The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves
The Slaves That Time Forgot
By John Martin
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Global Research, May 28, 2012
| |
opednews.com/ - 2008-04-14
| |
They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.
Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.
We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? After all, we know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade. But, are we talking about African slavery? King James II and Charles I led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.
The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on it’s own to end it’s participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.
Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories. But, where are our public (and PRIVATE) schools???? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed? Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer? Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To (unlike the African book) have the Irish story utterly and completely disappear as if it never happened.
None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.
© Copyright John Martin, opednews.com/, 2008 The url address of this article is:www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=31076
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July 04, 2012
HISTORY - IRISH SLAVE TRADE IN THE NEW WORLD
July 01, 2012
HUMOR - A GOOD MAN WITH A KIND HEART
The United Way realized that it had never received a donation from the
city's most successful lawyer. So a United Way volunteer paid the lawyer a
visit in his lavish office.
The volunteer opened the meeting by saying, "Our research shows that even
though your annual income is over ten million dollars, you don't give a
penny to charity. Wouldn't you like to give something back to your community
through the United Way?"
The lawyer thinks for a minute and says, "First, did your research also show
you that my mother is dying after a long, painful illness and she has huge
medical bills that are far beyond her ability to pay?"
Embarrassed, the United Way rep mumbles, "Uh . . . no, I didn't know that."
"Secondly," says the lawyer, "did it show that my brother, a disabled
veteran, is blind and confined to a wheelchair and is unable to support his
wife and six children?"
The stricken United Way rep begins to stammer an apology, but is cut off
again.
"Thirdly, did your research also show you that my sister's husband died in a
dreadful car accident, leaving her penniless with a mortgage and three children,
one of whom is disabled and another who has learning disabilities
requiring an array of private tutors?"
The humiliated United Way rep, completely beaten, says, "I'm so sorry, I had
no idea."
And the lawyer says, "So. . if I didn't give any money to them,
what the hell makes you think I'd give any to you?"
June 02, 2012
HUMOR - SAN PEDRO, CALIFORNIA - LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT
SAN PEDRO HAS ITS BENEFITS
Just because S.P. has the largest Italian-American population outside New York City, that doesn't mean it should be targeted for ridicule.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
GEE MAN -
I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SAYING AND IF I WAS INVOLVED IN ORGANIZED CRIME AND INTERNATIONAL DRUG SMUGGLING, I WOULD FEEL THE SAME EXACT WAY YOU DO.
WE ALSO HAVE A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE OF YOUR ILK HERE IN SIMPSONVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA AND I AM PROUD TO
SAY AND HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE THAT THEY CONTRIBUTE A GREAT DEAL TO THIS COMMUNITY.
UNFORTUNATELY, THE BUREAU OF PRISONS IS THINKING ABOUT RELOCATING MOST OF THEM TO NEW FACILITIES IN NORTHWESTERN STATES AND SINCE SO FEW PRISONERS OF OTHER ETHNIC GROUPS EXIST, EXCEPT FOR THE
OCCASIONAL PARKING VIOLATORS OR THOSE WHO FAIL TO LIMIT THE VOLUME OF MUSIC AT HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS --
THIS COMMUNITY WILL LOSE ONE OF THE MAJOR ECONOMIC PILLARS WE HAVE COME TO DEPEND ON FOR OUR TAX BASE.
THE ONCE IN A WHILE MONEY EARNED FROM CAPTURING ESCAPEES HAS ALSO FUNDED MANY COMMUNITY PROJECTS HERE IN SIMPSONVILLE. THE PROPERTY TAX ON TRAILERS AND PICK-UPS TRUCKS IS EXPECTED TO SOAR IN THE COMING
YEAR.
I JUST FELT THE NEED TO EXPLAIN HOW IMPORTANT YOUR PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TO THIS COMMUNITY AND LET YOU KNOW THAT THEY WILL BE MISSED WHEN THEY VACATE THE PREMISES.
TAKE CARE AND I TRUST YOU ARE AVOIDING ARREST AND INCARCERATION OF YOURSELF AND YOUR "FAMILY" IN SAN PEDRO.
I WON'T SIGN THIS -- SOME FOLKS IN TOWN MIGHT NOT LIKE ME ASSOCIATING WITH A POTENTIAL DETAINEE.
April 27, 2012
PUNS GONE WILD
The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .
She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.
A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart
Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'
I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'
The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
A backward poet writes inverse.
In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.
When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
If you jumped off the bridge in Paris , you'd be in Seine .
A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.'
Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says, "dam!"
Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.
Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.'
Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.
There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
April 16, 2012
AMERICAN REUNION
I never saw the original "American Pie" movie, but it was very easy to read the personality of the characters as soon as they appeared on screen in this sequel. This is far from a great film or a very creative production, but given it's faults, I enjoyed a decent amount of the movie. Nothing in the plot requires a high school diploma to understand, yet this film did present several grand themes: lost love - missed opportunities - loyalty - dealing with the death of a loved one - keeping a marriage vibrant. I can forgive the gross, childish humor, because the cast was able to generate enough heartfelt moments to lift this story out of the gutter and give us some moments worthy of our attention.
September 03, 2011
LOGICAL ANSWERS TO SIMPLE QUESTIONS
1. Johnny's mother had three children. The first child was named April.
The second child was named May. What was the third child's name?
2. There is a clerk at the butcher shop, he is five feet ten inches tall and he wears
size 13 sneakers. What does he weigh?
3. Before Mt. Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain in the world?
4. How much dirt is there in a hole that measures two feet by three feet by four feet?
5. What word in the English Language is always spelled incorrectly?
6. Billy was born on December 28th, yet his birthday is always in the summer.
How is this possible?
7. In California, you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg.
Why not?
8. What was the President's Name in 1975?
9. If you were running a race, and you passed the person in 2nd place,
what place would you be in now?
10. Which is correct to say: "The yolk of the egg are white" or "The yolk of the egg is white?"
11. If a farmer has 5 haystacks in one field and 4 haystacks in the other field,
how many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in another field?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Here are the Answers
1. Johnny's mother had three children. The first child was named April.
The second child was named May. What was the third child's name?
Answer: Johnny, of course.
2. There is a clerk at the butcher shop, he is five feet ten inches tall, and he wears size 13 sneakers. What does he weigh?
Answer: Meat.
3. Before Mt. Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain in the world?
Answer: Mt. Everest; it just wasn't discovered yet. 4. How much dirt is there in a hole that measures two feet by three feet by four feet?
Answer: There is no dirt in a hole.
5. What word in the English Language is always spelled incorrectly?
Answer: Incorrectly
6. Billy was born on December 28th, yet her birthday is always in the summer. How is this possible?
Answer: Billy lives in the Southern Hemisphere
7. In California, you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. Why not?
Answer: You can't take pictures with a wooden leg. You need a camera to take pictures.
8. What was the President's Name in 1975?
Answer: Same as is it now - Barack Obama.
9. If you were running a race, and you passed the person in 2nd place, what place would you be in now?
Answer: You would be in 2nd. Well, you passed the person in second place, not first.
10. Which is correct to say, "The yolk of the egg are white" or "The yolk of the egg is white?"
Answer: Neither, the yolk of the egg is yellow.
11. If a farmer has 5 haystacks in one field and 4 haystacks in the other field, how many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in another field?
Here are the Answers
1. Johnny's mother had three children. The first child was named April.
The second child was named May. What was the third child's name?
Answer: Johnny, of course.
2. There is a clerk at the butcher shop, he is five feet ten inches tall, and he wears size 13 sneakers. What does he weigh?
Answer: Meat.
3. Before Mt. Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain in the world?
Answer: Mt. Everest; it just wasn't discovered yet. 4. How much dirt is there in a hole that measures two feet by three feet by four feet?
Answer: There is no dirt in a hole.
5. What word in the English Language is always spelled incorrectly?
Answer: Incorrectly
6. Billy was born on December 28th, yet her birthday is always in the summer. How is this possible?
Answer: Billy lives in the Southern Hemisphere
7. In California, you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. Why not?
Answer: You can't take pictures with a wooden leg. You need a camera to take pictures.
8. What was the President's Name in 1975?
Answer: Same as is it now - Barack Obama.
9. If you were running a race, and you passed the person in 2nd place, what place would you be in now?
Answer: You would be in 2nd. Well, you passed the person in second place, not first.
10. Which is correct to say, "The yolk of the egg are white" or "The yolk of the egg is white?"
Answer: Neither, the yolk of the egg is yellow.
11. If a farmer has 5 haystacks in one field and 4 haystacks in the other field, how many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in another field?
Answer: One. If he combines all of his haystacks, they all become one big stack
August 12, 2011
SYLVIA BURGESS - THE REIGNING QUEEN OF BROOKLYN
****** SYLVIA BURGESS ******
##############################
A WONDERFUL WOMAN IN BROOKLYN WHO KNOWS HOW TO
ENJOY LIFE AND BRING JOY TO OTHERS WHILE DOING SO.
SHARE A FEW MINUTES WITH HER AND HER FAMILY.
SHE IS A QUEEN -- LIVING IN THE COUNTY OF KINGS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sjFQIxyt_Q
June 12, 2011
THE GREAT JOSEPHINE HOOVER
JUDGE HOOVER / MAYA HOOVER ---
PERHAPS YOU CAN EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK AT THE CHARLOTTE MUSEUM.
I STOOD BEFORE A BODY OF VERY WELL REGARDED CITIZENS OF MECKLENBURG COUNTY AND
GOOD PEOPLE FROM FAR BEYOND THE CONFINES OF THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA;
I ADMITTED TO THESE DECENT FOLKS THAT I WAS GUILTY OF:
MISFEASANCE
MALFEASANCE
NONFEASANCE
IN THE PERFORMANCE OF MY DUTIES, WHILE EMPLOYED BY THE PEOPLE OF
NORTH CAROLINA AS AN EDUCATOR AT CARMEL MIDDLE SCHOOL.
GUILT OVER MY CREATING AN UNJUST BURDEN FOR AN INNOCENT COLLEAGUE
DROVE ME TO CONFESS MY NEGLIGENCE AND I FULLY EXPECTED TO FACE, AT THE
VERY LEAST, A LOSS OF PENSION, IF NOT CRIMINAL CHARGES.
TO MY AMAZEMENT, THE AUDIENCE FOUND HUMOR IN THE LURID DETAILS OF MY CRIMINALITY:
** WHERE IS SOCIETY HEADED
** HAS THE MORAL COMPASS BECOME STUCK IN THE WRONG DIRECTION,
I EXPECTED TO CONFESS AND MAKE A HASTY DASH FOR THE PARKING LOT AND
BEAT THE PURSUING MOB TO MY CAR AND THE SAFETY OF SHAMROCK ROAD'S EXPRESS LANE.
INSTEAD, I WAS GREETED WITH LAUGHTER AND GENERAL APPROVAL OF MY
WAYWARD ACTIONS.
I HAVE TO BELIEVE THAT FOLKS JUST ASSUMED THAT MY FAULTS AND MISSTEPS
WERE OF NO CONSEQUENCE WHEN THEY COLLIDED WITH THE DYNAMIC
FORCE THAT IS EMBODIED IN THE TERM HOOVERIZATION.
MY ACTIONS COULD NO MORE DAMAGE THE HOOVER JUGGERNAUT
( Juggernaut is a term used to describe a literal or metaphorical force regarded as
UNSTOPPABLE.)
IN ITS PURSUIT OF ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE, THAN A SLINGSHOT COULD STOP A TANK.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CONGRATULATIONS TO A GREAT LADY ON A FABULOUS CAREER.
TAKE CARE - GAFF
October 08, 2010
WASHINGTON AND DuBOIS:TWO DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO SUCCESS
B.T. WASHINGTON
******************************************* W.E.B. DuBOIS
******************************************* W.E.B. DuBOIS
In his 1900 autobiography, Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington wrote:
“I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression on me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.”
The vision of that schoolroom and the idea that learning was “paradise” would provide lifelong inspiration for Washington. He is, perhaps, best remembered as the head of the world famous Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, founded in 1881, and known today as Tuskegee University.
His driving personality led a group of businessmen to ask if he would take the lead in creating the school. The Tuskegee Institute was the embodiment of Washington's over-arching belief that African Americans should eschew political agitation for civil rights in favor of industrial education and agricultural expertise.
Washington believed that once it was apparent to whites that blacks would “contribute to the market place of the world,” and be content with living “by the production of our hands,” the barriers of racial inequality and social injustice would begin to erode. Those words were spoken on September 18, 1895 at the Cotton States and International Exposition held in Atlanta, Georgia, known as the Atlanta Exposition. Washington’s speech stressed accommodation rather than resistance to the segregated system under which African Americans lived. He renounced agitation and protest tactics, and urged blacks to subordinate demands for political and equal rights, and concentrate instead on improving job skills and usefulness through manual labor. “Cast down your buckets where you are,” he exhorted his fellow African Americans in the speech.
Throughout his adult life, Washington played a dominant role in the African American community and worked tirelessly to improve the lives of blacks, many of whom were born in slavery. He gained access to presidents, top national leaders in politics, philanthropy and education. President William McKinley visited the Tuskegee Institute and lauded Washington, promoting him as a black leader who would not be perceived as too “radical” to whites. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Washington to the White House. A picture was published of the occasion, which angered many whites who were offended by the idea of a Black American being entertained in the White House. Washington was never invited to the White House again, although Roosevelt continued to consult with him on racial issues.
Washington also associated with some of the richest and most powerful businessmen of the era. His contacts included such diverse and well-known industrialists as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Julius Rosenwald, enlisting their support to help raise funds to establish and operate thousands of small community schools and institutions of higher education for the betterment of African Americans throughout the South.
However, by the early 1900s, other African Americans, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and newspaper editor William Monroe Trotter, were becoming national figures and speaking out about the lack of progress African Americans were making in American society. Du Bois, initially an ally of Washington’s, was particularly vocal about what he believed was Washington’s acceptance of black’s unchanging situation and began to refer to Washington's Atlanta speech as the “Atlanta Compromise” — a label that remains to this day.
The criticism by Du Bois and others diminished Washington's stature for some in the black community. They denounced his surrender of civil rights and his stressing of training in crafts, some obsolete, to the neglect of a liberal arts education. Washington’s public position of accommodation to segregation came in conflict with increasing calls from African Americans and liberal whites for more aggressive actions to end discrimination. Opposition centered in the Niagara Movement, founded in 1905, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an interracial organization established in 1909.
Yet there was another side to Washington. Although outwardly conciliatory, he secretly financed and encouraged lawsuits to block attempts to disfranchise and segregate African Americans. Since his death in 1915, historians have discovered voluminous private correspondence that shows that Washington's apparent conservatism was only part of his strategy for uplifting his race.
Even in death, as in life, Washington continues to engender great debates as to his true legacy. He was a founder of Tuskegee Institute, building it into one of the premiere universities for African Americans at a time when few alternatives were available, and he raised considerable funds for hundreds of other schools in the South for blacks. Yet, his ‘Atlanta Compromise’ speech stressed the need for blacks to accept the status quo and focus on manual labor as a way to economic development. In contrast, Du Bois believed that the “object of all true education is not to make men carpenters; it is to make carpenters men.”
Washington’s position that “the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly,” stands in stark contradiction to his covert support of legal challenges to discrimination. It is difficult to calculate the negative impact that flowed from Washington’s unwillingness to speak out publically against lynching and other acts of violence against blacks at the time — even with his extraordinary access to presidents and other prominent whites in the nation.
These two giants — Washington and Du Bois — underscore the fact that there was not a single linear path to achieving racial equality in the nation. The struggle required African Americans to both battle and accommodate the realities of segregation and discrimination to help future generations more fully realize the promise of America.
“I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression on me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.”
The vision of that schoolroom and the idea that learning was “paradise” would provide lifelong inspiration for Washington. He is, perhaps, best remembered as the head of the world famous Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, founded in 1881, and known today as Tuskegee University.
His driving personality led a group of businessmen to ask if he would take the lead in creating the school. The Tuskegee Institute was the embodiment of Washington's over-arching belief that African Americans should eschew political agitation for civil rights in favor of industrial education and agricultural expertise.
Washington believed that once it was apparent to whites that blacks would “contribute to the market place of the world,” and be content with living “by the production of our hands,” the barriers of racial inequality and social injustice would begin to erode. Those words were spoken on September 18, 1895 at the Cotton States and International Exposition held in Atlanta, Georgia, known as the Atlanta Exposition. Washington’s speech stressed accommodation rather than resistance to the segregated system under which African Americans lived. He renounced agitation and protest tactics, and urged blacks to subordinate demands for political and equal rights, and concentrate instead on improving job skills and usefulness through manual labor. “Cast down your buckets where you are,” he exhorted his fellow African Americans in the speech.
Throughout his adult life, Washington played a dominant role in the African American community and worked tirelessly to improve the lives of blacks, many of whom were born in slavery. He gained access to presidents, top national leaders in politics, philanthropy and education. President William McKinley visited the Tuskegee Institute and lauded Washington, promoting him as a black leader who would not be perceived as too “radical” to whites. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Washington to the White House. A picture was published of the occasion, which angered many whites who were offended by the idea of a Black American being entertained in the White House. Washington was never invited to the White House again, although Roosevelt continued to consult with him on racial issues.
Washington also associated with some of the richest and most powerful businessmen of the era. His contacts included such diverse and well-known industrialists as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Julius Rosenwald, enlisting their support to help raise funds to establish and operate thousands of small community schools and institutions of higher education for the betterment of African Americans throughout the South.
However, by the early 1900s, other African Americans, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and newspaper editor William Monroe Trotter, were becoming national figures and speaking out about the lack of progress African Americans were making in American society. Du Bois, initially an ally of Washington’s, was particularly vocal about what he believed was Washington’s acceptance of black’s unchanging situation and began to refer to Washington's Atlanta speech as the “Atlanta Compromise” — a label that remains to this day.
The criticism by Du Bois and others diminished Washington's stature for some in the black community. They denounced his surrender of civil rights and his stressing of training in crafts, some obsolete, to the neglect of a liberal arts education. Washington’s public position of accommodation to segregation came in conflict with increasing calls from African Americans and liberal whites for more aggressive actions to end discrimination. Opposition centered in the Niagara Movement, founded in 1905, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an interracial organization established in 1909.
Yet there was another side to Washington. Although outwardly conciliatory, he secretly financed and encouraged lawsuits to block attempts to disfranchise and segregate African Americans. Since his death in 1915, historians have discovered voluminous private correspondence that shows that Washington's apparent conservatism was only part of his strategy for uplifting his race.
Even in death, as in life, Washington continues to engender great debates as to his true legacy. He was a founder of Tuskegee Institute, building it into one of the premiere universities for African Americans at a time when few alternatives were available, and he raised considerable funds for hundreds of other schools in the South for blacks. Yet, his ‘Atlanta Compromise’ speech stressed the need for blacks to accept the status quo and focus on manual labor as a way to economic development. In contrast, Du Bois believed that the “object of all true education is not to make men carpenters; it is to make carpenters men.”
Washington’s position that “the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly,” stands in stark contradiction to his covert support of legal challenges to discrimination. It is difficult to calculate the negative impact that flowed from Washington’s unwillingness to speak out publically against lynching and other acts of violence against blacks at the time — even with his extraordinary access to presidents and other prominent whites in the nation.
These two giants — Washington and Du Bois — underscore the fact that there was not a single linear path to achieving racial equality in the nation. The struggle required African Americans to both battle and accommodate the realities of segregation and discrimination to help future generations more fully realize the promise of America.
^^^^^^^ PERSONAL COMMENTS FROM ALMETA COLVIN CANTLO ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Tuskegee is the number one college I applied to after high school. Miles College was on my list, but Tuskegee was at the top of that short list.
It was my dream school at the time ...considered elite in some circles. Even though I earned
a scholarship for tuition, my parents could not afford the room & board and I didn't have a job. Tuskegee was ideally located, approx sixty miles east of Montgomery, Alabama in an all black small country town, surrounded by acres of rich farm land that Dr. George Washington Carver used as his lab to teach farmers about crop rotation for a more lucrative harvest.
One of my brothers, my brother -in-law and a slew of cousins were fortunate enough to graduate from Tuskegee.
I Couldn't sell it to my son to attend ...too far from the city.
I spent time there in summer camp...two weeks each summer if my grades warranted it. At the time I did not realize the importance of
Tuskegee is the number one college I applied to after high school. Miles College was on my list, but Tuskegee was at the top of that short list.
It was my dream school at the time ...considered elite in some circles. Even though I earned
a scholarship for tuition, my parents could not afford the room & board and I didn't have a job. Tuskegee was ideally located, approx sixty miles east of Montgomery, Alabama in an all black small country town, surrounded by acres of rich farm land that Dr. George Washington Carver used as his lab to teach farmers about crop rotation for a more lucrative harvest.
One of my brothers, my brother -in-law and a slew of cousins were fortunate enough to graduate from Tuskegee.
I Couldn't sell it to my son to attend ...too far from the city.
I spent time there in summer camp...two weeks each summer if my grades warranted it. At the time I did not realize the importance of
*the historic grounds I was walking on...
*magnificent buildings constructed by the children of once enslaved people,
*the Tuskegee Airmen, whose barracks we slept in,
*internationally known Carver/lab museum,
*the infamous Syphilis Experiment
*and of the power of Dr. Booker T. Washington.
I saw these things, but didn't really appreciate any of it until much later.
I was there to be on my own, find myself academically and meet some guys and girls from other schools - to widen my world.
I still love the school and visit the campus as often as I can when we drive to Alabama from New York.
I was there to be on my own, find myself academically and meet some guys and girls from other schools - to widen my world.
I still love the school and visit the campus as often as I can when we drive to Alabama from New York.
August 26, 2010
GREEN BOOK ITEMS -
A PAGE FROM THE GREEN BOOK >>>>
( click on photo to enlarge )
A STORY BASED ON THE GREEN BOOK
( my assumption )
Calvin Alexander Ramsey at the Auburn Avenue Research Library in Atlanta.
He is the author of a play and book about how black travelers found food and lodging before the Civil Rights Act.
August 25, 2010
GREEN BOOK - COMMENTS - read GREEN BOOK first
I WAS SO OVERWHELMED WITH THE GREEN BOOK NOTES, THAT I FORGOT A LESSON
MY UNCLE JAMES O. DAVIS AND MY COUSIN BILL GILES, TAUGHT ME ON MOTOR TRIPS SOUTH, "BACK IN THE DAY."
THERE WAS NO INTERSTATE SUPER HIGHWAY LIKE I-95 OR I-85 - U.S. 1 WAS THE MAIN ROAD AND IT PASSED THROUGH LOCAL COMMUNITIES. SO, THE LOGOS / SIGNS
AND THE NAMES OF RESTAURANTS AND MOTELS TOLD THE TRAVELERS ALL THEY
NEEDED TO KNOW. THESE NAME WERE DESIGNED TO AVOID CONFRONTATIONS AND
TO ALERT DRIVERS OF ALL RACES AS TO THE WELCOME THEY WOULD RECEIVE AT
ANY STOPS ALONG THE WAY.
THESE NAMES NEED NO FURTHER EXPLANATION:
THE WHITE ANGEL MOTEL
THE BLACKJACK LODGE
THE BLONDE MERMAID DINER
THE BLACK KETTLE CAFE
I FIND THIS TO BE THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION OF THOSE WHO NEVER VENTURED
SOUTH -- YOUR MONEY WAS GREEN AND WELCOMED EVERY WHERE. THE LEVEL OF SERVICE WAS THE ISSUE. GETTING A CUP OF COFFEE AND SANDWICH TO GO IS NOT THE SAME AS SITTING AT A TABLE AND RELAXING OVER A MEAL. YOU GOT THE COFFEE AND SANDWICH, BUT NOT THE AMBIANCE IF THE NAME OR LOGO WAS NOT GEARED TO YOUR COMPLEXION.
** GAFF
^^^^^
Our history continues to teach me about the trials and tribulations that African Americans had to endure. Although, we may have a great imagination, in addition to the genuine, remarkable talent towards creativity, we are never fully able to imagine what our ancestors actually endured, just to enjoy a car ride. Reading about "The Green Book-Freedom Of The Road" will leave an indelible mark. Furthermore, this article expresses, "the mother of invention," when it was, so very much needed. "The Green Book..." has more than likely been responsible for saving the lives of many African Americans.Thanks
** ED GRANT
^^^^^^^^^
The Green Book was news to me but its existence and need was obvious--very interesting!
** JIM McCLUNE - LOS ANGELES
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I guess I am among the great unwashed and uninformed. I had never heard of the Green Book in this context. S&H Green stamps came to mind. But do I ever understand the significance of the Green Book and the circumstances that engendered it. Reminds me of the bus trips I took with my mother on the train from Durham to Blackstock, S.C. her native hometown, and to Baltimore. Fried chicken in a shoebox kept us close to the bus and in our seats.
Some friends and I are planning a visit to the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro. I will check to see if the Green book is on display there.
^^ LEONARD KING - RALEIGH
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THANKS GEORGE, LOVE THIS STUFF! Abundant Blessings.
Carolyn B. - Georgia
^^^^^^^^^^^
Chief, very interesting. Living in "somewhat" integrated N.Y., I had no idea of the necessity of such a guide, very enlightening for me!
ROSE - MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. VIA BROOKLYN
MY UNCLE JAMES O. DAVIS AND MY COUSIN BILL GILES, TAUGHT ME ON MOTOR TRIPS SOUTH, "BACK IN THE DAY."
THERE WAS NO INTERSTATE SUPER HIGHWAY LIKE I-95 OR I-85 - U.S. 1 WAS THE MAIN ROAD AND IT PASSED THROUGH LOCAL COMMUNITIES. SO, THE LOGOS / SIGNS
AND THE NAMES OF RESTAURANTS AND MOTELS TOLD THE TRAVELERS ALL THEY
NEEDED TO KNOW. THESE NAME WERE DESIGNED TO AVOID CONFRONTATIONS AND
TO ALERT DRIVERS OF ALL RACES AS TO THE WELCOME THEY WOULD RECEIVE AT
ANY STOPS ALONG THE WAY.
THESE NAMES NEED NO FURTHER EXPLANATION:
THE WHITE ANGEL MOTEL
THE BLACKJACK LODGE
THE BLONDE MERMAID DINER
THE BLACK KETTLE CAFE
I FIND THIS TO BE THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION OF THOSE WHO NEVER VENTURED
SOUTH -- YOUR MONEY WAS GREEN AND WELCOMED EVERY WHERE. THE LEVEL OF SERVICE WAS THE ISSUE. GETTING A CUP OF COFFEE AND SANDWICH TO GO IS NOT THE SAME AS SITTING AT A TABLE AND RELAXING OVER A MEAL. YOU GOT THE COFFEE AND SANDWICH, BUT NOT THE AMBIANCE IF THE NAME OR LOGO WAS NOT GEARED TO YOUR COMPLEXION.
** GAFF
^^^^^
Our history continues to teach me about the trials and tribulations that African Americans had to endure. Although, we may have a great imagination, in addition to the genuine, remarkable talent towards creativity, we are never fully able to imagine what our ancestors actually endured, just to enjoy a car ride. Reading about "The Green Book-Freedom Of The Road" will leave an indelible mark. Furthermore, this article expresses, "the mother of invention," when it was, so very much needed. "The Green Book..." has more than likely been responsible for saving the lives of many African Americans.Thanks
** ED GRANT
^^^^^^^^^
The Green Book was news to me but its existence and need was obvious--very interesting!
** JIM McCLUNE - LOS ANGELES
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I guess I am among the great unwashed and uninformed. I had never heard of the Green Book in this context. S&H Green stamps came to mind. But do I ever understand the significance of the Green Book and the circumstances that engendered it. Reminds me of the bus trips I took with my mother on the train from Durham to Blackstock, S.C. her native hometown, and to Baltimore. Fried chicken in a shoebox kept us close to the bus and in our seats.
Some friends and I are planning a visit to the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro. I will check to see if the Green book is on display there.
^^ LEONARD KING - RALEIGH
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THANKS GEORGE, LOVE THIS STUFF! Abundant Blessings.
Carolyn B. - Georgia
^^^^^^^^^^^
Chief, very interesting. Living in "somewhat" integrated N.Y., I had no idea of the necessity of such a guide, very enlightening for me!
ROSE - MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. VIA BROOKLYN
August 24, 2010
THE GREEN BOOK - FREEDOM OF THE ROAD
My memory of taking this type of road trip with family members behind the wheel is "too real."
Many thanks to DOLORES VANISON for alerting me to the article - it bought tears to my eyes - I recall these road trips south to attend family funerals.
Check out the article - ALPHA - OMEGA DANCE COMPANY- in the table of contents on this page.
CHIEF
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
NYTimes -- August 22, 2010
The Open Road Wasn’t Quite Open to All
By CELIA McGEE
For almost three decades beginning in 1936, many African-American travelers relied on a booklet to help them decide where they could comfortably eat, sleep, buy gas, find a tailor or beauty parlor, shop on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls, or go out at night. In 1949, when the guide was 80 pages, there were five recommended hotels in Atlanta. In Cheyenne, Wyo., the Barbeque Inn was the place to stay.
A Harlem postal employee and civic leader named Victor H. Green conceived the guide in response to one too many accounts of humiliation or violence where discrimination continued to hold strong. These were facts of life not only in the Jim Crow South, but in all parts of the country, where black travelers never knew where they would be welcome. Over time its full title — “The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide” — became abbreviated, simply, as the “Green Book.” Those who needed to know about it knew about it. To much of the rest of America it was invisible, and by 1964, when the last edition was published, it slipped through the cracks into history.
Until he met a friend’s elderly father-in-law at a funeral a few years ago, the Atlanta writer Calvin Alexander Ramsey had never heard of the guide. But he knew firsthand the reason it existed. During his family trips between Roxboro, N.C., and Baltimore, “we packed a big lunch so my parents didn’t have to worry about having to stop somewhere that might not serve us,” recalled Mr. Ramsey, who is now 60.
He is among the writers, artists, academics and curators returning a spotlight to the guide and its author, emblematic as it was of a period when black Americans — especially professionals, salesmen, entertainers and athletes — were increasingly on the move for work, play and family visits.
In addition to hotels, the guide often pointed them to “tourist homes,” privates residences made available by their African-American owners. Mr. Ramsey has written a play, “The Green Book,” about just such a home, in Jefferson City, Mo., where a black military officer and his wife and a Jewish Holocaust survivor all spend the night just before W. E. B. DuBois is scheduled to deliver a speech in town. The play will inaugurate a staged-reading series on Sept. 15 at the restored Lincoln Theater in Washington, itself once a fixture of that city’s “black Broadway” on U Street.
Julian Bond, the civil rights leader who is now a faculty member at American University, will take on a cameo role. Mr. Bond recalled that his parents — his father, a college professor, became the first black president of Lincoln University, in southern Pennsylvania — used the book. “It was a guidebook that told you not where the best places were to eat,” he said, “but where there was any place.”
In November, Carolrhoda Books will release Mr. Ramsey’s “Ruth and the Green Book,” a children’s book with illustrations by the award-winning artist Floyd Cooper. It tells the story of a girl from Chicago in the 1950s and what she learns as she and her parents, driving their brand-new car to visit her grandmother in rural Alabama, finally luck into a copy of Victor Green’s guide. “Most kids today hear about the Underground Railroad, but this other thing has gone unnoticed,” said Mr. Ramsey. “It just fell on me, really, to tell the story.”
Historians of travel have recognized that the great American road trip — seen as an ultimate sign of freedom — was not that free for many Americans, including those who had to worry about “sunset laws” in towns where black visitors had to be out by day’s end.
For a large swath of the nation’s history “the American democratic idea of getting out on the open road, finding yourself, heading for distant horizons was only a privilege for white people,” said Cotton Seiler, the author of “Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America,” who devoted a chapter of his book to the experience of black travelers.
William Daryl Williams, the director of the School of Architecture and Interior Design at the University of Cincinnati, in 2007 organized a traveling exhibition he called “The Dresser Trunk Project,” in which he and 11 other architects and artists used the “Green Book” to inform works that incorporated locations and artifacts from the history of black travel during segregation. Mr. Williams’s own piece, “Whitelaw Hotel,” referred to a well-known accommodation for African-Americans in Washington and included several pages from the “Green Book.”
Lonnie Bunch, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, a co-sponsor of “The Green Book” play reading, said the presence of the guide into the 1960s pointed out that at the same time people were countering segregation with sit-ins, the need to cope with everyday life remained.
He added: “The ‘Green Book’ tried to provide a tool to deal with those situations. It also allowed families to protect their children, to help them ward off those horrible points at which they might be thrown out or not permitted to sit somewhere. It was both a defensive and a proactive mechanism.”
Although Victor Green’s initial edition only encompassed metropolitan New York, the “Green Book” soon expanded to Bermuda (white dinner jackets were recommended for gentlemen), Mexico and Canada. The 15,000 copies Green eventually printed each year were sold as a marketing tool not just to black-owned businesses but to the white marketplace, implying that it made good economic sense to take advantage of the growing affluence and mobility of African Americans. Esso stations, unusual in franchising to African Americans, were a popular place to pick one up.
Mr. Bunch said he believes African American families are likely still have old copies sitting in attics and basements: “As segregation ended, people put such things away. They felt they didn’t need them anymore. It brought a sense of psychological liberation.”
Theater J in Washington, which specializes in Jewish-theme plays, is a co-producer of “The Green Book” reading. The “inconveniences” (as Green genteelly put it) of travel that African-Americans encountered were shared, albeit to a lesser extent and for a briefer period, by American Jews. In Mr. Ramsey’s play the Holocaust survivor comes to the tourist home after he’s appalled by a “No Negroes Allowed” sign posted in the lobby of the local hotel where he had planned to stay.
“The Jewish press has long published information about places that are restricted,” Green wrote in his book’s introduction, adding, “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States.”
The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, and Mr. Green ceased publication.
Many thanks to DOLORES VANISON for alerting me to the article - it bought tears to my eyes - I recall these road trips south to attend family funerals.
Check out the article - ALPHA - OMEGA DANCE COMPANY- in the table of contents on this page.
CHIEF
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
NYTimes -- August 22, 2010
The Open Road Wasn’t Quite Open to All
By CELIA McGEE
For almost three decades beginning in 1936, many African-American travelers relied on a booklet to help them decide where they could comfortably eat, sleep, buy gas, find a tailor or beauty parlor, shop on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls, or go out at night. In 1949, when the guide was 80 pages, there were five recommended hotels in Atlanta. In Cheyenne, Wyo., the Barbeque Inn was the place to stay.
A Harlem postal employee and civic leader named Victor H. Green conceived the guide in response to one too many accounts of humiliation or violence where discrimination continued to hold strong. These were facts of life not only in the Jim Crow South, but in all parts of the country, where black travelers never knew where they would be welcome. Over time its full title — “The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide” — became abbreviated, simply, as the “Green Book.” Those who needed to know about it knew about it. To much of the rest of America it was invisible, and by 1964, when the last edition was published, it slipped through the cracks into history.
Until he met a friend’s elderly father-in-law at a funeral a few years ago, the Atlanta writer Calvin Alexander Ramsey had never heard of the guide. But he knew firsthand the reason it existed. During his family trips between Roxboro, N.C., and Baltimore, “we packed a big lunch so my parents didn’t have to worry about having to stop somewhere that might not serve us,” recalled Mr. Ramsey, who is now 60.
He is among the writers, artists, academics and curators returning a spotlight to the guide and its author, emblematic as it was of a period when black Americans — especially professionals, salesmen, entertainers and athletes — were increasingly on the move for work, play and family visits.
In addition to hotels, the guide often pointed them to “tourist homes,” privates residences made available by their African-American owners. Mr. Ramsey has written a play, “The Green Book,” about just such a home, in Jefferson City, Mo., where a black military officer and his wife and a Jewish Holocaust survivor all spend the night just before W. E. B. DuBois is scheduled to deliver a speech in town. The play will inaugurate a staged-reading series on Sept. 15 at the restored Lincoln Theater in Washington, itself once a fixture of that city’s “black Broadway” on U Street.
Julian Bond, the civil rights leader who is now a faculty member at American University, will take on a cameo role. Mr. Bond recalled that his parents — his father, a college professor, became the first black president of Lincoln University, in southern Pennsylvania — used the book. “It was a guidebook that told you not where the best places were to eat,” he said, “but where there was any place.”
In November, Carolrhoda Books will release Mr. Ramsey’s “Ruth and the Green Book,” a children’s book with illustrations by the award-winning artist Floyd Cooper. It tells the story of a girl from Chicago in the 1950s and what she learns as she and her parents, driving their brand-new car to visit her grandmother in rural Alabama, finally luck into a copy of Victor Green’s guide. “Most kids today hear about the Underground Railroad, but this other thing has gone unnoticed,” said Mr. Ramsey. “It just fell on me, really, to tell the story.”
Historians of travel have recognized that the great American road trip — seen as an ultimate sign of freedom — was not that free for many Americans, including those who had to worry about “sunset laws” in towns where black visitors had to be out by day’s end.
For a large swath of the nation’s history “the American democratic idea of getting out on the open road, finding yourself, heading for distant horizons was only a privilege for white people,” said Cotton Seiler, the author of “Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America,” who devoted a chapter of his book to the experience of black travelers.
William Daryl Williams, the director of the School of Architecture and Interior Design at the University of Cincinnati, in 2007 organized a traveling exhibition he called “The Dresser Trunk Project,” in which he and 11 other architects and artists used the “Green Book” to inform works that incorporated locations and artifacts from the history of black travel during segregation. Mr. Williams’s own piece, “Whitelaw Hotel,” referred to a well-known accommodation for African-Americans in Washington and included several pages from the “Green Book.”
Lonnie Bunch, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, a co-sponsor of “The Green Book” play reading, said the presence of the guide into the 1960s pointed out that at the same time people were countering segregation with sit-ins, the need to cope with everyday life remained.
He added: “The ‘Green Book’ tried to provide a tool to deal with those situations. It also allowed families to protect their children, to help them ward off those horrible points at which they might be thrown out or not permitted to sit somewhere. It was both a defensive and a proactive mechanism.”
Although Victor Green’s initial edition only encompassed metropolitan New York, the “Green Book” soon expanded to Bermuda (white dinner jackets were recommended for gentlemen), Mexico and Canada. The 15,000 copies Green eventually printed each year were sold as a marketing tool not just to black-owned businesses but to the white marketplace, implying that it made good economic sense to take advantage of the growing affluence and mobility of African Americans. Esso stations, unusual in franchising to African Americans, were a popular place to pick one up.
Mr. Bunch said he believes African American families are likely still have old copies sitting in attics and basements: “As segregation ended, people put such things away. They felt they didn’t need them anymore. It brought a sense of psychological liberation.”
Theater J in Washington, which specializes in Jewish-theme plays, is a co-producer of “The Green Book” reading. The “inconveniences” (as Green genteelly put it) of travel that African-Americans encountered were shared, albeit to a lesser extent and for a briefer period, by American Jews. In Mr. Ramsey’s play the Holocaust survivor comes to the tourist home after he’s appalled by a “No Negroes Allowed” sign posted in the lobby of the local hotel where he had planned to stay.
“The Jewish press has long published information about places that are restricted,” Green wrote in his book’s introduction, adding, “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States.”
The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, and Mr. Green ceased publication.
August 09, 2010
QUOTES
IN DEALING WITH ROMANCE AND LOVE -- BOB MARLEY MADE THIS OBSERVATION:
"Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you;
you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is the true joy in life: being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
-George Bernard Shaw
"Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received."
- Albert Einstein
“When the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems begin to resemble nails."
- Abraham Maslow
"Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you;
you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is the true joy in life: being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
-George Bernard Shaw
"Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received."
- Albert Einstein
“When the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems begin to resemble nails."
- Abraham Maslow
November 27, 2009
CHIEF'S SURGERY - NOVEMBER 23,2009
Greenville, South Carolina doctors use state-of-the-art
surgery to restore normal heartbeats.
surgery to restore normal heartbeats.
COUSIN, ROOSEVELT GILLIAM III IS RECOGNIZED AS A MAJOR
AUTHORITY IN THE FIELD OF ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY. "THIRD," WHILE NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED, HELPED CLARIFY THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE PROCEDURE AND MADE IT EASIER FOR MYSELF AND VALERIE TO EMBRACE THE OPERATION WITHOUT ANXIETY.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THIS ARTICLE WAS IN THE GREENVILLE NEWSPAPER THE DAY AFTER I HAD THE SAME BASIC SURGERY AT A NEIGHBORING HOSPITAL.
These days, Dee Bauknight feels like she’s been subject to a miracle.
After suffering with an erratic heartbeat – technically, atrial fibrillation – for 25 years, Bauknight was afraid of the rigors of daily living. But on Oct. 22, she had a cutting-edge surgery called cardiac ablation that brought her back to normal.
“I have had a miracle,” Bauknight said. “I am raking leaves, and before I would have been afraid to do that. I can drive. I can do anything.”
While little known, about 5 million Americans have atrial fibrillation or AFib, and 300,000 cases are diagnosed each year, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Here in South Carolina, we are one of the national leaders in strokes, so having another weapon in the arsenal to fight the problem is welcome.
According to Dr. Craig McCotter, director of the Atrial Fibrillation & Arrhythmia Center, Cardiac Electrophysiology, Upstate Cardiology in Greenville, the center is one of only a handful in the United States. McCotter started his team in Columbia – the first in South Carolina – and operated there for three years before everyone moved to Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital.
“There is a huge need for this,” McCotter said about the cardiology niche, “but few people go into electrophysiology because it has the longest residency. It takes eight years of training after medical school.”
But that extra experience pays off. McCotter and his five-man team mix science and art in dealing with human hearts.
“You have to feel your way through the heart,” McCotter said, explaining the procedure where a catheter is inserted into the groin area and snaked up and into the heart. “There is no text book case, because each patient is so different.”
What McCotter and his team treat is atrial fibrillation, a condition in which the upper chambers of the heart beat irregularly or too fast. AFib occurs when the heart’s two small upper chambers quiver instead of beating.
Symptoms include a racing or irregular heartbeat, an overall feeling of weakness or lethargy, and dizziness, sweating or chest pain. AFib can worsen when patients drink alcohol, smoke, are obese, have sleep apnea, hypertension, congestive heart failure and more.
While the racing heart is scary in itself, when blood isn’t completely pumped from the heart chambers, it can pool and clot and eventually cause a stroke. In fact, about 15 percent of strokes occur in people with AFib.
Bauknight’s experience with AFib began about 25 years ago when she was running through an airport.
“I thought, ‘My heart is beating in a really strange way,’” Bauknight recalled. “And then it kept occurring.”
In 2001, she had a stroke. She also began passing out or blacking out. She was put on “a lot of drugs,” she said, but that was of little help. All day long, her heart beat erratically, stopped, and then restarted.
Bauknight lived in fear, but as she began to learn more about her condition, she discovered Dr. McCotter’s work.
The AFib Center now attracts patients from around the world, McCotter said. And he hasn’t encountered complications in more than 1,000 procedures.
Which isn’t to say that the procedure is for everyone, he said. He has to evaluate every patient to ensure each one is a good candidate for the procedure.
“If they’re not,” he said, “we do have every option available including pacemakers and medication.”
In the “delicate and dangerous” procedure, McCotter and his team use sophisticated 3-D scans, cardiac echo and cell mapping to find cells in the left, upper chamber of the heart that cause the erratic heartbeat. McCotter then uses ablation – in effect, he burns them with radio waves to destroy the individual cells – to help the heart return to normal.
“The biggest problem is getting complete ablations, but not to destroy so many cells as to cause complications,” he said. “If you don’t ablate enough cells, they can regrow.”
An average procedure takes about three hours, and patients are usually discharged the next day, and able to return to work in three days, McCotter said.
^^^^^
By Mike Foley • Staff writer • November 24, 2009
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THIS ARTICLE WAS IN THE GREENVILLE NEWSPAPER THE DAY AFTER I HAD THE SAME BASIC SURGERY AT A NEIGHBORING HOSPITAL.
These days, Dee Bauknight feels like she’s been subject to a miracle.
After suffering with an erratic heartbeat – technically, atrial fibrillation – for 25 years, Bauknight was afraid of the rigors of daily living. But on Oct. 22, she had a cutting-edge surgery called cardiac ablation that brought her back to normal.
“I have had a miracle,” Bauknight said. “I am raking leaves, and before I would have been afraid to do that. I can drive. I can do anything.”
While little known, about 5 million Americans have atrial fibrillation or AFib, and 300,000 cases are diagnosed each year, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Here in South Carolina, we are one of the national leaders in strokes, so having another weapon in the arsenal to fight the problem is welcome.
According to Dr. Craig McCotter, director of the Atrial Fibrillation & Arrhythmia Center, Cardiac Electrophysiology, Upstate Cardiology in Greenville, the center is one of only a handful in the United States. McCotter started his team in Columbia – the first in South Carolina – and operated there for three years before everyone moved to Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital.
“There is a huge need for this,” McCotter said about the cardiology niche, “but few people go into electrophysiology because it has the longest residency. It takes eight years of training after medical school.”
But that extra experience pays off. McCotter and his five-man team mix science and art in dealing with human hearts.
“You have to feel your way through the heart,” McCotter said, explaining the procedure where a catheter is inserted into the groin area and snaked up and into the heart. “There is no text book case, because each patient is so different.”
What McCotter and his team treat is atrial fibrillation, a condition in which the upper chambers of the heart beat irregularly or too fast. AFib occurs when the heart’s two small upper chambers quiver instead of beating.
Symptoms include a racing or irregular heartbeat, an overall feeling of weakness or lethargy, and dizziness, sweating or chest pain. AFib can worsen when patients drink alcohol, smoke, are obese, have sleep apnea, hypertension, congestive heart failure and more.
While the racing heart is scary in itself, when blood isn’t completely pumped from the heart chambers, it can pool and clot and eventually cause a stroke. In fact, about 15 percent of strokes occur in people with AFib.
Bauknight’s experience with AFib began about 25 years ago when she was running through an airport.
“I thought, ‘My heart is beating in a really strange way,’” Bauknight recalled. “And then it kept occurring.”
In 2001, she had a stroke. She also began passing out or blacking out. She was put on “a lot of drugs,” she said, but that was of little help. All day long, her heart beat erratically, stopped, and then restarted.
Bauknight lived in fear, but as she began to learn more about her condition, she discovered Dr. McCotter’s work.
The AFib Center now attracts patients from around the world, McCotter said. And he hasn’t encountered complications in more than 1,000 procedures.
Which isn’t to say that the procedure is for everyone, he said. He has to evaluate every patient to ensure each one is a good candidate for the procedure.
“If they’re not,” he said, “we do have every option available including pacemakers and medication.”
In the “delicate and dangerous” procedure, McCotter and his team use sophisticated 3-D scans, cardiac echo and cell mapping to find cells in the left, upper chamber of the heart that cause the erratic heartbeat. McCotter then uses ablation – in effect, he burns them with radio waves to destroy the individual cells – to help the heart return to normal.
“The biggest problem is getting complete ablations, but not to destroy so many cells as to cause complications,” he said. “If you don’t ablate enough cells, they can regrow.”
An average procedure takes about three hours, and patients are usually discharged the next day, and able to return to work in three days, McCotter said.
^^^^^
By Mike Foley • Staff writer • November 24, 2009
CRISIS OF ABUSE IN THE CHURCH
-- Roman Catholic Church leaders in Dublin spent decades sheltering child-abusing priests from the law and most fellow clerics turned a blind eye, an investigation ordered by Ireland's government concluded Thursday. Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who handed over more than 60,000 previously secret church files to the three-year investigation, said he felt deep shame and sorrow for how previous archbishops presided over endemic child abuse -- yet claimed afterward not to understand the gravity of their sins.
Martin said his four predecessors in Ireland's capital, including retired Cardinal Desmond Connell, must have understood that priests' molestation and rape of boys and girls ''was a crime in both civil and canon law. For some reason or another they felt they could deal with all this in little worlds of their own.
''They were wrong, and children were left to suffer.''
There was a similarly shocking investigation into decades of unchecked child abuse in Irish schools, workhouses and orphanages run nationwide by 19 Catholic orders of nuns, priests and brothers.
That report in May sought to document the scale of abuse as well as the reasons why church and state authorities didn't stop it, whereas Thursday's 720-page report focused on why church leaders in the Dublin Archdiocese -- home to a quarter of Ireland's 4 million Catholics -- did not tell police about a single abuse complaint against a priest until 1995.
By then, the investigators found, successive archbishops and their senior deputies -- among them qualified lawyers -- already had compiled confidential files on more than 100 parish priests who had sexually abused children since 1940. Those files had remained locked in the Dublin archbishop's private vault.
The investigators also dug up a paper trail documenting the church's long-secret insurance policy, taken out in 1987, to cover potential lawsuits and compensation demands. Dublin church leaders publicly denied the existence of the problem for a decade afterward -- but since the mid-1990s have paid out more than euro10 million ($15 million) in settlements and legal bills.
The report cited documents showing how church officials learned about some cases only when devoutly Catholic police received complaints from children or their parents -- but handed responsibility back to church leaders to sort out the problems themselves.
Thursday's report detailed ''sample'' cases of 46 priests who faced 320 documented complaints, although the investigators said they were confident that the priests had abused many more children than that. They cited testimony from one priest who admitted abusing more than 100 children, and another priest who said he abused a child approximately every two weeks for 25 years.
Just 11 of the 46 ultimately were convicted of abusing children -- typically decades after church leaders learned of their crimes -- while two others are scheduled to face Dublin criminal court actions within months. Fourteen are dead and most of the rest have been defrocked or barred from parish duties. Just six are still active priests.
Three Dublin archbishops -- John Charles McQuaid (1940-72), Dermot Ryan (1972-84) and Kevin McNamara (1985-87) -- did not tell police about clerical abuse cases, instead opting to avoid public scandals by shuttling offenders from parish to parish and even overseas to U.S. churches, the commission found.
It was not until 1995 that then-Archbishop Connell allowed police to see church files on 17 clerical abuse cases. At that time, Connell actually held records of complaints against at least 29 priests, the report found. Connell later pursued a lawsuit against the investigators in an abandoned bid to keep them from seeing more than 5,500 files documenting the church's knowledge of abusive priests.
The report said all four archbishops sought ''the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities.''
The investigators lauded a handful of priests and mostly low-ranking police who pursued complaints and prosecutions, almost always unsuccessfully, from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Senior police officers ''clearly regarded priests as being outside their remit'' and handed ''complaints to the archdiocese instead of investigating them,'' the report said.
''A few (priests) were courageous and brought complaints to the attention of their superiors. The vast majority simply chose to turn a blind eye,'' it said.
Ireland's police commander, Commissioner Fachtna Murphy, said he was ''deeply sorry'' to read that his force failed to provide victims of abusive priests ''the level of response or protection which any citizen in trouble is entitled to expect.''
The government also apologized for the state's failure to pursue Dublin priests accused of child abuse until recent years.
Justice Minister Dermot Ahern, who received the Dublin Archdiocese report in July but delayed its publication for legal vetting, vowed that the state would never again treat the Catholic Church with deference.
''A priest's collar will protect no criminal,'' he said.
But pressure groups representing more than 15,000 documented victims of abuse by Irish Catholic officials said the government was not doing enough to end the danger of Catholic child abuse -- in part because the law still stops short of requiring bishops to report abuse complaints to police.
Maeve Lewis, executive director of an Irish abuse counseling service called One in Four, noted that not a single person in Ireland has been convicted for ''recklessly endangering'' children, a crime created in 2006 legislation.
Lewis said the archbishops, bishops, monsignors, police and government health officials who suppressed abuse complaints for decades had never faced criminal investigations ''even though they are every bit as guilty as the priests who committed the abuse.''
And she forecast that, because abused children often do not seek justice until they reach adulthood, children today were still being abused by priests. ''It's very likely in 10 or 15 years' time that the children who are being abused today will bring forward allegations,'' she said.
''As Irish people we like to think we live in a civilized society,'' she said, ''but we need to hang our heads in shame.''
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
COMMENTS --- R K IN BROOKLYN
I would think that this has gone on in almost every country & crosses all Christian denomination lines. Only recently has info been leaking out about rampant sex abuse in the Jewish orthodox community. THEY, like the initial Catholic response is to deny, deny & circle the wagons. Sad times & special place in hell for these "religious guardians", right next to Chaney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz & Rove. (Bush gets a mercy pass for being an idiot)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
RPB IN FLORIDA
Priests are human beings, and, as such are capable of any of the sins that all people are capable of. They are also capable of manifesting all the psychological disorders that we all are capable of manifesting. Moreover, as regards the area of sexual development, if the Church continues to draw "recruits" only from those who choose not to marry, the Church will continue to recruit, disproportionately, people with atypical or arrested sexual development. This is distinctly NOT to say that all people who do not marry are sexually disoriented, nor is it to say that married people are incapable of abusive actions inside or outside their marriages, but simply that when you limit the pool from which you recruit, you skew the population you draw.
Obviously, if any insitution were to set 6 feet as a minimum height requirement, it would not find its population following the roughly 50% male, 50% female representation of the general population. In exactly the same way, if you set personal renunciation of the married state which is the societal norm, you're going to draw a skewed population.
This does not excuse the abuse of children. It merely says that some priests might steal, others might lust after their secretaries, others might be overly fond of intoxicants, and others might be tempted to abuse children. You don't assign the person tempted to steal to oversee the disbursal of diocesan funds; you don't move the guy chasing his secretary's skirt to chaplain at a college for women; you don't assign the substance abuser as coordinator of outreach to the homeless; you don't move a priest who abused children in one parish setting to another parish setting. It's that clear in my head.
It's not about "dropping dime." I have known people breaking various laws. It's not my job to identify them to the government. I don't get crazy that bishops did not call district attorneys, so long as they acted to protect children from future assault. Minimally, a priest suspected of a proclivity to child abuse might be assigned AWAY FROM children: as librarian in the diocesan library, chaplain at a home for retired nuns, secretary to the bishop, or to some administrative function or ministry to a geriatric population, or just booted out of the priesthood.
In too many cases, bishops mimicked the wall-of-silence behavior generally attributed to cops: they put their loyalty to the insititution and their fraternity above other, more significant, loyalties. "We're going to transfer you and don't do it again" would not work for an alcoholic priest; no rational, responsible person can believe it would work for a pedophile priest.
Too many of our bishops failed us big time by shielding the Church from bad press and failing to shield our children. Perhaps it is not my place to judge, but their moral lapse troubles me even more than the actions of the abusing priests. To be driven by a pathological urge for sexual contact with children and to submit to that pathological urge is more than bad enough. To be empowered to end it, and instead facilitate it by moving people around is exponentially worse.
I've known many good priests. I know good priests who go out to dinner in "civilian attire," because they are ashamed by the public association with news stories. The leadership not only failed the kids. They also failed these good priests.
And that's my two cents.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
R. P. IN TORONTO
Bottom line; the Catholic church has always been one sick puppy... how about the practice of castrating young boys so their voices would stay high for the choir? How sick was that? They only stopped doing that in the early 1900's. The church would go to the boy's parents and tell them what an honor it would be for their family for their son to be mutilated for their listening pleasure as girls weren't allowed to sing in church back then... me thinks all these boys were attractive as well... SICKOS!!!!!!!! When you deny the instinct to procreate, perversion is sure to follow. Celibacy was only instituted in the church to retain control over the priest's money so it wouldn't have to be shared with their families... it had and has nothing to do with god... since it surely must be god's will to have children.
Martin said his four predecessors in Ireland's capital, including retired Cardinal Desmond Connell, must have understood that priests' molestation and rape of boys and girls ''was a crime in both civil and canon law. For some reason or another they felt they could deal with all this in little worlds of their own.
''They were wrong, and children were left to suffer.''
There was a similarly shocking investigation into decades of unchecked child abuse in Irish schools, workhouses and orphanages run nationwide by 19 Catholic orders of nuns, priests and brothers.
That report in May sought to document the scale of abuse as well as the reasons why church and state authorities didn't stop it, whereas Thursday's 720-page report focused on why church leaders in the Dublin Archdiocese -- home to a quarter of Ireland's 4 million Catholics -- did not tell police about a single abuse complaint against a priest until 1995.
By then, the investigators found, successive archbishops and their senior deputies -- among them qualified lawyers -- already had compiled confidential files on more than 100 parish priests who had sexually abused children since 1940. Those files had remained locked in the Dublin archbishop's private vault.
The investigators also dug up a paper trail documenting the church's long-secret insurance policy, taken out in 1987, to cover potential lawsuits and compensation demands. Dublin church leaders publicly denied the existence of the problem for a decade afterward -- but since the mid-1990s have paid out more than euro10 million ($15 million) in settlements and legal bills.
The report cited documents showing how church officials learned about some cases only when devoutly Catholic police received complaints from children or their parents -- but handed responsibility back to church leaders to sort out the problems themselves.
Thursday's report detailed ''sample'' cases of 46 priests who faced 320 documented complaints, although the investigators said they were confident that the priests had abused many more children than that. They cited testimony from one priest who admitted abusing more than 100 children, and another priest who said he abused a child approximately every two weeks for 25 years.
Just 11 of the 46 ultimately were convicted of abusing children -- typically decades after church leaders learned of their crimes -- while two others are scheduled to face Dublin criminal court actions within months. Fourteen are dead and most of the rest have been defrocked or barred from parish duties. Just six are still active priests.
Three Dublin archbishops -- John Charles McQuaid (1940-72), Dermot Ryan (1972-84) and Kevin McNamara (1985-87) -- did not tell police about clerical abuse cases, instead opting to avoid public scandals by shuttling offenders from parish to parish and even overseas to U.S. churches, the commission found.
It was not until 1995 that then-Archbishop Connell allowed police to see church files on 17 clerical abuse cases. At that time, Connell actually held records of complaints against at least 29 priests, the report found. Connell later pursued a lawsuit against the investigators in an abandoned bid to keep them from seeing more than 5,500 files documenting the church's knowledge of abusive priests.
The report said all four archbishops sought ''the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities.''
The investigators lauded a handful of priests and mostly low-ranking police who pursued complaints and prosecutions, almost always unsuccessfully, from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Senior police officers ''clearly regarded priests as being outside their remit'' and handed ''complaints to the archdiocese instead of investigating them,'' the report said.
''A few (priests) were courageous and brought complaints to the attention of their superiors. The vast majority simply chose to turn a blind eye,'' it said.
Ireland's police commander, Commissioner Fachtna Murphy, said he was ''deeply sorry'' to read that his force failed to provide victims of abusive priests ''the level of response or protection which any citizen in trouble is entitled to expect.''
The government also apologized for the state's failure to pursue Dublin priests accused of child abuse until recent years.
Justice Minister Dermot Ahern, who received the Dublin Archdiocese report in July but delayed its publication for legal vetting, vowed that the state would never again treat the Catholic Church with deference.
''A priest's collar will protect no criminal,'' he said.
But pressure groups representing more than 15,000 documented victims of abuse by Irish Catholic officials said the government was not doing enough to end the danger of Catholic child abuse -- in part because the law still stops short of requiring bishops to report abuse complaints to police.
Maeve Lewis, executive director of an Irish abuse counseling service called One in Four, noted that not a single person in Ireland has been convicted for ''recklessly endangering'' children, a crime created in 2006 legislation.
Lewis said the archbishops, bishops, monsignors, police and government health officials who suppressed abuse complaints for decades had never faced criminal investigations ''even though they are every bit as guilty as the priests who committed the abuse.''
And she forecast that, because abused children often do not seek justice until they reach adulthood, children today were still being abused by priests. ''It's very likely in 10 or 15 years' time that the children who are being abused today will bring forward allegations,'' she said.
''As Irish people we like to think we live in a civilized society,'' she said, ''but we need to hang our heads in shame.''
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
COMMENTS --- R K IN BROOKLYN
I would think that this has gone on in almost every country & crosses all Christian denomination lines. Only recently has info been leaking out about rampant sex abuse in the Jewish orthodox community. THEY, like the initial Catholic response is to deny, deny & circle the wagons. Sad times & special place in hell for these "religious guardians", right next to Chaney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz & Rove. (Bush gets a mercy pass for being an idiot)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
RPB IN FLORIDA
Priests are human beings, and, as such are capable of any of the sins that all people are capable of. They are also capable of manifesting all the psychological disorders that we all are capable of manifesting. Moreover, as regards the area of sexual development, if the Church continues to draw "recruits" only from those who choose not to marry, the Church will continue to recruit, disproportionately, people with atypical or arrested sexual development. This is distinctly NOT to say that all people who do not marry are sexually disoriented, nor is it to say that married people are incapable of abusive actions inside or outside their marriages, but simply that when you limit the pool from which you recruit, you skew the population you draw.
Obviously, if any insitution were to set 6 feet as a minimum height requirement, it would not find its population following the roughly 50% male, 50% female representation of the general population. In exactly the same way, if you set personal renunciation of the married state which is the societal norm, you're going to draw a skewed population.
This does not excuse the abuse of children. It merely says that some priests might steal, others might lust after their secretaries, others might be overly fond of intoxicants, and others might be tempted to abuse children. You don't assign the person tempted to steal to oversee the disbursal of diocesan funds; you don't move the guy chasing his secretary's skirt to chaplain at a college for women; you don't assign the substance abuser as coordinator of outreach to the homeless; you don't move a priest who abused children in one parish setting to another parish setting. It's that clear in my head.
It's not about "dropping dime." I have known people breaking various laws. It's not my job to identify them to the government. I don't get crazy that bishops did not call district attorneys, so long as they acted to protect children from future assault. Minimally, a priest suspected of a proclivity to child abuse might be assigned AWAY FROM children: as librarian in the diocesan library, chaplain at a home for retired nuns, secretary to the bishop, or to some administrative function or ministry to a geriatric population, or just booted out of the priesthood.
In too many cases, bishops mimicked the wall-of-silence behavior generally attributed to cops: they put their loyalty to the insititution and their fraternity above other, more significant, loyalties. "We're going to transfer you and don't do it again" would not work for an alcoholic priest; no rational, responsible person can believe it would work for a pedophile priest.
Too many of our bishops failed us big time by shielding the Church from bad press and failing to shield our children. Perhaps it is not my place to judge, but their moral lapse troubles me even more than the actions of the abusing priests. To be driven by a pathological urge for sexual contact with children and to submit to that pathological urge is more than bad enough. To be empowered to end it, and instead facilitate it by moving people around is exponentially worse.
I've known many good priests. I know good priests who go out to dinner in "civilian attire," because they are ashamed by the public association with news stories. The leadership not only failed the kids. They also failed these good priests.
And that's my two cents.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
R. P. IN TORONTO
Bottom line; the Catholic church has always been one sick puppy... how about the practice of castrating young boys so their voices would stay high for the choir? How sick was that? They only stopped doing that in the early 1900's. The church would go to the boy's parents and tell them what an honor it would be for their family for their son to be mutilated for their listening pleasure as girls weren't allowed to sing in church back then... me thinks all these boys were attractive as well... SICKOS!!!!!!!! When you deny the instinct to procreate, perversion is sure to follow. Celibacy was only instituted in the church to retain control over the priest's money so it wouldn't have to be shared with their families... it had and has nothing to do with god... since it surely must be god's will to have children.
September 16, 2009
SELF GLORIFICATION
High-Five Nation
By DAVID BROOKS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES - SEPTEMBER 2009
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
On V-J Day, Frank Sinatra appeared, along with Marlene Dietrich, Jimmy Durante, Dinah Shore, Bette Davis, Lionel Barrymore, Cary Grant and many others. But the most striking feature of the show was its tone of self-effacement and humility. The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. And yet there was no chest-beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.
“All anybody can do is thank God it’s over,” Bing Crosby, the show’s host, said. “Today our deep down feeling is one of humility,” he added.
Burgess Meredith came out to read a passage from Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent. Pyle had been killed just a few months before, but he had written an article anticipating what a victory would mean:
“We won this war because our men are brave and because of many things — because of Russia, England and China and the passage of time and the gift of nature’s material. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than we are proud.”
This subdued sentiment seems to have been widespread during that season of triumph. On the day the Nazi regime fell, Hal Boyle of The Associated Press reported from the front lines, “The victory over Germany finds the average American soldier curiously unexcited. There is little exuberance, little enthusiasm and almost none of the whoop-it-up spirit with which hundreds of thousands of men looked forward to this event a year ago.”
The Dallas Morning News editorialized, “President Truman calls upon us to treat the event as a solemn occasion. Its momentousness and its gravity are past human comprehension.”
When you glimpse back on those days you see a people — even the rich and famous celebrities — who were overawed by the scope of the events around them. The war produced such monumental effects, and such rivers of blood, that the individual ego seemed petty in comparison. The problems of one or two little people, as the movie line had it, didn’t amount to a hill of beans.
You also hear a cultural reaction. As The Times of London pointed out on the day of victory, fascism had stood for grandiosity, pomposity, boasting and zeal. The allied propaganda mills had also produced their fair share of polemical excess. By 1945, everybody was sick of that. There was a mass hunger for a public style that was understated, self-abnegating, modest and spare. Bing Crosby expressed it perfectly on “Command Performance,” as Gregory Peck, Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall would come to express it in public life.
And there was something else. When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.
But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call “expressive individualism.” Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.
Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine. Before long, self-exposure and self-love became ways to win shares in the competition for attention. Muhammad Ali would tell all cameras that he was the greatest of all time. Norman Mailer wrote a book called “Advertisements for Myself.”
Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private “Crossfire”; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan’s egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.
This isn’t the death of civilization. It’s just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day “Command Performance,” comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I HAVE TO WONDER HOW ANYONE COULD WRITE A BETTER COLUMN – THE CLARITY OF THOUGHT HERE IS THRILLING TO BEHOLD.
**************************
ON THE TOPIC -- THIS MOVEMENT OF SELF PROMOTION AND CELEBRATION OF SELF IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD – I SEE IT AS A PRODUCT OF THE TELEVISION / VIDEO AGE. EVERYONE CAN BE FAMOUS – FACEBOOK CAN MAKE YOU A CELEBRITY, WHILE YOU LIVE IN YOUR PARENT’S ATTIC, BASEMENT OR GARAGE.
IN AN ERA OF CONNIE HAWKINS, ROGER BROWN, OSCAR ROBERTSON, JERRY WEST, RUSSELL AND CHAMBERLAIN, IT IS DIFFICULT TO FIND ANY FILM FOOTAGE OF THESE BASKETBALL PLAYERS IN THEIR HIGH SCHOOL DAYS.
MY GRANDSON, FRANKIE, HAS A VIDEO CHRONICLE OF HIS EXPLOITS WITH HIS FIFTH GRADE C.Y.O BASKETBALL TEAM. FRANKIE IS A MODEST PERSON, BUT HE LIVES IN AN AGE WHERE EVERYTHING IS RECORDED AND MANY FOLKS MISTAKE BEING RECORDED AS MEANING THEY ARE WORTHY OF BEING RECORDED.
I HAVE MET FOLKS WHO FEEL THEIR JOBS SHOULD CLOSE DOWN
FOR THEIR BIRTHDAY – FOLKS MY AGE ( OLD ) – AND THEY ARE ONE STEP ABOVE PART TIME EMPLOYEES AT THEIR WORK PLACES.
THIS ERA OF SELF PROMOTION, SELF-GLORIFICATION, WILL PAST – AND THEN RETURN – THE WORLD TRULY GOES IN A CIRCLE – BUT WHILE WE ARE IN THIS ERA OF “ME” – IT DOES SERVE TO PROVE THE BARD WAS RIGHT ---
“SOUND AND FURY SIGNIFYING NOTHING.”
By DAVID BROOKS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES - SEPTEMBER 2009
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
On V-J Day, Frank Sinatra appeared, along with Marlene Dietrich, Jimmy Durante, Dinah Shore, Bette Davis, Lionel Barrymore, Cary Grant and many others. But the most striking feature of the show was its tone of self-effacement and humility. The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. And yet there was no chest-beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.
“All anybody can do is thank God it’s over,” Bing Crosby, the show’s host, said. “Today our deep down feeling is one of humility,” he added.
Burgess Meredith came out to read a passage from Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent. Pyle had been killed just a few months before, but he had written an article anticipating what a victory would mean:
“We won this war because our men are brave and because of many things — because of Russia, England and China and the passage of time and the gift of nature’s material. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than we are proud.”
This subdued sentiment seems to have been widespread during that season of triumph. On the day the Nazi regime fell, Hal Boyle of The Associated Press reported from the front lines, “The victory over Germany finds the average American soldier curiously unexcited. There is little exuberance, little enthusiasm and almost none of the whoop-it-up spirit with which hundreds of thousands of men looked forward to this event a year ago.”
The Dallas Morning News editorialized, “President Truman calls upon us to treat the event as a solemn occasion. Its momentousness and its gravity are past human comprehension.”
When you glimpse back on those days you see a people — even the rich and famous celebrities — who were overawed by the scope of the events around them. The war produced such monumental effects, and such rivers of blood, that the individual ego seemed petty in comparison. The problems of one or two little people, as the movie line had it, didn’t amount to a hill of beans.
You also hear a cultural reaction. As The Times of London pointed out on the day of victory, fascism had stood for grandiosity, pomposity, boasting and zeal. The allied propaganda mills had also produced their fair share of polemical excess. By 1945, everybody was sick of that. There was a mass hunger for a public style that was understated, self-abnegating, modest and spare. Bing Crosby expressed it perfectly on “Command Performance,” as Gregory Peck, Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall would come to express it in public life.
And there was something else. When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.
But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call “expressive individualism.” Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.
Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine. Before long, self-exposure and self-love became ways to win shares in the competition for attention. Muhammad Ali would tell all cameras that he was the greatest of all time. Norman Mailer wrote a book called “Advertisements for Myself.”
Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private “Crossfire”; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan’s egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.
This isn’t the death of civilization. It’s just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day “Command Performance,” comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I HAVE TO WONDER HOW ANYONE COULD WRITE A BETTER COLUMN – THE CLARITY OF THOUGHT HERE IS THRILLING TO BEHOLD.
**************************
ON THE TOPIC -- THIS MOVEMENT OF SELF PROMOTION AND CELEBRATION OF SELF IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD – I SEE IT AS A PRODUCT OF THE TELEVISION / VIDEO AGE. EVERYONE CAN BE FAMOUS – FACEBOOK CAN MAKE YOU A CELEBRITY, WHILE YOU LIVE IN YOUR PARENT’S ATTIC, BASEMENT OR GARAGE.
IN AN ERA OF CONNIE HAWKINS, ROGER BROWN, OSCAR ROBERTSON, JERRY WEST, RUSSELL AND CHAMBERLAIN, IT IS DIFFICULT TO FIND ANY FILM FOOTAGE OF THESE BASKETBALL PLAYERS IN THEIR HIGH SCHOOL DAYS.
MY GRANDSON, FRANKIE, HAS A VIDEO CHRONICLE OF HIS EXPLOITS WITH HIS FIFTH GRADE C.Y.O BASKETBALL TEAM. FRANKIE IS A MODEST PERSON, BUT HE LIVES IN AN AGE WHERE EVERYTHING IS RECORDED AND MANY FOLKS MISTAKE BEING RECORDED AS MEANING THEY ARE WORTHY OF BEING RECORDED.
I HAVE MET FOLKS WHO FEEL THEIR JOBS SHOULD CLOSE DOWN
FOR THEIR BIRTHDAY – FOLKS MY AGE ( OLD ) – AND THEY ARE ONE STEP ABOVE PART TIME EMPLOYEES AT THEIR WORK PLACES.
THIS ERA OF SELF PROMOTION, SELF-GLORIFICATION, WILL PAST – AND THEN RETURN – THE WORLD TRULY GOES IN A CIRCLE – BUT WHILE WE ARE IN THIS ERA OF “ME” – IT DOES SERVE TO PROVE THE BARD WAS RIGHT ---
“SOUND AND FURY SIGNIFYING NOTHING.”
August 28, 2009
THE FAMOUS COKE CAN WARNING LIVES ON
This is Serious! This incident happened recently in North Texas .
A woman went boating one Sunday taking with her some cans of coke which she put into the refrigerator of the boat.
On Monday she was taken to the hospital and placed in the Intensive Care Unit. She died on Wednesday. The autopsy concluded she died of Leptospirosis. This was traced to the can of coke she drank from, not using a glass.
Tests showed that the can was infected by dried rat urine and hence the disease Leptospirosis. Rat urine contains toxic and deathly substances. It is highly recommended to thoroughly wash the upper part of all soda cans before drinking out of them. The cans are typically stocked in warehouses and transported straight to the shops without being cleaned. A study at NYCU showed that the tops of all soda cans are more contaminated than public toilets - Full of germs and bacteria. So wash them with water before putting them to the mouth to avoid any kind of fatal accident.
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THIS IS REALLY A GREAT WARNING AND I HAVE TO SALUTE THE COLLEGE KIDS WHO DREAM THIS STUFF UP AND FORWARD IT BETWEEN CLASSES.
THIS ONE IS ABOUT 15 YEARS OLD – BUT UPDATED WITH THE NEW CAN PHOTO.
I WILL RUSH OUT INTO THE STREETS AND WARN AS MANY PEOPLE AS I CAN ABOUT THIS DANGER – OF COURSE, THOUSANDS OF TEACHERS HAVE EXPLAINED THIS CONCEPT TO KIDS IN NURSERY SCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN, BUT HEY, YOU NEVER KNOW WHO WAS ABSENT ON THOSE DAYS.
IF I CAN UNDERSTAND THIS SCIENTIFIC THEORY CORRECTLY –
WHEN SOMETHING IS DIRTY, YOU SHOULD CLEAN IT.
WOW - THIS IS AMAZING.
BETWEEN POISON COKE COLA CANS,
EXPLODING CELL PHONES
AND
SERIAL KILLERS WHO HIDE IN THE BACK SEAT WHILE YOU ARE PUMPING GAS --- I HAVE LOST AT LEAST TEN TO TWELVE CLOSE FRIENDS THIS YEAR AND THIS IS ONLY AUGUST.
A DOCTOR TOLD ME THAT IF I TELL TEN PEOPLE THESE VERY INTELLIGENT IDEAS AND THEY TELL TEN PEOPLE – THEN HE FIGURED, WITHOUT USING
PAPER OR PENCIL, THAT 20 PEOPLE WOULD KNOW THESE WARNINGS.
I SHOULD GET OFF LINE NOW, BECAUSE FOUR MORE WARNINGS JUST CAME IN:
^^ DO NOT DRIVE A CAR WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED
^^DON’T OPEN THE DOOR ON A JET PLANE THAT IS IN FLIGHT
^^WHEN LEAVING A TALL BUILDING, AVOID USING AN OPEN WINDOW,
TAKE THE STAIRS OR ELEVATOR TO THE GROUND LEVEL
^^ DON’T POINT A LOADED GUN AT A CHILD WHO IS DRINKING AN UNCLEAN
CAN OF COKE AND PULL THE TRIGGER, THAT COULD CAUSE AN INJURY.
I CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHY THE N.Y. TIMES / CNN / MSNBC / THE POLICE / FBI / CIA / POISON CONTROL AGENCY / B.E.T. NEWS
DID NOT BROADCAST THIS MESSAGE BEFORE YOUR FRIEND SENT HIS URGENT
E-MAIL TO SAVE US.
I WISH THAT FRIEND HAD WARNED US ABOUT THE COLLAPSE OF THE SUB-PRIME MORTGAGE MARKET – THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A LITTLE MORE CURRENT THAN THIS 1994 COKE CAN EXPOSE AND MAYBE DONE A LOT MORE GOOD.
ONE QUESTION -- IS IT ONLY COKE CANS OR DO THE RATS URINATE ON OTHER CANS TOO?
A woman went boating one Sunday taking with her some cans of coke which she put into the refrigerator of the boat.
On Monday she was taken to the hospital and placed in the Intensive Care Unit. She died on Wednesday. The autopsy concluded she died of Leptospirosis. This was traced to the can of coke she drank from, not using a glass.
Tests showed that the can was infected by dried rat urine and hence the disease Leptospirosis. Rat urine contains toxic and deathly substances. It is highly recommended to thoroughly wash the upper part of all soda cans before drinking out of them. The cans are typically stocked in warehouses and transported straight to the shops without being cleaned. A study at NYCU showed that the tops of all soda cans are more contaminated than public toilets - Full of germs and bacteria. So wash them with water before putting them to the mouth to avoid any kind of fatal accident.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THIS IS REALLY A GREAT WARNING AND I HAVE TO SALUTE THE COLLEGE KIDS WHO DREAM THIS STUFF UP AND FORWARD IT BETWEEN CLASSES.
THIS ONE IS ABOUT 15 YEARS OLD – BUT UPDATED WITH THE NEW CAN PHOTO.
I WILL RUSH OUT INTO THE STREETS AND WARN AS MANY PEOPLE AS I CAN ABOUT THIS DANGER – OF COURSE, THOUSANDS OF TEACHERS HAVE EXPLAINED THIS CONCEPT TO KIDS IN NURSERY SCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN, BUT HEY, YOU NEVER KNOW WHO WAS ABSENT ON THOSE DAYS.
IF I CAN UNDERSTAND THIS SCIENTIFIC THEORY CORRECTLY –
WHEN SOMETHING IS DIRTY, YOU SHOULD CLEAN IT.
WOW - THIS IS AMAZING.
BETWEEN POISON COKE COLA CANS,
EXPLODING CELL PHONES
AND
SERIAL KILLERS WHO HIDE IN THE BACK SEAT WHILE YOU ARE PUMPING GAS --- I HAVE LOST AT LEAST TEN TO TWELVE CLOSE FRIENDS THIS YEAR AND THIS IS ONLY AUGUST.
A DOCTOR TOLD ME THAT IF I TELL TEN PEOPLE THESE VERY INTELLIGENT IDEAS AND THEY TELL TEN PEOPLE – THEN HE FIGURED, WITHOUT USING
PAPER OR PENCIL, THAT 20 PEOPLE WOULD KNOW THESE WARNINGS.
I SHOULD GET OFF LINE NOW, BECAUSE FOUR MORE WARNINGS JUST CAME IN:
^^ DO NOT DRIVE A CAR WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED
^^DON’T OPEN THE DOOR ON A JET PLANE THAT IS IN FLIGHT
^^WHEN LEAVING A TALL BUILDING, AVOID USING AN OPEN WINDOW,
TAKE THE STAIRS OR ELEVATOR TO THE GROUND LEVEL
^^ DON’T POINT A LOADED GUN AT A CHILD WHO IS DRINKING AN UNCLEAN
CAN OF COKE AND PULL THE TRIGGER, THAT COULD CAUSE AN INJURY.
I CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHY THE N.Y. TIMES / CNN / MSNBC / THE POLICE / FBI / CIA / POISON CONTROL AGENCY / B.E.T. NEWS
DID NOT BROADCAST THIS MESSAGE BEFORE YOUR FRIEND SENT HIS URGENT
E-MAIL TO SAVE US.
I WISH THAT FRIEND HAD WARNED US ABOUT THE COLLAPSE OF THE SUB-PRIME MORTGAGE MARKET – THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A LITTLE MORE CURRENT THAN THIS 1994 COKE CAN EXPOSE AND MAYBE DONE A LOT MORE GOOD.
ONE QUESTION -- IS IT ONLY COKE CANS OR DO THE RATS URINATE ON OTHER CANS TOO?
May 25, 2009
RANDY JAMES - HISTORY MATTERS
Friends:
The thousands of Applebees across the country have the same policy concerning their decor. When they first open a restaurant, they select a few local college and/or high school and place about a dozen photos of the school's athletic teams and/or clubs on the restaurant's walls.
The Applebees located in Fresh Meadows was no different. Back around 1993, when they opened, they put about 20 pictures of Lewis' teams up in the restaurant's waiting area.
Over the last 15 or so years, I had gotten used to friends and/or strangers coming up to me
in the neighborhood telling me that they saw me with either the baseball team picture of the basketball team picture on their last trip to Applebees.
Back around 2002, I even suggested to the manager of the restaurant that he update the pictures with current ones, but he said it was the policy to leave the pictures up that were appropriate when the restaurant first opened.
THEN, last week, Juliet (my teenager) informed me that the restaurant had updated the pictures, and now had photos of the current teams, thus removing me from posterity.
And while it should be a small item when you look at the big picture of life; for some reason, I feel wounded to the core.
RANDY JAMES
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
R. J. –
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
COACH JAMES, I WOULD GIVE YOU ONE PIECE OF ADVICE – IN FUTURE WRITINGS, DON’T START YOUR MESSAGES WITH THE WORD “FRIENDS,” -- NOT VERY MANY PEOPLE ARE GOING TO OPENLY APPLY THAT TITLE TO THEMSELVES – I SAW THE WORD “FRIENDS,” AND THOUGHT, THIS MESSAGE FROM RANDY IS NOT INTENDED FOR ME OR ANY DECENT PERSON.
RANDY MUST BE SPEAKING TO HIS ASSOCIATES WHO ARE INCARCERATED, AWAITING INCARCERATION OR APPEALING THEIR FELONY CONVICTIONS BEFORE THE FIFTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT.
The thousands of Applebees across the country have the same policy concerning their decor. When they first open a restaurant, they select a few local college and/or high school and place about a dozen photos of the school's athletic teams and/or clubs on the restaurant's walls.
The Applebees located in Fresh Meadows was no different. Back around 1993, when they opened, they put about 20 pictures of Lewis' teams up in the restaurant's waiting area.
Over the last 15 or so years, I had gotten used to friends and/or strangers coming up to me
in the neighborhood telling me that they saw me with either the baseball team picture of the basketball team picture on their last trip to Applebees.
Back around 2002, I even suggested to the manager of the restaurant that he update the pictures with current ones, but he said it was the policy to leave the pictures up that were appropriate when the restaurant first opened.
THEN, last week, Juliet (my teenager) informed me that the restaurant had updated the pictures, and now had photos of the current teams, thus removing me from posterity.
And while it should be a small item when you look at the big picture of life; for some reason, I feel wounded to the core.
RANDY JAMES
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
R. J. –
I FEEL THAT ARTHUR MILLER'S LINE FROM, "DEATH OF A SALESMAN," APPLIES TO YOUR COMMENTS --- "attention must be paid." YOUR STORY IS NOT ABOUT PERSONAL EGO, IT IS FAR GREATER THAN THAT.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
WHEN I GOT MY FIRST TEACHING POSITION IN BROOKLYN, AT JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL #35 A.K.A. STEPHEN DECATUR - THE PRINCIPAL WAS TRYING TO SAVE MONEY AND MAYBE THE TIME NEEDED FOR MINOR RENOVATION - ANYWAY, THE PLAN WAS TO TAKE THE OLD ATHLETIC HALL FAME NAME PLATES FROM THE LARGE AND VERY HANDSOME WOODEN PLACARD AT AND ABOVE THE MAIN AUDITORIUM STAGE, PAINT OVER THEM WITH THE NAMES OF THE CURRENT AND FUTURE CROP OF STAR ATHLETES PRODUCED BY THIS GREAT INSTITUTION’S NURTURING SPIRIT.
I CAME TO THE SCHOOL IN JANUARY OF 1968 AND THIS PLAN MUST HAVE BEEN DISCUSSED AND DECIDED UPON BEFORE I
CROSSED THE DOOR – THE ACTION WAS IN MOTION WHEN I LEARNED ABOUT IT – SELFISHLY I RESCUED MY OWN NAME FROM THE PILE OF MY CLASSMATES / HEROES THAT HAD BEEN VIRTUALLY GIVEN THE DEATH PENALTY.
IRONICALLY, I SALVAGED THE ONE NAME THAT I THOUGHT WAS THE LEAST DESERVING OF ALL THOSE ON THE BOARD.
HAD I BEEN A VETERAN STAFF MEMBER, WITH A GREATER VOICE, I MIGHT HAVE HELPED FIND A WAY TO PRESERVE THAT
WONDERFUL TRIBUTE TO FINE ATHLETES, ONE OR MORE, WHOM HAD REPRESENTED THE UNITED STATES IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES.
I ALSO KNEW THAT WONDERFUL FOLKS ON THE STAFF – BOTH FACULTY AND ADMINISTRATORS, WERE STRONG ADVOCATES FOR THE SCHOOL AND IF THIS WAS HAPPENING, MAYBE IT WAS NOT SO SIMPLE TO UNDO.
ANYWAY, THERE IS A NATURAL PAIN THAT COMES WITH SEEING HISTORY DISAPPEAR BEFORE YOUR EYES, SEEING THE LIBRARY
OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS BURN DOWN – OF HAVING SOMEONE DECIDE THAT THE OLD GRAVESTONES SHOULD BE REMOVED FOR NEW ONES – THAT THE OLD NOVELS, LIKE ”NATIVE SON,” SHOULD MAKE WAY FOR NEWER WORKS - THAT TALES OF MY
DAD AND HIS DAD, SHOULD BE SILENCED SO WE CAN DISCUSS MY GRAND-KIDS.
RANDY, THERE IS SOMETHING FUNDAMENTALLY AND INTRINSICALLY WRONG WITH SAYING THAT JACKIE ROBINSON OR PAUL ROBESON ARE TOO OLD SCHOOL TO BE RELEVANT IN THE WORLD OF 2009-- IF THEY ARE NOT RELEVANT, WHAT CONTEXT IS THERE TO EVALUATE THE CURRENT CROP OF CANDIDATES WHO FOLLOW IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS.
WHEN YOU MENTION THE ORIGINAL TRIBUTES TO FRANCIS LEWIS HISTORY BEING REMOVED, FOR THE SIN OF BEING TOO
HISTORICAL, I UNDERSTAND WHERE YOU ARE COMING FROM – THERE IS A TWILIGHT ZONE QUALITY TO THE PREMISE OF HISTORY BEING TOO OLD TO RETAIN.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
COACH JAMES, I WOULD GIVE YOU ONE PIECE OF ADVICE – IN FUTURE WRITINGS, DON’T START YOUR MESSAGES WITH THE WORD “FRIENDS,” -- NOT VERY MANY PEOPLE ARE GOING TO OPENLY APPLY THAT TITLE TO THEMSELVES – I SAW THE WORD “FRIENDS,” AND THOUGHT, THIS MESSAGE FROM RANDY IS NOT INTENDED FOR ME OR ANY DECENT PERSON.
RANDY MUST BE SPEAKING TO HIS ASSOCIATES WHO ARE INCARCERATED, AWAITING INCARCERATION OR APPEALING THEIR FELONY CONVICTIONS BEFORE THE FIFTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT.
May 22, 2009
AT MY EARLIEST CONVENIENCE
THERE SEEMS TO BE A FAILURE AMONG QUITE A FEW PEOPLE TO REALIZE THE DIFFERENCE IN THESE TWO SITUATIONS WHEN LEAVING A MESSAGE ON THEIR PHONE ANSWERING MACHINE:
1. TELLING A CALLER / CLIENT -- "PLEASE GET BACK TO ME AT YOUR
EARLIEST CONVENIENCE "
IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT IN BOTH MEANING AND LEVEL OF RESPECT
FROM THE WORDS BELOW -
2. "SORRY I MISSED YOUR CALL, I WILL GET BACK TO YOU AT MY
EARLIEST CONVENIENCE."
THIS IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS, LIKE DOUBLE NEGATIVES, THAT IF A PERSON
FAILS TO UNDERSTAND THE LESS THAN SUBTLE DIFFERENCE, IF IS NOT
EASY TO SCHOOL THEM -
THEY JUST DON'T GET IT OR ELSE THEY DON'T MIND "STICKING IT" TO THEIR CALLER / CLIENT.
IT IS GOOD FORM TO LET THE CALLER KNOW YOU WANT THEM TO TRY AGAIN TO REACH YOU.
IT IS NOT TOO GRACIOUS TO INFORM THE CALLER THAT, YOU WILL RETURN THEIR CALL WHEN YOU ARE GOOD AND READY, MAYBE AFTER A MEAL, A SHOWER AND VIEWING THE LATEST EPISODE OF "LAW AND ORDER."
ADDING "EARLIEST" DOES NOT, AS THEY SEEM TO THINK, CORRECT THE TONE OF THE MESSAGE - WHICH IS, "WHEN I AM GOOD AND READY."
1. TELLING A CALLER / CLIENT -- "PLEASE GET BACK TO ME AT YOUR
EARLIEST CONVENIENCE "
IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT IN BOTH MEANING AND LEVEL OF RESPECT
FROM THE WORDS BELOW -
2. "SORRY I MISSED YOUR CALL, I WILL GET BACK TO YOU AT MY
EARLIEST CONVENIENCE."
THIS IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS, LIKE DOUBLE NEGATIVES, THAT IF A PERSON
FAILS TO UNDERSTAND THE LESS THAN SUBTLE DIFFERENCE, IF IS NOT
EASY TO SCHOOL THEM -
THEY JUST DON'T GET IT OR ELSE THEY DON'T MIND "STICKING IT" TO THEIR CALLER / CLIENT.
IT IS GOOD FORM TO LET THE CALLER KNOW YOU WANT THEM TO TRY AGAIN TO REACH YOU.
IT IS NOT TOO GRACIOUS TO INFORM THE CALLER THAT, YOU WILL RETURN THEIR CALL WHEN YOU ARE GOOD AND READY, MAYBE AFTER A MEAL, A SHOWER AND VIEWING THE LATEST EPISODE OF "LAW AND ORDER."
ADDING "EARLIEST" DOES NOT, AS THEY SEEM TO THINK, CORRECT THE TONE OF THE MESSAGE - WHICH IS, "WHEN I AM GOOD AND READY."
February 01, 2009
HENNING FAMILY WISDOM & CELEBRITY QUOTES
* We get too soon old and too late smart. ---
*MISTER HENNING, SENIOR
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
**The older we get, the more liberated we feel, because at some point we say to ourselves, I am now xx years of age. What the hell is anyone going to do to me.
**Indulging regret and going through the wouldas, couldas and shouldas is pointless.
**God has a crazy sense of humor. By the time we figure so many things out to our own satisfaction, our bodies are too worn down to do anything about it.
**Enjoy the trip, particularly in the last quarter of the journey. The sunsets reflect many great days that have established that man in the mirror.
** PAUL HENNING - SFC '67
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CELEBRITY QUOTES
* Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself ~~"Lillian, you should have remained a virgin." -- Lillian Carter ( mother of Jimmy Carter )
* I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: "No good in a bed, but fine against a wall." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
* Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement. -- Mark Twain
* The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible. -- George Burns
* Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year. -- Victor Borge
* Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. -- Mark Twain
* By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. -- Socrates
* I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. -- Groucho Marx
* My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe. -- Jimmy Durante
* I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back. -- Zsa Zsa Gabor
* Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat. -- Alex Levine
* My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying. --
Rodney Dangerfield
* Money can't buy you happiness .. but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. --
Spike Milligan
* I am opposed to millionaires... but it would be dangerous to offer me the position. --
Mark Twain
* Until I was thirteen, I thought my name was SHUT UP. -- Joe Namath
* I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap. -- Bob Hope
* I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it. -- W.C. Fields
* We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress. -- Will Rogers
*Don't worry about avoiding temptation. as you grow older, it will avoid you. --
Winston Churchill
* Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty ... but everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out. -- Phyllis Diller
* By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go anywhere. --
Billy Crystal
* The cardiologist's diet: If it tastes good, spit it out.
????????
*MISTER HENNING, SENIOR
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
**The older we get, the more liberated we feel, because at some point we say to ourselves, I am now xx years of age. What the hell is anyone going to do to me.
**Indulging regret and going through the wouldas, couldas and shouldas is pointless.
**God has a crazy sense of humor. By the time we figure so many things out to our own satisfaction, our bodies are too worn down to do anything about it.
**Enjoy the trip, particularly in the last quarter of the journey. The sunsets reflect many great days that have established that man in the mirror.
** PAUL HENNING - SFC '67
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CELEBRITY QUOTES
* Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself ~~"Lillian, you should have remained a virgin." -- Lillian Carter ( mother of Jimmy Carter )
* I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: "No good in a bed, but fine against a wall." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
* Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement. -- Mark Twain
* The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible. -- George Burns
* Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year. -- Victor Borge
* Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. -- Mark Twain
* By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. -- Socrates
* I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. -- Groucho Marx
* My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe. -- Jimmy Durante
* I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back. -- Zsa Zsa Gabor
* Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat. -- Alex Levine
* My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying. --
Rodney Dangerfield
* Money can't buy you happiness .. but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. --
Spike Milligan
* I am opposed to millionaires... but it would be dangerous to offer me the position. --
Mark Twain
* Until I was thirteen, I thought my name was SHUT UP. -- Joe Namath
* I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap. -- Bob Hope
* I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it. -- W.C. Fields
* We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress. -- Will Rogers
*Don't worry about avoiding temptation. as you grow older, it will avoid you. --
Winston Churchill
* Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty ... but everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out. -- Phyllis Diller
* By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go anywhere. --
Billy Crystal
* The cardiologist's diet: If it tastes good, spit it out.
????????
November 24, 2008
FIVE LIFE LESSONS - always worthy of another look
THANKS TO ARNOLD HOOK FOR THIS VERSION OF THE TALES.
First Lesson -
During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one: 'What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?' Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. 'Absolutely,' said the professor. 'In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say 'hello.' I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.
Second Lesson -
One night, at 11:3 0 p.m., an older African American woman was standing on the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rainstorm. Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride. Soaking wet, she decided to flag down the next car. A young white man stopped to help her, generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 60s.. The man took her to safety, helped her get assistance and put her into a taxicab. She seemed to be in a big hurry, but wrote down his address and thanked him. Seven days went by and a knock came on the man's door. To his surprise, a giant console color TV was delivered to his home. A special note was attached.. It read: 'Thank you so much for assisting me on the highway the other night. The rain drenched not only my clothes, but also my spirits. Then you came along. Because of you, I was able to make it to my dying husband's bedside just before he passed away... God bless you for helping me and unselfishly serving others.' Sincerely, Mrs. Nat King Cole.
Third Lesson -
In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. 'How much is an ice cream sundae?' he asked. 'Fifty cents,' replied the waitress. The little boy pulled is hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it. 'Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?' he inquired. By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient. 'Thirty-five cents,' she brusquely replied. The little boy again counted his coins. 'I'll have the plain ice cream,' he said. The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left. When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies..
You see, he couldn't have the sundae, because he wanted to have enough money left to leave her a generous tip.
Fourth Lesson -
In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the king's wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the King for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way. Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the King indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant learned what many of us never understand! Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.
Fifth Lesson -
Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare & serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness.. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, 'Yes I'll do it if it will save her.' As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheek. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, 'Will I start to die right away'. Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.
First Lesson -
During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one: 'What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?' Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. 'Absolutely,' said the professor. 'In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say 'hello.' I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.
Second Lesson -
One night, at 11:3 0 p.m., an older African American woman was standing on the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rainstorm. Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride. Soaking wet, she decided to flag down the next car. A young white man stopped to help her, generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 60s.. The man took her to safety, helped her get assistance and put her into a taxicab. She seemed to be in a big hurry, but wrote down his address and thanked him. Seven days went by and a knock came on the man's door. To his surprise, a giant console color TV was delivered to his home. A special note was attached.. It read: 'Thank you so much for assisting me on the highway the other night. The rain drenched not only my clothes, but also my spirits. Then you came along. Because of you, I was able to make it to my dying husband's bedside just before he passed away... God bless you for helping me and unselfishly serving others.' Sincerely, Mrs. Nat King Cole.
Third Lesson -
In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. 'How much is an ice cream sundae?' he asked. 'Fifty cents,' replied the waitress. The little boy pulled is hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it. 'Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?' he inquired. By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient. 'Thirty-five cents,' she brusquely replied. The little boy again counted his coins. 'I'll have the plain ice cream,' he said. The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left. When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies..
You see, he couldn't have the sundae, because he wanted to have enough money left to leave her a generous tip.
Fourth Lesson -
In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the king's wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the King for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way. Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the King indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant learned what many of us never understand! Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.
Fifth Lesson -
Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare & serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness.. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, 'Yes I'll do it if it will save her.' As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheek. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, 'Will I start to die right away'. Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.
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