This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
The 50th Anniversary Of Love- Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When Butterfly Swirl Swirled- A CD Review
CD Review
Classic Rock: 1964, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1987
Scene brought to mind by the cover art that graces this CD. Said cover art showing in the background a motley foursome from some post- British invasion invasion group but in the foreground the object our, ah, inspection, one female earring bejeweled but more importantly day-glo, or if not day-glo then some non-toxic paint celebration, painted flower. Immediately bringing to my memory’s eye on Kathleen Callahan, a. k. a. Butterfly Swirl, Carlsbad (California, that’s important) Class of 1968 and Josh Breslin’s old flame from the summer of love, 1967 version, circa San Francisco in the merry prankster, yellow brick road night. Of course, as always in the interest of full disclosure, Ms. Swirl was my girl, very much my girl, until old Josh, Olde Saco High School Class of 1967 (that’s up in Maine, although that is not important to the story, or just a little) showed up on Russian Hill one fine day and, well, “stole” her from me. That too is not important to the story, except maybe to explain, a little, the kind of gal Kathleen was. What is important is how she came to be, not even out of high school yet, Butterfly Swirl.
No question in 1957 or 1977 Kathleen Callahan, brown hair, bright smile, good figure, great legs and an irksomely sunny disposition would have been just Kathleen Callahan, maybe the head cheerleader at some suburban school, some seaside suburban school like Carlsbad just norte of San Diego, Or, more realistically given that locale, some dippy surfer joe girl watching while they were hanging five or ten or whatever they did to those LaJolla, Malibu, Carlsbad waves that weren’t harming anybody as they slipped tepidly to shore. And, as she later confessed to Josh she actually had been a surfer joe girl, although the guy’s name was Spin Curley, nice right.
And then the 1964 British invasion came, and she, all of thirteen, although fully formed in lots of ways as she also told Josh and she was swept away, swept away from the silly little surfer girl life, small seaside everybody abode-housed Spanish fandango and the inevitably Spin. She told Josh it was really the Kinks that got her off-center. Not the Beatles or Rolling Stones as you might think. She said she was mad for their You Really Got Me, it kind of turned her on, turned her on a lot. A lot more than Spin could deal with what with his having to hang five or ten out in mother nature wave land. So naturally she headed to Los Angeles to check things out for a few days. Her and another girl, whose story can be summed up in one word-bonkers. Heavy metal pedal drug bonkers.
But she, that girl, get this, already had a moniker, Serendipity Swan, and knew some real cool people that she had met down at LaJolla where they were taking care of some rich guy’s estate (they are all estates in that zip code, then known as postal zones). This rich guy got rich, got very rich by “inventing” acid (LSD), or something like that. Or knew guys who invented it, or something like that. But in any case, the guy taking care of the estate, Captain Crunch and his confederates were always high, always on the move with their merry prankster yellow brick road bus and always welcoming to lost lambs, and ex-surfer girls. And that was how a couple of years before Kathleen, who had not then metamorphosized ed into Butterfly Swirl, kind of at wit’s end, eventually came up further north. And that is how I met her, and Josh too. Here’s the funny part though, as things got weird on the bus, or too weird for her and her embedded suburban girl manner (when she wasn’t high, high she was like a Buddha or Siva or whatever those divines are called) she hankered (my word) for home, and for her Spin and his hanging five or ten, or whatever he did to those waves. Like I said in 1957 or 1977 she wouldn’t have even been “on the bus.” But just for that 1967 minute, driven by those wicked Brits she broke free. Josh looked for her later but never caught up to her again.
Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's version of Leon Trotsky's seminal work, "The History Of The Russian Revolution". The link will click to the chapter cited in the headline to this entry.
Folk Rock’s Elder Statesman- Neil Young- Back In The Days
CD Review Harvest, Neil Young and various sidemen, Reprise Records, 1972 I have mentioned in a previous review of the work of Neil Young, “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”, that pound for pound in those days he and Crazy Horse stood tall in the rock pantheon. Maybe not as tall as the Stones or The Doors but somewhere in the mix. Now, getting close to forty years later, Neil has morphed into folk rock’s elder statesman and still puts out some creative work. That is not what interests me now though, at least not directly. What is interesting about this “Harvest” CD is how much of the best work here reflects where Neil Young was heading after that brilliant “heavy rock/psychedelic rock” flash of work with Crazy Horse (and his work before that with several other groups). Some of the songs like the classic “Heart Of Gold”, “Old Man” and “Words” could have fit very nicely on, say, his fairly recent “Prairie” CD. And that, my friends, is indeed a compliment. "Heart Of Gold" I want to live, I want to give I've been a miner for a heart of gold. It's these expressions I never give That keep me searching for a heart of gold And I'm getting old. Keeps me searching for a heart of gold And I'm getting old. I've been to Hollywood I've been to Redwood I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold I've been in my mind, it's such a fine line That keeps me searching for a heart of gold And I'm getting old. Keeps me searching for a heart of gold And I'm getting old. Keep me searching for a heart of gold You keep me searching for a heart of gold And I'm growing old. I've been a miner for a heart of gold.
Click on the headline to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.
Markin comment:
The name Leon Trotsky hardly needs added comment from this writer. After Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in his case it is just slightly after, Trotsky is our heroic leader of the international communist movement. I would argue, and have in the past, that if one were looking for a model of what a human being would be like in our communist future Leon Trotsky, warts and all, is the closest approximation that the bourgeois age has produced. No bad, right?
Note: For this 70th anniversary memorial I have decided to post articles written by Trotsky in the 1930s, the period of great defeats for the international working class with the rise of fascism and the disorientations of Stalinism beating down on it. This was a time when political clarity, above all, was necessary. Trotsky, as a simple review of his biographical sketch will demonstrate, wore many hats in his forty years of conscious political life: political propagandist and theoretician; revolutionary working class parliamentary leader; razor-sharp journalist ( I, for one, would not have wanted to cross swords with him. I would still be bleeding.); organizer of the great October Bolshevik revolution of 1917; organizer of the heroic and victorious Red Army in the civil war against the Whites in the aftermath of that revolution; seemingly tireless Soviet official; literary and culture critic: leader of the Russian Left Opposition in the 1920s; and, hounded and exiled leader of the International Left Opposition in the 1930s.
I have decided to concentrate on some of his writings from the 1930s for another reason as well. Why, with such a resume to choose from? Because, when the deal went down Leon Trotsky’s work in the 1930s, when he could have taken a political dive, I believe was the most important of his long career. He, virtually alone of the original Bolshevik leadership (at least of that part that still wanted to fight for international revolution), had the capacity to think and lead. He harnessed himself to the hard, uphill work of that period (step back, step way back, if you think we are “tilting at windmills” now). In that sense the vile Stalinist assassination in 1940, when Trotsky could still project years of political work ahead, is not among the least of Stalin’s crimes against the international working class. Had Trotsky lived another ten years or so, while he could not have “sucked” revolutions out of the ground, he could have stabilized a disoriented post-World War communist movement and we would probably have a far greater living communist movement today. Thanks for what you did do though, Comrade Trotsky.
The sixth Maine Peace Walk for Conversion, Community and Climate will be from October 13-21. This year the walk will largely be centered in Bath and concentrate on the serious need to convert Bath Iron Works (BIW) to peaceful and sustainable production.
As the planet heats up, the oceans warm and acidify, and Arctic ice melts we witness the release of methane that only accelerates the global warming problem. The response of the government has been to unleash geoengineering of the sky which further exacerbates the problem. In addition the US military has the largest carbon footprint of any organization on our Mother Earth. Waging endless war consumes massive amounts of fossil fuels and lays waste to significant environmentally sensitive places on the planet – particularly the oceans.
If we have any hopes to secure a future for the coming generations then we must immediately begin the conversion of the military industrial complex to environmentally appropriate renewable energy systems. What could be more important at this moment?
Studies at UMASS-Amherst Economics Department have long shown that producing commuter rails systems, offshore wind turbines, solar and tidal power would in fact create more jobs at facilities like BIW than we currently get building warships. Spending on education, health care, and other social programs also creates more jobs than does military production.
But if the environmental and peace movements don’t make the demand for conversion it will never happen and our children will be left with the devastating consequences.
While in Bath during October 13-21 we will hold morning and afternoon vigils at BIW to bring the conversion message directly to General Dynamics (owner of BIW) executives and shipyard workers. During each day we will go door-to-door across Bath to drop flyers at every house and business in the community. During the evenings a public program, film and music will be featured.
We will have a special guest during the peace walk from Jeju Island, South Korea where a Navy base has been built in a 500-year old fishing and farming village that worships their relationship to nature. Gangjeong village was torn apart to construct the Navy base but for the past 10 years daily non-violent protests have been held and they continue to this day. The warships built in Bath are already porting at this new Navy base.
We welcome everyone to join our peace walk for an hour, a day, or more and to help in any way you can. Accepting our present condition of endless war for fossil fuels is a dead end street that if not reversed will lead to our collective demise. We must have a conversion that begins with our hearts and extends to the timely task of totally reorienting our national production system.
Maine Peace Walk is sponsored by: Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST); Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space; Maine Natural Guard; Maine Veterans For Peace; Maine War Tax Resistance Resource Center; Peace Action Maine; PeaceWorks; Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Chapter (Boston area); Waging Peace Maine
(Groups are invited to co-sponsor and asked to make a donation toward the walk)
* See this video song by Jeju Island activist Joyakgol. It’s a new song about all the trash coming from US warships porting at the Jeju naval base, THAAD, overdevelopment, nukes and etc. Joyakgol will come to Bath in October for our Maine peace walk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QzZDR0qIws
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- Out In The Seals Rock Inn Frisco Town Night –Take Two
Funny he, Adam Evans, thought, a little sweaty and overheated from the turned too high thermostat put on earlier to ward off the open- eyed chill of the room, as he laid in his toss and turn early morning Seals Rock Inn, San Francisco bed, the rain pouring down in buckets, literally buckets, at his unprotected door, the winds were howling against that same door, and the nearby sea was lashing up its fury, how many times the sea stormy night, the sea fury tempest day, the, well, the mighty storm anytime, had played a part in his life. He was under no circumstances, as he cleared his mind for a think back, a think back that was occupying his thoughts more and more of late, trying to work himself into a lather over some metaphorical essence between the storms that life had bestowed on him and the raging night storm within hearing distance. No way, too simple. Rather he was just joy searching for all those sea-driven times, times when a storm, a furious storm like this night or maybe just an average ordinary vanilla storm passing through and complete in an hour made him think of his relationship with his homeland the sea and with its time for reflection. And so on that toss and turn bed he thought.
Funny, although not humorously funny like his nymph tryst with Terry that he had just finish thinking about, or ironically funny like his bonding with the sea from birth that got him started on this think, but kind of sad sack funny how he and Diana had met, met in Harvard Square in the summer of love, 1967 (check it out on Wikipedia for the San Francisco version of that same year but basically, in both cases although more flagrantly in ’Frisco, it was the winds blowing the right way for once when make love not war, make something, make your dreams come true with sex, drugs, music had its minute, has its soon faded minute via self –imposed hubris and the death-dealing, fag-hating, nigger-hating, women-hating, self-hatingbad guys with the guns and the dough leading, and still leading, a vicious counter-attack), she from Podunk Mid-West (Davenport out in the Iowas if you need to know) far from ocean waters, but thrilled by the prospect of meeting an ocean boy (okay, okay man, twenty- three, she twenty-one)who actually had been there, to the ocean that is.
Oh yah, how they met in that Harvard Square good night for the curious, simplicity itself (his version), she was sitting about half way across the room, the cafeteria room, the oldHayes-Bickford awful dish- water coffee out of necessarily sturdy ceramic mugs , runny eggs, steamy to perdition everything else room, although the food and its conditions was not why you hung out there,just up from the old Harvard Square subway stop (and no longer there, long gone and missed, nor is that subway stop the end of the Red Line), if that name helps (and it did , did help that is, if you had any pretensions to some folkie literary career, somebe-bop blessed poet life, or just wanted to rub elbows with what might be the next big thing after that folk minute expired of a British invasion of sexed-up moppets andwet dream bad boys and poetrydied of T.S. Eliot and rarified air, or, maybe just a two in the morning coffee, hard pressed sudsy coffee, but coffee, enough to keep a seat in the place, after a tough night at the local gin mills, and hadn’t caught anybody’s attention), sitting by herself, writing furiously, on some yellow notepad, and she looked up. He, just that moment looked up as well (although he had taken about six previous peeks in her direction but she ignored them, studiously ignored, with her furious pen), and smiled at her. And she gave him a whimsical, no a melt smile, a smile to think about eternities over, about maybe chasing some windmills about, about, about walking right over and asking about the meaning of, well, that smile. And he did, and she did, she told him that is. And in the telling, told him, that she had half seen (her version) him peeking and wondered about it.
All this peeking, half- peeking(her version, remember) , got him a seat at her table, and her a cup of awful coffee and a couple of hours, where are you from, what do you like, what is the meaning of existence and what the hell are you writing so furiouslyabout at two o’clock on Sunday morning. And one thing led to another and eventually the sea came in, although, damn age against he couldn’t for thelife of him rememberhow that subject came up, except maybesomething triggered when she mentioned Iowa, and he said please don’t bury me there but near some seaside bluff, or something.
And what did she look like, for the male reader in need of such detail, especially since she was sitting alone writing furiously at two in the morning, maybe she was, ah, ah, a dog. Nah, she was kind of slender, but not skinny, slender in that fresh as sweet cream Midwestern corn-fed way that started to happen after the womenfolk, not prairie fire pioneer women any longer, had been properly fed for a couple of generations after those hard Okie/Arkie push on days of eating chalk dust and car smoke trailing dreams. With the long de riguer freshly- ironed (really, after the Joan Baez fashion or just some college girl fad) brown hair pulled back from her face (otherwise she would have constantly had to interrupt her furious writing to keep it out of her face as she wrote). And a pleasing face, bright blue eyes, good nose, and nice lips, kissable lips. Nice legs from what he could see when he went over. But who was he kidding, it was that whimsical, no, melt, smile, that smile that spoke of eternities, although what it spoke of at two in the morning was gentle breezes, soft pillows, of that Midwestern what you see is what you get and what you get, well, you better hang on, and hang on tight, and be ready to take some adversity, to keep around that smile. But that was later, later really, when he had figured it out better about why he tossed and turned all that night (really morning) and that smile thought would not let him be.
Memory bank of their first time up in ocean’s kingdom, the next day actually she was so anxious to see the ocean, or maybe anxious to see it with him, they talked about it being that way too but let’s just memory call it her anxiety, the rugged cross salvation rocks that make up Perkin’s Cove in southern Maine, up there by Ogunquit. There are stories to be told of his own previous meetings with Mother Perkin’s but this is Diana’ s story and those stories, his stories, involved other women, other treacheries, other immense treacheries, and other angel-sized delights too. That day thought she flipped out, flipped out at the immensity of it, of the majestic swells (and of her swaying, gently, but rhythmically to the rise and fall of each wave) of the closeness of a nature that she, she of wind- swept wheat oceans, of broken-back bracero wet back labor to bring in the crop, of fights against every form of land injury, dust, bugs, fire, drought had not dreamed of. And as if under some mystic spell, or some cornfield ocean mistake, she actually plunged fully-clothed (not having been told of the needfor a swimsuit since the ocean itself was the play, the hugeness of it, the looking longingly back to primordial times of it, the reflection in the changings winds of it), in to the ocean at that spot where there is just enough room if the tide is right, just ebbing enough to create a sand bar to do so (today there is no problem getting down there as the Cove trustees have provided a helpful stairs, concrete-reinforced, against old time lumber steps breakaway and lost in some snarled sea) and promptly was almost carried out by a riptide.
He saved her, saved her good that day. Saved her with every ounce of energy he had to take her like some lonesome sailor saving his shipmate, save just to be saving, saving from the sea for a time anyway, or better, saving like the guy, that long gone daddy, who did or said some fool thing to his woman and she flipped out and make a death pact with old King Neptune (and wouldn’t you know want to bring long gone daddy along for the ride) from that song Endless Sleep by Jody Reynolds. But get this, and get it from him straight just in case you might have heard it from her. That day she was so sexed-up, there is no other way to say it, and there shouldn’t be, what with the first look ocean swells and her swaying , and her getting dunked good (with wet clothes and a slight feverish chill), and her being so appreciative of him saving her (the way she put it, his version anyway, was that save, that unthinking save, meant that whatever might come that she knew, knew after one day, and knew she was not wrong, that he would not forsake her for some trivial) that she wanted to have sex with him right there, right in the cove. (In those days there was a little spot that he knew, a little spot off a rutted dirt path that was then not well known, was unmarked , and was protected by rows of shrubbery so there was no problem about “doing the do” there and frankly that thought got him sexed-up too. Today there are so many touristas per square inch in high season and that old rutted path now paved so that the act would be impossible. It would have to wait hard winter and frozen asses, if that same scenario came up again.)
Here’s the thing thought she, Diana, from the sticks, from the Iowa fresh-mown fields, new to Harvard Square summer of love and Boston college scene school didn’t take birth control pills or have any other form of protection that day, although she was fairly sexually experienced (some wheat field farmer boy and then the usual assortment of colleges guys, some honest, some, well, one- night stands). And he, he not expecting to be a savior sailor that day carried no protection, hell, condoms (and, truth, his circle, the guys anyway, and really the girls knowing what the guys expected too, left it up to their partners to protect themselves. Barbarians, okay). So before they could hit the bushes, before they could lose themselves in the stormy throes of love he had to run up (yes, he ran, so you knew he was sexed-up too) to Doc’s Drugstore (no longer there, since Doc passed away many years ago and his sons became lawyers and not pharmacists) on U.S. 1 right in the center of Ogunquit. And red- faced purchased their “rubbers”(and wouldn’t you know there was some young smirky high school sales girl behind the counter when he paid for his purchase, jesus, with that knowing look of I know what you are up, mister). So as the sun started blue –pink setting in the west and to the sound, the symphony really, of those swells clanging on those rugged cross rocks they made love for the first time, not beautiful sultry night pillow love in some high-end hotel (like later), or fearfully (fearful that her prudish dorm roommate would bust in on them) in her dorm room but fiercely, fiercely like those ocean waves crashing mercilessly to shore. The time for exotic, genteel, gentle love-making (“making it,” out of some be-bop hipster lexicon their want to way of expressing that desire) would could later, later intermingled with the seventeen differences and sixteen almost reconciliations.
Funny too in that same sad sack love way they early onhad vowed, secular vowed (no, not that Perkin’s Cove love day, sex is easier to agree to, to make and unmake than vows, religious, secular, or blasphemous), that they would not, like their parents fight over every stupid thing.. That night in her dorm room after that full day of activity they stayed up half the night (hell with a little benny that wasn’t hard, and perhaps they stayed up all night, and although her roommate never showed that night they did not, his version, did not make love) remembering his Velcro Ma wars and, as she related that night and many night after, her Baptist father repent sinners weird wars. He related in detail his various wars, wars to the death that left him with no option, no he option except to leave the family house and strike it on his own, on his summer of love terms if possible, since he had sensed that wind that storm swell coming for a while and was as ready as any “hippie”(quaint term, although he did not, and never did, consider himself a hippie but rather traced his summer of love yearnings to beat times, to be-bop boys and girls with shadedeyes and existential desires). She related in detail her devil father, with seven prayer books in all his hands on Sunday and a thwarted creep up to her room every other day, and ofhis bend bracero hatred short-changing the wages of the wetbacks who came via train smoke and dreams to bring in the crop (or have the complaisant county sheriffkick them out wage-less, or with so manydeductions for cheap- jack low rent shack barely held together against the fury of prairie winds room and board, food just shy of some Sally (Salvation Army) hand out in some desolate back street town (and Adam knew of such foods, and of kindly thanks yous but that was give away food not sweated labor food)that it made the same thing. Justified of course by some chapter and verse about the heathens (Catholic heathens and he, the father , still fighting those 16th century religious wars out on prairie America and, and, winning against hard luck ,move on to the next shack and hand-out worthy food harvest stop, endlessly), and theirsorrows .
And they didn’t , didn’t act like their parents, their he and she parents, that summer of love, that overblown ,frantic , wind-changing summer of love, when they sensed that high tide rolling in, hell, more than sensed it, could taste it, taste in the their off-hand love bouts not reserved for downy billows (and he glad, glad as hell, that she, his little temptress she, had freely offered herself to him up on those rugged cross rocks so that he, when he needed a reason, coaxed her to some landlocked bushes, or some river, some up river ,Charles River, of course hide-out and she, slightly blushing, maybe, with the thought of it, followed along),taste it is the sweet wines handmade in some friend experiment , hey try this (and experiment yogurts, ice cream, dough bread, and on and on, too) , taste it in the tea, ganga, herb, hemp smoke curling through their lungs and moment peace, or later, benny high to keep sleep from their eyes on the hitchhike road, or later too, sweet cousin cocaine, cheap, cheap as hell, and exotic to snuffed noses to take away the minute blues creeping in, taste it in the new way that their brethren, that small crowd (after all not everybody got caught up in the summer of love minute, some went jungle-fighting, some went wall street back-biting, some went plain old ordinary nine to five- routining, some went same old same, old love and marriage and here come X and Y with a baby carriage , and mortgages , and saving for junior’s college and ,and, and…, offered this and that, free, this and that help, this and that can I have this free, taste it in, well, if you don’t want to do that, hell, don’t and not face Ma, or kin, or professional wrath (or she father fire and brimstone), taste it out in those friendly streets, no not Milk Street, not Wall Street,not the Loop, but Commonwealth Avenue, Haight Street, Division Street, many Village streets, many Brattle streets, many Taos streets, Venice Beach streets, all the clots that make the connections, the oneness of it all, the grandness of it all, the free of it all.
They, they made the kindness, the everyday kindness of it, the simple air-filled big balloon kindness of it like some Peter Max cartoonish figure, and when they filled that balloon with enough kindness and against the sluttiness remarks ofhigh Catholic Ma disapproving of heathens (see not all bigots were out in the prairie wheat field strung out on the lord and, wheat profits) and she Pa disapproving of hippie (never was , beat, beat, yes) they married , justice of the peace high wind Perkin’s Cove consummated married, she all garlanded up like some Botticelli doll model picture (Botticelli’s mistress, his whore,from what they had heard, and she blushed at that knowledge), flowered, flowing garment, free hair in thewind and he some black robe throw around , and feasting,feasting on those rugged cross rocks . Too much.
And for as long as they could see some new breeze blowing that they felt part of they were kind to each other (and others, of course). Then the winds of change shifted, and like the tides the ebbs set in, maybe not obvious at first, maybe not that first series of defeats, that Loop madness in ’68, that first bust for some ill-gotten dope and some fool snitch to save his ass from stir turned on him, some brethren (he hated snitch, the very word snitch, from that time down in that rolling barrel slope in the water episode as a kid with his older brother, and he didn’t snitch on his older brother now name etched in black marble in Washington along with other old neighborhood names), that first Connecticut highway hitchhike bust as they headed to D.C. for one more vain and futile attempt to stop the generation’s damn war, that several hour wait in Madison for some magnificent Volkswagen bus to stop and get them from point C to point D on their journey to this very storm- driven San Francisco spot (a few blocks up over in North Beach the old beat blocks, Haight Street hippie having turned into a free-fire zone, that” no that is six dollars for those candles , not free anymore brother” sea-change, and the decline of kindness, first casualty their own kindnesses, their own big balloon kindnesses more less frequently evoked, more tired from too much work, more “sorrybut I have a headache ,”he too, and less thoughts about trysts in hidden bushes, or downy billows for that matter. Worse, worse still, he went his way, and she went hers, trying to make it (no longer their “make it” signal to chart love’s love time) in the world, hell, nine to five routining it but it was the kindnesses, those big ball kindnesses that went (and that they both spoke of marriage counselor spoke of missing), and seventeen differences, substantial differences, and sixteen almost reconciliations, they grew older and apart, and…
She left him for another man, another non-sea driven man, a man who hated the outdoors, hated the thought of the ocean (he grew up in lobstertown Maine and had his fill of oceans, of fierce winds, of rubber hip boots, and of rugged cross rocksthank you, she told him non-ocean man had told her) when she called it seventeen times was enough quits after they had spent a couple of months up in that storm-ravaged Maine cottage that he insisted they go to reconcile after the last difference bout where she, quote, was tired as hell of the sea, of the wind, of the stuff that the wind did to her sensitive skin ( big old sadness at that remark by him for he never said, kindness, said anything about that, or never said he could stop the ravages of time), and, and, tired of him playing out some old man of the seas, some man against nature thing with her in his train, unquote. Yah, she up and left him. Damn, and he had had thoughts of eternity, of always being around that smile, that quizzical smile, or the possibility of that smile, that he first latched onto that first Harvard Square night when he had smiled at her across the room, and she had smiled that smile right between his eyes at him.
Join Us On Boston Common
Saturday August 19th –Built The Anti-Fascist United Front Against
The White Nationalists
Frank Jackman comment:
Recently in commenting
on an article from a leftist group about the struggle against the Alt Right,
White Nationalists, Nazis, KKK and their assorted hangers-on in high places and
low I mentioned that on other occasions I usually have posted political
material here that may be of interest to the liberal and radical milieu without
comment. And without necessarily agreeing with the content. Occasionally, and
given the developments in Charlottesville on Saturday August 12, 2017 when this
white trash menaced our people and took one of our own I will make additional
comment. I do so here in solidarity with the idea that we have to stop this
para-military wing of the right in its tracks now.
A lot of what this site
is about is presenting past history, past political history especially. More
than once I have mentioned that we need to learn the lessons of history. On
this question 1933 in Germany when Hitler and his storm troopers, the guys that
the White Nationalists, et. al drool over today, were controlling the streets
and ready to take power was too late (essentially
unopposed on those streets by the natural forces to oppose them, the socialist
and the communists who had their heads in the sand). We need to stop the White
Nationalist, Nazis, KKK, Alt-right and their supporters in the egg. Every worker,
every black person, every non-white ethnic minority come to think of it, every
Jewish person, every leftist, every one with a non-heterosexual sexual
preference or identity needs to incorporate this message now! The slogan of the
hour, this hour when the long-standing cold civil war in America is turning
hot-Build the Labor, Black, and other oppressed people United Front against the
Fascists-Now!!!!
Join us on Boston Common
beginning around 10 AM Saturday August 19, 2017 to stop the White Nationalists
and their ilk in their tracks.
In Boston Saturday Aug 19th-The Cold Civil War In America Is Turning Hot-Built the Anti-Fascist United Front Now! Frank Jackman comment: I will have more to say on the the sturggle against the White Nationalists, Nazis, Alt Right and their hangers-on in high places and low later. For now here is a link to a counter-demonstation in protest againt this grouping in Boston on August 19th at Boston Common.
An Encore -When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Sometimes Sam Lowell and his “friend” (really “sweetie,” long time sweetie, paramour, significant other, consort or whatever passes for the socially acceptable or Census Bureau bureaucratic “speak” way to name somebody who is one’s soul-mate, his preferred term) Laura Perkins whose relationship to Sam was just described at the end of the parentheses, and righteously so, liked to go to Crane’s Beach in Ipswich to either cool off in the late summer heat or in the fall before the New England weather lowers its hammer and the place gets a bit inaccessible and too windswept to force the delicate Laura into the weathers. That later summer heat escape valve is a result, unfortunately for an otherwise Edenic environment of the hard fact that July, when they really would like to go there to catch a few fresh sea breezes, is not a time to show up at the bleach white sands beach due to nasty blood-sucking green flies swarming and dive-bombing like some berserk renegade Air Force squadron lost on a spree captained by someone with a depraved childhood who breed in the nearby swaying mephitic marshes (mephitic courtesy of multi-use by Norman Mailer who seemed to get it in every novel- if you don't what it means look it up but think nasty and smelly and you will close-okay).
The only “safe haven” then is to drive up the hill to the nearby robber-baron days etched Crane Castle (they of the American indoor plumbing fortune way back) to get away from the buggers, although on a stagnant wind day you might have a few vagrant followers, as the well-to-do have been doing since there were the well-to-do and had the where-with-all to escape the summer heat and bugs at higher altitudes. By the way I assume that “castle” is capitalized when it part of a huge estate, the big ass estate of Crane, now a trust monument to the first Gilded Age, not today’s neo-Gilded Age, architectural proclivities of the rich, the guy whose company did, does all the plumbing fixture stuff on half the bathrooms in America including in the various incantations of the mansion.
Along the way, along the hour way to get to Ipswich from Cambridge Sam and Laura had developed a habit of making the time more easy passing by listening to various CDs, inevitably not listened to for a long time folk CDs, not listened to for so long that the plastic containers needed to be dusted off before being brought along, on the car's improvised CD player. And as is their wont while listening to some CD to comment on this or that thing that some song brought to mind, or the significance of some song in their youth. One of the things that had brought them together early on several years back was their mutual interest in the old 1960s folk minute which Sam, a little older and having grown up within thirty miles of Harvard Square, one the big folk centers of that period along with the Village and North Beach out in Frisco town, had imbibed deeply. Laura, growing up “in the sticks,” in farm country in upstate New York had gotten the breeze at second-hand through records, records bought at Cheapo Records and the eternal Sandy's on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge and a little the fading Cambridge folk scene through breathing in the coffeehouse atmosphere when she had moved to Boston in the early 1970s to go to graduate school.
One hot late August day they got into one such discussion about how they first developed an interest in folk music when Sam had said “sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan, maybe some a little younger too if some hip kids have browsed through their parents’ old vinyl record collections now safely ensconced in the attic although there are stirrings of retro-vinyl revival of late according a report I had heard on NPR."
Some of that over 50 crowd and their young acolytes would also have known about how Dylan, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s singing Woody’s songs imitating Woody's style something fellow Woody acolytes like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot never quite got over moved on, got all hung up on high symbolism and obscure references. Funny guys like Jack actually made a nice workman-like career out of Woody covers, so their complaints about the "great Dylan betrayal, about moving on, seen rather hollow now. That over 50s crowd would also know Dylan became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, their generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then he would settle for the master troubadour of the age.
Sam continued along that line after Laura had said she was not sure about the connection and he said he meant, “troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them by song and poetry as well if not decked in some officially approved garb like back in those olden days where they worked under a king’s license if lucky, by their wit otherwise but the 'new wave' post-beatnik flannel shirt, work boots, and dungarees which connected you with the roots, the American folk roots down in the Piedmont, down in Appalachia, down in Mister James Crow’s Delta, and out in the high plains, the dust bowl plains. So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered.”
Laura said she knew all of that about the desperate search for roots although not that Ramblin’ Jack had been an acolyte of Woody’s but she wondered about others, some other folk performers whom she listened to on WUMB on Saturday morning when some weeping willow DJ put forth about fifty old time rock and folk rock things a lot of which she had never heard of back in Mechanicsville outside of Albany where she grew up. Sam then started in again, “Of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s. He had been washed by it when he came to the East from Hibbing, Minnesota for God’s sake (via Dink’s at the University there), came into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, the next big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. For us. But also those in little oases like the Village where the disaffected could pick up on stuff they couldn’t get in places like Mechanicsville or Carver where I grew up. People who I guess, since even I was too young to know about that red scare stuff except you had to follow your teacher’s orders to put your head under your desk and hands neatly folded over your head if the nuclear holocaust was coming, were frankly fed up with the cultural straightjacket of the red scare Cold War times and began seriously looking as hard at roots in all its manifestations as our parents, definitely mine, yours were just weird about stuff like that, right, were burying those same roots under a vanilla existential Americanization. How do you like that for pop sociology 101.”
“One of the talents who was already there when hick Dylan came a calling, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who as you know we had heard several times in person, although unfortunately when his health and well-being were declining not when he was a young politico and hell-raising folk aspirant. You know he also, deservedly, fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.”
“Here’s the funny thing, Laura, that former role is important because we all know that behind every 'king' is the 'fixer man,' the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were like some mighty mystic (although in those days when he fancied himself a socialist that mystic part was played down). Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute. New York like I said, Frisco, maybe in small enclaves in L.A. and in precious few other places during those frozen times a haven for the misfits, the outlaws, the outcast, the politically “unreliable,” and the just curious. People like the mistreated Weavers, you know, Pete Seeger and that crowd found refuge there when the hammer came down around their heads from the red-baiters and others like advertisers who ran for cover to “protect” their precious soap, toothpaste, beer, deodorant or whatever they were mass producing to sell to a hungry pent-up market.
"Boston and Cambridge by comparison until late in the 1950s when the Club 47 and other little places started up and the guys and gals who could sing, could write songs, could recite some be-bop deep from the blackened soul poetry even had a place to show their stuff instead of to the winos, rummies, grifters and con men who hung out at the Hayes-Bickford or out on the streets could have been any of the thousands of towns who bought into the freeze.”
"Presto, if you wanted to clear the house just bring in some desperate “from hunger” snarly nasally folk singer for a couple, maybe three songs, and if that did not clear the high art be-bop poetry house then that folk singer was a goner. A goner until the folk minute of the 1960s where that very same folk singer probably in that very same club then played for the 'basket.' You know the 'passed hat' which even on a cheap date, and a folk music coffeehouse date was a cheap one in those days like I told you before and you laughed at cheapie me and the 'Dutch treat' thing, you felt obliged to throw a few bucks into to show solidarity or something. And so the roots of New York City folk according to the 'father.'
Laura interrupted to ask if that “basket” was like the buskers put in front them these days and Sam said yes. And then asked Sam about a few of the dates he took to the coffeehouses in those days, just out of curiosity she said, meaning if she had been around would he have taken her there then. He answered that question but since it is an eternally complicated and internal one I having to do with where she stood in the long Sam girlfriend pecking order (very high and leave it at that unless she reads this and then the highest) have skipped it to let him go on with the other Von Ronk story.
He continued with the other funny story like this-“The second story involved his [Von Ronk's] authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course just like today maybe people are getting doctorates in hip-hop or some such subject. Eager young students, having basked in the folk moment in the abstract and with an academic bent, breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the 'skinny.' Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and a wicked snarly cynic’s laugh but also could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish once published in the dissertation would then be cited by some other younger and even more eager students complete with the appropriate footnotes. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one, right.”
Laura did not answer but laughed, laughed harder as she thought about it having come from that unformed academic background and having read plenty of sterile themes turned inside out.
As Laura laugh settled Sam continued “As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer, who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who was featured on that Tom Rush documentary No Regrets we got for being members of WUMB, when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. It turned out to be Von Ronk's version which you know I still play up in the third floor attic.After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which tended to be spoofs on some issue of the day.”
Laura laughed at Sam and the intensity with which his expressed his mentioning of the fact that he liked gravelly-voiced guys for some reason. Here is her answer, “You should became when you go up to the third floor to do your “third floor folk- singer” thing and you sing Fair and Tender Ladies I hear this gravelly-voiced guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, some Old Testament Jehovah prophet come to pass judgment come that end day time.”
They both laughed.
Laura then mentioned the various times that they had seen Dave Von Ronk before he passed away, not having seen him in his prime, when that voice did sound like some old time prophet, a title he would have probably secretly enjoyed for publicly he was an adamant atheist. Sam went on, “ I saw him perform many times over the years, sometimes in high form and sometimes when drinking too much high-shelf whiskey, Chavis Regal, or something like that not so good. Remember we had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2002 I think. He had died a few weeks before. Remember though before that when we had seen him for what turned out to be our last time and I told you he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and we agreed his performance was subpar. But that was at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music. Yeah like he always used to say-'when the tin can bended …..and the story ended.'
As they came to the admission booth at the entrance to Crane’s Beach Sam with Carolyn Hester’s song version of Walt Whitman’s On Captain, My Captain on the CD player said “I was on my soap box long enough on the way out here. You’re turn with Carolyn Hester on the way back who you know a lot about and I know zero, okay.” Laura retorted, “Yeah you were definitely on your soap-box but yes we can talk Carolyn Hester because I am going to cover one of her songs at my next “open mic.” And so it goes.
“Alt-Right” Fascists: Shock Troops for Racist Genocide-Built The Anti-Fascist United Front Now!
Frank Jackman comment: as I have mentioned on other occasions I usually will post political material here that may be of interest to the liberal and radical milieu without comment. And without necessarily agreeing with the content. After all I can as here write my own commentary on the issues of the day to give my view. Occasionally, and given the developments in Charlottesville today, August 12, 2017 mentioned in the article this is one of them, I will post an article which I stand in solidarity with. I do so here.
Learn the lessons of history. Stop the Nazis, KKK, Alt-right and their supporters in the egg. Build the Labor, Black, and other oppressed people United Front against the Fascists-Now!!!!
Workers Vanguard No. 1115
28 July 2017
Waving the Flag of Slavery in Charlottesville
“Alt-Right” Fascists: Shock Troops for Racist Genocide-Built The Anti-Fascist United Front Now!
In Virginia, the state where Confederate general Robert E. Lee was defeated and surrendered, the small city of Charlottesville has become ground zero for fascist defenders of the Southern slavocracy. On July 8, 50 Klansmen, many in the hoods and robes of lynch rope terror, rallied in defense of a statue of Lee that the city council had voted to remove. On top of this, a new breed of fascist organizations in the “alt-right” is calling for a “Unite the Right” rally on August 12 in front of Lee’s statue. The poster for the rally features armed troops marching under the battle flag of slavery, surrounded by monuments to military and other Confederate leaders and with Nazi-style eagles flying overhead. This is a direct attack against black people.
Emboldened by the “Make America Great Again” racism of the Trump administration, fascist organizations like Identity Evropa and the Traditionalist Worker Party have been staging provocations across the country. The fascists are paramilitary shock troops that are held in reserve by the capitalist rulers and unleashed at times of social crisis against any prospect of revolutionary struggle by the working class. Their purpose is nothing less than the destruction of the workers movement, including unions and the left, and racial genocide. In the U.S., that means they especially have black people in their sights.
The roots of American fascism go back to the defeat of the Confederacy by the Union Army in the Civil War. The KKK and other race-terrorists came into being after that victory to bloodily suppress the newly freed slaves. No less than the Klan, the fascist vermin in the “alt-right” today represent a threat to the very right of black people to exist.
To date, this new crop of fascists has mainly aimed its fire at Muslims, immigrants, Jews and the antifas (anti-fascist activists) who have mobilized against them. Feeling the wind in their sails, they are now openly building for race-terror against black people through their “Unite the Right” rally, including by competing with the Klan over who best represents the “heritage” of the slavocracy. The aim of these fascists is to reverse the verdict of the Civil War.
The speakers list for the August 12 rally is a veritable who’s who of the contemporary American fascist movement. First among them is would-be führer Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute. In May, Spencer led dozens of fascists carrying torches and chanting Nazi slogans in Charlottesville in defense of Lee’s statue. Other speakers include Matthew Heimbach, head of the Traditionalist Worker Party, and Michael Hill, president of the League of the South. “Former” Klansman David Duke, a keynote speaker at the League of the South’s recent conference, is backing the August 12 rally.
Every time the fascists successfully rally, they gain confidence and win new recruits to their program of race-terror. In June 2016, when white-supremacists of the Traditionalist Worker Party and the Golden Gate Skinheads descended on Sacramento, they stabbed and slashed at least seven anti-fascists. This April, hundreds of fascists rioted in downtown Berkeley, where they chanted, “Hitler did nothing wrong” and attacked anti-fascists and leftists with clubs, flagpoles and knives. A week after Spencer’s torchlight rally in Charlottesville, Richard Collins III, a 23-year-old black student and Army lieutenant, was killed at the University of Maryland by a fascist. In early June, fascists rallied in Portland in what was essentially a celebration of the murder of two men who had intervened to stop the racist abuse of two women—one black, one Muslim—by a white-supremacist who had attended “alt-right” rallies.
Like the Klan, these neo-Nazis are the genuine face of American fascism. And they have powerful defenders, from the off-duty and retired cops and military personnel in the Oath Keepers who have provided security at their rallies to the regular police thugs of the capitalist state. On July 8 in Charlottesville, police arrested 23 of the more than 1,000 demonstrators who came out to protest the Klan’s provocation. Four of those arrested face felony charges, including for wearing a mask in public. With the local chief of police arguing that his main concern was “not the KKK,” cops intimidated and harassed anti-racist activists at their homes and workplaces in the weeks before the KKK rally. A spokesman for Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) told Al Jazeera (8 July) that the cops singled out non-whites for harassment at their homes. Drop all charges against the anti-Klan protesters!
Now, SURJ is appealing to the Charlottesville city government to revoke the permit for the “Unite the Right” rally. To rely on the forces that administer capitalist “law and order” to ban the fascists is a deadly delusion. It is those very forces that repress anti-fascist fighters. The protesters who had signs declaring “Cops and Klan Go Hand in Hand” had it right. While the cops were hurling tear gas against the anti-Klan militants, their bosses in the local government organized prayer meetings and “community discussion” together with assorted preachers, invoking the fascists’ “right to free speech.”
Fascism is not about free speech; it is about racist terror. Black people know only too well that when the fascists speak, it is with the lynch rope. Their “words” are fired out of the barrel of a gun. Their intent is to organize for an America in which black people do not exist. As the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party wrote in Socialist Appeal (3 March 1939), “The workers who spend all their time and energy in the abstract discussion of the Nazis’ ‘democratic rights’...will end their discussion under a Fascist club in a concentration camp.”
In contrast to the fascists, who see their road to power through extraparliamentary violence, right-wingers like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter are racist provocateurs and ideologues. When antifa groups shut down their speaking tours, they fall right into these bigots’ trap, handing them the flag of “freedom of speech” to wave like a bloody shirt. The likes of Yiannopoulos and Coulter should be protested, exposed and refuted. But to equate them with fascists only serves to disarm people in the face of the Nazis and other race-terrorists, who must be crushed in the egg.
The thousand-strong anti-Klan turnout on July 8 shows that there are plenty of people who want to stop the fascists in their tracks. Among such activists are antifa groups across the country. But while they have often shown real courage, the confrontations waged by small groups of antifas will not stop the fascist gangs. The fascists must be met by an overpowering counterforce, based on disciplined mobilizations of the multiracial working class. As Leon Trotsky, who together with V.I. Lenin was a central leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, wrote in the Transitional Program (1938) on the fight against Hitler’s Nazis: “Only armed workers’ detachments, who feel the support of tens of millions of toilers behind them, can successfully prevail against the fascist bands. The struggle against fascism does not start in the liberal editorial office but in the factory—and ends in the street.”
The new fascist organizations are small, but they are growing, armed and dangerous. They feed off economic devastation and are emboldened by official racist reaction. But the bitter economic and social discontent of the working class and oppressed can also fuel the rise of a fighting workers movement. In the U.S. during the 1930s Depression, militant workers who had waged pitched battles against the bosses and their state in order to organize unions struck some real “fear of god” into the fascist gangs.
In Minneapolis, where truckers strikes led by Trotskyist militants in 1934 laid the basis for the growth of the Teamsters into a powerful nationwide union, strike leaders and other battle-tested militants organized a union defense guard to take on a fascist gang called the Silver Shirts. The defense guard was led by Ray Rainbolt—one of the key fighters in 1934, a military veteran and American Indian—and included hundreds of union members. In Teamster Politics (Monad Press, 1975), Farrell Dobbs, a young Trotskyist leader of the truckers strikes, recalled that the defense guard aimed to build a labor-centered fighting force that would “include the unemployed, minority peoples, youth—all potential victims of the fascists, vigilantes, or other reactionaries.” When the Silver Shirts tried to hold a rally in Minneapolis, members of the defense guard were called out to the site. The audience turned tail and ran, and, having gotten wind of the union action, the Silver Shirts leader didn’t even show up.
Today, the idea that organized labor would mobilize its power in its own interests, as well as in opposition to the fascists, might seem fantastical, particularly to youth who have seen little to no union struggle. Responsibility for this situation lies with the trade-union misleaders, who have shackled the social power of the working class to the interests of their capitalist exploiters, particularly through the Democratic Party. But labor has real power, which lies in its numbers, collective organization and, above all, its ability to choke off profits through strikes and other actions. Whether it is the factory floor, the transit barns or the docks, the workplace remains the main site of integration in racist capitalist America.
Labor can and must be organized to smash the fascists. The potential for such action was shown in a small but real way by the labor/black mobilizations initiated by the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee to stop Klan and Nazi provocations in several cities in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. Through flexing their muscle in massive, multiracial mobilizations against the fascists, the workers will come to recognize their power as a class. What must be done is to build a revolutionary workers party that will wield that power to finally fulfill the promise of black freedom and emancipate all the exploited and oppressed. It will take nothing less than a third, socialist American Revolution to break the chains of racist capitalist rule and bury the fascist gangs for good. For labor/black action to stop the fascists!
Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's version of Leon Trotsky's seminal work, "The History Of The Russian Revolution". The link will click to the chapter cited in the headline to this entry.
