Manpower.

I have often heard, from outside the hedge, that most of the work in the world is done by women. I do not doubt for a moment that there are parts of the world where men sit and drink coffee and play board games all day while the ladies slave away, but that has not been my observation in the western world. And it would appear that much of what the western world enjoys in terms of 'modern goods', clothing, footwear and the like is made by ladies in China and the Indian sub-Continent. Were those ladies to down-tools for a week there would likely be an interruption to supply chains and a slow reduction in 'stuff' on the shelves for a while.

But we would get by.

Not so if men downed-tools for a week.  I hazard we would be in strife well before the week was out.

The Tavern has been in need of some maintenance work and over the past few weeks we have had the stonemasons in (it is a very old Tavern), along with carpenters, glaziers, roofers, electricians and plumbers, etc. Every one of them has been a man.

We had a Tradies Night for them last evening and the place was packed. We appreciated them in Tavern fashion. Free Ale, all night, served by a Knight.

By the way, that photo above is a nonsense. Propaganda. It is never seen in real life. Five woman and four men. Tradies?

Yes, of course, in our 'equal society' such tasks can be done by women in equal numbers. But they aren't. 

"Women can do anything a man can do - and better " - come the shouts from beyond the hedge, but they don't and won't.

A chap gets tired of hearing all the hubris and cant.

Were men to down tools we would be done for in a week. 

Oz is a modern country, like America, Europe, and perhaps half a dozen other 'First World' Nations, and we depend on men to do ALL the essential work to keep us going. 

The ladies make sandwiches. Except they do that less and less, and with more and more resentment.

That is an exaggeration, I know. Blame a customer for that one. 

Yes, ladies work, but largely in offices doing the paperwork. Few are in the trades. No quotas for ladies in the trades. Quotas are reserved for boardrooms and politics. Ladies pulling the plug in the west would mean that our bills would be late.

But men pulling the plug would mean disaster.

Janet Bloomfield recognises this. She told us of what American men do. It is much the same in Oz.

What would a Men's Day Off look like?

Time for a reality check.

I personally reckon that most of what she now speaks of would take a week, but who am I to argue with a lady. 

First up, the entire power grid is down. 100% of power plant operators, distributors, and dispatchers are men. Now, it’s possible that there are a few women working in these occupations, but however many there are, they do not make up even 1% of the total workforce, so statistically, 100% of the workforce is male.

91% of the nation’s electrical engineers are men, and if they don’t show up for work, there is no one to monitor and manage the nation’s electrical supplies. Assuming some automation (designed by men, naturally) kicks in for the day, we had all better pray there are no problems. 97.6% of electrical power line installers and maintenance workers are men.

Lights out, ladies and gentlemen.

Don’t bother turning on your taps, either. Or flushing your toilets. 95.5% of water and liquid waste treatment plant and system operators are men.

Think you might be able to get out-of-town for the one day the men don’t show up?

Think again.

Planes are out.

95.9% of aircraft pilots and flight engineers are men. If you happen to find a plane with a female pilot, don’t get too excited. 98.4% of aircraft mechanics and service technicians are men. You can, however, be assured of your comfort as you sit on a pilotless aircraft that has no mechanic for pre-flight clearance, because 77.6% of flight attendants are female.

But they stop short of actually making the sandwiches!  

Should you be lucky enough to find a female pilot and a female technician to clear you for take-off, you still have some praying to do. Statistically, 0% of air traffic controllers and airfield operations specialists are women.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there are ZERO ladies working in air traffic control. There just aren’t enough to constitute even 1% of the workforce.

Trains, of course, are also out.

100% of locomotive engineers and operators are men, as are 100% of the workers who operate railroad brakes, signals and switches. 94.4% of railway yardmasters are men, but if you chance upon a female yardmaster, it won’t help you much. She can’t operate the trains.

You might have better luck with bus drivers, almost half of whom are women.

But the streets are likely to be chaos. And there won’t be anyone on hand to help you navigate that.

87.4% of police and sheriff’s patrol officers are men. 96.6% of firefighters are men. 68.8% of Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics are men, so if it all goes tits up and you get hurt, there’s a small chance you might make it to a hospital.

I hope you don’t get too badly hurt, though. 65.7% of all surgeons are men.

Maybe you should just work from home? In the dark, mind you. With no running water.

Uh-oh. Looks like that might be a problem, too.

For all computer and mathematical occupations combined, 74.4% of the workforce is male. Computer network architects, who design and implement all our computer based communications systems are 91.9% men. And 94.2% of radio and telecommunications equipment installers and repair technicians are men.

Looks like that plan is frucked.

Hope it doesn’t get too hot, or too cold the day men don’t show up for work. Even if you had power, which you don’t, you would be hard-pressed to get anyone in to take a look at your wonky air-conditioner or furnace.

98.4% of heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers are men.

Oh well. Guess you’ll have to mosey on down to the local café, which has no power either, but what’s logic and consequence anyways? Be careful when you step over all that accumulating garbage! Remember that most EMTs are men, and they’ve taken the day off. Don’t want to get hurt now.

Most garbage collectors are men, too – 93.4%, to be exact.

You’ll need to stop at the ATM first, for a little cash injection.

Oops. Don’t bother.

The machine hasn’t been filled with money today. 81.5% of security guards and gaming surveillance officers are men. It’s unlikely the banks would be functioning anyways, with no men at work. 72.1% of all securities, commodities and financial services sales agents are men. 72.6% of the nation’s CEOs would be taking the day off, along with 70.9% of all the general and operations managers.

Don’t count on getting a weather report today. Statistically, 0% of the nation’s atmospheric and space scientists are women.

Actually, don’t plan on acquiring pretty much anything today.  

The workers in the entire production, transportation and material moving occupations are 78.2% men. Not only will no goods be moving on the day men go on strike, they won’t be made, period. 82.4% of all the industrial production managers are men.

Nothing will be built or extracted from the earth in terms of raw materials. 97.5% of that workforce is male.

Nothing will be installed, maintained or repaired. 96.8% of that workforce is male.

If men took a collective day off, we would instantly be without power, without the means to communicate, without protection, without water, without trucks bringing us the food and products we take for granted, because men are the ones who provide all those things. 

-Janet Bloomfield was banned from Twitter after creating hashtag #womenagainstfeminism

All information taken from Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States Department of Labor.

So, there you have it. 'It' being just a glance at just a few instances of the essential work that is done by MEN. 

None of the tradies in the bar said a word about doing anything a woman can do - better or otherwise.

I do wish the wimminz outside the hedge would put a sock in it.

But I guess that would be a man's job too.

And as a voice from a corner of the bar shouted over.... And yet, how many apocalyptic TV shows are saturated with kick ass women saving the day and beating those nasty, toxic males? I'll betcha there are feminists out there who think, bring on that no-male apocalypse, we'll show ya... lmfao!!!

Drinks all round and a special one for Janet.

Now, before you go, I am sure we can all find a similarly comprehensive list of all the things we depend on women for.  

Give it a go. Let us have 'the other side'.

Pax.

Before Alcatraz

America often follows Britain, and indeed, Oz, in dealing with the dregs of society.  Long before Alcatraz there was Sarah Island, described in the day as HELL.  I went there on holiday. It pre-dates the largest and almost as notorious prison, Port Arthur,  which is much closer to the Tavern. Sarah Island is remote in the extreme; cold, wet, surrounded by water and dense forest, it was considered 'escape-proof'. It wasn't for the want of attempts though.

Alcatraz, for our non-American customers, is also notorious, and was established as a military prison in1828, and a federal prison from 1934 until 1963. Because of its isolation from the outside by the cold, strong, hazardous currents of the waters of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz was used to house soldiers who were guilty of crimes as early as 1859. By 1861, the fort was the military prison for the Department of the Pacific and housed Civil War prisoners of war (POWs) as early as that year. Starting in 1863, the military also held private citizens accused of treason, after the writ of habeas corpus in the United States was suspended.

America's Sarah - Alcatraz

Sarah was for just civilian riff-raff of the very worst sort. Before the American Revolution Britain sent upward of 50,000 such riff-raff to the American Colonies, which perhaps explains some aspects of the wild west. But the theft of the New World brought about the development of the World Down Under, and a new place to send convicts. Hey, don't knock it. Back in the day it was considered a great and humane solution !! 

When you see the natural beauty of Macquarie Harbour, on the West Coast of Tasmania, it’s hard to imagine that back in the 1820s, this was the scene of incredible misery. However, the fact that the entrance to the harbour is known as Hell’s Gates should give you a clue. 

Entering the harbour through Hell’s Gates meant navigating waters so treacherous that many lost their lives here. For them it may have been their salvation because what awaited those who did make it was much, much worse than death. Almost all the vegetation of the island was cut down, such that huge wodden fences some 15 metres tall had to be erected along the length of the island to give some shelter from the high winds.

The trees and dense foliage there today is all regrowth.

Conditions at the penal settlement on Sarah Island in the southern part of the harbour were so harsh that one convict, only known as Trenham, went as far as stabbing a fellow inmate, reasoning that ..

this would get him executed and he wouldn’t have to

 spend more time in this hell. 

Originally, the Macquarie Harbour area was the territory of the Mimegin and the Lowreenne, two bands of the Toogee tribe. The Peternidic, a band of the North-west tribe, and the Ninene, a band of the South-west tribe, sometimes visited the area too. The Aboriginal people reffered to Sarah Island as Langerrareroune and it’s possible that the women used the island as a meeting place. 

In about 1815, when James Kelly sailed through Hell’s Gates to be the first European to visit Macquarie Harbour, he named Sarah Island after Sarah Birch, the wife of the merchant who had paid for the voyage. Within only a few years the island was selected as the site for a penal colony because it was so isolated and difficult to escape from.


At the beginning of 1822, the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station was established, with Sarah Island as its base. The convicts sent here were mostly male and were usually people who had committed further crimes while serving their original sentences in Van Diemen’s Land. Others were convicts who had escaped and were recaptured, while some of the most dangerous criminals were sent here directly once they got off the transport ships in Hobart Town. 

Gordon River

Lieutenant-Governor William Sorell wanted a penal settlement that would be economically viable enough to cover the costs of having established it in the first place. Sarah Island, like the land surrounding Macquarie Harbour, had a valuable natural resource: huge Huon pines that were perfect for shipbuilding and growing all down the Gordon River. 

In those first years of settlement, the convicts spent their days cutting timber, usually in chains. This didn’t require much skill but it was hard work made even harder by the cold and rain. Things didn’t get any better at night, with barracks so crowded that the inmates couldn’t sleep on their backs. 

Floggings were par for the course and the food was so inadequate that scurvy and dysentery were rampant. Prisoners could also be sent to nearby Grummet Island, alternatively known as Condemned Island, for solitary confinement. It is little wonder that the first escape attempt happened two months after the settlement was established and that during the first six years, 156 escape attempts were recorded. 

Not many would-be escapees actually made it and around half died during their attempts. Among those who did make it was James Goodwin. Goodwin and a fellow inmate, Thomas Connell, secretly carved themselves a canoe and slipped away from their timber-cutting party. The pair rowed up the Gordon and then the Franklin Rivers until a waterfall forced them to continue on foot. They then continued on, across rugged mountains and through dense forests, heading east to the settled areas. Eventually they parted ways and that was the last that anybody had heard of Connell. 

Goodwin, however, reached Ouse, where he was captured. Luckily for him, because he knew so much about the uncharted Western Wilderness, he was pardoned and given a job with the Surveyor General.

An inmate who escaped not once, but twice, was the notorious Alexander Pearce. Pearce, an Irishman, had been transported to Van Diemen’s Land for stealing several pairs of shoes. He first escaped in September 1822, along with seven others. Pearce had been at Sarah Island for only six weeks. The group had originally planned to steal a whaleboat and sail north but after they overpowered their overseer, things went awry and they ran into the wilderness instead. 

A little over a week later they were starving, so they drew lots and killed the loser, who then became their meal. 

Two of the men left the next day, trying to get back to Macquarie Harbour rather than becoming the next items on the menu. The rest of the group continued on their journey and also continued picking off and eating the weakest one 

until only Pearce was left. 

He made it to civilisation but was captured and sent to Hobart Town, where neither the magistrate nor the parson would believe his story. So, he was sent back to Macquarie Harbour, where he soon escaped again, this time with one other inmate as company. He was captured within 11 days and found carrying human flesh in his pocket. Of his companion there was no trace. 

In June 1824, at around the same time that Pearce was being tried for murder in Hobart Town, another convict who would become infamous, escaped from Sarah Island. 

Matthew Brady was one of fifteen men who stole a boat and sailed along the coast to the estuary of the Derwent River. Brady became a bushranger and somewhat of a folk hero with the nickname ‘Gentleman Brady’ because he always displayed impeccable manners while he was robbing his victims.

To solve the problem of transporting the timber from Macquarie Harbour, Sarah Island became a shipbuilding centre. For a while it was the largest operation of its kind in Australia, with more than 100 vessels built during the existence of the penal settlement. (actually 131, with near 100 being built under the direction of one Mr Hoy, who learned his craft in Dundee and became a master shipwright in Boston, USA). Interesting fellow. Civilian. Not a Prisoner.  He joined the 6 other civilians, all women, on the Island who were not prisoners or soldiers, but wives and daughters of soldiers. 

Remains of ship slipway

Well-behaved convicts could now get transferred to ‘softer’ duties like gardening, smithing or boat-building and skilled tradesmen were encouraged to come and work on the island, which became an industrial village.  

The Island's Cook, a lady called Sarah (the island not named for her) was the spider in a web of graft, corruption, blackmail, contraband smuggling and extortion that reached back to Hobart Town and even Sydney. She cooked the books as well as the rotting meat.

The shipbuilding operation on Sarah Island led to 

one of the most daring escapes from the penal settlement. 

In 1834, ten convicts who had helped build a brig named the Frederick stole the incomplete ship as it was preparing to sail for Hobart Town. They sailed west and made it all the way to Chile, (yes, that Chile, in South America), where they had to abandon ship because of a leak. They rowed the ship’s whaleboat to shore and pretended to be shipwrecked sailors. Four of the men were captured and brought back to stand trial on charges of piracy. 

However, these charges couldn’t stick because the ship had not been completed and had not been seized in open waters, so they were only found guilty of robbery. ("It was just sticks and some rope and a bit of canvas, yer 'onner. Honest"). It helped their case, too, that the ships logs were never found, nor its Commissioning papers. ("So, yer see, yer 'onner, it weren't really a ship, innit?")

The Round Earth Theatre Company in Strahan, the nearest town to Sarah Island, tells the story of the Frederick in the very popular play The Ship That Never Was, the longest-running play in Australia.

The Macquarie Harbour Penal Station was closed down in 1833 but in 1847, Sarah Island was used as a probation station. At various times during the next three decades and again in the 1930s and 1940s, timber cutters used Sarah Island as their base camp. Today only ruins remain on the island, among them the ‘new’ penitentiary completed in 1828. 

To visit Sarah Island, you can charter a yacht but the most popular way to get here is as part of a cruise from Strahan. Members of the Round Earth Theatre Company present excellent guided tours of the island, bringing its infamous history to life.

So, there you are or there you might go.

But first, have a long, cool drink.

And be good.

Pax

Beyond the Pale

The Tavern Pale is the large hedge that surrounds the property, keeping the riff-raff out. That is what a 'Pale' does. Pale is also the hue of white folk, especially old white folk, and specifically men, old white folk who constitute at least half of our customers. The riff-raff think that we are beyond the Pale, being as we are happily on the opposite side of the hedge, drinking our pints.

Where does the term come from, someone asked.  The phrase "beyond the pale" dates back to the 14th century, when the part of Ireland that was under English rule was delineated by a boundary made of such stakes or fences, and known as the English Pale. To travel outside of that boundary, beyond the pale, was to leave behind all the rules and institutions of English society, which the English modestly considered synonymous with civilization itself. 

Of course.

Actually it goes back further. Beyond the Pale is a phrase derived from the Latin 'palus' or stake, a series of which were used to demarcate a boundary, usually for defense. The phrase means "beyond the boundary", or "outside the limits of acceptable behaviour"

Early era white devils.

But we were reminded of the other pale: we white folk seem to be getting very short shrift these days and from all quarters. Well, maybe not all: the lefty, nonebrity quarters and all other hues. And even some of the same hue. !

It has not been this bad since we were called 'white devils' an era ago.

It is time we named some names of these blaggards. Walter Williams started us off with some American ne'er-do-wells who could do with a sound thrashing. You can add more in the comments.

The Demonizing of White Men

Rush Limbaugh’s December 2018 “Limbaugh Letter” has an article titled “Demonizing White Men.” It highlights—with actual quotations from people in the media, academia, and the political and entertainment arenas—the attack on white men as a class.

 https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/01/30/the-demonizing-of-white-men-is-everywhere-heres-proof/

You can decide whether these statements are decent, moral, or even sensible. Should we support their visions?

Don Lemon, a CNN anchorman, said, “We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them.”

Melodrama Rules, KO?

Yep. I am not making that up. No-one can make this stuff up. He could at least have changed that obviously biased hue of his by using lemon juice make-up.

Steven Clifford, former King Broadcasting CEO, said, “I will be leading a great movement to prohibit straight white males, who I believe supported Donald Trump by about 85 percent, from exercising the franchise [to vote], and I think that will save our democracy.”

Teen Vogue, a magazine targeting teenage girls, wrote, “Not only is white male terrorism as dangerous as Islamic extremism, but our collective safety rests in rooting out the source of their radicalization.”

Not that one has seen quite as many white Pentacostals blowing themselves up in shopping centres. It ain't vogue. I shall pull some pints while we wait. 

Economist Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, wrote a column titled “The Angry White Male Caucus,” in which he explained, “Trumpism is all about the fear of losing traditional privilege.”

There have been similar despicable statements made by academics.

James Livingston, a Rutgers history professor: “OK, officially, I now hate white people. … I hereby resign from my race. F— these people.”

Stacey Patton, a Morgan State University professor: “There is nothing more dangerous in the United States than a white man who has expected to succeed and finds himself falling behind.”

I would hope he takes a hike in the Yellowstone Park and see how he fares with the wolves. 

Stony Brook University sociology professor Michael Kimmel explained, “White men’s anger comes from the potent fusion of two sentiments: entitlement and a sense of victimization.”

Then there’s the political arena.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: “There’s no question that in Georgia and in Florida racism has reared its ugly head. And you have candidates who ran against [Andrew] Gillum and ran against Stacey Abrams who were racist. … And that is an outrage.”

Michael Avenatti, criticizing the GOP senators during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings: “These old white men still don’t understand that assault victims and women deserve respect and to be heard.”

“What troubles me is … they’re all white men,” commented former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm regarding GOP senators questioning Christine Blasey Ford at the Kavanaugh hearings.

William Falk, editor-in-chief of The Week, said, “There’s something odd about the overwhelming white maleness of Washington’s current leadership.”

Not to be outdone, entertainers have hopped on the demonizing-white-men bandwagon.

Joy Behar, talking on ABC’s “The View” about senators supporting Kavanaugh, said: “These white men—old, by the way—are not protecting women. They’re protecting a man who is probably guilty.”

Actress Gabourey Sidibe, also on “The View,” said: “Older white men are a problem, y’all, for everyone. We’re all at risk.”

Who? 

Does she sing?

Will it all be over soon?

Moira Donegan wrote an article for The Guardian titled “Half of White Women Continue to Vote Republican. What’s Wrong With Them?”

Renee Graham wrote a column in The Boston Globe that counseled, “Memo to black men: Stop voting Republican.”

Comedian Chelsea Handler tweeted, “Just a friendly reminder for the weekend: No white after Labor Day, and no old, white racist men after the midterms. Get out and vote.”

That is just a partial list of statements that would be viewed and condemned as racist simply by replacing “white men” with “black men,” “Mexican men,” or “Asian men.” You can bet the rent money that university presidents and media executives would sanction any of their employees for making similar broad, sweeping statements about non-white men.

It is also a partial list of nonebrities. Who are these people? Some appear to be white, yet demeaning being white. Are they mentally 'challenged'. I read their comments and laugh. 

Suppose a white anchorman said, “Black people are the greatest murder threat in this country.” I guarantee you that he’d be shown the door.

There are only two ways to explain the silence by people who should know better. Either they agree with the sentiments expressed or they are out-and-out cowards.

Decent American people ought to soundly reject and condemn this brazen attack on white men. 

I think that the attack is on masculinity itself and that white men are a convenient scapegoat —for now.

Indeed. The new 'virtues'  that we are supposed to signal are 'diversity' and 'tolerance'. Oh and 'inclusivity'. These folk just don't get it. They don't even practice them themselves.

Derision and the wallet are the ways to tackle them. Laugh at them and drive them out of business the easy way. No boycotts of buildings, just don't buy what they sell.

It seems that some commercial enterprises have to feel the pain and the heat. Ben Shapiro pointed to an example.

Marvel VP: 'Diversity' In Our Characters Is KILLING Our Sales

On Monday, Marvel Comics admitted what those who actually read comics have known all along: the emphasis on leftist messaging in comic books is killing the appeal. 

 https://www.dailywire.com/news/15033/marvel-vp-diversity-our-characters-killing-our-ben-shapiro?fbclid=IwAR04QW1q7GGZlzW4DyxOb2c_bSmhsmWimicA_kRtTVnqJU8Cv4rRvrIqyN0

David Gabriel, the vice president of sales at Marvel, said that comic book retailers were reporting a drop-off in interest in the new, diversity-oriented comics: 

“What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales…Any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up.”

It’s not racism driving people away from Marvel, though. It’s a feeling of irritation that classic characters are being redrawn and recast in order to assuage the feelings of social justice warriors. 

Iron Man is Tony Stark, not Riri Williams. Captain America is Steve Rogers, not Sam Wilson. Thor is Thor, not female Thor. Spider Man is Peter Parker, not Miles Morales.

This isn’t to say that the comics with Miles Morales aren’t good (they're actually really good, although the Iron Man series with Riri Williams isn’t any good at all). It’s to say that nobody wants to see iconic superheroes recast as completely different people to appease quotas on race and sex. Superheroes are brands. You can't twist those brands without hurting them.

When it comes to new superheroes, people are always skeptical, so this poses something of a challenge: how do you better reflect diversity in comics without tanking sales? 

The answer: make new characters terrific, then worry about whether they’re diverse – or use a historic diverse character to infuse new life. Marvel did the latter with Black Panther, hiring Ta-Nehisi Coates to write the comic, which immediately became a bestseller (the comic is actually unreadably bad, but at least Marvel tried doing diversity the right way here). 

In the DC universe, Harley Quinn, who was a marginal character twenty years ago, is now a major bestseller because she’s interesting, not because Batman had to become a woman.

But the comic book industry keeps attempting to slam its constituents over the head with social justice messaging – 

and that’s killing the quality of comics (see Batman, advocate for Trayvon Martin, or Captain America, illegal immigration defender). 

Turning iconic characters into avatars of social justice kills sales, too. It’s throwback comics doing most of the heavy lifting at this point – and Marvel and DC should take note that it’s not American racism driving that choice. 

It’s Americans’ discontent with the left’s willingness to sacrifice quality and legacy for politics.

And discontent is growing with the sacrificing of white men who have already sacrificed far too much for an ungrateful  nonebrity'sville.

I shall keep 'em outside the hedge while you construct a few pales for yourselves.

I have lately taken a comparative shine to that awful marxist lesbian creature who dominated the feminists a while back, who claimed "All men are Rapists".  And of course our very own Oz-babe Clammy Ford who demands that we "Kill all men". At least they weren't Wayyyyyycists !

Hahahaha.

I shall pull some pints.

Pax

The Music Didn't Die

I heard that it had, back in the 60's when Buddy Holly and his mates died in a plane crash in a storm. But it was found alive and well a decade or two later in Cleveland, Ohio. Like many 'older' folk I had an appreciation of 'yoof' music way back when, and despair of ever having what passes for today's efforts moving my heart, head or soul. The relatively sound people of an era long gone, with songs and tunes that actually said something to young people, were replaced with crass, screeching divas and  filthy-mouthed rappers.  But one chap and his mates stand out. And it was in Cleveland that he found his metier.

Hugh Anthony Cregg III, born in that era on July 5, 1950 and known professionally as Huey Lewis, is an American singer, songwriter, and actor.

Lewis sings lead and plays harmonica for his band, Huey Lewis and the News, in addition to writing or co-writing many of the band's songs. The band is known for their third, and best-selling, album Sports, and their contribution to the soundtrack of the 1985 feature film Back to the Future. Lewis previously played with the band Clover from 1972 to 1979. In 1985, Lewis sued Ray Parker, Jr. over similarities between Parker's theme for the 1984 movie Ghostbusters and Lewis' "I Want a New Drug". It was, to all intents, the same tune; the same  beat.

Huey and his lads, all pretty old now, are currently bringing the music back from the dead and rehearsing for a gig in the Tavern's Music Rooms, which spill out onto the patio and lawns.

Huey Lewis was born in New York City. His father, Hugh Anthony Cregg Jr., was an Irish-American from Boston, Massachusetts, and his mother, Maria Magdalena Barcinski, was Polish, from Warsaw.

Lewis was raised in Marin County, California, living in Tam Valley and Strawberry, and attending Strawberry Point Elementary School (where he skipped second grade) and Edna Maguire Junior High School in Mill Valley. When he was 13, his parents divorced. It presaged big changes in his life.

He attended and graduated from the Lawrenceville School, an all-male prep school in New Jersey, in 1967, and he achieved a perfect score of 800 on the math portion of the SAT.

Young Gregg was a nice young man who grew to be a fine man. His later fame did not drag him down.

He was also an all-state baseball player. Lewis attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His mother had an extramarital affair with Beat Generation poet Lew Welch who became his step father. Lewis' credits Welch with inspiring him in his early teenage years.

In an interview with David Letterman, Lewis talked about hitchhiking across the country back to New York City and how he learned to play the harmonica while waiting for rides. He talked about hanging out at the airport for three days until he stowed away on a plane to Europe. In later interviews, Lewis would reveal other encounters he had traveling around Europe. (See video at the end).

While visiting Aberdeen, Scotland, with no money and nowhere to sleep, he claimed that the locals were very hospitable by offering him somewhere to stay. In Madrid, Spain, he became an accomplished blues player as he hitchhiked and supported himself by busking with his harmonica. He gave his first concerts in Madrid, earning enough money to buy a plane ticket back to the US.

Upon his return, Lewis entered the engineering program at Cornell University. While there he made friends with Lance and Larry Hoppen who later played with Orleans and Eddie Tuleja of King Harvest. Initially an active student and a member of the fraternity Eta Lambda Nu, Lewis soon lost interest in college. He signed up with a band called Slippery Elm, and in December 1969 during his junior year, he dropped out of Cornell and moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area. His aim was to continue playing music, though along the way he also tried other fields of work including landscaping, carpentry, wedding, and event planning, as well as delivering and selling natural foods.

In 1971 Lewis joined the Bay Area band Clover. Around this time he took the stage name "Hughie Louis", the spelling of which he would tinker with for some years after. Other members of the band (at various points) included John McFee, Alex Call. Lewis played harmonica and sang lead vocals on a few tunes.

Let me digress from the timeline a little. Huey's sensitivity to the 'ordinary' man included the main movements of his day, especially the Vietnam War. 

"Walking on a Thin Line" was recorded by Huey Lewis and the News and is the fifth song on their 1984 release...Sports. The song is about both Vietnam soldiers and veterans...how the war weighed on their mind during combat...and the demons they would unknowingly confront upon their return home to the United States. Vietnam soldiers were treated with such disrespect and not awarded the honour they should have been given for participating in a war that a majority of America objected to. Examples of this outcasting can be seen in the lines "Don't you know me I'm the boy next door...The one you find so easy to ignore" as well as "Straight off the front line...Labeled as freaks loose on the streets of the city". 

In reality, these were just boys who simply enlisted in the armed services or were called to duty as part of the Draft Lottery of 1969. For the most part, they "Taught me how to shoot to kill" and became "A specialist with a deadly skill"...and all along this was merely "A skill I needed to have to be a survivor". These guys didn't start or ask to be in a war the public would never accept...and never deserved to be treated as criminals come the wars end.

"Walking on a Thin Line" peaked at number 18 on the Billboard 100 of 1984 (the only single from the album not to reach the top ten) and was received with mixed thoughts by the public...drawing a strong parallel to the war in which it is about.

To this old Warrior Tavern Keeper, 

it was one of his best and most poignant.

In 1976, after playing in the Bay Area with limited success, Clover went to Los Angeles. They had their big break in a club there when their act was caught by Nick Lowe who convinced Clover to travel to Great Britain with him. However, Clover arrived in Britain just as their folk-rock sound, known as pub rock in Britain, was being replaced by punk rock.

The two Clover albums produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange for Phonogram were not successful. By this point the spelling of Cregg's stage name had changed to "Huey Louis"; it is under this spelling that he is billed on both of Clover's albums for Phonogram, although for songwriting credits he is billed as "H. Cregg". In 1978 the band returned to California, McFee joined the Doobie Brothers, and Clover disbanded.

Under the name "Bluesy Huey Lewis", Lewis played harmonica on Thin Lizzy's 1978 landmark album Live and Dangerous. That same year, he was playing at Uncle Charlie's, a club in Corte Madera, California, doing the "Monday Night Live" spot along with future members of the News. At this point, he had adopted the "Huey Lewis" spelling, and the band was billed as Huey Lewis and the American Express. After recording the song "Exodisco" (a disco version of the theme from the film Exodus) simply as American Express, Lewis landed a singles contract from Phonogram and Bob Brown became his manager.

The band played a few gigs (including an opening for Van Morrison), before adding new guitarist Chris Hayes to the line-up. On Brown's advice, they changed their name again to Huey Lewis and The News. After a failed self-titled debut in 1980, the band finally broke through to Top 40 success with the gold album Picture This (1982). It rose to No. 13 on the albums chart thanks to the Mutt Lange-penned "Do You Believe in Love", the band's first hit.

It was around this time, travelling to small-town gigs, to even smaller crowds that he found an unexpected welcome in Cleveland. That initiated a song.

The band's third LP, Sports (1983), is one of the best-selling pop releases of all time. It became a No. 1 hit in 1984 and had multi-platinum success in 1985. Four singles from the album reached the top-10 of the Billboard Hot 100: "Heart and Soul" reached No. 8, while "I Want a New Drug," "The Heart of Rock & Roll," and "If This Is It" all reached No. 6.

Lewis knew Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds from having played harmonica on their 1979 albums ("Labour of Lust" and "Repeat When Necessary") and produced Lowe's 1985 version of "I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)". He later produced several songs (including one where he sang backup and played harmonica) on Bruce Hornsby & The Range's debut album, The Way It Is. Hornsby thanked him by writing the song "Jacob's Ladder", a No. 1 single from the News' next album.

His song "The Power of Love" was a No. 1 U.S. hit and was featured in the 1985 film Back to the Future, for which they also recorded the song, "Back in Time". 

Lewis has a cameo appearance in the film as a faculty member who rejects Marty McFly's band's audition for the school's "Battle of the Bands" contest. As an inside joke, the piece the band plays is an instrumental heavy metal version of "The Power of Love". (Lewis plays the audition committee leader, who, after glancing at the other, equally unimpressed fellow faculty members, picks up the megaphone and says, "Hold it, fellas ... I'm afraid you're just too darn loud".) A poster for the album Sports is hanging on Marty's wall when he awakes at the end of the movie. "The Power of Love" was nominated for an Academy Award.

Following the success of "The Power of Love" and Back to the Future, Huey Lewis and the News released their fourth studio album, Fore! in 1986. Fore! followed the success of Sports and reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The album spawned the No. 1 singles, "Stuck with You" and "Jacob's Ladder" as well as the mainstream rock hit "Hip to Be Square". In all, the album had five top-10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified triple platinum.

The remainder of the 1980s and early 1990s were mostly spent touring and recording fourteen top-20 Billboard Hot 100 hits and releasing two more hit albums: Small World (1988) No. 11 and Hard at Play (1991) No. 27. Lewis had a planned solo album titled Back in Blue that was canceled in the mid-90s due to living arrangement issues on the part of Lewis. One of the songs from that cancelled project, "100 Years From Now" was later used for the compilation album Time Flies... The Best Of.

Huey Lewis has sung with Umphrey's McGee at several shows beginning with the 2005 Jammy Awards and is featured on two tracks of their album Safety in Numbers.

On February 13, 2007, Lewis was interviewed on the podcast series Stuck in the '80s. During the interview, he revealed that the band has written several new songs that they planned to record in 2008. He also stated that, given how much the industry has changed since their last album, he was unsure how they would sell the new material.

During a show at the California State Fair on August 21, 2007, Lewis was named Sacramento's Musician of the Year by the fair's general manager and presented with a gold statue of the California state bear.

Lewis recorded a duet version of "Workin' for a Livin'" with Garth Brooks, which was included on Brooks' three-disc set The Ultimate Hits, in late 2007.

On July 4, 2008, the eve of his 58th birthday, Huey Lewis and the News were the opening act for the annual A Capitol Fourth celebration on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. More than a half million people attended and was broadcast live on PBS. The band performed "The Heart of Rock & Roll", "The Power of Love" and "Workin' for a Livin'".

On May 29, 2011, Lewis played the annual Summer Camp Music Festival in Chillicothe, Illinois, along with Chicago-based progressive jam band Umphrey's Mcgee. They were billed as Huey Lewis and The Rumors. Together they played covers as well as songs from both their respective catalogs.


On April 2, 2013, Lewis appeared on the ABC television series Dancing with the Stars, where he performed "The Heart of Rock & Roll" in celebration of the 30th anniversary release of Sports and a concert tour with the News.

Now, for those with time on their hands who would like a far more detailed and entertaining 'history', here is a sneak backstage.

I am not an old rocker. I am not a bit musical. My beloved son in whom I am well pleased is though. Not old, you understand, but musical.

It was he who introduced Huey.

Drinks for all involved. 

Rock to a good beat, and Pax.

An Occasion of Sin

There are a lot about, especially in the media. And boy do people rise to the occasions they find. So, to continue where I left off, with the Covington Catholic High School lad, we need to look carefully to see just where people can go wrong. And by 'wrong' I mean Sin. And by 'people' I count m'self in with you and the rabble, far left, alt-right and centre.

But first .. Put the stones down and step away from the fake news purveyors.


The left especially have a pronounced hypocricy, but don't think  that the ordinary folk do not. The lefties were as quick to condemn one high school lad as they were to rush to condemn anyone who tried to question another high school lad. 

Conservatives have a similar, albeit less noticeable propensity to hypocricy too.

And what did the lad do? He 'smirked', apparantly, although to me he seemed to be smiling a tad nervously. For that, the stones started flying. 

THIS is a SMIRK

The tweets, and other social media 'messages' wanted blood and guts, often literally.  They did not stop to think, nor gather facts. 

That is what we expect of journalists, but guess what?  They didn't wait, think nor collect facts either.

But, let us back up a bit for those who have not caught up let alone risen to the occasions. The hopefully sinless .... in this instance.  Christopher DeGroot gave some background before Anthony Esolen brought the message home about OUR sins.

Christopher focused on those that should know better.

Conservative Moral Prostitutes

People need enemies and scapegoats. People need someone or something to hate. For there is meaning and vitality in hating. There is, above all, unity, especially in politics, defined as it is by conflicts and group interests.

OK. Some people. Perhaps most. 

We learned this dark lesson this week.

 https://www.takimag.com/article/conservative-moral-prostitutes/

We saw the usual conservative moral prostitutes rush to condemn a group of innocent young Christian men. Students at Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky, they attended a pro-life rally at the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. last Saturday. Also present was a group of Native Americans, for like everyone these days, they too have grievances to express and rights to affirm. 

At one point a man named Nathan Phillips decided to walk up to Nick Sandmann, a member of the pro-life group, and bang a drum and sing in his face. 

Phillips is 64. Sandmann is 16. But Phillips’ behavior would have been extremely stupid even if he weren’t much older than the teenager. 

What was the meaning of the drumming and singing? What was it supposed to accomplish? 

Did Sandmann, as a young white man wearing a MAGA hat at a pro-life rally, embody such evils as Phillips sees fit to protest?

The answer, of course, is no. 

Yet as Jonathan Swift said, man is not a rational animal, but an animal that is capable of rationality. 

So it happened that many people, upon seeing brief footage of a white teenager smiling at an old Native American man while a group of boys, also wearing MAGA hats, looked on from behind the two men, assumed Sandmann and his schoolmates were looking for trouble. 

In their white privilege, they chose to pick on and ridicule Phillips, who, having dark skin, was oppressed by definition.

More detailed footage soon revealed all this to be nonsense. 

The boys, indeed, had done nothing wrong, and it was Phillips who was the agitator, though the plainly idiotic and dishonest man has put a benevolent-sounding spin on his conduct. (We also know now that Phillips is not, as he had claimed to be, a Vietnam veteran.) 

Sandmann and the other boys have been objects of hatred in both the media and on social media. 

Some have received death threats. And with that reflexive gutlessness that marks Christianity in our time, their school issued an apology. So did the Diocese of Covington.

It has been quite revealing to see how much hatred there is for white people in America, and what little it takes for it to come forth. 

Events, however, are essentially occasions for the assertion and expression of human character. 

Thus, if you know what people value and believe, you can have a pretty good sense of how they will perceive and judge phenomena in general. It is remarkable how predictable people are in this respect.

Christopher drew parallels with the Kavanagh hearings where similar wild lies were told to discredit the man (I abridged for brevity - follow the link) and mentions an example of what a journal wickedly threw at this lad: 

Hence the 'National Review' article “The Covington Students Might as Well Have Just Spit on the Cross,” written by Nicholas Frankovich and published at 2:55 a.m. on Sunday at the magazine’s website. 

The Covington boys, according to Frankovich, “mock a serious, frail-looking older man and gloat in their momentary role as Roman soldiers to his Christ. ‘Bullying’ is a worn-out word and doesn’t convey the full extent of the evil on display here.”

Remember, he is talking about a smiling boy, otherwise silent, with a drum banging in his face by a man who is shown subsequently to be a damnable liar. 

His hysterical enthusiasm increasing, Frankovich continues: 

For some of us, the gospel stories of Jesus’s passion and death are so familiar we no longer hear them. The evangelists are terse in their descriptions of the humiliations heaped on Jesus in the final hours before his crucifixion, the consummate humiliation. Read the accounts again or, if you’d rather not, watch the video. The human capacity for sadism is too great.

Unhappily, Frankovich failed to work in a Hitler reference for his fellow good team members.

National Review silently removed Frankovich’s article on the same day it was published. Then, with shameless hypocrisy, the magazine began publishing articles taking the media to task for its coverage of the Covington boys. 

To his credit, Frankovich has apologized for his atrocious article. But his destructive moralizing is just one instance of a general practice on the right. 

A quick look around on google, twitter, facebook and other social media will show the most disgusting, violent and obscene messages about and directed to this lad.  Mainly, I have to say, from the Left. 

We can point a finger, at Frankovich amongst many others but before we pick up the stones (which to my mind he richly desereves at least a few), let us hear from Anthony.  

Anthony Esolen is a lecturer, translator, and writer. His latest books are Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child and Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture. He directs the Center for the Restoration of Catholic Culture at Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts.

The Greater Sins in the Covington Incident

I dislike speaking about failure and sin, and dearly wish that the leaders of my Church would give me less occasion to do so.

Everyone by now has heard about what happened to boys from Covington Catholic High School.  They were at the Lincoln Memorial, waiting for the bus home to Kentucky.  

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2019/01/26/the-greater-sins-in-the-covington-incident/ 

They were in Washington, of course, to protest the murder of unborn children.  

In other words, unlike almost everybody else who goes to Washington to protest, they were there not to campaign, not to condemn a political party, and not to demand something for themselves, but to protect human lives that are now vulnerable to destruction.  Some of them were wearing a Make America Great Again cap.

Then they were harassed, in the vilest terms, by members of what appears to be a lunatic group, the “African Israelites.”  They did not respond in kind.  

They began to chant school chants, to drown out the insults.  At that point another protest group came into the picture.  They yelled at the boys too, telling them to go back to Europe.  This one was led by an American Indian (I too am native; I was born in the United States), beating a drum, within inches of the face of a boy he had apparently targeted.  The boy, nonplussed, held his ground and smiled a frozen smile.

Let us enumerate the sins that followed.  

The Diocese of Covington, along with many another organization and person, leapt to condemn the boy in harsh terms.  They did so without knowing what happened.  After all, they were not there.

This is called PREJUDICE, or RASH JUDGMENT.  You have the tree and the noose ready, and you say so publicly, before you know a thing.  

What prompts the sin of PREJUDICE?  A variety of things, in this case.  One was race hatred: many people leapt to judgment because the accused were white.  

One was our endemic contempt for boys.  One was political faction: people who do not believe as I believe about X – fill in the blank – are not simply mistaken, short-sighted, ignorant, or simply possessed of a different judgment about what is possible or advisable for the common good.  They are wicked.

That was shortly followed by VINDICTIVENESS.  People called for the boy to be expelled, and they were glad to subject him, his family, and his school to national disgrace.  The glee of vengeance causes people to lose all sense of proportion, and to forget their sins.

Unless I am much mistaken, this is not a land of saints.  To be rude to an old man is bad, even when the old man is behaving in a disgraceful way.  Place the worst construction upon the boy’s action.  Each of us has done plenty of things that are a hundred times more wicked, vile, and destructive than is that sin in question.  If the boy deserved expulsion for that, we should all deserve, for our worst sins, protracted torments followed by slow hanging.  The very call for a wildly disproportionate and ruthless punishment was such a sin.

But, of course, the lad has simply stood silently, smiling. 

A lot of people began to have second thoughts.  Others roamed over the Internet to find something, anything, that would cast the school in a bad light.  Some said that the boy did not himself write his sometimes ungrammatical apologia, explaining what happened.  They had, of course, no evidence for their accusation.

This was the sin of CALUMNY.  By this time, people knew quite well that the boys had not sought out any confrontation, and that they had been already abused by grown men aplenty.

To abuse the weak – children, women, youths – is at least a sin of COWARDICE, and to call them “faggots” and “incest kids” compounded the abuse with the sin of OBSCENITY.  To withhold the truth about the context of the incident, truth that would mitigate any guilt, or exonerate entirely, is to commit the sin of DETRACTION.

The Indian with the drum and his group showed up at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception the next evening, attempting to disrupt the Mass.  This was a sin of SACRILEGE, against the holy place and the worship of innocent people; in the context of what they had already done, it was the sin of CONTUMACY, and of SOWING DISCORD.

The school had to remain closed the following Monday, and the boy and his family have received plenty of threats of violence and death.  I have seen some of these.  Incitement to a felony crime is nothing for police to take lightly.  These are, at the least, sins of MALICE, not of intemperance; sins committed not in the heat of a situation that has come upon you suddenly, but in the cold; deliberate, calculated, intentional.

At the worst, they are sins of VIOLENCE, and of vicarious participation in the evil that is wished, if someone should be so mad or so wicked as to burn or kill.

I am not calling for the prejudicial, the contumacious, the cowardly, the deceitful, the vindictive, the factious, the malicious, and the violent to be strung up.  

The point is that, surrounding these boys and taking their words and actions in the worst way they can reasonably be taken, are crowds of people committing the sins I have named, sins that are many orders of magnitude more miserable.

That people can commit them and not be aware of the trap they have set for their own feet is simply astonishing to me. 

 I do not understand it.  I’m not a saint.  I daresay they are not saints, either.  

But they think they are.

They must think they are, because nobody, knowing that he is steeped in moral sewage from head to toe, would rave and rage at the filth on his neighbor’s shoe.  It would be worse than nonsensical.  It would be like begging for the vengeance of God to come down upon you.

Amongst the vile people denouncing the boy and calling for his punishment was the local Archbishop. A man who should have been aware of the mud and filth. 

His 'deeds' were Sinful.

From those given great position, powers and gifts, much more is expected. From Headmasters too.  

The behaviours of many all around this event were appalling. 

Whilst we may have to wait for Judgement from my Supplier at some later date, the 'society' we live in has its own means. The Law.

The boy's father has hired 'counsel' to pursue those that lied, threatened, calumnised, etc.

Covington Student Nick Sandmann Hires Prominent Libel Attorney

The family of Nick Sandmann, the teenager in the middle of the now-notorious encounter between a Native American man and several high school students wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, has hired a prominent libel attorney.

 https://www.thewrap.com/nick-sandmann-hires-prominent-attorney/

The family hired Atlanta-based lawyer L. Lin Wood on Thursday, family attorney Todd McMurtry confirmed.  

Wood has been called a “smooth-talking Southern attorney” that has “carved out a successful career representing the high-profile and falsely accused,” according to The Washington Post in 2011.

Wood represented former Republican presidential nominee Herman Cain after his campaign was derailed by sexual harassment claims, and also represented the family of JonBenet Ramsey, who were suspected in the murder of the child pageant queen.

Wood “is committed to bringing justice to 16-year-old Nick Sandmann and his family.” 

'Tis pity Denny Crane isn't real and available. He would frighten ten shades of greenback out of the hundreds whose arses he would haul into Court. 

It is going to be necessary to send a very hard message to anyone so willing to try to destroy with lies and threats.

Meanwhile, I thanked the gentlemen for their views and pulled pints all around.

Now, lest anyone think (uncharitably) that I take a 'holier than Thou' attitude here, none of the vile people involved traspassed against me, so I am in no position to offer forgiveness.  (Trolls have aimed at me in the past and I forgave them - keeping them outside the hedge lest there be more 'occasions of sin'.)

Those that apologise to young Nick may seek his forgiveness. But their souls -psyches are severely damaged. Perhaps out of ignorance or from 'possession' There are many out there - most of us? - who are subject to the attention of demons.

Pray for them.

I too may have some things to report in Confession. The Archbishop may need time with his Confessor as well.

Pray for me.

How about you?

Drink up.

Pax.