People Before Profit blog

Today in history: Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling turns 50

Fri, 31 Jul 2015 12:52:00 +0000

Joanne "Jo" Rowling, was born in Yate, Gloucestershire, on July 31, 1965. She writes under the pen names J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith.

Rowling is best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series, which has achieved worldwide reknown, won multiple awards, and sold more than 400 million copies.They have become the best-selling book series in history, the source for a series of films which is the second highest-grossing film series in history.

Rowling has led a "rags to riches" life story, progressing from state benefits to multi-millionaire status within five years. She signed up for welfare benefits after the death of her mother and a divorce from her first husband, leaving her as a single mom with one child. She described her economic status as being "poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless."

She was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990. She finished the first novel, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," in 1997. Six sequels followed, the last, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," in 2007. Since then, Rowling has written three books for adult readers, "The Casual Vacancy" (2012) and, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, the crime fiction novels "The Cuckoo's Calling" (2013) and "The Silkworm" (2014).

In April 2015, Little, Brown and Co. published J.K. Rowling's affecting 2008 Harvard commencement speech in book form, with illustrations by Joel Holland. In "Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination," the author asks profound and provocative questions about the nature of failure and success, and how can we use our imagination to better both ourselves and the world.

J.K. Rowling is by far the United Kingdom's best-selling living author, and holder of the Order of the British Empire. Naming her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, Time magazine noted the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her readers.

Harry Potter is now a global brand worth many billions of dollars. The last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history.The series, totaling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages.

Influenced by a rebellious communist

Rowling has used her wealth to support charities including Comic Relief, One Parent Families, the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain (Rowling's mother Anne died after ten years suffering from this disease), and in politics supports the Labour Party and Better Together. She established the Volant Charitable Trust, which uses its annual budget of £5.1 million to combat poverty and social inequality. She founded Lumos, a charity working to transform the lives of disadvantaged children.

Parents and librarians love the Harry Potter books, for they sparked an interest in reading among the young at a time when children were thought to be abandoning books for computers and television. Untold numbers of lifelong readers were nurtured by the thrill and imagination of these stories,although it is reported that despite the huge uptick in reading of these books, adolescent reading overall has continued to decline.

Rowling has described Jane Austen as her favorite author, but when she was a young teenager, her great-aunt gave her a copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, "Hons and Rebels." Rowling has singled out the one-time communist and civil rights activist as her "most influential writer," and made a point of reading all of her books. "Jessica Mitford has been my heroine since I was 14 years old," said Rowling, "when I overheard my formidable great-aunt discussing how Mitford had run away at the age of 19 to fight with the Reds in the Spanish Civil War." She named her first child Jessica and claims what inspired her about Mitford was that she was "incurably and instinctively rebellious, brave, adventurous, funny and irreverent; she liked nothing better than a good fight, preferably against a pompous and hypocritical target."

In April 2010, Rowling published an article in The (London) Times, in which she criticized Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's plan to encourage married couples to stay together by offering them a £150 annual tax credit: "Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say, 'It's not the money, it's the message.' When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money."

Hear, hear! Brilliant birthday greetings to J.K. Rowling!

Adapted from jkrowling.com and Wikipedia.

Photo: J.K. Rowling. | AP

"Ant-Man" is fun, but never thinks big

Thu, 30 Jul 2015 15:19:00 +0000

Marvel has started the summer in typical superhero fashion, introducing the latest installment in its rapidly expanding universe. Ant-Man, based on the 1960s character who exists in the same world as the Avengers, sees the film studio trying more of a minimalist, standalone story on for size, with mixed results. While you won't quite need a magnifying glass to catch all of the movie's good points, it is riddled with narrative misfires and, overall, leaves something to be desired. At the very least, it calls into dispute the old adage that "less is more."

Genre-wise, Ant-Man is equal parts action, heist, and comedy, and is refreshingly free of decimated cities and apocalyptic threats. True to its name, it's a smaller and more character-driven affair, and the most family-oriented that Marvel has done so far, to boot. The story features main character Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), who agrees to do one last heist to redeem himself for his past crimes and to earn the right to reunite with his estranged daughter. That heist involves taking a dangerous "Yellowjacket" combat suit from corporate enemy Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) before its ability to shrink a human being can be used to fundamentally shift the paradigm for military combat and the world - for the worse, according to Lang's employer, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas).

Pym, the original Ant-Man, is trying to make his own amends, after Cross shut him out of his own company and stole the very technology he invented to build the Yellowjacket suit. With the help of his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), Pym trains Lang to become the new Ant-Man and use the shrinking technology to stop Cross. What follows is a humor-tinged caper involving CGI-achieved fights on toy trainsets, on the tops of gun barrels, and other places where only ant-sized characters can go. These action pieces are innovative, but - I think - fall short of their full potential. It's unfortunate that the imagination here was the smallest facet of all, because so much more could have been done with this concept. And while our hero riding on the back of a flying ant, leading an army of insects into battle, is riotously cool, it only scratches the surface, cinematographically speaking, of what could have been achieved.

The narrative weaknesses don't help matters. Because Ant-Man's plot, which grapples with corporate subterfuge and weapons/technology being used for the wrong purposes, while sociopolitically poignant, positively reeks of repetition. In fact, we've seen this exact same story outline before, in the first Iron Man film, and sadly, the lackluster supporting cast of this film does not match up with that of its predecessor. Aside from Rudd and Douglas, the other actors aren't working much chemistry or doing much to tether the character-driven elements (which the film so desperately wants to pull off) to the action.

The humor is hit or miss - the latter more often than the former. To its credit, Ant-Man does its utmost to be as light-hearted as this sort of story should be, and as self-deprecating as it ought to be in consideration for the audience's waning suspension of disbelief. But more often than not, its offbeat jokes land with all the efficacy of a shredded paper airplane.

Ultimately, the movie fits the definiton of a popcorn flick, taking viewers on an amusing ride and wrapping everything up in, more or less, a neat little bow at the end. And of course, it's a Marvel film, so there are little tidbits here or there for us comic fans, including a cameo by Avengers character the Falcon and a mid-credits scene that's supposed to get us all geared up for the sequel. Furthermore, a post-credits scene teases the upcoming Captain America: Civil War that we'll see next year. But those offerings are arguably more exciting than the rest of the film. Fun but forgettable, Ant-Man makes us feel like we're just watching filler until Marvel brings out the big guns next summer.

"Ant-Man"

Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll

117 mins.

Photo: Marvel official site

More than a review: The importance of "Jimmie Higgins" work underlined

Tue, 28 Jul 2015 15:25:00 +0000

Not long ago, a good friend and fellow organizer made the statement, "Sadly, most people that align themselves with the movement are not interested in doing the Jimmie Higgins work."

"What in the hell is Jimmie Higgins work," I asked?

He replied, "You know, the unromantic side of organizing."

I did some research and found an obscure book by Upton Sinclair from 1919 titled "Jimmie Higgins." Though nowhere near as famous as "The Jungle," " Oil!," or "King Coal," it is arguably more relevant.

Comrade Jimmie Higgins, the protagonist, is a member of the Socialist party. He works various working-class jobs, struggling to keep his family out of poverty. He understands the value of effort, especially the seemingly mundane.

Each chapter is nothing short of a parable on organizing, complete with parabolic titles like Jimmie Higgins Debates the Issue or Jimmie Higgins Faces the War.

For example, Sinclair writes, "He was not one of the speakers, of course - he would have been terrified at the idea of making a speech; but he was one of those whose labor made the speaking possible, and who reaped the harvest for the movement."

Jimmie Higgins is a riveting window to a time in history - during World War I - when sadly nationalist sentiments divided the world's socialist movement. It also paints an accurate description of labor organizing before the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.

As much as I enjoyed Sinclair's book, within lies a truth abandoned by the socialist movement during the New Left years of the 1960s: that 'Jimmie Higgins work' is what truly wins victories in the struggle for democracy, equality, peace, jobs and socialism.

No one likes phone banking or signature gathering or door knocking.

Personally, I would rather make a healthy financial donation if it will get me out of phone banking. However, these tedious, non-romantic, mundane endeavors are the bedrock of building a movement.

When we are young in the movement, many of us have starry-eyed dreams of addressing throngs of factory workers or entertain visions of sailors in study groups reading pamphlets, etc.

Soon, one of two things happens. We retract these pipe dreams of admiration and get into the grunt work, the Jimmie Higgins work, or we never learn that ego and privilege often drive these visions and we split from established grassroots, movement-based organizations and form go-nowhere cliques and continue dreaming.

Michael Parenti, in his book "Black Shirts and Reds," declares one of the most difficult struggles of Communist Parties in Eastern Europe was "convincing the next generation of workers that pushing a button in a factory was winning the revolution."

However, in "Jimmie Higgins," Sinclair makes an excellent case about how important allegorical button-pushing is to the overall movement.

The downfall of this book is the ending, where Higgins loses his sanity in a military prison.

In my opinion, a collection of parables does not need an ending because the argument could be made that there is no beginning or middle. The value of "Jimmie Higgins" rests not in the plot. Rather, it can act as a guide for activists - those who struggle to continue, who do the arduous thankless tasks that make our movement possible.

"Jimmie Higgins"

By Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

Available in new and used paperback and hard cover editions, NOOK (e-Book), and The Project Gutenberg EBook.

Savoring Sautet: Five films by French auteur Claude Sautet re-released

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 16:06:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - When one thinks of French New Wave directors the names François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer are among those that leap to mind. But now Rialto Pictures is theatrically re-releasing five films by one of France's lesser known, yet nonetheless noteworthy auteurs, Claude Sautet. The quintet is being screened for a week beginning July 24 in the DCP (Digital Cinema Package) format in L.A. at the Laemmle Royal Theater. Cineastes who love their cinema sophisticated are likely to savor these motion picture bonbons.

Truffaut's 1962 Jules et Jim is often regarded as the gold standard for movies about ménage-à-trois relationships. However, Sautet's 1972 César & Rosalie gives that classic threesome a run for its money. César & Rosalie is a sometimes buoyant, almost always riveting account of the three-way love affair between Romy Schneider (Sautet is credited with reviving the saucy Austrian actress's career), Yves Montand (1969's Z) and Sami Frey (who appeared in Godard's 1964 Band of Outsiders but may be best known to American audiences for his role in the 1987 murder mystery Black Widow).

When Rosalie's (Schneider) former lover David (Frey) returns after a five-year absence he upsets the sexual applecart. As the aptly named César, Montand has been romancing Rosalie. While César is a successful scrap metal businessman, David is a much younger, better-looking cartoonist. The youthful artiste and middle-aged wheeler-dealer clash almost immediately.

Around the time César & Rosalie was released I used to argue with comrades on the New York Left about the state of mind of members of the capitalist class. Other leftists believed that the bourgeoisie were merely following their economic interests while I maintained that the capitalists were crazy, pursuing clinically insane policies like the misbegotten Vietnam War. I wish I had seen César & Rosalie at the time, because Montand's (who off screen was a gauchiste) depiction of the gauche César is exhibit "A" of my contention.

In addition to violent mood swings that jeopardize those around him (I fully expected César & Rosalie to end disastrously, like Jules et Jim), César is the embodiment of despicable conspicuous consumption. He buys things just to brag about them and show off that he can afford them and how rich he is. He dresses to impress - if not with his sartorial splendor, with the price tags of his garb. In one scene César boasts about how many francs his new shoes cost - which underwhelms Rosalie, who undercuts his braggadocio by pointing out that despite how expensive they are, his shiny brown shoes are mismatched with his suit.

I was really absorbed by and enjoyed César & Rosalie, with its untraditional take on relationships and human behavior. With its outré flavor and bent, the only recent U.S. release that's similar in terms of tone is The Overnight, that other outrageous comedy of manners that takes a skewed, offbeat look at monogamy.

Other Sautet films being screened through July 30 at the Laemmle Royal include the 1971 policier Max et les ferrailleurs, a crime thriller starring Michel Piccoli and Schneider. They also co-star in 1970's psychologically astute Les choses de la vie. Piccoli - a major French star - also returned with Montand for Sautet's 1974 look at male mid-life crisis among several buddies in Vincent, François, Paul and the Others, costarring Gérard Depardieu. Emmanuelle Béart (who acted in 1996's Mission: Impossible) starred in a later film by Sautet, 1995's Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, another meditation on marriage and male-female relationships. Sautet died in 2000.

This excursion into French cinema and Sautet revival can provide the cure for that put-your-brain-into-neutral summertime blues called "summer blockbusters." For show times see: www.laemmle.com/films/39524.

"Green Grow the Lilacs": Summer of the "Okies"

Fri, 24 Jul 2015 15:27:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - This seems to be the stage and screen summer of "Oklahoma" - and all these productions set in what had been called "Indian Territory" have Native American connections. The recent LA Film Festival screened Sterlin Harjo's hard-hitting indigenous indie about homeless Natives in Tulsa. Les Blank's just released documentary about Leon Russell, A Poem is a Naked Person, was shot in the 1970s and includes traditionally garbed Natives performing. Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum (WGTB) is presenting Tracey Letts' August: Osage County (see here for this critic's ruminations on the depiction of Osage's Cheyenne character portrayed by Jeanette Godoy).

As part of its current repertory season the Theatricum is also presenting the part-Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs' 1931 classic Green Grow the Lilacs, wherein two of the townsfolk identify themselves as being one quarter Native. In any case, Lilacs inspired the fabled Rodgers and Hammerstein, who adapted Riggs' drama into a full-blown 1943 Broadway musical extravaganza, with Fred Zinnemann directing Hollywood's 1955 version of Oklahoma!, where "the corn is as high as an elephant's eye." (A production of the musical opened July 17 at Cabrillo Theatre in Thousand Oaks.)

The plot of Oklahoma! is similar to that of Lilacs, which incorporates folksy songs into the play, performed by a guitar-slinging Curly (Jeff Wiesen), Aunt Eller (Melora Marshall) and the ensemble. These standards include numbers such as the title song (from which Riggs presumably derived the name of his play) and "Skip to My Lou" - the tunes may be cornier than those elephant's eye stalks, but when theatergoers received their Playbills they were also given separate lyrics sheets and invited to sing along during the choruses. This, of course, enhanced a homey ambiance that served this play about ordinary people well.

Lilacs takes place around the turn of the last century, when Riggs was a boy, before Oklahoma joined the Union and was known as Indian Territory or Indian Country. The simple farm folk and story are drawn from Riggs' childhood - ironically, Riggs' sodbuster saga was largely written at Paris' famed café Les Deux Magots, his trip to France underwritten by a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1931 production was produced on Broadway by the Theatre Guild, which was part of the proletarian theater movement depicting the common man and woman, presenting works by playwrights such as leftist John Howard Lawson, as well as plays by Eugene O'Neill, bard par excellence of the heartbreaking family drama. Lilacs was directed by Herbert Biberman who, 20-odd years later as a blacklisted independent filmmaker, helmed another piece about ordinary people called Salt of the Earth.

Fun facts of the day: In the original Lilacs production Method Acting guru Lee Strasberg portrayed the Syrian Peddler (Zachary Davidson plays the part with comic panache in the WGTB production). On the Great White Way Tex Ritter sang four of Lilacs' songs as Cord Elam (Wendy Pigott plays a character named Cory Elam in the version by WGTB, which doesn't have reservations about switch hitting when it comes to gender or ethnicity). And Franchot Tone, who would co-star with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton in 1935's Oscar winning Mutiny on the Bounty, played the original Broadway production's Curly.

Many are familiar with the storyline of Oklahoma!, if not the original Lilacs. But allow this ink-stained wretch to render these observations: Sex (and the thwarting of it) is an important part of the plot. Laurey Williams (portrayed with aw-shucks aplomb by Willow Geer, who has incarnated many ingénue roles for WGTB over the years and is returning to the stage shortly after giving birth) spurns the advances of Jeeter (Fry, not Derek), a hired hand ignobly and savagely played by Steven Green. She then proceeds to pursue doing with Curly exactly what Jeeter had wanted to do with Laurey and had caused her such revulsion.

Interestingly enough, it is the repulsive Jeeter, the blue collar-less brute, who has the most class-conscious dialogue in Riggs' folk-poem, aware of the fact that he is looked down upon because he is a manual laborer with dirt under his nails who does not own land or property. As a sort of cowboy, Curly is a rung up the Indian Territory's social ladder, and along with his better looks, is more appealing to Laurey. So it's not a case so much of what is being sought as who is seeking it.

Laurey and Curly's troubled attempts to form their sexual union can be symbolic of the Indian Territory's transition upon joining the Union in 1907, becoming Oklahoma, the 46^th state. The Green in the title may refer to the territorial status of a pre-statehood land not yet fully "mature" as one of the United States per se.

In any case, Riggs' play is a bit strange and doesn't actually have a denouement as such. But this production ambles amiably and dramatically along where appropriate in a folksy way that WGTB founder, mid-Westerner Will Geer, would likely have felt right at home with - especially as his TV alter ego, Grandpa Walton - and this Lilacs is quite enjoyable. Some ticket buyers will get a kick out of the sing-along portion in particular (follow the bouncing ball!).

Ado Annie is depicted with comic touches by Elizabeth Tobias. (In the musical Ado Annie is given a wonderfully witty song about being filled with sexual desire and promiscuity, "I Cain't Say No.") As is the Theatricum's wont, director Ellen Geer makes skillful use of the amphitheater's ample space amidst the great outdoors, and also deploys crowd scenes with multiple members of WGTB's troupe playing townsfolk. A standout among the ensemble is Devin Hollimon, a recent graduate of UCLA's school of Theater, Film and Television embarking upon her acting odyssey, who positively glows onstage, exuding joie de vivre. She is a delight to behold; casting directors should sit up and pay attention to this winsome young actor as she begins to tread the boards.

Which brings me to the marvelous Melora Marshall - who plays Laurey's guardian, Aunt Eller Murphy in Lilacs - an actress who never fails to drop your jaw and pop your eye. This chameleon-like thespian seems to cross genders, genres, ages and even species with the ease most mere mortals deploy when crossing the street. Melora is a shape shifter and gender bender of the first order. But seriously folks, is there any role Melora can't tackle and conquer? This Renaissance Woman could go from playing Lilacs to Shylocks. During this summer's repertory season, Melora's WGTB work includes one of the sisters in August: Osage County; a role somewhat similar to Aunt Eller as Maudie in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird; plus she is co-directing A Midsummer Night's Dream. For this critic's money, Melora Marshall is the most versatile actress on the L.A. theatre scene. Her Marshall Plan surely enriches the Angeleno stage.

Given that this seems to be the summer of the "Okies," I'd be remiss not to mention the Theatricum's other Oklahoma connection: That most famous "Okie" of them all, Dustbowl-refugee-turned-people's-balladeer Woody Guthrie, lived in a cabin on the grounds back in the day when he and Will Geer used their artistry to organize unions, agitating for working people's rights.

To find your way to Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum, ensconced somewhere in Topanga Canyon north of Malibu, I suggest you use a treasure map. Because whether you see Lilacs or any/all of the other four shows being mounted in repertory, you are bound to discover unburied treasure - the jewels, gems and gold of L.A.'s stage.

Green Grow the Lilacs is playing in repertory through Sept. 26 at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, Calif. 90290. For repertory schedule and other information call: (310) 455-3723 or see: www.Theatricum.com.

Photo: Willow Geer and Melora Marshall. Ian Flanders.

"Mr. Holmes": Sherlock's greatest case, a study in existentialism

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 17:57:00 +0000

When a character is too popular to die in the public's imagination (and wallet) after his creator has died, there is an inherent danger in superseding an original author with another who had absolutely nothing to do with the conjuring up of the familiar protagonist, in order to perpetuate the franchise. This sleight of hand is to literature what apocrypha is to the Bible. Dead authors can't speak from the grave to defend their creations from grave injustices perpetrated against their characters.

This recasting has happened to at least two top pop culture icons and British literary figures: Ian Fleming's spy James Bond and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. Though fraught with danger (i.e., commercial trumping creative considerations), this is not necessarily to say that picking up the storytelling torch should never be done, nor that the subsequent works will always be inferior to those of the founding wordsmith.

The eponymous private detective in screenwriters Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's 1970 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, as well as the Holmes depictions in James Goldman's 1971 They Might Be Giants and, best of all, Nicholas Meyer's 1976 The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, are all worthy additions to and meditations on Holmes, who is arguably one of the greatest characters in English literature. Enter into this sub-genre screen scribe Jeffrey Hatcher's Mr. Holmes, to which helmer Bill Condon has given the full Masterpiece Theatre treatment.

The distinguished English actor Ian McKellen (who played Frankenstein director James Whale in Condon's 1998 Gods and Monsters and Gandalf and Magneto in those endless Lord of the Rings and X-Men franchises) plays the title character in Mr. Holmes. At 76, Sir Ian does so as a 93-year-old Sherlock living at what appear to be the white cliffs of Dover and as a younger Holmes, hired for what was to be his last case.

This complicated film flashes back and forth in time, and even finds our man Sherlock at Hiroshima two years after this mostly civilian target was flattened and irradiated by an atomic bomb (if this is what America does when we're the good guys, imagine what we do when we're the bad guys!). In any case, the horrific Hiroshima references from 70 years ago emerge out of the Zeitgeist the very week the U.S. and other powers announce an agreement aimed at preventing Tehran from producing nukes (you know, like they all plus Tel Aviv, et al, have already done).

When Sherlock embarked on a new case in Doyle's exciting adventures he often enthusiastically exclaimed: "The game's afoot!" But here, in Mr. Holmes, nearly at the end of his game, the nonagenarian Sherlock must use his deductive reasoning skills - and more - to try and solve his ultimate case. Unlike in Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" or "The Red-Headed League," murder and bank robbery are not at stake here. These are mere child's play in comparison to Sherlock's final case: Finding himself alone after a long career, striving to figure out the meaning of life.

The lad Roger (the charming Milo Parker) helps Holmes crack the case. He is the son of Sherlock's housekeeper - no, not Mrs. Hudson, but Mrs. Munro, a widow who lost her husband during the Battle of Britain, played by Laura Linney. For some reason, Linney seems to have developed a specialty of depicting completely unlikable characters. Her Mrs. Munro is a real put-off, as was her Cathy Jamison character in the 2010-2013 Showtime series The Big C - a cancer patient who invaded her teenage son's privacy, belittled her husband (Oliver Platt), and was thoroughly unpleasant. I watched Linney on Tavis Smiley's chatfest the other day and she seemed much warmer than the remote, cold characters she has made her forte onscreen.

Viewers who thrilled to the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce 1930s/1940s film series won't find too much of their adventurousness in the more meditative Mr. Holmes. Indeed, some will likely find this complex rumination on aging and the purpose of existence, that perhaps exploits a big name character Hatcher had no hand in hatching, to be slow moving, dull, uneventful and hard to follow. There are also repeat ponderings on bees and wasps.

When the title character ceremoniously reflects on those people, such as Dr. Watson, who have mattered to him, Sherlockians may wince at the fact that Irene Adler - the one woman for whom Doyle allowed his straight-laced private investigator to express a sort of passion - is oddly omitted. What an oversight - surely a scandal in Bohemia!

More thoughtful moviegoers may enjoy this well acted feature that does to Sherlock Holmes what 1984's Hugh Hudson-helmed, rather ponderous Greystoke, written by Robert Towne and Michael Austin, did to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan. One wonders what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would make of this revisiting of his greatest fictional creation? This critic would not dare to speak on his behalf - it would take one of those séances Doyle was so fond of to find out.

Of course, fed up with public demands regarding his beloved fictitious private eye, Doyle himself unsuccessfully attempted to kill Holmes off at the Swiss waterfall of Meiringen, in a battle to the death with that "Napoleon of crime," Professor Moriarty. In any case, let's hope that the Doyle estate was well paid for this latest iteration of literature's supreme detective, who has been appearing on the big and little screen since before the cinema could speak. That's elementary, dear reader.

Mr. Holmes

PG | 104 min

Director: Bill Condon

Writers: Mitch Cullin (original story), Arthur Conan Doyle (characters)

Stars: Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Hiroyuki Sanada, Milo Parker

Photo: Ian McKellen and Milo Parker. Film website.

Stage and film star, humanitarian Theodore Bikel dies at 91

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 11:34:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) - Theodore Bikel, the Tony- and Oscar-nominated actor and singer whose passions included folk music and political activism, died Tuesday morning of natural causes at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 91.

The Austrian-born Bikel was noted for the diversity of the roles he played, from a Scottish police officer to a Russian submarine skipper, Jewish refugee, Dutch sea captain and Henry Kissinger.

"No one loved theater more, his union better, or cherished actors like Theo did. He has left an indelible mark on generations of members past and generations of members to come," Actors' Equity Association, which Bikel led as president from 1973-1982, said in a statement.

He also appeared on numerous television shows, recorded books on tape, appeared in opera productions and issued dozens of contemporary and folk music albums. He sang in 21 languages, and especially loved the Yiddish language repertoire.

He received an Oscar nomination for his 1958 portrayal of a Southern sheriff in The Defiant Ones, the acclaimed drama about two prison escapees, one black and one white. The following year, Bikel starred on Broadway as Capt. Georg von Trapp in the original production of The Sound of Music, playing opposite Mary Martin's Maria, which earned him a second Tony nomination.

Many theatergoers knew him best for his portrayal of Tevye in stage productions of Fiddler on the Roof. Although he did not appear in the original 1964 Broadway version or the 1971 film, he played Tevye more than 2,000 times on stage from 1967 onward. His latest film was a documentary about interpreting the work of Yiddish writer and playwright Sholem Aleichem, author of the stories from which Fiddler was adapted.

Among his film roles, he played the grumpy Soviet submarine captain in the Oscar-nominated 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. He played Kissinger in the TV movie The Final Days.

A prolific recording artist, Bikel also helped found the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, an event that has drawn hundreds of thousands of fans to Rhode Island over the decades and launched the careers of many notable musicians. He recorded 37 albums and sang with Pete Seeger and The Weavers.

Bikel did not consider his activism at odds with his work as a performer. In fact, he thrived on the variety in his life. "Professionally, I can count three or four separate existences," he said.

Born in 1924, in Vienna, Bikel moved with his family to Palestine as a teenager. While living on a kibbutz there, he discovered his love for drama.

"I often stood on heaps of manure, leaning on a pitchfork, singing Hebrew songs at the top of my voice - songs that extolled the beauty of callused hands and the nobility of work, which I was not doing too well," he wrote in his 1994 autobiography.

Bikel started acting in Tel Aviv's Habimah Theatre in 1943, then moved in 1946 to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Within a few years, he won a role in the London production of Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire with Vivien Leigh, playing Mitch, Stanley Kowalski's friend. It was the first of several high-profile collaborations between Bikel and scores of noteworthy performers in Europe and North America.

He made his Broadway debut in 1955 in Tonight in Samarkand and in 1958 was nominated for a Tony for The Rope Dancers.

Bikel, who became an American citizen in 1961, said in his autobiography, Theo: The Autobiography of Theodore Bikel, that one of the key moral dilemmas of his life was whether to return to his Israel in 1948 when it declared its statehood. He chose to remain in London. "A few of my contemporaries regarded what I did as a character flaw, if not a downright act of desertion," he wrote.

Bikel traveled to Mississippi in 1963 to sing at voter registration rallies, accompanied by Bob Dylan, who did not know at the time that Bikel had paid for his plane ticket.

Serving as a delegate to the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago, Bikel took part in anti-war demonstrations both inside the convention and out on the street. He was a board member of Amnesty International and a member of the National Council on the Arts.

Honored by the Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring for his support of Yiddish culture around the world, he received a plaque at a ceremony in Los Angeles, where he had established his primary residence. The much-honored activist quipped, "I have a whole room full of these at home. I call it 'Plaquistan.'"

Five years ago Bikel signed a letter of support for Israeli artists who refuse to perform in the Jewish settlement of Ariel on the West Bank, and cited his conscience. "Anyone who has strong feelings for Israel like I do, and that believes it is an absolute necessity to strive for peace, understands that the single most obvious obstacle are the settlements," Bikel said. "I understand that art and politics should not mingle, but art also has to be part of the world," he added.

He also was featured in a widely circulated Internet promo for a negotiated peace agreement, comparing the experience of the Jews being driven from their homes by the Tsarist government of Russia and the Palestinians forced from their lands during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence.

In a statement issued by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on the passing of Bikel, who was a former AFL-CIO Executive Council Board Member, the labor leader said, "Theo's passion on-stage was matched only by his passion for working people behind the scenes. His legacy will be felt by those who watched him on stage and screen, and by the countless actors he gave a voice to through his work in the labor movement. His decades of service to his craft and his fellow actors will never be forgotten, and will serve to pave the way to a better life for the next generation of actors."

Bikel is survived by his wife, Aimee Ginsburg-Bikel; sons Rob and Danny Bikel; stepsons Zeev and Noam Ginsburg; and three grandchildren.

Eric A. Gordon contributed to this story from Los Angeles.

Photo: http://www.bikel.com/home

Video: A 55-minute video of an appearance by Theodore Bikel was filmed in New York City just days before his death. It features a series of interviews with Jewish theater personalities, and Bikel winds up the program singing what turns out to be his farewell performance of the song "Zayt gezunt" (Be well). Click here.

"Dying to Know" is new doc about a dynamic duo

Wed, 22 Jul 2015 17:26:00 +0000

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. - The new Mammoth Lakes Film Festival focuses on narrative movies, documentaries, shorts and animation that express a singular, personal point of view. I enjoyed every short and feature-length work I saw at the inaugural annual fest, located about 300 miles north of Los Angeles in Mammoth's drop dead gorgeous setting. But my favorite film at MLFF was Gay Dillingham's highly informative, entertaining doc about a dynamic duo of '60s/'70s gurus: Dying to Know: Ram Dass and Timothy Leary, narrated by Robert Redford.

These Harvard psychology professors went, as writer Aldous Huxley put it, beyond the doors of perception by experimenting with psychedelics, and in doing so, not only turned the academic establishment upside down but rocked the emerging counterculture generation. Leary went on to pursue LSD as a key to expanded consciousness, while Richard Alpert embarked on another path, exploring Eastern mysticism in his quest for enlightenment, becoming Baba Ram Dass in the process.

This is a great story filled with fascinating details, such as why (space) cadet Leary was kicked out of West Point and which railroad Alpert's dad - a co-founder of Brandeis University - ran. It is to producer/director Dillingham's credit that she has found a visionary form that organically expresses the content of a film that is often visually stunning, conveying cosmic consciousness. For instance, she occasionally uses animation to great effect, especially in cleverly depicting "Bicycle Day" - when Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally dosed himself with LSD at his Basel lab and rode home on a bike, tripping his brains out on acid for the first time in human history, on April 16, 1943.

With its psychedelic style and sensibility, Dying to Know avoids the pitfalls of many conventional documentaries filled with talking heads, archival footage and the like. Of course, in addition to our two acolytes of acid and Eastern philosophy par excellence, the interviewees are indeed fascinating. They include Dr. Andrew Weil, who played a role in the then-Alpert's expulsion from the faculty when Weil was on the staff of the Harvard Crimson, long before he became a holistic healer and bestselling author. (Small world!) Other collaborators with the iconoclastic pair, such as Ralph Metzner, are interviewed, as well as one of Leary's five (yes, he was married five times - although not concurrently) wives, Joanna Harcourt-Smith. Former Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, who drew on his psychedelic experiences for his songs, also makes for a compelling eyewitness.

As for the doc's news clips, etc., Leary's 1960s testifying before Congress, including Sen. Ted Kennedy, is to die for, as Leary proclaims and explains his famous mantra: "Turn on, tune in, drop out!" However, there's not enough info about Leary's escape from a minimum security prison and his subsequent falling out with another New Left figure, former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, also living in exile in Algiers. For instance, to the best of my recollection, the Weathermen helped Leary bust out of the big house (so to speak), but their role in one of the most fascinating episodes in the era's history isn't even mentioned. On the other hand, I didn't know (or recall) that John Lennon wrote "Come Together" for Leary's California gubernatorial race against none other than Ronald Reagan. His sojourn in Afghanistan is also quite fascinating although, again, briefly mentioned - but a 95-minute biopic about two icons can only cover so much.

It should be mentioned that, as its title indicates, Dying to Know is also about the ultimate taboo and final frontier: Death. Ever the publicity conscious, crafty manipulator of public opinion, Leary turned his last hurrah into a media event. Watch the doc to find out how he and Star Trek's creator made history in the 1990s.

Baba Ram Dass, the author of the 1971 classic Be Here Now, who is about a decade younger than Tim, currently lives in Maui, where he is still on the path to enlightenment. The doc includes clips of the guru in Hawaii. I won't reveal what, but something quite mysteriously wonderful happens to the Eastern ascetic in his old age that is quite touching.

And so is the deep, abiding friendship between the titular Harvard colleagues who found themselves far from the tenure track, at the center of the '60s/'70s storm. The documentary reveals that Richard Alpert, raised as an upper class nice Jewish boy, was for a long time secretly gay. He was in love with Leary, although according to the doc it remained on the platonic level. Ram Dass eventually came out of the closet a while ago.

In any case, I loved this film's trip down memory lane, and will close with my own encounter with the high guru of LSD: In 1976, straight out of Hunter College film school, New Line Cinema hired me to be a movie distributor to hip university audiences. At that time, long before The Lord of the Rings, New Line also had a speakers' bureau that booked radical chic notables to speak at college campuses. One day it was announced that the one and only Timothy Leary, fresh out of the slammer, was coming to our Manhattan offices near Union Square to discuss speaking gigs. So I lay in wait for the dissident whom Pres. Nixon had called "the most dangerous man in America" (and hey, if anybody should know, Nixon should).

When I saw Tim with his longish white hair in the office I gave him a gift: A poster of one of the vintage films I was distributing, the 1930s serial Flash Gordon, starring Buster Crabbe. I said to the high priest of LSD: "Get it? Flash?" And the King of Acid Flashes gave me one of his Merry Prankster-ish, million-dollar smiles that I've never forgotten, and which this wonderful documentary brings back to life. Viewers should definitely tune in to Dying to Know: Ram Dass and Timothy Leary - what a long, strange, cinematic trip it is!

For more info see: http://dyingtoknowmovie.com/. For more info on Mammoth Lakes Film Festival see: http://www.mammothlakesfilmfestival.com/.

“All American Girl” asks "who will save the children?"

Wed, 22 Jul 2015 11:38:00 +0000

InterACT Theatre Company's "All American Girl" is a well-written, compelling one act play by playwright Wendy Graf that's ably directed by Anita Khanzadian. This one-woman show is, for the most part, well-acted by Annika Marks (alternating with Jeanne Syquia), who incarnates the title character Kathleen at various ages and in a variety of other roles, including briefly playing male characters. The part is very demanding and for the most part Marks acquits herself well, although the seven year old version of her Katie struck me as forced and full of mannerisms.

The sound by Joseph Slawinski is good, as is Carol Doehring's lighting, which includes some simple but effective visual effects. Joel Daavid's set is minimal, consisting largely of chalkboards, which underlines the didactic nature of this theatrical meditation on what turns an ordinary young Christian woman into a Islamicist terrorist. As press notes put it:

"Who will save the children?" "All American Girl" follows Katie, a bright and attractive girl committed to rescuing innocents from hardship and poverty, as she evolves into a passionate extremist. How does a seemingly ordinary American kid become radicalized? Is violence ever justified?"

The ironically titled All American has the veneer of being one of those "ripped from the headlines" docu-plays. In @This Stage Magazine, Graf said that the protagonist was inspired by the U.S.-born wife of one of the Boston Marathon bombers. The dramatist also told @ This Stage that she wanted to focus on the "humanity" of her character and not on the play's "politics," but like much of "All American Girl" this is subject to debate. Marks' portrayal is certainly all too human but there's no getting around the fact that, like a Brecht play, this is a primarily politically-themed drama. Some may quibble and argue that it is first and foremost concerned with religion, but what's called "Islamic extremism" seems to be more of a political than a religious phenomenon.

As this is such a political piece (KPFK radio host and leftwing stalwart Michael Slate even moderated a post-show discussion at the Lounge Theatre on July 18), this reviewer feels it's incumbent to make political observations regarding the play and its politics. In an attempt to explain Kathleen the play goes back to her childhood. But the decisive factor in converting this female who had been involved with anti-abortion Christian fanatics was that she happened to meet and marry Igbol, a Muslim man.

However, he does not have the same name as one of the Boston Marathon bombers (although his wife was named Kathleen) and furthermore, Igbol is not Chechen. Graf renders Kathleen's husband as being an exchange student from India, who has encountered pogroms against Muslims by Hindu mobs in the sub-continent and prejudice from redneck slobs in the U.S.

Now, some may commend Graf on shedding light on another aspect of international Islam. Although it is a predominantly Hindu nation, with its vast population India's Muslim minority makes it the world's second largest country in terms of Islamic inhabitants. On the other hand, some may fault Graf's crafting of an Indian connection as a convenient contrivance that removes Arabs, the Middle East and North Africa from the Islamicist equation and as such is a cowardly copout. Take your pick, Dear Reader!

We in the West are used to being bombarded by "news" depicting militant Muslims as perpetrators of barbaric, horrific violence - from Isis to Boko Haram to Al-Shabab to Al Qaeda to the Charlie Hebdo murderers and so on (all of which goes unremarked upon in "All American"). So certain theatergoers might praise Graf for pointing out that Muslims have also been victimized by discrimination and mass violence. But it's extremely odd that drone warfare - a main element in Washington's crusade against Islamic extremism that is generating disaffection amongst masses of people because of the "collateral damage" causing the deaths and injuries of many innocents, including children - is for some mysterious reason not stressed in the play. What a grievous omission.

For all of the play's topicality - which press notes indicate was conceived around 2013 - "All American Girl" is already outdated. Isis is never mentioned (even the FX TV series Tyrant now has an Islamic State-type "Army of the Caliphate"). The so-called "lone wolves" inspired to wreak havoc in the West by Isis through a "self-radicalizing" process is not applicable to Kathleen in "All American." (BTW, current use of the word "radical" by media, officials, etc., is yet another vilification of a word that had been mostly reserved for describing leftists.)

U.S. militarism

I saw this one-woman show the day a gunman committed mayhem at a military facility and recruiting stations in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Clueless officials and pundits scratched their noggins, wondering why a terrorist would attack armed forces-related venues? Gee, I don't know, Sherlocks - could it possibly be because the U.S. military willy-nilly invades and bombs Muslim nations, from poor immiserated Iraq to Libya and beyond, and arms nuclear-powered Israel as they bomb defenseless Gaza back to Gen. Curtis E. LeMay's stone age?

In America, we're supposed to have freedom of speech -- as long as you don't use your "free speech" to criticize those "defending" that same liberty with unprovoked attacks. The military is supposed to be above criticism in the so-called "land of the free."

For instance, look what happened on the presidential stump to candidate Trump when the blathering billionaire belittled Sen. McCain at a July 18 conservative conference of evangelicals, questioning whether this warmonger is a "war hero."

As filmmaker Michael Moore wrote in his 2008 election guide: "McCain flew 23 bombing missions over North Vietnam in a campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. During this bombing campaign, which lasted for almost 44 months, U.S. forces flew 307,000 attack sorties, dropping 643,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam (roughly the same tonnage dropped in the Pacific during all of World War II). Though the stated targets were factories, bridges, and power plants, thousands of bombs also fell on homes, schools, and hospitals. In the midst of the campaign, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara estimated that we were killing 1,000 civilians a week. That's more than one 9/11 every single month - for 44 months."

Bear in mind that Vietnam never attacked the U.S. Moore also described McCain's final mission assaulting this nation that never bombed America: "on October 26, 1967... John McCain, flying in his A-4 Skyhawk, was hit by a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft artillery shell just as he fired off his missile at - not a military target, not an army unit, not a battleship - but an electricity generating station that supplied electrical power to a number of neighborhoods. The target, according to McCain, was in 'a heavily populated part of Hanoi.' Heavily populated. A plane from the sky raining missiles down on a heavily populated area of a nation's capital," that had never attacked America.

Have McCain or any of the other war criminals who supported the Iraq invasion been charged with crimes against humanity? The main American I know of who has been tried in connection to U.S. war crimes in Iraq is - no, not Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Pearl, Wolfowitz, et al. I'm talking about Private Manning, who is now serving a lengthy prison sentence. And what was this soldier's "offense"? Revealing American atrocities in Iraq.

Meanwhile, back at the review:

At least "All American" has the courage to take on Western militarism, to denounce "imperialistic" policies and to express moral outrage at the slaughter of Muslim children (although the play never mentions the countless innocent Muslims, including kids, slaughtered by Isis and other Islamicist zealots). The play dares to point out that if you go around the world hitting hornets' nests with sticks you might actually get stung.

But at least one of the targets Kathleen and her erstwhile "All American" fanatical comrades choose to strike is pretty obscure and harebrained, exposing the murky "reasoning" (or lack of) of terrorists. Terrorism is a despicable tactic. Attacking innocent unarmed civilians is morally reprehensible and the means often used - suicide bombings, beheadings - are as repulsive as drones, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo torture. As most children know, "two wrongs don't make a right." No matter how just one's cause is and righteous one's outrage is, slaughtering noncombatants - often including children, elders, etc. - is so repugnant to the public that it does a grave disservice to those aggrieved victims whom terrorists claim to be acting on behalf of (even if they have not been asked to do so by the injured parties and in these destructive ways). This is especially true if other means of legitimate protest are available.

Jeremy Kagan's "Katherine"

One last thing about Graf's play: It struck me as being similar to Jeremy Kagan's far superior 1975 made-for-TV movie about an antiwar domestic terrorist called "Katherine" (not Kathleen. In "Katherine," Sissy Spacek plays another all American girl who eschews middle class and white skin privilege, participating in activities such as a Freedom School in the segregated South during the Civil Rights movement and interacting with South American guerrillas (unlike Kathleen, who is involved with rightwing Christian fundamentalist fanatics, which reveals her penchant for zealotry and extremism). Increasingly radicalized in particular by the Vietnam War, Katherine Alman turns towards armed struggle. Katherine's partner, Bob Kline (played Henry Winkler) may have been inspired, in part, by Weatherman Bill Ayers. Spacek's character seems based on a member of the Weatherman faction of SDS, Diana Oughton, who met her fate in a Greenwich Village townhouse in 1970. Like Kathleen, Katherine warns against the perils of terrorism and the injustices that mass manufacture it.

InterACT Theatre Company presents All American Girl Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 3:00 p.m. at the Lounge Theatre, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, CA 90038. For more info: (818)765-8732; www.InterACTla.org. The show has been extended to August 30.

Photo: Annika Marks. | Rick Friesen

"Race to Revolution" a must-read on U.S.-Cuba history

Tue, 21 Jul 2015 15:43:00 +0000

To his credit, the first African-American president, Barack Obama, recently took a bold step towards normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba, thereby challenging a decades-long failed policy intent on isolating the island nation. Undoubtedly, with this change in U.S. foreign policy, there will likely be a renewed interest in both nations' shared history.

That an African American took the initiative in spearheading this long overdue policy change is also important, as it is only the most recent illustration of a unique relationship between Blacks in the "slaveholders' republic" and their African kin in Cuba, the renowned slave depot and former Spanish colony.

Gerald Horne's "Race To Revolution: The United States And Cuba During Slavery And Jim Crow" is a monumental accomplishment, a welcomed, insightful contribution to an understanding of this unique relationship.

With voluminous amounts of research and citation, Horne builds a narrative spanning two centuries. He connects U.S. annexation of Florida and Texas to the expansion of slavery, British supported abolitionism in the Caribbean as a strategic move to possibility regain control of her former colonies, and Spanish colonial decline - in Cuba, as well as Mexico and Columbia - as part of a world-wide realignment of political power towards Washington, slavery and Jim Crow.

Further, Horne writes, "...considering that both Mexico and Columbia - where those of African descent [now] played leading roles - were considering annexing Cuba" posed an "existential threat to one of the most significant investment opportunities in the republic: slavery." Hence, the republics' flanking maneuver, as the annexation of Texas - a Mexican state - ultimately become another front in the on-going war against abolition.

"In retrospect, it is easy to infer that Washington's burgeoning desire to dismember Mexico was driven in part by the latter's abolitionism and its allied plans for Cuba," Horne concluded. In other words, he added, the message should be clear: "...cross Washington, back abolition, and run the risk of dismemberment."

The apolitical mischaracterization of rugged settlers simply struggling to make a new life in Texas - exemplified by the History Channel's recent show Texas Rising - takes on a new, more sinister meaning when viewed through this lens. For, it was partly the contest between slavery and abolition - a context often obscured - that ultimately justified the taking of the former Mexican state - not only to consolidate slavery in Texas, but to consolidate it in Cuba as well.

That Cuba could potentially become an independent state lead by former slaves was simply out of the question. As Horne writes, this "other alternative...was too ghastly to contemplate" to slave holders, as they did not want "another Haiti" just miles from their shores.

That Haiti's former slaves had recently dispatched their former masters - with a justifiable bloodletting - only added to the republics paranoia. Blacks fleeing Florida - and "the racist reign of terror" - often stopped first in Cuba. Many viewed the island as a staging ground for returning African Americans with hopes of freeing their still enslaved brethren - and embarking on their own justifiable bloodletting.

That London was heading towards abolition -- fomenting revolt and arming Blacks, first in Florida and then in the Caribbean as slavery was expanding in the South -- was also problematic for the "slaveholders' republic," as slave owners feared free and armed Blacks, aided by British troops, setting up camp just miles from their shores.

John Quincy Adams, undoubtedly, spoke for many of the time when he noted that Cuba was "the keystone to our Union. No American statesman ought to ever withdraw his eyes from it."

Horne's narrative tells us why.

Horne writes, Cuba could very easily be viewed as a "staging ground for attack on the mainland" by the British - who were undoubtedly still reeling from the loss of her colonies in 1776, and the stalemate in the just-concluded War of 1812 - in league with former slaves.

Further, "Cuba was a strategic chokepoint, controlling commerce east and west of the mainland and acting as a plug for the basin of the Mississippi River, the circulatory system of a good deal of North America. He who held Cuba potentially also had a firm grip on the throat of the mainland," Horne wrote.

Jostled by world powers - with very different perspectives on slavery, and later Jim Crow and capitalism - Cuba was often stuck in a vice.

As Horne writes, "Spanish Cuba was trapped between (and among) Haiti and the United States and Britain, all with dreams of their own as to how this pistol-shaped island should evolve. That Madrid felt compelled to appeal to U.S. nationals was emblematic of the reality that Cuba was far from Spain but close to the mainland republic, and like metal filings to a magnet Havana seemed to be drifting inexorably toward the stars and stripes," if only temporarily.

Horne's "Race To Revolution: The United States And Cuba During Slavery And Jim Crow" is a must read, especially now, as U.S. policy makers renew relations with the independent and socialist Cuba.

Like Horne's "Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation," "The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America," and his forthcoming "Confronting Black Jacobins : The U.S., the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic," Race To Revolution tells a story that needs to be told, redefining our nation's contradictory relationship to freedom, democracy, slavery, Jim Crow and human rights.

Race To Revolution: The United States And Cuba During Slavery And Jim Crow

By Gerald Horne

Monthly Review Press, 2014, 429 pages

“Jimmy’s Hall”: Ken Loach’s Irish working class heroes

Tue, 21 Jul 2015 14:27:00 +0000

For those of you who love movies in the tradition of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and Herbert Biberman/Michael Wilson's Salt of the Earth, I am the bearer of glad tidings: What is arguably the greatest contemporary leftist writer/director team in the English-speaking world now making pro-worker films is back! Director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty's Jimmy's Hall began its national U.S. rollout earlier this month.

Based on a true story, Jimmy's Hall is about Jimmy Gralton (the handsome, charismatic Barry Ward), the only Irishman deported as an illegal alien from Ireland, the land of his birth, without so much as a trial! Of course, Gralton's true "crime" was his fight against the reactionary church, aristocratic landowners and narrow nationalism by setting up a hall where ordinary people could dance to jazz music, study art and pursue a more class conscious politics during the Depression.

It's the class struggle dimension of their outlook that pits Jimmy's Hall workers against -the narrow nationalism of the not-so-free Irish Free State of the 1930s. Here, the Loach/Laverty team return to historical terrain they already trod in the 2006 Irish Revolution epic The Wind that Shakes the Barley, with Ireland's left wing struggling with the less radicalized nationalists.

The Loach/Laverty team is in the socialist realist tradition of filmmaking and the kitchen sink school of British drama, focusing on ordinary people who do extraordinary things, inspiring proletarian protagonists who take a stand against all odds. Previously, separately and jointly, these undaunted progressives brought us the 1995 Spanish Civil War epic about the International Brigades Land and Freedom (written by Jim Allen) and jointly: 1996's Carla's Song about the Sandinistas; 2000's pro-unionization, justice for janitors Bread and Roses about Latinos on strike in L.A., starring Oscar winner Adrien Brody; the aforementioned epic The Wind that Shakes the Barley; the 2010 Route Irish about private contractors in Iraq; and Laverty wrote 2010's Even the Rain, about the Cochabamba water rebellion in Bolivia, starring Gael García Bernal.

Jimmy's Hall also contains great acting, which enlivens the mass action mise-en-scène and sensibility. As Oonagh, Simone Kirby - who has acted at the Abbey Theatre and Old Vic - possesses a smoldering sexuality, whose love and desire for Jimmy have been thwarted by deportation. Even more heartfelt is Aileen Henry, who plays Jimmy's mother. She calls to mind Vera Baranovskaya, who starred in Vsevolod Pudovkin's 1926 Soviet classic Mother, based upon Maxim Gorky's revolutionary novel. Even more so, this Irish earth mother is reminiscent of Jane Darwell, who movingly depicted Ma Joad in another immortal masterpiece of the silver screen, John Ford's 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, screenplay by an Oscar-nommed Nunnally Johnson. (Darwell and Ford struck Oscar gold with their Wrath work.) As she blithely rescues Jimmy from being busted by the coppers, the scene-stealing Henry also recalls Sgt. Schultz - famous for exclaiming "I know nothing!" - in the 1960s POW TV sitcom Hogan's Heroes. Of course, Barry Ward's portrayal of the exultant rebel who loves jazz and Bolshevism has the poetry of a James Joyce novel.

This is great socialist cinema in the Eisenstein tradition of revolutionary filmmaking, a heritage that the Loach/Laverty team gloriously, lovingly perpetuates. Jimmy's Hall may be an ode to jazz, but it made me feel like singing those 1968 lyrics by the Rolling Stones, co-written by Keith Richards, whose grandfather was the first Labor Party representative of his district:

"Let's drink to the hard working people / Let's think of the lowly of birth / Spare a thought for the rag taggy people / Let's drink to the salt of the earth."

Jimmy's Hall (2014)

Director: Ken Loach

Writers: Paul Laverty (screenplay), Donal O'Kelly (play)

Stars: Barry Ward, Francis Magee, Aileen Henry, Simone Kirby

PG-13, 109 mins.

Photo: "Jimmy's Hall poster." Wikipedia (CC)

Today in history: Ernest Hemingway is born

Tue, 21 Jul 2015 12:10:00 +0000

Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899 - July 2, 1961) was one of America's most popular authors. His economical style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Three more novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered American classics.

Although often criticized for his vigorous hypermasculinism, with strains of homophobia and anti-Semitism in his writing, overall he identified with the progressive political tendencies of his time, and counted many writers and intellectuals on the left as colleagues and friends.

As an 18-year-old Hemingway left for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. "When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality," Hemingway said of the incident. "Other people get killed; not you ... Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you."

In 1921, now married - to the first of his eventual four wives - he moved to Paris, where he worked as a correspondent and joined the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s "Lost Generation" expatriate community. He published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1926, which many critics consider his best work. Its focus is the Spanish bullfighting culture.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Hemingway traveled to Spain as a journalist. Late in 1937, while in Madrid, Hemingway wrote his only play, The Fifth Column, as the city was being bombarded. He collaborated with composers Marc Blitzstein and Virgil Thomson, and filmmaker Joris Ivens, on a fundraising film for the Spanish Loyalists called The Spanish Earth. Back in Spain in 1938, he was present at the Battle of the Ebro, the last republican stand, and was among the last journalists to leave the battle as they crossed the river. In August 1939 Hemingway was one of 400 U.S. intellectuals who signed an open letter "To All Active Supporters of Democracy and Peace" which stated that "the reactionaries" had "encouraged the fantastic falsehood that the USSR and the totalitarian states are basically alike" and claimed that the USSR had "shown a steadily expanding democracy in every sphere."

After the Spanish war ended he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), which became a Book-of-the-Month Club choice, sold half a million copies within months, and helped to revive the author's literary reputation.

In 1939, Hemingway crossed in his boat from his home in Key West to Cuba. With his soon-to-be new wife Martha Gellhorn, he rented "Finca Vigia" (Lookout Farm), a 15-acre property 15 miles from Havana. He later purchased it for his winter residence. It became notorious for the dozens of cats he allowed to roam and breed there.

Hemingway was in London during World War II, present at the Normandy landings and the 1944 liberation of Paris.

Shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea (1952), set in Cuba, which won him the Pulitzer Prize, Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two successive plane crashes that left him in pain or ill health for much of his remaining life.

After the Revolution Hemingway remained on easy terms with the government, telling the New York Times he was "delighted" with Castro's overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista. He famously went out on fishing excursions with Fidel Castro. In July 1960, the Hemingways left Cuba for the last time, leaving art and manuscripts in a bank vault in Havana. After the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, in accordance with the policy of nationalizing American property in Cuba, the Finca Vigia was expropriated by the Cuban government, complete with Hemingway's collection of several thousand books. The Finca is a popular tourist site today. The Cuban government has in recent years made arrangements with American academic institutions to photocopy Hemingway's Cuban papers and make them available to scholars.

In 1959, he had bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, still racked with pain and depression, he committed suicide in 1961.

Adapted from Wikipedia and other sources.

Photo: Hemingway (center) with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens and German writer Ludwig Renn (serving as an International Brigades officer) in Spain during Spanish Civil War, 1937. | Wikimedia (CC)

Art should be like a ribbon around a bomb: Diego and Frida in Detroit

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 12:40:00 +0000

DETROIT - I enter the room. A hulking figure, monstrous and grotesquely engaging, walks along a scaffold above my head towards a scarfed, diminutive figure. He wraps his mass around her, then gently kisses her lips. The Elephant and the Dove.

There are no other words that more aptly describe this image dancing before my eyes. I am witness to a magic. A moment when the soul is stirred and the heart is shaken. The vision of how great art, revolutionary art, can change the way we look at the world. I am taking my first step into the world of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit. I am trembling.

The Detroit Institute of Arts has hosted this special exhibit since March 15 of this year. I went on opening day and felt rushed through my first experience. I was the last soul ushered out the door as it closed at 9:00.

I promised myself to go back. Two days ago, in the last week of the exhibit's engagement, I fulfilled that promise. And, as in the case of love and homemade chili, the second time around was even grander.

I gave myself all the time needed to soak up every nuance of this display, and it was magnificent. I hope some of you readers had the chance to come to Detroit to visit with Diego and Frida. By the time you read this it will be too late.

But still visit our great city and art institute. The murals that Diego painted in the Rivera Court, the reason for this pair's visit in 1932, will always be here to astound you. And their kisses still echo in that court.

When the Elephant and the Dove came to Detroit in April of 1932 they were three years married. Their respective positions in the art world were at each end of spectrum. Diego was at the height of his career, having recently been given a one man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Frida, who was twenty years his junior, was just setting out in her career as an artist. He was a renowned muralist and painter, and an avowed radical and member of the Mexican Communist Party.

Frida, who suffered indescribable pain from a bus accident in 1925, shared his politics, artistic sensibilities, and lust for life. Their 11 months in Detroit were driven and tumultuous. As in any manic relationship, there was the roller coaster ride of the great ups and the sickening downs.

Diego worked feverously and created one of the greatest artistic achievements in the modern world, Detroit Industry, while Frida created 11 works of art (seven of which were in this exhibition) to establish herself as a distinct artist in her own right.

At the same time, she was pregnant when they came to Detroit but suffered a miscarriage at Henry Ford Hospital on July 4, 1932. She painted Henry Ford Hospital just days afterward.

In this work, a naked Frida depicts herself on a bed bleeding, with red strings flowing outward from her body, connected to a variety of objects. One string is attached to a fetus, while a tear runs down her face. "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

While Frida despised Detroit, and was neither keen on either Americans nor on their capitalist society, Diego thrived on the industrialism and the technological changes that were reshaping the American worker. He was fascinated by the Ford Rouge Plant and used that as much of the inspiration for the Detroit Industry murals.

This was in the midst of the Great Depression, and Diego was well aware of the ravages that this economic catastrophe had placed on the workers of Detroit. Edsel Ford, the son of Henry Ford, used his own personal money to commission Diego to create the murals.

Diego envisioned that these new technologies could be used for either great social purposes, such as giving workers good jobs with more benefits, or evil purposes. He admired the efficiencies that the Fords had incorporated into the assembly line, but knew of the Fords' distain for unions and workers' rights.

In a bold, revolutionary artistic move, he took Edsel's money and created a complex mural with many subversive proletarian elements secretly embedded in it. He was criticized by his fellow comrades for being a sell out to the capitalists; he was equally criticized by much of the "decent" citizenry of Detroit for bringing communist propaganda to the walls of the Art Institute. Many wanted it destroyed. History has proven that both sides were wrong. The artist prevails.

After Detroit, and a failed attempt to create another revolutionary mural in New York City for Rockefeller, Diego's career began to falter. But Frida was beginning to find international acclaim. Her stay in Detroit, although filled with disdain and torment, gave her an emotional springboard to soar to artistic heights.

I could feel this in the sketches and paintings, even the simple pencil scratchings, staring back at me from the walls of the exhibit. She painted many self-portraits; of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits. "I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best."

As she stared back at me from her paintings, I felt embarrassed for her to see me with a tear rolling down my face. "Be strong, dummy, if she were to see you like this she would probably laugh, then slap you in the face," I say to myself. She whispers to me, "I was born a bitch. I was born a painter." I wipe the tear away and blow her a kiss. Nothing back. Not even a wink.

Diego and Frida loved and fought, then fought and loved. They divorced in 1939, then remarried one year later. At their best they lived together in love and joy and harmony and artistic genius, and at their worst they fought with all the piss and vinegar that any couple could muster.

But they fought with, for, and beside each other. The divinely inspired desire to be together for a lifetime, however short or long that may be, is indeed something well worthy of fighting for.

On July 13 1954, Frida Kahlo died at the age of 47. Diego Rivera wrote that the day Frida died was the most tragic day of his life, adding that, too late, he had realized that the most wonderful part of his life had been his love for her.

Her last words in her diary; "I hope the exit is joyful-and I hope never to return - Frida." You have returned my withered sunflower. You and the Elephant have come back to Detroit. I know you don't like it here, but it was a nice visit. Now go back home. And by the way, you gonna return that little kiss?

Photo: A painting by Diego Rivera.

Today in labor history: Ode to a labor troubadour, Woody Guthrie

Tue, 14 Jul 2015 14:57:00 +0000

We pause now from the almost constant commentary on active politicians and political activism to render an ode to a labor troubadour: Woody Guthrie.

Don't get us wrong: Guthrie, who was born in Oklahoma on July 14, 1912, was a political man, too. He authored a folksy, class-conscious and long-running column, "Woody Sez," in the Daily Worker out of NYC and the West coast edition, the People's World, and was associated with the Communist Party from 1936 on - though whether he was a formal member is subject to debate.

But mostly he expressed his politics in his folk songs - about workers, fellow Okies, the down and out, and regular Americans.

And he wasn't afraid to tackle the problems that workers and unionists faced, while bucking up their spirits, by singing about the people, you and me.

Guthrie, who is now honored nationwide, including by a U.S. postage stamp, is best known among the general population for his song "This Land Is Your Land."

Everybody remembers its first verse, which ends "This land was made for you and me." When you stop and think about it, that's a political statement.

He's singing the nation belongs not to the rich, but to the rest of us. Sound familiar? Now read the remaining verses of "This Land Is Your Land." Those verses are never taught in school and rarely sung.

Woody's out roaming on the highway, and he sees a "no trespassing" sign - the epitome of privilege and property during the Depression. He wrote "This Land" in 1940.

"But on the other side it didn't say nothing. That side was made for you and me," Woody sings. And then he gets really radical. The next verse of "This Land" is about bread lines of the Depression, with the hungry and poor waiting by the relief office. That verse finishes with Woody asking a subversive question: "Is this land made for you and me?"

Consider the class implications of that, before you end with Woody's defiant declaration that "Nobody living can ever stop me...This land was made for you and me."

One recent review of Woody's life noted he specifically wrote "This Land Is Your Land" as a counter to the saccharine, unquestioning and shallow patriotism of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." Note that that tune is now the theme song of the anti-worker Radical Right.

But wait, Woody wasn't done yet.

His next big hit was "Union Maid." That song is as relevant today, in an era of union-busting "consultants," labor law-breaking firms and off-shoring multinationals egged on by corporate financiers, as it was when he wrote it, just before World War II.

Woody's "goons, ginks and company finks" still exist. Among the modern goons are the hired security guards who beat a Detroit Newspaper Guild member into a coma during management-forced strike several years ago, and the tea partyites who assaulted a Service Employees member in St. Louis two years ago, breaking his arm.

We're not sure who "ginks" are, but "company finks" are snitches.

And Woody's "deputy sheriffs who made the raid" on the Union Maid and her allies are replaced, these days, by Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff Joe Arpaio and by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who not-so-coincidentally raid factories just when their Hispanic-named workers start an organizing drive.

And, of course, despite such intimidation, present-day "Union Maids" - more than 40 percent of all unionists - and union men, too, stand their ground, just as Woody sang.

About the only part of "Union Maid" that's out of date is Woody's urging the Union Maid to marry a Union Man and become a member of the Ladies Auxiliary. They'll both be protected by the Union Card, he sings.

Somehow, we have the feeling that if Woody were alive today - he died in 1967 - he'd be singing "Union Maid" at protests at Walmarts, or on the state capitol lawn in Madison, Wis. And he'd change that last verse, too. (At least a couple of alternate versions with non-sexist messages have been popularized since Woody's day.)

There are union balladeers now, and many are very good. But when it comes to rousing lyrics with a pro-union edge, few now - we would say none - can match the man from Okemah, Okla., Woody Guthrie.

So happy birthday, Woody. May your lyrics and your songs live forever!

Eric A. Gordon updated this article, originally published in PW on July 13, 2012.

Photo: Woody Guthrie's first Daily Worker column. Peoples World archive at Tamiment Library.

Today in history: Patrick Stewart turns 75

Mon, 13 Jul 2015 13:35:00 +0000

The highly accomplished, ever busy, and much beloved actor Patrick Stewart, who achieved worldwide fame in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the X-Men films, A Christmas Carol, and Excalibur, was born in Mirfield, Yorkshire, England, on July 13, 1940.

At the age of 12 Stewart enrolled in an eight-day drama course which changed his life. Thereafter, his participation in local amateur dramatics increased steadily, and before long he was pursuing acting full-time.

In 1957 he enrolled in the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, spending two years learning his craft, acquiring the "Received Pronunciation" of the British stage, and losing his Yorkshire accent. He made his professional stage debut in 1959 at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln, playing Morgan in a stage adaptation of Treasure Island. His early baldness did not deter him: He could play character roles au naturel and don a toupee for juvenile leads.

Throughout his career Stewart has successfully bridged the gap between the theatrical world of the Shakespearean stage and contemporary film and television. With the Royal Shakespeare Company he has played such roles as King John, Shylock, Henry IV, Cassius, Titus Andronicus, Oberon, Leontes, Enobarbus, Touchstone and Launce, as well as roles in modern plays.

On television, Stewart originated the role of Jean-Luc Picard in the hit series Star Trek: The Next Generation, which aired from 1987 to 1994. In addition to his starring role, he also directed several episodes, one of which ("A Fistful of Datas") received an Emmy. Stewart reprised his portrayal of Picard in the motion pictures Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, and Star Trek: Insurrection. In 2001, Stewart filmed Star Trek: Nemesis, the tenth installment of Paramount Pictures' Star Trek feature films.

As Picard, Stewart displays a calm, cool and collected, but also compassionate intellect that became a model for "best practices" administration. And the role had a powerful effect on the man: "It came to a point where I had no idea where Picard began and I ended. We completely overlapped. His voice became my voice, and there were other elements of him that became me."

Stewart's explorations of contemporary American drama on stage include Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Arthur Miller's The Ride Down Mt. Morgan.

In 1997, Stewart received critical notice for his title role of Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. Jude Kelly directed Stewart along with an otherwise all-Black cast in a "photo-negative production" which took a bold, new look at the play. Stewart's performance was praised in the New York Times as "never anything less than uncanny in his psychological portrait: it's like watching an autopsy on human feeling."

In 1998, Stewart played Captain Ahab in the USA network's Moby Dick, opposite Gregory Peck and Henry Thomas. The $18 million epic mini-series, filmed on location in Australia, set a ratings record for the network.

In addition to Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Stewart has adapted other works for the stage, TV and radio, including two works by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Procurator (from the novel The Master and Margarita) and A Country Doctor's Notebook. In 1992, he directed the musical-drama Every Good Boy Deserves Favour by Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn, starring with four other Star Trek cast members and the Orange County Symphony Orchestra.

In 1995 Stewart starred on Broadway as Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest. The production, which originated as part of New York's Shakespeare in the Park Festival, received overwhelming public and critical response, becoming the festival's biggest event since 1980.

Stewart won a 1996 Grammy Award for his narrative work on the Best Spoken Word Album for Children, Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.

In 2001, Queen Elizabeth conferred on Stewart the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.).

Stewart has established a solid record of support for liberal causes, among them marriage equality. On his Patrick Stewart Network website he promotes some of his favorites: The Ocean Alliance, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Refuge (for women and children against domestic violence).

Happy birthday, Sir Patrick!

Adapted from patrickstewart.org and other sources.

Photo: Wikipedia (CC)

"15 and a Union, Someday," a villanelle

Tue, 07 Jul 2015 16:20:00 +0000

Ten hours of toil and what is your pay?
For sizzled flesh as spuds drop in
Fifteen and a union, someday

Managers give you grief every way
Those low, low prices mistaken
Ten hours of toil and what is your pay?

You'd think an adjunct does OK
Yet that check won't bring home bacon
Fifteen K and a union, someday

When daily you are away
Kids and elders need carin'
Ten hours of toil and what is your pay?

Creating wealth for display
Corporate thieves enjoyin'
Fifteen now and a union, we say

For food and justice, global tongues pray
Echoes of May Day a-bornin'
Ten hours of toil and what is your pay?
Fifteen and a union today!

This poem is a villanelle, a form of poetry that traces its humble roots to the Italian countryside and peasants singing rounds during the harvest. The first poetic evidence of this form comes from a French poet, Jean Passerat, who died in 1602.

The formal characteristics of a villanelle are found in:

its 19 lines - five three-line stanzas with a final stanza of four lines;
its refrains - first and third lines are repeated as the last lines of stanzas two and four, and three and five, respectively;
its last two lines which are the two refrain lines;
its A-B-A rhyme pattern.

Perhaps the most well-known English language villanelle is "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas. His repeating lines are the poem's title and "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

This villanelle was written for and inspired by Dr. Ryan Poll's Forms of Poetry English class at Northeastern Illinois University.

Photo: Earchiel Johnson/PW

Today in history: Ringo Starr turns 75, asks for peace and love

Tue, 07 Jul 2015 09:18:00 +0000

Ringo Starr, legendary drummer for the Beatles, and a world-renowned advocate for peace, was born as Richard Starkey in Liverpool, England, on this date in 1940.

Ringo also sang, wrote songs and acted with the Beatles in Hard Days Night and Help, and later on his own. He sang lead on "With a Little Help from My Friends," "Yellow Submarine" and their cover of "Act Naturally." He also wrote the Beatles' songs "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden," and co-wrote "Photograph" with George Harrison.

In 1957, he cofounded his first band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, which had moderate success before the American rock and roll craze took over. When the Beatles formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He quit the Hurricanes and joined the Beatles in August 1962, replacing drummer Pete Best. The Beatles broke up in 1970, after inspiring a generation of young people at the height of the Vietnam War era to strive for more peace and love in the world.

Starr achieved commercial and critical success with his 1973 album Ringo, which was a top ten release in both the UK and the U.S. He has been featured in a number of documentaries and hosted television shows. Since 1989, he has successfully toured with variations of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.

Starr's creative contribution to music has received praise from critics, as well as fellow percussionists. Drummer Steve Smith said: "Before Ringo, drum stars were measured by their soloing ability and virtuosity. Ringo's popularity brought forth a new paradigm.... We started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect.... His parts are so signature to the songs that you can listen to a Ringo drum part without the rest of the music and still identify the song."

Starr, who was previously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a Beatle in 1988, was inducted for his solo career in 2015, making him one of 21 performers inducted more than once.

Along with the other members of the Beatles, in 1965 Ringo was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his contributions to British culture.

Ringo Starr invites everyone to celebrate #PEACEANDLOVE on his birthday today. He will appear at Capitol Records in Los Angeles at noon PST, and invites fans around there world to join the celebration and share a message of #PEACEANDLOVE at noon wherever you are. Put up a peace sign and say out loud or to yourself, "Peace and love!"

Adapted from Wikipedia and other sources.

Photo: Ringo Starr concert in Paris June 26, 2011 : Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band. CC 3.0.

"JFK and the Unspeakable" is "convincing portrait" of Kennedy

Mon, 06 Jul 2015 14:31:00 +0000

There have been many books written about the assassination of President Kennedy, so many, generating so much bewildering debate, in fact, that many people have given up trying to understand the event and its significance. But despite all that, I want to recommend without reservation this book by a Catholic theologian and peace activist, which is unique in many respects and provides an education that all supporters of peace and progress need as we struggle to overcome the danger of right-wing extremism.

This is the only book on the assassination recommended by the Kennedy family: "It has distilled all the best available research into a very well-documented and convincing portrait of president Kennedy's transforming turn to peace, at the cost of his life.... I urge all Americans to read this book," writes Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

It is also strongly endorsed by Daniel Ellsberg, Marcus Raskin, Oliver Stone, and Gaeton Fonzie, staff investigator for the U.S. House Committee on Assassinations, who stated it is "by far the most important book yet written on the subject."

Simply put, the book demonstrates beyond doubt that Kennedy was killed by the CIA with the help of right-wing Cuban emigrees and the support of extremist forces in the Pentagon, the State Department and possibly other elements of U.S. corporate power, who recognized that Kennedy was moving towards a radical break with the fundamental principles and policies of the Cold War. He was seen as a traitor, who had to be stopped before he could implement his plans.

This book not only documents in fascinating detail how Kennedy was killed but, more importantly, it describes the historical and political context, the reasons why he was murdered.

It is a devastating indictment of the Cold War and exposes the insane drive of its perpetrators in the CIA and the Pentagon for a first strike nuclear attack on Cuba and the USSR.

The book also exposes the massive cover-up of the truth as the FBI, the corporate media, and various public officials promoted the official story of the Warren Commission that the President was killed by a lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, allegedly motivated by Communist loyalties and possibly even abetted by Cuba and the Soviet Union.

The Kennedy family never believed this tale and sent a letter to Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev saying they recognized it was not Communists, but a right-wing conspiracy who were responsible. Douglass shows that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon Johnson also dismissed this story as a CIA fabrication, but nonetheless cooperated with the cover-up because they were deeply committed to continue the Cold War.

For the millions subsequently slaughtered in Vietnam, Indonesia, and elsewhere, the militarist policies of the CIA and the Pentagon were anything but cold. Douglass shows how this orgy of mass murder was unleashed by the assassination and gives a sense for us today of the dangerous forces still embedded in the foreign policy establishment of U. S. imperialism, which is why this book is so important.

"JFK and the Unspeakable, Why He Died and Why It Matters"

James W. Douglass, Orbis Books 2008

Today in history: Earl Robinson, composer of “Joe Hill,” born

Thu, 02 Jul 2015 13:13:00 +0000

On this date in 1910, composer Earl Robinson was born in Seattle. He received an undergraduate music degree from the University of Washington in 1933. The following year, finding little other work, he sailed on a passenger cruise to Asia and back as the shipboard entertainer, singing popular songs and playing salon, classical and dance music. The ship took him to Tokyo, Kobe, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Manila.

Shanghai, he writes in his autobiography, "was an eye-opener in my political education. The city was divided up into several foreign concessions - German, British, French. I took a rickshaw to the American concession, located behind a wall twenty feet high. There, in this city of eight million Chinese, I actually saw a sign posted: 'No Chinamen or dogs allowed.' Fifteen years later I quoted this to people who wondered about China going Communist."

With his newfound consciousness, Robinson headed for the East Coast, picking up regional folksongs along the way. In New York he threw himself into labor struggles, contributing songs and skits to the workers theater movement. He also befriended the leading radical composers of the day, such as Aaron Copland, Elie Siegmeister and Marc Blitzstein.

At Camp Unity, a Communist camp in New York State, he spent the summer of 1936 as the musical coordinator, arranging performances using songs from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) era, and the newer songs just emerging from the contemporary leftwing movement. Robinson's special gift, which distinguished him among his fellow composers, was his early orientation toward the American folk idiom, which he adapted with agility. At Camp Unity he met the lyricist Abel Metropol, better known by his pen name, Lewis Allan, and they became frequent collaborators over the next forty years.

One song they composed together that summer starts off:

I always read the paper "for people who think." / I never dreamed that I was even pink / Till one lovely evening in the public parks / I met a stalwart fellow whose kisses left their - Marx. / I kissed a communist, was my face red!

That same summer Robinson chose a poem by Alfred Hayes, previously published in New Masses, and in 45 minutes set it to music:

"I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night /Alive as you and me. / Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead." "I never died," says he. / "I never died," says he.

That song took off like a prairie fire and became for generations the unofficial national labor anthem.

Robinson composed music for the Federal Theatre Project. In one revue, Sing for Your Supper - the last show produced by the FTP before Congress shut down the program - Robinson's extended "Ballad for Americans," set to lyrics by John Latouche, became a hit. It reached a national radio audience when it was broadcast on November 5, 1939, on CBS, with the American People's Chorus and the world-famous African-American soloist Paul Robeson. Then the 11-minute number really took off, selling thousands of sheet music copies, appearing in movies, and picked up by many other singers. Choral groups around the country programmed it. The rich reverberance of Robeson's wall of sound singing "I am...America" was a powerful blow against racism and a robust, class-conscious affirmation of multiculturalism and the "nobodies" who built our country. In 1940 both the Republican and the Communist national conventions featured the "Ballad" on their program (!).

Robinson's longer cantata, 1944's "The Lonesome Train," written to Millard Lampell's libretto about President Lincoln's funeral train wending its way back to Springfield, Illinois, is in many ways a more substantial composition. It was superbly recorded, and came into noble service on airwaves all over the land when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died the following year.

Earl Robinson was a Communist Party member from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, and suffered greatly from the Hollywood Blacklist, which deprived him of film scoring jobs, a career he had started having some success with. His song "Black and White," to David Arkin's lyric, celebrated the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school desegregration.

Although almost completely unknown today, probably his most successful work from an artistic viewpoint was the folk opera Sandhog, to Waldo Salt's libretto, concerning the lives of the workers who built the subway tunnels in New York City. Later compositions focused on the environment and his evolving spirituality, and include an especially gifted Banjo Concerto. Robinson died in a head-on car crash caused by a drink driver on July 20, 1991.

Eric A. Gordon worked as co-writer with the composer on "Ballad of an American: The Autobiography of Earl Robinson" (Scarecrow Press, 1998).

Photo: Wikimedia (CC)

Misty Copeland named first black female principal dancer at ABT

Wed, 01 Jul 2015 14:40:00 +0000

NEW YORK - Misty Copeland, the Missouri-born dancer who has become a forceful voice for diversity in ballet, was named a principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre on Tuesday - the first African-American ballerina to achieve that status in the company's 75-year history.

The company announced the promotion six days after Copeland made her New York debut in the role of Odette/Odile in "Swan Lake," one of the most important roles in a ballerina's repertoire. The emotional performance ended with Copeland being greeted onstage by trailblazing black ballerinas of earlier generations, Lauren Anderson and Raven Wilkinson.

Ms. Anderson is a former principal dancer with the Houston Ballet. In 1990, she was the first African-American ballerina to become a principal for a major dance company. Raven Wilkinson was the first African-American woman to dance full-time with a major ballet company, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Ms. Copeland has called Wilkinson a mentor.

Ms. Copeland, 32, has become a celebrity in the past several years, making the cover of Time magazine as one of the most influential figures of 2015, and writing a best-selling memoir, "Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina," in which she recounted the challenges she faced on the road to her hard-won perch in ballet - and which has been optioned for a movie. She also was the subject of the documentary A Ballerina's Tale at this year's Tribeca Film Festival.

Ms. Copeland also was featured in a popular ad for Under Armour sportswear that shows her leaping and spinning in a studio, while a narrator recounts some of the negative feedback she received as a youngster, when she was told she had the wrong body for ballet and had started too late - at 13.

The dancer also has appeared as a guest host on the show "So You Think You Can Dance" and was a presenter at this year's Tony awards.

Ms. Copeland is the first black ballerina to be named principal at ABT, and the second black dancer overall. Desmond Richardson, a black male dancer, was a principal with the company in 1977-1978, and returned as a guest artist later.

Also named a principal dancer on Tuesday was longtime soloist Stella Abrera.

The ABT biography of Misty Copeland relates that Copeland received the 2008 Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Arts and was named National Youth of the Year Ambassador for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America in 2013. In 2014, President Obama appointed Copeland to the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. She is the winner of a 2014 Dance Magazine Award.

In addition to her best-selling memoir, Misty Copeland is the author of the children's book "Firebird," about a young girl who, with Copeland's help, finds the confidence to succeed. The story was inspired by her relationship with Raven Wilkinson, she told the Los Angeles Times.

The official fan page for Misty Copeland is here.

Barbara Russum contributed to this article.

Photo: mistycopeland.com