I Hear The Voice Of My Arky Angel-Once Again-With Angel Iris Dement In Mind

 

SWEET FORGIVENESS (Iris DeMent)
(c) 1992 Songs of Iris/Forerunner Music, Inc. ASCAP

Sweet forgiveness, that's what you give to me

when you hold me close and you say "That's all over"

You don't go looking back,

you don't hold the cards to stack,

you mean what you say.

Sweet forgiveness, you help me see

I'm not near as bad as I sometimes appear to be

When you hold me close and say

"That's all over, and I still love you"

There's no way that I could make up for those angry words I said

Sometimes it gets to hurting and the pain goes to my head

Sweet forgiveness, dear God above

I say we all deserve a taste of this kind of love

Someone who'll hold our hand,

and whisper "I understand, and I still love you"

 
AFTER YOU'RE GONE (Iris DeMent)

(c) 1992 Songs of Iris/Forerunner Music, Inc. ASCAP

There'll be laughter even after you're gone

I'll find reasons to face that empty dawn

'cause I've memorized each line in your face

and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me

I'll miss you, oh how I'll miss you

I'll dream of you and I'll cry a million tears

but the sorrow will pass and the one thing that will last

is the love that you've given to me

There'll be laughter even after you're gone

I'll find reason and I'll face that empty dawn

'cause I've memorized each line in your face

and not even death could ever erase the story they tell to me

Every once in a while I have to tussle, go one on one with the angels, or a single angel is maybe a better way to put it. No, not the heavenly ones or the ones who burden your shoulders when you have a troubled heart but every once in a while I need a shot of my Arky angel, Iris Dement. Now while I don’t want to get into a dissertation about the thing, you know, that old medieval Thomist argument about how many angels can fit on the end of a needle or get into playing sided in the struggle between pliant god-like angels and defiant devil-like angels in the battles in the heavens over who would rule the universe that the great revolutionary English poet from the time of the English revolution of blessed memory, John Milton, when he got seriously exercised over that notion in Paradise Lost I do believe we our faced, vocally faced with someone who could go mano y mano with whoever wants to enter into the lists against her.

Yes, and I know too that that “angel” thing has been played out much too much in the world music scene, the popular music scene, you know rock and roll in the old days and now mainly hip-hop what with in my day every kind of angel from some over the top earth angel that had some guy all swooning, Johnny Angel who just couldn’t keep one girl happy but had to play the field, going to the distaff side (nice old-fashioned word, right) some honkey-tonk angel who was lured into the night life by her own hubris, Hank’s morbid angel of death that seemed to hover over his every move until the big crash out, and my favorite, no question, teen angel, some, I don’t know how else to say it, some bimbo whose boyfriend’s car got stuck on a railroad track, the boyfriend got her out and yet she went running back, running back to get his two-bit class ring, a ring that he had probably given to half the girls in school before her, and did not come out alive, RIP, sister, RIP. No, I will take my Arky angel, take her with a little sinning on the side if you can believe there is any autobiographical edge to some of the songs, take her with a little forlorn lilt in her voice, take her since she has seen the seedy side of life. Yeah, that is how I like my angels.                  

Every once in a while when I am blue, not a Billie Holiday blue, the blues down in the depths when you have to just hear her, flower in hair, maybe junked up, maybe clean, hell, it did not matter, when she hit her stride, and she “spoke” you out of your miseries, but maybe just a passing blue I need to hear a voice that if there was an angel heaven voice she would be the one I would want to hear.    

I first heard Iris DeMent doing a cover of a folksinger-songwriter Greg Brown tribute to Jimmy Rodgers, the old time Texas yodeler discovered around same time as the original Carter Family in the late 1920s, on his tribute album, Driftless. I then looked for her solo albums and for the most part was blown away by the power of Iris’ voice, her piano accompaniment and her lyrics (which are contained in the liner notes of her various albums, read them, please). It is hard to type her style. Is it folk? Is it Country Pop? Is it semi-torch songstress? Well, whatever it maybe that Arky angel is a listening treat, especially if you are in a sentimental mood.

Naturally when I find some talent that “speaks” to me I grab everything they sing, write, paint, or act I can find. In Iris’ case there is not a lot of recorded work, with the recent addition of Sing The Delta just four albums although she had done many back-ups or harmonies with other artists most notably John Prine. Still what has been recorded blew me away (and will blow you away), especially as an old Vietnam War era veteran her There is a Wall in Washington about the guys who found themselves on the Vietnam Memorial probably one of the best anti-war songs you will ever hear. That memorial containing names very close to me, to my heart and I shed a tear each time I even go near the memorial when I am in D.C. It is fairly easy to write a Give Peace a Chance or Where Have All the Flowers Gone? sings-song type of anti-war song. It is another to capture the pathos of what happened to too many families when we were unable to stop that war. The streets of my old-time growing up neighborhood are filled with memories of guys I knew, guys who didn’t make it back, guys who couldn’t adjust coming back to the “real world” and wound up in flop houses, half-way houses, and along railroad “jungle” camps and guys who could not get over not going into the service to experience the decisive event of our generation.

Other songs that have drawn my attention like When My Morning Comes hit home with all the baggage working class kids have about their inferiority when they screw up in this world. Walking Home Alone evokes all the humor, bathos, pathos and sheer exhilaration of saying one was able to survive, and not badly, after growing up poor, Arky poor amid the riches of America. (That may be the “connection” as I grew up through my father coal country Hazard, Kentucky poor.)  

Frankly, and I admit this publicly in this space, I love Ms. Iris Dement. Not personally, of course, but through her voice, her lyrics and her musical presence. This “confession” may seem rather startling coming from a guy who in this space is as likely here to go on and on about Bolsheviks, ‘Che’, Leon Trotsky, high communist theory and the like. Especially, as well given Iris’ seemingly simple quasi- religious themes and commitment to paying homage to her rural background in song. All such discrepancies though go out the window here. Why?

Well, for one, this old radical got a lump in his throat the first time he heard her voice. Okay, that happens sometimes-once- but why did he have the same reaction on the fifth and twelfth hearings? Explain that. I can easily enough. If, on the very, very remotest chance, there is a heaven then I know one of the choir members. Enough said. By the way give a listen to Out Of The Fire and Mornin’ Glory. Then you too will be in love with Ms. Iris Dement.

Iris, here is my proposal, once again. If you get tired of fishing the U.P., or wherever, with Mr. Greg Brown, get bored with his endless twaddle about old Iowa farms or going on and on about Grandma's fruit cellar just whistle. Better yet just yodel like you did on Jimmie Rodgers Going Home on that Driftless CD.

No Justice, No Peace- Black Lives Matter- You Have Got That Right Brothers and Sisters-Speaking Truth To Power-The Struggle Continues 

 

 

Listen up. No, I am not black but here is what I know. Know because my grandfather, son of old Irish immigrants before the turn of the 20^th century, the ethnic immigrant group which provided a hard core of police officers in the City of Boston and surrounding towns back then, and now too for that matter, told me some stuff (and you can get a good sense of although fictionalized in Dennis Lehane’s novel, The Given Day. The “surrounding towns” part as they left the Irish ghettoes in South Boston and Dorchester, the latter now very heavily filled with all kinds of people of color, and moved first to Quincy and Weymouth then for some to the Irish Rivera further south in Marshfield and places like that). Those Irish also provided their fair share of “militants” in the “so-called” Boston Police Strike of 1919.

Here is what he said when I was a kid and has been etched in my brain since my youth. Cops are not workers, cops are around to protect property, not yours but that of the rich, cops are not your friends because when the deal goes down they will pull the hammer down on you no matter how “nice” they are, no matter how many old ladies and old gentlemen they have escorted across the street (and no matter how friendly they seem when they are cadging donuts and… at so coffee shop on their beat).  And every time I forget that wisdom they, the police remind me, for example, when they raided the Occupy Boston encampment late one night in October 2011 arresting many, including a phalanx of Veterans   for Peace defenders, for no other reason that the “authorities” did not want the campsite extended beyond the original grounds and then unceremoniously razed the place in December 2011 when the restraining order was lifted without batting an eye.

Now this is pretty damn familiar to the audience I am trying to address, those who are raising holy hell in places like Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York (and as I write about North Charleston down in South Carolina) about police brutality, let’s get this right,  about police murder under the color of law. And those who support the, well, let’s call a thing by its right name, rebellion.

Here is what my grandfather, or my father for that matter, did not have to tell me. They, and I ask that you refer to the graphic above, DID NOT need when I came of age for such discussions that I had to be careful of the cops as I walked down the street minding my own business(unless of course I was in a demonstration rasing holy hell about some war or other social injustice but I had that figured already). Did not need to tell me that I was very likely to be pulled over while “walking while Irish.” Did not suggest, as the graphic wisely points out, that I would need to have more identification than an NSA agent to walk down my neighborhood streets. Did not need to tell me that I would suffer all kinds of indignities for breathing.                        

He, they, did not have to tell me a lot of things that every black adult has to tell every black child about the ways on the world in the United States. But remember what that old man, my grandfather, did tell me, cops are not workers, cops are not friends, cops are working the  other side of the street. That old man would also get a chuckle out of the slogan-“Fuck The Cops.” If more people, if more white people especially, would think that way maybe we could curb the bastards in a little.  

 

  

On The 150th Anniversary Of The Union Victory In The American Civil War- In Honor Of The Heroic Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteer Regiment….  To Defend One’s Own    

 

 

In the wake of the travesties of justice in the Michael Brown murder case where a grand jury refused to indict a Ferguson, Missouri police officer and the Eric Garner stranglehold murder case in New York City where the same thing happened (and which has happened repeatedly over the years these two cases being egregious and the cause of blacks and their supporters saying enough) during Black History Month (hell, all year) it is appropriate to talk about the right of black self-defense (and of necessity at times, it is no accident that there is now renewed interest in groups like the Deacons for Defense, Robert F. Williams author of  Negroes With Guns, and his left-wing NAACP chapter in North Carolina and a recent book describing heroic, and mostly unheralded due to the non-violence hype associated with the Martin Luther King-led segment of the black civil rights movement in the 1960s, armed self-defense actions in aid of Mississippi freedom fighters by local black militants). And when we talk about that issue the heroic struggles of the Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteer Regiment easily come to mind.     

While there is no obvious link between the cases today and the heroic actions of black volunteers to defend their own by enlisting in the battle to eradicate slavery during the Civil War that is a matter of failure of imagination. From the very beginning of slavery in America, which means from the very beginning of the settlements, whites have feared, feared beyond reason at times, blacks, black men armed, or posing any kind of physical threat. In the case of the 54^th the Southerners during the Civil War went crazy when confronted with the idea of armed black men fighting for their freedom and treated any black captives brutally as no more than chattel to be executed upon capture and not as prisoners of war from an organized opposing army. No better example of that blind hatred by South Carolina whites thinking there was no greater dishonor came after the battle before Fort Wagner when the rebels buried the white commander of the regiment, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who had fallen there with the dead black soldiers he commanded in a mass grave. (His high abolitionist parents, and many Northerners thought there was no greater honor when asked later whether they wanted to remove his body from that site.)        

And so it has gone throughout the last one hundred plus years from black sharecroppers defending themselves during Jim Crow times, Robert F. Williams down in North Carolina calling for armed self-defense against the marauding white racists during the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, the Deacons for Justice down in Louisiana, and later the Black Panthers from Oakland to Boston. All standing for their right to defend their own by any means necessary. And all getting the eternal hatred of those whites who fear militantly political blacks who wish to defend the community. And that is where the current uprising being formed mostly by the young, young blacks and their allies, under the general name Black Lives Matter should think about history and about all the options.

[One hundred and fifty years later there is no more fitting memorial to those heroic defenders of the 54^th than the frieze on Beacon Street in Boston across from the State House commemorating their valor. Every time I go by the frieze, usually when we are demonstrating for or against some social policy of the day at the State House or at Park Street I stop and look at the determined faces of the soldiers as they march toward their destiny. Look particularly at the righteous grizzled old soldier by the head of Shaw’s horse marching with the “kids” to bring freedom and justice. Yeah, that was the place for old men to be during those hard tack Civil War time times. Today too, women too.]     

The Latest From The Cindy Sheehan Blog

 

http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/

A link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.

Markin comment:

I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. And of late  (2014) a fetish for running for office whatever seems to be worth looking at. This year it was the Governor's race in California. Other years it has been for President and for Congress. That Congressional race made sense because it was against Congresswoman and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who at one time was a darling of the liberals and maybe still is. But electioneering while necessary and maybe useful is not enough. So while her politics and strategy are not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times they do provide enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left to which she is appealing.

One though should always remember, despite our political differences, Ms. Sheehan's heroic action in going down to hell-hole Texas to confront one President George W. Bush in 2005 when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize in 2002-2003 after we had million in the streets for a few minutes. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.

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

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

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Another note from Frank Jackman  

There are many ways in which people get “religion” about the issues of war and peace, about the struggle to oppose the imperial adventures of the American government.  Learn that it is our duty to oppose those decisions as people who are “in the heart of the beast” as the late revolutionary Che Guevara who knew about the imperial menace both in life and death declared long ago. My own personal “getting religion” and those who I have worked with in such organizations as Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) and later Veterans For Peace (VFP) came from a direct confrontation with the American military establishment either during or after our service. Those were hard confrontations with the reality of the beast back in those days and it is no accident that those who confronted the beasts then are still active today. Remain active as a whole new threat to world peace emanates from Washington into the Middle East highlighted by the air wars in Syria and Iraq and the now new lease on life in Afghanistan.     

In a sense the military service confrontation form of “getting religion” on the issues of war and peace is easy to understand given the horrendous nature of modern warfare and its massive weapons overkill and disregard for “collateral damage.” Less easy to see is the radicalization of older women, mothers, mothers of soldiers like Cindy Sheehan in reaction to the senseless death of their loved ones. As pointed out above whatever political differences we have I will always hold Ms. Sheehan’s heroic actions in confronting on George W. Bush then President of the United States and the “yes man” for the war in Iraq started in 2003 (the various aspects of the Iraq saga have to be dated since otherwise confusion prevails) in high regard. She took him on down in red neck Texas asking a simple question-“if there were no weapons of mass destruction, not even close, why did my son die in vain?” Naturally no sufficient answer ever came from him to her. There she was a lonely symbol of the almost then non-existent anti-war movement. And then she started, as this blog of hers testifies to, to put the dots together, “got religion,” got to understand what Che meant long ago about that special duty radicals and revolutionaries have “in the heart of the beast.” And she too like those hoary military veterans I mentioned is still plugging away at the task.      

When Hard-Nosed Detectives Ruled The Roost-Dashiell Hammett’s Nightmare Town

Book Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Nightmare Town, Dashiell Hammett, Vintage, New York, 2000   

  

Over the past several years I have had occasion to review many books and film adaptations of the works of the two classic crime novel writers who are legitimately the forebears for all kinds of action-oriented hard-nosed fictional detectives today, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. I am at it again here with this review of a treasure trove of Hammett’s shorter works which were published in Black Mask and other crime magazines, Nightmare Town. And again I am astounded by the sparse, rough, flowing language that Hammett’s brought to the early hard-boiled detective novel with seems to be clearly in line with Ernest Hemingway’s modernist usage. That was a time when he and Chandler broke out of the parlor pink type stories and gave them some punch, gave their guys and gals some swagger, made their detectives jump more than a few hoops before they caught the bad guys (and in a couple of stories here  gals) flat-footed. No wonder writers like Ernest Hemingway tipped their hats to Hammett and Chandler. No wonder as well that the reader of publications like Black Mask waited impatiently for the next issue.    

This book contains twenty-two of Hammett’s short crime sketches a few that have been seen in other collected works like The Big Knock-Over. Naturally not all the works are equally good although all show the wicked bent of Hammett’s mind in constructing plot-lines and distributing clues. Three story lines stick out; the title piece Nightmare Town, the four Sam Spade pieces (yes, there was a Samuel Spade sans millstone Miles Archer before he ran up against the cutthroats and dangerous femme in The Maltese Falcon), and the first draft of The Thin Man (and yes again there was a thin man before Nick and Nora Charles, and Asta, and wangled their ways into the story line looking for that very elusive eccentric thin man).

Nighmare Town is a classic hard guys tale out of the Old West. No, not the Old West of Billy the Kid and honorable killings done to stake a claim out to land and manhood there in the days before civilization and the end of the frontier (end of land really unless you wanted to swim the Japan seas) clapped down and leave the wild boys in the towns with nothing but time on their hands. But then along came Prohibition and every guy who had a crooked thought, some bravado, and a fairly quick trigger was trying to jump onto easy street since they all instinctively knew that people were still going to need their booze, and plenty of it, no matter the cost.  That premise drives the hard to figure otherwise action as the protagonist gets more, much more, that he bargained for by staying in that created out of nothing Western town which fronted for a huge illegal liquor operation.

The four Sam Spade stories are interesting for what they are, which is cleverly plotted detective stories of the conventional sort where Sam, along with the police, smart boy, and without any female distraction, again smart boy, solves what seem to be impossible crimes, for example, how the thief, or thieves got away (for a while) with jewelry store robbery when it looked like the who thing went up in smoke. The “what not” part of the stories is, take either a look at the film or a read of the book, that the lack of that female distraction, that femme Bridget or whatever her name was, as a formidable foil makes this Sam a little less romantic, a little less hard-boiled, and little left nifty since he is not tilting at windmills to bring a little rough justice into this wicked old world that the fully formed detective in The Maltese Falcon.  

The First Draft of the Thin Man suffers as well from the absence of the two, well, suave, debonair, and witty detectives which Hammett created later, Nick and Nora Charles (oh, alright and Asta too) when he reworked this piece. The story line here moreover sort of gets run over at the end when the plot ran out of steam after one of the main seen character winds up dead, very dead and the thin man is still out there somewhere. But if you want to see how a master writer wrote when writers wrote read this one to see how a work progresses. Hell read the whole  book to see how crime novel writers wrote in the old days.           

The Last Chance Dance- With The Kingsmen's Late Jack Ely And Louie, Louie In Mind

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Fritz Jasper when he heard the news that the Kingsmen’s lead singer and guiding spirit (okay, okay the guy who kept things together) Jack Ely had passed away not only thought about the mortality rate of those of his generation of ’68 starting to take its toll, for the famous, the infamous, and the great unwashed, but that the Kingsmen probably had the greatest one-hit wonder song of the whole rock and roll 1960s. Somehow that one song Louie, Louie which depended more on the beat and sense of romantic adventure connected with the song got more mileage per turntable turn than one could shake a stick. Certainly it was not the lyrics which were frankly mostly unintelligible and those who have tried to decipher such things are still scratching their heads over that hard fact. In one hundred years obscure devotees will still be seeking the Roseate Stone on those lyrics. Jack Ely went to his grave keeping his own counsel about the whole issue.

Hell, who was Fritz kidding, mortality rates and one hits wonders were not what drove his thoughts when he heard about Ely’s passing but rather thoughts of vivacious Minnie Callahan the girl who got away, or maybe better let get away, during his high school days at Carver High. The song would forever after bring back that memory. He, in the intervening years, especially in the time immediately after they had graduated, after he had gone away to school and after he had spent some “tribal” acid-etched time on the hitchhike road with his friend, the late Peter Paul Markin, in the high life turbulent 1960s gold rush before returning to his safe, sedentary “normal” when he sensed the whirlwind days were ebbing and he went to graduate school to eke out a career as a senior civil servant. Minnie, had stayed around town after high school, had expressed to him dreams of a house on Pouty Point, the upscale section of town created after the land was sold by some old-time Finnish family who had given up a Mom and Pop existence trying to make a living from harvesting the cranberry bogs which were the lifeblood of the town’s economy since around the time of the Pilgrims it seemed. He could not see that then, had had to “sow his wilds oats” and by the time that he figured out what she had meant to him she was gone, who knows where, swallowed up in her own version of the 1960s magical mystery tour. When he did make inquiries on his occasional visits back to town when he was still in contact with his own estranged family it was too later, the family had also left town and the one source who could have helped him, Freddie Callahan, her brother, his best friend since junior high and his primary source of intelligence about her during those school days was “resting” out in Carver Cemetery, one of those 58,000 plus names etched in black marble down on the National Mall  in Washington, D.C. as a result of the war of their generation, Vietnam. 

Funny, Fritz thought, as Ely’s passing sparked thoughts back to sunnier times, he had been after Minnie since he first arrived in Carver when his father had had to relocate for his job out on U.S. Route 95 a few miles from town and he had run into her, literally, at Myles Standish Junior High after he became best friends with Freddie, whom he would continue to be friends with all through school until they lost contact except a few passed letters once Freddie’s number got called in the damn military draft that plagued a whole generation of young men then, and would continue to haunt many of those who have survived even now.

Freddie had warned him even then that she would break his heart, was nothing but a heart-breaker even then, one of those as he found out later when he would continue to attracted to the type, those virginal Irish Catholic girls who had their rosaries in one part of their brains and theirs lusts in the other all while making sure they were observed every Sunday morning at eight o’clock Mass. Jesus. (Jesus too the number times he would walk that mile or so to Sacred Heart Church in order to sit a few rows in back of her at that eight o’clock Mass and watch her ass. The Jesus part being that she knew, as he knew from her best friend, Ellen, Markin’s sister who told him, that he was looking at her ass, and not just there but in the corridors at school whenever she walked by.) So, yes, he had been forewarned but when seemingly involuntary hormonal actions dictates every move Freddie’s “advise,” his truthful friend talking was so much wind. So it went all through junior high when he would go over to the Callahan household sometimes knowing Freddie was not in just on the off chance that she would be in and maybe take pity on him. Take pity because he was as an outsider in a town where the relationships were fixed early and where the social peeking order were determined maybe at birth he was extremely shy around girls in general, Minnie in particular. Having three brothers and no nearby girl cousins did not help either. So junior high school drifted away with him and his Minnie Callahan dreams all asunder.     

That same situation, that same getting nowhere with Minnie, would have probably gone on high school as well, that same feeling that disturbed his sleep dreaming although maybe he would have gotten over it once he saw that Minnie had been matched up with the heroic senior halfback on the football team, Mickey Larkin once he spied her freshman year. It was not like he didn’t have other girls he was interested in, or were interested in him, although they tended to be the girls most influenced by the folk music craze that was being spear-headed by the emergence of Joan Baez as the “queen of the folk scene” and they all were ironing their hair to be as straight and long as hers and begging their dates to take them to coffeehouses in Cambridge some forty miles away to hear old British ballads and mountain music. Fritz though, having come of age in the prime of rock and roll hated folk music, hated it later too when Marston would drag him to those places when they were at Boston University. Nah, another guy with Minnie or girls interested in him would not have extinguished the flame, no way.   

And no way he would have gotten to first base with Minnie either except for one important event in his freshman year, the annual Fall Frolic which was sponsored as a fund-raiser by the Senior Class each year and which was the only event that the prideful senior class permitted underclassmen to attend, attend if they had the two dollar admission charge and by long enforced tradition if they kept out of the hair of any senior that they might run across. So usually until one became a senior and could take on the royal attributes most of the underclassmen, underclass guys were clinging to the walls for most of the evening. The girls though, if not with dates, not with senior dates were another matter and were fair game for senior boys. Needless to say Minnie was in attendance with one Mickey Larkin jealous fist and snarky remarks by half the girls in the school.  

Fritz had not figured to go to the event having no particular reason to go and having a serious disability in the dance world. He could not dance and he had two left feet. Freddie however had convinced him that he had go to “show the colors,” meaning to begin the long four year process becoming school royalty. If not then then perhaps never. So he went and held up his share of the wall for most of the evening hoping that he would survive, just survive.

The Fall Frolic really was a well-done affair with the senior dance committee going all out to make the drab gymnasium where the dance was held seem like a hotel ballroom what with all the flowers, bunting and disguising the bleachers by setting up tables along a couple of the walls (don’t worry those tables were exclusively for seniors and their dates, some rituals never change). The highlight though unlike most of the dances throughout the year was that the committee hired a live band, a live local band to provide the music, usually a band who could cover the latest hits, some classic rocks tunes, and of course, that last chance last dance song to end the evening. That year, somebody on the committee, Helen Kelly, Fritz thought as he thought back on the time, was friends with Rickey Rhodes, the lead singer of the “hot” local cover band around Boston, the Rockin’ Ramrods. So that night the Ramrods were scheduled to play.     

And play they did heating up the audience with lots of great covers of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee and Fritz could not remember who else but they were “hot” that night starting right from the first set. Fritz had been hanging onto the wall mainly although he did dance to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen since it was fast one with Ellen Marston who told him that she thought Minnie was looking in his direction (Fritz would later find out that Minnie had put Ellen up to that comment.). He blushed but thought nothing of as the song ended and he went back to the wall.

As the Ramrod’s opened up the second set (there were three as was usual in a big dance night) Fritz immediately picked up on the beat of a new song that everybody who hung out at Jimmy’s Jack’s Diner where he had the best jukebox in town was going crazy over, an unknown band from California, or he had heard they were from California, called the Kingsmen who were singing this song, Louie, Louie that had all the guys making suggestive moves, and the girls just kind of giggling, or getting into it. As they music played on Fritz spotted Minnie, Minnie looking radiant and beautiful and for the moment without Mickey. Maybe it was the way she looked, maybe, it was Ellen’s comment, hell, maybe he was just reacting against that string of long, straight-haired folkie girls that he had run into of late but whatever it was he found himself walking as if in a trance over to Minnie and making some very suggestive moves her way, Not bad for a two left-feet guy either. After he was done, flushed, turning red he turned around and went back to the wall. So nothing happened that night, nothing happened for a couple of weeks, but one night he went over to the Callahan house to see Freddie about something but he was not there according to Minnie. As he turned to go Minnie asked him if he would like to stay and listen to her latest records, one of them being her own recording of Louie, Louie. Thus started one of the great romances of the Carver High School Class of 1967.

Yeah, Fritz thought just at that moment, whatever happened to Minnie Callahan. Then he chuckled to himself, hell, what am I complaining about, he had gotten more shy boy dances later down at the Surf Ballroom from girls on that one song than he could shake a stick at. Not everything worked out but, thanks guys. Thanks, Jack Ely wherever you are and whatever the words were. RIP

A View From The Left

 

A View From The Left

 

A View From The Left

 

In Honor Of May Day 2015-From The American Left History Blog Archives-All Out On May Day 2012: A Day Of International Working Class Solidarity Actions- An Open Letter To The Working People Of Boston From A Fellow Worker

 

 

All Out For May 1st-International Workers Day 2012!

Why Working People Need To Show Their Power On May Day 2012

Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. I will stop there although I could go on and on. Sounds familiar though, sounds like your situation or that of someone you know, right?

Words, or words like them, are taken daily from today’s global headlines. But these were also similar to the conditions our forebears faced in America back in the 1880s when this same vicious ruling class was called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind, Jay Gould, stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.

What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight connected with the heroic Haymarket Martyrs in 1886 for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the robber barons of the 21st century.

No question over the past several years (really decades but now it is just more public and right in our face) American working people have taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Start off with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back except as “race to the bottom” low wage, two-tier jobs dividing younger workers from older workers like at General Electric or the auto plants). Move on to paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “too big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, in some cases literally paying nothing, we pay). And finish up with mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a life-time deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream.”

Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and many women and the grievances voiced long ago in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or, for some of us, great-grandparents).

That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like hell, against the ruling class that seems to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the ruling class of that day by their front-man Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property.

The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out via the Occupy movement), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under. All Out On May Day 2012.

I have listed some of the problems we face now to some of our demand that should be raised every day, not just May Day. See if you agree and if you do take to the streets on May Day with us. We demand:

 

*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! No More Wisconsins! Hands Off All Our Unions!

* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!

*End the endless wars- Troops And Mercenaries Out Of Afghanistan (and Iraq)!-U.S Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!

* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!

* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!

* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!

* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!

*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! For free quality public transportation!

To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:

*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there is no union - a one-day strike around some, or all, of the above-mentioned demands.

*We will be organizing at workplaces where a strike is not possible for workers to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out”.

*We will be organizing students from kindergarten to graduate school and the off-hand left-wing think tank to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, and to rally at a central location.

*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.

 

All out on May Day 2012.

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

 

Rain beating down, rain-beaten, as downcast as the weather a sock-soaked, rain jacket-soaked, pants-soaked Frank Jackman around    10:00 AM gathered up the small remnant of materials at hand. Those that he had actually decided to carry from the underground parking facility a few blocks from where he stood just then at the corner of Franklin and Congress Streets in downtown Boston when he realized that the thousand or so protestors were not going to materialize that day. The reason that Frank had been in the downtown area, not one of his usual haunts, was to participant in the May Day 2012 protest actions at the State Street Bank. Frank had been helping to organize the actions all spring ever since a call came out from Occupy Wall Street in January to build for a General Strike on May Day. Although Frank, and some of the other organizers, had not been naïve enough to believe that they could bring off a General Strike in Boston that year he, and they, believed that a serious mass action closing down one big symbol of Wall Street’s and the financial markets catastrophic effect on the American and world economy could be planned and be successful as a first effort. And gather important media coverage as well.

 

So the May Day organizing committee made up of mainly younger radicals and student supporters with a sprinkling of old-timers like Frank had planned, had planned not in the old-fashioned way by counting heads but by responses to a social networking campaign.       

As May Day approached the committee, Frank included, began to think that upwards of one thousand people might show up at the bank and that they could effectively close it down for several hours, with or with arrests, but with good media coverage. The reason for that wide-spread belief was that the Facebook event page that they had created had posted several thousand “likes” and “will comes.” Moreover many committee members were being deluged with requests for information and for flyers (although Frank as active as anybody on the networking sites did not see a “spike”). In any case Frank, who had volunteered to show up at the meeting point early and bring all the necessary materials for the action in his car was also carried away by the prospects of a successful action.

 

In the event Frank did not even bring a quarter of the material that he had transported in his car from Cambridge and most of that as he now realized had not needed  to be transported either. That many thousand “likes” turned out to be about fifty bedraggled protestors who to avoid freezing in the rain walked around shouting slogans to crowd-less streets. Crowd-less and media-less since the several well-known media vans that had gathered expecting to see a reportable melee had left by 8:00 AM looking for as one reporter snidely remarked on camera “real news”. Sure Frank was disappointed, sure he was crest-fallen, sure his was a little angry that some of the younger committee members thought that the vague social-networking streams that they lived and died by would come through like this was Cairo or someplace like that. But mainly he realized the very severe limits of cyberspace organizing when the deal went down. He hoped, as he wiped some raindrops off his face, that not a few of those “likes” were at least out of bed by then.         

 

(MIS)REMEMBERING VIETNAM

 

Many mainstream news outlets, and especially Public TV,  have been featuring reminiscences about the “fall” of Saigon and the end of what we call “The Vietnam War.” In Vietnam they call it “The American War” -- to distinguish it from the 10-year battle to gain independence from the French colonialists that preceded direct US involvement.  The stories and documentaries emphasize the tragedy of the considerable number of Vietnamese, who, out of conviction or otherwise had thrown their lot in with the American occupiers.  Thousands of them, in panic, sought to leave the country with the departing US personnel. Many succeeded, more did not and were abandoned in the hasty American evacuation from Saigon on April 30, 1975.

 

The trauma and suffering of those Vietnamese who left, and many who stayed behind or struggled to flee later, cannot be denied. But the real tragedy of the Vietnamese people did not just occur in 1975.  A hundred years of colonial rule preceded it –French domination, briefly interrupted by a Japanese invasion during the Second World War, was followed by renewed French post-war occupation -- facilitated by US financial and military assistance.  The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 led to a Geneva Agreement to re-unify Vietnam through a democratic vote that everyone believed would be won by resistance leader Ho Chi Min. 

 

Instead, the US maneuvered to evade the referendum by supporting a separatist regime in southern Vietnam, dominated largely by a Catholic minority that had been nurtured under French colonialism..  Many of the political and military elites allied with the US had earlier collaborated with the French – or even the Japanese – against Vietnamese independence. By blocking the Geneva Accords and national re-unification, the US condemned the tortured country to 20 more years of near genocidal warfare that killed up to 3 million Vietnamese and created many more millions of internal refugees. 55,000 Americans also died.

 

Of the estimated one-million who fled following the defeat of the US and South Vietnamese forces, many ended up in Dorchester, where the older generation of the community is still dominated by an aging, unreconciled exile elite.  Up and down Dorchester Avenue – and in the Vietnamese Cultural Center where DPP meets -- you can still see the yellow flag with red stripes of the long-defunct Republic of (South) Vietnam. Younger Vietnamese-Americans increasingly self-identify as a community of color faced with discrimination and engaged in the struggle for economic and civil justice.

 

Meanwhile, 2015 also marks the centennial of the first US invasion of Haiti, followed by many more over the years.

 

40 Years Later, From the Fall of Saigon to Our Fallen Empire

If our wars in the Greater Middle East ever end, it’s a pretty safe bet that they will end badly -- and it won't be the first time. The “fall of Saigon” in 1975 was the quintessential bitter end to a war. Oddly enough, however, we’ve since found ways to reimagine that denouement which miraculously transformed a failed and brutal war of American aggression into a tragic humanitarian rescue mission… Defeat in Vietnam might have been the occasion for a full-scale reckoning on the entire horrific war, but we preferred stories that sought to salvage some faith in American virtue amid the wreckage. For the most riveting recent example, we need look no further than Rory Kennedy’s 2014 Academy Award-nominated documentary Last Days in Vietnam… Our vivid collective memories are of Vietnamese refugees fleeing their homeland at war’s end. Gone is any broad awareness of how the U.S. burned down, plowed under, or bombed into oblivion thousands of Vietnamese villages, and herded survivors into refugee camps. The destroyed villages were then declared “free fire zones” where Americans claimed the right to kill anything that moved.   More

 

Agent Orange: Terrible Legacy of the Vietnam War

From 1961 to 1971, the US military sprayed chemical products that contained large quantities of dioxin in order to defoliate the trees for military objectives… Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) has introduced H.R. 2114, the Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2015. If enacted, the bill would lead to the cleanup of dioxin and arsenic contamination still present in Vietnam. It would also provide assistance to the public health system in Vietnam directed at the 3 million Vietnamese affected by Agent Orange. It would extend assistance to the affected children of male US veterans who suffer the same set of birth defects covered for the children of female veterans. It would lead to research on the extent of Agent Orange-related diseases in the Vietnamese-American community, and provide them with assistance. Finally, it would lead to laboratory and epidemiological research on the effects of Agent Orange.  More

Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? [see trailer] Showing Thursday, May 21, in Cambridge [please download & distribute flyer] HEIST traces the worldwide economic collapse to a 1971 secret memo entitled Attack on American Free Enterprise System. Written over 40 years ago by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, at the behest of the US Chamber of Commerce, the 6-page memo, called for a big business makeover of government through corporate control of the media, academia, the pulpit, arts and sciences and destruction of organized labor and consumer protection groups. HEIST exposes the systemic implementation of Powell's memo by BOTH U.S. political parties culminating in the deregulation of industry, outsourcing of jobs and regressive taxation. All of which led us to the global financial crisis of 2008 and the continued dismantling of the American middle class. Today, politics is the playground of the rich and powerful, with no thought given to the hopes and dreams of ordinary Americans. US democracy has been sold to the highest bidder. "Wherever one's politics fall on the spectrum, there is much in here --” such as a maddening video clip in which an American law firm offers counsel on how to avoid hiring American workers --” likely to give one pause." ~Mindy Farabee, LA Times "See this film and you may begin entertaining the notion of public hangings." ~Pacific Sun "HEIST is a one-stop summary of reasons for ordinary Americans to be furious at our financial systems. Its last third turns from compiling past outrages to encouraging activism, making this snappy, solid docu an ideal candidate for savvy distribs to jump on immediately." ~Dennis Harvey, Variety "For those who have not paid attention to 'the man behind the curtain,' or those who have swallowed The Matrix's Blue Pill, HEIST is an absolute must-see." ~D. Schwartz, cine source When/where doors open 6:40; film starts promptly 7pm 243 Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor, entrance on Windsor rule19.org/videos

“40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, we must support the Vietnamese people who continue to suffer some of the most horrific legacies of that war. Contact your representative and demand that he or she co-sponsor H.R. 2114.”

-Majorie Cohn, Veterans For Peace Advisory Board [Read More]

 

Waging Peace and Justice

May 2015

 

In April, we focused on military spending and VFP members participated in GDAMS actions. We launched a “Move the Money” shirt to bring attention to the need to fund local communities. Also in April, the VFP Board met in St. Louis, MO and discussed the future of Veterans For Peace, current U.S war policies, and how VFP can be most effective in waging peace.  Across the country, VFP chapters tabled at Earth Day events to highlight the impact that militarism and war have on the environment. Right now, we are preparing for a busy month in May with many opportunities to get involved. Please join us in taking action in one or more of the following ways. If you would like a packet of tabling materials, please e-mail casey@veteransforpeace.org.

 

Sam’s Ride For Peace – May 9^th- 18^th (Asheville, NC to Washington, DC)

Please spread the word and help support VFP member Sam Wiensted’s 4^th annual Ride For Peace. Sam’s Ride for Peace will start at the Bell Tower on the NC State campus (2100 Hillsborough St., Raleigh) at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 9. Riders will travel to the NC State Capitol at One East Edenton St. After a brief stop, riders will continue their journey, arriving in Washington, DC, on May 16. Check out the Facebook Event for more info.

 

“Swords to Plowshares” Belltower - May 15^th-May 27^th (Washington, DC)

VFP will maintain a 24 hour vigil with the Belltower on the mall in Washington, DC. This is a huge opportunity with numerous visitors to the area in the two weeks leading up to Memorial Day. It is also a huge challenge. Please contact Roger at progerehrlich@gmail.com if you can be in the D.C. area during May and are able to volunteer to help with the Belltower. Even if you CANNOT come to DC please donate to this effort to assist with expenses of veterans and volunteers staffing the tower. 

 

VFP First Annual Lobby Days (Washington, DC; in your city)

Many VFP members have already RSVP'd to participate in VFP's first annual lobby days. You can still sign up! If you can’t make it to DC, you are encouraged to arrange meetings in local offices during that time. Check out the Facebook Event for more info. This year, our legislative priorities include:

-The Federal Budget and Pentagon Spending

-Support Diplomacy with Iran

-Support H. R. 1232 Stop Militarizing Police Act

-Support the Relief for Agent Orange Victims Act

Memorial Day: Full Disclosure of Vietnam Event (Washington, DC)

As part of the Full Disclosure campaign, we are asking all who were affected, directly or indirectly, by the war to write letters addressed to “The Wall” (the Vietnam Veterans Memorial) describing their experiences and sharing their grief over its devastating consequences. The project welcomes letters from both soldiers and civilians. The letters will be gathered and placed at The Wall on Memorial Day 2015. Check out the Facebook Event for more info. To send a letter by email: vncom50@gmail.com. To send in a hand written envelope: Full Disclosure; Veterans for Peace; 409 Ferguson Rd.; Chapel Hill, NC 27516. 

 

Looking Ahead:

June 20^th, 2015 - Golden Rule Christening in Samoa, CA [map]

Aug 5^th – 9^th, 2015 - VFP National Convention in San Diego CA

Aug 6^th, 2015 - Hiroshima Day (1945)

Aug 9^th, 2015 - Nagasaki Day (1945)

Aug 27^th, 2015 – Anniversary Signing of Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)

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