***On The 98^th Anniversary Of Irish Easter Uprising 1916- A Word

 

A word on the Easter Uprising.

The easy part of analyzing the Easter Uprising of 1916 is the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland and militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it and therefore doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the strategy and tactics of the action and of the various actors, particularly in underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. Although, I think that frenzy on Mother England’s part would be a point in the uprising’s favor under the theory that England’s (or fill in the blank) woes were Ireland’s (or fill in the blank) opportunities.

The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were entirely committed to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, British Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor Party leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and others today is the same as then- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings I have come across a theory that the Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising’s leaders only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. (Let poets rule the land).

As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. Some formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 or the Soviet Commune of 1917 did not figure in the political calculations at that time.

As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic. That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter Rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own revolutionary experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord as a way to open the road to the class, struggle merited support on that basis alone. Chocky Ar La.

In Honor Of Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s Birthday (April 1870-Janaury 1924)-The Struggle Continues-Ivan Smilga’s Political Journey-Take Six        

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

 
For several years I have been honoring various revolutionary forbears, including the subject of this birthday tribute, the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin architect (along with fellow revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky) of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 each January under the headline-Honor The Three L’s–Lenin, Luxemburg , Liebknecht. My purpose initially was (and still is) to continue the traditions established by the Communist International in the early post-World War I period to honor our revolutionary forbears. That month has special significance since in the month of January leftists honor those three leading revolutionaries who had died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in his sleep after a long illness in 1924, and Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin.

I have made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I on previous occasions. I have also made some special points as well about the life of Rosa Luxemburg, “the Rose of the Revolution.” This month, the month of his birth, it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find a few good heroes, to highlight the early struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, as he attempted to define himself politically. Below is a sketch of a young fictional labor militant, although maybe not so fictional in the scheme of the revolutionary developments in Russia under the Tsar toward the end of the 19^th century and early 20^th century. This sketch should help define the problems facing the working-class there then, and perhaps now as well.

Ivan Smilga trembled with exhaustion as he knocked on the door at 20 Wentworth Street in the city of London where he sought refuge after his long flight from the Siberian frost fields of Mother Russia. Exhausted too beside him was his “wife” Elena (nee Kassova), a very pregnant Elena, whom Ivan had just helped escape from those frost fields after a six month journey over several countries and many stops. He had been given the Wentworth Street address by reliable comrades in Germany after Berlin had become too hot for the couple to stay in as Russian refugees (political exiles but we will use the German governmental designation for effect) and needed to move on to continue the struggle for freedom back home while they were forced abroad. As Ivan stood there waiting for the door to open he reflected on just how fantastic the past six months, hell, the past year had been.   

He thought back to that time a couple of years before, a few days before New Year’s Day 1900 when he had fought with Elena over the very hot question then of whether they would just continue the trade-union organizing at the Putilov Iron Works in Saint Petersburg where they both worked as he wished having been burned before when he tried to act politically before or expand as Elena wanted to make political demands of the Tsarist regime including public street demonstrations to make their point. Elena had been determined to pursue that course and had been planning along with a few fellow radical workers and a few students from the University such an action for New Year’s Day 1900 to symbolically bring Russia in the new century. After that argument Ivan had run off, left town for a retreat at the Finnish border and sulked. Finished sulking and filled with love (regular old romantic love) for his Elena he determined that he would help her after all. However by the time he returned to Saint Petersburg the Cossacks had done their dirty bloody sabre-wielding work and Elena had been rounded up and detained for trial and eventual transportation and exile in Siberia. Ivan had been ashamed that he had left  this love, his real love in the lurch by his actions and resolved to  go to the Siberian exile to be with her, or help her escape abroad depending on the circumstances.

Ivan having prior to meeting Elena at the Putilov Works had his own Siberian exile for some scatter-brained conspiracy against the Tsar that he had been talked in to, had no problem getting himself exiled to Siberia for the political crime of standing in front of the Winter Palace by himself calling for freedom for the Winter Palace Twenty (the number of those, including Elena, who were picked up at that New Year’s Day demonstration). Once he got to his place of exile at Yalov in the Siberian wilds (their place eventually since he had “married” Elena while in exile in order bring her with him from her place of exile at Alta Ata) he immediately began to plot their escape. She encouraged him in that pursuit since her days as effective street organizer inside Russia were over for now. That plan became more pressing when Elena shortly after joining him at Yalov became pregnant and didn’t want to have her child born in slave Russia (she had wanted to parent a revolutionary Ivan, just an old county bumpkin wayward backward farm boy at heart just wanted a child). Moreover Elena (and in her wake once Ivan began to attend the lively if sometimes arcane meetings of the local political exile groupings), a crackerjack organizer was needed by her organization, the fledgling Russian Social-Democratic Party, to go into foreign exile in order to help the organization from abroad now that he days inside Russia were numbered.            

Hence the escape by the pair in the dead of night and in the dead of winter, harrowing at times what with nature, wild animals, wild men and desperadoes ready to pounce on any weak thing out there, having to hide out under many furs on a sleigh in order not to freeze to make good their initial escape, then finally by rail to Saint Petersburg. From that location they moved clandestinely over the border and further passage out to Germany. They needed to move on against despite Elena’s weakened condition after Berlin when, at the Tsar’s request to the German government to deny all Russians exile status (the various reigning monarchs were inter-related) that place became too hot for them. From there they moved to Paris and then now exhausted to London. As the door opened and Elena brightened to see Vladmir Smirnov, an old party comrade of Elena’s Ivan finally realized that whatever else Elena’s and now his party work had become a family necessity. He felt he was ready now…               

Sixteen and sex. No, not the in some backseat coupe down by the seashore, up some hilled lovers’ lane, or in some midnight minute motel kind, at least not yet. Just get to know her, easy know her, and let things take their course from there. No more of this frenzied, heated, beating some other guy’s time (or trying to) like he had just got finished doing with Lucy. No more Lucys, and as an amendment, make it a constitutional amendment if you want, no more dog-eat-dog fighting over girls, women, you know, frails.

That is exactly what Johnny Prescott had on his mind as noticed this cool looking frill (girl) across the field heading his way. The field being, for those not from Clintondale, unofficially known as “the meadows,” a family outing place not well-used now that they had the big Gloversville Amusement Park going full blast but just the place to go and think through, well think through, sixteen and sex, boy sixteen and sex. So he knew, knew as sure as he knew he own think through habits that this frill (girl) was also here to do some thinking. Maybe some getting over a boy think like he was getting over Lucy. Or maybe thinking that the way the boy meets girl rules were set up were just flat-out screwy. He hoped so.

And as she, this girl okay, approached he recognized her from school, from Clintondale High. At least he thought so because although the high school was fairly big it was small enough so that he should have recognized her, even if only from the “caf.” As she came very close in view he noticed that it was none other than Timmy Riley’s younger sister, Betty Ann, a sophomore a year behind him. At first he was going to pass because now that he thought about it, although it was clear that she was pretty in a second look way, and maybe a third look way too, she was known as one of those bookish-types that, well, you know were too bookish to think about sixteen year old boys and sex, or maybe boys of any age. And, well Timmy, Timmy Riley, was the star fullback on the Red Raiders football team, and who knew how he felt about his bookish sister and sexed-up sixteen year old boys.

But Johnny felt lucky, or maybe just desperate, and started to speak. But before he could get word one out Betty Ann said, “It’s a nice day for walking the meadows with nobody around. I come here when I want to think about stuff, about my future and what I want to do in the world. How about you?” Bingo, thought Johnny. I am going to talk to Betty Ann, and I’ll take my chances with Timmy- the hell with him (unless he reads this then it’s strictly only in my head, okay Timmy). And they talked and talked until almost dark. Talk-weary but still no wanting to move more than three yards from each other Johnny pulled out his transistor radio and they listened to WMEX, the be-bop, non-stop rock ‘n’ roll station that was mandatory listening for those under eighteen, those who counted.

And while listening to Roy Orbison trill out Dream Baby; Brenda Lee heart-breakingly warble All Alone Am I: Patty Cline ditto heartbreak She’s Got You; Don and Juan telegraph Johnny’s pitch line What’s Your Name; The Angels silky be-bop ‘Til; and Frank Ifield croon I Remember You Johnny and Betty Ann began what became one of the great Clintonville High romances of 1962.

***Rick’s Flying Saucer Rock Moment- Weird, Wild &Wacky

He was glad, glad as hell that angel thing, that guardian angel thing, was over and done with. You know that Sunday school thing they beat you over head with about how your guardian angel was there to keep you on the straight and narrow, or else. Yes, Rick Rogers certainly was glad that was over although now that he thought about it  just kind of passed out of sight as he got older and other things filled his mind. Things like his June ("June Bug" was his pet name for her but he had better not hear you call her that, especially one Freddie Jackson, or else). Yes, Rick was now large, strong enough, and smart enough strong, not to have to worry about some needlepoint guardian angel looking out for him. Although truth to tell he was worried, a little anyway, about this Cold War Russian bear thing coming over here to take his brain away, or maybe put the big heat on him, the A-bomb heat and creating alien things from outer space to haunt his dreams. But only a little.

What was exercising Rick these days was his June (you know her pet name but don’t say it, please) and causing him no end of sleepless nights was that thing about Freddie Jackson, June’s old flame. At least according to his sister, Celia, a reliable source of North Adamsville High gossip, and not afraid to spread it when it pleased her, was that Freddie was taking his peeks at June, and she was peeking back. So, lately, in order to pass those sleepless nights Rick had begun to sit up in his bedroom at night with his transistor radio on, the one that he had forced his parents to buy him, batteries included, for last Christmas, rather than the practical ties they had intended to foist on him. And what Rick listened as the hour turned to midnight was The Crazy Lazy Midnight Madness Show on WMEX, the local be-bop, no stop, all rock radio station the that got the sleepless, the half-awake, the lame and the lazy through the 1950s Cold War night, and into the dawn.

Now this Crazy Lazy Show fare was strictly for night owls, stuff that would not appeal to daytime rockers, you know, those listening to guys like Elvis, Carl, Bo, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee, or just stuff that appealed to Lazy’s off-center, off-beat funny bone. One night, one really restless night, as Rick was revving up the transistor around midnight he heard Buchanan and Goodman’s silly The Flying Saucer, parts one and two back to back no less, so you see Crazy was serious about presenting goofy stuff. That was followed by Sheb Wooley’s devouring the Purple People Eater, and then, for a change of pace The Royal Teens be-bop Short, Shorts and that got his to thinking about how good June looked in them, and then back to zaniness when Bobby Picketts' flattened Monster Mash and, as he got a little drowsy, The Detergents waved over Leader of the Laundromat.

That last one got to him, got to him good, because, believe it or not the song had sentimental value to him. See he met June at the North Adamsville All-Wash Laundromat one day. His mother’s washing machine had broken down and she needed to bring the Roberts' laundry to the All-Wash and Rick drove her over. During that time June had passed by, he had said hi, they had talked and then more seriously talked, and that was that. Freddie Jackson was after that dust, a memory, nothing to June.

All this thinking really got Rick tired this night and as the last chords of Laundromat echoed in his head he fell into a deep sleep. Around four o’clock in the morning though he was awoken with a start, with the high pitched whining sound coming from some where outside his window. Next thing he knew a huge disc-like object was hovering over most of Adamsville, and stayed there for maybe a minute before departing just as quickly as it appeared. Rick took this for a sign, a sign that he and June would hang together. And a sign that Freddie Jackson probably should have taken a trip on that flying saucer while he could, or else.

Scenes From The 1960s Folk Minute-When The World, Our World, Was Young

Scenes From The 1960s Folk Minute-When The World, Our World, Was Young

Scenes From The 1960s Folk Minute-When The World, Our World, Was Young

Scenes From The 1960s Folk Minute-When The World, Our World, Was Young

B.B. King

Scenes From The 1960s Folk Minute-When The World, Our World, Was Young

The Charles River Valley Boys

The Class Struggle Continues...

 

Scenes From The 1960s Folk Minute-When The World, Our World, Was Young

In Honor Of May Day 2014-From The American Left History Blog Archives-Notes Of An Old Soldier-Greetings On May Day 2012 From The Boston Rally- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan –Ten Years Is Enough!

 

Sisters and Brothers, Hermanas y Hermanos, greetings on this glorious May Day, a day of international solidarity with the working people and oppressed of the world. Veterans for Peace proudly stands in solidarity with and defense of the just struggles of all people for political, social and economic justice in this wicked old world. And as witness our defenses of the encampments at Dewey Square in October and December of last year, and on a myriad other occasions, these are not just flowery words used on holiday occasions.

 

May Day is a very appropriate day to address the lessons of war and peace, lessons, as our organization’s name indicates, that have been dearly learned by war-hardened veterans on many of the battle fields of the 20^th and 21^st century.  I want to tell you a secret, a secret though that I want you to spread far and wide. I do not give a damn about the Obama Administration’s timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. I say, no I cry out to high heaven- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops and Mercenaries from Afghanistan. Ten years is enough!

 

And since this May Day is a day for actions I call on our sister and brother rank and file soldiers in Afghanistan, abandoned by the Obama administration to international expediency, to tell, no order, their commanders from that lowly platoon leader out in the boondocks to Commander-In Chief Obama to rev up the jeeps now, rev up the truck transports now, rev up the transport planes now. All Troops Out Now! And when they get back here heal them! Enough of war! Thank you.   

*** On The Aches And Pains Of Aging -With Jim Cullen, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, And All Other AARP-Worthy Brethren In Mind

 

 

 

"Do not go gentle..

...into that good night." First line of Dylan Thomas' poem of the same name.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT- Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Frankie Riley here. Yah, I know it has been a while since you have heard from me and I have seen or heard from most of you. Now some of you know, know full well, that back in North Adamsville days I could, well, you know “stretch” the truth. Stretch it pretty far when I was in a fix, or one of my corner boys like my right-hand man Peter Paul Markin up at our old "up the Downs" haunt, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, needed some outlandish excuse to get right. And fellow women classmates and some other women non-classmates as well know I would outright lie, lie like the devil in church or out, to get, well, “close” to you. Hope you forgive me about the lying, not about the trying to get close to you part. But that is all water of over the dam or under the bridge, take your choice. Today I am a new man, a truth-teller, or trying to be, except of course when I am practicing my profession as a lawyer. Then the truth might just be as elusive as it was when I was making up excuses for my corner boys or, if you were a woman, trying to “feel” you up. But enough of that as I am not here to speak of my repentance or about me at all, as hard as that might be to believe, but of the hard fact of age, yah, that creeping up thing that just kind of snuck up on us. So I am here to say just one thing- “won’t you take my word from me” like the old blues singer used to sing when he had the miseries. Listen up.

I am, once again, on my high horse today like I used to be when I had the bee in my bonnet on some subject in the old days. I have heard enough, in fact more than enough, whining from fellow AARP-worthies that I have been in contact with lately and others of my contemporaries from the "Generation of '68” about the aches and pains of becoming “ a certain age.” If I hear one more story about a knee, hip, heart, or, maybe, brain replacement or other transformative surgery I will go screaming into that good night. The same goes for descriptions of the CVS-worthy litany of the contents of an average graying medicine cabinet. Or the high cost of meds.

If I am not mistaken, and from what that old gossipy Markin has told me, many of you fully imbibed in all the excesses of our generation from crazed-out drug overkill to wacky sexual exploits that need not be mentioned in detail here (although I would not mind hearing of a few exploits strictly in confidence, attorney-client type confidence, of course), and everything else in between. Admit it. So come on now, after a lifetime of booze, dope, and wild times what did you expect? For those of us who have not lived right, lo these many years, the chickens have come home to roost. But I have a cure. Make that THE cure.

No I am not, at this late date, selling the virtues of the Bible, the Torah, the Koran or any of a thousand and one religious cures we are daily bombarded with. You knew, or at least I hope you knew, I wasn't going to go that route. That question, in any case, is each individual's prerogative and I have no need to interfere there. Nor am I going to go on and on about the wonders of liposuction, botox, chin lifts, buttocks tuckers, stomach flatteners and the like. Damn, have we come to that? And I certainly do not want to inflame the air with talk of existentialism or some other secular philosophies that tell you to accept your fate with your head down. You knew that, as well. No, I am here to give the "glad tidings," unadorned. Simply put- two words-graham crackers. No, do not reach for the reading glasses, your eyes do not deceive you- graham crackers is what I said.

Hear me out on this. I am no "snake oil" salesman, nor do I have stock in Nabisco (moreover their products are not "true" graham). So, please do not start jabbering to me about how faddish that diet was- in about 1830. I know that it has been around a while. And please do not start carping about how wasn't this healthful substance "magic elixir," or some such, that Ralph Waldo Emerson and his transcendentalist protégés praised to high heaven back in Brook Farm days. Well, I frankly admit, as with any such movement, some of those guys went over the top, especially that wacky Bronson Alcott. Irresponsible zealots are always with us. Please, please do not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Doctor Graham simply insisted that what our dietary intake consisted of was important and that a generous amount of graham flour in the system was good for us. Moreover, in order to avoid some of the mistakes of the earlier movement, in the age of the Internet we can now Google to find an almost infinite variety of uses and helpful recipes. Admit it, right now your head is swirling thinking about how nice it would be to have a few crackers and a nice cold glass of milk (fat-free or 1%, of course). Admit also you loved those graham crumb-crusted pies your grandmother used to make. The old chocolate pudding-filled ones were my favorite. Lime was a close second. Enough said.

Here is the closer, as they say. If people have been mistaking you for your father's brother or mother's sister lately then this is your salvation. So scurry down to your local Whole Foods or other natural food store and begin to fight your way back to health. Let me finish with this personal testimonial. I used to regularly be compared in appearance to George Bush, Sr. Now I am being asked whether Brad Pitts is my twin brother. Or is it Robert Redford? .....Oh well, that too is part of the aging process. Like I say-“won’t you take my word from me.” Get to it.

******

To “jump start” you here is a little recipe I culled from my own Google of the Internet.

Graham Crackers Recipe
November 10, 2004

I'm nostalgic about graham crackers because they remind me of my Grandma Mac. Her full name is Maxine McMurry and she is now 90 years old. She lived just a short drive from our house (when my sister and I were kids) and we would tag along after soccer games when my dad would go by on Saturdays to check up on her, trim hedges, wash cars, or do any handyman work she needed. Heather and I didn't mind at all because she had a huge driveway that was flat as a pancake and smooth as an frozen pond -- perfect for roller skating. This was in striking contrast to our house that was on a steep hill which made skating perilous at best.

Grandma Mac always had snacks and treats for us when we arrived. She had a beautiful cookie jar in the shape of a big red apple which was always filled with oatmeal raisin cookies (I admittedly picked out all the raisins). Around the holidays she would fill old See's candy boxes with with perfect cubes of chocolate fudge, and if we were really lucky she would have a plate full of sweet, graham cracker sandwich cookies in the refrigerator. It was a pretty simple concept, but I've never had it since. She would take cream cheese frosting and slather it between two graham crackers and then let it set up in the fridge. I couldn't get enough.

So I thought of her when I saw this recipe for homemade graham crackers from Nancy Silverton's pastry book. I've cooked a few other winners from Nancy's books in the past; the Classic Grilled Cheese with Marinated Onions and Whole Grain Mustard, and Spiced Caramel Corn, and have quite a few more tagged for the future.

Most people think graham crackers come from the box. Period. But making homemade versions of traditional store-bought staples is worth the effort if you have some extra time or enthusiasm -- in part because the homemade versions always taste better, but also because people LOVE seeing and tasting homemade versions of foods they have only tasted out of a store-bought bag or box. I've done marshmallows and hamburger buns in the past, as well - both a lot of fun.

As far as Nancy Silverton's take on graham crackers goes - this recipe was flawless. I didn't even have to make a special trip to the store because I had every ingredient in my pantry - flour, brown sugar, honey, butter. The dough was easy to work with, and the best part of the whole thing is that the cookies actually taste exactly like graham crackers. They are delicious. I included a recipe for the cream cheese frosting in case you want to make sandwich cookies out of your homemade crackers.

Graham Cracker Recipe

2 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons unbleached pastry flour or unbleached all-purpose flour

1 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

7 tablespoons (3 1/2 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen

1/3 cup mild-flavored honey, such as clover

5 tablespoons whole milk

2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

For the topping:

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade or in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. Pulse or mix on low to incorporate. Add the butter and pulse on and off on and off, or mix on low, until the mixture is the consistency of a coarse meal.

In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, milk, and vanilla extract. Add to the flour mixture and pulse on and off a few times or mix on low until the dough barely comes together. It will be very soft and sticky.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and pat the dough into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Wrap in plastic and chill until firm, about 2 hours or overnight.

To prepare the topping: In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon, and set aside.

Divide the dough in half and return one half to the refrigerator. Sift an even layer of flour onto the work surface and roll the dough into a long rectangle about 1/8 inch thick. The dough will be sticky, so flour as necessary. Trim the edges of the rectangle to 4 inches wide. Working with the shorter side of the rectangle parallel to the work surface, cut the strip every 4 1/2 inches to make 4 crackers. Gather the scraps together and set aside. Place the crackers on one or two parchment-lined baking sheets and sprinkle with the topping. Chill until firm, about 30 to 45 minutes. Repeat with the second batch of dough.

Adjust the oven rack to the upper and lower positions and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Gather the scraps together into a ball, chill until firm, and reroll. Dust the surface with more flour and roll out the dough to get about two or three more crackers.

Mark a vertical line down the middle of each cracker, being careful not to cut through the dough. Using a toothpick or skewer, prick the dough to form two dotted rows about 1/2 inch for each side of the dividing line.

Bake for 25 minutes, until browned and slightly firm to the tough, rotating the sheets halfway through to ensure even baking.

Yield: 10 large crackers

From Nancy Silverton's Pastries from the La Brea Bakery (Villard, 2000)

Cream Cheese Frosting1

8-ounce package of cream cheese

2 tablespoons butter, softened

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 cups of powdered sugar, sifted

Beat the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer until creamy. Mix in the cream cheese and beat until light and fluffy. Stir in the vanilla extract and when fully incorporated add the powdered sugar. Mix until smooth and creamy. Place in the refrigerator for an hour before using.

from Nancy Silverton's Pastries from the La Brea Bakery - reprinted with permission

***The Times Are Out Of Joint-Susie Roberts' Curse

The 1960s were an unusual time, unusual in that the normal certainty of life that every person, every teen-age person, kind of came to expect out of life in the red scare cold war night, go to school, get a job, get married, get ahead, pay attention a little to the news but keep it mainly at arm’s length came crashing down on the land like some mighty Jehovah storm to lift up and shake out almost every kid who was breathing and alert. The story of what did, and did not, happen between Susie Roberts and Jeff Brigham is a small snapshot sketch of what the big shake-up was all about. In another time, say the 1940s and 1950s of their parents’ time, they would, or would not have come together, dated, got married, had three kids and two dogs and been done with it. But a different wind blew in their time and the Susie Roberts of the world had to adjust or move on.    

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We know all about Rick Roberts, Susie’s older and only brother,   and his struggles growing up in the 1950s coming of age really by 1960. We know for instance that he used that transistor radio that his parents had given him one Christmas to shut out his parents’ and their poky music. Late one Sunday night he wound up discovering the blues coming out of Daddy Bopper’s Midnight Blues Hour from WMEX in Chicago learning about Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Son House and a whole brood of guys that came out of the Mississippi Delta hungry and lean and sick and tired of being sick and tired of one Mister James Crow and his evil ways. And that made something snap inside of him. So it was no surprise, no surprise at all in very white bread Clintonville (with zero black people) when Rick went to downtown Boston one Saturday afternoon when he was a senior at Clintonville High and joined in a picket of those protesting in front of Woolworth’s in support of those sitting-in down south to desegregate the lunch counters. It was also no surprise when Rick had crossed another line, maybe not as scary as the Jim Crow line but just as strong in the Clintonville high school ethos of the time where such things were not done, when he actually dated Julie Murray from North Clintonville High after they met in the mostly abandoned Clintonville Memorial Park one autumn afternoon and found they had a lot in common. That “lot in common” would later include the pair heading south when the desperate call for volunteers to help with civil rights work came.     

Susie Roberts, Rick’s youngest sister, however, faced a very different if more conventional dilemma. See Susie was stuck. No, not stuck in some car stuck place on some desolate road looking for sir galahad to show up and rescue the fair damsel, pulling might and main to win her favors. And, decidedly, not stuck on some Clintondale High Math class Pythagorean Theorem math problem looking for the square root of some distance from point A to point B. She had Lenny Linsky for that, and for any other math/science/history/english problem that she needed resolved. Yes, Lenny was that way about her. As were a few others, a few hopeless others, not willing however to join Lenny in the slave quarters. Everyone, hopeless or hopeful agreed, that while Susie was not up to speed in the mechanical or smarts departments she was cute (not knock-down drag-out beautiful but pretty enough, pretty enough not to have to worry about thinking about mechanical problems or math either now, and probably ever), tall, blonde, real blonde if you can believe that in this day, this 1966 day in age, pert, and miss personality. And in the final analysis isn’t that what you want in a high school honey even in the worst of times?

That though is exactly where Susie’s stuck problem came in. See she was stuck on a soda jerk over at Doc’s Drugstore in North Adamsville. (The segregated line that brother Rick and Julie had broken over “mixed” dating had disappeared like so much bad hubris and silliness in the Jehovah continental youth nation storm a-brewing so much so that Susie was not even aware of the taboo when she eyed her soda jerk) And Susie did not have eyes for just any of Doc’s five jerks (yes, I know soda jerks, but let’s just shorthand this thing as jerks, no slander intended, okay) but Jeff Brigham.

Yes, Jeff Brigham the big time politico, North Adamsville student body version, who had his picture taken with Robert Kennedy at some Northeast anti-war student conference where they were mapping out ways to end the war in Vietnam. And that is really where the problem came in. Jeff, bright, agile, good-looking Jeff, these heady days has no time for Susie, well, Susie no brains, although not really no brains but more no political brains. And see Susie does not understand why a sophomore, a good-looking sophomore girl in the year of our lord, 1966, have to care about war, about black civil rights, about whether Red China should be in the United Nations or not, or about which way America should be going just to keep up to speed with a jerk, although a good-looking jerk.

Something is out of whack and Susie can’t figure an angle to get to Jeff. Hey, any other time Jeff would be so much putty in her hands. He would be jerk proud, like the others at Doc’s were, just to have Susie come in and talk to them. But, damn, Susie muttered under her breath they aren’t Jeff. And as many signals as she has given Jeff when she played Doc’s juke box, played it to perdition, and tried to interest him in talking about songs like The Temptations’ crooning My Girl; Otis Redding’s be-bopping I’ve Been Loving You Too Long; Barbara Lewis practically begging her man to take what he wants on Baby, I’m Yours; and when she turns the volume up for Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman he just smiles his non-committal smile and starts talking about whether Robert Kennedy should, or should not, run for President in 1968, or some such thing. And then Susie fumed under her breath, the times are damn well out of joint as she plans her next moves.