Thursday, November 2, 2017

All Saints - All Souls - Celtic New Year 158 A.D. (After Darwin)





I never quite got it from the five minute Gospel Sunday soundbites from the Catholicism of my youth.

If you wanted to understand Sacred Tradition, you could only hope for the correct religious dogmatic gossip of the nuns in grade school. Of course these days where do a lot of young Catholics get that Tradition gossip with so few women wanting to give up life in order to join Jesus' Harem.

All Saints Day, Novermber 1, was a holy day of obligation to attend mass and pass the cash into the collection basket.

In olden times, before the bisexual Emperor-God "Saint" General Constantine, November 1 was the traditional Celtic New Year. But who needs a Celtic New Year if Caesar and Rome's genocide of all things Celtic makes the point moot?

There is that nun's gossip about All Saint's Day and or the Day of the Dead celebrated in Mexico on November 1 and 2.  November 2 is All Soul's Day. Nun's gossip is that November 1 is for all the saints that have gone to their eternal reward with official kudos and November 2 is for all the rest of us slugs who only manage by the thinnest margin are worthy of Jesus' salvation.

In Mexico, using ancient pre-Christian tradition, November 1 is the Day of the Dead for all infants, and children and innocents that die young, never get contaminated with that puberty/sex stuff that confuses the hell out of the eunich mentality of the priests that run the Pagan church of Rome.

Day of the dead is for all the dead, both young and innocent, and the old and not yet forgotten.

In Mexico on the day of the Dead (All Souls Day in Catholic-ese) the family cleans the ancestors grave site and the family brings food for the dead and the living also take part in a picnic like atmosphere of remembrance of the dead - not ancestor worship?

It was on this date 40 years ago I believe I encountered the spirit of my father six months after his death etc. in the house where he died. Another story.

And it as Celtic New Year is according to my secular reckoning and new age "Tradition" the year 158 A.D. (After Darwin).

Happy Celtic New Year!




Saturday, October 28, 2017

Image of the lost Saint Tammany Weathervane - Philadelphia 1812-1930?





Image of the lost Saint Tammany Weathervane - 9' x 9-1/2' - on top of 100' Liberty Pole aka Indian Pole for over 100 years - Old York Road and Wood Street - 1844 Advertisement


Free Library Phila.Collection - circa 1900

Intersection left Old York Road, right Fourth Street at Wood Street, showing base of "Indian Pole". 

Notice the two public drinking fountains, one for horses and one for humans. 


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Monday, October 9, 2017

Paul Robeson - 1898/1976 - Jersualem - American Political Prisoner - America's First #TakeAKnee






Paul Robeson - 1898/1976 - American Political Prisoner - America's First #TakeAKnee


Passport Revoked 1956-1958 by U.S. Government preventing an American Citizen to travel abroad. 



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson



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Sunday, October 8, 2017

Jason Aldean - Fly Over States.





Fly Over States

A couple guys in first class on a flight
From new York to Los Angeles,
Kinda making small talk killing time,
Flirting with the flight attendants,
Thirty thousand feet above, could be Oklahoma,
Just a bunch of square cornfields and wheat farms,
Man it all looks the same,
Miles and miles of back roads and highways,
Connecting little towns with funny names,
Who'd want to live down there in the middle of nowhere,
They've never drove through Indiana,
Met the men who plowed that earth,
Planted that seed, busted his ass for you and me,
Or caught a harvest moon in Kansas,
They'd understand why God made those fly over states,
I bet that mile long Santa Fe freight train engineer's seen it all
Just like that flatbed cowboy stacking US steel on a 3-day haul
Roads and rails under their feet
Yeah that sounds like a first class seat
On the plains of Oklahoma
Where they windshield sunset in your eyes
Like a watercolor painted sky
You'd think heaven's doors have opened
You'll understand why God made
Those fly over states
Take a ride across the badlands
Feel that freedom on your face
Breathe in all that open space
Meet a girl from Amarillo
You'll understand why God made
Why you'd want to plant your stakes
In those fly over states
Have you ever been through Indiana
On the plains of Oklahoma,
Take a ride,
Songwriters: NEIL THRASHER, MICHAEL DULANEY
© Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., HORI PRO ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
For non-commercial use only.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Passmore Williamson - Abolitionist Philadelphia Lawyer - 1822 / 1895


Source :  Chester County (Pa.) Historical Society - (Public Domain Image) 

Passmore Williamson, a defrocked Quaker, his views on abolition too radical for his home congregation, photo in jail at Philadelphia County Jail, Moyamensing Prison on contempt charges for his refusal to cooperate with the court in the case of Freed Slave and her two young sons, Jane Johnson, who was free when she set foot on Pennsylvania soil, 1855 

Williamson argued in court that Jane Johnson was not a fugitive slave under provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act 1850 in that her master was transporting himself and his chattel to New York to catch a ship to his new ambassador's post in Guatemala. 

Williamson defended Johnson in court and would not, could not reveal whereabouts of Jane Johnson landed him in jail for 100 days in contempt of court. 

Passmore Williamson


Sunday, September 3, 2017

My Latest on Kindle -Tales of Tucson Arizona




My long lasting memory of Tucson Arizona was one cold day in November around 1991, the day after Thanksgiving and walking along Stone Street to my job in a nearby office building, Stone being the old main street of the downtown area. Out of a deserted cityscape at 8 AM in the morning I saw a tumble weed something like six feet in diameter blowing along the street. 

Many people were not working that day. I, a city boy from back east, had to wonder if this was a normal occurrence and then had to wonder where it came from. Likely source was along the Santa Fe Railroad tracks about two blocks from where I was standing. Over time, I would come to realize how a once small cow town like Tucson kept it's cows and cowboy past a bit here and there as Malls replaced a downtown already with many storefronts boarded up from its glory says as an economic hub of the region of border area near Mexico. 

Along this theme some few years later I ran into a piece of Tucson current history. In a thrift store I came across a four inch by eight inch silver plated tray with ink invitation to the official grand opening of the United Bank building downtown. This from the grossly obscene days of the boom before the bust of the Savings and Loan fiasco that nobody learned from mainly because of the cover up by the Keating Five in the Senate covering their paws and tracks in that criminal enterprise. That scandal being a small scale training package of the bigger R/E mortgage scandal that went bust nationally in 2008. 

That the United Bank Tower still stands having have many banks and owners since then. Next to it is a large boarded up eyesore that looks like it should be hiding a would be fountain of a plaza next to the building which is in fact the boarded up foundation of a Twin Tower to the United Bank Tower that never got built. 

That the whole economy of Tucson, Phoenix and Arizona in general is a boom and a bust economy that over time has seen mining come and go and modern businesses as well. 



Friday June 13, 2008

...Which leads me to the story of my next door neighbor in Arizona. Perry had a remarkable life. Left home and dairy farm in Minnesota when he was fifteen in the middle of the depression and headed west. He wanted to be a cowboy and that he became for some years. Then when World War II broke out he went up to Canada and joined the fight. He hit Juno beach on D-Day as a lieutenant in the Canadian army. He married a Brit, brought his war bride home and settled into life in Arizona B.A.C. (before air conditioning).

Perry joined the post office and then worked his way up to postmaster before retirement. I got to talk to him over the fence as a neighbor. Good stories. Went into his house a few times and vice versa. All in all, he was a great neighbor.

Then one day his wife came to us to tell us that Perry had skin cancer, that they did some necessary surgery but that the disease may have spread. I am not sure how all this got started. Perhaps my neighbor’s wife was talking to my wife and then the topic came up about me being an elder in a local church. Apparently Perry had no religious ties. I would have assumed that he might have attended church in his youth in Minnesota. His wife asked if I would talk to him.

I went over to the man in his house and tried to give comfort. I don’t think he wanted me there. Perhaps he was in denial of his own mortality. No doubt he sensed how green I was in giving comfort. I admit it. I couldn’t do him any good. Between his resistance and my inexperience, I did not serve his needs very well sad to say. Perry died suddenly about two weeks later while working in the garden. We went to give comfort to the wife next door that night and then we attended a graveside service a few days later.

This is where I get some reality checks put into my little bubble world of beliefs. I met Episcopal nuns at the graveside. I never knew such an animal existed. They had educated Perry’s children. There were lots of neighbors, relatives and co-workers from the post office. The most interesting person I met was a female Rabbi. Perry was Jewish?

I was a bit taken aback. I had heard the story about how Perry and his war bride had built the second house in this desert housing community in 1948. When I closed on the house next door, I got my deed of title or whatever and included in the paperwork was a covenant of restrictions set on the property when it was built.

That covenant was of course stamped with a label “Null and Void under Federal Civil Rights Act of...” The nasty thing about that covenant was the few pages that made it quite clear in a long range of specifics that no ...”Jews, negroes or dogs...” were allowed in this housing development etc.

As it turned out, Perry had no religious affiliation. His wife was Jewish. I chuckled about how a man like Perry, this cowboy, this war hero, this postmaster must have laughed at the WASP covenant of restrictions. Here was a real individual. Here was an old fashioned American. Here was a man.

Perry had made arrangements with the rabbi to be buried in solidarity with his wife’s belief system. Was Perry a believer, an atheist, an agnostic? I don’t know. In retrospect I don’t care. I knew the man. He was good ethical man. I prayed for him.

Part of being a cultural Christian is that you can embrace people of other beliefs, respect them and still retain you basic feel for yourself and not compromise your basic faith.

America’s greatest strength is and has always been its diversity.

Amidst this eclectic graveside audience, I had an epiphany. I also think that that paradigm shift thing happened.

It was fascinating to hear the twenty third psalm read in Hebrew. I am not certain that the Kaddish was said there but I realized something about my own belief systems. Christianity is wrapped up in a lot of layers of traditions, sacred tradition, faith, grace, propaganda, love, hate and on an on.

There under a blistering Arizona sun, prayers for a Jew were said in the desert. Were these the similar prayers that Joseph of Aramathea read over Jesus’ broken and lifeless body on Good Friday at twilight, eve of Sabbath?

You could be surrounded with stone cathedrals, and stained glass and the gospels could be read from a Gutenberg bible and the minister could be wrapped in gold cloth. But could you get any more from prayers at the end of your life than my neighbor got that day or when Jesus was interred and they rolled the stone in front of the tomb?

It makes you think. It made me think.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tales of Tucson Arizona 



Monday, August 28, 2017

Of Statues to Fascism and Ivy League Spy Recruitment in the Cold War



Several things bother me lately. Suddenly more so than lately as well.

ONE is that the corporations and the MSM who gave Trump a free ride to the White House got what they paid for or what they thought was a deadbeat business man who would dance to the American corporate tune.

Problem with that is that Trump is already dancing that Russian dance. The MSM here and there have covered the real #LittleFinger Donald Deadbeat Trump over the decades. But his forays into not only Russia but the Soviet Union as early as some say 1987 seems rather peculiar to me. That Trump is looking for capital in the U.S.S.R. for R/E development sounds a bit unkosher to the ring of it in a traditional way.

Perhaps Soviet Generals and Commissars or KGB operatives needed money laundering in a big way and or the various ethnic mobs operating in the Soviet Union operated not in the open but were tolerated with the right amount of bribe money here and there in the many Soviet Bureaucracies.

My thought looking at it is - when exactly did the KGB recruit Donald Trump and his companies to do their bidding. 1987 or maybe even as early as 1967 in his days at Wharton @Penn.

A Penn recruitment center for spies in the middle of the Vietnam War in the Archetypal center of Capitalist business thought at Wharton (bow your heads). The KGB was never that smart but methodical, good on the long term leg work to get a bad product sold door to door.

Of course that triggers a thought to us of the big Soviet spy thing among the upper crust Brits in the Cold War at its beginning and the secrets of atomic weaponry etc.

TWO is that the media say that Donald transferred from Fordham in NYC to Penn in Philly to take the only R/E course degree available in the I-V and or Ivy League. Has anybody in the corporate media ever checked out that little gem?  And like most lies with a cherry on top, young Donald both attended classes and ran mom's company from Philly or commuting everyday by limousine?

And the Donald's deferments. Were the doctors signing off on his flat feet with little toes Philly and or NYC docs. Did they have legit Doctor's licenses. Did they do favors for frat brothers at Penn where maybe once upon a time they attended school etc. Were they Russian doctors? I remember the MSM being overwhelmed by Trump's present doc wearing Crocs on his feet and telling us that the sky is blue and the Croc Doc certifies the health of a man running for one of the toughest management jobs on the planet.

THREE that I used to live in Philly, grew up there and had to leave because it was a hate filled backwater of ignorance and quite frankly a corrupt fascist state of mind kind of place for little people like me that thought that democracy should be a little bit more liberal with dispensement of Justice to all peoples of that city.

That about the same time that Donald drifted down to Philly and the University of Pennsylvania in 1967, a fascist pig named Frank Rizzo became police chief in prelude to his run for mayor in 1971 and his changing party to Republican in a Democratic enclave in order to vie for the position of VP on the 1972 Nixon ticket. Agnew stayed on the ticket and later was sideswiped from the POTUS job because of his uncovered corruption as Governor of Maryland. How convenient and with what timing.

That and Frank Rizzo was both a racist and gay basher. That he kept records on everybody's bad habits for blackmail and or bribes perhaps and his meteoric rise to power. He kept meticulous records like J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI. And like the rumors that abound around a big homophobe like Hoover and Rizzo, the Philly police have to spend a lot of cop overtime protecting the monument to Rizzo across the street from the second empire style City Hall. Protect the statue from spray paint, eggs, and the occasional dressing up with bra panties and or dress just like J. Edgar. Wink Nod. Even talk of sending it south to South Philadelphia, an Italian enclave left in a very diverse city.

That Rizzo ran a police state as police chief and mayor that any Soviet mayor would envy and operated the kind of place where dirty little secrets could be sold to Soviet spy handlers at Penn with a lot of cold hard cash.

That the media ignore Sheriff Joe Arpaio's police state in Maricopa Country on the nearby border with Mexico all these years and only now pay any attention to him when The Donald and or the KGB have ordered his pardon - a wall separating him from justice. And triggering the memories I have of living in that police state in Philly before moving north to the NYC area some decades ago.






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Saturday, August 26, 2017

Now For Something Completely Different

Centennial of the Launching of the Big Ships U.S. Navy - August 1897 - Philly and Washington Park, Deptford NJ




A possible event connected to the famous 1897 Street Scene Photo (off of a stereograph photo card by "B.W. Kilburn and Company" - Library of Congress) above between 7th and 8th Street on Market Street and the crowds main focus looking east toward 6th Street may be a G.A.R. Grand Army of the Republic, Naval veterans posts event celebrating the launch in Spring 100 years prior, the centennial, of the original 6 ships of the first Official Navy under the U.S. Constitution and the ships built with funds authorized by Congress in 1794. Launched from six shipyards along the east coast in 1797. 

The event commemoration on August 12, 1897 was at Independence Hall starting at 12:30 PM. 

I would imagine with speeches and music the Navy Vets would have been there at least two hours. And the Vets in parade form then marching over to the Arch Street Wharf, may have used 6th Street - the reason for people in balconies at 7th Street trying to get a glimpse of the then moving event amidst the flags and bunting etc. on Market Street, the main drag through Philly. 

A typical muggy Philly August afternoon with a slight overcast of clouds to mute the shadows and direction of shade to indicate a time frame of the day. 

That and some folks wanting to take a Ferry over to Washington Park in Deptford Township NJ to get a view of yacht racing and mock naval battles off Fort Mifflin in the late afternoon into evening. 


The U.S.S. United States had already been launched in May 1797 from Humphries Shipyard in Philadelphia. 





http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Original_six_frigates_of_the_United_States_Navy







Philadelphia Inquirer 13 Aug 1897














https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Minneapolis_%28C-13%29







https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Katahdin_(1893)






https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphitrite-class_monitor







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Thursday, August 17, 2017

Tearing Down Monuments Does Not Change History - CSA




Wikipedia is listing something like three incarnations of the KKK. The second of which is dated 1915-1944.

It would seems that 90% of the Confederate Statues being removed in places ruled by Democratic politicians coincide in their origins with the second Klan period and its political power of pre-WWI through the war on Fascism in WWII.

I don't think it good to remove every monument in a public park because considering city and state budgets the removal of these statues will result in voided and or ugly space in the public places where they used to occupy space. 

I am against erasing history even if I don't like that history. 

People instead of reacting the this Trump supported Alt-Right, Neo-Nazi, Neo-Confederate outburst of hatred on the American landscape should be channeled into removing these monsters from public office via the voting booth. 


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Friday, August 4, 2017

Mueller Stew (DC Grand Jury) - Donald Trump Jr - Natalia Veselnitskaya





A lawyer, a spy, a mob boss, and a money launderer go into a bar.

The bartender says: "you guys must be here to talk about adoption."








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Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Bad Finger - Baby Blue - Breaking Bad - The American Dream










Guess I got what I deserved
Kept you waiting there too long, my love
All that time without a word
Didn't know you'd think that I'd forget or I'd regret
The special love I had for you, my baby blue
All the days became so long
Did you really think, I'd do you wrong?
Dixie, when I let you go
Thought you'd realize that I would know
I would show the special love I have for you, my baby blue
What can I do, what can I say
Except I want you by my side
How can I show you, show me the way
Don't you know the times I've tried?
Guess that's all I have to say
Except the feeling just grows stronger every day
Just one thing before I go
Take good care, baby, let me know, let it grow
The special love you have for me, my Dixie, dear.




Saturday, July 22, 2017

Jesus as Hard to Find as Sasquatch - So I Worship #SasquatchJesus...



A Christian Trump supporter is not just a moron, they're an oxymoron.
Perhaps they should follow my  - came back and ignored and not accepted yet for his new look. pic.twitter.com/vZE8MFdeOr
View image on Twitter


Jesus as Hard to Find as Sasquatch - So I Worship #SasquatchJesus...


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Saturday, July 8, 2017

Mary J. Blige, U2 - One




One

Is it getting better
Or do you feel the same
Will it make it easier on you
Now you got someone to blame
You say
One love
One life
When it's one need
In the night
It's one love
We get to share it
It leaves you baby
If you don't care for it
Did I disappoint you?
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without
Well it's too late
Tonight
To drag the past out
Into the light
We're one
But we're not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other
One
Have you come here for forgiveness
Have you come to raise the dead
Have you come here to play Jesus
To the lepers in your head
Did I ask too much
More than a lot
You gave me nothing
Now it's all I got
We're one
But we're not the same
We hurt each other
Then we do it again
You say
Love is a temple
Love a higher law
Love is a temple
Love the higher law
You ask me to enter
But then you made me crawl
And I can't be holding on
To what you got
When all you got is hurt
One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other
One
One
Songwriters: MARY J BLIGE, ESTHER DEAN, AUBREY GRAHAM, RODNEY JERKINS
© Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Peermusic Publishing
For non-commercial use only.
Data from: LyricFind


Thursday, July 6, 2017

Columbia College 1851 (1896 illustration)









FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2014

Did part of Ben Franklin's House exist up until the early part of the 20th Century?





Did part of Ben's house exist up until the early part of the 20th century? Background. 

http://www.philadelphiaspeaks.com/forum/history/33055-any-further-history-data-out-there-regarding-franklin-court.html



I ran into this photo circa 1910 regarding Franklin Court and I was reminded of a discussion on a NYC architectural interest forum, two years back, about how the original King’s College Main Hall of the original Columbia University in New York City, downtown and a block or two from city hall, how it probably got chopped up into sections, and sold off piecemeal rather than being totally demolished in the 1850s. 




The conversation was part of the then current so-called controversy of the Cordoba Mosque being built two blocks over from the World Trade Center. The so-called World Trade Center mosque was a foreign real estate thing with the taking over of the old Sym’s Men’s Clothing store and turning it into a mosque where mostly cab drivers could say prayers in a busy schedule.

The eventual plan was to tear down what was left of some nineteenth century cast iron fronted buildings tied together in that old clothing store, where I used to buy a few suits BTW, and build a thirteen story building to also contain office space, health/gym center and of course a place for prayer. 


In the course of the discussion it got mentioned that 49-51 Park Place was on the site of the original King’s College building. With the help of online lot maps with the city of New York, some interesting ideas developed. One was that the lots on Park Place were irregular in size. That the smallest lot on Park Place was likely to have been the structure directly beneath the cupola in the photo. 

There is a sketchy history attached to the move of King’s College before the revolution, Columbia College after the revolution, moving uptown to the present site of Rockefeller Center until about 1910 when it moved further uptown to the Morningside Heights campus on a hill overlooking Harlem at 116th Street and Broadway.

A modern idea is that you demolish and build fresh. (Urban Renewal?)

It would appear that the old King’s college building got sold off piecemeal with some parts demolished and some others still standing as stores until late in the nineteenth century. That some of the the basement walls of the old Sym’s store may be in fact part of still intact foundation walls of the original King’s College etc. But that is New York and money trumps history every day of the week there especially when it comes to real estate.

That to do this suggests a great deal of frugality on the people, their time and mindset, buying pieces of the building, recycling them, and also buying a chunk of a previous continuous building that could stand in pieces that stood on solid foundation walls and or solid interior supporting walls. Thus the irregular nature of some of the lots on Park Place according to that discussion documented below...







Getting back to Franklin Court, Hudson Street, S. Orianna St. and or the original Ben Franklin house torn down around 1810 to be subdivided into lots and make money for his descendants, the thought occurred to me that this, what looks like a large building 17 S. Orianna Street, would be built from scratch in almost an alleyway and described as a street. Perhaps it could be a recycled part of the original Franklin house or part of a three story addition built in 1785.

Considering Franklin’s wealth and interest in solid fire proofing with plaster in the construction, that the addition may have survived because it could stand on its own and that the street was positioned accordingly. Frugality plus room for a tidy profit too.

Can’t find anything online regarding when 17 S. Orianna Street was demolished, probably in the great tsunami of urban renewal in the 1950s.