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The Straw that Breaks the Camel's Back

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I paid twenty-five dollars for a comfortable old wicker love seat. The rasta man has his LP's and books displayed out on the sidewalk near Grand Army Plaza subway in Brooklyn. He's often there at the entrance. It was back before the turn of the century when I lived in that storefront on Vanderbilt Avenue. He just sits back in his beaten up old chair through all kinds of weather as the Park Slope crowd stream past. Streetwise. Street smart. Making a living. Hurting no one. Waiting to make a sale. So he can eat. So he can survive. So he can live. So when the rasta man saw me riding past on my bicycle, riding slow up the hill with my garden tools, he just walked out into the street and stopping me cold said: “You know me man. I'm no beggar man but I need some food some rice and beans. Can you help? Police have shut me down.” There's a thin line between civil society and revolution and sometimes it's more civil to revolt. What is it that keeps us down, compressed like t...
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Hollywood Bowl. Back in the USSR.

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  3rd June, 1985 One of the perks of journalism, particularly in overseas Bureaus, was the opportunity to pick your stories and rub shoulders with history and the past. I was on assignment with Ray Martin and David Brill for Australian Broadcasting and we were on the road with Eugene McCarthy on the way to the Hollywood  Bowl in LA. As well as a skilled and idealistic politician, McCarthy was a published poet and we’d already filmed him in his Washington DC office as part of a profile. Eugene McCarthy ran for president as  peace candidate in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War. Many years later I wrote in my diary: “CBS reports on the CIA and army disinformation campaign during Vietnam War. Seems General Westmoreland continuously underestimated allied troop casualties by as much as one-half to give President Johnson the feeling that America was winning the war. How many thousands were killed because of this?”. I remember that hot afternoon at the Hollywood Bowl...
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Still Nicaraguan Night.

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 Managua, Nicaragua 1987. The moon is round and cool and bright streaming down across the sky  breathing soft  tonight. Still Nicaraguan night  “FSLM” in rude bold strokes  red and black f ading  on the concrete wall.   “No Pasaran”. Still Nicaraguan night, apprehensive, still full of hope struggling through its triumph. The hard dry grass pricks my back. The rum is velvet sweet and strong.  The dog barks. 
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