Tradition

There I sit, in the local tavern, wearing a black baseball cap and navy blue windbreaker.  In front of me is a longneck brown bottle of old formula Schlitz, sweet and malty, and on the television is the Blackhawks game.  Seeing my reflection in the bar mirror, darned if I didn’t get a chill from the deja vu of seeing how close I accidentally nearly duplicated the old man in dress, posture, and situation …

The Blackhawks were a household staple when they were last on TV, back in the day when most of them still played bare-headed. My mother had me awaken my father from his post-dinner nap by turning up the volume when the hokey theme song came on, so he would make it for face-off.  One thing my mother always said of her mother, it was that she loved to watch a) hockey, and b) roller derby.

Then they first went on local pay per view, then off the air for good.  When Old Man Wirtz (the owner) died, his son sent the team out on caravan to reaquaint the team with Chicago, then threw the team on TV once again.  He pulled open the curtains and threw open the window in the dark, stuffy room that Blackhawk fandom became.  This is their first full season back on the air.  And the city has embraced them.

Considering how I love to watch hockey whenever it comes on TV, whether European, minor league (Wolves)  or late season NHL Saturday games, it’s still no surprise how it fell off my radar, since Chicago has been a black hole of hockey exposure.  But it is good to see the sport somewhat regularly once again.  And feel the growth of hockey interest once again fill my senses.  Watching the one non-Notre Dame team that he’d get excited about, and drinking his old brew.

Though next time, I’ll be more careful in clothing choice, and bust out the Kangol driving cap and leather jacket.  That black ballcap thing was just plain wierd.

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Christmas Truce

I’d like to make a Christmas post in regards to a somewhat forgotten event in history, the Christmas Truce of 1914.

As Christmas approached the festive mood and the desire for a lull in the fighting increased as parcels packed with goodies from home started to arrive.  On top of this came gifts care of the state.  Tommy received plum puddings and ‘Princess Mary boxes’.  Not to be outdone, Fritz received a present from the Kaiser, the Kaiserliche, a large meerschaum pipe for the troops and a box of cigars for NCOs and officers.

With their morale boosted by messages of thanks and their bellies fuller than normal, and with still so much Christmas booty to hand, the season of goodwill entered the trenches.  A British Daily Telegraph correspondent wrote that on one part of the line the Germans had managed to slip a chocolate cake into British trenches.

Christmas day began quietly but once the sun was up the fraternisation began.  Again songs were sung and rations thrown to one another.  It was not long before troops and officers started to take matters into their own hands and ventured forth.  No-man’s land became something of a playground.

Men exchanged gifts and buttons.  In one or two places soldiers who had been barbers in civilian times gave free haircuts.  One German, a juggler and a showman, gave an impromptu, and given the circumstances, somewhat surreal performance of his routine in the centre of no-man’s land.

On January 1, 1915, the London Times published a letter from a major in the Medical Corps reporting that in his sector the British played a game against the Germans opposite and were beaten 3-2.

Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxons recorded in his diary: ‘The English brought a soccer ball from the trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued.  How marvellously wonderful, yet how strange it was.  The English officers felt the same way about it.  Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.’

The Truce lasted all day; in places it ended that night, but on other sections of the line it held over Boxing Day and in some areas, a few days more.

In the public’s mind the facts have become irrevocably mythologized, and perhaps this is the most important legacy of the Christmas Truce today.  In our age of uncertainty, it comforting to believe, regardless of the real reasoning and motives, that soldiers and officers told to hate, loathe and kill, could still lower their guns and extend the hand of goodwill, peace, love and Christmas cheer.

There is an English site giving tribute to the Truce.  And here it is commemorated in Germany.  This event was wonderfully given tribute in song by The Farm.  Enjoy the video:

Peace on Earth, and goodwill to all.  One day, almost a century ago, this was made real by men who had everything to lose if anyone had made a misstep in this dance.  But it was fulfilled on both sides, in a series of happy coincidences that could accurately be considered a miracle.

Filed under: tribute

Anarchy

I have no doubt that anarchy is an impossible way to live.  It is hard wired into the physical brains of people to have some sort of organizational structure, for every group of two and above.

There never has been an anarchic society, and there never will be one.  But history isn’t a good enough reason, since even though the Bible says there is nothing new under the Sun, saying that there will never be pagers or cell phones because there were none before has been disproven.

Those who espouse anarchy assume that people are basically good, and that left alone, they will strive to go about their business and mind their p’s and q’s.  Penn Jillette’s famous “car keys”  statement astounds me, since I consider the man a genius in the true sense of the word; that his cognitive reasoning process exceeds us mere average mortals.  For you who are not as into Penn & Teller as I am, his quote is

Well, I’m a real total-freedom nut, a libertarian, and I’m one of those crazy optimists. You get this personality type of incredible Pollyanna, dip-shit optimism that just kind of turns out this atheist libertarian who thinks, let people do what they want and everything will be okay. I think, really, the percentage of people on the planet that are actually bad is so small, you don’t even have to consider them. Throw your car keys to everyone; you’re pretty much going to be okay. People just really treat other people, I think, really, really well, and always have, and are getting better all the time. Our crime rates are going down and so on.

How such dreck came from such a brilliant mind, well.

We are encultured to an extent we may never get to know.  We are encultured from the first words we here from out of the womb.  A temporary anarchy, like the car keys, or even a natural disaster, is not like having an anarchic society.  If there is a tornado, and the authorities are away taking care of who they can five miles away and will not get to this area for the next three days, well, everyone knows things will reestablish themselves at that time.  That is one thing that keeps people in line.  The second is that people will revert to their upbringing.  We’ve been encultured for empathy, in the Western Tradition.  That is why we get the warm fuzzies from reaching out to help others in a crisis.  Even in Nagasaki after the blast, the Japanese did their best to come together and re-knit their society, since they knew that even though that city was so devastated, their country will be back, and they went to work to make it so.

There are places where de facto, if not de jure, anarchy has been in effect, and in none has it ever been pretty.  Let’s look at the Somalia situation.  Go rent Black Hawk Down for a look at when out Army loses a helicopter in a place run under anarchy.  Now that same anarchy has hit the seas in the form of piracy.

There is anarchy in the U.S.A.  to study.  One of the best books I’ve read is Monster.  It is nothing but a testimony to the life that arose in a part of L.A. once the authorities ceded control, and left it to its own devices.  The Ivanhoe projects in Gary, Indiana was an area that the Gary police wouldn’t enter unless they were in a team.  That miserable project is now shuttered.

Let’s see Europe today.  The suburbs of the cities of France, the sad situation of Malmo, Sweden.

Okay, Europe past.  There is no hyperbole to overstate the state of anarchy in Germany after the Great War.  The free state of Bavaria had literally raised the black flag of anarchism over the region, for Christ sakes.  What was the reaction?  Well, Hitler took hold in Bavaria before going national.

Let’s look at business, our polite form of anarchic interpersonal relations.  Everyone who has been cheated, lied to, swindled, or outright burgled in a business transaction, raise your hand.  Once people know there is no structure overseeing their dealings, the sky’s the limit for fraud.  The movies Glengarry Glen
Ross and Boiler Room are classics for showing the mechanics of this.  Ask anyone who bought a box of bricks he thought was a set of speakers from a guy’s pickup truck in the mall parking lot (I knew a woman whose husband did just that).  Once money insulates someone from paying for his crimes, what makes him so moral, if he has no Christian (or other likewise) code?  Witness O.J. Simpson, or Klaus von Bulow.  Go rent American Psycho.

Critical Mass is a cycling movement that claims to be truly anarchic, with no structure and no leadership.  I have participated in CM, and can tell you, there are recognized leaders and an understood structure, much the same, though not as rigid or exclusive as high school cliques.

What I think is a good form is for another post.  I’m just here to trash anarchy tonight.

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Women

You all frustrate me.  The whole bunch of you.  Here is why:

It’s been more than a year since Stacy Peterson disappeared, and while she hasn’t been found, it seems her husband, Drew Peterson, has found love again.  CBS 2 has learned the woman is 23-years-old, and if she marries Peterson, she will be his fifth wife.  Peterson’s publicist Glenn Selig says the 54-year-old proposed within the last week after dating the woman for about four months.

This is not a rare thing; this is the rule.  Scott Peterson (no relation) received sacks of mail from female groupies.  At least he had some looks to explain that.  But this guy, who is a walking smirk that looks like the Cowardly Lion in The Wizzard of Oz, what gives?

If a guy puts cigarettes out on you, and leaves welts and bruises, you’ll follow him uphill through broken glass out of devotion.  But if he’s a stand-up guy who wants the best for the woman he loves, he’s dissed.

I doubt I’ll ever marry.

UPDATE:  here is a roster of Drew’s romances.  Just what in the hell is so sexy about that mope to draw all of these young, pretty women?

Filed under: no wonder I'm fed up

Contemplative Life

Once the official Roman pogroms ended for the Christians, they went from “wet” martyrdom to the ascetic, self-denying idea of “dry” martyrdom, that of living a solitary life as a hermit, or joining a monastic order, to go away from the world and sacrifice their lives for Christ in that way.

In the modern, material world, this life is seen as unmaintainable, and as an abberation, a freak choice, instead of a valid option for living.  As we urbanize and pack ourselves closer in, it should be even more of a valid option than before.

I think of the people who do try to run the straight and narrow, but the draw of temptation is too much.  Everyone has their own personal kryptonite, in varying degrees.  Locally, there’s been two priest sex scandals (funny how when the husband bangs the babysitter, it’s on page B-45, but when it’s a Catholic priest, it’s above the fold on the front page in the newspaper box).  If they were in a monastery, maybe the temptation for them would be gone, or at least their ability to act upon it would be reduced.  Same for gambling, or high living, or drugs.

I’m not judging, for I don’t know how heavy is someone else’s burden, especially since I don’t share that fault myself.  I just think there should be a valid other option for those who choose to self-remove, and live their lives in a community, and not have that live marginalized.

Filed under: religion

Corruption

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely; all great men are mad.
- Lord Acton

When you think of corrupt governments, what types do you think of?  Prosperous, efficient ones, or stagnant third word spitoons?

Let’s see:  Russia; corrupt oligarchy, fake elections, population implosion, grinding poverty, economic ruin, rampant alcoholism as people escape the harsh reality with vodka, a land only fit for white niggers.

Switzerland:  clean, efficient, prosperous, honest government.

I can compare all day.  But the places going nowhere require a buddy network and tons of cash in bribery to get anything done, while the places that are making good clear this underbrush out of the way and have cleaner, accountable government.

Look at the government of Detroit, then look at Detroit.  Look at the government of Valparaiso, Indiana, then look at that boomtown.

I know Gary, Indiana.  It has had graft problems since World War II.  Gilroy, the city stadium built for high school games, cost as much as a pro stadium of its time.  And not because it was any nicer than other large high school stadia.  Millions of dollars were poured into the city in the 1970′s for urban renewal, and there is nothing to show for it.  All the national donations to a Civil Rights Hall of Fame that was never built.  It is one thing to pay a tax and see roads, bridges, buildings.  Another to see it go poof.

Now look at Illinois. The tail of Chicago wags the state dog.  When Blagojevich first became governor, he shut down a Joliet landfill run by a relative of his father in law, the guy who made him governor, Richard Mell, giving Mell an axe to grind.  The wheels of revenge may grind slowly, but grind they do.  This is the background to consider when you think of his arrest.  Would he have gotten arrested if he didn’t cross his father in law, and by extension the Chicago machine?  Or would they have been available to cleanse his path and sweep away his footsteps, allowing him to sell a Senate seat and intimidate the Tribune into firing editors who dared to criticize him, with no threat of punishment?

This corruption did not make him arrogant, with a feeling of Teflon protection, overnight.  What has he seen in his early career that gave him the idea that he can reach as far as he did, too?

Once government gets mobbed up, the area it governs is soon to follow into decay.  Gary’s county, Lake, had a sheriff go into witness protection once he was convicted for corruption, for he knew he was a dead man if he stayed in the open while testifying against fellow county government men.  Look at this image of him in a Halloween mask with sniper accompaniment, as he goes into Federal Court in Hammond to testify.  Inset, is as he was, a man once feeling in charge of everything, afraid of nothing.

Sheriff Rudy Bartolomei (Photo from Chicago Tribune)

That wasn’t enough to clean up the mess.  An East Chicago government man fled to Greece, from where he could not get extradicted, to avoid testifying in a trial, and endangering his life as a result.  East Chicago Lawyer Jay Given was shot in a room of 400 people at a political fundraiser, and no one saw it.  Fellow East Chicago politico Babe Lopez ended up dead at the bottom of the Grand Cal, with a brick tied to the accelerator and a shot in the back of the head, and the coroner of course said it was suicide.

Political machines play for real, and play for keeps.  From this type of environment sprang the political career of That One.  Over the next four years we’ll choose if we become a Russia, or a Switzerland.

Filed under: no wonder I'm fed up, politics

Sentence

I used to be upset over the not guilty verdict of the O.J. murders.  But no more.  In fact, it seems that things worked out better than if he got put in jail for the first time.

Instead of being in jail among people who would give him respect for killing whitey, he is in jail in a state where I doubt he’d find any fans.  And where someone might get some respect if they did him in.

He got to spend a decade and a half being ostracised from polite society, the very people who he tried to impress and with whom he wanted to fit in.  He could make no money that wouldn’t gewt confiscated for the lost civil case.  And every move he made had gotten him in deeper and deeper than if he would’ve just retired and lived out of the country.  He could find no peace, no comfort, so he made an effort to get back some of his personal things, and in doing so, he set himself up for his demise.  So he has no one to blame but himself.

I do like it so!

Filed under: observations, tribute