Inside Out - Leo High School and a Little Flower Learning Moment Killed by PC

 

Little Flower Lancers: 1966-67  15 - 11   Palos Hills District Champions     
                             Thanksgiving Tourney Champions                             District Scores                                Semi-final Beat Stagg 85-42                             Title Game Beat St. Francis de Sales 69-66                             Oak Lawn Regional Tournament                                        

I am here at Leo High School every morning with the chirping of the birds, sometime between 4 AM and 5AM,depending on my duties to attend, or my level of laziness. This is a good time to get some work done and to write down ideas for development that might benefit this great old school.

In the winter months, I go directly to the boiler room and start up the furnaces.  It does not take long to heat up this well-constructed ninety year old gem and in the summer months my windowless inner cubicle gets hotter than the hinges of Hell.

Please, remember that I am talking about the building, a four story 32,000 square foot pile of concrete, ree-bar, wood, conduit, pipes, carpet and furniture.  It is not a school until at least one scholar arrives to learn and another to teach. Only then, does the place I drive to each morning become a school.
A school is a gathering of scholars usually disciples and a master, or masters.  From the Middle Ages all the way to the day John Dewey destroyed the notion of shared truth, students were called discipuli and the teacher magister. Latin was the langiuage of scholarly discourse.

In my lifetime, I witnessed the euthanizing of Latin and the Death of God by academics and churchmen.  Latin was deemed irrelevant, the vernacular ascended to Parnassus and the Vatican dome.  That is too bad.  The mystery of learning has gone the way of sacred liturgy -no mystery and no beauty.  Education means punching one's ticket for entry to something else.

Good teaching only comes from good scholars.  These days, paper means scholarship. Teacher certification is the stamp on the back of one's hand to the very special velvet roped section of Club Career marked education.

A good teacher has some capacity to articulate the facts, opinions, concepts and skills mastered over number of years in schools, or other occupations.  Two men who would recoil, if one called them scholars gave me a special learning moment. A young self-absorbed priest more concerned with social justice and artificial peace killed that moment.

I was in eighth grade when Little Flower High School Basketball was making a name for itself.  Parish founder and beating heart Monsignor McMahon was placed on Emeritus status and replaced by a nice guy, who allowed John Cardinal ( Louisiana Fats) Cody to systematically destroy the parish which featured a magnificent campus comprising the church, rectory, a fruit orchard grammar school and high school.  The grammar school was free to parishioners and high school almost free ( my 1969-70 tuition was $ 80).  We had many good teachers who volunteered their time, or received an almost invisible stipend for services - some were not even Illinois State Certified.

In my eighth grade year, we went to the community center in the high school - a state of the art gymnasium - to watch the Lancers on the hardwood.  These were athletic and graceful young men who had been coached by Tom Spatz (Leo '58) and Jim Dolan ( Leo '54).  They were magnificent human beings and they worked long and hard hours with us.

We (8th graders) were spazes. Uncoordinated bones and skin attached to undisciplined brain pans.

These two men, the  best PE teachers I ever had in all of my years of schooling,  made all of the boys in our class learn close order drill. Veterans Jim Dolan and Tom Spatz attempted to de-spaz thirty or more eleven year olds, by combining commands and movements: "Step with your left foot, Hickey! Your other LEFT!  Jesus Christ, did you have polio when you were younger, or are you deaf?"

We were awkward (spazmodic), graceless, distracted and chaotic, as all boys are, until we learned to keep pace, time and balance on command.

One the assistant priests, at Little Flower, a social engineer of the Msgr. Reynold Hillenbrand stamp complained that Spatz and Dolan were turning us precious little boys into goosestepping storm troopers and the weak pastor bowed to political correctness.  Close order drill no more, Mr. Dolan de-volunteered and Mr. Spatz stuck to basketball.

We went back to spaz. In four years, Cardinal Cody sold the filled to capacity and debt free Little Flower High School and Community Center to the Chicago Board of Education.  The parish closed in 1993.

Father Cupcake saved us from the goosestep and Msgr, Go-Along made nice with Louisiana Fats.

Thus, a school activity that was deemed irrelevant by a person not engaged in the activity, whatsoever, was legislated out of existence The rise of the pest, the pain-the-ass in the vernacular, had dawned.

Good teaching has nothing to do with State Certification, Inquiry, or political correctness.

Just saying.

The Goldsteining of Pastor Corey Brooks by Action Now and Illinois Democrats and Media

So, I'm standing in the open entrance to New Beginning Church and a couple of Blue T-Shirt Bedecked-out Volunteers ask me, " You Corey Brooks?"  Now, that was Spontaneous! I love spontaneity!  Baby's laughter.  A Great Smooch! Keeley Smith on WDCB!

Unamazzed though bemused, having listened to the Action Now "Volunteers" being warmed up for five minutes east of Martin Luther King Drive on 65th Place with chants themed to say that Pastor Corey Brooks betrayed Jesus, I replied, " No ladies, I am an aging white man. Corey Brools is a big, burly and handsome young Black man"

They smiled and moved back in line; herded by two young white people: a  guy in a pink Cape Cod cap and a chain-smoking young woman with a clipboard.  I have been off my Marlboro Reds for a couple of weeks and fought the temptation to bum a smoke from the young lady.

You see, I was at one of those community activist well-orchestrated SPONTANEOUS protests of some outrage.

The outrage du jour is Pastor Corey Brooks.  Got that?

Pastor Brooks was on his way back from the hospital, where he had accompanied members of the family of a parishioner stricken with a heart attack and picking up tubs of iced down bottled water for the two dozen chanting volunteers following Action Now cheerleader with the bullhorn and herded by Comrade Cape Cod and Virginia Slim.

Comrade Cape Cod

Virginia Slim

Popeye's Pappy

There was also an aging activist citizen journalist who looked like Popeye's Pappy,  White Progressive Privilege. Love it.  These three white folks acted like border collies for the two dozen "Volunteers."

I have the feeling that a community pantry, or shelter was the place to find activists.  One lady in blue Action Now T-Shirt agreed with me.

You see, Corey Brooks is not liked by the artificial turfed Grassroots activists allied with National, State, County and City Democrats.  He supported Bruce Rauner for Governor over Pat "JRW!!!!" Quinn. Shortly after Pastor Brooks endorsed Rauner, his church was violated. Talk about action now! Now, Action Now demands that Pastor Brooks STEP DOWN! Or, so the chanters chanted. man, you'd think Pastor Brooks asked to defund Planned Parenthood, or shot Cecil the Lion. Brooks hate abortion, like a man; howver I do not believe that he had taken up Big Game hunting.  No, he has committed thought crime.

It was this public endorsement of Rauner that caused the Goldsteining of Pastor Brooks yesterday and I first caught the mighty wind of Action Now's protest on Beachwood Reporter.  I like Pastor Brooks and called to give his church members a heads-up and stand in solidarity, as the slogan goes, with a neighbor.  I park at New Beginnings Church every morning of the school year, when I pick up Leo Students from Grand Crossing and have come to know Pastor Brooks.

Pastor Brooks, unlike too many priests, preachers and prophets in Englewood, Gresham, Grand Crossing and other desperate and blood soaked neighborhoods, is no race hustler, or grifter.  He questions support of Democrats who like to play the role of plantation boss.  He even endorsed a  Republican and Rauner, like all politicians rewarded a solid with a solid. Pastor Brooks was appointed to the Illinois Tollway Commission, which is open to African Americans as well as DuPage County Dowagers.  I believe the litmus test for such an honorific appointment is spelling Tollway. Nah, it's probably a little tougher.

Quite seriously, Action Now would demand that the African American Community deserves NO representation, because Rauner plans to destroy the African American Community. Thus the Goldsteining of Corey Brooks.

It takes mob Action Now to properly Goldstein a citizen.  Slogans, chants and T-shirts targeting the target for the day is how so-called "Grassroots" Activists assassinate a person's character. Located at 820 West Jackson in the heart of Chicago's . . .Greektown.  Two dozen activist volunteers made their way from Chicago's massive south side ( The Lake to Pulaski) Black communities, at their own expense, to board  bus to bring them to a Church in the heart of the community they just spent precious Ventra Credits to get to the bus in Greektown. Or so Virginia Slim explained, they are all volunteers and came on their own.

But arrived on a bus? Together with Action Now Alinsky Border Collies, Comrade Cape Cod, Virginia Slim and Popeye's Dad?  "One never knows, do one?" to quote Fats Waller.

I guess my tone betrays my sentiments.  Pastor Corey Brooks was targeted by some Democrat, or a rival activist priest, pastor or prophet, or maybe he is all three rolled  in one.  Corey Brooks was targeted for political punishment.

Pastor Corey Brooks handed out water and Dunkin Donuts and Comrade Cape Cod and Virginia Slim immediately ginned up the hate.

Pastor Brooks smiled and forgave. They know not what they do.

Comrade Cape Cod, Virginia Slim and Popeye's Dad do.

Ron Gidwitz is Right About Kirk. Senator! Blow!

Marque Kirque is another in the American parade of doughy mediocrities occupying political office (Senator Dick Durbin, Rep. Mike Quigley, Orrin Hatch, John Boehner, Barack Obama, former Gov. Jeb Bush) and breathing our air.

He is the Republican United States Senator from Illinois only because of the late Judy Baar Topinka, Rod Blagojevich, Senator Emeritus Roland "Tombstone" Burris and the doughy former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, with more than a little help from hundreds of thousands of spiritually flat-lined Illinois voters.

Marque Kirque is Dick Durbin without solid media cover.  The media will chip, Spackle and paint over ANYTHING Dick Durbin lies about, screws up, sells out, cowers from or pockets, because Dick Durbin is a national stooge for America's haters and wallet-lifters.

Marque Kirque suffered a stroke, but remains a full capacity lap-dog, whipping boy and handy vote for the ever unctuous and lip sucking Senior Senator from Illinois.

In the best of all worlds, both men would have an epiphany - realize the shabby lives they've led taking coin from Henry Van Ameringen, George Soros, Planned Parenthood USA and Mrs. Murphy of 10Sex57 S. Rockwell, Chicago, Illinois and resign, retire and repose in Sylvan glade to count their payoff money.  That only happens in a Disney movie, or Dan Savage Disney sit com.

It gets better.  Really? Can't set your watch by it.

We live in Illinois. That takes a guy with some $trength of character, $Partan values and $Parkling clean dollars.  Someone with political muscle wrapped in Benjamins . . . thousands of Benjamins.

Ron Gidwitz thinks Marque Kirque should go.  Speak on it, Ron!“I do not believe he will be a U.S. senator in 2017 and, as top of the ticket, he could cause collateral damage [to other Republican candidates]. I call on him to step aside and allow other Republicans to seek his seat,” Gidwitz told

Ron Gidwitz ran for governor and was stabbed in the back by the Illinois GOP, especially the late Judy Baar Topinka an accomplished kidney surgeon from way back ( ask George Ryan).  Ron Gidwitz would have made a superb governor. Much more honest, skilled and empathetic than Governor Rahm Rauner . . .I mean Governor Bruce Emmanuel.

Gidwitz was talking to Crain's Chicago Business and spoke his mind.

I like it.

Mr. Gidwitz backpedaled on his remarks, in the time-honored Illinois GOP tradition of blowing off ones own toes, but that does not diminish the power of his words.

Hey Marque Kirque!  Blow.  

Whiting's Pierogi Fest 2015 - Dough Matters & Odzemok on 119th Street

Today is the last day of the Whiting, Indiana 2015 Peirogi Fest - the absolute best street fest anywhere.  I have been going to Pierogi Fest since the 1990's when I lived in Griffith, Indiana. This is a celebration of people manifested in the treats prepared by busha, or jaja, depending upon ethnic origin.  For northwest Indiana, that means Slovak, Polish, Czech. Bohemian, Moldavian, Serbian or Croatian more than likely.  These folks were the manufacturers of American steel and the refiners of John D. Rockefeller's oil for the 100 years of the American Century.

The American Century seems to embarrass too many people today.  That is sad.   Sad people call the tunes too often these days - they are the ones out among the happy people with the 'equality and fairness' tape measures squawking about hurt feelings and feelings not as yet pinched.  Sad people do not celebrate, they berate, ridicule, ignore and forget.  Happy people dance! Happy people eat!  Happy people sing!  Happy people put away as much Pierogi as they can lay hands upon.

I am happy.    I spent the entire day among happy eaters and dancers: earth launched boot slapping Slovakian horn-dogs locking metaphorical antlers with other athletic swains from the valleys and meadows of the Heart of Europe in thick rut for the attentions of gorgeous, black and blue-eyed beauties in bright pink, black, green, orange and yellow dresses whirling wildly enough for this old geezer to remark "I See London; I See France!" Odzemok, Boy-oh! Three Slovak Dance Troupes from Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto wowed me.

I am happy!  I watched hundreds of kids hurling 12" softball at a modestly sized target-trigger in order to sink a little Carmelite nun into a vat of cool water.  For $ 5 you get three shots to Dunk the Nun.. I couldn't dunk a Camelite.  Had it been a Sinsinawa Dominican or a Sister of Mercy, I'd still be peeling off $20s. I donated my five and bought sister a cold beverage of malted grains.  Best believe that, Junior.


I am happy.  I spent some quality time with Mr. Pierogi, his own bad -self.

I am happy.  I spent a few Jacksons on Pierogi prepared by a landsman - Conley's Pierogis!

 I had Taco Pierogis. I had Louisiana Gator Pierogis!  I had Big Daddy's BubbaQue Pierogis.

I am Happy!  I was with people I know and Love! Neighbors who celebrate!  Sad people don't celebrate - they organize, march and howl. Happy people celebrate up a plenty!

The heat and humidity was exquisite and the massive crowd of happy people enjoying the celebration of genuine happiness was courteous to all and sundry.  Even the eight month olds were happy.

Get happy.  Get over to Whiting.



*Odzemok, considered by many to be the "national" or most typical dance of Slovakia, has been well preserved up to the present time. The physically strenuous and virtuoso movements of odzemok, along with its martial elements, make it basically a man's dance that is very special, indeed.

Variants of the dance are known throughout the Carpathian region by various names and are often referred to as "weapon dances." Such dances were originally danced by soldiers, robbers, and shepherds, but later they were also danced by the nobility. Accounts of this dance form survive from the 16th century and by the 19th century information became more profuse. Still, in this century, its vigor is quite remarkable.

Odzemok is found everywhere in Slovakia but is richest in the central and northeast parts, especially in the High Tatra Mountains.

8:30 A.M. July 21, 1944 - Guam Liberation Begins

PFC Patrick E. Hickey USMCR carrying the Tripod for a .30 Cal. Machine Gun - July, 1944 on the ridges above Guam's Red Beach 2.


My father, Patrick E. Hickey, died April 25, 2010. Most of the young men in his WWII Marine Company - Able, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines were wounded or killed on this day.

My Dad's platoon leader Lt. Krawiec of Chicago was wounded and evacuated getting out of the LVT (Landing Vehicle Tracked) on the Red Beach 2. PFC Boyd Curtis Troup of Jones, Michigan one of my Dad's best friends and fellow .30 Caliber Heavy Machine Gun crew member was wounded on this beach and evacuated as well.

The balance of Company A ( Able)including it's heroic company commander "Skipper" was pretty much wiped out over the next seventy-two hours taking Chorito Cliff and Bundschu Ridge ( named for Capt. Geary Bundschu-Navy Cross Skipper of A-1-3). Very few members of Able Company continued through the Guam Campaign, in fact the regimental casualties on the first day of the battle, exceeded the 3rd Marine Division Campaign casulties for the previous Battle for Bougainville ( Nov. 1-Dec. 25, 1943).

Author Scott Carmichael, while researching Bunschu Ridge acount of  my Dad's Company and the battles that he never talked about for the balance of his life, sent me this note about apicture that I had forwarded to him. . I informed him that my cousin Willie had found my Dad's Seabag with the number 312 stenciled next to his name. Mr. Carmichael replied -

Wow. Do you know what the number 312 represents? The men used a numbering
system for their gear. They didn't take their seabags along as they rode
their amtraks onto the beach, of course. Seabags were left behind on the
LSTs, for later retrieval. The men numbered not only their seabags, but a
lot of other equipment and gear. 312 = 3rd Marine Regiment/1st Battalion/2nd
company. The headquarters company was always listed as the 1st company
(311). That made Able company the 2nd company in the battalion (312).
Thanks for the information about the photograph.

The photograph above was confirmed to be my Dad carrying the tripod of the machine gun.


Mr. Carmichael contacted me days after my Dad passed away. He was looking for the few survivors of Able Company. Marine Lt. Krawiec died in January 0f 2010, but the gentle and humorous Mr. Troup still lives with his wife and the horrible and multiple wounds he received on Red Beach 2 Sixty Six years ago. I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Troup, back in May.

God Bless Every American Veteran!

Rebecca Fried - American Scholar and High School Student Quieted "No Irish Need Apply" Denier from the University of Illinois

Augusta Constitutionalist (Ga) 31 July 1868.

Kids love a challenge and nothing challenges them like a teacher saying something outrageous ( to their experiences) and demanding of them -"Well prove me wrong!"

My students LOVED rubbing my pug-nose in it -deeply and lovingly -and I have to say I loved it too.

I am wrong, early and often, and I will fess up when called on mistakes, misteps and, too often, miss spellings.  I write fast and furious and seem to require a full time editor just to pay the light bill.

A few years back there was a huge Hoo-Ha from a very celebrated American academic at University of Illinois who broadly and  loudly told Irish Americans to believe him and not their lying eyes.  I read his article published by OxFord University ( I'm in there too, under Thackeray BTW) Press and dismissed the professor 'painstaking and careful research' which denied that "No Irish Need Apply" signs existed - ever.

I remember seeing those very signs in the ads of old Chicago newspapers all the way up to WWII.

Well, I never bothered with Professor Richard J. Jensen's thesis and harbored my prejudices based upon emprirical evidence.
A high school student from Brooklyn, NY gutted Professor Jensen two weeks ago from t'aint to gizzard:

 in a piece for the Oxford Journal of Social History – the same journal where Jensen published his findings – Rebecca A. Fried, a  a high-school student at the Sidwell Friends school in Washington, DC,” has found overwhelming evidence that the NINA signs were very real and very prevalent.
In a wonderfully written and researched rebuttal, Fried challenges Jensen’s claim that “the NINA phenomenon is an ahistorical memory to be explained by ‘delu[sional]’ group psychology and ‘the political need to be bona-fide victims’ rather than by the fact of historic discrimination.”
Instead, she writes, “the documentary record better supports the earlier view that Irish-Americans have a communal recollection of NINA advertising because NINA advertising did, in fact, exist over a substantial period of United States history, sometimes on a fairly widespread basis.”


Wanted advertisement displaying the qualification “No Irish need apply.” The New York Herald, Vol. XXVIII Issue 186, Page 11. 7 July 1863.

How about that, youngster!?!!!!! Professor Jensen is being tuned up thanks to kid who was challenged by a teacher . . .not a real nice on it seems from the exchanges Old Doc Jensen is having with Rebbecca.

CPS Gets Claypool; Chicago Gets Another Sound and Thorough Screwing!

Just when one might believe that CPS is up the proverbial creek with the legendary paddle, Rahm makes Forrest Claypool, the chinless wonder of all metropolitan career grifters, to be CEO of CPS.

Well, F Me!

Forrest will serve Chicago's soul-less local cadre of connected venture capitalist as well as he did in every appointment he has enjoyed at the County and City levels of government.

Name a Claypool achievement, success, or non-disaster.

Name one.

I hear crickets.

Ty Warner - You Can't Fake Being a Good Guy

On Friday June 10, 2015, after many months of deliberation in an America that has been programed to boil furiously over whenever a successful person is deemed to be more equal than . . .anyone, the United States Seventh District Court of Appeals ruled that Ty Warner's punishment and sentence was just.

That was a shock to me.  Given our spiritus mundi (can I still say that?),  I expected the reverse, because I have gotten to know Ty Warner a little bit and that little bit leads me to believe that he is a good guy and this is no time for good guys - to paraphrase Cormac McCarthy. Creeps prosper, but good guys seem to take it in the neck.  The Sharptons, The Trumps, The Clintons, The Ayers and the self-made creeps like Dan Savage,Bill Cosby and Rachel Dolezal flourish in the age of Harrison Bergeron.

Every news outlet reporting on this fact strains mightily to get a hissy-slap at the billionaire anyway and that is only to be expected. You see, Ty Warner built his empire. Ty Warner is a man whom the legal cozeners, the academic milquetoasts and media purse puppies want punished, because he built his success.  Can't have that getting around. We are living in a time predicted by writer Kurt Vonnegut decades ago.  In his story Harrison Bergeron everyone must be equal -whatever.        

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal
before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter
than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was
stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the
211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing
vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. 

The Handicapper General is coming, unless good guys ( gender neutral, mind) take stock.

Ty Warner has spent a great deal of time here at Leo High School, as part of his probation to be sure, but having a wonderful time of it. I am an old timey English teacher who learned his trade by watching and emulating my betters.  How I engaged my students was how I was assessed, by Father Bob Erickson, Father Jim Fanale, Father Ken Yarno, Nick Novich, Jim Frogge, Dave Raiche, Sister Hellen Kavanaugh and Rich Zinnani.  They told me and taught me that teaching kids required much more than book learnin' - did I like being with people who wanted to learn something; not just people to talk at.  My great mentors taught me that I could not fake it. " Hickey, you can't pretend to be a good guy,"

You is, or you ain't. Only a good guy can be an effective teacher and the State don't issue Type-301 Good Guy Certification.

Ty Warner would have made a superb class-room teacher.

He is patient, witty, prepared, engaged and engaging with willful, occasionally obstreperous and easily bored young men who might not ever become billionaires.  They might not. Ty Warner offers them an up-close and personal opportunity to learn from a man who is a billionaire.

All of Ty Warner's billions of dollars can not make him a good guy, nor can he leave that in his Will.

He earned that sobriquet, just as he did his fortune, on his own.  Ty Warner treats people, who can do absolutely nothing for him, like they are the most important and interesting people on earth.  You can not fake that.

I am very happy that at least one good guy survived our Harrison Bergeron culture and society. Thanks be to God.

Teaching in 2015 - Worm Grunting Until Convicted

“The government I live under has been my enemy all my active life. When it has not been engaged in silencing me it has been engaged in robbing me. So far as I can recall I have never had any contact with it that was not an outrage on my dignity and an attack on my security.” HL Mencken

"That ability to impart knowledge . . . consists, first, of a natural talent for dealing with children, for getting into their minds, for putting things in a way that they can comprehend. And it consists, secondly, of a deep belief in the interest and importance of the thing taught, a concern about it amounting to a sort of passion. A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it—this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy. That is because there is enthusiasm in him, and because enthusiasm is almost as contagious as fear or the barber's itch." Henry Louis Mencken from  Prejudices: third series (publ. A. A. Knopf, 1922)

Henry Louis Mencken knew how to identify cant, insincerity, humbug, bigotry and sanctimony at the horizon.  He did not need to have it legislated before he could snap his galluses, gnaw on his stogy and shout to the helots, " Hey!  Rube! You're about to step in it for fair, Son!"

Being a fundamentally flawed human being, prone to vice but gifted with talents far above those of most mortals must have made the proud German American beer swilling genius feel like Casandra most days.

He could predict cultural disasters from any bar stool and, while amusing all and sundry, go unheeded.

Mencken stood at the dawn of American Progressive thought and shuddered. Research! Inquiry! Settled Science!  Foregone Conclusions and willful assumptions destroyed shared truth.

Americans ignored shared truth and swallowed data tossed by Academics whole and heartily.

From that magic  moment in 1876, Johns Hopkins University preened its purple feathers and waved proudly for inquiry over pedagogy America tumbled. The German architect of infant fascism, Alexander Humbolt, so impressed the Quaker bachelor

The University of Chicago, packed with Rockefeller spondulix, followed suit and the Academic Jackass eclipsed the pioneer, the innovator, the leader, the priest, the warrior, the athlete and genuine scholar in the America pulpit, bank line, battalion, playing field and imagination.

This past week, the United States Supreme Court wholly justified the very Germanic nonsense HL Mencken fought against his whole life.  Johns Hopskins is the core of this evil apple swallowed whole from the late 18th Century to this silly season.  Marriage ain't no more and ObamaCare is going to be as easy to avoid as taxes.

Mencken understood exactly where America was heading. As a very flawed man with some level of wit, I see the very same nightmare.

We are here, Henry!

A male and a female are matter for a court and future litigation.

A family is a group of people.

States rights are what have been agreed upon.

So teaching, especially in a Catholic school is now a dirtier job than Worm Grunting.

Two self-proclaimed American Catholics on the U.S. Supreme Court, Kennedy and Roberts, have effectively made teaching in a Catholic high school ( Catholic Universities long ago struck the flag) is about to become a very dangerous game; unless, of course,  the teacher  is cowed by the threatening realities of pitting shared truth against conveniently manufactured and very pliable doctrines.

I'll continue to grunt and sweat and dig up a few wormy triumphs in the classroom when students pick up on my enthusiasm for millennia of shared truths ( abortion is always murder, a bolt only goes into a nut, water boils at 212 and freezes at 32 degrees, Shakespeare is a genius and Toni Morrison writes stuff) - until the bracelets get slapped on.

Elwood P. Dowd Stops at the "Quiet Man Pub" for a Quick One

EPD - Evening.                  

One of the Lads- Pleasant night.
                 

EPD- I´ll try one of those black beers.

Bartender- Oh, the porter. Yes, sir.                  

EPD- Sir, will you join me? Matter of fact,

I´d like to buy everybody a drink.

                 
Old Fella -I do not believe I heard your name, tall man.
                 

EDP- Elwood . .Elood P. Dowd and this ( gesturing) this is my good friend . . .Harvey                  

Old Fella- And your father´s name?                  

EPD - Pete.  Pete Dowd.

He used to live here, by the Mornin´.            

I just bought the place back.

That´s why I´m here.                  

Old Fella - Then your grandfather

would be Ol´ Proisnas Dowd.
               

EPD - Right. and This (gesturing to right ) and this is my good friend Harvery . . .he's a Pookah

Old Fella- Bless his memory.  (Sotto Voce) The Yanks daft . . .a Pookah indeed.  Well drink up, Lads Waste not Want Not.



 

                 

Berkeley Balcony Tragedy Will Show Political Dry-Rot At Its Core

Many things, for aught I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever. Bishop George Berkely


Six Irish students on summer Visas died when a balcony collapsed and the New York Times saw fit to make a mockery of their deaths. The kids were accused of rowdy behavior and drunkenness and program for which they had applied was called into question.  The New York Times was worried about Berkeley - the college named for the 18th Century Irish Bishop and empiricist philosopher, but George Berkeley has not yet been accused of being 'loaded.'

The New York Times went far beyond the report of the deaths and Ireland demanded an apology and got one from Grey Lady that is similar to Rachel Dolezal's non-apology.

I think the New York Times took a very agitated and worrisome phone call from a political wheel just before print time.

You see political grifters, lawyers, activists and bundlers are deep in real estate.

Chicago readers might remember the death of a little black boy when a rusted gate of slum property fell on him. That property was managed by Cullen Davis, son of Allison Davis - the man who gave Barack Obama his shove into the White House.  Valerie Jarrett controls slum properties.

A tall, rusted steel gate that fell and crushed a 3-year-old boy to death at the Cabrini-Green public housing complex failed a building code inspection Monday, said Bill McCaffrey, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Buildings.
The gate at the Cabrini-Green rowhouses in the 900 block of North Cambridge Avenue fell on Curtis Cooper at about 5:30 p.m. Friday; he was pronounced dead less than an hour later in Children's Memorial Hospital. . . .

The CHA property has been managed for about two years by Urban Property Advisors. The firm is run by Cullen Davis, who is the son of influential city developer Allison Davis.

"If Chicago Housing Authority had been monitoring their properties, public housing wouldn't be in the shape it is in now," Steele said. "If they had been monitoring UPA, that gate wouldn't have fell."

UPA manages properties all over Chicago. The Davis family stands to make millions as part of CHA's Plan for Transformation, the city's ambitious effort to demolish high-rise public housing and replace it with mixed-income communities.

UPA Property Manager Ronald O'Neal and CHA spokesman Derek Hill declined to comment on Monday's failed building inspection.

Property is political capital and slum property is pure gold.  Note the rotted wooden support beams on the Berkley Building

I hope that Irish journalists crawl into the facts behind the rotten owners of the apartments and the amounts of cash they paid out to politicians -City, State and Federal -and bring the truth to light.

The wood rot begins on the pages of the newspapers providing cover for politicians.

At the end of day, I believe that a politician, political bundlers and the New York Times will have much to explain.

Blackhawks ( Management and Team) Prove that Good Guys Can Be Champions . . .Often

I have no Blackhawks jersey, but I really like Chicago's Champions.  From Rock Wirtz to the hoary old man Brad Richards ( a year younger than Marion Hossa) the Blackhawks Tribe is comprised of nice people. Like Duncan Keith and his pal Cammy.




John McDonough, the architect of this sports dynasty and General Manager, visited Leo High School earlier in the school year.  Leo High School students tend to be Arfican American young gents and not given to wearing Hawks Jerseys.  It seems that African Americans are not huge hockey fans, but the do seem to like basketball, or so really smart people like Spike Lee and Rachel Maddow would lead us to believe.

I am a bit of cynic.

John McDonough was impressed by the insightful and sharp questions the Leo student body posed to him at the assembly more than few months back.  In fact two Leo juniors pressed, Mr. McDonough after the students were dismissed.

Mr. McDonough invited both young men and their families to join him in his Blackhawks Skybox for one of the games in the early part of the season.

He did not need to do that.

That is what constitutes a good guy.  Doing something thoughtful and nice for people who do make any impact on one's life, whatsoever, just because one can do that.  It did not cost John McDonough anything.  Not nickle one.

Now two Leo seniors are loud and proud Blackhawks fans, who closely follow the Hawks and the game of hockey.

That is how Championships are made;not by loud, obnoxious, in-your-your-face mega-millionaire mesomorphs, but by good guys who never forget that they share the same oxygen as everyone else.

White Socialists Founded NAACP, So Why Beef That White Girl is Running the Spokane Branch?

A white muck-racking journalist was the founder and leader of the National Association of Colored People and he was a dyed-in-the-whool Socialist.  He was Charles Russell and he detested Booker T. Washington. So did the Niagra Movement, a group of fifty northern born well-eduacted African Americans who believed that Booker T. Washington's demand blacks in south and  the north learn skilled trades, as well as get an education was too slow and demeaning and Booker T. Washington, a man who endured a life-time slavery. unlike WEB Dubois, was an Uncle Tom.

A white law by tyhe name of Moorfield Storey ran NAACP for twenty years from 1909-1929.

In 1909 Russell was among 60 inspirational men and women such as Oswald Villard, William Walling, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jane Addams, and Lillian Wald who worked together to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), formed in the aftermath of a race riot at Springfield, Illinois in August of the previous year.[5] Russell's participation in the founding of the NAACP stemmed from his experiences with violence and racism as a child. One of the most memorable experiences included his father nearly being hanged for simply opposing slavery.[4] Russell served and participated on the board of directors for the NAACP for the remainder of his life. 

Of the sixty founders, only seven were black.

White Socialists detested the greatest African American hero - Booker T. Washington. Therefore, they setabout the task of erasing Booker T. Washington from history.  WEB DUBOIS , a pampered Harvard educated gent born to privilege, like most Progressives, was added to the original pantheon of NAACP.

Today, we learned that a white girl, who could have been a model for St. Pauli Girl beer brands, is running the Spokane, WA branch of the NAACP. What's the beef?

John Kass on Denny Hastert's Day in Court - Pulitzer Worthy Prose That Rises to Poetry

John Kass can work a pen.  He is a masterful penman and never better than when he covers a story so coiled in hypocrisy that keeps lesser artists slack jawed.  This is one of those Gordian Knots -the powerful politico bighted around a predatory pedophile.

John Kass's account of Denny Hastert's day in court rises to poetic heights -

For at least 15 excruciating minutes, the courtroom was silent, Hastert waiting. He'd pull at his lips and he'd cover his face again. Not all of his face, just the half where his mouth was.
He looked all hollowed out, chewed up, like paper. 

It reminded me of when my brothers and I were children on the South Side. We'd run to Leo's corner store to buy penny candy, like those colored dots, hard sugar lumps on paper rolls. Sometimes we'd take a bite of paper with the candy and later spit it out as we talked of the White Sox or what happens to souls in limbo.

That bit of chewed-up paper would dry in the sun, a lump on the sidewalk that had been paper but was now in altered form.

And so it was with Hastert, irreconcilable with the original, an altered man most likely changed by having to tell his family about why the feds had come after him.

Masterful.  The story of the criminal charges is merely crust covering the saga of man who may have used teaching and coaching to prey upon vulenerable kids.  Kass is the man to uncoil this yarn.

Maybe A Few Generations of 'Survivors' of Roe v. Wade Will Put an End to Abortion in America

 

In a sense, every American born since 1973 is a survivor of Roe. Perhaps that explains why, however young people might label themselves, abortion is a choice so few of them are prepared to take. Boston Globe

Abortion is the premeditated murder of a human being.  In 1973, a well-orchestrated campaign, not unlike the very successful one that will very shortly terminate the all sense of what marriage means, changed that fact.

Abortion is now known as women's health care, which is nonsense.

America's slide from the moral high ground to its current place in the moral mud pits can be traced from Roe v. Wade.

However, young people are doubting the narrative about abortion

Young Americans — voters under 30 — were once the most gung-ho in support of unfettered legal abortion. In 1991, fully 36 percent believed abortion should be legal under any circumstances. But by 2010, 18-to-29-year-olds had become more pro-life than their parents — only 24 percent still wanted to keep abortion legal in all cases. More than any other age cohort, in fact, young adults are now the most likely to think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.

My long-in-the-tooth Baby Boom contemporaries largely bought-in to the willful murder of unwanted children, I am ashamed to say.  We are the Disposable Generation, that created landfills for the Huggies we put on the babies who survived Planned Parenthood and now the Depends we need and added those convenient products to the piles of Schick disposable razors, plastic bottles, cutlery and batteries that powered our music devices that played Jerry Garcia and Carly Simon into the 21st Century.  We were OK with that because we were otherwise thoughtful and sensitive about our fellow man.

We elected Barack Obama, people and Obama is America's abortion President.

Young people have good hearts.


I am confident that the generations to come will end the American Holocaust.

Only then will America climb up out of the mud and crawl its way back up to the peak of the moral high ground.

Good on you, kids!