Blues Legend Henry Butler Passes To The Great High White Note Search Beyond

Blues Legend Henry Butler Passes To The Great High White Note Search Beyond 

From The Archives-No- From Today's Front Pages In Portland- As The First Anniversary Of Charlottesville Approaches-We Are In A Cold Civil War In America-No Platform For Fascists-No Platform For Nazis Or KKK Either-Join And Built The People’s Resistance

From The Archives-No- From Today's Front Pages In Portland-   As The First Anniversary Of Charlottesville Approaches-We Are In A Cold Civil War In America-No Platform For Fascists-No Platform For Nazis Or KKK Either-Join And Built The People’s Resistance  

August 6. 2018 Update-

A few friends, close friends at that, have taken me up short when I mention to them, to the political world beyond them as well that we are in the throes of a “cold civil war.” They look at me in disbelief. Look at me as if I was in some 1930s Germany time warp (even there they are wrong it is the 1920s which set the stage for the 1930s horrors not out of the blue) harping on the divide in this American society. A divide I did not make or make up but through plenty of things, tensions, from race to class have brought things to a boiling point. Then things like Charlottesville last year, things like Portland this weekend where the cold civil war took at heated turn between the alt-right and anti-fa and who knows what next weekend in Washington, D.C. on first anniversary of Charlottesville. Those friends still smirk a little but all I know is that as I have repeated mentioned I did not believe that in my six decade I would be seriously discussing the danger from the fascists small as it seemed a while back but more menacing now. More later-much more.

By Frank Jackman

[I really hate to start a piece with a bracketed introduction, really a double bracketed introduction since I had to do the same when I introduced the original piece last year around this time in the wake of the events in Charlottesville down in Virginia, down in the college town of the University of Virginia. However given the nature of the subject, no, given the impeding urgency of the subject the heating up of the cold civil war in America, a phenomenon not seen in this country since the decade before Civil War which ended slavery only after a series of compromises proved illusionary to end the damn institution and the only way to resolve the situation was with arms in hand and its concurrent phenomenon the rise of the organized fascist movement, aided not a little by the rabid occupants of the White House and the rest of the governing apparatus we need to talk.

This heating up of the cold civil war is a phenomenon which I have been noting for maybe a decade, maybe a little less but certainly since the big Great Recession as the economists call it now in historical hindsight when many people’s live were hung out to dry, hung out big time which started toward avalanche toward the big break of the have-nots, or maybe have not enough toward the right after flirting with Barack Obama to no avail. During that time, say since 2011 when I reported heavily on the wisp of the will phantom Occupy movement in these pages (and in Progressive Nation now on-line but which I was one of the hard copy founders of back in the 1970s but which was subsequently bought to a writers collective), I have interviewed many of those who have not move forward, no, who have been left behind for no fault of their own and no reason that they can figure out why they lost out except that now they have a handle on the damn thing as victims of globalization, liberal cabal globalization.

Still in 2016 despite knowing, feeling this unsatisfied undercurrent I was as taken aback, as shocked, and plainly speaking as clueless as any other of the talking class, of the political pundits who are supposed to have a ide about what was what in the political arena. Worse on the second point, on that rise of the fascistic elements from their cubbyholes and warrens in backwoods America, was not that I was unaware of it, hell, I had done a whole series on militias, survivalists and others who had a morbid fear ignited by their race hatreds, by their hatred of Barack Obama despite their generally have no contact ever with black people and despite not living within fifty miles of any black communities, barrios, Asian enclaves or urban Jews. Jesus. What had, has me stumped in that after fifty years or more of political struggle, fifty years since I wrote my first term paper on fascist groups in America (think of the name George Lincoln Rockwell as the poster child of that movement back then) I have to go out on the streets and hold the bastards off. Below is a quick review and summary of the past year complete with that bracketed introduction, now second introduction, that I have threatened you with. Frank Jackman]              

Original Introduction

[Under the now not so new direction of site manager Greg Green who has made some mistakes and made some very right decisions as is usual for chief editors and assignment impresarios we writers, young and old, free-lance or staff, stringers or by-line worthy have been given the green light as part of our works to discuss how we got the assignment or any other material the reader may find interesting as back story. I will do so here in a review of what I have called the impeding cold civil war in American over the past period. Frank Jackman]  

Sometimes out in the political hustings you come across a piece of written propaganda which hits you exactly where you live. Expresses your sentiments better than you could on your own. That is the case with the small, inexpensive paper leaflet that I picked up, or was handed to me, at an anti-fascist demonstration last summer on the Boston Common which I was covering for this publication. I subsequently received the same copies at a few other anti-fascist rallies and stand-outs again not sure which I picked up and which were handed to me although that is of no import to the political message stated. This “pick-up” “handed” conundrum the result of the fact that I grab one way or another every piece of literature that I come across at any rallies or such events that I cover or take part in.        

I headlined the beginning of this piece with the statement that we are in a cold civil war in this country, in America, and have been for a while, maybe the last twenty years at least but that fact has only been pushed in our faces bigtime since the age of Trump began where all the contradictions, all the divisions and all the cultural clashes have become part of the daily political battleground. There have been over the past year or so some important nodal points making that cold civil get at least momentarily hotter-one was horrendous Charlottesville which put all on notice that the divisions were deep and maybe had reached some boiling point. Make no mistake that Charlottesville was a “victory” for what passes as the Alt-Right, Nazi-Fascist-KKK-Militia combine which has been emboldened by the rise of the Trump reaction. Another was the recent nationwide student lead-high school student-led March for Our Lives demonstration, so you know this is something very different on the political horizon which was a “victory” for our side, for the people’s resistance which is important if we can keep up the momentum.  

One of the problems if you will of our side is that some people, a lot of people, many of whom have only recently come to political life have many mixed and confused feelings about what to do to stop the Alt-Right-Nazis-Fascist-KKK in their tracks. Have bought into at least partially the notion that these bastards have some “right” to free speech that we must respect. That we must expend political capital defending. “Forget that noise” as the late Pete Markin, a guy I grew up with and who gave me plenty of political insights said and would say today as well. We are private citizens and not governmental agents so have no obligation to defend such rights to free speech under any constitutional theory.

But the Constitution is only the bedrock of running a civil society. We the people of the resistance have to be clear that we do not support any right for the Alt-Right-Fascist-Nazi-KKK-Militia cabal to free speech to spew their genocidal, ethnic-cleansing, race war programs. And that, as history shows us, and everybody should read the history of the rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, is their calling card, their intention and we had better be clear that we have to nip that movement in the bud. Not only by confronting them across the police lines, police lines there to protect them and their so-called right to free speech since the police are governmental agents but to make sure they find not havens, no platforms, to spew their hateful messages. So yes so-called free speech issues take a very far back seat to the fight against the intentions of these monsters if we don’t stop them. Believe me they don’t give three-fifth of a damn about our free speech rights, will see us in hell first another sign we are in a cold civil war situation. More later.    

In Boston –The Latest Bash Back Boston-Stop The Fascists In Their Tracks November 18^th on Boston Common  

Frank Jackman comment:

I have mentioned on more than one occasion that we have been for a while in a state of cold civil war in America that has only had fuel to the fire added to it, make it tend toward a hot civil war, by the massive frauds, midnight rip-off actions, and general ignorance promoted by the Trump Administration. This rightly, and I think most thankfully, has gotten the previously moribund left, the bewildered and the oppressed up in arms enough to slowly begin a counter-attack against the night-takers from corrupt and venal right-wing bourgeois politicians like Trump and his ilk to the more dangerous extra-parliamentary forces-call them alt-right, fascist, KKK, etc. that have been unleashed-have been given fresh wind in their sails.

Not everything the left and its allies argue for in counter-attack either makes senses or provides a road forward in the anti-fascist struggle for example RefuseFascism has identified the Trump-Pence regime as fascist and to call for a parliamentary impeachment process to get rid of the bums. This Bash Back Boston grouping seems to be more militant but not quite sure that confrontation in itself without more gets us anyplace. I leave it an open question today. But for now as we sort things out, or as they get sorted for us which is as likely and has actually been the case over the past several months, let’s keep to the united front idea going until further notice. In short Saturday November 18^th in Boston be on the Boston Common to stop the Nazis, fascists and their ilk in their tracks whatever anti-fascist ideas you march under. 

           

In Boston Nov 4 -ResistFascism Rally Report From Allan Franklin

By Political Reporter Frank Jackman

[I have recently at Allan Jackson’s, the site administrator, request done a review of a lesser Humphrey Bogart movie Sirocco from the early 1950s because it had a political theme-or at least touched about what World War I wrought on the world beyond murder and mayhem in the trenches on all sides. Because I spent some time on that and a few other projects I missed a local event in Boston on the Boston Common on November 4^th sponsored by an organization called ResistFascism.org who were attempting to build some momentum to publicize an upcoming counter-demonstration against a thing called “Rally For The Republic,” a seemingly innocuous front name for a cohort of Nazis, Alt-Rights, KKK, White Supremacists, wacky Trump supporters and street thugs to be held at the Parkman Bandstand on November 18^th . The grouping had applied for but had been rejected for a permit to use that facility by the City of Boston but nevertheless intended to demonstrate that day for “free speech” rights or whatever other cover story they were pushing. The “call” for the rally itself told the real story that what they wanted was a street fight, especially targeting their nemeses the Anti-fa black-clad anarchists and Black Lives Matter.

Not to belabor the point the idea of a gathering momentum rally on the 4^th sounded like a good idea and so I detached my associate at the on-line Progressive America, Allan Franklin, to go check out and report back on the event. My premise for even bothering him with the assignment was that the literature associated with the event, including a full- page ad in the New York Times by ResistFascism made it appear like it was going to be a prelude similar to the massive 40, 000 plus counter-rally in Boston also held on August 19^th also at the Parkman Bandstand. As Allan will report that was not the case, not by a long shot although this resurgent fascist (and their sundry allies) menace needs to be combatted and combatted with massive counter-demonstrations to make them go back into their rat holes or wherever they hang out. To “crush them in the egg” as an old-time militant antifascist once told me who had been close to the Socialist Workers Party in the 1930s when James Cannon had told an audience in New York City that he had heard their chief, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, use that expression for the tasks ahead against the Nazi-night-takers. (That militant had at that time been instrumental through his union in bringing out a mass of working people to surround Madison Square Garden in that city when the fascist thugs tried to get a toehold there so I am sure he had the Trotsky remark on good authority.)

Allan, and I had agreed, had expected to take his notes and make a “think piece” story to be published here and at Progressive America. Subsequently we have decided to merely publish his somewhat edited notes which gives as much flavor to the event as it deserved.

Frank Jackman]              

[In the event the November 18^th “rally” drew about fifty to one hundred demonstrators and a counter-rally of about one thousand to fifteen hundred mainly Anti-fa, Black Lives Matter and Veterans for Peace militants. Curiously except for a couple of people that Allan had recognized from the November 4^th rally selling newspapers and passing out leaflets there was no identifiable presence by this ResistFascism operation on the Common at least. From their literature they had planned a rally at Copley Square about one half mile away from the Common although it might as well have been ten thousand miles away as far as visibly confronting the fascist menace that day. Frank Jackman]    

*****

Frank- Here are my observations about the ResistFascism rally that took place at the Parkman Bandstand on November 4, 2017 which we, you and I, have had many e-mail and phone conversations about with the organizers who wanted us to publicize the thing and cover it extensively. Also between us about our approach to a group we knew very little about except their literature and their persistent at the time and that unlike the paltry sums most leftist operations can gather these days they must have had an “angel” to be able to put a full page ad in the New York Times.

I showed up at the advertised spot, the Parkman Bandstand, about 3:30 for the 4:00 event at which time there were maybe twenty people gathered while the organizers were putting up signs and stocking a table with literature. (At first I thought I had the wrong spot not having been on the Common in years and figuring that maybe it was to be at the Park Street MBTA station entrance one of the historic protest spots on the Common that I knew from previous events but after asking if this was the right place of a person milling around I found I was indeed at the right spot.) After finding I was in the right place I knew almost immediately that this event was going to be far smaller than it was hyped up to be and which the organizers hounded us to publicize extensively beforehand and provide plenty of coverage for on the day of the event.

I did meet Steve, whom you told me you had plenty of contact via e-mail and cellphone with when he noticed my press tag and we talked for a bit. He continued to badger me about covering the November 18^th event they were planning at Copley Square. I told him frankly I did not see how a rally in Copley when the fascists were going to be on the Common a half mile away made sense, made a statement to the scumbags, made a statement about effectively resisting fascism as advertised. He demurred at that point and told me he had to help set up. This Steve seemed like a nice guy of the old school 1960s organizer sort that I have run into a lot in New York and out in San Francisco lately who under current adverse conditions are keeping up the good fight as best they can in an age when the social media technology and the subsequent generations’ organizing style have down-graded the old time ways of putting together protest rallies out in the real mean streets.

I sensed and somebody I talked to later knowledgeable about the leftist remnant still around the Cambridge/Boston milieu that this operation was an off-shoot of the old “Not In My Name” grouping from Iraq War 2003 days which was organized by an old-time cultist Maoist who didn’t hear he, Mao, died or something. It definitely had that liberal democratic feel especially around the main villains of the piece in their literature Trump/Pence and the urgent need to impeach them as if that would create the “newer world” you and the older guys I know are always harping back to when stuff like this comes up and you get all misty-eyed about the huge X number of people who came to some event against war, racism, capitalism, whatever about fifty years ago.     

  

The rally itself when I left about 5:30 never had more than one hundred people and that is perhaps generous considering the number of student journalists and other such curious student types who apparently were assigned by their professors to do coverage as a class assignment. The usual run of  general curiosity seekers who peek around the edges of such events getting confirmation for their distant hometown fears that Boston is some Red Moscow of the East Coast and making note never to send their kids to school in the town listening to the usual speakers preaching to the choir about that war, racism, sexism you and your crowd are always talking about how you almost had turned the corner on that stuff but you underestimated the forces of counter-attack arraigned against you and have been on the run ever since. Of course this included the usual Kumbaya folk music that is supposed to stir the crowd to a revolutionary pitch by evoking Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and who knows who else singing about the magic wand of getting rid of oppression. All in a regular left event day’s schedule.

I did notice that on a hand-out leaflet ResistFascism was advertising marching in a veteran’s peace parade on the 11^th, on Veterans Day and giving our starting time and place. I urged all the people I met to join that march that day since we are very familiar with and support the efforts of the main sponsor Veterans for Peace although I think you told me they were trying to reclaim the original purpose of the day by calling it Armistice Day since Sam Lowell, Fritz Taylor and I think Allan Jackson are Vietnam-era veterans, right.          

There were a few minor heavy verbal confrontations between protesters and a few Alt-right people who showed up obviously to do “recon” and size up what was what knowing they could get a row going by spitting out their garbage in a small environment. One from Salisbury, a young Iraq War veteran who portrayed himself as only interested in a dialogue with the left, told me he was an organizer for the so-called Alt-right rally on the 18^th. When I asked him about the rally “call” which we had culled from Facebook being inflammatory, calling for a street fight like you said after you read the Facebook announcement, he said just like the far left they had their crazy far right who wanted to stir things up. Take that for what it is worth, although one thing I have noticed about this newer breed of whatever you want to call these modern fascists is that that they are a bit slicker than the old guys who used to breath fire and damnation against the generic left, n----rs, gays, women and “commies” without blinking at eye. They are more media savvy and couch things in terms like “free speech,” “oppression,” “railing against the elites” and the like. Off the top of my head I think we have to treat them at least in the post-Charlottesville era where they showed some unsavory savvy and skills as being as smart as us in this war of words and images.    

Not much heated argument although a woman started yelling about those NFL players who went down on their knees during the national anthem before their football games and got into an argument with an Anti-fa who seemed very much the angry young man masked and dressed in Johnny Cash black of course.  A Veteran for Peace guy whom I think you know, at least he said he knew you, was able to calm her down a bit and she left. (I told him that I had been urging people I talked to during this time to join the Veterans Day peace march which would be starting near this section of the Common and he corrected me by calling it Armistice Day so I guess they are serious about reclaiming the day, or at least the name.      

All and all a waste of time and I told Jeff whom you had also assigned to this story to do interviews and take some photos and who was heading down to meet me to go home. Stuff might have happened after I left but I don’t think so. I am glad we had a hands-off with this R-F group although if they show up with any forces on the 11^th for that Veterans for Peace march let’s see what they have to offer. 

I felt sorry for you and Allan since you were inundated by phone calls and e-mails for stuff that seemed like a big deal and was all smoke and dreams. We have to help save your time and energy for the big stuff not this Mickey Mouse stuff so we better screen this stuff better.

Speak To Me Of Mendocino-With The McGarrigle Sisters Song On The Same Theme In Mind

Speak To Me Of Mendocino-With The McGarrigle Sisters Song On The Same Theme In Mind

By Zack James

Sid Lester had often wondered whether Lena, Lena of the Caffe Lena, the small coffeehouse that weaned many folksingers in the days when such activity was on deck, in the time of the now fabled early 1960s folk minute, now too but she the grey eminence had long gone to the shades and so that is not her bother had ever gotten to the Mendocino of her dreams and the song that the McGarrigle Sisters had reportedly written for her when she dreamed the dream of West Coast dreams. This was no mere academic question since Sid was asking it not only to himself but to his lovely companion, Mona Lord, who was accompanying him just that moment on the Pacific Coast Highway about fifty miles from that very spot, from the Mendocino of his dreams if not hers (but probably about three hours away given the hairpin turns that he increasingly hated to take along some very treacherous stretches of that beautiful view highway having almost gone down an un-guard-railed embankment to the ocean around Big Sur a few years back).

It was not like Sid had not been to the dreamland before, having made the trip up from the fetid seas of Frisco town (fetid in comparison to the Mendocino white-washed breakers eroding the sheer rock at a greater rate than he would have expected) a number of times mostly with his old time now long gone to “find herself” Laura, Laura Perkins whom he had talked into going up those several times based on nothing more than that he liked the song. Liked too that she, Laura liked it as well and would cover the song anytime she could find somebody to do a duo with her at “open mics” and features depending on how she was feeling. Mona having heard the song exactly once (she didn’t like the fact that Laura had liked the song and had been to Mendocino before she had and so would not listen when Sid tried to play it on his car CD player as they got closer to the place). Moreover she was reserving judgment on the relationship between the song and the place.

And that last point, the point for Sid anyway, was exactly how the song and the place connected. Was the real source of his wonder about old Lena back in the tired old East. Did she long like he had to be done with Eastern pressures and pitfalls. To stop worrying about where the money would come from for rent, to pay the utilities, hell to pay the performers and stop them from having to play for the foolish “basket” like when they  had just started out on some forlorn street in Cambridge , Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Old Town or the Village. Stop all of that and head West, head to South Bend for a minute, head over the Rockies and suck in the breezes of the new land, of the new dispensation. Yeah, he bet though that she never got to the West, never could leave her cats, never could get that café out of her system, would probably fret even if she only went out for a week or so.

As they, Sid and his new Mona, approached the outskirts of Mendocino he wondered, seriously wondered whether Mona would ask him someday to speak of Mendocino, to let the place get under her skin. Yeah, speak of Mendocino.                  

Artists’ Corner-Frank Stella And The Abstract Expressionist Movement

Artists’ Corner-Frank Stella And The Abstract Expressionist Movement

Thad Lyons comment: I was crazy for abstract art when I was a kid and that genre was fresh with guys like Jackson Pollack breaking through the last vestiges of representational art which dominated Western art for a few precious centuries. Then that movement kind of turned on itself, or maybe better, ran out of steam once one could not tell a piece of art work from the walls which surrounded the picture. Frank Stella put himself front and center of some new energies when he took that basically sound abstract art push away from representational art and brought back form, forms geometric and curvilinear to tell his stories in paint. Not all of it worked, some of it left the viewer bewildered but some of it pushed art forward when things looked tough.     

    

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –Paul Nash

As The 100^th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –Paul Nash 

By Seth Garth

A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100^th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100^th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –Otto Dix

As The 100^th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –Otto Dix 

By Seth Garth

A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100^th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100^th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.

When Hunks Like Robert Mitchum Lighted Up The Film Noir Heavens- Faith Domergue’s “Where Danger Lives” (1950)-A Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Where Danger Lives, starring Faith Domergue, Claude Rains, Robert Mitchum, directed by legendary film noir director John Farrow, 1950

The reader may wonder, no, may be in shock that young Sarah Lemoyne, me, is reviewing a 1950s film noir minor classic Where Danger Lives starring Robert Mitchum one of the half dozen or so best- known male noir leads rather than the expected “expert” on the genre Sam Lowell or at least a well-known reviewer like my mentor Seth Garth. Thank site manager Greg Green for that although after all that is what he gets paid for. Paid for putting out what he has termed “the fire.” The “fire” in this case the nondescript “dispute” if it can be said to rise to that level between the now slightly wizened Sam Lowell (my concession to Sam via Greg after consistent and provable accusations by me that he, Sam, has become both mentally and physically a shell of what his old-time legend bought and paid for by the studios and book publishers had been, had become wizened and senile from his rantings against a harmless young woman like me trying to learn her craft) and me over my so-called allegations about who actually wrote his film reviews after his breakthrough tome on film noir which is still considered by some of the diminishing clot of  older writers on the subject the definitive volume but which I made the “mistake” of saying was dated and left me cold, left me out in the cold in trying to understand the genre. Frankly should have been revised by him, or somebody about twenty years ago when neo-noir films like L.A. Confidential and Mullholland Drive took the genre in another direction. Also should have included at least a tip of the hat to the idea that most of the guys, private detectives, crooks, criminals and skirt-chasers were deeply misogynous. But that would have thrown his precious main theory about “man’s fate” into the trash heap and his book into the remainder bins.      

Although I have proof positive that mainly stringers, usually female stringers romantically involved with him if you can believe that , or believe that this mountebank has actually been married three times and has a bunch of nice kids, or young women looking to get up the professional male-dominated food chain he has muddied the waters so much that it is hard to believe that he did not do the deeds as noted. Worse of all personally were his insinuations, hurtful insinuation to both Seth Garth, allegedly his old school boy friend, and my partner Clara that Seth and I were in the throes of some intergenerational romance. Thoughts of a dirty old man who under other circumstances should have been relieved of his duties, except he had already been relieved of them through what was supposed to be his retirement. That “hanging around like Father Death,” Seth’s take on the matter is what has brought Seth to my defense and assistance much to Clara and my appreciation (although it was touchy for a while when she thought I was in my “man” interest stage after having gone to dinner with him alone one night since I have always been a “B” in the LGBTQ firmament while she is exclusively “L”).

All that is over now though, all the mutual mudslinging is over courtesy of Greg who did what most editors do when their writers start to wrangle to the detriment of the work. Called us in to walk the plank, for me to walk the plank or so I thought given Sam’s vast seniority. But no Greg the fount of wisdom just told Sam that Sarah should do a film noir review, a review of one of the examples that Sam used in that long-ago book everybody went crazy over. Not a major example but a sturdy one as this Where Danger Lives is. In return Sam is too do a musical or was to do a musical because when Greg suggested that he balked. Sam balked and said he would go back into cubbyhole retirement and leave the field to the younger writers. Thanks Sam but I still wanted to do this review to show my stuff so I too can climb up that cutthroat food chain you have withdrawn from with seeming good grace. So here we are.

After perusing Seth’s copy of Sam’s The Life And Times Of Film Noir:1940-1960 I noticed at least in the femme fatale section proper that Sam has made quite a case for some “going along minding his own business man,” usually a a professional man, being “mantrapped” by some vampish woman with evil designs on his time and happiness. (By the way, btw in Internet speak, perusing Sam’s book is all anybody could reasonably be expected to do since at 900 hundred long drawn out pages not even the most devoted besotted, book-wormish aficionado could wallow through the whole thing except those who have no other life and time on their hands than to wade through such things. Even Seth has told me and he has said it was okay to use his remarks here that he has never read the whole thing, never would have been able to so even as nighttime before bed reading. Especially as bedtime reading. Seth always said that Sam was a great reviewer but when he went beyond that put out the lights. Of course, Seth had the advantage, if it was an advantage, of having been present at the creation as he says while Sam was lumbering along on the volume and so knows exactly where Sam’s head was when he wrote the thing.                            

I will give you an example of what I mean by the so-call mantrap defense of the guy coming under the spell of some wayward femme fatale who takes no prisoners. In discussing the high classic Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas a section that goes on for some one hundred pages alone longer than the plot outline Sam gives the most useful for our purposes case for his dog-eared theory. Kirk, a minor gangster working out of Reno who would have been devoured alive by the sharks in Vegas, hired Jeff, Mitchum’s role, to seek Kathy, played by Jane, his errant girlfriend who has run off with a fistful of his dough and what amounted to the “finger.” Jeff, a professional detective, went to Mexico her last known whereabouts to find her, bring her back and collect his fee as any professional detective would have done and be done with it. Simply. Except once Jeff got down south, got to waiting around some off-beat cantina for her to appear once she did and he got his looks at her all his resolve vanished. I admit Jane Greer was a looker, would be a looker today too with that “come hither” look that men have found attractive in me when I am into listening to them sweet talk me which has not been for a while now. (They could learn something from Seth by the way who when he took Clara and me out to dinner, a dinner after the dinner we had alone which had upset Clara no end and got her yelling habits on, to ruffle things out she said to clear the air that if he was interested in me romantically that he would not beat about the bush about it. Said that he would have, as Clara had, taken dead aim at me. That made me feel good and hopefully satisfied Clara). 

But Jeff was a pro, was supposed to do his business and forget it. Instead he got hung up on some vagrant jasmine   scent, something in the sultry air, something about the way she turned her head just so and bought into some evil plot she had hatched up to get him to od her bidding, to get her to forget to bring her back to Kirk. And who knows what madness since not only did she grab Kirk’s dough but winged him with a couple of slugs in her girlish gun-simple way. In the end he will be betrayed by her, will be left holding the bag for a killing of another detective, will be forced to duck out and hide his identity in some two-bit California town and in the end wind up in some un-mourned ditch bleeding like a sieve. I could say more but the reader gets the picture of a man who can’t get out of the spider-like clutches of a woman. We, Sam wants us to believe, should bleed for Jeff just because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants on a job. Couldn’t say no. Yeah, right.

I suggest that Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon turning over the faithless Bridget and her stuff of dreams when she tried to have him take her place in the big step-off and Phil Marlowe in The Big Sleep when he foiled Carmen’s “come hither” advances and took gangster Eddie Mars down for the count had the better professional attitude when the deal went down. So much for Sam’s silly idea that the guy is just victim, just a patsy for whatever any stray good-looking woman has in store for him. That whole bogus sentiment will come into play when I set up the plotline and theory behind the film under review.

There is always one moment of no turning back in each film noir I have seen but except for what book reviewer Josh Breslin calls “holy goofs,” guys a la Jack Kerouac’s characterization who could not talk and chew gum at the same time, a moment when the guy makes the wrong turn. Except that wrong turn is not without volition on the part of the male and is not some Calvinistic predestination gambit where free choice either doesn’t matter or can’t be bought for love or money since he is not one of the elect and a doomed soul. Take the good doctor here Jeff, Mitchum’s role, funny Jeff was also the name of the wayward private detective in Out of the Past who wound up with a couple of slugs in him via a gun-simple femme in a graven ditch out in nowhere. He had a promising career in front of him, good bedside manner, a good if not outstanding resume and a girlfriend nurse who if not startingly beautiful like sultry Margo, Faith’s role, at least would be a good life partner and bedmate. He could have had it all and had no complains.       

Enter exotic flower mysterious Margo via a suicide attempt into the emergency room while Jeff was on duty. Margo, admittedly the clinging type set off something in him beyond his desire to make sure she did not attempt another end to her life especially when she “did the dixie,” a term via Seth via Sam, on him and set him on a search for her. Right there he should have, could have dropped the whole thing. No, this good doctor actually made a house call for crying out loud. What doctor this side of Nick Adams’ father in the Hemingway series of the same name made house calls once the AMA pulled the brakes on that practice citing too much wasted time and too few billable hours.         

           

Okay, sometimes a guy, a gal too I know I did with a couple of partners before Clara, will get infatuated and then sober up. Will let the thing die on the vine because things don’t add up. This is where Sam is all wrong in his wrong-headed theory. One night at some gin mill rendezvous dear sweet Margo tried to brush Jeff off claiming her father, her rich as Midas but demanding father, needed her to go on a vacation with him. False flag, red flag for any sane guy. What does the big broad-shouldered, jut-jawed lug do. Run out to her house to confront her father, to give him the real deal that he wanted to marry his daughter. Except that her “father” was really her husband and this was a non-incestuous relationship because she lied to Jeff, admitted she lied to Jeff right in front of hubby and her fall guy. Jeff could have walked, sort of did walk, except a sudden scream from Margo from inside the house sent him back in. Yeah, yeah, Sam like she forced him back. He wanted to on his hands and knees and with a smile- for his own desires.    

That walk back through those un-pearly gates led to his demise, led to his willing demise, his big step off when after fighting hubby, a much older man, who fell down after beating Jeff about his witless head. It turned out that he had killed the old man-and was at the same time subject to the trauma of a concussion in his medical self-examination world. Groggy, he accepted responsibility for the killing despite the old man still breathing while he was injured. He wanted to report the accident after all that was what it to the cops but against all good sense, against his still substantial ability to make decisions despite his head injury Margo talked him out of it. From there it is nothing but a run south to the border and freedom for the pair. Naturally to juice up the plot they run into plenty of hassles before they get to that precious Mexican border and the good life, the free life. All the while Margo was acting very weird, acting like she has something to hide. Which she did. I hope I offend nobody in the mentally-challenged community but she was a very disturbed woman who moreover had actually killed her hubby with a pillow which Jeff was clueless about. Clueless about until he stopped being of use to her as his head injury condition made him less useful for the final fateful getaway.

It was not until dear Margo gave him her patented old pillow treatment that he finally wised up, finally knew she had a screw loose. Confronting her with his so-called newfound wisdom right at the border and freedom fence she did the Kathy on him, fed him a couple of slugs for his efforts. Another gun-simple woman. Not so strange the coppers who have been hounding the pair from out in the desert somewhere to the border threw some slugs into her. She did do something Kathy never would have done, a gesture for love as Rick of Rick’s Café Americain would have said, twisted love maybe, and gave a deathbed confession absolving Jeff. Jeff, undeservedly lived to doctor on, lived to go back to that ordinary sweetie nurse and to avoid another walk on the wild side.        

Sam Lowell may not like it but his she-devil noise about the women, the femme fatales is all smoke and mirrors, all is now pricked like some kid’s balloon. Even Seth, as devoted if not as well known a film noir aficionado as Sam, paid me the compliment of saying that I had put a searchlight on something that had bothered him for a long time about Sam’s silly theory. That helpless male victim part by grown men of the world. He still is not totally convinced of my take on the matter but he respects it and if I give some more proofs he, unlike Sam, is willing to jump ship. Welcome aboard, mate.

A Salute To The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-The Sam And Ralph Stories - In The 157th Anniversary Year-Karl Marx On The American Civil War

A Salute To The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-The Sam And Ralph Stories - In The 157^th Anniversary Year-Karl Marx On The American Civil War  

[In early 2018, shortly after I had taken over the reins as site manager at this on-line publication I “saw the light” and bowed to the wisdom of a number of older writers who balked at my idea of reaching younger and newer audiences by having them review films like Marvel/DC Comics productions, write about various video games and books that would not offend a flea unlike the flaming red books previously reviewed here centered on the now aging 1960s baby-boomer demographic which had sustained the publication through good times and bad as a hard copy and then on-line proposition. One senior writer, who shall remain nameless in case some stray millennial sees this introduction and spreads some viral social media hate campaign his way, made the very telling observation that the younger set, his term, don’t read film reviews or hard copy books as a rule and those hardy Generation of ’68 partisans who still support this publication in the transition from the old Allan Jackson leadership to mine don’t give a fuck about comics, video games or graphic novels. I stand humbled.

Not only stand humbled though but in a valiant and seemingly successful attempt to stabilize this operation decided to give an encore presentation to some of the most important series produced and edited by Allan Jackson-without Allan. That too proved to be an error when I had Frank Jackman introduce the first few sections of The Roots Is The Toots Rock And Roll series which Allan had sweated his ass over to bring out over a couple of years. Writers, and not only senior writers who had supported Allan in the vote of no confidence fight challenging his leadership after he went overboard attempting to cash in on the hoopla over the commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love in 1967 but also my younger writer partisans, balked at this subterfuge. What one called it a travesty. Backing off after finding Allan, not an easy task since he had fled to the safer waters of the West looking for work and had been rumored to be any place from Salt Lake City to some mountainous last hippie commune in the hills of Northern California doing anything from pimping as press agent for Mitt Romney’s U.S. Senate campaign in Utah to running a whorehouse with Madame La Rue in Frisco or shacking up with drag queen Miss Judy Garland in that same city, we brought Allan back to do the introductions to the remaining sections. That we, me and the Editorial Board established after Allan’s demise and as a guard against one-person rule, had compromised on that gesture with the last of the series being the termination of Allan’s association with the publication except possibly as an occasional writer, a stringer really, when some nostalgia event needed some attention.       

That is the way things went and not too badly when we finished up the series in the early summer of 2018. But that is not the end of the Allan story. While looking through the on-line archives I noticed that Allan had also seriously edited another 1960s-related series, the Sam and Ralph Stories, a series centered on the trials and tribulations of two working-class guys who had been radicalized in different ways by the 1960s upheavals and have never lost the faith in what Allan called from Tennyson “seeking a newer world” would resurface in this wicked old world, somebody’s term.

I once again attempted to make the mistake of having someone else, in this case Josh Breslin, introduce the series (after my introduction here) but the Editorial Board bucked me even before I could set that idea in motion. I claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Allan was probably out in Utah looking for some residual work for Mitt Romney now that he is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator for Utah or running back to Madame La Rue, an old flame, and that high- end whorehouse or hanging with Miss Judy Garland at her successful drag queen tourist attraction cabaret. No such luck since he was up in Maine working on a book about his life as an editor. To be published in hard cop y by well-known Wheeler Press whenever he gets the proofs done. So hereafter former editor and site manager Allan will handle the introductions on this encore presentation of this excellent series. Greg Green]                   

By Bart Webber

Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris met on May Day 1971 under unusual circumstances to say the least. May Day might spring to mind for the politically attuned, left-wing politically attuned more likely, as an international workers’ holiday celebrated in many countries but not in the United States as anything but an unofficial day of commemoration by the high heaven left-wing native remnant who remember the mass marches on that day in the 1930s in places like New York City and San Francisco and the immigrants used to celebrating the day in their countries of origin. That day though Sam Eaton, who had become an anti-war activist a couple of years before when in reaction to his closest friend from high school corner boy days, Jeff Mullins, being blown away in some God forsaken village near Pleiku in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and Ralph Morris, an ex-Army veteran who had served eighteen months in that same Central Highlands area and after being discharged had also become an anti-war activist in reaction to what he called “the U. S. government making animals, nothing less” out of him and the fellow soldiers he served with in Vietnam had met on the football field at then RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.

They, respectively, had been arrested along with thousands of others while trying to “capture” the White House and to surround the Pentagon and symbolically shut it down. Those were heady days and although they did not effectively shut down the government that day and all the collective actions for years by the anti-war movement did not beat the American government out of Vietnam (it would take a concerted effort by the North Vietnamese Army/South Vietnamese Liberation Front offensive to sweep away the old regime and sent the United States desperately packing to the helicopter pads on the roof of the embassy as the famous photograph had it which right-wing aficionados still call “a stab in the back” for not staying the course even longer, not providing that admittedly corrupt Saigon  regime yet more weapons, dough and legitimacy) the friendship between the two men has lasted until this day (with some periodic lapses while both men moved back from total 24/7 political commitment to get jobs and raise families, nicely done). More importantly they remained true to their anti-war youth even as the high tide of the 1960s turned to ashes. They kept the faith, although in attenuated form.

One of the things that resulted directly from that May Day 1971 defeat of their slim forces by the rapacious government which launched a massive counter-offensive, counter-revolution to hear Sam say it which has lasted in some form, most recently around the so-called cultural wars, was the need felt by both of them to have a better handle on how to actually bring down a government bend on war, and continuation of war, by mass actions (including, if necessary as strange as it may seem to a reader today revolution so Sam word then not so off-beat). So they in the summer of 1972, like many thousands of other young radicals looking for some answers since what they had been doing previously was stalled began to read a lot of leftist literature from the past, including the works of Karl Marx, a name that previously meant the “enemy” in their red scare Cold War upbringing in the very working class towns of Carver, Massachusetts and Troy, New York respectively. Moreover Sam, who had been living in a commune in Cambridge with some other free-lance radicals invited Ralph to come over from Troy for that summer and take part in a study group which was being formed by one of the many “red collectives” that were sprouting up around the town.

And they did so, did study although they both confessed since they were not well-versed or deeply interested in history, did find out what May Day and lots of other things meant in the old days. Part of that study included a close study of Karl Marx’s relationship with America, a fact that they were both totally unaware of from the conventional histories they had been taught in high school. Particularly important were the efforts by Marx and the First International that he in effect led to support the Northern side in the American Civil War under the imperative of the abolishment of slavery in the Marxist scheme a progressive step for human progress and an unfettering of the capitalism system, then on a progressive historical curve by the dead weight of slave labor. And they had very kind words to say of one Abraham Lincoln who acted as a serious agent for change whatever his personal views on the black liberation question (in those old days every issue came forth as a question, the women question, the gay question, the Russian revolution question and so on).

So that is why today as Americans commemorate the 157^th anniversary of the start of a bloody civil war Sam Eaton and Ralph can draw inspiration from what Karl Marx tried with might and main to support. Sam, the writer of the two, although Ralph has put in more than his fair share of ideas, wrote a little piece on the subject as an introduction to articles by Marx on the subject. Here is what he had to say:                  

I am always amazed when I run into some younger leftists, or even older radicals who may have not read much Marx and Engels, and find that they are surprised, very surprised to see that Marx and Engels were avid partisans of the Abraham Lincoln-led Union side in the American Civil War. In the age of advanced imperialism, of which the United States is currently the prime example, and villain, we are almost always negative about capitalism’s role in world politics. And are always harping on the need to overthrow the system one way or another in order, peacefully if possible, but by any means necessary as Malcolm X used to say, if necessary, to bring forth a new socialist reconstruction of society. Thus one could be excused for forgetting that at earlier points in history capitalism played a progressive role. A role that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Marxists, if not applauded, then at least understood represented human progress.

Of course, one does not expect everyone to be a historical materialist and therefore know that in the Marxist scheme of things both the struggle to bring America under a unitary state that would create a national capitalist market by virtue of a Union victory and the historically more important struggle to abolish slavery that turned out to a necessary outcome of that Union struggle were progressive in our eyes. Read on.

Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton a couple of old-time radicals, old-time now in the  2010s unlike in their youth not being the Great Depression labor radicals who had been their models after a fashion and who helped built the now seemingly moribund unions, (or unions now rather consciously led by union leaders who have no or only attenuated links to past militant labor actions like strikes, plant sit-downs, hot-cargo struck goods, general strikes and such and would go into a dead faint if such actions were forced upon them and are so weakened as to be merely dues paying organizations forwarding monies to the Democratic “friends of labor” Party). They had come of political age as anti-war radicals from the hell-bent street in-your-face 1960s confrontations with the American beast during the Vietnam War reign of hell. Ralph from the hard-shell experience of having fought for the beast in the Central Highlands in that benighted country and who became disgusted with what he had done, his buddies had done, and his government had done to make animals out of them destroying simple peasants catch in a vicious cross-fire and Sam, having lost his closest high school hang around guy, Jeff Mullin, blown away in some unnamed field near some hamlet that he could not pronounce or spell correctly. The glue that brought them together, brought them together for a lifetime friendship and political comity (with some periods of statutory neglect to bring up families in Carver, Massachusetts and Troy, New York respectively) the ill-fated actions on May Day 1971 In Washington when they attempted along with several thousand others to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war. All those efforts got them a few days detention in RFK stadium where they had met almost accidently and steel-strong bonds of brotherhood from then on.     

They had seen high times and ebbs, mostly ebbs once the 1960s waves receded before the dramatic events of 9/11 and more particularly the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 called off what they had termed the “armed truce” with the United States government over the previous couple of decades. So Ralph and Sam were beside themselves when the powder-puff uprising of the Occupy movement brought a fresh breeze to the tiny American left-wing landscape in the latter part of 2011.  That term “powder puff” not expressing the heft of the movement which was not inconsiderable for a couple of months especially in hotbeds like New York, Boston, L.A. and above all the flagship home away from home of radical politics, San Francisco but the fact that it disappeared almost before it got started giving up the huge long-term fight it was expected to wage to break the banks, break the corporate grip on the world and, try to seek “newer world”). Ralph and Sam were not members in good standing of any labor unions, both having after their furtive anti-war street fights and the ebbing of the movement by about the mid-1970s returned to “normalcy,” Ralph having taken over his father’s electrical shop in Troy when his father retired and Sam had gone back to Carver to expand a print shop that he had started in the late 1960s that had been run by a hometown friend in his many absences. However having come from respectable working-class backgrounds in strictly working-class towns, Carver about thirty miles from Boston and the cranberry bog capital of the world and Ralph in Troy near where General Electric ruled the roost, had taken to heart the advice of their respective grandfathers about not forgetting those left behind, that an injury to one of their own in this wicked old world was an injury to all as the old Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) motto had it. Moreover despite their backing away from the street confrontations of their youth when that proved futile after a time as the Vietnam War finally wound down and yesterday’s big name radicals left for parts unknown they had always kept an inner longing for the “newer world,” the more equitable world where the people who actually made stuff and kept the wheels of society running and their down-pressed allies ruled.   

So Ralph and Sam would during most of the fall of 2011   travel down to the Wall Street “private” plaza (and site of many conflicts and stand-offs between the Occupy forces on the ground and then Mayor Blumberg and his itchy cops) which was the center of the movement on weekends, long weekends usually, to take part in the action after the long drought of such activity both for them personally and for their kind of politics. They were crestfallen to say the least when the thing exploded after Mayor Blumberg and the NYPD the police pulled down the hammer and forcibly disbanded the place (and other city administrations across the country and across the world and police departments doing likewise acting in some concert as it turned out once the dust settled and “freedom of information” acts were invoked to see what the bastards were up to).

Of more concern since they had already known about what the government could do when it decided to pull down the hammer having learned a painfully hard lesson on May Day 1971 and on a number of other occasions later when Ralph and Sam and their comrades decided to get “uppity” and been slapped down more than once although they at least had gone into those actions with their eyes wide open had been the reaction of the “leadership” in folding up the tents (literally and figuratively). Thereafter the movement had imploded from its own contradictions, caught up not wanting to step on toes, to let everybody do their own thing, do their own identity politics which as they also painfully knew had done   much to defang the old movements, refusing out of hand to cohere a collective leadership that might give some direction to the damn thing but also earnestly wanting to bring the monster down.

Ralph and Sam in the aftermath, after things had settled down and they had time to think decided to put together a proposal, a program if you like, outlining some of the basic political tasks ahead to be led by somebody. Certainly not by them since radical politics, street politics is a young person’s game and they admittedly had gotten rather long in the tooth. Besides they had learned long ago, had talked about it over drinks at Jack Higgins’ Grille in Boston more than once in their periodic reunions when Ralph came to town, how each generation had to face its tasks in its own way so they would be content to be “elder” tribal leaders and provide whatever wisdom they could, if asked.  Working under the drumbeat of Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up something of a “national anthem” for what went on among the better elements of Occupy are some points that any movement for social change has to address these days and fight for and about as well. Sam, more interested in writing than Ralph who liked to think more than write but who contributed his fair share of ideas to the “program,” wrote the material up and had it posted on various site which elicited a respectable amount of comment at the time. They also got into the old time spirit by participating in the latest up and coming struggle- the fight for a minimum wage of $15 an hour although even that seems paltry for the needs of today’s working people to move up in the world.