Corporatist State- Owned Whole Foods and Starbucks! Englewood is Kennilworth!

 

The Rahm Smoothies - a little ginger, a little honey and maybe more than a little Hal Baskin, maybe?

Whole Food shoppers you are subsidizing Englewood
Eggs are $1.99 in Englewood vs $3.099 in Lincoln Park
Milk is $1.99 vs $4.19 in Lincoln Park
Gallon of vanilla ice cream $3.99 vs $5.99 in Lincoln Park
When you shop at Whole Foods ask for the Englewood prices. Comment from Chicago Tribune Editorial

        

And if you go chasing rabbits

And you know you're going to fall

Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar

Has given you the call - Bruce Dold Editor Chicago Tribune

When Bruce Dold is told to get excited about something by the powers that be in this Rube Berg of a Banana Republic* he fairly micturates until he pounds out a mirthful tittering of gleeful Alice in Engelwheel hop about . . . whatever.

Today's cheer leading exercises is an especially hoydenish delight!

It's been said of Deerfield, Sauganash and countless other communities: This must be a nice place since it's got a Whole Foods and a Starbucks.
So what happens when you plunk down two of the country's most culturally powerful brands in impoverished Englewood? Do these stores become just a sideshow to the violent crime, or can they change perceptions about the quality of life in one of Chicago's most beaten-down neighborhoods?

Yes!!!!!! Number 2, Bruce !!!!!!!!!       Perceptions stop the trajectory of bullets!

I live in the 19th Ward, racially diverse but no Whole Foods. Would Dold et al opine a la Betty Davis from Beyond the Forest?



You bet!  This is Urbs in Horto, Dude!

 We got a Starbucks over by the 103rd Street Station and CVS, but more people go to Kareem's Dunkin Donuts on 104th & Western, even though it has not the culturally powerful brand-age cache of Starbucks, but then again at Double D's you don't need to pick Arabica coffee grounds out your gums after a few swallows.

Aside from my snide remarks, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Is a neighborhood only a fit place to live because two of the country's most culturally powerful brands plump their rumps within its confines?

Or, is neighborhood a place where most, if not all of the people look out for one another, respect one another and behave like citizens.

Well, Whole Foods and Starbucks are political players and 63rd Street has been a Development mess for Chicago's Planning & Development Department for more than twenty years.  Elder Hal Baskin has his mitts wide open to all venture opportunists and get-out the vote - for a wad of cash surety at the Ward level of the 3, 6, 15, 16, 17 and 20 Wards.  Six, count 'em six Wards for one Neigh. . .  (sorry) Community - an impoverished, delapidated, dangerous and gang-infested Community.

Much like Hyde Park?  Could be?  Really,Bruce?

My 19th Ward encompasses Beverly, West Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood. Huge difference.  Hal Baskin, a Democratic Party legitimized activist and Gangster Disciple Emeritus has 'reached out to touch' every community development project.

I have had the pleasure of waving bye-bye to a handcuffed Hal in the back of a 6th District Chicago Police squad car, when he and the Englewood Task Force tried to shake down Leo High School.

Lord knows the trouble I've seen!

Activist arrested at school protest
September 02, 2004 

Community activist and former gang member Hal Baskin was arrested for allegedly shoving a police officer Wednesday during a protest outside Leo High School on the South Side, authorities said.
Baskin, who has run for alderman several times and was once an associate of convicted Gangster Disciples kingpin Larry Hoover, was charged with misdemeanor battery, mob action and obstruction in the incident shortly before noon near the Catholic school at 7901 S. Sangamon St., police said. 

Two patrol officers confronted Baskin and several others after they saw a group of people with signs step off the sidewalk and obstruct traffic on 79th Street, Chicago police spokesman David Bayless said.

Baskin, released from custody at Gresham District police headquarters about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, said the protest was a peaceful appeal to the school to hire two neighborhood men for a construction project. He denied shoving the officer and said the group was on the sidewalk but was forced onto the street at times by police.
"Common sense would tell you that I've been doing this for 25 years. I know not to lay hands on a police officer," he said. "Why would I do something idiotic like that?"
Police alleged that when the officers asked the group to get out of the street, Baskin responded by shoving an officer. Three others also were arrested. Attempts to reach school officials were unsuccessful.  Chicago Tribune

Not really, we said plenty and none of it printable, this a few years before Corporatist Mayor Daley and his boy Rahm pulled all of the teeth out CPD.  Imagine cops putting the bracelets on Elder Hal today?

Well, just because Hal Baskin tried to pry open construction wallets universal in Englewood for more than thirty years, does not necessarily mean that he still has his huge mitts dug deeply into the britches of two of the country's most culturally powerful brands.  We won't know that, because the newspapers will never tell.

Bruce Dold is now editor of Chicago Tribune and he takes orders from City Hall and the most culturally powerful brands (Disney, Starbucks, Whole Foods, Audi et al) and you, the consumer, pay the prices and the get to feel good in knowing that you have stopped the laws of physics (speeding bullets) and the thug impulses in Englewood - home to some great people and some really nasty thugs.

Our society buys into nonsense when nonsense is the only thing being offered.

Some do well in such a society ( an Oligarchy) and most try to survive.

Nice one, Bruce.

* Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is the sociopolitical organization of a society by major interest groups, or corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests.

Hickey's Diversity Leg of Lamb

Diversity Leg of Lamb Ready for the lid and six hours of slow cooking magic


My Grandma, Nora ( nee Sullivan) Hickey, came to Chicago in 1912 from a one room cabin with a dirt floor outside of Caherciveen, County Kerry.  Nora had seven sisters and a little brother; she was the oldest and the family threw an American Wake for her, before heading to Queenstown in Cork and trip over.

She landed at Castlegarden, NYC and immediately upon release from Immigration took a train to Chicago.

Here, she worked in the kitchen 'a great home' on Prairie for the rich Yanks run by an African American woman and several Mexican women as her assistants,

Here, Nora Sullivan learned from the hands of the daughter of a slave and escapees of the Revolutions in El Norte how to properly prepare food.

Unlike so many Irish families in America, the Hickeys ate more than boiled grey beef, mashed spud sand cabbage.  We grew up with spices!

My Mom was a lousy cook until my Dad showed her how to make dishes other than burned pork and canned carrots.

The males in my family are exceptional cooks.  I ain't too bad.

I have recently fallen- in -love -all over again with the Hamilton Beach slow-cooker (AKA crock pot) and have larded my thick bones with soups, ragouts, Lancashire Hot Pots, cassoulets, goulashes and slum gullions of every variety.

Craving goat tacos a la Birrieria Ocotlon on east 106th in South Chicago - I used lamb shoulder and chops.  Not bad.  I also got tired of chewing down on missed bones.

Leg of Lamb - big bones - was the key.

Per the male sense of opportunity, Spices, vegetables and herbs became intriguing dramas.  The resultant dish comes from wonderlands and influences - Japan, Mexico, the Caribbean.

Here it is.

Celery chopped one cup

One large Vidalia Onion chopped

Two large Poblano peppers - cut lengthwise

One large red peppper  - cut length wise

Two Lbs Leg of Lamb whole and bone-in trimmed of fat

1/2 cup of Caribbean Jerk Spice for lamb rub

1/4 cup of Kikoman Teriyaki sauce

Big bunch of Cilanto

Methode:

Layer Celery Onions on the bottom of the Crock

Apply heavy doses of Caribbean Jerk rub to the trimmed leg of lamb and place over the celery and onions and then pour 1/4 cup of Teriyaki sauce over the lamb

Layer Poblano and Red Pepper strips over the lamb.

Turn Heat indicator on high and cooked covered for six hours - longer if you wish.  Then remove the leg bone and joints from the lamb - the meat will shred and fall away.

The natural fats and water in the vegetables will make a superb broth. Chop and sprinkle cilantro over the individual portions. 

Eat this with tortillas, flat breads, rice, coucous, or spuds. Here she is with about four hours of cooking.

I have not had any complaints and even a few lascivious notes from women in Morgan Park with whom I have shared portions and the recipe.

Voila!  Six hours and change later- The lamb falls away at the touch.  I will let this cool; pop in the ice box and serve it later with couscous.

Let me know how this works out for you and if it does not, keep it to yourself.
 Me?  I'm on it!

My Take-Away from the Debate Between Shameful and Shameless Last Night

This guy and his In . . .Native American, half-bree . . .mixed-race son  were out exercising their rights to bear arms in thick wet woods that are more swamp than sound footing. The guy and his kid and his son's pal stalk deer with large bore flintlock rifles, no doubt contemporary to the Presidency of Andy Jackson.  They come on big eight pointer buck and nail him and send his kid's pal back to camp for help lugging the fallen fawn.

In the mean time,  the boys at the camp are happily packing up pelts of all kinds, beaver, elk, mink and fox.  They are happy to be returning to civilization and joking with guy quality hijinks, when all of a sudden a buck-ass naked guy cries out and he's bleeding like stuck antelope.

All of sudden arrows whiz into all and sundry and trappers are dropping like InJu. . .Native Americans in an old Gene Autry movie.

The guys exercise their 2nd Amendment rights and return fire like concealed carry guy in all of them NRA ads.

The guy and his kid hear the shooting and leave the carcass to Nature's timely disunion of cells.

Then the brawl gets going and guys and In. . . . Indigeneous land owners are swinging like  saloon doors on pay day.

"Get to the Boat!"

Those who have made Nine First Fridays, wear Our Lady's Scapular, or are pretty damn fast and good their mitts make it to boat.

Trouble is Inju . . . Amerinds, to use the latest portmanteau nomenclature with regard to Indiens d'Amérique have the river covered on both sides and are not in the mood to hear Paleface say, " It is time to sit down and begin a National Conversation on Race."

Nah!

The boys are down to a score and change of voyageurs; actually they ain't voyageurs as voyageurs are French and these guys are white and black Americans in the same boat.

The guy with half-bre . . .mixed race son is the chief guide in this unlucky band of rugged-teers and the other hog with the big nuts is a guy that always says, " Watch out for 'Tree-En Words' meaning Redsk. . .Aboriginal Peoples and obvious hater who's gonna hate.

Not so the other guy who looks like Lenny DiCaprio with whiskers.

Well, the real boss, who the trappers call Captain and is the guy who signs the checks, decides that his group will go the way the guy who ain't racist says to go and sends him out to scout round.

Bad times.  The guy comes upon a couple of bear cubs, cute as the dickens, and Momma Bear madder than a Kennedy Park Mom at  little Maeve's third grade softball game with Mike Cullen as umpire.  Momma charges le grand écrivain américain and goes to town on him from crotch to noggin; turns the poor guy over and road maps his neck, back and rump with her massive claws.

The fight goes all Halloween ,Part Two with not just one but two returns to give Lenny the battered husband coup de grace. 

Mr. Climate Change manages to yank a knife from his belt and give the bitch bear a couple of sharp ones and the two go rolling down a hill - Momma Bear todt  and Lenny Alle Beat Scheiße.

The Brigade come looking for Lenny and find him.  Some want to polish him off Fitzgerald (racist Hater) and his toadies and the Captain, young Uncas and his buddy doctored and sew Lenny up and bring him along.   He's too banged up to travel and so they decide to leave him with two guys until he dies, or get's well.  As If!

Tough.

Not as tough as Jigs Donahue, but tough.

Fitzy and his snitches are left to deal with Lenny.  When the trappers hit the trail, Fitzy ( another Irish stereotype) tries to smother him, but Lenny's half-br . . .bi-racial  boy catches him and Fitzy stabs him to death and blows.

All this time the Indi. . . the Lamanites are trying to find the Chief's daughter, taken by . . .white men.  They go to the French and get the usual Froggie snotty treatment and continue to make sure that the tribe pees in the Wheaties of the white racist kidnapping American Exceptionalists.  Lenny too.

Fitzy and the guys take care to cover their tracks.

Lenny is buried and the kid ditched in the snow.

Lenny ain't dead and no one is going to pull the old Ray Milland on him.

He pounds himself up and out of the piney crypt and drags his mortal husk around the American West, until a friendly Red. . .Native Landsmann helps him and shares some left over buffalo that a pack of wolves are trying to get and the Inj . . . Good Samaritan is later grabbed by the French and hanged.

 You see the Frogs were the ones who grabbed the chief's daughter and had their wicked way with her and the Chief and his boys should be grateful that Lenny helped her, but they go ILM on him and shove him off a cliff.

Here I started to get sleepy and dozed off, but all I missed was that Man Called Horse stuff, where, nothing, but nothing will keep Lenny from exacting revenge on Fitzy.

That's pretty much what I took away from the most important Presidential Debate since Lincoln said nix on a box for Steve Douglas in Galesburg.

Shameful Donald Trump v. Shameless Hillary - shameful can snap out of it, but shameless is permanent.  Hell, Hillary still thinks slaughtering babies is as natural as a Momma bear kicking Lenny DiCaprio to the curb.

The First Thing After Mass This Sunday - A Bit of Yardwork

I know the garage is back there. Casa Hickey - a modest raised ranch in Morgan Park.


I get busy.  Drafting poignant, witty and very important indictments of folly universal do not spring unarmed from the HP keyboard like Minerva from the head of Jove, I can tell you.

No siree!  It takes hours of reading, determined distillation of facts and sober application of information to universal truths and Cardinal virtues before this son of 79th Street and blue collar values pounds out some wordage.

I tend to multi-task - taking time to smell the flowers, meditate on my own and mankind's follies, whip up a snack or two, and hold the cat up to whirling kitchen fan until it snarls in rage and just tickles me to death, before I take pen to paper, or finger the keys.

Hygiene is inportant - no dishes in sink, no biohazards in the ice box and no laundry blocking the view of the old flat-screen.

Outside lawn care?  Way down on the Daddy- do list.

My lawn, as I have noted here on many occassions, is a closely cropped collection of Collards, Clover, Cabombaceae, Cactaceae and some grass.

I have a cordial hatred dandelions and excise their presence with immediate and profound violence.

Others I take a liberal dislike, but will tolerate their presence up to a point.

However, this past week I have let things go like Angela Merkel at a U.N. buffet.

I determine to make things right.  I will go to Mass at Scared Heart Church and take in the Gospel message and Father Gallagher's always wonderful treatment of the text and pray the Memorare for the strength, energy and attention necessary to make things right.

One thing could block my intentions and efforts -Vade retro me Satana!

President's Britches Ablaze and Smoking Like the Choom Gang "in a White Classmate's Sparkling New Van,"

“I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” David Brooks of National Public Television, Radio and Sartorial Club


President Barack Obama (1.) do have sharp Hart Schaffner and Marx britches, Dave, and (2.)they are and have been ablaze for some time. That must be a rule with the 'Right Side of History' crowd - the Howard Zinn addicts who despise anything and everything about being an American -Sharp pants creases and and an inability to recognize the truth, even it falls like an Acme safe on one.  David Brooks appreciates those things. He and George Clooney are Dope!

Me ? I don't think that the tailor makes the man, nor do I believe fabricating slick sentences makes good government.  President Obama certainly does, as do far too many people, because he is living the life mapped out in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus - the tailor, re-tailored, a goofy tale of fact and fiction tripping over themselves. Inconvenient truths need not apply.

President Obama is the guy who was transformational - he is - Charlotte, Raton Rouge, Tulsa, Chicago, Brooklyn, owe so much to the man who burned racial bridges in America from Henry Louis Gates to Charlotte, North Carolina.

Obama said that he only knew about the Hilary Clinton e-mail kerfuffle from watching the evening news.  Really?  None of the Big Three networks covered that at all. Well now it turns out that the cool kid from Hawaii and leader of the Choom Gang had some fire to his smoke screen:

President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records made public Friday.
The disclosure came as the FBI released its second batch of documents from its investigation into Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

The 189 pages the bureau released includes interviews with some of Clinton’s closest aides, such as Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills; senior State Department officials; and even Marcel Lazar, better known as the Romanian hacker “Guccifer.”

In an April 5, 2016 interview with the FBI, Abedin was shown an email exchange between Clinton and Obama, but the longtime Clinton aide did not recognize the name of the sender.

"Once informed that the sender's name is believed to be pseudonym used by the president, Abedin exclaimed: 'How is this not classified?'" the report says. "Abedin then expressed her amazement at the president's use of a pseudonym and asked if she could have a copy of the email."

Huma said, 'What?"    Huma said, 'How is this not classified?'

If that is not a 'smoking gun,' it most certainly is a pair of snappy worsted wool's a'creased and a smoking!

It has been this south side Chicago Irish Catholic (end abortion) Democrat's opinion since meeting Barack Obama in 1996, that the man is not terribly bright - glib, self-important and corporately polished like many middle management suck-ups, sneaks and sycophants, but not all that smart.

Not very smart people do very well in our secular political society - we stopped being a culture in 1973 - by sticking to the script and doing and saying exactly what the public relations cats instruct.
Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk are two examples.  President Obama is the top of this pyramid.

The smoking strides of our President will not matter much.  It will be a wedge for some and an annoyance to most.

I will say this -President Obama has never let me down.  He has lived up to and exceeded my expectations.

 

Alderman Anti-Politics, DNAinfo's Ted Cox and Grassroots Collaborative Cover Rahm's Retreat

  ' . . .   impoverished black families don’t want white people and bourgeois African-Americans lecturing them about fatherhood." Mary Mitchell Chicago Sun Times

Mmmm! Mmm!~ Mmmm!  Chicago Sun Times Mary Mitchell is angry . . .24/7.

Rahm Emanuel was bullied away from holding a mirror up to the root problems determining Chicago's ever-soaring Black on Black killings ,  You know all that racist myth spouting about Fatherless Families.

Rahm was bullied by Mary Mitchell, the wired-in community clergy and of course Chicago's Regular Democratic Activists.

Read what Rahm hath wrought - post skulk of course.

So, Rahm invited only nice and compliant, but really, really, really concerned Goo-goos and Alder-critters, to his latest PPPP Preacherized Pistol Philippic* at Malcolm X college on the West Side.  

DNA info Chicago's Ted Cox is always nice and compliant. He knew that Rahm would not criticize the African American Community, Family, or  Individuals - No Way and No How.  Therefore, Ted Cox appeared to be fully fully-loaded to have other nice, compliant and really, really concerned person to off Progressive narratives on Rahm's crawfish far from the core issues.

Ted had Alderman Ameya Pawar of the 47th Ward.  Ald. Pawar is "anti-politics Alderman". In Chicagese, an ineffective gasbag loved by the press and Channel 11.

Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th) challenged the factual basis for the "myth" of the fatherless African-American family."I don't know that we'd go to . . .

Now this is Beautiful!

. . . Appalachia and talk about absent parents," Pawar said. "If we're going to be serious about talking about what's going on with families in poor communities, the mass incarceration has to be at the top of the list, and a failed war on drugs."

Forgive Ameya, Chicago; he is an Alderman and prone to saying really dumb things and added to the fact that he is the Anti-politics Alderman.  Well . . . knowing that Ted Cox trotted out an Activist from Grassroots Collaborative ( love that Lefty Lingo)

"I think the mayor should focus on economic policy," said Amisha Patel, executive director of the Grassroots Collaborative. "Blaming fathers and blaming families for crime is really disingenous. (sic)"

Hey, Alderman Appalachia is no Englewood.

IN Appalachia, the majority of families living in poverty are headed by married couples.
Poverty rates in Appalachia's rural counties far exceed the poverty rates in metro areas.
In part, these patterns reflect the lower levels of racial and ethnic diversity in the region, but they also reflect the low wages and lack of jobs in remote, rural areas.

Gee, the same . . .but really different!  And this is from social science, Progressives!

Who is being disingenuous?  You, Miss Grassroots Collaborative, Alderman Anti-Politics and Ted Cox. Yeah Ted, Alderman Anti-politics challenged the hell out of  the factual basis for the "myth" of the fatherless African-American family.  "We have a lot of corporate philanthropy and corporate activism that we need to tap into," he said.

Yet Pawar warned that "philanthropy lets rich people choose what's worthy and what's not," and instead urged the mayor to act as a "counterbalance" to Gov. Bruce Rauner, "a guy who is cutting programs [and] basically destroying what little safety net there is in Illinois."

Pawar went on to say that "a counterbalance to that is a strong mayor who's going to say this is wrong," adding, "We have a moral imperative to tax appropriately and serve everyone."

The nice and compliant Ted Cox concludes not with Retreating Rahm but Alderman Anti-politics on the grift for himself and Grassroots Collaborative

"We have a lot of corporate philanthropy and corporate activism that we need to tap into," he said.
Yet Pawar warned that "philanthropy lets rich people choose what's worthy and what's not," and instead urged the mayor to act as a "counterbalance" to Gov. Bruce Rauner, "a guy who is cutting programs [and] basically destroying what little safety net there is in Illinois."
Pawar went on to say that "a counterbalance to that is a strong mayor who's going to say this is wrong," adding, "We have a moral imperative to tax appropriately and serve everyone."

And that will end Gun Violence!  

There is no such thing as Gun Violence.  There is violence caused by people - demographics - you know, Voters. 

Alderman Anti-politics, Chicago!  He'll be back!  

Rahm stays fetal - It's all good!

*policing, prevention, penalties and parenting - well maybe not parenting.
   

Charlotte's Web - Woven by America's Enemies and Wearing Man Buns in Solidarity

People are shot and injured, stores are looted and the guilty get grants.

That is how it goes.  The poor, the ignorant, the victimized, the angry and the frustrated will never see their lives improved, but that is just fine and dandy, because they must continue to live in the imaginary world of institutional racism. The people behind the rioting will head home to Grosse Point, Kenilworth, Ann Arbor, Chicago's Hyde and Wicker Parks, just they did after Ferguson, Baton Rouge and St. Paul.  It's all good.   

The American news media never connects the dots in matters of politics, social justice, race relations, or law enforcement.

Greek Comedian Aristophanes wrote three hundred years before Christ, "The ignorant serve cruel masters."  By this he meant those of us kept ignorant of things, like a huge cliff awaiting our midnight stroll on a perfectly moonless night were miss served by those who not only knew the route but encouraged us to stretch our legs.

In the same way, the news Media ( CNN, ABC, PBS, NBC, MSNBC, CBS and most newspapers) completely ignore the deft hands of America's homegrown terrorists- Howard Zinn-ophlie academics, CPUSA, ISO and the many social media affiliates funded by George Soros - in the roiling blood spilled and to come.

Riots and lynch mobs are not spontaneous.  They are orchestrated by creeps.   One of the great saints of my Faith was a creep.  Saul of Tarsus (aka- Paul) was a huge fan of mob violence and like most agitators was a son of privilege, highly educated and bullet-proof by the powers that was - until he fell off of his horse on the rad to Damascus.

Today, no responsible member of the media questions the black balakava'd or masked white middle class lads in man-buns goading the white-shirted lad with more than a few hits of 'Loud' to hurl bricks, bottle and bull jive at police officers.

When the tear gas settles only the residents of slums and the cops are there to put things back to normal.  The Man-Bun Bolsheviks are on to the next site, or home for brie and shellfish with Mater and Pater in Kennilworth, or Portland.

The linguistically challenged rage-loaded street Brother of the Struggle interviewed by CNN is what America is offered as an explanation for the blood, arson and looting in Charlotte. Don Lemon never chats up the career -street guerrilla,who put away  Grand Theft Auto and other childish things, sort of, for the manly art of provoking violence in others without consequence.  God forbid young Seth is dragged into a Paddy wagon with Lamon and J'amal, but Peoples Law Office and ACLU are already in the cop house with fists full of writs and media camera's.

Why are the same pasty-faced and slack-jawed urban guerilla's always ignored by the media?

I believe we know why.  It keeps this stuff going. 

Until responsible reporters push back at editors and serve up the creeps behind the rioting - expect more.

Send Up Some Prayers for Ryan Rusch and His Family, Today

There is nothing more heart-breaking for parents than any child suffering. Those of us who are parents do and should feel for anyone's child, no matter the age, when major health problems threaten their time with us.

Ryan Rusch lives in West Beverly ( The west of Western Ave. - the Cape Cod, raised ranch and Georgian home Beverly working stiff tribe of the 60642 Zip Code).   Ryan was born with a rare heart disorder where only one artery supplies blood flow instead of the standard two.  He and his family have fought for life from the moment of birth.

Ten years ago, three teens decided to beat Ryan nearly to death.  It was a horrific beating, racially motivated by the attacker own words, but not deemed to be a Hate Crime.    Well, that is blood under the bridge.

Ryan added brain damage and all that goes with that, vision impairment, seizures, struggles with attention to studies, to his struggles with the aid of those, but he is one tough kid.  He played football, graduated from St. Rita High School and attended college.  Then heart problems resurfaced.

He is undergoing dramatic surgery as I hit these keys.

We have prayed for Ryan and his family for weeks at daily services in St. John Fisher and at Sacred Heart.  At Sacred Heart, we conclude the readings and prayers of the faithful in preparation for the Celebration of Eucharist with the Memorare.

This very special prayer to Our Lady is a miracle worker.  I taught it to many of the guys at Leo High School who are not Catholic and they said saying this prayer seemed to help them anyway. The words were stange to them, as it is to too many Catholics these days.

REMEMBER, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.

Do me a favor. Send up a couple of Memorares over the next few days for the Rusch Family and all children who suffer from health problems. Send some up for yourself, as well.

It won't kill you and it just might ease some family's burdens.  Say the words,  even if you hate God, religion,  or sentiment.

Send some up for Ryan.