HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-HONOR ROSA LUXEMBURG-THE ROSE OF THE REVOLUTION

HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-HONOR ROSA LUXEMBURG-THE ROSE OF THE REVOLUTION

 HONOR ROSA LUXEMBURG-THE ROSE OF THE REVOLUTION

Every January leftists honor three revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in 1924, Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin. Lenin needs no special commendation.  I will make my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in this space tomorrow so I would like to make some points here about the life of Rosa Luxemburg. These comments come at a time when the question of a woman President is the buzz in the political atmosphere in the United States in the lead up to the upcoming 2016 elections. Rosa, who died almost a century ago, puts all such pretenders to so-called ‘progressive’ political leadership in the shade.   

The early Marxist movement, like virtually all progressive political movements in the past, was heavily dominated by men. I say this as a statement of fact and not as something that was necessarily intentional or good. It is only fairly late in the 20^th century that the political emancipation of women, mainly through the granting of the vote earlier in the century, led to mass participation of women in politics as voters or politicians. Although, socialists, particularly revolutionary socialists, have placed the social, political and economic emancipation of women at the center of their various programs from the early days that fact had been honored more in the breech than the observance.

All of this is by way of saying that the political career of the physically frail but intellectually robust Rosa Luxemburg was all the more remarkable because she had the capacity to hold her own politically and theoretically with the male leadership of the international social democratic movement in the pre-World War I period. While the writings of the likes of then leading German Social Democratic theoretician Karl Kautsky are safely left in the basket Rosa’s writings today still retain a freshness, insightfulness and vigor that anti-imperialist militants can benefit from by reading. Her book Accumulation of Capital , whatever its shortfalls alone would place her in the select company of important Marxist thinkers.

But Rosa Luxemburg was more than a Marxist thinker. She was also deeply involved in the daily political struggles pushing for left-wing solutions. Yes, the more bureaucratic types, comfortable in their party and trade union niches, hated her for it (and she, in turn, hated them) but she fought hard for her positions on an anti-class collaborationist, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist left-wing of the International of the social democratic movement throughout this period. And she did this not merely as an adjunct leader of a women’s section of a social democratic party but as a fully established leader of left-wing men and women, as a fully socialist leader. One of the interesting facts about her life is how little she wrote on the women question as a separate issue from the broader socialist question of the emancipation of women. Militant leftist, socialist and feminist women today take note.

One of the easy ways for leftists, particularly later leftists influenced by Stalinist ideology, to denigrate the importance of Rosa Luxemburg’s thought and theoretical contributions to Marxism was to write her off as too soft on the question of the necessity of a hard vanguard revolutionary organization to lead the socialist revolution. Underpinning that theme was the accusation that she relied too much on the spontaneous upsurge of the masses as a corrective to the lack of hard organization or the impediments that  reformist socialist elements threw up to derail the revolutionary process. A close examination of her own organization, The Socialist Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, shows that this was not the case; this was a small replica of a Bolshevik-type organization. That organization, moreover, made several important political blocs with the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the defeat of the Russian revolution of 1905. Yes, there were political differences between the organizations, particularly over the critical question for both the Polish and Russian parties of the correct approach to the right of national self-determination, but the need for a hard organization does not appear to be one of them.

Furthermore, no less a stalwart Bolshevik revolutionary than Leon Trotsky, writing in her defense in the 1930’s, dismissed charges of Rosa’s supposed ‘spontaneous uprising’ fetish as so much hot air. Her tragic fate, murdered with the complicity of her former Social Democratic comrades, after the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin in 1919 (at the same time as her comrade, Karl Liebknecht), had causes related to the smallness of the group, its  political immaturity and indecisiveness than in its spontaneousness. If one is to accuse Rosa Luxemburg of any political mistake it is in not pulling the Spartacist group out of Kautsky’s Independent Social Democrats (itself a split from the main Social Democratic party during the war, over the war issue) sooner than late 1918. However, as the future history of the communist movement would painfully demonstrate revolutionaries have to take advantage of the revolutionary opportunities that come their way, even if not the most opportune or of their own making.

All of the above controversies aside, let me be clear, Rosa Luxemburg did not then need nor does she now need a certificate of revolutionary good conduct from today’s leftists, from any  reader of this space or from this writer. For her revolutionary opposition to World War I when it counted, at a time when many supposed socialists had capitulated to their respective ruling classes including her comrades in the German Social Democratic Party, she holds a place of honor. Today, as we face the endless wars of imperialist intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere in Iraq we could use a few more Rosas, and a few less tepid, timid parliamentary opponents.  For this revolutionary opposition she went to jail like her comrade Karl Liebknecht. For revolutionaries it goes with the territory. And in jail she wrote, she always wrote, about the fight against the ongoing imperialist war (especially in the Junius pamphlets about the need for a Third International).  Yes, Rosa was at her post then. And she died at her post later in the Spartacist fight doing her internationalist duty trying to lead the German socialist revolution the success of which would have  gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution. This is a woman leader I could follow who, moreover, places today’s bourgeois women parliamentary politicians in the shade. As the political atmosphere gets heated up over the next couple years, remember what a real fighting revolutionary woman politician looked like. Remember Rosa Luxemburg, the Rose of the Revolution.      

A Good Woman Is Hard To Find On His Mind-The Trials and Tribulations of Lance Lawrence

A Good Woman Is Hard To Find On His Mind-The Trials and Tribulations of Lance Lawrence

...yeah forever young  

By Seth Garth   

Sam Lowell had never seen anybody as skirt –crazy as his old friend Lance Lawrence, a guy that he had met in college, met at Boston University when by the luck the draw they became roommates freshman year and had remained in contact, sometimes with serious lapses of time, sometimes like now over forty years later almost daily. Day one freshman year they had hardly gotten their books from the bookstore when Lance had propositioned some young thing (his expression for the fair sex, for young women, okay, which he has used until this day even though who he is speaking or thinking of had lost the sweet bloom of youth long ago), Not only had propositioned her but had coaxed her (Sam’s gentile word for a lot more than some innocent coaxing) up into their dorm room on Bay State Road (leaving Sam, for the first but not the last hanging somewhere not in the dorm). That seduction, no, that coaxing a definite no-no in the hard-pressed later 1960s when freshman were supposed officially by the in locus parentis school authorities to be above such sexual desire and ways to relieve those desires. Nothing ever came of that indiscretion and like a million other Lance indiscretions for which he became something like campus famous never looked back, never thought such conduct was anything but the natural order. Lance’s natural order and if pressed today would probably wonder what the hell anybody was talking about, making a big deal about it as just the way he operated in his silver spoon world. And he had had since those fresh bloom days three, count them, three full-fledged divorces and a myriad of affairs to put paid to that sense of wonder like some Fitzgerald Dutchman looking for the first time at that fresh green breast of the Long Island of his deportee dreams.        

No question Lance was a good-looking guy, a good-looking guy in that sly, wicked way that guys back in the day looked to the opposite sex and which no longer commands those longing loving looks from forlorn midnight sitting by the telephone young women who charted his life and theirs by their meaningful glances (nowadays by the way waiting almost anyplace by the cellphone). Tall, not too tall, lanky, a little wiry which meant don’t mess with him and which on occasion especially under drink was very good advice, a long tousle of dark black hair and bedroom eyes (that remark made Sam mad when girls, his date girls, would ask him who the guy with the bedroom blue eyes was with a slightly suggestive sexual emphasis that usually did rouse to his benefit later in the evening). So, yes, Lance was a piece of work. And although Lance had lost several steps in the aging process he still believed that he had what it took to get the now no longer young “mature” women who engaged his attention a quick tumble just like that first freshman day.

So yes skirt-crazy as ever. Skirt-crazy through those three marriages two which broke up due to that very chasing (the third, his first flighty one when he expected to be shipped out to Vietnam and had worried himself to perdition that he would die unsung, and unmarried, was due to her chasing some football player type while he was in Dear John Vietnam without a scratch on him except whatever heart bleed he secretly harbored against the “bitch”). Of late Lance had been momentarily down in the dumps due to the break-up of his latest affair, an affair with Minnie Murphy whom he had had an “affair” with, the gentile way that he put it to Sam one night over drinks at Sam’s favorite watering hole in Cambridge, Joey’s Grille, although they had been shacked up for at least a decade before she gave him his walking papers. The breakdown of the Lance crisis had not been that he had done his damnest to earn those walking papers by his ever-lasting philandering, which he had, or at least that went unspoken but you never knew with quiet Minnie, a habit of hers drilled in childhood by a drunken father who made it his business to shut his whole brood up. No, Lance was beside himself with the fact that he was lady-less, was without a companion after an almost endless string going back, well, going back to that first freshman wayward day. Had been alone almost a month at that point.

Lance at least in Sam’s presence had never before been known to be reflective about his romantic downturns so Sam was rather surprised when Lance mentioned how his inattention, his distance, his indifference to Minnie’s feelings and he self-absorption had left Minnie no choice but to flee the scene, to go on her own quiet quest to “find herself” without the tensions of having to bear whatever mood Lance was in at any given time. Sam should have known that such self-analysis was a “cover,” a convenient way to introduce some latest scheme to grab some skirt rather than own up to his boorishness with Minnie. (Sam, a victim of his own two divorces and scads of college-weighted kids always had a soft spot in his heart for Minnie, especially after one meaningful night when he half-drunk brought up the subject and Minnie, gently as was her way always, told him that she had some feelings that way toward him too but Lance was her man and that was that, damn Lance.)

What had Lance down in the dumps was his latest “search” for some skirt. See, as he told Sam that bleary self-confession barroom drinking night he had recently joined a senior-oriented in-line dating service, Seniors Please, and had been hard-pressed to find his niche, his place in such an off-hand way of meeting women, “mature” women but Sam knew in his mind Lance was working the same game plan he had used to floor women since he was about six. Lance, as long as Sam had seen him operate under all weathers, always depended on those piecing bedroom eyes and a gift of blarney that would make any honest Irishmen weep for their inadequacies. That meant that he would meet some woman at a bar or at work (or at a bookstore when that was in style and there were bookstores, brick and mortar bookstores, where women would congregate to get their weekly reading materials and as it turned out when he found out later lingering around to see if there were any prospective men within fifty miles of the place the idea being that a guy who at least read a book was a likely prospect. Yeah, the bar at a certain age was pretty low.). Then work his magic based on some chemistry between them or some lust (on her part as likely as his also something Lance had found out from experience).

This on-line dating business was ass-backward. You filled out a “profile” of rather simpleton and non-responsive questions, some bullshit prompted lines about what you were looking for (sex of course, not only the province of the young), and a decent photo. The hook though was when you placed your profile on-line and got a few bites you couldn’t respond because you were not a member of the service and had to pay the entry fee which Lance begrudgingly did. Once he did that he got very few responses that he was interested in (what he would later find was that there were benighted trolls, a blight on all social media sites and something he had never expected “cougars,” older women “stalking” younger men, that could be an eighty year old hunting for sixty year old, Jesus). The photo and bullshit written profile did not play to his strong suit, did not play to that chemistry. The old days were long gone when you met somebody live say at a party, clicked, and exchanged phone numbers (or went out to parked car if it was that kind of night). So what was an “active” man to do when there were no other obvious ways to meet women when there were none at work or in his profession, the law profession, in general who were around his age and were interested in anything but making partner, where the “meat market” bars were way behind him and where his hi-jinks in the art museum he was advised to go to in order to meet women only gave him a headache.                 

Lance made Sam laugh with some of the stuff he mentioned he had run into (out loud laugh because some of the situations were funny and secretly laugh that finally the playboy of the western world had been taken down a peg or two). That cougar older woman hunting young man business but also the way Lance talked about what women, seemingly rational and intelligent women, put on-line. The expected bullshit “profile” stuff about finding a soul-mate and eternal love but also some impossible stuff like seriousness, good manners, and gentlemanly behavior. Jesus, Lance told Sam what the hell did they expect from guys who probably had at least a passing acquaintance with the 1960s and looser styles and mores. But the photographs were the tip-off that Lance was in deep trouble. He could not believe that these same women who were looking for eternal love unabashedly put photographs of themselves with their broods of grandchildren in the lead photographs (although Lance loved his own brood of grandkids he hardly would advertise himself as grandpa of the year). Could not believe that they put amply photographs of their pets (sometimes looking cuter than their owners) among their selections. Had flipped out when one woman had a photograph of her big bruiser of an adult son who looked like a professional football player all surly beside his mother looking for all the world like he would bust some guy’s nose if he looked cross-eyed at his dear mother.

Lance went on with his funny descriptions until he and Sam had had enough to drink and decided to head for their respective homes. As they parted after going out the door Lance said to Sam that he had to go home and boot up the computer to see if greeklady123 or coolocean47 (on-line monikers that everybody assumed on site) had responded to his messages. Yeah, Lance was a skirt-crazy guy, no question.          

When The Blues Was Dues- The Guitar Of Elmore James-About Who Put And When The Rock In Rock And Roll

When The Blues Was Dues- The Guitar Of Elmore James-About Who Put And When The Rock In Rock And Roll

I will get to a CD review of Elmore James’ work in a second. Now I want to tell, no retell, the tale that had me and a few of my corner boys who hung out in front of, or in if we had dough for food or more likely the jukebox, Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver where I came of age in the early 1960s going for a while. On one lonesome Friday night, lonesome meaning, no dough, no wheels, no girls, or any combination of the three, with time of our hands Billy Bradley, Jack Dawson and I went round and round about what song by what artist each of us thought was the decisive song that launched rock and roll. Yeah, I know, I know now, that the world then, like now, was going to hell in a hand-basket, what with the Russkies breathing hard on us in the deep freeze Cold War red scare night, with crazy wars going on for no apparent reason, and the struggle for black civil rights down in the police state South (that “police state" picked up later after I got wise to what was happening there) but what were three corner boys to do to while away the time.  

Here is the break-down though. We knew, knew without anybody telling us that while Elvis gave rock and roll a big lift in his time before he went on to silly movies that debased his talent he was not the “max daddy,” not the guy who rolled the dice. For one thing and this was Billy’s position he only covered Big Joe Turner’s classic R&B classic Shake, Rattle, and Roll and when we heard Joe’s finger-snapping version we flipped out. So Billy had his choice made, no question. Jack had heard on some late Sunday night radio station out in Chicago on his transistor radio a thing called Be-Bop Benny’s Blues Hour where he first heard this guy wailing on the piano a be-bop tune. It turned out to be Ike Turner (without Tina then) blasting Rocket 88. So Jack had his position firm, and a good choice. Me, well I caught this obscure folk music station (obscure then not a few years later though) which played not just folk but what would be later called “roots music.” And the blues is nothing but roots music in America. One night I heard Elmore James slide guitar his way through Look On Yonder Wall. That is the song I defended that night. Did any of us change each other’s mind that night. Be serious. I later, several years later, saw the wisdom of Jack’s choice and switched but old Elmore still was a close second. Enough said.       

CD REVIEW

The History of Elmore James: The Sky Is Crying, Elmore James, Rhino Records, 1993

When one thinks of the classic blues tune “Dust My Broom” one tends to think of the legendary Robert Johnson who along with his “Sweet Home, Chicago” created two of the signature blues songs of the pre-World War II period. However, my first hearing of “Dust My Broom” was on a hot LP vinyl record (the old days, right?) version covered and made his own by the artist under review, Elmore James. I have heard many cover versions since then, including from the likes of George Thoroughgood and Chris Smither, and they all reflect on the influence of Elmore’s amazing slide guitar virtuosity to provide the "heat" necessary to do the song justice. Moreover, this is only the tip of the iceberg as such blues masters and aficionados as B.B. King and The Rolling Stones have covered other parts of James’ catalog.

Perhaps because Elmore died relativity young at a time when blues were just being revived in the early 1960’s as part of the general trend toward “discovering” roots music by the likes of this reviewer he has been a less well-known member of the blues pantheon. However, for those who know the value of a good slide guitar to add sexiness and sauciness to a blues number James’ is a hero. Hell, Thoroughgood built a whole career out of Elmore covers (and also, to be sure, of the late legendary Bo Didderly). I never get tired of hearing these great songs. Moreover, it did not hurt to have the famous Broom-dusters backing him up throughout the years. As one would expect of material done in the pre-digital age the sound quality is very dependent on the quality of the studio. But that, to my mind just makes it more authentic.

Well, what did you NEED to listen to here? Obviously,” Dust My Broom". On this CD though you MUST listen to Elmore on "Standing At The Crossroads". Wow, it jumps right out at you. "Look On Yonder Wall" (a song that I used to believe was a key to early rock 'n' rock before I gravitated to Ike Turner's "Rocket 88" as my candidate for that role), "It Hurts Me Too" and the classic "The Sky is Crying" round out the minimum program here. Listen on.

Lyrics To "Dust My Broom"

I'm gonna get up in the mornin',

I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)

Girlfriend, the black man you been lovin',

girlfriend, can get my room

I'm gon' write a letter,

Telephone every town I know (2x)

If I can't find her in West Helena,

She must be in East Monroe, I know

I don't want no woman,

Wants every downtown man she meet (2x)

She's a no good doney,

They shouldn't 'low her on the street

I believe, I believe I'll go back home (2x)

You can mistreat me here, babe,

But you can't when I go home

And I'm gettin' up in the morning,

I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)

Girlfriend, the black man that you been lovin',

Girlfriend, can get my room

I'm gon' call up Chiney,

She is my good girl over there (2x)

If I can't find her on Philippine's Island,

She must be in Ethiopia somewhere

Robert Johnson

Scenes From An Ordinary 1960s Be-Bop Life-Scene Ten: California Dreamin’, Maybe, January 1970

Scenes From An Ordinary 1960s Be-Bop Life-Scene Ten: California Dreamin’, Maybe, January 1970


I waved good-bye to Angelica, once again, as she drove off from the ocean front campsite that we had been camping out on, the Leo Carrillo State Park near Point Magoo about fifty miles or so north of Los Angeles. She will now drive the road back in her green Ford Hertz unlimited mileage, mid-size rental (paid for, as she explained one night, by her parents whose golden age of the automobile-frenzied minds counted it as a strike against me, a very big strike, that when I had “kidnapped” their daughter on the 1969 blue-pink summer road west down in Steubenville, Ohio I didn’t even have a car). She planned (on my advise) to drive back mostly on the ocean-abutted, white-capped waves smashing against jagged ancient shore rocks Pacific Coast Highway down through Malibu and Santa Monica to take one last look at the Pacific Ocean as the final point on her first look ocean trip, to the LAX to take a flight back to school days Muncie, Indiana.

She will also be driving back to the airport and getting on that miserable plane east knowing as I do since we talked about it incessantly during her stay, that some right things, or at least some maybe right things, like our being together last summer heading free west and for these two January weeks in front of the sea, our homeland the sea, before her classes started again, got caught up in the curious web of the human drama. For no understandable reason. Hey, you already knew this if you have ever had even that one teeny-weeny, tiny, miniscule love affair that just had no place to go, or no time to take root, or just got caught out there in the blue-pink night. Ya, you know that story. But let me take some minutes to tell you this one. If it seems very familiar and you “know” the plot line well then just move on.


To get you up to speed after Angelica and I had been on the heartland hitchhike road (and places like Moline, Neola, and Omaha are nothing but the heartland, good or bad), she, well, she just got tired of it, tired of the lacks, tired of the uncertainties of the road. Hell, hell-on-wheels, I was getting a tired of it myself except I was a man on a mission. The nature of that mission is contained in the headline to this scene, and all the previous scenes in this series, so that need not detain us here. So in Neola, Iowa, Neola, Iowa of all places aided by “fairy grandmother” Aunt Betty, who ran the local diner where Angelica worked to help make us some dough to move on, and her own sense of dreams she called it quits back in September. Aunt Betty drove us to Omaha where Angelica took the bus back east, Indiana east from Nebraska, to hometown Muncie and I hit Interstate 80 West headed first to Denver before the snows, or so I hoped.

Honestly, although we exchanged addresses and telephone numbers where messages could be left, or where we could speak to each other (her parents’ house not being one of them), and made big plans to reunite in California in January during her school break, I didn’t really think that once we were off the road together that those plans would pan out.


Now I may not remember all my reasoning at the time this far removed, the now of my telling this story many years later, but I had had enough relationships with women to sense this one was good, very good, while it lasted but it could no survive the parting. Not one of those overused “absence makes the heart grow fonder” things you hear about. And, truth to tell, because I thought that was the way things would play out, I started getting focused back on Boston Joyel more than a little as I walked a lot, stood at the shoulder of the hitchhike road a lot, and fitfully got my rides on the road west.


But see this is where you think you have something figured out just so and then it goes awry. Angelica called, left messages, sent letters, even a telegram, to Denver (to the commune where, Jack and Mattie, my traveling companions on the final leg west whom I had met earlier in the spring on a different trip down to D.C., were staying). She sent more communications saying that she was still coming in early December to Los Angeles as well where we three stayed with a few artistic friends of Jack and Mattie’s. Cinema-crazed artistic friends, including one budding film director who moreover had great dope connections right into the heart of Mexico. This is where they would stay while I planned to push the hitchhike road north heading to San Francisco.


I once, in running through one of the scenes in this hitchhike road show, oh ya, it was the Neola scene, mentioned that in Angelica what you saw was what you got, what she said was what she meant, and both those were good things indeed. And so if I had thought about it a minute of course she was coming to California in January and staying with me for her two week break, and maybe longer. So when January came she contacted me though John and Mattie, who like I said were now staying with this very interesting experimental film-maker, David, in the Hollywood hills and canyons. I started back south to L.A. in order to meet her at the airport. From there I had it planned that we would go to Point Magoo mentioned above and camp out like in the “old days” at the ocean front state park.


Needless to say when I greeted her at LAX we both were all smiles, I was in more than all smiles mode, because I had been “stag” for a while and she was, well, fetching as always, or almost always. Here though is where I noticed that the road really is not for everyone. In Neola, and later getting on the bus back home in Omaha, poor Angelica looked pretty haggard but at the airport, well like I said, she was fetching.


And, guess what, she brought her sleeping bag that we got for her in a Lexington, Kentucky Army-Navy Store when we first seriously started on the road west. And the first thing she said about it was, referring to a little in-joke between us, “it fits two, in a pinch.” Be still my heart. So we gathered up her stuff, did the airport exit stuff (easier in those days) and picked up the outside shuttle to the Hertz car rental terminal. We were jabbering away like crazy, but best of all, we were like, a little, those first days last summer back in that old-time Steubenville truck stop diner and cabin when I first met her.


Of course, part of the trip for her, part of what she went as far as she could with me on the hitchhike road for, was to get to California and see what it was all about, and what the ocean was all about since she was a heartland girl who had never seen the ocean before. When we got to Point Magoo she flipped out, she flipped out mostly at the idea that we would stay, could stay right on the beach in front of the ocean. And just like a kid, just like I did when I was kid and saw the ocean, when she saw the Pacific, she jumped right in. Hell, she was so excited she almost got caught in a small riptide. I had to go drag her out. I won’t say we had fun every minute of those weeks acting out our ocean nomad existence, but most minutes, and I could see that she felt the same way.


Naturally, as time drifted away toward her return flight date we talked more and more about what the future, if any, held in store for us. She was adamant about not going back on the road, she was adamant as well that she wanted to finish school and make something of herself. I had no serious defense against that practical wisdom. And, truthfully, I wasn’t, toward the end of her stay, pushing the issue, partially because even I could see that it made sense but also, we had had a “flare-up” over the Boston Joyel question (I am being polite here).


But it was more than that; the flat out, hungry truth was, like I told you last scene, that out in the desert ghost dance scene, I really didn’t know how to deal with a Midwestern what you see is what you get woman like Angelica. I was more used to virtuous Irish Catholic girls who drove me crazy as a kid getting me all twisted up about religion, about nice girls, and about duplicity when I found out what the real score was with this type of young girl/ woman later. I was also, and Joyel was the epitome of this type, totally in sync (well, as much as a man can be) with the Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look at everything from twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of human relationships 24/7 kind of woman. And fatally attracted to them (and still am). This Angelica look at things only a couple of ways, let’s work things out easy-like, heavens, let’s not analyze everything to the nth degree flipped me out. Angelica was a breath of fresh air and, maybe, maybe, about ten years later, and two divorces later to boot, I would have had that enough sense god gave geese to hold onto her with both hands, tightly, very tightly. But I was in my blue-pink search phase and not to be detoured.


Of course all this hard work of trying to understand where we stood put a little crack in our reason for being together in the first place. The search for, search for something. Maybe, for her, it was just that life minute at the ocean and then on to regular life minutes out in the thickets of the white picket fences. She never said it then in so many words but that seemed to be the aim. And to be truthful, although I was only just barely thinking about it at the time, as the social turmoil of the times got weird, diffuse, and began to evaporate things started to lose steam. As we were, seemingly, endlessly taking our one-sided beatings as those in charge started a counter-offensive (a counter-offensive still going on) people, good people, but people made of human clay nevertheless got tired of the this and that existence, even Joyel. Joyel of Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look at everything from twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of relationships 24/7 was also weary and wary of what was next and where she fit into “square” society. Christ, enough of that, we know, or knew, that song too well.


A couple of days before Angelica was to leave, and on a day when the sun seemed especially bright, especially bright for then smog-filled Los Angeles January, and warm, not resident warm but Boston and Muncie warm, sat like two seals sunning ourselves in the glow of mother ocean she nudged me and asked me if I had a joint. Now Angelica liked a little vino now and then but I can’t recall her ever doing a joint (grass, marijuana, herb, ganja, whatever you call it in your woods). So this is new. The problem, although not a big one in ocean-side state park 1970 Southern California, was that I was not “holding.” No problem though, a few spots down the beach was an old well-traveled, kind of beat-up Volkswagen van that I knew, knew just as sure as I was standing on that white sand beach, was “holding.” I went over, asked around, and “bingo” two nice big joints came traveling with me back to our campsite. Oh, daddy, daddy out in the be-bop blue-pink night thank you brother van man. For just a minute, just that 1970 California minute, the righteous did inherit the earth.


Back at our camp site Angelica awaited the outcome of my quest, although she also wanted to wait until later, until the day’s sun started going down a bit more to go into that smoked-filled good night. When that later came Angelica was scared/ thrilled, as she tried to smoke the one I lit up for her and started coughing like crazy, but that was nothing then. Everybody, at least everybody I knew, went through that same baptism. But Jesus, did we get mellow, that stuff, as most stuff then was primo, not your ragweed bull stuff that ran the rounds later. And why should it have not been so as we were so close to the then sane Mexican border of those days to get the good stuff.


But all of this build-up over this dope scene is so much filler, filler in those days when if you didn’t at least take a pipe full (inhale or not, like it or not) you were a square “squared.” What the stuff did for Angelica, and through Angelica to me, got her to open up a little. No, not about family, or old boyfriends, or her this and that problems. No, but kind of deep, kind of deep somewhere that she maybe didn’t know existed. Deep as I had ever hear her before. She talked about her fate, the fate of the fates, about what was going on in the world, no, not politics; she was organically incapable of that. Mystics stuff, getting in touch with the sea homeland stuff, earth mother stuff too in a way. Dope-edged stuff sure but when she compared the splashing foam-flecked waves to some cosmic force that I forget how she put it (remember I was dope-addled as well) then for just that moment, just that moment when the old red-balled sun started to dip to the horizon on one of those fairly rare days when it met the ocean I swear that Angelica knew, knew in her heart, knew in her soul even, what the blue-pink American West dream stuff I had bombarded here with was all about. That was our moment, and we both knew it.


So when leaving came, leaving came, a couple of days later and we both, I think, as we packed up her things, including that well-used sleeping bag, knew we had come to a parting of the roads. As I put her stuff in the rental car she sweetly blurted out something I was also thinking, “I’ll always remember that night we made the earth under the cabin in Steubenville shake.” And I thought I bet she will, although she forgot the part about the making the roof of the cabin move too. And so there I was, waving as she drove off to her Angelica dreams. And I never saw her again.


Postscript: That last statement about never seeing her again is not exactly true. I have, at least up until a few years ago, and you have probably too, seen her in films and magazines. I don’t know all the later details, because I eventually lost contact with John and Mattie after they went to Mexico and got caught up, got badly caught up in, the small-time end of the international drug trade of the time, but Angelica eventually moved out to California with her boyfriend, and connected with David, the film-maker I mentioned before. And it seems I am a prophet for the still and moving cameras caught that look, that look I sensed when I first met Angelica because she went on to have a successful small part movie and commercial-making career. She was not the in-your-face-beautiful leading lady in the films but the who-was-that-other-good-looking-ah-fetching actress who you started thinking about later and really set your soul ablaze. The one that would, if you knew her, set your silly, twisted philosophical head straight after about two minutes with her. Or, if in a commercial, her look told you that, yes, maybe I had better buy about a dozen of those widgets she is selling although what on earth I will do with them is beyond me. Ya that look, that Muncie fresh, guileless look. I hope, hope to high heaven, that she got her version of the blue-pink night as well.

***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- Billie’s Lament-Elvis’ “One Night”

Peter Paul Markin comment:

This is the back story, the teen listener back story if you like, going back to the primordial youth time of the mid to late 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billie, William James Bradley, the schoolboy mad-hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood. Yah, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own.

Billie and I spent many, many hours mainly up in his tiny bedroom, his rock heaven bedroom, walls plastered with posters of Elvis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, somewhat later Jerry Lee Lewis, and of every new teen heartthrob singer, heartthrob to the girls that is, around; on his night table every new record Billie could get his hands on, by hook or by crook; and, neatly folded piles of clothing, also gathered by that same hook or by crook, appropriate to the king hell king of the schoolboy rock scene, the elementary school rock scene between about 1956 to 1960. Much of that time was spent discussing the “meaning” of various songs, especially their sexual implications, ah, their mystery of girls-finding-out-about worthiness.

Although in early 1959 my family had started the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe, I still would wander back there until mid-1960 just to hear his take on whatever music was interesting him at the time. These commentaries, these Billie commentaries, are my recollections of his and my conversations on the song lyrics in this series. But I am not relying on memory alone. During this period we would use my father’s tape recorder, by today’s standard his big old reel to reel monstrosity of a tape recorder, to record Billie’s covers of the then current hit songs (for those who have not read previously of Billie’s “heroics” he was a pretty good budding rock singer at the time) and our conversations of those song meanings that we fretted about for hours. I have, painstakingly, had those reels transcribed so that many of these commentaries will be the actual words spoken during those conversations (somewhat edited, of course). That said, Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie I’m still pulling for you. Got it.

*********

One Night-Elvis Presley

Intro: E A A11 E

[NC] Riff 1 Riff 1

One night with you

B7

Is what I'm now praying for

B7

The things that we two could plan

E

Would make my dreams come true

[NC] Riff 1 Riff 1

Just call my name

B7

And I'll be right by your side

B7

I want your sweet helping hand

E E7

My loves too strong to hide

Riff 2 Riff 2

Always lived, very quiet life

Riff 1

I ain't never did no wrong

Riff 3

Now I know that life without you

B7

Has been too lonely too long

One night with you

Is what I'm now praying for

The things that we two could plan

Would make my dreams come true

Always lived, very quiet life

I ain't never did no wrong

Now I know that life without you

Has been too lonely too long

One night with you

Is what I'm now praying for

The things that we two could plan

E A A11 E B7 E7

Would make my dreams come true

*****

Billie, William James Bradley, comment:

Yah, I know I haven’t talked to you in a while like I was supposed to. I was supposed to tell you all about Markin’s, Peter Paul Markin's, my best friend over Adamsville Elementary School, ill-fated attempts to single-handedly close the space gap they keep talking about ever since the commies put that Sputnik satellite up in orbit last year. I will have to put that on hold for now, because I still kind of broken up about something. See I got caught up, well I might as well just come out with it, with woman trouble, alright girl trouble okay. Some of you may know about how old best buddy Peter Paul tried to used Jerry Lee Lewis to cut my time with Laura, Laura Doyle. Ya Laura, the hottest frill in school, and maybe in this dead old town if you just count twelve or thirteen year old girls. And for right now all that counts, anyway. Got it.

Oh you think that Peter Paul, old best pal but definitely strictly junior varsity when it comes to the women, ah, girls took Laura away from me. Jesus, are you kidding? Come on now, if you know the story then you know that’s a joke, and if you don’t you should still know it is a joke. Hell, I swept Laura back even before the next school dance. I just let, once I figured out that Laura was really dazzled more by Jerry Lee’s hopped-up piano on High School Confidential than Peter Paul’s book shuffle dancing, nature take its course and she was back in my arms before you knew it. Maybe I will tell you the details of that one sometime but unlike that space thing, that Markin single-handed space thing, don’t hold me to telling you that story. Just say that nature is one thing you can’t escape from, nature and the king of the rock night around here, me, putting on his charm, his high Elvis charm and it was all over. Markin’s white flag was flying all over the place almost before it began.

No, what has me down in the dumps, seriously down in the dumps is that Laura moved away from the neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. Now I don’t know if Markin explained what this “projects”neighborhood thing is here down in Adamsville but it started out with guys like Markin’s father Prescott (a good guy although he is nothing but a Protestant, a Southern Baptist or something like that, but not a Roman Catholic like most of us here, and definitely not Irish like most of us too, but everybody likes him even William James Bradley Senior, my father, and he doesn’t like anybody usually, anybody without a beer bottle in his hand giving it to him anyway) and my father coming back from the war, World War II, and needing some housing, some cheap housing to hold them over until better times came along. And that’s how it worked for lots of people, well, except for Markin’s father and mine, who seem are going to be here forever and you can forget the better times. Well the ship finally came in for Laura’s father, a veteran like Prescott and mine, and so they moved to New Hampshire to some better place in the country or something. Laura showed me a picture of the place and it looked pretty good.

But see here is the bitch, excuse my language. No question Billie, William James Bradley, is strictly a love ‘em and leave guy. I have had plenty of girlfriends already, most of them sticks, no shapes, if you know what I mean, eleven and twelve year sticks, maybe one or two ten, sticks like Theresa, Karen and Donna (Cool Donna O’Toole, not my older sister Donna who is no stick but who I don’t talk to lately, if I can help it, what with her not liking anything in the world just because I like it). Laura though was my first step-up not stick girl, with a nice shape, a shape like a woman, or trying to be, and it showed, the trying part. Definitely something to invest some time in, some Billie time, and I did.

Here is where the bitch part comes in. Not only was Laura smart, and had those curves, that shape I just told you about. But as it turned out she had some great kind of kiss, long kisses, longer than any of the stick girls, way longer. And Laura was not afraid, once I put on the charm, to let me feel her up. I am not bragging and she is gone far away and so I am not talking behind her back but a few times, about four or five, she and I well, we acted like adults that way. And it wasn’t all me pushing either. See I knew that from my sister Donna, when we were talking more, that girls like this kind of stuff as well as guys do although they usually don’t let on. So, if you excuse me, I am kind of down in the dumps because I will now be left with just the sticks. And you know they don’t go for that sex stuff, or even think about it, or maybe even dream about it like it was a mortal sin. And maybe it is but don’t tell me that, or Laura.

And do you know how we set the mood for our fooling around once Laura got over that one-hit Jerry Lee thing? Well, I’ll give you a hint. A guy from Mississippi with long sideburns and a wicked sneer that made all the girls act crazy, and women too. Sure, Elvis. But not just any Elvis song. One Night. That was OUR song. And if you think about the lyrics a minute it talks about a guy being lonely, finding the right girl and making plans for the future. That guy was me, me with Laura because, and just ask Peter Paul, otherwise I am a love ‘em and leave ‘em guy. But now she’s gone, gone to some freaking farm country and will probably wind up showing some hayseed a good time, if you know what I mean. But, as my father s ays, says all the time-“that’s the breaks, kid.”

See, now that I am over my period of mourning, two weeks is enough for any girl, shape or no shape, and I am talking to Peter about different records I might as well tell you what I discovered in checking up on history, Elvis history, what else? That One Night thing was strictly kid’s stuff, goodie, goodie Ed Sullivan, and good parenting seal of approval kid’s stuff to make us act just like grown-ups. Find a girl or guy, make plans, settle down and maybe listen to Elvis all day and all night until we are old, like thirty maybe. Square, very square, if not just plain cube.

There is the real thing though and I can hardly wait to try it out on my next chick, my next love ‘em and leave ‘em chick. I found a recording up at Benny’s Record Shop in Adamsville Square that Elvis recorded that has the same beat as One Night but with different lyrics, One Night Of Sin. Yah, that’s more like it, more like real Elvis, more like Billie, William James Bradley, king of the rock night around here. And guess what? I have been noticing that Donna O’Toole, Cool Donna O’Toole is starting to have some shape, some woman’s shape, or trying to and maybe I‘ll give her another chance. Peter Paul, mad man Peter Paul Markin, heard that Donna cried no tears, no tears at all, when Laura headed north. I know one thing for sure I am going to make One Night Of Sin my song, and I don’t mind paying for my sins after. Got it.

*****

One Night Of Sin lyrics

One night of sin, yeah

Is what I'm now paying for

The things I did and I saw

Would make the earth stand still

Don't call my name

It makes me feel so ashamed

I lost my sweet helping hand

I got myself to blame

Always lived, very quiet life

Ain't never did no wrong

But now I know that very quiet life

Has cost me nothing but harm

One night of sin, yeah

Is what I'm now paying for

The things I did and I saw

Would make the earth stand still

Always lived, very quiet life

Ain't never did no wrong

But now I know that very quiet life

Has cost me nothing but harm

One night of sin, yeah

Is what I'm now paying for

The things I did and I saw

Would make the earth stand still

From Veterans For Peace-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Legacy and the Peace Movement

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Legacy and the Peace Movement

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	Each year, Veterans For Peace has the opportunity to allow the commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. to serve as a guidepost for the ways that we are carrying on his legacy—as an organization and more broadly as a peace movement. Peace, social justice and King’s legacy come together as VFP continues to advance the interests of the poor, of the victims of social and racial injustice, and of the victims of violence on all scales. We know that these are all symptoms of endless war-making and military domination. This MLK weekend, we reflect on what King’s legacy and the movement that he was a part of mean for us at this moment in history. Dr. King's memory has been largely sanitized in popular American culture, with some of his most revolutionary thoughts and words all but wiped from the pages of popular history. Rarely do we hear of his anti-war stance, his work to end poverty or his full vision of racial justice. At this historic moment,The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is uniting tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality. Opportunities For Action Check out our website for articles, videos and other resources The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is uniting tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality. Step up and join the effort. Listen and Share the Podcast: War is Killing Our Nation's Spirit.  Veterans For Peace partnered with Rev. William Barber and the Poor People's Campaign in a hosted discussion about war and the lasting impacts of war.  The discussion featured VFP Member Matt Hoh and the Afghan Peace Volunteers.  The video is available as well as a podcast. Resources and Study for the Poor People's Campaign: A collection of Poor People’s Campaign resources for study on poverty today, history, and Dr. King’s vision, created in collaboration with the 2015-16 national organizing tour towards a new Poor People’s Campaign for today.
Veterans For Peace welcomes donations. Veterans For Peace 1404 N. Broadway St. Louis, MO 63102 We also encourage you to join our ranks. Click to no longer receive updates from Veterans For Peace

In Boston (Everywhere)-Build (and Nourish) The Resistance!-Introducing The Organization "Food For Activists"

In Boston (Everywhere)-Build (and Nourish) The Resistance!-Introducing The Organization "Food For Activists"