When The World Was Fresh And Young And All Things Were Possible (Or So We Thought)-Ah, To Be Young Was Very Heaven-Ans Cat Steven’s Soundtrack Too-Ruth Gordon And Bud Cort’s “Harold And Maude” (1971)-A Film Review

When The World Was Fresh And Young And All Things Were Possible (Or So We Thought)-Ah, To Be Young Was Very Heaven-Ans Cat Steven’s Soundtrack Too-Ruth Gordon And Bud Cort’s “Harold And Maude” (1971)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

Harold and Maude, starring Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, 1971

I have commented in the past, and a number of other commentators have as well most notably or publicly the late great Gonzo journalist Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, on when the 1960s ended. Meaning not 1969 or 1970 however you count decade-endings but the spirit, the wildness ride of the 1960s, the time when we variously sought a “newer world” in the expression of poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and “to be young was very heaven” in the words of poet William Wordsworth. Thompson himself put it at 1968 and the Democratic National Convention in bloody Chicago and I, for one, and I am not alone on this, called May Day, 1971, the day we tried, and failed, to shut down the government if it would not shut down the Vietnam War the ebb tide. Others have picked the horrific Rolling Stones concert at Altamont as the low tide and others have expressed other lesser events at the touchstone of the night of the long knives, the long night of fighting, these days seemingly daily rear-guard actions in the cultural wars burning a hole in this country, in America. All of this to say that the film under review, the now classic Harold and Maude, upon re-watching (after having seen it several times when it was a cheap no dough for big dinners date night ritual to go watch and re-watch the film when it first came out in 1971) seems very much a product of those times, a moment in those times and therefore dated. Dated not in a negative sense necessarily although some of the dialogue seems that way but very much rooted in the dying embers of the 1960s, the ebb tide previously mentioned.

       

I noted recently in a rare film review of the anti-fascist classic from 1945 starring Dick Powell Cornered, previously rare apparently since under the new Greg Green regime since here I am again, reviewing a classic of another sort, that generally I had been concerned with other types of commentary, mostly political and social, cultural if you will. Greg “drafted” me for this assignment with the understanding that since I had already seen the film when it came out and he wanted somebody to do a “then and now” piece as he called it, and as it is called in the business, in the film review business at least at his previous job as editor at American Film Gazette I was the logical choice. Neglecting the real logical choice Sam who actually reviewed the film in 1971 but who these days is in a knock down, drag out fight with young up and coming reviewer Sarah Lemoyne over a series of issues that need not detain us here. So I am second logical choice not only because I had seen (and re-seen) the film but because I have some comments about the times centered on that ebb tide business mentioned above.     

The premise of Harold and Maude is fairly simple, a benighted young rich kid, Harold, played by Bud Cort who I don’t recall having done anything much of anything on screen after this performance which may tell us something as well about the film or the times since it was not well-regarded except in the rarified air of Cambridge and such alternative life-style havens and as well the extremely rarified air around Sam Lowell in those day for he prophetically was one of the few who reviewed the film positively. Harold had, rich or poor then, two things many of the young could relate to a deep-seeded if comically portrayed hatred for his well-heeled but indifferent mother who controlled lots of his life’s decisions and too much time on his hands waiting to break out in the world. That former may seem strange today but during the 1960s a common slogan was “don’t trust anybody over 30” which meant every freaking parent of the baby-boomer generation was in our cross-hairs. The latter as well since we were caught in a world we didn’t create, a war we could not comprehend while being caught up in its throes and no constructive way to make ourselves heard without going to the barricades.    

Harold, an odd-ball and a loner, although nobody would have cared much one way or the other about his idiosyncrasies then, beside staging about twenty-seven fake suicide attempts for his mother’s “benefit” attended funerals, became on the surface at least comforted by that attendance. As part of that ritual he eventually meets the Maude of the title, played by energetic Ruth Gordon, a woman almost eighty and still going strong, still full of spunk. She attends the funerals for a very different reason, a reason having to do with coming to terms with her own mortality, not an unimportant concern given her age. Harold, after umpteen attempts by his mother to get him married to an assortment of young women, gravitates toward, well toward a grandmother figure. Maybe we all hated our parents then but we gave grandparents a pass. I know my own grandmother saved my young ass from many a home life wrangle with my own mother.

Once you get past the extreme age difference between the pair they are kind of an interesting couple. Maude has, as I said, her own agenda, but while they interact she is a positive influence on Harold breaking out of his self-imposed shell. His affect, his clothing, his interest shift as he becomes more in thrall of Maude. The dicey part, or rather the two dicey parts which may have accounted for the negative reviews back in the day, was that relationship leading to a romance, leading to sexual intercourse between the two. These days you can love who you want, or at least that is the thought of many people on the question of gender identification but the area of intergenerational sex still has some distance to go. Who the hell would go to bed with their grandmother after all. More pressing was that Maude agenda item. She held firm to the notion that at a certain age, eighty, she would have had enough of life. And she acted on it, took her own life when the deal went down leaving Harold bereft. But not paralyzed for knowing Maude Harold was able to break out of death door’s grasp. Like I said dated, but not necessarily in a negative way given our social identity issues today.

When The Bad Guys Danced (And The Dance Was No Foxtrot, Brother) -James Cagney’s “Lady Killer” (1933)-A Film Review

When The Bad Guys Danced (And The Dance Was No Foxtrot, Brother) -James Cagney’s “Lady Killer” (1933)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Alex Radley

Lady Killer, starring James Cagney, 1933 

Everybody in the old neighborhood, the Atlantic section of Carville, the used to be “capital” of the cranberry world now pushed west to Wisconsin and places like that, knew a guy like Dan Quigley, the role that legendary actor James Cagney plays in the film under review Lady Killer. Well, maybe not everyone, but close, a guy who knows, or thinks he knows all the angles, has the angels on his side too no matter what. A Teflon-type guy who might be put in a spot but comes up smelling like roses.

I’ll get to Dana’s moves, good and bad, in a moment but the character of Dana Quigley, including the lady’s man, aspect reminded very much of Lenny Logan from down in that Atlantic section of Carville where I grew up and who was if not my closest friend, or me his, then we never crossed each other, and I was never directly the butt of one of his scams, cons, brainstorms. Lenny, good-looking Lenny, also a lady’s man was as much from what other older guys who write for this site have called “from hunger” in declining market seasonal cranberry country. But he always had dough from early on when he would con guys out of their milk money by flipping “fixed” baseball cards against the schoolyard wall (until some parents complained to the teachers and it stopped-or rather he stopped on those particular kids). That deeply larcenous scheming heart would parlay that kind of scam all through school including plenty of serious housebreaks which he would plan-and others would carry out. He would, for lack of a better word, be the “finger” man with plausible deniability in case things did not work out. Sent more than one young woman off to “Aunt Emma” as writer Sam Lowell would have called it in any earlier time and we said rolling our eyes “in the family way.” Lenny, wouldn’t you know, eventually broke that bad streak by becoming a very successful local lawyer (including being mine on a couple of occasions) but it was, as always with guys like Lenny, a close thing.

With that kind of character in mind let’s see what made Dana Quigley tick, how he passed his time. Part of the problem with this particular film is that the producers or somebody wasn’t sure which James Cagney they wanted to use. The notorious 1930s headliner gangster from films like White Heat in the classic age of that genre of which audiences in Great Depression ate up like crazy or the dandy song and dance Yankee Doodle Dandy man. As usual they went for the great test audience muddle. So they kind of put them together and added in that street wise kick. Yeah Dana was always hustling, nickel and dime stuff mostly until he almost drew a sucker punch when he got conned by a dame, by a moll, twist, frail whatever you want to call a girl ringer playing the old lost pocketbook gag luring guys in and set them up for a beating of their worldly goods at the poker table.

But our boy Dana got wised up quick, and despite a roomful of thugs against his small stature he made those low-rung gangsters cry uncle-and make them plenty of dough. Of course guys like Dana are always thinking about the next best thing which is to make a big score-here doing cagey burglaries in Mayfair swell houses. Made a nice racket as the pretty boy finger-man until the beef went too far and conked too many heads, too many deaths and the future looking like the big step for everybody unless they blow town.

That blowing town begins the shift to the pretty boy part, to Dana’s rise as an actor out in Tinseltown, out in Ed Rushca’s big Hollywood sign hills. While there he takes up with a different kind of frill, a big- time movie actress. Wouldn’t you know it though that old gang of his from back east wound up in LA, including that former love interest moll he had been running around with and who left him high and dry when the deal went down. The old gang figured to work that high- end burglary scam of old with Dana in the lead. Problem: the gang, now the gang that couldn’t shoot straight if you ask me robbed his movie star honey. Bad move. Maybe bad move both ways. The gang sensing Dana was the weak link wanted to waste him, put him out in the Pacific deep heading to the China seas maybe.  Dana in turn, turned copper –a no-no in our old neighborhood and by general consensus a “fink,” “rat,” “stoolie” better left six feet under. Even Lenny understood that, maybe Lenny better than anybody since he knew he could do whatever he wanted, whatever larceny, sex acts, etc. he wanted and the Omerta oath of the corner boy neighborhood would protect his young. But this is Dana remember, shades of Lenny, and so he lands on his feet. I don’t know what to make of this film but one thing I do know I kept thinking about Lenny all the way through the film.  You probably have your own Lenny and will too. 

Trying To Figure Out What The Heck Is Going In A Film-A Case Study-Tom Cruise’s “The Last Samurai” (2003)

Trying To Figure Out What The Heck Is Going In A Film-A Case Study-Tom Cruise’s “The Last Samurai” (2003)

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, Ken Wantanabe, 2003      

Usually in doing film reviews I watch the film, alone or with my companion to compare notes after viewing, and then write a draft review from scratch. I do not usually look at the now many film reviews provided by such companies as Netflix and the like on the Internet. (The best by far is still American Film Gazette which started out as a hard copy magazine about seventy years ago and went to on-line about ten years ago and has reviewed over fifty thousand films in that time, many reviews classics in the genre like that publication’s Sam Lowell’s extensive and inclusive film noir series from the 1970s which defined the genre in the wave of the French New Wave which went crazy over the 1930s-1940s material)  With the film under review though I was perplexed as to what my hook would be so I looked at some thoughtful and familiar reviewers I have known and trust (despite the cutthroat nature of the business personally between reviewers who take no prisoners  the reviews usually are spot on) and found that they had missed the point or had gotten so caught up in the action that they missed the real point which I will discuss in a minute after I take a few of the views expressed to school.

Marlene Kalen, a well-regarded reviewer and former colleague of Leslie Dumont now of this publication at Women Today, seemed to have dismissed the whole venture as just a violence-soaked way to put Tom Cruise in a period piece (1870s Japan after the American Civil War when many of the fighters of that war were free-booters, were ready and willing mercenaries for whatever came up from training foreign armies in modern warfare to robbing banks and trains a la the James gang and Cruise’s character, Captain Algren, took a leap to the Orient for a private company working on behalf of the Japanese government trying to modernize its army and put down a rebellion by traditional samurai who were resisting those efforts). To Ms. Kalen Cruise, along with Harrison Ford and the string of James Bond from Sean Connery on, were hopped up on the male fantasy cave man taking on all comers to preserve, well, preserve something. I have lost the figure, or it is not at hand but in a film of some two and one-half hours Ms. Kalen noted over twenty separate “battle, skirmish, fake battle” scenes including using children as foils for the violence. While I might today have sided a bit with her general conclusion about films, action films, which exist solely to keep people glued to their respective seats in horror, fascination I think by modern standards, and given the subject matter of the film which after all was about the demise of free agent warrior culture in a country trying to modernize the film’s violence was inherent in what was being produced.

Naturally if you want to avoid talking endlessly about violence in modern films, and not so modern films check out the gangster classics of the 1930s, then the next step is to fix on the brotherhood, the multicultural brotherhood (Japanese and American) between Captain Algren and the leading samurai, Kyoto, played by Ken Watanabe, around questions of honor, valor, and service. That was the approach Lenny Lynch then of American Film Gazette took when he made this out as one of the great buddy films in the tradition of Robert Redford and the late Paul Newman where individuals who would not normally associate with each other, would not normally interact in their respective occupations find a serious bond by virtue of their common (maybe universal at least that was the way Lenny broached the subject) regard for fellows who took honor, sacrifice and expertise seriously. Maybe if Lenny had thought more about what he saw on screen he would have seen that these two men in the end did not really understand each other since Kyoto was trying to stave off the injurious effects of modernization on Japanese society and Algren was barely more than a well-paid, well-trained but vicious mercenary. A loner to boot.    

A lot of people have prattled on endlessly, Danny Lawrence, from Film Today, for one about how the American Civil War was the harbinger of mass military industrialization and that older values and occupation had to bow down to what was coming, coming to America and to Japan and that to challenge that was fool-hardly and unwise. Thus the Kyoto-Algren axis of the film was misdirected   and the railroad magnate Omura, and his agent Colonel Bagley formerly of the Union Army as well, should have been held up as the model of modernizers and agents of serious change whatever personal benefits they would receive from such changes. The film according to Danny can be taken as a cautionary tale about what happens to those who can’t keep up with social changes and had to, should be left bury themselves in splendid isolation.      

Action-faction, buddy-buddy and holding the thumb in the dike may all have a place in a review of this film but sometimes reviewers can’t see what is in front of them, can’t get out of the way of their own shadows, can’t imagine the obvious as in this film. The key here, maybe the only thing that gives this film any energy is the “boy meets girl” aspect that none of the above reviewers had a clue about. (Remember I told you the film review occupation is not for the faint-hearted, is more cutthroat that any lawyers would dream possible and they consider themselves a pretty wild lot when they get up a head of steam). Think about it. This Captain Algren, a drunk, a stone-cold killer either while under orders or as a free-lancer, and a guy you should hang on to your wallet when he is around is nowhere, is nothing until his Japanese sweetie, Taka, whose husband he has off-handedly killed in battle sobers him up, get him to take a bath, teaches him how the show works in Japan and takes him in tow. Ms. Kalen may have counted up the number of violent acts committed in the film but what about the more numerous significant glances between Algren and Taka as the film rolls along. There will be problems as with any pair who are from different cultures but Taka softened the rough edges off of the good captain. The proof of what I say is obvious by the end of the film when there is speculation about what happened to Captain Algren after the decisive battle between Omura’s troops and the samurai warriors where Kyoto is killed and the samurai legend extinguished except in lore and novels is done and his whereabouts unknown. Does it really take a private detective like Phil Marlowe to figure out he hightailed it back to his Taka. Like I have said elsewhere Hollywood has milked this boy-girl theme a million times to good effect. Here as well.       

Films to While Away The Class Struggle By-"Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story"- Leonard Peltier Must Not Die In Jail

Films to While Away The Class Struggle By-"Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story"- Leonard Peltier Must Not Die In Jail

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin

DVD Review

Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story, Leonard Peltier, various leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM), defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, witnesses and by-standers, directed by Michael Apted, 1991

Let’s start this review of this documentary of the incidents surrounding the case of Leonard Peltier at the end. Or at least the end of this documentary, 1991. Leonard Peltier, a well-known leader of the Native American movement, convicted of the 1975 murder, execution-style, of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota after he had been extradited from Canada in the wake of the acquittal of two other Pine Ridge residents. In an interview from federal prison in that period the then still relatively young Peltier related that after receiving his life sentences and being told by prison officials that that meant his release date would be in 2035 he stated that he hoped not, for he would then be an old, old man. Here is what should make everyone interested in the case, and everyone interested in the least sense of justice, even just bourgeois justice, blood boil, he is now an old sick man and he is still in jail for a crime that he did not commit, and certainly one that was not proven beyond that cherished “reasonable doubt”

This documentary, narrated by Robert Redford in his younger days as well, goes step by step through the case from the pre-murder period when Native Americans, catching the political consciousness crest begun in the 1960s by the black civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement, started organizing, mainly through the American Indian Movement (AIM), on the Indian reservations of the West, some of the most impoverished areas in all the Americas. The focal point of this militant organizing effort came in the war zone-showdown, the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973. The tension that hovered in the air in the aftermath of that war between the American government and its Indian agent supporters on one side, and the AIM-led “warrior nation” on the other is the setting for this incident at Ogala.

Through reenactment of the crime scene; eye witnesses, interested and disinterested, voluntary or coerced; defense strategies at both trials from self-defense to lack of physical evidence, and on appeal; the prosecution's case, its insufficient evidence, and it various maneuvers to inflame white juries against unpopular or misunderstood Native Americans in order to get someone convicted for the murders of one of their own; the devastating, but expected effect of the trials on the political organizing by AIM; and the stalwart and defiant demeanor of one Leonard Peltier all come though in this presentation. As a long time supporter of organizations that defend class-war prisoners, like Leonard Peltier, this film only makes that commitment even firmer. With that in mind- Free Leonard Peltier-He Must Not Die In Jail!

A Good Woman Is Hard To Find On His Mind-The Trials and Tribulations of Lance Lawrence

A Good Woman Is Hard To Find On His Mind-The Trials and Tribulations of Lance Lawrence

...yeah forever young  

By Seth Garth   

Sam Lowell had never seen anybody as skirt –crazy as his old friend Lance Lawrence, a guy that he had met in college, met at Boston University when by the luck the draw they became roommates freshman year and had remained in contact, sometimes with serious lapses of time, sometimes like now over forty years later almost daily. Day one freshman year they had hardly gotten their books from the bookstore when Lance had propositioned some young thing (his expression for the fair sex, for young women, okay, which he has used until this day even though who he is speaking or thinking of had lost the sweet bloom of youth long ago), Not only had propositioned her but had coaxed her (Sam’s gentile word for a lot more than some innocent coaxing) up into their dorm room on Bay State Road (leaving Sam, for the first but not the last hanging somewhere not in the dorm). That seduction, no, that coaxing a definite no-no in the hard-pressed later 1960s when freshman were supposed officially by the in locus parentis school authorities to be above such sexual desire and ways to relieve those desires. Nothing ever came of that indiscretion and like a million other Lance indiscretions for which he became something like campus famous never looked back, never thought such conduct was anything but the natural order. Lance’s natural order and if pressed today would probably wonder what the hell anybody was talking about, making a big deal about it as just the way he operated in his silver spoon world. And he had had since those fresh bloom days three, count them, three full-fledged divorces and a myriad of affairs to put paid to that sense of wonder like some Fitzgerald Dutchman looking for the first time at that fresh green breast of the Long Island of his deportee dreams.        

No question Lance was a good-looking guy, a good-looking guy in that sly, wicked way that guys back in the day looked to the opposite sex and which no longer commands those longing loving looks from forlorn midnight sitting by the telephone young women who charted his life and theirs by their meaningful glances (nowadays by the way waiting almost anyplace by the cellphone). Tall, not too tall, lanky, a little wiry which meant don’t mess with him and which on occasion especially under drink was very good advice, a long tousle of dark black hair and bedroom eyes (that remark made Sam mad when girls, his date girls, would ask him who the guy with the bedroom blue eyes was with a slightly suggestive sexual emphasis that usually did rouse to his benefit later in the evening). So, yes, Lance was a piece of work. And although Lance had lost several steps in the aging process he still believed that he had what it took to get the now no longer young “mature” women who engaged his attention a quick tumble just like that first freshman day.

So yes skirt-crazy as ever. Skirt-crazy through those three marriages two which broke up due to that very chasing (the third, his first flighty one when he expected to be shipped out to Vietnam and had worried himself to perdition that he would die unsung, and unmarried, was due to her chasing some football player type while he was in Dear John Vietnam without a scratch on him except whatever heart bleed he secretly harbored against the “bitch”). Of late Lance had been momentarily down in the dumps due to the break-up of his latest affair, an affair with Minnie Murphy whom he had had an “affair” with, the gentile way that he put it to Sam one night over drinks at Sam’s favorite watering hole in Cambridge, Joey’s Grille, although they had been shacked up for at least a decade before she gave him his walking papers. The breakdown of the Lance crisis had not been that he had done his damnest to earn those walking papers by his ever-lasting philandering, which he had, or at least that went unspoken but you never knew with quiet Minnie, a habit of hers drilled in childhood by a drunken father who made it his business to shut his whole brood up. No, Lance was beside himself with the fact that he was lady-less, was without a companion after an almost endless string going back, well, going back to that first freshman wayward day. Had been alone almost a month at that point.

Lance at least in Sam’s presence had never before been known to be reflective about his romantic downturns so Sam was rather surprised when Lance mentioned how his inattention, his distance, his indifference to Minnie’s feelings and he self-absorption had left Minnie no choice but to flee the scene, to go on her own quiet quest to “find herself” without the tensions of having to bear whatever mood Lance was in at any given time. Sam should have known that such self-analysis was a “cover,” a convenient way to introduce some latest scheme to grab some skirt rather than own up to his boorishness with Minnie. (Sam, a victim of his own two divorces and scads of college-weighted kids always had a soft spot in his heart for Minnie, especially after one meaningful night when he half-drunk brought up the subject and Minnie, gently as was her way always, told him that she had some feelings that way toward him too but Lance was her man and that was that, damn Lance.)

What had Lance down in the dumps was his latest “search” for some skirt. See, as he told Sam that bleary self-confession barroom drinking night he had recently joined a senior-oriented in-line dating service, Seniors Please, and had been hard-pressed to find his niche, his place in such an off-hand way of meeting women, “mature” women but Sam knew in his mind Lance was working the same game plan he had used to floor women since he was about six. Lance, as long as Sam had seen him operate under all weathers, always depended on those piecing bedroom eyes and a gift of blarney that would make any honest Irishmen weep for their inadequacies. That meant that he would meet some woman at a bar or at work (or at a bookstore when that was in style and there were bookstores, brick and mortar bookstores, where women would congregate to get their weekly reading materials and as it turned out when he found out later lingering around to see if there were any prospective men within fifty miles of the place the idea being that a guy who at least read a book was a likely prospect. Yeah, the bar at a certain age was pretty low.). Then work his magic based on some chemistry between them or some lust (on her part as likely as his also something Lance had found out from experience).

This on-line dating business was ass-backward. You filled out a “profile” of rather simpleton and non-responsive questions, some bullshit prompted lines about what you were looking for (sex of course, not only the province of the young), and a decent photo. The hook though was when you placed your profile on-line and got a few bites you couldn’t respond because you were not a member of the service and had to pay the entry fee which Lance begrudgingly did. Once he did that he got very few responses that he was interested in (what he would later find was that there were benighted trolls, a blight on all social media sites and something he had never expected “cougars,” older women “stalking” younger men, that could be an eighty year old hunting for sixty year old, Jesus). The photo and bullshit written profile did not play to his strong suit, did not play to that chemistry. The old days were long gone when you met somebody live say at a party, clicked, and exchanged phone numbers (or went out to parked car if it was that kind of night). So what was an “active” man to do when there were no other obvious ways to meet women when there were none at work or in his profession, the law profession, in general who were around his age and were interested in anything but making partner, where the “meat market” bars were way behind him and where his hi-jinks in the art museum he was advised to go to in order to meet women only gave him a headache.                 

Lance made Sam laugh with some of the stuff he mentioned he had run into (out loud laugh because some of the situations were funny and secretly laugh that finally the playboy of the western world had been taken down a peg or two). That cougar older woman hunting young man business but also the way Lance talked about what women, seemingly rational and intelligent women, put on-line. The expected bullshit “profile” stuff about finding a soul-mate and eternal love but also some impossible stuff like seriousness, good manners, and gentlemanly behavior. Jesus, Lance told Sam what the hell did they expect from guys who probably had at least a passing acquaintance with the 1960s and looser styles and mores. But the photographs were the tip-off that Lance was in deep trouble. He could not believe that these same women who were looking for eternal love unabashedly put photographs of themselves with their broods of grandchildren in the lead photographs (although Lance loved his own brood of grandkids he hardly would advertise himself as grandpa of the year). Could not believe that they put amply photographs of their pets (sometimes looking cuter than their owners) among their selections. Had flipped out when one woman had a photograph of her big bruiser of an adult son who looked like a professional football player all surly beside his mother looking for all the world like he would bust some guy’s nose if he looked cross-eyed at his dear mother.

Lance went on with his funny descriptions until he and Sam had had enough to drink and decided to head for their respective homes. As they parted after going out the door Lance said to Sam that he had to go home and boot up the computer to see if greeklady123 or coolocean47 (on-line monikers that everybody assumed on site) had responded to his messages. Yeah, Lance was a skirt-crazy guy, no question.          

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access-What Every Young Woman Should Know

Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access-What Every Young Woman Should Know 

 Frank Jackman comment:

One of the great struggles on college campuses during the height of the struggle against the Vietnam War back in the 1960s aside from trying to close down that war outright was the effort to get the various ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps, I think that is right way to say it) programs off campus. In a number of important campuses that effort was successful, although there has been back-sliding going on since the Vietnam War ended and like any successful anti-war or progressive action short of changing the way governments we could support do business is subject to constant attention or the bastards will sneak something in the back door.

To the extent that reintroduction of ROTC on college campuses has been thwarted, a very good anti-war action indeed which had made it just a smidgen harder to run ram shot over the world, that back door approach has been a two-pronged attack by the military branches to get their quota of recruits for their all-volunteer military services in the high schools. First to make very enticing offers to cash-strapped public school systems in order to introduce ROTC, junior version, particularly but not exclusively, urban high schools (for example almost all public high schools in Boston have some ROTC service branch in their buildings with instructors partially funded by the Defense Department and with union membership right and conditions a situation which should be opposed by teachers’ union members).

Secondly, thwarted at the college level for officer corps trainees they have just gone to younger and more impressible youth, since they have gained almost unlimited widespread access to high school student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do their nasty work. Not only do the recruiters who are graded on quota system and are under pressure produce X number of recruits or they could wind doing sentry guard duty in Kabul or Bagdad get that access where they have sold many young potential military personnel many false bills of goods but in many spots anti-war veterans and other who would provide a different perspective have been banned or otherwise harassed in their efforts.  

Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of the high schools-military recruiters out as well! Let anti-war ex-soldiers, sailors, Marines and airpersons have their say.         

An Encore -He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind

An Encore -He Saw Starlight On The Rails-With The Irascible Bruce “Utah” Phillips in Mind

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Jack Dawson was not sure when he had heard that the old long-bearded son of a bitch anarchist hell of a songwriter, hell of a story-teller Bruce “Utah” Phillips caught the westbound freight, caught that freight around 2007 he found out later a couple of years after he too had come off the bum this time from wife problems, divorce wife problems (that "westbound freight" by the way an expression from the hobo road to signify that a fellow traveler hobo, tramp, bum it did not matter then the distinctions that had seemed so important in the little class differences department when they were alive had passed on, had had his fill of train smoke and dreams and was ready  to face whatever there was to face up in hobo heaven, no, the big rock candy mountain that some old geezer had written on some hard ass night when dreams were all he had to keep him company). That “Utah” moniker not taken by happenstance since Phillips struggled through the wilds of Utah on his long journey, played with a group called the Utah Valley boys, put up with, got through a million pounds of Mormon craziness and, frankly, wrote an extraordinary number of songs in his career by etching through the lore as he found it from all kinds of Mormon sources, including some of the dark pages, the ranch war stuff, the water stuff not the polygamy stuff which was nobody's business except the parties involved of those latter day saints.

For those who do not know the language of the road, not the young and carefree road taken for a couple of months during summer vacation or even a Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac-type more serious expedition under the influence of On The Road (what other travelogue of sorts would get the blood flowing to head out into the vast American Western night) and then back to the grind but the serious hobo “jungle” road like Jack Dawson had been on for several years before he sobered up after he came back from ‘Nam, came back all twisted and turned when he got discharged from the Army back in 1971 and could not adjust to the “real world” of his Carver upbringing in the East and had wound up drifting, drifting out to the West, hitting California and when that didn’t work out sort of ambled back east on the slow freight route through Utah taking the westbound freight meant for him originally passing to the great beyond, passing to a better place, passing to hard rock candy mountain in some versions here on earth before Black River Shorty clued him in.

Of course everybody thinks that if you wind up in Utah the whole thing is Mormon, and a lot of it is, no question, but when Jack hit Salt Lake City he had run into a guy singing in a park. A guy singing folk music stuff, labor songs, travelling blues stuff, the staple of the genre, that he had remembered that Sam Lowell from Carver High, from the same class year as him, had been crazy for back in the days when he would take his date and Jack and his date over to Harvard Square and they would listen to guys like that guy in the park singing in coffeehouses. Jack had not been crazy about the music then and some of the stuff the guy was singing seemed odd now too, still made him grind his teeth.  but back then it either amounted to a cheap date, or the girl actually liked the stuff and so he went along with it.

So Jack, nothing better to do, sat in front of guy and listened. Listened more intently when the guy, who turned out to be Utah (who was using the moniker “Pirate Angel” then, as Jack was using "Daddy Two Cents"  reflecting his financial condition or close to it, monikers a good thing on the road just in case the law, bill-collectors or ex-wives were trying to reach you and you did not want to reached), told the few bums, tramps and hoboes who were the natural residents of the park that if they wanted to get sober, if they wanted to turn things around a little that they were welcome, no questions asked, at the Joe Hill House. (No questions asked was right but everybody was expected to at least not tear the place up, which some nevertheless tried to do.)


That Joe Hill whom the sobering up house was named after by the way was an old time immigrant anarchist who did something to rile the Latter Day Saints up because they threw he before a firing squad with no questions asked. Joe got the last line though, got it for eternity-“Don’t mourn (his death), organize!”                   

Jack, not knowing anybody, not being sober much, and maybe just a tad nostalgic for the old days when hearing bits of folk music was the least of his worries, went up to Utah and said he would appreciate the stay. And that was that. Although not quite “that was that” since Jack knew nothing about the guys who ran the place, didn’t know who Joe Hill was until later (although he suspected after he found out that Joe Hill had been a IWW organizer [Wobblie, Industrial Worker of the World] framed and executed in that very state of Utah that his old friend the late Peter Paul Markin who lived to have that kind of information in his head would have known. See this Joe Hill House unlike the Sallies (Salvation Army) where he would hustle a few days of peace was run by this Catholic Worker guy, Ammon Hennessey, who Utah told Jack had both sobered him up and made him some kind of anarchist although Jack was fuzzy on what that was all about.

So Jack for about the tenth time tried to sober up, liquor sober up this time out in the great desert (later it would be drugs, mainly cocaine which almost ripped his nose off he was so into it that he needed sobering up from). And it took, took for a while.        

Whatever had been eating at Jack kept fighting a battle inside of him and after a few months he was back on the bottle. But during that time at the Joe Hill House he got close to Utah, as close as he had gotten to anybody since ‘Nam, since his friendship with Jeff Crawford from up in Podunk Maine who saved his ass, and that of a couple of other guys in a nasty fire-fight when Charley (G.I. slang for the Viet Cong originally said in contempt but as the war dragged on in half-hearted admiration) decided he did indeed own the night in his own country. Got as close as he had to his corner boys like Sam Lowell from hometown Carver. Learned a lot about the lure of the road, of drink and drugs, of tough times (Utah had been in Korea) and he had felt bad after he fell off the wagon. But that was the way it was. 

Several years later after getting washed clean from liquor and drugs, at a time when Jack started to see that he needed to get back into the real world if he did not want to wind up like his last travelling companion, Denver Shorty, whom he found face down one morning on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge and had abandoned his body fast in order not to face the police report, he noticed that Utah was playing in a coffeehouse in Cambridge, a place called Passim’s which he found out had been taken over from the Club 47 where Sam had taken Jack a few times. So Jack and his new wife (his and her second marriages) stepped down into the cellar coffeehouse to listen up.


As Jack waited in the rest room area a door opened from the other side across the narrow passageway and who came out but Utah. As Jack started to grab his attention Utah blurred out “Daddy Two Cent, how the hell are you?” and talked for a few minutes. Later that night after the show they talked some more in the empty club before Utah said he had to leave to head back to Saratoga Springs in New York where he was to play at the Caffé Lena the next night.         

That was the last time that Jack saw Utah in person although he would keep up with his career as it moved along. Bought some records, later tapes, still later CDs just to help the brother out. In the age of the Internet he would sent occasional messages and Utah would reply. Then he heard Utah had taken very ill, heart trouble like he said long ago in the blaze of some midnight fire, would finally get the best of him. And then somewhat belatedly Jack found that Utah had passed on. The guy of all the guys he knew on the troubled hobo “jungle” road who knew what “starlight on the rails” meant to the wanderers he sang for had cashed his ticket. RIP, brother.