#Longshoremen’s Hall

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"'LONGSHOREMEN HERE JOIN SHIPPING STRIKE," Toronto Star. September 13, 1943. Page 2. ---- Object to Labor Board Hearing Case Until Third Member Named ---- Montreal, Sept. 13 - (CP) National war labor board hearings of disputes involving "several thousand" freight handlers across Canada will await "the time when the board is fully constituted," F. H. Hall, vice-president of the International Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, so announced today.

He said he had sent a telegram to the labor board "declining to proceed with hearings scheduled for tomorrow and Wednesday and had urged Hon. Humphrey Mitchell, minister of labor, "to take immediate steps to fully constitute the board."

The labor board now has only two members, as the service of J. L. Cohen, K.C., labor representative, was terminated by federal cabinet action.

Meanwhile Mr. Hall gave this picture of the situation as far as A.F.L. freight handlers are concerned:

The strike of 1.800 Canadian Steamship Lines freight handlers and sympathizers from the Clarke Steamship Line in various St. Lawrence waterway ports continues, virtually paralyzing the movement of waterborne freight from the lakehead to Quebec.

Representatives of 3.500 C.P.R. hourly-rated employees from coast to coast, demanding vacations with pay and scheduled to appear before the labor board tomorrow, will not appear.

Representatives of 650 stevedores, employed by the Eastern Canada Stevedoring Co. of Halifax and demanding wage increases, will not appear at a scheduled hearing before the labor board.

Representatives of 500 Canadian Pacific and Canadian National freight handlers of Montreal, demanding wage increases, will not appear at a scheduled hearing before the labor board.

Representatives of 250 Canadian Pacific longshoremen at Saint John. N.B., demanding wage increases, will not appear at a scheduled hearing before the labor board.

Strike Spreads Here One hundred and fifty longshoremen, all C.S.L. employees in Toronto today joined the shipping strike which has involved five Great Lakes and St. Lawrence river ports.

Frank H. Hall, president of the board of Railway and Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express and Station Employees union. an- nounced: "The national war labor board has set Wednesday for the hearing of the case and the union has declined to proceed until the board is fully constituted.

"By an order-in-council made public last week. J. L. Cohen is no longer a member of the board. The union, on my instructions, has declined to be heard until a labor representative is appointed."

Mr. Hall said that freight at the head of the lakes is "completely tied up" there. He said, longshoremen employed by the Canadian Pacific Steamships and the Canada Steamship lines are on strike. The Montreal strike included employees of the Clarke Steamship Lines Ltd.

A C.S.L. official said that freight loading and unloading "is moving as usual in Toronto. We have a permanent staff here," was his only comment. There are no picket lines, he added.

No lake ships were unloaded at Montreal during the week-end. But at Fort William, white collar workers turned out to move part of the cargo of the passenger and package freight carrier Keewatin. All package freight boats at Fort William are idle, a C.S.L. official said.

The Keewatin cleared Fort William several hours later and with part of her cargo unloaded after all available labor, including office workers, trucked freight from the vessel to the shed for hours. At Sarnia, the C.S.L. steamer Huronic remained unloaded after 75 dock handlers there walked out in sympathy.

[lilsam96]

I'm just gonna yell into the void for a second because I'm... I'm far from being an angry person, but there's very specific things that make me want to turn into the Doom Slayer and starting ripping and tearing until it is done...

Just casually at hire this morning, and my buddy, S, is sitting with me in the hall. We're just talking and waiting it out. End up being told we can sign, and she had some place to be for family, so she left.

When she did, apparently that gives a senior guy the right to talk with three other senior guys about her loud enough that most people in the room can hear... Loud enough for ✨me✨ to hear.

He starts talking about a job S took about a month ago (A MONTH AGO) and how she was just standing there doing nothing and how he was yelling at her to "get to work" and "stop making your work partners do the job for her." He then tells this group of dudes that he laid into her -- nicely -- after the job was done and told her "if you can't do the job, don't take it out of the window," and proceeded to joke that she was on the verge of tears. *We do not have that luxury as casuals, mind you.*

Mind you, I'm sitting over in my seat, vibrating and livid, because that was NOT how that went for S. She's the hardest worker I've ever known, even more so than most guys I've worked with. She was fighting to get things done on that specific shift. There's a lot of senior guys that don't take the job S got that time because it's such a hard.

And those tears that senior dude thought she had? Not true. S was shaking because she was trying to hold back the hands she was about to throw, and that's the LAST thing you want from her. There's a reason why she's got a big ass scar on her right hand and why her ex husband is her ex. SHE DOESNT TAKE SHIT FROM NO ONE.

And to make matters worse, people who know this senior guy knows he's extremely misogynistic and he doesn't think women should be longshoremen. So he was a piece of shit to begin with.

I didn't tell S about it because she has some family stuff going on right now and doesn't need me adding fuel to any sort of fire... But I will say I was thinking some very violent, close quarter combat stuff in my head about this guy... And that doesn't happen almost at all. So I'm gonna go over here and just... Duke out these thoughts with some weights and heavy metal music because that dawg in me is about ready to just pick a fight.

[lboogie1906]

Ernest Charles Tanner (Ernie) (June 5, 1889 - 1956) was born in Indianapolis. His father was a trapeze performer, and his mother was a nurse. Moving to Tacoma with his family in 1900, He attended Stadium High School where he emerged as an outstanding athlete in track, basketball, baseball, and football. He attended Whitworth College and according to the Oregonian, was the first African American to play football at the college level in the Pacific Northwest. He helped Whitworth defeat the University of Oregon. He played in the local Negro League where he was captain and manager of the Tacoma “Little Giants.”

He joined the Tacoma chapter of the International Longshoremen’s Association. Generally, Black members were treated as “second class” and, placed into segregated locals.

His defining moment as a longshoreman came in the “Big Strike” of 1934 that shut down every Pacific Coast port. He was the only African American on the Tacoma strike committee and worked with San Francisco leader Harry Bridges to keep Black and white workers united during the strike so that employers could not break the union. He was elected to serve as the chairman of the local publicity committee.

He served as a trustee of Local 38-97 and on its executive board. He insisted that African American dockworkers be paid the same wages and work under the same conditions as white longshoremen.

When longshoremen in other West Coast ports left the ILA and formed the International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union, Tacoma remained in the ILA, the only major local not to join the ILWU. They finally joined the ILWU as Local 23.

The Tacoma longshoremen decided to build a new hall and the local’s members elected him to chair the building committee. The building was named the Ernest C. Tanner Labor and Ethnic Studies Center as part of the University of Washington’s Tacoma campus.

His son Jack, graduated from law school, after working on the docks and became the Pacific Northwest’s first African American federal judge when was named to the Federal District Court for Western Washington. He was survived by his wife, Irene, his son, and his daughter. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[stevenbejarano]

Pre-show vanity session (at Longshoremen Hall) https://www.instagram.com/p/Co2E9xcLWY6/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[undergroundrockpress]

Trips Festival, 1966. Photo by Gene Anthony.

The Trips Festival was a transformative event that helped mark the beginning of the hippie counterculture movement in San Francisco. Organized by Stewart Brand, Ramon Sender, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and Bill Graham at the Longshoremen’s Hall for January 21-23, 1966, the event brought together the city’s diverse underground arts scene, including rock music groups, experimental theater performers, dance companies, light show artists and film producers.

As Tom Wolfe says in the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, “the Haight-Ashbury era began that weekend.” The world would never be the same.

[houseboatisland]

Is Elizabeth on your island, and if so how has she adjusted after decades abandoned?

She is! And here's my headcanon for her:

Topham Hatt I, (The Fat Director,) had by 1926 accumulated a small fortune as General Manager of the North Western Railway. Reputed as a workaholic, (or boss-aholic,) Topham had sunk considerable amounts of money into his sprawling Wellsworth estate, Topham Hall. Topham was inspired by the undertaking of his sometime friend Sir Robert Walker, the Baronet of Sand Hutton. Walker's estate utilized war surplus one foot and three inch gauge locomotives to carry distinguished guests, agricultural produce, and coal to and bricks deriving from the nearby brickworks of Claxton.

The resulting pet project, the Topham Hall Railway, is where Elizabeth's story begins.

The T.H.R. was laid to what had essentially become the Sudrian "standard narrow gauge," of two feet and three inches. The line started from its Exchange Siding with Wellsworth Station, and made several crossings through the streets of that town's suburbs, before reaching the estate grounds. Hall Station brought passengers within a stone's throw of the mansion itself. Moving on, the line dove into the woods through a magical tree tunnel, with a spur at its opening for the engine and carriage shed. Crossing a brook over a three-span wooden trestle bridge, another station and a few sidings known as "Orchard Station" served the fruit and vegetable orchard. Another mile or so, and the railway stopped again for "Bowler's Station," where the Hatts and any guests could detrain for the estate's cricket pavilion.

Another half a mile, and the railway terminated at the Wellsworth Brickworks. This had been a puny operation before the THR linked up with it, employing only three men or so. After the railway's arrival, it expanded to employ a few dozen, and three more kilns were added. Throughout the Great Depression, Topham kept the Brickworks open and its employees onboard out of his own pocket, even as the bricks accumulated unsold. This was far more humanitarian than his treatment of NWR employees and three of his engines!

The railway had one locomotive, a royal purple Kerr Stuart 'Tattoo' class, named "Little Barford," technically a brother of the Mid Sodor Railway's No. 4, "Stuart." Little Barford arrived also with several v-tipper wagons, a dozen ex-War Department bogie wagons, four-wheel trucks and two ambulance vans. The ambulance vans were thoroughly rebuilt by the estate's woodshop to become an elaborate passenger coach, and a "Dining Car," which was quite identical save for the fewer seats and teeny gas cooker. The passenger coach saw constant use, but the Dining Car mostly sat in the siding at Bowler's Station as it cooked. The line was so short, it never could've done more than boil an egg while moving to timetable!

Capping off this complement of rolling stock was one Sentinel DG4 "Overtype" Steam Lorry, quickly named Elizabeth, after the Duchess of York's newborn daughter. Elizabeth was absolutely coveted by Topham, though he wasn’t exactly a steady hand at the wheel. Elizabeth was kept polished to perfection, even when her work involved carting such grubby loads as soil, clay, and coal. She was in every respect a "father's princess," but she worked dutifully and loved Little Barford like a twin brother. She also learned from her Victorian old master her favorite catchphrase, "We are/are not amused!" depending on the context.

The Second World War began in September 1939, and this national shift in priorities turned Elizabeth’s devil-may-care youth on its head. The Wellsworth Brickworks shuttered as many of its men volunteered or were called up, and housing construction all but ended. Little Barford was kept on at the Hall as the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries set to increase production on Topham Hall’s farms. Elizabeth on the other hand was, for the first time, moved away from her only home. As the civilian petrol rationing situation tightened, and private motoring was eventually banned, Elizabeth was suddenly very valuable as a coal-fired road vehicle.

She was commandeered and relocated to Tidmouth Harbour, working night and day as a dockside lorry. This was a very stressful period for her, for she was utterly friendless and out of her element. Although Sodor was never bombed, the routine blackout drills and stories of other ports destroyed, such as Liverpool, took their toll on her mentally. At some point however, she "bucked up." Elizabeth realized she was no longer an aristocrat's toy. For all she knew, Topham had probably forgotten her. As the military lorries she came face to face with daily were almost all of the internal-combustion type, who was to say that when, if ever the war was over, that he'd want her back if he remembered her?

In these circumstances, Elizabeth adopted her more familiar, stiff-upper lip personality. There was no time for polish or quaint little rides to the cricket pavilion, there was a war on! She became grubby, and liked to be grubby. She worked like the devil, and loved that even more. Her posh accent never left her, but she was now in every respect out to be a working girl. Elizabeth would never admit it to herself, but this huge change of self owed much to her upset at being removed from her only home. Did she legitimately like being a working lorry, rather than an estate owner's princess? Certainly she did. Was it an easy and completely voluntary change of character? Of course not. But it was done, and Elizabeth spent many nights assuring herself that it was the right path, the only path to have taken.

1945, the end of the war. Everyone was so jubilant. Elizabeth was cleaned and polished like a crown jewel, decked out with flags and bunting, and allowed to participate in the Tidmouth Victory Parade. In several colour newswreels of the event, you can spot her amid the cascade of tickertape and throngs of soldiers, nurses, longshoremen, civilians, tanks and lorries. It was no doubt a fun day for her, but now she thought a great deal about the future.

The war, which had been everything to her for six years, was over. Soldiers were being demobilized and coming home. Industries were retooling for the postwar world, to make consumer goods rather than several airplanes an hour. The Attlee Government, in conjunction with the devolved Sudrian Parliament established in 1946, had a grand vision for The Mainland and Sodor, where the welfare state for the long-suffering people and machines was vastly expanded, their jobs would be increasingly unionized and their bosses answerable to them, rather than the other way around.

Despite the historically harsh winter into the New Year of 1947, Sudrian workers, bouncing back much quicker than their Mainland counterparts, were delighted with PM Attlee's "New Jerusalem." Tidmouth Harbour was still very busy, as Sodor's biggest gate in and out for the world, and Elizabeth kept calm and carried on as time marched on. She was much busier than she had first feared, and that winter was her time to shine as so many petrol lorries were out of commission with "head colds." Elizabeth convinced herself, somehow, that these thousands and thousands of war surplus petrol lorries wouldn't take over. If so many had taken ill in these conditions, maybe Sodor, or even the whole world, would consider turning back the clock and restoring steam to the roads completely.

She feared and resented petrol lorries something terrible. When the petrol ration which had enabled her life all this time, was finally ended, she was heartbroken. Every worry she had seemed to come to pass all at once. First, the Tidmouth Harbour Authority decided it would be much cheaper to stack its fleet with war surplus lorries, and she was out of a job. Her next owner, a furniture mover, didn't keep her long, and neither did the next, a man who planned to fit her out as a bus and ran out of money.

By 1956, when the now-knighted Sir Topham Hatt I had died, Elizabeth had already been accumulating dust in a shed for two years. She never saw her last owner, who by now had failed to pay rent on her storage. Anopha Quarry, who owned the tumbledown little shack, seized her to make up the difference, but never once came to inspect the lorry who was now their property. Eventually, the Quarry forgot about her too.

It wasn't until 1961, when a little blue puffer deputizing for Toby on the Quarry Tramway carelessly had a coupling rod failure, that she reemerged. She made a heartstopping journey down the line for the necessary spare rod, pins, oilpot and tools in Ffarquhar Sheds, where she stirred up quite a scene, before an even more uncomfortable journey back. Elizabeth's Sentinel heritage thankfully preserved her for the whole ordeal, when Thomas' Driver, then at her wheel, worried that she'd explode and take him with her.

Back into the shed she went after this good deed, for how long, if ever to come out again, she didn't know. Until of course, that same night, a man very like her old Master, named Bertram just like his son whom she had given so many rides through the orchards and to cricket games, came to make a visit...

You can guess the rest :3

Sir Bertram Topham Hatt I was reunited with his childhood friend, and his father's favorite lorry. He immediately sent for her with his own money to be restored, and at once moved her back to Topham Hall, where she was herself reunited with the closest thing to a brother she'd ever had, Little Barford, who this whole time had been working as well as ever, and wondered why no one had ever gone to look for Elizabeth despite all his questions. It had been assumed, wrongly, that Elizabeth had perished on war service. That's how the Tidmouth Harbour Authority wrote it, after they pocketed her sale money! (Sir Bertram was LIVID not to get his hands on the now deceased Harbourmaster responsible.)

Elizabeth is now back to her childhood home hauling farm produce and any visitor willing to get dirty, for she still insists on carrying a bit of grime as a testament to her labours. The Wellsworth Brickworks has reopened, on a much smaller scale, as a "living museum," and Elizabeth takes great joy in carrying clay and coal again. Her, Little Barford, and Sir Bertram are now tighter than they've ever been, and Sir Bertram is the only man allowed to polish her. He's a much more sedated force at the wheel than his father, she notes, and quite often!

We ARE amused to see her <3

[todaysdocument]

Minutes of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 3/6/1956

“Mr. Walter reported to the Committee that on his way back from Tokyo he stopped in Hawaii for the purpose of investigating reports of penetration of the International Longshoremen Workers Union and other unions operating within the Territory of Hawaii. He stated that following interviews with various individuals in Hawaii, the situation appeared to be even worse than when the Committee conducted its investigation in 1950.”

File Unit: Minutes of Full Committee and Subcommittee Meetings of the Internal Security Committee During the 80th through 93rd Congresses, 1945 - 1976

Series: Committee Papers, 1945 - 1975

Record Group 233: Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789 - 2015

Transcription:

COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES

MARCH 6, 1956

The Committee on Un-American Activities met in executive session on March 6, 1956, at 10:40 A.M., in Room 225, Old House Office Building. The following members were present:

Francis E. Walter, Chairman

Morgan M. Moulder

Clyde Doyle

James B. Frazier, Jr., (entered at 10:55)

Donald L. Jackson

Gordon H. Scherer (entered at 11:05)

Mrs. Juliette P. Joray, Acting Clerk, was also present.

Mr. Walter reported to the Committee that on his way back from Tokyo he stopped in Hawaii for the purpose of investigating reports of penetration of the International Longshoremen Workers Union and other unions operating within the Territory of Hawaii. He stated that following interviews with various individuals in Hawaii, the situation appeared to be even worse than when the Committee conducted its investigation in 1950.

Mr. Hall and six other Smith Act defendants are free on bond pending the decision of the Court of Appeals, and are very active on behalf of the Communist cause. Mr. Walter further stated that he had discussed the delay in the handling of appeals filed by the Smith Act defendants in Hawaii with Chief Justice Warren. Mr. Warren agreed to take this matter up with Circuit Judge Denman, and to advise Mr. Walter of the outcome of his meeting with Judge Denman. It was agreed that the Committee would defer action until Mr. Warren had made his report.

The Chairman appointed a subcommittee consisting of Messrs. Doyle, Jackson and Scherer for the hearings to be held in Los Angeles beginning April 16.

Without objection, the Committee authorized a preliminary investigation and preparation for a  hearing to be held in St. Louis sometime in June.

Without objection, the Save Our Sons Committee hearing originally scheduled to be held in April, was postponed until June.

The subcommittee composed of Representative Morgan M. Moulder, Chairman, Edwin E. Willis and Gordon H. Scherer who recommended to the full Committee at its January 11, 1956 meeting, that Ellis Olim who appeared as a witness in Chicago on December 15, 1955, to be granted immunity under the provisions of Public Law 600, recommended to the full Committee that the offer of immunity be cancelled, inasmuch as Mr. Olim had decided not to testify.

Without objection it was so agreed. The Chairman directed that the same subcommittee who had heard Ellis Olim in California should sit when he is heard in open session.

[page 2]

-2-

The matter of releasing the testimony of Robert H. Williams who was mentioned unfavorably in the Committee's Neo Fascist Report, was discussed. It was agreed that no action would be taken until each member had an opportunity to read the allegations appearing in the Committee's report and to examine the testimony as given by Mr. Williams in Executive Session in Los Angeles, on June 28, 1955. The Clerk was directed to have this testimony set in galleys so that each member could be handed a copy for study.

The matter of investigating the NAACP was discussed but no decision was reached.

The question of inviting Hulan E. Jack to appear before the Committee was discussed but no decision was reached.

The Chairman requested Investigator Owens to outline to the Committee the outcome of the staff interrogations of current employees in the NLRB, held March 5. Mr. Owens advised the Committee that on that date, Mr. Arens and he (Owens) had questioned, under oath, four current employees of the NLRB in Washington, D.C. He advised further that there were an additional number to be subpoenaed. He stated that the basis for these staff interrogations were the confidential memoranda afforded this Committee by Senator McClellan's Committee. He also stated that each of the witnesses exhibited to the staff a letter to each of them dated March 5, 1956, and signed by Boyd Leedom, present Chairman of the NLRB, precluding their divulging to this Committee, in accordance with proper executive orders, any information contained in loyalty documents, files, hearing transcripts, etc. Mr. Owens advised that these witnesses interpreted this letter as preventing them from giving this Committee information which they independently possessed, of their own knowledge, which also had found its way into the above-described files or documents. Mr. Owens further advised the Committee that the staff, during the interrogation, made it completely clear that it was not asking for excerpts or information from any security or loyalty files, but merely information which each witness independently possessed as a matter of his own personal knowledge. The Committee instructed the staff to continue with the interrogations as scheduled. However, in the issuance of any new subpoenas, the staff was instructed no to include the duces tecum portion.

Mr. Scherer moved that the testimony of Helen Roark Hill be referred to the Department of Justice for possible perjury prosection. Mr. Doyle seconded the motion and it carried unanimously.

Following some discussion, the C ommittee authorized a preliminary investigation of the alleged Communist activities of one Jean capers of Cleveland, Ohio, and the Chairman instructed that an investigator be assigned to this case.

Mr. Scherer brought up the matter of an investigation of Communism in the field of art. However, the chairman stated that he thought the Committee had an ambitious program at the moment, adn that such investigation should be deferred until a later date.

The Committee adjourned at 11:30 A.M.

Francis E. Walter

Chairman

Juliette P. Jaray

Clerk

[benjimirthursby]

The Book of Thursby: Scions if Numenor - “Shotguns and Canned Goods.”

“There is no peace without a threat of war.  There is no war without the promise of peace.  All else is tyranny.” 

- Aubreen T'Subaki, "Qalvanda"

In the pre-dawn hours the Andustar and her sister ships checked their speed and held station as the convoy proceeded on to the outer bay of Kugane.  As the last vessel picked up a harbor pilot and made their way up the channel cut to the harbor they turned themselves for the Thursby Company shipyard. 

Kugane featured a large port and anchorage.  It was the gateway for trade and commerce on Higoshi.  The city reflected the complexities of diplomatic and internal considerations of the time.  The lords of the archipelago outwardly kept a policy of neutrality.  Pirates, Grand Companies, the Alliance and the Garlean Empire surrounded Higoshi.  Within Higoshi there was but one port officially open for trade, Kugane. This served several purposes.  It contained foriegn trade to transiting a single destination.  This normally kept diplomatic, commerce and forigene influence near to the city where it could be contained and more efficiently influenced or taxed.  This aided in appeasing Garlean interests after the invasion of Othard.  The situation was conducive to monitoring any rhetorical or material danger to their disputed sovereignty in the region.  

Confederacy, pirates, local tribute demands made the flow of visiting ships sparse for years. This impacted the demand for shipwrights, refits and new builds.  The two yards in Kugane had ceased operating for all but rare work.  The arrival of the Thursby company six years prior went unnoticed to most for most of this time.  As T’Subaki built her fleet elsewhere from the purchase of surplus tonnage and took to securing the sea lanes, it was presumed to be Malestrom which was, for whatever reason, asserting itself in the Ruby Sea.  

Concurrently Bondermir effected orders from Benjimir to procure ownership of the dormant ship yards.  Gil greased wheels, and kept transactions out of sight and mind especially since little transpired in the yards at first.  Subsequent work at the yards were the assumed to be a function of Malestrom’s skirmishes and improving commerce.  

By the time any might have concluded a pitched effort to open trade to Higoshi was under way, any means to challenge it was neither possible nor desirable.  Tribute flowed was flowing from every direction to the lords of Hiboshi.  Merchants through Kugane thrived more richly than in an age and were the envy of the islands.  Even beyond the port city, Higoshi merchants found their wares in growing demand across Eorzea.  Even then, Thursby company interests were obscured by the alliance with Malestrom and the flow of independent merchant vessels making port in Kugane.  

The airships passed the western graving docks.  They were mirrors of three newer ones built in an annex east of Kugane’s main piers.  All were filled.  The nearest dock in view held an unremarkable merchant airship nearing completion.  The other two appeared unremarkable but to the experienced eye.  Underway for over a year the lines of these ships prompted little reason to question vague descriptions of the projects as merchantmen of large size.  Their owners were not known, save for rumors of rich Lalafells from Ul’Dah whose means to pay was unsecure and thus the lengthy construction process.  

For its part, the Garlean gunships and tactical combatants were being widely engaged and remained scattered.  Matters at sea were the interest of few in the Empire.  The Imperial fleet was occupied supporting its forces ashore with smoldering conflicts across its territories.  These conflicts fueled suffering which for some years the Scions of Numenor and Thursby Company had each, in their own way, been involving themselves in.

The convoy ships were debarking passengers into Kugane as the escort squadron tied-off.  Longshoremen manhandled goods from ships to waiting wagons.  The largest vessels boasted their own crains.  From these pallets of goods were lowered off the ships onto wagons.  Members of the Scions of Numenor sat at the reigns of some of the wagons.  Others awaited on all manner of mounts.  As the wagons filled they made their way to the service streets past the merchant district and onto their destinations.

Caravans under the Scions of Numenor banner or protection made their way deep into territory across the map.  Goods or occasionally simply food and medicinal needs flowed into shop and stalls amidst the conflicts across the map.  The Thursby Company fleet ensured those efforts were supplied and protected in ways that would not fit in the former's altruistic and honorable reputation.  

Increasingly in the past year caravans debarked company ships at Kugane and made for whereabouts unknown.  More so than the convoys at sea, the array of dangers on land was more varied and commonly encountered.  The sum and success of the caravans were closely monitored in Tondera Hall.  Beast and people encountered by caravans were categorized assessed continuously.  When beasts were at issue, the Scions would send teams to hut.  When the danger was people posing more persistent dangers the Thursby Company would engage but rarely to the knowledge of any but the Scions captain general.

Flooding the piers between the wagons, the crews on shore leave and passengers pressed their way around the organized chaos into the district beyond.  Merchants with carts and trinkets awaited passengers and crews as they made their way into the city.  Shop keeps had posted placards welcoming all and enticing them with specials and deals.  Street performers were strumming instruments and the smell of food wafted thick through the air.  Spa workers sought to draw customers with the newest treatments.  Other women and men solicited clients with more timeless offers.  To the crews enjoying shore leave it was an exciting visit to a favorite place.  To the uninitiated it was an overwhelming bombardment on the senses.  

A woman, dimly lit but imposing in a hooded cloak stood in front of a rickshaw outside the central path from the Harbor masters tower.  She locked her eyes on a confused looking woman whose pace was slowed as she seemed to stop every second step to occasionally ask a question to somebody which drew confused looks in response.  Or at least it could have been her comments the cloaked woman thought.  This person's mode of dress bordered on the absurd.  Garish colored couture cobbled together in an effort to assemble a coherent style, masking ill kept physical conditioning.  Worthy she thought of the lesser districts in Garlemead where new money strove with more refined old money expressions of fashion, and usually lost.  Just another lesser bastard of the Sulistian family she resolved. 

Advancing on the woman Tatania Uberbreaker drew enough attention to lock eyes with the woman and extending an arm from under her cloak she gestured to the rickshaw. 

“Mad’am Sulistian, welcome to Kugane.”  she said.

*******

[delux2222]

Happy Birthday, Ben Katz (1902-1970) Historian William Loren Katz shares memories of his father, labor and cultural activist Ben Katz.

My father, Ben Katz, fell in love with African American blues and jazz music. He first had a large 78-rpm record collection, and then a large collection of African American history books and pictures.

I had to be one of the few white kids in the world who went to sleep listening to Bessie Smith, Sidney Bechet, and Louis Armstrong, and woke up surrounded by the writings of Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, and E. Franklin Frazier.

As he volunteered for a host of good fights, he took me as a school kid:

to the strike headquarters of longshoremen and Popeye cartoon artists in the 1930s; to New York’s Schomburg Library and its treasure of African American history; to meet legendary jazzman Bunk Johnson (who helped teach Louis Armstrong trumpet) in 1946; to meet the masterful Sidney Bechet, James P. Johnson, “father of stride piano,” and a niece of Bessie Smith in our living room in 1947 and 1948; and, to hear Louis Armstrong at his 1947 Carnegie Hall concert and Billie Holiday at a Harlem night club. Katz helped raise funds for the United Negro and Allied Veterans of America (UNAVA) by organizing “Really the Blues” and “Bessie Smith Memorial” concerts at Town Hall. I was there.

Katz and his best friends, Ernest Crichlow and Walter Christmas, joined with Charles White, Alice Childress, and others to help found the Committee for the Negro in the Arts (CNA) that sought to crack the color line in theater, radio, advertising, publishing, dance, classical music, etc.

With Christmas, Katz wrote “Lift Every Voice Poetry Production,” a Black History play performed in the Schomburg Library basement starring William Marshall, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Frank Silvera, and Alice Childress.

– – – – – – – – –

Thanks, Dad — especially for bringing Ernie and Walter into my life, and pointing me in the right direction.

[reidio-silence]

The convention had rented out the three-thousand-seat Longshoreman’s Hall, the stomping ground of America’s most militant trade unionist, Harry Bridges, then as always under suspicion for membership in the Communist Party. It was Bridges who had brought solidarity to the waterfront by ending the cruel “shape up” system in which longshoremen scratched each others’ eyes out every morning for the attention of the dock bosses in order to get work. Solidarity was supposed to be a left-wing ideal—feeling the power of thousands of voices joining as one to blot out an encroaching, malign power that seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. Now the solidarity belonged to Harry Bridges’s enemies: thousands of young businessmen and professionals and segregationists and union-busters were crying themselves hoarse to the tune of Barry Goldwater:

The young people of this country are realizing that there is something profoundly wrong with the way things are going.... Can you imagine what level—what economic peak—we should have reached by now if we had not been carrying the tremendous and steadily increasing burdens of the last thirty years? Can you imagine the rocketing effect on the economy, the vast increase in employment, if some of the tax brakes had been taken off and the basic productive forces really let lose? ... Modern liberalism is only a form of rigor mortis. The old, respectable—sometimes noble—liberalism of fifty years ago is gone for good!

Then came the seven-minute ovation. Nadasdy sighed. Barry had only inflamed the conventiongoers’ passions further.

The next morning the delegates arrived at the hotel ballroom to find pamphlets attacking Nelson Rockefeller on their seats (most, of course, relished them). The parliamentary session that followed lasted for twenty-two hours. Clif White’s old Communist Party enemies from the 1940s could have learned a thing or two.

— Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (2001)

[antoine-roquentin]

1. “What’s got you so spooked?” she asked.

He spoke to her as though in the midst of a panic attack, every word enunciated in a breathless gasp. “There’s some whores in this house.”

2. She gestured at the scantily clad women, but he did not believe her when she said they were sex workers. “There’s some.”

“Whores? In this house?”

3. “We��ve got the stencillers with us. We have the bricklayers. Clerks have joined the union. Many pipefitters proudly march with us. We have screenwriters on our side, standing out there in the lead. Groups of longshoremen have come down here today.” At each mention, there was an outburst of applause, but none cheered more than at the proclamation: “There’s some whores in this house!”

4. “I don’t know. A lot of people will be gunning for us if we go through with it. People willing to suck up to the powerful for a few scraps at the table.” Boone sighed. “There’s some whores in this.”

“House!” said the Lone Wanderer.

5. One man, apart from the rest of the group, had managed to duck under the line of truncheon-wielding rent-a-thugs. He scurried through the banquet hall, ducking under maitre-d’s whose ties cost more than his entire outfit, leaping over tables covered in white linen. The commotion he had caused had silenced the speaker of the evening, and everybody in attendance was instead staring at him. He had his chance to make his point, but chose to address his fellow protestors rather than the wealthy people surrounding him. He pointed towards the stars of the night. 

“There’s some. Whores! In this house!”

6. The nurse tapped the sodium-pentathol needle gently before inserting it into Antoine-Roquentin’s veins. 

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 5 July 1934 in San Francisco was Bloody Thursday, when police killed two longshoreman strikers and a bystander and hospitalised 115 people. Workers had been on strike against casual hiring methods on the docks. Within two weeks workers across the city launched a general strike against the wishes of the unions, and while the AFL disowned then effectively ended the strike, the longshoremen won the establishment of jointly operated hiring halls. This is Jeremy Brecher's history of the strike: https://libcom.org/history/dock-workers-strike-san-francisco-general-strike-1934-jeremy-brecher https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1161008490750966/?type=3

[sunshine-tattoo]

so my tiny, 7 lb tortoiseshell cat thinks she's a guard dog.

this morning, there was a bunch of noise outside the door of my apartment.

nothing scary. just some sounds from the nice workmen fixing something in the hall.

Im sitting on my couch and am unbothered. so are my two rabbits and my other cat.

But Axinite, the tortie, decides that This Will Not Stand.

rather than run away from the sounds like a sensible cat, she rushes to the door and sits there, crouched like some tiny tiger waiting for prey.

when the shadows of some boots appeared, she stuck her paws under the door crack to try and get the intruders.

this goes on for about 10 seconds before the workmen notice.

then I hear this, in the thickest nova scotia accent you've ever heard:

'awww look at the wee little paws there'

for those that don't know, Nova Scotia means 'new Scotland' and a huge percentage of our population are Scottish.

so picture these big, burly longshoremen, who's ancestors used to fight shirtless in the Highlands, just absolutely cooing over the toe beans of my very angry cat.

finally, the gents finished their work, said bye to the wee paws, and went off to whatever job they had next.

and Axinite, my sweet, dumb tortie, comes trotting over to me, tail up with pride, and climbs into my lap, purring with her victory over the Noise Monsters.

[classicfilmfan64]

Yes, his autograph is part of my character Actor autograph collection. I found this extensive biography online.

Lionel Jay Stander (January 11, 1908 – November 30, 1994) was an American actor in films, radio, theater, and television.

Lionel Stander was born in The Bronx, New York, to Russian-Jewish immigrants, the first of three children.

According to newspaper interviews with Stander, as a teenager, he appeared in the silent film MEN OF STEEL (1926), perhaps as an extra, since he is not listed in the credits.

During his one year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he appeared in the student productions The Muse of the Unpublished Writer, and The Muse and the Movies: A Comedy of Greenwich Village.

Stander's acting career began in 1928, as Cop and First Fairy in Him by E. E. Cummings, at the Provincetown Playhouse. He claimed that he got the roles because one of them required shooting craps, which he did well, and a friend in the company volunteered him. He appeared in a series of short-lived plays through the early 1930s, including The House Beautiful, which Dorothy Parker famously derided as "the play lousy".

In 1932, Stander landed his first credited film role in the Warner-Vitaphone short feature IN THE DOUGH (1932), with Fatty Arbuckle and Shemp Howard. He made several other shorts, the last being THE OLD GREY MAYOR (1935) with Bob Hope in 1935. That same year, he was cast in a feature, Ben Hecht's THE SCOUNDREL (1935), with Noël Coward. He moved to Hollywood and signed a contract with Columbia Pictures. Stander was in a string of films over the next three years, appearing most notably in Frank Capra's MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936) with Gary Cooper, MEET NERO WOLFE (1936) playing Archie Goodwin, THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN (1937), and A STAR IS BORN (1937) with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March.

Stander's distinctive rumbling voice, tough-guy demeanor, and talent with accents made him a popular radio actor. In the 1930s and 1940s, he was on The Eddie Cantor Show, Bing Crosby's KMH show, the Lux Radio Theater production of A Star Is Born, The Fred Allen Show, the Mayor of the Town series with Lionel Barrymore and Agnes Moorehead, Kraft Music Hall on NBC, Stage Door Canteen on CBS, the Lincoln Highway Radio Show on NBC, and The Jack Paar Show, among others.

In 1941, he starred in a short-lived radio show called The Life of Riley on CBS, no relation to the radio, film, and television character later made famous by William Bendix. Stander played the role of Spider Schultz in both Harold Lloyd's film THE MILKY WAY (1936) and its remake ten years later, THE KID FROM BROOKLYN (1946), starring Danny Kaye. He was a regular on Danny Kaye's zany comedy-variety radio show on CBS (1946–1947), playing himself as "just the elevator operator" amidst the antics of Kaye, future Our Miss Brooks star Eve Arden, and bandleader Harry James.

Also during the 1940s, he played several characters on The Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda animated theatrical shorts, produced by Walter Lantz. For Woody Woodpecker, he provided the voice of Buzz Buzzard, but was blacklisted from the Lantz studio in 1951 and was replaced by Dal McKennon.

Strongly liberal and pro-labor, Stander espoused a variety of social and political causes and was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. At a SAG meeting held during a 1937 studio technicians' strike, he told the assemblage of 2000 members: "With the eyes of the whole world on this meeting, will it not give the Guild a black eye if its members continue to cross picket lines?" (The NYT reported: "Cheers mingled with boos greeted the question.") Stander also supported the Conference of Studio Unions in its fight against the Mob-influenced International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). Also in 1937, Ivan F. Cox, a deposed officer of the San Francisco longshoremen's union, sued Stander and a host of others, including union leader Harry Bridges, actors Fredric March, Franchot Tone, Mary Astor, James Cagney, Jean Muir, and director William Dieterle. The charge, according to Time magazine, was "conspiring to propagate Communism on the Pacific Coast, causing Mr. Cox to lose his job".

In 1938, Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn allegedly called Stander "a Red son of a bitch" and threatened a US$100,000 fine against any studio that renewed his contract. Despite critical acclaim for his performances, Stander's film work dropped off drastically. After appearing in 15 films in 1935 and 1936, he was in only six in 1937 and 1938. This was followed by just six films from 1939 through 1943, none made by major studios, the most notable being GUADALCANAL DIARY (1943).

Stander was among the first group of Hollywood actors to be subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1940 for supposed Communist activities. At a grand jury hearing in Los Angeles in August 1940—the transcript of which was shortly released to the press—John R. Leech, the self-described former "chief functionary" of the Communist Party in Los Angeles, named Stander as a CP member, along with more than 15 other Hollywood notables, including Franchot Tone, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Clifford Odets, and Budd Schulberg. Stander subsequently forced himself into the grand jury hearing, and the district attorney cleared him of the allegations.

Stander appeared in no films between 1944 and 1945. Then, with HUAC's attention focused elsewhere due to World War II, he played in a number of mostly second-rate pictures from independent studios through the late 1940s. These include Ben Hecht's SPECTER OF THE ROSE (1946); the Preston Sturges comedy THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK (1947) with Harold Lloyd; and TROUBLE MAKERS (1948) with The Bowery Boys. One classic emerged from this period of his career, the Preston Sturges comedy UNFAITHFULLY YOURS (1948) with Rex Harrison.

In 1947, HUAC turned its attention once again to Hollywood. That October, Howard Rushmore, who had belonged to the CPUSA in the 1930s and written film reviews for the Daily Worker, testified that writer John Howard Lawson, whom he named as a Communist, had "referred to Lionel Stander as a perfect example of how a Communist should not act in Hollywood." Stander was again blacklisted from films, though he played on TV, radio, and in the theater.

In March 1951, actor Larry Parks, after pleading with HUAC investigators not to force him to "crawl through the mud" as an informer, named several people as Communists in a "closed-door session", which made the newspapers two days later. He testified that he knew Stander, but did not recall attending any CP meetings with him.

At a HUAC hearing in April 1951, actor Marc Lawrence named Stander as a member of his Hollywood Communist "cell", along with screenwriter Lester Cole and screenwriter Gordon Kahn. Lawrence testified that Stander "was the guy who introduced me to the party line", and that Stander said that by joining the CP, he would "get to know the dames more" — which Lawrence, who did not enjoy film-star looks, thought a good idea. Upon hearing of this, Stander shot off a telegram to HUAC chair John S. Wood, calling Lawrence's testimony that he was a Communist "ridiculous" and asked to appear before the Committee, so he could swear to that under oath. The telegram concluded: "I respectfully request an opportunity to appear before you at your earliest possible convenience. Be assured of my cooperation." Two days later, Stander sued Lawrence for $500,000 for slander. Lawrence left the country ("fled", according to Stander) for Europe.

After that, Stander was blacklisted from TV and radio. He continued to act in theater roles and played Ludlow Lowell in the 1952-53 revival of Pal Joey on Broadway and on tour.

Two years passed before Stander was issued the requested subpoena. Finally, in May 1953, he testified at a HUAC hearing in New York, where he made front-page headlines nationwide by being uproariously uncooperative, memorialized in the Eric Bentley play, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been. The New York Times headline was "Stander Lectures House Red Inquiry." In a dig at bandleader Artie Shaw, who had tearfully claimed in a Committee hearing that he had been "duped" by the Communist Party, Stander testified,

"I am not a dupe, or a dope, or a moe, or a schmoe...I was absolutely conscious of what I was doing, and I am not ashamed of anything I said in public or private."

An excerpt from that statement was engraved in stone for "The First Amendment Blacklist Memorial" by Jenny Holzer at the University of Southern California.

Other notable statements during Stander's 1953 HUAC testimony:

- "[Testifying before HUAC] is like the Spanish Inquisition. You may not be burned, but you can't help coming away from a little singed."

- "I don't know about the overthrow of the government. This committee has been investigating 15 years so far, and hasn't found one act of violence."

- "I know of a group of fanatics who are desperately trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States by depriving artists and others of life, liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness without due process of law ... I can tell names and cite instances and I am one of the first victims of it. And if you are interested in that and also a group of ex-fascists and America-Firsters and anti-Semites, people who hate everybody including Negroes, minority groups and most likely themselves ... and these people are engaged in a conspiracy outside all the legal processes to undermine the very fundamental American concepts upon which our entire system of democracy exists."

- "...I don't want to be responsible for a whole stable of informers, stool pigeons, and psychopaths and ex-political heretics, who come in here beating their breast and say, 'I am awfully sorry; I didn't know what I was doing. Please--I want absolution; get me back into pictures.'"

- "My estimation of this committee is that this committee arrogates judicial and punitive powers which it does not possess."

Stander was blacklisted from the late 1940s until 1965; perhaps the longest period.

After that, Stander's acting career went into a free fall. He worked as a stockbroker on Wall Street, a journeyman stage actor, a corporate spokesman—even a New Orleans Mardi Gras king. He didn't return to Broadway until 1961 (and then only briefly in a flop) and to film in 1963, in the low-budget THE MOVING FINGER (although he did provide, uncredited, the voice-over narration for the 1961 noir thriller BLAST OF SILENCE.)

Life improved for Stander when he moved to London in 1964 to act in Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards, directed by Tony Richardson, for whom he'd acted on Broadway, along with Christopher Plummer, in a 1963 production of Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. In 1965, he was featured in the film PROMISE HER ANYTHING. That same year Richardson cast him in the black comedy about the funeral industry, THE LOVED ONE, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh, with an all-star cast including Jonathan Winters, Robert Morse, Liberace, Rod Steiger, Paul Williams, and many others. In 1966, Roman Polanski cast Stander in his only starring role, as the thug Dickie in CUL-DE-SAC, opposite Françoise Dorléac and Donald Pleasence.

Stander stayed in Europe and eventually settled in Rome, where he appeared in many spaghetti Westerns, most notably playing a bartender named Max in Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. He played the role of the villainous mob boss in Fernando Di Leo's 1972 poliziottescho thriller CALIBER 9. In Rome he connected with Robert Wagner, who cast him in an episode of It Takes a Thief that was shot there. Stander's few English-language films in the 1970s include THE GANG THAT COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT (1971) with Robert De Niro and Jerry Orbach, Martin Scorsese's NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977), which also starred De Niro and Liza Minnelli, and Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979).

Stander played a supporting role in the TV film Revenge Is My Destiny with Chris Robinson. He played a lounge comic modeled after the real-life Las Vegas comic Joe E. Lewis, who used to begin his act by announcing "Post Time" as he sipped his ever-present drink.

After 15 years abroad, Stander moved back to the U.S. for the role he is now most famous for: Max, the loyal butler, cook, and chauffeur to the wealthy, amateur detectives played by Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers on the 1979–1984 television series Hart to Hart (and a subsequent series of Hart to Hart made-for-television films). In 1983, Stander won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film.

In 1986, he became the voice of Kup in THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE. In 1991 he was a guest star in the television series Dream On, playing Uncle Pat in the episode "Toby or Not Toby". His final theatrical film role was as a dying hospital patient in THE LAST GOOD TIME (1994), with Armin Mueller-Stahl and Olivia d'Abo, directed by Bob Balaban.

Stander was married six times, the first time in 1932 and the last in 1972. All but the last marriage ended in divorce. He fathered six daughters (one wife had no children, one had twins).

Stander died of lung cancer in Los Angeles, California, in 1994 at age 86. He was buried in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.

[soulventure91]

NaNoWriMo 2019 - Day 2 Excerpt

Teloram was less a keep and more of a haphazardly reconstructed tower near a fishing hamlet. The soft crashing of waves was audible even though the shore was miles away, and the smell of fish permeated everything. Diric Vajon kept his hood raised just high enough to keep the rising western sun out of his amber eyes as he rode into the village and reined in his black courser near what looked to be the local tavern. No one paid him any mind, which was just as Diric liked it. Most of the village still thought of itself Naidivan – apparent in the almost too precise motions of some of the fishers and longshoremen forming up to convoy towards the shore.  Still, Diric could blend in if he was not armed to the teeth: a greatsword strapped over his shoulder and a pair of handaxes slung into holsters on his waist. Aside from those, his rough leather hood and half-cape, travel-stained clothes camouflaging his armor, and relatively short stance allowed Diric some level of anonymity. Today, anonymity was a little more the order of the day.

               Once he had hitched his horse and pressed a silver coin into a stableboy’s hand, Diric paced with easy strides towards the makeshift gate that separated the village from the keep. A glance to the walls did reveal the standard Aechain merchant company guards to match the House Corbin banners dancing from the rounded wall and above the gate. If the reports were to be believed, the disappearance of the Corbin heiress had rightly shamed the company guards. One of the best rumors was the girl had flung a cat at one of the guards as a distraction for her to steal a horse and ride away. But rumors weren’t why Diric had come so far south – neither was being stopped by a pair of guards next to the gate as he began to approach.

               “I was summoned,” Diric stated before he could be asked. He drew a flattened enveloped from a pocket in his half-cape to present to the guards. One, a woman with the classic Naidiven weather-beaten complexion, took the letter to examine; Diric glanced at the other guard and noted one of his hands, rather than being enclosed in a leather glove, was wrapped in a bandage.

               Maybe the cat rumors weren’t too off the mark.

               “Fine, y’say you were summoned for the search; best you get t’meet his lordship,” the guard with Diric’s summons huffed, shoving the pages back into Diric’s chest. “Come on, then, move it.”

               “How charming,” Diric sighed as he tucked the letter away, but as he crossed the gates to approach the door his escort reached back to try pulling down his hood. Diric flinched as his scruffy black hair was exposed to the sun, shortly followed by the slight points to the tips of his ears. He frowned and glared at the guard. She had a slightly superior sneer that made Diric long to punch her.

               “He likes t’see the full face’f his hirelings,” she told him far too smugly before continuing to lead him into the keep proper. Diric stifled the offended growl in his throat and moved after her.

               Teloram’s so-called keep was hardly the grand palace Lord Corbin had undoubtedly had to abandon in the war. The focus of the keep was a simple tower built out from local stone, though clearly by hand instead of the older towers most Naidivan strongholds were built around. Practicality and defense were the idea of this design – both concepts most Aechain merchant princes didn’t fully understand. Some more decorative pieces that had somehow been brought over the border were an annoying contrast to the solid walls and slight constraining twists. It didn’t help that there were too many people within the halls – a terrible idea for a place meant to be scantly defended with relative ease. Still, Diric did far better weaving through the courtiers than his escort as they finally reached the central chamber. The design Diric recognized as a typical Naidivan command center: a raised dais in the center of the room intended for a table for maps, where the tower’s leadership could strategize in safety. With the Aechain residents, however, the dais instead hosted an ornate throne for Lord Corbin to perch, with multiple tables for his clerks, advisors, and whatever other attendants were deemed necessary.

[undergroundrockpress]

The Trips Festival (Longshoremen’s Hall - January 21-23, 1966) Photos by Gene Anthony.