were not encouraged to go into the service), mostly guys from his Vietnam War generation as the older World War II and Korea vets pass on and the Iraq and Afghan war vets are still finding their “voice” came to join the organization. What amazed him was how many of the stories centered on various objections that his fellow members had developed while in whatever branch of the military they were in. See Ralph had kept his “nose clean” despite his growing disenchantment with the war while serving his eighteen months in country. He had been by no means a gung-ho soldier although he had imbibed all the social and political attitudes of his working class background that he had been exposed to concerning doing service, fighting evil commies and crushing anything that got in the way of the American government. He certainly was not a model soldier either but he went along, got along by getting along. These other guys didn’t.

One story stood out not because it was all that unusual in the organization but because Ralph had never run up against anything like it during his time of service from 1967-1970. Not in basic training, AIT, not in Vietnam although he had heard stuff about disaffected soldiers toward the end of his enlistment. This guy, Frank Jefferson, he had met at one of the workshops on military resisters had told Ralph when he asked that he had served a year in an Army stockade for refusing to wear the uniform, refusing to do Army work of any kind. At least voluntarily. The rough details of Frank’s story went like this. He had been drafted in late 1968 and was inducted into the Army in early 1969 having had no particular reason not to go in since while he was vaguely anti-war like most college students he was not a conscientious objector (and still doesn’t since he believes wars of national liberation and the like are just and supportable, especially those who are facing down the barrel of American imperialism, was not interested in going to jail like some guys, some draft resisters, from his generation who refused to be inducted and did not even think about the option of Canada or some such exile. Moreover the ethos of his town, his family, his whole social circle was not one that would have welcomed resistance, would not have been understood as a sincere if different way of looking at the world. Add to that two guys had been killed in Vietnam from his neighborhood and the social pressure to conform was too great to buck even if he had had stronger convictions then.  

Three days, maybe less after Frank was deposited at Fort Jackson in South Carolina in January, 1969 for basic training he knew he had made a great mistake, had had stronger anti-war feelings, maybe better anti-military feelings than he suspected and was heading for a fall. This was a period when draftees, those fewer and fewer men who were allowing themselves to be drafted, were being channeled toward the infantry, the “grunts,” the cannon-fodder (words he learned later but not known as he came in) and that was his fate. He was trained as an 11 Bravo, killer soldier. Eventually he got orders to report to Fort Lewis in Washington for transport to Vietnam. On a short leave before he was requested to report Frank went back to Cambridge where he grew up and checked in with the Quakers which somebody had told him to do if he was going to challenge his fate in any way. The counsellor there advised him to put in a CO application at Fort Devens nearby. He did so, was turned down because as a Catholic objector he did not qualify under the doctrine of that church. (And he still held to his “just war” position mentioned above). He tried to appeal that decision through military then civilian channels with help from a lawyer provided by the Quakers (really their American Friends Service Committee) although that was dicey at best.

Then, despite some counsel against such actions Frank had an epiphany, a day of reckoning, a day when he decided that enough was enough and showed up at parade field for the Monday morning report in civilian clothes carrying a “Bring The Troops Home” sign. Pandemonium ensued, he was man-handled by two beefy lifer-sergeants and was thrown in the stockade. Eventually he was tried and sentenced to six month under a special court-martial for disobeying orders which he served in full. He got out after during that stretch and continued to refuse to wear the uniform or do work. So back to the stockade and re-trial getting another six months, again for disobeying lawful orders. Fortunately that civilian lawyer had brought the CO denial case to the Federal Court in Boston on a writ of habeas corpus and the judge ruled that the Army had acted wrongly in denying the application. A few weeks later he was released. Frank said otherwise he still might forty plus years later be doing yet another six month sentence. So that was his story and there were probably others like that during that turbulent time when the Army was in near mutiny.

Ralph said to himself after hearing the Jefferson story, yeah, these are the brethren I can work with, the many guys like Jefferson in VFP who really won’t fold under pressure. Yeah, that’s right, straight up guys.