Did You Hear John Hurt-With Mississippi John Hurt In Mind 

By Seth Garth   

Jason Taylor, Fritz’s son, his eldest son, the first son in the family to go to college in his generation wondered once he got to Cambridge what it would have been like if he had landed in Harvard Square in 1963 rather than 2013 and had been able to hear a guy named Mississippi John Hurt that his father kept playing on his CD player (and later on his MP3 player hooked to the house sound system). Or Skip James, or Bukka White, or Son House, or Fred McDowell or a million other blues, country blues guys from down in places like the Mississippi Delta and stayed to distinguish that crowd from Chicago and Detroit electric blue guys who were from down in the deep South too but created a whole new jammed-up sound with the amps up. Those latter guys headed north following the Mississippi to Memphis and then sweet home Chicago. Or so they thought. Wondered why his father had spent so much time trying to teach him about the blues, about why it was important to keep the tradition going even if only for those like him who had listened to the old timers back in the day. (Jason was amazed how much his father’s “instruction” had stayed with him as he landed in the Square when he started thinking about that blues-etched influence that he must have grabbed in his DNA.).

Fritz, when he would get his son alone, when he was in high school Jason thought, and out of earshot of his mother, Betsy, would tell him about all the times he went to places like the Club 47, the Club Blue, and the Café Nana with dates or looking for dates. (Fritz had met Betsy, wife number two, from upstate New York around Albany but out in farm country in Harvard Square but that was when he was in his outlaw cowboy music minute in the early 1980s so she was not a folkie as such). The idea was cheap dates since he was a poor boy from Utica, a half generation out of the farms and so had a hard time going to college and affording dates. And none was cheaper than going to the folk clubs in Cambridge and Boston and except when serious acts like Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton and the like came to play and you could for the price of a couple of cups of coffee, maybe a pastry between you, and a couple of bucks to show you were a patron of the arts for the “bucket” which sustained the night’s performer you had your date, and who knows what else if she was a folkie too. That is why Fritz and his friends hung around the coffeehouses in the Square looking for those folkie girls to share coffee and pastry with, and who knows what else. If times were tough and there was no money then you were reduced to hanging around the Hayes-Bickford listening to all kinds of talk and noise but the coffee was cheaper. And surprisingly there were girls there too who you could pick up and hang with for the night without expense. Wasn’t that a time.     

Jason, while he suffered under his father’s “instruction” about the genesis of folk and blues, would occasionally, again out of earshot of his mother since she would see red on the subject, get the story of how he saw the legendary Mississippi John Hurt down in the Village when he first came north after being “discovered” by some folk enthusiast who found him in a tiny shack down in the Delta. The seeing red part by Betsy was because that was where Fritz had met Louise, his first wife who not only took him for a ride when they got divorced but took a long time for Fritz to get out of his system. Jason would know the Louise story was coming because he father would get all wistful and he was not sure whether it was from being in the presence of a blues legend or the wiles of Louise Golden. Normally Fritz was the antithesis of wistful so Jason knew he was in for a fifteen minute journey to the past.

Somehow Fritz and his two roommates at Boston University were able to hitchhike themselves down to the Village in the days when you could do that without risking your life (and Fritz when Jason suggested that he and a girlfriend were going to hitchhike to Washington to save some money went nuts for that very reason). One of the roommates, Lenny, lived in the city, had grown up in Stuyvesant Town, so they had a place to stay that weekend. Mississippi John was playing at the Gaslight two shows a night, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The trio needed to see the show either Friday or Saturday since they had to hitch back on Sunday for classes on Monday. They were shut out of both Friday shows because they had gotten into the long line too late. Had not gotten there the mandatory two hours early to insure that they would get in. So late Saturday afternoon they headed down to the Village on the subway to wait their two hours. As they lined up Fritz saw a striking young woman with jet black hair, nice shape and nice legs, a big thing for him then in the match-up contest in line just in front of them. Waiting just like them to make the first show from the look of their placement in line. 

Fritz not known then, or ever as an aggressive man around the women he was interested in decided to “hit” on this beauty. He started with the classic line among folkies at that time about when they first heard their first folk music, stuff that they recognized as such. Rather than brushing Fritz off this woman, this Louise Golden, astounded Fritz with her arcane knowledge, knowledge far greater than his, about the roots of folk music and the roots of the blues. Apparently her parents some refugees to New York City from out in Topeka during the red scare 1940s when to be any kind of odd was the death knell were avid folk music collectors and so they had imparted their knowledge onto a willing Louise. During that almost two hour wait they must have run through every folk and blues fact they knew aided by interjections from Fritz’s roomies. The long and short of it was that Fritz and Louise agreed without much ceremony to sit at the same table (the roommates and Louise’s companion sat at the next table and were dismissed out of hand by the pair for the rest of the evening until John’s performance was over).           

Of course the by then ancient John Hurt small with a beaten down hat on his head that he must have worn for his whole long life amazed the crowd with his playing, with his clear picking even at his age. Sang beautiful simple blues like Beulah Land, Creole Belle, Frankie and Albert, the salacious Candy Man and the like. A great performance that Fritz could spin out the play list of for Jason even forty years later. Here’s the kicker though. No, not that they would meet after that performance the reader already knows that they would eventually marry. That night Louise who whatever the difficulties her parents had faced out in Topeka must have made some money in coming east because she paid for two cups of coffee for each of them and for each to have their own pastry. Yes, a match made in heaven, for a while.     

One night a fitful Jason decided to go into Harvard Square and check out whatever there was to check out as the kids these days expressed things. He decided to go to the Café Andre, the nearest thing to a coffeehouse still left in the Square and see who was playing for the “basket” that night (somethings never change). It turned out to be Eric Loftus an up and coming new age folkie who had a small following around Cambridge. As Jason entered, a little on the early side so he was not sure if she was there for a late snack or for the show he saw this willowy slender young woman with black hair and nice legs, something he noticed when looking for young women (yes, some things never do change)  sitting at a table by herself. He, like his father, was not aggressive around women but he decided he would “hit” on her. Asked her if he could buy her a cup of coffee, maybe a pastry if she was staying for the show. That started an affair which would find them many nights hanging around the café having coffee and a shared pastry.            

Yes, Jason Taylor was his father’s son alright, and the old man was right wasn’t that a time. 

Once Again, The Trials and Tribulations of Lance Lawrence-The Senior Set On-Line Dating Woes 

By Seth Garth 

Sam Lowell had to laugh about his old college roommate and lifelong friend Lance Lawrence as he walked home after another bout with Lance’s problem as described by him sitting at the bar at Joe Daley’s Grille in Cambridge. The problem: Lance Lawrence was running on empty in his latest quest to get a new female companion through this on-line dating service, Seniors Please, a service he had joined a few weeks after he had been issued his walking papers by his long-time companion, Minnie Murphy, who had to get out from under Lance’s jackboot and find herself, or whatever it was that had made them drift apart. Lance was never very reflective about why some women would even think of leaving him despite three, count them, three divorces and a million affairs (some of them during those marriages and grounds for divorce) and this latest serious boot from Minnie who persevered much longer than most, too long according to Sam. Lance, whatever else his good qualities and they were plentiful as Sam always recognized had throughout his life always thought of himself as something on the order of god’s gift to woman. Had the looks, charm, talk, and pure bullshit swagger to pull it off. More than once Sam had been jealous of those abilities, although not recently as Lance and he had gotten much closer after several years absence from each other’s lives. 

Sam had to confess that the first time that Lance had mentioned his dilemma since Minnie had left for parts unknown one night a few weeks previously after another drinking bout at Joe’s that he was pretty non-plussed about it. Part of it was that Sam had been half in love with Minnie to no avail as he learned to his regret one drunken night when he had made his intentions clear and she had told him that she had feelings that way too but she was Lance’s woman. That was that. Part of it was that he figured it was just a momentary glitch in the legendary Lance’s prowess for charming and bedding women, a phenomenon that Sam had witnessed many times since the first time when they were assigned to be roommates freshman year and they had not gotten out of the Boston University Bookstore before Lance had some pretty freshman co-ed coaxed up into their Bay State Road dorm room (leaving Sam to wait around the bookstore killing time). The way Lance had figured his drought that night had been that this on-line dating business did not play to his up front and personal charm and chemistry when everything on-line depended on profiles and answers foolish non-descript questions that told nobody nothing. That night Lance had ended the evening giving Sam a blow by blow description of the odd-ball way these “mature” women that he might have the slightest interest in presented themselves on their profiles. 

That was then though. Those were the days when Lance was just getting used to having to sweat to even get a response from the women on the site, at least any he would be interested in others contacted him by the score. Now Lance was getting desperate since he not made one conquest, conquest meaning as it had been since he was probably about six getting into bed with some woman and having his way with her. Not from a lack of trying as the now seemingly defeated Lance told his tales of woe. Sam couldn’t decide whether he should, secretly, laugh or cry, laugh because the old bastard finally was getting his comeuppance after all the times he had left Sam in the lurch following the scent of some woman, cry because if the legendary Lance Lawrence was having trouble meeting women where would that leave the much shyer and less aggressive Sam (who had two divorces under his belt, one fairly recently, and was now “single” himself).      

Here is the litany as Lance played it out. The way this on-line dating game worked was that you put in your profile, photograph, answered some questions, inane or not, to give some unsuspecting woman a change to see if you were somebody she might be interested in. Additionally you put in your zip code, distance you would be willing to travel to see the lovely, and age range. Lance, now on the high side of 60 had made his range 50 to 65 although he tended to favor the younger side (his second and third wives were about ten years younger than him). Through all that “work” Lance first “connected” with a late 50s woman from Jamaica Plain, an up and coming neighborhood in Boston. Connected here meaning that he had sent her a message via the site that he was interested in “chatting” with her. And so they did almost constantly over a couple of days. Lance figured this was “pay-dirt,” the old guy still had it. That notion was further cemented in his head when she out of the blue invited him to go to Museum of Fine Arts with her since a new exhibit was opening up. Frankly Lance could have cared a rat’s ass about art (that expression Sam first heard him use back in those freshman days, a carryover from his neighborhood days) but figured she was just looking for a neutral spot for them to meet. So he went along, found the exhibit, and her, interesting and bought her dinner. A pleasant day in which he figured he would play it cool and not try his end-around play to get her in bed that day. They easily agreed to meet again soon. The second date wound up being at a bar where she wanted to watch a Patriot’s football game (he would find out later after many other searches that an amazing number of older women were interested in this sport and this team for god knows what reason). Fair enough although he had long ago given up watching sports on television, watch anything on television and could have given a rat’s ass about watching the game that day. That day also turned out to be pretty good once they got through the game. They agreed to stay in contact and plan for another date. He had asked her if she had wanted to go to his house for a drink but she deferred saying that they should go slow and easy not a good sign for the always impatient Lance. Slow and easy indeed since after that football date he did not hear from her again. Lance would not “lower himself,” his term, to call or e-mail her so that one went off into the sunset.              

Lance then spent a week or so busily sending messages to a scad of other women but nothing panned out mostly because the most interesting looking women had no qualms about leading their profiles with endless photographs of them with their grandchildren, pets, or projects. One had a lead photograph of her with her football player-sized son whose pose spoke of serious mayhem if anybody was unkind to his Mom. So no sale. A couple of weeks later he did go on another date with a fifty-something woman who had never been married and although she had her charms Lance had then vowed never to message any more never married women since they were never married probably because they were frigid or something, or at least beyond his charms.  

Of course in the “mature” searching for love racket everybody unlike the wistful and naïve young carries a ton of baggage, carries every possible quirk and idiocrasy and the next date proved that to be the case. Very seldom in his life had Lance when he saw the slightest chance of bedding some women whatever her looks, personality, or karma never missed an opportunity to play the game until the end. This next date though he threw in the towel after a quick hour in which he kept looking at his watch and trying to figure out how to escape once he realized this one was a bit crazed, had some social issues and would not, maybe could not stop blabbing about the signs of the Zodiac and how when she divined them for her and Lance all the stars were aligned or something like that. Jesus, Lance had looked at Sam with a stare like he was very glad to have escaped with his manhood intact. That was not the last of the goofs though, there would be one more, this one who claimed to be a spiritualist and some kind of Zen Buddhist freak who though everything that had happened, worse would happen in the future was perfect, was immutable. Yes, Lance said he would screen his “women” much more carefully as he expressed a longing for the good old days when there were in the flesh meetings and the glint in a woman’s eye would tell him to go forward or back off.

As Sam and Lance once again departed out the front door of Joe’s to go to their respective homes Lance, as he had on their first meeting over the august question of Lance’s current love life Lance yelled across the street, “I have to go home and check if Illy23 and Hotmama234 (on-line monikers likes Lance’s loveman345) had left a message. Me.” Yeah, some things never change.       

A Good Woman On His Mind-The Trials and Tribulations of Lance Lawrence 

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.        

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 (now 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). 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 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 if 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 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 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 when 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 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 hijinks 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 because some of the situations were funny and secretly 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.             

In Search of …With Lost Loves And The Curse of On-Line Dating In Mind 

By Bart Webber 

In search of… that sure as hell fit Dan Hawkins’ fix, his inevitable lost love fix that had this time taken him by surprise, taken him for a spin as well. That terrible fix had a name, Moira Kiley, whom Dan had had a long, long for him at thirty, relationship with for three years, three and one half years if you included the six months he had been in shell-shock since she had left. It hadn’t been like he couldn’t have seen it coming, could have seen it coming if he had had his eyes wide open for there were signs and word fights that came very close a few times. And then there was that wake-up call time about a year before after they had gotten back from Paris, a freaking week after they both agreed that they had had a great time there and he had thought they had turned a corner, had thought about moving on from living together to marriage and such (that “and such” the question of children which he was ambiguous about and she was as well although less so). 

That week after Paris one night, one Friday night, a night they called their “wine date” night which they were using then as a way to touch base with each other, time to enjoy each other and be silly if they liked, silliness not a strong suit between them was the night Moira first lowered the boom. She had told him that she was dissatisfied with their relationship in no uncertain terms, that the great time in Paris only made it clear to her that the episodic good times they had could not make up for all the times in between. Could not make up for his ill-humored fits of anger at her for no earthly reason making her afraid to mention anything in the slightest bit negative for fear of that rage that he could not or would not contain. What he one night called the “fire in his head” but which had kept her awake more than one night while he dozed off oblivious to her hurts, her sorrows dragged in her own head since childhood out in upstate New York where he tyrant father brooked no talk, much less back talk. 

Could not make up for his usual indifference to her when he was hopped up on one of his work projects, one of his damn cases, one of his lawyer things. Or his exercise program, or his golf and golf buddies, or his craving for museums which bored her after about half an hour (except Paris where the museums blew here away with all the paintings she had read about since childhood) That after Paris time Moira coolly suggested to him that they go to couples counselling, something like that or she was leaving, was “going to find herself,” going find out what she was meant to do in this wicked old world (Dan’s term not hers) before it was too late (she was about to turn thirty, a critical age for such decisions as Dan had to acknowledge in his own turning thirty). 

Dan, who had grown up in a strongly working-class neighborhood, the Acre, in Riverdale about thirty miles west of Boston had been no partisan of what he called, what the guys whom he hung around with there, in college, and in law school called “New Age touchy-feely stuff” and at first had balked but after several hours of discussion over that weekend as Moira literately was packing her bags he agreed. The funny thing was that once they found a suitable counselor, a New Age-type no question, in trendy Cambridge but who was very much into letting the couples have the floor, work out between themselves what ailed them, he could see the wisdom of Moira’s suggestion. Could see that his off-the-wall behaviors and her reactions were the source of their problems. And that her childhood fears of her father had been rightly or wrongly, wrongly in that he would never hit her unlike that tyrant father.   

Naturally he had to “kick and scream” a bit about this therapy business but after a few sessions he was, using his term wherever there was an impasse in the session, “all in.” And so it had gone for the better part of a year before the crash, the lowering of Moira’s boom. Some sessions were good, the ones where they had to deal with each other’s hurt, hurts started in childhood with Dan having to prove he was not-bum-of-the-month which his father constantly called him and she with a father who would shut her up anytime she uttered anything, anytime. No question not a happy mixture. Some sessions, and this would be part of Moira’s final indictment of him, seemed like a match between two professional talkers, the counselor and the lawyer, with her on the outside looking in. Still he, they had held on until their summer vacation for a week up in Maine. That Maine trip was another great time, a time when they not known for goofiness had beside the usual beach and dinner out routine gone and played miniature golf (which she had fairly and squarely won and chided him kiddingly about since he was a pretty good golfer), gone to an old-fashioned drive-in theater (and “made out” in the old-fashioned kiddish way they had) and to a bowling alley (which was where he had shone although both were terrible bowlers) Then, a week after that great time, this week after a great time for Moira to spring something bad which Dan had thought a lot about the six months she had been gone, Moira lowered that final boom. After a short indictment of Dan’s short-comings, after again expressing her desire to find herself, to see what she was on earth to do she packed her bags that night and told him she was going to her sister’s house where she would stay until she found a place of her own. That was the last he had seen or heard from her except a few impersonal e-mails about forwarding her mail and forwarding her cellphone number to any friends who might call expecting that she would be found there.

For that six months since Moira had gone Dan had had time to think things through, think about what made Moira tick the way she did and how what seemed like a union of soulmates (both had used that designation when they gave each other holiday and birthday cards and the like) had turned to ashes with nothing in the end left behind. So he had been sad, been in a funk, and had worked like seven banshees to try to get her out of his mind, to move on. Then one day he realized that working twelve hour days and moping around was not going to either bring her back or allow him to move on. That six months had been in any case the longest he had been without a woman, been without some girlfriend, serious or not. Dan was now aching to get back into “the game” even if he had been sobered up about his own short-comings and was slightly apprehensive about getting back into a relationship, serious or not. 

Dan was not sure how to go about finding somebody since he felt that he was too old to go to the bar-hopping “meat-market” and he did not meet many available, or desirable, women in his profession so he left his feelings to stir for a while. One afternoon he heard a fellow male lawyer on his cellphone talking to somebody in such a way that he knew it was a female and that he did not know the woman well. Once the fellow lawyer saw that Dan had overheard the conversation and knowing through “water cooler” talk of his alone status mentioned that he had found Susan, the woman that he was talking to on the phone and with whom he had just set up their first date, on a well-known on-line dating service. He asked Dan to try this approach since they had vaguely talked about how hard it was to meet interesting women who were in the same profession as they were. Dan laughed and said no way that he was going to “meet” somebody, who knows some monster or serial killer, through the Internet. He had always found a girlfriend the old-fashioned way-meet them and then get their phones numbers if he was interested and go from there. But that conversation put a bug in Dan’s ear.                                                    

The long and short of it was that a couple of weeks later he decided to try “just for kicks” this new form of dating and signed up for the same service he fellow lawyer said he used. At first he was put off by the idea of paying for a dating service which despite the “come-on” of a free membership entailed payment if you wanted to get anywhere (and before he succumbed to payment he was badgered endlessly by the service about the benefits of membership). What floored him though was the questions he was supposed to answer to fill out his on-line “profile” (complete with on-line moniker-he used zackjames12 after his old friend from high school as a name he would remember easily when he logged into the site). He filled out some of the formation, left some of it blank, told little white lies about some stuff like what he was looking for in a woman which really amounted to getting somebody under the sheets, somebody to have sex with and see what happened after that but he pulled up with some bullshit about a “meeting of the minds”. Profiled flipped he clicked and he was off.       

Or Dan thought he was off but as it turned out he was having trouble connecting with most of the women on-line, probably because they were not Moira. One night when he was his father’s house in Riverdale he mentioned that since Moira had left him he had not had a girlfriend and then told the story about how he joined an on-line dating service but was not having much success except a few “chats” and a couple of cellphone calls that turned out to be not worth pursuing. He was down in the dumps about the situation. Dan’s father, Jethro, had to laugh. Women troubles would always plague the Hawkins men it seemed. Dan and his father had been estranged for several years after his father had divorced his mother to run after some other woman which had not worked out either. Dan had taken his late mother’s side and that had led to the years of estrangement (as had that constant belittling of him by Jethro). They had reconciled at his mother’s funeral and would periodically meet for supper and the elder Hawkins’ house.                

Beyond the seemingly endless women troubles of the Hawkins’ men the reason that Jethro had laughed at Dan was that he had a few years before joined the very site Dan had joined, or the senior version of that same site, Seniors Please. Jethro had always been a lady’s man of sorts, had had several girlfriends after he had left his wife and his girlfriend he was abandoning her for left him. He told Dan that over the past few years it was getting harder to meet women in the flesh. Those he came in contact with now that he was retired were concerned more about their grandchildren than dating men or else they were too young and didn’t have a clue about what he was talking about when he mentioned the hell he had raised in the 1960s. One had threatened to call the cops when he mentioned that he still liked to smoke grass and was glad that a number of states were allowing recreational purchases. Wished Massachusetts would get on the stick about it and stop keeping it as some goddam crime. So he was reduced to going on-line, or that was the way he put it to his son that night.    

Jethro told Dan that he had had the same troubles at first in reconciling the old-fashioned way he had always previously met women just as Dan had in the days before cellphones, on-line credit card payments and the Internet. But eventually he got the hang of it. Realized that all he had to do was write a couple of cogent paragraphs and the women would jump at the chance to meet him. Well not quite that easy but it seemed from what the women told him when they “chatted,” on-line, on the phone or the few he met for a date that most of the guys, older guys remember, who trolled these sites were loons, guys who thought they were twenty-something and talked boyish sex talk or about how nice some mature woman would look in a black dress and high heels. He had learned to avoid the on-line grandmothers whose idea of being appealing to a man, an older man, was to fill their profile pages with photographs of each and every grandchild. Had learned to avoid sixty-something women who had never been married since what the hell would they know about life. Was lukewarm about women who had children at home but overall he had taken the position that the rest were worth checking out-and not be too choosy looking over the on-line “meat market, senior version.” They talked some more about the do’s and don’t like don’t give a woman your real e-mail address since one woman still sends him messages about getting together and he had blown her off months before and don’t respond to anybody, woman or man, who asks for money early on, or ever. That dough will be long gone.               

That night Dan when he went back to his Cambridge apartment he turned on his computer and worked for a few hours “hitting” on every good-looking woman who did not look like a mass murderer and who could write a couple of complete paragraphs. But mostly that they did not look like or sound like Moira and that depressed him. Yeah, in search of …    

Dante’s Sins-Tom Hanks’ Inferno –A Film Review (2016)

By Sam Lowell

Inferno, starring Tom Hanks, 2016 

Blame it on Dante, blame it on his conception of the twelve billion or whatever number there were rings of hell if you like. Blame it on guys, billionaire guys who get a little squirrelly with all that dough gotten from inventing some doo-dad that could be used as a vehicle for some advertising platforms and hence a hefty IPO. That is the blame part in the film under review, Inferno (you know from old man Dante’s inferno made hotter by his doomed love for the fair Beatrice but that is only sub-text here). But the solving the dilemma, the enigma part is left to the good offices a Cambridge (England, okay) professor played by Tom Hanks (although his apparent lack of knowledge of Italian makes me a little suspicious of his academic credentials-but I am not a conspiracy theorist-of course maybe he just immersed himself in Latin the language of discourse in Dante’s time).            

Now this is a thriller so the Dante theme, the bringing in of a Dante scholar from Cambridge requires a little explanation. This high tech billionaire, does his name matter, whose new found wealth has made him like many of his ilk awash in a messianic complex, awash in thinking that his billions allowed him to tweak society any way he liked (usually they just do seemingly innocuous stuff like skewing the educational system with charter schools). The new messiah billionaire here though is worried about human extinction, worried as we all should by the world population explosion pressing against finite resources. So bright boy decided that he would “thin the herd” not like old Malthus with a little starvation but with the new plague which would cut the world population in half allowing the other half to prosper. Who would, or would not survive was to be left to chance-or the survival of the fittest. In any case this goof had to be stopped, stopped in the name of crusty old humanity. So the World Health Organization (WHO) the natural agency to stop this madness brought in the good professor to solve the clues involving Dante’s Inferno (and Botticelli’s picture of what that might look like) which the billionaire left for his followers after he committed suicide (with a little help from a rogue WHO agent seeing his main chance for serious dough).        

So the chase was on to stop the madness before one of the billionaire’s acolytes found its location and sprung the plague on the world (or half the world). But there are nefarious agents afloat who want to stop the good professor from helping the WHO and who either want to sell the biological weapon to the highest bidder or who are acolytes determined to carrying out the later billionaire’s sullen plan. The good professor is helped by a young doctor trying to help him recover his memory and find out why people are trying to kill him. The professor along with the good doctor are pushed hither and yon by the various clues hidden in museums and churches in Florence, Venice and ultimately Istanbul if you can believe that. The whole caper was a very close thing but naturally the good professor (and his good gal ex-lady friend in the WHO who had recruited him to help) figured enough out to save the world-no sweat). And that helpful doctor-well watch the film. By the way spare us from messianic billionaires with screwy social ideas and the dough to carry them out.  A good fast paced thriller.

Armistice Day Reflections- I Don’t Need A Good Conduct Certificate As An Anti-War Veteran-With Frank Jackman In Mind 

By Fritz Taylor

    

“I don’t need a good conduct certificate from Norm, National VFP, Smedley VFP, the gods, history, or anybody else to carry high the banner of VFP as an anti-war veteran,” Frank Jackman kept thinking to himself as he tossed and turned in the middle of night after he had looked at an e-mail from his old nemesis Norman Gordon. (Frank would also use that sentiment as the headline title of an e-mail that he would sent to the members of the Executive Committee of his local Veterans for Peace chapter, VFP, the Smedley Butler Brigade responding to Norm’s “charges.”) What had happened was that good old curmudgeon and guy who would rain on anybody’s parade but his own Norm Gordon had been up to his old tricks trying cause dissension in the ranks of the local organization. It would not have been the first time the two had locked horns over some organizational matter. The last time had been over whether the local chapter should carry as a matter of course the American flag in any public functions they attended. They both agreed on the matter that the chapter should not but Frank had been furious that Norm had not attended the meeting where the issue was discussed and had left him to carry the burden of the argument alone while he attended to some private business of his own. (Their position lost and would have anyway if Norm had shown up but that was just one more example of his stirring the waters up and then leaving everybody high and dry).        

This time the issue was personal, was about Frank’s status as an anti-war veteran, about whether he was in fact a veteran which was how acrimonious Norm could be when he got his fangs up. Frank had joined the local chapter of Veterans for Peace six or seven years before , recruited by Paul Sullivan the chapter coordinator, after having worked with the organization off and on for a number of years previous to that time. The crucial event had been his participant in an Armistice Day parade and program where he had proudly carried the black and white dove-emblemed VFP banner for the first time (Armistice Day also known as, officially known as Veterans Day, but the original intent had been to designate the day as a day of peace after the end of the huge bloodbath that was World War I). Frank’s position about joining organizations after a lifetime of belonging to many socialist and peace organizations, large and small, ad hoc and permanent, sometimes active, sometimes as a “paper” member was that he would not join a group unless he planned to be active. That decision had been solidified by his carrying that Armistice Day VFP flag that year.

What Frank had joined, and what he thought he had joined was the Boston chapter, the Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 of VFP and he had paid his chapter dues accordingly (and would in subsequent years as well). (The chapter named after the famous much decorated Marine Corps general who once he got “religion” on the war issue famously said “war is a racket”-and said much more as well look it up in Wikipedia for the full text.)  His understanding and the understanding codified in the by-laws of the chapter was that you could be a member of the local chapter without being a member of the national organization. Since he was actively working with the local chapter and would have been a mere paper member of the national organization all through his membership he had never joined, never thought to join the national organization. 

Enter Norm and his late night e-mail. In that e-mail Norm had mentioned that somehow he had found out that Frank was not a member of the national organization and by his lights not a member of VFP having not paid dues or submitted a DD214 ( military discharge papers which are the signal that you have in some way, shape or form completed your active duty) as required to be a member of the national organization (how and why Norm got that information from somebody at headquarters in Saint Louis he would never answer despite Frank’s repeated questions). 

In additional and this is the point on which Frank blew his stack Norm questioned whether Frank had ever been in the military since he had not produced a DD214 for the local as required by the local by-laws.  At the time of his recruitment, and he later asked Paul Sullivan about it and Paul was not sure whether back then proof of service was necessary for full membership, nobody had, including Paul, asked him for any documentation. Under ordinary circumstances challenging a member’s military service would not have been a “red flag,” hot button, seeing red issue by the local but only a few months previously there had been an ugly confrontation with people taking sides over what turned out to be bizarre case involving “stolen valor” (a term which signifies that somebody who may or may not have been in the military claims a lot of hot air combat bravery stuff like you would hear at an American Legion bar room). So Frank, who had been deeply embroiled in the controversy, was beside himself when even the hint of a challenge like that to his credentials came up, and it would not have had to be somebody as professionally antagonistic as Norm to have Frank seeing red. 

Here is how Frank initially responded to Norm’s e-mail after a fitful night of tossing and turning over the issue:                      

“Frankly Norm you are by your accusations now the primary reason why I do not choose to join National and had been one reason ever since you were treasurer badgering me to join -or as you say the “real” VFP-I am a proud member of Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9, VFP if that is not "real 

“VFP well I can live with that. By the way you should check the chapter by-laws like I did which do not require national membership for Smedley membership. 

“The other reason I choose not to join, and had once been the primary reason was that I do not when I join an organization want to be a paper member-I would only be a paper member of National and obviously I am not a paper member of Smedley- I still want to know why you would be interested in why I am member of national or not and how you would have access to information about whether I was or not. 

“More pressing though is your libelous remark about whether I was a veteran or not-I am right now putting in a request to the State Adjutant General's Office to get a copy of my discharge but I have other things on this accusation to say and will be sending out an e-mail about it if you can't wait to heard that I submitted my DD 214 to the Executive Committee. Later Frank Jackman “       

Norm’s answer to that e-mail, his not unusual sniveling answer was that Frank had mistaken his intent, he was just trying to get an active member of Smedley who moreover had attended various national events like the convention to join up with others in National. On the military service question he totally backed off saying he was sure that Frank had done military service. That sniveling made Frank more aware than ever that he had to tell people associated with the local chapter what his real military service was like and put some egg on Brother Gordon’s face. 

Frank had not mentioned much about his actual military service in part because for a very public man, for man who believed in his role of as a street anti-war activist he was very, very private about his personal life, about things that had happened to him in the past. That challenge by Norm had got him to thinking about something that had been in the back of his mind for a while about being a little more forthcoming about that aspect of his past. As part of trying to settle himself down over the whole Norm flare-up he had sent an e-mail to his ex-wife with whom he was still on friendly terms and he still counted on to give him counsel when he had what he called “a fire in his head.”  Here’s what he had to say to Moira: 

“Pea [pet name for Moira]-I want to tell you about this Norm character who called your house expecting that I was still living there. I already mentioned [in a previous e-mail] that he is some weird curmudgeon that wants to rain on everybody’s parade but his own. What he wanted to talk to me about and which he sent me an e-mail about last night when I had not called him was why I was not a member of VFP. This may sound odd but there are two parts to VFP-the National which has its own organizational structure and local Smedley which is part of and is subordinate to National. The point is that you can belong to Smedley without belonging to National and can run for local office as I have an idea to do this year without joining National. I have seen no reason except as a paper member to be a member of National. You know when I join something it is for real and not just for the resume. 

What’s a resume by the way? [Private joke between them because Frank has never assembled a resume having been in the right place at the right time on such matters most of his working life.] Norm’s position is that because I am not a member of National I am not a member of VFP and therefore should not hold office which is what I want to do come the next election cycle, and he probably thinks I am not be a member of Smedley although our by-laws do not require it.       

“The more serious allegation though is that he questions whether I am a veteran at all (like in the Bill Fuller case with all his fake “stolen valor” stuff). What this all means is that I feel honor bound not to him since I don’t need a good conduct certificate from him or anybody to prove I earned my spurs as an anti-war Veteran who did stockade time for his beliefs but to Smedley to clear the air. That means I have to bring up my military history which I have only told you the details of recently and which I have kept a low profile on with Smedley. You know I have earned my right to carry the VFP banner high the hard way and I know you are proud of me for that. 

“Funny though you know, or if you don’t know I will tell you, I am a very private public man if you get my drift and only tell about my personal life when I am up against the wall. This fall has been “outing” season for me. First having to talk about my cancer in public when I couldn’t put together that Peace Walk to Boston. Then I had to reveal to others the problems we were having in our marriage once I moved out and now this. I know you have my back on this-and maybe this will make me a better or more open person and you can be proud of me for that too.       

“Thank goodness though I am doing meditation because I really needed to do some after all that noise of this Norm thing -thanks for bringing me to see the virtue of that idea-kudos.  

“Please if Norm calls either hang up or just say I don’t live there anymore but don’t give him my cellphone number.”

Moira’s response was that she supported Frank in his efforts to clear his good name and that he should write a detailed explanation to the local Executive Board [whom he in any case as a precaution had CC’d  his various exchanges with Norm]of why he need not be challenged on his military service. Before that he had sent an e-mail telling the local leadership what he had already done and where he was heading:  

“Thanks to everybody for the support- I just put in a request for my DD214 with the State Adjutant General’s Office (that is the place in Massachusetts you can get a copy of your discharge for certain veterans from periods when you got a State bonus for military service). 

"I will be writing more about that in an e-mail (actually two e-mails) later  but for now since I am under a “cloud” about whether I am a veteran or not I want to know if the Committee thinks I should Emcee the Armistice Day program as I am expected too [Frank had volunteered to do that task as part of his stepped-up commitment to the local.] I will understand either way. I am more than willing to do it but will abide by your judgment. If I am not going to it I probably would not attend the parade/program so I have attached a copy of the Sam Adams Park permit [the place in downtown Boston where the program was to be presented] permit for somebody to print up and have when they set up. Remember the hassle last year. The cellphone number at the bottom 617-678-4114 is Laura Morris’ number in case of trouble- Later Frank”           

In the event the Committee had begged him to avoid dealing with Norm as a fruitless task for while they had already suffered many wounds. That evening he took up Moira’s suggestion and wrote a statement:     

“I Don’t Need A Good Conduct Certificate That I Am An Anti-War Veteran   

“I don’t need a good conduct certificate from Norm, National VFP, Smedley VFP, the gods, history, or anybody else to carry high the banner of VFP as an anti-war veteran. This issue has come up because of Norm’s erroneous insistence that I am not a member of VFP because I am not a member of National. I have addressed that elsewhere. What I find I need to defend myself against is his libelous insinuation that I am not a veteran. Comparing me by inference with the unfortunate Bill Fuller. I have today put in a request to the State Adjutant General’s Office, the place that has the DD214s for certain classes of Massachusetts veterans who received bonuses during various war periods.  I checked this morning and they still have mine (they moved from the State House to Milford). They have e-mailed me the request form which has to be returned by snail mail and they will return the DD214 by my requested e-mail delivery. That process shouldn’t take long and I will submit the document to the Ex Committee via e-mail when I get it.      

“But there is a faster way to check on my military service. Norm, since you seem to have plenty of time on your hands for checking stuff for no apparent purpose other than some private nefarious purpose of your own why don’t you go down to the Moakley Federal Courthouse in Boston or wherever they keep the older federal decisions in the next couple of day (who knows maybe you can find it on the Internet these day since it is a public record) and ask to see the decision in Private Francis J. Jackman (it may have been Joseph rather than the initial but the last time I looked, needed to look was in1976 so I am not sure of that) v. the Secretary of the Army (and others including the commanding general of Fort Devens and some underlings) around early February 1971 (I am not sure of the exact court order date but it was several days before my discharge). In that case old cranky Judge Francis Ford, no friend of G.I. resisters, ordered on a writ of habeas corpus my discharge from the Army for “arbitrarily and capriciously” denying my conscientious objector application. I was given a discharge under honorable conditions. 

“By the way that discharge by the Army was directly from the Fort Devens stockade where I was serving a six month sentence from a Special Court-Martial for refusing to wear the Army uniform. That was the second of two Special Court-Martials where I received a stiff sentence (the first, also six months, was just after they turned down my C.O. application where I, in uniform, attended an anti-war rally at the Main Gate of Fort Devens during “duty hours”). So altogether between confinement to barracks, periods of house arrest, stockade time including time in solitary (for “my own protection’’) I did well over a year in confinement.  In a later e-mail I will detail the pertinent facts and my reasons for keeping this information “on the low,” but for now you can understand that I am not going to take any noise from anybody about my status as an anti-war veteran who has paid his dues and can carry the VFP banner high, very high. 

“Although I don’t need witnesses to my anti-war Army good conduct Sally Rand from the Friends Meeting up in Cumberland, Maine who used to be at the Cambridge Meeting then was one of the organizers of the rally I attended in uniform in front of the fort. And of several rallies in my defense before that first court-martial. You can also ask Sev to ask his wife Lana if she remembers going to Fort Devens for some rallies for a G.I. resister. I know I got a letter of support from her while I was in the stockade.

“Like I said I will give details and my reasons later for not speaking about this matter but actually Norm and Nancy already know this story-they just don’t know they know it.  Last Spring I think at Edward’s Midnight Voices at Friends Meeting House I read a short piece which I titled Jack Callahan’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters Of War in Mind. I have been thinking about speaking about my military past for a while and now this situation has forced my hand. That piece was a slightly fictionalized, and slightly embellished, run through of my own situation from that time. Now you can understand better why the Chelsea Manning case is so close to my heart.           

“So the hell with anybody who has a problem with me not being a member of National, I have earned my right to carry the VFP banner without a lot of noise about it.”

A few days later Frank sent the Executive Committee the following to fill out the story: 

“Pertinent facts and reasons for keeping low on my military career

“I am as I have recognized more clearly this fall a very private public person.  I have tried until recently to keep the two separate. But the need to go public, to be “outed” one way or another about my battle with cancer when I couldn’t put together the Peace Walk to Boston, my impeding divorce once I was no longer in Watertown and now a question about my military service have required me to be more open about the private side . As I stated in an earlier e-mail about my military status brought on by Norm’s e-mail inquiry about why I am not a member of National, and more importantly in impugning my status as a veteran not having produced a DD214 for Smedley. A process which as far as I know was not required for local membership until we created the by-laws this year although there might have been some requirement that I had not been aware. I was certainly not asked for one when I joined. Now events have forced me to come forward on this issue as well. That questioning of my veteran status in light of the recent Bill Fuller “hot button” situation by Norm had as a matter of protecting myself and my anti-war reputation required me to speak out. Below are the pertinent facts and reasons for my previous silence.  

“I received my draft notice in the fall of 1968, took a physical which I passed and was called for induction in January, 1969. At that time I was fairly anti-Vietnam War but not enough to decide not to accept induction and either go to jail or Canada. My anti-war thought processes at that stage had not developed that far. While I thought vaguely about not going into the service nothing in my past headed me in that direction, including any support from family or friends for that kind of decision so that was off the radar. So I was inducted at the Boston Army Base and sent to Fort Gordon down in Augusta, Georgia for basic training. After about three, maybe four days down there I realized that I had made a horrible mistake. But I was down in Georgia far from home and so whatever thoughts I had about doing anything stayed with me until I was able to get home. At least that was my idea. 

“Now in 1969 all the Army cared about for the most part was replacing the “cannon-fodder” loses on the battlefields in 1968 through Tet and other battles so having no other specialized skills I was assigned to Infantry AIT (11Bravo, “grunt”, “cannon-fodder”) at Fort McClellan in Alabama. The only possible assignment for me after that designation and training was in the bloody rice fields of Vietnam.   At AIT a few of us from around Boston talked about refusing to take machine gun training but nothing came of it once the company commander read us the riot act and threatened the stockade which I feared quite a bit then. I thus decided to wait until I got home to see what I was going to do once I actually did get those orders to report to Fort Lewis in Washington for transit to Vietnam.      

“Once I got back to Boston I went over to Cambridge to the Friends Meeting House where they were doing both draft refusal counselling and G.I. rights counselling as well. One counsellor advised me to file an application as a conscientious objector. He also “advised” me that servicemen who went AWOL were dropped from their assigned places after about thirty days in case I wanted avoid going to Fort Lewis and put the C.O. application at a fort closer to home which would turned out to be Fort Devens. I did not believe under the standards in effect then that I qualified as a C.O. since I was not a Quaker or one of the historic religious objectors to war. So I went to Fort Lewis.            

“During that period I was reading like crazy, anti-war stuff and Catholic resister stuff like with the Berrigans at Catonsville, some G.I. resistance stuff and began to form a more definitive idea about what I had to do. Although I did not in the end wind up going to Vietnam as an infantryman then I was beginning to form the idea of refusal to continue my military career. As part of that idea I did wind up going AWOL back to Boston for over thirty days (almost two months really). I then turned myself into the FBI (after they had called my family’s house looking for me) and they turned me over to the State Police in Concord who turned me over the MPs at Fort Devens. There I was placed in a Special Detachment Unit (for AWOLs and other assorted misfits) to serve my punishment and also to put in my C.O. application. 

“In short order that C.O. application was “arbitrarily and capriciously” denied out of hand (words that would be used later to characterize the Army’s action) since I was stating my objection on general anti-war moral and ethical grounds not at that moment reason enough to be granted. (Some Supreme Court and lower federal court decisions would shortly thereafter broaden the scope of objection which would be germane in my case) and in early 1970 I was to be re-assigned to Fort Lewis this time again for transport to Vietnam as an infantryman. Before that happened my civilian attorney (provided through AFSC by the way) was able to get into federal court in Boston and get a temporary restraining order from a federal judge so that he could present a writ of habeas corpus that the Army had unjustly denied my application. That action would keep me at Fort Devens until my federal case was resolved. That granting of the TRO had also been a close thing because during my stay at Fort Devens I had begun to agitate against the war among my fellow soldiers and the very day that I got that TRO there was a general search around the base looking for me (I had been warned by a sympathetic clerk what was up and so was hiding on the base) to take me to Fort Lewis handcuffed and under guard for transport to Vietnam. 

“Once I learned that fate was what the Army had wanted to do to me something snapped in me. My feelings of resistance grew exponentially. That was when I began to get the idea of greater resistance. I had during that short period of freedom headed to Cambridge (only forty miles away) to work with the Quakers who were planning to rally at Fort Devens to end the war (that is where I met Sally Rand from up in Maine who was then the organizer of the event). I told them I was willing to join them during “duty hours” in uniform to protest, to support the call bring the troops home. I did so and when I went back to the base after the rally I was immediately arrested by the MPs and placed in the “hole” (solitary) for a few weeks before my first Special Court-Martial where I drew my first six month sentence. During that time, and this is important, Sally and others would rally outside the base in solidarity with my action (and to make sure through publicity that I was safe since the MPs who manned the stockade were mostly Vietnam veterans).              

“When I finished that sentence (minus good time) I was released back to that Special Detachment Unit. But the stockade had hardened me in my resolve to resist. (Plus a lot of reading along that line helped.) A few days after I got out of the stockade the first time I showed up at morning call out on the base parade field in civilian clothes with a sign around  neck calling “Bring the troops home.” That brought Special Court-Marital number two also six months. Toward the end of that sentence the Inspector-General showed up in my cell one afternoon and told me that the Federal Court in Boston had granted my writ of habeas corpus and that I was to be released in a few day (the Army decided not to appeal). Otherwise today I might still be serving six month sentences-who knows.

“Now there is obviously nothing in the above narrative to be shy about, at least not in VFP.  Hell, somebody called military resisters the only real heroes one time I remember (and I have done so in the Chelsea Manning case). Moreover under the more liberal standards of the times I deserved that C.O. status and have no problem with having pursued that course. Sometime after that whole Army experience had been settled I got a little more sophisticated about imperialism and its inevitable wars and about how to effectively organize as best we can against it. Under the influence of left-wing socialist thought (and basically Bolshevik practice in World War I) I came to see that doing individual actions like mine that only got me put out of the struggle had been less than effective. The long and short of it was, and still is to some extent, is that I believed I should have gone to Vietnam and helped organize the resistance there. With the Army half in mutiny who knows what I could have done. That is why I have been very hesitant to acknowledge my full military “career.” And still probably would have been if the issue had not been forced. So like I said in an earlier e-mail I earned my anti-war spurs the hard way and I can proudly hold the VFP banner up high and nobody can take that away from me. Frank Jackman.”

Yeah, Frank doesn’t need any good conduct certificate-thanks for “your service” Brother.   

                              

With Skip James’ Lyric I’d Rather Be With The Devil Than Be That Woman’s Man In Mind-Why I Won’t Vote For Hillary Clinton (Needless To Say Dump The Trump Too)

By Fritz Taylor

Okay, let’s go by the numbers. Sometime in maybe late 2007, early 2008 in any case before it became clear that one Senator Barack Obama of Illinois would pose a serious challenge to then Senator Hillary Clinton of New York I had been bombarded with a few books written probably by minions or otherwise tied to the Clinton brand name. As such things go they were political biographies commissioned to advance Mrs. Clinton’s ultimately ill-fated campaign or material to be used a sound bite fodder for the same purposes. I was asked by some serious political people, maybe political pimps is the better way to put the matter to get on board her train or at least review the various books to let people outside her direct camp know how good a candidate, how well-qualified she was and so on. I balked at such an insidious task although I did to my subsequent regret review some items for which I was sent to the gallows by those same serious political folk. (At that point I had not particular animus against the relatively unknown Obama although I was subsequently to have many a vile word to say against him and his endless wars and endless bullshit about a “post-racial” society and the sand in my mouth “hope” noise he spouted).         

My vantage point for writing about the various Clinton works was encapscalated almost perfectly by the old sweet falsetto-voiced bluesman from the late 1920s Skip James, who would be “discovered” by us budding folkies in the 1960s folk minute and have a second short career before passing on, in a signature song of his-Devil Got My Woman. The key line which I used shamelessly every time I could during the early part of that campaign year before I gave up covering the whole thing as one more act of futility for those of us who were serious about social change and who furthermore had no illusions in anything any candidate speaking for the Democratic Party of war and corruption had to say-“I’d rather be with the devil than be that woman’s man.” (Needless to say the various Republicans were and are beyond the pale and not worth even a sardonic look.) That very factual comment got me in hot water with some of my die-hard Clinton supporter friends (mostly politically savvy women looking to launch the first woman into the barren American presidency). But it also got me in Dutch with my more radically-inclined feminist friends who saw my comment as “sexist,” misanthropic and misogynous. Jesus didn’t they do their own castigations and aspirations against that woman for her lug-head vote with both hands for the Iraq War resolution which still lives with us burnt in our memoires for seemingly all eternity.   

Come 2016 and the age of Dump the Trump supposedly a greater threat to the American democracy than the “reds under every bed” of the red scare Cold War rhetoric of my youth back in the early 1960s and those same cohorts have taken once again to making the same silly accusations about my Neanderthal attitude (I am being kind to myself here since their language was significantly more heated that I care to quote). But everybody knows that bourgeois politics, hell, any politics is a tough dollar so for those who forgot my retort back then about my socially backward ways I am resurrecting my talisman-my defense.     

You see the blues lyrics, folk music in general, is almost always open to copying and tweaking. So the great modern (and very feminist) blues singer Rory Block came to my rescue after I remembered that she had done a version of Skip James’ song. Except naturally when she sang the song she said- I’d rather be with the devil than be that man’s woman.” Touché. I used the masculine version of that statement when somebody asked me if I supported Barack Obama for President in 2008. (I supported the very black, the very beautiful, and very feminist ex-Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney in her Green Party-etched efforts and Jill Stein of the same party in hers this year so there). I use the feminine version this year for Mister Clinton once again. Oh yeah, and Dump The Trump.