Elmwood Park, N.J., Mayor Charged with Voter Fraud

According to North Jersey.com, the mayor of Elmwood Park, N.J. was arrested Monday after authorities say he interfered in the 2017 mayoral election.

 

What’s most amazing is that a New Jersey newspaper reported on the allegations.  But election tampering here in New Jersey is not so amazing.  Especially not in the former East Paterson, renamed Elmwood Park so as not to take on the taint of the city of Paterson.  West Paterson also changed its name recently to Westwood Park.  They cannot avoid the spillover of Hispanic residents, legal and otherwise, from Paterson, however, and sexual predators have been arrested in Westwood Park, even as the town tries to carry on with normal community events like their local Easter Egg Hunt.

 

Elmwood Park Mayor Frank Caramagna, 74, resigned on Sunday, the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office said. Between March 2017 and November 2018, Caramagna allegedly filled in ballots of other registered voters, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.

 

Caramagna was Elmwood Park’s first Democratic mayor in nearly 50 years.  He was the first person elected to the post after the death of long-time Mayor Richard Mola in October 2016.  Robert Colletti served as the interim mayor after Mola’s 45 years of service.

 

Colletti was also Caramagna’s opponent in the 2017 election. It was a close election, with Caramagna receiving 2,348 votes and Colletti 2,030.  The tally was even closer before mail-in, provisional and absentee votes, with Caramagna holding only a three-vote lead after Election Day. Colletti could not immediately be reached for comment.

 

Caramagna was released from the Bergen County Jail on Monday. He did not immediately respond to messages left for him.

 

Elmwood Park Borough Administrator Michael Foligno said the Borough Council will likely discuss the situation at Thursday’s meeting.

 

“It’s a bit of a shock,” Foligno said. “I’ve known Frank Caramagna for many years in his capacity as a council person and then as mayor. But we’ll move forward as a community and as a governing body.”

 

Council President Daniel Golabeck was also surprised.

 

“He is entitled to full due process,” Golabeck said in a statement. “This resignation will not slow down the council’s work on the important issues we are confronting and working on nor will it affect any municipal services. The business of the borough and the council will continue unaffected.”

 

Former Elmwood Park Councilman Anthony Chirdo alluded to ballot tampering during his final meeting before stepping down on Aug. 16, 2018.

 

“Mayor, you do do an excellent job of absentee ballots,” Chiridio said at the time. “You got 446 absentee ballots last year, which is outstanding, and I’m just curious: Out of those, how many did you actually personally collect?”

 

Chiridio was met with a chorus of people on the council saying it was illegal to collect ballots personally, and that he was out of line.

 

“You never made a contribution since I’ve been mayor here,” Caramagna said to Chirdo during the meeting. “Never once; always been negative. You, as an Eagle Scout — you should be ashamed of yourself, because you make a lot of accusations.  Shame on you. I thought you were a better man. You better go away.”

 

When asked Monday about his 2018 comments, Chirido said they speak for themselves.

 

“There was a long history of concern about vote-by-mail ballots over the years there,” he said.  “Based on today, those worried seem warranted.  It’s a sad day for the town.”

 

November 2017 marked the fifth attempt by Caramagna to become mayor.  The father of three and grandfather of six taught Italian and Spanish for many years at Elmwood Park High School and also served on the Board of Education.

 

He is on the ballot in the June primary for re-election against Colletti and Magdalena Giandomenico.  His term expires December 31.

 

Caramagna is scheduled to appear in court on May 22.

 

Chiridio had to make the charges public before law enforcement could investigate.  The case is still pending and everyone is innocent until proven guilty.  Chiridio is an Eagle Scout.  It remains to be seen whether Caramagna is.  Strange that members of the council told Chiridio that he was out of line because it’s illegal to personal collect ballots.

 

Westwood Park, back when it was West Paterson, tried hard for the community.  But it’s town council meetings apparently have been a circus for years.  Back in the Sixties and Seventies, my grandparents lived in West Paterson.  Grandpa used to attend every town council meeting, raising cain until they finally threw Grandpa Gadfly out.

 

New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-9^th Distr.) has been an entrenched figure in the local politics of the Patersons and Totowa.  Before the redistricting, it was the 8^th District, and unfortunately, he was our Congressman.  Now we’re in the 11^th District, represented by Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen.  Thank goodness, it’s not Mikie Sherill.

 

How much hope can New Jersey have with such incorrigibly sticky-fingered politicians, illegal aliens, drug dealers, and rampant voter fraud?

 

 

 

Trump Trumps Obama’s U.N. Arms Trade Treaty

President Trump announced on Friday that the U.S. will halt ratification of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, a remnant of the Obama era, PJMedia reported.

 

In a dramatic moment during his speech at the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action event, Trump announced his decision to sign an order instructing the Senate to halt the ratification process begun under his predecessor. President Obama submitted the treaty, which aims to regulate the $70 billion international arms trade, to the Senate for ratification in 2013, but it was never signed.

 

Trump, who vowed to distance the U.S. from global agreements that undermine American sovereignty during his campaign, vowed that he would “never” ratify the arms treaty.

 

“My administration will not ratify the UN arms trade treaty,” he told the NRA. “We’re taking our signature back. The United Nations will get notice that we are formally rejecting this treaty.”

 

“Under my administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone,” the president promised. “We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedoms.” He then immediately signed a document ordering the Senate to stop the ratification process while on stage at the NRA convention.

 

The decision was apparently kept under tight wraps until Trump made the announcement during his speech Friday morning. Even NRA execs were unaware that he planned to sign the paperwork at the event, according to Trump.

 

The crowd roared its approval and chanted, “USA, USA!” as the president held up the signed document.

 

Conservative groups, including the NRA, have opposed the treaty, fearing that it would infringe on American sovereignty and cede power to the United Nations. The Trump administration had also voiced concerns that the treaty would unfairly penalize the U.S. because China and Russia were not signatories to the treaty. The U.S. is the world’s number one arms exporters in the world, with China and Russia coming in at numbers two and three.

 

Leftists are concerned that a rejection of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty will allow U.S. arms dealers and the military to assist allies in other countries in their own fight for freedom, particularly in South America. Ultimately, the treaty would have brought the United States’ Second Amendment under the auspices of the United Nations, essentially revoking our Second Amendment.

 

“And we have shut down the previous administration’s massive abuse of power known as Operation Choke Point,” the President announced. “Under this ill-advised program, government bureaucrats discouraged banks from making loans to gun retailers — a backdoor attack on private gun ownership that will never be allowed to happen on my watch. That’s step one, folks. Step one. You know what step two, three, and four is. Step four is: You don’t have guns. You don’t have any way to protect yourself.

 

“Today, I’m proud to announce another historic step to protect your Second Amendment rights.  And I didn’t tell Chris and Wayne and Oliver; I didn’t even tell them about it.  So they’re listening in this big room someplace, and they’re saying, ‘I wonder what he’s going to do?’  The good thing with me: You never know. Never know. That’s why we’re making trade deals that are so good for our country.

 

“So, in the last administration, President Obama signed the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty.  And in his waning days in office, he sent the treaty to the Senate to begin the ratification process.

This treaty threatened [to] subjugate your — and you know exactly what’s going on here — your rights and your constitutional and international rules and restrictions and regulations.

 

“Under my administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone. We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedom. And that is why my administration will never ratify the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. I hope you’re happy. I’m impressed; I didn’t think too many of you would really know what it is. You what it is? A big, big factor. But I see a couple of very happy faces from the NRA over there.

 

“And I am officially announcing today that the United States will be revoking the effect of America’s signature from this badly misguided treatment (agreement).  We’re taking our signature back. The United Nations will soon receive a formal notice that America is rejecting this treaty.

 

“As part of this decision, I will sign right now, in front of a lot of witnesses — a lot — it’s a lot of witnesses — a message asking the Senate to discontinue the treaty ratification process and to return the now-rejected treaty right back to me, in the Oval Office, where I will dispose of it.

 

“By taking these actions, we are reaffirming that American liberty is sacred and that American citizens live by American laws, not the laws of foreign countries. Thank you

(The President holds up document.)

 

“They all want the pen. Can you believe these people? Should I give it to them?”

 

Audience: Yeah!

 

“Together, we are fighting for the timeless values that have built and sustained our nation,” the President stated.  “And our nation is greater today than it has ever been. Stronger, richer. We’re doing better than ever before.  We are great Americans.  You’re doing a great job. Thank you.  Thank you.”

“We believe in the rule of law,” he went on to say.  “And we will always protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. And there are some people that are running right now; I don’t think they have that number one on their list.

“We believe that children should be taught to our country, honor our history, and always respect our great American flag.”

 

The President invited law enforcement officials and NRA members to come to the podium to tell their stories of fending off violent criminals with their licensed guns.  The stories came in the shadow of terrorist attacks overseas, particularly in Sri Lanka.  On Saturday, a lone, anti-Trump gunman tried to open fire on a chabad (a Jewish community center) in San Diego.  One woman was killed, and three injured, including a girl and a rabbi who courageously confronted the gunman, losing two fingers in the act.

 

“Gun owners make our communities safer,” President Trump said, “and they make our nation stronger. Americans have always understood this truth, going back to the earliest days of our nation.

 

“Two months before the American Revolution broke out, with the shot heard around the world, a group of patriots gathered along a bridge in Salem, Massachusetts. In the preceding months, British soldiers had confiscated muskets in Boston. You know the story well.  Gunpowder was seized in Somerville. And the patriots in Salem knew that the Redcoats would soon come for the town’s cannons.

“But the Americans were prepared — they already loved our country — and they were determined to defend their rights to the death.  When hundreds of British soldiers arrived at the bridge, the Americans stood firm, blocking their path. When swords were drawn, they didn’t flinch. When the Redcoats tried to steal American boats, the patriots sank those boats and sank them very quickly. When a British soldier held the tip of his bayonet against a man’s chest, that man — Joseph Whicher — tore open his shirt and dared him to do his worst.

“Soon, the crowd grew larger, as civilians came from miles around to stand side by side with their great countrymen against tyranny.  In the face of such unbreakable resolve, the King’s soldiers had no choice but to admit defeat and failure and retreat.

“In the courageous actions of those early Americans, we see the defiant and determined spirit of patriotism that has always willed America to its greatest victories.  It is a spirit that is passed down from generation to generation, from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters.  It is the spirit that lives in each and every one of you.

“Our duty, our responsibility, our sacred charge, is to preserve the freedoms that our ancestors gave their very lives to secure. Because no matter how many centuries go by, no matter how much the world changes, the central drama of human history remains the same.

“On one side are those who seek power, control, and domination. And on the other side are patriots like those in this hall who stand upright and plant their feet in eternal defense of our liberty.

“And with God as our witness, we swear today that we will defend our rights, we will safeguard our freedoms, we will uphold our heritage, we will protect our Constitution, and we will make America stronger, prouder, safer, and greater than ever, ever, ever before!

“To all of our incredible friends at the NRA: Thank you for fighting the good fight. It is an honor to fight by your side, and it’s an honor to be with everyone in this giant hall today. I am with you. I will never, ever let you down.

“Thank you. God bless you!  And God bless the United States of America.”

 

Once again, another great, great speech from our President.  Critics can question his taxes (he doesn’t have to show them) or his morals.  We knew all that before we voted for him.

 

But no one can doubt President Trump’s dedication to our country. It seems kind of ridiculous to threaten a president who has such a love of this country with impeachment.  We know his patriotism is genuine; it was evident long before he ever sought public office.  It was evident when he was still a registered Democrat.

 

Those who would destroy his presidency are the same ideologues who have celebrated the removal of Kate Smith’s statue in front of the Philadelphia Flyer’s stadium.  They’re the same global Marxists who advocate illegal immigration and suffrage for those illegal aliens.  They’re the same Snowflakes who howled over the murder of Muslims in New Zealand mosque on March 15, blaming “white supremacists” for the crime, but were silent on the murder of Christians in Sri Lanka, when three Catholic churches and three luxury hotels were attacked on Easter Sunday, killing 46 and injuring over 500.  Sri Lanka has since banned face coverings.

 

The President, at a times, went far astray from the topic of Second Amendment rights at times, touting our roaring economy, low unemployment rate, and better international trade rules.  With such a lopsided, propagandist media, you can’t blame the President for tooting his own horn.

 

Illegal aliens are still pouring over our southern border at an alarming rate and disappearing into the woodwork of American society.  The Democrats are pleased that these termites are eating away at the fabric of American society.

 

The President is sounding an alarm to which the Democrats are obviously not responding.  He just hopes there are enough freedom-loving voters to heed the call.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biden: The Future Gaffer-in-Chief?!

Joe Biden has announced his fourth run for President of the United States.  According to a Morning Consult/Politico poll, he has an eight-point lead over President Trump.

 

As reported by the online Morning Consult, the poll was conducted April 19-21 among 1,992 registered voters, which found Biden leading the president by 8 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup, 42 percent to 34 percent. Biden has a significant edge over Trump among women (17 points), Millennials (22 points) and Independents (10 points).

 

The national, online survey has a 2-point margin of error.

 

If the poll had shown Bernie Sanders with such a lead, given the current insanity of the Democrat Party, the lead might be understandable.  Millennials and Snowflakes, thanks to their indoctrination in school, are leaning further and further Left.  They may call him Crazy Bernie.  But he knows what he’s about.

 

Joe Biden, not to put too fine a point on it, is an idiot – and a crook.  He’s a corrupt politician who manipulated a deal with the bankrupt Amtrak to run from New York to Washington, D.C., so he’d have a ride to work and could shake paws on the annual Legislative Train.  In every other market, Amtrak is an abject failure.

 

• At a campaign stop in Missouri in 2008, then vice-presidential nominee Biden exhorted state senator Chuck Graham to stand up for a round of applause. Graham is a paraplegic after a car accident he had at age 16.

“Stand up, Chuck, let them see you,” Biden said.

 

• In a 2012 debate with Paul Ryan, he asserted that “we were never told” U.S. Embassy officials in Libya had asked for extra security before the Sept. 11, 2012 terror attack. Obama disavowed his statement.

 

• In 2009, he fumbled the Vice Presidential oath of office as he repeated it to Hillary Clinton.

 

• In 2016, he identified the Secret Service agent carrying “The Football,” the briefcase carrying America’s nuclear codes.

 

• At the signing of Obama’s much-ballyhooed health care plan in 2010, he dropped an f-bomb on-air just before Obama spoke to “celebrate” the passing of the bill, calling it “a big F-ing deal.”

 

• Taking questions at Sichuan University in 2011, Biden launched into a riff on China’s demographic crisis.  “Your policy is one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of [allowing only] one child per family,” the vice president helpfully offered.

 

• In 2012, he advised Obama not to order the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound because there wasn’t absolute proof that the Al Qaeda leader was in the Abbottabad residence.

 

• In 1991, Biden voted against the successful Gulf War though most historians now believe it was a well-executed, agile use of American power.

 

• In the midst of his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president in 2007, Biden took broad swipes at his opponents Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama, including one that was downright puzzling about the future president.   “I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said.  “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

 

• In 2015, while Ashton Carter was being sworn in as the secretary of defense, Biden put his hands on his wife Stephanie’s shoulders, rubbing them and appearing to whisper in her ear.

 

• In 2010, at a St Patrick’s Day reception for Brian Cowen, Biden got confused over which of the then Irish prime minister’s parents had passed away. “His mum lived in Long Island for 10 years or so, God rest her soul,” he said, before catching his mistake. “Although she’s, wait. Your mum’s still alive. It was your dad that passed. God bless her soul. I gotta get this straight,” Biden said to a big laugh from the crowd, showing that even when he screws up, his supporters often find it charming.

 

• “Remember, I said it standing here, if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

— Joe Biden, telling donors at a private fundraiser in Seattle that Barack Obama will likely be tested by an international crisis during his first few months in office.

 

Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

• “In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

— Joe Biden, captured on C-SPAN’s “Road to the White House” series, trying to bond with an Indian-American supporter.

• “I started thinking as I was coming over here, ‘Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?’”

— Joe Biden, during his first presidential run, lifting passages and even gestures from a speech by Neil Kinnock without giving credit to the leader of the British Labour Party.

• Biden’s problems continued when C-SPAN footage surfaced two weeks later showing Biden inflated his academic record at law school. (His claims included one that he finished in the top half of his class at Syracuse Law School; he graduated 76th of 85.) Though he later called the accusations of plagiarism “much ado about nothing,” dropped out of the race on Sept. 23.

 

• “I am a gaffe machine,” Biden admitted in December 2018.

 

• During a 2008 campaign rally, Biden said: “Look, John’s last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: Jobs. J-O-B-S.”

 

• At Syracuse University College of Law, Biden “used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution,” according to a faculty report. He cited the source in only a single footnote.

 

• As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, Biden took a leading role in questioning Anita Hill, who had accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. Biden asked her to describe her most embarrassing encounter with Thomas—“Can you tell us how you felt at the time? Were you uncomfortable, were you embarrassed, did it not concern you? How did you feel about it?”—and pushed an obviously reluctant Hill to say the name of a pornographic film star whom Thomas had alluded to.

 

• In an interview with CBS Evening News, Biden criticized the George W. Bush administration’s handling of the financial crisis. “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed,” Biden said.  But as FactCheck pointed out, Herbert Hoover was president during the 1929 Wall Street Crash and television didn’t exist.  [This blogger’s personal favorite gaffe.]

 

• At a 2008 New Hampshire rally, Biden second-guessed Obama’s choice for vice president. “Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice-president of the United States of America. Let’s get that straight,” Biden said, The Telegraph reported.  “She’s a truly close personal friend… quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me. But she’s first rate, I mean that sincerely, she’s first rate.”

 

• While promoting a federal government website for the The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Biden couldn’t remember the simple web address, which was Recovery.gov, referring to it at first as “website number.” It suddenly came to him during the interview.

 

• At a meeting with House Democrats in 2009, with the party facing criticism over the $787 billion economic stimulus package, Biden suggested the White House might be handling the financial crisis “wrong.” Again, the broken clock…

 

• In 2009, Politico reported that Biden was overheard making this comment to the then Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko: “I cannot believe that a French man visiting Kiev went back home and told his colleagues he discovered something and didn’t say he discovered the most beautiful women in the world. That’s my observation.”

 

• When Biden stopped off at a frozen custard shop in Milwaukee back in 2010, the manager offered him a dessert for free if the veep cut taxes, Fox News reported. Biden replied, “Why don’t you say something nice instead of being a smartass all the time?”

 

• On the 2012 campaign trail, when talking about Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s plans for Wall Street, Biden told an audience that included many African Americans, “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.” After criticism from the Romney campaign, Obama’s team called the complaints “faux outrage,” but also had to clarify that Biden’s comments were a reference to Republican remarks about unshackling the private sector and his own about unshackling the middle class, CBS News reported.

 

• In a 2012 speech on foreign policy, Biden praised President Obama’s approach to diplomacy. “Now is the time to heed the timeless advice from Teddy Roosevelt: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ End of quote,” Biden said. “I promise you, the president has a big stick.”   As the audience laughed, Biden repeated: “I promise you.”

 

• On NBC’s Meet The Press in 2012, Biden wrong-footed the White House by saying he supported gay marriage, pre-empting months of work behind the scenes in the Obama administration assessing the political risks of endorsing same-sex marriage. Politico reported that Biden’s interview created chaos in the White House. It pushed President Barack Obama to make a call on gay marriage sooner than he had wanted.  What?!

 

• Getting his Irish ‘up’: At another reception for an Irish Prime Minister, this time Enda Kenny in 2012, Biden said, “You know there’s an old Irish saying, there’s all kinds of old Irish sayings.  “My grandfather Finnegan, I think he made them up. But uh, it says, may the hinges of our friendship never go rusty.  Well, with these two folks that you’re about to meet if you haven’t already, there’s no doubt about them staying oiled and lubricated here, ladies and gentlemen.” As the audience laughed, Biden said: “Now for you who are not full Irish in this room, lubricated has a different meaning for us all.”

Had enough?  The entire Democrat field of 2020 candidates is a klown-car of Socialists, Marxists, crooks and creepers.  How could anyone think of voting for any of these people but least of all, Joe Biden?

If Joe Biden is their idea of a solid, respectable candidate, Heaven help the United States of America!

 

More Virtue Singing Signaling

Last Friday, the guest host on the Rush Limbaugh Show, Mark Steyn, was discussing how some Music Police objected to the song from The Sound of Music, “Edelweiss.”  There was talk, apparently, that the MPs wanted the song and its scene removed from the film because it was a Fascist song extolling the virtues of Nazi Germany.

 

I tried calling the show’s call-in number, but got the usual busy signal, the give the correct version of musical history.

 

I wanted to tell Mr. Steyn that nothing could be further from the truth.  Austria had no such song during World War II.  “Edelweiss” was written for the 1959 musical.  Certainly, the 1965 film took some license with the happy Austrians singing along, as my mother noted the first time she watched it with us.

 

Mom is from the Greatest Generation.  Hitler’s Nazi party infiltrated Austria, just as they had Poland and Czechoslovakia.

 

Mom’s cynical observation was, “Yeah, sure.  You people voted the Nazi Party in.”

 

Georg Von Trapp is portrayed in the Broadway and Hollywood versions as strongly anti-Nazi.  In the film, when he finds the Nazi flag flying from his home, he tears it down.  I’ve never seen the Broadway version, so I don’t know what the character did in the play.

 

However, we know from Maria’s two autobiographies what the real Georg Von Trapp.  The Von Trapp’s lived in Saltzburg, Austria, on its outskirts.  The family moved there after the mother, Agathe died of rheumatic fever.  They lived in a seaside villa on either the Adriatic or the Mediterranean.

 

Saltzburg holds an annual music festival in the summer, with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as the guest of honor.  Every summer, Maria tells us, their relatives (presumably both Georg’s and Agathe’s descended) upon the family.  As hosts, the children would give their relatives musical tours of Saltzburg.

 

Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat, the Eagle’s Nest, was not far away.  As matter of fact, he had to travel the road on which the Von Trapp’s lived to get to the city.  When Hitler visited Saltzberg, residents were required to fly the Nazi flag.

 

Georg Von Trapp refused to fly it.  He said that he would sooner display his tapestries rather than that ugly flag.  And he did.  He flew his tapestries.  His family was requested to perform for Hitler, in addition to the orders he had to take command of a Nazi submarine.  He refused both and sent his sons to England to live with their mother’s relatives to keep them from being drafted into the Nazi army.

 

When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, eleven years after Maria and Georg married, the von Trapps realized that they were on thin ice with a regime they abhorred. They were also becoming aware of the Nazis’ anti-religious propaganda and policies, the pervasive fear that those around them could be acting as spies for the Nazis, and the brainwashing of children against their parents. They weighed staying in Austria and taking advantage of the enticements the Nazis were offering—greater fame as a singing group, a medical doctor’s position for Rupert, and a renewed naval career for Georg—against leaving behind everything they knew—their friends, family, estate, and all their possessions. They decided that they could not compromise their principles and left.

 

The family lost most of its wealth through the worldwide depression when their bank failed in the early 1930s. Maria tightened belts all around by dismissing most of the servants and taking in boarders. It was around this time that they began considering making the family hobby of singing (the father and children were already musically inclined before Maria came to live with them) into a profession. Georg was reluctant for the family to perform in public, “but accepted it as God’s will that they sing for others,” daughter Eleonore said in a 1978 Washington Post interview. “It almost hurt him to have his family onstage, not from a snobbish view, but more from a protective one.”

 

As depicted in The Sound of Music, the family won first place in the Salzburg Music Festival in 1936 and became successful, singing Renaissance and Baroque music, madrigals, and folk songs all across Europe.  Having dual citizenship in Austria and Croatia, Georg and his family simply boarded a train for Italy, declaring that they were going on a music tour.  They did not travel over mountains as they did in the musical (with all their clothes and instruments!)  Traveling with their musical conductor, Rev. Franz Wasner, and secretary, Martha Zochbauer, they went by train to Italy in June, later to London, and by September were on a ship to New York to begin a concert tour in Pennsylvania. Son Johannes was born in January 1939 in Philadelphia.

 

When their six month visitors’ visas expired, they went on a short Scandinavian tour and returned to New York in October 1939. They were held at Ellis Island for investigation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, apparently because when asked by an official how long they intended to stay, instead of saying “six months,” as specified on their visas, Maria exclaimed, “Oh, I am so glad to be here—I never want to leave again!” The Story of the Trapp Family Singers notes that they were released after a few days and began their next tour.

 

In the early 1940s the family settled in Stowe, Vermont, where they bought a farm. They ran a music camp on the property when they were not on tour. In 1944, Maria and her stepdaughters Johanna, Martina, Maria, Hedwig, and Agathe applied for U.S. citizenship by filing declarations of intention at the U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont. Georg apparently never filed to become a citizen; Rupert and Werner were naturalized while serving in the U.S. armed forces during World War II; Rosmarie and Eleonore derived citizenship from their mother; and Johannes was born in the United States and was a citizen in his own right.

 

Georg offered his considered skill and knowledge to the United States Navy as a submarine captain, but the Navy didn’t trust someone they considered “a German” and turned him down.

 

As for the song “Edelweiss,” it is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music.  It is named after the edelweiss, a white flower found high in the Alps). The song was created for the 1959 Broadway production of The Sound of Music, as a song for the character Captain Georg von Trap (originated by actor Theodore Bikel). In the musical, Captain von Trapp and his family sing this song during the concert near the end of Act II, as a statement of Austrian patriotism in the face of the pressure put upon him to join the navy of Nazi Germany following the Anschluss (the Nazi annexation of Austria). It is also Captain von Trapp’s sentimental goodbye to his beloved homeland, using the flower as a symbol of his loyalty to Austria.  It is also used in the 1965 film of the same name.

 

No doubt, the Racial Revisionists have a huge problem with the title of the song which, in English, means “Noble White.”  “Edel” – noble.  “Weiss” – white.  Heavens to Betsies!  “Noble White”!  Why, how White Supremacist can you get?  Its scientific name – leontopodium nivale – doesn’t sound as “offensive; a mountain flower belonging to the daisy or sunflower family, Asteraceae.  Leontopodium means “lion’s paw” or “lion’s foot;” Nivale is French for “snowflake.”  In Romania it is known as Floare de colț which means Cliffhanger’s flower. In the Italian Alps the flower is referred to as “Stella Alpina,” while in the French Alps as “Étoile des Alpes”, both names meaning “Star of the Alps.”

 

While The Sound of Music was in tryouts in Boston, Richard Rodgers felt Captain von Trapp should have a song with which he would bid farewell to the Austria he knew and loved.  Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II decided to write an extra song that Captain von Trapp would sing in the festival concert sequence towards the end of the show.  As they were writing it, they felt this song could also utilize the guitar-playing and folk-singing talents of Bikel.  The Lindsay and Crouse script provides the metaphor of the simple edelweiss wildflower as a symbol of the Austria that Captain von Trapp, Maria, and their children knew would live on, in their hearts, despite the Nazi annexation of their homeland.

 

After the von Trapps left Austria, the taxes on their home lapsed.  By that time, the Nazis had been defeated and they left the mansion to the Catholic Church in Saltzberg, presumably to be used as a dormitory for Catholic students visiting and studying in the city.

 

“Edelweiss” was the last song Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote together; Hammerstein was suffering from stomach cancer, which took his life nine months after The Sound of Music opened on Broadway.

 

The great popularity of the song has led many to believe that it is an Austrian folk song or even the official national anthem. However, Austria’s official anthem is “Land der Berge, Land am Strome” (Land of the Mountains, Land on the Stream,” and the anthem used from 1929 until the Anschluss was “Sei gesegnet ohne Ende” (“Be blessed without end).

 

The flower is protected in Austria and illegal to pick. An “edelweiss” is also worn as a cap emblem by certain Austrian Army and the German Gebirgsjager (mountain troopers) units stationed in the nearby Bavarian Alps.

 

There is similar confusion about another song co-authored by Hammerstein, “Ol Man River” from the musical Show Boat, which is widely (though erroneously) believed to be an African-American spiritual.  The similar misconceptions about the two songs has been noted by two writers, both of whom see it as tribute to Hammerstein’s talents.

 

Alyson McLamore, in her Musical Theater: An Appreciation, writes, “The last song to be written for the show was ‘Edelweiss,’ a tender little homage to a native flower of Austria that has the effect of an authentic Austrian folksong, much as ‘Ol’ Man River’ struck listeners as a genuine African American spiritual.”

 

Hugh Ford, in his biography of Oscar Hammerstein, writes about “the ability of the authors to simulate the quality of an authentic folk song… ‘Ol’ Man River’ had the ring of a black laborer’s song… Thirty years later, ‘Edelweiss’ was widely believed to be an old Austrian song, though Oscar… composed it for the Sound of Music.”

 

Theodore Bikel, in his autobiography, Theo (2002), wrote that once, after a performance, he was approached by a native Austrian who said, “I love that Edelweiss” and then added, with total confidence, “of course, I have known it for a long time, but only in German.”

 

“Cultural appropriation” is as old as music itself, when the first pipers used flutes to trap birds while hunting.  European composers often traveled into the countryside to listen to the local musicians playing on their home-made instruments.  They would carry the tunes back to the cities with them, and compose variations on those musical themes.

 

In the 20^th Century, musicians often “covered” other musicians’ songs.  No doubt, they went through the proper legal channels.  Copyright laws were less rigid in those days.  Today, there are some CDs that you can’t even burn down to your own computer, never mind playing the song in public (certainly not for money).  When school music teachers buy a score of music, if there aren’t enough parts for some instrument (especially percussion), they are no longer allowed to copy the parts; they must order more copies from the music publisher.

 

This is especially infuriating for us mallet players.  If the publisher prints all the parts on one sheet, what do they think the musicians are going to do?  Drag the sheet music from one big instrument to another and hope they don’t lose count?!  Evidently, they do and losing your place in the music is what happens.

 

The Cultural Police are coming for our music, our movies, and our books.  Modern Art, for which they are responsible, basically stinks, so they can have it.  A music teacher who was on our community band had the unfortunate task of trying to teach music appreciation in a majority Hispanic school.  He was very frustrated with their disinclination to even try to appreciate music and eventually he died of exhaustion.  He was only in his fifties (and had health issues).

 

We need to consider ourselves in a position of a cultural drought.  We must hoarde our culture up and preserve from those who would destroy it.  Envision a day when you’ll only be able to buy a Kate Smith record, the oldest of the versions of Show Boat, Spike Jones, the book, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, or a Mel Brooks film on the (forgive the expression) “Black Market.”

 

Or will it be renamed “Markt Weiss” –  “The White Market”?

 

 

Wildwood, New Jersey, Blesses Kate Smith

The mayor of the Jersey Shore resort town, Wildwood, Ernie Troiano, has declared that visitors to the two-mile long Wildwood boardwalk will continue to hear the sound of Kate Smith singing “God Bless America.”

 

Joining him in this promise is North Wildwood Mayor Patrick Rosenello (the famous boardwalk traverses the three towns of North Wildwood, Wildwood, and Wildwood Crest).

 

“It’s an Irving Berlin patriotic song that has nothing to do with anything other than America,” Troiano told WPHT’s Dom Giordano on Monday. “I can assure you that my conversation with the mayor of North Wildwood, Patrick Rosenello, is, we have no intention of removing it.

 

“That’s not a statement that we don’t understand what’s going on, and we’re ignorant to the history and all that. … We understand the history,” Troiano added. “But the world’s gotten so politically correct and so afraid that they’re going to offend somebody. … The song is greater than anything.  So you know what? It’ll continue to play in Wildwood.”

 

It’s long been a tradition along the Wildwood boardwalk for “God Bless America” and the national to be played at 11 a.m. during the summer.  All activity stops on the boardwalk during the patriotic tribute and visitors cheer heartily afterwards.

 

Wildwood is raucous version of Seaside Heights and Asbury Park further north along the Jersey Shore.  Rowdy tee shirts are on display all along the boardwalk.  Vendors also sell specialized tee shirts for groups that use Wildwood’s Convention Center.  The annual N.J. Firemen’s Convention and Parade has been an especially wild party every September, with fire trucks and usually drunken firemen howling up and down the streets all night long.

 

We stopped going to Wildwood a few years back when the legs just couldn’t handle the two-mile parade and two-mile boardwalk.  But we’ll always have fond memories of those end-of-summer festivities and hearing Kate Smith’s version of “God Bless America.”  It was as ubiquitous as “Watch the Tram Car, Please!”

 

Glenn Beck pointed out yesterday and today on his radio program that Smith co-wrote the song “That’s Why the Darkies Were Born.”  According to IMDB, the ultimate source on all things entertaining, the songs for “George White’s Scandals of 1931” were written by Ray Henderson; the lyrics by Lew Brown (both white).  Paul Robeson is not listed in the cast.  A black actor, and as Glenn Beck has pointed out, a black activist whose father was a runaway slave, he did play “Joe” and sang “Ol’ Man River” in the 1936 film version of “Showboat.”

 

However, further research shows Robeson did record “That’s Why the Darkies Were Born” that same year, 1931.  So did Black jazz singer Mildred Bailey, who was known as “The Queen of Swing.”

 

The song is set as a march.  It’s an anthem.  There are no xylophones, marimbas (both African instruments), slide whistles, or clown horns.  It’s a serious song; it’s not Spike Jones.  Smith sings it reverentially (if you bother to listen to it or read the lyrics).

 

 

We’re all pretty much in agreement with Glenn Beck that this isn’t about stamping out racism – and this particular song was no example of it – it’s about erasing our culture – our songs, our literature, our history.  The Marxists believe in smashing icons, things that identify a particular culture.  History has been filled with icon-smashing tyrants who outlawed language, music, history, and culture.

 

The Chinese committed cultural genocide as recently as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, invading people’s homes and destroying ancient scrolls that recorded the family’s history.  During the Cold War, the Communists smashed the statues of local heroes in Europe and replaced them with statues of Marx, Lenin and Stalin.

 

Thankfully, you can still hear Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” on the Wildwood Boardwalk during the summer.

 

Wildwood will no into that winter of tyranny easily.

 

“Watch the scam car, please!”

 

 

 

 

 

Blacklisting Kate Smith

The Associated Press reports that “(T)he Philadelphia Flyers removed a statue of late singer Kate Smith outside NHL team’s arena Sunday, two days after covering it amid allegations of racism against the 1930s star with a popular recording of “God Bless America.”

“’The NHL principle ‘Hockey is for Everyone’ is at the heart of everything the Flyers stand for,’ Flyers President Paul Holmgren said in a statement.

“’As a result, we cannot stand idle while material from another era gets in the way of who we are today.’

“On Friday, the Flyers said Smith’s ‘God Bless America’ recording had been removed from their library, following baseball’s New York Yankees.

“The Yankees suspended use of Smith’s recording during the seventh-inning stretch amid conflicting claims about several of her songs, including a 1931 song ‘That’s Why the Darkies Were Born.’ The tune originated in the 1931 Broadway revue “George White’s Scandals,” and was considered satire at the time.  Smith’s likeness also appears in a 1939 ad that heavily uses the mammy caricature, one of the most well-known racist depictions of black women.

“Smith’s connection with the Flyers started in 1969 when a team executive ordered her version of ‘God Bless America’ to be played instead of ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ That led to her performing the song several times before games in the 1970s.  A year after her 1986 death, the team erected the statue.

“That’s Why Darkies Were Born” was a popular song written by Ray Henderson and Lew Brown.  It originated in George White’s Scandals of 1931.  It was most famously recorded by Kate Smith, whose rendition was a hit in 1931, and also by black singer and actor Paul Robeson.  It was also featured in a 1931 all-star recording of a medley of songs from George White’s Scandals, where it was sung by Frank Munn on Brunswick and just as famously part of Paul Whiteman medley sung by Mildred Bailey (another Black singer) on Victor.

The song has been described as presenting a satirical view of racism.

Someone had to pick the cotton,
Someone had to pick the corn,
Someone had to slave and be able to sing,
That’s why darkies were born;

Someone had to laugh at trouble,
Though he was tired and worn,
Had to be contented with any old thing,
That’s why darkies were born;

Sing, sing, sing when you’re weary and
Sing when you’re blue,
Sing, sing, that’s what you taught
All the white folks to do;

Someone had to fight the Devil,
Shout about Gabriel’s Horn,
Someone had to stoke the train
That would bring God’s children to green pastures,
That’s why darkies were born.

 

Among the cast of George White’s Scandals of 1931 were Ray Bolger and Rudy Vallee.  The musical revue opened at the Apollo Theatre in September 1931 and played for six months.

 

George White’s Scandals were a long-running string of Broadway revues that ran from 1919–1939, modeled after the Ziegfeld Follies.  The “Scandals” launched the careers of many entertainers, including W.C. Fields, the Three Stooges, Ray Bolger, Helen Morgan, Ethel Merman, Ann Miller, Eleanor Powell, Bert Lahr, and Rudy Vallee.  Louis Brooks, Dolores Costello,  Alice White, and Alice Faye got their show business start as lavishly dressed (or underdressed) chorus girls strutting to the “Scandal Walk.”   Many of George Gerwshin’s early work appeared in the 1920–24 editions of “Scandals.”

If you think the thin-skinned racial and “cultural appropriation” police are upset about a song sung in 1931, imagine their reaction to a popular Roaring Twenties dance called “The Black Bottom”?  The Black Bottom, danced by Ziegfeld Follies star Ann Pennington and Tom Patricola, touched off a national dance craze.

The black bottom is a dance which became popular in the 1920s – the Roaring Twenties, also known as the Jazz Age, and the era of the flapper.  It was danced solo or by couples.

 

Originating among African Americans in the rural South, the Black Bottom eventually was adopted by mainstream American culture and became a national craze in the 1920s.  The dance was most famously performed by Ann Pennington, a star of the Ziegfeld Follies, who performed it in a Broadway revue staged by Ziegfeld’s rival George White in 1926.

 

The rhythm of the Black Bottom is based on the Charleston.  Bradford’s version, printed with the sheet music, gave these instructions:

 

Hop down front then doodle back [doodle means “slide”]
Mooch to your left then mooch to the right
Hands on your hips and do the mess around,
Break a leg until you’re near the ground [break a leg is a hobbling step]
Now that’s the old black bottom dance

Instructions for the mooch are “Shuffle forward with both feet. Hips go first, then feet.”

 

Not playing Kate Smith’s version of “God Bless America” is like not playing Bing Crosby’s version of “White Christmas” because the movie in which it was sung featured a black-faced tribute to Abraham Lincoln, although Black actress Louise Beaver, who played the housekeeper, gets a ride during the song.  There is no version of “White Christmas” directly from the film available because it was never recorded.  Most television and cable networks eliminate the Abraham Lincoln tribute altogether, although the Independent Film Channel shows it as originally shown.

 

No one really knows why audiences of that time found black-face routines entertaining (which had evolved from minstrel acts during the days of Vaudeville).  Theaters in those days were likely segregated, so the white audiences wouldn’t really have cared if the blacks were offended.  The Cakewalk or Cake Walk was a dance developed from the “Prize Walk” held in the late 19th century, generally at get-togethers on black slave plantations after emancipation in the Southern United States. Alternative names for the original form of the dance were the “Chalkline Walk,” and the “Walk Around.”

 

At the conclusion of a performance of the original form of the dance in an exhibit at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, an enormous cake was awarded to the winning couple. Thereafter it was performed in minstrel shows, exclusively by men until the 1890s. The inclusion of women in the cast made possible all sorts of improvisations in the Walk, and the original was soon changed into a grotesque dance which became very popular across the country.

 

Grotesque dances were comic or lighthearted and created for buffoons and commedia dell’arte characters to amuse and entertain spectators or patrons. In 16th and 17th centuries grotesque dances were often presented as an anti-masque, performed between the acts of more serious courtly entertainments. Likewise, the 17th century ballet à entrées (a series of loosely connected tableaux rather than a continuous dramatic narrative) sometimes contained grotesque sequences, most notably those devised by the Duke of Nemours for the court of Louis XIII

.

Some of the grotesque performers were physically deformed, but the Italian tradition of ballo grottesco, typified by the dancer and choreographer, Genaro Magri whose career was at its apex in the 1760s, involved a high degree of virtuosity and athleticism. Ballets sometimes contained grotesque dances or consist solely of grotesque dance.

 

The cakewalk was influenced by the ring shout, which survived from the 18th into the 20th century, an ecstatic, transcendent religious ritual, first practiced by African slaves in the West Indies and the United States, in which worshipers move in a circle while shuffling and stomping their feet and clapping their hands. Despite the name, shouting aloud is not an essential part of the ritual.

 

The ring shout was practiced in some African-American churches into the 20th century, and it continues to the present among the Gullah people of the tidal and barrier islands along the Atlantic Coast.

 

Researchers of the Federal Writer’s Project of the WPA interviewed aged ex-slaves in the 1930s, when there was no longer any need to suppress information about the happier moments of slave life” such as when slaves had been able to covertly mock their owners without getting punished, through the signals and expression of dance.

A South Carolinian told of Griffin, a fiddler who played for the dances of the whites as well as for the ‘annual cakewalks of his own people.’  In 1960, a story told to him by his childhood nanny in 1901 was repeated by 80-year-old actor Leigh Whipple: “Us slaves watched white folks’ parties where the guests danced a minuet and then paraded in a grand march, with the ladies and gentlemen going different ways and then meeting again, arm in arm, and marching down the center together. Then we’d do it too, but we used to mock ‘em every step. Sometimes the white folks noticed it, but they seemed to like it; I guess they thought we couldn’t dance any better.”

 

Or maybe, by that time, the white people thought the century-old minuet (in the times of slavery) was ridiculous, too.  They were more inclined towards the waltz by then.

 

“White folks” made fun of “Darkies;’ “Darkies made fun of the white folks.”  The tradition came from opera.  Before “folks” could travel to other countries, opera brought foreign culture to the folks, in their own language, which is why “Carmen” is about a Spanish cigarette factory worker sung in French.

 

Looking back at films where American or European actors portrayed characters from other races or cultures (most notably Alec Guinness portraying an Asian), it’s rather annoying.  You want to see the real deal, not someone doing a bad job of imitation.  In the early days of film, producers were on a tighter budget.  Racism no doubt played its part, cheating not only the performers but the audiences of a more authentic performance.

 

However, to “blacklist” a singer because of an accepted practice, as well as deliberately misunderstood performance is censorship.  Reading the full lyrics, you realize that the singer is paying homage to the blacks.  The satire is on the “white folks.”  Hollywood’s stars, if not its producers, were much more “woke” than today’s activists are willing to admit.  They respected the Black performers and the Black culture.  Stars like Bing Crosby and Kate Smith went out of their way to showcase Black entertainers.  Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bo Jangles Robinson in “Bojangles of Harlem” in the 1936 film “Swing Time.”

 

The year before little Shirley Temple danced with Bojangles Robinson himself in the 1935 film, “The Little Colonel.”  She was six.  Husband-and-wife ballroom dancers Irene and Vernon Castle performed “The Cake Walk” for audiences in 1915, turning the dance into a dance craze called “The Castle Walk.”

 

Today’s racial activists have more on their agenda than skin color.  Melonin is their bullet.  Their target is the United States of America and White, Western culture, which they want to replace with some version of Marxist socialism or communism.  In order to that, they must churn the grist mill of racial grievance, dredging up a past that is no longer relevant and not nearly as abhorrently racist as they would like to paint it.  Hollywood was probably at its worst in the Roaring Twenties and early Thirties.  Poor little Shirley Temple got her start in baby burlesque shorts that would make anyone cringe today.  There were no ratings and many films made then would be rated “X” today.

 

So, get over yourselves, racial appropriation police.

 

Sing, sing, sing when you’re weary and
Sing when you’re blue,
Sing, sing, that’s what you taught
All the white folks to do;

 

It’s called “entertainment.”

 

 

Good Friday, 2019

Only in New Jersey (or so it seems).

 

A dentist with an office in Clifton, N.J., decided to celebrate Easter this year with bunnies.

 

Playboy bunnies.

 

Dr. Wayne Gangi set up a group of mannequins dressed as Playboy bunnies, wearing sexy lingerie and wearing Easter-egg colored wigs, on the front lawn of his office at the corner of Grove Street and Robin Hood Road in Clifton.

 

He originally displayed the Playboy bunny mannequins for Valentine’s Day but then decided to “repurpose” them for Easter Week.

 

A female resident nearby became so upset with the display that she went to the office yard and dismantled and dismembered the mannequins.  The Clifton Police charged her with criminal mischief.  Her hearing is today.

 

The “bunnies” have been restored to the lawn and have been joined by at least one male Playboy bunny.

 

Part of the sinner in all of us (or most of us) can smile wryly at the dentist’s sense of humor.  We can be offended.  Or shocked.  Or just add the Playboy Easter Bunnies to the list of things that are wrong with the way we celebrate Easter, a pagan holiday.

 

Easter eggs.  Easter bunnies (the costumed sort, the candied variety, and the stuffed doll type).  Easter bonnets.  Easter egg hunts.  Easter egg rolls.  Easter egg races.

 

Easter is a pagan holiday.   The naming of the celebration as “Easter” goes back to the name of a pagan goddess in England, Eostre, who was celebrated at beginning of spring. The only reference to this goddess comes from the writings of the Venerable Bede, a British monk who lived in the late seventh and early eighth century.

 

According to religious scholar Brent Landau, a Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Texas at Austin, “This year, Easter falls late, on April 21.  The reason for this variation is that Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. So, in 2020, Easter will be celebrated on April 12, and on April 4 in 2021.

 

“As religious studies scholar Bruce Forbes summarizes:

“Bede wrote that the month in which English Christians were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus had been called Eosturmonath in Old English, referring to a goddess named Eostre. And even though Christians had begun affirming the Christian meaning of the celebration, they continued to use the name of the goddess to designate the season.”

 

“Bede was so influential for later Christians that the name stuck, and hence Easter remains the name by which the English, Germans and Americans refer to the festival of Jesus’ resurrection.

“It is important to point out that while the name “Easter” is used in the English-speaking world, many more cultures refer to it by terms best translated as “Passover” (for instance, “Pascha” in Greek) – a reference, indeed, to the Jewish festival of Passover.

“In the Hebrew Bible, Passover is a festival that commemorates the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, as narrated in the Book of Exodus It was and continues to be the most important Jewish seasonal festival celebrated on the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

“At the time of Jesus, Passover had special significance, as the Jewish people were again under the dominance of foreign powers (namely, the Romans). Jewish pilgrims streamed into Jerusalem every year in the hope that God’s chosen people (as they believed themselves to be) would soon be liberated once more.

“On one Passover, Jesus traveled to Jerusalem with his disciples to celebrate the festival.  He entered Jerusalem in a triumphal procession and created a disturbance in the Jerusalem Temple. It seems that both of these actions attracted the attention of the Romans, and that as a result Jesus was executed around the year A.D. 30.”

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are relentless religious scholars, report that  “Rather than using months with such names as March and April, the Bible speaks of such months as Adar and Nisan. (Esther 3:7) .   …  That day, Nisan 14, was the same date that the Romans impaled our Lord Jesus Christ. “

 

In other words, the Jehovah’s Witnesses observe a date rather than a day of the week as “Good Friday.”  The Hebrews observed a thirteen-month calendar and an eight-day week called, as did the Celts, the Burmans and the ancient Etruscans.

1. Yom Rishon – יום ראשון (abbreviated יום א׳), meaning “first day” [corresponds to Sunday] (starting at preceding sunset of Saturday)
2. Yom Sheni – יום שני (abbr. יום ב׳) meaning “second day” [corresponds to Monday]
3. Yom Shlishi – יום שלישי (abbr. יום ג׳) meaning “third day” [corresponds to Tuesday]
4. Yom Reviʻi – יום רביעי (abbr. יום ד׳) meaning “fourth day” [corresponds to Wednesday]
5. Yom Chamishi – יום חמישי (abbr. יום ה׳) = “fifth day” [corresponds to Thursday]
6. Yom Shishi – יום שישי (abbr. יום ו׳) meaning “sixth day” [corresponds to Friday]
7. Yom Shabbat – יום שבת (abbr. יום ש׳), or more usually, simply Shabbat – שבת meaning “rest day” [corresponds to Saturday]
8. Shemini Atzeret [as far as I can make out is the 8th day].

 

There was an eighth day, but it didn’t occur every year.  This made scheduling the Jewish holidays so that they didn’t fall on a Saturday.  This is the weekly calendar that would have been in place in Jesus’s time.  The Hebrews followed a lunar, not a solar, calendar.

 

Western Europe received its weekly calendar from the Greeks and Romans, long before Christianity made its way into those lands.  By the time Christian missionaries showed up, the days of the week were too well-established to eradicate.  Only Iceland reverted to the logical, Hebrew custom of simply calling the day of the week by its numerical name.

 

Good Friday is the saddest day on the Christian calendar.  Jesus died sooner than the Romans had expected.  When the guards came to report that he was dead, Pontius Pilate supposedly replied, “Already?”  Some traditions say that he literally died of a broken heart – that his heart burst.

 

Whatever the actual cause of death, his followers failed him.  The pagan Romans mocked him; the Jews abused him and called for his execution, even when a reluctant Pilate offered to release him, as Jesus had committed no crime that Pilate could see.  He finally acquiesced to their charge that he’d put himself above Caesar, declaring that he was the son of God (he never claimed to be the king of the Jews but of all believers in God).

 

Today, Christian churches are being vandalized and burned across Europe.  We don’t believe Notre Dame Cathedral was one of them; being a very old building, with probably old wiring, under renovation, there’s no reason to look further than a spark from some old wiring striking one of the 850 year-old timbers supporting the church.

 

Still, Christ and His church are as much under attack as they were that first Good Friday.  Christ is mocked, ridiculed, and the speaking of his name forbidden right here in certain places in the United States of America.  Around the world, Christ’s followers worship in secret and in fear of government reprisals, torture and imprisonment.

 

Every day, we find ourselves lurching farther and farther away from God’s love and protection.  We’re surrounded by non-believers who reject Christ’s teaching.  We ourselves fall short of his grace every day.  The world has itself upside down.  Even the cross on which Christ was crucified was actually the T, the sign of Tammuz, for whom the Jews were exiled to Babylon for defiling the Jerusalem temple with bloody sacrifices to Tammuz (Nimrod, of Noah’s Flood fame, his great-grandson).

 

Some scholars report that every pagan god or practice, even those as far away as in Scandinavia and the South Pacific can be traced back (linguistically) to him.  Small wonder that the Jews and Romans may have placed Christ on a pagan cross, just for good measure.

 

We should cringe at every Easter egg hunt that involves children older than, say, seven.  If you’ve ever been to one, you’ve doubtless seen older children, in their fervor to find the prize, trample the smaller children.  What would Jesus say to that?  Is that what He died for?

 

Yes, it’s always good to see Spring return.  The bunnies, chicks and other baby animals are sweet (just don’t give these live animals as gifts!).  Let the young girls wear their flowered hats.  The air is warm again, after a long (or short) winter and it’s refreshing to feel the spring breeze and see the gardens in bloom.

 

But except for Jesus, we would not see another spring, another flower, or a light more wonderful than the sunrise.  His sacrifice has made it possible for us to enjoy an eternal spring of youth, health and happiness.

 

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”​—Ps. 118:22.

 

AG William Barr Releases Redacted Mueller Report

U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced in a press conference today that he’d released a redacted version of the Mueller Report on the investigation into Russian collusion.  A paper copy has been released to Congress and the Media; citizens can access the report online.

 

Barr said at the press conference that the report completely exonerates President Trump and his campaign members from any collisional interference in the 2016 Presidential Elections.  He said that document dumps potentially incriminating Hillary Clinton were entirely the fault of Russian operatives and Wikileaks and that President Trump and his campaign team had nothing to do with it.

 

The online version is still not available publicly at this time (just before Noon).  According to Judge Andrew Napolitano of Fox News, who has a copy of the report, there’s some reason to suspect obstruction of justice by the President but much more to indicate that he did not obstruct justice.  In the wiley wording of the Justice Department, we can’t conclude that he did not commit obstruction of justice, but there’s not enough evidence to prove that he did.

 

Prior to the press conference five House Democrat chairpeople demanded that Barr not hold the press conference on the grounds that Trump would “control” the report on the Mueller report.

 

During the press conference, Barr was met with these questions from the press after stating that the press relentlessly attacked the President:

 

Barr: “I’m not sure what your basis is for saying I’m being generous to the President.”

 

A reporter then brings up his use of the word “unprecedented.”

 

“Is there another precedent for it?” Barr asks.

 

“No,” the reporter answers.

 

“Okay, so unprecedented is an accurate description?”

 

The reported replied, “Uh…yeah.”

 

Barr said that Mueller’s report found ten possible obstruction situations.  The Liberals are trying to prove that Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice for supposedly ordering Don McGahn’s in June 2017 to have Mueller fired. McGahn didn’t do it and was prepared to resign. Trump backed off, but later tried to get McGahn to deny firing order, according to McGahn’s testimony.

 

Except that President Trump had every right to fire Mueller.

 

The report, two years in the making, is 448 pages long and cost the taxpayers $35 million.

 

The Financial Times spins the report this way:  “Robert Mueller’s report makes the case that Donald Trump was unsuccessful in his efforts to derail the investigation into Russian meddling because many of his aides simply did not carry out his orders to intervene.”

 

And yet, Mueller was still unable to find any evidence of collusion.  Had Trump been successful, the taxpayers would have been saved $25 million.  If there was no crime – and it turns out there wasn’t – then Trump couldn’t have obstructed “justice.”  All he would have done was save us two years’ worth of unnecessary drama.

 

Nothing in these documents and in these indictments suggested that any American was involved or accused of “colluding” with the Russians to meddle with the 2016 elections.  That’s what we were told.

 

The bulldog Democrats will never let go, of course.  What they are counting on is an ongoing case against Trump in the Southern District which has nothing to do with Russian collusion.  Some legal experts believe the Russian collusion case was a fishing expedition to discover evidence of some sort against Trump in the case in New York.

 

He cannot be tried in that case while he’s president.  But the Democrats are hoping to use the bad publicity in the 2020 campaign, which is just around the corner.  They also may be hoping, as federal prosecutors often do, to drain Trump financially in court so that he’ll be unable to mount an effective campaign.

 

But for right now, the Desperate Dems are clinging to those alleged ten instances of “obstruction of justice.”  Corey Booker tweeted that they’ve already produced a searchable PDF of the document, making it all the easier for Democrat hacks to come up with their talking points for the rest of the day.

 

One of the examples, according to Rush Limbaugh, who has read the report is Trump’s statement that the investigation “as a witch hunt” and “when does it end?”  That’s their evidence?  That just shows how ridiculously, risibly desperate they are.

 

“We know there’s obstruction; we just couldn’t find it,” Rush has said.  “That’s the definition of a ‘witch hunt.’”

 

Absolutely.  Absolutely ridiculous.  Absolutely disgraceful.  The Democrats are even calling for AG William Barr’s resignation.

 

Absolutely tiresome.  Meanwhile, Hillary’s culpability – revealed by the Wikileaks dump – is swept under the rug.  Even though the Democrats paid for the Steele dossier that made this singularity possible.

 

The First of the Last of the Skywalker Saga Trailers

It’s the beginning of the end – of the official Skywalker Saga, unless Disney decides to make some backfill films about the early years of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia (wouldn’t THAT be great?!).  The trailer for Star Wars Episode IX:  The Rise of Skywalker has just been released.

 

The trailer doesn’t reveal very much:  just Rey being chased down in some desert by a First Order fighter and the Millennium Falcon flying through hyperspace with Lando Calrissian happily at the helm and, unfortunately, Kylo Ren makes an appearance and so does Princess Leia (the late Carrie Fisher) in previously unused footage.  There’s plenty of action, with Luke Skwalker providing the voice-over, telling (someone) that this is their fight now.

 

Still, the ordeal was too much for one superfan.

 

According to the BBC News, “Eric Butts [of Kentucky] is what you might call a ‘reaction YouTuber.’ He makes videos where he watches trailers and reacts, whether that’s with laughter, bemusement or even tears.

 

“So as far as he was concerned, a recent video where he cried while watching the new Star Wars Episode IX teaser trailer was not unusual.

 

“The internet disagreed.

 

“’It started blowing up in a very negative way,’ Eric told the BBC. ‘I was getting very horrible stuff sent to me.’

 

“As social media became saturated with hate-filled tweets and his video was viewed more than 6.8 million times on Twitter – at the time of writing – it seemed there would be no end to people mocking him for his reaction.

 

“That is until his video caught the eye of Mark Hamill, the actor who played Luke Skywalker, who tweeted his support.

 

Why anyone would ridicule someone so passionate & clearly enjoying what he’s seeing is beyond me. #UPFsAreTheBestFans 👍

— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) April 15, 2019

 

Eric told the BBC that with a name like “Eric Butts” he was used to getting insulted online.

 

“It wasn’t really getting to me,” he said. “When it all started, before Mark Hamill got involved, I was on holiday for my 40th birthday with my fiancee.

 

“It’s hard to get ups”

On return from his holiday, Eric was still receiving negative comments, but was happy that he was getting money from the ad revenue on YouTube.

 

“’So, I was thinking, hey, I’m making a few extra bucks and I can buy a video game,’” he told the BBC.

 

”A prominent Twitter commenter suggested it made them want to ‘cringe to death.’

 

“Another called Eric part of ‘a whole new population of undateable men.’”

 

Evidently, he’s not that undateable if he’s engaged to be married.

 

“No one is ever really gone,” Luke Skwalker says.  “We’ll always be with you.”

 

Other reports say that other fans wept seeing Carrie Fisher again on the screen.  Her untimely death really messed up the Star Wars schedule and storyline.  She was supposed to be the star of this last film in the original series of nine episodes that George Lucas planned a long time ago, in a Ford Galaxy far, far away.

 

Luke died at the end of the last film.  His character change was not at all popular with the fans or with regular moviegoers.  It didn’t bother some of us cynics, but Luke Skywalker appeared at the beginning of the late Seventies when hope was re-emerging in America after the violent, disgustingly Marxist Sixties.

 

Looking through a list of the movies of the late Sixties and early Seventies, there wasn’t much in the way of decent films for decent people to see.  There was the French Connection and The Godfather, unquestionably blockbusters.  But they were grim. We’d ended the Sixties with Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Wild Bunch, Easy Rider, They Shoot Horses Don’t They, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and Sweet Charity (all 1969).

 

Yes, there was Planet of the Apes (1968) and Hello, Dolly! (1969), with a much-too-young but very funny Barbra Streisand.  But there was the epically 2001:  A Space Odyssey (1968 and quite possibly the most boring movie of all time).

 

The new decade brought Patton, Tora, Tora, Tora! and Love Story, but it also brought Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist, Panic in Needle Park, Deliverance, Carnal Knowledge, and M*A*S*H*, which rewrote the Korean War and placed it in Viet Nam.

 

It’s not that there were no good movies at all, just not many that made you want to stand up and cheer.  At least we had some excitement with the Poseidon Adventure and some fun with American Graffiti (1973).

 

With American Graffiti and Jaws (1975), moviegoers found a reason to go back to the movies in greater numbers, if they wound up being afraid to go into the water.

 

With the appearance of Star Wars (1977), heroes returned to the movies.  Callow young heroes, sassy damsels in distress (Carrie Fisher did “sassy” very well), and wise-cracking loners were back on the silver screen.  That spring, after a late winter of so-so trailers but widespread word-of-mouth, moviegoers lined up around the theater to get in to see Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.  People had lined up around theaters that way since Gone with the Wind premiered in 1939.  Other film producers caught on.  Some produced Star Wars knock-offs.  Star Trek came to the silver screen after being unceremoniously dumped by NBC after its third season.

 

The secret to the success of Star Wars is simple:  it was pure, uncomplicated fun.  “Camp” the critics called it. At least the first movie.  The plot thickened and darkened, of course, probably too much so.  But that first movie.  Star Wars was blessed by the stars with a double trine of good luck, clever casting, and plenty of action.  Plus the Laurel and Hardy of droids, R2D2 and C3PO.

 

Director and creator George Lucas originally envisioned three sets of trilogies.  He didn’t think the movie would make it past its opening night.  But he was wrong.  The two movies following the original were popular too, particularly Empire.

 

The second set of trilogies, the prequels, were not nearly as well-received.  They were, by necessity, much darker, being the origination story of Darth Vader – Anakin Skywalker.  Moviegoers in general complained about the darker nature of these films.  But then, what did they expect?  It was the story of Darth Vader.

 

Fanboys complained about everything from the casting of young Jake Lloyd as the nine-year-old Anakin Skwalker in The Phantom Menace (1999) to the insertion of the wildly unpopular character of Jar-Jar Binks, an admittedly cringe-worthy character meant to be a comic relief in an

otherwise bleak film about Anakin’s slow downfall.

 

The real hero of the prequels is Yoda.  He’s rather like the character Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) plays in the current History Channel series Knightfall.  Yoda, like Talus, is far too much of a taskmaster.  At least Talus has the excuse of training Templar Knights in 12^th Century France.

 

Yoda makes a lot of mistakes in training Anakin.  Their “lack of faith” – something Darth Vader intones in A New Hope – “is disturbing.”

 

Ah well, that’s the movies.  The last set of the trilogies, The Force Awakens, comes out in 2015.  Instead of being released in the spring, as its predecessors were, it, and the next two movies are released in the dark of December.  The films are far too dark for the taste of most Star Wars fans.  There’s very little “fun” in the films; only death.  The first to go is the incredibly popular Han Solo (played by Harrison Ford).

 

The fun of the movie comes in the form of the new, young cast:  Daisy Riddley (the feisty, Force-sensitive Rey), the very funny John Boyega (an AWOL Stormtrooper named Finn) and the easy-on-the eyes Oscar Isaac (hot-shot pilot Poe Daemeron).

 

Still, much as you like them, you really yearn to see Luke, Han and Leia.  The latter-two show up, only to have Han die towards the end of the movie.  Leia shows up in the next movie, The Last of the Jedi, and so does Luke, but he’s no longer the hopeful, optimistic and good-natured young Rebel pilot.  In short, he’s a depressed grouch (although this blogger found his cynicism funny).  He makes it to end of the film – and then he dies.  Now only Leia is left to carry on.

 

In between, Disney, which has taken over from Lucasfilm and Twenty-First Century Fox, introduce a canon-film, that tells the story of what happened just before A New Hope.  This was an extremely entertaining and moving film.  You could watch this movie without ever having seen a Star Wars film and not care in the least.

 

Princess Leia makes a computer-generated appearance at the end since she’s still supposed to be the baby-faced 19-year-old we saw in A New Hope.  But almost anyone even gets to see this film, the actress, Carrie Fisher, dies (probably of heart failure).  I saw the film, went home, just happened to turn on my computer, something I almost never do at night, and discovered that Fisher had been taken off an airplane in guarded condition.

 

I followed the story online until the conclusion, when the plane landed and she was taken to the hospital.  All of us online that night was hoping that, like other people who suffered from this potentially fatal condition, that she would survive.

 

The next morning, we were heartbroken to learn she had not.  A lifetime of using drugs, even after countless trips to rehab, had caught up with her.  In the end, she couldn’t shake her addiction to drugs and alcohol.  I had been following her Twitter account.  On the night of her birthday back in October, she posted that she was “partying” with friends.

 

Perhaps it was the long flight from Europe and not moving around that contributed to her death – it has been known to happen.  All we knew was we’d lost our favorite space princess.

 

Still, the movies had to go on.  Disney had vowed not to use any more computer-generated images of her for that last film, in which she was supposed to play a main role.  That role now had to fall to Mark Hamill, who was officially dead as Luke Skywalker, and Billy Dee Williams, who was only too happy to return as Lando Calrissian.

 

The end of the “Skywalker Saga” is hard for those of us who grew up with the Star War movies, who were more or less the same age as the characters themselves.  It’s like we’re dying off, or good friends we’ve known all our lives are dying off.

 

But that’s how life is, in reality.  Actor Mark Hamill took his good friend Carrie Fisher’s death particularly hard.  At one point, he was ready to just give up on the films.  But apparently, he remembered all his young fans counting on him and all of Carrie’s fans, too, for that matter.  If only Harrison Ford could have been that mindful.

 

Hamill didn’t have to come back.  But he is.  For one thing, the producers have to resurrect the character to undo the damage they did in The Last Jedi, and for that, they need Mark Hamill who is said to have regretted the damage as well.

 

Everyone deserves a second chance.

 

But this is the end, at least for this part of the series.  All good things must come to an end, even something as good as the original Star Wars.  “How we deal with death is just as important as how we deal with life.”

 

No wait; that was Star Trek:  The Wrath of Khan (1982).

 

Still, it’s good advice for Star Wars fans sorry to see the series end.

 

May the Force Be with You.

 

Always.  (Harry Potter:  The Deathly Hallows II, although Obi-Wan Kenobi said it first in Star Wars:  A New Hope).

 

 

 

 

Notre Dame Cathedral: The Disaster and the Miracle

Yesterday, just after its early 6:30 p.m. closing, a small fire broke out at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which turned into a devastating conflagration that destroyed the entire roof of the church and its iconic spire, which supposedly contained a small piece of the famous Crown of Thorns.
The Paris Fire Brigade took two hours to arrive at the site, which is on a small, congested island in the heart of Paris. No one was killed and only one firefighter was seriously injured in the blaze. The fire took 9 hours to bring under control and authorities feared the fire would spread to the famous bell towers, of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” fame.

 

But late into the Paris night, authorities assured the public that the bell towers were safe. In the light of morning, authorities discovered that the 850 year-old church’s gothic arches had done their job of protecting the interior of the church.

 

According to the UK Daily Mail, a French priest who helped the wounded in the Bataclan terror attack on Paris and who survived an ambush in Afghanistan also emerged as a hero of the Notre Dame fire.

 

Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain of the Paris Fire Brigade, rushed straight for the relics housed in the cathedral to rescue the Blessed Sacrament and the Crown of Thorns relics from the blazing building on Monday night. The firefighters also rescued priceless artwork from the cathedral. The artwork has been sent to the Louvre for safe-keeping. The cathedral stained glass windows also survived.

 

Once the fire was extinguished, firefighters found the church’s cross standing erect and unharmed amidst the ruins.

 

The ancient church had been undergoing $6.8 million in a projected 20-year renovation work near the spire. Engineers had discovered cracks in the cathedral’s walls and foundation. Some statues had been strapped in place.

 

The fire alarm was sounded twenty minutes before the fire was detected. The blaze was discovered in a high, almost inaccessible place high up in the roof near the spire. The fire department blamed the delay in arriving on rush hour traffic in a crowded part of the city. The cathedral sits on a small island in the middle of the Seine River (Ile de la Cite). The island can be accessed by small bridges. Also on the island are a hospital, the city courthouse (Palais de Justice de Paris), and another French Gothic cathedral, Sainte-Chappelle.

 

The island, and the surrounding area of the city were also filled with tourists visiting Notre Dame for Easter Week. Some visitors videotaped the Palm Sunday Services at the cathedral. With the state police right there, it’s hard to fathom why they had so much trouble with traffic management.

 

Parisiennes, Frenchmen and women, Roman Catholics worldwide, and history and architecture lovers world-wide were stunned. Tourists and residents wept as the fire engulfed the building and the spire toppled over into the building.

 

The cathedral was begun in 1160 under Bishop Maurice de Sully and was largely complete by 1260, though it was modified frequently in the ensuing centuries. In the 1790s, Notre-Dame suffered desecration during the French Revolution; much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. In 1804, the cathedral was the site of the Coronation of Napoleon I as Emperor of France, and witnessed the baptism of Henri, Count of Chambord in 1821 and the funerals of several presidents of the Third French Republic.

 

The cathedral is one of the most widely recognized symbols of the city of Paris and the French nation. As the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Paris, Notre-Dame contains the cathedra (bishop’s throne) of the Archbishop of Paris (Michel Aupetit). 12 million people visit Notre-Dame annually, making it the most visited monument in Paris.

 

It is believed that before the period of Christianity in France, a Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter stood on the site of Notre-Dame. Evidence for this is the Pillar of the Boatmen, discovered in 1710. This building was replaced with an Early Christian basilica. It is unknown whether this church, dedicated to Saint Stephen, was constructed in the late 4th century and remodeled later, or if it was built in the 7th century from an older church, possibly the cathedral of Childebert I. The basilica, later cathedral of Saint-Etienne was situated about 130 ft. west of Notre-Dame’s location and was wider and lower and roughly half its size. For its time, it was very large – 230 ft. long – and separated into nave and four aisles by marble columns, then decorated with mosaics.

 

A baptistery, the Church of St. John the Baptist, built before 452, was located on the north side of the church of Saint-Étienne until the work of Jacques-Germain Soufflet in the 18th century. Four churches succeeded the Roman temple before Notre-Dame. The first was the 4th century basilica of Saint-Étienne, then the Merovingian renovation of that church which was in turn remodeled in 857 under the Carolingians into a cathedral. The last church before the cathedral of Notre-Dame was a Romanesque remodeling of the prior structures that, although enlarged and remodeled, was found to be unfit for the growing population of Paris.

In 1160, the Bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, decided to build a new and much larger church. He summarily demolished the Romanesque cathedral and chose to recycle its materials. Sully decided that the new church should be built in the new Gothic style, as by then a number of large Gothic cathedrals had already been raised elsewhere in France.

 

The chronicler Jean Saint-Victor recorded in the Memoriale Historiarum that the construction of Notre-Dame began between 24 March and 25 April 1163 with the laying of the cornerstone in the presence of King Louis VII and Pope Alexander.

 

So why did this disaster happen?

 

The authorities suspect it was an accident related to the renovation. However, the manager claims that the part of the project on which they were working didn’t involve welding equipment. Perhaps a careless worker tossed a cigarette he thought was out? Maybe there was some faulty wiring they hadn’t noticed?  Who knows?

 

A renovation accident would be the best guess.

 

However, there is this report from Newsweek magazine, dated March 21, 2019:

 

“France has seen a spate of attacks against Catholic churches [12] since the start of the year, vandalism that has included arson and desecration.

 

“Vandals have smashed statues, knocked down tabernacles, scattered or destroyed the Eucharist and torn down crosses, sparking fears of a rise in anti-Catholic sentiment in the country.

 

“Last Sunday, the historic Church of St. Sulpice in Paris was set on fire just after midday mass on Sunday, Le Parisien reported, although no one was injured. Police are still investigating the attack, which firefighters have confidently attributed to arson.

 

“Built in the 17th century, St. Sulpice houses three works by the Romantic painter Eugene de la Croix, and was used in the movie adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown.

 

“Last month [February], at the St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Houilles, in north-central France, a statue of the Virgin Mary was found smashed, and the altar cross had been thrown on the ground, according to La Croix International, a Catholic publication.

 

“Also in February, at Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, in south-central France, an altar cloth was burned and crosses and statues of saints were smashed. The attack prompted Lavaur Mayor Bernard Canyon to say in a statement: ‘God will forgive. Not me.’

 

“And in the southern city of Nimes, near the Spanish border, vandals looted the altar of the Church of Notre-Dame des Enfants (Our Lady of the Children) and smeared a cross with human excrement.

 

“On February 9, the altar at the church of Notre-Dame in Dijon, the capital of Burgundy region, was also broken into. The hosts were taken from the tabernacle, which adorns the altar at the front of the church, and scattered on the ground.”

 

“The Vienna-based Observatory of Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, which was founded in cooperation with the Council of European Bishops Conferences (CCEE) but which is now independent said there had been a 25 percent increase in attacks on Catholic churches in the first two months of the year, compared with the same time last year.”

 

Some of the acts of desecration don’t quite reach the level arson; we’ve suffered such desecrations (and thefts) over the years at churches here in the United States. Still, given this crime-wave, particularly against, Catholic Churches, one can’t help wonder whether it was an accident, as stated above, or terrorism.

 

If it had been an act of sheer terrorism, there was a missing component here: human victims. Islamic terrorists love their human sacrifices. Considering how long it took to report the fire, terrorists could (and would) probably have accessed that scaffolding on Palm Sunday. Islamic terrorists also love the calendar.

 

This fire was just too mild (for them) to be their work. Certainly, it made their day but it doesn’t have their signature.

 

Then, there’s the matter of arson – financial arson. This renovation project was costing $6.8 million in Euros. That’s a lot of Euros. The renovators had discovered that the building was in much worse shape than they initially thought. Did someone decide that renovating Notre Dame was Sisyphean task? Did they do a cost-benefit analysis and conclude that they were going to be in the red. Cash in on whatever insurance policy they may (or may have) have on the project?

 

That’s a long stretch.

 

Notre Dame Cathedral’s wooden section was also known as “The Forest.” The roof and wooden structure were built with 52 acres of forestland. That’s a lot of dry, 850-year old wood. The stonemasons of that day knew that, which was why they built the stone buttress so soundly and why there’s still so much of the cathedral intact from what everyone initially feared.

 

If you haven’t been there, just like with the Twin Towers in New York City, you just can’t imagine how big this cathedral really was. I’ve never been there myself. But I’ve seen pictures and studied them, comparing the people and surrounding buildings to the Bell Towers of Notre Dame. I thought I read somewhere that they’re 800 feet high – but I could be wrong.

 

Anyway, there was a lot of open air between the floor and those high vaulted, stone ceilings. And then you came to the 850 year-old wood and the spire, where the fire was centered. The Paris Fire Brigade simply didn’t have aerial equipment high enough to reach the fire in the spire.

 

President Trump had suggested helicopter and tank plane dumps. We shouldn’t be too hard on him for such a suggestion. Unfortunately, given the age of the cathedral and its already-uncertain sturdiness, the cathedral simply would not have survived thousands of gallons of water being dumped upon it. What’s more, aerial dumps aren’t an exact science, experts say, and other buildings could have destroyed in the attempt.

 

Given the age of Notre Dame Cathedral, its weakened condition, the fact that it was undergoing a long-term renovation, and the acres of dry wood constituting its structure, it’s no surprise that what they first considered a small fire spread so quickly. We can certainly understand why it was such a difficult fire to fight, if not why the police took so long to clear the traffic so that the fire department could get through.

 

The delay may have been due to the anxiety to rescue the holy relics and the priceless artwork. The cathedral building was already something of a lost cause before the fire ever broke out. Fixing it would take 20 years and millions of dollars. Still, the church could be rebuilt. The relics and the artwork absolutely could not be replaced.

 

However, the eye of suspicion still looks at those other twelve fires in the space of two or three months. Paris is infested with Christian-hating, anti-Semitic Islamists. There are places in the Paris suburbs where the police haven’t been able to patrol in years. The heroic priest of the Paris Fire Brigade had helped the wounded in another terror attack.

 

We should wait for the evidence. But we want to hear the truth. If it was an accident, we want to see and hear the absolute truth. If it was financial arson, well the French Press be on it.

 

If it was terrorism, we demand that the Media not sweep it under the rug.  Incidentally, why did French President Macron declare a “National Emergency” for a fire on an island in the middle of the Seine River?

 

Meanwhile, we’re relieved to hear that the cathedral was not totally destroyed and in fact could be repaired in about the same time it would have been renovated. Best of all, the famed Bell Towers survived.

 

Let Emmanuel (the biggest bell) ring out long, loud and clear in gratitude to God – and the brave firefighters of the Paris Fire Brigade.