AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

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

Tuesday, September 05, 2017

October 7-14, 2017 Keep Space for Peace Week

12:22 PM

Global Network

To GN List Serve

October 7-14, 2017

Keep Space for Peace Week

International Week of Protest to

Stop the Militarization of Space

No Missile Defense

Close U.S. Bases Worldwide

No to NATO

Stop Drones Surveillance & Killing

End Privatization of Foreign/Military Policy

Convert the Military Industrial Complex

Deal with climate change and global poverty

List in formation

Bath Iron Works, Maine (Oct 7) Vigil across from administration building on Washington Street (Navy Aegis destroyers outfitted with “missile defense” systems built at BIW) 11:30-12:30 am Smilin’ Trees Disarmament Farm (207) 763-4062
Bath-Brunswick, Maine (Oct 13-21) 6^th Maine Peace Walk will focus on conversion of Bath Iron Works with twice daily vigils at the shipyard and door-to-door leafleting. Sponsored by many groups in Maine and Massachusetts. globalnet@mindspring.com
Bath, Maine (Oct 21) Finale event of Maine Peace Walk with music/speakers/food at Waterfront Park in downtown Bath from noon til 2:00 pm. globalnet@mindspring.com
Belfast, Maine (Oct 7) Put up space week posters and hold ‘Stop Militarization of Space’ signs on Resistance Corner. Peace and Justice Group of Waldo County dscampc321@gmail.com
Brunswick, Maine (Oct 12) Showing of new film Village versus Empire by South African filmmaker about new Navy base on Jeju Island that is porting US warships viewed through the eyes of Shaman artist Dohee Lee. Sponsored by PeaceWorks at the Frontier Café & Cinema. 7:30 pm Tickets $8. globalnet@mindspring.com
Brunswick, Maine (Oct 17) Maine Peace Walk will walk to nearby Brunswick and hold pot luck supper and evening program on impact of Bath Iron Works on the local environment, economy, ports-of-call overseas and the process of conversion. Hosted by Unitarian Church, supper at 6:00 pm. globalnet@mindspring.com
USAF Croughton, England (Oct 7) March & Rally at U.S. satellite communication and intelligence base. Space communications, drones, bomber guidance, missile defence and command & control functions. (Also will be the site of Global Network’s 26th annual meeting in 2018) 12-4 pm. Oxfordshire Peace Campaign, oxonpeace@yahoo.co.uk
Davis Monthan AFB, Arizona (Oct 10) Vigil at Craycroft Road entrance (at Golf Links Road) from 7:00 – 8:00 am. Remotely piloting UAV's from the base that are firing guided bombs and missiles and killing more civilians than targeted "terrorists" in Afghanistan, Iraq Syria, Pakistan and possibly more sovereign nations. A-10 warplanes that train at the base are responsible for the vast majority of radioactive Depleted Uranium ammunition - estimated at well over 400 tons - used in Iraq since 1991. More info: 520-323-869
Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South Korea (Oct 7-14) Picketing, educating, expressing solidarity with the people of Seongju and Gimcheon against THAAD, in front of the Jeju navy base, sponsored by the Anti-naval base committee, Gangjeong Village armha2013@gmail.com
Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South Korea (Oct 14) Discussion on the "Keep Space for Peace week and military industry’, as a part of an event on the issue of Military Industry organized by People Making the Jeju, Peace Island to Be Demilitarized. (armha2013@gmail.com)
Gimcheon, South Korea (Oct 7-14) Nightly candlelight vigil against US deployment of THAAD missile defense system near their community (Gimcheon train station). The Gimcheon nightly candle vigil hit its one year anniversary on Aug. 20, 2017
Seongju, South Korea (Oct 7-14) Nightly candlelight vigil against US deployment of THAAD missile defense system near their community (a parking lot across from the Seongju County Office) The Seongju nightly candle vigil hit its one year anniversary as of July 13, 2017.

Soseong-ri, Seongju, South Korea (Oct 7-14) Soseong-ri in Seongju is located just next to Gimcheon. It is a small village lived by around 160 people - mostly elderly women and men farming melons. The residents and their supporters have been protesting day and night since the former Lotte Skyhill Country Club site in Soseong-ri was discussed as the planned THAAD deployment site in August, last year. A radar and two launchers of THAAD system were forcefully deployed in the former LCC on April 26, this year. Still they are continuing their struggle to stop more deployment of four launchers. Beside their 24 hour vigil, they hold a regular rally every Wednesday in front of Soseong-ri village hall which started on Nov. 30. 2016.

Vandenberg AFB, California (Oct 4) Keep Space for Peace vigil at space warfare base at the Main Gate from 3:45 pm to 4:45 pm. For information contact Dennis Apel at 805-343-6322.

Keep Space for Peace Week co-sponsored by: Anti-naval base Committee of Gangjeong village, Jeju Island, South Korea; US Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea & Militarism in Asia & the Pacific; Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom

Resources:

· Download our full-size space week poster at: http://www.space4peace.org/actions/Keep%20Space%20for%20Peace%20Poster%202017_large.jpg

· Space videos for viewing and sharing available at: http://www.space4peace.org/videos.htm

· Latest Global Network Space Alert newsletter at: http://www.space4peace.org/newsletter/Space%20Alert%2035.pdf

· John Pilger’s new film ‘The Coming War on China’ - For screenings, contact Bullfrog Films john@bullfrogfilms.com http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/cwoc.html

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

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

In Boston-Resist DACA Deportations-And Every Other Trump "Cold Civil War" Action

In Boston-Resist DACA Deportations-And Every Other Trump "Cold Civil War" Action

Resist Deportations!

Defend DACA! Extend TPS! Jail Joe Arpaio! No Ban! No Wall! Defend Transgender Rights! Resist Fascism!

Mobilize Saturday, September 16

1:00 PM Park Street T

followed by a March to the JFK Federal Building

The government in Washington has stepped up attacks on migrants to levels not seen in years. Trump's attacks on Muslim migrants were only the beginning. Deportations are accelerating. Trump is terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and has pardoned the racist ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio. He also threatens to shut down the government if a Mexican border wall is not built. He threatens the Temporary Protected Status program. This comes on top of his recent bigoted executive order against transgender troops in the US armed forces and his defense of Fascists in Charlottesville, NC. Millions of youth and decent hard working people are under attack! Trump and his cheerleaders in the U.S. Congress are leading a generalized assault on our lives, rights, and living conditions. The leading edge of this assault today is the stepped up attacks against migrants. An injury to one is an injury to all! Mobilize September 16!

Planning meeting:

Sunday, September 10, 12:00 noon

Encuentro 5

9A Hamilton Place, Boston, MA

Park Street T stop

All are invited

facebook.com/events/284164215401645/

The Not So Pretty Finish-With Etta James’ “Please, No More” in Mind

By Hank Jones

“No more, no more,” had become Shep Wilson’s new mantra once he got over his rage against his long-time companion, Sarah Long, after she had set him adrift, had as she said “moved on” to fine herself whatever that might have meant when she uttered the ugly words of separation one night and then the next day was gone, leaving no forwarding address and only the thin reed of a cellphone number and e-mail address to remember her by. It had not been like Shep had not known it was coming, or could see it coming since Sarah had been making noises about leaving, and under what conditions, for a couple of years prior to that sneaking out the next day door. And maybe she was right to make a clean break, although in his heart of hearts Shep knew he was only fooling himself, only acting out of his version of male alleged indifference which had been part of the problem between the pair for the past several years.

Shep kept trying to think through what he could have done differently, where he had fallen down bad enough to make her leave. And make him take up her chant of “no more” (not really put that way by her since she would have used more gentile language that fit her persona but that was the way that it rang through this latest fire in his head and that was the way he was trying to think the matter through). He knew that he shared the blame, shared in the debacle of their love, had lost that magic that held them together for so many years, and that the little saying that she had had in sunnier times about how they had been so much in love in those early years and though it would continue forever. And in the early days, hell, up until the last few years that love had been as genuine as any emotion that he held dear. Then a whole series of events, a whole personal deluge of troubles laid him low, and had made him a grumpy old man. The last month or so, maybe two months he had tried to take stock of himself (and of her role in their decline after all as she admitted she could have signaled him more concretely about what was ailing her, what make her say her own “no more”). Had tried to put, as he constantly told her against all odds, to put his best foot forward. Unfortunately it had been too late.

After Shep thought about those early days when they were so in love, were so sympathetic to each other, fed off each other’s needs, faced the wicked old world as a pair of waifs, soul mate waifs was the way she put it one time early on, sipping on a little light wine to numb himself a bit against the emptiness in his heart, he tried to retrace where he had fallen down (her shortcomings were her business now and so he looked at the lonely world through his future path and how he could become the “new” Shep, get rid of that mantra of “no more” into a better place).

Shep had never been much for reflection, never much to think how his actions, or better his omissions, would affect Sarah, would make her withdraw, make her close her heart to him. Had dismissed at least in his on fire head much of what she would speak of when she was seriously trying to signal him that things had dramatically drifted downhill. Would not take the signals about getting help, psychiatric help foremost, that she first gently and then more insistently tried to get him to undertake. Saw that as her New Age Cambridge background thing that she was forever trying out (and to his mind without much success but he kept that to himself especially as she seemed more and more to withdraw into that world as she got more distraught about them and as well about her place in the sun, about who she was).

Funny, Shep thought to himself, in the end, or rather toward the end, in one of those previous downhill moments he had agreed to go with her to couples counselling (they had tried that route about twenty years before but both had been dissatisfied with the counsellor who seemed to be more interested in what she had to say than what they had had to say). Funny as well that he, not she though, and if he had been wise enough to see what that meant he could have seen what was coming, he felt that the then current counselling, and the counsellor, was a worthwhile endeavor every week (Sarah, before they decided, or rather she decided, to discontinue the work, had told him that she thought the counsellor was “championing him” because, as a gregarious type in such situations he had the better of it against her more quiet and thoughtful responses which tended to be short, if to the point.)

Shep’s troubles really had started with the advent of his medical troubles, with what he called “the poking and prodding” of the medicos, a few years before. Yeah, he knew growing older, getting to be an old grumpy man, meant that health issues would surface, would especially as he reached his seventh decade (he knew first-hand as well from his friends of similar ages that this was the “deal,” the real deal). Shep had prided himself on keeping a semblance of fitness, of keeping himself heathy as measured by very infrequent visits to the doctor’s office and of not feeling sick most of the time except for an occasional cold. Then the deluge, first trouble with breathing and eating necessitating an endoscopy which found some problems, and medications. After that bladder problems associated with his smoking many years before according to the urologist, more medications, and then more recently the final nail in the coffin (his expression as stated to Sarah many times and a silly foolish thing to say), the early discovery of bladder cancer after a scope should unusual inflammations. More procedures and more medications.

One day Shep just erupted, started yelling at Sarah, started to approach her for which she would later say she stood in fear of physical danger he seemed so out of control (not at the time though as she thought that saying anything would only enflame him further). After a few minutes he settled down, because something of the old Shep, but the line had been crossed. Shep swore he would stop taking the medications since they seemed to be making him more aggressive, more sullen, and angrier. As it turned out one of the medications was reacting poorly with another one and had aided in Shep’s angry responses to the world-and to Sarah.

If the medications, if the health issues were all that there were Sarah pointed told Shep before she departed she could have worked around that. What she could not work around was what Shep called one night the fire in his head (not helping that inability to “work around” were long-time, long-held issues around Sarah’s own worth, around who she was, around what was she to do in the world now that she too was retired, issues which had plagued her since childhood). In the end that “fire in his head,” that not being “at peace” with himself was the way she expressed her take on the situation was what made something snap in her psyche. Shep, as he would admit to himself in a moment of candor several weeks after she had gone, had reacted to his health issues and graceless aging rather than getting more rest and taking it easier in life had true Shep form driven himself even harder in order to leave what he told Sarah was his mark on the wicked old world. The snapping point for her was that he seemed indifferent to her needs, seemed to be in a world of his own, and had begun again to question every move that she made like he did not trust. In a final stab to his heart she had told him that her own increasing medical problems were being aggravated by his foul behavior(after being fearful of doing so since she still worried about his anger if she did tell him this hard truth).

So this was Shep’s sad demise. Or could have been but one night a couple of months after Sarah left he woke up one night and said “no more.” No more acting like a crazed maniac, no more fruitless search for some netherworld place in the sun. He had read a book, a book on meditation that Sarah had left behind talking about the benefits of doing such a therapy, backed up by scientific evidence. (Shep was not sure that Sarah had not left the book behind on purpose since she, like in a lot of things around his well-being, had mentioned his doing meditation on numerous occasions in the past.) So Shep started practicing the art, had real trouble at the beginning in focusing away from his two million “pressing” forward that day issues and living in the moment. But as with many things when he gets “religion” Shep is still at it after a month. His mantra, his focus term, not surprisingly “no more.”

[Shep would wind up meeting Sarah in a Whole Foods grocery store in Cambridge several months later and remarked after telling him she had spent the previous several months in California that he seemed calmer, seemed to have lost some of that fire in his head, and seemed more at peace with himself. Had said also that they should keep in touch now that she was back in town and that he wasn’t such a maniac (her term for his previous late innings conduct). So who knows. All Shep knows is that he wanted “no more” to do with the old Shep).

“Even The President Of The United States Sometimes Must Have To Stand Naked”- Tales From The Trump Bunker- "The Emperor Has No Clothes"

It's All Right Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Lyrics

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn that he's not busy being born
Is busy dying

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you'd just be
One more person crying

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright ma, I'm only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright ma, I can make it

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Do what they do just to be nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say "God bless him"

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole that he's in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright ma, if I can't please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright ma, it's life, and life only

Songwriters: Bob Dylan

It's Alright, Ma lyrics © Bob Dylan Music Co.

Artist: Bob Dylan

Album: Bringing It All Back Home

Released: 1965

Genre: Folk-rock

Zack James’ comment June, 2017:

Maybe it says something about the times we live in, or maybe in this instance happenstance or, hell maybe something in the water but certain things sort of dovetail every now and again. I initially started this commentary segment after having written a longest piece for my brother and his friends as part of a small tribute booklet they were putting together about my and their takes on the Summer of Love, 1967. That event that my brother, Alex, had been knee deep in had always interested me from afar since I was way too young to have appreciated what was happening in San Francisco in those Wild West days. What got him motivated to do the booklet had been an exhibit at the de Young Art Museum in Golden Gate Park where they were celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the events of that summer with a look at the music, fashion, photography and exquisite poster art which was created then just as vivid advertising for concerts and “happenings” but which now is legitimate artful expression.

That project subsequently got me started thinking about the late Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, the driving force behind a new way of looking at and presenting journalism which was really much closer to the nub of what real reporting was about. Initially I was interested in some of Thompson’s reportage on what was what in San Francisco as he touched the elbows of those times having spent a fair amount of time working on his seminal book on the Hell’s Angels while all hell was breaking out in Frisco town. Delved into with all hands and legs the high points and the low, the ebb which he located somewhere between the Chicago Democratic Convention fiasco of the summer of 1968 and the hellish Rollins Stones Altamont concert of 1969.

Here is what is important today though, about how the dots get connected out of seemingly random occurrences. Hunter Thompson also made his mark as a searing no holds barred mano y mano reporter of the rise and fall, of the worthy demise of one Richard Milhous Nixon at one time President of the United States and a common low-life criminal of ill-repute. Needless to say today, the summer of 2107, in the age of one Donald Trump, another President of the United States and common low-life criminal begs the obvious question of what the sorely missed Doctor Gonzo would have made of the whole process of the self-destruction of another American presidency, or a damn good run at self-destruction. So today and maybe occasionally in the future there will be some intertwining of commentary about events fifty years ago and today. Below to catch readers up to speed is the most recent “homage” to Hunter Thompson. And you too I hope will ask the pertinent question. Hunter where are you when we need, desperately need, you.

*******

Zack James comment, Summer of 2017

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. (Walking with the king not about walking with any king or Doctor King but being so high on drugs, your choice, that commin clay experiences fall by the way side. In the times of this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place, where many walked with the king, if you prefer, and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when it looked like we had the night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for old times’ sake (oh no, no that is not done in proper society, in high art society these days) at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing until August 20^th of this year.

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. He would have gone crazy seeing all the crew deserting the sinking U.S.S. Trump with guys like fired FBI Director Comey going to Capitol Hill and saying out loud the emperor has no clothes and would not know the truth if it grabbed him by the throat. Every day would be a feast day. But perhaps the road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted other bullshit would have been bumpier than in those more “civilized” times when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders ruled the roost. Hunter did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting regret for which he could hardly hold his head up in public) but these days he surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs who like their forbears would stop at nothing he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from all pores. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now

“Even The President Of The United States Sometimes Must Have To Stand Naked”- Tales From The “Pennsylvania Avenue Bunker”-In Defense Of Science

By Political Commentator Frank Jackman

Yeah, the legendary now Nobel Literature Laureate Bob Dylan had it right way back in 1965, in the time of Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States and major war criminal when he wrote as part of the lyrics to the early folk rock song It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) the following “… even the president of the United States must have to sometimes stand naked.” Maybe he was thinking LBJ but somehow the current occupant of the White House seems more appropriate. See it took LBJ almost four years to get down into the bunker and today’s occupant, do I need to mention his name, has gone down into the bowels of the Pennsylvania Avenue bunker after only four months. That is newsworthy, worthy moreover of some extended commentary in this space as we begin the “death watch” that has become something of a familiar part of the modern American presidential landscape.

My, our, motivation on this site for this new series of commentaries is that we are truly worried about the fate of the Republic, the American Republic, republican government, these days. That overarching fear is something that even in the darkest days of the Lyndon Baine Johnson administration and the criminally dark days of his successor one Richard Milhous Nixon, a lowly common criminal as it turned out we did not see tattering. I have “confessed” elsewhere that I had seriously underestimated the differences between the wretch Hillary Clinton and this sociopath we are contenting with now and that underestimation has only led me to become haunted by the specter of having to fight in the streets to defend the hard-fought democratic gains of the past couple of centuries that are now on the chopping block. We are in hard and troubled times and as much as I like to give conventional bourgeois politics the back of my hand the times demand more-demand some contributions to build the resistance, build it right now as a firewall against the time when these guys come up and out of the bunker one more time. Starting with the commentary below we will occasionally chronicle this cheapjack soap opera unfolds before our disbelieving eyes. I can only add where is “Doctor Gonzo,” the late journalist Hunter S. Thompson when you need him. He would have jackhammered this thing picked lean already. Stay tuned for the, maybe, next four year of the race to the bottom.

********

In Defense of Science-June 2, 1917

I really, really and truly, believed that somewhere in say the 18^th century we began to put our “faith” increasingly in scientific investigation of whatever ailed us, whatever mysteries of the universe which seemed inexplicable needed some rational explanation. And that was a move forward for humankind. I was, having been steeped in that tradition, prepared to let fact and figures, real facts and figures, not stuff found on the ground, taken from some fortuneteller’s table (sorry fortunetellers of the world this diatribe is not directed at your profession), or made up to score points in a governmental policy argument drive my own sense of the world. Apparently that admittedly quaint notion has taken a beating of late in many quarters from those who found those “facts” on the ground.

That is the only way to explain the inexplicable announcement by one Donald J. Trump, President of the United States in the year 2017, to take this country, America, out of the Climate Change Accords (I will not preface that title with Paris since it was never about the country where the damn thing was hammered out, and that term is no hyperbole as the infighting was fierce). Apparently the nationalist America First wing of what passes for the White House governing group has won the day based on from all reports bad information, spurious arguments, cooked data and that stuff just mentioned found on the ground. Not on any look at scientific evidence. Of course if the “rapture” is your frame of reference then fact and figures are silly.

This is not the place to detail the manifold reasons why an even non-binding treaty should or should not be adhered to but rather what the withdrawal means about a trend that had previously been slowly (and now more rapidly) creeping up on us about the value of the scientific method that guys like Galileo went to the mat trying to defend. Tried to take out of snake charmer realm and put the evidence from nature, society, on firmer footing. Not infallible, or at least I do not believe that was the intent of those who strove to create what we have come to call what seemingly is also a quaint idea-The Enlightenment. Unfortunately that progressive trend is under assault and while if I had my druthers I would prefer to fight from a more socialistic perspective I am more than willing to fight for the heritage of that very Enlightenment that has gotten us pretty far in the past couple of centuries. If you fear for the Republic, the American Republic, then you too should join and built the resistance. The fight is on and you had better start taking an active side before the waters, winds, fires, and the deluge that we will now stand even more defenseless against take us all down.

When Sun Records Blew The Lid Off Rock And Roll-With The Show “Million Dollar Quartet” In Mind

By Sam Lowell

“You know they are right whoever said it sometimes a picture, a photograph, tells more than a thousand words, or you name the number of words,” Jack Callahan was telling his lady-friend, wife, and number one companion of forty-odd years, Chrissie (nee McNamara and so as Irish as her beau and husband), as they exited the side door of the Ogunquit Playhouse, the non-profit theater group up in the town of the same name up in Southern Maine which this fall (2016) had brought back by popular demand the hit show-The Million Dollar Quartet. Jack’s photograph reference was to the now famous one of the key creators and interpreters of rock and roll, ouch, now called the classic age of rock and roll Elvis (no last name needed at least for anybody who knew anything at all about rock and roll and maybe just about music), Carl Perkins (who actually had first dibs of right on a song, Blue Suede Shoes, that Elvis blew everybody out of the water with), Johnny Cash (a name known as much for country and gospel-oriented music later but a serious rocker out of the blocks when he was starting out who travelled with the previously mentioned artists as they wowed the young things in the backwaters of the South), and, Jerry Lee Lewis, in the end the most long-lived and perhaps if he could have as Jack’s non-blushing Irish wit grandfather put it, “kept his pecker in his pants” the most prolific of the lot. Certainly the way he was highlighted in the show, the way the actor who portrayed him did his bit, stole the damn show in fact there was much to be said about that possibility. All four, who at various times had been under contract to legendary Sun Records owner Sam Phillips and that photograph taken in the end of 1956 represented the only time all four were under one roof singing together. Beautiful.

Chrissie had had to laugh when she thought about how they had come to be in Ogunquit in the late fall, a time when she normally did not even want to think about north, north of their home in Hingham a town on the coast south of Boston. The hard fact was that Jack and Chrissie had had another of their periodic falling-outs and Jack had, in the interest of preserving the marriage, taken one of those periodic “sabbaticals” from Chrissie that had helped in the past to salvage their marriage. So Jack had taken a small off-season cottage in Ogunquit, a town he, they knew well for almost as long as they had been together. While he had been in “exile” he would frequently pass the Playhouse and notice on the billboard how long the show was playing for. If Chrissie relented before the first week in November he was determined to take her to the show. As it turned out, as usual, but nothing negative should be made of the idea, Chrissie had gotten lonely for her Jack and suggested that she would head north (a real sign that she was missing her guy) and stay with Jack before the end of October. Hence the conversation on Friday night as they exited that side door to reach their automobile for the short ride to Jack’s cottage.

Of course “luring” Chrissie to the show was a no-brainer since they both had grown up, had come of age during the second wave of the rise of rock and roll coming to smite down their parents Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee et al. music that they had been previously enslaved to without recourse. Without recourse meaning the big “no” in the respective Callahan and McNamara family hearths when either had approached their parents about turning the radio dial away from WJDA 1940s stuff to WMEX the hot rock station of the time. They were more likely get “the lecture” on the devil’s music and advise to listen to their 1940s more attentively or worse, much worse, be threatened with the Irish National Hour as an alternative. (On this “second wave” thing their older brothers and sisters who passed on the torch after having given up the radio fight went outside their respective homes to find the music on local jukeboxes starting with early Elvis just as Jack and Chrissie would likewise find their outlet at those same jukeboxes a few years later when the British invasion took the nation by a storm.)

On any given Friday or Saturday night Jack Callahan, a legitimate high school football hero who would go on to be a good if not great college career, and his corner boys, everybody had corner boys in the old Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville, would hang around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor putting dimes and quarters into the jukebox to hear (and re-hear) the newest big rock hits. (Eventually, when Chrissie got under Jack’s skin and did something about it one Friday night, a story in itself worthy of telling but this is about rock and roll legends and not the hijinks of 1950s teenagers so we will move on she and Jack would spent those Friday and Saturday nights spinning tunes together -and other stuff too.)

Back to the show though. Jack and Chrissie had had dinner at a local restaurant and then headed to the Playhouse a little early since neither in all the years they had collectively been going to Maine set foot in the place. So they were thrilled when they saw the stage all festooned with the Sun record label in bright lights and with the stage set up to be like Sam Phillips’ wreck of a recording studio. To top that off in the background rock and roll music was being played over the loudspeakers- Jack laughed (and sang along) when he heard Warren Smith doing his classic Rock and Roll Ruby followed by Jerry Lee’s Mona Lisa. Jack admitted and Chrissie would too at intermission that they were amped up, expected to be thrilled to hear a lot of the songs they had grown up with and hadn’t heard for a while. And they were not disappointed, no way.

Of course the core of the show was about the fabulous four (not to be confused with the other fabulous four, the Beatles, who worshipped at the shrine of these older rockers over in Britain when the American teen audience was gravitating toward bubble-gum music). But there also was a sub-story line dealing with the hardships of a small record company promoting talent, promoting rock and roll talent, and in those days most of them were small and would be out of business without some kind of hit to keep them afloat. So the story line was as much about the trials and tribulations of Sam Phillips trying to keep his operation afloat-including the unfortunate selling of Elvis’ contract to big dog RCA for what in the end was chump change in order to keep above water-to keep his dream of creating rock legends alive.

The other tension was between the various performers and their desires to make the big time which at times did not coincide with what Sam was trying to. At the edge of the Phillips story though is what to do after Elvis got away, and Johnny and Carl wanted to sign with a bigger record company. And that is where grooming Jerry Lee came in, the next big thing that Phillips seemed to be able to draw to his little two-bit operation. Like Jack’s grandfather said if Jerry Lee could have just kept it in his pants once maybe he could have ruled the whole rock and roll universe. That was the way the story played here.

Story-line or no story line (including an additional female singer, a girlfriend of Elvis’ who represented the seriously under told story of female singers in the early days of rock and roll) the show was about the songs that Jack and Chrissie came of age to from Elvis’ classics including those hips moving frantically to Carl’s great rockabilly guitar (he dubbed the “king of rockabilly” back then) to Johnny deep baritone. And the topping-the actor doing Jerry Lee’s role doing things with a piano (including blind-folded) that would seem impossible. Let’s put it this way after that night Chrissie was seriously thinking about taking Jack back-again. Enough said.

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Steppenwolf's "America When Are You Now...We Can't Fight Lone Against The Monster"

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Steppenwolf's "America When Are You Now...We Can't Fight Lone Against The Monster"

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

Steppenwolf – Monster Lyrics

Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of Kingdom and pope

Like good Christians some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands, to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And till the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end

While we bullied, stole and bought a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

The Blue and Grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war was over
They stuffed it just like a hog

And though the past has its share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But its protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey

The spirit was freedom and justice
And its keepers seemed generous and kind
Its leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
Now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told

Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin'

The cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole world's got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner we can't pay the cost

'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin'

America, where are you now
Don't you care about your sons and daughters
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster

America, where are you now
Don't you care about your sons and daughters
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster

America...America...America...America...