A View From The Left- WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME-Join And Build The Resistance

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

How Gentrification Is Killing US Cities and Black Lives

What you read in the pages of How to Kill a City is a heartbreaking story of the destruction of Black lives. You read how cultures are wiped out of a city's fabric, and all for a $6 latte. Business leaders claim they are helping "renovate" a city, bringing it back to its original luster, while passing off the displaced as a kind of collateral damage. They may feel a little bad for a moment, but checking their bank account offers them the reassurance they are doing it for the right reasons.  Gentrification is no longer just a buzzword used to describe renovation in a once poor neighborhood on the occasional whim of a developer; it is now a systematic plan by the country's wealthiest individuals to take away even more from struggling communities and minority groups, turning their losses into profits.  Gentrification takes a community's personal tragedy, loss and destruction, and monetizes it.   More

BILL MCKIBBEN: On April 29, We March for the Future

It is hard to avoid hyperbole when you talk about global warming. It is, after all, the biggest thing humans have ever done, and by a very large margin. In the past year, we’ve decimated the Great Barrier Reef, which is the largest living structure on Earth. In the drought-stricken territories around the Sahara, we’ve helped kick off what The New York Times called “one of the biggest humanitarian disasters since World War II.” We’ve melted ice at the poles at a record pace, because our emissions trap extra heat from the sun that’s equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima-size explosions a day. Which is why, just maybe, you should come to Washington, DC, on April 29 for a series of big climate protests that will mark the 100th day of Trumptime. Maybe the biggest thing ever is worth a day…  Trump is either the end of the fight for a working planet Earth—or the moment when that fight turns truly serious. That choice is not up to him. It’s up to the rest of us.   More

If you can’t go to DC. . .

Saturday, April 29 @ 12:00 pm - 3:30 pm

BOSTON PEOPLE’S CLIMATE MOBILIZATION

On April 29, the #PeopleClimate March will bring together hundreds of thousands of people from across the country to demand JOBS, JUSTICE, and REAL CLIMATE SOLUTIONS. Here in Boston, we’ll have a full day of workshops and activities to build and grow our movement, starting with an energizing rally at 12pm on Boston Common. Join us!

*Schedule for Boston PCM on April 29* See more at: peoplesclimate.org
>>12:00-1:00pm
– RALLY for jobs, justice and bold action on climate on Boston Common
>>1:00-3:30pm
– ACTION TABLES, activities, and art-making on Boston Common
– TEACH-INS on the connections between the climate fight and other struggles for justice at indoor spaces around the Common (learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1302204036560536/)

CLIMATE CHANGE AS GENOCIDE

Not since World War II have more human beings been at risk from disease and starvation than at this very moment. On March 10th, Stephen O’Brien, under secretary-general of the United Nations for humanitarian affairs, informed the Security Council that 20 million people in three African countries -- Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan -- as well as in Yemen were likely to die if not provided with emergency food and medical aid. “We are at a critical point in history,” he declared. “Already at the beginning of the year we are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the U.N.”  Without coordinated international action, he added, “people will simply starve to death [or] suffer and die from disease.” Major famines have, of course, occurred before, but never in memory on such a scale in four places simultaneously…  The likelihood that droughts this severe would be occurring simultaneously in the absence of climate change is vanishingly small. In fact, scientists generally agree that global warming will ensure diminished rainfall and ever more frequent droughts over much of Africa and the Middle East. This, in turn, will heighten conflicts of every sort and endanger basic survival in a myriad of ways.  More

THE SHOCKING REALITY OF A FUTURE OF SHRINKING JOBS

The jobs reports would have us believe our rebound from the recession is almost complete. The reality is very different. The Economist has some fancy words for it: "Job polarization," in which middle-skill jobs decline while low-skill and high-skill jobs increase and the workforce "bifurcates" into two extremes of income…  Most of our new jobs are in service industries, including retail and health care and personal care and food service. Those industries generally don't pay a living wage. In 2014, over half of American workers made less than $15 per hour, with some of the top employment sectors in the U.S. paying $12 an hour or less.  Worse, most underpaid workers are deprived of the benefits higher-income employees take for granted. A Princeton study concluded that a stunning 94 percent of the nine million new jobs created in the past decade were temporary or contract-based, rather than traditional full-time positions.   More

The average millennial worker makes less than the average baby boomer did in 1975

Over the past four decades, young American workers saw their average incomes decline by 5.5 percent after adjusting for inflation, according to new figures published Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1975, workers aged 25 to 34 had a median personal income of $37,000 in modern dollar terms. In 2016, that number was down to $35,000.  Earnings have declined despite the fact that today's young people are better educated than 40 years ago. Thirty-seven percent of young people had a bachelor's degree last year, compared to 22.8 percent in 1975.   In part, experts say, the decline in average incomes results from new impediments to financial success that confront millennials, but that older Americans did not have to overcome. A more unequal economy presents fewer opportunities for younger workers.  More

Dakota Access Pipeline Mogul Cut $250,000 Check for Trump's Inauguration

Included in the roster of funders is pipeline builder Kelcy Warren, who contributed a quarter-million dollars to the event. Warren's company, Energy Transfer, is behind construction of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline.  In an interview with The Dallas News in January, Warren described 2016 as the "toughest year of my life," referring to protests that rocked the company over the construction of DAPL. He said that Trump's election gave him hope.  Protests over DAPL forced the Obama administration to put the project on hold. Indigenous and environmental activists claim the pipeline threatens lands and water that are crucial to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota. Trump, however, ignored those pleas and green-lighted construction of DAPL in February.  Several other companies that later benefited from executive actions taken by President Trump also donated to the inauguration.  Coal mining giant Murray Energy and petrol companies Chevron and Citgo gave over a million dollars combined. Last month, Trump took actions that put former President Obama's signature climate change regulation, the Clean Power Plan, in jeopardy.  More

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

DOUBLE STANDARDS ON SYRIAN CASUALTIES

When an alleged nerve gas attack took place on the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun on April 4, the perpetrator was instantly identified as the Syrian government – though many doubts still exist and there has not been a complete and impartial investigation.  Heartbreaking stories and photos about child casualties and “Assad’s war crimes” dominated the news for days on end.  Donald Trump ordered a supposedly retaliatory missile attack against a Syrian air base – a unilateral act that would have been illegal under the UN charter even if the Syrian government were guilty.  Compare the response to thesuicide bombing attack on a bus convoy of Syrian Shi’ite evacuees near Aleppo a few weeks later, which killed more civilians, including over 80 children.  MSM reports refused to name the perpetrators because no group had claimed responsibility -- and the story vanished quickly from the news.

Weapons Expert: The Nerve Gas Attack Described in White House Report Did Not Occur

The conclusion of this summary of data is obvious—the nerve agent attack described in the WHR [White House Report] did not occur as claimed. There may well have been mass casualties from some kind of poisoning event, but that event was not the one described by the WHR…  This raises troubling questions about how United States political and military leadership determined that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged attack. It is particularly of concern that the WHR presented itself as a report with “high confidence” findings and that numerous high-level officials in the U.S. government have confirmed their belief that the report was correct and to a standard of high confidence.  More

Trump’s Syria strike clearly broke international law — and no one seems to care

President Donald Trump’s surprising decision to launch a cruise missile strike on Syria was sharply criticized by Russia as a “flagrant violation of international law.” While it might be tempting to dismiss this claim as mere Putin-esque propaganda, on this question at least, Russia is almost certainly correct. In the view of most international lawyers, the US strike on Syria is a crystal-clear violation of the UN Charter. So why doesn’t anybody, except Russia and some international lawyers, seem to care?  The uncomfortable answer seems to be that, at least with respect to this question — can a state use military force against a regime that uses banned weaponry against citizens? — international law simply doesn’t matter very much. And this suits the United States and the Trump administration just fine.  That may sound like an endorsement of lawlessness, or of a Trump administration foreign policy that may be driven by little more than one man’s whim, but it’s actually a worldview that both Democratic and Republican administrations have embraced.  More

America Is the World's Biggest Terrorist Organization—Why Is That So Hard to Understand?

It is always the ‘rogue state’ that is the threat to the world order – Iraq here, North Korea there. And in that ‘rogue state’ it is always the dictator who commands the entire monstrosity. Mockery is the guise with Kim Jong-un as it was with Saddam Hussein. These men have no taste: Saddam with his garish disco mustache and anachronistic military uniform and Kim with his New Wave haircut and his strangely out of proportion laughter. Threats are made to emanate from them – they itch to attack and are only held back by the democratic role of the United States, who sanctions the countries till they starve or patrols their waters with massive war ships to intimidate them into surrender. But the United States is not a threat. It is merely there to ensure that the real threats – Iraq then, North Korea now – are kept in check. The author, in other words, is always the Eastern Despot.   More

WAR IS NOT AN OPTION FOR KOREA

The United States and North Korea are like two “accelerating trains coming toward each other,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned last week. North Korea test-fired four ballistic missiles off the coast of Japan as thousands of South Korean, Japanese, and U.S. troops, backed by warships and warplanes, are currently engaging in massive military exercises, including the deployment of the Navy SEALS that killed Osama Bin Laden.  With no communication other than military posturing, Pyongyang is left to interpret Washington’s maneuvers as preparation for a pre-emptive strike. Given the political vacuum in South Korea following President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment, all tracks are heading towards one destination: war…  Although the fantasy of surgical strikes to topple brutal dictators has long intoxicated American military officials, they’ve been restrained by the sobering reality of such reckless action. In the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton considered a first strike on North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the Pentagon concluded that even limited action would claim a million lives in the first 24 hours — and this was well before Pyongyang possessed nuclear weapons.  More

THE COMING CRISIS WITH IRAN

President Trump has flip-flopped many times during his first months in office. But none may be as consequential as his decision on April 18 to certify that Iran is abiding by the nuclear deal of 2015, paving the way for further waiving of sanctions. In just a few months, Mr. Trump has gone from promising to “tear up” the nuclear deal to allowing its extension. The administration has now said it will conduct a 90-day review of whether lifting sanctions — as required by the nuclear deal — will be in line with American national security interests. But that timeline is not long enough to save the deal and stop the United States and Iran from sliding dangerously back to a path toward war. There are a number of potential land mines on the near horizon. The first is in Congress, where a bipartisan effort is underway to introduce new sanctions on Iran that, despite the protestations of the legislation’s sponsors, would violate the terms of the nuclear agreement by adding new conditions onto the deal.   More

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Support hunger strikers at Tacoma immigration detention centre

4/20/2017 3:14 PM

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Dear friends, We invite you to support this call to action from the NWDC Resistance by phoning the authorities listed below. Thank you.

NWDC Resistance/Resistencia al NWDC - CALL TO ACTION Hunger Strike Continues at Northwest Detention Center As GEO Retaliates With Worsening Food Tacoma, WA 19 April 2017 – Today, over a dozen individuals detained at Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) continued a hunger strike to call attention to the abysmal conditions at the facility, which have only gotten worse since Trump took office. More immigrants plan to join the hunger strike this weekend. Men and women detained at the facility have reported the quality of the food has deterioratedin the last few days, potentially in response to their activism. The NWDC, which is located on a superfund site, is the largest immigrant detention center on the West Coast, caging over 1500 immigrants while awaiting civil deportation proceedings. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracts with The GEO Group, a multinational private prison corporation, to run the facility, and hunger strikers aimed their demands at both the federal government and the private contractor. NWDC has been a frequent target of immigrant activists since a March 2014 hunger strike involving 1200 detainees first brought international notoriety to the immigration prison.  Detention conditions have worsened under the Trump administration, triggering this latest strike, which started on April 10. Trump has staffed his deportation force with openly anti-immigrant officials with links to white supremacist organizations, leaving people detained with little choice but to put their bodies on the line to fight for their basic dignity. Attorney General Jeff Session’s newly released memorandum calling for increased prosecutions of immigrants and their supporters, combined with a roll-out where he referred to immigrants as “filth,” highlights the continued need for local resistance to the federal deportation and detention dragnet We need your support!! Call the City of Tacoma and ICE Call the City of Tacoma’s Finance Department and urge them to revoke GEO Group’s Business License. In a March 2017 letter to GEO, Mayor Strickland noted that the City of Tacoma can revoke GEO’s business license if it is a “danger to the public health, safety and welfareof the individuals [detained] as well as the community as a whole.” ► Finance Department, Andrew Cherullo, Finance Director, +1 253.591.5800 Call ICE and demand that 1) they meet the Hunger Strikers Demands (see below) and 2) GEO Group not retaliate against hunger strikers. We have reports that strikers have been threatened with transfer to facilities away from their loved ones as punishment. ► Acting Field Director, Bryan S. Willcox ► Assistance Field Director (Detention): William Penaloza ► Facility Main Telephone: +1 253 779.6000 ► Field Office Main Telephone Line: +1 206 835.0650 Hunger Striker’s Demands  Change the food menu  Lower commissary prices.  Improve hygiene, including the ability to wash clothes with soap and water.  Increase recreation time.  Have schoolwork and other programs available to keep detainees occupied.  Improve medical attention.  Increase wages for working detainees.  Help speed up the legal process for detainees Contact: Maru Mora Villalpando, NWDC Resistance: resistenciasolidarity@gmail.com and 206-251-6658 Update: https://www.facebook.com/NWDCResistance/

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From The Archives-On The 100th Anniversary Of Irish Easter Uprising 1916- A Word

From The Archives-On The 100^th Anniversary Of Irish Easter Uprising 1916- A Word

A word on the Easter Uprising.

In the old Irish working-class neighborhoods where I grew up the aborted Easter Uprising of 1916 was spoken of in mythical hushed reverent tones as the key symbol of the modern Irish liberation struggle from bloody England. The event itself provoked such memories of heroic “boyos”  (and “girlos” not acknowledged) fighting to the end against great odds that a careful analysis of what could, and could not be, learned from the mistakes made at the time entered my head. That was then though in the glare of boyhood infatuations. Now is the time for a more sober assessment. 

The easy part of analyzing the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916 is first and foremost the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland, especially by the “shawlies” in Dublin and the cities who received their sons’ military pay from the Imperial British Army for service in the bloody trenches of Europe which sustained them throughout the war. That factor and the relative ease with which the uprising had been militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it lead easily to the conclusion that the adventure was doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the timing and the strategy and tactics of the planned action and of the various actors, particularly in the leadership’s underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. (Although, I think that frenzy on Mother England’s part would be a point in the uprising’s favor under the theory that England’s [or fill in the blank of your favorite later national liberation struggle] woes were Ireland’s [or fill in the blank ditto on the your favorite oppressed peoples struggle] opportunities.

The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation struggle experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were savagely committed to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not part of their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, cowardly British Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor Party leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and others today is the same as then if somewhat attenuated- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings on national liberation struggles I have come across a theory that the Easter Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising’s leaders only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. (“Let poets rule the land”).

As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. A formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 where the working class momentarily took power or the Soviet Commune of 1917 which lasted for a longer period did not figure in the political calculations at that time. As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic.

That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today, is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord in war as a way to open the road to the class struggle merited support on that basis alone. Chocky Ar La.

*On The Anniversary Of Vladimir Lenin's Birthday- Those Who Honor Lenin Are Kindred Spirits

Click on title to link the "Vladimir Lenin Internet Archive" for an online copy of his 1917 article, "The Tasks Of The Proletarian In Our Revolution".

Markin comment:

The name Lenin, the party Bolshevik and the revolution Russian need no introduction to readers of this space. We are still trying assimilate the lessons that Lenin drove home in the early struggles for socialism. Happy Birthday, Comrade Lenin wherever you are doing your revolutionary time.

*On The Anniversary Of Vladimir Lenin's Birthday- Those Who Honor Lenin Are Kindred Spirits

Click on title to link the "Vladimir Lenin Internet Archive" for an online copy of his 1917 article, "The Tasks Of The Proletarian In Our Revolution".

Markin comment:

The name Lenin, the party Bolshevik and the revolution Russian need no introduction to readers of this space. We are still trying assimilate the lessons that Lenin drove home in the early struggles for socialism. Happy Birthday, Comrade Lenin wherever you are doing your revolutionary time.

*On The Anniversary Of Vladimir Lenin's Birthday- Those Who Honor Lenin Are Kindred Spirits

Click on title to link the "Vladimir Lenin Internet Archive" for an online copy of his 1917 article, "The Tasks Of The Proletarian In Our Revolution".


Markin comment:

The name Lenin, the party Bolshevik and the revolution Russian need no introduction to readers of this space. We are still trying assimilate the lessons that Lenin drove home in the early struggles for socialism. Happy Birthday, Comrade Lenin wherever you are doing your revolutionary time.

In Boston- Join the Mass Protest Against Trump this May 1st!-Join The Resistance

In Boston- Join the Mass Protest Against Trump this May 1st!-Join The Resistance 

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Stand Up for Immigrants on May 1st! View this email in your browser Strike and Protest on May 1st in Boston! An Injury to One is an Injury to All! We need to disrupt “business as usual” to defeat Trump’s agenda. Working people have the potential power to strike a blow at Trump and his billionaire backers by shutting down their profits on May 1. Alongside immigrant organizations and labor unions, we will take action against the deportations, Trump’s wall, the Muslim ban, anti-union laws and attacks on women’s reproductive rights. We will oppose any retaliation by employers or schools against workers or students who strike or walk out on May Day. Join us for this powerful protest on May 1st in Boston! RSVP on Facebook! Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Shut Down Creech! Apr 23-29, 2017 - Stop the Drone Wars

 

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Shut Down Creech! Apr 23-29, 2017 Mass mobilization to stop the Drone Warsshutdowncreech.blogspot.com Join us April 23 – April 29, 2017 at Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada for a 3rd national mobilization of nonviolent resistance to shut down killer drone operations in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia and everywhere.  Includes weeklong Camp Justice peace encampment. Sponsored by: CODEPINK: Women For Peace, Nevada Desert Experience, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Veterans For Peace & Courage to Resist Empire War Status Op-ed by Bob Meola, Courage to Resist. April 3, 2017 A lot of people miss Barack Obama because he smiled nicely while he dropped over 26,000 bombs on seven nations, last year. He was a much more pleasant personality.… Now, the McResistance, of the Democratic Party and the corporate media have their propagandists reviving the cold war and dangerously flirting with hot war with Russia. Americans are eating Russia Did It propaganda on a daily basis. It is the United States that has interfered with foreign elections and foreign governments everywhere and overthrown approximately five dozen of them since World War ll.… Read More Support War Resister Pvt. Ryan Johnson Imprisoned a decade after refusing crimes of his country Please support US military war resister Army Private Ryan Johnson by making a tax-deductible donation to his support fund, hosted by Courage to Resist. Doing so will help Ryan through the remainder of his prison sentence, and help Ryan and his wife Jenna relocate after his release. Donate today: https://couragetoresist.org/support-ryan Courage to Resist. March 23, 2017 We at Courage to Resist are reaching out to you to help imprisoned Army soldier Ryan Johnson and his wife Jenna. We’re helping them get on their feet upon Ryan’s expected May release from Miramar Brig in Southern California. Your support is critical to help them begin their next chapter. Ryan Johnson hasn’t gotten many easy breaks. He lost his father at the age of three. Growing up he would face years of abuse at the hands of a new stepfather. As a teen Ryan escaped into patterns of drug abuse, self-harm, and finally dropped out of high school. Now he endures insult of military imprisonment after literal injury serving the US armed forces. This pall of unfortunate circumstances doesn’t mean there isn’t light in Ryan’s life. He has persevered, with his compassion, kindness, and conscience intact. Read more at: https://couragetoresist.org/support-army-private-ryan-johnson/ Please donate today: https://couragetoresist.org/support-ryan

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Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Words From “You Are Not Alone” In Mind

Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Words From “You Are Not Alone” In Mind   

By Fritz Taylor 

Sam Lowell was a queer duck, an odd-ball kind of guy who couldn’t stop keeping his head from exploding with about seventeen ideas at once and the determination to do all seventeen come hell or high water. And not seventeen things like mowing the lawn or taking out the rubbish but what he called “projects” which in Sam’s case meant political projects and writings and other things along that line. Yeah, couldn’t put out “the fire in his head” the way he told it to his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, one night at supper after she had confronted him with the fact, and not for the first time, that he was getting more irritable, was more often short with her of late, had seemed distant, had seemed to be drifting into some bad place, a place where he was not at peace with himself. That not “at peace” with himself an expression that Laura had coined that night to express the way that she saw his current demeanor. That would be the expression he would use in his group therapy group to describe his condition when it met later that week. 

He would almost shout out the words in despair when the moderator-psychologist asked him pointedly whether he felt at peace with himself at that moment and he pointed responded immediately that he was not. Maybe it was at that point, more probably though that night when Laura confronted him with his own mirror-self that told Sam his was one troubled man.  

Yea, it was that seventeen things in order and full steam ahead that got him in trouble on more than on occasion. The need to do so the real villain of the piece. See Sam had just turned seventy and so he should have been trying to slow down, slow down enough to not try to keep doing those seventeen things like he had when he was twenty or thirty but no he was not organically capable of doing so , at least until the other shoe dropped. Dropped hard.      

It was that “other shoe” dropping that made him take stock of his situation, although it had been too little too late. One afternoon a few days after that stormy group therapy session he laid down on his bed to just think through what was driving him to distraction, driving that fury inside him that would not let him be, as he tried to put out the fire in his head. That laying down itself might have been its own breakthrough since he had expected, had fiercely desired to finish up an article that he was writing on behalf a peace walk that was to take place shortly up in Maine, a walk that was dedicated to stopping the wars, mostly of the military-type but also of the environmental degradation against Mother Nature. 

Sam, not normally introspective about his past, about the events growing up that had formed him, events that had as he had told Laura on more than one occasion almost destroyed him. So that was where he started, started to try to find out why he could not relax, had to be “doing and making” as Laura called it under happier circumstances, had to be fueling that fire in his head. Realized that afternoon that as kid in order to survive he had learned at a very young age that in order to placate (and avoid) his overweening mother he had to keep his own counsel, had to go deep inside his head to find solace from the storms around his house. For years he had thought the driving force was because he was a middle child and thus had to fend for himself while his parents (and grandparents) doted respectively his younger and older brothers. But no it had been deeper than that, had been driven by feelings of inadequacy before his mother’s onslaught against his fragile head.        

As Sam traced how at three score and ten he could point to various incidents that had driven him on, had almost made him organically incapable of having a not ever active brain, of going off to some dark places where the devils would not let him relax, that kept him going around and around he realized that he was not able to relax on his own, would need something greater than himself if he was to unwind. Laura had emphatically told him that he would have to take that journey on his own, would have to settle himself down if he was to gain any peace in his whole damn world. Sam suddenly noticed after Laura had expressed her opinion that she had always been the picture of calm, had been his rock when he was in his furies. Funny he had always underestimated, always undervalued that calmness, that solid rock. He, in frustration, at his own situation asked Laura how she had maintained the calm that seemed to follow her around her world.         

Laura, after stating that she too had her inner demons, had to struggle with the same kind of demons that Sam had faced as a child and that she still had difficulties maintaining an inner calm, told Sam that her daily Buddha-like meditations had carried her to a better place. Sam was shocked at her answer. He had always known that Laura was drawn to the spiritual trends around their milieu, the “New Age stuff” he called her interest since it seemed that she had taken tidbits from every new way to salvation outside of formal religion (although she had had bouts with that as well discarding her Methodist high heavens Jehovah you are on your own in this wicked old world upbringing for the communal comfort of the Universalist-Unitarian brethren). He had respected her various attempts to survive in the world the best way she could but those roads were not for him, smacked too much of some new religion, some new road that he could not travel on. But he was also desperate to be at peace, a mantra that he was increasing using to describe his plight.    

Then Laura suggested that they attend a de-stress program that was being held at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as part of what was billed as HUB-week, a week of medical, therapeutic, technological and social events and programs started by a number of well-known institutions in the Boston area like MGH, Harvard, MIT and others. Sam admitted to being clueless about what a de-stress program would be about and had never heard of a Doctor Benson who a million years before had written a best-selling book about the knot the West had put itself in trying to get ahead and offered mediation as a way out of the impasse. Sam was skeptical but agreed to go.

At the event which lasted about two hours various forms of meditative practice were offered including music and laughter yoga. Sam in his mind passed on those efforts. The one segment that drew his attention, the first segment headed by this Doctor Benson had been centered on a simple technique to reduce stress, to relax in fact was called the relax response. Best of all the Doctor had invited each member of the audience to sample his wares. Pick a word or short phrase to focus on, close your eyes, put your hands on your lap and consecrate, really try to concentrate, on that picked term for five minutes (the optimum is closer to ten plus minutes in an actual situation).          

Sam admitted candidly to Laura that while attempting fitfully focusing on one thing, in his case the phrase “at peace,” he had suffered many distractions but that he was very interested in pursuing the practice since he had actually felt that he was getting somewhere before time was called. Laura laughed at Sam’s response, so Sam-like expecting to master in five minutes a technique that she had spent years trying to pursue and had not been anywhere near totally focused yet. He asked her to help him to get started and they did until Sam felt he could do the procedure on his own.

We now have to get back to that “other shoe” dropping though. Although Sam had expressed his good intentions, had felt better after a while Laura had felt that he needed to go on his journey without her. She too now felt that she had to seek what she was looking for alone in this wicked world despite how long they had been together. So Laura called it quits, moved out of the house that she and Sam had lived in for years. Sam is alone on his journey now, committed to trying to find some peace inside despite his heartbreak over the loss of Laura. Every once in a while though in a non-meditative moment he curses that fire in his head. Yeah, he wished he could have put out that fire in his head long ago.