ALCStudies Journal

Advanced Labor & Cultural Studies Web Site & Blog

Category Archives: History

Good-Bye to All This

During my time in the bosom of the United States, I have experienced friendship and kindness. I have shared laughter. I have admired the creativity and talent and hard work of my friends and colleagues, and savored the majesty of my adopted country’s purple mountains , its flowing rivers and golden fields, its deserts and rocky shores.

I have tried to learn how to be blindly, incessantly optimistic, how to be obsessed with the idolatry of wealth and success, how to be entertained mindlessly and obliviously while being exploited and distracted from living by the marketplace ; how to claim self-reliance even as our friends and colleagues, family and institutions fail us; how to be resilient in our solitude and loneliness even in the midst of a pandemic and collective anxiety. Because of course God or the universe or Bill Gates always gives us what we need.

Now I am returning to be with my people, to share their fate. It is interesting to reflect on the above given the recent news in Ukraine: I doubt they would agree they are getting what they need. Have human beings learned nothing from history? Must we constantly become prey to the insecurities and resentment of individuals in each period of history who react by imposing their chaos on others?

I hope that hope will prevail, that sense will be redeemed. I look forward to waking up tomorrow individually and collectively free to savor our lives in a world where we can look forward to the future, rather than being trapped in fear and uncertainty of the present.

удачи (Best of Luck)

– DA

From a colleague:

The Honorable Nebenzia Vassily Alekseevich

Permanent Representative

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

As a US citizen and student of history I have an appreciation for Russia’s history up through World War I and to the present day. I also value your country’s rich literature and culture, including the work of Tolstoy and one of my favorite writers, Anton Chekhov. My desire would be to learn enough Russian to read at least a small amount of his work in the original. I hope I will be still afforded the opportunity in my lifetime to do this.

It is clear to me that Russian concerns for it’s security need to be acknowledged and negotiated in the context of present realities. The latter include the existence of NATO and Ukraine’s sovereignty. While the recent unilateral and violent invasion of Ukraine cannot be condoned, it is clear that Russian concerns need to be respected and addressed. The question I put to you is this: What would it take to provide practical reassurance for Russia and the parties involved in a way that is sustainable? Has this been communicated? While it seems out of the power of ordinary citizens such as myself to achieve a resolution, I think you will agree that it is in the interest of everyone’s welfare for those bearing responsibility to achieve such a rapprochement sooner rather than later.

Consumers, Free Market, Health & Wellness, History, Mental Health, News and politics, Politics, Problem-Solving , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In Honor of Carl Reiner

We can all use a laugh lately. Carl Reiner (3/20/1922–6/29/2020) and Mel Brooks were/are two of the best in delivering them. Please enjoy the following excerpt read as a tribute by one of our staff from The 2000 Year Old Man. Brooks and Reiner created and performed this sketch in the 1960s. — DA

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Skin Trouble, 1943

An excerpt read from Woody Guthrie’s book Bound for Glory; as relevant now as when he published it in 1943.

This is included in an event we planned to celebrate Guthrie’s music, life and writings.

— DA

P.S. Please see the following written text for the excerpt.

While we walked away, holding our faces to the slight breath of air that was moving across the yards, he asked , ‘Say your name was?’

I said, ‘Woody.’

‘Mine’s Brown. Glad ta meet you, Woody. You know I’e run onto this skin color before.’ He walked long the cinders.

‘Skin trouble. That’s a damn good name for it. ‘ I walked along beside him.

‘Hard to cure it after it gets started, too. I was born and raised in a country that’s got all kinds of diseases, and this skin trouble is the worst on of the lot,’ he told me.

‘Bad,’ I answered him.

‘I got sick and tired of that kind of stuff when I was just a kid growing up at home. You know. God, I had hell with some of my folks about things like that. But, seems like, little at a time, I’d sort of convince them, you know; lots of folks I never could convince. They’re kind of like the old bellyache fellow, they cause a lot of trouble to a hundred people. and then to a thousand people, all on account of just some silly, crazy notion. Like you can help what color you are. Goddamit all. Why do’t they spend that same amount of time and trouble doing something good…?

— Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory pg. 221

Audio, History, Live Performance, Mental Health, Music, News and politics, Personality, Politics, Storytelling , ,

What Goes Around —

Leave a comment Posted by on April 24, 2020

— Seems to comes around again eventually. Before Nickle & Dimed, there was George Orwell’s Down & Out in Paris & London on the plight of the poor in the 1920s. While ‘sheltering’, coping with lockdown puritanism, and hoping you can pay your bills, you can listen to Down & Out, plus Orwell’s other work, courtesy of BBC Radio. – DA

‘The stars are a free show; it don’t cost anything to use your eyes.’

‘What a good idea! I should never have thought of it.’

‘Well, you got to take an interest in something. It don’t follow that because a man’s on the road he can’t think of anything but tea-and-two-slices.’

‘But isn’t it very hard to take an interest in things—things like stars—living this life?’

‘Screeving, you mean? Not necessarily. It don’t need turn you into a bloody rabbit—that is, not if you set your mind to it.’

‘It seems to have that effect on most people.’

… ‘But you don’t need to get like that. If you’ve got any education, it don’t matter to you if you’re on the road for the rest of your life.’

‘Well, I’ve found just the contrary,’ I said. ‘It seems to me that when you take a man’s money away he’s fit for nothing from that moment.’

‘No, not necessarily. If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, “I’m a free man in here”‘—he tapped his forehead—’and you’re all right…’

George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933

Audio, Education, Entertainment, Health & Wellness, History, Literature, Mental Health, News and politics, Personality, Problem-Solving, Psychology, Storytelling, Work and Identity , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Life in a TB Sanitorium: Two New Episodes

Leave a comment Posted by on April 13, 2020

We’ve posted two new readings from an ongoing work-in-progress we’re sponsoring about a young woman diagnosed with tuberculosis in the 1950s.

Episode 5: The White Rabbit and a New Friend.

Latest Episode: Francine.

Please click to hear previous episodes on the project page.

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Leadership Trivia

One of our associates used the following inspiring speech in teaching his English class. Do you know the name of the person who originally presented the speech? Extra points for the year and occasion. Hint: It’s not by one of our current world leaders.

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an Emperor — that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible — Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there’s room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me I say, “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die; and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers: Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers: Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, “the kingdom of God is within man” — not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite!! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise!! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers: In the name of democracy, let us all unite!!!

 

Please click the link to hear the original audio of this speech in a new page at American Rhetoric.

– DA

Audio, Entertainment, Film, History, Mental Health, News and politics, Organizations, Personality, Politics, Problem-Solving, Psychology, Storytelling, Technology , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Machine Stops

Leave a comment Posted by on March 28, 2020

Readings from E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops (1909). Created for the ALCStudies project on Technology in Literature & Popular Culture.

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The Plot Thickens

2 Comments Posted by on March 23, 2020

Always something, in fiction as in life.

Please see new installments posted for Tuberculosis in the 50s (Sponsored Fiction):

3. Leaving Behind the Present
4. The San

Looking for a title. Anyone interested in doing this as a graphic novel? Netflix series?

Let’s be careful out there. – DA

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2nd Installment: Tuberculosis in the 50s

Leave a comment Posted by on February 26, 2020

Please see (hear) the second installment from a new fiction work-in-progress we are sponsoring. Thanks. – DA

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Audio File: Tuberculosis in the 50s (New Fiction)

Leave a comment Posted by on February 9, 2020

Coronavirus today; AIDS in the 80s. Through the 1950s people were afraid of the white death, AKA tuberculosis. Please listen to the initial installment from a novel in progress submitted to us about a young woman diagnosed with the disease.

This is read by one of our staff. We are considering it for possible audio serialization. For more information on TB, please see Susan Sontag’s Illness As Metaphor.

Thanks for visiting. — DA

 

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