Jonathan P. Baird

August 21, 2011 is the 40th anniversary of George Jackson’s death. It is likely not an event that will be noted in any place but obscure left and African American blogs. I am not aware of any public celebration of his life. Weirdly, I was at the Wilmot Public Library for a used book sale and there was a copy of Soledad Brother. I was curious to see how it would read after so many years so I bought it and read it again.

It certainly did evoke a different period. Soledad Brother is a collection of prison letters George Jackson wrote in the period 1964-1970. Most of the letters are to family members but there are also letters to his attorneys and also to Angela Davis.

For those who do not know about George Jackson, at age 18 in 1961 he was convicted of armed robbery of a gas station in which he stole $70. His ridiculous sentence was one year to life. Jackson never got out of prison. Prison officials piled on the disciplinary infractions and the time he served had no relation to the original crime of which he was convicted. Once in jail, he became politically aware. He studied Marxist political thought and later he joined the Black Panther Party.

Jackson had been in San Quentin and in January 1969 he was transferred to Soledad prison. I will not go into the events surrounding his death. Jackson died in an escape attempt. He was shot dead in the prison yard. This event happened after George’s brother Jonathan took a judge, the D.A.., several prisoners and several jurors hostage in an effort to release Soledad brothers. Jonathan, the judge, and two other hostages ended up dead. They were all killed as they attempted to drive away from the courthouse.

No one really knows what happened the day George Jackson died and whether he was set up and assassinated by prison officials. At the time, James Baldwin wrote, “No Black person will ever believe that George Jackson died the way they tell us he did.”

In writing this piece, I thought it would be more interesting to highlight impressions of Soledad Brother now rather than covering the contested terrain of what happened in 1971.

My strongest reactions to the book were two fold. First, Jackson was an incredibly stand up guy. He wrote cleanly and well, called it like he saw it, and he did not back down. In a manner reminiscent of Malcolm X, he purged himself of what he called slave mentality.

” Although I would very much like to get out of here in order to develop a few ideas that have occurred to me – although I would not like to leave my bones here on the hill – if it is a choice between that and surrendering the things that make me a man, the things that allow me to hold my head erect and unbowed, then the hill can have my bones. Many times in the history of our past – I speak of the African here in the U.S. – many times we were presented with this choice, too many times, too many of us choose to live the crippled existence of the near-man, the  half-man. Well, I don’t care how long I live. Over this I have no control, but I do care about what kind of life I live, and I can control this. I may not live another five minutes but it will be five minutes definitely on my terms.” (Soledad Brother p. 84)

Another example:

“For us it is always tomorrow: tomorrow we’ll have enough money to eat better; tomorrow we’ll be able to buy this necessary article of clothing, to pay that debt. Tomorrow, it never really gets here. “To every one who has will more be given…but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” I don’t like this life, I can never reconcile myself to it, or rationalize the fact that I have been basely used, hated and repressed as if it were the natural order of things. Life is at best a nebulous shadow, a vague contingency, the merest of possibilities to begin with.” (Soledad Brother p.65)

Also:

“Forget the Westernized backward stuff about god. I curse god, the whole idea of a benevolent supreme being is the product of a tortured, demented mind. It is  a labored, mindless attempt to explain away ignorance, a tool to keep people of low mentality and no means of production in line. How could there be a benevolent superman controlling a world like this. He would have to be malevolent, not benevolent. Look around you, evil rules supreme. God would be my enemy. The theory of a good, just god is a false idea, a thing for imbeciles and old women, and, of course, Negroes. It is a relic of the past when men made words and mindless defenses for such things as sea serpents, magic and flat earths.” (Soledad Brother p. 151)

My other strong reaction is sadness at the tragedy of his life (as well as his brother Jonathan). George did not make it to 30. While he was an inspiration to many, his death was a waste of an intellectually gifted, courageous man who could have made other great contributions. It is hard not to think his political views were profoundly mistaken even if understandable. I expect this will not be a popular thing to say for hero-worshippers on the left but the military adventurism, the fanaticism, and the failure to understand the United States are also part of the Jackson picture. I can say that, looking back, the revolution of the era had something of an hallucinatory quality. Without in any way belittling the activism, the energy, and the originality of the Movement, revolution, actual socialist revolution, was a fantasy. The masses of American people were not and have not been persuaded that socialism is preferable to capitalism. That is a necessary precondition to a successful transition to socialism.

Social change must be about persuasion, persuasion of the majority, not the few. While very imperfect and while disproportionately representing the financial upper 1% of the population, our democracy must be preserved. The experiences of the 20th century, Hitler and Stalin, clearly demonstrate the dangers of both right wing and left wing authoritarianism. Only true believers can think that their particular brand of armed revolution would result in a qualitative improvement in the lives of the majority of Americans.

Jackson’s personal circumstances were desperate and it led him to embrace a desperate world view which got him killed. It did not have to be that way. While Jackson denigrates MLK, I think MLK had a better grasp of American politics. The American people quite legitimately were not ready for the brand of politics espoused by the Black Panther Party of that era. Of particular importance, American working people lacked then and still lack political class consciousness. Unlike our class conscious ruling class, working people do not see their destinies as tied together. Individualism reigns. There is not even a broad-based social democratic party in America, let alone a socialist party.

Serious liberals, leftists, progressives, radicals, whatever you call them, have to be about building political alternatives based on democracy, voting, rationality, and persuasion. There are no shortcuts. While Jackson mocked non-violence, I would argue his brand of violence did not serve him or the Movement well. Among other things it got him killed. It created a justification for the unconstitutional Cointelpro program which resulted in vicious attacks on the Panthers, AIM, and other Movement activists. America’s history is drenched in violence. Non-violence is the moral, high ground perspective for a social change movement to advance the interests of poor and working people.

There are a number of other things that deserve criticism in Soledad Brother. The hyperbole about fascism in America, the dehumanized pig language, the cartoonish black and white view of the world, the homophobia – all are wrong. That said, I think a balanced view of George Jackson must honor his bravery in the face of extreme racism and injustice. I will leave the last word to Jackson:

“…I dig people, righteous people. I always have found it hard to really hate anyone. I loved people. I understood from the beginning that the end purpose of life was simply to live, experience, contribute, connect, to gratify body and mind.”

While I never intended my blog to be a travel guide, I did want to say a few things about southeast Alaska. For my money, it is the most beautiful part of the state. Rain forest, major waterways, snow covered peaks, glaciers and ice fields – all are there. Before I came to Alaska, I had only the dimmest notion of the state’s geography.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to travel to Juneau and Ketchikan three times in the last year for work. Juneau, in particular, is beautiful with mountains going down to water. The Gastineau canal runs through the area and it is a tourist mecca with many massive cruise ships docking from May to September. Tourism is the lifeblood of the community.

I wanted to mention a couple things I did on my most recent Juneau trip earlier this month. These are my four star recommendations. I hiked up Mt. Roberts after taking the tram which goes up about 1800 feet from downtown. While the tram was a mob scene, hardly anybody seemed to venture farther up the mountain. Once you got 15 minutes up from the top of the tram, there were only a handful of hikers. Hard to believe more people did not go up higher. I did see four black bears and two bald eagles flying overhead. I hit it on what must have been one of the primo days of summer. The views going up were sensational. The air was crisp and exceptionally clean and it did not get cold until I reached the snow. It felt good to breathe. On top before the snow there was a flat remarkably green pasture like area. On the far side, there was an area that reminded me of the Great Gulf Wilderness near Mt. Washington in NH. You can hike to some wide lookouts overlooking this vast gulf wilderness. In the distance there were mountains beyond mountains for as far as the eye could see.

I also went on a whale watch on Auke Bay near Juneau. It is the home of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a great government agency. Auke Bay must be one of the best spots in the world to see humpback whales. There were several pods in the vicinity of our boat. I saw many whales. There were two breaches and I saw bubble net feeding where a group of whales trap schools of herring. I have to say it was way more exciting than I expected it would be. I found the grace and beauty of the whales captivating. It was cool to hear their sounds which the captain played by putting some kind of sonar device in the water to hear the whales.

After the whale watch, I went over to Mendenhall Glacier for a short hike. I was surprised at the amount of ice around Juneau since it is warmer than up north. Mendenhall has receded dramatically though. Our tour guide showed how much it has receded over the last 20 years alone and that was huge.

In the museum about southeast Alaska in Ketchikan, they say southeast alone is as big as 500 Rhode Islands. I liked the vibe in southeast – friendly, slower-paced, and more relaxed than Anchorage. I was told Juneau is the most liberal and green city in the state and I believe it.

It has been a while since I have done a shout out for any poet so I figure now is a good time to mention Marge Piercy. Probably like many leftists, I read her poetry and novels with pleasure. Because she was so of the period (60’s-70’s), she was always a fun read.

Given the way fame works in America, poets, older or younger, are not exactly news. General rule of thumb: if you are a poet, a critical thinker/writer or a left public intellectual, you will likely be relegated to obscurity. There are a few notable exceptions but not too many.

As a former Boston area resident (a lifetime ago), I enjoyed Piercy’s Cambridge-based novels. I did see her read once in Cambridge. Her poetry book To Be of Use was a classic. I haven’t looked at To Be of Use for many moons but it contained some wonderful political poems.

I have read a number of her novels. I thought Vida was good and also her World War 2 novel, Gone To Soldiers. I never read it but my wife liked He, She and It.

I think Piercy wrote some pretty forgettable stuff too. My old political friend Barbara used to call Woman on the Edge of Time,  Woman on the Ledge of Slime. Still, nobody bats .1000 and I wanted to recommend her work especially to those who may never have heard of her. Given the amnesia machine that is America, that could be many.

I will share a few Piercy poems. I liked her book, The Art of Blessing the Day which includes poems with a Jewish theme. I guess I related to some of the same liturgy that inspired her. All the poems quoted are from The Art of Blessing the Day.

A candle in a glass

When you died, it was time to light the first
candle of the eight. The dark tidal shifts
of the Jewish calendar of waters and the moon
that grows like a belly and starves like a rabbit
in winter have carried that holiday forward
and back since then. I light only your candle
at sunset, as the red wax of the sun melts
into the rumpled waters of the bay.

The ancient words pass like cold water
out of stone over my tongue as I say kaddish.
When I am silent and the twilight drifts
in on skeins of unraveling woolly snow
blowing over the hill dark with pitch pines,
I have a moment of missing that pierces
my brain like sugar stabbing a cavity
till the nerve lights its burning wire.

Grandmother Hannah comes to me at Pesach
and when I am lighting the sabbath candles.
The sweet wine in the cup has her breath.
The challah is braided like her long, long hair.
She smiles vaguely, nods, is gone like a savor
passing. You come oftener when I am putting
up pears or tomatoes, baking apple cake.
You are in my throat laughing or in my eyes.

When someone dies, it is the unspoken words
that spoil in the mind and ferment to wine
and to vinegar. I obey you still, going
out in the saw toothed wind to feed the birds
you protected. When I lie in the arms of my love,
I know how you climbed like a peavine twining,
lush, grasping for the sun, toward love
and always you were pinched back, denied.

It’s a little low light the yahrtzeit candle
makes, you couldn’t read by it or even warm
your hands. So the dead are with us only
as the scent of fresh coffee, of cinnamon,
of pansies excites the nose and then fades,
with us as the small candle burns in its glass.
We lose and we go on losing as long as we live,
a little winter no spring can melt.

_______________________________________

For she is a tree of life

In the cramped living room of my childhood
between sagging rough-skinned sofa that made me itch
and swaybacked chair surrounded by ashtrays
where my father read every word of the paper
shrouded in blue smoke, coughing rusty phlegm
and muttering doom, the rug was a factory
oriental and the pattern called tree of life

My mother explained as we plucked a chicken,
tree of life: I was enthralled and Hannah
my grandmother hummed for me the phrase
from liturgy: Eytz khayim hee l’makhazikim
bo v’kol nitee-voteh-ho shalom:
for she is a tree of life to all who hold her fast,
and the fruit of her branches is peace.

I see her big bosomed and tall as a maple
and in her veins the beige sugar of desire
running sometimes hard, surging skyward
and sometimes sunk down into the roots
that burrow and wriggle deep  and far among the rocks
and clay and the bones of rabbits and foxes
lying in the same bed at last becoming one.

I see her opening into flushed white
blossoms the bees crawl into. I see her
branches dipping under the weight of the yield,
the crimson, the yellow and russet globes,
apples fallen beneath the deer crunch.
Yellow jackets in the cobalt afternoon buzz
drunken from cracked fruit oozing juice.

We all flit through her branches or creep
through her bark, skitter over her leaves.
Yet we are the mice that gnaw at her root
who labor ceaselessly to bring her down.
When the tree falls, we will not rise as plastic
butterfly spaceships, but will starve as the skies
weep hot acid and the earth chafes into dust.

_______________________________________

S’hema

Hear, Israel, you are of G-d and G-d is one.

Praise the name that speaks us through all time.

V’ahavta

So you shall love what is holy
with all your courage, with all your passion
with all your strength.
Let the words that have come down
shine in our words and our actions.
We must teach our children to know and understand them.
We must speak about what is good
and holy within our homes
when we are working, when we are at play,
when we lie down and when we get up.
Let the work of our hands speak of goodness
       Let it run in our blood
and glow from our doors and windows.

We should love ourselves, for we are of G-d.
We should love our neighbors as ourselves
We should love the stranger, for we
were once strangers in the land of Egypt
and have been strangers in all the lands of the world since.
Let love fill our hearts with its clear precious water.
Heaven and earth observe how we cherish  or spoil our
       world.

Heaven and earth watch whether we choose life or choose
       death.
We must choose life so our children’s children may live.
Be quiet and listen to the still small
voice within that speaks in love.
Open to that voice, hear it, heed it and work for life.
Let us remember and strive to be good.
Let us remember to find what is holy
within and without.

Since I moved to Anchorage, I had heard about the hike up Flattop Mountain. It was on my Alaska list. Last summer i intended to hike it but continuing rain stopped me. I think it rained over 30 days in a row last summer, including numerous weekends.

While prolonged rain is not an unfamiliar summer season for New England either, I did find that weather very disappointing and I know I was not alone in feeling that way. Alaskans did tell me it wasn’t like this last summer. Anchorage has a generally temperate climate. Unlike Fairbanks which features weather extremes, Anchorage is neither excessively cold nor hot. It is mostly in the 50’s in the summer without the stifling humidity now so much a staple in the northeast.

Anyway, getting back to Flattop, my friend Cliff and I hiked it a couple weeks ago on what started out as a sunny day. For those unfamiliar with the mountain, it is in Chugach State Park very near Anchorage. It is probably the most popular hike in Alaska and there were no shortage of hikers along with us.

You do not have to go far to start with wide views of Cook Inlet. As you head up, there are ever increasing spectacular panoramas. It is not a difficult hike for the first two-thirds of the hike, There are a couple ledges that are  a little hairy. The hike gets harder for the last part which is over rocks and more vertical.

Getting up higher, there was no one marked trail. People headed up on a variety of paths. There were the teenagers easily running up and down (no sweat!), the family hikers with a baby in a backpack and the rest of us. The last stretch was somewhat steep. The climb to the top reminded me a little of Mt. Lafayette. Flattop is not as tall as Lafayette but the rocks on top were similar.

Not having climbed it before, i was unclear about when we would be getting to the summit. It is always a pleasant surprise to get to the top. Flattop lived up to its name. The summit is a wide expanse with great views in all directions.
It was very windy on top and it had gotten overcast and started to rain a little. I imagine on a clear day you could have seen Denali. You could see the whole Anchorage area, Cook Inlet and far beyond.

Coming down proved more difficult for me. I took it slow (it was wet) and used my hands for balance. I had to do some scrambling and I will say my legs were sore for a couple days after.

Being a history buff, I do find the history of the area quite fascinating. Supposedly, between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago, humans migrated from Siberia to Alaska. At the time, ice sheets spread across North America, although apparently not in interior Alaska. As the ice sheets receded, early Eskimos migrated to areas in Alaska including what is now Chugach State Park. Most of the early Eskimos stayed in seasonal settlements. They were mostly here for the summer but left for more hospitable climate south as winter approached.

It is estimated that around 1,000 years ago the Dena’ina Athabascans migrated from Alaska’s interior to Cook Inlet. They hunted beluga whales, bear, caribou, mountain goats, sheep and moose and they fished for salmon. The Dena’inas lived off the land and had respect for all living creatures.

According to the Dena’ina tradition, animals and humans lived together and shared a common language. The raven was seen as the creator of the ancient world and raven was known as a mischief-loving deity with a penchant for pranks. The Dena’ina believed plants and animals went through transformations taking their present shape but retaining human-like spirits. The Dena’ina think that everything in nature possesses its own spirituality. According to tradition, either you respect nature or you run the risk of punishment such as bad luck in hunting, illness or death.

In 1959, when Alaska became the 49th state, the federal government granted the new state huge tracts of land. There were fears among Anchorage residents that private interests would try and get their hands on timber. A movement developed to protect the wilderness. In 1970, the Alaska Legislature created Chugach State Park, protecting the environment.

As a pretty new observer of the state, I would say what sets Alaska apart is wilderness. In so much of the rest of America we have set ourselves utterly apart from the natural world. Now it is not just living in concrete urban landscapes or boring isolated suburbias. It is living on screens, always plugged in, doubly removed from a living world.

Alaska is the fantasy of primeval America. If there is a a defining best quality of Alaskans , it is the spunk and indomitable spirit which has allowed them to survive a relentless and unforgiving Mother Nature. I read an Alaskan story in the last week that is illustrative. I don’t think this story got play outside of Alaska so I want to share it.

A father and four young girls, including two of his daughters, age 15 and 12,  set off at about 9:30 pm to cross Tustumena Lake. The lake is on the Kenai peninsula. It is a glacier-fed lake, about 25 miles long and 6 miles wide. The group planned to stay in a public use cabin on the far side of the lake.

When they set off, the lake was calm. They embarked in an 18 foot aluminum skiff. Given the long daylight in Alaska, there was still plenty of light when they left.

After they got part way across, the weather suddenly and drastically changed. Big winds whipped up off Tustumena Glacier and the skiff had to contend with 9 foot waves. The skiff swamped and sank. Lake Tustumena water temperature was in the low 40’s.

All had portable flotation devices (PFD) but they were two miles from shore. One of the girls had a problem with an ill-fitting PFD and the dad tried to assist her. They all started to swim to shore. The 15 year old daughter led the way and rallied the others.

Unfortunately, the father and one of the girls became hypothermic and eventually unresponsive. Having to leave their father and friend behind, the 15 year old continued on and led the other two on the swim to shore. Amazingly, they swam the 2 miles to shore through the waves and freezing water temperature. They reached land at 3 am. The 15 year old knew knew where the public use cabins were and she then led a hike on the beach which went on for 6-7 hours. Two of the girls had lost shoes on the swim and they had to walk the rocky beach shoeless. They found the cabin, changed clothes, started a fire and warmed up.

No help arrived til the next night almost a day after they set out. The girls put on brightly colored clothing and waved flags to attract attention from air searchers. As one on line comment remarked in the Anchorage Daily News, this story was a miracle inside a tragedy.

The will to survive, the ability to think and act in a desperate situation, and the sheer survival skills displayed are so admirable. I would never have thought anyone could have survived in that water at those temperatures, let alone swim 2 miles. And then to do what it took to stay alive after. With so much to despair about in the world, it is heartening and hopeful that there are young people out there like those girls.

This book is long overdue. It places the American socialist tradition inside American history. It explores chapters that are missing from most conventional history books while connecting some interesting dots. The book promotes a sense of the continuity of a long-standing tradition that has not been sufficiently appreciated.

Ignorance, distortion for political purpose, and misunderstanding are rife when it comes to American socialist history. The decibel level is so high and there are so many axes to grind that clarity has been a casualty.

As a member of the 60’s generation of leftists, I think that we have lacked a sense of history about the generations of leftists who have preceded us. It does seem like every generation of American leftists has to start over without a shared base of knowledge and experience. The absence of even a vibrant American labor movement contributes to the national void. The history of American socialism is and has been invisible for a long time.

Nichols’ book helps, in a small way, to fill that emptiness. He shows the long history of socialist tradition in America which is largely unknown. Unless you are a devoted student of history, there is no way you will know about the history Nichols unearths. As I think Gore Vidal said, we live in the United States of Amnesia. It strikes me as quite the contradiction that a country founded in revolution could have so impoverished and weak a radical tradition after its founding. Which does lead to the story…

Nichols begins with Emma Lazarus of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” fame. Although I knew Lazarus’s poem graces the Statue of Liberty, i did not know she was a secular Jewish radical. Nichols writes:

“The story of Emma Lazarus, the whole story, is an important one for contemporary Americans. It reminds us that the authors of “the American credo” were not free market capitalists preaching laissez faire mantras of “eat or be eaten”, “survival of the fittest”, “close the borders” or “government is the problem”. In fact, the country founded in radical opposition to monarchy, colonialism and empire, has from its beginnings been home to socialists, social democrats, communists and radicals of every variation. Criticisms of capitalism were not “imports”  brought to our shores by the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of ancient lands. They were conceived of, written about and spoken by Americans long before Karl Marx or Fidel Castro or Nelson Mandela or Hugo Chavez put pen to paper or grasped the sides of a lectern. Emma Lazarus was not, as is often thought, an immigrant; she was a fourth-generation American whose family roots planted in the soil of America before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.”

Nichols shows that Lazarus was inspired by Henry George, a utopian political economist and social philosopher. She openly acknowledged the influence of socialist ideas in her writing. I think it is worth it to go back and take a look at Lazarus’s most famous poem:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Nichols then goes back to early American history. He particularly focuses on Tom Paine, the bad boy international revolutionary. The Paine that Nichols presents was a secular cosmopolitan intellectual. In his writings, Paine demonstrated a principled concern for egalitarianism and social justice. Paine proposed schemes akin to Social Security, child welfare laws, and public housing  – all programs typically bemoaned by conservatives.

As has been true with other great radicals after they die, the legacy of Paine is something of a political kaleidoscope. People of whatever ideological stripe see what they want to see and claim him as a kindred spirit. Witness Glenn Beck’s book invoking Paine. There is black humor in watching Beck urge his followers to read Paine when Beck appears to have no grasp of Paine’s writings. The Becks of his day hated Tom Paine.

Paine was particularly an inspiration to Abraham Lincoln, Eugene V. Debs, and later FDR. To quote Debs: ” The revolutionary history of the United States and France stirred me deeply and its heroes and martyrs became my idols. Thomas Paine towered above them all.”

Nichols covers much ground in his overview of the 19th and early 20th century. I learned about Fanny Wright, the “great red harlot” of American radicalism in the late 1820’s and early 1830’s. In her day, Wright was a famous abolitionist, a socialist and a feminist. Walt Whitman adored her. In reminiscing about her to his friend Horace Traubel, Whitman said:

“In those days, I frequented the anti-slavery halls in New York – heard many of their speakers – people of all qualities, styles – always interesting, always suggestive. It was there I heard Fanny Wright…a woman of the noblest make-up whose orbit was a great deal larger than theirs – too large to be tolerated for long by them: a most maligned, lied-about character – one of the best in history though also one of the least understood…Her views were very broad – she touched the widest range of themes – spoke informally, colloquially. She published while there The Free Inquirer, which my daddy took and I often read. She has always been to me one of the sweetest of sweet memories: we all loved her: fell down before her: her very appearance seemed to enthrall us.”

Later Nichols covers the influence of the 1848 European revolutionaries on Lincoln; Horace Greeley and the national influence of the progressive paper, the New York Tribune; and the founding of the Republican Party which initially was anti-slavery and was not economically conservative.

Probably most interesting was the era when American socialists did have genuine political clout. Nichols highlights the successes of the Socialist Party in winning elections and in administering major cities. By 1912, the Socialist Party had elected 34 mayors, along with city councils, school board members and officials in 169 cities from Butte Montana to New York City.

Nichols describes “sewer socialism”, the brand of socialism that was focused on clean and local government. He notes the first Socialist elected to Congress was Victor Berger of Milwaukee. Berger held his seat in Congress from 1911 to 1929. Socialists of that era hoped to make a reputation for absolute honesty and clean government.

At the national level, Nichols recounts the presidential campaigns of Debs and Norman Thomas. Debs made 5 runs between 1900-1920 and Thomas made 6 attempts between 1928-1948. Debs pulled close to a million votes in 1912, 6% of the total cast.

While it would be easy to dismiss the Socialists as a failed movement (particularly in light of present irrelevance), Nichols appreciates the role of Socialists as authors and promoters of new reform ideas. Many of the ideas pioneered by socialists like unemployment compensation, old-age pensions, union rights, jobs programs, minimum wage etc were eventually taken up and adopted by Democrats during the New Deal and after. Any calculation of movement failure should be balanced against the success of the movement as progenitor of reform ideas.

It is ironic, almost ridiculous, that President Obama would draw fire from the Right for being a socialist. Words lose meaning when a mild reformer like Obama can be misidentified as a socialist. By any rational standard, Obama is not even close to being a social democrat. Unlike FDR, who was concerned about appealing to his left flank which had some power, Obama has not shown that concern. Thus you get Rahm Emanuel and his famous comments about liberals and progressives criticizing Obama as “f-ing retards”.

Because we live in an era when the ideology of “government is the problem” is so strong, Nichols wants to refute that perspective and show how narrow and ahistorical it is. Nichols writes:

“This country, which was founded on a radical interpretation of enlightenment ideals, which advanced toward the realization of those ideals with an even more radical assault on the southern aristocracy, which was made more humane and responsible by the progressive reform; the New and Fair Deals and the war on poverty and inequality of the first three quarters of the twentieth century is now tinkering around the edges of the challenges posed by the twenty-first century.”

Nichols is concerned that public policy entertain a full range of ideas, including reform ideas from the left.

I do think it is fitting that Nichols gives so much play to Eugene Debs. He was and remains the outstanding figure of American socialism. Out of hard experience, Debs came to see the need for a workers’ political party. But Debs also defended liberal democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law.

It is a tragedy of our time that America lacks even a credible social democratic party, let alone a socialist party. Without those perspectives, economic circumstances worsen and no one stands up strongly for working people. Whether the issue is economic inequality, jobs for our unemployed millions or climate change, I think it is fair to say the policy responses by both major parties are weak at best and grossly inadequate.

Since Nichols invokes Walt Whitman as a rebel sympathetic to socialism and since Whitman is a favorite of mine, I will end with a Whitman poem  that is a favorite of mine. It seems apropos.

To A Foil’d European Revolutionaire

Courage yet, my brother or my sister!
Keep on – Liberty is to be subserv’d whatever occurs;
That is nothing that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any
  number of failures,
Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any
  unfaithfulness,
or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal
  statutes.

What we believe in waits latent forever through all the
  continents,
invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light,
  is positive, and composed, knows no discouragement,
Waiting patiently, waiting its time.

(Not songs of loyalty alone are these,
But songs of insurrection also,
For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world
  over,
And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,
And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)

The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent
  advance and retreat,
The infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs,
The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and
 lead-balls do their work,
The named and unnamed heroes pass on to other spheres,
The great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in
  distant lands,
The cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with
  their own blood,

The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground
  when they meet;
But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor
  the infidel enter’d into full possession.

When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor
  the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.

When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,
And when all life and all the souls of men and women are
  discharged from any part of the earth,
Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be
  discharged from that part of the earth,
And the infidel come into full possession.

Then courage European revolter, revoltress!
For till all ceases neither must you cease.

I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am
  for myself, nor what any thing is for,)
But I will search carefully for it even in being foil’d,
In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment – for they
  too are great.

Did we think victory great?
So it is – but now it seems to me, when it cannot be help’d,
  that defeat is great,
And that death and dismay are great.

Imagine this situation: you are a young person of 20 and you have started experiencing increasing symptoms of weakness, fatigue, and paralysis. The symptoms are periodic, not consistent. While the symptoms come and go, they can be so severe that you have almost died on a number of occasions. You have lived through times when you could not eat and you could barely breathe. You have been on and off life support. However, your doctors cannot find anything wrong with you. They have run all possible tests and they have no explanation or diagnosis for your condition. The doctors think the illness is in your head.

This is the story that Chloe Atkins describes in her memoir, “My Imaginary Illness”. Having lived through years of medical hell, she achieves some measure of justice and payback by describing her medical experience. The book is an important contribution about a common but overlooked problem: how we treat individuals who suffer from medical conditions that cannot be diagnosed.

Atkins shows that all too often such individuals are treated with hostility by the medical world. They are blamed for their illness. Ironically, as Atkins’ medical condition worsened, she became more vilified by doctors. She points out how the medical world’s response to her was largely to assume she was a con artist out for some type of secondary gain. They could not explain her so the problem had to be her.

For over 10 years, Atkins’ condition was dire. At points, she became quadriplegic. Because her stomach could not absorb nutrients, she required intravenous feeding. She was bagged and ventilated repeatedly during the course of her illness. Still, she was treated as a psychosomatic head case patient and a black sheep. She had a medical chart that read like a rap sheet. Her reputation preceded her and her prior medical chart history colored perceptions of her illness when she needed to seek out care in new medical settings. It was so hard for Atkins that she seriously considered suicide rather than having to deal with yet another hostile medical establishment.

Fortunately though, there were some physicians, nurses, and therapists who were not so ready to condemn. While Atkins did not perfectly fit diagnostic criteria for a rare illness, myasthenia gravis (MG), she did have an atypical presentation of that illness. She got remarkably better when she finally started receiving MG treatment from her neurologist.

The book raises good questions about how the medical world treats people who are difficult to diagnose. Why are doctors so quick to judge negatively? Why the intolerance for ambiguity? Why are doctors so ready to write off a patient as draining precious medical resources  when that person has an unusual or highly complex problem that may be poorly understood?

If an illness is perceived as functional, not organic, the ill person is often seen by doctors as a faker. Atkins shows how doctors who believed she was ill were ridiculed by senior members of her medical team. With technology allowing the sharing of much more medical history (a good thing and potentially very helpful), extensive chart misinformation can lead essentially to slander of a difficult patient.

The book raises other good points about our health care system. There is an expectation, almost a conceit, that the medical world has an answer for everything. Atkins’ book shows how untrue that is and it implicitly makes the point that there is still much that cannot be explained. The book is a reminder to place our view of illness into a historical perspective. Medical care in 2011 has reached a certain plateau in its dynamic evolution. It is not what it was in 1950 or 1850 and it is not what it will be in 2100 (assuming we as a species make it that far).

Medical care takes place in a 2011 social, political, and economic context. What we see as “the norm” is the product of a confluence of factors that includes limited financial resources and our largely private market system. While many tout quality of care and say our health care system is the best in the world, Atkins  shows how dysfunctional care can become when you toss together ill-defined symptoms, troubled family situations and perceived non-compliance with treatment.

The last part of Atkins’ book is a critical commentary on her care written by a psychiatry professor, Brian David Hodges M.D. As an example of the historical nature of medicine, Dr. Hodges recalls a poster from the 1950’s picturing a doctor promoting a brand of cigarettes. The Hodges section serves as as an analytical  counterpoint to Atkins’ narrative.

Having had much recent personal family experience over the last two years with the health care system, I do have to say that a critical stance toward quality of care is well-justified. The succession of treating doctors with seemingly no continuity of care; the objectification of patients who are scrutinized at a distance by a medical herd giving their medical gaze; and the overall dehumanization of patients with a failure to see those patients as alive, aware, emotional, needy creatures – all these contribute to a highly alienated situation for a patient.

Both my parents died in a hospital. While they both lived long lives, I do not feel good about the circumstances of their death. We never got a diagnosis about what was wrong with my dad until after he died. That might have been okay but doctors came and went like ships passing in the night. Communication was pitiful although my family members were trying to find out what was happening. Being there, I could not say my dad had a doctor, just a collection of medical personnel none of whom appeared to spend any time with him. My dad went out in the usual hooked-up-to-machines way we die.

My mom is another story. I was not physically present at the time of her death but I do feel bad care helped to kill her. I learned about her experience from my brother Rob. My mom was overmedicated and severely depressed. I have no way of knowing but I suspect her medications were bungled. For weeks her medications were being adjusted by a variety of doctors with god only knows how much familiarity with her chart. I had seen my mom for a few days two weeks before she died. She seemed improved at the time and I thought she might go home soon. She had spent the previous four months either in rehab or at hospitals with a brief stint at home. She also had no continuity of care I could ascertain. At the end her medical problems included congestive heart failure and diabetes. She had been on Prednisone and insulin. Ironically, my mom used to say that she believed mismanagement of her mom’s medications had killed her.

Atkins’ book has particular relevance from a legal standpoint. I would say it is hardly unusual to find claimants who present with both subjective complaints of pain and no or little objective evidence to support the degree of impairment claimed. As someone with past experience representing disability claimants and with current experience evaluating claims, I would note such a circumstance can provoke a wide array of responses.

“My Imaginary Illness” is, in effect, a brief supporting open-mindedness, tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity , empathy, curiosity, and respect for the dignity of the claimant. It is a corrective to the world-weary, cynical perspective that automatically assumes subjective pain claimants are malingerers. Whether you are a doctor, a lawyer, a judge or a consumer of health care, I would say “Read this book.”

It is fast approaching two years since my dad died. It will be two years on May 4. I wanted to write a small remembrance to honor him.

I remember my dad in his hospital bed a few days before he died. He had gotten no clear diagnosis from an ever changing parade of doctors about what was wrong but it was clear he was not doing well. Only after his death did we find out he had adenocarcinoma. He had been having severe back pain for a few months which had masked what was really going on. He was hooked up to a variety of machines in the technological way we escort people out of this life.

In that room at Lankenau Hospital were, among others, my sister, my mom and my Aunt Arline. Almost unbelievably, they are all dead now. (Sadly my Aunt Arline, my dad’s sister, died this last week)

In a private moment in that hospital room, my dad pulled me aside. He said he did not think he was going to make it. He asked me to take care of my mom in his absence. I tried to reassure him. Even then, it was very hard for me to imagine the world without my dad in it. He was that big a presence.

Stepping back, I want to recognize his devotion and loyalty to family. He was unfailingly loyal to my mother. I do see my dad as an incredibly positive role model. He had his faults (who does not) but it was almost as if he had some secret knowledge about the value and worth of consistent caring.

My parents built a world around their love and it held up strongly. By any standard, almost 60 years is a good run. The example stands as one object lesson of a good, well-lived life. Which is not to say that they did not encounter much adversity together. My brother Richard’s death at age 2; prolonged business adversity, including Chapter 11; my sister’s illness – and that only touches a few items on a longer hit parade. I think the adversities brought them together though and increased both of their senses of empathy for suffering.

I would note that my dad did frequently compliment my mom. It could have been about her cooking (she was amazing!), a golf shot she hit or some other random act of kindness she performed. He lavished praise and there was a sweetness about these proclamations.

His kindness was unusual. As long as I can remember,  this Jewish man gave Christmas presents, usually $25, to a wide variety of people, especially workers at the Wynnewood House where he and my mom lived for many years. He did this way after he had the money to afford that type of generosity. I think my mom thought it was mishuganah but that was my dad. It was out of control and it never stopped.

I think of William Blake: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” Probably not the sense in which Blake meant it but it rings true to me.

I am prompted to offer up three poems I want to share.

Yom Kippur     by  Yehuda Amichai

Yom Kippur without my father and mother
is not Yom Kippur

From the blessing of their hands on my head
Just the tremor has remained like the tremor of an engine
That didn’t stop even after their death.

My mother died only five years ago,
She is still being processed
Between the offices above and the papers below.

My father who died long ago is already resurrected
In other places but not in my place.

Yom Kippur without my father and without my mother
Is not Yom Kippur.
Hence I eat to remember
And drink not to forget
And sort out the vows
And catalogue the oaths by time and size.

In the day we shouted Forgive us,
And in the evening we cried Open to us.
And I say forget our sins, forget us, leave us alone
At the closing of the gate when the day is done.
The last ray of the sun splintered
In the colored glass window of the synagogue.
The ray of the sun is not splintered,
We are splintered,
The word “splintered” is splintered.

—————————————————-

All That Could Go Wrong      by   E. Ethelbert Miller

now fills my life.
The face of my father
is now my own.

My hands now show
their age and not what
they have built

I cannot sit at the
kitchen table without
thinking of him.

Head bent over his
meal and feeling the
heat of it against his brow.

How hungry I was to know
what he felt and how afraid
of my father’s hunger I became.

A man in my own house
with my wife’s back to me.
In bed where I
 might have

slept alone if it was not
for some sense of duty
to death or marriage or

whatever comes next in this
life which kills so slowly
and every breath is his breath.

——————————————————–

Dirge Without Music    by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the
hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, – but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter,
the love, –
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and
curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not
approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in
the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Could there be anything better than joyriding through rural Alaska on a beautiful spring Saturday? I had CDs of Bruce and the E Street Band from a live 1975 concert at Hammersmith Odeon London (my favorite Springsteen) and 40 Licks from the Stones. Not bad.

I had to drive up to Willow, Alaska. That is almost 70 miles north of Anchorage. Willow is the place where the Iditarod actually starts. What with the weather being picture perfect, I figured it would be a great chance for Denali viewing. After my Willow stop, I headed farther north.

Once you get past Eagle River, a suburb of Anchorage, the road is reminiscent of Route 4A, north of Wilmot, New Hampshire. 4A is a moose alley: a two lane road surrounded by expansive woods. You know the moose are there. You don’t know when they will jump out and surprise you. The road north of Anchorage features moose warning signs.

The major difference with 4A is the mountain factor in Alaska. The mountains are numerous, bigger, hugely snowcapped, and strikingly vertical. I am reminded of the old saying: size matters.

As an easterner, I am conscious of the scale of things Alaskan. Alaskans are conscious of it too. In the summer at the Anchorage Farmers Market, there is a guy running a booth selling paraphernalia contrasting how little Texas is next to Alaska. He sold a teeshirt with a scaled map of Texas superimposed easily inside the boundaries of Alaska. Texas is teeny-weeny!

Back on the road, I did want to mention that you pass through Wasilla before you get to Willow. While Wasilla is famous for things Palin, I would suggest it should be better known for nearby Hatcher Pass. Last summer with my friends Cliff and Theresa, we went for a hike there. Hatcher Pass has stunning views. It would be a great place for a family hike.

Wasilla itself looks dumpy from the road. It features plastic urban sprawl with shockingly poor quality housing visible from the highway. I guess it should not be surprising that the media has lavished so much attention on the fascinating superstar and zero attention on the living conditions of other lesser mortals who inconspicuously inhabit the same regional turf.

Driving north at around 100 miles from Anchorage, you hang a right for Talkeetna. Fourteen miles later you approach the outskirts of the downtown. On the left outside town is a turnout, Talkeetna Bluff, which is an awesome site for Denali viewing.

I hit the jackpot for a clear day. Denali is massive and dominant. There is something stirring about mountains, especially those of breathtaking size, and the trip was worth it just to see the Alaska range. That range includes Mt. McKinley (Denali) 20,320 feet, Mt. Hunter 14,573 feet, and Mt. Foraker 17,400 feet.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to see Mt. Everest but there was an unworldly shimmering blue background to the giant white peaks which jutted up across the skyline. Denali is the highest mountain in North America with the greatest vertical rise of any mountain on earth. And I would note that Talkeetna is well over 100 miles away from Denali. The mountain has staggering size for such a distance way.

There is an interesting political and historical dispute over the mountain’s name. Denali is the traditional Athabascan name, translated as “the great one” or more accurately “the high one”. Athabascans and Native Alaskans would not name a geographic area after a person. It is not in keeping with Native Alaskan tradition.

The name Mt. McKinley was foisted on Alaska. In 1896, a prospector, William Dickey, wanted to make a political statement in favor of the gold standard by naming the mountain after Presidential nominee, William McKinley of Ohio. McKinley, as nominee and later as President, never visited Alaska and he had little to do with the state before he was assassinated in 1901.

In 1975, the Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali. Then Alaska Governor Jay Hammond, with support from the Alaska Legislature, appealed to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names for an official name change so the mountain could be Denali.

The Ohio Congressional delegation fought back by introducing legislation to attach the name McKinley permanently to the mountain. One Ohio member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Ralph Regula from Canton, fought the name change for many years. When Rep. Regula testified before the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, he stated:

“This action would be an insult to the memory of President McKinley and to the people of my district and the nation who are so proud of his heritage.”

Considering how undistinguished a president McKinley was (another captive of robber barons) and also considering the fact that he had nothing to do with Alaska, the McKinley name is like a bad joke. Without getting too P.C., calling Denali Mt. McKinley has been an arrogant and blatant act of cultural imperialism. The insult is to the Native Alaskans whose long-term historical presence has been ignored and denied.

The Denali/McKinley name fight has remained a stalemate since 1975 because the U.S. Board of Names has a policy of not considering names changes while legislation is pending. The Ohio Congressional delegation has continued the efforts of Rep. Regula and has put in a bill every session to prevent the Denali name change.

Alaska did gain one victory though. In 1980, the National Park Service changed the park name from Mt. McKinley National Park to Denali National Park although the mountain has remained Mt. McKinley. Regula could not stop the park name change.

Heading into town, Talkeetna (population 772) is tiny with one main drag. It is a big tourist destination with quite a few Alaskan tschotske stores. You can find all trinkets, moose and bear, not to mention aurora borealis. Talkeetna is famous for having been the reputed inspiration for the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska in the TV show Northern Exposure.

I did go for a wonderful lunch at Mountain High Pizza Pie where pizzas, strombolis and calzones are made from scratch. I also stopped in a used book store, Tales Told Twice Books. I bought an early S.J. Rozan novel, Concourse, and an early William Kent Krueger, Iron Lake. (I have a weakness for mysteries) The lady behind the counter asked if I wanted the senior discount. Surprised, I told her I was 60. She said I qualified. Somewhat uneasily, I took the discount.

For anyone who gets near Denali, you might seriously consider renting a small plane. Air taxi service will fly you around Denali and will land you on a glacier. I expect it would be memorable.

One last thing I did want to say: Alaska weather has proven very different from the stereotypes I held before I arrived. Since February, the weather has been consistently nice. New Englanders: don’t go to Florida! Come to Alaska in March or April. Good time to get away from both those late pesky snow storms and mud season. And you can return in time for black fly season.

It is with sadness that I read about the recent death of Joe Bageant on March 26. His is a voice I will miss. His death did not elicit the public attention it deserved. As a culture we pay far more attention to shallow no-talent celebrities than serious writers.

For anybody who has never heard of Bageant, he was a writer, the author of a book that sold pretty well a few years back, Deer Hunting With Jesus. Besides simply writing well, Bageant had a uniquely rural American perspective. Based in Winchester Virginia, he lived in red state heartland, away from any blue metropolis. The only other writer I can think of who was remotely like Bageant was Edward Abbey although they certainly had differences. Both were rebels and both wrote from the boondocks.

As a southern rural white working class writer who zeroed in on the issue of class, Bageant wrote truthfully and empathetically about poor white people. Here is some vintage Bageant:

“To be poor and white is a paradox in America. Whites, especially white males, are supposed to have an advantage they exploit mercilessly. Yet most of the poor people in the United States are white (51%) outnumbering blacks two to one and all other minority poverty groups combined. America is permeated with cultural myths about white skin’s association with power, education, and opportunity. Capitalist society teaches that we all get what we deserve, so if a white man does not succeed, it can only be due to laziness. But just like black and Latino ghetto dwellers, poor laboring whites live within a dead end social construction that all but guarantees failure. If your high school dropout daddy busted his ass for small bucks and never read a book in his life and your mama was a textile mill worker, chances are you are not going to be recruited by Yale Skull and Bones and grow up to be President of the United States, regardless of our national mythology to that effect. You are going to be pulling an eight-buck-an-hour shift work someplace and praying for enough overtime to make the heating bill. A worker.”

Bageant does a good job of showing the devastation meted out to the rural poor. Whether black or white, both have been hammered in this economy.

“Rural America is now a cold heartless place that is very difficult to escape, where the rules of hard work and honesty no longer apply. The only people making any dough in rural and small town America these days are bankers, lawyers, doctors and a few with government jobs. Thanks to the new global economy, it is hard and desperate terrain for working people. Mean too.”

Bageant catalogues the indignities and insults showered on working people. I think it is fair to say he reserves some of his harshest criticism for liberals and the left. Bageant criticizes Democrats and the left for failing to support workers. Now Democrats talk about supporting the middle class, contributing to the national mythology that everyone in America is middle class. Mention of poor or working people has been excised from the vocabulary.

Once upon a time, Democrats stood with workers. Now, many middle class progressives look down their nose and have a contemptuous view of white workers as trailer trash. Bageant totally has their number. He calls out the elitism and class snobbery.

“Liberal America loves the Dalai Lama but is revolted by life here in the land of the pot gut and the plumber’s butt.”

Also:

“The liberal elite is not entirely a Republican myth. This generation of white liberals is not involved in class issues and have become more about trendiness.”

Or how about:

“Ain’t no wonder libs got no street cred. Ain’t no wonder a dope-addicted clown like Limbaugh can call libs elitists and make it stick. From where we stand, knee deep in doctors bills and hoping the local styrofoam peanut factory doesn’t cut the second shift, you ARE elite.”

I do think Bageant was exactly right. Call it lack of empathy, compassion or identification. Liberals have not wanted to be around working people and behind it is class prejudice. Of course, he had no illusions about Republicans and their slavish devotion to the rich. Bageant saw through that agenda.

Bageant wanted liberals and the left to leave their enclaves and reach out to his people. He points out that rural southerners in his region had never met a liberal! The far right is far more interwoven in the community. Bageant suggests focus on fundamental issues like jobs that pay a living wage, education and national health care for all. He especially discusses education. So many people from his region drop out, get an inferior quality education and do not develop critical thinking skills. Money is a part of the equation: education now comes with crushing debt. Bageant has no illusions but he wants progressives to see rural red state areas as places to win over – not write off.

I expect Bageant would have been heartened by recent events in Wisconsin and the development of a new labor movement. He knew his people have been on the losing end of a class struggle. Bageant favored working people getting organized. For anyone who would like to find out more, Bageant’s website is a great place to start : http://www.joebageant.com  His essays are all posted there.  Also, read Deer Hunting with Jesus. It is a hoot, downright entertaining, funny, and a good read. I will also mention that Bageant has a new book coming out called Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir. I haven’t read it yet but I expect it would be well worth reading.