Teaching in 2015 - Worm Grunting Until Convicted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are here, Henry!

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

A family is a group of people.

States rights are what have been agreed upon.

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

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

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

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

EPD - Evening.                  

One of the Lads- Pleasant night.
                 

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

Bartender- Oh, the porter. Yes, sir.                  

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

I´d like to buy everybody a drink.

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

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

Old Fella- And your father´s name?                  

EPD - Pete.  Pete Dowd.

He used to live here, by the Mornin´.            

I just bought the place back.

That´s why I´m here.                  

Old Fella - Then your grandfather

would be Ol´ Proisnas Dowd.
               

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

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



 

                 

Berkeley Balcony Tragedy Will Show Political Dry-Rot At Its Core

Many things, for aught I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever. Bishop George Berkely


Six Irish students on summer Visas died when a balcony collapsed and the New York Times saw fit to make a mockery of their deaths. The kids were accused of rowdy behavior and drunkenness and program for which they had applied was called into question.  The New York Times was worried about Berkeley - the college named for the 18th Century Irish Bishop and empiricist philosopher, but George Berkeley has not yet been accused of being 'loaded.'

The New York Times went far beyond the report of the deaths and Ireland demanded an apology and got one from Grey Lady that is similar to Rachel Dolezal's non-apology.

I think the New York Times took a very agitated and worrisome phone call from a political wheel just before print time.

You see political grifters, lawyers, activists and bundlers are deep in real estate.

Chicago readers might remember the death of a little black boy when a rusted gate of slum property fell on him. That property was managed by Cullen Davis, son of Allison Davis - the man who gave Barack Obama his shove into the White House.  Valerie Jarrett controls slum properties.

A tall, rusted steel gate that fell and crushed a 3-year-old boy to death at the Cabrini-Green public housing complex failed a building code inspection Monday, said Bill McCaffrey, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Buildings.
The gate at the Cabrini-Green rowhouses in the 900 block of North Cambridge Avenue fell on Curtis Cooper at about 5:30 p.m. Friday; he was pronounced dead less than an hour later in Children's Memorial Hospital. . . .

The CHA property has been managed for about two years by Urban Property Advisors. The firm is run by Cullen Davis, who is the son of influential city developer Allison Davis.

"If Chicago Housing Authority had been monitoring their properties, public housing wouldn't be in the shape it is in now," Steele said. "If they had been monitoring UPA, that gate wouldn't have fell."

UPA manages properties all over Chicago. The Davis family stands to make millions as part of CHA's Plan for Transformation, the city's ambitious effort to demolish high-rise public housing and replace it with mixed-income communities.

UPA Property Manager Ronald O'Neal and CHA spokesman Derek Hill declined to comment on Monday's failed building inspection.

Property is political capital and slum property is pure gold.  Note the rotted wooden support beams on the Berkley Building

I hope that Irish journalists crawl into the facts behind the rotten owners of the apartments and the amounts of cash they paid out to politicians -City, State and Federal -and bring the truth to light.

The wood rot begins on the pages of the newspapers providing cover for politicians.

At the end of day, I believe that a politician, political bundlers and the New York Times will have much to explain.

Blackhawks ( Management and Team) Prove that Good Guys Can Be Champions . . .Often

I have no Blackhawks jersey, but I really like Chicago's Champions.  From Rock Wirtz to the hoary old man Brad Richards ( a year younger than Marion Hossa) the Blackhawks Tribe is comprised of nice people. Like Duncan Keith and his pal Cammy.




John McDonough, the architect of this sports dynasty and General Manager, visited Leo High School earlier in the school year.  Leo High School students tend to be Arfican American young gents and not given to wearing Hawks Jerseys.  It seems that African Americans are not huge hockey fans, but the do seem to like basketball, or so really smart people like Spike Lee and Rachel Maddow would lead us to believe.

I am a bit of cynic.

John McDonough was impressed by the insightful and sharp questions the Leo student body posed to him at the assembly more than few months back.  In fact two Leo juniors pressed, Mr. McDonough after the students were dismissed.

Mr. McDonough invited both young men and their families to join him in his Blackhawks Skybox for one of the games in the early part of the season.

He did not need to do that.

That is what constitutes a good guy.  Doing something thoughtful and nice for people who do make any impact on one's life, whatsoever, just because one can do that.  It did not cost John McDonough anything.  Not nickle one.

Now two Leo seniors are loud and proud Blackhawks fans, who closely follow the Hawks and the game of hockey.

That is how Championships are made;not by loud, obnoxious, in-your-your-face mega-millionaire mesomorphs, but by good guys who never forget that they share the same oxygen as everyone else.

White Socialists Founded NAACP, So Why Beef That White Girl is Running the Spokane Branch?

A white muck-racking journalist was the founder and leader of the National Association of Colored People and he was a dyed-in-the-whool Socialist.  He was Charles Russell and he detested Booker T. Washington. So did the Niagra Movement, a group of fifty northern born well-eduacted African Americans who believed that Booker T. Washington's demand blacks in south and  the north learn skilled trades, as well as get an education was too slow and demeaning and Booker T. Washington, a man who endured a life-time slavery. unlike WEB Dubois, was an Uncle Tom.

A white law by tyhe name of Moorfield Storey ran NAACP for twenty years from 1909-1929.

In 1909 Russell was among 60 inspirational men and women such as Oswald Villard, William Walling, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jane Addams, and Lillian Wald who worked together to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), formed in the aftermath of a race riot at Springfield, Illinois in August of the previous year.[5] Russell's participation in the founding of the NAACP stemmed from his experiences with violence and racism as a child. One of the most memorable experiences included his father nearly being hanged for simply opposing slavery.[4] Russell served and participated on the board of directors for the NAACP for the remainder of his life. 

Of the sixty founders, only seven were black.

White Socialists detested the greatest African American hero - Booker T. Washington. Therefore, they setabout the task of erasing Booker T. Washington from history.  WEB DUBOIS , a pampered Harvard educated gent born to privilege, like most Progressives, was added to the original pantheon of NAACP.

Today, we learned that a white girl, who could have been a model for St. Pauli Girl beer brands, is running the Spokane, WA branch of the NAACP. What's the beef?

John Kass on Denny Hastert's Day in Court - Pulitzer Worthy Prose That Rises to Poetry

John Kass can work a pen.  He is a masterful penman and never better than when he covers a story so coiled in hypocrisy that keeps lesser artists slack jawed.  This is one of those Gordian Knots -the powerful politico bighted around a predatory pedophile.

John Kass's account of Denny Hastert's day in court rises to poetic heights -

For at least 15 excruciating minutes, the courtroom was silent, Hastert waiting. He'd pull at his lips and he'd cover his face again. Not all of his face, just the half where his mouth was.
He looked all hollowed out, chewed up, like paper. 

It reminded me of when my brothers and I were children on the South Side. We'd run to Leo's corner store to buy penny candy, like those colored dots, hard sugar lumps on paper rolls. Sometimes we'd take a bite of paper with the candy and later spit it out as we talked of the White Sox or what happens to souls in limbo.

That bit of chewed-up paper would dry in the sun, a lump on the sidewalk that had been paper but was now in altered form.

And so it was with Hastert, irreconcilable with the original, an altered man most likely changed by having to tell his family about why the feds had come after him.

Masterful.  The story of the criminal charges is merely crust covering the saga of man who may have used teaching and coaching to prey upon vulenerable kids.  Kass is the man to uncoil this yarn.

Maybe A Few Generations of 'Survivors' of Roe v. Wade Will Put an End to Abortion in America

 

In a sense, every American born since 1973 is a survivor of Roe. Perhaps that explains why, however young people might label themselves, abortion is a choice so few of them are prepared to take. Boston Globe

Abortion is the premeditated murder of a human being.  In 1973, a well-orchestrated campaign, not unlike the very successful one that will very shortly terminate the all sense of what marriage means, changed that fact.

Abortion is now known as women's health care, which is nonsense.

America's slide from the moral high ground to its current place in the moral mud pits can be traced from Roe v. Wade.

However, young people are doubting the narrative about abortion

Young Americans — voters under 30 — were once the most gung-ho in support of unfettered legal abortion. In 1991, fully 36 percent believed abortion should be legal under any circumstances. But by 2010, 18-to-29-year-olds had become more pro-life than their parents — only 24 percent still wanted to keep abortion legal in all cases. More than any other age cohort, in fact, young adults are now the most likely to think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.

My long-in-the-tooth Baby Boom contemporaries largely bought-in to the willful murder of unwanted children, I am ashamed to say.  We are the Disposable Generation, that created landfills for the Huggies we put on the babies who survived Planned Parenthood and now the Depends we need and added those convenient products to the piles of Schick disposable razors, plastic bottles, cutlery and batteries that powered our music devices that played Jerry Garcia and Carly Simon into the 21st Century.  We were OK with that because we were otherwise thoughtful and sensitive about our fellow man.

We elected Barack Obama, people and Obama is America's abortion President.

Young people have good hearts.


I am confident that the generations to come will end the American Holocaust.

Only then will America climb up out of the mud and crawl its way back up to the peak of the moral high ground.

Good on you, kids!

Chuck Goudie Smears Leo High School

Chuck Goudie makes a very good living off of smearing people.  He works for ABC, the network that will feature a sit com developed by Dan Savage, (a violently hateful Anti-Catholic bigot who parlayed sexual preference into a sitcom) and operates what he calls the ABC 7 I-Team.

I began work at Leo High School in 1995, four years after the Irish Christian Brothers refused to send teachers to this school in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood.  The Irish Christan Brothers taught and operated Leo High School from 1926, until 1991.

In the late 1990's, the priest-pedophile scandal knocked the Catholic Church to its knees, where it remains trying to undo the damage of homosexual and some heterosexual child stalkers who used the Church to prey on children.  This scandal swelled to epic proportons because bishops listened to lawyers.

They still do.  Problems do not go away, but the Irish Christian Brothers did - at least here at Leo.  In the wake of the abuse scandals, Leo High School was asked to provide any and all information it might possess concerning the abuse of youngsters by members of the Congregation of Christian Brothers. I joined the President of Leo High School on two depositions concerning the class action lawsuit against the Congregation of Christian Brothers.

From what I gathered, there were more cases in the United States and Canada of physical abuse allegations, than sexual overtures and triumphs by Brothers to students in their keeping.

The Congregation of Christian Brothers is bankrupt.

That does not mean that lawyers can't find some coin. Hence, Chuck Goudie's I-Team smear.  Chuck, who violated crime scenes in the past ( Miglin Murder), decided to smear Leo High School, even though Leo has no affiliation with the Congregation of Christian Brothers other than history and has helped lawyers bring claims against pedophile hiding behind hard collars.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The ABC7 I-Team looked into claims by nearly 100 alleged victims of sexual abuse in metro Chicago that the archdiocese and some of its schools are keeping dangerous secrets.

Leo High School is keeping dangerous secrets?  Here they are Chuck !

• Educational experiences for Leo students include speakers of note and field trips.
• One-half of the individuals that work at Leo are Leo graduates.
• No student who wants a good education is turned away. Leo expects its students to succeed and to be the best they can be, as do parents who have a financial obligation.
• Leo’s tuition is $7,000 a year, but no one pays this amount. 50 hours of volunteer work by parents over the course of the school years will lower tuition down to $5,000.  Alumni are also very generous, bringing the average tuition cost down to $4,000 per year. This is in contrast to $15,000 actual cost at Leo High School to educate one student.  Based on 2014-15 published tuition rates, the average tuition of South Side Catholic Schools is $10,000.
• Leo does face competition from other charter schools.  There are five in the 17th ward.
• Leo provides a rigorous college prep program.  Although no direct subsidies are received from a religious institution (Leo does have a chapel), Leo benefit from the Big Shoulders Fund that supplies support to Catholic schools in the neediest areas of inner-city Chicago.  Big Shoulders performs prep work free for Leo students.
• There is a very supportive and interested alumni, loyal and dedicated, who often show up at Leo unannounced. This year’s alumni banquet attracted 700 Leo grads and guests.
• Although the Leo high school building is structurally old and lacks the frills and attractiveness of school buildings located in more affluent areas, the structure is solid and was built to last.  Upkeep and maintenance costs are therefore kept at a minimum.

Chuck Goudie is very well paid and he is not very truthful.

He says this to close Investigations, " The I-Team left numerous messages at , Leo and . . . Schools, but never heard back."

Not true, Chuck.  One lovely young African American single mother of two answers, or takes down every phone message, every e-mail and every carrier pigeon missiive that come to Leo High School, where it has been since 1926 at 7901 S. Sangamon Street 60620, ph.(773) 224-9600 ex. 208 (for me) and fax at (773) 224-3856. E-mail come to admin@leohighschool.org. Also, every commnication with regard to Leo High School goes through a genuine journalist and newsman, Leo President Dan McGrath.  This inquiry, Chuck, would not be Dan McGrath's first rodeo.  We got nothing from ABC, Channel 7, or the I-Team.

Nothing from I-Team and nothing from Chuck. So, that is a smear - saying we do not return phone calls, much less keep "dangerous secrets."

Unless Chuck Goudie is prepared to call a lovely young African American single mother of two a liar, I'd say Chuck should crawfish on his report in a very public manner.

In a really nice world, a Leo Alumnus who has a very public record of going to court and righting public wrongs should give Chuck Goudie an old school legal ass-kicking.

A Savage Murdered Brian O'Malley's Son

Savage Mr. Pitts - Savage :Middle English: from Old French sauvage 'wild', from Latin silvaticus 'of the woods', from silva 'a wood'. - and the boy he slaughtered Kevin O'Malley

Kevin O'Malley was murdered by a savage in Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, this past weekend.  Kevin is the son of Brian O'Malley, Leo Class of 1972.

Leo High School has had more than its share of blood spilled by the hands of savages - shot, stabbed, or  bludgeoned.

This is not a delicate subject whatsoever. Savages murdered Leo freshman Antonio Davis and put Leo Man Miles Turner in Illinois Rehab for the better part of a year and a wheelchair.  Savages murdered Officers Eric Lee and William Fahey.  Savages murdered Leo Valedictorian and Golden Gloves Champion Jason Riley.  Savages murdered a Leo student from Canaryville's brother in a gangway at 45th & Wallace.  Savages come in every race, creed and of course color.

To say, this is not the case is unjust.

Kevin O'Malley's mother and father, like the thousands of anguished parents and relatives who cry out over the loss of victims of savagery on the evening news, are going to bury their child.  Kevin O'Malley is the same age as my son.

The savage who shot Kevin O'Malley will be considered for  comfort by the people who do not want us to use the noun that describes base, animal humans who only understand impulses.

Our culture makes victims of savagery privileged characters, or, at best, people to be forgotten and turns savages into cult heroes - give the media forty-eight hours and Mr. Pitts will become Mr. Chips, without an opportunity.

That is wrong in every color of the rainbow.

May Christ comfort the O'Malley family and welcome home Kevin OMalley. 

Ireland Always Wanted to be England

Ireland was Ireland/ When England Was a Pup; Ireland Will Be Ireland/ When England's Time is Up ( Old Street Ballad)

We are an unfortunate priest-ridden race and always were and always will be tell the end of the chapter.... A priest-ridden Godforsaken race. JAMES JOYCE, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man


Ireland - not to be confused with Irish People - always wanted to be England.  By that I mean, the Irish who cleaned up good, went to University, got jobs on newspapers, RTE in the Irish government  or elected to the Dáil , or advocated, were never happy being biologically linked to bog men who could crack anvils with pious prayer.

With the Irish Gay Marriage Victory all of that is no longer a problem:

Secularists insist that religious people will continue to receive the protection of the state – and maybe they are correct. But you have to concede that this does amount to a social revolution by statute. Once-upon-a-time you never had to think twice before quoting Corinthians in public. Nowadays, you have to invoke the state’s beneficent protection to do so.

Ireland is finally England!  Ireland is a secular state, unhobbled by any faith -Of our Fathers anyway.

The Secular Marriage for Anyone Victory in Ireland - the country and not the people, necessarily - is a victory for the cleaned-up good, University sampled, employed secularists who PLO over IDF and  Seifreid Nelson Sauvignon blanc 2014 over a pint of Guinness any day. These are the folks who believe in OXFAM over St. Vincent De Paul, admire Khaled Mashal rather than Chaim Herzog and Michael Barron way over Kevin Myers.

We have the same crowd here in Chicago and Illinois - the comfortable activist/investment plunger who watches only WTTW, loves abortion and hates Chick Fil Lay.

Ireland's referendum has nothing to do with gay or straight.  It's only about making sure that the Roman Catholic Church goes to ground for good, just as Henry VIII demanded when he socially engineered religion out of existence in that daffy realm.

Ireland is England.

I think that the Irish People will rethink this referendum in about ten years.  Ireland will object mightily.

Big Shot Rahm and His Chicago Media Purse Puppies Deflect Failure on City Workers

“The video, I think, is there for all to see and make a judgment. … Rahm Emanuel on dozing cop video
Like every bully, sneak and politician, Rahm offers "BUT" with this ". . .You have to look at what the men and women in uniform throughout the city do all day" in order to smear and avoid a subsequent and well-earned ass-kicking from his betters. You know, weasel words.

Rahm Emanuel is a nasty little man, but a Big Shot.  A Big Shot is an inflated ego supported by sycophants and opportunists.  The opportunists will keep the video alive for a week or so, beefed up with bitchy commentary from the likes Mike Flannery, Dane Placko, Chuck Goudie and Carol Marin and sauced with threats to ruin the life of the man in the squad car who closed is eyes. That's the Chicago Way!

Kill the working stiff and make sure that Big Shots stiff us all.  Rahm is a Big Shot and change.

He is also the Mayor of the Cty of Chicago who promised one, all and sundry that he has learned his lessons and will no longer be a nasty little man and a Big Shot.  That was re-call election days and  night. When night passed, and he rubbed the sleep from his dark-rimmed eyes, his feet hit the floor and he strutted to City Hall the same nasty little man and Big Shot we all know him to be. The problem is that the City of Chicago's sophisticated finances are all over the rails.

So, when some cell-phone equipped citizen caught a Five-O dozing in his squad, Rahm had a golden opportunity to deflect outrage at another city worker, instead of doing his job. The pure gold of this opportunity lies in the fact that the police officer is white.

Rahm, like all good Progressives. detests working people.  Working people are Subjects, or Predicate Nominatives used as rhetorical devices, only.

Working people are The Masses, toilers, breadwinners, hard hats, rank and filers who populate neighborhoods and pay taxes used in and for communities where employment is about as common as the White Rhino - the animal, not Senator MARQUE KIRQUE.

Taking a page from the Richard M. Daley playbook, written for that particular  rare reader at the University of Chicago in the mid-1990's, working stiffs, hirelings, boyhood friends, breeders and unevolved Raoman Catholics. became the meat tossed to Chicago's toothlees media lions.

The minute Rahm appointed career gifter and job hopping milquetoast Forrest Claypool to run Chicago's buses and trains, that worthy told Chicago that its transit problems had to do with CTA employees taking a break to urinate.

Amalgamated Transit Workers Local 308 President Robert Kelly fought back and embarrassed the onion-skinned mayor and his stooge at the CTA.  Immediately, the nasty little man and Big Shot and his career grifter stooge from moss-back Illinois began a campaign to vilify Kelly - a working man.

They brought in no less a loud mouth than Pastor Pfleger and and old Black Panther Bobby Rush to paint Kelly as a racist, over paid white devil who hated children and recently released convicted youth.

With Chicago's soaring homicides, why blame it on a dozing cop?

Idiot media creatures make political hay off of stories that expose the hiring of a labor leaders kid, a napping cop, a Streets and San plumber getting paid overtime, or a meter reader fudging her ticket books.  Soon they find themselves appointed to political postings, or Government Watchdog leadership.

Chicago is blessed with hard-working investigative journalists, but they always seem to be harnessed with a Carol Marin, Dane Placko, or Chuck Goudie in the story's travois, which drags no further than where the Big Shots want it to land.

When Chicagoans toss the Tribune and the Sun Times, turn off ABC, NBC, CBS, WTTW and start taking the plight of our City very seriously and talk to cops, firemen, City Workers about the realities of our wasted talents and treasure, then it might be time to empty City, County and State government of the looters, the leaches and the Big Shots.

Until then, . . .boy how about those Cubbies? . . .can't wait to get my Riot Fest tickets . . .sweet!

Hickey's All-Time Ten Toughest Men Ever

One may be brave, strong, cruel, domineering and wildly successful and be a cream puff as a man.  Toughness, I believe, is measured by how much one can take, rather than dish out. Here is my list of all-time real life tough guys. Take the test linked to Toughness
           1. Jesus of Nazareth

 2. Tom Crean

 3. Bishop Walsh 4.Ralph Ellison 5. Booker T. Washington 6. Don Pero Nino 7. Moishe Dayan 8. Samson  9.  Pancho Villa10. Spike O'Donnell

Ten Tough Guys.

America's Dash from 'The Field' to Victimhood

"The Bull" McCabe: The field is mine.

The American: Well we'll see about that won't we? John B. Keane The Field
"You didn't build that!"  President Barack Obama on the stump 2012

John B. Keane was a brilliant Irish writer, storyteller and pub owner from County Kerry.  In 1965, he wrote a play called  The Field that told the story of a rough farmer by the name of The Bull McCabe.

The Bull McCabe worked land adjacent to his own - a field allowed to grow fallow and useless through neglect.  He made the field grow green and fecund by his labors.  In fact, he neglected his own family to make this once useless field of rocks and weeds flourish and become an asset.

The problem being the field is owned by a widow. It's the law.

When the widow decided not to sell the property to The Bull,  he engaged in rural terrorism to force the poor woman to give up and go away.

If The Bull had a lawyer as every serious victim seems to have, he could have made a case in court for himself under the real estate laws of Adverse Possession - A method of gaining legal title to real property by the actual, open, hostile, and continuous possession of it to the exclusion of its true owner for the period prescribed by state law. Personal Property may also be acquired by adverse possession.

The Bull, like most people, was too busy doing his work to give such thoughts only people with too much time on their hands and a few sparks of cunning between their ears their due.

Like most of us, an injustice real or perceived can race the heart to bitterness.  The Bull was bitter, due to the widow's grasp on the land and the widow, bitter about the pranks and taunts visited  upon her by  The Bull McCabe, his slow-witted son and a sneaky leach called The Bird.

The widow determined to sell the property to a Rich American - The Yank - sight unseen.  The play ends in tragedy.

John Keane's wonderful play concerned human labor and property rights at its most basic. Keane's characters played to the fates without a politician to come to aide of either side.

That was in 1965.  LBJ was President. There was a War on Poverty and War in Vietnam.  Victim hood became the greatest revolutionary tool since anarchists international discovered that fused pyrotechnic could shake Bourgeoisie into submission.  Bomb tossing had little effect. Victim hood won the day for the Masses.

America's greatest essayist, wrote a history of Political American Victim hood in the Weekly Standard.  Epstein writes,

Victims of an earlier time viewed themselves as supplicants, throwing themselves on the conscience if not mercy of those in power to raise them from their downtrodden condition. The contemporary victim tends to be angry, suspicious, above all progress-denying. He or she is ever on the lookout for that touch of racism, sexism, homophobia, or insensitivity that might show up in a stray opinion, an odd locution, an uninformed misnomer. People who count themselves victims require enemies. Forces high and low block their progress: The economy disfavors them; society is organized against them; the malevolent, who are always in ample supply, conspire to keep them down; the system precludes them. Asked some years ago by an interviewer in Time magazine about violence in schools that are all-black—that is, violence by blacks against blacks—the novelist Toni Morrison, a connoisseur of victimhood whose novels deal with little else, replied, “None of those things can take place, you know, without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city.”
Public pronouncements from victims can take on a slightly menacing quality, in which, somehow, the roles of victim and supposed antagonist are reversed. Today it is the victim who is doing the bullying—threatening boycott, riot, career-destroying social media condemnation—and frequently making good on their threats. Victims often seem actively to enjoy their victimhood—enjoy above all the moral advantage it gives them. Fueled by their own high sense of virtue, of feeling themselves absolutely in the right, what they take to be this moral advantage allows them to overstate their case, to absolve themselves from all responsibility for their condition, to ask the impossible and demand it now, and then to demonstrate virulently, sometimes violently, when it isn’t forthcoming. (emphasis my own)

We are victims waiting for shoes, bricks, bats, bullets and bombs to drop - unless we have a lawyer in our wallets'

Americans have run from The Field.   John B. Keane's character The Bull McCabe would have none of that -things will go very tragically, I am afraid; unless, we snap out of it.

Another Leo Class of Men Set to Graduate, Because of Mr. McGrath, Coach Holmes and Miss Latifi!

Leo High School President Dan McGrath wil J. Robinson 2018



Coach Mike Holmes raises us up!

The Lion Queen, math teacher Miss Aurora Latifi


These are the final examination days for the Leo High School Class of 2015.  
Latrell Giles will go to St. Joe's in Renssalaer, Indiana - million miles from 37th & Rhodes.

I am going to miss these fine young men - one gent will be going to the United States Coast Guard Academy and another will study and play football at St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana where Leo Legend Jimmy Arneberg once coached and Chicago Bears held their summer work-out camps.  All have been accepted to at least one good college, or university.  The 2015 Valedictorian wants to opt for the skilled trades, probably the stationary engineers - great trade and vocation that.

Leo Men will go on to proud lives.  These are proud people around this school - proud Alumni, proud leadership, proud parents and families and proud students.

I'd like to credit this pride to three individuals: Leo President Dan McGrath, football coach and Father Figure Mike Holmes and the Lion Queen, Miss Aurora Latifi.

I can think of no trio people who have done more for each and every member of the 2015 and for Leo High School's traditions of commitment and courage.

Dan McGrath spends every waking hour anguishing over Leo High School and young men it serves.  Dan is at every Leo event - academic, athletic or social.  Not an hour goes by that misses a Dan McGrath moment for each and every student under this roof, all the while bringing his many talents to the onerous tasks of meeting payroll, strategic planning, correcting a student's prose, or reaching out to new money.

Mike Holmes raises up young men. Mike takes every student to his massive heart with a father's pride.  He is the most positive, joyful, fierce and sweet-hearted man our young men will ever meet in life.

Aurora Latifi commands love and respect in the math classes she teaches and in halls she patrols. Leo graduates know algebra, calculus, geometry and basic math when they accept a diploma at graduation, because a pretty girl from the mountains of Albania would not allow failure.

Our young men succeed because Leo expects that of them.  No three people set that bar higher than Dan McGrath, Mike Holmes and Aurora Latifi.

Anthony Burgess - How Writers Paint with Words

Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.

Aquinas, Thomas. 13th Century.

Outside, the main doors behind him, he was hit full in the chest by autumn. The doggy wind leapt about him and nipped; leaves skirred along the pavement, the scrape of the ferrules of sticks; melancholy, that tetrasyllable, sat on a plinth in the middle of the square. English autumn, and the whistling tiny souls of the dead round the war memorial.  from The Doctor is Sick* by Anthony Burgess

My God! That man could paint with words. The simple 'he was hit' gets a gloriously imaginative pigments from the full palette of Burgess's final picture. 'He' is hit "full in the chest by autumn."  The happy dog of Fall lands both paws squarely on the old heart box, and leaps and nips and skirrs not only at the man's feet, but also a concrete foot honoring English war-dead.

Like Vermeer before an empty canvass, Burgess has mixed his pigments and slathered them onto the palette of his mind's tongue and allows his hands and fingers to form a mighty scene.

Tell me God's hand avoid human expression.

* The "doctor" of the title is Edwin Spindrift, Ph.D., an unhappily married professor of linguistics who has been sent home from Burma to England suffering from a mysterious brain ailment. While Edwin is confined to a neurological ward, undergoing a battery of diagnostic tests, Mrs. Spindrift amuses herself with some disreputable new friends at the surrounding pubs. Sometimes, to Edwin's distress, she sends these friends to keep her husband company during visiting hours, rather than come herself. Most of the novel is a dream sequence: while anesthetised for brain surgery, Edwin's anxiety over his wife and the company she keeps turns into a slightly surrealistic fantasy in which Edwin leaves the hospital and encounters his wife's friends, with whom he has various adventures.

Anthony Burgess: Not Good Writing, Great Writing

                This Leo HS Sophomore is my personal Guidance Counselor


Mr. Apple*..... is a sophomore at Leo High School.  He has a magnificent brain wired to tangle of behavior circuits in need of some minor adjustment. In short, if a pane of glass, left leaning against a locker,  gets smashed, the search for the culprit is not an extended one.  He is a healthy adolescent male.  That is how we roll.   The man is working on his 16 year old impulse control circuitry, I'll say that for him. If I had half of his brains, I'd have one.  His academic chart is only now beginning to reveal an arrow pointing up to what some people might call achievement.

Since, Mr. Apple . . .happens to hold a past record of low-achievement due to his manly impulse to do whatever he feels like doing at the moment and has thickened his disciplinary jacket to RR Donnelly proportions, as well as remains  in possession of the one of sharpest minds on campus, I sought his counsel about my return to the classroom.

I presented Mr. Apple. . .. with a copy of Ralph Ellison's " King of the Bingo Game" and asked him to read it over the weekend.  I told him that it was an example of great writing in prose.

We talked about classroom management (consistency ) and agreed that students act up when bored with a teacher.  When they get bored with a teacher, the subject gets the same treatment.  It ain't pretty.

" Teacher'll says 'This is a great book' and leave it at that," my counsellor told me and added, "Well, it ain't great . . .it's boring. and then he/she gets mad  and says 'take out some paper it's quiz time.' Just because it's in a book don't make it great."

My Man!

Mr. Apple. . . .,  asked me about the difference between good writing and great writing.  I said, "You. "

What you bring to the reading of the book must meet what the writer who wrote it in a way that knocks you backwards.

Here is the best example that I know of in one paragraph.  This is from a brilliant short novel by brilliant guy -Anthony Burgess.

Outside, the main doors behind him, he was hit full in the chest by autumn. The doggy wind leapt about him and nipped; leaves skirred along the pavement, the scrape of the ferrules of sticks; melancholy, that tetrasyllable, sat on a plinth in the middle of the square. English autumn, and the whistling tiny souls of the dead round the war memorial.  from The Doctor is Sick

How's your forward motion?  We'll take a look at this paragraph tomorrow, Kids.  Read and see why I dare call it great writing.

* Fearless defensive back in football, a chess master , two time Gold Honor Roll Student  and undisputed King of Detentions!

In the 19th & 20th Centuries The Reds Went to Jail; Today The Reds Arrest The Cops: Francis O'Neill and Emma Goldman, Best Friends Forever!

In just a little more than century, Reds (Marxists who demand to called Progressives) have finally beaten Law Enforcement.  With time, treasure and talent, the Roger Baldwins ( founder of the ACLU and NAACP) have managed to bulldoze the moral high ground of American life to its current valley of the shadow of death.

All it took was money from the once prosperous American middle class and put it into the hands of lawyers, academic, criminals and of course journalists.

Six police officers are in custody in the City of Baltimore for the murder of a man - three officers are black and three are white, but it matters not because the current wisdom defines them as White African Americans.
They are "white" because they joined the Baltimore Police Department. N.B. Let's try and remember that novelist Tom Wolf was being sarcastic when he said, in the Bonfire of the Vanities, that black men become Irish the minute they join a police force. America is evolved - Audie Murphy and Chris Kyle are psychopaths and Al Gore and Michael Moore are cross-trainers; Bishop Fulton J. Sheen long canceled by ABC TV is forgotten and  Sodomite Social Critic Dan Savage is on ABC TV Disney  Cops are locked up and Criminals made Millionaires/Les One Third to Cockroach Commie Lawyers

Somethings need to be permanent -Racism, Class Envy, Ostentatious Displays of Vulgarity. Others, totally forgotten, like police officers are human beings.

Come with me back in time to the turn of the twentieth century. Emma Goldman was planting bombs and getting away with it, because she had the best lawyers and Captain Francis O'Neill Superintendent of Chicago Police was preserving Irish music, catching bad guys, stepping between plutocrats and strikers and making next to nothing annually.

Emma Goldman lectured late in her career as a Revolutionist and here recounts her time with  Chief O'Neill after the assassination of President McKinley: From steppingstone.com

The subject of my lecture in Cleveland, early in May of that year, was Anarchism, delivered before the Franklin Liberal Club, a radical organization. During the intermission before the discussion I noticed a man looking over the titles of the pamphlets and books on sale near the platform. Presently he came over to me with the question: "Will you suggest something for me to read?" He was working in Akron, he explained, and he would have to leave before the close of the meeting.

Mary Isaak came in to tell me that a young man, who gave his name as Nieman, was urgently asking to see me. I knew nobody by that name and I was in a hurry, about to leave for the station. Rather impatiently I requested Mary to inform the caller that I had no time at the moment, but that he could talk to me on my way to the station. As I left the house, I saw the visitor, recognizing him as the handsome chap of the golden hair who had asked me to recommend him reading-matter at the Cleveland meeting.
Hanging on to the straps on the elevated train, Nieman told me that he had belonged to a Socialist local in Cleveland, that he had found its members dull, lacking in vision and enthusiasm.. He could not bear to be with them and he had left Cleveland and was now working in Chicago and eager to get in touch with anarchists.
At the station I found my friends awaiting me, among them Max. I wanted to spend a few minutes with him and I begged Hippolyte to take care of Nieman and introduce him to the comrades.

How long has it been since Cleveland had an elevated train?
My holiday in Rochester was somewhat marred by a notice in Free Society containing a warning against Nieman. It was written by A. Isaak, editor of the paper, and it stated that news had been received from Cleveland that the man had been asking questions that aroused suspicion, and that he was trying to get into the anarchist circles. The comrades in Cleveland had concluded that he must be a spy.
I was very angry. To make such a charge, on such flimsy ground! I wrote Isaak at once, demanding more convincing proofs. He replied that, while he had no other evidence, he still felt that Nieman was untrustworthy because he constantly talked about acts of violence. I wrote another protest. The next issue of Free Society contained a retraction

As I stood at a street-corner wearily waiting for a car, I heard a newsboy cry: "Extra! Extra! President McKinley shot!" I bought a paper, but the car was so jammed that it was impossible to read. Around me people were talking about the shooting of the President.
Carl had arrived at the house before me. He had already read the account. The President had been shot at the Exposition grounds in Buffalo by a young man by the name of Leon Czolgosz. "I never heard the name," Carl said; "have you?" "No, never," I replied. "It is fortunate that you are here and not in Buffalo," he continued. "As usual, the papers will connect you with this act." "Nonsense!" I said, "the American press is fantastic enough, but it would hardly concoct such a crazy story."
... While I was waiting for the man to fill out his order, I caught the headline of the newspaper lying on his desk: "ASSASSIN OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY AN ANARCHIST. CONFESSES TO HAVING BEEN INCITED BY EMMA GOLDMAN. WOMAN ANARCHIST WANTED."
By great effort I strove to preserve my composure, completed the business, and walked out of the store. At the next corner I bought several papers and went to a restaurant to read them. They were filled with the details of the tragedy, reporting also the police raid of the Isaak house in Chicago and the arrest of everyone found there. The authorities were going to hold the prisoners until Emma Goldman was found, the papers stated. Already two hundred detectives had been sent out throughout the country to track down Emma Goldman.
On the inside page of one of the papers was a picture of McKinley's slayer. "Why, that's Nieman!" I gasped.
When I was through with the papers, it became clear to me that I must immediately go to Chicago. The Isaak family, Hippolyte, our old comrade Jay Fox, a most active man in the labour movement, and a number of others were being held without bail until I should be found. It was plainly my duty to surrender myself. I knew there was neither reason nor the least proof to connect me with the shooting. I would go to Chicago.

I had often heard of the third degree used by the police in various American cities to extort confessions, but I myself had never been subjected to it… On the day of my arrest, which was September 10, I was kept at police headquarters in a stifling room and grilled to exhaustion from 10.30 a.m. till 7 p.m. At least fifty detectives passed me, each shaking his fist in my face and threatening me with the direst things …
I reiterated the story I had told them when first brought to police headquarters, explaining where I had been and with whom. But they would not believe me and kept on bullying and abusing me. My head throbbed, my throat and lips felt parched. A large pitcher of water stood on the table before me, but every time I stretched my hand for it, a detective would say: "You can drink all you want, but first answer me. Where were you with Czolgosz the day he shot the president?" The torture continued for hours. Finally I was taken to the Harrison Street Police Station and locked in a barred enclosure, exposed to view from every side …
I woke up with a burning sensation. A plain-clothes man held a reflector in front of me, close to my eyes. I leaped up and pushed him away with all my strength, crying: "You're burning my eyes!" "We'll burn more before we get through with you!" he retorted. With short intermissions this was repeated during three nights …
Since my arrest I had had no word from my friends, nor had anyone come to see me. I realized I was being kept incommunicado. I did get letters, however, most of them unsigned. "You damn bitch of an anarchist," one of them read, "I wish I could get at you. I would teat your heart out and feed it to my dog." "Murderous Emma Goldman," another wrote, "you will burn in hell-fire for your treachery to our country." A third cheerfully promised: "We will cut your tongue out, soak your carcass in oil, and burn you alive." The description by some of the anonymous writers of what they would do to me sexually offered studies in perversion that would have astounded authorities on the subject. The authors of the letters nevertheless seemed to me less contemptible than the police officials. Daily I was handed stacks of letters that had been opened and read by the guardians of American decency and morality. At the same time messages from my friends were withheld from me. It was evident that my spirit was to be broken by such methods.

The same evening Chief of Police O'Neill of Chicago came to my cell. He informed me that he would like to have a quiet talk with me. "I have no wish to bully or coerce you," he said; "perhaps I can help you." "It would indeed be a strange experience to have help from a chief of police," I replied; "but I am quite willing to answer your questions." He asked me to give him a detailed account of my movements from May 5, when I had first met Czolgosz, until the day of my arrest in Chicago. I gave him the requested information, but without mentioning my my visit to Sasha or the names of the comrades who had been my hosts. As there was no longer any need of shielding Dr. Kaplan, the Isaaks, or Hippolyte, I was in a position to give practically a complete account. When I concluded—what I said being taken down in shorthand—Chief O'Neill remarked: "Unless you're a very clever actress, you are certainly innocent. I think you are innocent, and I am going to do my part to help you out." I was too amazed to thank him; I had never before heard such a tone from a police officer. At the same time I was skeptical of the success of his efforts, even if he should try to do something for me.
Immediately following my conference with the Chief I became aware of a decided change in my treatment. My cell door was left unlocked day and night, and I was told by the matron that I could stay in the large room, use the rocking-chair and the table there, order my own food and papers, receive and send out mail. I began at once to lead the life of a society lady, receiving callers all day long, mostly newpaper people who came not so much for interviews as to talk, smoke, and relate funny stories. Others, again, came out of curiosity. Most attentive was Katherine Leckie, of the Hearst papers … A strong and ardent feminist, she was at the same time devoted to the cause of labour. Katherine Leckie was the first to take my story of the third degree. She became so outraged at hearing it that she undertook to canvass the various women's organizations in order to induce them to take the matter up.

Buffalo was pressing for my extradition,but Chicago asked for authentic data on the case. I had already been given several hearings in court, and on each occasion the District Attorney from Buffalo had presented much circumstantial evidence to induce the State of Illinois to surrender me. But Illinois demanded direct proofs. There was a hitch somewhere that helped to cause more delays. I thought it likely that Chief of Police O'Neill was behind the matter.
The Chief's attitude towards me had changed the behaviour of every officer in the Harrison Street Police Station. The matron and the two policemen assigned to watch my cell began to lavish attentions on me. The officer on night duty now oftern appeared with his arms full of parcels, containing fruit, candy, and drinks stronger than grape-juice. "From a friend who keeps a saloon round the corner," he would say, "an admirer of yours." The matron presented me with flowers from the same unknown. One day she brought me the message that he was going to send a grand supper for the coming Sunday. "Who is the man and why should he admire me?" I inquired. "Well, we're all Democrats, and McKinley is a Republican," she replied. "You don't mean you're glad McKinley was shot?" I exclaimed. "Not glad exactly, but not sorry, neither," she said; "we have to pretend, you know, but we're none of us excited about it."

Buffalo failed to produce evidence to justify my extradition. Chicago was getting weary of the game of hide-and-seek. The authorities would not turn me over to Buffalo, yet at the same time they did not feel like letting me go entirely free. By way of compromise I was put under twenty-thousand-dollar bail. The Isaak group had been put under fifteen-thousand-dollar bail. I knew that it would be almost impossible for our people to raise a total of thirty-five thousand dollars within a few days. I insisted on the others being bailed out first. Thereupon I was transferred to the Cook County Jail.
The night before my transfer was Sunday. My saloon-keeper admirer kept his word; he sent over a huge tray filled with numerous goodies: a big turkey, with all the trimmings, including wine and flowers. A note came with it informing that he was willing to put up five thousand dollars towards my bail. "A strange saloon-keeper!" I remarked to the matron. "Not at all," she replied; "he's the ward heeler and he hates the Republicans worse than the devil." I invited her, my two policmen, and several other officers present to join me in the celebration. They assured me that nothing like it had ever before happened to them—a prisoner playing host to her keepers.

The newspapers had published rumours about mobs ready to attack the Harrison Street Station and planning violence to Emma Goldman before she could be taken to the Cook County Jail. Monday morning, flanked by a heavily armed guard, I was led out of the station-house. There were not a dozen people in sight, mostly curiosity-seekers. As usual, the press had deliberately tried to incite a riot.
Ahead of me were two handcuffed prisoners roughly hustled about by the officers. When we reached the patrol wagon, surrounded by more police, their guns ready for action, I found myself close to the two men. Their features could not be distinguished: their heads were bound up in bandages, leaving only their eyes free. As they stepped up to the patrol wagon, a policeman hit one of them on the head with his club, at the same time pushing the other prisoner violently into the wagon. They fell over each other, one of them shrieking with pain. I got in next, then turned to the officer. "You brute," I said, "how dare you beat that helpless fellow?" The next thing I knew, I was sent reeling to the floor. He had landed his fist on my jaw, knocking out a tooth and covering my face with blood. Then he pulled me up, shoved me into the seat, and yelled: "Another word from you, you damned anarchist, and I'll break every bone in your body!"
I arrived at the office of the county jail with my waist and skirt covered with blood, my face aching fearfully. No one showed the slightest interest or bothered to ask how I came to be in such a battered condition. They did not even give me water to wash up. For two hours I was kept in a room in the middle of which stood a long table. Finally a woman arrived who informed me that I would have to be searched. "All right, go ahead," I said. "Strip and get on the table," she ordered. I had been repeatedly searched, but I had never before been offered such an insult. "You'll have to kill me first, or get your keepers to put me on the table by force," I declared; "you'll never get me to do it otherwise." She hurried out, and I remained alone. After another long wait another woman came in and led me upstairs, where the matron of the tier took charge of me. She was the first to inquire what was the matter with me. After assigned me to a cell she brought a hot-water bottle and suggested that I lie down and get some rest.
The following afternoon Katherine Leckie visited me. I was taken into a room provided with a double wire screen. It was semi-dark, but as soon as Katherine saw me, she cried: "What on God's earth has happened to you? Your face is all twisted!" No mirror, not even of the smallest size, being allowed in the jail, I was not aware how I looked, though my eyes and lips felt queer to the touch. I told Katherine of my encounter with the policeman's fist. She left swearing vengeance and promising to return after seeing Chief O'Neill. Towards evening she came back to let me know that the Chief had assured her the officer would be punished if I would identify him among the guards of the transport. I refused. I had hardly looked at the man's face and I was not sure I could recognize him. Moreover, I told Katherine, much to her disappointment, that the dismissal of the officer would not restore my tooth; neither would it do away with police brutality …
Poor Katherine was not aware that I knew she could do nothing. She was not even in a position to speak through her own paper: her story about the third degree had been suppressed. She promptly replied by resigning; she would no longer be connected with such a cowardly paper, she had told the editor.

Again I was taken to court for a hearing and again the Buffalo authorities failed to produce evidence to connect me with Czolgosz's act. The Buffalo representative and the Chicago judge sitting on the case kept up a verbal fight for two hours, at the end of which Buffalo was robbed of its prey. I was set free.
Ever since my arrest the press of the country had been continually denouncing me as the instigator of Czolgosz's act, but after my discharge the newpapers published only a few lines in an inconspicuous corner to the effect that "after a month's detention Emma Goldman was found not to have been in complicity with the assassin of President McKinley."
Upon my release I was met by Max, Hippolyte, and other friends, with whom I went to the Isaak home. The charges against the comrades arrested in the Chicago raids had also been dismissed. Everyone was in high spirits over my escape from what they had all believed to be a fatal situation. "We can be grateful to whatever gods watch over you, Emma," said Isaak, "that you were arrested here and not in New York." "The gods in this case must have been Chief of Police O'Neill," I said laughingly. "Chief O'Neill!" my friends exclaimed; "what did he have to do with it?" I told them about my interview with him and his promise of help. Jonathan Crane, a journalist friend of ours present, broke out into uproarious laughter. "You are more naïve than I should have expected, Emma Goldman," he said; "it wasn't you O'Neill cared a damn about! it was his own schemes. Being on the Tribune, I happen to know the inside story of the feud in the police department." Crane then related the efforts of Chief O'Neill to put several captains in the penitentiary for perjury and bribery. "Nothing could have come more opportunely for those blackguards than the cry of anarchy," he explained; "they seized upon it as the police did in 1887; it was their chance to pose as saviours of the country and incidentally to whitewash themselves. But it wasn't to O'Neill's interest to let those birds pose as heroes and get back into the department. That's why he worked for you. He's a shrewd Irishman. Just the same, we may be glad that the quarrel brought us back our Emma."
I asked my friends their opinion as to how the idea of connecting my name with Czolgosz had originated. "I refuse to believe that the boy made any kind of confession or involved me in any way," I stated; "I cannot think that he was capable of inventing something which he must have known might mean my death. I'm convinved that no one with such a frank face could be so craven. It must have come from some other source."
"It did!" Hippolyte declared emphatically. "The whole dastardly story was started by a Daily News reporter who used to hang round here pretending to sympathize with our ideas. Late in the afternoon of September 6 he came to the house. He wanted to know all about a certain Czolgosz or Nieman. Had we associated with him? Was he an anarchist? And so forth. Well, you know what I think of reporters—I wouldn't give him any information. But unfortunately Isaak did."
"What was there to hide?" Isaak interrupted. "Everybody about here knew that we had met the man through Emma, and that he used to visit us. Besides, how was I to know that the reporter was going to fabricate such a lying story?"

There's a pencilled note in the copy of the book I have noting that it's the Chicago Daily News that's under discussion, not the New York Daily News.
A trusted person was dispatched to Buffalo, but he soon returned without having been able to visit Czolgosz. He reported that no one was permitted to see him. A sympathetic guard had disclosed to our messenger that Leon had repeatedly been beaten into unconsciousness. His physical appearance was such that no outsider was admitted, and for the same reason he could not be taken to court. My friend further reported that, notwithstanding all the torture, Czolgosz had made no confession whatever and had involved no one in his act.

The tragedy in Buffalo was nearing its end. Leon Czolgosz, still ill from the maltreatment he had endured, his face disfigured and head bandaged, was supported in court by two policemen. In its all-embracing justice and mercy the Buffalo court had assigned two lawyers to his defence. What if they did declare publicly that they were sorry to have to plead the case of such a depraved criminal as the assassin of "our beloved" President!

Czolgosz was sentenced to death in the electric chair.
While it has nothing to do with the preceding story, I noticed while reading the book that Goldman had enjoyed visiting the fair city of San José during the Spanish-American war.
Thenceforth my most important lecture, and the best-attended, was on Patriotism and War.
In San Francisco it went over without interference, but in the smaller California towns we had to fight our way inch by inch. The police, never loath to break up anarchist meetings, stood complacently by and thus encouraged the patriotic disturbers who sometimes made speaking impossible. The determination of our San Francisco group and my own presence of mind saved more than one critical situation. In San Jose the audience looked so threatening that I thought it best to dispense with a chairman and carry the meeting myself. As soon as I began to speak, bedlam broke loose. I turned to the trouble-makers with the request that they choose someone of their own crowd to conduct the meeting. "Go on!" they shouted; "you're only bluffing. You know you wouldn't let us run your show!" "Why not?" I called back. "what we want is to hear both sides, isn't that so?" "Betcher life!" someone yelled. "We must secure order for that, mustn't we?" I continued; "I seem unable to do so. Supposing one of you boys comes up here and shows me how to keep the rest quiet until I have stated my side of the story. After that you can state yours. Now be good American sports."
Boisterous cries, shouts of "Hurrah," calls of "Smart kid, let's give her a chance!" kept the house in confusion for a few minutes. Finally an elderly man stepped up on the platform, banged his cane on the table, and in a voice that would have crumbled the walls of Jericho, bellowed: "Silence! Let's hear what the lady has to say!" There was no further disturbance during my speech of an hour, and when I finished, there was almost an ovation.

 Emma Goldman and Chief O'Neill are middle class Darby and Joan nowadays.  Real radicals make a great deal of money shrinking the middle class out of existence and cops are being assassinated and sent to jail.

Wasn't that a time?