Archive → March, 2017
Coach Joe Paterno Vindicated
While there is a lot to learn from the Penn State – Jerry Sandusky debacle, such as adults should do common sense things, and adults should not rush to judgment, etc., there is one thing that has emerged from the recent trials involving former PSU president Graham Spanier and former assistant football coach Mike McQueary (who just hours ago won yet more millions of dollars from Penn State): Coach Joe Paterno was totally innocent.
Recall that legendary head football coach Joe Paterno was wrongly blamed for the actions and then results of past assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s mass child molesting ways. The whole thing was correctly a shock, but everyone who was around Sandusky was blamed. Hell, I think the board of trustees even tried to blame a janitor, no lie. The infamous Louis Freeh report was issued, one of the great works of bad fiction, and Joe Paterno was summarily fired.
The man had devoted himself to Penn State, to the improvement of college sports, to the improvement of college athaletics, to the novel idea that a gifted college athlete could also receive a quality education and go on to have a meaningful and successful career after college football, including (gasp) those athletes who did not make it into the NFL.
This is novel, because 99.8% of college football teams are like puppy mills, where young men are used up in a short term quest for wonderful ratings and glamour. It’s a pile of crap and it is wrong. Only Coach Joe Paterno and a couple others (Coach Lou from Notre Dame, of course) stood against that sick tide.
And that is why Coach Joe Paterno was pilloried in the wake of the Sandusky scandal.
Not because Paterno had done anything wrong, by act or by omission, but because he stood so far above everyone else around him. As college sports standards sank lower and lower, Joe stood for old fashioned values like hard work, earning your way, mentorship, patriotism, community, and all the other quaint values and ideas that are passe when so much money and fame are to be made.
So Paterno was fired early into the Sandusky scandal, by a spineless PSU board of trustees scared of its own shadow and lacking in the bravery and honesty that had marked Joe’s entire life, when he answered his front door on a weekend morning.
The results of this week’s trials are a kind of trial of Joe Paterno in absentia. Had Spanier been found guilty of certain charges, then one might have been able to ascribe the same guilt to Joe. And had PSU prevailed against Coach McQueary, and not lost for the umpteenth time, each time costing PSU millions of dollars, then one might have been able to say that PSU was right in firing Joe because he had failed to act when learning that Sandusky was a monster.
But none of that happened. Yes, this week Spanier was found guilty of the misdemeanor of child endangerment. Given that everyone on Planet Earth now knows the facts surrounding this, this makes sense.
What does not make sense is how Paterno’s great name has not been cleared.
Fact: Paterno called Spanier on a Sunday morning, having heard from McQueary the night before that Sandusky was seen raping a little boy in the football locker room.
Fact: Spanier then went on to hush it all up because of his fear of bad press. Fact: Spanier is a slime; hell, we could tell that just by his appearance and demeanor. But it is now official.
And it is also official that McQueary was a good guy and did what he was supposed to do.
What has not yet been made official is that Coach Joe Paterno remains one of the best human beings to have ever played a role in American sports, and he was wrongly accused, wrongly persecuted, wrongly terminated, and wrongly maligned even after his death.
This week’s court results vindicate Coach Joe Paterno’s good name and reputation.
Now put his damned statue back up and name Old Main after him.
Dangerous RINOs Ahead
Around the world, both the leading and moderately successful democracies are unsustainably absorbing huge numbers of illegal immigrants who both refuse to integrate and probably could not integrate, even if they wanted.
In most places they show no signs of integrating, and are instead associated with lawlessness and chaos.
Europe, Israel, and America are where this is happening.
The faux “victim” status of the invaders has given them access to publicly funded health and education benefits, against the will of the people paying for them.
This invasion-in-fact puts increasing economic and social pressure on existing populations, the people who built their societies from the ground up. You know, the “natives.”
These European natives live in the very places against which the invaders are entitled to “resist occupation.” Why and how it is “occupation” when Europeans and Americans move to other countries, but it is a morally required population shift when everyone moves to Europe and America, is one of those mysteries that can probably only be explained by being steeped in the ‘deep thinking’ of Marxism.
This presently unarmed invasion is made possible by ruling elites who either benefit financially from the cheap labor influx, or who personally enjoy signalling their great virtues and thus willfully ignore the huge problems descending upon the natives.
While you would think leaders from opposite sides of the aisle would collide on this civilization-ending invasion, the truth is that huge collaboration between left and right party establishments is what has enabled this in the first place. Most of the left and the right are run by ruling class elites.
Among the world’s ruling class elite, the RINO is the most dangerous animal. This is because the RINO says it is a watch dog, when in fact it is a guide dog for the invaders while the American family lies asleep inside the cozy home.
Living in its own cushy, posh, comfy little corner, insulated from the reality around it, the careerist RINO just has to successfully pretend to be a watch dog and occasionally bark like a watch dog. That keeps most of the rabble away. Never mind that the rabble are the citizens the RINO is supposed to be watching.
Aside from a small group of conservatives in Congress and in state houses, the GOPe is not protecting America. The GOPe is not standing guard. Sure some of the GOPe members make a few noises about standing up for the citizens they represent, but just like with the GOPe recent unwillingness to eliminate ObamaCare, these RINOs cannot bring themselves to make a principled stand when the time has arrived. It might upset someone and threaten their cozy elected job.
Around here in central Pennsylvania, career congressman Charlie Dent is probably the greatest example of the most worthless of RINOs in Congress, and state senator Jake Corman is the best example in the PA legislature. Won’t a couple patriots please challenge Dent and Corman in their upcoming primaries?
It is time to make these RINOs an endangered species. Otherwise, America will become an endangered specie itself.
Weekend with the PA sportsmen
Though being involved with the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs since about 2000, maybe 1999, I have never spent an entire weekend at one of the group’s annual conventions.
Founded in the 1920s, PFSC is one of America’s oldest conservation groups. Back in 1954, the group started what is now the Great American Outdoor Show, now run by NRA.
PFSC has been at the forefront of every major environmental issue (sometimes with the greens, sometimes not), conservation initiative, and gun rights fight since the 1920s. It is a group worth giving to in any way you can, and it seems to attract the most selfless, generous, interesting people.
This past weekend was my first full PFSC convention, and I enjoyed it a lot. It was eye-opening and heart warming. My new role as Perry County Delegate gave me a whole new view.
Here are some observations:
First, the group is politically, ethnically, genderly, and religiously diverse. Not just a bunch of “white guys with guns,” the group is administratively and professionally run mostly by three kind, patient, and bossy women, with an impressive second vice president on her way up to being president in the new few years. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Atheists, Deists, and probably a couple Druids. Republicans, Independents, Democrats, liberals, moderates, conservatives, and knuckle-draggers. Financially successful business people, blue collar workers with dirt under their nails, retired state, federal, and private industry workers. It is a rich and neat mix of very different people from across Pennsylvania, who share a few passions: Wildlife conservation, habitat conservation, passing on the outdoor heritage (hunting, trapping, fishing, hiking, camping, canoeing etc), and Second Amendment rights. But ageism reigns supreme, with not many young people showing up.
Second, the group is overwhelmingly in the “Oldster” category, with a few truly young people. There’s a lot of white hair and white beards. I am 52 and I am considered one of the “young guys.” But there are some active 20- and 30-somethings. Why lots of younger people are absent is probably attributable to these reasons: a) Like many other Americans, young sportsmen take a lot for granted, b) Like many other Americans, young sportsmen are happy to let someone else carry their weight, c) Americans are scattered all over the place with family and work obligations, and people raising young families are programmed from Friday at 4:00 until Sunday at 9:00 every weekend.
Something needs to change here, though, and young people must get involved with PFSC. There are a lot of forces out there quietly working against the interests of sportsmen, and if the guard is weakened or dropped, then the negative changes will happen fast and furious. Think your shooting range is grandfathered in, and protected from all of the new housing that suddenly surrounded it? Guess what, someone could challenge your range’s status in court for the 29th time, and finally get a lousy judge who decides to be the creator of law, not the arbiter. Only PFSC stands ready.
Third, these are the most generous, community-spirited people you will ever meet. They are devoted and happily spend their own money to protect what they love. Unlike the popular but nevertheless wrong method of demanding that everyone bend to some individual’s wishes, the sportsmen just keep giving and giving, and hoping that eventually everyone else will realize the trails, pretty birds, farms, and public lands they take for granted did not just happen because. Rather, sportsmen were there at the beginning, working hard to protect these resources for decades. Simply because they are visionary, passionate, dedicated and hard working.
Would you please lend a hand?
Buy a three-dollar raffle ticket?
Come out and work a Youth Field Day?
Join a club and pay a little money to keep the ranges looking spotless?
Join the PFSC as an individual, or simply donate five or ten bucks, to help pay for the FULL TIME lobbyist on Capitol Hill?
You don’t like lobbyists, you say. OK, who then is going to head off bad legislation aimed at destroying your Second Amendment rights, stealing your public lands, fouling the public waters, or allowing wildlife to only become roadkill?
Only the PFSC protects the interests of all Pennsylvania sportsmen. They have been doing it since the 1920s, and they are doing it today.
Join this small but spirited and accomplished crowd, be the best you can be, or just send them five bucks and help a worthy cause. It is your own cause, after all. http://www.pfsc.org/
The things that make life fun
Music, family, food, friendship, art derived from craftsmanship, Nature, aesthetics, and so on are things that make life fun.
The best things in life are free, and aren’t really things: Love, friendship, trust, integrity, honesty. We can have as much of these as we want, and very often they only require giving a little to get a lot in return.
I am not Italian, but when I used to hang out with Italians, I finally learned what “food” really, truly is. Restaurateur Andy Zangrilli of State College trained me in two of his restaurants as a line chef, from salads to sautee, when I was fresh out of high school. Andy owns Gullifty’s and other landmark restaurants around Pennsylvania, and prided himself on making all of his food from scratch, including pickling and smoking his own pastrami and corned beef, as well as making his own prosciutto and some cheeses. It had to be done just right, or not done at all. And when the food was done right, it was like hearing angels sing. As a dad and husband who enjoys cooking, I try to bring some of Andy’s amazing recipes to life in our own home. No complaints yet!
Today’s news was just filled with all kinds of rich targets: RyanCare vs ObamaCare, news that an Israeli teenager has been arrested for committing the lion’s share of the email and phone threats made against Jewish institutions across America over the past months (and NOT “white supremacists”), my old Penn State chum and good friend Seth Williams being indicted for bribery as DA of Philadelphia, and so on.
Never at a loss for words or strong opinions, I would naturally have more to say on these subjects than I should. And you know what, this is also the PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs spring conference, too, and I will be going to that. So I guess that is where I am going to let the mind and written word go next.
Wildlife biologist Ben Jones of the PA Game Commission will be speaking tomorrow night, a can’t-miss opportunity for those of us who love nature, wildlife, and conservation. I will be joining a lot of friends and colleagues this weekend at this gathering, and that’s what I am going to focus on here:
Enjoy your friends and family, my friends. Life is so precious and yet so tenuous. At my age, we all too often see good people gone in a blink of an eye. People who brought us smiles, and laughter, joy and love, warmth and companionship. These are treasures, though we cannot weigh them out or count them. Yes, there is a time for ego, debate, values, culture, and possessiveness, and anger, and hurt, and revenge, and so on, but this weekend….for me it’s about friendship.
It is one of those “things” that make life worth living. For a tiny price, it can be had in truckloads.
Comey must go
The FBI is supposed to be above politics.
Steadfastly professional, uncorrupted, uncorruptable, the FBI is supposed to be the impartial, non-partisan steady hand on our nation’s law enforcement.
So when FBI director James Comey blatantly stuck it to Republicans last Fall, then stuck it to Democrats days before the election, in an apparent effort to curry favor with an incoming Republican administration, and then stuck it to Congress and President Trump days ago with blatantly false testimony and open contempt for a directive to cooperate with other law enforcement personnel, it wasn’t a sign that the guy is an equal opportunity jerk.
The guy is just an unprofessional jerk.
Comey is enjoying playing politics, in the center of politics, for his own ego trip and personal sense of power, and that simply is not acceptable. The costs this imposes on our fragile nation are too high.
The guy is openly wallowing in a personal power trip. His arrogance is on full display, right down to his smug face while giving patently false testimony before Congress. That is, denying there was an investigation of Trump, or a recent corruption of the government’s investigative powers, when there are now handfuls of evidence that Trump and other private Americans with no foreign security value were wiretapped and surveilled by the Obama administration. And they then leaked that information out to the press, an avowed opponent of Trump.
Even Washington Post partisan activist Bob Woodward now concedes that Obama administration officials may end up going to jail over this.
Fire Comey. He is simply a public servant like any other public servant, with a bigger burden to prove his restraint and professionalism than anyone else. He is not up to that task. We The People deserve better and it is time for him to go.
President Trump, please do America a favor and let Mr. Comey go join the private sector.
Why are there syllables in my bread?
The other day I made the mistake of looking at the the ingredients label on the bag containing a loaf of sliced bread I brought home from the Giant store on Linglestown Road.
Can you believe the chemicals and additives and preservatives that are in that loaf of bread, according to the label? These are seriously long, serious-sounding, polysyllabic words that I have trouble pronouncing, no matter how long I have to spell them out slowly.
Words this long do not belong in the human body.
It made me wonder, Why are all these syllables in my bread?
Shouldn’t bread just be something like flour, water, salt, sugar, eggs, baking powder, maybe some fresh yeast, plus fire? For the past five thousand years, bread has been successfully made with slight variations on this theme of basic ingredients.
One of my kids has a health issue, and for most of her life it was treated with scary chemicals.
One by one, the chemicals stopped working. We were left with few options.
Then a researcher in Israel began a study, where kids with this health issue would go on a basic diet: No processed food, no canned food, no frozen food except what you freeze yourself. Everything fresh. No soda, no powdered drink mixes. Etc.
Guess what? She went into remission. It was attributable solely to the lack of processed food and the attendant polysyllabic chemicals she was otherwise ingesting when she ate “food.”
Today our friend Roberta came over, delivering Girl Scout cookies that only our boy can eat (well, I could easily eat them, but my body needs no extra calories or fat). We caught up in the kitchen over fresh coffee. Turns out she has changed her diet, and is feeling a lot better than before, plus she is lean and feeling energized.
What is her diet? No processed food.
Seeing that bread label got me thinking. Seeing my beloved child get better from a serious health issue got me thinking. Talking with our family friend of nearly twenty years got me thinking. Here is what I am thinking:
Syllables and food do not go together, unless it’s Italian. Certainly not in English.
Chemicals and food should not go together.
Chemicals are not food.
Chemicals and body health probably do not go together, except as a treatment for a serious health issue.
I just ate a pile of fresh carrot sticks. They were not nearly as satisfying to me, as they don’t taste great, as something processed. But it’s the beginning of something good. And it reminds me to start preparing seeds for the summer garden.
And one more thing: Giant also sells freshly baked bread. This bread lacks the preservatives of the bagged bread. It’s my new go-to bread, and as I do most of the food shopping for our family, it is what we are going to have going forward.
Maple syrup thoughts
Yes, I enjoy metaphors, and no, this is no metaphor.
Each spring I and my willing victim family members undertake a ritual that might just be the most labor-intensive goal you will ever take here in modern America.
We make maple syrup.
We tap the maple trees in mid January, using traditional buckets, and now also using the plastic spiles and tubing. Then we gather the sap into a big tank in the back of a pickup truck. When we reach about 15-20 gallons of sap, we boil it. It takes a long time, a lot of energy, a lot of propane.
Here are some season-end thoughts, as the last batch evaporates outside in a shed right now:
- Sap production can be erratic, and there is no explanation. Mostly driven by nighttime temperatures, some trees can be just pumping out sap like gangbusters for two to four weeks, and then kind of go dead, or nearly dead. Our late-season taps are the biggest producers right now, while the early taps have mostly dried up. I don’t know why this is, but it is frustrating. We did not get a lot of sap this year, and though I felt uncertain about beginning to tap so early, I am glad we did, because we would not have gathered enough had we not started back in mid January this year. Rumors are Pennsylvania’s maple producers are having a bad sap season, too.
- Cans and plastic tubing each have advantages and disadvantages. Cans get bugs galore, and the lids can get beat up by high winds. The plastic tubing drips down into a container, which can attract curious deer, raccoons, etc, and they can mess with the stuff. Next year we will continue to do both types. One thing, though, we do need bigger containers for the tubing and plastic spiles; they can easily produce a gallon of sap overnight. I hate to see sap spill out on the ground. Almost a Biblical thing…
- From what I read, a lot of syrup producers will not use cloudy sap. Well, we use everything we get, cloudy, clear, bugs swimming about, and we eventually filter out the bugs, wood bits, etc. Regardless of how cloudy it is, when it evaporates down to syrup, it tastes amazing.
- Finally, less is more. Used to be we’d wait until we got 30-35 gallons of sap in the tank to start boiling it, enough to make over half a gallon of syrup. Problem with that is it’s a lot of sap to boil, the way we boil it. We use two large outdoor propane burners under the stainless steel evaporator pan. If we used firewood, it might get hotter or evaporate faster. But then I’d have to cut more firewood, and because we already burn between two and four cords of wood a season in our wood stove, I don’t want to cut and split any more than we really need. So, now when we hit 15 to 20 gallons of sap, we start boiling. It takes about ten to twelve hours, so start as early as possible. This is a manageable amount of time for us.
OK, those are the thoughts for now. Surely as we go forward more will come and go. Here are some photos from the other day, above and below. The sap is boiled and evaporated in a big stainless steel pan, then the condensed syrup is moved inside to the stove top, where we carefully finish it off and pour it into old whisky bottles.
A mighty wind
Astute followers of weather may have noticed the past few years have been marked by strong winds, each and every year. Usually around seasonal changes. Really strong winds. Howling.
Silly people will jump to the conclusion that this is yet more evidence of “global warming,” or “climate change,” because God knows, everything that happens is “evidence” for these theories, no matter what.
But the truth is actually much more interesting and compelling. The cause of these winds is Planet Earth’s changing polarity.
Our planet’s magnetic polarity switches every 100,000 years, or so, give or take.
This means that what is now the North Pole becomes the South Pole, and vice versa.
The magnetic field surrounding our planet is responsible for our existence here, because it provides a shield against cosmic rays and radiation, including from our own sun. Mars was once a watery oasis, a lot like Earth, but when its magnetic shield weakened, solar radiation stripped the planet’s surface of water and everything else needed for life. Including its atmosphere.
Because Earth’s magnetic shield is so strong, we survive. However, our magnetic shield is weakest when the polarity shifts. It’s like trying to walk when you’ve bent over with your pants around your ankles…you can kind of shuffle forward, but you won’t be winning any running or walking competitions.
As a result of our weakened magnetic shield, it is kind of like Star Wars ship-to-ship fighting scenes, where some of the laser bolts get through and kind of rock the ship. It is alarming, but not really damaging.
Oh, people can be damaged by the unusually strong sun’s rays, if they are out without clothes. But we already know that is foolish behavior.
But more than anything is the effect on our climate, and the resulting winds. Though it is not totally understood, the increased heat and solar radiation on our planet’s surface definitely causes temperatures to rise, and it can cause what feels like rough weather, though it is probably relatively calm compared to other planets.
There is nothing we can do about this polarity shift, and the resulting mighty winds, other than batten down the hatches and try to adapt.
More than anything, watching this happen reminds us of how tenuous life on Planet Earth is, and what a narrow window it was that opened to permit us to move forward technologically and materially. We have perhaps foolishly built high rise buildings and overhead power lines during a relatively narrow window of relative calm, but it is what it is. We cannot go back over all our infrastructure and rebuild it, though we are seeing the benefits of buying up private property along floodways to prevent further material destruction.
With these strong winds, we are just going to have to get used to them, and hope the polarity shift doesn’t poop out halfway through. Because then we’d all become Martians.