Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery Vandalized in Philly


I used to have a photo(s) of ourselves, family, in fuzzy unfocused "Baby Brownie" Black and White, of ourselves on Memorial Day or the 4th of July picnics at Wissinoming Park in Philly of over fifty years ago. (Wissinoming - Lenni-Lenape word of "duck creek").

The photos might still exist but are in the hands of my gay brother in Phoenix who refuses to share them with me. Still victimizing his younger sibling after all these years and him pushing 70 - whatever. No love lost there.

Wissinoming Park is a nice little plain stretch of ground with big trees and a dried out impression or small creek bed that runs through the property, all that is left of some 19th century Philly robber baron's country estate. The mansion in the middle of the property is long gone.

The significance of this park was that my father and his childhood family also picnicked there as a child, his childhood home nearby and now under I-95 across from the old Frankford Arsenal.

In a small corner of this very tranquil piece of real estate was a tiny crowded cemetery, a Jewish cemetery with grave stones carved in English but mostly Hebrew. I say crowded because the whole scene is also surrounded by Cedar Hill Cemetery, the major secular cemetery that dominates the landscape north of the old town of Frankford. Some of my great-grandparents buried in there I was told by my wasp grandmother. I have yet to look up that Scots/Welsh branch of my family tree.

The town dates back to the Swedes before the Dutch and the English and the cemeteries were built post Civil War out in the farmland and countryside of Philadelphia County before all this was absorbed into a dense urban center full of factories and now a decaying hulk of a place. But the cemeteries escaped the fate of a lot of once country and then urban cemeteries that were condemned,  disemboweled, and moved on mass in boxed bones to other resting places further out into the outer suburban counties of Philly.

The condemned cemeteries usually ended up as things desperately needed in the urban sprawl as playgrounds or supermarkets or supermarket with parking with other small stores, laundromats in what even in an urban setting is the traditional American Strip Mall.

But surprising there is a hill or higher land setting above the old town of Frankford which now ends as a terminus of the Frankford to downtown to Upper Darby elevated train. The old Frankford Road splits into a fork in the road at the entrance to Cedar Hill Cemetery into Bustleton Pike to the left and on the right old Bristol Pike now Frankford Avenue. - (The road to Bristol Pa. and Trenton N.J. beyond - and the oldest road - originally an Indian footpath in the state.)

Long intro to the Hebrew Cemetery. and the recent tragic event in the news. I say this because between the decay of the old Frankford town and the fancy row houses that went up from the 20s to the 50s of post WWII Mayfair on farmland beyond is this brief land of cemeteries and a park that gives a welcome and calming shade of trees and green to the urban setting.

Surprising to hear of the vandalism of the Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery. There always through the years were acts of terrorism vandalism - some spray paint or the turning over of a gravestone or two in Cedar Hill or Mt. Carmel representing IMO more as act of teenage angst on a Saturday night with a couple of buds from the neighborhood sharing a six pack.

While there were pockets of anti-Semitism in Philly, it was nothing what I see on TV or read about in Irish Catholic places like South Boston where the sub-culture there is no doubt back bay Brahmin in direct conflict with working class Irish American and somehow the Jews in between.

I have tried in the past few days to talk to some ppl on Twitter who use the desecration of the Mt. Carmel cemetery as part of some great political plot under the current Russian Junta running the White House.

I am in the middle working with memories of older than forty years from Philly, is the memory that the Quaker subculture was always unique in that tolerance was preached if not always practiced in Philly town square, i.e. the Know Nothing Riots of the 1840s that inspired the RC archdiocese to build a separate and in many ways superior school system for children of that particular belief system. But alas that RCAD only has a few token minority catering high schools left in the inner city to supplement its premiere in the suburb rich white Catholic education business.

I should say that Mr. Carmel was built on a tiny lot, photo below and a text of sort in comment of the current political situation - daily ten minute 1984-style Fake Hates out of the Trump Whore White House. The tiny plot seemed overcrowded in the number of stones per square inch and always seemed to me to comply with the European concept of "ghetto".

I grew up near one of these forgotten and condemned Jewish Cemeteries in Harrowgate, Harrowgate and or the German Cemetery and or Jewish Cemetery on old urban maps. I grew up not even knowing that it was and or once was there. I in a way am a very minor contributor to not letting forgotten Philly and or Harrowgate history slip away into the nothingness of dumbed-down American nothing recognition of the past. Those who do not know of or understand the past are condemned to relive the worst parts of that past etc.

My sometimes hobby is making up a Find a Grave entry for forgotten Philadelphians. I ran into the fact of the old Harrowgate Jewish Cemetery and resurrected the memory of a rabbi once buried there before being moved elsewhere. At the time I did not know that the Cemetery did not still exist. The spot on the map in a Google satellite image is still green etc. I am not perfect but it bothers me that some ppl in Philly died after their children or never married and people who made major contributions to the history of the area are forgotten to the present.  So below one of my grave entries and that in some cases get adopted and managed by others more enthusiastic than moi on the person and or subject matter. Doing my part as part-time amateur historian.

In a way I am here to be along with real citizens and volunteers especially Muslims in Philly to if only virtually restore overturned Jewish grave makers of once free and equal living Philadelphians, I am here to help not lose our valuable American heritage to the current Russian/Nazi Hate generating out of the White House and descended into the apes Republican KKK Party.












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Sunday, February 26, 2017

Animal Farm (quotes) - George Orwell


"All men are enemies. All animals are comrades."
Animal Farm ~~ George Orwell





"Napoleon is always right."
Animal Farm, Geo Orwell


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Friday, February 17, 2017

The Incredibly Disappointing HBO Series "The Young Pope"




The Incredibly Disappointing HBO Series "The Young Pope"

Since I am already a cultural Christian and have twelve years of Catholic education I could get into the language and concepts that this extremely well written series presented in the Roman Catholic Pagan traditions and ritual that go back to the sun god Alexander the Great several hundred years before the common era on the calendar. 

Being a distant none-Catholic makes it easy to understand what the actors in their impeccable dress and fabulous stage sets were attempting to do with "The Young Pope" starring actor Jude Law as Pope Pius XIII and his search, a learning curve (really), for God even after he has been elected the youngest pope in centuries of the crusty old Vatican business HQ.

The opening premise has all the old men, the cardinals, wondering how they elected such a young, and American pope (British actor Law doing this w/an American accent) as Lenny Belardo, a cardinal somehow of one of the dioceses of NYC. In episode nine, the best episode of the series, Belardo had somehow at one time "Shared power" with pedophile archbishop Kurtwell of Queens. (Queens is not a diocese but part of the Brooklyn-Queens Diocese) Kurtwell now under investigation for the Vatican in New York in the person of almost falling down constantly drunk Monsignor Father, soon to be cardinal, Gutierrez, one time rector of St. Peter's Basilica and its passages and crypts below. It is Gutierrez who Pius XIII befriends and talks and walks around at night in the basilica to find out the down and dirty of everything political in the Vatican. 

Pius imports Sister Mary to be his gatekeeper. Sister Mary was the nun who was in charge of Lenny in the orphanage when his hippy parents dumped him there in order to travel lighter on a "trip to Venice". This is a background theme of the whole series episodes 1-10 - both the separation anxiety of being dumped by his parents and the floating protection of the substitute mother figure of Sister Mary, played beautifully by actress Diane Keaton.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Open Letter to David O'Reilly, The Inquirer Regarding Abp Chaput's Unconditional Support of Trump


A Real Bishop of Philadelphia - John Neumann 1852-1860

Mr. David O'Reilly, Correspondent Philly.Com The Inquirer 

BTW Grats on your long and no doubtless rewarding meal ticker career!



I am writing this as an open letter because Charles Chaput complains about the media not fawning like they should be in a Fascist Slave Nation that Trump and his cadre of Nazi haters envision for the USA.



“I don’t want to be partisan in my comments here, but it seems to me if we are really serious about our common responsibilities, we support the president,” Archbishop Charles Chaput told the California-based talk show host Hugh Hewitt, a Catholic conservative.

I think your boutique journalism piece above about Chaput latest whining about something or other is more an infomercial for the California Hewitt Radio show than it is about the media or Trump. 

That Chaput is the force behind the California Fascist Catholic / "Christianist" organization of The Napa Institute promoting secret functions where church as state are one in the Fascist Vision of a future or is it now America.


I have been watching your topic Charles Chaput since he tossed two first graders into the street in Denver in Father Breslin's parish because the two kids moms were moms and or lesbian.

He ranted and raved I believe more about MSNBC and probably on Fox News in 2011 to say that the American Media were anti-catholic for not reporting on a World Youth Day in Spain that year.

That was the cover story that I believe after some research was a response to some so-called desecration of a state owned chapel in the State Controlled Complutense University in Madrid. 

That the background on lesbians making political points in a political theatre of a state owned and supported chapel was a response in fact that an anti-gay Gang(s) of devoted Catholic Fascists patrolled the campus at night with clubs to make certain no gays would meet in public in a public university after dark. Gay reactions to violence against gays and ignored/endorsed by the police was the other half of that Chaput story. Chaput is only interested in half truths IMO. etc.


I am also not fond of "Chief Outtatown" my terrible non-PC label for this carpetbagger archbishop in Philly. If the media can ignore personal insults like "Pocahantas" by a warped mental case of a so-called President for the female senator Elizabeth Warren, why am I wrong in calling this bigot a name that fits his so-call heritage. 

But I really disliked this dude when he came up with a political agenda to attack JFK in the grave for his separation of church and state stance and in lines with the upcoming 2012 elections. Something about attacked dead Dem Prezs by the GOP like FDR with the 22nd amendment. Irony with that was that Eisenhower, Nixon if he had cleaned up his act, and Reagan could have probably gone for though not done third terms, but not in St. Ronny's case. RIP


Sorry that BXVI had to retire for senility and sorry that Chuck did not get his red hat as promised because of this new possibly more moderate pope F1.

As I remember the local newspapers, TV and radio in the day would fawn at the sight a Philly archbishop deigning to step half a foot out of the old 10 acre Cardinal Dougherty 61 room Bishop's Palace on City Line Avenue to give the media their 30 second soundbite or half a column hardcopy interviews. I believe that lent as much to the recent Philly unpleasantness of abuse by clergy thingy as much as internal Catholic hierarchy mismanagement. Whatever. 

Regards, 

Mike McShea

@areligionist


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Wednesday, February 8, 2017

History Begins to Repeat Itself with Pence's Tie Breaking DeVos Vote




With VP Pence Tie Breaking DeVos "Education" Vote - There can be no doubt that the USA is a "Christian" nation.



BERLIN: PROCLAMATION TO THE GERMAN NATION

FEBRUARY 1, 1933


...The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life....






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Sunday, February 5, 2017

Do Russian Citizens Have to Pay American Income Taxes?




Where is the certificate of his Russian citizenship granted in secret by Putin. Benedict Trump?

RICH ppl refuse to pay their fair share of taxes worldwide.


Except when they have several passports and national loyalties.



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