Armistice Day is around the corner!
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Sunday, October 27, 2019
Armistice Day is around the corner! Veterans For Peace
Mix and Mingle Among The Mayfair Swells-Jane Austen’s “Love and Friendship” (2016)-A Film Review
Mix and Mingle Among The Mayfair Swells-Jane Austen’s “Love and Friendship” (2016)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon
Love And Friendship, starring Kate Beckindale, Xavier Samuel, based on the novella Lady Susan by Jane Austen, 2016
Damn my old friend and former colleague at American Film Gazette Sam Lowell whom I replaced as film critic at this site although occasionally writes some “think” pieces now that he is no longer under any deadline. His damnation centers on the tendency that he had when he got interested in a type of film or an author/writer and do a “run” based on that interest (still does so when writing about film noir which he been doing a slow moving “run” B-grade noirs on recently). Over the many years I have known him I also seemed to have picked up the habit. The habit in the present case being taking a “run” at various films based on Jane Austen’s novels and other works after having viewed the film The Jane Austen Book Club. Well we are going down that trail once again with the film adaptation of her early work Lady Susan using the title of another Austen work Love and Friendship.
The scheme in Book Club was to take a modern book club membership and develop the plot of the film around the similarity of relationships among them to those in Austen’s six major novels. No question that one Jane Austen was an astute observer of the social mores and ethos of the later 18th century, early 19th century English country gentry, a strata of society which if it didn’t have the prestige of the upper nobility nevertheless owned the vast tracts of land and controlled the doings of the Parliament in those days that made the kingdom work. Here dear Jane looks at the mating rituals of that country gentry whose members were always in the end driven by the need to avoid dropping down the social ladder. That is most definitely the concern of the lead character Lady Susan, played by Kate Beckindale, whose aim is just that desire to avoid dropping down in her circumstances-and because inheritance is everything just look at the obtuse Common Law provisions that of her daughter.
Let the games begin. Bring a scorecard. Lady Susan is on the rebound having been tossed out of one manor for going toe to toe with the lord of said manor. So off she goes to the country estate of her brother-in law and wife with her lady companion to see what she can dig up to restore her diminished sources. Before long she has that brother-in-law’s wife’s brother, Reginald played by Xavier Samuel, eating out of her hand despite himself (despite knowing that she is in modern language a “tramp”). But his/their father said no way, forget it. Still that brother is not so easy to convince of milady’s sullen sooty character and things look like he will be snagged.
Then all hell breaks loose Lady Susan as it turned out was still going toe to toe with that randy lord and his wife found out about it through a letter delivered by Reginald. The long and short of it is that Lady Susan was forced to call off her relationship with promising Reginald although that is not the last we will see of him. Enter Lady Susan’s daughter Frederica along with a goof companion Sir James Martin. Once Reginald sees Frederica they quickly become an item and goof Sir James is left empty-handed. Well not quite since on the rebound and fiercely committed to her own cozy future she picks up Sir James. All’s well that ends well. With this scenario it is a wonder that Britain was able to rule the world for as long as it did. Hey, what do you think maybe it was because of it.
In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International*From The Marxist Archives- Karl Marx On Historical Materialism
Click on the title to link to a "Workers Vanguard", newspaper of the Spartacist League/U.S, article on the subject mentioned in the headline.
Tales Of The Lakota Queen-The Time Navajo Jack Caught The Westbound Freight
Tales Of The Lakota Queen-The Time Navajo Jack Caught The Westbound Freight
By Seth Garth
Hi, Ace of Diamonds here, my on the bum moniker, real name Jim Mahoney. I just got the word a few days ago that the near-legendary master hobo Navajo Jack (sorry, never knew his last name, or his real last name the reason which will become obvious below) had caught the West-bound train. That is hobo-bum-tramp speak for passing away, dying. How I know that expression I gathered from first- hand experience when I was on the bum back in the 1970s after my first divorce which got a big hand from my drug and money problems which the “ex” couldn’t deal with any longer after I spent the mortgage payment one month on an few ounces of nose candy, of sweet cousin cocaine and she threw me out or I took off depending at this far remove on whose story you want to believe. At the time we were living in Oakland out in California (funny to say these days because we couldn’t afford upscale San Francisco and now Oakland is getting beyond reach for the same kind of people as us back then). I was also in hock to about fifteen other people so I decided to scram, to head out on the road, to go underground really, to go to a place where repo men, dunners and a couple of guys with turned up out of joint noses who worked from a drug dealer I was in hock to big time, and the United States Post Office couldn’t find me with the three dollars in my pocket and a green small backpack with all my worldly possessions in it.
Yeah, the big idea was to go to a place where nobody cared about I.D, about what your past was about or your last address. Of course never having been on the bum before I wasn’t sure where to go. That is not exactly right I had been thrown out of the family house a few times as a young kid when my mother couldn’t handle what she called “one more disgrace” but that was kid’s stuff. Then I would go to the church for refuge but having lost the faith, having lapsed as they say in the Catholic Church that was the last place I wanted to go, especially in unknown California. I headed to the Sallies, to the Salvation Army where if you gave them a “story” they would put you up for a few days. That is exactly what I did once I saw that almost any hard luck story would do. They just wanted a story to cover themselves that you would go the straight and narrow, be contrite. At least while you were under their protection. So I headed to the Mission District, told my story and got my three days and three squares.
That is where I first met Boston Brownie whose first name I do know but will keep quiet about just in case anybody is looking for him for any reason. Still despite time and sunnier days I still remember the rules. Most of which he taught me that first Sally experience. Brownie had confused me when he introduced himself since I thought he was from Boston although he was really from Albany and was using Boston as a cover. I had told him that I was from Riverdale not far from Boston and he told he had slept near the Sudbury River not far from my growing up home one time when he was East. That was the night he told me never tell to say where you were really from, or your name, since you never knew who might cut your throat for that information, meaning if somebody was looking for you they would have a source to go to. I went by the moniker Vegas Vick until one night out in a jungle camp south of Westminster in Southern California while playing five-card stud with Saw Mill Jefferson I kept drawing the Ace of Diamonds and thereafter was christened Ace of Diamonds.
In any case after our stay, my stay was up at the Sallies me and Brownie decided or rather he decided and I went along to hit the road. By the way it was Brownie who clued me in to the fact that at the Sallies as long as you were sober, or appeared sober, could get extensions of your stay especially if you had an earnest story and demeanor. (When I found those “later and sunnier times” anytime, now even, the Sallies sent a request for donations I would ante up so there is some kind of equity in this transaction between us even if they are unaware of the connection.) I wound up staying about two week, kept sober, got some day labor money and paid close attention when Brownie would tell me various hustles like where to get free lunches on the church soup line circuit, some clothes beyond my crusted old stuff and how to hit the church social welfare circuit to get five, ten, twenty dollars to “get on your feet” with a half decent sob story.
I didn’t have to embellish mine much since that divorce, the drugs and a general line of patter about a new start got me over the line. The only thing that Brownie yelled at me about was that day labor work which he said was beneath his dignity, his dignity as a hobo. That was when he gave me the word on the differences, recognized differences among the road brethren, between the low-level bum who basically refused to work living almost exclusively on hand-outs, the tramp who would work any kind of job from dishwasher to fruit-picker mainly to keep himself in wine and cigarettes and the kings of the hill, the hoboes who kept the hobo jungles in order and who only worked when there was some worthwhile job, not cheapjack day labor. Anybody, or almost anybody, was welcome at least for a while in any hobo camp but that hierarchy as I would come to see definitely existed.
I had read Jack Kerouac’s On The Road as a younger man and so I was kind of thrilled that we would be heading out on what I thought was the hitchhike road. Maybe meet some females looking for male companionship, maybe not. (The curse of the hitchhike road then whenever I chanced to travel that way when too far from the freight tracks was not the later mass murderer roaming the highways looking for easy victims but what we called the “perverts” guys who were cruising looking for other guys, homosexuals, who if you said no would dump you off the side of the road like I was one time out in Winnemucca in the Nevadas.) That hitchhike stuff was crazy Brownie laughed the only way to travel was on the freights where you could make better time avoid lots of road hassle and local on the look-out cops (although overall the railroad bulls, cops were more of a hassle than any civilian cops except when trying to sleep in their parks or places like that.) Brownie’s plan was to head south since this was late September when we started and as you headed East if you went through the Rockies you could run into snow and cold weather trouble as early as early October. We went south to L.A. on a Union Pacific spur then headed East on the grand old Southern Pacific. That first trip out I would have bet everything I had that hitchhiking was better but I will admit Brownie was right that to get where you are going that freight system is the way to go.
As I have already mentioned along the various railroad tracks that crisscross the country there are hobo camps, jungles, where the brethren can find kindred, a safe flop and a not fit for everybody meal at least. The camp at Gallup, New Mexico was where I met the legendary Navajo Jack who Brownie kept telling me about and hoped would be at Gallup when we arrived. Naturally the stories about so-called legendary guys on the road center on survival prowess, beating back the bulls and cops and the ability to jump any freight that comes your way. Nothing big by real world standards but big in that world. Navajo had that reputation but also one as a guy who would not think twice about cutting another guy if he crossed him or crossed some young kid (more likely tried to rape the kid) or crossed some friend. But mainly the legend was about his ability to run the rails, to see that mystical starlight on the rails. When I did get to meet him I was all ears to what he had to say. (Brownie and he had traveled together when both were younger, when Navajo was working the freights trying to get out of the fucking Dakotas and that reservation life.)
But enough about me and my travels which in the hobo-tramp-bum road book were rather short (even including the hitchhike trail) since once I headed East that last time and settled in Boston for real and opened up a small print shop, got remarried and took on those sunnier days I went off the road. Navajo never did as I would hear occasionally from Brownie (when he finally went off the road after almost getting a leg severed trying to jump a freight that was moving too fast for him).
This time that I found out about Navajo Jack’s demise I had run into Boston Brownie in the Boston Common as I occasionally do when I am downtown for some reason and noticed that he was sitting on a bench that I have seen him sit on a million times over the years. Since the days when he stopped trying to catch freight trains because he just couldn’t do it anymore. (I had given up that mode of transportation many years before that and had gone back to the nine to five grind which proved easier than being on the bum-most hobos, bums, tramps would disagree and who is to fault them.) Sometimes I would stop and give him a ten-er or whatever I had in my pocket and talk for a while. Sometime not either because I was in that nine to five rush or because he was in his cups, his high wino heaven moment.
That day though Brownie was coherent, and I had money in my pocket, so I sat down next to him and talked a bit. That is when he mentioned that he had heard from somebody else that Navajo had passed away, hell, some things, some terms die hard, had caught that West-bound train. Brownie didn’t know exactly how Jack ended although it was on the bum, on the road since the party who informed Brownie said Navajo had passed some place in Illinois on the Lakota Queen and had been found one morning face down a short distance from the tracks near a hobo “jungle” and somebody had called the coppers to get him out of there. (“Hobo jungle” a place usually a short distance from the side of a railroad track, or under a bridge, along a river bank if there no train tracks where the travelling people as they say in Ireland can find kindred, find some food, some hellbroth stew usually no culinary expert could cook up, some warmth of the eternal fire some protection of sorts from railroad “bull,” railroad cops, or local cops as long as they decided not to bust the operation up and, maybe, some camaraderie although that sometimes could be iffy as I knew from first-hand experience when old-timers did not welcome young guys into their club.)
Well at least Navajo didn’t die in his bed, didn’t die in his native South Dakota a place from which he was always running away from. Died running the Lakota Queen which is the name Navajo gave to every train he ever hopped a ride whether it was the Washington and Ohio, Union Pacific or Southern Pacific. Needless to say it was never an Amtrak passenger train every true hobo scorned out of hand. That running away something that I could relate too then, maybe now too on full moon nights when I get a craving for being on the road, for being free from the nine to five drag that I would bitch and moan to Brownie about when he was not in his cups. The times I talked to Navajo we would always start with -where you running away from this time. Funny Navajo didn’t even want to carry his name, his traditions at a time when I knew him American Indians were becoming “Native Americans” and later “Indigenous peoples” for despite his moniker he was half Lakota, half white if you can fathom that.
Yeah Navajo Jack was Lakota Sioux and I think he said Welsh, but he hated that former fact, hated that he had grown up on a dingy South Dakota reservation just as I had grown up in that Riverdale mill town about forty miles west of Boston. Told me he had tried out various names Hopi Hank, Raging Apache and the like but after going through Navajo country somebody had tagged him with the name and it stuck. Funny though from the first day, or rather night I met him out in Gallup, New Mexico, out at the hobo jungle right outside of town not far from the Southern Pacific tracks he called every train the Lakota Queen, so who knows what was going through his mind at any given time about running away from his past. A lot of guys had names for the freights, usually after some love that had faded long ago or had been run away from and regretted. I always thought Navajo was running the same thoughts in his head when he rode every train west or east. Some squaw his term, some Phoebe Snow we called it around some flame-flickered campfire.
Navajo was maybe ten, fifteen years older than I was. Had been on the bum, been on the road for maybe ten years then, had been on that road every since he got out of the service, out of the Army after hell-hole duty in Vietnam which he said he would never get over, not about the killing but about the lies the government, the white man’s government had told him via the recruiting sergeant about what was going on over there. Made sure he didn’t put down roots anywhere, left no forwarding address for nothing nowhere the way he said it. I always liked being around Navajo, he got me out of a few jams, kicked my ass a few times when he let the whiskey get to him, but always will be in my book one of the royalty of the road, of the hobo kingdom.
Funny, as I left Brownie that forlorn day when I found out about Navajo I almost said that he had “cashed his check.” I stopped myself when Brownie gave me a wicked look and then said, “sorry Navajo that you wound up catching that West-bound freight.” Brownie smiled as if to say that he now knew that I would always remember the rules of the road.
Armies Of The Night, Oops, Armies Of The Day- The October 21, 2018 Women’s March On The Pentagon-Another Sam Eaton And Ralph Morris Story From The Archives
Armies Of The Night, Oops, Armies Of The Day- The October 21, 2018 Women’s March On The Pentagon-Another Sam Eaton And Ralph Morris Story From The Archives
By Frank Jackman
Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton have never been skimpy about doing things for the cause, the cause for them some peace in this wicked old world, some end to the endless wars their county, their America is embroiled in, leading to wicked out of whack U.S. military budgets that are wasteful and wanton. It was not always like that for this pair-they were as patriotic as any other 1960s citizen having in Ralph’s case served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam during the hellish times in 1967 and 1968. Sam Eaton not thinking much about the war since he had a serious childhood leg deformation and therefore was militarily unfit had his sad epiphany when his best friend Jeff Mullins had sent him a letter begging him that if anything happened to him in Vietnam to tell everybody who would listen to oppose the damn war against peasants who were fighting for their land and independence and we had no rationale quarrel with them.
Ralph had come back from Vietnam without any illusions about what he had done, what he had watched others do to people he had no quarrel with and Jeff Mullins had not returned from the war. This unlikely pairing despite both being from serious working-class backgrounds and hence tight in some matters met in the field of fire down in Washington, D.C. on May 1971 where they “met” in Robert Kennedy Stadium not for a professional game but having been rounded up in a police sweep on the streets when they were among thousands who had decided to up the ante and try to shut down the government if it would not shut down the war. Those were desperate times for anti-war advocates, Ralph ha gone down there with a contingent from Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) from the Albany area. The area where he grew up and Sam had come down with a cohort of radicals from Cambridge near where he grew up in Carver (at one time the cranberry bog capital of the world he would tell everybody who would listen.
That meeting, better meeting of the minds would last until this day through thick and thin. Both men had raised families and that had curtailed their activities somewhat over the years. They would not meet sometimes for extended periods of time but they always felt a bond that time and distance would not, could not break. Ralph had joined Veterans for Peace in the early part of the 21st century and Sam had joined as an associate so a lot of the events they went to were under the black and white dove-etched flags of that organization. As they had come of retirement age, Ralph turning over the high end electronics business his father had started to his youngest son and Sam’s his printing business over to a trusted employee they had become if anything more active as the times demanded their efforts what with endless wars, bloated military budgets and cuts in necessary social programs rocking the country well beyond even the most egregious acts of the Vietnam War governments. Ralph would make Sam laugh when he suggested that they buy a condo in Washington they were down there so much lately back in June around the Poor Peoples Campaign.
That endless war, endless increase in the military budgets and the endless cuts in social programs (and add in general boorishness of the governments of late) made them prime subjects for any event that would highlight those issues. During the summer of 2018 they had seen during one march or other an advertisement calling for a women’s march on the Pentagon in October. Actually the exact days of the 1967 actions, October 20th and 21st. The call issued by antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan. The combination of the name Cindy Sheehan and March of the Pentagon sent flashes through their minds. Cindy Sheehan whatever her subsequent trajectory, not all for the better, earned a lot of “street cred,” an important characteristic to them when she almost single-handedly revived the peace movement, the anti-Iraq opposition when that war turned into another long-term American military quagmire when she “camped out” down at George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas back in 2005-2006 looking for answers to one question-why was her son killed in Iraq when there was no rational reason to have gone into that benighted country in the first place since there were no weapons of mass destruction on the premises. That got a lot of peace activists, including Ralph and Sam, back on track after a period of quiescence after the invasion was started despite mass opposition. No, forget “back on track” shamed them back onto the streets. Her name alone was enough for them to make plans.
Sam, the reader and writer of the pair, although Ralph had plenty of ideas in his own right and on those occasions would do himself proud with whatever “think piece” he would put together, had been indifferent to the anti-war movement as mentioned before in 1967 and of course Ralph had been in Vietnam then so neither for their respective reasons had been involved in the original march on the Pentagon that year. Sam had actually later read Norman Mailer’s account of his part the action, his self-serving part in the award-winning Armies of the Night and despite some of Mailer’s over the top language in explaining the course of events had at that point wished he had been part of the action which included many acts of civil disobedience when got those, including Mailer himself, a taste of federal or local justice. (This “later” after Sam had, and Ralph too their own fair share of arrest for acts of non-violent civil disobedience.)
When the pair discussed the up-coming action they knew, given the marginal condition of the active anti-war/peace movement that there would be no literati like Mailer, Dwight MacDonald from Partisan Review and a fistful of other writerly types. No glitterati like William Sloane Coffin and Doc Spock, they of draft resistance fame for which they would stand trial. And no known heavy politicos like Allan Ginsberg OMing the building to the mist of mind, Abbie Hoffman “levitating” the place or even left-liberal types and if things of late ran true to form despite a deluge of press releases no mainstream press (although they knew from Boston/Albany/New York City/ Washington D.C. experience there would be plenty of student journalists sent by their professors to hone their skills on the cheap to people talking to like Ralph and Sam who had learned that talking “to the kids” would hone their own interviewing skills at least giving some pithy line worthy of the mainstream press-if they had bothered to show up. The long and short of it was that this pair were pumped to go do battle against Moloch on its terms and see what came of it.
Only to be for one of the few times in their long and sometimes lonely anti-war careers disappointed or rather perplexed at what had been so promising but which was by any standard a bust. There would be no blame placed, although some scuttlebutt placed blame on the lack of organization, lack of a united front with other peace and social action groups beyond Ms. Sheehan’s name, lack of proper publicity and lack of dramatic effect. Both men had come down by plane from Boston, gone were the days when they would think nothing of the ten hour drive from either Albany or Boston, think nothing of having to go through or around bitch New York City traffic, think nothing of sleeping on church floors sleeping bag in hand, think nothing of the gruel provided for food, thinking nothing of no sleep for three days running of necessary. But poor bladders, poor eyesight, poor energy levels and a little sense that bourgeois flight was not so bad for the soul after all that had made that previous mode of travel outmoded. Even the million bus rides were out for those same reasons.
The plan of action was for the “masses” to meet at Pentagon City Metro stop which Sam knew from previous trips down was the perfect place to meet to head to the Pentagon a mile or two away. But that meeting spot should have also rung bells in their ears because no way would the place take a mass march. And it didn’t since perhaps three or four hundred, at the outside five, people showed up before the noon starting time (which for one of the few times in anti-war march history actually did go off around that time-both men thinking that fact amazing). (By Sam’s count there between police and military far more of them than demonstrators which is a sad commentary on the state of the peace movement as refracted trough this event. The march route was fairly short by Washington march standards but the route, the Sunday-driven route, meant that there would be nothing but empty parking lots that ring the building to greet the crowd. In the event the march ended at the North Parking lot and the dwindling crowd ( a “choir” crowd so once the march was completed there was drift since the line-up of speakers and performers in the vast empty parking lot, mercifully though with a sizable number of port-a- johns for the AARP-worthy crowd was not enough to hold those who had heard it all before) heard what they expected to hear from anti-warrior veterans and performers.
If this was to be the jump-off to a new revived anti-war movement like the 1967 Pentagon march had been this did not go down well with two long-time activists. If this was that start-please have mercy. They left the place late that afternoon scratching their heads searching for answers-no doubt about that hard fact
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Korea: Prospects for Peace in a changing world Massachusetts Korea Peace Campaign Seung Hee Jeon
Korea: Prospects for Peace in a changing world
To Al Johnson
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Korea: Prospects for Peace in a changing world
Tuesday, October 29, 6:30pm
Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St (Copley Square)
Dear Al,
US-North Korea peace talks seem to be stalled, but Trump has pushed out the hawkish John Bolton, who had been blamed for the lack of progress. South Korea and Japan are escalating their rhetoric, the US-China trade war continues to deepen, and Hong Kong has been roiled by protests. What are the prospects for peace in Korea given the rapidly changing events in Asia and world politics?
Keumjoo Armstrong, co-chair, Massachusetts Korea Peace Campaign. Keumjoo is just back from a visit to North Korea. She will share slides and her reflections on North Korea and on what needs to be done to prevent war
Joseph Gerson, Director of Program, American Friends Service Committee and Director of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security. Joseph will address historic legacies and current great power policies and ambitions in Northeast Asia - with Korea at their vortex; causes and implications of growing tensions between Japan and South Korea, including their current trade war; and perspectives of South Korean peace advocates on the stalled U.S.-DPRK-ROK negotiations.
Hyungjin Kim (president of WeHope, the "Comfort Women" project-NEU, and Sonny Son (chairperson, board of directors of WeHope), will participate in the discussion.
Refreshments: Kim Pop (Korean rice rolls) and other refreshments will be served.
Sponsors: Massachusetts Korea Peace Campaign; Community Church of Boston; Massachusetts Peace Action
Pyongyang swimming pool. Pyongyang Street Scene. Keumjoo Armstrong photo | 
Seung Hee Jeon
Co-coordinator
Massachusetts Korea Peace Campaign
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