This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Click On Title To Link To BAAM Newsletter (local Boston anarchist collective) site for two good introductory articles about the labor struggles of the 19th century and a biographic sketch of the heroic anarchist (and later American Communist Party member) Lucy Parsons, widow of Haymarket martyr Albert Parson and revolutionary fighter in her own right. While my sympathies are clearly with the communist wing on the left wing continuum, especially the struggles led by Leon Trotsky to save the heritage of the Russian Revolution in the 1920’s and 1930’s, the main points of these articles are made by kindred spirits that all labor militants can stand in solidarity with as part of our common labor history.
************* COMMENTARY
THIS YEAR MARKS THE 121TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MAY DAY HAYMARKET FRAMEUPS. HONOR THE MEMORY OF AUGUST SPIES, ALBERT PARSONS, ADOLPH FISCHER, GEORGE ENGEL, LOUIS LINGG, MICHAEL SCHWAB, SAMUEL FIELDEN, OSCAR NEEBE- CLASS WAR VICTIMS OF AN EARLIER TIME. ALSO REMEMBER LUCY PARSONS WHO CARRIED ON THE STRUGGLE FOR VINDICATION AFTER HER HUSBAND’S EXECUTION. LET US REDOUBLE OUR EFFORTS TO FREE TODAY’S CLASS WAR PRISONERS.
Politically, the writer of these lines is far distance from those of the Haymarket Martyrs. Their flag was the black flag of anarchism, the writer’s is the red flag of communism. Notwithstanding those political differences, militants must stand under the old labor slogan that should underscore all labor defense work now as then- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’. Unfortunately that principle has been honored far more in the breech than in the observance by working class organizations.
Additionally, in the case of the Haymarket Martyrs today’s militants must stand in solidarity and learn about the way those militants bravely conducted themselves before bourgeois society in the face of the witch hunt against them and their frame-up in the courts of so-called bourgeois ‘justice’. Not for the first time, and most probably not for the last, militants were railroaded by the capitalist state for holding unpopular and or/dangerous (to the capitalists) views. Moreover, it is no accident that most of the Haymarket Martyrs were foreigners (mainly Germans) not fully appreciative of the niceties of 19th century American ‘justice’. This same ‘justice’ system framed the heroic anarchist immigrant militants Sacco and Vanzetti in the early 20th century and countless other militants since then. As we struggle in the fight for full citizenship rights for immigrants today we should keep this in mind. Although, as we know, this American system of ‘justice’ will not forget the occasional uppity ‘native’ political dissenter either.
Most importantly, we must not forget that the Haymarket Martyrs at the time of their arrest were fighting for the establishment of a standardized eight hour work day. It is ironic that 120 years later this simple, rational, reasonable demand should, in effect, still be necessary to fight for by working people. All proportions taken into account since the 1880’s, a very high percentage of the working class still does not have this luxury- given the necessity of two wage-earner families, two job wage-earners, dramatic increases in commute time in order to gain employment, unpaid but mandatory work time (note especially the Walmartization of labor time) and a high rate of partially or fully unemployed able-bodied workers. To do justice to the memory of the Haymarket Martyrs this generation of militants should dust off another old labor slogan that used to be part of the transitional demands of the socialist movement- 30 hours work for 40 hours pay. TODAY THIS IS A REASONABLE DEMAND. Obviously such a demand cannot be implemented in isolation. To even propose such a demand means we need to build a workers party to fight for it. Moreover, and let us not have illusions about this; this capitalist state does not want to and will not grant such a demand. Therefore, we must fight for a workers government. That would be a true monument to the memory of the Haymarket Martyrs.
From The Boston May Day Committee-Boston May Day 2011 at the Rose Kennedy Greenway Park-All Out In Boston On Our International Working Class Holiday!-Honor The Haymarket Martyrs!
When: Sunday, May 1, 2011, 12:00 pm
Where: Rose Kennedy Greenway Park • Cross St. and Hanover St. • across from the Haymarket T Station corner • Boston
Start: 2011 May 1 - 12:00pm
*******
Boston May Day 2011 at the Rose Kennedy Greenway Park
Let's commemorate International Workers Day this year with a rally at 12 noon at the Rose Kennedy Greenway Park, across from the Haymarket T Station, in the corner of Cross and Hanover streets in Boston.
After the rally we will take the T to East Boston to join in the East Boston March to the May 1 rally in Chelsea.
We demand:
1. Stop attacks on workers!
2. Stop the detention and deportation of migrant workers and their families!
3. No racist profiling Secure Communities programs!
4. Money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation!
5. Unity of all workers to defend our rights!
6. International unity for immigrant rights.
Special performance by the radical theater group Bread and Puppet
This event is initiated and sponsored by the Boston May Day Committee.
For organizational endorsements please write to info[@]bostonmayday.org
The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.
Scene Nine: Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- The Ghost Dance-Late 1969
Damn, already I missed Angelica, road-worthy, road-travel easy, easy on the eyes and easy getting us a ride Angelica as I traveled down Interstate 80 onto the great prairie Mid-American hitchhike road after we parted at the Omaha bus station, she heading home East, at least Indiana east from Nebraska, and I to the savage search for the blue-pink great American West night. And I will tell you true that first ride and every ride after that, every miserable truck stopped or sedan ride, it didn’t matter, made me utter that same oath.
Right then though I was on my first connection ride out of Omaha and as luck would have it this big bruiser, full tattoo armed with snakes, roses and lost loves names, truck driver who was obviously benny-ed, benny-ed to perdition and was talking a blue streak was driving right through to Denver, my next destination. All I wanted was the ride but I knew enough of the road, enough of the truck driver come-on part of it anyway to know that this guy’s blue streak was a small price to pay for such a lucky break. See, some guys, some guys like Denver Slim, who left me off at that long ago (or it seemed like long ago) Steubenville truck stop and Angelica (hey, now I know who to blame, if I ever get my hands on that damn Denver Slim… Ya, ya, what are you going to do, big boy?), wanted to talk man to man. Back and forth like real people, especially as I reminded him of his errant (read: hippie –swaying) son. Other guys are happy for the company so they can, at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour with the engine revved high and where conversation is made almost painful and chock-filled with the “what did you says?”, spout forth on their homespun philosophy and take on this wicked old world. With these guys an occasional “Ya, that’s right,” or a timely “What did you mean by that?” will stand you in good stead and you can nod out into your own thoughts.
And that is exactly where I wanted be, as old Buck (where do they get these names) droned on and on about how the government was doing, or not doing this or that for, or to, the little guy who helped build up, not tear down, the country like him. What Aunt Betty, sweet Neola grandmotherly Aunt Betty, said as she left me off at the Interstate 80 entrance still rings in my ears. I was good for Angelica. Hell, I know I was. Hell, if I had any sense I would admit what I know inside. Angelica was good for me too. But see the times were funny is a way. No way in 1962, or ‘64, or ’66, let’s say, that I would have run into an Angelica. I was strung out, strung out hard on neurotic, long black-haired (although that was optional), kind of skinny (not thin, not slender, skinny, wistfully skinny, I say), bookish, Harvard Square, maybe a poet, kind of girls. If I said beatnik girls, and not free-form, ethereral, butterfly breeze “hippie” girls you’d know what I mean. As a kid I was cranked on pale, hell wan was more like it, dark-haired, hard Irish Catholic girls, and I mean hard Irish Catholic girls with twelve novena books in their hands, and lust in their hearts. So, I swear, when Angelica’s number turned up I was clueless how to take just a plain-spoken, says what she means, means what she says young woman who had dreams (unformed, mainly, but dreams nevertheless) that also were plain-spoken. Ah, I can’t explain it now, and I doubt I ever will. Just say I was stunted, stunned, and smitten, okay and let me listen to old Buck’s drone.
****
I have now put many a mile between me and Omaha and here I am well clear of that prairie fire dream now in sweet winter desert night Arizona not far from some old now run down, crumbling Native American dwellings that keep drawing my attention and I still want to utter that oath, that Angelica oath. Sitting by this night camp fire casting its weird ghost night-like shadows just makes it worst. And old now well-traveled soldiers turned “hippies”, Jack and Mattie, playing their new-found (at least to me) flute and penny whistle music mantra to set the tone.
Hey, I just remembered, sitting here wrapped up in Angelica and ancient primal tribal memories out of the whistling black star-filled night that I haven’t filled you in on where I have been, who I have seen (like John and Mattie), and how I got here from that star-crossed Neola night, at least the past Denver part. Jesus, and here we are only a few hundred miles from the ocean. I can almost smell, smell that algae sea churned smell, almost see the foam-flecked waves turn against the jagged-edged La Jolla rocks and mad, aging surfer boys from another time looking for that perfect wave. Ya, another more innocent time before all hell broke loose on us in America and crushed our innocent youthful dreams in the rice paddies of Asia, our Angelica plain-spoken dreams, but not our capacity to dream. That only makes the Angelica hurt worst as I remember that she had never seen the ocean, the jagged edged, foam-flecked ocean that I went on and on about and I was to be her Neptune on that voyage west to the rim of the world. Well let me get to it, the filling you in part..
After grabbing that straight ride from blue streak talkin’ old Buck I did tell you about, and a short but scary two day delay by a serious snow squall hurricane-wind tumult just before the Rocky Mountain foothills leading into Denver I got there in good order. If I didn’t tell you before, and now that I think about it I didn’t, I was to hook up with my now traveling companions, Jack and Mattie, there for the final trip west to the ocean and serious blue-pink visions. If you don’t remember Jack and Mattie, they are two guys that I picked up on the Massachusetts highways heading south in the days when I had a car this year in the early spring. We had some adventures going south, that I will tell you about another time, before I left them off in Washington, D.C. so they could head west from there. We agreed then to meet up in Denver later in the year where they expected to stay for a while. My last contact with them in late summer had them still there but when I arrived at the communal farm on the outskirts of Denver where they had been staying I was informed that they had gotten nervous about being stuck in the snow-bound Rockies and wanted to head south as fast as they could. They had left a Phoenix address for me to meet them at. I stayed at the commune for a few days to rest up, doing a little of this and that, mostly that, and then headed out myself on what turned to be an uneventful and mercifully short hitchhike road trip to Phoenix to connect with them.
And so here we are making that last push to the coast but not before we investigate these Native American lands that, as it turns out, we all had been interested in ever since our kid days watching cowboys and Indians on the old black and white 1950s small screen television. You know Lone Ranger, Hop-along Cassidy, Roy Rogers and their sidekicks’ fake, distorted, prettified Old West stuff. Stuff where the rich Native American traditions got short shrift.
Earlier today we had been over to Red Rock for an Intertribal celebration, a gathering of what was left of the great, ancient warrior nations that roamed freely here not all that long ago but who are now mere “cigar store” Indian characters to the public eye. The sounds, the whispering shrill canyon sounds and all the others, the sights, the colors radiant as they pulled out all the stops to bring back the old days when they ruled this West, the spirit, ah, the spirit of our own warrior shaman trances are still in our heads. I am still in some shamanic-induced trance from the healing dances, from warrior tom-tom dances, and from the primal scream-like sounds as they drove away the evil spirits that gathered around them (not hard enough to drive the marauding “white devil” who broken their hearts, if not their spirits though). Not only that but we scored some peyote buttons (strictly for religious purposes, as you will see) and they have started to kick in along with the occasional hit from the old bong hash pipe (strictly for medicinal purposes).
So right now in this dark, abyss dark, darker than I ever saw the night sky in the East even though it is star-filled, million star-filled, in this spitting flame-roared campfire throwing shadow night along with tormented pipe-filled dreams of Angelica I am embedded with the ghosts of ten thousand past warrior- kings and their people. And if my ears don’t deceive me, and they don’t, beside Jack’s flute and Mattie’s penny whistle I hear, and hear plainly, the muted gathering war cries of ancient drums summoning paint-faced proud, bedecked warriors to avenge their not so ancient loses, and their sorrows as well.
And after more pipe-fillings that sound got louder, louder so that even Jack and Mattie seem transfixed and begin to play their own instruments louder and stronger to keep pace with the drums. Then, magically, magically it seemed anyway, I swear, I swear on anything holy or unholy, on some sodden forebear grave, on some unborn descendent that off the campfire- reflected red, red sandstone, grey, grey sandstone, beige (beige for lack of better color description), beige sandstone canyon echo walls I see the vague outlines of old proud, feather-bedecked, slash mark-painted Apache warriors beginning, slowly at first, to go into their ghost dance trance that I had heard got them revved up for a fight. Suddenly, we three, we three television-sotted Indian warriors got up and started, slowly at first so we are actually out of synch with the wall action to move to the rhythms of the ghosts. Ay ya, ay ya, ay ya, ay ya,…..until we speed up to catch the real pace. After what seems an eternity we are ready, ready as hell, to go seek revenge for those white injustices.
But just as quickly the now flickering camp fire flame goes out, or goes to ember, the shadow ghost dance warriors are gone and we crumble in exhaustion to the ground. So much for vengeance. We, after regaining some strength, all decide that we had better push on, push on hard, to the ocean. These ancient desert nights, sweet winter desert nights or not, will do us in otherwise. But just for a moment, just for a weak modern moment we, or at least I knew, what it was like for those ancient warriors to seek their own blue-pink great American West night.
Click On Title To Link To "Wikipedia"'s Entry For The Fall Of Saigon And A Famous Photograph Of The Evacuation Of The United States Embassy In The Wake Of The North Vietnamese Army Advances On Saigon.
Commentary
April 30th Marks The 34th Anniversary Of The Military Victory Of The North Vietnamese Army/South Vietnamese National Liberation Front With The Fall Of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City).
Other years I have used this occasion to review some work directly related to that victory from the view point of highlighting some exploit of the victors in that war- our side. One should not underestimate the importance of that victory by a determined, if outgunned military force, in crimping the style of American imperial policy for a significant period (and some would argue its continuing effect today). One should also note, sadly, that this event (always dramatically visualized in the mind’s eye by those pictures of the helicopters evacuating American and other personnel from the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy) the last clear cut anti-capitalist victory that we have been able to celebrate. That, in itself, is cause for reflection.
This year, with the almost daily growing evidence by the Obama administration that it is seeking to escalate the American presence in the quagmire that is Afghanistan beyond any rational necessity, I wish to review the memoir of one of the American architects of the American escalation in Vietnam, Secretary of War Robert Strange McNamara. As McNamara’s version of the Vietnam saga unfolds, and not incidentally or accidentally his craven attempt to reshape the history of his involvement in that process as well, one cannot help but see that the same sense of American hubris is at play now. As always to be on the safe side here the slogan remains- Obama- All U.S./Allied Troops Out Of Iraq and Afghanistan Now!
The Fog Of War, Part II- War Secretary Robert McNamara’s View Of His Handiwork in Vietnam
Book Review
In Retrospect: The Tragedy And Lessons Of Vietnam, Robert Strange McNamara with Brain VanDeMark, Random House, 1995
Anyone who had caught the Friday March 27, 2009 headlines is aware that the Democratic Party-run Obama government has called for some 4,000 additional troops for Afghanistan and what they, euphemistically, call civilian support teams in order to bolster the sagging regime of “Mayor of Kabul” Karzai. Those numbers are in addition to the 17,000 extras already committed by the Obama regime in February. Does the word escalation seem appropriate here?
One of the problems of having gone through the Vietnam experience in my youth (including periods of lukewarm support for American policy under John F. Kennedy, a hands-off attitude in the early Lyndon B. Johnson years and then full-bore opposition under the late Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford regimes) is a tendency to view today’s American imperial policy in the same by-the-numbers approach as I took as a result of observing the Vietnam War as it unfolded. There are differences, some of them hugely so, between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Just as, I have previously noted in this space, there are differences between Vietnam and the recently “completed” Iraq War. (Hey, I’m just going by what the media tells me is going on. They wouldn’t lead us astray, would they?)
But, I keep getting this eerie feeling in the back of my neck every time I hear, or see, anything concerning Afghanistan coming out of this new Obama administration. They appear clueless, yet are determined to forge ahead with this policy that can only lead to the same kind of quagmire than Vietnam and Iraq turned into. That is where the analogies to Vietnam do connect up. In this regard, I have recently been re-reading Kennedy/Johnson War Secretary Robert Strange (that’s his middle name, folk, I didn’t make it up and didn’t need to) McNamara’s memoirs, written in 1995, of his central role in the development of Vietnam policy, “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam”.
Obviously McNamara has put his own ‘spin’ on his personal role then in order to absolve himself (a little) before history. That is to be expected. What comes through crystal clear, however, because in the final analysis McNamara still doesn’t get it, is that when you’re the number one imperial power all the decisions you make are suppose to fall into place for your benefit because you represent the “good guys”. Regardless of what you do, or do not, know about the internal workings of the situation at hand. The Kennedy/Johnson administrations were almost totally ignorant of the internal working of Vietnamese society. That is why I have that eerie, very eerie, feeling about this Obama war policy.
In the normal course of events former high level bureaucrats in American presidential administrations usually save their attempts at self-justification for high ticket published memoirs or congenial `softball' speaking tours and conferences. In short, they prefer to preach to the choir at retail prices. Apparently, Cold Warrior extraordinaire Secretary of War Robert Strange McNamara felt that such efforts were very necessary in his case and hence he had to go to the prints in order to whitewash his role in the history of his times. Despite an apparent agreement with his “ghost writer” not to cover certain subjects and be allowed to present his story his way it is always good to catch a view of how the other side operates. It ain't pretty.
After a lifetime of relative public silence, at the age of 8o something, McNamara decided to give his take on events in which he was a central figure like dealing with the fact of American imperial military superiority in the post- World War II period, dealing with the Russians and the fight for American nuclear superiority during the Cold War, the ill-conceived Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the later Cuban Missile crisis and above all his role in the escalation of the wars in Southeast Asia, primarily Vietnam.
Very little here focuses on his time at the World Bank, a not unimportant omission that would highlight my point that he might have changed his clothing in the course of his career but not his mindset. While those of us interested in learning the lessons of history have long understood that to know the political enemy is the beginning of wisdom one will not find much here that was not infinitely better covered by the late journalist David Halberstam in his classic “The Best and The Brightest”.
McNamara has chosen to present his story in the form of parables, or rather, little vignettes about the “lessons” to be drawn from experiences (eleven in all by the way). Thus, we are asked to sit, embarrassingly, through McNamara's freshman course in revisionist history as he attempts to take himself from the cold-hearted Cold Warrior and legitimate “war criminal” to the teddy-bearish old man who has learned something in his life- after a lifetime of treachery. Yet, like that freshman course there are things to be learned despite the professor and more to learn, if only by reading between the lines, than he or she wanted to express.
McNamara presents his take by dividing the Vietnam War buildup, at least at the executive level, into periods; the early almost passive Kennedy days; the post Kennedy assassination period when Lyndon Johnson was trying to be all things to all men; the decisive post-1964 election period; and, various periods of fruitless and clueless escalation. It is this process that is, almost unwittingly, the most important to take from this world. Although McNamara, at the time of writing was an older and wiser man, when he had power he went along with ever step of the “hawks”, civilian and military. He led no internal opposition, and certainly not public one. This is the classic “good old boys” network where one falls on one’s sword when the policy turns wrong. And he is still scratching his head over why masses of anti-war protesters chanted “war criminal” when they confronted him with his deeds. And then listen to the latest screeds by current War Secretary Gates concerning Afghanistan. It will sound very familiar.
In the end, if one took his story at face value, one could only conclude that he was just trying to serve his bosses the best way he could and if things went wrong it was their fault. Nothing new there, though. Henry Kissinger has turned that little devise into an art form. Teary-eyed at the end McNamara might be as he acknowledges his role in the mass killings of his time, but beware of a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yet, you need to read this book if you want to understand how these guys (and gals) defended their state then, and now.
As is always appropriate on international working class holidays and days of remembrance here is the song most closely associated with that movement “The Internationale” in English, French and German. I will not vouch for the closeness of the translations but certainly of the spirit. Workers Of The World Unite!
The Internationale [variant words in square brackets]
Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.
No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.
________________________________________
L'Internationale
Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passe faisons table rase
Foules, esclaves, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout
C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain (bis)
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain
Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun
Pour que le voleur rende gorge
Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge
Battons le fer quand il est chaud
L'état comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Egaux, pas de devoirs sans droits
Hideux dans leur apothéose
Les rois de la mine et du rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose
Que dévaliser le travail
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande
Ce qu'il a crée s'est fondu
En décrétant qu'on le lui rende
Le peuple ne veut que son dû.
Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans
Appliquons la grève aux armées
Crosse en l'air, et rompons les rangs
S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales
A faire de nous des héros
Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles
Sont pour nos propres généraux
Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes
Le grand parti des travailleurs
La terre n'appartient qu'aux hommes
L'oisif ira loger ailleurs
Combien, de nos chairs se repaissent
Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours
Un de ces matins disparaissent
Le soleil brillera toujours.
________________________________________
Die Internationale
Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde,
die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt!
Das Recht wie Glut im Kraterherde
nun mit Macht zum Durchbruch dringt.
Reinen Tisch macht mit dem Bedranger!
Heer der Sklaven, wache auf!
Ein nichts zu sein, tragt es nicht langer
Alles zu werden, stromt zuhauf!
Volker, hort die Signale!
Auf, zum letzten Gefecht!
Die Internationale
Erkampft das Menschenrecht
Es rettet uns kein hoh'res Wesen
kein Gott, kein Kaiser, noch Tribun
Uns aus dem Elend zu erlosen
konnen wir nur selber tun!
Leeres Wort: des armen Rechte,
Leeres Wort: des Reichen Pflicht!
Unmundigt nennt man uns Knechte,
duldet die Schmach langer nicht!
In Stadt und Land, ihr Arbeitsleute,
wir sind die starkste Partei'n
Die Mussigganger schiebt beiseite!
Diese Welt muss unser sein;
Unser Blut sei nicht mehr der Raben
und der machtigen Geier Frass!
Erst wenn wir sie vertrieben haben
dann scheint die Sonn' ohn' Unterlass!
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of The Wolftones Performing The Song In Honor Of "James Connolly". There are also some very good photographs of the destruction of Dublin after the British shelled the downtown area of "their province" to kingdom come.
Guest Commentary
In this song James Connolly is memorised as leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) and founder of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA).
Another song tells the circumstances in which he was executed for his participation at the Easter Rising.
JAMES CONNOLLY
Where oh where is our James Connolly,
Where oh where can that brave man be,
He has gone to organise the Union,
That working men might yet be free.
Where oh where is the citizen army,
Where oh where can that brave band be,
They have gone to join the great rebellion,
And break the bonds of slavery.
And who will be there to lead the van,
Who will there be to lead the van,
Oh who should there be but our James Connolly,
The hero of each working man.
Who carries high our burning flag,
Who carries high our burning flag,
Oh who but James Connolly all pale and wounded,
Carries high our burning flag.
They carried him up to the jail,
They carried him up to the jail,
And 'twas there that they shot him one bright May morning,
And quickly laid him in his grave.
Who mourns now for our James Connolly,
Who mourns now for that fighting man,
Oh lay me down in yon green garden,
And make my bearers Union men.
We laid him down in yon green garden,
With Union men on every side,
And we swore that we'd make one mighty Union,
And fill that gallant man with pride.
So come all you noble young Irishmen,
Come join with me for liberty,
And we will forge a mighty weapon,
And break the bonds of Slavery.
James Connolly
A great crowd had gathered outside of Kilmainhem
With their heads all uncovered they knelt on the ground
For inside that grim prison lay a brave Irish soldier
His life for his country about to lay down.
He went to his death like a true son of Ireland,
The fireing party he bravely did face.
Then the order rang out: "Present arms, Fire!";
James Connolly fell into a ready made grave.
The black flag they hoisted, the cruel deed was over,
Gone was the man who loved Ireland so well,
There was many a sad heart in Ireland that morning,
When they murdered James Connolly, the Irish rebel.
God`s curse on you, England, you cruel hearted monster,
Your deeds would shame all the devils in Hell,
There were no flowers blooming but the Shamrock is growing
On the grave of James Connolly, the Irish rebel.
Many years have rolled by since the Irish rebellion,
When the guns of Brittania they loudly did speak,
The bold I.R.A. battled shoulder to shoulder,
as the blood of their bodies flowed down Sackville Street.
The Four Courts of Dublin, the English bombarded,
The spirit of freedom, they tried hard to quell
But above all the din rose the cry "No Surrender!"
`Twas the voice of James Connolly, the Irish Rebel.
On The 50th Anniversary Of The Passing Of The
“King Of The Beats” -Ti Jean Kerouac-A Series Of Appreciations-
By Contributing Editor Allan Jackson
For
Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50th Anniversary Of His Death And The
“Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall With
Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies"
By
Lance Lawrence
[In
the interest of today’s endless pursue of transparency which in many cases
covers up the real deal with a few fake pieces of fluff admit that I knew Jack
Kerouac’s daughter, his now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever
cramped reason and which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out
in Todo el Mundo south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. I also
knew Allan Ginsburg in his om-ish days when we fired up more than one blunt
(marijuana cigarette for those who are clueless or use another term for the
stick) to see what we could see out in the National Mall and later Greenwich
Village night.
This
piece first appeared in Poetry Today shortly after Allan
Ginsburg’s Father Death death and caused a great deal of
confusion among the readers, a younger group according to the demographics
provided to me by the advertising department when I was trying to figure out
where the thing got lost in the fog. Some readers thought because I mentioned
the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally recognized in
pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference actually referred
to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and 1950s before Beat
went into high gear not a cat. Some readers, and I really was scratching my
head over this one since this was published in a poetry magazine for
aficionados and not for some dinky survey freshman college English class, that
because I mentioned the word “homosexual” and some jargon associated with that
sexual orientation when everybody was “in the closet” except maybe Allan
Ginsburg thought I was referring W.H. Auden. Jesus, Auden, a great poet no
question if not a brave one slinking off to America when things got too hot in
his beloved England in September 1939 and a self-confessed homosexual in the
days when that was dangerous to declare in late Victorian public morality
England especially after what happened to Oscar Wilde when they pulled down the
hammer was hardly the only homosexual possibility despite his game of claiming
every good-looking guy for what he called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t
personally think anybody even read him anymore once the Beats be-bopped.
There
were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James
Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but
those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of
society. Jack Weir because of some West Coast references. Jeffery Stein, the
poet of the new age shtetl because of the dope. All wrong. That poet had a name
an honored name Allan Ginsburg who howled in the night at the oddness and
injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his mother’s memory and not be
confused with this bag of bones rough crowd who refused to learn from the silly
bastard. This piece was, is for ALLAN GINSBURG who wrote for Carl Solomon in
his hours of sorrow just before he went under the knife and I for him when he
went under the ground. Lance Lawrence]
***********
I
have seen the best poet of the generation before mine declare that he had seen
that the best minds of his generation had turned to mush, turned out in the
barren wilderness from which no one returned except for quick stays in safe
haven mental asylums. Saw the same Negro streets he saw around Blue Hill Avenue
and Dudley Street blank and wasted in the sweated fetid humid
Thunderbird-lushed night (and every hobo, vagrant, escapee, drifter and grafter
yelling out in unison ‘what is the word-Thunderbird-what is the price forty
twice” and ready to jackroll some senior citizen lady for the price-ready to
commit mayhem at Park Street subway stations for their “boy,” to be tamped by
girl but I will be discrete since the Feds might raid the place sometime
looking for the ghost of Trigger Burke who eluded them for a very long time.
Thought that those angel-headed hipsters, those hep cats hanging around Times,
Lafayette, Dupont, Harvard squares) crying in pools of blood coming out of the
wolves-stained sewers around the black corner would never stop bleating for
their liquor, stop until they got popular and headed for the sallow lights of
Harvard Square where they hustled young college students, young impressionable
college students whose parents had had their best minds wasted in the turbid
streets of south Long Island (not the West Egg of Gatsby’s dream of conquering
everything in sight like any other poor-boy arriviste with too much money and
not enough imagination and not East Egg of the fervid elites but anytown,
Levitttown of those who would escape to Boston or Wisconsin to face the angel
of death up front and say no go, pass, under luminous moons which light up
sparks and say to that candid world which could have given a fuck hard times
please come again no more.
Saw
hipsters cadging wine drinks from sullen co-eds staying out too late in the
Harvard Square night who turned out to be slumming from some plebian colleges
across the river maybe good Irish girls from frail Catholic parishes with
rosaries in their fair-skinned hands and a novena book between their knees who
nevertheless has Protestant lusts in their pallid hearts but unrequited (here’s
how-they would arrive at the Café Lana with ten bucks and their virginity and
leave with both and some guy with dreams of salty sucking blowjobs walking out
the backdoor and doing the whack job behind the dumpster –a waste of precious
fluids and according to Norman Mailer world-historic fucks which would product
the best minds of the next generation all dribbled away). Maybe tasty Jewish
girls from the shtetl in not East or West Egg who flocked to the other side of
the river and gave Irish guys who previously had dribbled their spunk behind
dumpsters after losing out to ten bucks and virginity in tack tickey-tack
Catholic girls who refused to give that head that would have brought some of
best mind some freaking relief (better not say fucking relief because that
would be oxymoronic). Maybe some sullen fair-skinned and blonded Protestant
girls who spouted something about one god and no trinities, no god and no
trinities and just feel good stuff. All three varieties and yes there were more
but who knew of Quakers, Mennonites, lusty Amish girls run away from home,
Tantic card-wheelers, and fresh- faced red light district sluts who at least
played the game straight-played the cash nexus for pure pleasure and maybe to
even up some scores. All-Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, yeah, Quakers (fakirs,
fakers and Shakers included), the sluts, Mennonites and yes those lusty
red-faced Amish runaways all coming together after midnight far from the negro
streets but not far from the all night hustlers and dime store hipsters with
their cigar store rings and cheap Irish whiskeys bought on the installment plan
who converged around the Hayes-Bickford just a seven league jump from the old
end of the line dead of night Redline subway stop in order to keep the angel of
death at arms’ length. There to listen until dawn to homosexuality affixed
hungry for the keyhole blast or the running sperm fakir poets and slamming
singsters fresh out of cheapjack coffeehouses where three chords and two- line
rhymes got you all the action you wanted although maybe a little light on the
breadbasket sent around to show that you were appreciated. Yeah, now that I
think about the matter more closely hard times please come again no
more.
Saw
the angel of death make her appearance one night at the Café Lana and then
backstopped the Club Nana to fetch one young thing who warbled like heaven’s
own angel. Hipster turned her on to a little sister and the some boy and she no
longer warbled but did sweet candy cane tricks for high-end businessmen with
homely wives or fruitless ones who had given up that sort of “thing” after the
third junior had been born and who were ready to make her his mistress if she
would just stop singing kumbaya after every fuck like she was still a freaking
warbler, a freaking virgin or something instead of “used” goods or maybe
schoolboys whose older brothers took them to her for their first fling at going
around the world, welcome to the brotherhood or maybe some old fart who just
wanted to relive his dreams before the booze, the three wives and parcel of
kids did him in and then the hustler sent her back to the Club Nana to “score”
from the club owner who was connected with Nick the dream doper man, the Christ
who would get him- and her well –on those mean angel-abandoned death watch
streets but who knew that one night at the Hayes (everybody called it just that
after they had been there one night, one after midnight night where they had
that first cup of weak-kneed coffee replenished to keep a place in the
scoreboarded night where hari-kara poets dreamed toke dreams and some Mister
dreamed of fresh-faced singer girls looking for kicks. So please, please, hard
times come again no more.
I
have seen frosted lemon trees jammed against the ferrous night, the night of
silly foolish childhood dreams and misunderstanding about the world, the world
that that poet spoke of in a teenage dream of indefinite duration about who was
to have who was to have not once those minds were de-melted and made
hip to the tragedies of life, the close call with the mental house
that awaits us all.
By
Lance Lawrence
Sometimes
you just cannot win. Sometimes you just let it pass and other times as now
anything less than incarceration or the bastinado will not permit me to say
some words on a subject that I care about. Attentive readers of Growing
Up Absurd In The 1950s or its sister publication where such material
is something like syndicated know that I, and most of the older writers here
and for that matter other publications who grew up in the 1950s have some
relationship to “the Beats” to Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg above but lesser
lights stationed in North Beach, San Francisco and Greenwich Village, New York
City and other sullen outposts. Know that although we were way too young or too
interested in our generation’s salvation-rock and roll music-to be washed clean
by the Beats that by some process of osmosis we picked up some of the ideas,
words, be-bop, lust, homosexual slang, road terminology. Courtesy of Jack
Kerouac and the crowd whether he accepted the honorific “King of the Beats” or
like Bob Dylan dubbed by the mass media always looking for a hook “King of the
Folkies” for the next generation, the folkie-hippie counterculture
abdicated.
Personally,
and I have the scars and restless writerly nights to prove it, I was very
second-wave influenced by Kerouac and not only by his most famous book, bible
really when the time for such things was ripe, On The Road. Maybe
less that books like Big Sur which got me to Todo el Mundo
just south of Big Sur and some wild escapades and near fatal escapes toked to
the gills on weed or whatever came through the very open door. Influences which
have made it natural to recount some of those adventures in print of one sort
or another. Natural as well this 50th anniversary year since
Jack Kerouac’s death in 1969 to make a big deal out of that milestone. To write
some fresh material as below or to republish some older material. And not just
memories of Kerouac’s influence but what I called in one article the “assistant
king of the beats” Allan Ginsburg.
That
is where the sometimes you can’t win comes in and the have to “speak to the
issue” rears its head as well. Recently both to acknowledge the 50th anniversary
of Kerouac’s passing and to honor Allan Ginsburg’s as well I had an
article Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall originally published
in Poetry Today in 1997 republished in several publications
under the title For Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50th Anniversary
Of His Death And The “Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A
Going To Fall With Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies."
In a
new introduction to the piece I mentioned that in the interest of today’s
endless pursue of transparency which in many cases covers up the real deal with
a few fake pieces of fluff admitted that I knew Jack Kerouac’s daughter, his
now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever cramped reason and
which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out in Todo el Mundo
south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. Those were the fast and
loose days when everybody wanted to be out somewhere around Big Sur and one day
I happened to be in The Lost Way restaurant (now still open under another name
serving wholesome food unlike the burgers and fries and beer that sustained us
then) and somebody mentioned that Jack’s daughter, unacknowledged daughter as I
said, Jan was sitting a few tables away having as I learned later from her had
just come from Pfeiffer Beach which played a role in a few of Jacks’
books. One thing led to another and we wound up taking Jan with us to our digs
(house) in Todo el Mundo several miles away.
That
simple fact has now led in 2019 to some fool, a fool with a name very familiar
in the age of the Internet of Anonymous, to assume without proof that Jan and
I, or Jan and somebody in the house were having an affair, and most probably
me. The only “proof” given, maybe asserted is better was that a guy by the name
of Johnny Spain told him that he had been there at our house when Jan came
tumbling and that we had a party for about four days when booze, sex, and drugs
flowed freely. I knew Johnny Spain back in those days so that part is real. He
was on the run from the coppers for either drug possession or for assault I
forget which since we had a few such characters some our way and as we were not
fond of the coppers then, maybe not now either we gave him shelter. Johnny
probably saw many things as he imbibed in whatever was around the place, but he
would not have seen me hanging with Jan. Simple reason: one Carol Riley forever
known as Butterfly Swirl in those times when many of us, including me the Duke
of Earl (yes from the 1950s hit single), were carrying monikers to reflect our
new-found freedoms was slumming from her perfect wave boyfriend existence down
in Carlsbad in the days before young women took to the surf themselves and had
come north to see what was happening. Butterfly was very possessive which I
didn’t mind but would have ditched me and/or has it out with Jan if we had been
having an affair. End of story, well, not quite the end Butterfly returned to
Carol and her perfect wave surfer before long after finding out “what was
what.”
This
is really where my real ire is hanging though. In that same introduction I
mentioned that I also knew Allan Ginsburg in his om-ish days long before he
became a professor when we fired up more than one blunt (marijuana cigarette
for those who are clueless or use another term for the stick) to see what we
could see out in the D.C. National Mall and later Greenwich Village night. Like
I said that piece which formed the basis for republication first appeared
in Poetry Today shortly after Allan Ginsburg’s Father
Death death and caused a great deal of confusion among the readers. I
gave a few examples of what went awry in the responses. Some readers thought
because I mentioned the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally
recognized in pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference
actually referred to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and
1950s before Beat went into high gear not a cat. In any case there was no way
the staid and high Victorian sensibilities Eliot would know anything about the
bohemia of his day except maybe knowing some bonkers Bloomsbury cadre. One
would be totally remiss to call him the max daddy of anything as I did in my
homage.
Some
readers, and I really was scratching my head over this one since this was
published in a poetry magazine for aficionados and not for some dinky survey
freshman college English class, that because I mentioned the word “homosexual”
and some jargon associated with that sexual orientation when everybody was “in
the closet” except maybe Allan Ginsburg thought I was referring W.H. Auden.
Jesus, Auden, a great poet no question if not a brave one slinking off to
America when things got too hot in his beloved England in September 1939 and a
self-confessed homosexual in the days when that was dangerous to declare in
late Victorian public morality England especially after what happened to Oscar
Wilde when they pulled down the hammer was hardly the only homosexual
possibility despite his game of claiming every good-looking guy for what he
called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t personally think anybody even read him
anymore once the Beats be-bopped.
There
were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James
Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but
those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of
society. The flight from downtrodden home life made worse by plodding square
parents whose dreams for their off-spring were life-deadening civil servant jobs
although admittedly a step up from the dregs down at the working poor base of
society. Jack Weir because of some West Coast references, the usual
suspects North Beach, Big Sur, Todo el Mundo (where Allan Ginsburg never went
or never went while I was there, Fillmore Street dreams and drugs, the
inevitable Golden Gate reference. Jeffery Stein, the poet of the new age shtetl
because of the dope and self-identification with the downtrodden and the caged
inmates at the mental hospitals which he frequented more times than he liked to
admit.
All
wrong. That poet had a name an honored name Allan Ginsburg who howled in the
night at the oddness and injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his
mother’s memory and not be confused with this bag of bones rough crowd
readership who refused to learn from the silly bastard. This piece was, is for
ALLAN GINSBURG who wrote for Carl Solomon in his hours of sorrow just before he
went under the knife and I for him, for Allan the sad day when he went under
the ground.
That
all was twenty some years ago and while those readers responses were stone-cold
crazy they at least had the virtue of ignorance since I did not mention the
name Allan Ginsburg in the title nor in the piece. Frankly I did not think I
had to do so. What, however, is to be made of readers in 2019 who I assume had
read my introduction and its named poet in bold print who still believe that I
am referring to some other poet, some of them pretty obscure and old school
which makes me think these readers were maybe college freshman survey course
takers. I won’t go through them all since unlike 1997 where one actually had to
write and mail with proper postage whatever was on their minds today they can
just flail away and done so many more responses showed up at my in-box.
Here
are today’s scratching my head entries. What Sam Lowell a fellow writer here
has seen it all in his forty plus years as a film critic calls trolls since
they are tied to alternate facts and more importantly whatever they have on
their minds, if that is what they have. Maybe they just don’t read
introductions or are among the dwindling few who still take umbrage that
someone would tout the virtuous of long-time known homosexual when everybody
else has moved on, has bought into a very sensible idea that it is nobody
else’s business who you love-and now wed. So a few of the rabid went along that
line but rather than grab onto Ginsburg have assumed that I was writing about
Walt Whitman, since I mentioned the grand civil war and the fate of boys and
men including a semi-erotic paean to Abe Lincoln. Of course they got that wrong
since Whitman’s ode to Lincoln Oh Captain, My Captain is one
of the few truly chaste and un-coded poems he wrote. But that is a classic
example of this troll contingent’s faking reality to suit some odd-ball
political agenda from we should all run like hell.
It
only got worse after Greg Green, site manager for the on-line publications here
who in the old hard copy days would have been called the editor, started
publishing some of the e-mails which only fueled the flames. Declared open
season on reason until on advice of wise Sam Lowell mentioned above who chairs
the Editorial Board that sits to clamp down on an editor’s more off-the-wall
decisions. To continue a vague off-hand reference to the various Eggs off Long
Island Sound got one F. Scott Fitzgerald the brass ring mainly so that Jay
Gatsby could be extolled as the upwardly mobile paragon of American virtue for
a new century (that is exactly what was said if you can believe that since in
the unlamented Jazz Age except for the jazz Jay got himself shot and dumped in
some coal bin.) A couple more to make my point since I suddenly realized that
to even present these holy goofs, an expression learned at the feet of one Jack
Kerouac who had I believe more talented types in mind, but the expression just
popped out at me. Yeats, Yeats of all poets drew some fan-dom based on talk of
Irish girls losing their virtues in sullen Cape Cod gin mills. How that goes
with muse Maude Gonne escapes me. Finally, and at least this person had some
literary sense he thought because I mentioned Time Square hipsters, drifters
and grifters waking up in sullen midnight sweats looking for some savior not
the Lord fixer man to get them well and ready to do an occasional soft-core
armed robbery or jack-roll (I was impressed with the sue of that term since
nobody uses that expression for a very old trick of taking a slender club or
maybe a roll of fisted quarters and bopping some drunk or old lady for their
ready cash I was speaking of one Gregory Corso the bandit-poet. Sorry I was
reaching for the big Howl and Kaddish master and beautiful lumpen dream Corso
was a secondary player back in those long-gone daddy days. Enough. Lance
Lawrence]
[Back in 2007 and then in 2017 when we commemorated the 50th and
60th anniversaries respectively of the publication of Jack
Kerouac’s landmark travel book of a different kind On The Road which
ignited a generation maybe two to “hit the road” I was the site manager, then
called general editor, a throw-back from the times when American Left
History was a hard copy publication. At those times I had been
re-reading a series of Ti Jean’s books after senior writer Sam Lowell had
pointed out to me that the previous years had been the 50th and
60th anniversaries respectively of fellow Jack “beat” brother
Allan Ginsberg’s landmark poem (really screed) Howl which for
a while took poetry into a different direction which we had neglected to
commemorate (and which we did belatedly). Now Sam has again reminded that we
have come to a certain commemoration date, the 50th anniversary
of the death of Jack Kerouac and we are again in need of evaluation, no,
re-evaluating the place of his work, his place as “king of the beats” whether
than title fits or not and his place in the sun.
Of course on those prior occasions I could assign whatever I
wanted to whomever I wanted since I was the person who was handing out the
assignments. Now after a prolonged internal fight in which I was deposed and
sent into “exile” I am back but solely as a contributing editor, not as the
person handing out assignments. That task is now in the capable hands of one
Greg Green whom I knew over at American Film Gazette many
years ago and had brought over a couple of years ago to run the day to day
operation here. Greg and I have had our ups and downs especially after I was in
desperate straits when I was sent into exile and had no current source of
income and had to depend “on the kindnesses of strangers.” But that is past and
since I was instrumental in the previous commemorations Greg decided that I
should as with a couple of other major projects that I have done since my
return oversee the Kerouac death watch this year.
Needless to say, since this dark cloud anniversary is upon us I
have to do a new introduction, a setting of the tone. One thing that I was not
able to do when I was overseeing the previous commemorations was to write about
something that has haunted me for a long time-how different Jack’s experiences
were from those of my parents, from any Acre neighborhood parents despite some
very strong similarities between the way he grew up and the way they did. In
short they were near contemporaries having all been born and raised in the 1920s
and forward. Nevertheless they could not have been more different in their
lifestyles and life dreams. It would take their son, and their son’s generation
to at least momentarily connect with the older man and what he brought to the
table. Maybe the link between “beat” and “hippie” was tenuous, but it was
there, and is there fifty years after his passing to the unsettled grave. That
will be the thread that runs through this new series. Adieu, Ti
Jean.
*************
Jack fifty tears, fifty years gone in some bastard grave in holy,
holy, holy Edson Merrimack River ground busted asunder by holy goofs looking
for timely relics, looking for that one word which would spring them into some
pantheon, some parity with the king (we will not even mention that other king
that animated our dreams for we now speak of parent, parent of class of ’68
dream. Funny non-Catholic ground Lowell given his deep sea dive to right his
ship around the beatitudes that the class of ’68 left in the shade if you
wished to know. Mere turning in her old Quebec come down to the textile mills
from desolate turn of the century farms which gave to the bloody English
overlords, another common sticking point against heathen English overrunning
the small patch farms with enclosures and encumbered debts devotion grave, with
the times out of sorts the young passing before ancient hatreds mother. Not a
stranger come the end on Hard Rock Mountain and no place but some stinking
trailer benny and that fucking crucifix that never helped anybody that far gone
into the haze.
Not strange for assuredly lapsed Catholic cum Buddha swings
devotee coming out of Desolation Mountain, Dharma bum frills and assorted other
spiritual trips, (won’t even think about that black boy, and he was just a boy,
who against some grandmother dreads blew the high white note out to the China
Seas, via, well, via Frisco Bay drove the writing, the what, the unvarnished
truth until it drove him into the ground. That and those endless
whiskeys and cheap Thunderbird wines when dimes were scarce a few times down on
his luck cadging wino bottles from buying for underaged kids, with his bottle
the kicker and what the hell if he didn’t go it, didn’t get his some sterno
junkie would dip into Salvation Army surplus and the thirst was great. Not
“his” thirst but “the” thirst and don’t mix the two up buddy as he told that
straggly bearded kid, some hippie bastard from Omaha clueless about the
decadent night which lie ahead, the compromises too.
Strangely bisected, fuck finally my real point (another luxury of
not having to be general editor with parsing and editing to make “nice” for the
academic journals which thrive, which throttle on Jack’s sputum and
can get down in the mud with the real critics like Artie Shaw and Bugs Malone
and not worry about half-ablaze in the head, half fire in the head Patti
Griffin called it once), through my own parents too who had no idea
of hip, no idea of “beat,” except maybe mother in beatitude but that is a
different story, a story about common roots high holy day Catholic stuff.
Another common point, emerged in veiled tears, speaking of tears, to rear their
ugly heads come feast days. (Wondering if her, their fairy sons would see the
light, would submit to the calling that every grandmother hoped without saying
leaving it to transient daughters to do their own parsing. Father no hipster
born to the hills and hollows which hallowed by memory played no part in big
boom beat-beat time coming out of World War II like houses on fire. No speedy
cross-country by 1947 Hudson (hell no car a public transportation might as well
say welfare crude bum and fuck that is all a guy like that deserved.) With big
ideas of shaking things up, making merry with the always with us squares and
other geometric forms. Jesus the worst part knowing that they knew not of
square or any other geometric dreams. Too bad, too bad when they chance came
around and the call went out looking for junkie hipsters, con men and queers
hanging around public toilets on Seventh Avenue in New York City.
No Dean Moriarty, hell call a thing by its right name, no Max
Fame, no Allan Ginsberg, no Kenneth Rexforth, no Hank James, or his brother
William speaking in tongues trying to figure what a guy named Freud meant when
he wanted to go where his mother lived, after killing cosmic fathers and
brothers, no Gregory Corso, no John three names somebody a throwback to ancient
Boston Brahmin bouts with legitimacy speaking of bastards, trace the genealogy
back to Mayfair swells days, nothing for the bastard who is bothering one Laura
Perkins who I have been sweet on for an eternity but who only has eyes for Sam
Lowell about her sexy takes on serious 19th century artist who
were as capable of going down into the mud, blowing some high white note out in
the Japan seas for a change. Above all no Neal Cassidy, no fake Dean Moriarty
to skirt the libel laws with wives and mistresses searching for vagrant unknown
fathers in some dusty coal bins but a poor old good old boy and maybe in
another time said Dean, Adonis Dean against Father Sheik, would have wandered
out in the cowboy West night looking for drunken fathers with hip-ness but that
was not the play, not at all. Father Sheik coming like a bat out of hell from
those hazardous coal bins looking to break the eternal hills and hollows
existence that plagued his fathers since the time the first clan were cast out
of England for stealing pigs or consorting with them in any case with not
unfamiliar family refrain of “leave, or the gallows,” such were the tempers of
the times.
And Father Sheik, hell, Adonis Dean too, with no way out except
that passport via some Nippon adventure over Pearl always Pearl nothing else
needed and he off to Pacific battles and raiments. Jack to the North Seas and
merchant marine bunks with odd-ball seasick sailors (and me wondering whether
having looked of late at YouTube should attribute my borrowed words but the
hell with it plenty of seasick sailors had nothing to do with YouTube or song
lyrics). And forsaken Dean too young to know the face of battles hung up in
reformatory secret vices which an earlier generation (and later ones too) would
“dare not speak their names” (Catamite, Sodomite, homosexual, pug ugly,
suck-head, your call.) How quaint.
Two years and two places do make a different no Bette Davis eyes
in the hills and hollows but Jack-induced Merrimack adventures of boys seeking
pleasures in riverside woods and hamming it up for all the world to see. If
only the old man could have written out his dreams, if he could have written
out anything. Jack to the library born to take his fill of whatever classics
that river textile town had to offer and whiskey you’re the devil which should
have given even a blinded son something to think about with dear Jack fifty
years dead and the old man still trembling in his teeth. My God.
But he never made, he the old man never made New York ever as far
as I could tell, knew none but obvious landmarks like tall Empire State
Building or Lady Liberty. Mother Jacked on some Cape Cod Canal cutaway small
steamer to the Big Apple (not Big Apple then but who knows) and Automats,
evoking Laura’s Edward Hopper sad-assed dreams of a guy who couldn’t even draw
smiling faces and hence the queen of 20th century angst and
alienation and five cent ferry rides to Staten Island. The Village, okay for me
to call it Village as I was a denizen once for Jack too might as well have been
on some planet’s moon for all she knew-him too, too rich for his blood but
Jack’s meat, no problem. Even if strangely Times Square hipsters, grifters,
drifters and Howard Johnson hot dog eaters were mixed into the new wave, then
new wave against Big Band Duke, Artie, Lionel jazz boys coming up with their
sullen lipped riffs to spring a new alienated be-bop on the square world. Jack
knew square, knew father square, knew mother, Mere, square in large letters of
unrequited love but shook it off long enough to cross the great desert America
giving Lady Liberty the boot, the un-shod sole, or maybe taking a cue from Jack
book lamming it out on Bear Mountain just for the hell of it. But this old
mother, not Mere mother, never knew, never had an idea of even in her big
Catholic, Irish Catholic dream of meeting the boy next door and finding steady
white-collar civil servant heaven. Jesus is that what she was about when the
deal went down and Jack split for Ohio with two bucks and six bologna
sandwiches stale well before Toledo believe me I
know.
Life took a different tact though she never found that clever
test-worthy boy next door (he was some greaser with a big hog of a bike which
would have inflamed Dean, would have gotten his wanting habits on and maybe a
run to the Coast). So she having had her fill of Coney Island dreams and
Automat five cent pies took a chance on the Sheik (strange on looking at Jack
photographs how sheik-like our boy was and father too like some lost tribe
members) found guarding the country’s defense not far from her home but he of
Pacific wars, many with manly Marines. Jack flopped the Navy but did dangerous
merchant marine runs out in the North Atlantic, out to the Murmansk seas (that
makes three China and Japan alongside) not honored even in Washington until
much later down in front of Arlington National bravos resting places. And a not
so funny twist of sagging fate brought her dish loads of kids and some
undefined alienation from which she was excluded, and he too by association.
They didn’t prosper far from it but they also didn’t have that run, no, those
runs, to the West looking for lost fathers, looking for the Adonis of the West
to shake up his love. Could two worlds be any more different and only about say
forty miles apart. That not a question but maybe a quiet condemnation for some
woe-begotten life of quiet desperation, her mantra for all the good it did her.
It would take a son, some son, some great girth of sons and
daughters to jailbreak, to Jack their ways out of that parent, remember their
parents’ contemporary, that snare set for those who didn’t get to Times Square,
didn’t get to the Village but stuck it out in Hoboken, Elko, Oceanside. It
would take some unsettled sense that all was not right with the world, that too
many kids were stuck with Modesto hot-rod dreams, Hell’s Angels angers,
Louisville thwarts, and many La Jolla searches for perfect waves to jumpstart
what Jack, and not just Jack but he is fifty tears, fifty years gone. Oh, what
might have been.
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Alastair Moock Doing "God Saw Fit To Make Tears".
CD Review
Walking Sounds, Alastair Moock, Bad Moock Rising Records, 1997
Here is an early Moock CD.
So what is good here? For you topical folk types with a little sense of humor how about “Me And My Friend” (with a very nice sense of the use of language getting a strong workout here). “Dance in the Night” and “Walking To The End Of The World ” deserve a listen but if you have only time to listen to one give a listen to “ What If Love Came Too Soon” then you will know why the old folk tradition like the blues is still in capable hands. This is an early CD (maybe his first?) and reflects a little unsureness about where he was at and a little showing off of the literary end of his work. That’s okay. We know from later experience that he has the goods.
Click On The Title To Link To A YouTube Film Clip Of Woody Guthrie Performing This Land Is Your Land.
CD REVIEW
Woody Guthrie; Dust Bowl Ballads, Woody Guthrie, Buddha Records, 2000
Although this space is mainly dedicated to reviewing political books and commenting on past and current political issues literary output is hardly the only form of political creation. Occasionally in the history of the American and international left musicians, artists and playwrights have given voice or provided visual reminders to the face of political struggle. With that thought in mind, every once in a while I have used this space to review those kinds of political expression.
This review was originally used to take an end around look at some previously unknown, if not hidden, Woody Guthrie work from the 1940 and 1950s that were not songs, but poems, reflections, and “speak-outs” that came to mind when Woody he had his lucid moments, an album entitled Note Of Hope. Best of all for those, like me, who worry about the future of folk music as the generation of ’68 dwindles these works were recreated and put to music (including producer Rob Wasserman’s fatalistic bass, yes, bass work) by some younger artists who will carry the torch forward. And that album brought me back to a Woody hunger and hence a refreshed look at his Okie dust bowl ballads.
My musical tastes were formed, as were many of those of the generation of 1968, by Rock & Roll music exemplified by The Rolling Stones and Beatles and by the blues revival, both Delta and Chicago style. However, those forms as much as they gave pleasure were only marginally political at best. In short, these were entertainers performing material that spoke to us. In the most general sense that is all one should expect of a performer. Thus, for the most part, that music need not be reviewed here. Those who thought that a new musical sensibility laid the foundations for a cultural or political revolution have long ago been proven wrong.
That said, in the early 1960’s there nevertheless was another form of musical sensibility that was directly tied to radical political expression- the folk revival. This entailed a search for roots and relevancy in musical expression. While not all forms of folk music lent themselves to radical politics it is hard to see the 1960’s cultural rebellion without giving a nod to such figures as Dave Van Ronk, the early Bob Dylan, Utah Phillips, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and others. Whatever entertainment value these performers provided they also spoke to and prodded our political development. They did have a message and an agenda and we responded as such. That some of these musicians’ respective agendas proved inadequate and/or short-lived does not negate their affect on the times.
As I have noted elsewhere in a review of Dave Van Ronk’s work when I first heard folk music in my youth I felt unsure about whether I liked it or not. As least against my strong feelings about The Rolling Stones and my favorite blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James. Then on some late night radio folk show here in Boston I heard Dave Van Ronk singing Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies and that was it. From that time to the present folk music has been a staple of my musical tastes. From there I expanded my play list of folk artists with a political message.
Although I had probably heard Woody’s This Land is Your Land at some earlier point I actually learned about his music second-hand from early Bob Dylan covers of his work. While his influence has had its ebbs and flows since that time each succeeding generation of folk singers still seems to be drawn to his simple, honest tunes about the outlaws, outcasts and the forgotten people that made this country, for good or evil, what it is today. Since Woody did not have a particularly good voice nor was he an exceptional guitar player the message delivered by his songs is his real legacy.
And now we have a second legacy look for the ages from the hard-edged American populist. Stick outs here include Tom Goad I and II (basically John Steinbeck’s Grape of Wrath in lyric form), California dreamin’ Do Re Mi, the outlaw love song Pretty Boy Floyd and I Ain’t Got No Home. A tip of the hat to Woody.
This Land Is Your Land-Woody Guthrie
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
Where Have All The Flowers Gone- With Legendary Folk-Singer Pete Seeger In Mind
By Si Lannon
[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]
[As noted in a review posted here (and in the on-line version of American Folk Gazette) on Woody Guthrie’s forever influence on generations of folk musicians if not other genres as well I agreed with Bart Webber in a previous article of his about the appropriateness of this disclaimer above or whatever it purports to be by the "victorious" new regime headed by Greg Green and his so- called Editorial Board. If nothing else this disclaimer has been attached now to a fourth article I have contributed in this space which has once again pointed told one and all, interested or not, that I have been “demoted” from Associate Book Reviewer to Everyman. Not directly, no not directly from this crew. No matter how tough Allan Jackson was, and he was, he spoke his mind and let the devil take the hinter post. So once again I plead once would have been enough, more than enough.
That brings me back to the additional point I in my last review that those of us who defended Allan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin for a blog moniker) in the fierce no-holds barred internal struggle have taken our "beating" and have moved on as far as I can tell. I noted Going on and on about the internal purging process, and while for public consumption he has “retired” I know enough from youthful left-wing politics which at the organizational, turf, level could be as crazy as any bourgeois political fights without the advantage of some material to now know that is what happened to the poor bastard is a disservice. Moreover what originally appeared to me to be the rantings of a cranky old man (I am an old man but usually not cranky) by Phil Larkin, who in the interest of transparency is an old growing up friend, about a purge of older writers, or maybe a putting them on the back-burner seems more rational each day. Si Lannon]
**********
A while back, a few months ago now I think I mentioned in a sketch about how I came to learn about the music of Woody Guthrie I noted that it was hard to pin just exactly when I first heard his music since it pre-dated my coming to the folk minute of the 1960s. After some thought I pinpointed the first time to a seventh grade music class (Mr. Dasher’s class whom we innocently then called Dasher the Flasher just for rhyming purposes but which with today’s sensibilities about the young would not play very well) when he in an effort to have us appreciate various genre of music made us learn Woody’s This Land Is Your Land.
In thinking about when I first heard Pete Seeger sign I came up against that same quandary since I know I didn’t associate him with the first time I heard the emerging folk minute. That folk minute start which I do clearly remember the details of got going one Sunday night when tired of the vanilla rock and roll music that was being play in the fall of 1962 on the Boston stations I began flipping the small dial on my transistor radio settling in on this startling gravelly voice which sounded like some old-time mountain man singing Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies. I listened to a few more songs on what turned out to be a folk music program put on every Sunday evening between seven and nine at the request of some college kids in the area who were going crazy for roots music according to the DJ.
After thinking about it for a while I realized that I had heard Pete not in solo performance but when he was with The Weavers and they made a hit out of the old Lead Belly tune, Good Night, Irene. In those days, the early 1950s I think, The Weavers were trying to break into the popular music sphere and were proceeding very well until the Cold War night descended upon them and they, or individual members including Pete were tarred with the red scare brush. Still you cannot keep a good man down, a man with a flame-throwing banjo, with folk music DNA in his blood since he was the son of the well-known folk musicologist Charles Seeger, and with something to say to those who were interested in looking back into the roots of American music before it got commercialized. Interested in going back to the time when old cowboys would sing themselves to sleep around the camp fire out in the prairies, when sweat hard-working black share-croppers and plantation workers down South would get out a Saturday jug and head to the juke joint to chase the blues away, and when the people of the hills and hollows down in Appalachia would Saturday night get out the jug and run over to Bill Preston’s old seen better days red-painted barn and dance that last dance waltz to that weeping mountain fiddle. Stuff like that, lots of stuff like that to fill out the American songbook.
