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Thursday, February 05, 2015
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As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner
In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school but the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists and Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements, those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress, humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.
And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful English poets (we will speak of American poets when they slip into war footing in 1917)like Wilfred Owens before he got religion, e.e. cummings madly driving his safety ambulance, beautiful Rupert Brookes wondering which way to go but finally joining the mob in some fated oceans, sturdy Robert Graves all blown to hell and back surviving but just surviving, French , German, Russian, Italian poets tooo all aflutter; artists, reeking of blooded fields, the battle of the Somme Muirhead Bone's nothing but a huge killing field that still speaks of small boned men, drawings, etchings that no subtle camera could make beautiful, that famous one by Picasso, another by Singer Sargent about the death trenches, about the gas, and human blindness for all to see; sculptors, chiseling monuments to the national brave even before the blood was dried before the last tear had been shed, huge memorials to the unnamed, maybe un-nameable dead dragged from some muddied trench half blown away; writers, serious and not, wrote beautiful Hemingway stuff about the scariness of war, about valor, about romance on the fly, among those women. camp-followers who have been around since men have left their homes to slaughter and maim, lots of writers speaking, after the fact about the vein-less leaders and what were they thinking, and, please, please do not forgot those Whiggish writers who once the smoke had cleared had once again put in a word about the endless line of human progress, musicians, sad, mystical, driven by national blood lusts to the high tattoo, went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….
Very Long Engagement
Very Long Engagement
In January 1917, five wounded French soldiers, their hands bound behind them, are brought to the front at Picardy by their own troops, forced into the no-man's land between the French and German armies, and left to die in the cross fire. Their brutal punishment has been hushed up for more than two years when Mathilde Donnay, unable to walk since childhood, begins a relentl ...more
Victory To The West Coast Longshoremen
West Coast Ports Could Shut Down in Days, Cripple Asia Trade
Traffic at nearly 30 West Coast ports is on the verge of "complete gridlock" and shipping officials have threatened to stop paying dockworkers if a contract deal is not reached soon.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Pacific Maritime Association CEO James McKenna said West Coast seaports, which handle some $1 trillion in trade per year, could shut down in the next five to 10 days and cripple U.S. trade with Asia. He said the organization is not considering a technical "lockout," but warned that the shipping system would inevitably bring itself to a stop if congestion persists.
PMA and the International Longshore & Warehouse Union have been working to negotiate new contracts since May. Nearly 20,000 dockworkers at 29 ports are impacted. PMA says ILWU has conducted slowdowns, walk-offs and other actions at key ports, aggravating congested conditions and disrupting cargo movement in a bid to influence the talks. He said productivity had dropped between 30 percent and 50 percent in recent months, crippling whole strings of vessels, in some cases. It's like "they're getting paid to grind us into the ground," McKenna said.
The union denied the claims and said the congestion crisis was "employer-caused."
IN-DEPTH
Lady Day Is In The House-With Torch Singer Billie Holiday In Mind
I remember one day many years ago now, a winter day for sure and so to add to the depression I was feeling over the latest serious quarrel I had had with my wife (soon to be my ex-wife but that is another story and don’t blame Billie for that) the chill and bluster had me down as well as I entered a bookstore in Harvard Square. I want to say that it was the old long gone Paperback Booksmith store but it might have been the Harvard Book Store up the street. In any case that is where I heard this low sad torchy female voice coming out of the sound system most of those places had to liven things up while you were browsing (or “cruising” as I found out later when somebody told bookstores were the “hot” spot if you were looking for a certain kind of woman (or man), needless to say my kind of woman, bookish, sassy and, well, a little neurotic). Not placing the voice since my torch singers of choice were the likes of Bessie Smith or Peggy Lee I asked one of the clerks who was singing that song Night and Day with such feeling on the PA and she looked at me like I was some rube from the sticks when she said Billie Holiday (and she could have added stupid, which is what that look meant).
Now that event was memorable for two things, listening to that song and a follow-up one, All of Me, almost immediately got me out of my funk and as is my wont that also was the start of my attempt to get every possible Billie Holiday album or tape (yeah, it’s been a while) I could get my hands on. So thereafter any time that I felt blue I would put on a Billie platter or tape and feel better.
In my book, and I am hardly alone on this, Billie Holiday is the torch singer's torch singer. Maybe it is the phrasing on her best songs. That well-placed hush. Maybe it is the unbreakable link between her voice when she is on a roll and the arrangements. Hell, maybe in the end it was the dope but, by Jesus, she could sing a modern ballad of love, lost or both like no other. And if it was the dope, let me say this- a ‘normal’ nice singer could sing for a hundred years and never get it right, the way Billie could get it right when she was at her best. Dope or no dope. Was she always at her best? Hell no, as a review of all her recorded material makes clear. Some recordings, for example, done between 1945 and her death in 1959 for Verve show the highs but also the lows as the voice faltered a little and the dope put the nerves on edge toward the end.
Here is the funny thing thought, the maybe the politically correct funny thing although those who insist on political correctness in everyday civil life should lay off harmless cultural preferences and personal choices. One time I was touting Billie’s virtues to a group of younger blacks who I was working with on some education project and the talk came around to music and I mentioned how Billie could sing my blues away when times were tough. A few of these young blacks when the heard me raving about Billie startled me when they wrote her off as an empty-headed junkie, a hophead, and so on. Some of their responses reflecting, I think, the influence of the movie version of her life (Lady Sings the Blues with Diana Ross) or some unsympathetic black history 'uplift' type views on her life that have written her off as an 'addled' doper. I came back on them though, startled them when I said the following, “if Billie needed a little junk to keep her spirits up I would have bought her whatever she needed just to hear her sing that low and sorrowful thing she did that chased my blues away.” Enough said.
In Honor Of The Heroic Massachusetts
54th Black Volunteer Regiment…. To Defend One’s Own
In the wake of the travesties of justice
in the Michael Brown murder case where a grand jury refused to indict a
Ferguson, Missouri police officer and the Eric Garner stranglehold murder case
in New York City where the same thing happened (and which has happened repeatedly
over the years these two cases being egregious and the cause of blacks and their
supporters saying enough) during Black History Month (hell, all year) it is appropriate
to talk about the right of black self-defense (and necessity at times). And
when we talk about that issue the heroic struggles of the Massachusetts 54th
Black Volunteer Regiment easily come to mind.
While there is no obvious link between
the cases today and the heroic actions of black volunteers to defend their own
by enlisting in the battle to eradicate slavery during the Civil War that is a
matter of failure of imagination. From the very beginning of slavery in America
which means from the very beginning of the settlements whites have feared, feared
beyond reason at times, blacks, black men armed, or posing any kind of physical
threat. In the case of the 54th the Southerners during the Civil War
went crazy when confronted with the idea of armed black men fighting for their freedom
and treated any black captives brutally and not as prisoners of war. No better example
of that hatred thinking there was no greater dishonor came after the battle
before Fort Wagner when the rebels buried the white commander of the regiment,
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who had fallen there with the dead black soldiers he
commanded in a mass grave.
And so it has gone throughout the
last one hundred plus years from black sharecroppers defending themselves during
Jim Crow times, Robert F. Williams down in North Carolina calling for armed
self-defense against the marauding white racists during the civil rights struggles
of the 1950s and 1960s, the Deacons for Justice down in Louisiana, and later the
Black Panthers from Oakland to Boston. All standing for their right to defend their
own by any means necessary. And all getting the eternal hatred of those whites
who fear militantly political blacks who wish to defend the community. And that
is where the current uprising being formed mostly by the young under the
general title Black Lives Matter should
think about history and about all the options.
[One hundred and fifty years later
there is no more fitting memorial to those heroic defenders of the 54th
than the frieze on Beacon Street in Boston across from the State House
commemorating their valor. Every time I go by the frieze, usually when we are
demonstrating for or against some social policy of the day I stop and look at
the determined faces of the soldiers as they march toward their destiny. Look
particularly at the righteous grizzled old soldier by the head of Shaw’s horse marching
with the “kids.” Yeah, that was the place for old men to be during those times.
Today too. ]
***Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes - Bound No'th Blues
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
February is Black History Month
Bound No'th Blues
Goin’ down the road, Lawd,
Goin’ down the road.
Down the road, Lawd,
Way,way down the road.
Got to find somebody
To help me carry this load.
Road’s in front o’ me,
Nothin’ to do but walk.
Road’s in front of me,
Walk…an’ walk…an’ walk.
I’d like to meet a good friend
To come along an’ talk.
Hates to be lonely,
Lawd, I hates to be sad.
Says I hates to be lonely,
Hates to be lonely an’ sad,
But ever friend you finds seems
Like they try to do you bad.
Road, road, road, O!
Road, road…road…road, road!
Road, road, road, O!
On the no’thern road.
These Mississippi towns ain’t
Fit fer a hoppin’ toad.
Goin’ down the road.
Down the road, Lawd,
Way,way down the road.
Got to find somebody
To help me carry this load.
Road’s in front o’ me,
Nothin’ to do but walk.
Road’s in front of me,
Walk…an’ walk…an’ walk.
I’d like to meet a good friend
To come along an’ talk.
Hates to be lonely,
Lawd, I hates to be sad.
Says I hates to be lonely,
Hates to be lonely an’ sad,
But ever friend you finds seems
Like they try to do you bad.
Road, road, road, O!
Road, road…road…road, road!
Road, road, road, O!
On the no’thern road.
These Mississippi towns ain’t
Fit fer a hoppin’ toad.
Langston Hughes
… he, Bradley Brim (juke joint, roadside house, rent party stage moniker, Clarksville Slim, but let’s just stick with Bradley until he needs to use that moniker again up north), was sick and tired of, hell, being sick and tired. First off, after last Saturday night, Bradley was sick and tired of every no account jive- ass jackass field hand, cotton field hand, in the great state of Mississippi feeling like he could, like he could as a natural right, all rum brave on Spider Jones’ homemade, feel that he could throw his whiskey jar at the stage when he didn’t like a particular number he (Clarksville Slim, remember) was doing. Damn, go elsewhere. Next off he was sick and tired unto death of every Louella, Bee, Sarah, Selma, and Victoria (those his last four, ah, five girlfriends, for those not in the know, not in the juke joint circuit know), taking what little money he had (and it wasn’t much after expenses, a little reefer, a couple of bucks for some trifle for his girl of the moment) and spending it on her walking daddy, her husband or her pimp. And then at the end of the night saying, sweet purr saying, he was her one and only walking daddy, after he had picked up her tab and they headed to his place, his cabin for what no walking daddy, husband or pimp was giving her. And lastly off, if that was the way to say it, he was just about ready to shake the dust of old Spider Jones’ juke joints (road houses and cafes too, he had a string of them around the southern part of the state), his cornball liquor, the dust of Clarksville, and the dusts of the great state of Mississippi and follow the northern star to the promised land, to Chi town, to legendary Maxwell Street where a man could make himself some money and still come out ahead.
And as he started thinking, thinking once again about shaking that damn dust off, he thought too about how he wouldn’t miss his day job at Mister Baxter’s Lumber Company that was hampering his musical development because he couldn’t practice during the day like he should, wouldn’t miss every Mister James Crow-craving white man, woman and child in the state telling him, sit here, don’t sit there , walk here, don’t walk there, eat here, don’t eat there, drink the water here, don’t drink the water there, even Mister Baxter, wouldn’t miss every cornball white hick, white trash hick, really, eye-balling him anytime he went downtown for Mister Baxter, or on his own hook. Wouldn’t miss a lot of things, except those women who shook loose of their walking daddies and wanted him to be their coffee-grinder when the dawn came up.
He heard, and he thought he heard right, heard it from Mickey Mack’s woman who was waiting for Mickey to send for her to come to Chi town any day now that there were plenty of jobs up there, good paying jobs in steel mills and slaughter houses (he thought about, and laughed too, how in school Miss Parker had read the class a poem by some crusty old white guy who called Chi town“hog-butcher to the world”), the housing wasn’t too bad (some cold- water flats which sounded better than the raggedy ass old Mister Baxter cabin he lived in) and get this, nobody, nobody white on this good green earth cared where you ate, drank, sat on the bus, as long as you didn’t bother them (and maybe didn’t live next door to them).But mainly all he cared about was making it, or breaking it, he held that possibility out too, on Maxwell Street (or starting out on one of the side streets and working his way up) singing his stuff, singing his covers of Robert Johnson that he thought would drive the women wild (especially his version of Dust My Broom) and of Muddy too. Yah, all he cared about was following that northern star to sweet home Chicago.
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
***UP FROM SLAVERY-THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS
BOOK REVIEW
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, FREDERICK DOUGLASS
FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH
At the start of the 21st century the international labor movement faces, as it has for a long time, a crisis of revolutionary leadership. That leadership is necessary to resolve the contradiction between the outmoded profit-driven international capitalist productive system and a future production system based on social solidarity, cooperation and production for social use. In America, at least, there is also a crisis of leadership of the black liberation struggle, which is tied into the labor question as well through the key role of blacks in the labor force. More happily in the 19th century in the struggle against slavery by the slaves and former slaves for black liberation there was such a leadership and none more important than the subject of this autobiography, Frederick Douglass. Even a cursory look at his life puts today ‘clean’ black leadership in the shades.
That Frederick Douglass was exceptional as a fighter for black freedom, women’s rights and as a man there is no question. His early life story of struggle for individual escape from slavery, attempts to educate himself and take an active political role on the slavery question rightly thrilled audiences here and in Europe. I, however, believe that he definitely came into his own as a revolutionary politician when he broke from Garrisonian non-resistant abolitionism and linked up with more radical elements like John Brown and the Boston ‘high’ abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. This abolitionist element pointed the way to the necessary fight to the finish strategy, arms in hand, to end slavery that eventually came to fruition in the Civil War.
At one time I personally believed that Douglass should have gone with John Brown to Harper’s Ferry. He would have provided a better grasp of the political and military situation there than Brown had and would have been forceful in calling out the slaves and others in the area to aid the uprising. In no way was my position on his refusal based on his personal courage of which there was no question. I now believe that Douglass more than made up for any help he would have given Brown by his work for an emancipation proclamation and for his calls for arming blacks in the Civil War to take part in their own emancipation. As such, it is well known that Douglass was instrumental in calling for the creation of the famous Massachusetts 54th Regiment, including the recruitment of two of his sons. Yes, 200,000 black soldiers and sailors under arms fighting to the death, and under penalty of death by the rebels, for their freedom is a fitting monument to the man.
Douglass, as well as every other militant abolitionist worth his or her salt, lined up politically with the new Republican Party headed by Lincoln and Seward before, during and shortly after the Civil War. However, the Republican Party ran out of steam as a progressive force fairly shortly after the war, culminating in the sell-out Compromise of 1877 which abandoned blacks to their fate in the South. Douglass, committed to emancipation, education and ‘forty acres and a mule’ for his fellows stayed with that party far too long. When key elements of that party lost heart in the black struggle due to their racism and other factors, moved on to other interests, or accepted the traditional white leadership of the South he also should have moved on to another progressive formation. Embryonic workers parties and other such progressive formations were raising their heads in the 1870’s. I do not believe that office in the Consular Service in Haiti was worth continuing to support a party going in the wrong direction. Notwithstanding that point, if you want to read about the exploits of a ‘big man’ in the history of the struggle of the oppressed, our history, when it counted this is your stop. Honor the memory of Frederick Douglass.
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