Feds extend deadline for comments on future draft
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COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559 www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist |
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Feds extend deadline for comments on future draft Courage to Resist 5/22/2018 12:15 AM To support the resistance Feds extend deadline for public comments on future draft The feds initially provided only a few days for the public to submit comments regarding the future of the draft in the United States. This mirrored their process of announcing public hearings with only a few days notice. Due to pressure, they have extended the deadline for your online comments until September. They need to hear from us! It's time to end draft registration once and for all. Don't expand the draft to women. End it for everyone. No national service linked to the military--including immigration enforcement. Until the US is invaded by a foreign power, stop pretending that the draft is about anything other than empire. Submit your own comments online here. As we have been reporting to you, a federal commission has been formed to address the future of draft registration in the United States and whether the draft should end or be extended. The press release states "The Commission wants to learn why people serve and why people don’t; the barriers to participation; whether modifications to the selective service system are needed; ways to increase the number of Americans in service; and more." Public hearings are currently scheduled for the following cities. We encourage folks to attend these hearings by checking the commission's website for the actual dates and locations of these hearings (usually annouced only days before). June 26/27, 2018: Iowa City, IA June 28/29, 2018: Chicago, IL July 19/20, 2018: Waco, TX August 16/17, 2018: Memphis, TN September 19/21, 2018: Los Angeles, CA For more background information, read our recent post "Why is the government soliciting feedback on the draft now?" And if you haven't yet, check out our podcast on this issue . . . hasbrouck Courage to Resist Podcast: The Future of Draft Registration in the United States We had draft registration resister Edward Hasbrouck on the Courage to Resistpodcast this week to explain what's going on. Edward talks about his own history of going to prison for refusing to register for the draft in 1983, the background on this new federal commission, and addresses liberal arguments in favor of involuntary service. Edward explains: ...When you say, "I'm not willing to be drafted", you're saying, "I'm going to make my own choices about which wars we should be fighting", and when you say, "You should submit to the draft", you're saying, "You should let the politicians decide for you." What's happening right now is that a National C… COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT! 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559 www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist Change email address / Leave mailing list Powered by YMLP
Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s
Song Of The Same Name In Mind
By Fritz Taylor
[Sam Lowell and I have known each other for a long time, since
a time back in the 1970s when our paths met at an anti-war veterans’ conference
in New York (a conference which would wind up setting up a Vietnam Veterans
Against the War [VVAW] chapter in his hometown area in Boston and mine in my
hometown Atlanta, Georgia area. We would see each in places we were protesting
one or another egregious acts of the American government, the American military
against some poor benighted country that got caught in the cross-hairs of some
fool president. Later, after the ebb tide of the anti-war, the Vietnam anti-war
had happened we connected in other ways via our veteran connection and I would,
at his request, write something veteran-related that he could not put a handle
on. Something that Allan Jackson, who was the editor then when this publication
was in hard-copy form, would accept and for when I needed some ready cash.
The subject matter of this piece, Sam’s not being at peace
with himself is done with his permission since it is such a personal and
emotional matter. None of us men from the Vietnam era, soldier or civilian, political
activist or not, have been as forthcoming as the younger men who have come
after us, our children and now grandchildren (I dare not say
great-grandchildren but I know some of us ae in that category). We were all
about change and seeking a newer world as a guy named Markin, also a vet, who
didn’t make it through used to say but we were more like our World War II
fathers when it came to speaking of personal matters. A shame. This piece while
not a breakthrough since we have been mulling things over the past few years,
is a big step for Sam and me, Sam to narrate and me to write about such
matters.
The conversations we had around putting this piece together
actually happened a couple of years ago just after, as will be noted below, his
long-time companion, Laura Perkins, not wife, for he had had three of those and
they both agreed they were better off just living together since she had been
married twice had left their house (Sam had made us laugh one time when he
mentioned that it was cheaper too between alimony and child support). This
piece was, is something of a therapy session for Sam’s angst at Laura’s leaving
and his inability to put out the fire in his head. We decided to put it aside
for a while until it made sense to publish the results of those conversations.
Better Sam and Laura have been talking again since both recognized that the
bonds between them were very strong and they both, frankly, my frankly, missed
each other’s company. Sam is really sending Laura a bouquet on this one. And I am glad to play the florist. Fritz
Taylor]
************
Sam Lowell was, is a queer duck, an odd-ball kind of guy who
couldn’t stop keeping his head from exploding with about seventeen ideas at
once and the determination to do all seventeen come hell or high water. And not
seventeen things like mowing the lawn or taking out the rubbish but what he
called “projects” which in Sam’s case meant political projects and writings and
other things along that line. Yeah, couldn’t put out “the fire in his head” the
way he told it to his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, one night at supper
after she had confronted him with her observation, and not for the first time,
that he was getting more irritable, was more often short with her of late, had
seemed distant, had seemed to be drifting into some bad place, a place where he
was not at peace with himself. That not “at peace” with himself an expression
that Laura had coined that night to express the way that she saw his current
demeanor. That would be the expression he would use in his group therapy group
to describe his condition when they met later that week. Would almost shout out
the words in despair when the moderator-psychologist asked him pointedly
whether he felt at peace with himself at that moment and he pointed responded
immediately that he was not. Maybe it was at that point, more probably though
that night when Laura confronted him with his own mirror-self that told Sam his
was one troubled man.
Yea, it was that seventeen things in order and full steam
ahead that got him in trouble on more than on occasion. The need to do so the
real villain of the piece. See Sam had just turned seventy and so he should
have been trying to slow down, slow down enough to not try to keep doing those
seventeen things like he had when he was twenty or thirty but no he was not
organically capable of doing so, at least until the other shoe dropped. Dropped
hard.
It was that “other shoe” dropping that made him take stock
of his situation, although it had been too little too late. One afternoon a few
days after that stormy group therapy session he laid down on his bed to just
think through what was driving him to distraction, driving that fury inside him
that would not let him be, as he tried to put on the fire in his head. That
laying down itself might have been its own breakthrough since he had expected,
had fiercely desired to finish up an article that he was writing on behalf a
peace walk that was to take place shortly up in Maine, a walk that was
dedicated to stopping the wars, mostly of the military-type but also of
environmental degradation against Mother Nature.
Sam, not normally introspective about his past, about the
events growing up that had formed him, events that had as he had told Laura on
more than one occasion almost destroyed him. So that was where he started,
started to try to find out why he could not relax, had to be “doing and making”
as Laura called it under happier circumstances, had to be fueling that fire in
his head. Realized that afternoon that as kid in order to survive he had
learned at a very young age that in order to placate (and avoid) his
overweening mother he had to keep his own counsel, had to go deep inside his
head to find solace from the storms around his house. For years he had thought
the driving force was because he was a middle child and thus had to fend for
himself while his parents (and grandparents) doted on respectively his younger
and older brothers. But no it had been deeper than that, had been driven by
feelings of inadequacy before his mother’s onslaught against his fragile
head.
As Sam traced how at three score and ten he could point to
various incidents that had driven him on, had almost made him organically
incapable of not ever having an active brain, of going off to some dark places
where the devils would not let him relax, that kept him going around and around
he realized that he was not able to relax on his own, would need something
greater than himself if he was to unwind. Laura had emphatically told him that
he would have to take that journey on his own, would have to settle himself
down if he was to gain any peace in his whole damn world. Sam suddenly noticed
after Laura had expressed her opinion that she had always been the picture of
calm, had been his rock when he was in his furies. Funny he had always
underestimated, always undervalued that calmness, that solid rock. He, in
frustration, at his own situation asked Laura how she had maintained the calm
that seemed to follow her around her world.
Laura, after stating that she too had her inner demons, had
to struggle with the same kind of demons that Sam had faced as a child and that
she still had difficulties maintaining an inner calm, told Sam that her daily
Buddha-like meditations had carried her to a better place. Sam was shocked at
her answer. He had always known that Laura was drawn to the spiritual trends
around their milieu, the “New Age stuff” he called her interest since it seemed
that she had taken tidbits from every new way to salvation outside of formal
religion (although she had had bouts with that as well discarding her Methodist
high heavens Jehovah you are on your own in this wicked old world upbringing
for the communal comfort of the Universalist-Unitarian brethren). He had
respected her various attempts to survive in the world the best way she could
but those roads were not for him, smacked too much of some new religion, some
new road that he could not travel on. But he was also desperate to be at peace,
a mantra that he was increasing using to describe his plight.
Then Laura suggested that they attend a de-stress program
that was being held at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as part of what
was billed as HUB-week, a week of medical, therapeutic, technological and
social events and programs started by a number of well-known institutions in
the Boston area like MGH, Harvard, MIT and others. Sam admitted to being
clueless about what a de-stress program would be about and had never heard of a
Doctor Benson who a million years before had written a best-selling book about
the knot the West had put itself in trying to get ahead and offered mediation
as a way out of the impasse. Sam was skeptical but agreed to go.
At the event which lasted about two hours various forms of
meditative practice were offered including music and laughter yoga. Sam in his skeptical
mind passed on those efforts. The one segment that drew his attention, the
first segment headed by this Doctor Benson had been centered on a simple
technique to reduce stress, to relax in fact was called the relax response.
Best of all the Doctor had invited each member of the audience to sample his
wares. Pick a word or short phrase to focus on, close your eyes, put your hands
on your lap and consecrate, really try to concentrate, on that picked term for
five minutes (the optimum is closer to ten plus minutes in an actual
situation).
Sam admitted candidly to Laura that while attempting
fitfully focusing on one thing, in his case the phrase “at peace,” he had
suffered many distractions but that he was very interested in pursuing the
practice since he had actually felt that he was getting somewhere before time
was called. Laura laughed at Sam’s response, so Sam-like expecting to master in
five minutes a technique that she had spent years trying to pursue and had not
been anywhere near totally focused yet. He asked her to help him to get started
and they did until Sam felt he could do the procedure on his own.
We now have to get back to that “other shoe” dropping though.
Although Sam had expressed his good intentions, had felt better after a while
Laura had felt that he needed to go on his journey without her. She too now
felt that she had to seek what she was looking for alone in this wicked world
despite how long they had been together. So Laura called it quits, moved out of
the house that she and Sam had lived in for years. Sam is alone on his journey
now, committed to trying to find some peace inside despite his heartbreak over
the loss of Laura. Every once in a while though in a non-meditative moment he
curses that fire in his head. Yeah, he wished he could have put out that fire
in his head long ago.
The Foibles Of The Mayfair Swells -The Film Adaptation Of Edith Warton’s The Age Of Innocence” (1934)-A Review
The Foibles Of The Mayfair Swells -The Film Adaptation Of Edith Warton’s The Age Of Innocence” (1934)-A Review
DVD Review
By Film Critic Sandy Salmon
The Age of Innocence, starring Irene Dunne, John Boles, based on Edith Wharton’s novel of the same name, 1934
A couple of points before I dig into a short review of the film under review, the cinematic adaptation of Edith Wharton’s classic Mayfair swells novel The Age Of Innocence (or maybe New York Knickerbocker society is better as a way to designate the high society in Manhattan around the turn of the 20th century). Edith Wharton like expatriate Henry James certainly knew the ins and outs, the mores, morals, and custom of New York high society and could write reams about it. Also I thought that only we Irish neighborhood bred denizens (brought up by grandparents Dan and Anna Riley in my case) were not the only ones who had a taboo against “airing dirty linen in public” if a view of the film is any true indication of what was going on in those inner city mansions and brownstones.
That said this story line done in a flashback form in a conversation between a grandfather and his errant grandson centers on the potentially illicit romance between a married woman, the Countess, played by Irene Dunne and a love struck high society lawyer, Newland Archer, played by John Boles who nevertheless is engaged to a proper young high society prospect which will unite two families like glue upon consummation. The drama, or maybe better put, melodrama, is the built up to the final decision by the Countess, a woman who has left her husband and was in the throes of seeking a divorce, very taboo in gentile society, hell, maybe all society then once she warms up to Newland. The tensions among the engaged and then newly-wedded couple, Newland’s infatuation with the Countess and the high society matrons attempts to put a lid on the affair drive the film. In the end Newland stays with his wife and spent the rest of his life longing for the Countess.
The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government
The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government
By Frank Jackman
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
*********
The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers’ government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.
That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.
Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when classic capitalism began to become the driving economic norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The most unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really came with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)
So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America, are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.
[A reference back to the American Communist Party’s work in the 1920s may be informative here. As mentioned above there was some confusion, no, a lot of confusion back then about building a labor party base on workers and farmers, a two -class party. While the demands of both groups may in some cases overlap farmers, except for farm hands, are small capitalists on the land. We need a program for such potential allies, petty bourgeois allies, but their demands are subordinate to labor’s in a workers’ party program. Fast forward to today and it is entirely possible, especially in light of the recent Occupy experiences, that some vague popular frontist trans-class movement might develop like the Labor Non-Partisan League that the labor skates put forward in the 1930s as a catch basin for all kinds of political tendencies. We, of course, would work in such formations fighting for a revolutionary perspective but this is not what we advocate for now.]
Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-A Rosalie Sorrels Potpourri- Utah Phillips, Idaho, Cafe Lena, Childhood Dreams and Such
For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-A Rosalie Sorrels Potpourri- Utah Phillips, Idaho, Cafe Lena, Childhood Dreams and Such
CD REVIEWS
Music For The Long Haul
If I Could Be The Rain, Rosalie Sorrels, Folk-Legacy Records, 2003 (originally recorded in 1967)
The first paragraph here has been used in reviewing other Rosalie Sorrels CDs in this space.
“My first association of the name Rosalie Sorrels with folk music came, many years ago now, from hearing the recently departed folk singer/storyteller/ songwriter and unrepentant Wobblie (IWW) Utah Phillips mention his long time friendship with her going back before he became known as a folksinger. I also recall that combination of Sorrels and Phillips as he performed his classic “Starlight On The Rails” and Rosalie his also classic “If I Could Be The Rain” on a PBS documentary honoring the Café Lena in Saratoga, New York, a place that I am also very familiar with for many personal and musical reasons. Of note here: it should be remembered that Rosalie saved, literally, many of the compositions that Utah left helter-skelter around the country in his “bumming” days.”
That said, what could be better than to have Rosalie pay an early musical tribute (1967) to one of her longest and dearest folk friends, her old comrade Utah Phillips, someone who it is apparent from this beautiful little CD was on the same wavelength as that old unrepentant Wobblie as well as a few of her own songs. I have reviewed Rosalie’s recent (2008) tribute CD to the departed Utah “Strangers In Another Country” elsewhere in this space. Here Rosalie takes a scattering of Utah’s work from various times and places and gives his songs her own distinctive twist. Those efforts include nice versions of “If I Could Be The Rain”, “Goodbye To Joe Hill” and “Starlight On The Rails”. From her own work “One More Next Time” and “Go With Me” stick out. And here is the real treat. Rosalie’s voice back in the old days was just as strong as it was in 2008 on “Strangers”. Nice.
If I Could Be The Rain-"Utah Phillips"
Everybody I know sings this song their own way, and they arrive at their own understanding of it. Guy Carawan does it as a sing along. I guess he thinks it must have some kind of universal appeal. To me, it's a very personal song. It's about events in my life that have to do with being in love. I very seldom sing it myself for those reasons.
If I could be the rain, I'd wash down to the sea;
If I could be the wind, there'd be no more of me;
If I could be the sunlight, and all the days were mine,
I would find some special place to shine.
But all the rain I'll ever be is locked up in my eyes,
When I hear the wind it only whispers sad goodbyes.
If I could hide the way I feel I'd never sing again;
Sometimes I wish that I could be the rain.
If I could be the rain, I'd wash down to the sea;
If I could be the wind, there'd be no more of me;
If I could hide the way I feel I'd never sing again;
Sometimes I wish that I could be the rain.
Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips
THE TELLING TAKES ME HOME
(Bruce Phillips)
Let me sing to you all those songs I know
Of the wild, windy places locked in timeless snow,
And the wide, crimson deserts where the muddy rivers flow.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
Come along with me to some places that I've been
Where people all look back and they still remember when,
And the quicksilver legends, like sunlight, turn and bend
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
Walk along some wagon road, down the iron rail,
Past the rusty Cadillacs that mark the boom town trail,
Where dreamers never win and doers never fail,
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
I'll sing of my amigos, come from down below,
Whisper in their loving tongue the songs of Mexico.
They work their stolen Eden, lost so long ago.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
I'll tell you all some lies, just made up for fun,
And the loudest, meanest brag, it can beat the fastest gun.
I'll show you all some graves that tell where the West was won.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
And I'll sing about an emptiness the East has never known,
Where coyotes don't pay taxes and a man can live alone,
And you've got to walk forever just to find a telephone.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
Let me sing to you all those songs I know
Of the wild, windy places locked in timeless snow,
And the wide, crimson deserts where the muddy rivers flow.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STARLIGHT ON THE RAILS
(Bruce Phillips)
I can hear the whistle blowing
High and lonesome as can be
Outside the rain is softly falling
Tonight its falling just for me
Looking back along the road I've traveled
The miles can tell a million tales
Each year is like some rolling freight train
And cold as starlight on the rails
I think about a wife and family
My home and all the things it means
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams
A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time
A man who spends his life just rambling
Is like a song without a rhyme
If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83
By Music Critic Bart Webber
Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.
(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)
Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned 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 the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). 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, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is 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. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people 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 than lost loves and longings.
Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)
Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion 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 banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of 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 and thoughst of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels
CD REVIEWS
Music For The Long Haul
If I Could Be The Rain, Rosalie Sorrels, Folk-Legacy Records, 2003 (originally recorded in 1967)
The first paragraph here has been used in reviewing other Rosalie Sorrels CDs in this space.
“My first association of the name Rosalie Sorrels with folk music came, many years ago now, from hearing the recently departed folk singer/storyteller/ songwriter and unrepentant Wobblie (IWW) Utah Phillips mention his long time friendship with her going back before he became known as a folksinger. I also recall that combination of Sorrels and Phillips as he performed his classic “Starlight On The Rails” and Rosalie his also classic “If I Could Be The Rain” on a PBS documentary honoring the Café Lena in Saratoga, New York, a place that I am also very familiar with for many personal and musical reasons. Of note here: it should be remembered that Rosalie saved, literally, many of the compositions that Utah left helter-skelter around the country in his “bumming” days.”
That said, what could be better than to have Rosalie pay an early musical tribute (1967) to one of her longest and dearest folk friends, her old comrade Utah Phillips, someone who it is apparent from this beautiful little CD was on the same wavelength as that old unrepentant Wobblie as well as a few of her own songs. I have reviewed Rosalie’s recent (2008) tribute CD to the departed Utah “Strangers In Another Country” elsewhere in this space. Here Rosalie takes a scattering of Utah’s work from various times and places and gives his songs her own distinctive twist. Those efforts include nice versions of “If I Could Be The Rain”, “Goodbye To Joe Hill” and “Starlight On The Rails”. From her own work “One More Next Time” and “Go With Me” stick out. And here is the real treat. Rosalie’s voice back in the old days was just as strong as it was in 2008 on “Strangers”. Nice.
If I Could Be The Rain-"Utah Phillips"
Everybody I know sings this song their own way, and they arrive at their own understanding of it. Guy Carawan does it as a sing along. I guess he thinks it must have some kind of universal appeal. To me, it's a very personal song. It's about events in my life that have to do with being in love. I very seldom sing it myself for those reasons.
If I could be the rain, I'd wash down to the sea;
If I could be the wind, there'd be no more of me;
If I could be the sunlight, and all the days were mine,
I would find some special place to shine.
But all the rain I'll ever be is locked up in my eyes,
When I hear the wind it only whispers sad goodbyes.
If I could hide the way I feel I'd never sing again;
Sometimes I wish that I could be the rain.
If I could be the rain, I'd wash down to the sea;
If I could be the wind, there'd be no more of me;
If I could hide the way I feel I'd never sing again;
Sometimes I wish that I could be the rain.
Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips
THE TELLING TAKES ME HOME
(Bruce Phillips)
Let me sing to you all those songs I know
Of the wild, windy places locked in timeless snow,
And the wide, crimson deserts where the muddy rivers flow.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
Come along with me to some places that I've been
Where people all look back and they still remember when,
And the quicksilver legends, like sunlight, turn and bend
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
Walk along some wagon road, down the iron rail,
Past the rusty Cadillacs that mark the boom town trail,
Where dreamers never win and doers never fail,
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
I'll sing of my amigos, come from down below,
Whisper in their loving tongue the songs of Mexico.
They work their stolen Eden, lost so long ago.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
I'll tell you all some lies, just made up for fun,
And the loudest, meanest brag, it can beat the fastest gun.
I'll show you all some graves that tell where the West was won.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
And I'll sing about an emptiness the East has never known,
Where coyotes don't pay taxes and a man can live alone,
And you've got to walk forever just to find a telephone.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
Let me sing to you all those songs I know
Of the wild, windy places locked in timeless snow,
And the wide, crimson deserts where the muddy rivers flow.
It's sad, but the telling takes me home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STARLIGHT ON THE RAILS
(Bruce Phillips)
I can hear the whistle blowing
High and lonesome as can be
Outside the rain is softly falling
Tonight its falling just for me
Looking back along the road I've traveled
The miles can tell a million tales
Each year is like some rolling freight train
And cold as starlight on the rails
I think about a wife and family
My home and all the things it means
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams
A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time
A man who spends his life just rambling
Is like a song without a rhyme
On The 100th Anniversary -The Bolsheviks: A Party Ready to Take Power (Quote of the Week)
On The 100th Anniversary -The Bolsheviks: A Party Ready to Take Power (Quote of the Week)
The Bolsheviks: A Party Ready to Take Power
(Quote of the Week)
The Provisional Government that emerged after the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, which overthrew tsarist rule, was capitalist and committed to launching a new military offensive in the interimperialist First World War. Speaking at the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, V. I. Lenin denounced Menshevik leaders like Irakli Tsereteli, who served in the Provisional Government as the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. In counterposition, Lenin called for a soviet government based on workers and soldiers councils and asserted the willingness of the Bolsheviks to take power. The Bolsheviks were a minority at the Congress, while the Mensheviks and petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionaries were the majority. By the time of the Second Congress four months later, the Bolsheviks had become the majority. Lenin’s struggle paved the way for the victory of soviet power in the October Revolution.
According to the previous speaker, the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs...there was no political party in Russia expressing its readiness to assume full power. I reply: “Yes, there is. No party can refuse this, and our Party certainly doesn’t. It is ready to take over full power at any moment.”...
Side by side with a government in which the landowners and capitalists now have a majority, the Soviets arose, a representative institution unparalleled and unprecedented anywhere in the world in strength, an institution which you are killing by taking part in a coalition Ministry of the bourgeoisie. In reality, the Russian revolution has made the revolutionary struggle from below against the capitalist governments welcome everywhere, in all countries, with three times as much sympathy as before. The question is one of advance or retreat. No one can stand still during a revolution. That is why the offensive is a turn in the Russian revolution, in the political and economic rather than the strategic sense. An offensive now means the continuation of the imperialist slaughter and the death of more hundreds of thousands, of millions of people—objectively, irrespective of the will or awareness of this or that Minister, with the aim of strangling Persia and other weak nations. Power transferred to the revolutionary proletariat, supported by the poor peasants, means a transition to revolutionary struggle for peace in the surest and most painless forms ever known to mankind, a transition to a state of affairs under which the power and victory of the revolutionary workers will be ensured in Russia and throughout the world. (Applause from part of the audience.)
—V. I. Lenin, “Speech on the Attitude Towards the Provisional Government” (June 1917)
| ||||||||
For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-In Honor Of Lena Spencer- Caffé Lena And Saratoga’s Folk Scene
For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-In Honor Of Lena Spencer- Caffé Lena And Saratoga’s Folk Scene
Caffé Lena, Kate McGarrigle and various artists, directed by Stephen Trombley, Miramar Production, 1991
I know of the work of, and have reviewed in this space, the late Utah Phillips, Rosalie Sorrels, obviously Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, The McGarrigle family, David Bromberg and many of the other “singing” heads that populate this tribute documentary or found their way to Café Lena’s. Lena Spencer, owner, operator (and, from all accounts off-hand fairy godmother), through thick and thin, as thoroughly documented here , of Saratoga’s Café Lena was the impresario of the upstate New York’s booming 1960s folk scene. So there is a certain sense of déjà vu in viewing this film. This documentary film was probably as much about our youthful dreams and ambitions (and that hard musical road, although voluntarily chosen) as it was a tribute to Lena.
I know Saratoga and its environs well and if New York City’s Greenwich Village and Cambridge’s Harvard Square are better known in the 1960s folk revival geography that locale can serve as the folk crowd’s summer watering hole (and refuge from life’s storms all year round). From the descriptions of the café ‘s lifestyle and of the off-beat personality of Lena it also was a veritable experiment in ad hoc communal living). The folkies that did find found refuge there have been interesting behind- the- scenes stories to tell about Len that make this a very nice slice of history of the folk revival of the 1960s.
A special note to kind of bring us full circle. My first CD review of folksinger Rosalie Sorrels and the late Utah Phillips combined works together, who are highlighted in this documentary along with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, mentioned a spark of renewed recognition kindled on my part by the famous folk coffee house “The Café Lena” in Saratoga Springs, New York. Thus, it is rather fitting that Rosalie performs Utah’s “If I Could Be The Rain” and Utah his “Starlight On The Rails” here. Even more fitting are the McGarrigles performing their “Talk To Me Of Mendocino”, song composed in honor of Lena.
"Talk to Me of Mendocino"
written by Kate McGarrigle
© 1975 Garden Court Music (ASCAP)
I bid farewell to the state of old New York
My home away from home
In the state of New York I came of age
When first I started roaming
And the trees grow high in New York State
And they shine like gold in the autumn
Never had the blues from whence I came
But in New York State I got 'em
Talk to me of Mendocino
Closing my eyes I hear the sea
Must I wait
Must I follow
Won't you say come with me
And it's on to South Bend, Indiana
Flat out on the western plain
Rise up over the Rockies
And down on into California
Out to where but the rocks again
And let the sun set on the ocean
I will watch it from the shore
Let the sun rise over the redwoods
I'll rise with it till I rise no more
Talk to me of Mendocino
Closing my eyes I hear the sea
Must I wait
Must I follow
Won't you say come with me
If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83 (June 2017)
By Music Critic Bart Webber
Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, 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 got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute (that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze. (I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important)
Those urban locales were the high white note spots 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, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and character in her own right, 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 rounded out his personality. 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 going for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). 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
Caffé Lena, Kate McGarrigle and various artists, directed by Stephen Trombley, Miramar Production, 1991
I know of the work of, and have reviewed in this space, the late Utah Phillips, Rosalie Sorrels, obviously Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, The McGarrigle family, David Bromberg and many of the other “singing” heads that populate this tribute documentary or found their way to Café Lena’s. Lena Spencer, owner, operator (and, from all accounts off-hand fairy godmother), through thick and thin, as thoroughly documented here , of Saratoga’s Café Lena was the impresario of the upstate New York’s booming 1960s folk scene. So there is a certain sense of déjà vu in viewing this film. This documentary film was probably as much about our youthful dreams and ambitions (and that hard musical road, although voluntarily chosen) as it was a tribute to Lena.
I know Saratoga and its environs well and if New York City’s Greenwich Village and Cambridge’s Harvard Square are better known in the 1960s folk revival geography that locale can serve as the folk crowd’s summer watering hole (and refuge from life’s storms all year round). From the descriptions of the café ‘s lifestyle and of the off-beat personality of Lena it also was a veritable experiment in ad hoc communal living). The folkies that did find found refuge there have been interesting behind- the- scenes stories to tell about Len that make this a very nice slice of history of the folk revival of the 1960s.
A special note to kind of bring us full circle. My first CD review of folksinger Rosalie Sorrels and the late Utah Phillips combined works together, who are highlighted in this documentary along with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, mentioned a spark of renewed recognition kindled on my part by the famous folk coffee house “The Café Lena” in Saratoga Springs, New York. Thus, it is rather fitting that Rosalie performs Utah’s “If I Could Be The Rain” and Utah his “Starlight On The Rails” here. Even more fitting are the McGarrigles performing their “Talk To Me Of Mendocino”, song composed in honor of Lena.
"Talk to Me of Mendocino"
written by Kate McGarrigle
© 1975 Garden Court Music (ASCAP)
I bid farewell to the state of old New York
My home away from home
In the state of New York I came of age
When first I started roaming
And the trees grow high in New York State
And they shine like gold in the autumn
Never had the blues from whence I came
But in New York State I got 'em
Talk to me of Mendocino
Closing my eyes I hear the sea
Must I wait
Must I follow
Won't you say come with me
And it's on to South Bend, Indiana
Flat out on the western plain
Rise up over the Rockies
And down on into California
Out to where but the rocks again
And let the sun set on the ocean
I will watch it from the shore
Let the sun rise over the redwoods
I'll rise with it till I rise no more
Talk to me of Mendocino
Closing my eyes I hear the sea
Must I wait
Must I follow
Won't you say come with me
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