As March 17th Approaches-The Face Of Old Irish Working-Class North Adamsville- In Honor Of Kenny, Class Of 1958

As March 17^th Approaches-The Face Of Old Irish Working-Class North Adamsville- In Honor Of Kenny, Class Of 1958

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

Another Moment In History- A Guest Post, Of Sorts

Kenny Kelly, Class of 1958? comment:

A word. I, Kenneth Francis Xavier Kelly, at work they just call me Kenny, although my friends call me “FX”, am a map of Ireland, or at least I used to be when I was younger and had a full head of very wavy red hair, a mass of freckles instead of a whiskey and beer chaser-driven mass of very high-proof wrinkles, and my own, rather than store-bought, rattlers, teeth I mean. For work, yah, I’m still rolling the barrels uphill, I, well, let’s just say I do a little of this and a little of that for Jimmy the Mutt and leave it at that. I am also the map, the Irish map part anyway, of North Adamsville, from the Class of 1958 at the old high school, or at least I should have been, except for, well, let’s leave that as at a little of this and that, for now, as well. I’ll tell you that story another time, if you want to hear it. Or talk to that old bastard, Headmaster Kerrigan, Black-Jack Kerrigan, and he’ll give you his lying side of the story if he can still talk the bastard.

Let’s also put it that I grew up, rough and tumble, mostly rough, very rough, on the hard drinking-father-sometimes-working, and the plumbing-or-something-don’t-work- and-you-can’t- get- the-tight-fisted-landlord-to- fix-anything-for-love-nor- money walk up triple decker just barely working class, mean streets around Sagamore and Prospect Streets in one –horse Atlantic. At least my dear grandmother, and maybe yours too, called it that because there was nothing there, nothing you needed anyway. You know where I mean, those streets right over by the Welcome Young Field, by Harry the Bookie’s variety store (you knew Harry’s, with the always almost empty shelves except maybe a few dusty cans of soup, a couple of loaves of bread and a refrigerator empty except maybe a quart of milk or two, an also active pin-ball machine, and his “book” right on the counter for all the world, including his cop-customer world, to see), and the never empty, never empty as long as my father was alive, Red Feather (excuse me I forgot it changed names, Dublin Grille) bar room. Now I have your attention, right?

But first let me explain how I wound up as a “guest” here. Seems like Peter Paul Markin, that’s the half-assed, oops, half-baked,  wrote up some story, some weepy cock and bull story, about the Irish-ness of the old town,  A Moment In History… As March 17th Approaches to the North Adamsville Graduates Facebook page and my pride and joy daughter, Clara, North Adamsville Class of 1978 (and she actually graduated), saw it and recognized the names Riley, O’Brian and Welcome Young Field and asked me to read it. I did and sent Peter Paul an e-mail, christ, where does he get off using two names like he was a bloody heathen Boston Brahmin and him without a pot to piss in, as my dear grandmother used to say, growing up on streets on the wrong side of the tracks, over near the marshes for chrissakes, wronger even than the Sagamore streets. Or my baby Clara did, did sent the e-mail after I told her what to write. I’m not much of hand at writing or using this hi-tech stuff, if you want to know the truth.

I don’t know what he did with that e-mail, and to be truthful again, I don’t really care, but in that e-mail I told him something that he didn’t know, or rather two things. The first was that I “knew” him, or rather knew his grandmother (on his mother’s side) Anna Riley because her sister, Bernice, and my dear grandmother, Mary, also an O’Brien but with an “e”, who both lived in Southie (South Boston, in those days the Irish Mecca, for the heathens or Protestants, or both, both heathen and Protestant, that might read this) were as thick as thieves. When I was just a teenager myself I used to drive his grandmother over to her sister’s in Southie so that the three of them, and maybe some other ladies joined them for all I know, could go to one of the Broadway bars (don’t ask me to name which one, I don’t remember) that admitted unescorted ladies in those days and have themselves a drunk. And smoke cigarettes, unfiltered ones no less, Camels I think when I used cadge a few, which his stern grandfather, Dan Riley, refused to allow in the house over on Young Street.

I know, I know this is not the way that blue-grey haired Irish grandmothers are supposed to act, in public or private. And somebody, if I know my old North Adamsville gossips, wags and nose-butters, and my North Adamsville Irish branch of that same clan especially, is going say why am I airing that “dirty linen” in public. That’s a good point that Peter Paul talked in his story about Frank O’Brian and not airing the family business in public in that foolish essay, or whatever he wrote. So what am I doing taking potshots as the blessed memories of those sainted ladies? That is where my second thing comes in to set the record straight – Peter Paul, and I told him so in that e-mail (or Clara did) with no beating around the bush, is to me just another one of those misty-eyed, half-breed March 17th Irish that are our curse and who go on and on about the eight hundred years of English tyranny like they lived it, actually lived each day of it. (Yes half-breed, his father, a good guy from what my father told me when they used to drink together, so he must have had something going for him, was nothing but a Protestant hillbilly from down in the mountain mists hills and hollows Kentucky)

Now don’t get me wrong. I am as patriotic as the next Irishman in tipping my hat to our Fenian dead like old Pearse did back in 1913 or so, and the boys of ’16, and the lads on the right side in 1922, and the lads fighting in the North now but Peter Paul has got the North Adamsville Irish weepy, blessed “old sod” thing all wrong. No doubt about it. So, if you can believe this, he challenged me, to tell the real story. And I am here as his “guest” to straighten him out, and maybe you too. Sure, he is helping me write this thing. I already told you I’m a low-tech guy. Jesus, do you think I could write stuff like that half-assed, oops, half- baked son of an expletive with his silly, weepy half-Irish arse goings on? I will tell you this though right now if I read this thing and it doesn’t sound right fists are gonna be swinging, old as I am. But let’s get this thing moving for God’s sake.

Let me tell you about the shabeen, I mean, The Red Feather, I mean the Dublin Grille, bar room on Sagamore Street. That’s the one I know, and I am just using that as an example. There were plenty of others in old North Adamsville, maybe not as many as in Southie, but plenty. If you seriously wanted to talk about the “Irish-ness” of North Adamsville that was the place, the community cultural institution if you will, to start your journey. Many a boy, including this boy, got his first drink, legal or illegal, at that, or another like it, watering hole. Hell, the “real” reason they built that softball field at Welcome Young was so the guys, players and spectators alike, had an excuse to stop in for a few (well, maybe more than a few) after a tough battle on base paths. That’s the light-hearted part of the story, in a way. What went on when the “old man”, anybody’s “old man”, got home at the, sometimes, wee hours is not so light-hearted.

See, that is really where the straightening out job on our boy Peter Paul needs to be done. Sure, a lot of Irish fathers didn’t get drunk all the time. Although the deep dark secret was that in almost every family, every shanty family for certain and I know, and many “lace curtain” families they was at least one reprobate drunk. Hell, the local city councilor’s brother, Healy I think it was, was thrown in the drunk tank by the coppers more times than he was out. They could have given him a pass-key and saved time and money on dragging him to the caboose. But the king hell takes-the-cake was old Black-Jack’s Kerrigan’s brother, Boyo (sorry, I forget his real name). Yah, the North Adamsville High headmaster’s brother, the bastard that I had a run-in with and had to hightail it out of school, although it was not over his brother.

See Black-Jack’s family though they were the Mayfair swells since Black-Jack had gone to college, one of the first in the old neighborhood, and they had that big single-family house over on Beach Street. But more than one night I found Boyo lying face-down on Billings Road drunk as a skunk and had to carry him home to his wife and family. And then head back to the other side of the tracks, that wrong side I already told you about. Next day, or sometime later, Boyo would give me a dollar. Naturally when I went to school after that I went out of my way to flash the dollar bill at Black-Jack, saying “Look what Boyo gave me for helping him out.”

That’s all I had to say. Black-Jack always turned fuming red, maybe flaming red.

A lot of Irish fathers didn’t beat on their wives all the time either. And a lot of Irish fathers didn’t physically beat their kids for no reason. Plenty of kids go the “strap” though when the old man was “feeling his oats.” (I never heard of any sexual abuse, but that was a book sealed with seven seals then.) And more than one wife, more than one son’s mother didn’t show her face to the “shawlie” world due to the simple fact that a black eye, a swollen face, or some other wound disfigured her enough to lay low for a while. I had to stop, or try to stop, my own father one time when I was about twelve and he was on one of his three day Dublin Grille whiskey straight-up, no chaser toots and Ma just got in his way. He swatted me down like a fly and I never tried to go that route again. But he didn’t try to beat my mother again either, at least not when I was a around or I would have heard about it on the shawlie wire.

And a lot of Irish wives didn’t just let their husbands beat on them just because they were the meal ticket, the precious difference between a home and the county farm or, worse, the streets. And a lot of Irish wives didn’t make excuses (or pray) for dear old dad when the paycheck didn’t show up and the creditors were beating down the door. And a lot of Irish wives didn’t let those Irish fathers beat on their kids. And a lot of Irish mothers didn’t tell their kids not to “air the dirty linen in public.” But, don’t let anyone fool you, and maybe I am touching on things too close to home, my home or yours, but that formed part of the scene, the Irish scene.

Maybe, because down at the Atlantic dregs end of North Adamsville the whole place was so desperately lower working-class other ethnic groups, like the Italians, also had those same pathologies. (I am letting Peter Paul use that last word, although I still don’t really know what it means, but it seemed right when he told me what it meant). I don’t know. Figure it out though, plenty of fathers (and it was mainly fathers only in those days who worked, when they could) with not much education and dead-end jobs, plenty of triple deckers, no space, no air, no privacy rented housing and plenty of dead time. Yah, sure, I felt the “Irish-ness” of the place sometimes (mainly with the back of the hand), I won’t say I didn’t but when Peter Paul starts running on and on about the “old sod” just remember what I told you. I’ll tell you all the truth, won’t you take a word from me.

An Irish Love Story During Troubled Times-David Lean’s “Ryan’s Daughter” (1970)-A Film Review-For Saint Patrick's Day

An Irish Love Story During Troubled Times-David Lean’s “Ryan’s Daughter” (1970)-A Film Review-For Saint Patrick's Day 

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

Ryan’s Daughter, starring Robert Mitchum, Christopher Jones, Sarah Miles, John Miles, Trevor Howard, directed by David Lean, 1970

As those of us who were around during the 1960s and paid attention to the movies if, like myself, for no other reason than cheap dates and darkness, might have expected if they heard the name David Lean they would fully expect to have big lush vistas and cinematic epics, long cinematic epics. He had an already established pedigree with Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. And Lean does not fail us with this 1970 effort, Ryan’s Daughter, about the troubled love affair between a wistful Rosy Ryan, played by Sarah Miles, and an invalided British Army Officer, played by Christopher Jones, during the heart of World War I and the brewing troubles in the fight for Irish independence.

In a later time the wistful, restless, searching, reaching for rainbows Rosy might have been a classic “flower child”. I know I had dates with just such wistful women back in the 1960s and delighted in their company, as long as I could hold their attention. But our Rosy had two very big problems, maybe three, back then and it is not quite clear to me even after watching the three and one half hour masterwork (I won’t include extra time spent on the Special Features which were well worth checking out to get a feel for how an epic gathers itself together).

First and foremost she was a “flower child,” a free spirit in a rural Irish village isolated by the foaming sea and by its own staid traditions driven by the Roman church and an oppressed nation culture and while today a woman having an “illicit” affair would draw at most a few well-placed snickers back then the future held nothing but shaming, shunning and maybe worse. So her desire to “seek a newer world” as my old friend Sam Lowell would call what she was after was checked from minute one. Secondly, Rosy when she had that illicit affair was a very married women, married to a “quiet man,” a village intellectual, the widowed middle-aged village school teacher, Charles, played by Robert Mitchum. No man likes to be, or should like, to be cuckolded but Charles was the soul of rationality whatever emotional trauma was churning inside. A young lass and an older man set in his ways would seem to have been doomed from the start as both recognized in the end after the heat of her affair was terminated by the suicide of that troubled invalided army officer. Lastly Rosy was caught in the throes of the modern Irish struggle for national liberation where the nationalists were using Mother England’s troubles on the continent to spring for freedom. That made the British Army of Occupation all the more onerous. Made her “their” whore in the eyes of the locals. Worse made her subject to accusations, falsely as it turned out, of informing when the boyos from the IRA were trying to rescue weapons sent by the Germans which had been battered by the terrible wrath of Irish Sea and the British garrison was waiting in ambush for them up the road.                         

Name your chose of what would do Rosy in at the end (aided by a treacherous father who actually was a snitch) as she and Charles walked out of the village where they had stayed maybe too long but she paid dearly for that love-I hope she thought it was worth it. What, no question, is worth it is to watch this film unfold against the grandeur of the Irish countryside and those terrible seas.   

In Boston Two Veterans Groups Banned from the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade Veterans For Peace Are Out as Well

In Boston Two Veterans Groups Banned from the

Saint Patrick’s Day Parade 

Veterans For Peace Are Out as Well

  Veterans For Peace 

For Immediate Release

 

Contact: Pat Scanlon at 978-590-4248 or

Email: PatScanlonMusic@yahoo.com

 

Two Veterans Groups Banned from the

Saint Patrick’s Day Parade 

Veterans For Peace Are Out as Well

 

March 10, 2017

SOUTH BOSTON— There are two veterans organizations prohibited from marching in the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade this year. One group because they dare to exhibit a tiny rainbow flag to identify who they are as individuals. The second group is being denied because they work for Peace and Peaceful resolution of conflict. Veterans For Peace have also been denied to walk in the parade on March 19.

 

Both Governor Baker and Mayor Walsh had wonderful things to say about veterans in yesterday’s news”, stated Pat Scanlon, Special Event Coordinator for the local chapter of Veterans For Peace. “Mayor Walsh stated, “I will not tolerate discrimination in our city” and the Governor had moving words to say about our veterans. To quote the governor as reported; "That word veteran, to me it approaches holy," Baker said. "And the idea that we would restrict the opportunity for men and women who put on that uniform knowing full well they could put themselves in harm's way, and deny them an opportunity to march in a parade that's about celebrating veterans, doesn't make any sense to me."

 

“What are we, chopped liver”, continued Scanlon. Veterans For Peace is a national veterans organization with over two hundred veterans in their local chapter for the Boston area. These are Veterans have fought in every war since WWII. Many of these Veterans have been in harms way defending this country, have seen the horrors of war first hand, are highly decorated and now work for peace. Yet, once again not allowed to march in this historical parade. Where is the outcry from our leaders about these veterans not being able to walk in this parade? It is as if Peace is a Dirty Word.

 

The application that was sent to the AWVC is attached – please read it and try to figure out why the members of the AWVC denied Veterans For Peace to participate.

 

“It is shameful”, stated Scanlon. “The City of Boston should take back this parade and truly make it inclusive for all, regardless if you are gay or work for peace”.

 

Attachments include: 

Application for participation in Saint Patrick's Day Parade

Press Release

Picture of Veterans For Peace on West Broadway in 2016

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Out In The Delta Night-With Legendary Bluesman Muddy Waters In Mind

Out In The Delta Night-With Legendary Bluesman Muddy Waters In Mind

By Lester Lannon

Bart Webber was a late-comer to the world of the blues, you know, the music that came via Mother Africa beat from down in the Delta, out in the Piedmont and along the Alabama crescent. He had missed capturing that sound deep in his head although he probably had heard some riffs accidently or sub-consciously in some way until the early 1970s having previously been deeply emerged in the rock and roll of his youth down in Riverdale south of Boston and later by the “acid” rock of his young adulthood. Guys like Johnny Winters and John Mayall, gals like Bonnie Raitt, Janis Joplin probably entered his universe without being tagged as from down in Delta, Piedmont, Crescent land. His tutor in all things blues (and of folk of which it could be have been argued, and has been blues, is a integral  part of) Sam Lowell introduced him to the genre one night in Cambridge at Jack’s, the then famous blues room, after they had not seen each other for a while. And that would be a main subject of conversation thereafter when the met at any gin mill.

That “not having seen each other for a while” being the direct result of Bart’s coming back from the West Coast about a year earlier to open up a small printing shop in Riverdale in the old Lawrence Lowell Building just off downtown and Sam’s, also back from the Coast about the same time, beginning his second year of law school in Boston at Suffolk Law School. As old-time high school friends they had drifted out to California, draft exempt respectively for an exemption as sole support of his family after his father passed away and as physically unfit for military, along with a couple of other guys from Riverdale, Jack Callahan and Frankie Riley, and about a million young people from everywhere trying to find some meaning to their lives, at least that was the quest, that is what Bart and Sam thought they were doing. Once Sam was safely through L1 he called Bart up and they had begun once again their youthful searches for the meaning of everything musical.  

For those not familiar with Cambridge, those not familiar with Harvard Square in the folk pantheon, and those not familiar with the early link-up between traditional folk music from the mountains like East Virginia and Tom Doulas and such classic blues tunes as Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move and 61 Highway and Bukka White’s Panama Limited Jack’s was the place more so than the Club Blue and Café Nana further up the street where hot blues was played. The place too where you could heard a young Bonnie Raitt now that we are name-dropping working out the kinks in her material, working out her thirst, and working out her entrée into the blues world in those days in the 1960s when Sam, before he headed out west with an important segment of his generation, immersed himself in the genre. He would mention some stuff to Bart, as always, whenever he thought he could get the musical upper-hand on Bart. Bart had been way ahead of him on the classic rock, you know, Elvis, Carl, Buddy, Chuck and Jerry Lee but Sam had chipped away at that lead with the advent of the Stones and was eons ahead once the folk and blues milieus came into some fashion among the hipsters of Cambridge and the diaspora.

That night we are talking about, the night of the meeting at Jack’s, with both men safely drinking their whiskies and scotches in lieu of the less public hash pipe, ganga gong, or dixie cup. (You figure out that usage if you are too forgetful, or too young just Google Tom Wolfe and you will link straight to the reference.) Sam started a conversation by telling Bart that he remembered back in the day when he had heard Howlin’ Wolf, the mad monk Chicago bluesman, who had practically eaten his harmonica on a song called How Many More Years (are you going to dog me around-a very good question that any righteous man is entitled to ask his, ah, temperamental lady when she is giving nothing, nothing but heartache and the runaround) get down and dirty on a Willie Dixon song, Little Red Rooster, long after he had heard the Stones do their cover of the song which many radio stations around Riverdale refused to play on the air for its allegedly suggestive sexual references having nothing to do with roosters or barnyards. He had been “blown away” by the Wolf’s version. What he had to tell Bart that night was that he had just heard a record where a couple of the Stones, probably Keith Richards and Ronnie Woods, sitting at the feet of the Wolf learning how to play, really play that song rather than their white bread, white boy version. Hot stuff.                  

That gave Bart just the opportunity he was looking for to bring up his “difference” with Sam about who was the “max daddy” bluesman, the electric Chicago blues version not that of the down country  guys like Son House and Skip James. And that difference turned on his much greater preference for the more sultry blues beat of Mister Muddy Waters who never almost “ate” his own harmonica since he had hired help like James Cotton and Junior Wells to handle that chore. Naturally Bart always pointed to Muddy’s Hoochie Goochie Man as far superior to the gruntings of the Wolf, who in Bart’s mind had never really got the mud of the Delta off his boots.

Of course Sam, once cornered by Bart, once he knew Bart was on the war-path about the blues and who was who, aided no little by those bar whiskies and scotches, had to come back on him with that story about how the Stones when they were on one of the their early United States tours had made the pilgrimage to Chicago, to Chess Records, in those days the Mecca for Chicago blues (and incidentally a record company owned by Marshal Press’ father and uncle who just happened to be the Stones’ road manager at that point) and Muddy Waters having seen the boys come in for a look volunteered to bring their luggage in. Wolf would have left the damn luggage float up Division Street before he would bend to such indignities.            

Bart, not to be outdone in the urban legend department (urban legend about Muddy toting anybody’s luggage much less the Stones who at that point he would probably not even known about, much less that they were crazy for his music) came back on Sam hard with the facts and figures about how many “lady friends” Muddy had hanging around for his pleasure, including a few times, one at one table and another a few tables away. Of course there were rumors around that Wolf refused any advances by the enraptured females, black and white, in his audiences leading to the charges that he was “light on his feet.”  (Another urban legend since Mrs. Burnet, Wolf’s real last name stayed at home taking care of business in the knowledge that her Chester was working and not working out if you get the drift.)       

A few more whiskies and scotches would surely have Sam and Bart at each other’s throats talking heatedly about whether Hubert Sumelin added more to Wolf’s entourage than Junior Wells’ to Muddy’s. It would be a knock-down, drag-out fight from there. Sam must have wondered on such nights about the monster he had brought forth unto the world. Amen, brother, amen.  

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Woody Guthrie's' "Deportee"

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Woody Guthrie's' "Deportee"  

During, let’s say the Obama administration or, hell, even the Bush era, for example  we could be gentle angry people over this or that notorious war policy and a few others matters and songs like Give Peace A Chance, We Shall Overcome, or hell, even that Kumbaya which offended the politically insensitive. From Day One of the Trump administration though the gloves have come off-we are in deep trouble. So we too need to take off our gloves-and fast as the cold civil war that has started in the American dark night heads to some place we don’t want to be. And the above song from another tumultuous time, makes more sense to be marching to. Build the resistance!

Deportee
(aka. "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos")
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Martin Hoffman

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

      

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Barry McGuire's "Eve Of Destruction

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Barry McGuire's "Eve Of  Destruction    

During, let’s say the Obama administration or, hell, even the Bush era, for example  we could be gentle angry people over this or that notorious war policy and a few others matters and songs like Give Peace A Chance, We Shall Overcome, or hell, even that Kumbaya which offended the politically insensitive. From Day One of the Trump administration though the gloves have come off-we are in deep trouble. So we too need to take off our gloves-and fast as the cold civil war that has started in the American dark night heads to some place we don’t want to be. And the above song from the 1960s, another tumultuous time, makes more sense to be marching to. Build the resistance!      

BARRY MCGUIRE LYRICS

Play "Eve Of Destruction" on Amazon Music

"Eve Of Destruction"

The eastern world it is exploding
Violence flarin', bullets loadin'
You're old enough to kill but not for votin'
You don't believe in war but whats that gun you're totin'?
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'

But you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction

Don't you understand what I'm tryin' to say
Can't you feel the fears I'm feelin' today?
If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy, it's bound to scare you boy

And you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction

Yeah my blood's so mad feels like coagulating
I'm sitting here just contemplatin'
I can't twist the truth it knows no regulation
Handful of senators don't pass legislation
And marches alone can't bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin'
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin'

And you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for four days in space
But when you return it's the same old place
The pounding of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead but don't leave a trace
Hate your next door neighbor but don't forget to say grace

And tell me
Over and over and over and over again my friend
You don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction
Mmm, no, no, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction

Public Comments Due on U.S. Deployment of THAAD in Guam

Public Comments Due on U.S. Deployment of THAAD in Guam

 

The US Army has announced the availability of the updated Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Permanent Stationing in Guam, Environmental Assessment (EA), including the Draft Findings of No Significant Impact. The EA assesses the potential impacts associated with the current expeditionary (temporary) placement and operation of a THAAD ballistic missile defense battery at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam [since 2013], and from the proposed permanent stationing of the THAAD battery at the current location on Northwest Field. 

The EA was previously released for public comment in June 2015. Because of changes to the overall size of the cargo drop zone (CDZ) training area and associated vegetation clearing, and the completion of agency consultations for biological and cultural resources, the updated EA and associated FNSI are being released for public comment.

 

THAAD is also now being deployed against the massive will of the people in South Korea.

Comment Here

The public comment period began on March 17, 2017 and ends on April 17, 2017. All comments on the EA and Draft FNSI must be received or postmarked no later than April 17, 2017. Comments may be submitted online or via postal mail addressed to:

U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command
Attention: SMDC-ENE (Mark Hubbs)
Post Office Box 1500
Huntsville, AL 35807-3801
  
You can give your comments online using this web site at   http://www.thaadguamea.com/provide-comments

Below are the comments submitted by the Global Network:

Our organization opposes the deployment and testing of THAAD in Guam.  The process of using lands on Guam is evidence of US continued colonization of this island. The creation of suitable deployment sites for the array of THAAD technologies will have adverse effects on the land. The stor…

For all these reasons we think the deployments of THAAD on Guam should be rejected.

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org 
http://space4peace.blogspot.com  (blog)

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. - Henry David Thoreau

What Makes An Effective Protest-The Risen People?-May Day 1971-Build The Resistance

What Makes An Effective Protest-The Risen People?-May Day 1971-Build The Resistance 

Here is a take from NPR on how earlier protest movements affected policy.

http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/02/23/effective-protest-movement

Click on the headline to link to an entry for May Day 1971 in Washington, D.C.

http://libcom.org/library/ending-war-inventing-movement-mayday-1971


Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all we knew, every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums, aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let her rip cosmic brakeman Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some wheat field night fantasy this trip.

No this trip was not about securing some cultural enclave in post-war (World War II so as not to confuse the reader) break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute, absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we are, he is, ready. On that dusty road ready.

More. See all roads head south as we and they, his girlfriend of the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or dream wish and his sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted, okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your “type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some forlorn rear view mirror.

Yah, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more, too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down to D.C. for what many of them figured would be the last, finally, push back against the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching television and the news, but THEY, and we knew (know) who they were, had their antennae out too, they KNEW those who were coming, even high-ball fixed (or whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style (and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad as Ct., nothing except Arizona was). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy (remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance sometime).

The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe, better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, they thought about it later in lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really, and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms these jailbirds-in-waiting- were ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day 1971.

And not just any massed presence like the then familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention then to anymore except the organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter, would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat. Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody mentioned them out loud in our presence and we were at every meeting, high or low. Moreover we had our ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. We, rightly or wrongly, silly us thought “cop.” 

So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment around DuPont Circle (He, we, thought, but it may have been further up off 14^th Street, Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys from old revolutions and so, well, discounted) to early rise (or early stay up cigarette chain-smoking and coffee-slurping to keep the juices flowing).

Out into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded, coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere, bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam, naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum, beat, beat like gongs, defeated.

Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all, was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested, two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big ironic (past ironic) Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.

And, as we were being led away by one of D.C.s finest, we turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with the strategy that day and we had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before, that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous sister, forgive us. (Not so anonymous actually since we saw her many times later in Boston, and Peter Paul almost would have traded in lust for her but he was still painted Botticelli-bewitched and so I, he, let the moment pass, and worked on about six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later. We saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)

Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart road tramps acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, we were longing for the hot, dusty, truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.  

Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Non-Essential Elvis- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Elvis Presley performing the essential That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.

The Essential Elvis Presley, Two CD set, Elvis Presley, Sony Music 2007



There are a thousand, thousand ways to package the be-bop rock and roll minute king of the 1950s teenage angst night. And for his early work he should be packaged, packaged to eternity. It is the rest of his work that is the problem and hence the problem with this two CD set of what the producers have picked as essential. There are just too many dud, and semi-duds from his later period (the 1960s and 1970s Las Vegas flame-out period.
Any essential product has to be top-heavy with 1950s stuff get a nod from me.

From this compilation the obvious classics That’s All Right, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Don’t Be Cruel, Jailhouse Rock and It’s Now or Never rate a nod. Th rest though are strictly a mishmash. And I know from where I speak. Why? Until very, very recently I actually, if you can believe this, did not think much of Brother Presley’s music. And I was (and still am somewhat) nothing but a be-bop rock and roll baby-boomer boy who could listen to the stuff all day and night. A while back I got a hold of a five CD set of Elvis’ work from the Sun Record days mainly. That’s the Elvis who will live in rock and roll history. Stuff like It’s All Right, Mama, I Forgot To Remember To Forget, Good Rockin’ Tonight, That’s Where Your Heartaches Begin, Your Right She Left and a ton of others. Ya, the stuff from the days when he was hungry, and we were too. This compilation will not satisfy that hunger.

As March 17th Approaches-Remembrances Of Boston Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade 2012

As March 17^th Approaches-Remembrances Of Boston Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade 2012

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

[Saint Patrick’s Day 2012 represented something of a high point in the efforts of Veterans for Peace, their peace and social justice activist allies, their gay LGBTQ community allies, to either gain entrance in the “official parade” which should have been opened to all or to be given a reasonable start time either immediately before or after the “official” parade. In 2013 and 2014 they wound up finishing their peace parade almost in the dark to half empty streets filled party-going drunks and assorted misfits. In 2015 after some very sour and self-serving maneuvers by City Hall and the official parade committee the peace parade had to be cancelled again as it was this year. Damn.]

“Hey, just follow the Veterans For Peace (VFP) white and black dove-emblazoned flags down to D Street and you’ll run right into the Saint Patricks’ Peace Parade staging area,” a grizzled veteran, looking like a man who had seen his share of battles in war and peace, bellowed to one and all as Frank Jackman and his veteran and peace activist companions exited the Broadway Redline MBTA station on that overheated March 17^th 2012 Sunday late morning in order to form up in that parade the old vet had informed them about. Headed out into the South Boston (Southie) day.  

[As it turned out, by the way, when Frank “interviewed” him later while they were waiting in that flag-festooned staging area, the grizzled veteran, Bob Ballad, had indeed seen his share of battles, having done two tours in ‘Nam, two tours as a “grunt,” an infantry man, “cannon fodder,” during hell time, 1966-68, and also of peace time battles against drugs and liquor, a couple of bouts of homelessness, a couple of divorces, and a few other of the now well-known  pathologies of  those who had had trouble coming back to the “real world “ after Vietnam that Frank had witnessed in his own family, in his own old time Hullsville neighborhood,  and among his fellow VFPers. Moreover , unlike Frank, who was also a Vietnam veteran and had  turned anti-war while in the military, that grizzled vet had not turned against war, the rumors of war, and all that war entails until his own son started clamoring for permission to go in the service when Iraq exploded in 1991. That is when he put his foot down, kept his son out, and had been a stalwart anti-warrior ever since. Talk about a guy with street “cred” on war issue. Welcome aboard, brother, welcome aboard]               

Frank  had to chuckle to himself a little as he and his companions headed up Broadway among the throngs who were forming up for the official parade that although he had grown up in the Irishtown section of Hullsville (you could hardly walk down a street of that town at this time of year and not be confronted with more green than you would ever see short of  maybe Dublin , and that was true even these days when the town itself, reflecting a couple of generations more moving south out of  Boston had lost it dominate Irish feel) and had lived in Boston on and off for most of his adult life he had never gone to the official parade. Well except that one time in high school junior year when he and “flame” Kathy Flanagan (she of the long wild red hair, light freckled face and green eyes, and thin athletic body who disturbed his sleep more than one night in those days) had “skipped” school (unlike in Boston which was in a different county from Hullsville they did not have the day off from school in the days when the holiday was celebrated on the actual day not only on Sunday) and headed via the long haul Eastern Mass bus armed with a pint of  Southern Comfort, the drink of choice and cheap, over to the parade. They never got there, to the parade anyway. They had stopped off at Carson Beach and started drinking that ambrosia and well, one thing led to another and  who gave a damn about some silly shamrock drunken parade anyway when a guy had a wild, green-eyed, red-headed girl next to him on the seawall. So, although he had many close connections with old “Southie,” the first stop for many of the famine-borne (famine of one kind or another, not just the food kind although that was writ large on that benighted country’s history) Irish, including his family, this was to be the first time that he showed up in Southie for a parade on Saint Patty’s Day. And of course while he might be on those same hallowed official parade streets his purpose that day was to march with the VFP contingent in their alternative peace parade.                  

Frank was not sure of all the details then about why there was a need for a separate parade, although later after the event he dug out some of the details from some guys who were closely involved in organizing the alternative event, but the gist of it centered on exclusion. Everybody in town, everybody who cared anyway, knew that back in the 1990s the official parade organizers had gone to court, hell, had gone all the way to the Supremes, over excluding gays and lesbians (even Irish gays and lesbians like somehow such human categories could not exist in Catholic-heavy Irishtown and was a dastardly thing, a mortal sin maybe, so if there were then they did want any part of it publicly). And won, won the right to exclude whomever they wanted from their “private” parade, as the Supremes in one of their more arcane legal decisions that made no sense when he read it backed them up.

See though, when you have a “right” to exclude that can take you into some strange places so when the VFP decided they wanted march in the official parade to protest various war actions of the American government, or just to send out a peace message to a large crowd they too were excluded by the official parade organizers. The “reason”-short and simple reason, they, the officials, didn’t want the words “veterans” and “peace” put together in their parade.  Hence the march of the excluded that VFP had first organized the previous year. And hence too Frank Jackman had that year responded to their call and was approaching the staging area with that sense of solidarity in mind.

As Frank waited, seemingly endlessly waited for the peace parade to step off  (the officials had, as part of their victory, been able to legally keep any other formations at least one mile behind their procession) he began to think of the many connections he had with this old section of town, this section that he had heard had changed demographically and in other ways as the Irish moved south and the younger more diverse set moved in and rehabilitated the old cold- water triple-deckers that lined all the lettered and numbered streets of the section (at least showing some sense of order since the real of the town was identified by a miasma of odd-ball combinations). He remembered ancient first murky visits to those old cold- water flats where some great aunts and their huge broods lived in splendid squalor and of cheap ribbon candy offered at Christmas time and not much else. Or funny things like the few times that he had been “privileged” to drive his material grandmother Riley  (nee O’Brian) over to Southie so that the sisters (some of those grand-aunts) could go to one of the “ladies invited” taverns and get drunk since Grandpa Riley refused, absolutely refused, to have liquor in the house (or cigarettes either). He wished he could remember the exact gin mill but he couldn’t except that it was near the Starlight Ballroom. 

Or when he was older and his uncle on his mother’s side had taken him to Jim and Joe’s farther up Broadway, up toward M Street, and “baptized” him with his first drink of whiskey straight up (no beer chasers then, that would could later). Or later still when he became something of a regular at Jim and Joe’s while he was working his way through college servicing vending machines for York Vending just around the corner from the D Street staging area and the guys, the mainly Southie guys that he worked with, “forced” him to drink with them after work, drink straight shot whiskey (and hence the genesis of beer chasers). Beyond those episodes though, except an occasion walk on Carson Beach (with and without female companionship) he had not been around Southie much since then.

After a while, a long hot while, since the weather was unseasonably warm for March in Boston, the peace parade stepped off, stepped off with VFP black and white dove-emblazoned flags flying in the lead paced by several cars for those really old (so he thought) World War II  veterans, veterans from Frank’s late father’s time sitting on board. As he looked back he noticed a huge banner calling for No War On Iran and another calling for Freedom For Private Bradley Manning [now Chelsea], another worthy cause, and behind that contingents of LGBT in various combinations, and behind them broken up at intervals by marching bands other progressive and social groups wishing to express solidarity with the excluded here, and throughout the world. Frank felt good, felt he had made the right decision to come this day despite some medical problems recently.

As the parade turned onto Broadway, old Broadway, of a thousand drinks and other assorted goings on, he again thought about the old days as he passed various landmarks, or the spots where the landmarks had been once. Artie’s where his first serious serious “flame” Sheila Shea had left him, left him for good, Jim and Joe’s now called the Green Tavern, where he had had more cheap whiskeys than he cared to recall, a couple of places farther up where ladies were invited back then (quaint notion, right),and he had been invited by a couple of ladies and then up where another  small “flame” Minnie Kiley had lived, then up and over to  cavernous East  Broadway where the triple-deckers of his early youth still stood thick as thieves.

Then he started to notice that those self-same triple- deckers had been upgraded and that those who stood on the sidewalks clapping as the parade went by were not the “from hunger” Irish second and third cousins of his youth but looked, well, wed-fed and well-cared for. And as they marched toward the end of the parade route at Andrew Square he also noticed, very distinctly noticed, a small section of streets where gay men were standing with a sign and cheering. Frank then flashed back to an earlier time when the deep dark secret in Aunt Bernice’s brood, the one from K Street, was that one of the boys, Harry, was “different” and had been banished from the house. Yes, things had certainly changed but he wished that those idiots who were so keen on exclusion had moved away from those whiskey and beer chaser bar stools and come into the sunlight…               

March Is Women's History Month-From The Archives Of Women And Revolution-Soviet Women Combat Pilots Fought Nazi Germany-The Story Of The Night Witches

March Is Women's History Month-From The Archives Of Women And Revolution-Soviet Women Combat Pilots Fought Nazi Germany-The Story Of The Night Witches 

*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-Down With U.S. Imperialism For Class Struggle At Home!

Click on the title to link to an on line copy of the "Workers Vanguard" article on the subject mentioned in the headline.