Community First Slate Candidates Boxing Night at Bourbon Street January 30th

Worth Township Democratic Committeeman John O'Sullivan between and the legendary Kansas Comet, NFL Bears Gayle Sayers and Leo High School President Dan McGrath.

Worth Township Democratic Committeeman John O'Sullivan is a public leader who puts Community First and is one of the last of the public people who actually walk-the-walk.John O'Sullivan, like 19th Ward Alderman Matt O'Shea, is a 'with the voters' public servant who can be seen out on the streets actually listening to the voters. Johnny O' listens to people and respects what they have to say about the government that they are getting; so, when John O'Sullivan speaks, I tend to listen as carefully to what he has to say because I know that he is speaking for my neighbors.  When Johnny O' speaks, it reflects what he is already doing. 

Johnny O' has been there for the constituents of Worth Township that takes in a healthy chunk of the south side of Chicago, taking the fight to powerful and the 'bullet-proof' as he did leading the way in the Burr Oak cemetary nightmare, standing up to bosses and finding real paths away from street violence
John O'Sullivan is backing the Community First Slate of Candidates. 

I'll be at Bourbon Street on wednesday, Johnny!

 

Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 8:56:26 PM
Subject: Worth Township Community First Party

Dear Friends,

It is with great pleasure that I proudly endorse the Community First Party for the Worth Township Government.  After much consideration I do believe it is time for a change. The Township of Worth includes the communities of Oak Lawn, Evergreen Park, Alsip, Blue Island, Palos Heights, Chicago Ridge, Worth, Crestwood, Merrionette Park, Bridgeview, Hometown and Robbins. The Community First party consists of 8 unique individuals that each bring fresh new ideas to township government.  The slate of candidates has agreed upon some very proactive points that you should be aware of :

1. Term limits for elected township officials.

2. Suspension of pensions for elected township officials.

3.  Salary freeze for elected township officials.

They have agreed upon these points because they want MORE FOR YOU - for our seniors, our families and our children!  They put our COMMUNITY FIRST!

Please join us for a fundraiser on Wednesday, Jan. 30th at Bourbon Street from 6-9 pm. $35 includes open bar, buffet style dinner, Olympic style boxing matches featured by Celtic Boxing Club in Mt. Greenwood. It's sure to be a great time and an opportunity for you to meet the candidates.  

Please take a minute to open the attached documents.  I'm sure you will be impressed.  Attached you will find:

1.  Candidate information

2.  Event Ticket /information

Please feel free to call me with any questions or concerns.  I look forward to seeing you there and I look forward to the future of Worth Township.

Regards,

John O'Sullivan

Worth Township Democratic Committeeman

708-259-7443

St. Bridget of Kildare - Pray for Burr Oak Cemetery Families and Give Them Comfort!

Last week was nuts! Burr Oak Cemetery was desecrated and thousands of my neighbors are at a loss to understand the monstrous misdeeds perpetrated on the souls now departed and their families.

I went to Mass and spent the whole time rubber necking and trying to coax a smile out of a blondie two year old trying to pull a Steve McQueen from her Mom and older sisters -'I not like Church!' Share it, Sister.

Last night I tried to make up for my crumby Mass by doing some reading and came upon a great site run by a Catholic Convert. We don't get many of them these days. I was touched by this remark on the Home Page, by Dee:

I am a recent convert to the Roman Catholic Church (2005) from Evangelical Protestantism. I'm interested in Catholic theology, Celtic spirituality, and Benedictine Spirituality. I am an Associate at Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY (Episcopalian) and work and live in beautiful New England. I love to travel, and my most recent trip was to the Holy Land in February 2008. I enjoy music, reading, family and friends. I enjoy blogging about my faith and facilitating the Great Adventure Bible Study, an overview of Salvation History. Hope you enjoy my new blog

I do, Dee. I am especially delighted to note that St. Bridget of Ireland is one of my favorite Saints. St. Bridget was the saint of the Mighty Oak. Kildare means the Church of the Oak in Irish. Bridget was a Celtic aristocrat who devoted her live to Christ. She was a powerful Abbess and leader long before the Second Wave Feminists and goofballs. St. Bridget like most great women put her whole heart, soul and muscle into getting the job done and without the reward of publicity. This is from Dee's site:

Cogitosus, a monk of Kildare in the eighth century, expounded the metrical life of St. Brigid, and versified it in good Latin. This is what is known as the "Second Life", and is an excellent example of Irish scholarship in the mid-eighth century. Perhaps the most interesting feature of Cogitosus's work is the description of the Cathedral of Kildare in his day: "Solo spatioso et in altum minaci proceritate porruta ac decorata pictis tabulis, tria intrinsecus habens oratoria ampla, et divisa parietibus tabulatis". (The rood-screen was formed of wooden boards, lavishly decorated, and with beautifully decorated curtains. )



Probably the famous Round Tower of Kildare dates from the sixth century. Although St. Brigid was "veiled" or received by St. Macaille, at Croghan, yet, it is tolerably certain that she was professed by St. Mel of Ardagh, who also conferred on her abbatial powers. From Ardagh St. Macaille and St. Brigid followed St. Mel into the country of Teffia in Meath, including portions of Westmeath and Longford. This occurred about the year 468. St. Brigid's small oratory at Cill-Dara became the centre of religion and learning, and developed into a cathedral city. She founded two monastic institutions, one for men, and the other for women, and appointed St. Conleth as spiritual pastor of them. It has been frequently stated that she gave canonical jurisdiction to St. Conleth, Bishop of Kildare, but, as Archbishop Healy points out, she simply "selected the person to whom the Church gave this jurisdiction", and her biographer tells us distinctly that she chose St. Conleth "to govern the church along with herself".

Thus, for centuries, Kildare was ruled by a double line of abbot-bishops and of abbesses, the Abbess of Kildare being regarded as superioress general of the convents in Ireland.

Not alone was St. Bridget a patroness of students, but she also founded a school of art, including metal work and illumination, over which St. Conleth presided. From the Kildare scriptorium came the wondrous book of the Gospels, which elicited unbounded praise from Giraldus Cambrensis, but which has disappeared since the Reformation.

According to this twelfth- century ecclesiastic, nothing that he had ever seen was at all comparable to the "Book of Kildare", every page of which was gorgeously illuminated, and he concludes a most laudatory notice by saying that the interlaced work and the harmony of the colours left the impression that "all this is the work of angelic, and not human skill".

Small wonder that Gerald Barry assumed the book to have been written night after night as St. Bridget prayed, "an angel furnishing the designs, the scribe copying". Even allowing for the exaggerated stories told of St. Brigid by her numerous biographers, it is certain that she ranks as one of the most remarkable Irishwomen of the fifth century and as the Patroness of Ireland. She is lovingly called the "Queen of the South: the Mary of the Gael" by a writer in the "Leabhar Breac". St. Brigid died leaving a cathedral city and school that became famous all over Europe. In her honour St. Ultan wrote a hymn commencing:

Christus in nostra insula Que vocatur Hivernia Ostensus est hominibus Maximis mirabilibus Que perfecit per felicem Celestis vite virginem Precellentem pro merito Magno in numdi circulo.(In our island of Hibernia Christ was made known to man by the very great miracles which he performed through the happy virgin of celestial life, famous for her merits through the whole world.)

The sixth Life of the saint printed by Colgan is attributed to Coelan, an Irish monk of the eighth century, and it derives a peculiar importance from the fact that it is prefaced by a foreword from the pen of St. Donatus, also an Irish monk, who became Bishop of Fiesole in 824. St. Donatus refers to previous lives by St. Ultan and St. Aileran. When dying, St. Brigid was attended by St. Ninnidh, who was ever afterwards known as "Ninnidh of the Clean Hand" because he had his right hand encased with a metal covering to prevent its ever being defiled, after being he medium of administering the viaticum to Ireland's Patroness.

She was interred at the right of the high altar of Kildare Cathedral, and a costly tomb was erected over her. In after years her shrine was an object of veneration for pilgrims, especially on her feast day, 1 February, as Cogitosus related. About the year 878, owing to the Scandinavian raids, the relics of St. Brigid were taken to Downpatrick, where they were interred in the tomb of St. Patrick and St. Columba. The relics of the three saints were discovered in 1185, and on 9 June of the following year were solemnly translated to a suitable resting place in Downpatrick Cathedral, in presence of Cardinal Vivian, fifteen bishops, and numerous abbots and ecclesiastics. Various Continental breviaries of the pre-Reformation period commemorate St. Brigid, and her name is included in a litany in the Stowe Missal.

In Ireland today, after 1500 years, the memory of "the Mary of the Gael" is as dear as ever to the Irish heart, and, as is well known, Brigid preponderates as a female Christian name. Moreover, hundreds of place-names in her honour are to be found all over the country, e.g. Kilbride, Brideswell, Tubberbride, Templebride, etc. The hand of St. Brigid is preserved at Lumiar near Lisbon, Portugal, since 1587, and another relic is at St. Martin's Cologne.
Text taken from http://www.newadvent.com/

The interesting part of this whole essay is that it is not mentioned directly but Brigid (pronounced Breed in the ancient Gaelic) is often confused, and their stores interwoven, with another Brigid who was a pagan and honored as a goddess. The whole idea that St. Brigid's convent was underneath a large oak tree, oaks being highly venerated by the Druids and priestesses of pagan Ireland, certainly has reinforced the idea for centuries.

Edward C. Sellner, in his book Wisdom of the Celtic Saints states that 'nuns at her monastery are said to have kept an eternal flame burning there, a custom that may have originated with female druids residing at that spot long before the saint arrived. Their leader supposedly was a high priestess who bore the name of the goddess Brigit or Brighid, a deity of wisdom, poetry, fire and the hearth. Like other Celtic goddesses who sometimes appear in groups of threes, the goddess Brigit was associated with two sisters by the same name -- one who was patron of healing and the other of the smith's craft. The attributes were eventually identified with Brigit, the saint, whose feast day, February 1, came to be celebrated on the same day as that of the pagan goddess.'

St. Bridget - Bring peace to the people hurting from Burr Oak Cemetery and give comfort to those who are confused.

We Have a Problem! Burr Oak Cemetery and Someone Else's Troubles

Father Dan Mallette blesses the desecrated grounds at Burr Oak.


So I asked the undertaker what it took to make him laugh/when all he ever saw is people cryin'

first he hands me a bunch of flowers that he received on my behalf/he said, "Steve business just gets better all the time
Steve Goodman -Somebody Else's Troubles



Max Weismann of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas is an architect and a philosopher.

He designs. Max Weismann thinks. He thinks because he reads and he reads what is great. Max wrote to me in response to the horrific desecration of the dead Americans at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL

"We are under Siege!Aside from the plethora of current inequities and iniquities being perpetrated on the citizens of this nation, we have now reached the nadir--Congress now passes massive bills of profound and long lasting consequences, without even reading them.

That said, we are ultimately at fault--whenever something is wrong in our communities, cities, states or country, it's because we let it get that way."

We are responsible. Max Weismann is using the 1st Person Plural in its archaic form. Thanks to Progressive PC obfuscation of the common language ( O, Let's Ban Midget!)The first person plural however now means You. Thanks to Victimhood and Identity Politics. Many thanks. Like the name of that old Hippie/Yuppie bar Fred Holstein's - Somebody Else's Trouble , people like to talk of the revolution that someone else fights and spreading the wealth that someone else pays for.

I grew up in a blue collar world where free lunch ends when Mom stops making it. If someone at the bar buys me a beer, I am duty bound to buy the next one. It all evens out, unless you happen to be the type of louse who stands around caging drinks and smile with your short arms and deeper pockets when the round comes to you. I don't do those things, because I have had my ass kicked repeatedly and with great gusto by my elders and betters. You don't get away with that too much around Western Avenue, though I have seen it done. I called such a person a louse, an insect who feeds on others; but, who's to say? One man's louse is another man's cause celebre.

The bane of my outlook in all things over the last four decades has been a dominance of earnest people who speak in hushed measured tones and affect a look of pained recognition but intolerant disgust with all other people. Joan Walsh a Progressive writer and editor of Salon and all too frequent guest on MSNBC ( the Tool Shed) comes to mind. Joan Walsh and folks like her have a mantra - 'Who's to Say?'

e.g. Michael Jackson was not only the greatest entertainer of all time, the 21st Century Dionysus who danced in a Golden Age; a John the Baptist who announced Barack Obama. Who's to say?

Me. I don't do group think and neither do most Americans. I voted for Barack Obama when he ran against Bobby Rush in my Congressional District - Obama lost. I like Barack Obama.

I worked for John McCain. John McCain lost, because he seemed to want to lose, after September 19th 2008 - the day the American Economy tanked. My Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Aunts and my hundreds of cousins voted for Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is my President. I still feel that he was no where near ready to be President and that he will be the Jimmy Carter of the New Millennium - too bad. Nice guy.

I belong to the We - 99% of the Hickey/Winters/Brennan/Donahue/Cleary family voted to make Barack Obama Our President. Pronouns matter. Possessive Pronouns really matter. My guy lost, We won. That is America! Thanks be to God!

Who's to say? Me. I read and seem to understand history. I read and seem to understand poetry,drama, fiction and essays. I taught literature with some success for decades. I occasionally even get paid to write something, because I have something to say. Somethings I managed to learn on my own -from great books.
The rest I learned by getting the odd slap when needed, or from the silent treatment for being a jerk.

I work for and with black teenagers at Leo High School in Gresham neighborhood - in fact a black kid was shot over at 1400 W. 78th Place early this morning by a clown in dred-locks firing from the sun-roof of the car in which he was riding. Some mother has a kid at Advocate Hospital in Oak Lawn with his guts shot out and tubes in every orifice - my kids are asleep. This kid could be a Leo Man, I hope and pray not. The Kids at Leo High School are all black, but the guys helping pay their tuition are nearly all white guys.

Race relations issues are talked about by Joan Walsh-like head-shakers on WTTW who never drop a dime to help kids at Leo. Race Relations happen every day and race relations are pretty damn good. Leo High School is a safe place for Black Kids - they study, meet old white guys, play sports and succeed. Their folks pay heavy tuition bills and old white guys buck up plenty to ease their pain.

Gresham District Chicago Cops protect the kids once they are out of the school and help to see that they get home, without some clown throwing shots at them.


Sheriff Tom Dart unearthed the horrific desecration of My Neighbors at Burr Oak Cemetery. We have a problem. We are under siege, as Max Weismann wrote to me with heartbreakingly succinct clarity.

A Joan Walsh can write for Salon and shake her jowls with disgust at all of us, while making a case for Abortion about white on black systemic racism on MSNBC. Great.

The bones of a child are as precious to me as the bones of Emmett Till, Ezzard Charles, Dinah Washington and the hundreds of people who struggled and laughed and provided for their children and were back-hoe-ed by three morons at the bidding of some others.

We have a problem. Sheriff Tom Dart and all of us are now doing something about what was done. We need to start taking care of Someone Else's Troubles by calling out the dopes who continue to say 'Who's to Say?' We Do.

We need to Read what is Great and not just what is rammed down our throats, by Group Thinkers. We can read Dead White Men and still honor the thoughts of living women of color - honor bright; it can happen.

We need to say that killing Children is not a Woman's Reproductive Health Issue; murder is not the result of systemic racism, but an individual act selfish contempt for everyone else; suffering is not Some Else's Trouble; help is not always the result of more taxes.

Who's to say? Me. I don't need to be right; I just need to live like I might be correct.


Go to The Center for the Study of Great Ideas and get some Great Ideas from people who had them.

The CENTER has two primary missions:

One, to help awaken citizens from their moral and intellectual slumbers and to help them understand why philosophy is everybody's business: the possibility of finding sound and practical answers to questions about the good life and good society. And philosophy's ability to answer the most basic normative questions, WHAT OUGHT WE SEEK IN LIFE? And HOW OUGHT WE SEEK IT?

Two, to promulgate the insights and ideals embedded in Dr. Adler's lifelong intellectual work in the fields of Philosophy, Liberal Education, Ethics and Politics. To continue functioning as THE resource for, access to, and the on-going interpretation of his work.

Burr Oak - The Four? Oh, There's Got to be More! Ah, "The Presence of Management!"

The looting of graves to make room for more bodies and bigger profits at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL. necessarily leads to the simple proposition -" God ain't making any more land."

Four cemetery employees are charged with dismembering human bodies so plots could be resold, or pounding down original graves to create more room, affecting nearly 300 deceased. ( click my post title for more) For openers.


The path from Burr Oak Cemetery goes well beyond the greedy designs of four hapless mopes - three gravediggers/graverobbers and the Lady in the Office - to Tucson, Arizona where the former corporate heads of Perpetua laid their weary bodies down in retirement.

Slivy Edmonds Cotton, the former president and CEO of Perpetua, Inc, lives in Tucson, AZ. She says she stepped down in 2002.

During her time with the company, she managed Burr Oak Cemetery.

Cotton says, "I have to tell you I was totally shocked and appalled at such a horrendous story, we really spent a lot of time trying to create the type of company in the funeral industry that was all about serving families and people."

We asked cotton if she investigated any similar cases of cemetery desecration at the time she was managing Burr Oak.

Cotton says, "I don't think that there's ever been anything to this magnitude. There are always rumors about things may have happened years ago, and there were rumors about things that might have happened years ago. We did do some investigation and were not able to identify anything that had actually happened."

Cotton says she did hire Carolyn Towns. Towns was one of the employees arrested in the case.

Cotton adds, "Carolyn having been on the management team, she was certainly aware at that time that these types of things were not tolerated."

Cotton goes on to say that she hasn't had contact with Towns in years, nor the company.

"I was there very often and we had two or three other managers who traveled to the various properties to make sure there was enough presence of management. This is not the way most cemeteries operate, and it's certainly was not the way Burr Oak operated at the time I was involved."

The current president of Perpetua in Richardson, Texas, Melvin Bryant didn't return our calls.

Ah, the Presence of Management! Is that something akin to The Ghost of Management, or the Chimera of Management? The Veneer of Management? How about the Panavision of Profit? The Galaxy of Greed?

I live near Burr Oak. In fact, I live near most cemeteries it seems. My wife and most of my family are interred with the Catholic Cemeteries at Holy Sepulchre and Mount Olivet. The Catholic Cemeteries purchased vast tracks of land way back in the 19th Century. Remarkably, despite more than a century of Christian burials in those vast tracks of land there remains many more great tracks of land, yet unused, or plotted.

Where the land is tight for burial, some real hideous shenanigans can dance afoot. Cui Bono? Those who might profit. Grave diggers, Management Presence Officers, and there just might be long procession of others who profit in Loss.

It seems that 111th Street, 115th Street and 127th Street and the adjunct north and south routes to the various Gates to Eternity in the southwest Chicago Mortuary Community are rarely if ever free of anacondas of cars trailing a hearse.

Land is tight and the mortal certainty of death must have made an impact upon a few people beyond the four mopes now in custody.

Sheriff Tom Dart, Attorney General Lisa Madigan and other members of Law Enforcement should be digging into the financial records and acquisitions of the Perpetua Corporate Officers past and present and perhaps other industries in the Death Market who passed through the Gates at Burr Oak.

This is only getting warmed up, Folks!

Sheriff Tom Dart - Dignity for the Deceased as Profit Made from Burking by Resurrectionists at Burr Oak in Alsip

Grave robbing is a taboo that goes back to the dawn of civilized (people living together) history. Respect, piety and grace is bestowed upon the dead, unless profit is to be had in violating the sanctity of eternal sleep. Indiana Jones, or Burke and Hare, rob graves for profit.

Burking the dead was a practice also known as Resurrectionists, after the two Irish grave robbers in Edinburgh, Scotland in the early part of the 19th Century -William Burke and William Hare - in which graves would be robbed and bodies sold for medical research and anatomy lectures. The practice was so lucrative that Burke and Hare became serial killers who filled the graves that they would later rob.

In the light of the miserable treatment of the dead at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL., Sheriff Tom Dart dispatched the Chaplains of the Cook County Sheriff's Office to bless the grounds in which the bodies were dumped, after their plots were re-sold.

This small act of decency speaks very well of the Cook County Sheriff. When small deeds mark a heart, one can trust that larger issues will be graced with a great heart.

Well done, Sheriff Dart!



Click my post title for the link to the Tribune Story.