Leo High School Plans Television Production Studio ( WCHI NEWS)

Leo High School begins its 90th year of serving Chicago with a new opportunity - a television production studio.

A donor has provided a studio ( WCHI NEWS) and all of the equipment to begin giving Leo students the chance to learn television production skills in front of and behind the cameras.

This digital television production studio will eventually be directed and operated by Leo students and advisors from the school and colleges like Columbia College, as well as media professionals from Chicago.

President Dan McGrath and the donor conducted a series of meetings this summer to discuss feasibilty and implementaion of the gift.

 Chicago Actress Kara Zediker with Bill Figel (Leo '73 and President Dan McGrath ( Leo '68)

On August 18th McGrath's Committee met in the Leo Board to set immediate goals. Leo Alumnus, retired Sun Times Sports writer and PR executive William Figel*, Chicago based actress and Columbia College Alumna Kara Zediker **and Editor John Weeks of WCHI News offered counsel.  This committee agreed after two hours that the month of September provided our students with three big school events for student reports.

It was determined to immediately get equipment into the hands of the students and begin shooting footage with the goal of having enough skills to cover three events in September

• Chicago Sports Team visit ( as yet must be kept secret)  at Leo September 15th
• Entrepreneur and scion of the Jackie Robinson legacy, David Robinson’s Visit September 16th
• West Point Cadet and Leo Boxing Event September 19th

Students will begin shadowing WCHI's John Weeks and other tech savvy pros in the editing. sound mixing and animation in production.

 Leo High School  will begin the process of resourcing student talent from Columbia College, who will supervise students along with a moderator from Leo High School, as interns gaining academic credit for hours served. Interns will help Mr. Weeks in training cameramen, sound and animation production, lighting gaffers and script production and editing.

With footage and some practice in editing our goal will be to have a basic quality product to show prospective parents, use in recruitment, put up on You Tube, and attach to grant requests.
 Leo VP, football coach and father figure Mike Holmes showed the Media Resource Center to John Weeks being constructed in the old Leo library at the moment.

This is an opportunity that comes at no better time in the proud history of Leo High School. .

* Mr. Figel teaches Leo's Journalism Course - pro bono.

** Ms. Zediker appeared recently on NBC's Chicago PD and may soon grace the small screen on Chicago Med. 

How Leftists Looted a Charity - Chuck Feeney's Money Went to Build Goverment Policy and Not Help People

MacArthur will narrow its focus to address global climate change and reform the U.S. criminal justice system - Julie Stasch,President of the MacArthur Foundation

“I can only surmise that you underestimate, or perhaps wish not to engage with, my misgivings about, and objections to, Atlantic’s current grant making focus, the structure of the board and certain of its practices, and a number of operational aspects, including ever-increasing staff numbers and elevated overhead costs.” Feeney reiterated that he was less exercised about “social justice” as a philanthropic theme than he was about whether it was “a worthy use of our resources - from Chuck Feeny Fights Back

Big Charities ( Ford, Hearst, Polk Brothers, Joyce, MacArthur, Annenberg & etc.) 

Chuck Feeney* is one of my personal heroes.  He is working class, Irish Catholic from Elizabeth, NJ who through his own genius amassed a fortune and decided to help people.  Mr. Feeney came from the same background as me, but in much tougher times.  Feeney grew up in Depression/WWII New Jersey and witnessed how Irish immigrants and Irish Americans squeezed out a living and managed to share with their less fortunate neighbors.

When Feeney made billions of dollars with his Duty Free Airport shops, he decided to give away most of what he had earned.  He formed Atlantic Philanthropies and 501(c) 3 organization dedicated to making better world.  He formed a board, as did John MacArthur here in Chicago, and trusted people to make good use of his money.  In 1981, Chicago based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation purged its board of any and all member with "conservative" inclinations, like former Secretary of the Treasury William Simon. Atlantic Philanthropies did likewise.

However, Chuck Feeney fought back.  Here is a detailed story of how Marxist and Left Leaning activists abuse philanthropy. Click Chuck Feeney's name in the first paragraph to read the full story.

This is very long, very clearly written piece.  I will merely cut and paste the conclusion for you here below, but do read the study in its entirety - Public Policy is not Philanthropy.  The Public Policy Pirates and people who hate how Chuck Feeney made his fortune work with political leeches and agenda driven activists to make this world, more hungry, less free and very dangerous.

Conclusion
Chuck Feeney initially sought anonymity as he gave away his fortune, but he is now very much a public figure. In that anonymous January 2010 letter, Feeney’s friends said they hoped he himself would make public the story of how AP’s board grew deaf to the wishes of its founder—as paraphrased by O’Clery, “so that those who might follow [Feeney] could benefit from his mistakes as well as his successes.” That would include the matter of how hard Feeney had to fight to preserve his vision for his own foundation versus that of certain board members.
Feeney’s story contains an obvious lesson about protecting donor intent, one that this writer imagines is being very carefully, if quietly, studied by individuals and families who have already endowed, or are considering endowing, some of their wealth to foundations.
On that score, there’s a telling moment in the book where Feeney, Bill Gates, and future AP CEO Christopher Oeschli are sitting together in January 2011. Oeschli asks Gates about his experience with “outside advisors” in running a foundation. “We discovered they bring an agenda and ego of their own,” Gates says.
As Feeney’s own story shows, that agenda and ego can clash directly with a donor’s stated, expressed intent. But a donor does not have to simply cave in when that intent comes under attack. The donor doesn’t have to accept the attacks, or be intimidated by self-important “advisors” on a foundation board with august pedigrees or overfed egos.
If there’s a lesson in Feeney’s experience, it might be (paraphrasing Esther Forbes’ novel Johnny Tremain) that “a donor can stand up.”
Neil Maghami’s most recent piece for CRC was “Tom Steyer, the New Paladin of the Left” (Foundation Watch, August 2014).

FW to friends.

*Charles Francis "Chuck" Feeney is an Irish-American businessman and philanthropist and the founder of The Atlantic Philanthropies, one of the largest private foundations in the world

Collecting Water Using Only a Beachball, or Dialog With a Progressive

Progressives constantly call people to dialog with them.  Most human beings converse, share ideas, do the old verbal gambit.  There is give and take. The Progressive opens with previously drawn conclusion

• Police torture black people 24/7 and use Homan Square as their Racist Gitmo
• Marriage is only about emotion
• President Obama errs not
• Bicycles and their riders are above the law
• Blackhawks Patrick Kane raped a girl, because it was in the news and he is a sports figure and right-winger . . .on the ice

Disagree and get dismissed. I was told by a very talented and well educated young man with sterling career as a journalist and with whom I have spent some very happy moments, to stay off of his Facebook and other means of communication, because I said that it seemed like the accused but not charged hockey player was being set up for extortion according to eye-witnesses.  That is disappointing.   An educated man not just uninterested in one side of story, but censorious

That is the current spiritus mundi and that person's problem. Emotions are not facts and pre-drawn conclusions not truth.  Truth has always  a moveable feast for Progressives from the day John Dewey shared his treacle become gospel. 

You see, nowadays. there is only group thought ( read Daily Kos or other Progressive site commentaries) and no grey area, no doubts and above all there certainly is no God. Progressives also reject 'shared truths' -apriori. Shared truths are what bring people together.  Without shared truths, politics and government can provide millions of dollars to people who teach, advocate and legislate for the final solution to shared truths.That is why my Eurpean blood kin the  Irish people, who in reality are most welcoming generous and loyal people, rail against the Jew Media and Israel, support Hezbollah, smuggle weapons into Gaza along with Palestinian relief and agree that Pre-Obama America must be brought low. It is a head-scratcher, reading the Kerryman, or the Irish Examiner to find that school children in my grandmother's hometown, Cahirciveen were trained by a teacher to be Jew baiters at Christmas time in 2013.

Israeli journalist, Sarah Honig, was in Ireland to celebrate the mutual love for freedom between the Israelis and the Irish an and learned that the worm had definitely turned. Trocaire a thickly Marxist organization is much like the hijacked former charities here in Chicago ( MacArthur Center for Justice & etc.) dedicated to dividing people and damn the cost.  I read for a living and tend to remember what I read.  More importantly, many former 501(c) 3 charities were boarded and seized by Marxist buccaneers in the late 1980's and 90's and redirected the money of MacArthurs, Annenbergs and others from charitable purposes to identify and agenda political cooperatives. The news media paints these Marxist in inoffensive pink and purple and yellow pastels and the dodge works.  Most people believe the philanthropic dodge and dismiss any thought of chicanery.  Most people are so much nicer than I happen to be, "  The Easter Bunny in front of the Walgreens is really an axe-murderer, but he looks so cute!  Let's take the kids to play with him."

Trocaire and the local school abused kids. 

Santa hat wearing school kids were raising money to be given to Trocaire to plant olive trees for the Palestinians in the town of Daniel O'Connell - The Liberator, explained that Palestinians were suffering at the hands of the evil Jews.  Their teacher had shared his OxBridge BBC Talking Points with these children, which happen to be reinforced by RTE ( Irish Radio and Television) and too many in the Irish Government especially President Michael Higgins, a fierce enemy of Pre-Obama America and Israel.  

Presenting ideas to Progressive, much less gaining any hearing whatsoever, is like collecting water with a beachball.  

Leo High School Begins Its 90th Year of Service to Chicago

Leo High School will be 90 years old on September 9, 2016.  The school opened on that day in 1926.  !926 was the year that

• Chicago's Blackhawks took to the ice for the first time
• Vitners Foods began making their snack products
• Rainbow Cone scooped pistachio, chocolate and orange sherbert over vanilla icecream

We serve this city and produce great products.

Here are only a very few of the productive people who light the way for Leo Men to come.

General Thomas P. Gerrity ( Leo 1930) - father of Air Force Missiles and Logistics

Thomas A. Murphy ( Leo 1934) CEO of General Motors during its Golden Age

Dr. James B. Hartney ( Leo 1939) Pathologist and Hero of Our Lady of Angels Fire

Frank Considine (Leo 1939) - CEO of National Can and the man who modernized Egypt's Economy for Anwar Sadat

John P. Fardy (Leo 1940) - Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient

Dr. Stafford Hood ( Leo 1970) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Andre Brown (class of 2000), NBA forward (2006–present).

Thomas R. Fitzgerald (class of 1959), retired chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court

Jason Jefferson (class of 1998), NFL defensive lineman (2005-08).

Jim O'Toole (class of 1955), Major League Baseball pitcher, starter for National League in 1963 All-Star Game

Chris Watson (class of 1995), NFL defensive back (1999–2003).

Multipy these great men by twenty five and you will have an accurate understanding of why Leo High School means so much to this city.

From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world but only these two. The race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere, they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense no group is of pure race. Viktor Frankl, author, physcian and Holocaust Survivor

Why Anyone Would Side With Donald Trump Is Beyond Me.

' Megyn Kelly,dyed her hair/DooDah, Doodah!"

I like billionaires.  I can safely say, that I know two billionaires, one is a Chicago real estate developer ( as is Trump) and the other makes plush toys.  The two billionaires that I know are gentlemen to the backbone, witty, kind, hard-working and very generous.

Then there is Donald Trump.

I first became Trump conscious in 1988, while teaching at La Lumiere School in LaPorte, Indiana.  My wife and I ran a dorm called Becket House on the heart-breakingly beautiful campus hugging a spring fed lake.  We had twenty three young gents of the junior class in our charge and one of them was Murph.  Murph was a delight.  He has a Fred Flintstone mug attached to a head that was the size of a boulder in a Gene Autry western, to paraphrase Skinny Sheahan.  Murph wanted to be a billionaire.  He was a rock-ribbed David Stockman/Ronald Reagan/Russell Kirk Republican from the far western suburbs of Chicago.  Murph was built like a bull and owned a generous, merry-hearted  savagery that was delight to watch from the sidelines of Laker football.  He loved combat and dominated  at middle linebacker, but was a sucker for the draw play. Murph!!!!!!!!  Don't Blitz on Every GD Play!!!!!!

I had Murph in English class and he constantly topped off his armful of books with Trump: The Art of the Deal.  I caught the lad yellow marking this flabby tome, when he should have been reading Billy Budd, during each day's mandatory two and 1/2 hour silent study in the dorm.  I was perched at my desk in the common room situated between our living quarters and ten double occupant rooms of my charges and did my work as well as hush up the lads, look for and confiscate walk-men buzzing with Dead Head tapes, wake up sleepers and generally maintain the sanctity of study.  This required that I get off my broad manly ass and manage by walking around.

Murph was an incorrigible.  Sleep? You bet.  Eat his Korean dormy's candy?  Check!  Read the Art of the Deal?  Only when not sleeping, or eating imported Haitai Cherry Marus from the Heedon's round metal candy box. More than the Asian confections, Murph stuffed himself with The Art of Deal.

" Murph!  Eighty Six that idiot's tripe!"

" Mr. Hickey, Trump's a genius and you're just a Thackeray geek."

"Notwithstanding. Get to work on your weekly essay.  It is Thursday and you have yet to write alick."

" I'm on it. Hey what is Mary making us? Damn she can cook, Hick Old Man."

I read the book. It is crap-doodle, ghosted by the guy who says that high energy is counter productive.  Really?  Relax and make millions?

I could never get Murph to abandon Trump.  I admire that in a man - fierce loyalty.  I am pretty much like that myself.  Hell, I'm still a Democrat. Don't look like one, but I am. Loyalty is vital.  Bad people manage to win the loyalty of good people.

There is nothing about Donald Trump, that could induce me to walk across a small carpet to meet him.  Not interested.  I know hustlers and users.  I have been in education since 1975 and that industry is jam-packed with creeps, grifters and protected incompetents.  Donald Trump might have made splendid member of the Obama Administration had he not gone on his four decades of gilted national hustle. He just might become President.

Donald Trump is backed by the Eugene Robinson, Chris Matthews, CBS, New York Times, Washington Post, Obama's Jornolistseses, Rachel ( "I'm Backin' Ya, Butch!") Maddow George Soros, Planned Parenthood, the League of Progressives, Rahm Emanuel, and millions of Howard Beal Tea Party Libertarian Pro-Lifers.

After the debate Trump's fans went NYC wilding on Megyn Kelly, who gave Mr. Hair Club for Men a kick in the nuts unparalleled since the fight between Butch Cassidy and Harvey Logan



Me?  I like Megyn Kelly and she has Trump on the ropes.

I wonder how Murph is doing?  God, I loved that kid!

Tonight's 2016 GOP Presidential Debate - Suicide is Painless

I expect tonight's GOP Presidential Candidate Debate for the 2016 Run for Office to look like the mass suicide cave scene from Clint Eastwood's brilliant Letters from Iwo Jima.

The ten candidates who made the FOX NEWS cut will have a golden opportunity to commit the Dutch Act before the largest expected audience in history.

They will not need CNN's John King, or PBS's Gwen Ifil to play gottcha; in fact, it will be a comfortable setting for the Party that always manages to blow off its own toes to self-destruct. The theme music from the 1969 movie M.A.S.H. would be a deft touch. 

Donald Trump will win the debate, not because he is the best candidate, but because he is the biggest loser on the stage and all of the other in-the-tank media outlets will glory in his oafish swinishness and place the debate laurels deeply upon his Hair Club for Men noggin.

This may also be the shark that FOX News has yet to bound over. 

Ruminams et sobrii civis cavete! 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just saying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comrade Cape Cod

Virginia Slim

Popeye's Pappy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Gidwitz is Right About Kirk. Senator! Blow!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like it.

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

Hey Marque Kirque!  Blow.  

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Get happy.  Get over to Whiting.



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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

God Bless Every American Veteran!

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

Augusta Constitutionalist (Ga) 31 July 1868.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Well, F Me!

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

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

Name one.

I hear crickets.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teaching in 2015 - Worm Grunting Until Convicted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are here, Henry!

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

A family is a group of people.

States rights are what have been agreed upon.

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

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

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

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

EPD - Evening.                  

One of the Lads- Pleasant night.
                 

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

Bartender- Oh, the porter. Yes, sir.                  

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

I´d like to buy everybody a drink.

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

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

Old Fella- And your father´s name?                  

EPD - Pete.  Pete Dowd.

He used to live here, by the Mornin´.            

I just bought the place back.

That´s why I´m here.                  

Old Fella - Then your grandfather

would be Ol´ Proisnas Dowd.
               

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

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