WritingIrish

Grounded

2012-01-12T12:00:00.001-08:00

While Alaska struggles under 15+feet of snow, Missouri residents, winged and non-winged, adjust with some annoyance to an overnight one-inch dusting, the first of the season. Juncos, Cardinals, Purple Finches and White-throated Sparrows share black oil sunflower seed while St. Louis motorists slip and slide down city streets with more than a few complaints and collisions.

"I'm thinking about moving," grumbled one exec after taking 40 minutes to drive less than a mile. If I were better at Arithmetic, I could probably point out that the cellar-dwelling NFL St. Louis Rams have taken 60 minutes to travel less than one hundred yards more than once this past season.

Thanksgiving Reject

2011-12-01T06:22:00.000-08:00

If you think you have problems, consider this poor old Wild Eastern Turkey who will not be among those courting the ladies next spring. Nor will he ever be selected to grace anyone's Thanksgiving plate. This poor guy is blind in his right eye and almost blind in his left. It's a problem of warts that have grown over his eyes. He has returned faithfully every day for the past week and feeds on the corn I put out. However, I fear for his well being as winter approaches. Anyone have any suggestions? Meanwhile, I'll put in a call to the Conservation Dept.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; src="http://act.theteaparty.net/5273/prosecute-eric-holder/wt/?src=widget" width="220px"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; src="http://act.theteaparty.net/5273/prosecute-eric-holder/wt/?src=widget" width="220px"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Full Beaver Moon

2011-11-10T08:35:00.001-08:00

November's full Moon is called the Beaver Moon because it wasthe time to set traps, before the waters froze over. This Moon was also calledthe Full Frost Moon.

See it in the East tonight with the bright planet Jupiter at the right and the Pleiades to the left. (As you view it.)

Midnight Visitor

2011-11-09T13:57:00.000-08:00

Out here in Missouri folks were excited to learn that the baseball Cardinals Manager Tony LaRussa just received a congratulatory phone call from the White House on the Birds' World Championship. You can imagine my surprise when I was awakened at midnight by a visit from the President himself. There he was, scratching at my deck door in the darkness. When I turned on the light and opened the door to greet him, however, he fled. There's just no accounting for the actions of Democrats.

236 Years and Counting

2011-11-09T09:00:00.000-08:00

NOVEMBER 10, 2011:
That's how many years it's been, yes 236, since the first Marines joined the Corps in 1775 at Philadelphia's Tun Tavern. Are there any Marines alive today who do not remember their Serial Number? Not likely. Some can even remember their Rifle number. Fifty seven years later, I am not one of them. Today is the day we memorialize Marines everywhere, those no longer in uniform, those serving in the MidEast and elsewhere, and especially all those who died in defense of their country. Thank you and SEMPER FI!

What's Going On?

2011-09-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

According to the Mayan calendar, December 21 of 2012 will be a once-in-26,000-years event. Our sun will be perfectly aligned with the center of the Milky Way, the galaxy that contains our Solar System. But that's just a side issue. If you were one of those who watched the six-hour, storm-delayed football game between Notre Dame and S. Florida on Sept. 3, you may be aware that at the height of the lightning storm (which forced total evacuation of the ND stadium) several UFO's were recorded on camera. There was no conspiracy or theatre here. Different cameras all recorded the same flights of at least two objects traveling at speeds and performing maneuvers that no man-made aircraft could come even close to matching. One such photo (small, blue) is above. Last night being the Harvest Moon, I stood out by my pumpkin patch about 10PM and photographed the full Harvest Moon that, in days gone by, provided farmers with more than enough light to finish bringing in their crops. When I transferred the photos to my computer, I was surprised to see that three of the photos also revealed something else that, for lack of better words, was like a glowing orange worm. See photos above.
I'm wondering now if anything similar was visible in the night skies above Ann Arbor last Saturday when Michigan scored a miraculous touchdown to defeat the Irish after finding themselves losing their lead with only 30 seconds remaining in the game.
And what will there be in the night skies this coming Saturday when the Mich State Spartans travel to South Bend? Can it be that residents of one of our neighboring Solar systems have discovered football? Or are these latest appearances of UFOs just part of what we might expect next year as the "Big Event" of the Mayan Calendar comes to pass?

When Our Lady ain't happy...

2011-09-04T06:59:00.000-07:00

Our Lady threw a few lightning bolts in South Bend yesterday, perhaps as a reminder to Notre Dame's increasingly secular administration that they have strayed far from the path that Rev. Edward Sorin, the university's founder, meant for them. This has all happened since 1967 when an overconfident clique of "Catholic" college prexies assembled in upstate Wisconsin to declare their independence from the Vatican. All in the interest of "academic freedom" of course. ND's mad rush to join the "Free thinking" Ivy Leaguers has led to a university that is now pretty much spiraling downhill by the day, many Church officials, alumni and long-time supporters believe.
In its shocking loss yesterday to unheralded S. Florida, the pre-season 16th ranked Irish played like an eighth-grade pickup team as lightning crackled over the stadium in a six-hour exhibition that would have sent the Four Horsemen galloping out of town. On the sidelines, ND's highly-touted new coach Brian Kelly looked like a cross between Jimmy Cagney and Captain Queeg having a stroke. Kelly's on-again, off-again quarterbacks must wonder who is really the opposition. The Irish starting lineup included a 250-pound linebacker whose sexual assault on a 110-pound coed last year drove her to suicide. No matter, ND's PR department assured the world that the incident would be thoroughly investigated. The university no doubt hopes that everyone will forget. This particular jock has a long history of violence, including throwng a desk at his high school teacher who took his cell phone away. But, in the shadowy world under the Golden Dome, society's standards of behavior are different for those who wear football uniforms, even those who play as sloppily as they did yesterday. A few more lightning bolts in the right place might be what is needed.

A week later and nothing has changed. Our Lady is still unhappy with Notre Dame's stiff-necked abandonment of her Catholic mandate. This time, she used Denard Robinson (Michigan QB) as Her messenger. What next?

He's Worried, too

2011-09-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

When I was in the service a thousand years ago, I worried that I'd be sent to some combat theatre and die there. I was not and I did not. But now, I'm thinking that very much more of Obama's face and fiction will most certainly put me in my grave. Is there no end to his deceit, dissembling and hypocrisy? I really think he should be institutionalized.

Opportunity Knocks

2011-04-12T07:46:00.000-07:00

Ninety-nine years ago today a group of Irish immigrants, mostly all poor as Church Mice, departed from the port of Queenstown (now Cobh) in southeast Ireland. Almost all were third-class passengers, carefully excluded from any contact with the wealthy "elite" on the decks above. We all know the outcome of that brief journey aboard the world's most famous ship on its maiden run to New York City. Four days after leaving Ireland, some 1,500 passengers aboard Titanic perished in icy waters 350 miles south of Newfoundland. One third of the original 2,200 on board survived, as well as two dogs. There will be dozens of Memorial services and events at this time next year to mark the 100th anniversary of the tragedy, including a repeat voyage following the same route as the ill-fated White
Star liner. Tickets, anyone?

February in the Country

2011-02-10T06:20:00.000-08:00

February 9, 2011: Another tale of a 13-year old to report upon. Not a gifted grandchild (like yesterday’s Blog) but a rebellious 1998 SUV with a gnawing problem.
What is this orange “ABS” warning on my dashboard? Nothing to do with my Abs, I’m sure, as they vanished many years ago. Whatever they were. If they ever were.
SEE YOUR DEALER I’m instructed. I do so on a snowy and slippery Wednesday morn. A 30–minute drive to the dealer from my isolated home at the end of a gravel lane in the country.
“Could be a lot of things. We’ll check it out,” I’m told by Greg, Head Service man.
In the confined waiting room, an hour later, I tire of watching a forced-upon local (St. Louis) channel pitching the in-town arrival of a new Disney Mickey Mouse Magic Show. “It’s a “Magical Event with Mickey and all his friends…”
I retreat to the showroom and turn on my laptop hoping for a WiFi connection. It’s there. “Forty Seven years ago today, February 9, 1964, the Beatle invasion began. Seventy three million witnessed the Beatles singing “All my Loving” on the Ed Sullivan show. “ I remember Ed. He was a member of our St. Mary’s Parish in Port Chester NY and a good guy, albeit no Bob Hope. But lots of free appearances for charitable causes.
I return to the Service Desk and consult Greg . In an era of commercial sleight-of-tongue and fine-print trickery, Greg is my guardian angel and should be running General Motors. (Not some community organizer.)
“I’ll give you a loaner,” says Greg. “We’ll need a few more hours on your car.”
“What is it?” I ask. Just a fuse, I had thought.
He gives me a pained look.
“Mice.”
I’ve been here before. They snuggle up to the engine block and build their nests. I’d turned on the ignition of my SUV a month earlier, then the heater fan. A torrent of mice excrement and mini-acorns blew into my lap.
This is more serious. Now they’ve chewed their way through much of my wire circuitry. Three hours and $306 later, I have my SUV back with new wiring. Greg tells me they ousted at least one mouse, but they think he got back inside.
“Get some mothballs,” he advises. What I really need is a very hungry cat.

Abi, my 13-year-old home-schooled granddaughter, writes:

2011-02-08T13:56:00.000-08:00

Forgotten Islands
The islands had no name; they had never had a name. They were deserted pieces of ground that lay in the lagoon, protected from the sea by a larger island. Fishermen came and went, only pausing to cast out from the sand strewn with driftwood and fish bones. Swarms of kingfishers, seagulls, and pelicans invaded the island, and dolphins dove in the brackish water in search of mullet, mackerel, or cod. Occasionally a heron glided down to snap up a fish. Manatees floated by, nibbling on the sea grass that covered the lagoon’s bottom. Mangroves, reaching their long legs into the water, were populated by loggerhead and hawksbill turtles, as well as panthers, eagles, falcons, and yellow- and indigo-colored snakes. Australian pines grew thickly together in several places, each one stretching its roots to grasp the soil. Black and white mangroves swarmed the beaches. Southern live oaks rose from the center of the island, towering above everything.
The island bustled with activity, but from where I balanced on the end of the sea-weathered dock, they appeared to be a green line along the scarlet horizon. I let myself hang over the edge of the dock until my toes touched the rough board that served as a makeshift seat. The motor sputtered after a few tugs at the pull cord; after a few more, I listened to it roar as I untied the spring line and pushed off from the dock. Waves of salty spray rose as the collapsible boat tore through the water. The motor sometimes died out about halfway, so I knelt down to check the fuel. A charcoal-colored fin sliced above the water, announcing an approaching dolphin. A few brown pelicans followed the dolphin, hoping to be led to a school of fish. I heard a splash as a pelican dived for his supper. Finally, as an indication that my efforts toward reviving the motor had paid off, it rumbled, and I shot off again.
At my arrival, the twittering of unseen mockingbirds filled the trees as I scanned the first island for the dock that I had built with three 5-by-5 fir planks and ten 3-foot-long posts. I carefully backed in and tossed a bay line from the bow. Bringing the rear of the boat into parallel with the dock, I threw another line from the stern and secured the boat. Reaching up, I grasped two of the posts that rose from the dock and pulled myself onto the island.
The dock reached out into a wide bay that slowly curved into the island. Fallen pines lay around the dock. To my left I could see a gap in the trees where a path wove to meet the beach, but I decided to go right. I kept to the beach until the trees crowded me out, and I scrambled through the scratchy underbrush. I came upon a natural clearing with a floor of pine needles and stopped to rest. I glanced around me, and noticed a crude campfire: stones lay in neat circle, charred remains of firewood cluttering the center. Looking eastwards, the direction opposite where my boat was moored, I saw a clear beach once again. Striding over, I ran my fingers through the dark sand and watched a motorboat speed by.
I continued to my left until the trees pushed me away again, and I slowly made my way towards the direction of the dock. I passed through two clearings with carpeted with pine needles. One of them also had a campfire made in the same simple way. Reaching the area near the boat, I clambered over fallen pines till I saw before me the dark forest crowding over a neglected path that led north. The path split into two; one continued through an area of dense trees, whereas the other ran along a ridge close to the lagoon. It came out on a clear beach. A sandbar connected the island on which I was now standing with the second island. I ventured across the sandbar, jumping over the middle where the water was a few inches deep. The fading sunlight, passing through the water, made swirly patterns on the lagoon floor.
I continued northeast. I walked through a natural door formed by Florida sugar maples. Ahead of me was a rough campsite. There was a blue clothesline, two fire pits identical to the ones on the first island, again with a floor of pine needles. A charred, rusty camping grill lay on their side below the clothesline. I turned to my left and trudged down a path that led to the other side of the island. The path wound around several curves and finally left me at the side of a muddy pond. The bright red of the evening sky reflected in the pond.
I continued to the left and wound up on a beach that stretched far into the water. The beach was littered with fish bones and oyster shells. I picked up one of the shells. The outside was a pattern of grey lines that ran both ways, but the inside was a deep purple. I raised my head to see the same shade of purple projected on the sky. The first star shone above my head and the tiny sliver of a moon rose behind me. I heard the music of the crickets and the rhythmic beating of the waves as night fell on the forgotten islands.

Put Your Little Hand in Mine...

2011-01-26T10:58:00.000-08:00

It’s 6 a.m in Punxsutawney PA and Bill Murray is smashing his clock radio again. We can empathize.

"Groundhog Day" has become the icon for those looking to escape repetition and hopelessness. Like Americans have been doing these past two years.

We turn on the TV and see THAT FACE again, over and over, jaw pointing to the sky and brainless head bobbing from left to right and right to left in tune with his teleprompter. It never changes. Day after day of eloquent but empty words. Day after day of non-accomplishment. Another and yet another Groundhog Day.

(Don't look to escape for at least two years.)

Happy Heartburn

2011-01-24T09:22:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day in ‘39
Paula, Paula, please be mine.
My youthful heart was in a whirl
For that bright-eyed, little
Red-headed girl.

Yes, I set my cap for Paula Payne
But learned the
meaning of the word “disdain.”

Miss Lyman gave the box a shake
and then once more for Cupid’s sake.

Sixty-three for Paula Payne,
The six I sent her
all in vain.

When all the handing out was done,
Upon my desk there was but one.

Yes, the only card I ever got,
was “I Hate You” from Emma Prott.

It’s too late, Paula, yes it’s too late. Something inside has died and I jut can’t take it, you little red-headed minx and my first grade passion.

More Hypocrisy

2011-01-20T11:03:00.001-08:00

WHAT'S WRONG HERE?

ND's president Jenkins to march in Washington's Roe v. Wade Pro-Life Rally at the same time that he continues to prosecute the "ND88," those who dared to "trespass" on the ND campus in peaceful protest against Jenkins awarding an honorary doctorate to the nation's most committed pro-abortionist, Barack Obama.

The university issued the following release:

"Students, alumni, and administrators from Notre Dame will join University President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., in Washington, D.C., January 24 for the annual March for Life, a pro-life rally protesting abortion held on the anniversary of the decision in the United States Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. While the march is taking place, the Alumni Association will hold a Sanctity of Life prayer service at the Grotto on Notre Dame’s campus."

Hypocrisy running rampant!

Caught Red-Handed

2011-01-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

That crack on the head that John Andrew Boehner and his new gavel gave Nancy hasn't deterred her one bit. She and Dingy Harry are caught here up to their old tricks at a midnight planning session.

Still in There Pitchin'

2011-01-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 7, 2011. It's his birthday today, and Chicago's Dick Savage is expecting visits from some of his kids, grandkids and great grandkids. "I don't know how many will show up," he says. How many are there in all? Ninety-nine. How old is Dick today? One hundred and three. Born in 1908, the last year that his beloved Chicago Cubs won a World Series. But Dick hasn't given up hope. "The Lord is keeping me alive for a reason. And I think it's to see the Cubbies finally win one." Dick is the oldest living graduate (1930) of the University of Notre Dame. He's a Bridge fanatic and still plays. At Chicago's Palmer House in the '60's , he played with one of the game's greatest, Charles Goren. No, he's not on the Internet. He bought a Zenith computer back in the late '70s but never got friendly with it. We understand. Happy Number 103, Dick.

....And all that jazz

2011-01-03T14:16:00.001-08:00

Buddy Rich. 1917-1987. Drummer extraordinaire. Never took a music lesson, but played with such jazz greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Ventura, Louis Armstrong and Gene Krupa. Krupa called him “the greatest drummer ever to have drawn breath.”
On March 29, 1948, the Buddy Rich band played for the Junior Prom at Iona Prep in New Rochelle NY. As a 14 year-old brat working the soft-drink-and-cookies stand in one corner of Iona’s Harris gymnasium, I had the chance to watch the master drummer up close. Intermission and the band wanted some refreshments. “On the house,” I told them. “Take all you want.” At closing time one of them came over and handed me a pair of Buddy Rich’s drumsticks. “On the house,” he said. I gave one of them to my pal who was working with me. Did he keep it? Who knows. But I kept mine. That was 63 years ago and I still have it. And the program from that night. Here’s to you, Buddy Rich. Hope you enjoyed the cookies.

"I Really Can't Stay Long..."

2010-12-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

Yet another malfunctioning GPS on the Missouri skyways. This Tufted Titmouse careened into the deck door and got the worse of it. Some rubbing of his tummy and a few encouraging words put him back in action. He posed for a few photos and soon rejoined his mates foraging at the feeder for black oil sunflower seeds. (Make sure you keep trays of water available for your winter visitors.)

ND's Rev. (?) Jenkins refuses to Meet with Parents of Molested Teen Suicide

2010-12-18T14:26:00.000-08:00

Seeberg Family Rebuffed:

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/12/17/lizzy-seebergs-family-feels-violated-notre-dame-football-star/

2010-12-17T12:35:00.000-08:00

When I began writing the novel "Grottogate" about a year ago, I had only a vague outline in mind. I wanted to include the Titanic disaster (100th anniversary fast upcoming), the ill-considered honorary doctorate awarded by the University of Notre Dame to Barack Obama, and the occasion of the 100th birthday of Notre Dame's oldest graduate.

How to tie all these together?

Along the way, serendipity stepped in. I discovered that there were two passengers on Titanic named Kate Connolly I began to uncover other road signs that told me I was most certainly on the right path. Talking to ND's oldest grad, I learned that his mother shared my surname, that our ancestors were from the same county in Ireland, and he and I both were Bridge fanatics. Soon after, I discovered that a Notre Dame classmate and friend had published a scholarly tome on exactly the university's same disheartening digressions from Catholicism that I hoped to explore. Then I found that the 85-year-old daughter of an Irish-born Titanic survivor was living just 15 minutes from me.

That lady was Mary Kathleen Daly Joyce of Union, MO, whose father, Eugene Daly, was one of the 705 who survived the April 15, 1912, sinking of the most famous ship in maritime history. Mary was still active in Titanic-related events.

She was kind enough to let me interview her several times. I brought her a coffee table book on “A Day in the Life of Ireland.” We examined every page as her black cat sat on my lap.

She gave me access to photographs of her famous father, who was memorialized as the “piper” aboard the Titanic. He played the “Uillean” or “elbow” bagpipes that relieved the piper of blowing into the bag. In the short four days before the Titanic collided with a massive iceberg south of Newfoundland, Eugene Daly had become the darling of the third class (“Steerage”) passengers, entertaining them with Irish jigs and reels as the luxury liner sped across the North Atlantic on her maiden voyage.

Ultimately (under the character name Mary Dolan), Mary Daly Joyce became a major character in my book (“Grottogate”). We exchanged letters and phone calls regularly. She sent me recollections of her father, interspersed with relevant quotes from Scripture.

I called her late in September to let her know that I expected first copies within weeks. “Forget the book,” she said. “Just come over for some more talk and tea—and some soda bread.” I did not. I was swept up in the last of the many telephone and e-mail communications with my publisher that led to the book's arrival at my front door.

On October 15, I approved the final proofs. Ten days later, the first books were delivered. I called Mary immediately to let her know I'd be over with her copy.

I hadn't told her that I'd included a tribute to her in the “front matter” of the book. It read: “The Lord blessed me the day he sent me to Mary Daly Joyce of Missouri, a God-fearing and faithful friend and daughter of Eugene Daly, the piper aboard the Titanic who survived to return to Ireland. I treasure Mary's memories and moral support.”

After several failed attempts to reach her by phone, I called her son's home. “Mary died two weeks ago,” I was told.

I have only her letters, some photos, (and her father's recipes for Soda Bread and Irish Brown Cake) to fall back on. I've made many mistakes in my life. The decision not to visit her that last time was certainly among the worst.

.

“Books Unearthed in my Basement”

2010-12-08T14:48:00.000-08:00

First Lessons in English Grammar by G.F. Holmes, University Publishing Co., New York, 1879. Book’s owner, apparently one Elias Wesley. Interestingly, Wesley (or someone else) sketched an 1878 20-cent silver piece on the title page, a coin that now sells for as much as $11,000.
“First Lessons…” would be very useful today, I believe, for more than 50% of Americans, including a number of White House residents. Some very basic stuff.
For instance: Says G.F. Holmes, “Vowels are sounds that can be uttered by themselves (a, o, i etc.). Consonants are sounds that cannot be uttered without the help of a vowel: (e.g. t, m, b etc.). Think about it next time you’re searching for music on your radio. Is it possible you can even distinguish between a consonant and a vowel? Or does it all just sound like someone flushing something putrid down the toilet?

Archangelic Architecture

2010-12-07T06:16:00.000-08:00

December temperatures that flirt with freezing drop anchor out here in the Missouri outlands. The black plastic trays and terra cotta base plates of water for the birds ice up overnight. Down at the pond it takes longer, but the early architecture of the surface is pure art that would make Pella or Andersen shatter with envy.
Perfect geometric patterns: triangles, rectangles, diamonds, even pentagons. Art imitates nature for sure, but art can’t touch these originals. To add to the display, the thin ice sings and whistles quietly as it forms.
Underneath, the catfish, bass, turtles and frogs have buried themselves close to the shore in the bottom mud and leaves for the winter, unaware of the matchless deco designs of sparkling crystal layers taking shape above them. They’ll remain there until the water temperatures rise. (Bullhead catfish can become totally frozen and yet revive in the spring.)
There are days that I envy them all.

The buck stops here...

2010-12-03T05:18:00.000-08:00

It's 5:45 AM and the best time of day. I make my way through the darkened house to the deck for an uninhibited view of the waning, thin crescent moon in the southeast. Above it, Venus is a brilliant burst of light, showing her finest visage at this time of year. The temperature is in the 30s and I'm shivering but the view is worth it. Waves of cold seep up the lawn from the woods below and I wonder if there are any deer watching me standing here like an an idiot in shorts and tee shirt. I know one phase of the hunting season expires this weekend and I think those without antlers will be safe come Monday morning. We have a posted "Positively No Hunting" sign at the top of our lane and I regularly reattach it and nail it back to its frame. Who detaches it and leaves it on the ground? I don't know, but I think the deer understand that these woods are a safe haven. I come inside and turn on the lights. A fat field mouse has visited the kitchen overnight and tripped the old, splintered Victory trap that I've set in the corner of the kitchen. Sorry, Mister Mouse, positively no sampling. I carry him to the front door and pitch him out to the hawks. At the same instant, a bat who has been overnighting on my front porch flutters down from the ceiling and loops over my head. Later, after a fiery red winter sun has risen above the tree tops on the same path as the moon, I pick up my new e-book reader to enjoy a visit with Agatha Christie. As I pass the living room window I glance down at the pond to see a buck deer making his way cautiously down the dam. Is he still endangered? I don't know. I'll have to check those Dept. of Conservation dates again. But for now, he's still alive and I'm happy.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Feeder

2010-11-29T10:59:00.000-08:00

...Not so funny, actually, for this smartly dressed handful of fluff. A second story window intruded on its flight path and he wound up sprawled on a latticed iron deck table, eyes glazed and claws locked tightly.This seems to occur regularly despite the ornaments and pieces of tape I've put on the window to deter incoming avians. Mourning doves, cardinals, nuthatches, titmice, wrens, at least one catbird - - they've all had collisions with the backside of my two-story home, especially above the deck. I brought this fellow, a young black-capped chickadee, inside and subjected him to about five minutes of massaging in the heart area. It's the best way that I know to revive these off-course fliers and it worked just fine for this guy. I took him back outside, held a one-way conversation for a few minutes and he flew to a nearby branch to pose for photos. All chickadees look alike to me so I can't tell which he is of the large number out there feeding at the moment. The chickadee is one of the human-friendly birds who can be taught to feed from one's hand in bad-weather situations.

Then and Now

2010-11-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

When Notre Dame and nearby women's college Saint Mary's were actually Catholic, everything short of an armed blockade was employed to keep the two sexes separated. In earlier days, a stile allowed approved ND visitors to SMC to access the "Avenue" leading to the ladies. In later years, the stile was removed and a Colfax Avenue bus would stop there to pick up and return students to town.

A friend of mine from Kansas first ventured on the SMC campus in 1952 when he had been drafted at the last minute for a "blind date." He dressed up with a nice white shirt and a sweater, "big stuff for a kid from Kansas" he told me later. He gave his name at the door and a messenger was dispatched upstairs to announce his arrival.
One of the good sisters (from deep within her traditional Holy Cross clamshell wimple) confronted him.
"Young man, where is your necktie?"
He hesitated. "Sister, Jesus did not wear a tie."
He was escorted off campus.
All of this, of course, was before both colleges became venues for the "Anything goes" secular philosophy. So much for Old School Ties.

Things that happened on the Day that Tom Bergeron was Born

2010-11-16T11:27:00.000-08:00

Friday, May 6, 1955. I'm skipping lunch today so I can get out on Highway 17 north and put Camp LeJeune behind me for the weekend. People are kind. They pick up Marines in uniform and even buy me a meal sometimes. I could pretty much set my watch, had I one, at estimating the time I would arrive at my destination. It's almost like having my own car, but someone else buys the gas. There may be a danger to this weekend hitch-hiking existence, but I haven't encountered it yet. Au contraire. Just a few weeks ago, on a rainy Friday evening, a new red '55 Mercury Monterey braked for me on Route 1 north out of Fredericksburg. A lovely lady with a lovely smile from Rocky Mount NC, not that far from Lejeune. "Sorry," she said, "I'm only going as far as DC." I was headed to New York. No matter, by the time we reached DC, Peggy and I were pretty good friends, I had her telephone number and she promised to write me and let me know when she'd drive down for the weekend. But this weekend I was planning to thumb to New York and be with my family. That is, until the telegram arrived, a mere hour before I was to station myself on Rt. 17 and beg a ride. "DO NOT COME HOME THIS WEEK TO (sic) MUCH CONFUSION DETAILS IN LETTER."

A dozen words in WESTERN UNION'S block text that stopped me in my tracks. That was communication fifty-five years ago. No instant messaging or e-mail. Just a two- dollar trip to the W.U. office in White Plains to warn me off. I already had my weekend Pass in my pocket, so I decided to just get out on the highway and see where it might take me. I stopped at the barracks first to get my bag. The mail had been delivered and, as usual, dropped on our racks. I had a letter. It was from Peggy and she said she would arrive about five that afternoon. She did and we spent the weekend in Wilmington. Communications in those days was not quite so speedy, but it had a way of working out.

Oh, and the "Confusion" at home? One of my older sisters had announced her intent to marry. She'd met him three weeks ago. Yes, I can imagine the confusion.

George Schwartz, aka George Soros

2010-11-10T05:17:00.000-08:00

From my friend Dave Meyer who points out that Soros "makes no pretense about the fact that he wants to bring the US down. Just read his own words below and also understand that Mr. Soros and Mr. Obama have close ties."

Background Guide to George Soros

Posted on November 9, 2010 at 5:07pm by Jonathon M. Seidl

Editor’s note: The following outline was obtained by The Blaze from Glenn Beck’s TV team. It is the background document they used to produce Tuesday night’s George Soros expose. It has been edited for form but not content:

BACKGROUND

“Messianic Fantasies”

“It is sort of a disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out,” (The Independent, June 3, 1993)

“I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of self-importance –to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes or, even better, a scientist like Einstein,” (The Alchemy of Finance, George Soros)

According to friend Byron Wien (now with the Blackstone Group), “You must understand he thinks he’s been anointed by God to solve insoluble problems. The proof is that he has been so successful at making so much. He therefore thinks he has a responsibility to give money away,” (Time Magazine, Sept. 1, 1997)

“If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin. But when I made my way in the world I wanted to indulge myself in my fantasies to the extent that I could afford.”

George Soros 60 Minutes Interview – 12/20/98 / Transcript:

KROFT: Are you religious?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: Do you believe in God?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: (Voiceover) Soros told us he believes God was created by man, not the other way around, which may be why he thinks he can smooth out the world’s imperfections.

<"%3Ca%20target=%27_blank%27%20href=%27http://dart.clearchannel.com/click.ng/site=premiere&affiliate=prn-theblaze&pagepos=9028&prngenre=conservative_talk&prntype=web&prnpage=interior%27%3Ehttp://dart.clearchannel.com/click.ng/site=premiere&affiliate=prn-th>

“THE MAN WHO BROKE THE BANK OF ENGLAND”

“As September 15 wore on, George Soros’s confidence that Britain would pull the pound out of the ERM was growing. It had been Stanley Druckenmiller who had thought the time ripe for making a bet against the sterling. He talked to Soros about doing something. Soros gave him the green light but urged his head trader to bet an even larger sum than Druckenmiller had in mind. And so Druckenmiller, acting for Soros, sold $10 billion worth of sterling… The next morning at 7:00, the phone rang at Soros’s home. It was Stan Druckenmiller with news… While George Soros had slept, he racked a profit $958 million. When Soros’s gains from other positions he took during the ERM crisis were tallied, he racked up close to $2 billion… It was this bet, this single act of placing $10 billion on the fact that Britain would have to devalue the pound, that made George Soros world famous,” (SOROS THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY, pgs 5-6).

“He famously shorted the British pound in 1992, wagering $10 billion on a drop in its value. In a desperate bid to keep its currency afloat, the Bank of England tried to buy up pounds as fast as Soros could dump them. However, as more and more investors followed Soros’ lead and joined his efforts, the Bank of England eventually gave up. The British pound was devalued, launching a tsunami of financial turmoil from Tokyo to Rome. When it was over, millions of hardworking Britons confronted their diminished savings, while Soros counted his gains. He had personally made nearly $2 billion on the catastrophe,” (The Shadow Party, pg. 4).

Soros has said of this event: “I had no platform, so I deliberately [did] the sterling thing to create a platform. Obviously people care about the man who made a lot of money…my influence has continued to grow and I do have access to,”(Time Magazine, Sept 1, 1997)

In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, the then Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, accused him of bringing down the Malaysian currency, the ringgit, through his trading activities. In Thailand he was branded an “economic war criminal” who “sucks the blood from the people”.

REVOLUTIONS

“Just write that the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire,” (The New Republic, Jan 1994)

“I am acting out a fantasy and so is Eastern Europe. A psychiatrist once told me how dangerous it is to act out fantasies and I am beginning to see what he meant,” (http://www.osi.hu/oss/postscript.html)

ANTI-SEMITISM

In a 1998 interview with Steve Kroft, Soros was asked if he felt guilty about confiscating property from Jews as a teenager. He responded, “No.”

“I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence–but I don’t want to be part of it.”That experience notwithstanding, Soros has chosen to exclude Israel and Jewish causes, by and large, from his massive philanthropy-a decision that has caused comment among one of his colleagues in the financial community, particularly those who are strong supporters of Israel. In Hungary, Soros has been subject to anti-Semitic attacks. Referring to being a target, Soros, in his book “Underwriting Democracy,” wrote, “I am ready to stand up and be counted.” When I mentioned that rather suggestive line to Soros during one of several extended interviews with him, he responded quickly, “Right. It took me a long time.”

He continued, “My mother was quite anti-Semitic, and ashamed of being Jewish. Given the culture in which one lived, being Jewish was a clear-cut stigma, disadvantage, a handicap-and, therefore, there was always the desire to transcend it, to escape it.” He confirmed what someone had told me-that his family name had long ago been changed from Schwartz. “So the assimilationist Jews of Hungary had a deep sense of inferiority and it took me a long time to work through that,” he said, adding, however, that he succeeded in doing so many years ago… “I am escaping the particular. I think I am doing exactly that by espousing this universal concept”-of open society. “In other words, I don’t think that you can ever overcome anti-Semitism if you behave as a tribe… the only way you can overcome it is if you give up the tribalness.”

(Source: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SOROS by CONNIE BRUC, The New Yorker, January 23, 1995,)

“As I looked around me for a worthy cause. I ran into difficulties. I did not belong to any community. As a Hungarian Jew I had never quite become an American. I had left Hungary behind and my Jewishness did not express itself in a sense of tribal loyalty that would have led me to support Israel,” (http://www.osi.hu/oss/ch1.html)

INFO ON NAME CHANGE FROM SHWARTZ TO SOROS

Born in Hungary in 1930, Mr. Soros began life as George Schwartz. His father, Tivadar, was from humble origins; his mother, Erzebet, from money. Both were Jews, but nonobservant (she eventually converted to Catholicism). Once married, Tivadar had to work just two hours a day managing some of his wife’s family property, which provided a handsome living for them and their two sons, Paul and George. At some point during the boys’ childhood, the parents decided to change the family name and chose the Hungarian-sounding but in fact obscure Soros. It means “soar” (in the future tense) in Esperanto, the made-up trans-European language promoted by those who dreamed of a world free of nationality. Tivadar was among its leading proponents. (Source: The Mind of George Soros; Meet the Esperanto enthusiast who wants to save the world from President Bush, 2 March 2004, The Wall Street Journal)

Before the end of the war, however, Soros’ upper-middle-class world had inverted. The family posed as Christians and separated to hide from the Germans. They changed their name from Schwartz (considered too Jewish-sounding) to Soros (more reflective of the family’s Hungarian roots and because his father liked the palindrome). (The elusive billionaire: An author tries valiantly to capture the essence of philanthropist George Soros, Vancouver Sun, 20 April 2002)

MORE ON TIVADAR SOROS

The other day, George Soros and his older brother Paul, an engineer turned investor-philanthropist, met in the offices of Soros Fund Management to discuss their father. The occasion was the English-language publication of Tivadar Soros’s wartime memoir, “Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-Occupied Hungary,” which was first published in 1965 in Esperanto, one of six languages in which Soros pere was fluent.

“It was his nature, regardless of difficulties, to believe that one must behave like a human being and one must make the most of life,” Paul Soros said, explaining the charm and ebullience of his father, who, in the book, is described by his five-year-old son George as “a married bachelor,” and who, even when living semi-reclusively under an assumed Christian identity, never missed his daily swim. “I remember during the siege we went to the opera, because at a time when there was no food the opera still served very nice hors d’oeuvres and patisserie. Whether or not it was prudent, the idea was that you should make the most of your circumstances.”

George, who, like Paul, has inherited his father’s broad face, pointed out that Tivadar’s fondness for the comforts of bourgeois life was not accompanied by a docile bourgeois sensibility. “We didn’t preserve ordinariness,” George said. “He made us very conscious that these were extraordinary times and that the normal rules didn’t apply.” In the book, Tivadar writes that at one point young George was required by the authorities to deliver notices to certain Jews that they should report to the Rabbinical Seminary with blankets and food. “This was a profoundly important experience for me,” George said. “My father said, ‘You should go ahead and deliver them, but tell the people that if they report they will be deported.‘ The reply from one man was ’I am a law-abiding citizen. They can’t do anything to me.’ I told my father, and that was an occasion for a lecture that there are times when you have laws that are immoral, and if you obey them you perish.”

“Masquerade” contains a great deal of black social comedy; a running theme is Tivadar’s efforts to convince his recalcitrant mother-in-law that, all things considered, it really would be best if she stopped regarding the occupation as a personal insult. (”I refuse to go anywhere if the people don‘t know who I am and I have to pretend I’m somebody else all the time,” she said of his attempts to find a safe house for her.) Tivadar’s own ease with his assumed identity-he grew a mustache, and went by Elek Szabo-led him, one day during an air raid, to tell a neighbor in the shelter about the time he approached the podium on which Hitler was standing at the 1936 Winter Olympics, just to see how close he could get. “Hardly fifteen minutes had passed after my tale when there was suddenly a great commotion,” Tivadar wrote. “The shelter commander appeared, surrounded by several officers. . . . It transpired that the air-defense commander, in great excitement that there was someone present who had seen Hitler, had radioed headquarters and a group had come over right away to see this privileged person.”

Tivadar’s energies, though, were largely devoted to the extremely serious business of procuring papers to save relatives and friends from a new, unimaginable form of terror. “My father was ahead of the curve, because he recognized the moment the Germans came in that this was a different world and one had to act differently,” George said. He and Paul agreed that they still try to live by their father’s resourceful example. “The funny thing is that in character we probably both inherited a lot more from our mother,” George said.

GLOBALIZATION

Soros has long been calling for increased globalization. In “The Crisis of Global Capitalism,” 1998 he writes: “To stabilize and regulate a truly global economy, we need some global system of political decision-making. In short, we need a global society to support our global economy. A global society does not mean a global state. To abolish the existence of states is neither feasible nor desirable; but insofar as there are collective interests that transcend state boundaries, the sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions. Interestingly, the greatest opposition to this idea is coming from the United States. But there has never been a time when a strong lead from the U.S. and other like-minded countries could achieve such powerful and benign results. With the right sense of leadership and with clarity of purpose, the U.S. and its allies could help to stabilize the global economic system and to extend and uphold universal human values. The opportunity is waiting to be grasped.”

(Source: The Crisis of Global Capitalism.(book excerpt), George Soros, 7 December 1998, Newsweek)

During this year he called for greater authority to institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and for an International Credit Insurance Corp. to establish some kind of supervision over national supervisory authorities and stated, “At the same time, there remains the urgent need for Congress to authorise an increase in the capital of the IMF.“ He admitted that such ”radical ideas“ could not even be considered until Congress ”changes its attitude toward international institutions in general and the IMF in particular.” (Source: Soros calls for global credit insurance agency, 15 September 1998, Reuters News)

Soros has said that the United States would cease to be the world’s undisputed dominant force. “The veto power that we have in the International Monetary Fund will disappear. We will be downsized. At the same time, hopefully, we will have a better working system and opponents will be more downsized than we will.”

(Source: BOSTON, Oct. 29 — Massachusetts Institute of Technology press release via Factiva)

“The Bubble of American Supremacy,”: “The disparity between private goods and public goods manifests itself in a number of ways. First, there is a growing inequality between rich and poor, both within countries and among countries. Admittedly, globalisation is not a zero-sum game: its benefits exceed the costs in the sense that the increased wealth produced by globalisation could be used to make up for the inequities and other shortcomings of globalisation and there would still be some extra wealth left over.

The trouble is that the winners do not compensate the losers either within states or between states. The welfare state as we know it has become unsustainable and international income redistribution is practically nonexistent. Total international assistance amounted to $US56.5 billion ($74.4 billion) in 2002. This amount represents only 0.18 per cent of global GDP. As a result, the gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow.”

(Source: Edited extract from The Bubble of American Supremacy by George Soros via The Sydney Morning Herald, February 4, 2004)

KARL POPPER

SOROS’ PHILOSOPHY

At the London School of Economics, Soros discovered the work of philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his thinking. He was attracted to Popper’s critique of totalitarianism, The Open Society and Its Enemies, which maintained that societies can only flourish when they allow democratic governance, freedom of expression, a diverse range of opinion, and respect for individual rights. Later, working as a trader and analyst, he adapted Popper to develop his own “theory of reflexivity,” a set of ideas that seeks to explain the relationship between thought and reality, which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. Soros began to apply his theory to investing and concluded that he had more talent for trading than for philosophy. In 1967 he helped establish an offshore investment fund; and in 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds. http://www.soros.org/about/bios/staff/george-soros

QUOTES FROM “The Open Society and Its Enemies: Hegel and Marx,” by Karl Popper (Vol. 2), by Karl Popper

The development of capitalism has led to the elimination of all classes but two, a small bourgeiouse and a huge proletariat: and the increase of misery has forced the latter to revolt against its exploiters. The conclusions are, first, that the workers must win the struggle, secondly that, by eliminating bourgeiouse, they must establish a classless society, since only one class remains. (pg 151-152)

But all over the earth, organized political power has begun to perform far-reaching economic functions. Unrestrained capitalism has given way to a new historical period, to our own period of political interventionism, of the economic interference of the state. Interventionism has assumed various forms. There is the Russian variety; there is the fascist form of totalitarianism; and their s the domestic interventionism of England, of the United States, and the “Smaller Democracies” led by Sweden where the technology of democratic intervention has reached the highest level so far. (pg 155)

Admittedly, increasing misery must produce resistance, and it is even likely to produce rebellious outbreaks. But the assumption of our argument is that the misery cannot be alleviated until victory has been won in the social revolution. (pg 163)

I am not in all cases and under all circumstance against a violent revolution. (pg 166)

…the working of democracy rests largely upon the understanding that a government which attempts to misuse its powers and to establish itself as a tyranny (or which tolerates the establishment of a tyranny by anybody else) outlaws itself, and that the citizens have not only a right, but also a duty to consider the action of such government a crime, and its members as a dangerous gang of criminals. (pg 167)

MORE ABOUT KARL POPPER

http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/8018

Although compelled to leave his native Austria in the 1930s (because of his Jewish ancestry), his book is remarkably free from personal bitterness or sadness.

He did not shrink from tracing the sources of those dangerous ideas to Marx, to Hegel, and even to that greatest of all philosophers, Plato. At a time when many intellectuals had lost faith in democracy, Popper offered a spirited defense of democratic principles and outlined a compelling vision of a society grounded in democratic reforms.

Popper was a fallibilist, one who perceives great error and danger in any theory of knowledge—or regime—that claimed to offer certain truth. In such a system, there would be no incentive to establish social and political structures that promote learning or the free exchange of ideas; truth is already at hand. In the name of historical progress, the regime may then justify the squelching of human freedoms and even atrocities on a grand scale.

George Soros, who first encountered The Open Society as Popper’s student at the London School of Economics, founded the Open Society Institute to propagate Popper’s ideas, particularly in Eastern Europe. Thus the political philosophy Popper first articulated before the start of the Cold War is now being studied and put into practice in countries newly emerging from behind the Iron Curtain.

He left school at age sixteen and began auditing lectures at the University of Vienna. Although a Marxist as a teenager, he was repelled in 1919 by the leftist-inspired street violence of postwar Vienna that resulted in the deaths of demonstrators. That same year, he studied Freud’s psychoanalysis and worked for a time with psychiatrist Alfred Adler.

In 1922 he matriculated at the University of Vienna. To support himself, he apprenticed himself to a cabinetmaker and took up social work. Pursuing his goal of becoming a schoolteacher, Popper subsequently returned to the university. In 1928, he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy and, in 1929, a teacher’s certificate. Beginning in the late 1920s, Popper began interacting with members of the famous Vienna Circle of logical positivists, a group of prominent intellectuals trying to articulate the importance of science for philosophy. Shortly after publishing (in German) a then little-noticed but classic work on the logical foundations of science in 1934, Popper left Austria under the threat of Nazi anti-Semitism. From New Zealand, where he had obtained a university teaching post, he returned to England after World War II as professor of philosophy of science at the London School of Economics, where he remained until his retirement.

SOROS’ CURRENT TIES

SOROS AND PRESIDENT OBAMA

In December 2006, Soros met with presidential hopeful Barack Obama in Soros’ New York office. Soros had previously hosted a fundraiser for Obama during his 2004 campaign for the Senate.

On January 16, 2007, Obama announce the creation of a presidential exploratory committee and within hours Soros sent a contribution of $2,100, the maximum allowable under campaign finance laws.

Days after Obama was elected in November of 2008, Soros said in an interview “I think we need a large stimulus package which will provide funds for state and local government to maintain their budgets – because they are not allowed by the constitution to run a deficit. For such a program to be successful, the federal government would need to provide hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition, another infrastructure program is necessary. In total, the cost would be in the 300 to 600 billion dollar range.” Since then, Congress passed a $787 billion stimulus and Obama very recently introduced a $50 billion plan to improve the country’s transportation program, saying “I want America to have the best infrastructure in the world.”

In that same interview, Soros called for cap & trade: “I think this is a great opportunity to finally deal with global warming and energy dependence. The US needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights. I would use the revenues from these auctions to launch a new, environmentally friendly energy policy. That would be yet another federal program that could help us to overcome the current stagnation.” Since then, Congress has introduced cap & trade legislation. (More info in “going green” section)

Also in that interview, Soros said “In 2010, the Bush tax cuts will expire and we should not extend them.” Since then, Obama expressed his opposition to the Bush tax cuts in an interview with ABC on September 9th: “All those middle class folks who need tax relief hostage right now in order to provide tax breaks for the top two percent wealthiest Americans, who don’t need a tax break, aren’t asking for a tax break. And you know, if we could afford it, it’d be one thing. But we know that’s gonna cost $700 billion over ten years. And so, that is not a smart thing to do for the economy”

Soros is also on board with Obama’s proposals to reform the banking system. In an interview with the BBC: Interviewer: Now President Obama last week announced some quite radical proposals to reform the banking system. He wants them out of what he calls “proprietary trading”, using their capital to speculate on their own account, and also he wants a limit on their size. Are these constructive measures in your view? Soros: Very much so these are the right … it goes in the right direction. In my opinion, it doesn’t actually go far enough because it still leaves the problem of too big to fail. In other words, if you let’s say now again Goldman Sachs gives up its banking license, it becomes then an investment bank …

January 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/davos/8485029.stm

Since Obama’s been in office, Soros has made four visits to the White House

ALSO IN HIS 2008 INTERVIEW:

Soros: “I think this is a great opportunity to finally deal with global warming and energy dependence. The US needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights. I would use the revenues from these auctions to launch a new, environmentally friendly energy policy. That would be yet another federal program that could help us to overcome the current stagnation.

SPIEGEL: Your proposal would be dismissed on Wall Street as “big government.” Republicans might call it European-style “socialism.”

Soros: That is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful — but also very harmful to our society.

SPIEGEL: Would you advise the new president to say that publicly?

Soros: He has already spoken about changing the political discourse. I think it is better to have a government that wants to provide good government than a government that doesn’t believe in government.

WILL ANOTHER FISCAL STIMULUS BE NEXT?

“The simple truth is that the private sector does not employ available resources. Mr. Obama has in fact been very friendly to business, and corporations are operating profitably. But instead of investing, they are building up liquidity. Perhaps a Republican victory would boost their confidence, but in the meantime, investment and employment require fiscal stimulus,” (Financial Times, Oct. 4, 2010)

LAUNCHING A WAR AGAINST PRESIDENT BUSH

Soros told the Washington Post: “I have made rejection of the Bush doctrine the central project of my life… America, under Bush, is a danger to the world. And I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.”

Also during that election: “This is the most important election of my lifetime. These aren’t normal times. The ends justify every legal means possible.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/10/18/041018fa_fact3?currentPage=3#ixzz0xAm1jvyV

SOROS AND VAN JONES

Soros has also supported Van Jones – Originally through the Open Society Institute which gave the Ella Baker Center $151,800 in 2006 and $140,000 in 2007. Van Jones was head of the Ella Baker Center during those years. OSI also funded Green for All in 2008 – they received a grant in the amount of $75,000 to “integrate the Civic Justice Corps into Green For All’s campaign to create a national Clean Energy Corps.” while Van Jones was running it. Van Jones later appeared as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Additionally, OSI helped fund TIDES which then started the Apollo Alliance (where Van Jones sat on the board).

CAP & TRADE

Soros is also a huge proponent of cap and trade. The sot below sounds very similar to VAN JONES’ “We’renot going to put a new battery in a broken system.”

SOROS: “work on a better world order where we work together to resolve problems that confront humanity like global warming. And I think that dealing with global warming will require a lot of investment.

SOROS: You see, for the last 25 years the world economy, the motor of the world economy that has been driving it was consumption by the American consumer who has been spending more than he has been saving, all right? Than he’s been producing. So that motor is now switched off. It’s finished. It’s run out of — can’t continue. You need a new motor. And we have a big problem. Global warming. It requires big investment. And that could be the motor of the world economy in the years to come…Instead of consuming, building an electricity grid, saving on energy, rewiring the houses, adjusting your lifestyle where energy has got to cost more until it you introduce those new things. So it will be painful. But at least we will survive and not cook.

MOYERS: You’re talking about this being the end of an era and needing to create a whole new paradigm for the economic model of the country, of the world, right?

GEORGE SOROS: Yes.

VIDEO: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/george-soros-on-the-green-energy-economy/

MORE ON GREEN INITIATIVES

In 2009, Soros announced the formation of the Climate Policy Initiative to address global warming, and said he would fund it with $10 million a year over 10 years

Friends of the Earth is another group that receives Soros money. In 2008 they received $50,000 from OSI to “build and support an international network of organizations dedicated to improving the environmental, social and developmental impacts of Chinese overseas investments.” Friends of the Earth also received $180,000 from Tides Foundation in 2008 to “integrate a climate equity perspective in the presidential transition.”

THE OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE

Soros started Open Society in 1993

Soros has given away over $7 billion to “support human rights, freedom of expression, and access to public health and education in 70 countries.”

Up to $425 million donated annually

Aryeh Neier is the president of the Open Society Institute and Soros foundations network. “Neier personally created the radical group Students for a Democratic Society in 1959… He worked for the American Civil Liberties Union for fifteen years,” (The Shadow Party, pg 23).

Open Society Foundations recently pledged its largest donation ever to Human Rights Watch in the amount of $100 million to be distributed over 10 years

Richard Poe writes, “Through his global web of Open Society Institutes and Open Society Foundations, Soros has spent 25 years recruiting, training, indoctrinating and installing a network of loyal operatives in 50 countries, placing them in positions of influence and power in media, government, finance and academia.”

Some organizations that have received support from OSI:

Center for American Progress

Tides Foundation

Campaign for America’s Future

National Council of La Raza

ACORN

Apollo Alliance

Center for Community Change

Free Press

MoveOn.org

Top 20 grant recipients in 2008 (the most recent OSI filing)

International Crisis Group $5,000,000

Ministry of Education Republic of Liberia $4,250,000

Drug Policy Alliance $4,000,000

Media Development Loan Fund $3,900,000

Bard College $3,094,539

Proteus Fund Inc $3,000,000

The Revenue Watch Institute $3,000,000

The Tides Foundation $2,875,000

The Mayors Fund to Advance New York City $2,512,415

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities $2,107,000

Public Interest Projects $1,700,000

The Tides Center $1,396,681

Center for Community Change $1,362,500

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights education$1,320,000

Fund for the European University $1,100,000

Center for New York City Neighborhoods $1,050,000

American Civil Liberties Union Foundation $1,000,000

Center for American Progress $1,000,000

Foundation to Promote Open Society $1,000,000

Link Media Inc $1,000,000

(Source: Open Society Institute, IRS Form 990-PF, 2008)

CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS

Early in 2003, Soros pledged $3 Million over 3 years to the think tank

He awarded $1 Million in grants to Center for American Progress for 2008/2009

The group was largely set up to prevent Bush from gaining re-election in 2004. Soros told the Washington Post: “I have made rejection of the Bush doctrine the central project of my life… America, under Bush, is a danger to the world. And I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.”

The organization is headed by John Podesta

Van Jones is currently a senior fellow

In its first year, CAP took in more than $10 million

In 2006, CAP launched a network of liberal religious leaders called Faith in Public Life to “fuel this burgeoning faith movement with cutting edge strategies and capacity-building resources”

CAP’s campus Progress, with a staff of 15 and a large network of student advisers, offers money and guidance to help college activists launch initiatives and newspapers

CAP has a congressional outreach staff and aides dedicated to booking its experts on talk shows. It has a studio that offers daily taped segments and talking points for radio hosts, and it broadcasts liberal radio host Ed Schultz‘s show when he’s in town.

TIDES

2008 funding from Open Society Institute to Tides (latest year for which the OSI has filed a Form 990 document with the IRS):

The Tides Center: $1.354 million

Tides Foundation: $2.875 million

Total: $4.229 million

Drummond Pike is Founder & CEO of Tides Foundation. He is also Treasurer of Democracy Alliance, a group that was founded with major financial backing from member George Soros.

The Apollo Alliance is a project of the Tides Center.

Van Jones is a former board member

Apollo Alliance helped to design and promote the stimulus bill which included $110 billion for “green spending”

SOJOURNERS

Open Society gave Sojourners a $200,000 grant in 2004, $25,000 in 2006, and $100,000 in 2007.

THE QUANTAM FUND

Soros launched the Quantam Fund after immigration to America from London in 1956. It was one of the world’s first private hedge funds.

Soros recently passed much of the fund’s management to his two grown sons, Robert and Jonathan

The fund, which is registered in the Netherlands Antilles, turned an original investment of six million dollars, in 1969, into five and a half billion dollars by 1999.

AMERICAN CONSTITUTION SOCIETY

The American Constitution Society is a left-wing legal activist group working to change our nation’s laws and approaches towards law enforcement. One of its areas of focus is constitutional interpretation and change.

OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE DISCLOSED GRANTS TO ACS

Grants disclosed on George Soros’ Open Society Institute’s Form 990 tax filings to American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) going back to 2002 (with the exception of the 2005 filing which could not be searched electronically). Open Society’s 2002 filing referenced that the grant was designated for start-up of ACS. Adding all the totals from each year below (excluding 2005) comes to $14,602,850.

2008 funding: $3.65 million

2007 funding: $4.5 million

2006 funding: $5,025,000

2004 funding: $676,800

2003 funding: $251,050

2002 funding: $500,000

Is that Nancy leaving town? Or maybe Lisa? Or is it Halloween again?

2010-10-27T05:18:00.000-07:00

In years long past, Halloween meant bobbing for apples floating in a galvanized washtub. The secret there was total immersion. Take the plunge, hands behind your back and pin the apple to the side of the tub. Just do it.

(Like every movie that wasn't "A" on the Legion of Decency list, bobbing for apples would have been just another forbidden fruit in our Irish Catholic home had our parents known it originated from a pagan baptismal rite.)

Traditionally, Halloween was also the night when a young lady not into apple bobbing could explore her marriage prospects. The trick was to slice an apple at its equator and eat it by candlelight before a mirror. If all went according to plan, her future spouse would appear over her shoulder in the mirror.

Failing that, the lady could always set a small snail to crawl through the ashes in the fireplace where, as it moved, it would spell out the first letter of her future husband's name.

I had a friend who tried that, but the snail kept spelling out the wrong letter. So she tossed it into the street. That was three months ago. This week her doorbell rang, she opened the door, and there was the snail.

"Yes?" she asked.

"What was that all about?" said the snail.

The Final Harvest - - Part Two

2010-10-25T16:46:00.000-07:00

(Cont'd from Oct. 25 Post):

The night of the new moon, broomsticks and black magic. The Eve of All Hallows and —for those who call themselves pagans—the first ritual of their new year.

Small wonder that you don't really want to be seven years old and the last kid in a ragged gaggle of costumed trick-or-treaters, farthest from the flashlight, black clouds scudding overhead, and hearing an occasional, unfamiliar sound just behind you on the sidewalk.

In Missouri, there's a full slate of activities—before and after Halloween—year-round, in fact—— just for those who would weave spells, conjure up family members who have departed this well-trodden earth, and even "promote better networking among local pagans."

Groups with names like "The Alliance for Magical Religions," "Goddess Women Gathering," and "Earth Spirit." They assemble regularly for programs such as The Serpent Mother, Open Full Moon Circles, and Embracing the Dark.

However, as intriguing as it might be to party with Pagans (a great name for a new NFL team entry), or chat with one's ancestors across a candled card table, all this witchcraft and wizardry should produce some more satisfying results. Like who's really going to win next Tuesday's elections or can Mizzou go home with all the marbles this year?

More on this tomorrow...

The Final Harvest

2010-10-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

If a lady named Hecate (Heck-a-tee) leaves a message on your answering machine next Sunday night, don't return the call.

Hecate is the goddess of ghosts and witchcraft, a wand-waving spirit of sorcery who haunts graveyards and crossroads. And cornfields. Maybe yours. And next Sunday is her day.

For Hecate and her bestial brood, Halloween is a lot more than Hershey bars and hot cider.

It's the night of Samhain, pronounced Sam-Hane in the U.S., but in Ireland (Halloween is of Celtic origin) it's pronounced Sow-In (like Cow-in). Samhain is the night that marks the third (and final) harvest—and the night when the curtain that separates the living and the dead is at its thinnest. (Is that too much information?)

Celtic tradition holds that this was, as a feast of the dead, the one night that those who had passed on could return to the land of the living and celebrate with their clan.

The great Irish burial mounds were opened up and lighted torches set within so that the dead could find their way. Extra places were set at the table and food provided for any who had died that year. These ghoulish galas lasted only until dawn as the departed had to be back in the Underworld before sun-up.

Even today, this is heady stuff.

(MORE ON THIS TOPIC TOMORROW, MEANWHILE, THINK ABOUT IT.

Murmur of Innumerable Bees

2010-10-23T08:32:00.001-07:00

Population decrease notwithstanding, honey bees are not all that scarce out here in rural Missouri. Each year at this time they fake being hummingbirds and swarm the feeders. I'm hoping for some late Ruby-Throat migrants to show up, but the bees don't know that. Few hummers would risk running their blockade that begins at about 9AM and continues until dusk when the lack of light tells the bees it's time to head home.

When I sit out on the deck or porch, several of them will usually visit me and crawl up my arm or down my leg. I've learned to let them do so. Finding nothing of interest, they will go elsewhere.

I'm less tolerant of the bald-faced hornets who occasionally will build a gray volley-ball-shaped nest in one of my cedar trees. I have to depend on predators to discourage them and they usually do. Don't ask me what kind of predator. There are bears in this part of Missouri and we discovered some bear tracks on our lane a few years ago. So have at it, bear, but keep your distance from me.

DamnYankees

2010-10-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

It just keeps happening. The most detestable team in baseball (by my standards) is still hanging around, their fists clutching $10,000 bills (picturing Salmon Chase, our 6th Chief Justice) and trying to buy themselves another World Championship. Maybe they've been bumped, but last I saw, they hadn't been. We grew up in the '30s and '40s with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yankees tormented the Dodgers at every opportunity. They conquered them in five successive World Series meetings. My brother and I wore our teeth down to stubs grinding them. Not until 1955 did the Brooks finally turn the tables. It was the only World Series win ever for Brooklyn. Soon after that they turned Hollywood and went west to L.A. We abandoned them. We would never again face another October with our hearts being squeezed by the Bronx Bombers. We were freed. That was the end of baseball for both of us. We pretended to be interested, but really didn't care. After a while, we no longer even knew what team was representing what city. It became Musical Chair baseball. It was the end of baseball. And I still hate the damn Yankees. (Maybe I'll go take just one peek at the word Sports on my home page.)

DC Rallies Look at these!

2010-10-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

Glenn Beck's 8/28 conservative rally versus the 10/2 liberal/socialistic rally. (via Warren Roche on Facebook). Taken within minutes of the same time on their respective days. The first one at 12:40 pm, the second at 1 :00 pm.

2010-10-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

In summer months I have eight hummingbird feeders active and often attract 15-20 ruby-throated hummingbirds at a time on them. In these waning autumn days, I still have five feeders working but the visitors are few. It's been two days now since a hummer has appeared. The last one showed in early morning temperatures in the 30s. She (a female juvenile) sat motionless on the red UFO-shaped feeder for perhaps ten minutes, then dropped to the ground like a stone. I rushed out but could find no sign of her. Happily, she was back that afternoon but I haven't seen one since. Last year, on the day we turned the clocks back (Nov. 1), I was stunned to see a flitting silhouette on my front porch in the gathering gloom of dusk. Hummers are normally gone from Missouri in late September. To see one in November is extraordinary. It was a male juvenile and it stayed with me for a week. I sent pictures (see above) to the experts at Cornell Ornithological Labs and an Audubon official visited me to verify the sighting. This is serous stuff, folks. Sure enough, as it transpired, my ruby-throat was the last of its kind seen in Missouri for the year 2009.

So don't be hasty to take down those feeders. You never know when a solitary migrant might be passing through. And they have a long way to go.

What has Big Ears and Brays?

2010-10-06T08:55:00.000-07:00

A rural autumn dusk and the bluejays are strafing the porch roof with pin oak acorns. I sit there with binoculars and a cup of tea, listening to the braying of a jackass in a field to my left. The sound is indescribable. It can only be distantly compared, perhaps, to Leo Durocher, nose to nose with 6'3", 225-pound umpire George Magerkurth, protesting a called third strike on Brooklyn's Dixie Walker.
Two jackasses reside on the 40 acres next to my 11. I have stood at the fence occasionally and watched as they amble toward me, looking no doubt for a handout. I call them Barry and Joe. They share their field with a horse, a companion to another horse who dropped dead several months ago and who, with the aid of a bulldozer, is now buried somewhere on those 40 acres. I know not the cause of its death, but listening every day to a pair of complaining jackasses certainly must have been a contributing factor.
Now I see that the PCs have come swarming llke termites out of the woodwork to upbraid Rush for calling Barry a jackass. Why, I wonder. Barry certainly is a jackass, and in many more areas than Economics. He is not only a jackass, but an idiot, a fool, a liar and a charlatan. Pick a word in that chapter of the Thesaurus and it applies. Would that he were simply a jackass. But there is much more going on in the White House than mere stupidity. And if you don't understand that, you are, well, a jackass.

Obama Sticks It to Whitey Again

2010-08-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

Haven't heard much about Shirley in the news lately.....maybe this is why, huh?

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/110/024/Is_There_More_to_Sherrods_Dismissal.html

Andrew Breitbart is a media genius.

He proved it originally with his brilliant handling of the ACORN 'hooker' scandal which he skillfully manipulated so that the corrupt media was forced, against its will, to broadcast corruption in one of Obama's most powerful political support groups. But Breitbart's handing of that affair is nothing compared to his brilliant manipulation of the Shirley Sherrod 'white farmer' scandal.

It all began last Monday, July 22, 2010. As the country watched in horror, Breitbart released a snippet of a tape on his "Big Government" site which showed an obscure black female official of the Dept. of Agriculture laughing to a roomful of NAACP members about how she'd discriminated against a destitute white farmer and refused to give him the financial aid he desperately needed. As she smirked to the room, she'd sent him instead to a white lawyer - 'one of his own kind' - for help. The black woman was Shirley Sherrod - and almost immediately she became the center of a firestorm of controversy which exploded throughout the country. Within a day of the release of that infamous tape, the head of the Dept. of Agriculture, spurred on by Obama, demanded - and received - Sherrod's resignation. Breitbart had won.

But then seemingly Breitbart's actions began to explode in his face. As Sherrod screamed in protest, FOX News released the entire text of her speech last March to the NAACP. And there on tape Sherrod was shown supposedly repenting of her racism against a white farmer and instead championing his fight to win funds to keep his farm afloat. Within hours of that entire tape being revealed, the entire world turned against Andrew Breitbart. Conservatives throughout the country were enraged that he'd endangered their reputations by releasing a 'doctored' tape. Breitbart, they thundered, had dealt a fatal blow to the conservative media. I confess that I also was horrified at what I saw as the clumsiness and stupidity of Breitbart in 'doctoring' a tape to make a supposedly innocent woman look guilty. But now I discover I have been as guilty of haste to judgment of Breitbart as the Dept. of Agriculture was of Ms. Sherrod.

Only now am I realizing the real purpose for Breitbart's release of that tape snippet. It was to allow him to cunningly trick the media into exposing one of the most shocking examples of corruption in the federal government - a little known legal case called "Pigford v. Glickman".

http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/07/27/pigford-v-glickman-86000-claims-from-39697-total-farmers/?singlepage=true

"In 1997, 400 African-American farmers sued the United States Department of Agriculture, alleging that they had been unfairly denied USDA loans due to racial discrimination during the period 1983 to 1997." The case was entitled "Pigford v. Glickman" and in 1999, the black farmers won their case. The government agreed to pay each of them as much as $50,000 to settle their claims.

But then on February 23 of this year, something shocking happened in relation to that original judgment. In total silence, the USDA agreed to release more funds to "Pigford". The amount was a staggering $1.25 billion. This was because the original number of plaintiffs - 400 black farmers - had now swollen in a class action suit to include a total of 86,000 black farmers throughout America .

There was only one teensy problem. The United States of America doesn't have 86,000 black farmers. According to accurate and totally verified census data, the total number of black farmers throughout America is only 39,697. Oops.

Well, gosh, how on earth did 39,697 explode into 86,000 claims? And how did $50,000 explode into $1.25 billion? Well, folks, you'll just have to ask the woman who not only spearheaded this case because of her position in 1997 at the "Rural Development Leadership Network" but whose family received the highest single payout (approximately $13 million) from that action - Shirley Sherrod. Oops again.

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/110/024/Is_There_More_to_Sherrods_Dismissal.html

Yes, folks. It appears that Ms. Sherrod had just unwittingly exposed herself as the perpetrator of one of the biggest fraud claims in the United States - a fraud enabled solely because she screamed racism at the government and cowed them into submission.

But wait, it gets even more interesting. Ms. Sherrod has also exposed the person who aided and abetted her in this race fraud. As it turns out, the original judgment of "Pigford v. Glickman" in 1999 only applied to a total of 16,000 black farmers. But in 2008, a junior Senator got a law passed to reopen the case and allow more black farmers to sue for funds. The Senator was Barack Obama.

Because this law was passed in dead silence and because the woman responsible for spearheading it was an obscure USDA official, American taxpayers did not realize that they had just been forced in the midst of a worldwide depression to pay out more than $1.25 billion to settle a race claim… That’s BILLION, not million… OF YOUR TAX DOLLARS

But Breitbart knew. And last Monday, July 22, 2010, he cleverly laid a trap which Sherrod - and Obama - stumbled headfirst into which has now resulted in the entire world discovering the existence of this corrupt financial judgment. Yes, folks - Breitbart is a genius.

As for Ms. Sherrod? Well, she's discovered too late that her cry of 'racism' to the media which was intended to throw the spotlight on Breitbart has instead thrown that spotlight on herself - and her corruption. Sherrod has vanished from public view. Her 'pigs', it seems, have come home to roost.

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates."

Tacitus

Pirates on the Potomac

2010-01-04T16:09:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder why the world seems to stand idly by while Somalian pirates intercept and hijack ships many times their size? It's like Gulliver being shanghaied and held hostage by a single Lilliputian.

Its also a lot like you, me and millions of Americans being enslaved at this very moment by a narcissistic child-who-would-play-president.

We ask one another: what do we do?

I don't know.

I do know that I have severed several friendships (including one of very long standing), while also strongly reinforcing others with those who were previously no more than passing acquaintances. It's a continuing mystery that more than a few people, educated and intelligent, do not see what is happening.

Why do the captains of the hijacked ships not resist? We might ask ourselves why does the captain of our Ship of State not resist when terrorists threaten and act against us?

Obama is the Capt. Queeg of the new century. He is running us aground and placing the blame for every misstep (and there are many) on his predecessor or someone else. He is, in fact, paranoid, tyrannical and incompetent. We are headed for the rocks and shoals.

Only God can make a Waxwing

2008-05-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

Not talking about Icarus here, but a Cedar Waxwing, one of the Lord's prettier creations. Looking like well-dressed masked bandits, they'll invade your space without you even knowing, have lunch, and depart. So keep your eyes out. You probably won't hear their zzzzzztt, zzzzzt from the treetops.

Abby from QC

2008-04-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

(from Renoir's The Dancer [1874])

Miss Lovinia, a dancer you know
Performed recently in a grand ballet.
After, she called me to paint a portrait
Of her, The Lady, in a silken gown.
As I approached her house she called to me.
"Monsieur Renoir, why, you're already here!
Come quickly, for my mother is waiting."
Her lilting tone made me feel very nice,
And I longed for my childhood again.
As I reached the door Lovinia sat
And asked me if I'd like a cup of tea.
She posed in a dancing position while
I, I prepared my brush and white paint
And soon Lovinia came on canvas,
White skirt billowing out into the scene
Clutching a handkerchief white like the snow
Hair ribbon tied at a jaunty angle.
Mrs. Lablondelle paid me what was due
While saying, "What a likeness of my girl!"
I hurried out, happy at my own success
Imagining dancers floating away.

...Abigail Boberg, Age 10, Quebec City

HAPPY BIRTHDAY...

2008-04-11T17:11:00.000-07:00

...to you, on the 108th birthday of the U.S. Submarine Force. To you and to all your mates —those who returned and those who did not— we thank you for your sacrifices and heroism in protecting our country.

You've heard of them...

2008-04-10T13:44:00.001-07:00

...and now, here's one. Yes, it's a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Like the Snipe, they do exist and it's not easy for them to go through life with the stigma of their name. There is, as well, a Secretary bird, but she can't hold an Inkjet Cartridge #21 to a Sapsucker which taps a tree trunk in perfectly aligned, descending, left-to-right rows. A QWERTYUIOP to our yellow-bellied friend.

Mrs. Puddlegumby

2008-04-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

Abigail Boberg, a ten-year-old girl in Quebec City, writes. She wrote this poem last week in less than an hour after viewing Claude Monet's "Mme. Louis Joachim Gaudibert" (1868)

Mrs. Puddlegumby

I was called over to a house one day
To paint a portrait of a lady who,
As you may recall, wears her hair up in
A knot, that curls into a chocolate brown
Bun. She called me “dear sir” and rustled her
Pea-green skirt wherever she walked that day.
Her silly actions almost made me laugh
But rich folks are like that I guess
Never have a bit of sense in their heads.
They stick their noses high into the air
And act as if you’re not there, yes they do!
Well, Mrs. Puddlegumby struck a pose,
She tossed her curls and shook her head and laughed.
But quickly I painted a saucy view
Her nose turned up in great disdain, I did.
A haughty look inside her big black eyes.
Her skirts flung out onto the carpet rug.
Ha! How displeased that silly lady was.
With shake of head and pointing at the door
She showed me out and paid me not a cent.
Outside I laughed until my throat was sore.
She never called for me to come again.
I fear she saw me laughing for I heard
A noise and turned and saw the curtain move.
I shall never forget that funny girl
Who had the name of Mrs. Puddlegumby.

Report from Cape Cod

2007-08-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

Always wanted a house on the Cape? Now's your chance. Thanks to the forever-in-your-face MA bureaucrats (they'll be telling you how to decorate your bedoom soon) and the unavailability of home insurance against the elements, it's a buyer's paradise. But the Cape ain't the homeowner's paradise it once was. You have to look to find something new and novel happening. Like Trader Joe setting up shop. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it inspired Cape Cod Kate to fire up her desktop and punch out the following.

Not For Gourmets Only

Trader Joe has come to town
With foodstuff prices so low down
That folks who've shopped at other marts
Are filling up those new red carts
While sipping fragrant cups of joe
As wending through the aisles they go
In states of pure organic bliss,
They've never seen the likes of this!

Entranced by T.J.'s friendly tone
The customers feel right at home
With happy checkers beaming smiles,
No wonder shoppers come for miles
Off-Cape, on-Cape, it doesn't matter,
Joe's place is bright with cheerful chatter;
Just shop by day or shop by night,
His well-selected stock's so right

For ordinary mealtime fare
Or fancy fêtes extraordinaire,
His shelves and cases hold the best,
The favorite foods of East and West
With clearly marked nutrition lore
Plus fine desserts and treats galore;
This favored populace now knows
It's fun to frequent Trader Joe's!

____________
Even the hummers (the kind that fly) are leaving the Cape early this year.