Trad Catholic. Army vet. Ex-geographer. Ex-journalist: murder, organized crime, jazz, c&w, the press. Love: PA hills, Irish whiskey, good stories.
A Farm In Northeast Ohio
Joined January 2016
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The second chapter from The Rivers of Amerikay.
Book 1 of The Book of Crusoe Walker: The Ghaney
I Ain't, He Says, I Ain't, Old Kid, And I Would Pinch ' Em If I Did
It was nearly a year since we had destroyed the second Cibola, less than that since Bear-Named-Bear had ripped the throat out of the last of the Harpey brothers and my uncle, Toby Walker, was nervous - something I'd never seen in him before. We were waiting to meet old Addis Walker, the man who was called Songo by all of the Prithees and most of the family.
There were three of us - Toby and his wife, Maddie, and me - and we were expected for dinner with Songo and his almost-new wife, Rebecca, on board the Melancholie Jakewees, the very big and very elegant riverboat that had been my grandfather's home (and mine) since Butterfield the Assassin had burned down the Panopticon the year before.
At first, it had not been planned to be a dinner but, instead, a meeting between Songo and Toby. Then, because it was to be the last day of the old year, Rebecca who was as kind and good as she was beautiful and tough insisted that Maddie who was very pregnant at seven months be included because she wanted to - well, because she wanted to share as much as she could in the coming into the world of her first grandchild.
At the last minute, I'd been added to the list of those who would dine.
My father, Darby, had returned to the Tionesta along the Ghaney to spend Christmas with old friends and I'd gone back with him. Unlike the rest of the Walkers, I'd never been an outdoorsman through and through and though I could take down a deer with my rifle at least as well as all of them, I'd never learned to like field dressing one. So, I'd decided to leave Tionesta early in order to spend First Night with my friends in Nimishillen.
It was late afternoon when I'd gotten back to the Jakewees, and the sky was glooming gray and snow was spitting. I was tired, cold, wet and hungry and I'd been on the Ghaney, alone in my kayak, for a day-and-a-half.
Except for the guards, I saw and spoke to no-one as I hauled myself and my pack filled with Christmas presents - maple candies for the grown-ups and a painter-skin covering for the coming baby - up to my cabin on the Texas.
Ted Joy retweeted
بعد أن قضت معظم حياتها في الدفاع عن الحركة النسوية.. الكاتبة البريطانية بيترونيلا وايت تكتب مقالًا تعبر فيه عن ندمها قائلةً:
“أنا عازبة وبلا أطفال ووحيدة لقد خذلتني الحركة النسوية وخذلت جيلي كله”
أضافت الكاتبة في مقالها: “ألتقي كل يوم اثنين مع مجموعة من الصديقات في أحد مطاعم لندن نجلس على طاولة بالقرب من النافذة ونناقش حياتنا، لدينا الكثير من الأمور المشتركة فكلنا في منتصف الخمسينات من عمرنا ونساء عاملات متعلمات تعليمًا مرموقًا ولكن.. هناك فراغ في حياتنا فكلنا عازبات وليس لدينا أطفال
أشعر بشكل متزايد كما تشعر صديقاتي المقربات أن الحركة النسوية قد خذلت جيلنا .. وأعتقد أحيانًا وكذلك صديقاتي بأن الغرب قد تجاوز الفلسفة النسوية وأنها أصبحت ضارة .. فأين في هذا العالم تُترك النساء مثلنا حتى نصل إلى منتصف الخمسينات من العمر ونجد أنفسنا وحدنا؟ .. هل تعلمون أن واحدة من كل عشر نساء بريطانيات في الخمسينات من العمر لم تتزوج قط وتعيش بمفردها! وهو أمر مؤلم وغير صحي
قالت لي صديقتي سالي البالغة من العمر 55 عامًا: أشعر دائمًا بأني شخص غير مرغوب به كامرأة لأن الحركة النسوية علمتنا أن الأنثى التقليدية هي صورة نمطية اخترعها الرجال لإبقائنا تحت سيطرتهم وبناءً على ذلك كنت معاديةً للرجال إلى حد إبعادهم والآن ها أنا أدفع ثمن ذلك .. أقولها بوضوح لقد حان الوقت لإعادة التفكير في هذه الثقافة واسترجاع الثقافة التقليدية .. ربما يكون الوقت قد فات بالنسبة لي ولصديقاتي ولكن لا ينبغي لنا أن نسمح للحركة النسائية بأن تدمر حياة الأجيال القادمة أيضًا”
Ted Joy retweeted
How can @MIT and President Kornbluth sit back and allow Kristin Knouse to remain on the MIT faculty when she has been found by a jury of her peers to have falsely accused him of rape, and intentionally destroyed his life and career with the help of co-conspirators in the MIT administration?
How does this not violate MIT’s code of conduct?
How can one continue to trust the research she produces?
Why has MIT not immediately launched a formal investigation to reconsider the removal of @DMSabatini’s tenure and Knouse’s continued inclusion on the faculty?
The evidence from the case is now in the public record. It is a straightforward process for MIT to review the facts.
Justice must be served.
Female MIT scientist climbed into famed professor's bed and 'aggressively' demanded sex... before making #MeToo allegation that almost ruined him after he dumped her
dailymail.com/news/article-1…
Ted Joy retweeted
Leftist man calls Christians “mentally children” and says he wishes the “South had seceded” because the Bible Belt and Christianity are holding back advancement in medicine and technology.
Does this dude not realize that Christian society built most of modern medicine..??
A study of every Nobel Prize from 1901 to 2000 found 65.4% of the winners were Christians. 6 of the 8 Ivy League schools were started by churches or ministers, including Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
Methodists started Vanderbilt, and its medical school figured out how to grow viruses in chicken eggs, which made vaccines possible. And the Catholic Church alone runs about 5,500 hospitals around the world.
Ted Joy retweeted
I am speechless. Thomas Aquinas College just dropped a study on the rigor of the new SAT.
It compares the 1980/87 test with 2026. The findings should terrify every parent and teacher...
Vocabulary has collapsed.
Old SAT: 70.6% of questions tested vocab.
New SAT: 15%.
The old test forced students to know a wide range of words through analogies, antonyms, and sentence completions. The new test abandoned that. Most vocab questions now just ask students to fill in one blank from context.
Reading passages also got radically shorter (average ~97 words vs 300–340).
The new test uses short expository passages and hands you the necessary background knowledge inside the text. The older tests leaned much more heavily on argumentative and persuasive writing, assumed far more historical, scientific, and cultural knowledge, and penalized students who lacked it.
This is a redefinition of what "college readiness" means.
If you believe that kids should develop rigorous vocabulary, be capable of sustained reading, and possess background knowledge, I have bad news for you. The SAT no longer measures these.
If you want a future where children can actually read difficult texts and construct complex arguments, the SAT must be replaced now.
This cannot go on.
We were concerned that the SAT has become a less reliable measure of student preparedness for a rigorous college curriculum.
So, we commissioned a study from Johns Hopkins University. What does this study tell us about the state of higher education?
The results are shocking. thaq.co/4iLThZ0
TheDems are showing their true colors.
Ted Joy retweeted
I never post because no one ever sees my posts or never responds, but my husband needs all prayers and positive vibes he can get. He survived Vietnam, a life altering motorcycle wreck and now septic shock. He’s out of CCU, so I think we’ve turned a corner.
Ted Joy retweeted
There are unintended consequences to everything. It is hard to explain to civilians how strict the Naval Academy honor code is.
I had a friend Plebe year who was deathly ill with the flu and missed an exam.
Page one of the syllabus said, in bold letters: "If you miss an exam, you will take it immediately during the next scheduled class."
She gets out of the hospital, and her upperclassmen ask if she missed anything important. She says yes, an exam.
They ask if she rescheduled it. "Yes, for Monday," she says, knowing that is the next scheduled class.
One of the upperclassmen runs into the professor and asks if she called him to reschedule the exam. He says no.
She was put on trial and kicked out of the school for lying.
This was the late nineties. You'll have to subscribe to @CSSProvision's USNA podcast to find out if it's still that strict, but it is definitely not a joke.
Historically they take even the whitest lies seriously.
And history matters because today’s generals attended college last century.
This is a good thing. I have advocated for new immigrants to be held to the West Point honor code...
"A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do."
...during a five-year probationary period after becoming a citizen. It doesn't have to include white lies, but it absolutely must include fraud of all types.
So why do I say there are unintended consequences?
Because the second you receive your diploma and commission, you no longer have to follow the honor code.
This makes sense. We couldn't keep national secrets if no Army officer could lie. BUT...
During those four years at USMA you become hyper-aware of lies, and people who are told not to do something, anything, are tempted to do it. Some do lie, and they go to extraordinary lengths to cover it up.
We had another classmate, a senior, who didn't want to go to war. He wanted to be a supply officer instead, but the only way to get a non-combat assignment was to be injured.
This man tied his arms behind his back and launched himself off a top bunk to dislocate his shoulder.
But that's not the crazy part. The crazy part was the rumor that his parents had hired a lawyer and an acting coach to run him through a murder board before the injury. They trained him on exactly how to deliver the lie about his injury.
I don't know if that rumor about the murder board was true, but it was directionally correct. At the very least, he had been thinking through exactly what he would say for years.
This was a very high-IQ individual, working for YEARS to tell one lie.
And it worked. He graduated into the Supply Corps.
That is an extreme case. The vast majority of service academy graduates don't tell lies while enrolled. But every single one of them thinks about how to lie, a lot, because human nature is to be tempted by prohibitions.
And even the most squeaky-clean midshipman has to sit on the jury during Brigade Honor Board trials. So they get an insider's view of how lies fail.
The unintended consequence is that you become very good at understanding what lies work and what lies do not.
And West Point has something Annapolis does not.
The Naval Academy's Honor Concept is, paraphrasing, "Midshipmen do not lie, cheat, or steal."
West Point's is different: "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do."
Or tolerate those who do.
Army cadets have the added obligation to be on the lookout for lies.
All this is to say that USMA graduates are exceptionally intelligent and have a very keen sense for spotting lies.
Again, that's a good thing. But that superpower can also be used to become an exceptional liar.
And in today's hyper-political climate, it is not easy to get a star without lying about something big.
You don’t understand. You think you do, but you don’t.
A great majority of U.S. Army officers are incapable of telling the truth. It is a feature of the system, not a bug.
The higher up they get, the more lies they’ve been willing to tell. Not all, but most.
This has not always been the way of things. This is the GWOT way of things.
If you attempt to speak the truth in a system built on lies, you get attacked like an immune system strikes a virus.
This isn’t me trying to take cheap shots at them. I’ve tried for years to spell this out in elevated prose where applicable.
I can’t best around the bush anymore. Any institution that attacks the truth no longer serves the greater good. It’s merely serving itself.
Interesting that you use the term "eudaemonia".
That, of course, is one of the principles of Catholic thought and, more than anything else, the Declaration is based on Catholic anthropology, political theory and jurisprudence.
In Parliamentary Supremacy systems of governance, so called ‘rights’ are permissions granted by The State; UK, Canada & other ‘Crown’ nations.
In America (due to the existence of the Declaration of Independence) the system is different and unique. The right to Life (Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness; eudaemonia) is antecedent to the State and government has no jurisdiction, no authority to control/override/violate that. It is not a permission/privilege granted. It is an antecedent right that government is duty bound and obligated to protect. That government itself in America was constituted to uphold and defend.
Countries without the Declaration of Independence (its ontological first principles and its constitutive jurisdictional grammar) have no defence against violation of the ‘right to life’.
America is exceptional in that sense and other nations would do well to learn from what its Founders established, how and why - what for. It needs to be the foundational obligation of each American in their own professional capacity to demonstrate and embody this understanding too - if America is to defend and conserve for generations to come, the unique posterity its Founders pledged everything to establish, for the benefit of generations to come.
The insanity of American women.
Ted Joy retweeted
My daughter is in the ER again.
Please pray she doesn’t need another amputation (#3).🙏🏻
Ted Joy retweeted
🚨 BREAKING OVERNIGHT: SecWar Pete Hegseth has FIRED Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia after he reportedly FAILED three polygraphs about leaking classified information to the press
GOOD RIDDANCE TO ALL LEAKERS! 👋🏻
He's now under investigation over LEAKS about the Iran war, the Russia-Ukraine war and more, and the case has been referred to the DOJ
Sylvia purportedly got around the Pentagon's escort rules for reporters by meeting journalists outside the building
Hegseth made the right move for our country!
Wow!
When a fighter jet loses its fuel system over the freezing North Atlantic Ocean, standard military procedure says the pilots must eject and let the aircraft sink.
On September 5, 1983, United States Air Force Captain Jon "Ghost" Alexander and First Lieutenant Karol Wojcikowski were 520 miles from land when their F-4E Phantom II suffered a catastrophic fuel valve failure.
In the icy Atlantic waves below, an ejected pilot had just ninety seconds of consciousness before freezing to death.
One hundred miles away, a four-engine KC-135A Stratotanker named North Star heard their mayday. Captain Robert Goodman, Captain Michael Clover, and boom operator Technical Sergeant Ron Craft turned their 100-ton tanker around immediately.
Even after they hooked up, the Phantom's broken valves could not take enough fuel, one engine flamed out, and the crippled fighter began dropping too slow for a jet tanker to stay connected.
So the crew of North Star broke every rule in the flight manual.
At just 1,400 feet above the waves, Captain Goodman lowered the massive tanker's landing gear in mid-air to create drag, pulled his four engines to idle, and slowed to 190 knots.
For the final 160 miles to Gander, Newfoundland, Sergeant Craft kept that rigid metal refueling boom locked tight inside the Phantom's spine, literally towing the crippled fighter through the sky until both men landed safely.
A refueling boom is built to pump gas. In American hands, it became a tow rope strong enough to drag two brothers home.
Ted Joy retweeted
Fr James Martin's LGBT group Outreach has published an “LGBT Confiteor” for use by “LGBT Catholics”
The prayer also references “queer saints”:
“Therefore I ask all my spiritual ancestors, queer saints, and you, the human family, to pray with me, that together we might build a better tomorrow.”
Details soon on @CatholicHerald
Ted Joy retweeted
Bishop Athanasius Schneider exhorts all Catholics
We have an absolute duty to disobey a pope who creates confusion and ambiguity regarding the Faith and sacred Liturgy
We have an absolute duty to obey the Church of the Ages
We must hold onto this truth during this time of maximum confusion and gaslighting
The Bergoglian heretics have intensified their attacks on the Church through Synodality
STAND FIRM
Another highly-schooled, middle-class woman
Ted Joy retweeted
I had a 6 year old student the other day tell me he couldn't read something because he was stupid. I said "That's definitely not true because you read earlier and you did great, why are you saying you're stupid?" Two of his classmates came up next to him and both said "No, he's stupid. He's actually the stupidest person in first grade" and the little 6 year old nodded. Like the grass is green or the sky is blue, this kid has made his being "stupid" a fact of life.
Parents, you really need to start re-thinking what you're saying and doing to your kids. You aren't helping them, you're giving other students ammunition.
Ted Joy retweeted
A people who's history has been erased is more vulnerable to political subjugation.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."- George Orwell
"The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was."- Milan Kundera
Paris to shut down the Louvre, other tourist attractions over fears of violent Saturday protests trib.al/ObdtWsw
