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Thursday, January 28, 2021
Fwd: How EdTechs and higher ed institutions partner for rapid innovation
Fwd: The GameStop rebellion
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Monday, January 25, 2021
Cousin Celebration
Happy Summer To All
Past Project and News of Visit to Florida
Thanks for all the materials and contributions to our photo album for Aunt Audrey of Florida. The photo book turned out great with many photos covering the entire family. Aunt Audrey loved it.
We spent an afternoon with Audrey, Barbara and her children (David and Melody), Diane & Phil and their children (Joe and Jennifer), and Linda & Chuck (with Andrew and Chester). It was a wonderful visit, but too short a time.
New Members
It is exciting to learn that our extended family has grown in numbers with two new members. Stephen Taylor in July of 92 and Jennifer Marie Kirby in August 92.
Reasons to Celebrate
We’ve got good reasons for a celebration, now lets have one. A party is planned for Saturday, October 3, 1992 at noon (to whenever) at Duff Park in Penn Hills.
Directions to the Park and Party
Take the Penn Hills exit off of the Parkway East. Take the exit which blends into Rodi Road. Follow Rodi Road and turn LEFT off of Rodi Road onto Duff Road. The corner of Rodi and Duff has Alway Tires, Ryan Auto Glass and Newport Square.
Follow Duff Road up a long hill, and at the crest of the hill at a baseball field, make a sharp left turn. The road is before the school and beside the tennis courts. This road leads directly to the Park Pavilion and our party.
Bringing Things
If Uncle Joe’s family wold bring deserts and Aunt Margaretmary's family would bring salads, Uncle Leo’s family will do the rest.
RSVP
Please RSVP before September 25 and if you are unable to attend, please send news and pictures.
Love, Aunt Audrey
Sunday, January 24, 2021
Monday, January 18, 2021
Fwd from John: My thoughts on MLK day and beyond
--- Forwarded message ---------
From: John H.
Date: Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 10:38 PM
Subject: My thoughts on MLK day and beyond
Subject: My thoughts on MLK day and beyond
Martin Luther King was Angry and So Am I
As I sit here in the prelude to Martin Luther King Day I am angry, frustrated and depressed. This morning I tuned into our church service only to be advised that while we, as a predominately white church, were singing some black spirituals this was not to be seen as an appropriation of 'blackness' and that we shouldn't be ashamed to do so. But why should we ever have to be reminded of such a thing. Singing another culture's songs should always be seen as a celebration of that culture's traditions and a spreading of understanding. It made me upset insofar as it was just one more example of the current trend being imposed on us to apologize for the accident of being born 'white'. I refuse to be ashamed of who I am. I am, however, ashamed and deeply saddened by what many whites have done both historically and currently to people of color both in this nation and around the world.
Yes, "Black Lives Matter", but so do Palestinian and Afghani and Syrian and Iraqi and Yemeni and Iranian and Indonesian and Congolese and Sudanese and Libyans and Venezuelans and Hondurans and Cubans and all of the other people of the world which we Americans have been directly and indirectly complicitly involved in murdering – and not just historically, but at this very moment in the support of corporate greed and the expansion of empire. And, yes, this is an equal opportunity killing by Americans of all races and creeds, regularly celebrated in our corporate media as some perverted form of the defense of freedom. But freedom for whom?
What we call freedom in this nation is not freedom in any real sense of the word. It is an illusory meme draped over the our corporate killing ground to give us comfort while living in violent kleptocracy run by oligarchs and plutocrats whose only concern is grabbing everything possible regardless of the cost in human and environmental destruction. They succeed by controlling what we are allowed to know and how we are allowed to know it. They own the media which controls the propaganda which we are daily fed and they knowingly feed it to us in a manner to insure that we mere 'consumers' will always have reasons to hate one another – but never 'our betters'. Thus, our media minders insure that class issues are never allowed to rise to the surface of the discussion. We are always forced instead into issues of culture, race, gender or religious differences that are intended to separate rather than unite us.
One of the ways of doing this was devised by the CIA propaganda apparatus. That was to promote the idea that anyone suggesting that a conspiracy might exist from within the government was a "conspiracy theorist" and then equating such a person with being nothing more than a fringe loony. The problem is that there have been many actual historical conspiracies engaged in by high governmental officials of the United States – many by operatives of the CIA – which have been well documented – and they continue to this day. The reasoning, of course, is that by creating the 'brand' conspiracy theory as a loony tune concept would eliminate any possibility of actual high-level conspiracies from being exposed. And, for the most part, this has worked exactly as planned.
This is not to suggest that every conspiracy proposed is real or that some persons proposing them are not crazy as loons. This is what gives the whole scheme credibility. We know, for instance, that Bush's Iraq War started as the result of an actual conspiracy on the part of the Bush administration, planned well before 9/11, to 'cook the books' so to speak by creating fictitious evidence and by funneling false information to Judith Miller of the New York Times to gin up popular support for a devious and terrible undertaking. But even before that, 9/11 was also used as an excuse for attacking Afghanistan in another attack planned long before 9/11 in an effort to drive out the Taliban because they had refused to agree to a proposed pipeline through their nation which would have benefitted Halliburton then chaired by Richard Cheney. This too was a conspiracy, though never touted as such by the media. Thus, 9/11 was an extraordinarily useful tool for the start and continuation to two never-ending illegal wars of choice which have resulted in the deaths and injuries to literally millions of people in multiple nations since 2001.
The CIA has been involved in literally hundreds of conspiracies of various natures since its founding at the end of World War II including the smuggling of heroin and cocaine from Southeast Asia and South and Central America into the U.S. But these are never discussed in polite company nor, heaven forbid, on mainstream media. There is the current conspiracy, operating in the open, to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Venezuela and the one just defeated where Honduras took back its legitimate government following an overthrow by the CIA assisted by Hillary Clinton's State Department. There was the conspiracy following World War II to save many high-level Nazi officers and scientists by moving them to South American, the U.S. and parts of Europe where they would be secure and available for our use. But we don't like to discuss this too much.
I could go on and on, the list is almost endless. There is the fabricated case against Julius Assange and Wikileaks for which Assange is still being tortured in Britain for the crime of publishing material he was handed – something the New York Times regularly gets away with as they and he should. But because Assange released information which was embarrassing to the United States he must be severely punished if not murdered. And on, and on, and on . . .
And now, as a result of the assault on the Capitol, Joe Biden is proposing a new Domestic Terrorism law to supplement the already terrible Patriot Act which gave widely broad surveillance powers to the national security state. This is an awful idea which was, as with the Patriot Act, already in the official pipeline prior to the Capitol assault. The official excuse is the need to go after right wing vigilante militarism. But what the powers that be really fear is not the right, they are entirely comfortable with fascism in its various forms. What they fear is the progressive left because it is the progressive left that is willing to call out the Democratic Party establishment for the neoliberal corporate posers that they are.
The Democratic Party establishment as well as the 'liberal' mainstream media have firmly and thoroughly aligned themselves with the national security state. At this juncture there is essentially no separation between the two. It now appears that at least half of the commentators on CNN and MSNBC are former or current members of the FBI, CIA, NSA, Justice Department, Defense Department or other military or security agencies. The primary bastion of liberal news, the New York Times has long been a semi-official conduit of propaganda from the CIA as is NPR. Sadly the right wing media and the Republican Party are no better. They just spew a different brand of similar prowar pro-surveillance propaganda aimed to keep their particular audience angry and inflamed against the left.
So where does this all leave us? It does, I believe, leave us in a form of Orwellian hellscape where nothing is true and everything subject to distorted propaganda. If one dares question the prevailing dogma he or she is charged with being a "conspiracy theorist" and thus a "nut case" unworthy of consideration. And now that private monopolies such a Google, Facebook and Amazon are being permitted to disappear any and everyone they chose from the Internet dissenting voices of whatever stripe are at great risk. The probability of a new Domestic Terrorism Law threatens to clamp down and dampen dissident views even more. These certainly make it appear that the United States is on the cusp of becoming a purely fascist society in the most horrendous Orwellian way imaginable – not by soldiers stationed on the street corners, but by very effective thought control managed by corporate overlords and their political heiring's with a hard-right Christian fundamentalist military standing guard in the background.
I don't know about you but the prospect of this makes me very, very sad and very glad to be old. Perhaps you noticed that I made no mention of the imminent global climate catastrophe in this piece. That was no accident. I did so because in this scenario there is simply no possibility that the powers that be will take any meaningful action – even if such action is possible – to ameliorate the coming destruction of life on planet Earth, at least life so far as we know it.
So as I write this, now in my late seventies, I realize that I have now lived through the highlight period post-capitalist wonder in the world. Coming out of the Great Depression in the 1930s and 1940s and following the horror of World War II there was an optimism that humankind had embarked on a new and more enlightened course in the world – that prosperity for all could be at hand. And yet here we are now, a scant 70 or so years later looking at an Orwellian present and desolate future if there will be a future for humanity at all. How could it be that we have allowed our so-called civilization to collapse in on itself so catastrophically so quickly? How can it be that we imposed on ourselves a system of greed and self-interest to the detriment of all life to take control of our very existence? In the end it is nothing less than a form of self-immolation. It is the Icarus myth writ to a civilizational level. Who now will be left to write the obituary for humanity?
John
"You're not to be so blind with patriotism
that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong,
no matter who does it or says it."
- Malcolm X
Webmaster, International Swim Coaches Association, SwimISCA.org
Executive Director of SKWIM USA, a 501(c)(3), SKWIM.us
The Pittsburgh Project - swim coach and head lifeguard
Coach at The Ellis School for Swimming, T&F and Triathlon
Pittsburgh Combined Water Polo Team & Renegades (Masters)
Friday, January 15, 2021
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Saturday, January 09, 2021
Fwd: Mark, see you in London this year?
--- Forwarded message ----
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Thursday, December 31, 2020
Fwd: Economic Impact Payments Are Underway
From: Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr.
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Sunday, December 13, 2020
Tuesday, December 08, 2020
Fwd: Reminder: Important news about SUUSI 2021
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Wednesday, December 02, 2020
Friday, November 13, 2020
History teaches prudent lesson on Pitt stadium. Hey Brian O'Neill
PG, April 4, 1999
Brian O'Neill Column
History teaches prudent lesson on Pitt stadium
"Pitt stadium will be razed..."Sorry to see you feeding into the "done deal mentality." And, its nine-time national champions, not six.
Some of the mentions in the opinion article include:
- money corrupting games
- venerable structure
- tradition
- there was no innocent days of yore!
- obscure novel, Stadium, 1931
Listen:
- Pitt Stadium was built with bonds. Big deal. Lots of businesses and buildings are built with bonds.
- "The students, fervid old grads and townspeople who had nothing else to do, came to the stadium on Saturday afternoons, but seldom with enthusiasm."
Yea. Yawn. So what is the point. The fans are not going to get excited when the home team losses all national significance. This is a timeless understanding. People would rather win than not.
Productive people don't spectate, they live
Pittsburgh should cater to the busy people in our communities, and not spectators anway. We, the citizens, want among other things, more spaces to engage with one another. These are high-level playgrounds. We like the idea of sports performance complexes, but they need to server citizens with much better cost/benefits.One can live while in the role of a spectator too. In the stands one can build releationships. One can also appreciate a struggle of time, space and releationship in others, and learn for themselves.
Desirable for Bettering Releationships
Pitt needs students, old grads and idle townspeople to come to its campus on Saturdays. Pitt does not need empty seats on the North Side on Saturdays.The Game and the Process of Games
The NCAA handbook has swelled in size from the times of Sutherland. Pay to players was not formalized in scholarships as it is today. Pay to players is nothing new. Scholarships of this era are under the table too, as they are not out in the open. Ask a coach or the athletic department to publish their scholarship levels telling who is funded and to what level. Ask a baseball coach, or a sports coach with another cap on scholarships if those numbers are public knowledge, and they are not. There are privacy reasons, sure. But todays ills are the same as those of the past. Scholarships are given and taken in an under-the-table maner as they are not out in the open. These scholarships are formalized and legal documents, but are not out in the open on the top of the table for sure.Purity
Who said anyting about being pure? Why not argue and refute virginity as a reason to raze Pitt Stadium. The Brian goes on to write, "Better players engorged the stadium." Snicker. Seems you do have a dirty thought -- engorged!Beano Cook
Beano is a pigskin prognosticator of national stature, and that makes him a gambling advocate, in turn less pure, in turn of under-the-table transactions. To say what Beano says is anything but a "gambling" perspective is unwise. If Beano says Pitt should move to the new Steelers stadium, I'm of a heart to say that the move should not happen all the stronger. You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. Just above you had a purity thread, and then below you switch to a source of the worst kind for purity.Beano = Gambling
Gambling = Not Pure
Beano = Raze Pitt Stadium
I say do the inverse of what Beano says. For example: The CHOKE folks worked withing the system with the County Health Department to prohibit the opening of a new coke plant in Hazelwood. The Health Department uses consultants who are engineers who get paid by the polluters. Its the corporations that spend to keep their operations alive. Beano Cook is one of the polluters in sports today. His opinion has an inverse effect on what is right. He is biased won't say anything otherwise to go counter to the "done-deal mentality."
Same to with the PG. Thanks for helping in the arguements to keep Pitt Stadium.
Case in point: I've talked to a number of journalists and reporters in Pittsburgh in the past months. More and a couple have told me that they think that the closing of Pitt Stadium is a terrible idea. They are dead-set against it. However, they don't want to loose their jobs. They don't want to loose press-passes once the new stadium opens. They do not want to buck up against these vindictive leaders who are on the other side of the arguement.
Sad for them. Sad for us. Sad for my neighbors too.
Gambling Stinks
Think of it in a perspective of the definition of sports as advocated here. Sports are games of time, space and releationship. Gambling is not a releationship builder. Gambling is not a space sensative activity, as it happens around the world. And, gambling is not much of a time game either. Gambling is anti-sport as it sets out to lessen all values of the game, time, space and releationships. Gamblers can't even bet upon who is going to win -- there are "favorites" and they change the rules of the games themselves as a team can win by 2 points -- and not cover the spread. How defeating.Gambling is not sports and it greatly hurts sports.
Tainted but Valid Somewhere
Beano is a Pitt grad. Beano is a friend of Pitt and Pittsburgh. Beano has many releationships that might have some roots due to sports. There is much to build upon there, to make a sports person's opinion ring true, but the tainting is going to take great amounts of drilling to get to the sports person within Beano.
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