For Father's Day: Last blast from the past

After a year, time for review

To: Stephen Christopher

From: Mom and Dad

Re: Performance to date

We’ve decided to sit down with you now, a little earlier than normal, and review your performance.

We know your official anniversary date isn’t until tomorrow, but your mother and I aren’t sticklers for full formality.

We’ve been for the most part pleased with your performance, so you’ll be happy

to know we’ve decided to keep you on with the organization.

And we believe the positives outweigh the negatives, so we believe there is room for advancement in the organization.

But we also believe in setting goals. We’ve allowed you in this first year to kind find your way with the organization.

We were really pleased you were able to join us a year ago. It was an intense,

nine-month negotiation before the deal was clinched, and that last session —

what a whopper.

Started at 10:45 p.m. on a Thursday night and didn’t finish until 6:32 p.m. the next day.

As noted, we’ve been extremely pleased since.

You’ve shown a real flair for making people smile, particularly your grandmothers.

But I think you made your Grandpa Guilfoyle almost cry a couple of times as well — one of those “happy cry” type things — but you need to watch that in the future.

Your strengths? For one, you are doing very well at keeping a schedule. Like your father, you have a real talent for sleeping. Also like your father, you can almost walk a straight line. You like to prop yourself up on the biplane your Grandma and Grandpa Larson bought you, but you are beginning to move away from needing that.

You have shown a talent for sucking up in specific ways to your Daddy.

You kissed him three times on Father’s Day, but really haven’t that much since. You also said “Dada” first, and meant it. but you gave it up after a couple of days.

You perk up with a smile whenever you are around your mother, and she can make you laugh like no one else can.

That’s a more generic way of sucking up. Both your mother and I don’t mind the sucking up.

We aren’t criticizing. We just want to make a note of it now, so you’ll know, later on, that we were on to you from the get-go.

Yes, this memo is going in your permanent file with the organization.

You already can throw very good. A small ball gets tossed across the room with either arm. You roll your big ball with your mother, playing a roll-y kind of catch which she thinks is brilliant.

Your Father wants you to be a major league pitcher sohe can sponge off you in his

dotage. Unfortunately, his dotage is probably going to start next week, so you might have to grow up kind of fast.

You crawl with speed. You are active and fast.

There is some room for improvement in several key areas, however. You haven’t said “Mama” yet, and we’d really like to see some movement in that area.

You have steadfastly refused to settle on a hair color, but what little colorless hair you have is getting almost long enough to need a trip to the barber shop.

You do seem to catch a lot of colds. But when you go to the doctor’s office, you are

almost uniformly a good boy.

You do seem to fuss a lot when you have a cold and your mother and I have to

suction your nose.

Let’s set a timetable for you to learn how to blow your own nose, and thus we won’t have to keep doing this unpleasant task. We won’t feel guilty making you cry, and you will get your nose cleared out that much sooner.

It will be a win-win for all involved.

We’d like to see some more movement in the teeth area as well. A little girl born just one week before you has more than twice as many teeth as you.

Your mother believes in this area that whatever pace you are on is fine.

Your father is too competitive for his own good. You not only need to catch up, you need to get ahead and stay ahead.

We’re not just talking incisors. We’d like to see some cuspids and molars within the next year.

You haven’t noticed, but we have —you have actually stood on your own a couple of times without holding on. but you snake your arm back to daddy’s leg or the ottoman or the couch or whatever you are leaning on.

When you don’t think about it, you can stand.

When you think about what you are doing, you fall on your butt. Boom.

We don’t want you to not think, but you need to not think about this area a lot

more.

I’ve started working with you on standing a little bit.

But this is another thing where you are going to have to do most of the work.

Once you stand on your own, you’ll quickly be walking on your own.

Your mother wants to see this as much as possible.

Your father is afraid he definitely won’t be able to keep up once you’re really moving along.

This review, of course, comes after the positive reviews you got at your three-month and six-month probationary periods.

As per organization policy, at this stage, with the good reviews, we have indeed decided to make you a permanent part of the organization.

From now on out, there will just be annual reviews.

In other words, we guess we’re going to keep you.

For Father's Day: Another blast from the past

I wrote this for my dad's birthday in 2000.

Dad taught me to be who I am

News Editor

Stephen Guilfoyle

When he was born –

• a man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not yet president.

• the greatest epoch of the 20^th Century, World War II, was nine years in the future;

• a small man full of hatred was legally forbidden to speak in Germany, but Adolf Hitler, not yet elected to anything, was gaining influence and backing from powerful industrialists of that country;

• there was a 40-foot deep pit on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 32nd Street, where, 18 months later, would rise the grandest building ever built, the Empire State Building; and

• the New York Yankees were the greatest baseball team ever, with a lineup that included Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

I’m a mean kid at times and sometimes I make fun of my dad for being old.

But I look back on the world into which he was born and I realize that he has indeed somehow, behind my back, really gotten old.

I’ve never much written about my dad because it’s more fun to make fun of Mom, because her sense of humor is always taxed.

I often wonder why someone like Dad, who always jokes, ended up with Mom, who almost never does.

Dad and I go to movies. That’s what we do. We talk football now.

I am whatever kind of man one might think I am because of what I learn from him.

But I learn not from him telling me what he wants to teach, but from my watching what he

does.

I picked the historical markers, because they all have some significance to either his life or my

view of it.

Roosevelt, well, that’s my joke. “Geez, Dad, you were born before Roosevelt was President.”

And Roosevelt was president for a long time.

The Empire State Building, well, I connect that with Dad because he’s always seemed to

me a New Yorker. He’s settled down fine in South Carolina these past 20 years, but it’s just not his natural place.

If someone were to put him in an alien zoo and were to create his natural habitat, there would have to be canyons made of concrete and glass and subways.

Hitler is not included because Dad was a tyrant. Dad is a gentle man. But Dad took a little trip to Ireland when he was a youth and got stuck there for years because of World War II.

He was raised over there by his aunt.

It shaped him to be a very different sort from his brother and his sister.

I include the Yankees because, despite being born in the Bronx, the Yankees were never his team.

But it is important to note that the greatest team of all time was the Yankees of the ’30s.

When my father was born in 1930, those Yankees were a segregated team, white men only need apply.

One of the most important lessons I learned from my father, and about my father, came unspoken

but etched in deep.

My father’s favorite baseball team was dem Bums, the Brooklyn Dodgers. His favorite player

was Jackie Robinson.

My father loved Jackie Robinson’s ability to make a play out of nothing, score a run after getting

walked to first base.

It taught me all I ever needed to know about race relations and how to judge people. You judge a man by his ability, not by the color of his skin.

What a fabulous teacher he was. I gained a core belief in justice and fair play and fundamental human equality, just because Dad said, “Jackie Robinson was my favorite baseball player.”

So my Dad turned 70 Tuesday.

I wish there were someway to stop it, but I can’t. Instead, I’ll remember again all that he’s taught me. .

And I’ll feel humbled, because I’m not half the man he is, but I’ll feel lucky that I know to keep trying to measure up

St. Philip Neri’s annual Italian Festival means good food and family fun | Fort Mill Times - Fort Mill, SC

St. Philip Neri’s annual Italian Festival means good food and family fun | Fort Mill Times - Fort Mill, SC

Camera happy? How funny is that?

The other day I saw in a Google tag for a column by someone on one side of the gay marriage amendment, a describtion of Charlotte N.C. Bishop Peter Jugis as "camera-happy."
Sure, the column was commentary about a video the Bishop had made on the amendment in which he described the church's position on the amendment.
But "camera-happy"?
At first, I just laughed and laughed at the ignorance the description displays. Hell, I've probably been in more Internet vidoes than the Bishop. As for TV and such, he is sought ought on occasion, certainly. Don't think he goes after TV cameras.
It's hard to imagine a guy so shy rising to his position, but he did.
And I thought it was amusing, so I asked him aboubt when I saw him after Mass on Sunday. He did not seem to take it in the way I did. It's obvious he is pained by, probably not the description, but the response as a whole.
For the writer to ascribe such venality to an opponent, just because he or she can, doesn't strike me as good journalism, nor honest commentary.
Disagree with him if you must. The Bishop is going to disagree with you, forever, on this issue and a few other on which the Church simply cannot compromise. But don't hurl asinine insult.
The description isn't in the column, just the preview you get when you come upon it in a Google search. But it was put there, deliberately, by someone.
To me it proves only that the writer has not met the man. That's not opinoin, but fact.
My opinion is that it also proves the writer will go out of his or her way to avoid the man, and as such, will never have an honest debate of this or other important issues. Nope. It was a simple hurling of invectives at an opponent because he doesn't think as you think he should.
Sad, sad, sad.
Here's the bishop's video --

Can you watch that and think that this descriptor on Google,
"Charlotte's bishop takes lights, camera, action against gay marriage ...
clclt.com/.../charlottes-bishop-takes-lights-camera-action-against-gay-...
Mar 15, 2012 – Peter J. Jugis, Charlotte's camera-happy Catholic bishop, throws the church's weight behind Amendment One. ... Creative Loafing Charlotte "
is at all fair?
Even if you take out the "camera-happy," a blatant lie, it's still not an accurate description. He's not throwing any weight around. He's just explaining the Church's position.
But in the interest of fairness, here's the commentary.
http://clclt.com/theclog/archives/2012/03/15/charlottes-bishop-takes-lights-camera-action-against-gay-marriage
I could go on and on about that, also. But it's just more of such sad,poor commentary. It is rife with things such as ,aking erroneous assumptions because it vilifies a perceived opponent, saying if X must be true, than Y, similar to X, must also be true. But Y is not true.
Sad, sad, sad.

St. Philip Neri breaks ground

St. Philip Neri breaks ground
http://www.fortmilltimes.com/2012/03/06/1922957/st-philip-neri-breaks-ground.html

Church and State

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/26/santorum-church-and-state_n_1302246.html?1330274673&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009&ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

The reason that idiots like Rick Santorum, and indeed most of the American political Right, get away with saying things is that they don't really know American history.

The other reason that idiots such as Santorum and most of the American political right get away with saying things like this is that almost all of the American political LEFT are just as dumb about American history.

Here's what they believe. The Pilgrims came to America for religious freedom, and our country was founded by Christians who believed in religious freedom.

That's simply not true. It has a grain, a germ, an element, a kernel of truth. But it is not the whole truth.

First, the Pilgrims weren't the first here.

Jamestown was a government colonization effort. Perhaps a licensed, sanctioned effort backing priavte efforts. Public private partnership? But it was done with government backing, certainly.

So you had these people here, those people there, of English descent. But the Dutch were in New Amsterdam. None of the above groups practiced the same religion, but they also didn't interact with each other, so there wasn't much need for "religious freedom."

A lot of people think the Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay Colony were more just additional Pilgrims who came after those Pilgrims at Plymouth.

Puritans and Pilgrims were hardly the same thing. Neither practiced what would be called the Church of England doctrine. But they were not the same faith.

We like to say they came here for religious freedom, but given what they did afterward, it is, on the face of it, plain that they instead came here escaping religious oppression.

To me, and to most Americans, the idea of religious freedom means freedom to practice your religion, whatever that may be.

To the Pilgrmis, it meant the the freedom to practice the Pilgrim faith. To the Puritans, it meant the freedom to practice the Puritan faith, and that faith alone. They believed in the primacy of the Bible, and that every person should be a minister, in a sense. But again, what happened afterward proves they didn't even toe that line perfectly.

Look up for yourself the name Anne Hutchinson. But to put it briefly, she was a woman who moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, got along well for a while, then had what she called a personal vision from Jesus, and started spreading a word that didn't quite fit the Puritan doctrine.

Look up also the name of Roger Williams.

I know about Anne Hutchinson because I looked her up as a child, and she came up in my good history class. There is a highway named for her in just north of New York City we drove on all the time.

In New York State? Why, one might ask, would a highway in that state be named for a woman who lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Simply put, because she was driven out of that colony for not fitting in as the church leaders.

Same deal with Roger Williams. One might know him as the founder of the state of Rhode Island. He named its capital city Providence because he believed he was brought there by God.

But he was also someone from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who did not fit in and who was driven into what was then the wilderness. What did he preach that was so offensive, by the way? The separation of church and state, among other wild ideas.

Both Hutchinson and Williams could have died because they had a different faith than those who came to America, we tell ourselves, seeking religious freedom. But they were seeking only the freedom of THEIR religion.

Look back at the history of our states and you will see a tapestry of religion. The Puritans faith has evolved into what is called Congregationalist, so they remain. I don't know a lot about it, but I respect its right to practice.

Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, for Quakers. Most of the colonies were founded by those who followed the church of England, and were Anglican. Somehow, even a Catholic colony, Maryland, snuck into the mix, founded by William Carroll.

Just after the Bay Colony was founded, if a Catholic had wandered in, he would not have been welcome. He or she might have been at least driven out, as Hutchinson and Williams were. They might have been treated far worse.

Baptists managed to get themselves over to these colonies, but many of them scattered into the woods, some seeking unlimited elbow room. But many probably went to get away from their Anglican neighbors. In some states, such as Virginia, you were required to be on the rolls of of an Anglican church and required, by law, to pay tithe to church as well as tax to state.

Anyway, that's the background that doesn't get thrown into the mix. We know that our "fore-fathers" were being oppressed for their religious beliefs in bad old England.

But we ignore the fact, the historical fact, that once free of oppression there, most of our fore fathers started practicing it here.

It's saddening to see someone like Rick Santorum espousing beliefs such as what he says, and why John F. Kennedy was right on the mark in what he said about separation of church and state.

If Santorum had been born just 50 years earlier, and had gone into certain Southern towns and expressed his belief, he might have found his "Papist" butt run out of town on a rail. Or worse.

Hundreds of years past the institution in our law of freedom of religion, with a strong separation of churhc and state, Some enclaves still maintained bigoted, discriminatoty ideas and would have reacted even with violence to something from outside their own religion.

The Founding Fathers who wrote our Constitution and created the Bill of Rights put religious freedom into the constitution not only to get rid of laws requiring membership in this or that state religion, and to eliminate laws requiring a tithe to the church (this was a big one for Thomas Jefferson), but to keep the religious fractured landscape of the new country safe from each other.

They did it to keep Protestants from using the law to discriminate against Catholics, and vice versa. To keep families from being driven out into the wilderness,which America still had a bunch of in those days, because they didn't believe the same as the more established folks did.

In other words, the constitutional amendment that protects Christians practicing their faith, was put in place to protect these Christians from those Christians.

It's our history

The Beatles "Day Tripper/ We Can Work It Out" (Music Of Lennon & McCartney) - YouTube

The Beatles "Day Tripper/ We Can Work It Out" (Music Of Lennon & McCartney) - YouTube

My wife informs me this was No. 1 on the charts the day I was born.