Johnny Hazard : Tanks Versus Teachers in Mexico City

Striking teachers at Zócalo plaza in Mexico City, Friday, September 13, 2013. Photo by Eduardo Verdugo / AP.

Tanks vs. teachers:
Federal police drive striking teachers
from Mexico's Zócalo plaza

By Johnny Hazard / The Rag Blog / September 19, 2013

"In addition to promoting just causes and altering business as usual for awhile (and hoping that such alterations will be permanent), marches, rallies, highway blockages, and the collective taking of public spaces, but especially encampments and occupations, re-establish community and the liberating collective creativity that has been lost amid urban chaos." -- Armando Bartra, Mexican left intellectual

"Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexican president, doesn't know how his first wife died, can't name three books that have shaped his life, and can't name the capital city of the state of Veracruz, yet he's ready to evaluate teachers!" -- Sign on a tent at the teachers' encampment

MEXICO CITY -- 3,500 federal police, with their tanks and water cannons and joined by hundreds of the “progressive” police of Mexico City, expelled thousands of teachers, members of the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (dissident caucus but, today, the de facto teachers' union in Mexico) from the central plaza, the Zócalo, on Friday, September 13.

Violence, according to government and mainstream media, was limited, but images of 12 police attacking one woman have been widely distributed. In other times or other places, or with other actors, this may have been the end of the story: another social movement smothered.

But the teachers have not gone far. Many are in the plaza of the Monumento de la Revolución, about a mile away. And the level of public support for the teachers is much greater since the police action. Students at most of the campuses of all the public universities in the city, including technical schools and teachers' colleges, have voted in assemblies to shut down campuses and join in actions to support the teachers.

Police drive teachers from the plaza Monday. Photo by Eduardo Verdugo / AP.

They are staffing the kitchens at the encampment and arrived on short notice for a candlelight march on Saturday night and for a much bigger march on Sunday night that culminated in an alternative Independence Day celebration.

The federal police attack on teachers had, perhaps, two main objectives:

1. To support the governments's bogus education reform that stems from the premise that teachers are to blame for whatever is wrong with education and with youth. (A movie called Panzazo, styled after Waiting for Superman, was funded by the corporate elite and served as the first shot by the other side in this battle.)


2. To open up the plaza for Independence Day celebrations tonight and tomorrow. It's a strange ritual in which hundreds of thousands of apolitical, mostly drunk people fill the square, shoot fireworks at other people, spray foam on people who don't want it, and listen to the president shout "Viva México" at a time when Mexico's lack of independence in the face of U.S., Canadian, and Spanish corporations has never been more severe. Television coverage of the event appears more stately, emphasizing pomp and circumstance inside the presidential palace (which faces the Zócalo), and muting the noise of the crowd.

This year was Peña Nieto's first Independence Day in office and images abound of his promenading with his new wife, a soap opera star. His relationship with her became public very soon after the mysterious death of his first wife. When he was still a state governor, he had a multi-million-dollar publicity contract with Televisa, the largest television network. It's common here for politicians to literally buy the media with taxpayer funds, but Peña Nieto has taken the concept to a new level.

The teachers and their supporters are now organizing -- gathering food, tarps, tents, and clothes -- to withstand extreme rains. (Normally in this season, it rains for a while every day in the late afternoon, but, since Friday, it's been raining most of the time as very severe tropical storms have hit both coasts. Guerrero, home to some of the most hell-raising teachers, is especially hard-hit, with damage exacerbated by systemic negligence. In Acapulco and Chilpancingo, and more in smaller communities, there is no running water, telephone, transportation, or Internet service.)

This week has seen marches every day and most of the local universities remain in active shutdown till Friday. Much of the coverage of the strike in the U.S. media, it should be noted, has been inaccurate or misleading, or often virtually nonexistent.

[A former Minneapolis teacher, Johnny Hazard now lives in Mexico City where he is a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México and author of Con estos estudiantes: La vivencia en la UACM, a book about that alternative university.]

See earlier Rag Blog coverage of the continuing Mexican teachers' protests by Johnny Hazard and Shirley Youxjeste.

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INTERVIEW / Jonah Raskin : Occupy's Nathan Schneider on Anarchy and Radical Catholicism

Nathan Schneider, June 17, 2012. Photo from Occupy.

Interview with Occupy’s Nathan Schneider:
Anarchy, activism, and radical Catholicism

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / September 19, 2013

"It's hard to pick a revolution about which one doesn't have major misgivings. But they also have peak moments: the nuns kneeling before Marcos' tanks in the Philippines; the queer crusaders emerging out of the Sixties; the cacophonous assemblies at the Paris Commune; the pockets of anarchist rule in Catalonia; the Christians and Muslims in Tahrir guarding one another's prayers." -- Nathan Schneider

If Nathan Schneider had a middle name it might be “Contrary” or “Confrontational.” There isn’t a sentence that he writes or speaks that’s not provocative. In that sense, he’s a child of the Sixties, though he wasn’t born until the Reagan 1980s, and more precisely in 1984, the year that George Orwell warned us against.

“Half Jewish,” as he calls himself, he grew up in the free-floating spiritual environment that characterized the end of the twentieth century in America, which meant that he was touched by secular Judaism, secular Christianity, and “a strong dose of Eastern Spirituality” -- through his mother. Not surprisingly, given his family and background and the force of his own quest for a spiritual matrix, he converted to Catholicism at the age of 18.

After he graduated from public schools in Virginia, he attended Brown and then the University of California at Santa Barbara, but gave up on academia to pursue his “education through journalism.” Schneider has been connected, as an observer and a participant, to the Occupy Movement for two years, beginning in 2011 and continuing until the present.

He tells the story of his conversion to Catholicism in God in Proof, and the story of his engagement with Occupy in Thank You, Anarchy which Rebecca Solnit calls, in her introduction, a “superb book.” It’s not the first book about Occupy but perhaps it’s the most comprehensive.

On the cusp of 30, Schneider has quickly become one of the “best and the brightest” -- to borrow a phrase from the 1960s -- in a generation of intellectuals and activists who are reinventing the American radical tradition. In the under-30 crowd, there’s probably no one with a deeper affinity for the Sixties than Schneider, and no one more eager to question the legacies of the Sixties than he — all of which makes his books and articles provocative and entertaining.

Nathan Schneider, March 19, 2012. Photo from Occupy.

Jonah Raskin: An Old Left friend of mine -- Alexander Saxton -- used to say that there was a gene for utopia. Do you think that there’s a gene for anarchy?

Nathan Schneider: Maybe it's the same gene. Or maybe it's a mood or a moment. Many people who were talking the anarchist talk during Occupy are now more or less back to doing the same-old-same-old. The Occupy mood or moment was caused partly by a failure -- from the Democratic Party of Obama to radical left organizations -- to bring young folks into the fold. A few years after Obama's election - - with no limits on Wall Street or the security state -- there were no viable alternatives. So, there was a craving to do away with everything, take over a square and start from scratch.

My Catholic friends tell me that I’m a closet Catholic. I’m motivated by guilt and by the need to confess. There’s more to Catholicism than guilt and confession isn’t there?

Guilt motivates me, too, but I don't attribute that to Catholicism. Despite evidence to the contrary, thanks to 2,000 years of baggage, the Catholic Church is supposed to be a durable institution that helps people live out the gospel of faith, hope, and love. I've found a great deal of inspiration and support in communities of radical Catholics such as the Catholic Worker. But my faith is enlivened just as much by acts of witness that aren't done by Catholics -- and Occupy was chock full of them.

Do you wish you had been alive in 1968? If so what might you have done?

I might have kept to the sidelines. My mother was in France that year and my father in Southern California, yet their proximity to rebellion didn't seem to impact them appreciably. Occupy could just as well have passed me by if I hadn't happened to be in on it from the beginning. I had time on my hands.

What if you were alive in Paris in, say, 1789?

I would have liked to be a pamphleteer.

Or in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944?

I probably would have died, as members of my family did.

I remember Tom Hayden popularizing the notion that repression leads to resistance. In Chile, for example, repression lead to the death of a movement that had culminated in the election of Salvador Allende. Is there a more nuanced view of repression and resistance in Hayden’s?

In Occupy, repression inspired wider resistance only for the first few weeks. Occupiers, especially in early 2012, got addicted to repression and couldn't understand why their arrests stopped inspiring the public. Movements in far more repressive regimes tend to understand this dynamic instinctively. Activists need to be strategic about how much to invite the repression of the state and how much to circumvent it.

What you attribute to Hayden is related to the horrible notion that "things have to get worse before they get better." No Thanks!

When you say in Thank You, Anarchy that the revolution isn’t far off, what are you actually saying? What do you mean by “far off” and what do you mean by “revolution”?

I was thinking of a conversation I had with an Egyptian activist. I asked whether, she expected that Mubarak would be out of power. She said, "Not in a million years." Social transformation is hard; when it happens it can seem so easy and inevitable, until it gets really hard again. In the passage you're quoting from, I'm trying to play with the dialectic. As for what we mean by revolution, take your pick. I'm trying to talk about the way in which revolution can't be talked about.

You have published two books this year? What other books do you have in the works?

My goodness, two's not enough? They've got me plenty busy. But I am also working on an essay about dispensationalism, a popular form of apocalyptic theology.

What political writers have taught you the most about writing about politics?

Jeff Sharlet -- who also writes at the intersection of politics and religion -- has long been a mentor, though I can't come close to imitating him. He introduced me to JoAnn Wypijewski who guided me at a formative time. As the initial occupation approached, I was reading Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night -- about the 1967 anti-war march on Washington -- which I loved and hated, because all that seems to matter to Mailer is what he’s thinking. At times his thoughts are brilliant. Lastly, I've learned a lot from Joan Didion, especially how her thinking is less important than what she reveals.

How white was Occupy Wall Street?

Schneider on Occupy.

It started out pretty white, and then became less white and then white again. We saw some of the wrinkles in our supposedly post-racial society when it turned out that people didn't know how to relate to each other across racial lines.

The other day, I saw a young black man in my neighborhood wearing one of Jay Z's "Occupy All Streets" T-shirts. The movement forced Jay Z to discontinue those shirts. In Occupy Atlanta, John Lewis, a civil rights hero, was denied a chance to speak. A lot of the beauty in us and in our society that’s normally hidden under a bushel was allowed to shine in Occupy. So was a lot of ugliness.

Can you say more about Jay Z and the T-shirts?

People were very sensitive to rip-offs and co-optation. It was a tough decision because if the shirts had been around they might have led to more connections to communities of color.

Is there a revolution from the past that inspires you more than any other?

It's hard to pick a revolution about which one doesn't have major misgivings. Every revolution betrays. But they also have their peak moments: the nuns kneeling before Marcos' tanks in the Philippines; the queer crusaders emerging out of the Sixties; the cacophonous assemblies at the Paris Commune; the pockets of anarchist rule in Catalonia; the Christians and Muslims in Tahrir guarding one another's prayers. Still, it's hard to pick one that I'd be willing to wish on anyone.

The Left used to have a monopoly on the word “contradictions.” Now it’s everywhere. What would you say were the main contradictions, in the Marxist/Maoist sense, of Occupy?

So many: autonomy and accountability, sanity and madness, order and mischief, creativity and frustration, occupation and colonization, relief and recovery, grievance and self-sufficiency, ecstasy and failure. The moment these contradictions resolved themselves, and one element in them came to dominate over the other, the dynamism went away.

Why do you think it is that every generation in America over the past 60 years or so has wanted to define itself in opposition to an earlier and an older generation? Why not emphasize continuities between generations?

Occupy had the potential to be powerfully cross-generational. From the outset, young folks were driving it, but they were very eager to hear from elders. They wanted advice, support and help. Many leading organizers had grown up in political families, and, while they viewed their parents as more moderate than themselves, they credited their upbringing for their politics.

Sounds like you have a theory on this. 

I think that the Sixties generation of radicals had to rebel so hard against their parents that, when they became the new establishment in left wing groups, they had an Oedipal fear that later generations would do the same to them. So they didn't make a priority of raising young leaders.

If you look around at the established radical organizations, especially in New York City, you'll be hard-pressed to find more than a tiny minority of young people involved. But as those who turned out for Occupy showed, it's not for lack of young activists. Before and after Occupy, young folks eager to get involved in radical politics had to hustle to find mentors and material support. Friends of mine affiliated with the political right don’t seem to have this problem.

Are you calling for defiance against older generations?

I’m trying to bridge the gaps between generations. I tend to get along with older people.

My favorite political quotation is from Gramsci about the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will. What’s yours?

Mine is the entirety of the commencement speech that the poet-priest (and friend) Daniel Berrigan once gave at a Catholic prep school in Manhattan: "Know where you stand and stand there." Not that I follow it, really -- I just like it.

What’s your connection to Berrigan?

We met about five years ago. I started going to his monthly community suppers. We talked and saw that we had common interests. I see him regularly now, but his health is deteriorating rapidly. I don’t know how much longer he’ll be around.

In a nutshell what does anarchy mean to you?

A society in which some people don't wield unnecessary power over others, and one in which the needs of all are put before the privileges of a few. "Anarchy" has so many connotations, and in the book I like to play off of several of them at once. It's a very ambidextrous word: chaos, freedom, organization, and structurelessness. I want them all.

[Jonah Raskin, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is a professor emeritus at Sonoma State University and the author of For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman and American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and the Making of the Beat Generation. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

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Mike Klonsky : Forbes Calls Charter Schools 'Part of a Corrupt System'

Demonstration in New York against school privatization.

'Part of a corrupt system':
Forbes piece pounds charters

About the only thing charters do well is limit the influence of teachers’ unions. And fatten their investors’ portfolios.

By Mike Klonsky / The Rag Blog / September 18, 2013

An article appearing in the September 10 issue of Forbes gives a swift kick in the rear end to charter schools. According to Forbes contributor Addison Wiggin, charter schools have selective enrollments, don't perform any better than regular public schools, and are part of a corrupt system that funnels public funds into the pockets of privatizers and corporate cronies through real estate deals and tax credits.

He writes:

Charter schools are frequently a way for politicians to reward their cronies. In Ohio, two firms operate 9% of the state’s charter schools and are collecting 38% of the state’s charter school funding increase this year. The operators of both firms donate generously to elected Republicans.

In Florida, the for-profit school industry flooded legislative candidates with $1.8 million in donations last year. “Most of the money,” reports The Miami Herald, “went to Republicans, whose support of charter schools, vouchers, online education and private colleges has put public education dollars in private-sector pockets.”

But it's not just about Republicans. Wiggin saves his best shots for Democrats like the ones in Philadelphia who closed 23 public schools -- about 10% of the total -- to be replaced by charters. Not to mention Arne Duncan who "rolled out the Obama administration’s 'Race to the Top' initiative, doling out $4.4 billion in federal money to the states -- but only to those states that lifted their caps on the number of charter schools."

Something I wasn't aware of was a program called EB-5 that encourages foreign investors who pony up $1 million in a wide variety of development projects -- or as little as $500,000 in “targeted employment areas” -- to buy immigration visas for themselves and family members.

“There’s a risk to taking education to Wall Street,” says Education Week -- “one that helps explain why so few publicly traded companies cater to the educational needs of students in elementary, middle and high school.”

But EdWeek charter school blogger Katie Ash attacks Wiggin's piece for being "inflammatory." Wiggin doesn't mince words, says Ash, "and I'm sure many will take offense at his staunch views."

Not me. He's shooting straight.

This article was also posted by the author to Schooling in the Ownership Society.

[Mike Klonsky is a long-time education activist who teaches in the College of Education at DePaul University and is director of the Small Schools Workshop. He has spoken and written extensively on education issues and is active in the struggles in Chicago to save and transform public schools. A veteran of the civil rights and anti-war movements, Klonsky is a former National Secretary of SDS. He blogs at his SmallTalk Blog and you can follow him on twitter here.]

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Ron Jacobs : 'Another Self Portrait' of Bob Dylan

Another Self Portrait:
Dylan’s take revisited

Dylan's voice here is the voice of an earnest troubadour. There is little of the smoky raspiness present in his mid-sixties material or the world-weary gruffness of Dylan's current persona.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / September 18, 2013

When I lived there in the early 1970s, the main shopping area in Frankfurt am Main revolved around the Hauptwache U-Bahn stop.

Part old-world cobblestone streets and alleyways filled with small shops and part modern multifloor department stores, including the Kaufhof firebombed by the Andreas Baader (the future Rote Armee Fraktion leader) and others in an action against capitalism and war, the area covered several city blocks.

It served as a crossroads for several streetcars, a subway (U-Bahn) station that included a large shopping area, the American Express office, and lots of action. A few blocks away was the Opernplatz, site of the then bombed-out Frankfurt Opera House and the site of most major political rallies in the city.

One of my favorite stores to hang out in was in the underground shopping area at the Hauptwache. It was a fairly large store that sold records, books, and periodicals. The first time I walked around the Hauptwache and found the store, it was the enlarged cover of the Evergreen Review featuring a picture of Che Guevara that attracted me. The date was in early March 1970.

I wandered around the store, looking at the treasures therein. New Left books from around the world, mostly translated into German but some in English, leftist newspapers, a small English language book section, underground newspapers from Britain and the East Coast of the United States, and hundreds of rock, blues, and classical records.

I had no money. I fingered the records in the bins, determined to get some money and buy a couple of them. The next time I visited the store a clerk showed me the turntables in the back where I could listen to albums before purchasing. She sat me down with Jethro Tull's second album and I gave it a listen.

The next time I went to the store, I had 30 Deutsch Marks in my pocket. It was enough to buy a record and a couple undergrounds. The first record I saw in the window, and the reason I'm writing about this store, was Bob Dylan's Self Portrait. I had already read a good deal about the record, most of it negative. I didn't care. I loved Bob Dylan. I bought it without a listen. It cost 30 DM. No underground newspapers for me that time.

After getting on the streetcar home I opened the bag, unwrapped the cellophane from the album and studied the package. The songs were mostly traditional tunes with a couple live recordings of Dylan and the Band from the previous year’s Isle of Wight festival. The front was a primitivist style painting of Dylan by Dylan. A self-portrait obviously.

When I got home, I put it on the turntable. I was immediately taken, even with some of what seemed to be overproduction on some of the tracks. Besides the two tracks from Isle of Wight ("Quinn the Eskimo" and "Like a Rolling Stone"), my favorite tunes were “Days of ‘49” and “Blue Moon.”

Fast forward to 2013. A new Self Portrait disc is in my player. It’s titled Another Self Portrait and includes the tracks from the first album with that name and a few others from the same period, including a demo version of “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” a couple early takes on tunes that were on 1969’s Nashville Skyline, and some songs that appeared on the New Morning disc.

The tracks are almost all completely stripped down. Just Bob and guitar on quite a few of them. It’s even better than the original. The innocence present in this collection makes me wish it was still here. Since it isn't, this helps me pretend otherwise. Dylan's voice here is the voice of an earnest troubadour. There is little of the smoky raspiness present in his mid-sixties material or the world-weary gruffness of Dylan's current persona.

The music is as close to pure as anything ever released by Dylan. The guitar is clear and clean, his picking and strumming reflecting a casual and comfortable relationship with the instrument. The songs that include other players remind one of a very talented and friendly jam session. The songs range from outlaw ballads to songs of love; from pop standards to Dylan compositions. Arrangements are modified and time signatures changed, creating an element of surprise for the listener and lending a different understanding to the lyrics.

Bob Dylan was living in Woodstock, New York, just prior to when these songs were recorded. He was a married man making music and raising kids in the country. Some of his fans were also moving to the country, eager to leave the cops and the dealers of the city behind.

The war in Vietnam continued to rage, while the antiwar movement was taking desperate turns, wondering how in the hell it could stop the killing. Cops in all sorts of uniforms (and many not in uniform) were doing their best to disrupt and destroy the positive changes the counterculture was trying to establish. Music might have been the only salvation.

The guitar playing on these songs is superb and technically superior to anything Dylan recorded before. In addition, the musicians that appear on these songs are topnotch and include David Bromberg, The Band, Al Kooper, Norman Blake, Charlie McCoy, Charlie Daniels, and a myriad of other top players, many then working in Nashville.

The musical interaction between Dylan and his fellows creates a performance ranking among the best Dylan has ever put together. This is somewhat remarkable given the mostly negative response the first Self Portrait album received. In part, that reception can be blamed on the strings that were laid on top of many of the original tracks. To put it simply, the overdubs hid most of the folk instrumentation actually played during the recording sessions.

Another reason for the poor reception had to do with the expectations so many people had for Dylan in 1971. Despite his recent attempts to step back from the role of generational spokesman and all-around revolutionary so many had placed on him (and, to be honest, he encouraged in some ways), all too many of his listeners wanted him to lead the charge. However, it turned out Dylan did not even want to be in the battle.

There is one song in this collection that I first heard on the bootleg (unauthorized release) known as the Great White Wonder. This song has always intrigued me with the simple manner it emotionally stirs the listener to consider the grimy, lost men that sit on sidewalks around the world. Titled “Only a Hobo,” it’s the first Dylan song I ever learned to play on guitar.

That’s not why I like it, though. It’s because of the song’s unadorned musical approach to its subject matter. Bob Dylan sings a tale of a broken man whose heroism goes unnoticed because his heroic act is just that of being alive in spite of the fact that his life has gone “from a drop in the bucket to a hole in the ground.”

The version on this CD has a banjo playing clearly in the background, plucking away the minutes of a dying hobo’s life. That banjo extracts the melancholy present in this story of capitalism’s castoffs. Together with Bob Dylan’s singing, the melancholy of a hobo’s life is forged into the beauty that is the other side of this life.

Another Self Portrait revives a part of Dylan’s catalog that has been unjustly ridiculed. This two-CD set forces a reconsideration of Dylan’s intentions and his artistry during the period these recordings cover. Indeed, critic Greil Marcus does exactly that in his set of liner notes accompanying the CD. (It was Marcus who wrote the infamous Rolling Stone review that asked of the original Self-Portrait, “What is this shit?” -- more in response to the album’s reception than to the music therein.)

Suffice it to say, it is worthy of reconsideration.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, was published in 2013, along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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Alan Waldman: ‘Are You Being Served?’ Was Hit Sitcom in Britain and Around the World

Waldman's film and TV
treasures you may have missed:

It -- and sequel ‘Grace and Favour’ -- aired 81 classic episodes, which repeated and repeated on many PBS stations.

By Alan Waldman / The Rag Blog / September 18, 2013

[In his weekly column, Alan Waldman reviews some of his favorite films and TV series that readers may have missed, including TV dramas, mysteries, and comedies from Canada, England, Ireland, and Scotland. Most are available on DVD and/or Netflix, and some episodes are on YouTube.]

Are You Being Served? is a beloved Britcom that aired 69 silly and naughty but highly amusing episodes from 1972 to 1985. It dealt with the antics and misadventures of the staff of the men’s and women’s clothing floor in fictional Grace Bros. department store in London.

It was created and totally written by executive producers David Croft (won two BAFTAS and earned 13 BAFTA noms for this, 'All 'Allo!, Dad’s Army, and other series and who won the British Comedy Awards’ Lifetime Achievement honor) and Jeremy Lloyd (same BAFTAs and got two Emmy noms for writing on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Lloyd started his career as a suit salesman at Simpson’s Department Store.

Later episodes drew enormous British audiences -- up to 22 million (in a country of 50 million, at that time). It took the 1977 “Best Sitcom” BAFTA.

All episodes are available on DVD and Netflix, with many episodes, such as this gem, available for free on YouTube.

From 1992 through 1993, the brilliant cast returned as the same characters running a country manor/hotel for 12 episodes of Grace & Favour (called Are You Being Served? Again! in some countries).

The cast was impeccable and their comic timing was superb. Molly Sugden played Mrs. Betty Slocombe, who drank, was man-hungry, and constantly changed her bright hair color. Gap-toothed Jon Inman was Mr. Wilberforce Humphries, a very effeminate men’s department head who lived with his mother. Frank Thornton (who went on to star in Last of the Summer Wine, Britain’s longest running sitcom) created Captain Stephen Peacock, a haughty floorwalker who claims to have fought in the British North Africa campaign, but who actually worked with food and never saw combat.

Cast of Are You Being Served?

Wendy Richards (long a mainstay of the enormously popular soap opera Eastenders) was cute but dim cockney saleslady Miss Shirley Brahms. Nicholas Smith (with young Mike Berry, one of the only two cast members still alive today) was incompetent, jug-eared Mr. Cuthbert Rumbold, who was autocratic to some, obsequious to his boss, and who had a long series of foxy but stupid secretaries.

Trevor Bannister as Mr. Lucas, followed by Mike Berry as Mr. Spooner, were womanizing, wisecracking junior salesmen. Harold Bennett was ancient “young Mr. Grace,” who was rich, stingy, and surrounded by sexy “nurses.” Arthur Brough was older salesman Mr. Ernest Grainger, who often fell asleep on the sales floor. There were also many funny minor and guest characters.

Are You Being Served? had much humor based on sexual innuendo, misunderstandings, mistaken identity, and slapstick. Outrageously funny sight gags often featured crazy costumes which the characters were required to wear for store promotions or gaudy store displays frequently with malfunctioning robotic mannequins. The show constantly made fun of the rigid British class system. Are You Being Served? is best remembered for its prolific use of double entendre.

Those double entendres and the show’s reliance on sexual stereotypes attracted some mild criticism, as did frequent jokes about Mrs. Slocombe's cat. A typical line from Mrs Slocombe: "Animals are very psychic; the least sign of danger and my pussy's hair stands on end." John Inman's camp portrayal of Mr. Humphries as a seemingly gay man could easily be misinterpreted by viewers. Inman pointed out that Mr. Humphries' true sexual orientation was never explicitly stated, and writer David Croft declared that the character was not homosexual, but "just a mother's boy."

The series was very popular in the United States on PBS stations and on BBC America, as well as in many Commonwealth nations around the world. My various wives and I howled through much-anticipated repeat episodes, time and again. A U.S. adaptation pilot episode called Beane's of Boston aired on CBS, but it didn't make it to series. An Australian version, also called Are You Being Served?, ran for 16 episodes from 1980 to 1981 and co-starred John Inman as Mr. Humphries.

In 1977, an Are You Being Served? film was released, using the same characters and cast. It was set in the fictional Spanish resort of Costa Plonka. The film was an adaptation of a very successful stage version of the show.

Grace & Favour/Are You Being Served? Again! had the same main cast as its predecessor, plus Michael Bilton (who was priceless in Waiting for God), Billy Burden, Fleur Bennett, and others.  

[Oregon writer and Houston native Alan Waldman holds a B.A. in theater arts from Brandeis University and has worked as an editor at The Hollywood Reporter and Honolulu magazine. Read more of Alan Waldman's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Revisiting 'American Exceptionalism'

Beacon to the world? Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Was Putin right?
Revisiting 'American exceptionalism'

A better future and the survival of the human race require us to realize, as Paul Robeson suggested, that what is precious about humanity is not our differences but our commonalities.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / September 17, 2013

Continued study and research into the origins of the folk music of various peoples in many parts of the world revealed that there is a world body -- a universal body -- of folk music based upon a universal pentatonic (five tone) scale. Interested as I am in the universality of (hu)mankind -- in the fundamental relationship of all peoples to one another -- this idea of a universal body of music intrigued me, and I pursed it along many fascinating paths. -- Paul Robeson, Here I Stand, 1959.

America’s destiny required the U.S. “...to set the world its example of right and honor... We cannot retreat from any soil where providence has unfurled our banner. It is ours to save that soil, for liberty, and civilization... It is elemental... it is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth.” -- Senator Albert Beveridge, Indiana, Congressional Record, 56 Congress, I Session, pp.704-712, 1898.

President Vladimir Putin wrote in The New York Times, September 12, 2013, that “it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.” This statement embedded in a generally reasonable statement about the instability of Syria brought an outcry from the liberal media elite and often-quoted academics.

For example a Bloomberg editorial refers to Putin’s “bizarre” “out-of date” analysis. Professor Fouad Ajami wrote that “Arab regimes of plunder and tyranny were both physically close to Russia” and the “lawless Kremlin model.”

Liberal commentators dwelled on the silly pictures of muscular Putin riding a horse without a shirt. Or they reminded viewers of Russia’s recent (and vile) homophobia. Or they referred to Putin’s pedigree as a KGB operative or as the ruler behind the throne manipulating the Russian electoral system in order to return to office after being replaced.

Even considering the source.
Image from Huffington Post.

Although critics were probably correct to challenge his claim that the recent gassing of Syrian citizens was done only by rebels, he did admit that the Assad regime in fact does have such weapons. But both Democrats and Republicans expressed outrage that anyone could challenge the idea that the United States is the “exceptional” nation.

Let’s be clear. United States foreign policy over the last 150 years has been a reflection of many forces including economics, politics, militarism, and the desire to control territory. The most important idea used by each presidential administration to gain support from the citizenry for the pursuit of empire is the claim that America is “exceptional”.

Think about the view of “the city on the hill” articulated by Puritan ancestors who claimed that they were creating a social experiment that would inspire the world. Over 300 years later President Reagan again spoke of “the city on the hill.” Or one can recall public addresses of turn of the twentieth century luminaries such as former President Theodore Roosevelt who claimed that the white race from Europe and North America was civilizing the peoples of what we would now call the Global South. Or Indiana Senator Beveridge’s clear statement: “It is elemental... It is racial.”

From the proclamation of the new nation’s special purpose in Puritan America, to Ronald Reagan’s reiteration of the claim, to similar claims by virtually all politicians of all political affiliations, Americans hear over and over that we are different, special, and a shining example of public virtue that all other peoples should use as their guide to building a better society and polity.

However, looking at data on the United States role in the world, the United States was at war for 201 years from 1776 to 2011. Ten million indigenous people were exterminated as the “new” nation moved westward between the 17th and the 20th centuries and at least 10 million people were killed, mostly from developing countries between 1945 and 2010 in wars in which the United States had some role.

In addition, world affairs was transformed by the singular use of two atomic bombs; one dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, instantly killing 80,000 people and the other on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killing another 70,000.

Comparing the image of exceptionalism with the domestic reality of American life suggests stark contrasts as well: continuous and growing gaps between rich and poor, inadequate nutrition and health care for significant portions of the population, massive domestic gun violence, and inadequate access to the best education that the society has the capacity to provide to all.

Of course, the United States was a slave society for over 200 years, formally racially segregated for another 100, and now incarcerates 15 percent of African-American men in their twenties.

The United States is not the only country that has a history of imperialism, exploitation, violence, and racism, but we must understand that our foreign policy and economic and political system are not exceptional and must be changed.

Finally, a better future and the survival of the human race require us to realize, as Paul Robeson suggested, that what is precious about humanity is not our differences but our commonalities. Exceptionalist thinking separates us. Sharing what we have in common as human beings, both our troubles and our talents, is the only basis for creating a peaceful and just world.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Michael James : Heart of Illinois in the Summer of '64

Boys in a pickup truck in front of the Fulton Democrat in Lewistown, Illinois, in the summer of 1964. Photos by Michael James from his forthcoming book, Michael Gaylord James' Pictures from the Long Haul.

Pictures from the Long Haul:
Heart of Illinois in the Summer of '64

Hanging with this band of old dudes I learned to roll smokes. I played guitar and sang with them, and in the process acquired some finger-picking guitar riffs and a staple of country tunes. I chipped in change and took regular slugs from half-pint bottles of Jim Beam.

By Michael James / The Rag Blog / September 17, 2013

[In this series, Michael James is sharing images from his rich past, accompanied by reflections about -- and inspired by -- those images. This photo will be included in his forthcoming book, Michael Gaylord James' Pictures from the Long Haul.]

The March on Washington was so positive. Good feelings flowed. The assassination of President Kennedy in the fall brings grief and sadness. Things are different now, often a world away from those feelings of hope, optimism, and belief in the future we shared after The March in August 1963.

At Christmas I leave school early for a job delivering the mail in Weston, Connecticut. I drive beside the Bridgeport Hydraulic Reservoir; I love the snow and the pines, and watch a snow goose fly over the ice-covered lake. The big bird reminds me of a B52 Bomber. One day I get out of the little Morris Minor I use to deliver the mail and knock on a door. The great jazz pianist Dave Brubeck greets me, then thanks me when I hand him his package.

Hotel Spoon River in Peoria, Illinois, 1964.

That holiday season I also saw a Broadway production of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology at the Belasco Theater. I fell in love with Spoon River. Discovering Masters -- and other authors, radicals, and muckraking journalists -- gave me a more realistic view of America. Masters’ portrayal of small town life countered the popular images of “the good old days” and an unblemished American flag.

My dad and mom had known Masters when he was an older man. I heard about him all of my life. I hadn’t paid much attention to it. And I was not an enthused listener when my dad, standing in his underwear, would pull Spoon River Anthology off the bookshelf and read the poems, the stories from the grave.

At the University of Chicago Dad had the lead in a theatrical production of Masters’ Andrew Jackson. Masters’ wife saw it and told him to look up Edgar Lee in New York City. As he was a young actor then in Morris Carnovsky’s Group Theater, he did and was treated kindly. He also met Sherwood Anderson while hanging out at the Chelsea Hotel. Later both my parents worked on the radio show Against the Storm, and Dad gave Masters the part of the “old Professor.”

Each weekday during the spring of 1964 I got up before dawn and drove out Route 22 to Half Day, Illinois. I climbed up into my bus at the Ritzenthaler bus barn and drove two school bus routes. I saw cows heading to pasture, picked up kids from as far north as Antioch on the Wisconsin border, and dropped them off at school.

I would return to my apartment and spend several hours writing before going back out on the roads. Then I would pick up the school kids and drop them at their homes. I loved that job.

The writing was academic: sociology. I was working on my senior thesis and the topic was “The American Business Elite: Route of Entrance and Field of Success for Those Possessing Low Status Attributes.” Got it? Basically the well-heeled -- the old-line bluebloods -- made it big in established fields like banking, while Catholics and Jews, possessing “low status attributes,” made it via newer, riskier routes, like the railroad and entertainment industries.

That spring some of the Lake Forest College fraternities brought Bo Diddley to campus. I reconnected with Jerome, the maraca player, and reminded him of the time in 1957 when we shared hard cider at St. Anthony’s Hall in Saugatuck, Connecticut. Then I told him about when my boyhood pal Doug Fenton and I -- with two young well-to-do New York girls -- went to the Apollo to see Bo and waited after the show at the backstage door.

Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner at Heart of Illinois Fair in Peoria, 1964.

We wanted to say Hi and talk with “my friend Jerome.” Eventually he had come out -- blasted, wearing a doo rag and a leather coat -- and given us a mumbled hello before he split. This time, Jerome laughed. We talked and drank beer.

Who would have thought? I graduated from Lake Forest College -- with honors. I was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and accepted for graduate study at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Brandeis, and the University of California, Berkeley. My plan was to become a sociologist. I thought the most radical sociologists were at Berkeley. So Berkeley was my choice.

But first, I had a summer ahead of me.

I got a job as a “participant observer” working with an anthropologist named Mel Diamond on a Notre Dame study of Southern white migrants in Chicago’s Uptown. I moved into the Villa Sarata, an SRO (single room occupancy) on the 4100 block of Kenmore. It was the first time I had lived in a city since I was a baby in New York. And it was my first -- though not last -- move into Chicago’s legendary and notorious Uptown.

I began learning about Appalachia: its people and the conditions that moved them North.

A good amount of my time was spent under the El tracks in the alley between Kenmore and the Graceland Cemetery -- resting place of the boxing champ Jack Johnson. By day I hung out with a group of older hillbillies -- or Southern guys -- and wrote up notes at night. One of the “subjects” was Penny Menser from Kentucky, a one-armed guy who was an ace cigarette roller.

Hanging with this band of old dudes I learned to roll smokes. I played guitar and sang with them, and in the process acquired some finger-picking guitar riffs and a staple of country tunes. I chipped in change and took regular slugs from half-pint bottles of Jim Beam.

The manager’s wife at the Villa Sarata taught me to make biscuits and gravy. Sometimes at night I walked up to Montrose Avenue to the Jubilee, a bar with a great C&W band and one amazing -- and near-naked -- shake dancer in a cage. One of the musicians, Louie Bautista, later emerged as Luis, a conscious Chicano and body worker; I received my first massage from him, in 1976.

My girlfriend from Lake Forest, Lucia, and her family had moved back to Peoria. I took the Illinois Central Railroad down to visit. Waiting to be picked up at the station on what turned out to be a very hot day, I enjoyed an ice-cold beer at the Coney Island Tap. The next day we visited Spoon River country, starting in Lewistown, where farmers in overalls gathered for an auction. I spotted the Hotel Spoon River and a Ford pickup truck with two boys in it, parked in front of The Fulton Democrat.

Next we went to Petersburg to visit Masters’ boyhood home and the cemetery where he is buried. Also buried there is Ann Rutledge -- who may have been Abe Lincoln’s first love and the subject of a poem in Spoon River Anthology.

Our final stop was the Heart of Illinois Fair in Peoria, where we attended a Democratic Party rally featuring Governor Otto Kerner. Kerner was a liberal, two-term Governor best known as the head of Lyndon Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. That Commission issued The Kerner Report after the summer of ‘67’s urban black rebellions, a report critical of the government’s failings in the issues of poverty and the inner city. It warned the nation was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal.”

Kerner was also known for allegedly arranging favorable dates for some Illinois racetracks. The racetrack scandal made him the first of four Illinois Governors to do prison time, though to this day his conviction remains suspect. Big Jim Thompson prosecuted Kerner. Thompson was the U.S. Attorney General for Northern Illinois, appointed by President Nixon. A Republican, he would go on to four reigns as Illinois Governor, supporting the flat-tax idea responsible for the pension crisis crippling Illinois today.

Mike's 1957 Ford "ragtop" convertible.

 The summer over, I rode solo in the white ‘57 Ford convertible I got from Dick Simon. Simon, from Manhattan, was one of Lake Forest College’s beatniks. I took the “ragtop” through Indiana, driving through the night down the old Route 20.

The convertible’s top was ripped-up and coming apart, so I kept it down. It was August, but the night was unseasonably cold. I was bundled up and wearing my foul weather rain gear. Both the heater and the radio were blasting away. I sped under stars and a waxing moon through mile after mile of cornfields, slowing at irregular intervals when cruising through the dimly lit and very still small towns.

Again, I headed home to visit my family at the old farmhouse on Westport’s Wilton Road. I’d stay a few days, soak in the people and the vibes once again, then roll west, back across the continent to sunny California. UC Berkeley, here I come. I’m about to take another step into America, and the exciting, fun-filled, dynamic, and tragic days of the 1960’s.

[Michael James is a former SDS national officer, the founder of Rising Up Angry, co-founder of Chicago's Heartland Café (1976 and still going), and co-host of the Saturday morning (9-10 a.m. CDT) Live from the Heartland radio show, here and on YouTube. He is reachable by one and all at michael@heartlandcafe.com. Find more articles by Michael James on The Rag Blog.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Award-Winning Novelist and Screenwriter Stephen Harrigan

Noted Texas writer Stephen Harrigan in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, Friday, September 6, 2013. Photos by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio podcast:
Award-winning novelist, screenwriter,
and journalist Stephen Harrigan

The author of the New York Times bestseller, The Gates of the Alamo, Harrigan has been selected to write the initial title and centerpiece work in an ambitious 16-volume history of Texas to be published by the University of Texas Press.

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / September 17, 2013

Award-winning author, screenwriter, and journalist Stephen Harrigan was our guest on Rag Radio, Friday, September 6, 2013.

Rag Radio is a weekly syndicated radio program produced and hosted by long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, and recorded at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download the podcast of our September 6 interview with Stephen Harrigan here:


Stephen Harrigan, the author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction,  has been selected to write the initial title and centerpiece work in an ambitious 16-volume history of Texas -- tagged the Texas Bookshelf -- to be published by the University of Texas Press.

Harrigan is the author of  The Gates of the Alamo, a New York Times bestseller and the recipient of the Spur Award for the best Novel of the West. Harrigan's novel, Remember Ben Clayton, also won the Spur Award, as well as the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians for best historical novel.

The Eye of the Mammoth, a career-spanning collection of Harrigan's essays, was published in 2013 by the University of Texas Press.

Stephen Harrigan, left, with Rag Radio's
Thorne Dreyer and Tracey Schulz.

Steve Harrigan is an award-winning screenwriter who has written many movies for television. A longtime contributor -- and contributing editor -- to Texas Monthly, his articles and essays have appeared in a wide range of publications.

Also a Faculty Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Steve is a founding member of the Texas Book Festival and of Capital Area Statues, Inc. Harrigan will be featured at the 2013 Texas Book Festival and is one of three writers being honored with the Austin Public Library Friends Foundation's 2013 Illumine awards for excellence in literary achievement.

On Rag Radio, we discuss the special demands of researching and writing historical fiction -- especially when the subject is an iconic event like the Battle of the Alamo, and Harrigan's revealing and often very funny experiences as an "A-List writer of B-List productions," while writing made-for-TV movies.

We also talk about Steve's participation in the massive Texas history project being undertaken by the UT Press; about the unique role that Texas Monthly magazine has played in encouraging and nourishing Texas writers; and about the recent death -- and significant legacy -- of Texas literary giant John Graves.


Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio is now also aired on KPFT-HD3 90.1 -- Pacifica radio in Houston -- on Wednesdays at 1 p.m.

The show is streamed live on the web and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, September 20, 2013: Environmental researcher and climate change activist Bruce Melton.
Friday, September 27, 2013: In their first father/daughter interview, Newsman Dan Rather and Austin-based environmentalist Robin Rather.
Friday, October 4, 2013: Novelist Thomas Zigal, author of Many Rivers to Cross.
Note: Our interview with Chicago-based activist Michael James, originally scheduled for Friday, September 20, will be rescheduled on a date to be determined.

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Jean Trounstine : Education in Prison Works

Image from audaciousideas.org.

So are we listening?
Study proves education in prison works

The largest ever meta-analysis of prison education and its overwhelming positive effect on recidivism was released in August, so what are we going to do about it?

By Jean Trounstine / The Rag Blog / September 16, 2013

It was barely six months ago when I first wrote about the battle to bring back Pell Grants for prisoner education programs across the country. Pell grants are those all-important grants that my college students rely on and that once funded prisoners -- 1 percent of those who received such grants across the country.

Pells were “disappeared” under “progressive” President Bill Clinton in 1994 when he signed an omnibus crime bill that allowed removal of Pells. And with their removal, we punctured college programming in many states.

Back in March, I applauded the work many were doing with little money to bring attention to the need for Pells and the need for education in general for those behind bars. This underscores a well-known fact: the more education a person has, the less likely that person is to be involved in the criminal justice system or to recidivate if they have been incarcerated.

And in Texas, at a time when 1-in-27 adults are in prison, jail, on probation, or parole, that is pretty significant. Education keeps people out of prison and the clearer that becomes, the more likely we are to get others to see we save money by helping to fund the education of those in prison, on probation, and on parole. Pell grants still haven't made it back as a way to fund college education in prison but that doesn’t mean we can’t advocate for their return.

This past August, a report from the Rand Corporation -- apparently "the largest-ever meta-analysis of correctional educational studies" -- found a statistical basis for what some of us have been saying for years. According to Rand, prisoners who "receive general education and vocational training are significantly less likely to return to prison after release and are more likely to find employment than peers who do not receive such opportunities."

The cost is also a major plus for prisons and prisoners: a $1 investment in prison education "reduces incarceration costs by $4 to $5 during the first three years post-release."

Most important is this new piece of data: those who participate in any sort of correctional education program have 43 percent less liklihood of returning to prison than those who do not. Not insignificantly, employment after release was 13 percent higher among those who participated in either academic (or vocational) education programs than those who did not.

Amidst sweltering Texas jail cells and lawsuits over unbearable conditions, Texas recently got some notice for its business education program -- somewhat ironically, in my opinion, called “Prison Entrepreneurship Program. And the Windham School District has always supported correctional educational courses.

But across the country, the kind of education that gives people access to science, the humanities, and social sciences is not given any sort of priority -- no matter how much that education might make prisoners better next-door neighbors. I’d love to see EdX -- free Internet courses offered by such institutions as Harvard and MIT -- offered to prisoners. But who will take the time to develop that program when an "eye for an eye" makes us say, “they did the crime, who cares?”

Several years ago I visited a prison in England and discovered how much some Brits valued education behind bars. They were allowing and encouraging prisoners who were on their way out to apply to colleges while still incarcerated so they'd have some security when they reentered the free world.

One prison I visited also brought in those searching for workers -- i.e. recruiters -- to watch prisoners perform in theatrical productions. After seeing a performance, job counselors interviewed the actors and many were offered jobs upon release. This was one of the most supportive and creative ways I had seen -- anywhere -- to help people land on their feet.

These studies that we do -- Rand's being the latest and perhaps the most comprehensive to date -- are great, but only if prisons and correctional officials actually listen to the results. It's good to hear Attorney General Eric Holder saying that

These findings reinforce the need to become smarter on crime by expanding proven strategies for keeping our communities safe, and ensuring that those who have paid their debts to society have the chance to become productive citizens.

Now let's bring back Pell Grants and make college accessible and affordable for all -- even, and especially, those behind bars who are proving they are more likely to stay out of crime if given books, pens, teachers, and a chance.

[Jean Trounstine is an author/editor of five published books and many articles, professor at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, and a prison activist. For 10 years, she worked at Framingham Women's Prison and directed eight plays, publishing Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison about that work. She blogs for Boston Magazine and takes apart the criminal justice system brick by brick at jeantrounstine.com where she blogs weekly at "Justice with Jean." Find her contributions to The Rag Blog here.]

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Kate Braun : During Fall Equinox Give Thanks for Earth's Bounty

Honor Mother Earth on Fall Equinox. Image from Seeds of Good Fortune.

Fall Equinox:
A time to seek balance in all things

By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / September 16, 2013

“Come, ye thankful people come
Raise the song of harvest home...”

Sunday, September 22, 2013 is the Fall Equinox, aka Mabon, Harvest Home, Second Harvest, or Cornucopia. Hours of day and night are equal on this day. As you concentrate on rituals for protection, prosperity, security, self-confidence, and harmony, seek balance in all things.

Use the colors red, orange, russet, maroon, brown, deep gold, and violet in your decorations and dress. Select decorations from an assortment of gourds, pine cones, acorns, grains, apples, pomegranates, ivy, dried seeds, horns of plenty, grapes, autumn leaves, scales or balance beams, and textured fabrics such as velvet, velour, and corduroy.

Serve your guests a buffet that can include breads, nuts, apples, pomegranates, carrot soup, blackberries, nuts, and cider as well as red meat or fowl. Honor all Goddess-as-Matron deities such as Cerridwyn, the Celtic water-oriented Goddess of Autumn whose symbol is the cauldron; her fruit is the apple and all nuts and seeds are sacred to her.

Traditionally, quilts were started on this date, but any project that would occupy your winter evenings could be begun now. You may also make a corn dolly or other poppet, charge it with the qualities and goals you are working on, and bury in the yard or garden as a seed that will see fruition as you achieve the goal.

To make a corn dolly: using about three fresh corn husks, bend them in half and use a strip of corn husk to tie off a small bit at the bend to form the dolly’s head; decide where the waist should be, twist the corn husks at this point and tie them with another corn husk strip. Fluff out the skirt and your corn dolly is finished. Sprinkle her with a few drops of wine and tell her the qualities and goals you choose to work on over the winter. Write this down for future reference.

Then bury her in your garden or back yard or under a tree, as you would plant a seed you want to grow vigorously. Plan to visit the site periodically; use it during the Dark Time to meditate on what you have sown. When celebrating the Spring Equinox, look at what your goals were and see what strides you have made towards achieving them.

This is a festival where you should give thanks for: Mother Earth’s bounty and the feast being enjoyed; friends and family; specific goodnesses in your life (name them); professional success as well as the basics of food, clothing, and shelter. When giving thanks, go around the table Sun-wise, starting with you, the host/ess, and moving to your left around the table.

When you give thanks for the bounty of the Earth, you are maintaining your connection to Spirit in a most elemental way. Without good water, good earth, good air, and healthy bees, there would be no crops to celebrate. Indeed, without these things there would be no people to create such a celebration. By honoring Mother Earth seasonally, we recognize not only our spirituality but also our place in the greater scheme of things.

Kate Braun will be participating in a Spiritual Life Productions Metaphysical Fair on Saturday and Sunday, September 21- 22, 2013, at the Marchesa Hall and Theater, 6406 N. I-35, Suite 3100, Austin, Texas. Saturday hours: 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m.; Sunday hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Kate will also be answering questions on Tarot, Sunday at 1 p.m. as part of the fair’s lecture series.

[Kate Braun was a contributor to the original Rag. Her website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com. Read more of Kate Braun's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 9, 1924-1930

Mural shows Saad Zaghlul, first Egyptian prime minister, giving the finger to the military council. Image from Egypt 2011 and Beyond.

A people's history:
The movement to democratize Egypt

Part 9: 1924-1930 period --The Wafd government and the repression of communists.

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / September 16, 2013

[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman's Rag Blog "people's history" series, "The Movement to Democratize Egypt," could not be more timely. Also see Feldman's "Hidden History of Texas" series on The Rag Blog.]

After an Egyptian constitution was promulgated in 1923, martial law was abolished, an election was held, and Saad Zaghlul, the leader of the Egyptian landowning elite’s nationalist Wafd party, became prime minister in January 1924.

A Wafd government was then formed in Egypt which just “represented bourgeois landowner and upper-class interests and aspirations,” did not represent the interest of Egypt’s “poverty-stricken rural peasants and urban workers,” and “was inherently hostile towards the labor movement” in Egypt, according to Tareq Y. Ismael and Rifa‘at El-Sa’id’s The Communist Movement in Egypt: 1920-1988.

During the 1920s, the plots of arable land owned by 1 million Egyptian peasants were “too small for subsistence,” and “fully one-fifth of rural families” in Egypt “owned no land at all,” according to A History of Egypt.

By late 1924 the Wafd government had interned the entire leadership of the Egyptian Communist Party and disbanded Egypt’s Confederation of Trade Unions.

After 1,200 to 1,500 Egyptian workers had gone on strike in February 1924 at the Filatunes Nationales of Egypt firm in Alexandria -- and workers at Egyptian Oil Industries, Egyptian Salt and Soda Company, Kafr-El-Zayat-Coffon Company, and Abouchanabs had also gone on strike during the same month -- the Wafd government banned gatherings of Egyptian workers, and on March 3, 1924, arrested Egyptian Communist Party leaders such as Hosni al-‘Arabi, Anton Maroun, and Sheikh Safwan Abu-al-Fatah and destroyed the Egyptian Communist Party of the early 1920s.

But “the Comintern put together a new central committee from the remnants of the Egyptian Communist Party” still active “and not imprisoned;” and a new Egyptian Communist Party organization -- "this time more tightly structured, with cells and a private printing press -- was implemented in Cairo, Alexandria, and Port Said,” according to The Communist Movement in Egypt: 1920-1988.

And, as the same book recalled, on March 6, 1925, the Egyptian Communists “acquired a small newspaper, al-Hisab” and “managed to publish” prior to May 18, 1925, “eight issues before it was shut down and its editor and staff jailed.”

Yet “from the first, the organizational meetings of the” reestablished Egyptian Communist Party’s’ “new central committee were infiltrated by British intelligence;” and “an intelligence agent, Mohammed ‘Abd al-‘Aziz,” even “became secretary general of the central committee in late 1924 and served in that post for 4 years,” according to The Communist Movement in Egypt: 1920-1988.

Not surprisingly, all members of the reestablished Egyptian Communist Party’s Central Committee were arrested by the government after Ahmad Ziwar Pasha succeeded Saad Zaghhoul as the monarchical government’s prime minister on May 30, 1925. But, as Selma Botman observed in The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970, “despite the demise of organized Egyptian communism” during the 1920s, “small pockets of legal leftist activists appeared...some years later...”

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

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Alan Waldman: ‘New Street Law’ is a Dramatic English Legal Series

Waldman's film and TV
treasures you may have missed:

Scottish actor John Hannah heads a strong cast as two competing law firms seek justice.

By Alan Waldman / The Rag Blog / September 9, 2013

[In his weekly column, Alan Waldman reviews some of his favorite films and TV series that readers may have missed, including TV dramas, mysteries, and comedies from Canada, England, Ireland, and Scotland. Most are available on DVD and/or Netflix, and some episodes are on YouTube.]

New Street Law was a compelling, well-made Manchester, England, legal series that aired 14 episodes in 2006-2007. All 14 are on DVD and Netflix.

Handsome Scottish thespian John Hannah (Rebus and BAFTA nom for Four Weddings and a Funeral) stars as defense attorney Jack Roper, whose firm regularly contends against the crafty prosecutorial law firm headed by his former mentor, QC Laurence Scannel (Paul Freeman, who played the villain in Raiders of the Lost Ark).The series well combines humor, courtroom drama, romance, and suspense.

It was created, produced, and frequently written by former trial lawyer Matthew Hall, along with co-creator/producer G.F. Newman (who also created 2001-2007’s Judge John Deed).

Cases deal with murder, heroin possession, medical malpractice, arson, rape, child sexual molestation, and hate crimes. There are also various personal fireworks among the lawyers.

New Street Law features a very fine cast. John Thomson (BAFTA nom for Cold Feet) is very engaging as lawyer Charlie Darling. He has a clandestine relationship with a married female colleague (played by Laura Cazelet, who was harrowing as a prison denizen in Bad Girls). A droll judge is played by an actor I have long loved: Don Warrington (who received Britain’s MBE award and played in 63 Brit series). He was brilliantly hilarious in Rising Damp, which I have previously reviewed on this blog.

Other strong performers include Lisa Faulkner (Murder in Suburbia, Murdoch Mysteries), Chris Gascoyne (four noms for Coronation Street), Penny Downie (57 Brit TV serie), Jayne Ashbourne (40 series), Lee Williams (Hotel Babylon and 35 other series) and Ace Bhatti (nominated as “Villain of the Year” for Eastenders).

I recommend this excellent series. Partial episodes can be sampled for free on YouTube.

[Oregon writer and Houston native Alan Waldman holds a B.A. in theater arts from Brandeis University and has worked as an editor at The Hollywood Reporter and Honolulu magazine. Read more of Alan Waldman's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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