Genetic Destiny

It starts simply. We had a big dog & cat pack. Three dogs, four cats. They all got along, visited with one another every day. Then three of them died suddenly. The one who took it the hardest was Raebert. He fell into a depression. Moaning and groaning as theatrically as John Barrymore in a bad thirties movie.

Why my wife relented on her commitment to let the pack dwindle from here on in. It’s too much work, not to mention the vet bills. But Raebert was threatening to crush me to death with his need to lay his full weight on me all the time. Moan. Groan. Mostly he missed Molly, our insouciant old greyhound doll. Not like they hung out all the time. But when she was gone he couldn’t stand it. The sighthound thing. They all do have a thing.

Last time we had a big loss it was my wife who suggested the unthinkable, replacing a deerhound with a deerhound.

This time it was my turn to suggest the unthinkable, replacing a greyhound with a Scottie.

Not as crazy as you might think. Deerhounds are sighthounds. They are also archetypal Scottish dogs. She’d had a couple in her youth. I’d had a Westy, a cairn, and two wire-haireds. Scottish dogs have as much in common as sighthounds do. Just different things. Sighthounds like couches and stuffed animals they can steal and cuddle. Scottish dogs like being in charge, defying human authority, and sleeping late. Never knew one who mostly didn’t have to be waked up to begin the day.

So I proposed the Scottie idea. To my surprise she was open to it. We looked into the puppy world. Nobody available. With her long history of greyhound rescues, she investigated Scottie rescues. She found one.

Ten years old. An orphan who drifted from one owner to another, none of whom returned her, but all of whom were enfeebled or incapacitated in one way or another. She was a dog without a country. Or a real home. We were happy to take her.

Which is when the ordeal begins. Greyhound rescue is like the Underground Railroad. Dogs suddenly reprieved from slavery and needing homes quick. Yes, they talk to you on the phone, and they care that you care, but the delivery occurs in mall parking lots like drug deals. Here he/she is, good luck, and please let us know if you can’t cope.

Scottie rescue. Ah. A whole different story. Muffie is a dog who was considered nearly unplaceable because of her age and history. And yet we had to prove ourselves.

I struggle for a comparison. Scottie rescue isn’t the Underground Railroad. It’s the rescue of aristocrats from the French Revolution. The administrators are the Scarlet Pimpernel. My wife had to do an hour long FaceTime performance revealing our house and its amenities to the Rescue Directorate. Then, when we rode up today for the transfer, it wasn’t like a drug deal. It was like a combination genealogical interrogation and mortgage closing.

While I waited with a snoozing Scottie, my wife disappeared into a NJ Turnpike rest stop with the Scottie Lady for close to an hour. She had to provide my birth certificate, my aunt’s Colonial Dame certification, my maternal grandmother’s DAR credentials, my grandfather’s ranking in Scottish freemasonry (fortunately my wife brought his sword), and documentation of my family’s history of fighting for Bonnie Prince Charlie in the Scots’ final bid for the throne. She was then required to endure a line by line recitation of the dog’s entire veterinary history, more than $2,000 worth, all of which resulted in no diagnosis of permanent physical ills but a prescription for twice daily tranquilizers. Because she spaced out twice at one dubious vet’s office in Ohio.

Well, at least Muffie arrived in a Maybach limousine.

Too bad she had to come home in a Jeep.

Despite her aristocratic ancestry, she reminds me most of Mickey, our feral cat. Someone who hasn’t had enough human contact. She wanders and avoids human contact. But she’s a gorgeous little girl. I used the same approach I used with Mickey. Picked her up — had to teach my wife the chest pickup that works with terriers — and held her close. She accepted and let me hold her for several minutes.

Right now, I think we’re going to be fine. Raebert seems happy. He heard her coming up the stairs and he smiled for the first time since Molly died. He’s interested again.

Wish us luck. I believe she’s home now.

She’s still checking everything out…

I’ll report in full later. This is her first night. So far so good.

Let’s stick it up Tom Jeff’s Alpha-Sigma-Sigma.

So why did a rape culture activist target a particular fraternity at the University of Virginia? Even the Washington Post sees something Phishy about it:

The story and Erdely’s comments about it, moreover, suggest an effort to produce impact journalism. While media critics on the right and the left cry about media bias in just about every news cycle, the complaints generally amount to nothing but ideological posturing. There are few things like a good media-bias claim to distract from a substantive conversation.

In the case, of Erdely’s piece, however, there’s ample evidence of poisonous biases that landed Rolling Stone in what should be an existential crisis. It starts with this business about choosing just the “right” school for the story. What is that all about? In his first, important piece on this story, the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi described the author’s thought process:

So, for six weeks starting in June, Erdely interviewed students from across the country. She talked to people at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. None of those schools felt quite right. But one did: the University of Virginia, a public school, Southern and genteel, brimming with what Erdely calls “super-smart kids” and steeped in the legacy of its founder, Thomas Jefferson.

A perfect place, in other words, to set a story about a gang rape.

Observe how Erdely responded to a question about the accused parties in Jackie’s alleged gang rape. In that Slate podcast, when asked who these people were, she responded, “I don’t want to say much about them as individuals but I’ll just say that this particular fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi — it’s really emblematic in a lot of ways of sort of like elitist fraternity culture. It’s considered to be a kind of top-tier fraternity at University of Virginia…It’s considered to be a really high-ranking fraternity, in part because they’re just so incredibly wealthy. Their alumni are very influential, you know, they’re on Wall Street, they’re in politics.”

The next time Erdely writes a big story, she’ll have to do a better job of camouflaging her proclivity to stereotype. Here, she refuses to evaluate the alleged gang rapists as individuals, instead opting to fold them into the caricature of the “elitist fraternity culture,” and all its delicious implications. Of course, one of the reasons she didn’t describe the accused is that she never reached out to them.

There’s a simpler answer to the question of how she chose her target. The author of the original “story” went to Penn. She may not know Greek, but she probably knows Greek letters. So she knows how to identify Phuckups from a mile away.

Call me a sap. I still want to trust the legacy of Thomas Jefferson.
Unless I’m just another wannabe slaveholder.

Haven’t read the details. But the obviously idiotic story of a secret gang rape at the University of Virginia is now imploding. Don’t need to provide a link. Links are now as plentiful as the shards of broken glass the alleged victim was raped on.

Lovely campus, isn’t it? That Jefferson dude knew how to create a Roman atmosphere. Caligula would have felt right at home.

Oops. Did I say something wrong? Like my wife always says, there’s no crime in the south I couldn’t believe happened. Although I’ve been south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Surprise. There really is such a thing as a southern gentleman. I’ve met them, known them, and appreciate their quantity. There are bad guys too, but not enough to keep a crime like this secret.

The story could never have been true and not immediately reported, probably with accompanying violence against the offenders. If you think otherwise, you’re a delusional narcissist lefty feminist. No kidding.

Tim?

The entrance to the now infamous Phoenix Club.

I assumed from all the promotion that Mark Zuckerberg was actually a member of the Phoenix SK Club at Harvard. Then I stumbled across this bit of misinformation.

Vulture has an interview with an anonymous former-Final Club member/Harvard grad which clears up many of the questions you may have. But the basic gist is that they are like a frat but are “not affiliated with a larger national organization, and nobody lives in them.” The name Final Club is “a relic of a different era” because “back in the day, you would join the freshman club, then I forget what the middle stage was, and then you join the final club your senior year. So the name is. As for what is real and what is created for the movie, this is what he said:

They get the overall feel right. Obviously it’s a little sensationalized. The biggest final club scene is at what they claim is the Phoenix. The exterior shot is the Spee, not the Phoenix, and the interior shots are neither the Spee nor the Phoenix. But of course, who cares — they’re buildings. They have the bouncer at the front who’s got an ear piece waving in all those girls … obviously that doesn’t really happen. There aren’t really buses of BU girls that come in. And they certainly don’t look like the girls in that movie. And then the parties themselves are less debauched than in that kind montage. There are generally fewer naked girls. Everything’s a little tamer.

This is all ridiculous. I haven’t been at Harvard in a long time, but the history of Final Clubs is nothing like this. They were never fraternities, and I can’t think they have drifted all that far away from their origins. They never had many members. They never went through elaborate hazing rituals. One night of initiation that involved too much drinking and that was it. In black tie, of course. After that you were one of them. Lunch was served every day, and there was a chit-bar, and sometimes you went to dinner at the Hasty Pudding. In many ways it was quite innocent. The big deal at the Phoenix was lobster luncheons in our fairly small brick garden on Fridays. Members only. No chance to impress a girl. We talked about things. The Wiki entry of notable PSK members is a joke. (The ones without links are the ones who deserve thanks.)

When I was there we had Arthur Waldron, class valedictorian and now a conservative luminary at Commentary magazine, and Philip Core, the late author and artist who did more than most to make being gay respectable and sometimes glamorous. We had a Rhode Island rogue who tried, and frequently succeeded, in bedding every woman he met (before going on to a brilliant career in marine biology) and a genuine lothario related to Jim Thorpe who is now in power at some major prep school. Also at least a pair who had gotten perfect 1600 board scores that nobody listened to except when they lowered the boom on us. We were an eclectic bunch.

That’s scratching the surface. Who knows how many members belong on the notable list? Somebody’s determined to keep a low profile.

Overall, the final clubs were actually kind of priggish. Consider their common rules. Here’s a picture of the real Phoenix SK Club.

The attached building is the old Iroquois Club, no longer in existence even in my day.

At left, there’s the main entrance shown up top, accessible only by key, and on the lower right the Guest Room entrance. Non-members, including women, were only permitted in the Guest Room. Which means no one but members were allowed into the upper chambers, which were tremendously sybaritic. Like the Main Lounge, and the intensely dark and beautiful bar just two steps away.

Was there Champagne? Yes. Was there abuse and exploitation of young women? No.

That was the way all Final Clubs operated. Beautiful within, but only for members.

I don’t know what’s changed. I’m still amazed that my prep school and my Harvard club have become so unfairly famous. Was Mark Zuckerberg really a member of the Phoenix? I doubt it.

Facebook is the rottenest piece of software I have ever seen. The people I knew at the Phoenix would have done it better. And they weren’t really snobs or elitists. In my day they were simply hiding from sixties nonsense. Most of our best conversations occurred in the basement, which was about as simple and plebeian as you can get. Our pool table looked like this, but more shabby:

Most of us knew there was more to life than lobster. I once played pool with a Korean journalist in the employ of the Boston Herald American who told me he had dripped freezing water onto the faces of North Koreans to extract information and told me the single scariest thing about Americans was how they would keep coming for ONE of their own. I kicked his ass at pool. And I hated him. Still do.

We watched TV too. A guy would flop down with a pizza and we’d watch old movies.

Yeah. Antenna. Guy showed up with pizza. No to anchovies? Shit. So we watched all the old old old movies late into the night. Is there a synonym for Rita Hayworth?

No. But like all Ivy League drunks, we had a bar. Only it wasn’t so fancy.

Domestic beer and memories of life the way people really live it.

Yeah. We had one foot in the Ivy world and the other in the real world. The way I remember it. And if you’ve taken the Bubble Quiz, you’ll find I’m in, and have always been, in the real world. Cause the Phoenix was the Mercersburg of clubs. We were all just who we were. Unlike almost all the rest of them. Why we had the biggest brain and the biggest queer. We did not care. Isn’t that the best definition of liberty?

Or is this what’s happening? The Spee was always worse than the Phoenix. Jack and Robert were frequently there in tuxes on their top half and nothing on their bottom half, gasping for air.

Hell. Who knows? The new upper class may have finally triumphed over my old Mercersburg and my old Harvard. We were such naifs in those days, weren’t we? I once danced for an hour with a Smith girl who thanked me and left. I spent close to a weekend with a Mount Holyoke girl of another race without making a move. I was right in line with the new affirmative sex legislation. Come right out and tell me you want me out loud to have sex with you. I’d have been there in a second.

Actually, that’s how it finally happened. One girl said, “Stop teasing me. Just do it.” So I did. Beautiful Jewish girl. She told me she was a 5. Of course, Jewish girls have a scale that goes all the way up to 12. She was actually a 10. Screw the numbers. I was in love with her, which is how it should always be.

The only 12 I ever met is still just a dream. No longer beautiful. Because beauty comes from the soul. And the soul can sour. Doubt if Zuckerberg has learned this. Things billionaires don’t know yet.

They just wish they ever had this view when they were young.

Easy to get dumb.

I am the three elven kings. One ring killed but two left.

How does it go?

Three rings for the elven kings under the sky. Seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone. Nine for mortal men doomed to die. One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them. One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

It’s not easy to be an elf, immortal and beautiful and such. I mean, who doesn’t know the poem that begins, “Ah Elbereth, Gilthoniel, silivren penna miriel.” Which means, roughly, “Ah Elbereth, star kindler, slanting down sparkling like a jewel.”

It goes on from there. The full text if you need it.

What my wife and I face on a regular basis, being from the ancient undying breed Tolkien was writing about. It’s not always easy sparkling like a jewel. Especially if you’re living with one of the nine. Who may be malevolent phantoms of lords long dead but retain a healthy appetite for rings of all kinds.

My wife, for example, never possessed one of the 20 most famous rings, but she had a perfectly decent Elf Queen one, which our own pet Nazgul devoured:

She didn’t kill him. But she waxed wroth.

Today, he devoured one of my own rings — the one I wore on my wedding day. He crushed it like a junkyard car compacter.

What I didn’t know was that my elven queen had stockpiled three rings (shown above) to offset any such eventuality. One was too large, one was right for some number of years until the day before yesterday, and one fits perfectly now.

What our resident Nazgul does not know is that I also possess the One Ring, because I am by legacy a Freemason and therefore rule all conspiracies about Mankind for all time. He can’t get to this one. It’s in a secret Scottish place.

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them. One ring to bring them all and in our laughter kilt them.

We’re almost complete in ring compilation. The other eight of the dead are in boxes on our shelves, no matter how freely they still ride in our minds. The final dwarf lord will be arriving in a week or two, reminder of six dwarves past. Then we’ll get hold of this whole Sauron problem.

This is not statistically significant in any global sense. It’s just a slice of life that might be an instructive microcosm. There’s a town in Wales where 99 young people committed suicide by hanging in the space of five years. Apparently, the phenomenon continues, although the press and the police have stopped reporting on it for fear that publicity encourages it. The movie is a documentary exploring the extraordinary proliferation of one kind of suicide in one specific demographic.

There’s very little offered in the way of answers. Mostly lots of reactions by parents, friends of the dead, and locals speculating about why this became a distinct trend in an area of modest population.

Lots of mothers, some fathers, numerous young folk, all offering theories and attempts at explanation. Too much alcohol and drugs, too little hope about the prospects of life, too little too late support from the U.K.’s National Health Service. (Suicidal? Come back Monday.) Hardly any serious outreach by the police, a depressing and fairly violent environment in a town of 40,000 dominated by what The Great Society would have called “projects.” Almost no references to the quality of education, religious belief, and economic opportunity.

But lots of tearful parents wondering what went so drastically wrong. Plenty of broken hearts. And multiple shocking challenges to one’s ability to read character and intention.

I was telling my wife about it on the phone midway through and, flippantly, I suggested the answer was tattoos. It seemed that almost all the suicides had them, and I was minded of the way characters were rendered in the Iliad. Always by external physical traits and bits of costumery — armor and helms and symbols — as if there was no real conscious mentality inside. The person was the body and its decorations, no more, no less.

Imagine my surprise when the final thoughtful interviews were not with parents or youngsters but the proprietors of a tattoo parlor. Their depressing experience was of youngsters coming in to get tattoos of remembrance and killing themselves a few days or weeks later. They weren’t youngsters themselves and were plainly terrified of the ramifications of their next encounters with their own sons and daughters. What’s a provocative intent to have serious conversation? What’s overlooking too much in a clearly dangerous environment. Who are our kids, really?

I don’t know the answers any better than the film makers did. But I do wonder just how far today’s kids will go to experience the sense of being alive, even if it’s their last moment alive. Because my sense is that they don’t feel alive, don’t know much feeling at all.

This was posted at Breitbart today:

by MARTIN GREENFIELD 29 Nov 2014 83

The following article is by Martin Greenfield, author of the new memoir Measure of a Man: From Auschwitz Survivor to Presidents’ Tailor (Regnery).

Experiencing and expressing gratitude should never feel clichéd.
I’m thankful.
I’m thankful that seventy years ago at Auschwitz, despite my mother, grandparents, two sisters, and 5-year-old baby brother being sent to Hitler’s ovens, I was spared.
I’m thankful for the nameless older Jewish inmate inside the Nazi laundry who taught me how to sew, a skill I’ve used now for decades as a master tailor to Hollywood stars and U.S. presidents.
I’m thankful for the last conversation I had with my father inside the concentration camp before we were separated and he was later murdered. “You are young and strong, and I know you will survive,” he told me in a quiet moment our first night at Auschwitz. “If you survive by yourself, you must honor us by living, by not feeling sorry for us. That is what you must do.”
I’m grateful for those words. They echo in my heart even still. It was a gift only a father’s wisdom could give. It gave me a reason to go forward, a reason to be. It does still. And I’m grateful.
I’m thankful that in the winter of 1945, the stupid-looking wooden clogs the Nazis made me wear did not give out in the unrelenting snows we encountered over many miles during the Death March from Buna to Gleiwitz. Even as the German soldiers turned our column into a moving shooting gallery, for some unknown reason, God kept their guns off me, sparing me the fate of the scores of frozen frames that lay littered across the land, embalmed in glacial graves.
I’m grateful. I’m grateful for the hundreds of thousands of American boys led by Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower—whom I later made suits for—and their willingness to fight and die to destroy Hitler’s death machine.
I’m thankful.
I’m thankful that when I arrived in America, penniless and unable to speak and read English, I encountered a kind and patient American English teacher who taught night classes at Erasmus High School in New York. When she learned of my fascination with baseball, she agreed to attend a Brooklyn Dodgers game. Ebbets Field proved to be the ultimate American classroom. There, she turned the baseball diamond into a chalkboard. She made me pronounce every position and read every billboard.
Around the eighth inning, I looked out across the lush green field and up into the clear blue sky. I was struck by the improbability of the moment. My life was a miracle. The crack of a baseball bat had replaced the smack and sting of a flogging stick. I had friends. I had newly discovered family members in America. I had a green card. I had a job and a chance. I had Jackie Robinson.
A rush of gratitude overcame me—a feeling that my life had a meaning and purpose that I couldn’t fathom, that by some astonishing act of divine benevolence I’d been one of the fortunate few who were spared the flames.
I was grateful then, I am grateful now.
I’m thankful for my wife, Arlene, who loves and supports me, and did through all those years when my night terrors awoke her from her sleep.
I’m thankful for my two sons, Tod and Jay, who run our “only in America” hand-tailored suit business in Brooklyn.
I’m thankful for grandchildren who will never know how much every hug, every fleeting smile means to a man who became an orphan when he was 15.
I’m grateful.
I’m grateful that for some grace-filled reason, against all logic and probability, God led Americans to fight for me, to save me, to claim me as one of their own, to nurture me with opportunities, and to help me build a home where I could love and raise my family in my beloved America.
I’m left with nothing but gratitude and joy for my life.

Grief is not a competitive sport. Everyone experiences it multiple times. Comparisons are odious. There is no Maslow’s hierarchy of loss. The enshrinement of women who have lost children as the ultimately grief-stricken is odious because it accomplishes nothing but the diminishment of every other kind of loss. It also expressly diminishes men. A father’s grief can’t compare to a mother’s. Because you know.

Which is worse? Losing a child to cancer? Or losing a child to murder? Quick. Do your calculations and post the answer on Facebook.

Any such process is despicable. There are many losses people don’t get over. Closure is a media phantasm. But like Mr. Greenfield, whose losses are literally incalculable, not getting over it is no excuse for not getting on with it.

Sympathy, and empathy, are likewise incalculable. The amount owed is not contingent on how high the loss rates in the mathematics of grief. Part of my dudgeon on this topic.

Our hearts can and do go out to all kinds of people in pain. There’s no such thing as this much is enough because, say, you didn’t lose a biological child of your loins. Yes, that’s bad, very very extremely bad. But so is a dead Yorkie in the arms of a 90 year old woman who had no one else in her life.

Finally, the calculus of grief is a damaging notion for those who have experienced terrible loss. The temptation to declare, “my loss is greater than yours” is corrupting and, well, venal. God did not single you out and grant you either a crown of thorns or a halo. He gave you life. And pain, even enormous pain, is part of life. It’s one way, not the only way but one way, of learning how deeply we can feel. It’s not fair? The notion of fairness is irrelevant. Life is. Death is. Loss is. Grief is.

Gratitude is.

You’ve no idea.

Been talking with a friend about great cars I’ve driven. Have a sense it doesn’t compute with him. Everyone’s too young. Today’s Asian vehicles are faster and safer. The German ones are more refined. They hum. But the old ones were much MUCH more fun.

I recommended this one to my friend. He, like me, is no longer young. He doesn’t need a Ferrari/Lamborghini/Corvette girl trap. He needs a life injection.

Not very fast. Just a nice thrum. Life spread out before you on the open road.

I’ve driven practically everything. Tell you about the Bugatti later. But have you been behind the wheel of one of these?

It’s not the exotica of its looks that gets you. It’s the straight six motor. Makes you believe that God Himself is a straight six motor. The car itself can kill you at any time with its oversteer. But the sound, my word, the sound of that motor, thrilling you into a smile that will not quit.

Had one of these too. Now we’re talking fast.

Chrysler 300 with a 440 and dual exhausts.

Zero to one hundred before you’re ready. An ocean liner with a whoosh of seat-slamming acceleration. It can cruise at a hundred all day long. It can corner like a sports car. I know. I’ve driven it like that. When the carburetor’s secondaries open it’s an instant affirmation of everything worthwhile in life.

Godawful fast.

Friend of mine bought one of these from the classifieds. Wasn’t fast enough to suit him. Then one day we heard the sound of a bearing spin. The previous owner had run it without oil. Engine totally screwed. So my friend rebuilt it absolutely to spec, bolt by bolt. He also bought a plain Firebird hood to disguise its Trans-Am-ness. Then he raised holy hell all over South Jersey. I remember one night getting into an impromptu road race with a Chevy Monte Carlo. We were just riding his tail until a long straight materialized before us. Doing about 110 mph. Then my friend punched the accelerator. At 110 mph. The secondaries opened, and the Trans Am emitted this predatory growl and leaped forward like a beast unleashed. We were at 130 mph and gaining speed in an instant. Usually, the car felt like the standard GM piece of junk, rattly and loose. But at top speed it got svelte, quiet, and nimble. It became a race car. The Monte Carlo blew its engine. Just like in the movies.

There are other stories about this car. I won’t bore you with them unless you ask, which you won’t, because none of you are old enough to know what real driving is like. Which brings me to the Bugatti shown above.

All aluminum. You could dent a fender by leaning on it. (This one had a red aluminum custom body with fenders to die for.) The cockpit was aluminum too. Right hand drive. Ever had to shift left handed? Big wooden steering wheel. It was designed to be able to go 88 mph. Fifty years later it could go — 88. We did. On New Jersey Route 55. A state cop car, standard cop car, gradually pulled alongside, stared down into our open cockpit, and pulled away. They hadn’t seen what they had seen. Because cops are people too.

She’s only 10 or so.

When I was a kid or so, I had a Westie and I had a cairn. Also had two wire haired fox terriers. Nothing prepared me for deerhounds, but nothing can.

Always wanted a Scottie. Looks like we might be about to get one. They kick ass.

What Raebert needs at this point. Are we all cool on the desirability of this outcome? Thought so.

I will drink your bloooood.

Truth to tell, Raebert is not doing well. He misses the greyhound Molly and his grieving process has been physically exhausting for us. His mood has been bleak and dark.

Exit Mrs. IP’s declaration that there will be no more dogs in this household. We rang up Scottie Rescue, and they have what might be just the right bitch to keep Raebert in line.

Filled in the application and within minutes the missus is going to conduct a FaceTime house tour to convince the rescue people that we, parents of five rescued greyhounds, one rescue pug, and one rescue Boston terrier, are worthy of an aged Scottie. Sounds fair.

Wish us luck.

Not really. An operational brain against a weak Brit radish.

This is fun. Let me set the scene. My wife went to the Amish Market for oodles of good food. I was left alone with the deerhound, the pug and the injured orange cat. Also, the Ohio State-Michigan football game. She knew I had big concerns. Michigan stopped winning long ago and their team really sucks this year. The Buckeyes are like other teams we know, slow to anger and flex their muscles.

So I didn’t watch the beginning at all. I watched, sort of, a silly romantic movie called “The Lake House” and browsed Facebook, where I discovered someone had taken a casual swipe at me. I alerted him that that was a wrong thing to do. He wanted to get it on.

I’m showing you the whole exchange. It’s pretty funny. He patronizes me from the outset and continues to joust for quite a while without ever citing a single fact to back up his uninformed opinion.

He gets the last word, of course. It’s his proof of triumph. Never mind that he didn’t make a single point.

It’s just the way lefties are. If you cite facts, those facts were made up by righties like yourself. They never have to cite facts because everyone they know agrees with them, unless they’re righty dimwits. Their first resort is always insult.

What’s fun is that this is a laboratory exercise, a proof if you will, of how their damaged minds work. They don’t make any argument and then pronounce themselves victors by virtue of their impeccable arrogance. It’s also always more fun when such trolls are Brits. They presume they are better educated. But they can no longer write at all. Or think at all. They’re just dead minds on the vine.

My dare still stands: “Wait till you turn your head, white boy.”

P.S. Yes, Ohio State won. Don’t congratulate me all at once. My mother and her parents went there. When they win this game, for me it’s like a family reunion.

We went out for Thanksgiving. For the first time.

Funny. We took our granddaughter to a nice hotel for Thanksgiving dinner. Otherwise she’d have been alone on course for a Thanksgiving Day shift at the mega-pharmacy, where she is excelling by doing the job, sort of. Which we defeated by having Thanksgiving at noon. She’s majoring in Sociology. She’s got an upcoming course in class stratification. Along these lines, she wants the Redskins to change their name. Everyone at her college agrees with her. All she needs in the way of moral force, and all us oldsters need not object. She made a face when I referred to the six years of hell this president has given us. Who would know better about such matters than a college student in 2014?

She wasn’t interested in the view from the hotel ballroom.

Battleship New Jersey. Symbol of American hegemony. Sexist too.

My wife was happy. The girl ate like a champ, working through a mountain of seafood. She’s majoring in sociology, she tells us again, and they’ve done her good. I mean they’ve done her good. I was wearing a nice tie and I tried to explain. “I just want you to know that I was in the university where most of this leftist garbage got started nearly 50 years ago, and it has never ever worked, not once.”

“Things have to change,” she said. “If they didn’t there would be no feminism and there would still be slaves.”

“Things change all the time,” I said. “Things change because people change their minds, not because young people in classrooms decide they have an imperative to impose change on the rest of us.”

So she got up and procured more crab claws and desserts. Impressive trencherman. Truly impressive.

My wife was delighted to spend the morning with her. I’m delighted my wife is delighted. Not delighted that our granddaughter is being turned systematically into another self-satisfied leftist.

So. Happy Thanksgiving. Everyone.

Thanks to all my shiny new friends at Facebook I have something funny to share with the two of you who are still reading me here. (If you click on the maps, they’ll get way bloody bigger.)

It’s an annual Brit competition to fill in the names of the states in the map of the U.S.A. Here’s at least 20 minutes of guffawing.

The best one (not really, but a taste anyway)

Problem is, I’ve a sneaking suspicion that even these careless but deadly wits know the right answers better than your own kids. Tell me (or better, show me) how wrong I am. Or show me YOU know better.

Nothing is worse.

I know I’ll get pilloried no matter how I approach this subject. But it needs to be approached. We live in a time of massive and ludicrous contradictions papered over by a tissue-thin wall of entertainment and other mass media propaganda.

Consider how many hours of programming you’ve been subjected to. All the Hollywood and TV movies, all the true crime stories, all the local news footage of women screaming, “My baby!” on the sidewalk after the sad event. How many Oscar turns have we seen of actresses playing mothers who sink into catatonia, cut off relations with their husbands, and live in the staling museums of their lost child’s bedroom? Meanwhile the husband buys an old pickup truck and drives around mooning after faint resemblances to his lost progeny. The end of their own lives is what’s now expected of parents who lose a child. You never ever get over it. Nor should you. It’s the new measure of the desolation of life itself. Anything less would be insufficient. Even morally derelict. Whatever moral means these days. Mull that for a moment.

My paternal grandparents grew up in Victorian times in the Philadelphia area. By a strange coincidence both came from eight-child families constituted the exact same way. An older sister, six brothers in a row, and then a younger sister. Both experienced the same loss — one of the brothers falling ill to appendicitis, operated on after peritonitis had already set in, on a kitchen table, and then his death in childhood.

I knew them both into their eighties. They could still speak affectingly of the loss, but it did not wreck their lives. Their families did not fall apart, they were not subsequently ignored in favor of prolonged dramatics of grief. They believed their brothers had gone back to God, and their own duty was to continue living.

Of course, a couple of things were different then, even as late as the late nineteenth century. Not all children made it out of childhood. Childhood, and infancy in particular, as well as childbearing were dangerous times. Grief was a real and regular occurrence, but it was also part of the routine passage of life. Why the maintenance of faith and your personal relationship with God were high priorities.

Why, perhaps, the ultimate sin in those days would have been a mother’s decision to kill a child before it was born. The odds against the babes were bad enough without the additional threat of murder in the womb.

Another difference. Men married women before they made babies. Two parents improved the riskier odds against child survival. A mother to keep watch and a father to instill discipline and good judgment. A stable long lasting arrangement, very rarely busted up by divorce, that gave children the smoothest possible passage to adulthood.

These days, I hear young women crowing about the progress of feminism who are themselves the product of broken homes and the consequent uncertainties of economics and even physical safety. I do not condone male infidelity, but how much have women given away of their ability to raise their children properly by becoming impoverished single mothers for the fleeting satisfaction of undoing their vows to husbands who strayed? They’re empowered. They’re bold brave feminists. They’re living in the No Man’s Land of contradictory standards: they love their children more than anything, but they’re willing to blight their children’s lives because forgiveness of a man is the hardest, most insurmountable peak a woman ever tries (and usually fails) to climb.

Result? They no longer believe in marriage, however much they love, worship, profess their willingness to sacrifice anything and everything for their children. So they hook up with even more worthless and promiscuous men, and have babies out of wedlock they can’t care for, can’t properly parent, and therefore don’t properly parent. So that the day comes when there’s a body in the street and they scream, as if after the fact emotion will rectify a life of selfish refusal to consider consequences or the evidence under their noses. “My baby!”

That lonesome wail does not a mother make.

Not making this up. There’s a street in my hometown I creep down at 15 mph. Because small children are left alone to play on the sidewalks, and sometimes a ball or a doll bounces into the street. There is no time to react when a child darts between two cars after a toy. “My baby!” Where were you ten minutes ago when a scream might have made a difference?

“My baby!” Not said about the countless abortions sought by the poor and unmarried. Just about the unintended consequences of careless life with no acceptance of real parental responsibility. How a big athletic teenager manages to become a drugged up thug who attacks a police officer and gets gunned down. Never your responsibility, never your fault. The Man murdered “my baby.”

Reason enough to reorient your life around exacting revenge for your tragically ruined life. Yeah. Not the child’s tragedy. Yours.

But you have your correlatives in the middle and upper classes too. Neglect and narcissism take many forms. The medical profession actually has a term for the maternal ailment it represents: Munchausen’s By Proxy, meaning a mother who seeks sympathy via the ills that befall her children, accidentally or willingly.

Death comes to us all. If it comes to your children and you feel guilty, confess the guilt and seek forgiveness. If you feel no guilt, repair the hole in your life and resume your responsibilities to the dozens of other people in your life. If you kill your marriage, your career, your family relationships, you are tantamount to a suicide, a lost pebble that sends out unending ripples of pain, and loss far greater than your own.

O Entertainment Industry! Please quit extolling this kind of histrionic martyrism. It’s death in a very thin disguise.

We ALL live with loss. What life is. Not living with it is the sin.

The Serendicity of Facebook. (Click for bigger.)

I could write a LOT more than a thousand words about this random compilation of photos my Facebook page has assembled. About the photos themselves, their placement, their meaning. Six images that say everything important about me. Humbling for a writer who has written millions of words about being me.

Only one will I mention. Between heaven and faith is a picture of a woman not my wife. But she is my wife, an incarnation of the Boudica who will not allow me to take her picture. Take your cue from the eyes. You don’t want to mess with those eyes, make them mad, make them worse than mad. A beauty worth living up to without trivial grudges or malefactions of any kind.

Why it’s a meaningful portrait at the heart of a symbolic array.

Go ahead and ignore it. But sometimes seeming accidents are the purest Serendicity.

Who is Ilya Somin? He says I got personal. Did I?

Didn’t call his mother any names. Didn’t call him any names. I said he doesn’t care. He doesn’t. Is that personal? Maybe. My wife and I quarreled about it. We arrived at an agreement. Yeah, it may be personal. If you don’t care about American citizens and I call you out on it, maybe you should take it personally. I sure do.

P.S. Tired, tired, tired. The Ilya Somins of the world are the most tiresome of all. They ban. I never did. Not in ten years. They ban when they’re losing. And the Somins are always losing. Nobody can stand in the arena with me and win. Not ever.

What I always do is win. Without banning. Tell Ilya Somin. He can come here if he really wants to fight. Winning is out of the question though. Not to get personal or anything, he’s just not smart enough.

Let the Games Begin!

The 2014 edition of the games got underway last night (as required) with a dramatic opening ceremony in Ferguson, Missouri. First was the traditional torching of a police car, followed by touchingly nostalgic tributes to the games’ customary events — including the looting of liquor stores, nail salons, and dollar stores, the burning to the ground of hair salons, the overturning and burning of parked cars, and the ever popular hurling of bottles and obscenities at police.

Competing teams in other cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, DC, and Oakland, played their part in inaugurating the (expected) two week long event by conducting parades through their planned target zones.

Movingly, the president played master of ceremonies, offering encouragement to the rioters with a becoming nostrum or two about fair play.

Needless to say, the opening ceremonies were covered live, with outstanding play by play coverage, by all three cable news networks, who will also share minute by minute coverage of individual events in the weeks to come.

Enjoy this time-honored production as it unfolds before us. I’m sure we’re all proud to be witnesses.

Nearly killed. Like last week in Green Bay

No. Not about Philadelphia. Surprise. About an Eagle. Hit by a truck. Is he dead? No.

He’s got his own couch now.

Why Eagles fly. Yep. It’s about Philly’s Eagles after all.

And the best voice in football, Merrill Reese.

Fly they do.

P.S. ONE MORE REASON TO HATE THE COWBOYS. Number 33, Duane Thomas. They screwed him. Like they do to everyone.

Pretty funny Yale propaganda film. I also went to Cornell for grad school. So that part’s funny too. Shame they had to film in cheesy New Haven locations.

It’s no big deal but today is The Game. Harvard versus Yale. The only thing I like about Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League anymore. Football. It’s still a game, not a business. No athletic scholarships. No spring practice. Sure there are dumb jocks but they have to be able to do the classwork. There are no challenge flags. What the refs call is the law. Games move smartly along. Pun intended.

Overall, Yale’s way ahead in the series. They always had more dumb jocks. Recently, though, Harvard’s been kicking Yale’s ass. Some number of years worth in a row. If you know what I mean. (Okay, it’s not Alabama-Auburn. I don’t know exactly.) But I’m worried this year. Yale keeps beating everybody worse than Harvard does. That’s a sign, right? And sooner or later, Yale’s going to rise up and beat Harvard, because every dog has his day. Even if it’s a drooling, half-witted bulldog. Right?

Harvard rarely goes undefeated. (Only 19 times now that I’ve done the research.) They like to think it’s a noblesse oblige thing. Truthfully, it’s a not quite good enough at football thing. But right now Harvard is 9-0. About where they were in 1968. Yale was undefeated that year too. When they had Calvin Hill, who became a huge star with the Dallas Cowboys. Figures. Dallas Cowboys and Yale go together. Lots of stars, lots of sex scandals, not much in the way of solid accomplishments for a long long time if you know what I mean.

Not that Yale isn’t old. It is. Like Bill and Hillary are old.

Anyway. Back in 1968 there was a unique confrontation. Both Harvard and Yale were undefeated. (Not this year. Yale lost to Dartmouth early in the season.) That year, maybe for the last time, The Game meant something. Yale was ranked somewhere in the the top 25 nationally. Harvard was, well, Harvard. So with 42 seconds left on the clock, Harvard was losing 29-13. When a miracle happened. The next day, the headline of the Harvard Crimson read, “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.” They even made a documentary about it. Because when a bunch of people go to Yale and Harvard and something unusual happens, you can bet a movie will be made about it eventually.

Not feeling good about this one. This year, The Game is at Harvard, but there’s no real home field advantage in this contest. It’s not like Lambeau, where everybody stops breathing when Aaron Rodgers has the ball. Everybody’s drunk and not paying attention. And the two schools are so close geographically that it’s pretty much 50-50 Harvard and Yale regardless of where they’re playing.

Worse, Marist grad and self-nominated Harvard man Bill O’Reilly is attending The Game. Yuk.

Nobody has to root one way or the other. We’re focused on The Game because we’re still getting over pet deaths. The deerhound Raebert runs away from Philadelphia Eagles games because my wife cheers too loudly. She’s much more restrained about Ivy League games. As am I.

Why? Because it’s just a game. Saving grace.