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5/17/2018 6:12 PM

 

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Kshama Sawant: Subscribe to the only newspaper that has the fighting strategies to challenge Trump and the Billionaire class!    How can we win affordable housing, $15 an hour min. wage, Medicare for all, and free college? How do we defeat Trump and the Republican Party’s brutal pro-corporate, misogynistic, racist agenda? How can we win the political revolution against the billionaire class? These are some of the burning questions for millions who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and who have poured into the streets to protest attacks on immigrants, women’s rights, gun violence, and more. In the pages of Socialist Alternative, the newspaper of Socialist Alternative, we build on the proven strategies that won two historic victories in electing Kshama Sawant, the first socialist elected to a major city’s political office in 100 years. Our editorial team brings the experience of leading the fight for $15 to its first major victory in the nation in Seattle in 2014 and then in Minneapolis last year. This year we played a leading role in building the movement to Tax Amazon and big business to fund permanently affordable, public housing in Seattle.  Subscribe today to receive our print or electronic newspaper! Subscription rates: Regular rate: $2/month ($25/year) Solidarity rate: $3/month ($50/year)

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POOR PEOPLES CAMPAIGN Systemic Racism, Voter Suppression and Immigrationc Monday, May 21 -- 2:00 PM

POOR PEOPLES CAMPAIGN

Systemic Racism, Voter Suppression and Immigration. Monday, May 21  --  2:00 PM

Boston Common - Shaw Memorial, across from State House and down the steps• 24 Beacon St., Boston, MA 2133

We are one of over 30 states across the country and in Washington, DC heading to their state capitals on May 14 to force a serious national examination of the enmeshed evils of systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation and the war economy. Join us in nonviolent moral fusion direct action as we show our elected leaders we will no longer allow attention violence to keep poor and disenfranchised people down.

Pentagon Spending State Campaigns for Consideration at May 19th Meeting:

Pentagon Spending State Campaigns for Consideration at May 19th Meeting:

A. Educating Mass Residents to the High Cost to Taxpayers of the War Machinery:

If Americans knew how much of their tax dollars went to the Pentagon, theirattitudes might be different. It is perhaps not surprising that no agency of the U.S. Govt. reports back to the Citizenry how their income tax dollars are spent, and that this basic information is very difficult for the average citizen to find.

1). City or Town Taxpayer Information and Transparency Resolutions. This follows precedent that many cities and towns report back to taxpayers how their property taxes are spent. The Taxpayers Information resolution would direct municipalities to report back to resident taxpayers how the Congress spent their income tax dollars in the previous year, in simple piechart of bar graph form. See draft at end. 

2). Taxpayers Information and Transparency Act for Introduction to the State Legislature.

This would direct State to report to Mass taxpayers how Congress allocated their federal income taxes in past year. This received a Hearing earlier this year, but we weren't yet mobilized at the level needed to get it out of committee. With more lead time for 2019, we might get this to the floor. Reps Provost, Connolly and about 20 other State Reps were co-sponsors first time around. We would count on members of this network to lobby their state Reps and Senators at the time of the initial hearing, and then later if bill were to come to the floor of either chamber.

In developing campaigns for limiting Pentagon Spending we will want a number of efforts that people all across the state can participate and lead in. The most natural of these are legislative initiatives focused on the State Legislature - every Mass resident has a State Rep and State Senator:

B. Educating Mass Residents that Nuclear Weapons Manufacture and Maintenance is a Business:

         3). "Don't Bank on the Bomb" Nuclear Weapons Divestment Act, directed to the State Legislature, as opposed to municipalities. This is essentially Cambridge nuclear weapons corporations divestment resolution, but at state level. It follows precedents of South Africa divestment and Tobacco divestment state legislation. Rep. Mike Connolly is happy to take the lead, and I suspect many members of this network could convince your Reps to sign on.

4). Broader Weapons Divestment campaigns as proposed by Code Pink.

This campaign is just developing, with first focus on Blackrock (financial) corporation weapons investments. The local forms this would take in Massachusetts need to be developed. However Code Pink is interested in launching such campaigns on campuses, focused on college endowments.

            Another focus might be Raytheon's major contracts for Saudi Arabia, and war on Yemen.

C. Educating Mass Residents as to how much local human services and jobs programs could be increased, by cutting inflated Pentagon budget.

5). People’s Budget for Massachusetts: This work has been done thus far through the People's Budget for Massachusetts, the follow-up to the earlier statewide Budget for All campaign, and to a lesser extent through Subways Not Submarines public transit campaign deriving from “No to Trillion Dollar Nuclear Weapons upgrades”.

This requires making clear which programs in our state would benefit from Congress adopting the People's Budget. This has been a research task thus far, with a small number of people working on it. But no reason not to have - for example - local forums in local communities, focusing on positive impact in that community - in housing, public transit, education, environment, infrastructure etc. Or asking organizations to endorse, support.

6). Invest in Minds Not Missiles forums on campuses/ Housing not Bombs/ Subways not Submarines in Communities:

These forums would focus on the possibility of providing four years of tuition free college, by cutting for example, the Ohio submarine purchases proposed in trillion dollar nuke upgrades; We hope to organize such a forum at UMass Boston in the early fall, focusing on higher ed costs. 

In Mass communities, themes might be increased investment in affordable housing; in Worcester area might be Build Passenger Trains Not Nuclear Submarines. 

7). Partner with Veterans for Peace in demonstrations and forums calling on investing in Veteran’s services rather than additional weapons. these efforts would try to engage personnel delivering the services.

         D. Congressional Budget Initiatives:

                  8). Focus on Progressive Caucus: 

         Ask members of Congressional Progressive Caucus to strengthen their call for cuts in the Pentagon budget by cancelling $1.2 Trillion Nuke Upgrades.

         E. Other

Respectfully Submitted: Pentagon Budget Committee: 

Appendix: Taxpayers Information and Transparency Act

(Language below for State Legislative bill; small wording changes if a city or town council resolution)

Preamble:

•       Whereas the largest tax burden that falls on Massachusetts residents are their federal income taxes, averaging more than $12,000/household; and

•       Whereas, no agency of the federal government communicates back to Massachusetts taxpayers how their federal income tax dollars were spent,

•       Whereas Massachusetts tax payers deserve to know that for example, of the more than $90 billion dollars they sent to the federal government in 2015, 54% went to Pentagon spending, while only 6% went to Housing and Community Development, 2% went to Public Transportation, and 3% to Energy and Environmental protection.

The Act:

•       The Secretary for Administration and Finance shall provide a short summary each year to be mailed to Massachusetts resident taxpayers by March 15, which reports the total amount of income tax paid to the federal government by Massachusetts taxpayers in the prior year, together with the per cent of those dollars allocated in the prior year’s Congressional discretionary budget to housing, education, healthcare, public transit, biomedical research, veterans services, food stamps and assistance, environmental protection, and defense spending including nuclear weapons. The report shall include easy to read pie chart or bar graph form and use the budget numbers reported by the Congressional Budget Office of the federal government. The report shall also remind taxpayers that Medicare and Social Security programs are financed as separate trust funds, not through income taxes. 

•             The Secretary may acquire the information required under this section from any nonpartisan, third-party organization that regularly compiles such data; provided further, the secretary may enter into an agreement with such an organization to produce the report on the secretary’s behalf.

        

        

Jonathan King

Prof of Molecular Biology

MIT

Cambridge MA 02139

617 253 4700

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In The Age Of The Marriage Made In Heaven-Maybe-Carol Lombard And James Stewart's “Made For Each Other” (1939)-A Film Review

In The Age Of The Marriage Made In Heaven-Maybe-Carol Lombard And James Stewart's “Made For Each Other” (1939)-A Film Review

DVD Review

Leslie Dumont

Made For Each Other, starring Carol Lombard, Jimmy Stewart, 1939

This film review of Made For Each Other is one of those “he said, she said” kind of movies. No, not in the way you think about some spat between two lovers, marriage partners or simple bedmates. Rather about how to approach this film, this old time melodrama a genre which got many a movie audience especially during World War II made up of waiting at home or working in the factory women through the tough nights and working days. Not that I have anything against old time melodramas which were the staple of date nights in college in the days when guys paid on the date and if short of money, a chronic problem, always suggested some such film at the second run and retro-theaters around campus. Moreover when I was working at this publication in the days when it came out in hard copy before I saw the writing on the wall about getting my own by-line Josh Breslin, who still works here and who then was my companion, let’s leave it at that, was forever taking me to such retro-theaters to watch some melodrama or other old time film he had been assigned to review.     

No, what has me in a “he said, she said” mood was something that old time film reviewer Sam Lowell told his now longtime companion and fellow writer here Laura Perkins to do when you hadn’t a clue about how to go about “the hook” which every movie review rests on. Sam said when all else fails on an oldie you can always check out the “slice of life” edge and get the job done. That, in any case, is what Laura told me when I asked her what the hell to do with this tear-jerker which you however know deep in your bones is going to work out right in the end. Has to work out right because remember those waiting at home or working in the factories women who needed a boost to get them through those hard nights and boredom days.

While this film is not the worse you could ever find for the slice of mid-20^th century married life movie that it represents it is still hard for me to pick out some points that will enlighten the reader about those times. Here is the play though. John, an up and coming Mayfair swell bred young lawyer in New York City, played by Jimmy Stewart, meets Jane (hey I didn’t make up the character names but John and Jane in a now age of Trevor and Regan do signify a different sensibility), played by Carol Lombard, a young women of unknown means, on a business trip for an important case his big-time Yankee New York law firm is handling. Both smitten they immediately marry on the fly something more likely to happen once the World War comes America’s way a few years later.

This may be, and as already signaled will turn out to be, a marriage made in heaven but the road is long and bumpy. First off John’s high and mighty mother, an endlessly carping type that I was all too familiar with both with my own mother growing up and with my first husband’s mother so I could certainly sympathize with that dilemma, disapproves of his marriage choice preferring the boss’ daughter for her charge and then, a widow, moves in with the young marrieds and drives Jane crazy (that mother moving in different these days when the kids are moving in or staying in the parental home what with rents and housing prices out of reach for many these days). Worse, hard-working steady at the wheel Johnny boy winds up getting passed over for a partnership-the kiss of death in most law firms and time to move on although he does not do so even when Jane steels him to ask for a raise so they can get a little house and put dead-weight mother in the attic or something.         

If all that wasn’t enough John and Jane have a child who before he is a few years old winds up catching pneumonia and things look like he is a goner much to the distress of his loving parents. Nowadays getting the right medicines for childhood illnesses is no big deal but then whatever serums were around were sparse and expensive (as some drugs are today as well). Johnny up against it begs his niggardly boss to give him an advance or loan to get the drugs necessary which have to come all the way from Salt Lake City. So here is where the nail-biter part comes in-the part about getting the drugs to New York from there in a blizzard. Getting through the blizzard in an open cockpit plane for crying out loud. In the end though the child is saved, Johnny gets a raise and due to Jane’s stoic presence during the crisis gains Johnny’s mother’s respect. That will do it.

Stop The Nuclear Weapons Madness-Now!

Stop The Nuclear Weapons Madness-Now!

By Special Guest Greg Green

“What goes around, comes around” as my friend Jack Riley’s father, Francis Riley always called Frankie by his friends, would said whenever the circle turned on any subject. Lately the subject, the very serious subject in light of this guy, this President of the United States, POTUS in twitter feed speak, one Donald J. Trump and his ranting about existential threats of nuclear war to his country by tiny miniscule North Korea. The threat given the disparity in size of arsenal and capacity to inflict massive and irreversible damage to that country and the earth much on the side of the United States. At no time in recent memory, certainly since the end of the Cold War with the world-historic defeat and demise of the Soviet Union, has the threat of nuclear war, the saber-rattling,  been as intense as now.          

That brings us to the “what goes around, comes around” part of the story. The late Peter Paul Markin, always known as “Scribe,” Frankie Riley’s old-time hang out in the neighborhood friend, in his very first political act, an act scorned by all his corner boy growing up friends, including Frankie and others who heard about it as well, back in the fall of 1960 attended an anti-nuclear weapons rally sponsored by SANE a group headed by Doctor Spock and some Quakers and people like that at the Park Street subway station stop on the Boston Common. He had been hounded and harassed by anti-communist thugs and other red scare Cold War types but felt that he had done the right thing. (The right thing aided by winning a five dollar bet with Frankie Riley that the Scribe would not go into Boston and do the rally). So protesting against the nuclear madness has come full circle.    

Here’s the interesting part- a few weeks ago at the Park Street subway station on the Boston one ancient Frankie Riley, surrounded by Quakers and other such types, was protesting the war clouds that could lead to nuclear war these days at a current anti-nuclear war rally. Yes, what goes around, comes around. 

In Boston- 5/21 Poor Peoples' Campaign - Mobilize Monday @ 2 PM

 5/21 Poor Peoples' Campaign - Mobilize Monday @ 2 PM

Charlie Welch

1:12 PM

To  act-ma@act-ma.org  

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*Poor People's Campaign to Challenge Systemic Racism*

*as Protests at Massachusetts State House Intensify*

*---*

*Nonviolent Direct Action Planned in Boston,*

* Part of Wave of Protests that has Hit 35 States, Washington, D.C.*

*---*

*Poor People, Clergy, Advocates to Demand Immediate Restoration of the
Voting Rights Act, End to Racist Gerrymandering, Reversal of State Laws
that Prevent Municipalities from Raising Wages, Immigration Justice*

Linking Systemic Racism and Poverty: Voting Rights, Immigration,
Xenophobia, Islamophobia, and the Mistreatment of Indigenous Communities

The Poor Peoples Campaign seeks to shift the moral narrative toward
engagement with and commitment to the struggles of the poor and
dispossessed.

Today we are living in a nation where systemic racism is used to deny
the humanity of people to exclude them economically, politically, and
socially. This effort relies on inflicting super-exploitation, violence,
and mass incarceration on the effected communities. Since 2010, 23
states have passed racist voter suppression laws, including racist
gerrymandering and redistricting, laws that make it harder to register,
reduced early voting days and hours, purging voter rolls, and more
restrictive voter ID laws. In 2013 the US Supreme decided to gut the
1965 Voting Rights Act.

These attacks follow a broader pattern of restricting and curtailing
democratic processes by drawing on legacies of racism to undermine local
efforts to organize for better conditions. As of July 2017, 25 states
have passed laws that preempt cities from adopting their own local
minimum wage laws. Most of these have been passed in response to city
councils passing or wanting to pass minimum wage increases.

These continued attacks on democracy are connected to a growing
scapegoating and assaults on undocumented migrants, xenophobia, and
Islamophobia. In the years following the attacks of 9/11 and amid fears
of economic insecurity, we have been led to believe that immigrants make
our society and communities less safe, threaten our culture and
democracy, and compete for our jobs and resources.

However, undocumented migrants contributed $5 trillion to the U.S.
economy over the last 10 years. They have paid many billions into Social
Security and federal taxes. They also pay eight percent of their income
in state and local taxes, while the wealthiest one percent pay just 5.4
percent. Undocumented migrants and legal residents are barred from
receiving assistance under major public welfare programs, causing
hardship for many poor immigrant families. These millions of decent
hardworking Americans who strengthen our economy and communities must be
treated with the dignity and respect due to all human beings. They
should not be used as cover for the overall assault on our lives,
rights, and living conditions.

Enough is enough! Join us for a rally on Monday at 2:00 PM.

*WHO: *Participants in Massachusetts Poor People’s Campaign: A National
Call for Moral Revival

*WHAT: *Protest at Massachusetts State House demanding immediate action
to address

                             systemic racism and poverty

*WHERE: *William Gould Shaw / 54th Regiment Monument, Boston Common:

                             bottom of steps immediately across Beacon
St. from the State House

*WHEN: *Monday, May 21 at 2PM

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“To Be Young Was Very Heaven”-With The 50th Anniversary Of The “Summer Of Love, 1967” In Mind-Frankie Riley's Story

“To Be Young Was Very Heaven”-With The 50^th Anniversary Of The “Summer Of Love, 1967” In Mind-Frankie Riley's Story

Revised Introduction by Zack James

[I was about a decade or so too young to have been washed, washed clean to hear guys like Peter Paul Markin, more on him below, tell the tale, by the huge counter-cultural explosion that burst upon the land (and by extension and a million youth culture ties internationally before the bubble burst) in the mid to late 1960s and maybe extending a few year into the 1970s depending on whose ebb tide event you adhere to. (Markin’s for very personal reasons having to do with participating in the events on May Day 1971 when the most radical forces tried to stop the Vietnam War by shutting down the government and got kicked in the teeth for their efforts. Doctor Gonzo, the late writer Hunter Thompson who was knee-deep in the experiences called it 1968 around the Democratic Party convention disaster in Chicago. I, reviewing the material published on the subject mostly and on the very fringe of what was what back then would argue for 1969 between Altamont and the Days of Rage everything looked bleak then and after.)

Over the next fifty years that explosion has been inspected, selected, dissected, inflected, infected and detected by every social science academic who had the stamina to hold up under the pressure and even by politicians, mostly to put the curse of “bad example” and “never again” on the outlier experimentation that went on in those days. Plenty has been written about the sea-change in mores among the young attributed to the breakdown of the Cold War red scare freeze, the righteous black civil rights struggles rights early in the decade and the forsaken huge anti-Vietnam War movement later. Part of the mix too and my oldest brother Alex, one of Markin’s fellow corner boys from the old neighborhood is a prime example, was just as reaction like in many generations coming of age, just the tweaking of the older generations inured to change by the Cold War red scare psychosis they bought into. The event being celebrated or at least reflected on in this series under the headline “To Be Very Young-With The Summer of Love 1967 In Mind” now turned fifty was by many accounts a pivotal point in that explosion especially among the kids from out in the hinterlands, like Markin an Alex, away from elite colleges and anything goes urban centers.   The kids, who as later analysis would show, were caught up one way or another in the Vietnam War, were scheduled to fight the damn thing, the young men anyway, and were beginning, late beginning, to break hard from the well-established norms from whence they came in reaction to that dread.

This series came about because my already mentioned oldest brother, Alex James, had in the spring of 2017 taken a trip to San Francisco on business and noticed on a passing Muni bus that the famed deYoung Museum located in the heart of Golden Gate Park, a central location for the activities of the Summer of Love as it exploded on the scene in that town, was holding an exhibition about that whole experience. That jarred many a half forgotten memory in Alex’s head. Alex and his “corner boys” back in the day from the old Acre neighborhood in North Adamsville, a suburb of Boston where we all came of age, had gotten their immersion into counter-cultural activities by going to San Francisco in the wake of that summer of 1967 to “see what it was all about.”

When Alex got back from his business trip he gathered the few “corner boys” still standing, Frankie Riley, the acknowledged leader of the corner boys, Jimmy Jenkins, Si Lannon, Jack Callahan, Bart Webber, Ralph Kelly, and Josh Breslin (not an actual North Adamsville corner boy but a corner boy nevertheless from Olde Sacco up in Maine whom the tribe “adopted” as one of their own) at Jimmy’s Grille in North Adamsville, their still favorite drinking hole as they call it, to tell what he had seen in Frisco town and to reminisce. From that first “discussion” they decided to “commission” me as the writer for a small book of reflections by the group to be attached alongside a number of sketches I had done previously based on their experiences in the old neighborhood and in the world related to those times. So I interviewed the crew, wrote or rather compiled the notes used in the sketches below but believe this task was mostly my doing the physical writing and getting the hell out of the way once they got going. This slender book is dedicated to the memory of the guy who got them all on the road west-Peter Paul Markin whom I don’t have to mention more about here for he, his still present “ghost” will be amply discussed below. Zack James]              

To the memory of the late Peter Paul Markin on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary year of the Summer of Love, San Francisco, 1967

[Although this small tribute book is dedicated to the memory of Peter Paul Markin from the corner boys days of the old Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville and will have contributions from all the surviving member of that tribe there are other corner boys who have passed away, a couple early on in that bloody hell called Vietnam, Ricky Russo and Ralph Morse, RIP brothers, you did good in a bad war, Allan Jackson, Allan Stein, “Bugger” Shea and Markin’s old comrade, Billy Bradley. You guys RIP too.]          

By Francis Xavier Riley (Frankie)

Markin was a piece of work. If not one of kind then close to it and I can still say that some sixty years since we first met. Met in seventh grade in junior high school at the old North Adamsville Junior High. I had been recognized as the leader of a bunch of guys who hung around the traditional junior high hangout, Doc’ Drugstore, which had the added attraction of being not only a place where the ill and lame got their cures but had a soda fountain attached to a jukebox. A jukebox that got all kinds of play from the young bud girls that were throwing their dimes and quarters into to hear their latest for the minute heartthrob. So you mostly know why we hung around that spot just as our older brothers did and maybe some of the fathers even before that.

Markin had come over from across town, from the Brook Meadows Junior High a couple of months into the school year so he already had one strike against him since by then all the social and personal relationships which would last through high school and beyond (beyond in our case enough to have been around when Markin came making his clarion call to head west and see what the emerging “youth nation” was all about in the Frisco Summer of Love). Moreover he was even then kind of a nerdy guy, you know, always spouting odd-ball facts and figure like we gave rat’s ass about any of it. (That “rat’s ass” which I haven’t said in years maybe since Markin’s time was the “in” word we used to fluff off anything that was not important to us-important being mostly girls, cars and how to get money to deal with either, or both.)

His idea, once we became friends and he would confide in me some of his feelings, not a lot, that wasn’t our style, the style, then that the reason he became a wizard at certain things was because he had maybe read that knowing such stuff, like who was who in folk music when that stuck his fancy also something that then the rest of us could have given a rat’s ass about, was the way to meet interesting girls. Or then any girls once his hormonal urges got into overdrive. I would tell you more about Markin’s theory and the reality of his junior high and high school love life such as it was except this is about the Summer of Love where his approach was something like pure magic when he and the young women were stoned, you know high as kites on the drug of the day. On the West Coast they flocked around him like acolytes-and he took full advantage of that luck.

Another strike, and maybe the definitive one once Markin said he had thought about it later, was that he had come from the even then notorious Adamsville “projects,” public assistance housing. Between the large family, four siblings along with him and his father’s lack of education that was where the family was thrown helter-skelter in his early years. Years that formed the hard edge as he said of that “from hunger” feeling that drove a lot of the seamier side of his personality. Strangely most of us in the Acre section of North Adamsville were in some cases poorer, or at least as poor, as Markin’s family but that “projects” albatross designation hanging around his neck in the small one family houses or at worst a double-decker apartment in the Acre caused him some isolation before we became friends. (My mother when things were tough in our family or when one of us went off the rails would spring the “wind up in the projects” on us to try to make us behave which worked when we were younger but was like water off a duck’s back later.) Funny thought when I thought about it later myself we all had that “from hunger” edge, and acted on it. Some of us grew out of it, some didn’t. Markin never had a fighting chance to test that out either way.

So Markin and I met in seventh grade and after a few disputes we became friends and would stay that way for as long as he was in contact with any of us, when he was alive although Josh Breslin who will tell his own story about Markin not I was the last to see him before the fateful drug trip down to Mexico. I could tell lots of things about Markin but what is important for this piece is that he and his odd-ball facts and figures drove him to the conclusion starting I think in tenth grade that there was a “new breeze coming through the land” or that was his idea that he would periodically pound into us on a stray Friday or Saturday hanging out night when other prospects had petered out. Again the rest of us could have given a rat’s ass about it until much later, later when it was obvious even to the socially dumbest of us that indeed a new breeze was in the air. How Markin, a guy from nowhere in the social firmament, from a hick town to boot knew what he sensed is beyond me all I know is until 1967 every time he would begin his rant I would close my ears, close them tight.   

I was shocked, we all were shocked, when Markin told us one day in the spring of 1967 that he was dropping out of school, out of Boston University, where he had a scholarship and maybe some financial aid. All I know is that his family not matter what the tuition had no money, none, to send him, the first in his family to go to college, there. Even in my own case where I went to a branch of State U later my parents were hard-pressed to find some spare dough to send me and I had to work as well all through school. The idea he presented to us was that from what he had heard about what was happening out West that the time of the new breeze had come and he was going to what he called “find” himself.(Of course as Alex James has already mentioned in his introductory piece that fateful decision which sounded good in the short haul especially when we imbibed some weed a habit which Markin had begun to indulge in at college along with about half our generation and introduced us to wound up in the long haul not so good. I won’t repeat here what Alex has said but Markin eventually wound up getting drafted since he had lost his student deferment, getting his ass into Vietnam, and afterward, after coming back to the “real” world he called it, the trip down the slippery slope. The ultimate “from hunger” move that haunted his whole blessed life.)  

Markin would sent back reports about what was happening out West when he finally got out there after hitchhiking out on his first trip. (That first hitchhike road inspired by his inflamed reading of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road in high school and trying. Again just then we could have given a rat’s ass about that.) He wound up in Golden Gate Park where a couple of stray California girls befriended him once they heard his accent and thought it was “cute,” or something like that. That and about ten thousand facts about music and literature, On The Road, finally getting him some positive play when they found out that he had hitchhiked out across the country to find out what was what out West, found out if that new breeze was really here.       

The thing about the spring of 1967 is that like lemmings to the sea lots of young people were heading west (according to Alex’s report on the deYoung Museum exhibit something like 100, 000) and the town was taxed to the limit with so many stray kids, some runaways from Podunk towns like ours, some like Markin looking to “find” themselves so it was fortunate that Markin had run into Aphrodite and Venus (not their real names but I don’t remember them, their real names, and besides what was important at that time was coming up with a moniker to “reinvent” yourself with. Markin was the Be-Bop Kid paying homage to his semi-beat roots and I was Cowboy playing to my childhood love of watching Westerns on television Saturday mornings and later at the Strand Theater Saturday matinees. Others can give their monikers in their pieces if they wish.). They had actually come up from Laguna Beach a couple of months before on Captain Crunch’s converted yellow brick road school bus (Markin’s expression for the vehicle) and that was where after a couple of days of sleeping out in the air on his improvised bedroll in the Park he wound up.

This Captain Crunch was his own piece of work. He was an older guy, older then being maybe thirty or a little younger, who had been travelling up and down the Pacific Coast Highway in his own version of what the author Ken Kesey had started with his own school bus Further On complete with Merry Pranksters who set the tone for the whole West Coast experience of “drug, sex and rock and roll.” Kesey had been the guy who did all the “acid test” stuff that the writer Tom Wolfe would write about later and drive even more kids west (or if not West then to do what was happening there in towns like New York City, Boston, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Madison and any place where there were enough young people to hold the experience together. The Captain knew Kesey and as Alex mentioned we had been to his place in La Honda when we went out and joined Markin on the bus. Reportedly, and in all the time we were on the bus we could never pin the story down fully anyway, the Captain had traded a bag of serious dope for the bus. All I know is that we never lacked for drugs all through the experiences as the Captain always had a ready supply from weed to speed to acid.                 

When Aphrodite and Venus introduced Markin to the Captain a couple of days later once they thought he was “cool” the pair immediately took to each other. Had some kind of wavelength thing that I could never quite figure since the Captain had gone to an elite Ivy League school, Columbia if I recall, and had a certain aristocratic sensibility about him. Maybe it was Markin’s ten billion facts, or his enthusiasm, or maybe they were connected because each in their own way were what Alex called small letter prophets the Captain too having sensed early that a new day was coming and had grabbed the bus and all and started to live out the dream. Before Markin would come back to make his pitch in the late summer he had gone with the bus twice down toward Los Angeles and back again. As Markin was at pains to tell us in his pitch every day was another days of drug, sex and rock and roll if you wanted it. (Aphrodite and Venus before they left the bus just before Markin headed East were successively his first two girlfriends out West. They were totally unlike the tight Eastern Irish Catholic girls we grew up with or even like the girls who would hover around Markin at Boston University. They were converted “surfer girls” and had nothing but easy ways and good time delights on their minds. They would Markin thought not make the long road in the search for utopia that was what we were really looking for if you had to give an academic explanation for it  but were a very pleasant diversion along the road.)           

When Markin hitchhiked back from Frisco he was taking no prisoners, not taking no for an answer among the corner boys who were still around (a couple of guys were in the service, in Vietnam where Ricky Russo and Ralph Morse would lay down their heads and be forever etched in black granite down in Washington and at the town square memorial in Adamsville, North Adamsville is for governmental purposes if not for social purposes part of Adamsville proper, and a couple of others had left town for jobs or some other reason but the bulk of us were still attached to the town, a few still are). The breeze was here and whether we liked it or not we were going to check it out. This by the way was very unusual for Markin to assert himself so forcefully since he usually was the guy who proposed stuff to me and I would take it from there in the hierarchy which ruled at the time which was headed by me. Frankly, and this may tell something about why Markin fell down in Mexico trying to deal with organizing something. He was a great idea man for fresh breeze stuff and the stuff that we did give a rat’s ass about which was grabbing dough fast and easy. That is the part of Markin I always appreciated. He always had an idea, maybe ten at a time, on how to get dough fast and easy. He would conger up some scheme and I would lead the operation. The one time he actually did try to lead one of his schemes he almost got us all arrested since he forgot the cardinal rule to have a lookout when you were going through a house not your own.            

As Alex mentioned once Markin got us fired up he and Markin took off for California via the hitchhike trail since Alex had no job to ditch which I had to do before I could head out. I keep thinking today how crazy we were to even attempt to hitchhike across town never mine across the country with all the crazies out there but we did it collectively a couple of dozen times without a problem. There was a point maybe sometime around the exposure of the Charles Manson madness in Southern California when hitching became dangerous and passé but by then we were all off the road one way or another.

In any case my first trip out along with Jack Callahan, the great football player from our high school days who despite that acclaim was nothing but a hardcore corner boy and good to have around since he was as tough as nails (except with his high school sweetheart Chrissie McNamara whom he is still married to all these years later unlike me with three marriages and three divorces under my belt) was via the Greyhound bus. Part of that was to placate my mother who would have run me down all the way to China if I had told her I was hitchhiking. Nevertheless that bus ride was the only time I, we, used that horrible form of cross-country travel. Travel with screaming kids, overweight people sitting next to you or snoring and just the nerve-racking experience of being cooped up in a bus without proper hygiene for five or six days straight. No matter what they say about the health conditions, sanitary conditions, in Haight-Ashbury it was no worse than the damn bus. Certainly when we got onto the Captain’s bus that was clearly healthier if more primitive since the Captain and his lady Mustang Sally made that a condition was travelling with them. Over the couple of years I was on that bus several people were summarily excluded for poor hygiene or not pulling their weight keeping the quarters clean.

I will say that Markin who as you might have suspected of a minor prophet was filled with hyperbole about lots of stuff but he had the skinny on the wild and wonderful scene out in Frisco town (and later on the trips up and down the coast). Now when we were growing up, when we were hanging around the corners of North Adamsville, even the idea of drugs other than the traditional alcohol haze that half the Acre drifted around in was anathema. That stuff was for junkies, guys like Frankie Machine in the film adaptation of Nelson Algren’s The Man With The Golden Arm but the stuff Markin had us try Columbia Red, good weed, got us all changed around. Needless to say except for LSD, acid, none of us turned down whatever drug was cooked up. That combined with the wild girls, wild girls in comparison the rough bible between their knees Irish Catholic girls who drove us crazy and gave us nothing whatever we might say on the corner about how we scored like crazy with some Suzy.

But it was not just the drugs, the wanton women, the music, or even all of them put together but that new spirit of adventure that took us, us corner boys from North Adamsville out of our ruts and gave us a sense of community which we never had beyond our corner boys’ bondings. On the 50^th anniversary hell I still miss it, still wouldn’t mind  travelling that road again. Yes, Markin, the Scribe, as I dubbed him half in fun when we first met can take a bow even all these years later for that. And yes I still miss the crazy bastard as much as ever. 

 

An Encore -He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind

An Encore -He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Jack Dawson was not sure when he had heard that the old long-bearded son of a bitch anarchist hell of a songwriter, hell of a story-teller Bruce “Utah” Phillips caught the westbound freight, caught that freight around 2007 he found out later a couple of years after he too had come off the bum this time from wife problems, divorce wife problems (that "westbound freight" by the way an expression from the hobo road to signify that a fellow traveler hobo, tramp, bum it did not matter then the distinctions that had seemed so important in the little class differences department when they were alive had passed on, had had his fill of train smoke and dreams and was ready  to face whatever there was to face up in hobo heaven, no, the big rock candy mountain that some old geezer had written on some hard ass night when dreams were all he had to keep him company). That “Utah” moniker not taken by happenstance since Phillips struggled through the wilds of Utah on his long journey, played with a group called the Utah Valley boys, put up with, got through a million pounds of Mormon craziness and, frankly, wrote an extraordinary number of songs in his career by etching through the lore as he found it from all kinds of Mormon sources, including some of the dark pages, the ranch war stuff, the water stuff not the polygamy stuff which was nobody's business except the parties involved of those latter day saints.

For those who do not know the language of the road, not the young and carefree road taken for a couple of months during summer vacation or even a Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac-type more serious expedition under the influence of On The Road (what other travelogue of sorts would get the blood flowing to head out into the vast American Western night) and then back to the grind but the serious hobo “jungle” road like Jack Dawson had been on for several years before he sobered up after he came back from ‘Nam, came back all twisted and turned when he got discharged from the Army back in 1971 and could not adjust to the “real world” of his Carver upbringing in the East and had wound up drifting, drifting out to the West, hitting California and when that didn’t work out sort of ambled back east on the slow freight route through Utah taking the westbound freight meant for him originally passing to the great beyond, passing to a better place, passing to hard rock candy mountain in some versions here on earth before Black River Shorty clued him in.

Of course everybody thinks that if you wind up in Utah the whole thing is Mormon, and a lot of it is, no question, but when Jack hit Salt Lake City he had run into a guy singing in a park. A guy singing folk music stuff, labor songs, travelling blues stuff, the staple of the genre, that he had remembered that Sam Lowell from Carver High, from the same class year as him, had been crazy for back in the days when he would take his date and Jack and his date over to Harvard Square and they would listen to guys like that guy in the park singing in coffeehouses. Jack had not been crazy about the music then and some of the stuff the guy was singing seemed odd now too, still made him grind his teeth.  but back then it either amounted to a cheap date, or the girl actually liked the stuff and so he went along with it.

So Jack, nothing better to do, sat in front of guy and listened. Listened more intently when the guy, who turned out to be Utah (who was using the moniker “Pirate Angel” then, as Jack was using "Daddy Two Cents"  reflecting his financial condition or close to it, monikers a good thing on the road just in case the law, bill-collectors or ex-wives were trying to reach you and you did not want to reached), told the few bums, tramps and hoboes who were the natural residents of the park that if they wanted to get sober, if they wanted to turn things around a little that they were welcome, no questions asked, at the Joe Hill House. (No questions asked was right but everybody was expected to at least not tear the place up, which some nevertheless tried to do.)


That Joe Hill whom the sobering up house was named after by the way was an old time immigrant anarchist who did something to rile the Latter Day Saints up because they threw he before a firing squad with no questions asked. Joe got the last line though, got it for eternity-“Don’t mourn (his death), organize!”                   

Jack, not knowing anybody, not being sober much, and maybe just a tad nostalgic for the old days when hearing bits of folk music was the least of his worries, went up to Utah and said he would appreciate the stay. And that was that. Although not quite “that was that” since Jack knew nothing about the guys who ran the place, didn’t know who Joe Hill was until later (although he suspected after he found out that Joe Hill had been a IWW organizer [Wobblie, Industrial Worker of the World] framed and executed in that very state of Utah that his old friend the late Peter Paul Markin who lived to have that kind of information in his head would have known. See this Joe Hill House unlike the Sallies (Salvation Army) where he would hustle a few days of peace was run by this Catholic Worker guy, Ammon Hennessey, who Utah told Jack had both sobered him up and made him some kind of anarchist although Jack was fuzzy on what that was all about.

So Jack for about the tenth time tried to sober up, liquor sober up this time out in the great desert (later it would be drugs, mainly cocaine which almost ripped his nose off he was so into it that he needed sobering up from). And it took, took for a while.        

Whatever had been eating at Jack kept fighting a battle inside of him and after a few months he was back on the bottle. But during that time at the Joe Hill House he got close to Utah, as close as he had gotten to anybody since ‘Nam, since his friendship with Jeff Crawford from up in Podunk Maine who saved his ass, and that of a couple of other guys in a nasty fire-fight when Charley (G.I. slang for the Viet Cong originally said in contempt but as the war dragged on in half-hearted admiration) decided he did indeed own the night in his own country. Got as close as he had to his corner boys like Sam Lowell from hometown Carver. Learned a lot about the lure of the road, of drink and drugs, of tough times (Utah had been in Korea) and he had felt bad after he fell off the wagon. But that was the way it was. 

Several years later after getting washed clean from liquor and drugs, at a time when Jack started to see that he needed to get back into the real world if he did not want to wind up like his last travelling companion, Denver Shorty, whom he found face down one morning on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge and had abandoned his body fast in order not to face the police report, he noticed that Utah was playing in a coffeehouse in Cambridge, a place called Passim’s which he found out had been taken over from the Club 47 where Sam had taken Jack a few times. So Jack and his new wife (his and her second marriages) stepped down into the cellar coffeehouse to listen up.


As Jack waited in the rest room area a door opened from the other side across the narrow passageway and who came out but Utah. As Jack started to grab his attention Utah blurred out “Daddy Two Cent, how the hell are you?” and talked for a few minutes. Later that night after the show they talked some more in the empty club before Utah said he had to leave to head back to Saratoga Springs in New York where he was to play at the Caffé Lena the next night.         

That was the last time that Jack saw Utah in person although he would keep up with his career as it moved along. Bought some records, later tapes, still later CDs just to help the brother out. In the age of the Internet he would sent occasional messages and Utah would reply. Then he heard Utah had taken very ill, heart trouble like he said long ago in the blaze of some midnight fire, would finally get the best of him. And then somewhat belatedly Jack found that Utah had passed on. The guy of all the guys he knew on the troubled hobo “jungle” road who knew what “starlight on the rails” meant to the wanderers he sang for had cashed his ticket. RIP, brother.