Geometry - The Catholic Soul

That's why Geometry, Clyde.

I pick up twelve to thirteen Leo students every morning.  Sophomore Clyde "The Glide" Butler is a veteran passenger and my first stop in Englewood of Chicago.  Clyde is a school leader, by dint of his character developed from his family, and an excellent student with 3.8 GPA.  That freshman year cumulative average is currently being battered by Euclid and Archimedes: Geometry.

                                                             Clyde the Glide Leo 2018
The sophomores are having a genuine struggle, as did I in  the Fall of1967, getting a grip on Geometry the second step of the classical quadrivium ( Arithmetic, Geometry, Astrology and Music).  The 19th Century Germans and 20th Century American sociologist-philosophes murdered education by systematically undoing  1800 years of Classical Education in name of Kaiser and then John Dewey.  Now, there is Arne Duncan armed with Common Core and Video lessons from Howard Zinn and his comic book quality videomaster Kenneth Burns - just wait until you learn how FDR saved his career by making Henry Wallace his Veep.

Geometry survives in the curriculum, as does Counting and Ciphering wages amounting up to and including $ 15.00 per hour. Geometry, because we all need to learn the angles and Math because Mickey D's needs cashiers.

Geometry, if taught correctly, is murder in the early goings.  Dead Tan Guys invented Geometry. The same folks who gave us Democracy and the best cuisine of God's Blue Planet made sense of universe -geometry handled the shapes and Arithmetic the majesty and types of numbers. Geometry and Math were cult classics, because they were mysteries more than disciplines (like our Prussian John Dewey demands).

The Greeks realized that mathematics offered the young mind its first immediate encounter with Truth.  Early education taught basic reading and calculating skills, and developed a taste for beautiful and noble actions and ideas.  Through these efforts, the youth were made receptive to their culture.  But geometry, the study of shapes through measurement, and arithmetic, the study of fascinating kinds of numbers, contained truths that transcended any human society.  Right triangles and ellipses belong to no man; they are instances of a beautiful, ordered reality that is eternal and divine.  Students learned that such truth exists, and that their minds could see it. from Beyond the Test: Educating in The Truth

Geometry and Arithmetic built cathedrals, aqueducts, roads that all led to Rome, mosaics, sculpture, painting, military dicta and screwed fresh water up to a thirsty folks from the Nile.  That screwer of Lake Michigan Straight was none other than Archimedes who studied his Euclid and gave the Romans all kinds of hell during the eight years of siege on his town of Syracuse. Like I said, Old Dead Tan Guys mastered the shapes and numbers and allowed us to put them to practical purposes.

" Why do we gotta study Geometry? Its boring.  What do you do with it?" saith Clyde the Glide.

Euclid heard the same damn thing.  Euclid understood that we live in a 3-D world and only need the glasses to see it that way.  The glasses are reverence.  Geometry ( and I received a Gentleman's D) is awesome - in the proper definition.  It does, or should strike awe in all of us - more so than Mark Zuckerberg's PT Barnum nonsense.  Euclid stole no one Else's ideas - far as I know.

Numbers and shapes lead us to The Truth - we Catholics call that God.  That is Catholic soul, Clyde.

Last Call from the Chicago Tribune - " Illinois! Stand Up for Non-Euclidian Marriage !"

I have witnessed birth.   In two of the three blessed events, the attending obstetrician pronounced, " Mrs. Hickey, you and your husband are the parents of beautiful baby girl."  On one occasion, after a very difficult and painful experience for my 'birth' partner as the dope didn't take for the breech birth of the fetal-distressed object of our prayers, the exhausted medical professional, " Mrs. Hickey, you and your husband are the proud parents of a handsome young man!"

In no case, did the attending physician pronounce the sexual preference of any child born to our family e.g. " You are the proud parents of a lesbian, transgender, switch-hitting, homosexual male, or whatever."  Rather, I was informed and fully understood that my wife and I had a son and two daughters: one male with the attendant reproductive apparati and two female girls, as far I as could tell.  

We bought unisex diapers, wipes, keister ointment and Similac for all three.  Strictly Euclidian.  We took it from there.  I got out of car with the saw cut down the Christmas Trees and hauled them back to the running car where Mrs. Hickey and very warm kiddies waited for the task to be completed.  " Dads, don't get cold.  Mommies are smarter."



Greg Harris, Fred Eychaner, Terry Cosgrove, Kelly Cassidy, and others have done a magnificent job of purchasing, bullying or convincing Illinois that polls matter and Euclid is an old Greek.  With the legislative cxlock running down on the Illinois Religious Freedom and Marraige Fairness Act, the Chicago Tribune issued this call arms against Black Evangelicals, Muslims, devout Jews, Catholics and Euclid:

State Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, needs 60 votes by week's end to add Illinois to the list. The nose count is still close. Let's get it done.
Public support for same-sex marriage is barreling ahead, and it isn't likely to change direction.
This month, a Gallup poll found 53 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage, up from 44 percent in 2010 and 27 percent in 1996. Separate polls measured support at 55 percent in Arizona, 56 percent in Virginia and 57 percent in Michigan.

No less a Non-Euclidian sexual practitioner than Cole Porter admitted to the Euclidian mandate of 'parts' in procreation -

When the little bluebird 
Who has never said a word 
Starts to sing Spring
When the little bluebell 
At the bottom of the dell 
Starts to ring Ding dong Ding dong 
When the little blue clerk 
In the middle of his work 
Starts a tune to the moon up above 
It is nature that is all 
Simply telling us to fall in love 

And that's why birds do it, bees do it 
Even educated fleas do it 
Let's do it, let's fall in love 

Cold Cape Cod clams, 'gainst their wish, do it 
Even lazy jellyfish do it 
Let's do it, let's fall in love 

I've heard that lizards and frogs do it 
Layin' on a rock 
They say that roosters do it 
With a doodle and cock . . . Cole Porter "Let's Fall in Love"

Let's do what exactly one might ask?  Why Sex, Junior!  You know, what Percy Sledge said . . .better yet! Marvin Gaye!



Easy, Son!

Sex tempered with love and blessed in marriage brings about all that Springtime stuff - birth, renewal!  Now, in Planned Parenthood nations like Red China, some confused breeders obey the State and flush beautiful children down the toilet, but most Cole Porter/Percy Sledge/Pope Francis folks warp their babes in swaddling clothes and lay them in mangers.

Euclid observed, just like I observed, that there are differences.  In the last century, feminism argued against this.  Science, according to Michael Levin in his brilliant critique of feminism, got in the business of debunking observation. " You going to believe your lying eyes, or ME, Gloria Steinem?"

Non Euclidian morality is rooted in post Kantian philosophy and reached its full fruition with Hitler.  Margaret Sanger was a Non-Euclidian and our feminist bra-burners and infanticidal Medeas are non-Euclidians.

Gay marriage was born of feminism.  Science- even social science, Levin reminds us, is or should be in the business of explaining observation and not leading data, polling, or agendas to pre-cast conclusions.

Marriage is Euclidian = one man + one woman = Some kid.

Cole Porter knew that and he was as Gay as a Clifton Webb Marathon on TMC.


19th Ward note.
The Non-Euclidian money spends, I'll give it that - my State Senator Bill Cunnigham is on board and voted for Non-Euclidian Marriage Illinois;  my State Rep. Fran Hurley took the coin of Terry Cosgrove.  We will see how she votes.  Nice girl, Fran.  That was damn Euclidian of me, I guess.