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[Editor’s note: This poem appears in both sections HH-6 and FF-1.]
Lynetta Jones
1664 Page Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
THE MOLDER
1/23/77
I took a piece of plastic clay,
And idly fashioned it one day,
And as my fingers pressed it still,
It molded – yielding to my will.
I came again when days were past,
The bit of clay was firm at last,
The form I gave it, still it wore,
And I could change that form no more.
A far more precious thing than clay,
I gently shaped from day to day,
And molded with my fumbling art,
A young child’s soft and yielding heart.
I came again when years were gone,
And it was a man I looked upon,
Who such godlike nature bore
The men could change it – NEVERMORE.
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[Editor’s note: Handwritten account]
Book – as a bride
Linetta [Lynetta Jones]
After marriage I was installed on a fair sized farm which was well stocked with farm animals and expected to assume full responsibility there while my husband who owned part interest in a construction company was several hundred miles away during the season for building gravel roads. The [illegible word] where the construction was [illegible insert] and that was often in another state than Indiana, our home state.
While the farm showed to good advantage there was no laborsaving devices and I carried liquid food to the pigs in a pasture one quarter mile away from the farmhouse. Water had to be pumped by hand for all the stock which not infrequently broke fence and had to be chased at all hours of night and day, and fences repaired afterward, in some fashion which I hoped would deter another breakthrough.
Then I became pregnant with Jimmy Warren, which I planned to do since I figured the time was right in the economic condition which had hit so violently in 1929 was bound to change for the better, soon, I thought, but such was not the case. It went from bad to worse.
I was not too disturbed when the mortgage was about to take the farm which was [illegible word] in the little village of Crete, Indiana about six miles directly east of Lynn, Indiana. It was there that little Jim was born. I was seeing the handwriting on the wall. “Depression or no depression, the man knows nothing about stock raising or farming, and I refuse
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to endure this type of slavery for the rest of my life. I must find more lucrative ways to meet the tremendously high goals I have set, in the length of time I have given myself to do so and in such severe conditions as the nation is now in financially.”
My husband’s work was the first to fold up. The company lost everything to the financial backers. My husband have not cried tears of disappointment was resigned to letting the mortgagee take the farm, but I said “only in return for the house he lives in at Lynn and whatever mortgages it carries will I sign such an agreement. I tend to have a roof over my child’s head come hell or high water. Convey my message to THIS shark,” and I, “and tell him I am not just playing. Tell him it is my custom to uphold my end of negotiations. Tell him I don’t know how to play the role of ‘worm’ and I’m not fixing to learn.”
My husband reasoned that the man’s goodwill would be affronted and tried to escape conveying my message. “Either you do or I hire a lawyer,” said I, “and tell the mortgagee it is the nature of the Tigress to defend her cubs.” Whereupon I walked off and left him with it, not daring to believe that he would spunk up to conveying my message as spoken, but evidently he did for the deal went through exactly as I had outlined and I paid off the mortgage on the house very soon afterward.
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FF-1-97a
Lynetta Jones
1664 Page Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
THE MCCARTHY ERA
Robert and his brother Michael Meeropol use the name of their adoptive parents. They are the natural sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg – convicted and executed on a charge of espionage in 1953.
Accused of having passed secrets concerning the components of the atomic bomb to the Russians, the unfortunate couple have little chance of establishing either extenuation or innocence. That the so-called secrets of our discovery of the bomb having been well aired both at home and abroad by the news media was an open secret at best. Although our laws provided that courts must assume a defendant is innocent until he or she is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the reverse of this has often been the practice.
It was an era of mass hysteria and tremendous fears, and gender in great measure by the discovery of an implement of war capable of bringing an end to this planet and everything upon it.
The Rosenbergs were not alone in suffering the consequences of the great unrest, although it had cost them life itself. Men and women of excellent repute and outstanding
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accomplishment were hounded, deprived of their livelihood, and held up to public ridicule unjustly accused and cast into prisons where they languished for years and died without hope of redress or vindication. Neighbor was set against neighbor and blood kin against blood kin, while the witchhunt rolled on and a feeling of insecurity reached the proportions of an epidemic. To my knowledge, restitution was neither offered nor gained by any of these victims in later years, although it is most unlikely that any court with more rational climate extant at a later time could have convicted any of these victims on such flimsy circumstantial evidence.
However, it is well to remember that such data, erroneous as it was in many cases, became a permanent record, and given such favorable climate as I have described, could rise again full-fleshed, to become a scourge as it was then.
Most ruthless among those afflicted with the yen to accuse and destroy was US Senator [Joseph] McCarthy. I have never been so seriously alarmed for the welfare of our nation, as when listening to his speeches via radio broadcast, and listen I did, most every night until the wee hours of morning. McCarthy became victim of his own fire and zeal. He was stricken on the Senate floor and did not long survive the fatal attack. The nation sickened of aggression directed at its people, and shook off the shackles of unfounded fears.
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In the course of time, a degree of rationality crept back into the conclaves of those in high places. Old scars continued to bleed, inwardly. Old hatreds lay dormant in the hearts and minds of those who have inspired these persecutions.
The Rosenberg boys grew to adulthood under an adoptive name. Robert had been five years of age when his natural parents died. He is now twenty-eight. Robert Meeropol was a guest speaker at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco very recently. He spoke of the turbulence so rife during that period of our history (1953) which is often referred to as the “McCarthy era.” He said his parents had been the victims of a “frame-up” and convicted for a crime that could not possibly have ever happened, for the information they were accused of conveying to the Russians was “worthless,” and the secret of the atom bomb had ceased to be a secret a long time before.
Robert Meeropol further stated that the case was heard before a non-sequestered jury exposed to constant red-baiting journalism. There were regular secret meetings and obvious collusion between the trial judge, the FBI Director, the Attorney General, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in a conspiracy to assure a conviction. Meeropol said the reopening of the case of their parents was not “reliving the
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past” in a sincere attempt to assure that what happened to their parents could not happen to any other persons.
Meeropol said that he and his brother Michael are seeking to get possession of more than 800,000 pages of FBI and Justice Department files that led to the conviction and execution of their parents.
The brothers sued under the Freedom of Information Act and secure the release of some 30,000 pages of these files in November of 1975. Meeropol said his parents had not been the only victims of the McCarthy era, sometimes referred to as “The American Inquisition,” but that their trial had marked a “crucial turning point in this nation’s history.”
McCarthy era attitudes still exist, Meeropol said, sending the cost in human life of the Vietnam struggle, the hardship of others who have had their freedom curtailed, and lastly President Ford’s recent remarks that the Puerto Rican nationalist movement was controlled by Cuba.
America today must fight to maintain her hard-won freedoms and to revitalize the safeguards written around them, and also be equipped to roll back such trends as “secret police forces,” collusion to bring about injustice in high places, and attempts to muffled voices of her people.
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Lynetta Jones
1664 Page Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
PAIN
BY
LYNETTA JONES
The brain reacts quickly to injury to any part of the body. The cells fire, the signal is flashed over the nerve paths, and pain results almost simultaneously. Science still has much to learn about that remarkable organism, the brain. New information is constantly being revealed to throw new light on hitherto uncharted areas. Much remains hidden and the search goes on.
One very interesting discovery has been reported by science writer Gobind Behari Lal, in the San Francisco Examiner (2-20-77). Lal reports that the brain manufactures an opium-like hormone called endorphin which is far more potent than morphine. This hormone influences the growth hormone and the development of sexual function, and is capable of producing tumors.
Endorphin has been found to be more powerful than pain and is able to reduce and suppress it. It is hoped that this breakthrough may pave the way to mastery of diseases thus far considered to be unconquerable.
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Dr. C. H. Liand of the University of California and his associates have reported to the National Academy of Science that endorphin may play an important role in the control of neuroendocrine (the nervous hormones) activity and that it has removed chemical blockage to the working of the growth hormone.
In an experiment reported by Dr. Bruce Pomeranz of Toronto, an animal under anesthesia was subjected to pinpricks to produce pain. The signal was monitored by an electrical device near the cells.
The brain responded by producing endorphin which halted the signals and dispersed the pain for ninety minutes after which the animal was again responsive to pain. The experiment was discontinued at this point. The results may explain to the Western world how acupuncture works. It has been working for the Chinese for hundreds of years.
The End
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Lynetta Jones
1664 Page Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
GOITER
BY
LYNETTA JONES
The thyroid gland provides the body with a hormone called “thyroxin.” Without the mineral iodine this gland cannot function properly and is overworked. This produces the unsightly enlargement of the neck known as “goiter.”
The Food and Life Year Book of Agriculture reminds us that “lack of iron mind in the food and water supply is considered the chief, if not the only cause, of simple goiter.”
Goiter is almost non-existent along the coastal belts, except among people who harbor a distaste for sea foods. Iodine is struck by wind-born rainfall and sea spray over the land adjacent to the sea and liberally distributed there.
Unfortunately this valuable trace mineral is not present in foods grown inland, even though there may be the very same kind of food grown along the sea. Some doctors treat goiter with kelp alone.
This enlargement of the neck was known to the ancients who blamed “the evil spirits” for that and just about every other ever thing they encountered.
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These primitive people treated goiter with the burnt ashes of sponge which was thought to be capable of expelling the most evil spirits.
Fortunately the remedy was not without merit since the sponge, like the seaweed, is rich in iodine.
Resources:
Common & Uncommon Use Of Herbs For Healthful Living, by Richard Lucas
Food and Life Year Book of Agriculture
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Lynetta Jones
1664 Page Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
Instinct is a wonderful force. It is wisdom directed toward the preservation and the best welfare of organisms that do not reason. It turns the faces of the flowers towards the sun; places the moss on the leeward side of the rock or tree trunk; and guides the long flights of the migratory birds. It often directs the destiny of mankind when and if they are willing to listen. Men, having the capacity to reason, do not always reason well and seldom are attuned to nature.
An item from Reuters ran on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, January 1, 1968, and read as follows: (exact quote)
March of the Fearless Hares
Thousands of fearless and hungry hares were reported on the march in far Eastern Siberia.
The Soviet news agency, Tass quoted report from the area saying the hares trooped through the streets settlements in the Kamchatka Peninsula “showing utter disregard for the frenzied barking of dogs.”
When they reached the coast of the Sea of Okhoitsk, “the hares ravenously attack sea kale (a kind of plant in the cabbage family)
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washed ashore by the tide,” Tass said. Then they “marched back to the tundra in the same organized matter,” the report said.
Experts were quoted as saying the hares were believed to be suffering from “an acute mineral hunger.”
Resource:
San Francisco Chronicle, January 2, 1968
Common & Uncommon Use Of Herbs For Healthful Living, by Richard Lucas
Food and Life Year Book of Agriculture