Tag: education

KMAG DAILY THREAD 20251112 + Education & Boomers

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BOOMERS


I have seen the targeting of Boomers in the last few years. Sort of reminds me of MAO.

 Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution

In August 1966, the 73-year-old Mao made a speech at the Plenum of the Communist Central Committee. He called for the youth of the country to take back the revolution from the rightists. These young “Red Guards“ would do the dirty work in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, destroying the “Four Olds”—old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. [And the Elderly, who had been venerated in traditional Chinese Culture.] Even a tea-room owner like President Hu Jintao’s father could be targeted as a “capitalist.”

While the nation’s students were busily destroying ancient artwork and texts, burning temples and beating intellectuals to death, Mao managed to purge both Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping from the party’s leadership. Liu died under horrific circumstances in prison; Deng was exiled to work in a rural tractor factory, and his son was thrown from a fourth-story window and paralyzed by Red Guards.

In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution complete, although it continued through his death in 1976. Later phases were directed by Jiang Qing (Madame Mao) and her cronies, known as the “Gang of Four.”

….

On a side note via Yuri Bezmenov  https://substack.com/@yuribezmenov

Matt da Silva Bullet da Silva Bullet

You can’t underestimate the power of schools over children. It’s a fact of linguistics that children don’t talk like their parents but their classmates. And anyone who’s ever studied languages understands that culture and language are two expressions of the same thing.

That’s why the Marxists are so hellbent on changing the meaning of words. From calling men women to confusing illegals with citizens by glossing over the fact with the carefully chosen “people.” (The government is abducting people!) The Left is really good at tactical linguistics.

…

As a Boomer, I consider us the transition generation. A bit of background as usual.

In 1933 there was Executive Order 6102: FDR’s Gold Confiscation Program and it was codified into law in 1934 with the Gold Reserve Act.


The Myths and Reality of Gold Confiscation – LewRockwell

(Short & sweet explanation)

… in January 1934 when FDR re-defined the dollar as only 13.71 grains. It was a 41% devaluation of the dollar, which meant that it thereafter took $35 to exchange for one ounce of gold…

So clearly, notwithstanding the enduring myth, FDR really did not need the weight of gold collected from the confiscation to re-establish confidence in the dollar. Simply devaluing the dollar by a slightly greater amount would have achieved the same objective. So why did FDR confiscate gold?

In our book, The Collapse of the Dollar, John Rubino and I provided an answer, but it wasn’t an explanation that we developed. Rather, the answer came from Alan Greenspan’s 1966 essay entitled “Gold and Economic Freedom”.

“The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit…The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”

So it seems clear to me that FDR confiscated American’s gold for the same reason Lenin confiscated it in Russia and Hitler confiscated it in Germany, namely, to get it out of the hands of the people…

CONGRESSMAN MCFADDEN

Almost immediately and ever since this commentary, he was characterized and smeared as anti-Semite. Today, there are online accounts given that demonstrate that the critics of McFadden didn’t even examine his important speeches let alone debate them and in fact use license to make things up (straw men fallacy)…

It is hard today to find anything positive said about this prescient and wise man. The critics of McFadden rarely focus on the core issues, which time has demonstrated are completely valid…

But thanks to the wonders of technology, you can conduct a word search examination of the 1932 speech. Although McFadden singled out certain Jewish-run banks like Kuhn and Loeb, a CTRL+F hunt reveals the words “Jew” or “Jewish” was never used during this entire classic speech, nor his 1931 speeches.

He did use the term “international bankers” six times in ’32; but with 89 years of additional hindsight, one would have to be in total cartoon world to deny the existence of powerful international bankers. — The Assassination of Louis McFadden

McFadden was a banker by trade. According to Wiki “He is known for his antisemitic conspiracy theories, which eventually saw him lose his seat in the House of Representatives.” Gotta paint him as Antisemitic within the first 3 sentences. However the three assassination attempts, the third being successful, do not deserve mention by Wiki. Only the smears by the press. Remember J.P. Morgan and friends bought control of the news in 1915 and the Anti-Defamation League was started in 1913 “To stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” Especially people like the Warburgs and Soros.

Why was McFadden smeared as an Antisemite BEFORE Hitler’s atrocities and then assassinated? You have to go to the Wayback Machine to find this explosive speech that helped get him killed.

Congressman McFadden Remarks in Congress, 1934

“The statement that it is necessary for the people to give their gold- the only real money- to the banks in order to protect the currency, is a statement of calculated dishonesty!

“By his unlawful usurpation of power on the night of March 5, 1933, and by his proclamation, which in my opinion was in violation of the Constitution of the United States, Roosevelt divorced the currency of the United States from gold, and the United States currency is no longer protected by gold. It is therefore sheer dishonesty to say that the people’s gold is needed to protect the currency.

“Roosevelt ordered the people to give their gold to private interests- that is, to banks, and he took control of the banks so that all the gold and gold values in them, or given into them, might be handed over to the predatory International Bankers who own and control the Fed.

“Roosevelt cast his lot with the usurers. “He agreed to save the corrupt and dishonest  at the expense of the people of the United States.

“He took advantage of the people’s confusion and weariness and spread the dragnet over the United States to capture everything of value that was left in it. He made a great haul for the International Bankers.

“The Prime Minister of England came here for money! He came here to collect cash!

“He came here with Fed Currency and other claims against the Fed which England had bought up in all parts of the world. And he has presented them for redemption in gold.

“Mr. Chairman, I am in favor of compelling the Fed to pay their own debts. I see no reason why the general public should be forced to pay the gambling debts of the International Bankers….


And shortly thereafter in 1941, having moved US gold into the hands of the Bankers and enabled currency devaluation (inflation) the USA entered World War II.

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT DEBT

By the end of World War I, the Government’s debt was around $25 billion. After the war in the 1920s, US government debt shrank to around $17 billion. So the bankers crashed the economy in 1933.

…The Fed is tasked to provide liquidity to America’s financial system. But from 1930 to 1933, it shockingly engaged in deflationary monetary policy that reduced the nation’s cash supply by nearly one-third, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman).

As privately-owned central bank of United States, the Fed can change the quantity of dollars in circulation — which leads to (and magnifies the) economic boom and bust cycles of U.S. economy… LINK


Under FDR US Debt went from $22 billion in 1933 to $258 million in 1945 at the end of WWII. LINK

Taking part in this war was very expensive for the U.S. Not only did the U.S. pay for its own military, it also lent money to Britain and other countries fighting the German military. [Which was not paid back] The estimated cost for the U.S. was $323 billion. To help pay for the war, the U.S. took on more debt, borrowing about $211 billion. Much of the debt was in the form of U.S. Savings Bonds, which were also called War Bonds at the time. The sale of the bonds was very successful. About 18 percent of the total U.S. debt for the war was funded by War Bonds. At the end of World War II, the Government’s debt had grown to more than $258 billion


From 1949 to 1979 the debt increased from $253 to $845 billion and from there to $11.9 TRILLION by 2009 DESPITE all the taxes we Boomers paid. As of November 10, 2025, the U.S. national debt stands at $38 trillion, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s daily report. WIKI

☕️ FOLLOWING SCIENCE ☙ Tuesday, November 11, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

….So why are conservatives like MTG and O’Reilly whinging about Democrat talking points? The answer is because Biden and the Autopen printed so much money that it tripled the amount of circulating currency.

Something like that is going to smart. There’s no avoiding it.

Inflation is inconvenient; nobody likes having to carry cash around in buckets. But it is painful only because of a three-word economic law: “Wages are sticky.” It means that, in a time of hyperinflation, people’s salaries increase much slower than consumer goods prices. Wages get stuck. Prices are the hare, and wages are the tortoise. There are many reasons why wages are so sticky. Some reasons are obvious, some are less intuitive, and some are drenched in syrup.

But it matters little why. It just is.

Whenever wages finally do increase, groceries and electricity and insurance don’t get cheaper. They just get more affordable.

The most difficult news is that prices will never return to pre-Biden levels. There’s too much cash sloshing around…

As we are now finding out, it was not Boomers who were getting rich, we were their cash cows, the cannon fodder for their endless war and now the Cabal’s fall guy, taking the blame for their crimes. At least that is what they are hoping. As Scott likes to point out, it is (working) white males who are on the bottom of the totem pole.

FDR’s set-up of the American People was followed by Nixon and The End of the Gold Standard in 1971.  Once the dollar was completely un-tethered from gold, the Rockefellers instigated the OPEC oil embargo in 1973. See OPEC and Rockefeller (An old truck driver told me there was so much oil during that period, the workers at the refineries were complaining they were running out of storage room.) Over night the price at the pump doubled causing a massive increase in the price of everything else… except the value of your savings account and pay check.


It was bad enough that FDR stole our gold, he also saddled us with the New Deal and the bastardization of the Commerce Clause. SEE: The Commerce Clause: Route to Omnipotent Government. Financially it has been a disaster for Americans.

Federal Regulations Have Made You 75 Percent Poorer

U.S. GDP is just $16 trillion instead of $54 trillion

The growth of federal regulations over the past six decades has cut U.S. economic growth by an average of 2 percentage points per year, according to a new study in the Journal of Economic Growth. As a result, the average American household receives about $277,000 less annually than it would have gotten in the absence of six decades of accumulated regulations—a median household income of $330,000 instead of the $53,000 we get now.


On top of that, under Reagan, our American corporations were stripped of their wealth via leveraged buyouts and then sold off to foreigners. As a country we went from corporations that were part of our community and viewed Americans as long term investments to transnational corporations who view Americans as replaceable cogs to be discarded as soon as they became ‘too expensive.’ During my Dad’s lifetime people worked for the same company all their life and retired with a pension. I watched the company I was planning to grow old with, a company with ZERO DEBT, get bought out in a hostile takeover, stripped and sold off piece meal. I even knew a guy in Boston, whose business was shipping the machinery from closed US factories in New England to Israel!

EDUCATION


Perhaps the nastiest thing the Cabal did was to destroy out education system. After all the target has always been the uppity middle class. As Dr Blumenfeld pointed out in Dumbing Down America

…he[Dewey]analyzed the traditional curriculum that sustained the capitalist, individualistic system and found whathe believed was the sustaining linchpin — that is, the key element that held the entire system together: high literacy. To Dewey, the greatest obstacle to socialism was the private mind that seeks knowledge in order to exercise its own private judgment and intellectual authority.High literacy gave the individual the means to seek knowledge independently. It gave individuals the means to stand on their own two feet and think for themselves. This was detrimental to the “social spirit” needed to bring about a collectivist society….

I was a victim of the See & Say reading method as a child.

A Brief History of Reading Instruction

By Stephen Parker a retired teacher who is pro-phonics

For more than a century, reading instruction has been involved in a high-stakes battle between supporters of two opposing methods for teaching a child to read. While this battle is often characterized as “Phonics” versus “Whole Word,” I think it’s more accurate to describe the two methodologies as “Bottom-Up” versus “Top-Down.” … The two methods are not compatible. [BULL SCHIFF! I learned Phonics from Mom and used it when ‘sight reading’ did not work.]

In 1908, Edmond Huey publishes his book The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading which quickly becomes the manifesto of a growing Whole Word (anti-phonics) movement….

In 1927, a nationally known educator, Dr. Arthur Gates, from Teachers College at Columbia University, joins the Whole Word movement….

By 1930, phonics – meaning explicit teaching of the code – has been abandoned in most of the nation’s classrooms….

1930 – 1965: Whole Word becomes the dominant top-down method for teaching reading in the United States…

1955: The Rudolf Flesch book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, becomes a runaway best seller in the US. It’s a passionate (and polemic) plea for the elimination of Whole Word memorization and guessing, and for a return to phonics….

1955: In a defensive response to the Flesch book, the education establishment and textbook publishers create the International Reading Association (later rebranded as the International Literacy Association). William S. Gray of the University of Chicago is named the first president. It was Gray who developed the popular Look/Say reading series, Dick and Jane, so heavily criticized by Flesch in Why Johnny Can’t Read. [Future IRA presidents will include such noteworthy names as Kenneth Goodman (1981), co-founder of Whole Language (see below), and Marie S. Clay (1992), founder of Reading Recovery.]…


What is interesting is even in Junior High, my friends and I saw the deterioration of education from one year class to the next and remarked upon it. We certainly noticed the Civil Rights Act and the bussing of little Drug Pushers into our school as the CIA expanded their customer base. (A friend’s 7 year old sister was hooked on cocaine in a school near where the Clintons now live.)


Robin Eubanks, an attorney who wrote the blog, Invisible Serf’s Collar gets into the details.

…A background in Law is also excellent preparation for determining precisely what the terms commonly used actually mean. Especially in an industry that is consciously using language to hide the actual intended goals. My experience allowed me to recognize that education in the US and globally has been, for decades,  engaged in a massive Newspeak (as in George Orwell’s 1984) campaign that creates a public illusion on what is being promised and what is coming to the schools and classrooms that are this country’s future. I know what the words and terms really mean to an Ed insider and how it differs from the common public perception. I have documented what was really behind the reading wars and math wars. I have pulled together what the real intended Common Core implementation looks like. And it is wildly different from the PR sales job used to gain adoption in most of the states.

For me the English language is both a sword and a shield. I have documented what is really going on, written a book describing how and why education became a weapon, and now we are going to talk about what the real Common Core implementation looks like in various communities in the US in this busy Summer of 2012…

One of her articles:

Reorienting World Order Values Via the Intervention of Activist Education and Progressive Politics

Why yes that is a quote from a Future Worlds Project financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for Peace in the early 70s. At least we now know why education just keeps coming up as the vehicle of choice to initiate social change without that fundamental fact being particularly noticeable. Even if caught, we just get told to defer to the professionals so that the political coup can continue at a slower pace. Drastic Gradualism is actually the term used to get the West to a radically different social, economic, and political system. Hopefully by the year 2000 was the Plan. The 70s were to have been the years to use education to change the prevailing Consciousness before initiating the mobilization for change in the 80s. The precise language used was to:

“supplant the outmoded values/ belief system associated with the state system [they mean nation-state, not those pesky political units the US has 50 of] in a pre-ecological age. [in other words, before Paul Ehrlich started writing about impending disaster]. The emergence and diffusion of a new value/belief consensus [helpfully provided as a Conceptual Understanding so ALL students will know it] is a vital precondition for the kind of active politics that would accomplish the transformation of the structures of power and authority in subsequent period of time.”

Now how many of you have heard that Common Core cannot be incremental? It MUST be comprehensive. Reforms in teacher evals, curricula, assessment, instructional practices, etc. ALL at once. The kind of social engineering that even a weak student of history would know better than attempt. Even if everything about the Common Core was actually about academic content. Which it most decidedly is not.

Well our new World Order planners as they honestly appear to be proud of being [again from then Princeton prof Richard Falk’s book] said it was because (their italics) mechanical penetration of existing curricula was not enough…

And if you click on HOME you get https://web.archive.org/web/20230308083457/http://invisibleserfscollar.com Listing a lot more of her articles.

Some Comments by Robin at Jo Nova’s blog.

Robin July 7, 2015 at 12:34 am ·

http://joannenova.com.au/2015/07/high-pressure-propaganda-greens-using-children-to-write-activist-letters-in-school/#comment-1724611

I actually have copies of the curriculum UNESCO created back in 2002 to be pushed globally in K-12 created in fulfillment of their obligations as Task Manager under Agenda 21. So much for it being just a theory of conspiring. I also documented the Belmont Challenge and Earth System Alliance that this is a part of. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/the-belmont-challenge-and-the-death-of-the-individual-via-education/

In my book Credentialed to Destroy: How and Why Education Became a Weapon I chronicle the UN entities and the OECD’s confessions of how their use of K-12 education plays into their broader goals. The Secreatry-General of the oECD was especially forthcoming. The thorough use of constructivism globally in K-12 and how it is actually about something other than how to teach subjects is also detailed.

I have also covered on my blog how Queensland has been used by the UN to pilot the transdisciplinary vision for K-12 in something that went by the name the New Basics Project.

There is a theory in K-12 that comes straight out of Marxism that is widely apparent in all the CAGW hype. It doesn’t matter if a theory is factually true. What matters is the effect implementing it as if it were true will have on people and the environment. Never forget the view that There’s Nothing as Practical as a Good Theory if fundamental transformation of people and institutions with governments in charge is the real agenda.

Rereke Whakaaro July 7, 2015 at 12:58 pm

http://joannenova.com.au/2015/07/high-pressure-propaganda-greens-using-children-to-write-activist-letters-in-school/#comment-1724711

The Hitler Youth, that you refer to, in pictures, started out as a Green Movement. Members of the Hitler Youth wore green shirts, and were sometimes referred to as Greenshirts.

One of their pamphlets reads:

“In every german breast the German forest quivers with its caverns and ravines, crags and boulders, waters and winds, legends and fairy tales, with its songs and its melodies, and awakens a powerful yearning and a longing for home; in all German souls the German forest lives and weaves with its depth and breadth, its stillness and strength, its might and dignity, its riches and its beauty — it is the source of German inwardness, of the German soul, of German freedom. Therefore protect and care for the German forest for the sake of the elders and the youth, and join the new German “League for the Protection and Consecration of the German Forest”. [Reproduced in Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Auf der Suche nach Arkadien, Munchen, 1990 p 147.]

The brightest and fittest of the Hitler Youth went on to form the nucleus of the Waffen Schutzstaffel (the SS), or in English, Protective Squadron. – Hitler’s private bodyguards.

But they didn’t just protect Hitler, in a personal sense, rather they protected the Furer (or leader), but more importantly, they were sworn and dedicated to protecting the Fatherland – Germany.

Substitute the concept of Gaia, as the Earth Mother, for the concept of Fatherland, as being just Germany, and you have the modern Green Shirts.

Robin says:

August 9, 2013 at 5:12 am

The models won’t go away because environmental catastrophe is at the center of global education reforms insisting we need new kinds of minds. It is all grounded in the Paul Ehrlich and Robert Ornstein book from that convenient and busy year of 1989 New World New Mind.

It’s also at the center of the political efforts that we shift to a so-called cooperative commonwealth model where the common good” as decided by government officials will be paramount. The Democracy Collaborative out of U Maryland has been quite busy on this note as has Gar Alperowitz on his book tour.

None of us may be among the 350 invited guests from all over the world being planned for in this September Meeting of the Minds annual conference http://cityminded.org/events/toronto/agenda but we are all being planned for at the meeting. Don’t miss the US EPA official attending as they work on a different kind of commerce for the 21st century.

They need the supposed AGW crisis. It’s the excuse for all the planning and sought revolutionary transformations.

Robin says:

June 22, 2013 at 4:08 pm

As somebody who reads all these reports coming out of the UN and Club of Rome and what Ehrlich says he intends to do etc, the books and reports read like satire and bad fiction. Which they are except intentions coupled to political power and taxpayer financing have actual real effects.

I suspect the early 90s writers were looking at things like the World Order Models Project and the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and then the hype around Limits to Growth and then the 87 Brundtland Report and realizing this is all an excuse for unquestioned power. AND being the paymaster for all that redistribution.

Understanding WOMP from the early 70s is very enlightening to appreciating the mentalities and lust for money and power that have always been hand in hand with these Save the World by changing human values schemes. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/reorienting-world-order-values-via-the-intervention-of-activist-education-and-progressive-politics/ lays out WOMP.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20230324180457/http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/reorienting-world-order-values-via-the-intervention-of-activist-education-and-progressive-politics/]

The Club of Rome considered WOMP a peer in its intentions and credentials involved.

…..

AND straight from the WEATHER UNDERGROUND!


The Gory Details About Terrorist Teacher Kathy Boudin

…Radical Math was created by educator Jonathan Osler several years ago while teaching at El Puenta Academy in New Jersey. Osler taught Radical Math along-side Cathy Wilkerson, a former member of the Weather Underground Organization (with Bill Ayers) who once participated in a plot to detonate a nail bomb at a dance for military personnel at Fort Dix.

Radical Math provides hundreds of social justice math lessons obviously meant to indoctrinate. For example, lesson titles include “Sweatshop Accounting,” “Racism and Stop and Frisk,” “When Equal Isn’t Fair,” “The Square Root of a Fair Share” and “Home Buying While Brown or Black.”…


IPOT aka Sir Patrick Mack did a very good series on the Weather Underground.
Utube had scrubbed the videos… So you know they are worth watching.

The Weathermen I – IPOT Presents – 6.21.19

The Weathermen II – Of Media, Money & Men – IPOT Presents – 11.11.19

@ 47 minutes it goes over some of the history of the Weather Underground

@ 1 hour 12 minutes it starts in on the connection of Bill Ayers and Linda Darling-Hammond to Common Core. Linda was the education advisor to Obama’s presidential campaign and was among candidates for US Secretary of Education under Obama.

@ 1 hour 16 minutes it leads into ANTIFA and the violence on campus to prevent Conservative speakers.

If nothing else listen to that section

The Weathermen III – ALL4FLOYD – IPOT Present

Dear KMAG: 20240129 Joe Biden Didn’t Win ❀ Open Topic

Joe Biden didn’t win. This is our Real President:

AND our beautiful REALFLOTUS.

This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).

And yes, it’s Monday…again.

But we WILL get through it!

We will always remember Wheatie,

Pray for Trump,

Yet have fun,

and HOLD ON when things get crazy!

We will follow the RULES of civility that Wheatie left for us:

Wheatie’s Rules:

  1. No food fights.
  2. No running with scissors.
  3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.

And while we engage in vigorous free speech, we will remember Wheatie’s advice on civility, non-violence, and site unity:

“We’re on the same side here so let’s not engage in friendly fire.”

“Let’s not give the odious Internet Censors a reason to shut down this precious haven that Wolf has created for us.”

If this site gets shut down, please remember various ways to get back in touch with the rest of the gang:

Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.

Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.

We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.

Joe Biden didn’t win.

And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.

Wolfie’s Wheatie’s Word of the Week:

pseudandry

noun

  1. assumption of a man’s proper name by a woman
  2. use of a masculine name by a woman as a pseudonym
  3. the use by a female writer of a male pseudonym
  4. the first step in girls falling for the transgender social contagion
  5. what brainwashed schoolgirls do with the help of Democrat teachers
  6. appropriation of male nomenculture by a mentally ill woman

nomenculture

noun

Wolfmoonian neologism (which may or may not already exist) designed to criticize left-wing political correctness over it’s ridiculous “cultural appropriation” morality. The resemblance to nomenclature is intentional. The obvious meaning is “culture of naming things”.

MUSIC!

Enjoy a classic “epic” track from back when we were on CTH, supporting Trump against the Jebusites and Donkey Coms!

Steve’s post on Tides reminded me of this scene in the movie Interstellar. Pay attention to the music.

This guy’s goofy deadpan humor is just fun to watch. He “collects” great bass players around the world in his video channel. Enjoy!

THE STUFF

Did you ever wonder why LinkedIn is so horrible, and encourages a weird kind of PC phoniness? This is the guy who founded it, and who runs it.

Keep pushing the Faucists and the Branch Covidians every day on masks, vaccines, and DEATH BY JABS. They’re backing up and giving OUR SIDE the scientific credibility now.

Pay attention here. Democrats are MAOIST. Public schools are now MAOIST. This is not an accident.

Never count on ‘slims to protect you from ‘slims.

https://twitter.com/RonEng1ish/status/1751146305961795858

OK, I laughed at this. Medical political jokes are a weakness.

Just sayin’!

Until victory, have faith!

And trust the big plan, too!

And as always….

ENJOY THE SHOW

W

Lefty’s View of WWII, by Wild Bill

OK, straight up apologies, Dear Q-Treepers & Friends, for this likely stream of consciousness post very loosely inspired from our dear Daughn’s nostalgic posts. This is going to veer about in personal family history domains so is meant as a bit of a slice of Americana…

Detroit’s skyline as viewed from the Ambassador Bridge

Grandpa S. came to stay with us at some point for an extended stay while I still lived in my parents’ home. I think it was after my grandma had died but before I went away to college. Grandpa had been sick and so lived with us for a season as he regained his health & his strength. There were times he’d watch Price is Right with my brothers & I & encourage us to make guesses on the various games, which we all thoroughly enjoyed.

Grandpa was a bit of a gruff man having grown up in the Motor City & having a Northwoods lumberjack for a father. He was a self-made man of limited education, never having finished high school. An avid outdoorsman and good with his hands he knew how to work hard and he was respected and even loved by many people from practically all walks of life. He had deep practical wisdom & was even flexible in his lifestyle deciding to take up new hobbies as a widower, like candle AND candy making. He had a zest for life & perpetual twinkle in his eye!

Ty Cobb in 1913 in Detroit, the era when he let Grandpa & other kids into the ballpark by the back fence to watch the games for free!

Well one day while he was staying with us the phone rang unexpectedly. Being the oldest kid it fell to me to answer the call, as my parents weren’t home at the time. Some gravelly male voice on the other end of the phone was looking for a “Lefty” & I was concerned. The only “lefty” I could imagine would be some fictional gangster or ne’er-do-well. Anyway with tremulous voice I mentioned to Grandpa that someone was looking for “Lefty”. He snatched the phone from my hand & bellowed out in his own testosterone truncated tongue “Lefty here!” I was beyond flabbergasted, My Grandpa Was Lefty!!!

Obviously this was a pretty basic nickname for a man who was left-handed, especially growing up in an era when being left-handed was a “sinister” condition. Both he, my dad’s dad, AND my mom’s mom, were left-handed & suffered the indignities that went along with being different & the punishments typically meted out for errant usage of the “wrong” hand in those bygone days. Both of these grandparents had less than beautiful handwriting but were surely more ambidextrous than most. My youngest brother is also blessed with this left-handedness & it definitely contributed to some of his sporting successes, especially his ability to be a switch-hitter on his high-school baseball team! I think he was also more competent with both feet as a soccer player than were most teammates too.

Grandpa had been a pretty poor student during his formal education. In fact, after his death, when my parents were going through his things they discovered a lone report card saved from nearly 8 decades before. Apparently this “all S” card was the best he ever did. That was based on a grading system of U=Unsatisfactory, S=Satisfactory, & E=Excellent, I believe. Basically grandpa got the equivalent of an all-C, straight average report card & that was the treasure of the ages. How easily did the high marks of so many in our family line become blasé. We didn’t really understand what it was to suffer ridicule for poor marks, well most of us didn’t…

My dad is going over my post with me & said that on Grandpa’s report card there were 12 things to be graded on per marking. In the 1st card marking he got 4 S’s & the rest U’s. 2nd marking was 8 or 9 S’s the rest U’s. The final card marking he got all 12 S’s. My grandpa wrote on that report card “Best report card I ever had” & saved it all those years. Neither my dad nor his sister knew about that card before grandpa’s death.

Not Grandpa’s report card, but one from the era when he first attended school

Grandpa did throw things away, including stock certificates for companies that went belly up during the Depression, per my dad. He provided for his family during his lifetime & had less than $1,000 to his name when he died…& a new car that he called “my second to last car”. My brother got that late ’80’s Tempo after Grandpa’s passing.

Now according to my dad his dad had one of his grade school teachers as a regular customer at his gas station & garage in the heart of Detroit. Some three decades after she taught him she would berate him with “see I knew you’d never amount to anything” when she came to fill up or get some car service from him or his employees. Imagine being dogged like that as a self-made business man, yet Grandpa didn’t stint on the service in spite of the disrespect.

In fact dad is quite sure that Grandpa accepted Scrip during the war years, and my other grandpa, being a teacher, was paid in scrip too. It is quite likely that Grandpa S’s cruel elementary teacher paid in scrip AND much of that payment never was converted to Actual Money (I don’t know all the social reasons for that) so Grandpa took care of that teacher’s material needs even as she maligned his interpersonal & self-esteem ones. He truly was the bigger man.

Not my Grandpa’s gas station, but his brand in his era

When looking for possible images of Grandpa’s old Sunoco gas station at Junction & Toledo in Detroit I ran across this nostalgic discussion of old Detroit area gas stations.

https://www.atdetroit.net/forum/messages/6790/93948.html?1226175627

During the Second World War, at some point rationing was on. This meant that even in the Motor City it was hard to get what one needed to maintain functional transportation for the masses. Dad said that Grandpa had an old vulcanizing machine, that could be used to patch tires, and that his dad practically single-handedly kept Detroit on wheels! If he could have brought that machine with him to Northern Michigan when he retired it should have ended up in a museum, how significant was it’s contribution to keeping Detroit moving!

1945 Ration Book from the region, this example from Illinois

Speaking of Northern Michigan let’s segue a bit. My Grandpa’s dad had grown into manhood in the Northern Michigan lumbering industry, though he himself was a mid-Michigan farm boy. He left home, possibly even before his teen years to work in lumbering. He drove the horse-drawn wagons, worked as a lumberjack, and later was some type of foreman.

The company he worked for was owned by a Mr. Lowrey and at one point Lowrey’s son made his way into the woods to get his lumbering chops with the working guys. Apparently the lumberjacks were a pretty rough group of customers & Great-Grandpa took the boss’s son under his wing, showed him the ropes, AND protected him from the brutish thugs. This was noticed by the boss so later on when operations were moved South into Detroit Great-Grandpa was invited to come along and manage the lumber yard. That’s what he did for the rest of his working life. AND that is how that side of my family came to Detroit, right about 1900!

Logging in Michigan, 1890’s, when my Great Grandpa was still working in the Northern Michigan woods

Apparently Great Grandpa S. was a pretty tough customer too. He was tall, over 6 feet, with a fairly slender build. Even so, he was incredibly strong. One time Grandpa, as a young man, or even teen, had occasion to do some work at his dad’s lumber yard. There were train cars to be loaded or unloaded of 50 pound bags of cement, I believe. Grandpa would carry a bag in each hand & fling them in a smooth motion up to stack even over his head. Dad said that his father had very strong hands & even used to play handball at the Y in Detroit. Anyway G observed GG breaking up a fight amongst some unrulies in the lumber yard. When they wouldn’t stop the fight Great Grandpa stepped in & with One Blow Each felled each man. My grandpa was in shock that his dad could or would do that, this was someone not to mess around with!

Ironically my dad & his friends also experienced Grandpa’s physical & character strength for themselves. There was a time in their teen years that dad & his buddies took out the family car joy riding, over 50 miles of driving without ever leaving the Detroit city limits. Apparently Dad didn’t think to put more gas in the car so the next day as Grandpa was headed into work at His gas station, he ran out of gas. Grandpa somehow got a hold of Dad’s buddy & lifted him one handed off the floor & stuck him to the wall. What happened to Dad during that timeframe has always been rather murkily glossed over. I know my dad inherited this skill set for I once witnessed him lift up one of my brother’s cocky little friends up off the floor & stick him to the wall, though he used 2 hands in this surprising intervention on the now more subdued teen!

So we’ve had Michigan’s North Woods in our blood for a number of generations. Now fortunately my Grandpa S. married my grandma, the daughter of a railroad engineer–both of her parents were children of immigrants from the British Isles. Grandma’s dad had a fairly cushy job that he’d worked into on the Michigan Central Railroad. One of the perks of working for the railroad was getting the family to ride the rails, for free, I believe. Grandma’s family used to regularly travel Up North and enjoy Summer vacations in Michigan’s beautiful North Country, far from their native Detroit.

Historic Arbutus Beach, on Otsego Lake, MI in the era when my grandma’s family vacationed there

Eventually Grandma’s parents settled on a small community in Gaylord and bought a Cottage, being the first such building in the newly platted resort community of Arbutus Beach, along the beautiful sandy shore of Otsego Lake. Nearly all of Grandma’s siblings and many cousins ultimately obtained cottages in that community. My grandparents married in the late 1920’s and somehow acquired one of the existing Cottages in Arbutus Beach, as its second owners. My dad & his sister, along with their mother, spent virtually Every Summer of their childhood in that Northern Michigan paradise. Surrounded by family & friends they’d leave Detroit the day after school let out & only head home the day before school started in the Fall. Grandpa would join them for both journeys, I think because there was only one car. Grandma & the kids either caught the train to/from town or perhaps bummed rides from relatives with transportation.

How my great grandparents moved their cottage to Arbutus Beach, details here: https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2017/06/29/josiahs-story-about-the-4th-of-july/

Now that same Cottage ended up becoming my grandparents’ retirement home, somewhat unexpectedly. Up until the Race Riot era of the late ’60’s both sets of my grandparents expected to live in their Detroit homes for the remainder of their natural lives. However during that season of social upheaval block-busting real estate agents put the pressure on & ultimately both sets of grandparents winterized Summer cottages to become their then retirement homes.

The simpler times of my dad’s youth saw Otsego Lake rarely shackled, as it is now, by excessive docks or boats

The Gaylord Cottage would figure largely in my own life too. When my new husband & I decided to come to Michigan–we had met & married in Oklahoma, though I was a child of the Motor City–we ended up living temporarily in The Cottage that was now in my parents’ possession after Grandpa’s death about a half decade previously. Michael & I lived in The Cottage as newly weds AND as new parents. Our first child, Nathaniel was born while we lived in The Cottage (his height is marked on the 4 generation height-recording doorjambs between the dining & living rooms at just One Day Old!) & was gifted the nickname “The Jack-Pine Savage” because of this northern naissance. In fact I believe our son is the Only family member in 6 generations of our extended family associated with this Northern Michigan community who was born in Gaylord, though several have died there. Though our twins were born while we still lived in that community–we had bought our own house in town by that time–they were in fact born downstate because of the high-risk nature of that pregnancy & their anticipated medical needs…

If you’d like to see a Newspaper article from back when Michael & I and the Boys lived in Gaylord in the 1990’s check it out here, on pages 1, 4, & 5:

http://207.74.70.101:8080/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-6631/1996-11-07%20Thu%20Building%20Familes.pdf

Anyway, at one point when Michael & I were moving into The Cottage we boxed up some things to make room for some of our belongings. One day we were going through some old kids books and discovered some doodlings & writings by my dad. Apparently Dad had fancied himself some type of cowboy AND given himself the moniker Wild Bill! I absolutely Loved It!!!

Whenever watching that perennial classic A Christmas Story, I can imagine my dad as a lad in the 1940’s into the ’50’s with his admiration for all things cowboy & his gun prowess. I’m pretty sure that he was Up North when practicing targeting some strategic mushrooms on top of a log. However, unlike Steve’s important Saturday reminders, he forgot to notice what was Behind his target. So successfully hitting mushrooms with his BB gun sometimes meant tagging one of his playmates inadvertently as the projectiles maintained their forward trajectory. Simpler times…

Boy with gun in the 1950’s, not my dad but similar to his era

It’s impossible to anticipate what type of gems one might unearth in an old family home! Years ago there was a major garage cleaning undertaken by 3 generations of the family. At one point an old scorched ironing board cover, complete with it’s “scorchless” packaging was unearthed. After much conversation it was returned to the archeological dig to be unearthed years, or perhaps generations from now, so the joy & consternation at our family ways can continue!

Saving that old ironing board cover reminded Dad about his mom’s dad, the railroad engineer. Apparently Great-Grandpa T. used to collect stamps. He would meticulously organize them into small piles and tie them together with small pieces of string & place them strategically in old cigar boxes. Well he kept some container labeled “String Too Short To Save” for this stamp-corralling work, apparently because that was about all such short lengths of string were good for! If you knew how much my packratedness AND that of some other family members has tormented those who are more comfortable with much less physical (& other) baggage, you would recognized that “String Too Short To Save” isn’t always a badge of honor here!

Several books had similar titles, so this metaphor goes well beyond just our family perspective & experience–yikes!

So back to Lefty AND World War II. Dad & his sister have some direct memories of the war years, though they were still Very Young when it ended. Apparently they kept a pail of pure sand in the attic in case the house were ever bombed or hit with incendiary devices. They employed blackout curtains. Grandpa was sometimes involved in some type of neighborhood patrol, well Dad says that actually the next-door neighbor Mr. Bush was the Warden, who’d knock on your door if any light showed through the blackout curtains. They sounded an air raid siren for a drill in getting into blackout conditions & the Warden would patrol the neighborhood looking for any errant lights during that drill. Ration Books were in play & plenty of food was hard to get. Street Signs were removed to prevent the enemy, should he land on our shores, from easily navigating these foreign roads. And of course rationing meant deprivations in many arenas.

One place of deprivation was in the use of gasoline. Even Grandpa, who owned his own gas station business, could not get extra gasoline. That meant that when hunting season rolled around he wouldn’t be able to head Up North to the Hunting Shack to do the traditional annual deer hunting pilgrimage, or wouldn’t he? Actually he had some cousins who were farmers and apparently the government wasn’t rationing their access to gas in Any Way. So some of these cousins arranged to leave cans of gas strategically along the side of the road, hidden in the ditch, so Grandpa could gas up sufficiently to make it to his war-time limited hunting camp!

teaser historic post card from Luzerne, MI our guys rarely see this many deer in the region nowadays

By the way, how The Shack came into the family is a bit of an interesting tale too. Grandpa, his cousin, uncle, & some friends used to hunt the state or federal lands adjacent to a farmer’s land Up North. They’d done this for some years in a remote area in Oscoda County near the Very Small Town of Luzerne. Many times these hunters had begged the farmer to sell them a small amount of land so they could put up more permanent hunting camps than their tent-based camps of yesteryear. One time they invited the farmer to join them for a meal in the large dining tent. Their camp stove gave off a spark that ignited that tent AND it completely burned before they could un-stake all the ropes & drop the canvas to the ground. The farmer decided it was no way to live so relented & sold them One Acre, which was subdivided into 2 plots & 2 hunting shacks were built there, both still standing.

The shack across the street used to have a custom-made wood burned sign (recently stolen) claiming “Piscopalian Valley”, which is what our original hunters used to call the area since the piss would go in the pail before the hunting shacks AND outhouses were put in. In fact Grandpa’s uncle Will was known as “the Mayor of Piscopalian Valley” since he would make the rounds of the many nearby hunting camps AND the “blue horse trail” camp (the blue horse trail marks an equestrian path that traverses the fingers of Michigan’s Mitten–no NOT that Mitt!–from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron and makes navigating “our” hunting zone much more interesting) & pick up all the news of the hunt & the community–what a rich history abounded there & many tales live on!

Blue Horse Trail near Luzerne passes through the family hunting grounds

Speaking of news AND WWII the way Lefty learned about the end of the war was pretty amazing. Now I don’t ever recall hearing my grandpa tell this story, but Wild Bill has good recall of it. Apparently as The War was waning Grandpa went on an extended hunting or fishing adventure in the wilds of Canada, dad said that it was a fishing trip. He was walking along a portage trail in the woods & came across a carving on a tree trunk declaring the date & time of the end of the war in Europe AND he ran across this within two hours of someone carving it, literally out in the middle of nowhere! What an amazing world!

If only that WWII was the war to end all wars & love reigned supreme

Boy were our forbears hearty & blessed people. We are blessed to carry their blood in our veins & some of their quirkiness in our behaviors & of course some of their personality & physical traits in our beings, as they continue to live on, in a manner of speaking, in & through us.

From C.S. Lewis in his Chronicles of Narnia, as recounted here: https://silo.pub/pocket-companion-to-narnia-a-guide-to-the-magical-world-of-cs-lewis.html. HONOR — To seek honor in obedience and to behave honorably may be said to be one definition of a true Narnian. In PC [Prince Caspian]15, Caspian is ashamed that he comes of such a dishonorable (Telmarine) lineage. Aslan replies, “You come of the Lord Adam and Lady Eve. And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar and shame enough to bow the heads and shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”

Veteran’s Day Addendum

Honoring our warriors, especially on Veteran’s Day!

We all owe so much to the many who have made tremendous sacrifices to fight for & ensure ongoing degrees of freedom for their fellow man. The complexity of the tapestry of lives, lifestyles, & social & family dynamics can never fully be done justice. So many different ways our warriors & their families & friends have laid down their lives for the family of man. Thank you!

I come from a family without direct modern experience in military service & warfare. However I know of numerous serviceman in the extended family who answered the call. This listing is to honor their service & sacrifice & that of so many others who have stood in the gap on freedom’s and our nation’s behalf.

  • Orringh Stoddard, Captain Massachusetts Line, Revolutionary War
  • Husband Michael’s Hagerman ancestor, United Empire Loyalist
  • Friedrich Bluemle, Mom’s birth great grandfather, compulsory German military service before immigrating to America mid 1800’s
  • Michael’s relations, both sides service Civil War, fractured family & fractured nation
  • William E. Curren, US Army Signal Corp, late 1800’s
  • Clarence E. Curren, Virginia Ship Building Co., WWI Navy
  • Patrick L., Husband’s father’s uncle, WWII Nave Sea Bee, construction battalion
  • Verner R. Shoup, Hubby’s grandfather & son of CO governor Oliver H. Shoup, WWI Army
  • David O. M., Mom’s birth grandfather, WWI Army
  • Robert D. M., Mom’s birth father, WWII Marine, action in Tarawa & beyond
  • Avis B. B., Mom’s birth mother, WAC WWII, service in Alaska & beyond
  • Thurman T., Grandma’s brother, WWII, machinist, Manhattan Project
  • Hugh T., Grandma’s brother-in-law, WWII Army medical doctor
  • Maynard K., Mom’s brother, Korea-era Naval service, injured medical discharge
  • Zachary S., my nephew, Marine in modern service
My ancestor Orringh Stoddard’s letter February 3, 1780 preserved in George Washington’s papers, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw4.064_0179_0180/

May the Lord continue to equip us all with the tools we need to keep fighting the good fight!

Vignette of my Uncle Hugh’s military service, from his obituary “Dr. Thompson was a US veteran, serving with the US Medical Corps for three and a half years. He was captain of the 32nd Field Hospital in Italy. After VE Day, he was sent to the Philippines and Japan.” He moved his wife & kids into their Northern Michigan cottage while he was overseas during WWII, being concerned for their safety had they remained in their Detroit home during his extended absence. Service & Sacrifice!

http://otsego.advantage-preservation.com/viewer/?k=hugh%20thompson&i=f&d=01011903-12312013&m=between&ord=k1&fn=herald_times_usa_michigan_gaylord_19911024_english_23&df=1&dt=10&cid=2955 has further details on Dr. Hugh Thompson’s career & photos.