Save Mumia's Life-Act Now 

Update May 2015 URGENT: Please keep up calls & emails  to save Mumia's Life! Continue to keep the pressure on!
New  video “Mumia is Dying in Prison / He Needs Us Now”		Please call these numbers (Dialling code from UK for the USA is 001.  Pennsylvania is five hours behind London.) John Wetzel Secretary, Department of Correctionsra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov 717-728-4109 717-728-4178 Fax 1920 Technology Pkwy, Mechanicsburg PA 17050 John Kerestes Superintendent SCI Mahanoy 570-773-2158 x8102 570-783-2008 Fax 301 Morea  Road, Frackville PA 17932 Tom Wolf PA Governor 717-787-2500 governor@PA.gov 508 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg PA 17120 Susan McNaughton Public Information Office PA DOC Press secretary: 717-728-4025 smcnaughton@pa.gov
Mumia's Condition Grave Take Action NOW!
2 May: Mumia was still in the infirmary at SCI Mahanoy. Pam Africa and Abdul Jon visited, and Mumia has been able to call his wife, Wadiya Jamal, and meet with his attorney, Bret Grote.  The attorney has submitted expert medical recommendations to the Dept of Corrections outlining the need for Munia to undergo immediate and thorough diagnostic tests to find the cause of his life threatening health condition which the prison has allowed to become nearly lethal. Obtaining a diagnosis is paramount at this moment. The prison is still preventing Mumia's doctors from adequate oversight and input by preventing Mumia having access to information he needs to advocate for his own care.  Public pressure has been key every step of the way, and remains crucial.  Please keep up the calls, emails and faxes. Demand that: ·         Adequate diagnostic test be done immediately. ·         Mumia's chosen doctor is allowed to conduct an onsite medical examination ·         Mumia's doctor is allowed to communicate freely and regularly with him and prison infirmary physicians. (There are no phones in the prison infirmary; Mumia’s calls are limited to 15 minutes and he has limited access to the day room where the phones are located).
Please call the numbers listed, along with Mumia's name his prison number is AM 8335.  Call local news sources in your area that would report on this crisis. Share this email with your contact lists. Get out the information via any social media you use especially Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #MumiaMustLive
It is clear that Pennsylvania prison officials are intent on carrying out their plans to murder Mumia through medical neglect. This situation is urgent.  Every call matters.  Every action matters.  Call your friends, your neighbours. We must speak out now before it’s too late. For more information: Free Mumia, Move organization, Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, International Action Center and Mumia’s Facebook
Circulated by: Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike & Payday men’s network

Mumia's condition grave: Take Action

Dateline: Friday April 24th, 8:45pm Dear friend, Mumia Abu-Jamal was seen today by his wife and his condition has worsened. He, is gravely ill.  We are asking everyone to call the prison. Right now. It may be late, but call whenever you get this.  Mumia needs 24 hour care and supervision. He can not be in this condition in general population. In this state he may not be able ask for help, he may lose consciousness. He is too weak. (He was released from the infirmary two days ago). His condtiion: He is extremely swollen in his neck, chest, legs, and his skin is worse than ever, with open sores. He was not in a wheelchair, but can only take baby steps. He is very weak. He was nodding off during the visit. He was not able to eat- he was fed with a spoon. These are symptoms that could be associated with hyper glucose levels, diabetic shock, diabetic coma, and with kidney stress and failure.  Please call these numbers, and any other numbers you have for the Prison and the Governor. Demand that Mumia Abu-Jamal see a doctor ASAP. Right Now! Demand that the prison officials call his wife Wadiya Jamal and his lawyer Bret Grote immediately. Demand that he be seen immediately, and the not be left to go into a diabetic coma.     John Kerestes, Superintendent SCI Mahanoy: 570-773-2158 x8102 | 570-783-2008 Fax | 301 Morea Road, Frackville PA 17932 Tom Wolf, PA Gvrnr: 717-787-2500 | governor@PA.gov | 508 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg PA 17120 John Wetzel, PA DOC: 717-728-4109 | 717-728-4178 Fax | ra-contactdoc@poc.gov | 1920 Technology Pkwy, Mechanicsburg PA 17050 Susan McNaughton, DOC Press secretary 717-728-4025.  PA Doc smcnaughton@pa.gov   We need your help right now.  Please forward this far and wide. We need more phone numbers to call inside SCI Mahanoy. If you have one send them to us info@prisonradio.org. Every call matters.  Every action matters.  We need to be in the streets. Call your friends, your neighbors. Take action. freemumia.com   prisonradio.org   bringmumiahome.com Noelle Hanrahan Prison Radio   Rise For Mumia >>     Share   Tweet   Forward

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A Guy Who Knew All The Angles- James Cagney’s The Roaring Twenties

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

The Roaring Twenties, starring James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, 1939

Yeah, Eddie Barrett, a big time gangster, hood really, back in the 1920s when such guys were a dime a dozen although like all things involving money some guys were a little hungrier and ruthless about sating that hunger than the others, bought the ticket, took the ride, and in the end wound up very dead on some forsaken bloodied New York marbled stoop, un-mourned and unloved. Well, that last part is not exactly true, since over the hill flame Panama who knew Eddie when he was just a raw punk starting out and did her a good turn, took a big fall for her. Yeah, Panama of the easy street times and easy virtue shed a few tears when he punched his ticket.

See Eddie knew all the angles just like a lot of guys who grew up hard, grew up on the hard knocks working class streets of New York or any other big town, had “street smarts” which in his neighborhood was prized above real smarts since what was the latter going to get you except hustling from nine to five for dimes and donuts. While not every guy who grew up hard had to use all the angles at their disposal Eddie did, and hence a few wrong turns brought him to that stony death and those few for old time memories Panama tears. Eddie, played in the film under review, The Roaring Twenties, by James Cagney but the role could have been played by half a dozen hard-nosed guys, hard-nosed actors, then and now, because what Eddie had, how Eddie survived for a while in the world is something a lot of guys, and not just actors, would know, know without the script.   

Here’s the lay of the land and you judge whether Eddie did right, or got too tied up in the angles bit. Or maybe you will think that our boy just got waylaid by circumstances, you know, a combination of things that just proved too much to overcome. That is what a real smart guy (or gal) would think, lay it off on social conditions, and maybe they would be right but that is not what the street smart guys would say.  Eddie like a lot of street guys started out straight enough, had small New York, Bronx or Flatbush dreams around the early part of the 20^th century when dreams were plentiful and prospects to do okay were not outlandish. See Eddie, well, Eddie was a grease monkey, a guy pretty handy around cars, worked for a guy for a while and then figured if everything went okay would open his own shop since even back then America was in love with the automobile and guys who could fix them were aces. But here is where those of you who want to discuss that “victim of circumstances” stuff could have a field day. Just as Eddie was coming to serious manhood the troubles in Europe, you know, World War I spilled over into America and Eddie would up in the American Expeditionary Force in Europe and he joined up for the fight, did his fair share of fighting on the trench-filled fronts, made a couple of buddies, and came home safe and sound. But that is when it all started to come undone. He came back, like in a lot of wars of late, not to a hero’s welcome, but to no job, no prospects, and no liquor, no liquor because of the Volstead Act which prohibited the sale of legal liquor all through those roaring twenties, the free-wielding Jazz Age that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about, wrote about the Mayfair swells part anyway and guys like Gatsby who were trying to crash the gates even though the odds were stacked against them, but which not everybody got a chance to dive into.

So no job, no dough, no prospects Eddie Barrett faced a turning point after a hack (cab-driver, okay) friend let him go in on his cab business and while doing that work got into trouble for delivering some illegal booze to Panama’s speakeasy. He took the bust, and Panama’s gratitude sealed with tears at the end, but also got wise to the ways of the world and being a street smart guy figured to ride the wave, the free and easy booze wave (although, and here he was smart unlike some guys then who drank up the profits and later guys who snorted the cocaine profits, he didn’t drink, not at first anyway). So our boy moved up the food chain, looked to be a guy who would survive the cut in the survival of the fittest struggle.

But two things get in his way, well, two things but really one thing, a dame, a frail, a frill or whatever they called a woman in their neighborhoods in those days, a torch singer too, who was looking to make it in the bright lights of the city.  This young woman though, Jean (played by virginal good-girl Priscilla Lane) is all wrong for Eddie, Eddie from the wrong side of the tracks, since she is a clean-cut girl next door-type whatever her singing aspirations. Panama, old standby through thick and thin Panama is more Eddie’s speed. But when a guy gets gone on a woman, well, you know almost anything can happen, street smart guy or not. So Eddie takes the tumble, figures that in order to keep her in clover that he has to move more quickly up the food chain. And that is where problem number two comes in. There are already guys ahead of you in line in that food chain, and so Eddie has to get rough, get pushy with the next guy up. In the process his runs into an old war buddy, George (played by a young Humphrey Bogart), who was also street smart and who was working for the next guy up the chain. They decide, uneasily, to join forces, and for a while they are making money hand over fist, are living on easy streets.

But here is where fate, the furious fate sisters, played Eddie wrong. First off despite the dough that virginal Jean did not go for Eddie but had eyes for, what did they call it, one of her own kind, another Eddie war buddy, a lawyer and so Eddie was out in the cold on that front. I will say he took that defeat like a man and let her go. Here though is where you never know what is going to happen. The Great Depression came along and wise investment stock-heavy like everybody from the barber to the bookie to the banker Eddie goes under, had to sell out to George, cheaply which stuck in his craw. Then that old war buddy lawyer, working for the District Attorney got involved in trying to smash the crime rackets and while Eddie was down on cheap street our friend George had moved up the chain. Naturally a guy who has moved up the chain will take umbrage if the coppers try to squeeze his action and so, for Jean’s sake, yeah, Eddie is still carrying the torch for her despite everything, has that final confrontation with George and his boys and winds up on those tear-stained bloody steps for his efforts. Yeah, Eddie knew all the angles, was a smart guy, but you know when a dame is involved all bets are off. Yeah, buy the ticket, take the ride.                

The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   

 

Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from the days that I now call the “Generation Of ‘68,” we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. 1968 being a watershed year for lots of things from Tet in Vietnam bringing home the reality of the lost war to the American bourgeois political upheavals that led to Chicago hell in the summer and the May events in Paris which showed the limits that a student-based vision of the "newer world" we sought.

That last, the student-based vision of the world got us into more trouble than expected when we confronted the bourgeois order straight-up and they came back on us with a vengeance. There must have been about eighty million ideas around like "students" were the new working class, the "red university that would be the central organizing axis of the new dispensation, and in the hubristic nature of youth we just fell in on ourselves as the obvious vanguard since that is what youth, youth in America had always done (that frame of reference, short-sighted as usual was based on the many youth, heroic youth who stood down the House Un-American Committee (HUAC) in San Francisco, and shouldered the weight in the anti-nuclear, civil rights and early anti-Vietnam War movements. But, and here is where the May Days in Paris is instructive, never really threatened to shut down the government or any of its policies by its actions despite nation-wide strikes on most campuses toward the end. A few, a relatively few, did learn other forces were necessary to mobilize if we were to beat down the old order but that was too late, the ebb had carried the day and most of the forces that were animated by the upheavals of the 1960s walked away learning no real lessons about what was necessary to really "turn the world upside down."                 

Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on who survived the 1950s red scare or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who survived the red scare and the Stalinists had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us. Yes, we young stalwart in-your-face- rebels were going to re-invent the world we had not made and we needed no old fogies to put a damper on our efforts. See we were going to re-invent that world without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads the minute the American government felt the least bit threatened. (Chicago 1968, Kent State 1970 and for me personally May Day 1971 when we without anywhere near adequate forces or much of a strategy were going to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war stand as signposts to those failures.) Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists.
Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time New Left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s young left-wing militants.

***************
A Frank Jackman comment (2014):

Recently I wrote a short piece in a left-wing political blog centered on the need for revolutionary intellectuals to take their rightful place on the active left, on the people’s side, and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines (or wherever they were hiding out). One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement a few years back, the continuing failed efforts to stop the incessant American war machine, and the lack of serious and righteous response to the beating that the working classes and oppressed in this country (and internationally) have taken from the ruling class and their hangers-on a certain stock-taking was in order. A stock-taking at first centered on those young radical and revolutionaries that I had run into in the various campsites and had talked to on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and discouraged when their utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of regret from the masses.

I noted there, and the point is germane here as I try to place the remnant of old New Left represented by the contributors in The Rag Blog in perspective, that is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory which I mentioned in the article still holds true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working-class specific questions play in world politics (the national question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated), special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

That said I have also made a note that some of theories from the old days, now being re-tread by some of the old New Left denizens of this blog as if nothing had changed since the 1960s,  made me think that making the revolution the old-fashioned Marxist working class way is the beginning of wisdom. In the interest of full disclosure though back in the day I was as likely as anybody to adhere to all kinds of new theories (mainly because the old theories being old must be irrelevant, a notion that was widespread then) but life, political life, itself has already made its judgments on the worth of those theories for pulling humankind ahead. The class struggle exists, although in a very one-sided manner right now, one-sided on their side not ours, and any theory, any plan worth its salt, worth the righteous oppressed rising up against it should reflect that and at its core the teachings of Marx and his progeny still make sense.   
A Markin disclaimer:

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. 

In Honor Of May Day 2015-From The American Left History Blog Archives-Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013

 

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

I have noted on several previous occasions (including in an article in the April 2012 “Boston Occupier, Number 7”) that due to the recent absence of serious left-wing political struggle (prior to the events at Occupy Boston in Dewey Square from October to December 2011anyway) that our tasks for May Day 2012 in Boston centered on reviving the international working class tradition beyond the limited observance by revolutionaries, radicals and, in recent years, immigrants. This effort would thus not be a one event, one year but require a number of years and that this year’s efforts was just a start. We have made that start.

 

The important thing this year was to bring Boston in line with the international movement, to have leftist militants and others see our struggles here as part of an international struggle even if our actions were, for now, more symbolic and educational than powerful blows at the imperial system. I believe, despite the bad weather and consequently smaller than anticipated numbers on May Day 2012, we achieved that aim. Through months of hard outreach, especially over the past several weeks as the day approached, we put out much propaganda and information about the events through the various media with which we have access. The message of this May Day, a day without the 99%, got a full hearing by people from the unions, immigrant communities, student milieu and other sectors like the women’s movement and GLBQT community.  The connections and contacts made are valuable for our further efforts. 

 

 Some participants that spoke to me on May Day (and others who had expressed the same concerns on earlier occasions) believed that we had “bitten off more than we could chew,” by having an all-day series of events.  While I am certainly open to hear criticism on the start time of the day’s events (7:00AM does stretch the imagination for night-owlish militants) the idea of several events starting with that early Financial District Block Party and continuing on with the 11:00 AM Anti-Capitalist March which fed into the noontime rally at Boston City Hall Plaza  and then switching over to the immigrant community marches and rally capped off that evening by the sober, solemn and visually impression “Death Of Capitalism” funeral procession still seems right to me. Given our task –introducing (really re-introducing) May Day to a wider Boston audience we needed to provide a number of times and events where people could, consciously, contribute to the day’s celebration. Maybe some year our side will be able to call for a one event May Day mass rally (or better a general strike) but that is music for the future. 

 

Needless to say, as occurs almost any time you have many events and a certain need to have them coordinated, there were some problems from 

technical stuff like mic set-ups to someone forgetting something important, or not showing at the right time, etc. Growing pains. Nevertheless all the scheduled events happened, we had minimum hassles from the police, and a couple of events really stick out as exemplars for future May Days. The Anti-Capitalist March from Copley Square, mainly in a downpour, led by many young militants and which fed into the noontime City Hall rally was spirited and gave me hope that someday (someday soon, I hope) we are going to bring this imperial monster down. The already mentioned funeral procession was an extremely creative (and oft-forgotten by us) alternative way to get our message across outside the “normal” ham-handed, jack-booted political    

screed.

 

Finally, a word or two on organization. The Occupy-May Day Coalition personnel base was too small, way too small even for our limited goals. We need outreach early (early next year) to get enough organizer-type people on board to push forward. More broadly on outreach I believe, and partially this was a function of being too small an organizing center, we spent too much time “preaching to the choir”-going to events, talking to people already politically convinced , talking among ourselves rather than get out into the broader political milieu. For next year (which will not be an election year) we really need union and community people (especially from oppressed communities) to “smooth” the way for us. We never got that one (although we want more than one ultimately) respected middle-level still militant union official or community organizer that people, working people, listen to and who would listen to us with his or her nod. Radical or bourgeois politics, down at the base, you still need to have the people that the people listen to on board. Forward to May Day 2013.           

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Artists’ Corner-

 

 

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the hide-bound Academy filled with its rules, or be damned, spoke the pious words of peace, brotherhood and the affinity of all humankind when there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society in its squalor, it creation of generations of short, nasty, brutish lives just like the philosophers predicted and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, putting another man to ground or laying their own heads down for some imperial mission.

They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course. 

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as they marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss his high tea. Jesus what a blasted night that Great War time was.  

And as the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, artists, beautiful artists like Fernand Leger who could no longer push the envelope of representative art because it had been twisted by the rubble of war, by the crashing big guns, by the hubris of commanders and commanded and he turned to new form, tubes, cubes, prisms, anything but battered humankind in its every rusts and lusts, all bright and intersecting once he got the mustard gas out of his system, once he had done his patria duty, like speaking of mustard gas old worn out John Singer Sargent of the three name WASPs forgetting Boston Brahmin society ladies in decollage, forgetting ancient world religious murals hanging atop Boston museum and spewing trench warfare and the blind leading the blind out of no man’s land, out of the devil’s claws, like Umberto Boccioni, all swirls, curves, dashes, and dangling guns as the endless charges endlessly charge, like Gustav Klimt and his endlessly detailed gold dust opulent Asiatic dreams filled with lovely matrons and high symbolism and blessed Eve women to fill the night, Adam’s night after they fled the garden, like Joan Miro and his infernal boxes, circles, spats, eyes, dibs, dabs, vaginas, and blots forever suspended in deep space for a candid world to fret through, fret through a long career, and like poor maddened rising like a phoenix in the Spartacist uprising George Grosz puncturing the nasty bourgeoisie, the big bourgeoisie the ones with the real dough and their overfed dreams stuffed with sausage, and from the bloated military and their fat-assed generals stuff with howitzers and rocket shells, like Picasso, yeah, Picasso taking the shape out of recognized human existence and reconfiguring the forms, the mesh of form to fit the new hard order, like, Braque, if only because if you put the yolk on Picasso you have to tie him to the tether too.          

And do not forget when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it turned out sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….