Two great musicians are working on the prayed for premier of an original work. Michael Moriarty*, celebrated actor, musician, composer and defender of unborn children has written a string quartet – musical presentation that usually consists of two violinists, a violist and a cellist. The work from the time of Haydn has four movements. Dan Robinson**, director of the St. Cecilia Choir of St. John Cantius, has taken Mr. Moriarty’s work, transcribed the manuscript and played it through to determine that it should be presented in public.

Michael Moriarty, most known as a stage, screen and television actor, symphony for strings was first performed in St. Louis and again at the New York City. Of this work performed as part of the Bachanalia Festival at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan,CAROLINE STOESSINGER, the cathedral’s artistic director said,
“Bach said he wrote music for the entertainment of the soul. Michael Moriarty is an entertainer who writes in a contemporary idiom, influenced by jazz and highlighted with memories of 18th-century counterpoint.”

I am working to scare up some funding ( a modest $ 7,000-$8,000) in order to secure a venue, pay musicians for rehearsals and the concert. During my post-Leo hours, I am hitting up possible patrons or a solid corporate citizen (Bank or Business) in order to help this collaboration between two talented men some funding.

If you love music and you appreciate the labors of talented people, let’s pray to the Catholic Muse of Music – St. Cecilia. Not only that, if you have any ideas about helping to bring this work to life here in Chicago – leave a comment. Thank you!

Everybody!(repeat after each line) Pray for us. Saint Cecilia,

Saint Cecilia, wise virgin,(Pray for us. Saint Cecilia, & etc.)

Saint Cecilia, whose heart burned with the fire of divine love,
Saint Cecilia, apostle by your zeal and charity,
Saint Cecilia, who converted your spouse and procured for him the crown of martyrdom,
Saint Cecilia, who by your pleadings moved the hearts of pagans, and brought them into the true Church,
Saint Cecilia, who did unceasingly see your guardian angel by your side,
Saint Cecilia, who mingled your voice with the celestial harmonies of the virgins,
Saint Cecilia, who by your melodious accents celebrated the praises of Jesus,
Saint Cecilia, illustrious martyr of Jesus Christ,
Saint Cecilia, who during three days suffered most excruciating torments,
Saint Cecilia, consolation of the afflicted,
Saint Cecilia, protectress of all who invoke you,
Saint Cecilia, patroness of holy canticles,
Saint Cecilia, special patroness and advocate of all singers, musicians, authors, and students,

*
Michael Moriarty’s Music
New CD
[5-7-00] A Voice in the Wilderness (working title) — Michael will be in the recording studio soon!

Great Find:
An album, “The Highest Standards” from the mid-80s contains a song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” featuring Michael playing the harmonica.

Production Company: Plug Records
Producer: David Lahm.

Michael Moriarty’s Jazz CDs
Reaching Out
Sweet ‘n Gritty
The Michael Moriarty Quintet Live at Fat Tuesday’s April 12, 1992

The New York Times has called Michael Moriarty “a jazz pianist of considerable skill.”

Michael Moriarty’s Classical Tape
The Music Of Michael Moriarty
Symphony For String Orchestra, conducted by Michael Moriarty
Psalm For Solo Violin, Nina Beilina – Violinist
The Kaufman Symphony For Chamber Orchestra
Simplicity
A CD with William Feasley, guitar & Vladimir Lande, oboe
From a review:
“The little-explored combination of oboe and guitar has managed to find a
small but unique repertory for itself. The sharp, dark overtones of this kind of
ensemble work best with lyrical modern music, as in Ibert’s dramatic Entr’acte,
Karl Pilss’s lovely neo-classic Sonatine, and a serious, ruminative piece (Simplicity)
by Michael Moriarty (yes, the actor!)…”

**
St. Cecilia Choir and Sine Nomine Ensemble
Daniel V. Robinson, Director

In addition to serving as one of the directors of the Sine Nomine and St. Ceclia Choirs at St. John Cantius, Daniel Robinson is music director of the Great Lakes Dredge and Philharmonic Society in Chicago. He has also guest-conducted the a cappella ensemble Bella Voce. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and graduate degrees in music from Stanford University. He studied conducting with Robert Shaw, Clayton Krehbiel, John Ferris, Howard Swan, Weston Noble, and Richard Rosewall. He was founder and music director of Basically Bach. Previous church choir work includes stints with the Harvard University Choir, the Harvard University Summer Choir, the First Unitarian Church in Danvers, MA, and the Stanford Memorial Church Choir.

**
Pat Hickey is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer

image St. Cecilia in Stained Glass by Matt Alderman

Here is a taste:

Last week, the Chicago City Council unanimously passed a resolution against torture, a symbolic act, at best. Torture is inhumane, banned by the United Nations and most civilized nations, and is contrary to the core beliefs of the world’s major religions.

So why are the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the Illinois Coalition Against Torture and religious communities like mine lauding this as a historic event? We shouldn’t have had to ask our elected officials to pass legislation proscribing torture. It seems to be basic common sense, instinctive human behavior to abhor torture. To inflict cruel and inhuman treatment is beneath us as human beings.

While applauding our city’s leaders for making Chicago the first city in the nation to condemn torture, we are certainly not seeing our goal anywhere near being accomplished. This is one deliberate and necessary step. It will indeed be a long road to raise the consciousness of the general public that torture is a reality; it is happening and likely will continue until we demand that it stop.

If memory serves, Sister, Jesus joined no Coalition. Plenty of torture going around, his cousin got himself beheaded and all, but Jesus never signed up with the Sicarri, or Zealots, in their Coalition Against The Stooge Puppet King Herod and Roman Imperialists Masters and Crucifiers. Like Free Mumia, I recall that the crowd that demanded Jesus get a tune-up by the cohort prior to crucifixion, demanded Free Barabbas! Now, those folks were committed activists, Sister.

Sister decries the fact that the media paid not enough attention to her and the various coalitions. Sister, we have more Coalitions than Mount Carmel has football championship trophies and yet kids are murdered with impunity because lawyers get fat overturning convictions on meme that police torture, lie, intimidate and use saracasm.

Sister Benita Burge’s Up -
The day also presented the opportunity for us to address another type of torture — prolonged solitary confinement. In Illinois, the Tamms Correctional Center is a supermax facility that incarcerates inmates in solitary confinement, often for months or years at a time, which mental health professionals define as torture. Here in Chicago, to our shame, former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge and officers under him tortured some 200 suspects to the point of confessing to crimes they did not commit. These victims were imprisoned while most of those who tortured, except Burge, who was convicted of a related crime, remain free.

Mental Health professionals? Incarceration of crazy thugs is torture – health care provided, educational opportunities abound, legal access to Lawsuit Lotto Lawyers, no to mention shelter, meals, and wardrobe; unlike the victims of these thugs, incarcerated under dirt until Judgement Day.

Sister Benita brings it home to Council and the Coalitions -This resolution declaring Chicago a torture-free city is a momentous occasion. We can be proud that our City Council can be called on to stand by its word and demand accountability if such violent treatment should ever again occur.

Sorry Sister, this is but another sanctimoniously meaningless bit of self-puffering from 50 people doing nothing meaningful, Sister.

Jon Burge was convicted of perjury after years of media bear-baiting and legal legerdemain.

G. Flint Taylor and legions of other fatuous opportunists have made fortunes by playing media, do-gooders and generations of young people completely unaquainted with the facts of the murders, arrests, convictions and subsequent judge shopping by Peoples Law Office, MacArthur Center for Justice, Loevy & Loevy.

There has been absolutely no proof of torture – hundreds of allegations and millions of dollars in payouts -but not one win in G.Flint Taylor’s column.

Jon Burge was trapped in a legal maze created by time, judge shopping, media complicity and collective memory loss.

When torture appears, deal with it. That has yet to be proven. Truth is not something “We Can All Agree Upon.” That is John Dewey.

There is much to pray for, Sister. Good people are up to their elbows helping young people read, write, add and subtract and somehow know that other people want to help them without lining their own pockets.

Praising a hollow and popular gesture like this means nothing and actually keeps the problems on our streets more than healthy. By the way, schools need teachers. I have not seen a nun here at Leo High School, in the heart Chicago’s killing fields, in years. Facta Non Verba.

N. B. – do read Gregory Koger one of Sister Benita’s Coalition Guys.

Here is Sister Benita’s coalition pal’s coda-“What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.”—Karl Marx

And his Mission Statement:

The world today cries out for radical, fundamental change. . .
But the cruelest fact of all is this: IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY! For here is the glaring contradiction: in today’s world the production of things, and the distribution of the things produced, is overwhelmingly carried out by large numbers of people who work collectively and are organized in highly coordinated networks. At the foundation of this whole process is the proletariat, an international class which owns nothing, yet has created and works these massive socialized productive forces. These tremendous productive powers could enable humanity to not only meet the basic needs of every person on the planet, but to build a new society, with a whole different set of social relations and values…a society where all people could truly and fully flourish together.

—Constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Here are the City Council Coalitions, Speakers and Advocates:
Speakers at the press conference and hearing included: Congressman Danny Davis; Flint Taylor, attorney with the People’s Law Office who has been instrumental in seeking justice for the men tortured by Chicago police commander John Burge; Dr. Frank Summers, psychologist who lead the fight within the APA to bar psychologists from participating in interrogations and torture in Guantanamo; Cherif Bassiouni, United Nations war crimes expert; Melinda Power and Margaret Power, Illinois Coalition Against Torture; Mary Lynn Everson, Marjorie Kovler Center; Sr. Benita Coffey, representing the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT); Laurie Jo Reynolds, activist with Tamms Year Ten; Mario Venegas, Chilean survivor of torture under Pinochet; Mark Clements, Burge torture survivor; Mary L. Johnson, mother of a Burge torture victim and inmate at Tamms Correctional Center, as well as several other mothers of Burge torture survivors; and Wallace “Gator” Bradley, who spoke to the use of torture in the federal ADX supermax prison.

Charming Coalition.

**

Pat Hickey is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer

image Joe Moore contemplates ham sandwich during Press Conference.

Cardinal George is now the target of a petition signed by 1,000 persons from around the country, as radical Gay activists mobilize their hearts, hands and voices in a national shriek.

With multi purpose Soros funded push by Change.Org – Gay Activists are doing their best to make Catholics uncomfortable. We’re Okay. Thanks and Merry Christmas.

However, such actions and the very cooperative nature of a not very bright American media can confuse some people . . . who happen to be very confused from the get-go.

The fact is that the Roman Catholic Church sponsors more Gay friendly services than any LGBTQ Advocacy meet-up and shout center. Full Medical HIV-AIDS services, psychological services and counselling are available because the Catholic Church has been in the fore-front for Gays, just as it has been for children, battered women, convicts, the elderly, the disabled, the challenged and most of all the unborn.

Read more at With Both Hands

image Tribune comments could be cut and paste from this classic in anti-Catholic bigotry

The Urban Gentry largely childless, secular, affluent and educated scorns the bootless and unhorsed breeders who send their kids to Catholic schools and retain the values of the parish as well as citizenship over Progressive doctrines- they always have and they always will, whether it is on the davenports of Hull House, or on camera at WTTW, the Gentry Liberal can not stand neighbors. Neighbors live in parishes and neighborhoods.

Thanks to Michael Shakman and his community of judges, lawyers, journalists and academics, politics became a dinosaur with the compliance of short-sighted politicians and Progressive architects. Added to Shakman decrees, unique to Cook County, are more ordinances and policies heaped upon public safety agencies – Police and Fire. Cops wear more handcuffs than criminals.

Read more at With Both Hands

Eric Zorn cuts to the core of the problem at Penn State by touting a Nash-like cartoon from the in-house paper hanger Stantis -Scott Stantis. I do not believe that there is a Roman Catholic bishop on the Board of Directors at Penn State. While Joe P is a practicing Catholic . . .that must be it! Scott Stantis, who couldn’t carry Jack Higgins’ jockstrap, evidently needs to draw that connection for the brie-eaters and they love it! Eric Zorn squeals -Stantis Brings It!

Random Bishops! Dude!

Scott Stantis is widely ignored (I was unaware of his body of work) and requires a pedestal. Eric Zorn (EZ), The Water Boy, a columnist and Progressive mouthpiece has a good sized readership. I read him for laughs.

Read more at With Both Hands

Governor Pat Quinn has revealed the full content of his character and its emptier than a politician’s promise.

Terry Cosgrove, President of Planned Parenthood’s Personal PAC, shoveled $ 500,000 and ‘in-kind’ support behind a career opportunist.

I worked to help this manneQuinn get elected Governor. God forgive me.

Since his victory Governor Pat Quinn has done everything he was told to do by every lug nut and gear in the Progressive Machine. He has been especially compliant to Boss Terry Cosgrove.

The most sickening thing about Governor Quinn’s will to power is his immediate run-for-cover on every decision he makes and every bill he signs. He is now permanently hiding behind Terry Cosgrove’s Personal PAC and a sad young woman who was forced by Terry Cosgrove to dive on Quinn’s barbed wire with Cardinal George.

Read more at With Both Hands

image Human Shield in WWI Belgium

Kevin Clark – a leader of the highly dicey International Solidarity Movement is also a Gay Liberation Activist who happens to work closly with self-proclaimed Catholic Anti-war activists, Hamas, and was the man who helped guide Rachel Corrie into the path of an Israeli Defence Force bulldozer. Clark led suits and protests against Peoria based Caterpiller for building bulldozers. Clark also spearheaded the Gaza Flotilla activism and the attack on Cardinal George one Easter Sunday a few years ago agin using kids to do his work -Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War.

Then there is the ubiquitous Andy Thayer whose commercial challenged young would be bolsheviks with his Thee You in the Threeth before blocking traffic and getting the challenged arrethted.

Andy, like the smarmy Clark, happens to be a Gay Liberation Activist which is nice, but he also works with Lawsuit Lotto Lawyer Jon Loevy who has made millions of dollars bringing suit against any and all law enforcement for any reason.

SEIU Joe Iosbaker has had a year of playing at Haymarket Martyr thanks to an FBI raid over his labors on behalf of Hamas. Joe wants Chicagoans to think of the G-* summit as alter-day Republic Steel picnic (1937). Bring the kids in strollers and maybe the Bulls, not the team, but the old-timey Red handle for cops, will light up a few babies, when provoked by the Soul-Patched Knit-Hat Che T-shirt dweebs. ” Cool Bix! Light the tires under Viaduct! Seatle!”

I believe ex- Professor Dave Protess has the bus wheel marks all over the back of his Brooks Brothers Oxford shirt, more because he shed light on the network of wealthy radical enterprises – I wonder way Professor of Law and Can’t Practice Law NU’s Bernardin Dohrn, who took a trip to Eygpt in solidarity just before the Gaza Flotilla disaster and the soapy Arab Spring, has not stood in solidarity with the Fagin of the Innocense Project? I know Chicago’s supine media is not wondering the same thing.

Read more at With Both Hands

When asked by (WLS AM Bill)Cameron whether the conditions were ripe for a strike this year, she (Teachers Union President Karen Lewis)said: “I think it’s very high. Because people are very upset and people feel disrespected.”
Chicagoist 8/15/2011 ( parentheses my own)

Earlier in the piece we find this, “she (Lewis) did not predict that teachers will ultimately go on strike, only that the probability is high that members will call for a strike vote.” What’s the deal? Will teachers be going on strike any time soon?”

Leo High School opens this week, but we have on-going registration. Leo High School is a Catholic college preparatory high school, often called a “pay school” by families more familiar with public education. There is tuition. Tuition is a covenant between the school and the family of the student. Picking up a financial obligation the family is assured that their student will have an opportunity to succeed in academics, participate in a glorious athletic program, be treated with attention to the student’s needs. To help families meet their end of the covenant, there are thousands of Leo Alumni and the Big Shoulders Fund – a Catholic foundation dedicated solely to helping inner city families get a great Catholic education.

Leo High School had a great year last year.

1. 100% college placement

2. Leo graduates received hundreds of thousands of dollars in college scholarships

3. Leo families were helped by Leo Alumni, private and corporate foundations and generous individuals to the tune of $ 840,000

4. Leo tested and registered the largest incoming class of freshmen in twelve years, including white and Hispanic students

5. Leo 2011 graduate Eder Cruz was named a Gates Millenium Scholar

6. Leo’s Track team won its sixth IHSA State Championship – Leo is the only non-public high school to win the IHSA Track Title in its 115 year history and Leo Captured Titles in both Class A and Class AA

The probability is high that Chicago Teachers Union will vote for a strike. Leo High School and all other Catholic schools will open this month an get down to the business of helping students.

Enroll, now. If you think that tuition is costly, imagine what a morale challenged public school faculty might cost your child. Leo High School has not been disrupted by violence in the school. The police officers of Gresham Sixth District only have come to the school to correct problems outside of the school that might impact on the safety of our Leo Men. The business of Leo High School is all about the student.

In fact, all summer long students have popped in to visit and ask for summer reading ideas from President Dan McGrath, chat with Principal Phil Mesina and learn some great study skills from Leo’s Vice president and Gunny Mr. Frank Wilson, USMC, lift weights, shoot hoops, box in the Leo facility run by Mike Joyce, snitch candy from the Ms. Adams and Ms. Hemp in the office and pay Mrs. Townsend parcels of tuition, while Mom and Dad were at work.

Mike Holmes, Leo Director of Admissions and Leo Alumnus Mike Anderson have brought in many families seeking help for their sons who having a difficult time at other schools, or are concerned about meeting the costs of tuition.

Here is a transcript of a message left on my voice mail -” This is Pat Nolan, Class of ’51. It was great seeing you guys at the Leo Golf outing. I’m sending my 21st Century (Spring Mailing) with my gift. I was little late in getting it in the mail. I hope all is well at Leo.”

Pat Nolan and hundreds of other Leo Men have the kids who were here all summer, even though school was out, on their minds and in their hearts.

The teachers have been back since last week. The Maintenance( Ron Reynolds, James Crawford and Derrick De Berry) men have the place looking great. These gentlemen are solid gentlemen and great role models who do as much teaching throughout the day than many people calling themselves educators that I have encountered. They teach pride by example and respect for every task.

No Strike – Leo Treats Families Right. Take a look at the Leo High School Website

Call Mr. Mike Holmes here at Leo ( 773) 224-9600 and arrange a sit-down with any or all of us. Pop in for a visit even when school starts. Our students are our best reflection of the Leo Brand.

Leo High School
7901 S.Sangamon Street
Chicago, IL 60620

Open for business every year since 1926 – business is good!

Facta Non Verba! Deeds not Words!

Read more from Pat Hickey

Illinois goofiest Congress critter Schakwosky also took a whack between the eyes with an electoral two-by-four:

Underscoring the national implications, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Chicago, a member of the House Democratic leadership, traveled to Pasch’s campaign headquarters Tuesday, where the two exchanged hugs. Schakowsky and some of her political workers were assisting in getting voters to the polls.

Hugs are good, but from Jan?

Sandy Pasch got bashed -

The last race was one of the highest-spending, in the north Milwaukee suburbs, where Democratic state Rep. Sandy Pasch fell to Sen. Alberta Darling, a 19-year incumbent. Darling, co-chair of the Legislature’s budget-writing panel, was a key target for unions.

Read more at With Both Hands

image Potato Blight