Wednesday, January 28, 2009
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (AKA A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (AKA A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH Escalera al cielo (Sp) Une question de vie et de mort (Fr) Scala al paradise (It)
A classic film directed by the Archers considered the best European and British film directors of the 20th century*
(Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
TIME: May 1945 Just before V-E Day.
PLACE (setting) : Someplace over the English Channel, England and….Heaven
MAIN CHARACTERS
1) PETER CARTER (the pilot) Starring DAVID NIVEN
Oscar winning actor
2) JUNE (the American girl; WAAC Woman’s Army Air Corps) Starring KIM HUNTER
Oscar winning actress
3) Bob Trubshawe
(“Sparks”: the radio man on the bomber) ROBERT COOTE
4) A woman angel Kathleen Byron
5) Conductor 71 (Frenchman)
(A French Noble executed during the Reign of Terror 1791) Marius Goring
6) Dr. FRANK REEVES (an English Doctor) Roger Livesey
7) Abraham Fallon (American; killed April 19, 1775 at the Battle of Lexington) Raymond Massey
8) The Celestial Judge / The Surgeon Abraham Sofaer
Extras:
From all the Allied Powers
See what countries you can identify. included real WWII R.A.F. crews,
Red Cross nurses
and W.A.A.C (Woman’s Army Air Corps)
MOVIE QUESTIONS and DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1) Peter Carter is the RAF (Royal Air Force) pilot who is returning from a bombing mission over Nazi Germany. What is the matter with his plane?
2) Why is Peter Carter alone except for “Sparks” the dead radioman (Bob)? Where is his crew?
______________________________________________________________________________
3) Why doesn’t Peter bail out with his parachute?
_____________________________________________________________
4) Who does Peter talk to over the radio?
_____________________________________________________________
5) According to Peter who the world is in trouble because it ignores the teaching of what three famous teachers?____________________________________________________________________________
6) Peter comes to in the surf of the English Channel and who does he meet at the beach?
____________________________________________________________________________________
7) Do you believe in love in first sight?
___________________________________________________________________________________
8) Even though Peter has survived he has a head injury so what does Dr. Reeves tell Dr.
McEwen and June what Peter needs to survive?
9) When the ambulance is late what does Dr. Reeve do? What happens to Dr. Reeve? What job will Dr. Reeve take?
_______________________________________________________________________
10) )Who says:” I've fallen in love with her. Her accent is foreign, but it sounds sweet to me. We were born thousands of miles apart, but we were made for each other/”
______________________ _______________________________________________________
11) In Heaven the prosecutor Abraham Fallon say “Be careful, doctor Reeves. In the whole Universe, nothing is stronger than The Law.
Doctor Frank Reeves: Yes, Mr. Fallon, nothing is stronger than The Law in the Universe, but on Earth nothing is stronger than________________________________________________________________________________
12) Will June and Peter live a long and happy life together in the end?________________________
POEM BY WILLIAM BLAKE "THE DIVINE IMAGE"
The Divine Image
by William Blake
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form,
In heathen , Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
by William Blake
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form,
In heathen , Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
A Highland Gentleman
FROM AM BAILE:
In the aftermath of the last Jacobite Rebellion a series of Acts of Parliament launched an assault on the culture of Gaeldom including the proscription of Highland dress and the playing of pipes.
The form of Highland dress has always owed much to the army and it was the Highland regiments which kept the kilt and the tartan alive until, in 1782, their use was once more permitted. Before that time, Scots were only permitted to wear any 'tartanry', if they joined the British Armed Services. Pipers were permitted to wear their kilt, but usually in a Regimental color.
The kilt itself in its original form was a very basic garment which required neither tailoring nor the frequent replacement which a pair of breeches needed. The tartan cloth forming a piece of material some two metres in width by four or five metres in length. This was known variously as the Breacan, the Feileadh Bhreacain and the Feileadh Mor - the big kilt, usually referrred to in English as the belted plaid.
The belted plaid had many advantages in the Highland climate and terrain. It allowed freedom of movement, it was warm, the upper half could provide a voluminous cloak against the weather, it dried out quickly and with much less discomfort than trousers and, if required, it could, by undoing the belt, provide a very adequate overnight blanket. The tightly woven wool proved almost completely waterproof, something the lose woven wool of today is not. When complete freedom of action was required in battle it was easily discarded, and one famous Highland clan battle, that between the Frasers the MacDonalds and Camerons in 1544, is known as Blar-na-Leine, which can be translated as 'Field of the Shirts'.
The bagpipes are thought to have been used in ancient Egypt. The origins of the pipes in Scotland is unclear. It had been suggested that they were a Roman import. Others have claimed that the instrument came from Ireland as a result of colonisation. The original pipes in Scotland had only a single drone. The second drone was added in the mid to late 1500s. The third drone, or the 'great drone', came into use early in the 1700s.
Beginning with Iain Odhar, who lived in the mid-16th century, the MacCrimmon family was responsible for elevating Highland pipe music to new heights. This music is called piobaireachd (pronounced piobroch).
Clan pipers' titles were mostly hereditary and held in much esteem. The best known were the MacCrimmons, pipers to MacLeod of Dunvegan; the MacAuthurs, pipers to MacDonald of the Isles; the MacKays, pipers to the MacKenzie; the Rankins, pipers to MacLean of Duart
As dèidh Ar-a-mach mu dheireadh nan Seumasach thug sreath de dh' Achdan Pàrlamaid ionnsaigh air dualchas na Gàidhealtachd le toirmeasg an èididh Ghàidhealaich agus cluiche na pìoba.
Tha an deise Ghàidhealach riamh air a bhith gu mòr an comain an airm agus b' iad na rèisimeidean Gàidhealach a chum am fèileadh agus am breacan beò gu 1782, nuair a chaidh an ceadachadh a-rithist. Ron àm sin chan fhaodadh Albannaich breacan sam bith a chur orra ach a-mhàin nam biodh iad ann an seirbheis Arm Bhreatainn. Dh'fhaodadh pìobairean am fèileadh a chur orra, ach mar bu trice b' ann an dath na rèisimeid.
Na chruth tùsail, b'e bad-aodaich gu math sìmplidh a bha san fhèileadh, nach fheumadh tàillearachd no càradh, mar a dh'fheumadh briogais. Bha breacan na phìos aodaich de dhà meatair de leud agus de cheithir no còig meatairean de dh'fhaid. Bha seo air ainmeachadh mar Breacan, am Fèileadh Breacain agus am Fèileadh Mòr. Bha am Fèileadh Mòr no am 'Big Kilt' sa Bheurla mar bu trice a' ciallachadh plaide le crios air. Bha mòran bhuannachdan sa phlaide-chrios ann an aimsir agus talamh na Gàidhealtachd. Bha e furasta gluasad leis, bha e blàth, dh'fhaodadh am pìos àrd dheth a bhith na chleoca mòr dìonach an aghaidh na sìde, thioramaicheadh e gu luath agus le fada na bu lugha de mhì-chomhfhartachd na briogais agus, nam feumaist, le bhith a' toirt dheth a' chrios, dhèanadh e deagh phlaide oidhche. Bha an clò a bh' air a dhlùth-fhighe cha mhòr gu tur dìonach air uisge, rud nas eil clò an latha an-diugh a th' air fhighe nas fharsainge. Nuair a bhiodh feum air mòr-shaorsa gluasaid, bha e furasta a chur dhiot agus tha aon bhlàr cinnidh ainmeil ann, eadar na Frisealaich, na Dòmhnallaich agus na Camshronaich ann an 1544 air ainmeachadh mar 'Blàr na Lèine'.
Thathar an dùil gun robhar a' cluiche na pìoba san t-seann Eiphit. Chan eil eachdraidh na pìoba an Alba idir soilleir. Tha feadhainn dhen bheachd gun tàinig iad a-steach ri linn nan Ròmanach. Tha cuid eile ag ràdh gun tàinig iad à Eirinn ri linn eilthireachd. Cha robh aig a'chiad phìoban ann an Alba ach aon dos. Chaidh an dàrna dos a chur riutha ann am meadhan no deireadh nan 1500an. Thàinig an treas dos no an 'Dos Mòr' tràth sna 1700an.
A' toiseachadh le Iain Odhar, a bha beò am meadhan an t-16mh linn, bha teaghlach MhicCruimein nam meadhan air àrdachadh cliù na pìoba. 'S e pìobaireachd a th' air a' cheòl seo. Bha tiotalan phìobairean nan cinnidhean, mar bu trice, dualach agus bhathar a' toirt mòran spèis dhaibh. B' iad Clann MhicCruimein a b'ainmeile, 's bha iadsan nam pìobairean do MhacLeòid Dhùn Bheagain; bha Clann MhicArtair nam pìobairean do MhacDhòmhnaill nan Eilean; bha Clann MhicCaoidh nam pìobairean do Chlann MhicChoinnich; bha Clann MhicFhraing nam pìobairean do MhacGilleathain Dhubhairt
Of Maddoff and the Truth: Far better to be a leal mon
Dear friends and colleagues:
Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually Victor Frankl
One thing is certain: Bernard L. Madoff was not a leal mon; a chivalrous gentleman of honor. He was not a good brother. He was not a good husband. He was not a good father. He was not a good citizen. He was not a good exemplar of his race and line. He shamed his coreligionists and fellow citizens. He exploited the greed and vanity of others. He was, indeed, an exemplar of the Hollow Man, a man without a chest. A clear example of the stunting effect of greed and materialism as a kind of spiritual disease.
If we are wise we will study his tale for it is a morality tale. There is no question his scam was a technology scam made possible by the PC for it was the PC and phoney printouts that were his accomplices.
How gullible is the modern man to the Leaf, the Printed Page! Tolstoy warned us long ago how unjust and unwise it was to judge men by “mere pieces of paper.”
But truth is a fixed star – a thing of abiding clarity- it needeth not the pencil or the pen. Many is the truth that has never been written only experienced, only remembered, only taught. Many the statistic a mere fabrication.
Una verdad pocha which may have been true in 1914, 1959 1999 or last month but no longer is. This world has many turns and all is flux.
And the truth often reveals itself sometimes over a long period of time and sometimes in a flash as by accident. But make no mistake it often passes us by.
Mr. Madoff was a parasite and charlatan like the three rascals in Juan Manuel’s story who left the Emperor without his shirt.
"He appeared to believe in family, loyalty and honesty,” said one former Madoff employee, who asked to remain anonymous because of the continuing litigation and investigations. “Never in your wildest imagination would you think he was a fraudster.”
And he was great because he was so “successful” and if you are rich you must really know.
In the end he will have to live with himself and the fact he dishonored and defrauded even his own family members.
In the end he will have to face the Just Judge whom I believe will judge the living and the dead.
In the end he will be left will be his name: Ponzi, Quisling, the Pseudo-J. P. Morgan: Madoff. The Pseudo Mench. The man without shame left only with ignominy.
The Great Teacher said, indeed, “What profiteth a man who gains the whole world and loses his soul?” (Luke 9:25)
“the honest man, though e’er sae poor
Is king ‘ men for a’ that” (BURNS)
Excessive pride indeed cometh before the untergang.
Victor Frankll wrote, in Man’s Quest for Meaning,
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate…. in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually.”
What we do is what we become.
Far better to be a modest man, a humble man, a man of honor, a seeker of the truth, a ranker: a leal mon loved and respected to the end and indeed long after too.
“ Man cannot be measured by the colour of his skin, or by his speech or by his clothes and jewels, but only by his heart. (Mika Waltari).
In the end truth and honor ‘-tis true- are better and more lasting than gold. When our world has passed away, when our nation ceases to exist, when our language is forgotten, when our books are dust, truth will abide.
Aye. “S truth.
RICHARD K. MUNRO
January 25, 2009 - NYT
The Talented Mr. Madoff
By JULIE CRESWELL and LANDON THOMAS Jr.
TO some, Bernard L. Madoff was an affable, charismatic man who moved comfortably among power brokers on Wall Street and in Washington, a winning financier who had all the toys: the penthouse apartment in Manhattan, the shares in two private jets, the yacht moored off the French Riviera.
Although hardly a household name, he secured a longstanding role as an elder statesman on Wall Street, allowing him to land on important boards and commissions where his opinions helped shape securities regulations. Along the way, he snared a coveted spot as the chairman of a major stock exchange, Nasdaq.
And his employees say he treated them like family.
There was, of course, another side to Mr. Madoff, who is 70. Reclusive, at times standoffish and aloof, this Bernie rarely rubbed elbows in Manhattan’s cocktail circuit or at Palm Beach balls. This Bernie was quiet, controlled and closely attuned to his image, down to the most minute details.
He was, for instance, an avid collector of vintage watches and took time each morning to match his wedding ring — he owned at least two — to the platinum or gold watch band he was wearing that day.
Per his directives, the décor in his firm’s New York and London offices was stark. Black, white and gray — or “icily cold modern,” as one frequent visitor to the New York operation described it.
Despite nurturing a familial atmosphere in his offices, he installed two cameras on the small trading floor of the firm’s London operations so he could monitor the unit remotely from New York.
This Bernie also ran a money management business on the side for decades that he kept hidden far from colleagues, competitors and regulators.
While he managed billions of dollars for individuals and foundations, he shunned one-on-one meetings with most of his investors, wrapping himself in an Oz-like aura, making him even more desirable to those seeking access.
So who was the real Bernie Madoff? And what could have driven him to choreograph a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, to which he is said to have confessed?
An easy answer is that Mr. Madoff was a charlatan of epic proportions, a greedy manipulator so hungry to accumulate wealth that he did not care whom he hurt to get what he wanted.
But some analysts say that a more complex and layered observation of his actions involves linking the world of white-collar finance to the world of serial criminals.
They wonder whether good old Bernie Madoff might have stolen simply for the fun of it, exploiting every relationship in his life for decades while studiously manipulating financial regulators.
“Some of the characteristics you see in psychopaths are lying, manipulation, the ability to deceive, feelings of grandiosity and callousness toward their victims,” says Gregg O. McCrary, a former special agent with the F.B.I. who spent years constructing criminal behavioral profiles.
Mr. McCrary cautions that he has never met Mr. Madoff, so he can’t make a diagnosis, but he says Mr. Madoff appears to share many of the destructive traits typically seen in a psychopath. That is why, he says, so many who came into contact with Mr. Madoff have been left reeling and in confusion about his motives.
“People like him become sort of like chameleons. They are very good at impression management,” Mr. McCrary says. “They manage the impression you receive of them. They know what people want, and they give it to them.”
As investigators plow through decades of documents, trying to decipher whether Mr. Madoff was engaged in anything other than an elaborate financial ruse, his friends remain dumbfounded — and feel deeply violated.
“He was a hero to us. The head of Nasdaq. We were proud of everything he had accomplished,” says Diana Goldberg, who once shared the 27-minute train ride with Mr. Madoff from their homes in Laurelton, Queens, to classes at Far Rockaway High School. “Now, the hero has vanished.”
If, in the end, Mr. Madoff is found to have been engaging in fraud for most of his career, then the hero never really existed.. Authorities say Mr. Madoff himself has confessed that he was the author of a longstanding and wide-ranging financial charade. His lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, declined to comment.
During the decades that Mr. Madoff built his business, he cast himself as a crusader, protecting the interests of smaller investors and bent on changing the way securities trading was done on Wall Street. To that end, like a burglar who knows the patrol routes of the police and can listen in on their radio scanners, he also actively wooed regulators who monitored his business.
“He once mentioned to me that he spent one-third of his time in Washington in the early 1990s, late 1980s,” says a person who has known Mr. Madoff for years but requested not to be identified because he does not want to be drawn into continuing litigation. “He was very involved with regulators. I think they used him as a sounding board and he looked to them like a white knight.”
“He was smart in understanding very early on that the more involved you were with regulators, you could shape regulation,” this individual adds. “But, if we find out that the Ponzi scheme goes back that far, then he was doing something much smarter. If you’re very close with regulators, they’re not going be looking over your shoulders that much. Very smart.”
MR. MADOFF spent his early years in Laurelton, a close-knit, Jewish enclave where he and his friends ate ice cream at the local five-and-ten and attended activities at the community center.
“It was an idyllic place to grow up in,” recalls Vera Gitten, who attended elementary school with him. She remembers him as “very thin,” a good student and extremely outgoing. She recalls a musical skit that he and his best friend wrote, rehearsed and performed for the class when they were in fifth or sixth grade.
“It was a broad company, sort of a ‘Sheik of Araby’ kind of thing where they wore costumes, which were their parents’ bedsheets, that made them look like they were desert sheiks,” Ms. Gitten says. “They would have us rolling.”
None of Mr. Madoff’s former elementary school friends could recall what his parents, Ralph and Sylvia, did for a living. According to Securities and Exchange Commission documents from the 1960s, it appears that his mother had a brokerage firm called Gibraltar Securities registered in her name with an address in Laurelton.
In 1963, the S.E.C. began investigating whether a number of firms, including Ms. Madoff’s, had failed to file financial reports and whether that required revoking their registrations. Early the next year, Ms. Madoff withdrew her registration and the S.E.C. dropped its proceedings against her.
While Mr. Madoff’s friends remember little about his parents, they all clearly recall his childhood sweetheart, and future wife, Ruth Alpern, a pretty, bubbly blonde who was voted “Josie College” by her Far Rockaway High School class.
Mr. Madoff, after graduating from high school in 1956, spent a year at the University of Alabama, where he joined Sigma Alpha Mu, a Jewish fraternity. A year later, he transferred to Hofstra University, where he graduated in 1960 with a degree in political science. He later became a Hofstra trustee, but the university never invested with him.
Mr. Madoff spent the next year at Brooklyn Law School, attending classes in the morning and running his side business — installing and fixing sprinkler systems — in the afternoon and evening, recalled Joseph Kavanau, who attended law school with Mr. Madoff. When Mr. Kavanau married his wife, Jane, who was Mrs. Madoff’s best friend from Queens, Mr. Madoff was the best man.
“Bernie was very industrious,” Mr. Kavanau explains. “He was going to school and working at the same time.”
Mr. Madoff was never interested in practicing law, Mr. Kavanau says. Instead, Mr. Madoff left law school and, using $5,000 saved from being a lifeguard and from his sprinkler business, joined the ranks of Wall Street in the 1960s.
“For many years when we were first married, my wife and I would go to their house or we would all go out to dinner, maybe a couple of nights a month,” said Mr. Kavanau, who says that the first home Mr. Madoff shared with his bride was a modest, one-bedroom apartment in Bayside, Queens.
Over the years, however, the two couples drifted apart. From time to time, Mr. Kavanau said he turned on the television and caught a glimpse of Mr. Madoff — now a successful financier — being interviewed, realizing that he had made his mark on Wall Street.
“The last time I saw him, we had run into him and Ruth on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach,” Mr. Kavanau recalls. “We were definitely aware of how well he was living.”
When asked if he can understand what happened, what may have motivated or prompted Mr. Madoff to eventually take such risks after building up a seemingly successful business, Mr. Kavanau paused.
“There is no way to. I can’t make it add up. It doesn’t make sense,” he says, growing increasingly frustrated. “I cannot take the Bernie I knew and turn him into the Bernie we’re hearing about 24/7. It doesn’t compute.”
WHEN Mr. Madoff arrived on Wall Street in the 1960s, he was an outsider. His small firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, got its start by matching buyers of inexpensive “penny stocks” with sellers in the growing over-the-counter market. This hardscrabble market was made up of stocks that were not listed on the tonier New York Stock Exchange or American Stock Exchange.
In the O.T.C. market, it was common practice — and completely legal — for firms like Mr. Madoff’s to try to attract big trades to their shop by offering to pay clients a penny or two for every share they traded. His firm would make money by pocketing the difference in the “spread,” or the gap between the offering and selling price for the stocks.
During the mid-1970s, when changes in the rules allowed his firm and others like it to trade more expensive and more prestigious blue-chip stocks, Mr. Madoff began gaining market share from the Big Board.
“He was a man with a good idea who was also a terrific salesman,” says Charles V. Doherty, the former president of the Midwest Stock Exchange. “He was ahead of everyone.”
While completely legitimate, the practice of paying for trading orders was entirely distasteful to blue bloods on the established exchanges who saw the actions, ultimately, as a threat to their livelihood. Around this time, Mr. Madoff began cultivating key relationships with regulators.
“He was the darling of the regulators, without question. He was doing everything the regulators wanted him to do,” says Nicholas A. Giordano, the former president of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. “They wanted him to be a fierce competitor to the New York Stock Exchange, and he was doing it.”
Current and former S.E.C. regulators have come under fire, accused of failing to adequately supervise Mr. Madoff and being too cozy with him.
Arthur Levitt Jr., who served as S.E.C. chairman from 1993 to early 2001, has acknowledged that he occasionally turned to Mr. Madoff for advice about how the market functioned. But Mr. Levitt strongly denies that Mr. Madoff had undue influence at the S.E.C. or that the agency’s enforcement staff deferred to him.
Mr. Levitt said that he was unaware that Mr. Madoff even ran an investment management business, and that Mr. Madoff never had special access to him or other S.E.C. officials. He also noted that he and Mr. Madoff opposed one another on several key industry issues.
“The notion that Madoff came to my office many times is a fiction,” Mr. Levitt says. “And the notion that he did my bidding is so fantastic that it defies belief.”
Mr. Madoff’s firm was an early adopter of new trading technologies. And, during the early 1990s, he served three one-year stints as head of the Nasdaq, an electronic exchange that has competed vigorously and won market share from brick-and-mortar exchanges like the Big Board.
Despite this flair for the experimental, Mr. Madoff routinely told his employees to adopt the mantra “KISS,” or “keep it simple, stupid.” He was, after all, a man of precise and controlled habits. He smoked Davidoff cigars and, in London, tailored his suits at Kilgour on Savile Row and bought many of his watches at Somlo Antiques.
Associates and others acquainted with him said his punctilious ways sometimes veered into obsessive-compulsive behavior. His office, for example, always had to be immaculate.
According to a former employee, who requested anonymity because of continuing litigation and because, he said, regulators have told Madoff employees not to speak to the media, Mr. Madoff scouted the office for potential filth. Once, when he spotted an employee eating a pear at his desk in New York, this person said, Mr. Madoff spied some juice dripping onto the gray carpet.
“What do you think you are doing?” this person recalls Mr. Madoff demanding. Eating a pear, the employee replied. Mr. Madoff ripped the soiled carpet tile from the floor, then rushed to a closet to retrieve a similar swatch to replace it.
Julia Fenwick, who was the office manager for Mr. Madoff’s London operation from 2001 until the unit was shuttered in December, said that “everything had to be perfect” and that “you never left paper on your desk — ever.”
Although he visited the London office only a couple of times a year, usually on the way to his vacation home in France, Mr. Madoff still reveled in micromanaging everything there, including the office décor.
The London unit recently finished spending about $700,000 for a refurbishment that recreated the black and gray palette of Mr.. Madoff’s New York office and his private jet, Ms. Fenwick says. The result was office furniture made from black ash, black trimming on gray walls, black computers, black mouse pads and even a black refrigerator on the trading floor.
But former employees and friends say Mr. Madoff’s obsession with order and control of his environment never led them to believe that deeper problems were afoot.
“He appeared to believe in family, loyalty and honesty,” said one former Madoff employee, who asked to remain anonymous because of the continuing litigation and investigations. “Never in your wildest imagination would you think he was a fraudster.”
Despite all of the easy money that rolled into Mr. Madoff’s firm for much of its existence, financial pressures began to emerge there during the last several years after Wall Street changed the way securities were priced and as new competition emerged.
In his asset management business, however, Mr. Madoff continued to haul in fresh rounds of money from unsuspecting investors hungry for the predictable and handsome returns he booked year after year, without missing a beat.
Employees who were veterans in the New York and London offices were even allowed to invest with Mr. Madoff, according to people who worked at the firm. Some employees are said to have given Mr. Madoff a large portion of their life savings — all of which now appears to be gone.
Like so many others who invested with him, his employees weren’t lured to his funds simply by a promise of outsize returns. Rather, they say, they sought the security of investing with a man they knew and trusted. The Bernie they thought they knew.
Mr. Madoff’s confidence reminds J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist, of criminals he has studied.
“Typically, people with psychopathic personalities don’t fear getting caught,” explains Dr. Meloy, author of a 1988 textbook, “The Psychopathic Mind.” “They tend to be very narcissistic with a strong sense of entitlement.”
All of which has led some forensic psychologists to see some similarities between him and serial killers like Ted Bundy. They say that whereas Mr. Bundy murdered people, Mr. Madoff murdered wallets, bank accounts and people’s sense of financial trust and security.
Like Mr. Bundy, Mr. Madoff used a sharp mind and an affable demeanor to create a persona that didn’t exist, according to this view, and lulled his victims into a false sense of security. And when publicly accused, he seemed to show no remorse.
Television footage of Mr. Madoff entering his Park Avenue apartment building after federal authorities charged him with fraud in December doesn’t seem to show a man exhibiting any sorrow or regret. With a battery of reporters asking him whether he felt remorse, he declined to respond and pushed his way into his building. (Thus far, his only public apology has apparently been in letters left in his lobby for fellow tenants who suffered through the media circus outside their building.)
To some extent, analysts of criminal behavior say, defining Mr. Madoff is complicated by the wide variety of possible explanations for his scheme: a desire to accumulate vast wealth, a need to dominate others and a need to prove that he was smarter than everyone else. That was shown, they say, in an ability to dupe investors and regulators for years.
Like the former F.B.I. agent Mr. McCrary, Dr.. Meloy cautions that he has not met Mr. Madoff and can’t make a clinical diagnosis. Nevertheless, he says individuals with psychopathic personalities tend to strongly believe that they’re special.
“They believe ‘I’m above the law,’ and they believe they cannot be caught,” Mr. Meloy says. “But the Achilles’ heel of the psychopath is his sense of impunity. That is, eventually, what will bring him down.”
He says it makes complete sense that Mr. Madoff would have courted regulators, even if he ran the risk of exposing his own actions by doing so.
“In a scheme like this, it’s very important to keep those who could threaten you very close to you,” Dr. Meloy explains. “You want to develop them as allies and shape how they go about their business and their attitudes toward you.”
INDEED, if it is shown that Mr. Madoff fooled regulators for decades, that would have been a “heady, intoxicating” experience and would have fueled a sense of entitlement and grandiosity, Mr. McCrary says.
And by reeling in people from the Jewish community, from charities, from public institutions and from prominent and relatively sophisticated investor networks worldwide, Mr. Madoff wreaked havoc on many lives.
That’s why Mr. McCrary says it’s not too far-fetched to compare Mr. Madoff to serial killers.
“With serial killers, they have control over the life or death of people,” Mr. McCrary explains. “They’re playing God. That’s the grandiosity coming through. The sense of being superior. Madoff is getting the same thing. He’s playing financial god, ruining these people and taking their money.”
MUNRO'S COMMENTARY
Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually Victor Frankl
One thing is certain: Bernard L. Madoff was not a leal mon; a chivalrous gentleman of honor. He was not a good brother. He was not a good husband. He was not a good father. He was not a good citizen. He was not a good exemplar of his race and line. He shamed his coreligionists and fellow citizens. He exploited the greed and vanity of others. He was, indeed, an exemplar of the Hollow Man, a man without a chest. A clear example of the stunting effect of greed and materialism as a kind of spiritual disease.
If we are wise we will study his tale for it is a morality tale. There is no question his scam was a technology scam made possible by the PC for it was the PC and phoney printouts that were his accomplices.
How gullible is the modern man to the Leaf, the Printed Page! Tolstoy warned us long ago how unjust and unwise it was to judge men by “mere pieces of paper.”
But truth is a fixed star – a thing of abiding clarity- it needeth not the pencil or the pen. Many is the truth that has never been written only experienced, only remembered, only taught. Many the statistic a mere fabrication.
Una verdad pocha which may have been true in 1914, 1959 1999 or last month but no longer is. This world has many turns and all is flux.
And the truth often reveals itself sometimes over a long period of time and sometimes in a flash as by accident. But make no mistake it often passes us by.
Mr. Madoff was a parasite and charlatan like the three rascals in Juan Manuel’s story who left the Emperor without his shirt.
"He appeared to believe in family, loyalty and honesty,” said one former Madoff employee, who asked to remain anonymous because of the continuing litigation and investigations. “Never in your wildest imagination would you think he was a fraudster.”
And he was great because he was so “successful” and if you are rich you must really know.
In the end he will have to live with himself and the fact he dishonored and defrauded even his own family members.
In the end he will have to face the Just Judge whom I believe will judge the living and the dead.
In the end he will be left will be his name: Ponzi, Quisling, the Pseudo-J. P. Morgan: Madoff. The Pseudo Mench. The man without shame left only with ignominy.
The Great Teacher said, indeed, “What profiteth a man who gains the whole world and loses his soul?” (Luke 9:25)
“the honest man, though e’er sae poor
Is king ‘ men for a’ that” (BURNS)
Excessive pride indeed cometh before the untergang.
Victor Frankll wrote, in Man’s Quest for Meaning,
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate…. in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually.”
What we do is what we become.
Far better to be a modest man, a humble man, a man of honor, a seeker of the truth, a ranker: a leal mon loved and respected to the end and indeed long after too.
“ Man cannot be measured by the colour of his skin, or by his speech or by his clothes and jewels, but only by his heart. (Mika Waltari).
In the end truth and honor ‘-tis true- are better and more lasting than gold. When our world has passed away, when our nation ceases to exist, when our language is forgotten, when our books are dust, truth will abide.
Aye. “S truth.
RICHARD K. MUNRO
January 25, 2009 - NYT
The Talented Mr. Madoff
By JULIE CRESWELL and LANDON THOMAS Jr.
TO some, Bernard L. Madoff was an affable, charismatic man who moved comfortably among power brokers on Wall Street and in Washington, a winning financier who had all the toys: the penthouse apartment in Manhattan, the shares in two private jets, the yacht moored off the French Riviera.
Although hardly a household name, he secured a longstanding role as an elder statesman on Wall Street, allowing him to land on important boards and commissions where his opinions helped shape securities regulations. Along the way, he snared a coveted spot as the chairman of a major stock exchange, Nasdaq.
And his employees say he treated them like family.
There was, of course, another side to Mr. Madoff, who is 70. Reclusive, at times standoffish and aloof, this Bernie rarely rubbed elbows in Manhattan’s cocktail circuit or at Palm Beach balls. This Bernie was quiet, controlled and closely attuned to his image, down to the most minute details.
He was, for instance, an avid collector of vintage watches and took time each morning to match his wedding ring — he owned at least two — to the platinum or gold watch band he was wearing that day.
Per his directives, the décor in his firm’s New York and London offices was stark. Black, white and gray — or “icily cold modern,” as one frequent visitor to the New York operation described it.
Despite nurturing a familial atmosphere in his offices, he installed two cameras on the small trading floor of the firm’s London operations so he could monitor the unit remotely from New York.
This Bernie also ran a money management business on the side for decades that he kept hidden far from colleagues, competitors and regulators.
While he managed billions of dollars for individuals and foundations, he shunned one-on-one meetings with most of his investors, wrapping himself in an Oz-like aura, making him even more desirable to those seeking access.
So who was the real Bernie Madoff? And what could have driven him to choreograph a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, to which he is said to have confessed?
An easy answer is that Mr. Madoff was a charlatan of epic proportions, a greedy manipulator so hungry to accumulate wealth that he did not care whom he hurt to get what he wanted.
But some analysts say that a more complex and layered observation of his actions involves linking the world of white-collar finance to the world of serial criminals.
They wonder whether good old Bernie Madoff might have stolen simply for the fun of it, exploiting every relationship in his life for decades while studiously manipulating financial regulators.
“Some of the characteristics you see in psychopaths are lying, manipulation, the ability to deceive, feelings of grandiosity and callousness toward their victims,” says Gregg O. McCrary, a former special agent with the F.B.I. who spent years constructing criminal behavioral profiles.
Mr. McCrary cautions that he has never met Mr. Madoff, so he can’t make a diagnosis, but he says Mr. Madoff appears to share many of the destructive traits typically seen in a psychopath. That is why, he says, so many who came into contact with Mr. Madoff have been left reeling and in confusion about his motives.
“People like him become sort of like chameleons. They are very good at impression management,” Mr. McCrary says. “They manage the impression you receive of them. They know what people want, and they give it to them.”
As investigators plow through decades of documents, trying to decipher whether Mr. Madoff was engaged in anything other than an elaborate financial ruse, his friends remain dumbfounded — and feel deeply violated.
“He was a hero to us. The head of Nasdaq. We were proud of everything he had accomplished,” says Diana Goldberg, who once shared the 27-minute train ride with Mr. Madoff from their homes in Laurelton, Queens, to classes at Far Rockaway High School. “Now, the hero has vanished.”
If, in the end, Mr. Madoff is found to have been engaging in fraud for most of his career, then the hero never really existed.. Authorities say Mr. Madoff himself has confessed that he was the author of a longstanding and wide-ranging financial charade. His lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, declined to comment.
During the decades that Mr. Madoff built his business, he cast himself as a crusader, protecting the interests of smaller investors and bent on changing the way securities trading was done on Wall Street. To that end, like a burglar who knows the patrol routes of the police and can listen in on their radio scanners, he also actively wooed regulators who monitored his business.
“He once mentioned to me that he spent one-third of his time in Washington in the early 1990s, late 1980s,” says a person who has known Mr. Madoff for years but requested not to be identified because he does not want to be drawn into continuing litigation. “He was very involved with regulators. I think they used him as a sounding board and he looked to them like a white knight.”
“He was smart in understanding very early on that the more involved you were with regulators, you could shape regulation,” this individual adds. “But, if we find out that the Ponzi scheme goes back that far, then he was doing something much smarter. If you’re very close with regulators, they’re not going be looking over your shoulders that much. Very smart.”
MR. MADOFF spent his early years in Laurelton, a close-knit, Jewish enclave where he and his friends ate ice cream at the local five-and-ten and attended activities at the community center.
“It was an idyllic place to grow up in,” recalls Vera Gitten, who attended elementary school with him. She remembers him as “very thin,” a good student and extremely outgoing. She recalls a musical skit that he and his best friend wrote, rehearsed and performed for the class when they were in fifth or sixth grade.
“It was a broad company, sort of a ‘Sheik of Araby’ kind of thing where they wore costumes, which were their parents’ bedsheets, that made them look like they were desert sheiks,” Ms. Gitten says. “They would have us rolling.”
None of Mr. Madoff’s former elementary school friends could recall what his parents, Ralph and Sylvia, did for a living. According to Securities and Exchange Commission documents from the 1960s, it appears that his mother had a brokerage firm called Gibraltar Securities registered in her name with an address in Laurelton.
In 1963, the S.E.C. began investigating whether a number of firms, including Ms. Madoff’s, had failed to file financial reports and whether that required revoking their registrations. Early the next year, Ms. Madoff withdrew her registration and the S.E.C. dropped its proceedings against her.
While Mr. Madoff’s friends remember little about his parents, they all clearly recall his childhood sweetheart, and future wife, Ruth Alpern, a pretty, bubbly blonde who was voted “Josie College” by her Far Rockaway High School class.
Mr. Madoff, after graduating from high school in 1956, spent a year at the University of Alabama, where he joined Sigma Alpha Mu, a Jewish fraternity. A year later, he transferred to Hofstra University, where he graduated in 1960 with a degree in political science. He later became a Hofstra trustee, but the university never invested with him.
Mr. Madoff spent the next year at Brooklyn Law School, attending classes in the morning and running his side business — installing and fixing sprinkler systems — in the afternoon and evening, recalled Joseph Kavanau, who attended law school with Mr. Madoff. When Mr. Kavanau married his wife, Jane, who was Mrs. Madoff’s best friend from Queens, Mr. Madoff was the best man.
“Bernie was very industrious,” Mr. Kavanau explains. “He was going to school and working at the same time.”
Mr. Madoff was never interested in practicing law, Mr. Kavanau says. Instead, Mr. Madoff left law school and, using $5,000 saved from being a lifeguard and from his sprinkler business, joined the ranks of Wall Street in the 1960s.
“For many years when we were first married, my wife and I would go to their house or we would all go out to dinner, maybe a couple of nights a month,” said Mr. Kavanau, who says that the first home Mr. Madoff shared with his bride was a modest, one-bedroom apartment in Bayside, Queens.
Over the years, however, the two couples drifted apart. From time to time, Mr. Kavanau said he turned on the television and caught a glimpse of Mr. Madoff — now a successful financier — being interviewed, realizing that he had made his mark on Wall Street.
“The last time I saw him, we had run into him and Ruth on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach,” Mr. Kavanau recalls. “We were definitely aware of how well he was living.”
When asked if he can understand what happened, what may have motivated or prompted Mr. Madoff to eventually take such risks after building up a seemingly successful business, Mr. Kavanau paused.
“There is no way to. I can’t make it add up. It doesn’t make sense,” he says, growing increasingly frustrated. “I cannot take the Bernie I knew and turn him into the Bernie we’re hearing about 24/7. It doesn’t compute.”
WHEN Mr. Madoff arrived on Wall Street in the 1960s, he was an outsider. His small firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, got its start by matching buyers of inexpensive “penny stocks” with sellers in the growing over-the-counter market. This hardscrabble market was made up of stocks that were not listed on the tonier New York Stock Exchange or American Stock Exchange.
In the O.T.C. market, it was common practice — and completely legal — for firms like Mr. Madoff’s to try to attract big trades to their shop by offering to pay clients a penny or two for every share they traded. His firm would make money by pocketing the difference in the “spread,” or the gap between the offering and selling price for the stocks.
During the mid-1970s, when changes in the rules allowed his firm and others like it to trade more expensive and more prestigious blue-chip stocks, Mr. Madoff began gaining market share from the Big Board.
“He was a man with a good idea who was also a terrific salesman,” says Charles V. Doherty, the former president of the Midwest Stock Exchange. “He was ahead of everyone.”
While completely legitimate, the practice of paying for trading orders was entirely distasteful to blue bloods on the established exchanges who saw the actions, ultimately, as a threat to their livelihood. Around this time, Mr. Madoff began cultivating key relationships with regulators.
“He was the darling of the regulators, without question. He was doing everything the regulators wanted him to do,” says Nicholas A. Giordano, the former president of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. “They wanted him to be a fierce competitor to the New York Stock Exchange, and he was doing it.”
Current and former S.E.C. regulators have come under fire, accused of failing to adequately supervise Mr. Madoff and being too cozy with him.
Arthur Levitt Jr., who served as S.E.C. chairman from 1993 to early 2001, has acknowledged that he occasionally turned to Mr. Madoff for advice about how the market functioned. But Mr. Levitt strongly denies that Mr. Madoff had undue influence at the S.E.C. or that the agency’s enforcement staff deferred to him.
Mr. Levitt said that he was unaware that Mr. Madoff even ran an investment management business, and that Mr. Madoff never had special access to him or other S.E.C. officials. He also noted that he and Mr. Madoff opposed one another on several key industry issues.
“The notion that Madoff came to my office many times is a fiction,” Mr. Levitt says. “And the notion that he did my bidding is so fantastic that it defies belief.”
Mr. Madoff’s firm was an early adopter of new trading technologies. And, during the early 1990s, he served three one-year stints as head of the Nasdaq, an electronic exchange that has competed vigorously and won market share from brick-and-mortar exchanges like the Big Board.
Despite this flair for the experimental, Mr. Madoff routinely told his employees to adopt the mantra “KISS,” or “keep it simple, stupid.” He was, after all, a man of precise and controlled habits. He smoked Davidoff cigars and, in London, tailored his suits at Kilgour on Savile Row and bought many of his watches at Somlo Antiques.
Associates and others acquainted with him said his punctilious ways sometimes veered into obsessive-compulsive behavior. His office, for example, always had to be immaculate.
According to a former employee, who requested anonymity because of continuing litigation and because, he said, regulators have told Madoff employees not to speak to the media, Mr. Madoff scouted the office for potential filth. Once, when he spotted an employee eating a pear at his desk in New York, this person said, Mr. Madoff spied some juice dripping onto the gray carpet.
“What do you think you are doing?” this person recalls Mr. Madoff demanding. Eating a pear, the employee replied. Mr. Madoff ripped the soiled carpet tile from the floor, then rushed to a closet to retrieve a similar swatch to replace it.
Julia Fenwick, who was the office manager for Mr. Madoff’s London operation from 2001 until the unit was shuttered in December, said that “everything had to be perfect” and that “you never left paper on your desk — ever.”
Although he visited the London office only a couple of times a year, usually on the way to his vacation home in France, Mr. Madoff still reveled in micromanaging everything there, including the office décor.
The London unit recently finished spending about $700,000 for a refurbishment that recreated the black and gray palette of Mr.. Madoff’s New York office and his private jet, Ms. Fenwick says. The result was office furniture made from black ash, black trimming on gray walls, black computers, black mouse pads and even a black refrigerator on the trading floor.
But former employees and friends say Mr. Madoff’s obsession with order and control of his environment never led them to believe that deeper problems were afoot.
“He appeared to believe in family, loyalty and honesty,” said one former Madoff employee, who asked to remain anonymous because of the continuing litigation and investigations. “Never in your wildest imagination would you think he was a fraudster.”
Despite all of the easy money that rolled into Mr. Madoff’s firm for much of its existence, financial pressures began to emerge there during the last several years after Wall Street changed the way securities were priced and as new competition emerged.
In his asset management business, however, Mr. Madoff continued to haul in fresh rounds of money from unsuspecting investors hungry for the predictable and handsome returns he booked year after year, without missing a beat.
Employees who were veterans in the New York and London offices were even allowed to invest with Mr. Madoff, according to people who worked at the firm. Some employees are said to have given Mr. Madoff a large portion of their life savings — all of which now appears to be gone.
Like so many others who invested with him, his employees weren’t lured to his funds simply by a promise of outsize returns. Rather, they say, they sought the security of investing with a man they knew and trusted. The Bernie they thought they knew.
Mr. Madoff’s confidence reminds J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist, of criminals he has studied.
“Typically, people with psychopathic personalities don’t fear getting caught,” explains Dr. Meloy, author of a 1988 textbook, “The Psychopathic Mind.” “They tend to be very narcissistic with a strong sense of entitlement.”
All of which has led some forensic psychologists to see some similarities between him and serial killers like Ted Bundy. They say that whereas Mr. Bundy murdered people, Mr. Madoff murdered wallets, bank accounts and people’s sense of financial trust and security.
Like Mr. Bundy, Mr. Madoff used a sharp mind and an affable demeanor to create a persona that didn’t exist, according to this view, and lulled his victims into a false sense of security. And when publicly accused, he seemed to show no remorse.
Television footage of Mr. Madoff entering his Park Avenue apartment building after federal authorities charged him with fraud in December doesn’t seem to show a man exhibiting any sorrow or regret. With a battery of reporters asking him whether he felt remorse, he declined to respond and pushed his way into his building. (Thus far, his only public apology has apparently been in letters left in his lobby for fellow tenants who suffered through the media circus outside their building.)
To some extent, analysts of criminal behavior say, defining Mr. Madoff is complicated by the wide variety of possible explanations for his scheme: a desire to accumulate vast wealth, a need to dominate others and a need to prove that he was smarter than everyone else. That was shown, they say, in an ability to dupe investors and regulators for years.
Like the former F.B.I. agent Mr. McCrary, Dr.. Meloy cautions that he has not met Mr. Madoff and can’t make a clinical diagnosis. Nevertheless, he says individuals with psychopathic personalities tend to strongly believe that they’re special.
“They believe ‘I’m above the law,’ and they believe they cannot be caught,” Mr. Meloy says. “But the Achilles’ heel of the psychopath is his sense of impunity. That is, eventually, what will bring him down.”
He says it makes complete sense that Mr. Madoff would have courted regulators, even if he ran the risk of exposing his own actions by doing so.
“In a scheme like this, it’s very important to keep those who could threaten you very close to you,” Dr. Meloy explains. “You want to develop them as allies and shape how they go about their business and their attitudes toward you.”
INDEED, if it is shown that Mr. Madoff fooled regulators for decades, that would have been a “heady, intoxicating” experience and would have fueled a sense of entitlement and grandiosity, Mr. McCrary says.
And by reeling in people from the Jewish community, from charities, from public institutions and from prominent and relatively sophisticated investor networks worldwide, Mr. Madoff wreaked havoc on many lives.
That’s why Mr. McCrary says it’s not too far-fetched to compare Mr. Madoff to serial killers.
“With serial killers, they have control over the life or death of people,” Mr. McCrary explains. “They’re playing God. That’s the grandiosity coming through. The sense of being superior. Madoff is getting the same thing. He’s playing financial god, ruining these people and taking their money.”
MUNRO'S COMMENTARY
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Speaking of Chivalry or the "Leal Mon".
In Memory of
Captain ALEXANDER ALAN MACKENZIE
4th Bn., Seaforth Highlanders
who died age 26
on 23 March 1918
Son of the late Alexander and Helen MacKenzie.
Remembered with honour
ARRAS MEMORIAL
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/hudsoncrash2.pdf Graphic of miracle flight
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5529137.ece
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/science_news/4300211.html
Here are some interesting articles related to Chivalry and manhood.
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2541
http://spectator.org/archives/2007/04/11/groping-for-god-and-country-an
“CHIVALRY or the LEAL MON”
BY RICHARD K. MUNRO
Chivalry was present when Airbus A320 crashed on the Hudson. It was present in the person of the Captain Sullenberger, in the crew and in the passengers. [Chesley Sullenberger] “walked the plane twice after everyone else got off and tried to verify that there was nobody else on board. This pilot did a wonderful job," said Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York. The remarkable exploit of Captain Sully was the prefect example of a chivalrous hero who followed a manly code of ethics that puts DUTY and others –the Common Good- ahead of self at all times. Chivalry was present that cold April night in 1912 when the great ship the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. A stunning statistic from the calamity reveals the ethos of the day: While seventy-four percent of the female passengers survived, only 20% of the men aboard the tragic luxury liner perished. The rule for the lifeboats: women and children first! I remember reading that Winston Churchill was once asked what he would do if the Soviets or the Nazis triumphed in the end; he said he would prefer not to survive in such a world. There are things, in other words, worse than death. If civility, right and wrong, family, faith and chivalry were to die then I, too, would prefer not to survive to endure such a world. Chivalry might be down but it is not out.
Women and children first are indicative of a belief and hope in the future of family, society, country, faith and civilization. It is recognition that men are expendable in extremis. Women, mothers and children are the future. “Women and children first” is not just a time-worn phrase. It bespeaks, honor, fidelity and chivalry - a higher consciousness- one nurtured by the great legacy of Western Civilization, itself a product of Judeo-Christian religious thought and norms of Right and Wrong developed over centuries. Unfortunately, these virtues contend with powerful, often destructive influences from a hedonistic popular culture in the movies, Las Vegas, rock music, television, sports that bombard us with outrageously sexual images of men and women that are not just inappropriate but exploitative even perverse, pornographic and degenerate.
There is no question I am of the Old School. I was raised to be a Highland Gentleman what Walter Scott called a “Doonie Wassal” (Dhuine-uasal Gàidhealach). (As I write I listen to FLOWERS OF THE FOREST a tune and song I must have heard in the womb). Such songs like this or KELVIN GROVE or the NAMELESS LASSIE or RIBHINN CHOIBHNEIL (The Kindly Lassie) which put me at one with the many past events: round the old Baldwin Hamilton upright singing with my mother and sisters as the old folk listened, St. Mungo Cathedral January 14, 2005, the Edinburgh Tattoo in 2000 and 1967, The Park Bar (in Glasgow) and Kelvin Grove in 1967,2000 and 2005, Kearny High School Auditorium 1975, Madison Square Garden 1959 (we never went to basketball games but to see the tattoos of Highland Regiments particularly the Black Watch and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.)
http://www.rampantscotland.com/songs/blsongs_forest.htm
Sing on, sing mair o' thae auld sangs, {SING MORE OF THE OLD SONGS)
For ilka ane can tell {FOR EACH ONE CAN TELL
0' joy or sorrow i' the past {OF JOY OR SORROW IN THE PAST
Where mem'ry lo'es to dwell, {WHERE MEMORY LOVES TO DWELL}
http://www.rampantscotland.com/songs/blsongs_sangs.htm
Victorian literature, classical literature, the Bible, traditional Christian prayers and practices were very strong in my family and quite literarily a part of every day life. Growing up as a boy I never remember a single day without books being opened, poems recited, music being played and songs being song though not the songs popular of the time. My son is still astonished that I don’t know the popular music of the 1950’s or 1960’s –supposedly my time- I know the music of the 1850’s and pre-1919 Britain and Europe especially. Naturally, I had heard of Elvis Presley but unless he was singing hymns or traditional music I simply had no interest. I preferred Broadway musicals, opera, classical music and traditional music which seemed much richer linguistically and intellectually to the immature yelpings and banging about of pop and rock music.
My father, in particular, was a model of gentlemanly behavior and what the Greeks called sophrosyne (moderation). He rarely drank anything but wine or sherry. I never saw him intoxicated though he admitted to me he had had his moments of great Celtic exhuberance –V-J day for example. I loved and admired my Auld Pop for his kindness and virtues but temperance was not one of his virtues. I think he tried to drink to kill the pain and loneliness of having survived two world wars unlike almost all of his friends and comrades in arms. Nonetheless he was a mild-mannered gentleman and was always tender with children and women though literally ready to lay down his life to protect those he loved. When he was occupied reading to his grandchildren or teaching them he was too occupied and responsible to drink. He was a ‘leal mon’. In fact, he saved my life when I was an infant, a story that my sisters and parents recounted to me. Perhaps this was the beginning of the great bond of love we had and still have. He had tremendous strength and physical courage and throughout his long life he risked his life many times to save his friends and comrades in arms. He was awarded the Military Medal for courage at 2nd Ypres and it was said he and his comrades would have earned the Victoria Cross except for the fact that there were no officers to document their heroism. The Dins (Indian Soldiers) called him “Changa Dost” (the good comrade) because he would bring back wounded Indian soldiers just the same as wounded Scottish soldiers, most notably Captain Sandy MacKenzie, ASH (later Seaforth Highlanders). Major MacKenzie was critically wounded in the Struma Valley and unable to make it back to allied lines but Auld Pop tended to his wounds, nursed him and carried him on his back for hours bringing him to the aid station. He invalided out of the service but reenlisted during the crisis of 1918 and tragically was killed in France. That was heartbreaking to the men he had led and who thought he had made it back to “Old Blighty” safe and sound. Sandy MacKenzie was only 26.MacKenzie is listed as a Captain in the Commonwealth war graves records but I was told that Captain MacKenzie was posthumously promoted to Major. I have a gold watch his widow gave to my grandfather in 1919.
NE OBLIVISCARIS (do not forget).
http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=3077733
I have not achieved much in this life –I am just a humble schoolmaster- but I have not been guilty of cruelty, neglect or abuse of elders, children or women and I have tried to be a guiding parent and a loyal and faithful husband to my wife. A good conscience is my only reward of a chivalrous gentleman. There have been many times when I think, indeed, I am the “last of the Mohicans” but I think of what Chivalry is and think it is worthy to speak of and to teach others by word and by example.
John Stuart Mill said:
“Though the practice of chivalry fell even more sadly short of its theoretic standard than practice generally falls below theory, it remains one of the most precious monuments of the moral history of our race, as a remarkable instance of a concerted and organized attempt by a most disorganized and distracted society, to raise up and carry into practice a moral ideal greatly in advance of its social condition and institutions; so much so as to have been completely frustrated in the main object, yet never entirely inefficacious, and which has left a most sensible, and for the most part a highly valuable impress on the ideas and feelings of all subsequent times. “
Chivalry spells out certain ethical standards that foster the development of manhood. Politeness and deference towards others, especially women, children and elders is the mark of a gentleman. The virtues of chivalry offer more, however, than mere pleasantries and politeness. They were, are and remain beautiful and noble ideals! They should appeal to the true man. They give purpose and meaning to male strength, and therefore support the overall workings of society for the Common Good. We admire men who are strong, but if their strength is not directed to uphold what is good, honest and just, what value does it have? The SS were strong but they were evil. The Marines I served with were men of honor but I am sure they were every bit the fighting men the toughest SS men were. Chivalrous gentlemen are called to use their strength to defend those who cannot defend themselves, and commit themselves to just causes.
Nothing is more unmanly, in my opinion, and petty, than delighting in scandal and gossip. Not only do you harm those who are victims of gossip, you harm yourself as well. How? By becoming a creature who is unloving. It is wrong to delight in the guilt or suffering of others, or to feed the flames of scandal, a major occupation of nightly television. I am interested in the news of the day but I turn off gossip about so-called celebrities, murdered wives and children. I usually am the last one in the school to know that so and so was cheating on so and so. I simply have no interest in the private sexual lives or preferences of my colleagues. We talk about students, the political and cultural affairs of the day, literature and sometimes sports or our families. I don’t talk a lot about TV because, I must admit, I am not with it when it comes to the latest TV show. I do talk about movies because I love movies particularly classic movies but week after week I look at what is in the cinemas and really I have no interest. Once again, I have more in common with people who are married and have children so I tend to socialize with them though I certainly don’t ignore younger single teachers.
Men ought to be courteous and polite to others, generous helpmates to their wives and elders in their family, their faith community, their social world and their country. My mother, who was a model of Caritas (Christian love), used to say: “God made us strong only for short while so that we can help others.” A man, in my opinion, should never neglect his home or his family duties and should do his best at his work –if not for himself then to provide for his loved ones.
What are the virtues a man -a “leal mon” should have? . Above all he must have integrity or display that the Greeks called “alethic” virtue. Truth must be important to a real man.
One must avoid the temptation to shade the truth, boast or lie, especially to those we love. Sometimes honesty requires us to say things that seem blunt or harsh but a measure of tact, gentleness and a humble, loving approach can take the sting out of honest criticism. He must be honest and share with his children the personal value integrity, modesty, chastity, faithfulness, patriotism, motherhood and faith has for him.
I always tell my catechists that there were times in my life when I did not go to Mass as often as I should have but I never lied about to anyone especially my mother. When she called me up to ask if I had gone to Mass I could never bring myself to lie to her and I promised I would not neglect my obligation. But I also tell them that as the years go on I really enjoy going to Mass and really miss it if I don’t go. For it is when I am at Mass –and when I am singing- that I am closest with my dear departed ones.
A man must courageous but be gentle to the weak and with a strong sense of justice which means having gratitude, displaying mercy and being generous. He must have respect for his marriage partner for life. The word respect comes from the Latin “respicere” meaning “to look at”; one does not ignore others; one looks at them with respect and worth with all their assets and weaknesses. He must be humble enough to laugh at himself and at the world. Humility means an extreme awareness of the limits of all virtue and of one’s own limits as well. Not all can be done and not all can be known. Scott wrote that “true genius of the highest class is always humble.” Men are beings of the earth (humus in Latin whence humility). In my experience the most generous people are also the most humble. Wherever there is humility, says St. Augustine, there is also Charity.” I believe the Gael of old –before the Saints and Scholars and the Greeks hardly knew humility as they did not know mercy or charity. Aristotle did not seem to recognize this virtue in his Nichomachean Ethics. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html
A man, must be, faithful and loyal to those he loves. This is the essence of being a “true man” a “leal mon”. If we want to grasp the essence of martial fidelity we need to understand what makes a married couple a married couple. I dislike the term “couple” or ‘”significant other” very much. My uncle Jos –a very frank and sometimes brutal man less gentlemanly than my father- was fond of the term “concubine” which if you think of it is just a fancy word for bed-companion or a “piece of ass.” One would think a woman would aspire to more than being the “squeeze” of the moment. But it is quite true English sometimes lacks the proper vocabulary of love and marriage it seems to me as compared to French, Spanish or Greek.
The highest compliment my Auld Pop could give a man was to call him a “leal mon a goodjin” (a loyal man a thorough good person someone you count on to the death and I mean to the death.) If you could not be counted on to the death in all circumstances to behave with honor , fidelity and courage you were not a ‘leal mon.” (the Highland word is dileas meaning faithful, loyal, loving, trusted)
A good man to Auld Pop was simply a man who would not forsake “his lass nor his brother in arms”.
A man of justice and courage who would never turn his back to his friend or in the face of the enemy.
That was what was a “leal mon,”
The concept is analogus to what the Jews would call a “mensch” (a man of integrity and honor) or the Spanish would call (un hombre de bien) Leon Rosten defined a ‘mensch” as . “Someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being “a real mensch” is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous. “ There is no question in my mind that there is such a thing as “leal mon” and it is an ideal I hope my son always follows.
But for the sake of this short commentary I will use the world man or true man as the synonym for “leal mon’, mensch or hombre de Loyalty denotes a relationship that is based on truth and commitment. If we are fortunate, we have companions who are loyal to us—but we must be loyal to others and other things as well. I have always tried to be loyal to my school as my grandfather was to his Regiment and I was to the Marines. Remember, loyalty is a virtue to cultivate, even when it is not reciprocated.
To me fidelity –fidelity to what is good and true- is one of the highest virtues. Fidelity is faithful love to love and through love. We owe fidelity to selfless courage, to suffering, to the blood of martyrs and heroes, to sacrifice, to endurance and to love.
“Remember the people you came from” is a call for giving your forefolk their just due and, I believe gives one a stronger identity.
According to Montaigne in fidelity lies the true basis of personal identity: “The foundation of my being and identity is purely moral; it consists in the fidelity to the faith I swore myself….I take the responsibility of a certain past as MY OWN, and because I intend to recognize my present commitment as still my own in the future.”.
The past is no more ; the future is still to come. The past is in need of our compassion and gratitude; for the past cannot stand up for itself. Such is the duty of memory: compassion and gratitude for the past. Yet in the face of oblivion there is memory. This fragility is the essence of mind, which no less mortal than we, is yet alive within us, as mind in remembering its mortality.
Once again I prefer the Spanish here over English because it distinguishes clearly between an ephemeral hook up and un matriomonio which is one thing: husband-and-wife. Gaelic also has one word for married couple and that is ‘caraid’ which also means a pair (or twins).
There is no question in my mind that when it came to the importance of fidelity in marriage my Spanish wife and I had completely the same culture of fidelity and sincerity. Even though I was an American –it was more important that I was the son of Scottish Catholic and a devout Christian mother –an Islander of the Free Church tradition- because it meant I shared with my Spanish fiancée the common values of the Old Europe or Christendom.
There is no question in my mind so many Irishmen and Highlanders in particular marry Europeans such as Poles, Italians, Portuguese and Spaniards because they feel closeness to those cultures than many English –being highly secularized- simply do not feel. There is no question that Rome and Jerusalem were more important to us than London –a place where no one in my family ever lived or had any special allegiance to.
People often express surprise that I never married a Scottish or Irish girl (I dated a few point of fact) but the simple fact is most of the British or Scottish girls I met were very secular, progressive and left wing even anti-American. Even many of the Irish-American New Yorkers I met were far too avant guarde for me and few were serious Catholics.
By contrast, the Italians I knew and the Spaniards and Cubans I knew were pro-American and held traditional values very similar to mine. There is no question that for me, it was in the cards I would marry someone devoutly Christian who had strong family based values. Marrying someone in my faith and who shared my faith was far more important to me than marrying someone of my parent’s nationality or my nationality. Sharing the faith of your spouse is an important foundation in maintaining fidelity in the marriage.
Mere sexual congress, how often repeated, is, it should be obvious, is insufficient to create a bond of fidelity. Most men, I know would do anything to have (to speak bluntly) “a piece of ass”. I believe mere cohabitation, however lasting, is not true fidelity.
A man who pledges his love and protection to a woman wants her to have the honor and protection of sharing his name, his children, his home, his property and the support and love of his entire family for her sake and for sake of the children. The passion of deep sexual attraction must be in a serious heterosexual relationship at some time but this intense passion cannot last except in memory. No married couple could ever last without this kind of fidelity of each spouse to his shared history, which is a mixture of trust and gratitude that makes a married couple happy. This kind of love, which we observed in our parents who were married 59 ½ years and separated only by war and death, is more moving and impressive than the narrow love of Hugh Heffner or even the pure passionate love of young lovers. To me this kind of fidelity is more precious than any other kind.
There is no such thing as an ‘open marriage’ and divorce is a great betrayal of fidelity. I consider myself very lucky to have avoided the scourge of divorce. My Auld Pop always emphasized there was no word for divorce in his language –one was separated by war or death only. When I asked him, as a small boy, what this divorce was –it seemed to me something very sad , perhaps a form of torture , like tormenting Christ with spears- and he answered somewhat ironically, “Dinna fash yersel’ (bother) about THAT; it’s something they do in America!” To which of course I protested we WERE living in America and he replied, “Aye, but that dinna mean we have to pick up their bad habits.”
One of my uncles married an American born girl and she divorced him, after just a few years and two children, in a most savage, cruel and selfish fashion. But my uncle , a very religious man, treated her with respect long after the divorce, picking her up at the airport, putting chains on her tires in the snow even lending her money. He explained to me that “in the eyes of God we are still married.” He never spoke ill of his ex-wife and he had ample cause to do so. THAT is fidelity. I tried to learn from my Uncle’s mistake. He got talked into marriage by his mother and the woman who turned him down several years before but then found out he was the best prospect she had met. So before she lost her looks and figure –she was pushing 30- she wrote to his mother to find out where he was –he was stationed in Germany at the time- and basically threw herself at him and he fell for the bait. It is good advice never to marry someone who tries to win over your parents more than you. It is also good advice never to go back to someone who “dumps” you and then has “second thoughts.” In my opinion, one cannot trust the fidelity of such a person. “Better to have loved and lost than never have love at all, “ was a saying I heard my Uncle say many times. His wife came to his funeral –he is buried in Arlington Cemetery- and told me that my uncle was better husband than she was a wife. By then she was an old, stout lonely woman well past middle age and nothing like the angry avant guarde confident feminist I had met thirty years before. She had a chance of fidelity and she threw it away. I think she regretted it. She must have known she sinned gravely against the duties of married life and betrayed a trust. She probably never did love my uncle and so did not respect him either. In my opinion, she was a terrible example for her children. How can one swear to love somebody forever and love no one else as husband and wife? If the love dies what’s the point –some people might say- of maintaining the fiction and responsibilities and demands of it? Some people seem to say “I will not love you forever but I will be grateful that we shared love for a while.” That is more than nothing but it is not fidelity. It says love me for a long as you want to –as long as I am young and physically attractive or successful- but then ditch me when something younger or better rolls along. That kind of attitude must be something but it is not fidelity.
There are at least six reasons NOT TO MARRY (a gentleman thinks of such things for himself , his charges and his friends).
#1 Don’t marry someone you don’t really know. If you are pressured to rush to the altar as my Uncle Norman was you have to ask yourself. “What is the reason for the rush?” If he or she truly cares they will give you time to be sure.
#2 Don’t every marry someone you don’t like or have anything in common with BESIDES sex and physical attraction. Everyone I have ever known married someone with whom he or she felt a strong sexual attraction. I could be wrong but this is the easiest part of a relationship. Speaking as a man most women 16 to 60 are sexually attractive at some point in their lives. Once again, speaking from personal experience, most women hit their peak attractiveness from age 25 to about 42. Most women, just like most men, unless they work very hard at it, start to lose the battle of the bulge in their 40’s. Once again, perhaps it is just me, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. If I compare the looks of my friend’s wives who are excessively thin they seem more pinched, more wrinkled and less attractive with each passing year. Other women, with a more matronly look, remain very pleasant to be with and to look at. Some women are astonishingly beautiful for a short period of time and others have a high lifetime batting average and remain attractive for a longer period of time. There is such a thing as growing old gracefully. I can think of nothing more hideous and ridiculous for a 60 year old woman trying to dress like a 19 year old virgin. I once had a chance to meet the opera singer Beverly Sills. She had a wonderful smile and personality. She was a very attractive woman but no one would ever say that she was girlish or thin. She merely looked her age and looked good at it. By contrast I met Eleanor Parker in 1976 –one of Hollywood’s great beauties of the 1940’s and 1950’s now most famous for the role of the forty something Countess in The Sound of Music. She was getting ready for the previews of a rival of Pal Joey. She looked ghastly. She had obviously had one facelift or several and her face was so taut she could hardly smile or make any expression whatsoever. Miss Parker was overweight but less so than Beverly Sills but she was obviously wearing a tight dress one or two sizes too small for her. She could hardly walk it was so tight. The story was the managing director of the Circle in the Square Theater told her to get in her costume or she was fired. I think he knew she COULDN’ T get IN her costume. He must have also been shocked at her appearance as well and must have felt he wasn’t losing anything by firing her. She had obviously lost her looks. But the point is Beverely Sills and Eleanor Parker were both about the same age (in their 50’s) but Beverley Sills still looked like Beverley Sills; Eleanor Parker looked like a zombie with a mask. She was almost unrecognizable. Anyway Eleanor Parker was fired and I never saw her performance. The bottom line is if you can’t respect the behavior, habits and values of your potential mate, rethink the situation. What will it be like with this person once the haze of romantic love fades? Could you love your wife (once again, speaking as a man) if she lost her size 6 figure? Let’s face it multiple pregnancies and the years usually wreak havoc with a woman’s figure. And time does not remain still for any of us in any case. It is a mistake to marry for beauty alone, a very big mistake.
#3 If the people around you who know you well and love you –your parents, siblings, close relatives, teachers, and wise friends- are counseling you against marriage to a certain person, you must pause. Although they don’t know your potential spouse as well as you do, they are not as emotionally mixed up as you are by the strong sexual attraction or romantic feeling you have for that other person. This is particularly true if the couple is sexually active. Nothing fools you that you have to have your spouse like an active sex life before marriage. I wonder what purpose a honeymoon serves for people like that. And why even wear white? But if people around you are expressing doubts you should at least give yourself some time to think about what you are doing. Imagine, for example, if your spouse had no money, lost all of his or her teeth and gained 100 pounds. My father always said to me that I should look at the mother of the potential bride because it was a reasonable indication of what the daughter would look like in 25 or 30 years with 25, 30 or 50 additional pounds. I would add another proviso too. I don’t think it is important to marry for money and position. I think marrying for personal happiness and family reasons are the most important. But that having been said there is something one should always consider. It is one thing to marry someone who has next to no money but it is another to marry someone with extravagant tastes and $50,000 in debt!!!! Most marriages fall apart for two basic reasons: lack of sexual compatibility and financial distress.
#4 building upon that last point. Never marry anyone in whom there are signs of unstable behavior. If you beloved needs to be drunk or high to have a good time, I think it is a serious cause to worry. If he or she can never hold down any kind of job at all in the last few years find out why. Can’t he or she get along with the boss or with coworkers.. Is the discipline of work too much for him or her? Once again, I have never been a great success in life but I have always worked. I worked my way up from being a laborer in construction and unloading rail cars to sales, to being a bank employee, then finally a Community College instructor and high school teacher. No one has ever asked me for me resume or offered me a job but I have always been respected as someone who was a hard worker, honest and loyal.
#5 A lastly to reiterate a point mentioned before if your primary drive for getting married is an overpowering urge to have –or continue to have –sex with this person, STOP. Sex is important for a good marriage but sex is NOT love. It is absurd to overvalue physical love. Speaking as a man, men are beasts and I think it is true to say, that in the dark, as has been said, women are all the same if that’s all you want from a woman. But once again that is not love. Real love is sharing laughter, sharing experience, sharing children, sharing affection, trust. Physical love (eros) can provide the spark and the glue for the beginning of a relationship but it cannot provide the substances. Being in love and having love in a marriage is something other and something more than being sexually aroused. Not all desire is love though it may always be lust. The desire for a woman period might just be lust but the desire for a specific woman is another. Some people say this is love too but I do not ; love that is merely transitory and sexual is not love merely as Anthony Burgess called it in A Clockwork Orange, “the old in and out”.
Nonetheless, alienation of affections is one of the primary reasons marriage fail. They say the French (the elite anyway) have their solution –it seems horrible to me and contrary to fidelity and honesty- a man keeps his lover and his wife separately. That is to say one has (presumably young, thin and attractive) temporary lover and a permanent mother-manager. Virtual bigamy or polygamy you might call it. It seems like a bore to me. If you wife is your partner and best friend don’t you want to spend as much time as possible with your best friend? But there is no question, however, the issue of extramarital sex is present in many marriages. Once again, speaking as a man, one must avoid excessive temptations and exercise self-control. Most of my women friends are safely married or far away. I never pretend to be unmarried and do not socialize with younger unmarried women. It seems to me Lotharios must neglect their families, their work or their intellectual life because if one is dedicated to those things one simply has no time to roll up ephemeral sexual contests. Once –just once- while I was studying at UVA I went to a spaghetti dinner at the Catholic parish in the university. What a mistake! The participants were overwhelmingly young women in their early to mid 20’s. I was in my late 40’s at the time. I was very polite but I did not stick around and I never took the bus to that church again. If I am alone I make sure I go to early Mass. Sometimes when I am alone on a business trip or home alone I may have a conversation at restaurant or bar with a younger woman –a college student for example- but only in an avuncular fashion. I can’t understand teachers who want to date their students. Of course, I love my students and want to best for them but because I love them I want to do them no harm. I am there to teach them not to seduce them or abuse them.
#6 Never get married because you feel you have to or everyone else is getting married. It is chivalry to treat your date with respect. It is foolishness to marry someone because OOPS she says she is pregnant. I have known friends who married their pregnant girl friends but did not know if they were the father. That is no way to start a marriage. Once again fidelity and trust are the basis of any good relationship.
In choosing this unique person for our mate, this combination of history and charm, this merging of flesh and soul, we are looking for a lifetime of love that will sustain us. If we are wise we will come to understand that genuine love is not a free gift but an earned achievement. Perhaps we catch love when it comes our way like a fever or virus; I do not know. But I do know this true love is based on fidelity and it is up to us to learn how to grow in love.
A marriage, or matriomonio presupposes love and duration. My father knew Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 by heart and I often heard his collection of Roland Colman recordings of the Sonnets. As a small boy it was made clear to me that Shakespeare was almost as authoritative as the Bible or Burns and there is no question it was an important part of my education as man or gentleman. He also made it clear to me how much he loved my mother. And let me say that my Auld Pop was widowed never talked about any other woman except his wife. She was so talked about and so quoted by my father and mother and grandfather that I almost came to think as if I had known her myself though she died almost twenty years before I was born. That is fidelity –to love someone who gave you so much love during your life that you never forget that person. Certainly love of that kind is a selfless love because the dead cannot do anything for you themselves except perhaps connect to you in communuion and comfort you through their souls and memory.
One of our favorite modern movies is Sense and Sensibility which uses this poem to show Marianne Dashwood’s conceptions of love. Ah, yes, love’s not Time’s fool:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
I have been called a hopeless romantic but to that charge I say romantic Highlanders have more fun and sing the best love songs because they know what chivalry and love is all about. As Burns sang “Gae seek your pleasures where you will etc.”
Chivalry speaks about romantic love and Highland Gentleman know about and care about romantic love and fidelity. They also know “modesty is the true beauty of woman”’; in other words modesty and chastity are sexy and very desirable. People today have lots of sex –or at least they boast about it- but they find relationships flat and devoid of romantic love. That is because Eros-love (sex) promises more than it can deliver, especially in regards to companionship, trust and permanence.
Why? Because we perceive romantic love as something spontaneous, something that does not demand work patience and a strong moral base. The wisdom, literature and songs of our forefolk tell us something that is quite the opposite. The very essence of romantic love, true love is commitment. This is where, in my opinion, chivalry provides a vital ingredient. Love relationships provide the laboratory where the virtues of chivalry are tested to their fullest, and the manliness of a “leal mon” is proved. With time and fidelity true love grows and true love not only stimulates the best in us but it is a recipe for happiness and love that can last a lifetime –and beyond.
Aye. “S truth I am telling ye!”
Cremin and Ravitch: Points of Sanity in an Insane World
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/education_in_blue.html
Cremin who, in The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, declared that the progressive fads, despite their lofty nostrums like "creative self-expression," resulted in sheer "chaos" when implemented by middling teachers, as has often been the case.
Diane Ravitch emphasized progressivism's most deleterious result. In The Troubled Crusade: American Education 1945-1980, she concluded that the practices of the "new" education in general, as early as the late 1940s, sought to change "students' attitudes and behavior to conform to social norms ... rather than subject matter acquisition," causing a decline in academic studies. (Plus ça change. The most prevalent criticism of the Reggio schools today is that it disregards the basic learning that children need to advance academically - and this, to reiterate, because the approach permits children to define their own lessons and projects.)
(All I can conclude is that there is much insanity in the country. The Auld Book has it better: “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child. “(Proverbs, xxii, 15). The silver lining, of course, is that such people are below ZPG so they will leave little trace on American culture as compared to Islam, Mormonism, Orthodox Judaism, Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism).
In my humble opinion, such people are just play acting at education and civilization. What a waste of time, effort and resources. I return to my classics –the only true education.
MUNRO
Cremin who, in The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, declared that the progressive fads, despite their lofty nostrums like "creative self-expression," resulted in sheer "chaos" when implemented by middling teachers, as has often been the case.
Diane Ravitch emphasized progressivism's most deleterious result. In The Troubled Crusade: American Education 1945-1980, she concluded that the practices of the "new" education in general, as early as the late 1940s, sought to change "students' attitudes and behavior to conform to social norms ... rather than subject matter acquisition," causing a decline in academic studies. (Plus ça change. The most prevalent criticism of the Reggio schools today is that it disregards the basic learning that children need to advance academically - and this, to reiterate, because the approach permits children to define their own lessons and projects.)
(All I can conclude is that there is much insanity in the country. The Auld Book has it better: “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child. “(Proverbs, xxii, 15). The silver lining, of course, is that such people are below ZPG so they will leave little trace on American culture as compared to Islam, Mormonism, Orthodox Judaism, Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism).
In my humble opinion, such people are just play acting at education and civilization. What a waste of time, effort and resources. I return to my classics –the only true education.
MUNRO
Sunday, January 4, 2009
HOW TO AVOID BEING POOR
TEMPERANTIA (sophrosyne)
This is how I introduce practical economics to my high school students. I tell them that two of the most important decisions in their lives will be 1) whom they choose to love 2) and what educational and job paths they choose to follow. I emphasize that education is for personal improvement and happiness but also to a large degree for utilitarian reasons particularly in this age of credentialiasm. I have great sympathy for the poor and most of my students are poor but I believe in this life" if you sweat you get and if you snooze you lose." I believe as much as possible young people must take charge of their lives and their education. It is my duty to help them make good decisions but ultimately it is up to them to make choices. They have to choose to study. Whatever the qualifications of their teachers their improvement must chiefly depend on themselves. I cannot think or study for my students. I can only help put them on the best way to think and study that I know. They have to decide how they are going to spend their lives and what purpose if any their lives will have.
(MUNRO)
HOW NOT TO BE POOR BY WALTER WILLIAMS
…. I thought of an excellent topic for the event: how not to be poor.
Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science.
First, graduate from high school.
Second, get married before you have children, and stay married.
Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage.
And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.
If you graduate from high school today with a B or C average, in most places in our country there's a low-cost or financially assisted post-high-school education program available to increase your skills.
Most jobs start with wages higher than the federal minimum wage , which is currently $5.15. {NOTE: the California minimum wage is $8.00}A man and his wife, even earning the minimum wage, would earn $21,000 annually. According to the Bureau of Census, in 2003, the poverty threshold for one person was $9,393, for a two-person household it was $12,015, and for a family of four it was $18,810. Taking a minimum-wage job is no great shakes, but it produces an income higher than the Bureau of Census' poverty threshold. Plus, having a job in the first place increases one's prospects for a better job.
The civil rights struggle is over, and it has been won. At one time, black Americans did not have the same constitutional protections as whites. Now, we do. Because the civil rights struggle is over and won is not the same as saying that there are not major problems for a large segment of the black community. What it does say is that they're not civil rights problems, and to act as if they are leads to a serious misallocation of resources.
-- Walter Williams, syndicated columnist and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.
N.B.
Like the Federal wage and hour law, State law often exempts particular occupations or industries from the minimum labor standard generally applied to covered employment. Particular exemptions are not identified in this table. Users are encouraged to consult the laws of particular States in determining whether the State's minimum wage applies to a particular employment.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/america.htm Check the minimum wage laws state to state.
See also
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm
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