The Merriest Springald in Our Pandemic: Part III - Wesley Invites Over COVID-19 Refugees

Fear is a survival characteristic, but it makes us vulnerable to the impulse—or demand—that we surrender control to somebody else." J.D. Tuccille in Reason

"The current outbreak is thought to have started in a food market in Wuhan, China. But uncertainties remain: Researchers are still not sure which animal started the outbreak. DNA evidence suggests it’s likely related to bats (which also were the origin of the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2003). But there’s also new, unconfirmed evidence, that the illegal pangolin trade may be implicated."  VOX

“To be clear, there is nothing good about twice as many people having this virus, or worse, dying from it, no matter how long the increase takes,” Governor JB Pritzker

" Wellington, Come on back!"  Governor JB Pritzker


Recap Parts I-II

Wesley Dioneo is the only son of Chicagoland real estate tycoon, Martin Dioneo and his society maven wife Allyson.  Martin Dioneo caught the COVID-19 virus from his Laplander personal trainer and is on a ventilator in Chicago's Northwestern Medical Center.  Allyson is holed up in the couple's massive east Lake Shore Drive apartment building a score of yards from the iconic Drake Hotel.

Allyson has sent Wesley Dioneo to the family get-away home at Stop 30 lake Shore Drive in Long Beach, Indiana. Wesley is a senior at St. Ignatius College Prep and had been since the school shut down on March 16, 2020.  Ally immediately sent Wesley to Long Beach, where he can be safe.

PART III:  Wesley Invites fellow COVID -19 Refugees over to Stop 30 after Easter is Cancelled

Imagine that you are an eighteen year old male, you come from  great wealth and privilege, that your father is leaning heavily on Death's Door with a virus that began because some goof wanted to dine on an exotic bat in Red China and that you have been living in isolation at a vacation home on the shores of one of the planet's most beautiful inland seas - a fresh water sea, mind you and that you are a person of great personal charm, intelligence, wit and Ambition - imagine.

Well, Wesley assessed all of his plus column blessings against the force of State and municipal executive orders, the skewed evidence of the dangers the virus COVID-19 might pose, the maternal apothegm hung around his neck upon stepping aboard the 509 South Shore Line eastbound train from Millenium Park  to Carroll Street Michigan City, " Behave and have fun, but no parties." and determined after two weeks of isolation that enough was a feast.

Wesley said to himself, "  The Nardo Bros.  are lonesome and Halib keeps texting me. We can social distance right at home."  Wesley text messaged his three pals, the Brothers Nardo, day students at La Lumiere and Halib Samer, teh smartest student at Marquette High School. to come over and Supe Smash Brother Ultimate the hours away and quaff some of Dad's Czech beers.

Declan  and Brian Nardo lived in Long Beach year around  with their parents and three sisters.   Their Dad Sal Nardo was a Machinist with Areclor Mittal in Burns Harbor and their Mom was a grammar school principal in Chesterton.  Halib Samer lived in a ranch house  near the Botanical Gardens with his mother.  Halib's Dad was killed in a car wreck in 2016 and his Mother worked in HR at Franciscan Hospital and grieved mightily.

Halib was accepted for admission to University of Michigan where he planned to study biology.  Halib was a master of the intricacies involved in staying alive in Smash Brothers and ran teh Marquette High School Friday Smash Brothers after classes set-to that attracted scores of would be Smash Brothers winners. Halib took down most comers.  He could not beat Amy Briddlestone.  Not only the prettiest member of the student body but the most aggressive and deadly Smash Brothers paddle smith.

Halib was madly in love with Ms. Briddlestone.

Wesley was plagued with text messages from the fetching young Amy, Marquette HS Class of 2022.  Amy made nice with Halib, in order to get close to the yummy and brilliant Wesley.  There was no way that Wesley would have anything to do with Amy of a 'relationship'  nature, because Halib was a friend.  Wesley had developed a code thanks to his Grandpa Bosco.  From his earliest memory, Wesley learned the lessons of human obligation from a man who lost toes walking that rigorous walk out of the Frozen Chosin in 1950.   Wesley wanted to aspire to be just such a man and no Amy could ever part him from that path.

Wesley asked his three best friends over and they would eat pizza, subs, ice cream and quaff Czech beers, while trying to destroy one another in Smash Brothers Ultimate.

Wesley called Northwestern and talked to Dr. Jay Standring, MD - Notre Dame & Loyola Med.  His Dad's temperature was still scary high and struggled to breathe on his own.  He was off the ventilator.  Wesley prayed.

An hour later called the Nardo Brothers and Halib Samer.

Coming in Part IV - Four men and six ladies violate the Executive Orders.

The Merriest Springald in our Pandemic - Meet Wesley Dioneo, Class of 2020: Part II

"I'm the public face of this city.  "I'm on national media, and I'm out in the public eye. The woman who cut my hair had a mask and gloves on so we are, I am practicing what I'm preaching." Mayor Lori Lightfoot on violating her Executive Orders.

Part One: Recap

Martin Dioneo, a top Chicago real estate Developer, is felled by the Coronavirus and placed on a respiratory ventilator in Northwestern Medical Center in March 2020.  His wife, socialite activist Allyson, waits out the virus in their massive East Lake Shore Drive Home and sends the couple's only son Wesley, a senior at St. Ignatius College Prep to the family vaction home in Long Beach, Indiana.  There are no schools, businesses, barbershops, saloons, or eateries open and citizens hunker down where they can.  Wesley will invite ten friends to his home to tell their stories and drink Martin Dioneo's supply of Imported Czech beers. 

Martin Dioneo had one son, Wesley.  Wesley was tall and lanky and had a slightly smirky quality about him that disarmed even the most hardened cynic.  Wesley had good genes from a his second generation Italian American Dad and his Midwestern Methodist WOKE mother Allyson -  the family conscience. Born in Long Grove, Illinois to Chuck Percy Republicans, Malcolm and Libby Coldtiquer.  Mal had been a co-pilot on a C-87 that flew Gen. George Marshall anywhere he wanted to go in the continental United States. Libby worked at Bell & Howell in Wheeling, Illinois. Libby worked with the future Illinois Senator Chuck Percy, when he was that camera and lens manufacturer's legal wunderkind.

The Coldtiquers were major players in the Illinois GOP and Planned Parenthood. No family should have more than one kid.   "Plan for one and act on the rest," was Libby's mantra.  Allyson was Libby's girl and trained the offspring t o speak her mind even when not asked or needed and to be always assertive.  Mal was always a co-pilot and let Libby turn Daddy's little girl into a force of nature who would dominate her peers from Campfire Girls to League of Women Voters to Mayor Lori Lightfoot's task force on Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Allyson was a crowd.  Her opinions and thoughts were always backed by wealth and privilege.  Marrying a titan of Chicago's real estate Olympus helped metastazize those impressive waves utterance.  WTTW included Allyson Dioneo to every panel on women, wrongful imprisonment, LGBTQ issues, legal Weed, fashion and philanthropy and don't get her started on the late-Cardinal Francis George.   Thank Gaia for Chicago' s new Catholic Ordinary, Allyson could now attend Christmas and Easter services ( well not this year anyway) at Holy Name.

Allyson Dioneo was what one might call an attractive female, were one not WOKE.

She attracted a young energetic DePaul University  School of Business MBA who bore a striking resemblance to a young Tony Curtis. Allyson set her hooks for Martin Dioneo after their second abortion together.  They had three over a period of six years, while lived in Old Town tear-downs and later  Lincoln Park brownstones.  Martin was bothered by the abortions more because for his traditionalist mother and father, than by the loss of tissue with his DNA.  Allyson worked the same doctrinal charms on Martin as she did upon Joel Weiseman and Phil Ponce.

When Martin could afford a plot of land and air-rights on East Lake Shore Drive, the Dioneo's could add a third member to their living space.

Wesley Bosco Dioneo was born on October 14, 2002.  He was a beautiful baby, an adorable infant/toddler,  a fiesty pre-schooler and an able, affable and athletic elementary and high schooler.  He was the kid that Moms and Dads wanted their kids to hang-out with, if not become.

Wesley mattered.

He was captain of soccer team, a reliable substitute on the basketball teams up until senior year when he called it quits, a witty and skilled forensic debater and a constant A Honor Roll member who was not interested in NHS in the least bit.   Wesley could care less about the service requirements.  He was a scholar, a leader and his character rejected the notion of do-gooder play acting at soup kitchens and old folks homes.

Wesley was not a cynical smart-ass.

He was genuine, direct and honest.

In fact, he was very much like his Dad and Grandpa Dioneo. Old Bosco Dioneo was a Korean War hero of the Chosin Resorvoir.  He lost three toes to froistbite and carried a few ounces of Chinese and Russian metal in his back, legs and fore arms.  He refused to accept the Purple Heart, because, in his words, " I was never hit.  No Chinaman could shoot me."  Bosco had been raised a few doors down from Saint 's Mother Cabrini's Columbus Hospital - it is a hipster real estate development now. What is not?

Bosco Dioneo was a lumber man and taught his grandson Wesley to respect the beauty, the smell and the sacred nature of wood.  He taught Wesley to carve, as well as cut lumber like a man.

Wesley was tall, lanky and as darkly beautiful as Sandro Botticelli's St. Sebastian.   Like a Chicago Medici, the son of Martin Dioneo could afford to commission painting of himself, but that called too much attention away from who was Wesley Dioneo

His peers and class mates knew Wesley Dioneo and that loved and respected him. He liked girls and respected them, in the old world manner of his grandfather.

When COVID-19 felled his father and his mother exiled Wesley to a  Long Beach self-quarantine, The girls of Saint Ignahtius, Mother McAuley, Marquette Catholic and La Lumiere School called Wesley with sympathy - real and feigned.

Wesley had three close males friends  The Nardo Brothers, who attended La Lumiere School and Halib Samer, the son of Lebanese immigrants who went o Marquette High School in Michigan City.

Wesley invited seven girls and his three buddies over to tell their own stories and punish Martin Dioneo's supply of Czech beers.

Wesley was a good kid.

The Merriest Springald in Our Pandemic: Wesley Dioneo Has the Gang Over for Tales and Tall Boys. Part One

“For the vast majority of you already taking precautions, your lives will not change very much,” Governor J. B. Pritzker March 2020


In this sore affliction and misery of our city, the reverend authority of the laws, both human and divine, was all in a manner dissolved and fallen into decay, for [lack of] the ministers and executors thereof, who, like other men, were all either dead or sick or else left so destitute of followers that they were unable to exercise any office, wherefore every one had license to do whatsoever pleased him. Many others held a middle course between the two aforesaid, not straitening themselves so exactly in the matter of diet as the first neither allowing themselves such license in drinking and other debauchery as the second, but using things in sufficiency, according to their appetites; nor did they seclude themselves, but went about, carrying in their hands, some flowers, some odoriferous herbs and other some4 divers kinds of series,[7] which they set often to their noses, accounting it an excellent thing to fortify the brain with such odours, more by token that the air seemed all heavy and attainted with the stench of the dead bodies and that of the sick and of the remedies used. Giovanni Boccaccio Decameron  1492

Along the  Northwest  Indiana shoreline sits a rosary of beach communities hugging the evaporating shores of Lake Michigan, which has burglarized the sandy real estate, as is its wont every thirty years.
This year was special as the Great Lake flung iits doors open to an air-borne global pestilence - Covid 19. In one of these beads of the affluent rosary sat the get-away home of Martin Dioneo.

Martin Dioneo operated a real estate realm that included most of the prime suburban properties on the Chicago metropolitan necklace - Barrington, Winnetka, Wilmette, Hawthorn Woods, Glencoe and many holdings in Beverly touching on Longwood Drive, Hyde Park along the Midway and Evanston near Sheridan Road.  Martin Dioneo rubbed shoulders with the John Bucks and Jim Carlins, but was quite a few pegs below their august places on the urban corporate taxonomy.  Martin Dioneo was beyond comfortable, but retained his working class sensibilities honed to the heel of his moral blade, as opposed to the point.   He respected a working man, but what do his damnedest to avoid actually putting spade to soil.   Martin's father had been a lumber man and very successful one in Bridegport and later Evergreen Park, Illinois.  It was lumber that allowed Martin to make his foray into the cut-throat world of urban and suburban real estate development.  Martin  Dioneo was felled by a bug that originated in Wuhan China, because someone wanted to eat a bat.

Martin was a member of the East Bank Club, until he had his apartment building
on East Lake Shore Drive fitted out with the latest and greatest physical fitness equipment and a personal trainer from Lapland in Finland to bully-rag and encourage him through his ever changing regimen of workouts.  Gaelbu , Martin's Sami trainer from the great state of Ustjoki, travelled to Paris over the Christmas Holidays and was infected with the Covid 19 bug and brought the affliction home to Martin Dioneo - Et in Arcadia, Ego!  Also, in high-priced real estate along Chicago's Lake Front.

In  early March of 2020, Martin Dioneo was in the isolation unit of Northwestern University Hospital.

Martin's wife Allyson sent her son Wesley, a senior at St. Ignatius College Prep to their vacation home at Stop 30 in Long Beach, Indiana,  to wait out the plague. 

Wesley Dioneo was a very popular young man who had only just been accepted to begin classes at Yale in the fall of 2020. 

While Martin struggled for breath on the ventilator at Northwestern Med Center, and Allyson hunkered down on East Lake Shore Drive, Wesley could be trusted with the keys to the family vacation compound in Indiana. 

What to do?



Coming up next - Wesley operates the garage doors and lets in a half score of privileged young people for beers and home-made stories.  

The Man in the Iron Mask is Out and The Sun King Might get Eclipsed

"Louis XIV was a handsome young man with good health. “(Louis XIV) was graceful, dignified and awe-inspiring, if humourless.”  The Ancien Regime in Europe

'A man is held to be criminal,sometimes, by the great ones of the earth,not because he has committed a crime himself but because he knows of one which has been committed.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask


I can not stand Rod Blagojevich.  He is an remains a smirking jerk. In the 2002 Gubernatorial Primary, Blago campaign workers from the 19th Ward terrorized rival Paul Vallas's family, while he was out scaring up votes.   Campaign thugs scared Vallas's kids, but not his tough and lovely wife, Sharon, who had been a cop in the south suburbs.

Sharon Vallas scared off the tough guys, before calling the 22nd District.  I lived down the block from the Vallas family in the 19th Ward.

Some of my friends worked for Blagojevich, even though they knew Paul Vallas to be a man of rock-solid ability and integrity - he was their neighbor from 2525 West 107th Street, 60655.

Illinois State Senator Barack H. Obama backed Roland Burris in the primary. Obama would go on to become a US Senator, President of the United States and a Progressive Sun King and Blago his man in the iron mask.

Blagojevich won the Governor's Primary and Illinois State Senator Barack H. Obama got on the Blago bandwagon.   Blago won the Illinois gubernatorial race over GOP Attorney General James Ryan by 52%.


The skilled trades unions, like my Blago Backer 19th Ward neighbors, supported the Democrat Milorod Blagojevich.  The skilled trades unions would also enthusiastically back current Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.  Like JB Pr\itzker after him, Blago was a Progressive governor who valued the advice and counsel of Rahm Emanuel and Mikva Mafia of Hyde Park.


Governor Blagojevich gave senior citizens free bus rides, said he was blacker than Obama( well his Illinois Health Care programs were a template for ObamaCare) and thought about making Oprah Winfrey a United States Senator, like old Roland Burris.  A close aid committed suicide, by swallowing rat poison over a garbage dump in Joliet, while he went on  Comedy Central.

Blago's bouncing ball of boorishness reached an apogee when he deigned to sell President-elect Barack H. Obama's senate seat. Tapioca as south siders say, 'All done!'

His wife was humiliated into going on Survival.  His kids were denied a father.  Blago was locked away and the keys were thrown away. The smirking jerk went to the joint.

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his wife did serious time as well

Blago became the Man in Iron Mask and Barack H. Obama Louis XIV.

That is ancient history  Boo Radley became President in 2016 - Old #45, Donald J. Trump is poised to reclaim The White House.  President Trump is the most reviled Chief Executive in our history, no getting past that.  Like Blago, most of this detestation by the good and the phony, was brought on by his own words and deeds.

That said, this spirited man in the Oval Office has struck a chord with 47% of American people who love or accept him as a leader.  He is Boo Radley - everyone with a brain hates him.  But boo Radley was no villain.  A goof, to be sure, but no monster.

Boo Radley sprung Blago in a most politically and morally cynical effort to stir the merde. No one can whip up a cauldron poop, like Blago and now that Iron Mask is off his mug it is only matter of time before this arch-grifter begins to tell the truth on the protected frauds like Dick Durbin, President Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel, Mike Madigan and especially the Wizard of Weed and Admiral of Abortion Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and his kith and kin.

The Obama legacy and the tax-payer funded temple to his Presidency on public lands willl take the biggest hits.

Others will do some time in the iron hotel.

Personally,  I think this was an abuse of Presidential pardons, but I would love to see The Sun King get his smirk eclipsed.

The Man in Iron Mask is out and he will shoot his mouth off.

I Need a Top Coat, Life Insurance, the Love of a. Good Woman, More Fruits and Grains - ‘The Irishman? ‘ Not So Much

Any number of friends acquaintances, strangers and passers-bye have told me that I “need to see Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman.

I need to see this 31/2 hour epic story of a Frank Sheerin, a pathological killer who may have had something to do with disappearing Jimmy Hoffa?  I need this entertainment outing , why?

Plum evades me.

Can’t get roused to stir up even a modicum of interest to decline the offering to spend whatever the market will bear NETFLIX, or Marty.

I have never seen Frozen, the 50 Shades of Anything, Taken 1,2,3. & 4 among most films trotted since 1999.

I have yet to see an episode of

• Will & Grace
• The TV Show About Brainiac Nerds
• 60 minutes since the death of Andy Rooney
• States of Union
• Maud
• Brady Bunch in all of its manifestations
• Presidential Medals of Freedom
• Public Television -since the last episde of I, Claudius
• Bill O’Reilly
• Sean Hannity
• Rachel Maddox
• Chicago Tonight - since Phil Ponce ambushed Hank Lentzen
• Mass for the Shut-ins
• Family Guy
• The Real O’Neals
• Anderson Cooper
• Meet the Press

The last good movie that I watched at the Show ( a movie theatre) was A Little Chaos with the immortal Allan Rickman as Louis XIV of France. 

I am leading rich and full life, even though I have not purchased tickets for Hamilton.  I am not that woke. 

No,  I will shed my mortal husk without seeing The Irishman. 

Knock yourselves out!

Tenterhooks for the Enablers of Pedophile Duke? Nah, Let Horses Yank Him

“Everyone is on tenterhooks especially after the backlash to the Duke’s ‘Newsnight’ interview – no one saw the fall-out from that coming, especially the Duke,” a source previously told The Sun.

         Tenterhook - a hook used for stretching cloth, as with a tent. 

Stretching cloth for manufacture, or setting up a tent is nice metaphorical point of reference to feelings of tension. But nothing says it so well, when referring to the randified Duke of York - aka Andrew Albert Christian Edward . . .Windsor, I guess. 

This Royal Pedophile ( ˈpɛdoʊfaɪl, ˈpɛdəfɪl) An adult who is sexually attracted to children.) is getting his comeupance - sort of, 

The BBC will air the heir’s accuser this evening. I hope this princely pervert and degenerate Duke gets thoroughgoing drubbing. 

His play pal Jeffery Epstein choked on his sins and saliva in the New York lock-up while on suicide watch.

President Clinton is collecting speakers fees. 

I teach young people, ages 14-18, and they are children.  They live at home with their parents and are genuinely unaware of monsters like the Duke of York and the late Mr. Epstein. They will come to know all of manner of natural and unnatural forms of human behavior after high school. Their parents will have grounded them is eternal truths.  The Catholic high school they attend reinforces the lessons learned in the home and presented from the pulpit.

The kids are alright.

Stretching cloth for manufacture is unfamiliar to my students, as is the fact that rags worn by impoverished and starving children could soon be taken from their corpses and turned into good and useful paper. Dickens wrote Bleak House thanks to paper-mills. Ironically, the little ragged Dickens beggars might have been resurrections.  

Stretching the truth is and has been the tool of useful journalists and secular moralists who deny that sexual crimes are punishable by anything. 

One British hag of the aristocracy stated that pedophilia is not a crime. Two academics refer to the abuse of children as, “learning to love.”   like an apprenticeship program. 

We live in times where idiots hold universal truth over the fires.  We can nod in solemn agreement over the actions of the powerful and the protected, or we can ridicule swine for walking on two legs, boarding a private jet and vacationing on pedophile island. 

I choose the later. 

Mia Farro - I’m Going Whole Grain . . .with Plenty of Meat and Salt

The woman I love, but who absolutely hates when I mention her in writing has been nag . . .offering wholesome suggestions about adding Ancient grains to my diet. Her arguments are tighter than the pockets on a fat man’s pants.  Healthy eating is way cool and helps fight Dunlap’s Disease*

So , epicure that I am and dedicated to the lads who made  Mare Nostrum the pond of the world for more than a thousand years - I plunged into farro in Italian and tritium dicoccum.  This hearty grain was boiled by the Etruscans and later served in the Legions of Rome, conquering our cousins the Gauls and other beef eating Celts and then bricking the roads that remain all over civilized Europe. 

My idea of a healthy side dish is generally a half-pound of spuds drizzled in butter, or rice soaked with Kikkoman Teriyaki  sauce.   However, I can raise the bar on myself when compelled by the good opinion of a swell dame, or shamed by the vanishing notches on a belt.

If was good enough for Marius’s Mules and Caesar’s 10th Legion, it is good enough for Porky Pat of Michigan City.

Here is my variation on this Healthy Theme - Mia Farro, A Dish Served Chilled

1 Cup of Farro - I chose Bob’s Red Mill Farro
1Ribeye -(0.71 Lbs)
1/2 cup Cherry Tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped pitted olives
1/4 cup of chopped Feta cheese
1/4 cup of cilantro. 
Juice of 1/2 Lemon 
Kosher Salt and Black Peper


Soak 1 cup of Farro overnight -just get the grains wet.
In a three quart pot add three cups of ice cold water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and boil for thirty minutes - covered the last five. Keep and eye on the grains and stir every once in a while.

In a good skillet pan grill the ribeye to medium/medium well
Let cool and slice thinly - the thin liner the better.

I a large glass mixing bowl with a good plastic lid mix the meat Cherry Tomatoes, olives, cilantro and chopped Feta.

Drain any liquid from the grains and add to the mixture.

Pour in the Lemon juice and mix like hell. Let cool and snap on plastic cover.

Put the stuff in the ice box and allow it to cool for at least three.

I nailed a couple of bowls of the this and feel that it stacks up nicely against chili, ragout, or slumgullion.

Mia Farro - a cold dish served is no revenge.




* My belly done laps over my belt!

Bob Foster Is Where God Requires an Honest Heart and a Windbreaker

  

                            Robert W. Foster -Eternal Since 1940

Man, did you feel that wind yesterday?  I was in the parking lot of Meijer’s in Michigan City and saw a blue basket-cart sail past my car with no human hands at the helm.  It was loaded with groceries. The helmsman caught up with it a yards west of the entrance. That was some wind.

When I got home and went back to work on my up-coming final exams, I learned via Facebook messaging from Dan Stecich,  that Bob Foster, Leo Class of 1958, Purdue Boilermaker, History Teacher and Football Coach for Leo, Mount Carmel, Little Flower, and St. Rita high schools, Principal and President of Leo High School had gone home to Christ.

That was no wind.  Bob Foster was leaving.

I worked for Bob Foster. I learned that Leo High School is not made of re-bar and poured concrete, but of bone, blood, muscle and heart.  Bob Foster coordinated those vital elements from all of the men he taught, mentored, or met.    Mr. Foster taught them the fundamentals of commitment and courage and swelled the sidelines of a very winning team.

Leo High School remains a vital organ on 79th & Sangamon Streets, because of Bob Foster.

God is not making any more Bob Fosters, because He did such a damn good job on the original.

You will know Bob Foster, because you will meet Bob Sheehy, Terence Bates, Mike Joyce, Mike Holmes, Dan Stecich  Mark Lee, Gus McNamara, Denzel Tucker, Bill Holland, Amir Hunter, Mike O’Neill, Raheem Williams, Rich Finn and Lonnie Newman.  Bob Foster will be most present wherever Leo Men and good people work to help make this a better world.

The bulk of Bob Foster’s spirit whirl-winded to God’s home field, where it is sunny, dry, the grass is cut just the length to confound the opposition and all a man needs is an orange windbreaker with Leo HS stenciled in bold black on the left breast.

Bob left enough spirit in everyone else to maintain the mission here.

That was some wind.

Obituary for Robert W. Foster

Foster, Robert W.

Beloved Husband of the late Carol (nee Goss).
Loving Father of Jennifer (Dan CFD) McVicker, Michael, and Cathleen (Sean) Huenecke.
Dear Grandfather of Erik, Luke, Peter, Jessica, and Ryan.
Fond Brother of the late Thomas, Donald, Jack, and Jeanne Tighe.
Dear Uncle of many nieces and nephews.
Special appreciation to Bob’s caregiver and friend Al.

Bob retired from Leo High School in 2010 after over 40 years in numerous capacities, Teacher, Head Football Coach, Athletic Director, Principal and President.

Recipient of Leo High School Alumni Association “Man of the Year” in 2008 and Hall of Fame Inductee. Tony Lawless Award winner. 2013 Inductee to the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame and 1983 Chicago Catholic League Hall of Fame Recipient, 1999 Distinguished American Award from the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame (Chicago Metro Chapter), 2006 ISCC Educator of the Year Award. 

Arrangements entrusted to Robert J. Sheehy & Sons Funeral Home


www.sheehyfh.com 708-857-7878

Free People, or Helots. Hoosiers are Free People, for Now.

like donkeys suffering under heavy loads,
by painful force compelled to bring their masters half
of all the produce that the soil brought forth.
(Tyrtaeus West Fragment 6, trans. West)

Description

Helots - The helots were a subjugated population group that formed the main population of Laconia and Messenia, the territory controlled by Sparta. 

noun

1. a member of a class of serfs in ancient Sparta, intermediate in status between slaves and citizens.

   • a serf or slave.

I have been using this term to describe people of the middle class in Chicago, Cook County and Illinois for a number of years,   In ancient Sparta, Helots were the middle class, sandwiched between the upper class and slaves as we know the term. 

In Chicago during my life time (1952-2018) there, I watched the robust American middle/working class diminish, shrink and all but vanish from Cook County.   The upper classes and their stooges ( some journalists, activists, too many labor unions, private charities) have done everything to get people who pay taxes, work for a living and live happy lives get the Hell out of Dodge. 

A few weeks ago, one of the Oligarchy’s stooges with Chicago Sun Times  wrote a piece bewailing the departure of the black middle class from Chicago and positing the possibility of its return.   The stooges of Oligarchy have made Race the basis of everything, but the facts confound this lie.  The Black Middle Class is no different from the Polish, Swedish, Greek, Lithuanian, Bohemian, Mexican, Jewish and Italian middle class.  The only ethnic demographic of the Middle Class that does not get it is the Irish.

As a group the Irish serve the oligarchy with regularity and lick-spittle lock-step for the likes of Pat Quinn, Richie Daley, Toni Preckwinkle, Lori Lightfoot and JB Pritzker like no other.  

This is odd because the Irish were once in the forefront of creating the middle class.  My Grandfather was. a hairy pawed union slugger in the stock yards who helped form one of the most powerful and professional skilled trades unions in Illinois.  He went from coal heaver, to operating engineer, to union official always with a job in the trade.  He was a radical Big Jim Larkin off-the-boat bog-trotter in 1912, who eventually owned a huge brick bungalow for his wife and thirteen children at 7535 S. Marshfield, saw his grandson become a Norte Dame standout and Houston Oiler, but was as equally proud of that man’s younger brother who won an ITT fellowship in engineering design, because merit was a path out of the working class.  All of his 75 grandchildren became solidly middle class citizens. Those blue collar dreams came true in the early 1960’s. 

That was when John F. Kennedy became President and starred down the Communists in Berlin, Vietnam and Cuba.  Today, JFK would be excoriated as a Red-baiting, anti-abortion, Catholic deplorable. JFK would be a helot today.   Our world hates pugnacious people with moral centers.  The Fighting Irish is a logo.  Bishop Shiel is forgotten and the doughy mush Monsignor Jack Egan touted as a working class hero.  Today, a Pastor Michael Pfleger is treated with deference, if not the contempt that he works so very hard to elicit. 

The Irish tend to be generous to a fault, tribally loyal and willing to be counted.  Those same gifts allowed the Irish as a group to be co-opted by people and indeologies that detest them to the marrow.  Hyde Park buried Bridgeport between 1972 and the Progressive Hegemony that controls Illinois.  Abner Mikva and Dr. Quentin Young co-operated with City Hall and County Building and roped in the likes of Tom Hynes, Neil Hartigan and the young Daleys.  The Media, 501(c) # Fortunes and IVI-Good Government cache no longer assaulted The Machine. 

Mike Madigan understood that Ward power was over and played cent-field with Hyde Park.  The Irish fought no one and became most congenial. 

The Congenial Irish took the path of least resistance and all but erased the verbal fighting from their political, religious and moral lexicon.  The Irish got behind Neil Hartigan and went soft on abortion to the point that a mushy mope like Senator Dick Durbin walks publicly in a green sash. 

The Irish of the tail-end of the 20th Century get behind “great gals and guys” who take the coin, the endorsement and condescension of people who detest everything about being Irish. 

As such, huge voting blocks in neighborhoods in the 19th Ward have helped put shackles on the Irish and any ethnic group that marries into their flabby embrace. 

The Irish retain political influence in Cook County and Illinois because the Irish, as a group, go-along with the great enthusiasm.  

As a result, the middle class is being eliminated.  Why?  The middle class is anathema to the Oligarchy who blend Marxism with kleptomania. 

Cook County is Animal Farm.  Pigs get fat and everyone else gets slaughtered. 

Shunning, slogans, group hate and the daffy doings of the Bears and Cubbies numb middle class families  that still remain within the borders of the City and the State.  Like blacks and sharecroppers in the post-Reconstruction American South, the middle class suffer the same burdens hoisted upon their backs by Richie Daleys, Rahm Emanuel, Bruce Rauner and now the completely supine Lori Lightfoot. 

Individuals finally get a bellyful. I planned to move out of Illinois and found a home in Michigan City, Indiana.   Alas, my children will continue to live in Illinois.  

All three were born outside of Cook County, but all three love being close to cousins, aunts and uncles and grandma, as did I. 

I can visit.  They own homes.

Hoosiers have resisted the harness.  The news papers have no reliable stooges, but report on public affairs and actually have local high school sports data and stories,  One might mark the end of freedom in Illinois from the time that the sports pages became propaganda for lovable losers and the milquetoasts of the Midway,

More significantly, the newspapers are independent and a MEDIA.  There are no self-absorbed stooges like Eric Zorn, Fran Spielman, Carol Marin, Michael Sneed, Rex Hupke, or the appalling Mary Schmich.

Politically, there is not a huge block of Woke Millennial Irish to wrap Progressive initiatives like abortion in corned beef and cabbage. 

The editorial boards are not lickspittles for City Hall.  In fact, today’s. headline screams this: 

 La PORTE – Just days before the election, felony charges were filed against Michigan City Mayor Ron Meer for his actions following the arrest of his stepson earlier this month, but no judge has yet agreed to conduct a probable cause hearing.Court records show that on Wednesday – under seal – the La Porte County Prosecutor's Office charged Meer with one felony count of official misconduct; five felony counts of intimidation; and two misdemeanor counts of false informing resulting in substantial hindrance to law enforcement.
The charges were initially filed in Superior Court 4, but Judge Greta Stirling Friedman recused herself from "even finding probable cause on the basis that, among other reasons, the Judge's spouse, whose employment caused him to be included on an email chain and could potentially lead to his being a witness in this matter," according to court records.

No Bruce Dold, Chicago Tribune managing editor could spike the story.  No team of Yahoos like Mark Brown, Neil Steinberg, or Mary Mitchel could blare out distraction yarns of Racism, or Yellow Corn.

 Days before election Mayor Ron needs to gussie-up his resume.  I spoke with Michigan Citizens and some like what Mayor Meer has done for the downtown area and others said that he was jerk when they worked for him in City Government.   Everyone has a vote and it is not for barter.

I don’t have a dog in the fight and look forward to election day. 

Hoosiers are not helots - yet.   

Cold War South West Lake Michigan Shore - The Nike Sites

The C-47 -Portage, Indiana Nike Missile Site from 1954-1972 was a part of the defensive ring of anti-missile batteries that garlanded the Lake Michigan shoreline. The Last Line of Defense - Chicago’s Nike Missile Sites

The threat of death by Communism was very real and its palpable, existential presence was part of every day life for people on the south side of Chicago and Northwest Indiana.

As a child, I remember going to the Museum of Science and Industry with my Uncle Bart and future Aunt Betty (c 1957) and remarking on white ballistic missiles sited along Lake Shore Drive.  “ Those are Mike Sites, Padgeen,” the recently discharged Korean War veteran uncle replied.  “They are there to keep the Reds from killing us,”. he further explained.

Sixty-two years later, I retain a healthy fear of the Reds.  They still would like to kill us, but they have chosen to legislate and tax us to death, rather than inflict thermo-nuclear war on us all - not they might not opt for that once the dough vanishes.

Last Tuesday, as our bus load of Marquette Catholic High School students returned to Michigan City from the wonderful Holocaust Museum in Skokie, passed by Wolf Lake, I pointed to the last indication of Hammond Nike Sites along Sheffield Avenue.  One of the freshmen challenged my veracity and went to Nike Sites Hammond Google.

“Yep, Mr. Hickey nailed it!  Dudes, check it out!”

The young cynic presented a number of photos from the world wide web.

These sites were abandoned in 1972 as no longer relevant.  Communism was treated very much in the same way.  Nothing to worry about.

Once the existential threat was removed, who. needs anything else?  Just like real life, “ God, get me out of this and I will be a modern day St. Sebastian!”. Threat removed and penitent goes total libertine!

I hope that teachers remind students of these sites as historical artifacts to the times when the nuclear cloud and the very genuine threat of Communism hung heavily over all of us.

My Uncle Bart fought the Reds in Korea as a U.S.Marine.  The threat of the Reds was very clear to him and my future Aunt Betty.  Sophisticated people who see abortion as a health care laugh at their  existential fears of the 1950’s & ‘60s and vote in people to Offices 2019 who may have helped take away the Nike sites with its spectral caveat concerning mad socialism and a sound wariness over a system of economics that has a history of slaughtering millions of people.

It is interesting that it took a trip to Skokie’s Holocaust Museum to jog my memories about Nike Sites.

Sadie Hawkins Dance 2019 - I’m A Goin’! Can I say that these days?

From 1934 to 1977 ( FDR -Jimmy Carter Administration), there was a comic strip that made fun of white people who live in fly-over America. These are People elites might never have encountered - persons from Lower-Slobovia and all treated with humorous respect by the creator.  Al Capp’s artistry was so popular that a  hit musical comedy was born of its celebrity.

Li’l Abner was not a Gangstah rapper gunned down at the behest of Chief Keef.  For fact, it was a comic strip theater featured the lives of white folks from the mountain hamlet of Dogpatch.  The denizens old Dogpatch were hillbillies, or as today’s PC cranks might offer Mountain Williams.

One of these Deplorables was the unfortunate daughter of the founding family, Sadie Hawkins.   Sadie was . . .homely.  One of Life’s Unplucked Flowers, like a Sister of Mercy back in the day, Sadie Hawkins, not a Mackeral Snapper, but a Bible-belted bringer-in-of-sheaves, resorted to whining to her Paw that no man wanted to her.  Paw came up with a race requiring every eligible bachelor in Dogpatch to get a running start from his homely child and head for the tall pines.  If Sadie could catch her man, she’d keep him.

Out of this misogynistic bit of patriarchal law-laying-down, arose the Sadie Hawkins Dance.  In every high school gym in America Sadie Hawkins Dances required the girls to ask the boys out to the jig.

The boys are honor-bound to accept and have fun.

Tonight, I will chaperone a Sadie Hawkins.  In English class last week, I revealed the etymology of the name of the dance, much to the surprise and delight of one and all.

The Dance is almost sold out.

My only beef is the fact that there is no band.  Kids no longer go to dances with bands.  That is a tragedy.  There will be a DJ.

I will duke the platter-spinner a double sawbuck to ensure that the following numbers are played:

Hold me

Just Ask the Lonely

Land of 1000 Dances

Devil with the Blue Dress On

A Fin a piece is a bargain to educate young American Catholic young men and women.