President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning-She Must Not Die In Jail-The Struggle Continues- A Story Goes With It   

Click on link to White House Petition To Pardon Chelsea Manning-

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/commute-chelsea-mannings-sentence-time-served-1

By Fritz Taylor 

“You know it is a crying shame that the Chelsea Manning case has fallen beneath the cracks, that her plight as the only woman prisoner in an all-male prison out there in the wheat fields of Kansas, out at Leavenworth has been ignored except an occasional news note or yet another petition for President Obama to do the right thing like he has with the drug cases and pardon her, to commute her sentence to time served, to the six plus years she has already been tossed away behind the walls,” yelled Ralph Morse over to Bart Webber while they were preparing to set up a banner proclaiming that very idea as part of a birthday vigil for Chelsea on her 29^th birthday on this cold December day. (Ralph thought to himself while he was yelling over to Bart that he would never get over those basic training drill sergeants during his time in the military during the Vietnam War, never get over being spooked by them that if you did not toe the mark you would wind up in Leavenworth and here he was supporting a young transgender whistle-blower who did what he should have done but cowered to those redneck drill sergeants. Well even 60-somethings can learn a thing or two from the younger crowd.) 

“Yeah, between the fact that she had to in order to protect herself against maltreatment from a bunch of goddam threatening guards who told her to “man up” at Leavenworth after she was convicted and sentenced to those hard thirty-five years in 2013 “come out” as a transgender woman and the overriding blow-up over the Snowden revelations which took all the air out of any other whistle-blower case Chelsea got the short end of the stick,” replied Bart also yelling his comment against both the windy day and the constant stream of loonies, crazies and con men and women who populated the environs around the Park Street subway station at Boston Common on any given Saturday between the hours of one and two in the afternoon when the space, or part of it, was given over to  peace action groups and other left-wing political organizations.               

Ralph thought to himself as he cut a few wind holes in the banner proclaiming the need for President Obama to grant Chelsea her pardon that he had come a long way (and Bart too) since the fall of 2010 when they learned that Chelsea (then using her birth name Bradley but we will use her chosen name and assume everybody understands we are talking about the same person) was being held essentially incommunicado down at the Quantico Marine Base (strange since Chelsea was in the Army) in solitary and their organization, Veterans for Peace, had called for demonstrations to have her released even then, or at least taken out of solitary and stop being tortured (no small “peacenik” charge since the appropriate United Nations rapporteur had made such a finding in her case). Ralph and Bart had been among the very first to set up a rally (not at Park Street but in Davis Square over in Somerville where Bart had lived for the previous decade) and they had been committed to her defense ever since. (Their own admittedly sorry response to “their” war, Vietnam, by in Ralph’s case joining the Army and in Bart’s case by accepting induction into that same Army had caused then after the fact, after their military service to “get religion” on the questions of war and peace. They saw the Chelsea case as pay-back to a real hero, maybe the only hero of the Iraq War and had worked like seven dervishes on the case. More importantly had kept the faith even after the case inevitably went off the front pages and became a cypher to the general population.)           

Both men had agreed once the fanfare had died down that along with keeping the case in the public eye as best they could they would commemorate two milestones in Chelsea’s live yearly-the anniversary of her incarceration by the government now over six years in May and her birthday in December (her 29^th ). That was why Ralph and Bart were struggling with the downtown winds to put their banner in place. These days they were not taking the overall lead in setting up such events but had responded to a call by the Queer Strike Force to do so and they were following that organization’s lead to rally and to make one last desperate push to get Chelsea a pardon. Everybody agreed, willingly or not, that under the impending Dump the Trump regime that Chelsea’s chances of a pardon were about zero, maybe less. So the rally. And so too the desperation in Ralph and Bart’s own minds that the slogan their fellow VFPer Frank Jackman had coined-“we will not leave our sister behind” would now fall on deaf ears, that she would face at least four, maybe eight years of hard ass prison time-time to be served as a man in a woman’s body when the deal went down. Worse that Chelsea had already attempted twice earlier in the year to commit suicide and the hard fact emblazoned in the added sentence on their banner-“she must not die in jail” had added urgency.        

Ralph and Bart had met down in Washington in 1971 after both had been discharged from the Army and had gotten up some courage, with some prompting from their respective very anti-war girlfriends, to go down and get arrested during the May Day actions when in another desperate situation they tried to help shut down the government if it would not shut down the war-the Vietnam War. They had been through a lot over the years in the struggle to keep the peace message alive and well despite the endless wars, and despite the near zero visibility on the subject over the previous ten plus years. 

Both had grown up in very working class neighborhood respectively Troy in upstate New York and Riverdale out about thirty miles west of Boston and had followed the neighborhood crowds unthinkingly in accepting their war and participating in the war machine when it came their time. So no way in 1968,1969 say could either have projected that they would hit their sixties standing out in the lonesome corners of the American public square defending an Army private who in many quarters was considered a traitor and who moreover was gay. In the old days the best term they could think of to describe their respective attitudes toward gays was “faggot and dyke”-Jesus. (That whole gay issue was already well known to them from some information provided by agents of Courage to Resist, the organization which was the main conduit for publicity about the case and for financing Chelsea’s legal defenses. They also were aware through those same agents about Chelsea’s sexual identity which all partisans and Chelsea herself had agreed to keep on the “low” in order not get that issue confused with her heroic whistle-blower actions during trial and only later revealed by her publicly as a matter of self-defense as mentioned above.)     

Later that night after the birthday vigil was over and Ralph and Bart were sitting at Jack’s over in Cambridge near where Bart lives (Ralph still lived in Troy) having a few shots to ward away the cold of the day’s events both had been a bit morose. The event had gone as well as could be expected on a political prisoner case that was three years removed from the serious public eye. The usual small coterie of “peace activists” had shown up and a few who were supporting Chelsea as a fellow transgender and there had been the usual speeches and pleas to sign the on-line petition to the White House to trigger a response from the President on the question of a pardon (see link above). (That lack of response by the greater LGBTQ community to Chelsea’s desperate plight all through the case had had Ralph and Bart shaking their heads in disgust as the usual reason given was that all energies had to expended on getting gay marriage recognized. The twice divorced Ralph and three times divorced mumbled to themselves over that one). 

Ralph and Bart were in melancholy mood no question since they had long ago given up any illusion that the struggle against war and for some kind of social justice was going to be easy but the prospects ahead, what Ralph had called the coming “cold civil war” under the tutelage of one Donald Trump had them reeling as it related to Chelsea’s case. They bantered back and forth about how many actions they had participated in since they got the news of the case that a young whistle-blower was being held for telling the world about the cover-up of countless atrocities committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan (via Wiki-leaks, not the mainstream media who would not touch making the information that Chelsea had gleaned for love or money). 

There were the trips to Quantico down in hostile Virginia in order to get Chelsea out of the “hole,” get her out of Marine base solitary (and where they faced an incredible array of cops and military personnel all to “monitor” a few hundred supporters). The trips to the White House to proclaim their message. The several trips during the trial down at Fort Meade in Maryland where they had to laugh about being on a military base for the first time in decades (they had been barred many years back for demonstrations on a military base against the Reagan administrations war against Central America). The weekly vigils before the case went to trial and over the previous three years the fight to keep the case in the public eye.          

As they finished up their last shots of whiskey against the cold night both agreed though that come May they would be out commemorating Chelsea’s seventh year in the jug if Obama did not do the right thing beforehand. They both yelled as they went their separate ways (Ralph was staying with his daughter in Arlington) old Frank Jackman’s coined phrase-“we will not leave our sister behind.” No way.    

A Ladies’ Man-With All The Ladies He Was Not With Tonight In Mind  

By Jason Taylor 

David McGovern always considered himself a ladies’ man, although it was not obvious from his appearance or his demeanor that he harbored such thoughts. No, Dave (his preferred nickname and not Davey as his blessed late mother used to call him, call him with a certain tone that meant he was in some kind of trouble, under some maternal menace and he would run for cover against her wrath), was not a guy who had his generation’s idols like Paul Newman or Robert Redford good looks (and now let’s say Brad Pitts for those baffled by the mention of the previous names). Rather he had the craggy good looks of a weathered Irishman (or as one gal put it after he had turned her over, had left her in the lurch for the “next best thing,” his constant search, a Rasputin look complete with that evil eye spell that had been the bad night of her existence, and not her alone) when young which played to his advantage among the gentile and non-gentile beat/ hippie young women he was attracted to from his high school roaming days on around Cambridge and environs. 

He emphatically was not, could not be attractive to the ice cold beautiful set of women that he attempted to avoid like the plague (you know the cheerleaders and social butterflies in high school and the stockbroker trophy wives later). They ignored him and laughed at him in his funny hand-me-downs in any case so as much a question of accepting social reality as anything else. His demeanor, well his demeanor, or his “hook” as he always kidded himself in private moments was to take a woman by main force-by the fact of wearing her down with his two thousand assorted facts ready for distribution at a moment’s notice and his thousand, roughly, ideas some off-point but some fascinating to intellectually-oriented women -also sent by main force. So you could see that he knew early on that he would be attracted to, attractive to certain types of women-and they to him. So for a great deal of his sweet soft soap life he had at any given time a bevy, nice word huh, of women in his orbit.                  

That bevy idea to Dave is important, will become more important because he defined himself by his “list” (what in the old days would be called the black book, the book where you had a list of names of available, available to you, and telephone numbers, so you can tell by that old-fashioned instrument it had been a while since that concept had been in its prime, of as many young women as you had come across and not crossed off). 

Some of Dave’s exploits when he was younger were the stuff of local urban folk legend among his crowd. In this day and age it might cause snickers or raised eyebrows as rather sophomoric and a sign of youthful insecurity (even though the particular “run” to be spoken of had occurred when he was in his mid-twenties). That insecurity part, upon later reflection by Dave himself in some private moments had some merit since in early high school due his poverty and self-consciousness of that hard fact, and his female classmates’ as well he did not have any girlfriend at all. It was only Harvard Square, the folk scene, the coffeehouses, the old Hayes-Bickford and what was happening there that gave him a new lease on life.

But enough of the psychological reasons for his need to take a “run” every now and again. That “run” meant that between serious women friends he would try to date, lure or whatever (and bed) as many women as he could logically handle. This was no meant trick in the days when all you had was a landline telephone and only a certain amount of time to do your hard-boiled loving. Five, well, maybe six was the highest number he could handle when Dave was in the “rut.” Here’s what a “run” might look like and remember this was not some teen frenzy but from his mid-twenties times. Needless to say it started with him going to a friend’s party (pot party if anybody is asking although the liquor flowed as well) and he ran into Josie, a delicious young woman fresh from the campus at half-revolutionary Madison at the University of Wisconsin (via Manhattan and a high ranking at Hunter College High) and so just Dave’s meat in those days when he was particularly attracted to high achiever Jewish women who had a radical past, or wished they had since that was one of his calling cards then. Dave had been a draft-resister, had served some time for his resistance so he played the “girls say ‘yes’ to boys who say ‘no’” card for all it was worth. (There is a famous, maybe infamous today, photograph from 1968 maybe you can Google it with three fetching women, three women a guy would be willing to say “no” to the draft for if you wanted to get an idea of what they looked like, sitting on a couch under a sign with just that expression written above them.) Josie went for him in a big way, and if things had been different, if he hadn’t just broken up with his first wife (a wife he had married as he was going off to jail so that she could have visitation rights and so he in a morose mood would have been married something he was hung up about since his teens-bad move, very bad reason in the end) and was in no mood for being serious just then they could have been a solo match. In fact at one point Dave seriously considered dumping the other women for Josie but he was just not smart enough to see that he could have had a much simpler life had he had the brains given to geese.                           

In a way Josie just whetted Dave’s appetite for she was not only a radical gal she was also very inventive in bed as a number of women were in those days after “the pill” and some discreet reading of the Kama Sutra had freed things up for a whole younger generation of women who were ready to break out of their mothers traps. A few weeks after meeting Josie Dave though he met an art student from the Museum School at an opening of an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. He had decided to go see some of the Impressionists that he was (and is) crazy about when he saw this young woman with sketch book in hand drawing free-hand (and very well) a painting by Monet (one of those rural France scenes all misty and pointy). He stepped up to her and gave her, gave Robin, some of his two thousand facts about Monet (the stuff that even artists don’t know or give a damn about) and that was enough to whet her appetite although she was not as impressed with his left-wing credentials as Josie since she was one of the most apolitical people he had ever met, totally into her art to the avoidance of all else (she would tell him later that she had seen her brother go “wrong” with radical politics, having had been around the Weather Underground when that organization meant something for the political action of the time and cause all kinds of problems in her family’s household so she very consciously avoided the subject).       

Of course with two women being dated at the same the question, a question that would grow exponentially with the addition of more women, there were times when one wanted to see him or he to see her and so the juggling started (and the notorious “no show” without calling to cancel the date and just leaving Josie or Robin hanging, and the bullshit reason for not doing so. The “no show” business drove the very reliable Robin crazy when he decided that he needed to check out what the sexual inventive Josie was thinking up.) That question, no, that problem, hit home when Robin brought him to her apartment across the Fenway from school to meet her roommate, Rachel, after Robin had told her so much about Dave and after a few visits began to “see” Rachel. Rachel who was a student at Boston University and had come there from upstate New York near Saratoga Springs was very political, and very much a good spirit unlike Robin who would get moody was thus number three. (Much later, after the “run” had run its course and he was alone again Dave had a private laugh about some advice the old time blues singer, Sippy Wallace, a singer that Bonnie Raitt had help “discover” as the blues revival hit high gear told her female listeners to follow-“don’t advertise your man.”)                    

Naturally that idea of dating roommates was not without problems as far as keeping it from Robin. Rachel said she didn’t give a damn who he was “seeing,” nice clean way to put it right, as long as he was available to her and didn’t tell Robin about them because she was a both a good roommate and finding another place before the school was out would have been hard. Needless to say Rachel and Dave met at his place or at hers when Robin was away although one Sunday night they had almost played it too close as Robin came in the door from a family visit and Dave had to go out the fire escape that came with apartment building sin the Fenway, praise be. The next conquest meeting Dave would gather in was a friend of Robin’s from school, Catherine, whose father had been a “lifer” military officer and since she was estranged from that man she was impressed, very impressed by Dave’s anti-war credentials. Fortunately she lived in Cambridge and so there was no problem seeing her (except she balked at first when he told her that he was “seeing” Rachel as well as Robin but his old trick of the frontal attack, of “shaming” her into being too bourgeois about the whole thing and that they should live in the world of ideas, and of art got him through the door). Dave had been in error about this “run” consisting of six young women since that would have actually been an earlier “run” (and reflects the vagaries of age on the memory). So Martha, was number five and the end, a woman he had met at a political event and had surprised him with her knowledge of politics and ideas and who knew the classics in German as well. She had stayed with him every step of the way when he started his two thousand facts and myriad of ideas. It was a serious question of who seduced who on that one.              

All of this womanizing had to come to an end sometime and you would be surprised that the big reason that the whole house of cards fell apart was that Dave developed a little “habit,” a little “date” with cousin cocaine, with the snowman. In the end he would get clean but along the way he did some awful things to those women from conning them for money for coke to the infamous no shows which got more frequent as he got into his “head” (and had to spend so much time hustling to get his dope). Martha left him early since she was involved with an organization who wanted her to go to Germany. Catherine found some other guy once it was clear Dave was not going to take her seriously (and she was having second-thoughts about cheating on her friend Robin). Rachel went crazy when Dave tried to get her to do a little coke to get them in the mood and threw him out of the apartment one cold night). Josie he kind of let go when he realized that she was worth having as a solo relationship but he was in no shape to work on that (to his everlasting sorrow). Robin, poor crazy artist Robin was the only one who was willing to stand by him, even after he lied about where the money she lend” went before it became too obvious that he was a cokehead. But by then the “run” had run its course and he left town to head out west without saying good-bye (to make a coke deal connection and “get well”).         

All of this youthful prelude mentioned here to observe that sometimes you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, or some guys never change may be a better way to put the matter. Dave, after “getting clean” would subsequently have three unsuccessful marriages and a few scattered affairs (some while married, some not). But mostly he stayed with one woman at a time, no more than two. After his third divorce a few years ago he had decided that he would no longer deal with having a relationship with a female, the work was too hard, he was getting too old for all of this. That resolve lasted a couple of years then one night he told his old drinking companion, Jack Collins, at Jimmy’s Grille that he needed to “break out,” needed the company of a woman again. The problem was that he was out of practice, and moreover as the mostly older male crowd that frequented Jimmy’s demonstrated where would a guy meet mature women these days. Bars were out, the museums were passe and the old time trick of haunting the bookstores was out since they were mostly out of brick and mortar in the age of Amazon. Jack then suggested to him an on-line dating service, Seniors Please, which he had tried and had gotten some dates from although he admitted that it had been a lot more work than he would have expected. That work including having to wade through the endless photos of older women holding their grandchildren, their pets or posing with their adult children. Jack told Dave from that look on his face that he was probably in need of that service despite the problems.         

Dave balked at first, balked in front of Jack that drinking night but about a week later he took the plunge. The whole idea of these on-line dating sites from the site’s prospective is to sell memberships and other come-ons to “fast-track” your chances of actually getting a date (and who knows what else). Merely signing up gets you nothing but a good laugh since you can’t respond or get a response without ponying up some credit-carded membership fee. So Dave went through his paces, paid his dough, answered a bunch of supposedly relevant questions to see who you would match up with and, most importantly, put up a few paragraph profile about what he was looking for, and who should answer his plea. Of course this part to Dave with his now two thousand plus facts and few thousand ideas was like manna from heaven. He immediately got plenty of ‘messages” from women who appreciated his sincere profile (he would find out later that the guys on the site ranged for the most part from Neanderthals to con artists looking to prey on women for dough and so his very reasonable and well-written words impressed a lot of women-the bar apparently among the senior set with their collective histories of failure very low).         

That flurry of messages from local women got him thinking about how he really was a ladies’ man, got him thinking back to the days when he went through women like water (by the way he totally discounted as bizarre messages of women from Texas or Wisconsin since why would he travel half way around the world for what was really a blind date and why would they expect anything from their long range messages). One woman clued him in to what was really going on since there were more men, already outlined above, on the site than women so they gravitated toward the sane, the rational and those whose photograph(s) showed some promise. There was no kidding about this as guys would put photographs of them in the bathroom and other strange places, would come on strong with the sex bit for no particular reason and would liberally strew their incomplete sentences with obscenities. Jesus, Jack had been right this whole thing was a lot more work than one would have though from a generation who had been through the mill already. Had all, including Dave, carried enough baggage with them to fill the belly of your average commercial jet airplane.  

Undaunted though Dave was amazed at how many women on the basis of one or two short messages were eager, more than eager in some cases, to meet for coffee or some such proposition. That ease was his downfall and that is what sent him back to his old ways. What one woman called the “harem” effect since while there were more men than women on the site there were only a finite number that seemingly had not been junkies, jailbirds or juke artists a guy like him, in person unseen, presented a target for all the disappointed lonely-hearted women (and he admitted, not untruthfully that he too was lonely). The woman, Betsy, who told him about the harem effect was actually his first date on the site and here is how it played out. After a couple of short messages she asked him if he would like to meet her the next day at the Museum of Fine Arts. Since he was still crazy about art and the location of the meet-up was a neutral place he accepted for the next afternoon around one. All that morning he wondered what she would be like in person, somebody with three heads, a mass murderer, who knows what else. As it turned out she was just a more mature version of the kind of free-spirited women he was attracted to in his youth. So he decided to play out his hand with her for a while.              

In the meantime he was getting flurries of messages from other women (some of them unsolicited, others which he initiated on the basis of their profiles). Enough to get “hungry” for his old ways despite that successful Betsy meeting. One day, one Sunday he had in succession, a date for brunch with Debbie, a late lunch with Chrissie, and a medium late supper with Alison. All without his now usual afternoon nap. Add in one more with Ellen a week later and at one point his was dating five women. Here’s the problem though our ladies’ man Dave had lost a step or five and despite the beauties of modern technology and his still intact ability to throw facts into the wind at random he grew tired, very tired of trying to make arrangements to meet this latest bevy. Moreover his interest level had diminished with age. What he really wanted was to see what there was to see about Betsy and so he gradually left the others behind (older women seem to be better natured about a guy not returning calls or taking no calls as a signal that he was no longer interested than in the old days. But you know when they put up the score in such matters Dave McGovern will be thought of as an old dog. Will always have been thought of as a ladies’ man right to the end.           

To Live Outside The Law-With The Outlaw Poet Slade Martin In Mind 

By Bart Webber 

No way in Slade Martin’s sweet young life in 1965 did he ever expect, ever want to turn into an outlaw poet, a poet out of Villon, Verlaine, and of late the “beat” gangster street poet Gregory Corso hanging around Allan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Billy Burroughs, all sainted poets in their own right although getting passed as beat got beat but the commercial code, got itself onto televisions out in the heartlands-the kiss of death for any off-beat movement. No way did he think, did he want to be a gunsel poet, a guy living outside the law writing his poetry on the run, waiting in some cloven corner for the civil war in his head to wrap around the idea that he was doomed by the times and by the actuarial tables for outlaw anything including poets. 

Figure it out for yourselves, Slade a product of Weston, out in the endlessly leafy suburbs of Boston did not project as some project kid with a dictionary in one hand and a gun in all the others. Not a big scholar beyond his from childhood love of language (had to go to summer school twice for math to give you an idea of his focus) but in the college track if for no other reason that he was excellent athlete, an excellent football player, a quarterback who would be heavily recruited by the smaller elite colleges like Williams, Lafayette or Amherst on the way to stockbroker heaven or a place in some daughter’s father’s company. Sweet.      

But Slade Martin had a problem, really two problems, one was that he really was mad for words, for English words (and later in high school Spanish palabras after reading Frederico Garcia Lorca to ragged pages), for poetry and no amount of kidding by his fellow football players and assorted jocks around the leafy suburban school, no amount of teasing from the bevy of young women who followed him around Monday morning after he had thrown for three touchdowns say and could have given a goddam about poetry but rather dreamed of silky sheets (we are in the suburbs remember where even the kids had silk this and silk that including bedding) could turn him from his love of language. The other problem was that in order to really be a poet, to be a poet not in the mold of say T.S. Eliot who was all the square rage just then just because he was dubbed a modernist poet who spoke, mostly, of modern themes of alienations and anguishes he knew he had to break out of the mold intended for him, intended to keep him to that stockbroker road that seemed to float around his destiny.      

But a kid like Slade who grew up on the streets of Weston unlike a kid who grew up on the streets of Lowell, Paterson, or Brooklyn did not instinctively have the wherewithal to figure out that he was going to have to live outside the law, to live out his life like some latter day Villon who became a hero once he discovered him by accident in an anthology of world poetry at the town library. (Villon who had no country that he would recognize, was a classic drifter and grifter almost any modern would recognize and had some pretty unsavory company inflamed Slade’s imagination although his poetry with few exceptions left him cold.) So Slade had to learn his outlaw trade by stealth, by figuring out that he had to go his own course. Funny before 1965 he expected to ply his trade, his love of language wrapped up for him via some academic training and then using whatever influences his father had in the publishing business to get his foot in the door. 

Then Slade heard a song, a folk song, a genre he was not that familiar with but would later find a niche in, by a guy named Dylan (who was born with a different last name he had heard but had taken the last name Dylan in honor of the drunken poet Dylan Thomas who was raging against the dying of the light somewhere) where he made a big point out of having a reputation as an outlaw, saying that to be honest and Slade took this to mean honest in his poetry he must live outside the law. And so Slade, haltingly and inexpertly, turned himself into the outlaw poet that kids still read today when they read poetry in the elite schools although more usually they would sneak into the back alleys of the local library and read him there with a math book or something as cover and try to figure out what the fuck to do to speak their harried words to an indifferent world.    

Naturally Slade had to blow off Weston, get the leaves out of his ears, to blow off college too, to forget that application to Amherst who wanted that arm of his not for writing but beating Williams in their annual gridiron battles. So at sixteen almost seventeen Slade grabbed half a hundred dollars loose change sitting around his mother’s pocketbook and one night headed for Cambridge with an idea of some kind of adventure to be able to put some truthful words together instead of the prickly pear words that had to be coaxed out of him by a very sympathetic teacher (who nevertheless wanted him to go to Amherst, his alma mater). He took the Peter Pan bus into Boston and then the Redline subway to Harvard Square where when he emerged he found himself running up the steps to be face to face with the entrance to the fabled Hayes-Bickford. The Hayes the place where any midnight you could see the literate refugees from the night (and other more besotted refugees as well) holding forth for their fellows. Cups of steaming coffee armed and ready.  

That mother larceny night was the night he met Freddy Fallon who would guide him through the world of petty gangster-dom and a lifelong outlaw habit that he could never, would never and did not want to break even when he became famous (or infamous depending on your viewpoint) in the underground circles where his poetry was lapped up by hungry acolytes and devotees. Funny thinking back on it Slade would laugh at how easily he, a raw egg kid from the evergreen suburbs fell so hard and quickly for Freddy’s urban highway bullshit line of patter. Maybe after all he just looking for that excuse to break out and see what that break did to his words. He did not have long to wait since Freddy conned (and Slade would later agree that that word was appropriate) him into his first midnight creep that very night on the basis that if he needed a place to stay he could stay with Freddy as long as he went on the caper with him. In the event the job was a piece of cake-a robbery (unarmed this time since a gun was not necessary) of a famous Harvard professor’s house over on Francis Street which was like grabbing low hanging fruit (Slade would use that very term when he wrote a poem, The Midnight Creep, dedicated to Freddy, about the escapade a few days which New Directions would publish in an anthology of young poets the next year). They grabbed a few thousand dollars’ worth of silver and other trinkets and just as Freddy called it the professor never even called the cops and so they were able to get way with that caper. The classic Slade poem The Last Go-Round would also much later be the product of that night’s work as would a number of other poems created after a lawless spree. 

(Some of Slade’s best poems were written in prison on those occasions when he and Freddy were not as lucky as with that embarrassed professor on that first night. He would be nominated and short-listed for Solace Sunset his first long lyric poem dedicated to Villon, or better the ghost of Villon who was the subject matter of the piece about the dignity of living outside the walls of respectable society if you had the cajones to do so which he believed was still in some high school English classroom anthologies.)            

They, they meaning a few professors who came to his cell to have an interview with him about his concept of the outlaw poet, had asked Slade the last time he was incarcerated before he passed away a few years back why he left the grandeur of the leafy suburbs to pursue a career on the lower depths of society, to give up what would have been a promising straight life career as a poet. He looked at the collective gathering with a sneer and sideward glances and after along harangue about the death ship suburbs and the bullshit academic poetry which nobody gave a fuck about, a longer harangue about how only authentic words should touch paper and pen and a few words about his underground following being more worthwhile to communicate with than sitting in cold cellars reading awful mishmash poems to fellow poets and their girlfriend and boyfriends. 

He finished up with some words of wisdom which the late Freddy Fallon (killed several years before in a shoot-out with a couple of bank guards who thought the bank’s dough was their own money and who also paid with their lives for that belief) had imparted to him that very first night when he had gone on that Harvard caper. To live outside the law you must be honest. Of course like almost everything that Freddy said or did he stole it from Bob Dylan one night when Bob was around Cambridge and around the Hayes putting some finishing touches on a song he was writing. But the idea was right, and Slade said when they big book was written against his name they would know that his words were not all bullshit but honest, honest as the pure driven wind.       

An Alternate Reality-Doctor Strange- A Film Review (2016)

DVD Review 

By Sam Lowell 

Doctor Strange, starring Dominick Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, 2016 

Blame it on the big bang theory, blame it on an expanding universe, or better after watching the film under review, Doctor Strange, expanding multi-verses. Heck blame it on Steven Hawking if you want but modern day alternative reality films are here to stay (that alternative reality business these days maybe reflecting a desire to move away from the earth-bound situation of late). Add in almost constant action of various sorts, meaning mostly fighting and assorted mayhem and a lot of interesting special effects that drive a lot of these kinds of films today and you have a worthwhile new addition to the alt-reality genre. Doctor Strange raises his head to the challenge,            

Here’s the play. Doc Strange, a Type A personality, is a hot shot big time surgeon in New York City. No “meatball” surgery for this guy, nothing by prime cases to beef up his reputation, get him into the big medical journals as whiz. He had it all, dough, a great place, a great car, a great looking girlfriend if he wanted her. Then one night he got into a big car crash in which his hands, his beautiful surgeon’s hands remember, were smashed up. End of career, move on to I don’t know what maybe a factory job. Hey, did you forget he is a Type A guy so no way is he going to not try for a big come-back. Nothing works though until he gets a line on going Zen essentially. Going to the outback in Katmandu out in Nepal. Go study with the serious meditation warriors.       

Of course when our good doctor gets there he is, being a secular rationalist and deep believer in science, skeptical of what is going on until the sorceress, the head of the monastery where he has been directed shows him a whole new way of thinking outside the box. Developing skills that will put the earthly surgeon’s game in the backseat. He buys into the program after a while and being a Type A still despite his new inner calm discipline he goes all out to be the best, to find out al there is to know about being a neo- Zen warrior.   

Naturally this alt-reality is heady stuff and not everybody is down for the cosmic challenge. It seems that the universe, really multi-verse is being threatened by a bad guy, a force of darkness who wants to be number one in that multi-verse. What else is new. He recruited some of the sorceress’s student with the promise of eternal life. And these guys, especially the mascara running all over his eyes leader took it as good coin to side with the multi-verse’s Mister Bad. So the battle was on. You know the battle between good and evil. You also know that our good Doctor Strange after about twelve confrontations with Mister Bad’s agents in order in the end to save Earth when the chips were down wins the day. Wins the day but also is now confronted with the idea that he has to make sure things work out right, make sure the Earth is safe from the Mister Bads of the multi-verse. So if you hear about a sequel to this film you heard it here first.      

Once Again, On The Enigma Of The Late Songwriter Leonard Cohen- "He's Your Man"(?)

DVD Review

Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, Leonard Cohen, various artists, directed by Lian Lunson, Liongate Productions, 2005

I have used today’s, August 18, 2009, review of “The Best Of Leonard Cohen” CD as the start of my review of the DVD “Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man” because I believe that the questions that I had about his place in musical history get resolved, partially, in the film:

“The Best Of Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen, CBS Records, 1975

Leonard Cohen always seemed to me to be the odd man out in the swirl of the folk revival of the early 1960’s. Yes, sure he did his time at the Chelsea Hotel (something of a rite of passage for some singer/songwriters). He certainly, either through his music or lifestyle, did not merely represent some hippie faddism. He was just a little too old and little too proper writer, in the European sense, for that. Yet, although some of his material could well be played in the beat cafés of the late 1950’s, there too his work seems too civilized for that raucous crowd. A viewing several years ago of a film documentary on his life, work and times "I'm Your Man" only added to my confusion about where to pigeonhole Mr. Cohen.

So now you see my dilemma. In any case the best place to start to get an appreciation for the work of this very talented and driven lyricist (I cannot say much for his vocal accomplishments as it will be the lyrics that will stand the test of time, not the voice) is this compilation of his best work, circa 1975. Haven’t we all had, or wanted to have, male or female, that “Suzanne” of the first song. This is probably his best known song, and I think rightly so as a secondary anthem of the 1960’s. Included here are the heart-wrenching lyrics of “Bird On A Wire”, as well as “Sisters Of Mercy” and “So Long, Marianne”. Cohen tips his hat to the Chelsea Hotel experience in “Chelsea Hotel No. 2”. As I run through this list there is one thought that does occur to me. If you are in a depressed or melancholy mood it is best to save this CD for some other time. But do listen to it.”

Those remarks receive some answers in this well-done 2005 part biographic sketch and part tribute concert (down in Sydney, Australia). The parts about his driven personal life from the days when he held forth in the poetry circles of his native Montreal, his evolution as a lyricist during his key stay at the Chelsea Hotel (basically absorbing the vibrant folk lyric/ poetic milieu of New York City, the center of the cultural universe back in those days), and his long time commitment to the rigors of Buddhism round his story and give a better sense of the demons that drove his work.

The concert segments interspersed between the Cohen commentaries are the real reason to view this DVD though. I mentioned in the review of the CD (and Cohen, with a measured sense of his own creative skills, confirms in this film) that Leonard Cohen would be remembered for his lyrics not for his voice. By that I did not mean that his work could not be well-covered by others. And this Sydney concert is the proof. Of course any time you have the McGarrigle Sisters, Anna and Kate and the Wainwright kids (Kate’s kids), Rufus and Martha (Martha outshines Rufus here, if you can believe that), you know that there is a solid base to the show. Add in Linda Thompson, Beth Orton and others covering Cohen classics like “Suzanne”, “Sisters Of Mercy”, and Chelsea Hotel”, to name a few, and this is quite a tribute show. Additionally, there is as segment with the ubiquitous Bono and the U2 crowd doing their part by “aiding” Cohen’s singing on a newer song “Tower Of Sound” and the title entry “I’m Your Man”. This is good stuff for Cohen aficionados and newcomers alike.

"Suzanne" -Leonard Cohen

Suzanne takes you down to her place newer the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that shes half crazy
But thats why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from china
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That youve always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For youve touched her perfect body with your mind.

And jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe youll trust him
For hes touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now suzanne takes you hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From salvation army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For shes touched your perfect body with her mind.

The Enigma Of The Later Singer/Songwriter  Leonard Cohen

CD REVIEW

The Best Of Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen, CBS Records, 1975

Leonard Cohen always seemed to me to be the odd man out in the swirl of the folk revival of the early 1960’s. Yes, sure he did his time at the Chelsea Hotel (something of a rite of passage for some singer/songwriters). He certainly, either through his music or lifestyle, did not merely represent some hippie faddism. He was just a little too old and little too proper writer, in the European sense, for that. Yet, although some of his material could well be played in the beat cafés of the late 1950’s, there too his work seems too civilized for that raucous crowd. A viewing several years ago of a film documentary on his life, work and times "I'm Your Man" only added to my confusion about where to pigeonhole Mr. Cohen.

So now you see my dilemma. In any case the best place to start to get an appreciation for the work of this very talented and driven lyricist (I cannot say much for his vocal accomplishments as it will be the lyrics that will stand the test of time, not the voice) is this compilation of his best work, circa 1975. Haven’t we all had, or wanted to have, male or female, that “Suzanne” of the first song. This is probably his best known song, and I think rightly so as a secondary anthem of the 1960’s. Included here are the heart-wrenching lyrics of “Bird On A Wire”, as well as “Sisters Of Mercy” and “So Long, Marianne”. Cohen tips his hat to the Chelsea Hotel experience in “Chelsea Hotel No. 2”. As I run through this list there is one thought that does occur to me. If you are in a depressed or melancholy mood it is best to save this CD for some other time. But do listen to it.”

Leonard Cohen » Bird On The Wire Lyrics

Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you.
Like a baby, stillborn,
like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song
and by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
he said to me, "You must not ask for so much."
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

Oh like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.

Leonard Cohen » Suzanne Lyrics

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

Leonard Cohen » Sisters Of Mercy Lyrics

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.
Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.
Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned:
When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned.

Well they lay down beside me, I made my confession to them.
They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon.
Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon.
And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right,
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.


Leonard Cohen » Chelsea Hotel #2 Lyrics

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet,
giving me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.
Those were the reasons and that was New York,
we were running for the money and the flesh.
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left.

Ah but you got away, didn't you babe,
you just turned your back on the crowd,
you got away, I never once heard you say,
I need you, I don't need you,
I need you, I don't need you
and all of that jiving around.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."

And then you got away, didn't you babe...

I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best,
I can't keep track of each fallen robin.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
that's all, I don't even think of you that often.

Dimmed Elegy For Leonard-On Master Songwriter Leonard Cohen's Passing At 82

By Sam Lowell

Maybe somebody else should have written this elegy, written some words commiserate with the broad strokes a master lyricist like Leonard Cohen who etched upon every member of the generation of ’68 with any sense of what was happening in those desperate days that the pathos of love, among other things, could draw out from the depths of his sullen creative mind. Yes, someone like my friend Frank Jackman who lived and died by his lyrics in the midnight hour by the forlorn telephone (now forlorn cellphone is probably more apt but the waiting still goes on) for a word, just a word that you, a human speck, had something somebody needed to speak to you about. Most of the time that ring never came (just like now) and some human speck tossed and turned the night away in sweats or tears. Leonard was that kind of songster, a songster not of protest except in the broadest sense that modern times had created some strange paradoxes in the love game like his contemporaries of the time Dylan, Ochs, Baez, Paxton, but of the silt of existence, of the lonely longing sorrows of the night.    

So he spoke of erratic Chelsea mornings in dank dark foreboding New York City sitting among the crowd gathered there to desperately make their mark, make a wave before the lobby of that hotel got too crowded with fame, that section of the big yellow light city that was open to poverty-driven talent. One time somebody did a visual take, a documentary about how Leonard hit these shores (oh well coming over the border from Canada, okay) in formal garb, never going down to the depths of hippy causal. (I wonder what he made of his audiences about a half generation younger than him and so free to mix and match whatever struck their fancy, the same crowd aged now that showed up in similar garb the last tour or the one previous to that he took out in the blazon America goof night.)         

Spoke of the loneliness of existence, what did he call it, oh yeah, a bird on the wire, great metaphor for the sunken heart after the affair is over or after the roar has settled into it torpor. That damn bird tied into so many knots, couldn’t relieve the pressure in his fertile brain. Oh sure he had his flock of ladies, Joanie, and the crowd from around the town but it always seemed not to supply him with the energy he needed to write his paeans to the struggles of modern love life. Couldn’t catch what he dreamed of in those dark hours before the dawn blurry-eyed and weary from putting some words together.     

Spoke of some mind’s eye Botticelli wisp of a woman, flowers in her hair, all aflutter a fresh breeze willing to show you the lights of heaven or take you by the hair and dump you down in some lonesome broken down valley. As was the nature of the times once the constrains of a straight-laced society were pulled asunder she took you as her lover, twirled you around, gave you sustenance and left you standing at the backdoor wondering what the hell had happened, why you were not able to roll with the flow when she took another lover and took him to the lights of heaven and then pulled him by the hair and dumped him down some lonesome broken down valley. And so it went but you were just a shade too square when the deal really went down to brush it off and so you were the one who waited by the midnight telephone (now cellphone remember but the same thing) watching the darkness settle into your brain, watching your life drain for your heartless sins. All will be forgiven in the end (a very Christian notion for a guy who never hid his deep Jewish roots but maybe all were sons and daughters of Abraham anyway).    

Spoke of good-byes and sorrows, missed opportunities and promises, always worrying to perdition about the future, about the next one to tear his heart out, to drive him to words to express his angst, to express his lost. And now we are left to express our lost. Yeah, somebody else should have written this elegy but I did okay, okay alright. Leonard, RIP.      

The Way They Were-With World War II Marriages In Mind  

By George Logan

One night Allan Jackson was talking to an acquaintance about the unusual way that his parents had met. Talking to a recently met lady friend acquaintance, Ellen Johnson, met through an on-line dating service, Seniors Please to give you an idea of the approximate ages of the conversationalists, and why they were comparing notes about how their parents met. Parents who had met, married and eventually stayed together in the throes of World War II, against the closing of the European and Pacific wars with a little hope of a breathing space to pursue their romances for future reference. The subject had come up as Allan and Ellen were collectively trying to outline, broad outline, their family histories, and how they grew up, survived the vicissitudes of childhood, teen-hood and the baggage of adulthood to arrive in free-fall at the same table via cyberspace, something that would have seemed impossible as a way to meet for their parents (or even their younger selves which both had commented on in an e-mail response as indeed a bizarre way to meet companions against the old-fashioned face to face meeting and go from there way).            

Such basic personal history talk is no way unusual for people who have barely known each other except in cyberspace as a way to “break the ice,” get a feel for whether the person sitting opposite you is worthy of further consideration (or are you secretly thinking that he or she has the look of an ax-murderer, a goof, or a crazy and how the hell did you ever get mixed up in such an experiment at your age). The whole thing depending on a certain amount “trust” that what was on their profiles, scanty details at best, and on your instinct after a few phone calls. So family history it was in this case, as in others to get a feel for the situation, for any false notes. The amazing thing about this particular combination was that despite the arbitrariness of on-line dating via the beauties of cyberspace Allan and Ellen had actually grown up not five miles away from each other in North Adamsville a few miles from Boston although it might as well have been five thousand miles but that as will be explained as the family histories unfold.            

Here is the way the Jackson family saga unfolded. Prescott Jackson had been born down in Appalachia, down in coal country, down in Hazard, Kentucky known far and wide in story and song as a bedrock town where you dug coal or didn’t work. In such a situation it was not surprising that Prescott once he attained his coming of age, that being fourteen in coal country, he was yanked out of school to work in the mines. That yanking based on the “principle” that one did not need an education to shovel coal just a strong back and good lungs (book-learning his father would always call education when he wanted to upbraid Allan or his brothers about their knowledge from books against the realities of this wicked old world). And so Prescott shoveled coal when there was work during the Great Depression of the 1930s, times that certainly were rough all over.

Then came December 7, 1941, a day that for Prescott’s generation would be permanently etched in their psyches as the day the Japanese dropped their bomb loads on Pearl Harbor (as for Allan and Ellen’s generation the JFK assassination in 1963 and today’s 9/11 are permanently etched in their psyches). Prescott the next day put down his shovel and took the bus to Louisville to sign up for the Marines (an act, the signing up the next day whatever branch of the service, many other young men did that next day as well). And he never looked back, looked back on his growing up Hazard hometown. Prescott, a beaten down man not noted for a sense of irony, later made Allan take a double take when he had asked his father about why he had left the coalfields. Prescott’s reply was that he would rather have taken his chances against the Nips (the common and probably the least offensive name for the Japanese foe) than to chance his life on the black lung that would have grabbed him if he had stayed at home. Whether that had been a wise decision with all the sorrows of his later life that were pressing down on him was a question left unanswered and with which he went to the grave.

Prescott, although he never talked about the details which Allan had only gleaned from his maternal uncle after his father’s passing, fought in all the big name island wars in the Pacific with the Marines. With the end of the war in sight (after the horrific atom bombings of two major Japanese cities) he was assigned to the Naval Depot at Riverdale about twenty miles from North Adamsville to await demobilization. [The Marines are the soldiers for the Navy for the confused about Prescott’s assignment.] That is where he met Delores Riley, Allan’s mother, who had been then just out of high school and had been working in one of the offices in the complex. They would meet at a USO dance one Friday night and the rest was history.           

Well not so fast history, maybe not schoolboy history or Mister Wells’ history but history nevertheless as Allan had once read as a line in an old time detective novel so family history of the mortally tragic kind. A history against the flow of the times. Whatever romance, or the bite of romance, hit Prescott and Delores over the head there were some hard-scrabble facts that confronted them from day one of their marriage (although not conclusive of what would happen in the future that marriage had because Prescott was a Protestant and Delores a Catholic been performed by a Roman priest in the rectory not the church of her growing up parish without the benefit of parents who were violently opposed the coupling). The hard fact was that one hard-boiled Marine soldier boy Prescott Jackson, high school drop-out and not well-spoken or a very good writer had no skills that measured up to anything in the Boston economy, an economy markedly not in need of an unskilled son of a coal-miner.

That hard fact would plague him his whole checkered working career as the last hired, first fired in the various downturns that bogged down the American capitalist economy. In what is now considered something of a golden age of working class America during the hegemonic 1950s the Jackson family (parents and three boys, three boys carried to term close together another hard fact) were left out, left out with a hard thump.             

It had not been pretty down at the bottom of society where everybody is prey to the bottom-feeders, where “the projects” cultural gradient stamped everything with its scarcity face. Small apartment, too small for three growing boys, many times no car in the golden age of the American car to get about in that isolated projects location, a weekly struggle to pay rent and food, cheap-jack clothing and a million other hard knock things that come in the poverty train of the working poor. Worse, one hundred times worse, though was the social and psychological scarring due to that sense that one was left behind, was made to feel less human, less worthy. Of anything. Allan would spent his whole life looking over his shoulder at what others had which in his youth he never had. And of course he was the “lucky,” one, he survived although that was a close thing. His brothers, the older a career criminal, the younger beset by massive mental problems which required long periods of enforced institution did not survive the whole experience. As Allan related that last information a tear formed in his eyes for what might have been but never was in the benighted Jackson family.

Ellen had been visibly shaken by Allan’s story since she had grown up not four or five miles from “the projects” in North Adamsville that Allan had grown up in but it might as well have indeed been that five thousand miles because the twain would never meet. Although she was slightly younger than Allen Ellen had parents who also met during World War II and this hard fact forms the backdrop of what happened to two families from the same town. Ellen’s father, Paul, had come from a large, too large Irish Catholic family of twelve children (three from a previous marriage on his father’s side and nine with Paul’s mother), the O’Brians, due to family economic circumstances had been “shipped out,” given up to another family, the Johnsons, who could afford to take care of him. They lived in the Adams Shore section of town. That, given the less than glorious fate of the scad of children left behind was probably the decisive factor in driving her father toward success in that golden age of the American dream mentioned before. Ellen mother, Gloria, nee Crawford, had come from a very prosperous family from Maine. Ellen’s maternal grandfather had been a doctor in the bargain. Although Paul was smart he, and the Johnsons, did not have enough money to send him to college during the height of the Great Depression and so he did odd jobs here and there before the war. During World War II her father had joined the Navy and would eventually be stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Base where he meet Gloria who was working doing her civic duty as a civilian secretary to one of the high naval officers on the base. They had met in the office of that officer when Paul had to take some paperwork for approval there. They were married not too shortly after. The rest is history.                                        

We will dispense with what kind of history it might have been except to say that it was very different from what Allan had experienced. Paul used his G.I Bill benefits to advantage and went to college in Boston at Boston University to study business. [Allan’s father could have qualified to use the G.I. Bill as well except there was nothing available that he could have used it for without a high school diploma and besides he had had to struggle hard to just keep food on the table for three close in age growing boys.] After he finished his studies he and Gloria started a family which would grow to three before they were finished. Now Paul had struggled just like Prescott to put food on the table at first (and made Gloria angry on more than one occasion when her family offered to help and he turned them down flat).But Paul was able to roll with the golden age of the American economy. See he had an idea, an idea based on the quicksilver rise of television in the home. Since his own children, including Ellen, would clamor for watching television during lunch and dinner he thought of the idea of creating those folding television tables that one can put food on and watch television undisturbed. He didn’t design the damn thing but his idea was to get somebody to design the table and he would merchandise it. Bingo, the American dream come true.

Immediately that meant, much to Gloria’s delight, moving from Adams Shore to posh Adams Heights (and later to a WASP haven in Alden down by the sea). Meant that Ellen (and her two siblings) would go to private schools and attend prestigious colleges. Ellen was one of the few women molecular biologists at MIT when that discipline was gaining traction. Mostly and she admitted this she led a straight forward very upper middle class life with a minimum of problems (and baggage). One sister had been in some trouble over drugs and radical politics but the family had the wherewithal to squash all of that. The only thing Ellen expressed sorrow over which had not happened was that she had never been married (Allan had three failed marriages under his belt) and had given up that idea a while back for the easier road of companionship. That idea is where the saga of the two very different family histories might join together. Who knows stranger things have happened in the age of cyberspace.