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
On The 150th Anniversary Of Marx's "Das Capital"-"Slavery, Plunder and the Rise of Capitalism"
Workers Vanguard No. 1116
25 August 2017
TROTSKY
LENIN
Slavery, Plunder and the Rise of Capitalism
(Quote of the Week)
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Karl Marx’s seminal work, Capital, in which he laid bare the workings of the capitalist mode of production. In the excerpts below, Marx explains the key role that slavery, pillage and conquest played in the primitive accumulation of capital by the European powers.
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre....
The colonies secured a market for the budding manufactures, and, through the monopoly of the market, an increased accumulation. The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement, and murder, floated back to the mother-country and were there turned into capital....
Whilst the cotton industry introduced child slavery in England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new world.
Tantae molis erat [so great was the effort required], to establish the “eternal laws of Nature” of the capitalist mode of production, to complete the process of separation between labourers and conditions of labour, to transform, at one pole, the social means of production and subsistence into capital, at the opposite pole, the mass of the population into wage labourers, into “free labouring poor,” that artificial product of modern society. If money, according to Augier, “comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,” capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.
No Good Reasons to Continue America’s Longest War in Afghanistan
The longest war in modern U.S. history approaches its 16th anniversarySaturday, and so far there is no end in sight… Afghan civilians are caught between corrupt, U.S.-backed warlords in government, U.S. troops on the ground and airstrikes from above, Taliban forces, and now an emerging Islamic State presence. The war has hardly improved their lives and will likely mean many more years of violence. TheRevolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, the oldest women’s political organization in the country, warned 16 years ago against U.S. intervention… If reducing terrorism was its goal, the U.S. has spectacularly failed in Afghanistan and appears to not care one way or another. Aside from the terror it has rained down on Afghans year after year, U.S. presence there has only resulted in the Taliban gaining strength, the U.S.-backed government becoming more corrupt and the emergence of new formations based on fundamentalist ideologies. More
Trump plans to declare that Iran nuclear deal is not in the national interest
President Trump plans to announce next week that he will “decertify” the international nuclear deal with Iran, saying it is not in the national interest of the United States and kicking the issue to a reluctant Congress, people briefed on an emerging White House strategy for Iran said Thursday. The move would mark the first step in a process that could eventually result in the resumption of U.S. sanctions against Iran, which would blow up a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear activities that the country reached in 2015 with the U.S. and five other nations… Trump’s senior national security advisers agreed within the past several weeks to recommend that Trump “decertify” the agreement at the Oct. 15 deadline, two of those people said. That would start a 60-day congressional review period to consider the next steps for the United States. On its own, the step would not break the agreement among Iran, the United States and other world powers, but would start a clock on resuming sanctions that the United States had lifted as its part of the deal. More
Defense Secretary Contradicts President on the Iran Deal
Days before President Trump has to make a critical decision on whether to hold up the Iran nuclear deal, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis openly split with him on abandoning the agreement, the second senior member of the president’s national security team to recently contradict him. Mr. Mattis told senators on Tuesday that it was in America’s interest to stick with the deal, which Mr. Trump has often dismissed as a “disaster.” “Absent indications to the contrary, it is something that the president should consider staying with,” Mr. Mattis told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee after being repeatedly pressed on the issue. More
Over 180 Democratic House members urge Trump to re-certify Iran deal
Orchestrated by Rep. Ted Deutch from Florida and Rep. David Price from North Carolina, the missive comes ahead of the looming October 15 deadline, when Trump will have to report to Congress whether Tehran is honoring the landmark pact, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). “Absent credible and accurate information confirming a material breach, we are concerned that withholding certification of Iran’s compliance or walking away from the JCPOA would harm our alliances, embolden Iran and threaten US national security,” the letter said. The lawmakers also suggested that American withdrawal from the deal could damage attempts to resolve the escalating nuclear standoff with North Korean through a diplomatic process. More
TEXT of the letter is here; signatories included all Mass members of Congress)
CHALLENGING THE US-SAUDI AIR WAR ON YEMEN
The bill introduced by a bipartisan group of House members last week to end the direct U.S. military role in the Saudi coalition war in Yemen guarantees that the House of Representatives will vote for the first time on the single most important element of U.S. involvement in the war — the refueling of Saudi coalition planes systematically bombing Yemeni civilian targets. Since the Obama administration gave the green light to the Saudi war of destruction in Yemen in March 2015, it has been widely recognized by both Congress and the news media that U.S. military personnel have been supplying the bombs used by Saudi coalition planes. But what has seldom been openly discussed is that the U.S. Air Force has been providing the mid-air refueling for every Saudi coalition bombing sortie in Yemen, without which the war would quickly grind to a halt… Refueling Saudi coalition bombing missions “not only makes the U.S. a party to the Yemen conflict, but could also lead to U.S. personnel being found complicit in coalition war crimes,” Kristine Beckerle, Yemen and UAE researcher at Human Rights Watch, has observed.More
Hayat writes:
If you have not already, please go to link in article below to take AN ACTION to stop the US-backed Saudi massacre in Yemen. Ask your congressperson to support H. Con. Res. 81. Finally we have a chance to do something about this cruel war affecting thousands. This resolution will be debated next week.
So far only Capuano and McGovern have cosponsored from Mass.
No Good Reasons to Continue America’s Longest War in Afghanistan
The longest war in modern U.S. history approaches its 16th anniversarySaturday, and so far there is no end in sight… Afghan civilians are caught between corrupt, U.S.-backed warlords in government, U.S. troops on the ground and airstrikes from above, Taliban forces, and now an emerging Islamic State presence. The war has hardly improved their lives and will likely mean many more years of violence. TheRevolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, the oldest women’s political organization in the country, warned 16 years ago against U.S. intervention… If reducing terrorism was its goal, the U.S. has spectacularly failed in Afghanistan and appears to not care one way or another. Aside from the terror it has rained down on Afghans year after year, U.S. presence there has only resulted in the Taliban gaining strength, the U.S.-backed government becoming more corrupt and the emergence of new formations based on fundamentalist ideologies. More
ANTI-NUCLEAR WEAPONS GROUP WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican). Berit Reiss-Andersen, the Nobel committee chair, said it was due to the group's "groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty prohibition" on nuclear weapons. "We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time," she continued. She cited the North Korea issue. In July, after pressure from Ican, 122 nations backed a UN treaty designed to ban and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons. But none of the nine known nuclear powers in the world - including the UK and the US - endorsed it. Ms Reiss-Andersen called on nuclear-armed states to initiate negotiations to gradually eliminate the weapons. More
US Plans New $1.5 Trillion Nuclear Weapons Complex
While much of the world pursues the abolition of nuclear weapons — embraced by the adoption July 7 by 122 nations of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons — the militarized Trump White House is pursuing plans for a trillion-dollar rebuild of the entire US nuclear weapons complex. The enormous, extravagant program is designed to produce 80 new nuclear warheads every year, including three new warhead types, a new $20 billion nuclear-armed Long Range Standoff (LRSO) weapon, a new $12 billion B61 nuclear gravity bomb, a new fleet of nuclear-armed submarines, and a new $100 billion intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system.. As WallStreet.com online reported recently, “A review by the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan, nuclear weapons watchdog, [found] the total 30-year cost of the program could rise to $1.5 trillion” — $500 billion beyond what the Obama Administration first proposed in 2016. Beyond the colossal expense, the program appears to be a flagrant violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. More
Boston’s City Council overwhelmingly approved a set of regulations Wednesday that could make it harder for landlords to evict tenants without just cause, while giving city officials better ways to track how many housing evictions are occurring and where.
Called the Jim Brooks Community Stabilization Act — named after the late social justice advocate — the measure would require landlords to notify the city whenever they move to evict a tenant, for whatever reason. The city and landlord would then have to alert the tenant to his or her housing rights, such as the ability to appeal to a state Housing Court, and the tenant could be directed to advocacy groups… The Home Rule Petition was passed by a 10 to 3 vote, with Councilors Bill Linehan, Sal LaMattina, and Timothy McCarthy dissenting. Linehan said he opposed the measure because the state already has laws that govern evictions.
[the NO votes represent Charlestown, E.Boston, North End; Hyde Park/ Roslindale; South Boston/South End] More
Steve Meacham of City Life/Vida Urbana writes:
WE WON!! Yesterday, Boston City Council voted 10 to 3 in favor of the Jim Brooks Community Stabilization Act! Read the coverage from WBUR or The Boston Globe. This victory is a beginning, not an end. And in the spirit of the late Jim Brooks, we're hitting the street TOMORROW to show solidarity with low-income renters fighting a building-wide mass-eviction.
RECORD VOTE ON THE PEOPLE’S BUDGET
“Today’s vote on the People’s Budget marks the closest Congress has come to passing a budget that was truly designed to represent the values and needs of the American people. With over half the Democrats voting for the People’s Budget and key leaders like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-WA) it’s clear the party supports smart reductions in Pentagon bloat and wise investments in diplomacy which will make Americans safer…The People’s Budget would help step America back from its endless war footing in the Middle East by prohibiting any expansion of U.S. combat troops in Syria, reducing Pentagon spending, and getting rid of the shadowy Pentagon slush fund, the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget. Planning for a proactive and just foreign policy, it would also invest in robust diplomatic and humanitarian strategies needed to address current conflicts and prevent new ones. More
All Mass Reps voted for the People’s Budget except Keating, Moulton and Tsongas.
Here’s How Much of Your Taxes Have Gone To Wars
The average American taxpayer will have paid nearly $7,500 to fund the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria since the 9/11 attacks, according to previously unreported Pentagon budget data sent to Congress this summer. This fiscal year, each U.S. taxpayers will pay about $289 for both wars, according to the Defense Department data. Next year — fiscal 2018 — that number would drop to $281 per taxpayer, if Congress were to pass the White House’s spending request unchanged, which won’t happen. And there’s another reason that number is likely to change: the Trump administration’s plan to send more American troops to Afghanistan… But that number is far from the total cost of the wars. For one thing, the figures do not include classified amounts spent on the wars by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. But when other, far greater costs are included — such as medical and disability payments to veterans over the next 40 years, and war-related funding for the State Department and other federal departments — the total post-9/11 bill approaches $5 trillion, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. More
Rev. Barber: Racialized Voter Suppression is the "Election Hacking" the U.S. Must Address
Yeah, I’m very concerned that while we should focus on the Russian hacking, but that we’re missing that the greatest hacking of our system was racialized voter suppression. Let me give you some numbers for your audience. Eight hundred and sixty-eight. That’s the number of—the number fewer, that we had 868 fewer voting sites in the black and brown community in 2016, black, brown and poor community. Twenty-two. Twenty-two states passed voter suppression laws since 2010. That’s where 44 senators were represented, over nearly 50 percent of the United States House of Representatives. And at least 16 or 17 seats in the Senate—rather, in the House, probably would not be where they are partisan, if it was not for voter suppression. More
Vulture Capitalists Circle Above Puerto Rico Prey
When Congress established Puerto Rico’s civil government in 1917 it decreed that any bonds issued by its government would be free from taxation. In addition, it is written into the 1952 constitution that the repayment of any kind of public debt must take priority over financing public services. In 1952, when Puerto Rican politicians tried to convince Puerto Ricans that they were no longer a colony, and they convinced the United Nations to take Puerto Rico off the list of non-self-governing societies, this constitution was put into place and one of its founding principles was that Puerto Rico was going to be a site for US economic investment… it’s only going to get worse because of the PROMESA Act [NB: Passed by Congress to deal with the financial crisis and bankruptcy]. Some critics have dared to describe it as a kind of bailout or aid package, but that’s not so. There is absolutely no transfer of money from the federal government to Puerto Rico as part of the PROMESA Act… Clearly the only solution being imagined for Puerto Rico’s economic future is permanent and sustained indebtment. More
Boston Billionaire is One Of The Largest Holders Of Puerto Rican Debt
For years, the identity of the owner of one of the largest holdings of Puerto Rican debts has been a mystery.
That mystery has finally been solved, with the help of the The Baupost Group, who unmasked themselves to The Intercept. The Baupost Group, a Boston-based hedge fund managed by billionaire Seth Klarman, owns nearly a billion dollars of Puerto Rican debt, purchased under a shell company subsidiary and hidden from public scrutiny. Baupost acquired the debt through an on-paper Delaware-based corporation named Decagon Holdings LLC, whose beneficial owner had been unknown until now… He is known as the top campaign contributor in New England, and has been a major donor in Republican politics in Massachusetts, including largely secretsupport for 2016’s Question 2, an ultimately unsuccessful effort to lift a state cap on charter schools. Klarman supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, calling Trump “completely unqualified for the highest office in the land.” More
The Sept. 21 standout had almost 30 people participating, including a few children, and a woman who came out of the subway and stopped when she saw us to find out more, and a woman who was driving by and stopped when she saw us, wanting to join in. We got a lot of enthusiastic yells and honks from cars, and at one point a sustained chorus of honks from a lot of cars, so loud that all the pedestrians turned to look, and asked us what was happening. I don't think we got any tart "All lives matter!" this time. (Though we were ready with our answer: "Yes, I completely agree with you!") We got seven new members of DPP signed up, some of whom are planning to come to the Oct. 16 DPP meeting. We do need more people to leaflet pedestrians and drivers stopped at lights, so if people can plan to come on Oct. 19 and Nov. 16 and be ready to do some leafletting, that would be great.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact Kelley, kelready@msn.comor Becky, beckyp44@verizon.net, or call Dorchester People for Peace 617-282-3783
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
Why is our government killing thousands of people around the globe they can’t even identify?
See National Bird, a film about the secret US drone assassination program.
Directed by Sonia Kennebeck, this powerful documentary follows the dramatic journey of three whistleblowers who are determined to break the silence around one of the most controversial issues of our time: the hidden U.S. drone war, which has escalated substantially under President Trump.
The film also interviews people on the ground in Afghanistan whose families and lives have been shattered by the deaths and lost futures of those who have been injured and terrorized by drones.Plagued by PTSD and guilt over participating in the killing of thousands of faceless people, including children, they courageously decide to speak out publicly, despite the possible severe consequences.
After the film there will be a short discussion with suggestions of things we can do to stop this immoral and indefensible form of warfare.
Sponsored by Eastern Massachusetts Anti-Drones Network, a task force of UJP (United for Justice with Peace) JusticeWithPeace.org, (617) 776-6524. Co-sponsored by Mass Peace Action, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and Veterans for Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade.
An Encore -Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over-On The Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death-Magical Realism 101
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Scene: Brought to mind by the cover art on some deep fogged memory producing, maybe acid-etched flashback memory at the time, accompanying CD booklet tossed aside on the coffee table by a guy from the old days, the old New York University days, Jeff Mackey, who had been visiting Sarah, Josh Breslin’s wife of the moment. Jeff had just placed the CD on the CD player, the intricacies of fine-tuned down-loading from YouTube beyond anybody’s stoned capacity just then and so the “primitive” technology (stoned as in “turned on,” doped up, high if you like just like in the old days as well although Josh had gone to State U not NYU but the times were such that such transactions were universal and the terms “pass the bong” and “don’t bogart that join” had passed without comment). Don’t take that “wife of the moment” too seriously either since that was a standing joke between Sarah and Josh (not Joshua, Joshua was dad, the late Joshua Breslin, Jr.) since in a long life they had managed five previous marriages (three by him, two by her) and scads of children and two scads of grandchildren (who had better not see this piece since grandma and grandpa have collectively expended many jaws-full hours of talkabout the danger of demon drugs, the devil’s work even if only with a half-hearted sincerity since they fully expected that those younger kids like their own kids would experiment, would "puff the magic dragon" and then move on).
When Josh had picked up that tossed aside booklet he noticed awispy, blue-jeaned, blouse hanging off one shoulder, bare-foot, swirling mass of red hair, down home Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night. (The Generation of "68 designation a term of art among the brethren still standing who had faced down that seminal year in the history of the 1960s, some calling it the ebb tide year although Josh had pushed that forward over the years to 1971 the year when they had utterly failed to shut down the government if it would not shut the Vietnam War.) The woman maybe kin to Janis, maybe not, but certainly brethren who looked uncannily like his first ex-wife, Laura, who had taught him many little sex things learned from a trip to India and close attention to the Kama Sutra which he had passed on to everybody thereafter including Sarah. And no again don’t take that wistful though about Laura as anything but regret since their civil wars had passed a long time before and beside Laura had not been heard from since the time she went down to Rio and was presumably shacked up with some dope king or diamond king or something probably still earning her keep with those little India tricks. (Strange to think that straight-laced Forest Lawn-raised Laura knew all the tricks that some courtesans would blush at sine a look at her would say virgin until marriage. No way.
Still looking at the tantalizing artwork Josh thought of the time of our time, passed. Of wistful women belting out songs, band backed-up and boozed-up, probably Southern Comfort if the dough was tight and there had been ginger ale or ice to cut the sweet taste or if it was late and if the package store was short of some good cutting whiskey, but singing, no, better evoking, yes, evoking barrelhouse down-trodden black empresses and queens from somewhere beyond speaking troubled times, a no good man taking up with that no good best girlfriendof hers who drew a bee-line to him when that empress advertised his charms, no job, no prospect of a job and then having to go toe to toe with that damn rent collector man on that flattened damn mattress that kept springing holes, maybe no roof over a head and walking the streets picking up tricks to pass the time, no pocket dough, no prospects and a ton of busted dreams in some now forgotten barrelhouse, chittlin’ circuit bowling alley complete with barbecued ribs smoking out back or in a downtown “colored” theater. Or the echo of that scene, okay. Jesus, maybe he had better kick that dope thing before he actually did start heading to Rio.
*******
Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some merry prankster yellow brick road bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or someplace like that, maybe Russia he was not sure of the geography all he knew was that he had made a wag wiggle a little for his indiscretion) was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, weary even of hanging out with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride but in a time when everyone in youth nation was shedding "slave" names the moniker of the day or week was the way that you identified most fellow travelers-that was just the way it was and kind of nice when you thought about it-wouldn't you rather be Moonbeam than some Susan something), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish up some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising. Yeah, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do, the Prince mused to himself. Chuckled really, term paper stuff was just not his “thing” right then. Hell, he had dropped out of State U, dropped out of Laura Perkin’s life, dropped out of everything to chase the Western arroyo desert ocean washed dream that half his generation was pursuing just then.
Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, 1967 version to be exact, autumns of drugs, strange brews of hyper-colored experience drugs and high shamanic medicine man aztec druid flame throws, winters of Paseo Robles brown hills discontent, brown rolling hills until he sickened of rolling, the color brown, hills, slopes, plains, everything, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of Martin Luther King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim former high school runner’s frame could not afford.
Now the chickens had come home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed, after graduating from high school, that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, the Prince is nothing but a Mainiac, Olde Saco section, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though before she went back to her golden-haired surfer boy back down in Carlsbad (his temperature rose even now every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually and she had never heard of the Kama Sutra) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.
What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.
Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Miss Ruby, as he called her as a little bait, a little come on bait, playing on her somewhere south drawl, although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message).
Josh, all throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, even a gal like Wanda Jackson, when they were hungry, and that hunger not only carried them to the stars but slaked some weird post-World War II, red scare, cold war hunger in guys like Josh Breslin although he never, never in a million years would have articulated it that way back then. That was infernal Captain Crunch’s work (Captain was the “owner” of the “bus” and a story all his own but that is for another time) always trying to put things in historical perspective or the exact ranking in some mythical pantheon that he kept creating (and recreating especially after a “dip” of Kool-Aid, LSD for the squares, okay).
But back to Ruby love. He got a surprise one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and he felt was meant to be a little coquettish and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.
What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace that someone, Bonnie Raitt or Maria Muldaur, had found in old age out in some boondock church social or something, mad Bessie Smith squeezed dry, freeze-dried by some no account Saint Louis man and left wailing, empty bed, gin house wailing ever after, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie, the queen of the double entendre, sex version, with her butcher, baker, candlestick-maker men, doing, well doing the do, okay, and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog made just for her that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all a full-blast Piece Of My Heart.
Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey just up the road from the Big Sur merry prankster yellow bus camp, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting some work at the Monterrey Pop Festival held each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl (or maybe some cheap gin or rotgut Southern Comfort, cheap and all the in between rage for those saving their dough for serious drugs).
Ya just a wisp of a girl, wearing spattered blue-jeans, some damn moth-eaten tee-shirt, haphazardly tie-dyed by someone on a terminal acid trip, barefoot, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma, (although he had seen a fair share of the breed in Fryeburg Fair Maine) who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster.
Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. And maybe some sweet sidle promise, who knows in that alcohol blaze around three in the morning. All Josh knew was this woman, almost girlish except for her sharp tongue and that eternal hardship voice, that no good man, no luck except bad luck voice, that spoke of a woman’s sorrow back to primordial times, had that certain something, that something hunger that he recognized in young Elvis and the guys. And that something Josh guessed would take them over the hump into that new day they were trying to create on the bus, and a thousand other buses like it. What a night, what a blues singer.
The next day Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that just slightly off-hand look in her eye that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him, and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either, whoever that dull-wit was) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August, sign up for State U., and still be okay but that he had better grab Ruby now while he could.
