***Out In the 1950s Crime Noir Night- A Grifter’s Farewell- “Dark City- A Film Review

DVD Review

Dark City, starring Charleston Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Dean Jagger, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Paramount Pictures, 1950

No question after running through a seemingly endless run of crime noir films that not all the films in the genre are equal. The classics like The Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon, Gilda, and Out Of The Past speak for themselves with fine plot lines and slightly awry femme fatales to brighten things up. The film under review, although not in that category, could have been better had it not gotten caught up in some melodramatic flim-flam and stayed the hard-boiled, gritty classic grifter story that it set out to be. The outlines of the plot surely gave more promise that was delivered.

Down in those post-World War II means streets out West a lot of war-weary, war-tousled, war-scarred guys tried to do, well, the best they could. And the best they could usually was some grifter scheme to make a score off some bozo mark and hit the road, hit the road fast, and leave no forwarding address. That is the substance of the plot here. Ex-soldier (World War II just in case you might have forgotten, or were not sure what war I was talking about since there are many to choose from these days) Dan Healy (played in an understated, post-war alienated, existential man kind of way by Charleston Heston before he became Moses or Ben Hur or whatever big screen techno-color champ he became later) make his downwardly mobile way to grifter-dom in some seedy skid row town.

Dan's thing is gambling and, of course, for such an endeavor you need suckers with dough, easily parted with dough. And, as well, some confederates in on the scam. That is the case here as Dan and two fellow grifters (one played by Jack Webb before he got “religion” and became Sergeant Friday on the 1950s television show, Dragnet) rope in the sucker, a guy holding a five thousand dollar check (serious money, serious money down on mean street then) although the money is not actually his. Needless to say a fool and his dough are soon parted.

And that is where things start to go wrong with this film (as well as in the lives of our three gamblers). Filled with remorse the mark (played by Don DeFore) can’t face the horror of going back and confessing to his employers that he blew the dough on gambling, and instead hanged himself in his lonely room. Not for him the easy road of blowing town and changing his name, toughing it out, or even filing a court claim against the miscreant gamblers. In short, nobody, nobody this side of Hollywood takes the rope on the facts presented here. And then it gets worst. See the mark has an older dominating brother who watched out for him. Now this suicide business once he finds out the cause got him a little exercised. See the brother is a stone-cold psycho and he is out to even the score-and hence to create three dead, very dead gamblers.

Well, if you have been paying attention you know that Charleston Heston, the star and therefore kill-proof, is one of those marked for extinction so the other two get their just desserts and old Heston squeaks by after some close moments. The problem is when we see finally see who the killer-brother is there is no way that anyone could believe, or at least I could believe, that this gorilla was anybody’s brother. Come on.

The other place where the film goes wrong is on the inevitable love interest angle. Now Danny boy, who spends a good part of the film moodily cutting up old torches from back in the day, has a sort of girlfriend. A very fetching smoky-voiced chanteuse, Fran, (played by Lizabeth Scott) girlfriend who wears her heart on her sleeve for him, although he is mostly indifferent to her. No femme fatale here-just a "what you see is what you get" gal who can sing the blues, while having them over her man who has done her wrong. The problem is that the chemistry between Danny and Fran is all wrong, all wrong alls ways. Fran is the girl next door and Danny, is well Danny, a grifter and the two don’t mix. And the plot gets further muddied when Dan, trying to get a lead of where the mark’s brother is, starts to play footsie with the dead mark's non-grieving widow. So you see now what I mean when I say that not all crime noirs are created equal.

Free Bradley Manning Now!

Army releases photo of Bradley Manning dressed as a woman that he emailed to his therapist - as the private takes stand to apologize for leaking documents to WikiLeaks

• The former intelligence analyst, 25, apologized for his actions during a prepared statement at his sentencing hearing today
• Photograph of Bradley Manning dressed as a woman - wearing a wig and makeup was released today also
• He faces up to 90 years in prison for leaking classified information
• 'I'm sorry I hurt people. I'm sorry that I hurt the US. I'm apologizing for the unexpected results of my actions,' he told the military judge
• Earlier in the day, an Army psychologist testified that Bradley Manning's private struggle with his gender identity put massive pressure on the soldier

By Associated Press and Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED:15:27 EST, 14 August 2013| UPDATED:18:54 EST, 14 August 2013

510shares

141

View
comments

On the same day that Bradley Manning finally took to the stand and apologized for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks - the army he betrayed released a picture of the troubled soldier wearing a blond wig, makeup and lipstick.
He addressed the court after a day of testimony about his troubled childhood in Oklahoma and the extreme psychological pressure that experts said he felt in the 'hyper-masculine' military because of his gender-identity disorder — his feeling that he was a woman trapped in a man's body.
Speaking in the court room at Fort Meade, Baltimore, Manning, 25, said, 'First your honor, I want to start off with an apology.'
'I'm sorry I hurt people. I'm sorry that I hurt the US. I'm apologizing for the unexpected results of my actions,' he told the military judge, Colonel Denise Lind.
As the photograph that Manning sent to his army therapist in confidence was circulated to the media, Manning told the court he understood what he was doing at the time of the leaks and the decisions he made.
However, he says he did not believe at the time that leaking the information would cause harm.
'When I made these decisions, I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people.' said the former Private 1st Class who was found guilty of 20 out of 21 counts against him last month - including several for espionage.
However, he was acquitted of the most serious charge of 'aiding the enemy' - for which he could have faced the death penalty.
His conciliatory tone was at odds with the statement he gave in court in February, when he condemned the actions of U.S. soldiers overseas and what he called the military's 'bloodlust.'
Regardless, Manning faces up to 90 years in prison for the leaks.

Stepping out: Bradley Manning heads to court at Fort Meade on Wednesday for his sentencing hearing

Gender Identity Issues: In this undated photo provided by the U.S. Army, Pfc. Bradley Manning poses for a photo wearing a wig and lipstick. Manning emailed his military therapist the photo with a letter titled, 'My problem'

Sentencing: Manning, who could speak up in court later today, faces up to 90 years in prison for the leaks

Manning's statement came after three days in which his legal team had called witnesses to persuade the judge to lower his sentence.
His statement on the stand was unsworn, which meant that he could only speak to the judge and not be cross-examined.
Speaking directly to Colonel Lind, Manning admitted to having 'a lot of issues', when he leaked the material to WikiLeaks in 2010 and that these still continue to cause him trouble.
However, the soldier who faces a lifetime behind bars said, 'These issues are not an excuse for my actions.'

More...

• Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife weep as they are sentenced to prison for tax fraud and misusing $750,000 in campaign funds
• Schizophrenic gunman who held three people hostage at bank posted terrifying Facebook messages in hours before stand-off which left one victim dead and a second critically injured
• 'It cost the public dearly': Snowden says media have failed as government watchdogs in his first interview since NSA leaks

Speaking candidly to the court, Mannning said that the diplomatic wires and classified documents he stole and sent to WikiLeaks, and its founder Julian Assange was wrong.
He said that the ramifications of his actions were now 'clear to me' and that he had reached these conclusions during 'self-reflection' throughout the three years he has already spent in custody.
Speaking quickly and mumbling slightly, Manning said, 'How on earth could I, a junior analyst, believe I could change the world for the better?'
'I understand I must pay a price for my decisions and actions.
'I have flaws and issues that have to deal with. But I know that I can and will be a better person. I hope that you can give me the opportunity to prove, not through words, but through conduct, that I am a good person.'

Pressure: Bradley Manning, shown as he is escorted from court on July 30, was put under stress by his gender identity struggle, an Army psychologist has testified at his sentencing in Maryland

Earlier today, an Army psychologist has testified that Bradley Manning's private struggle with his gender identity in a hostile workplace put incredible pressure on the soldier.
Capt. Michael Worsley spoke at Manning's sentencing hearing at Fort Meade, near Baltimore on Wednesday, where the former intelligence analyst is expected to deliver a statement later today.

'I am Sorry but Unfortunately I Can't Go Back and Change Things': Bradley Manning's Statement in Full

'First, your honor, I want to start off with an apology. I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry I hurt the United States.

At the time of my decisions, as you know, I was dealing with a lot of issues, issues that are ongoing and continuing to effect me. Although a considerable difficulty in my life, these issues are not an excuse for my actions.

I understood what I was doing, and decisions I made. However, I did not fully appreciate the broader effects of my actions.

Those factors are clear to me now, through both self-refection during my confinement in various forms, and through the merits and sentencing testimony that I have seen here.

I am sorry for the uintentended consequences of my actions. When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people.

The last few years have been a learning experience. I look back at my decisions and wonder how on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better on decisions of those with the proper authority.

In retrospect I should have worked more aggressively inside the system, as we discussed during the statement, I had options and I should have used these options.

Unfortunately, I can't go back and change things. I can only go forward. I want to go forward. Before I can do that, I understand that I must pay a price for my decisions and actions.

Once I pay that price, I hope to one day live in a manner that I haven't been able to in the past. I want to be a better person, to go to college, to get a degree and to have a meaningful relationship with my sister with my sister's family and my family.

I want to be a positive influence in their lives, just as my Aunt Deborah has been to me. I have flaws and issues that I have to deal with, but I know that I can and will be a better person.

I hope that you can give me the opportunity to prove, not through words, but through conduct, that I am a good person and that I can return to productive place in society. Thank you, Your Honor.'

The 25-year-old faces up 90 years in prison for leaking more than 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks while working in Iraq in 2010.

Manning, , who was apparently considering transitioning to become female, eventually came out to the therapist and emailed Worsley a photo of himself dressed as a woman, wearing a blonde wig and lipstick.
The photo was attached to a letter titled 'My problem', in which Manning described his problems with gender identity and his hopes that a military career would 'get rid of it'.
In a web chat in May 2010, he also said that he was 'waiting to redeploy to the US, be discharged... and figure out how on earth I'm going to transition'.
Worsley characterized the soldier as alone and isolated while at his post in the southeast of Baghdad. He added that this isolation was aggravated as he struggled with being gay in a 'hyper-masculine' military environment.
'He was going it alone, and really felt alone,' Worsley said. 'Being in the military and having a gender identity issue does not exactly go hand-in-hand.
'It further served to isolate him, and at that time the military was not exactly friendly to the gay community or anybody who held views as such. I don't know that it's friendly now either.'
He added: 'You put him in that kind of hyper-masculine environment, if you will, with little support and few coping skills, the pressure would have been difficult to say the least. It would have been incredible.'
Worsley's testimony described some military leaders as lax at best and obstructionist at worst when it came to tending to troop mental health.
He said some in Manning's brigade 'had difficulty understanding' recommendations the doctor would make regarding the needs of some soldiers.
'I questioned why they would want to leave somebody in a position with the issue they had,' Worsley said of troubled soldiers.
Manning's lawyers argue that Manning showed clear signs of deteriorating mental health that should have prevented commanders from sending him to a warzone to handle classified information.
Earlier in the hearing, the former master sergeant whom Manning first sent the picture to faced tough questions over why he chose to ignore it.
'This is my problem,' Manning wrote in an email to Master Sgt. Paul Adkins in April 2010. 'I've had signs of it for a very long time. It's caused problems within my family. I thought a career in the military would get rid of it.'

He added: 'Now, the consequences of it are dire, at a time when it's causing me great pain in itself.'
Adkins did not forward this email to his supervisor until nearly half a year after Manning's arrest.
He explained: 'I really didn't think at the time that having a picture floating around of one of my soldiers in drag was in the best interest of the mission, the intel mission, Sir.'

Troubled time: Manning was isolated and alone in the Army because of his desire to dress in female clothing

'Red flags': Defense attorneys said superiors should have recognized issues Manning was having

After receiving the email, Adkins wrote a memo stating that Manning's instability 'is a constant source of concern' and that this was 'symptomatic of a deeper medical condition, unknown at this time' - but he did not mention the photograph or Manning's anxiety.
A month later, Adkins found Manning sitting in the fetal position in his room with an exposed blade at his side. He had carved 'I want' in a chair.
Adkins reassigned Manning to his workstation - and hours later, Manning punched his counselor.
'I wrongly assessed that he was stable enough to conduct his shift,' Adkins said on Tuesday.

Younger years: Manning, who was apparently considering transitioning to become a woman when he returned from the warzone, has said he does not like seeing pictures of himself as a young boy

Struggle: Manning, pictured as a child, was bullied throughout school for being gay, friends have said

Manning had a troubled childhood growing up in Crescent, Oklahoma and Wales, where he was often teased by schoolmates for being gay. He came out to his mother in 2006 and he revealed that he has struggled with his gender identity.
'I wouldn't mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn't for the possibility of having pictures of me plastered all over the world press as a boy,' he recently told the New York Times.

Leaked: Manning was convicted of leaking more than 700,000 documents from a classified government computer network while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010

Manning has said almost nothing since the trial began under an international spotlight on June 3. His attorneys kept him off the stand, and he has sat silently at their side.

The former junior intelligence analyst could end that silence later today when his attorneys read a statement to the court, a military spokesman said.
Its content is unknown. It would be the first time Manning has spoken publicly at length since late February, when he read a 10,000-word statement in a pre-trial hearing.

Chief defense attorney David Coombs is expected to conclude his case for a lenient sentence on Wednesday after calling a dozen witnesses.
Judge Colonel Denise Lind could sentence Manning immediately after the defense finishes.

Support: Many consider Manning a hero for leaking the information, while others deem him a traitor. Here, a protest gathers outside of the gates at Fort Meade, Maryland during his trial last month

The leaked material that shocked many around the world was a 2007 gunsight video of a U.S. Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Baghdad.
A dozen people were killed, including two Reuters news staff, and WikiLeaks dubbed the footage 'Collateral Murder'.
Lind, the judge, convicted Manning of 20 charges, including espionage and theft, on July 30. He was found not guilty of the most serious count, aiding the enemy, which carried a life sentence.
Prosecutors argued that Manning was an arrogant soldier who aided al Qaeda militants and harmed the United States with the release of the documents.
His attorneys have countered that the Army ignored his mental health problems and violent outbursts and that computer security at Manning's base was lax. They contended that Manning, who is gay, was naive but well-intentioned and suffering from a sexual identity crisis in Iraq.

Share or comment on this article

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2393831/Army-releases-photo-Bradley-Manning-dressed-woman-emailed-therapist--private-takes-stand-apologize-leaking-documents-WikiLeaks.html#ixzz2c5EgRfiv
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

***FromThe Archives -Looking For A Few Good Men…And Women For Peace- A Stroll In The Boston Common On Veterans Day, Circa 2011- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran!-Hands Off Syria- Hands Off The World!

Markin comment:
Last year when I wrote what amounted to a paean to the Veterans For Peace and their Boston Common anti-war activities on Veterans Day 2010 in the entry, A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day, where I said the following:

“Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.

Now normally in Boston, and in most places, a Veterans Day parade means a bunch of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) or American Legion-types taking time off from drinking at their post bars (“the battle of the barstool”) and donning the old overstuffed uniform and heading out on to Main Street to be waved at, and cheered on, by like-minded, thankful citizens. And of course that happened this time as well. What also happened in Boston this year (and other years but I have not been involved in previous marches) was that the Veterans For Peace (VFP) organized an anti-war march as part of their “Veterans Day” program. Said march to be held at the same place and time as the official one.”

And this year I expected to say roughly the same thing, except now that I have worked with them in some actions here in Boston, down in Washington D.C. in front of the Winter Palace (oops, the White House) in some civil disobedience actions, and in front of the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia in defense of the heroic Army private, Bradley Manning, that copy-cat approach doesn’t seem adequate. And here is why.

For an anti-war war veteran there are two kinds of ways to call oneself a veteran. The obvious one is to have “gone into the service,” as my grandmother (and probably many, too many, other grandmothers as well) used to say. The other is to be a veteran of the kind of anti-war actions described above. And, in the old days (the VVAW days) we used to say that kind of veteran service with a certain knowing snicker. A snicker like it was good to know, know finally, that you were on the side of the angels. And so to put paid to this piece let me finish with a story, a story about how a few god men and women kept on the right side of those angels just recently here in Boston.

Everybody with a pulse knows that there is a populist movement that has swept part of America (and the world) this fall looking for a little social justice and an end to the 1% takes all system we have lived under all our lives, the Occupy movement. An attentive news reader also knows that part of the publicity generated around the movement centers on establishing encampments in cities, large and small, in order to dramatize the pressing needs of the great majority of people. Here in Boston that started on September 31, 2011 with successful occupation of a section of the Rose Kennedy Greenway at Dewey Square near South Station. On October 10th elements within the movement attempted to expand the encampment another block and pitched tents accordingly. This “affrontery” set Boston Mayor Thomas Menino into spasms and he ordered out his Cossacks (a. k. a. cops) to disband the rabble, forthwith. At a General Assembly (the decision-making body that drives the camp and the political perspectives) that evening the overwhelming majority of those present and voting voted to defend the second site. As result in the dead of night (about 2:00 AM) the Mayor’s horde descended on the campsite in full combat regalia to arrest the peaceful assembly waiting to defend the site. Some one hundred and forty people were arrested that early morning.

That is the back story, and is more or less widely known by now. What is less well known is that a contingent of veterans, almost all veterans of previous civil disobediences actions, had determined one more time to defend something. This time not the mythical home and country but “family,” a family of mainly younger people who were not as well- versed in cop madness, or the niceties of the nightstick as these veterans. And so as is called for when an encampment is set up in enemy territory that contingent set up a perimeter on the pathway in front of the camp in the direction from which the attack was expected. And it came. The veterans, some of who were arrested and others who were merely pushed aside, or to the ground, “defended” the camp, honorably . And you now know why anything I expected to say about this years Veterans Day anti-war gathering on November 11th pales in comparison. A few good women and men, indeed. And I say that without a snicker today.

Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran!-Hands Off The World!

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

Peter Paul Markin comment:

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

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

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

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

I have related elsewhere in discussing my high school experiences as also noted in that series mentioned above that one of the hardships of high school was (and is) the need , recognized or not, to be “in.” One of the ways to be “in,” at least for a guy in my post-World War II generation, the “Generation of ’68,” and the first generation to have some disposable income in hand was to have cool clothes, a cool car, and a cool girlfriend. “Cool,” you get it, right? Therefore the way to be the dreaded “out” was to be ….well, you know that answer.

One way not to be cool was to wear hand-me-downs from an older brother, an older brother who was build larger than you and you had to kind of tuck in that and roll up that. Or to wear, mother–produced from some recessive poverty gene Bargain Center midnight fire discount sale, oddly colored (like purple or vermillion) or designed (pin-striped then not in style or curly-cues never in style) clothes. This is where not having enough of life’s goods hurts. Being doled out a couple of new sets of duds a year was not enough to break my social isolation from the “cool guys.” I remember the routine even now-new clothes for the start of the school year and then at Easter. Cheap stuff too from the Bargain Center mentioned above-a Wal-Mart-type store of the day.

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

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

FromThe Marxist Archives-The Bolshevik Press and the Fight for Workers Revolution

Workers Vanguard No. 920 12 September 2008 TROTSKY LENIN The Bolshevik Press and the Fight for Workers Revolution (Quote of the Week) As Workers Vanguard enters its annual subscription drive, we print below excerpts from an article by V.I. Lenin celebrating the tenth anniversary of Pravda, the Bolshevik daily newspaper founded in April 1912 amidst an upsurge of militant class struggle in tsarist Russia. The article was written in 1922, as the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution inspired, in the words of Lenin, new Chartists (referring to the revolutionary tradition of the mid 19th-century proletarian movement in Britain), new Varlins (Eugène Varlin, a socialist leader of the 1871 Paris Commune) and new Liebknechts (Wilhelm Liebknecht, 19th-century Marxist leader of the German socialist movement). The tenth anniversary of a Bolshevik daily published in Russia…. Only ten years have elapsed! But measured in terms of our struggle and movement they are equal to a hundred years. For the pace of social development in the past five years has been positively staggering if we apply the old yardstick of European philistines like the heroes of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals. These civilised philistines are accustomed to regard as “natural” a situation in which hundreds of millions of people (over a thousand million, to be exact) in the colonies and in semi-dependent and poor countries tolerate the treatment meted out to Indians or Chinese, tolerate incredible exploitation, and outright depredation, and hunger, and violence, and humiliation, all in order that “civilised” men might “freely,” “democratically,” according to “parliamentary procedure,” decide whether the booty should be divided up peacefully, or whether ten million or so must be done to death in this division of the imperialist booty, yesterday between Germany and Britain, tomorrow between Japan and the U.S.A. (with France and Britain participating in one form or another)…. At this most difficult moment it would be most harmful for revolutionaries to indulge in self-deception. Though Bolshevism has become an international force, though in all the civilised and advanced countries new Chartists, new Varlins, new Liebknechts have been born, and are growing up as legal (just as legal as our Pravda was under the tsars ten years ago) Communist Parties, nonetheless, for the time being, the international bourgeoisie still remains incomparably stronger than its class enemy. This bourgeoisie, which has done everything in its power to hamper the birth of proletarian power in Russia and to multiply tenfold the dangers and suffering attending its birth, is still in a position to condemn millions and tens of millions to torment and death through its whiteguard and imperialist wars, etc. That is something we must not forget. And we must skilfully adapt our tactics to this specific situation. The bourgeoisie is still able freely to torment, torture and kill. But it cannot halt the inevitable and—from the standpoint of world history—not far distant triumph of the revolutionary proletariat. —V.I. Lenin, “On the Tenth Anniversary of Pravda” (May 1922) ********* V. I. Lenin On the Tenth Anniversary of Pravda Written: 2 May 1922 First Published: Pravda No. 98. May 5, 1922; Signed: N. Lenin; Published according to the Pravda text Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, pages 349-352 Translated: David Skvirsky and George Hanna Transcription\HTML Markup:David Walters & R. Cymbala Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License It is ten years since Pravda, the legal—legal even under tsarist law—Bolshevik daily paper, was founded. This decade was preceded by, approximately, another decade: nine years (1903-12) since the emergence of Bolshevism, or thirteen years (1900-12), if we count from the founding in 1900 of the “Bolshevik-oriented” old Iskra.[1] The tenth anniversary of a Bolshevik daily published in Russia .... Only ten years have elapsed! But measured in terms of our struggle and movement they are equal to a hundred years. For the pace of social development in the past five years has been positively staggering if we apply the old yardstick of European philistines like the heroes of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals. These civilised philistines are accustomed to regard as “natural” a situation in which hundreds of millions of people (over a thousand million, to be exact) in the colonies and in semi-dependent and poor countries tolerate the treatment meted out to Indians or Chinese, tolerate incredible exploitation, and outright depredation, and hunger, and violence, and humiliation, all in order that “civilised” men might “freely”, “democratically”, according to “parliamentary procedure”, decide whether the booty should be divided up peacefully, or whether ten million or so must be done to death in this division of the imperialist booty, yesterday between Germany and Britain, tomorrow between Japan and the U.S.A. (with France and Britain participating in one form or another). The basic reason for this tremendous acceleration of world development is that new hundreds of millions of people have been drawn into it. The old bourgeois and imperialist Europe, which was accustomed to look upon itself as the centre of the universe, rotted and burst like a putrid ulcer in the first imperialist holocaust. No matter bow the Spenglers and all the enlightened philistines, who are capable of admiring (or even studying) Spengler, may lament it, this decline of the old Europe is but an episode in the history of the downfall of the world bourgeoisie, oversatiated by imperialist rapine and the oppression of the majority of the world’s population. That majority has now awakened and has begun a movement which even the “mightiest” powers cannot stem. They stand no chance. For the present “victors” in the first imperialist slaughter have not the strength to defeat smalltiny, I might say—Ireland, nor can they emerge victoriotis from the confusion in currency and finance issues that reigns in their own midst. Meanwhile, India and China are seething. They represent over 700 million people, and together with the neighbouring Asian countries, that are in all ways similar to them, over half of the world’s inhabitants. Inexorably and with mounting momentum they are approaching their 1905, with the essential and important difference that in 1905 the revolution in Russia could still proceed (at any rate at the beginning) in isolation, that is, without other countries being immediately drawn in. But the revolutions that are maturing in India and China are being drawn into—have already been drawn into—the revolutionary struggle, the revolutionary movement, the world revolution. The tenth anniversary of Pravda, the legal Bolshevik daily, is a clearly defined marker of this great acceleration of the greatest world revolution. In 1906-07, it seemed that the tsarist government had completely crushed the revolution. A few years later the Bolshevik Party was able—in a different form, by a different method—to penetrate into the very citadel of the enemy and daily, “legally”, proceed with its work of undermining the accursed tsarist and landowner autocracy from within. A few more years passed, and the proletarian revolution, organised by Bolshevism, triumphed. Some ten or so revolutionaries shared in the founding of the old Iskra in 1900, and only about forty attended the birth of Bolshevism at the illegal congresses in Brussels and London in 1903.[2] In 1912-13, when the legal Bolshevik Pravda came into being it had the support of hundreds of thousands of workers, who by their modest contributions[3] were able to overcome both the oppression of tsarism and the competition of the Mensheviks, those petty-bourgeois traitors to socialism. In November 1917, nine million electors out of a total of thirty-six million voted for the Bolsheviks in the elections 10 the Constituent Assembly. But if we take the actual struggle, and not merely the elections, at the close of October and in November 1917, the Bolsheviks had the support of the majority of the proletariat and class-conscious peasantry, as represented by the majority of the delegates at the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets, and by the majority of the most active and politically conscious section of the working people, namely, the twelve-million-strong army of that day. These few figures illustrating the “acceleration” of the world revolutionary movement in the past twenty years give a very small and very incomplete picture. They afford only a very approximate idea of the history of no more than 150 million people, whereas in these twenty years the revolution has developed into an invincible force in countries with a total population of over a thousand million (the whole of Asia, not to forget South Africa, which recently reminded the world of its claim to human and not slavish existence, and by methods which were not altogether “parliamentary”). Some infant Spenglers—I apologise for the expressionmay conclude (every variety of nonsense can he expected from the “clever” leaders of the Second and Two-and-aHalf Internationals) that this estimate of the revolutionary forces fails to take into account the European and American proletariat. These “clever” leaders always argue as if the fact that birth comes nine months after conception necessarily means that the exact hour and minute of birth can be defined beforehand, also the position of the infant during delivery, the condition of the mother and the exact degree of pain and danger both will suffer. Very “clever”! These gentry cannot for the life of them understand that from the point of view of the development of the international revolution the transition from Chartism to Henderson’s servility to the bourgeoisie, or the transition from Varlin to Renaudel, from Wilhelm Liebknecht and Bebel to Sudekum, Scheidemanu and Noske, can only be likened to an automobile passing from a smooth highway stretching for hundreds of miles to a dirty stinking puddle of a few yards in length on that highway. Men are the makers of history. But the Chartists, the Varlins and the Liebknechts applied their minds and hearts to it. The leaders of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals apply other parts of the anatomy: they fertilise the ground for the appearance of new Chartists, new Varlins and new Liebknechts. At this most difficult moment it would be most harmful for revolutionaries to indulge in self-deception. Though Bolshevism hasbecome an international force, though in all the civilised and advanced countries new Chartists, new Varlins, new Liebknechts have been born, and are growing up as legal (just as legal as our Pravda was under the tsars ten years ago) Communist Parties, nonetheless, for the time being, the international bourgeoisie still remains incomparably stronger than its class enemy. This bourgeoisie, which has done everything in its power to hamper the birth of proletarian power in Russia and to multiply tenfold the dangers and suffering attending its birth, is still in a position to condemn millions and tens of millions to torment and death through its whiteguard and imperialist wars, etc. That is something we must not forget. And we must skilfully adapt our tactics to this specific situation. The bourgeoisie is still able freely to torment, torture and kill. But it cannot halt the inevitable and—from the standpoint of world history—not far distant triumph of the revolutionary proletariat. May 2, 1922 Endnotes [1]Iskra (old) was the first Russian illegal Marxist newspaper. Founded by Lenin in 1900, it played the decisive role in the formation of a revolutionary Marxist party of the working class of Russia. Soon after the Second Party Congress (1903), control of the newspaper was seized by Mensheviks. With the publication of its 52nd issue Iskra ceased to be an organ of revolutionary Marxism. [2] Lenin refers to the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., which was held on July 17-August 10 (July 30-August 23), 1903. The first thirteen sessions took place in Brussels. Owing to police persecution, the Congress was moved to London. [3] Here Lenin means the cash collections that were undertaken by workers for their newspaper Pravda.

*Studs Terkel's America-The Great Racial Divide

The Other Great Divide-Race in Studs Terkel’s America

BOOK REVIEW

Race: How Blacks And White Feel About The Great American Obsession, Studs Terkel, The New Press, New York, 2004

As I have done on other occasions when I am reviewing more than one work by an author I am using some of the same comments, where they are pertinent, here as I did in earlier reviews. In this series the first Studs Terkel book reviewed was that of his “The Good War”: an Oral History of World War II".

Strangely, as I found out about the recent death of long time pro-working class journalist and general truth-teller "Studs" Terkel I was just beginning to read his "The Good War", about the lives and experiences of, mainly, ordinary people during World War II in America and elsewhere, for review in this space. As with other authors once I get started I tend to like to review several works that are relevant to see where their work goes. In the present case the review of Race: How Blacks And Whites Feel About Each is a forthright look at the state of American racial tensions a couple of decades ago although the issues raised and the fears expressed are not far from the surface of today’s racial landscape.

Moreover, the times of Obama notwithstanding, although the “code” words for the race question have changed many of the attitudes that are articulated here are hardly “shocking” to one who has had his ear to the ground down at the base of society. The most common attitude expressed by whites here- that of course they are not racially prejudiced, have nothing against blacks, even has black friends, in short, have no racial problems is belied by the refusal to live, go to school with or work with blacks. Perhaps a little surprising, at least to me, was the feeling expressed by many blacks that they did not want to live with whites, did not trust them and also feared them. That is the paradox of race in America and has been since slavery times. Anyone who paid close attention to this year’s presidential race and avoided the easy democratic and social generalizations of the mainstream pundits got hit over the head with this reality on the job, in the public schools in the neighborhood and on the streets every day. Certainly the Obama victory was a significant fact in this racially divided society. However one would be living in a fool’s paradise to think that overnight the race question had been eliminated. But enough of that except to say that we could certainly have used Studs talents to do a postscript on this book today.

One thing that I noticed immediately after reading this book, and as is true of the majority of Terkel’s interview books, is that he is not the dominant presence but is a rather light, if intensely interested, interloper in these stories. This is important in trying to get to the bottom of such a socially charged question as racial attitudes. Here, for better or worse the interviewees get to tell their stories, unchained. In this age of 24/7 media coverage with every half-baked journalist or wannabe interjecting his or her personality into somebody else’s story this was, and is, rather refreshing. Of course this journalistic virtue does not mean that Studs did not have control over who got to tell their stories and who didn’t to fit his preoccupations and sense of order. He has a point he wants to make and that is that although most “ordinary” people do not make the history books they certainly make history, if not always of their own accord or to their own liking. Again, kudos and adieu Studs.

Bradley Manning, family, and doctors take stand: report and analysis: trial day 34

digg

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. August 14, 2013.

Bradley Manning (Photo credit: Patrick Semansky/Associated Press)

Pfc. Bradley Manning took the stand to deliver an apology for the method with which he exposed the wrongs he witnessed in Iraq, as his defense concluded its sentencing case. He faces a maximum prison term of 90 years, after he was convicted last month of 20 counts of Espionage, Computer Fraud, federal theft, and Army violations. In February, he explained releasing hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks as an act of conscience, to spark a debate on war and U.S. foreign policy.
“I’m sorry,” Manning said in an unsworn statement. “I’m sorry that my actions hurt people and hurt the United States.” While the open sessions of the sentencing hearing have revealed no casualties connected to any of WikiLeaks’ releases, diplomats testified that some democracy activists had to be relocated, and those tasked with reviewing the war logs said they had to notify some sources in Iraq and Afghanistan of potential retribution for cooperating with the United States.
“At the time of my decisions, as you know, I was dealing with a lot of issues,” but they are “not an excuse.”
Rather than apologize for blowing the whistle on the abuses he witnessed, he explained that he regretted the method with which he did so. “In retrospect I should have worked more aggressively inside the system,” he said. “[I] had options and I should have used these options.”
Manning continued,

I did not truly appreciate the broader effects of my actions. Those effects are clearer to me now through both self-reflection during my confinement in its various forms and through the merits and sentencing testimony that I have seen here. I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions. When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people.

Discussing his future aspirations, he said, “I want to be a better person, go to college, get a degree. I want to be a positive influence in other people’s lives.”
“Bradley’s brief statement today to Judge Lind apologizing for what happened in no way alters the fact that he took heroic action in the midst of an illegal war,” said Jeff Paterson, director of the Bradley Manning Support Network. “He certainly didn’t blow the whistle on the wrongs he saw in the correct military manner, but he did something while most did nothing. That is why millions have been moved to support him, and why we will not relent until he is free.”
The statement followed a day of testimony in which Manning’s doctors and family discussed his mental health, stressors, and childhood.
Military doctor: Manning “true to his principles”
Dr. David Moulton, the defense’s expert on forensic psychiatry, reviewed Manning’s medical records and history, and also diagnosed him with GID, along with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and some traits of Asperger’s.
Dr. Moulton said that the thing that stood out most about Manning was his consistency, as his beliefs held up throughout interviews and statements. Asked if he believed that in the future Manning would try to correct something that violated his sense of morality, Dr. Moulton said, “I think historically Manning has been pretty true to his principles.”
He said he displayed some “narcissistic traits,” such as “grandiose ideations,” and “arrogant and haughty behavior” when stressed. He said that Manning had “post-adolescent idealism,” a relatively normal focus on making a difference in the world and enacting social changes, for those aged 18-24.
Prosecutors honed on the claim that Manning was narcissistic, attempting to show him as someone who didn’t respect his fellow soldiers. They asked Dr. Moulton about chat logs with Adrian Lamo, in which Manning called his fellow soldiers “a bunch of trigger happy ignorant rednecks,” and if that indicated further narcissism. But Dr. Moulton said, “I can’t say I haven’t” called fellow Marines “rednecks.”
Dr. Michael Worsley, the clinical psychologist Manning saw in Iraq, testified about their therapy sessions and Manning’s issues while he was deployed. In May 2010, he diagnosed Bradley with Gender-Identity Dysphoria (GID), formerly known as Gender-Identity Disorder, along with an anxiety-related but unspecified personality disorder.
The doctor discussed how GID isolated Manning and gave him great stress, as gender is a core part of our identity, adding to the pressures and difficulty he already endured as a homosexual soldier under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT). Even without GID, Dr. Worsley said, Manning was working in an “almost openly hostile environment” that made life “extremely difficult.”
Revealing oneself as homosexual in the military could result in a court-martial at the time, and even today after DADT’s repeal, revealing one’s desire to be the opposite gender would result in administrative separation from the Army.
Manning had no real support system to reach out to about his issues. Dr. Worsley said that soldiers are already separated from their support base, but Manning didn’t really have one back at home anyway. Now he was put in a “hyper-masculine environment,” so the pressure would’ve been “incredible.”
Dr. Worsley said in May (Manning was arrested later that month), he and behavioral health officials discussed what was best for him, believing he should be chaptered out of the Army, because GID was a “long-term issue” that would be “better served outside of the military.”
Manning’s sister and aunt describe childhood
Casey Major-Manning, Bradley’s older sister, testified about their childhood, marred by alcoholism and neglect. Both of their parents drank daily; their father was a functioning alcoholic while their mother slept until noon, at which point she began to drink until she dropped. At just 11-years old when he was born, Casey changed Bradley’s diapers and brought him a bottle, as his mother was frequently too drunk. Bradley’s mother drank and smoked cigarettes at least six months into her pregnancy.
Bradley’s aunt, Debra Van Alstyne, testified about how Manning has changed in the last three years, since his arrest.
“He understands there are people who love him, care about him,” she said. “I’m not sure he understood that before.”
Asked what she would say to Judge Lind, regarding Manning’s potential sentence, she said, “I just hope she takes into account he had a very hard start” in life. “He just thought he was doing the right thing when I think he was really not thinking clearly at all.”
The defense then rested its sentencing case. Court will resume Friday, at 1:00pm ET, for a potential government rebuttal case.

The Stately Drag Queens Of The Portland Museum Of Art

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

Sometimes a man is hard-pressed to tell a story, to tell a story about things that he only learned about later in life, learned about haphazardly and in some senses in an abstract way, in an abstract right way but abstract nevertheless. Learned some things which his experience, his life experience, is ill-suited for him to try to make sense out of, to try to fit in human language emotions of which he is only distantly capable of conveying, yet is compelled to convey. The story to be conveyed here is such a story and concerns my old growing up friend, Jason Barnes, from Olde Saco, that is up in Maine, coastal Maine for those heathens who want to know, about twenty miles or so from scene of the action here, the Portland Museum of Art located over on Congress Street in that benighted city. Yah, Jason Barnes’ saga is such a story about a man’s abstract knowledge limitations and while it would be better for him to tell it, and maybe he will some day when he reflects on what I say here, it is left to this old scribbler to give his take on the matter as it was explained to him by Jason one night not long ago.

I had not seen Jason for a while, maybe three or four years, until he rang me up one afternoon once he found out from a mutual friend of ours from the Olde Saco days that I had retired from the publishing industry and had moved from the bustle and traffic of Cambridge back up to Ocean City not far from where we grew up (although it might as well be a million planets away from the old Acre projects where we came of age. Since Jason now resides in Kennebunk , also a short distance from Olde Saco, it was an easy fit to meet up at one of our old drinking holes, the Dew Drop Inn in ocean-side Olde Saco, one late afternoon where we in our youth had many a time unloaded many a hard-pressed dollar trying to drink ourselves into some form of salvation, mine from constant women troubles, and he not from those particular woes but others, others unknown to me at the time but certainly did not concern women. After a few drinks, the old whiskey and water of our youth still the drink of choice except now we drank from the high-shelf rather than house whiskey or what passed for whiskey then, he laid out his story, not to seek pity or redress or anything like that but just to tell it, and to ask for some commiseration if not understanding. Commiseration he got that day, the bonds that we could draw on of that emotion going back to boyhood 1950s times in the old Acre projects where we breathed our first.

Now I have to tell you some things about Jason, some things related to the story even though it is going to raise hell with the flow of what he had to say and how I would really want to present what he had to say. It will go a long way to explaining why he got commiseration that late Dew Drop Inn afternoon although not understanding. Like I said Jason and I were thick as thieves from first grade at Olde Saco South Elementary School located in that housing project that I mentioned before and that everybody in town called the Acre (whether to signify Hell’s Acre or God’s Little Acre was, is, a subject for dispute) all the way through high school. We had our share of run-ins with authority, first teachers and parents, later cops and judges. We also had our share, or so it seemed at the time, of successes and failures with girls, the young women who were forever a mystery then (and now).

On that last matter it was frankly all a sham on Jason’s part though. A crying out loud sham, although he didn’t know it at the time, at the time when he was grabbing every stray girl on the beach, the ballroom or Jimmy Jakes’ Diner (the one on Main Street no the one on Atlantic Avenue that catered to the tourists, the French-Canadian tourist who swamped the place in summer making it an outpost of old Quebec), nor how to express it, or how to proceed on his feelings in that benighted 1950s old time French- Canadian Roman Catholic-drenched working class town. See, and this I did not know until many years later when he shocked me with the news after he told me he had been arrested in New York City on Christopher Street in 1969 during what later became known as the Stonewall Rebellion, Jason was gay (or to use the terms of the times and which he used to describe himself then, a fag, queer, a homosexual, although he did not use the term homo).

And Jason said that had always had those feelings from when he was a young boy, a young boy sifting through his mother’s bureau drawers touching her womanly things, getting an unnamable excitement from the rustle of silk and cotton. (Although truth to tell I also did the same things, the same no idea what made women different from men thing except the feeling was not to endure for long). We were both adults at the time of his “coming out” and I certainly knew of homosexual activities (and knew how to say fag, queer and homo, as well as dyke and lessie with the best of them), or had heard about them from others I knew in the newspaper world who were so inclined. But not Jason, not Jason who had a wife and two young children whom he adored and who adored him. Impossible.

It took me a long while, a very long while, to comprehend that hard fact, that he had suppressed his real feelings, had done what was “normal”for the sake of appearance and for the sake of his parents and siblings, had done what was the right thing to cover for the wrong things that he began to investigate, secretly, very secretly began to investigate not long after we left high school. It wasn’t until sometime later when I asked him why he had never “hit” on me, or gave me any overt expression of what he was feeling he said, I, kind of bookish, kind of full of a guy full himself, and kind of scrawny, was not his type, his type being muscle beach boys then. He made me laugh when he said he would watch the muscle guys that did their work-outs on Olde Saco Beach every summer and figure that they were the essence of manliness not realizing that many of those brethren were as gay as he was. In any case later, later when he began to act on his desires he actually favored bookish guys, although he had no taste for scrawny ones. With that remark, after the laughter settled down, we were undying friends again.

So with that information out of the way we can proceed with what Jason told me that barroom afternoon, told me about himself more that I had heard about before in order to understand why he was upset by what happened at the art museum. Sometime after Jason “discovered” who he really was, and acted on it by divorcing his wife and moving to the Soho district down in New York City just before it became the big arty place to be he had a further identity crisis. Or rather exploring his sexuality further than he had done previously, previously when he was keeping himself deep in the closet and having to spend all his emotional and physical energy on keeping that hard lid on, he found that he really did like that old time feeling he got when he put on his mother’s garments (and later, in deep secret, his wife’s things on occasion). He didn’t believe he was a woman necessarily but he knew that he felt more than just being a gay man. So he started to hang out at the High Hat Club, a joint off of Soho where there were nightly drag queen performances. You know some big burly guy dressing up and performing Mae West or some blonde, and making the boys tittle. Harmless stuff really, and nobody’s business.

One night though, a slow Monday night Jason thought, they had what we now call an “open mic” at the club and for three dollars you could dress up and go up and strut your stuff, and see if the boys were tittled. Now I know this “open mic” stuff from other milieus, the ever ready folkies filling up local coffeehouses with their plainsong plea, comedy clubs looking for fresh talent, poetry slams and so on but I was never hip to the drag queen scene and how they discovered new talent. All I knew was that at the end of Olde Saco Beach, down the far end, the very end there used to be a club my mother (and if I recall Jason’s too) warned us against, the Rock Haven, an old converted boat where female impersonators did their thing.

So this one night Jason decided to strut his stuff. He gave more details that I needed to know about the arts of breast enhancement, leg and face shaving, and the terrible problems with make-up worthy of some of the women I have known but this not about the trials and tribulations of drag queens as such so I will not proceed further along that course. I don’t know if he had a boyfriend at the time, a steady guy anyway, but he went on stage that night and did a smoky version of jazz-singer Peggy Lee’s Cry Me A River. The boys went wild, went crazy and he had more dates than he could handle for a while. Moreover he turned that night’s performance into an act at the club for the next several years, a paying act, which provided him, along with generous boyfriends, mainly older, with enough to live on for a while.

The problem though like with all women is that once the aging process starts, starts its inevitable toll the boys were looking for fresh meat, fresh songs and fresh daisies. Jason also said he was tired of the scene, more so after many, too many friends contracted AIDS and so he went back to his profession, his trained profession as an architect for a firm outside of Boston. And so he did that and still does that kind of work, lives a quiet life with his lover and husband, Gus (husband of late once the good citizens of Maine finally got it right on the same-sex marriage question). A good solid citizen of the Pine Tree state and still is.

But what got Jason so upset, so knotted up that he had to tell Joshua Breslin of his incident at the art museum. Well, here is the way he told it to me. He had wanted to see the travelling exhibit from the Museum of Modern Art, the Payson Collection of mainly modern art so he went there one weekday to do so. While viewing Pablo Picasso’s Boy With A Horse he noticed that an older woman, a woman dressed rather shabbily, no, rather haphazardly with a hat popular in about 1956 that did not go with her outfit, a jacket that did not match with her skirt, and wearing sneakers, New Balance, topped off by huge ill-fitting glasses and some almost ghoulish make-up that did nothing for her was watching him intensely. A mess thought Jason at first and second glance. Now this is important because even as a kid Jason had a feline, well let’s call it a feline, sense of style, even if he, we, couldn’t do anything about it, not having two dimes to rub together most days. So this woman’s look offended his sense of order but he let it pass.

While Jason was viewing a Matisse though he noticed this old shipwreck was staring at him again, staring closely, and did so for a couple of minutes. Then this wreck yelled out “Peggy, Peggy Lee, it’s me Judy Garland,” Jason shrank for he knew very well the reference could only be directed at him, and only by someone who knew him from New York City in the old days, his old drag queen days. And he knew further that “Judy Garland” was none other than Dick Jones (aka Rita Jones, and several other names as well, girl’s names of course) whom he worked with (and competed, furiously competed with, as they all did for those boy titters) at various location in that city. So Jason knew, despite all caution that he needed to talk to her, talk quickly and quietly.

The upshot of the whole thing was that the shipwreck, let’s call her Judy to keep things straight, was in town for one day, one night really, doing her Judy act down at the Sandbar Club. Jesus, Jason thought don’t old queens know enough to give it up. He also could not imagine the clientele that would pay, pay good money or bad, to see a sixty-something drag queen under any circumstances. Jason had the good sense to stop performing before he wound up in some such circumstances. And that is really why Jason wanted to discuss this whole thing with me, me rather than Gus, who would have been nonplussed by the whole thing. Besides Jason really wanted to talk about getting old, about our getting old, and not about the stately if faded drag queens of the art museum. He said seeing Judy made him for the first time feel old. Welcome aboard, brother. But get this- every time I think about the image of that faded drag queen waiting for the other shoe to drop I finally realized why I could only commiserate with Jason and not show understanding. Jesus.