This is My Friend Sharon J.and She is Welcome Any Day

Miss Sharon J____ kept me happy while I parked cars for the Stanley Cup visit to Leo High School - Leo's North Lot (09/15/2015)

On the day, the Chicago Black Hawks Organization and our great Defense Man #7 Brent Seabrook brought the Stanley Cup to Leo High School, I was busy outside of school building arranging parking and security for the event with officers of the Sixth District and Leo High School seniors who volunteered.

I ran back forth between the faculty and visitor parking lot on the southwest side of 79th & Sangamon and the big student/parent/visitors lot on the northeast side of the street.

One person who helped keep me centered and happy through the day is a little lady who became my pal seven years ago,  Her name is Miss Sharon J----.

Sharon has had a tough life, but is a remarkably chipper lady.  She walks all over the 17th Ward and lives in a small apartment near 87th and Carpenter.

Sharon graduated from the now closed Visitation Girls Catholic High School in the early 1970's and went to Jackson State University where she became friends with the great Chicago Bear legend Walter Payton. Like Payton Miss Sharon is a Mississippi gal and her chats with me always segue to 'homecoming'  near Columbia with all of her cousins.

Miss Sharon's nephews went to Leo High School and she is always asking me if I came to know so-and-so, or knew what they were up to.

Sadly, Miss Sharon is out of touch with some in her family.  After Jackson State University, life went off the rails for Miss Sharon.  Miss Sharon is neither down, nor out.  Miss Sharon struggles.

Her very sweet and thoughtful heart was never damaged by anything that harmed her otherwise. Some people say heartless things about and to her.  That is all too human. Aldermen, State Senators and even school teachers can thoroughly rotten bastards who would take the last chair, or the parking spot of a disabled person and say some of the warmest and nicest things. Some people never see past the resume, the title or the human tinsel. I like to tear into gifts, be human or boxed.  I get excited about opening new gifts and enjoying old ones.  I love the gift of speech.   I like words.  I like deeds better. Me, I take people as they act toward me and Miss Sharon is and has been my pal.

On the day, of the Stanley Cup Visit, Miss Sharon refused my offer to escort her into the event.  " No, thank you, I don't want upset anyone.  One teacher told me 'Stay away, Crackhead,' one morning, 'the boys don't need to see you hanging around.'  I don't want anyone upset."

Miss Sharon and I stayed out and had some laughs.

I wish I knew who said that to this lady, or anyone.  Miss Sharon is always welcome.

My Interview with Donald Trump at the Old Evergreen Plaza on 95th & Western Avenue

The Donald at the PlaZoo on Western, in Evergreen Park, IL.  He said pretty much the same tripe to Chris Wallace.  Hell, why not?


PAT HICKEY: Mr. Trump, good to see you again. You took care of the dandruff problem you had when I sat behind you at the Gary, Indiana Gambling Hearings in 1994,

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you.

HICKEY:  What was it Selsun Blue, a full-court press of Zinc Pyrithione, or some organic shampoo?


TRUMP: I felt it. I mean I felt it from within. We have tremendous discontent in the country. We have tremendous problems in the country. And I felt it early on or I wouldn't have done this. But I see tremendous discontent.

HICKEY: Before we dig down into some issues,  how about that flatulence problem that seemed to accompany the dandruff?  Man, it was brutal, Don.  I mean, I have a pretty robust constitution and all but I thought, back then, that you must have put away an even dozen Whitey One Bites, a handful of Slim Jims and washed them down with a warm six pack of Buckhorn.

TRUMP: OK.

HICKEY : -- quick answers. Hey, I'm just stoking ya!  Should a prospective Commander-in-Chief tear off a half-dozen odoriferous pew splitters in public, like you did in 1994, or do his level best to tough it out?

TRUMP: I would use the debt limit. I don't want to say -- I want to be unpredictable, because, you know, we need unpredictability. Everything is so predictable with our country.

But I would be very, very strong on the debt limit. And I would be asking for a very big pound of flesh if I were the Republicans. And the problem with the Republicans, they have two sides. The smaller side is very strong and the other side is always agreeing and, you know, you can't do that.

HICKEY:  You were plenty unpredictable in the Gary Conference Center that day! Now, I can't see any of the other candidates GOP, or DEM doing the same with the exception of Bernie and he subsists on Vermont Vegan Alternative Energy Sources which can be as GI toxic as a fully loaded Dago Beef Combo from Al's on Taylor Street.

TRUMP: I do not want to say that because I want to show unpredictability. You have to. You can't just go around and say that.

But Planned Parenthood should absolutely be defunded. I mean if you look at what's going on with that, it's terrible. And many other things should be defunded and many things should be cut.

 HICKEY: You won't do a thing about abortion, Trumpo, no way!  Anyway. . . . How about that wedge of hair?  John Cutrone could take care of that in a nano-second.  Hey, look, this was real nice, Glad to see shoulder snow belt is cleared up and I must say you have exercised great pyloric self-control with me today - unlike that day in Gary, when you matched smelter for sphincter with Gary Works, the still operational LVT and the Dutch ovens of Inland over in East Chicago.  Have a nice campaign, I got pretty much what I wanted from you . . .Hey!  The interview is over and there's no cameras . . .Look.  Go talk to some of the Gummers getting exercise.  Nice.  Adios, Trump!  Beat it!  Go win a nomination.  Jesus, Christ, what is wrong with me?  Never make eye contact.

Truth is as Dead as God ( BTW - HE Ain't) in American Education and the Politics It Serves

The weakness of the philosophy originally advanced to justify the democratic movement was that it took individuality to be something given ready-made, that is, in abstraction from time, instead of as a power to develop. John Dewey

The contingency of all into which time enters is the source of pathos, comedy, and tragedy. John Dewey

John Dewey was a social engineer with powerful friends like John D. Rockefeller - a 1%er who was told by one of his snitches, or close advisers to give away $1 of every $10 he exploited from God's earth and the workers who toiled to extract, process, ship and sell to education, so that he could keep the remaining $9 without the screams and wailing of the likes of Jane Addams and other sapphic women with way too much time on their hands and the long-haired writers who penned muckraking screeds at their commands.

It worked!  John D. built University of Chicago and Columbia University School of Education to grant PhDs to Dewey and Hegel disciples universal and packed billions of spondulix into his purse.

John Dewey was no more a teacher than Obama's gift from 1%-er John Rogers and Secretary of Education and former Chicago Public Schools layabout, Arne Duncan - who wants, now, to be Governor of Illinois.  Hell, he'll win in a landslide.

John Dewey is to truth, as Mrs. O':Leary's cow' s hoof was to Chicago on hot, dry and windy day in Old Chicago.

The majority of folks believed that Kate O'Leary's bossy kicked over the lantern on her barn on Kinzie Avenue and caused the Great Chicago Fire. That is an example of John Dewey Education.  Kate was absolved by a vote in the Chicago City Council. in 1997. That's nice.

Truth, however, is not the possession of the majority, unless you really bought into John Dewey.

You see John Dewey claims that 'inquiry' is the substitute for truth.  It is play. It is a rigged game. Draw a conclusion and convince everyone, or nearly everyone, to cooperate with you and you win.

That, boys and girls, is why our public and even a growing number of private and Catholic schools are producing dummies.  By dummies, I mean those dolls that used be be entertaining, but are now considered creepy, through which a person other than the dummy speaks.  Kids are not allowed to be, much less think for themselves in American Cooperative Education.  Zero Policies and Group Think ( inquiry) trumps truth.

Name an absurdity in our time -

• Barack Obama's Presidency
• Black Lives Matter
• No Score Youth Sports
• Grade Inflation
• No F's
• Ritalin
• Zero Tolerance
• Diversity Mandates
• The Wrongful Conviction Industry
• The DNC
• Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois
• Universal Trophies and Awards
• American Public Education
• American Public Radio and Television
• Howard Zinn
• Kaitlyn Jenner, American Hero

-and you have the collective wisdom of John Dewey.

Truth is shared, observable and most times it is eternal.  One of the greatest defenders of truth and even religion was an aristocratic agnostic mathematician/philosopher Bertrand Russell.  How's that for some irony?

Russell said this on John Dewey and his vandalism of education and democracy - 

The error of democracy lies in regarding all claims to superiority as just grounds for the resentment of the herd. In the modern world, much work which is necessary to the community requires more ability than most men posses sand there must be ways of selecting exceptional men to do this work. In general, if they are to be as well qualified as possible, it is desirable to select them while they are still young - say twelve years old - and to allow them to make more rapid progress than is possible to a class of average boys or girls. The feeling that it is undemocratic to single out the best pupil is one which leads to a great waste of good material 

Excellence, courage and faith are forbidden in John Dewey's Progressive and Secular Public Schools.  Truth is murdered for the sake of cooperation.

 Americans need to be a bit more more disruptive in John Dewey's schools.

The Egyptian Darkness of Progressive Chicago - FOX 32 Chicago's Dane Placko Helps Torch Free Speech

And no power of fire could give them light, neither could the bright flames of the stars enlighten that horrible night. The Book of Wisdom XVII, 5.

"Until FOX 32 started asking questions, he was one of the top officials in the office of Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez. He made $153-thousand a year as chief of the office's civil division." Dane Placko Fox32 

My rule of thumb, when considering a news item from Dane Placko of Chicago FOX 32, is a Progressive Democrat wants someone dead - metaphorically, socially, politically, economically, but maybe not physically . . .maybe not.

Dane Placko, I have no doubt, got a call from someone in City, or County government and went to work on a man who has been working in the Cook County States Attorney's Office for sometime and has not yet learned that group thought is a 24 hour, 365 days per year unwritten but certainly fully funded mandate. The man, in the cross hairs of Dan Placko's investigation is named Dan Gallagher.  Mr. Gallagher made a comment on Facebook that was deemed 'inappropriate' because First Lady Obama seemed a bit porcine in the photo - Under a Facebook post about the First Lady meeting Pope Francis, a comment by Daniel F. Gallagher says: "I think Moosechelle was hiding a secret service agent in the seat of her dress."

Someone hissed the comment to Dane Placko, a man given to hack journalism only upon people who can be fired in government, but never on anyone who makes  career of lousing up Chicago, Cook County, or the State of Illinois.  FOX 32 has Placko.  ABC7 has Chuck Goudie. Illinois BGA has Andy Shaw ( formerly of ABC 7) protecting the Progressive Democrat Eunuchs ( Proco Joe/Claypool) and Pharaohs (Daley/Rahm/Preckwinkle) who have destroyed our schools, our neighborhoods and our collective safety.

It seems Mr. Gallagher, obviously a white privileged individual and incapable of being a Group Think victim, holds

• Al Sharpton
• Pastor Pfleger
• Hillary Clinton

in scant regard.  Now, had he limited himself to GW Bush, Tea Party People, the Koch Brothers, or the late Cardinal George for criticism, Mr. Gallagher would be receiving support from an obviously gutless Anita Alvarez and a future pay stub.

As it is, Dane Placko has his scalp.

This is Egypt, not Chicago.  If you do not think what you are told to think ( Ain't Rahm Great?  Obama Should be on Mount Rushmore, Bike Lanes Rock! & etc.) you should move to BumTryst, Indiana, Fella.

If work take a check from City, County and State payrolls and you venture a thought critical of a protected Eunuch, much less a Pharaoh, someone will dial up Dane Placko, Chuck Goudie, Andy Shaw, or one of the many purse puppy inkslingers in this sad burg and you will be forced to resign and live out your days in ignominious . . . .light.  Everyone else is way happy in the dark.

James Webb is The Democrat Who Won Last Night's Debate - He was the Only Democrat on the Stage

I watched last night's Democratic Party Presidential Debate after I watched the Chicago Cubs work off the curse of a goat and curses of too many White Sox Fans.  Though I am an unashamedly tribal, let's say Parochial south sider, I was delighted to watch the Cubs take down the tough and canny St. Louis Cardinals.

I do not believe in curses. I believe in God's grace and the Cubs were graceful and Cub Fans gracious.

Growing up, in a grammatical manner of speaking, on the south side of Chicago, I learned to embrace my Catholic Faith, the values of blue collar  neighborhood Chicago and the once proud and fierce Democratic Party that defended labor, fought secularism, Communism, classism and defended America.  Over the last twenty years, I watched labor weaken itself by making bargains with public sector unions and effectively shrink the middle class.  The skilled and industrial trades created the American middle class and the greatest standard of living for more people than any movement or conquest in world history.  When labor took up the redistribution of wealth mantra from SEIU in the late 1980's things went badly for the skilled and industrial trades.

Likewise, during this period, but beginning a bit before, the Democratic Party went from being the political party of working men and women to a platform for eugenics, global corporatism and a cowardly rapprochement with Marxism.  No longer were labor leaders, churchmen and military leaders clarion voices for working people.  Street Hustlers, wealthy Ivy League wet-brains, academic charlatans and pollsters carried the policies of racial division, self-doubt and angry classism in their purses and man-clutches, as well as the billions of dollars necessary to turn Anti-Abortion Democrat candidates like U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and those of his ilk into smarmy, dithering and cowardly puppets for some very bad causes and the people funding them.

To me, the candidacy and Presidency of Barack Obama seemed a Billy Goat's Curse upon the Democrats and I could only vote for local candidates who continued to fight for human life from conception to grave, like my own Congressman Dan Lipinski and Alderman Matt O'Shea of the 19th Ward. That's just me.

Last night, former Senator James Webb rekindled my love of the Democratic Party.  My only objection to James Webb is his continued support of Roe v. Wade.  Webb once said of social issues ( read abortion and gay marriage) " I believe the power of the government ends at my front door unless there is a compelling reason to come inside ..."     There is, Mr. Webb.  We can't have Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness without Life.

That powerful objection of mine aside, I was impressed to see one genuine Democrat of the true stripe defend and hold his position against the flabby, phony and prefabricated plays to the plants in the audience of Bernie Sanders and the odious Mrs. Clinton.

James Webb is the Annapolis Man, the thickly decorated combat Marine, the independent United States Senator, the fierce defender of American exceptionalism ( yes, CNN, America is exceptional) and interests and dedicated Secretary of the Navy who ensured this country's ability to defend itself.  Webb is no author of ghost-written auto-biographies, nor a clip board wielding community activist with billionaire backers.  Jim Webb is an honorable patriot and author of what is considered to be the finest novel to come out of the Vietnam War ,  ten other powerful books, films and an Emmy Award winning documentary on the Scots-Irish contributions to America.

In debate, Webb stood with great honor.

Gloria Vanderbilt's little boy Anderson Cooper tried to collapse Senator Webb from the get-go with this -



James Webb mopped the floor with Cooper.

Webb wrote in 2010 that the White Privilege Myth is a dodge used to divide people.  Last night Anderson Cooper proved Webb correct to millions of Americans.

Later, Cooper offered this idiotic question, "the enemy they are most proud of."  - James Webb answered the Vietnamese soldier who tried to kill him.

The Vegas Casino packed with Sanders and Clinton plants went silent -on demand.

James Webb was the only Democrat on that Stage a man graced by God.

James Webb can have my vote.   A man with this much honor must eventually strangle abortion in this nation and make America great once more.


Go, Cubs, Go!  

Brent Seabrook and Lord Stanley at Leo High School - Hawks and Lions: One Goal

Calvin Frogge (1925-2015) - Illinois Farmer, WWII Naval Aviator and Catholic Gentleman to the Backbone Goes Home to Christ

Calvin Frogge was a pure Illinois Man of the Soil. He suffered no fools gladly, but took them to his heart with charity little found in our current cynical days. Calvin farmed.  He farmed before and after flying for the U.S. Navy in WWII.
 
After the war Calvin had the good sense to woo one of the beautiful McCue girls and the good fortune to manage an 'OK' to his offer of marriage. Calvin and Marietta raised two very talented sons.  Calvin lost his pal and bride, Marietta a few years ago and had been in poor health.  I know that he nearly wore out the kneelers at St. Anne Shrine in St. Anne and also St.Mary's Beaverville.

At weddings and family gatherings, this son of French voyageurs and resident of Martinon, Illinois was last man off the dance floor and usually last man standing. Calvin was never a gabby man, but he was always a witty man and given to rustic saws like , It's colder than a mother-in-law's kiss! and rainin' harder'n a cow peein' on a flat rock!

Calvin was a sweet tempered man, who laughed with the sun rise and got out into the cornrows and got things done.  He specialized in growing pop corn for Popeye PopCorn and knew how to rotate his fields for just the right yield for soybeans to confound the digital grains futures street board on the main drag of Watseka.

My prayers and sympathies to Jim and Margaret Frogge and Jim's brother Tom and grandkids, Jessica, Sarah and Nathan Frogge for the loss of this great man.

They are not growing them like Calvin anymore. 

Telling Yarns - The Germ of Art and Producer Ciara Nic Chormaic

 

Narrator: Europeans who had flocked to 19th Century Chicago for jobs crouched together for survival. They created ethnic enclaves little Germanys, Italy's, Warsaws, and Pragues, glowering at each other with suspicion
Douglas Bukowski, Writer: I think the best way to look at late 19th century Chicago is to think of it as a great boxing ring by the lake. People just didn't get along here. Nobody who was Polish wanted to have an Irish priest. Nobody who was Irish wanted to go to a German church. This whole notion of tolerance for other groups was foreign to people who didn't know any other groups in the old country. from PBS American Experience Series: Chicago in the 19th Century

I had the great pleasure to attend the opening night of Mike Houlihan's Irish American Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Center in heart of the Loop.

I explained the etymology of the Loop to film maker Dave McLaughlin and his wife Mary Beth as we walked from the Siskel Center to The Emerald Loop for the post viewing party.

I pointed above us to the roaring CTA elevated trains  above Lake and State.   The Loop is elevated track fencing much of the Dan Burnham and Louis Sullivan 19th century architecture that once housed capitalists, so detested by PBS and their 501(c) 3 foundation beneficiaries that funding was provided to re-write history.  That is not how stories, yarns, legends and history work . . .except on Public Television, Radio and at Media Matters.

People have been telling yarns and even paint cave walls when words failed them.

The Irish American Film Festival presented Deach An Dorais ( What;s Your Poison?) a documentary based on the Bronx legend of Mike Malloy, the Rasputin of the Bronx, a 1933 alcoholic who just would not die.  Mike Malloy survived more than twenty attempts by four creeps who wanted to cash-in on insurance policies take out in the homeless derelict with no known relatives or friend.  All Mike had going for him was an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and an iron constitution.  He survived poisonings, methonal guzzlings, glass, nail and contaminated sardine and oysters swallowings, freezings in sub-zero temperatures, while soaked with booze and buckets of ice cold water and even a speeding automobile driven over his body.

The story was told by Bronx residents and made it's way into plays, 1950's radio stories like Johnny Dollar -Insurance Investigator and,  most recently, picked up and printed by Smithsonian Magazine and made its way east over the Atlantic on the BBC.

Stories are rooted in human interactions.

Lions, chimps and whales don't tell stories, no matter what PBS tells us.

Story-telling is the germ of art.

When we arrived at The Emerald Loop the stories weaved up a storm.  Irish American News columnists and television producer Mike Morley told of Martin Hogan The Fenian Hero who escaped an Australian Penal Colony on the The Catalpa only to be buried without ceremony at Chicago's Mount Olivet Cemetery, James Sheahan told of Constable James Quinn, the first Chicago cop to be killed in the line of duty and author Rick Barrett's long work to set the record straight.

I had asked a the producer of  DEOCH AN DORAIS, Ms. Ciara Nic Chomaic if she had gathered information from New York's greatest story teller, T.J. English, author of Paddy Whacked.  Ciara had reached out to Mr. English, but he was unavailable.
Producer Ciara Nic Chormaic (center)
You see, Ms. Nic Chormaic build the stories around any given story.  She had attached the undertakers, the academics, the genealogists, the artists, a NYPD detective, GAA Hard Man Anthony Molloy ( the film's narrator) and the wildly entertaining and brilliant criminal pathologist who really stole the film for me.

The director Paddy Hayes and Ms. Nic Chromaic created art from a story.

However it was Ciara Nic Chromaic who vetted the story tellers made the narrative handled by Mr. Hayes possible.

History is a fabric of yarns, sagas. songs and stories - Art.

PBS, Ken Burns, Oliver Stone do propaganda.

I like Art.

Neighbors Celebrate Hickey's Delayed Lawn Work With a Blue Angels Flyover!

This is my Lawn Mower.  It is generated by the will to go out and cut the grass, weeds, dandelions and tree branchlings behind the force of my sixty-four year old frame and , of course,  the time to do it. Hey, I been busy. Really. As the poet said, Time flies like an arrow and Fruit Flies Like a Banana.

Prior to this day's cuttings and pullings, Lawn Hickey was not unlike this!

Homo , Civis et proximum. eum locum te deducas languoribus peresus triturans triturabit!

Time! on whose arbitrary wing
The varying hours must flag or fly,
Whose tardy winter, fleeting spring,
But drag or drive us on to die---
Hail thou! who on my birth bestowed
Those boons to all that know thee known;
Yet better I sustain thy load,
For now I bear the weight alone.

Get your fat ass out to the garage! Lube the damn wheels on the WalMart Special and start pushing!

With rapid Force our sharpen'd Blades we drive,
Strain ev'ry Nerve, and Blow for Blow we give.
All strive to vanquish, tho' the Victor gains
No other Glory, but the greatest Pains.

Here -  and here is what I hath wrought!

WITH Heat and Labour tir'd, our Scythes we quit,
Search out a shady Tree, and down we sit:
From Scrip and Bottle hope new Strength to gain;
But Scrip and Bottle too are try'd in vain.

New-growing Labours still succeed the past;
And growing always new, must always last.

The neighbors are having a Fly-Over by the Blue Angels at noon.