A Visit to Casa Hickey

Not Chaos like together crush'd and bruis'd,
But as the world, harmoniously confus'd:
Where order in variety we see,
And where, tho' all things differ, all agree.
Alexander Pope, Windsor Forest, ll.12-16

Friday night, the woman I love and I paid a visit on two new parents and their beautiful child; after I got in my baby fix for the weekend, we had a late light supper at the fabulous KODA Bistro in West Beverly. Before we headed north and west to return the elegant and beautiful woman to her home in the immediate west suburbs, I stopped by the house.

My Daughter Clare and her troop of pals, expanded from the St. Cajetan pre-school line-up, to include teen beauties and scholars at Mother McAuley, Marist and St. Iggy from every parish urban and south sub-urban, were thronged and polishing off post-Halloween Fun Size Milky Ways, Three Musketeers and Kit Kats, Capri Sun Juices, slices of Doreen's pizza, between the back door ( the only entrance employed on the south side) and front room ( pronounced Frunchroom hereabouts) AKA living room.




The fair dame's reaction went viral.

A dolor sit hominis castrum suum, vel alterius palude!

N.B. This Sunday morning's pre-Mass offering was inspired by Michael Moriarty's wonderful article on Bette Davis. Click my post title.

To Help End Abortion:Leave the Gore on The Cutting Room Floor

There is nothing so horrible as America's love affair with abortion.

It is not something for children - despite the Democrats push to allow babies to kill their own babies without the approval of parents like Illinois' idiotic "Third Reich Imitators of the Legislature - Senator Heather Steans and Representative Kelly Cassidy.

I read Cardinal Cupich's tepid and perfunctory Statement in the St. Cajetan Parish Bulletin

As citizens of a state and people of faith who care about the common good, I urge you to join me and my brother bishops in an effort to defeat this radical departure from current law and practice in our state. Please reach out your State Representative and Senator to urge defeat of these bills. 

This milquetoast in a mitre waited far too late ( March 23, 2109) to say something about the state of Illinois legislating an open season on the innocent and then said nothing.

Real hearts have been broken by these evil bills long ago and thousands of people have taken action and packed the Illinois Legislative Building in Springfield to try and halt this evil long before the Ordinary of America's largest Catholic population opened his thin lips.

House Bill 2495 and Senate Bill 1942 seek to terminate any consideration of human being in the womb, as well as give the green light to Planned Parenthood's abortion mills.

House Bill 2467 and its identical Senate Bill 1594, repeals the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act sand strips parents of the right to prtect their daughters from the probes, scalpels and forceps of Planned Parenthood.

Blase Cupich, a feral political animal with a Pallium, plays coyly with politicians who take Mammon's coin like the Daleys, Durbins, Quigleys, Cunninghams, Burkes and Hurleys of Illinois and their Republican go-along mates.  Abortion is money. Money for Campaigns. Money for Ads and Money for continued self-service.

Abortion is joined at the hip with LGBTQ and Women's Issues.  "Hate abortion and  you hate gays and haughty women," runs its effective nonsequitur. Nonsense works in a non- Euclidian world.

Abortion owns the Media, as well as the politicians.

Abortion owns organized labor and union websites tout the glories of women and wonder of diversity.  Union people with large families vote for politicians who support the American genocide.

My large Catholic extended family does so every election.

I am not in a union.

I hate abortion.

Abortion owns the Arts, as well.  I know too many musicians, thespians and graphic artists who mouth Planned Parenthood platitudes, even though they are kind and generous people.

I know three actors who are fierce defenders of the unborn Mary Carney-Houlihan, her husband Mike and Michael Moriarty. The have dedicated their art and their lives to fighting for the lives of unborn children and often at the expense of lucrative opportunities.  They have been 'woke' for decades.

Pro-Life film makers are rare and generally awkward artists.  Like Pro-Life activists, they tend to be too over the top.

Pro-Life does not mean one needs to be Pro-goof, or Pro-Dilettante. A new film "Unplanned" has made something of a tiny ripple in the debate.

I have seen some scenes and decided that it will fail to help end abortion. Un Planned is the  true story of a Planned Parenthood renegade and abortion survivor, Abby Johnson, who woke to the fact that abortion is, in fact, a dollar drive House of Blood.



Hollywood panned the film and I must go along with the review - bad film, but good propaganda for the people who already understand abortion's intrinsic evil.

The gore and the horror of abortion clinic will not turn hearts and minds.  America is immune to the sight of blood and only too readily relishes hours of down-time viewing dedicated to the dining habits of werewolves, zombies and HBO ingenues and comics.

Aristotle, a dead white man, but an active member of the LGBTQ community of Athens and the court of Macedon, rightly argues in his Poetics, that violence must happen out of sight of the audience in order to effect a genuine catharthis of horror and pity.

That is why we do not SEE Oedipus put out his own eyes, or witness Medea's murder of her sons.

True horror allows the mind to work out the details.  No drama, or actual film of the Holocaust was as chilling as the sober and dreadful luncheon and meeting of Eichmann, Rheinhardt and the other architects of the Final Solution for World Jewry, as HBO's Conspiracy.

The minutes of The Wannsee Protocols was the script of the most terrifying movie  I have ever watched.



Would that a Pro-Life version of this brilliant movie get produced and abortion become understood for what it truly happens to be - the American Holocaust.

In the mean time, we must make Abortion's friends, like Cardinal Cupich, Democrat and GOP politicians who take Planned Parenthood's coin  feel very uncomfortable and ridicule - in the most loud of horse-laughs - the blood-soaked hypocrisy of Planned Parenthood.  Until then America will never be great again. 

I Have Absolutely Nothing to Complain About . . . But, This Gent Just Might!

Michael Moriarty reminded me this morning that it is the small blessings that mean everything.

Five people have been injured in the first day of the San Fermin festival, in the race known as the running of the bullsA Spanish Red Cross spokesman said that a total of four people needed treatment by medical staff and one was hospitalised after falling.
Tens of thousands of people packed into Pamplona's main square on Wednesday for the start of the annual event... Sky News London.

"Uncle Sam’s Big Bowl of Breakfast Meats" A Modest Proposal for Magazine or Great Meal

Fawcett Publishing was founded by Capt. Wilford Hamilton Fawcett – Capt. Billy, a Spanish American War and WWI veteran. It began with a magazine dedicated to humor, snappy stories, cute girls, gadgets and games. Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang took its title from a shrapnel shell that would blow-up over the heads of troops. Rather ghoulish that was, considering that Capt. Billy’s audience happened to be veterans of the Great War who endured the horrors of head wounds. Imagine a veteran of Iraq, or Afghanistan putting out a magazine entitled Laughs from an Improvised Explosive Device (IED.

As a dedicated and devout craven, my sense of irony tends toward the more wholesome and manly pursuits of the heaping board – a table loaded with eats. Patriotism and ripping yarns often meet over platters of meat. Nothing makes an American whose forebears left the hunger and despair of Lebanon, Poland, Norway, Liberia, Latvia, Lithuania, or the Philippines more Teddy Roosevelt than a good porterhouse or rack of lamb. At LaLumiere School, alma mater of Chief Justice John Roberts and comic actor Jim Gaffigan, I once asked my students to write an essay about which bird other than the American Eagle might best represent America.



Patrick Costello of Evanston, IL argued and wrote that America's iconic bird should be a Turkey – not the feathered living idiot who drowns himself during rainstorms, but the cooked, whole roasted feast. A+, my Boy! Uncle Sam would be proud. Uncle Sam the founder of the feast.

I would like to publish a monthly periodical dedicated to Uncle Sam’s America – if, to parallel to the movies of recent but popular culture, you’re in any way of the mind-set and character of Apollo Creed from Rocky; Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York, Wes Studi in anything, or Gloves Donahue from All Through The Night and Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius Beauvier then YOU are on my team.

Let’s have a wildly patriotic – nay jingoistic - magazine published by a draft-dodging coward for combat vets, lumber Jacks and Jills, and Guys and Dolls who pour gravy on everything without a second thought. I want to call this magazine –Uncle Sam’s Big Bowl of Breakfast Meats – that should give you some idea of the direction that our literary musings should take.

Paul Bunyan Portions for Thought: My Dream Team and topics ( maximum 600 words per month) – all articles, poems and features must make a flattering reference to our country, our history, our people, our way of life, our cuisine, and, or Uncle Sam would all be managed and edited by the likes of Dan McGrath, John Hector, Marcus Pass and Susan Jordan.

• Luggage, Safety and Packing Tips from the White House – Larry Lynch U.S. Secret Service (retired)
• Visual Arts - Sister Wendy Beckett
• Religion - Father Tony Brankin and Elias Crim
• Nutrition and Health with AFL/NFL Football Hall of Famers and Legends Art Donovan*and Dick Butkus

* Voila! Art Donovan!

• Dance – Tough one - gotta find a real hoofer
• Poetry – Chicago’s J.J. Tindall
• Media and Pop Culture – Steve Rhodes and Anne Leary
• Law –Tamara Holder and Chief Justice of Illinois(ret.) Thomas Fitzgerald
• Theatre - Robert Falls Tony Moskus and Kara Zediker
• Your Dollars, Investments Gold, Guns, and Ammo – Ms. Terry Savage and Mr. Ted Nugent
• Medical & Neurological Breakthroughs – Jay Cutler Chicago Bears and Dr. Tom Origitano M.D. Loyola University
• Education K-20 – Ben Stein
• Humor – Joseph Epstein
• Film – Mike Houlihan & Michael Moriarty
• B&Bs with Dave Sambler of Bridgeport B & Bs
• Butcher Chat – Mike Benson of County Fair Foods
• Travel – Any Retired Stewardess with at least 25 years on the job with United/American/Southwest and Steve Jordan, former VP of Bank of Singapore
• Inner City Life – Levois
• Weather for the Month – Michele Leigh definitely.
• Politics and Government – Rep. Dan Lipinski Skinny Sheahan & Dan Kelley
• Chicago and National Nightlife – Nick Novich
• Sports with Dr. Camille Paglia **and Sox Pitching Great Bart Johnson – Dr. Paglia’s article of the decline of TO in Philly rocks from 2005:

**Philadelphia Eagles fans have been living in a jock soap opera -- "All My Children" surreally crossed with "Die! Die! My Darling!" Star wide receiver Terrell Owens arrived in a cloud of tainted glory from the San Francisco 49ers last year and took this city to delirious heights as the Eagles marched to the Super Bowl, their first appearance there in 24 years. Streaking downfield into the end zone in game after game, Owens (called "T.O.") danced, cavorted and mugged to the ecstatic delight of a Philadelphia crowd that had been starved for trash and flash in the drearily corporate era of nerdy Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie. . . .Goodbye, Terrell -- wherever you're headed. Thanks for the memories, but as a fierce funk song says, "Just let the doorknob hit you where the dog shoulda bit you!"
Que Mujer!

America is no where near past its prime and glory, Let’s drop the texting and get in some eating, bowling, travelling, reading and writing.

Keith Jarrett's "Danny Boy" - A Poignant Sense of Loss from a Giving Man

Ecstasy seems to be Jarrett’s identity: not only “follow your bliss” but “here, have a taste of mine!”

He’s one of the greatest storytellers we have!

As an actor I know a little about the subject of leading an audience through a tale of … mystery … and adventure … and … well … yes LOVE.

Is there a more sacred love song in the world than Danny Boy?

My adopted son, Floyd, just lost one of his sons today in a Toronto shooting.

Black on black vengeance.

To me the piercing truth of Jarrett’s rendering of Danny Boy has the agonies of profound loss in them, losses like that of my son.

Within all that pain, the beauty of existence is never more intense. The half-note interval tensions that drift … yes, mysteriously appear and disappear in his harmonies.

Speaking of “never more” … the “nevermore” of life and its fragility … and knowing how a great artist can literally force us to realize just how exquisite is God’s gift to us.Life!

How brief.

How divinely painful.

Bill Evans, one of the most influential jazz pianist of our time, performs Danny Boy in a much higher register … and … as lovely as his version may be … it carries none of the weight of Jarrett’s.

Why?

The stated key, at the very opening, tells us how profoundly serious Keith Jarrett is about Life in general.

The very last chorus of Jarrett’s Danny Boy leads to a brief quintessence of devastating harmonies, tensions that are at once divinely painful yet so deliriously inevitable. You know that this entire call to Danny Boy strikes at the very heart of our impermanence.

It ends with an allusion to the sacred plagal cadence, that all familiar ending to a choir hymn. Only an allusion, however.

Michael Moriarty, Actor, Jazz Musician, Journalist,Composer and Defender of the Unborn.



Today, Leo Alumni, Veterans of America's Wars, a living Medal of Honor recipient, and citizens will re-dedicate the gravesite of Cpl. John Fardy, USMC, a Leo graduate and Medal of Honor hero.

Click my post tite

The Feast of Corpus Christi - The Body of Christ

I had a perfectly lovely day with Miss Terry Sullivan. Together, we searched for hardware to fix her blinds and picked up another useful household item at Sears on 111th Street in Worth. One of the parts needed could only be found at Mount Greenwood True Value and so we hooked around back east.

After, finding the requiste blind fitting, we light- lunched at a new restaurant Joseph's* on 111th Street, The soup, salad and red pepper Italian sausage with garlic flecked bread was just the ticket.

I took a long stroll through Mount Olivet Cemetery** with the lady I love yesterday afternoon. Mount Olivet is a history lesson on the south side. It is one of the oldest Catholic burial sites in Chicago.

Mount Olivet brings together families and history. It contains the tombs of Chicago giants, like Monsignor Maurice Dorney, the King of the Chicago Stockyards; Michael Cassius McDonald, the founder of not only Chicago organized crime, but as historian Richard Lindberg reminds us, the Cook County Democratic Organization; the victims of the Chicago Fire and numerous Lake Michigan sailing wrecks, the bodies of strikers who fought for the eight hour day in Pullman and the Stockyard Strikes of 1904, 1912 and 1919; Captain Francis O'Neill, the Chicago Police Superintendent who meticulously preserved centuries of Irish music. There are gangsters and Carmelites buried close to one another, but the striking feature for me is the litany of familiar south side Chicago family names - Stanton, Parker, Sheehan, O'Donnell, Bransfield, Enright, Blakey, McAullife, McGrath, Dowling, Brackin, Nash, Burke, Cullen, Ahern, Capriotti, McNamara, Capangna, Casto, Gurgone, Pilon, Gately, Foster, Arneberg, Jennings, Donahue, Moriarty, Testa, Angone, Antonelli, Morganelli, . . . at one time Capone.

They are all brought together - living and the buried - at Mount Olivet,on sacred ground and our precious history. There are rolling hills and trees. Mount Olivet is a great meditation.

Today, is the Feast of Corpus Christi - The Body of Christ. We celebrate the union of God and Man in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on Calvary and especially in the transformation, consecration and communion of His Body and Blood in the Mass.
John 6: 51 - 58

I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you;
he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.
As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.
This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever."

There is much to remind us of others. I generally need a whack with a two by four between the eyes to snap me out of my contemplation of my navel. A stroll with one I love through Mount Olivet had a much more salubrious effect.

*

Joseph's Restaurant and Bar
3123 W. 111th Street, Chicago, IL 60655
Google Map
(773) 445-5637

Phone : (773) 445-5637
Email : josephsrestaurantchicago@gmail.com

We are located on 111th street just east of Kedzie Avenue in Chicago - Mount Greenwood, IL

**

Mount Olivet Cemetery, 2901 West 111th Street
Opened 1885

Mount Olivet Cemetery was the first Catholic diocesan cemetery to serve Chicago’s southland. Established in 1885, the burial ground is one of the city’s most picturesque and was once located outside of the city limits. Catholics in Chicago were immigrants, and not surprisingly, city cemeteries reflect ethnicity. While there were German and Polish National cemeteries, the Irish tended to be buried in diocesan cemeteries. Mount Olivet Cemetery buried mainly Irish, reflected in its family plots and monuments of Celtic crosses and Irish names. Not surprisingly, a statue of St. Patrick is found amongst the graves.

Irish Nationalists of Chicago Obelisk at Mount Olivet Cemetery

Dedicated September 30, 1888

Rising 81 feet above Mount Olivet Cemetery is the first monument in America erected by the Irish Nationalists Society. In 1888, this Egyptian obelisk of Barry gray granite features a seven foot pedestal. At each angle are four Corinthian columns. The obelisk was erected in honor of those Irish patriot heroes who died in Chicago, yet had no family in their new country.

The face of the monument reads:

“Erected August 20, 1888 to the memory of departed brethren. God Save Ireland.”

Former Alaska Governor Palin Did Nothing to Keep Chicago's City Hall Open Yesterday

Yesterday was opening day for freshmen at Leo High School and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin could not be bothered to drop by and give the African American young men attending this venerable Catholic inner city high school a Howdy! Not only that Chicago City Hall was closed for business and Palin lifted not one finger to help.

Sarah Palin is the cause of all the problems President Obama has had since his historic election.

In Afghanistan, American troops face the Taliban, with whom we should be dialoging, but nowhere is Palin to be found.

When the late Michael Jackson was gulping down white gloved handfuls of crazy pills, did Palin intervene? 'Zounds - she did not!

Did she save Vick's Dogs? Nope.

MSNBC Chris "Milky" Matthews suggests with every breath in his thigh that Palin is ordering folks to strap on the shooting irons and attend Townhalls.

Sarah Palin is goading Americans to attend Townhalls in order that they may be infected by the H1N1 - Pig Puker Virus.

Every voice in electronic media devotes every level of volume in damning Palin, but her pernicious influence on the lives of all Americans continues unabated - like the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, Professor James Moriarty The Napoleon of Crime, Sarah Palin is La jeune fille à l'agneau.

Yet, considered unlettered and unwholesome to Salonitas and their lap-dogs like David Brooks and Kathleen Parker, Palin weaves a web of calumny and intrigue with the dexterity of Kali -Palin's tawny and sinew-ed Diana-like arms snake in and out of every aspect of the Life American!

Woe unto this Land! Unscrubbed of Palin.

Only this morning, I counted the bills in the silver clip inscribed with the honorific -#1. Dad ( Father's Day 1999) and was shocked to see that I had ten dollars fewer than the previous morning.

Palin is Afoot in this Land of the Free! The Game's Afoot!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/17/palin_called_a_spade_a_spade_97916.html