Maine Owl

The late Burl Toler was the first African-American to be a ref in the NFL and the first to work a Super Bowl

Mr. Toler died Sunday in California. By all accounts he was a gifted college athlete, a member of the legendary 1951 University of San Francisco football squad. Though undefeated, the school was not invited to any bowl games. The San Francisco Chronicle explains,

The Dons of 1951 were one of the greatest college teams of all time, but they weren't invited to a bowl game. Publicly the reason was USF's soft schedule, but apparently the real reason was that the Southeastern Conference, which controlled the bowls, didn't want any African American players. USF had two, Mr. Toler and [Ollie] Matson.

USF had defeated College of the Pacific 47-14 at Stockton in a game that was supposed to determine which team went to a bowl. Instead, Pacific went to the Sun Bowl, and the Dons (9-0) got nothing.

There was talk at the time that the Dons could have gotten a bowl if they were willing to leave Mr. Toler and Matson behind. To a man, the Dons wouldn't think of it.

For all of our persistent problems, it is encouraging to know that we have--through great organizing, resistance, and struggle, including the refusal of the USF team to be forced to play a bowl game without their black players--been able to heal some of our sicknesses.

Condolences to the family of Mr. Toler.

Harry Patch was 111

In the British papers today, Harry Patch variously is described (in this case by his biographer, Richard van Emden) as "the oldest man in Britain, the last Tommy, the last foot soldier of the First World War, the last man to serve in the trenches in the ?war to end all wars?, the last of that fighting breed."

But he spoke of his experiences only after age 100. And he was "vehemently anti-war," according to the remembrance on the UK ITN TV channel:



Of the War, he said "It wasn't worth it."

I looked through many of the obits and remembrances today, but besides the quite good one by van Emden, I found in the UK and elsewhere no piece as gripping as that written by Robert Barr for the Associated Press:

"I didn't welcome the war at all, and never felt the need to get myself into khaki and go out there fighting before it was 'all over by Christmas.' That's what people were saying, that the war wouldn't last long," he said.

His most vivid memory of the war was of encountering a comrade whose torso had been ripped open by shrapnel. "Shoot me," Patch recalled the soldier pleading.

The man died before Patch could draw his revolver.

"I was with him for the last 60 seconds of his life. He gasped one word ? 'Mother.' That one word has run through my brain for 88 years. I will never forget it."

Would this happen on television nowadays?

It's amazing how growing up with a television on affects a person. This man was in our living room five nights a week through most of the sixties and seventies. It's not so much that I'll miss Ed McMahon. It's the whole milieu of my childhood that's disappearing and leaving a void. Thank goodness there's YouTube for filling that sentimental, nostalgic place. God rest your soul, Ed.

Remarkable man remembered in WERU broadcast


Jim Harney's photos from Iraq often have been used at anti-war demonstrations to illustrate who pays the worst costs of the war

Area peace activists were saddened last month on the December 26 passing of Jim Harney. For WERU Weekend Voices on January 3, Amy Browne assembled the best of Jim's recent talks and interviews into a one-hour program. I do not want any of us to forget this program, so I'm reminding everyone to listen. You go HERE to play or download the program, or go ahead and play it right here:


WERU Weekend Voices 1-3-2009

[Jim] Harney was former Catholic priest, and one of the Milwaukee 14, a group of priests and faith-based peace activists who broke into draft boards and burned about 10,000 Selective Service records with homemade napalm in a protest against the Vietnam War in 1968. They read from the gospel while the records burned. He spent more than a year in jail for his part in that protest.

In recent years many of us knew Jim Harney through the faces and voices of others that he shared through his photographs and stories. The photographs of people he met in Iraq have adorned pins and posters, putting a real face on war. Jim traveled extensively in Latin America, interviewing and photographing people whose stories might not otherwise be told? the poor, survivors of systemic economic violence, those struggling for change. He accompanied them on their journeys? running with his friends in El Salvador as US bombs rained down on them, sleeping in the mud in the corn fields, crossing the desert with the undocumented.

After learning he had terminal cancer, Harney planned a walk from Boston to Washington DC last summer, to call attention to the plight of the undocumented. He was able to make it as far as Rhode Island.

In December 2008, Jim Harney was given the Sacco & Vanzetti Social Justice Award from Community Church of Boston? an award that over it?s more than 30 year history has also been presented to Howard Zinn, Scott and Helen Nearing, Cesar Chavez and Rachel Corie.

See Jim's writing and more of his remarkable photos at www.posibilidad.org.

Old friend

The gray-bearded wild man of the mountains has a nice blog, at downeast.com.

Nobel speech was biting, invasion of Iraq was a contemptuous "bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism"

An ailing Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005. Here is an excerpt of his message on that occasion.

PINTER: The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn?t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what?s called the ?international community?. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be ?the leader of the free world?. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man?s land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You?re either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading as a last resort all other justifications having failed to justify themselves as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ?bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East?.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they?re interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Playwright Harold Pinter died today. He was 78 years old.

Gone 15 years yesterday. Watch this interview. He was the first Media Matters!

Gone at 77

Sadly, I did not know she was ill. My strongest memory of Odetta is a concert she gave at the First Parish Church on Congress Street in Portland on winter solstice, 1990. (I'm pretty sure it wasn't 1991.) That was incredible. She will be missed...

What's the point?

It's tag line is "They said it. Collected here are statements from hundreds of leading Democrats and other liberals from all over the state of Maine."

I'm reluctant to post any link to this hatchet-job website. At best, it is a misguided collection of innuendo bathed in sanctimony. At worst, it is McCarthy-ist. You almost can hear Ann Coulter or David Horowitz drooling in the background.

Here's an example. They post a piece published in 2003 in the Bangor Daily News by my friend Doug Allen. It begins like this:

Going to War
by Doug Allen

Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who does not care about the welfare of the people of Iraq or neighboring countries. In fact, many of us in the peace movement feel more strongly about this than do policy makers in Washington. We questioned why Washington, the military, and certain corporations provided biological and chemical weapons and military and financial aid to Saddam Hussein and continue to supply similar dictators and violators of human rights in the Middle East and throughout the world.

What are we supposed to feel? How is this guy who thinks Saddam Hussein was "brutal" a University of Maine full professor of philosophy (paid lower than most U.S. full professors)?

This is know-nothingism. It illustrates why Republican politics is completely debased from the public good for the people of Maine.

Rest in peace.

George Carlin, gone at 71.

For some reason I have been transmitted back to about 1974, shooting baskets with my high school buddy Jim while reciting Carlin's seven words you can't say on television, Biff Barf, and the Hippy Dippy weather report.