From The Bob Feldman Blog-Bobby Sands 'Last Cry'- In Honor Of Bobby Sands, MP, And The Ten Irish Hunger Strikers of 1981

From The Bob Feldman Blog-Music To While Away The Class Struggle BY-Bobby Sands 'Last Cry'- In Honor Of Bobby Sands, MP, And The Ten Irish Hunger Strikers of 1981

From the American Left History blog

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

*The 25th Anniversary Of The Irish Republican Hunger Strikers-ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF BOBBY SANDS, MP- The Struggle Continues

Click on title to link to YouTube film clip on Bobby Sands and the Ten Irish Hunger Strikers of 1981

COMMENTARY

ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF BOBBY SANDS, MP


This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the deaths of Bobby Sands and the 10 Irish Republican Freedom Fighters as a result of their hunger strikes against the British Occupation. Hunger strikes are a way, and justifiably so, of gaining the world’s attention to an injustice done to downtrodden and unequally matched people struggling against occupation. That was certainly the situation in the North at that time. Unfortunately there still is no peace in the North nor can there be until the bloody British Army gets out. That is the primary condition necessary before real peace will come. Nationalists, Republicans and Socialists may disagree on the political configurations of the future governments in Ireland but all can, and should, demand the end of the occupation. To really honor these heroes raise the demand- ALL BRITISH TROOPS OUT OF IRELAND (and get the hell out of Iraq while we are at it). And to honor James Connolly, Commandant, Irish Citizens Army, an earlier Irish martyr, let us fight for socialist solutions to the “Troubles”. Chocky Ar la (Our Day Will Come).


"Easter, 1916"-William Butler Yeats

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

The Children of Easter, 1916- A Moment In History…For M.M, Class of 1964

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of William Butler Yeats', Easter, 1916.

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:

“A Terrible Beauty Is Born”, a recurring line from the great Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Easter, 1916.

At the corner of Hancock Street and East Main Street, forming a wedge in front of our old beige-bricked high school, ancient North Adamsville High School now of blessed memory although that hard fact was not always the case after passing through its portals but that for another day, stands against all weathers a poled plaque, sometimes, perhaps, garlanded with a flower of flag. From that vantage point, upon a recent walk-by, I have noticed that it gives the old school building a majestic “mighty fortress is our home” look. The plaque atop the pole, as you have probably already figured since such plaques are not uncommon in our casualty-filled, war-weary world, commemorates a fallen soldier, here of World War I, and is officially known as the Frank O’Brien Square. The corners and squares of most cities and towns in most countries of the world have such memorials to their war dead, needless to say far too many.

That plaque furthermore now, as it did not back in the 1960s, competes, unsuccessfully, with a huge Raider red billboard telling one and all of the latest doings; a football game here, a soccer game there, or upcoming events; a Ms. Something pageant, a cheer-leading contest, a locally produced play; or honoring somebody who gathered some grand academic achievement, won some accolade for a well-performed act and so forth. In due course that billboard too will be relegated to the “vaults" of the history of our town as well. This entry, however, is not about that possible scenario or about the follies of war, or even about why it is that young men (and now women) wind up doing the dangerous work of war that is decided by old men (and now old women), although that would be a worthy subject. No, the focus here is the name of the soldier, or rather the last name, O’Brien, and the Irish-ness of it.

A quick run through of the names of the students listed in, our yearbook, the Magnet for the Class of 1964, will illustrate my point. If Irish surnames are not in the majority, then they are predominant, and that does not even take into consideration the half or quarter Irish heritage that is hidden behind other names. My own family history is representative of that social mixing with a set of Irish and English-derived grandparents. And that is exactly the point.

If North Adamsville in the old days was not exactly “Little Dublin”, the heritage of the Irish diaspora certainly was nevertheless apparent for all to see, and to hear. More than one brogue-dripped man or woman, reflecting newness to the country and to the town, could be heard by an attentive listener at Harry’s Variety Store on Sagamore Street seeking that vagrant bottle of milk (or making that bet with Harry’s book on the sure-fire winner in the sixth at Aqueduct but we will keep that hush since, who knows, the statute of limitations may still not have run out yet on that “crime,” although the horse certainly did, run out that is). Or at Doc Andrews’ Drugstore, ya, good old Doc over on the corner of Young Street and Newberry seeking, holy grail-seeking that vagrant bottle of whiskey, strictly for medicinal purposes of course. And one did not have to be the slightest bit attentive but only within a couple of blocks of the locally famous, or infamous as the case may be, Dublin Grille to know through the mixes of brogue and rough-hewn strange language English that the newcomers had “assimilated.” And, to be fair, those same mixes could be heard coming piously out of Sunday morning Mass at Sacred Heart or at any hour on those gas-guzzling, smoked-fumed Eastern Mass buses that got one hither and fro in the old town. That North Quincy was merely a way-station away from the self-contained Irish ghettos of Dorchester and South Boston to the Irish Rivieras, like Marshfield and heathen Cohasset and Duxbury, of the area was, or rather is, also apparent as anyone who has been in the old town of late will note.

And that too is the point. Today Asian-Americans, particularly the Chinese and Vietnamese, and other minorities have followed that well-trodden path to North Adamsville from way-station Boston. And they have made, and will make, their mark on the ethos of this hard-working working-class part of town. So while the faint aroma of corn beef and cabbage (and colorful, red-drenched pasta dishes, from the other main ethnic group of old North Adamsville, the Italians) has been replaced by the pungent smells of moo shi and poi and the bucolic brogue by some sweet sing-song Mandarin dialect the life of the town moves on.

Yet, I can still feel, when I haphazardly walk certain streets, the Irish-ness of the diaspora “old sod” deep in my bones. To be sure, as a broken amber liquor bottle spotted on the ground reminded me, there were many, too many, father whiskey-sodden nights (complete with the obligatory beer chaser) that many a man spent his pay on to keep his “demons” from the door. And to be sure, as well, the grandmother passed-down ubiquitous, much dented, one-size-fits all pot on the old iron stove for the potato-ladened boiled dinner (that’s the corn beef and cabbage mentioned above for the unknowing heathens) that stretched an already tight food budget just a little longer when the ever present hard times cast their shadow at that same door.

And, of course, there was the great secret cultural relic; the relentless, never-ending struggle to keep the family “dirty linen” from the public eye, from those “shawlie” eyes ready to pounce at the mere hint of some secret scandal. But also this: the passed down heroic tales of our forbears, the sons and daughters of Roisin, in their heart-rending eight hundred year struggle against the crushing of the “harp beneath the crown” (and even heathens know whose crown that was); of the whispered homages to the ghosts of our Fenian dead; of great General Post Office uprisings, large and small; and, of the continuing struggle in the North. Yes, as that soldier’s plaque symbolizes, an Irish presence will never completely leave the old town, nor will the willingness to sacrifice.

Oh, by the way, that Frank O'Brien for whom the square in front of the old school was named, would have been my grand uncle, the brother of my Grandmother Markin (nee O'Brien) from over on Young Street across from the Welcome Young Field.

Easter, 1916-William Butler Yeats

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- Luke Kelly- "The Foggy Dew"

Click on the title to link a "YouTube" film clip of Luke Kelly performing "The Foggy Dew".

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

The Foggy Dew

As down the glen one Easter morn to a city fair rode I
There Armed lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by
No fife did hum nor battle drum did sound it's dread tatoo
But the Angelus bell o'er the Liffey swell rang out through the foggy dew

Right proudly high over Dublin Town they hung out the flag of war
'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky than at Sulva or Sud El Bar
And from the plains of Royal Meath strong men came hurrying through
While Britannia's Huns, with their long range guns sailed in through the foggy dew

'Twas Britannia bade our Wild Geese go that small nations might be free
But their lonely graves are by Sulva's waves or the shore of the Great North Sea
Oh, had they died by Pearse's side or fought with Cathal Brugha
Their names we will keep where the fenians sleep 'neath the shroud of the foggy dew

But the bravest fell, and the requiem bell rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide in the springing of the year
And the world did gaze, in deep amaze, at those fearless men, but few
Who bore the fight that freedom's light might shine through the foggy dew

Ah, back through the glen I rode again and my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men whom I never shall see more
But to and fro in my dreams I go and I'd kneel and pray for you,
For slavery fled, O glorious dead, When you fell in the foggy dew.

*A Saga Of The "Famine Ship" Irish- Albany-Style- William Kennedy's "Quinn's Book"

Click on the title to link to the "New York State Writers Institute" Website for its entry on Albany-cycle writer William Kennedy.

Book Review

Quinn’s Book, William Kennedy, Viking Press, New York, 1988

Recently, in reviewing an early William Kennedy Albany-cycle novel, “Ironweed” I mentioned that he was my kind of writer. I will let what I stated there stand on that score here. Here is what I said:

“William Kennedy is, at least in his Albany stories, my kind of writer. He writes about the trials and tribulations of the Irish diaspora as it penetrated the rough and tumble of American urban WASP-run society, for good or evil. I know these people, my people, their follies and foibles like the back of my hand. Check. Kennedy writes, as here with the main characters Fran Phelan and Helen Archer two down at the heels sorts, about that pervasive hold that Catholicism has even on its most debased sons and daughters, saint and sinner alike. I know those characteristics all too well. Check. He writes about that place in class society where the working class meets the lumpen-proletariat-the thieves, grifters, drifters and con men- the human dust. I know that place well, much better than I would ever let on. Check. He writes about the sorrows and dangers of the effects alcohol on working class families. I know that place too. Check. And so on. Oh, by the way, did I mention that he also, at some point, was an editor of some sort associated with the late Hunter S. Thompson down in Puerto Rico. I know that mad man’s work well. He remains something of a muse for me. Check.”

That said, this little novel takes place in an earlier time in the Albany novel cycle, the earliest period thus far in my reading of the cycle. This is a story of the hard period in America for those “famine ship Irish” that were driven to seek a new life in the New World against their collective wills. But, certainly they were driven out of Ireland by economic necessity and desperation. For the most part the snippets of character detailed here, including the earliest generations of names that are familiar from later generations in Kennedy’s books , do not suggest that they were driven out due to some criminal activity, political or not, against old “Mother “England”.

That "snippet of character" reference above also can be used as a point that makes this novel a little different from the others in this cycle. The narrator, Daniel Quinn, a teenage boy-man orphan (nice touch, as narrator in a fresh, young country) with plenty of spunk and ambition, as is usually the case gets plenty of character build-up throughout. However this novel is driven more by the plot than by character development than prior Kennedy reads. That plot, such as it is, centers on Quinn's “golden quest” to win the hand of the “teen angel”, Maud, come hell or high water. Along the way, we are taken on a Kennedy version of “magical realism”, 19th century Albany Irish style: of the "famine ship" Irish; of the old Dutch squirarchy that ruled the Hudson Valley in those days; of the American racial and political scene in the pre-Civil War period, and much else. That “much else” sometimes gets in the way of the “golden quest”, but as almost always with Kennedy he gives us a good read, if not a great one.

Songs Of The Old Sod- The Traditional Irish Singer/Storyteller Joe Heaney

Songs Of The Old Sod- The Traditional Irish Singer/Storyteller Joe Heaney

CD Review

The Road From Connemara: As Told To Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl, Joe Heaney, Topic Records, 2002


Over the past couple of years I have spilled plenty of ink harking back to the American side of the folk revival movement of the early 1960s in which a whole generation it seemed, the generation of my youth, could not get enough of traditional music from many different sources: the mountains of Virginia and Kentucky; the swamps and bayous of Louisiana; the Mississippi delta and the North Carolina piedmont to name a few. And as part of that revival, of course, a renewed interest in songs from the old country, Ireland, which formed the backbone along with England, Scotland and Wales of the core of many trans-Atlantic versions of old time music, especially from the Scotch- Irish who populated those eastern mountain regions.

Furthermore, I have recognized as part of that spilled ink on the subject of the folk revival the names of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, and to a lesser extent, The Dubliners, as having been pivotal in the renewed interest in Irish music beyond the patented Saint Patrick’s Day classics of “My Wild Irish Rose and “Danny Boy” that were carted out every year on that date, at least here in the American Irish diaspora.

Of course, that input begs the question of where the lads mentioned above got their source music from, and that is where the likes of all-Irish champion a capella singer/storyteller Joe Heaney comes in, via a connection with some familiar names from the American folk scene, Peggy Seeger (fame folklorist Pete Seeger’s half-sister) and folk historian and songwriter Ewan MacColl. This compilation of songs and stories is an excellent primer for getting a handle on the music that our grandparents, or great-grandparents, heard and listened to back in the old country.

Moreover some of the songs are sung in Irish (a real treat and the source of some of Heaney’s best renditions on this compilation). There are songs of love, young and old, misused and abused love, laments for lost and couldn’t be love. Also the British occupation and what it did to the formation of the Irish psyche and the national liberation struggle as it was brought to fruition. Heaney does a great job as well of telling the stories behind many of the songs. So if you are a little behind in your knowledge of the Irish folk tradition, the real tradition, here is a way to catch up fast.

*Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History-The "Molly Mcguires" And The 19th Century Irish -American Struggle For Trade Unions

Click On Title To Link To A Wikipedia Entry For The Molly Maguires. Note, as always, with these entries on this site there can be problems with facts and political perspective.

Every Month Is Labor History Month.

This commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

The Smells, Ah, The Smells Of Childhood- Ida's Bakery

Click on the headline to link to a website devoted to oatmeal bread recipes. Hey, I never said I wasn't quirky on some of these links.

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville High School Class of 1964, comment:

There are many smells, sounds, tastes, sights and touches stirred up on the memory’s eye trail in search of the old days in North Adamsville. Today though I am in thrall to smells. The why of this thralldom is simply put. I had, a short while ago, passed a neighborhood bakery here on the St. Brendan Street that reeked of the smell of sour-dough bread being baked on the premises. The bakery itself, designated as such by a plainly painted sign-Mrs. Kenney’s Bakery- was a simple extension of someone’s house, living quarters above, and that brought me back to the hunger streets of the old home town and Ida’s holy-of-holies bakery over on Sagamore Street.

Of course one could not dismiss, dismiss at one’s peril, that invigorating smell of the salt air blowing in from North Adamsville Bay when the wind was up. A wind that spoke of high-seas adventures, of escape, of jail break-out from landlocked spiritual destitutes, of, well, on some days just having been blown in from somewhere else for those who sought that great eastern other shoreline. Or how could one forget the still nostril-filling pungent fragrant almost sickening smell emanating from the Proctor &Gamble soap factory across the channel down in the old Adamsville Housing Authority project that defined many a muggy childhood summer night air instead of sweet dreams and puffy clouds. Or that never to be forgotten slightly oily, sulfuric smell at low- tide down at North Adamsville Beach, the time of the clam diggers and their accomplices trying to eke a living or a feeding out of that slimy mass. Or evade the fetid smell of marsh weeds steaming up from the disfavored Squaw Rock end of the beach, the adult haunts. (Disfavored, disfavored when it counted in the high teenage dudgeon be-bop 1960s night, post-school dance or drive-in movie love slugfest, for those who took their “submarine races” dead of night viewing seriously. And I do not, or will not spell the significance of that teen lingo race expression even for those who did their teenage “parking” in the throes of the wild high plains Kansas night. You can figure that out yourselves.)

Or the smell sound of the ocean floor (or dawn, if you got lucky) at twilight on those days when the usually tepid waves aimlessly splashed against the shoreline stones, broken clam shells, and other fauna and flora turned around and became a real roaring ocean, acting out Mother Nature’s high life and death drama, and in the process acted to calm a man’s (or a man-child’s) nerves in the frustrating struggle to understand a world not of one’s own making. Moreover, I know I do not have to stop very long to tell this retro crowd, the crowd that will read this piece, about the smell taste of that then just locally famous HoJo’s ice cream back in the days. Jimmied up and frosted to take one’s breath away. Or those char-broiled hot dogs and hamburgers sizzling on your back-yard barbecue pit or, better, from one of the public pits down at the beach. But the smell that I am ghost-smelling today is closer to home as a result of a fellow classmate’s bringing this to my attention awhile back (although, strangely, if the truth be known I was already on the verge of “exploring" this very subject). Today, after passing that home front bakery, as if a portent, I bow down in humble submission to the smells from Ida’s Bakery.

You, if you are of a certain age, at or close to AARP-eligible age, and neighborhood, Irish (or some other ethnic-clinging enclave) filled with those who maybe did not just get off the boat but maybe their parents did, remember Ida’s, right? Even if you have never set foot one in old North Adamsville, or even know where the place is. If you lived within a hair’s breathe of any Irish neighborhood and if you grew up probably any time in the first half of the 20th century you “know” Ida’s. My Ida ran a bakery out of her living room, or maybe it was the downstairs and she lived upstairs, in the 1950s and early 1960s (beyond that period I do not know). An older grandmotherly woman when I knew her who had lost her husband, lost him to drink, or, as was rumored, persistently rumored although to a kid it was only so much adult air talk, to another woman. Probably it was the drink as was usual in our neighborhoods with the always full hang-out Dublin Grille just a couple of blocks up the street. She had, heroically in retrospect, raised a parcel of kids on the basis of her little bakery including some grandchildren that I played ball with over at Welcome Young field also just up the street, and also adjacent to my grandparents’ house on Kendrick Street.

Now I do not remember all the particulars about her beyond the grandmotherly appearance I have just described, except that she still carried that hint of a brogue that told you she was from the “old sod” but that did not mean a thing in that neighborhood because at any give time when the brogues got wagging you could have been in Limerick just as easily as North Adamsville. Also she always, veil of tears hiding maybe, had a smile for one and all coming through her door, and not just a commercial smile either. Nor do I know much about how she ran her operation, except that you could always tell when she was baking something in back because she had a door bell tinkle that alerted her to when someone came in and she would come out from behind a curtained entrance, shaking flour from her hands, maybe, or from her apron-ed dress ready to take your two- cent order-with a smile, and not a commercial smile either but I already told you that.

Nor, just now, do I remember all of what she made or how she made it but I do just now, rekindled by this morning’s sough-dough yeasty smell, remember the smells of fresh oatmeal bread that filtered up to the playing fields just up the street from her store on Fridays when she made that delicacy. Fridays meant oatmeal bread, and, as good practicing Catholics were obliged to not eat red meat on that sacred day, tuna fish. But, and perhaps this is where I started my climb to quarrelsome heathen-dom I balked at such a desecration. See, grandma would spring for a fresh loaf, a fresh right from the oven loaf, cut by a machine that automatically sliced the bread (the first time I had seen such a useful gadget). And I would get to have slathered peanut butter (Skippy, of course) and jelly (Welch’s grape, also of course) and a glass of milk. Ah, heaven.

And just now I memory smell those white-flour dough, deeply- browned Lenten hot-cross buns white frosting dashed that signified that hellish deprived high holy catholic Lent was over, almost. Beyond that I draw blanks. Know this those. All that sweet sainted goddess (or should be) Ida created from flour, eggs, yeast, milk and whatever other secret devil’s ingredient she used to create her other simple baked goods may be unnamed-able but they put my mother, my grandmother, your mother, your grandmother in the shade. And that is at least half the point. You went over to Ida’s to get high on those calorie-loaded goodies. And in those days with youth at your back, and some gnawing hunger that never quite got satisfied, back that was okay. Believe me it was okay. I swear I will never forget those glass-enclosed delights that stared out at me in my sugar hunger. I may not remember much about the woman, her life, where she was from, or any of that. This I do know- in this time of frenzied interest in all things culinary Ida's simple recipes and her kid-maddening bakery smells still hold a place of honor.

The Intellectuals Or The Jocks?-For Fredda Cohen, North Adamsville High, Class Of 1964-Phil Larkin’s View

Click on the headline to link to a letter written by the late American writer, Norman Mailer, and printed in The New York Review Of Books, detailing his choices for "must reads" in the American literary canon. What would your ten choices be? See below.

Phil Larkin guest comment:

I did not then, nor do I now, know Fredda Cohen, a fellow classmate at North Adamsville High, Class of 1964. I don’t remember if old track buddy Markin, Peter Paul Markin, who prompted me to write some teary-eyed thing for him knew her or not, but it was with her in mind that I wrote the following. I, today, strongly believe that I could have learned a lot from her and maybe Markin does too but you will have to ask him that yourself. No way, no way on god’s good green earth in the year 2011 and while I am still breathing, old time “jock” buddies or not, am I going to vouch for that maniac. Here goes:

Every September, like clockwork, I am transported to a place called the beginning of the year. No, not New Year’s Day like any real person would expect, but the school year for most students, younger or older. That is a frame of reference that I have not changed in all these years. And every year, or many years anyway, my thoughts come back to the road not taken, or really not taken then, when I ask myself the following question that I am posing in such a way here so that you can ask it to yourself as well: What group(s) did you hang around with in high school?

This question is meant to be generic and more expansive that the two categories listed in the headline. These were hardly the only social groupings that existed at our high school (or any public high school, then or now, for that matter) but the ones that I am interested in personally for the purpose of this thing. Corner boy devotees and hoods, social butterflies, teases (actually that is covered that under social butterflies, girl social butterflies), school administration “brown noses,” science nuts, auto mechanics grease monkeys, bolsheviks, hippies, beats, hip-hop nation devotees, could-care-if-school-kept-or-not-ers, school skippers, drop-outs, and religious nuts can speak your own piece for your “community.”

You, fellow alumni from Anyway U.S.A. High, can also feel free to present your own extra categories in case I missed anything above like S&M or B&D devotees or stamp club members or both intertwined, if your you were aware of such types. However, for this writer, and perhaps some of you, here were my choices. The intellectuals, formerly known as the "smart kids.” You know, the ones that your mother was always, usually unfavorably, comparing you to come report card time in order to embarrass you or get you to buckle down in the great getting out from under the graying nowhere working class night and make something of yourself that she (and dad) could be proud of. Yes, those kids at the library after school, and even on Saturday, Saturdays if you can believe that, and endlessly trudging, trudging like some Promethean wanderers about forty six pounds of books, books large and small, books in all colors, mainly, and here is the kicker, well-thumbed, very well-thumbed. Or, on the other hand the jocks, the guys and in those days it was almost exclusively guys (girls came in as cheer-leaders or, well, girlfriends-sometimes the same thing). You know, mainly, the Goliaths of the gridiron, their hangers-on, wannabes and "slaves." The guys who were not carrying any forty-six pounds of books, although maybe were wearing that much poundage in gear. And any books that needed carrying was done by either girlfriends or the previously mentioned slaves. Other sports may have had some shine but the “big men” on campus were the fall classic guys. Some sports such as the old buddies, Markin and Larkin, track and field events didn’t usually rate even honorable mention compared to say a senior bake sale or high school confidential school dance.

Frankly, although I was drawn to both groupings in high school I was mainly a "loner" for reasons that are beyond what I want to discuss here except it very definitely had to do with confusion about the way to get out from under that graying working class nowhere night. And about “fitting” in somewhere in the school social order that had little room for guys (or girls for that matter) who didn’t fit into some classifiable niche. And for guys, 1960s shorts-wearing track guys, running the streets of old North Adamsville to the honks of automobiles trying to scare us off the road (no share the road with a runner then) and jeers, the awful jeers of girls, that space was very small. The most one could hope for was a “nod” from the football guys (or basketball in winter) in recognition that you were a fellow athlete, of sorts. Ya, times were tough but we survived.

But now I can come out of the closet, at last. I read books. Yes, I read them, no devoured them endlessly (and still do), and as frequently as I could. Did you see me carrying tons of books over my shoulder in public. Be serious, please. Here is the long held secret (even from Markin). I used to go over to the library on the other side of town, the Adamsville side where no one, no one who counted anyway (meaning no jock, of course), would know me. One summer I did that almost every day. So there you have it. Well, not quite.

In recent perusals of my class yearbook I have been drawn continually to the page where the description of the Great Books Club is presented. I believe that I was hardly aware of this club at the time but, apparently, it met after school and discussed Plato, John Stuart Mill, Max Weber, Karl Marx and others. Fredda Cohen ran that operation. Hell, that sounded like great fun. One of the defining characteristics of my life has been, not always to my benefit, an overweening attachment to books and ideas. So what was the problem? What didn't I hang with that group?

Well, uh..., you know, they were, uh, nerds, dweebs, squares, not cool (although we did not use those exact terms in those days). That, at least, was the public reason, but here are some other more valid possibilities. Coming from my 'shanty' background, where the corner boys had a certain cachet, I was somewhat afraid of mixing with the "smart kids." The corner boys counted, after school anyway, and if they didn’t count then it was better to keep a wide, down low berth from anything that looked like a book reader in their eyes. I, moreover, feared that I wouldn't measure up, that the intellectuals seemed more virtuous somehow. I might also add that a little religiously-driven plebeian Irish Catholic anti-intellectualism (you know, be 'street' smart but not too 'book' smart in order to get ahead in one version of that graying working class nowhere night) might have entered into the mix as well.

But, damn, I sure could have used the discussions and fighting for ideas that such groups would have provided. I had to do it the hard way later. As for the jocks one should notice, by the way, that in the last few paragraphs that I have not mentioned a thing about their virtues. And, in the scheme of things, that is about right. So now you know my choice, except to steal a phrase from something that madman Markin wrote honoring his senior English teacher, Ms. Lenora Sonos- "Literature matters. Words matter." (I wish now that I had had her as well). I would only add here that ideas matter, as well. Hats Off to the North Adamsville Class of 1964 intellectuals!
*****

Norman Mailer

Ten Favorite American Novels

U.S.A. John Dos Passos
Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Studs Lonigan James T. Farrell
Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald-1st A.J.
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
Appointment in Samarra John O'Hara
The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain
Moby-Dick Herman Melville

This would be my list, as well, except instead of Moby Dick I would put Jack Kerouac's On The Road

In Honor Of Easter 1916-When The Boyos Cried Out Against The Rough-Edged Night– “Blackout”- The Dropkick Murphys- A CD (DVD) Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Dropkick Murphys performing Worker’s Song.

CD (DVD) Review

Blackout, CD with bonus DVD with live performances, Dropkick Murphys, Hellcat Records, 2003

Guys (guys being used here colloquially for men and women) with a sense of Easter 1916, James Connolly, Irish Citizens Army, General Post Office, fight the damn English 800 hundred year oppressors history. Rock and roll guys, hard rock and rock guys, who throw back to classic 1960s days (ouch!, ouch for me that is). Boston mean streets guys. Irish guys, working class guys, Irish working class guys, not always the same thing as elsewhere and perhaps a bit more clannish what with that Aer Lingus making Dublin a suburban stop from Logan. What is there not to like for a Irish-immersed working class guy who lived just a stone’s from mother home Southie.

And the answer is nothing, including a nice little bonus DVD to see the boyos (also colloquially used) rage against the hard-edged world night. And do it on their own terms from up-tempo Irish Saint Patrick’ Day “drunk as a skunk” standards like Black Velvet Band to homage working class Worker’s Song to just regular working class angst stuff to just regular boy meets girl, heaven hell no way out stuff boy meets girl stuff, that we all face, and face gladly. Nice work, boyos. And don’t ever get complaisant, okay.

When The Harp Was Buried Beneath Crown- For James Connolly Commandant, Irish Citizens Army

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Machem performing a song of Irish national liberation, The Rising Of The Moon.

The Clancy Brothers, The Rising Of The Moon, 1991

The following review was used to comment on several of the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Machem recordings back in the day, the 1960s day anyway, when they performed many times in America and various members stayed here for stretches at a time. The obvious musical skills, sheer talent, and commitment to craftsmanship of this group during its history need no comment by me. Nor does their commitment to keeping the Irish folk tradition alive beyond the known and by now well-worn Saint Patrick’s Day “everybody is green” traditions Thus the criterion for my reviews was solely based only whether and how closely the works represented the political traditions associated with the historic struggle for independence from the English, the bloody eight hundred year oppression. The Yeatsian Easter 1916 “terrible beauty is born” saga

A word. As I developed a quasi- leftist political consciousness, frankly, nothing then really more than a studied left liberalism, red scare, cold war variant, tepid, very tepid and timid upon reflection, in my youth I also, in an unsystematic and for the most part then unconscious manner, developed an interest in what is today is called roots music. Initially this was reflected in my first love-the blues, music that spoke to that hard times growing up poor in a world, or rather a country, that was frowning on poorness. The old country blues of the Mississippi Delta sweat labor, share-cropping, hard-drinking, hard moaning, no electricity juke joint Saturday night where you got a woman or a knife, maybe both, maybe neither. Or up river, sweet home Chicago, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf cries in the great neon electric industrial night.

During the early sixties, under the influence of Dave Van Ronk, first heard on some local almost mythical folk hour, called hootenanny or some such name, singing out of some graveyard voice from those hills and hollows down Kentucky way, Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies I developed an interest in folk music, then at the height of its revival minute. Then, in turn, came Bob Dylan storming heaven or hell to be the voice of our generation, at least in song, Pete Seeger methodically keeping the “faith” alive against the rock influence that drove our generation to distraction, Woody Guthrie linking us back to dustbowl, hobo, tramp, road bumming wobblie days, and the rest. It is through this process that I, almost accidentally, came to appreciate the work of the artists under review.

This is an odd route, and I will explain why. I was actually reared on the material presented on this album by my maternal grandfather, a great supporter of the Irish Republican Army. I gained from him my own romantic attachment to the exploits of the IRA in 1916 and beyond that to independence and the continuing struggle in the north. Although my own political evolution since then has led me away from political support to the IRA I still love the old songs which represent the spirit of Irish national identity and aspirations for national liberation historically suppressed by the bloody English.

A word about the songs presented here. The liner notes included with the CD are very helpful. The songs range in subject from ‘The Rising of the Moon’ at the time of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishman, probably the last time that a united, independent, non-sectarian single Irish state was possible, to ‘Kevin Barry’ and ‘Sean Treacy’ just before the partition in 1921, creating the mess that still confronts us politically today. That said, as these lines are being written we are approaching the 96th Anniversary of the Easter Uprising of 1916. The vision that James Connolly, and the others, of a workers’ Social Republic as proclaimed at the General Post Office still waits. In short, there is still work to be done, North and South, united or as independent states. Listen to these songs to understand where we have come from and why we still need to fight.

When The Boyos Cried Out Against The Rough-Edged Night– “Blackout”- The Dropkick Murphys- A CD (DVD) Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Dropkick Murphys performing Worker’s Song.

CD (DVD) Review

Blackout, CD with bonus DVD with live performances, Dropkick Murphys, Hellcat Records, 2003

Guys (guys being used here colloquially for men and women) with a sense of Easter 1916, James Connolly, Irish Citizens Army, General Post Office, fight the damn English 800 hundred year oppressors history. Rock and roll guys, hard rock and rock guys, who throw back to classic 1960s days (ouch!, ouch for me that is). Boston mean streets guys. Irish guys, working class guys, Irish working class guys, not always the same thing as elsewhere and perhaps a bit more clannish what with that Aer Lingus making Dublin a suburban stop from Logan. What is there not to like for a Irish-immersed working class guy who lived just a stone’s from mother home Southie.

And the answer is nothing, including a nice little bonus DVD to see the boyos (also colloquially used) rage against the hard-edged world night. And do it on their own terms from up-tempo Irish Saint Patrick’ Day “drunk as a skunk” standards like Black Velvet Band to homage working class Worker’s Song to just regular working class angst stuff
to just regular boy meets girl, heaven hell no way out stuff boy meets girl stuff, that we all face, and face gladly. Nice work, boyos. And don’t ever get complaisant, okay.

The “Shame” Culture Of Poverty- Down In The Base Of Society Life Ain’t Pretty

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the late Irish-American writer and my muse on this post, Frank McCourt.

Peter Paul Markin comment:

A few years ago in reviewing Frank McCourt’s memoir of his childhood in Ireland, Angela’s Ashes, I noted that McCourt’s story was my story. I went on to explain that although time, geography, family composition and other factors were different, in some ways very different, the story that he told of the impoverished circumstances of his growing up “shanty” in Limerick, Ireland, taking all proportions into consideration, was amazingly similar to those I faced growing up “shanty” in a Boston, Massachusetts suburb, North Adamsville, a generation later. A recent re-reading of that work only confirms my previous appraisal. The common thread? Down at the base of modern industrial society, down at that place where the working poor meets what Karl Marx called the lumpenproletariat, the sheer fact of scarcity drives life very close to the bone. Poverty hurts, and hurts in more ways than are apparent to the eye. No Dorothea Lange Arkie/Okie Dust Bowl hollow-boned despair, hardship windowless, hell, door-less, hovel, no end in sight, no good end in sight photograph can find that place.

I also mentioned in that McCourt review that the dreams that came out of his Limerick childhood neighborhood, such as they were, were small dreams, very small steps up the mobility ladder from generation to generation. If that much, of step up that is. I immediately picked up on his references to what constituted “respectability” in that milieu- getting off the the soul-starving “dole” and getting a “soft” low-level governmental civil service job that after thirty some years would turn into a state pension in order to comfort oneself and one’s love ones in old age.

That, my friends, is a small dream by anybody’s standard but I am sure that any reader who grew up in a working poor home in America in the last couple of generations knows from where I speak. I can hear my mother’s voice urging me on to such a course as I have just described. The carping, “Why don’t you take the civil service exam?,” so on and so on. Escaping that white-walled nine-to-five, three-week vacation and a crooked back cubicle fate was a near thing though. The crushing out of big dreams for the working poor may not be the final indictment of what the capitalist system does to the denizens down at the base but it certainly will do for starters.

In the recent past one of the unintended consequences of trying to recount my roots through contacting members of my high school class, North Adamsville High School Class of 1964, has been the release of a flood of memories from those bleak days of childhood that I had placed (or thought I had placed) way, way on the back burner of my brain. A couple of year ago I did a series of stories, Tales From The ‘Hood', on some of those earlier recalled incidents. Frank McCourt’s recounting of some of the incidents of his bedraggled ragamuffin upbringing brought other incidents back to me. In Angela’s Ashes he mentioned how he had to wear the same shirt through thick and thin. As nightwear, school wear, every wear. I remember my own scanty wardrobe and recounted in one of those stories in the series, A Coming Of Age Story, about ripping up the bottoms of a pair of precious pants, denims of course, one of about three pair that I rotated until they turned to shreds in the course of time, for a square dance demonstration for our parents in order to ‘impress’ a girl that I was smitten with at Adamsville South Elementary School. I caught holy hell, serious holy hell for weeks afterwards, for that (and missed, due to my mother’s public rage in front of everybody, my big chance with the youthful stick girl “femme fatale” as well-oh memory).

I have related elsewhere in discussing my high school experiences as also noted in that series mentioned above that one of the hardships of high school was (and is) the need , recognized or not, to be “in.” One of the ways to be “in,” at least for a guy in my post-World War II generation, the “Generation of ’68,” and the first generation to have some disposable income in hand was to have cool clothes, a cool car, and a cool girlfriend. “Cool,” you get it, right? Therefore the way to be the dreaded “out” was to be ….well, you know that answer. One way not to be cool was to wear hand-me-downs from an older brother, an older brother who was build larger than you and you had to kind of tuck in that and roll up that. Or to wear, mother–produced from some recessive poverty gene Bargain Center midnight fire discount sale, oddly colored (like purple or vermillion) or designed (pin-striped then not in style or curly-cues never in style) clothes. This is where not having enough of life’s goods hurts. Being doled out a couple of new sets of duds a year was not enough to break my social isolation from the “cool guys.” I remember the routine even now-new clothes for the start of the school year and then at Easter. Cheap stuff too, from some Wal-Mart-type store, like the Bargain Center mentioned above, of the day.

Top this all off the dead weight of the Roman Catholic Church better doing in the next world piled, pig-piled on one’s “soul,” as if the “sin” of being poor in the world was that mortal sin that would preclude heaven’s gate, heaven’s gate at all. Or the almost as equally dead weight of those pious poor as church mice brethren who looked down from their one niche up perch at we raggedy shanties as they strove, usually unsuccessfully, to “better” themselves. But worst, worst that all that were the unacknowledged sneers when one passed the better sort, especially the girls. Ya, I know, know now, it wasn’t just poor and raggedy boys who took the snub but why didn’t somebody give me the word.

All of this may be silly, in fact is silly in the great scale of things. But those drummed-in small dreams, that non-existent access to those always scarce “cool” items, those missed opportunities by not being ‘right,’ meaning respectable, added up. All of this created a “world” where crime, petty and large, seemed respectable as an alternative (a course that my own brothers followed, followed unsuccessfully for life, and that I did for a minute), where the closeness of neighbors was suffocating and where the vaunted “neighborhood community” was more like something out of “the night of the long knives.” If, as Thomas Hobbes postulated in his political works, especially "Levithan," in the 17th century, life is “nasty, short and brutish” then those factors are magnified many times over down at the base.

Contrary to Hobbes, however, the way forward is through more social solidarity, not more guards at the doors of the rich. All of this by way of saying that in the 21st century we need that social solidarity not less but more than ever. As I stated once in a commentary that I titled, Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?, one of the only virtues of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks among the working poor is that I am personally inured to the vicissitudes of the gyrations of the world capitalist economy. Hard times growing up were the only times. But many of my brothers and sisters are not so inured. For them I fight for the social solidarity of the future. In that future we may not be able to eliminate shame as an emotion but we can put a very big dent in the class-driven aspect of it.

The Face Of Old Irish Working-Class North Adamsville- Another Moment In History -In Honor Of Kenny, Class Of 1958?

Another Moment In History- A Guest Post, Of Sorts

Kenny Kelly, Class of 1958? comment:

A word. I, Kenneth Francis Xavier Kelly, at work they just call me Kenny, although my friends call me “FX”, am a map of Ireland, or at least I used to be when I was younger and had a full head of very wavy red hair, a mass of freckles instead of a whiskey and beer chaser-driven mass of very high-proof wrinkles, and my own, rather than store-bought, rattlers, teeth I mean. For work, ya, I’m still rolling the barrels uphill, I, well, let’s just say I do a little of this and a little of that for Jimmy the Mutt and leave it at that. I am also the map, the Irish map part anyway, of North Adamsville, from the Class of 1958 at the old high school, or at least I should have been, except for, well, let’s leave that as at a little of this and that, for now, as well. I’ll tell you that story another time, if you want to hear it. Or talk to that old bastard, Headmaster Kerrigan, Black-Jack Kerrigan, and he’ll give you his lying side of the story if he can still talk the bastard.

Let’s also put it that I grew up, rough and tumble, mostly rough, very rough, on the hard drinking-father-sometimes-working, and the plumbing-or-something-don’t-work- and-you-can’t- get- the-tight-fisted-landlord-to- fix-anything-for-love-nor- money walk up triple decker just barely working class, mean streets around Sagamore and Prospect Streets in one –horse Atlantic. At least my dear grandmother, and maybe yours too, called it that because there was nothing there, nothing you needed anyway. You know where I mean, those streets right over by the Welcome Young Field, by Harry the Bookie’s variety store (you knew Harry’s, with the always almost empty shelves except maybe a few dusty cans of soup, a couple of loaves of bread and a refrigerator empty except maybe a quart of milk or two, an also active pin-ball machine, and his “book” right on the counter for all the world, including his cop-customer world, to see), and the never empty, never empty as long as my father was alive, Red Feather (excuse me I forgot it changed names, Dublin Grille) bar room. Now I have your attention, right?

But first let me explain how I wound up as a “guest” on this “Tales of Old North Adamsville” blog. Seems like Peter Paul Markin, that’s the half-assed, oops, half-baked, manager of this site, posted up some story, some weepy cock and bull story, about the Irish-ness of the old town, “A Moment In History… As March 17th Approaches” to the “North Adamsville Graduates Facebook” page and my pride and joy daughter, Clara, North Adamsville Class of 1978 (and she actually graduated), saw it and recognized the names Riley, O’Brian and Welcome Young Field and asked me to read it. I did and sent Peter Paul an e-mail (christ, where does he get off using two names like he was a bloody heathen Boston Brahmin and him without a pot to piss in, as my dear grandmother used to say, growing up on streets on the wrong side of the tracks, over near the marshes for chrissakes, wronger even than the Sagamore streets). (Or my baby Clara did, after I told her what to write. I’m not much of hand at writing or using this hi-tech stuff, if you want to know the truth)

I don’t know what he did with that e-mail, and to be truthful again, I don’t really care, but in that e-mail I told him something that he didn’t know, or rather two things. The first was that I “knew” him, or rather knew his grandmother (on his mother’s side) Anna Riley because her sister, Bernice, and my dear grandmother, Mary, also an O’Brien but with an “e”, who both lived in Southie (South Boston, in those days the Irish Mecca, for the heathens or Protestants that might read this) were as thick as thieves. When I was just a teenager myself I used to drive his grandmother over to her sister’s in Southie so that the three of them, and maybe some other ladies joined them for all I know, could go to one of the Broadway bars (don’t ask me to name which one, I don’t remember) that admitted unescorted ladies in those days and have themselves a drunk. And smoke cigarettes, unfiltered ones no less, Camels I think when I used cadge a few, which his stern grandfather, Dan Riley, refused to allow in the house over on Young Street.

I know, I know this is not the way that blue-grey haired Irish grandmothers are supposed to act, in public or private. And somebody, if I know my old North Adamsville gossips, wags and nose-butters, and my North Adamsville Irish branch of that same clan especially, is going say why am I airing that “dirty linen” in public. That’s a good point that Peter Paul talked in his story about Frank O’Brian and not airing the family business in public (in that post mentioned above). So what am I doing taking potshots as the blessed memories of those sainted ladies. That is where my second thing comes in to set the record straight – Peter Paul, and I told him so in that e-mail (or Clara did) with no beating around the bush, is to me just another one of those misty-eyed, half-breed March 17th Irish that are our curse and who go on and on about the eight hundred years of English tyranny like they lived it, actually lived each day of it. (Yes half-breed, his father, a good guy from what my father told me when they used to drink together, was nothing but a Protestant hillbilly from down in the mountain mists hills and hollows Kentucky)

Now don’t get me wrong. I am as patriotic as the next Irishman in tipping my hat to our Fenian dead, and the boys of ’16, and the lads on the right side in 1922, and the lads fighting in the North now but Peter Paul has got the North Adamsville Irish weepy, blessed “old sod” thing all wrong. No doubt about it. So, if you can believe this, he challenged me, to tell the real story. And I am here as his “guest” to straighten him out, and maybe you too. Sure, he is helping me write this thing. I already told you I’m a low-tech guy. Jesus, do you think I could write stuff like that half-assed, oops, half- baked son of an expletive with his silly, weepy half-Irish arse goings on? I will tell you this though right now if I read this thing and it doesn’t sound right fists are gonna be swinging, old as I am. But let’s get this thing moving for God’s sake.

Let me tell you about the shabeen, I mean, The Red Feather, I mean the Dublin Grille, bar room on Sagamore Street. That’s the one I know, and I am just using that as an example. There were plenty of others in old North Adamsville, maybe not as many as in Southie, but plenty. If you seriously wanted to talk about the “Irish-ness” of North Adamsville that was the place, the community cultural institution if you will, to start your journey. Many a boy, including this boy, got his first drink, legal or illegal, at that, or another like it, watering hole. Hell, the “real” reason they built that softball field at Welcome Young was so the guys, players and spectators alike, had an excuse to stop in for a few (well, maybe more than a few) after a tough battle on base paths. That’s the light-hearted part of the story, in a way. What went on when the “old man”, anybody’s “old man”, got home at the, sometimes, wee hours is not so light-hearted.

See, that is really where the straightening out job on our boy Peter Paul needs to be done. Sure, a lot of Irish fathers didn’t get drunk all the time. Although the deep dark secret was that in almost every family, every shanty family for certain and I know, and many “lace curtain” families they was at least one reprobate drunk. Hell, the local city councilor’s brother, Healy I think it was, was in thrown the drunk tank by the coppers more times than he was out. They could have given him a pass-key and saved time and money on dragging him to the caboose. But the king hell takes-the-cake was old Black-Jack’s Kerrigan’s brother, Boyo (sorry, I forget his real name). Ya, the North Adamsville High headmaster’s brother, the bastard that I had a run-in with and had to hightail it out of school, although it was not over his brother. See Black-Jack’s family though they were the Mayfair swells since Black-Jack had gone to college, one of the first in the old neighborhood, and they had that big single-family house over on Beach Street. But more than one night I found Boyo lying face-down on Billings Road drunk as a skunk and had to carry him home to his wife and family. And then head back to the other side of the tracks, that wrong side I already told you about. Next day, or sometime later, Boyo would give me a dollar. Naturally when I went to school after that I went out of my way to flash the dollar bill at Black-Jack, saying “Look what Boyo gave me for helping him out.” That’s all I had to say. Black-Jack always turned fuming red, maybe flaming red.

A lot of Irish fathers didn’t beat on their wives all the time either. And a lot of Irish fathers didn’t physically beat their kids for no reason. Plenty of kids go the “strap” though when the old man was “feeling his oats.” (I never heard of any sexual abuse, but that was a book sealed with seven seals then.) And more than one wife, more than one son’s mother didn’t show her face to the “shawlie” world due to the simple fact that a black eye, a swollen face, or some other wound disfigured her enough to lay low for a while. I had to stop, or try to stop, my own father one time when I was about twelve and he was on one of his three day Dublin Grille whiskey straight-up, no chaser toots and Ma just got in his way. He swatted me down like a fly and I never tried to go that route again. But he didn’t try to beat my mother again either, at least not when I was a around or I would have heard about it on the shawlie wire.


And a lot of Irish wives didn’t just let their husbands beat on them just because they were the meal ticket, the precious difference between a home and the county farm or, worst, the streets. And a lot of Irish wives didn’t make excuses for dear old dad (or pray) when the paycheck didn’t show up and the creditors were beating down the door. And a lot of Irish wives didn’t let those Irish fathers beat on their kids. And a lot of Irish mothers didn’t tell their kids not to “air the dirty linen in public.” But, don’t let anyone fool you, and maybe I am touching on things too close to home, my home or yours, but that formed part of the scene, the Irish scene.

Maybe, because down at the Atlantic dregs end of North Adamsville the whole place was so desperately lower working-class other ethnic groups, like the Italians, also had those same pathologies. (I am letting Peter Paul use that last word, although I still don’t really know what it means, but it seemed right when he told me what it meant). I don’t know. Figure it out though, plenty of fathers (and it was mainly fathers only in those days who worked, when they could) with not much education and dead-end jobs, plenty of triple decker, no space, no air, no privacy rented housing and plenty of dead time. Ya, sure, I felt the “Irish-ness” of the place sometimes (mainly with the back of the hand), I won’t say I didn’t but when Peter Paul starts running on and on about the “old sod” just remember what I told you. I’ll tell you all the truth, won’t you take a word from me.

Irish diaspora, one-horse Atlantic, Welcome Young Field, working class neighborhood

Support The Saint Patrick's Day Parade Veterans For Peace Efforts To March- March 20th In South Boston

Click on the headline to link to a Smedley Butler Brigade of the Veterans For Peace Website entry concerning the efforts to join the 2011 South Boston Saint Patrick's Day Parade on March 20th.

When: Sunday, March 20, 2011, 2:00 pm

Where: Broadway MBTA Station - Look for VFP Flags • Dorchester Ave. & Broadway • do not attempt to drive - come by T • South Boston

Start: 2011 Mar 20 - 2:00pm

Themes for the Day:
· How is the War Economy Working for You
· Bring the Troops Home, Take Care of Them When They Get Here
· Cut Military Spending, Save Jobs: Teachers, Fireman, Police
· Peace is Patriotic! “Not a Dirty Word”

Please join Veterans For Peace and other peace and social justice organizations for this historic alternative “people’s parade” following the official Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.

Background: Veterans for Peace were denied permission to walk in the “Official Saint Patrick’s Day Parade”. The stated reason was because the Allied War Veterans Council (War Council) did not want the word “peace” associated with the word “veteran”. They also stated that Veterans For Peace were too political for the parade. As if all the politicians, military formations and bands in the parade are not political?


The City of Boston has issued a permit to Veterans For Peace to have The Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, immediately following the “official parade”. Our parade is a “people’s parade for peace and justice”.

We invite all progressive groups (peace, environmental, women’s rights, civil rights, labor, GLBT etc.) in the greater Boston area to please join us as we follow behind the official parade. The South Boston parade is the largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the country and is estimated to draw one million spectators. This is a huge opportunity for us to get our message out!

For more information please go to: Smedleyvfp.org or email ujpcoalition@gmail.com

For information on how your group can participate, contact:

Pat Scanlon, Veterans For Peace: 978-475-1776
United for Justice with Peace: 617-383-4857
American Friends Service Committee: 617-497-5273
*******
Markin comment:

Normally the efforts of anybody, individually or as an organization, trying to take part into the annual South Boston Saint Patrick’s Day Parade would be a yawner for this writer. Having grown up in a Irish working class neighborhood in suburban Boston and having about ten thousand roots to South Boston back to the “famine ships” of the 1840s when they embarked there with some forebears and now through various second and third cousins I, at least since I have come of leftist political age, have avoided the drunken brawls and other sham Irish stuff associated with Saint Patrick’s Day like the plague.

This situation though is different. This is about defending the public square (even though the august United States Supreme Court has already declared this specific parade a private affair and no subject to free speech guarantees). This is about political exclusion of the Veterans For Peace (as opposed to plenty of space for pro-war veterans and their associations) as was that attempt previously by various Irish gays and lesbians and their supporters to march in this parade that was the subject of the Supreme Court legal decision. That is where our fight is. And that is why this struggle is supportable and why it deserves space here. Although really when we talk about the Irish and Ireland I say the hell with the spirit of Saint Patrick. Rather think of the spirit of the fighters of Easter 1916. That is the real Irish deal. No question.

*******
Activists add second St. Patrick parade
Will follow older S. Boston event
By Billy Baker
Globe Staff / March 10, 2011

South Boston will play host to two St. Patrick’s Day parades this year — the traditional one and, right behind it, an alternative parade that is billing itself as the St. Patrick’s Peace Parade.

The second parade, which will be required to remain one mile behind the main parade, is being organized by an antiwar group, Veterans for Peace. The Peace Parade will include marchers from a gay rights organization, 16 years after the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council went to the US Supreme Court to win the right to block gay groups from marching in the traditional St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Veterans for Peace, which has clashed with parade organizers in the past, had applied to march in the main parade, but was denied by organizers. The antiwar group then won city approval for its own parade along the same route on March 20, the date of the main parade.

“We’re not that type of parade,’’ Philip Wuschke Jr., the organizer of the main parade, said of the antiwar group, which had proposed holding signs that said, “How is the war economy working for you?’’ and “Bring the troops home and take care of them when they get here.’’

“We’ve got military units in the parade, and people that are on the side of the streets have probably been in the military and would be offended,’’ Wuschke said. “We’re not protesting nothing. It’s just a parade.’’

Wuschke took over the parade last year from longtime organizer John “Wacko’’ Hurley, who led the fight to bar gay groups. But Wuschke, a 45-year-old who lives in Stoughton, said there would be no change in policy as a result of the change in leadership.

The Supreme Court decision said private parade organizers could not be required to admit groups that convey a message contrary to that of the organizers.

“We don’t ban gays and lesbians from the parade,’’ Wuschke said. “Just no outright signs. This is not a gay pride parade.’’

Patrick Scanlon, the coordinator for the Greater Boston chapter of Veterans for Peace, said his organization, which has 130 chapters nationwide, was criticized as “too political.’’

“We’re too political because we’re interested in peace?’’ Scanlon asked rhetorically. “This is a parade that features every politician that can walk, and everyone who can’t walk is riding.’’

In 2003, Scanlon’s group was denied permission to march in the parade, but was allowed to march behind it by Boston Police. Parade organizers sued police, arguing they had violated the Supreme Court decision, and won again. A US magistrate judge ruled that if any group wants to participate in the parade without the permission of the Allied War Veterans Council, it must follow the same parade application process to the city as any group would but would need to remain one mile behind to make clear the two parades were separate. This is the first time anyone has applied for a parade permit under that provision.

Scanlon said it’s unclear how many people will march with the Veterans for Peace parade. They were notified of approval on Feb. 26, and Scanlon said they’ve already generated a lot of interest from people associated with the Honk! Festival of Activist Street Bands that takes place in Somerville and Cambridge each fall.

But a gay rights group has already declared its intention to join the alternative parade. On its Twitter feed yesterday, Join the Impact Massachusetts announced its participation by stating “take back the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.’’ The post contained a link to a Facebook page inviting people to march.

“We would prefer to be in the main parade, but if anybody is being left out we’re going to stand with them because of our history,’’ said Ann Coleman, a Join the Impact Massachusetts cochair and the person behind the initiative to join in the Veterans for Peace parade. Coleman said the group plans to hold signs, including rainbow flags.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who has long boycotted the St. Patrick’s Day Parade because of the ban on gay groups, will not be participating in either parade, according to his spokeswoman, Dot Joyce.

“As always, the city is focused on providing a safe and enjoyable parade day for everyone,’’ was all Joyce would say, “and it sounds like there’s going to be something for everyone in South Boston that day.’’

Billy Baker can be reached at billybaker@globe.com.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

Support The Saint Patrick's Day Parade Veterans For Peace Efforts To March- March 20th In South Boston

Click on the headline to link to a Smedley Butler Brigade of the Veterans For Peace Website entry concerning the efforts to join the 2011 South Boston Saint Patrick's Day Parade on March 20th.

When: Sunday, March 20, 2011, 2:00 pm

Where: Broadway MBTA Station - Look for VFP Flags • Dorchester Ave. & Broadway • do not attempt to drive - come by T • South Boston

Start: 2011 Mar 20 - 2:00pm

Themes for the Day:
· How is the War Economy Working for You
· Bring the Troops Home, Take Care of Them When They Get Here
· Cut Military Spending, Save Jobs: Teachers, Fireman, Police
· Peace is Patriotic! “Not a Dirty Word”

Please join Veterans For Peace and other peace and social justice organizations for this historic alternative “people’s parade” following the official Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.

Background: Veterans for Peace were denied permission to walk in the “Official Saint Patrick’s Day Parade”. The stated reason was because the Allied War Veterans Council (War Council) did not want the word “peace” associated with the word “veteran”. They also stated that Veterans For Peace were too political for the parade. As if all the politicians, military formations and bands in the parade are not political?


The City of Boston has issued a permit to Veterans For Peace to have The Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, immediately following the “official parade”. Our parade is a “people’s parade for peace and justice”.

We invite all progressive groups (peace, environmental, women’s rights, civil rights, labor, GLBT etc.) in the greater Boston area to please join us as we follow behind the official parade. The South Boston parade is the largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the country and is estimated to draw one million spectators. This is a huge opportunity for us to get our message out!

For more information please go to: Smedleyvfp.org or email ujpcoalition@gmail.com

For information on how your group can participate, contact:

Pat Scanlon, Veterans For Peace: 978-475-1776
United for Justice with Peace: 617-383-4857
American Friends Service Committee: 617-497-5273
*******
Markin comment:

Normally the efforts of anybody, individually or as an organization, trying to take part into the annual South Boston Saint Patrick’s Day Parade would be a yawner for this writer. Having grown up in a Irish working class neighborhood in suburban Boston and having about ten thousand roots to South Boston back to the “famine ships” of the 1840s when they embarked there with some forebears and now through various second and third cousins I, at least since I have come of leftist political age, have avoided the drunken brawls and other sham Irish stuff associated with Saint Patrick’s Day like the plague.

This situation though is different. This is about defending the public square (even though the august United States Supreme Court has already declared this specific parade a private affair and no subject to free speech guarantees). This is about political exclusion of the Veterans For Peace (as opposed to plenty of space for pro-war veterans and their associations) as was that attempt previously by various Irish gays and lesbians and their supporters to march in this parade that was the subject of the Supreme Court legal decision. That is where our fight is. And that is why this struggle is supportable and why it deserves space here. Although really when we talk about the Irish and Ireland I say the hell with the spirit of Saint Patrick. Rather think of the spirit of the fighters of Easter 1916. That is the real Irish deal. No question.
*******
Activists add second St. Patrick parade
Will follow older S. Boston event
By Billy Baker
Globe Staff / March 10, 2011

South Boston will play host to two St. Patrick’s Day parades this year — the traditional one and, right behind it, an alternative parade that is billing itself as the St. Patrick’s Peace Parade.

The second parade, which will be required to remain one mile behind the main parade, is being organized by an antiwar group, Veterans for Peace. The Peace Parade will include marchers from a gay rights organization, 16 years after the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council went to the US Supreme Court to win the right to block gay groups from marching in the traditional St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Veterans for Peace, which has clashed with parade organizers in the past, had applied to march in the main parade, but was denied by organizers. The antiwar group then won city approval for its own parade along the same route on March 20, the date of the main parade.

“We’re not that type of parade,’’ Philip Wuschke Jr., the organizer of the main parade, said of the antiwar group, which had proposed holding signs that said, “How is the war economy working for you?’’ and “Bring the troops home and take care of them when they get here.’’

“We’ve got military units in the parade, and people that are on the side of the streets have probably been in the military and would be offended,’’ Wuschke said. “We’re not protesting nothing. It’s just a parade.’’

Wuschke took over the parade last year from longtime organizer John “Wacko’’ Hurley, who led the fight to bar gay groups. But Wuschke, a 45-year-old who lives in Stoughton, said there would be no change in policy as a result of the change in leadership.

The Supreme Court decision said private parade organizers could not be required to admit groups that convey a message contrary to that of the organizers.

“We don’t ban gays and lesbians from the parade,’’ Wuschke said. “Just no outright signs. This is not a gay pride parade.’’

Patrick Scanlon, the coordinator for the Greater Boston chapter of Veterans for Peace, said his organization, which has 130 chapters nationwide, was criticized as “too political.’’

“We’re too political because we’re interested in peace?’’ Scanlon asked rhetorically. “This is a parade that features every politician that can walk, and everyone who can’t walk is riding.’’

In 2003, Scanlon’s group was denied permission to march in the parade, but was allowed to march behind it by Boston Police. Parade organizers sued police, arguing they had violated the Supreme Court decision, and won again. A US magistrate judge ruled that if any group wants to participate in the parade without the permission of the Allied War Veterans Council, it must follow the same parade application process to the city as any group would but would need to remain one mile behind to make clear the two parades were separate. This is the first time anyone has applied for a parade permit under that provision.

Scanlon said it’s unclear how many people will march with the Veterans for Peace parade. They were notified of approval on Feb. 26, and Scanlon said they’ve already generated a lot of interest from people associated with the Honk! Festival of Activist Street Bands that takes place in Somerville and Cambridge each fall.

But a gay rights group has already declared its intention to join the alternative parade. On its Twitter feed yesterday, Join the Impact Massachusetts announced its participation by stating “take back the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.’’ The post contained a link to a Facebook page inviting people to march.

“We would prefer to be in the main parade, but if anybody is being left out we’re going to stand with them because of our history,’’ said Ann Coleman, a Join the Impact Massachusetts cochair and the person behind the initiative to join in the Veterans for Peace parade. Coleman said the group plans to hold signs, including rainbow flags.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who has long boycotted the St. Patrick’s Day Parade because of the ban on gay groups, will not be participating in either parade, according to his spokeswoman, Dot Joyce.

“As always, the city is focused on providing a safe and enjoyable parade day for everyone,’’ was all Joyce would say, “and it sounds like there’s going to be something for everyone in South Boston that day.’’

Billy Baker can be reached at billybaker@globe.com.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

Support The Saint Patrick's Day Parade Veterans For Peace Efforts To March- March 20th In South Boston

Click on the headline to link to a Smedley Butler Brigade of the Veterans For Peace Website entry concerning the efforts to join the 2011 South Boston Saint Patrick's Day Parade on March 20th.

When: Sunday, March 20, 2011, 2:00 pm

Where: Broadway MBTA Station - Look for VFP Flags • Dorchester Ave. & Broadway • do not attempt to drive - come by T • South Boston

Start: 2011 Mar 20 - 2:00pm

Themes for the Day:
· How is the War Economy Working for You
· Bring the Troops Home, Take Care of Them When They Get Here
· Cut Military Spending, Save Jobs: Teachers, Fireman, Police
· Peace is Patriotic! “Not a Dirty Word”

Please join Veterans For Peace and other peace and social justice organizations for this historic alternative “people’s parade” following the official Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.

Background: Veterans for Peace were denied permission to walk in the “Official Saint Patrick’s Day Parade”. The stated reason was because the Allied War Veterans Council (War Council) did not want the word “peace” associated with the word “veteran”. They also stated that Veterans For Peace were too political for the parade. As if all the politicians, military formations and bands in the parade are not political?


The City of Boston has issued a permit to Veterans For Peace to have The Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, immediately following the “official parade”. Our parade is a “people’s parade for peace and justice”.

We invite all progressive groups (peace, environmental, women’s rights, civil rights, labor, GLBT etc.) in the greater Boston area to please join us as we follow behind the official parade. The South Boston parade is the largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the country and is estimated to draw one million spectators. This is a huge opportunity for us to get our message out!

For more information please go to: Smedleyvfp.org or email ujpcoalition@gmail.com

For information on how your group can participate, contact:

Pat Scanlon, Veterans For Peace: 978-475-1776
United for Justice with Peace: 617-383-4857
American Friends Service Committee: 617-497-5273
*******
Markin comment:

Normally the efforts of anybody, individually or as an organization, trying to take part into the annual South Boston Saint Patrick’s Day Parade would be a yawner for this writer. Having grown up in a Irish working class neighborhood in suburban Boston and having about ten thousand roots to South Boston back to the “famine ships” of the 1840s when they embarked there with some forebears and now through various second and third cousins I, at least since I have come of leftist political age, have avoided the drunken brawls and other sham Irish stuff associated with Saint Patrick’s Day like the plague.

This situation though is different. This is about defending the public square (even though the august United States Supreme Court has already declared this specific parade a private affair and no subject to free speech guarantees). This is about political exclusion of the Veterans For Peace (as opposed to plenty of space for pro-war veterans and their associations) as was that attempt previously by various Irish gays and lesbians and their supporters to march in this parade that was the subject of the Supreme Court legal decision. That is where our fight is. And that is why this struggle is supportable and why it deserves space here. Although really when we talk about the Irish and Ireland I say the hell with the spirit of Saint Patrick. Rather think of the spirit of the fighters of Easter 1916. That is the real Irish deal. No question.

*From National Public Radio-Poor Economy Forces Irish To Find Work Elsewhere- The Trials Of The Diaspora

Click on the headline to link to an NPR report on the latest news from the Irish diaspora trail.

Markin comment:

As a child of the Irish diaspora on my mother's side, her forebears coming over on famine ships of the 1840s, this story has a very familar ring about the latest leavings from the old country.

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-The Dubliners' "The Molly Maguires"

Click on the title to link a YouTube film clip of the Dubliners performing The Molly Maguires.

In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
******
THE DUBLINERS THE MOLLY MAGUIRES LYRICS

Make way for the Molly Maguires
They're drinkers, they're liars, but they're men
Make way for the Molly Maguires
You'll never see the likes of them again

Down the mines no sunlight shines
Those pits they're black as hell
In mud and slime they do their time
It's Paddy's prison cell
And they'll curse the day they travelled far
And drowned their tears with a jar

(Chorus)

Backs will break and muscles ache
Down there there's no time to dream
Of fields and farms, of women's arms
Just dig that bloody seam
But they'll break their bodies underground
Who'll dare to push them around

Fragments Of Working Class Culture- On the Question Of Working-Class War Time Social-Patriotism

Markin comment:

Recently I posted in this space under my Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By series a lesser-known anti-war song by Bob Dylan from the early 1960s, John Brown. (See archives, September 15, 2010). As part of the commentary about the lyrics of the song, which I have again included below, I mentioned some of my own experiences growing up in a working class neighborhood and the pressures faced from the neighbors, and others, to conform to the unquestionably accepted social-patriotic working class war stance during the early stages of the Vietnam War. I mentioned there that the “shawlies” put considerable pressure on my parents, my mother in particular, to get me to knuckle under to the war hysteria once it was known that I was, frankly, even rather mildly opposed to the war. The shawlies were not unlike the mother in John Brown, despite the known consequences that some sons, their sons, were not going to come back, or if they did come back, as many did, would be in Brother Brown’s condition.

Someone mentioned to me that they did not know what a “shawlie” was and further that I should expand on my commentary about my own working class anti-war experiences. I intended to do this in any case but when I thought about it a bit I wanted to, additionally, suggest that there is a certain working class attitude toward war somewhat different, as bespeaks those who, one way or another, bear the brunt of the “grunt” work of war, from other classes and that requires a different kind of anti-war work from that of the campuses or in middle class towns, and for our cause, is more problematic. (We will not even discuss the rich; they did not, and do not, sent their kids to war, under any circumstances. Hell, they no longer even bother to provide the general staff officers anymore like in the old days of the WASP stranglehold on the military command posts.) Until I get a chance to write that up for now I will make some general points in aid of that proposition.

*************

Most of us have gone through over the past decade (and continue to go through), at least here in America, two major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The initial response by the vast majority of the citizenry to the Afghan war in October 2001 in the aftermath of the World Trade Center atrocities was overwhelming support for the Bush Administration to bomb them (presumably the Taliban and Al Qaeda) back to the Stone Age, or further back if possible. No questions asked. I have related on other occasions my own fears, for one of the few times in my long political career, to be out on the streets of America protesting that war. The point that I want to make here is more that this “quick war” does not serve as a fair model for how the working class quarters response to war calls by the American president, any president. Virtually the whole populace was up in arms, and to about the same degree.

Iraq (2003), and the build-up to the invasion to Iraq, is more indicative. We will leave aside the machinations and other manipulations by the Bush Administration to “prove” whatever it was they were out to prove. What is important, and I will listen to contrary evidence on this, but I think I have it pretty accurate is that in most working class areas, city or small town, the initial response was to support, and to support vocally, the invasion, whatever the rationale as an extension of the Al Qaeda hunt. And this from people, from mothers, mothers like John Brown’s who would be sending their sons and daughters off with the ubiquitous yellow ribbon.

I know the heat of that fervor from personal experience in that period, as I witnessed it closely, too closely, in at least two pro-war rallies, both in working class areas, hard working class areas (South Boston, Massachusetts and the Albany, New York triangle), as well as anecdotal evidence from others in industrial Chicago and New Jersey. In this sense, for those who either forgets or who are too young to remember and who want to get a feel for what unabashed early support for the Vietnam War looked like down at the working class base those more current examples should suffice.

And that brings us back to my own anti-war experiences with the “shawlies.”, the Irish working class mothers who sent their sons (and now daughters) off to war without so much as a flinch. In our neighborhood, although I confess I only heard it used by more recent or older immigrants, it signified that circle, council if you will, unofficial of course, of mothers, young and old, who set the moral tone, at least the public moral tone of the place. In short, the gossips, old hags, and rumor-mongers (I am being polite here) who had their own devious grapevine, and more importantly, were a constant source of information about you to your own mother. Usually nothing good either.

I actually know the term better as used in the Irish playwright Sean O’Casey’s Dublin plays set during the First World War, and signified those mothers who were receiving money from the British government for the use of their sons in that war as cannon fodder oops, soldiers. Notwithstanding that Ireland was then the prime colony of dear old “Mother England.” Those “sawflies” moreover were the first to denounce the boys (and the few girls) of the Easter, 1916 uprising for national liberation in order to keep the bloody British dole coming. So, this is clearly not a term of endearment.

However the "shawlies” are still with us. They do not have to be in Dublin or its environs, nor do they have to be Irish, for that matter. My use here, reflecting Bob Dylan’s lyrics, is of that mother (or father, sister, uncle, or brother) who in knee-jerk reaction is more than willing to give up their young relatives to the American imperial state. And the hard fact of life, and of left-wing political organizing from the Bolsheviks forward has been the struggle to break that allegiance, or as is more usually the case take advantage of war-weariness when it finally hits the working class.

As I noted previously, for the last several years at least, at many of the peace rallies that I have attended there is usually a representative speaking for Military Families For Peace or some such organization that signifies that they too have gotten “hip” on the war question. What seems to be universally true is that in this overwhelmingly working class element of the anti-war movement (probably most prominently represented several years ago by Gold Star Mother, Cindy Sheehan, in her struggles to get ex-President George W. Bush’s attention) the initial pride, patriotism, and sense of glory turned to ashes when the deal went down. The simple, ubiquitous yellow ribbon didn’t mean a damn thing beyond some superficial nod to that service.

I speak from some experience on this turning against war, although somewhat from the opposition direction. My growing-up working class neighborhood provided more than its fair share of soldiers and other military personnel for the various stages of the Vietnam War. That wall down in Washington, the VA hospitals, the half-way houses and the flophouses of this country testify to that. Although, I am sure, every mother exhibited the usual anxieties about military service for her sons during war time no one, at least publicly, called for opposition to the Vietnam War early on (and later, when it was practically de rigueur to oppose it to do so quietly without public fanfare, to those of us on the other side’s utter frustration).

When I was called to military duty and “turned commie” for opposing the war while in uniform in the process, as my own mother related to me the opinions of other neighbor mothers, this was so “abnormal” that I was officially dis-invited from many homes. That part was, in the end, probably not important for me as I was heading out the door of that neighborhood anyway, but for those left behind, in this case my parents, this scorn was very real and very hurtful. Especially, as my parents, not without some very hard internal struggles went out of their way to support their son, not politically so much as because I was their son. Kudos.

Let me end this up like I did the previous commentary. When they (today’s shawlies) come, like vultures, at you for not “supporting” the troops, or some such argument show that you are “hip” and run this song (John Brown)at them. Oh, and scream to the high heavens, Obama-Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries (and whoever else they have running around) From Afghanistan And Iraq!

************

John Brown-Bob Dylan lyrics


John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore
His mama sure was proud of him!
He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all
His mama’s face broke out all in a grin

“Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine
You make me proud to know you hold a gun
Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get
And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home”

As that old train pulled out, John’s ma began to shout
Tellin’ ev’ryone in the neighborhood:
“That’s my son that’s about to go, he’s a soldier now, you know”
She made well sure her neighbors understood

She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile
As she showed them to the people from next door
And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun
And these things you called a good old-fashioned war

Oh! Good old-fashioned war!

Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come
They ceased to come for about ten months or more
Then a letter finally came saying, “Go down and meet the train
Your son’s a-coming home from the war”

She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around
But she could not see her soldier son in sight
But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last
When she did she could hardly believe her eyes

Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off
And he wore a metal brace around his waist
He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know
While she couldn’t even recognize his face!

Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face

“Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done
How is it you come to be this way?”
He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move
And the mother had to turn her face away

“Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud
You wasn’t there standing in my shoes”

“Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine”

Oh! Lord! Just like mine!

“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink
That I was just a puppet in a play
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke
And a cannonball blew my eyes away”

As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
And he dropped his medals down into her hand

Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by Special Rider Music