DROPPED INTO HISTORY'S TOILET
HOW FAR A MANUFACTURED STAR
MAY SINK IN A MERE SIX YEARS
WHATEVER COULD
BE HOLDING HIM UP?
Monday, July 28, 2014
Thank You,
Sister Mary St. Roger
By Kenneth M. Weinig,
{NOTE: Dr. Weinig, a distinguished educator, is Founder and, Headmaster Emeritus, The Independence School, Newark, Delaware]
My first grade in public school had been rather boring, but I loved the weekly Catechism classes in my parish conducted by a smiling nun who put colored stars next to every question in the Baltimore Catechism I got right, which were many, thanks to the motivation by my Catholic grandmother, who lived with us, and by my Protestant mother, too. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I had thought, to have such a wonderful teacher like this every day!
In September of 1950, my wish came true: I was overjoyed to enter the second grade at Our Lady of Loretto School in Hempstead, N.Y. My teacher was Sister Mary St. Roger, a cautious smiler. An early reader—thanks also to my mother—I expected to be placed in the Bluebirds, the highest group, but I was disappointed to be seated with the Robins. Oh, well, at least I wasn’t with the dumb Canaries. Later, I learned that mom had conferred with Sister, and they had agreed to give me a conservative placement, since I had come from a public school; better to promote than demote. Soon, I proved worthy of Bluebird membership but was glad they didn’t group for mathematics! As I write this, I am looking up at a shelf on which sits a small, blue ceramic lamb, given to me by Sister for winning a class spelling bee.
I even remember some of my friends’ names. Steve Colucci introduced me to Walt Disney comics, and I was especially fascinated by Uncle Scrooge. Billy Hardwin made me a Brooklyn Dodgers fan but sometimes got into trouble because he was caught drawing during a lesson pictures of Ebbets Field with the players’ names in the lineup: Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, and, his favorite, Duke Snider. James Lowe was easily the smartest in the class, and we became friends, too. That year my mother also got me my first library card, and I most enjoyed the animal stories of Thornton Burgess.
But far more memorable were the Catholic customs to which I was introduced at O.L.L. My friends urged me to come early and they would really show me some fun. So, I got permission from my mother and used my public bus ticket to arrive at 7:45 to see what the “fun” was. Steve and Billy were waiting outside the convent. When they saw the door open, they raced up to the first nun that emerged, and both yelled, “Good morning, Sister, may I carry your books?” She smiled, gave her books to one, and he joyfully accompanied her to her classroom. This ritual was repeated with all the nuns and us groupies.
Later in the week, I was honored to be a book-bearer, too. Of course, in those days the sisters all wore their glorious, inspiring traditional habits, that made you proud to be a Catholic and some Protestants wish they were. Today, we see—if we can recognize them at all—the few remaining nuns dressed like seedy social workers, crude wooden crosses hanging from their necks. Another custom, new for me, was the noon bell for the Angelus. On the recess yard, hundreds of students froze in place and prayed. The older boys quickly yanked into line any first-grader who didn’t get with the program.
I am almost brought to tears when I recall another ritual. During one recess, held after there had been a school-wide Mass held in the auditorium, I heard a tinkling bell, with a tone different from that of the richer Consecration bells. Everyone fell to his knees on the rough pavement, and I quickly followed the crowd without having a clue why. Shortly, we saw an altar boy walking along ringing the bell, followed by the priest carrying the covered chalice back to the rectory!
Once at Mass—and I only remember this having happened once—the priest dropped a Host. The reaction among the congregation couldn’t have been greater had a grenade exploded. Everything came to a shocked halt until Father, on his knees, had removed and consumed from the carpet every molecule.
A story that Sister read to the class as part of our First Communion preparation also is burned into my mind. Although it would be deemed too strict by today’s weakened standards, the story was about a little boy who, on the eve of his scheduled first reception of the Sacrament, woke up thirsty. After going to the refrigerator and taking a sip of orange juice, he was instantly horrified as he recalled the rules of fasting then in force. Tears streamed down his face as he confessed to his mother, who also wept, because her son would have to wait another year to receive his first Host! Harsh? Perhaps, but, I submit that with ceremonies and rules like these, is it any wonder that Catholics of my generation, properly educated, have not a sliver of a doubt about the truth of the Real Presence? And I further believe that such practices as Communion in the hand, only bowing instead of kneeling, and receiving from the hands of un-ordained laypeople only diminish this belief.
Sister Mary St. Roger once told another story, too, one that the politically correct today would have censored. In the early 1950s in China, Chang Kai Chek was about to lose his country to the Communists, led by Mao Tse Tung, an event that the class was learning in Our Weekly Reader. To illustrate the evils and cruelty of godless Communists, Sister brought into class a pair of chopsticks. She then told us that Mao’s followers would come up behind Christian children and place the objects into their earlobes, and, if they didn’t renounce their faith, the sticks would be pounded into their ears, breaking the eardrums! We were horrified, of course, I wincing even recalling my mother’s cleaning my ears with q-tips.
Later, when I saw on our first television some sessions of Congress during which Senator McCarthy was questioning people, I asked my parents what was going on. They told me that he was trying to find out whether there were Communists in our government. I then assumed the senator was a hero and couldn’t understand why others were critical of him, my parents obviously not able to explain to a seven-year-old the difference between means and ends. [NOTE: Despite years of hearing the pejorative terms “McCarthyism” and “Witch Hunt,” we now know (e.g., from such books as Ann Coulter’s TREASON) that everyone McCarthy accused of being a Communist was in fact a Communist.] Thank you, Sister, for exposing me to the truth so early.
My year in second grade was not without its lighter moments. In the boys’ lavatory, there was a sink about six feet long with four drinking-water fountain heads in a row. Each head had three holes from which the water emerged before forming one stream. One day I was curious about what would happen if you put your finger over one of the holes. When I did this and turned the water on, the stream shot out about two feet into the air. Wow! I was then at fountain #1 and wondered what would happen if I put my finger over two of the holes. I quickly did this, and the water arched very high into the air, reaching fountain #4.
What I didn’t realize was that James Bernard was drinking from fountain #4. I can still hear the plopping sound of the water hitting this boy’s thick black hair. I was lucky that he was very easygoing, or I would have been in a fight. I said I was sorry and returned to class. Within two minutes, Bernard came back, too, but he had not sufficiently dried his hair, causing water to drip onto his desk, and when Sister angrily asked him to return to the bathroom and dry himself properly, I had to bury my head in my hands to stifle the laughter. Dodged a bullet there.
By far, the most memorable lesson Sister taught us was the one about the purity of Mary’s soul. She drew three circles on the blackboard representing souls. She pointed to the first one, obviously black, and said this was a soul in mortal sin. Then she drew in the second one, with the chalk held sideways, causing the circle to become white. This was a soul with grace, perhaps after Communion. Before coloring the third circle, she explained that the Mother of God was conceived (a word we didn’t understand then, of course) without original sin and that her entire life was sinless. Then she proceeded, with obvious emotion, to take a full piece of new chalk and whiten the third circle. She did this with abnormal vigor, moving the chalk around and around for what seemed to be many minutes, with pieces and crumbs of white falling to the rail and onto the classroom floor, until there was nothing left of it; the circle almost glowed.
I have never forgotten this, especially since Sister had always stressed frugality with classroom supplies. She had even chided one student for discarding a piece of chalk that couldn’t have been much more than ¼” long; no waste here, she would say. To witness her using an entire piece just to illustrate the “whiteness” of Mary’s soul stunned us students, and this one never forgot that lesson.
My parents moved to another state when I was in fourth grade, and soon after, I was forced to return to public schools until my senior year, after we moved again. I have heard and seen many complaints leveled at and many parodies made of Catholic education with its allegedly cruel nuns. Perhaps I was lucky, but I never experienced any of this negativity, and I am very grateful to all these wonderful sisters for the Faith I have today. I feel very sorry for today’s Catholic youth, who, except in some very traditional places, are deprived of this experience.
Before writing this little memoir, I called my old Long Island parish to inquire about Sister Mary St. Roger. We could seldom tell a nun’s age then, with their beautiful, traditional habits, but, if she were still on this earth she would have to be well into her nineties. I learned that the school is no longer in operation, and the receptionist didn’t even know what order of nuns once taught there. Pity. But, Sister Mary St. Roger, please know that I shall never forget you and you’ll always be in my prayers. Thank you!
Sunday, July 27, 2014
The Way to Knowledge
7/27/14
If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine . . .
The golden rule to follow to obtain spiritual understanding is not one of intellectual pursuit, but one of obedience. If a person wants scientific knowledge, then intellectual curiosity must be his guide. But if he desires knowledge and insight into the teachings of Jesus Christ, he can only obtain it through obedience. If spiritual things seem dark and hidden to me, then I can be sure that there is a point of disobedience somewhere in my life. Intellectual darkness is the result of ignorance, but spiritual darkness is the result of something that I do not intend to obey.
No one ever receives a word from God without instantly being put to the test regarding it. We disobey and then wonder why we are not growing spiritually. Jesus said, “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24). He is saying, in essence, “Don’t say another word to me; first be obedient by making things right.” The teachings of Jesus hit us where we live. We cannot stand as impostors before Him for even one second. He instructs us down to the very last detail. The Spirit of God uncovers our spirit of self-vindication and makes us sensitive to things that we have never even thought of before.
When Jesus drives something home to you through His Word, don’t try to evade it. If you do, you will become a religious impostor. Examine the things you tend simply to shrug your shoulders about, and where you have refused to be obedient, and you will know why you are not growing spiritually. As Jesus said, “First . . . go . . ..” Even at the risk of being thought of as fanatical, you must obey what God tells you.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
UPDATE
See and hear Kate Smith sing
PICKANINNY HEAVEN
I assure you it's darling.
PICKANINNY HEAVEN
I assure you it's darling.
Kate Smith Pickaninny Heaven - YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq0HH9d_lHk
Jul 11, 2010 - Uploaded by JerseySurvivor
from HELLO EVERYBODY (1933). Another addition to the "What Were They Thinking?" file. At the height of ...All comments on Kate Smith Pickaninny Heaven - YouTube
www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=Mq0HH9d_lHk
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Pickaninny Heaven by Kate Smith Songfacts
www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=22269
Kate Smith - The New York Times
www2.nytimes.com/specials/magazine4/.../smith.ht...
The New York Times
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| Paul Robeson (1898-1976) |
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| Kate Smith (1907-1986) |
Thursday, July 24, 2014
UPDATE
Courtesy of WAYLON
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
TWA family member cites "Internet conspiracies"
Producer: "One or more ordnance explosions
outside the aircraft caused the crash"
"TWA Flight 800" will premiere July 17,
the anniversary of the crash
NTSB investigator insists evidence showed
an explosion inside the fuel tank
Anderson Cooper:
'TWA Flight 800 Was SHOT DOWN'
'TWA Flight 800 Was SHOT DOWN'
 |
| Anderson Cooper |
By Jack Cashill
[Emphasis added by FT]
July 22, 2014
July 22, 2014
Some truths CNN reveals only accidentally. One such truth Anderson Cooper shared on the night of July 17. In speaking about the shoot down of Malaysian airliner MH 17 earlier that day, Cooper referred back to “July 17, 1996, when TWA Flight 800 was shot down off the coast of Long Island in New York.”
See it here:
TWA Flight 800 was fresh on Cooper’s mind. Two days earlier, Cooper hosted a CNN special report on the subject, “Witnessed: The Crash of TWA Flight 800.” To understand the depth of media-government complicity, it is useful to compare “Witnessed” with two prior videos.
One is the ironically titled, “No Survivors: Why TWA 800 Could Happen Again.” CNN created this special report for the tenth anniversary of the crash in 2006. The second is a fifteen-minute video produced by the CIA in 1997 that we will call “Zoom Climb.”
“Zoom Climb,” the theatrical highlight of the FBI investigation, was designed to negate the stubborn testimony of the eyewitnesses. An animated sequence in “Zoom Climb” shows an internal fuel tank explosion blowing the nose off the 747. According to the video's narration, TWA 800 then "pitched up abruptly and climbed several thousand feet from its last recorded altitude of about 13,800 feet to a maximum altitude of about 17,000 feet."
This rocketing aircraft was alleged to look like a missile and to have confused the eyewitnesses. This animation was essential to close the investigation. Without this zoom climb scenario, the FBI had no way to explain what hundreds of official eyewitnesses had actually seen.
In the [second] animated sequence created for the 2006 “No Survivors,” however, CNN completely eliminated the zoom climb from its explosion scenario. A year ago, I addressed this discrepancy when I appeared on CNN’s “New Day” program with the producer of “No Survivors,” Jim Polk. Polk, who spoke before me, implied that there was but a single eyewitness, a helicopter pilot who said “he did see a missile before the explosion.”
I countered, “Well, unlike what Jim says, there were 270 eyewitnesses to a missile strike, 96 of them, this is FBI eyewitnesses, saw it from the horizon ascend all the way up to the plane.”
I then asked Polk, “Why did you eliminate the zoom climb if the CIA -- and what was the CIA doing involved in this in the first place -- if the CIA used that expressly to discredit the eyewitnesses?
Polk admitted the CIA zoom climb was “controversial” and conceded that CNN removed it because “there's no supporting evidence for the CIA's animation.” In “No Survivors,” however, Polk did not bother even to acknowledge the controversy, namely that the CIA had created a bogus animation to discredit the very real testimony of hundreds of eyewitnesses, and CNN knew it. “Controversial” does not do this outrage justice.
Aware, perhaps, that some viewers caught the discrepancy, “Witnessed,” split the difference between the CIA’s zoom climb and the perfectly flat trajectory of “No Survivors.” CNN did so by showing an animation produced by the NTSB three years after the CIA video to smooth out some of the absurdities in “Zoom Climb.”
In this animation, Flight 800 rises gently for about 1500 feet, corkscrews in the sky in great sweeping loops, then noses over and falls more or less straight down. Like “No Survivors,” however, “Witnessed” does not alert the viewer to the inconsistency among these videos, an inconsistency that reveals the rank dishonesty of both the CIA and NTSB productions.
“Witnessed” did, however, add some dollops of truth to the official media position. One had to do with the testimony of pilot David McClaine who witnessed the crash from an Eastwinds airliner about three thousand feet above TWA Flight 800 and some twenty miles away.
In “No Survivors,” CNN uses his testimony to support the government position. The network quotes McClaine as saying, “I did not see any missile at all.”
In fact, McClaine’s full testimony made hash out of the government position. When a few honest members of the NTSB witness group finally got to question the CIA analysts responsible for the animation in 1999, they focused on McLaine's testimony. They did so because his testimony refuted the CIA theory.
"If [TWA 800] had ascended," Robert Young of the NTSB witness group told the CIA analysts during this interview, "[McLaine] would have been concerned because it ascended right through his altitude." When a CIA analyst tried to deflect the question, Young continued. "I think [McClaine] would have noticed [the climb]," he said sarcastically. "Your analysis has it zooming above his altitude."
In “Witnessed,” CNN allows McLaine to make the case that when he saw the explosion, “[TWA 800] went down, not up. . . . The wings fell right off the airplane right away. So how is it going to climb, or what if it had no wings?” McLaine also conceded that a missile “could have come from the other side of the airplane,” but from his position above TWA 800, he did not see it.
Young and his colleagues also grilled the CIA analysts about just how many people actually saw the purported zoom climb. “That is something that a few eyewitnesses saw,” said Analyst 1. “The guy on the bridge saw that.” The CIA, in fact, built its animation around this one individual.
On July 30, 1996, Mike Wire, a millwright who observed events from a bridge in Westhampton, had told an FBI agent exactly what he had seen, specifically “a white light that was traveling skyward from the ground at approximately a 40 degree angle. . . . the white light ‘zig zagged’ as it traveled upwards, and at the apex of its travel the white light “arched over” and disappeared from Wire’s view.” After the light disappeared, the FBI 302 continues, Wire “saw an orange light that appeared to be a fireball.”
In “Zoom Climb,” the narrator says of Wire’s testimony, “The white light the eyewitness saw was very likely the aircraft very briefly ascending and arching over after it exploded rather than a missile attacking the aircraft.”
To make its theory work, the CIA animation converted Wire’s “40 degree” climb to one of roughly seventy or eighty degrees. It reduced the smoke trail from three dimensions, south and east “outward from the beach,” to a small, two-dimensional blip far offshore. Most noticeably, it fully ignored Wire’s claim that the projectile ascended “skyward from the ground” and placed his first sighting twenty degrees above the horizon, exactly where Flight 800 would have been.
Curiously, however, the CIA narrator repeats Wire’s claim that the projectile “zig zagged,” although neither the CIA nor the NTSB animation shows the crippled plane in anything but a perfectly smooth, elliptical ascent.
In trying to reconcile these discrepancies, CIA Analyst I told the NTSB group that when the FBI “reinterviewed” Wire, he changed his story, admitting that, yes, “the light did appear in the sky.” Said Analyst I, “Now, when the FBI told us that, we got even more comfortable with our theory.”
For “No Survivors,” CNN did not bother to interview Wire. For “Witnessed,” however, a CNN producer traveled to Wire’s Pennsylvania home and interviewed him on camera. As Wire told the producer, “I was a witness to Flight TWA 800. Yes, I do believe I saw a missile.” Wire then described events almost exactly as he told the FBI in his original interview. The animation in “Zoom Climb,” he said on air, “clearly did not match anything that I witnessed.”
Unfortunately, CNN chose not to show what Wire also told the producer, and it was something of a bombshell: there was no second interview. The CIA and/or FBI concocted that interview out of whole cloth. Wire spoke to the producer at length about how the government manufactured second interviews for several key witnesses.
When I appeared on “New Day” with Jim Polk, I spoke briefly about one of these eyewitnesses, FBI Witness #73. An aviation buff, in her original interview she told the FBI how she watched a “red streak” with a “light gray smoke trail” move up towards the airliner, and then go “past the right side and above the aircraft before arcking [sic] back down toward the aircrafts [sic] right wing.” She even reported the actual break-up sequence before the authorities figured it out on their own.
In her alleged second interview, #73 confessed to drinking several "Long Island Ice Teas," and these impaired her judgment.
In real life, she doesn't drink, did not even know what a Long Island Ice Tea was, and, as in Wire's case, did not give a second interview. She only learned of the fraud a few years ago.
In real life, she doesn't drink, did not even know what a Long Island Ice Tea was, and, as in Wire's case, did not give a second interview. She only learned of the fraud a few years ago.
The CNN producers, Cooper included, know all of this. It may account for why “Witnessed” finally called out FBI honcho Jim Kallstrom on one of his many egregious lies. While the viewer watches a clip of Kallstrom at a hearing, saying, “There were about 200 people that saw events in the sky that they described. None of which described a missile,” the camera scans several FBI witness statements and highlights the word “missile” in each.
Given what he knew, it is understandable that Anderson Cooper would say “TWA Flight 800 was shot down.” That very day the subtitle of “No Survivors” proved prophetic, “Why TWA 800 Could Happen Again.” Needless to say, Cooper’s flirtation with the truth could not be allowed to stand. He came back groveling a half hour or so later.
I just want to correct something I said regarding the plane crash, earlier I said that today was the anniversary of flight TWA 800, crashing off the coast of Long Island in 1996. I believe I said that it was shot down, obviously the government said it was a center fuel tank explosion. Although some people indicated they saw a rocket, there was no evidence of that. It was ruled to be a center fuel tank explosion, so I apologize for misspeaking about that anniversary.
No evidence? And now our media are criticizing Russia for covering up the shoot down of MH 17?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/07/anderson_cooper_twa_flight_800_was_shot_down.html at July 24, 2014 - 05:40:31 AM CDT