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
Mix and Mingle Among The Mayfair Swells-Jane Austen’s “Love and Friendship” (2016)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon
Love And Friendship, starring Kate Beckindale, Xavier Samuel, based on the novella Lady Susan by Jane Austen, 2016
Damn my old friend and former colleague at American Film Gazette Sam Lowell whom I replaced as film critic at this site although occasionally writes some “think” pieces now that he is no longer under any deadline. His damnation centers on the tendency that he had when he got interested in a type of film or an author/writer and do a “run” based on that interest (still does so when writing about film noir which he been doing a slow moving “run” B-grade noirs on recently). Over the many years I have known him I also seemed to have picked up the habit. The habit in the present case being taking a “run” at various films based on Jane Austen’s novels and other works after having viewed the film The Jane Austen Book Club. Well we are going down that trail once again with the film adaptation of her early work Lady Susan using the title of another Austen work Love and Friendship.
The scheme in Book Club was to take a modern book club membership and develop the plot of the film around the similarity of relationships among them to those in Austen’s six major novels. No question that one Jane Austen was an astute observer of the social mores and ethos of the later 18th century, early 19th century English country gentry, a strata of society which if it didn’t have the prestige of the upper nobility nevertheless owned the vast tracts of land and controlled the doings of the Parliament in those days that made the kingdom work. Here dear Jane looks at the mating rituals of that country gentry whose members were always in the end driven by the need to avoid dropping down the social ladder. That is most definitely the concern of the lead character Lady Susan, played by Kate Beckindale, whose aim is just that desire to avoid dropping down in her circumstances-and because inheritance is everything just look at the obtuse Common Law provisions that of her daughter.
Let the games begin. Bring a scorecard. Lady Susan is on the rebound having been tossed out of one manor for going toe to toe with the lord of said manor. So off she goes to the country estate of her brother-in law and wife with her lady companion to see what she can dig up to restore her diminished sources. Before long she has that brother-in-law’s wife’s brother, Reginald played by Xavier Samuel, eating out of her hand despite himself (despite knowing that she is in modern language a “tramp”). But his/their father said no way, forget it. Still that brother is not so easy to convince of milady’s sullen sooty character and things look like he will be snagged.
Then all hell breaks loose Lady Susan as it turned out was still going toe to toe with that randy lord and his wife found out about it through a letter delivered by Reginald. The long and short of it is that Lady Susan was forced to call off her relationship with promising Reginald although that is not the last we will see of him. Enter Lady Susan’s daughter Frederica along with a goof companion Sir James Martin. Once Reginald sees Frederica they quickly become an item and goof Sir James is left empty-handed. Well not quite since on the rebound and fiercely committed to her own cozy future she picks up Sir James. All’s well that ends well. With this scenario it is a wonder that Britain was able to rule the world for as long as it did. Hey, what do you think maybe it was because of it.
Tales Of The Lakota
Queen-The Time Navajo Jack Caught The Westbound Freight
By Seth Garth
Hi, Ace of Diamonds here, my on the bum moniker, real
name Jim Mahoney. I just got the word a few days ago that the near-legendary master
hobo Navajo Jack (sorry, never knew his last name, or his real last name the
reason which will become obvious below) had caught the West-bound train. That
is hobo-bum-tramp speak for passing away, dying. How I know that expression I
gathered from first- hand experience when I was on the bum back in the 1970s
after my first divorce which gota big
hand from my drug and money problems
which the “ex” couldn’t deal with any longer after I spent the mortgage payment
one month on an few ounces of nose candy, of sweet cousin cocaine and she threw
me out or I took off depending at this far remove on whose story you want to
believe. At the time we were living in Oakland out in California (funny to say
these days because we couldn’t afford upscale San Francisco and now Oakland is
getting beyond reach for the same kind of people as us back then). I was also
in hock to about fifteen other people so I decided to scram, to head out on the
road, to go underground really, to go to a place where repo men, dunners and a
couple of guys with turned up out of joint noses who worked from a drug dealer
I was in hock to big time, and the United States Post Office couldn’t find me
with the three dollars in my pocket and a green small backpack with all my
worldly possessions in it.
Yeah, the big idea was to go to a place where nobody
cared about I.D, about what your past was about or your last address. Of course
never having been on the bum before I wasn’t sure where to go. That is not
exactly right I had been thrown out of the family house a few times as a young
kid when my mother couldn’t handle what she called “one more disgrace” but that
was kid’s stuff. Then I would go to the church for refuge but having lost the
faith, having lapsed as they say in the Catholic Church that was the last place
I wanted to go, especially in unknown California. I headed to the Sallies, to
the Salvation Army where if you gave them a “story” they would put you up for a
few days. That is exactly what I did once I saw that almost any hard luck story
would do. They just wanted a story to cover themselves that you would go the
straight and narrow, be contrite. At least while you were under their
protection. So I headed to the Mission District, told my story and got my three
days and three squares.
That is where I first met
Boston Brownie whose first name I do know but will keep quiet about just in
case anybody is looking for him for any reason. Still despite time and sunnier
days I still remember the rules. Most of which he taught me that first Sally
experience. Brownie had confused me when he introduced himself since I thought
he was from Boston although he was really from Albany and was using Boston as a
cover. I had told him that I was from Riverdale not far from Boston and he told
he had slept near the Sudbury River not far from my growing up home one time
when he was East. That was the night he told me never tell to say where you
were really from, or your name, since you never knew who might cut your throat
for that information, meaning if somebody was looking for you they would have a
source to go to. I went by the moniker Vegas Vick until one night out in a
jungle camp south of Westminster in Southern California while playing five-card
stud with Saw Mill Jefferson I kept drawing the Ace of Diamonds and thereafter
was christened Ace of Diamonds.
In any case after our stay,
my stay was up at the Sallies me and Brownie decided or rather he decided and I
went along to hit the road. By the way it was Brownie who clued me in to the fact
that at the Sallies as long as you were sober, or appeared sober, could get
extensions of your stay especially if you had an earnest story and demeanor.
(When I found those “later and sunnier times” anytime, now even, the Sallies
sent a request for donations I would ante up so there is some kind of equity in
this transaction between us even if they are unaware of the connection.) I
wound up staying about two week, kept sober, got some day labor money and paid
close attention when Brownie would tell me various hustles like where to get
free lunches on the church soup line circuit, some clothes beyond my crusted
old stuff and how to hit the church social welfare circuit to get five, ten,
twenty dollars to “get on your feet” with a half decent sob story.
I didn’t have to embellish
mine much since that divorce, the drugs and a general line of patter about a
new start got me over the line. The only thing that Brownie yelled at me about
was that day labor work which he said was beneath his dignity, his dignity as a
hobo. That was when he gave me the word on the differences, recognized
differences among the road brethren, between the low-level bum who basically
refused to work living almost exclusively on hand-outs, the tramp who would
work any kind of job from dishwasher to fruit-picker mainly to keep himself in
wine and cigarettes and the kings of the hill, the hoboes who kept the hobo
jungles in order and who only worked when there was some worthwhile job, not
cheapjack day labor. Anybody, or almost anybody, was welcome at least for a
while in any hobo camp but that hierarchy as I would come to see definitely
existed.
I had read Jack Kerouac’s On The Road as a younger man and so I
was kind of thrilled that we would be heading out on what I thought was the
hitchhike road. Maybe meet some females looking for male companionship, maybe
not. (The curse of the hitchhike road then whenever I chanced to travel that
way when too far from the freight tracks was not the later mass murderer
roaming the highways looking for easy victims but what we called the “perverts”
guys who were cruising looking for other guys, homosexuals, who if you said no
would dump you off the side of the road like I was one time out in Winnemucca
in the Nevadas.) That hitchhike stuff was crazy Brownie laughed the only way to
travel was on the freights where you could make better time avoid lots of road
hassle and local on the look-out cops (although overall the railroad bulls,
cops were more of a hassle than any civilian cops except when trying to sleep
in their parks or places like that.) Brownie’s plan was to head south since
this was late September when we started and as you headed East if you went
through the Rockies you could run into snow and cold weather trouble as early
as early October.We went south to L.A.
on a Union Pacific spur then headed East on the grand old Southern Pacific.
That first trip out I would have bet everything I had that hitchhiking was
better but I will admit Brownie was right that to get where you are going that
freight system is the way to go.
As I have already mentioned
along the various railroad tracks that crisscross the country there are hobo
camps, jungles, where the brethren can find kindred, a safe flop and a not fit
for everybody meal at least. The camp at Gallup, New Mexico was where I met the
legendary Navajo Jack who Brownie kept telling me about and hoped would be at
Gallup when we arrived. Naturally the stories about so-called legendary guys on
the road center on survival prowess, beating back the bulls and cops and the ability
to jump any freight that comes your way. Nothing big by real world standards
but big in that world. Navajo had that reputation but also one as a guy who
would not think twice about cutting another guy if he crossed him or crossed
some young kid (more likely tried to rape the kid) or crossed some friend. But
mainly the legend was about his ability to run the rails, to see that mystical
starlight on the rails. When I did get to meet him I was all ears to what he
had to say. (Brownie and he had traveled together when both were younger, when
Navajo was working the freights trying to get out of the fucking Dakotas and
that reservation life.)
But enough about me and my
travels which in the hobo-tramp-bum road book were rather short (even including
the hitchhike trail) since once I headed East that last time and settled in
Boston for real and opened up a small print shop, got remarried and took on
those sunnier days I went off the road. Navajo never did as I would hear
occasionally from Brownie (when he finally went off the road after almost
getting a leg severed trying to jump a freight that was moving too fast for
him).
This time that I found out
about Navajo Jack’s demise I had run into
Boston Brownie in the Boston Common as I occasionally do when I am downtown for
some reason and noticed that he was sitting on a bench that I have seen him sit
on a million times over the years. Since the days when he stopped trying to
catch freight trains because he just couldn’t do it anymore. (I had given up
that mode of transportation many years before that and had gone back to the
nine to five grind which proved easier than being on the bum-most hobos, bums,
tramps would disagree and who is to fault them.) Sometimes I would stop and
give him a ten-er or whatever I had in my pocket and talk for a while. Sometime
not either because I was in that nine to five rush or because he was in his
cups, his high wino heaven moment.
That day though Brownie was
coherent, and I had money in my pocket, so I sat down next to him and talked a
bit. That is when he mentioned that he had heard from somebody else that Navajo
had passed away, hell, some things, some terms die hard, had caught that
West-bound train. Brownie didn’t know exactly how Jack ended although it was on
the bum, on the road since the party who informed Brownie said Navajo had
passed some place in Illinois on the Lakota Queen and had been found one
morning face down a short distance from the tracks near a hobo “jungle” and
somebody had called the coppers to get him out of there. (“Hobo jungle” a place
usually a short distance from the side of a railroad track, or under a bridge,
along a river bank if there no train tracks where the travelling people as they
say in Ireland can find kindred, find some food, some hellbroth stew usually no
culinary expert could cook up,some
warmth of the eternal fire some protection of sorts from railroad “bull,”
railroad cops, or local cops as long as they decidednot to bust the operation up and, maybe, some
camaraderie although that sometimes could be iffy as I knew from first-hand
experience when old-timers did not welcome young guys into their club.)
Well at least Navajo didn’t
die in his bed, didn’t die in his native South Dakota a place from which he was
always running away from. Died running the Lakota Queen which is the name Navajo
gave to every train he ever hopped a ride whether it was the Washington and
Ohio, Union Pacific or Southern Pacific. Needless to say it was never an Amtrak
passenger train every true hobo scorned out of hand. That running away
something that I could relate too then, maybe now too on full moon nights when I
get a craving for being on the road, for being free from the nine to five drag
that I would bitch and moan to Brownie about when he was not in his cups. The
times I talked to Navajo we would always start with -where you running away
from this time. Funny Navajo didn’t even want to carry his name, his traditions
at a time when I knew him American Indians were becoming “Native Americans” and
later “Indigenous peoples” for despite his moniker he was half Lakota, half
white if you can fathom that.
Yeah Navajo Jack was Lakota
Sioux and I think he said Welsh, but he hated that former fact, hated that he
had grown up on a dingy South Dakota reservation just as I had grown up in that
Riverdale mill town about forty miles west of Boston. Told me he had tried out
various names Hopi Hank, Raging Apache and the like but after going through
Navajo country somebody had tagged him with the name and it stuck. Funny though
from the first day, or rather night I met him out in Gallup, New Mexico, out at
the hobo jungle right outside of town not far from the Southern Pacific tracks
he called every train the Lakota Queen, so who knows what was going through his
mind at any given time about running away from his past. A lot of guys had
names for the freights, usually after some love that had faded long ago or had
been run away from and regretted. I always thought Navajo was running the same
thoughts in his head when he rode every train west or east. Some squaw his
term, some Phoebe Snow we called it around some flame-flickered campfire.
Navajo was maybe ten,
fifteen years older than I was. Had been on the bum, been on the road for maybe
ten years then, had been on that road every since he got out of the service,
out of the Army after hell-hole duty in Vietnam which he said he would never
get over, not about the killing but about the lies the government, the white
man’s government had told him via the recruiting sergeant about what was going
on over there. Made sure he didn’t put down roots anywhere, left no forwarding
address for nothing nowhere the way he said it. I always liked being around Navajo,
he got me out of a few jams, kicked my ass a few times when he let the whiskey
get to him, but always will be in my book one of the royalty of the road, of
the hobo kingdom.
Funny, as I left Brownie
that forlorn day when I found out about Navajo I almost said that he had
“cashed his check.” I stopped myself when Brownie gave me awicked look and then said, “sorry Navajo that
you wound up catching that West-bound freight.” Brownie smiled as if to say
that he now knew that I would always remember the rules of the road.
Armies Of The Night, Oops,
Armies Of The Day- The October 21, 2018 Women’s March On The Pentagon-Another
Sam Eaton And Ralph Morris Story From The Archives
By Frank Jackman
Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton
have never been skimpy about doing things for the cause, the cause for them
some peace in this wicked old world, some end to the endless wars their county,
their America is embroiled in, leading to wicked out of whack U.S. military
budgets that are wasteful and wanton. It was not always like that for this
pair-they were as patriotic as any other 1960s citizen having in Ralph’s case
served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam during the hellish times in 1967 and 1968.
Sam Eaton not thinking much about the war since he had a serious childhood leg
deformation and therefore was militarily unfit had his sad epiphany when his
best friend Jeff Mullins had sent him a letter begging him that if anything
happened to him in Vietnam to tell everybody who would listen to oppose the
damn war against peasants who were fighting for their land and independence and
we had no rationale quarrel with them.
Ralph had come back from
Vietnam without any illusions about what he had done, what he had watched
others do to people he had no quarrel with and Jeff Mullins had not returned
from the war. This unlikely pairing despite both being from serious
working-class backgrounds and hence tight in some matters met in the field of
fire down in Washington, D.C. on May 1971 where they “met” in Robert Kennedy
Stadiumnot for a professional game but
having been rounded upin a police sweep
on the streets when they were among thousands who had decided to up the ante
and try to shut down the government if it would not shut down the war. Those
were desperate times for anti-war advocates, Ralph ha gone down there with a
contingent from Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) from the Albany area.
The area where he grew up and Sam had come down with a cohort of radicals from
Cambridge near where he grew up in Carver (at one time the cranberry bog
capital of the world he would tell everybody who would listen.
That meeting, better
meeting of the minds would last until this day through thick and thin. Both men
had raised families and that had curtailed their activities somewhat over the
years. They would not meet sometimes for extended periods of time but they
always felt a bond that time and distance would not, could not break. Ralph had
joined Veterans for Peace in the early part of the 21st century and
Sam had joined as an associate so a lot of the events they went to were under
the black and white dove-etched flags of that organization. As they had come of
retirement age, Ralph turning over the high end electronics business his father
had started to his youngest son and Sam’s his printing business over to a
trusted employee they had become if anything more active as the times demanded
their efforts what with endless wars, bloated military budgets and cuts in
necessary social programs rocking the country well beyond even the most
egregious acts of the Vietnam War governments. Ralph would make Sam laugh when
he suggested that they buy a condo in Washington they were down there so much
lately back in June around the Poor Peoples Campaign.
That endless war, endless
increase in the military budgets and the endless cuts in social programs (and
add in general boorishness of the governments of late) made them prime subjects
for any event that would highlight those issues. During the summer of 2018 they
had seen during one march or other an advertisement calling for a women’s march
on the Pentagon in October. Actually the exact days of the 1967 actions,
October 20th and 21st. The call issued by antiwar
activist Cindy Sheehan. The combination of the name Cindy Sheehan and March of
the Pentagon sent flashes through their minds. Cindy Sheehan whatever her
subsequent trajectory, not all for the better, earned a lot of “street cred,”
an important characteristic to them when she almost single-handedly revived the
peace movement, the anti-Iraq opposition when that war turned into another
long-term American military quagmire when she “camped out” down at George W.
Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas back in 2005-2006 looking for answers to one question-why
was her son killed in Iraq when there was no rational reason to have gone into
that benighted country in the first place since there were no weapons of mass
destruction on the premises. That got a lot of peace activists, including Ralph
and Sam, back on track after a period of quiescence after the invasion was
started despite mass opposition. No, forget “back on track” shamed them back
onto the streets. Her name alone was enough for them to make plans.
Sam, the reader and writer
of the pair, although Ralph had plenty of ideas in his own right and on those
occasions would do himself proud with whatever “think piece” he would put
together, had been indifferent to the anti-war movement as mentioned before in
1967 and of course Ralph had been in Vietnam then so neither for their
respective reasons had been involved in the original march on the Pentagon that
year. Sam had actually later read Norman Mailer’s account of his part the
action, his self-serving part in the award-winning Armies of the Night and despite some of Mailer’s over the top
language in explaining the course of events had at that point wished he had
been part of the action which included many acts of civil disobedience when got
those, including Mailer himself,a taste
of federal or local justice. (This “later” after Sam had, and Ralph too their
own fair share of arrest for acts of non-violent civil disobedience.)
When the pair discussed the
up-coming action they knew, given the marginal condition of the active
anti-war/peace movement that there would be no literati like Mailer, Dwight
MacDonald from Partisan Review and a
fistful of other writerly types. No glitterati like William Sloane Coffin and
Doc Spock, they of draft resistance fame for which they would stand trial. And
no known heavy politicos like Allan Ginsberg OMing the building to the mist of
mind, Abbie Hoffman “levitating” the place or even left-liberal types and if
things of late ran true to form despite a deluge of press releases no
mainstream press (although they knew from Boston/Albany/New York City/
Washington D.C. experience there would be plenty of student journalists sent by
their professors to hone their skills on the cheap to people talking to like
Ralph and Sam who had learned that talking “to the kids” would hone their own interviewing
skills at least giving some pithy line worthy of the mainstream press-if they
had bothered to show up. The long and short of it was that this pair were
pumped to go do battle against Moloch on its terms and see what came of it.
Only to be for one of the
few times in their long and sometimes lonely anti-war careers disappointed or
rather perplexed at what had been so promising but which was by any standard a
bust. There would be no blame placed, although some scuttlebutt placed blame on
the lack of organization, lack of a united front with other peace and social
action groups beyond Ms. Sheehan’s name, lack of proper publicity and lack of
dramatic effect. Both men had come down by plane from Boston, gone were the
days when they would think nothing of the ten hour drive from either Albany or
Boston, think nothing of having to go through or around bitch New York City
traffic, think nothing of sleeping on church floors sleeping bag in hand, think
nothing of the gruel provided for food, thinking nothing of no sleep for three
days running of necessary. But poor bladders, poor eyesight, poor energy levels
and a little sense that bourgeois flight was not so bad for the soul after all that
had made that previous mode of travel outmoded. Even the million bus rides were
out for those same reasons.
The plan of action was for the
“masses” to meet at Pentagon City Metro stop which Sam knew from previous trips
down was the perfect place to meet to head to the Pentagon a mile or two away.
But that meeting spot should have also rung bells in their ears because no way
would the place take a mass march. And it didn’t since perhaps three or four
hundred, at the outside five, people showed up before the noon starting time
(which for one of the few times in anti-war march history actually did go off
around that time-both men thinking that fact amazing). (By Sam’s count there
between police and military far more of them than demonstrators which is a sad
commentary on the state of the peace movement as refracted trough this event.
The march route was fairly short by Washington march standards but the route,
the Sunday-driven route, meant that there would be nothing but empty parking
lots that ring the building to greet the crowd. In the event the march ended at
the North Parking lot and the dwindling crowd ( a “choir” crowd so once the
march was completed there was drift since the line-up of speakers and
performers in the vast empty parking lot, mercifully though with a sizable
number of port-a- johns for the AARP-worthy crowd was not enough to hold those
who had heard it all before) heard what they expected to hear from anti-warrior
veterans and performers.
If this was to be the
jump-off to a new revived anti-war movement like the 1967 Pentagon march had
been this did not go down well with two long-time activists. If this was that
start-please have mercy.They left the
place late that afternoon scratching their heads searching for answers-no doubt
about that hard fact
As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –George Braques
By Seth Garth
A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.
Poets’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Poets Take A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath
By Lenny Lynch
I don’t know that much about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20th century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I. (Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches. Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios.
I don’t know much but this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.
Look too at honor denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar, weak-kneed and bleeding,would shake and one George Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.
As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –George Braques
By Seth Garth
A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.
Poets’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Poets Take A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath
By Lenny Lynch
I don’t know that much about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20th century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I. (Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches. Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios.
I don’t know much but this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.
Look too at honor denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar, weak-kneed and bleeding,would shake and one George Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.
L.A. Resistance Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.
It was a watershed year in American history. In 1968, protests and marches erupted almost daily; riots broke out across the United States; the Fair Housing Act was signed into law; Richard Nixon was elected president; and the back-to-back assassinations of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy threatened to tear the country apart. The Vietnam War, which had been simmering for more than a decade, suffered its highest body count on record.
Today, the U.S. military relies on a volunteer army to fight its forever wars. But in the 1960s, you could get a draft deferral only if you were married, had children, were a registered college student or had a medical condition that precluded you from service. The Resistance was a local organization based in Los Angeles whose mission was to stop the war though dedicated, nonviolent noncooperation with the federal Selective Service System. Members turned in their draft cards in protest, but their dissent came at a heavy price; some were fined up to $10,000 or sentenced up to five years in prison.
“We Won’t Go: the Los Angeles Resistance, Vietnam and the Draft,” an exhibit of The Resistance archives on display from June 22 to Aug. 19 at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Getty Gallery, explores these young men’s commitment to social justice. The collection features posters, leaflets and legal documents created by the Peace Press, along with newspaper clippings, draft cards, videos, and images by photographer Charles Brittin.
“Having the Resistance archives here [is] significant as they document their activities during an important time in our political history,” said Ani Boyadjian, research and special collections manager at the Central Library. “They were answering Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for a Vietnam summer by creating a movement of nonviolent draft resistance with the aim of ending the war.”
Bob Zaugh, one of the original members of the Resistance, graduated from Gardena High School in 1962 and promptly registered with the Selective Service. “The war in Vietnam wasn’t heating up yet, but I didn’t want to be drafted. So I took a 2S,” he said.
Zaugh enrolled at El Camino College, and like so many other students his age, enjoyed the security of a college deferment.
In the summer of 1967, the war intensified and riots broke out in Los Angeles. Concerned about the deadly conflict and an impending draft, the political science major from Torrance attended a speech on the UCLA campus. The speaker was David Harris, the student body president at Stanford University.
“Everything changed after hearing his electrifying speech,” said Zaugh. “That’s when I got in involved with The Resistance. I was given a deferment while poor people and people of color didn’t have that privilege.”
Zaugh dropped out of school and turned in his draft card. From 1967 to 1968, the Los Angeles Resistance held peaceful protests outside the Selective Service offices in Westwood, where busloads of young men were inducted into the military. Vietnam was not their father’s war.
In 1967, Zaugh began working for the Peace Press, a political collective backed by founder and UCLA graduate student Jerry Palmer. “The sentiment in the country at the time was overwhelmingly pro-war, which made us very unpopular,” said Zaugh. “We had to teach ourselves how to print because nobody else would print our literature.”
Booted by landlords unsympathetic to their cause, and hounded by the FBI and CIA, the Peace Press relocated several times over the course of its 20-year existence from 1967 to 1987.
The ultimate objective of the Resistance was not only to end the war but the draft itself. Draft card turn-ins were held twice in 1967 and 1968. “We also refused inductions and physicals,” said Zaugh. These acts ranged from felonies to federal offenses; resisters eventually had to appear in court, many without attorneys. One of Zaugh’s friends was given three years in prison at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, while another was subjected to solitary confinement.
Even Harris was indicted. Convicted of draft evasion, he served 15 months in federal prison in 1969. When Zaugh had his day in court, he decided to represent himself despite his hatred for public speaking. Luckily, he found an ally in federal Justice Harry Pregerson, a liberal former Marine and veteran of the battle of Okinawa in World War II. Said Zaugh, “He thought my argument was terrible, told me I was going to lose and had me acquitted.”
Zaugh said he and his fellow members of the Resistance felt it was their responsibility to let the public know what their government was doing in Vietnam. “We wanted people to pay attention to our foreign policy and what we could do about it,” he said.
Eventually, the powers that be realized the war was unwinnable.
“The Resistance was a very potent organization,” noted Zaugh. “The government did its best to keep us out of the public eye and keep stats on the number of men who were breaking the Selective Service laws under wraps.”
As many as 206,000 people were reported delinquent during the entire war period, according to the Antiwar and Radical History Project. Fewer than 9,000 out of 209,517 accused draft offenders were convicted.
In 1977, realizing the draft resisters were too numerous to imprison, President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty to those who fled abroad, allowing them to return to the United States.
Since the war’s conclusion, Zaugh has continued his involvement in social activism, peacefully protesting the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in Avila Beach and Gary Tyler’s four-decade incarceration in Angola, La. Zaugh also spent 13 years working for “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, a loyal Peace Press customer, at his Bongo Comics Group.
Liesl Bradner is a Los Angeles-based journalist covering the arts, culture and history for the past 15 years. She has been a book reviewer for Truthdig since 2014. The Pennsylvania native graduated from Florida State University after studying English literature at Cambridge University. Soon after a stint at the Orlando Sentinel, she landed at the Los Angeles Times. Her work has appeared in the New Republic, The Guardian, Variety, and World War II and military history magazines. She has also contributed essays for Taschen books' “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” and “Matthew Weiner's Mad Men.” A member of the West Los Angeles Veterans Home Support Foundation, Bradner is currently co-authoring the upcoming book “Snapdragon: The WWII Exploits of Darby’s Ranger and Combat Photographer Phil Stern,” to be published in spring 2018.
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