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.

Vietnam Statistics from the Wall - Michael Moriarty Forwarded This On The Other Greatest Generation

A Vietnam Marine, Bill Pfeifer sent this to Michael Moriarty and Michael sent this along to me.

Tom Brokaw should take a look at another Greatest Generation.

Interesting Veterans Statistics off the Vietnam Memorial Wall

"Carved on these walls is the story of America , of a continuing quest to preserve both Democracy and decency, and to protect a national treasure that we call the American dream." ~President George Bush

SOMETHING to think about - Most of the surviving Parents are now Deceased.

There are 58,267 names now listed on that polished black wall, including those added in 2010.

The names are arranged in the order in which they were taken from us by date and within each date the names are alphabetized. It is hard to believe it is 36 years since the last casualties.

Beginning at the apex on panel 1E and going out to the end of the East wall, appearing to recede into the earth (numbered 70E - May 25, 1968), then resuming at the end of the West wall, as the wall emerges from the earth (numbered 70W - continuing May 25, 1968) and ending with a date

in 1975. Thus the war's beginning and end meet. The war is complete, coming full circle, yet broken by the earth that bounds the angle's open side and contained within the earth itself.

The first known casualty was Richard B. Fitzgibbon, of North Weymouth , Mass. Listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having been killed on June 8, 1956. His name is listed on the Wall with that of his son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who was killed on Sept. 7, 1965.

There are three sets of fathers and sons on the Wall.
39,996 on the Wall were just 22 or younger.
8,283 were just 19 years old.
The largest age group, 33,103 were 18 years old.
12 soldiers on the Wall were 17 years old
5 soldiers on the Wall were 16 years old.
One soldier, PFC Dan Bullock was 15 years old.

997 soldiers were killed on their first day in Vietnam .
1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam .

31 sets of brothers are on the Wall.
Thirty one sets of parents lost two of their sons.
54 soldiers on attended Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia . I wonder why so many from one school.
8 Women are on the Wall. Nursing the wounded.
244 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War; 153 of them are on the Wall.

Beallsville, Ohio with a population of 475 lost 6 of her sons.
West Virginia had the highest casualty rate percapita in the nation. There are 711 West Virginians on the Wall.

The Marines of Morenci - They led some of the scrappiest high school football and basketball teams that the little Arizona copper town of Morenci (pop. 5,058) had ever known and cheered. They enjoyed roaring beer busts. In quieter moments, they rode horses along the Coronado Trail, stalked deer in the Apache National Forest . And in the patriotic camaraderie typical of Morenci's mining families, the nine graduates of Morenci High enlisted as a group in the Marine Corps. Their service began on Independence Day, 1966. Only 3 returned home.

The Buddies of Midvale - LeRoy Tafoya, Jimmy Martinez, Tom Gonzales were all boyhood friends and lived on three consecutive streets in Midvale, Utah on Fifth, Sixth and Seventh avenues. They lived only a few yards apart. They played ball at the adjacent sandlot ball field. And they all went to Vietnam . In a span of 16 dark days in late 1967, all three would be killed. LeRoy was killed on Wednesday, Nov. 22, the fourth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Jimmy died less than 24 hours later on Thanksgiving Day. Tom was shot dead assaulting the enemy on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

The most casualty deaths for a single day was on January 31, 1968 ~ 245 deaths.
The most casualty deaths for a single month was May 1968 - 2,415 casualties were incurred.

For most Americans who read this they will only see the numbers that the Vietnam War created. To those of us who survived the war, and to the families of those who did not, we see the faces, we feel the pain that these numbers created. We are, until we too pass away, haunted with these numbers, because they were our friends, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. There are no noble wars, just noble warriors. (emphasis my own)

Please pass this on to those who served during this time, and those who DO Care.

Not as lean; not as mean; but still a MARINE

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

"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

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

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.

"Sarah Palin Is America," Michael Moriarty Calls It Correctly

Any people who agree that the killing of a child is choice, will also agree that two gentleman can procreate, that America can only win by losing, that up is down and round is square have been educated pretty badly.

When Washington sent Cornwallis and his redcoats out of the trenches at Yorktown, the Crown forces bandsmen played a song -"The World Turned Upside Down." The Monarchy was sent packing. The colonists fought to become Americans. The Americans fought the British again, as well as Napoleon's Navy and the Barbary Pirates to maintain a flawed but free democratic republic that eventually ironed out the slavery issues with the blood of Americans.

After two World Wars, a catastrophic economic and climate disaster in the 1930's, the America meant to be was built in the 1950's - a revolution in life style. That lifestyle brought ease and comfort to the Nation. Wars were no longer declared, but remained horrific. Korean and Vietnam war veterans returned to comments from neighbors and even family members, "Where have you been?" Bleeding.

"No matter, we have a new two-car garage, color TV, and free college tuition. Only dummies go in the Service."

Perhaps that ease gave us too much time to worry about ourselves. I know that I am about self-absorbed as one can get - well, maybe not always.

We allowed Roe v. Wade. To me that is akin to question asked of returning servicemen -"Where have you been? Out of sight; out of mind." Out of mind can mean madness.

Actor, musician, journalist and defender of the innocent unborn Michael Moriarty wrote a powerful endorsement of Sarah Palin in Big Hollywood. I agree with Mr. Moriarty.

Lincoln predicted that America would not be destroyed by a foreign power. If she dies, it will be by suicide.
Sarah is the only life raft America has right now. Any other candidate for the Republican Party, Romney in particular, will eventually be in the back room cutting deals with a virulently Progressive Democratic Party, a radically Leftist’s poison that has, with Obama, proven its own promise: “the fundamental transformation of the United States of America.”
After four years of Obama, the Dr. Jeckyll of America has already become Mr. Hyde. This radical experiment with a known Marxist in the Presidency?
Suicide.
Ms. Palin has said she will announce in the near future.
Should she even announce her withdrawal, I trust these words and those of others might help her to reconsider.
Sarah Palin is America.
America at her most beautiful, her most honest, her most simply eloquent and her most resilient.
Resilience is what America needs now.
Without Sarah Palin as President, America cannot bounce back.
Many might call a President Palin “bold medicine”.
With America on the edge of suicide, Sarah Palin is the “shock treatment” needed by the entirely moribund, self-defeated and suicidally depressed world.
The human race must either be pro-life or pro-death. Those “enlightened despots” who think otherwise and are certain we can “split hairs” into whole crops of Progressive New World Order Thinking?

Sarah Palin reminds me of the women that I admire. She is a happy person. She is happy because she is honest and unafraid. I always thought that Barack Obama was a pretty good politician, until he ran for President. He was elected to be sure. You can't take that from the man. Why he was elected will be the subject of history.


Well stated, Mr. Moriarty. I do not believe that Michael Moriarty is too much concerned about criticism. We still have the vote.

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.”

Kevin Myers - Why One Writes, Yet Sales Stink Out Loud

I have written two books, articles, reviews, rants, confessions, obfuscations, grants, proposals, love notes and many, many apologies. I am blessed to have received payment for the books, articles and reviews. Go figure.

Those payments went immediately to debtors - Peoples Gas, ATT, ComEd, Cook County, The City of Chicago, and the great folks at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. Some spare shillings and shekels went to entertainment and my snappy habiliments.

Great writers practice the art. I too practice the craft with the love of the game of a fourth-stringer. There are so many wonderful writers. Some of my favorite writers practicing today are not the best-selling political pundits and hacks, nor the plugged-in lawyers, let alone the socialite dabblers who pen less than meaty bestsellers, and columns. In my helot's opinion the very best writers are:

Joseph Epstein - America's Montaigne: Joe Epstein is to Pat Hickey as Tartar of Kobe beef with Imperial Beluga caviar and Belons oyster is to a Slim Jim.

Beachwood Reporter Publisher/Editor and moral titan Steve Rhodes who has more integrity than Gates has nickels

Actor/journalist/musician Michael Moriarty - God did overtime pumping talent, grace and courage in this fierce defender of honesty

Literary critic/activist Camille Paglia - The Total Woman

Lawyer/journalist Christine Flowers of Philadelphia - A Superb Person

Sports writer and Leo HS President Dan McGrath the King of the Declarative Sentence

Chicago historian Richard Lindberg If it happened Richard reports on it without varnish

Chicago attorney/journalist/historian Dan Kelley who is exact and poetic in presenting his prose

Jazz critic/journalist Stanley Crouch he writes with the soul of a sailor

Bloggers John Ruberry and Anne Leahy who keep Illinois wide awake to common sense

Novelist/historian Kevin Baker - read Baker's historical novels and understand America: Paradise Alley, Dreamland and Strivers Row better than Dos Passos.

Tribune columnist John Kass - Royko couldn't carry John's jockstrap, nor would care to

Sun Times Reporters Natasha Korecki and Mark Konkol Hope for Journalism

Second City Cop - The Flat-foot can sling prose

Humorist/actor/Film Maker Mike Houlihan: The Man is Pure Gold

18th Century Chicago Genius the late Tom Roeser

Journalist Dennis Byrne a reminder of Ray Coffey's honest prose

Demographer/journalist Joel Kotkin

Political Pundit Don Rose - Maybe the only Progressive who parts with a nickel

Crime Biographer/historian Rose Keefe - tougher than Smash McKenna after a full meal

Priest/Homilist -Father Tony Mazurkiewicz,O.Carm. & Father Gallagher of Sacred Heart Church

At the top of this talented tree, is Irish Independent columnist Kevin Myers. The man can line up words like Napoleon lined up Tirailleurs, Grenadiers, and Chasseurs at Austerlitz. Today, Kevin Myers presents a golden insight to writers in the face of reality.

Spilling ink does not portend a bankable pot of gold.

Wednesday June 08 2011
Few things so thoroughly test the will to live of Writers of Unsuccessful Books (such as this columnist) as the inexcusable success of others, and why they are so favoured.

Any tour of a bookshop by us WUBs reveals slain pine trees groaning beneath the weight of the pink-covered works by authors who may simply be described: TOP: Twenties, Ovaried, Photogenic. And if they're not T or P, but are still O, then there's always the Orange prize for women writers only (which is announced today: imagine the outcry from those well-known literary feminists Fallopia Whynge and Ovaria Fume over a man-only literary award).

The 'Daily Telegraph' last week gave a half-page splash to the first novel of a TOP named Georgina Bloomberg. The author is 28 and already famous, being the very successful show-jumping daughter of the even more famous Michael Bloomberg, the Wall Street billionaire and mayor of New York. Moreover, no doubt emboldened by family success, her sister nurtures serious political ambitions. Georgina Bloomberg's debut work of fiction is about -- well whaddya know -- a successful show-jumping daughter of a Wall Street billionaire, with a politically ambitious older sister. The fair Miss Bloomberg has even been interviewed at length about her "writing" by the 'New York Times', dear God almighty. So how was this possible? All was revealed in the 'Telegraph' story: "Bloomsbury, the publisher, said the idea for the book came from an agent."

Of course it bloody did. (Pause to vomit).

Traditional publishing is dying, and the market-driven, agent-led TOPification of books is one reason why. However, market distortions are not just at the TOP level of pulp fiction. It is now the norm for established writers to gushingly review one another's books: in Ireland, it is Colm/Sebastian/Joseph/ Anne, in Britain it is Julian/ Ian/Sebastian/Martin, interlocking literary torcs upon whose burnished gold the sun of mutually warm critiques never sets.

Which is why at this time of year, I almost welcome the annual outbursts of toxin from VS Naipaul, at whatever festival he is attending. Last week he announced at Hay that no woman writer would ever be as good as him -- to an entirely predictable fury. He is a quite refreshingly horrible man. He doesn't write to be successful or to be popular. He has no eye for a market, or an idea of what a market is. This is not a touching and beguiling naivety, so much as ignorance about the real world, which in scale is probably every bit the equal of the ignorance of the delightful Miss Bloomberg. But presumably unlike her, Naipaul exults in his ignorance as proof of his superiority, where in reality it is simply a pathological disorder.

Naipaul is a monster. His monstrousness is not made in any way more charming by his lack of guilt or shame. By his own account he repeatedly betrayed his young and vulnerable wife with prostitutes.

He is the kind of vile man who is murdered in the opening pages of a whodunit, and at the end we find that every single character we have met in the book, including the investigating police officers, plus Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Roger Ackroyd and Sherlock Holmes, have all entered the general and thoroughly deserved conspiracy to kill him.

Yet Naipaul is a sublime writer. No living novelist comes near him. It is an inexplicable paradox. The only other "modern" novelist who was so unpleasant was also perhaps the only English writer over the past century who was his match: Evelyn Waugh. He too was a monster: a posturing snob, a sneering bully and -- like Naipaul today -- an alpha male whom no one could ever best in social interaction, merely because of his status in the human hierarchy. This is a fact of life that confirms our condition as exalted chimpanzees: it is always impossible for lower status animals to defeat higher status animals in social conflict. No one left Bismarck's or Hitler's or Stalin's or Churchill's or Cheney's or Rumsfeld's offices slapping their thighs and chuckling triumphantly: "By God, I got the better of that dormouse."

WAugh's misanthropic life came to an end just as Naipaul's literary career was beginning, almost like a transmigration of abominable souls. Nonetheless, wise observers ought to judge the literary merits of both men solely for their written words, whereas their spoken utterances, full of hatred, bigotry and snobbery, should be treated with contempt.

But of course, the world is not wise, which is why Naipaul's recent and very silly boast, that no woman writer would ever be as good as him, has been making predictably loud headlines, with a drearily predictable indignation from Fallopia Whynge and Ovaria Fume. This is stupid: his opinions are neither worth repeating, rejecting nor reacting to, in any way. They should, like Miss Bloomberg's literary ambitions, and those of all her fellow TOPs, be totally ignored. Alas, that is not the way life on this planet works, which is what we poor weeping WUBs know all too well, as we watch Bloomberg make No 1 in Tesco, while Naipaul is the overall bestseller in Hodges Figgis, and Writers With Ovaries enjoy the Orange.

Irish Independent

Ain't it true though.

Michael Moriarty, Sergei Rachmaninoff and James Joyce

“She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the dusty odor of cretonne. She was tired.” James Joyce -'Eveline' from The Dubliners

Eveline or Evvy, refused to escape and buried her White face in the common-place -lace curtains, dust and a timorous obligation to the familiar.

In this very short story by James Joyce, the reader gets dragged into the soul-less commonplace that is Eveline.

She is a middle class woman in love with a a manly, kind, adventurous and alive man named Frank. Frank is leaving dear old dirty Dublin for Buenas Aires and wants to take Evvy with him. She refuses. She stays musty and dusty. Get these final lines -

A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:

"Come!"

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.

"Come!"

No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.

"Eveline! Evvy!"

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

Old Jim could work a pen.

Another fine writer is my frequent e-mail pal, Michael Moriarty. This actor, musician, journalist and courageous defender of the unborn lives in Canada and is working on an autobiographical musical composition. This musical biography may be a Confessio like St. Augustine's or an Apologia ala John Cardinal Newman. We shall see, or hear.

Nevertheless, Mr. Moriarty wrote a touching remembrance for Exit Stage Right. Like his musical composition the essays are titled The Haunted Heaven. In the passage that I provide today, Mr. Moriarty explores the coming of the Holy Spirit through the music of Rachmaninoff. Here is the passage by the Russian composer refered to in Mr. Moriarty's essay -

Rachmaninoff!

What a Virgil, Sergei Rachmaninoff, to lead me into the Haunted Heavens of Life!

Then to be reintroduced to the Russian giant by a divinely gifted genius named Olga Kern!!

She is now ripping into the last movement with all the simultaneous speed, strength and sensitivity she can summon up with the same oceanic brilliance she has mustered throughout this virtual monster of a piano concerto.

Russian composers and Russian musicians will play a monumentally large role in my life as the years pass. The first of course was the vibrantly impassioned Russian genie, Sergei Rachmaninoff.

He and his Haunted Heaven entered my life before I could even talk.

To this day Rachmaninoff's protean lyricism seems unsurpassed by anyone.

He and his music became a virtual umbilical cord to my infancy's ecstasy.

His melodies are only the beginning of his abandon to whatever muse God chose to both plague and adore him with.

Oceanic is the only adjective that seems sufficient.

Unlike Eveline in Joyce's tale, Moriarty plunges into the waves.

Michael can work a pen.


http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/959/

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."

Actor Michael Moriarty on Literature, Existentialism and The Fragile Minds of American Youth

The mind of a young person is God's marvel. The more the young mind encounters the more it absorbs; however, what that supple organ makes use of what it takes in can be dangerous. Parents, priests and pedagogues are best agents to direct the and chennel the course of experiences and epiphanies taken in by young people. There are very bad ideas - drinking mercury, diving off of a water tower, or basing one's actions upon seductive principles founded on misery.

The Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard built a theology on dread as the basis for making decisions. Abraham agonizing over his pact to sacrifice Issac as the blood bond of God's covenant was the spark of existentialism - a negative philosophy that morphed Kierkegaard's sermons into a Romantic precis of Satan's wildly idiotic battle with God. Knowing full well God's omnipotence, Old Scratch never-the-less gave it the old Ivy League try - again, and again. Byron's Childe Harold in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, lines 1031-1102 whines:

I have not loved the World, nor the World me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee,
Nor coined my cheek to smiles,-nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such-I stood
Among them, but not of them- in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

What teenage girl girl could not go weak in the knees ( Vampire, Matrix-caparisoned dark eyed, pale and pasty dreamy non Jock) over the sentiments of this brooding youth? J,D. Salinger's Holden Caufield - the quintessential American Teenage Male - narrates his negative world view and spits ironic scorn at the phonies of the ordered world. Young minds are attracted to the dark - death - dread and the Gothic.

The greatest generation and their Korean and Vietnam heirs had their bellies full of death and dread and created a lifestyle and standard of living that was the antithesis - a life affirming ethic and commitment to service - for their children. The American brooding generations had the luxury to hurl defiance at order and life itself with parsing nods to dim authorities found in books and spouting semiotic nonsense from the plush podiums of the Academy - whatever the hell that is.

Chicago-rooted actor, composer,essayist and anti-abortion activist Michael Moriarty wrote a sound study of the dangers of toxic doctrines ingested by young minds without the rigorous oversight of parents, priests and capable pedagogues - that's teachers. Mass murderer Jared Lochner seems to be a case study of toxic thought unchecked . . .and most likely unsupervised.

American Existentialism: Jared Loughner

By Michael Moriarty
web posted February 7, 2011

While Jared Loughner's list of favorite writings run from Hitler's Mein Kampf and Marx's Communist Manifesto to George Orwell, Hermann Hesse and Ernest Hemingway, a mysteriously missing set of fashionably well-respected names are the French Existentialists, such as Abert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre.

By the time I had finished that relentlessly compelling tale of gratuitous murder and vague redemption (Albert Camus' The Stranger which ends with the words, "all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration,") my sense of the world had been shattered into a thousand pieces.

The essentials of this quote are from Stranger In A Strange Land – The Enduring American Appeal Of Existentialism, Nick Gillespie's still startling review of George Cotkin's Existential America.

With the endearing confession I can share with Mr. Gillespie about existentialism – "I still never quite understood it" – I suddenly began to comprehend a few things I had not even dreamt of during Freshman year at Dartmouth and the existential labyrinths of Philosophy 101. The course was taught devoid of the endless examples of senseless murder available even then. Somehow the anti-hero of Albert Camus' The Stranger was held to be examined in an a-historical vacuum. The ghosts of Jack The Ripper and Lizzie Borden were just begging to attend class; but the Professor would not even utter their names.

After this past week, however, and the nightmares rolling out of Tucson, Arizona, with the massacre there, the insane slaughter handed out to all of America by one Jared Loughner?

Cotkin's most original insight is something that escaped Camus and the others: "Existentialism, American style ... jibes well with American antinomianism, that willingness of the lonely individual to rebel against entrenched authority in the name of his or her most intense beliefs. Antinomianism, like existentialism, challenges easy certitude, entrenched religion, and moribund political assumptions."

Scary?

Quite possibly.

This is Jared Loughner, as attorney pro-se, defending himself in court.

The crime in Albert Camus' The Stranger is merely a small example of the massacre in Tucson which America may never recover from. Yet the obscenely joyous anticipation within the murderer that "a huge crowd of spectators … should greet me with howls of execration"?

This, for an existentialist apparently, is not insanity.

This is classic anti-heroism.

"L'enfer est les autres!"

"Hell is other people", as a profoundly existential character proclaims in Jean Paul Sartre's No Exit. The brilliant critic, Walter Kaufmann, encapsulated existentialism as defined by the 4 D's: "death, despair, dread and dauntlessness". According to the likes of Jean Paul Sartre, Jared Loughner is the quintessentially existential anti-hero.

To a French existentialist, Jared Loughner is not insane.

He is "dauntlessly" addressing "death, despair and dread" with a defining existential act, multiple versions of that apparently liberating but cold-blooded killing in Albert Camus' The Stranger.

Is existentialism a true philosophy?

Or is it merely a rationalization for the "enlightened despots" of France, from 18th century Robespierre to the 20th century's Jean Paul Sartre, to either commit mass murder or openly relish the shameless homicides of Jared Loughner, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, et al?

I believe Existentialism is the 20th century effort of French intellectuals to rationalize their horridly bloody, 18th century revolution. Existentialism was, and still is for many Frenchmen and women, the effort of intellectual supremacistsin Paristo defend what is the heart of the French Revolution and the rationale for the French Guillotine: it was the Existentially justifiable thing to do at the time.

Death, despair, dread and dauntlessness!

This is the moment in which I must remind my readers of the true enemy of the French Revolution. The ultimate and permanent enemy of the French Revolution was not the aristocracy nor even the bourgeoisie.

It was and still is the Catholic Church.

In addition and more to the point of this article, the number one enemy of the Progressive Revolution or the Obama Nation's "Fundamental transformation of the United States" is not the Tea Party but the Catholic Church. Rome's unflinching and unwavering condemnation of abortion strikes at the very cornerstone of Progressive philosophy, strategy and visions of the future. While the very black attire of Catholic priests similarly signify the very existential themes of dread, death and despair, the antidote, however, is not a mindless or homicidal dauntlessness.

It is Life!

Life, life and more life!

Life that is even more dauntless, forceful and abandoned than the mad eyes of Jared Loughner.

Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order 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.

The American classroom could use Michael Moriarty.

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.

USMC v. ACLU

This was sent to me by Two-time Emmy Winner, Jazz Pianist, Journalist, Essayist and Implacable Foe of Abortion and Progressive Nonsense, Michael Moriarty.

If you look closely at the picture above, you will note that all the Marines pictured are bowing their heads. That's because they're praying. This incident took place at a recent ceremony honoring the birthday of the corps, and it has the ACLU up in arms. "These are federal employees," says Lucius Traveler, a spokesman for the ACLU, "on federal property and on federal time.. For them to pray is clearly an establishment of religion, and we must nip this in the bud immediately."

When asked about the ACLU's charges, Colonel Jack Fessender, speaking for the Commandant of the Corps said (cleaned up a bit), "Screw the ACLU." GOD Bless Our Warriors. Send the ACLU to France !

Please send this to people you know, so everyone will know how stupid the ACLU is getting in trying to remove GOD from everything and every place in America May God Bless America , One Nation Under GOD!

click my post title for a fine essay by Michael Moriarty!

Charles Carroll - Catholic Founding Father & Signer of Declaration of Independence

Catholics helped make America. There were not a whole hell of a lot of Catholics in the thirteen original colonies, except for Maryland. One Catholic, Charles Carroll of Carrolton, was a patriot and stuck his Fish-on-Friday neck out as far as Sam Adams, John Adams, Ben Franklin and the lads of Virginia. In fact, Charles Carroll signed the Declaration of Independence.

These days Catholics are under constant assault from Academics, politicians including supposed Catholics, and the hacks of secular media and Hollywood. The Catholic Church is rock solid in its defense of Life, Marriage, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Being alive precludes what secularist call Liberty or Libertine-ism and any man or woman who takes Life Vows of Love knows that the Liberty to do whatever one feels like doing is not in the cards.

Yesterday, I posted a beautifully written essay by Emmy/Tony Award winning actor and jazz musician Michael Moriarty. Mr. Moriarty said this,

All is politics these days … and all will be used to further the political game.
However, considering the Catholic Church’s major hand in overturning the Polish Communist State, the “game” is decidedly beyond politics.
The increasingly deadly Game has been a not-so-Cold War for quite some time.
Unfortunately, it is now not only Catholics versus Communists.
It is the Catholic Church versus the entire Progressive New World Order.
Versus the European Union’s Socialism.
Versus Russia’s neo-Soviet allegiance with Red China.
It is basically the Catholic Church versus the World.
Not even America is an ally of either Israel or the Catholic Church.
America is no longer, as the President has repeatedly declared by word and deed, a Judeo-Christian Civilization.
It is clearly and merely a part of the Progressive New World Order.

Catholics in America are being tested. Too many are failing that test handsomely and going along to get along - University of Notre Dame parse to weasel acceptance of abortion from our President who is abortions best friend; politicians Senators Kerry, Durbin, Dodd and Congressmen Pelosi, Stupak and Kennedy all play ball in Planned Parenthood's yard. If Catholics abandon their beliefs - life begins at conception and marriage is a sacrament between a Man and a Woman for Life -they will be praised and petted. If not, Catholics are bludgeoned as pedophile co-conspirators and worse.

That does not seem to be Original Intent of the Founding Fathers. Let's celebrate one -Charles Carroll!

"Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time;
they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion,
whose morality is so sublime and pure
(and) which insures to the good eternal happiness,
are undermining the solid foundation of morals,
the best security for the duration of free governments." Maryland member of the Continental Congress, the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, US Senator for Maryland (1789-1792)

Now, that seems like Original Intent.


“To what purpose was the threat thrown out of enforcing the penal statutes [against Catholics]
by proclamation? Why am I told that my conduct is very inconsistent with the situation of one
who owes even the toleration he enjoys to the favor of government? If by instilling prejudices
into the Governor, and by every mean and wicked artifice, you can rouse the popular resentment
against certain religionists, and thus bring on a persecution of them, it will then be known
whether the toleration I enjoy be due to the favor of government or not….”

Mr. Carroll you nailed it and you never once heard MSNBC! Happy Fourth of July, America!

Born: September 19, 1737 in Annapolis, Anne Arundel County1
Father: Charles Carroll2
Mother: Elizabeth (Brooke) Carroll3
Education: attended Academy of Jesuits at Bohemia Manor, Cecil County, 1747; College of St. Omer, France, 1749-53; College of French Jesuits, Rheims, France, 1754; College of Louis-le-Grand, paris, France, 1755-57; studied law in Bourges, Paris, and London, 1757-644
Religious Affiliation: Catholic5
Marriage: June 5, 1768 to Mary (Molly) Darnall6
Children: Elizabeth, Mary, Louisa Rachel, Charles, Anne Brooke, Catherine, Elizabeth7
Private Occupations:
Planter; managed his estate "Doughoregan"
Subscriber, Potomac Company, ca. 1772
Partner, Baltimore Ironworks Company
Proprietor, Susquehanna Canal, 1783
Member, Board of Directors, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company
Landlord; money lender8
Public Service:
Conventions, Anne Arundel County, 1774-76
Maryland Senate, Western Shore, 1777-1800; Maryland Senate President 1783
Committee of Correspondence, 1774
1st Council of Safety, Western Shore, 1775
Committee of Observations, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, 1774-75
Delegate, Continental Congress, 1776, 1777-1778, 1780
Signer, Declaration of Independence, 1776
U.S. Senator, 1st, 2nd Congresses, 1789-92
Common Councilman, Annapolis, 1780-83, 1785 (resigned)9
Died: November 14, 1832 in Baltimore10
Buried: Doughoregan Manor, Anne Arundel (now Howard) County11

1774 – became a member of the Committee of Correspondence for Anne Arundel and
Annapolis (November)
1774 – elected to the 2nd Maryland Convention
1775 – served on the Maryland Committee of Correspondence and Council of Safety
(summer)
1776 – participated in a Continental Congress mission seeking Canada’s support for the
American cause (February)
1776 – chosen as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress (June)
1776 – signed the Declaration of Independence document (August)
1776 – appointed as a delegate to the convention to write Maryland’s first State Constitution
and Declaration of Rights
1776 – elected member of the first Maryland Senate
1777 – appointed delegate to Congress
1783 – elected President of the Maryland Senate
1789 – served as one of Maryland’s first two U.S. Senators

When his turn came to sign the document on that hot August day in Philadelphia in 1776, Charles Carroll stepped forward briskly, signed Charles Carroll, started back to his seat and then abruptly returned to the document and, picking up the quill pen again, added of Carrollton.

Like his fellow delegates to the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, signing his name to the document was an act of courage. Today, we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence as the beginning of our country as an independent nation. But, if the fortunes of war had gone the other way and George Washington and his ill equipped Continental Army had lost, this document would have been a death warrant for Charles Carroll and the other fifty-five delegates who joined him in signing.

God Bless Michael Moriarty! God Bless America!

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mmoriarty/2010/06/30/catholics-vs-communists/

Catholics v. Communists - Abortion is the Da Vinci Key: Brilliant Essay By Michael Moriarty

I guarantee you, if the Catholic Church condones abortion, we won’t hear any complaints about priests and child abuse in the mainstream press, not while the Obama’s public schools are handing out condoms to five year olds without parental consent. Michael Moriarty - Big Hollywood

Opposition to Abortion is the key to the riddle of Hegalian Progressive -Communist/Progressive World War on the Catholics. Emmy and Tony Award-winning Actor, musician and journalist Michael Moriarty presents a brilliant essay. Click my post title for the full text.

It is basically the Catholic Church versus the World.

Not even America is an ally of either Israel or the Catholic Church.

America is no longer, as the President has repeatedly declared by word and deed, a Judeo-Christian Civilization.

It is clearly and merely a part of the Progressive New World Order.

As I’ve said before, America gave up any substantive resistance to the very Marxist New World Order when her Supreme Court passed the Roe v Wade decision 37 years ago.

In Europe, however, the Catholic Church has refused to condone abortion or euthanasia.

America’s collapse to the first stage of Communism, which is Socialism, was insured when the Nixon/Kissinger Presidency not only collapsed before Vietnamese Communists in Paris but when its Supreme Court – bipartisan, mind you – instituted legalized abortion.

America not only gave up the territorial fight, it surrendered in the spiritual war as well.

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 Fights PC Jazz Goofs & Erroll Garner - I'll Remember April

Progressive Jazz: How the Left’s ‘Teachable Moments’ Killed Bradley’s Michael Moriarty's poignant and on-target essay on the Progressive PC poisoning of jazz focused my attention on the Great Erroll Garner Click my post title for pure genius.

Errol Garner is ignored. It seems to me that Mr. Garner is ignored because he was not angry enough - to the contrary.

Garner remains unique. Playing consistently to a very high standard, he developed certain characteristics that bear few resemblances to other pianists. Notably, these include a plangent left-hand, block-chorded pulse, a dancing pattern of seemingly random ideas played with the right hand in chords or single notes, and playful introductions, which appear as independent miniature compositions, only to sweep suddenly, with apparent spontaneity and complete logic, into an entirely different song.

Sumptuously romantic on ballads, and fleet and daring on up-tempo swingers, Garner’s range was wide. Nicknamed ‘The Elf’, more, perhaps, for his diminutive stature than for the impish good humour of those introductions, Garner was the first jazz pianist since Fats Waller to appeal to the non-jazz audience, and the first jazzman ever to achieve popular acclaim from this audience without recourse to singing or clowning. Dudley Moore acknowledges much of his style to Garner, and ‘swinging 60s piano jazz’ owes a massive debt to him. Stylistically, Garner is in a category of which he is, so far, the only true member. Since his death in January 1977, there has been no sign that any other pianist other than Keith Jarrett is following his independent path in jazz.

Michael Moriarty, a jazz pianist as well as a great American actor, wrote this

My God, the politicizing of jazz had grown to a militant exclusivity that infuriated me!
Had I not been with my director and had downed a few more drinks, I might have tipped over a few tables.
Now the atmosphere of this Nicole Henry album was inspired in one of the most jazz-addicted nations in the world, Japan.
They obviously retain a freedom within their increasingly sensitized souls more American than that most American giant of world cities, New York!!
Perhaps it was the moment the sportscaster, Dick Schapp asked me, “Michael, is there anyone in New York you haven’t offended?!”
“Yes,” I should have said, “You, Dick!”
Tighten the phones to your ears, if you’re using them to listen to the intimacy Ms. Henry maintains with herself – and that, mind you, is the first necessity of any recording … or film artist for that matter – and then let the “still, small voice” in.
Let the deep and quietly, blissfully disturbing surrender happen.
Bradley’s is no more and hasn’t lived for many years because once Bradley himself had died, his poor wife could not keep the Progressive Militants out.
That crowd of elitists, enlightened despots and intellectual supremacists had driven the regular customers like myself … had forced them out.
Eventually even they didn’t come.
Why?
They had no one to give a “teachable moment” to.
What happened to Bradley’s has now happened to all of America.
How long we will be in for this horrifyingly arrogant, “teachable endlessness” … and how long this soul-less and tragically American fascism can continue … will perhaps depend upon the depth of agony we all must feel repeatedly when the quintessentially American forms of music are fed to us as a privilege only afforded us by the Progressive dictators who claim to own it.

Big Hollywood 4/10/210

Jazz belongs to all of us. Thanks Mr. Moriarty and thank you Mr. Garner

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mmoriarty/2010/04/09/progressive-jazz-how-the-lefts-teachable-moments

http://www.oldies.com/artist-biography/Erroll-Garner.html