This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
A PARABLE CONCERNING PROPERTY-From The Pen Of Bertolt Brecht
A PARABLE CONCERNING PROPERTY
PLAY/BOOK REVIEW
THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE, BERTAOLT BRECHT, UNIVERSTIY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, 1999
One of the master communist playwright Bertolt Brecht’s strengths as an artist was the ability to set up a moral dilemma and work it out to a conclusion, not always a satisfactory one, by play’s end. This is unusual in a seemingly orthodox follower of the old Stalinist 'socialist realist’ cultural program. This work nevertheless permitted Brecht to address an age-old question about the nature of property ownership, extending it from its natural and historic setting in land and chattels to the question of personal human ownership.
The question posed here is whether a child abandoned by its natural mother then found and raised by another women should go to the former or that latter. Nice dilemma, right? But Brecht, as seem in Mother Courage and other parables, is not above cutting right to the bone on moral questions. What makes this work a cut above some of Brecht’s more didactic plays is the way that he weaves the parable about the odd resolution of an ancient Chinese property dispute and places that ‘wisdom’ in context of a then current dispute between two Soviet-era communes.
In the ancient dispute the judge who is called upon to render judgment, using the circle as a medium to resolve the dispute, seems to be Solomonic but is really a buffoon. This is pure Brechtian irony. This says as much about Brecht's attitude toward property as it does about the old time Chinese justice system. The question of property rights as presented by Brecht and their value as a societal glue is also something the reader or viewer of this play should think about, as well.
Hands Off Heroic Whistler-Blower Reality Winner-Julian Assange's Defense Of Her Actions Here we go again- We no sooner get the heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning out of the slammer, out of the clutches of the Army out in Fort Leavenworth than the Feds grab NSA contractor Reality (an appropriate name by the way) Winner for telling the world about Russian connections and Trump. Which by the way eight million Congressional committees and a DOJ Special Prosecutor are seriously looking into. None of them are facing any jail time from seeking to expose the truth. Hands off Reality Winner. Help defend her against the governmental monsters. It is rather appropriate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in the crosshairs of an international cabal looking for his hide was one of the first to come out in defense of Reality Winner
I am pro-union and my first job after the Air Force and college was working as an organizer for the United Farm Workers Union in Florida — organizing fruit pickers.
A couple of years ago I was invited by a union member to march with BIW (Bath Iron Works) workers who were protesting against General Dynamics’ management efforts to slowly but surely break the union at the shipyard by outsourcing work to non-union shops. I eagerly joined the protest. Over the years I’ve heard directly from scores of BIW workers about their grievances against the company.
Not only has GD come to the city of Bath with silver cup in hand (while its top CEO was pulling in multi-million dollar bonuses) asking for more tax breaks, but over the years the corporation has repeatedly gone to the state demanding tax cuts, always threatening to leave Maine.
GD has done little to diversify away from all-military production at BIW, whether into commercial shipbuilding, or other major nonmilitary production. So when the military contracts slow down, workers get what amounts to permanent layoffs.
GD frequently brings in nonunion middle managers and poorly trained supervisors who don’t know much about the ins and outs of shipbuilding in any given aspect of production, causing delays and inefficiencies for which the unions get blamed.
Major nonmilitary production capable of employing many hundreds, if not thousands, would be a big plus at the shipyard and I know that many workers support such a direction.
With Trump announcing he intends to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Change Accords our hopes for dealing with the harsh reality of global warming has taken another severe blow. The U.S. military has the largest carbon bootprint on the entire planet. Official Washington ‘insisted’ that the Pentagon be exempted from monitoring by the Kyoto climate change protocol and the recent Paris agreement made reporting of military impacts optional.
In Holland, all electric trains are now run on wind power. Offshore wind turbines and commuter rail systems could be built at BIW as could tidal power and solar power systems. All that is needed is the political will. The abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” We need to make these demands if the future generations are to have any hope for survival.
At a 1994 Labor Day Rally at BIW the speakers included then BIW President Buzz Fitzgerald, Local S6 President Stoney Dionne, IAM National President George Kourpias, Rep. Tom Andrews, AFL-CIO Treasurer Tom Donahue, Sen. George Mitchell and President Bill Clinton. Watching the event on C-SPAN archives it was remarkable that all the speakers were calling for the conversion of the shipyard. Today we find that GD has no interest in such a positive direction. (It should be remembered that GD uses federal tax dollars to build destroyers. Why couldn’t that same public tax money be used to build sustainable technologies?)
The workers and unions at BIW can’t make this kind of conversion (or diversification) happen by themselves. They are daily fighting to enforce their contract with GD and are largely consumed with trying to prevent layoffs.
Former Columbia University professor of industrial engineering Seymour Melman called our present system “Pentagon-managed state capitalism.” Melman reported that the USA by around 1990 had substantially lost its skills base in machine tool-related (and other highly skilled) industrial production, including in commercial shipbuilding — largely due to over concentration on military production.
The peace community does protest frequently at BIW, but we are not targeting the workers. We are trying to create a dialogue in the community around the need for a just transition towards more sustainable, less boom-and-bust types of production at BIW. We understand that General Dynamics is the entity that holds the power to make these big decisions — along with our elected officials like Collins, King, Pingree and Poliquin.
We know that the workers and the unions have ideas about things that could be done at BIW to stabilize employment at the shipyard. They should be given a key role in envisioning what might be built more sustainably. But none of this will happen unless the peace community, the environmental community, the religious community, labor unions, local political leaders, and the general public become advocates for a change of direction from endless war toward dealing with climate change NOW by transitioning facilities like BIW.
The workers are currently hostages during this time of political negligence where nothing gets done. I for one stand with them and urge everyone in the community to help push things along so that the environment, the community, and the workers come out on top.
Bruce K. Gagnon is a member of PeaceWorks and lives in Bath.
Where: Center for Marxist Education • 550 Mass. Ave. • Cambridge
The US-China relationship is one of considerable global importance on several levels. Trump in his presidential campaign adopted a very hostile anti-China tone. However, after Trump assumed power, he changed; his actions towards China have proved more moderate and he even described President Xi as "very respected." But the longer term relationship could be volatile, as underlying administration policy involving Korea, the Asia pivot, trade and other issues remains unclear, and the basic class antagonism remains between capitalist United States and socialist China. Duncan McFarland will make a presentation on US-China relations at the beginning of the Trump era, including China's perspective and foreign policy; followed by discussion.
presentation by Duncan McFarland, Committees of Correspondence for Demcracy and Socialism
Cosponsored by Center for Marxist Education and United for Justice with Peace
Where: Center for Marxist Education • 550 Mass. Ave. • Cambridge
The US-China relationship is one of considerable global importance on several levels. Trump in his presidential campaign adopted a very hostile anti-China tone. However, after Trump assumed power, he changed; his actions towards China have proved more moderate and he even described President Xi as "very respected." But the longer term relationship could be volatile, as underlying administration policy involving Korea, the Asia pivot, trade and other issues remains unclear, and the basic class antagonism remains between capitalist United States and socialist China. Duncan McFarland will make a presentation on US-China relations at the beginning of the Trump era, including China's perspective and foreign policy; followed by discussion.
presentation by Duncan McFarland, Committees of Correspondence for Demcracy and Socialism
Cosponsored by Center for Marxist Education and United for Justice with Peace
Films To Class Struggle By-"Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story"- Leonard Peltier Must Not Die In Jail
Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin
DVD Review Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story, Leonard Peltier, various leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM), defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, witnesses and by-standers, directed by Michael Apted, 1991
Let’s start this review of this documentary of the incidents surrounding the case of Leonard Peltier at the end. Or at least the end of this documentary, 1991. Leonard Peltier, a well-known leader of the Native American movement, convicted of the 1975 murder, execution-style, of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota after he had been extradited from Canada in the wake of the acquittal of two other Pine Ridge residents. In an interview from federal prison in that period the then still relatively young Peltier related that after receiving his life sentences and being told by prison officials that that meant his release date would be in 2035 he stated that he hoped not, for he would then be an old, old man. Here is what should make everyone interested in the case, and everyone interested in the least sense of justice, even just bourgeois justice, blood boil, he is now an old sick man and he is still in jail for a crime that he did not commit, and certainly one that was not proven beyond that cherished “reasonable doubt”
This documentary, narrated by Robert Redford in his younger days as well, goes step by step through the case from the pre-murder period when Native Americans, catching the political consciousness crest begun in the 1960s by the black civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement, started organizing, mainly through the American Indian Movement (AIM), on the Indian reservations of the West, some of the most impoverished areas in all the Americas. The focal point of this militant organizing effort came in the war zone-showdown, the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973. The tension that hovered in the air in the aftermath of that war between the American government and its Indian agent supporters on one side, and the AIM-led “warrior nation” on the other is the setting for this incident at Ogala.
Through reenactment of the crime scene; eye witnesses, interested and disinterested, voluntary or coerced; defense strategies at both trials from self-defense to lack of physical evidence, and on appeal; the prosecution's case, its insufficient evidence, and it various maneuvers to inflame white juries against unpopular or misunderstood Native Americans in order to get someone convicted for the murders of one of their own; the devastating, but expected effect of the trials on the political organizing by AIM; and the stalwart and defiant demeanor of one Leonard Peltier all come though in this presentation. As a long time supporter of organizations that defend class-war prisoners, like Leonard Peltier, this film only makes that commitment even firmer. With that in mind- Free Leonard Peltier-He Must Not Die In Jail!
An Encore -When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Sometimes Sam Lowell and his “friend” (really “sweetie,” long time sweetie, paramour, significant other, consort or whatever passes for the socially acceptable or Census Bureau bureaucratic “speak” way to name somebody who is one’s soul-mate, his preferred term) Laura Perkins whose relationship to Sam was just described at the end of the parentheses, and righteously so, liked to go to Crane’s Beach in Ipswich to either cool off in the late summer heat or in the fall before the New England weather lowers its hammer and the place gets a bit inaccessible and too windswept to force the delicate Laura into the weathers. That later summer heat escape valve is a result, unfortunately for an otherwise Edenic environment of the hard fact that July, when they really would like to go there to catch a few fresh sea breezes, is not a time to show up at the bleach white sands beach due to nasty blood-sucking green flies swarming and dive-bombing like some berserk renegade Air Force squadron lost on a spree captained by someone with a depraved childhood who breed in the nearby swaying mephitic marshes (mephitic courtesy of multi-use by Norman Mailer who seemed to get it in every novel- if you don't what it means look it up but think nasty and smelly and you will close-okay). The only “safe haven” then is to drive up the hill to the nearby robber-baron days etched Crane Castle (they of the American indoor plumbing fortune way back) to get away from the buggers, although on a stagnant wind day you might have a few vagrant followers, as the well-to-do have been doing since there were the well-to-do and had the where-with-all to escape the summer heat and bugs at higher altitudes. By the way I assume that “castle” is capitalized when it part of a huge estate, the big ass estate of Crane, now a trust monument to the first Gilded Age, not today’s neo-Gilded Age, architectural proclivities of the rich, the guy whose company did, does all the plumbing fixture stuff on half the bathrooms in America including in the various incantations of the mansion.
Along the way, along the hour way to get to Ipswich from Cambridge Sam and Laura had developed a habit of making the time more easy passing by listening to various CDs, inevitably not listened to for a long time folk CDs, not listened to for so long that the plastic containers needed to be dusted off before being brought along, on the car's improvised CD player. And as is their wont while listening to some CD to comment on this or that thing that some song brought to mind, or the significance of some song in their youth. One of the things that had brought them together early on several years back was their mutual interest in the old 1960s folk minute which Sam, a little older and having grown up within thirty miles of Harvard Square, one the big folk centers of that period along with the Village and North Beach out in Frisco town, had imbibed deeply. Laura, growing up “in the sticks,” in farm country in upstate New York had gotten the breeze at second-hand through records, records bought at Cheapo Records and the eternal Sandy's on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge and a little the fading Cambridge folk scene through breathing in the coffeehouse atmosphere when she had moved to Boston in the early 1970s to go to graduate school.
One hot late August day they got into one such discussion about how they first developed an interest in folk music when Sam had said “sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan, maybe some a little younger too if some hip kids have browsed through their parents’ old vinyl record collections now safely ensconced in the attic although there are stirrings of retro-vinyl revival of late according a report I had heard on NPR." Some of that over 50 crowd and their young acolytes would also have known about how Dylan, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s singing Woody’s songs imitating Woody's style something fellow Woody acolytes like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot never quite got over moved on, got all hung up on high symbolism and obscure references. Funny guys like Jack actually made a nice workman-like career out of Woody covers, so their complaints about the "great Dylan betrayal, about moving on, seen rather hollow now. That over 50s crowd would also know Dylan became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, their generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then he would settle for the master troubadour of the age.
Sam continued along that line after Laura had said she was not sure about the connection and he said he meant, “troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them by song and poetry as well if not decked in some officially approved garb like back in those olden days where they worked under a king’s license if lucky, by their wit otherwise but the 'new wave' post-beatnik flannel shirt, work boots, and dungarees which connected you with the roots, the American folk roots down in the Piedmont, down in Appalachia, down in Mister James Crow’s Delta, and out in the high plains, the dust bowl plains. So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered.”
Laura said she knew all of that about the desperate search for roots although not that Ramblin’ Jack had been an acolyte of Woody’s but she wondered about others, some other folk performers whom she listened to on WUMB on Saturday morning when some weeping willow DJ put forth about fifty old time rock and folk rock things a lot of which she had never heard of back in Mechanicsville outside of Albany where she grew up. Sam then started in again, “Of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s. He had been washed by it when he came to the East from Hibbing, Minnesota for God’s sake (via Dink’s at the University there), came into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, the next big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. For us. But also those in little oases like the Village where the disaffected could pick up on stuff they couldn’t get in places like Mechanicsville or Carver where I grew up. People who I guess, since even I was too young to know about that red scare stuff except you had to follow your teacher’s orders to put your head under your desk and hands neatly folded over your head if the nuclear holocaust was coming, were frankly fed up with the cultural straightjacket of the red scare Cold War times and began seriously looking as hard at roots in all its manifestations as our parents, definitely mine, yours were just weird about stuff like that, right, were burying those same roots under a vanilla existential Americanization. How do you like that for pop sociology 101.”
“One of the talents who was already there when hick Dylan came a calling, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who as you know we had heard several times in person, although unfortunately when his health and well-being were declining not when he was a young politico and hell-raising folk aspirant. You know he also, deservedly, fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.”
“Here’s the funny thing, Laura, that former role is important because we all know that behind every 'king' is the 'fixer man,' the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were like some mighty mystic (although in those days when he fancied himself a socialist that mystic part was played down). Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute. New York like I said, Frisco, maybe in small enclaves in L.A. and in precious few other places during those frozen times a haven for the misfits, the outlaws, the outcast, the politically “unreliable,” and the just curious. People like the mistreated Weavers, you know, Pete Seeger and that crowd found refuge there when the hammer came down around their heads from the red-baiters and others like advertisers who ran for cover to “protect” their precious soap, toothpaste, beer, deodorant or whatever they were mass producing to sell to a hungry pent-up market. "Boston and Cambridge by comparison until late in the 1950s when the Club 47 and other little places started up and the guys and gals who could sing, could write songs, could recite some be-bop deep from the blackened soul poetry even had a place to show their stuff instead of to the winos, rummies, grifters and con men who hung out at the Hayes-Bickford or out on the streets could have been any of the thousands of towns who bought into the freeze.”
Laura interrupted to ask if that “basket” was like the buskers put in front them these days and Sam said yes. And then asked Sam about a few of the dates he took to the coffeehouses in those days, just out of curiosity she said, meaning if she had been around would he have taken her there then. He answered that question but since it is an eternally complicated and internal one I having to do with where she stood in the long Sam girlfriend pecking order (very high and leave it at that unless she reads this and then the highest) have skipped it to let him go on with the other Von Ronk story. He continued with the other funny story like this-“The second story involved his [Von Ronk's] authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course just like today maybe people are getting doctorates in hip-hop or some such subject. Eager young students, having basked in the folk moment in the abstract and with an academic bent, breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the 'skinny.' Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and a wicked snarly cynic’s laugh but also could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish once published in the dissertation would then be cited by some other younger and even more eager students complete with the appropriate footnotes. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one, right.”
Laura did not answer but laughed, laughed harder as she thought about it having come from that unformed academic background and having read plenty of sterile themes turned inside out.
As Laura laugh settled Sam continued “As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer, who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who was featured on that Tom Rush documentary No Regrets we got for being members of WUMB, when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. It turned out to be Von Ronk's version which you know I still play up in the third floor attic.After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which tended to be spoofs on some issue of the day.”
Laura laughed at Sam and the intensity with which his expressed his mentioning of the fact that he liked gravelly-voiced guys for some reason. Here is her answer, “You should became when you go up to the third floor to do your “third floor folk- singer” thing and you sing Fair and Tender Ladies I hear this gravelly-voiced guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, some Old Testament Jehovah prophet come to pass judgment come that end day time.”
They both laughed.
Laura then mentioned the various times that they had seen Dave Von Ronk before he passed away, not having seen him in his prime, when that voice did sound like some old time prophet, a title he would have probably secretly enjoyed for publicly he was an adamant atheist. Sam went on, “ I saw him perform many times over the years, sometimes in high form and sometimes when drinking too much high-shelf whiskey, Chavis Regal, or something like that not so good. Remember we had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2002 I think. He had died a few weeks before. Remember though before that when we had seen him for what turned out to be our last time and I told you he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and we agreed his performance was subpar. But that was at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music. Yeah like he always used to say-'when the tin can bended …..and the story ended.'
As they came to the admission booth at the entrance to Crane’s Beach Sam with Carolyn Hester’s song version of Walt Whitman’s On Captain, My Captain on the CD player said “I was on my soap box long enough on the way out here. You’re turn with Carolyn Hester on the way back who you know a lot about and I know zero, okay.” Laura retorted, “Yeah you were definitely on your soap-box but yes we can talk Carolyn Hester because I am going to cover one of her songs at my next “open mic.” And so it goes.
If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The
Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83
By Music Critic Bart
Webber
Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s
that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, the late Peter Paul Markin and others
were deeply immersed in (and the former two never got over since they will
still tell a tale or two about the times if you go anywhere within ten miles of
the subject-I will take my chances here because this notice is important) all
roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square, the Village down in NYC, North Beach
out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. That is where names like
Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, and a whole crew of younger folksingers who sat at
the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
But there was another
important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up
around Skidmore and some other colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s where some of
those names played but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to
play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing)
coffeehouse. Upstarts like Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call
several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about). And out of Idaho
one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round
at the age of 83.
The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in
2002 when she performed at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up
her shoes from the dusty travel road. She was on fire that night except the
then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be
on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job) cast a
pall over the proceedings. I will always remember her cover of Old Devil Time that night-yeah, give me one more chance, one
more breathe. But I will always think of If
I Could Be The Rain whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels
In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Bill Dunne
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
“You know, Dad, the only good thing
that came out of the break-up with Moira was that I finally cooled the fire in
my head a little, finally gained a little peace. Funny it came through taking
up meditation which I used to laugh at when Moira would urge me to think about
doing it to relax my fevered head a bit. Used to call it just another one of
those New Age things that she was always touting as the next best cure for what
ailed humankind,” Dan Hawkins said to his uncomprehending father, Jethro, a man
he until a few years before he had been estranged from once the old man
divorced his late mother to run off with some floosy who left him flat and
broken, hearted and financially. They had only reconciled after his mother’s
funeral when it seemed that such mending needed doing. That incomprehension of
old Jethro about what Dan had just told him was nothing but the truth as the
old man was “old school,” had grown up in utter poverty in Riverdale, had done
his time in “Nam and had been and was proud of his service and exhibited all
the traits of those young men, white men,
who had come of age in the late 1950s and were unaffected, or claimed to
be unaffected, by all the bullshit, Jethro’s term, that passed for wisdom during
the counter-cultural 1960s. So his running off with some floosy, his heavy
drinking (and at one point drug use), his sense of Vietnam, my country right or
wrong, patriotism were all of a piece. All of piece that would make something
like meditation, something he had seen the Buddhists do in Vietnam while
good American like him were taking care
of the shit train that they had let their country fall into by ignoring the
“commies” until it was too late. If his wife, if his girlfriends of which he
had had many after that floosy slipped away with his dough and his balls, had
suggested that he take up meditation for what ailed him he would have shown,
had shown for lesser offenses than that, the back of his hand. (And Dan could
through a miserable childhood of merciless criticism, and back hands, testify
to the truth of that statement. A truth that contributed mightily to those many
years of estrangement between the two men.
“What the fuck are you talking about,
Dan? How the hell was whatever that meditation bullshit that ball-buster Moira
trying to lay on you going to help keep you to together when she wanted to run
the show, ’’ old Jethro answered back with that unknowing grin on his face that
what Dan should have done was given her his back hand, and maybe a couple of
good fucks and that would have stopped that noise.
“Dad, you can’t do that with women
anymore and you probably couldn’t even in your day and if you had tried to lay
a hand on Ma she would have left you high and dry way before you got tangled up
that floosy Susie that broke you. I don’t want to talk about that, okay. Just
hear me out with a word and maybe you can learn something for once,” Dan
responded plaintively. His father almost began to say something nasty but the
look in Dan’s eye told him to back off.
This is the way Dan’s old high school
friend, Rich Bruce, remembered what Dan had said to his father one night when
they were having dinner at Elmer’s Diner in old town Riverdale where Rich still
lived and Dan needed to confide in somebody about what he was trying to do to
be less distraught about Moira’s quick disappearance from his life.
Although at first Dan and Moira were
crazy in love like many twenty-somethings who were going through their first
serious love affairs right from the start there had been tensions, tensions
caused by Dan always being in overdrive as he was starting his career in law at
a major law firm, Dale, Dale, and Rutgers where the pressure was great to
perform or hit the bricks. Dan had met Moira one night at Jeff’s Grille, a
local hang-out for law students at Suffolk once they got over the grind of 1L
after he had taken his bar examination and needed to unwind. She was a last
year student at the Museum School of Art who was there with a girlfriend and he
had asked them if they wanted a drink to celebrate his “victory” since he
believed he had passed the damn thing on the basis of the written questions.
One thing led to another and they started dating and making plans, in the
meantime moved in together.
That’s when the heartache began, that’s
when that fire in Dan’s head led to many word fights and Moira’s first threats
that things were not working out and that she was leaving. In lieu of that, at
least for a while once Dan explained what pressures he was under from the
high-pressure law firm he was tied up with, Moira decided to start doing
meditation with Don Henderson, the locally famous Buddhist convert who ran
classes each week at the Boston Center for Adult Education. Moira admitted for
a while that doing her “meds” she called it helped to relieve the tensions
between them.
Just for a while though as she became more distraught at Dan’s
behavior, including a fear that he might strike he in a keyed-up moment. She
suggested to him that he might benefit from meditation. He blew off that suggestion,
laughed at her and said that if anybody he knew every found out that he was
doing such a New Age thing he would be laughed out of town.
Probably Dan’s response set something
off in Moira, he wasn’t sure if that was the moment when he had time to reflect
on what had happened after she packed her bags and left but it didn’t help. She
got moodier the more he got in that same condition, they made love less often
and not as tenderly as before, a sure sign that things were going downhill
fast. She would speak wistfully of having to find herself, having to see what
she was all about in this wicked old world (Dan’s term, not hers) and the
kicker, that she thought Dan’s frenzies were affecting her already delicate
health. That last part, the affecting her health part got Dan’s attention and
that was when he suggested the trip to Paris. She agreed.
The trip to Paris had been great, they
saw the museums, ate well, made love better than they had in a while and came
back refreshed. Or so Dan thought. A week later, perhaps seeing how great
things could be away the pressure-cooker of their lives together Moira lowered
the boomthe first time. Said she wanted out. Dan begged her not to go and the
only way he could placate her then was to succumb to her request that they go
into couples counselling. Dan had hated even the idea of that kind of thing
(and when he told his father about what she had asked him to do the old man
gave a look like wasn’t he just pussy-whipped). So they went to a counsellor in
Cambridge that Moira had heard of through New Age network and while Dan had
held his nose at first once he got into the sessions he told Moira that he was
in all the way, one hundred percent.
Those weekly sessions went on for the
better part of a year until he and Moira decided to take a week’s vacation to
Maine. That week was another great time for fun at the beach, eating out and
doing a few goofy things like playing miniature golf, going bowling, and going
to an old-fashioned outdoor drive-in theater. A week later Moira lowered the
final boom, packed her bags and left (that threatening to leave and leaving
after a great vacation had Dan thinking about Moira’s own psychological
problems but not much). Her argument was that like before she had to find herself,
see what she was about and still thought Dan was aggravating her medical
problems. She also told him in uncertain terms that he had better take stock of
himself, seek some help, maybe see Don about doing meditation or he would
become a human wreak.
Well Dan moped around for a while,
several weeks, thinking about where he had let the thing fall apart. Knew that
he had been responsible for a lot of what had gone wrong, had been an ass about
stuff. Then one day on the bulletin board at the law firm he saw a notice that
several institutions in Boston, including Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)
were putting on a Hubweek, a week of social, physical, and medical therapy
workshops and lectures to let people calm down essentially. He noticed that one
workshop was being held at MGH with a Doctor Herbert Benson, a name he knew
from a book he had read that Moira had left around the apartment one thing when
she was looking for yet another New Age idea. This Doctor Benson had proof, had
done research, that practicing meditation would help your health or as Dan put
it put out the fire in his head, let him be at peace a little. So he went to
the workshop and the rest is history. He started doing that previously scorned
meditation. And he felt better, calmer.
Old man Jethro Hawkins’ reaction:WTF. Some things never change.
