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
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Feds reject DoD move to pawn off Chelsea Manning
July 18, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
How Chelsea Manning sees herself -portrait by Alicia Neal
In a win for heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower Chelsea (former Bradley) Manning, the Bureau of Prisons denied the Army’s request to transfer Manning into the civilian prison system. This would have allowed the Army to shunt their responsibility to provide proper health care to a transgender service member—a precedent setting situation that they have fought hard to avoid. The Army has now reluctantly agreed to provide a “rudimentary level” of gender-related health care at the Fort Leavenworth military prison, Kansas. The Chelsea Manning Support Network is pleased to announce that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been retained by Chelsea Manning to represent her interests going forward with this issue.
“We are monitoring the situation to ensure that the Army provides Ms. Manning with medically-necessary treatment consistent with their clear constitutional obligations and are prepared to take any legal action necessary to ensure that Ms. Manning receive the treatment that she needs without any further delay,” noted Chase Strangio, Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s LGBT & AIDS Project. Mr. Strangio added: “Yesterday, an unnamed defense department official leaked that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has authorized the Army to treat Chelsea Manning with “rudimentary” treatment for her diagnosed Gender Dysphoria. Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced last August to 35 years in prison, has been diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria by at least three military doctors and has now been waiting for treatment for nearly a year. Gender Dysphoria is a serious medical condition for which treatment, including hormone therapy, is often medically necessary. Withholding this treatment can lead to serious physical and psychological harms including depression, anxiety and suicidality.” Receiving care from Fort Leavenworth is a triumph for Chelsea Manning, whose request for treatment, “did not involve any request to be transferred,” stated Chelsea in May. “At the beginning of 2014, the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, KS and the Army Corrections Command were ready to approve and implement a treatment plan that at least conservatively met the standards set forth by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.”
In May, Manning’s trial attorney David Coombs addressed the Army’s attempt to avoid providing Chelsea with adequate medical care: “The military absolutely needs to revisit its “policy” on transgender medical care and adapt it to 21st century medical standards. It cannot continue to bury its head in the sand any longer. Although a very small number of military inmates are transferred to federal prison each year, this is only after all appeals have been exhausted and the military inmate has been discharged from the service. Chelsea’s appeals have not yet begun and her transfer to federal prison in these circumstances would be unprecedented.”
Mr. Coombs told the Associated Press yesterday that he was encouraged that the Army will begin medical treatment, noting that he is “hopeful that when the Army says it will start a ‘rudimentary level’ of treatment that this means hormone replacement therapy.”
Meanwhile, Manning’s new appellate legal team, led by Nancy Hollander and Vince Ward, of Albuquerque, NM, have begun preparing for the first stage of legal appeals, beginning with arguments before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year. Supporters of Manning are hopeful that the appeals process will eventually overturn Espionage Act-based aspects of the sentence, possibly reducing jail time by decades. Manning’s significant and ongoing legal fees continue to be paid for by thousands of individual Americans, as well as concerned individuals worldwide.
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The Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good
Woman On Your Mind- Mannish Child
From The Pen OfFrank Jackman
Johnny Prescott daydreamed his way
through the music that he was listening to just then on the little transistor
that Ma Prescott, Martha to adults, had given him for Christmas after he has
taken a fit when she quite reasonable suggested that a new set of ties to go
with his white long-sleeved shirts might be a better gift, a better Christmas
gift and more practical too, for a sixteen-year old boy. No, he had screamed he
wanted a radio, a transistor radio, batteries included, of his own so that he
could listen to whatever he liked up in his room, or wherever he was, and didn’t
have, understand, didn’t have to listen to some Vaughn Monroe singing about some
place over there, or Harry James’ Sentimental
Journey or Tommy Dorsey or his brother Jimmy doing the inevitable Tangerine 1940s war drum thing. Or
worse, the Inkspots, Jesus, he was tired of that spoken verse they include in
every freaking song doing I’ll Get By
or If I Didn’t Care which had to
listen to on the huge immobile radio complements of RCA Victor downstairs in
the Prescott living room.
Hearing shades of that stuff all day
every day when Ma Prescott got dreamy while dusting the furniture or washing
the floors had finally gotten to him. Even more disturbing than that was
passing through the downstairs on Saturday night after dinner, maybe out for
some elusive date or just hanging with the guys in front of Doc’s Drugstore
looking at the girls passing by or stepping inside every now and again to hear
what one of those girls was playing on Doc’s super-jack jukebox, and seeing his
mother and father gearing up for a full night, seven until eleven of that stuff
presented by Bill Marlowe on his Stagedoor
Johnny show on WJDA. Strictly squaresville, cubed.
[Hey, for a minute I forgot who my
audience might be. Sure those of you from the generation of ’68, those who for
a minute in the 1960s thought along with me that we might turn the world upside
down, might change things for little guys and gals for the better, turn things
around so that they might look like something we might just want to pass on to
the next generation know what a transistor radio was. Lived and died by that
neat invention invented by some guy who knew what the hell he was doing, knew
we who came of age in the cold war red scare 1950s needed our own way of
getting privacy and created a radio that was small enough to conceal, put in
our pockets if need be, and let us at the flick of a wrist listen to whatever
radio station was providing that be-bop music that we craved. Those of you not
from that generation of ’68 should know that this gizmo was like a primitive
iPOD or MP3 player except, well, except you could not download whatever songs
you were interested in. Yeah, I know primitive now but a breath of fresh age
back then when we needed to break-out from our parents’ music just like you and
every generation needs to do.]
So Johnny glad that he had won one
battle although he knew he was behind, seriously behind in the war, that
inevitable generational war (although he did not, and probably his parents did
not either if they had forgotten their own battles against intransigent
parents, know enough then to call the tussle of wills a battle) was primed to
go nightly to his room to hear all those songs that he first heard on that
Doc’s jukebox. But here was his dilemma, here is what he could not make heads
or tails out of at first. One night as he listened to this new record Shangra-la
by The Four Coins that just finished up a few seconds before and as this Banana
Boat song by The Tarriers was starting its dreary trip he was not sure that
those ties wouldn’t have been a better deal, and more practical too. Yeah, this
so-called rock station, WAPX out of North Adamsville, the closest station that
he could receive at night without some static in the air had sold out to, well,
sold out to somebody, because except for late at night, midnight late at night,
one could not hear the likes of Jerry Lee, Carl, Little Richard, Fats, and the
new, now that Elvis was gone, killer rocker, Chuck Berry who proclaimed loud
and clear that Mr. Beethoven had better move along, and said Mr. Beethoven best
tell one and all of his confederates, including Mr. Tchaikovsky that rock ‘n’
roll was the new sheriff in town. As he turned the volume down a little lower
(that tells the tale right there, friends) as Rainbow (where the hell do
they get these creepy songs from) by Russ Hamilton he was ready to throw in the
towel though.
Johnny could not quite figure how that
magic that first got him moving, first got him swaying his hips, first got him
feeling funny thoughts about girls and how they had changed from being kind of just
plain nuisances (and they were, no question in Johnny’s mind about that) to kind of nice to
have around changed and why. Changed from every guy around town (young guys anyway,
the guys who counted) wearing sideburns, wearing a swagger, and wearing a sneer
that they hoped some foxy girl would wipe off their faces (and the girls, those
not totally and fantastically addicted to the “king” himself, were hoping that
they could wipe off). Changed from running, yes, running home after school each
and every week day afternoon to watch on television for the latest dances and
tunes on American Bandstand (and the latest foxy chicks too don’t forget
that Johnny) ever since Bill Haley and the Comets rocked the joint, or beloved
Eddie Cochran went summertime blues crazy. Changed from sexually-charged lyrics
by Chuck Berry and what he would do, or not do, to his sweet little sixteen.
Changed from the high energy explosion of Jerry Lee working off the back of
some hokey flatbed truck, piano keys flailing away, hair bouncing with the
beat, on High School Confidentialin the movie by the same name when he put his
name forward as the new king of the rock hill (although the movie itself was
kind of dippy). Yeah, changed to guys like Fabian, Bobby Vee, and Neil Sedeka who you would not dream of hanging around
with, would not allow on your corner boy corner but who all the girls, well,
most all of the girls flipped out over. Worse, worse than anything else these
guys and their music was stuff that parents actually went for, saw as innocent and
nice. Jesus.
Desperate he fingered the dial looking
for some other station when he heard this crazy piano riff starting to breeze
through the night air, the heated night air, and all of a sudden Ike Turner’s Rocket
88 blasted the airwaves. But funny it didn’t sound like the whinny Ike’s
voice so he listened for a little longer, and as he later found out from the DJ
it was actually a James Cotton Blues Band cover. After that performance was
finished fish-tailing right after that one was a huge harmonica intro and what
could only be mad-hatter Junior Wells doing When My Baby Left Me
splashed through. No need to turn the dial further now because what Johnny
Prescott had found in the crazy night air, radio beams bouncing every which
way, was direct from Chicago, and maybe right off those hard-hearted Maxwell
streets was Be-Bop Benny’s Chicago Blues
Radio Hour. Be-Bop Benny who started Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats
Domino on their careers, or helped.
Now Johnny, like every young
high-schooler, every "with it" high school-er in the USA, had heard
of this show, because even though everybody was crazy for rock and roll, just
now the airwaves sounded like, well, sounded like music your parents would
dance to, no, sit to at a dance, some kids still craved high rock. So this show
was known mainly through the teenage grapevine but Johnny had never heard it before
because, no way, no way in hell was his punk little Radio Shack transistor
radio with two dinky batteries going to ever have the strength to pick Be-Bop Benny’s live show out
in Chicago. So Johnny, and maybe rightly so, took this turn of events for a
sign. And so when he heard that distinctive tinkle of the Otis Spann piano
warming up to Spann’s Stomp and up with his Someday added in he
was hooked. And you know he started to see what Billie, Billie Bradley from
over in Adamsville, meant when at a school dance where he had been performing
with his band, Billie and the Jets, he mentioned that if you want to get rock
and roll back you had better listen to blues, and if you want to listen to
blues, blues that rock then you had very definitely had better get in touch
with the Chicago blues as they came north from Mississippi and places like
that.
And Johnny thought, Johnny who have
never been too much south of Gloversville, or west of Albany, and didn’t know
too many people who had been further either, couldn’t understand why that beat,
that da, da, da, Chicago beat sounded like something out of the womb in his
head, sometime out of Mother Africa (although again what did he know of old
African instruments and that sound, that beat that seemed like eternity beating
on his brain). That beat turning his own very personal teen-age blues to something
else for the duration of the song anyway. But when he heard Big Walter Horton
wailing on that harmonica on Rockin’ My Boogie he knew it had to be in
his genes.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel
Tuesday, July 22 5:30pm Copley Sq, Boston Details at Facebook
Stand up and be counted
Ireland:
On The 75th Anniversary Year
Of The Defeat Of The Spanish Revolution- The Lessons Learned
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
In July 1936 General Franco led a military
uprising against the legally elected Popular Front government in Spain which
set off three years of war, set off the Spanish Civil War, which proved to be a
prelude, a “dress rehearsal” for World War II. That uprising, the initial massively
popular fight against it by the leftist workers and peasants, and the ultimate victory
by Franco’s forces and a forty year “night of the long knives” reign of terror
in 1939 is filled with lessons for leftists today. Therefore it seems fitting to
me that while we are sadly commemorating the 75th anniversary of the
defeat I can pass on some lessons that others have drawn from that experience both
while the events were unfolding and later.
********
Markin comment:
This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. More, later. ********** Thoughts of the Evening: Olavi Kantola
September 18, 2011 By Alina Flinkman-->
Olavi Kantola Editor’s note: Olavi Kantola was a Finnish-American volunteer in the International Brigades. This text by Alina Flinkman appeared in the Finnish magazine Vaku in 1941. With thanks to Olavi’s nephew Bob Kantola. Translation by Sirpa Rautio.
It has been snowing heavily the whole day with the harsh Northerly wind blowing. At the break of the evening snowing has paused for a moment, and the wind is blowing with a wheezing sound, circling huge piles of snow, around the buildings and where ever there is a sheltered spot. The harsh and stormy weather has impact also on the human mind.
The newspaper is already read, and sowing and fixing clothes is not of interest for the moment, even for a farm (or peasant) women. So I am wondering what to do, as there is still evening left. I decided to pick up a book from the bookshelf to read, and my hand happened to touch a pile of pictures on the upper shelf. I started to look at the pictures one by one and found many with various groups of ex action-comrades (note – I am not sure what this is, but the translation is literal – probably refers to organized trade union or communist groups.) Many of the lives had already burnt down for ever (they had died). While thinking this and that, I happened to turn a picture of the first child gymnastic group in Superior, Wisconsin, at year 1923. Many of the children in the picture have grown up. Was thinking how have the winds of destiny been swinging your lives, others have had it worse, while some others have possibly been less dented in their lives. I had gone through the back row and moved on to the front row with three boys.
Olavi – you are a hero in that group. You have seen the grand new Soviet Union, where a new system is being built. You were helping to build it and you were satisfied with that system.
You came to your country of birth (translator’s note – not clear but I think it refers to USA rather than Finland) at the moment when assistance was given to the people of Spain in its fight for freedom and democratic rights against the Fascist beasts. You, Olavi, joined the troops, which went to defend workers’ rights. It was the most precious thing for you. You came to see the destruction of the war with all the brutality that went with it.
You managed to see and do a lot considering your young age. You sleep now for eternity there under the grass in Spain. But the memory of your heroism lives on!
Translator’s Note: Reading some excerpts of the letter, which he wrote to his mother before he went to fight, it becomes crystal clear he knew why he was going there:
“This as well is in accordance with those principles I have been thought ever since I was a child. Additionally, I am convinced that it is always in front of me in life to be at the line of fire, which ever country I am in. As I said in my previous letter, it is the task of my generation in this world to resolve the question for which Spartacus already hundreds years ago led the gladiators to fight. Will the workers class, the poor, always be persecuted or will we rise one day to finish off this system of exploitation? In these battles in the past hundreds of years thousands have died, but what is a more honorable death than to die for the future in which millions have a good life and to can build a world where they also benefit.
This experience, combined with my times in the Soviet Union, should make me a proper man for the working class. And then could the coming generations talk about me honestly and perfectly: He lived and died for the principles of Marx-Lenin-Stalin, which have won the freedom for the multimillions of Russians and which will produce the final victory for the entire working class, blacks, yellows and whites in the most distant and smallest corners of the globe. And when we bury the fascist and imperialist systems, my ghost will be there in the vicinity and smiling: It was not for nothing.”
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Stop the Israeli assault on Gaza launched on July 8. End the Israeli blockade on Gaza ongoing since 2007. End American support and assistance for Israeli crimes.
Join together in Copley Square to speak out about the injustice in Palestine!
Bring your own signs for the rally and we will have candles for the vigil.
As Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza enters its second week, join with thousands across the world in demanding an end to Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians.
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Friday, July 18, 2014
On The 75th Anniversary Year
Of The Defeat Of The Spanish Revolution- The Lessons Learned-THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39, LEON TROTSKY
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
In July 1936 General Franco led a military
uprising against the legally elected Popular Front government in Spain which
set off three years of war, set off the Spanish Civil War, which proved to be a
prelude, a “dress rehearsal” for World War II. That uprising, the initial massively
popular fight against it by the leftist workers and peasants, and the ultimate victory
by Franco’s forces and a forty year “night of the long knives” reign of terror
in 1939 is filled with lessons for leftists today. Therefore it seems fitting to
me that while we are sadly commemorating the 75th anniversary of the
defeat I can pass on some lessons that others have drawn from that experience both
while the events were unfolding and later.
********
Reposted from the American Left History blog- June 6, 2006 BOOK REVIEW
THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973
THE CRISIS OF REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP AS WE APPROACH THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO LEARN THE LESSONS FOR THE DEFEAT OF THAT REVOLUTION. I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.
Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.
The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.
The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.
This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice. I further note that the question of the crisis of revolutionary leadership still remains to be resolved by the international working class.
Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.
Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.
The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basic for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations. For more such examples of the results of the crisis of leadership in the Spanish Revolution read this book.
Revised-June 19, 2006
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Stop the Israeli assault on Gaza launched on July 8. End the Israeli blockade on Gaza ongoing since 2007. End American support and assistance for Israeli crimes.
Join together in Copley Square to speak out about the injustice in Palestine!
Bring your own signs for the rally and we will have candles for the vigil.
As Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza enters its second week, join with thousands across the world in demanding an end to Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians.
Take to the streets to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel, an end to the siege of Gaza, and an end to the occupation.
***From The Brothers Under The Bridge Series- The Road Less Traveled- Johnny Prescott’s Choice- With A Tip Of The Hat To Poet Robert Frost
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:
In the first installment of this series of sketches space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town, California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”
The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and another down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.
After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.
The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.
Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch from 1979 told to me by my friend Peter Paul Markin about a corner boy from back in his old North Adamsville neighborhood fits this description, had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.
Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or got caught up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his whole blessed life pointed the other way. Let Markin tell the tale his way and you will see that it exactly fits the series and the times, the times of the Vietnam two roads. The sign to place this one under, easy; the road not taken.
********
Added Comment:
I am not a big fan of Robert Frost's poetry (although his public readings were very interesting with that old swamp Yankee wisdom voice although don’t borrow anything from him or let him borrow because that is the way of the swamp Yankee) but this one, this one about the two roads (hell, maybe more but two makes the point nicely), one not taken, not taken like some childhood door choiceevery once in a while "speaks" to me when there are two (or more) choices to make in life. That choice business certainly applies to the characters below, certainly speaks to their respective predicaments. o
Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.
1. The Road Not Taken
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20
*********
Sergeant John Prescott, “Johnny P.” to his pals gathered around a small table, drinking sodas (although in their North Adamsville neighborhood in the old days everybody, everybody in New England too, maybe, called it tonic but that term fell out of usage with mass national advertising of soft drinks and so soda) and coffee, in the next room was a quiet, unassuming guy, no great scholar in high school just getting by although mainly getting by because being quiet and unassuming his teachers found no reason not to push him on until graduation. Quiet and unassuming too around with his corner boys, not the leader, a rank and filer really, but always ready to “show the colors” when some other corner boys wanted to take a run for the store front corner of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, his hang-out corner boy place. Quiet and unassuming with the girls too, a little shy really being raised in an all boy family and so not wise to girl ways, silly or profound, never without a date when it counted but also never the subject of “can’t wait to tell you” talk in that manic Monday morning before school girls’ room talkfest where what did or did not get done to whom, and by whom, over the weekend was hashed out. Johnny was “nice” was the best that any girl ever uttered about Johnny later when the dust had settled.
Yeah, Johnny P., a guy with just that barebones patriotism that animated many working class kids, North Adamsville neighborhood kids no exception, to “do their duty” and join up when America was in danger, no questions asked. Father, an ex-Marine, who had seen all the action a man could want in the Pacific island-hopping war during World War II (somebody once said there were no ex-Marines but we will let that pass since his father, a taciturn man, taken to occasional bouts of heavy silent drinking never talked about those Pacific experiences like many in his generation, except for the life-long after-effect trouble from malaria). Scads of uncles, grand-uncles (one killed in World War I and who had an eternal square up near the high school named after him like too many squares in this wicked old world), older cousins, older neighbors all taking the oath, all going through the male neighborhood rite of passage.
Not quite some gung-ho “my country, right or wrong,” that dividing line came later, but never questioned because nobody would have thought to pose the question then, but pretty close when all was said and done. Yeah, everybody just quietly and assumingly did their duty and quiet unassuming Johnny followed suite. And as the early 1960s, the time of high school fun and frolic and for sturdy football lineman Johnny P, fun and frolic with one fetching Chrissie O’Shea and their quiet romance that was the decidedly not the talk of the Class of 1964 at old North Adamsville High, turned to mid-1960s and clarion calls that the country was in danger in some place called red-infested Vietnam Johnny, and not just Johnny, answered the call. Answered the call like father, uncles and forbears had done for generations before (it would be later that a few, too few, North Adamsville boys would join the draft resistance movement, a few, again, too few, would join the military resistance when the American Army was half in mutiny in the late 1960s). And here, gathered around a small table, in early May 1968 his old corner boys from in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs” (the local section oftown was called Norfolk Downs like in bloody England and hence the “up the Downs”) were chatting away like mad.
Suddenly, Frank Riley, fabled Frankie, the king of the be-bop Salducci’s night in those fresher days, in Johnny corner boy rank and filer days yelled to no one in particular but they all knew what he meant, “Remember that night after graduation when Tonio threw us that party at the pizza parlor.” And all the other five gathered at the table became silence with their own memories of that night. See, Tonio was the king hell owner and Zen master pizza maker at Salducci’s who had even those waiting for that never coming local bus in front of the shop looking in amazement through the glass windows at Tonio flipping pizzas.And a guy for some unknown reason, call it Frankie’s charisma (or blarney which amounted to the same thing in Irishtown) who treated Frankie (and therefore most of Frankie’s friends) like some prodigal son. So Tonio put out a big deal party right on the premises, closed to all but Frankie, his friends and hangers-on (and girls of course, many girls because although Frankie was “hitched” to his sweetheart from junior high, Joanne he had many “girl friends”). Tonio, at least this is what he said at the time, appreciated that Frankie brought so much business his way what with his corner boys, their corner boys, and the, ah, girls that gathered round them and who endlessly fed the juke box that he had to show his appreciation in such a way. And everybody had a great time that night, with the closed-door illegal wine (against a state-mandated twenty-one but hell it was only wine), Tonio-provided wine, flowing like crazy and nobody, no authorities or parents the wiser for it.
Part of that great time, the part the guys around the 1968 table were remembering just then, the part of that great gun-ho 1964 time occurred late that night when, plenty of wine under their belts, Frankie and the corner boys, talked “heroic” talk. Talked about their military service obligations that was coming up right on them after graduation. And this was no abstract talk, not this night, for not only was this a party put on by Tonio to show his gratitude for the business sent his way but a kind of going away party for sturdy football player and increasingly part-time corner boy, Johnny P. (the other part, the more and more part, with one fetching Chrissie O’Shea who many guys coveted but who deferred to the age old tradition of not cutting some fellow corner boy’s time until he was dumped, a tradition unlike some others that was actually honored, had been for a long time ever since a big blow-out back in the early 1950s when some guy tried to cut another guy’s time and wound up face down on North Adamsville Beach ruled a drowning but everybody knew the real score), who signed up right after graduation and was getting ready to leave for “boot camp” at Fort Dix, New Jersey in a few days. So everybody was piling on the bravery talk to Johnny about “killing commies” somewhere, maybe Vietnam, maybe Germany, hell, maybe Russia or China. And Johnny, not any rum-brave kind Johnny, not any blah blah-ing about bravery, football or war, Johnny just kind of sat there and let the noise go by him. His thoughts then were of Chrissie and doing everything he could to get back to her in one piece.
Of course heaping up pile after pile on the bravery formula was one Frankie Riley, ever the politician and well as keenly acknowledged corner boy king, who had so just happened to have landed, through a very curious connection with the Kennedy clan, a coveted slot in a National Guard unit. So, Frankie, ever Frankie, could be formally brave that night in the knowledge that he would be far away from any real fighting. His rejoinder was that his unit “might” be called up. The others kidded him about it, about his “week-end warrior” status, but just a little because after all he would be serving one way or another. Also kind of silent that night was Fritz Taylor just then ready to “do his duty” after having had a heavy-duty fight with his mother about his future, or lack of a future, and her “hadn’t he better go in the service and learn a trade” talk.
Most vociferous that night was Timmy Kiley. Yes, Timmy, the younger brother of the legendary North Adamsville and later State U. football player “Thunder Tommy” Kiley. He was ready to catch every red under every bed and do what, when and where to any he caught. Timmy later joined the Navy to “see the world” and saw much of some dreary scow in some dry-dock down in Charleston, South Carolina. Even Peter Paul Markin, Frankie’s right-hand man, self-described scribe, and publicly kind of the pacifist of the group, who usually got mercilessly “fag”-baited for his pale peace comments was up in arms about the need to keep the “free world” free. But that was just the way he talked, kind of a studied hysterical two-thousand facts diatribe. Markin, student deferred, at that 1968 table had just gotten notice from his friendly neighbors at the North Adamsville Draft Board that upon graduation he was to be drafted. And he was ready, although kicking and screaming about some graduate school project that the world really needed to know about, to go. That was the way it was in the neighborhood. Go or be out. Frank Ricco, the so-called token Eye-talian, of the Irish-laden Salducci’s corner boy night (and a kid that Tonio actually hated, some kind of Mafioso, omerta thing with his father) also displayed super-human brave talk that night but he was credited , not so many months later with not only going in the Marines but of seeing some heavy-duty action in jungle-infested Kontum, and some other exotic and mainly unpronounceable places farther south in the water-logged rice paddles of the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.
Quiet, quieter than Johnny Prescott thinking of Chrissie, or Fritz, sullenly furious at his mother or at his hard-scrabble fate, or both, was Johnny Callahan. Johnny no stranger to corner boy controversy, no stranger to patriotic sentiments, at least publicly to keep in step with his boys, secretly hated war, the idea of this war coming up and was seriously hung up on the Catholic “just war” theory that had been around since at least Saint Augustine, maybe earlier. See Johnny had a grandmother (and also a mother, but less so) who was an ardent Catholic Worker reader and adherent to their social philosophy. You know, Dorothy Day and that crowd of rebel Catholics who wanted to go back to the old, old days, the Roman persecution days, of the social gospel and the like.
And grandmother had the “just war” theory down pat. She was the greatest knitter of socks for “the boys” during World War II that the world may have ever known. But on Vietnam she was strictly “no-go, no-go, no way” and she was drilling that in Johnny’s head every chance she got (which was a lot since Johnny, having, well let’s call it “friction” with his mother sought refuge over at grandma’s). Now grandma was pressing Johnny to apply for conscientious objector status (CO) but Johnny knew that as a Catholic, a lapsing Catholic but still a Catholic, the formal “just war” theory of that church would not qualify him for CO status. He wanted to, expected to, just refuse induction. So that rounded out that party that night. Hell, maybe in retrospect it wasn’t such a great party, although blame the times not Tonio for that.
Just then, as each member at the table, thought his thoughts started by Frankie’s remembrance sipping their sodas and coffee sort of absent-mindedly someone from the other room called out, “pall-bearers, get ready.”
Postscript: Sergeant, E-5, John Phillip Prescott made the national news that 1968 year, that 1968 year of Tet, made the Life magazine photo montage of those killed in service in Vietnam on any given week. Johnny P.’s week was heavy with casualties so there were many photos, many looks of mainly working-class enlisted youth that kind of blurred together despite the efforts to recognize each individually. And, of course, Johnny P.’s name is etched for eternity in black marble down in Washington, D.C. John Patrick Callahan served his two year “tour of duty” as federal prisoner 122204, at the Federal Correctional Institution, Allentown, Pennsylvania. The road less traveled, indeed.
In a win for heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower Chelsea (former Bradley) Manning, the Bureau of Prisons denied the Army’s request to transfer Manning into the civilian prison system. This would have allowed the Army to shunt their responsibility to provide proper health care to a transgender service member—a precedent setting situation that they have fought hard to avoid. The Army has now reluctantly agreed to provide a “rudimentary level” of gender-related health care at the Fort Leavenworth military prison, Kansas.
