Report On July 19th “Midnight Voices” Event

No Midnight Voices in August we will start up again on the Third Thursday in September on the 20^th

Yes, the nighttime is the right time. That was true Thursday night July 19^th at the Friends Meeting House in Cambridge as we held the fourth Midnight Voices event sponsored by the Smedley Butler Brigade, VFP here in Boston. This month our own Smedley Ex Comm member Bob “Doc” Masters hosted the event and did a bang-up job, as expected, in his first effort. The evening started off with an “open mic” which drew eight performers doing anything from story-telling to singing and playing guitar covering well-known songs and those of their own creation to poetry and literary readings (including a great one from Samantha Marc Levy about his travels to Laos and Vietnam). A highlight was our own ex-Coordinator Pat Scanlon on banjo performing for the first time in public his recently written song on climate change (to the tune of You Are My Sunshine). (Hey the writer gets to “promote” whom he or she wants, right).        

Georgia Parks, a young writer, our main feature, read from several of her published poems and a long section from a work of fiction. After a short, too short since we were running behind schedule (we have to end by (9:30), intermission our host Bob Masters read from red scare black-listed Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, a powerful poem by Bertolt Brecht and a short be equally powerful poem left on the latrine walls by some unknown G.I in 1969 hellhole Vietnam. He related his own experiences in hellhole Vietnam 1969 as field doctor to these works. Also powerful stuff and we hope to hear more from him along these lines. Smedley David Rothhauser graced us with a poem and a reading from a section of a novel he is working on about Sacco and Vanzetti. We hope to hear more readings as the work progresses about the case that never dies, nor should it.

All in all a varied program which is what we are striving for. We have the Friends meeting room until at least May 2019 on the third Thursdays of the month starting up again September 20^th. Anyone interested in a half hour feature or a fifteen- minute mini-feature contact Al Johnson at alfredjohnson34@comcast.net Open mic is first come, first serve. Singers get two songs, others should figure on five- minute presentations.