*****Important Mumia Abu Jamal Update-Free Mumia

*****Important  Mumia Abu Jamal Update-Free Mumia

 

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

The legendary social commentator and standup comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction. The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be. ***** An Open Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal Supporters-A Personal Commentary (April 2008 but the main point-freedom for Mumia is still front and center) The Partisan Defense Committee has passed "An Open Letter to All Supporters of Mumia‘s Freedom" to this writer. Those few who might not know of the torturous legal battles to free this innocent man can find further information at the above-mentioned Partisan Defense site. I make my own comments below. Normally I pass information about the case of political prisoner Mumia abu-Jamal on without much comment because the case speaks for itself. The case has been front and center in international labor defense struggles for over two decades. However, in light of the adverse ruling by a majority of a federal Third Circuit Court of Appeal panel in March 2008 that affirmed Mumia’s 1982 conviction for first-degree murder of a police officer and left the only issue for decision that of resentencing to either reinstate his original death sentence or keep him imprisoned for life without parole I have some things to say about this fight. Occasionally, in the heat of political battle some fights ensue around strategy that after the smoke has cleared, upon reflection, leave one with more sorrow than anger. Not so today. Today I am mad. Am I mad about the irrational decision by the majority of the Third Circuit panel in Mumia’s case? Yes, but when one has seen enough of these cases over a lifetime then one realizes that, as the late sardonic comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, in the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the halls. What has got me steamed is the obvious bankruptcy of the strategy, if one can use this term, of centering Mumia’s case on the question of a new trial in order to get the ‘masses’- meaning basically parliamentary liberal types interested in supporting the case. This by people who allegedly KNOW better. The bankruptcy of this strategy, its effects on Mumia’s case and the bewildered response of those who pedaled it as good coin is detailed in the above-mentioned Open Letter. Read it. Today, in reaction to the Third Circuit court’s decision, everyone and their brother and sister are now calling for Mumia’s freedom. At a point where he is between a rock and a hard place. However, it did not have to be that way. Mumia was innocent in 1982 and he did not stop being innocent at any point along this long road. Freedom for Mumia was (and is) the correct slogan in the case. A long line of political criminal cases, starting in this country with that of the Haymarket Martyrs if not before, confirms that simple wisdom. Those who consciously pedaled this weak ‘new trial’ strategy as a get rich quick scheme now have seen the chickens come home to roost. And Mumia pays the price. I would point out two factors that made a ‘retrial’ strategy in the case of an innocent man particularly Pollyanna-ish for those honest militants who really believed that Mumia’s case was merely a matter of the American justice system being abused and therefore some court would rectify this situation if enough legal resources were in place. First, it is illusory that somehow, as exemplified in this case, a higher court system would remedy this egregious wrong. Long ago I remember a lawyer, I believe that it might have been the late radical lawyer Conrad Lynn no stranger to political defense work, telling a group of us doing defense work for the Black Panthers, that all these judges belong to the same union. They do not upset each other’s work except under extreme duress. Second, and this is where the ‘wisdom’ of the reformists about reaching the ‘masses’ by a stage-ist theory of defense work (fight for retrial first, then freedom) turns in on them. As witness the list of names of those who have signed the Partisan Defense Committee’s call for Mumia’s freedom, excepting professional liberals and their hangers –on, those interested in Mumia’s case (or any leftwing political defense case) will sign on just as easily for freedom as retrial. Thus, opportunism does not pay, even in the short haul. That said, Free Mumia- say it loud, say it proud.

*****No Killer/No Spy Drones...

*****No Killer/No Spy Drones...

From The Pen Of Bart Webber 

One night my friend from high school, Carver High Class of 1967 down in Southeastern Massachusetts Sam Lowell whom I hadn’t seen in a while and I were, full disclosure having a few high-shelf whiskeys at Jack Higgin’s Sunnyvale Grille in Boston, arguing over the increasing use of and increased dependence on killer/spy drones in military doctrine, American military doctrine anyway. Me, well again for full disclosure I am a supporter of Veterans For Peace and have been involved with such groups, both veteran and civilian peace groups, since my own military service ended back during Vietnam War days. I follow the line of VFP that killer/spy drones are qualitatively a no better (or no worse) part of the modern military arsenal that any other weapon and need to be opposed with the same rigor as we do for nuclear weapons and other all the military hardware used in the seemingly endless wars the American imperium has dragged us into. That “line” business in relationship to VFP is unlike various Marxist groups and quasi-Marxist collectives I hung around with in my younger days after discharge from the American Army as a matter of choice rather than obligation. In those old-time organizations hardly any of them around anymore or if so are peopled with the relics of those youthful endeavors (and good luck to them since the young these days except on rare and fleeting occasions are not picking up the torch) were guided they concept of democratic centralism from the Leninist Bolshevik organizational doctrine, if one disagreed with the organizational “line” would if in the minority keep quiet in public about the difference. VFP, based on more broadly-based democratic principles reflecting a different mission and different way to change the world, has no such restrictions although arguing for support of killer/spy drones would put one in opposition with the goals of the organization and one would in good conscience have to consider whether continued membership was appropriate.      

Sam’s position, full disclosure he was granted an exemption from military duty during the Vietnam War period after his father had died suddenly in 1965 and he was the sole support, or close to it, of his mother and four younger sisters, was a little more nuanced if nevertheless flatly wrong from my perspective. Perhaps reflecting an “average Joe” position of a guy who did not serve in the military and had not seen up close what all the “benefits” of modern military technology have brought forth to level whatever target they have chosen to obliterate and under what conditions. In the post-9/11 period he like many from our generation of ’68 had made a sea-change in their former anti-military positions and have embraced some form of selected approval of various aspects of current military doctrine. Starting with the initial approval of the “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq which in the end left egg all over his face. Sam, nevertheless, argued that the high degree of accuracy, the “cleanness” of the method, and the destruction of the specific object (his word, I would say person or place, mainly person) without high casualties on the American side (that reduction of “boots on the ground” argument which underpins much of modern doctrine in the wake of Vietnam and even Iraq itself) to fight the “war on terrorism” which disturbs his old age has made him a partisan of such weaponry.       

As usual these days we argued for a few hours or until the whiskey ran out, or we ran out of steam and agreed to disagree. The next day though, no, the day after that I got to thinking about the issue and while not intending to directly counter his arguments wrote a short statement that reflects my own current thinking the matter. Here it is:

“Ever since the early days of humankind's existence an argument has always been made by someone and not always by the gung-ho warriors, many times rather by some safely-ensconced desk-bound soul who was too busy to become a warrior but was more than glad to let some other mother's son do the bitch work, that with some new technology, some new strategic gee-gad, warfare, the killing on one of our own species, would become less deadly, would be more morally justified, would bring the long hoped for peace that lots of people have yacked about in the abstract until some governmental decision to go to war gets their war blood up.

Those arguments are being retailed these days by the killer/spy drone aficionados who think they have found something new under the sun. Don't believe that false bill of goods, don't believe the insane war lies from warriors, arm-chair warriors, or the merely fearful, it is the same old killing machine that has gone on for eons. Killing from far away places like Nevada to the Middle East in war game rooms with screens set up like video games except tell that to the "sorry, collateral damage, no foul because not intended" victims who got in the way. Enough said and enough of killer drones killing and spy drones spying too.”  

*****As Obama, His House And Senate Allies, His “Coalition Of The Willing” Ramp Up The War Drums In Syria -Again- Stop The Bombings

*****As Obama, His House And Senate Allies, His “Coalition Of The Willing” Ramp Up The War Drums In Syria -Again- Stop The Bombings-Stop The Incessant Escalations-- Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries From The Middle East!

Frank Jackman comment:

I have already recently mentioned elsewhere the night not long ago when my friend from high school, Carver High Class of 1967 down in southeastern Massachusetts, Sam Lowell, who I hadn’t seen in a while were, full disclosure, having a few high-shelf whiskeys at Jack Higgin’s Sunnyvale Grille in Boston, arguing over the increasing use of and increased dependence on killer/spy drones in military doctrine, American military doctrine anyway. I also mentioned that night, which is germane here, in discussing the broader category of the seemingly endless wars that the American government is determined to wage at the close of our lives ( we are both on the wrong side of seventy so check the actuarial tables if you think I am mistaken) so that we never again utter the word “peace” with anything but ironic sneers that I, again for full disclosure, am a supporter of Veterans For Peace and have been involved with such groups, both veteran and civilian peace groups, since my own military service ended back during Vietnam War days.

For those not in the know that organization of ex-veterans of the last couple of generations of America’s wars has been for over a quarter of a century (actually just commemorated its thirtieth anniversary this summer of 2015) determinedly committed to opposing war as an instrument, as the first instrument, of American policy in what that government sees as a hostile world (a view that it has held for a long time, only the targeted enemy and the amount of devastation brought forth has changed).  

I also noted Sam’s position with his concurrence, full disclosure, he was granted an exemption from military duty during the Vietnam War period after his father had died suddenly in 1965 and he was the sole support, or close to it, of his mother and four younger sisters, was a little more nuanced if nevertheless flatly wrong from my perspective on the killer/spy drones. I thought his argument perhaps reflected an “average Joe” position of a guy who did not serve in the military and had not seen up close what all the “benefits” of modern military technology have brought forth to level whatever target they have chosen to obliterate and under what conditions. More importantly that Sam, who marched in any number of anti-Vietnam War parades with me after my service was over and I gave him the “skinny” on what was really going on in that war, had made in the post-9/11 period like many from our generation of ’68 a sea-change in their former anti-military positions. Something in that savage criminal attack in New York City against harmless civilians got the war lusts, yes, the war lusts up of people, good, simple people like Sam and lots of “peaceniks” from our generation to kill everything that got in our way. LBJ and Richard Nixon would have in their graves rather ironic smiles over that change of heart.   

And those many who changed positions, who sulkily went along with whatever was “necessary,” including I remember one time a woman who identified herself as a Quaker who, I swear, asked plaintively on some radio talk show I was listening to whether we (meaning the American government and not her individually I assume but who knows) could not surgically nuclear bomb Al Qaeda from all memory. Sam got caught up in this war lust wave and has since, starting with his initial approval of the “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq, wound up in the end left with egg all over his face.

But Sam is nothing if not determined just like me to carry on in his views and so another night at Jack Higgin’s found us arguing over the more recent egg-in-face aspects of American war policy in the Middle East with the rise of ISIS, the demise of the failed states of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan and with it whatever rationale made the American government built a thing from which it had to run.

As is also usual these days like with the question of killer/spy drones we argued for a few hours or until the whiskey ran out, or we ran out of steam and agreed to disagree. The next day though, no, the day after that I again got to thinking about the issue of the debacle of American policy and while not intending to directly counter Sam arguments wrote a short statement that reflects my own current thinking the matter. Here it is:

“Nobel “Peace” Prize Winner, U.S. President Barack Obama (and yes that word peace should be placed in quotation marks every time that award winning is referenced in relationship to this “new age” warmonger extraordinaire), abetted by the usual suspects in the House and Senate (not so strangely more Republicans than Democrats, at least more vociferously so) as internationally (Britain, France, the NATO guys, etc.), has over the past year or so ordered more air bombing strikes in the north of Iraq and in Syria, has sent more “advisers”, another fifteen hundred at last count [summer of 2015] but who really knows the real number with all the “smoke and mirrors” by the time you rotate guys in and out, hire mercenaries, and other tricks of the trade long worked out among the bureaucratiti, to “protect” American outposts in Iraq and buck up the feckless Iraqi Army whose main attribute is to run even before contact is made, has sent seemingly limitless arms shipments to the Kurds now acting as on the ground agents of American imperialism whatever their otherwise supportable desires for a unified Kurdish state, and has authorized supplies of arms to the cutthroat and ghost-like moderate Syrian opposition if it can be found to give weapons to {which it could not and backed off for now in the Fall of 2015],  quite a lot of war-like actions for a “peace” guy (maybe those quotation mark should be used anytime anyone is talking about Obama on any subject ).

Of course the existential threat of ISIS has Obama crying to the high heavens for authorizations, essentially "blank check" authorizations just like any other "war" president, from Congress in order to immerse the United States on one side in a merciless sectarian war which countless American blunders from the get go has helped create.

All these actions, and threatened future ones as well, have made guys who served in the American military during the Vietnam War and who, like me, belatedly, got “religion” on the war issue from the experience (and have become a fervent anti-warrior ever since), learn to think long and hard about the war drums rising as a kneejerk way to resolve the conflicts in this wicked old world. Have made us very skeptical. We might very well be excused for our failed suspension of disbelief when the White House keeps pounding out the propaganda that these actions are limited when all signs point to the slippery slope of escalation (and the most recent hikes of whatever number for "training" purposes puts paid to that thought).

And during all this deluge Obama and company have been saying with a straight face the familiar (Vietnam-era familiar updated for the present)-“we seek no wider war”-meaning no American combat troops. Well if you start bombing places back to the Stone Age, or trying to, if you cannot rely on the weak-kneed Iraqi troops who have already shown what they are made of and cannot rely on a now virtually non-existent “Syrian Free Army” which you are willing to give whatever they want and will still come up short what do you think the next step will be?

Now not every event in history gets repeated exactly but given the recent United States Government’s history in Iraq those old time Vietnam vets who I like to hang around with might be on to something. In any case dust off the old banners, placards, and buttons and get your voices in shape- just in case. No New War In Iraq!–Stop The Bombings In Iraq And Syria!- Stop The Arms Shipments!-Vote Down The Syria-Iraq War Budget Appropriations!     

***
Here is something to think about picked up from a leaflet I picked up at a recent (small) anti-war rally:  

Workers and the oppressed have no interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary Sunni-Shi’ite civil war in Iraq or the victory of any side in Syria. However, the international working class definitely has a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism that constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and downtrodden.

[Whatever unknown sister or brother put that idea together sure has it right]  

*****Lady Day Is In The House-With Torch Singer Billie Holiday In Mind

*****Lady Day Is In The House-With Torch Singer Billie Holiday In Mind

 

 

From The Pen Of Josh Breslin 

 

 

I remember one day many years ago now, although it could have been any number of years before or since given the woman who I want to talk about, talk about Lady Day, and how she made me feel better about things, about blue things going on in my life those many years ago that I am thinking of, or many years before or many years after that. By the way although I know that this is confessional age, an age when every emotion seemingly has to be publicly wrought out over no matter how private this is not about my blues, or not much but about the lady in question, Lady Day helped chase some of them away and I will leave it to the reader to decide whether I am running a confessional scene like some errant Catholic schoolboy, a faith that I grew up in incense and high Latinisms and all but which probably was trumped by that finer Irish Catholic grandmother heritage of not "airing the damn, her term, family's or your dirty linen in public." Yeah, I do believe the latter prevailed in the long haul. So, yes, I want to talk about a woman whom I never knew personally since she was of my parents generation and thus removed by at least a generation from any possibility of being a direct influence unlike my Olde Saco, Maine corner boys, was hanging out in New York City a place I never went to until my high school years long after she was a shade and was black a condition that would not have played well in that Irish Catholic grandmother-etched neighborhood where I grew up. Had moreover had never been that aware of her as a performer although I believe I heard her one wisp of a time on the Ed Sullivan Show but don’t quote me on that.

Yeah, talk about how a lady from my parents time, from a foreign city and a foreign color chased away my blues, unlike a number of women who I have known from my own time and place, and white too, Irish Catholic red-headed women mostly who have given me endless heartache (although having grown up in a different time and eventually place than grandmother's Irish Catholic-etched Olde Saco neighborhood streets I did had a couple of black women who gave me that same endless heartache), more than once before that day I am thinking about and did so after. This particular day Lady Day came in very handy, it must have been a winter day for sure since I still can feel the frosty feeling, the snow whirling outside and inside my brain I had while the events were unfolding.

So add that to the depression I was feeling over the latest serious quarrel I had had with my wife, the chill and bluster of that winter day had me down as well, as I entered a bookstore in Harvard Square, I think the Harvard Bookstore which is still there although it could have been the Paperback Book Smith which is long gone as Square fixture. That wife very soon thereafter to be my ex-wife, an ex-wife who with her alimony demands and child support would continue to have plenty to do with my blues for a long time thereafter, but who just that moment had plenty to do with the particular depression I felt that time so don’t blame the winter for that, but don’t ask for the particulars of the dispute, that time, that is another story, a story already done and wrapped up in a bow. And don’t blame Billie for either the cold or subsequent divorce since people have blamed Billie enough for what ails them and I have come today to honor that fresh flower lady day.

Now that I think about it on that blustery day I have it ass backwards I think I was entering the old long gone Paperback Booksmith store but it might have been the still there Harvard Book Store up the street so don’t hold me to the particular bookstore just know that it was a bookstore, in Harvard Square, in the cold raw winter (and you know about the depression part so onward).

In any case that is the day and place where I heard this low sad torchy female voice coming out of the sound system most of those places had (have) to liven things up while you were (are) browsing (or “cruising” as I found out later when somebody told me bookstores were the “hot” spot if you were looking for a certain kind of woman [or man], needless to say my kind of woman, bookish, sassy and, well, a little neurotic but the dating circling ritual among the bookish, sassy whatevers is also a story for another day). 

A smoky voice for smoky darkly lit rooms where the smoke hangs on the walls through daylight but best seen in low wattage light  and where romances might burst open (or at least be an inexpensive cheap date at a couple of cups of coffee and a pasty or a couple of glasses of sweet red wine hopefully not just out of the press and more hopefully loosen her up, loosen up that hot date you had been moving heaven and hell to get to for weeks,for the night’s anticipations) reminding me of cafés and coffeehouses in places like New York, Boston, San Francisco. New York around the Village when smoking was “cool,” when cigarettes smokers like me (heavily at times especially whisky drinking or dope pulling times all now mercifully quieted) ruled the roost with regulation butt hanging out of side of one's mouth in the old con man or French gangster imitating Chicago gangster style (and now pity for French style smokers now banished, now desperate refugees in the outer edge of the outdoor café tables, rain or shine, destroying the whole noir cinema night).

When smoky rooms lived and jazz (okay, okay jazz and some rarified urban blues too not the country bumpkin Delta kind every black person who could follow the northern star was fleeing from to break Mister James Crow’s grip) was king and such a rasp-edged cut the air with a knife voice would be  swaying in the background amidst the cling of glasses, small wine glasses bulb-like with slender stems filled maybe one third of the way with some house blend (again hopefully not newly pressed) and sturdy whisky shot glasses which spoke of hard-edged ethnic enclaves, workingmen drowning themselves in sorrows to break the hunger sorrows of their lives and their sons taking right up where they left off except maybe since café prices unlike men’s taverns were dear sipping the edges of the glass more slowly. A voice to cut through the edge of the air around the small murmurs of collective voices (two, three, four but an uncomfortable fit to a table times whatever number Bob, Ray or Sam could squeeze into the space without the fire marshal raising hell about capacity or asking for a bigger extortionous pay-off)  talking of the news of the day (Jesus, that damn war is starting to heat up), the current hardship of life (Christ, the damn rent man was looking for his draw and I barely culled him out of the damn thing), the latest lost romance (divorces, two-timings, will write when I get a chance, waiting by the midnight phone the damn thing growing out of the ear waiting for that prisoner’s one call) or just cheesy chitchat. Yeah just the dross of daily life until the singer (you already know who she is because I set it up that she is smoky-voiced, can cut the air with the damn thing), yeah, until she hits that high white note and for one second, maybe today the time a nanosecond but whatever the count the room is silent, no glasses tinkling (some slender dame almost ready to put the stem of the glass to her mouth, some guy, maybe Red Radley who was famous for the slow whisky sipping and all of the bartender in town dreaded his appearance at their doors because he would take up a table or a stool and the tip would be nada), no dishes clanging (those pastries with two forks almost gone and the parties asking why they had bothered to order the damn thing since it tasted like last week’s stale remainders at some Salvation Army Harbor Lights retreat, which I can tell you is pretty stale, no voices chattering their hearts out (that midnight waiting suspended in the air) but stopped against that neck-turning sound.

The hushed patrons searching the dark smoky night for the source finally fixing in on an ill-lit stage, a joke of a stage put together slap-dash, a few boards, a little varnish, raised just enough to see whoever was performing, hell, to see Lady Day performing she was practically indentured to the owner since he had advanced her seven weeks pay when she had to see the “fixer man” to get well, in order not to cut down on the number of café tables that could be squeezed into the space, a third-rate bass player strumming his beat message (that’s all Harry could afford he said then ranting about the musicians' union scale but what were you going to do  otherwise she would have to hoof it alone), likewise the pitter-patter of the second-rate drummer not playing too loudly in order avoid drowning out the voice in front of him (see he had been her lover before that “fixer man” became her true lover, gave her that smoky voice, let the night air be cut by her voice), and a first-rate big sexy sax man (a second cousin to Johnny Hodges and so had something big and high white culled in his genes) blowing his brains out and mentally taking note that amid the clutter of daily life, the insolvability of the hardships and the need to go on to find the next romance that for that one moment those concerns were suspended.

Yeah, a voice, now that he had been through his own troubles with sister cocaine (hence the knowledge of slow whisky sipping a la Red Radley, Salvation Army Harbor Light retreats, and if you could get through the “detox” then the screwy message they had to spread the gospel that you had to listen to and no Sky’s Miss Sarah Brown all pert, petite, and pious, and of waiting around midnight phones after the twelfth “cure” had not taken and your own Miss Sarah Brown has abandoned ship, has moved onto some other Eddie whose only virtue, and maybe no virtue was that he was not you, that his nose was clean [a pun] and that she would at least have a breather until whatever fatal weakness he was hiding took hold) having just an edge fortified by some back room dope (she was trying to ease off “boy”, H, heroin to the squares and so the “fixer man” was squeezing sweet cousin cocaine into her brain) to break the monotony of the day (and who knows maybe the life, maybe of everything that had led her to this dark, ill-lit stage filled with too many tables, no room to breathe, no drink in hand to get through the numbers until the break as her cousin was wearing off after that early rush) with its phrasing (strange how the phrasing separated out those who could reach that high white note, not every night like this night for she would know but the silence, by the absence of glass clanging, the shuffling of dishes, the small murmurs all in suspension except those clouds of smoke rising to meet her, and her wishing to chase down that damn drink with a nice mellow cigarette to calm her fucking nerves), pleading with you like in some biblical battle between heaven’s angels and hell’s like something old revolutionary divine John Milton would think up but which she just the deliverer of high white notes not some literary light to take your blues away.

Like in that second (okay to be all up to date nanosecond) aside from whatever the dope that was still running round her brain could do she had a space there in that frail shimmering body with its pit-marked skin that could end that fucking war, could make that rent man disappear, could sent that guy a dime to drown that midnight phone madness, hell, could make the decision between red or white for the living room walls, to solve your pain, to take yours on, and get rid of hers.  

Not placing the alluring voice in that bookstore that day since my torch singers of choice then were the likes of Bessie Smith, Dinah Washington, Eartha Kitt, Helen Morgan, or Peggy Lee I asked one of the clerks who the person who was singing that song, the old Cole Porter tune, Night and Day with such sultry, swaying feeling on the PA sound system. She, looking like a smarmy college student, probably a senior ready to graduate and enlighten us, the heathens some way, and therefore wise to the worldly world who didn’t mind the job she was doing while waiting for her small change fame but was not in the habit of answering questions about who or what was being played over the loudspeaker since she had been hired to cater to help patrons find where such-and-such a best seller, academic, or guide book was located, looked at me like I was some rube from the sticks when she said Billie Holiday, of course (and she could have added stupid, which is what that look meant).      

Now that event was memorable for two things, listening to that song and a follow-up one, All of Me (which she did not hit the high white note on in that PA version), almost immediately thereafter got me out of my funk despite the fact that the subjects of the songs were about love, or romance anyway, something I was at odds with just that moment (remember the wife, ex-wife business). The other, as is my wont when I hear, see, read something that grabs my attention big time also was the start of my attempt to get every possible Billie Holiday album or tape (yeah, it’s been a while since that wintry day of which I speak) I could get my hands on. So thereafter any time that I felt blue I would put on a Billie platter or tape and feel better, usually.

In my book, and I am hardly alone on this, Billie Holiday is the torch singer's torch singer. Maybe it is the phrasing on her best songs (like I heard in that first song that got me thinking back to old time cafes and coffeehouses). That well-placed hush, the dying gasp. The hinted fragrant pause which sets the next line up. Maybe it is the unbreakable link between her voice when she is on a roll and the arrangements which with few exceptions make me think whoever else might have been scheduled to cover the song the composer had Billie in the back of his or her mind when they were playing the melody in their heads. Hell, maybe in the end it was the dope that kept her edge up but, by Jesus, she could sing a modern ballad of love (Cole Porter show tunes, Irving Berlin goof stuff, Gershwin boys white boy soul), lose, or both like no other.

And if in the end it was the dope that got her through the day and performance, let me say this- a “normal” nice singer could sing for a hundred years and never get it right, the way Billie could get it right when she was at her best. Dope or no dope. Was she always at her best? Hell no, as a review of all her recorded material makes clear. Some recordings, a compilation, for example, done between 1945 and her death in 1959 for Verve show the highs but also the lows as the voice faltered a little and the dope put the nerves over the edge toward the end.

Here is the funny thing though, no, the strange thing now that I think about the matter, the politically correct strange thing although those who insist on political correctness in everyday civil life should lay off anybody’s harmless cultural preferences and personal choices if you ask me. One time I was touting Billie’s virtues to a group of younger blacks, a mixed group, who I was working with on some education project and the talk came around to music, music that meant something other than background noise, other than a momentarily thrill and I mentioned how I had “met” Billie and the number of times and under what circumstances she had sung my blues away when times were tough. A few of these young blacks, smart kids who were aware of more than hip-hop nation and interested in roots music, old time blues, Skip James on the country end and Howlin’ Wolf on the city end, to an extend that I found somewhat surprising, when they heard me raving about Billie startled me when they wrote her off as an empty-headed junkie, a hophead, and so on. Some of their responses reflected, I think, the influence of the movie version of her life (Lady Sings the Blues with Diana Ross) or some unsympathetic black history ‘uplift,’ “you don’t want to wind up like her so keep your eyes on the prize and stay away from dopers, hustlers, corner boys and the like, or else” views on her life that have written her off as an “addled” doper.

I came back on them though, startled them when I said the following, “if Billie needed a little junk, a little something for the head, a little something to get through the night, to keep her spirits up I would have bought her whatever she needed just to hear her sing that low, sultry and sorrowful thing she did in some long lost edgy New York café that chased my blues away.” Enough said.     

*Saucy and Sexy- The Wicked Old World of James M. Cain-"Mignon"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American novelist James M. Cain

Mignon, James M. Cain, The Dial Press, New York, 1962



The last time I have had a chance to mention the work of James M. Cain in this space was a review of his classic noir films The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, a couple of films that take place in the 1930-40’s in sunny California. As usual when I get ‘high’ on an author I like to run through most of his or her work to see where he or she is going with it. Thus, this review of a lesser work by Cain is something of an introduction to themes that he likes to give a work out in his literary efforts.

And what are those themes? Well, sex, steamy or otherwise, thwarted love, consummated love that will end badly and frankly, greed. Nothing new to add in Mignon, except that Cain does this with a use of language and sense of plot that is well above average for those who try these combinations. With Mignon moreover he addresses his familiar themes but backdates his place to New Orleans and his time to that of the American Civil War period. While some of his plot twist and turns are interesting the overall effect is that this is a very ordinary tale of betrayed love, frustration and financial fiasco that has been done much better when he sticks to California in the 1930-40’s. Yes, that is the real James M. Cain. That is the one that belongs in the second tier of the American literary pantheon. Stay tune for more.

*****Mimi’s Glance - With Richard Thompson’s Vincent Black Lightning, 1952 In Mind

*****Mimi’s Glance - With Richard Thompson’s  Vincent Black Lightning, 1952 In Mind

 

 

Mimi’s Glance, Circa 1963

 

 

 

 

Mimi Murphy knew two things, she needed to keep moving, and she was tired, tired as hell of moving, of the need, of the self-impose need, to keep moving ever since that incident five years before, back in 1958, with her seems like an eternity ago sweet long gone motorcycle boy, her “walking daddy,” Pretty James Preston, although he as long as she had known him never walked a step when his “baby,” his bike was within arm’s length. I knew this information, knew this information practically first hand because the usually polite but loner Mimi Murphy had told me her thoughts and the story that went with it one night after she had finished a tough on the feet night working as a cashier at concession stand the Olde Saco Drive-In Theater out on Route One in Olde Saco, Maine.

That night, early morning really, she had passed me going up to her room with a bottle of high-end Scotch, Haig& Haig, showing its label from a brown bag in her hand while I was going down the stairs in the rooming house we lived in on Water Street in Ocean City, a few miles from Olde Saco. A number of people, including Mimi and me, were camped out there in temporary room quarters after the last of the summer touristas had decamped and headed back to New York, or wherever they came from. The cheap off-season rent and the short stay-until-the-next-summer-crowd-showed-up requiring no lease drew us there. Most residents, mostly young and seemingly unattached to any family or work life kept to themselves, private drinkers or druggies (probably not grass since I never smelled the stuff which I had a nose for from youthful smoke-filled dreams while I was there so coke, opium, speed, maybe horse although I saw no obvious needle marks on arms or cold turkey screams either), a couple of low profile good looking young hustling girls, probably just graduating from amateur status and still not jaded “tarts” as my father used to call them, who didn’t bring their work home, guys maybe just out of the service, or between jobs, and so on. I had seen a couple of guys, young guys with horny looks in their eyes, maybe an idea of making a play, making passes at Mimi but thought nothing of it since they also targeted the hustling girls too.

 

Since I had never bothered Mimi, meaning made a pass at her, she must have sensed that being contemporaries, she was twenty-one then and I twenty-two, that maybe she could unburden her travails on a fellow wayward traveler. That no making a pass business by the way due to the fact that slender, no, skinny and flat-chested Irish red-heads with faraway looks like Mimi with no, no apparent, warm bed desires, that year and in those days not being my type after tumbledown broken-hearted youthful years of trying to coax their Irish Catholic rosary bead novena favors to no avail over in the old Little Dublin neighborhood around the Acre in Olde Saco.

 

Whatever she sensed and she was pretty closed-mouth about it when I asked her later she was right about my ability to hear the woes of another wanderer without hassles, and she did as she invited me up into her room with no come hither look (unlike those pretty hustling girls who made a profession of the “come hither look” and gave me a try-out which after proving futile turned into small courtesy smiles when we passed each other). But she showed no fear, no apparent fear, anyway.

After a couple of drinks, maybe three, of that dreamboat scotch that died easy going down  she loosened up, taking her shoes off before sitting down on the couch across from me. For the interested I had been down on my uppers for a while and was drinking strictly rotgut low-shelf liquor store wines and barroom half empty glass left-overs so that stuff was manna from heaven I can still taste now but that is my story and not Mimi’s so I will move on. Here is the gist of what she had to say as I remember it that night:

She started out giving her facts of life facts like that she had grown up around this Podunk town outside of Boston, Adamsville Junction, and had come from a pretty pious Roman Catholic Irish family that had hopes that she (or one of her three younger sisters, but mainly she) might “have the vocation,” meaning be willing, for the Lord, to prison cloister herself up in some nunnery to ease the family’s way into heaven, or some such idea. And she had bought into the idea from about age seven to about fourteen by being the best student, boy or girl, in catechism class on Sunday, queen of the novenas, and pure stuff like that in church and the smartest girl in, successively, Adamsville South Elementary School, Adamsville Central Junior High, and the sophomore class at Adamsville Junction High School.

As she unwound this part of her story I could see where that part was not all that different from what I had encountered in my French-Canadian (mother, nee LeBlanc) Roman Catholic neighborhood over in the Acre in Olde Saco. I could also see, as she loosened up further with an additional drink, that, although she wasn’t beautiful, certain kinds of guys would find her very attractive and would want to get close to her, if she let them. Just the kind of gal I used to go for before I took the pledge against Irish girls with far-away looks, and maybe red hair too.

 

About age fourteen thought after she had gotten her “friend” (her period for those who may be befuddled by this old time term) and started thinking, thinking hard about boys, or rather seeing that they, some of them, were thinking about her and not novenas and textbooks her either she started to get “the itch.” That itch that is the right of passage for every guy on his way to manhood. And girl on her way to womanhood as it turned out but which in the Irish Roman Catholic Adamsville Junction Murphy family neighborhood was kept as a big, dark secret from boys and girls alike.

Around that time, to the consternation of her nun blessed family, she starting dating Jimmy Clancy, a son of the neighborhood and a guy who was attracted to her because she was, well, pure and smart. She never said whether Jimmy had the itch, or if he did how bad, because what she made a point out of was that being Jimmy’s girl while nice, especially when they would go over Adamsville Beach and do a little off-hand petting and watching the ocean, did not cure her itch, not even close. This went on for a couple of years until she was sixteen and really frustrated, not by Jimmy so much as by the taboos and restrictions that had been placed on her life in her straight-jacket household, school and town. (Welcome to the club, sister, your story is legion) No question she was ready to break out, she just didn’t know how.

Then in late 1957 Pretty James Preston came roaring into town. Pretty James, who despite the name, was a tough motorcycle wild boy, man really about twenty-one, who had all, okay most all, of the girls, good girls and bad, wishing and dreaming, maybe having more than a few restless sweaty nights, about riding on back of that strange motorcycle he rode (a Vincent Black Lightning, a bike made in England which would put any Harley hog to shame from rev number one when I looked for information about the beast later, stolen, not by Pretty James but by third parties, from some English with dough guy and transported to America where he got it somehow, the details were very vague about where he got it, not from her, him) and being Pretty James’ girl. One day, as he passed by on his chopper going full-throttle up Hancock Street, Mimi too got the Pretty James itch.

But see it was not like you could just and throw yourself at Pretty James that was not the way he worked, no way. One girl, one girl from a good family who had her sent away after the episode, tried that and was left about thirty miles away, half-naked, after she thought she had made the right moves and was laughed at by Pretty James as he took off with her expensive blouse and skirt flying off his handle-bars as he left her there unmolested but unhinged. That episode went like wildfire through the town, through the Monday morning before school girls’ lav what happened, or didn’t happen, over the weekend talkfest first of all.

No Pretty James’ way was to take, take what he saw, once he saw something worth taking and that was that. Mimi figured she was no dice. Then one night when she and Jimmy Clancy were sitting by the seawall down at the Seal Rock end of the beach starting to do their little “light petting” routine Pretty James came roaring up on his hellish machine and just sat there in front of the pair, saying nothing. But saying everything. Mimi didn’t say a word to Jimmy but just started walking over to the cycle, straddled her legs over back seat saddle and off they went into the night. Later that night her itch was cured, or rather cured for the first time.

Pouring another drink Mimi sighed poor Pretty James and his needs, no his obsessions with that silly motorcycle, that English devil’s machine, that Vincent Black Lightning that caused him more anguish than she did. And she had given him plenty to think about as well before the end. How she tried to get him to settle down a little, just a little, but what was a sixteen-year old girl, pretty new to the love game, totally new, new but not complaining to the sex game, and his well-worn little tricks to get her in the mood, and make her forget the settle down thing. Until the next time she thought about it and brought it up.

Maybe, if you were from around Adamsville way, or maybe just Boston, you had heard about Pretty James, Pretty James Preston and his daring exploits back in about 1957 and 1958. Those got a lot of play in the newspapers for months before the end. Before that bank job, the one where as Mimi said Pretty James used to say all the time, he “cashed his check.” Yes, the big Granite City National Bank branch in Braintree heist that he tried to pull all by himself, with Mimi as stooge look-out. She had set him up for that heist, or so she thought. No, she didn’t ask him to do it but she got him thinking, thinking about settling down just a little and if that was to happen he needed a big score, not the penny ante gas station and mom and pop variety store robberies that kept them in, as he also used to say, “coffee and cakes” but a big payday and then off to Mexico, maybe down Sonora way, and a buy into the respectable and growing drug trade.

And he almost, almost, got away clean that fatal day, that day when she stood across the street, an extra forty-five in her purse just in case he needed it for a final getaway. She never having handled a gun mush less fired one was scared stiff it might go off in that purse although she Pretty James had her in such a state that she would have emptied the damn thing if it would have done any good. But he never made it out the bank door. Some rum brave security guard tried to uphold the honor of his profession and started shooting nicking Pretty James in the shoulder. Pretty James responded with a few quick blasts and felled the copper. That action though slowed down the escape enough for the real coppers to respond and blow Pretty James away. Dead, DOA, done. Her, with a tear, sweet boy Pretty James.

According to the newspapers a tall, slender red-headed girl about sixteen had been seen across the street from the bank just waiting, waiting according to the witness, nervously. The witness had turned her head when she heard the shots from the bank and when she looked back the red-headed girl was gone. And Mimi was gone, maybe an accessory to felony murder or worst charge hanging over her young head, and long gone before the day was out. She grabbed the first bus out of Braintree headed to Boston where eventually she wound up holed up in a high-end whorehouse doing tricks to make some moving on dough. (She mentioned some funny things about that stay, which was not so bad at the time when she needed dough bad, and about strange things guys, young and old, wanted her to do but I will leave that stuff out here.)

And she had been moving ever since, moving and eternally hate moving. Now, for the past few months, she had been working nights as a cashier in the refreshment stand at Olde Saco Drive-In to get another stake to keep moving. She had been tempted, a couple of times, to do a little moon-lighting in a Portland whorehouse that a woman she had worked with at her last job, Fenner’s Department Store, where she modeled clothes for the rich ladies, had told her about to get a quick stake but she was almost as eternally tired at that prospect as in moving once again.

And so Mimi Murphy, a few drinks of high-shelf scotch to fortify her told her story, told it true I think, mostly. A couple of days later I saw her through my room’s window with a suitcase in hand looking for all the world like someone getting ready to move on, move on to be a loner again after maybe an indiscrete airing of her linen in public. Thinking back on it now I wish, I truly wish, that I had been more into slender, no skinny, red-headed Irish girls with faraway looks that season and maybe she would not have had to keep moving, eternally moving.

 

ARTIST: Richard Thompson
 
TITLE: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
 

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike

A girl could feel special on any such like

Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you

It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952

And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems

Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme

And he pulled her on behind

And down to Box Hill they did ride

/ A - - - D - / - - - - A - / : / E - D A /

/ E - D A - / Bm - D - / - - - - A - - - /

Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand

But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man

I've fought with the law since I was seventeen

I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine

Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22

And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you

And if fate should break my stride

Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae

For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery

Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside

Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside

When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left

He was running out of road, he was running out of breath

But he smiled to see her cry

And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world

Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl

Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do

They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52

He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys

He said I've got no further use for these

I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome

Swooping down from heaven to carry me home

And he gave her one last kiss and died

As The Obama Regime Ends-Mister President Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

As The Obama Regime Ends-Mister President Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!