Gold, Frankincense and Murph

They came into the house and saw the young
child with Mary, his mother, and they fell
down and worshiped him. Opening their
treasures, they offered to him gifts: gold,
frankincense, and myrrh. Matthew 2:11

Today is the feast of the Epiphany, or the visit of Wise Men (Magi) to the Holy Family.  This is a wonderful feast, recorded in the Gospels and celebrated throughout the Christian world.

When we were kids we called it Greek Christmas.   It is their Feast of Lights, celebrated as the emergence of the Church of Christ into the light, after three centuries of life in the catacombs under Roman persecution.  Our Greek buddies had two Christmas celebrations and our Jewish pals had Hanukkah which was a prolonged series of gifts as well.  We did Ok.  Only suckers beef.

You see for the Greeks and the Eastern Rite Churches The Epiphany encompasses not only the birth of Christ, but also celebrates the Baptism of Jesus, the visit of Magi and Marriage Feast Cana.

To us Catholics, Latin Rite, we think only about the visit of the three Wise men.

Theologically, it was the Greek Rite that has the more elaborate sensibility. The Eastern Orthodox patriarchs of the early Christian Church fused the Theophony of Christ ( Nativity) and the Epiphany of Christ ( the appearance of ) as the Body of Christ ( the Church) emerging to the light.

When I was a little guy, I got a particular kick out of the three Magi.  Two white guys and a black dude, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. How the hell we came up with those names is a wonder because none of the three Gospel accounts mention their names.  Ok by me.   They, to me, were like Bob Hightower, Pedro, and the Abilene Kid from the Three Godfathers.   They were like my many uncles who dropped off gifts, unannounced and for no reason other than they thought of me.

To the Christ Child the Magi brought gifts.  Until I was in third grade, I was totally flummoxed on their holiday selections: gold, frankincense and mur. . .murph.

For years I thought it was Murph, like my Dad's cousin Bart Murphy, who played for the Leo Lights in 1945.

I did learn that it was; Myrrh was an oil used for anointing Kings.

Gold, I could understand. Everyone needs some walking around money; especially a young Jewish couple on the bad side of King Herod and flopping in a stable.

Frankincence was a perfume, or kind of incense that made sense - in stable and new born baby and all.

But Myyrrh?

Oil - like the stuff we oiled our Wilson, Rawlings and Spaulding mitts with, sticking a baseball in its hollow and tying it up tight for a few days.

Oil makes things soft in order to make them tough.  Tough is pliable, durable, but never hard,

Hard is ruined.  Leaving an un-seasoned baseball glove out in the rain made it hard, brittle and useless.

Oil is for annointing us, toughening us and keeping us from becoming hard.  It is probably the best gift of the three.

Four hard people tortured a special needs kid, this past week.  Stone hard killers continued their work here in Chicago.   A hard man killed gunned down innocent people in Florida,  A hardened terrorist ran a truck into and killed four Israeli soldier.  At every ramp on every expressway, people with a hard road will beg for change and some of us will harden our hearts to them.  It is 18 degrees and they are asking for a little help.  I saw a couple load up on surf and turf at the Golden Steer on Friday night and leave no tip whatsoever.  People need some myrrh.

A hard guy can never ever be a tough guy.

Wish St. Matthew had written, "they offered to him gifts: gold, frankincense, and oil."  I went a long time thinking it was Murph.

Meet the Press - They Do Not Respect You

 Police said the incident began when an off-duty Chicago firefighter began to argue with motorists in the funeral procession who were blocking a fire lane. Police said the argument became “verbal and physical.”
Beal’s family members have said the incident began when an off-duty police officer tried to run one of their relatives off the road. Sun Times Frank Main &Mitch Dudek  

The shooting, which took place three days before Donald Trump's election as president, happened in Mount Greenwood, a largely white enclave heavily populated by police and firefighters on the mostly black and Hispanic South Side. Dueling protests followed, and the groups traded racial slurs and insults; supporters of the police, largely white, made clear those protesting the shooting, mostly black, were not welcome in the neighborhood. Chicago Tribune - Elvvia Malagon

         Kofi Ademola is a community organizer with Black Lives Matter Chicago and has been in                    regular contact with the Beal family since the fatal shooting.

He had not spoken to the family Thursday but reached out to offer some encouragement during this difficult time. Ademola said the family was already grieving when Beal was fatally shot. And now they are dealing with the arrest of Beal's brother Michael, who was taken into custody following the shooting for allegedly tackling with the officer and attempting to grab his gun.
For Ademola, what stood out among the new information was the 911 call from the officer. He said the officer's tone backs up the family's claims that painted the officer as both "aggressive" and "antagonistic." DNAinfo Kelly Bauer and Howard Ludwig

The media comments on a shooting that took place in November.  The accounts of the video released by the lame-duck Independent Police Review Board and soon to be Rahm-reconfigured as COPA, indicate a good police shooting.

Meet the Press!

None of the above reports from today's sources are accurate.  The funeral possession went on without the family Beal - they were weaving in and out of traffic, one vehicle was doing a U-Turn on 111th Street at Troy and then blocked the entrance to the FIRE HOUSE - which dispatches an Ambulance to black and white residents of Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood.

DNAinfo has been disgraceful from the day of the shooting. Only Ed Komenda presented exactly what had happened.

The incident happened about 3 p.m. Saturday near 111th Street and Troy Avenue. Joshua Beal was in a procession of cars returning from a funeral when he stopped in front of a firehouse on 111th Street, according to prosecutors.
An off-duty police officer told Beal that he was blocking access to the firehouse and the confrontation started, prosecutors said. Another off-duty officer in a nearby barber shop joined in on the confrontation, prosecutors said.
A group of nine people approached the second officer and started punching him, prosecutors said.A police sergeant driving to work saw the fight. He got out of his car, drew his gun and said he was a police officer, authorities said.
"You're not the only mother------- out there with guns," Joshua Beal said and waved the gun "back and forth," according to prosecutors. Joshua Beal then pulled the trigger, prosecutors said. It was unclear whether the gun actually fired.
Beal, who was in town to serve as a pallbearer at his cousin's funeral, refused to drop his gun, and he was shot multiple times, prosecutors said. He later died at Advocate Christ Medical Center.
Michael Beal then tried to pick up his brother's gun, prosecutors said.
"F--- you," Michael Beal said, according to prosecutors. "You killed my brother. I'm going to kill you."

Ed Komenda wrote that accurate account on November 8th and has not written about the Beal shooting since - Howard Ludwig, Kelly Bauer, Joe Ward are the compelling narrators.

The Tribune uses 'dogwhistle' racism and race baiting.

Has a black or Hispanic Community ever been referred to as an enclave?  Is Boystown an enclave?
Might Hyde Park be an enclave?  What is the diversity of Chinatown?  Mount Greewood is a neighborhood and black people live there next door to white people.

Enclave's etymology from the French for 'enclosure' and the Latin root word clavis offers a dog whistle to sensitive ears.  Clavis or 'key' suggests locked up, violent and hostile.  Shucks, link up Google's images for enclave and it jibs with Neil Steinberg's smears.

We get it.  The story of what actually happened on November 5, 2017 at around 3 PM on the north side of 111th Street in Mount Greenwood has yet to be told in the Chicago press, dissected by Phil Ponce on WTTW, or smirked about on WBEZ.

The core of the story is lost in the feathers and boas of 'compelling narrative.'

• 60's style racism
• Tweets from high school girls
• Ja'mal Green's political future
• Pastor Pfleger's grift box
• CPUSA and REVCOM
• Racism, racism and more racism

No an idiot who violated traffic laws with easy contempt, was confronted by people who are not idiots. A fight ensued.  Police officers announced them selves and pulled service weapons when the idiot was 'unresponsive' to police orders. The idiot pulled a gun on the announced police officers who returned fire.  The idiot died, God be good to him, and the press, Ja'mal Green, Black Lives Matter, REVCOM and Pastor Pfleger did the rest - Oh, and Kofi Ademola wants in too. 

Meet the Press!  With contempt. 

Broetics: The Path Into the Male Mind

"ut pictura poesis (l. 361),"  Hoarce from ars Poetica

Final Final Fantasy
I will not spend one hundred and thirteen
hours of my life on a video game
ever again. I will not rationalize,
claiming that it is somehow "research" for
my future career as a comic book
writer. I will not allow myself to be
sucked beyond the event horizon of an
RPG situated on a distant
planet, no matter how good the graphics are
on the nubile female lead character's chest.
I will no longer waste my time seeking out
arbitrary unlockable achievements.
I am going to start beating games faster. Brian McGackin

As in pictures, so in poetry.  The camera eye of the brain works wonders and the poet brings to life images and sentiments akin the apprehended.

Women ask of men, " What are you thinking right now."

Sister, you don't wanna know.

Really.  Usually it is nothing anywhere near akin to ocean spray and white stallions running through the surf, while I saddle up my rippled and coiled muscles and sinew in the direction of an imaginary sylph.

Nope; it is usually black and white cartoons from the 1930's of emaciated cows goosing one another and giving out with snappy patter - 'Solid, Jackson!'

Real men play cartoons in their heads, when not thinking about conquest, the next food item, or excuses. Productive cognition is for the job, fixing the furnace, or doing the checkbook alchemy.

Even Poets, if they be male, drift on clouds of hilarious time wasted.

Blind Milton, I am sure made up scenarios of dead Papists being pitchfoked into the Devils maw by industrious and trim Puritans.

Today, we  are blessed to feature the Man's Milton 2017 - young Master Brian McGackin&* - the Broet Laureate.

I have recently completed the slim volume of many Broesy - Broetry. 

Here is yet another sample of verse by a man, for men and thoroughly about men.

For Mama Celeste, as a Child
Mother cut tiny
slices for my small boy hands:
delicate pizza.
For Mama Celeste, in College
Hold up. This whole time
you were only a dollar?
You cheap, frozen whore.
For Mama Celeste, after College
Sorry about that.
Please take me back, Mama C.
I'm sick of ramen.

Men, get a copy of Broetry; Ladies read and learn what men have on their minds.  Stephen Hawking is filthy gent from what I hear.

As in days gone by - Poetry written by men is Broetry:

 If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl. H. L. Mencken

"quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus (l. 359)"  Horace -Ars Poetica

* Brian McGackin is the author of BROETRY (Quirk Books, 2011) and DEATH IN THE RICK (http://deathintherick.com/).
He has a BA from Emerson College in Something Completely Unrelated To His Life Right Now and a Masters in Poetry from USC.
He enjoys Guinness, comic books, and Bruce Willis movies 

Inherited Wealth and the Marxist Grifter - The Two-Faced American Progressive

I always get a kick out of watching Katrina Vanden Heuvel on cable television (for some reason she is never on Fox) and delight in her class warrior makeup.

She reminds me of my youngest daughter who donned a jet black wig over her red tresses and faux-leather bodice and snow boots as she fought Gods and Monster as Xena.  Vanden Heuvel is an heiress to a huge fortune that allows her to open doors all over Manhattan and Cambridge and East Egg and L.A. to spout class war with Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes and fellow trust fund baby Anderson Cooper.

Today, in the Washington Post, this doyen of democracy deconstruction sparks up the Birkenstock Bolsheviks of America with ways to combat Donald trump.

She leads off by quoting one of the most egregious creeps in American philanthropy - Gara Lamarche.

Gara Lamarche looted billions of dollars from Chuck Feeney's Atlantic Philanthropies all through the 1990's and into the New Millennium.  Now, here is a reather lengthy bit of read to whet your appetite for further study of Marxists who loot family foundations:

 Feeney’s “transformational philanthropy” across five continents focused on laying down a big check early on to support major projects (usually centered on a new building of some kind), which would in turn inspire others to make their own large contributions. But Feeney wasn’t focused on the buildings themselves (he never allowed them to be named for him) but rather the way large new facilities could revitalize a local neighborhood and also spur long-term growth in a larger area by boosting the educational and medical sectors. Just as he heeded Andrew Carnegie’s injunction not to die rich, he also heeded his predecessor’s advice to build “the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise.” This was the niche where Feeney had found his proudest moments as a philanthropist—such as the $125 million that AP committed in 2008 to the University of California San Francisco Medical Center in the run-down Mission Bay neighborhood. Or the $62 million AP provided to Galway University in Ireland, which is just a portion of the $800 million AP has provided to fund education in Ireland. Or the $350 million AP provided to Feeney’s alma mater, Cornell, so it could build a campus on New York City’s neglected Roosevelt Island (a fraction of the estimated $1 billion AP has awarded to Cornell).
For his part, LaMarche had his own answer to this question, one he had proffered even before becoming AP’s CEO in 2007: amplify AP’s funding for “community organizing” and “social justice giving,” as O’Clery puts it. In other words, embrace the philosophy of Soros and the Open Society Institute, and fund battalions of radical Alinskyite nonprofit protest groups.
As O’Clery writes, “from 2007 to 2011, under LaMarche’s management, [AP] would make over one hundred contributions to 501(c)(4) organizations” such as HCAN. (See examples below.) In this, LaMarche enjoyed a particularly strong rapport with three members of AP’s board: Frederick “Fritz” A. O. Schwarz Jr. (AP’s board chair, a prominent liberal lawyer and great-grandson of the famous New York toy baron); Elizabeth McCormack (a long-time fixture of the Rockefeller family’s philanthropic interests); and Michael Sovern (one-time Columbia University president and former trustee of Bill Clinton’s legal defense fund).
O’Clery writes that “Feeney was initially supportive of LaMarche’s prioritizing health care reform.” But the wider consequences of this shift towards smaller grants was not lost on him. It meant a major change in the size of grants AP had been making for most of its history, as well as their intended impact.
Feeney has liberal political leanings, but his philanthropy was another matter – more rooted in a philosophical, rather than political, view of the world. AP’s record of grants can be best understood as an expression of Chuck Feeney’s personal background. Feeney’s family of origin was not a wealthy one, but it was rich in terms of values—including charity towards others. One gets the impression from O’Clery’s book that Feeney’s philanthropy gave him a chance to express some of his most dearly held personal values, as handed down by his parents and neighborhood. Said his daughter Leslie:
“He has incredible empathy with people, which has its roots in his Irish Catholic background. He is a real child of his time. One needs to understand those Irish American neighborhoods during and after [World War II], how they worked, how they helped each other. That’s a big part of his life. He saw his mother and father take people off the street, helping people.”
For Feeney, the chance to do something extraordinary for others in need was no light matter—not out of a desire to be ostentatious or court publicity, nor out of a sense of “guilt” that he had become a rich man, but more likely, perhaps, for him to demonstrate that his basic beliefs remained undiluted by his great wealth.
In strategy, tactics, and impact of philanthropy, the approach of LaMarche, who seems to live for political controversy, activism, publicity, and adulation, could not be more different from Feeney’s.
The philosophical battle lines between founder, key board members, and the foundation’s senior leaders were drawn.

Gara Lamarche is up to his game and Katrina Vanden Heuvel delights in his coaching.

 As the new year begins, any honest progressive knows the political outlook is bleak. But if we’re going to limit the damage that President-elect Donald Trump inflicts on the country, then despair is not an option. The real question, as Democracy Alliance President Gara LaMarche recently said, “is how you fight intelligently and strategically when every house is burning down.”
Indeed, with Trump and Republicans in Congress aggressively pushing a right-wing agenda, progressives will need to invest their resources and attention where they can do the most good — both now and over the next four years. With that in mind, here are three steps to take to resist and rebuild as the Trump administration gets underway.
First, while strong national leadership is certainly important, progressives must recognize that the most significant resistance to Trump won’t take place in Washington. It’s going to happen in the streets led by grass-roots activists, and in communities, city halls and statehouses nationwide.

Katrina touts Governor Moonbean of the nouveau secessionist State of California as a 'national leader' who just might confound American Trumpery and save this nation for the Banana Republic Obama founded . . .and lost in an election.

Progressive always seem to be people with bucks up to their butts - trust fund babies like Bill Ayers, Katerina Vanden Heuvel and Bill De Blasio, or Cadillac Commies leeched onto to hide of 501(c)3 family fortunes.

They make sense to the news media.  Progressive America is a two-headed monster fueled by wealth and hungry for power.  Our media has taken the short-cut to access and power and waddles along the Progressive Path - Deconstruction of Universal Truths, Abortion, Dependency, Identity Victimhood, Race and Class Warfare.

The rest of us know Progressives and "the Media"  to be phonies and snobs. Progressives created the opportunity taken by Donald Trump.  I just hope that he is not one of them.

He inherited his wealth, but that does not make him a bad guy.  I know plenty of uber-rich folks who are as down-to-earth genuine and sincere as the ladies of the St. Cajetan Altar and Rosary Society and the guys at the Evergreen Park VFW - John Buck, Ron Gidwitz, Ty Warner and the late Don Flynn come to mind, here in Chicago.

Progressives want something for themselves - power.

Everyone else a happy, secure and meaningful life.

The two-headed monster is still breathing 

Chicago Will Cure Cancer Decades Before It Does an Accurate Prognosis on Killings

Editor’s note: To memorialize the victims of Chicago’s most violent year in two decades, the Chicago Sun-Times wrapped Sunday’s print editions with 618 faces of the 780 people murdered citywide in 2016 — every victim’s photo that the newspaper could obtain. Columnist Mary Mitchell offers her take on steps to address the city’s violence problem here. To read more stories of homicide victims, go to the Homicide Watch Chicago website: homicides.suntimes.com.  Chicago Sun Times

"You're not the only mother------- out there with guns," - the late Joshua Beal

 What's the cure to Chicago's homicides?  An accurate diagnosis would be a great start. However, compelling narratives are the rule of the day.  People kill people.  They will use a gun, a 2 X 4, a tire iron, a rock, a blade, or  broom to effect the demise of some person who has something the killer wants, or to send a message, or to quiet a witness, or burnish one's street cred, or just playing.

White people kill, black people kill, even Alsatian Quakers kill, if they are accustomed to bad behavior, have no moral core, or happen to be psychopaths. People tend to work their way up the gradus of bad behavior, before becoming killers.

Compelling narratives frame people with very bad behavior as victims of systemic racism, economic exploitation, or identity frustration.  But that is not why people kill.  People kill when they believe that they can get away with it.  If one gets away with misbehavior at every turn, be it jaywalking, disrupting the classroom, intimidating weaker people, stealing, spitting,littering, raping and looting, why not light some one up?

Shopping Malls are up for grabs as mobs of kids act out, just as they do during the school day.  Dots remain unconnected.

We see the problem as a chalk outline and not the previous few hours and minutes of the life outlined and its encounter with a gun owner.

When we are sick and hurting we need good, no-nonsense physicians attending our problems.

 My son was three years old and one morning he could not walk.  " My legs somehow can't work."  His older sister cried, "Conor can't walk!" Terrified his mother and I scooped him up and darted to La Porte Hospital ER.

There the child was examined for hours.

In the mean time, I had called Dr. James Kennedy, M.D. recently retired surgeon who was himself in the early stages of the Parkinson's Disease that would take his life, far too soon. Dr. Kennedy spent all of his free time either going to swimming meets for his seven  athletic children, or attending burn seminars, or surgical methodology demonstrations.

My two physician pals, Doctors Rick Clark and Mark Manning trained under the gimlet eye of Dr. Kennedy.  They told me of a mass shooting that flooded victims into the St. Mary's Hospital ER in Kankakee, Illinois one summer's night.  Dr. Kennedy was off and the ER was a madhouse.  Dr. Kennedy happened to be walking west on Court Street when he saw the all of ambulances charging toward St. Mary's.  Doc went straight there.

Into the chaos, panic and blood appeared Dr. James Kennedy - deus ex machina!  Quiet, order and efficiency saved a dozen lives.

Doc Kennedy counselled, " Don't sign off on anything.  Stay calm like your wife, Mary.  She never panics.  I 'll be there in an hour."

The doctors ran a series of blood tests on the little guy. They were very concerned. Recently, a three year old in Long Beach had been diagnosed with cancer and the first sign had been an inability to walk.

Mary and I clutched hands and prayed.

Dr. Kennedy arrived and needed no introduction as his reputation preceded him even here in Indiana.

" What's the trouble Conor?"

" I can't somehow walk."

Dr. Kennedy examined his feet and legs, " He has been wearing cowboy boots," he stated and not asked.

Mary told him that her mother had bought Conor and his two cousins cowboy boots at Lighthouse Square the week before.

" They're too tight."

No cancer.  no Byzantine pathology required.  No extended stay, or observations necessary.  Conor went on to play every sport but baseball, never dropped a snap as a football center in four years of play at St. Rita and La Lumiere.  He is walking to the Cotton Bowl to watch the Broncos of Western Michigan challenge the Badgers and walks proudly.  He never again wore cowboy boots.


Chicago's murder scores sit at 795.

Here is current wisdom from activists, politicians and the go-along Chicago Media and my rejoinder.

• It's Guns - inanimate objects; pencils do not fail exams
• It's Gangs - Old Homies no longer run the show
• It's Poverty -guns are not free
• It's Unemployment- guns are not free
• It's Racism - what isn't?
• It's Policing - Policing has been outlawed by City Hall, the Peoples Law Office, Black Lives Matter, Carol Marin, Eric Zorn, The Chicago Tribune and Sun Times and WTTW
• It's Not Policing - Depends upon which side of the compelling narrative the media got up on

My Dr. Kennedy-esque empiricism tells me that wrapping the Sunday Edition in photos of the murder victims, Pastor Pfleger Photo Ops, Mag Mile Marches, Blue Ribbon Panels, ACLU studies with pre-cast conclusions, and weeping and wailing for the cameras are all very nice, but will not stop the killing.

Checking behavior at the root, just might.

Acting the fool, playing the Cell Warrior, just playing, cutting in line, playing chin check, just playing, passing in the imaginary right lane, and working the gums 24/7 are very early indicators of a person capable of riding the 9 down on some chump. See - the late Joshua Beal*

Bad medicine.

Until the Chicago death diagnosis recognizes the true cause of the problem - an inability to realize that getting over on people is not getting by - our 'legs won't somehow work.'

* Ed Komenda's DNAinfor account was the only media piece to exactly report the incident.