Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History “ series started in the Fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Louis Auguste Blanqui 1832-Speech before the Society of the Friends of the People
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Source: Louis Auguste Blanqui, écrits sur la révolution, Oeuvres completes, Tome 1. Editions Galilée, paris, 1977;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2007.
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The fact shouldn’t be hidden that there is a war to the death between the classes that compose the nation. This truth recognized, the truly national party, the ones patriots should rally to, is the party of the masses.
Until now there have been three interests in France: that of the so-called upper classes, that of the middle or bourgeois class, and finally that of the people. I place the people last because they were always the last and because I count on an imminent application of the Gospel maxim that “the last shall be first.”
In 1814 and 1815 the bourgeois class, tired of Napoleon not because of despotism (it cares little for liberty, which in its eyes it isn’t worth a pound of good cinnamon or a nice fat bill), but because the blood of the people being exhausted, the war was beginning to take its children from it and, even more, because it harmed its tranquility and hindered commerce. The bourgeois class then received the foreign soldiers as liberators and the Bourbons as God’s envoys. They were the ones who opened the gates of Paris, who treated the soldiers of Waterloo as brigands, and who encouraged the bloody reaction of 1815.
Louis XVIII rewarded them with the Charter. This Charter established the upper classes as an aristocracy and gave the bourgeois the Chamber of Deputies, called the democratic chamber. With this the émigrés, the nobles, the big landowners who were fanatical partisans of the Bourbons, and the middle class who accepted them from self-interest found themselves the masters in equal part of the government. The people were pushed to the side. Bereft of leaders, demoralized by foreign invasion, having lost faith in liberty, they remained silent and submitted to the yoke while remaining on their guard. You know the consistent support the bourgeois class gave the Restoration until 1825. It loaned its hand to the massacres of 1815 and 1816, to the scaffolds of Borie and Berton, to the war in Spain, to the arrival of Villèle and the changes in the electoral law; until 1827 it regularly sent majorities given over to those in power.
In the period 1825-1827 Charles X, seeing that he was succeeding at everything and believing himself strong enough without the bourgeois, wanted to proceed to their exclusion, as was done with the people in 1815. He took a daring step towards the Ancien Régime and declared war on the middle class by proclaiming the exclusive dominance of the nobility and clergy under the banner of Jesuitism. The bourgeoisie is by essence anti-spiritual: it detests churches, and believes only in double entry bookkeeping. The priests irritated them: they had consented to share with the upper classes in oppressing the people, but seeing its turn arrive as well, full of resentment and jealousy against the high aristocracy, it rallied to that minority of the middle class that had combated the Bourbons since 1815 and that it had sacrificed up till then. It was then that a war of newspapers and elections began, carried out with so much steadfastness and fury. But the bourgeois fought in the name of the Charter and nothing but the Charter, and in fact the Charter assured their power. Faithfully executed, it gave them supremacy within the state. Legality was invented to represent this interest of the bourgeoisie’s and to serve as its flag. The legal order became a kind of divinity before which constitutional opponents burned their daily incense. This struggle was carried out from 1825 -1830, ever more favorably to the bourgeois, who rapidly gained ground and who, masters of the Chamber of Deputies, soon threatened the government with complete defeat.
What were the people doing in the midst of this conflict? Nothing. They remained a silent spectator to the quarrel, and everyone knows that its interests didn’t count in the debates of its oppressors. To be sure, the bourgeois cared little about them and their cause, which were looked on as having been lost fifteen years before. You recall that the papers most devoted to the constitutionals regularly repeated that the people had submitted their resignation to their representatives, the only organs of France. It wasn’t only the government that considered the masses as indifferent to the debate: the middle classes detested them perhaps even more, and they surely counted on being the only ones to pluck the fruits of victory. That victory didn’t go further than the Charter. Charles X and the Charter with an all-powerful bourgeoisie, this was the goal of the constitutionals. Yes, but the people understood the question differently. The people mocked the Charter in execrating the Bourbons. Seeing its masters argue among themselves it spied out in silence the moment to leap onto the battlefield and bring the parties into agreement.
When the classes arrived at such a point that the government no longer had any resource than coups d’état, and that that threat of a coup d’état was suspended over the heads of the bourgeois, then they were gripped with fear! Who doesn’t recall the regrets and terrors of the 221 after the order of dissolution that answered their famous address? Charles X spoke of his firm resolve to resort to force, and the bourgeoisie blanched. Already most of them loudly disapproved the 221 for having allowed themselves to be carried away by revolutionary excesses. The most daring placed their hope in the refusal of a tax that would have been paid and in the support of tribunals, almost all of who would gladly have filled the office of summary political courts. If the royalists demonstrated so much confidence and resolution, if their adversaries showed so much fear and uncertainty, it’s that both regarded the people as having resigned themselves and expected to find them neutral in the battle. And so on one hand the government depended on the nobility, the clergy and the big landowners, and on the other was the middle class which, after five years of warming up in a war of words, was ready to come to blows with the people, silent for fifteen years and believed resigned.
It was in these conditions that the combat was engaged. The ordinances were issued and the police smashed the newspaper presses. I won’t speak of our joy, citizens, we who are shaking the yoke and who are finally witnessing the reawakening of the popular lion that had slept for so long. July 26 was the most beautiful day of our life. But the bourgeois! Never has a political crisis offered a spectacle of such frightful, such profound consternation. Pale, frantic they heard the first shots as the first discharge of a picket that was to shoot them down one by one. You all remember the conduct of the deputies on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. They used what presence of mind and faculties fear left to them to ward off, to halt the combat. Preoccupied with their own cowardice, they were unready to foresee popular victory and were already trembling beneath Charles X’s knife. But on Thursday the scene changed. The people were the victors. And then another terror seized them, more profound and oppressive. Farewell dreams of the Charter, of legality, of constitutional royalty, of the exclusive domination of the bourgeoisie! The powerless ghost that was Charles X faded away. In the midst of the debris, of flames and smoke, the people appeared standing on the corpse of royalty, standing like a giant, the tricolor flag in hand. They were struck with stupor. It was then that they regretted that the National Guard didn’t exist July 26, that they condemned the lack of foresight and the folly of Charles X, who had smashed the anchor of his own salvation. It is too late for regrets! You can see that during these days, when the people were so grand, the bourgeois were tied up between two fears, that of Charles X in the first place, and then that of the workers. A noble and glorious role for these proud warriors who float their high plumes at parades on the Champ de Mars.
But citizens: how is it that so sudden and fearsome a revelation of the force of the masses remained sterile? By what fatality did that revolution made by the people alone, and that should have marked the end of the exclusive reign of the bourgeoisie as well as the success of popular interests and might, have no other results than the establishing of the despotism of the middle class, aggravating the poverty of the workers and peasants, and plunging France a bit further into the mud? Alas, the people, like the other old man, knew how to win, but not how to profit from its victory. The fault is not all their own. The combat was so brief that its natural leaders, those who would have led the way to victory, didn’t have the time to distinguish themselves from the crowd. They necessarily rallied to the leaders who had figured at the head of the bourgeoisie in the parliamentary struggle against the Bourbons. What is more, they were grateful to the middle classes for their little five year war against their enemies, and you have seen what benevolence, I would almost say what feeling of deference they showed towards those men in suits they met on the streets after the battle. That cry of “Long Live the Charter!” which was so perfidiously abused was nothing but a rallying cry for proving its alliance with these men. Did they already feel, as if by instinct, that they had just played a nasty trick on the bourgeoisie and, in the generosity of the victor, did they want to make advances and offer peace and friendship to their future adversaries? Whatever the case, the masses hadn’t formally expressed any positive political will. What acted on them, what had thrown them into the public square, was the hatred of the Bourbons, the firm resolution to overthrow them. There was both Bonapartism and the Republic in the wishes they formed for the government that was to issue from the barricades.
You know how the people, in its confidence in the chiefs they’d accepted and which their ancient hostility to Charles X made them consider them as equally implacable enemies of the entire Bourbon family, retired from the public squares once the battle was finished. At that point the bourgeois came out of their cellars and threw themselves in their thousands onto the streets, which the departure of the combatants had left free. There is no one who doesn’t remember with what amazing suddenness the scene changed on the streets of Paris, like at a theatre; the way suits replaced work jackets, in the blink of an eye, as if a fairy wand had made some disappear and others spring up. This was because the bullets were no longer flying. It was no longer a question of receiving blows, but of gathering up loot. To each his role: the men of the workshops disappeared, the men who work behind the counter appeared.
It was then that the wretches who had been given victory as a deposit, after having attempted to place Charles X back on his throne, feeling that their lives were at risk and lacking the courage to brave the dangers of such a treason, stopped at a less perilous treason. A Bourbon was proclaimed king. Under the direction of agents paid with royal gold 10-15,000 bourgeois put in place in the courts of the new palace saluted the master for a few days with their cries of enthusiasm. As for the people, since they have no dividends and lack the means to stroll beneath the windows of palaces, they were in the workshops. But they weren’t accomplices in this unworthy usurpation that would not have occurred had they found men capable of guiding their angry and vengeful blows. Betrayed by their chiefs, abandoned by the schools, they remained silent and on their guard, as in 1815. I’ll cite you as an example a coachman who drove me last Saturday. After having told me of the part he played in the combats of the three days he added: “ On the way to the Chamber I encountered the procession of deputies headed towards the Hotel de Ville. I followed them to see what they’d do. Then I saw Lafayette appear on the balcony with Louis-Philippe and say, ‘Frenchmen, here is your King.’ Sir, when I heard that word it was as if I’d been stabbed. I was blinded; I went on my way.” That man is the people.
This then was the situation of the parties immediately following the July Revolution. The upper class was crushed; the middle class, which hid itself during the combat and disapproved it, demonstrating as much cleverness as it did prudence, snatched the fruits of victory that were won despite them. The people, who did everything, remained a zero, as before. But a terrible act has been accomplished: like a thunderbolt, the people had suddenly entered the political scene that they took by assault, and though more or less chased from it at the same instant, they nevertheless acted with mastery. They withdrew their resignation. It will henceforth be between them and the middle class that bitter war will be carried out. It’s no longer between the upper classes and the bourgeois: in order to better resist, the latter will need to call their former enemies to their assistance. In fact, for a long time the bourgeoisie has not hidden its hatred of the people.
If we examine the conduct of the government there is in its policies, the same march, the same progression of hatred and violence as among the bourgeoisie, whose interests and passions it represents.
When the bricks of the barricades were still piled up in the streets all that was spoken of was the program of the Hotel de Ville, of republican institutions; handshakes, popular proclamations, the grand words of liberty, independence, and national glory were bandied about. And then, when those in power had at their disposal an organized military force, pretensions mounted; all the laws, all the ordinances of the Restoration were invoked and applied. Later, the prosecution of the press, the persecutions of the men of July, the people beaten and tracked down with bayonet blows, taxes increased and collected with a rigor unheard of under the Restoration: this entire apparatus of tyranny revealed the governments hatreds and fears. But it felt that the people felt that same hatred for them, and not judging itself strong enough with the support of the bourgeoisie alone it sought to rally the upper classes to its cause in order that, established on this dual base, it would be in a state to more successfully resist the threatened invasion of the proletarians. It is to this maneuver to conciliate the aristocracy that we should attach the system it has developed in the past eighteen months. This is the key to its policy. And this upper class is almost entirely composed of royalists. In order to bring them along it was thus necessary to as nearly as possible approach the Restoration, to follow its meanderings, to continue them. And this is what was done. Nothing was changed except the name of the king. The people’s sovereignty was denied, trod upon. The court wore mourning attire for foreign princes, legitimacy was copied in all regards. Royalists were maintained in their places, and all those who had to leave in the first onrush of the revolution found more lucrative positions; the magistracy was preserved in such a way that the whole administration is in the hands of men devoted to the Bourbons. What is more, a part of this upper class, the most rotten part of it, that which above all wants gold and pleasures, deigned to promise its protection to public order. But the other part, the one I’ll call the least rotted in order not to say “ honorable,” that which has self-respect and faith in its opinions, which worships its flag and its old memories, these people reject with disgust the caresses of the middle way. They have behind them the largest part of the populations of the south and the west, all those peasants of the Vendée and Brittany who, having remained foreign to the movement of civilization, preserve an ardent faith in Catholicism, and with reason confound in their devotions Catholicism with legitimacy, for these are two things that have lived and must die together.
Do you think that these simple and believing men are open to the seductions of bankers? No, citizens! For the people, whether if in their ignorance they are enflamed with religious fanaticism or if, more enlightened, they allow themselves to be carried away by enthusiasm for liberty, the people are ever great and generous; they don’t obey low monetary interests but the nobler passions of the soul, the aspirations of elevated morality. But however delicately and deferentially we might handle Brittany and the Vendée, they are still ready to rise at the cry of “God and King” and threaten the government with their Catholic and royal armies, which the first shock will smash. And that’s not all: that faction of the upper classes that attached itself to the middle way will abandon it at the first moment. All they promised was to not work to overthrow them. As for devotion, you know it’s possible to have it towards coupon clippers. Even more, I’d say that the greatest part of the bourgeois, who are pressing, gathering around the government from hatred of the people who they fear, from fright at war, which they have a horror of for they think it’ll take their écus from them, these bourgeois barely care for the current order; they feel it to be powerless to protect them. Let the white flag [of the Royalists] come along that would guarantee them the oppression of the people and material security and they’d be ready to sacrifice their former political pretensions, for they bitterly regret having, through pride, sapped the power of the Bourbons and prepared their fall. They would abdicate their part of power to the hands of the aristocracy, willingly trading tranquility for servitude.
For the government of Louis-Philippe hardly reassures them. It can copy the Restoration all it wants, persecute patriots, set itself to erasing the stain of insurrection it is soiled with in the eyes of the adorers of public order. The memory of those three terrible days pursues them, dominates them. Eighteen months of successful war against the people were unable to counter-balance one sole popular victory. The battlefield is still theirs and that already old victory is suspended over power’s head like the sword of Damocles. All are looking to see if the thread is not soon going to break.
Citizens, two principles share France, that of legitimacy and that of popular sovereignty. The first is the ancient organization of the past. This is the framework society lived in for 1400 years, and that some want to preserve by instinct of self-preservation, and others because they fear that the framework won’t be able to be promptly replaced and anarchy will follow its dissolution. The principle of popular sovereignty rallies all men of the future, the masses who, tired of being exploited, seek to smash the framework that suffocates them. There is no third flag, no middle term. The middle road is foolishness, a bastard government that wants to give itself airs of legitimacy that one can only laugh at. And so the royalists, who perfectly understand this situation, profit from the tact and indulgence of those in power who seek to bring them over to them so as to more actively work at their destruction. Their many newspapers demonstrate daily that the only possible order is legitimacy, that the middle road is powerless to constitute the country, that apart from legitimacy there is only revolution and once the first has been left behind, there is only the second.
What will then happen? The upper classes are waiting for the moment to raise the white flag. In the middle class the great majority, composed of those men who have no other homeland than their counter or their cash box, who would gladly become Russian, Prussian, or English to earn two liards on a piece of cloth or 1/4 % additional profit on discount, will without fail line themselves up behind the white flag. The very name of war and popular sovereignty makes them tremble. The minority of that class, made up of intellectual professions and the small number of bourgeois who love the tricolor flag, the symbol of France’s independence and freedom, will take the side of popular sovereignty.
What is more, the moment of disaster is rapidly approaching. You see that the Chamber of Peers, the magistracy, and most civil servants are openly conspiring for the return of Henri V, mocking the middle road. Legitimist gazettes no longer hide either the hopes or the projects of the counter-revolution. The royalists in Paris and the provinces are gathering their forces, organizing the Vendée and Brittany, and are proudly planting their banner. They are openly saying that the bourgeoisie is with them, and they aren’t wrong. They are only waiting for a signal from foreign lands to raise the white banner, for in foreign countries they would be crushed by the people. They know this and we are counting on their being crushed, even with foreign support.
You can be assured Citizens that they will not want for this support. This is the place to take a look at our relations with the European powers. It should be noted, in fact, that the external situation has developed in parallel with the political march of the government internally. External shame has grown in the exact same proportion as bourgeois despotism and the poverty of the masses internally.
At the first sound of our revolution the kings lost their heads, and the electric spark of insurrection having rapidly set Belgium, Poland, and Italy aflame, they sincerely thought their last day had arrived. How could it be imagined that the revolution didn’t mean a revolution, that the expulsion of the Bourbons didn’t mean the expulsion of the Bourbons, that the overturning of the Restoration would be a new edition of the Restoration? Not even the maddest of individuals could believe this. The cabinets saw in the three days the awakening of the French people and the beginning of its vengeance against the oppressors of nations. Nations judged in the same way as cabinets. But for our friends and enemies it was soon obvious that France had fallen into the hands of cowardly merchants who asked only to traffic in its independence and to sell its glory and liberty at the best price possible. While the kings awaited our declaration of war they received begging letters in which the French government implored pardon for its errors. The new master excused himself for having participated against his will in the revolt. He protested his innocence and his hatred for the revolution that he promised to tame, to punish, to wipe out if his good friends the kings promised him their protection, a small place in the Holy Alliance whose faithful servant he would become.
The foreign cabinets understood that the people weren’t complicit in this treason and that it wouldn’t delay in rendering justice. Their decision was taken: exterminate the insurrections that had broken out in Europe, and when everything returns to order unite their forces against France and come strangle in Paris itself the revolution and the revolutionary agent. This plan was followed with an admirable consistency and skill. They couldn’t go too fast, because the people of July, still full of their recent triumph, would have been too alert to a too direct threat and would have forced its government’s hand. In any event, it was necessary to grant time to the middle way to stifle enthusiasm, discourage patriots and instill mistrust and discord in the nation. They also couldn’t go too slowly, for the masses could have grown tired of the servitude and poverty that weighed on it internally and for a second time smash the yoke before the foreigners were in shape.
All of these shoals were avoided. The Austrians invaded Italy. The bourgeois who govern us said “Good!” and bowed before Austria. The Russians exterminated Poland. Our government cried “Very good!” and prostrated itself before Russia. During this time the London conference amused the onlookers with its protocols aimed at assuring the independence of Belgium, for a Restoration in Belgium would have opened France’s eyes and it would have been in a position to defend its work. The kings are now taking a forward step. They don’t want an independent Belgium: it’s a Dutch restoration they want to impose on it. The three courts of the north, confronted with the massacre, refuse to ratify the famous treaty that cost the conference sixteen months of labor.
And now will the middle way respond with a declaration of war on this insolent aggression. War! Good God! The word makes the bourgeois turn pale. Listen to them! War means bankruptcy, war means the Republic! War can only be supported with the blood of the people; the bourgeoisie doesn’t involve itself in this. Their interests, their passions have to be appealed to in the name of liberty, of the fatherland’s independence. The country must be put back into their hands, which alone can save it. It would be a hundred times better to see the Russians in Paris than to unleash the passions of the multitude. At least the Russians are friends of order; they reestablished order in Warsaw... These are calculations and the language of the middle way.
The Royalists will keep themselves at the ready, and next spring the Russians, on crossing the border, will find their lodgings prepared for them as far as Paris. For you can be sure that when the time comes the bourgeoisie will not resolve to make war. Its terror will have been increased by all the fear that will be inspired in it by the anger of a people betrayed and sold out, and you’ll see the merchants brandish the white rosette and receive the enemy as a liberator, for the Cossacks frighten them less than the mob in work jackets.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The People Are War-Weary, Very War Weary Although There Is No End In Sight- Take Four-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan!-President Obama Pardon Private Manning!
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
Recently my old back in the 1960s days friend, Peter Paul Markin, himself a war veteran, were comparing notes about the virtual “under the radar” place that American imperial war policies (there is no other name for it with over 1000 bases in the world and over 700 billion plus dollars eaten up by the war budget each year) has taken in this year’s presidential campaign. And, additionally, the almost total lack of organized public outcry about those policies, most notably the lingering death sore of Afghanistan. That despite the fact that some far-sighted, hell, even some jaded bourgeois commentators have placed the odds of civil war in that benighted country (I will not even dignify such a war lord and mercenaries run place as a state) after the alleged American troop draw down scheduled now for 2014 at two to one in favor of civil war. Even by the American government’s own self-serving estimates the forecast is almost as grim. I ask; what gives? Where are the mass rallies against the beast?
The reason for Peter Paul and me comparing notes on this subject was simple enough. Between the two of us we have attended over the past several months in various capacities a whole series of parades, marches and commemorations only one of which I will mention more on later that was specifically a peace parade. I will describe our purpose in using those settings as a way to bring the anti-war message home below. However right now I can state that we have come to agree, without a doubt, there is a vast war-weariness that if not organized in a public way runs pretty deep just under the surface among the plebeian masses of this country.
For those who do not know, Peter Paul, over the past several years going back before the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 has attempted to move might and main along with his fellow Veterans For Peace (VFP)to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately to urge no war with Iran) to no avail. I, although not a veteran, have attempted in various journalistic endeavors and on the streets to make those same basic points to no avail as well. Those “no avails” though have never stopped us from continuing to push the rock up the mountain when the cause is righteous. And the struggle against these particular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is righteous and has brought us closer together of late. That has not always been the case, as Peter Paul tends to take a harder anti-capitalist look at the wars as systematic of the need to bring down the whole damn American house of cards and I more from a more anti-imperialist perspective of just trying to hold the military monster in check. We united on one idea earlier this year and that was the need to continue to get the anti-war message out to the general public. By any means necessary.
That is where the parades notion came in play, although we claim no originally for the idea, none at all. The parades notion actually kind of hit us in the face as a way to bring any kind of peace message to the folks whom we do not normally run into in our rarified big city radical circles. Of course the original focus started out last year in 2011 with Peter Paul’s chapter of Veterans for Peace in Boston, the aptly named (“war is a racket”) Smedley Butler Brigade, attempts to march in the “official” South Boston Allied War Council’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Without going into all the particulars of the denial of permission for VFP to march (involving reams of material from a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting such exclusions for “private” parades) that organization was shut out of the official parade. Needless to say these resourceful vets (mainly long in the tooth Vietnam era vets who cut their teeth on just such symbolic actions) just created their own peace parade to follow the official parade to let those who came to South Boston know there was another voice to be heard from on the questions of war and peace.
That parade in 2011 is where the first tentative recognition of war-weariness came in. Now for those not familiar with South Boston (“Southie”) this is, or was, according to Peter Paul, the last bastion of Irish-centered working class pro-war (or at least don’t question war policy) sentiment left in the world ( a little hyperbole from him, but I am used to it). His family roots stem from that community and I will defer to his analysis (although I would argue that my own hometown, Olde Saco up in Maine filled with grateful immigrant French-Canadians and old time Down East Yankees, would give his Irish a run for his money on unquestioning patriotic sentiment). Expecting the worst all were surprised by the positive reception in Southie.
This spring when we marched (yes, I marched with Peter Paul and his VFP brethren like in olden times) the response by those same plebeian masses was even more cordial to say the least. Not in the “down with the war, slay the dragon, down with the war budget, take care of things at home” sense that we have “preached” to high heaven about in this space, and others but in the tap of the fingers to the head salute, the ubiquitous throwing up of peace signs, the response when we called for troops out, and enough is enough, as we passed by. Salutes of the VFP flag by hoary old war veterans decked out in their military attire just put icing on the cake. And that is how the Breslin-Markin antiwar “spring offensive” (with, ah, a little help from VFP and others obviously) took off.
A Dorchester Day Parade just south of Southie in one of the more ethnically diverse Irish/Vietnamese/Latino/ Brazilian you name it neighborhoods of Boston (although neighborhoods like Southie that have provided more than their fair share of troops to America’s imperial adventures) produced an even more cordial response. Here some even took up our chants from the sidewalks, shook hands, and offered vocal support as we passed by. Ditto at several Memorial Day services in the area where there was much gnashing of teeth by those who have lost loved ones in the last decade’s wars (and over the post-service stresses that are only now coming to light in huge streams). More recently parades in affluence Rockport and working- class Portsmouth, New Hampshire have only confirmed the cordiality, openness to anti-war messages, and the war weariness. That last one, Portsmouth, by the way, held in a town that depends (read: would not survive) substantially for its local economy on naval appropriations for the huge shipyard there.
So the disconnect between American governmental war policy and the genuine war-weariness of the masses is real enough. But real enough as well, despite the openly expressed sentiments, is any sense of one being able to do anything about it other than patiently waiting for withdrawal due dates. And that is where my simple suggestion comes in.
I, as well as other honest knowledgeable anti-warriors, have recognized that we have not had any serious effect on Bush-Obama war doctrine in Iraq and precious little thus far in Afghanistan. There is one place, and one thing that we can do to turn that around right now. Call on President Obama to pardon Private Bradley Manning now being held in pre-trail detention in Fort Leavenworth Kansas pending charges that could amount to a life sentence for the young soldier. For the forgetful Private Manning allegedly passed sensitive information about U.S. atrocities against civilians and other cover-ups in Iraq and Afghanistan to Wikileaks who then passed it on to a candid world. Thus Private Manning is the “poster person” for opposition to all that has failed, all that is wrong, all that was (and is )atrocious, and all that was (and is) criminal in Bush-Obama war policy. So raise the cry with us-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!
Recently my old back in the 1960s days friend, Peter Paul Markin, himself a war veteran, were comparing notes about the virtual “under the radar” place that American imperial war policies (there is no other name for it with over 1000 bases in the world and over 700 billion plus dollars eaten up by the war budget each year) has taken in this year’s presidential campaign. And, additionally, the almost total lack of organized public outcry about those policies, most notably the lingering death sore of Afghanistan. That despite the fact that some far-sighted, hell, even some jaded bourgeois commentators have placed the odds of civil war in that benighted country (I will not even dignify such a war lord and mercenaries run place as a state) after the alleged American troop draw down scheduled now for 2014 at two to one in favor of civil war. Even by the American government’s own self-serving estimates the forecast is almost as grim. I ask; what gives? Where are the mass rallies against the beast?
The reason for Peter Paul and me comparing notes on this subject was simple enough. Between the two of us we have attended over the past several months in various capacities a whole series of parades, marches and commemorations only one of which I will mention more on later that was specifically a peace parade. I will describe our purpose in using those settings as a way to bring the anti-war message home below. However right now I can state that we have come to agree, without a doubt, there is a vast war-weariness that if not organized in a public way runs pretty deep just under the surface among the plebeian masses of this country.
For those who do not know, Peter Paul, over the past several years going back before the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 has attempted to move might and main along with his fellow Veterans For Peace (VFP)to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately to urge no war with Iran) to no avail. I, although not a veteran, have attempted in various journalistic endeavors and on the streets to make those same basic points to no avail as well. Those “no avails” though have never stopped us from continuing to push the rock up the mountain when the cause is righteous. And the struggle against these particular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is righteous and has brought us closer together of late. That has not always been the case, as Peter Paul tends to take a harder anti-capitalist look at the wars as systematic of the need to bring down the whole damn American house of cards and I more from a more anti-imperialist perspective of just trying to hold the military monster in check. We united on one idea earlier this year and that was the need to continue to get the anti-war message out to the general public. By any means necessary.
That is where the parades notion came in play, although we claim no originally for the idea, none at all. The parades notion actually kind of hit us in the face as a way to bring any kind of peace message to the folks whom we do not normally run into in our rarified big city radical circles. Of course the original focus started out last year in 2011 with Peter Paul’s chapter of Veterans for Peace in Boston, the aptly named (“war is a racket”) Smedley Butler Brigade, attempts to march in the “official” South Boston Allied War Council’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Without going into all the particulars of the denial of permission for VFP to march (involving reams of material from a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting such exclusions for “private” parades) that organization was shut out of the official parade. Needless to say these resourceful vets (mainly long in the tooth Vietnam era vets who cut their teeth on just such symbolic actions) just created their own peace parade to follow the official parade to let those who came to South Boston know there was another voice to be heard from on the questions of war and peace.
That parade in 2011 is where the first tentative recognition of war-weariness came in. Now for those not familiar with South Boston (“Southie”) this is, or was, according to Peter Paul, the last bastion of Irish-centered working class pro-war (or at least don’t question war policy) sentiment left in the world ( a little hyperbole from him, but I am used to it). His family roots stem from that community and I will defer to his analysis (although I would argue that my own hometown, Olde Saco up in Maine filled with grateful immigrant French-Canadians and old time Down East Yankees, would give his Irish a run for his money on unquestioning patriotic sentiment). Expecting the worst all were surprised by the positive reception in Southie.
This spring when we marched (yes, I marched with Peter Paul and his VFP brethren like in olden times) the response by those same plebeian masses was even more cordial to say the least. Not in the “down with the war, slay the dragon, down with the war budget, take care of things at home” sense that we have “preached” to high heaven about in this space, and others but in the tap of the fingers to the head salute, the ubiquitous throwing up of peace signs, the response when we called for troops out, and enough is enough, as we passed by. Salutes of the VFP flag by hoary old war veterans decked out in their military attire just put icing on the cake. And that is how the Breslin-Markin antiwar “spring offensive” (with, ah, a little help from VFP and others obviously) took off.
A Dorchester Day Parade just south of Southie in one of the more ethnically diverse Irish/Vietnamese/Latino/ Brazilian you name it neighborhoods of Boston (although neighborhoods like Southie that have provided more than their fair share of troops to America’s imperial adventures) produced an even more cordial response. Here some even took up our chants from the sidewalks, shook hands, and offered vocal support as we passed by. Ditto at several Memorial Day services in the area where there was much gnashing of teeth by those who have lost loved ones in the last decade’s wars (and over the post-service stresses that are only now coming to light in huge streams). More recently parades in affluence Rockport and working- class Portsmouth, New Hampshire have only confirmed the cordiality, openness to anti-war messages, and the war weariness. That last one, Portsmouth, by the way, held in a town that depends (read: would not survive) substantially for its local economy on naval appropriations for the huge shipyard there.
So the disconnect between American governmental war policy and the genuine war-weariness of the masses is real enough. But real enough as well, despite the openly expressed sentiments, is any sense of one being able to do anything about it other than patiently waiting for withdrawal due dates. And that is where my simple suggestion comes in.
I, as well as other honest knowledgeable anti-warriors, have recognized that we have not had any serious effect on Bush-Obama war doctrine in Iraq and precious little thus far in Afghanistan. There is one place, and one thing that we can do to turn that around right now. Call on President Obama to pardon Private Bradley Manning now being held in pre-trail detention in Fort Leavenworth Kansas pending charges that could amount to a life sentence for the young soldier. For the forgetful Private Manning allegedly passed sensitive information about U.S. atrocities against civilians and other cover-ups in Iraq and Afghanistan to Wikileaks who then passed it on to a candid world. Thus Private Manning is the “poster person” for opposition to all that has failed, all that is wrong, all that was (and is )atrocious, and all that was (and is) criminal in Bush-Obama war policy. So raise the cry with us-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The People Are War-Weary, Very War Weary Although There Is No End In Sight- Take Three-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan!-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning!
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
Recently my old back in the 1960s days friend, Peter Paul Markin, himself a war veteran, were comparing notes about the virtual “under the radar” place that American imperial war policies (there is no other name for it with over 1000 bases in the world and over 700 billion plus dollars eaten up by the war budget each year) has taken in this year’s presidential campaign. And, additionally, the almost total lack of organized public outcry about those
policies, most notably the lingering death sore of Afghanistan. That despite the fact that some far-sighted, hell, even some jaded bourgeois commentators have placed the odds of civil war in that benighted country (I will not even dignify such a war lord and mercenaries run place as a state) after the American troop draw down at two to one in favor of civil war. Even by the American government’s own self-serving estimates the forecast is almost as grim. I ask; what gives? Where are the mass rallies against the beast?
The reason for Peter Paul and me comparing notes on this subject was simple enough. Between the two of us we have attended over the past several months in various capacities a whole series of parades, only one of which I will mention more on later that was specifically a peace parade. I will describe our purpose in using those settings as a way to bring the anti-war message home below. However right now I can state that we have come agree, without a doubt, there is a vast war-weariness that if not organized in a public way runs pretty deep just under the surface among the plebeian masses.
For those who do not know, Peter Paul, over the past several years going back before the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 has attempted to move might and main along with his fellow Veterans For Peace (VFP)to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately to urge no war with Iran) to no avail. I, although not a veteran, have attempted in various journalistic endeavors and on the streets to make those same basic points to no avail as well. Those “no avails” though have never stopped us from continuing to push the rock up the mountain when the cause is righteous. And the struggle against these particular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is righteous and has brought us closer together of late. That has not always been the case, as Peter Paul tends to take a harder anti-capitalist look at the wars as systematic of the need to bring down the whole damn American house of cards and I more from a more anti-imperialist perspective of just trying to hold the monster in check. We united on one idea earlier this year and that was the need to continue to get the anti-war message out to the general public. By any means necessary.
That is where the parades notion came in play, although we claim no originally for the idea, none at all. The parades notion actually kind of hit us in the face as a way to bring any kind of peace message to the folks whom we do not normally run into in our rarified big city radical circles. Of course the original focus started out last year in 2011 with Peter Paul’s chapter of Veterans for Peace in Boston, the aptly named (“war is a racket”) Smedley Butler Brigade, attempts to march in the “official” South Boston Allied War Council’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Without going to all the particulars of the denial of permission for VFP to march (involving reams of material from a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting such exclusions for “private” parades) that organization was shut out of the official parade. Needless to say these resourceful vets (mainly long in the tooth Vietnam era vets who cut their teeth on just such symbolic actions) just created their own peace parade to follow the official parade and to let those who came to South Boston know there was another voice to be heard from on the questions of war and peace.
That parade in 2011 is where the first tentative recognition of war-weariness came in. Now for those not familiar with South Boston (“Southie”) this is, or was, according to Peter Paul, the last bastion of Irish-centered working class pro-war (or at least don’t question war policy) sentiment left in the world ( a little hyperbole from him, but I am used to it). His family roots stem from that community and I will defer to his analysis (although I would argue that my own hometown, Olde Saco up in Maine filled with grateful immigrant French-Canadians and old time Down East Yankees, would give his Irish a run for his money on patriotic sentiment).
This spring when we marched (yes, I marched with Peter Paul and his VFP brethren like in olden times) the response by those same plebeian masses was even more cordial to say the least. Not in the “down with the war, slay the dragon, down with the war budget, take care of things at home” sense that we have “preached” to high heaven about in this space, and others but in the tap of the fingers to the head salute, the ubiquitous throwing up of peace signs, the response when we called for troops out, and enough is enough, as we passed by. Salutes of the VFP flag by hoary old war veterans decked out in their military attire just put icing on the cake. And that is how the Breslin-Markin antiwar “spring offensive” (with, ah, a little help from VFP and others obviously) took off.
A Dorchester Day Parade just south of Southie in one of the more ethnically diverse Irish/Vietnamese/Latino/ Brazilian you name it neighborhoods of Boston (although neighborhoods like Southie that provide more than their fair share of troops to America’s imperial adventures) produced an even more cordial response. Here some even took up our chants from the sidewalks, shook hands, and offered vocal support as we passed by. Ditto at several Memorial Day services in the area where there was much gnashing of teeth by those who have lost loved ones in the last decade’s war (and over the post-service stresses that are only now coming to light in huge streams). More recently parades in affluence Rockport and working- class Portsmouth, New Hampshire have only confirmed the cordiality, openness to anti-war messages, and the weariness. That last one, Portsmouth, by the way, held in a town that depends (read: would not survive) without naval appropriations for the huge shipyard there.
So the disconnect between governmental war policy and the genuine war-weariness of the masses is real enough. But real enough as well, despite the openly expressed sentiments, is any sense of one being able to do anything about it other than patiently waiting for withdrawal due dates. And that is where my simple suggestion comes in.
I, as well as other knowledgeable anti-warriors, have recognized that we have not had any effect on Bush-Obama war doctrine in Iraq and precious little thus far in Afghanistan. There is one place, and one thing that we can do to turn that around right now. Call on President Obama to pardon Private Bradley Manning now being held in pre-trail detention in Fort Leavenworth Kansas pending charges that could amount to a life sentence for the young soldier. For the forgetful Private Manning allegedly passed sensitive information onto Wikileaks who then passed it on to a candid world. Thus Private Manning is the “poster person” for opposition to all that has failed, all that is wrong, all that was (and is )atrocious, and all that was (and is) criminal in Bush-Obama war policy. So raise the cry with us-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!
Recently my old back in the 1960s days friend, Peter Paul Markin, himself a war veteran, were comparing notes about the virtual “under the radar” place that American imperial war policies (there is no other name for it with over 1000 bases in the world and over 700 billion plus dollars eaten up by the war budget each year) has taken in this year’s presidential campaign. And, additionally, the almost total lack of organized public outcry about those
policies, most notably the lingering death sore of Afghanistan. That despite the fact that some far-sighted, hell, even some jaded bourgeois commentators have placed the odds of civil war in that benighted country (I will not even dignify such a war lord and mercenaries run place as a state) after the American troop draw down at two to one in favor of civil war. Even by the American government’s own self-serving estimates the forecast is almost as grim. I ask; what gives? Where are the mass rallies against the beast?
The reason for Peter Paul and me comparing notes on this subject was simple enough. Between the two of us we have attended over the past several months in various capacities a whole series of parades, only one of which I will mention more on later that was specifically a peace parade. I will describe our purpose in using those settings as a way to bring the anti-war message home below. However right now I can state that we have come agree, without a doubt, there is a vast war-weariness that if not organized in a public way runs pretty deep just under the surface among the plebeian masses.
For those who do not know, Peter Paul, over the past several years going back before the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 has attempted to move might and main along with his fellow Veterans For Peace (VFP)to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately to urge no war with Iran) to no avail. I, although not a veteran, have attempted in various journalistic endeavors and on the streets to make those same basic points to no avail as well. Those “no avails” though have never stopped us from continuing to push the rock up the mountain when the cause is righteous. And the struggle against these particular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is righteous and has brought us closer together of late. That has not always been the case, as Peter Paul tends to take a harder anti-capitalist look at the wars as systematic of the need to bring down the whole damn American house of cards and I more from a more anti-imperialist perspective of just trying to hold the monster in check. We united on one idea earlier this year and that was the need to continue to get the anti-war message out to the general public. By any means necessary.
That is where the parades notion came in play, although we claim no originally for the idea, none at all. The parades notion actually kind of hit us in the face as a way to bring any kind of peace message to the folks whom we do not normally run into in our rarified big city radical circles. Of course the original focus started out last year in 2011 with Peter Paul’s chapter of Veterans for Peace in Boston, the aptly named (“war is a racket”) Smedley Butler Brigade, attempts to march in the “official” South Boston Allied War Council’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Without going to all the particulars of the denial of permission for VFP to march (involving reams of material from a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting such exclusions for “private” parades) that organization was shut out of the official parade. Needless to say these resourceful vets (mainly long in the tooth Vietnam era vets who cut their teeth on just such symbolic actions) just created their own peace parade to follow the official parade and to let those who came to South Boston know there was another voice to be heard from on the questions of war and peace.
That parade in 2011 is where the first tentative recognition of war-weariness came in. Now for those not familiar with South Boston (“Southie”) this is, or was, according to Peter Paul, the last bastion of Irish-centered working class pro-war (or at least don’t question war policy) sentiment left in the world ( a little hyperbole from him, but I am used to it). His family roots stem from that community and I will defer to his analysis (although I would argue that my own hometown, Olde Saco up in Maine filled with grateful immigrant French-Canadians and old time Down East Yankees, would give his Irish a run for his money on patriotic sentiment).
This spring when we marched (yes, I marched with Peter Paul and his VFP brethren like in olden times) the response by those same plebeian masses was even more cordial to say the least. Not in the “down with the war, slay the dragon, down with the war budget, take care of things at home” sense that we have “preached” to high heaven about in this space, and others but in the tap of the fingers to the head salute, the ubiquitous throwing up of peace signs, the response when we called for troops out, and enough is enough, as we passed by. Salutes of the VFP flag by hoary old war veterans decked out in their military attire just put icing on the cake. And that is how the Breslin-Markin antiwar “spring offensive” (with, ah, a little help from VFP and others obviously) took off.
A Dorchester Day Parade just south of Southie in one of the more ethnically diverse Irish/Vietnamese/Latino/ Brazilian you name it neighborhoods of Boston (although neighborhoods like Southie that provide more than their fair share of troops to America’s imperial adventures) produced an even more cordial response. Here some even took up our chants from the sidewalks, shook hands, and offered vocal support as we passed by. Ditto at several Memorial Day services in the area where there was much gnashing of teeth by those who have lost loved ones in the last decade’s war (and over the post-service stresses that are only now coming to light in huge streams). More recently parades in affluence Rockport and working- class Portsmouth, New Hampshire have only confirmed the cordiality, openness to anti-war messages, and the weariness. That last one, Portsmouth, by the way, held in a town that depends (read: would not survive) without naval appropriations for the huge shipyard there.
So the disconnect between governmental war policy and the genuine war-weariness of the masses is real enough. But real enough as well, despite the openly expressed sentiments, is any sense of one being able to do anything about it other than patiently waiting for withdrawal due dates. And that is where my simple suggestion comes in.
I, as well as other knowledgeable anti-warriors, have recognized that we have not had any effect on Bush-Obama war doctrine in Iraq and precious little thus far in Afghanistan. There is one place, and one thing that we can do to turn that around right now. Call on President Obama to pardon Private Bradley Manning now being held in pre-trail detention in Fort Leavenworth Kansas pending charges that could amount to a life sentence for the young soldier. For the forgetful Private Manning allegedly passed sensitive information onto Wikileaks who then passed it on to a candid world. Thus Private Manning is the “poster person” for opposition to all that has failed, all that is wrong, all that was (and is )atrocious, and all that was (and is) criminal in Bush-Obama war policy. So raise the cry with us-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop Night-Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- The Siren Call Of The Mountain Wind Song
Out In The Be-Bop Night-Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- The Siren Call Of The Mountain Wind Song
Markin comment:
The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.
Scene Five: The Siren Call Of The Mountain Wind Song In The Search For The Blue- Pink Great American West Night
Hey, not every aspect of the 1960s blue-pink night was a search for some kind of transcendence. Mostly it was that, and its glow has kept a few of us warm through many a desperate dark, cold night since. But sometimes it was running away from the past, from roots, or maybe better, from rooted-ness. Or just plain old running away from what lurked ahead and ahead did not seem as good as the road, the road with all its troubles. For those who have read the previous scene, the scene where I got stuck down in a Steubenville, Ohio 1969 truck stop diner and got “lucky” finding a woman friend to share the road with, you know at the end of that episode we were heading out, or trying to head out West. For those who have not read that scene let me introduce my new lady friend, Angelica. Angelica, who, as fate would have it, was working in that diner truck stop where I got stuck and happened to think I was “nice” and after a little of this and that decided that her search for meaning in her young life entailed accompanying me on the road west. Whoa! In any case there she was walking beside me as we tried to hitch a ride from one of the rigs idling at the stop. If you want to know the details of the “how come” of our walking together just now go read that last scene, otherwise I will try to fill you in as we go along.
In the process of getting you filled in, let’s get one thing clear. When you were on the road, on the 1960s hitchhike road, and trying to get across the country the rules, the rules of the road, were a little different than the rules in workaday life. Your take on life and your, usually, transient relationships with passing strangers, male or female, got a little twisted. Not necessarily in a bad way, but twisted. I was pleased, pleased beyond belief, as least privately, to have winsome, fetching Angelica along. As I mentioned before in those hitchhike days it was always easier to get rides when you had a female companion, and one with good legs and a good shape, a shape that drivers could notice as they sped by was a plus. Maybe, thinking it was a mirage anyway, not every benny high, moony, overstretched transcontinental truck driver, running overweight anyway, would put on the airbrakes for her on the Interstate at eighty miles an hour. But those young, slower lane sedan drivers would slam on the brakes, and gladly. Ya, I know now it is not cool, nor should it be, to be using a woman as a “decoy” in that way but that was the way it was then “on the road.”
Now, if you don’t know, meaning you haven’t read the previous scenes, I, by this time, had been periodically crossing the country for some time in search of …... well, in search of something because just now, some forty years later, I am getting just a little weary of calling it the blue-pink night but this was Angelica’s whimsical maiden voyage. Angelica, was, moreover, pretty naïve about life and clueless about the road having just a few weeks earlier left home and hearth in cozy mid-country Muncie, Indiana. (Don’t tell me all about the famous Lynd sociological study of squaretown, oops, I mean, Middletown, that used that town as its sample back in the 1920s I already mentioned that before.) Therefore she was crushed beyond my comprehension, as we walked closer to the idling trucks on the other side of the diner, when I mentioned to her that the small suitcase (neatly packed) she was carrying was not a good road item compared to a nice fungible knapsack for when we had to do some walking between rides. I do not know, and I never found out, whether the look, not the nice sly, coquettish look that she greeted me with early in our “courtship” at the diner and that hooked me, but some volcanic devilish look she gave me was for when I mentioned to her the fact that she was going to have to abandon that suitcase or that the “road”, the real hitchhike road meant some walking. Later, and not much later at that, she saw my point about the suitcase, but that does not erase that look from my memory’s eye.
Nor was that little episode the end of our little road “adjustments.” In the few weeks that Angelica had been working long hours at the diner she served many of the truckers whose rigs were idling in the truck stop rest area we were cruising for rides. So, naturally, she tried to find out where some of those that she knew were heading. This day, they are heading mainly east, or anyway, not west. Finally, she ran into one burly teamster, Eddie, who was heading down Route 7 along the Ohio River to catch Interstate 64 further down river and then across through to Lexington, Kentucky. Angelica was thrilled because, as it turned out, she had kin (her term, okay), a cousin or something, down in Prestonsburg, Kentucky whom she hadn’t seen in a while and where we could stay for a few days and take in the mountain air (her idea of rest, mine then and now, was strictly ocean breezes, thank you). I tried, tried desperately, without being obnoxious about it, to tell her that heading south was not going to get us to the West very easily. She would have none of it, and she rightly said, that we were in no rush anyway and what was wrong with a little side trip to Kentucky anyway. Well, I suppose in the college human nature course, Spat-ology 101, if there was such a course then, and they taught it, I should have had enough sense to throw in the towel. After all this was Angelica’s first, now seriously, whimsical venture out on the road. And I did, in the end, throw in the towel, except not for the reason that you think.
What Angelica didn’t know until later, and you didn’t know until now, was that I was deathly afraid of going to Kentucky. See, I had set myself up to the world as, and was in fact in my head, a Yankee, an Oceanside Yankee, if you like. I was born in Massachusetts and have the papers to prove it, but on those papers there is an important fact included. My father’s place of birth was Hazard, Kentucky probably not more than fifty to one hundred miles away from Prestonsburg. He was born down in the hills and hollows of mining country, coal mining country, made famous in song and legend. And also made infamous (to me) by Michael Harrington’s Other America which described in detail the plight of Appalachian whites, my father’s people. And also, as a result of the publicity about the situation down there, the subject in my early 1960s high school of a clothing drive to help them out. My father left the mines when World War II started, enlisted in the Marines, saw his fair share of battles in the Pacific, got stationed before discharge at a Naval Depot in Massachusetts and never looked back. And see I never wanted him to look back. That’s the way it was back then, make of it what you will. Sure, now, among other things, I can thank winsome, head-strong Angelica for making that move, but then, well, like I said I threw in the towel, but I was not happy about it. Not happy at all.
Actually the ride down Route 7 was pretty uneventful and, for somebody who did not feel comfortable looking at trees and mountains, some of the scenery was pretty breath-taking. That is until we started getting maybe twenty miles from Prestonsburg and the air changed, the scenery changed, and the feel of the social milieu changed. See we were getting in the edges of coal country, not the serious “Bloody Harlan” stuff of legend but the older, scrap heap part that had been worked over, and “worked out” long along. The coal bosses had taken the earth’s assets and left the remnants behind to foul the air and foul the place.
But, mostly, and here is where I finally understood why my father took his chances in World War II and also why he never looked back, shacks. Nothing but haphazardly placed, unpainted shacks, with hard-scrabble patched roofs just barely covering them. With out-houses, out-houses can you believe that in America in the 1960s. And with plenty of kids hanging out in the decidedly non-manicured front yards waiting… well, just waiting. Look, I came up in my early youth in a public housing project that had all the pathologies one has come to associate with that form of social organization. Later, in my coming of age days we lived in a tiny, very tiny, single family house but I was not prepared for this. All that I can say about my feelings at the time was that I would be more than willing to crawl on all fours to get back to my crummy old growing up homestead rather than fight the dread of this place.
Fortunately Angelica’s kin (second cousin), Annadeene, husband and two kids all at about age twenty, lived further down the road, out of town, in a trailer camp which the husband, Fred, had expanded so that it had the feel of a small country house. More importantly it had indoor plumbing and a spare room where Angelica and I could sleep and put our stuff. Fred, as I recall, was something of a skilled mechanic (coal equipment mechanic) who worked for a firm that was indirectly connected to the Eastern Kentucky coal mines.
This Prestonsburg, as you can imagine, in the 1960s was nothing but one of a thousand such towns that I had (and have) passed through. A main street with a few essential stores, some boarded up retail space and then you are out of town. Then hardly worth, and maybe now too, putting a strip mall into. Moreover, Route 7 as it turned into Route 23 heading into Prestonsburg and then further down turned into nothing but an old country, pass at your own risk, country road about where Angelica’s cousin lived. What I am trying to get at though is that although these people were in the 20th century they were somewhat behind the curve. This is, as it probably was in my father’s time, patriotic country, country where you did your military service came home, worked, if you could find it, got married and raised a family. Just in tougher circumstances than elsewhere.
I understood that part. What I did not understand then, and am still somewhat confused about, is the insularity of the place. The wariness, serious wariness, of strangers even of strangers brought to the hills and hollows by kin. I was not well received at least at first, and I still am not quite sure if I ever was, by Angelica’s kin and I suppose if I thought about it while they had heard of “hippies” (every male with beard, long hair, and jeans was suspected of belonging to that category) Prestonsburg was more like something from Merle Haggard’s Okie From Muskogee lyrics than Haight-Ashbury. Angelica kept saying that I would grow on them (like I did on her) but I knew, knew down deep that we had best get out of there. I kept pressing the issue but she refused to listen to any thoughts of our leaving until after Saturday night’s barn dance. Fred and Annadeene had after all especially invited us to go along with them. We could leave Sunday morning but not before. Christ, a hillbilly hoe-down.
Probably about twenty years ago I would have felt no compulsion to go into anything but superficial detail about this barn dance. Today though I do have that need. Otherwise this scene lacks completeness. I will say that I have, twenty years ago or now, a very clear picture of Angelica being fetching for this dance. All her feminine wiles got a workout that night. What I can’t remember is what she wore or how she wore her hair (up, I think) but the effect on me (and the other guys) was calculated to make me glad, glad as hell, that we stayed for this thing. What I can remember vividly though is that this barn dance actually took place in a barn, just a plain old ordinary barn that had been used in this area for years (according to the oldsters since back in the 1920s) for the periodic dances that filled up the year and broke the monotony of the mountain existence. The old faded red-painted barn, sturdily build to withstand the mountain winds and containing a stage for such occasions was something out of a movie, some movie that you have seen, so you have some idea of what it was like even if you have never been within a hundred miles of a barn.
Moreover the locals had gone to some effort to decorate the place, provide plenty of refreshments and use some lighting to good effect. What was missing was any booze. This was a “dry” county then (and maybe still is) but not to worry wink, wink there was plenty of “white lightning” around out in the makeshift dirt parking lot where clusters of good old boys hovered around certain cars whose owners had all you needed. Just bring your own fixings. After we had checked out the arrangements in the barn and Annadeene had introduced us to her neighbors Fred tapped me on the shoulder and “hipped” me to the liquor scene. We went outside. Fred talked quietly to one of the busy car owners and then produced a small jar for my inspection. “Hey, wait,” he said “you have to cut that stuff a little with some water if you are not used to it.” I took my jar, added some water, and took a swig. Jesus Christ, I almost fell down the stuff was so powerful. Look, I used to drink whiskey straight up in those days, or I thought I drank whiskey straight up but after one swig, one swig, my friends, I confess I was a mere teetotaler. Several minutes later we went back inside and I nursed, literally nursed, that jar for the rest of the night. But you know I got “high” off it and was in good spirits. So good that I started dancing with Angelica once the coterie of banjo players, fiddlers, guitarists and mandolin players got finished warming up. I am not much of a dancer under the best of circumstances but, according to her, I did okay that night.
Hey, you’d expect that the music was something out of the Grand Ole Opry, some Hee-Haw hoe-down stuff, some Arkansas Jamboree hokum, right? Forget that. See back in the mountains, at least in the 1960s mountains, they did not have access to much television or sheet music or other such refinements. What they played they learned from mama and papa, or some uncle who got it from god knows where. It’s all passed down from something like time immemorial and then traced back to the old county, the British Isles mainly. Oh sure there was a “square” hoe-down thing or two but what I heard that night was something out of the mountain night high-powered eerie winds as they rolled down the hills and hollows (hollers, if you are from there). Something that spoke of hard traveling first from the old country when luck ran out there, then from the east coast of America when that got too crowded and just sat down when it hit those grey-blue mountains, or maybe, although I never asked (and under the circumstances would not have dared to ask) formed their version of the blue-pink great American West night, and this is as far as they got, or cared to go.
Some of this music I knew from my folk experiences in Boston and Cambridge earlier in the 1960s when everybody, including me, was looking for the roots of folk music. Certainly I knew Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies when the band played it instrumentally. That was one of the first songs, done by gravelly-voiced Dave Van Ronk, I heard on the folk radio station that I listened to. But, see, back in those early days that stuff, for the most part, was too, well you know, too my father’s music for me to take seriously. Bob Dylan was easier to listen to for a message that “spoke” to me. But this night I thrilled to hear real pros going one-on-one to out-fiddle, out-banjo, out-mandolin, out, out-any instrument each other in some mad dash to appease the mountain nymphs, or whatever or whoever was being evoked to keep civilization away from the purity of the music. That night was as close as I got to my roots, and feeling good about those roots, and also as close as I got to Angelica. I could go on and give examples that you could go check out on YouTube and listen to but this is one of those moments you had to be there, okay.
About 12:30 or one o’clock the dance broke up, although as we headed down the rutted, jagged street we could still hear banjos and fiddles flailing away to see who really was “king of the hill.” Angelica said she was glad that we stayed, and I agreed. She also said that, yes, I was right; it was time to head west. She said it in such a way that I felt that she could have been some old time pioneer woman who once she recognized that the land was exhausted knew that the family had to pull up stakes and push on. It was just a matter of putting the bundles together and saying goodbye to the neighbors left behind. Needless to say old resource road companion Angelica, sweet, fetching Angelica put that fetchiness to good use and had us lined up for a ride from another Eddie truck driver who, if he was sober enough, was heading out with a load at 6:00 AM to Winchester just outside Lexington from where we could make better connections west. 6:00 AM, are you kidding? I am still wearing about eight pound of that white lightning, or whatever it was. Angelica merely pointed out in her winsome, fetching way that nobody forced me to drink that rotgut (her word) liquor when softer refreshments had been available inside. Touché, 6:00 AM it is.
Dog tired, smelling of a distillery, or some old time hardware store (where the white lightning ingredients probably came from) Angelica and I laid our heads down to get a few hours sleep. Gently she nuzzled up to my side (how she did it through the alcoholic haze I do not know) and gave every indication that she wanted to make love. Now we are right next door to the two unnamed sleeping children, sleeping the sleep of the just, and as she got more aggressive we have to be, or we think we have to be, more quiet. No making the earth under the Steubenville truck stop motel cabin shake this night. And, as we talked about it on the road later, that was not what was in her mind. She just wanted to show, in a very simple way, that she appreciated that I had stayed, that I had been wise enough to figure out how long we should stay, and that, drunk or sober, I would take her feelings into account. Not a bad night’s work. And so amid some low giggles we did our exploration. Oh, here is the part that will tell you more than a little about Angelica. She also wanted to please me this night because she did not know, given the vagaries of the road, when we would be able to do it again. Practical girl.
In the groggy, misty, dark before dawn, half awake, no quarter awake night Angelica tapped me to get up. We quickly packed, she ate a little food (I could barely stand up never mind do something as complicated as eat food), and we made our goodbyes, genuine this morning by all parties. As we went out the front trailer door and headed up the road to the place where Eddie had said to meet him I swear, I swear on all the dreams of whatever color that I have ever had, that the background mountains that were starting to take form out of the dark started to play, and to play like that music I heard last night from those demon fiddlers and banjo players. I asked, when we met Eddie, who was only a few minutes late, and who looked and felt (as he told me) worst that I did (except that he proudly stated that he was used to it, okay Eddie) if those musicians were still at it over at that old devil of a red barn. “No,” he said. “Where is that music coming from then?” I said. Old Eddie (backed by Angelica) said “What music?” That angel music I said. Eddie just looked bemused as he revved that old truck engine up and we hit the road west.
Several years ago I was half-listening to some music, some background eerily haunting mountain music coming from a folk radio station when I had the strangest feeling that I had heard the tune before. I puzzled over it sporadically for a few days and then went to the local library to see if they had some mountain music CDs. They did and I began on that date a feverish acquaintance with this form of music that I have occasionally reviewed here, especially the various Carter Family combinations. I, however, never did find out the name of that song.
And in a sense it has not name. It was the music from that old mountain wind as it trailed down the hills and hollows that I heard that last night in Prestonsburg. See here is what you didn’t know as you read all this stuff, and I only half knew it back then. I had been in Kentucky before that trip down from Steubenville, Ohio with sweet Angelica. No, not the way you think. My parents, shortly after they were married and after my father got out of the service, took a trip back to his home in Hazard so his family could meet his bride, or maybe just so he could show her off. They stayed for some period of time, I am not sure exactly how long, but the long and short of it is, that I was conceived and was fussing around in my mother’s womb while they were there. So see, it was that old mountain wind calling me home, calling me to my father’s roots, calling me to my roots as I was aimlessly searching for that blue-pink great American West night. Double thanks, Angelica.
Markin comment:
The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.
Scene Five: The Siren Call Of The Mountain Wind Song In The Search For The Blue- Pink Great American West Night
Hey, not every aspect of the 1960s blue-pink night was a search for some kind of transcendence. Mostly it was that, and its glow has kept a few of us warm through many a desperate dark, cold night since. But sometimes it was running away from the past, from roots, or maybe better, from rooted-ness. Or just plain old running away from what lurked ahead and ahead did not seem as good as the road, the road with all its troubles. For those who have read the previous scene, the scene where I got stuck down in a Steubenville, Ohio 1969 truck stop diner and got “lucky” finding a woman friend to share the road with, you know at the end of that episode we were heading out, or trying to head out West. For those who have not read that scene let me introduce my new lady friend, Angelica. Angelica, who, as fate would have it, was working in that diner truck stop where I got stuck and happened to think I was “nice” and after a little of this and that decided that her search for meaning in her young life entailed accompanying me on the road west. Whoa! In any case there she was walking beside me as we tried to hitch a ride from one of the rigs idling at the stop. If you want to know the details of the “how come” of our walking together just now go read that last scene, otherwise I will try to fill you in as we go along.
In the process of getting you filled in, let’s get one thing clear. When you were on the road, on the 1960s hitchhike road, and trying to get across the country the rules, the rules of the road, were a little different than the rules in workaday life. Your take on life and your, usually, transient relationships with passing strangers, male or female, got a little twisted. Not necessarily in a bad way, but twisted. I was pleased, pleased beyond belief, as least privately, to have winsome, fetching Angelica along. As I mentioned before in those hitchhike days it was always easier to get rides when you had a female companion, and one with good legs and a good shape, a shape that drivers could notice as they sped by was a plus. Maybe, thinking it was a mirage anyway, not every benny high, moony, overstretched transcontinental truck driver, running overweight anyway, would put on the airbrakes for her on the Interstate at eighty miles an hour. But those young, slower lane sedan drivers would slam on the brakes, and gladly. Ya, I know now it is not cool, nor should it be, to be using a woman as a “decoy” in that way but that was the way it was then “on the road.”
Now, if you don’t know, meaning you haven’t read the previous scenes, I, by this time, had been periodically crossing the country for some time in search of …... well, in search of something because just now, some forty years later, I am getting just a little weary of calling it the blue-pink night but this was Angelica’s whimsical maiden voyage. Angelica, was, moreover, pretty naïve about life and clueless about the road having just a few weeks earlier left home and hearth in cozy mid-country Muncie, Indiana. (Don’t tell me all about the famous Lynd sociological study of squaretown, oops, I mean, Middletown, that used that town as its sample back in the 1920s I already mentioned that before.) Therefore she was crushed beyond my comprehension, as we walked closer to the idling trucks on the other side of the diner, when I mentioned to her that the small suitcase (neatly packed) she was carrying was not a good road item compared to a nice fungible knapsack for when we had to do some walking between rides. I do not know, and I never found out, whether the look, not the nice sly, coquettish look that she greeted me with early in our “courtship” at the diner and that hooked me, but some volcanic devilish look she gave me was for when I mentioned to her the fact that she was going to have to abandon that suitcase or that the “road”, the real hitchhike road meant some walking. Later, and not much later at that, she saw my point about the suitcase, but that does not erase that look from my memory’s eye.
Nor was that little episode the end of our little road “adjustments.” In the few weeks that Angelica had been working long hours at the diner she served many of the truckers whose rigs were idling in the truck stop rest area we were cruising for rides. So, naturally, she tried to find out where some of those that she knew were heading. This day, they are heading mainly east, or anyway, not west. Finally, she ran into one burly teamster, Eddie, who was heading down Route 7 along the Ohio River to catch Interstate 64 further down river and then across through to Lexington, Kentucky. Angelica was thrilled because, as it turned out, she had kin (her term, okay), a cousin or something, down in Prestonsburg, Kentucky whom she hadn’t seen in a while and where we could stay for a few days and take in the mountain air (her idea of rest, mine then and now, was strictly ocean breezes, thank you). I tried, tried desperately, without being obnoxious about it, to tell her that heading south was not going to get us to the West very easily. She would have none of it, and she rightly said, that we were in no rush anyway and what was wrong with a little side trip to Kentucky anyway. Well, I suppose in the college human nature course, Spat-ology 101, if there was such a course then, and they taught it, I should have had enough sense to throw in the towel. After all this was Angelica’s first, now seriously, whimsical venture out on the road. And I did, in the end, throw in the towel, except not for the reason that you think.
What Angelica didn’t know until later, and you didn’t know until now, was that I was deathly afraid of going to Kentucky. See, I had set myself up to the world as, and was in fact in my head, a Yankee, an Oceanside Yankee, if you like. I was born in Massachusetts and have the papers to prove it, but on those papers there is an important fact included. My father’s place of birth was Hazard, Kentucky probably not more than fifty to one hundred miles away from Prestonsburg. He was born down in the hills and hollows of mining country, coal mining country, made famous in song and legend. And also made infamous (to me) by Michael Harrington’s Other America which described in detail the plight of Appalachian whites, my father’s people. And also, as a result of the publicity about the situation down there, the subject in my early 1960s high school of a clothing drive to help them out. My father left the mines when World War II started, enlisted in the Marines, saw his fair share of battles in the Pacific, got stationed before discharge at a Naval Depot in Massachusetts and never looked back. And see I never wanted him to look back. That’s the way it was back then, make of it what you will. Sure, now, among other things, I can thank winsome, head-strong Angelica for making that move, but then, well, like I said I threw in the towel, but I was not happy about it. Not happy at all.
Actually the ride down Route 7 was pretty uneventful and, for somebody who did not feel comfortable looking at trees and mountains, some of the scenery was pretty breath-taking. That is until we started getting maybe twenty miles from Prestonsburg and the air changed, the scenery changed, and the feel of the social milieu changed. See we were getting in the edges of coal country, not the serious “Bloody Harlan” stuff of legend but the older, scrap heap part that had been worked over, and “worked out” long along. The coal bosses had taken the earth’s assets and left the remnants behind to foul the air and foul the place.
But, mostly, and here is where I finally understood why my father took his chances in World War II and also why he never looked back, shacks. Nothing but haphazardly placed, unpainted shacks, with hard-scrabble patched roofs just barely covering them. With out-houses, out-houses can you believe that in America in the 1960s. And with plenty of kids hanging out in the decidedly non-manicured front yards waiting… well, just waiting. Look, I came up in my early youth in a public housing project that had all the pathologies one has come to associate with that form of social organization. Later, in my coming of age days we lived in a tiny, very tiny, single family house but I was not prepared for this. All that I can say about my feelings at the time was that I would be more than willing to crawl on all fours to get back to my crummy old growing up homestead rather than fight the dread of this place.
Fortunately Angelica’s kin (second cousin), Annadeene, husband and two kids all at about age twenty, lived further down the road, out of town, in a trailer camp which the husband, Fred, had expanded so that it had the feel of a small country house. More importantly it had indoor plumbing and a spare room where Angelica and I could sleep and put our stuff. Fred, as I recall, was something of a skilled mechanic (coal equipment mechanic) who worked for a firm that was indirectly connected to the Eastern Kentucky coal mines.
This Prestonsburg, as you can imagine, in the 1960s was nothing but one of a thousand such towns that I had (and have) passed through. A main street with a few essential stores, some boarded up retail space and then you are out of town. Then hardly worth, and maybe now too, putting a strip mall into. Moreover, Route 7 as it turned into Route 23 heading into Prestonsburg and then further down turned into nothing but an old country, pass at your own risk, country road about where Angelica’s cousin lived. What I am trying to get at though is that although these people were in the 20th century they were somewhat behind the curve. This is, as it probably was in my father’s time, patriotic country, country where you did your military service came home, worked, if you could find it, got married and raised a family. Just in tougher circumstances than elsewhere.
I understood that part. What I did not understand then, and am still somewhat confused about, is the insularity of the place. The wariness, serious wariness, of strangers even of strangers brought to the hills and hollows by kin. I was not well received at least at first, and I still am not quite sure if I ever was, by Angelica’s kin and I suppose if I thought about it while they had heard of “hippies” (every male with beard, long hair, and jeans was suspected of belonging to that category) Prestonsburg was more like something from Merle Haggard’s Okie From Muskogee lyrics than Haight-Ashbury. Angelica kept saying that I would grow on them (like I did on her) but I knew, knew down deep that we had best get out of there. I kept pressing the issue but she refused to listen to any thoughts of our leaving until after Saturday night’s barn dance. Fred and Annadeene had after all especially invited us to go along with them. We could leave Sunday morning but not before. Christ, a hillbilly hoe-down.
Probably about twenty years ago I would have felt no compulsion to go into anything but superficial detail about this barn dance. Today though I do have that need. Otherwise this scene lacks completeness. I will say that I have, twenty years ago or now, a very clear picture of Angelica being fetching for this dance. All her feminine wiles got a workout that night. What I can’t remember is what she wore or how she wore her hair (up, I think) but the effect on me (and the other guys) was calculated to make me glad, glad as hell, that we stayed for this thing. What I can remember vividly though is that this barn dance actually took place in a barn, just a plain old ordinary barn that had been used in this area for years (according to the oldsters since back in the 1920s) for the periodic dances that filled up the year and broke the monotony of the mountain existence. The old faded red-painted barn, sturdily build to withstand the mountain winds and containing a stage for such occasions was something out of a movie, some movie that you have seen, so you have some idea of what it was like even if you have never been within a hundred miles of a barn.
Moreover the locals had gone to some effort to decorate the place, provide plenty of refreshments and use some lighting to good effect. What was missing was any booze. This was a “dry” county then (and maybe still is) but not to worry wink, wink there was plenty of “white lightning” around out in the makeshift dirt parking lot where clusters of good old boys hovered around certain cars whose owners had all you needed. Just bring your own fixings. After we had checked out the arrangements in the barn and Annadeene had introduced us to her neighbors Fred tapped me on the shoulder and “hipped” me to the liquor scene. We went outside. Fred talked quietly to one of the busy car owners and then produced a small jar for my inspection. “Hey, wait,” he said “you have to cut that stuff a little with some water if you are not used to it.” I took my jar, added some water, and took a swig. Jesus Christ, I almost fell down the stuff was so powerful. Look, I used to drink whiskey straight up in those days, or I thought I drank whiskey straight up but after one swig, one swig, my friends, I confess I was a mere teetotaler. Several minutes later we went back inside and I nursed, literally nursed, that jar for the rest of the night. But you know I got “high” off it and was in good spirits. So good that I started dancing with Angelica once the coterie of banjo players, fiddlers, guitarists and mandolin players got finished warming up. I am not much of a dancer under the best of circumstances but, according to her, I did okay that night.
Hey, you’d expect that the music was something out of the Grand Ole Opry, some Hee-Haw hoe-down stuff, some Arkansas Jamboree hokum, right? Forget that. See back in the mountains, at least in the 1960s mountains, they did not have access to much television or sheet music or other such refinements. What they played they learned from mama and papa, or some uncle who got it from god knows where. It’s all passed down from something like time immemorial and then traced back to the old county, the British Isles mainly. Oh sure there was a “square” hoe-down thing or two but what I heard that night was something out of the mountain night high-powered eerie winds as they rolled down the hills and hollows (hollers, if you are from there). Something that spoke of hard traveling first from the old country when luck ran out there, then from the east coast of America when that got too crowded and just sat down when it hit those grey-blue mountains, or maybe, although I never asked (and under the circumstances would not have dared to ask) formed their version of the blue-pink great American West night, and this is as far as they got, or cared to go.
Some of this music I knew from my folk experiences in Boston and Cambridge earlier in the 1960s when everybody, including me, was looking for the roots of folk music. Certainly I knew Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies when the band played it instrumentally. That was one of the first songs, done by gravelly-voiced Dave Van Ronk, I heard on the folk radio station that I listened to. But, see, back in those early days that stuff, for the most part, was too, well you know, too my father’s music for me to take seriously. Bob Dylan was easier to listen to for a message that “spoke” to me. But this night I thrilled to hear real pros going one-on-one to out-fiddle, out-banjo, out-mandolin, out, out-any instrument each other in some mad dash to appease the mountain nymphs, or whatever or whoever was being evoked to keep civilization away from the purity of the music. That night was as close as I got to my roots, and feeling good about those roots, and also as close as I got to Angelica. I could go on and give examples that you could go check out on YouTube and listen to but this is one of those moments you had to be there, okay.
About 12:30 or one o’clock the dance broke up, although as we headed down the rutted, jagged street we could still hear banjos and fiddles flailing away to see who really was “king of the hill.” Angelica said she was glad that we stayed, and I agreed. She also said that, yes, I was right; it was time to head west. She said it in such a way that I felt that she could have been some old time pioneer woman who once she recognized that the land was exhausted knew that the family had to pull up stakes and push on. It was just a matter of putting the bundles together and saying goodbye to the neighbors left behind. Needless to say old resource road companion Angelica, sweet, fetching Angelica put that fetchiness to good use and had us lined up for a ride from another Eddie truck driver who, if he was sober enough, was heading out with a load at 6:00 AM to Winchester just outside Lexington from where we could make better connections west. 6:00 AM, are you kidding? I am still wearing about eight pound of that white lightning, or whatever it was. Angelica merely pointed out in her winsome, fetching way that nobody forced me to drink that rotgut (her word) liquor when softer refreshments had been available inside. Touché, 6:00 AM it is.
Dog tired, smelling of a distillery, or some old time hardware store (where the white lightning ingredients probably came from) Angelica and I laid our heads down to get a few hours sleep. Gently she nuzzled up to my side (how she did it through the alcoholic haze I do not know) and gave every indication that she wanted to make love. Now we are right next door to the two unnamed sleeping children, sleeping the sleep of the just, and as she got more aggressive we have to be, or we think we have to be, more quiet. No making the earth under the Steubenville truck stop motel cabin shake this night. And, as we talked about it on the road later, that was not what was in her mind. She just wanted to show, in a very simple way, that she appreciated that I had stayed, that I had been wise enough to figure out how long we should stay, and that, drunk or sober, I would take her feelings into account. Not a bad night’s work. And so amid some low giggles we did our exploration. Oh, here is the part that will tell you more than a little about Angelica. She also wanted to please me this night because she did not know, given the vagaries of the road, when we would be able to do it again. Practical girl.
In the groggy, misty, dark before dawn, half awake, no quarter awake night Angelica tapped me to get up. We quickly packed, she ate a little food (I could barely stand up never mind do something as complicated as eat food), and we made our goodbyes, genuine this morning by all parties. As we went out the front trailer door and headed up the road to the place where Eddie had said to meet him I swear, I swear on all the dreams of whatever color that I have ever had, that the background mountains that were starting to take form out of the dark started to play, and to play like that music I heard last night from those demon fiddlers and banjo players. I asked, when we met Eddie, who was only a few minutes late, and who looked and felt (as he told me) worst that I did (except that he proudly stated that he was used to it, okay Eddie) if those musicians were still at it over at that old devil of a red barn. “No,” he said. “Where is that music coming from then?” I said. Old Eddie (backed by Angelica) said “What music?” That angel music I said. Eddie just looked bemused as he revved that old truck engine up and we hit the road west.
Several years ago I was half-listening to some music, some background eerily haunting mountain music coming from a folk radio station when I had the strangest feeling that I had heard the tune before. I puzzled over it sporadically for a few days and then went to the local library to see if they had some mountain music CDs. They did and I began on that date a feverish acquaintance with this form of music that I have occasionally reviewed here, especially the various Carter Family combinations. I, however, never did find out the name of that song.
And in a sense it has not name. It was the music from that old mountain wind as it trailed down the hills and hollows that I heard that last night in Prestonsburg. See here is what you didn’t know as you read all this stuff, and I only half knew it back then. I had been in Kentucky before that trip down from Steubenville, Ohio with sweet Angelica. No, not the way you think. My parents, shortly after they were married and after my father got out of the service, took a trip back to his home in Hazard so his family could meet his bride, or maybe just so he could show her off. They stayed for some period of time, I am not sure exactly how long, but the long and short of it is, that I was conceived and was fussing around in my mother’s womb while they were there. So see, it was that old mountain wind calling me home, calling me to my father’s roots, calling me to my roots as I was aimlessly searching for that blue-pink great American West night. Double thanks, Angelica.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The Lady In Shay’s Pond
Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Josh, to all but crazed aficionados of his by-line in the publishing world, and recently “retired” from the rigors of the public prints in such progressive and radical newspapers and journals as the East Bay Other, The Eye, Climate Change Quarterly, The National Digest, and Thompson’s Review, has agreed to share some of his insights into the ways of the world in this space. Oh, and by the way, he happens to be a long-time friend, raconteur,, and mad monk compadre of mine ever since we set eyes on each other up in some noble San Francisco hill in the summer of love, 1967 version, when he donned the name and persona of the Prince of Love and I, Be-Bop Benny, and from then on we were together “on” Captain Crunch’s magical mystery tour yellow brick road bus. Enough said-Markin
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment
I had not seen Peter Paul Markin in a while when he invited me to make some comments in this space. The immediate cause of our recent reunion was his appearance at a conference up in Portland, Maine near my old growing up, and current, home town of Olde Saco. The subject of that conference, unlike the million and one anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-oppression (name your flavor of the month) conferences that we have wound up at together, was on film noir/ crime noir, a subject we both have shared as a life-long passion. And while I am foggy on exactly how Pee-Pee (except for a short time in the 1967 summer of love when I, and everybody else, called him Be-Bop Benny, the name I have always called him) came by his passion mine actually came out of my early professional work, when as a cub city desk reporter for the Portland Daily Gazette (now long gone), I covered the police beat and needed a break from that mundane assignment to relax and deal with some “real” cinematic and literary crime. Especially after reporting on this one story, the story of the Lady in Shay’s Pond that drove me deep into the genre.
Funny, everybody today thinks, you just go to some swanky journalism school, or school of communications like over at the university, and presto you are a print/internet/television instant icon. Not so in the old days, the now old early 1970s when after getting “off the bus” out on the West Coast I headed back east to make my name, and fortune. Although I had no journalism degree I had always wanted to be a journalist and had done some free-lance work while “on the bus” for different West Coast alternative newspapers and journals that Captain Crunch had connections with through Ken Kesey’s circle of friends. So I wrote a few things about this and that, mostly in a drug coma (or in the throes of love, it could be six-two-and even on either proposition) for The Los Angeles Free Express, The East Bay Other, Ramparts, etc. Nothing big, nothing fancy but I had the bug, had that small scratch resume, and had a notion that if I worked the back roads of journalism I could find some niche to start off with without the degree that I was, frankly, too old and too antsy to go back to school for.
I actually got my East Coast start up at the beloved Schoodic Times, a weekly local newspaper that covered the Bar Harbor area and points north. I was the all-mister-everything there. You know writing up how some Mayfair swell was giving a party for his little girl, Bessie, and he or she, mainly she, wanted all the known world, the known swell Bar Harbor world to know, that hard fact. With each and every participant’s name listed. Correctly listed, or there would be hell to pay. Or maybe covering the monthly town meeting in bustling Schoodic Point or some other meeting convened to vote on (vote against, mainly) some public welfare issue. Or write up some ad copy (mainly in tourist –heavy summer) for Aunt Betty’s Diner, explaining exactly why this local “hot spot,” a piece of authentic New England charm was a “must eat” stop on that hard-earned yearly two weeks’ vacation.
Best of all was covering the “crime” scene news. You know how lobsterman Woodson and lobsterman Eppings went at it tong and nail over who rightfully owned some derelict untagged lobster trap. And that tongs and nails fight wound up in front of the local justice of the peace. That last type work, little of it as there was, and mainly off tourist-heavy season (everybody was on their best behavior for the “guests”), is what got me that first real job at the not missed Portland Daily Gazette. Remind me to tell you about those Schoodic days some time. They really were something else but now I have a murder, or some murders, to solve so let me press on.
Now everybody figures, and figures maybe rightly, if you land in a big city newspaper, say Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, you are among royalty and have entre everywhere. Just snap, flash the badge, point to the camera man and presto you have your story. Ain’t necessarily so, and most definitely was not in my case. I was thrilled, thrilled beyond words, as I recall that I was going to be a cub reporter on the city desk at the Gazette. I figured a couple of articles and I would be talking to the mayor, the governor, the president, who knows, on a first name basis just like the big boys and girls.
Forget that. Podunk (sorry Portland) cub city desk reporter meant you were at the bottom of the feeding chain. Below, well below, the drunken career copy editor who they stashed there because at one time he had won some prize for some odd-ball thing that nobody exactly remembered but is agreed upon by all not to bring up. Below the Woman’s Page lady busy manicuring her fingernails waiting on the latest recipe to file, the latest tidbit about what a certain very much married Mr. So-and-So and Miss Somebody were seen doing at some social event, or writing up somebody’s a party complete with a detailed list of what went on and who participated (I hoped that she spelled each and every name correctly, or else she was doomed). Below the publisher s daughter who was “stashed” there to keep her out of harm’s way (read: away from the night life at Jimmy Jake’s Blues Club down at Olde Saco Beach in high French- Canadian ooh-la-la summer) before she marries the son of the Augusta (Maine) Journal. And that cub reporter below also meant nothing but to mainly cover the police “beat” press room at the main station on the off-chance that every known Mafioso don, every know jack-roller, every known mug, yegg, drifter, grifter, and midnight shifter intended to descend on Portland in a fit of hubris.
Or maybe to cover, just maybe, that one time, off-hand odd-ball murder, or really before it was all over, murders, that has the whole town stirred up for months. That’s the one that broke me out of the bottom of the chain, out of writing novels at my police station desk to keep my eyes open. Yes, that day, October 23, 1973, the day they dragged the lady out of Shay’s Pond over in Ocean View.
That day I was just writing my fifth re-write of chapter three of my novel, The Third Wife, a novel to end all novels, to put Hemingway on cheap street, to let Fitzgerald go back and sulk, and have another drink with Zelda, to nuzzle Mailer out for that great American Novel prize when the police call came in. [We knew when a call, silly, obtuse, or important came in, because a green light flashed three times in the press room to alert us, quaint.] Some kids had been traipsing in the woods over at Shay’s Pond in Ocean View and come across a very badly decomposed body of what latter turned out to be a woman who had been strangled, a woman known in Ocean View although not as a full-time year-round woman but a “summer guest” (with the emphasis squarely on summer, and squarely on barely tolerated) as the native Mainiacs like to call them.
I didn’t know much about Ocean View then, although it was only a few miles south of my old hometown, Olde Saco. But it might as well have been a million miles away. Although they didn’t have gated communities then as they do now Ocean View was strictly for the Mayfair swells. Not, maybe as swell as the old time Bar Harbor set with their two last name middle and last names and stuff like that but strictly swells and strictly no murder capital of the world swells. In fact the town had no police force (except for summer rent-a-cop college boys, really just life-guards, who wanted to impress the junior girls swells and maybe catch an off-hand “wild girl” waiting to break-out before marrying another two last name middle and last name guy.) So the State Police out of Portland, along with a couple of special deputies from the Portland Police Department who knew the area, had to deal with the body, deal with the publicity (or rather keeping a lid on it), and deal with solving the crime, or what they thought was the crime. One cop in particular, Detective Garcia, had worked on a case there before (it didn’t come out until after it was all over that the case was over some “he said, she said” things between a big time stockbroker and his estranged wife, kid’s stuff, strictly kid’s stuff).
Here is what the “Staties” picked up right away after a couple of days hard work. The woman, Eleanor, the young wife (twenty-six) of J. Eugene Murry, yes, that J. Eugene Murry, the CEO of Murry Industries, the ancient big defense contractor, had been reported missing by Mr. Murry back in late August, whereabouts at the time unknown, possible destinations unknown, last known companion (s) unknown, cash in hand, plenty, love of J. Eugene Murry, nil. Of course Mr. Murry might just a have been the slightest bit more helpful since he had a rather large mansion over on not-gated but might as have well have been Atlantic Street, Mrs. Murry had called him from that locale several times asking for (and receiving) money in early August, and she was seen by various mansion employees with one (or more) males, young males, closer to her age that Mr. Murry’s.
All that, of course, didn’t come out until later after the case was nailed. Oh, ya, and Mrs. Murry, or someone who sounded very much like Mrs. Murry had called Murry Industries, specifically Mr.Murry’s personal secretary asking for (and receiving) cash six times between late August and the discovery of the body in the pond. The last time just four days before the very, very decomposed (I had to avert my eyes when I first saw it) came to the surface, or whatever dragged it to shore.
With that last bit of information in hand the previously laconic Mr. Murry determined to hire a private detective to get to the bottom of this case. See the regular cops were going too slowly for him all of a sudden. Yes, Mr. Murry was that kind of man. He didn’t care what his wife did, or didn’t do, in public or private, as long as she remained Mrs. Trophy-Wife but now that she was gone, long gone, something had to be done, and done quickly. And, no, no, a thousand times no J. Eugene Murry did not kill his wife, and his alibi, naturally was that little blonde personal secretary who was feeding somebody dough to keep her away.
Now this private detective thing, the stuff of crime noir legend is nothing but a shill. Look, most of these guys can’t tie their shoes, can’t spell murder, and couldn’t make it on the police force (because (a) they couldn’t keep quiet about the graft, (b) didn’t give Johnny Rico or some guy enough protection, or (c) couldn’t keep quiet about the free doughnuts and coffee in the locker room provided by Milly’s Diner) and got the boot. And not knowing any other gainful profession set up shop in some flea-bag office building with failed dentists, repo men, and insurance coverage chiselers. Hats off to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler but that is the stuff of dreams, opium dreams from what I can gather.
I guess our Mr. Murry just went to the nearest telephone directory and placed his finger on the first name he came to, Alan Albert, because that is who Detective Garcia (who knew Albert when he was on the Portland force before he was canned for taking more than his cut of the protection money and “forgetting” about the Precinct Six captain, a fatal mistake) introduced me to him as Mr. Murry’s new private hired help. His main previous work, upon interview by me, was some rough-edged divorce work. That work, keyhole peeper work, rather than solving police platoon-sized murders, is what keeps most private dicks in coffee and cakes, and the wolves from the door.
But here is the funny part, funny after the big pin in the balloon I have put in the private- eye sleaze business. Alan Albert actually did solve the crime, crimes actually, the heinous crimes of murder, although not in the two-fisted, take a couple of slugs for the cause, maybe save a damsel in distress, or get bopped by some femme fatale out for her own kicks way. Here is how.
When Albert went over to be interviewed by Miss Grayson (the name of that, ah, blonde, very personal secretary belonging to one Mr. J. Eugene Murry) he recognized a photo on her desk as belonging to a girl he once knew from the Sea and Surf Club over at Olde Saco Beach (I remembered that club, and its mainly hell motorcycle “wild men” well). That girl in the photo, Emily Greer, happened to be a very close friend of Miss Grayson, according to what she said at the time. Upon request, after being given the job of finding Mrs. Murry’s killer (or killers), Alan was given a photograph of Mrs. Murry. He noted, although he kept quiet about it then, the striking resemblance between Eleanor Murry in the photograph and Emily. Enough to follow a certain lead.
See this Emily Greer, wild as hell, a “motorcycle mama” is what we called them in old Olde Saco time (and maybe they still do), was at one time the girlfriend of that Detective Garcia who introduced us a few days back. But after squeezing the Detective for all kinds of stuff, including getting her brother to walk on a murder rap, she dumped him and left him for some white trash biker from Ellsworth. But Detective Garcia still had it bad for his Emily. So, every once in a while she would squeeze him, squeeze him hard for information about the swells in Ocean View. See he had worked that stockbroker and wife feud that he had investigated into a little affair with the slumming wife (the “sleeping around and caught" cause of the stockbroker “he said, she said” argument that he broke up). So he gave up the Mrs. Murry information from Mrs. Stockbroker to Emily, and presto, Eleanor Murry is nowhere to be found. And, as it turned out, a few other “summer guests” would also turn up in that stinking Shay’s Pond.
Private Detective Albert and Public Detective Garcia, after rounding up Miss Grayson (real name, Alice Greer) at Murry Industries Headquarters (she was feeding the so-called Mrs. Murry dough out the door to her sister, Emily) and placing her safe and sound at Police Headquarters took a little ride over to the Sea and Surf Club to collar Miss Emily. No guns, no fights, no car chases, no whipping chains, just a plain ordinary “come with us, sister” arrest. And if you saw spiteful Emily you could see that she would have taken a couple in the chest if he she had been sober just then, but you could also see that she had the wherewithal to dunk those five bodies found in that small pond, without remorse.
So you see why I got into “real” crime noir after all this matter-of-fact-stuff. Let me tell you about some real crime stuff up in old Schoodic Point, a titanic fight between two lobstermen over the spoils of a daily catch. That will get the hairs in the back of your neck up. Oh, I guess I have run out of time. That is a story for another day
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment
I had not seen Peter Paul Markin in a while when he invited me to make some comments in this space. The immediate cause of our recent reunion was his appearance at a conference up in Portland, Maine near my old growing up, and current, home town of Olde Saco. The subject of that conference, unlike the million and one anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-oppression (name your flavor of the month) conferences that we have wound up at together, was on film noir/ crime noir, a subject we both have shared as a life-long passion. And while I am foggy on exactly how Pee-Pee (except for a short time in the 1967 summer of love when I, and everybody else, called him Be-Bop Benny, the name I have always called him) came by his passion mine actually came out of my early professional work, when as a cub city desk reporter for the Portland Daily Gazette (now long gone), I covered the police beat and needed a break from that mundane assignment to relax and deal with some “real” cinematic and literary crime. Especially after reporting on this one story, the story of the Lady in Shay’s Pond that drove me deep into the genre.
Funny, everybody today thinks, you just go to some swanky journalism school, or school of communications like over at the university, and presto you are a print/internet/television instant icon. Not so in the old days, the now old early 1970s when after getting “off the bus” out on the West Coast I headed back east to make my name, and fortune. Although I had no journalism degree I had always wanted to be a journalist and had done some free-lance work while “on the bus” for different West Coast alternative newspapers and journals that Captain Crunch had connections with through Ken Kesey’s circle of friends. So I wrote a few things about this and that, mostly in a drug coma (or in the throes of love, it could be six-two-and even on either proposition) for The Los Angeles Free Express, The East Bay Other, Ramparts, etc. Nothing big, nothing fancy but I had the bug, had that small scratch resume, and had a notion that if I worked the back roads of journalism I could find some niche to start off with without the degree that I was, frankly, too old and too antsy to go back to school for.
I actually got my East Coast start up at the beloved Schoodic Times, a weekly local newspaper that covered the Bar Harbor area and points north. I was the all-mister-everything there. You know writing up how some Mayfair swell was giving a party for his little girl, Bessie, and he or she, mainly she, wanted all the known world, the known swell Bar Harbor world to know, that hard fact. With each and every participant’s name listed. Correctly listed, or there would be hell to pay. Or maybe covering the monthly town meeting in bustling Schoodic Point or some other meeting convened to vote on (vote against, mainly) some public welfare issue. Or write up some ad copy (mainly in tourist –heavy summer) for Aunt Betty’s Diner, explaining exactly why this local “hot spot,” a piece of authentic New England charm was a “must eat” stop on that hard-earned yearly two weeks’ vacation.
Best of all was covering the “crime” scene news. You know how lobsterman Woodson and lobsterman Eppings went at it tong and nail over who rightfully owned some derelict untagged lobster trap. And that tongs and nails fight wound up in front of the local justice of the peace. That last type work, little of it as there was, and mainly off tourist-heavy season (everybody was on their best behavior for the “guests”), is what got me that first real job at the not missed Portland Daily Gazette. Remind me to tell you about those Schoodic days some time. They really were something else but now I have a murder, or some murders, to solve so let me press on.
Now everybody figures, and figures maybe rightly, if you land in a big city newspaper, say Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, you are among royalty and have entre everywhere. Just snap, flash the badge, point to the camera man and presto you have your story. Ain’t necessarily so, and most definitely was not in my case. I was thrilled, thrilled beyond words, as I recall that I was going to be a cub reporter on the city desk at the Gazette. I figured a couple of articles and I would be talking to the mayor, the governor, the president, who knows, on a first name basis just like the big boys and girls.
Forget that. Podunk (sorry Portland) cub city desk reporter meant you were at the bottom of the feeding chain. Below, well below, the drunken career copy editor who they stashed there because at one time he had won some prize for some odd-ball thing that nobody exactly remembered but is agreed upon by all not to bring up. Below the Woman’s Page lady busy manicuring her fingernails waiting on the latest recipe to file, the latest tidbit about what a certain very much married Mr. So-and-So and Miss Somebody were seen doing at some social event, or writing up somebody’s a party complete with a detailed list of what went on and who participated (I hoped that she spelled each and every name correctly, or else she was doomed). Below the publisher s daughter who was “stashed” there to keep her out of harm’s way (read: away from the night life at Jimmy Jake’s Blues Club down at Olde Saco Beach in high French- Canadian ooh-la-la summer) before she marries the son of the Augusta (Maine) Journal. And that cub reporter below also meant nothing but to mainly cover the police “beat” press room at the main station on the off-chance that every known Mafioso don, every know jack-roller, every known mug, yegg, drifter, grifter, and midnight shifter intended to descend on Portland in a fit of hubris.
Or maybe to cover, just maybe, that one time, off-hand odd-ball murder, or really before it was all over, murders, that has the whole town stirred up for months. That’s the one that broke me out of the bottom of the chain, out of writing novels at my police station desk to keep my eyes open. Yes, that day, October 23, 1973, the day they dragged the lady out of Shay’s Pond over in Ocean View.
That day I was just writing my fifth re-write of chapter three of my novel, The Third Wife, a novel to end all novels, to put Hemingway on cheap street, to let Fitzgerald go back and sulk, and have another drink with Zelda, to nuzzle Mailer out for that great American Novel prize when the police call came in. [We knew when a call, silly, obtuse, or important came in, because a green light flashed three times in the press room to alert us, quaint.] Some kids had been traipsing in the woods over at Shay’s Pond in Ocean View and come across a very badly decomposed body of what latter turned out to be a woman who had been strangled, a woman known in Ocean View although not as a full-time year-round woman but a “summer guest” (with the emphasis squarely on summer, and squarely on barely tolerated) as the native Mainiacs like to call them.
I didn’t know much about Ocean View then, although it was only a few miles south of my old hometown, Olde Saco. But it might as well have been a million miles away. Although they didn’t have gated communities then as they do now Ocean View was strictly for the Mayfair swells. Not, maybe as swell as the old time Bar Harbor set with their two last name middle and last names and stuff like that but strictly swells and strictly no murder capital of the world swells. In fact the town had no police force (except for summer rent-a-cop college boys, really just life-guards, who wanted to impress the junior girls swells and maybe catch an off-hand “wild girl” waiting to break-out before marrying another two last name middle and last name guy.) So the State Police out of Portland, along with a couple of special deputies from the Portland Police Department who knew the area, had to deal with the body, deal with the publicity (or rather keeping a lid on it), and deal with solving the crime, or what they thought was the crime. One cop in particular, Detective Garcia, had worked on a case there before (it didn’t come out until after it was all over that the case was over some “he said, she said” things between a big time stockbroker and his estranged wife, kid’s stuff, strictly kid’s stuff).
Here is what the “Staties” picked up right away after a couple of days hard work. The woman, Eleanor, the young wife (twenty-six) of J. Eugene Murry, yes, that J. Eugene Murry, the CEO of Murry Industries, the ancient big defense contractor, had been reported missing by Mr. Murry back in late August, whereabouts at the time unknown, possible destinations unknown, last known companion (s) unknown, cash in hand, plenty, love of J. Eugene Murry, nil. Of course Mr. Murry might just a have been the slightest bit more helpful since he had a rather large mansion over on not-gated but might as have well have been Atlantic Street, Mrs. Murry had called him from that locale several times asking for (and receiving) money in early August, and she was seen by various mansion employees with one (or more) males, young males, closer to her age that Mr. Murry’s.
All that, of course, didn’t come out until later after the case was nailed. Oh, ya, and Mrs. Murry, or someone who sounded very much like Mrs. Murry had called Murry Industries, specifically Mr.Murry’s personal secretary asking for (and receiving) cash six times between late August and the discovery of the body in the pond. The last time just four days before the very, very decomposed (I had to avert my eyes when I first saw it) came to the surface, or whatever dragged it to shore.
With that last bit of information in hand the previously laconic Mr. Murry determined to hire a private detective to get to the bottom of this case. See the regular cops were going too slowly for him all of a sudden. Yes, Mr. Murry was that kind of man. He didn’t care what his wife did, or didn’t do, in public or private, as long as she remained Mrs. Trophy-Wife but now that she was gone, long gone, something had to be done, and done quickly. And, no, no, a thousand times no J. Eugene Murry did not kill his wife, and his alibi, naturally was that little blonde personal secretary who was feeding somebody dough to keep her away.
Now this private detective thing, the stuff of crime noir legend is nothing but a shill. Look, most of these guys can’t tie their shoes, can’t spell murder, and couldn’t make it on the police force (because (a) they couldn’t keep quiet about the graft, (b) didn’t give Johnny Rico or some guy enough protection, or (c) couldn’t keep quiet about the free doughnuts and coffee in the locker room provided by Milly’s Diner) and got the boot. And not knowing any other gainful profession set up shop in some flea-bag office building with failed dentists, repo men, and insurance coverage chiselers. Hats off to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler but that is the stuff of dreams, opium dreams from what I can gather.
I guess our Mr. Murry just went to the nearest telephone directory and placed his finger on the first name he came to, Alan Albert, because that is who Detective Garcia (who knew Albert when he was on the Portland force before he was canned for taking more than his cut of the protection money and “forgetting” about the Precinct Six captain, a fatal mistake) introduced me to him as Mr. Murry’s new private hired help. His main previous work, upon interview by me, was some rough-edged divorce work. That work, keyhole peeper work, rather than solving police platoon-sized murders, is what keeps most private dicks in coffee and cakes, and the wolves from the door.
But here is the funny part, funny after the big pin in the balloon I have put in the private- eye sleaze business. Alan Albert actually did solve the crime, crimes actually, the heinous crimes of murder, although not in the two-fisted, take a couple of slugs for the cause, maybe save a damsel in distress, or get bopped by some femme fatale out for her own kicks way. Here is how.
When Albert went over to be interviewed by Miss Grayson (the name of that, ah, blonde, very personal secretary belonging to one Mr. J. Eugene Murry) he recognized a photo on her desk as belonging to a girl he once knew from the Sea and Surf Club over at Olde Saco Beach (I remembered that club, and its mainly hell motorcycle “wild men” well). That girl in the photo, Emily Greer, happened to be a very close friend of Miss Grayson, according to what she said at the time. Upon request, after being given the job of finding Mrs. Murry’s killer (or killers), Alan was given a photograph of Mrs. Murry. He noted, although he kept quiet about it then, the striking resemblance between Eleanor Murry in the photograph and Emily. Enough to follow a certain lead.
See this Emily Greer, wild as hell, a “motorcycle mama” is what we called them in old Olde Saco time (and maybe they still do), was at one time the girlfriend of that Detective Garcia who introduced us a few days back. But after squeezing the Detective for all kinds of stuff, including getting her brother to walk on a murder rap, she dumped him and left him for some white trash biker from Ellsworth. But Detective Garcia still had it bad for his Emily. So, every once in a while she would squeeze him, squeeze him hard for information about the swells in Ocean View. See he had worked that stockbroker and wife feud that he had investigated into a little affair with the slumming wife (the “sleeping around and caught" cause of the stockbroker “he said, she said” argument that he broke up). So he gave up the Mrs. Murry information from Mrs. Stockbroker to Emily, and presto, Eleanor Murry is nowhere to be found. And, as it turned out, a few other “summer guests” would also turn up in that stinking Shay’s Pond.
Private Detective Albert and Public Detective Garcia, after rounding up Miss Grayson (real name, Alice Greer) at Murry Industries Headquarters (she was feeding the so-called Mrs. Murry dough out the door to her sister, Emily) and placing her safe and sound at Police Headquarters took a little ride over to the Sea and Surf Club to collar Miss Emily. No guns, no fights, no car chases, no whipping chains, just a plain ordinary “come with us, sister” arrest. And if you saw spiteful Emily you could see that she would have taken a couple in the chest if he she had been sober just then, but you could also see that she had the wherewithal to dunk those five bodies found in that small pond, without remorse.
So you see why I got into “real” crime noir after all this matter-of-fact-stuff. Let me tell you about some real crime stuff up in old Schoodic Point, a titanic fight between two lobstermen over the spoils of a daily catch. That will get the hairs in the back of your neck up. Oh, I guess I have run out of time. That is a story for another day
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The People Are War-Weary, Very War Weary Although There Is No End In Sight- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan!
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
Recently my old back in the 1960s days friend, Peter Paul Markin, himself a war veteran, were comparing notes about the virtual “under the radar” place that American imperial war policies (there is no other name for it with over 1000 bases in the world and over 700 billion plus dollars eaten up by the war budget each year) has taken in this year’s presidential campaign. And, additionally, the almost total lack of organized public outcry about those
policies, most notably the lingering death sore of Afghanistan. That despite the fact that some far-sighted, hell even some jaded bourgeois commentators, have placed the odds of civil war in that benighted country (I will not even dignify the place as a state) after the American troop draw down at two to one in favor of civil war. Even by the American government’s own self-serving estimates the forecast is almost as grim. What gives? Where are the mass rallies against the beast?
The reason for our comparing notes on this subject was simple enough. Between the two of us we have attended over the past several months in various capacities a whole series of parades, only one of which I will mention more on later that was specifically a peace parade. We have come agree though that, without a doubt, there is a vast war-weariness that if not organized in a public way runs pretty deep just under the surface among the plebeian masses.
For those who do not know, Peter Paul, over the past several years going back before the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 has attempted to move might and main along with his fellow Veterans For Peace (VFP)to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately to urge no war with Iran) to no avail. I, although not a veteran, have attempted in various journalistic endeavors and on the streets to make those same basic points to no avail as well. Those “no avails” though have never stopped us from continuing to push the rock up the mountain when the cause is righteous. And the struggle against these particular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is righteous and has brought us closer together of late. That has not always been the case, as Peter Paul tends to take a harder anti-capitalist look at the wars as systematic of the need to bring down the whole damn house of cards and I more from a more anti-imperialist perspective of just trying to hold the monster in check. We united on one idea earlier this year and that was the need to continue to get the anti-war message out to the general public. By any means necessary.
That is where the parades notion came in play, although we claim no originally for the idea, none at all. The parades notion actually kind of hit us in the face as a way to bring any kind of peace message to the folks whom we do not normally run into in our rarified big city radical circles. Of course the original focus started out last year in 2011 with Peter Paul’s chapter of Veterans for Peace in Boston, the aptly names (“war is a racket”) Smedley Butler Brigade, attempts to march in the “official” South Boston Allied War Council’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Without going to all the particulars of the denial of permission for VFP to march (involving reams of material from a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting such exclusions for “private” parades) that organization was shut out of the official parade. Needless to say these resourceful vets (mainly long in the tooth Vietnam era vets who cut their teeth on just such symbolic actions) just created their own peace parade to follow the official parade and to let those who came to South Boston know there was another voice to be heard from on the questions of war and peace.
That is where the first recognition of war-weariness came in. Now for those not familiar with South Boston (“Southie”) this is, or was, according to Peter Paul, the last bastion of Irish-centered working class pro-war (or at least don’t question war policy) sentiment left in the world ( a little hyperbole from him, but I am used to it). This spring when we marched (yes, I marched with Peter Paul like in olden times) the response by those same plebeian masses was even cordial to say the least. And that is how the Breslin-Markin antiwar “spring offensive” (with, ah, a little help from VFP and others) took off.
A Dorchester Day Parade just south of Southie in one of the more ethnically diverse Irish/Vietnamese/Latino/ Brazilian you name it neighborhoods of Boston (although neighborhoods like Southie that product more than their fair share of troops) produced an even more cordial response. Ditto several Memorial Day services in the area. More recently parades in affluence Rockport and working- class Portsmouth, New Hampshire only confirmed the cordiality, openness to anti-war messages, and the weariness. That last one, Portsmouth, by the way, held in a town that depends (read: would not survive) without naval appropriations for the huge shipyard there.
So the disconnect between governmental war policy and the genuine war-weariness of the masses is real enough. But real enough as well is any sense of being able to do anything about it is in the cards other than patiently waiting for withdrawal due dates. And that is where my simple suggestion comes in.
I, as well as other knowledgeable anti-warriors have recognized that we have not had any effect on Bush-Obama war doctrine in Iraq and precious little thus far in Afghanistan. There is one place, and one thing that we can do to turn that around right now. Call on President Obama to pardon Private Bradley Manning now being held in pre-trail detention in Fort Leavenworth Kansas pending charges that could amount to a life sentence for the young soldier. For the forgetful Private Manning allegedly passed sensitive information onto Wikileaks who then passed it on to a candid world. Thus Private Manning is the “poster person” for opposition to all that has failed, all that is wrong, all that was (and is )atrocious, and all that was (and is) criminal in Bush-Obama war policy. So raise the cry with us-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
Recently my old back in the 1960s days friend, Peter Paul Markin, himself a war veteran, were comparing notes about the virtual “under the radar” place that American imperial war policies (there is no other name for it with over 1000 bases in the world and over 700 billion plus dollars eaten up by the war budget each year) has taken in this year’s presidential campaign. And, additionally, the almost total lack of organized public outcry about those
policies, most notably the lingering death sore of Afghanistan. That despite the fact that some far-sighted, hell even some jaded bourgeois commentators, have placed the odds of civil war in that benighted country (I will not even dignify the place as a state) after the American troop draw down at two to one in favor of civil war. Even by the American government’s own self-serving estimates the forecast is almost as grim. What gives? Where are the mass rallies against the beast?
The reason for our comparing notes on this subject was simple enough. Between the two of us we have attended over the past several months in various capacities a whole series of parades, only one of which I will mention more on later that was specifically a peace parade. We have come agree though that, without a doubt, there is a vast war-weariness that if not organized in a public way runs pretty deep just under the surface among the plebeian masses.
For those who do not know, Peter Paul, over the past several years going back before the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 has attempted to move might and main along with his fellow Veterans For Peace (VFP)to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately to urge no war with Iran) to no avail. I, although not a veteran, have attempted in various journalistic endeavors and on the streets to make those same basic points to no avail as well. Those “no avails” though have never stopped us from continuing to push the rock up the mountain when the cause is righteous. And the struggle against these particular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is righteous and has brought us closer together of late. That has not always been the case, as Peter Paul tends to take a harder anti-capitalist look at the wars as systematic of the need to bring down the whole damn house of cards and I more from a more anti-imperialist perspective of just trying to hold the monster in check. We united on one idea earlier this year and that was the need to continue to get the anti-war message out to the general public. By any means necessary.
That is where the parades notion came in play, although we claim no originally for the idea, none at all. The parades notion actually kind of hit us in the face as a way to bring any kind of peace message to the folks whom we do not normally run into in our rarified big city radical circles. Of course the original focus started out last year in 2011 with Peter Paul’s chapter of Veterans for Peace in Boston, the aptly names (“war is a racket”) Smedley Butler Brigade, attempts to march in the “official” South Boston Allied War Council’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Without going to all the particulars of the denial of permission for VFP to march (involving reams of material from a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting such exclusions for “private” parades) that organization was shut out of the official parade. Needless to say these resourceful vets (mainly long in the tooth Vietnam era vets who cut their teeth on just such symbolic actions) just created their own peace parade to follow the official parade and to let those who came to South Boston know there was another voice to be heard from on the questions of war and peace.
That is where the first recognition of war-weariness came in. Now for those not familiar with South Boston (“Southie”) this is, or was, according to Peter Paul, the last bastion of Irish-centered working class pro-war (or at least don’t question war policy) sentiment left in the world ( a little hyperbole from him, but I am used to it). This spring when we marched (yes, I marched with Peter Paul like in olden times) the response by those same plebeian masses was even cordial to say the least. And that is how the Breslin-Markin antiwar “spring offensive” (with, ah, a little help from VFP and others) took off.
A Dorchester Day Parade just south of Southie in one of the more ethnically diverse Irish/Vietnamese/Latino/ Brazilian you name it neighborhoods of Boston (although neighborhoods like Southie that product more than their fair share of troops) produced an even more cordial response. Ditto several Memorial Day services in the area. More recently parades in affluence Rockport and working- class Portsmouth, New Hampshire only confirmed the cordiality, openness to anti-war messages, and the weariness. That last one, Portsmouth, by the way, held in a town that depends (read: would not survive) without naval appropriations for the huge shipyard there.
So the disconnect between governmental war policy and the genuine war-weariness of the masses is real enough. But real enough as well is any sense of being able to do anything about it is in the cards other than patiently waiting for withdrawal due dates. And that is where my simple suggestion comes in.
I, as well as other knowledgeable anti-warriors have recognized that we have not had any effect on Bush-Obama war doctrine in Iraq and precious little thus far in Afghanistan. There is one place, and one thing that we can do to turn that around right now. Call on President Obama to pardon Private Bradley Manning now being held in pre-trail detention in Fort Leavenworth Kansas pending charges that could amount to a life sentence for the young soldier. For the forgetful Private Manning allegedly passed sensitive information onto Wikileaks who then passed it on to a candid world. Thus Private Manning is the “poster person” for opposition to all that has failed, all that is wrong, all that was (and is )atrocious, and all that was (and is) criminal in Bush-Obama war policy. So raise the cry with us-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!
Recently my old back in the 1960s days friend, Peter Paul Markin, himself a war veteran, were comparing notes about the virtual “under the radar” place that American imperial war policies (there is no other name for it with over 1000 bases in the world and over 700 billion plus dollars eaten up by the war budget each year) has taken in this year’s presidential campaign. And, additionally, the almost total lack of organized public outcry about those
policies, most notably the lingering death sore of Afghanistan. That despite the fact that some far-sighted, hell even some jaded bourgeois commentators, have placed the odds of civil war in that benighted country (I will not even dignify the place as a state) after the American troop draw down at two to one in favor of civil war. Even by the American government’s own self-serving estimates the forecast is almost as grim. What gives? Where are the mass rallies against the beast?
The reason for our comparing notes on this subject was simple enough. Between the two of us we have attended over the past several months in various capacities a whole series of parades, only one of which I will mention more on later that was specifically a peace parade. We have come agree though that, without a doubt, there is a vast war-weariness that if not organized in a public way runs pretty deep just under the surface among the plebeian masses.
For those who do not know, Peter Paul, over the past several years going back before the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 has attempted to move might and main along with his fellow Veterans For Peace (VFP)to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately to urge no war with Iran) to no avail. I, although not a veteran, have attempted in various journalistic endeavors and on the streets to make those same basic points to no avail as well. Those “no avails” though have never stopped us from continuing to push the rock up the mountain when the cause is righteous. And the struggle against these particular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is righteous and has brought us closer together of late. That has not always been the case, as Peter Paul tends to take a harder anti-capitalist look at the wars as systematic of the need to bring down the whole damn house of cards and I more from a more anti-imperialist perspective of just trying to hold the monster in check. We united on one idea earlier this year and that was the need to continue to get the anti-war message out to the general public. By any means necessary.
That is where the parades notion came in play, although we claim no originally for the idea, none at all. The parades notion actually kind of hit us in the face as a way to bring any kind of peace message to the folks whom we do not normally run into in our rarified big city radical circles. Of course the original focus started out last year in 2011 with Peter Paul’s chapter of Veterans for Peace in Boston, the aptly names (“war is a racket”) Smedley Butler Brigade, attempts to march in the “official” South Boston Allied War Council’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Without going to all the particulars of the denial of permission for VFP to march (involving reams of material from a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting such exclusions for “private” parades) that organization was shut out of the official parade. Needless to say these resourceful vets (mainly long in the tooth Vietnam era vets who cut their teeth on just such symbolic actions) just created their own peace parade to follow the official parade and to let those who came to South Boston know there was another voice to be heard from on the questions of war and peace.
That is where the first recognition of war-weariness came in. Now for those not familiar with South Boston (“Southie”) this is, or was, according to Peter Paul, the last bastion of Irish-centered working class pro-war (or at least don’t question war policy) sentiment left in the world ( a little hyperbole from him, but I am used to it). This spring when we marched (yes, I marched with Peter Paul like in olden times) the response by those same plebeian masses was even cordial to say the least. And that is how the Breslin-Markin antiwar “spring offensive” (with, ah, a little help from VFP and others) took off.
A Dorchester Day Parade just south of Southie in one of the more ethnically diverse Irish/Vietnamese/Latino/ Brazilian you name it neighborhoods of Boston (although neighborhoods like Southie that product more than their fair share of troops) produced an even more cordial response. Ditto several Memorial Day services in the area. More recently parades in affluence Rockport and working- class Portsmouth, New Hampshire only confirmed the cordiality, openness to anti-war messages, and the weariness. That last one, Portsmouth, by the way, held in a town that depends (read: would not survive) without naval appropriations for the huge shipyard there.
So the disconnect between governmental war policy and the genuine war-weariness of the masses is real enough. But real enough as well is any sense of being able to do anything about it is in the cards other than patiently waiting for withdrawal due dates. And that is where my simple suggestion comes in.
I, as well as other knowledgeable anti-warriors have recognized that we have not had any effect on Bush-Obama war doctrine in Iraq and precious little thus far in Afghanistan. There is one place, and one thing that we can do to turn that around right now. Call on President Obama to pardon Private Bradley Manning now being held in pre-trail detention in Fort Leavenworth Kansas pending charges that could amount to a life sentence for the young soldier. For the forgetful Private Manning allegedly passed sensitive information onto Wikileaks who then passed it on to a candid world. Thus Private Manning is the “poster person” for opposition to all that has failed, all that is wrong, all that was (and is )atrocious, and all that was (and is) criminal in Bush-Obama war policy. So raise the cry with us-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
Recently my old back in the 1960s days friend, Peter Paul Markin, himself a war veteran, were comparing notes about the virtual “under the radar” place that American imperial war policies (there is no other name for it with over 1000 bases in the world and over 700 billion plus dollars eaten up by the war budget each year) has taken in this year’s presidential campaign. And, additionally, the almost total lack of organized public outcry about those
policies, most notably the lingering death sore of Afghanistan. That despite the fact that some far-sighted, hell even some jaded bourgeois commentators, have placed the odds of civil war in that benighted country (I will not even dignify the place as a state) after the American troop draw down at two to one in favor of civil war. Even by the American government’s own self-serving estimates the forecast is almost as grim. What gives? Where are the mass rallies against the beast?
The reason for our comparing notes on this subject was simple enough. Between the two of us we have attended over the past several months in various capacities a whole series of parades, only one of which I will mention more on later that was specifically a peace parade. We have come agree though that, without a doubt, there is a vast war-weariness that if not organized in a public way runs pretty deep just under the surface among the plebeian masses.
For those who do not know, Peter Paul, over the past several years going back before the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 has attempted to move might and main along with his fellow Veterans For Peace (VFP)to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately to urge no war with Iran) to no avail. I, although not a veteran, have attempted in various journalistic endeavors and on the streets to make those same basic points to no avail as well. Those “no avails” though have never stopped us from continuing to push the rock up the mountain when the cause is righteous. And the struggle against these particular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is righteous and has brought us closer together of late. That has not always been the case, as Peter Paul tends to take a harder anti-capitalist look at the wars as systematic of the need to bring down the whole damn house of cards and I more from a more anti-imperialist perspective of just trying to hold the monster in check. We united on one idea earlier this year and that was the need to continue to get the anti-war message out to the general public. By any means necessary.
That is where the parades notion came in play, although we claim no originally for the idea, none at all. The parades notion actually kind of hit us in the face as a way to bring any kind of peace message to the folks whom we do not normally run into in our rarified big city radical circles. Of course the original focus started out last year in 2011 with Peter Paul’s chapter of Veterans for Peace in Boston, the aptly names (“war is a racket”) Smedley Butler Brigade, attempts to march in the “official” South Boston Allied War Council’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Without going to all the particulars of the denial of permission for VFP to march (involving reams of material from a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting such exclusions for “private” parades) that organization was shut out of the official parade. Needless to say these resourceful vets (mainly long in the tooth Vietnam era vets who cut their teeth on just such symbolic actions) just created their own peace parade to follow the official parade and to let those who came to South Boston know there was another voice to be heard from on the questions of war and peace.
That is where the first recognition of war-weariness came in. Now for those not familiar with South Boston (“Southie”) this is, or was, according to Peter Paul, the last bastion of Irish-centered working class pro-war (or at least don’t question war policy) sentiment left in the world ( a little hyperbole from him, but I am used to it). This spring when we marched (yes, I marched with Peter Paul like in olden times) the response by those same plebeian masses was even cordial to say the least. And that is how the Breslin-Markin antiwar “spring offensive” (with, ah, a little help from VFP and others) took off.
A Dorchester Day Parade just south of Southie in one of the more ethnically diverse Irish/Vietnamese/Latino/ Brazilian you name it neighborhoods of Boston (although neighborhoods like Southie that product more than their fair share of troops) produced an even more cordial response. Ditto several Memorial Day services in the area. More recently parades in affluence Rockport and working- class Portsmouth, New Hampshire only confirmed the cordiality, openness to anti-war messages, and the weariness. That last one, Portsmouth, by the way, held in a town that depends (read: would not survive) without naval appropriations for the huge shipyard there.
So the disconnect between governmental war policy and the genuine war-weariness of the masses is real enough. But real enough as well is any sense of being able to do anything about it is in the cards other than patiently waiting for withdrawal due dates. And that is where my simple suggestion comes in.
I, as well as other knowledgeable anti-warriors have recognized that we have not had any effect on Bush-Obama war doctrine in Iraq and precious little thus far in Afghanistan. There is one place, and one thing that we can do to turn that around right now. Call on President Obama to pardon Private Bradley Manning now being held in pre-trail detention in Fort Leavenworth Kansas pending charges that could amount to a life sentence for the young soldier. For the forgetful Private Manning allegedly passed sensitive information onto Wikileaks who then passed it on to a candid world. Thus Private Manning is the “poster person” for opposition to all that has failed, all that is wrong, all that was (and is )atrocious, and all that was (and is) criminal in Bush-Obama war policy. So raise the cry with us-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan! President Obama Pardon Private Manning!
Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Save Private Bradley Manning-Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Davis Square, Somerville -Beginning July 4th The Stand-Out Will Be Every Wednesday From 4:00-5:00 PM-Support Bradley during his next hearing, July 16-20!
Click on the headline to link to a the Private Bradley Manning Petition website page.
Markin comment:
The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward a late fall/early winter trial. Those of us who support his cause should redouble our efforts to secure his freedom. For the past several months there has been a weekly stand-out in Greater Boston across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop (renamed Bradley Manning Square for the vigil’s duration) in Somerville on Friday afternoons but we have now changed the time from 4:00-5:00 PM on Wednesdays. This stand-out has, to say the least, been very sparsely attended. We need to build it up with more supporters present. Please join us when you can. Or better yet if you can’t join us start a Support Bradley Manning weekly vigil in some location in your town whether it is in the Boston area, Berkeley or Berlin. And please sign the petition for his release. I have placed links to the Manning Network and Manning Square website below.
Bradley Manning Support Network
http://www.bradleymanning.org/
Manning Square website
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
The following are remarks that I have been focusing on of late to build support for Bradley Manning’s cause.
Veterans for Peace proudly stands in solidarity with, and defense of, Private Bradley Manning.
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq War timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
I stand in solidarity with the alleged actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious war-related doings of this government, under Bush and Obama. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning may have exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justifications rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
I am standing in solidarity with Private Bradley Manning because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over two years, and has been held without trial for longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
These are more than sufficient reasons to stand in solidarity with Private Manning and will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.
Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! Free Private Manning Now!
************
Support Bradley during his next hearing, July 16-20!
Bradley Manning next three-day hearing will take place July 16-20th at Fort Meade, MD.
While the military prosecution refuses to publish their court filings publicly, and defense attorney David Coombs has not yet added new filings to his blog, we recognize the significance of the next hearing due to discussion of a government motion with the potential to further handicap the defense.
At the April 24-26th hearing, the prosecution introduced a motion designed to ban any discussion of whether harm was or was not caused to the U.S. from future court proceedings. This would prevent the defense from accessing important evidence in the form of government reports about the impacts of WikiLeaks’ releases. Neither the content nor the conclusions of these assessments have been made public, despite the public’s obvious interest in this information.
The legal argument the government is putting forward to support this motion is as disturbing as the motion itself. As we previously explained:
The government [prosecution] declared that it does not believe that PFC Manning’s motives, or even whether or not the U.S. was actually damaged in any way by the releases, are relevant to its case for the “Aiding the Enemy” charge. The government contends that life in prison is warranted for soldiers who release information that hypothetically could be used by the enemy. The prosecution also considers irrelevant the issue of whether making the information public might benefit citizens of the U.S. or its allies.
While the judge did not rule on this motion at the June 6-8th hearing as we expected, she did say that she would be taking it under legal counsel over the next few weeks. We think this means she plans to rule at the July 16-20th hearing.
As with previous hearings, we encourage all who support Bradley to attend. David Coombs, Bradley’s defense lawyer, issued the following statement of gratitude to supporters on June 12th:
Over the past two years, thousands of individuals have either donated to the defense fund or given freely of their time to support PFC Bradley Manning… At every court hearing, I am given the opportunity to witness this support first hand. The attendance by supporters during these hearings as been nothing short of inspiring. Although my client is not permitted to engage those in attendance, he aware of your presence and support… I would like to publicly thank all those who have supported my client over the past two years. I also want to pass on the following message from Brad: ”I am very grateful for your support and humbled by your ongoing efforts.” Brad also asked me to specifically thank on his behalf the unflinching support of Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network. (Read the full statement.)
On July 16th, join the vigil for alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning at the Fort Mead main gate, 8am-10am (Maryland 175& Reece Rd, Fort Meade, MD 21113). Directions to the Fort Meade Visitor Control Center can be found here. The hearing itself typically starts at 9am each day, so we recommend arriving at the gate at least an hour beforehand to guarantee entry to the courtroom. If you arrive later in the day, you will have other opportunities to gain access to the courtroom during recess.
Want to attend the proceedings but can’t afford to do so? We want to pack the courtroom with dedicated advocates so that we can build a strong team to defend Brad. See if you might qualify for financial support!
Finally, if you are unable to attend the proceedings but still want to take action for Brad, check out our newly-updated Take Action page! Please be sure to register all support actions at http://events.bradleymanning.org/
Markin comment:
The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward a late fall/early winter trial. Those of us who support his cause should redouble our efforts to secure his freedom. For the past several months there has been a weekly stand-out in Greater Boston across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop (renamed Bradley Manning Square for the vigil’s duration) in Somerville on Friday afternoons but we have now changed the time from 4:00-5:00 PM on Wednesdays. This stand-out has, to say the least, been very sparsely attended. We need to build it up with more supporters present. Please join us when you can. Or better yet if you can’t join us start a Support Bradley Manning weekly vigil in some location in your town whether it is in the Boston area, Berkeley or Berlin. And please sign the petition for his release. I have placed links to the Manning Network and Manning Square website below.
Bradley Manning Support Network
http://www.bradleymanning.org/
Manning Square website
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
The following are remarks that I have been focusing on of late to build support for Bradley Manning’s cause.
Veterans for Peace proudly stands in solidarity with, and defense of, Private Bradley Manning.
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq War timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
I stand in solidarity with the alleged actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious war-related doings of this government, under Bush and Obama. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning may have exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justifications rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
I am standing in solidarity with Private Bradley Manning because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over two years, and has been held without trial for longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
These are more than sufficient reasons to stand in solidarity with Private Manning and will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.
Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! Free Private Manning Now!
************
Support Bradley during his next hearing, July 16-20!
Bradley Manning next three-day hearing will take place July 16-20th at Fort Meade, MD.
While the military prosecution refuses to publish their court filings publicly, and defense attorney David Coombs has not yet added new filings to his blog, we recognize the significance of the next hearing due to discussion of a government motion with the potential to further handicap the defense.
At the April 24-26th hearing, the prosecution introduced a motion designed to ban any discussion of whether harm was or was not caused to the U.S. from future court proceedings. This would prevent the defense from accessing important evidence in the form of government reports about the impacts of WikiLeaks’ releases. Neither the content nor the conclusions of these assessments have been made public, despite the public’s obvious interest in this information.
The legal argument the government is putting forward to support this motion is as disturbing as the motion itself. As we previously explained:
The government [prosecution] declared that it does not believe that PFC Manning’s motives, or even whether or not the U.S. was actually damaged in any way by the releases, are relevant to its case for the “Aiding the Enemy” charge. The government contends that life in prison is warranted for soldiers who release information that hypothetically could be used by the enemy. The prosecution also considers irrelevant the issue of whether making the information public might benefit citizens of the U.S. or its allies.
While the judge did not rule on this motion at the June 6-8th hearing as we expected, she did say that she would be taking it under legal counsel over the next few weeks. We think this means she plans to rule at the July 16-20th hearing.
As with previous hearings, we encourage all who support Bradley to attend. David Coombs, Bradley’s defense lawyer, issued the following statement of gratitude to supporters on June 12th:
Over the past two years, thousands of individuals have either donated to the defense fund or given freely of their time to support PFC Bradley Manning… At every court hearing, I am given the opportunity to witness this support first hand. The attendance by supporters during these hearings as been nothing short of inspiring. Although my client is not permitted to engage those in attendance, he aware of your presence and support… I would like to publicly thank all those who have supported my client over the past two years. I also want to pass on the following message from Brad: ”I am very grateful for your support and humbled by your ongoing efforts.” Brad also asked me to specifically thank on his behalf the unflinching support of Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network. (Read the full statement.)
On July 16th, join the vigil for alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning at the Fort Mead main gate, 8am-10am (Maryland 175& Reece Rd, Fort Meade, MD 21113). Directions to the Fort Meade Visitor Control Center can be found here. The hearing itself typically starts at 9am each day, so we recommend arriving at the gate at least an hour beforehand to guarantee entry to the courtroom. If you arrive later in the day, you will have other opportunities to gain access to the courtroom during recess.
Want to attend the proceedings but can’t afford to do so? We want to pack the courtroom with dedicated advocates so that we can build a strong team to defend Brad. See if you might qualify for financial support!
Finally, if you are unable to attend the proceedings but still want to take action for Brad, check out our newly-updated Take Action page! Please be sure to register all support actions at http://events.bradleymanning.org/
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