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. 

Cook County Forest Preserves - Our Greatest Natural Asset for Education, Pleasure and Recreation

 

To acquire … and hold lands … containing one or more natural forests or lands connecting such forests or parts thereof, for the purpose of protecting and preserving the flora, fauna and scenic beauties within such district, and to restore, restock, protect, and preserve the natural forests and said lands together with their flora and fauna, as nearly as may be, in their natural state and condition, for the purpose of the education, pleasure, and recreation of the public.  Cook County Commissioners 1905

1904 had been a tough year for Chicagoans, especially south siders -  Chicago lost the Summer Olympics to St. Louis and the Streetcar and Stockyard Strikes. put many people in financial, physical and even mortal jeopardy - scabs opened fire from rail cars used by the packers to safely transport them to and from the yards and killed several strikers.

Orchestra Hall was completed largely through the subscriptions of the Swift, Armour.  Schwarzschild & Sulzberger packinghouse barons. Very few stockyard workers attended the symphony, I would hazard a guess.

What did working people do and where did they go for relaxation?  What was available to them?  Saloons.  Church.  Union Halls.

The Great Conservationist was in the White House. President Teddy had designated vast tracks of land for the edification, enjoyment and education of the American people.

It seems that in 1905, a few like-minded public servants did the same.

Some brilliant people staked out  68,000 acres of field, wood and water around and within the City of Chicago and gave us the Cook County Forest Preserve District.

This soul tonic of a resource is one of the wonders of living where we do - one wonders if a contemporary public official has the heart and brains to match the vision of the 1905 County Commissioners.

Following the lead of Dr. John Rauch's  Public Parks, City of Chicago (Chicago, 1869), the great sanitarian who fought Yellow Fever and cholera here and beyond Chicago,  some clear headed people put the Forest Preserve into being just after the 1904 strikes and the loss of Olympics.

The 1905 document calling for the creation of a Forest Preserve District was weakly written and it was not until 1911 that the dream came to life.

From that time, the common man, as well as the swell, had his own 'green retreats.' Dan Ryan Woods, Maple Lake, Willow Slough, Joe Louis Golf Course, Brookfield Zoo, Arie Crown Botanic Gardens, Busse Woods, Desplaines River Trail and Camp Dan Beard became places where the grey canyon of La Salle Street, or the red dust of Hegewisch might be forgotten for  a couple of restorative hours.

• Chicago kids could take nature hikes, toboggan, sled, swim, play football, softball and jog.
• Old Timers could take their Kerry Blue, or mixed mutt breed out for a chase of a tennis ball.
• Lovers could neck.
• Families could barbecue, picnic, camp and relax.
• Children at the Nature Stations like Little Red Schoolhouse could learn about the flora and fauna of Cook County
• Teens learned to 'drink responsibly

For one hundred and eleven years, the working stiff and the well-heeled have been afforded a pastoral paradise.

Quality people put this into being.  Let's pray that quality people will preserve the Cook County Forest Preserve District.

All photos of Dan Ryan Woods

The United Nations is King Herod The Great - The Senator Dick Durbin of His Day

 Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the US Senate Majority Whip, received the International Family Planning Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Planned Parenthood of Illinois and the United Nations Foundation (UNF).

 "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more."[ Jeremiah from The Gospel of St. Matthew

By geographic region, abortion policies were most
restrictive in Oceania, followed by Africa and Latin
America and the Caribbean. Only 6 per cent of
Governments in Oceania and Africa and only 12 per
cent in Latin America and the Caribbean allowed
abortion upon request. Eighteen countries in Africa,
12 in Asia, 8 in Latin America and the Caribbean and
8 in Oceania allowed abortion only to save a
woman’s life. Europe and Northern America, in
contrast, had the most liberal abortion policies in
2013. Both Governments in Northern America and
73 per cent of Governments in Europe allowed
abortion on request.  United Nations -Abortion Policies and Reproductive Health

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents.  Herod the Great was an oily Progressive thinking opportunist who switched allegiances at the drop of some blood, but was very civilized and sophisticated.   He was a Jew who who took a  Nishtkefelecht attitude towards matters of religion and conscience, like an Irish Catholic Democrat who is praised by Planned Parenthood. Think of Senator Dick Durbin and you understand King Herod.  Totally, sophisticated.

Civilized and sophisticated people, United Nations explains, approve of abortion - a woman's reproductive health.

Unsophisticated people take the lessons of Matthew's Gospel to heart:

When [the Magi] had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Get up, he said, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."[7] When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old or under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more."

Wait a minute!  Even HBO's Game of Thrones, must see TV for any sophisticate, offered an homage to St. Matthew - the late King Robert's bastards must all be slaughtered so that  creepy little King Joffrey can rule - just like Herod and not unlike the former Pro-Life Senior Senator from Illinois.

Abortion is a murder of convenience.

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents - slaughtered by Herod the Great in order to scientifically eliminate any and all possibilities of having a claimant to his Roman throne.

The United Nations, which has been  owned and operated by Marxist sophisticates ever since the Korean War Cease Fire, is the most sophisticated body of thugs on earth.  With pie-charts, graphs, globalist politicians and a dunghill of rhetorical polemics, the United Nations has done more to isolate people of faith ( Israel), slaughter people of Faith ( Uganda, Somalia, Syria, Lebanon) and innocents globe round than any psychopathic dictator or James Bond Villain could dream up.

I see the United Nations as a global Planned Parenthood.  I see their biggest supporters ( Senator Dick Durbin and so many others) doing King Herod the Great on a daily basis.

This is a day that commemorates the slaughter of children under the age of two by that globalist sophisticate and civilized Progressive King Herod of Judea.

This is a day for some unsophisticated examination of the deeds of some all too human monsters - individual and collective.

How Un-Evolved of Me! Loping the Mule is Not Love for Evolved

The Sin of Onan - past time of both genders and a few more.

You ladies all of merry England
Who have been to kiss the Duchess's hand,
Pray, did you not lately observe in the show
A noble Italian called Signor Dildo? ...
A rabble of pricks who were welcomed before,
Now finding the porter denied them the door,
Maliciously waited his coming below
And inhumanly fell on Signor Dildo ... Sir John Wilmot 17th Century Libertine

I have been told that I need to work on my filters.   Especially when I speak to people beyond the pale of my blue collar Catholic parish, where marriages largely remain intact, kids grow up and become useful citizens and weirdos are generally seen for what they happen to be.

Gay people are married and live happily together. Some with adopted children who are happy that someone houses, feeds, provides and most of all loves them.  That is a good thing.  Fact of the matter is those folks choose not to live in my neck-of-the-Dan Ryan Woods.  This appears to be hetero-marriage world.  I am sure that are gay couples here in the 19th Ward, I know more than few gay singles, here and about who work at the County Building, City Hall and at the Criminal Courts, who grew up in Tommy More, Little Flower, St. Dennis and Ethelreda parishes with us who chose not to marry at this time.  They are great people who would be as welcome as they are without spouses, because they are great people.

That said, and I said it many times,   Marriage is meant for a man and a woman. Way back in 2011, Illinois passed the Civil Unions Ordinance which did not confer on couples the terms 'spouses,'husbands, and 'wives.'  That was handled by Gov. Pat Quinn, the Paul Simon Insitute Polls and our elected officials on November 20, 2013.  Evolution sure has sped up some!

The legislation has yet to change the simple fact that the Yin and Yang of gender remains at play and no matter how much two gals, or two guys love one another the laws of biology discovered by Fr. Gregor Mendel, O.S.A. remain in play:

1) The Law of Segregation: Each inherited trait is defined by a gene pair. Parental genes are randomly separated to the sex cells so that sex cells contain only one gene of the pair. Offspring therefore inherit one genetic allele from each parent when sex cells unite in fertilization.
2) The Law of Independent Assortment: Genes for different traits are sorted separately from one another so that the inheritance of one trait is not dependent on the inheritance of another.
3) The Law of Dominance: An organism with alternate forms of a gene will express the form that is dominant.
The genetic experiments Mendel did with pea plants took him eight years (1856-1863) and he published his results in 1865. During this time, Mendel grew over 10,000 pea plants, keeping track of progeny number and type. Mendel's work and his Laws of Inheritance were not appreciated in his time. It wasn't until 1900, after the rediscovery of his Laws, that his experimental results were understood.

We are people;not peas!  Got it.

When gender became as unnecessary to the political culture world, it became of paramount necessity to the litigious high priests of moral legislation and jurisprudence.  Lawyers lawsuit the shit out of average un-evolved people of Faith and not the other way around.

When gay marriage was argued all the way from Springfield to the United States Supreme Court, people of sense and faith worried about the marriage between a man and his rooster, girl and her pet pony, an ardent swain and his melon, brothers seeking more than a Bromance, sapphic sisters setting up camp, Mormon poly-same sex partners and a Frog and her robot.

All objections were immediately peck sniffed and eyes rolled like Buddy Bomar was tossing them, by the evolved libertine libertarians who study morality on HBO.  Mark Ruffalo is cool with it; worship it.  It gets better.  

In France,  a woman named Lilly wants to marry her robot.  Robot passion suppression is not new - sex toys appear in every culture. For the Ladies, The Dildo, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) appears, appears mind you, to have been evolved from the smoothly carved wooden, how shall I say, tool of nautical origin.

 One theory is that it originally referred to the phallus-shaped peg used to lock an oar in position on a dory (small boat). It would be inserted into a hole on the side of the boat, and is very similar in shape to the modern toy. It is possible that the sex toy takes its name from this sailing tool, which also lends its name to the town of Dildo and the nearby Dildo Island in Newfoundland, Canada.

For the Gents, the Sailor's Wife, the Mighty Mitt, the Fleshlight, or the Fifi developed in prison for the more  staunch anti-sodomy cell dwellers. The Fifi, which refers to an artificial vagina usually made by rolling a trash bag or condom inside of a towel, and using some sort of lubrication such as hand lotion.

The Robot's fiance and would-be spouse, Lilly the Frog, has science, behind her desires, of course:

University of London Computing Professor Adrian David Cheok said he believes robots will not only become common, but preferable for many people.
“It’s going to be so much easier, so much more convenient to have sex with a robot. You can have exactly what kind of sex you want. That’s going to be the future. That we will have more sex with robots and the next stage is love … we’re already seeing it.”
“Actual sex with humans may be like going to a concert. When you’re at home you can listen to Beethoven’s ninth symphony, it’s good enough and once or twice a year you’ll want to go the Royal Albert Hall and hear it in a concert hall.
“That may be the way sex with humans is going to be. It’s going to be much more easier, much more convenient to have sex with a robot, and maybe much better because that’s how you want it.”

Now, Professor Adrian David Cheok is no  ordinary jagoff.  He's a scientist, no doubt a devout onanaist as well.

All of these evolved means of onanism come down to self love - Onanism. We were sex educated ( segregated from the ladies of course)  by Father Gerrity in the mysteries of self mastery and the lists of love-making outside of the sacrament of Matrimony.   Self-love ( pocket pool, boxing the Jesuit, beatin' the bishop, loping the old mule, greasing the flagpole, chuckin' the custard ) was a thoroughly vain pursuit and the Sin of Onan.  

And sin we did!

However, self control and human will tempered by moral adjustments and canon law, prevented generations of hearts wanting what the heart wants from shivering our timbers 24/7.  That and exhaustion, I suppose. We  managed to fall in love, marry and procreate and then do that providing and loving for the bairns.

On the secular side of things, Planned Parenthood demands more wiggles and giggles and more penetrating productions. A gal has to make a buck.

Grabbing the gecko was not an act of love, but an imitation of sex.

Evolution is a hoot in this Anthony Weiner World of Ours!  Just maybe not all that . . .gratifying.

Allow me to speak on Siebert's Pub and then St. Raphael's Catholic Church - Greeting a New Wave of Catholics With the Grandeur of West Side and South Side Icons

If you’re looking for a family friendly place with a unique menu, full bar and 12 draft beers then... 
Siebert's Pub is the place for you!

This is why I left you in Crete, that you might amend what was defective, and appoint presbyters in every town as I directed you (Titus 1:5).


Last weekend, Terry Sullivan and I spent some long planned quality time with two of the most impost important people in my life - Kate and Charlie Olson. Both of these people got me through the toughest times in my life and made the happiest ones beyond special.

Charlie and I taught at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL.  Kate was senior the year I began there and was one year junior to my wife Mary Cleary Hickey.

In 1988, Mary and I went to La Lumiere School in Laporte, Indiana and shortly after Charlie and Kate moved up to Lake County, Illinois where Kate worked as an engineer for Baxter and later Abbott Labs and Charlie taught and coached at Grayslake North.

When Mary was diagnosed with brain cancer, Charlie and Kate would drive to our home in Griffith, Indiana and often take the three kids with them.  They were with us all through that horrible time.

They helped me recover from loss and regain my balance - sort of.  They are delightful friends.

Though last weeks Arctic Chill and blizzardy road conditions turned Lake County into a scene from Dr. Zhivago we soldiered out to Salem, Wisconsin just over the State Line and had a great dinner at Sieberts Pub, which seems to have shanghaied a four star chef from somewhere, because the sea food and other dishes made more happy Packer Fans, than the Bears did the next day. Charlie and I both had the grilled Ahi Tuna steak, lightly seasoned with a side of homemade wasabi mayo. Most places do to tuna steaks, what TGI Friday's and Chili's do food in general.  
You eat it with all gusto and passion of David Mamet strapped to chair and subjected to 48 hours of Bill Moyers on PBS loop tapes -"We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie." In the absence of a fine pie, go to Siebert's*.

Siebert's prepares ( Medium rare tuna – Cooking temperature 132°F (56°C) – Cooking time 30 minutes) the fish and presents it with care.

Kate and Terry had pasta and pulled pork, but I am so self-absorbed that I only can comment on what I had for dinner.

Siebert's is and old timey road house on Antioch Road above the Chain of Lakes.  The staff are very welcoming to south of the border FIPS. Never once, did I feel the need to comment on the Packer wear, nor the fried cheese curds getting vacuumed up at the bar, by all and sundry.

We were stated and satisfied.

The next morning We went to 11A.M Mass at St. Raphael the Archangel Catholic Church, before the trip home and my daughters Christmas gathering in Oak Lawn.

St. Raphael the Archangel is a work of genius.  This original place of worship was a typical post-WWII era, cookie-cutter modern American barn-like ecumenical design - externally indistinguishable from the the 11th Day Unitarian Temple of Coexistence, or an interior not unlike a rock concert venue.

Some people think that Catholic Churches are empty, only because of the scandals, or that the liturgies are too traditionally Catholic.

Nonsense, the Catholic Church has had scandals ever since Acts of the Apostles.  The Catholic Churches in the Catholic Church that are unashamedly Catholic - not Episcopalian/Methodist Lite, or Unitarian Book Club variety - are packed on Sundays.  If it looks Catholic, it more than likely is that.  Try and get a seat at St. John Cantius, or St. Odilo's three minutes before the Gospel and then try and reserve parking in front of City Hall.

We took Little Grassy Road east to Route 45 and then north for about a mile and there on our left ascended a blast from the past.

St. Raphael the Archangel was the dream of the late Francis Cardinal George, a Chicagoan steeped in our towns faith and history.In 2006, knowing the ever increasing population of Lake County, Cardinal George ordered Father John Jamnicky to assess the need for and begin the planning for the construction of a traditional Catholic Church.  On April 30th, 2007 Father Jamnicky became the first pastor of St. Raphael the Archangel. It was a barn - literally.

"An old barn, on the Alfred and Florence Pedersen farm in Antioch, converted into the temporary St. Raphael the Archangel Catholic Church.
Liturgical artifacts and furnishings salvaged from various shuttered Chicago Catholic churches and recycled in the temporary church."

Unlike too many houses of worship, it did not stay a Catholic barn.

The beauty of the immigrant built churches of Chicago reflected the authenticity and power of the devout who labored and penny'd - up the pew money to build St. Adalbert's, St. Patrick's and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Chicago.  The parish cut out a fine Mission:

St. Raphael the Archangel is a young parish, only 6 years old, of approximately 600 families. We are currently holding Mass in a remodeled barn, which we believe to be the most beautiful temporary church you will ever see, while our permanent church is being built in Old Mill Creek.
We are a traditional Roman Catholic Church that teaches the Gospel and the Bible with clarity and enthusiasm. We are loyal to the Magisterium – the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church. It is important to us that we live our beliefs, that we are witnesses of the compassionate love of Jesus for all people, that we share his message with others so that they may grow in spiritual life and find salvation. It is our goal to affirm and advance the Catholic faith.

St. Raphael the Archangel took the best of Old Catholic Chicago - the facade of St. John of God and the interior of St. Peter Canisius - matched the 'welcome home' mission sparked by Cardinal George.

His spirit rises above the prairies of Lindenhurts with the Bell Towers and Stained Glass windows of St. Raphael the Archangel.



The place was packed.  There were many young families, especially Mexican and Filipino, as well as former Chicagoans.  A south side priest Father Michael McGovern is pastor of St. Raphael the Archangel.  Father grew up in  Christ the King parish. His homily reflected the many signs demanded of God by weaklings like me and the daily signs that blow by my notice.  An angel told Mary and Joseph to expect the unexpected. They did not blink.  I get whacked between the eyes with two by four and I ask when lunch is served.

St. Raphael the Archangel is a sign that Cardinal George is very much with us, renewing Christ's Church by pointing to the signs of our faith in history. Pretty good weekend trip north of Madison Avenue.

Food for the soul can come with wasabi mayo or a parish that dedicates itself to renewal without erasing tradition, beauty and history.


* Siberts Pub: 8403 Antioch Rd, Salem, WI 53168
Phone: (262) 843-4621:  Aaron & Kim Edmonds owners

Lower Police Standards - The Three Pander-Bears & Rahm's Racist Insult to Chicagoans

"Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday opened the door to allowing candidates with minor drug and criminal offenses to become Chicago Police officers to attract minorities at a time of high crime and deep distrust." Chicago Sun Times City Hall Cheerleader  Fran Spielman

Gee, Chicago minorities are just too involved in weed and youthful shenanigans to become cops?  Parents in Englewood, Chatham, Brainerd and Auburn Gresham allow their boys and girls to fire up some Loud, even though it might mean saying bye, bye to gainful employment at a later age?

Wow, Chicago minorities in Garfield Ridge, Pilsen Little Village and South Chicago can not escape the lure of Latin Kings, Maniac Latin Disciples Latin Counts, Vice Lords, Stones, All People Nation, Spanish Cobras, Latin Dragons, Latin Eagles, Imperial Gangsters, Simon City Royals, Harrison Gents, Almighty Ambrose and the Surenos, weed, theft and battery?  Que Lastima!

The Mayor who is drowning in homicides and his City Council of Progressive Independent Rubber-stamps are clawing at the old Pander-Bears Playbook as a life preserver. A white pander-Bear, a Latino Pander Bear and a Black Pander Bear set up Rahm's end-run around sense, safety and the sanctity of life.  Ed Burke, George Cardenas and Roderick Sawyer came up with another gimme-shelter dodge for Rahm the Racoon-Eyed Mayor.

Ever since Mayor Coon-Eyes Emanuel hushed up the video on the shooting of Laquan McDonald and tossed his family $3 M buckeens to hush-up about City Hall mischief, the  Big Bill Thompson of Highland Park has been universally ridiculed, shunned by the Clintons and Obama's White House, detested by citizens of Chicago - minorities and the few remaining majorities left in the city's tax-base, but propped up, worshipped and all but felated by the Chicago press and WTTW.  Rahm has had to skulk his way through the revolving door at Trump Towers and now the Sun Times is engaged in more post-Laquan mythopoeia with this howler from the always supine Lynn Sweet:

Lynn Sweet
@lynnsweet | email
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WASHINGTON — Since the election, President-elect Donald Trump has lavished attention on one family, besides his own, meeting with all three Emanuel brothers: first Ari, then Rahm, and on Wednesday, with eldest brother Zeke.
This leaves the strong impression that Trump, if not exactly courting the famous and accomplished brothers, is going out of his way to seek input from the Chicago-born Democrats.!

Love that Fake News!

Lynn, tell them about Rahm's three pointer in that game against the pre-schoolers at the Latin School!  Oh, that never happened?  So, what! So long as you are doing fake news, pour it on!

Hey, how about Mitt Romney's chances at Secretary of State?  Oh, that's right.  That was cruel of me.

Many disinterested Chicago voters and WTTW watchers will nod with conviction and agree with Lynn Sweet that "Boy Them Emanuel Scamps are Just the Nuts!  Ain't they?  And Such Talented Boys!"

Rahm and the Chicago City Council with the 50 ( sorry, 49, as of yesterday, I guess) AlderStampers will totally destroy what is left of Chicago and recruit future Chicago Police Officers right off of CLEARPATH - put together by former Superintendent McCarthy to identify the City's gang hot-spots.  Not every gang-banger has committed a murder, yet; but, they smoked some loud and now can pass the piss tests, thanks to Brother Ed Burke, Father Emanuel!

Set up a CPD recruiting station at Foster Park. The only people allowed in there are gang-bangers.

I hate to give these creeps a good idea.

I worked with African American, Mexican, Latino, Canaryville Irish kids for twenty one years.  They could pass a piss test. They do not sport a Jacket threaded with larcenies.  Their parents sent them to Catholic schools to stay away from gangs.  The same can be said for the families that chose Charter Schools.  The very same can be said of the vast majority of minority kids who attend CPS.  CPS students are forced into Claypool's concentration camps and told to like it at Harper, Robeson and Hubbard, while the elites grift out spots for future activists at Whitney Young and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Lower standards and telling "minorities" that they just can not make the cut is racist, insulting and self-serving.

Lower the standards and insult the very mission of Law Enforcement.

On Wednesday, the effort picked up steam.
Burke and Cardenas joined Sawyer in sponsoring a resolution calling for City Council hearings to discuss implementing the federal recommendations.
The report suggests that police departments across the nation should disregard minor criminal offenses of candidates from “underrepresented communities,” revise the controversial psychological exam and lower the bar for written and physical exams.  ( So keep high standards for White Boys and Girls?)   
“Certain barriers — including background investigations that treat all arrests and criminal convictions alike regardless of type of offense or how recent the occurrence, or even screen out those voluntarily admitting to drug use alone [without any conviction] — can prevent the agency from hiring the diverse officers it needs to connect with and serve the entire community,” the report says.
Likewise, psychological tests and credit checks put up “discriminatory employment barriers to women and racial minority applicants,” the report states.
Burke made a similar argument Wednesday.
“Simply put, there are many occasions when a minor incident that occurred many years ago should not be enough to rule out a candidate for consideration,” Burke, a former Chicago Police officer and ex-Police Committee chairman, said in a news release.
“We are not so much asking the department to lower [its] hiring standards as we are asking them to apply a greater standard of fairness." (Emphases my own) 

Horseshit, Eddie! How long was he a cop?  Toolong on City Council for sure.  In fact, every Council Member should ponder the story I link here.  Disgusted by the politicians elected to fill seats in their town,  every member of Bunker Hill, Indiana's Police Department resigned.

It is time for these pandering political clowns to be tossed out of business.  I include our Chicago Media.

And Trump is dangerous?

Objectify Chicks? No Way, Hombres; I'm Here to Praise Camille Paglia

“Every year, feminists provide more and more evidence for the old charge that women can neither think nor write.”  Camille Paglia in Art, and American Culture: Essays (New York: Vintage, 1992)

"On Tuesday, 18 October 2016, pop star Madonna raised some eyebrows by offering to perform oral sex on voters who cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton." Snopes


Camille Paglia is one of the finest minds in America.  She is without peer as a literary critic and scholar, an honest and clear voice for women, among a screaming murder of feminist crows and a good hearted person.

I read with interest her recent riposte to Madonna's post-Trump election whine that 'no women helped her.'  You see, Madonna beefed recently, again, to the gang at Billboard's Women in Music event:

Madonna made waves at the Billboard Women in Music event with her powerful speech about sexism, ageism, and misogyny, but feminist Camille Paglia is hitting back at the iconic singer for her claims that she was rebuffed when looking for female support at the start of her career.
During her speech on Friday, the 58-year-old recalled wishing for a female peer at the start of career and specifically called out Camille, claiming that the famous writer said she 'set women back' by objectifying herself sexually

I know of Madonna, but I do not know jack about Madonna.  To me she was one of the babes tapped by misogynists to play baseball during WWII, when all the guys went to war in that Tom Hanks movie, that my daughters played over and over and over.

She the gaped toothed blond.

Musically, I am told she is a genius.  Could be, but I am more of an Ella Fitzgerald, Keeley Smith, Lani Hall, Sarah Vaughan and Linda Ronstadt guy,  with a nod to the Babe from the Pretenders - Chrissy Hinds, now and then.  Madonna and most her acolytes are either background noise, or irritants.

Now, to the issue.  Camille Paglia went to bat for Madonna as far back as 1990 and called her a 'true feminist.'  What the hell that means, I am at a loss.  It seems that Madonna is a true feminist in her whining.

The problem stems from objectifying women, I guess.  I do that all time, " Hey, she's pretty!  Lovely Legs!  Gorgeous woman!" and by holding chairs, doors, burdens and regard for the carbon footprints that are in no way, shape, or manner anything like me, my Dad, my son, my uncles, cousins, pals and purchasers of boxers everywhere - owners of Adams Apples Universal.

I dig chicks.

I really dig smart chicks; especially ones with legs up H'yar and capable of tossing a glance that could cut a steel beam in half.

Camille Paglia is my kind of a woman in everything, but the fact she would be about as romantically interested in me, as I would be with Mike Barnicle. Camille, alas, is a daughter of Sappho.  That's cool.

Madonna does not do much for me.  I'd hold the door for her, however.

Oh, yeah!   Louis Prima was married to Keeley Smith.  Lucky guy!

David Wallace-Wells is Not Happy! Trump Has America and Ain't Giving it Back!

Thus says the LORD:
Woe to the city, rebellious and polluted,
to the tyrannical city!
She hears no voice,
accepts no correction;
In the LORD she has not trusted,
to her God she has not drawn near. ZEP 3:1-2, 9-13 

The city was always an asylum. On television on Election Night, the world (sic) they used was bubble. But what a bubble.
New Yorkers woke up on November 8 in what seems now like a fairy-tale fog, convinced, as ever, that the future belonged to us. By midnight, the world looked very different, the country very far away (and the future, too). Eighty percent of us had voted against the man who won, and 80 percent, it seemed, were already hatching plans to leave — for Canada or Berlin or anywhere else we imagined we could live safely among the like-minded. That was when the text messages began coming in from old friends in Wisconsin and Texas and North Carolina and Missouri. They were watching the same returns we were, in the same apocalyptic panic, and all making desperate plans to come to New York. For them, the city was still the same fairy tale. David Wallace-Wells in New York  (emphasis and parenthetical my own)

Boy, are people unhappy that Trump won. I believe that David Wallace-Wells, the author of the passage above and editor of New York magazine, as well as contributing writer to The Nation, Salon, Slate, Atlantic and every other tony, high-brow, damn-your-eyes soapbox of the elite in this country, was so upset that he screwed up the second sentence ( world, for word), as well as got the date wrong for the Dawn of The Donald.

Hey, I am no one to point fingers at the odd typo, or slight misrepresentation, but I am only a 'blogger' and a working stiff. I live in Chicago's Morgan Park, kind of like Queens in New York City. I voted before November 8th, and I was surprised by the election results as Mr. Wallace-Wells, but for different reasons.

Wallace-Wells weeps of waking November 8th in the firm belief that Hillary would continue the defense of abortion, offensive art, illegal aliens, religious suppression in all things, Marxist economics, globalism, endless wars and the American oligarchy.  The Dream denied.  Dang.

That said, Mr. Wallace-Wells writes a pretty nice little rant filled with good-old anti-Irish race cards and KKK memes for those of us voted off-the island of Manhattan by Wallace-Wells and calling the magically once far-flung personalities on the island of Manhattan to flock to the Resistance!

Before Eric Garner and before the ground-zero mosque, before Rudy Giuliani called Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary “sick stuff” and before Trump called for the execution of the Central Park Five; before Abner Louima and before stop-and-frisk and before the Crown Heights riots; before Stonewall began with a police raid; before redlining; before the 1927 Klan riot, when Fred Trump was arrested wearing white; before 38 were killed by a 1920 bomb detonated by anarchists outside J. P. Morgan; before 120 died, mostly free black men, mostly at the hands of Irish New Yorkers raging through the city, resisting enlistment in Lincoln’s war to free their brothers; before all that, when Peter Minuit of New Amsterdam legend established the city as a sanctuary for mercenary commerce on a seaboard being settled, in every other colony, by religious ideologues, it was not by war or raid or smallpox but merely by submitting an exploitatively low bid. Those 24 dollars were consecrated into acquisitive legend almost immediately — a fabulous deal, a terrific deal, and also, sort of, a con. It set a template New Yorkers would emulate for centuries, as the city’s big-tent open-mindedness covered something darker: violence of certain groups against others, neighbors exploiting neighbors for the prize of living among one another and maybe even conquering the world. This makes for a very particular kind of tolerance. We tolerate living around bad guys doing bad things, in part because we can always tell them to fuck off. And often do.
Millions of dreamer-hustlers came anyway — from 1892 to 1954, 12 million through Ellis Island alone. Elsewhere in the country, new arrivals had set up shop and claimed primacy where they landed. Here, newer waves just kept coming, swamping the claims of those who came before, wave after wave, Irish and Germans followed by Russian Jews and Armenians and Poles and Czechs and Slovaks and Greeks, tidal waves leveling into ethnic palimpsests of communities so enormous and elaborate they might have been called whole civilizations just 500 years before (Kleindeutschland, the Five Points, Central Park’s black Seneca Village). When the country closed its borders in the spirit of “racial hygiene,” the immigrants were followed by American freaks, fleeing suburbs and parents and finding refuge here.
Native-born New Yorkers can seem precocious marvels to newcomers, but they rarely hold the city’s gaze for very long — ask Andy Warhol (from Pittsburgh) or Madonna (Detroit), Zora Neale Hurston (from Notasulga, Alabama) or Langston Hughes (Joplin, Missouri), Truman Capote (New Orleans) or Dorothy Parker (Long Branch, New Jersey), or even Andrew Carnegie (Scotland) and J. P. Morgan himself (Hartford, Connecticut). Nobody knows any Dutch, which meant nobody has really come first, when you think about it, which means nobody really owns the city, even the obscenely rich who talk like they do. The city is so much a hot spring of immigrants and migrants and arrivistes, self-inventors and refuge-­seekers and self-mythologizers, that no one can ever feel quite comfortable or secure, no matter how royally statused. The churn is eternal and the envy general, like antibodies to complacency. No one is immune to insecurity, not the sons of tycoons or the daughters of mayors or the offspring of artists and musicians raised as downtown royalty on lower Fifth Avenue. Not even the golden-haired boy born into a real-estate fortune in the glorious sun of the white man’s mid-century boom who built a gold-plated empire for himself out of the resentment he felt staring out across the East River at Manhattan from Queens. And who wanted, even more than to conquer the Manhattan skyline, to watch his own tabloid fantasy become “real” in the pages of the New York Post. BEST SEX I’VE EVER HAD is surely, even now, the greatest day of the president-elect’s entire life.

Yep, elites ain't happy.

In a few days, after someone reads this piece to Bruce Dold, I expect that Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn will do a series of similar chit-chatty exchanges about how stupid, ugly, racist, homophobic, non-Dreamers living in Portage Park, Mount Greenwood, Peotone and Crescent City worked that Russian fake news on all of the Hamilton Attendees, Pastor Pfleger Partisans, and Oak Park Rangers making Trump supreme, though losing the popular vote. Damn Alexander Hamiliton, the real one not  Lin-Manuel Miranda, who should be on the Ten Spot rather than that Federalist, and his Electoral College!!!!  

It hurts.

Hey, It gets better.

Journalists will be breaking each others necks to see who will write the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich of this millennium, and activists can sit again at the feet of Bill Ayers and learn about timers and detonators.  It's all good.

Anyway,  David Wallace-Wells invites other Cities, noting that New York is not Guam, but the Philippines:

And we also know that we are not in fact alone — that New York is not an island but an archipelago. Our mayor has resister-cousins in Chicago and Los Angeles and Providence, San Francisco and Seattle and Minneapolis — and those are just a few of the cities mobilizing themselves as immigrant sanctuaries. We know that the number of Democratic counties has shrunk over the last decade or two, as entrepreneurs and other hustlers flooded into cities, and we know that the counties that went blue in this election account for nearly two-thirds of the American economy. We also know that Peter Thiel was basically the only Trumper in Silicon Valley. If you have to live in a bubble, really, you could do worse.

Kerr-Plop, Rahm is already cutting deals and pencil necked geeks of the Valley are paying court to the Grand Fuhrer of Wallace Wells' thought piece. Owwww.

I noticed that David Wallace Wells never mentions Queens.