St. Cecilia Pray for Us - A Musical Collaboration Unites America's Michael Moriarty and Chicago's Dan Robinson

Let us pray. O Eternal God, who gave us, in the person of Saint Cecilia, a powerful protectress, grant that after having faithfully
passed our days, like herself, in innocence and holiness, we may one day attain the land of beatitude, where in concert with her, we
may praise you and bless you forevermore in eternity. Amen.

Two great musicians are working on the prayed for premier of an original work. Michael Moriarty*, celebrated actor, musician, composer and defender of unborn children has written a string quartet - musical presentation that usually consists of two violinists, a violist and a cellist. The work from the time of Haydn has four movements. Dan Robinson**, director of the St. Cecilia Choir of St. John Cantius, has taken Mr. Moriarty's work, transcribed the manuscript and played it through to determine that it should be presented in public.

Michael Moriarty, most known as a stage, screen and television actor, symphony for strings was first performed in St. Louis and again at the New York City. Of this work performed as part of the Bachanalia Festival at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan,CAROLINE STOESSINGER, the cathedral's artistic director said,
"Bach said he wrote music for the entertainment of the soul. Michael Moriarty is an entertainer who writes in a contemporary idiom, influenced by jazz and highlighted with memories of 18th-century counterpoint."


I am working to scare up some funding ( a modest $ 7,000-$8,000) in order to secure a venue, pay musicians for rehearsals and the concert. During my post-Leo hours, I am hitting up possible patrons or a solid corporate citizen (Bank or Business) in order to help this collaboration between two talented men some funding.

If you love music and you appreciate the labors of talented people, let's pray to the Catholic Muse of Music - St. Cecilia. Not only that, if you have any ideas about helping to bring this work to life here in Chicago - leave a comment. Thank you!

Everybody!(repeat after each line) Pray for us. Saint Cecilia,

Saint Cecilia, wise virgin,(Pray for us. Saint Cecilia, & etc.)

Saint Cecilia, whose heart burned with the fire of divine love,
Saint Cecilia, apostle by your zeal and charity,
Saint Cecilia, who converted your spouse and procured for him the crown of martyrdom,
Saint Cecilia, who by your pleadings moved the hearts of pagans, and brought them into the true Church,
Saint Cecilia, who did unceasingly see your guardian angel by your side,
Saint Cecilia, who mingled your voice with the celestial harmonies of the virgins,
Saint Cecilia, who by your melodious accents celebrated the praises of Jesus,
Saint Cecilia, illustrious martyr of Jesus Christ,
Saint Cecilia, who during three days suffered most excruciating torments,
Saint Cecilia, consolation of the afflicted,
Saint Cecilia, protectress of all who invoke you,
Saint Cecilia, patroness of holy canticles,
Saint Cecilia, special patroness and advocate of all singers, musicians, authors, and students,

*

Michael Moriarty's Music
New CD
[5-7-00] A Voice in the Wilderness (working title) -- Michael will be in the recording studio soon!

Great Find:
An album, "The Highest Standards" from the mid-80s contains a song, "You'll Never Walk Alone" featuring Michael playing the harmonica.

Production Company: Plug Records
Producer: David Lahm.

Michael Moriarty's Jazz CDs
Reaching Out
Sweet 'n Gritty
The Michael Moriarty Quintet Live at Fat Tuesday's April 12, 1992


The New York Times has called Michael Moriarty "a jazz pianist of considerable skill."

Michael Moriarty's Classical Tape
The Music Of Michael Moriarty
Symphony For String Orchestra, conducted by Michael Moriarty
Psalm For Solo Violin, Nina Beilina - Violinist
The Kaufman Symphony For Chamber Orchestra
Simplicity
A CD with William Feasley, guitar & Vladimir Lande, oboe
From a review:
"The little-explored combination of oboe and guitar has managed to find a
small but unique repertory for itself. The sharp, dark overtones of this kind of
ensemble work best with lyrical modern music, as in Ibert's dramatic Entr'acte,
Karl Pilss's lovely neo-classic Sonatine, and a serious, ruminative piece (Simplicity)
by Michael Moriarty (yes, the actor!)..."

**

St. Cecilia Choir and Sine Nomine Ensemble
Daniel V. Robinson, Director

In addition to serving as one of the directors of the Sine Nomine and St. Ceclia Choirs at St. John Cantius, Daniel Robinson is music director of the Great Lakes Dredge and Philharmonic Society in Chicago. He has also guest-conducted the a cappella ensemble Bella Voce. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and graduate degrees in music from Stanford University. He studied conducting with Robert Shaw, Clayton Krehbiel, John Ferris, Howard Swan, Weston Noble, and Richard Rosewall. He was founder and music director of Basically Bach. Previous church choir work includes stints with the Harvard University Choir, the Harvard University Summer Choir, the First Unitarian Church in Danvers, MA, and the Stanford Memorial Church Choir.

In Auctor Vox Moriarty - Speech, Freedom and the Progressive Roach Whisperers

Reading American actor/composer/journalist and defender of the unborn, Michael Moriarty, is a treat. The Detroit born grandson of a Chicago Back-of the-Yards baseball great George Moriarty is a cultural repository. Michael Moriarty is most remembered for his brilliant performances on stage, screen and television. This well-read and discerning man now lives in Canada, but keeps attentive fingers on the pulse of America and finds Old Sam slipping.

Uncle Sam took ill when he allowed the lawful murder of children rouged and mascaraed in the dodge of Womens Rights. If a nation can kop plea for the death of children, it can and will swallow and follow anything.

Michael Moriarty writes for Big Hollwood, Stage Right and has graced the pages of Chicago Daily Observer. Trained by the Jesuits, Mr. Moriarty's writing is thick with cultural, spiritual, philosophic and political references linked by a graceful tone of voice that is reminicent of James Joyce's best short stories ( Ivy Day in the Committeeroom, Araby, and Eveline) or the poetic tropes and thunderous tones of Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos. Moriarty alludes to Brecht and parallels Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff in an essay about Sarah Palin. Moriarty is open and honest about his all too human weaknesses and vanities and deftly sweetens his vinegar with crystals of the sugar of humanity among the Humanities.

Michael Moriarty watched the GOP Michigan debates in Canada last night, while I was enjoying a dinner on Taylor Street with my three beautiful children and an exquisite woman who allows herself to be seen in public with me. While we tucked away at veal marsala, penne alla vodka, pork chops Genovese, salmon Putanesca and manicotti alfredo, Michael Moriarty watched the beleagured Herman Cain stand like a man against the baseless charges of crimes against women that charged onto the floors of American debate on the command of Progressive Roach Whisperers. Progressive journalists, editors and handsomely paid political operatives like Chicago's David Axelrod call the roaches to work. The roaches get TV face time, interviews and perhaps another place of employment to bring wrongful termination and sexual harassment suits to court.

The Roach Whisperers can also be Marxist lawyers who undermine any and all confidence in the American Justice System - adepts at freeing career criminals and bringing suit against police officers, police departments, cities and counties. They whisper in the ears of agenda driven roach-like editors and columnists.

It seems that perhaps Americans are growing sick of the Roach Whisperers. Recently, at Dunkin Donuts on Western Ave., I had occassion to discuss the charges against Herman Cain with a Chicago Police Officer and he responded, " I don't care if they say he lit a box of kittens on fire, I still will vote for him."

The Progressive Roach Whisperers have owned the political narrative from the time that some insect suggested that George Herbert Walker Bush abandoned the crew of his WWII torpedo bomber. I remember the rage of my Pacific veteran father when that calumny was spewed from the Dukakis Campaign operatives. I voted for Snoopy Mike and I know that my life-long Democrat father did not.

Things have gotten even uglier as the new millenium rolled out. The Roach Whisperers own the media, because real journalists like Ray Coffey, Dennis Byrne, Nick Von Hoffman Mike Royko, Jack Mabley and others retired or have gone home to Christ, Moses and Allah.

Here is a great read from Michael Moriarty -

Yes, we in America also have the freedom to lie and to maliciously exaggerate. However, the court of public opinion in American democracy will decide whether or not accusations are justified or merely the product of greedy but increasingly frightened political ambitions.

Justice Clarence Thomas was the first-such target of left-wing, railroading, character-assassinating, Beltway connivances. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.


In fact, American freedom of speech may have handed our next President, Herman Cain, the American liberty which Marxist ideologues will forever be choking on. They, the American progressive useful idiots, have patronized their own dwindling constituency, “liberated” them into the Occupy Wall Street self-indulgences, leaving these spoiled, perennial sophomores doing real sexual damage to one another.

It’s Woodstock Redux without the star-studded performances.

The image I see is an orgy of lemmings, willing victims traipsing behind their Pied Piper, President Obama, right off the cliff of common sense. Whether it is economic common sense or sexual common sense, the American left prove themselves the “useful idiots” of a very alive Communist New World Order.

The Journolists had the light shined on them and scurried under the appliances, last year, but they still collect paychecks. They, MSNBC and the Soros funded Daily KOS, Media Matters and the Hollywood Squares of Huffington Post are the Roach Whisperers.

Americans, thanks be to God, know how to navigate a cow pasture. Americans have guides like Michael Moriarty to mark those execremental fields.

Click my post title for the powerful voice of Michael Moriarty.

Thanks, Pal!

April 5, 2011 - Happy Birthday to Michael Moriarty - Actor, Musician, Essayist and American

Happy Birthday to Michael Moriarty! This Chicago-rooted American actor, jazz musician, essayist and patriot is a thoughtful critic of American folly and powerful voice for the unborn. I am very proud to correspond with this wonderful man of principle, wit and courage. I first witnessed this man's talents at the Chicago Theatre in 1973, when he starred along with Robert De Niro in the poetic baseball film Bang the Drum Slowly. Mr. Moriarty portrayed a self-interested pitcher who restored his soul by caring for a dying catcher whose career had been notable only for his being the butt of jokes, pranks and ridicule for his team mates. At the end of the film Moriarty narrates a closing sentiment that is one of most heart-wrenching epiphanies in film - " From here on in, I rag nobody."

Michael Moriarty (born April 5, 1941 in Detroit, Michigan) is an Emmy winning American actor. Tall and lanky, this 6'4" actor is known most for his role as Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Stone on the long running TV series Law & Order. He attended the University of Detroit Roman Catholic High School, and then matriculated at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire in 1963, where he was a theatre major.

After he received his degree, he left for London, where he enrolled in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, after receiving a Fulbright Scholarship.

In 1973, Moriarty was cast to play the egocentric Henry Wiggen in Bang the Drum Slowly, a film about friendship between two unlikely baseball teammates (the second being Robert De Niro, a slow thinking catcher who becomes terminally ill). Moriarty had a strong baseball background on which to draw for the role, as his grandfather George Moriarty had been a third baseman, umpire and manager in the major leagues for nearly 40 years.

In 1973, Moriarty starred in a TV movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie with Katharine Hepburn. Coincidentally, the film also featured Sam Waterston (who replaced Moriarty as the Executive Assistant District Attorney on Law & Order in 1994.) Moriarty's role in Menagerie won him an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actor of the Year (see ).

Moriarty's career on the screen was slow to develop, while his theater career was flourishing. He starred as a Nazi bureaucrat who degenerates into a coldblooded murderer in the miniseries Holocaust (which earned him another Emmy). Through the 1980s, Moriarty starred in such Larry Cohen movies as Q, The Stuff, It's Alive 3, and A Return to Salem's Lot, as well as Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider and Hanoi Hilton.

From 1990 to 1994, he starred as Ben Stone on Law & Order. He ended up leaving the show in 1994, alleging that his departure was a result of his threatening a lawsuit against then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who had cited Law & Order as offensively violent. He moved to Canada, declaring himself a political exile, and lived for a time in Halifax and Toronto before settling in Vancouver. Recent projects he has acted in include Courage Under Fire, Along Came a Spider, Shiloh, Emily of New Moon and James Dean, for which he won his third Emmy.

Moriarty today lives in British Columbia, where he still acts and has become politically active, describing himself as a "centrist", which will prove questionable (see http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/1105/1105eugenics.htm]]) to the reader of Enter Stage Right or MMUUUHP (Michael Moriarty Unofficial, Unauthorized, Unsanctioned Home Page).

Moriarty has recently announced his intention to run for President of the United States in 2008. He also has been a frequent contributor of numerous political columns to the ESR (Enter Stage Right) on-line Journal of Conservativism.

He has a website, the allegedly unauthorized MMUUUHP, and his recent blogs there and on ESR contain scathing denunciations of Bill Clinton, Thanaticism, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, anti-Catholicism, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George W. Bush, both major U.S. political parties, Halliburton, the College of Cardinals, and most of Catholic theology, although he states that he had a Jesuit Catholic upbringing.
[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Michael Moriarty ]

Michael Moriarty is also a fine jazz pianist and a cat of quality:

He sees, why Nature plants in man alone
Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown:
(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind
Are given in vain, but what they seek they find)
Wise is her present; she connects in this
His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss;
At once his own bright prospect to be blest,
And strongest motive to assist the rest.
Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine,
Gives thee to make thy neighbour’s blessing thine.
Is this too little for the boundless heart?
Extend it, let thy enemies have part:
Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense,
In one close system of benevolence:
Happier as kinder, in whate’er degree,
And height of bliss but height of charity.
God loves from whole to parts: but human soul
Must rise from individual to the whole.
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake!
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace;
His country next; and next all human race

Alexander Pope Essay on Man

Henry Wiggins - "From here on in, I rag nobody."

Chicago in Michael Moriarty's Meditations & The Genius of Steve Allen

The guy can act, write, compose and tickle the 88s. Michael Moriarty is in the process of writing a series of prose reflections and this is the eighth rendering.

I have been blessed to know some really talented and good people in my 58 years of stomping on the terra. Michael Moriarty is as complex a moral man as the other Chicago rooted genius, actor, musician, comic, writer, composer and television pioneer Steve Allen, who was kicked out of Mount Carmel High School in his freshman year thanks to singer/actor and classmate Richard Kiley. Steve Allen was related to the Donahues, Murphys, Regans and Quinlans of the south side of Chicago and often returned to the old neighborhood even when he was at the height of fame as founder of the Tonight Show and played Hammond Organ concerts at the Franklin House on south Western Avenue*.

Michael Moriarty's grandfather George Moriarty was a baseball professional and contemporary of Tyrus Cobb, Buck Weaver, Eddie Collins and Jiggs Donahue who played for both the Cubs and The White Sox, before becoming an icon for the Detroit Tigers.
George Moriarty was also a musician and composer, but nowhere near as deeply talented as his grandson Michael. I like to think that Chicago and especially the south side of Chicago - the Stockyards and beyond - had much to do with the evolution of genius in families Billy Allen and Bella Montrose to Steve Allen and George Moriarty to Michael.

In the Eighth edition of Moriarty's Haunted Heaven prose scatting, we consider eternity.


The Haunted Heaven: Chapter Eight: The Theater of the Mysterious Same By Michael Moriarty
web posted July 18, 2011

As one hovers above the first and one of the most defining moments of a life, patience is the order of not only the day but the essence of eternity.

Eternity is one factor, however, that people can measure their lives by.

The infinity of the Universe and the eternity of Time?

These are the precepts upon which I now measure my life, both its relative insignificance but its spiritual importance as well.

Oh, I know, Stephen Hawking, whom I have never had the privilege to meet, might dispute the infinity of the Universe, and then again, since he has admitted to making mistakes himself, he eventually – because he is now an eternal factor of the universe – he eventually might change his mind again.

He might not dispute the infinity of the Universe.

If he is even slightly a pantheist, he might be willing to accept the Universe in its entirety as God Itself.

If, however, the Universe is infinite, then God is ultimately and infinitely incomprehensible.

"Not if it is just more of the same, Michael!"

I'm sure that metaphysically "It" is just "more of the same". However, the "same" is so infinite within "Itself" that It, Itself, demands to be capitalized.

The God of Same.

If we know that God looks in wonder upon Himself, then the "Same" is as bottomless a mystery as Life itself has proven to be for millenniums.

Then again, Stephen Hawking, as well as some of his certainties, might be exposed as hoaxes.

Global Warming, chapter two: Science as Inevitably Political Propaganda.

Therein lies the mystery!

Perhaps the Devil, at times, can put even God Himself in doubt, into anxiety.

Does God then call upon another God for reassurance?

No.

This is God The Father and whatever doubts He might have?

The Doubts must come from one question: what is He to do with His own creation, which in this case is the Devil?

Evil in all its secret and manifest forms, a fact that God Himself created.

The Devil Himself as a blessing in disguise, as it is the very necessitation of Human Free Will.

That makes sense to me.

I'm now listening to a playback of my Seeds, the title for my own, little, musical inspirations, melodic and harmonic thoughts that … well … might very well fit themselves together into a masterpiece?!

The Seeds themselves, at this point in musical history, are nothing new. It is the order in which they are placed and developed that will determine whether or not they are the seeds for a work of art or the distracted pastimes of a wannabe.

Ah, ego mania! The bane of all exceptional creativity!!

One must be patient, particularly with one's own shortcomings.

I look at myself metaphorically, feel and see the considerable amount of damage that Life and I have done to myself, but, then again, I look at it as God's own work of art.

The Devil had a hand, that is for certain. Must we think of God and the Devil as Rogers and Hammerstein?!

The division between my responsibilities and Life's gets blurred very quickly when Progressive Psychology becomes involved. So involved that Good and Evil, even High and Low become a relative matter.

That is when Madness sets in and Evil becomes the Master to destroy all Masterpieces.

What is Progressivism?

"Anything but the Same!"

"Damn the Same!!" cry the Progressives.

Just now, I came to a possible format – and I only say possible format – for my symphonic series: the first movement always being an Overture of sorts, there to introduce the audience to the themes of the coming movements. Oh I would love to wait and wait, as Brahms did before he unleashed his highest symphonic achievement, his First Symphony, but I'm 70 years old!

"On, don't go back!" as the great English director, Sir Tyrone Guthrie would order us to do.

We poor but proud players of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

This poor but proud composer soldiers on.

What theater am I working for now?

The Theater of the Mysterious Same!

Old songs but eternally new settings.

Those who know the old songs best?

They lead!

We follow.

The goal?

Our destination?

Heaven!

If you are really serious about your life, why settle for anything less?

Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and 4Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com.

I remember a top rated loud mouth FM radio personality, as they were termed, horse-laughing the mention of Steve Allen, in the early 1990's. His side-kick buzzed and hooted slight regard for the man who won Emmys for Network and Public TV and Grammys for some of his 5,000 songs, comic genius, artistry at the piano and prodigious literary output. Hell, he had the drive-time slot!



* Both Moriarty and Steve Allen are criticized for their defense of eternal truths:

Michael Moriarty--like Jon Voight before him--turns Right.

It's a sort of ritual for certain aging male celebrities to publicly retreat into social and/or poltical conservatism. Steve Allen, in his last years, became a cranky crusader against what he considered "filth" in entertainment. The late Ron Silver (once involved with the left-to-moderate Creative Coalition) became vocal about his rightist beliefs after 9/11. Jon Voight, who won an Oscar for playing an anti-Vietnam War paraplegic (inspired by Ron Kovic) in COMING HOME, now can be found opnionating on Fox News. And don't get me started on former comedian Dennis Miller.

Michael Moriarty has now come to the proverbial fork in the road--and has turned Right. Here are links to an interview and a Moriarty-penned article for Andrew Breitbart's showbiz-liberalism-bashing site BIG HOLLYWOOD.

http://poetry-arts-confidential.blogspot.com/2009/12/michael-moriarty-like-jon-voight-before.html

American Catholics - Ben Stone on the Rock of Peter: Michael Moriarty Nails It.

Between Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi, Vice-President of the United States and former Speaker of the House, American Catholics and Catholicism have been officially given role models that publicly defy the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI and the centuries-long, pro-life tradition of the Church.

What Abraham Lincoln said about America may very well be repeated about the Catholic Church: If She dies, it won't be by a foreign power. It will be by suicide.

America is not dead yet but is, indeed, dying because of the Roe v Wade decision 38 years ago. There is no longer the American "inalienable right to life".

The same Leftist attack on the United States from within the Democrat Party is the same Leftist attack on the Catholic Church from within largely Democrat American Catholicism, i.e. Biden and Pelosi.

Michael Moriarty

It takes a mirror to tell me to lay off that third Italian beef from Al's on Taylor Street. Two is enough for any glutton. Those size 36/29s fit like a surgical glove and that ain't good . . .for other people to look at. A man can not go through life wearing "eatin' pants."

Being a Catholic is tougher than being a happy gent on the thresh-hold of size 38 britches. My note to self . . . leave the car in the garage and hike. Eat like a Unitarian and pray like a Poor Clare.

Yesterday, I posted a piece in reaction to Neil Steinberg's latest in his serious of snotty advice to Catholics concerning Governor Quinn's fealty to Planned Parenthood and Progressive Everything, over his loudly stated Christian conscience conflicting with his broadly stated personal Catholicism.

Today, I noticed that 19th Ward Blog which reaches many more readers is likewise offended by the Dante spouting Masker of the Sun Times.

http://19thwardchicago.blogspot.com/2011/12/latest-attack-on-catholic-churchby.htmlAmerican Catholics have a problem. Public Catholics (Clan Kennedy) and elected Catholics ( Biden, Daley, Durbin, Quinn, Kerry, Pelosi et al) tend to belong to the Democratic Party. Chicago Catholics like me tend be Democrats as well. The Progressives control the Democratic Party. The Progressives are secularists -no religion is better than any religion. Abortion is a must. There is no such thing as sin, because of evolution and Civil Rights.

The Catholic Church in America is the last stand against the evil that is killing an unborn child. Likewise, the Catholic Church in America is the last stand against the Progressive elimination of sin.

In the last couple of years, I have become more aware of intrinsic evil behind Progressive thought. Bertrand Russell, an agnostic intellectual, called Dewey/Hegelianism the most dangerous assault on thought in centuries and termed it a cosmic impiety. I witness the results of John Dewey's work daily, working at an inner city Catholic high school and see that Catholic education works well for non-Catholic African American young men. Catholic values help them succeed - not marches, T-shirts, nor tax-breaks.

It is the mirror held up to Public Education and the world without sin, or consequences that it helped create. We struggle at Leo everyday, undoing what John Dewey hath wrought, because the bulk of our students come from public schools. Leo is costly. Leo holds the individual accountable - teachers, administration, staff, students and parents.

Part of my work brought me into contact with one of America's best actors - Michael Moriarty. Mr. Moriarty is not only a gifted actor, but a splendid jazz musician, composer and essayist. More so, Michael Moriarty has stepped away from American life, lives very well in Canada and tries to make sense of lunacy here. By here, I mean the Progressive epi-center Chicago.

Michael Moriarty has Chicago roots, as I have written about, and keeps in touch with what is happening here. Chicago's capitulation to the Roger Baldwin, WEB Du Bois, John Dewey, Henry Wallace Progressives after decades of growth and success as the City That Works as a Catholic Democrat American city is as much a concern to Michael as it is to me.

Progressive secular doctrine has replace the Church Triumphant of Cardinal Mundelein and is actively trying to stamp out Catholic opposition to its agendas - abortion for all, and sin no longer exists - only systemic racism, classism and sexism.

Michael Moriarty has very solid grip on what is going on here in one of President Obama's many hometowns - Hawaii, Kansas, Indonesia, Chicago. Chicago is the progressive epi-center that created the President. The President, like the governor, owes his success to the secular Progressive papacy. Every Progressive is a pope . . . ask one.

Michael Moriarty writes another beautifully Joycean essay that links Catholicism, St. Joan, Progressive Marxism, abortion, and Democrat Catholic Maskers like Quinn and Durbin with the Jewish Catholic intellectual Simone Weil and the actress Ingrid Bergman in a stained-glass masterpiece of a mirror.

Law and Order's Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) understands the Rock of Peter and the sand that is a soulless secularism.

No way I am buying size 38 pants.

Click my post title

More Michael Moriarty at the Paley Media Center

http://www.ny.com/cgibin/frame.cgi?url=http://www.paleycenter.org/&frame=/frame/museums.html

Mark Harris and the Moriartys - George & Michael: Novels, Baseball, Chicago and God

"You will no more expect the novelist to tell you precisely how something is said than you will expect him to stand by your chair and hold your book". Mark Harris American Novelist 1922-2007

In my Arcturus Calendar for October 7 it says, "De Soto visited Georgia, 1540." This hands me a laugh. Bruce Pearson also visited Georgia. I was his pall-bear, me and 2 fellows from the crate and box plant and some town boys, and that was all. There were flowers from the club, but no person from the club. They could of sent somebody.

He was not a bad fellow, no worse than most and probably better than some, and not a bad ballplayer neither when they give him a chance, when they laid off him long enough. From here on in I rag nobody.

Mark Harris - Bang the Drum Slowly

Mark Harris wrote great novels. I read The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly while I worked nights at Orchestra Hall, which paid for my tuition at Loyola University. I worked - didn't get fired anyway.

I read these books on the recommendation of Dr. William Heibel of the English Department at Loyola. Years later, Dr. Heibel would serve on my Master of Arts Oral Examination panel - he was brutal and a great guy.

Bang the Drum Slowly is a secular parable set in the 1950's - its narrator is a fireball pitcher for the fictitious New York Mammoths by name of Henry Wiggen.

Henry Wiggen is a talented athlete and sharp student of human nature - in the off season Wiggen sells insurance to the natures who inhabit the team clubhouse. One of the more ignorant, sad and lonely members of the Mammoths is the rube catcher Bruce Pearson who would make Shoeless Joe Jackson appear to be Baseball's Noel Coward.

Wiggen and Pearson room together and Wiggen learns that Pearson is dying of cancer.

Wiggen tries to make Pearson enjoy his own talents, gifts and humanity in his last days.

The novel was made into a beautiful film and teamed two wonderful actors Robert DeNiro and Michael Moriarty.

Recently I learned that Moriarty's grandfather, George, had been born and raised in Chicago's Stockyards and was great baseball player.

George Joseph Moriarty

Positions: Third Baseman, First Baseman and Outfielder
Bats: Right, Throws: Right
Height: 6' 0", Weight: 185 lb.

Born: July 7, 1885 in Chicago, IL (All Transactions)
Debut: September 27, 1903
Teams (by GP): Tigers/Highlanders/WhiteSox/Cubs 1903-1916
Final Game: May 4, 1916
Died: April 8, 1964 in Miami, FL
Buried: St. Mary Cemetery,in Evergreen Park, IL
Relatives: Brother of Bill Moriarty

and more . . .


George Moriarty
Street-tough George Moriarty carved a career in baseball that spanned more than 50 years, as player, coach, manager, umpire, executive, and scout. As a player, Moriarty played with Ty Cobb on the Detroit Tigers, and used his aggresive baserunning to swipe home 11 times. He later succeeded Cobb as manager of the Tigers, after becoming an AL umpire. Moriarty spent two decades as an arbiter before joining the Al office as a public relations official. He later scouted for several teams, until his death in Miami in 1964.
Career Batting Stats
G AB H R HR RBI SB AVG SLG OBP OPS OPS+
1076 3671 920 372 5 376 248 .251 .312 .303 .616 95.9
Teams George Moriarty Managed
Detroit Tigers (1927-1928)
Born
George Joseph Moriarty was born on July 7, 1885, in Chicago, IL.

Died
April 8, 1964, Miami, FL

Batted: Right
Threw: Right

Major League Debut
9 27,

Nine Other Players Who Debuted in 1903
John Titus
Hans Lobert
Solly Hofman
Lee Tannehill
George Moriarty
Jake Stahl
Three-Finger Brown
Chief Bender
Red Ames

Post-Season Appearances
1909 World Series
Notes
Actor Michael Moriarty, known for his roles in the television show Law and Order, and the baseball movie Bang the Drum Slowly, is the grandson of George Moriarty.


Michael Moriarty's grandfather played with Ty Cobb and could be as mean as that iconic sociopath, but retained more humanity and good humor. From Wikipedia:

It is reported that once while Moriarty was umpiring, Babe Ruth, who was at bat, stepped out of the batter's box and asked Moriarty to spell his last name. When he had spelled it out, Ruth reportedly replied, "Just as I thought; only one I." The baseball card shown to the right of this text spells Moriarty's name incorrectly - with "two I's."
Moriarty also was noted for his influence on the life of Tigers first baseman Hank Greenberg. During the 1935 World Series, Moriarty warned several Chicago Cubs players to stop yelling anti-semitic slurs at Greenberg [2]. When the Cubs players persisted with their remarks, Moriarty took the unusual step of clearing the entire Chicago bench - a maneuver that got him fined by then-commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis [3]. Later, when Greenberg was pursuing Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, Moriarty kept the final game of the 1938 season going until darkness made it impossible to continue. Greenberg finished the night two homers shy of Ruth's record [4].
In his biography, Hank Greenberg recalled:
Much later in my career George Moriarty and I became very good friends. Back in the early 1900s he played third base for Detroit, and he used to steal home. Somebody wrote a poem about him, and the title was “Never Die on Third Moriarty.” All through the rest of his life George felt he knew something about stealing home. When he was umpiring on third base . . .

Not only that George Moriarty was a musician and songwriter.

thus -

Despite his combative field persona, off the field Moriarty could be more congenial, maintaining close friendships with Jesuit priests at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. Moriarty also fancied himself a lyricist, and collaborated with Richard A. Whiting on the tune "Love Me Like the Ivy Loves the Old Oak Tree."

A great American Novelist created a character who plays America's past time. A great athlete competes and flourishes in that mileau. His grandson goes on to play the character created by Mark Harris and goes on to become a great American Actor

God seems to know what He's doing.



http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/moriage02.shtml?redir

Chicago Roots: Actor Michael Moriarty Jazz Man

Actor Michael Moriarty's grandfather, George, was born in Back of the Yards and played for the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs. Mr. Moriarty is an accomplished jazz pianist and vocal stylist.

Talented man from a talented blood-line in a tough town!

* George Moriarty

George Moriarty, former third baseman, umpired from 1917 to 1940

George Moriarty grew up in Chicago, where his immigrant father was a childhood friend of another Irishman, Charlie Comiskey. He reached the majors as a third baseman in 1906, having already earned a reputation as a fighter of the first rank. When he joined the Detroit Tigers in 1909, Ty Cobb challenged him to a fight. Moriarty handed Cobb a bat. “A fellow like you,” said the young third baseman, “needs a bat to even things up when fighting an Irishman.” Cobb wisely backed off.

In 1917, his playing career over, Moriarty joined the American League umpiring staff, remaining until 1940. A Sporting News poll in 1935 rated him the best umpire in the league. One day in 1932, he took a page from Tim Hurst’s book when he fought four Chicago White Sox (three players and the manager) all at once after a hotly contested game in Chicago. Moriarty emerged with a broken wrist, but managed to hold off all his assailants despite being nearly twice the age of the players involved.

Moriarty was so esteemed as a baseball man that he took a two-year hiatus from umpiring in 1927-28 to manage his old team, the Detroit Tigers. In fact, several Irish-American umpires interrupted their umpiring careers to manage major league clubs; others who did so were John Gaffney, John Kelly, Hank O’Day, and Tim Hurst.

http://www.wcnet.org/~dlfleitz/sabrpres.htm



Street-tough George Moriarty carved a career in baseball that spanned more than 50 years, as player, coach, manager, umpire, executive, and scout. As a player, Moriarty played with Ty Cobb on the Detroit Tigers, and used his aggresive baserunning to swipe home 11 times. He later succeeded Cobb as manager of the Tigers, after becoming an AL umpire. Moriarty spent two decades as an arbiter before joining the Al office as a public relations official. He later scouted for several teams, until his death in Miami in 1964.
Career Batting Stats
G AB H R HR RBI SB AVG SLG OBP OPS OPS+
1076 3671 920 372 5 376 248 .251 .312 .303 .616 95.9
Teams George Moriarty Managed
Detroit Tigers (1927-1928)
Born
George Joseph Moriarty was born on July 7, 1885, in Chicago, IL.

Died
April 8, 1964, Miami, FL

Batted: Right
Threw: Right

Major League Debut
9 27,

Nine Other Players Who Debuted in 1903
John Titus
Hans Lobert
Solly Hofman
Lee Tannehill
George Moriarty
Jake Stahl
Three-Finger Brown
Chief Bender
Red Ames

Post-Season Appearances
1909 World Series
Notes
Actor Michael Moriarty, known for his roles in the television show Law and Order, and the baseball movie Bang the Drum Slowly, is the grandson of George Moriarty.

Michael Moriarty is Considering a Run for President . . .of Ireland

Michael Moriarty is also a famous American actor, musician/composer,journalist and fierce for of abortion in all of its euphemisms.living in Canada. Michael Moriarty and I became acquainted via the Internet and I learned of the great man's Chicago roots.

I grew up in Little Flower Parish with many Moriartys. Like the Hickeys, there was a shower of them. Like the Hickeys and so many of the 79th Street Irish they were from the Kingdom of Kerry.

A Moriarty back home is the Harry Caray of Ireland by the name of Michael Moriarty. During my lunch break which comes anywhere between 9AM and midnight, I read about this Michael Moriarty from Dingle just west of Castleisland in this week's Kerryman -on-line: I you don't get the Kerryman, do.

Michael Moriarty, more commonly known by his Irish name - Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh is considering a run for President of Ireland.

By MARIAN O'FLAHERTY


Wednesday August 24 2011

LEGENDARY broadcaster Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh will reveal on Friday whether or not he will make a bid for the Irish Presidency.

The West Kerry native is still mulling over the question of whether or not he will run for the Aras and spent time discussing the matter with his family in Dún Síon, Dingle, over the past number of days.

Mr Ó Muircheartaigh outlined his interest in a run for the Arás to The Kerryman last week, adding that despite being approached by a number of political parties, if he were to run it would be as an independent candidate.

Speaking to the Kerryman on Tuesday, Mr Ó Muircheartaigh said he was yet to make a call on the matter. However, he indicated that it is likely that he will confirm his final decision on the matter this coming Friday.

The sprightly 80-year old was speaking to the Kerryman from his home in West Kerry before leaving for an engagement in County Meath.

This Michael (Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh) like the gent in Canada is man of great wit:


These are classics from the world of Irish Sport (hurling - a combination of hockey and homicide, Gaelic football, rugby, soccer Football)

"... and Brian Dooher is down injured. And while he is, I'll tell ye a little story. I was in Times' Square in New York last week, and I was missing the Championship back home. So I approached a news-stand and I said 'I suppose ye wouldn't have the Kerryman would ye?' To which, the Egyptian behind the counter turned to me and he said 'do you want the North Kerry edition or the South Kerry edition?'... he had both...so I bought both. And Dooher is back on his feet..."

"Anthony Lynch the Cork corner back will be the last person to let you down - his people are undertakers"

"I saw a few Sligo people at Mass in Gardiner street this morning and the omens seem to be good for them. The priest was wearing the same colours as the Sligo jersey! 40 yards out on the Hogan stand side of the field Ciaran Whelan goes on a rampage, its a goal. So much for religion."

Colin Corkery on the 45 lets go with the right boot. Its over the bar. This man shouldn't be playing football. He's made an almost Lazarus-like recovery from a heart condition. Lazarus was a great man but he couldn't kick points like Colin Corkery.

"1-5 to 0-8.. well from Lapland to the Antarctic, that's level scores in any man's language".

"Pat Fox has it on his hurl and is motoring well now ... but here comes Joe Rabbitte hot on his tail ...... I've seen it all now, a Rabbitte chasing a Fox around Croke Park!"

"I see John O Donnell dispensing water on the sideline. Tipperary, sponsored by a water company. Cork Sponsored by a tae company. I wonder will they meet later for afternoon tae."

"Teddy looks at the ball, . . . the ball looks at Teddy"

"Danny "The Yank" Culloty. He came down from the mountains . . . and hasn't he done well?"

"He grabs the sliothar, he's on the 50......he's on the 40......he's on the 30..........................he's on the ground"

"In the first half they played with the wind. In the second half they played with the ball".

"He kicks the ball lan san aer, could've been a goal, could've been a point.............it went wide."

"Stephen Byrne with the puck out for Offaly....Stephen, one of 12......all but one are here to-day, the one that's missing is Mary, she's at home minding the house.....and the ball is dropping i lar na bpairce...."

"Pat Fox out to the forty and grabs the sliothar, I bought a dog from his father last week. Fox turns and sprints for goal, the dog ran a great race last Tuesday in Limerick. Fox to the 21 fires a shot, it goes to the left and wide..... and the dog lost as well."

"Sean Og O'Hailpin.... his father's from Fermanagh, his mother's from Fiji, neither a hurling stronghold."

"Teddy McCarthy to Mick McCarthy, no relation, Mick McCarthy back to Teddy McCarthy, still no relation
"we need to push the backs forward!!"

This last is worth a landslide
Some Muck-savage -"Where can I find two free tickets to the next All-Ireland?"

Micheál Ó Muircheartaighanswers - “ the same place u'll find hens teeth lorraine.

Michael Moriarty for President - sounds good on both sides of the foamy brine.

Here's more from Moriarty the Yank -Big Hollywood:

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mmoriarty/2011/08/24/does-morgan-freeman-really-want-this-president-pissed-off/http://macra.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/764608735/m/8151016481

The Most American Movie - Bang the Drum Slowly

 

The Best Years of Our Lives defines the essence of what American courage is versus the disastrous proposals and delusions that brought the entire human race into the Second World War. The film also portrays the essence of an American goodness which, now more than ever, is like no other in the world. Michael Moriarty - Ottawa Life Magazine 7/15/2012

       "Genius is a web into which poor, normally mortal humans inevitably fly!" - Michael Moriarty - Ottawa Life Magazine        

Bruce Pearson ( Robert DeNiro): Everybody'd be nice to you if they knew you were dying. Henry Wiggen ( Michael Moriarty: Everybody knows everybody is dying; that's why people are as good as they are. from Bang the Drum Slowly - 1973

I beg to differ with a man of true genius, only this once; Michael Moriarty wrote that The Best Years of Our Lives, which presents the the physical, mental and spiritual anguish of three WWII veterans upon homecoming,  might just be the greatest American film ever produced.   Moriarty, whose grandfather was reputed to be the one of the most fiercely competitive men to ever play professional baseball, the most American of sports, George Moriarty, feared by the legendary Ty Cobb and respected by the profession as an umpire once he retired from play, is an athletic actor who brought the soul of baseball - a tragi-comic drama itself- to life in the film Bang the Drum Slowly (1972)*.   I'd offer that this film is the genuine American movie.

It is American because it is youthful, hopeful, energetic, profane, respectful, witty and courageous.  Play is serious business.  Games ( in Greek agonistes ) are man's recognition of God.   In pure sport, man enacts his course of life.  The goal is to come as close to perfection as possible, without allowing ones self to become ensnared in pride (hubris)  -that is what tragedy is all about.   The Games that we play are very serious.   The struggle required in living well is our mortal art.  Baseball is often agreed upon to be an example of perfect sport - requiring patience, energy, charity, deft physicality and self-deprecating humor.

The manager of the fictional baseball team of Mark Harris's novel and screenplay, Dutch, offers this summary of his time on earth -" When I die, in the newspapers they'll write that the sons of bitches of the world have lost their leader."  

Dutch Schnell's aphorism stands as tall  his memorable "Skip the facts, just gimme the details."  The devil dwells in the details:

This is the story of a star-pitcher Henry " Author" Wiggen ( Moriarty) attempting to give dignity to the last months  of dying catcher Bruce Pearson ( DeNiro) and in so doing draws every spark of humanity from a clubhouse full of idiosyncracies, egos, appetites and grudges. Death has no sting.

Here is what Moriarty and Wiggen hath wrought.

The agony ( the struggle) of dying young is the American gift to God.  The Game is everything, because the game reflects God's love of man.

Bang the Drum Slowly is the American film.

* Chicago Note -America's Montaigne, Joseph Epstein**, sent this Chicagoland fact along:

Maury and Lois Rosenfield, the couple who produced Bang the Drum Slowly, both of them now dead, were dear friends of mine. They lived in Glencoe. Maury was a successful lawyer, who became interested in the movies through a friendship with Ben Hecht. The Rosenfields acquired the services of DeNiro for this movie for $10,000. Of Michael Moriarity, Maury used to say that no actor had ever done less to advance his own career. . . . Keep tapping away.
Best, Joe

Joe noted that Mr. Rosenfield had great respect for Moriarty's selflessness.

**

Joseph Epstein (born January 9, 1937 in Chicago) is an essayist, short story writer, and editor, best known as a former editor of the Phi Beta Kappa Society's The American Scholar magazine and for his recent essay collection, Snobbery: The American Version. He was also a lecturer atNorthwestern University from 1974 to 2002. He is a Contributing Editor at The Weekly Standardand a long-time contributor of essays and short stories to The New Criterion and Commentary. The late William F. Buckley, Jr., in his review of Snobbery, called Epstein the wittiest writer alive.

Epstein's body of work reveals his fascination with common everyday situations, amusing trends and small pleasures that he brings to his reader's attention. He also specializes in essays that shed light on the musings and ideas of famous and forgotten authors and writes short stories that prominently feature the city of Chicago and the characters that have populated his 70 years as an observer of the city.

http://www.ottawalife.com/2012/07/the-best-american-film-of-my-life/

Michael Moriarty's Miracle Message

For me the human being is a miracle.

For Progressive Americans, however, because of the particularly Progressive Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade Decision of 1973, the human being has become less than ordinary.

The human being is now an easily disposable or aborted threat to the ideals of a Progressive New World Order.

Michael Moriarty

A great actor and a great writer, Michael Moriarty writes about the collision taking place in America and around the globe: Progressive Hegalianism against people of faith. Mr. Moriarty's Granfather, George Moriarty, was a stockyards guy and played for both the White Sox and the Cubs.

Devout Jews, Muslims, Christians and especially Catholics are being assaulted in the the broader secularist culture.
An eloquent man, Michael Moriarty writes clearly and wittily.

Send Progressivism back to France, where the whole, Communist nightmare began!

Here is my lesson for the day.

There has been a human genius so old that the “enlightened despots” of Harvard think it so antiquated that it no longer has contemporary relevance, except as a foil for their Progressive Comparative History Lessons, their “teachable moments”, their vision of Mankind’s inevitably scientific progress to the clearly envisioned destination: The Completion of The Progressive, One-Thousand-Year Plan For All of Humanity.

In other words, The New World Order.

The last Progressive of that ilk was Adolf Hitler.

We have seen and spoken of … repeatedly … the image of our President looking down his flared nostrils at us, and we’ve heard the words that accompany such arrogant certainty.

“The fundamental transformation of the United States of America!”

Within one year of office, President Obama has been captured in photos that make some of Mussolini’s grandstanding grimaces look reticent.

Good to have you in the brawl, Michael!

Michael Moriarty's Close Reading of Communism/Progressivism in "On The Water Front"

Michael Moriarty is great actor and a serious scholar. I learned that Mr. Moriarty had Chicago roots ( Grandfather was baseball great George Moriarty - born in 'Back O' The Yards and buried at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Evergreen Park). Mr. Moriarty played Henry Wiggen in the great American film Bang the Drum Slowly.

Mr. Moriarty writes for Big Hollywood. The other day Moriarty presented a close reading of Elia Kazan's classic film On The Waterfront and presented some sobering thoughts on American Political culture, Marlon’s Mao: Part Three.

Michael Moriarty is a good read. Click my post title for the full article.

Here is a sample:


Close Reading/Reading to Write
Definition of genre

Close reading—usually of a written text, but quite possibly of a film, a painting, or another work of art—is the first stage in writing an essay that responds to or builds upon the ideas in the original text. That is why a close reading is sometimes called “reading to write” or “reader response.” Rather than merely extracting facts from the text, a close reading prepares you to analyze it critically through your own writing.

http://uwp.duke.edu/wstudio/resources/genres/close_reading.pdf

This, the Great American Tragedy of Communism’s homicidal insistence upon invading America as a “Progressive Movement” – the assassination of the very Catholic President John F. Kenney being one of its most disgracefully high points – will, I have massive faith, eventually turn out to be just another triumph of America over the mortal enemies of her infinitely and universally resonant Declaration of Independence.
Here, while basking in the relevance of On The Waterfront, I suddenly see the cosa nostra metaphor, the Brechtian fascination with Chicago mobs, the Obama administration’s Red-packed Czardom and Mao Zedong himself as the Godfather of all Godfathers … this mounting tower of Progressive Babel, making absolutely no sense whatsoever unless you have a ruthless mob willing to enforce it.
Our Second Amendment?!
If we don’t have weapons in our hands, the enlightened despots still know that we’re packing heat.
Most important is our American knowledge of the truth and the power of love.
With our government now run by no more than an Ivy-league educated, gangster’s mob, I recall Terry Malloy’s reluctant acceptance of a pistol from his doomed lawyer brother who insists – following one of screen history’s greatest moments of acting, Rod Steiger’s resigned and tragic sigh, the beginning of his surrender to the inevitability of his own death – “You’re gonna need it!”
Here is where, even before Karl Malden’s firey priest makes his re-entrance, God begins to arrive.
Then, of course, the hair-raising race down the darkened alley when Terry Malloy and Edie Doyle first barely escape being run down by Johnny Friendly’s hit team truck, then see the hanging, dead body of Rod Steiger.
Brando’s childlike plea to Eva Marie Saint to take care of his brother’s now fallen body, that gun in his possession, ready to do business.
Terry goes to Friendly’s bar to reek revenge upon his brother’s killers. With his hand still bleeding from the near-death escape with Edie, Terry hunches on the bar, gun in hand, to await the arrival of Johnny Friendly.
Who shows up?
A priest … a Catholic priest.
God again!!

Reading Michael Moriarty - A Primer for James Joyce

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend 1
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to 2
Howth Castle and Environs. . . . Coming, far! End here. Us 13
then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thous- 14
endsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a 15
long the
Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce PARIS, 17. 1922-1939

None of them (George Soros, Vlad Putin and President Obama) reached their present standings by dint of a warm heart. Michael Moriarty - Canada 2012.

I had a a very good student at La Lumiere (1988-92) who wanted to read Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. I asked the young woman* if she had read Dubliners and she replied "No."

Had she read, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man? Again, "No."

Ulysses? " No,"

How about Chamber Music, Pomes Penny each? " No, but heard that if you read James Joyce, you'll have an easier time with college admissions and it helps in the interviews.

It do. Joyce is tough. Have you read Milton? " No."

Dante? " No."

Have ever listened to the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem? " No."

Ever heard of Oliver St. John Gogarty**?

" No."

Okay. Let's start there with the song " Finnegan's Wake."


" No thanks. I have to meet my counsellor. Bye."

Oliver St.John Gogarty was a pal of young James Joyce and became a prominent Dublin surgeon and man of letters. Interesting name -Oliver = both St. Oliver Plunkett Martyr, but, also Oliver Cromwell whose Death Panels made Martyrs. St. John the Gospel writer and also a great Norman family name that is pronounced Sin Jin across the pond and Gogarty at the caboose. A typical Paddy name related to Fogarty - meaning the banished, or exiled. (O'hOgartaigh)

Gogarty was the Alpha Male and James Joyce the wingman. Gogarty was a superb athlete, gregarious, handsome, confident,physically courageous, and social. Jimmy Joyce, was bookish, sickly, quietly witty, brooding, shy, and angry.

Gogarty was at home in Anglo-Irish Protestant circles and could work a pint glass in a dirty Dublin Moore Street shebeen with honest Tadgh and Paddy. Young James Joyce affected the air of a Pre-Raphaelite genius and often had the living shite beat out of him, unless Gogarty were near-by. Later in Paris, Old Jim Joyce picked fights after getting a snoot-full of absinthe and then declaring " Deal with them, Hemingway!" - which the Oak Park bully did and glad to do so.

Gogarty authored As I went Down Sackville Street, a witty and amusing memoir of pre-WWI and Civil War Dublin ( 1910-1922) and scores of articles, poems, plays and sketches. He was a hero of the IRA during the Black and Tans War and later was elected to the Irish Senate.

James Joyce had a falling out with the Alpha Male in 1904 and imposed exile on himself from dear old dirty Dublin, Ireland and going to regular Mass on Sundays.

My student never asked me about Oliver St. John Gogarty.

James Joyce is on literary Olympus with Milton, Chaucer and Shakespeare. Gogarty is a fine bit of hill.

Joyce, like Milton read and absorbed words, sounds, rythms and rhymes in order to slowly develop works of genius. He did not begin with Finnegan's Wake. Nor should a sixteen year old girl. Nor should anyone. One must immerse oneself in the shallow waters before cliff diving in Mexico.

One of the best cliff-divers wielding a pen and keyboard is renowned actor Michael Moriarty. He passed another birthday on Friday April 5th. Mr. Moriarty lives in self-imposed political exile in Canada and could not be a happier man. He was angered by Bill Clinton, America's Alcibiades, and is appalled by the present occupant of the White House. I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Moriarty. He like Gogarty and Joyce welded to Vaughan Williams - an accomplished actor, musician, historian, journalist and fierce defender of the unborn.

I recommend reading Michael Moriarty, knowing that his prose is a plunge into the deep end of the pool. He is no silly bonhomie like Christopher Buckley, much less a timid titmouse like David Brooks; rather, he is liberal with literary and cultural allusions, lost on to many first time readers. His context is vast.

Click my post title for # 44 in his Michael Moriarty's Haunted Heaven.

* Last I heard this young woman held a Master of Arts and was near completion of her Ph.D. in English Literature.

** "He had a defect that prevented him being a companionable man: he had no reserve in speaking about people, even those he had cause to admire, even those who were close to him. If they had some pitiful disability or shortcoming, he brought it right out. It was an incontinence of speech... The result was that people gave him license and kept a distance from him." --Padraic Colum (emphasis my own)


O.St.J.Gogarty's "The Song of the Cheerful (but slightly sarcastic) Jesus" [e206]

I'm the queerest young fellow that ever was heard.
My mother's a Jew; my father's a Bird
With Joseph the Joiner I cannot agree
So 'Here's to Disciples and Calvary.'
If anyone thinks that I amn't divine,
He gets no free drinks when I'm making the wine
But have to drink water and wish it were plain
That I make when the wine becomes water again.

My methods are new and are causing surprise:
To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes
To signify merely there must be a cod
If the Commons will enter the Kingdom of Good

Now you know I don't swim and you know I don't skate
I came down to the ferry one day and was late.
So I walked on the water and all cried, in faith!
For a Jewman it's better than having to bathe.

Whenever I enter in triumph and pass
You will find that my triumph is due to an ass
(And public support is a grand sinecure
When you once get the public to pity the poor.)

Then give up your cabin and ask them for bread
And they'll give you a stone habitation instead
With fine grounds to walk in and raincoat to wear
And the Sheep will be naked before you'll go bare.

The more men are wretched the more you will rule
But thunder out 'Sinner' to each bloody fool;
For the Kingdom of God (that's within you) begins
When you once make a fellow acknowledge he sins.

Rebellion anticipates timely by 'Hope,'
And stories of Judas and Peter the Pope
And you'll find that you'll never be left in the lurch
By children of Sorrows and Mother the Church

Goodbye, now, goodbye, you are sure to be fed
You will come on My Grave when I rise from the Dead
What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly
And Olivet's breezy-- Goodbye now Goodbye

http://www.themodernword.com/joyce/joyce_works_fw.html

Michael Moriarty & Dennis Byrne -On Public Intellectuals and Marriage: Defense of 1st Principles

"I have concluded that to be an intellectual is to reach for an entirely different planet than the one most of us live on. Certainly to be an intellectual is to create another language of sorts.I understand the impulse, having been a lifelong, shameless dreamer." Michael Moriarty, Ottawa Life Magazine

"Few if any supporters of gay marriage demand as a matter of central concern that each gay partner be automatically recognized as the parent of any child generated by the other."  Dennis Byrne Chicago Tribune


God, in his Eternal sense of humor, has seen fit to allow me to breath and also to connect,, converse and commiserate with intellectuals fired with fierce fortitude. Fortitude is moral strength founded in a belief or faith beyond one's self that defines all subsequent actions and intellectual positions regardless of outcomes.

Murder and killing are very different.  One is an act of desperation and the other an act of necessity.  A woman and a man are very different, in most cases.  That difference is a necessity to human generation.  President Obama is not only America's First Abortionist, but also America's First Gay, because public intellectuals have said so.  I am sure that Barack Obama would wildly object to either claim made on his behalf, by the people who fund, support, worship and obey his every waking thought, as a matter of Pragmatism - saying anything, at anytime, for different reasons.  Pragmatism is the core, but very moveable, doctrine of  the American Intellectual.  Pragmatism denies 1st Principles - faith in God is the very First of 1st Principles*.  God is Inconvenient Truth.

I was told by a Jesuit of sound and sensible orthodoxy, Father Al, that any Catholic could never be admitted membership in the American Intellectual fraternity, based upon our demand for First Principles ( Ethics and Pseudo-Ethics).  Father Al let us working-stiffs know that we should swell with pride in the knowledge of this bar to the country club of parsers.

Progressives can not admit to eternal truths, because those truths block their end-runs around logic and rigor. Michael Moriarty, Chicago rooted actor, musician, composer and writer,nicely unmasks the clever masker in his recent article for Ottawa Life Magazine.

Mr. Moriarty reacts to an article by Professor Louis Menand of New York University, in The New Yorker.  This piece concerns the state of American higher education.  Prof. Menand's hobby-horse is the American public intellectual - the citizen-scholar who 'purifies' culture - Joan Didion, Janet Malcolm, Norman Mailer, and Pauline Kael to Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman, Joan Walsh, and Alec Baldwin. 

"They (NY Intellectuals) played the role of purveying intellectual culture to a wider audience, and spoke to people outside their own fields.”

THEY made 1st Principles ( God and all of His Works) obscure enough for Ad Men and Ambulance Chasers, one step out of the cow shit in Wisconsin, want to be little Andre Malrauxs and feel the WILL to be proletarian.  Make six to seven figures selling Ban Roll-on Deodorant and write checks to the Black Panthers, SDS, and John Lindsey.  Our capitalist economy made them gentry, and the New Republic allowed them to play Atticus Finch - One Man's Murder of an Unborn Child is Another's Woman's Health Care, Scout. Who's to say? - with a self-satisfied snap of the store-bought galluses. 

Michael Moriarty picks the parsing Pragmatist's bones clean, because like most Catholic educated folks, he remembers what he has read before and applies scrutiny accordingly:

I first encountered Prof. Menand, . . . , as somewhat of an authority on the American literary and social critic Edmund Wilson, the rather intense-looking face to the left.
Louis Menand’s preface for Wilson’s To the Finland Station had the refreshing wisdom to include a very Russian warning about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: Vladimir Nabokov’s remark that Lenin was “a glass of the milk of human kindness at the bottom of which was a dead rat.”
One assumes, however, that the publisher of To the Finland Station must have considered Menand a Wilson authority or at least an admirer of some sort.
In typically mystifying fashion, Menand says about his college dissertation on Edmund Wilson.
“I didn’t write about Wilson because he was an important figure for me, but because he was part of that phenomenon.”He means the “Modernist” phenomenon… or is it the “Post-Modernist” phenomenon?As a further glimpse into his dissertation, he says,

Prof. Louis Menand

“The writers who influenced me the most were Joan Didion, Janet Malcolm, Norman Mailer, and Pauline Kael. It wasn’t Edmund Wilson and it wasn’t Lionel Trilling, even though I certainly read them. When I was a graduate student, I thought about them as possible models, but when I look at what I have done since, they have not been particularly influential. The reason I like the writers I named is because they seem very sophisticated in seeing through issues about culture and ideas that actually is very like contemporary academic thinking. The thing about Wilson—that in the end is frustrating about him—is that he had no ability to think theoretically. In the few cases where he does, it is his least satisfactory work.”“The reason I like the writers I named is because they seem very sophisticated…“ “Sophisticated” is the seminal code word, I believe. All five of the writers achieved success, literary American triumph actually, without being necessarily branded as Communist.

Seeming is believing in Pragmatic Progressivism

In 1971, I was taught by a Jesuit priest and philosophy professor of sound and sensible orthodoxy, Father Al, that any Catholic could never be admitted membership in the American Intellectual fraternity, based upon our demand for First Principles ( Ethics and Pseudo-Ethics).  Father Al let us working-stiffs paying Loyola tuition know that we should swell with pride in the knowledge of this particular bar to the country club of Pragmatic parsers. 'Sometimes it is a gift to be refused admission,'  said the Missionary with a cold sore to boiling aboriginal stew pot. 

Progressives can not admit to eternal truths, because those truths block their end-runs around logic and rigor.

Around the time that Father Al was teaching Ethics to me and Mike Miller, Jim Molloy, Mike Stankewicz, Jack McNamara, Mary Kay Harvey and Stanley Jurich, the Temptaions were singing Just My Imagination, Running Away With Me.

Each day through my window I watch her as she passes by
I say to myself you're such a lucky guy,
To have a girl like her is truly a dream come true
out of all the fellows in the world she belongs to me.
But it was Just my imagination,
once again runnin' away with me.
It was just my imagination runnin' away with me. Oo
Soon we'll be married and raise a family (Oh yeah)
A cozy little home out in the country with two children maybe three.
I tell you I can visualize it all
this couldn't be a dream for too real it all seems;
But it was Just my imagination once again runnin' way with me.
Tell you it was just my imagination runnin' away with me.

Rigor.  Michael Moriarty is a dreamer in the mold of Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, Billy of Occam, Moses Maimonides, and John Scotus Erigenna.  Those medieval gents were the Temptin' T's of scholastic thought - four Brits and a Jew. Like them, the Temptations - African American scholastics - cut the veil between imagination and reality to happy conclusion - marriage is between a Man and Woman.  Celebrate that diversity in Holy Wedlock!

Dennis Byrne, another Jesuit educated writer, has heroically challenged the parsing pragmatists over Marriage.  The outcome of his position will be a cavalcade of idiotically molded screeching from peanut gallery in the comment page.  I'd wager that the five star estimate by robo-writers will assess Mr. Byrne's defense of Marriage between a Man and Woman at two stars by day's end and here's why:

Research and common sense indisputably validate that heterosexual marriage is uniquely good in itself, better for the children and essential for the common good.
That's why government has seen fit to regulate this singular institution. Government doesn't regulate all human relationships; you don't need a license to form a friendship or a court decree to dump a friend. If marriage didn't serve a unique public good, government protections of all of its parties wouldn't be required; it would be regarded as little more than two people living together.
This is not to say that every marriage must produce children or that children raised in different circumstances, e.g. adoption, in separated families or by gay partners, can't do as well as or better. Nor does it deny that a same-sex partnership can't bond into a permanent, caring relationship, as good as or better than can heterosexual couples. Traditional marriage is an ideal, and like all other ideals, in practice it can fall short of its lofty goals. That doesn't negate the importance of preserving the ideal.

The ideal is not pragmatic.  Never was, no how.  Seeming is all the believing Bruce Dold and Chicago Tribune editorial board require, Mr. Byrne.  It is easier to be Eric Zorn, Carol Marin, Mary Schmich, Neil Steinberg, and Steve Chapman in this cracker-chested burg these days, because they all write the exact same thing in every column - like the citizen-scholars Michael Moriarty unmasks in his recent article - these lightweights  purvey what passes for  intellectual culture to a wider audience.

Holding to First Principles and all that goes with them requires virtue- "Hence it is necessary for us to progress, following this procedure, from the things that are less clear by nature, but clearer to us, towards things that are clearer and better known by nature. "

Michael Moriarty and Dennis Byrne offer excellent examples of intellectual discernment and courage; not

Just my Imagination, running away with me.

  

* In every systematic inquiry (methodos) where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these; for we think we know something just in case we acquire knowledge of the primary causes, the primary first principles, all the way to the elements. It is clear, then, that in the science of nature as elsewhere, we should try first to determine questions about the first principles. The naturally proper direction of our road is from things better known and clearer to us, to things that are clearer and better known by nature; for the things known to us are not the same as the things known unconditionally (haplôs). Hence it is necessary for us to progress, following this procedure, from the things that are less clear by nature, but clearer to us, towards things that are clearer and better known by nature. (Phys. 184a10–21) Aristotle

 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0515-byrne-20120515,0,6394836.column
http://www.ottawalife.com/2012/05/moriartys-musings-new-yorks-public-intellectuals/

Happy Birthday to Bill Koloseike and Michael Moriarty

Happy Birhday to Two Great Americans  - Bill Koloseike '92 and Michael Moriarty in the neighborhood of Ageless.  These pals of mine have helped untold thousands of people.

 Bill Kay - yeah, that Bill Kay: Mr. Chrysler, Ford, Chevy and Nissan Illinois - built a school and church in Uganda that flourishes.  At the age of 78 Bill learned Spanish in order to teach ESL to hundreds of people in the Aurora area and Bill has donated Millions of Dollars to assist Leo High School families meet the cost of Catholic high school tuition.



Michael Moriarty, a gifted athete,  is not only one of America's greatest actors, but also an accomplished pianist and composer.  He has roots in Chicago's Canaryville Neighborhood and his uncle Albert Died fighting the great Chicago Stockyards Fire of 1910.  His Grandfather played for the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers and Umpired the American League all through the 1940's and 1950's



Michael is and has been fierce enemy of Abortion -The American Holocaust and has fought bigotry and small-mindedness against gays, African Americans, Jews and women.  No progressive phony, Michael Moriarty battles evil from Euclidian principles and appeals to universal truth.

These two gents deserve huge cakes and drifts of ice cream!

Happy Birthday Lads!