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
The
Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair-
With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind
By Lenny Lancaster
Funny
how trends get started, how one person, or a few start something and it seems
like the whole world follows, or the part of the world that hears about the new
dispensation anyway, the part you want to connect with. That new dispensation
for my generation began back in the late 1950s, early 1960s so maybe it was
when older guys started to lock-step in gray flannel suits (Mad Men, retro-cool
today, okay) and before Jack and Bobby Kennedy put the whammy on the fashion
and broke many a haberdasher’s heart topped off by a soft felt hat. It would be
deep into the 1960s before open-necks and colors other than white for shirts
worked in but by then a lot of us were strictly denims and flannel shirts or
some such non-suit combination. Maybe it was when one kid goofing off threw a
hard plastic circle thing around his or her waist and every kid from Portland,
Maine to Portland, Oregon had to have one, to be tossed aside in some dank
corner of the garage after a few weeks when everybody got into yo-yos or Davey
Crockett coonskin caps. Or maybe, and this might be closer to the herd instinct
truth, it was after Elvis exploded onto the scene and every guy from twelve to
two hundred in the world had to, whether they looked right with it or not, wear
their sideburns just a little longer, even if they were kind of wispy and girls
laughed at you for trying to out-king the “king” who they were waiting for not
you.
But
maybe it was, and this is a truth which I can testify to, noting the photograph
above, when some girls, probably college girls (now called young women but then
still girls no matter how old except mothers or grandmothers, go figure) having
seen Joan Baez on the cover of Time (or perhaps her sister Mimi on some
Mimi and Richard Farina folk album cover)got out the ironing board at home or
in her dorm and tried to iron their own hair whatever condition it was in,
curly, twisty, flippy, whatever don’t hold me to hairstyles to long and
straight strands. (Surely as strong as the folk minute was just then say 1962,
63, 64, they did not see the photo of Joan on some grainy Arise and Sing
folk magazine cover the folk scene was too young and small then to cause such a
sea-change).
Looking
at that photograph now, culled from a calendar put out by the New England Folk
Archive Society, made me think back to the time when I believe that I would not
go out with a girl (young woman, okay) if she did not have the appropriate
“hair,” in other words no bee-hive or flip thing that was the high school rage
among the not folk set, actually the social butterfly, cheerleader, motorcycle
mama cliques. Which may now explain why I had so few dates in high school and
none from Carver High (located about thirty miles south of Boston). But no
question you could almost smell the singed hair at times, and every guy I knew
liked the style, liked the style if they liked Joan Baez, maybe had some dreamy
desire, and that was that.
Then one night many weeks later after they had had a couple of dates she
startled him when he picked her up at her dorm at Boston University to go over
the Club Blue in the Square to see Dave Van Ronk hold forth in his folk
historian gravelly-voiced way. She met Sam at the door with the mandatory
long-stranded hair which frankly made her face even longer. When Sam asked her
why the change Julie declared that she could not possibly go to Harvard Square
looking like somebody from some suburban high school not after seeing her idol
Joan Baez (and later Judy Collins too) with that great long hair which seemed
very exotic, very Spanish.
Of course he compounded his troubles by making the serious mistake of
asking if she had it done at the beauty parlor or something and she looked at
him with burning hate eyes since no self-respecting folkie college girl would
go to such a place where her mother would go, So she joined the crowd, Sam got
used to it and after a while she did begin to look like a folkie girl (and
started wearing the inevitable peasant blouses instead of those cashmere
sweaters or starched shirt things she used to wear).
By the way let’s be clear on that Julie thing with Sam back the early 1960s.
She and Sam went “dutch treat” to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue. Sam and
Julie were thus by definition not on a heavy date, neither had been intrigued
by the other enough to be more than very good friends after the first few dates
but folk music was their bond. Despite persistent Julie BU dorm roommate rumors
what with Sam hanging around all the time listening to her albums on the record
player they had never been lovers. A few years later she mentioned that Club Blue
night to Sam as they waited to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie with me and my
companion, Laura Talbot, to see if he remembered Van Ronk’s performance and
while he thought he remembered he was not sure.
He asked Julie, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair
and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” Julie
had replied yes and that she too had never forgotten that song and how the
house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone
was performing had been dead silent once he started singing.
As
for the long-ironed haired women in the photograph their work in that folk
minute and later speaks for itself. Joan Baez worked the Bob Dylan anointed
“king and queen” of the folkies routine for a while for the time the folk
minute lasted. Mimi (now passed on) teamed up with her husband, Richard Farina,
who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s, to write and
sing some of the most haunting ballads of those new folk time (think Birmingham
Sunday). Julie Collins, now coiffured like that mother Julie was beauty
parlor running away from and that is okay, still produces beautiful sounds on
her concert tours. But everyone should remember, every woman from that time
anyway, should remember that burnt hair, and other sorrows, and know exactly
who to blame. Yeah, we have the
photo.
As We Enter The 100th
Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I- Francis Tolliver’s “Christmas In
The Trenches”-A Comment
My name is Francis Tolliver. I come from Liverpool Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here I fought for King and country I love dear It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung The frozen field of France were still, no Christmas song was sung Our families back in England were toasting us that day Their brave and glorious lads so far away I was lyin' with my mess-mates on the cold and rocky ground When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound Says I "Now listen up me boys", each soldier strained to hear As one young German voice sang out so clear "He's singin' bloddy well you know", my partner says to me Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony The cannons rested silent. The gas cloud rolled no more As Christmas brought us respite from the war As soon as they were finished a reverent pause was spent 'God rest ye merry, gentlemen' struck up some lads from Kent The next they sang was 'Stille Nacht". "Tis 'Silent Night'" says I And in two toungues one song filled up that sky "There's someone commin' towards us" the front-line sentry cried All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright As he bravely strode, unarmed, into the night Then one by one on either side walked into no-mans-land With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand We shared some secret brandy and wished each other well And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell We traded chocolates, cigarettes and photgraphs from home These sons and fathers far away from families of their own Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin This curious and unlikely band of men Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night "whose family have I fixed within my sights?" It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war Had been crumbled and were gone for ever more My name is Francis Tolliver. In Liverpool I dwell Each Christmas come since World War One I've learned it's lessons well That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame And on each end of the rifle we're the same
-- John McCutcheon "Christmas in the trenches
By Alex Radley
Jim Anderson’s great-grandfather
whom Jim just barely knew before he passed away was very proud of his military
service in World War I with what he always called Pershing’s American
Expeditionary Force. And for a long time, certainly as long as he lived Jim was
on his knee proud too. Jim’s grandfather in his turn was proud, quietly proud
not speaking much about his experiences in the Pacific war part of World War II
as was common among that generation according to Jim’s father who told him very
little when he questioned his father about the medals that were tucked in a
family chest covered in a heavy clothe jacket. Jim’s father in his turn, also
quiet about the specific of his service in Vietnam, would say that overall
whatever the “damn,” his word when he mentioned that war, purpose of fighting
that war was which still eluded him that he was proud of his service. But Jim remembered
distinctly nights when he would hear his father being consoled by his mother
when he woke up screaming with what must have been nightmares although like Jim
said not much was spoken about the matter. And Jim for a long time, having no
reason to doubt it, held all of this family pride in his person. As much as a
person who did not serve could. Then his generation’s war, the Iraq war of 2003
came and although Jim had no inclination to join up to fight what his grandfather
called “the heathens” he did have to think, or better rethink some stuff about
war, and guts and glory, and about the horrible waste.
All of this was aided by
his then girlfriend, Susan, whom he called Susan of the Flowers since she had
that retro-something out of the 1960s hippie look, and who was now his wife who
was fervently against the Iraq war build-up and dragged him along with her when they were students at
Michigan. Peace, really pacifism, came easily to Susan since she had been
brought up a Friend, a Quaker, although she was “lapsed” if you can be in such
a society unlike Jim’s own Catholicism where he would make people laugh (not
his parents though) by saying being lapsed was almost a sign of grace. Jim remembered
the first time that she gave him a copy of Christmas
in the Trenches he was shocked, great-grandfather- derived shocked that
enemy soldiers, close quarter combatants would call their own short haul “truce” in
that World War I that he had been so proud of. That got Jim looking into the
matter more closely especially when after all the protesting they had done (along
with millions of others throughout the world) in the build-up to the Iraq War
Bush II went ahead and blew the place apart for what turned out to be no reason
at all. “Fake information” in today’s fevered newsprint world.
World War I was an
important watershed in the history of war because with the strategy of trench
warfare on the ground killing would be done for the first time on an industrial
scale (although for its day, especially at Cold Harbor, the American Civil War
would give a gruesome preview of what was to come when things got out of hand.
What had started out as something of a “jolly little show” quickly over by
Christmas 1914 assumed by all sides including organizations like the
international social democracy which had clamored for a decade or more before
the guns started firing but who bowed to the nationalist fervor of their
respective countries when the first shots rang out. And so Christmas in the
trenches, several Christmases as it turned out. So that little soldierly truce story
which Susan would keep bringing to his
attention each year when he needed an example of a small break from the madness
down at the base, down where the guys fought the “damn” thing (this “damn” Jim’s).
After having completely
failed to stop the Iraq war in 2003 Jim started what has now become a long if
sporadic investigation of what could have made a difference, what could have
stopped the madness in its tracks and that would always bring him back to those
soldiers down at the base, down there in the killing fields of France. Not at
the base of the Iraq war since there was very little dissension at the time in
the ranks of the all-volunteer army and National Guard units sent to do the
dirty work, the “walk-over.” Not the small action of the truce in in Christmas
in the trenches but a little later, toward 1917 when all hell broke loose in
Russia. A Russia whose armies were melting away on the Eastern Front. Melting
away, and who knows to what extent before the February Revolution exposed the
house of cards, with agitation from the Bolsheviks who Jim had believed in good
family anti-communist from believed were the source of all evil in the world to
hear his grandfather speak on the subject.
Ideology aside, as hard
as that is to dismiss in this kind of situation, the Bolsheviks had a hard and
fast policy that their youth essentially would not volunteer to go in the Czar’s
peasant-build Army but if drafted (dragooned really) they were to go and see
what they could do in their units when and if a chance came up to break the
stalemate. This was a very different policy from the individual acts of resistance,
refusal to be drafted, that were epidemic during his father’s war which
included many friends of Susan’s parents who were not Quakers but didn’t want
to fight in an immoral war. Jim very carefully approached his father about what
he thought of those draft resisters. His answer startled Jim when he said for a
long time he held a very big grudge against the draft dodgers he called them
but more recently he believed that they may have been right after all. Told Jim
a story about a couple of guys in his unit in Pleiku who wanted the unit to
refuse to go out on some half-baked mission. They quickly wound up in Long Binh
Jail, LBJ, as it was called and the unit went out anyway and sustained heavy
loses, got him wounded the first time. His father didn’t know what happened to
those guys except he hoped they survived but even with them he said they
probably were right. Maybe if a couple more guys had stuck with them something could
have happened. Yes, Jim thought when he was thinking about it later, but that
was music for some future. For now we have that little dust-up one Francis
Tolliver Christmas.
An Encore-Frank Jackman’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters of War In Mind
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
Jack Callahan’s old friend from Sloan High School in Carver down in Southeastern Massachusetts Zack James (Zack short for Zachary not as is the fashion today to just name a baby Zack and be done with it) is an amateur writer and has been at it since he got out of high school. Found out that maybe by osmosis, something like that, the stuff Miss Enos taught him junior and senior years about literature and her favorite writers Hemingway, Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker to name a few, that she would entice the English class with stuck with him with through college where although he majored in Political Science he was in thrall to the English literature courses that he snuck in to his schedule. Snuck in although Zack knew practically speaking he had a snowball’s chance in hell, an expression he had learned from Hemingway he thought,of making a career out of the literary life as a profession. Would more likely wind up driving a cab through dangerous midnight sections of town occasionally getting mugged for his night’s work to satisfy the muse. A hard-shell working-class boy, a son of the bogs, the cranberry bogs that made the town famous, in the up and coming 1960s when colleges became a realistic possibility for a whole swath of previously neglected youth would not throw away whatever chance he had in order to get hit on the noggin for that beautiful muse. Here's the funny part though that high and mighty hotshot Political Science major winding up producing about the same practical results as the literary life though since he wound up spending several years doing slave labor before he hit bottom and worked his way up again. But that was later. The writing bug stuck with him, savior stuck with him, through his tour of duty during the Vietnam War, and savior stayed with him through those tough years when he couldn’t quite get himself back to the “real” world after ‘Nam and let drugs and alcohol rule his life so that he wound up for some time as a “brother under the bridge” as Bruce Springsteen later put the situation in a song that he played continuously at times after he first heard it with its beginning line “Saigon, long gone…." Stuck with him after he recovered and started building up his sports supplies business, stuck with him through three happy/sad/savage/acrimonious “no go” marriages and a parcel of kids and child support.And was still sticking with him now that he had time to stretch out and write longer pieces, and beat away on the word processor a few million words on this and that.
Amateur writer by the way if you asked him (although probably it is wiser to just assume he did not earn his living in the prints and move on unless you want an hour tirade about the differences and not all accruing to the professionals either) meaning nothing more than that he liked to write and that writing was not his profession, that he did not depend on the pen for his livelihood(or rather more correctly these days not the pen but the word processor). That livelihood business was taken up running a small sports apparel store in a mall not far from Lexington (the Lexington of American revolutionary battles to give the correct town and state) where he now lived. Although he was not a professional writer his interest was such that he liked these days with Jimmy Shore, the famous ex-runner running the day to day operations of the store, to perform some of his written work in public at various “open mic” writing (and poetry) jams that have sprouted up in his area.
This “open mic” business was a familiar concept to Jack from the days back in the 1960s when he would go to such events in the coffeehouses around Harvard Square and Beacon Hill to hear amateur folk-singers perfect their acts and try to be recognized as the new voice of their generation, or something like that. For “no singing voice, no musical ear” Jack those were basically cheap date nights if the girl he was with was into folk music. The way most of the "open mics" worked, although they probably called them talent searches then, was each performer would sign up to do one, two, maybe three songs depending on how long the list of those wishing to perform happened to be (the places where each performer kicked in a couple of bucks in order to play usually had shorter lists). These singers usually performed in the period in front of the night’s feature who very well might have been somebody who a few weeks before had been noticed by the owner during a previous "open mic" and asked to do a set of six to sixteen songs depending on the night and the length of the list of players in front of him or her. The featured performer played, unlike the "open mic" people, for the “basket” (maybe a hat) passed around the crowd in the audience and that was the night’s “pay.” A tough racket for those starting out like all such endeavors. The attrition rate was pretty high after the folk minute died down with arrival of other genre like folk rock, heavy rock, and acid rock although you still see a few old folkies around the Square or playing the separate “open mic” folk circuit that also has run through church coffeehouses just like these writing jams.
Jack was not surprised then when Zack told him he would like him to come to hear him perform one of his works at the monthly third Thursday “open mic” at the Congregational Church in Arlington the next town over from Lexington. Zack told Jack that that night he was going to perform something he had written and thought on about Frank Jackman, about what had happened to Frank when he was in the Army during Vietnam War times.
Jack knew almost automatically what Zack was going to do, he would somehow use Bob Dylan’s Masters of War lyrics as part of his presentation. Jack and Zack ( one of many Vietnam veterans who got “religion” on the anti-war issue while he in the Army and became a fervent anti-war guy after that experience despite his personal problems) had met Frank in 1971 when they were doing some anti-war work among the soldiers at Fort Devens out in Ayer about forty miles west of Boston. Frank had gotten out of the Army several months before and since he was from Nashua in the southern part of New Hampshire not far from Devens and had heard about the G.I. coffeehouse, The Morning Report, where Jack and Zack were working as volunteers he had decided to volunteer to help out as well. Now Frank was a quiet guy, quieter than Jack and Zack anyway, but one night he had told his Army story to a small group of volunteers gathered in the main room of the coffeehouse as they were planning to distribute Daniel Ellsberg’s sensational whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various spots around the base (including as it turned out inside the fort itself with one copy landing on the commanding general’s desk for good measure). He wanted to tell this story since he wanted to explain why he would not be able to go with them if they went inside the gates at Fort Devens.
Jack knew Zack was going to tell Frank’s story so he told Frank he would be there since he had not heard the song or Frank’s story in a long while and had forgotten parts of it. Moreover Zack wanted Jack there for moral support since this night other than the recitation of the lyrics he was going to speak off the cuff rather than his usual reading from some prepared paper.
That night Zack was already in the hall talking to the organizer, Eli Walsh, you may have heard of him since he has written some searing poems about his time in three tours Iraq. Jack felt right at home in this basement section of the church and he probably could have walked around blind-folded since the writing jams were on almost exactly the same model as the old folkie “open mics.” A table as you entered to pay your admission this night three dollars (although the tradition is that no one is turned away for lack of funds) with a kindly woman asking if you intended to perform and direct you to the sign-up sheet if so. Another smaller table with various cookies, snacks, soda, water and glasses for those who wished to have such goodies, and who were asked to leave a donation in the jar on that table if possible. The set-up in the hall this night included a small stage where the performers would present their material slightly above the audience. On the stage a lectern for those who wished to use that for physical support or to read their work from and the ubiquitous simple battery-powered sound system complete with microphone. For the audience a bevy of chairs, mostly mismatched, mostly having seen plenty of use, and mostly uncomfortable. After paying his admission fee he went over to Zack to let him know he was in the audience. Zack told him he was number seven on the list so not to wander too far once the session had begun.
This is the way Zack told the story and why Jack knew there would be some reference to Bob Dylan’s Masters of War that night:
Hi everybody my name is Zack James and I am glad that you all came out this cold night to hear Preston Borden present his moving war poetry and the rest of us to reflect on the main subject of this month’s writing jam-the endless wars that the American government under whatever regime of late has dragged us into, us kicking and screaming to little avail. I want to thank Eli as always for setting this event up every month and for his own thoughtful war poetry. [Some polite applause.] But enough for thanks and all that because tonight I want to recite a poem, well, not really a poem, but lyrics to a song, to a Bob Dylan song, Masters of War, so it might very well be considered a poem in some sense.
You know sometimes, a lot of times, a song, lyrics, a poem for that matter bring back certain associations. You know some song you heard on the radio when you went on your first date, your first dance, your first kiss, stuff like that which is forever etched in your memory and evokes that moment every time you hear it thereafter. Now how this Dylan song came back to me recently is a story in itself.
You remember Eli back in October when we went up to Maine to help the Maine Veterans for Peace on their yearly peace walk that I ran into Susan Rich, the Quaker gal we met up in Freeport who walked with us that day to Portland. [Eli shouted out “yes.”] I had not seen Susan in about forty years before that day, hadn’t seen her since the times we had worked together building up support for anti-war G.I.s out at the Morning Report coffeehouse in Ayer outside Fort Devens up on Route 2 about thirty miles from here. That’s when we met Frank Jackman who is the real subject of my presentation tonight since he is the one who I think about when I think about that song, think about his story and how that song relates to it.
Funny as many Dylan songs as I knew Masters of War, written by Dylan in 1963 I had never heard until 1971. Never heard the lyrics until I met Frank out at Fort Devens where after I was discharged from the Army that year I went to do some volunteer anti-war G.I. work at the coffeehouse outside the base in Army town Ayer. Frank too was a volunteer, had heard about the place somehow I forget how, who had grown up in Nashua up in southern New Hampshire and after he was discharged from the Army down at Fort Dix in New Jersey came to volunteer just like me and my old friend Jack Callahan who is sitting in the audience tonight. Now Frank was a quiet guy didn’t talk much about his military service but he made the anti-war soldiers who hung out there at night and on weekends feel at ease. One night thought he felt some urge to tell his story, tell why he thought it was unwise for him to participate in an anti-war action we were planning around the base. We were going to pass out copies of Daniel Ellsberg’s explosive whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various location around the fort and as it turned out on the base. The reason that Frank had balked at the prospect of going into the fort was that as part of his discharge paperwork was attached a statement that he was never to go on a military installation again. We all were startled by that remark, right Jack? [Jack nods agreement.]
And that night the heroic, our kind of heroic, Frank Jackman told us about the hows and whys of his Army experience. Frank had been drafted like a ton of guys back then, like me, and had allowed himself to be drafted in 1968 at the age of nineteen not being vociferously anti-war and not being aware then of the option of not taking the subsequent induction. After about three week down at Fort Dix, the main basic training facility for trainees coming from the Northeast then, he knew two things-he had made a serious mistake by allowing himself to be drafted and come hell or high water he was not going to fight against people he had no quarrel with in Vietnam. Of course the rigors of basic training and being away from home, away from anybody who could help him do he knew not what then kept him quiet and just waiting. Once basic was over and he got his Advanced Infantry Training assignment also at Fort Dix which was to be an infantryman at a time when old Uncle Sam only wanted infantrymen in the rice paddles and jungles of Vietnam things came to a head.
After a few weeks in AIT he got a three day weekend pass which allowed him to go legally off the base and he used that time to come up to Boston, or really Cambridge because what he was looking for was help to file an conscientious objector application and he knew the Quakers were historically the ones who would know about going about that process. That is ironically where Susan Rich comes in again, although indirectly this time, since Frank went to the Meeting House on Brattle Street where they were doing draft and G.I. resistance counseling and Susan was a member of that Meeting although she had never met him at that time. He was advised by one of the Quaker counselors that he could submit a C.O. application in the military, which he had previously not been sure was possible since nobody told anybody anything about that in the military, when he got back to Fort Dix but just then, although they were better later, the odds were stacked against him since he had already accepted induction. So he went back, put in his application, took a lot of crap from the lifers and officers in his company after that and little support, mainly indifference, from his fellow trainees. He still had to go through the training, the infantry training though and although he had taken M-16 rifle training in basic he almost balked at continuing to fire weapons especially when it came to machine guns. He didn’t balk but in the end that was not a big deal since fairly shortly after that his C.O. application was rejected although almost all those who interviewed him in the process though he was “sincere” in his beliefs. That point becomes important later.
Frank, although he knew his chances of being discharged as a C.O. were slim since he had based his application on his Catholic upbringing and more general moral and ethical grounds. The Catholic Church which unlike Quakers and Mennonites and the like who were absolutely against war held to a just war theory, Vietnam being mainly a just war in the Catholic hierarchy’s opinion. But Frank was sincere, more importantly, he was determined to not go to war despite his hawkish family and his hometown friends’, some who had already served, served in Vietnam too, scorn and lack of support. So he went back up to Cambridge on another three day pass to get some advice, which he actually didn’t take in the end or rather only partially took up which had been to get a lawyer they would recommend and fight the C.O. denial in Federal court even though that was also still a long shot then.
Frank checked with the lawyer alright, Steve Brady, who had been radicalized by the war and was offering his services on a sliding scale basis to G.I.s since he also had the added virtue of having been in the JAG in the military and so knew some of the ropes of the military legal system, and legal action was taken but Frank was one of those old time avenging Jehovah types like John Brown or one of those guys and despite being a Catholic rather than a high holy Protestant which is the usual denomination for avenging angels decided to actively resist the military. And did it in a fairly simple way when you think about it. One Monday morning when the whole of AIT was on the parade field for their weekly morning report ceremony Frank came out of his barracks with his civilian clothes on and carrying a handmade sign which read “Bring the Troops Home Now!” That sign was simply but his life got a lot more complicated after that. In the immediate sense that meant he was pulled down on the ground by two lifer sergeants and brought to the Provost Marshal’s office since they were not sure that some dippy-hippie from near-by New York City might have been pulling a stunt. When they found out that he was a soldier they threw him immediately into solitary in the stockade.
For his offenses Frank was given a special court-martial which meant he faced six month maximum sentence which a panel of officers at his court-martial ultimately sentenced him to after a seven day trial which Steve Brady did his best to try to make into an anti-war platform but given the limitation of courts for such actions was only partially successful. After that six months was up minus some good time Frank was assigned to a special dead-beat unit waiting further action either by the military or in the federal district court in New Jersey. Still in high Jehovah form the next Monday morning after he was released he went out to that same parade field in civilian clothes carrying another homemade sign “Bring The Troops Home Now!” and he was again manhandled by another pair of lifer sergeants and this time thrown directly into solitary in the stockade since they knew who they were dealing with by then. And again he was given a special court-martial and duly sentenced by another panel of military officers to the six months maximum.
Frank admitted at that point he was in a little despair at the notion that he might have to keep doing the same action over and over again for eternity. Well he wound up serving almost all of that second six month sentence but then he got a break. That is where listening to the Quakers a little to get legal advice did help. See what Steve Brady, like I said an ex-World War II Army JAG officer turned anti-war activist lawyer, did was take the rejection of his C.O. application to Federal District Court in New Jersey on a writ of habeas corpus arguing that since all Army interviewers agreed Frank was “sincere” that it had been arbitrary and capricious of the Army to turn down his application. And given that the United States Supreme Court and some lower court decisions had by then expanded who could be considered a C.O. beyond the historically recognized groupings and creeds the cranky judge in the lower court case agreed and granted that writ of habeas corpus. Frank was let out with an honorable discharge, ironically therefore entitled to all veteran’s benefits but with the stipulation that he never go onto a military base again under penalty of arrest and trial. Whether that could be enforced as a matter of course he said he did not want to test since he was hardily sick of military bases in any case.
So where does Bob Dylan’s Masters of War come into the picture. Well as you know, or should know every prisoner, every convicted prisoner, has the right to make a statement in his or her defense during the trial or at the sentencing phase. Frank at both his court-martials rose up and recited Bob Dylan’s Masters of War for the record. So for all eternity, or a while anyway, in some secret recess of the Army archives (and of the federal courts too) there is that defiant statement of a real hero of the Vietnam War. Nice right?
Here is what had those bloated military officers on Frank’s court-martial board seeing red and ready to swing him from the highest gallow, yeah, swing him high.
Masters Of War-Bob Dylan
Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin’ But build to destroy You play with my world Like it’s your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion As young people’s blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud
You’ve thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain’t worth the blood That runs in your veins
How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I’m young You might say I’m unlearned But there’s one thing I know Though I’m younger than you Even Jesus would never Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die And your death’ll come soon I will follow your casket In the pale afternoon And I’ll watch while you’re lowered Down to your deathbed And I’ll stand o’er your grave ’Til I’m sure that you’re dead
To Sin By Silence When We Should Protest Makes Cowards Out Of Men (Women Too)!-Build The Resistance!
By Political Commentator Frank Jackman
To Sin By Silence When We Should Protest Makes Cowards Out Of Men … (and I added women too)-lines from “Protest” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Usually when I want to grab a line or two from some poem it would more likely by from say Bertolt Brecht’s “To Those Born After,” Langston Hughes’ “Homage To John Brown” or Claude McKay’s “Let’s Us Die Like Men (and I would add women here again) and not some relatively obscure American poet but when the point is made so succinctly I could not resist using the damn thing as it disturbed my sleep one night
Ella Wheeler Wilcox whatever her vices or virtues as an American working the ways of the late 19th and early 20th century had it exactly right-had a mantra that we need to live by these dark days on the American frontier (the frontier not Harvard Professor Turner’s old idea about the closing of the frontier once you hit the Pacific Ocean with all its consequences for a restless people ever since but the outer edge of civil society). We must continue to resist the Trump government with whatever resources we have. And whatever hubris we can gather in to keep us from the storm that has gathered right on our doorsteps.
Most of us didn’t want this fight, the older ones of us thinking that maybe we could pass on under conditions of an armed truce with the imperial government. But then the cold civil war descended on us and we had to pick sides, those of us who see the necessity of picking sides when bans are in place, when walls are being built and when the rich, no, hell no, the super-rich have literally stepped up to besieged every social program that our people need to face the next day. And act. Act to build the resistance which these days looks like it will need to be on the order of the French Resistance in World War II.
Do you really want to bend your head down when the deal, the hell train coming, goes down and your kids, if you have kids, your grandkids if you have grandkids, or just your own conscience asks you what did you when it was time to speak up. Remember Ella had it right, right as rain.
Here is Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After" if you need further reason-
I
To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
II
You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:
Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.
Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.
And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.
An Encore -He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Jack Dawson was not sure when he had heard that the old long-bearded son of a bitch anarchist hell of a songwriter, hell of a story-teller Bruce “Utah” Phillips caught the westbound freight, caught that freight around 2007 he found out later a couple of years after he too had come off the bum this time from wife problems, divorce wife problems (that "westbound freight" by the way an expression from the hobo road to signify that a fellow traveler hobo, tramp, bum it did not matter then the distinctions that had seemed so important in the little class differences department when they were alive had passed on, had had his fill of train smoke and dreams and was readyto face whatever there was to face up in hobo heaven, no, the big rock candy mountain that some old geezer had written on some hard ass night when dreams were all he had to keep him company). That “Utah” moniker not taken by happenstance since Phillips struggled through the wilds of Utah on his long journey, played with a group called the Utah Valley boys, put up with, got through a million pounds of Mormon craziness and, frankly, wrote an extraordinary number of songs in his career by etching through the lore as he found it from all kinds of Mormon sources, including some of the dark pages, the ranch war stuff, the water stuff not the polygamy stuff which was nobody's business except the parties involved of those latter day saints.
For those who do not know the language of the road, not the young and carefree road taken for a couple of months during summer vacation or even a Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac-type more serious expedition under the influence of On The Road (what other travelogue of sorts would get the blood flowing to head out into the vast American Western night) and then back to the grind but the serious hobo “jungle” road like Jack Dawson had been on for several years before he sobered up after he came back from ‘Nam, came back all twisted and turned when he got discharged from the Army back in 1971 and could not adjust to the “real world” of his Carver upbringing in the East and had wound up drifting, drifting out to the West, hitting California and when that didn’t work out sort of ambled back east on the slow freight route through Utah taking the westbound freight meant for him originally passing to the great beyond, passing to a better place, passing to hard rock candy mountain in some versions here on earth before Black River Shorty clued him in.
Of course everybody thinks that if you wind up in Utah the whole thing is Mormon, and a lot of it is, no question, but when Jack hit Salt Lake City he had run into a guy singing in a park. A guy singing folk music stuff, labor songs, travelling blues stuff, the staple of the genre, that he had remembered that Sam Lowell from Carver High, from the same class year as him, had been crazy for back in the days when he would take his date and Jack and his date over to Harvard Square and they would listen to guys like that guy in the park singing in coffeehouses. Jack had not been crazy about the music then and some of the stuff the guy was singing seemed odd now too, still made him grind his teeth. but back then it either amounted to a cheap date, or the girl actually liked the stuff and so he went along with it.
So Jack, nothing better to do, sat in front of guy and listened. Listened more intently when the guy, who turned out to be Utah (who was using the moniker “Pirate Angel” then, as Jack was using "Daddy Two Cents" reflecting his financial condition or close to it, monikers a good thing on the road just in case the law, bill-collectors or ex-wives were trying to reach you and you did not want to reached), told the few bums, tramps and hoboes who were the natural residents of the park that if they wanted to get sober, if they wanted to turn things around a little that they were welcome, no questions asked, at the Joe Hill House. (No questions asked was right but everybody was expected to at least not tear the place up, which some nevertheless tried to do.) That Joe Hill whom the sobering up house was named after by the way was an old time immigrant anarchist who did something to rile the Latter Day Saints up because they threw he before a firing squad with no questions asked. Joe got the last line though, got it for eternity-“Don’t mourn (his death), organize!”
Jack, not knowing anybody, not being sober much, and maybe just a tad nostalgic for the old days when hearing bits of folk music was the least of his worries, went up to Utah and said he would appreciate the stay. And that was that. Although not quite “that was that” since Jack knew nothing about the guys who ran the place, didn’t know who Joe Hill was until later (although he suspected after he found out that Joe Hill had been a IWW organizer [Wobblie, Industrial Worker of the World] framed and executed in that very state of Utah that his old friend the late Peter Paul Markin who lived to have that kind of information in his head would have known. See this Joe Hill House unlike the Sallies (Salvation Army) where he would hustle a few days of peace was run by this Catholic Worker guy, Ammon Hennessey, who Utah told Jack had both sobered him up and made him some kind of anarchist although Jack was fuzzy on what that was all about. So Jack for about the tenth time tried to sober up, liquor sober up this time out in the great desert (later it would be drugs, mainly cocaine which almost ripped his nose off he was so into it that he needed sobering up from). And it took, took for a while.
Whatever had been eating at Jack kept fighting a battle inside of him and after a few months he was back on the bottle. But during that time at the Joe Hill House he got close to Utah, as close as he had gotten to anybody since ‘Nam, since his friendship with Jeff Crawford from up in Podunk Maine who saved his ass, and that of a couple of other guys in a nasty fire-fight when Charley (G.I. slang for the Viet Cong originally said in contempt but as the war dragged on in half-hearted admiration) decided he did indeed own the night in his own country. Got as close as he had to his corner boys like Sam Lowell from hometown Carver. Learned a lot about the lure of the road, of drink and drugs, of tough times (Utah had been in Korea) and he had felt bad after he fell off the wagon. But that was the way it was.
That was the last time that Jack saw Utah in person although he would keep up with his career as it moved along. Bought some records, later tapes, still later CDs just to help the brother out. In the age of the Internet he would sent occasional messages and Utah would reply. Then he heard Utah had taken very ill, heart trouble like he said long ago in the blaze of some midnight fire, would finally get the best of him. And then somewhat belatedly Jack found that Utah had passed on. The guy of all the guys he knew on the troubled hobo “jungle” road who knew what “starlight on the rails” meant to the wanderers he sang for had cashed his ticket. RIP, brother.