The Dragon and Captain Bill

Captain Bill, the Merchant Marine sea captain, was my brother's lifelong friend.  Well, livelong since the junior year in high school.  Bill was lovely to little children and a genial host and guest.  He could be raw and ugly especially to his wife, even in front of company.   Over and over through the years my brother swore he'd never have anything to do with Bill again, but over and over friendship won out and the door was open for the kid who slept on our couch nights when he had nowhere else to go.

Maybe Bill never got over his childhood.  His father had issues and wasn't around much.  His older brother abused him.  School was a nightmare since he was the littlest guy on the bus in a world where little guys were easy prey.  Bill started fighting back.  He may have lost every fight, but he put up such fierce resistance that people started leaving him alone.  Then he got to middle school and discovered wrestling and weightlifting.  He worked out like a demon.  His schoolyard fights were legendary.  Pretty soon, nobody in Farmingdale or the surrounding towns messed with Billy H.  And pretty soon Billy H stopped messing with anyone.  He was on a Vision Quest for a college scholarship and the Olympic wrestling team.  That dream ended on a controversial call in the New York State wrestling championships, but all the hard work paid off with an offer of admission to the New York State Maritime Academy.

While the rest of America burned, Farmingdale quietly integrated its high school in the 1960s.  The school board led by old man Weathers just decided one night to turn the two small high schools into middle schools and open a big new high school on the south side of town.  When it opened up there were the black kids from North Amityville.  Not much fuss.  The football teams became powerhouses.

Farmingdale High School

150 Lincoln Avenue

Farmingdale, New York

Young Captain Bill was walking down the hall one day, senior year, contemplating the new life that awaited him.  He bumps into someone and apologizes.  It's a black kid, a new kid at the school who doesn't know the legends or landscape.  The black kid flies into a rage and shoves Bill.

Bill says,  "Don't do that."
"F... you, motherf..er!  Let's go [fight]!" 
The black kid is hopping around like Muhammad Ali.
"Look I'm sorry," says Bill  (God, I don't need this now I'm going to college).
"You a punk! Let's go!"
"What did you say?" 
The young black has opened the door to a dangerous place.  He's thinking he's having a little fun intimidating a soft, short, white suburban kid.
"You heard me.  You a punk."  You punkin' out!"
The young black stepped through the door into the very dangerous place.
"You punkin' out!"
"Nobody says Billy H punked out!  I'll see you at the Lake after school."

What and where's the Lake thinks the black kid.  The Lake was a pond in a wooded area behind the high school at the intersection of Southern State Parkway and Bethpage State Parkway.  It was where the high school kids went to settle their differences.

Pride and anger boxed Billy into a corner.   He's missed too many driver's ed classes already.  If he misses another, he flunks the course.  Who else does he turn to for help: my brother.  

"Tim, I got to fight this black kid after school.  I can't miss anymore driver's ed,  Go down to the Lake and tell him to wait for me and I'll be there if he still wants a piece of me."
"God, Billy, just let it go.  You don't need to fight.  You have nothing to prove."
"He called me a punk, Tim.  He's saying I punked out.  Nobody says Billy H punked out.
"Give it a rest Billy.  You're going to college.  Nobody will believe him anyway and next year you'll be at a school with people who don't know or care...unless you do this stupid thing and get thrown in jail for massacring some black kid."
"Nobody says Billy H punked out.   Do this for me, Tim."
"Ok, but it's a very bad idea."

So my brother treks on down to the Lake.  By the time he gets there, there's a big crowd.  The white kids have gotten word that Billy H, the legend, is about to reenter the ring.   The black kid, still in the dark about what he's gotten into, is there with a bunch of the brothers to back him up.  My brother walks up to him.

"The guy you want to fight is going to be late.   It's a bad idea, but if you still want to fight him he'll be here in a little while after he finishes driver's ed."

The brothers backing up the new kid know my brother from the football team.  They look at each other.  One of them walks over to my brother.

"Mac, who's the brother fighting."
My brother sighs and announces:  "He's picked a fight with Billy H."
"Thanks, Mac."
The football brother goes back to the black kid and drags the now very bewildered brother off.
"Let's go.  You ain't fightin' no Billy H."

The Dragon Sponors a Baseball Team

Arizona Yaquis Baseball

Help this child!

My beautiful and smart wife has degrees from Simmons, Yale and the University of California at Berkeley.  However, she is of a generation of women who refused to learn to type.  When she went off to college, her mother told her to learn to type.  "You can always get a job as a secretary."  That sealed the deal and my wife never touched a keyboard thereafter.

Not knowing how to type became a handicap when technology started taking over the workplace.  But not for my wife.  By then she was the chief operating officer of the state's largest Medicaid health plan.   She had a crackerjack assistant.  My wife need only scratch down a few notes or dictate a few words and her commands shot off into the ether. 

Then little Jimmy and Little Mary came into our lives.

"Jim! Jim! Come quickly!"
I raced into the room to find a little girl and a woman hovering over a computer.
My daughter was crying.  My wife was looking on, helpless and distraught.
"Jim!  Do something!  Can't you see this little girl needs help!"
The computer was frozen.
After pondering the situation for a moment,  I put my index finger on the computer keyboard's escape key and pushed down.  The computer sprang back to life.

I exited the room, wisely not saying a word.

The Dragon and the Snuggy

One day you're promoted to one of the most esteemed and sought after jobs on campus.  The next you're introduced to reality.

"Gentlemen, you are responsible for maintaining order on your dormitory floor.  If there's problem, you need to figure out how to deal with it.  Don't call me [the Assistant Dean of Men} or security unless the building is burning down."

"Mr. M and Mr. M please meet with me.   Gentlemen, Mr. X and Mr. Y will be on your floor.  Deal with it."   Mr. X was an the All-East starting guard on the football team.  His roommate, Mr. Y, was no longer on the football team due to an unfortunate incident with a reluctant young woman during parietal hours.  He was being allowed to finish his education at Holy Cross, but his athletic career was over.  The worst fears of Mr. M and Mr. M were completely unfounded.   M. X was a no-nonsense student.  If any mischief lurked in his heart, he was too smart to let it interfere with his goals.   How he hooked up with Mr. Y is a mystery.   Sober, Mr. Y was smarter than most thought and spent the year on his best behavior.

It was the 160-pound hockey player who was a headache.  He lived across the hall from the football players.  We made it through the entire fall without a mishap.  Then late one December night the football players came knocking at my door.

"Mac, we can't get Frank out of our room.  Come and help."
Two gigantic football players couldn't get Frank, the 160-pound hockey player, to leave?
"Ok, I'll come down and evict him."
When I go into their room I have to duck when a hockey stick sails past my head.
Safely prone on the floor.
"FRANK!  What the Hell are you doing."
"We're trying to kill me, Mac."
Frank is talking to me from the safety of a cabinet over the one of the dorm room clothes closet.  The cabinet is just big enough to hold a 160-pound hockey player.
"Come down, Frank.  Damn it!"
"They'll kill me." 
Frank is a very long way from sober.   From my vantage point on the floor, Frank appears to be naked, except possibly for some undershorts.
"Come down, Frank!  I won't let them touch you."
"No way I'm coming down, Mac!   I don't trust you, either."
I crawl out of the room to avoid the flailing hockey stick.
"Stay out of the room, you two.  I'm going to get Lou [the other Mr. M].
"Lou, get up!  Get up, Lou!  I need help with a problem."
Lou is sound asleep and just mumbles.   He is either a really a sound sleeper, or is taking the coward's way out.  I go back to the football players.
"Isn't there someway you can get Frank out without hurting him."
Mr. Y ponders this for a second and looks at Mr. X.
"We can get him out any way we can think of, as long as we don't hurt him?"
"Yes [Sweet Jesus, forgive me]"
"We'll be back"
Ten minutes later they appear with what appears to be a large cylinder of CO2 they've liberated from a Coke machine.
"What are you going to do with that."
"You'll see."
By now half the people on the dormitory floor are awake and out of their rooms watching the spectacle.
One holding the cylinder and the other the hose, the football players enter the room, opening the valve on the CO2 gas.   Frank is blinded.   He is quickly overcome by the gas, drops the hockey stick and jumps out of the storage cabinet gasping for air.  The football players drop the gas cylinder and grab Frank.
Before I can say a word Frank is being carried down the hall by the football players, out into the snow, followed by a large crowd.  The football players tear Frank's underpants off over his head, giving him a snuggy.  The crowd cheers (Frank was far from universally popular).  Then the football players throw Frank into a snow bank.

Frank and I are left there alone in the cold and dark.
"You ok, Frank?"
"@#$%^&*! you, Mac!  
Frank is on his feet now, standing naked in the snow.
"Why'd you "@#$%^&*!  let them do that to me."
"Calm down, Frank.   Let's go inside and get you warm."
So I took Frank to his room, put some clothes on him and put him to bed.  Then I went across the hall and banged on the football players' door.
"You two lock the door and don't come out until the morning.  Worry about putting the Coke machine back together then.  If there's any more trouble, I'll have to call Harrington [the Assistant Dean of Men] and then the shit will really hit the fan."
I spent the rest of night in peace.  In the morning, the Coke machine was back together, no one said a word about what happened, including my roommate who missed the whole show.

My Babysitter's Dad

One of the sadder moments in life was showing up at our elementary school Harvest Festival (why can't we just call it Halloween) and seeing the cops on the security detail, including my babysitter's dad, wearing body armor.   Has the world come to that.  Cops have to worry about getting shot during a grammar school holiday party?

I don't want to pry, but I'd love to know how grace touched this man, my babysitter's dad.  He's white.  His wife is white.  He has four children.  His oldest daughter is black, our babysitter.

A CPA Flashes the Dragon

Head down.  Work hard.   Dazzle the clients.  Blow your supervising partner away by telling his client, the Aramco General Audit, who had an office the size of an airplane hanger, why the world's largest oil producing company could not produce its financial statements.   That's what it takes to be a rising star.

And when you're a rising star all sorts of amazing opportunities present themselves, including women who throw themselves at your feet.

I couldn't possibility have invented this.  Never in my life did it occur to me that this could happen... not in the offices of one of the most prestigious accounting and auditing firms in the world.  In a girly bar in the Philippines maybe, between rounds of fighting in Vietnam.   But not in the palatial offices, the sanctum sanctorum, of the Auditor's Auditor.

"What do I have to do to get your attention?"
It was well past the time when even the stalwart worker bees from Texas A&M, well on the way to their 60 hour weeks, had gone home.
There in the doorway to my office was the latest addition to our staff, an extremely attractive, but married young woman.
Her dress was hiked up around her shoulders and I can assure you, thank God, that she was wearing underwear.  She was shaking her booty.

I got myself transferred to Arizona at the first opportunity.   She ditched her husband and married one of the firm's partners.  He was a decent man, but apparently more dimwitted than I'd realized.

The Lonesome Train

Long ago in Levittown, New York, my Uncle Pete Reilly was the voice of civility and reason. He called on "Progressives" for restraint, but they wouldn't have anything to do with it and ended up with a big fight over the public schools and the ballad of the Lonesome Train.

The Lonesome Train was composed by members of Pete Seeger's group the Almanac Singers, which was closely affiliated with Camp Unity, which in turn was connected to the American Communist Party. The ballad was a harmless enough ditty about Lincoln, unity and the war on slavery, but included rather unfortunate references to New York, New Yorkers and New York politicians. My uncle pleaded with the school administrators and school board to be reasonable and avoid starting a fight by featuring the ballad in the schools. My father objected, too. In addition to the unfortunate references to New Yorkers, the Almanac Singers had an unfortunate and, back then, well known history. Being affiliated with the Camp Unity crowd, Seeger and his singers opposed America's entry into World War II and denounced Franklin Roosevelt for trying to help England when England stood alone in the world against fascism. This was while the Soviet Union was still an ally of Adolf Hitler. The Almanac Singers and Pete Seeger were "conscientious objectors." In that vein, Seeger wrote the anti-war ballad Plow Under (every fourth American boy) in 1941 prior to Hitler turning on his ally the Soviet Union. After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Seeger and the Almanac Singers changed their tune and volunteered to perform for the U.S. Office of War Information.  That relationship and the Almanac Singers didn't last long after someone pointed out that they'd authored Plow Under. The Almanac Singers became the Weavers.  To what should be no one's surprise, when the Vietnam War came along, Seeger and the Camp Unity kids were once again "conscientious objectors," aligned with the Soviet Union and writing anti-war ballads: "And the big fool says to push on."   The Soviet aligned version of America First was the American Peace Mobilization, which among other pro-Hitler actions called Franklin Roosevelt a "warmonger" and agitated for ending Lend-Lease aid to Britain during the Blitz.

That my friends, on this Veterans Day (11/11/2014), is why I have a great deal of skepticism when I hear someone say they're a conscientious objector. Few of them can say they've been consistent, except to their political allegiances.

*    *    *    *    *    *

"At any rate, today I'll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was merely a 'hard driver' and not a 'supremely cruel misleader.' I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the  Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks."
-- Pete Seeger

What differentiates Seeger from the Christians and Americans is straightforward.   No Christians or Americans alive today endorsed or participated in the alleged sins of the Inquisition, Crusaders and slaveholders.  It's dubious claiming that most of Seeger's accused even had an ancestor who was an Inquisitor, Crusader or slaveholder.   On the other hand,  Seeger was not simple an admirer of the living Stalin but a propagandist on Stalin's behalf who did his part to stop America from intervening when America's support might have kept Hitler and Stalin from plundering Catholic Poland, clearing the way for the Holocaust to come.  Stalin killed millions on his own.  Stalin's alliance with Hitler to divide Poland cleared the way for the Holocaust.   Seeger might not have realized that the Hitler-Stalin alliance would result in the Holocaust, but at the time it was pretty clear that Hitler had evil plans for the Jews.

Seeger was joined in his opposition to support for England and American intervention in World War II by other left wing organizations including the Morgen Freiheit, the Daily Worker and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Veterans.

*    *    *    *    *    *

Plow Under
(an America first, anti-draft song) 
-- Pete Seeger, May 1941

Now the politicians rant
A boy's no better than a cotton plant
But we are here to say you can't
Plow the fourth one under.

[Final Chorus:]
Plow under,
Don't you...plow under
Don't you...plow under
Every fourth American boy.
Now, don't you...plow under,
Don't you...plow under
Don't you...plow under
Every fourth American boy

The Dragon Drives a Caprice

My dad drove a junker.  Forever.  It was an old blue Chevy Caprice, one headlight dangling from its wires where the front bumper was still smashed in from an accident.  One visit home I borrowed it to go to a restaurant and upon leaving the restaurant discovered the car no longer went in reverse.  I had to put the car in neutral, get out, get in front and push the thing out of its parking space.  Got home:  Dad, you need a new car.  If money's a problem, I'll buy you one.  No, no, Son.  I love that car.  It's got another 100,000 miles on it.  How do you park the thing, Father?   Oh, I just pull into parking spots where it rolls out downhill or where you can drive straight ahead out the other side.

After Dad died, I sold it to the guy down the street for a dollar.  He was a cop and happy to have it since the cops had a garage that would fix up the junkers to run little better for cheap.  The cops in his precinct liked to drive junkers to work.   Work was a bad neighborhood where the denizens vandalized the cops' personal cars parked near the police station.

Aramco: Women Drivers

Women don't drive in Saudi Arabia.  They don't ride in cars with anyone other than a relative.  Only their eyes are exposed in public.  Shortly before the Aramco shuttle (an all first class seat Boeing 747 that travelled between Houston and Dammam) landed in Dammam, all the woman disappeared.  One minute a bunch of gals in jeans are scurrying for the bathrooms and the next the plane is filled with black robed bodies bobbing up the aisles, women peeking through the eye slits in their outfits trying to locate their seats before landing.

The exception to the rule was the Aramco compound.  By the grace of God and Bill Keller's dad,  wives of American workers were allowed to drive.  Alone, no less.  This led to awkward moments with Aramco security since the Saudi security guards could not talk to the American women drivers when they were apprehended for speeding.  They'd send the wife on her way, then the husband would have to come down to the police station and apologize to the police for the wife's bad behavior and promise it would never happen again.

The Dragon Gets a Free Drink

Airplane rage is all the rage.  It's not a new problem.

I have long legs and don't like being elbowed by the person sitting next to me, so to stretch my legs and move out of the way of flying elbows, I always reserve an aisle seat weeks in advance of my airplane rides ( and these days avoid airplanes as much as possible altogether).

One flight during my consulting days at the end of a long itinerary, I settled into my precious aisle seat, closed my eyes and started to doze, even before the plane took off.  A commotion started at the front of the plane.   A man who hadn't planned things the way he wanted was nastily abusing the flight attendants, demanding he be given a seat alongside his wife.  The flight attendants said that they'd see what they could do, but it didn't look good since the plane was very full.  Then the guy spots me and the empty seat next to me.

Will you move so my wife and I can sit there.  
Find me an aisle seat, says I.  I reserved this one weeks ago.
Then he got nasty and abusive with me.
Shut up sucker or I'll stuff you in the overhead bin, says I.
He was dumbstruck.
The guy in the aisle seat behind me gets up and moves into the seat next to me.
I don't mind, says he.
Gutless, says I.  You shouldn't reward an abusive bullying person.
He shrugged his shoulders and I went back to dozing.
After the plane took off and we were safely aloft, someone gently nudged me.
It was a flight attendant.  She whispered in my ear, can we buy you a drink.
Thanks, says I.

The Dragon Hires a Temp: No Country for Old Men

Back in the bad old days after I got a sit-on-your-butt job and before I got too old to be hirable, I ran big tech projects for a big consulting firm.  I kept my eye out for talent who could help my projects, because a few good hires could really make a software development project.  I know. You're thinking I was an old guy who just liked talking to young women, but I wasn't interested in romance.  I wanted to find people who could program and weren't on someone else's radar in the days when tech people in the US were a hot commodity.  People who weren't going to go to a strip club at lunch time and have a couple of beers  (on one project in Pittsburgh I always needed to be sure to hold all my meetings with the client programmers before lunch hour).   At vendor software training sessions I looked for unappreciated young women programmers and recruited them for my projects.  My greatest coup was discovering a temp who a client had hired to type documentation.  She was a Carnegie Mellon CS major who'd gotten into a fight with her father and didn't have enough money to finish school.  We gave her a big raise and with very little additional training she wrote all the system reports.  After the project she finished her degree work, moved to Seattle and (I hope) lived happily ever after.

*  *  *  *  *
An added advantage to hiring young women -- besides them not going to strip clubs at lunchtime for beers -- was that they weren't likely to be a difficult manic-depressive ex-marine contractor who was prone to skipping his lithium and liked shooting his pet machine gun in the desert after work.

*  *  *  *  *
Another drawback to hiring women in the days before Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill.  The women always seemed to be riled up about something.  I couldn't figure out what until our biggest project was nearly over and the senior partner had packed his bags and gone home, leaving me to straighten out the broken pieces.

"Everybody Loves" Grace checked in with me.
(Grace was so sweet that she never figured out until after he retired that, when she lived in Vientiane during her junior high years, her dad worked for the CIA and was head of Air America security)
Sorry if Jacq and I were grumpy sometimes.
No problem. You should work with fisherman who've been pulling nets for a week straight... or sailors who've just spent a month firing 10,000 5" rounds during all night raids on Haiphong Harbor and other scenic tropical places.
Oh... it was just that X [senior partner] kept bugging us.
I knew that.
No you didn't.  He used to walk up behind us and snap our bras and other dirt bag stuff like that.
You should have told me.  I'd have stopped it.
We were afraid you'd get mad and punch him out.
You're a good judge of character, my dear.
[Too bad, though, that Deloitte job was one I'd have loved to have left in a legendary blaze of glory.  I was disappointed I'd missed the excuse to do what I wanted to do anyway.]

*  *  *  *  *
The women weren't without sin.   Sweet Grace and her pals had their "mean girls" counterparts.  They liked to gossip about everyone's sex lives and Partner X loved to personally indulge them (no wonder we were behind schedule and losing money).  In particular the ladies, even the sweet ones, liked to speculate and confirm which men were gay.  STOP.  I don't care that you saw Bob kissing his boy friend goodbye this morning.  I need Bob to lead you people, develop the specifications for the claims system and make sure you people program it according to spec.   Short of personally sleeping with the guy myself, I will do anything to keep him happy. 

RIP Captain Robert Regan -- the Right Stuff

Third Eli Baseball Game Cancelled

"Because several players will have to leave for compulsory Naval Science cruises on June 18, the third Harvard-Yale baseball game, originally schedule for June 20 (1941), has been called off. The Crimson players involved include: third baseman Gilbert F. Whittemore '42, catcher Robert F. Regan '41, and Sophomore outfielders Fred S. Troy, Jr. and Robert S. Potter."

My uncle Rob was the starting catcher for the Harvard baseball team in 1941.  Not bad for the son of a Gaelic speaking farm girl from Lisdoonvarna (Honoragh Lafferty) and a trolley car conductor from Cork (Tim Regan).  Jack and Joe Kennedy sat behind my grandmother at baseball games and shouted encouragement for "Shanty" Regan.   No one seemed to mind nicknames back then.   Joe Kennedy was Uncle Rob's inspiration for going Naval Aviation:  "If that bum Joe Kennedy can be a pilot, so can I."

Uncle Rob was assigned to VC-38 a squadron of TBF torpedo planes that fought in the Solomons Campaign.   My mother called the torpedo planes "Ensign Eliminators", a well-earned nickname due to their heavy losses during the Pacific war.  At Midway in June of 1942, VT-8's entire complement of TBDs and TBFs was wiped out during their repeated desperate attacks on the Japanese fleet.

For valor during many World War II battles, including the raids on the heavily defended Japanese naval bases at Rabaul and Kure, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross (three times).

After the war, Rob became one of the Navy's first jet test pilots and finished his career as the commander of Naval Air Station Corpus Christi.

*   *   *   *   *

REGAN, ROBERT F.

INJ Tone under attack at Kure

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross [America's second highest award for combat valor ] to Lieutenant Robert F. Regan (NSN: 0-106999), United States Naval Reserve, for extraordinary heroism in operations against the enemy while serving as Pilot of a carrier-based Torpedo Plane in Carrier Air Group THIRTY (CAG-30), while leading a flight of torpedo bombers in a bombing attack on major combatant units of the Japanese Fleet in Kure Harbor, on 19 March 1945. Lieutenant Regan skillfully and courageously selected the best point of attack and pressed home his own bombing run to a very low altitude despite intense anti-aircraft fire scoring two direct hits on a heavy cruiser [sinking IJN Tone, whose aircraft had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor]. His courageous and skilled tactics set the pace for the remaining attacking planes resulting in heavy losses to the enemy vessels. His outstanding courage and determined skill were at all times inspiring and in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
[It was during the Kure raid that Holy Cross College professor Joseph O'Callaghan, SJ., displayed valor meriting the Congressional Medal of Honor when USS Franklin was struck by a devastating attack from Japanese bombers and nearly sunk]

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Lieutenant Robert F. Regan (NSN: 0-106999), United States Naval Reserve, for gallantry and intrepidity in operations against the enemy while serving as Pilot of a carrier-based Torpedo Plane in Carrier Air Group THIRTY (CAG-30), while participating in an aerial flight as leader of a squadron of torpedo bombers in an attack upon an enemy convoy in the East China Sea, on 24 March 1945. As a result of careful planning of the attack of his squadron, the planes in his flight scored several torpedo and bomb hits on enemy ships. He personally scored a direct hit with his torpedo on a large enemy cargo vessel which exploded and sank. As a result of his and other attacks the entire convoy was destroyed. His courage, determination and devotion to duty in the execution of this mission were at all times in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Throwing Acetone on Holy Cross ROTC students

As if it weren't bad enough to suffer the distain of my fellow students and harassment by some like the Holy Cross black student provocateur, it is amazing to discover that a Holy Cross professor claims it's all a myth.  It is certainly no myth that Holy Cross students threw acetone on my fellow Holy Cross NROTC students in 1969.

Holy Cross: Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

Brother Rat


 
 
It is also no myth that I had to endure an abusive graduate school interview at Stony Brook University where the program director concluded that I should go elsewhere because my veteran's benefit made it possible for me to afford a more expensive graduate school.  Since then I've interviewed many and went out of my way to conduct the interview in a professional and polite manner, not as a prelude to Glengarry Glen Ross.






Disrespect for Vietnam vets is fact, not fiction 
Bob Feist,  Star Tribune

The Dragon Meets Felix Frankfurter

I met Felix Frankfurter many years ago when I was in kindergarten.  It was during the big airline fight when my father got himself admitted to the Supreme Court bar.

Anyway I got sick in the court's waiting room.  All over a beautiful rug.   The guards took over and said don't worry Mr. Mac, we'll take care of the boy.  They whisked me to the court's infirmary and started pumping me full of milk of magnesia or something else awful.   Then Justice Frankfurter walks in and asks for some aspirin cause he has a terrible headache.  The guard thinking he's doing a wonderful thing presents me to the great justice.  The great justice extends his hand and says nice to meet you young man.   I duck and cover.  No way I was shaking hands with a big scary guy in a black dress.

*    *    *    *    *

Years before, when my grandfather led the Boston Carmen's Union during the big strike, the union was on the ropes and management wasn't much better off.   The exhausted parties agreed to arbitration.  Management picked their arbitrator.   Grandpa Tim paused and slyly said... I pick Professor Frankfurter from Harvard.

The Exorcist

Fred Phelps was a local character who terrorized Topeka, Kansas, for years.  He'd been an Eagle Scout when he was a boy, and began preaching against sin in college.  Conservative Bob Jones University allegedly gave him an ultimatum to seek psychiatric care or leave.  He left and earned a two year degree from John Muir College.  He was hired to preach at Topeka's East Side Baptist, but left in a year to found his own Westboro Baptist Church.  The church was his house in Topeka's Westboro neighborhood, and his large family was the congregation.  They did baptisms in the swimming pool and claimed status as a non-profit religious organization.

Fred earned a law degree from nearby Washburn University and got off on a good foot taking up civil rights cases for African Americans.  He got disbarred when he sued a court clerk for not getting him a transcript on time, put her on the witness stand for two weeks, and allegedly during the examination accused her of perverted sexual acts.  Why the judge let this go on is a mystery to this day, but Fred had a way of intimidating people.

When the AIDS epidemic hit,  Fred and his "congregation" started picketing the funerals.  His message was loud and clear, and the chanting and shouts were accompanied by graphic placards just to be sure you got the message:  "God Hates Fags" and stick figures posed suggestively to depict homosexual sex acts.  When there wasn't a funeral to picket, Fred and company picketed churches where the funerals had been held.

Fred inevitably got around to picketing my brother's church and, never mind the children, the adjoining Catholic school my nephew attended.  This infuriated the parish priest.  But what to do.   Fred wanted confrontation.   He hoped he'd be physically attacked, then he'd sue the attacker and use the money to keep Westboro Baptist going.   The priest donned his full regalia of vestments, grabbed his aspergillum, a ewer of holy water and headed for Fred.   Fred was furious when he got hit by the holy water, but what can you do?  Sue someone for sprinkling you with holy water.  Fred complained to the bishop.  The bishop sent him more holy water as a token of peace, secretly hoping that if enough touched him, Fred might burn up in smoke and blow away.

The Best of Arizona: AZ Shockers Championship Baseball

A Wing and a Prayer


 

Poverty in America: The Dragon Meets the Hawk

Some people like NY Times columnist Nick Kristof think America can't be saved unless all the teachers have a degree from Harvard.  He's never met the Hawk.  Of course not, the elites who think  it's their privilege to tell us how to live our lives don't send their children to inner-city Title 1 public schools.  Most wouldn't know what a Title 1 school is even if they'd been near one... other than thinking as they drove by when the students were arriving that it would be best to check if the car doors are locked.

The Hawk comes to mind this morning because he was directing traffic when I dropped my daughter off for school.  His traffic theatrics make you wonder if he's related to the famous Pittsburgh cop, Vic Cianca.

The Hawk went to work as a janitor at the Rose Lane School because he needed job.  When you spend high school perfecting your skateboard maneuvers, your career options are limited.

The school principal took a shine to the Hawk and encouraged him go to college and get a job teaching.  "You do very well with the children.  They love you."

And so it came to pass, that my little Jimmy, the bane of elementary school teachers, walked into the Hawk's fourth grade class and went from being an average student to having one of the very highest math test scores in the school district.  Maybe the key to success was that little Jimmy loves fishing and the kid who did the best that day got to feed live minnows to the bass the Hawk kept in a big tank in the room. 

Sit in on his class and you'd discover that the Hawk was the frickin' original Pied Piper.  He'd say the magic word and 30 kids would clap three times in unison and then there'd be complete silence and rapt attention.

*    *    *    *    *

 

The basic principles of Title 1 [federal assistance] state that schools with large concentrations of low-income students will receive supplemental funds to assist in meeting students' educational goals. Low-income students are determined by the number of students enrolled in the free and reduced lunch program. For an entire school to qualify for Title 1 funds, at least 40% of students must enroll in the free and reduced lunch program.

 

The Dragon meets Dirty Marie

I'd been the light-heavy weight fisticuffs champ of New York's Metropolitan Junior Hockey League, which sent Joe Mullen to Boston College and the NHL, but hitting a woman never occurred to me.  On the other hand,  I was on the receiving end once.

I'd been dating a young woman while doing graduate school at NYU.   Things seemed to be going very well.  Before Christmas break we travelled to Washington, DC, and spent a weekend with her sister's family.  Afterwards, I went home to New York and spent Christmas with my family.

When she returned from break, I went to see her at her apartment.   Shortly after I entered she said she had some bad news (for me).   She was moving to California to get married.   After I'd left her sister's house, she'd hopped on a jet plane and spent Christmas with another boy friend.  Little did I know.  I spent a whole weekend with at least two, probably three people, who treated me like the latest family addition without coming close to letting on that I was the latest family sucker.  Which hurt more the loss of the woman or the humiliation discovering I'd spent a weekend as the family fool.

Since staying any longer seemed to be pointless, I politely excused myself without saying much at all and headed home.  The apartments at NYU had no elevators.   I wasn't far down the first flight of stairs when someone runs up behind me and kicks me real hard in the butt.   I turned to defend myself, which I'd done ferociously on more than one occasion, and there was my "friend" Dirty Marie.  "IF YOU LEAVE NOW, I WILL NEVER SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN"  she screamed.  I turned around and just kept going.

*  *  *  *  *
I should have immediately bailed out on this when she waited until breakfast to announce that...  technically ... she was still married.

The New Holy Cross

The epistles I receive from my alma mater are intriguing to say the least. 

First and foremost they celebrate the new, diverse and co-ed Holy Cross where students are decidedly brighter than those who attended in the past.

Then there are the inveterate pleas for donations to support the alma mater.  These are not simply intriguing.  They are downright puzzling.  If the graduates of the New Holy Cross are so darn smart why do they need my money.  After all, if all the graduates of the New Holy are smarter than me, then they're all multi-millionaires many times over and a school that's left its past behind can certainly do without the past's money.

I'm not exactly sure what smart means -- sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart.  But I definitely know what dumb is.

The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club

 

Top Gun North SAR

Butch Meets the Dragon

I grew up in a union family so it was very interesting, to say the least, when I got assigned to a team negotiating a labor contract with the City of Independence, Missouri, firemen.   I was about the same age as the firemen on the union team so we had a lot in common.  As the negotiations dragged on and on (the firemen were waiting to see if their candidates won the city council election), the union team started laying it on pretty thick with outrageous demands.  One day the union president, Butch, demanded that the city put into the firemen's contract  a guarantee that the city would only buy products made in the United States.   I immediately shot back, sure Butch, we'll put that in the contract... when you sell your Volkswagen. 

Rashomon

Commoner: Well, men are only men. That's why they lie. They can't tell the truth, even to themselves.

Priest: That may be true. Because men are weak, they lie to deceive themselves.

Commoner: Not another sermon! I don't mind a lie if it's interesting.

 



The Dragon Calls the Principal

The word Maryvale scares most of my Phoenix neighbors.  Hell.  A lot of them won't even send their children to the neighborhood public schools where my kids go.  Maybe being in the Navy me made less touchy about that.  When black and Mexican guys are part of the crew watching your butt when the bullets are flying around, you're a little less touchy about whose kid sits next to your little Mary in class. 

The world is full of a lot of basically good kids.  A few are self-starters, like my Mary.  Most, like my Jimmy (little guy in the middle), need some direction.  Some of the kids need a lot of direction. 







A few of them need a smack upside the head from the principal.  Towards the end of my son's middle school basketball season, we made the trip to Maryvale.  The game went well and the Maryvale players were good sports even though they lost the game.   The young ladies were another matter.  The Maryvale girls took exception to the Madison No. 1 girls cheering vigorously for the Madison boys.   The Maryvale girls, shouting profanities, followed the Madison boys and girls out to the bus.  There was no security anywhere in sight to stop this.   They kept up the profanities led by a tall black girl.  When the bus drove by them pulling out of the lot, the girls starting throwing rocks. 

I had promised my wife not to get involved with this stuff anymore, so I just stood and watched.   Finally I shouted at the girls and told them I'd be calling their principal in the morning.  At least I made it out of the parking lot without them throwing rocks at me.

In the morning I sent a strongly worded email to the principal, the president of the governing board, and their superintendent and our superintendent.   The leader of the pack was suspended from school.  The other girls were dropped from the cheer squad.   In the spring when we visited for baseball and softball, there was plenty of school security around.   The girls were still yapping at one another.  The boys played with respect.

The Dragon dials 911

Why didn't I send my kid to Camelback, the public high school down the street from us.  It would be so convenient.  Let's start with high school night at Madison No. 1 (my son's middle school),  the curriculum that CHS was offering left a lot to be desired for those who are college bound.   Then there's the wonderful neighborhood experience, eg, the gunfight out in front of the high school.   Old news?  Ok, how about the little league game last year where the game had to be stopped because two guys got into a fight over a girl.   It was a darn impressive fight.   One guy, a CHS student, he looks like superman.  The other one a wiry terrier guy who won't stop yapping at superman.   Not even when superman rips off his own shirt and starts pounding his own mighty chest with his fists.  Terrier-guy didn't stop yapping at all even while superman was shaking him like a rag doll and banging terrier guy against the walls and concrete deck.  Terrier-guy even managed to land a few punches while he was bouncing off the wall.

I'm done with breaking up fights.  I dialed 911 and yelled at superman and terrier-guy that the police were on the way.   Some other brave souls finally separated them.  Superman finally came to his senses and ran off.  He's had the crap nurtured out of him  and realized he didn't need to be there when the cops arrived.   Lucky for him it took the cops 30 minutes to show up.

I've lived in the Madison neighborhood for 20 years I love the kids -- I've been a soccer or baseball coach for a lot of them -- but a few of them scare the crap out of me.  And if they scare me, my kid isn't going to CHS.

The FBI meets the Dragon

The FBI showed up at our door one day years ago. 
Jim, Jim! wailed my poor old mother-in-law, a little old Italian lady.  The FBI are here! 
I walked over to the door. 
We'd like to speak with your wife. 
What about, says I. 
We need to speak with your wife. 
You can tell me. 
No, we can't.  We need to speak with her. 
At this point my little boy butted in: what do the ladies want, Daddy. 
I smiled and said, they're from the FBI, son, and they're here to arrest your mother. 
My mother-in-law nearly fainted. 
The FBI agents squealed NO, NO, it's nothing like that. 
Ok, what is it then.  
We can't tell you. 

I finally relented and told them my wife was at work and where that was.  It turns out she'd been taking a shortcut through the back parking lot behind the FBI building on the days she had to pick up our son at the babysitter. 

Do you have a camera, they asked?  
Were you taking pictures. 
We can't be too careful after Oklahoma City, sorry. 

Across town at about the same time a terrorist was training on an aircraft simulator for 9/11.

*   *   *   *   *

 

Since the FBI agents didn't tell me what they wanted.  I didn't bother to tell the FBI who my wife worked for.  I was sending them to Arizona's second largest Medicaid health plan run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy and Carondelet.   My wife was the COO and a specialist in maternal child health care and had recently gone to Washington to accept an award from the Medicaid people for caring for AIDS patients.  

 

Receptionist:  Welcome to Mercy Care Plan.  How may I help you.

FBI:  we're here to see Julie...

Receptionist:  Do you have an appointment?

 

I'd guessed that the FBI wanted to ask some questions about the Native American tribes the health plan served.  That they took my wife for a potential terrorist never entered my mind.  But I've never let her forget it.

The Sprinkler Prayer

I confess that prayer hasn't been a big part of my life.   My son rats me out to his confessor that we miss Mass on Sunday.  It's not that I've lost faith in the One True Religion. I'm a just a pretty serious procrastinator unless I'm in the zone building a system.   My grandmother would say that every act is a prayer; most of my work was a prayer.  There were go-live days when I prayed a lot. 

I got sucked into Little League one day when a woman called up and asked if I'd coach my son's team.  I'd coached little league hockey while I was in graduate school and swore I'd never do it again.  The kids were great.  The parents made you miserable.  But what could I say to the lady who was suggesting no coach, no baseball for your kid.

It's a frightening and helpless feeling when you get caught in a rip tide.  You keep swimming and swimming but keep getting sucked in the wrong direction.  Everyone who's had a bad dream like that may understand, too. This was Little League.  Before long you're sucked helplessly in a direction you don't want to go... because you're doing it for the kids.  That's when I met Lyndon.

Before you can play ball you have to fix up the fields.  Ours were in really, seriously bad shape, especially by modern Phoenix area Little League standards where some of the leagues pay professional crews to manicure the fields.   We didn't have enough money to hire a crew.  When I heard how much the crew cost,  I volunteered for the do-it-yourself alternative and showed up at the playground at my son's school  (In the end it would have been less expensive and less painful to have personally forked over $10,000 for the crew in the beginning, but that's another story).

Even with the do-it-yourself option, some of the dad's got carried away.  I looked up from raking dirt and there are some guys with a backhoe digging a trench to put in a sprinkler system.  Later in the afternoon they're still working on the sprinklers.  Old fishing boat deckhands live by the dictum "don't watch while someone else works" so I sauntered over and offered to help.  We finished filling in the trench when the sun was low in the sky. 

While we waited for the water to be turned on, I chatted with Lyndon who was leading the effort.  He looked like a real worker, heavyset and muscular, sweating with his tool belt strapped to his waist.  Call me Mako.  I'm from Hawaii.  We're serious about Little League there.  What's the matter with you people (you aren't Japanese and don't know how to work).  We had nothing.  Compared to us you guys are rich, but you can't build a Little League field.  Mako played baseball at Baylor and although he was now a deacon at the Baptist church down the street,  he still hated Roger Clemens who played for Texas and taunted the Baylor players after he struck them out.

I didn't get to tell Mako about Uncle George playing poker with Babe Ruth.  The moment of truth came and we turned on the water.  Fabulous, wonderful we can now water the fields before games. Instead of weathering an Arizona dust storm, the kids could play baseball.  Then the bad news.  A puddle appears at third base.  It got bigger... and bigger.  Someone had driven a pickup near third and the weight of the truck had cracked the water pipe.  

We dug out the pipe, fixed the break and tried again.   More water.  We needed a new part.  Someone was dispatched to Home Depot to get it.  We waited and waited.   Night came and the lights went on.   More bad news.  The lights would only stay on until 9 pm.  It was Sunday night and the only way we can stop the water is by turning off all the water to school.   The principal is not going to be happy.   If we don't fix this, the playground will be a lake tomorrow or the school will not have water, and it's way too late to call a plumber.  The part comes and we try again.  This is time consuming because someone has to run to the school and turn on the water.   It doesn't work.  About this time the lights go out.   Mako has a vision.  Oops, he didn't glue it right.  Turn off the water.   Glue it right.  We hope.   We are working under the headlights of Mako's pickup truck now, in a trench that smells like Boston harbor at low tide.  His kid goes to a Christian school miles away.  I'm terrified because my kid goes to school here and I'll have to face the principal in the morning.  The principal was one of those wiry women who could humble you with a wag of a finger and wasn't shy about doing it.  She'd have made a good nun.

This is our last chance.  We wait a good while for the glue to seal the pipe.  We're ready to try again.  Mako stops everyone (which by now is just me and him).  Let us pray.  Standing over the trench, Mako bows his head and lifts his hands up in the darkness illuminated only by the lights from his pickup.  "Dear Lord, I pray for your strength and courage upon us.  Bless our work and give us a successful end.  In Jesus name, I pray."   I raised my hands, too, and prayed real hard along with Mako, even though he was Baptist.  And then whispered "Dear God, save me from principal Murphy."

Mako headed for the school.  He called me on his cellphone and told me to be ready.  Here comes the water.  I waited.  It sounded like there was water in the pipe...... it was holding.  We waited a decent interval, filled in the trench and went home.

Praise be to Jesus.

Revelation 1:12-18

A major downside to Holy Cross College prior to 1972 when the men's college became coeducational were weekends that became very quiet, especially after the football season ended.  Fraternizing with the gentler gender required trips to Boston: Emmanuel, Newton and Regis colleges for Catholic women.  My wife went to Simmons College across the street from Emmanuel, but I didn't meet her until much later in life.  She and her friends dated young men at Harvard and MIT.  This may have had something to do with snobbery on their part and lack of imagination on the part of Holy Cross boys.  Possibly a healthy dose of both.  I think it came as a major relief to my wife's parents when she finally settled down and married a good Catholic boy, a normal person with an honest appreciation for Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio ... and a war veteran to boot.

The Massachusetts Turnpike might have been the fastest route from Holy Cross to Boston, but we usually drove Route 9, no tolls.  In those days, that road had some very dark stretches and turns that could jar the passengers when the driver got a little sleepy.  One dark night on the road back from Emmanuel the passengers were sound asleep.  I was starting to nod off myself when we hit one of the those curves and I jerked the steering wheel to stay on the road.  Jerked from dreams about a beautiful Emmanuel girl with long black hair, my friend John who was sitting beside me screamed:

OH DEAR JESUS, I'M DEAD!

Above the curve, on a hill, illuminated in the darkness like a baroque Caravaggisti painting, was a huge statue of Jesus Christ, which of course was the first thing sleepy John saw when he opened his eyes. 

Revelation 1:12-18

"A revalation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him so that he could tell his servants what is now to take place very soon; he sent his angel to make it known to his servant John..."
"And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.  But he laid his right hand on me, 'Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last.  I am he who lives and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.  Amen.'"

Beetlejuice and the Big Bang

Ask a Holy Cross student then or now what Betelgeuse is and 99 times out of 100 they'd tell you it's a movie directed by the renown Tim Burton, starring Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, and Winona Ryder. 


The major exception would be all the Navy ROTC students who were required to study celestial navigation and knew how to locate the super red giant star that sits on the shoulder of the constellation that some of us playfully called O'Ryan, the Hunter.   Profoundly ironic that the NROTC students, who some vituperatively said didn't belong there, were among the few at Holy Cross with any academic connection to the great tradition of Jesuit astronomy:  Clavius, Secchi and Lemaitre, father of the Big Bang, and I'm not talking a TV show. 

Ok, it's an anachronism to conflate 1960s Holy Cross with Tim Burton, but what's the difference between a blank stare and a crossword puzzle education, although there may be some karma involved here since Winona Ryder is the goddaughter of Holy Cross alumnus and notorious LSD guru Timothy Leary.

The Rape of the Celtic Women

Judging by recent contributions from Frank Bruni and Joe Nocera, The New York Times has a stipulation in its employment contract that mandates stories where an Irish relative is the foil.

"My mother tells me that on the eve of her marriage to my [Italian] father, one of her [Irish] relatives pulled her aside and said, They’re not like us, you know.'”  -- Joe Nocera
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/05/opinion/joe-nocera-my-american-family.html

Joe wasn't entirely forthcoming here.  I can testify that the Irish and Italians are, in fact, different.  My Italian mother-in-law treats me like a king.  I love having her around.  She always takes my side in family disputes. I am waited on hand and foot.  My wife loves to cook for her husband although she seems to have been somewhat contaminated by American feminism, occasionally remonstrating that I should help with the housework.  My retort: "Your mother never said that to your father."  She remains mildly bitter about having to defer to her brothers and fetch water when they were too enthralled with watching the Three Stooges to get it themselves.  She's also bitter about knowing the Mass backwards and forwards in Latin and not being able to be an alter girl; and getting asked to write her brother's Columbus Day essay for the Boston diocese contest and not getting any credit for the winning essay.  She goes into a tizzy cleaning the house before her mother arrives.  What's the point, says I, as soon as she gets here she'll scrub and polish the place from bottom to top anyway, and when she's done she'll start all over again the next day.

It's a different story for a daughter-in-law.  Joining an Italian family meant being an Italian wife, learning to cook Italian, bearing children and waiting on the men.  My wife said she was a grown woman before she discovered her grandmothers weren't Italian (Spanish and Portuguese, in fact).  Her Irish sister-in-laws weren't about to buy into that, leading to years of empty seats at the Christmas dinner table  (more spaghetti with lobster sauce and cannoli for the rest of us).

While my wife was still in high school, her mother told her to learn to type.  She'd always be able to get a good job as a secretary.  Rebellion.  My wife refused to learn to type.  After Berkley and Yale, when she rose to a high level executive job, someone else did her typing.  Today she's a consultant with a disability since she now has trouble typing her own e-mails.   My mother-in-law's perspective wasn't a bad one, though.  She was a well paid legal secretary for Boston's wealthiest law firm.  It was a dream job... until one of the lawyers decided to be a woman and they told my mother-in-law, an old Italian lady, she'd have to share the restroom with a person who was still anatomically a man.  She just about had a heart attack.  The law firm offered her counselling to help her deal with the anxiety brought on by her prejudice.

There were other differences.  My wife's family consists of rock-ribbed Republicans while mine was and still is stalwart Wagner Democrats with brother Tim's Topeka Taxi Service driving Celtic Woman, Kathleen Gilligan Sebelius, all over Kansas during her campaign for governor.  Whenever my brother-in-law starts jawing about Roosevelt's Raw Deal, I love to point out that it was Wagner's New Deal as much as Roosevelt's and that my family (along with Farley and Flynn) gave America Wagner and Roosevelt.  Then I tell brother Paul that Wagner is the buddy my grandfather talked into running for the U.S. Senate.  You run and let Farley and the rest of us worry about getting you elected (as in you don't have a need to know, but we'll run a dry Republican against the wet incumbent in Republican primary and make sure the wet incumbent finds a job when he gets beat).

http://holycross-and-clarencethomas.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-smoke-filled-room.html

http://holycross-and-clarencethomas.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-aviator.html

As vexing as it was to set up an internet connection to air Kennedy-baiting Howie Carr for my mother-in-law during her Arizona visits,  I saw it as a small price to pay for spaghetti with lobster sauce, grandma's handmade raviolis and Uncle Joe's cannoli.   Forget the Mona Lisa.  The cannoli is my favorite Italian work of art.

*  *  *  *  *  *

 

The alliance that gave us the culture we call Hispanic today began with Scipio before he was Africanus.  Hannibal, the Carthaginian, had the Romans on the ropes.  At Cannae (216 BC) he had destroyed their greatest army and along with it the best and brightest of Rome's best families.  Just as the Roman Senate was about to surrender, young Scipio and his friends stormed into the Senate and forced them to continue the war.   After his father and brother were killed in Spain, young Scipio was the only Roman left who would volunteer to lead the fight.  Arriving in Spain, his troops captured a beautiful young woman. 
 

Instead of accepting her as a prize of war, Scipio returned her unharmed to her fiancé, the Celtic chieftain Allucius.  This won Scipio the allegiance of Spain's Celts and meant defeat for Carthage as Scipio and the Celts defeated first Hannibal's brother in Spain and then Hannibal himself on the battlefield of Zama (202 BC) outside the walls of Carthage.

It wasn't long before the marriage between Italy and the Spanish Celts went up in smoke.  A long guerilla war humbled the Romans.  Another Scipio was sent to set things right.  He laid siege to Numantia (133 BC) and after a stubborn fight the Celts and their women committed suicide rather than submit to the Italians and slavery.


The Last Days of Numantia - Alejo Vera

Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni.



"Boadicea's husband Prasutagus was ruler of the Celtic Iceni tribe. He ruled as a nominally independent ally of Rome and left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman emperor in his will. However, when he died, his will was ignored and the kingdom was annexed as if conquered. Boadicea was flogged and her daughters raped by the Italians and Roman financiers called in their loans."

Boadicea led a great uprising against the Romans and almost drove them out of the British Isles, but was defeated at the Battle of Watling Street (61 AD) after the Romans rallied and sent in their legions of Anglo-German mercenaries.  Rather than accepting capture and submission to Rome Boadicea committed suicide.

My great Aunt Margaret, part of a clan of independent Celtic women, was more successful in her battles with the Romans.
http://holycross-and-clarencethomas.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-god-father-and-tom-dewey.html

The Death Penalty and Ethel Rosenberg

One day the subject of the death penalty came up at the breakfast table.  My father blurted out: "I'm against it.  There's no such thing as equal justice!"

The sphinx talks!  And the floodgates opened.  In his days as a lawyer he'd seen too many prosecutors railroad people.  Ethel Rosenberg!   I nearly fainted.  My father, the devout Catholic, who told me bedtime stories about his friend Jack Roth hunting down Rusky spies, is going to defend Ethel Rosenberg?   "Your Great-Aunt Jo was friends with Ethel Rosenberg."  Disbelief.   We're talking about the sweet old aunt who gave us boxes of chocolate chip cookies when we came to visit.  The woman ever present with Rosary beads in her hands.  The woman who religiously sent money to Catholic missionaries in the Philippines.  The Aunt Jo whose sister was a leader of the Silk Stocking district Republicans.  The Aunt Jo who left you the Standard Oil stock from her inheritance?  That Aunt Jo was best friends with the infamous Rusky spy, Ethel Rosenberg?

Your Aunt Jo didn't need to, but she worked in the New York public schools.  She had an office job at the one where Ethel sent her kids.   Ethel, he went on, was a devoted mother.  She'd arrive early at the end of the school day to spend time chatting with Aunt Jo before taking her boys for religious instruction.  That SOB Roy Cohn railroaded Ethel to promote his own career.  The United States of America executed some little kids' mother because an ambitious creep who got his buddy appointed as trial judge wanted to become a big shot lawyer and power broker.

Then the sphinx looked as though he was going to fly into a rage and start pounding the table.  They tried to railroad my Uncle George [the debonair bookmaker] for the murder of Arnold Rothstein!  They tried to force him to give up the real killer, but he didn't know or wouldn't tell.  Your grandfather was beside himself worrying that his brother would get sent to the electric chair.  George didn't flinch and called the prosecution's bluff.  People blamed my father and his friend Jimmy Walker for fixing the trial, but they didn't have anything to do with that.  My Aunt Marion and her friends passed judgment on George and set him free.  Marion belonged to a bridge club and the presiding judge was the husband of Marion's bridge club friend.  The presiding judge appointed a "sympathetic" judge who directed the not-guilty verdict that saved George.

Poor Ethel.  Roy Cohn was holding her hostage, trying to break up a big spy ring by wringing a confession out of her husband.  Her husband called Cohn's bluff.  Cohn didn't flinch.  My grandfather was gone, Jimmy Walker was gone, Aunt Marion was gone.  New York's Irish women didn't pull the strings anymore.   The Roy Cohn had usurped their power to appoint prosecutors and  judges.  Aunt Jo couldn't save Ethel.