PETITION: Demand Congress protect Oak Flat from ecological devastation
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Saturday, February 09, 2019
2/10 Worcester Report Back: WFP Cuba Food Justice Delegation
2/10 Worcester Report Back: WFP Cuba Food Justice Delegation
Worcester Report Back: WFP Cuba Food Justice Delegation
Sun. Feb 19th 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Stone Soup
<https://www.facebook.com/stonesoupworcester/?eid=ARCnnLKb4Cv2yNohgaoUOUMcAyWf1x8oRygle3i1wxr2kujNGL9jBmvchYE_afQV2u9A3JAzVx0jzOrw>
4 King St, Worcester, Massachusetts 01610
Come join Witness for Peace New England
<https://www.facebook.com/WFPnewengland/> at Stone Soup
<https://www.facebook.com/stonesoupworcester/> on Sunday Feb. 10th at
6:30 pm for a community dinner and report back from our food justice
delegation to Cuba last month.
From December 12-21, a mostly Boston-based group of urban farmers and
activists of color from the Urban Farming Institute of Boston
<https://www.facebook.com/urbanfarminginstituteboston/>, Farmers
Collaborative <https://www.facebook.com/farmcollab/>, Healing, Empathy,
Redemption, Oasis <https://www.facebook.com/herocenter22/>, The Food
Project <https://www.facebook.com/thefoodproject/>, Spanish Immersion
<https://www.facebook.com/spanish.immersion.3> and other organizations
traveled in solidarity to Havana, Artemisa and Pinar del Río, alongside
the Centro Memorial "Martin Luther King"
<https://www.facebook.com/MartinLutherKing30/>, in order to learn about
sustainable food, farming and activism.
Meet our delegates as they share photos and stories, explain useful
practices in agroecology and community resilience, discuss
cross-movement solidarity building, and give updates on how they have
been incorporating lessons from Cuba into their own work for food
sovereignty and environmental justice.
We will have art, literature and artesanía for sale to help support
scholarships for this delegation, and will also provide information on
an upcoming Worcester-based delegation to Cuba in June 2019! Please
reach out to Lee at 857-636-8479 or Shahbaz A. Soofi
<https://www.facebook.com/M.shahbazA.soofi> if you have any questions or
are able to bring a dish for our community dinner!
https://www.facebook.com/events/461907331009141/
______________________________
Act-MA mailing list
Act-MA@act-ma.org
http://act-ma.org/mailman/listinfo/act-ma_act-ma.org
To set options or unsubscribe
http://act-ma.org/mailman/options/act-ma_act-ma.org
Sun. Feb 19th 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Stone Soup
<https://www.facebook.com/stonesoupworcester/?eid=ARCnnLKb4Cv2yNohgaoUOUMcAyWf1x8oRygle3i1wxr2kujNGL9jBmvchYE_afQV2u9A3JAzVx0jzOrw>
4 King St, Worcester, Massachusetts 01610
Come join Witness for Peace New England
<https://www.facebook.com/WFPnewengland/> at Stone Soup
<https://www.facebook.com/stonesoupworcester/> on Sunday Feb. 10th at
6:30 pm for a community dinner and report back from our food justice
delegation to Cuba last month.
From December 12-21, a mostly Boston-based group of urban farmers and
activists of color from the Urban Farming Institute of Boston
<https://www.facebook.com/urbanfarminginstituteboston/>, Farmers
Collaborative <https://www.facebook.com/farmcollab/>, Healing, Empathy,
Redemption, Oasis <https://www.facebook.com/herocenter22/>, The Food
Project <https://www.facebook.com/thefoodproject/>, Spanish Immersion
<https://www.facebook.com/spanish.immersion.3> and other organizations
traveled in solidarity to Havana, Artemisa and Pinar del Río, alongside
the Centro Memorial "Martin Luther King"
<https://www.facebook.com/MartinLutherKing30/>, in order to learn about
sustainable food, farming and activism.
Meet our delegates as they share photos and stories, explain useful
practices in agroecology and community resilience, discuss
cross-movement solidarity building, and give updates on how they have
been incorporating lessons from Cuba into their own work for food
sovereignty and environmental justice.
We will have art, literature and artesanía for sale to help support
scholarships for this delegation, and will also provide information on
an upcoming Worcester-based delegation to Cuba in June 2019! Please
reach out to Lee at 857-636-8479 or Shahbaz A. Soofi
<https://www.facebook.com/M.shahbazA.soofi> if you have any questions or
are able to bring a dish for our community dinner!
https://www.facebook.com/events/461907331009141/
______________________________
Act-MA mailing list
Act-MA@act-ma.org
http://act-ma.org/mailman/listinfo/act-ma_act-ma.org
To set options or unsubscribe
http://act-ma.org/mailman/options/act-ma_act-ma.org
How did Jeffrey Sterling get through his long ordeal in prison for more than two and a half years? With enormous help from his wonderful wife Holly, many friends, and countless supporters he’d never met. And from Shakespeare.
New from CIA truth-teller Jeffrey Sterling
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New from CIA truth-teller Jeffrey Sterling
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All That Is Hollywood Tinsel Is Not Gold- F. Scott Fitzgerald At The End-“The Pat Hobby Stories”
All That Is Hollywood Tinsel Is Not Gold- F. Scott Fitzgerald At The End-“The Pat Hobby Stories”
Book Review
By Seth Garth
The Pat Hobby Stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald, originally printed in Esquire magazine, 1940-1941, collected 1962
I had in earlier times, a few years ago now, gone on and on about who best represented the so-called Jazz Age F. Scott Fitzgerald whose works either coined the phrase or so well the times he owned the term or his fellow Parisian ex-pat Ernest Hemingway. Both exiles from a sullen America that was turning in on itself just when looking outward was necessary. Sound familiar? During that joust I came decidedly out on the side of Fitzgerald based on the great classic novel The Great Gatsby which put a microscope to the whole sordid mess of post-World War I America. Having answered that rather narrow question I have never done so, nor have never been asked by the previous site manager who gives out such assignment Allan Jackson, or the current one Greg Green to tackle the broader question of who had the more powerful collective novel output. For that I would have to flip to Hemingway both because he left a greater treasure-trove of such work and because he worked better in that genre. I have also never been asked to evaluate the better of the two when it comes to short stories. Then I would have to flip back to Fitzgerald since he wrote a ton more mainly to keep the dunning debt collector wolves from the door and live a life-style his wife Zelda was accustomed to and because he had a certain lyricism that hit the mark on this genre.
That brings us kind of full circle to the short story collection under review Fitzgerald’s The Pat Hobby Stories written late in his career and while he was working like seven dervishes as a screen-writer in the Hollywood trying to salvage whatever scripts came his way while drinking up half the liquor cabinets in Beverly Hills. That drinking curse aside even at the end he had “it,” had that certain feel for what makes a short story entertaining and make a point, a social or literary point. In the interest of transparency, a trait, which Greg Green seems to be trying to cultivate here, the reason I was given this assignment by him was that I was the only one who had previously done any work on either author. According to Greg some of the other younger writers if you can believe this had never read anything but either man and only knew of them by reputation. Jesus.
The title tells the story all of these twenty or so stories revolved around one Pat Hobby. One has-been screenwriter who had been around the Hollywood studio scene since Hector was a pup. Since the silent film days if anybody was asking. The former a very different kind of screenwriting skill from that of the “talkies” which depended on dialogue more than the earlier visual props setting to get through. Back in the day Pat had been king of the hill, had been a go to guy for every producer and director who needed an idea or a sick script worked on. That was reflected in his upscale life-style (including the status symbol obligatory swimming pool to announce you had arrived), his bevy of wives who as he memorably noted later “fed out of his pocket” were in turn discarded and his more than nodding acquaintance with the stars of the era, male and female.
But that was then, that was some ten years before the time of these stories which were written by Fitzgerald in 1939-1941 and so tell me that our Pat didn’t transition very well to the new milieu. At the time of the stories he is a forty-nine year old has-been hanging around studio lots “doing the best he can.” Grabbing a turkey of a script nobody else wanted to do, cadging his old director and producer friends to put him on contract salary at much diminished rates from the old top dollar days. Trying to “steal” other younger writers thunder when working with other writers. In short a man who is in decline.
Pat though is not solely the victim of outside objective forces. He has a drinking problem, seems to have been an alcoholic, like Fitzgerald’s which would kill the author at an early age. He also seems to have liked to “play the ponies” which when you have no dough can be a dicey proposition as Bart Webber who has written about his own very real gambling jones here can tell you. Moreover it seems that it was touch and go about here he would be laying down his head any given night. A studio set empty bed or the back of his repo man’s delight car on its last legs (and not even owned by him).
Yeah, a guy on the skids, a guy a couple of inches away from the “row.” The big problem though is Pat has lost a step or seven in the “idea” department, has gotten stale. Not so off of this collection Fitzgerald though since I was eager, more than eager, to get to the next story to see what was what with Pat as a writer. From me that is a high compliment to an author. Enough said.
Junkie’s Sonata-Your Innocent When You Dream-This Is Not Johnny Milton’s Paradise Found- The Film Adaptation From The Jesse Stone Series Of Robert Parker’s “Innocents Lost” (2011)-A Short Made For Television Film Review
Junkie’s Sonata-Your Innocent When You Dream-This Is Not Johnny Milton’s Paradise Found- The Film Adaptation From The Jesse Stone Series Of Robert Parker’s “Innocents Lost” (2011)-A Short Made For Television Film Review
DVD Review
By Josh Breslin
Innocents Lost, starring Tom Selleck, 2011
The late crime novel writer Robert B Parker, I think he liked to be called private detection writer but I prefer crime novel and since it is my dime there you have it, was a prophet, was man before his time in writing about the junkie wave that has descended upon the land of late. (Called the opioid crisis in polite society since this involves some of those polite society relatives but junkie wave is more like it, more the way novelist Nelson Algren who wrote the definitive novel on the subject The Man With The Golden Arm would have put it.) I was looking for a film, having already reviewed the film adaptation of Algren’s novel starring Frank Sinatra long along, that would bring a more contemporary edge to the subject. I didn’t want the sudden newspaper wave baloney detailing how the streets are not safe now with junkies shooting the works in every corner scaring little children or about some poor bastard being bopped on the head for his kale so some sullen cretin could see his (or her as we will see here) fixer man to get well-for a minute. So after some light scouting I found Innocents Lost and this is just the vehicle I need to do a modern day screed on junkie-hood, the junkie sonata.
In the background of this one is the profound notion that a cop will always be a cop and that is the case with deposed police chief Jesse Stone who got bounced from his job for reasons unknown is pouting about getting back in harness. (Unknown to me since I have not seen the previous eight films I think already produced in this series.) Getting back in harness in land’s end, in Paradise by the sea in some mythical Cape Ann locale if only he can overcome whatever it was that got him the boot. One thing for sure there was no heavy lifting on this job with crime and criminals staying far from this upscale town-which is exactly the way the uppity town’s people liked it-what the hell was Haverhill for anyway. (There were rumors that this Jesse Stone whose previous experience before falling down in Paradise was as a coffee and donut shop patrolman in La La land had put his name in for the vacant police commissioner’s job in New York City. The search committee had a good laugh as they tossed that one out on the first round. Everybody thought it was a joke since nobody had ever heard of Paradise, or knew it never existed and were hardly going to hire a stool-sore patrolman for their top gun.)
While Jesse broods (and hard liquor drinks which may be the key to his getting kicked out of Paradise) in splendid isolation as he watches the tide come in he gets the nod on a couple of cases. Only one of which concerns us here, the junkie shoot-up case. (In the other one white-bread Jesse helps a stumble-down Boston cop figure out that a guy in a fatal hold-up was not the guy although that did the black suspect no good since his “alibi” was that he had raped some helpless woman some blocks away from the felony robbery. That is a Jesse resume builder for sure).
While Jesse was wiling away the hours at the dingy Paradise police department offices he befriended a young woman, a college student named Laura, don’t get tied up with names when dealing with junkies especially those who have to hustle their asses in the street to get their fixer man dough, who before spiraling downward had been picked for DUI. This Laura was the daughter of a rich woman recently divorced from her husband, presumably for adultery although it could have been plenty of other things, who had zero concern for parenting or for her daughter. Laura as kids will took it hard and started slippery-slope drinking which brought her fatefully foursquare with Jesse. Jesse took her under his wing for a while but with his own drinking problems, his divorce and the pressures of the cop job (are you kidding the heaviest duty making the monthly quota for parking tickets) he lost track of her. Lost track until she wound up down the road from that splendid isolation place he lived in while plotting his comeback. Wound up dead from an overdose, from heroin, from sister, from boy, from H, whatever you call it in your neighborhood. Except in Jesse-less tourist trap Paradise they called it an accident by some stumblebum stranger passing through.
The suddenly quasi-parental Jesse gets on the case, stops drinking for a couple of days if I recall. This Laura thing had to have been if not murder then not the official accident everybody in Paradise had bought into, had wished into with a vengeance. So Jesse goes on his own down and dirty investigation starting with that rehab mill she had gone into for the drinking problem (and it really was, they were pushing them out the minute the insurance stopped or Daddy Warbucks stops payments) over in Haverhill run by a doctored who lived in Paradise. Through cashing in a few favors, Jesse found out that this Laura had been busted for trafficking in drugs and her ass. How did that happen taking a young college girl and turning her into a junkie whore. Somebody was behind the whole thing, somebody had turned her on to the drugs and her spiral downward.
Of course Jesse finds the guy, a Russian guy naturally like this was still the Cold War who worked at that rehab mill. This bastard’s MO was to work the rehab mills, knowing that orderly help was hard to get for minimum wages. He would scout out the vulnerable ones, girls, guys it didn’t matter, load them up with feel good drugs and then put them on the street safe in the knowledge that he was connected with the right mobsters. End of story. Well not quite Jesse traps the guy by luring him and his next hustling girl to a hotel and humiliates him. Tough Russian guys though, connected or not, are not about to let some ex-cop have the last laugh so he goes after Jesse out there in Paradise splendor. Wrong move though in Jesse’s home turf. KIA. That didn’t bring back that fallen Laura, didn’t seem to be a resume-builder, didn’t do much to put a dent in society’s drug problems, didn’t stop his brooding and plotting but did allow him to get that fresh whiskey bottle out and pour a few fingers of the nectar. More later.
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