Andy Thibault

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Cool Justice 
How To Read Between The Lines
By ANDY THIBAULT, Columnist
Law Tribune Newspapers
May 9, 2005

When the boss judge says, "It wasn't my idea to make those cases secret," how do we know if he's telling the truth?

Short of going to federal court to get documents, we have to read between the lines. It might be the only other way -- as citizens -- to find out what is really going on.

For example, when the boss judge says, "It was all up to individual judges, and I can't do anything about it," how do we prepare for that?
One of my personal antidotes is to re-read sections of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Double-up on the magic mushrooms. Now, there: Doesn't it all make sense?

This brings me to the larger question: How do we learn to read between the lines? Certainly it helps if one has a great teacher. It could be one of those teachers with a subtle Socratic method - and, or, a poet.

We're lucky that in the saga of Connecticut's secret court cases for the rich and powerful - administered [not in the interests of justice] by the high priests with advanced robitis -- we can read this paper, The Connecticut Law Tribune, and The Hartford Courant. But, what about all the other stories? With all the downsizing of newspapers and increases in monopoly markets over the past 30 years, there's just too much bullshit to go around. I've concluded, very unhappily, that the newspapers just can't handle it anymore.

This has been bothering me for quite a few years. I haven't known what to do. Then, the other day, it hit me right in the face.

I found a new answer man. He's about 6-feet, 5-inches tall, hard to miss. To find him most days, you might have to travel to the beautiful and struggling city of Willimantic. He lives there, and teaches English nearby in Mansfield.

The solution to the riddle of the secret court cases - and many other of today's stories from Abu Ghraib to the ongoing radical shift of wealth in this country, is on page 51 of his new book, "Stomp and Sing," Curbstone Press. The poem, by Jon Anderson, is called "True Story."

Andersen dreams of singing "We Shall Overcome" mournfully and off-key at a demonstration outside the Pentagon until his head is cracked open and he is shoved into the ice-clogged Potomac. There, he encounters, among others, the singer / activist Pete Seeger who greets him with a firm handshake, saying, "Hello, Jon - Woody said you'd be coming."

Two weeks later, in reality, Andersen travels to Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven where Seeger is playing a benefit concert for striking Yale workers. Arriving early, he finds an unlocked door. He shyly enters a room where dozens of women wearing union buttons are folding programs. One tells him to come in and meet Seeger.

"He gave me a short history of the labor movement and sang a miner's song and I got up the nerve to ask him if he had read Agnes Smedley's Daughter of the Earth, in which bosses seal up the mine to snuff out a fire and snuff out the miners in the process as their wives drop hysterical at the shaft entrances and at the feet of machine-gun armed Pinkerton goons. He said no but his wife's mother had known Agnes back in the 20s … When he asked me what I did, and I told him that I was a high school English teacher, he stopped strumming, turned to me and said: `Well, Jon, it seems to me that your job is to teach kids to read between the lines.' "

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