***Poet's Corner- John Keats' Ode On A Grecian Urn...

Frank Jackman comment:

When I first read Keats' poem in high school I went crazy over it. Re-reading it now gives me that same feeling. That's the way some works of art affect you. 

John Keats. 1795–1821

625. Ode on a Grecian Urn

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape	5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?	10
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave	15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!	20
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!	25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.	30
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,	35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.	40
O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!	45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'	50

 

Poetess, Author And Activist Maya Angelou Passes At 86

 

***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..Intellectuals 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, you will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent by fellow classmates via the class website. So I have taken on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. That is no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Of course not everybody who graduated with me in that baby-boomer times class of over five hundred students had a literary flare or could articulate their dreams in the most coherent way. But they had dreams, and they have today when we have all been through about seven thousand of life’s battles, good and bad, a vehicle to express whatever they want. As I have mentioned before in other sketches I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.) Interestingly those who have joined the site have, more or less, felt free to send me private e-mails telling me stories about what happened back in the day in school or what has happened to them since their jailbreak from the confines of the old town.

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren mentioned above, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest. Other stuff as here defies simple classification as I am taking the high road, taking on a discussion about the class intellectuals, the ones who I admired from a distance, silently. My latest correspondence with Marilyn Madden, who as will be pointed out below was voted our senior class genius-female version, centered on an after-school club that she belonged to, The Great Books club, that I would have loved to have joined if I had known about it. Oh yeah, and if I hadn’t had about seven tons of teenage angst and alienation that made me a loner.  Here is my side of the thing anyway and a little tribute I put together to honor the “smart kids” of the class as a result of the e-mail exchanges between us:

 

[Marilyn and I originally “met” on site (I did not know her in school, no way) after I had noticed that her yearbook class photograph had not been on her profile page, send an e-mail to her about the omission,  and had notified the webmaster, Donna, of that fact which she subsequently rectified. That gave me an opening to mention to Marilyn her having been voted the class genius-female side and my take on that, and hers too. And we were off from there.]        

 

 “Hi Marilyn - Thank for note and thanks for agreeing with me that we should show generous appreciation whenever we can for the efforts of our reunion committee in putting together this website so we can cut up old torches.  As for your photo Donna, our super-wizard webmistress, placed yours on your profile page today. Check it out.  You look properly professorial there. It must be in the genes. [Marilyn’s forbears for three generations had been professors at a local religious college.]   As for the Madden-Smith name that is the way your name is listed on a related North Adamsville High School-website so I used that to address you. From now on I will use just Smith as you requested. [This concerned the way her name was listed in hyphenated form as is still somewhat popular in certain circles to not drown out forever maiden names (and identities).]

Now for the serious stuff-the writing stuff-I am surprised after reviewing your yearbook class photo resume that you said that you were isolated from other classmates. I thought I was the classic loner/outsider. In any case you have at least one thing on your resume I (and others) would be greatly interested in hearing about-the Great Books Club. I swear I didn’t know that we even had such a thing at school. I could have used that kind of club because I was filled to the brill with half-formed social/political/literary ideas and could have used such discussions to sort things out. What books did you discuss?

Here are some other questions you can answer at your leisure- how did North help or hinder you in your career as an editor? [Marilyn had recently retired after a career as an editor as various journals, newspapers, and publishing houses, some well-known.] Any particular teachers influence you? [Marilyn had commented favorably on my appreciation of Miss (Ms.) Sonos, my senior year English teacher placed on the Message Forum page for all to read.] If you don’t want to write about North times then how about your editing career. I hope it was for literary magazines and journals. We would be glad to read anything you could write. Look, we have an exceptional opportunity with the new technology to put together a collective memory of our times to show the stuff we were made of. We need you to help us.            

As for the genius thing I will keep quiet on that but I must confess since I believe the statute of limitations has run out on this “crime” that I actually voted for Sarah Stein for class genius. Forgive me. [Marilyn, too modest since her resume was worthy of such recognition, expressed surprise that she won the “class genius” designation and told me that she too had voted for Sarah. Keep that under your hat.] Later Frank Jackman.‘’

All of which spawned the following appreciation:

“***The Intellectuals Or The Jocks?

Every school since back in Socrates’ time has had discernable social groupings within so I was not surprised when I was asked recently what group(s) I hung around with, if any, at North. Here is my answer and I solicit yours as well…      

I did not then, nor do I now, know Sarah Stein, Marilyn Madden, or Irvin Jack Rubin, fellow classmates at North Adamsville High, Class of 1964 and among the smart set, the class geniuses. I don’t remember if my old “jock” running buddy Brad Badger,  whose very existence prompted me to recently write some teary-eyed thing about him running amok on the streets of North Adamsville in the old days knew them or not, but it was with them in mind that I wrote the following. I, today, strongly believe that I could have learned a lot from that trio and maybe Brad  believes that as well but you will have to ask him that question yourself. No way, no way on god’s good green earth in the year 2014 and while I am still breathing, old time “jock” buddies or not, am I going to vouch for that maniac. Here goes:

Every September, like clockwork, I am transported to a place called the beginning of the year. No, not New Year’s Day like any rational person would expect, but the school year for most students, younger or older. That is a frame of reference that I have not changed in all these years. And every year, or in many of those years anyway, my thoughts go back to the road not taken, or really not taken then, when I ask myself the following question that I am posing in such a way here so that you can ask it to yourself as well: What group(s) did you hang around with in high school?

This question is meant to be generic and more expansive that the two categories listed in the headline. The intellectuals and the jocks were hardly the only social groupings that existed at our high school (or any high school, then or now, for that matter) but the ones that I am interested in personally for the purpose of this sketch. The list of other possibilities is long: white tee-shirt, denim jeans, leather jacket, engineer boots complete with whipsaw chain corner boy devotees; wanna-be gangster hoods hanging out one knee bent against the school wall menacing all who entered; the latest Seventeen magazine-attired social butterflies, girl social butterflies, populating the spirit and dance committees and come senior year that prized prom committee looking down their noses at the peasantry below;  teases, male and female, also a sub-genre of social butterflies, avoiding furtive glances thrown their way and then “hurt” when no one pays attention after a while; school administration “brown noses” (really “snitches,” the bastards) who had been in that condition since some ill-disposed elementary school-teacher made them hall monitor; nerdy four-eyed science nuts ready to blow the whole school up to satisfy some morbid curiosity; oil-stained auto mechanics grease monkeys forever talking about engine compression, riding around town in their customized ‘57 Chevys, and strangely leaving a trail of broken-hearted lovely foxy girls behind; incipient Bolsheviks just waiting for the word; black-sweatered  faux “beats” ready to hang “square” on a candid world; choral music nation devotees (okay, okay glee club) ready to sing at the drop of a hat; could-care-if-school-kept-or-not-ers, no explanation necessary; chronic school skippers; drop-outs, religious nuts, and who knows what other “social network” combines, maybe bowling. All of those listed group members can relate your own thoughts on behalf of your high school “community.” I have other thoughts this day.

You, fellow alumni from North Adamsville High School, Adamsville, Massachusetts, U.S.A. may also feel free to present your own categories of hang-out groups in case I missed anything above like baton-twirling, the infamous band (the stories I have heard about after practice in the band room shocked me, made me blush), square-dancing, bird-watchers, or stamp collectors, or all of them intertwined, if your tastes ran that way then. However, for me, and perhaps some of you, there was an unequal running battle between the two choices presented in the title. Or maybe what I wished I had chosen is a better way to put the matter.

Should I have hung out with the intellectuals, formerly known as the "smart kids.” You know, the ones that your mother was always, usually unfavorably, comparing you to come report card time in order to embarrass you or get you to buckle down in the great getting out from under the graying nowhere working- class night and make something of yourself that she (and dad) could be proud of. Yes, those kids who could be seen at the library after school, and even on Saturday, Saturdays if you can believe that, and endlessly trudging, trudging like some Promethean wanderers with about forty- six pounds of books, books large and small, books in all colors, and here is the kicker, well-thumbed, very well-thumbed.

Or with the “jocks.” The jocks, to the extent I could be identified with any school group, were the ones who I hung around with. You know, the guys and in those days it was almost exclusively guys (girls came in as cheer-leaders or girlfriends-sometimes the same thing) who lived to throw, heave, punch, pull, leap upon, trample, block, jump, pummel, everything in sight but, ah, books. You know, mainly, the Goliaths of the gridiron, their hangers-on, wannabes and "slaves." The guys who were not carrying any forty-six pounds of books, although maybe they were wearing that much poundage in sports gear. And any books that needed carrying was done by either girlfriends or the previously mentioned slaves. Other sports may have had some shine but the “big men” on campus were the fall classic guys. Some sports such as cross-country and track and field, my sports, didn’t usually rate even honorable mention compared to say a social butterfly-driven senior bake sale or some high school confidential school dance in the school social pecking order.

Frankly, although I was in one grouping and thought about the other in high school I was mainly a "loner" for reasons that are beyond what I want to discuss here except it very definitely had to do with confusion about the way to get out from under that graying working- class nowhere night. And about “fitting” in somewhere in the school social order that had little room for guys (or girls for that matter) who didn’t fit into some classifiable niche. Room for teen angst and alienated guys, 1960s shorts-wearing track guys, running the streets of old North Adamsville to the honks of automobiles trying to scare us off the road (no “share the road with a runner” then) and jeers, the awful jeers of the girls, that space was very small. The most one could hope for was a “nod” from the football guys (or basketball in winter) in recognition that you were a fellow athlete, of sorts. Yeah, times were tough.

But as this is a confessional age I can now come out of the closet, at last. I read books back then. Yes, I read them, no devoured them endlessly (and still do), and as frequently as I could (can). I LIKED reading, let’s say, “max daddy” English poet John Milton’s tangled Paradise Lost. I lived to read footnotes in arcane history books. You know the sources for the big controversy over whether the Cromwell’s time 17^th English Revolution was driven by declining or rising gentry. Yeah stuff like that. Did you see me carrying tons of books over my shoulder in public though? Be serious, please. Here is the long held secret (even from Brad). I used to go over to the library on the other side of town, the Adamsville Square side, where no one, no one who counted anyway (meaning no jock, of course), would know me. One summer I did that almost every day for at least part of the day. So there you have it. Well, not quite.

In recent perusals of our class yearbook I have been drawn continually to the page where the description of the Great Books Club is presented. I was unaware of this club, didn’t know it existed, at the time but, apparently, it met after school and discussed Plato, John Stuart Mill, Shakespeare, Karl Marx and others. (See below.) Sarah, Marilyn and  others were members. Hell, after I read the description of what went on there that club sounded like great fun. One of the defining characteristics of my life has been, not always to my benefit, an overweening attachment to books and ideas. So what was the problem? What didn't I hang with that group?

Well, uh..., you know, they were, uh, nerds, dweebs, squares, not cool (although we did not use some of those exact terms in those days). That, at least, was the public reason, but here are some other more valid possibilities. Coming from my “shanty” background, where the corner boys had a certain cachet, I was somewhat afraid of mixing in with the "smart kids." The corner boys counted, after school anyway, and if they didn’t count then it was better to keep a wide, down low berth from anything that looked like a book reader in their eyes. I, moreover, feared that I wouldn't measure up, that the intellectuals seemed more virtuous somehow. I might also add that a little religiously-driven plebeian Irish Catholic anti-intellectualism (you know, be “street” smart but not too “book” smart in order to get ahead in one version of that getting out from under graying working -class nowhere night my family kept harping on) might have entered into the mix as well.

But, damn, I sure could have used the discussions and fighting for ideas that such groups like that book club would have provided. I had to do it the hard way later. As for the jocks one should notice that I have not mentioned a thing about their long- term effects on me. And, in the scheme of things, that is about right. So now you know my belated choice, except to steal a phrase from something that I wrote recently honoring my senior English teacher, Miss Sonos-"Literature matters. Words matter." I would only add here that ideas matter as well. Hats Off to the North Adamsville  Class of 1964 intellectuals!

This list is from a letter written in the early 1950s by the late American writer, Norman Mailer, and printed in The New York Review Of Books a few years ago, detailing his choices for "must reads" in the American literary canon. What would your ten choices be?

 

Norman Mailer
Ten Favorite American Novels

U.S.A.- John Dos Passos

Huckleberry Finn- Mark Twain

Studs Lonigan -James T. Farrell

Look Homeward, Angel- Thomas Wolfe

The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald-1^st on my list

The Sun Also Rises- Ernest Hemingway

Appointment in Samarra- John O'Hara

The Postman Always Rings Twice- James M. Cain

Moby-Dick- Herman Melville

This would be my list as well sticking to Mailer’s selection time period except instead of Moby Dick I would put Nelson Algren’s Walk On The Wild Side and instead of Huckleberry Finn I would put J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.

U. S. Hands Off Heroic Whistler-Blower  Edward Snowden! 

Here is why-

NBC News Exclusive with Brian Williams

Inside the Mind of
Edward Snowden

In a wide-ranging and revealing interview, Brian Williams talks with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the global impact and debate sparked by his revelations.

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NBC News 12 minutes

Edward Snowden Interview

EXCLUSIVE: Edward Snowden Tells Brian Williams the U.S. Stranded Him in Russia

By  Tracy Connor

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• EXCLUSIVE: Edward Snowden Tells Brian Williams the U.S. Stranded Him in Russia

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By  Tracy Connor

Edward Snowden, in an exclusive interview with "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams, blamed the State Department for stranding him in Russia, saying he "never intended" to wind up there.

"I personally am surprised that I ended up here," Snowden said in the interview, an excerpt of which aired on TODAY on Wednesday morning.

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Snowden's comments about his new home came in an extended, wide-ranging interview with Williams, his first with a U.S. television network, airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.

"The reality is I never intended to end up in Russia," he said. "I had a flight booked to Cuba onwards to Latin America and I was stopped because the United States government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in Moscow Airport.

"So when people ask why are you in Russia, I say, 'Please ask the State Department."

Exclusive: Edward Snowden Defends ‘Totality’ of His Expertise

Nightly News

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Secretary of State John Kerry hit back in a live interview on TODAY.

"For a supposedly smart guy, that’s a pretty dumb answer, frankly," Kerry said. "If Mr. Snowden wants to come back to the United States today, we'll have him on a flight today."

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"He can come home but he’s a fugitive from justice which is why he is not being permitted to fly around the world," Kerry added.

"The reality is I never intended to end up in Russia."

In the sit-down, Snowden also fought back against critics who dismissed him as a low-level hacker — saying he was “trained as a spy” and offered technical expertise to high levels of government.

“I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word, in that I lived and worked undercover overseas — pretending to work in a job that I’m not — and even being assigned a name that was not mine,” Snowden said.

He described himself as a technical expert who has worked for the United States at high levels, including as a lecturer in a counterintelligence academy for the Defense Intelligence Agency and undercover for the CIA and National Security Agency.

“But I am a technical specialist. I am a technical expert,” he said. “I don’t work with people. I don’t recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I’ve done that at all levels from — from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top.”

Last year, when Snowden left the country ahead of reports based on his leaks of NSA spying programs, administration officials played down his work history, using descriptions such as “systems administrator” to describe his role at the agency.

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In June, President Barack Obama himself told reporters: “No, I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.”

Snowden told Williams that those terms were “misleading.”

In the Defense Intelligence Agency job, Snowden said, he "developed sources and methods for keeping our information and people secure in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world."

"So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading," he said.

— With Erin McClam

 

In Honor Of May Day 2014-From The American Left History Blog Archives -From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!

Last fall there were waves of politically-motivated repressive police attacks on, and evictions of, various Occupy camp sites throughout the country including where the movement started in Zucotti (Liberty) Park. But even before the evictions and repression escalated, questions were being asked: what is the way forward for the movement? And, from friend and foe alike, the ubiquitous what do we want. We have seen since then glimpses of organizing and action that are leading the way for the rest of us to follow: the Oakland General Strike on November 2^nd, the West Coast Port Shutdown actions of December 12^th, Occupy Foreclosures, and other actions including, most recently, renewed support for the struggles of the hard-pressed longshoremen in Longview, Washington. These actions show that, fundamentally, all of the strategic questions revolve around the question of power. The power, put simply, of the 99% vs. the power of the 1%.

Although the 99% holds enormous power -all wealth is generated, and the

current society is built and maintained through, the collective labor

(paid and unpaid) of the 99%-, we seldom exercise this vast collective power in our own interests. Too often, abetted and egged on by the 1%, we fruitlessly fight among ourselves driven by racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, occupational elitism, geographical prejudice, heterosexism, and other forms of division, oppression and prejudice.

This consciously debilitating strategy on its part is necessary, along with its control of politics, the courts, the prisons, the cops, and the military in order for the 1% to maintain control over side without worrying for a minute about their power and wealth. Their ill-gotten power is only assured by us, actively or passively, working against ourselves. Moreover many of us are not today fully aware of, nor organized to utilize, the vast collective power we have. The result is that many of us - people of color, women, GLBTQ, immigrants, those with less formal educational credentials, those in less socially respected occupations or unemployed, the homeless, and the just plain desperate- deal with double and triple forms of oppression and societal prejudice.

Currently the state of the economy has hit all of us hard, although as usual the less able to face the effects are hit the hardest like racial minorities, the elderly, the homeless and those down on their luck due to prolonged un and under- employment. In short, there are too many people out of work; wage rates have has barely kept up with rising costs or gone backwards to near historic post-World War II lows in real time terms; social services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have continued to be cut; our influence on the broken, broken for us, government has eroded; and our civil liberties have been seemingly daily attacked en masse. These trends have has been going on while the elites of this country, and of the world, have captured an increasing share of wealth; have had in essence a tax holiday for the past few decades; have viciously attacked our organizations of popular defense such as our public and private unions and community organizations; and have increase their power over us through manipulating their political system even more in their favor than previously.

The way forward, as we can demonstrate by building for the May Day actions, must involve showing our popular power against that of the entrenched elite. But the form of our power, reflecting our different concepts of governing, must be different from the elite’s. Where they have created powerful capital profit driven top down organizations in order to dominate, control, exploit and oppress we must build and exercise bottom-up power in order to cooperate, liberate and collectively empower each other. We need to organize ourselves collectively and apart from these top down power relationships in our communities, schools and workplaces to fight for our interests. This must include a forthright rejection of their attempts, honed after long use, to divide and conquer in order to rule us. A rejection of racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, elitism and other forms of oppression, and, importantly, a rejection of attempts by their electoral parties, mainly the Democrats and Republicans but others as well, powerful special interest groups, and others to co-opt and control our movement.

The Occupy freedom of assembly-driven encampments initially built the mass movement and brought a global spotlight to the bedrock economic and social concerns of the 99%. They inspired many of us, including those most oppressed, provided a sense of hope and solidarity with our fellow citizens and the international 99%, and brought the question of economic justice and the problems of inequality and political voiceless-ness grudgingly back into mainstream political conversation. Moreover they highlighted the need for the creation of cultures, societies and institutions of direct democracy based on "power with"- not "power over"- each other; served as convivial spaces for sharing ideas and planning action; and in some camps, they even provided a temporary space for those who needed a home. Last fall the camp occupations served a fundamental role in the movement, but it is now time to move beyond the camp mentality and use our energies to struggle to start an offensive against the power of the 1%. On our terms.

Show Power

We demand:

*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!

* Put the unemployed to work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!

*End the endless wars!

* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!

* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!

* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!

* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!

*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!

To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizinga wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:

*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where
there is no union - a one-day general strike.

*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”

*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.

*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.

These actions, given the ravages of the capitalist economic system on individual lives, the continuing feelings of hopelessness felt by many, the newness of many of us to collective action, and the slender ties to past class and social struggles will, in many places, necessarily be a symbolic show of power. But let us take it as a wakeup call by a risen people.

And perhaps just as important as this year’s May Day itself , the massive organizing and outreach efforts in the months leading up to May 1st will allow us the opportunity to talk to our co-workers, families, neighbors, communities, and friends about the issues confronting us, the source of our power, the need for us to stand up to the attacks we are facing, the need to confront the various oppressions that keep most of us down in one way or another and keep all of us divided, and the need for us to stand in solidarity with each other in order to fight for our collective interests. In short, as one of the street slogans of movement says–“they say cut back, we say fight back.” We can build our collective consciousness, capacity, and confidence through this process; and come out stronger because of it.

Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.

All out in Boston on May Day 2012.

***Out In The 1950s Be-Bop Night- Memories Of Snug Harbor Elementary School 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

A while back I went on to the class website established for the 50^th Anniversary reunion of my North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 (that’s in Massachusetts) to check out a new addition to the list of those who have joined the site. Now the way this site works, like lots of such sites, is that each classmate who logs in gets a profile page to tell his or her story of what has happened of interest in their lives over that previous 50 years, stuff at least that they wanted classmates to know about.  Donna, the site administrator (and class Vice-President back in the day), had recently added a poll section to the homepage in which various questions were posed. The first question asked was where class members went to elementary school and gave some choices from elementary schools that would have fed into North Adamsville High. I had gone to an “other” non-listed school, Snug Harbor Elementary,   on the other side of town that fed into cross-town rival Adamsville High and so I provided the following comments on the “Message Forum” page set up on the site to be used to make such timely comments.

********

Snug Harbor Elementary… Among The “Others”

[Snug Harbor was not listed by name on the survey so I made this comment on the “Message Forum” section.]

 

Since “other” is the largest segment of the “What elementary school(s) did you attend?” poll those of us who went elsewhere should identify themselves. Here’s my contribution.

I went to Snug Harbor Elementary School, 1952-1958 which I believe served both the Adamsville “projects” where I came of age  and the private homes up to Sea Street. I was in the first class to go from Grade 1 to 6 in that school. I know there are other NA64ers who went through the school although I am not sure how many went all six years. Identify yourselves. 

Snug Harbor Memories…

Recently I went down to the Adamsville projects in order to take some photos of Snug Harbor Elementary School to add to the elementary school attended list on our North Adamsville Class of 1964 site. I also took some other photos that I had not originally intended to put on the site. However since fellow ex-Snug Harbor students Johnny Terry and Danny Valentine in MF#31 and #33 have referenced various places there I have decided to place some photos here to give some context to what they/we are talking about.

Everybody who came out of “the projects” back in the 1950s (that is what everybody, residents and non-residents, called the Adamsville Housing Authority four-unit apartment complexes then, for good or evil) knows that there was that one little convenience store, then called Carter’s, to service the whole place if you needed some quick food purchases. The place is still there under a different name (see photo). Strangely there was not, and still is not, any large supermarket on the whole peninsula. I estimated that the nearest shopping area is about four miles away, not easy when you like in my day we had no family car or, as likely, a junk box that ran erratically. That despite the fact that there were/are several hundred families living in those apartments (see photo) many somewhat dependent on public transportation, then the dreaded never-coming Eastern Mass bus which I spent half my youth waiting for, or I should say would have spent have my youth waiting for if I had not taken matters into my own hands and just walked to Adamsville Center or wherever I need to go. Now the MBTA has that route and I hope provides more regular service to those in need of such services.

Naturally if your household ran out of milk or bread-milk to salute the President or somebody when we walked home at noon for lunch and watched Big Brother (no, not Orwell’s) Bob Emery on WBZ television and Jesus-white bread Wonder Bread for those endless peanut and jelly sandwiches-you walked down along the seawall on Palmer Street to the store to make your emergency purchases. But that was to placate the parents. The real draw for young kids then at Carter’s was the vast, vast to young eyes, display cases of penny candy (you know Mary Janes, no, not that Mary Jane, not then anyway, Bazooka bubble gum, Tootsie rolls, Milk Duds, root beer barrels, Necco wafers, etc.), soda (then called, ah, tonic by the civilized New England world now out of fashion, the word and the world) in a big ice-filled chest containing the Cokes and Pepsis of the day but also various flavored Nehis, Hires Root Beer, Robb’s, etc.), and Twinkies/Hostess cupcakes/Devil Dogs, Table Talk pies and I might as well add etc. here too. In short that sugar high we are all guarding against these days with a vengeance with weight programs, arcane and profuse medical advice, and sheer will-power but which fueled our fast brave young hearts then.

Astonishingly with a few minor changes and some upgrading of the units walking around “the projects” today is about the same as in the 1950s. Danny mentioned that he had lived at 115 Taffy Road so I know many of the spots that he referred to in his message. (See photo of the jetty when he and his father fished, my brothers and I built a raft to try to go out on the seven seas or our idea of that adventure, and the P&G factory across the channel that reeked of soap on warm summer nights when the wind was up. See also the photo of one of the beaches that we swam at, although not I think Red Beach, the beach where I almost drown when I was eight and was saved in just the nick of time as I was going down for the third time by the swimming instructor on the beach, now returned to its natural state. And a photo of one of the apartment complex units-four units to a complex with all the social pathologies of people, poor people living in small quarters too close together).

Our family, my parents and two brothers, Kevin (NAHS Class of 1966) and Paul (should have been in our class but dropped out in 10th grade) lived at 88 Taffy Road. We were the first family to live in our unit beginning in about 1950 and left in the winter of 1959 to return to North Adamsville where Paul and I attended North Adamsville Junior High, now Middle School (Kenny, the Quincy School and then NAJH). We missed the famous “long march” from North Adamsville High to the new junior high school that winter arriving just after that historic event. (I have heard, although, I consider it nothing but a nasty rumor that there are still five students missing who got lost on the way over and never reported to North Adamsville Junior High-ah, such is the nature of long marches.)     

Danny and Johnny both mentioned Saint Joseph’s Church as the church that they attended since there was no church, no Catholic Church, in the Adamsville projects until 1956 or so. (Saint Boniface’s since de-consecrated, exorcised, or whatever that process is called to un-church the building.) There had been CC services held in the Snug Harbor school auditorium before that time. Sunday school by stern unforgiving nuns who apparently believed that spare the rod, spoil the child was the way to go with unruly kids who did not know their Baltimore Catechism by heart, as I well know, was held in an adjoining area of the school. I confess that I do not remember where that Saint Joseph’s they mentioned is since I had my first communion (along with brother Paul) at Blessed Sacrament in Hough’s Point.  

The names that Danny mentioned as having attended Snug Harbor before North Adamsville High, Mickey Finn and Franny Lawrence from our storied NAHS football team especially, I recall as well. I would add Brad Badger the great cross country and track runner from our class who lived there until 4^th grade and who was my best friend back then (as well as later through high school). And Tommy McFarland, one of the guys from the NAS golf team. Forget all those guys though. Here is a real special remembrance. The projects is where I came of age (quaint, right?). Naturally I developed some “crushes” when I started being attracted to, ah, girls, those sticks that one year were so giggly and bothersome and then all of a sudden the next year had charms, and became, well, interesting. Interesting trying to figure out, no, not intellectually figure out but figure out how to kiss when they turned out the lights at some birthday party or “petting” party. The biggest crush I had over a girl, a girl all dewy, smelling of bath soap and wearing cashmere sweaters, is one who is a member of our NAHS class. Her initials are MG so you can scurry to the Manet [our class year book] and figure it out. And no I never spoke to her. Jesus, are you kidding she was not a “projects” girl but lived in one of the ranch houses for the up and coming middle class that were being build up the street outside the projects. So, no, no way did I talk to her. Such are the ways of forlorn young puppy love.     

The most important place in the whole projects, and which probably saved my life, was the Thomas Crane Public Library branch that was then located in the basement of the Snug Harbor school (and is now located at Sea Street and Palmer). Probably saved me from the troubled fate of a lot of projects kids that I hung around with, some like Ronny, George and Slim who later wound up in jail, Cedar Junction for major felonies, or like Peter, face down in some dusty back alley in Mexico with two bullets in his skull after a busted drug deal. Unfortunately the lure of the easy life hit both my brothers. In fifth and sixth grade I was torn between a very alluring life of petty crime (you know “clipping” stuff from stores, mainly jewelry, a little jack-rolling, daydream thoughts of big time armed robberies of gas stations and such) and books. I had always liked to read before but in the battle between books and satisfying a poor boy’s wanting habits the pull was toward the latter. In the summer after sixth grade immediately after school got out I just kind of wandered into the library one hot day to get out of the heat and read for the whole day and from then on I was hooked on books. As for the criminal life, well, it had its good points and I am simplifying this narrative too much to say that the romance of the bandit life stopped cold that hot summer day but I eventually figured out there were easier ways to survive in this wicked old world than that road. But it was a close thing, a very close thing.