Sunday, May 17, 2020

Are You A Person Who Requires Justification, or Are You a Worker?


I always wanted to be regarded for my worth.  My family valued hard work. Hard physical work was the litmus test.

My Grandfather, Lawrence Hickey of Crinnie Hill, Castlisland, County Kerry, Ireland, held that " NO man could DIG like Martin Ford!"

If one had been presented the Medal of Honor and three honorary degrees from Columbia University, Harvard and  a life membership to Total Fitness, it would mean less than nothing compared to Martin Ford, of Scartaglen, Count Kerry, and his ability to dig a 6' by 4'12" deep trench for plumbing.  As if???!!!

I worked at Chicken Unlimited on 79thst & Wood Street in Chicago, Illinois,  from August until October 1968 and  I was fired.  Gene Mahony fired me, because I could not deep fry chicken pieces in a consistent manner.  I could not.  No how. No way.

I went to work at Gee Lumber on 79th Street and did so there for as long a as I wanted.  I cut lumber, mixed cement, threaded pipe for plumbling and bent pipe for electrical uses.  I was and remain a very hard competent and hard working employee. From 1975 until I was very discourteously fired by a dull, but WOKE scold Catholic high school principal  in December 2019,   I worked as a very honored and respected English teacher.  My heart is broken and choose not to teach again.  Kids and parents are wonderful, Catholic schools seem to be run by people who could not cut it in the classroom and political play-actors.  I'll have none of it.

A person must work in order to fulfill the obligation to God, who opens our eyes in the morning.

I work and will do hard labor.

I work 8-12 hours per day as a packer and shipper of vitamins in Port of Indiana, Indiana.  I am very happy to do this work.

The work is tiresome, but not hard.  The work is important, but not crucial.

After 8, or 12 hours of work, I go home and read  The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Anabasis, Contra Catalina, or the latest issue of Jugs and Ammo.

Now, some cousins might find my tone here  to be a bit sardonic.  That is true and I tend to be sardonic and I tend to be a bit of a know it all.  Well, dang me, dang me, they outta take a rope and hang me. Hang me from the highest tree!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Woman would you weep for me. Do Doit Do Duh Doit Doin Do!!!!

That aside.  I value hard work.

Today, we seem to honor work that was normally doing one's job.

" Oh, Thank you!  Thank you, for your service!!"  is chirped at every small courtesy performed by a waitress, attendant, or hanger-on.

Nurses are now Sgt. Stryker, taking that last puff on a square and that Jap bullet in the back while the six Lads raise Old Glory on Suribachi.

Clerks at Service Six on Route 12, wearing masks and palming the "losing" Hossier Lotto tickets of dowagers and dumb-asses, are deemed the sons of Audie Murphy and Sergeant York.

Let me just say that during this, our Months of Infamy & Days of Harrowing Sorrow, that I am a hero.

Yes!

I am a son of the Myrmidons!  The Greave wearing Greeks!  The Baddest of the Bad!

I have been making Gummy Vitamins as an Essential Worker in Port of Indiana, Indiana!

Listen up.  I rise at 4:15 A.M. and that is Four Fifteen Ante Meridian, Bub! Every day.  Unless some event, or upset, interrupts that condition, mind you, I get up at the first chirps of the sparrows.

I immediately  S, S & S  and, if you need to know the full meanings of that tripling consonant acronym, it means to shower, to shave, and to see that the internal gastronomical organs are evacuated - soundly.

Sounds like steam escaping!

My boots are drawn on with great care and attention, as I know that socks can bunch up and cause an eight hours of serious agitation and irritation.  My boots are Red Wings #401 and made in Minnesota.

I drive from Michigan City on the historic Route 12 and wind the tree-lined road with great care as the route is winding and deer are incredibly stupid. Deer wait until the car gets within killing distance before they 'decide' to take the plunge across the road and blast from fender, to hood, to trunk over your car.

The drive takes 20 minutes - tops. I had been taking the lovely and winding Route 12, but several encounters with Bambi and his cousins shifted my course to the more direct Route  20 - a few miles to the south and somewhat parallel.

I arrive, punch in, and wash my hands with great care.  People put our product in their mouths and every person in the plant pays careful attention to that fact.  We wear hair nets, beard nets, gloves, safety glasses and of course PPI masks. The masks properly worn tend to fog up my glasses and so when social distancing allows I shift the mask under the old schnozoola.

I immediately grab a pallet jack and find a stack of undamaged pallets and deposit them at my line station.  Then, I check with my line boss about the codes on the labels and the product to see how many boxes I will need to make for the shift.  Generally, two to three hundred for starters.

An hour later, the person packing the plastic wrapped bundles of three bottles of Gummy Vitamins will signal me that product is coming down the line.

The line begins in the sealed-off production room where six to eight of my co-workers separate hundreds of pounds of Gummies, place caps on a conveyor, place bottles on another belted line and monitor the weights.  The bottle capping machine is whirling miracle of mechanical madness.  The nine bottle cap-ers look like Oscar statuettes pounding and twisting plastic caps and seals onto the bottles containing exact weights of product.

Then the hundreds of bottles waddle to the labeling station, the plastic wrapper and to the packer.  The packer inspects the bottles for damage, flawed Gummies, or bad labeling and tosses any package that does not meet standards.  I pack as well as stack.  The packer must check for proper codes that are inked onto the bottles just before they get bright labels.  My old eyes fail me at this task and when I can no longer properly check for the code, my line boss will send over younger eyes.

Four packages of three bottles go into each box and then the box is thrust into the automatic taping and sealing device and conveyed to my mighty mitts, which I use to begin stacking boxes on the pallet.


Generally the boxes weigh between five and ten pounds each, but the Large Tall Boy weigh about fifteen pounds.  I get a  very good work-out lifting and twisting and running and re-working the flawed bottles and product.  My pallets have ten stacks of fourteen rows arranged according to product shipping manifest.

I wear a back brace and lift with my legs.  The work is tiring, but easy and nothing like waitering, bar tending, walking a police beat, nursing, or carpentry - to say nothing of cement work, garbage collection, farming, or clerking.

The hardest part for me is shrink wrapping the full pallet which requires me to Limbo LOW, while wrapping plastic wrap around the pallet with ever increasing speed. " Look at that white man, Go!!!"

I get very dizzy and winded doing that onerous task.

I wait for my line boss to begin making up two pallet tags which I attach, after the Quality Control Officer inspects my pallet to ensure that the boxes are arranged according to the shipping orders.  I have yet to undo one of my pallets, I am proud to say.

Once tagged, I grab a pallet jack and haul my stack to the warehouse where a fork-lift driver picks it up and takes it to a waiting trailer.

After eight to ten hours, we will have completed six to seven pallets. That's 140 boxes times six or seven.   Not a bad day' s work,

I have been blessed to work all through this COVID-19 pandemic.  I have an essential worker paper in my car.  I was never once stopped by law enforcement during the Stay at Home months of March-April.

I enjoy the work and the lovely people with whom I sweat on a daily basis.  These people humble me.  Black, Mexican and white.  I am the oldest person on the floor.  Most are fighting to feed,clothe and house their families at a very low wage.  Think National Minimum Wage and some change.

They are the heroes and they are so without that damn bug, or grifter politicians using a crisis to lord it over people.

Workers are heroes; not Sgt. Stryker, or Audie Murphy.  That is plenty for me, anyway.









Saturday, May 16, 2020

The Merriest Springald in Our Pandemic: Part IV - Outlaw Yarns of Long Beach, Indiana in the Time of Plague






Fame is but a fleeting shadow,
Glory but an empty name;
Spite of all that I have gone through,
’Tis, I find, a losing game:

Without interest, without money,
Nothing can a soldier gain;
Though he be the sole survivor
Of a host of comrades slain:

What avail these glitt’ring honours,
Which a queen laid on my breast;
Though I’ve sought them from my childhood,
Would I’d fallen with the rest:

Then my heart had not been broken
Life had fled without a sigh;
Hunger presses—I am fainting—
Ought a soldier thus to die? - The Old Shekarry

n.b. from the word shikaree, or hunter

“I actually am calling you about, I think you appoint his replacement, don’t you,” Pritzker said in one 2008 call.

Pritzker was asking about a report that Blagojevich was going to appoint Alexi Giannoulias “to something in Washington.” Giannoulias was the state treasurer at the time and if he was appointed to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, it would have opened a vacancy for the treasurer’s position, which Pritzker wanted. . . . “We still have politicians in this state who are on the take. We’ve got to get rid of them. We’ve got to make sure that we find them out. We’ve got to make sure they get prosecuted.” JB Pritzker the Illinois Panic Governor and pandering panjandrum. 

n.b. - the old BS

                                            Part IV - Outlaw Yarns of Longbeach




Recap Parts I-III

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

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

Wesley invites over his pals and trusted companions, the Nardo Bothers and Habib( Declan & Brian) and Habib Samer for a few days of social distancing, Super Smash Brothers and Pater Dioneo's Czech beer cellar.  The quartet do what young men do - eat, play and spirit up the atmosphere with verbal assaults upon cant and cowardice. 

                                                                  ___________


The Martin Dioneo house at Stop 30 Lake Shore Drive in Long Beach sits on the dune above the lake.  Long Beach was created as a resort town for weekend getaways salving the bumps and bruises of the affluent from Chicago.  There are three Frank Lloyd Wright designed homes in this beach community, where females out number the males.   This haven is thick with Irish Catholics from Chicago's once blue collar neighborhoods who have made it in politics, the markets, the courts, or through honest knavery. 

The Dioneo House*, is modest for a real estate mogul and at $1.5 million dollars offers the connection to the middle class that helps keep Martin Dioneo grounded and centered beyond his fabulous wealth.  His father, Bosco, helps with that and steers his son and grandson back to the real people and away from the celebrated lamprey eels who swim only to find new life sustaining backs to do their swimming.  Long Beach, indiana boasts a few of such. 

Hunter Biden resides here and the former Vice President and would-be President has a habit of stumbling upon youthful beach bonfire parties and offering a little of touch of Uncle Joe in the night.

Long Beach is a happy community of year round residents and their weekender neighbors.  Martin loved getting away to his house above the waters.

Now, ventilated and under constant care at Northwestern Medical Center, Martin is in a medically induced coma under constant care and attention.  What goes on in that coma is Martin's to know. He was a heavy cigarette and cigar smoker, until this past year and the virus spawned by that bat dinner in Wuhan is no friend of  pink gray or black lungs.  Mrs. Dioneo, Ally, saw no purpose in wringing hands and hovering near her cell phone and got herself appointed to Governor Pritzker's COVID-19 Task Force where used her entitled voice on all matters medical and political. 

Ally sent Wesley to Long Beach - away from harm and out of from under her feet.  Wesley was cool with that. 

In this time of the Coronavirus plague many youthful refugees find themselves isolated and lonely.  Wesley Dioneo never gets bored.

Wesley plays chess on the computer,   writes essays to himself on many subjects and plans his next moves beyond the pampered nests that he is privileged to call his homes.  He is accepted at Yale, Princeton and Northwestern for the Fall of 2020. However, Wesley Dioneo has been infected by his grandfather Bosco with a sense of obligation to God, Nation and himself.  Bosco lost a number of toes from the retreat from Chosin Reservoir in 1950 and added a level of honor that seems far above of the reach of lesser men and women. Wesley's sense of honor and duty is as terminal, but as yet untested. 


After two weeks of isolation and unable to take in the glories of Spring in Indiana - the  dogwood is emerging from cold black bark of Winter's Maples, Cedars, White Pines and the Black, Blue and Green Ashes.  The pines are thick and unchanging and so is this self-Quarantined life.


" Brian are you working for your Dad?" The Nardo Brothers worked at the family's Submarine Sandwich Shoppe on Karwick Road.

" Wesley, how is your Dad? and No he and Mom have suspended operations for a few days until they get an Ok from the City about PPI's , sanitizers and plastic screens.  We are free for the time being."

" Dad is still in the coma and no change.  This sucks.  My Grandpa goes to Northwestern every day and gets turned away.  Mom is working with the governor.  You and Corm want to stay over for a couple of days?  Dad's cellar is load -ED with Staropranen and KruĊĦovice. ... let's fire up Smash Bros and tell tales. Habib is getting dropped off when his Mom goes to the hospital.  He says she is expected to be on call forever, now. How about the girls?  Think they can get away? "

The girls were six lovely ladies who had been friends and even 'dates' with the four young Social Distancing Outlaws.

Principally they are - Addison Pawliak, Paisley Ewan, Aaliyah Justice, Genesis Mullen, Kennedy Lynch, and Amy Kinsley Briddlestone. They seemed a Northwest Indiana demographic composite. Addison was a second generation Steel Family girl who worked as car hop at Carlson's Drive-in on Coolspring.  Paisley's father and mother were partners with Winston & Strawn. Aaliyah Justice and Genesis Mullen were cousins whose grandfather was pastor of the most important AME Church in Michigan located in the Pines along Route 12, Kennedy Lynch's father had been the long-time principal of Notre Dame Grammar School, until a teacher accused him of verbal sexual harassment. The Gary Diocese went along with the specious claim and summarily discharged a wonderful and effective school man, Such are the times and customs of a people who abandon their liberties out of fear. Last among this garland of roses was Amy Briddlestone, whose family owned a horse riding academy near LaPorte on Johnson Road. 

Amy Briddlestone had set her cap for the carelessly dashing Wesley Dioneo and had teased Habib in order to find her way into the meditative Mr. Dioneo's heart. 

The four young men caucused up first for twelve hours of Smash Brothers and ice cold Czech beers with pizzas and snacks engineered from the Dioneo larder.

Wesley descanted, " Gentlemen!  You three have been my anchor and my engine.  I have never wanted with men such as yourselves,  Were we garrisoned on the Pecos and facing hordes of Comanche, I know that each one of you would spend his last .44 in my defense.  That said, I propose that when we have best one another on the game console and quaffed just the right amount of Saromparmen, that we organize a story fest with the women.  Each of you will tell a story and I will judge the best of the lot. The prize will be my kayak."

A chord of notes accompanied the outburst of "Dude" in a triangle of spontaneous agreement. 

When the ladies would arrive the next day at 1 PM, Nine tale tellers would compete for the kayak.  In the mean time, Declan  told this yarn.

" A few years ago, my freshman year at La Lumiere, I met John Paxson the Boss of Bulls.  We were shooting outside the paint and in came the man who scored the winning basket in 1993 - Old # 5!!1 Well, he and I played horse."

Declan, a stocky but solidly athletic man of 6' with a bush of black curly hair often referred to as a JewFro, was greeted with trio of disbelieving voices, including his Irish twin brother Brian who also played for the La Lumiere Lakers and was teammate of Declan and present when John Paxson made a visit to the National Champion's Marsch Gym.

" NO WAY!!!!  You lying sack of shit, Declanc!  WHEN?  When, did you best John Macbeth Paxson at horse? "


Nonplussed? ( I love that contronym!) Not a bit!  Declan drew himself to his full 6' of manhood and rejoined, " Look, Dipshit, you and the Champions were bored with the old man and hit the showers and the Main House as quick as boiled asparagus.  I however, eschewed the buffet and played the man. H. O. R.S. E.  that's horse and no horseshit.  He was cool.  He wasn't always bald you know."

Declan would take his tale to the grave.  

Declan was an Outlaw and an honest man. 

PART V - Enter the Ladies



*"One of the best buys on the water, this well-built home sits on 60 x 125 lot with 5 bedrooms 3.5 baths, and fantastic views from every level. Great opportunity to create your own memories at your own private beach! After a fun day of swimming and romping in the sand, more fun awaits on the deck where you can watch the sunset and hear the beautiful sound of the waves. Many updates over recent years, including roof, gutters, down spouts, and new Thermopane Anderson windows. This is a prime location offers plenty of parking space for guests (6-7 spaces!) plus an attached 2-car garage, won't last," 






Saturday, April 18, 2020

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



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

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

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



" Wellington, Come on back!"  Governor JB Pritzker


Recap Parts I-II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Halib was madly in love with Ms. Briddlestone.

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

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

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

An hour later called the Nardo Brothers and Halib Samer.

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

Saturday, April 11, 2020

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



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

Part One: Recap

Martin Dioneo, a top Chicago real estate Developer, is felled by the Coronavirus and placed on a respiratory ventilator in Northwestern Medical Center in March 2020.  His wife, socialite activist Allyson, waits out the virus in their massive East Lake Shore Drive Home and sends the couple's only son Wesley, a senior at St. Ignatius College Prep to the family vaction home in Long Beach, Indiana.  There are no schools, businesses, barbershops, saloons, or eateries open and citizens hunker down where they can.  Wesley will invite ten friends to his home to tell their stories and drink Martin Dioneo's supply of Imported Czech beers. 
Martin Dioneo had one son, Wesley.  Wesley was tall and lanky and had a slightly smirky quality about him that disarmed even the most hardened cynic.  Wesley had good genes from a his second generation Italian American Dad and his Midwestern Methodist WOKE mother Allyson -  the family conscience. Born in Long Grove, Illinois to Chuck Percy Republicans, Malcolm and Libby Coldtiquer.  Mal had been a co-pilot on a C-87 that flew Gen. George Marshall anywhere he wanted to go in the continental United States. Libby worked at Bell & Howell in Wheeling, Illinois. Libby worked with the future Illinois Senator Chuck Percy, when he was that camera and lens manufacturer's legal wunderkind.

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

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

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

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

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

Wesley mattered.

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

Wesley was not a cynical smart-ass.

He was genuine, direct and honest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wesley was a good kid.




Wednesday, April 08, 2020

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



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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What to do?



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

Thursday, February 20, 2020

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




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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Others will do some time in the iron hotel.

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

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




Tuesday, December 03, 2019

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




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

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

Plum evades me.

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

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

I have yet to see an episode of

  • Will & Grace
  • The TV Show About Brainiac Nerds
  • 60 minutes since the death of Andy Rooney
  • States of Union
  • Maud
  • Brady Bunch in all of its manifestations
  • Presidential Medals of Freedom
  • Public Television -since the last episde of I, Claudius
  • Bill O’Reilly
  • Sean Hannity
  • Rachel Maddox
  • Chicago Tonight - since Phil Ponce ambushed Hank Lentzen
  • Mass for the Shut-ins
  • Family Guy
  • The Real O’Neals
  • Anderson Cooper
  • Meet the Press
The last good movie that I watched at the Show ( a movie theatre) was A Little Chaos with the immortal Allan Rickman as Louis XIV of France. 

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

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

Knock yourselves out!

Monday, December 02, 2019

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




“Everyone is on tenterhooks especially after the backlash to the Duke’s ‘Newsnight’ interview – no one saw the fall-out from that coming, especially the Duke,” a source previously told The Sun.
         Tenterhook - a hook used for stretching cloth, as with a tent. 

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

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

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

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

President Clinton is collecting speakers fees. 

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

The kids are alright.

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

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

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

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

I choose the later. 

Sunday, December 01, 2019

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







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

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

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

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

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






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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mia Farro - a cold dish served is no revenge.




* My belly done laps over my belt!

Thursday, November 28, 2019

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


  
                            Robert W. Foster -Eternal Since 1940

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

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

That was no wind.  Bob Foster was leaving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was some wind.



Obituary for Robert W. Foster
Foster, Robert W.

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

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

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

Arrangements entrusted to Robert J. Sheehy & Sons Funeral Home


www.sheehyfh.com 708-857-7878