Saturday, December 03, 2011

It's Still God's World, Pundits Notwithstanding - Milton and a Huge Loss in High School Basketball




Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night [ 50 ]
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Confounded though immortal: But his doom
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain [ 55 ]
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witness'd huge affliction and dismay
Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:
At once as far as Angels kenn he views
The dismal Situation waste and wilde, [ 60 ]
A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv'd onely to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace [ 65 ]
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd:
Such place Eternal Justice had prepar'd [ 70 ]
For those rebellious, here thir Prison ordain'd
In utter darkness, and thir portion set
As far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n
As from the Center thrice to th' utmost Pole.
O how unlike the place from whence they fell!


Leo High School lost to Seaton on the hardwood last night 95-66. The Basketball team had more than a tough night on the fabled third-floor gym surface, as the Mother Elizabeth Seaton Bees stung the Lions mightily with steady 3-point, 2-point cannonades and wholesome foul shooting.

Between the freshman and sophomore games, I treated some of the gents to comestibles at the Fan Stand on the first floor - Chris MsS#$%^ (Leo 2015), "Hickey, you think we'll take the varsity?"

God only knows.

I missed the varsity game entirely because my daughter called for me to to jump start the automobile battery in her conveyance that only days ago I recommended she replace.

The jump-start worked and her Chevy is sitting outside of my window catching the last leaves of 2011. It will stay there until the lovely fruit of my seed coughs up some cash for a battery.

I read the scores before turning in. God spoke and Seaton swept.

My thoughts turned to Milton, old crabby blind Jack, who also had daughters, Oliver Cromwell's Latin Minister. Latin was still the lingua franca of diplomacy, Puritan bigotry notwithstanding.

John Milton is arguably the greatest voice in English. Less the Steven Spielberg ( give 'em what they want) huckster and showman that Bill Shakespeare happened to be, and far less funny that Geoff Chaucer, Milton spoke past human vanity and proudly humbled himself before the Three Persons of ontological certainty - the Alpha and Omega Trio.

Milton was a sponge of human tongues and unlike dusty dopes like John Dewey and Noam Chomsky applied language to its actual purpose - to seek Truth. Milton sought to not justify God, but to justify God's Ways to Man. Huge difference. Like I noted above above, Milton was Cromwell's Latin Minister. Oliver Cromwell beheaded Charles I with the full agreement of a very frightened Parliament and built a Taliban state of England that any Islamic Brother would embrace - in practice if not theology. Warty Ollie burned witches, killed Catholics, banned plays, songs, and books and made Jihads on Scotland and Ireland that rocked the Casbah. Burning the Cathedral full of Papists in the Irish town of Drogheda north of Dublin, Cromwell ordered his Iron Sides troopers to sing hymns and when questioned about barbecuing the kids along with their elders remarked, "Nits breed lice."

That gent would have made a fine Planned Parenthood president.

Milton was the Latin Minister of a very progressive government of bigots, but no bigot himself. In fact, though a devout Puritan, Milton counted many Italian Cardinals as his boon chums. Milton was schooled not only in Latin, but Greek, Hebrew, Italian and French. He was tasked principally with defending and justifying Cromwell's regicidal government to the world of men, but his life sought to make sense of God's Plan.

All things, not some, are ex Deo. The Fall of Man was and could only be a consequence of the Fall of angels. Satan, formerly Lucifer, is the first community activist.

Satan organizes all beings and goes Alinsky on God and his stooges -Michael, Gabriel & etc. - and agitates for reform which means Satan should be God. Satan is brilliantly energetic, but goes nowhere. Satan is really, really, really frustrated that he is not God the Omnipotent Creator of Satan and everything else; therefore, Satan can only attack God through Man, whom God loves. What Satan, for all of his energy and talent, can not grasp, nor accept is that he is not God. He therefore turns away from everything that is God. Satan is the Anglicized word from the Hebrew for op poser הַשָׂטָן ha-Satan.

Opposition.

Paradise gets Lost and Satan manages to have God's beloved creatures Adam and Eve oppose God's Will. However, poor old Satan is confounded by the fact that God's Will trumps the best laid plans and all of the opposition research in the Devil's trick bag. God Planned this opposition by Satan and eventually Man only to have Paradise redeemed.

When I read the scores of the Seaton debacle, all I could think of was Milton's wonderful scene of the fallen demons on the fiery landscape of what soon would become Hell. Satan was also the first Construction/Real Estate Magnate - He and Beelzebub, raised Hell.


Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he [ 245 ]
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail [ 250 ]
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. [ 255 ]
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: [ 260 ]
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th' associates and copartners of our loss [ 265 ]
Lye thus astonisht on th' oblivious Pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy Mansion, or once more
With rallied Arms to try what may be yet
Regaind in Heav'n, or what more lost in Hell? [ 270 ]
So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub
Thus answer'd. Leader of those Armies bright,
Which but th' Onmipotent none could have foyld,
If once they hear that voyce, thir liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft [ 275 ]
In worst extreams, and on the perilous edge
Of battel when it rag'd, in all assaults
Thir surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they lye
Groveling and prostrate on yon Lake of Fire, [ 280 ]
As we erewhile, astounded and amaz'd,
No wonder, fall'n such a pernicious highth.
He scarce had ceas't when the superiour Fiend
Was moving toward the shoar; his ponderous shield
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, [ 285 ]
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb
Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views
At Ev'ning from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, [ 290 ]
Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe.
His Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast
Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand,
He walkt with to support uneasie steps [ 295 ]
Over the burning Marle, not like those steps
On Heavens Azure, and the torrid Clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with Fire;
Nathless he so endur'd, till on the Beach
Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call'd [ 300 ]
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High overarch't imbowr; or scatterd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce Winds Orion arm'd [ 305 ]
Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew
Busiris and his Memphian Chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursu'd
The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore thir floating Carkases [ 310 ]
And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood,
Under amazement of thir hideous change.
He call'd so loud, that all the hollow Deep
Of Hell resounded. Princes, Potentates, [ 315 ]
Warriers, the Flowr of Heav'n, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can sieze
Eternal spirits; or have ye chos'n this place
After the toyl of Battel to repose
Your wearied vertue, for the ease you find [ 320 ]
To slumber here, as in the Vales of Heav'n?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conquerour? who now beholds
Cherube and Seraph rowling in the Flood
With scatter'd Arms and Ensigns, till anon [ 325 ]
His swift pursuers from Heav'n Gates discern
Th' advantage, and descending tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked Thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this Gulfe.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n. [ 330 ]


Hell of place you got there!

Fallen is not damned. The Leo motto is Facta Non Verba -Deeds not Words. Our Deeds fell short . . .way short . . .29 points short of a tie and thirty of win.

Fall seven times and get up eight. Christ could not have Restored Paradise if he stayed down on the third fall. Christ never tanked a fight. He fell three and with some help climbed up for a crucifixion and death that justified God's Ways to Man.

Paradise Lost is no Color Purple, or Kite Runner, but needs to be read, studied and taught.

Friday, December 02, 2011

Mandarin Andy S(EIU)Tern Occupies Wall Street Journal


Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar, --
Which the same I am free to maintain.

President Obama still could not find a Chinaman on 22nd Street.


Years ago, before Senator Barack Obama appeared in the Temple of Isis ( or Oprah) in Denver at the Democratic National Convention, SEIU's Andy Stern and Anna Burger made extended and frequent visits to Red China.

Purple Mandarin Andy Stern and Anna May Wong Burger on The Road for the Reds in 2006.

Newsweek and Time had fabulously ornate photos and syrupy articles of Mandarin Andy and Shanghai Anna meeting with their Maoist pals. You will need to spend hours and hours on the information super-highway digging up those articles and photos tossed down the Orwellian Memory Hole after 2008.

President Obama bowed to Red China, no doubt prompted by Mr. Deficit Stern - that obeisance did not work out all too well for Nobel bed-decked Olympic Barry.

Mandarin Andy was appointed to President Obama's Deficit panel along with Illinois clown Congressperson Jan Schakowsky, but Andy was tagged with accusations of fiscal malfeasance and exited stage left. Mandarin Andy immediately Google-scrubbed the accusations and his purse puppies like Tom Friedman, Ezra Klein, Joan Walsh and MSNBC looked to Eygpt for Hope and Change - the Islamic Brotherhood won in a landslide this week and Jordan is next!

Red China is trying to get another stimulating wad of cash out of America, but that damn Congress is just too mean. Dragon Dancers are Occupying every city . . .well sort of . . .the Heathen Chinee are very, very patient. Maybe a Barbara Boxer Rebellion is in the offing?

Well,Ding Hao, Feather merchants!

Mandarin Andy, President Obama's Old China Hand, is back smooching the Red Rumps of the Beijing in of all places the Wall Street Journal. Stern-first steaming his Purple XXXXXL gunboats down the Yangtze River of Capitalist Commerce!

The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model—so successful in the 20th century—is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century. In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA's results—a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1%—are pathetic.

This should motivate leaders to rethink, rather than double down on an empirically failing free-market extremism. As painful and humbling as it may be, America needs to do what a once-dominant business or sports team would do when the tide turns: study the ingredients of its competitors' success.

While we debate, Team China rolls on. Our delegation witnessed China's people-oriented development in Chongqing, a city of 32 million in Western China, which is led by an aggressive and popular Communist Party leader—Bo Xilai. A skyline of cranes are building roughly 1.5 million square feet of usable floor space daily—including, our delegation was told, 700,000 units of public housing annually.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government can boast that it has established in Western China an economic zone for cloud computing and automotive and aerospace production resulting in 12.5% annual growth and 49% growth in annual tax revenue, with wages rising more than 10% a year.


Team China????

You Flyin' Tiger!

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/16/8390290/

Thursday, December 01, 2011

A Precious Mixture - Progressive Posturing of Corsairs. Rebels, and Goofs






Billy Ayers and Byron -Aristocratic Rebels: One had sincerity and talent and wrote great poems and the other is Bill Ayers.









Trin. Coll. (Wednesday), Novr. 6th, 1805

My Dear Augusta, - As might be supposed I like a College Life extremely, especially as I have escaped the Trammels or rather Fetters of my domestic Tyrant Mrs Byron, who continued to plague me during my visit in July and September. I am now most pleasantly situated in Superexcellent Rooms, flanked on one side by my Tutor, on the other by an old Fellow, both of whom are rather checks upon my vivacity. I am allowed 500 a year, a Servant and Horse, so Feel as independent as a German Prince who coins his own Cash, or a Cherokee Chief who coins no Cash at all, but enjoys what is more precious, Liberty.

George Gordon, Lord Byron [Trinity, 1805-07], letter to his sister Augusta, 6 November 1805


'I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame Bear, when I bought him here, they asked me what I meant to do with him, and my reply was "he should sit for a fellowship." Sherard will explain the meaning of the sentence, if it is ambiguous. This answer delighted them not, we have eternal parties here, and this evening a large assortment of Jockies, Gamblers, Boxers, Authors, parsons, and poets, sup with me. - A precious Mixture, and they go well together.'

George Gordon, Lord Byron [Trinity, 1805-07], letter to Elizabeth Pigot, 26 October 1807



During the Vietnam War, many blue-collar and minority kids went to fight. The sons of more affluent and influential fathers went to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Michigan and Berekley Universities and became radicals - rebels.

The high school classes of 1964-1969 took a pounding in Vietnam. Their Fortunate Son counterparts made war on American Involvement in South East Asia, Racism, Capitalism and Middle Class Mores. Dorms became he foxholes of a romantic revolution for American middle class and aristocratic rebels. Guys who sneaked a Schlitz in June, became Septemberists after a few tokes of weed. As Tom Hayden once said about the growing '60's drug culture, get a middle class square to break the law once, and you have a revolutionary for life.

All through their college years, some of America's Baby Boom generation played the role of Young Lord Byron. They repudiated the bourgeoisie lives of Ward and June, back home in Bloomfield Hills, MI, Winnetka, IL and Shaker Heights, OH. They bought East German Stassi great-coats, wore beads, long manes and facial hair. Some sported kaftans along with tied-dyed everything that matched classes on John Dewey,Thoreau, Rousseau, Marx, Hegel, Nietsche and sober sociology lectures on systemic racism.

Boot Camp over these young Robespierre's ascended the barricades and issued statements proclaiming solidarity with Nation Liberation Fronts Universal.

While the blue collar and minority running dog pawns went to Hines Hospital, Walter Reed and other Veterans Administration facilities to learn how to walk with prosthetic limbs, Childe Harold's matriculated to University of Michigan Law, Northwestern University Graduate Schools of Business, Johns Hopkins Medical School and other paths paved by Ward and June years before our Byrons took the ACTs.

Revolution is either for the miserable, or the very comfortable.

A peasant, slave or surf can only bear to see so many of his children starve. An Aristocratic Rebel can only stand to keep his/her views private in public for a non-second.

The Dead-head sticker on a Cadillac Generation had children and grandchildren now Occupying Time on Television and Editorial Pages.

Our Media is no longer made up of Chicago News Bureau shoe-leather investigators, but Medill School of Journalism Aristocratic Rebels.

Our Labor organizers are no longer articulate tough guys with visible scars and cauliflower ears, but University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work graduates trained by the generation of Aristocratic Rebels who fought the Vietnam War at Berkeley, Columbia, Michigan, Dartmouth and Yale.

Our Childe Harold's are being scooped up in Philly and L.A. and occasionally received a shot of pepper spray, or an old fashioned wood shampoo from law enforcement professionals. Here in Chicago, the iconic home of Underground Rowdies like Billy Ayers and Marilyn Katz, sadly enough the revolutionary spirit has done south for the winter - probably Naples, Fl. with gramps and granny, or to hotter climes.

Revolution is Romantic. Byron, Satan, Marx, Soros, Ayers, Code Pink, Daily Kos and OWS are the same.

The only thing difference being - Satan, Byron and Marx had some talent.

The aristocratic rebel, of whom Byron was in his day the exemplar, is a very different type from the leader of a peasant or proletarian revolt. Those who are hungry have no need of an elaborate philosophy to stimulate or excuse discontent, and anything of the kind appears to the m, merely an amusement of the idle rich. They want what others have, not some intangible and metaphysical good. Though they may preach Christian love, as the medieval communist rebels did, their real reasons for doing so are very simple: that the lack of it in the rich and powerful causes the sufferings of the poor, and that the presence of it among comrades in revolt is thought essential to success. But experience of the struggle leads to a despair of the power of love, leaving naked hate as the driving force. A rebel of this type, if, like Marx, he invents a philosophy, invents one solely designed to demonstrate the ultimate victory of his party, not one concerned with values. His values remain primitive: the good is enough to eat, and the rest is talk. No hungry man is likely to think otherwise.

The aristocratic rebel, since he has enough to eat, must have other causes of discontent. I do not include among rebels the mere leaders of factions temporarrily out of power; I include only m,en whose philosophy requires some greater change than their own personal success. It may be that love of power is the underground source of their disconte, but in their conscious thought there is criticism of the government of the world, which, when it goes deep enough, takes the form of Titanic cosmic sel-assertion or, in those who retain some superstition, of Satanism. Both are to be found in Byron. Both, largely through men whom he influenced, became common in large sections of society which could hardly be deemed aristocratic. The aristocratic philosophy of rebellion, growing, developing, and changing as it approached maturity, has inspired a long series of revolutionary movement,s from the Carbonari after the fall of Napoleon to Hitler's coup in 1933; and at each stage it has inspired a corresponding manner of thought and feeling among intellectuals and artists.

It is obvious that an aristocrat does not become a rebel unless his temperament and circumstances are in some way peculiar. Byron's circumstances were very peculiar. His earliest recollections were of his parents' quarrels; his mother was a woman whom he feared for her cruelty and despised for her vulgarity; his lameness filled him with shame, and prevented him from being one of the herd at school. At ten years old, after living in poverty, he suddenly found himself a Lord and the owner of Newstead. His great-uncle the 'wicked Lord,' from whom he inherited, had killed a man in a duel thirty-three years ago, and been ostracized by his neighbors ever since. The Byrons had been a lawless family, and the Gordons, his mother's ancestors, even more so. After the squalor of a back street in Aberdeen, the boy naturally rejoiced in his title and his Abbey, and was willing to take on the character of his ancestors in gratitude for their lands. And if, in recent years, their bellicosity had led them into trouble, he learnt that in former centuries it had brought them renown. One of his earliest poems, "On Leaving Newstead Abbey", relates his emotions at this time, which are of admiration for his ancestors who fought in the Crusades, at Crecy and at Marston Moor. He ends with pious resolve:

Like you will he live, or like you will he perish:
When decay'd may he mingle his dust with your own.

This is not the mood of a rebel, but it suggests "Childe" Harold, the modern peer who imitates medieval barons. As an undergraduate, when for the first time he had an income of his own, he wrote that he felt as independent as "a German Prince who coins his own cash, or a Cherokee Chief who coins no cash at all, but enjoys what is more precious, Liberty. I speak in raptures of that Goddess because my amiable Mama was so despotic." He wrote, in later life, much noble verse in praise of freedom, but it must be understood that the freedom he praised was that of a German Prince or a Cherokee Chief, not the inferior sor that mught conceivably be enjoyed by ordinary mortals.
Lord Betrand Russell History of Western Philosophy.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
(1788–1824)

1812: Childe Harold, cantos 1 and 2.
1813–14: The Oriental tales, including The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara.
1816: Separation from Lady Byron; leaves England, never to return.
1818: Begins Don Juan.
1813: Joins the Greek war for liberation from the Turks.
In his History of English Literature, written in the late 1850s, the French critic Hippolyte Taine gave only a few condescending pages to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, and then devoted a long enthusiastic chapter to Lord Byron, “the greatest and most English of these artists; he is so great and so English that from him alone we shall learn more truths of his country and of his age than from all the rest together.” This comment reflects the fact that Byron had achieved an immense European reputation during his own lifetime, while his English contemporaries were admired only by small coteries in England and America; through much of the nineteenth century he continued to be rated as one of the greatest of English poets and the very prototype of literary Romanticism. His influence was felt everywhere, not only among minor writers—in the two or three decades after his death, most European poets struck Byronic attitudes—but among the major poets and novelists (including Goethe in Germany, Balzac and Stendhal in France; Pushkin and Dostoevsky in Russia, and Melville in America), painters (especially Delacroix), and composers (especially Beethoven and Berlioz).
These facts may surprise the student who is aware of the modern estimate of Byron as the least consequential of the great Romantic poets, whose achievements have little in common with the distinctive innovations of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, or Shelley. Only Shelley, among these writers, thought highly of either Byron or his work; while Byron spoke slightingly of all of them except Shelley, and in fact insisted that, measured against the poetic practice of Alexander Pope, he and his contemporaries were “all in the wrong, one as much as another… we are upon a wrong revolutionary poetical system, or systems, not worth a damn in itself.” Byron’s masterpiece, Don Juan, is an instance of that favorite neoclassic type, a satire against modern civilization, and shares many of the aims and methods of Pope, Swift, Voltaire, and Sterne. Even Byron’s lyrics are old-fashioned: many are in the eighteenth-century gentlemanly mode of witty extemporization and epigram (Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos) or continue the Cavalier tradition of the elaborate development of a compliment to a lady (She Walks in Beauty and There Be None of Beauty’s Daughters).
Byron’s chief claim to be considered an arch-Romantic is that he provided his age with what Taine called its “ruling personage; that is, the model that contemporaries invest with their admiration and sympathy.” This personage is the “Byronic hero.” He occurs in various guises in Byron’s writings, but from the first sketch in the opening canto of Childe Harold, and in the verse romances and dramas that follow, his persistent character is that of a moody, passionate, and remorse-torn but unrepentant wanderer. In his developed form, as we find it in Manfred, he is an alien, mysterious, and gloomy spirit, immensely superior in his passions and powers to the common run of humanity, whom he regards with disdain. He harbors the torturing memory of an enormous, nameless guilt that drives him toward an inevitable doom. He is in his isolation absolutely self reliant, inflexibly pursuing his own ends according to his self generated moral code against any opposition, human or supernatural. And he exerts an attraction on other characters which is the more compelling because it involves their terror at his obliviousness to ordinary human concerns and values. This figure, infusing the archrebel in a nonpolitical form with a strong erotic interest, embodied the implicit yearnings of Byron’s time, as imitated in life as well as in art, and helped shape the intellectual as well as the cultural history of the later nineteenth century. The literary descendants of the Byronic hero include Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick, and the hero of Pushkin’s great poem Eugene Onegin. Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, gives a chapter to Byron—not because he was a systematic thinker, but because “Byronism,” the attitude of “Titanic cosmic self assertion,” established an outlook and a stance toward humanity and the world that entered nineteenth-century philosophy and eventually helped to form Nietzsche’s concept of the Superman, the hero who stands outside the jurisdiction of the ordinary criteria of good and evil.
Byron’s contemporaries insisted on identifying the author with his fictional characters. But Byron’s letters and the testimony of his friends show that; except for recurrent moods of black depression, his own temperament was in many respects antithetic to that of his heroes. He was passionate and willful, but when in good humor he could be very much a man of the world in the eighteenth-century style—gregarious, lively, tolerant, and a witty conversationalist capable of taking an ironic attitude toward his own activities as well as those of other men. The aloof hauteur he exhibited in public was largely a mask to hide his diffidence when in a strange company; he possessed devoted friends, both men and women, and among them he was usually unassuming, companionable, sometimes even exuberant, and tactful; to his household dependents he was unfailingly generous and tenaciously loyal. But though Byronism was largely a fiction, produced by a collaboration between Byron’s imagination and that of his public, the fiction was historically more important than the poet in his actual person.
Byron was descended from two aristocratic families, both of them colourful, violent, and dissolute. His grandfather was an admiral nicknamed “Foulweather Jack”; his great-uncle was the fifth Baron Byron, known to his rural neighbors as the “Wicked Lord,” who was tried by his peers for killing his kinsman William Chaworth in a drunken duel; his father, Captain John Byron, was a rake and fortune-hunter who rapidly dissipated the patrimony of two wealthy wives. Byron’s mother was a Scotswoman, Catherine Gordon of Gight, the last descendant of a line of lawless Scottish lairds. After her husband died (Byron was then three), she brought up her son in near-poverty in Aberdeen, where he was indoctrinated with the Calvinistic morality of Scottish Presbyterianism. Mrs. Byron was an ill-educated and almost pathologically irascible woman who nevertheless had an abiding love for her son; they fought violently when together, but corresponded affectionately enough when apart, until her death in 1811.
When Byron was ten, the death of his great-uncle, preceded by that of more immediate heirs to the title, made him the sixth Lord Byron. In a fashion suitable to his new eminence he was sent to Harrow School, then to Trinity College, Cambridge. He had been born with a clubfoot, which was made worse by inept medical treatment, and this defect all his life caused him physical suffering and agonized embarrassment. His lameness made him avid for athletic prowess; he played cricket and made himself an expert boxer, fencer, and horseman, and a powerful swimmer. He was also sexually precocious; when only seven, he fell in love with a little cousin, Mary Duff, and so violently that ten years later news of her marriage threw him into convulsions. Both at Cambridge and at his ancestral estate of Newstead, he engaged with more than ordinary zeal in the expensive pursuits and fashionable dissipations of a young Regency lord. As a result, despite a sizable and increasing income, he got into financial difficulties from which he did not entirely extricate himself until late in his life. In the course of his schooling he formed many close friendships, the most important with John Cam Hobhouse, a sturdy political liberal and commonsense moralist who exerted a steadying influence throughout Byron’s turbulent life.
Despite his distractions at the university, Byron found time to try his hand at lyric verse, some of which was published in 1807 in a slim and conventional volume entitled Hours of Idleness. This was treated with unmerited harshness by the pontifical Edinburgh Review and Byron was provoked to write in reply his first important poem, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, a vigorous satire in the couplet style of the late eighteenth-century followers of Pope, in which he incorporated skillful but tactless ridicule of all his major poetic contemporaries, including Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.
After attaining his A. M. degree and his majority, Byron set out with Hobhouse in 1809 on a tour through Portugal and Spain to Malta, and then to little-known Albania, Greece, and Asia Minor. In this adventurous two-year excursion, he accumulated materials which he wove into most of his important poems, including his last work, Don Juan. The first literary product was Childe Harold; he wrote the opening two cantos while on the tour which the poem describes, published them in 1812 soon after his return to England, and, in his own oft-quoted phrase, “awoke one morning and found myself famous.” He became the celebrity of fashionable London, enjoying an unprecedented literary success, which he soon increased by his series of highly readable Near Eastern verse tales; in these the Byronic hero, in various embodiments, flaunts his misanthropy and undergoes a variety of violent and romantic adventures that current gossip attributed to the author himself. In his chronic shortage of money, Byron could well have used the income from these publications, but instead maintained his status as an aristocratic amateur by giving the royalties away. Occupying his inherited seat in the House of Lords, he also became briefly active on the extreme liberal side of the Whig party and spoke courageously in defense of the Nottingham weavers who, made desperate by technological unemployment, had resorted to destroying the new textile machines; he also supported other liberal measures, including that of Catholic Emancipation.
In the meantime he found himself besieged by women. He was extraordinarily handsome—“so beautiful a countenance,” Coleridge wrote, “I scarcely ever saw… his eyes the open portals of the sun—things of light, and for light.” Because of a constitutional tendency to obesity, however, Byron was able to maintain his beauty only by recurring again and again to a starvation diet of biscuits, soda water, and strong cathartics. Often as a result of female initiative rather than his own, Byron entered into a sequence of liaisons with ladies of fashion. One of these, the flamboyant, eccentric, and hysterical young Lady Caroline Lamb, caused him so much distress by her frenzied pursuit and public tantrums that Byron turned for relief to marriage with Annabella Milbanke, who was in every way Lady Caroline’s opposite, for was naïve, unworldly, intellectual (with a special passion for mathematics), and not a little priggish; she persuaded herself that she could make Byron over in her own image. This ill-starred marriage produced a daughter (Augusta Ada) and many scenes in which Byron, goaded by financial difficulties, behaved so frantically that his wife suspected his sanity; after only one year, the union ended in a legal separation. The final blow came when Lady Byron discovered her husband’s incestuous relations with his half sister, Augusta Leigh. The two had been raised apart, so that they were almost strangers when they met as adults; also, Byron seems to have had one attribute in common with the Byronic hero—a compulsion to try forbidden experience (including, as we now know, homosexual love affairs), joined with a tendency to court his own destruction. Byron’s affection for his sister, however guilty, was genuine, and endured all through his life. This affair proved a delicious morsel even to the jaded palate of the dissolute Regency society; Byron was ostracized by all but a few friends, and finally forced to leave England forever on April 25, 1816.
Byron now resumed the travels incorporated in the third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold. At Geneva he lived for several months in close and intellectually fruitful relation to Shelley, who was accompanied by his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and by his wife’s stepsister Claire Clairmont—a misguided girl of seventeen who had forced herself upon Byron while he was still in England and who in January 1817 bore him a daughter, Allegra. In the fall of 1817 Byron established himself in Venice, where he inaugurated various affairs that culminated in a period of frenzied debauchery that, he estimated, involved more than two hundred women, mainly of the lower class. This period was also one of great literary creativity: often working through the later hours of the night he finished his tragedy Manfred, wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold, and after turning out Beppo, a short preview of the narrative style and stanza of Don Juan, began the composition of Don Juan itself In the colloquial ottava rima, he finally learned to write poetry as well as he had written the prose of his superbly vivid, informative, and witty letters.
Exhausted and bored by promiscuity, Byron in 1819 settled into a placid and relatively faithful relationship with Teresa Guiccioli, the young wife of the elderly Count Alessandro Guiccioli; according to the Italian upper-class mores of the times, having contracted a marriage of convenience, she could now with propriety attach Byron to herself as a cavaliere servente. Through Teresa’s nationalistic family, the Gambas, Byron became involved in the Carbonari plot against Austrian control over northern Italy. When the Gambas were forced by the authorities to move to Pisa, Byron followed them there, and for the second time joined Shelley. There grew up about the two friends the “Pisan Circle,” which in addition to the Gambas included Shelley’s wife Mary and his friends Thomas Medwin and Edward and Jane Williams, as well as the Greek nationalist leader Prince Mavrocordatos, the picturesque Irish Count Taaffe, and the flamboyant and mendacious adventurer Edward Trelawny, who seems to have stepped out of one of Byron’s romances. The circle was gradually broken up, first by Shelley’s anger over Byron’s treatment of his daughter, Allegra (Byron had sent the child to be brought up as a Catholic in an Italian convent, where she died of a fever in 1822); then by the expulsion of the Gambas, whom Byron followed to Genoa; and finally by the drowning of Shelley and Williams in July 1822.
Byron meanwhile had been steadily at work on a series of closet tragedies (including Cain, Sardanapalus, and Marino Faliero) and on his superb satire, The Vision of Judgment. But increasingly he devoted himself to the continuation of Don Juan. He had always been diffident in his self-judgments and easily swayed by literary advice. But now, confident that he had at last found his métier and was accomplishing a masterpiece, he kept on, in spite of persistent objections against the supposed immorality of the poem by the English public, by his publisher John Murray, by his friends and well-wishers, and by his extremely decorous mistress, the Countess Guiccioli—by almost everyone, in fact, except the idealist Shelley, who thought Juan incomparably better than anything he himself could write and insisted “that every word of it is pregnant with immortality.”
Byron finally broke off literature for action when he organized an expedition to assist in the Greek war for independence from the Turks. He knew too well the conditions in Greece, and had too skeptical an estimate of human nature, to entertain hope of success; but he was bored with love; with the domesticity of his relations to Teresa, and in some moods, with life itself. Also, since his own writings had helped to kindle European enthusiasm for the Greek cause, he now felt honor-bound to try what could be done. In the dismal, marshy town of Missolonghi he lived a Spartan existence, training troops whom he had himself subsidized and exhibiting great practical grasp and power of leadership amid a chaos of factionalism, intrigue, and military ineptitude. Worn out, he succumbed to a series of feverish attacks and died just after he had reached his thirty-sixth birthday. To this day Byron is revered by the Greek people as a national hero.
Students of Byron still feel, as his friends had felt, the magnetism of volatile temperament. As Mary Shelley wrote six years after his death, when she read Thomas Moore’s edition of his Letters and journals: “The Lord Byron I find there is our Lord Byron—the fascinating—faulty—childish—philosophical being—daring the world—docile to a private circle—impetuous and indolent—gloomy and yet more gay than any other. … [I become] reconciled (as I used to in his lifetime) to those waywardnesses which annoyed me when he was away, through the delightful and buoyant tone of his conversation and manners.” Of his inner discordances, Byron himself was aware; he told his friend Lady Blessington: “I am so changeable, being everything by turns and nothing long—I am such a strange mélange of good and evil, that it would be difficult to describe me.” Yet he remained faithful to his code: a determination always to tell the truth as he saw it about the world and about himself (his refusal to suppress or conceal any of his moods is in part what made him seem so contradictory) and a dedication to the freedom of nations and individuals. As he went on to say to Lady Blessington: “There are but two sentiments to which I am constant—a strong love of liberty, and a detestation of cant.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=xS3sqPSvALEC&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=bertrand+russell+on+byron+the+aristocratic+rebel&source=bl&ots=hddvzx7NwD&sig=DoM6dsQ7anKzOhMrhlBPVRoce6Q&hl=en&ei=laPXTpejM-702wWwhtSYDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=bertrand%20russell%20on%20byron%20the%20aristocratic%20rebel&f=false

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

What Do You Make of It? Stew and Forrest Claypool


Very early yesterday morning, I got me a crock pot.

I got me some cubed chuck beef ( 2 lbs.), two pounds of small red potatoes, flour, Kerry Gold butter, garlic, a big Vadalia onion, celery,carrots, Bay leaf, chopped parsley, chopped basil, cracked black pepper, Kosher salt, paprika, a 16 oz. can of crushed tomatoes. What do I make of it?

Well, I made a dark red roux with a tablespoon of the flour and a tablespoon of Kerry Gold butter in my cast iron skillet using a big wooden spoon and a sharp eye and set it aside. Then, I tossed the two pounds of cubed chuck in a zip lock bag of flour Kosher salt, and paprika and when thoroughly coated tossed the bag contents into a huge cast iron skillet with a mixture of melted butter and oil.

I tossed the the can of crushed tomato and bay leaf into the crock pot, added six cups of water and set the pot on high and added the red spuds after cutting washing them good and cutting each one in half. I thinly sliced the celery -about two cups; likewise, the carrots and into the pot they went.

The meat browned up like the nose of a grammar school snitch and I let it take on a good crust. I crushed two big cloves of garlic and added that to the pot and coarsely cut the big Vidalia into man-sixed pieces and added them to the pot. In went the meat, once it looked like the leavings of a Jean and Georgetti's Juggernaut porterhouse on the plate of a Yuppie - charcoal on the outside and medium red within.

I added more paprika, a slice of Kerry Gold butter, a whole clove of garlic, and the six cups of cold water. I stirred the stuff like Justin Wilson trying to scare off a hangover and let it cook for two hours and added my roux and churned up the mess again with more care.

I covered the the top of the stew with finely chopped parsley and set it on medium. I went to Leo High School at 5:15 AM, left the Hallowed Halls at 7:45 AM for meeting in Lansing at 8:30 after that ended at 10:45 AM got on Bishop Ford and stopped home. Smelled good in Casa Hickey. I stirred up the pot and added a tablespoon of mixed Italian spices to more chopped parsley and headed to meetings in Bridgeview and later Joliet.

I got home at 4:35 PM and kept the kids away from the pot. We dined at 5:45 PM. Not bad.


Mrs. Daley was buried while I was on the road. Herman Cain had some babe in Atlanta accuse him of thirteen years of marital infidelities. Newt Gingrich is the new Romney. Pakistan is going rouge-er. American Airlines is going bankrupt. Gov. Pat Quinn will sign legislation that will allow speed traps all over Chicago. Blago got slapped by Judge Zagel again - no tapes- and is expected to take a 12 year minimum sentence in Club Fed and put it under the Holiday Tree. Tolls will double to help ring in the New Year. Francis Cardinal George and some other Catholic Bishops will meet with Governor Christian during Advent Cyber-Black Monday netted some major coin.
Forrest Claypool wants to know, "How did you enjoy your bus rides?" The RTA spent $500,000 to conduct paper surveys handed out at CTA and Metra stops. Forrest loves it!

The survey "enables us to receive honest and helpful feedback from our customers to help us improve all facets of our operation," CTA President Forrest Claypool said.


Gee, I always fib on surveys, Forrest, and so do many, many, many of my pals and neighbors.

Name - Soren Dias

Address - Stately Wayne Manor

Phone - Often

E-mail - She Male
& etc.

Gee, Forrest, I generally prepare my ingredients, use the proper tools, time everything within reason, and periodically actually taste the stew I am about to serve.

How about riding a few buses and stepping onto the old Red-line? Novel, I know and subjective, but generally effective. Far less costly.


What are we supposed to do with all of that?

As best we can.

I had some quality ingredients at least and was prepared to make use of them. I did not need to conduct a paper survey of my stew-recipients. They ate like they were going to the Chair.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Moral Certainties at Keegan's Pub 11/26/2011


Retinopathy means "sick retina" and it is among the most terrifying of diabetic complications. What happens in retinopathy is that, with continual exposure to high blood sugars, tiny blood vessels start to grow in a disordered and out of control fashion in the retina--the part of the eye where nerves transmit light images to the brain.


After years of drinking and consuming every sugary substance on the cart, Red Edison went blind from diabetes. Red had been a steam-fitter with Cook County and worked at the Audy Home, until his retirement.

Red was a regular at Keegan's Pub -Club K- on south Western Ave. until last year when he went blind from the diabetes. In the mean time Red had undergone therapy and partnered with a beautiful German Shepherd guide dog - Fritz.

On Sunday, just befor ethe kick-off of Caleb's first NFL start as Bears QB, Red and Fritz wanderered into Keegan's where four big lads from Northern Ireland quietly quaffed pints of Magner's Cider and various foreign and domestic lagers. The bartender, a man from Belfast recently laid off as a carpenter, helped the blind gent to a stool near the door.

" Hi, Bernard!" shouted the tall red-headed sixty-eight year old pensioner who was disapponted to learn that not only was Bernard not on duty, but that his boon chums of days gone by had removed themselves not only from Club K but terra firma.

A powerful County Down voice answered the blind man, "S'all Leds fra' AnTRUM, ARM-ah en FurMAhna en Her." (trans. There are a quartet if young men from Counties Antrim, Armagh and Fermanagh Northern Ireland in this establishment).

"Can you say that in English?"

"Ull Nar-thurn Eye-Rush Leds. (trans. Gentlemen all from Six Counties under the Rule of Perfidious Albion)"

" Wanna hear a great joke about you Donkeys from Far Down?"

The cordial atmosphere thickened into a slushy and chilly silence. The bartender admonished, Red.

" LessUn,Mayt. Um Sex Fute Fife. Kee-Run's Sex Tree, Tummy's uh Beg Led unna Way't Lufter, Dermut's Uh ExtreeUM' Kuck Buxer, and Deck-Lun's wunted fer hes beyun wid th' 'RA." ( Be careful, my friend. I am 6'5" tall, Cian is 6" 3", Tommy lifts weights, Dermot is an Extreme Kick-Boxer and Declan is a rebel on the run.)
Yuh, Stuhl Wanna, Tull Yer Jok', Fulla?"

" Not if I have to explain the damn thing five times. An Orange juice with a straw, my Good man! Don't pet the dog , Kid; he'll piss all over your leg."

The Bears lost to Oakland, because Caleb failed to spike the ball within the parameters of time and good sense.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Choice - It's All about a Woman's Health and Happiness



I have stood up for the freedom of choice in the United States Senate, and I stand by my votes against the confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. With one more vacancy on the court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a woman's right to choose for the first time since Roe vs Wade, and that is what is at stake in this election. . . .
A woman's ability to decide how many children to have and when, without interference from the government, is one of the most fundamental rights we possess. It is not just an issue of choice, but equality and opportunity for all women. Barack Obama
- Planned Parenthood's 1st President Ever!




A hospital in Australia making news for having killed the “wrong” twin in an abortion of a healthy unborn child when the mother of the babies wanted an abortion on her child who doctors said had little chance to live. Now, both babies are dead.

The Herald Sun newspaper reports that the unnamed woman from Victoria had already named her unborn children when doctors told her one of the unborn babies had a congenital heart defect that would requires years of operations, assuming the baby survived long enough to have them. The mother decided to have an abortion, terminating the life of one of her unborn children and allowing the other baby to live.


Yep, science and choice -they go together like Hope and Crosby . . .Hope and Change.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Irony Spring 2012 - Chicago and World Anarchists to Welcome Nobel Laureates and the G-8/NATO Summits

Aunt Helen's Boys Aloysius (Taco) and Declan (Testy) are staying for a few weeks and can help with Eileen's 1st Communion Party.

Here is a study in Ironic Planning -

Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced today that Chicago will host the 12th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates this spring.

The summit, the first to be held in North America, will at the University of Illinois at Chicago April 23-25.
. . .
The event is expected to attract high profile leaders from around the globe. All former Nobel Peace Laureates will be invited to attend. It will be co-chaired by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Walter Veltroni, the former mayor of Rome. Emanuel will serve as an honorary co-chair.
The Nobel meeting will come a month before Chicago is in the international spotlight for the simultaneous G-8/NATO summits, which also are expected to attract throngs of protesters.


Mayor Holiday Tree is proving to be a master of Irony. Chicago, old Urbs in Horto is about to become Ciuitate Ironia and then, after the young bandanna and knit-hat bedecked anarchists get going, Quod LABO Urbs ( That Toddling Town) will become Urbis Incendio Piget (The City of Tire Fires).

Let's see, first of all President Obama is running to keep his job - check!

President Obama was honored as a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate - check!

Mayor Holiday Tree became the Mayor in order to steer the Obama 2012 Campaign -check!

In the time between that well-laid plan of mice-men (Mayor Holiday Tree's Election and the 2012 Election on November 2, 2012), there has been the Wisconsin Bongo Fest, the Arab Spring and our own Occupy America, God Bless Them! Occupy Wall Street has been a probe of police strategies and tactics. Ironically enough, the later day Lenins have been coached and schooled by University of Illinois Chicago Distinguished Professor Emeritus Billy Ayers.

Now, here is the pay-off . . .guess where the Nobel Dudes will gather?

At the University of Illinois Chicago - good old cement city!

Not only that, right here in Old Chi-town, Forrest Claypool has insulted every bus driver and L-engineer, Municipal Pensions were sucked dry by Stuart Levine, Tony Rezko and Blago with help from the usual Progressives, Mayor Holiday Tree has set the table for every Ward Organization to bow before the Garbage Grid, signalling massive City layoffs, and Chicago Water now costs a well metered lung.

Into this din and glare shall arrive the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates of the World, including President Obama. Close on the heels of that gathering of worthies arrives the G-8 economics and banking wizards, followed by the stripped down nations of NATO. Splendid.

Imagine having your twin nephews (Taco and Testy Donnellan) of the Outlaws MC (AOA), recently released from our Medium Security Correctional Facility in Galesburg after serving a nickel for A/B but the drug charges were dismissed, staying in your living room, join neighbors and clergy for your daughter's 1st Communion Party when you can not afford a quart of Faygo, let alone a cake for fifty guests. " Yeah, thanks for coming. Give the envelopes to Taco and Testy, Aunt Helen's boys. They'll keep an eye on your Audi."

What could possibly go wrong?

Waiting for our guests will be the same trust-funded tire fire enthusiasts who have made such fine impression on one and all these past five months.

This spring might be just a great time to wander Indiana, discover Michigan, or hang right here in the Hood.

Irony is best appreciated from a distance.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Rahm's "Holiday Tree" - Cosmic Impiety On Display


Mayor Rahm Emanuel lit the Chicago Holiday Tree. The Holiday Tree will delight Secular Puritans - The Progressives. Will Rahm next light the Holiday Candle - that big brass receptacle for seven candles? How about that Old Devil Crescent Moon?

Mayor Rahm Emanuel continued a Chicago tradition by flipping the switch to light the 55-foot Colorado spruce in Daley Plaza Wednesday night, but unlike Mayor Daley, Emanuel will be lighting a "holiday" tree.

The city's first Jewish mayor originally abstained from calling the festive display a "Christmas tree," although the city refers to Wednesday night's event as the "98th Annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony" on its website.

Emily Soloff, associate director for interreligious and intergroup relations for the American Jewish Committee, told the Chicago Tribune that the mayor's word choice was admirable.

"Those for whom it isn't a religious symbol relate to it for the symbol of happiness and joy that we all as Chicagoans can experience this season," Soloff said. "That adds to our civic pride and our feelings of being a community that we all share in a part of this season."
Huffington Post naturalmente

We are enjoying Secular Puritanism's last kicks at the collective Christian Cat.

The other day Atheist activists and ACLU at some level of support and encouragement ventured onto Camp Pendelton to make sure that Marines removed a cross at a make-shift chapel to the fallen of Iraq and Afghanistan. Another Pyrrhic Progressive victory got notched up.

The Secular Puritans continue to put religion, largely Christianity, into the blocks and halters with the cheerleaders like Bill Maher and Hollywood types swinging the censers filled with Progressive frankincense. When President Barack Obama won in 2008, children of Dewey went dancing in the aisles. Obama ushered in an age dedicated to Science and Certainty and Logic, they argued. Children are tissues!

Things are not looking all that great for the Science, Certainty and Logical Presidency.

Here in the Obama 2012 epicenter, Chicago, Mayor Rahm lit the Holiday Tree. It was Rahm getting in the faces of people - little man disease. Little people, both physical and psychological go all terrier on people in an attempt to intimidate them.

People who are self-assured do not need to intimidate. Intimidation is generally attempted by persons with low-self-esteem. Little man's complex often goads a smaller person to swagger and act the bully with people perceived to be bigger than themselves or somehow an imagined threat. Little Intimidators go after the bigger targets, in the mistaken notion that there are no real consequences to their actions.

The Chicago Sun Times , with great regularity, features the front page story of a little man marinated with giant killer -Mr. Booze - who was punched by a larger man. Fatal error, that.

There are things larger than us no matter how big, or powerful we might be, or become - that's in Darwin by the way.

Darwin opened the door for Hegel, Fichte, Nietsche and Dewey. Where biology was once the province of Czech Monks looking to make better beans fro the Augustinian monastery and cashiered British Army officers, who robbed the regimental funds to pay off gambling debts and were now consigned to battalions of butterflies, Darwin allowed economists and romantic social engineers to play God.

Although it is developed in the crude English style, this is a book which contains the basis of natural history for our views.
Karl Marx on Darwin's On the Origin of SpeciesDecember, 1860


Karl Marx wanted to dedicate his Das Kapital to Darwin, but the Beagle voyager declined

Dear Sir:
I thank you for the honour which you have done me by sending me your great work on Capital; & I heartily wish that I was more worthy to receive it, by understanding more of the deep and important subject of political Economy. Though our studies have been so different, I believe that we both earnestly desire the extension of Knowledge, & that this is in the long run sure to add to the happiness of Mankind.
I remain, Dear Sir
Yours faithfully,
Charles Darwin -Letter from Charles Darwin to Karl Marx
October, 1873


Sorry, Charlie, but I think you and Herr Marx merely fueled the fools.

Science was the means of overturning the study of metaphysics - the study of Being. What is there and what is it like? Spirituality can not be measured but we sure recognize that there is a there - there.

I never met my great grand fathers, but I have great faith in their existences - in County Kerry. If I trust public documents, I can reach a greater certainty on this issue, but again I am locked into trust or faith.

Getting rid of faith diminishes the individual. In the 19th Century, leading powers that have been, worked to diminish the individual and promote the community. That is the essence of Progressive ism -control.

Rahm lit the Holiday Tree, but the problem remains - HOLIDAY means Holy Day. There's that damn religion again!

Taking down creches, crosses and all manner of religious icon is the act of bullies and little people. They are impious. They not only get in the faces of people, but they thrust their noses and mouths heavenward. Piety is the recognition of something greater than our selves.

In his great History of Western Philosophy, an early example of Great Thought for Dummies, Lord Bertrand Russell, an agnostic, took John Dewey apart. The Father of American Education was a little man who never worried about consequences. Dewey believed that inquiry was the same truth.

Bertrand Russell called John Dewey's Hegelianism "'cosmic impiety,' the temptation to treat truth as a means of control, leading to an intoxication with scientific power, and the dismantling of checks on human pride and hubris. Russell called cosmic impiety the greatest danger of his time. It is a danger that shows no sign of passing and I think the new atheists are only deepening it" ( Mark Vernon).

Philosopher and agnostic Mark Vernon expanded on this scientific bit of data to underscore the meanness of Secular Puritanism, The parish churches of this country may or may not be emptying but the medieval cathedrals are filling up ??" because beautiful music and sublime architecture speaks to people of this ultimate mystery.

There is still alot of There, out There!

Light that Holiday Tree Rahm and then Light that Holiday Candle - learned ignorance is still ignorance and very bad manners. There are consequences - lots of them.

This I know, Darwin, Hegel, Fichte, Sorel, Marx, Dewey, and Progressives are the foundation for the Holiday Tree, X-Mas, and the Obama 2012 Campaign and that is a pretty shaky foundation. It ain't no Rock.

http://www.markvernon.com/friendshiponline/dotclear/index.php?post/2007/08/22/696-the-rise-of-atheism


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving! The Handsome Men of Leo High School Universal

Tamara Holder thinks we're handsome.

Yesterday, I loaded the data on the first returns from Leo High School's Campaign Leo Fall/Winter direct mail campaign. Solid as always. The turn around is generally 24 hours after Rescigno's Rapid Mail Solutions and Harte and Sons Printing fired the load off to the U.S. Postal Service.

The early returns signal a husky hunk of much needed revenue to this inner city Catholic high school serving young men too tough to fall to the streets and too proud to allow events to determine their lives. Their parents are taking extra jobs to meet tuition.

Times, by the way, are very tough.

Yesterday, I also plugged in the amounts for the checks dropped off by 1970 Alumnus Bobby Standring from the Lions of Laughter comedy night at the Beverly Arts Center this past Saturday Night. As comic laureate Paul Kelly reminded his audience, "Handsome is as Handsome Do!"

There was a Leo High School Tradition going back to the 1940's, whenever a coach, teacher, or student made a speech before the entire student body and staff, for the Lions Universal to yell approval for his words with shouts of " Handsome Bobby! Handsome Willie! Handsome Jimmy!"

Handsome, Paul Kelly reminded us on Saturday night, was an ironic recognition of our public faces. Man we are some ugly Dudes! However, in reflection of our deeds pushed by our hearts we go from beasts to beauties. Handsome Lions!

As is his custom, Leo President Dan McGrath wanders the cafeteria during the lunch hours and offers a "a touch of Danny" in the day.

From table to table, he greets the Lions Universal with praise, encouragement, and most of all thanks. They are the reasons that 400 people packed Beverly Arts Center on Saturday night and also packed envelopes from Zip Codes far beyond 60620 with checks of $25, $50, $100 and up to and including $200,000 from much older boys who once stamped approval and shouted Handsome Jimmy, Handsome Billy, Handsome Horsey, Handsome Bobby, and Handsome Pete Doyle!

The young men attending Leo make us proud. Our best athletes also happen to be top students and chess masters. Running Back Keith Harris is an IHSA recognized Scholar/Athlete and owns a fearsome record as a Leo Varisty Chessman. Jeremy a sophomore who played football as a freshman managed the Lions this year and is # 2 in his class.

The biggest disciplinary headache confronting teachers is keeping shirts tucked. The halls, where Jelani Clay, Eder Cruz, Moose Gilmartin, Andy McKenna, Tommy Hopkins, Dr. Stafford Hood, Dean at University of Illinois, General George Muellner of Boeing, Illinois Chief Justice Emeritus Tom Fitzgerald, Bishop John Gorman and Frank Considine '39, who modernized Eygpt's economy in the 1970's avoided the eyes of Brothers Rooster McCarthy, Mr. Foster and especially Brother Sloan, are as quiet as they were decades ago, when class is in session.

Visitors to Leo High School are hooked by the spirit of thanks and cooperation that scents our halls, though the second floor bathroom does otherwise, due to its aged plumbing.

One of the most beautiful young women I know, Tamara Holder, an attorney, Fox Television Legal Analyst and journalist visited Leo several times and then called me, " Hickey, I want in! Let me help on your Advisory Board." Done. Tamara works with Bill Holland, Bobby Sheehy, Jack Fitzgerald, Mike Holmes, Kenny Mason, Mike Joyce, Rich Finn, and John Linehan. Tamara is eye-poppingly gorgeous. The Leo Board members are . . .Handsome. Together they advise Dan McGrath and Principal Phil Mesina on how best to serve the Handsome Lions chowing down in turkey, stuffing, greens, yams and cobbler at yesterday's lunch. Today, we will have a Thanksgiving Mass and celebrate the Handsome Jesus Christ for all the blessing and care that He provides this great school and the Handsome young men it serves.

Paul Kelly noted that he looks at the man in the mirror each morning, no longer the tightly fleshed jaws of a teenager perhaps, and announces " Okay!. . . Handsome!"


Damn right, you are Handsome.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

November 22, 1963 - November 22, 2011


"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." John F. Kennedy



CAMELOT - 11/22/1963




CAME NOWHERE NEAR WITH GREAT REGULARITY -11/22/2011

Want to Know About Tony "The Man in the Iron Mask" Rezko? Read Sun Times Reporter Natasha Korecki - A Real Journalist


The Media stinks because it collectively believes that its audience agree fully and rapturously with it or are to dismissed universally as bumpkins, Rubes, hill-rods, knuckle-draggers, and Bible-clinging gun toters. I have never owned a gun and read the Bible via the readings during Mass on Sundays.

The Media believes it to be H.L.Mencken, Edward R. Murrow, Ring Lardner and Anne Landers on steroids. Too many iconic columnists believe themselves to be Atticus Finch, when in fact they are little more than Ernest T. Bass.
Some female columnists see themselves as 12-Step Dry Dorothy Parkers and are little more than Roseanne Barr before a well-needed nap.

There are yet great writers covering stories. In Chicago, the Sun Times is blessed to have great reporters, despite a daffy Color-forms Progressive editorial board.
Mark Konkol, Abdon Pallasch, the tenacious Tim Novak, the always fair and witty Steve Metsch, Maureen O'Donnell and the brilliant Natasha Korecki.

Yesterday, Ms. Korecki offered the most exact, tightest, honest and insightful summary of the Tony Rezko saga in her report on today's sentencing of America's Man in the Iron Mask.

Tony Rezko was the 2008 Presidential Campaign in miniature - a story where the smoke ascending from the fire was sucked up into the ozone by the Media, like a powerful kitchen exhaust hood over a toasting skillet of week old fish.

Natasha Korecki recently covered the Blago court dates with wit and accuracy.

Here is a real journalist who respects her readers on Tony Rezko.

Long known as the “political fixer,” who was friends with a politically young Barack Obama, Tony Rezko once grabbed headlines in a presidential campaign. At the same time in Illinois, Rezko’s name was synonymous with a federal investigation into former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

But since Rezko volunteered to go jail after his 2008 conviction, he’s settled in as not much more than a footnote in both politics and corruption.

That’s partly because the investigation into Blagojevich exploded after Rezko’s trial, taking a new turn involving the sale of President Obama’s U.S. Senate seat — conduct that happened when Rezko was already behind bars.

However, even though he cooperated with federal authorities after his conviction on 16 of 24 counts of corruption under Blagojevich’s tenure as governor, Rezko was never used as a witness in subsequent criminal cases.

It’s left the once high-profile defendant, set to be sentenced on Tuesday in Chicago federal court, in a precarious position.

Rezko volunteered to go to jail immediately, volunteered to cooperate and volunteered to delay his sentencing so he could be called as a witness at both of Blagojevich’s trials as well as the trial of Springfield power broker William Cellini, according to his lawyers.

Being behind bars — but not sentenced — meant he endured more oppressive prison conditions than most white collar criminals who are usually sentenced then shipped off to prison camps, his lawyers said.

But in the end, the government never called him to the witness stand. While Rezko’s lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve. to sentence him to time served, the government has requested a stiff penalty: 11 to 15 years in prison.


Thank Ms. Korecki! You wrap things up much tighter than a Federal Prosecutor with an agenda! You respect the people at the Red Boxes fishes for alot of quarters.

Monday, November 21, 2011

A Real Priest Tunes Up Planned Parenthood's Gov. Patsy Quinn


Illinois Governor (for now) Pat Quinn turned the keys over to Boss Terry Cosgrove. Boss Terry Cosgrove is the President of Personal PAC of Planned Parenthood. He is not the labor governor, that he campaigned as, but the pawn of Planned Parenthood and the Progressive Machine of Illinois - Cadillac Commie lawyers making millions in Pan-wrongful lawsuits ( Torture, brutality, racism and just being mean), Gay Rainbows, Public Salary PACS, Green Rangers, Dr. Quentin Young and Abner Mikva.

Pat Quinn immediately found cover when he was challenged by the Catholic Bishops of Illinois and sanctimoniously whined that he is a Christian and allowed Boss Cosgrove to control the narrative for him - The Bishops were anti-rape victim. Really? The news media said so, when Boss Cosgrove made the phone calls and terrifying Twitters.

Now, the Catholic Bishops want a sit down with Governor Christian. Let's see, $ 500,000 from Personal PAC and Boss Cosgrove's good will, or living up to the Baptism. Confirmation, and all that other hocus pocus, from the Abusers of Children . . .now, which way do you think Quinn will flop? Quinn flipped on all of the skilled trades unions, doing the Christian budget of Illinois.

The Bishops should do something better with their time - devising strategies on how not to allow the in-the-tank media to play them for saps again.

Instead, have a real priest visit Governor Christian. I suggest Father Tony Brankin of St. Odilo's Shrine of Lost Souls in Berwyn.

Father Brankin is a real priest and there are damn few of them.

Click my post title, scroll down to page 2 and read in full the parish bulletin from St. Odilo's and the musings of Father Tony Brankin with regard to the Quinn tap dances for abortion.

Quinn can't hide behind Planned Parenthood's skirts when there is real priest in the room.

Chicago Comic Paul Kelly - The Soul of a Pro


There is so much interest in the annual arctic sea ice minimum that there's a prediction market on Intrade. People bet on it. Betting on sea ice is a little like buying life insurance. You say "I bet I die." The insurance company says "We bet you don't." Eventually you do die, but somehow they end up winning the bet.


Saturday's Lions of Laughter brought home three big name Stand Up Comics, Kenny Howell, Bill "Soups" Campbell and the iconic John Caponera shepherded by Chicago-based Paul Kelly. The Four Lions of Laughter was a sell-out!

The show ran from 8 P.M. until well past 11:30 and the four comic geniuses had them rolling in the isles of the Beverly Arts Center. Leo Men and their wives and significant others packed the 400 seats of the south side theatre operated by Leo Alumnus Mike Nix thanks to the tireless efforts of Leo President Dan McGrath and Alums Bobby Standring, Bill Figel, John Gardner, and Paul Kelly.


Not only did Paul Kelly open the show with a side-splitting Occupy St. Barnabas shtick, but he acted as Emcee - rather ego wrangler to the three hot-property assessts of mirth. Every performer is or should be an exacting craftsman and not one of the masters of timing and punch-line phoned in this show.

Bill Campbell related the comic nature of parenting and the road in show business; Kenny Howell pushed the edge of the envelope and had demure Longwood Ladies, Mother Mc Auley Cheerleaders and Queen of Peace knock-outs shooting pop through the schnozes, as Master Howell '82 knocked one after the other into the balcony packed his Classmates; John Caponera brought things home with his rubber mug maniacal antics that accompanies his verbal assaults on the funny bones.

But it was Paul Kelly's kinder and gentler self-deprecating south side EveryDad who controlled the pace and the path of a great night's entertainment. Kelly talked about our daily discovery that God has the last laugh on all of us Long-in-the Tooth Tab Hunters - " I am bald in the front, top and back, with patches in my ears and possess a rather hairy butt; therefore, when things really go south in the hair department, I'll just comb all of that forward . . .it comes already parted. Hell, I get up every morning, look in the mirror and say . . .Okay."

Leo Alumnus Brian Needham, a Beggar's Pizza Magnate provided hot stuff for post-concert Cokes and Jokes and Jazz artists pianist Tom Muellner and singer Miss Terry Sullivan knocked out tunes from the American Songbook of Jazz Standards.

Paul Kelly was a Pro's Pro and made the Lions of Laughter Concert magic for the scores of guests and Leo Lions.

Thank you to the staff and crew of the Beverly Arts Center, especially Mr. Rick Julian who worked the sound board for the comics and provided the first public viewing of film-maker Bob Milkovich's Leo Boxing You Tube sensation "Believe in Yourself."

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Sinclair Lewis, Progressives and the Gospel of Contempt



Sinclair Lewis wrote very important novels in the last century. They are important, because the novels have been used to mark the Hegelian line in the sand separating Americans. He is a Nobel laureate. Here are some of the words he slung at his acceptance speech -

Whether imaginary castles at nineteen lead always to the sidewalks of Main Street at thirty-five, and whether the process might be reversed, and whether either of them is desirable, I leave to psychologists. . . .

I drifted for two years after college as a journalist, as a newspaper reporter in Iowa and in San Francisco, as - incredibly - a junior editor on a magazine for teachers of the deaf, in Washington, D.C. The magazine was supported by Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. What I did not know about teaching the deaf would have included the entire subject, but that did not vastly matter, as my position was so insignificant that it included typing hundreds of letters every week begging for funds for the magazine and, on days when the Negro janitress did not appear, sweeping out the office.

Doubtless this shows the advantages of a university education, and it was further shown when at the age of twenty-five I managed to get a position in a New York publishing house at all of fifteen dollars a week. This was my authentic value on the labor market, and I have always uncomfortably suspected that it would never have been much higher had I not, accidentally, possessed the gift of writing books which so acutely annoyed American smugness that some thousands of my fellow citizens felt they must read these scandalous documents, whether they liked them or not.

Main Street, published late in 1920, was my first novel to rouse the embattled peasantry and, as I have already hinted, it had really a success of scandal. One of the most treasured American myths had been that all American villages were peculiarly noble and happy, and here an American attacked that myth. Scandalous. Some hundreds of thousands read the book with the same masochistic pleasure that one has in sucking an aching tooth.

Since Main Street, the novels have been Babbitt (1922); Arrowsmith (1925); Mantrap (1926); Elmer Gantry (1927); The Man Who Knew Coolidge (1928); and Dodsworth (1929). The next novel, yet unnamed, will concern idealism in America through three generations, from 1818 till 1930-an idealism which the outlanders who call Americans «dollar-chasers» do not understand. It will presumably be published in the autumn of 1932, and the author's chief difficulty in composing it is that, after having received the Nobel Prize, he longs to write better than he can.


Lewis had contempt for the subject of all his body of work - people who were not unhappy.

There are the Babbits and the Progressives and all the poor, ignorant, and helpless masses who follow their directions in American Life. Opposing them are everyone else - the Middle Class and those much more financially fortunate.

The Babbits are those who see living a good, useful and comfortable life as a good thing - bills paid, kids fed, family housed by dint of hard work, personal economics, and faith.

The Babbits reflect the life lived by George Babbit, a fictional Midwestern Middle Class, Middle Western pater familias, who stood for everything that Sinclair Lewis was not and would not become - dull.

The 1922 satire Babbit was all the rage and the antithesis of the wild bohemianism that accompanied America's first victory as World Power, the prohibition of alcohol universal within the States, the disposable income that followed the post-War economic boom, and the challenge to values.

WWI was objected to by the new Hegelians, not so much out of love for humanity, as it was an interruption in Progressive Socialism. The Wobblies ( International Workers of the World) had moved beyond organizing labor to radical revolutionary goals. Planned Parenthood and Roger Baldwin's ACLU sprouted up with the success of American Labor, which took the path most taken - to the Middle Class. Workers wanted their children to eat, go to school, avoid the mines and mills, and scratch out a better life in America. They were not much interested in a Classless Society.

The Wobblies were co-opted into the American Communist Party and largely disappeared as irrelevant. Planned Parenthood, ACLU and the Progressive Left became the Movement. Workers do not tend to follow Worker Mandarins who could not identify the working end of a broom. Academics do that. So do young people ignorant of history and the values attached to hard work.

Sinclair Lewis became the voice of the voiceless Left of the Post WWI Era. He smartly delineated the Us and the Thems in very witty and attractive prose. Two years before the publication of Babbit, Lewis produced Main Street - the Progressive icon for American Middle Class hypocrisy, vacuity, bigotry, Bible/Gun Clinging, boosterism, and hate. Lewis voiced what the ACLU brings to court -Contempt for Middle Class values, faith, and quality of life, much more powerfully than Babbit.

When we read Main Street, Lewis pushes our noses in the THEY that Progressives want eliminated

“They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden; that mushrooms are as edible as corn-beef hash; that the word "dude" is no longer frequently used; that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of apparent intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight; that it is not a universal custom to wear scratchy flannels next the skin in winter; that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ; that some poets do not have long hair; and that Jews are not always peddlers or pants-makers.

"Where does she get all them the'ries?" marveled Uncle Whittier Smail; while Aunt Bessie inquired, "Do you suppose there's many folks got notions like hers? My! If there are," and her tone settled the fact that there were not, "I just don't know what the world's coming to!”
― Sinclair Lewis, Main Street


You can hear that voice coming over the air-waves of NPR anytime of the day. We don;t want to be Uncle Smail, much less Aunt Bessie.

Progressives understand that the Rock of Ages will wash away from the beating the tides of WILL and Time.

“I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers... coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now — and we're going to try our hands at it.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Main Street


We are the Aware the Progressive. They are patient.

Occupy Wall Street is the Triumph of Progressivism and the Triumph of Contempt.

Sinclair Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. He wrote It Can't Happen Here a really crappy novel, but a great icon of the intellectual Left and nine more unremarkable works. He died of alcoholism a year before I was born at Englewood Hospital to parents who lived in the back apartment above the alley at 76th & Union; moved to a large two bedroom apartment near Sherman Park on 55th Street and finally a Two Story Georgian at 75th & Wood in Gresham where my brother and sister were born. My Dad worked two-three jobs a week and sometimes a day. My Mom stayed home with us. We lived in a house we owned from 1952 -1974 and I went to teach in Kankakee, Illinois. A beautiful town built on a river with factories and opportunities. Sinclair Lewis hated towns like Kankakee and people who lived their - Kiwanis, Rotarians, Elks, Moose and most of all Knights of Columbus.

Babbits.


http://counterpoint.uchicago.edu/contempt.html

Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Estonian Diesel Man - A Touching Irish Ballad



"Tis true, so.

Tina May Perfection from a Little Blond Brit


I love female vocalists, especially jazz singers - Keeley Smith, Peggy Lee, Amanda Crumley, Blossom Dearie, Terry Sullivan, Nancy Wilson and the fabulous Ella Fitzgerald
Tina May is young British jazz vocalist -Dig this Blond!








Tina started exploring and developing her jazz sensibilities at University College, Cardiff. She attended vocal studies with Eilleen Price in the music dept. and almost immediately teamed up with other musicians to form small bands.She joined the Welsh Jazz Soc. run by Jed Williams and was soon a regular listening to Sweets Edison, Eddie'Lockjaw' Davies, Al Cohn and many, many more at The Lions Den' in the Great Western Hotel in Cardiff. As a student of French ,Tina knew she would have the opportunity of living in France for a year as part of her degree course. She chose to study in Paris and began her apprenticeship in Jazz when ,by chance, she met up with some aspiring young music students, who invited her to 'faire un boeuf' - have a jam with them.These musicians were Pascal Gaubert and Patrick Villanueva - who recorded with Tina on the 'live in Paris' album nearly twenty years later! Very soon Tina was performing at Le Slow Club with the Roger Guerin Big Band with special guest Kenny Clarke - such a great drummer and sweet man. Le Caveau de la Huchette became another regular gig for Tina and the band. Tina formed a quartet with Patrick Villanueva, Renaud Garcia-Fons, Alain Richard and they performed allover Paris . At that time Tina was also involved in theatre and especially comedy review- something she felt a great affinity with. She met up with another talented thespian Rory Bremner who was already writing sketches and performing his hilarious monologues and skits on politics. Together Tina and Rory performed 'You are Eiffel but I like You (!)' - a review show which they took from Paris to the Edinburgh Fringe re-naming it 'Midnight Excess'. Tina was singing some amusing jazz songs like 'I'm hip' and doing some bi-lingual and 'franglais' originals as well as acting alongside Rory. Happy times !

Friday, November 18, 2011

The Men of Leo Boxing - Faith, Pride, Work, and Success




Mike Joyce and the boxing men of Leo Catholic High School.
Located on the southside of Chicago this school has been a safe and supportive place for young men to get a quality education for 86 years. © a bob milkovich short

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Film & Animation

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milkovich Photograpahy leo catholic high school
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