Book Review : “Ghettoside” by Jill Leovy – posted 6/1/2015
I have to say Ghettoside by Jill Leovy was not what I expected. We are awash in crime fiction, crime-solving TV shows and a million shallow and stereotyped portrayals of inner city crime. Ghettoside is not like any non-fiction book or novel of that genre. It is a very sharply drawn book with compelling characters and a unique perspective.
Leovy takes on the subject of the murder of Black men in America. Through the true story of one murder in Los Angeles County and its successful investigation, she makes a powerful argument.
“…where the criminal justice system fails to respond vigorously to violent injury and death, homicide becomes endemic.”
Leovy argues that the criminal justice system has preoccupied itself with control, prevention and nuisance abatement rather than responding to victims of violence. She says the criminal justice system has done a poor job in addressing black on black homicide.
It is admittedly a difficult and sensitive topic to tackle. Leovy recognizes the harshness of the American criminal justice system, the racist misuse of capital punishment, the excessively punitive drug laws, and the mass incarceration of young black men but she forcefully argues the State has failed to protect black men from bodily injury and death. Leovy sees too little application of the law – not too much.
Leovy’s theme is quite consistent with the campaign Black Lives Matter which has grown out of the police shootings of young black men. She argues that homicides in the black community have garnered inadequate attention and resources. Generally, these murders are not well-covered by the media. Too often they are ignored completely.
That tragic lack of attention and indifference are rooted in racism and devaluation of Black lives. An L.A. detective coined the term “the Monster” to refer to the epidemic of black on black homicide. Especially in the late 1980’s and 1990’s, there was a crazy ravaging where murder followed murder. Leovy says the murder rate has declined since then but the underlying phenemonon remains.
She says that the lack of media coverage was intended to convey the message that black on black homicide is “small potatoes”. She writes:
“Gangs were a big topic but atrocity, trauma, and lifelong sorrow were not part of the public’s vocabulary about black on black violence. Somehow mainstream America has managed to make a fetish of South Central murders yet still ignores them. The principal aspect of the plague – agony – was constantly underrrated.”
There is nothing cliched or less than three dimensional in Ghettoside. Leovy develops the characters in her story from the victims, to the victims’ families, to the police and homicide detectives. She gets into the role of homicide detective and the special talents required to be a good one. She describes the homicide detectives’ creed this way: “…standing over the body of a murdered prostitute..”She ain’t a whore no more”, he said. “She some daddy’s baby.” To the homicide detective, the murdered person, no matter their criminal involvement, deserved justice. As she says, the murdered were inviolate.
Leovy looks hard at high-homicide environments and adds to our understanding of why there have been so many killings. She says a large share can be described by two words: men fighting.Stupid grudges, debts, competition over women, snitching, and drunken antics – all have led to murder and lasting feuds. Whatever the original basis for the dispute, the desire for vengeance intrudes. The fixation on honor and respect in circumstances of weak legal authority leads to more acts of violence.
Since the 1980’s and 1990’s there has been a decline in the murder rate in Los Angeles County. Leavy provides a nuanced explanation for the decline. She cites an easing of residential hypersegregation. She says that integration and mobility into mixed communities tended to reduce homicide rates. A reduced caseload has then allowed for better archiving, investigation of cold cases and clearing new cases. Detectives have more time and new technology allows for better, faster matches of bullets to revolvers.
Interestingly, she thinks an increase in Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits paid to poor black people has been a positive. While SSI is often maligned, she argues that the receipt of SSI has reduced homicides. Leovy cites the federal Second Chance Act of 2005 which inspired efforts to provide SSI to prisoners upon reentry. Many prisoners qualify for SSI on the basis of mental illness such as bipolar disorder and ADD. Leovy explains it this way:
“An eight hundred dollar a month check for an unemployed black ex-felon makes a big difference to him. He can move, ditch his homeys, commit fewer crimes, walk away from more fights.”
Leovy remarks that SSI has been a transformational positive force. She says “cold cash paid out to individuals is a powerful thing”. It has countered extreme economic marginalization. Leovy sees SSI as saving many from being murdered or maimed. This is a perspective that is rarely if ever heard but it makes perfect sense. When people have nothing and opportunities are totally lacking, what are the alternatives?
While there are many cool things about this book, it is uniquely a product of personal reporting. For years Leovy had created a website called the Homicide Report. She attempted to provide a comprehensive accounting of every homicide in Los Angeles County. She began seeing patterns and as she wrote she tried to penetrate the mystery of disproportionate black homicide. She particularly listened to the bereaved – all those parents, children, spouses and siblings who had suffered. I don’t believe anyone has attempted anything like this before.
At the same time as Leovy offers up this book, she maintains a degree of humility about understanding all the murders. She recognizes that black on black homicide remains an ongoing issue. I do think that the book offers many insights into how police departments and our larger society could reform and do a better job at addressing the roots of violence. She makes clear that we have brushed over tremendous tragedies out of indifference and racism. I hope this book is widely read. It takes up a significant problem that has been largely swept under the rug.
Anger at Poor People – posted 5/25/2015 and published in the Concord Monitor on 6/3/2015
This piece appeared in the Concord Monitor on 6/3/2015 under the title “The art of hating the poor”.
Being hostile to poor people is a long American tradition. Historically, the American people have fluctuated between a desire to help the deserving needy and an alternating desire to castigate and punish the undeserving poor. The tension between these conflicting desires lies behind public policy disputes about poverty and what to do about it.
Nationally, in the state legislatures this session, it would appear that anger at the unworthy poor had the upper hand. Here I am thinking about a new Kansas welfare law signed by Governor Sam Brownback that restricts Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients from accessing more than $25 of their monthly benefit money per day from ATMs.
The Kansas law contains many other restrictions including a prohibition against spending TANF cash assistance in retail liquor stores, casinos, tattoo parlors, massage parlors, body piercing parlors, nail salons, lingerie shops, movie theaters, swimming pools and cruise ships.
Kansas is not the only state that introduced legislation like that. A Missouri bill introduced by Republican state Rep. Rick Brattin outlaws the use of TANF funds to purchase chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood and steak. The Missouri bill has not yet passed.
Questions arise about these restrictions. How are TANF recipients, who often do not have bank accounts, going to pay rent or utility bills if they can only take out $25 at a time? What about ATM fees? Won’t TANF recipients get hit up on every withdrawal so they are losing precious and needed dollars? And as for purchases, is buying seafood bad? How about paying to go swimming? I guess the worst thing you can be is a welfare swimmer who loves tuna fish.
The laws do wreak havoc on lingerie-wearing, tattooed, energy-drinking TANF recipients who are getting massages, gambling, and watching movies on cruise ships. If you are from Kansas, I can understand that you would want to go on cruises.
Seriously, these type laws, whatever their intentions, reflect a mean-spirited mentality. The view is not one that sees poverty as a result of misfortune or social class. It is about bad persons. Poverty is seen as a willful result of personal deficiencies, laziness, and vice.
In his book The Undeserving Poor, the historian Michael Katz fleshes out the long historical consistency of this view. He quotes an 1834 sermon preached by Reverend Charles Burroughs, who spoke at the opening of a new chapel in the poorhouse in Portsmouth, New Hampshire:
“…Pauperism is the consequence of willful error, of shameful indolence, of vicious habits. It is a misery of human creation, the pernicious work of man, the lamentable consequence of bad principles and morals.”
The anger in this view is palpable and it is still with us today. Many Americans direct their anger downward on the poor rather than upward at the superrich. Possibly that is because most Americans are physically closer to poor people whether in supermarkets, other stores or nearby neighborhoods. They personally observe the poor. The superrich live apart in a rarified world beyond direct personal observation. It is easier to be mad at someone you see and experience than people you may envy who are a distant abstraction.
Overlooked in the welfare discussion is the national decline in the number of people on TANF. States everywhere have dramatically pared down their welfare rolls. Yet, an almost irrational hatred of welfare lives on. In its new legislation, Kansas also lowered the lifetime limit recipients could stay on TANF from 48 months down to 36 months. The original 1996 welfare reform legislation allowed states up to 60 months.
I would suggest that anger at the poor reflected in the Kansas and Missouri welfare laws is misdirected. Whatever their faults, the poor have minimal power to shape our political world. The same cannot be said of the superrich. Their wealth translates into inordinate political power . They buy politicians to do their bidding and their priorities do shape our world.
So why do the poor get blamed so much? I think there is a lack of understanding of social class and our class structure. Many are uncomfortable with talking about it but class is the dirty secret of American life. Even with our increasing economic inequality, talking about it is a little taboo. I do think that class has a pervasive influence on the way we live, work and think.
Americans are conditioned to think we are all middle class. Maybe there are some really rich people and some poor people at the ends of the spectrum but most people are alleged to be in the middle. This view is part of the mythology of America. I would argue that most Americans are working class. Unlike Europeans, we do not generally look at the world through a class lens and class consciousness is not recognized as a virtue.
This is too bad because, among world views, I think class provides a powerful tool for making sense of the world. Not everybody starts in the same place in this life. The prep school-attending child of great wealth is in a way different place than the inner city, public school-attending poor child. The advantages for the child of extreme wealth are profound, multi-faceted, and lifelong.
Those born into a family on welfare are near the bottom of the class structure. Focusing on their vices obscures their social class position. It is their class position – not their personal qualities – which largely dictate their life opportunities. One unfortunate feature of our increasing economic inequality has been the decline in social mobility. While there always are exceptions, class is a more important determinant than has been recognized.
I know there are different ways to define class. I should say that I am defining class based on the power and authority people have at work. Working class people typically have little control over the pace or content of their work.
Over the last four decades, the American working class has experienced lower real income, longer hours at work, and fewer protections by unions and government regulation. Big business shipped many of the formerly good paying manufacturing jobs overseas as they sought cheaper labor elsewhere outside the United States.
If you consider the 2016 presidential candidates, with the notable exception of Senator Bernie Sanders, the candidates have precious little to say about our class system. Republicans usually say people who mention social class are promoting class war. They ignore the reality that our Big Business class is far and away the most class conscious about pursuing its interests. When Big Business advances its interests at the expense of labor that is not called class war. That is business as usual.
While the Republicans are a coalition of interests including Big Business, social conservatives, and libertarians, from a class viewpoint, they consistently reflect the interests of the superrich.
Democrats generally do not talk about the working class any more. Now they talk about appealing to the middle class. I do not think it is an accident that Democrats have lost some appeal to working class voters. If your appeal is more to rich yuppies and professionals, working people notice. To their credit, the Democrats do offer some support for raising the minimum wage and addressing income inequality.
The writer Michael Lind once wrote:
“The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.”
Demonizing and being angry at the poor reflects a deep misunderstanding of American politics.
Lesean McCoy, Chip Kelly and the Trivialization of Racism – posted 5/17/2015 and published in the Concord Monitor on 5/20/2015
This piece appeared in the Concord Monitor on May 20, 2015 under the title “The Racism Game”.
The obsessive Deflategate scandal aside, probably no story in the football offseason was more surprising than the trade of Lesean McCoy. The Philadelphia Eagles traded McCoy, a star running back, to the Buffalo Bills for linebacker Kiko Alonzo. In 2013, McCoy was the leading rusher in the NFL and in 2014 he finished third.
The whole episode would not be worthy of much discussion if not for McCoy’s public comments since the trade.
McCoy accused the Eagles’ coach Chip Kelly (former New Hampshire guy, by the way) of racism for making the trade. He said Kelly did not like or respect stars and he felt Kelly was getting rid of all the good Black players. In this connection he mentioned Desean Jackson, a former Eagle, who was a star wide receiver. Kelly had released Jackson the previous season. Jackson signed with the Redskins.
Others in the media like Stephen A. Smith of ESPN also accused Kelly of racism. He pointed to Kelly’s handling of wide receiver Riley Cooper after Cooper’s drunken, racist comments at a Kenny Chesney concert. Kelly let Cooper stay on the team. He gave Cooper a chance to make amends.
Since there may be no worse accusation than being called a racist, what is the evidence behind McCoy’s accusation of racism?
It appears to be that Kelly traded him. The Eagles did not want to pay the many millions McCoy wanted. The Bills signed McCoy to a 5 year, $40 million contract that includes $26.5 million in guaranteed money.
But what about McCoy’s accusation that Kelly is getting rid of all the good Black players? In free agency in 2015, the Eagles signed, among others, linebacker Brad Jones, cornerback Byron Maxwell, cornerback Walter Thurmond, running back Ryan Matthews, running back DeMarco Murray and wide receiver Miles Austin. In the draft, they took wide receiver Nelson Agholor and cornerback Eric Rowe. All are Black.
As for the rest of the team, Darren Sproles, Demeco Ryans, Fletcher Cox and Jordan Matthews are all fine players. Maybe not stars like McCoy but very good football players. They are also Black.
I think McCoy’s accusation of Kelly being racist was utterly unfounded. He was sliming a reputation out of anger because he was traded. But even worse, McCoy was unintentionally trivializing the meaning of racism.
False accusations rebound to the detriment of the accuser. They also are confusing because they point in the wrong direction. They do not direct attention to the real racism that does exist.
What McCoy said presents an unfair view of Kelly and his approach to coaching. Although McCoy is a great football player, he appears to be a narcissistic, self-centered multi-millionaire. I would guess that along with the salary cap McCoy’s exit from the Eagles had more to do with his not buying into Kelly’s system. Kelly is putting together his own team that has almost no leftovers from the Andy Reid era.
The most insightful article I have seen about Kelly’s unique approach to football coaching was from Philadelphia Daily News reporter, Paul Domowitch. In a piece wriiten on May 8, Domowitch argues that what Kelly wants has nothing to do with race or color.
“It is about work ethic and intelligence and commitment. It is about wanting smart players who, regardless of race, creed or salary-cap number, will buy into the Chip Kelly Plan and have an unquenchable desire to get better, no matter how much success they’ve already achieved.”
Domowitch cites a book by a Stanford psychology professor, Carol Dweck, as important to Kelly. The book is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Dweck contrasts what she calls a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Domowitch says Kelly wants players with a growth mindset. That is players who believe they can expand their potential through years of passion, hard work and training.
Kelly is a sports science guy. He very carefully looks at things like sleep regimen and nutrition. The team creates personalized performance smoothies for each player. Players wear sleep monitors so that coaches can correct poor performance due to lack of sleep. Kelly and the Eagles have invested heavily in strength and conditioning coaches. To quote Domowitch:
“Kelly wants players with a growth mindset who believe the harder they work the better they will continue to get. Contrary to what McCoy believes, he has absolutely no problem coaching stars. He just doesn’t care much for coaching players with star mentalities, black or white.”
When I heard about McCoy’s comments, I recalled another story I had read about Kelly from Dave Zirin, a sportswriter I respect. In 2011, Zirin was touring the country with Dr. John Carlos, a former Olympian and anti-racist campaigner. Carlos was one of the two Black athletes who had raised a clenched fist on the medal stand at the 1968 Olympics. That was an iconic and electrifying moment that galvanized anti-racists world-wide.
Zirin wrote how on the 2011 tour they were trying to speak to student-athletes in big-time NCAA football and basketball programs but overwhelmingly they got no response or a negative response from these programs. Only one coach from a big university sports program asked Carlos to come and speak to his team. That was Chip Kelly at Oregon.
In the piece, Zirin says he called John Carlos to get his recollections of the experience with Kelly. Carlos recalled that Kelly introduced him to his players as a person of principle and resolve and Kelly said that any successful team needed to share those kind of principles if they wanted to rise above being ordinary. Carlos remembered Kelly being passionate in having his players know the history of 1968 and the sacrifices made by Dr. Carlos and his generation of Black athletes.
Now does that sound like someone who is a racist?
I would suggest that trying to read in racist motivation to a football trade is a waste of time.
Most people seem to think of racism as something bad that someone says. While it certainly can be that, I would suggest quite a different understanding.
Racism is institutionalized in America. It is deeply embedded in our social structure with roots going back to slavery. We have ghettos in every major city; discrimination in housing, employment, health care and education; mass incarceration of young Black men; and, blatant police misconduct directed at minorities.
Racism is not about an unhappy football-playing multi-millionaire. We should be looking at the living and working conditions of the millions of everyday people who are struggling with little or no financial security. It is those conditions that need to be addressed.
Even with some good initiatives, the ascendance of the Obama presidency has not changed much for the masses of Black people in America (this is also true for poor and middle income people of all races). Obama’s presidency has been important symbolically but on issues like income inequality, it is hard to argue poor and middle income people have gained ground.
In surveying the field of potential Presidential candidates for 2016, I would say no candidate has distinguished him or herself by staking out a strong anti-racist platform. We remain in a dishonest period of denial and unconscious racism. We still pretend to phony colorblindness.
Accusations like McCoy’s do a disservice to the real struggle against racism. We need some truth tellers in the political arena and right now, they are lacking.
Conflict Over Heavy Industry in Wilmot – posted 5/6/2015 and published in the Concord Monitor on 5/9/2015
This piece appeared in the Concord Monitor on May 9, 2015 under the title “Fuel Facility out of Place in the Wilds of Wilmot”.
I have lived in Wilmot for 26 years. It is the longest I have lived anywhere in my life. I grew up in Lower Merion, a suburb of Philadelphia. Wilmot cannot be mistaken for a suburb. It is rural, located roughly between Mount Kearsarge and Ragged Mountain, in central New Hampshire.
Living in Wilmot, you have some elbow room. That space, a feature of country living, correlates to a decrease in anxiety. You can breathe a little more freely. Wilmot is free of the congestion and density typical of urban areas.
I own a tee-shirt that says: “Welcome to fabulous Wilmot, New Hampshire. What happens here stays here…But nothing ever really happens here.” It captures the feel of the town. Wilmot is quiet and located in the middle of nowhere. Part of its charm is its out-of-the-wayness.
When you tell people from outside New Hampshire – or even within New Hampshire – that you are from Wilmot, most of them have never heard of it.
The town of 1400 residents covers a pretty big geographic area and it is spread out. It has three distinct areas: Wilmot Flat, Wilmot Center, and North Wilmot. Where I live in North Wilmot is the boondocks. A neighbor once described the drive in the spring up Teel Hill to North Wilmot as like entering a long green tunnel.
In the background stands Mount Kearsarge. During foliage season last year, my friend Steve, my dog Shady and I all hiked up Kearsarge. We took the longer trail down. It was nothing short of spectacular.
There is no shortage of wildlife. We co-habitate with bears, deer and moose. Over the years, two of my golden retrievers have been porcupined. I just noticed the top of a hard plastic compost container in my backyard has been ripped in half and tossed. The likely culprit was a bear, one of my neighbors.
North Wilmot is a great area for hiking around and walking dogs. There are plenty of dirt back roads and virtually no traffic. In the summer you can find swimming holes and big rocks to lie on and sun yourself.
Other than an occasional new home going up, development has been slow. We are so far from most businesses that it is hard to find much local employment. Many people travel far for work. They choose to live in Wilmot because of the place.
Nobody has captured our sense of place better than Donald Hall. He began writing poetry about life in Wilmot during summers spent working at his grandparent’s farm. Now in his 80″s, he is still writing essays about life here, past and present. In Here at Eagle Pond, he has an essay entitled “Why We Live Here”. He wrote:
“We live where we live for landscape and seasons, for the place of it, but also for the time of it, daily and historical time.”
So it was a total shock to learn about the new effort to locate heavy industry in Wilmot, a project of jarring inconsistency with history and tradition. Huckleberry Oil and Propane Company plans to build an above ground storage and distribution facility with four tanks of propane holding 120,000 gallons, a 20,000 gallon heating oil tank, a 10,000 gallon kerosene tank and a five bay garage. The potential site is on Route 11, next to Scott’s Yard Care.
At present, there is no heavy industry in Wilmot. While inappropriate, profit-seeking development often seems like an almost normal part of modern life, I, for one, must say that I did not expect an attempt to bring a piece of the New Jersey Turnpike into our collective lives in Wilmot.
Part of what makes this effort surprising is that Wilmot residents previously voted to prohibit heavy industry in the town. At town meeting held in March 1968, Wilmot residents approved an ordinance banning the storage of flammable and explosive materials in the town. That ordinance has never been repealed.
I would suggest it is not knee-jerk environmentalism or some form of NIMBYism to have very serious reservations about this project. I have three concerns.
My first concern is environmental. The projected location is poorly conceived. It is too near critical water resources. The drainage from the proposed site flows under Route 11 and very near Whitney Brook which is connected to Chase and Tannery pond and the Blackwater River.
It is hardly paranoid to be concerned about water quality. Wilmot residents have wells and swimming areas connected to the same watershed near the project. Contamination of the groundwater could be disastrous.
If you were a property owner in the vicinity, I doubt you bargained for nearby fuel storage tanks. In spite of Huckleberry’s assurances to the contrary, there is a history of fuel tanks leaking at many sites in New England. What would even one bad leak or accident mean for this small town?
I do think the town has an obligation to assess the risk before it goes farther down this road. Town officials should look carefully at Huckleberry’s safety record at its other New Hampshire facilities. More generally, they should consider other communities’ experience with contamination from leaking storage tanks to understand the risks this facility poses to Wilmot’s water, air and soil.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published quite a bit on source water protection. It reports that there are currently 3,000 contaminated sites across the region that still await clean-up. Here is an apropos quote from a 2010 EPA publication about above ground storage tanks.
“Storage tank releases can contaminate soil and drinking water supplies. Petroleum products are composed of volatile organic compounds. Even a small spill can have a serious impact. A single pint of oil released into the water can cover an acre of water surface and can seriously damage an aquatic habitat. A spill of only one gallon of oil can contaminate a million gallons of water. It may take yers for an ecosystem to recover from the damage cause by an oil spill.”
The EPA goes on to say that the location of a facility must be considered in relation to drinking water wells, streams, ponds, and other navigable waters. Factors like the distance to drinking water wells and surface water, the volume of material stored, worse case weather conditions and drainage patterns must be considered.
I personally think it would be wise for the town to hire an impartial expert to explore all the environmental issues raised. Apparently the Planning Board is going to do that.
My second concern is aesthetic. By any measure, the project is an eyesore. While Wilmot does need fuel, it doesn’t need such an ugly industrial structure in a place of high visibility. It would be the equivalent of a Blakean satanic mill. Just what Wilmot needs in a prominent location – a potential Superfund site!
The storage facility will be lit 24 hours a day. The lighting will be on 20 foot poles. Because the site is raised well above the road, nearby residents are concerned about the night light being cast far and wide.
There are some other unanswered questions. How tall would the fence be around the project? What kind of security would there be? Would tanker trucks be coming and going at all hours, 24/7? And what about fire fighting in the event of an explosion? Can Wilmot’s small volunteer Fire Department handle that?
My last concern is procedural and legal. Stepping back, I hope town officials do not feel compelled to rush through any process of approval. The questions are too serious, the risks too high.
From my perspective, the fact that the Wilmot Zoning Board of Adjustment granted a variance to allow the project to move forward should be of little consequence. That was before almost the whole town knew what was happening.
Without getting into the particulars, I will say the early part of the process has, at the very least, an appearance of impropriety. I have wondered how a town ordinance approved by the town voters could be trumped by a highly questionable approval of a variance that had zero public participation. If anyone were to take the time to read the variance application submitted by Huckleberry I believe they will see it is a bad joke. The lofty conditions that must be met before approval is granted require both public input and buy in, which never actually happened, and is unlikely to.
In thinking about what is happening in Wilmot, I am reminded of the famous Thoreau quote from his essay “Walking”: “…in Wildness is the preservation of the World.” Maybe Wilmot is not too wild but it does not need to foul its nest. Not every assertion of private profit-making corresponds to the public interest. Sometimes it is better to simply leave things as they are.
Music Review: Van Morrison “Duets – Reworking the Catalogue” – posted 4/26/2015
So it is with a degree of trepidation that I review Van’s newest album, “Duets – Reworking the Catalogue”. My son Josh, my music authority, has already dissed it. An album of duets sounds like it could be a subpar rehash of songs done far better elsewhere.
I have listened to “Duets” quite a bit while driving back and forth to work in Massachusetts. The album is very good. It rewards many listens. I don’t like every cut but when does that happen on any album? Van did not pick popular songs to redo. It must be his contrariness but the songs are generally more obscure ones from his collection.
Before I discuss my favorite cuts on the album, I did want to say a few things about Van. Of iconic 60’s artists, I think Van Morrison has been among the most consistently creative and durable. So many 60’s rockers flamed out long ago. Van has figured a way to keep going and evolve. Plus he has sold out to no one. He has stubborn integrity. I can think of nobody who has combined soul, jazz, blues, R&B, Celtic music, and rock like he has.
I owe some Van appreciation both to my wife Debra and to my son Josh. I think both could qualify as bona fide Van authorities and experts. I think Debra owns every Van album there is. His concert from the early 90’s “A Night in San Francisco” was like a Debra theme song. It was played so much it is amazing it could play any more.
Josh did sing Tupelo Honey beautifully at his wedding. I do remember an apropos Dylan quote: “Tupelo Honey has always existed and Van Morrison was merely the vessel and the earthly vehicle for it.” While my son can flat out sing, I do think Van has been a bit of a role model. I know Josh will tell me if I am off on that. I have long thought the kid should pursue music more than he has because he has talent. But he is superbusy and what kid listens to their parent?
Hard to believe but it has been almost 10 years since Josh, Deb and I went to see Van play at the Orpheum in Boston. That was a memorable night.
As for the album, my favorite cut is “Rough God Goes Riding”. I have never seen that song mentioned in any review of “Duets”. There is just something about it. The duet is with his daughter Shana Morrison. The lyrics are compelling and the music is a perfect fit.
“..I was flabbergasted by the headlines
People in glass houses throwing stones
Gaping wounds that will never heal
Now they’re moaning like a dog in a manger.”
Van brings a poet’s touch and even when you are not sure where he is going it remains interesting.
I also liked “Carrying a Torch” . That song had been done on Van’s album, Hymns to the Silence. Both Dylan and Tom Jones have performed it too. It captures a quality of unrequited love or love that was once there and is now only longed for.
“I’m carryin a torch for you
I’m carryin a torch
You know how much it costs
To keep carryin a torch”
The version Van and George Benson do of “Higher Than the World” is better than the version he did on the album Inarticulate Speech of the Heart. It has a lighter, 70’s sounding refinement.
I thought Van’s duet with Joss Stone on “Wild Honey” was cool. I had not known Joss and Van had ever played together. ( I am a fan of Joss’s two Souls Session albums”). The end of the song is classic Van with a long improvisation.
The last song I will mention is “Real Real Gone” which Van does with Michael Buhle. Van brings energy to the song. I liked his nods to Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke and James Brown.
I hope Van keeps going and going. There is a poetic superiority to his lyrics. I would mention that there is a new book of selected Van lyrics, Lit Up Inside, put together by City Lights Publishing. Van picked the lyrics he wanted to include. While this song is not on “Duets”, I think it is pretty good in capturing Van. It is off his 1998 album “Back on Top”.
Precious Time
Precious time is slipping away
But you’re only king for a day
It doesn’t matter to which God you pray
Precious time is slipping away
It doesn’t matter what route you take
Sooner or later the hearts going to break
No rhyme or reason, no master plan
No Nirvana, no promised land
Because precious time is slipping away
You know you’re only king for a day
It doesn’t matter to which God you pray
Precious time is slipping away
Say que sera, whatever will be
But then I keep on searching for immortality
She’s so beautiful but she’s going to die some day
Everything in life just passes away
But, precious time is slipping away
You know she’s only queen for a day
It doesn’t matter to which God you pray
Precious time is slipping away
Well this world is cruel with its twists and turns
Well the fire’s still in me and the passion burns
I love a medley til the day I die
‘Til hell freezes over and the rivers run dry
Precious time is slipping away
You know she’s only queen for a day
It doesn’t matter to which God you pray because
Precious time is slipping away
Precious time is slipping away
You know you’re only king for a day
It doesn’t matter to which God you pray
Precious time is slipping away
Precious time is slipping away
You know you’re only king for a day
It doesn’t matter to which God you pray because
Precious time is slipping away
Eduardo Galeano: Remembering a Giant of Latin American Literature – posted 4/19/2015 and published in the Concord Monitor on 4/24/2015
This piece appeared in the Concord Monitor on April 24, 2015 under the title “The Artful Teller of Truths”.
Possibly some readers will remember this incident from 2009. At the Summit of the Americas conference, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Obama shook hands. Chavez also gave Obama a book. The book was Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries in the Pillage of a Continent. The author of that book was the Uraguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano.
The book immediately soared on Amazon but based on his reaction, it appeared Obama was unfamiliar with the book. He was quoted saying he thought Chavez was giving him a book that Chavez himself had written. For whatever reason, probably a smart-alecky one, Chavez gave Obama the Spanish version. Obama doesn’t speak or read Spanish.
I thought of this incident when I heard Galeano had died on April 13. While he was famous in Latin America and he had been famous there since the 1970’s, he was much less known in the United States.You had to look around to find an obituary. I did hear a story on NPR about his death. When I asked various friends of mine about Galeano, most had never heard of him.
So why does Galeano matter? Honestly, we do not usually pay attention to any writers, especially those from outside the United States. I will give my reasons.
Galeano made me look at the world differently. He looked at Latin American history in a way most Americans have not considered. It is a bottom up history, sympathetic to the poor people of his region. Plus he is a great and charming storyteller and the history is anything but dry. He saw a connection between the underdevelopment of Latin America and the great wealth in the United States and Europe. A passage from the start of Open Veins will give a flavor:
“The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing. Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations. Centuries passed, and Latin America perfected its role. We are no longer in the era of marvels when fact surpassed fable and imagination was shamed by the trophies of conquest – the lodes of gold, the mountains of silver. But our region still works as a menial. It continues to exist at the service of others’ needs, as a source and reserve of oil and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit and coffee, the raw materials and food destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming them than Latin America does from producing them.”
Part of what set Galeano apart was not just his passion for remembering things others wanted forgotten. It was also his poetic and feeling style. In her introduction to The Open Veins of Latin America, Isabel Allende described Galeano this way:
“He is one of the most interesting authors ever to come out of Latin America, a region known for its great literary names. His work is a mixture of meticulous detail, political conviction, poetic flair, and good storytelling. He has walked up and down Latin America listening to the voices of the poor and the oppressed, as well as those of the leaders and the intellectuals…He has opposed military dictatorships and all forms of brutality and exploitation, facing unthinkable risks in defense of human rights. He has more first-hand knowledge of Latin America than anybody else I can think of, and uses it to tell the world of the dreams and disillusions, the hopes and the failures of its people. He is an adventurer with a talent for history, a compassionate heart, and a soft sense of humor.”
Galeano did live his convictions. After the military coup in Uraguay in 1973, Galeano had to go into exile. He had been imprisoned briefly. He first went to Argentina but he had to flee there as well. He then went to live in Spain. The right wing military governments in Uraguay, Argentina and Chile all banned Open Veins of Latin America. When Galeano left Argentina, his name was on the death squads list.
He was not able to return to Uraguay until 1985 when democracy was finally restored. The story of that era in Latin America in the 1970’s is not sufficiently understood. It was a horror show of dirty wars where Latin American militaries savaged their own civilian populations in the name of a war against terror. Galeano was fortunate to have escaped with his life.
After he returned to Uraguay in 1985, Galeano again took up journalism. He resurrected Marcha (renamed Brecha), a periodical which had been shut down by the military. Doing journalism was nothing new for Galeano. He had actually started his newspaper career at the age of 14 drawing cartoons for El Sol, the weekly of the Uraguayan Socialist Party. He then went on to write for Marcha and another left wing daily, La Epoca.
Even though he wrote many books, Galeano did not belittle journalism. In an interview with the Spanish newpaper. El Pais, he said,
“There is a tradition that sees journalism as the dark side of literature with bookwriting at its zenith. I don’t agree. I think that all written work constitutes literature, even graffiti. I have been writing books for many years but I am trained as a journalist , and the stamp is still on me. I am grateful to journalism for waking me up to the realities of the world.”
Galeano has written a number of other books that deserve mention. I liked Upside Down which is written in a very simple, direct style. There are many others but I will name Days and Nights of Love and War and Memories of Fire.
Galeano was also a soccer fanatic. He adored the sport and wrote a book titled Football in Sun and Shadow. I expect soccer fans would love it.
It made me sad that Galeano’s death was passing too unnoticed. I will end with another Galeano quote:
“One writes out of a need to communicate and to commune with others, to denounce that which gives pain and to share that which gives happiness. One writes against one’s solitude and against the solitude of others. One assumes that literature transmits knowledge and affects the behavior and language of those who read…One writes, in reality, for the people whose luck or misfortune one identifies with – the hungry, the sleepless, the rebels, and the wretched of this earth – and the majority of them are illiterate.”
Book Review: “Young Thurgood” by Larry S. Gibson – posted 4/12/2015
My friend Paul recommended this book and with good reason. Young Thurgood by law professor Larry S. Gibson is a very enjoyable and educational read based on extremely comprehensive research. Professor Gibson did a fantastic job of sleuthing to dig up stories and information. The book presents a vivid picture of the young Thurgood Marshall long before his tenure as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. It succeeds in showing the world in which Marshall grew up, a world in which vigilante justice sometimes competed against the rule of law. It shows how the young Marshall got his legal career off the ground.
Although it is not that long ago, the world of Marshall’s youth is insufficiently understood today. It was a world in which lynchings of black men had not been so unusual. Gibson points out that from 1890 to 1940, 5000 black Americans were lynched in the United States. Racism defined America and rigidly circumscribed the lives of all minorities.
Marshall grew up in Maryland. He personally experienced the world of vicious segregation. Gibson says that in the period from 1882 to 1930 Maryland ranked twenty-seventh out of the 48 states in the number of lynchings that occurred within its borders. 33 lynchings had occurred in Maryland.
I mention lynchings because the 1933 lynching of a black man named George Armwood figured in Marshall’s early career. He was fresh out of law school, 23 years old, and he and ten other black lawyers sought a meeting with Maryland’s governor to see what the governor planned to do about what happened to Armwood. Marshall became a lawyer one week before the Armwood lynching.
Until 1885, Maryland had restricted the practice of law to white males only. It was still a big deal that Marshall could become a lawyer. Gibson says only 60 African Americans had been lawyers in Maryland before Marshall was admitted to the Bar. It took a legal challenge to permit Black lawyers to practice as Bar members. Many jurisdictions allowed no Black lawyers.
Gibson includes the results of a survey conducted in 1928 about the status of Black lawyers in the South. The responses are eye-opening and racist as hell. Here is one from Taylor County, Fla.: “No Negro lawyer in this county now nor as ever been. A Negro lawyer would be as much out of place here as a snowball would be in Hades.”
Marshall pointedly challenged Governor Ritchie at their meeting about the Armwood lynching and asked: “Is there an investigation taking place in the state police department?” Governor Ritchie did not directly answer and the state response was the usual do-nothing. Gibson shows how Marshall aggressively pursued the anti-lynching effort. He joined the coalition effort to pass anti-lynching legislation, the Costigan-Wagner Bill, in Congress. He repeatedly wrote Maryland’s senator, Senator Tydings to push him to support the legislation.
Marshall researched prior lynchings and showed that most lynching victims were not, in fact, rape suspects. Debunking that stereotype, he showed that Blacks accused of minor offenses had typically been the ones brutally victimized. While no one was ever held accountable for Armwood’s lynching, Gibson states that Armwood was the last person ever to be lynched in Maryland. Marshall’s efforts and the anti-lynching coalition did have some positive effect although the Costigan-Wagner Bill went down to defeat in Congress because of a filibuster by Southern senators.
I don’t think Marshall would have been surprised by all the police shootings of young Black men in the 21st century. There is a direct line from his experience to what we see today.
There are many good stories in Young Thurgood. It was interesting to see the tension between his civil rights cases and his need to support himself. He went through periods of being absolutely financially desperate. To make ends meet, Marshall worked a night job at the Baltimore City Department of Health as a clinic clerk. He had to track sexually transmitted diseases. This was at the same time as he handled major civil rights cases, tort suits, divorces, and other legal matters. Marshall said, “Nobody cares which twenty-three hours in a day I work.”
Marshall was an extraordinarily hard worker. While at law school, he was always working when he wasn’t in class. He had been too poor to live in Washington DC where his law school, Howard University, was located. He lived in Baltimore and commuted to DC six days a week on the train. After getting up at 5am, he walked a mile to the B & O station on Mount Royal Avenue, He then had to walk to law school.
Gibson recounts the different jobs Marshall held including railroad waiter, assistant law school librarian, and waiter at a fancy country club resort. Marshall was very popular and socially adept in any setting. He had a very sunny and friendly disposition.
It turned out that Marshall’s winning personality and positive disposition served him well in many different contexts. Gibson describes Marshall this way:
“A gregarious person and a natural politician, Marshall enjoyed conversing with persons of all economic levels. As a lawyer he was diplomatic and collegial, disarming adversaries and defusing tense situations with personal charm and humor. Eight summers as a waiter had cultivated tact and skill in quickly assessing people and situations, and these interpersonal skills helped him greatly during his early career.”
Marshall had a remarkable talent of being reasonable with those who disagreed with him. Gibson says that ability flowed from his experience as a competitive debater in high school and college. He was a good listener. Gibson portrays Marshall as anything but a know-it-all. He said others described Marshall as “a sponge”, soaking up the ideas of those around him. He was pragmatic.
Gibson shows how Marshall was always ready to directly approach the people who had the most authority to address situations in which he was engaged. He famously had a relationship with J. Edgar Hoover. Marshall had a great sense of humor and that also helped him. There was one story Gibson told that I cannot pass on recounting.
“When Marshall met Great Britain’s Prince Edward, His Highness asked Marshall “Do you care to hear my opinion of lawyers?” to which Marshall reportedly responded with a smile, “Only if you care to hear my opinion of princes”.
The cases Marshall handled as a young lawyer were most impressive and varied. Gibson does a good job of getting into the cases and the challenges Marshall faced. In 1935, Marshall, on behalf of a Black student and Amherst College graduate, Donald Murray, filed suit against the University of Maryland School of Law, which at the time would not allow any Black students at the school. The case ultimately went to trial and Marshall prevailed on an equal protection basis. Marshall did all the work on appeal and he again won at the Maryland Court of Appeals.
The Murray case opened the door nationally to desegregation of schools and other government facilities. If his career with impact litigation ended there that would have still been huge but it was only the very beginning. Marshall had a long career litigating before he became a judge.
Marshall also was counsel on a case that addressed racial discrimination in school teacher pay for teachers in Maryland. Using his customary careful grasp of the facts, Marshall showed how on average Black teachers were paid 53.9% of what white teachers earned for doing the same work. Marshall filed four lawsuits around the issue, including one in federal court, and he again prevailed using equal protection.
The ruling in this case provided the foundation for teacher pay litigation throughout the South.
I am not doing justice to the breadth of cases described by Gibson. He shows Marshall’s losses as well as his wins. Gibson also does a good job of showing how Marshall emerged from a tradition of courageous and effective Black attorneys in Baltimore. Marshall had great mentors who modelled how to be an effective civil rights lawyer. Gibson singles out Charles Houston who played a critically helpful role in Marshall’s life. But there was also Everett Waring, W. Ashbie Hawkins and Warner T. McGuinn. Each deserves more than passing mention. Waring was the first African American to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was also the first African American member of the Maryland Bar. He was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1885.
In reading about Marshall, it is hard not to be impressed and inspired by what one man could do. His example is genuinely remarkable and warrants close study. Both as a lawyer and a judge, he is an outstanding role model. By any measure his accomplishments were staggering. I plan to write more about Marshall.
My friend Paul did not steer me wrong. Check out the book.
Militarism and Perpetual War as a Way of Life – posted 4/5/2015 and published in the Concord Monitor on 4/9/2015
New Hampshire is now beginning to experience that riveting and recurring ritual: the migration and influx of presidential candidates. All of us in the Granite State get the opportunity to see and question all those who are trying out for that most megalomaniacal of roles. Whether at house parties or at large events, we can usually get up close and personal with the candidates. This is so New Hampshire.
In assessing the potential 2016 field on both the Democratic and Republican side, I remain concerned about the narrowness of the policy options presented by both major parties. While we often focus on the difference between Democrats and Republicans, I submit the parties have too much in common. This is especially true when it comes to foreign policy and the view of America’s role in the world.
Both parties support an utterly bloated military budget. They agree the Pentagon needs much more money. President Obama thinks the Pentagon should get $534 billion in 2016. He asked for an additional $51 billion to pay for operations in the conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. This represents a roughly $38 billion increase from the 2015 base budget. It does not include separate additional programs through the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons.
The Republicans support spending even more money on the military. Senator McCain was quoted favoring $17 billion beyond what President Obama requested. The Republicans have been arguing that America under Obama is “in retreat”. They suggest ramping up the war against ISIS with possible boots on the ground. They also contemplate attacking Iran. Not surprisingly, they also oppose the recent successful negotiations limiting the Iranian nuclear program.
Sums of money like $534 billion are almost incomprehensible to grasp but I think we need to look hard at what that money would be used for. Clearly on the menu is money for a permanent troop presence in Afghanistan, money for the war against ISIS, money for a possible ground war in Iraq, money for new F-35 combat aircraft and also new ballistic missile submarines.
As one military observer, William Hartung, has pointed out, all this money amounts to a huge Pentagon slush fund. We have no idea where much of it goes. How much goes for black ops and how much goes for total electronic surveillance of god knows who? How can that be compatible with democracy? Shouldn’t we know where all that money is going?
I think it is astonishing how all the hypervigilant, tightfisted House legislators on the Republican side can want to replace Medicare with a voucher-like private insurance option while being so cavalier about profligate military spending. Need a new weapon system? No problem.
The assumptions that underlie such out-of-control military spending deserve attention. America now appears to be accepting war all the time. Wars, for the most part, used to be time-limited. The War on Terror is not like that. It is forever and always. To quote New York Times reporter, James Risen:
“America has become accustomed to a permanent state of war. Only a small slice of society – including many poor and rural teenagers – fight and die, while a permanent national security elite rotates among senior government posts, contracting companies, think tanks and television commentary, opportunities that would disappear if America was suddenly at peace. To most of America, war has become not only tolerable but profitable and so there is no longer any great incentives to end it.”
In his book, Pay Any Price, Risen exposes how the old military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about has evolved into what he calls the homeland security-industrial complex. This national security state, with an expansive view of the role of the military, has embraced the role of world policeman.
The quest is for total global military dominance. Whether via drones, Special Forces, manufactured proxy armies or the use of American troops, we apparently need to be ready to intervene in any hot spot in the world on a moment’s notice. No place is off limits. The web of over 700 military installations and bases we maintain around the globe allows for the possibility of force projection almost anywhere.
I am reminded of an old essay written almost 100 years ago by the writer Randolph Bourne. He wrote a piece entitled War is the Health of the State. To a disturbing degree our economy now depends on war. The livelihood of so many depends on producing and exporting arms and munitions. There are a massive constellation of roles related to our various military endeavors. As Risen points out, management consultants and academics make no money if they determine alleged threats are overblown.
We need to be asking how much is the desire for personal profit, status, and power driving our policy?
Risen argues, and I would agree, our homeland security-industrial complex needs scary enemies to justify the expenditure of ridiculous sums of money. If Americans can be scared out of their wits, mountains of money can be thrown at contractors who fight, to use the words of George W. Bush, “the evildoers”. That is essentially what we have done. We are a nation in search of an enemy.
This is an age-old story of greed and abuse of power. Those who stand to profit from endless war have a vested interest in the promotion and constant reinforcement of fear-mongering. The fact that there is some reality to the threat (ISIS) makes it harder to see our manipulation. No doubt ISIS is horrible but it is the responsibility of Arab nations in the region to fight that battle.
By essentially deregulating national security, we opened the door to privatization and outsourcing. Risen’s book is eye-opening about the outright theft of billions of dollars that the Bush Administration lavished on Iraq. It is a story that has not been told enough. We really do not know where a ton of money transported to Iraq by the Bush Administration disappeared to. Numerous contractors stuffed money away. Risen says that billions are still squirreled away in a bunker in Lebanon. If we still had enough investigative journalists, I would think they would be looking hard at that money trail.
Post 9/11 opportunists saw a chance to make a bundle as did all the policy intellectuals who supported the second Iraq War. Many of these same folks now support a ground war against ISIS. Considering their shameless track record, it is unbelievable that anyone would buy what they are selling as if the Iraq War was not enough. These policy intellectuals, our latest incarnation of the best and the brightest, will not be doing the dying if we are foolish enough to go along with their future war plans.
I hope New Hampshire citizens ask the presidential candidates hard questions about the growth of the homeland security-industrial complex. Questions like: what is an appropriate national security strategy? What are the genuine threats to us in the United States and what are not? When is diplomacy more appropriate than military intervention? What is the strategic role for addressing poverty and climate change? Are there other ways to oppose ISIS than the use of American troops? As I mentioned, how about the role and responsibility of other Arab countries to challenge ISIS?
A powerful argument can be made for a more modest, less expensive foreign policy based on an awareness of the limits of our power. I admit to a very dark view of the results of our frequently interventionist foreign policy over the last 50 years. Both parties seem oblivious to these awful results and blindly blunder forward.
Maybe the most positive thing that could be said is that we avoided a nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. That could easily have happened with outcomes too catastrophic to contemplate.
We did not reap any peace dividend after the Soviet Union collapsed. The demise of the Russian threat almost seamlessly led to the War on Terror with new justifications for military spending.
In a short article, I cannot hope to catalogue all the bad things that came out of our interventions in Vietnam and the more recent Iraq War. If we were going to make a list, I would include: so many needless deaths, devastating injuries including blown off body parts, traumatic brain injuries and PTSD, Agent Orange, napalm, tiger cages, return of torture, warrantless wiretaps, rendition, and domestic surveillance of everyone. And that is right off the top.
Generally speaking, we have lowered the bar on good reasons to go to war.
Among the candidates, with the exception of Senator Bernie Sanders (not yet a candidate), no one is even talking about our excessive militarism. No one is asking if the growth of the homeland security-industrial complex poses any dangers for democracy. I do not see candidates saying caution is better than military adventurism.
Since my argument could be misunderstood or deliberately misconstrued, I did want to say that in no way am I criticizing our soldiers who have served honorably and bravely in Vietnam, Iraq, and other war zones. Their sacrifices have been noble. My argument is directed at the architects of policies and the opportunists who try and profit from war. Too often they have sent soldiers to die for no good reason.
As the custodians of the still important, first in the nation primary, let’s make our questions count. Maybe our questions and the candidates’ answers can make some news.
Denise Levertov – posted 3/28/2015
Americans have a too casual attitude toward war. It is often attributed to the fact no war has been fought on American soil for a very long time. Without first hand experience, Americans lack knowledge of the awfulness of war.
In my lifetime, the Vietnam war was the big war. It was a monument to pointlessness. More recently, we have had the Iraq War which started in 2003. That war was based on lies and falsehoods cooked up by the George W. Bush – Dick Cheney administration.
How many lives have been snuffed out or irreparably damaged by these stupid wars? The mind reels thinking about that. The numbers are vast.
Now we have war-mongering politicians talking about a new war with Iran, not to mention the war against the Islamic State. Have these politicians learned anything from our wars over the last 50 years (and I am leaving smaller wars out)? It would appear not. There is the same blindness, the same uncritical acquiesence and a new generation of young and innocent soldiers to be sacrificed to the gods of war.
But not everybody is so naive.
I first became aware of the poet Denise Levertov because of her opposition to the war in Vietnam. She was outspoken and a fierce critic of American intervention in Vietnam. Levertov’s husband at the time, Mitchell Goodman, was also an activist against the war. Levertov used to speak and read her poems at anti-Vietnam war rallies. I saw her do that. I also saw her read when she visited my old school, Trinity College, in Hartford, Ct. in the early 1970’s.
I thought of Levertov when I was reading Seymour Hersh’s new article in the March 30, 2015 New Yorker about his return visit to My Lai, the scene of the most famous Vietnam massacre. Levertov did see the horror. She did not sugarcoat or lie or look away as was all too common. She would have appreciated Hersh’s piece.
Reading Hersh, I was struck by the lack of American reckoning and remorse for the crimes committed. As Hersh reported, American troops cold-bloodedly murdered 504 victims from 247 families. Among the dead were 182 women. American troops executed 173 children including 56 infants. Although an army jury convicted Lieutenant William Calley of mass murder and sentenced him to life and hard labor, President Nixon intervened and Calley was released from jail. Three months after Nixon left office, Calley was freed altogether. As Hersh points out, he was the only officer ever convicted for his role in the My Lai massacre. Where was the American price paid for this enormous atrocity?
While Levertov is much more than an anti-war poet, I wanted to recognize her for courageous and honorable opposition to the war. She used her poetry to speak out. Poets are ignored in America but I would ask where are the poets now? Where are the Denise Levertovs’ of our day? Our society is lacking moral compass.
To honor and remember Levertov, I wanted to print two of her poems.
What Were They Like? by Denise Levertov
Did the people of Vietnam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
Did they use bone and ivory,
jade and silver, for ornament?
Had they an epic poem?
Did they distinguish between speech and singing?
Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
It is not remembered whether in gardens
stone gardens illumined pleasant ways.
Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,
but after their children were killed
there were no more buds.
Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
All the bones were charred.
it is not remembered. Remember,
most were peasants; their life
was in rice and bamboo.
When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
maybe fathers told their sons old tales.
When bombs smashed those mirrors
there was time only to scream.
There is an echo yet
of their speech which was like a song.
It was reported their singing resembled
the flight of moths in moonlight,
Who can say? It is silent now.
Living by Denise Levertov
The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer
The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day
A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily
moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.
Each minute the last minute.
Jonathan P. Baird 