Tuesday, July 03, 2018

ANNOUNCING: On July 19, farmworkers return to NYC to demand, “How Much Longer, Wendy’s?” Coalition of Immokalee Workers

Coalition of Immokalee Workers<workers@ciw-online.org>
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Latest on Armistice Day plans for a military parade in DC



Win Without War

Douglas — Remember Trump’s tank parade? His horrible idea for a giant military parade taking over the streets of our nation’s capital is only getting worse: He’s ordered the Pentagon to plan this authoritarian parade for Veterans Day.
That means that soldiers will be forced to march in Trump's parade instead of spending time resting or with loved ones. On Veterans Day.
Forcing active-duty servicemembers to spend many hours practicing to inflate Trump’s ego — and then making them give up their Veterans Day holiday weekend to march in a mandatory parade? That’s blatantly awful, even for Trump.
We’ve got to put a stop to this. On Saturday, Win Without War joined hundreds of thousands of activists marching against Trump’s militaristic, racist immigration agenda. This July 4th, let’s keep raising our voices to shut down Trump’s violence-first policies — not prop up his authoritarian agenda with forced parades.
Every dollar that goes to this parade is a dollar that could have been invested in true safety and peace. Trump is pilfering from veterans’ health care and Flint’s clean water to feed his ego with an autocratic march.
Win Without War spends a lot of time and energy fighting to jam up the gears of the Washington war machine. We go toe-to-toe with war hawks and defense industry lobbyists at every turn. But for once, the D.C. consensus and the American people’s common sense agree: This parade is a terrible idea.
Nobody wants this parade except Trump — not even the Pentagon. That means we have real leverage to stop this dangerous and disrespectful parade.
And right now, we have the perfect chance to act. This July 4th week, Congress is looking for ways to prove to their constituents they are standing up for democratic values.
So we need to let Congress know: The absolute least they can do this week is to prevent Trump from forcing servicemembers to march in an authoritarian parade on Veterans Day.
Thank you for working for peace,
Sunjeev, Stephen, Amy, and the Win Without War team





 
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The Star Wars Industry Churns Onward-Luke Skywalker aka Mark Hamill Cashes His Check-Director Rian Johnson’s “Star War: The Last Jedi-VIII (Sure, Sure) (2017)-A Film Review


The Star Wars Industry Churns Onward-Luke Skywalker aka Mark Hamill Cashes His Check-Director Rian Johnson’s “Star War: The Last Jedi-VIII (Sure, Sure) (2017)-A Film Review






DVD Review



By Will Bradley      



Star Wars: The Last Jedi-VIII, starring the Mark Hamill (the late) Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, and an ensemble cast backing up the main actors, directed by Rian Johnson, 2017   



No question the Star Wars industry has spawned nothing but gold, more than faux Vegas Canto Bight shown in a sequence in VIII could ever dream of for creators, actors, directors and the thousands needed to keep the operation churning. No question either that from my perspective this thing had been played out, has lost plenty in the script department since this Last Of The Jedi has stuck pretty much to the action-filled and story-thin formula that has driven everything after the first trilogy. Frankly I don’t give a damn about IX although I know as sure as I am now writing that we will be besieged by such a production if for no other reason that to keep the gold coming in.



If all of this sounds a bit cynical then you are right on the money. I did not ask for this assignment, did not want it and hopefully have not dug myself into a hole by griping about my fate publicly. Here’s how this one has played out. Seth Garth and Johnny Callahan, the latter a serious financial angel for this publication, both desperately wanted to tackle this film. Seth had done a few of the earlier episodes and Johnny has actually done the review of the very first one for the hard copy edition of this publication back in 1977. Meaning this: both men have been aficionados since day one. Sensing that this golden operation was finally bringing this monster to a close both wanted to pay homage to, well, let’s call a thing by its right name-their youth. Greg Green, site manager and the guy who hands out the assignments, decided to make a Solomonic decision and pass them both by and look for somebody who was less involved emotionally and cinematically with this saga. Thus I got the call having not even been born when the series started and moreover as disinterested a party as could be about the whole business after falling asleep when my parents rented a tape for the VCR from the local video store  (showing my age at least against those who know only DVDs or streaming).           



Okay where to start. Darth Vader, oops, Kylo Ren, really   Benjy Solo, who turns out to be the late Mr. Vader’s grandson showing how if not incestuous in the direct sense at least in the storyline the whole thing was, is, played by Adam Driver, is up to his born to be bad self continuing from the last episode wreaking havoc on a sullen galaxy where he is acting as a discipline for the chief universal bad guy, a blob named Smoke, no, Snork, no, Snoke. For the good guys, good guys and gals as it turned out with a new generation of possible Jedi Knights coming from the female side of the sexual divide with Rey, played by Daisy Ridley, we have the same old same old leading the charge, leading the Resistance to the bad guys with General Leia, played by the late Carrie Fisher in her last film, and a few young bravos along side Rey and her friends Poe and Finn.             



What no Luke Skywalker? (Hans Solo, Benjy’s dad has passed beyond done in by Benjy’s hands as well although his ever-faithful companion Chewie is still going at it strong helping young Rey out of a couple of jams although he hasn’t improved his English much in the subsequent forty or so years). Yes, Luke is around but he is sulking on some desolate island having apparently given up the virtuous Jedi Knight job. The sulk  inherited from his reaction to his earlier attempts to tame an unruly universe. Half this film is spent with wanna-be Jedi Knight Rey trying might and main to get Luke back in the struggle, back into the resistance against bad boy Benjy, okay Kylo, and his handler Snoke. The other half is the usual fight to the death, yawn, between the good guys and the bad with the bad guys who vastly outnumber the good but who apparently were ill-trained by Snoke and his minions taking a pummeling before the end. Needless to say as things wind up, wind up for this episode anyway, the Resistance, the rebels are still holding on, still around in case the galaxy decides enough is enough with new head bad guy Kylo, okay, Benji and bring down a hell and damnation on his sorry butt.       



News Flash: before the end good old boy Luke does show up for one last hurrah holding off the bad guys to let the good guys and gals escape. That done one Luke Skywalker who Seth Garth and Johnny Callahan speak of in hushed tones cashed his check. What will happen next without his magic wand to protect the universe.   

Happy Birthday John Hurt- From Beulah Land- Mississippi John Hurt


Happy Birthday John Hurt-  From Beulah Land- Mississippi John Hurt
CD REVIEW

Last Sessions, Mississippi John Hurt, Vanguard Records, 1972


If one were to ask virtually any fairly established folk music singer in, let’s say 1968, what country blues musician influenced them the most then the subject of this review would win hands down. The list would be long- Dave Van Ronk, Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Phil Ochs, Chris Smithers, Joan Baez and on and on. Hell, Tom Paxton wrote a song about him-Did You Hear John Hurt? That song still gets airplay on the folk station around where I live.

So what gives? Why the praise? What gives is this- Mississippi John Hurt and his simple country blues were 'discovered' at a time when many young, mainly white urban musicians were looking for roots music. This search is not anything particularly new-John and Alan Lomax went on the hustings in the 1930’s and recorded many of the old country blues artists that were ‘discovered’ in the 1960’s. Hell, you can go back further to the 1920’s and the record companies themselves were sending out agents to scour the country looking for talent- they found the likes of the Carter Family and Blind Willie McTell along the way.

And what made John Hurt so special? Well, for one, very clean, very simple picking on the old guitar. For another that little raspy voice that you had to perk up your ear to if you wanted to hear him. But the big deal really is that he sang songs in a simple country way that reflected the hard life of the Mississippi delta, the hard work of picking cotton, the hard fact of being black in the Jim Crow South and the hard fact of needing some musical entertainment on a hot Saturday night after a hard week in the fields. The flow changed when the blues headed north to Chicago and got electrified but if you want to hear a master at work when the sound was simpler then hear John Hurt, hear him playing Creole Belle. And Joe Turner Blues, Spanish Fandango, Beulah Land and the rest.

Sunday, July 01, 2018

The Days Of Old In The Old West- The “Black Cowboy” And His Songs Via Smithsonian/Folkways


The Days Of Old In The Old West- The “Black Cowboy” And His Songs Via Smithsonian/Folkways






By Sarah Lemoyne





Recently in a film review of Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden’s iconic and twisted Western cowboy classic Johnny Guitar I noted that I had heard on National Public Radio a piece about the work of a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops who I do know putting together a compilation of recordings, originals and his own take, of the black cowboy song experience for Smithsonian/Folkways. I mentioned and gave that film as a prime example of how the black cowboy had been written out of everything from dime store novels to “oaters.” That was not the case and the black cowboy in the post-Civil War, post-hell Reconstruction period in its aftermath played an honorable role in “taming the West.” Listen up.        



http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/04/23/black-cowboys-music-dom-flemons

When Ladies Lasted Last And Gentlemen Did Not Eve Span-David Niven’s “The Lady Says No” (1951)-A Film Review


When Ladies Lasted Last And Gentlemen Did Not Eve Span-David Niven’s “The Lady Says No” (1951)-A Film Review






DVD Review



By Laura Perkins



The Lady Says No, starring David Niven, Joan Caulfield, 1951



One of the most fortunate things in my life, my professional career I should say which I am restarting here after a short hiatus at another publication, has been having Sam Lowell’s pithy comments and helpful hints along the way. (In the seemingly necessary to include interest of full disclosure these days Sam and I have been long, very long time, companions and he was the one who got me the lush long-time assignment at The Daily Literary Digest before luring me back to this publication where I had been a free-lance stinger when I was younger and when the publication was strictly hard-copy under Allan Jackson’s editorship now ended.) Two that apply to this review of 1950s The Lady Says No since there does not appear to be any other socially redeeming quality to recommend it is that, one, when all else fails for a “hook,” the hook being what you hang your hat on when reviewing films you can always use the old “slice of life” bit which I will invoke here. The other that applies is based on Sam’s old habit when he used to drink heavily and carouse with wicked women (before he met me and his match) was to just take whatever the studio publicity department put out, rip off the title and submit under your own by-line. And nobody complained. Of course today for old time films you have to cheap sheet Wikipedia and click and paste to do the same job. For the life of me I can’t figure out this silly film and so I was sorely tempted to just do that but no, this lady says no, I will trudge along trying to give the “skinny” as best I can.             



Of course if we are talking today, talking in today’s #MeToo whirlwind then something like the lady, or rather woman, says no that had a whole different and less menacing connotation back when this film was made for public consumption (although the overriding issues of male authority dominance and expectation and female subordinate resigned acceptance or flagrant abuse were I would argue not far from the surface then either). That is where blessed Sam’s “slice of life” snapshot theory comes into full force. It is extremely hard to see how a film like this, even a comedic film such as this would have any cache at all today. Certainly, the results, the ending could bear no weight today.



Bill, a globe-trotting photographer, played by David Niven, is on assignment to photograph and do a story on best-selling author Dorinda Hatch, played by foxy Joan Caulfield who has created a whirlwind in the eternal male-female, no, female-male battle of the sexes-so-called by calling for her version of an unarmed insurrection against Neanderthal males and his publication wants the scoop. As it turned out, as expected in the twelve millionth rendition of the Hollywood boy meets girl story that has saved many a studio (and incidentally got Sam on the road to taking credit for studio copy once he realized that half the films in that cinematic land depended on this beautiful little trope), there is some chemistry between them. Despite Bill’s hunter-gatherer manner and Dorinda’s obvious Seven Sisters naivete rampant in those day about what was what in the sexual wars for inexperienced young women-and ask Sam men too. The whole theme hinges on whether Dorinda’s naïvete or Bill worldliness will out in the end.



If it was just a matter of that battle royal this would be a thin-and shorter-film but the thing gets rounded out when the two sides start crusading for their respective positions among the GIs and their wives at Fort Ord out in Big Sur-Carmel-Monterrey country in California. (A place where Sam and I have gone many times especially when he gets into his Jack Kerouac and the beats mood and insists we go back to Todo El Mundo south of Big Sur where he hung out in the old days.)   Dorinda starts her own little rebellion (with some push-back) among the Army wives womenfolk in her fight. And here is really where this is a 1950s time capsule (maybe before actually) as a film all the while despite Dorinda’s feminist convictions she is inexplicitly attracted to Bill, uses whatever wiles, female or otherwise to tamp that madness, those hormones, down. You already know the ending, know it if you have been in anyone of the twelve million girl meets boy efforts Hollywood has put out in its existence. Not surprisingly despite the film’s origin in 1951 there is nothing of the red scare Cold War night and atomic thunder coming hellishly down on the world in this one. Nothing either that would pass muster with today’s audiences except members of the lonely-hearts clubs. Nothing that would resolve the eternal conundrum since Adam and Eve times, maybe before.

      

Support Courage To Resist-The Defenders Of Military Resisters, The Draft Resistance And Whistleblowers-Free Reality Leigh Winner

Support Courage To Resist-The Defenders Of Military Resisters, The Draft Resistance And Whistleblowers-Free Reality Leigh Winner










From the Archives of Marxism-Friedrich Engels' “From the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom”

From the Archives of Marxism-Friedrich Engels' “From the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom”

Workers Vanguard No. 1096




23 September 2016



From the Archives of Marxism-Friedrich Engels' “From the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom”


We publish below excerpts from Friedrich Engels’ 1880 work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. In explaining scientific socialism, Engels makes clear that only through the conquest of power by the working class and the expropriation of the capitalist class can the benefits of science, technology and education be available to all, laying the material basis for the full liberation of humanity. The excerpts below are taken from the Marx and Engels Selected Works (Progress Publishers, 1976).

The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production.

What is, then, the position of modern socialism in this connection?

The present structure of society—this is now pretty generally conceded—is the creation of the ruling class of today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the feudal system, with the privileges it conferred upon individuals, entire social ranks and local corporations, as well as with the hereditary ties of subordination which constituted the framework of its social organisation. The bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward the capitalist mode of production could develop in freedom. Since steam, machinery, and the making of machines by machinery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the productive forces evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie developed with a rapidity and in degree unheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, in its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed under its influence, had come into collision with the feudal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in its more complete development, comes into collision with the bounds within which the capitalistic mode of production holds it confined. The new productive forces have already outgrown the capitalistic mode of using them. And this conflict between productive forces and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, like that between original sin and divine justice. It exists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions even of the men that have brought it on. Modern socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working class....

The perfecting of machinery is making human labour superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage-workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital. Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class; that the instruments of labour constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the labourer; that the very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about that the economising of the instruments of labour becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labour power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labour functions; that machinery, the most powerful instrument for shortening labour time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer’s time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital. Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys its own home market. “The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time, accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.” (Marx’s Capital, p. 671)....

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers—proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialised character of the means of production. And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself....

Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realisation were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times....

Division into classes has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the existence of class distinction itself has become an obsolete anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually, a hindrance to development.

This point is now reached. Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless, face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself. Nor is this all. The socialised appropriation of the means of production does away, not only with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation of productive forces and products that are at the present time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height in the crises. Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialised production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties—this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here.

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom....

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.

On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road"(1957)- "A Confederate General From Big Sur"-A Book Review

On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road"(1957)- "A Confederate General From Big Sur"-A Book Review



In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James

To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just kicks, stuff, important stuff has happened or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation.  Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my older brother Alex thy called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the mean streets of New York, Chi town, North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps, half stirred left on corner coffees and cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well. So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind. The kind that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back).              
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother Alex’s name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967 just mentioned.  Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before (and which nobody in the crowd paid attention to, or dismissed out of hand what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie  and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s book which had caused a big splash in 1957, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s (and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.     
Like I said above Alex was out two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely end. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly from hunger working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some   hot chick’s pants as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley the “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan that was for smooth as silk Frankie to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Dylan above all else) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)

Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like he wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll. So it was through Markin via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.           


Book Review

A Confederate General From Big Sur, Richard Brautigan, Grove Press, 1964


Recently, in reviewing another more well-known book, “Trout Fishing In America”, by the 1960s counterculture writer, Richard Brautigan, I wrote the following paragraph that applies to the book under review here, “A Confederate General From Big Sur”, as well:

“I noted in a recent review of a film documentary about the literary exploits and influences of the “beat” generation of the 1950s on my generation, the “Generation of ‘68”, that we were a less literary generation. That was one of the things that drew me to the beat literary figures like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs, among others. Our generation was driven more by the sound of music and fury. Although I believe that statement holds up over time it is not true that there were no literary figures who tried to express for us what the landscape of mainstream American was like, and why it desperately needed to be changed. Enter one Richard Brautigan and his exploration on that theme, “Trout Fishing In America”.”

As I also pointed out there I was drawn to “Trout Fishing” originally based on the photograph on the cover, of all things. Once inside, however, it was clear that Brautigan had the “gift”, the madman’s gift for telling some truths about mainstream American society that the “beat” writers also tried to make us “hip” to. And, as is my wont, once I have “discovered” a writer I tend to want read everything else of value that they have written. This brings us to “Confederate General”.

The plot here centers on one Lee Mellon who is searching, in this case literally, for a Confederate general form Big Sur who may be a forbear. Along the way he has a series of adventures trying to get to the truth of the matter and also finds that others are interested in seeking the truth surrounding this figure. The hard truth is that no real records exist for this general, although then, as now, that is hardly cause for disqualification. This one is quirkier than “Trout Fishing” and in the end less satisfying. Sometimes a writer “speaks” to me more than once with his work, and sometimes not. The latter applies here.

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Labor’s Untold Story- A Personal View Of The Class Wars In The Kentucky Hills And Hollows-"The Children Of The Coal"-The Music Of Kathy Mattea

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Labor’s Untold Story- A Personal View Of The Class Wars In The Kentucky Hills And Hollows-"The Children Of The Coal"-The Music Of Kathy Mattea



The Children Of The Coal- The Music Of Kathy Mattea

CD REVIEW

By Fritz Taylor


Coal, Kathy Mattea, Captain Potato Records, 2008


Several time over the past year or so I have mentioned in this space, as part of my remembrances of my youth and of my political and familial background, that my father was a coal miner and the son of a coal miner in the hills of Hazard, Kentucky in the heart of Appalachia. I have also mentioned that he was a child of the Great Depression and of World War II. He often joked that in a choice between digging the coal and taking his chances in war he much preferred the latter. Thus, it was no accident that when war came he volunteered for the Marines and, as fate would have it despite a hard, hard life after the war, he never looked back to the mines.

All of this is by way of an introduction to this unusual tribute album. Of all the subjects that one could think of in the year 2008 fit for a full exposition the unsung life, trials and tribulations, and grit of those who, for generations, mined the coal (and other minerals) and passed unnoticed in the hollows and hills of Appalachia (and the West) does not readily come to mind. Even for this long time labor militant. But Ms. Mattea, who has her own roots to the coal, has done a great service here. Kudos are in order.

Now politically the coal story is today a very disturbing one. For one, the strip-mining of significant portions of places like Kentucky and West Virginia goes on unabated and essentially unchecked. For another, the number of miners has dwindled to a very few and are getting fewer. As a labor militant I have feasted on the heroics of the Harlan and Hazard miners, the exploits of Big Big Haywood and the Western Federation of Miners, and the class-war battles from any number of isolated locales where men (mainly) dug the coal and fought for some sense of dignity. The dignity and sense of social solidarity may still remain but the virtues of the lessons of the class struggle- picket lines mean don’t cross and class solidarity is essential- have clearly been eroded. That is the political part that cannot be separated from the musical part of this story. Why?

The songs selected for inclusion here spell out the condition of life for the miners, in short, as the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes put it centuries ago- life is "short, nasty and brutish" in the mines and the mining communities. The songs like You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive and the choice of material by well-known mountain music songwriters Jean Ritchie, Billy Edd Wheeler, and Hazel Dickens reflect that. Theses simple mountain tunes, as performed by Ms. Mattea and her fellow musicians, spell out the story with soft guitar, fiddle, mandolin and other instruments that create the proper mood. Probably it is very hard for those not familiar with the coal, the isolated communities, and the sorrow of the mountains to listen to this compilation in one sitting. For that it probably takes the children of the coal. For the rest please bear with it and learn about an important part of American history and music.

“You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive”

In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky
That's the place where I trace my bloodline
And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone
You will never leave Harlan alive

Oh, my granddad's dad walked down
Katahrins Mountain
And he asked Tillie Helton to be his bride
Said, won't you walk with me out of the mouth
Of this holler
Or we'll never leave Harlan alive

Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinking
And you spend your life just thinkin' of how to get away

No one ever knew there was coal in them mountains
'Til a man from the Northeast arrived
Waving hundred dollar bills he said I'll pay ya for your minerals
But he never left Harlan alive

Granny sold out cheap and they moved out west
Of Pineville
To a farm where big Richland River winds
I bet they danced them a jig, laughed and sang a new song
Who said we'd never leave Harlan alive

But the times got hard and tobacco wasn't selling
And ole granddad knew what he'd do to survive
He went and dug for Harlan coal
And sent the money back to granny
But he never left Harlan alive

Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinking
And you spend your life just thinkin' of how to get away

Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinking
And you spend your life digging coal from the bottom of your grave

In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky
That's the place where I trace my bloodline
And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone
You will never leave Harlan alive

"The L & N Don't Stop Here Anymore"

When I was a curly headed baby
My daddy sat me down on his knee
He said, "son, go to school and get your letters,
Don't you be a dusty coal miner, boy, like me."

[Chorus:]
I was born and raised at the mouth of hazard hollow
The coal cars rolled and rumbled past my door
But now they stand in a rusty row all empty
Because the l & n don't stop here anymore

I used to think my daddy was a black man
With script enough to buy the company store
But now he goes to town with empty pockets
And his face is white as a February snow

[Chorus]

I never thought I'd learn to love the coal dust
I never thought I'd pray to hear that whistle roar
Oh, god, I wish the grass would turn to money
And those green backs would fill my pockets once more

[Chorus]

Last night I dreamed I went down to the office
To get my pay like a had done before
But them ol' kudzu vines were coverin' the door
And there were leaves and grass growin' right up through the floor

[Chorus]
Labels: Big Bill Haywood, COALMINERS, HarLan County, Hazel Dickens, IWW, mountain music, United Mine Workers, UTAH PHILLIPS