Posts Tagged → yale
Portrait of an American Man
Across America, tourists visit all kinds of special places, built and natural. Across America, university campuses are home to special academic buildings, donated by successful business people who graduated from those same colleges. Probably everyone who visits and studies at these places take them for granted, except the conservancies, land trusts, and other caretakers charged with the operations and maintenance jobs.
Here today, we look at one of these historic donors, who built and donated one of America’s most famous architectural statements. He was a successful businessman from humble beginnings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Back in the 1920s and 1930s, the heyday of department stores, which were the internet/ Amazon/ eBay of their time, his family went from owning small clothing, fabric, and hat stores to one big department store in downtown Pittsburgh. The enormous store was famous for carrying everything that every household required, in grades, qualities, and prices that every household could afford. Foods, clothing, fabrics for making clothing, pots, pans, utensils, firearms and ammunition, fishing gear, shoes, work boots…the list is endless.
Incidentally, in the 1970s State College, PA, where I grew up, the O.W. Houts department store, out at the Western very end of College Avenue, carried everything a family would need, including old coins, stone arrowheads dug up in the local farm fields, records, a wide selection of utility-grade firearms (where I got my first .22 single shot rifle and a 16 gauge single shot shotgun), clothing, shoes, food, etc. Next door was the Houts Hardware store and Lumber Yard. They sold nails by the pennyweight, tools, keys, and of course all kinds of locally sourced lumber.
Despite its relatively small size, the O.W. Houts department store and hardware store were absolutely core parts of the State College area lifestyle. And so we can imagine what the gigantic Kaufmann Department Store was like in Pittsburgh, many many times the size of Houts. The wives and daughters of coal miners shopping for calico two aisles over from the wives and daughters of coal mine owners shopping for lace and fur trimmings. 1920s Pittsburgh was a gigantic melting pot of iron, steel, and fifty different nationalities from around the world, and everyone got most of their necessities from the Kaufmann Department Store.
Edgar Kaufmann built the family business from the ground up, taking big risks and making big sacrifices along the way, and became exceptionally wealthy. His family upbringing emphasized giving charity, which he did in large amounts throughout his life. The one charitable donation he is best known for is Fallingwater and its surrounding Bear Run Preserve.
Below is Edgar Kaufmann’s portrait, done in 1929, and occasionally on display at Fallingwater, which is where I photographed it. It is filled with meaningful symbolism and clues to his personality and outlook on life. Below is my understanding of this statement.
Edgar is standing between two potent symbols, the (Christian?) alms bowl (charity) to his right, and the carefully shielded Middle Eastern crescent moon, on his left. This moon would be his own background, of the desert, partially obstructed by cloth, that is slightly pulled back to both cover it, and also reveal it by drawing the eye to it. Cloth being the most representative symbol of his department store’s biggest staple as well as its famous fashion statements.
He is holding a rustic walking stick in his dominant right hand, which puts emphasis on the importance of this simple cut branch. Yes, it is a humble symbol of hiking and the outdoor lifestyle, and it also has the V top for holding venomous snakes’ heads. The other venemous snakes in 1929 were the Nazis, and maybe this is his way of saying he would be seeking to catch them and pin them down. Or that he was at least aware of them in his life.
Edgar’s left arm leans heavily on the chair, perhaps a symbol of his never-ending work ethic stuck at a desk.
The chair’s right side, Edgar’s outdoorsy, charitable, artistic, manly, masculine, and muscular side, is well carved, carefully defined. Its left side is deliberately stunted and malformed, as if to say that his outdoors life and his charity work defined him best, and his boring work life was his least interesting aspect. Don’t we all have have different sides to us and to our personalities?
His sporty tennis sweater says all-America, while his shirt sleeves are pulled up to reveal his manly biceps. The tennis sweater is Harvard red, instead of the blue from his alma mater Yale. Something must have happened at Yale to make him upset with the school.
Edgar Kaufmann conveys an image of American masculinity straddling two worlds, one of which he must subtly hide. And the reason I picked this portrait to write about is because nearly 100 years after this was painted, America is back to that 1929 period, where American Jews have to hide their identity, lest they be hurt, abused, robbed, for merely being Jews. This is not a good reflection on Americans, that we have come back to this kind of un-American behavior.
Edgar was a political conservative, but a cultural libertine..another personality split some readers might relate to. He helped design, build, lived in, showcased, and then donated Fallingwater through his son, Edgar jr, for public benefit. Across America, so many historic tourist attractions and artistic buildings were created or donated by Jews, as were an awful lot of the donated buildings at universities. We should be celebrating this ethic, not picking on these people as a whole.
Edgar Kaufmann
Election Day now and a year later
A year ago today I was working a poll in Paxtang, I think. Handing out Trump for President literature (Trump won, everyone knows it), and some US Congressman Scott Perry lit, kibbitzing with other poll workers, chatting up voters and asking for their vote. One thing that really hammered home to me the difference between the Trump supporters and the regular county GOP committee members is the energy level we brought.
I was high energy and on my feet for hours, walking up to voters and asking for their vote, explaining the differences in the candidates. The GOP committeeman was lounging in a folding chair most of the time, occasionally standing, handing out literature for PA rep. Sue Helm if voters walked by close enough to take it from his hand.
When I engaged in discussion with the Democrat Party poll watcher, a woman attorney from northern Maryland, it became clear that she was an unapologetic communist. After she flew into a rage over some “Proud Boys” Latinos who showed up in their Trump socks, Trump pants, Trump hats, Trump shirts, and Trump underwear, I asked her why she was a communist. And at that point the Dauphin County GOP committeeman sprang into action, consoling the Democrat Party poll watcher with giggling assurances that I was a lone kook, my own special kind of far-right lunatic, and not at all representative of the Republican Party.
Yes, the GOP committeeman had more in common with the communist poll watcher than with me, the President Donald Trump advocate and poll watcher. Think about that. I still haven’t shaken it. For a long time I wanted to write a letter to this Dauphin County Republican Party committeeman, and among other things ask him if I was wrong in asking her (the lady poll watcher) why she was a communist. Turns out I was correct, that the Democrat Party is now an open and unapologetic communist movement. Do GOP hacks ever admit they were wrong?
Today is Election Day once again, and we have more of a local race to look at now. Our spring primary election yielded an unusual outcome in Harrisburg, a black woman winning the Democrat Party nomination for mayor of Harrisburg City. Usually the white liberals have it all locked up by mesmerizing and lying to their modern-day slaves to vote for the white liberal candidate. But after decades of white liberal mayors failing to do a single thing to improve the lives of black people in Harrisburg City, black voters here decided to try something different. They voted for a black candidate.
Talk about a step on the road to recovery! Congratulations to my fellow Harrisburg citizens for shaking off their white liberal slave masters!
Eric Papenfuse is the sitting white liberal mayor who was ousted in the spring primary by Wanda Williams, a forever member of the Harrisburg City Council. Eric Papenfuse touted his long list of policy and financial failures and concluded with a communist pledge of a guaranteed minimum income for certain city residents. Yep, the white liberal promised yet more government dependency for a community that is drowning and dying in white liberal dependency. If you ever wondered why urban decay is filled with drug addiction, consider where that addiction started: White liberal crack aka public dependency programs that made black people dependent on white liberal handouts.
Wanda’s election signs proclaim her a “lifelong Democrat,” which is hardly anything to brag about. I mean, look at where the Democrat Party has gotten urban black people across America – generations of failed churches, failed schools, failed families, but by God, they reliably vote for continued Democrat Party failure like good slaves!
Despite Papenfuse’s desperate write-in effort, Wanda is likely to win today. I hope that she grows into the Mayor job with an epiphany that causes her to shrug off the built-in failures of the political past she has lived and worked in.
Dear Wanda, please forgo political parties. Forgo political payback or pay-off of any sort. Please help our city citizens climb out of the poverty and failure that white liberals like Eric Papenfuse deliberately put them in. There are a million creative solutions to the mess here in Harrisburg City, and none of them are loyal to any political party or derivative thereof, such as teacher’s unions.
What have we got to lose by trying something new? We already know all of the current players bring nothing but failure and misery. Break free; break the bonds of injustice, Wanda!
A year from now, at the 2022 Election Day, I hope to write a different retrospective than “Yep, the new mayor immediately embraced all of the failed policies handed to her by the outgoing administration and made them her very own.”
And goodbye Eric Papenfuse. I won’t miss you and your cozy cronyism one bit. You did absolutely nothing but hurt Harrisburg even more than it was hurting when you took office eight years ago. Your mayoral Skid Row proved once again that graduating from Yale (and any other Ivy League school) is a damning millstone hung around the necks of the puffed up unfortunates who brag up these worse-then-useless diplomas. You couldn’t think yourself out of a wet paper bag if an entire city depended upon you for it.
The Curious Case of “Dr.” Bandy X. Lee
If there is one place in our lives where integrity matters most, it is with healthcare and the medical professionals and caregivers who provide it. Our personal health is everything to us. Without good health, we decline and become disabled, or die.
Healthcare professionals who monkey around with your health are at best incompetent. Like basing their opinions on hearsay. Those who play with people’s health for personal reasons, like philosophical views held by either the caregiver or the patient, are evil. They either cannot or will not rise above their own limited personal views, and instead use whatever authority they possess to inflict damage on someone they disagree with.
Such is the case of “Doctor” Bandy X. Lee, a purported professor at Yale University.
A review of her credentials reveals just how low medical standards have become, because the subjects she studies and supposedly specializes in are the most abstract, subjective things. She does not actually treat anyone for an infection, or for an injury. Instead, Lee specializes in creating new categories of fake injuries resulting from an otherwise healthy society.
By their nature her subjects of study defy critical thinking, and instead rely upon political positions, or at best philosophical views. Such as “violence prevention.”
Maybe it is no surprise that Lee defines violence and violent behavior in a way that indemnifies truly violent dictators like North Korea’s dictator Kim Kong Dong, or whatever his name is, and which ascribes negative values to people engaging in self-defense. Especially with firearms. Especially in America.
Or, people like President Trump, whose mere discussion of defending America is characterized by Lee as “violence” and “violent behavior.”
Parasite Lee is in an American policy world infested with hordes of anti-America academics, trained to couch every area of study and specialization in a way that undermines American security, culture and law, and which elevates our avowed enemies. Their political enemies are always Republicans, conservatives, and now “white males.”
Ms. Lee recently injected herself into the international spotlight by pronouncing Donald Trump mentally unfit to serve as president. Like, he’s crazy.
But wait, there’s more!
Lee also declared that the fate of the world hangs on Trump’s forcible removal from office, and that he represents a dire threat to humanity. Yes, she asserts, Trump is going to get all humanity blown up in a nuclear war, because he likes war, he likes weapons, and he acts tough. Yes, she says, it will be Trump’s fault when the world is blown up. Nope, not North Korea’s fault, or China’s fault, but the guy trying to defend America from North Korea. Yup, huge crisis if trump stays in office, she says.
Lee is not completely alone. She shares this distinctive role with a whole mess o’ other so-called mental health professionals, who, like Lee, are also complete frauds. These are all political activists masquerading as medical professionals, who inject their political views into what is supposed to be sacred medical work. They are doctors like Doctor Jekyll was a doctor, like Auschwitz death camp Doctor Mengele was a doctor. That is, fake, fake, fake doctors.
The biggest problem here is that none of these people, including Lee, have actually examined Trump in person. They make wild, subjective suppositions about him, ascribe wild, subjective motives to his decisions, and apply their own subjective personal views and values, as if THEY are what is normal behavior. But none of them have actually talked to the guy, which is what their professional standards require.
Lee and her cohort of political activists are not actual medical professionals. That is measured by their substitution of personal views for professional standards, a clear violation of everything being a doctor is about. She and her fellow psychiatric screwballs have violated medical standards, state, and federal law by passing medical judgment on a purported patient without actually examining them.
Aside from obvious frauds, these people are a bunch of wimps, too. They are not fighters, defenders of the nation, or even healthcare providers or caregivers. They will quickly lock up as “crazy” anyone who disagrees with their leftist political views. By the way, this is what dictatorships everywhere do. They characterize their political opponents as “unsteady,” a “threat” to people around them, and then forcibly lock them up and at best keep them heavily sedated. One has to wonder who Lee has done this to already…let us guess, are there patriotic Americans among her victims?
I would not want Lee or any of her fellow medical frauds in my life, or in your life, in any way. These people are liabilities to America and to their local communities. Their “standards” are so screwy, so low, that they are hurting the people around them, not helping them. Maybe that is their purpose.
The use of one’s medical training to be a partisan political whore, or a traitor, is grounds for losing one’s professional credentials, and that is what must occur next: Strip Lee and her fellow medically trained prostitutes of their medical licenses. These aren’t serious medical professionals, and the medical field will not miss them.
The case of Bandy X. Lee’s medical malpractice is a also view into the world of leftwing political activism. Literally everything there is politicized; there are no boundaries that cannot be crossed to achieve political domination, including the illegal mis-use of one’s medical credentials. The ends always justify the means to liberals. It’s always some world-ending crisis that justifies destroying their political opponents.
Which reminds us of the newly renamed global warming, no, wait, climate change, no, wait, now it is “climate crisis”: A bunch of so-called professors use tenure to promote bizarre and indefensible claims totally contrary to actual science, but it is such a “crisis” that everything must stop, change, and turn hard left, or else…the world ends.
One takeaway message from all this is that our colleges have become cesspools of anti-American activism, but paid for by hard working Americans. Yale University now produces the stupidest, least trained people, most incapable of critical thinking. Ivy League? Oh pshaw! It’s the Political Correctness League, where being close-minded is the standard. And the Americans who believe the ideas and assertions emanating from places like Yale and Lee…I mean, we are constantly told by the media that Trump’s supporters are a bunch of idiots, but look at the low standards liberals have. They will believe anything!
There is a crisis, all right, a crisis in credibility. The more outlandish the claims, the bigger the credibility crisis.
The bigger takeaway message here is that America is under assault from within, by people who use their professional roles to damage and undermine America’s security and the health of her citizens. Whatever the better alternative to America is, is never stated by these people. Their message is simply that America as it is, is bad, and it must radically change. Perhaps they think communist China is better?
Maybe Ms. Lee needs to go there, to China, and promote her ideology. Surely she will be warmly welcomed.
Perhaps they were the ones who sent her to America in the first place.
UPDATE: January 12, 2018, it turns out “Doctor” Bandy X. Lee has no medical license. She held a medical license in California, which lapsed in 2013. She holds no medical license in Connecticut, where she now resides and “practices” medicine. Performing the duties of a medical doctor without a license is a criminal act. In the past few days Lee was reprimanded by the American Psychiatric Association, because she issued a medical opinion about a person without having examined that person, and made it public without that person’s consent. As we suspected, Bandy X. Lee is not really a doctor, she is a highly trained political activist with the trappings of a doctor. Zero credibility, Bandy X. Lee, zero credibility.
