As The 150th Anniversary Commemoration Of The American Civil War Passes–In Honor Of The Abraham Lincoln-Led Union Side- The Hard Years Of War-A Sketch-Wilhelm Sorge’s War

As The 150th Anniversary Commemoration Of The American Civil War Passes–In Honor Of The Abraham Lincoln-Led Union Side- The Hard Years Of War-A Sketch-Wilhelm Sorge’s War

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I would not expect any average American citizen today to be familiar with the positions of the communist intellectuals and international working-class party organizers (First International) Karl Mark and Friedrich Engels on the events of the American Civil War. There is only so much one can expect of people to know off the top of their heads about what for several generations now has been ancient history.  I am, however, always amazed when I run into some younger leftists and socialists, or even older radicals who may have not read much Marx and Engels, and find that they are surprised, very surprised to see that Marx and Engels were avid partisans of the Abraham Lincoln-led Union side in the American Civil War. I, in the past, have placed a number of the Marx-Engels newspaper articles from the period in this space to show the avidity of their interest and partisanship in order to refresh some memories and enlighten others. As is my wont I like to supplement such efforts with little fictional sketches to illustrate points that I try to make and do so below with my take on a Union soldier from Boston, a rank and file soldier, Wilhelm Sorge.  

Since Marx and Engels have always been identified with a strong anti-capitalist bias for the unknowing it may seem counter-intuitive that the two men would have such a positive position on events that had as one of its outcomes an expanding unified American capitalist state. A unified capitalist state which ultimately led the vanguard political and military actions against the followers of Marx and Engels in the 20^th century in such places as Russia, China, Cuba and Vietnam. The pair were however driven in their views on revolutionary politics by a theory of historical materialism which placed support of any particular actions in the context of whether they drove the class struggle toward human emancipation forward. So while the task of a unified capitalist state was supportable alone on historical grounds in the United States of the 1860s (as was their qualified support for German unification later in the decade) the key to their support was the overthrow of the more backward slave labor system in one part of the country (aided by those who thrived on the results of that system like the Cotton Whigs in the North) in order to allow the new then progressive capitalist system to thrive.       

In the age of advanced imperialist society today, of which the United States is currently the prime example, and villain, we find that we are, unlike Marx and Engels, almost always negative about capitalism’s role in world politics. And we are always harping on the need to overthrow the system in order to bring forth a new socialist reconstruction of society. Thus one could be excused for forgetting that at earlier points in history capitalism played a progressive role. A role that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Marxists, if not applauded, then at least understood represented human progress. Of course, one does not expect everyone to be a historical materialist and therefore know that in the Marxist scheme of things both the struggle to bring America under a unitary state that would create a national capitalist market by virtue of a Union victory and the historically more important struggle to abolish slavery that turned out to be a necessary outcome of that Union struggle were progressive in the eyes of our forebears, and our eyes too.

Furthermore few know about the fact that the small number of Marxist supporters in the United States during that Civil period, and the greater German immigrant communities here that where spawned when radicals were force to flee Europe with the failure of the German revolutions of 1848 were mostly fervent supporters of the Union side in the conflict. Some of them called the “Red Republicans” and “Red 48ers” formed an early experienced military cadre in the then fledgling Union armies. Below is a short sketch drawn on the effect that these hardened foreign –born abolitionists had on some of the raw recruits who showed up in their regiments and brigades during those hard four years of fighting, the last year of which we are commemorating this month.

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Wilhelm Sorge’s father, Friedrich, was beside himself when, on opening the front page of his Boston Gazette that raw mid- April 1861 day, he read of the attacks on Massachusetts Sixth Volunteers down in secession-hungry, rebel-loving, negro-hating Baltimore. Friedrich had been a political partisan his whole life starting as a young man in his native Germany where he had been an ardent “Red Republican,” a working-class stuff who expected that the Revolution of 1848 would have led to the co-operative republic that they, the working stuffs, so well deserved, and for which they bled on the barricades. The “red” part came from his adherence to the Workman Co-Op in his home town of Cologne which was influenced by the ideas of Marx, LaSalle and even the Frenchman, Proudhon. Now here in Boston among the exiled German community, those who had had to flee for their lives, once the reaction pulled the hammer down and the “night of the long knives” had begun its now decade plus reign in Germany he had tempered his “red” spirit a little, but just a little, and had been an active participant in the slave abolitionist movement in Boston siding with the more activist  wing around the fiery Brahmin Wendell Phillips and ex-black slave Frederick Douglass out in Rochester in New York where he published his Northern Star.

As early as the fall 1859 he had known deep down in his bones that the reaction to the martyred Captain John Brown’s execution, North and South, could only lead to bloody conflict before long. He had admired Captain Brown the one time he had heard him speak, or rather had seen him, some 19^th century great God Jehovah avenging angel, in Boston when he was trying to raise money for what was then an unknown expedition which turned out to be the attempted slave insurrection at Harper’s Ferry. Friedrich had also taken the lead, not without opposition from some of the more conservative German working men from the waterfront cotton warehouses who worried about their jobs, in commemorating the valor of Captain Brown after he had been hung down in traitorous Virginia.  



His party’s, the Republican Party’s victory in the presidential election with dark horse Abraham Lincoln’s fractured election victory in 1860 only confirmed that terrible conflict suspicion (fractured since he got no Southern electoral votes and in a four man race had only a minority of the non-decisive popular vote). Friedrich had been among the first, remembering back to those ’48 barricade days which they had established a little too late, to argue that every young able-bodied man who had his same thoughts should organize themselves into militias, to prepare for the coming fight arms in hand. Moreover he had offered his services as an instructor or in whatever capacity he could be most useful.

In early January 1861, as civil war approached with various Southern states refusing to acknowledge the election results and were convening sessions to discuss and vote on secession, Friedrich was delighted when the men of Massachusetts began to form volunteer militia units. Many workers in the textile cities of Lowell and Lawrence, many German-American artisans and skilled workers among them some known to him, were the first to join a new infantry regiment, the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, when it was formally organized on January 21, 1861. All through the winter and early spring, the men met regularly to drill. Friedrich assisting in small arms tactics and the construction of defensive fortifications. In March, they were issued uniforms and Springfield rifles and told to be ready to assemble at any time. When Fort Sumter was attacked on April 12th, the men of the Massachusetts Sixth knew their time had come.

Three days later, the newly inaugurated President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to serve for three months. They were ordered to Washington, D.C. to protect the capital and lead the effort to quash the "rebellion." The Sixth Massachusetts gathered with other regiments in Boston on April 16th. The Boston Gazette captured the feelings of many when it published one soldier's letter home: "We have been quartered since our arrival in this city at Faneuil Hall and the old cradle of liberty rocked to its foundation from the shouting patriotism of the gallant sixth. During all the heavy rain the streets, windows, and house tops have been filled with enthusiastic spectators, who loudly cheered our regiment . . . The city is completely filled with enthusiasm; gray-haired old men, young boys, old women and young, are alike wild with patriotism." Among those on the streets stood gray-haired Friedrich Sorge in his “Red Republican” regalia dusted off for the occasion. And down in surly Maryland that fine regiment had tasted their first blood.  

Friedrich, after reading the hated news from Baltimore, became solemn thinking of past skirmishes back home in Germany where friends and comrades had fallen under hails of bullets when he had read of several soldiers, brave boys, killed and wounded when some pug-ugly crowd tried to block their passage forty or so miles further south to defend Washington, to defend the Republic. He thought again how just a few days before Boston had celebrated the departure of that regiment, as it would others later, including the prideful 54^th Massachusetts Regiment ordered by Governor Andrews filled to the brim with freed and escaped black men many recruited by his friend Douglass, going down to defend the capital in Washington. To defend against the threats of the insurrectionary separatists who were attempting to form their own country based on the slave trade, the slave economy, and the lucrative cotton trade that had been fueled by the world’s increase in textile production as such technological changes in the previous few decades had allowed more production with less labor to feed a world looking for cheap clothing and bedding.



Just then Friedrich thought about how if he had not been so old and the little shop he had built from scratch once he and his family had landed on American shores after that first London exile did not need to be run personally by him he would have gone with the boys south to show the rebels a thing or two about human worth. Friedrich as he told one and all of late, especially those young German immigrants who knew not of battles in the old country, had been in military action before, back in the days in Europe, in Germany, in 1848 when they, he and his fellow students were trying to get a democratic government installed in his native Cologne. They/he had failed and rather than face a long term jail sentence with three young children to feed, including his eldest Wilhelm, he and his wife had fled first to Paris and then when that spot became inhospitable to radical German immigrants to London and then to Boston (via New York) where he had set up his small print shop.   



After setting the newspaper down Friedrich resolved that he would talk to Wilhelm, now eighteen and strong, about joining up in one of the regiments that was being formed daily in the town on orders from the governor and legislature and do his part to save the republic which had provided a haven for his family. Moreover, and this information of necessity was held closely among the German immigrant community of Boston and the now far-flung other German communities out in the Midwest farmlands and Texas settler lands, Friedrich had not only been a “red republican,” in the generic sense that a lot of ‘48s who were on the barricades espoused some socialist ideas but had been a converted follower in the Workmen’s Co-Op of the well-known (in Europe if not in America) communist thinkers and activists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Had been a sympathizer of their Communist League before everything got busted up in 1849 and 1850. He therefore held “advanced” views about the way the downtrodden of the earth should and could be treated. Here in Boston, not always to his benefit in the German community or to his profit in his print shop contracts, he was known as a “high abolitionist” of the Wendell Phillips school and become known beyond the German community as one who thrilled to the actions of Captain John Brown of blessed memory down in Harper’s Ferry (and had previously raised monies in the community at the behest of Theodore Parker to aid the anti-slavery forces in Kansas in the mid-1850s when they were in desperate need of arms, including Captain Brown). Yes he would speak to his son that evening at dinner.      



That evening the two Sorges, father and son, had their first serious household dispute. Like many a son Wilhelm wanted to distance himself from his father’s activities, no matter what those activities were, no matter how good the cause. Wilhelm wanted to make a name for himself in the new land. So when Friedrich broached the subject of military service to Wilhelm he answered flatly “no.” No, he was not going to jeopardize his rising position in the firm of Sanborne and Son, the largest cotton merchants in Boston, to go save Mr. Lincoln’s bacon (he used another word but we will be kind here). He, moreover, considered himself like his employers, Charles and son Franklin, a “Cotton Whig,” a person who stood to benefit from increased cotton production to feed that never-ending stream of textile goods the world was demanding. So no, no indeed, one Wilhelm Sorge, moving up in the American world, was not going to try to save the old Union as it was, not as long as cotton was king. Moreover while he was at it he did not care a whit about freeing “nigras,” about the need to get them out of servitude. He had not been his father’s son getting all weepy about their plight down south. He, moreover, had to deal with them, freed slaves but still nirgas, in the Sanborne warehouses every day as they moved the heavy bales of cotton every which way and their bodies  “stank” stank to high heaven and he was not going to risk getting shot up for some heathen voodoo stink. No, no thank you.          

On The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of Jack Kerouac-It Must Have Been Something In The Water- Old Textile Mill Town Along The Merrimack Lowell-The Strange Combination of James Abbott McNeil Whistler, Bette Davis And Jack Kerouac

On The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of Jack Kerouac-It Must Have Been Something In The Water- Old Textile Mill Town Along The Merrimack Lowell-The Strange Combination of James Abbott McNeil Whistler, Bette Davis And Jack Kerouac

By Bart Webber

This is what Laura Perkins learned as she did what she calls research in her on-going self-selected art works series called Traipsing Through The Arts while she was researching various 19^th century artists for precedent for her general theory that sex and erotica in all its forms is what drove all serious 20^th century art. (21^st century art is an open question but check her series for that since that is beyond what I want to discuss.) One James Abbott McNeil Whistler, the butterfly-drenched guy who embarrassed his mother by fobbing her off as a study in black and white, or gray or whatever color he was able to purchase on credit in London when he short of cash and had tapped out with his friends who he in any case never paid back. As it turned out Whistler at least, if not his as all mothers are sainted mother whatever color he painted her, who Laura was not able to find out her place of birth in time for the publication of this piece was born in Lowell, Massachusetts along the path of the Merrimack River at a time when the Lowell boys were starting to crank out their red brick mills and con red-cheeked farm girls into sweated labor for little wages.

Now Laura has been pounding on Whistler’s reputation as a philandering and no-account deadbeat who when short of cash would hustle his mistress of the moment (what in those quaint days they called whatever his favorite at the time  “living without benefit of clergy”) either out onto the cold and foggy London streets or when times permitted some leeway would procure (read: pimp) that mistress by way of one of his painting to some Mayfair swell and he, they were able to paint, break bread for a few more days. His most notorious example was his bold and brash “advertisement” called The White Girl” (latter when he had run her into the T.B. ground and abandoned her for the next best thing he would name it a study in white or symphony in white or some such bull but I have insisted on the original title). See he put the poor girl all in high collar long dress white like some innocence virgin which would spark the interest of some lustful Mayfair youth. Such a youth or whoever was willing to pay the freight would know she was available after Whistler placed the work at his dealer’s gallery by a very usual coded method-the wolf’s head and fur that she was standing on. After serious research by her “ghost” adviser (Sam Lowell who works here as well mainly doing film reviews) in ancient procuring traditions it was found out that the wolf’s head and as importantly the fur signified she was “available,” a tradition started in the time of the Whore of Babylon.

There was plenty of other negative energy around the name of the nefarious Whistler including full scaled orgies and the like but mainly it was about his silly notion that he was doing everything according to the principle of “art for art’s sake.” Everybody at the water cooler laughed at that lame excuse for a theory, art aficionado or not, knowing that was a total fraud. Knowing that was the last refuse of the scoundrel, the fallback position for any number of artistic swindles and theories making Laura’s sex theory seem very respectable and germane.

In a way the less said about Whistler and his Lowell connection the better since he, wisely, early in life fled the town (after some scandal with one of the Lowell mill owner’s daughters) and headed for fresh start England where he proceeded to foul the air there as well. Needless to say, nobody unlike with Kerouac is hyping his relationship to the city with parks and yearly festivals. Still there is that artistic, creative root that I want to deal with to connect him in the long chain with actress Bette Davis and writer Jack Kerouac the other two Lowell born personalities in the triad. (Sally Hansen, the poet, also Lowell born while worthy of some monogram did not fit in easily with the trio I have projected and will get a separate piece later.)            

I was driven by two factors in putting this piece together. Si Lannon’s   2017 piece in American Film Gazette and republished in American Left History when he went that publication to sit on the newly created Editorial Board in discussing Bette Davis, Jack Kerouac and the symbolic Lowell connection and this year’s on-going pieces by Seth Garth commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the too young death of Jack Kerouac. Along the way the Whistler factor kind of dove-tailed to show that the town produced more than sweated textiles to the world at one time (although by Jack’s growing up time the signs were clear that the mills were “running south” for cheaper labor and eventually off-shore).

A little more is in order about Si Lannon, a writer well known to me for his articles on his and others experiences in the devil’s war, the Vietnam War, that carved a nation in two, maybe more and from which at least culturally it has never recovered mentioned to me one day when he was getting ready to review an old time black and white movie Of Human Bondage for the American Film Gazette for which he still writes occasionally that the female star Bette Davis had been born in Lowell, Massachusetts. Something that he did not know although before moving to North Adamsville about thirty miles south of Boston his early years were spent a few towns over in leafy suburban Westford. Si has been a longtime admirer of another Lowell native Jack Kerouac who torched a placid post-World War II world with his On The Road some sixty years ago (and which we have as Seth Garth mentioned “seemingly endlessly” and he may be right commemorated in this space recently on the sixtieth anniversary of its publication). That got Si thinking that there must be some connection that he could draw between two such iconic celebrities from an old dying mill-town (dying even back then as the mills headed cheap textile labor south and then cheaper foreign shorts worldwide-in their respective birth times 1908 and 1922) that had seen better days beside the inevitable “there must be something in the water” theory.            

Taking a tip from Si I have taken my own view on what beside the “water” drove these talents writing in the free-flowing irreverent and shoot from the hip manner of Jack Kerouac who influenced many writers who came of age in the 1960s despite the fact that he “disowned” our hippie lifestyles which drove our narratives.

A river runs through it. The great rushing splurge from the New Hampshire mountains, at least that is what I have been told is source ground zero of the broken- down millwheel towns to the seas and unto the great cold wash Atlantic and there to homeland Europe left behind from desolation days Merrimack (homeland before Lowell migration and Quebec flee failing farms up north looking for factory river work and before them first rosy-cheeked farm girls bringing a little, very little extra cash for bad time harvest insurance and then sullen Irish immigrants from hungry famine ships before the figured out and controlled town politics in the ward-heeler tradition). Merrimack some potent Indian signifier (excuse me Indian when Indian was the name spoken and not the correct Native American or even better indigenous peoples who can  stake serious and legitimate claim to sacred ground now ill-trodden over by umpteen colonial generations from frosty mill owners and those rosy-cheeked farm girls and sullen Irishmen as well and no reparations in sight) long before the devils came in their blasted wooden hull ships from across that briny North Atlantic no high note in sight unlike the great big blow out in Frisco town when a skinny black kid blew that one to perdition. (That kid once one checked the genealogy in need of his own reparations from West Coast Africa slave Middle Passage days but he sure could blow that skinny boy sexy sax like some second coming of Johnny Hodges in his Billie Holiday prime and when he saved Duke’s ass more than one time in that corner called a bandstand, a stage with smoked filled room and small café tables filled with changing drinks and undertone sex in the air directly attributable to that phallic sax and player.)    

Great rushing river dividing the town between the remember “fake natives,” fake natives the right term having just explained true Natives and a miniature “class” in colonial grab culture, and the on-coming foreigners come to pick up the slack in the bottomless spinning wheel pits (the noise drowning out sing-song voices and whiskey hoarse alike and maybe that is where the sober siren sought his Jack strange mystifying voice and he his throbbing pace that in the end wound up like whiskey breath but that mere speculation since cocaine sister junkie fits or opium bong pipe back room sleeping bag dreams in shady off-beat rooming houses filled with rum-dums and grifters could have played the scene out).        

River, two forked river making everybody think without reflection about Hemingway’s two-fisted big hearted river divine forgetting he drew from sparse languages and Jack, come to think of it Bette too, drew from endless chatter and write-downs, come flowing from the great ices of New Hampshire hills laying down sediments (and sentiments, cute and quaint but don’t get too much of either in the post-World War II period when everything came asunder) along a path unto the great turn and ageless rock formation by Pawtucketville Bridge-dividing that town even further (or is it farther) pushing out Highland visions of august majesty not looking at the small stucco-roofed houses the dream of every farm Quebec traveler south to tell the tale of making it in golden streets America.

Ready for a switch up now to tell the female river rush side of the story. Then a poor besotted girl emerges, emerges out of the dust hitting the high trail west landing forlorn and mystified in some fallen angel diner and a gas station town near the Petrified Forest in the Arizona (trees so ancient, think about it, that they have turned to stone some kind of metaphor there-something about staying in one place too long), breaking out from Great Depression hungers side saddle on the golden trains west keeping out of the wrath of the railroad bulls ready to jack club you for your now smelly existence like they were not made of the same clay. Off, way off of, Route 66 heavy-travelled by wandering hobos with not a dime their pockets but some wicked Villon poetry to whip by the pretty girls, even the ones protectively hiding it with jeans, then called no chic dungarees, flannel no shape shirts, work boots and sailor’s cap from some minute on the road love for a square meal. Off way off of Route 66 to be well-travelled in the next generation by hungry guys tired of lunch pail diners off Merrimack Street running hard by the same-named river and dirty grease-spun Esso gas stations at home drift to the cities but need to catch some dust and grit although what they thought of benighted stone trees who knows in between those expansive cities. Strangely that next generation embodied by that Frenchie guy who shared main billing when guys wrote about break outs of broken-down mill towns. But back in sandy wind-driven deserts filled with souvenir rocks (2for $3 the last anybody heard). There some Papa generation before her came out looking for El Dorado or gold something different and landed in two- bit desert stretches and kind of got stuck, got good and stuck there. (Not everybody made it as the skeletons along the way of cattle, horse, and human set among the bramble and down some aching arroyo tell every daredevil passer-by and every sensational dime store penny a word novelist in the days when that “contract” ruled writers on “spec” too just like hobo intellectual and enraptured million word Jacks notebook in his own wear-worthy flannel shirt.)

And there abandoned by a big city dream mother, I’ll say Gay Paree big city just as World War I boomed it last illicit guns and she despite her Villon ways and Verlaine dreams of some Rimbaud needed to get out of town before the gendarmes got their hooks into her for their ten per cent graft, and an ill-defined no account wimp father she came of age dreaming the dreams, funny city girl dreams of faraway places away from the dust and those fucking stoned trees when the wind howls through the age-worn crevices (making one think of other social howls and wolves and Molochs and white-dressed nurses in mental wards for the cure as if some fucking mental hospital would cure what ailed some love-stuck felon and of cool jazz man hipsters grooving on Charlie riffs and be-bop coming of age in some dark night smoke-filled cafes then try it now brother and you will be tarred and feathers even famous Jack tarred for smoking on ill-light television sets and backroom dinosaur hustles   and Times Square con artists under the tough as nails Gregory now Saint Gregory but then just a shooting star wordy guy with a jack-roll for salvation which seemed to work since he got a heaven -sent honorific out of the deal hustling the rubes). Her father the king of the species all dressed up and cowardly when it came right down to it. Dreaming book dreams, small printed page books sent from far away by those who could not take the dust, the heat, those howls and once again those fucking night-blinding stone trees which tourists would pay a pretty penny for a chip, a sliver. Jesus. Dreamed fourteenth century or was fifteenth dreams of mad man con man rabble Villon out of some Balzac French novel but real enough speaking about how he could not stay with civil people but sought solace among the petty thieves, the cutthroats, the man murderers (little did she know who would come through door to marvel at her bug-eyes and blinkers making sorry Villon nothing but a second-rate Time Square hustler, hey, pacifist even) , the flotsam and jetsam among the people who lived outside the moat, who did not dream but planned and honest folk beware and watch out.         

          

“Hey there stranger” she spoke quickly to that stranger with the strange pale voice and the paler skin despite walking the sun-drenched walk of the tramp no better than Villon’s men outside the moat and who looked like he had not had three squares in many a moon so that is what she thought when he first came in, came in and recognized in that small book, that funny thought poem by mad monk gone astray Villon and thus was kindred against the Papa silliness and some gas station jockey who tried to make love to her before her time. He was vague, road-wise vague at first but loosened up when that beef stew sunk in and that coffee and cruller made him light-headed talk crazy (the road which do that after a few days on unfettered sun they call it and rightly, desert-addled). So they talked, he called it conversation, and told her that the night-takers descending on the flat land earth, what he meant by that she never figured out, even in the freaking (his term not hers) stone tree desert filled with arroyo-seized skeletons that the day for conversation was quickly coming to froth, which she did figure out, was dangerous beyond whatever small thoughts she had ever had out in that vast night sky thunder-blazed desert. Ditto on that figuring out too except she learned that one the hard way. Naïve kid she thought him the new Messiah come that she has heard about over the blaring radio that made the diner hours go by more quickly so she could retreat into Villon’s manly dreams without distraction. He, the stranger he, laughed and said no vagabond who was out filching (cadging in what he meant she thought) free eats in dust-bitten rocks could claim Messiah-hood, could survive the new age coming and coming quickly right through her door. Her bug-eyes blinkered at that, at her silly illusions when she thought about it later after he was gone, gone to who knows what savior-driven place.          

No sooner had the stranger taken his filched food (she still insisted it was cadged and would use that word telling her story whenever anybody asked her if she had actually seen the savior, had maybe slept with him for good measure or at least thought about it as chaste as she was then although filled with the normal young woman coming to terms with her sexuality longings and misconceptions) when the night-takers stormed in (stormed in more than one way bringing half the desert hell with them as boon companion) and made her savior stranger sit on his ass on the floor. Made hell come to pass before the night was through. All over the blighted world too where their brethren, they standing in for the lot just then, felt a fresh, no, a sickening breeze at their backs. (He, the stranger, would comment that the night-takers took their sweet-ass time whenever they descended on some unsuspecting crowd and that those descended upon took their sweet-ass time figuring out how to get rid of the bastards and the latter history would seem to have borne out that truth). Sweet manna.

Then that forlorn stranger had an idea, a good one if somebody beside her thought about it later that he would go mano a mano with the night-takers, would play the gallant when all was said and done (giving lie to the idea that he didn’t have any ideas about defending against the surging night-takers except their time had come). Naturally he lost, better won/lost and left her with her book, her small Villon book, a guy from the fourteenth century or was it the fifteenth and her dreams kind of intact. A few years later some guys in a 1949 Hudson (or was the car a Studebaker) tired of the Route 66 road came by looking for grub, looking for free eats and some whiskey but by then she was long gone to some city that Papa and father could not fathom. Not realizing that young woman or not she was just following their youthful trails to break-out of the cloistered rut but that would be a later reflection when the fires next time (sorry James Baldwin the line was too good not to use for a break-out of a different kind).               

[On in the frozen Western night several years and ten thousand thoughts later the no longer girlish girl hung up on old time French bandit-poets, con men, desolation angels, and holy fools, and lost in thought time of the intellectuals far from the blessed stone trees, as far away as she could get to Southern California and so “frozen” ironic she picks up a book, a paperback left on the counter by a forgetful customer who after paying for his Woolworth-quality lunch must have given up all hope. She flips it into her pocketbook to either wait on his owner’s return or for something to read that night, that lonesome stone tree wilderness night that never left her thoughts. That guy, or whoever it was, never returned and so that night she read, read until the early morning hours and then read some more.          

Read about a guy, although in her mind it could have be a girl, who had the same wanderlust that drove her west, drove her to the great blue-pink American western night he called it looking for some father that he had never known, maybe if that was not mere metaphor just as she was looking as well although she left some reality time father behind in the rearview mirror, looking forlornly, for that father from some oil-spilled New Jersey shore river to the wind-swept China seas before the Golden Gate Bridge. Looked just like that skinny Negro kid (now Afro-American or black) with his grandmother bought attire was looking for that high white note blowing out of the bay to its own China seas. Looked high and low for the missing brethren who long ago had crossed her path out in the hard stone-tree night when everything was possible but the intellectuals then flabby and ill-disposed to fight the night-takers even to a draw abandoned all hope, decided that primitive man would take the day and crush any free spirits. This guy though flush with the expectations of many new adventures once the night-takers were put to the sword took to the road, took a chance that he could find that father some fucking place-maybe Latimer Street in Denver, maybe Neola, Grand Island, Reno, Winnemucca, Tulsa, Fargo (although give up all hope if you wind up in that locale). She wondered that maybe he had stolen her dreams. Maybe he had stared at the same rivers that drove her desires, yes, just maybe that was the case.]    

A young boy who only spoke patois, meaning that he only spoke mother tongue French via Quebec distillations, until he went to school played hooky one day and sat in the lost souls library hoping to find something that would challenge his fevered brain and slip-slopped over to the poetry section and found this guy Villon, a poet of the fourteenth or was it the fifteenth century, who spoke of dreams and crashing out (spoke too of ruffian petty larcenies outside the moat but the boy let it pass because he knew all about that, had passed that stage with his fevered corner boys too poor to do anything but dream of petty larcenies and charms, knew that poet kings only spoke of such to work up a sweat, to deal better with hipsters, con men, sullen fallen women, junkies and assorted felons riding on the railroad jungle tracks). Knew he had kindred in that long- ago poet king and sought out fellows who could understand such dreams, could understand too the patois that he thought in. Would find plenty of hipsters, cons, con men, Molochs, holy goofs, cowboy angels, a teenage Adonis to spar with his brethren soul. Find Moloch, insanity, the clap, jungle fever, whiskey shakes, penniless forsaken highways, lost boys, sullen youth, Zen, chicken shit and on some days, but only some days, he wished he never left that fucking river, that holy of holies Merrimack and had forgone those wistful eyes that he remembered out in cold Winnemucca, Neola, Grand Island, Big Sur nights. Oops, take away that Big Sur part for he learned much out in the wind-drenched barren cave-like rock strewn beaches wind blowing his black frugal hair every which way high as a kite, not whisky so much in those days but plentiful subterranean mary jane (his term other apply as well) to see visions like no other except once in Saint Joseph’s hunger Sunday morning before communion church.       

      

[Weird thoughts along the Merrimack lifeline (remember like bodies made-up, filled with arteries and canals) a fervent solemnly disciplined fourteen year old boy armed with Woolworth’s ten-cent notepads and chewed raw No. 2 pencils, sits arms akimbo, strange gangling not yet athletic fourteen year old position like some latter day saint Buddha seeing all knowing all with hashish pipe tucked into some secret place sitting out with cans of beans and rat shit on desolation row waiting for fires and damnation, in a silent black back row orchestra seat (no red dress girl singing swinging Benny Goodman songs that night to come hither him to perdition and have to ask the eternal boy-girl question-orchestra or balcony-and he would know the answer always know the answer balcony of course she speaking of his silliness- why else would I come into the shadows with you) of the of long gone to condos or cute shops Majestic Theater off of Bridge Street staring intensely at the big white screen suddenly turned to magic motion pictures with a dust storm brewing out in some fucking petrified forest and some girl not his holding off some ragged sweater gas jockey, and having if you can believe this Villion-etched dreams, maybe not outside the moat larceny dreams but not belonging dreams about belonging too.   

That desert-bleached girl, young woman serving them off the arm before the break-out waiting, eternally waiting like that fervent fourteen-year old boy for something to happen, for some kicks, for something better than listening to the average swill the customers brought in the door, waiting she thought for culture, or her idea or culture anyway. What grabbed that poor boy though was that scene out of some latter day great American West night when he thought he would be able to choke the Eastern dust from off his shoes and live-and write, always write. So kindred, kindred too when some holy goof hobo, tramp, bum angel Buddha comes traipsing down the road looking for hand-outs and God Jesus that would be the life. He, she, they make small kindred talk and speak of that damn poet, that Villon who knew more than he should about the human condition, more than any fourteen-year old boy anyway (or coming of womanly age girl either). 

But before long the dream shattered, the night-takers released from their caves come swooping down like hell’s avenging angels, avenging the lost paradise that he had read a guy by the name of Milton, half-blind had gone on and on about in some heaven’s battle and they the losers-and what of it. But when you take on the night-takers you better realize that you will take some casualties, take some holy sacred blood from the holy earth returned and that ain’t fair, ain’t fair at all but who knows maybe Buddha, Rama. Zoroaster, Jehovah, the unnamed one, planned it out that way. Out the door of that no longer silent black back row orchestra seat he was glad that he had not had some red dress come hither girl to bother him. For he wondered, wondered as he sank his eyes into the white froth of the mighty Merrimack below whether she, that Western tableau desert girl who belatedly found his paperback book in some midnight ham and cheese on rye Woolworth’s and read bleary eyes into that good morning and then read some more would ever acknowledge him, ever read his mind like he read hers.]  

Ha, as he tried to climb Bear Mountain with a dollar and a quarter in his stained dungarees (not called jeans then, not around him anyway) splattered flannel shirt and broken toe boots looking for that father he never knew (although his own father had passed on before he knew that he was looking for another father somewhere along the wino camp tracks, some arroyo bush or in some county jail working out a scheme looking too for Adonis father’s sons and close howling friend looking just for Adonis and whatever he had to offer in the sex game-a coded reference then to homosexuality not a big thing in beat crowd circles). Had Route 66 cold because if he could search that highway he would miss some connection, some angst the shrinks called it among the hot rod car, surf board, motorcycle lost winding in stir and some rough trade honey to some beast, boys he would meet out in the great blue-pink American Western night. As he pulled his thumb out of his back pocket he finally relaxed and dug the scene.

Hit long rides and short, mostly lonely truckers looking for company and searching for the sons they had never known, tramp diner stops, railroad stews on nights so cold his broken toe boots seized up on him, grabbed a couple of big rides with big blondes looking for some max daddy to be-bop with and leave in Doc’s drugstore while they waited to be “found” by some Hollywood agent. Took tokay swigs with the best of them, met up with rabid New Jersey poets (already mentioned before in coded Adonis dreams and Father Death the father of us all), New York City Times Square gangster dope peddlers and sainted poets (funny always the poets driving him forward he would have to write that down, Ivy League junkies on the nod, and finally the Adonis of the western night whom he would be-bop with unto the San Francisco Bay dropped that high white note out in the China seas. Yeah, he had it all except maybe those bug eyes from childhood lost in some flophouse. Still on some days, and only on some days, he wished he never had left that fucking river, never that sacred ground river. He wondered if she though that same thought.

(And would have wondered, he always born to wonder if she thought of  the bastard symphony in white, in black in every dark color painter hustling his women in paint and if he would have known him as kindred too.)         

Free All Catalan Independentistes! For a Catalan Workers Republic North and South of the Pyrenees!

Workers Vanguard No. 1150	8 March 2019

Free All Catalan Independentistes!

For a Catalan Workers Republic North and South of the Pyrenees!

We publish below a February 20 article written by our comrades of the Grupo Espartaquista de México and the Ligue trotskyste de France, sections of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist).

Twelve leading Catalan independentistes are being dragged through a show trial in Spain’s Supreme Court by the bourgeois government of the social-democratic PSOE prime minister Pedro Sánchez. Their “crime”: having organized and carried out the October 2017 referendum on independence of the oppressed Catalan nation and having proclaimed a Catalan republic.

Former vice president of the Catalan Generalitat [government], Oriol Junqueras of the Esquerra Republicana (ERC)—who faces a sentence of up to 74 years—and eight other Catalan nationalists have already endured more than one year in prison. Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart, former heads of the Assemblea Nacional Catalana (ANC) and Òmnium Cultural (OC) pro-independence organizations, and Carme Forcadell, former speaker in the Catalan Parlament, are also behind bars. Others fled Spain to escape arrest, including former Generalitat president Carles Puigdemont of the Partit Demòcrata Europeu Català (PDeCAT). In March 2018, the German and Spanish police and intelligence services collaborated closely to detain Puigdemont on a European Union (EU)-wide arrest warrant later withdrawn by Spain.

The repression and humiliation of these Catalan bourgeois nationalists is a warning to any who would seek separation from Spain. As proletarian internationalists, we demand the immediate release of all Catalan independentistes. We also demand freedom now for all Basque nationalists languishing in Spanish and French dungeons. Drop all charges!

The charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds were originally filed by the previous Spanish government, headed by the neo-Francoist People’s Party (PP). The openly racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Catalan and anti-Basque Vox party—old school Francoists—joined the government in the prosecution as a “private accuser.” The social democrats, rabid españolistas [Spanish nationalists] and loyal subjects of “his majesty” King Felipe VI, have from the beginning fully supported the persecution of Catalan independentistes (including the suspension of Catalonia’s autonomy between October 2017 and June 2018). Since last year they have implemented it from their position in the government. The Catalan nationalist parties helped prop up the Sánchez government in Madrid but finally abandoned the government when it repeatedly refused to grant an independence referendum. When the Catalan parties recently voted against his budget, Sánchez was forced to call early general elections, which are to be held on April 28.

The social democrats’ failed attempt at a deal with Catalan forces incensed the PP, Vox and Ciudadanos. This Francoist trinity organized a Castilian-chauvinist display of force in Madrid on February 10, demanding the imprisonment of the independentistes and the fall of the Sánchez government. As a personification of the unity of Spanish and French anti-Catalan chauvinism, present in this orgy of backwardness was former French prime minister Manuel Valls, now a Ciudadanos candidate for mayor of Barcelona. Under François Hollande’s 2012-17 French Socialist Party government, Valls implemented one attack after another against the proletariat and did his best to make his name as the scourge of Arabs, the Roma [Gypsy] people and all the oppressed.

For Independence from Spain and France!

There is a single Catalan nation and a single Basque nation, each of which is divided and oppressed by two capitalist states: Spain and France. In order to stabilize the Spanish state after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, Catalonia, the Basque Country and other regions were granted fraudulent autonomy in the late 1970s. In France, on the other hand, the oppressed nations have no linguistic or legal rights whatsoever. Especially in the Basque Country, the population faces as much repression as in Spain. Due to the differences in the historical development of capitalism in Spain and France, the driving force of pro-independence movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country [Euskal Herria] comes from the portions of those nations forcibly retained within Spain. Thus, the fate of the Basques and Catalans in France strongly depends on what happens on the Spanish side of the border.

We call for the independence of Euskal Herria and Catalonia now, in the North and the South. We are also for the right of independence of Galicia and for the unconditional withdrawal of Spain from its enclaves in Morocco—Ceuta and Melilla. As for France, we are for the independence of the French colony of Kanaky [New Caledonia] and of the Corsican oppressed nation, and for the right to independence for all the French colonies.

We recognize in the struggle for national liberation a potential motor force for proletarian revolution. We seek to imbue the working class of France and Spain with the understanding that the fight against the national oppression of Basques and Catalans is an integral part of the fight for the emancipation of the proletariat itself. Down with the Spanish monarchy! For workers republics of Catalonia and Euskal Herria!

Down With the EU!

Catalonia has nothing resembling its own state, particularly armed forces. In the face of the Castilian onslaught and in the absence of a class-conscious proletariat, there is no hope of making Catalan independence a reality in the near future. The Catalan bourgeoisie has prostrated itself before the EU, pleading for its backing. The EU is no supranational state, but an imperialist consortium dominated by Germany. It is devoted to squeezing every possible euro of profit from the working class of Europe, including in Germany, while trampling on the national sovereignty of its poorer members like Greece, Portugal and Romania on behalf of the imperialist powers, mainly Germany and, to a lesser extent, France.

Contrary to the illusions spread by Catalan nationalists, the EU unequivocally backs the Spanish bourgeois state against Catalan independence. An independent Catalonia would threaten the breakup of Spain and would undermine French imperialism by fueling the national aspirations of Galicians, Basques, Corsicans and all colonial peoples. It would also threaten the unraveling of the whole EU club of robber barons and their victims. Down with the EU! For a Socialist United States of Europe, united on a voluntary basis!

For Proletarian Political Independence

The events of the past two years have demonstrated that independence will not come from parliamentary maneuvers among the bourgeois independentistes who plead for agreements with Madrid. As we wrote last year: “There is a force capable of making national liberation a reality, defeating all these enemies of Catalonia’s freedom: it is the working class, through the mobilization of its enormous social power” (“National Liberation Struggle at Impasse,” WV No. 1126, 26 January 2018). The key to unleashing this power lies in the struggle for the political independence of the workers movement. In Catalonia, this includes combating illusions in the bourgeois nationalists of the PDeCAT, the ERC and of the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP), class enemies of the Catalan workers.

Acting hand in hand with Madrid, successive Catalan governments, headed either directly by the right-wing PDeCAT (and its predecessor, Convergència i Unió) or in collusion with the ERC and the CUP, have implemented anti-worker austerity and brutal anti-union attacks. Only last fall, the Catalan Generalitat, headed by PDeCAT’s Joaquim Torra, unleashed its cops against four days of strikes and demonstrations by public employees, teachers, students and doctors protesting budget cuts and tuition hikes.

Leninists in the Spanish and French heartlands need to struggle to break the working class from its class enemy by winning workers to the defense of Catalan and Basque independence. In Catalonia, the proletariat is divided, with a large section opposing independence. It is necessary to wage a relentless fight against the entrenched Castilian and French chauvinism of “España, una, grande y libre” [“Spain, one, great and free”] and “la France, une et indivisible” [“France, one and indivisible”]. Such bourgeois ideology is regurgitated by the social democrats and reformist “Marxists,” as well as by the misleaders of the working class at the head of the union federations. In Spain, the latter include the Comisiones Obreras and Unión General de Trabajadores (historically linked respectively to the Communist Party and the PSOE), and in France, the Confédération générale du travail (historically linked to the French Communist Party) and Force ouvrière. Only on the basis of such political struggle can Leninist-Trotskyist parties be forged, the revolutionary leadership needed to lead the working class to power throughout the region.

Pseudo-Trotskyists, Popular Frontism and Chauvinism

Until the very eve of the 1 October 2017 independence referendum in Catalonia, Izquierda Revolucionaria (IR, affiliated with Peter Taaffe’s Committee for a Workers’ International) denounced the fight for independence for Catalonia and Euskal Herria as counterposed to “socialism,” which would supposedly arrive under the auspices of the “anti-establishment” (but no less chauvinist) bourgeois Podemos party. Now these opportunists call for a Catalan “socialist republic of workers and the people,” which will come out of a “united front” of working-class organizations and bourgeois forces such as the CUP and others (El Militante, February 2019). IR’s political perspective is that of the popular front, a coalition aimed at subordinating the proletariat to its bourgeois class enemy. In Spain in the 1930s, the popular front—a bourgeois government—was the instrument for the strangulation of the Spanish Revolution, opening the gates to Franco’s forces and his bloody reign of rightist reaction (see “Trotskyism vs. Popular Frontism in the Spanish Civil War,” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 61, Spring 2009).

As for IR’s newfound attachment to Catalan “independence,” it is worth noting that their maximum program remains “For a socialist federal republic” of Spain, which would include the Catalans, Basques and Galicians with no regard to the will of these oppressed nations. Meanwhile, the French affiliate of IR, Gauche révolutionnaire, remains silent about Catalan and Basque oppression at the hands of its “own” French imperialism, contenting itself with occasionally reprinting articles by its Spanish comrades. It is no wonder that they are buried in the chauvinist and colonialist bourgeois party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The neo-Morenoites of the CRT (Corriente Revolucionaria de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras, in France the Courant communiste révolutionnaire within the New Anti-Capitalist Party) called for abstaining in the 2017 independence referendum—a call which constituted a capitulation to Castilian chauvinism—all the while giving political support to the bourgeois CUP. Now they try to pass themselves off as the staunchest fighters for “Catalan self-determination” while continuing to spout Castilian chauvinism.

Referring to the December 2017 Catalan elections forced by Madrid, they write: “An important portion of the Catalan working class voted for Ciudadanos thinking of national unity…. The idea of the ‘Balkanization’ of the peninsula would obviously be grave and there is no left or working-class organization that could seriously desire it” (izquierdadiario.es, 23 July 2018). Thus, while claiming that “revolutionaries are not for just any unity of the Spanish state,” the CRT opposes the separation of Catalonia, Euskal Herria and Galicia in the name of...the “national unity” of Spain! Not unlike IR, the CRT’s claims to support self-determination are conditional on a “free and voluntary” federation of Iberian republics, to which end they “have insisted on demanding that the [bourgeois] CUP break with the Catalan bourgeoisie”!

Contrary to the CRT’s chauvinist fearmongering over the “Balkanization” of Spain, a victory in the struggle for independence for Catalonia would in fact represent a crippling blow to the very same capitalist repressive apparatus that keeps the entire proletariat enchained in wage slavery. But international proletarian victory is not the goal of the likes of the CRT and IR. In contrast, we in the ICL strive to follow the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky in order to fight for new October Revolutions around the world.

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-On Entering North Adamsville High Redux , Circa 1960

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-On 

Entering North Adamsville High Redux , Circa 1960

By Allan Jackson

[Not all of the sketches in the rock and roll series were triggered by music, the corner boy scene, or by remembrances of Markin although they did provide the bulk of material. Some things obviously we triggered by later events such as this one dealing with the first kind of scary day of high school after being cocooned in junior high (now middle school most places) and elementary school. Having to deal with a bigger universe of kids you didn’t know from other feeder schools and such. Of course there are certain progressions some of us had to follow from elementary to junior high to high school and then college each with its own set of hurdles and promises. None which would necessarily stir memories except as detailed below for an outside factor-here the upcoming class reunion which triggered these thoughts about the first day of school at North Adamsville High in 1960.

That is an important year for a lot of reasons but only a few months into the school Jack Kennedy our own Irish Jack Kennedy got elected President of the United States (in today truncated lingo POTUS). That is important maybe not to the start of the story which is pretty convenient about first day jitters and where your place in the sun of high school pecking orders would be but the start of what Markin, the Scribe, would start yakking about incessantly-the fresh breeze coming to the land. It was while it lasted called Camelot in the beginning with all the promise that meant. And while things did not go according to plan exactly Scribe’s fresh breeze did carry him, us for a while.  

But first getting through the dream world of poor boys, cars, girls, more girls, cars, no money hell you get what it was all about except girls can give their own spins on their times. Allan Jackson]

******  

A few years ago, maybe four or five now, around the time that Frank Jackman (always Frank and not Francis since that was too much like that St Francis who was good to animals and stuff and no self-respecting corner boy wanted that tagged to his name besides the formal name sounded kind of faggy (that was the term of “art” then among macho corner boys in our neighborhood now gay) e when the guys talked about names one night, also not Frankie since that name was taken up in his crowd) by Frankie Riley (always Frankie and not Francis for the same reason as Frank but also Frankie because he had always been called Frankie since time immemorial to distinguish him from his father Frank, Sr.) his Jack Slack’s bowling alleys corner boy chieftain all through high school in North Adamsville had been commemorating, maybe better to say comparing notes, on their fiftieth anniversary of entry into that school in the ninth grade Frank had written a remembrance of the first day of school freshman year. He had written it at the behest of a female fellow classmate, Dora, for a class website where she was the webmaster that she and a few others had established so that those from the Class of 1964 who wished to, those who were able to, could communicate with each other in the new dispensation of cyberspace.

That remembrance, one of a series of sketches that he eventually did, and on recent inquiry from Jimmy Jenkins another classmate and ex-corner boy comrade, Frank has stated that he stood by that “sketch” characterization, centered on the anxieties that he had on that first day about making a brand new impression on the freshman class, about changing his junior high school quasi-“beatnik” style, his two thousand fact barrage that he would lay on anybody who would listen. A style change that lots of guys and gals have gone through when faced with a new situation, although the people he was trying to impress had already been his classmates in that junior high school and were painfully aware of the previous way that he had presented himself, presented himself  under Frankie’s direction, to the world. When Frankie at the time read what Frank had written, a thing filled with new found sobbing, weeping, and pious innocence he sent him an e-mail which brought Frank up short. Frankie threatened in no uncertain terms to write his own “sketch” refuting all the sobbing, weeping, piously innocent noise that Frank had been trying to bamboozle their fellow classmates with. The key point that Frankie threatened to bring down on a candid world, the candid world in this instance being the very curious Dora for one, and her coterie of friends who had stayed in contact since high school since they all lived in the area, to be clear about was the case of Frank Jackman and one Lydia Stevenson. Or rather the case, the love-bug case he had for her. That, and not some mumble-jumble about changing his act which he never really did since you could always depend on Frank going on and on with one of his two thousand arcane facts that he tried to impress every girl he ran across in high school with and to dress like he had just come walking in from post-beat Harvard Square, was the very real point of what was aggravating him on that long ago hot endless first Wednesday after Labor Day morning.

See Frank had gotten absolutely nowhere with Lydia, nowhere beyond the endless talking stage, and thus nowhere, in junior high but he was still carrying the torch come freshman year and fifty years later he still felt that fresh-scented breathe and that subtle perfume, or bath soap, or whatever it was she wore, breezing over him. Or maybe her curse, a North Adamsville curse that he claimed at one point that Lydia cast on him since he never had then a girlfriend from school, or from North Adamsville for that matter. Not in high school anyway. The currency of that fresh breeze that occupied his mind may have been pushed forward by his getting back in touch with classmates. And as fate would have it, the thrice-married Frank, never one to say never to love had as a result of getting back in touch with classmates on the website had a short fruitless affair with another classmate, Laura, who had been a close friend of Lydia’s in junior high school and told him a couple of things about what Lydia had thought about Frank. Laura confirmed that Lydia had expected Frank to ask her out in junior high school but also confirmed by that failed affair with Laura that Lydia’s curse was still at work fifty years later. And it is that missed opportunity to fall under the sway of that Lydia scent that will drive this short sketch, hell, forget Frank and his sketch business, this short piece.                  

This is the way Frank described to me what happened after Frankie sent that fatal e-mail that might expose his long hidden thoughts: 

“Frankie, for once listened patiently as I finished my story, the one that he say was filled to the brim with sobbing, weeping, whining bull about starting anew and being anxious about what would happen, and which he threatened to go viral on, immediately after I was finished let out with a 

“Who are you kidding Jackman that is not the way you told me the story back then.” Then he went on. “I remember very well what you were nervous about. What that cold night sweats, that all-night toss and turn teen angst, boy version, had been about and it wasn’t first day of school jitters. It was nothing but thinking about her. That certain "she" that you had kind of sneaked around mentioning as you had been talking, talking your his head off about filling out forms, getting books, and other weird noises, just to keep the jitters down. The way you told it then, and I think you called me up right after school was out to discuss the matter, was that while on those pre-school steps you had just seen her, seen her with the other North Adamsville junior high girls on the other side of the steps, and got all panicky, got kind of red-faced about it, and so you are going to have to say a little something about that. And if you don’t I will.” 

Frankie continued along this line, stuff which seemed to be true but which made me wonder how a guy who when we met at the Sunnyville Grille over in Boston for a few drinks to discuss this and that, not the Lydia thing but our corner boy exploits, couldn’t remember where he left his car keys and we had to call AAA to come out and find them on his driver’s side seat. Jesus.  Here’s what he was getting at:

“See, I know the previous school year, late in the eighth grade at North Adamsville Junior High, toward the end of the school year you had started talking to that Lydia Stevenson in art class. Yes, that Lydia who on her mother’s side was from some branch of the Adams family who had run the jagged old ship-building town there in North Adamsville for eons and who had employed my father and a million other fathers, and I think yours’ too if I am not mistaken, for a while anyway, around there and then just headed south, or to Greece or someplace like that, for the cheaper labor I heard later. She was one of the granddaughters or some such relation I never did get it all down. And that part was not all that important anyway because what mattered, what mattered to you, was that faint scent, that just barely perceivable scent, some nectar scent, that came from Lydia when you sat next to her in art class and you two talked, talked your heads off.

“But you never did anything about it, not then anyway although you said when we talked later about it you had this feeling, maybe just a feeling because you wanted things to be that way but a feeling anyway, that she had expected you to ask her out. Asking out for junior high school students then, and for freshmen in high school too because we didn’t have licenses to drive cars, being the obligatory "first date" at Jimmy Jack's Shack (no, not the one off Adamsville Boulevard, that's for the tourists and old people, the one on Hancock up toward the Square is the one I am talking about). You said you were just too shy and uncertain to do it.

“Why? Well you said it was because you came from the “wrong side of the tracks” in the old town, over by the old abandoned Old Colony tracks and she, well like I said came from a branch of the Adams family that lived over on Elm in one of those Victorian houses that the swells are crazy for now, and I guess were back then too. That is when you figured that if you studied up on a bunch of stuff, stuff that you liked to study anyway, then come freshman year you just might be able to get up the nerve to ask her to go over to Jimmy Jack's for something to eat and to listen to the jukebox after school someday like every other Tom, Dick and Harry did then.

“.... So don’t tell me suddenly, a bell rang, a real bell, students, like lemmings to the sea, were on the move, especially those junior high kids that you had nodded to before as you took those steps, two at a time. And don’t tell me it was too late then to worry about style, or anything else. Or make your place in the sun as you went along, on the fly. No, it was about who kind of brushed against you as you rushed up the stairs and who gave you one of her biggest faintly-scented smiles as you both raced up those funky granite steps. Yeah, a place in the sun, sure.”

And so there you had Frank satisfying Frankie enough with his agreement to make public on the class website the gist of his stubborn e-mail. Funny though as much time as they spent talking about it back in the day and then when they resurrected it a few years ago Frank never did get to first base Lydia in high school, although she sent him a few more of those big faintly-scented smiles which Frank didn’t figure out until too late. Within a couple of weeks of the school opening Lydia was seen hand in hand with Paul Jones, a sophomore then, the guy who would lead North Adamsville to two consecutive division football championships and who stayed hand in hand with him until she graduated. Frank had had a few girlfriends in high school, Harvard Square refugees like himself who went crazy for his two thousand facts but they were not from the town. The few times Frank did try to get dates in school or in town, get to first base, he was shot down for all kinds of reasons, a couple of times because he did not have a car and the girls had not the slightest interest in walking around on a date, a couple of times he was just flat stood up when the girls he was to date took the next best thing instead. Yeah, the Lydia hex sure did him in. And after that Laura disaster don’t say he wasn’t jinxed, just don’t say it around him.       

In The 1930-1940s Golden Age Of Screwball Comedy-With A Twist-Rosalind Russell’s “She Wouldn’t Say Yes” (1945)-A Film Review

In The 1930-1940s Golden Age Of Screwball Comedy-With A Twist-Rosalind Russell’s “She Wouldn’t Say Yes” (1945)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

She Wouldn’t Say Yes, starring Rosalind Russell, Lee Bowman, directed by classic screwball comedy director Alexander Hall, 1945

Recently I reviewed another one of these Rosalind Russell- starring and Alexander Hall-directing golden age of screwball comedy films from 1942 My Sister Eileen where I made an observation based on my longtime companion and fellow reviewer Sam Lowell’s insight on “the hook.” “The hook” being the tag line you want to spin the review around. I was at something like wits’ end trying to salvage something from that screwball comedy which would be understood by today’s audiences. That is where Sam, who has had a long history of reviewing many films from the black and white film era kindled by spending many a sullen Saturday afternoon double film matinee in his youth, came to the rescue by telling me that many of these films can be profitably looked at as “slice of life” vehicles.

That is the same hook I will use to review this film She Wouldn’t Say Yes (can’t say much for the nondescript title which could mean anything from in the romance department from solicited John sex to marriage)-what a young professional woman had to go through in her profession in an age when even professional women were expected to get marriage and perform wifely and motherly duties and sent the career to the attic in the days of one breadwinner-the husband-families. Doctor Susan Lane, a rich and successful psychiatrist, Rosalind Russell’s role, is moving ahead just fine alone and single like many women today but back then a bit of an oddity even for professional women. All around her men, from her father to a fellow psychiatrist, are bothering her about marriage and motherhood to complete herself. Balderdash says she-until.      

The “until” is a cartoonist Michael Kent who is travelling west as the good Doctor is she to home and he to deployment in the Pacific as World War II nears its end. He is smitten from minute one despite a series of pratfalls which wouldn’t draw a titter from an eight year old today. She is totally non-plussed and rather annoyed by his advances (and maybe today he would face a serious case of sexual harassment charges despite his grinning ways if she pressed the issue and she very well might have) on the train all the way to Chicago. In Chi town he still won’t give up even while a legitimate blonde vixen makes a big play for him-with and without the good Doctor’s advice. Naturally, 1940s naturally, even for a strong women’s role as this is even as a foil for a screwball comedy, the good Doctor’s heart slowly melts under the barrage of pratfall attacks including a falsely arranged marriage between the two. So you know damn well what happened as the sun faded in the west. Yeah, let’s chalk this one up to a slice of life-and a lesser screwball comedy than the movie recently reviewed. And a mile behind Ms. Russell’s classic performance as Hildy in His Girl Friday with Cary Grant.    

From The Rock Against The Nazi-Night Takers-Director Edward Dmytryk’s “Seven Miles From Alcatraz” (1942)-A Film Review

From The Rock Against The Nazi-Night Takers-Director Edward Dmytryk’s “Seven Miles From Alcatraz” (1942)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

Seven Miles From Alcatraz, starring James Craig, Bonita Granville, directed by Edward Dmytryk, 1942

Who was it, Uncle Joe, Stalin, I think who said paper will take anything written on it. Well apparently the same thing is true for film as the film under review, a slightly-veiled World War II propaganda piece by Edward Dmytryk in the days when the Soviet Union was an American ally and all hands, American and Soviet among others, were needed in the titanic struggle to smash the Nazi-night-takers who were subjecting Europe to a thrashing. (Of course a few years later Dmytryk when the tide turned against the Soviets in the early Cold War days and all hands were needed against them   wound up being jailed as one of the Hollywood Ten who were honorably sentenced for contempt for not snitching on their fellow leftists-although he did “sing” later, sang loud to save his two bit career). The film under review was an effort in that direction although it was spiced up a bit as a third-rate thriller.        

When the deal went down that mention of “all hands against the Nazis” was no hyperbole as the two main characters of this film were escapees from “the Rock,” Alcatraz, the supposedly inescapable federal prison out in Frisco bay. Champ, played by James Craig, and Jimbo hightailed it one foggy night and wound up seeking refuge at a lighthouse out in the Japan currents. They take the residents of that lighthouse hostage, including the lighthouse keeper’s fetching wholesome daughter Ann, played by Bonita Granville, and plan their next moves (and Champ plays his hand trying to get with Ann to keep himself occupied until shipping out time).

What the fugitives did not know, nor did the residents, was that one of their number was a Nazi agent using the place to work on his nefarious plans to help blow up half of Frisco town if the opportunity presented itself. Jimbo wound up wasting that agent without knowing what his purposes had been. Those became clear when a threesome, two men and a woman, claimed they were stranded and sought refuge at the lighthouse. Their real purpose was to rendezvous with a German sub in order to get detailed plans of the layout of the city to the proper military authorities. For most of the film Champ and Jimbo could have cared less about what the Nazis were up to, it wasn’t their fight. After all they were prisoners, escaped prisoners, who were looking for a getaway. They would bargain with the devil if he could get them out. But once they became aware that the plans would have blown the Rock and them with it they began to see the light, began to see that they had to defend American right against the vermin.                

   

Jimbo said it best, “they were gangster’s but they were American gangsters” and they formed that vaunted united front with the lighthouse residents to do the Nazi scum in. Got the information to the right people to blow that damn Nazi sub out of the water too. See even fugitives, low life, could contribute to the war effort. Okay. 

In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- *From The Archives-Old Wobblie Folksinger/Storyteller Utah Phillips Needs Your Help

Click On Title To Link To Utah Phillips Web page.

Commentary

I have just received this communication about Utah Phillips from a local folksong society newsletter. I would add that I saw Utah playing at a club in Cambridge last spring (2007) and he looked a little off then. I have reposted below a CD Review of his anthology Starlight On The Trail from 2006 for those unfamiliar with his music and his politics. We differ on the politics but please help this old class warrior. I have added a link to his website here.

I have also added a link to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) website.

Utah Phillips needs help

Unions Passing Resolutions to Honor, Assist Folksinger/Storyteller Bruce "Utah" Phillips

The great folksinger and storyteller Utah Phillips has had to retire from performing due to chronic and serious heart problems that have plagued him for years. In recognition of his great love for and work on behalf of the union movement and working people of the United States, several union locals have passed resolutions honoring Phillips and attaching donations for his "retirement fund." Unable to travel or stand the rigors of performing a two-hour concert, Phillips has seen his main source of income vanish just when his medical problems are demanding more money for treatment and medications.

In response, Local 1180 of the Communications Workers of America (NYC), and both the Detroit and the James Connolly (Upstate New York) Branches of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) have recently passed the following resolution:

Bruce "Utah" Phillips is a truly unique American treasure. Not just a great folksong writer and interpreter, not just a great storyteller, Utah has preserved and presented the history of our nation's working people and union movement for audiences throughout the world. His recorded work keeps these songs and stories alive. He has spoken up against the injustices of boss-dominated capitalism and worked for peace and justice for more than 40 years.

Now Utah finds himself unable to continue performing due to severe heart problems. We wish to honor and recognize his great talent, spirit and love for the working people and the union movement of the United States. Therefore, we move to pass this resolution in gratitude for all he has done and will continue to do in his
work and life. We also wish to contribute to Utah Phillips in appreciation and in solidarity as he and his wife, Joanna Robinson, deal with his health and the loss of his ability to work.

This news is being released with the hope that other unions, anti-war and labor-affiliated organizations will respond in kind by passing this or similar resolutions in appreciation for all Utah Phillips has done for the cause of unions and peace.

Another way that organizations and individuals can help is by purchasing some or all of Utah's vast catalog of songs and stories. All of his CDs and more information are available at his website, www.utahphillips.org, and Utah has begun posting pod casts up there that you can download and listen to! You can also order his CDs online (credit card sales) through www.cdbaby.com but be advised that prices are cheaper and more of that money will go into Utah's hands if you order directly from him. More info on his website.

Here's the address for CD orders and to send a donation: U. Utah Phillips, No Guff Records, P.O. Box 1235, Nevada City, CA 95959, (530) 265-2476

Utah has given so much of himself to the labor and peace movements. It is great news that some unions and many have chosen to give something back to him, to allow him and his wife, Joanna Robinson, to rest easy, work on his long-term health, and not have to worry about where money will come for the medicine and bills he has to pay.

In Solidarity, George Mann


AN UNREPENTANT WOBBLIE AT WORK

CD REVIEW

STARLIGHT ON THE RAILS- UTAH PHILLIPS, 2005

Although this space is mainly dedicated to reviewing political books and commenting on past and current political issues as a way to orient today’s alienated radical youth on the lessons of the past literary output is hardly the only form of political creation. Occasionally in the history of the American and international left musicians, artists and playwrights have given voice or provided visual reminders to the face of political struggle. With that thought in mind, every once in a while I will use this space to review those kinds of political expression.

My musical tastes were formed, as were many of those of the generation of 1968, by ‘Rock and Roll’ music exemplified by the Rolling Stones and Beatles and by the blues revival, both Delta and Chicago style. However, those forms as much as they gave pleasure were only marginally political at best. In short, these were entertainers performing material that spoke to us. In the most general sense that is all one should expect of a performer. Thus, for the most part that music need not be reviewed here. Those who thought that a new musical sensibility laid the foundations for a cultural or political revolution have long ago been proven wrong.

That said, in the early 1960’s there nevertheless was another form of musical sensibility that was directly tied to radical political expression- the folk revival. This entailed a search for roots and relevancy in musical expression. While not all forms of folk music lent themselves to radical politics it is hard to see the 1960’s cultural rebellion without giving a nod to such figures as Dave Van Ronk, the early Bob Dylan, Utah Phillips, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and others. Whatever entertainment value these performers provided they also spoke to and prodded our political development. They did have a message and an agenda and we responded as such. That these musicians’ respective agendas proved inadequate and/or short-lived does not negate their affect on the times.

My leftist political consciousness, painfully fought for in my youth coincided with an expansion of my musical tastes under the influence of the great blues and folk revivals of the 1960’s. Unfortunately my exposure to the blues greats was mainly on records as many of them had been forgotten, retired or were dead. Not so with the folk revival which was created mainly by those who were close contemporaries. Alas, they too are now mainly forgotten, retired or dead. It therefore is with special pleasure that I review Utah Phillips Songbook while he is very much alive.

Many of the folksingers of the 1960’s attempted to use their music to become troubadours for social change. The most famous example, the early Bob Dylan, can be fairly described as the voice of his generation at that time. However, he fairly quickly moved on to other concepts of himself and his music. Bob Dylan’s work became more informed by the influences of Rimbaud and Verlaine and the French Symbolists of the late 1800’s and thus moved away to a more urban, sophisticated vision. From the start and consistently throughout his long career Utah has acted as a medium giving voice to the troubles of ordinary people and the simpler ethos of a more rural, Western-oriented gone by day in the American experience. He evokes in song the spirit of the people Walt Whitman paid homage to in poetic form and John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck gave in prose. He sits comfortably in very fast company. Therefore, Utah Phillips can justly claim the title of a people’s troubadour.

A word about politics. Generally, one rates music without reference to politics. However, Utah has introduced the political element by the way he structured the Songbook. Each song is introduced by him as to its significance heavily weighted to his political experiences, observations and vision. Thus, political comment is fairly in play here. Utah is a long time anarchist and unrepentant supporter of the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World, hereafter IWW). Every militant cherishes the memory of the class battles led by the IWW like the famous Lawrence strike of 1912 and honors the heroes of those battles like Big Bill Haywood and Vincent St. John and the militants they recruited to the cause of the working class in the first part of the 20th century. They paved the way for the later successful organization drives of the 1930’s.

Nevertheless, while Utah and I would both most definitely agree that some old-fashioned class struggle by working people in today’s one-sided class war would be a very good thing we as definitely differ on the way to insure a permanent victory for working people in order to create a decent society. In short, Utah’s prescriptions of good moral character, increased self-knowledge and the creation of small intentional communities are not enough. Under modern conditions it is necessary to take and safeguard political power against those who would quite consciously deny that victory. History has been cruel in some of the bitter lessons working people have had to endure for not dealing with the question of taking state power to protect their interests. But, enough said. I am more than willing to forgive the old curmudgeon his anarchist sins if he’ll sing ‘I Remember Loving You’ the next time he tours the Boston area.