We're occupying US Senator Ted Cruz's office now! Please share!
To Al
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Friday, July 14, 2017
7/13-We're occupying US Senator Ted Cruz's office now! Please share!
7/13 MIT janitor Francisco Rodriguez Guardado DETAINED by ICE
7/13 MIT janitor Francisco Rodriguez Guardado DETAINED by ICE
Francisco Rodriguez Guardado, a janitor at MIT for over five years, was
*detained by US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)* in
Burlington, MA at his ICE check-in earlier this afternoon. There is a
*rally from 5pm-6pm at the JFK Federal Building* in Boston to call for
his immediate release. The Facebook event for the rally may be found at
https://www.facebook.com/events/1100279510071849/ -- please share and
invite your contacts!
An MIT contingent to the rally will gather at 4:30pm at the Kendall red
line stop and depart for the rally at 4:40pm.
More information about Francisco's case can be found at
https://action.mijente.net/petitions/stop-francisco-s-deportationAt his
scheduled check-in with ICE on June 13, he was told to return for
another check-in in December; however, just six hours later, ICE called
again and told him to come back on July 13, in just one month, with his
travel documents. Today, at that check-in, he was detained.
black for bc-talk
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Act-MA@act-ma.org
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*detained by US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)* in
Burlington, MA at his ICE check-in earlier this afternoon. There is a
*rally from 5pm-6pm at the JFK Federal Building* in Boston to call for
his immediate release. The Facebook event for the rally may be found at
https://www.facebook.com/events/1100279510071849/ -- please share and
invite your contacts!
An MIT contingent to the rally will gather at 4:30pm at the Kendall red
line stop and depart for the rally at 4:40pm.
More information about Francisco's case can be found at
https://action.mijente.net/petitions/stop-francisco-s-deportationAt his
scheduled check-in with ICE on June 13, he was told to return for
another check-in in December; however, just six hours later, ICE called
again and told him to come back on July 13, in just one month, with his
travel documents. Today, at that check-in, he was detained.
black for bc-talk
______________________________
Act-MA mailing list
Act-MA@act-ma.org
http://act-ma.org/mailman/listinfo/act-ma_act-ma.org
To set options or unsubscribe
http://act-ma.org/mailman/options/act-ma_act-ma.org
From Veterans For Peace- Help Build Peace Abroad and At Home
Help Build Peace Abroad and At Home
To
 Your efforts as a member of Veterans For Peace are as important today as they ever have been. We live in critical times. Veterans For Peace needs your monetary support (and volunteer your time if you wish) to keep up the struggle against war and to advocate for peace. We are so grateful for the support we receive from people like you who are committed to peace.The Trump administration and the Pentagon are taking steps to increase U.S. military operations around the world. We have heard promises to increase the Pentagon budget by $54 billion and most recently, Congress - Democrats and Republicans, brokered a budget deal to keep the government running which increased military spending by $12.5 billion. Now there is a move to send more troops to Afghanistan. The Trump administration plans to double down on the past two administration’s failure of a very heavy reliance on military interventions, including the omnipresent drones that terrorize civilian families. Your active participation and your monetary support are central to breaking through power and saving our democracy. A donation to VFP will help ensure the credible voices of veterans, who demand peace, continue to be heard. We know peace is possible and can help others understand this too. Unfortunately, there is no indication that the Trump administration has any diplomatic plan to extricate our country from these uncontrollable vortices of endless wars. It is up to us as the people to demand and force change. Your generous gift will help build peace abroad and at home. Now is the most crucial time to make sure the voices of wise veterans are heard pressing for serious initiatives for peace. 
You contribution no matter how small or large will help us make a difference.
P.S. Ask about VFP’s Peace is Possible Legacy Gift! Your legacy toward envisioning and building a peaceful world will be remembered by friends, your extended family and all of Veterans For Peace. Thank you.
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A View From The Left- NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong
NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong
The U.S. is risking a catastrophic military clash with Russia in Syria. There is no legal or moral basis for the United States to be waging war in Syria, risking conflict with Russia and nuclear apocalypse for us all. Sign up for the Thunderclap and sign the petition to the U.S. Congress and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, urging them to immediately remove all U.S military planes from Syrian skies and keep them out of that country's airspace. Partners Include: RootsAction.org, World Beyond War, DailyKos, Veterans For Peace, The Nation, andWatchdog.net
Retired Flag Officers Warn Against Regime Change and “Aggressive Posturing” Toward Iran
The letter voices “strong support” for the Iran nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany), whose second anniversary will be marked on July 15. Trump has not yet followed through on a campaign promise to tear up the accord, although the administration’s attitude toward its own compliance remains ambiguous. Although the officers stress the importance of abiding by the agreement, much of the letter addresses concerns about the possibility that a military incident between contending forces in Syria, the Persian Gulf, or in or near Yemen could spiral into war. It urges the administration to establish “official diplomatic communications channels with the Iranian government.” More
IGNORING THE HUMAN DISASTER IN YEMEN
It is hard to imagine that along with the catastrophe that has been inflicted on Syria for the past six years, another calamity is unfolding in Yemen of damning proportions while the whole world looks on with indifference. What is happening in Yemen is not merely a violent conflict between combating forces for power, but the willful subjugation of millions of innocent civilians to starvation, disease and ruin that transcends the human capacity to descend even below the lowest pit of darkness, from which there is no exit. Seven million people face starvation, and 19 out of 28 million of Yemen’s population are in desperate need of humanitarian aid. Both the Saudis and the Houthis are restricting food and medicine supplies from reaching starving children; many of them are cholera-ridden, on the verge of joining the thousands who have already died from starvation and disease. More than 10,000 have been killed, and nearly 40,000 injured. UNICEF reports nearly 300,000 cholera cases, and a joint statement from UNICEF and the World Health Organization declares the infection is spreading at a rate of 5,000 new cases per day. More
House Rejects Saudi-UAE War in Yemen
The Davidson [R-OH] amendment prohibits U.S. military action in Yemen not authorized by the 2001 AUMF. U.S. participation in the Saudi-UAE war in Yemen is not targeting Al Qaeda or ISIS and is not authorized by the 2001 AUMF. Davidson's amendment would block the U.S. refueling of Saudi and UAE warplanes bombing Yemen. The Nolan [D-MN] amendment prohibits the deployment of U.S. troops to participation in Yemen's civil war. Nolan's amendment would block the U.S. refueling of Saudi and UAE warplanes bombing Yemen. The Saudi-UAE war in Yemen, in which U.S. participation was never authorized by Congress, has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine, with the worst cholera outbreak in the world, with the UN on the verge of giving up on vaccination against cholera in Yemen because of the war. The Saudi-UAE war in Yemen has also strengthened Al Qaeda and ISIS. Indeed, Al Qaeda's Yemen branch is allied with the Saudis and the UAE against the Houthi-Saleh forces. More
DESTROYING MOSUL TO SAVE IT: Possible US-Backed War Crimes in Iraq Exposed
Thousands of civilians have been killed in Mosul and millions have been displaced since ISIS took control of the city in June 2014. The crimes of the group have been well documented by Amnesty International and other human rights groups. The report notes that ISIS deliberately put thousands of civilians in harm's way, using them as human shields in the city's conflict zones, and killing people who attempted to escape. The report also focuses on the human cost of the U.S.-led coalition's actions in Mosul. Amnesty interviewed 150 witnesses, experts and analysts about dozens of attacks, and focused on a pattern of attacks that took place between January and July 2017… The coalition's attacks were largely carried out with Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions (IRAMs), explosives with unsophisticated targeting abilities, which "wreaked havoc in densely-populated west Mosul and took the lives of thousands of civilians," according to the report. Air strikes by U.S. planes were also frequent during this time period, and the report says the coalition did little to protect civilians from these attacks. More
RICHARD FALK: Challenging “Nuclearism”
On 7 July 2017 122 countries at the UN voted to approve the text of a proposed international treaty entitled ‘Draft Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.’ The treaty is formally open for signature in September, but it only become a binding legal instrument according to its own provisions 90 days after the 50th country deposits with the UN Secretary General its certification that the treaty has been ratified in accordance with their various constitutional processes… The Nuclear Ban Treaty (NBT) is significant beyond the prohibition. It can and should be interpreted as a frontal rejection of the geopolitical approach to nuclearism, and its contention that the retention and development of nuclear weapons is a proven necessity given the way international society is organized… The old reassurances about being committed to nuclear disarmament as soon as an opportune moment arrives increasingly lack credibility as the nuclear weapons states, led by the United States, make huge investments in the modernization and further development of their nuclear arsenals. More
A View FromThe Left- WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
This week, more than 1,500 groups sent a letter to Congress calling for a budget that invests in our health, jobs, and future - not one that slashes vital services while increasing tax cuts for the rich.
Help us show Congress their constituents agree. View the Letter
Help us show Congress their constituents agree. View the Letter
Trump's Worst Collusion Isn't With Russia - It's With Corporations
The top priority in Congress right now is to move a health bill that would gut Medicaid and throw at least 22 million Americans off their insurance — while loosening regulations on insurance companies and cutting taxes on the wealthiest by over $346 billion. As few as 12 percent of Americanssupport that bill, but the allegiance of its supporters isn’t to voters — it’s plainly to the wealthy donors who’d get those tax cuts. Meanwhile,majorities of Americans in every single congressional district support efforts to curb local pollution, limit carbon emissions, and transition to wind and solar. And majorities in every single state back the Paris climate agreement. Yet even as scientists warn large parts of the planet could soon become uninhabitable, the fossil fuel-backed Trump administration has put a climate denier in charge of the EPA, pulled the U.S. out of Paris, and signed legislation to let coal companies dump toxic ash in local waterways… If Trump’s people did work with Russia to undermine our vote, they should absolutely be held accountable. But the politicians leading the charge don’t have a snowball’s chance of redeeming our democracy unless they’re willing to take on the corporate conspirators much closer to home. More
What Happened to America’s Wealth? The Rich Hid It.
Government officials will tell us “there’s no money” to repair or properly maintain our tired infrastructure. Nor do we want to raise taxes, they say. But what if billions of dollars in tax revenue have gone missing? New research suggests that the super-rich are hiding their money at alarming rates. A study by economists Annette Alstadsaeter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman reports that households with wealth over $40 million evade 25 to 30 percent of personal income and wealth taxes… First, we’re missing billions in taxes each year. That’s partly why our roads and transit systems are falling apart. Second, wealth inequality may be even worse than we thought. Economic surveys estimate that roughly 85 percent of income and wealth gains in the last decade have gone to the wealthiest one-tenth of the top 1 percent. That’s bad enough. But what if the concentration is even greater? More
Elizabeth Warren shows how she will take on Trump for Affordable Housing
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) plans to take to the streets of Washington on Wednesday to add to pressure from mayors for President Trump to protect federal investment in affordable housing. Warren is headlining a protest march against Trump's proposal to slash $6.2 billion from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, less than two weeks after a dozen mayors signed on to a letter warning that the proposed budget cuts could shut down public housing units. Warren, who for years has railed against Wall Street and an economic system rigged against the poor and working class, will address low-income tenants and housing activists from across the nation. “I want to make sure that affordable housing is front and center on our agenda of items to be protected,” Warren said in an interview Tuesday evening. “We can’t just let this one fly below the radar screen.” More
Bernie Sanders Holds Highest Approval Rating at Home, Mitch McConnell Is Dead Last
The longest-serving independent in Congressional history holds a 75 percent approval rating among his constituents and only a 21 percent disapproval rating, according to the poll. That gives Sanders the highest approval rating in the Senate. In second place is Sen. Brian Schatz, D.-Hawaii, with 69 percent of his constituents approving of his job. Senators Mazie Hirono (D.-Hawaii), John Hoeven (R.-N.D.) and Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.), rounded out the top five. Sanders was also named the most popular politician in the entire country in a March 2017 Fox News poll. In that poll, he held a 61 percent approval rating among those polled across the whole country… The senators least liked by their constituents included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R.-Ky., who ranked dead last, with a disapproval rating of 48 percent. More
When Will Climate Change Make the Earth Too Hot For Humans? Sooner than you Think!
The present tense of climate change — the destruction we’ve already baked into our future — is horrifying enough. Most people talk as if Miami and Bangladesh still have a chance of surviving; most of the scientists I spoke with assume we’ll lose them within the century, even if we stop burning fossil fuel in the next decade. Two degrees of warming used to be considered the threshold of catastrophe: tens of millions of climate refugees unleashed upon an unprepared world. Now two degrees is our goal, per the Paris climate accords, and experts give us only slim odds of hitting it. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues serial reports, often called the “gold standard” of climate research; the most recent one projects us to hit four degrees of warming by the beginning of the next century, should we stay the present course. But that’s just a median projection. The upper end of the probability curve runs as high as eight degrees… The last time the planet was even four degrees warmer, Peter Brannen points out in The Ends of the World, his new history of the planet’s major extinction events, the oceans were hundreds of feet higher. More
JESSE JACKSON: Facing the New Assault on Civil Rights
The Trump administration has launched an unprecedented rollback of civil rights and voting rights. Those who care about building a more perfect union face harsh headwinds. We’ve gone from an administration seeking to fulfill these rights to one seeking to repeal these rights… The rollback is government wide. The Labor Department has announced plans to disband the division that polices discrimination among federal contractors as a “cost cutting measure.” The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate the environmental justice program that focuses on the environmental threats to minority communities. The Education Department is decimating staffing of its Office of Civil Rights. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has revoked guidance on a rule that allows transgender people to stay in sex-segregated shelters matching their gender identity. More
Negative Campaign Against Arabs and Muslims Has Consequences
While, as president, Donald Trump has worked to cultivate a relationship with Arab leaders, the antipathy towards Arabs and Muslims that he and his party have cultivated in recent years continues to have a worrisome impact on American public opinion and policy. Recent polling conducted three weeks after Trump’s summits in Saudi Arabia, establishes the persistence of a deep and disturbing partisan divide in American attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims. On many questions, the views of Democrats and Republicans are exactly the opposite of one another, with Republican attitudes toward the two communities being extremely negative and the views of Democrats being overwhelming positive… This situation is of deep concern to Arab Americans and American Muslims. We have, in the past, experienced discrimination, been victims of hate crimes, and endured painful political exclusion. It is clear that sustained hostile campaigns either by hardline supporters of Israel or, now, by some leading Republicans have taken a toll on our communities. They must be combated until our political discourse is freed from the scourge of hate, negative stereotyping, and scapegoating. More
In Boston- Dorchester Standout for Black Lives Thursday July 20, 5:30-6:30 PM (and the third Thursday of every month) at Ashmont T station plaza
Come to the next monthly
Dorchester Standout for Black Lives
Thursday July 20, 5:30-6:30 PM
(and the third Thursday of every month)
at Ashmont T station plaza
Come to the next monthly Dorchester Standout for Black Lives
Thursday July 20, 5:306:30pm (and the third Thursday of every month) at Ashmont T station plaza. There were 40 people at our June 15 standout!
We will hold a big banner saying “We Believe that Black Lives Matter” and Black Lives Matter signs (including about a variety of issues that impact Black lives), and hand out fliers to pedestrians and drivers stopped at red lights. Please join us; all are welcome!
Remaining dates this spring and summer are:
June 15, July 20, August 17, and September 21. Kelley kelready@msn.com or Becky, beckyp44@verizon.net, or call Dorchester People for Peace 617-282-3783
In Boston- Tuesday, July 18: STATE HOUSE HEARING: Stand up for Free Speech and the Right to Boycott for Justice in Israel-Palestine
Tuesday, July 18: STATE HOUSE HEARING:
Stand up for Free Speech and the Right to Boycott for Justice in Israel-Palestine!
On Tuesday, July 18 there will be a State House hearing on the deceptively-named “Act Prohibiting Discrimination in State Contracts” (S.1689/ H.1685) -- in reality an anti-BDS bill backed by the Israel lobby and disguised as an anti-discrimination measure. (Boycott, Divest and Sanction is the Palestinian-initiated effort to pressure Israel to abide by its obligations under international law and human rights.) Because this bill is intentionally confusing, it is important to understand it. It seems innocuous but it’s not. Click here for a presentation that explains the 
bill, its intent, legal problems, and dangers. Click here for 10 reasons to oppose the bill.
bill, its intent, legal problems, and dangers. Click here for 10 reasons to oppose the bill.
HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO:
--CALL AND/OR WRITE to your own state representatives and members of the committee hearing the bill.
-- SHOW UP FOR THE HEARING! The Hearing is expected to begin at 11am and may go all day, in the State House Gardner Auditorium.
Swing And Sway With Lester Deauville And The Stills-With Benny Goodman In Mind
Swing And Sway With Lester Deauville And The Stills-With Benny Goodman In Mind
By Bradley Fox
“What the heck was that song that Peggy Lee sang in that movie we saw a few years ago when the war was on, the one that had every Hollywood star, male and female, at least on the male side the ones who were not in uniform anyway,” Delores LeBlanc asked her closest girlfriend, Anne Dubois, as they were sifting through some old albums and spotted an old Benny Goodman album, an album where Benny was working with a trio and without a vocalist so it must have been dated before the war.
“Is Why Don’t You Do Right the one you are thinking of where she was swaying to the beat and making all the guys bug-eyed and not just the ones on the screen? I had to rap Fred Allen on the knuckles [not literarily just an expression of hers] he was so buggy over her in that one. Of course he had just gotten off the transports from Europe and so any girl would have driven him buggy, including me that night where I couldn’t, wouldn’t stop him from doing what he wanted with me after we had had a few drinks at Jacques’ Grille over on High Street.”
“Yes, that’s the one” replied Delores with a chuckle, a knowing chuckle since she had had her hands full with Prescott Breslin, her sweetheart Marine when he had gotten back from the Pacific War, and like Anne she wouldn’t stop him from doing what he wanted with her, which she did not mention to Anne since she had a serious reputation as a good French-Canadian Catholic girl around the F-C neighborhoods of Olde Saco and did not want tell-everybody-in-the-world Anne to broadcast that fact like she did about her own affairs, like she did with Fred and the few other guys she bedded before she married Sean Riley out of the blue. (Not so “out of the blue” as time would tell since Seamus Riley was born seven months after the marriage ceremony. Fortunately Sean did the right thing and Anne did not have to go see “Aunt Emma” the usual excuse for why a young unmarried woman was not around the neighborhood for a while. The Aunt Emmas of the world had plenty of guests when the boys came back from the Pacific and European theaters and not everybody was savvy in Catholic-etched Olde Saco about “protection,” very naïve really. By the way the Dubois family were not happy that Anne had married an Irishman, married outside the F-C community. Some things never change.)
The reason that Delores had let Prescott have his way with her, the reason that she was sorting old records was that come next Sunday afternoon she and Prescott were to be married and since they would only have small studio apartment over on Delacroix Street she needed to pick and choose what to save and what to discard since her parents in their own small place did not have room to store much and her room would be taken by Brigette in the time-honored practice among the seven LeBlanc children of the next oldest child getting the single bedroom that came with being the oldest still in the house. Since Brigette was the youngest that problem would be resolved when she moved out but she was only fourteen and so it would still be years before that room could be a storage area.
“You know I think the name of that movie was Stagedoor Canteen,” Delores said to Anne thinking out loud. “We saw it together when you were going with Fred and I was trying to decide whether I wanted to stay with Prescott, stay with a none F-C guy which my parents were not happy about, and were very unhappy about the prospects of my marrying a guy from down in the hills of Kentucky, and a Protestant to boot. There was something forever about him and that was that. That’s why we are being married in the rectory of Saint Cecelia’s and not in the church since only practicing Catholics get that honor,” she continued.
Then Delores got all wistful about how she and Prescott had met. It was really all up to Anne since she had persuaded Delores to go to the USO weekly dance held in Portland. She had not wanted to go having been both tired from working as a spinner in the MacAdams Textile Mill, a place where half the town worked, and during the war half the town’s women while the guys were in the service and having just broken up with Lenny La Croix because he wanted to have his hands all over her and at that time she wasn’t interested in letting vagabond Lenny have his way with her. But Anne finally persuaded her to go since Lester Deauville and the Stills, a be-bop band which covered many of Benny Goodman’s songs, was the featured act. And both Anne and Delores had been crazy for be-bopping Benny since they were teenagers.
So once the dance started, once Lester and the boys heated up the joint, got everybody dancing with Huge Francois on the high heaven clarinet Anne and Delores jumped onto the dance floor and did their jitter-bug stuff. Then during a slow one, some Cole Porter tune, Prescott had come up and asked her to dance. She originally had determined to say no to any serviceman’s request to dance but something in that rich wavy black hair, those black eyes, and that slight Southern drawl which she had never heard before made her say yes. And then it was all Prescott’s play from there. And he made the most of it, was known among his fellow Marines as the “Sheik” for a reason. Not that night but on a subsequent date at the next USO dance. After that second dance night she would always associate Benny Goodman with Prescott, with her do-right man.
Did You Hear John Hurt-With Mississippi John Hurt In Mind
Did You Hear John Hurt-With Mississippi John Hurt In Mind
By Bradley Fox
“Are you going over to Harvard Square Friday night to hear that guy, John Hurt, everybody has been talking about at the Club Nana, the old guy that Mick Greenleaf discovered when he went on that trip down South to see if any of the old time blues singers were still around, or if anybody knew what had happened to them?,” Cecilia Taylor had inquired of Theresa Green, her college roommate at Boston University and more importantly to this conversation fellow folk aficionado. Folk aficionado on Theresa’s part ever since the previous fall when in the toss-up for roommates at the freshman dormitories on Bay State Road had produced Cecelia as her mate. Cecelia from Fort Lee on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge had been a regular coffeehouse going on the weekends in the Village since her junior year of high school and she had kind of dragged Theresa in her wake. Theresa from Podunk Riverdale about forty miles south of Boston had never even heard of folk music, could not name one song off-hand and was furthermore clueless about blues, country blues of which Mississippi John Hurt was a representative as Cecelia called it a sub-set of folk.(Theresa if she had thought about that question of not knowing a folk song off-hand only had to think back to seven grade Music Appreciation class with Miss Enos and her attempts to get her charges to sing some song such as Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land to know that she knew at least that one national anthem of folk although in high school she had been so mired in teenage heartthrobs like Bobby Darin, Fabian, and Bobby Vee that any other thoughts about music were so much wind.)
That Theresa “dragged along” by the way, aside from the question of whether she was, or was not going to the Club Nana Friday night, was made infinitely easier by Cecilia having thrown Mel Jackson out as a lure. Mel was well-known in the freshman class, by the girls at least, as one of the sexiest guys around. Moreover he had been learning to play the guitar and to sing some of the folk songs that were making the rounds in the clubs and coffeehouses at the Tuesday night “open mics” held at the Cafe Blanc on the other side of the street from the Club Nana on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge. Cecelia had known Mel since day one of school since he had been in her freshman orientation class and on the round-robin question and answer period they had both mentioned an interest in the budding folk music movement running its course through a lot of college towns and other urban oases. They had subsequently had a couple of dates but the flame wasn’t there and so they became just friends.
That “just friends” status though had gotten Cecelia to meet Mel’s roommate Thorn Davis who did strike a flame. So one Friday night Cecelia who had been talking up her interest in the folk scene since they had become roommates talked Theresa, dateless and bored, into going on a double date with her and Thorn, Mel the bait. That night Tom Paxton, a new talent, a guy who was either in the Army or who had just gotten out down at Fort Dix in New Jersey was playing at Jerry’s Coffeehouse and so they spent the evening listening to his stuff (Jerry’s a notch below the Café Blanc and Club Nana which charged a cover and required that you at least had a cup of coffee in front of you to keep your seat so that the featured performer actually got paid from the admission fee did not charge admission. Jerry’s did as all such establishment did in Harvard Square at least require the cup of coffee and got the crowd that could not get into the formerly mentioned clubs or guys out on cheap dates with girls that they didn’t figure to get anywhere with. A whole treatise could be written on “getting anywhere with and dating etiquette back then, now to for that matter. Performers hated the set-up because they had to play for the “basket,” had to pass the hat in the audience to make their nightly wages to keep the landlord from their doors.)
Although that night had been something of a disaster for the Mel-Theresa combination since Mel was serious about attempting to make a career out of folk music, that was his idea anyway and Theresa only knew as much about folk music as Cecelia had told her in quick flashes so she would not be totally adrift. Every time the conversation hit a turn she would be clueless, for example, when they talked about Pete Seeger and his earlier career with the Weavers and they mentioned how the Weavers had made a big hit out of Leadbelly’s Goodnight, Irene she knew neither the Weavers nor the name Leadbelly ( except to think that it was an odd name for a singer or a person ). So that night Mel and Theresa had kind of flopped, except she did like Tom Paxton, especially his Last Thing On My Mind. That seemed to be about it, one date and done.
The next morning early Theresa woke Cecelia up and told her she needed a crash course in advanced folk (that is how she put the matter) since she had not slept a wink thinking about Mel’s blue eyes, bedroom eyes she called them and Cecelia knew exactly why she wanted that crash course. Cecelia passed Theresa her copy of Fred Allen’s A Layman’s Folk Music History and told her to start reading from page one and then she could ask questions. Theresa thereafter learned about the roots of the roots of folk from the old country British mist of time ballads that were collected by Francis Child in the 19th century which in bastardized versions were still played in places like Appalachia and Nova Scotia. The French-Canadian Arcadian traditions that would head south to the swamps of Louisiana and Cajun music. The key role of Delta and Piedmont blues in the black musical experience all the way up to those Newport “discoveries.” More importantly for the benefit of her Mel dreams to know who the hell Peter Seeger, the Weavers, Dave Von Ronk, Josh White and the rest of the current or near current batch of folk tradition aficionados.
Over time Theresa, granted with a great deal of help from Cecelia who after all had lived through that first crucial period of the folk revival, did become very knowledgeable about the folk scene and some folk history too although she had not seen Mel during that time she was getting tutored in the high points by Cecelia but she was determined if she did see him that she would do better than that first date. One afternoon toward the spring of 1963 she was walking along Commonwealth Avenue up by the Sherman Union and heard a guy singing a song, Come All You Fair And Tender Maidens and step closer to hear who was singing the song. Of course it was Mel. When he saw her he waved and smiled, a little. With that little encouragement after he had finished the song she went up to him and said all in one breathe, “I didn’t know that you were into mountain music, isn’t that a song that Dave Von Ronk covered on his Inside Dave Van Ronk album and didn’t that song get discovered by Cecil Sharpe, the British folklorist back in the early part of the century down in Kentucky.” Bingo. Mel asked if she was doing anything Friday night since Hedy West was playing at the Café Mark in Kenmore Square. And that was that.
So Cecelia asking Theresa if she was going to hear John Hurt was not an academic question. The answer though was “no” since she and Mel were going to the Village Friday afternoon in order to hear Dave Van Ronk at the Gaslight. She did ask Cecelia to tell her what Hurt’s playlist was and any impressions she had of him when she got back Sunday night.
Sunday night came and Theresa was back. After putting her luggage away Theresa asked Cecelia how the Hurt concert had gone. Cecelia laughed, said the show was great. What she was laughing about was how she had been expecting some big old black guy, maybe the size of Howlin’ Wolf or something and then on stage came kind of haltingly this little wizened old man in an old rumbled suit and a straw hat that must have been older than him. He was so short that Mike Greenleaf had to keep adjusting the mic every couple of songs when he would change positions. He had this ratty old guitar too that he said he had bought for about six dollars in the Sear & Roebuck catalogue back in the 1920s. Then he told the story about how Mike and a couple of other guys had come down to Clarksville down in Mississippi looking for him after somebody in Jackson had told them about an old blues player in the Clarksville area named Hurt. Mike and the others had known exactly who their informants meant since they had all listened to him on one of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music albums.
The way Hurt told the story here he was in this little shack of a house, a cabin I guess and had been picking cotton ever since he could remember after that minute of fame. Somebody from the audience then asked him, since some rumors were going around that Sid Dalton, his manager was working him too hard, taking too much dough for himself and not getting the best deals for his projected albums. Hurt had a funny answer, he said whatever arrangements Sid made were fine by him since playing “beats picking cotton for an old man” and he smiled his couple of teeth missing smile. He sang like heaven (played some very clean guitar picking which Thorn and Cecelia had never seen before). Sang Creole Belle, Frankie and Albert, his version of the traditional Frankie and Johnny song, Candy Man, Miss Collins Moans, Beulah Land, Coffee Spoon, and a few others they didn’t know but sounded good. “Too bad you guys couldn’t come,” Cecelia said. Theresa said wistfully that she wished they had too since Dave Van Ronk had been drinking heavily before his show and it showed-he had a very off night. And so it goes.
From The Guys And Gals Who Know The Face Of War-The Smedleys-Veterans For Peace
From The Guys And Gals Who Know The Face Of War-The Smedleys-Veterans For Peace
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