Showing posts with label Conor Oliver Hickey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conor Oliver Hickey. Show all posts

Saturday, November 26, 2016

I Shall Arise and Go, And Make Some Corn Bread!

Image result for eating cornbread

I had a swell Thanksgiving!  Did not overdo the helpings and avoided my usual the Gibraltar-like renditions of smashed garlic spuds and stuffing and decided to forego the traditional fifth helpings.

Took a vigorous walk from the garage to my couch in the basement and watched recored episodes of Cheyenne. Where will he be camping tonight?

It is now Saturday and I made a pot of Brunswick stew* last last week.  My son is stopping by after work this afternoon and the lad can work a fork like his Mom and Pop.

Nothing goes better with Brunswick stew like a golden brown cast iron skillet full of corn bread.

I do corn bread good. Pre heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Butter a good cast iron skillet  9" diameter I used soft Kerry Gold

1. Cup of Gold Medal Flour
1. Cup of Quaker Corn Meal
1. Cup of sugar
1.tsp. of sea salt
1/4 cup of Honey
1. Jumbo Egg from Marianno's
1. 10 oz. can of Green Giant nibblets corn
3 & 1/2 teaspooons of Calumet Brand Baking Powder
1/3 cup of Peanut Oil - Mr. Planters, Please.
1 generous dash of Vanilla extract

Mix it all in a bowl with good sized fork.  Don't mix too well.  Spread it pie tin and toss it in the oven for 25 minutes.  Check with a butter knife for doneness. Dance to doneness~!



Image result for pie tin full of golden cornbread
When it is 'doneness' let oven cool down to 145 degrees F. and keep corn bread nice and warm until your eaters bang open the back door and squeal, " It it done?"

Then ladle out some Brunswick stewBrunswick stew.jpg 
Cut corn bread into diagonal slices for dipping.

Use softened Kerry Gold butter for eating corn bread, like an American.


*I use chicken thighs and pork shoulder, corn scraped from the oven roasted cob and replace Greathern Beans for the lima bean - lima beans are just wrong on so many levels.


Thursday, January 31, 2013

My Son Has More Money in Beverly Bank Than the Nation of Zimbabwe


 My Son Conor on the Far Right with Two Boon Chums, celebrating Conor's Bank Account!
There are cash-strapped governments and there are broke governments. And then there's Zimbabwe, which, after paying last week's government salaries, has just $217 left in the bank. No, we didn't forget any zeroes to the end of that figure. Zimbabwe, the country that's home to some of the world's largest platinum and diamond reserves, literally has the same financial standing as a 14-year-old girl after a really good birthday party. The country's finance minister admitted as much in a press conference on Tuesday. "Last week when we paid civil servants there was $217 [left] in government coffers," Tendai Biti told reporters. "The government finances are in paralysis state at the present moment. We are failing to meet our targets."

Tendai, old son, them  targets must be the size of a gnat's nuts.  If all you got $ 217 in the old cartera.

My son is 22 years old.  Conor is a big strapping handsome guy ( Mom's DNA) with a ready smile and , in the manner Hickey,quick with a buck!  Nevertheless, the lad has some fundamental thrift.  An apprentice tradesman, Conor is doing alright.  He is on the path to a debt free young manhood.  No college debt.

An apprentice does not make a great deal of money, but Conor lives at home and only needs to pay his union dues, class fees, car insurance and car payments. Of course, there is dispensable capital.   Like most of his contemporaries, the lad has few cares and fewer sleep-depriving responsibilities.


Zimbabwe* is an idiotic piece of Africa that stands as a metaphor of liberal thought.   It is nation run by a blood-thirsty idiot, Robert Mugabe, and for idiots - only people like Bill Ayers, Jimmy carter, Rammsey Ckark, Rev. Al Sharpton, Bill Moyers and MSNBC have deep admiration for this folly on wheels of a nation.

To quote Conor Oliver Hickey, "Hey, You can't spend everything!"

Not so, says Old Bob Mugabe!



Zimbabwe is nine years older than my son Conor, but it has only $ 217 left in its bank account.  Conor could buy three Zimbabwe's and have enough to buy a round at Dubliner, Keegans and Cork & Kerry. Beverly Bank and Trust is a neighbor friendly institution.

Stout fellow and sound dollar husbandry, my son!

If an old guy named  Bob Mugabe tries to put the bite on you for a touch, my son, explain that you give only to Catholic Charities.


*
WELCOME TO ZIMBABWE
The country of Zimbabwe is 390,580 sq km and is bordered on all sides by other countries. Zambia lies to the northwest with the Zambezi river and its Victoria Falls forming the border. Mozambique lies to the northeast with its border formed by the Eastern Highlands. Botswana lies to the southwest and South Africa to the south (its border formed by the Limpopo River)

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Verisimilitude: Batman, Books, and Byronic Monsters





Sometime in late January 1977, I argued with an older colleague about a novella that I chose to teach.
The chap with two years more class time than me, was a corpulent omnivore with a Hemingway fixation; sported a beard a la Papa; smoked a pipe and never graded the papers he assigned.  Instead the pretentious gent 'stored' them in his classroom and distributed slips of paper with grades never lower than a B-.  Odd That. However, Father Jim Fanale,CSV, our department chair, ordered the three years of ungraded papers freed of their bondage the following month and began the paper trail to jettison an Illinois Certified (K-12) payroller. But, that was to be.

I had ordered Edward Everett Hale's 1863 classic Man Without a Country faux-Hemingway made sport of this dusty golden-oldie, " What's next the Molly Pitcher?"   Not long enough really ; 24 lines in 6 stanzas of four; I may, however, offer Barbara Fritchie by John Greenleaf Whittier. I loved the closed couplet.  I love when that old broad gives M'arse Robert his Reb Comeuppance.

'Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,But spare your country's flag,' she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirredTo life at that woman's deed and word;
'Who touches a hair of yon gray headDies like a dog! March on! he said.
Nope, the kids will love Man Without a Country.

Hemingway had his kids read Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky.

Needless to say, following the Inauguration of Jimmy Carter and his immediate pardon of the Vietnam draft-dodgers, Man Without a Country was poignantly tonic to high schoolers. The novella is wonderful well-written example verisimilitude (Fictive Truthfulness).  Edward E. Hale, used the actual cry of an Ohio Democrat Copperhead who worked against the Union in the Civil War and paraphrases "D——n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!" through the voice of the fictional Phillip Nolan, an American Army officer serving in "Legion of the West ( Texas)" who takes up with Aaron Burr in his attempt at Empire.


Phillip Nolan gets his wish in a punishment that fit his crimes - he is imprisoned about Naval ships for the balance of his life without ever hearing another human voice say anything to him of or about the United States of America.


President Jimmy Carter has just pardoned young men who deserted America for Canada in order to avoid being drafted or serving the military in Vietnam.

The kids loved the story of the young romantic Phillip Nolan whose dreams of Empire required treason to his country,  Hemingway Fats required his students purchase the Notes from Underground, at the end of the school year I picked a dozen or more unopened and untouched copies of that Jerk Manifesto, I n fact, I re-read this work the other night.

Dostoevsky's novella is a tough read.  The first half of the book is a complete Hegelian mishmash of society's wrongs and justification for complete isolation - sort of an ASSHOLE for Dummies. Underground Man, the narrator protagonist, is someone who lives on spite, grudges, pay-back, insults, and self-pity.

Yesterday, our country was slapped with another madman's carnage.  At 4 AM, when I woke up, I read about the massacre of the innocent that occurred hours before; my son Conor, was taking a flight  out of Midway to Denver with four of his friends.  We talked about the massacre at the movies.  Conor departed with Joe Logan.  They were meeting the other three at Midway as they had gone to see Dark Knight Rising just like poor souls in Aurora, Colorado.  This quintet of south side Irish Catholic Chicago twenty somethings were going to Denver and then on to the old silver mining town of Georgetown, once home to the famous Poker Annie.  They would actually live on a ranch as their base-camp in the shadow of God's great architecture - five gregarious Catholic League football has beens rooting through abandoned silver mines, white water rafting and quaffing the malted grain beverages three meals a day.

Hours before, a gifted kid slaughtered strangers and wounded the heart of our nation. What did this kid read; what ideas were put in his head?

I took a pass on teaching Notes from Underground to high school kids. It's a work of genius, but it is essentially a manifesto of evil.  Crime and Punishment, ditto.  I was blessed by great mentors and teachers who impressed me with my obligation as a teacher -don't teach what you like; teach what kids need.  Thank you, Nick Novich, Dave Raich, Father Fanala, Father Sheridan and Mr. Kerrigan.  Thank you, Loyola University.

Literature, ideas, creeds that isolate us, from one another and grade chasing science ventures -my God, Neuroscience  - that are not community building, self-absorbed and purposely destructive are as dangerous as the one hundred round drum-clip purchased by a Byronic monster who wrote in blood the other night -"The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop here."


Man Without a Country and Notes From Underground Texts:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/600/600-h/600-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15868/15868-h/15868-h.htm

Friday, July 15, 2011

Unsolicited Assesment of the Character of This Blogger


There was an exchange of opinion in the commentary section of these postings concerning my lineage, ancestry, and inclinations -civic, amorous, and otherwise. These offerings violated taste, wit and concern for the winsome hearts of ladies everywhere. Nevertheless, this exchange between two worthies might clear up any and all misconceptions regarding the character and deportment of your humble servant.

His handsome face and rich attire had appealed to their admiration, his cool daring and the way he had handled the bully of the town had won their respect.

"I tell ye what, boys," a burly miner remarked, "he ain't no slouch, ef ye hear me squeal, but did enny of ye ever see him afore?"

'I did," a grizzled old prospector offered this of the paragon Prolific Hickey" I know'd the villain over in Custer Park, 'bout Twenty Seven yar ago."

"An' what war his record thar?"

"All white;- a chief— free with his dust, his dukes, and his derringers, jess as it'd suit ye; an' clear grit down to hard-pan."



"I thought so— he looks it. An' that kid o' his'n (Conor Oliver Hickey)! I sw'ar he's a whale! the little feller came ridin' in on thet thar hoss, an' a-singin' out Lord, boys, so like's 'f he meant business, an' when I reckon he did, ye could a-knocked me down with a chaw o' tobacco, I war so 'mazed like."

"Same here, pard."

"And here."
. . .& etc. as like encomiums poured on!