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Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Get on a bus to D.C. The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
State House action to protect immigrant families in Mass. Wed 20th 12:30 PM - 2 PM
State House action to protect immigrant families in Mass.
Wed 20th 12:30 PM - 2 PM
Toddlers are being torn from their mothers' arms. Children are being put in cages and warehoused at an old Walmart. Asylum-seekers escaping domestic abuse and gang violence are being turned away. And right in our communities, families are being torn apart every day by overzealous immigration enforcement. It's morally abhorrent.
So what is Massachusetts doing to protect immigrant families? The state Senate passed a budget amendment with 4 basic protections, to stop police from helping round up immigrants and protect civil rights and due process. But the House is doing NOTHING, and Governor Baker has threatened to veto the Senate measure.
We're NOT going to let them get away with this. Meet us on the State House steps at 12:30, and we'll go into the State House together. Bring SMALL signs (8.5x11 or something you can roll up, so you can get through security), but most important, your voice. If the House won't listen, we're going to make ourselves heard!
So what is Massachusetts doing to protect immigrant families? The state Senate passed a budget amendment with 4 basic protections, to stop police from helping round up immigrants and protect civil rights and due process. But the House is doing NOTHING, and Governor Baker has threatened to veto the Senate measure.
We're NOT going to let them get away with this. Meet us on the State House steps at 12:30, and we'll go into the State House together. Bring SMALL signs (8.5x11 or something you can roll up, so you can get through security), but most important, your voice. If the House won't listen, we're going to make ourselves heard!
Hosted by Pioneer Valley Workers Center and 6 others
also note
Sanctuary in the Streets General Assembly (Northampton)
What is Sanctuary in the Streets?
Sanctuary in the Streets is a rapid response network of 2,000 people and 40 congregations mobilizing against raids and deportations, workplace abuse, and hate crimes. We have a 24 hour response hotline and have trained 800 people to rapidly mobilize as a detention is taking place. Thus far, we have accompanied over 40 individuals/families facing immigration detention and/or deportation, and have worked with dozens of workers to win justice in cases of wage theft, retaliation, and sexual harassment.
What happens at the general assemblies?
At our general assemblies, all our committees meet: fundraising, education and media, logistics and technology, events and training, and our newly formed mutual aid committee. If you're new, you'll attend an orientation to learn about the network and the current projects of each committee. You'll then be ready to join a committee or plug into existing projects!
Sanctuary in the Streets is a rapid response network of 2,000 people and 40 congregations mobilizing against raids and deportations, workplace abuse, and hate crimes. We have a 24 hour response hotline and have trained 800 people to rapidly mobilize as a detention is taking place. Thus far, we have accompanied over 40 individuals/families facing immigration detention and/or deportation, and have worked with dozens of workers to win justice in cases of wage theft, retaliation, and sexual harassment.
What happens at the general assemblies?
At our general assemblies, all our committees meet: fundraising, education and media, logistics and technology, events and training, and our newly formed mutual aid committee. If you're new, you'll attend an orientation to learn about the network and the current projects of each committee. You'll then be ready to join a committee or plug into existing projects!
Reflections On Memorial Day, 2017 At The Vietnam Memorial Wall-Fritz Taylor’s Endless War
Reflections On Memorial Day, 2017 At The Vietnam Memorial Wall-Fritz Taylor’s Endless War
********
By Josh Breslin
[My old friend Fritz Taylor from down in Fulton County, Georgia was from what I heard from others, not him, one of the bravos of the Vietnam War. Had a few medals, well won, which he eventually threw over the fence at the Supreme Court building down in Washington, D. C. when a bunch of Vietnam veterans who had turned against the war they had helped fight, had been marked forever by, decided that such a gesture was an appropriate way to show their fierce opposition.
But that was not the end of it not by a long-shot either politically or mentally for Fritz Taylor. The mental part first. Whatever it was that happened to Fritz over there in that hellhole he carried those psychic wounds around with him for a long time, still does. Went through the usual drug, divorce homelessness, “recovery” cycle familiar from life experiences among fellow soldiers until he was able to keep his demons somewhat in check and function in a reasonable manner. Know this that this is an on-going struggle even today almost fifty years later so you know some serious shit happened, know a little why the demons had him on the run for a while.
All during this psychic drama though Fritz never lost his hatred for war that he had experienced at first hand once he, as the late Peter Paul Markin also a Vietnam veteran and the man who introduced me to Fritz long ago used to say, “got religion,” got on the right side of the angels on the questions of war and peace. Successively had belonged to Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and Veterans for Peace after the former organization kind of petered out. It was as part of a contingent of VFP members who were going to protest the Trump government’s desire to increase the bloated military budget by 54 billion dollars that found him in Washington this Memorial Day, 2017. Found him as always drawn to the Vietnam Memorial adjacent to the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall. He as always paid his respects to those he knew from the war, and from his old neighborhood. But he would also have a moment of bitter reflection about some comrades who did not make the wall-and should have. This is what he expressed to me when he came back and I spoke to him about his trip.]
********
Fritz Taylor, Vietnam veteran, 1969-1971, 4th Infantry, always claimed long after he had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace, after he had earned the right to oppose the bloody damn thing having been up close and personal that some of his fellow veterans had been shortchanged when it came to the crying wall, crying for him every time he went down to D.C. and was drawn to, had to pay his respects to his fallen comrades. He knew that each name inscribed on that black granite had paid their dues. No question.
This year he happened to be in D.C. on Memorial Day and so as it turned out quite by accident his “duty” to his fallen comrades, especially hometown boys Eric Slater and Jimmy Jenkins Fritz forever etched in stone there, he had caught part of the annual ceremony. Righteous Fritz who went he went over to the peace side of the equation probably had logged more jail time than was good for him with acts of civil disobedience when he wanted to make a point about the current wave of endless wars, moreover did not have any issue when new names of those who were missing in action somehow had gotten repatriated or had been accounted for by some other method. (See above for additions to this year’s crying wall). What grieved Fritz was those like his friend from Vietnam days, Johnny Ridge, a working class kid from Steubenville out in Ohio near the river who after many years of suffering psychic wounds received in Vietnam jumped into that Ohio River. Or another friend from anti-war soldier days, Manny Gibbons who spent his last few years fighting cancer which the doctors directly related to his exposure to Agent Orange. There were others whose stories he knew but those two accounts will do to make this point.
Fritz, righteous Fritz, that day once again promised his lost comrades that he would work until he went to his own not too distant death to get their names etched in stone. Vietnam will never end for one Fritz John Taylor, or a lot of other guys either.
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
On The Anniversary Of Their Execution-From The Pen Of Bob Feldman- "They Killed The Rosenbergs"
On The Anniversary Of Their Execution-From The Pen Of Bob Feldman- "They Killed The Rosenbergs"
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
"They Killed The Rosenbergs"
They killed the Rosenbergs
They killed them on the electric chair
They killed the Rosenbergs
They killed them to make people scared.
They arrested the Rosenbergs
They broke into their home
They jailed the Rosenbergs
They ignored their sons who moaned.
They framed the Rosenbergs
They used false evidence
They tortured the Rosenbergs
They used a lying witness.
They smeared the Rosenbergs
They charged them with "conspiracy"
They sentenced the Rosenbergs
They sent them up to Sing Sing.
They murder the innocent
They execute the powerless
With barbaric hands they pulled their switch
For the Rosenbergs would not submit.
To listen to "They Killed The Rosenbergs" protest folk song, you can go to following music site link:
http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Biographical+Folk+Songs/They+Killed+the+Rosenbergs
Many years after the Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953 by the U.S. government and no longer alive to deny that they were guilty of any crime, some U.S. academics and mainstream journalists claimed that de-classified KGB documents “prove” that the Rosenbergs were not framed. Yet, as I noted in Downtown (2/17/93), during the 1980s, former Village Voice writer Deborah Davis came into possession of a set of revealing U.S. Justice Department documents. The de-classified documents apparently indicated that, when he worked as a Press Attache’ in the U.S. embassy in Paris, former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee “was a central figure” in “a State Department/CIA campaign against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg” which “was designed to persuade Europeans that the Rosenbergs were guilty of espionage and deserved to be put to death,” according to the second edition of Davis’s book, Katharine The Great: Katharine Graham and The Washington Post.
According to Davis, “the documents show” that in the early 1950s “Mr. Bradlee went to the Rosenberg prosecutors in New York under orders of `the head of the CIA in Paris,’ as he told an assistant prosecutor, and that from their material he composed his `Operations Memorandum’ on the case, which was the basis of all propaganda subsequently sent out to foreign journalists.”
In an April 1, 1987 letter to Deborah Davis, however, Bradlee (currently a vice-president of the Washington Post Company media conglomerate) wrote:
“I worked for the USIA as the Press Attache’ of the United States Embassy in the early 1950s. I never worked for the CIA. I never participated in a `CIA propaganda campaign’…”
Yet a December 13, 1952 U.S. Government Memorandum from Associate Prosecutor Maran to Asst. U.S. Atty. Myles Lane apparently stated:
“On December 13, 1952 a Mr. Benjamin Bradlee called and informed me that he was Press Attache’ with the American Embassy in Paris, that he had left Paris last night and arrived here this morning. He advised me that…he was sent here to look at the Rosenberg file…
“He advised me that it was an urgent matter…He further advised that he was sent here by Robert Thayer, who is the head of the C.I.A. in Paris…”
For more information on the Rosenberg Case, you can check out the web site of the Rosenberg Fund for Children at www.rfc.org/case.htm .
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
"They Killed The Rosenbergs"
They killed the Rosenbergs
They killed them on the electric chair
They killed the Rosenbergs
They killed them to make people scared.
They arrested the Rosenbergs
They broke into their home
They jailed the Rosenbergs
They ignored their sons who moaned.
They framed the Rosenbergs
They used false evidence
They tortured the Rosenbergs
They used a lying witness.
They smeared the Rosenbergs
They charged them with "conspiracy"
They sentenced the Rosenbergs
They sent them up to Sing Sing.
They murder the innocent
They execute the powerless
With barbaric hands they pulled their switch
For the Rosenbergs would not submit.
To listen to "They Killed The Rosenbergs" protest folk song, you can go to following music site link:
http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Biographical+Folk+Songs/They+Killed+the+Rosenbergs
Many years after the Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953 by the U.S. government and no longer alive to deny that they were guilty of any crime, some U.S. academics and mainstream journalists claimed that de-classified KGB documents “prove” that the Rosenbergs were not framed. Yet, as I noted in Downtown (2/17/93), during the 1980s, former Village Voice writer Deborah Davis came into possession of a set of revealing U.S. Justice Department documents. The de-classified documents apparently indicated that, when he worked as a Press Attache’ in the U.S. embassy in Paris, former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee “was a central figure” in “a State Department/CIA campaign against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg” which “was designed to persuade Europeans that the Rosenbergs were guilty of espionage and deserved to be put to death,” according to the second edition of Davis’s book, Katharine The Great: Katharine Graham and The Washington Post.
According to Davis, “the documents show” that in the early 1950s “Mr. Bradlee went to the Rosenberg prosecutors in New York under orders of `the head of the CIA in Paris,’ as he told an assistant prosecutor, and that from their material he composed his `Operations Memorandum’ on the case, which was the basis of all propaganda subsequently sent out to foreign journalists.”
In an April 1, 1987 letter to Deborah Davis, however, Bradlee (currently a vice-president of the Washington Post Company media conglomerate) wrote:
“I worked for the USIA as the Press Attache’ of the United States Embassy in the early 1950s. I never worked for the CIA. I never participated in a `CIA propaganda campaign’…”
Yet a December 13, 1952 U.S. Government Memorandum from Associate Prosecutor Maran to Asst. U.S. Atty. Myles Lane apparently stated:
“On December 13, 1952 a Mr. Benjamin Bradlee called and informed me that he was Press Attache’ with the American Embassy in Paris, that he had left Paris last night and arrived here this morning. He advised me that…he was sent here to look at the Rosenberg file…
“He advised me that it was an urgent matter…He further advised that he was sent here by Robert Thayer, who is the head of the C.I.A. in Paris…”
For more information on the Rosenberg Case, you can check out the web site of the Rosenberg Fund for Children at www.rfc.org/case.htm .
*On The Anniversary Of The Execution Of The Rosenbergs- E.L. Doctorow's Fictional Treatment "The Book Of Daniel" And Sidney Lumet's Film "Daniel"
*On The Anniversary Of The Execution Of The Rosenbergs- E.L. Doctorow's Fictional Treatment "The Book Of Daniel" And Sidney Lumet's Film "Daniel"
Repost
Commentary- June 2, 2009
This June marks the 56th Anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by the American state. I have defended the Rosenbergs elsewhere in this space, including a review last year of a film documentary by Rosenberg granddaughter, Ivy Meerpol, titled "Heir To An Execution".(Check Archives). Directly below are some remarks made in additional to that review in light of a flurry of controversy around their names that surfaced in the Fall of 2008. This year I have chosen to review E.L. Doctorow's 1971 fictional treatment of some aspects of the case and the film based on the book. Needless to say I stand by my defense of this heroic radical couple. Justice still awaits in their case.
*****************
Commentary made in addition to a September 14, 2008 review of a film documentary by Rosenberg granddaughter, Ivy Meerpol, in this space.
Honor the Heroic Soviet Spies Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobel
In the commentary above I alluded, somewhat obliquely, to the Verona Tapes-the decoded Soviet transmissions from World War II- as an earlier American governmental source for the proposition that Julius Rosenberg was providing scientific information of some sort to the Soviet Union during that period. Recent news has highlighted the possible truth of that assertion. First the release of classified grand jury testimony in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case mentioned above. Also the assertion by convicted Rosenberg co-conspirator Morton Sobel that he passed scientific information to the Soviets during that period. More recently, in some interviews in The New York Times, the Rosenberg children (Meeropols), after having spend their adulthoods trying to build a case for their parents’ innocence have seemingly come to the position that their father, at least, was indeed working for the Soviets.
Let’s be clear here. For those who saw military defense of the Soviet Union, Stalinist warts and all, as an internationalist socialist duty until its demise in the early 1990’s the question of honoring Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has not hinged on their guilt or innocence of the charges of aiding the Soviet Union leveled by the American government. Nor has it hinged on opposition to the death penalty, although we are opposed to that barbaric punishment. The question has always been, if not openly then otherwise, the service they were in a position to provide to the first workers state. In the interest of “muddying the waters” we have never earlier proclaimed them, as we have with Kim Philby and his Cambridge cohorts, Richard Sorge or Leopold Trepper, heroic Soviet spies. Now, apparently, we can openly acknowledge our debt at last to Julius and Morton Sobel. The case remains unclear about Ethel although we honor her as a soldier of the revolution as well. Some little piece of historic justice is finally possible in their cases.
I would add here that although I had spend a fair portion of my life as a military defender of the Soviet Union and the other workers states of East Europe while they existed that, as a practical matter, that defense never got beyond the propaganda stage. Apparently, Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobel, in their attempts to defend the interests of the Soviet Union as they saw that duty, were in a position to do more. Although the political gap that separated us was, at times drawn in the blood of our murdered comrades at the hands of the Stalinist henchman that they defended, they acted as soldiers of the revolution here. That is the why of honoring them in this space.
Finally, I have mentioned before that I have always liked the idea of Julius organizing in the 1930’s in behalf of freedom for the jailed militant labor leader Tom Mooney while at City College of New York (CCNY). As those who follow this space know the late Professor Irving Howe, the social democratic founder/editor of Dissent also was at CCNY during this period as an anti-Stalinist socialist who was won to Trotskyism, for a moment, during this same period. He, along with a fair number of others recruited from the Socialist Party milieu at CCNY dropped out of the Socialist Workers Party (the main organized Trotskyist organization in America at the time) over the question of defense of the Soviet Union when it mattered in the late 1930’s. I pose this question- When the fight for socialism is on the line who do you want with you- Julius Rosenberg or Irving Howe? To ask the question is to give the answer. The Rosenbergs and Sobel were not our people- but they were our people.
*********************
Book/ DVD Review
This review is being used for both book and DVD versions of Doctorow's work as the central points to be made in regard to both works are similar. The film starring Timothy Hutton as Daniel and directed by the acclaimed Sidney Lumet fairly closely hems to Doctorow's story line. Hutton does an excellent job as Daniel. Obviously, such dramatic moments as the attempts to run away from the state authorities by the Rosenberg children after their parents' arrest, the touching visiting scenes by the children in the prison just prior to the executions, the executions and the tragic fate of one of the children (in the book, not real life) get more attention than in the book. But that is cinematic license, and here is not overplayed.
The Book Of Daniel, E.L. Doctorow, Random House, New York, 1971
Daniel, starring Timothy Hutton, directed by Sidney Lumet, DVD release 2008
At first blush the Rosenberg Cold War Soviet espionage case of the 1950's, that ended in the execution of both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by the American state despite a worldwide campaign to save their lives, would not appear to be a natural subject for fictional treatment. Unlike, let us say, Kim Philby and the various Cambridge spies the Rosenbergs' biographies and political profiles do not have the stuff of larger than life drama. Moreover, whatever their efforts were on behalf of the defense of the Soviet Union, as they saw it, the details do not jump out as the makings of a spy thriller. And the well-known historical novelist (`Ragtime", Loon Lake", etc.), E.L. Doctorow, does not go into any of that material. What Doctorow has attempted to mine, and I think within the parameters that he has set himself successfully so, is the effect that the political actions of the Rosenbergs had on their children at the time, on their children's futures (in state custody and later adopted privately) and on the trauma of being the "heirs to an execution" in adulthood. Add to that the biblical implications ("The Book Of Daniel") that Doctorow weaves into his story and that is more than enough material for one novel.
Naturally, the question of the fate of the children of famous (or infamous, as the case may be) is a fair subject for treatment, fictional or otherwise. There is a whole flourishing body of literature concerning this topic. What makes the Rosenberg children distinct (a boy and girl, rather than the real two boys, fictionally named Daniel and Susan Issacson here) is that they were son and daughter to parents who in the eyes of the American state and significant parts of the American population were traitors. Not a good way for young kids to develop their self-esteem. That struggle, placed in the context of the traumas over personal identification which were rift as they grew to adulthood and that helped define the 1960's the time of the action of this story, drive the main themes of the story. The interlocked questions of life in the academy (Daniel is something of a professional graduate student), life on the political streets (Susan has chosen a psychologically dangerous way to cope with her heritage by going full-bore into the left-wing political activity of the period) and coming to grips, successfully or not, with their legacies give the plot substance.
Aside from Doctorow's main themes of exploring the thorny question of the responsibility that parents have for their children, either as parents or as political people, the last part of the book where Daniel, as a coping mechanism if nothing else, begins to get "political" provides some interesting (for the time) theories about what happened in the Rosenberg case. The themes of "good Jew, bad Jew" (as shown by the large cast of Jewish characters in the trial process), the alleged inadequacies of the defense, the scarcity of government evidence (the Rosenbergs were convicted of that old stand-by "conspiracy"), the nature of the early Cold War period and the personal and political limitations of the Rosenbergs themselves get a full workout here. In the end though, as I mentioned in a commentary reviewing Rosenberg granddaughter Ivy Meerpol's film, "Heir To An Execution", concerning the personal characters of the Rosenbergs they did their duty as communists, as they saw it. For that they deserve all honor. And someday some real justice to clear their names.
Repost
Commentary- June 2, 2009
This June marks the 56th Anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by the American state. I have defended the Rosenbergs elsewhere in this space, including a review last year of a film documentary by Rosenberg granddaughter, Ivy Meerpol, titled "Heir To An Execution".(Check Archives). Directly below are some remarks made in additional to that review in light of a flurry of controversy around their names that surfaced in the Fall of 2008. This year I have chosen to review E.L. Doctorow's 1971 fictional treatment of some aspects of the case and the film based on the book. Needless to say I stand by my defense of this heroic radical couple. Justice still awaits in their case.
*****************
Commentary made in addition to a September 14, 2008 review of a film documentary by Rosenberg granddaughter, Ivy Meerpol, in this space.
Honor the Heroic Soviet Spies Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobel
In the commentary above I alluded, somewhat obliquely, to the Verona Tapes-the decoded Soviet transmissions from World War II- as an earlier American governmental source for the proposition that Julius Rosenberg was providing scientific information of some sort to the Soviet Union during that period. Recent news has highlighted the possible truth of that assertion. First the release of classified grand jury testimony in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case mentioned above. Also the assertion by convicted Rosenberg co-conspirator Morton Sobel that he passed scientific information to the Soviets during that period. More recently, in some interviews in The New York Times, the Rosenberg children (Meeropols), after having spend their adulthoods trying to build a case for their parents’ innocence have seemingly come to the position that their father, at least, was indeed working for the Soviets.
Let’s be clear here. For those who saw military defense of the Soviet Union, Stalinist warts and all, as an internationalist socialist duty until its demise in the early 1990’s the question of honoring Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has not hinged on their guilt or innocence of the charges of aiding the Soviet Union leveled by the American government. Nor has it hinged on opposition to the death penalty, although we are opposed to that barbaric punishment. The question has always been, if not openly then otherwise, the service they were in a position to provide to the first workers state. In the interest of “muddying the waters” we have never earlier proclaimed them, as we have with Kim Philby and his Cambridge cohorts, Richard Sorge or Leopold Trepper, heroic Soviet spies. Now, apparently, we can openly acknowledge our debt at last to Julius and Morton Sobel. The case remains unclear about Ethel although we honor her as a soldier of the revolution as well. Some little piece of historic justice is finally possible in their cases.
I would add here that although I had spend a fair portion of my life as a military defender of the Soviet Union and the other workers states of East Europe while they existed that, as a practical matter, that defense never got beyond the propaganda stage. Apparently, Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobel, in their attempts to defend the interests of the Soviet Union as they saw that duty, were in a position to do more. Although the political gap that separated us was, at times drawn in the blood of our murdered comrades at the hands of the Stalinist henchman that they defended, they acted as soldiers of the revolution here. That is the why of honoring them in this space.
Finally, I have mentioned before that I have always liked the idea of Julius organizing in the 1930’s in behalf of freedom for the jailed militant labor leader Tom Mooney while at City College of New York (CCNY). As those who follow this space know the late Professor Irving Howe, the social democratic founder/editor of Dissent also was at CCNY during this period as an anti-Stalinist socialist who was won to Trotskyism, for a moment, during this same period. He, along with a fair number of others recruited from the Socialist Party milieu at CCNY dropped out of the Socialist Workers Party (the main organized Trotskyist organization in America at the time) over the question of defense of the Soviet Union when it mattered in the late 1930’s. I pose this question- When the fight for socialism is on the line who do you want with you- Julius Rosenberg or Irving Howe? To ask the question is to give the answer. The Rosenbergs and Sobel were not our people- but they were our people.
*********************
Book/ DVD Review
This review is being used for both book and DVD versions of Doctorow's work as the central points to be made in regard to both works are similar. The film starring Timothy Hutton as Daniel and directed by the acclaimed Sidney Lumet fairly closely hems to Doctorow's story line. Hutton does an excellent job as Daniel. Obviously, such dramatic moments as the attempts to run away from the state authorities by the Rosenberg children after their parents' arrest, the touching visiting scenes by the children in the prison just prior to the executions, the executions and the tragic fate of one of the children (in the book, not real life) get more attention than in the book. But that is cinematic license, and here is not overplayed.
The Book Of Daniel, E.L. Doctorow, Random House, New York, 1971
Daniel, starring Timothy Hutton, directed by Sidney Lumet, DVD release 2008
At first blush the Rosenberg Cold War Soviet espionage case of the 1950's, that ended in the execution of both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by the American state despite a worldwide campaign to save their lives, would not appear to be a natural subject for fictional treatment. Unlike, let us say, Kim Philby and the various Cambridge spies the Rosenbergs' biographies and political profiles do not have the stuff of larger than life drama. Moreover, whatever their efforts were on behalf of the defense of the Soviet Union, as they saw it, the details do not jump out as the makings of a spy thriller. And the well-known historical novelist (`Ragtime", Loon Lake", etc.), E.L. Doctorow, does not go into any of that material. What Doctorow has attempted to mine, and I think within the parameters that he has set himself successfully so, is the effect that the political actions of the Rosenbergs had on their children at the time, on their children's futures (in state custody and later adopted privately) and on the trauma of being the "heirs to an execution" in adulthood. Add to that the biblical implications ("The Book Of Daniel") that Doctorow weaves into his story and that is more than enough material for one novel.
Naturally, the question of the fate of the children of famous (or infamous, as the case may be) is a fair subject for treatment, fictional or otherwise. There is a whole flourishing body of literature concerning this topic. What makes the Rosenberg children distinct (a boy and girl, rather than the real two boys, fictionally named Daniel and Susan Issacson here) is that they were son and daughter to parents who in the eyes of the American state and significant parts of the American population were traitors. Not a good way for young kids to develop their self-esteem. That struggle, placed in the context of the traumas over personal identification which were rift as they grew to adulthood and that helped define the 1960's the time of the action of this story, drive the main themes of the story. The interlocked questions of life in the academy (Daniel is something of a professional graduate student), life on the political streets (Susan has chosen a psychologically dangerous way to cope with her heritage by going full-bore into the left-wing political activity of the period) and coming to grips, successfully or not, with their legacies give the plot substance.
Aside from Doctorow's main themes of exploring the thorny question of the responsibility that parents have for their children, either as parents or as political people, the last part of the book where Daniel, as a coping mechanism if nothing else, begins to get "political" provides some interesting (for the time) theories about what happened in the Rosenberg case. The themes of "good Jew, bad Jew" (as shown by the large cast of Jewish characters in the trial process), the alleged inadequacies of the defense, the scarcity of government evidence (the Rosenbergs were convicted of that old stand-by "conspiracy"), the nature of the early Cold War period and the personal and political limitations of the Rosenbergs themselves get a full workout here. In the end though, as I mentioned in a commentary reviewing Rosenberg granddaughter Ivy Meerpol's film, "Heir To An Execution", concerning the personal characters of the Rosenbergs they did their duty as communists, as they saw it. For that they deserve all honor. And someday some real justice to clear their names.
Poets' Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"- In Honor Of Julius And Ethel Rosenberg
Poets' Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"- In Honor Of Julius And Ethel Rosenberg
Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the heroic communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed by the American state on June 19, 1953.
To Those Born After
I
To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
II
You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:
Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.
Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.
And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.
Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the heroic communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed by the American state on June 19, 1953.
To Those Born After
I
To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
II
You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:
Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.
Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.
And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.
An Encore -The Son Of Dharma-With Jack Kerouac’s On The Road In Mind
An Encore -The Son Of Dharma-With Jack Kerouac’s On The Road In Mind
Jack Callahan thought he was going crazy when he thought about the matter after he had awoken from his fitful dream. Thought he was crazy for “channeling” Jack Kerouac, or rather more specifically channeling Jack’s definitive book On The Road, definite in giving him and a goodly portion of his generation that last push to go, well, go search a new world, or at least get the dust of your old town growing up off of your shoes, that had much to do with his wanderings. Got him going in search of what his late corner boy, “the Scribe,” Peter Paul Markin called the search for the Great Blue-Pink American West Night (Markin always capitalized that concept so since I too was influenced by the mad man’s dreams I will do so here). Any way you cut it seeking that new world that gave Jack his fitful dream. That “driving him crazy” stemmed from the fact that those wanderings, that search had begun, and finished shortly thereafter, about fifty years before when he left the road after a few months for the hand of Chrissie McNamara and a settled life. Decided that like many others who went that same route he was not build for the long haul road after all.
But maybe it is best to go back to the beginning, not the fifty years beginning, Jesus, who could remember, maybe want to remember incidents that far back, but to the night several weeks before when Jack, Frankie Riley, who had been our acknowledged corner boy leader out in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys from about senior year in high school in 1966 and a couple of years after when for a whole assortment of reasons, including the wanderings, the crowd went its separate ways, Jimmy Jenkins, Allan Johnson, Bart Webber, Josh Breslin, Rich Rizzo, Sam Eaton and me got together for one of our periodic “remember back in the day” get-togethers over at “Jack’s” in Cambridge a few block down Massachusetts Avenue from where Jimmy lives. We have probably done this a dozen time over the past decade or so, more recently as most of us have more time to spent at a hard night’s drinking (drinking high-shelf liquors as we always laugh about since in the old days we collectively could not have afforded one high-shelf drink and were reduced to drinking rotgut wines and seemingly just mashed whiskeys, and draino Southern Comfort, and that draino designation no lie, especially the first time you took a slug, the only way to take it, before you acquired the taste for it).
The night I am talking about though as the liquor began to take effect someone, Bart I think, mentioned that he had read in the Globe that up in Lowell they were exhibiting the teletype roll of paper that Jack Kerouac had typed the most definitive draft of his classic youth nation travel book, On The Road in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of its publication in 1957. That information stopped everybody in the group’s tracks for a moment. Partly because everybody at the table, except Rich Rizzo, had taken some version of Kerouac’s book to heart as did thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of certified members of the generation of ’68 who went wandering in that good 1960s night. But most of all because etched in everybody’s memory were thoughts of the mad monk monster bastard saint who turned us all on to the book, and to the wanderings, the late Peter Paul Markin.
Yeah, we still moan for that sainted bastard all these years later whenever something from our youths come up. It might be an anniversary, it might be all too often the passing of some iconic figure from those times, or it might be passing some place that was associated with our crowd, and with Markin. See Markin was something like a “prophet” to us, not the old time biblical long-beard and ranting guys although maybe he did think he was in that line of work, but as the herald of what he called “a fresh breeze coming across the land” early in the 1960s. Something of a nomadic “hippie” slightly before his time (including wearing his hair-pre moppet Beatles too long for working class North Adamsville tastes, especially his mother’s, who insisted on boys’ regulars and so another round was fought out to something like a stand-still then in the Markin household saga). The time of Markin’s “prophesies,” the hard-bitten Friday or Saturday night times when nothing to do and nothing to do it with he would hold forth, was however a time when we could have given a rat’s ass about some new wave forming in Markin’s mind (and that “rat’s ass” was the term of art we used on such occasions).
We would change our collective tunes later in the decade but then, and on Markin’s more sober days he would be clamoring over the same things, all we cared about was girls (or rather “getting into their pants”), getting dough for dates and walking around money (and planning small larcenies to obtain the filthy lucre), and getting a “boss” car, like a ’57 Chevy or at least a friend that had one in order to “do the do” with said girls and spend some dough at places like drive-in theaters and drive-in restaurants (mandatory if you wanted to get past square one with girls, the girls we knew, or were attracted to, in those days).
Markin was whistling in the dark for a long time, past high school and maybe a couple of years after. He wore us down though pushing us to go up to Harvard Square in Cambridge to see guys with long hair and faded clothes and girls with long hair which looked like they had used an iron to iron it out sing, read poetry, and just hang-out. Hang out waiting for that same “fresh breeze” that Markin spent many a girl-less, dough-less, car-less Friday or Saturday night serenading us heathens about. I don’t know how many times he dragged me, and usually Bart Webber, in his trail on the late night subway to hear some latest thing in the early 1960s folk minute which I could barely stand then, and which I still grind my teeth over when I hear some associates going on and on about guys like Bob Dylan, Tom Rush and Dave Von Ronk and gals like Joan Baez, the one I heard later started the whole iron your long hair craze among seemingly rationale girls. Of course I did tolerate the music better once a couple of Cambridge girls asked me if I liked folk music one time in a coffeehouse and I said of course I did and took Markin aside to give me some names to throw at them. One girl, Lorna, I actually dated off and on for several months.
But enough of me and my youthful antics, and enough too of Markin and his wiggy ideas because this screed is about Jack Kerouac, about the effect of his major book, and why Jack Callahan of all people who among those of us corner boys from Jack Slack’s who followed Markin on the roads west left it the earliest. Left to go back to Chrissie, and eventually a car dealership, Toyota, that had him Mr. Toyota around Eastern Massachusetts (and of course Chrissie as Mrs. Toyota).
In a lot of ways Markin was only the messenger, the prodder, because when he eventually convinced us all to read the damn book at different points when we were all, all in our own ways getting wrapped up in the 1960s counter-cultural movement (and some of us the alternative political part too) we were in thrall to what adventures Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty were up to. That is why I think Jack had his dreams after the all-night discussions we had. Of course Markin came in for his fair share of comment, good and bad. But what we talked about mostly was how improbable on the face of it a poor working-class kid from the textile mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, from a staunch Roman Catholic French-Canadian heritage of those who came south to “see if the streets of America really were paved with gold” would seem an unlikely person to be involved in a movement that in many ways was the opposite of what his generation, the parents of our generation of ’68 to put the matter in perspective, born in the 1920s, coming of age in the Great Depression and slogging through World War II was searching for in the post-World War II “golden age of America.” Add in that he also was a “jock” (no slur intended as we spent more than our fair share of time talking about sports on those girl-less, dough-less, car-less weekend nights, including Markin who had this complicated way that he figured out the top ten college football teams since they didn’t a play-off system to figure it out. Of course he was like the rest of us a Notre Dame “subway” fan), a guy who played hooky to go read books and who hung out with a bunch of corner boys just like us would be-bop part of his own generation and influence our generation enough to get some of us on the roads too. Go figure.
So we, even Markin when he was in high flower, did not “invent” the era whole, especially in the cultural, personal ethos part, the part about skipping for a while anyway the nine to five work routine, the white house and picket fence family routine, the hold your breath nose to the grindstone routine and discovering the lure of the road and of discovering ourselves, and of the limits of our capacity to wonder. No question that elements of the generation before us, Jack Kerouac’s, the sullen West Coast hot-rodders, the perfect wave surfers, the teen-alienated rebel James Dean and wild one Marlon Brando we saw on Saturday afternoon matinee Strand Theater movie screens and above all his “beats” helped push the can down the road, especially the “beats” who along with Jack wrote to the high heavens about what they did, how they did it and what the hell it was they were running from. Yeah, gave us a road map to seek that “newer world” Markin got some of us wrapped up in later in the decade and the early part of the next.
Now the truth of the matter is that most generation of ‘68ers, us, only caught the tail-end of the “beat” scene, the end where mainstream culture and commerce made it into just another “bummer” like they have done with any movement that threatened to get out of hand. So most of us who were affected by the be-bop sound and feel of the “beats” got what we knew from reading about them. And above all, above even Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem, Howl which was a clarion call for rebellion, was Jack Kerouac who thrilled even those who did not go out in the search the great blue-pink American West night.
Here the odd thing, Kerouac except for that short burst in the late 1940s and a couple of vagrant road trips in the 1950s before fame struck him down was almost the antithesis of what we of the generation of ’68 were striving to accomplish. As is fairly well known, or was by those who lived through the 1960s, he would eventually disown his “step-children.” Be that as it may his role, earned or not, wanted or not, as media-anointed “king of the beats” was decisive.
But enough of the quasi-literary treatment that I have drifted into when I really wanted to tell you about what Bart Webber told me about his dream. He dreamed that he, after about sixty-five kinds of hell with his mother who wanted him to stay home and start that printing business that he had dreamed of since about third grade when he read about how his hero Benjamin Franklin had started in the business, get married to Betsy Binstock, buy a white picket fence house (a step up from the triple decker tenement where he grew up) have children, really grandchildren and have a happy if stilted life. But his mother advise fell off him like a dripping rain, hell, after-all he was caught in that 1960s moment when everything kind of got off-center and so he under the constant prodding of Markin decided to hit the road. Of course the Kerouac part came in from reading the book after about seven million drum-fire assaults by Markin pressing him to read the thing.
So there he was by himself. Markin and I were already in San Francisco so that was the story he gave his mother for going and also did not tell her that he was going to hitchhike to save money and hell just to do it. It sounded easy in the book. So he went south little to hit Route 6 (a more easterly part of that road in upstate New York which Sal unsuccessfully started his trip on). There he met a young guy, kind of short, black hair, built like a football player who called himself Ti Jean, claimed he was French- Canadian and hailed from Nashua up in New Hampshire but had been living in Barnstable for the summer and was now heading west to see what that summer of love was all about.
Bart was ecstatic to have somebody to kind of show him the ropes, what to do and don’t do on the road to keep moving along. So they travelled together for a while, a long while first hitting New York City where Ti Jean knew a bunch of older guys, gypsy poets, sullen hipsters, con men, drifters and grifters, guys who looked like they had just come out some “beat” movie. Guys who knew what was what about Times Square, about dope, about saying adieu to the American dream of their parents to be free to do as they pleased. Good guys though who taught him a few things about the road since they said they had been on that road since the 1940s.
Ti Jean whose did not look that old said he was there with them, had blown out of Brockton after graduating high school where he had been an outstanding sprinter who could have had a scholarship if his grades had been better. Had gone to prep school in Providence to up his marks, had then been given a track scholarship to Brown, kind of blew that off when Providence seemed too provincial to him, had fled to New York one fine day where he sailed out for a while in the merchant marines to do his bit for the war effort. Hanging around New York in between sailings he met guys who were serious about reading, serious about talking about what they read, and serious about not being caught in anything but what pleased them for the moment. Some of this was self-taught, some picked up from the hipsters and hustlers.
After the war was over, still off-center about what to do about this writing bug that kept gnawing at him despite everybody, his minute wife, his love mother, his carping father telling him to get a profession writing wasn’t where any dough was, any dough for him he met this guy, a hard knocks guys who was something like a plebeian philosopher king, Ned Connelly, who was crazy to fix up cars and drive them, drive them anyway. Which was great since Ti Jean didn’t have a license, didn’t know step one about how to shift gears and hated driving although he loved riding shot-gun getting all blasted on the dope in the glove compartment and the be-bop jazz on the radio. So they tagged along together for a couple of years, zigged and zagged across the continent, hell, went to Mexico too to get that primo dope that he/they craved, got drunk as skunks more times than you could shake a stick, got laid more times than you would think by girls who you would not suspect were horny but were, worked a few short jobs picking produce in the California fields, stole when there was no work, pimped a couple of girls for a while to get a stake and had a hell of time while the “squares” were doing whatever squares do. And then he wrote some book about it, a book that was never published because there were too many squares who could not relate to what he and Ned were about. He was hoping that the kids he saw on the road, kids like Bart would keep the thing moving along as he left Bart at the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge on their last ride together.
Then Bart woke up, woke up to the fact that he stayed on the road too short a time now looking back on it. That guy Ti Jean had it right though, live fast, drink hard and let the rest of it take care of itself. Thanks Markin.
If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83-Once More Into The Time Capsule
If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83-
CD Review
Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001
"Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:
Disc One; Woody Guthrie on “Hard Travelin’”, Big Bill Broonzy on “Black , Brown And White”, Jean Ritchie on “Nottamun Town”, Josh White on “One Meat Ball” Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”, Cisco Houston on “Midnight Special”, The Weavers on “Wasn’t That A Time”, Glenn Yarborough on “Spanish Is A Loving Tongue”, Odetta on “I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain”, The New Lost City Ramblers on “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down”, Bob Gibson and Bob Camp on “Betty And Dupree”, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on “San Francisco Bay Blues”, Peggy Seeger on “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, Hoyt Axton on “Greenback Dollar” and Carolyn Hester on “Turn And Swing Jubilee”."
Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”. Like everyone else from the “Generation of ‘68” who paid attention to folk music on their way to greater social and political consciousness I know this song from Pete Seeger’s rendition. I only knew the name Malvina Reynolds much later. I only ‘knew’ the musical work of Ms. Reynold much later through the efforts of Rosalie Sorrels who did a whole CD compilation of Malvina's work (reviewed in this space). The lyrics to “Little Boxes”, by the way, are a very concise and condensed expression of the way many of us were feeling about the future bourgeois society had set up for us back in the early 1960s. As the song details-it was not pretty. I submit that it still is not pretty.
Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems
Little Boxes
Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1990. Malvina and her husband were on their way from where they lived in Berkeley, through San Francisco and down the peninsula to La Honda where she was to sing at a meeting of the Friends’ Committee on Legislation (not the PTA, as Pete Seeger says in the documentary about Malvina, “Love It Like a Fool”). As she drove through Daly City, she said “Bud, take the wheel. I feel a song coming on.”
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.
And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
By Music Critic Bart Webber
Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in (and the former two never got over since they will still tell a tale or two about the times if you go anywhere within ten miles of the subject-I will take my chances here because this notice is important) all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. That is where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers who sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
But there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some other colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s where some of those names played but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.
Yeah, out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is different, where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. Tough too when you landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes.
The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. She was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels
Rosalie's friend Malvina Reynolds
Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001
"Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:
Disc One; Woody Guthrie on “Hard Travelin’”, Big Bill Broonzy on “Black , Brown And White”, Jean Ritchie on “Nottamun Town”, Josh White on “One Meat Ball” Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”, Cisco Houston on “Midnight Special”, The Weavers on “Wasn’t That A Time”, Glenn Yarborough on “Spanish Is A Loving Tongue”, Odetta on “I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain”, The New Lost City Ramblers on “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down”, Bob Gibson and Bob Camp on “Betty And Dupree”, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on “San Francisco Bay Blues”, Peggy Seeger on “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, Hoyt Axton on “Greenback Dollar” and Carolyn Hester on “Turn And Swing Jubilee”."
Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”. Like everyone else from the “Generation of ‘68” who paid attention to folk music on their way to greater social and political consciousness I know this song from Pete Seeger’s rendition. I only knew the name Malvina Reynolds much later. I only ‘knew’ the musical work of Ms. Reynold much later through the efforts of Rosalie Sorrels who did a whole CD compilation of Malvina's work (reviewed in this space). The lyrics to “Little Boxes”, by the way, are a very concise and condensed expression of the way many of us were feeling about the future bourgeois society had set up for us back in the early 1960s. As the song details-it was not pretty. I submit that it still is not pretty.
Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems
Little Boxes
Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1990. Malvina and her husband were on their way from where they lived in Berkeley, through San Francisco and down the peninsula to La Honda where she was to sing at a meeting of the Friends’ Committee on Legislation (not the PTA, as Pete Seeger says in the documentary about Malvina, “Love It Like a Fool”). As she drove through Daly City, she said “Bud, take the wheel. I feel a song coming on.”
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.
And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
Reflections On Memorial Day, 2017 At The Vietnam Memorial Wall-Fritz Taylor’s Endless War
Reflections On Memorial Day, 2017 At The Vietnam Memorial Wall-Fritz Taylor’s Endless War
By Josh Breslin
Fritz Taylor, Vietnam veteran, 1969-1971, 4th Infantry, always claimed long after he had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace, after he had earned the right to oppose the bloody damn thing having been up close and personal that some of his fellow veterans had been shortchanged when it came to the crying wall, crying for him every time he went down to D.C. and was drawn to, had to pay his respects to his fallen comrades. He knew that each name inscribed on that black granite had paid their dues. No question.
This year he happened to be in D.C. on Memorial Day and so as it turned out quite by accident his “duty” to his fallen comrades, especially hometown boys Eric Slater and Jimmy Jenkins Fritz forever etched in stone there, he had caught part of the annual ceremony. Righteous Fritz who went he went over to the peace side of the equation probably had logged more jail time than was good for him with acts of civil disobedience when he wanted to make a point about the current wave of endless wars, moreover did not have any issue when new names of those who were missing in action somehow had gotten repatriated or had been accounted for by some other method. (See above for additions to this year’s crying wall). What grieved Fritz was those like his friend from Vietnam days, Johnny Ridge, a working class kid from Steubenville out in Ohio near the river who after many years of suffering psychic wounds received in Vietnam jumped into that Ohio River. Or another friend from anti-war soldier days, Manny Gibbons who spent his last few years fighting cancer which the doctors directly related to his exposure to Agent Orange. There were others whose stories he knew but those two accounts will do to make this point.
Fritz, righteous Fritz, that day once again promised his lost comrades that he would work until he went to his own not too distant death to get their names etched in stone. Vietnam will never end for one Fritz John Taylor, or a lot of other guys either.
On the 100th Anniversary Year Of The Armistice That Stopped The Blood Bath Of World War And Swept Away The Flower Of A Generation-From The Pen Of Ernest Hemingway On Love And War- "A Farewell To Arms"
Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the great American writer, Ernest Hemingway.
BOOK REVIEW
A FAREWELL TO ARMS, ERNEST HEMINGWAY, GROVE PRESS, 1997
I have spent a political lifetime arguing that the nature of modern society turned on the dramatic and deadly events that became what we know in history as World War I. A Farewell to Arms is Ernest Hemingway’s attempt to come to grips with that notion in novelistic form. He combines the two themes that he is noted for and accomplished at - love and war- and demonstrates how hard that combination is on the love side of the equation. Here we find the first flourishes of that angst, desperation and sense of futility in the persons of the main characters, a young fancy-free American officer and a British nurse who had recently lost her fiancé in battle, that would characterize the survivors of the war- the "lost generation".
When I reviewed Hemingway’s "The Sun Also Rises" I argued that Scott Fitzgerald had the truer ear for the pathos of the "lost generation" after the war. I also noted that Hemingway had a much better ear and style for the love and war combination. Here Hemingway clearly wins. Maybe it is the trauma of war that makes his sparseness of language and stripped emotion work. Maybe it is his eternal quest for honor and the other attributes of machismo closely associated with the war experience. Maybe it is because he could just flat-out write a hell of a war story. But, damn, you had better read this novel if you want to know what writing is all about.
BOOK REVIEW
A FAREWELL TO ARMS, ERNEST HEMINGWAY, GROVE PRESS, 1997
I have spent a political lifetime arguing that the nature of modern society turned on the dramatic and deadly events that became what we know in history as World War I. A Farewell to Arms is Ernest Hemingway’s attempt to come to grips with that notion in novelistic form. He combines the two themes that he is noted for and accomplished at - love and war- and demonstrates how hard that combination is on the love side of the equation. Here we find the first flourishes of that angst, desperation and sense of futility in the persons of the main characters, a young fancy-free American officer and a British nurse who had recently lost her fiancé in battle, that would characterize the survivors of the war- the "lost generation".
When I reviewed Hemingway’s "The Sun Also Rises" I argued that Scott Fitzgerald had the truer ear for the pathos of the "lost generation" after the war. I also noted that Hemingway had a much better ear and style for the love and war combination. Here Hemingway clearly wins. Maybe it is the trauma of war that makes his sparseness of language and stripped emotion work. Maybe it is his eternal quest for honor and the other attributes of machismo closely associated with the war experience. Maybe it is because he could just flat-out write a hell of a war story. But, damn, you had better read this novel if you want to know what writing is all about.
We Are In A Cold Civil War In America-No Platform For Fascists-No Platform For Nazis Or KKK Either-Join And Built The People’s Resistance
We Are In A Cold Civil War In America-No Platform For Fascists-No Platform For Nazis Or KKK Either-Join And Built The People’s Resistance
By Frank Jackman
Sometimes out in the political hustings you come across a piece of written propaganda which hits you exactly where you live. Expresses your sentiments better than you could on your own. That is the case with the small, inexpensive paper leaflet attached above that I picked up, or was handed, at an anti-fascist demonstration last summer on the Boston Common which I was covering for this publication. I subsequently received the same copies at a few other anti-fascist rallies and stand-outs again not sure which I picked up and which were handed although that is of no import to the political message stated. This “pick-up” “handed” conundrum the result of the fact that I grab one way or another every piece of literature that I come across at any rallies or such events that I cover or take part in.
I headlined the beginning of this piece with the statement that we are in a cold civil war in this country, in America, and have been for a while, maybe the last twenty years at least but that fact has only been pushed in our faces bigtime since the age of Trump began where all the contradictions, all the divisions and all the cultural clashes have become part of the daily political battleground. There have been over the past year or so some important nodal points making that cold civil get at least momentarily hotter-one was horrendous Charlottesville which put all on notice that the divisions were deep and maybe had reached some boiling point. Make no mistake that Charlottesville was a “victory” for what passes as the Alt-Right, Nazi-Fascist-KKK-Militia combine which has been emboldened by the rise of the Trump reaction. Another was the recent nationwide student lead-high school student-led so you know this is something very different on the political horizon which was a “victory” for our side, for the people’s resistance which is important if we can keep up the momentum.
One of the problems if you will of our side is that some people, a lot of people, many of whom have only recently come to political life have many mixed and confused feelings about what to do to stop the Alt-Right-Nazis-Fascist-KKK in their tracks. Have bought into at least partially the notion that these bastards have some “right” to free speech that we must respect. That we must expend political capital defending. Forget that noise as the later Pete Markin, a guy I grew up with and who gave me plenty of political insights said and would say today as well. We as private citizens and not governmental agents so have no obligation to defend such rights to free speech under any constitutional theory.
But the Constitution is only the bedrock of running a civil society. We the people of the resistance have to be clear that we do not support any right for the Alt-Right-Fascist-Nazi-KKK-Militia cabal to free speech to spew their genocidal, ethnic-cleansing, race war programs. And that, as history shows us, and everybody should read the history of the rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, is their calling card, their intention and we had better be clear that we have to nip that movement in the bud. Not only by confronting them across the police lines, police lines there to protect them and their so-called right to free speech but to make sure they find not havens, no platforms, to spew their hateful messages. So yes so-called free speech issues take a very far back seat to the fight against the intentions of these monsters if we don’t stop them. Believe me they don’t give three-fifth of a damn about our free speech rights, will see us in hell first another sign we are in a cold civil war situation. More later.
When Soldiers Of Fortune Held Forth In The Central American Night (And Were Well Paid)- Tom Cruise’s “American Made” (2017)-A Film Review
When Soldiers Of Fortune Held Forth In The Central American
Night (And Were Well Paid)- Tom Cruise’s “American Made” (2017)-A Film Review
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DVD Review
Bart Webber
American Made, starring Tom Cruise, 2017
If you are going to be a drug smuggler you had better be
the best liar, con man, sell-out artist you can be otherwise you are going to
wind up in some dirty, dusty back road someplace with a couple of slugs in your
head and an unmarked grave in some stinking potter’s field far from home. This I
know. All of this the lying, conning (including to close long-time friends), selling-out
and falling down in some abandoned arroyo south of the border happened to my
old time high school friend Peter Paul Markin (the real Markin not Allan
Jackson who formerly headed the operations at this publication and took the Markin
moniker as an on-line identity-and nobody complained). Yeah, Markin fell under the
bus after making it through not unscathed in Vietnam and was never quite the
same especially when that golden age hippie minute evaporated under the counter-offensive
of the night-takers who have been running the show in this country ever since.
But Markin was small time, was just trying to feed his serious cocaine habit at
the end (a no-no if you are smuggling and tasting the product at the same time)
when he made a fatal move to go “indy” down in Mexico and got nothing but two
slugs in the head and a potter’s field grave for his efforts.
Which brings us to this
so-what based on fact true story about a serious upscale TWA commercial flight
go by the book pilot Barry Seal with a taste for the wild side, for the dough
side, who converts to drug smuggler extraordinaire in the film under review American Made.
Of course. any time you have a story line involving the
CIA, drug cartels, the DEA, Contras and who knows who else you should hold onto
your wallet. This is not supposed, at least in the director’s eyes, to be a
biopic since Tom Cruise as the lead character Barry Seal, the late Barry Seal
and the real one were very much unlike and moreover the story-line holds together
better if it is told as on screen. So take the plot for what it is worth but
know that Barry had a taste for the wild side beyond the bags full of money he
was making in his very useful skilled profession as an ace pilot.
You need a scorecard in any case to work through the
cons, lies etc of this one. Barry an unhappy TWA pilot with a gaggle of kids
and a good-looking wife meets up with the CIA who need some help with the troublesome
growing insurgencies in Central and South America. Barry buys in if the price
is right and the plane is fast. Then the CIA wants him to be the bag man for their
guy in Panama. Which leads to the fatal collusion with the very interested drug
cartels starting their big-time cocaine runs heading north. Naturally through
all this Barry is living high off the hog and a charmed live. Until. Until things
go awry as he expands his operations and is caught. Not good for a gringo with
much information to offer to save his own skin. Vaya con dios Barry once the
cartel sends its hit men north. See, high end or low like Markin when you play
with that fire it is every person for him or herself. A nice swift moving
action film which Mr. Cruise is well-known for with a shade bit more nuance in
the role than the usual bang-bang operations he is cinematically involved in.
Monday, June 18, 2018
In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Robert Seth Hayes
In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Robert Seth Hayes
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
HAYES, ROBERT SETH
BLACK LIBERATION ARMY POLITICAL PRISONER
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