cid:image014.jpg@01D2E6A2.DD414B60Come to the next monthly STANDOUT FOR BLACK LIVES Ashmont T Station Plaza​ Every fourth Thursday April-Oct. 5:30-6:30 pm July 25

Come to the next monthly 

STANDOUT FOR BLACK LIVES

Ashmont T Station Plaza​

Every fourth Thursday April-Oct.  5:30-6:30 pm

July 25  * August 23  *September 26 * October 26 Please hold these dates!  Spread the Word!  All are welcome!

Hold our banner and Black Lives Matter signs * Hand out fliers

https://www.facebook.com/DorchesterPeopleforPeace    *   www.dotpeace.org

contact: 617-282-3783      

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- Happy Birthday Woody Guthrie- *Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- Woody Guthrie's "Pastures Of Plenty"

Happy Birthday Woody Guthrie- *Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- Woody Guthrie's "Pastures Of Plenty"


*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- Woody Guthrie's "Pastures Of Plenty"

A“YouTube” film clip of Woody Guthrie's "Pastures Of Plenty".


No, today I am not going to beat you over the head with a screed about how music, in whatever form, is not the revolution. You know that already, and if not life itself should have disabused you of that notion long ago. Music, however, has always had an important place in the history of progressive movements as a way to rouse the troops and keep the faith. I think back to the days of Cromwell’s plebeian New Model Army, singing New Testament psalms, while going off to do battle against England’s King Charles I’s royalist forces that started the whole modern revolutionary movement. Or the songs of the French revolution. Or those of the modern labor movement like “The Internationale”. I could go on, but you get the point.

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

Markin comment:

Woody Guthrie had an extraordinary way to take a complex subject like the plight of the 1930s migrant workers and make great musical art out of it. Put this with Steinbeck's "Grapes Of Wrath", the movie of the same title and Dorothea Lange's photographs and you have a very good idea of what the Great Depression of the 1930s meant, and continued to mean to those generations that went through it, like my parent's generation.


Pastures Of Plenty-Woody Guthrie

It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road
Out of your Dust Bowl and Westward we rolled
And your deserts were hot and your mountains were cold

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind

California, Arizona, I harvest your crops
Well its North up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table your light sparkling wine

Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters run down
Every state in the Union us migrants have been
We'll work in this fight and we'll fight till we win

It's always we rambled, that river and I
All along your green valley, I will work till I die
My land I'll defend with my life if it be
Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free

n Lieu Of A Hook- In Defense Of One Woman Vigilantism-Frances McDormand’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017)-A Film Review

In Lieu Of A Hook- In Defense Of One Woman Vigilantism-Frances McDormand’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, starring Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, 2017 

I frankly don’t know what to make of this film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri which I do know rightfully won Oscars for two of the actors in this effort. One for the righteous Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes and the other as supporting actor Sam Rockwell as Jason Dixon. My quandary though is about what the cluster of themes are supposed to represent. What that means in “film speak,” in what I mentioned in one recent film review piggy-backing off of long time film critic and my longtime companion, Sam Lowell, is that I don’t have a “hook,” something to turn this review on. Sam’s safety valve suggestion which mainly is good for older films, black and white films from the 1940s and 1950s which he made his reputation on, wrote what many until recently anyway considered the definite classic on the genre, is to take on the “American slice of life” aspect when all else fails or you are stuck.

I am not sure though in this case this film tells us much about contemporary America, at least anything that you can put a hook into. A suggestion that this film is the current classically fashionable “fight” between the Eastern intelligentsia and the redneck backwoods “good old boys and girls” who sense of justice and political correctness are worlds apart seems snarky. A cinematic replay of the 2016 American presidential campaign, interfered with or not, doesn’t put this round peg in the square. Moreover, the way the whole political correctness aspects play out makes me believe (and Sam too when I asked for candid and serious advice) that the producers have missed out on the Occupy Movement, more importantly what #Me Too stands for, and most decisive of all is that it is clueless about race, about what Black Lives Matter which after all started in real Ferguson, Missouri and either they didn’t hear the news or were more comfortable with stale old clichés about the matter. I make no pretense to have the pulse of the racial question right in this country but if I knew that when I was making a film like this I would not flaunt that ignorance straight up.

Maybe it is best to lay out the storyline and let the emotions wrought by the situation stand in for a hook. I don’t like the idea but I also don’t like the aforementioned slice of life pitch either. Mildred, played by McDormand, is the bereft mother of a raped and murdered teenage daughter by person, or persons unknown. Also in the mix the ditched wife of a wife-beater husband and devotee of intergenerational sex having copped a holy goof nineteen- year old girlfriend after ditching Mildred in a fit of his 27^th mid-life crisis. Mildred is far from over the grief of losing that daughter and the local police’s seeming readiness to throw the case deep into in the cold files. Down the road from her house are the three billboards of the rather inelegant and unfashionable film title and she decides to move things off of dead center by renting the long unused signs to shame/egg on/belittle the efforts to find her daughter’s murderer.

Needless to say the cops, especially top cop Willoughby, played by Woody Harrelson, and one of his young deputies, a wacko cop, Jason Dixon, played by Sam Rockwell did not like this aspersion on their commitment to solving this or any crime. The townspeople in general back them up on this and so stoic and determined Mildred stands essentially alone in seeking some rough justice in this wicked old world for her beloved and mourned daughter. To add fuel to the fire (no pun as will be mentioned shortly) Willoughby is dying of cancer and before the whole deal had gone down commits suicide which some contend Mildred’s seemingly unwarranted campaign had a hand in. With the top cop’s death Jason goes into overdrive first crashing and trashing everything in sight and then when he is fired by the new sheriff in town, a black man no less, he get’s “religion”  about what a cop is supposed to, and not supposed to do.

Meanwhile Mildred still on a rampage turns into a one woman guerilla unit firebombing the police headquarters not knowing that Jason was inside. He got out but had severe burns over a good part of his body. Guys like Jason though never get a break, whether the deserve one or not, and when he does try to solve the case after hearing a random bar conversation which might be related to the daughter’s murder and collects DNA surreptitiously from the suspect it turns out there was no match. Which leaves Mildred and Jason now confederates on that so-called suspect’s trail as over-the-top vigilantes.

See what I mean about where the hook is despite the two excellent acting jobs. In the end though maybe the query of the title of this review can stand in-in defense of one woman vigilantism. Hope that will do.        

For Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50th Anniversary Of His Death And The “Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall With Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies"

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End The Endless Wars- And Keep Them Ended-From The Archives-With A Word From Veteran For Peace Stalwart Ralph Morris

End The Endless Wars- And Keep Them Ended-From The Archives-With A Word From Veteran For Peace Stalwart Ralph Morris

I learned the hard way, the very hard way that the average citizen learns (in the old days almost exclusively guys but there were gals) about the government’s policies on war and peace. The hard way for me was as a bloody foot soldier during the Vietnam War (and also a few guys from the old Tappan Street neighborhood in Troy, New York who laid down their heads there and whose names are now, not forgotten, not by me, etched in black granite down in Washington. But you can learn something in this wicked old even from serious mistakes or in my case sheer ignorance. Learn the hard lessons of something like a “people’s” war and peace policy. It was not easy, it took some time and guidance from my longtime friend Sam Eaton but it has been deeply ingrained in my mind for many years now.      

My pearl of wisdom is to automatically question, hard question the moves the government, the Executive, the military and its hangers-on when the war clouds are hovering as they are today by the American government in places like Russia and China, smaller places too like Iran and let us not forget the litany of “small still smoldering wars” that have made the term endless wars a sardonic expression. I am a child (as is Sam and a number of other writers here) who are old enough to have been brushed by the post-World War II Cold War that iced up world politics for two generations, at least.

When I see the fog of war forming its ugly head of steam of late I want to yell in the streets for some rationality before this government has itself worked up again to bring the house down. The average citizen, you and me, can do as suggested by this archival leaflet to make the general public a little more aware that we should be taking the first warning signals seriously. That fucking war in Vietnam was good for that at least.  

On The Sixtieth Anniversary Of Her Death-Lady Day-Billie Holiday- She Took Our Pain Away Despite Her Own Pains- Out In The Torch Singer Be-Bop Blues Night- Blues Masters- The Women Hold Forth- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Billie Holiday holding forth, very holding forth on Stormy Blues.

Blues Masters: Classic Blues Women: Volume 11, various artists, Rhino Records, 1993

I swear, I swear on a stack of seven bibles, I am off, finally off film noir femme fatales after watching (or rather , re-watching) Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, mainly Jane Greer, go round and round in the classic crime noir Out Of The Past. How could any rational man not think twice about following such femmes as Jane Greer’s Kathy who just happened to be a little gun happy (and a chronic liar to boot) who put a couple in Robert Mitchum’s Jeff after he did somersaults to try to save her bacon about six times. That’s gratitude for you.

Well, like I said I am off, done, finished with those two-timing dames, and good riddance. Now I have time, plenty of time, and my health to speak of blues in the night wailing female torch singers who, as far as I know, do not carry or do not need to carry guns, to do their business. Of course it was not big deal to change my allegiances because since I was a kid I have been nothing but putty in their hands for any torch singer who could throw away my blues with some sorrow laden tune.

Maybe it was in some back-drop Harvard Square coffeehouse in long mist time 1960s when I first heard such voices, first among them, Billie Holiday, late, early, whatever Billie Holiday singing of some man on her mind, mostly some no good man, some no dough man, who maybe took a couple of whacks at her for no reason, or just took her last dough to bet on that next sure thing…and happiness. Or maybe earlier when some home background 1940s we-won-the-war be-bop music filtered through the air my own childhood house from the local radio station playing Peggy Lee all Benny Goodman’d up, or Helen Whiting, or, or well, you get the drift. Stuff that would stop me in my tracks and ask, ask where did that sorrow come from.

Later, several years later, it blossomed fully when some now half-forgotten (but only half-forgotten) girlfriend gave me a complete Vanguard Record set of all of Bessie Smith’s recordings. Ah heaven, and ah the student neighbors who had to listen for half a day while I played the damn set through. So get it, get it straight I am a long-time aficionado of the genre and commenting on this Blues Masters CD about classic women blues singers is a piece of cake.

Strangely, although the bulk of the “discovered” blues singers of the folk revival minute of the 1960s were male (Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Son House, Skip James, et. al) back in the serious heyday of the blues in the 1920s and early 1930s women dominated the blues market, the popular music of the day. And the women featured in this compilation were the most well-known of the myriad torch singers that lit up the concert hall, speakeasies and juke joints North and South. Mamie Smith, “Ma” Rainey, the divide Sippie Wallace, of course Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey (later to be one of the first women blues producers and record company owners), and Alberta Hunter are all rightfully and righteously here.

What, no Billie Holiday? Well yes she does Stormy Weather here so stay calm. I have singled her out because to me her voice, her phrasing, her half breath between notes is what torch singing was all about and all about whenever I felt (or feel) blue I just turned to Billie and she would sing your blues away (unfortunately not her own). Now if I could just get a torch singer who was also a non-gun- toting femme fatale I would be in very heaven. Ya, I know I said I was off femmes but what are you going to do.

Before The Fall-Before The Garden Of Eden Fell Into Disrepair-Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “I Confess” (1953)-A Film Review

Before The Fall-Before The Garden Of Eden Fell Into Disrepair-Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “I Confess” (1953)-A Film Review    

DVD Review

By Lenny Lynch

I Confess, starring Montgomery Clift,  Anne Baxter, directed by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, 1953

I admit, freely admit that I am a lapsed, very lapsed Catholic of the Roman persuasion although that is no factor in the how or why of drawing this review of an Alfred Hitchcock minor classic I Confess set in Catholic Canada, French-Canadian Canada, Quebec, which is actually a separate country or could be if the Quebecois wanted such an outcome as many have demonstrated for in the past, where my good friend and mentor Josh Breslin’s people came from a couple of generations back. What does factor in is the still scarred, scary, bizarre ritual (ritualistic cleansing at least) memoires of facing the inquisition in the confessional box in the person of the parish priest, one Father Lally who was one son of a bitch on dragging out every last sin out off his charges and pronouncing high dungeon penance that would make many a knee weary down at the blessed altar rail. (Many years later it came out, came out during the scandalous cover-ups and then exposes of the sodomites in the pulpits in the Boston Catholic diocese that good old Father Lally was giving absolution gratis for his favored boys who confessed to all kinds of sexual fantasy sins that the bastard then made them pay for scarring at least one of maybe two generations of innocent boys. He died before any of them got any satisfaction of seeing his crimes exposed and sent prison bound. Money will never wash away the crimes against humanity that Father Lally inflicted on this troubled world. As least for believers there is the satisfaction that he will burn in hell for eternity and maybe a few can get some solace from that.)

But all that has nothing to do with the plot of the film except that the sanctity of the confessional, the so-called penitent-priest confidentially plays a big role in this film. A rather extreme way that the privilege which after all is a legal privilege in a court of law and no something church ordained although maybe it had its roots in that way back when which can be looked at. Penitent X (I don’t want to violate that sanctity even as a lapsed, very lapsed Catholic) has committed murder, maybe not murder one but murder nevertheless and maybe murder one if X had done it in the act of a robbery which would make it felony murder. He and his wife work for Priest A, played by Montgomery Clift, at the rectory and after he committed the dastardly crime he confessed in the confessional to Priest A. He is home free or at least he thinks he is since he has some kind of understanding that Priest A will not snitch on him to the coppers, and he doesn’t.

Where things get dicey is that way back when before he was ordained, before he got “religion” after being in the military during World War II he had a torrid affair with a woman who subsequently married somebody else but was still in love him. Why that matters is that she and Priest A were seen together the night of the murder and he can’t explain where he was at the time of the murder. Looks like the big step-off for a guy just doing his job. Things get a little better after a trial in which the good priest is found not guilty although that standard is not the same as innocent and the festering parishioners are ready to nail his ass to the wall over the romance stuff. Before they can get the tar out though Penitent X’s wife tells all her husband was the murderer and for that act of sanity he kills her and then runs like a bastard to get away. No way will he do so though as the coppers nab the bastard and he buys nothing but six feet of hard dirt for his troubles. Yeah, nothing here made me want to jump back on the priest-ridden bandwagon as much as I hate to see an innocent guy, a straight-laced priest with a sullen past come close to the big step-off.      

On The Sixtieth Anniversary Of Her Death-Lady Day-Billie Holiday- She Took Our Pain Away Despite Her Own Pains- *It Don't Mean A Thing If You Ain't Got That Swing- The Birthday Centenary Of Swing's Artie Shaw

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for jazz man and mad clarinetist Artie Shaw.


Markin comment:

There is a question of who was the better clarinetist, Artie Shaw or Benny Goodman, among classical jazz aficionados (although one should not exclude Duke Ellington's sideman, Barney Bigard, in that mix). There is, however, no dispute over who had the better swing band in the 1930s- Artie hands down (including with Billie Holiday as vocalist, for a short time). For those, by the way, unfamiliar with swing that was the "bad" teenage-driven music that your grandparents, or parents, listened to away from their parents. You know, the music of the youth tribe like rock and roll for my generation or, maybe, hip-hop for this generation.

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *The Folk Troubadour Of Old- Pete Seeger

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Pete Seeger Doing "Which Side Are You On". Seems, appropriate, right?

That Old Devil Time- The Music Of Pete Seeger

Headlines&Footnotes: A Collection Of Topical Songs, Pete Seeger, Smithsonian/Folkways, 1999

The name Pete Seeger has come up repeatedly in this space over the past few years as the transmission belt from the old 1930’s and 1940’s Depression and World War II era folk revival to the that of the one in the early 1960’s. In other places in this space (check archives) I have mentioned my political differences, great and small, with Brother Seeger so there is no need to go into that here. I would note, however, that despite his folksy style he has always been driven by a political conception to his work. That is, that music, and in his case, folk music can be used to bring political “glad tidings” to the masses. One cannot fault that principle, although what effect music has in driving people to higher political consciousness is a very, very open question in my mind. Nevertheless putting topical subjects to music by the folk balladeer and troubadour alike has a long pedigree and needs no defense here. Moreover, in the capable hands of Pete Seeger, the compilation under review represents a very nice cross-section of that way of driving the political message home.

Everyone in the modern folk milieu owes a debt to Pete Seeger for playing “keeper of the flame” for the old time ‘talking blues’ format of spreading political and social messages (and Woody Guthrie as well, who perfected the art form). This volume is ample proof of that. Good examples here that provide such messages without the drumbeat of heavy political analysis are the pro-women’s liberation “There Once Was A Woman Who Swallowed A Lie” and, most dramatically (and relevantly, as President Obama right now works his way through the “Big Poppy Field” of Afghanistan) “Waist Deep In The Big Muddy” (ostensibly a tale about World War II but really about Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War policy). For social commentary one cannot beat Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes” (almost self-explanatory about the deadening nature of upscale American suburban life) and The Claiborne’s “Listen Mr. Bilbo” (about the simple truths of immigration in America, virtually an immigrant-created country).

Of course, no collection of Seeger efforts is complete without the Spanish Civil War song, “Viva La Quince Brigada”, about the heroic Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th International Brigade that fought valiantly there or to do a cover to commemorate an early heroic Cuban patriot, Jose Marti’s “Guantanamera”. For topical songs, a staple of the folk tradition since about the Middle Ages, try “The Titanic” (yes, that one that went down in 1912-and wasn’t suppose to) and “The Sinking Of The Reuben James” ( an ode to the merchant marines in the early days of World War II). For left wing political struggles under adverse conditions, “Hold The Line”, about a famous Paul Robeson concert at Peekskill, New York that was busted up by fascistic local red necks in the build-up to the ‘red scare of the 1940’s and 1950’s is a good exemplar. And so on. In short, for those who want to hear folk music with a historical sense as it was meant to be presented then here is your primer by one of your master singers of such works. Get to it, okay.


Here are some Pete Seeger-created songs (not all on this reviewed CD)

A LITTLE A' THIS 'N' THAT

My grandma, she can make a soup,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
She can feed the whole sloop group,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
Stone soup! You know the story.
Stone soup! Who needs the glory?
But with grandma cooking, no need to worry.
Just a little a' this 'n' that.

Grandma likes to make a garden grow,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
But she likes to have the ground just so,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
Not too loose and not too firm.
In the spring, the ground's all got to be turned.
In the fall, lots of compost, to feed the worms,
with a little a' this 'n' that.

Grandma knows we can build a future,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
And a few arguments never ever hurt ya,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
True, this world's in a helluva fix,
And some say oil and water don't mix.
But they don't know a salad-maker's tricks,
with a little a' this 'n' that.

The world to come may be like a song,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
To make ev'rybody want to sing along,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
A little dissonance ain't no sin,
A little skylarking to give us all a grin.
Who knows but God's got a plan for the people to win,
with a little a' this 'n' that.

Words and Music by Pete Seeger (1991)
(c) 1991, 1993 by Sanga Music Inc.


IF YOU LOVE YOUR UNCLE SAM) BRING THEM HOME

If you love your Uncle Sam,
Bring them home, bring them home.
Support our boys in Vietnam,
Bring them home, bring them home.

It'll make our generals sad, I know,
Bring them home, bring them home.
They want to tangle with the foe,
Bring them home, bring them home.

They want to test their weaponry,
Bring them home, bring them home.
But here is their big fallacy,
Bring them home, bring them home.

I may be right, I may be wrong,
Bring them home, bring them home.
But I got a right to sing this song,
Bring them home, bring them home.

There's one thing I must confess,
Bring them home, bring them home.
I'm not really a pacifist,
Bring them home, bring them home.

If an army invaded this land of mine,
Bring them home, bring them home.
You'd find me out on the firing line,
Bring them home, bring them home.

Even if they brought their planes to bomb,
Bring them home, bring them home.
Even if they brought helicopters and napalm,
Bring them home, bring them home.

Show those generals their fallacy:
Bring them home, bring them home.
They don't have the right weaponry,
Bring them home, bring them home.

For defense you need common sense,
Bring them home, bring them home.
They don't have the right armaments,
Bring them home, bring them home.

The world needs teachers, books and schools,
Bring them home, bring them home.
And learning a few universal rules,
Bring them home, bring them home.

So if you love your Uncle Same,
Bring them home, bring them home.
Support our boys in Vietnam,
Bring them home, bring them home.

Words and Music by Pete Seeger
© 1966 Storm King Music, Inc.

(From Broadside #71, June 1966: "A woman told me, 'I'm praying every night, please bring my son home safe.' I told her, 'Haven't you learned the lesson of the song WE SHALL OVERCOME? There's no solution for you or your son or me and my son unless it's a solution for all of us. It's got to be 'WE' or there's no solving the problem.' Now I don't claim this song is as good as it should be. But I was hoping for a song which would be good for a group of people to sing over and over again, and a frame in which new verses could be improvised, and the melody and harmony developed as the singers got with it.")

HOLD THE LINE

Let me tell you the story of a line that was held,
And many brave men and women whose courage we know well,
How we held the line at Peekskill on that long September day!
We will hold the line forever till the people have their way.

Chorus (after each verse):
Hold the line!
Hold the line!
As we held the line at Peekskill
We will hold it everywhere.
Hold the line!
Hold the line!
We will hold the line forever
Till there's freedom ev'rywhere.

There was music, there was singing, people listened everywhere;
The people they were smiling, so happy to be there -
While on the road behind us, the fascists waited there,
Their curses could not drown out the music in the air.

The grounds were all surrounded by a band of gallant men,
Shoulder to shoulder, no fascist could get in,
The music of the people was heard for miles around,
Well guarded by the workers, their courage made us proud.

When the music was all over, we started to go home,
We did not know the trouble and the pain that was to come,
We go into our buses and drove out through the gate,
And saw the gangster police, their faces filled with hate.

Then without any warning the rocks began to come,
The cops and troopers laughed to see the damage that was done,
They ran us through a gauntlet, to their everlasting shame,
And the cowards there attacked us, damnation to their name.

All across the nation the people heard the tale,
And marveled at the concert, and knew we had not failed,
We shed our blood at Peekskill, and suffered many a pain,
But we beat back the fascists and we'll beat them back again!

Words by Lee Hays; Music by Pete Seeger (1949)

TALKING UNION

If you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do;
You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you;
You got to build you a union, got to make it strong,
But if you all stick together, now, ‘twont he long.
You'll get shorter hours,
Better working conditions.
Vacations with pay,
Take your kids to the seashore.

It ain’t quite this simple, so I better explain
Just why you got to ride on the union train;
‘Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay,
We’ll all be waiting till Judgment Day;
We’ll all he buried - gone to Heaven -
Saint Peter’ll be the straw boss then.

Now, you know you’re underpaid, hut the boss says you ain’t;
He speeds up the work till you’re ‘bout to faint,
You may he down and out, but you ain’t beaten,
Pass out a leaflet and call a meetin’
Talk it over - speak your mind -
Decide to do something about it.

‘Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool
To go to your meeting and act like a stool;
But you can always tell a stool, though - that’s a fact;
He’s got a yellow streak running down his back;
He doesn’t have to stool - he'll always make a good living
On what he takes out of blind men’s cups.

You got a union now; you’re sitting pretty;
Put some of the boys on the steering committee.
The boss won’t listen when one man squawks.
But he’s got to listen when the union talks.
He better -
He’ll be mighty lonely one of these days.

Suppose they’re working you so hard it’s just outrageous,
They’re paying you all starvation wages;
You go to the boss, and the boss would yell,
"Before I'd raise your pay I’d see you all in Hell."
Well, he’s puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick,
He thinks he’s got your union licked.
He looks out the window, and what does he see
But a thousand pickets, and they all agree
He’s a bastard - unfair - slave driver -
Bet he beats his own wife.

Now, boy, you’ve come to the hardest time;
The boss will try to bust your picket line.
He’ll call out the police, the National Guard;
They’ll tell you it’s a crime to have a union card.
They’ll raid your meeting, hit you on the head.
Call every one of you a goddamn Red -
Unpatriotic - Moscow agents -
Bomb throwers, even the kids.

But out in Detroit here’s what they found,
And out in Frisco here’s what they found,
And out in Pittsburgh here’s what they found,
And down in Bethlehem here’s what they found,
That if you don’t let Red-baiting break you up,
If you don’t let stool pigeons break you up,
If you don’t let vigilantes break you up,
And if you don’t let race hatred break you up -
You’ll win. What I mean,
Take it easy - but take it!


Words by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger (1941)
Music: traditional ("TaIking Blues”)

From The Naval Archives-When Ships Were Made Of Wood And Men Of Steel (Or Maybe The Reverse)

From The Naval Archives-When Ships Were Made Of Wood And Men Of Steel (Or Maybe The Reverse)

Eric Saint James

No question having grown up near the town of Mystic in Connecticut that I learned to love (and fear) the sea, the oceans early. The first house I remember my family living in was at Shady Point, one of the sea lanes for incoming boats and ships. I would endlessly dream that those passing ships, or one of them would take me on some adventure, would attempt to satisfy my urge for wonder. From the age of maybe six I would read whatever was age appropriate about sea-faring exploits. I particularly loved the swashbuckling novels of Walter Jordan and would sit at ocean’s edge dreaming and plotting to get my “first ship”  

Jordan’s novels were centered on the days before steam made sea-travel far less dangerous and time-consuming. Were centered on the wooden ships that I would see down at Mystic Village on display, including a working ship as part of the feel of the place. What intrigued me most those was those fearless tars, sailors, cabin boys not only in managing the feckless seas but defending them and theirs against the bad guys, the slimy pirates whose sole reason for existence seemed to be to loot ships that were carrying cargoes worth some money.

Probably at about fourteen I began to tire of Jordan’s novels since they seemed to then, as I began my literary light explorations, to have been done to a formula (except the changing color of the hair of some maiden who needed saving or some such, land or sea).That was also around the time that I was beginning to get the urge to “go to sea” (aided somewhat by my utter devotion to Ernest Hemingway’s works which seemed more modernly realistic).

My “goal” was to get taken on board that working wooden ship down the Mystic River. When I turned sixteen I applied and got picked to be an apprentice. I was beside myself with joy for once in my young life. Sad to say though, to make a long story short, I “washed out” as they say in the Navy. Despite having been raised in Mystic, having that great love of the sea I had never really been on a boat or ship beyond the Sound, never been in rough waters some distance out. On the third day out we came up against some very rough seas (brought on by the aftermath of some hurricane) and I became utterly seasick. I, the crew, hell even the Captain tried everything to settle me down. Nothing worked and so my short our mother sea career ended in ignominy.