Join Bernie Sanders and AOC Monday
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Sunday, May 12, 2019
Join Bernie Sanders and AOC Monday Varshini Prakash
Delta Airlines is worth billions of dollars. But it’s actively fighting its employees who want to join a union and negotiate for better wages, telling them to buy video games instead.
Delta Airlines
Join Bernie Sanders and tell Delta to stop trying to undercut workers' right to form a union and negotiate for better wages.
Alfred:
Delta Airlines is a multi-billion dollar company whose CEO made nearly $22 million in 2017.
Yet the company’s ramp agents — like the people who you see out of the plane window helping load and unload airplanes — make as little as $9 an hour.
Nine dollars an hour is not a livable wage. It makes sense that Delta employees have decided to join together to form a union, so they can bargain together for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Well, Delta doesn’t like that. In fact, they told their employees to buy video games instead of forming a union. Really. This is their poster:
What a disgrace. A company that can pay its CEO nearly $22 million can certainly afford to treat its workers better.
Bernie Sanders is standing with Delta workers who want to exercise their right to form a union. Will you join him in calling on Delta to stop trying to undercut workers' right to form a union and negotiate for better wages?
When Bernie talks about the need to rebuild the American labor movement and to make it easier, not harder, to join a union, he means it. And we mean it on our campaign, too.
Bernie 2020 is the first-ever major presidential campaign to negotiate a contract with its workers’ union. We’re proud of that fact, and we hope other campaigns follow suit.
The right to organize as part of a union has historically been one of the surest ways for American workers to join the middle class.
There are many reasons for the growing inequality in our economy, but perhaps the most significant reason for the disappearing middle class is that the rights of workers to join together and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions have been severely undermined.
That is why it is such a disgrace for Delta to make its CEO a multi-millionaire while actively fighting its employees’ rights to form and join a union and to negotiate for better wages. Telling its employees to buy video games instead of joining a union is insulting to the workers, and to the idea that people should be able to make a living wage in this country.
Will you call on Delta to let its workers form a union and negotiate for better wages?
Thank you for standing up for working people.
In solidarity,
Faiz Shakir
Faiz Shakir
Paid for by Bernie 2020
PO BOX 391, Burlington, VT 05402
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Leaving Neverland: Lying Hit Piece Down With the Demonizing of Michael Jackson! “The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all…. All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair.” —James Baldwin (1985)
Workers Vanguard No. 1153
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19 April 2019
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Leaving Neverland: Lying Hit Piece
Down With the Demonizing of Michael Jackson!
“The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all…. All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair.”
—James Baldwin (1985)
Recalling the zombie creatures in the acclaimed music video “Thriller,” there is a renewed feeding frenzy over the deceased King of Pop. HBO’s Leaving Neverland, a sensationalist four-hour film by Dan Reed, showcases Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who allege years of childhood sexual abuse by Michael Jackson. Falsely marketed as a “documentary,” Leaving Neverland is based solely on the spurious and uncorroborated testimonies of Robson and Safechuck, two men who for decades were known as ardent defenders of Jackson against sexual abuse charges, of which the singer was fully exonerated. Now the news vultures, with the blessing of the “Queen of All Media,” Oprah Winfrey, are rehashing the old smear campaign, and the racist, anti-sex and anti-gay witchhunt that encircled the celebrity during his life and hounded him to death. As Marxists, we categorically reject such witchhunts and the moralistic bourgeois framework behind them, which criminalizes any contact between adults and children that is perceived as sexual, casting adults as predators and children as victims.
Dan Reed’s hatchet job presents zero evidence, deliberately omits anyone who could easily rebut the abuse allegations and conceals the accusers’ financial motivations. Howard Weitzman, attorney for the Jackson estate, details in both a 7 February letter to HBO CEO Richard Plepler and a 21 February lawsuit against the company, how the accusers lack all credibility. Between 2013 and 2017, Safechuck and Robson, the latter a self-proclaimed “master of deception,” tried to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from the estate. Their multiple civil cases related to alleged abuse were dismissed with prejudice. Still trying to collect huge sums for damages, the two men’s lawyers pursued a new course: using the court of public opinion to help their appeal gain traction.
Characterizing the network’s hit piece as a “posthumous character assassination,” the Jackson estate’s lawsuit rightly observes:
“Ten years after [Jackson’s] passing, there are still those out to profit from his enormous worldwide success and take advantage of his eccentricities. Michael is an easy target because he is not here to defend himself, and the law does not protect the deceased from defamation, no matter how extreme the lies are. Michael may not have lived his life according to society’s norms, but genius and eccentricity are not crimes. Nothing and no one can rewrite the facts which show that Michael Jackson is indeed innocent of the charges being levied at him.”
And the facts are that in a 2005 criminal trial, Michael Jackson was found not guilty of 14 counts related to the alleged molestation of 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo. At that time, Wade Robson, who testified on Jackson’s behalf, was adamant in both his deposition and on the stand that Jackson never touched him or any other child. That trial also vindicated Jackson as to the previous 1993 child abuse accusations against a different 13-year-old. Likewise, the FBI conducted extensive investigations and surveillance of Jackson for over a decade between 1992 and 2005. The Feds and prosecutors, intent on finding any way to frame a black man for molesting white children, could not produce a shred of evidence, including in the over 300 pages of FBI documents published online.
Leaving Neverland has begun to receive some blowback as multiple discrepancies come out in the shady tales of Robson and Safechuck, who clearly rehearsed their scripted interviews in multiple takes. Director Dan Reed has gone to the wall over his incendiary piece of fiction, comparing Michael Jackson defenders to religious fanatics, calling them “the Islamic State of fandom.” Such defenders would include Jackson’s longtime friends Macaulay Culkin and Brett Barnes, as well as Diana Ross. Barnes, who the film implies was the “next in line” to be molested by Jackson, denounced the movie in a message online: “Not only do we have to deal with these lies, but we’ve also got to deal with people perpetuating these lies.”
One of those lies is from Safechuck, who claims that he and Jackson spent their sexual “honeymoon” in the Neverland train station starting in 1988. Yet the station was not built until 1994, when Safechuck was beyond his childhood years (one of the claims is that Jackson dumped kids when they reached puberty) and when Jackson, then married, was not even living there! Meanwhile, Robson claims his first sexual encounter with Jackson took place in 1990 when he was left alone at the Neverland ranch while his family took a trip to the Grand Canyon. But according to his mother’s own sworn statements, Robson accompanied his family on the trip. The timelines of “abuse” for Robson and Safechuck are so illogical that they could only be manufactured.
The liberal bourgeois U.S. media, like the New York Times, has promoted salacious headlines of the “predator” Jackson and blacked out any criticism of Leaving Neverland. Meanwhile, countless bloggers, YouTube commentators and online communities (as well as a couple of foreign news outlets) have meticulously pieced together the real story. Conservative talk show host John Ziegler, who is no fan of Jackson, was one of the first to interview Michael’s niece Brandi and nephew Taj in search of the truth. Well acquainted with the accusers, they paint a picture of Robson and Safechuck as professional opportunists whose families latched on to Jackson, took advantage of his friendship and generosity, and only turned against him when their own personal fame and fortune took a downturn years after Jackson’s death. Shattering Robson’s pretense as a naive, chaste adolescent who was duped by Michael into hating women, Brandi notes that in her seven-year teenage relationship with Robson, he had sexual encounters with multiple women.
In 2009 Robson, then 27 years old, attended Jackson’s funeral and wrote in a tribute that Jackson is “one of the main reasons I believe in the pure goodness of humankind. He was a close friend of mine for 20 years. His music, his movement, his personal words of inspiration and encouragement and his unconditional love will live inside of me forever. I will miss him immeasurably.” Just two years later, after Robson failed to nail a choreography gig for Cirque du Soleil’s “Michael Jackson ONE” and his career dried up, he suddenly “realized” through therapy that he had been abused. For his part, Safechuck “discovered” his abuse when watching Robson on the Today show, which coincided with the Safechuck family’s financial meltdown.
Moral Frenzies and Mob Justice
In a thoughtful piece called “The New Lynching of Michael Jackson” (medium.com, 27 February), Linda Raven-Woods observed: “That so many prominent journalists and media talking heads have displayed the willingness to accept this film blindly at face value, without raising the much needed questions that need to be asked about its veracity, is a bigger unforgiveable travesty than the film itself.” She goes on to note how the backers of Leaving Neverland are confident “that the current zeitgeist of MeToo and its ‘don’t question victims’ mentality will create the tunnel vision needed to willfully blind viewers.” In an atmosphere that has junked the presumption of innocence and due process for those accused of sexual abuse, this tale finds a fertile medium.
Up until he died, Michael Jackson firmly maintained that his relationships with children had been platonic, an assertion backed up by forensics and witnesses. But in the #MeToo climate of “believe all survivors,” HBO’s prurient screenplay was “proof” enough to rile up the torch-bearing mob. Numerous radio stations around the world pulled Michael Jackson’s music, clothing lines withdrew their Jackson apparel, and an episode of The Simpsons with Jackson’s voice was removed from its catalog.
Even if at any point in his life Jackson did have some kind of romantic relationship with an underage boy, that is no crime in our eyes. He was accused of violating laws that prohibit sexual activity, even when consensual, before an arbitrary age. As steadfast defenders of privacy and sexual freedom, the Spartacist League has always opposed “age of consent” laws, which are intended to stigmatize and punish all intimate relationships between adults and younger people. By branding any sexual act involving a minor as rape, such laws are inherently repressive and promote state interference into people’s intimate lives.
Sexual activity is natural for humans of all ages. The sole guideline for any sexual relationship should be that of effective consent—that is, mutual agreement and understanding by the parties involved, regardless of age, gender or sexual preference. In that light, we have always uniquely stood for the rights of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which advocates the legalization of consensual sex between men and boys. We also oppose all legislation against victimless crimes, such as pornography, which is simply images and words intended for pleasure.
In anti-sex witchhunts a la Americana, mass hysteria and moral outrage are crucial ingredients to stoke fear and push ideological conformity to bourgeois norms. The “predator” bogeyman is socially useful for the capitalist rulers, who can hypocritically parade as “protecting the children” and divert attention from the social system they uphold, which regularly denies children basic needs like food, shelter and education. Hysteria over “child abuse” does nothing to confront real violence, but merely serves to bolster the institution of the family. The family, the main source of the oppression of women and youth, is key under capitalism to enforcing behavioral roles and the obedience of the next generation.
During the “Satanic sex ring” panic of the mid 1980s and early ’90s, hundreds of innocent people, especially day care employees, were framed up on fantastical charges of raping and torturing children. Child psychologists, who implanted false “recovered memories” during therapy, assisted in the crusade. The ideological backdrop was the promotion of “good” stay-at-home mothers as against the supposed evils of childcare. A not-so-subtle echo of this “right” vs. “wrong” parenting schema appears in Leaving Neverland, with its warnings against leaving kids with strangers or letting them sleep in bed with an adult. The implication is that only the family can offer a safe haven. Yet it is often within the family itself that children, who are confined in the horrible straitjacket of moralism and religious guilt, suffer criminal abuse.
The graphic sexual accounts in Leaving Neverland, which come off as rather gentle and innocuous, are manipulatively presented as part of Jackson’s “grooming” process whereby he seduced children into loving him. The film’s intention is to equate entirely harmless affection from adults with assault and trauma. This is the shtick of Dan Reed, a self-declared “gun for hire” who made his name from tabloid movies like The Paedophile Hunter that sensationalizes bloodthirsty vigilantism. His “grooming” narrative is the focus of HBO’s follow-up special After Neverland hosted by the billionaire Oprah. Parading as an authority on child sexual abuse, she invited an audience of “survivors” to take part in “this moment” that “transcends Michael Jackson.”
There is a deeper agenda at play, not only in terms of boosting profit and ratings, but also in deflecting attention from Harvey Weinstein, whom she considered a close friend during the many years of his alleged serial assaults of women. Oprah’s HBO stunt has earned her deserved animosity from black critics calling her a sellout and a traitor for throwing Jackson’s corpse to the wolves, with trending hashtags #NOprah and #CancelOprah. Appearing on Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show last week, Oprah claimed that such “hateration” would not make her waver in her defense of Robson and Safechuck, maintaining that molestation amounts to a “pattern” of sexual seduction. In fact, the only “pattern” in this entire saga is that of con artists repeatedly trying to shake down an innocent man.
The Man in the Mirror
The legacy of Michael Jackson spans a period from his roots as a working-class black kid in Indiana to his 45 years as a successful entertainer, during which he transformed the face of pop music, broke records, transcended racial barriers and became a celebrated international superstar. Yet his life was no “American dream” but mirrored racist American cruelty. As we commented in our obituary for the artist (WV No. 940, 31 July 2009):
“The tragedy of Jackson’s death is that an extremely influential music career was driven to the brink of destruction by a savagely racist and puritanical witchhunt spanning more than a decade. The mass hysteria whipped up against Jackson over charges of ‘child molestation’ was an indictment of this anti-sex, bigoted capitalist society, where being an eccentric black celebrity is enough for the state to try to frame you up with something.”
From his early years in the Jackson 5, Michael Jackson went on to become a global icon shortly after the struggles of the civil rights movement. Notwithstanding the “lightening” of his physical appearance, in a country where the color-caste nature of black oppression is enforced through the “one drop of black blood” rule, Jackson was always a black man. And for that he was a marked man. Since the days of chattel slavery, in the U.S. black skin has carried the stamp of permanent servitude, social isolation and “inferiority,” regardless of social status or success and sometimes because of it. Black oppression is the cornerstone of American capitalism, enforced by custom and law and expressed through segregation, cop violence and extralegal terror.
Decades after the racist lynching of Emmett Till, accusations of sexual assault are still used as a pretext to go after black men, including those like Jackson who did not conform to toxic stereotypes of black male sexuality. Throughout history, anti-sex frenzies, not least the current #MeToo variant, have fanned the flames of racial and sexual bigotry, conjuring up the supposed virtue of white womanhood and purity of white childhood. It is perhaps no coincidence that Jackson’s favorite book was To Kill a Mockingbird, the story of a black man ruined by false rape allegations.
As a performer, Michael Jackson helped define American pop culture as a whole, and for that he continues to be both celebrated and crucified. His behavior may have been an enigma to many, but his lyrics reflected his own struggle to overcome the discrimination and hounding he confronted throughout his career. Everyone who personally knew Jackson can testify to his unaffected “Peter Pan Syndrome” and his kindhearted fondness for children, which likely derived from his utter lack of a childhood. He was exceedingly generous with his time and money, as shown by his commitment to help Robson and Safechuck develop their careers. But in this callous society, no good deed goes unpunished.
Our defense of Jackson over the years is an expression of our dedication to the socialist liberation of humanity. As communists who champion the cause of all the victims of this decaying social order, we seek to build a revolutionary party based on the vanguard of the working class—one that can act as a “tribune of the people” against every form of oppression and bigotry. Such a party will lead the struggle for the complete political and economic reorganization of society through workers revolution, which will open the door to rooting out racial and sexual divisions and overcoming material scarcity. A communist world will be one of complete sexual freedom and material abundance, in which every black child, and all others, can grow and develop their talents, and every person can express themselves fully, propelling human civilization to undreamed-of heights.
***Happy Birthday Robert- From The Blues In The Night Archives (2011) The Centenary Of Blue Master Robert Johnson's Birthday- Yah, Hellhound On His Trail
Markin comment:
I have noted in previous entries that I, unlike many others, am not a particular devotee of Robert Johnson. I prefer the likes of Skip James, Son House and Bukka White nevertheless I understand and support the notion of Robert Johnson as a key blues master. No question. Just personal preferences. Happy Birthday, Brother Robert.
*****
Repost On Robert Johnson
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
*The "Mac Daddy" Of Modern Blues- Robert Johnson
DVD REVIEW
Hell Hounds On His Heels- The Legendary Robert Johnson’s Story
Can’t You Hear The Wind Howl?: The Life And Music of Robert Johnson, Robert Johnson and various artists, narrated by Danny Glover, 1997
I have recently spent some little effort making comparisons between old time country blues singers. My winners have been Skip James and Son House. Apparently, if the story behind the Robert Johnson story presented here is right, I am in a minority compared to the like of guitarists Eric Clapton and Keith Richards. So be it. After viewing this very informative bio, complete with the inevitable “talking heads" that populate these kinds of film efforts I still have that same opinion, except I would hold Johnson’s version of his “Sweet Home, Chicago” in higher regard after listening to it here. Previously many other covers of the song, including the trendy Blues Brothers version seemed better, a lot better.
The producers of this film have spent some time and thought on presentation. The choice of Danny Glover as expressive and thoughtful narrator was a welcome sign. Having Johnson road companion and fellow blues artist, Johnny Shines, give insights into Johnson’s work habits, traveling ways, womanizing, whisky drinking, and off-center personality make this a very strong film. Add in footage of Son House (an early Johnson influence) and various other Delta artists who met or were met by Johnson along the way and one gets the feeling that this is more a labor of love than anything else. For a man who lived fast, died young and left a relatively small body of work (some 20 odd songs) this is a very good take on Robert Johnson. I might add that if Johnson is your number one blues man this film gives you plenty of ammunition for your position.
Note: As is almost universally true with such film endeavors we only get snippets of the music. I would have liked to hear a full “Preacher’s Blues,” “Sweet Home, Chicago,” "Terraplane Blues,” and “Hell Hounds On My Heels”but for that one will have to look elsewhere.
Terraplane Blues" lyrics-Robert Johnson
And I feel so lonesome
you hear me when I moan
When I feel so lonesome
you hear me when I moan
Who been drivin my terraplane
for you since I've been gone
I'd said I flashed your lights mama
your horn won't even blow
I even flash my lights mama
this horn won't even blow
Got a short in this connection
hoo-well, babe, its way down below
I'm on hist your hood momma
I'm bound to check your oil
I'm on hist your hood momma mmmm
I'm bound to check your oil
I got a woman that I'm lovin
way down in Arkansas
Now you know the coils ain't even buzzin
little generator won't get the spark
Motors in a bad condition
you gotta have these batteries charged
But I'm cryin please
Saturday, May 11, 2019
The Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love -Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over-On The Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death-Magical Realism 101
The Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love -Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over-On The Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death-Magical Realism 101
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Scene: Brought to mind by the cover art on some deep fogged memory producing, maybe acid-etched flashback memory at the time, accompanying CD booklet tossed aside on the coffee table by a guy from the old days, the old New York University days, Jeff Mackey, who had been visiting Sarah, Josh Breslin’s wife of the moment. Jeff had just placed the CD on the CD player, the intricacies of fine-tuned down-loading from YouTube beyond anybody’s stoned capacity just then and so the “primitive” technology (stoned as in “turned on,” doped up, high if you like just like in the old days as well although Josh had gone to State U not NYU but the times were such that such transactions were universal and the terms “pass the bong” and “don’t bogart that join” had passed without comment). Don’t take that “wife of the moment” too seriously either since that was a standing joke between Sarah and Josh (not Joshua, Joshua was dad, the late Joshua Breslin, Jr.) since in a long life they had managed five previous marriages (three by him, two by her) and scads of children and two scads of grandchildren (who had better not see this piece since grandma and grandpa have collectively expended many jaws-full hours of talk about the danger of demon drugs, the devil’s work even if only with a half-hearted sincerity since they fully expected that those younger kids like their own kids would experiment, would "puff the magic dragon" and then move on).
When Josh had picked up that tossed aside booklet he noticed a wispy, blue-jeaned, blouse hanging off one shoulder, bare-foot, swirling mass of red hair, down home Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night. (The Generation of "68 designation a term of art among the brethren still standing who had faced down that seminal year in the history of the 1960s, some calling it the ebb tide year although Josh had pushed that forward over the years to 1971 the year when they had utterly failed to shut down the government if it would not shut the Vietnam War.) The woman maybe kin to Janis, maybe not, but certainly brethren who looked uncannily like his first ex-wife, Laura, who had taught him many little sex things learned from a trip to India and close attention to the Kama Sutra which he had passed on to everybody thereafter including Sarah. And no again don’t take that wistful though about Laura as anything but regret since their civil wars had passed a long time before and beside Laura had not been heard from since the time she went down to Rio and was presumably shacked up with some dope king or diamond king or something probably still earning her keep with those little India tricks. (Strange to think that straight-laced Forest Lawn-raised Laura knew all the tricks that some courtesans would blush at sine a look at her would say virgin until marriage. No way.
Still looking at the tantalizing artwork Josh thought of the time of our time, passed. Of wistful women belting out songs, band backed-up and boozed-up, probably Southern Comfort if the dough was tight and there had been ginger ale or ice to cut the sweet taste or if it was late and if the package store was short of some good cutting whiskey, but singing, no, better evoking, yes, evoking barrelhouse down-trodden black empresses and queens from somewhere beyond speaking troubled times, a no good man taking up with that no good best girlfriend of hers who drew a bee-line to him when that empress advertised his charms, no job, no prospect of a job and then having to go toe to toe with that damn rent collector man on that flattened damn mattress that kept springing holes, maybe no roof over a head and walking the streets picking up tricks to pass the time, no pocket dough, no prospects and a ton of busted dreams in some now forgotten barrelhouse, chittlin’ circuit bowling alley complete with barbecued ribs smoking out back or in a downtown “colored” theater. Or the echo of that scene, okay. Jesus, maybe he had better kick that dope thing before he actually did start heading to Rio.
*******
Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some merry prankster yellow brick road bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or someplace like that, maybe Russia he was not sure of the geography all he knew was that he had made a wag wiggle a little for his indiscretion) was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, weary even of hanging out with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride but in a time when everyone in youth nation was shedding "slave" names the moniker of the day or week was the way that you identified most fellow travelers-that was just the way it was and kind of nice when you thought about it-wouldn't you rather be Moonbeam than some Susan something), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish up some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising.
Yeah, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do, the Prince mused to himself. Chuckled really, term paper stuff was just not his “thing” right then. Hell, he had dropped out of State U, dropped out of Laura Perkin’s life, dropped out of everything to chase the Western arroyo desert ocean washed dream that half his generation was pursuing just then.
Yeah, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do, the Prince mused to himself. Chuckled really, term paper stuff was just not his “thing” right then. Hell, he had dropped out of State U, dropped out of Laura Perkin’s life, dropped out of everything to chase the Western arroyo desert ocean washed dream that half his generation was pursuing just then.
Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, 1967 version to be exact, autumns of drugs, strange brews of hyper-colored experience drugs and high shamanic medicine man aztec druid flame throws, winters of Paseo Robles brown hills discontent, brown rolling hills until he sickened of rolling, the color brown, hills, slopes, plains, everything, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of Martin Luther King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim former high school runner’s frame could not afford.
Now the chickens had come home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed, after graduating from high school, that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, the Prince is nothing but a Mainiac, Olde Saco section, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though before she went back to her golden-haired surfer boy back down in Carlsbad (his temperature rose even now every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually and she had never heard of the Kama Sutra) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.
What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.
Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Miss Ruby, as he called her as a little bait, a little come on bait, playing on her somewhere south drawl, although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message).
Josh, all throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, even a gal like Wanda Jackson, when they were hungry, and that hunger not only carried them to the stars but slaked some weird post-World War II, red scare, cold war hunger in guys like Josh Breslin although he never, never in a million years would have articulated it that way back then. That was infernal Captain Crunch’s work (Captain was the “owner” of the “bus” and a story all his own but that is for another time) always trying to put things in historical perspective or the exact ranking in some mythical pantheon that he kept creating (and recreating especially after a “dip” of Kool-Aid, LSD for the squares, okay).
But back to Ruby love. He got a surprise one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and he felt was meant to be a little coquettish and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.
What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace that someone, Bonnie Raitt or Maria Muldaur, had found in old age out in some boondock church social or something, mad Bessie Smith squeezed dry, freeze-dried by some no account Saint Louis man and left wailing, empty bed, gin house wailing ever after, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie, the queen of the double entendre, sex version, with her butcher, baker, candlestick-maker men, doing, well doing the do, okay, and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog made just for her that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all a full-blast Piece Of My Heart.
Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey just up the road from the Big Sur merry prankster yellow bus camp, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting some work at the Monterrey Pop Festival held each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl (or maybe some cheap gin or rotgut Southern Comfort, cheap and all the in between rage for those saving their dough for serious drugs).
Ya just a wisp of a girl, wearing spattered blue-jeans, some damn moth-eaten tee-shirt, haphazardly tie-dyed by someone on a terminal acid trip, barefoot, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma, (although he had seen a fair share of the breed in Fryeburg Fair Maine) who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster.
Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. And maybe some sweet sidle promise, who knows in that alcohol blaze around three in the morning. All Josh knew was this woman, almost girlish except for her sharp tongue and that eternal hardship voice, that no good man, no luck except bad luck voice, that spoke of a woman’s sorrow back to primordial times, had that certain something, that something hunger that he recognized in young Elvis and the guys. And that something Josh guessed would take them over the hump into that new day they were trying to create on the bus, and a thousand other buses like it. What a night, what a blues singer.
The next day Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that just slightly off-hand look in her eye that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him, and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either, whoever that dull-wit was) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August, sign up for State U., and still be okay but that he had better grab Ruby now while he could.
Death, Be Not Proud-With The 17th Century Poet John Donne’s “Death, Be Not Proud” In Mind
Death, Be Not Proud-With The 17th Century Poet John Donne’s “Death, Be Not Proud” In Mind
Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
Related Poem Content Details
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
By Seth Garth
[Usually music critic Seth Garth confines himself to reviews of CDs and other related subjects like the history behind various musical genre but today he has asked for space to speak about poetry or rather the effect that a poem, 17th century poet John Donne’s Death, Be Not Proud, has had on his old schoolboy friend Luther Larsen who is going through some tough times these days. He begs your indulgence. Ben Goldman]
My schoolboy friend from old Riverdale High Luther Larsen is dying. I cannot put the matter anymore gently. Luther Larsen is dying. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but his ticket has been punched. He is a “dead man walking” to use a term from death penalty cases as he himself put it to me the other night on the cellphone when he called me from Boston where he is stating for a few days and where he has of late been a patient at Massachusetts General Hospital. Early last year after complaining for several months of serious bladder problems (let’s just leave it at seriously increased urgency and frequency problems and the reader can figure it out from there on the ravages of a seventy-five year old man) and seeking various treatments that did not relieve his condition one biopsy taken to see what the real problem was he was informed by the doctor that he had bladder cancer.
After the initial shock, no, denial had worn off (he did not tell me about his condition until several months after the diagnosis) Luther began what are called BCG treatments, not the dreaded chemotherapy he was at pains to tell me and others whenever anybody made that mistake about the nature of the procedure. I will not go into the graphic aspects of the procedure but they included a series of treatments projected to be over a two plus year duration in order to control the spread of cancerous cells by throwing a toxic cocktail into his body to “harden” up the walls of the bladder. His urologist touted the procedure as a very successful way to control the disease. Luther was all in even though he hated the periodic procedure days like the plague for it left him depleted and very tired although the actual procedure time was fairly short the life-cycle of the chemicals was not.
Luther went through the first couple of series with flying colors after he was “scoped,” after the doctor did another procedure to see what his bladder looked like and after he got the results of a urine sample back. Then after the last series and “scope” the other shoe dropped. The urologist informed him that his bladder was inflamed again, the cancerous cells were making a comeback. The problem, the ‘dead man walking” problem, remember that is Luther’s term not mine, is that due to other medical problems including prostate issues he was not a candidate for a bladder replacement, the next step if the BCG procedure was unsuccessful in holding back the cancerous cells. Meaning, according to the doctor, that while they would continue the periodic BCGs that realistically he had only a couple of years before he would be overcome by the cancer. Would be a “dead man dead” as Luther put it in one of his more sardonic moments.
Luther’s initial reaction to the news from the doctor once he returned from Boston to the apartment that he was renting in a small fishing village in Maine was denial and fear, not uncommon among people who have gotten this kind of terminal notice. (The “why” of the apartment in a small Maine fishing village for a man who has all his life feared to be more than a mile from city street lights will be dealt with in a minute.). He became reclusive, a condition made worse by the isolation and emptiness of that small Maine fishing village in winter until that other night when he told me his fate (again it had been a month after the doctor’s bad news before he made that call to me to tell me about his condition).
But enough of the sad medical prognostication because if you have been playing attention the topic is about John Donne’s poem Death, Be Not Proud which is really what Luther wanted to talk about for the hour and one half that we were on the phone (he, self-admittedly, not much of a phone person so you can get the tenor of his concerns). Luther had ever since we met in English class freshman year at old Riverdale High been mad for poetry, would read poems out loud even when we were hanging around pizza parlor corners on windswept and girl-less Friday nights much to the rest of us's annoyance and to our prospects for “picking up” stray girls who were guy-less and knew that the pizza parlor was the “spot” to meet and see what happened. In those days I was trying to get all the guys interested in the folk minute that was brewing in the land and which I had heard girls, the kind of girls I, we, would be interested in were getting into so I was not really paying attention to what Luther was spouting forth as far as poetry went. The one poem I was crazy about mad man Allen Ginsberg’s Howl Luther, to use an expression that made the pizza parlor rounds, could have given a rat’s ass about.
The exception to my disinterest in Luther’s foolish poems was John Donne’s Death, Be Not Proud which Luther lived by, still does which will come again in a minute as well and then mainly on religious grounds. See Luther was brought up a Protestant, a Lutheran and hence his name, who were not as hung about getting to heaven as I as a Roman Catholic devotee was then. Luther always said, now remember he was only maybe fifteen or sixteen at the time and not any more worried about the grim reaper than I was, that he would not worry about dying, would face it as bravely as he could when his time came. Saw death not as an enemy but as just the “big sleep” (my term from that last paragraph of Raymond Chandler’s crime novel The Big Sleep), no better or worse. He had picked up that idea from Donne’s poem and anytime we talked of the subject that would always come up. I then, and now too, feared death, feared not being, feared losing the battle, feared winding up outside the gates of Eden. The other night Luther quoted for the first time in a long time that poem and said that he was still resolved as he had been as a schoolboy when the matter was not quite so pressing to face his impending death as bravely as he could. He made short work of the few feeble arguments I made to carry on until the bitter end.
Then, as his voice became noticeably less audible over that damn phone, Luther kind of whispered what did bother him, was agitating him in the light of his recent news. He had begun to become afraid that at the end he would die alone, alone with nobody to see him through at the end. Now of course I and a bunch of other guys will be there when that hopefully faraway day comes but you have to know Riverdale schoolboy “speak” to know what Luther really meant. He meant that there would be no female companion to see him off. I knew exactly what he meant because poetry –addled or music-addled we were, are, skirt-addled. And that brings us back to that point about why he was tucked away in some godforsaken small isolated Maine fishing village in winter. A couple of years ago his long-time companion, Stephanie, Stephanie Murphy, told Luther she had found another man, had found somebody more in tune with her musical and artistic interests than he and that she was leaving him and the home they had shared for the previous ten years (Luther had been twice divorced, not nice divorces before meeting Stephanie).
Once she left, once she left even knowing that he had serious health issues, Luther could not face staying in their place and took off for Maine which in sunnier times had been a place of refuge for both of them. And there he has stayed although recently he has made noises about going back to his roots, going back to Riverdale to face the end in a place that he knew would provide some mental relief.
Once she left, once she left even knowing that he had serious health issues, Luther could not face staying in their place and took off for Maine which in sunnier times had been a place of refuge for both of them. And there he has stayed although recently he has made noises about going back to his roots, going back to Riverdale to face the end in a place that he knew would provide some mental relief.
As we finished that long conversation Luther signed off by reaffirming that he was not afraid to die, and was hopeful that maybe he could find someone (remember read some woman) who would be there for him at the end. I do give a rat’s ass about that and I told him I hope that he does find somebody. Enough said.
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