This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Every leftist, hell,
everybody who stands on the democratic principle that each nation has the right
to self-determination should cautiously rejoice at the “defrosting” of the
long-time diplomatic relations between the American imperial behemoth and the
island of Cuba (and the freedom of the remaining Cuban Five in the bargain).
Every leftist militant should understand that each non-capitalist like Cuba
going back to the establishment of the now defunct Soviet Union has had the
right (maybe until we win our socialist future the duty) to make whatever
advantageous agreements they can with the capitalist world. That despite
whatever disagreements we have with the political regimes ruling those
non-capitalist states. That is a question for us to work out not the
imperialists.
For those who have
defended the Cuban Revolution since its victory in 1959 under whatever political
rationale (pro-socialist, right to self-determination, or some other hands off
policy) watching on black and white television the rebels entering Havana this
day which commemorates the heroic if unsuccessful efforts at Moncada we should
affirm our continued defense of the Cuban revolution. Oh yes, and tell the
American government to give back Guantanamo while we are at it.
Markin comment:
Those of us who came of age in the 1960s, especially those of us who cut our political teeth on defending, under one principle or another (right to national self-determination, socialist solidarity, general anti-imperialist agenda, etc.), the Cuban revolution that we were front row television witnesses to, cherish the memory of the heroic Cuban defenders at the Bay of Pigs. No one cried when the American imperial adventure was foiled and President John Kennedy (whatever else we felt about him then), egg on face, had to take responsibility for the fiasco.
Those of us who continue to adhere to the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist agenda, whatever our differences with the Cuban leadership, today can join in honoring those heroic fighters. Today is also a day to face the hard fact that we have had too few victories against the imperialist behemoth. The imperial defeat at the Bay of Pigs was however our victory. As today’s imperialist activity in Libya, painfully, testifies to those forces, however, have not gotten weaker in the past 50 years. So the lesson for today’s (and future) young militants is to honor our fallen forebears and realize that the beast can be defeated, if you are willing to fight it. Forward! Defend the Cuban Revolution! Defend Libya against the imperialist onslaught! Free The Cuban Five!
How World War II Was Won-With Cary Grant’s “Kiss Them For Me” (1957) In Mind
DVD Review
By Sandy Salmon
Kiss Them For Me, starring Cary Grant, Jayne Mansfield, Suzy Parker. 1957
In wartime all emotions, plans, ideas are kind of pushed together and what would ordinarily be a slow-moving train turns into a supersonic airplane ride. That was certainly the case in the matter of love and marriage as the film under review of Cary Grant’s Kiss Them For Me film adaptation of the 1945 play brings to the fore. And World War II the time frame of this cinematic effort, the time of the Generation of ‘68’s, my parents, the parents of today’s baby boomer generation was no exception. That wartime was filled with all kinds of hasty marriages some which lasted forever as in my own parents’ case and some didn’t (and some lasted forever shouldn’t have either). (That “kiss them for me’ by the way as a symbol of the time no mere happenstance for there is a very famous photograph taken in Time Square, New York City of a sailor in a deep embrace all out kiss with some dame whom he may or may not have known, probably not, once V-E Day was declared to end the war in the European Theater).
Of course even in a romantic comedy as here there is a need to be solemn about the dedication of those who rolled back the night-takers in the European and Pacific wars not all of them who made it and laid down their heads in some watery or mud splattered grave. Here Cary Grant and companions are gadabout Navy fliers out in the Pacific War, the part fought against the Japanese, who by daring-do get ride from Honolulu circa 1944 to San Francisco for some well-deserved shore leave. All of this done in a normal smooth as silk Cary Grant style who is a guy with a fast glib comic tongue ad who butter would not melt in his mouth. One they get into Frisco town it is party time as long as they can hold out. Of course along the way they have to deal with the fact that they are under orders to report to a medical facility over in Oakland which would and will crab their style. And along the way Cary and pals are figuring out ways to avoid that situation like the plague.
Here’s where the love and romance if you can get it comes in. Cary is smitten by this Gwentyth, played by fetching ex-model Suzy Parker, a good-looking take her anywhere proudly red-head who probably was the dream of any service guy who wanted to settle down to a nice nest after the war. Well she is already “spoken for” by a well-heeled (and heel) war contractor who is nothing but trouble for Cary and the boys. But all Cary has to do is put on that smooth as silk charm and bingo he and she, they are an “item” all in a couple of days. Yeah, the times were like that. But in the normal patriotic twist that hot affair will have to be put on hold for the duration since the boys rejecting a soft stateside assignment head back to the danger to finish what they had started. Not the best Cary Grant vehicle but adequate.
[Somewhat incongruously this film also stars blonde, very blonde, 1950s busty bombshell Jayne Mansfield who was, along with Marilyn Monroe except Jayne was a step or two down in the talent category, the epitome of World War II generation guys, my father’s generation guys, idea of a highly sexual desirable woman. Unlike the iconic Marilyn who could really though Jayne played to type the “dumb bimbo” which in this film seemed out of place. Maybe she knew somebody high up in the studio but her performance detracted from the main play-that Cary charm-and in the end serious side of war despite the on-screen antics.]
Happy, Happy 100th Birthday Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti-Max Daddy Of Famed “City Lights Bookstore” In “Beat” San Francisco When It Counted And Muse Of His Generation’s Poets
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 for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking 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. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis) 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 they called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, 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 diners’ 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 and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers, connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to trash those connection when they acolytes came calling looking for the “word.” 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 (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands). Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother’s Alex 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, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright event, 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 any 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(after an incredible publishing travail since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, 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, like I say I think the best part, 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 on the road 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 and semi-tragic 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 for fear of being tarred with those brushes. 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 any way they could 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 bit “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 now also a high-road lawyer 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 Bob 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 Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll in about three weeks. 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.
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-Poet's Corner – Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Coney Island Of The Mind”
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.
Markin comment
When I think of Lowell, Massachusetts, and I do as I have some ancient connections with that old mill town, I think of mad man wordsmith Jack Kerouac and his “beat” buddies, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. And when I think of “drugstore cowboy” William Burroughs I think of his hometown, the gateway to Middle America, St. Louis. And when I think of “Om Man” Allen Ginsberg I think of San Francisco Howl (Yes, I know I should think New Jersey but that doesn’t jibe with my “travelogue” West.) And when I think of San Francisco I think of “poet dream” City Lights Bookstore. And when I think of City Lights Bookstore I think of “keeping the dim light burning” Lawrence Ferlinghetti. And so should you.
********
Coney Island Of The Mind-Number 20
The pennycandystore beyond the El is where I first fell in love with unreality Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom of that september afternoon A cat upon the counter moved among the licorice sticks and tootsie rolls and Oh Boy Gum
Outside the leaves were falling as they died
A wind had blown away the sun
A girl ran in Her hair was rainy Her breasts were breathless in the little room
Outside the leaves were falling and they cried Too soon! too soon!
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Number 8
It was a face which darkness could kill in an instant a face as easily hurt by laughter or light
'We think differently at night' she told me once lying back languidly
And she would quote Cocteau
'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say 'whom I am constantly shocking'
Then she would smile and look away light a cigarette for me sigh and rise
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the International Brigades and their role in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- Woody Guthrie's Spanish Civil War Salute "Jarama Valley"
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
"Jarama Valley" Lyrics- Woody Guthrie
there's a valley in spain called Jarama
its a place that we all know so well
it was there that we fought against the fascists
we saw a peacful valey turn to hell
from this valley they say we are going
but dont hasten to bid us adue
even though we lost the battle at jarama
we'll set this valley free before we're through
we were men of a laken battelion
we're proud of the fight that we made
we know that you people love the valley
we're remember a laken vrigade
from this valley they say we are going
but dont hasten to bid us adue
even though we lost the battle at jarama
we'll set this valley free before we're through
you will never find peace with these fascists
you'll never find friends such as we
so remember that valley iof jarama
and the people that'll set that valley free
from this valley they say we are going
but dont hasten to bid us adue
even though we lost the battle at jarama
we'll set this valley free before we're through
all this world is like this valley called jarama
so green and so bright and so fair
no fascists can dwell in our valley
nor breathe in our new freedoms air
from this valley they say we are going
but dont hasten to bid us adue
even though we lost the battle at jarama
we'll set this valley free before we're through
On The Anniversary Of The Entry Of The International Brigades Into The Spanish Civil War All Honor To The Memory Of The "Premature" Anti-Fascist Fighters-Langston Hughes' "Negroes in Spain," from "The Volunteer for Liberty" (1937) Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the International Brigades and their role in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39. Friday, February 05, 2010
*Poet's Corner- The Work Of Langston Hughes
Commentary
February Is Black History Month
The following is a repost of a tribute to Langston Hughes from Black History Month February 2009. I just flat out like Hughes' bluesy style. I have added some more early poems and commentary.
The name Langston Hughes is forever linked to the poetic form of the blues, the Harlem Renaissance and the struggle for black liberation. Less well know is his role an "pre-mature anti-fascist" volunteer with the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th International Brigade in Spain, organized by the Communist International to defend republican Spain. That is why he is honored in this space today. That he later distanced himself from his earlier attachment to communism, as he saw it, does not negate that when it counted he was counted in. Hughes was hardly the first, nor would he be the last, to break from his radical past. We honor that past and fight against the politics of his later turn.
This article by Langston Hughes is from the newspaper of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain
"Negroes in Spain," from "The Volunteer for Liberty" (1937)
In July, on the boat with me coming from New York, there was a Negro from the far West on his way to Spain as a member of the 9th Ambulance Corps of the American Medical Bureau. He was one of a dozen in his unit of American doctors, nurses, and ambulance drivers offering their services to Spanish Democracy.
When I reached Barcelona a few weeks later, in time for my first air-raid and the sound of bombs falling on a big city, on of the first people I met was a young Porto Rican of color acting as interpreter for the Loyalist troops.
A few days later in Valencia, I came across two intelligent, young colored men from the West Indies, aviators, who had come to give their services to the fight against Fascism.
ALL FIGHT FASCISM
And now, in Madrid, Spain's besieged capital, I've met wide-awake Negroes from various parts of the world -- New York, our Middle West, the French West Indies, Cuba, Africa -- some stationed here, others on leave from their battalions -- all of them here because they know that if Fascism creeps across Spain, across Europe, and then across the world, there will be no more place for intelligent young Negroes at all. In fact, no decent place for any Negroes -- because Fascism preaches the creed of Nordic supremacy and a world for whites alone.
In Spain, there is no color prejudice. Here in Madrid, heroic and bravest of cities, Madrid where the shells of Franco plow through the roof-tops at night, Madrid where you can take a street car to the trenches, this Madrid whose defense lovers of freedom and democracy all over the world have sent food and money and men -- here to this Madrid have come Negroes from all the world to offer their help.
"DELUDED MOORS"
On the opposite side of the trenches with Franco, in the company of the professional soldiers of Germany, and the illiterate troops of Italy, are the deluded and drive Moors of North Africa. An oppressed colonial people of color being used by Fascism to make a colony of Spain. And they are being used ruthlessly, without pity. Young boys, mean from the desert, old men, and even women, compose the Moorish hordes brought by the reactionaries from Africa to Europe in their attempt to crush the Spanish people.
I did not know about the Moorish women until, a few days ago I went to visit a prison hospital here in Madrid filled with wounded prisoners. There were German aviators that bombarded the peaceful village of Colmenar Viejo and machine-gunned helpless women as they fled along the road. One of these aviators spoke English. I asked him why he fired on women and children. He said he was a professional soldier who did what he was told. In another ward, there were Italians who joined the invasion of Spain because they had no jobs at home.
WHAT THEY SAID
But of all the prisoners, I was most interested in the Moors, who are my own color. Some of them, convalescent, in their white wrappings and their bandages, moved silently like dark shadows down the hall. Other lay quietly suffering in their beds. It was difficult to carry on any sort of conversation with them because they spoke little or no Spanish. But finally, we came across a small boy who had been wounded at the battle of Brunete -- he looked to be a child of ten or eleven, a bright smiling child who spoke some Spanish.
"Where did you come from?", I said.
He named a town I could not understand in Morocco.
"And how old are you?"
"Thirteen," he said.
"And how did you happen to be fighting in Spain?"
BRING MOORISH WOMEN
Then I learned from this child that Franco had brought Moorish women into Spain as well as men -- women to wash and cook for the troops.
"What happened to your mother", I said.
The child closed his eyes. "She was killed at Brunete," he answered slowly.
Thus the Moors die in Spain, men, women, and children, victims of Fascism, fighting not for freedom -- but against freedom -- under a banner that holds only terror and segregation for all the darker peoples of the earth.
A great many Negroes know better. Someday the Moors will know better, too. All the Franco's in the world cannot blow out the light of human freedom.
The Weary Blues
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway ....
He did a lazy sway ....
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man's soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--
"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
And put ma troubles on the shelf."
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more--
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.
Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
Freedom Road
written by: Langston Hughes, sung by:Josh White
Hand me my gun, let the bugle blow loud
I’m on my way with my head up proud
One objective I’ve got in view
Is to keep ahold of freedom for me and you
That’s why I’m marching, yes, I’m marching
Marching down Freedom’s Road
Ain’t nobody gonna stop me, nobody gonna keep me
From marching down Freedom’s Road
It ought to be plain as the nose on your face
There’s room in this land for every race
Some folks think that freedom just ain’t right
Those are the very people I want to fight . . .
United we stand, divided we fall
Let’s make this land safe for one and all
I’ve got a message and you know it’s right
Black and white together, unite and fight!
The Negro Mother by Langston Hughes
Children, I come back today
To tell you a story of the long dark way
That I had to climb, that I had to know
In order that the race might live and grow.
Look at my face -- dark as the night --
Yet shining like the sun with love's true light.
I am the dark girl who crossed the red sea
Carrying in my body the seed of the free.
I am the woman who worked in the field
Bringing the cotton and the corn to yield.
I am the one who labored as a slave,
Beaten and mistreated for the work that I gave --
Children sold away from me, I'm husband sold, too.
No safety , no love, no respect was I due.
Three hundred years in the deepest South:
But God put a song and a prayer in my mouth .
God put a dream like steel in my soul.
Now, through my children, I'm reaching the goal.
Now, through my children, young and free,
I realized the blessing deed to me.
I couldn't read then. I couldn't write.
I had nothing, back there in the night.
Sometimes, the valley was filled with tears,
But I kept trudging on through the lonely years.
Sometimes, the road was hot with the sun,
But I had to keep on till my work was done:
I had to keep on! No stopping for me --
I was the seed of the coming Free.
I nourished the dream that nothing could smother
Deep in my breast -- the Negro mother.
I had only hope then , but now through you,
Dark ones of today, my dreams must come true:
All you dark children in the world out there,
Remember my sweat, my pain, my despair.
Remember my years, heavy with sorrow --
And make of those years a torch for tomorrow.
Make of my pass a road to the light
Out of the darkness, the ignorance, the night.
Lift high my banner out of the dust.
Stand like free men supporting my trust.
Believe in the right, let none push you back.
Remember the whip and the slaver's track.
Remember how the strong in struggle and strife
Still bar you the way, and deny you life --
But march ever forward, breaking down bars.
Look ever upward at the sun and the stars.
Oh, my dark children, may my dreams and my prayers
Impel you forever up the great stairs --
For I will be with you till no white brother
Dares keep down the children of the Negro Mother.
Daybreak In Alabama by Langston Hughes
When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.
Justice by Langston Hughes
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
The Blues by Langston Hughes
When the shoe strings break
On both your shoes
And you're in a hurry-
That's the blues.
When you go to buy a candy bar
And you've lost the dime you had-
Slipped through a hole in your pocket somewhere-
That's the blues, too, and bad!
Po' Boy Blues by Langston Hughes
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
Since I come up North de
Whole damn world's turned cold.
I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong.
Yes, I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong,
But this world is weary
An' de road is hard an' long.
I fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
Fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
She made me lose ma money
An' almost lose ma mind.
Weary, weary,
Weary early in de morn.
Weary, weary,
Early, early in de morn.
I's so weary
I wish I'd never been born.
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Captain John Brown
STRIKE THE BLOW-THE LEGEND OF CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harpers Ferry. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they headed south. I was then, however, neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the struggle against slavery. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Almost 150 years after his death this writer is proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown.
This documentary, for friend and foe alike, brings out the main issues of John Brown’s personal life and the political turmoil of his times. As usual in such endeavors the producers attempt to give an even-handed account by bringing in historians and others from many perspectives. And that is fine, especially for defenders of Brown, in these times when many right-wing tendencies have tried to invoke his name for their unworthy causes and the term terrorist is freely bantered about. In a sense this documentary, unintentionally I am sure, to bring him back to his proper place as an avenging angel for the progress of humankind.
And what of the issues of Brown’s life and times. The documentary covers it all pretty well; his Calvinist upbringing and early abhorrence of slavery; his failures in various business ventures; his ‘monomaniacal' view that slavery must be abolished; his guerilla fights in Kansas, including the controversial murders of some pro-slavery forces there; his strategic and tactical military errors at Harpers Ferry; his stoic and resolute demeanor in face of his execution; and, of course, his subsequent legend. For those not familiar with John Brown this is a quick primer which should be supplemented with some reading. There are an abundant number of books on his life.
Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon
By Seth Garth
I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7thStreet entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.
Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articlesI have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)
In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.
The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’sMorning Editionwhere they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’sThe Times They Are A-Changin’as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.
I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.
For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.
So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.
Click on the headline to link to a "Workers Vanguard" polemic, dated August 29, 2008.
Markin comment:
I will let the contestants battle it out. I would only emphasize here that Karl Marx, and those who have followed his work, was a historical materialist to his bones. Thus, the struggle against slavery mad it a "no- brainer" for him to support the Northern side in the American Civil War, and to urge others to do so as well.
Bringing it All Back Home, Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1965
It seems hard to believe now both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). It is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.
Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan’s role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a couple of songs here. Obviously, no one will ever really unravel what the meaning of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" is about except that it has produced one of the most famous lines of the 1960’s- ‘you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’ (although if the truth be known you do) that I am fond of using anytime I get a change to use it as a political cutting edge. "Love Minus Zero No Limit" is one of the great modern love songs that will along with a few others define what love,longing and companionship meant for our generation.
Needless to say "Gates of Eden" is the modern equivalent of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (and I do not mean to use that praise hyperbolically). If Milton was explaining the ways of god to man in the aftermath of the defeat of the English Revolution then Dylan was attempting to give his take on the eternal verities for modern times.
John Wesley Harding, Bob Dylan, 1970
Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan's role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a couple of songs here. Needless to say this is a theme album centered on the old West that Dylan has written songs about elsewhere as well. That too is part of the American folk heritage. This rather good thematic conception hits right from the opening "John Wesley Harding" (a real, if more villainous, character of the Old West than portrayed here), "All Along the Watchtower" (that was given its definitive cover by Jimi Hendrix) and finishes up with the bittersweet "I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight". Politically, "I Pity The Poor Immigrant" takes on added meaning with today’s immigrant trials and tribulations. Is this Dylan’s best work? No, but it is a worthy effort.
Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol 3, Bob Dylan, 1993
Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan's role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a couple of songs here. This is compilation of songs from various, none of them new except the lyrically very well done "Dignity" that tells more about the meanness of modern life than many a novel. Some of the other material of note- "Forever Young" (our anthem as the 1960’s generation grows older) - the surreal "Brownsville Girl" that shows that Dylan could certainly use that stream of consciousness trope to great effect, the flat out rocking of "The Groom Still Waiting At The Altar", the topically political "Hurricane" (about the frame up for murder of the fighter Rubin Carter and the fight to free him-a fight that we can draw lessons from today about the nature of class struggle defense) and from his born-again Christian period a rousing "You Got To Serve Someone". Just a nice cross section of material here.
Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1965
Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan’s role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to mention a couple of points here. Any song that starts out like "Desolation Row" with the line- “ They are selling post cards of the hanging, they’re painting the passports brown” will automatically get my attention every time- and keep it through over 11 minute of stream of consciousness, word play and harmonica energy. If I had to pick my number one favorite Dylan song (and the one that I have listened to the most) this is the one. Start me off with the “ When you're lost in the rain in Juarez ” of "Tom Thumbs Blues" as an appetizer and I am all set for a while. How is that for back-to-back treats- harmonica thrown in gratis?
Having mentioned my two favorites on this album I have hardly completed comment. I am not sure whether Bob Dylan was the voice of the generation of ’68, or whether he wanted to be. However, few can deny that "Like A Rolling Stone" was one of the anthems of our generation- with or without direction home. Highway 61 Revisited has over the years gone up in my estimation as a song with an interesting story line and a very rock beat. Of course, with Dylan one needs some thoughts of lost love, longing and the vagaries of keeping a relationship on course so "Queen Jane Approximately" fits the bill. Well, I could go on and on but you get the point this is a Dylan album you must own. More than that though if you want to get a feel for the trials and tribulations of the 1960’s by one of its best troubadours you NEED this album.
Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon
By Seth Garth
I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.
Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)
In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.
The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.
I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.
For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.
So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.
