Leo High School Veterans Observance - Friday Nov. 4th at 11 A.M.

The late Bernie Ingersoll ( Leo '43) with Don Hogan ( Leo '45) and Jerry Tourville ( Leo '48) in 2006 at the Veterans Observances.

Leo Veterans Observances

Leo High School site of Veterans Observance on Friday, November 4th, 2011
at@11:00 A.M

Contact - Mr. Pat Hickey -Director of Development (773) 224-9600 ex. 208
When – November 4th 2011 at 11AM
Where – The Courtyard of Leo High School 7901 South Sangamon Street Chicago 60620
What - Leo High School, Leo Alumni Association welcomes all veteran to the Memorial Observance at the Leo War Memorial in the school’s courtyard. , Leo High School Principal Phil Mesina (USAF ret.) r & Vice Principal Frank Wilson (USMC ret.) will direct the observance which features presentations by Veterans, wreath - laying by John Gardner, President of the Alumni Association

Who - Leo High School erected a memorial in 1965 to the many Leo men who have died serving America in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam and the Windy City Veterans of Chicago updated the engraved names and constructed permanent lighting for the memorial. Last year more than two hundred persons joined the 150 Leo students in honoring America’s war fallen.

Leo High School Speakers at War Memorial 11 A.M.

1. Principal Phil Mesina, USAF (ret.) and Vice-Principal Mr. Frank Wilson, USMC (ret.) call to Order

2. Prayer Father William McFarlane Leo '83

3. Leo Alumni President Dan McGrath

4. Color and Honor of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines – Posting of the Colors -Chicago’s own & Wreathe Laying by Leo Veterans & Purple Heart Veterans.

5. Our National Anthem by Leo Freshman Chris McSmith

6. Leo 2004 Alumnus and Iraq Afghanistan Combat Veteran: Sgt. Jauwan Hall, USMC

7. Taps by Bugles Across America Larry Richards (Leo'60)– Gun Salute and Dismissal & Refreshments in Leo Cafeteria

Join us for this solemn tribute to America's heroes.

The Media Is Jasper Hoegen-Vander - Locker Inspection and The Herman Cain Lynching

Jonathan Mumbles Martin - MSNBC Manure Salesman with a Mouthful of Samples


At the end of the school year, there was always locker inspection. At Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL, sometime in the late 1970's, I taught (for want of a better term) young gent by the name of Jasper Hoegen-Vander. Jasper was, I believe, the only student in my career whom I failed for the entire year. Jasper completed nothing - not a homework assignment, not a quiz, not an essay and certainly not an exam. Jasper had and did nothing.

I met with Jasper, talked with his parents, brainstormed with my Department Chair, Guidance Counsellor, and Principal and could not motivate Jasper to do anything. I had taught his older brother Perry, a great athlete, student leader and scholar who went on to University of Illinois. Jasper's folks owned a produce farm in the Dutch colony of Wichert, IL between St. Anne and the Indiana State line. Jasper, it seemed would have been fully content to be Robert Frost's Hired Man until the day he cast off his mortal coil.

On Jasper's last day of four years of complete inactivity at Mac, I asked the lad to do something - anything on a piece of paper that could justify my giving him a Gentleman's D for the year.

"Anything? Like how stupid and boring you are?"

As you wish, Jasper, anything.

"How about how fat and slutty your Mom is?"

One man's opinion might suffice.

For forty five minutes we carried on with this Bizzaro World Socratic Method - Jasper posing ever more gloriously obscene and offensive questions concerning my ontological* place on our planet. On paper, nothing.

All of my other students, six sections of a score or more, had handed in blue books and were cleaning out their lockers for the summer.

Jasper, it is getting on to four o'clock and you have not even put your name on the paper.

"Are you looking on my test,Man? That's cheating. What are you a cheat? Did you cheat your way to the top?"

My position is far from the top, Jasper, and I have to conduct locker inspection.

" Hope you'll find some cool stuff? Bag of dope for you to smoke? That how you got to be such a dope?"

Jasper, hand in your paper.

"What about locker inspection?"

That last question became the stuff of legend. For the balance of my career at Bishop Mac, which ran from 1975-1988, colleagues would ask that question, whenever something absurd was posed by someone at faculty meetings. " We should modify the curriculum to reflect the contributions of political prisoners to our way of life - Thoreau, Gandhi, the Soul on Ice Negro,. . .Theodore Cleaver" would be met with a universal chorus of "What About Locker Inspection?????!!!!!!!!!!!!"

When I heard and later read about the Politico C-4 getting fused by Jonathan Martin all I could say was "What about Locker Inspection?"

Jasper's question floated out into the ozone.

Locker Inspection? What does that have to do with anything?

"I'm asking the question, Mr. A$$hole ( Jasper, to say the least, understood the social proprieties)? WHAT ABOUT LOCKER INSPECTION???????"

It rang loudly through the halls.

Jonathan Martin is a journolist MSNBC regular mumbling manure salesman with a mouthful of samples. Jonathan's lynching of Herman Cain sparked me to again ask, "What about Locker Inspoection?"

Jonathan Martin is Jasper Hoegen-Vander Lite.

Herman Cain is a very nice, black man who is married to a very nice woman and he is also a GOP Presidential Candidate who happens to be more popular than our first Bi-racial President. That will not stand. Jonathan Martin is asking the very same questions of the American Body Politic and Candidate Herman Cain as Jasper HoegenVander posed to me in an all but empty classroom in Kankakee.

Take a look.



If Herman Cain is as MSNBC insists a Minstral Performer, a Racist Joke and a Sexual Harasser, why is Mumbles Martin asking "WHAT ABOUT LOCKER INSPECTION!"

Like Jasper, Jonathan Martin has got nothing.

Unlike Jasper, Jonathan Martin is unwilling to spit it out - a manure salesman with mouthful of samples.

De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum.






*Ontology (from onto-, from the Greek ὤν, ὄντος « being; that which is », present participle of the verb εἰμί « be », and -λογία, -logia: science, study, theory) is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.

America's Killer Apps and a Solid Wet Towel Snap

My son leaves for work a little after five o'clock in the morning. My eldest child is at work by 7:30 A.M. My youngest is at Mother McAuley for Zero Hour classes at 7 A.M. and the cat is trying to break into the closet in the hall to get at the Charmin and Bounty towels, the little feline bitch.
I'll be at Leo between 5 and 5:30 AM.

My son is an apprentice in a skilled trades union, my eldest is working in-between jobs, and my youngest is preparing to meet the world. Old Dad has been at it for decades.

I went to four o'clock Mass on Saturday with scores of neighbors - cops, foremen, school teachers, retirees and far too many young talented people who have been recently laid off.

America is having some tough times. The President recently said that we are soft, unimaginative, and lost our competitive edge. I respectfully disagree. The President has not watched kids at Kennedy Park, or Catholic League football, nor witnessed the creativity on display at a St. Cajetan's science fair. Likewise, he may do himself some good tagging along with union cement finisher, carpenter, electrician, or do a ride along with cops and firemen in Englewood.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to let us know that we are still in the game. Niall Ferguson gives navel gazers a snap of the wet-towel with his latest piece in Newsweek.

America had proudly reinvented itself before. But this time around, the "reinvention" had wrought a toxic behemoth, one that will likely kill the American economy in our lifetime. The "financial industry" in America is the modern equivalent of American opium traders of yore. Just as the "traders" such as the grandpa of an American president (Delano), plus other American blue-bloods became filthy rich pushing the illicit drug on the China (with the help of gunboats and demands of "free trade"), today's American "finance industry" is designed to serve the same function, backed by unlimited capital, and pushing a low cost, high profit "product" that is designed and guaranteed to ruin the buyers. In the case of opium, within a short couple of generation?s, the illicit drug (banned by the Qing governemen?t but pushed by the Anglo American swashbuckling "smugglers?" backed by gunboats) hollowed out the Chinese economy, dragging it down from No. 1 down to below 100th in the world.

He takes the Blackberry, Apple Mac tropes gets the cold wet and sharp point of towel to the flabby rump with stinging accuracy. Click my post title above for the full whack.

Here are the Killer Apps on the American Device, that will get us back in the game:

Western Civilization's Killer Apps

COMPETITION
Western societies divided into competing factions, leading to progressive improvements.

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
Breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology.

THE RULE OF LAW
Representative government based on private-property rights and democratic elections.

MODERN MEDICINE
19th- and 20th-century advances in germ theory, antibiotics, and anesthesia.

THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
Leaps in productivity combined with widespread demand for more, better, and cheaper goods.

THE WORK ETHIC
Combination of intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.


All America needs to do is, as John Kass tells, lay off the Hopium Pipe. Pull it together! Hit the pews; help the neighbors; get the nose out of the belly-button; hit the books; turn off MSNBC, FOX, and CNN and go to a Ward Meeting. Buckle that chin-strap and play until the last whistle.

The Noon of Night - The Shock and The Fright!

Aside from the Occupy Wall Street Kids, Halloween is celebrated one the Eve of All Saints Day - that's tomorrow a Holy Day - November 1st. The celebration of All Hallows E'en began in Ireland about 1,000 A.D as an amalgamation of the Celtic Samuin ( Sow-en)a harvest celebration with Pagan Druidic Rites absorbed by the Christian Faith.

Apples, pumpkins, bonfires, blessings, maledictions and especially dressing up and begging became associated with the night of the faeries, spooks, hags, goblins and zombies. Tales of the supernatural were spun by the imaginative and pranks were played upon cheap-skates and cranks.


Tonight, troops of kids and their parents will flood my streets from about 4- 7PM. They will be decked out as Captain America, Princesses, Glee Cheerleaders, Pumpkins, Vampires and Batman.

I have bowls of Kit-Kats, Three Musketeers, M & Ms, Milky Ways, and Tootsie Rolls ready for the throng.

From my front porch, I will with throaty theatricality give out with hoary verse, as well as dispense Dentist Ammo.

Here is my favorite from the Cavalier/Metaphysical poets

The Hag

Robert Herrick (1648)



The Hag is astride,
This night for to ride;
The Devill and shee together:
Through thick, and through thin,
Now out, and then in,
Though ne’r so foule be the weather.

A Thorn or a Burr
She takes for a Spurre:
With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,
Through Brakes and through Bryars,
O’re Ditches, and Mires,
She followes the Spirit that guides now.

No Beast, for his food,
Dares now range the wood;
But husht in his laire he lies lurking:
While mischiefs, by these,
On Land and on Seas,
At noone of Night are working,

The storme will arise,
And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder,
The ghost from the Tomb
Affrighted shall come,
Cal’d out by the clap of the Thunder.

Spooky? Wait til the neighbors see me in my Mark Spitz 1970 rig out!

Hickey in a Speedo . . . shudder, quake and howl!

Abortion Nutty Nun-Skull Joan Walsh Whacks Her Ruler on Billy Daley's Noggin

Sr. Joan would sicken a mad dog raised on a diet of barbed wire and broken beer bottles - Lawd, Ha' Mercy!


Nothing is more repulsive than a thick ankled old Irish Harpy with all of the worst and not one of the positive aspects of a caricature Nun. Joan Walsh, editor of Salon and MSNBC Whack-job goes off on White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley. Joan Walsh would have made a splendid goof-ball nun, doing liturgical dance, and helping Planned Parenthood kill more kids.

Sister Joan hates arrogance and puffery so much in people who think that they have the salt to stand in Barack Obama's shadow.

Truth to tell, young Barry Obama would have cashed in his future Nobel Prize just to get in the same elevator as Bill Daley in 1995, when he was tagging along with Billy Boy Ayers at the Woods Fund.

Bill Daley gets cracked in Cankle's review of Roger Simon's Politico interview with the Chief of Staff. Simon was a laughable entity years ago in Chicago a

President Light Weight is bullet-proof, because of Harpy's like Walsh and the Mules of MSNBC.

Sr. Joan gives Billy the Full Bush -

My favorite part comes when Simon asks Daley how the White House keeps politics and policy separate. “They can be separate, yeah,” Daley says. “You can say, ‘Look, this may be good policy, but the politics of it may be shitty.” Simon asks which Obama will go for, and Daley’s answer may well find its way into a 2012 GOP ad. “He’ll try to find that middle ground,” Daley says. “How close can we get to it being really shitty policy or really shitty politics but getting something accomplished?’” (For the record, Politico used dashes to denote the dirty words, but I think the quote is most honest if rendered the way Daley said it.)

That’s a deeply stupid remark, but Simon plays it straight; in fact, the profile comes off as worshipful. The Politico veteran relates that Daley used to keep an old “Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply” sign in his Chicago law office, as a typical Daley reminder, in Simon’s words, “of where they came from and how far they have gotten.” Oh please. Sure, generations back Daley is said to be descended from famine Irish, but where Bill Daley came from is a place of privilege: He is the son of perhaps the most powerful mayor in America.

Daley is a Democratic version of George H.W. Bush as described by the late Ann Richards: someone born on third base who thinks he hit a triple. He used his family background and political connections to take part in today’s quintessential Democratic get-rich-quick scheme, corporate law and investment banking. It’s always shocked me how a certain type of affluent Irish Catholic can excuse his work on behalf of the wealthy as long as he has a “No Irish Need Apply” sign in his office, which puts him on the side of the underdogs. Daley is an overdog who represents the interests of overdogs.

Have fun reading Joan Walsh's dried up and nasty point of view by clicking my post title.

Why Bother With The Trib - The Real Reporting Can Be Found at Chicago News Co-Op

I read quite a bit. Even at this hoary-age of the dark-side of 58, I tend to remember what I read. Reading like plumbing, carpentry, and painting is an art. I do not plumb, carpent or paint, unless there is a very good reason to do so, like black water gushing up out of every household orifice, timbers a'cracking and chips of paint getting mixed in with the Lime and Salt flavored tortilla chips.

I read because I must. I have taught generations of high school kids not only to engage in reading, but introduced them to the very best in writing, in order to become discerning readers.

While a student at Loyola, I worked with a Stationary Engineer who was a 'big reader' - Mack Bolan, Nick Carter, Mickey Spillane, various and sundry crotch novels with titles like "Trailer Park Pam and the Big-Top Snake Wranglers at Play." While appreciative of the cover art that packages such tomes, I, none the less, found the lurid prose to be just that and came away from their sentences with the feelings of shame that must accompany young Ezra when Mom comes down into the basement with basketful of the twenty-something's laundry and catches Young E with his mitts around more than a pretzel stick, while watching the Kardasian hi-jinks on the wide-screen Hi Def.

Chicago's two remaining big newspapers and their web-sites have become little more than Condensed Lite Nick Carter dailies.

The Chicago Tribune, to be fair, has made some modest gains toward substance in recent months, but any paper with a disc jockey as managing editor and editorial board propagandist is rather sad. The Sun Times, likewise has improved from its laughable days when Cheryl Redd called the shots, and has excellent journalistic foot-soldiers like Mark Konkol, Natasha Korecki, Maureen O'Donnell, Tim Novack and Abdon Pallasch and Southtown's Star's Steve Metsch.

However, you can not find a better source for reporting, opinion and insight than the Medill Castaways of the Chicago News Cooperative ( New York Times).

One of my favorite, Metro and City Hall beat journalists is Dan Mihalopoulos. Today, this gritty and exacting reporter cuts through fatuous opinions of the Aldermen and City Hall flacks and presents the realities of Chicago Police Manpower shortages.

The ACLU and the usual suspects of political loudmouths and phonies are providing cover form Rahm Emanuel's dodgy deployments. Dan Mihalopoulos offers the facts - reminding readers of what newspapers used to do. While the Emanuel 'Smart Sizing" of the Chicago Police Department might provide cover for aldermen and the Administration, saturating high crime areas with Officers will not necessarily solve the problem.

Only Dan Mihalopulos cuts to the chase -

The Chicago News Cooperative recently obtained a list of the unit assignments for the 10,300 sworn Chicago police department employees from a police source who requested anonymity because the department leaders have declined to release it.

The records described the unit assignments as of early October and appeared to reflect the vast majority of the recent personnel moves ordered by the Emanuel administration.

Most of the detectives were assigned to one of the department’s five area headquarters, while about 2,400 of the police officers were either assigned directly or detailed to specialized units, including the narcotics section and the internal affairs division.

It was impossible to deduce from the data exactly where the officers in specialized units were working. The list also did not include supervisors.

The other 7,000 police officers, representing a majority of the department’s sworn members, were each assigned to patrol beats in one of the 25 districts. The number of officers in each district ranged from a low of 191 in the 23rd district to 386 in the 7th district.

A comparison of the beat deployment figures with department statistics for property crimes and violent crimes in each district this year shows:

¶Four districts — the 25th, 8th, 6th and 4th — had higher ratios of both property crimes and violent crimes per officer than the citywide average.

¶The highest ratios of property crimes to beat officer counts were in the 14th, 8th and 25th districts, each of which reported at least 15 property crimes per patrol officer in the year’s first eight months.

¶The lowest proportion of violent crimes to officers was in the 1st district, which covers downtown Chicago, followed by the 19th district on the North Side.

¶The 4th district, in the city’s southeast corner, had the largest gap between staffing level and violence, with 4.05 violent crimes per officer.

The 4th district covers most of the 7th Ward, whose alderman, Sandi Jackson, praised Emanuel for adding officers to areas of greater need, despite tight budget constraints. But asked about the Chicago News Cooperative findings, Jackson replied: “There is absolutely a disparity. We are not where we would want to be ideally.”

Some experts say the reaction of aldermen in apparently underserved districts, though politically astute, would not lead to the wisest policies for fighting crime.

“It is reasonable and rational to expect that there should be more officers in areas with more crime,” said Arthur Lurigio, a professor of psychology and criminology at Loyola University. “But there is no evidence that would necessarily be the case.”

Lurigio said saturating areas with officers often merely pushed criminals to other places that then witnessed a spike in violence.

Imagine if high crime areas were saturated with beat officers, prowler cars and paddy wagons?

Imagine what Harvey Grossman and the ACLU say and how quickly they would shop for Federal Judges to sue over racist invasions and forces of occupation in Englewood, or Roseland?

Fourteen people were wounded and one killed last night, blares the Tribune in anticipation of a full explanation to people by Eric "The Water Boy" Zorn, or a thunderingly hilarious cop-slamming J'accuse from Bruce Dold.

Read The Tribune for laughs, read the Chicago Sun Times for the great reporters and skip the columnists, and read the Chicago News Cooperative in order to be fully informed.

To Well-Heeled Chicagoans

It is a shame that Chicago's 1%ers can meet at Smith and Wolinsky's and pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars and invest in a bar or a restaurant, but take a pass on helping to fund the only real news source in Chicago - The Chicago News Cooperative. I mean aside from a guy who moved to Chicago and already pumps millions into schools, the great John Canning, where are all of the Oxen Gore-ing PlumpCats and Kittens? Support Chicago News Cooperative. Us Helots are already pumped dry, by Rahm, Boss Preckwinkle, Governor Easter Bunny, and Boss Claypool -not to mention Boss Shakman.

This great source of news should be supported by the people who have the most treasure in their kicks. If you have a couple of hundred thousand dollars laying around your Gold Coast condo, Lakeview gray stone, or Hyde Park mansion, give Jim Warren a call, or write a huge check to

Chicago News Cooperative Contact Info:
70 East Lake Street, #810
Chicago, IL 60601


www.chicagonewscoop.org

Chicago needs real news and good writing.



The two journalistic and editorial equivalents of "Trailer Park Pam and the Big-Top Snake Wranglers at Play" just aren't cutting it. Buck up, Buckaneers!

On October 31st, Let's Celebrate the Birth of Our Seven Billionth Human Being - Welcome to a Great Life, Little Guy!

Legendary Boxing Trainer Angelo Dundee with incoming Leo High School Freshman Jake Joyce Class of 2028. Angelo is 90 and Jake is well shy of his first birthday.

STEUBENVILLE, OH—October 31, 2011, has been declared "the day of seven billion" – the day the population of the human race will reach its highest mark ever. Many experts have deemed this "an ominous day." But Steven W. Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, says it should be a celebration.

"I, for one, am not frightened," Mosher said. "In fact, we're celebrating the birth of baby seven billion. (This milestone) represents a great victory over death."

Yesterday, I had the pleasure and honor to hold in my arms, Master Jake Daniel Joyce - Leo High School Class of 2028. Jake is the son of Jamillah Ali-Joyce and Leo Boxing Coach Mike 'Pickle' Joyce Leo '86 and the little brother of big sisters Nadia and Amira.

He is a beautiful little man, alert, smart, and duked up in the Cuz D'Amato Beek-a-Boo style.

I am a Baby-sap. Little gents and ladies get along with me until a few years past the age of reason - T'weens -Gen Y-ners.

Baby's give us sinners a tap on the shoulder to yank our heads out of our belly buttons and recognize the fact that we are not the center of the universe. They are God's Eyes and Voice.

This morning before gearing up for the day at Leo, I read the above story about the 7 Billionth Human coming aboard on Halloween. I occupied 40 minutes watching a You Tube video of Dr. Mosher. Listen to this guy.





How anyone can argue for the death of child plum evades me. I tend to view Planned Parenthood as the later-day Baal Rites - toss the innocent to death, to appease ourselves. And they call Cannibals savages?


Happy Birthday, Kid!

Les Soeurs Baiser - A Tale of Halloween Deception

Men sholde nat knowe of goddes pryvetee [God's private affairs].
Ye, blessed be alwey a lewed [unlearned] man
That noght but oonly his bileve kan! [who knows nothing except the Creed]
Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales


Thanks to John Dewey, too many Americans have been duped. Lord Bertrand Russell, the father of Logical Positivism, and a celebrated agnostic, was a contemprary of the Father of American Public Education, who took a dim view of Dewey's dim philospophy of Education - Inquiry is Truth. Well it is not, Jasper.

Lord Russell tagged Dewey's will to power, via fundamentally unsound pedogogy, to be a "cosmic impiety." Because one insisits that 'it just is' does not determine an end.

Here is a seasonal object lesson that deconstructs Dewey's Inquiry, that I recently heard from Vietnam Hero and California Yeoman Iron Mike McQuade.


"A cabbie picks up a Nun. She gets into the cab, and notices that the
VERY handsome cabdriver won't stop staring at her. She asks him why he is staring..

He replies: "I have a question to ask, but I don't want to offend you"

She answers, " My son, you cannot offend me. When have been a nun as long as I have, you get a chance to see and hear just about everything. I' m sure that there's nothing you could say or ask that I would find offensive."

"Well, I've always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me."

She responds, "Well, let's see what we can do about that -
1) you have to be single and
2) you must be Catholic."

The cab driver is very excited and says, "Yes, I'm single and Catholic!"

"OK" the nun says. "Pull into the next alley."

The nun fulfills his fantasy with a kiss that would make a hooker blush.

But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying.

"My dear child," said the nun, why are you crying?"

"Forgive me but I've sinned. I lied and I must confess, I'm married and I'm a Unitarian."

The nun says, "That's OK. My name is Steve and I'm going to a Halloween party!"

Quod erat Demonstrandum.

Rahm's Residency Rules -You Stay As Long as There's a Nickel To Be Squeezed Out of You Helots; Only Then You May Go

Inspector General Joe Ferguson, in a report issued this week, said the city's residency requirement makes no exceptions.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has received criticism for allowing the chief administrative officer of the Chicago Public Schools to live in Winnetka for the next two years because of his reluctance to pull his adopted daughter out of her school.

Joe -Well, maybe this one time for an appointee -after all the kid goes to school in Winnetka - he's not a cop, teacher or fireman for Crissakes.

Rahm - Let's Change the Subject! Call the Water Boy! Tell Eric I need three or four residency shout-outs!


The Garbage Grid is the tip of the spear and the upcoming raised water rates is merely the dagger to the short ribs. When you can't breathe, you can't fight back.

Chicago and Cook County has turned the keys over to the progressives.

The Middle Class Tax Base must stay, for immediate future, because it must pay for planned Urban Center Chicago - the playground for the elites. If you own a home, have kids, attend church services, cut your own grass, rake your lawn, keep an eye on your neighbors' kids, call-in crimes, take food to suffering and wonder how long you can keep up with the mounting expenses and the glaciers of bullshit from politicians and the news media, you are not an elite.

Cops, Firemen, Streets and Sanitation Workers, Skilled Tradesmen, Clerks, Accountants, and necessary worker bees for the City of Chicago must reside within the City Limits . . .for now.

Progressive Career ASSholes*, like Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle will call her media pals and publicly humiliate and lay off hundreds of County janitors and then purchase more land for CC Forest Preserves. She'll call her media pals again and publicly humiliate and fire a family man from his County job, because he did not vote for Joy Cunningham's desire to be an Illinois Supreme Court Justice. Make sense?

Career A$$holes, like Forrest Claypool, will cut bathroom breaks and then whine about union rules for bus drivers and CTA train drivers, as if those decades-old benefits sprouted up like some magic Carbondale mushrooms and then continue to build his own pension cash mountains by dint of insider appointments, because the chinless jerk can't get himself elected.

Give me an honest, hard-working thief any day, over these Career A$$holes.

Huge lay-offs are coming and soon. The County and the City of Chicago will lay off the last of the Helots in the coming months and years.

What happens to the Shakman Empire when that happens? Mike gonna strike tents?

That's all down the road. There's more to do!

The Aldermen of the City Council will have gelded themselves, the Wards will be Smart-sized and the population of the City will continue its diaspora to Will, Du page, and Lake Counties. The poor are Section 8'd to the collar suburbs and the middle class will follow shortly, once every possible nickel can be squeezed out the pockets of people in the neighborhoods.

That's the plan, Stan! In a few years, Joe Ferguson, or his clone, will announce that it is just ducky for City employees to hit the trail.

The Progressive Triumph of Will shall be celebrated in the Green, Childless Chicago Urban Center. Garbage and Water, Kids.

* Progressive Career A$$holes can be identified as a person or persons whom breathless idiots term "Ain't He/She Great?" There is never a scintilla proof on the claim, however; thus "Forrest Claypool did a great job with the Chicago Parks District." How and What? Explain, please. "Well, he just did. He's an outsider and a Reformer. What are you some Right Wing Nut? He's Great! Great I tells You!"

The Career A$$hole makes broad and frequent use of Chicago's Iconic Columnists and The Career A$$holes Media Organ -Channel 11 WTTW & WBEZ ( Count the Times a Non Career A$$hole is the featured focus, or a guest - unless being targeted for take-down or abuse. WTTW will invariably do a Progressive Policy Pile -On the target for today, like last week's Eddie Arruza and Forrest Claypool shout-down of CTA Union President Bob Kelly.

http://discussions.chicagotribune.com/20/chinews/chi-cook-county-forest-preserve-looking-to-buy-land-20111026/10

A Baby Seal Walks into a Club… Hollandaise on a Baby Moon

Zagat's just listed Les Nomades as the best restaurant in Chicago.

I had the pleasure of dining at Les Nomades* early last Christmas season and it was worth every nickel. The service is attentive and informative, without making . . . well me . . .feel like the Summer School Valedictorian.

Rarely does one find exquisite food served with wit and friendly admonitions regarding cutlery and elbows.

My beautiful table mate and I were dining at Les Nomades with an ever so lightly falling Currier and Ives snow outside and roaring genuine wood fire warming toes and hearts. Every detail of the food, the presentation, and even the fine china serving dishes are exquisite.

Into the main course, we are struck by revulsion as the sauce for the charred asparagus and mushroom ragout arrived; to be served on a distinctly cheap-looking metallic disk, that looked like the Baby Moon on Maury Lanigan's 1964 Pontiac Tempest . Not being a craven sophisticate nor a devotee of Nouveau French cuisine and the byzantine rites that accompany the pre-prandial delights, I mentioned the odd presentation to Brendan our waiter.

With a warm smile Brendan explained, “There’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise.”

A couple of fish are put in a tank. One says to the other, "How you drive this mother?"

Souriez et le monde entier sourit avec toi. Fronce les sourcils et vous êtes sur votre propre, Jack!


*

In the pantheon of local restaurants few fly, as the cliche goes, "under the radar" quite like Les Nomades. That should soon change for a couple of reasons.

Zagat named Les Nomades as its top-ranked Chicago restaurant; Alinea can't get the top spot all the time. Zagat calls Les Nomades “one of the last bastions of haute cuisine" while praising the “beautifully prepared" food of chef Chris Nugent.

The ranking may be a tad bittersweet for Les Nomades, as Nugent is leaving to open Goosefoot in Lincoln Square (2656 W. Lawrence Ave.). Named after the edible green that grows freely within Chicago's city limits, Grub Street Chicago's Michael Gebert reports Nugent has no plans on downsizing or making his take on French cuisine less expensive.

[Nugent] plans to offer an 8-course and 12-course tasting menu for an anticipated $90 and $140 in the 36-seat space. But the restaurant will be BYO, putting Goosefoot in the same fast-growing high end-accessible category as places such as Schwa and EL Ideas.
Nugent also told NBC 5's The Talk he plans on opening Goosefoot in November.

The Tribune Water Boy Has a Blinding Flash of "N.S.?"

Eric Zorn, the Garbage Grid Grinder and Water Boy for Team Rahm-a-Lama-Dang-Dong had an Epiphany after watching WTTW - Winnetka Talks To Wilmette.

Like, the movie goers nodding with conviction to the sight of Charles Foster Kane's Rosebud Sled incinerating to a cinder in Xanadu,CA, Eric Zorn realizes that . . . Public Unions cost money!

After months of mouthing the Mike "Michigan Fats" Moore Meme in Wisconsin and throaty preachifying about Union Solidarity, The Water Boy now knows what any blue collar tangible citizen has known for decades about Time and Half for Overtime and Double Time and a Half on Birthdays.

Solidarity Forever . . .well until now.

Talk about many happy returns! Earning $50 an hour if you usually earn $20, just because it is Your Special Day.

And who pays for these gifts? Riders, the same folks who are looking at fare increases or service cuts if the CTA doesn’t get its costs under control, in part by winning work-rule concessions from its unions.

Kelly, who was seated next to Claypool on the WTTW set during the contentious conversation, went on: “If a guy is working and is getting paid for eight hours and he works on his birthday, he gets an additional eight” hours, he said. “If you do the math, that’s not 21/2 times. There’s nobody out there who gets 21/2 times.”

Well, almost nobody. During a follow-up interview Tuesday, Kelly said that when his members are called to work an overtime day on their birthday or employment anniversary, they’re paid double time and a half, but he estimated that “it doesn’t even happen 100 times a year.”

Still. WTTW moderator Eddie Arruza asked the question on everyone’s mind: “Why do they get paid extra on their birthday anyway?”

Eddie Arruza and Forrest Claypool tag teaming a guest on WTTW? -Ouis!Naturalmente, Mes Amis!

Progressives always do a pile on a target-guest, like two geeks emerging from their latest locker-stuffing at the hands of jocks and cool kids and then jumping like WWF Heroes on poor little Tobie, the ADD lite weight, but Summer School Valedictorian. Nobody bullies like Progressives.

Well, I'll be dipped and rolled, says the Water Boy! EZ has been been doing any number of cheerleading routines for the Smart Garbage Grid and most recently Bump-Up The Water Rates and Get Your Own Bad Selves a Meter from the top of Rahm's Progressive Propaganda Pyramid.

Eric only reports and comments on what he is given. Today, he must react on what he saw and the strain to his very soul is hurtful to witness and, obviously, facts must be brought to his attention.

Public Unions, Eric, are paid for through taxes. Public Unions are as old as the 1960s when Lefties in New York got JFK's Okey-Dorky to hammer Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall ( the Democratic Ward Machine) is gone and Public Unions have all but murdered the Middle Class.

The Skilled and Industrial Trades Unions and their membership, not tweedy mopes with milky hands and earnest big-hearted, but two-faced activists, fought and bled for Labor Rules.

The Public Service ( teachers, City, State, Federal workers) aped the gains made by Real Labor. Eric does not twist Forrest (Rula Lenska) Claypool's nipples for bashing the Civil Rights of Workingmen. I listened to that tin-horn mope make promises to Union Men, trying to unhorse Joe Berrios two Springs ago, all over the south side - Forrest, Boss Toni and Easter Bunny Quinn. Eric the Water Boy, instead, gets all pissy about Union Bargaining Chief Kelly doing exactly what he was employed to do (stand up for his Local)and then mocks the rank and file's benefits bargained for with political hacks and their progressive propagandists in the first place.

As a Progressive, Water Boy, you demand to go east and west on Western Ave., but that is not, in truth, how traffic flows.

Instead of coming to a realization that Public Service Unions are not a really great idea, though they create a swell post-Shakman Patronage Army.

Eric's outrage over the obvious is charming, even whimsical. Harry Potter's magic wand works just fine on the big screen and on cable, but when your little digits tear open the packaging and you try it out - you must contend with your magical imagination.

Double Bubble and Double Time and a Half, little Muggle with the Water Pail, has been around for a very long time.

So, the next time Michigan Fats and Big Ed want to get a bongo circle in Madison, WI, or Zuccotti Park, ask the Two TeleTubby Trotskys - 'Who's paying?' It's easy let me do this slow -

Private Sector -labor good! - only so much money to bargain for.

Public Sector -labor(PACs) not so good! - Tax well's drier than All Things Considered.


The Skilled Trades and Industrial Unions who helped make the American Middle Class fought for decades to earn those rights through Collective Bargaining with Management.

Water Boy! The Game's Afoot and you're all tangled up . . .here, start with this knot . . .then over . . .over that's it . . .Over not under . . . under is opposite of over . . .that's right over, but upside down . . .we'll come back and see how you're doing.

Rahm's Garbage Grid is Urban Euthanasia

The Garbage Grid is Rahm and his cadre of Progressive Policy appointee geniuses
(left over from Mayor Mumbles of course)pulling the plug on the bothersome, ailing, long in the tooth Chicago Middle Class. The Aldermen of the City Council will go along with this procedure especially those who will benefit by the death of Chicago's ethnic and minority neighborhoods.

Good riddance via Bad Rubbish . . .collection - The Garbage Grid.

Progressive ( affluent, childless, secular, health fascist, and degree'd) hate everyone else; especially, church going breeders and their horrible offspring.

The Urban Center is the end-game. A Progressive Playground for young, and those who think that they are youthful - you know, the Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorn human train wrecks who continue to sport ear rings and '60s rigouts.

We, all the rest of us, are breathing their air and taking up too much of their time.

We gotta go. And go we shall!

The Garbage Grid is the hearty 'GTFOOH!!!! From the Twitters et alto the Helots. This from WBEZ - the Mouthpiece of Progressives -

Chicago aldermen are very protective of their trash pick-up powers. And so, a plan to take some of those powers away was greeted a bit coldly at a city council hearing on Monday evening.

Trash pickup is now done ward-by-ward, allowing individual aldermen control over the politically important service. That goes away under Rahm Emanuel's proposed budget, which his administration tried to sell to aldermen. A handful of them weren't buying it - at least not yet.

Progressives have climbed Garbage and swam Sewage into power here in Chicago and Cook County from the day that Alderman John 'Johnny D'Pow' Powers of the old 19th Ward appointed lesbian crank Jane Addams as a Garbage Commissioner. Like every Progressive from manly Jane to Deb Shore to Forrest Claypool, Progressives immediately turned on their benfactors and the Helots.

The tasty core of Chicago -universities, medical centers, museums, parks, restaurants, theatres, zoos, conservatories, gardens, clubs, galleries would be ever so much happier without the grumpy, lumpy and dumpy cops, firemen, tradesmen, worker bees and their wives and ugly children!

The Progressive will abort or euthanize any and every troublesome burden quicker than a Preckwinkle gobbles a pension! Euthanize the old boring middle class and abort their damn children who take up table space in fine dining establishments.

Rather than come to grips with urban problems, Progressives create open spaces and volumes of idiotic regulations. The Jim-dandy is the move to create the Urban Center. Carol Coletta is CEOs for Cities and she says, "Clearly, the next generation of Americans is looking for different kinds of lifestyles — walkable, art, culture, entertainment."

To that end, the middle class must exit, because all they care about are their homes, their lawns,their churches, their neighbors and their damn kids. They have some control over their Aldermen, because he/she will get an earful and then the door. Once you take services from the Alderman, why bother? Leave.

Trade thousands of Helots for a few hundred young, college educated, affluent singles, like Cleveland:

In Cleveland, which lost 17% of its population, downtown added 1,300 college-educated people ages 25 to 34, up 49%.

"It tells us we've been on the right track," says David Egner, president and CEO of Detroit's Hudson-Webber Foundation. Three anchor institutions —Wayne State University, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit Medical Center — recently launched "15 by 15," a campaign to bring 15,000 young, educated people to the downtown area by 2015.

Among the lures are cash incentives: a $25,000 forgivable loan to buy (need to stay at least five years) downtown or $3,500 on a two-year lease.

Garbage will be collected according to a grid. Talk to the Grid! Don't like it leave!

This is all about choice - like abortion and euthanasia - kill the middle class and let the Urban Center of a smaller, smarter Chicago please the Unpleasant - the Progressive.


http://www.wbez.org/story/no-more-trash-superpowers-chicago-aldermen-93430?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cprpolitics+%28WBEZ+-+Politics%29

Sister Veronica - A Heroic Nun Honored Heroes

My experience with Roman Catholic nuns began in 1958 at Little Flower Grammar School at 80th & Honore on the south side of Chicago. The subsequent eight years were punctuated, to say the least, by lessons in humility. To the say the least, it was a wholly adversarial meeting of hearts and minds. Nonetheless, I received, with the clouts, the odd ear twist, imprecations, maledictions and grudging absolutions, a knowledge of my faith, history, love of the written word and respect for numbers and science, akin to a member of any Papuan Cargo Cultist.

High School and college were a leap of faith and absence of feminine clericalism, having had my secondary and higher education hand-ed off to black cowled Augustinian priests and brothers and ultimately Jesuits. They were magnificent educators and men of Faith.

It was not until my teaching career, that I encountered Sisters of Notre Dame (CNDs) as colleagues. Sisters Theresa Galvan, Maryilyn Doucette, Madeline LaMarre, Helen Kavanaugh, Alice Larson were great teachers and fun girls. It was a revelation to me that nuns could be anything but, to use my Grandfather Hickey's Kerryman appellations Life's Unplucked Flowers, or Hairy Faced Old Galway Bitches. To the contrary, the CNDs were Cultured, Serious, Devout, Orthodox and could work a beer glass and crack a rack of eight ball. Helen Kavanaugh was a proficient slate-woman who pocketed more than a few coins and bills for the Votive Candles from faculty patsies, like your humble servant. We had a Cadillac of a pool table in the Bishop McNamara faculty lounge.

I often pillory nuns here, more shame to me. That is merely a reaction to Activist Nuns, who do anything but their ministries - beat drums, demand ordination as priests, help fund Leftists, work for Planned Parenthood and parse the murder to the unborn.

Here is a portrait from my friend in Philadelphia, lawyer/columnist Christine Flowers who presents the work of Sister Veronica.

Sister Veronica is one of the Might Macs - Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary - portrayed in the new film of the same name.

THEY SAY there are no atheists in foxholes, even though the nonbelievers have started clamoring for their own "chaplains" anyway (kind of a "Don't Pray, No Hell"). That old proverb sheds light on the way faith and combat are deeply intertwined, on the battlefield as well as in the minds of those who serve both God and country.
So, it's not really surprising that one of the most devoted champions of American heroes wore a uniform of another type: that of the Roman Catholic nun. Sister Veronica, of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, spent five decades whipping her young archdiocesan recruits (girls in plaid kilts, boys in blazers) into shape. When she retired, she moved on to the real thing: combat veterans.

Sister spent the last part of her life, almost two decades, compiling detailed and moving records of the people who received the Medal of Honor, the highest award that our country can bestow on its soldiers. Established in 1861 by Abraham Lincoln, the award was designed to honor exceptional bravery in combat, destined only for those men (and women) who, as Sister noted, "placed their lives in danger while serving in the armed forces, above and beyond the call of duty."

Some of the recipients are legendary, including Audie Murphy, Pappy Boyington and Douglas MacArthur. Others are less well-known even though their heroism was no less compelling. That's where Sister Veronica came in. It was her belief that every combatant who fought, bled, suffered and, in many cases, died for this country deserved to be remembered, and to have a face attached to his or her name. She spent countless hours, from 1970 to 1987, compiling records of these troops as the chief archivist for the Medal of Honor Grove at the Freedoms Foundation, in Valley Forge. She pored over books, articles, microfilms and everything else she could get her hands on to breathe life into the memory of these patriots. For her, as long as they were remembered, they were alive.

Some found it strange that a nun, a woman who had devoted herself to Christ, would choose a second vocation like this one, tied as it was to the horrors of the battlefield. She had an answer for them, one that conjures the image of pacifist Alvin York and Father Francis Duffy, the most decorated cleric in the history of the Army:

"I once spoke with a family that didn't want to accept a posthumous medal because of religious reasons. I told them that I, too, hate war, but I love these men who have made it possible for me to worship my God in a manner of my choosing."

Recently, thanks to the scholarship of Dr. Terry Barrett and the hard work of Vietnam hero Jim Furlong Leo Alumnus Mark Lee, Leo High School re-dedicated the gravesite of Medal of Honor hero Cpl. John Fardy. Leo High School annually observes honors for all who have sacrificed their youth and too often their lives and limbs in military service to America.

On November 4th, Leo High School, the 2nd Batallion, 24th Marines (Chicago's Own), the Leo Alumni and Windy City Veterans will honor all who serve with wreath laying at the Leo War Memorial. 2004 Leo Graduate Sgt. Jauwan Hall, U.S.M.C. will talk about his recent service in Iraq and Afghanistan. All are invited to join us in the courtyard of Leo High School at

Leo High School - 7901 S. Sangamon Street Chicago, Illinois 60620 -at 11AM on Friday November 4th.

I will remember Sister Veronica, as well as all of the wonderful women who serve Christ and Country.

I'll even put my Irish Alzheimer's on hold and remember my antagonists (1958-1966) with charity and love.



http://avangelista.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/catholic-sisters-and-the-american-civil-war/
http://avangelista.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/catholic-sisters-and-the-american-civil-war/

Nurse, Nurse ! We Got ObamaCare Triage Goin' On at Occupy Chicago! Send - Gaddafi's Ukie Nurse- STAT! She Could Use the Work!

It is always a giggle to experience the latest paint-job on a Tribune 'on-the-street' report. This one is a howler.

The group, the nation's largest union of registered nurses, is calling on its membership in Chicago to picket City Hall this morning to demand that misdemeanor trespassing charges against the nurses and all of the protesters be dropped . . .

The two nurses arrested were among a larger group marching with Occupy Chicago protesters and later set up a tent to provide first aid.

"It was the wrong move," RoseAnn DeMoro, the group's executive director, said Sunday. "We were there to make sure if the occupiers get harmed, they have first aid."

DeMoro said the nurses' arrest will only serve to strengthen her organization's commitment to the Occupy movement.

"The nurses are angry, and it's made us double our resolve," she said.

DeMoro said nurse volunteers have set up tents at Occupy protests in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York without any arrests.

Occupy Chicago protesters, angered by what they characterized as harsh treatment by police, voted late Sunday to join the nurses' demonstration.

By 8:30 p.m. Sunday, police said almost all of the 130 people arrested the night before had been released on bail, but some remained in custody.

Gee, Roseann DeMoro sounds like she might stop by Vito & Nick's for a couple of pitchers of Miller and an 18" Kitchen Sink thin crust after a double in the ER at Christ Advocate in Oak Lawn, IL. Just a nurse.

Naw, she is way-powerful. She runs the Nurse/SEIU Coalition PAC out of California and she personally brought down - now get this - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -

From Huffington Post naturalmente!

Allons! Courage et confiance...Ah! vivre deux! Sorry, a bunch of neighborhood guys were loading up coolers of ice at Kean to tailgate before for Lyric Opera's performance of Tales of Hoffman tonight! The guys are stoked! Back to the issue . . .Roseann DeMoro.

DeMoro is executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), which has gained international acclaim most recently for igniting the campaign that toppled one of the world’s most famous celebrity politicians, Arnold Schwarzenegger, dropping his public approval from 70% to 35% in the polls and administering to him a severe pummeling in a special election last year.

The poor kid stringing the stuff for Tribune does not even mention that item. You see, Occupy Everything is a dodge, Clyde. No really. Roseanne DeMoro like Olympia, the automaton and first love of Hoffman in Offenbach's Prelude, is a stone-power chucker. She is going to snit Rahm and he will order the cops to get tough on the nurses.

This OWS flapdoodle is about as grassroots as the whole Obama 2012 Campaign. It's fully orchestrated, Son. It's a probe. This is the dress rehearsal for the NATO Convention coming to our fair city next Spring - The Axelrod Spring! Protests and the Hope and Change that some poor cop will look cross-eyed at some Knit-hat doofus with a bongo.

It's a fix, Daddy. Like Barney Frank, who will only get in the jackpot if he is found with a dead boy or a live girl in his sleeping bag.

So far, the cops have acted like the wait staff at Les Nomades - attentive, courteous and knowlegeable without being excessivement Officieux.

Rose Demoro is a hack. Hell, she writes for Arianna Huffington. Felons and D List Hollywood goofs are her columnists.

I suggest that the poor little recent Medill graduate study up on the principals in a news story. Do the old gum-shoe reporter stuff - find out who exactly is Wanda Skutnik.

To the OWS Movement - Kids, get some celebrity street cred like in NYC - some star power.

Moamar Gaddifi's nurse - that busty Ukrainian "Just up the Dose" Gal has been out of work since she took it on the heel and toe out of Tripoli, last April. Moamar won't mind . . .anything.

I was just 21 when I went to work for Muammar Gaddafi. Like the other young women he hired as nurses, I had grown up in Ukraine. I didn’t speak a word of Arabic, didn’t even know the difference between Lebanon and Libya. But “Papik,” as we nicknamed him—it means “little father” in Russian—was always more than generous to us. I had everything I could dream of: a furnished two-bedroom apartment, a driver who appeared whenever I called. But my apartment was bugged, and my personal life was watched closely.

Imagine just how quickly you will get a police response when Oksana Balinskaya stands out among the bongo and bucket circle jerks.

Every Shrek-look-alike in Kevlar between Hegwisch and Howard Ave. will be stepping up to slap the bracelets on Nurse Oksana Balinskaya. Well maybe not every . . .CPD is not all Breeders . . .we celebrate Diversity.

For those Intéresse les hommes, perhaps Roseann Demoro could come up with a stunner from the City by the Bay.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/04/10/my-years-as-gaddafi-s-nurse.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rose-ann-demoro

Occupy Hyde Park - Capitalists and Bankers to Occupy the Midway

At today's Leo High School Open House for 8th Graders, I heard that Arbitragers, Fannie and Freddie Mae Investors, U.S. House & Senate Democrats and Gordon Gecko have organized a hostile take over of Midway Plaisance, Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap Beer Garden, Chicago Theological Union and the Rockefeller Chapel this afternoon.

Not to be outdone by the wonderful and spontaneous Occupy Everything folks, Occupy Hyde Park is planned to spontaneously duplicate at Berkley, Columbia, Oberlin and William and Mary and Haight Ashbury district in San Francisco - these will be catered affairs and business casual discouraged.

Like the Commie Methuselah, Pete Seeger's concert of hootenanny ditties for the kids, Occupy Hyde Park will feature Bob Kubam and the In-men and Bill Deal and Rondell's












Bankers - let working masses tremble!!!!! . . . Or Shake those Money Makers!

There's Waldo - Elusive Waldo Discovered at The Horse with OWS Chicago - Cuffed and Conveyed

Waldo sans Toque and horn-rims, following his arrest.


I can not begin to tell you the number of hours I spent with my children's books, puzzles, Color Forms Paste Ups and even Video's in my vain attempt to not only identify but somehow find Waldo.

Thanks to the good humored professionalism of Chicago Police Department officers, the lanky, horn rimmed glasses and toque wearing fugitive was found and apprehended along with the young people who occupied their childhood's in the search for Waldo and now Occupying Everything, but something of lasting importance.

God Bless Chicago Police Officers.

Would that those jello-spined civilians handing down the orders to Police Officers would completely ignore and leave these pampered and needy children to the elements -environmental and social.

Our Erasable Chicago History - Remember Mopetown?

Mopetown Archer west of Ashland today.

I remember Mopetown, it was a tiny neighborhood squeezed between Bridgeport and McKinley Park along Archer Ave. between Ashland and Hoyne and 31st and 33rd Streets.

The huge and largely accurate Encyclopedia of Chicago has no entry for Mopetown. If you Google search Mopetown, Chicago you have the devil's own time finding anything and you get coaxed into surrendering for MOBTOWN.

Mopetown was there. There was a saloon called McGloin's at Archer and Ashland that was home to Mopetown neighbors. I would take the Archer bus from Loyola's Lewis Towers Campus and or my various jobs in the Loop and transfer at Ashland for the bus south to 75th Street. I'd duck into McGloin's when the weather was really bad. It was there that I'd first learned of Mopetown - where diversity first manifested itself. Every ethnic and racial face and religious creed lived in Mopetown.



The name, I was told came from a German family name that Irish, Bohemian, Lithuanian, Mexican, and Polish folks somehow translated to Mope. Nothing to do with the character of Mope - one prone to moping, or acting the mope. Mopes weren't dragged up in Mopetown. They worked at the Yards, Stock & Lumber, or the barrel works, or Darling Rendering at 35th & Ashland, or Wrigley's Gum at the same location.

The smell of offal, mint, and spearmint mingled in Mopetown.

History is what happened, what was, and what we allow ourselves to remember.

The late Anne Keegan was a Tribune columnist who was the goods, as the old timers would say.

She saved history and Mopetown in 1987, when she wrote about the last families still living in the shadows of the Stevenson Expressway.

The Gerrings, the Atkinses, the Starrs and the Polyaks lived there.

The Camps, the Higginses, the Kuberas and the Van Tillbergs lived there too, just north of Archer Avenue, near the railroad tracks. It was a secluded neighborhood of Chicago that outsiders couldn`t find or didn`t dare go into unless they knew somebody. The Scolios, the Forrers, the Walshes, the Verdons and their slew of kids all were once part of that tiny section of town where families were big, cottages were small, times were tough, men hard-working, women long-suffering and every third or fourth house was a ``blind pig.``

The Stevenson Expressway stands where these families once lived--their cottages gone, their trees cut down, their yards cemented over, their inhabitants moved away, their neighborhood erased forever from the map.

It is one of the Chicago neighborhoods that, over the last three decades, has disappeared as quietly as Brigadoon faded into the evening mist.

Only Russell Wilkens and his wife, Mary, remain. Living in a house along the eastbound Ashland Avenue exit where trucks rumble and cars speed by, they are the last family in Mopetown.

Mopetown. Find an old-timer and he`ll tell you.

Mopetown--when the houses were still standing and the families were living there, with all the kids racing around and everybody`s dogs sleeping on the unpaved streets--was tucked between the Bridgeport and McKinley Park neighborhoods, from Ashland to Hoyne Avenues, from 31st Place to 33d Street.

``Mopetown. No one ever really knew how it got to be called Mopetown,``

Click my post title for Anne Keegan's full history lesson.

History today is more about forgetting in order to advance an agenda.

People forget that racism did not exist at the turn of century. Negroes coming to Chicago for a better life were called Strikebreakers. Jane Addams got to Mike Donnelly of Amalgamated Meatcutters Union and the 1904 Stockyard Strike was called off, after a unanimous vote was taken to continue the strike. The union was broken and more poor blacks were shipped to Chicago to compete for jobs with the Canaryville Potato Eaters, the Bridgeport Loogans, Polacks, Bohunks, Kikes, Dagoes and Krauts.

Racism is a neologism coined in 1907, four (4) years after the Chicago Stockyard Strike and did not come into common usage until the 1930's a decade and change after the Chicago Race Riots of 1919.

The Oxford English Dictionary defined racialism as "belief in the superiority of a particular race" and gives a 1907 quote as the first recorded use. The shortened term racism did not appear in the English language until the 1930s. It was first defined by the OED as "[t]he theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race", which gives 1936 as the first recorded use. Additionally, the OED records racism as a synonym of racialism: "belief in the superiority of a particular race". By the end of World War II, racism had acquired the same supremacist connotations former associated with racialism: racism now implied racial discrimination, racial supremacism and a harmful intent. (The term "race hatred" had also been used by sociologist Frederick Hertz in the late 1920s.)

While racism did not exist when Mopetown was born and lived most of its life, there sure were brawls between whites and blacks in Chicago. Read Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54 by Rick Halpern or re-read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

We can lay racism over anything we wish and reduce history to an agenda. That is not the best thing to do, in my opinion. Nothing is easy. History ain't nothing.

Mopetown was there.

Punching Away Despair - Gordon Marino and Dicky Eklund Spar with Leo Men

Gordon Marino instructing at St. Olaf's.
Dicky Ecklund and Gordon Marino worked the boxing paddles for two Leo Boxers on Friday












I have the greatest job on this our planet. I take credit for other people's generosity, as Director Development for Leo High School; manage to teach with out the burden of class sizes, lesson plans, or holding myself accountable for student progress, mingle with tough, smart, willful, earnest and happy souled young men, write proposals and draft strategies for improving the school's financial health and institutional growth and get paid every two weeks.

Those are only the meat and spuds of the job. Here's the gravy - I work with a journalism legend and Leo Alumnus Dan McGrath, President of Leo High School. Dan McGrath is a prose practitioner of the purest ore; longtime sports writer in the tradition of Ring Lardner, Arch Ward and Dave Condon; an editor of unparalleled discernment and Catholic gentleman to the backbone.

Likewise, Leo Alumnus Mike Joyce, an attorney, former pro boxer, and Leo Board Member is my friend. Mike Joyce and Dan McGrath are magnets. They attract people to their hearts, their minds and their hands. Like most Leo Alumni, these gentlemen are so because they treat every human being as the most important person on the planet. Dan McGrath knows every student in the school and has a very powerful grip on each young man's progress. Dan McGrath leads from the front, because he gets behind each of the young men in his charge.

Mike Joyce, likewise, is more than hands on with his boxers. Mike Joyce once said, "these kids need people who really paying attention to them, even if that means chewing their asses." Mike knows all about that. He related a story to me and two visitors to Leo on Friday.

Mike told us, "One of my first amateur bouts nearly ended my love of boxing. I was lured into sparring with a guy who had an upcoming fight, by these two jerk managers. I could barely, hold my hands up in the ring, but thought because I was a street fighter that I was a boxer. I knew nothing. I was torn to pieces. I was bleeding and bruised and had to take the bus from Fuller Park back home. One of the Murphy Brothers watched what happened to me, talked to me and took me under their care. I was not just someone to be used by some louse who was making his boy look good - a punching bag. That is what I try to do with our kids. From the start, all they learn is the basics - how to stand, how to guard themselves, how to jab, how to hook . . .months before they put on headgear. Most of all they get in top shape and know that someone has their back."

The two visitors were Dicky Ecklund* and Gordon Marino**. Dicky Ecklund is the brother of Irish Mickey Ward and was played by Christian Bale in the recent Oscar winning film The Fighter. Gordon Marino is the former Yale and Virginia Military Institute (VMI) boxing coach, author of “Kierkegaard in the Present Age,” “Ethics: The Essential Writings,” co editor of “The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard,” writer for New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post and is director of the Hong/Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn.

On Friday, Leo High School was ginning up spirit with Notre Dame great and Leo Alumnus Jay Standring in the the iconic third floor gym in anticipation to that night's football game with our brothers the Crusaders of Brother Rice.

Mike, Dan and I joined boxer-trainer Dicky Ecklund and Gordon Marino on the second floor's boxing gym, while Jay Standring schooled the Lions on Leo Traditions. Also joining us were Leo students Marlon Claybrooks and Eddie Cooper.

Both Ecklund and Marino put on the Paddles and hand sparred with our guys and both boxers impressed the visiting dignitaries. Eddie Cooper displayed the best poise, balance and preparation. Though with the mournful sloth of his sport slowing him, Football player Marlon has what Dicky Ecklund called " Heavy Hands." The kid hits very hard.

Our kids were given a tutorial that would cost another boxing student a lung. Dicky Ecklund admonished the 'heavy-handed' Marlon about keeping his eyes on his opponent's gloves and hips and not turning his head in a follow-through.

After the lessons, we went to the gym with Leo student body. Our three visitors needed a ride to the Sheraton on Illinois and I offered to drive. When we were leaving the gym we were chased by Darius Gaddy, who shouted to Dicky Ecklund -"Hey, was that you who jumped out of all those windows in the movie?" Ecklund affirmed.

I had read Gordon Marino in the past - he is a warrior poet philosopher. While Dicky Ecklund has the contemporary street cred, Professor Marino pulls what we do at Leo into philosophy - the discipline of leading a good life.

Ecklund and Marino were in town to celebrate Boxing legend Angelo Dundee's nine decades at the Italian American Hall of Fame on Taylor Street that night, while Leo Lions fought for inches, feet and yards at Brother Rice ( Br. Rice 45; Leo 40). I had the privilege of spending a few hours with these fine teachers.

It was on the Dan Ryan that Mike Joyce told the story of how a boxing manager had abused him, how another manager had sensed his pain and picked up his desire to box, and his own doctrine for the ring.

Gordon Marino offered some sensitive insights on Despair and the inner city kids that we serve. I could not capture his articulate words with any accuracy nor duplicate them with any real clarity. Here is what Gordon Marino wrote in the New York Times about the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, and modern life's muddled sense of what it truly is -

The spirit is one thing, the psyche another: The blues one thing, despair another.

How might Kierkegaard have parsed the distinction for the Doubting Thomas who will only believe what he can glean on an M.R.I.? Perhaps he would describe it this way.

Each of us is subject to the weather of our own moods. Clearly, Kierkegaard thought that the darkling sky of his inner life was very much due to his father’s morbidity. But the issue of spiritual health looms up with regard to the way that we relate to our emotional lives. Again, for Kierkegaard, despair is not a feeling, but an attitude, a posture towards ourselves. The man who did not become Caesar, the applicant refused by medical school, all experience profound disappointment. But the spiritual travails only begin when that chagrin consumes the awareness that we are something more than our emotions and projects. Does the depressive identify himself completely with his melancholy? Has the never ending blizzard of inexplicable sad thoughts caused him to give up on himself, and to see his suffering as a kind of fever without significance?

If so, Kierkegaard would bid him to consider a spiritual consultation on his despair, to go along with his trip to the mental health clinic.

Despair, it seems to me, comes from a belief that one is all alone. For far too many people, that just might be the case.

Our kids might not become the next Ali, Fraser, or Sugar Ray, but they will know their stance, how to guard and how to hit back. A defeat is not necessarily a failure. A win is not necessarily a triumph. Balance, Poise and Preparation is everything. More importantly, our kids will know many people are in their corner,

This was only a few hours of my life on Friday, at the greatest job on the planet.




*

Dicky Eklund is the man portrayed by actor Christian Bale in the upcoming movie “ The Fighter “. He is a former 3 time golden Gloves champion with over 190 victories as an amateur. He is best known as a professional boxer for having faced Sugar Ray Leonard in a bout televised on HBO in 1978.

Dicky’s talent as a trainer is also legendary, having trained his brother, Irish Micky Ward, for dozens of dramatic ring victories, including two that were voted fight of the year by Ring Magazine. One of those victories, over the great Arturo Gatti, is considered by most boxing insiders to be the “ Fight of the Century “

As a trainer, Dicky is known for his tremendous insight into the boxing game, his ability to motivate fighters and his challenging workout regimens. These are traits that helped his brother Micky push through grueling opponents while on the road to winning a world championship title.

Dicky is now a full time trainer, working with competitive boxers and MMA fighters. Dicky also has training options for people who are simply looking to get in shape, learn boxing basics or even a one time workout challenge.

http://dickeklund.com/bio/

**

A former boxer, Gordon Marino
was head boxing coach
at Virginia Military Institute
and now runs a boxing program
in Northfield, Minn.,
where he teaches philosophy
at St. Olaf College.
He also writes about boxing
for the Wall Street Journal.

http://www.ringsideboxingshow.com/GordonMarinoBLOGDundee.html

Tales of the South Side: Bubs Murtaugh Goes to Mission

Bubs Murtaugh had issues, as do we all, I know. Murtaugh's issues were legion. Bubs came from what was known back in the day as Scottsdale Area, after the Shopping Center with the Goldblatt's at 79th between Pulaski and Cicero.

As my legion of reader will recall, Bubs Murtaugh lived near Durkin Park in St. Bede the Venerable Parish, played football for Tom Cavanagh at St. Laurence High School in Burbank, got a full ride for football to St. Procopius College ( now Illinois Benedictine University) in Lisle, IL, guzzled Schlitz Tall Boys and reefer-ed his way out of that, got a job with Streets and San and lived with his Mom and Dad. N.B. - click my post title for more earnest and poignant yarns of this sort.

Bubs Mutaugh survived his parents and a savage lust affair with a babe - a busty graduate of Emeryk Zajack's Bartender Academy on Archer in Garfield Ridge and who worked intermittently at the Swap-a-Rama in Alsip. He had title to raised ranch of his parents in St. Bede's and kept up with the growing property taxes and the devaluation of the home and property. He was laid off his work on the trucks by the City and pensioned up. He had nothing but time and some cash to kill.

Taxes were not anywhere near the Centurion's in Murtaugh's Problematic Legion. His boozing and frequent brawls earned him a universal invitation to take his business to establishments east of Cicero, and then Pulaski, and nowhere between 111th & 63rd Streets. Bubs Murtaugh's welcome was as worn as the foreskin on an uncircumcised dry-humper locked in a porn shop. He was losing his teeth due to poor dental hygiene and pops in the choppers and was now at age 59 a poster child for dental implants.

When he and his paramour parted company for keeps, Bubs took stock. He still liked his cocktails, but he wanted a change in his life, but, like St. Augustine, not quite yet.

Bubs Murtaugh went on a toot in Blue Island, Il that became the stuff of legend. Bubs boozed , befriended, borrowed from, betrayed, beat up, and was beat down, by nearly every carbon footprint on New Western Ave. and Old Western Ave. between 119th Street to the north to across the tracks on Western to the trailer park on the other side of Our Lady of Sorrows.

When not closing or awaiting the opening of a joint, Bubs Murtaugh caught a few dreamless winks in bars at closing time, or on the CTA. It was an Odyssey fueled and sailed upon the amber waters provided by the good folks of the Miller Brewing Company.

One night,incidit in scyllam cupiens vitare charybdim*, or between Vincennces and Vermont Street, the sea-monsters and whirlpool of pilsner got the best of the booze blind Bubs. His sense of awareness returned in the lock up of the Blue Island police station at 13031 Greenwood Avenue. He was taken to Markham Courthouse and charged with robbery.

Bubs was in a genuine jackpot. Blacked out he had robbed a young couple of $ 45 and a take-out meal from Restaurante Tenochtitlan (Desayuno Tenochtitlan... $9.50: Steak topped with 2 eggs and a Choice of Salsa(red,green or chipotle),Served with Rice,de la Olla Beans,One Grilled Jalapeno Pepper and Tortillas)and was transported to Cook County Jail.

His cousin from his Mom's side received the plaintive phone-coded message and bonded Bubs out three days later. His court date was thirty-days in his immediate future.

The man dried out. He paced his basement, watched his Boxed Set DVD Collector's edition of the great Matt Helm Series because the cable was shut off, slept fitfully and prayed. On floor of his living room under the front door's mail slot were piles of bills, ComEd and People's Gas red cards notifying him of impending utilities terminations and gorgeously painted presented cardboard notice of a mission given by a Capuchin who had the power of healing. Father Payton Hester ,O.F.M. Cap., at St. Bede's. Bubs could stand a miracle. Bubs stepped in and was prepared to step-up!

Th young and muscular Capuchin said, "Anyone with 'special needs" who wants to be prayed over, please come forward to the front by the altar."

With that, Bubs got in line, and when it was his turn, the smiling scion of Fra Matteo Bassi 1495-1552 - founder of the Capuchins wlecomed Bubs. The smiling Preacher asked, "My son, what do you want me to pray to Our Lord and the Virgin Mary about for you?"

Bubs replied, "Father, I need you to pray for help with my hearing."

The brown cowled friar put one finger of one hand in Bubs's ear, placed his other hand on top of Murtaugh's head, and then prayed and prayed and prayed. He prayed a "blue streak" for Bubs Murtaugh, and the packed pews of St. Bede's joined in with great enthusiasm.

After a few minutes of enchanting and uplifting quiet, Father Payton Hester, OFM, Cap. removed his hands, stood back and loudly and angelically asked, " Bub's Murtaugh, how is your hearing now?"

Bubs answered, " I don't know. It ain't 'til next Thursday."

Ita fit verum et fertur

Hat tip to Max Weismann of the Center for Great Ideas

*Scylla and Charybdis
Ulysses had been warned by Circe of the two monsters Scylla and Charybdis. Also can be meant as 'between a rock and hard-ass.'

ObamaCare/Planned Parenthood as Cute as a Chinese Baby . . . a Dead Chinese Baby.

“The Obama administration’s mandate that all health plans must provide to women, with no charge, all government-approved contraceptives, has already reignited debate on the federal role in health care,” Fleishman writes. “Ah, how I remember “Every child a wanted child,” our motto at Planned Parenthood. And I do welcome this legislation.

Fleishman goes on to condemn the world’s population growth and says the Obama mandate and the one-child policy is needed to stem that.

“Unless we act (this legislation, along with China’s “one child” policy, is a start), the world is doomed to strangle among coils of pitiless exponential growth,” he concludes.

Now, that is what being an a$$hole is all about!



The first comment on the Chicago Tribune's paste-up of the Reuters story is from a genuine Progressive who equates the cold disdain for a toddler crushed by not one but two drivers and ignored by 18 adults to Herman Cain's comments OWS protesters.

Not so, Slim Wit! The death of this baby following a week of struggle to live is a tribute to Planned Parenthood, Progressives and Planned Parenthood's 1st President of the United States.



Give that a good viewing and then try to write a check to Planned Parenthood. Worse, Senator Dick Durbin and other elected lackeys take coin from Planned Parenthood spout their bull$shit and legislate for them.

In Ireland, they call people like Durbin Cute 'Hoors*. Women are never called Hoors (Whores) in Ireland, only men; especially political hacks.

One Child -One Wanted child is the very Novocaine to America's soul.

The murder of children, after conception or in a nursing home eighty years later, is murder. ObamaCare is all about control. Nothing controls like termination.

The same clowns who weep over the death of a lamprey eel, pee-in-their-pants with joy over abortion.

What is appalling is Planned Parenthood and anyone connected with those murdering dowagers, from aldermanic office, to the White House.

Cute Hoors . . .as cute as a Chinese baby.

*Cute Hoor – Someone who tricks other people without being discovered. Clever or sneaky.

Now, attention, Ye Cute Hoors, Ye.




http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/10/ex-planned-parenthood-director-praises-chinas-one-child-policy/

http://saynsumthn.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/does-planned-parenthood-approve-of-chinas-brutality-forced-sterilization-policies/

http://www.missionariestopreborn.com/planned_parent.html