Nano Farms

It's always a little bit iffy when we pray at our Wednesday Novena for a just distribution of the earth's wealth.  The word 'distribution' leads one's thoughts possibly to 're-distribution' which leads one's thoughts possibly to think of the Church's often politicized social justice ministries that lead one's thoughts possibly to Socialist ideologies.  Are we asking for a just distribution of the earth's wealth or for a re-distribution of people's individual wealth? I admit to muttering that intention half-heartedly.

Here, however, is a ray of sunshine in a Catholic approach to poverty.  A priest has seen fit to cash in on, if you will, that faddish business of sustainable agriculture, eating local, farm to table and farm to fork and so on and on with Nano Farms USA.

Father Larry Goode is the pastor of St. Francis of Assisi parish in East Palo Alto, a small and historically low-income city in the San Francisco Bay area. Recently, Fr. Goode watched as big tech companies – Facebook, Google, and Microsoft – bought up most of the land surrounding his neighborhood, driving rent prices up and St. Francis' low-income families out.He started brainstorming with St. Patrick's seminary professor Father George Schultze and Ignatius Press founder Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio to come up with a way to create sustainable income for the poor in the area. That's how the idea of NanoFarms USA, a worker-owned farming cooperative, was born.
After receiving permission from Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone and St. Patrick's seminary rector Father Gladstone Stevens, Fr. Goode and St. Francis parishioners started using seminary grounds to plant produce, which they then started selling at local parishes and markets.

Not only do they sell the produce but they also sell miniature gardens, the Nano Farms, and then supply the labor to maintain them. Fr. Goode says, "NanoFarms is responding to the Holy Father’s constant call to the Church to care for the poor."  

Perhaps at the Wednesday Novena, instead of praying for a just distribution of the earth's wealth, we might rather pray for the distribution and growth of many Nano Farms.

London Grove Tomato

The London Grove Tomato 

It's not everyday I'd write about a tomato.  But this is a tomato that my late father developed, and, for some time now, I've been crusading to fix the London Grove Tomato's provenience properly in Chester County, Pennsylvania gardening history.  

The London Grove Tomato, until recently known mostly to patrons of the London Grove Plant Sale in Kennett Square, PA and others in those environs, has begun to appear on a few websites with a strikingly dissonant description.  For example, on the Happy Cat website,  the London Grove Tomato is described as  “A very old and rare Quaker Heirloom from friends of ours here in Chester County,” 

The London Grove Tomato appears on other websites with similar descriptions.  Amishland Heirloom Seeds says it’s also called the Rabbit’s Foot Tomato.  The newsletter of Buy Local Buy PA writes that the London Grove Tomato is said to have been in the “London Grove Quaker community for about 100 years.”  Wow.

My father, Leo Robert Daiuta, is generally acknowledged as the person who created this tomato and then began selling it at the London Grove Plant Sale in Kennett Square, PA, hence the eponymous name.  If the London Grove Tomato is 100 years old, my father must have been going on about 150 when he died this past August 2014 at the actual age of 92.

While my father is no longer here to answer questions about the tomato, I do have jotted down a little history of the tomato as he gave it to me back in 2008.  My account has been corroborated by others in the London Grove/Kennett area, though, absent their corroboration, I'd be quite confident that my accounting is about as accurate a one as you'll get.

My father was a first generation Italian who grew up in West Chester, PA and after marrying my mother, they moved to Kennett Square in 1947.  In the early 1950s both he and my mother, neither of them previously Quakers, joined the London Grove Monthly meeting in Kennett Square, PA hence my father's (and the tomato's) connection with the Quaker community in the area.

A Quaker provenience for the lovely London Grove Tomato is shaky.  At least part of the reason the London Grove Tomato exists at all is because my father, a zealous gardener, wanted to grow the “paste tomato” that he remembered his mother using and that his father or a neighboring uncle probably grew in a small back yard in West Chester.  If the London Grove Tomato is anything, it’s maybe Italian-Quaker though it's more definitely Italian-American, just like my father.

As for the age of the London Grove Tomato, I don’t think my father would put it at much more than 40 years old.  As he told it to me, in the mid 1970s, my father asked a cousin in Italy to bring him the seed for the Corno di Vaca tomato, a long, hollow tomato in the shape of a cow’s horn that the Italians used to make tomato paste.  The hollowness of the tomato was  a minus in my father’s mind and so he set out to come up with something more to his liking, deciding to cross the Corno di Vaca with a Rutgers.  

My father was an engineer by training and an incurable inventor by nature.  He sought to modify or re-create nearly everything that crossed his path.  The tomato may have been just one more of his projects to pass the time, but given the intentional care he gave to this project over a period of growing seasons, I suspect he had a particular result in mind.  That he saw his new creation as finito is evidenced at least in part by the fact that my mother staged several photo shoots of the tomato on our back patio!  Her photo shows the familiar cow horn shape with a shining, unblemished and smooth red skin.  Now that’s a tomato!

As people enjoy the London Grove Tomato it occurs to me they might want to forego romantic images of industrious Quakers tilling the soils of Chester County, PA 100 years ago.  Rather, I would hope they’d picture the stalwart Romans of the early days of the Republic with their love of the plow and the earth and their pride in all that honest sweat and toil could produce from their land. This is after all a tomato of Italian origin, from an Italian-American whose "backyard" garden covered a half acre of land and yielded a harvest to feed our family for the entire year and then some. The original farm to fork kind of thing you might say. 

The newer generation of farmers, those at Happy Cat and Amishland as for-instances, might be said to farm as part of a whole philosophy of life defined by an ideology of food or a politics of gardening.  Their outlook might be said to draw from or encompass the slow food movement, the farm to table (or directly to the fork) push, the enjoinders to eat fresh and local and organic, to embrace tradition, to preserve the environment, to eschew the military-industrial complex while you're at it.  And, even in the 21st century, to get back to the earth, a place apparently not yet reached since the journey there began in the 1970s.  Still, one would think these philosopher-farmers would be interested in accuracy. When I sent a message to Happy Cat Farms saying that their description of the London Grove Tomato was off, I got a response that said:"Hello,Sorry but it is you who is wrong, but thanks for writing. Happy cat."  Alas, their dissonant description of a "Quaker" London Grove Tomato remains on their website.  

By now there are probably many variations on the original Corno di Vaca (which itself may have many different names) that the Italian immigrants of the late 19^th century brought over to the U.S.  In fact, in Staten Island, NY, I’ve seen an accidental cross between the Corno di Vaca and a cherry tomato.  While there may be other Italian Luther Burbanks out there the only one I know of is my father.  I’m very proud of his Italian heritage and I think of the semi-Italian London Grove tomato as a part of his legacy.  

May the London Grove Tomato live on! And may my father rest in peace.  And, Buon Gusto as you eat tomatoes this summer, especially should you sample the fine London Grove Tomato.

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Seventeen seventy-five, that is!  Paul Revere's midnight ride is recounted by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem 'Paul Revere's Ride,' a great poem to read anytime, but especially on the eighteenth of April just 238 years after the fact (and just slightly after midnight).  Or 153 years after Longfellow wrote it.  Gets the blood going and causes one to remember what the fight was all about.

  "A voice in the darkness,  a knock at the door and a word that shall echo for evermore!"

 

 

 

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

 

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,–
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

 

Then he said “Good-night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

 

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

 

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,–
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

 

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,–
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

 

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

 

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

 

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

 

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

 

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

 

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

 

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

A Noble Bar

Something a little different and a little 'noble.'

University of the People

I read this article back in February when it appeared, found it intriguing, but it looked like the University of the People was mostly for foreign students without much money who were willing to try a new idea.  However, with the rash of articles now appearing about alternatives to the traditional four year liberal arts education, it seemed a good idea to revisit this article.

Here is today's article from Inside Higher Ed which characterizes the challenge to liberal arts colleges in this way: 

a changing college-going demographic that will result in fewer upper-class students, the traditional pool for a residential liberal arts colleges; increasing skepticism among the public about the value of a liberal arts degree with no direct ties to a profession; the rising costs of educating a student, which will likely result in even higher tuition; and a changing understanding of technology that might require greater inclusion of technology in the curriculum, both as a tool for learning and a subject.

And yesterday's article discusses Coursera, the Ivy League version of the people's university (an oxymoron I suppose).   This article explains that MOOCs stands for 'massively open on-line courses.'

The Brooklyn Institute is another option in the changing landscape.

Constitution Course

You may be interested in Hillsdale College's free on-line course on the U.S. Constitution.   Go here.  There will be a total of  10 lectures, each about 40 minutes in length, which you can access at any time.  Each lecture has accompanying readings (posted for our convenience), a Q&A session and a quiz.  I'm particularly fond of the quizzes which you can take until you get an A.  

Lecture 6 treats the matter of religious freedom and every reading addresses the current controversy over the HHS mandate, Obama's calculated strikes at the Church and religious liberty as well as the frequent cry by those who mis-understand what is meant by the separation of church and state.  The Virginia Declaration of Rights, section 16 says:

That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.

Notice the words 'according to the dictates of conscience.'

In Madison's On Property, read first his definition of property and then what he has to say about freedom of religion: 

Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man’s house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man’s conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.

  Madison goes on in a kind of humorous vein to protest heavy-handed government seizing property:

What must be the spirit of legislation where a manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen shroud, in order to favor his neighbour who manufactures woolen cloth; where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the economical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of buttons of other materials!

Charles Murray in the WSJ

Charles Murray is in the news again because of his new book, Coming Apart.   This article gives a taste of the book I'm guessing.  A couple interesting quotes are below.

In explaining the growing gap between what he calls the new upper class and the new lower class Murray writes,  

As I've argued in much of my previous work, I think that the reforms of the 1960s jump-started the deterioration. Changes in social policy during the 1960s made it economically more feasible to have a child without having a husband if you were a woman or to get along without a job if you were a man; safer to commit crimes without suffering consequences; and easier to let the government deal with problems in your community that you and your neighbors formerly had to take care of.  

In talking about religious affiliation and its decline among the new lower class (i.e. Fishtown in this article) he says,

Whatever your personal religious views, you need to realize that about half of American philanthropy, volunteering and associational memberships is directly church-related, and that religious Americans also account for much more nonreligious social capital than their secular neighbors. In that context, it is worrisome for the culture that the U.S. as a whole has become markedly more secular since 1960, and especially worrisome that Fishtown has become much more secular than Belmont. It runs against the prevailing narrative of secular elites versus a working class still clinging to religion, but the evidence from the General Social Survey, the most widely used database on American attitudes and values, does not leave much room for argument.

His discussion of a remedy to the growing gap between the classes is directed toward the upper classes: 

Life sequestered from anybody not like yourself tends to be self-limiting. Places to live in which the people around you have no problems that need cooperative solutions tend to be sterile. America outside the enclaves of the new upper class is still a wonderful place, filled with smart, interesting, entertaining people. If you're not part of that America, you've stripped yourself of much of what makes being American special.

Such priorities can be expressed in any number of familiar decisions: the neighborhood where you buy your next home, the next school that you choose for your children, what you tell them about the value and virtues of physical labor and military service, whether you become an active member of a religious congregation (and what kind you choose) and whether you become involved in the life of your community at a more meaningful level than charity events. 

In conclusion Mr. Murray kind of plays devil's advocate to his own proposal and says,  "We're supposed to trust that large numbers of parents will spontaneously, voluntarily make the right choice for the country by making the right choice for themselves and their children?"  His answer to this is yes. 

Maybe that's his Libertarian side coming through--you don't need a lot of directives, plans and legislation; just leave people alone and good people will do the right thing.  The problem is that they don't, that the road to hell is often paved with the good intentions of good people and, anyway, there are plenty of bad people out there promoting bad things that destroy the efforts of the good people. 

SFC Alwyn Cashe

Along with the more familiar definition of the word "amazing"  as 'very surprising, wonderful, astonishing,  astounding,' my dictionary gives several archaic senses for the word amazement.  They are 'overwhelming fear, bewilderment, stupefaction.'  Put these all together and such is the feeling when reading the account of  SFC Cashe's courage and determination back in 2005 in Iraq.   SFC Cashe died of his burn wounds about a month after being injured.   R.I.P.  What a legacy of bravery to leave behind. 

Watch This Short Video on America's Form of Government

First Things

Five years of a magazine subscription means that it's time to cull through all the back issues, re-read the favorites, toss the unwanteds and pass along the ones worth-reading all in order to create a few inches of shelf space for the new magazine subscriptions.

First Things is the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus's creation that deals with religion in public life. It's difficult to throw the magazine away since every issue is chock full of pithy, cerebral articles by heavy-weight thinkers in theology, economics, literature, Judaic studies, jurisprudence and more. There are articles by Nobel prize winners and judges and of course, there was the entertaining (and easier to read) "The Public Square" by Fr. Neuhaus in the back of every issue. However, the purging must be done, and, it's done with some relief as I confess to a certain impatience with the publication, a certain difficulty with it and even a feeling of opprobrium when each issue shows up in the mailbox. To put it bluntly, the fact is that I can't understand the majority of the articles. I get a good start with something like, "Theology After Isaac Newton", thinking that it should be really engaging, but by the third paragraph, I'm lost. Nonetheless, there are several articles that I did actually read from beginning to end--and understood ---so here's a compendium of First Things Articles To Be Remembered.

China's Catholic Moment 2009

An Apology For Democratic Capitalism 2009

The Sixties, Again and Again 2008

Children's Books, Lost and Found 2008

How Pedophilia Lost Its Cool 2008

The Vindication of Humanae Vitae 2008

What Marriage Is --And What It Isn't

What Really Happened At Vatican II 2008

December 2007 (Review of Marriage and Caste in America by Kay Hymowitz)

October 2007 (Review of The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier)

As I cull through a few more stacks, the compendium may grow.

Speaking of, Where Are The Men. . . . . . .

We can read more about men and manliness in two new books, Manthropology and Is There Anything Good About Men? humorously reviewed in this Wall Street Journal article.

Here we can see two men, the Bushes, pere et fils, at the World Series Game in Texas.

Alveda King and Restoring Honor Rally

Hopefully, Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. will become more of a household name now that Glenn Beck included her in his Restoring Honor Rally back on August 28th. Alveda King travels wherever Priests for Life sends her to carry her message on the "evil twins" of abortion and racism. As a Pastoral Associate for African-American Outreach of Priests for Life, King spreads the under-reported news that while blacks comprise only 12% of the general population, they have 35% of the abortions. King is one of the few in the pro-life movement to point out that a disproportionate percentage of abortion clinics are found in minority neighborhoods, supposedly to "serve" the poor. But, as King points out, "you don't serve the poor by taking their money to terminate their children."

Alveda King offends liberal, establishment blacks, or the Black Mafia as writer Lloyd Marcus calls them, because she doesn't deliver the required blacks-as-victims rhetoric. In her open letter of 2008 to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), King doesn't promote green jobs, free rides to community colleges or more government hand-outs. She talks about strengthening the black family, promoting marriage and family values. She reminds America's African-American leaders that the core mission of black civil rights groups is to ensure the equality of rights for all persons without recourse to violence or hatred. And, again, to the CBC, she addresses the issue of reparations saying,

the battle against oppression and segregation was not white versus black, but right versus wrong. There are no separate races divided by skin color. It was not whites who did this to blacks, it was Southern racists who even took us into a war where 300,000 whites gave their lives to end slavery. A political party based on abolition was formed by whites to free the slaves.

Hardly words that Maxine Waters, Al Sharpton, or, for that matter, Barack Obama, want to hear.

Alveda King offends white feminists when she says,

The abortion movement in this country was started by Margaret Sanger, the founder of an organization known today as Planned Parenthood. Ms. Sanger was quite open that she wanted "more children from the fit, less from the unfit." The unfit, she made clear, were blacks and poor whites. She had no qualms about speaking to as many as 12 Ku Klux Klan meetings. As I discuss in the new film, "Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America" (produced byLifeDynamicsInc.), she targeted blacks in her eugenics-based campaigns.

And, Alveda King speaks out in a way that liberals find intolerable. When she invokes the dream of her Uncle Martin, and asks, How can the dream survive if we murder the children? she unsettles those who have whitewashed MLK, Jr. as little more than a "man of peace," a secular, kindly figure who wanted nothing more than a big group hug for the world. Columnist Johnathan Capehart scolds Ms. King for being a political opportunist at the Beck rally and "besmirching" her uncle's legacy. And columnist Bonnie Erbe is offended because Alveda King has dared to equate the pro-life movement with the civil rights movement and abortion with racism.

Erbe writes that she "supports abortion rights but I'm not sure I would go so far as to call it a human rights issue." Really? Highly doubtful considering that the operative mantra of the pro-abortion (reproductive rights) movement, the feminist (women's rights) movement, the homosexual (gay rights) movement has been to paint their respective causes as human rights violations and to create their movements in the image of the Civil Rights movement of the 60s.

Several years ago Alveda King spoke on the Barnard College campus at the request of the Columbia University pro-life student group. King arrived on a warm fall day in October wheeling her suitcase in front of her, having just come from another lecture tour. She has no entourage, no glamour, no flash and she gives her presentation by herself. Critics like Erbe and Capehart who desperately attempt to discredit King by saying she feeds on and distorts her uncle's legacy should attend one of her talks and note that there is humility in her presentation, not braggadoccio and that her message about the black experience in America, though not what the mainstream media wants to hear, is first-hand and true. Alveda King is tireless in her efforts to spread her message and Glen Beck deserves credit for supporting her.

CatholicVote.Org

Here is CatholicVote.Org's new ad.

America For Me

Only a few days late for the July 4th holiday, here is a poem not so often quoted, but one that I find appealing for celebrating what is unique to the United States. The poem was written by Henry Van Dyke,but I was introduced to it by the children's author, Jean Fritz, who writes books about Americans and American history. Fritz grew up in China as the daughter of missionaries, and her autobiography, the name of which escapes me at the moment, is a touching and poignant account of her life there. In the book, she tells how, as a young girl, she found herself reciting this poem to herself, out loud, as her ship pulled into port on one of her visits back home to the U.S. , the "blessed Land of Room Enough."



America For Me

'TIS fine to see the Old World and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues and kings
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.

So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom, beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.

I like the German fir-woods in green battalions drilled;
I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing foutains filled;
But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day
In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her sway!

I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack!
The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back.
But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free--
We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.

Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
To the blessed Land of Room Enough, beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

Henry Van Dyke

President Bush After 9/11

A friend sent this to me recently. I know that baseball fans have quite a way to go before kicking into World Series mode, but this video shows an American spirit that has been flaccid if not just plain absent in the last few years. Here, President Bush throws out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium a month or so after 9/11 as the crowd gives voice to the American spirit that we hopefully still have in us. As he reflects on the experience and walks out onto the mound, Bush shows how a real American president should act.

Iraq Vets for Congress and Combat Veterans for Congress

Fighting back seems to be the order of the day after Obama bullied Americans and imposed on us his health care bill. (Or as Sen. Baucus called it, the bill that will address the "mal-distribution of income in America.") Among the various groups that are organizing, there is the Senate Conservatives Fund here with a petition pledge to vote only for those candidates who will repeal the health care bill. Hugh Hewitt continues to promote the National Republican Congressional Committee here , which appears to have a similar goal. Just today I got a call from the Republican National Committee asking for money to take back the Congress, but Michael Steele fails to impress and has not been that much of a friend to conservatives.

There are two other groups that are keeping tabs on up-and-coming contenders for congressional seats. They are Iraq Veterans for Congress and Combat Veterans for Congress. While I don't know their views on health care, it's certainly worth keeping an eye on these candidates for the same reasons that I wrote about concerning Allen Griffith and Lt. Col. Allen West (who is endorsed by both veterans groups). At American Thinker, Alan Fraser summarizes here a Harris Poll which reveals that Americans have the most confidence in leaders who come from the military. It's also noteworthy that all the veterans are Republicans, as will be anyone else in Congress who will work to repeal this wealth re-distribution, that is, health care bill.

As Hugh Hewitt and Erick Ericson constantly remind their audiences, even if these candidates aren't in our districts, we can support them by donating to their campaigns.

Team Rubicon

I have been meaning to again mention Team Rubicon which I wrote about here. Team Rubicon is the privately-organized relief effort that was conceived of and created by Jake Woods, a former Marine, who recruited retired military personnel, firemen and doctors and went into Haiti before the larger and more cumbersome relief organizations could get there.

To my surprise, Jake Woods is all of 26 years old.

He was interviewed on the Hugh Hewitt show a couple weeks ago. Hear what a former Marine, a former college football player and a person of (Christian) faith can do with an idea and some hard work.

Team Rubicon now has a website , and a documentary about the group is in the works as well.

Lt. Col. Allen West in Florida's 22nd District

Lt. Col. West, like Allen Griffith, is another leader at the local level whose candidacy will help strike more blows against what West calls the "leadership by entitlement" that we currently suffer with in Washington.

In this Newsmax interview from last month, West is straightforward and articulate about any number of issues. On race relations, he says that Blacks have to get away from the victimization of liberalism and engage in the empowerment of conservatism. He describes the 'self-licking ice-cream cone' whereby government creates victims who then become wedded to the government for help, causing the government to claim it must grow ever larger to help all the victims it created. (Sounds like a perfect description of the Obama presidency.) On Islam, West doesn't hesitate to say that Islam isn't a religion, but rather a "theocratic, political system disguised as religion."

If Joe Biden happens to be looking for any more mainstream African-Americans who are clean, bright and articulate, he need look no further than Allen West.

Allen Griffith 4 Congress

Please follow and support this candidate from my home state of Pennsylvania. The video is great and so is his message. More people, regular people (all those 'folks' that Barack Obama keeps referring to) need our support when they, like Allen Griffith, decide to take a stand and throw their hat into the ring of public service. Our government should not be in the hands of a self-anointed, ruling elite in Washington, but rather in our hands, the hands of our local leaders, friends and neighbors who have the ability to articulate our viewpoints and the integrity to represent us honestly. Great success to Allen Griffith in his run for Congress. Griffith's website is: http://allengriffith4congress.com/

Don Jenkins and Patrick Brady--Medal of Honor Winners and the Virtue of Courage

Blackfive offers today a very readable, if perhaps even eloquent, account of two Medal of Honor winners, Patrick Brady and Don Jenkins, on the anniversary of their actions. Tenacity and grit mark the deeds of both men, but, with no disrespect meant to Brady who flew repeated missions to evacuate wounded soldiers, there's something particularly poignant about the tale of Private First Class Jenkins.

After his unit lands in Kien Phong province, Jenkins is described as running to an 'exposed area' and then shooting his way across the terrain, picking up and discarding weapon after weapon in what reads a bit like a TV Western shoot-'em-up.

Jenkins ran to an exposed area and opened fire on enemy soldiers gathering near log bunkers with his M-60. When his machine gun jammed, Jenkins grabbed another rifle and fired upon the enemy while a teammate attempted to repair the M-60. He repeatedly charged through open terrain to grab ammunition from fallen soldiers until he could no longer find any ammunition. Then Jenkins picked up two anti-tank weapons from another fallen soldier. Despite incoming enemy fire, he closed within 20 yards of the enemy bunkers and destroyed two of them.Then the resourceful soldier picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and resumed his destruction until that weapon was exhausted as well. Meanwhile, a group of soldiers was pinned down just meters away from the enemy.

Medal of Honor winners most certainly exemplify the cardinal virtue of courage or bravery, but according to Aristotle, men are not brave because "they rush on danger without foreseeing any of the perils." That would simply be rash and foolish behavior. For Aristotle, bravery is action in the face of fear, but action tempered by reason, and action for a 'noble end.' One might ask whether Jenkins, who just the day before had required resuscitation after drinking 'poisoned wine,' was brave or whether he was just crazy and reckless.

If the embattled soldier has time for reasoned and prudent thought as he is dropped onto a battlefield under enemy fire, more power to him. In Jenkins's case, regardless of the state of his reasoning faculties, the virtue of courage that most certainly lurked within him was called out as he proceeded next to rescue not one but three wounded soldiers although he himself had been hit with shrapnel.

Previous rescue attempts had resulted in one death and many injuries, but that news must not have phased Jenkins. Ignoring serious shrapnel wounds in his stomach and legs, Jenkins crawled forward 100 meters to the embattled position three times over the course of the night, each time bringing back a wounded comrade. Following the battle, Jenkins was promoted to Staff Sergeant. Oddly enough however, Jenkins' commanding officer had threatened to bust him down to Private the day prior to his heroic actions: Jenkins needed to be resuscitated due to drinking a poisoned bottle of wine. Following his discharge, Jenkins returned to the coal mines of Kentucky, and received notification that he was to be awarded the Medal in 1971.

Regardless of whatever Jenkins may or may not have had in mind when he took off for that exposed area after landing, he finished the day with a fittingly Aristotelian 'noble end,' and such action is the reason we rightly revere and reward the virtue of bravery in our soldiers.