Mr. Harold Green - Leo Hero: Facta Non Verba

When Leo High School welcomes Moms, Dads, Students and Staff, the bags of Mickey D's cast-off paper and plastic, battalions of styrofoam trays with chicken bones, legions of Frito-Lay parcels, squads of empty pints of Bumpy Face Seagrim's Gin, scraps of Sun Times Redlines and wet matted bits of penny saver coupon bundles are no where to be seen on the grounds.

Elves must pick up and toss the detritus of modern urban thoughtlessness and 'disappear it' into City of Chicago waste bins on our 79th Streetcape.

This morning I traveled from my home in Morgan Park six miles to the south and west of Leo High School, up Western Avenue (plowed and somewhat salted), east on 87 Street (plowed and somewhat salted) and north on Racine ( unplowed, nor salted) to 79th Street east ( (plowed and salted) and into the Leo Parking Lot ( unplowed at 4:45 AM).

I got out of the Malibu and said my morning Leo Memorare and noticed that the sidewalks and pathways around the school were already cleared.

When snow blankets the pathways and sidewalks, some miracle men must have bolted from their quilty blankets in the Sixteen Degree frost of the morning and cleared  our winter waves of white stuff.

No, my dears, Mr. Harold Green and Army veteran and a family man with the strength of eight lesser mortals did that.

Harold shoveled all of Leo's campus and then cleared the CTA benches for people who wait to swipe their hard-bought Ventra Cards for travel to work and school - not in Harold Green's job description. With all of that done - Harold will drive to Beecher, Illinois, South Holland, Roseland, Brainard and back to Leo High School with twelve students.  Now, some mincing person might offer, " Well, that's his job."

Mr. Harold Green gets to work at Leo High School at around 4AM - rain, shine, snow and trouble: Never late, never absent. During the day, while perched on my rump in the Development cubicle, I see Mr. Harold Green haul, lift, fix and fetch in and out of the school - 'Go to Menards: Get coffee for visitors; Jump Start my Car . . .' and ,one day, just prior to Leo's Annual Veterans Observance I received this inter-office memo :

Pat,

1.  Harold Green will pick up coffee.

3.  Harold Green will set up 3-4 rows of chairs.

4.  Harold Green will set up podium and sound system.

5.  I spoke to Mrs. Latifi and she will have NHS students greet and help older veterans cross the street.

7.  Mrs. Hill will have 1-4 students sing the National Anthem.

Thanks,

Well, it is his job, after all.

Yes, it is.  Have a nice day, Cupcake.

Mr. Harold Green is the Leo High School go-to-guy that educators and most otherwise nice people rarely notice.

I'm not so nice.  I notice.

Harold Green is my idea of a mythological Titan.

Harold Green expects to do his work.  That is all that Harold Green needs to say about it.

The Potat-er from Decatur Takes Obama Spiel to The Englewheel: Dick Durbin is No Bob Foster

One of the most gigantic of all fatuous ninnies, Senator Dick Durbin, carried President Obama's message to the well-strapped choir.

ENGLEWOOD — As President Barack Obama announced strict new gun controls nationwide Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) visited one of the neighborhoods devastated the most by gun violence *to voice his support . . .

That is nice.  Englewood, pronounced Englewheel by Chicago's mildly besieged Highland Park Homie Mayor, is a Zipcode where many of Chicago's homicides ( translated into Media Speak -Gun Violence) takes place.  Folks in Englewood are strapped -  they are impoverished and also very well armed.

Folks are strapped a few blocks to the south, where I work every day, in Gresham.  I have seen many handguns, most owned according to existing statutes by very good people and some in the hands of thugs; not necessarily gang members -thugs.

There are gangs in strapped communities, where a bi-polar law enforcement psychology exists - mistrust and now a vigorous hatred of any and law enforcement and a riveting fear of Vice Lords, Stones, 4 Corner Hustlers and Disciples of all Discriptive Modifiers, who prey on children, the elderly and geographically over-priced retailers from outside the African American communities.

Very Good People buy, or manage to get guns to protect themselves, while our politically maligned first responders are distracted by gangs, elected officials, Cadillac Commie Lawyers, the callow Chicago news media ( please, read agenda wrapped columnists and all editorial boards) and can not be the 1st Responders to their calls.

Into this sadness, arrives a doughy, fatuous ninny, United States Senator Dick Durbin (D) who will do and say anything for the PACS and people who fund his larded ass and its place in the United States Senate.  Durbin was once a 'fierce defender of the unborn' and now is Planned Parenthood's most fawning of PP President Cecile Richard's Lucchese Boots lickers.

President Obama tongues the Luccheses of Planned Parenthood, like a three old with his first Rainbow Cone. Dick Durbin showed the President how to do that.

I have met both our President and our Senior Senator and was and remain underwhelmed by both men.

When Dick Durbin was wedged into his Senate seat back in 1997, I was in my second year of service to Leo High School in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood.  Dick Durbin is Irish - a mealymouthed, spineless and rather dull Irish American.  Leo High School has Irish and African America DNA in its blood, bones and sinew. Bob Foster is an Irish American - a tough, honest, warlike softy of a man with deep and abiding love of historical, personal  and shared truth. Bob Foster is  aproud Leo Alumnus, history teacher, athletic director, guidance counsellor, principal and Leo's first President, now retired.

Dick Durbin came to Leo to be seen in a black neighborhood.  Gresham was more of a shooting gallery than it happens to be today and gang warfare was more robust.  Leo High School is a Roman Catholic high school for young men and the gangs were more intimidated by Leo President Bob Foster than the cops from the Sixth District.  Bob Foster maintained Leo's continued operation in Gresham out of the pure force of his nature and his Irish " I Could Give a Shit" attitude toward politicians, newsmen, Church higher-ups, icons, and millionaires - let alone gangbanger war lords. Every kid at Leo was an African American encouraged to celebrate his race by dint of his character and Bob Foster never aped any other dialect for public posing other than his salty and articulate Sou't Side Irish. 

Bob Foster does not have phony fiber in his DNA and he had to meet Dick Durbin.

Durbin toured Leo, was introduced to Leo Students, was wowed by the phalanxes of athletic trophies that include a number of City of Chicago Football Championships and remarked on the photos of young Bob Foster in the 1956 Championship Team picture.  Bob Foster introduced Dick Durbin to Leo Head Football Coach Mike Holmes who had just led the Lions to another IHSA Football Playoff run.

When the toured end with 'coffee and' in Bob Foster's office, Senator Dick Durbin asked, " Does Leo Have a Football Team?"

Like I said, Bob Foster is a singular man.  Singular men make miracles happen.

I waited and was not disappointed.  Most educators, failed classroom teachers with bigger salaries and pensions, would said, " Yessir Senator, we sure do!"  They might have passed on the remark, unchallenged and said, " I just love doing the work of Dr, King and Jesse Jackson, don't you Senator?"

Not Bob Foster - " Jesus Christ Almighty???!!!!! You gotta be soft as baby-shit!  How in the Hell were picked to be Senator?"

Thus, ended the Decator Potater's visit to Chicago's inner city in the late 1990's. Dick Durbin was seen in the inner city, photographed by staff, but he was not heard at the time.

Now, Dick is back in the Hood and Bob Foster is retired.

There is a home-truth spoken by Leo Men - " You can't make this shit up,"

God helps us.

* Guns are inanimate objects and can not commit any human act.

Chicago Wants, Voted For and Fully Supported Rahm's ChiRaq

Here malice, rapine, accident conspire,
And now a rabble rages, now a fire;
their ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
and here the fell attorney prowls for prey;
here falling houses thunder on your head,
and here a female atheist talks you dead....
This mournful truth is everywhere confessed,
Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed. Samuel Johnson -London



Our local, state and Federal government was handed over to fools, thieves and petty tyrants (bullies) via policy, lazy and apathetic voters and, also, people wanting to help neighbors and strangers and feel good about doing so.

Chicago re-elected Rahm Emanuel - black voters, white ethnic Catholic voters, Jewish voters, Hipster voters, CTU Karen Lewis Fan voters, All of Chicago labor and people 'doing a solid' for their neighbors holding political jobs.

Try and find someone who will say, " I'm With Rahm!"

Rahm Emanuel did not shoot Laquan McDonald sixteen times, nor did the Chicago Police Department.



Many of the people leading Mag Mile protests and paying that 'stare-down' kid to goad police officers into giving him a well-deserved slap in the puss, had "I'm With Rahm' lawn signs, or sat with Mayor Emanuel in seats reserved for Progressive Democrat and GOP oligarchs at BlackHawks, White Sox and Cubs games.

Chicago has killed off people of 'worth' in politics and replaced the Ed Kellys, Tom Murphys, Paul Vallases and so many others to clear the way for Forrest Claypool, Mike Quigley, Rahm Emanuel, Toni Preckwinkle and Barack Obama.

Our schools of education helped a great deal.  Teachers and students are ignorant of shared truth, because shared truths are verboten.

Dead Old Men like Shakepeare, Chaucer, Cicero, Dryden, Thackeray and Samuel Johnson have no place in the canon of American education.

Instead, public officials are allowed to make idiotic indictments of shared truths in the media and remain completely unchallenged, unaccountable and perfectly acceptable. Several years ago, when then -Alderman Toni Preckwinkle was encouraged by the University of Chicago mafia to seek high office, she said this in print in reaction to a request to make Saul Bellow's name get the same treatment as Joel Hall "    "In a city whose streets commemorate fascist pilots and other controversial figures, it should have been a rubber-stamped request . . ."   Toni denied the request to give Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow a brown Honorary Street Sign based upon and equally idiotic article  - Oh, that's right. . .I forgot the Chicago Tribune put Toni Preckwinkle's comment into the Orwellian Memory Hole  - like I said Chicagoans ( Bruce Dold Editor et al) 'doing a solid' for a friend.

Worth means nothing and therefore the worthless get moved into public office.

A worthless class of executives, legislators, educators and policy engineers have created a city that proudly spears "I'm With Rahm" lawn signs into the homey grass and then marches down the Mag Miles chanting tired Marxist 'Hey-Hey, Ho- Ho, Rahm has gotta go!' platitudes.

Had shared truth been of any concern for Chicago voters, our children would be learning from Milton, Bellow, Booker T. Washington, Juvenal and Samuel Johnson

A Garlic Infused News Years Eve 1994 - Clare Waited Until 1995 to Join Us

"Some clodhopper down in Griffith, Indiana swallowed a yo-yo the other day."
"Now that's real news!" from A Christmas Story

         " Well, I guess The Hickeys are now Clock Hobbers down in Griffith, Indiana" Mary E. Hickey

It was a Saturday and Mary was about a week overdue.  Mary is the mother of my two oldest - Nora and Conor.  Nora was ten years old and Conor was five and delighted that a baby was on the way.  My Mom and Dad took the two bairns to Oak Lawn for New Years, as Mary was sure to pop any minute.

We had moved to Griffith, Indiana ( The Town That Came to the Tracks - No, Kidding that is the town's motto) that summer, when Mary and I took jobs at Bishop Noll Institute in Hammond - the setting of classic Christmas Story movie.  The kids attended St. Mary's Grammar School only few blocks north of our home 218 N. LaFayette( third house north of the apartment building).

The home was a yellow framed shot-gun bungalow built for families who worked in the once thriving steel mills from Hegewisch in Illinois all way the to Porter County, Indiana.  This little house prepped for our new little Hickey.    We did not know if it would be a girl or boy child and did not care.  Mary a gorgeous, tall skinny redhead always sported a pregnancy beautifully and looked like a red bristled broom with half-barrel of Baderbrau ( great Chicago beer) strapped to the handle, but had had enough of waiting for Lazy Childe #3!"

" Take me to that Italian joint in Munster, Giovanni's.  I hear that if you garlic up a storm it induces labor," Mary commanded.   From the minute I met Mary in 1977- once was enough . . .ANd Done!

It was colder than a mother-in-law's kiss and there was about a foot of snow on the ground.  We took the Main Street ( 45th Ave)  to Munster. Mary was slated to deliver at Munster Hospital on Calumet Avenue and it was only a few blocks from, Giovanni's on Ridge Road. I had scouted quickest routes to the Hospital, barring one of the many freights trains blocking us from the birthing room and the Benjamin Griffith's cleverly named MainStreet seemed the surest route,

Giovanni's in Muster, Indiana is on Ridge Road and snuggles up to Illinois State Line near Lansing.  It is a wonderful and authentic Italian restaurant free of faux fare found at Francesca's franchise and much more satisfying than any Olive Garden trough.

Giovannis does garlic like Baderbrau  does hops and malted grains.

Mary always ate like she was "going to the Chair," but this New Year's had a maternal and medical reason for her gourmandizing -" Get what you want and I'll just have . . . The Bruschetta, Shrimp Scampi,  . . .they're appetizers! Don't give me that look . . .mmm. . . the calamari salad - load up the garlic, please. . . .a cup of minetrone . . .Oh, and the crab cakes and just bring me some iced tea.  What?"

I am no slouch with a fork, but even this hormone stoked feed seemed excessive and my face betrays what passes for reflection, like a fatman stuffed in a Speedo at State and Madison at High Noon.

The waitress approved Mary With Child's order with the knowing nod to me signalling the sisterhood of contempt universal for the unwombed tablemate.

" Ignore him, Honey."

" I do. I hope this works, I would love to have a News Year's Eve baby - Little Tax Deduction! God, I'm starved pass the bread olive oil and the crashed garlic."

Mary was a brilliant woman, a talented artist and master malaprop.   She would say the booming local enterprise was doing " Land Mine Business!" and hummed the great Four Tops hit about a monster " Ain' No Woman Like the One-eyed Got."



I screw up practically everything I touch, but get the words or phrasing to fit. . . most times.

" What?  Oh, pardon me, Mr. Wordschmidt!"

The orders arrived and Mary lived the lyrics of Johnny McEldoo on New Year's Eve 1994!  I had the 16 oz. bone-in Steak and put away only a few ounces when, " Cut me off nice hunka that, Big Boy! . . .pronto!"

So let it be written; so, let it be done!

Mary scooped more garlic onto the generous cut of wood-fired beef crusted in sea salt, pepper corns and fresh garlic and it vanished as had the Bruschetta, Minestrone, Calamari Salad, Crab Cakes and the appetiser for two portion of Shrimp Scampi and never broke a sweat.

" If This Baby Doesn't Get on the Ball and quick upon it!"

My bushy browed eyes betrayed me again, Uncomfortable, my Lamb?

" Don't start with me, Bucko, or you'll be driving back to Griffith zipped in a body bag.  Ask for the check."

It was 8 P.M.  We drove past Munster Hospital and Mary stared at the ER sign.  " Say nothing, Hubby and you might just live to see 1996 . . .you're doing all the night work with this lazy child for at least a year, Bub!"

It was a tough four hours for my Love and I am sure that child napping and thumb-suckingly contented in her womb was more than satisfied with garlic-infused amniotic fluid marinade.  we watched and waited -  with Dick Clark and throngs in Times Square -



Clare was so fetal-ly contented that she napped away until January 2, 1995.  I barely had time to park the car and Mary shot our baby into this world.

Time-delayed garlic miracle!

Tree of Joy - no gathering and collecting required

  Ecclesiastes 2:26 "For God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in His sight; but to the sinner He gives the work of gathering and collecting, that he may give to him who is good before God. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind."

Joy is free. I was never more joyful than Christmas time on a Catholic boarding school campus empty of students and most staff between 1988 and 1994.

One of the most joyful days of my life took place a little before Christmas Day in 1994 at La Lumiere School in LaPorte, Indiana.

The campus is stunning and rings a lovely spring fed lake with massive pines, hickory, elm, maple and oak trees.

My wife Mary, daughter Nora and son Conor lived in a four bedroom house attached to La Lumiere School's Becket House - home to twenty-three young men in their junior year and in our care.  Becket House was one of three male houses for boarders - the others were Newman for freshman and sophomores and Aquinas for seniors.

My role was to supervise studies, make sure that the rooms managed to stay as hygienic and orderly as possible, give the guys some sense family and make sure that the natural inclinations of seventeen and eighteen year old males had some checks.

The guys were great.  They spoiled my kids and loved my wife. Me, they tolerated - I can be a huge pain in the ass. No, really.  The campus emptied after semester exams.

We needed a Christmas tree -The campus was empty but for a very few people.

The Hickeys had the run of the place.

I was still driving a 1974 Ford four door that I bought off of Dave Raiche before leaving Bishop McNamara High School for this wonderful teaching job that included housing for my young family and free meals. Te Ford kept me grounded and reminded me of what Diocesan Catholic school payclecks are all about - La Lumiere is a Catholic Independent School - better pay and perquisites. I was able to purchase a newish Buick Skylark that Mary used for her work at Le Mans Academy in Rolling Prairie and to convey the kids around to baby sitters, school and regular transport.


I drove the Ford on campus and used it only for very short trips to stores and gas stations on Route 20.  Today, I would use the Blue Beast to haul home a Christmas tree from field on far northeast corner of campus, where maverick pines grew.  Didn't cost me nickel one.

The night before it had snowed fiercely, as it often does in northwest Indiana, leaving thick tufts of white stuff between patches of green and brown pine needles. It was cold.

Mary and the kids wanted to go cut the tree with me.  I had a very good Craftsman bow saw and ta hick Chinese army corduroy hat, a replica of a Russian fur hat, that embarrassed Nora no end.  On it went.

" No, Dad!  Not the Russia Hat! Someone might see us!"

Nora was nine and in second grade at Notre Dame Parish School in Michigan City.  Nora and her vain little chums played the knee-cap tragedy of Nancy Kerrigan on patches of ice in the playground. The little strumpets would jog onto the ice and fall grabbing their knees in feigned pain and anguish and cry out, like knee assassinated Olympic skater, " Why? Why? Why,?' after Tonya Harding took a hammer to her.

That game is indicative of the level vanity-sophistication possessed by Nora and her pals, who just 'might' see me wearing the 'Russia Hat.'

Mary bundled the whining wench and her joyfully grinning little brother as tight  as ticks into JC Penny winter wear, scarves and gloves and boots and we went out to the blue Ford.

We drove down the hill between Becket and Augustine House from Becket Parking onto the Burma Road that ran up and past the Academic Center and Aquinas House and through the road cut by the maintenance crew to the fields.  The road weaves through magnificent tall pines planted in the 1930's when the La Lumiere School campus had been a Civilian Conservation Corps site.  Poor young city kids from Gary and Chicago planted these pines still at Grenadier Guard attention.

The snow started again and it was cold.  Mary, Nora and Conor bravely stepped out of the car for a nano second and bolted back in - " This is Big Daddy work, fella; go get your family a nice one," said my gorgeous redheaded queen of obvious irony.  " Don't lose a finger, Big Boy!"

Off I trudged through deep drifts and pelting snow.

I found a six footer and full and cut it down.  Then dragged its corpse back to the Ford. I tied the tree to the roof and got into the car.  I shifted to Low.  The Ford shuddered and went deader than Kelsey's nuts.

I popped the hood and monkeyed with wires from the distributor to the battery and nothing.

Not a spark.

" Well, this certainly is Merry Christmas," whined my nine year old wounded Nancy Kerrigan re-enacttress.

" March or Die," I replied and began singing, "Marche de la Légion Etrangère" (Le Boudin).

"Tiens, voilà du boudin, voilà du boudin, voilà du boudin! . . ."

" Not funny, Dad!!!!!!!!!! Why did you make us come with you? Oh, this is some Merry Christmas!"

" Chill pill, Nora," ordered the boss of the Hickey latch-up and Red Haired Mary led her duo of unhappy and snow crusted little woodchoppers through the field and into the pines.

Conor was happy and worried about the Blue Beast.

I would have Greg and Shawn from maintenance jump the old flivver and get it back to some running order.

Mary and the two kids set off on foot back to the campus proper without any sort of a look back. Hot Chocolate and a warm house and Dad could catch up.

I dragged the ever heavier Douglas Fir back to Becket House, like corpse of Sam Magee.  onceBack at Becket House, I trimmed off the stump and branches, bounced the big pine on the snow shoveled ( yours truly) concrete patio outside the house and fixed it to its stand.

We set the majestic pine up in our living room.  Mary garnished the tree with wooden ornaments that she had made, or traded for with other Art teachers and coiled of thick old timey lights.

It was a joy. My joy increased with birth of Clare in 1995 - the image of her mother. Mary died in 1998.  The kids are all grown up. Nora is married to much better man than I could ever hope to be; Conor is a skilled tradesman and still a joyfully happy young man.

We had great tree in 1994.

Didn't cost nothing.  I tend to forget that, 'grasping for the wind.'

Poor Words on Fallen Fireman in Full Ascent

I don't believe for a minute; no, not a  bit of it,
That a  Shaft presumes a full stop,
 Like a period at the end of some line.

At my desk, safe and snug in doors,
With Leo's clacking of boiler just below me
I read of the Fall of a neighbor of mine.

An east side fire on Baltimore Ave. and a Dad,
A husband, a Halligan-fisted friend in full drop
Down an unguarded shaft to a stop malign.

I'm not buying, not for one minute; no, not a bit of it.
Christ ER had a go at denying gravity's plea
For one more ascent to Christ's arms Icarus enshrine.

There was no Fall. This was ascent.
The shaft is on on us, expecting full stop.
A fireman was winged high; not as we opine.

Words fail me, you see I am limited and
Limiting runs us off the secured . . .unguarded
Smoke befogged level line

Not our Call; not our Bell; not our say so,
But His who draws up and in the True.
I do what what I can here - Dan is fine.

Here's Who Banned Naperville High School from Expressing Free Exercise of Religion

No Asians, Pacific Islanders, Arab Americans, much less African Americans?  Gee whiz, Progressives sure play in their own sand box and then make other people miserable.


The Freedom from Religion Foundation filed a complaint with Naperville Central High School after pictures surfaced of the team praying before a Nov. 14 game against Waubonsie Valley High School. ABC 7 Chicago

 “We are so pleased that these outstanding thinkers and freethinkers have agreed to publicly lend their endorsement to the Foundation, and its two purposes of promoting freethought and the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause,” said Dan Barker, Foundation co-president.

• Jerry Coyne, Ph.D., professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, is author of the popular book 'Why Evolution is True' and the blog of the same name.
• Richard Dawkins, probably the world’s most famous contemporary atheist and a distinguished evolutionary biologist, is Oxford professor emeritus. In his blockbuster book, The God Delusion, Dawkins writes: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.”
• Daniel C. Dennett is Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts, and author of the bestselling book about religion, Breaking the Spell. In a newspaper article about his nonbelief, Dennett once wrote: “I’ve come to realize it’s time to sound the alarm.”
• Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of 36 Arguments For the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction and a research associate in Harvard’s psychology department, is FFRF Freethought Heroine of 2011. Goldstein is a 1996 MacArthur Fellow (the “genius” award). She has taught at Barnard and in the Columbia MFA writing program and the Rutgers philosophy department. She’s been a visiting scholar at Brandeis and at Trinity College in Hartford.
• Ernie Harburg, a retired research scientist, is president of Yip Harburg Foundation and co-author of Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz? Ernie has dedicated his retirement to furthering the lyrics, music, memory and progressive views of his freethinking father, the lyricist Yip Harburg, author of classic songs such as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and of Rhymes for the Irreverent, recently republished by FFRF.
• Jennifer Michael Hecht, poet, historian and author of the acclaimed Doubt: A History and The End of the Soul, told the FFRF 2009 convention audience: “If there is no god — and there isn't — then we [humans] made up morality. And I'm very impressed.”
• Susan Jacoby, bestselling author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, and program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, told FFRF convention-goers in 2004: "[President] Kennedy had to speak about his religion because he was suspected of insufficient dedication to the Constitution's separation of church and state. Today's candidates are suspect if they display too much dedication to secular government."
• Robin Morgan, feminist pioneer, global activist, author of the groundbreaking "Sisterhood is Powerful" and more than 20 books, was formerly Ms. Magazine editor and consulting editor. She is the co-founder of the Feminist Women's Health Network and Women's Media Center and currently hosts "Women's Media Center Live" the radio "talk-show with a brain."
• Mike Newdow is working pro bono to challenge such violations as the addition of “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. He told the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments: “I am an atheist. I don't believe in God. And every school morning my child is asked to stand up, face that flag, put her hand over her heart, and say that her father is wrong.”
• Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard, is author of The Blank Slate: “I never outgrew my conversion to atheist at 13.”
• Katha Pollitt, “Subject to Debate” columnist for The Nation, author and poet, has spoken out regularly and energetically as a freethinker, in such columns as “Freedom From Religion, Sí!”
• Ron Reagan, media commentator, describes himself in a radio ad he taped for FFRF as: “Unabashed atheist, not afraid of burning in hell.”
• Robert Sapolsky, a neurologist, Stanford professor and bestselling author, once suggested FFRF put up a sign at its conventions: “Welcome, hellbound atheists.”
• Edward Sorel, satiric cartoonist and irreverent illustrator who is a regular contributor to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and whose caricatures have been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, has been a Foundation member since the 1980s.
• Julia Sweeney, comedian and actress, is writer/performer of the play, “Letting Go of God”: “How dare the religious use the term 'born again.' That truly describes freethinkers who've thrown off the shackles of religion so much better!”

I taught The Crucible for decades to high school students.  I taught It Sinclair Lewis' It Can' Happen Here for years.  I taught Milton's Paradise Lost; The Dream of the Rood; Dante's Inferno and the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., as well as Voltaire, Byron, Shelly, Keats and Walt Whitman.

These well-educated elites of Freedom From Religion Foundation would find that troubling.  

Based upon a photo of  high school football players 'grabbing a knee' around their coach, Freedom from Religion Foundation assumed that the players were being puritanized by a public school employee in the secular heresy of prayer.

Naturally, the Foundation filed suit and the Naperville School Leadership tucked tail -"Naperville Community Unit School District 203 Supt. Dan Bridges said he instructed coaches of all sports in the district not to take part in prayers."

The players and their parents had none of it - 

"We, as a football team and a family, give Coach Stine our full support. He is the best coach in the state and cares about each and every one of us more than any other coach cares about his players. We are proud that he is willing to stand up for his faith and for the example he sets for us. He is a role model for every one of us in a world where true male role models are becoming few and far between. The players will continue this tradition of praying before our games and would like to extend an invitation to all members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation to come out next fall and watch us pray and play the game we love. Go Redhawks."

Go, Redhawks!

Freethought????  Except when thinking about God and something other than nonsense.

Why Do ISIS Terrorists Hate Us? Watch Windy City Live, The Chew and or Anthing Produced by The New Disney!

This week I have spent a great deal of time in doctors offices, Emergency Rooms and pharmacies. Those visits require patience for patients and their drivers.  Patience is a time tempered virtue. Ergo, my patience was tested . . .sorely tested.

My patience was not tested by the constraints of medical priorities, nor the unhappy people afflicted with physical burdens, pain and uncertainty.  It was tested by the universal application of ABC/DISNEY channels pumped out of the cables and flat screens in offices of urologists, internal medicos, ERs, pharmacies and even a bakery.

I have watched more Windy City Live, and The Chew,  than human being can tolerate.

The shows are

• Loud -even with the sound off
• Lack any and All Dignity
• Lack Content but Themes aplenty
• Peopled by persons the CTA Redline would ban
• Insulting Universal with More Applause Barrages by Hooting Cretins (Hell bent on getting free stuff) than  offered to Joe Stalin, when he was purging like a Vogue model
• Vile and Make one feel the need to shower for several hours

The US Army psych-ops units could have gotten Noriega to become a Trappist.

e.g. - <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gw9x9r6rAsk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

My deepest concern is the fact that these shows are actually watched by people who pick up a handy remote and adjust their settings to ABC 7 in Chicago and or its many national affiliates with the threat of torture.

If want to know why many people voted for Barack Obama (twice), love and admire Donald Trump, consider the greatest intellectual jurist in American history to be a racist, or ISIS just happened, watch ABC daytime programming.

Hit the links - if you dare.

Brutal.

The Rhetorical Masters - ER Nurses and EMTs at Palos Community Hospital

I have spent alot of time in Hospitals.  I am, for all of my follies, sins and an active career despoiler of my own personal Temple of Christ, as healthy as a horse.

The last few weeks have placed me in the position of driver to-and-from ERs, waiting rooms, Doctors Offices, Walgreens Pharmacies and non-medical affiliated places of business.

We all do what we can for our family and friends who have medical issues.

Yesterday, again, a long day at the Emergency Rooms of Palos Community Hospital was required of me.

Palos Community Hospital is a busy place, but it is no Stroger, or Advocate Christ Trauma Center. Nonetheless, I was impressed by women and men who treat us all - eventually.

I was impressed not so much by the medical skills, but by their mastery of language.

I arrived at the ER a little before 7AM and just short of the ambulance arrival.

The place was immaculate and empty.  Within  a score of minutes Palos Community ER filled up. My ears caught the activity beyond the pulled curtains

• An attempted suicide
• A little girl who could not feel her toes following an early morning dance lesson
• More than a few elderly women who fell in their homes
• More than a few work related accidents

At 10 AM, I was asked to run some errands.  Outside of the drawn curtains blue gowned nurses and uniformed EMTs pushed gurneys and carts of human wounded into the halls and giving the worried families comforting, but carefully worded assurances.

When I returned an hour later the gurneys waiting for treatment stations multiplied and the staff lost not a step, nor a scintilla of sweetness. 

That I found impressive.

I am a blabby flannel mouth.   These skilled medics were much more verbally and rhetorically skilled than this word larded soul could ever hope to be, because they are not only constrained by the physical afflictions and some cases hemorrhaging wounds before their compassionate eyes and in their proficient fingers, but also the jungle of jargon attached by lawyers to every document they initial and sign, or utter in public.

God Bless them!

Me and Leon at the Criminal Courts on 26th & California on Cold and Sunny Chicago Day

Jury Duty - Wednesday December 9th 2015.  No getting around it.  I was told my aunt's funeral yesterday was no excuse from this civic responsibility.  Later, I learned that my cousin's son had been told the very same thing by the non-robot who answered the phones.  Cousin Mike's boy was in the jurors assembly area with your humble correspondent.

Parking at the Leighton Branch of the Cook County Criminal Courts is a pre-ordained ticket bonanza for our revenue thirsty City and County.  Parking has all but disappeared in Chicago thanks to the Democrats of Cook County and City of Chicago over the last twenty years.  The big parking garage just east of the California Boulevard parkways is an expensive crap shoot and an absolute nightmare when court is dismissed.

Hours earlier, I did a few e-mail services at Leo High School and then headed down up Western Avenue to my strategically planned parking spot in the Heart of Italy neighborhood located just east of Cook County Jail and the Criminal Courts Leighton Branch on California.

I turned east of Western Ave. on Blue Island and turned at Oakley.  I know this neighborhood as it is one of my absolute favorite dining locales in this diminishing city.  There is island of hope for frustrated motorists seeking a parking spot here.  There are no Green Parking Boxes and there is always a limited number of spots.  Go and seek them out.

I parked, after scouting for any signs of City Ordinance Violations indicators and found it trouble free.

I walked east on 25th street, past the South Side Outlaws Club and several massive auto repair mega-plants and scores of kids heading to school from Lawndale Gardens.



I crossed California Boulevard and walked south to the courts.  It was 7:30 AM and my summons told me to report NO LATER than 9AM.

Outside of the newish Leighton Building  a young Black man in a Afro-Tricolor knit hat and shivering inside a very thin leather jacket was leaning on one of thick concrete blocks intended to stop terrorists from driving a car bomb into the facility grabbing a smoke.

I decided to grab one too.

" Jury duty,?' I asked with my customary south side Irish bonhomie.

" No, sir, a beef," answered the young gent whom Alderman Leslie Hairston and Mayor Rahm Emanuel would order racist and or race -traitor cops to brace if they got within twenty feet of him.

I have some street sense developed via empirical data stored over many years of not really giving a $hit about appearances.  Some of the creepiest people I have encountered sport HartMarx suits, or Lake Forest doyen get-ups. The absolute creepiest are Sixty-Somethings costumed in Retro-hippie Bolivarista get-ups and are usually academics, or CPAs from Evanston.

This young gent had the looks of a working man, a family man and, like me, a guy who screwed up.

"What's the charge? "

" DUI - I can't take this one.  I live in Merrillville with my wife and two kids.  I work construction and need my car.'

" Where'd you get tagged?"

" 79th Street just west of Halsted."

Right in the Pat Hickey conversational (monologue) wheelhouse.

" I work at Leo High School."

" I know it says so on your coat."

Unabashed, " What happened?"

The young man told that his wife had gone to Chicago with a couple of friends from high school and had, as many a young lady in my circle of life, taken one too many Mojitas.  The two kids were staying with an Aunt and my nicotine gulping fellow had stopped at the Alaska Pipeline for a  few jars with the lads.

Perfect storm.  He got call from his bride to come and get her at a pub on Vincennes not far from Leo High School - he had a couple of beers in him and drove from Schereville to the Skyway and eventually west on 79th Street.  He noticed a CPD patrol car behind him and the fact that he was not wearing a seat belt.  He pulled on the always, it seems, tangled safety harness and swerved a bit.  Blue Lights.

We walked into the Leighton Building and were told to leave until 8:30 AM. I asked the young man his name.  " Leon _____."

I took Leon for coffee - he declined breakfast on me.  We walked west on 26th Street, in what seemed 'forever,' along the walls of Cook County Jail and arrived in the warmth of Milagro!

We had a great jaw.  I learned that Leon's family had once been a political juice load of DNA, until Daley II turned his back on Leon's grandmother.  He had grown up in Englewood, attended Amos Alonzo Stagg elementary ( former site of Leo High School's legendary Shewbridge Field) and CVS High School.  As many a young man will do he got into a juvenile beef and was sent to the State of Illinois Boot Camp in Rantoul and learned a better path.  Since then he had no further scrapes with the law, worked in construction in Belize, the Bahamas and now in Northwest Indiana.

We walked back to Leighton and went inside, I asked if Judge Thomas Murphy was working here in the hope that maybe, Leon would get a nonpolitical black robe for his beef.  No luck, Murph is in Bridgeview Division.

We  queued up in the males only line.  Leon was told he had to lock-up his cellp-phone.  We were parting, " I send up a flock of Memorares at 9 AM."

" What's that?"

" The absolute best prayer, I know, Leon. God Be with!"

" You too.  Thanks,"

No, Leon. Thank you. I went to the third floor, was selected for Panel 6, saw my cousin Mike's kid and talked about Aunt Aurelia's wake at Sheehy's on 79th Street and said a good number of prayers for Leon.

Jury duty was a breeze.

Inquiry - Conclude and Gather The Facts in Favor of An American Gestapo

The Laquan McDonald Shooting is a convenient step to a much larger goal - the establishment of Federal Police everywhere in America.

Black Lives Matter only until this goal is achieved.

• Henry Louis Gates
• Ferguson, MO
• Baltimore,
• Cincinnati
• Chicago

All steps up the National Police ladder of inquiry.


Marches and Scream Fests on Race will continue until this goal is achieved - an American Gestapo.

Cops, no matter how many cameras affixed with Dolby sound included, will still be cops, until the goal of a National Supreme Policing Force is achieved.

While Rahm Emanuel attempted to sweep the McDonald shooting under any rug and damn the costs, because he was facing re-election, Jamie Kalevn found a friendly judge who offered up Criminal Complaints ( CRs) against any and all members of the Chicago Police Department.

CRs are 'beefs' - Police are required to interface with criminals and people who do not follow the rules most people take as a matter of course in daily life.  Such individuals as the former return the obligatory Q & A by filing a 'police complaint.'

Jamie Kalven, a millionaire real estate mogul, investor and Marxist from Chicago's Hyde Park is celebrated Progressive icon with decades of community activism to his record.  He now heads the Invisible Institute.

Young independent journalist Brandon Smith dovetailed to Kalven successful jude shopping, as would Chicago's utility self-promoting news harridan Carol Marin, and notes " But I'm not taking no for an answer—particularly in light of Kalven v. Chicago, an Illinois Appellate Court decision last March that established information about police misconduct is public, except in limited circumstances that don't apply in the case of the McDonald shooting video.

That case was brought by Chicago civil rights journalist Jamie Kalven. After he prevailed, he and his lawyers helped the city craft a more thorough transparency policy in accordance with the court's decision. Apparently the Chicago Police Department believes the Kalven ruling doesn't apply in the case of the shooting of Laquan McDonald.  I'd like to hear what the courts think."

Brandon, you would not like to hear what I think, because I believe that Truth is shared, not co-opted.

I believe that the shooter of Laquan McDonald is an idiotic monster, from what I witnessed on the video who betrayed all of his law enforcement sister and brothers. I do not believe, nor think as you say, that he is in any way a symptom of any problem with policing - local, state or federal.

He belongs to some political creature in Chicago, or Cook County, or the State of Illinois.  Someone in the food chain is what Chicagoan's call 'his Chinaman.'  He's got sponsor somewhere.

He is a wrong guy.

He should not be, be you will help make him be a rung on the ladder to an Amnerican Gestapo.

You have a great deal of fellows in satisfying, as John Dewey used the term, path to Inquiry. God help us.

A national police force is a huge topic on all of cable news outlets and in the WIFI friendly coffeeshops of America.  An American Gestapo.

Americans want that.  Americans need that.  You see, inquiry has determined things so long ago . . .long before Burge, long before Laquan McDonald and Americans by and large accept every dust ball of incident, word, thought and nod that rolls out in news print, pours from the maw of Carol Marin, or gets ruled accommodating judges.

Listen.  Brandon Smith



Brandon Smith went to a notoriously ant-cop law firm - Loevy and Loevy which has its roots in the Marxist American labor movement of the last century.  Jon Loevy is the son of Arthur Loevy who attempted to move 'police labor' to the far left during the later part of the 20th Century.  His son honed his sights on 'systemic police racism and brutality' and made millions from gutless local and State settlements, as well as active participation in the now discredited, but still much loved Wrongful Conviction Industry.


Police misconduct is no longer policed by the police, but by task forces, panels and left-friendly columnists.

Chicago is a thug comfort zone.  Police are universally targeted and vilified.

Inquiry - drawing a conclusion and making anything fit that conclusion is American thought.