I am a Wolverine, in the University of Michigan, “Hail to the Victors Valiant” sense, so when the Wolverines meme got rolling, it caught my eye.
I think it started on Feb. 14 with a National Review Online list of the top 25 conservative movies here, which listed Red Dawn at number 15. In this movie, Soviets attack in the U.S. and a group of high school kids fight them and I gather their battle cry was “Wolverines!” because that was the name of their school’s football team. (I haven’t seen the movie, but see the clip below.)
Our dear studly Robert Stacy McCain added his own nominations here and then Moe Lane weighed in here on Stacy’s take on NRO’s list calling Red Dawn “awful,” BUT the movie must have some kind of hold on Moe’s imagination because he added this fateful “P.P.S.”:
WOLVERINES!!!!!
And the meme was off and running.
Tea Party people: this is your battle cry: “WOLVERINES!!!!!”
Conservatives are now a guerrilla resistance. Harassing the enemy — staging raids and ambushes that prevent him from enjoying his conquest at leisure — is basic to guerrilla resistance. If we are doomed to destruction, as least let it be said that we died fighting. But those who never fight, never win.
In a word: “Wolverines!”
It has been picked up by The Bloggess, although totally by serendipity after someone sent her a Wolverine doll that is inflated through a stem positioned in Wolverine’s crotch, as you can see here at her “Good Mom, Bad Mom” blog at the Houston Chronicle.
But then the dear Bloggess took it into her head to rally the world via Twitter to cry, “Wolverines!” here and such is her charismatic leadership that it was a top trend on Twitter in an hour.
What can I say?
WOLVERINES!!!!!
P.S.
I gave dear Stacy such a glowing testimonial this week that I have to admit I long for him to include me with his other testimonials in that gap right under Little Miss Attila (DO. NOT. GO. THERE!) and just above Sean Hackbarth, like this:
Stacy has put me in his Blogroll as Cynthia Yockey, which is enormously generous and warms my heart.
P.P.P.S.
However, karma has gotten busy with Stacy for denouncing gay marriage so often this week that Google Ads served up a display ad featuring a bare-chested, hot man, and the headline, “Find sexy gay singles in your area!” just now when I went to his site. I would LOVE to know if any of my readers go there and see it, too! Come back and tell!
Update: Cuban Diva visited Stacy’s site, The Other McCain, this afternoon (3/15/09) and e-mailed the screenshot below of what the Google gods of karma do to gay marriage denouncers:
Karma's a bitch (with a sense of humor): gay dating site ad screen capture from The Other McCain, 3/15/2009.
Dan Collins of Protein Wisdom has declared today, Friday the 13th, to be National Iowahawk Day. Iowahawk is also known as Dave Burge, who writes the funniest political satire ever and who would definitely be snapped up by a major media company if only he were not, well, a conservative who excels at making them look foolish. I am celebrating this hilarious occasion with Iowahawk’s video above and the link here to Iowahawk’s own selection of his top 25 columns.
My personal favorite Iowahawk post is “Balls and Urns” from October 2008 about the vagaries of political polling. Here’s a sample:
This is, for all intents and purposes, how political pollsters compute the mysterious “margin of error,” which has everything to do (and only to do) with pure mathematical sampling error. If you look at the formula above and round it just a smidge, you get a simple rule of thumb for the margin of error of a sampled probability:
Margin of Error = 1 / sqrt(n)
So if the sample size is 400, the margin of error is 1/20 = 5%; if the sample size is 625 the margin of error is 1/25 = 4%; if the sample size is 1000, it’s about 3%.
Works pretty well if you’re interested in hypothetical colored balls in hypothetical giant urns, or survival rates of plants in a controlled experiment, or defects in a batch of factory products. It may even work well if you’re interested in blind cola taste tests. But what if the thing you are studying doesn’t quite fit the balls & urns template?
What if 40% of the balls have personally chosen to live in an urn that you legally can’t stick your hand into?
What if 50% of the balls who live in the legal urn explicitly refuse to let you select them?
What if the balls inside the urn are constantly interacting and talking and arguing with each other, and can decide to change their color on a whim?
What if you have to rely on the balls to report their own color, and some unknown number are probably lying to you?
What if you’ve been hired to count balls by a company who has endorsed blue as their favorite color?
What if you have outsourced the urn-ball counting to part-time temp balls, most of whom happen to be blue?
What if the balls inside the urn are listening to you counting out there, and it affects whether they want to be counted, and/or which color they want to be?
If one or more of the above statements are true, then the formula for margin of error simplifies to
Margin of Error = Who the hell knows?
You can buy Iowahawk a beer to celebrate his day by contributing to the Beer Fund here. And this is so cool — you can include a message with your tip.
Note to cynics: I really do love Iowahawk. As you can see from my “About Me” page that he was the first to recognize me for my work in thinking about blogging in 2008, which was so encouraging because I didn’t actually start this blog until Jan. 12, 2009. And the fact that I want him to include my blog in his “League of Super Friends” blogroll with the passionate hot heat of a thousand thousand suns has nothing to do with this celebration of him whatsoever. Really. Buy him a beer. For the children.
I have been pining to have me some more of that saucy Pattymelt, who wrote an absolutely hilarious post for HillBuzz during the 2008 campaign and today, Friday the 13th, is my LUCKY day because she’s baa-aaa-ack!!! on the pixels of HillBuzz, the Hillary PUMA (Party Unity My Ass!) site written by some nice young moderate Democratic gay men in Chicago who poured their hearts and bank accounts out campaigning for Sarah Palin and John McCain (in that order). I totally, totally LOVE the HillBuzz boys and have posts planned on their courage and integrity and love of Sarah Palin.
Here’s a taste of Patricia Melton, aka Pattymelt, president-for-life of the Mineral City Coffee Club, from today:
This morning, the Coffee Club ladies and I discussed Iceland’s meltdown, while sipping Anne’s vile Icelandic Meltdown international coffee (or, in my case, pouring that swill into the artificial ficus Earl’s mother gave me one Christmas, because the woman is THAT CHEAP). Grace, my best friend, in her role as Club Vice President, directed our attention to the various charts and graphs she brought, showing just how ridiculous it was for a small and independent fishing nation to splurge so much of its national treasure on grandiose projects with little chance of practical success. The pie charts were especially good, and edible, as Grace has, as of late, become quite the fan of Ace of Cakes on TV (and now uses her oven and various fondants the way most people use Kinko’s and Xerox). There was one chart, in particular, that I believe would have accurately described Iceland’s foreshadowing of America’s own coming financial disaster related to Obama’s recent Trillions-of-Dollars-Spending-Spree, but Grace, unfortunately, used blueberry as her medium, and while the rest of us were distracted by something adorable three of the cat-babies were doing (Mister Sniffles, Mister Giggles, and Mister Waffles, who, all in a row, each put either their paws on their eyes, their mouth, or their ears, like those hear no evil, see no evil, eat no evil monkeys, and Anne started a squabble because she said the cat-babies were all racists, because thinking about, talking about, or saying anything looks like a monkey is racist, even if the cat-babies doing whatever looks like monkeys are actually black cat-babies, or at least a mixed black and white cat-baby, like Mr. Waffles is), that particular pie chart just vanished into thin air. I, of course, knowing better, immediately went down into the basement where Earl keeps most of his trains (he calls the basement “Earlsylvania,” his own private domain where he claims I have no powers, and I remind him he has no sense or grasp of reality). There, I found an empty pie tin, and blueberry all over Earl’s face. “The elves did it. I don’t know anything about any pie. The elves ate the pie and then framed me for it,” he claimed, knowing full well I didn’t believe him, because if the elves of Mineral City ate as much pie as Earl insisted, there sure would be a whole lot of bloated, diabetic elves not existing at all in Mineral City because they are imaginary.
I don’t spend all that much time in Earlsylvania, visiting my husband’s miniature HO scale world in the basement typically only when I’m upset with him and need to hide some of his little people to feel better (“Why no, Earl, I didn’t kidnap your miniature Cub Scout Troop Jamborie and hide them under the magazine rack. It must have been those elves, all hopped up on pie again, looking for mischief.”) So, I hadn’t been down there in months, and was shocked at all the changes to Earlsylvania in that time.
Here is what made Pattymelt my favorite dish: Read “Battle Stations!” about the Democratic and Republican ladies’ coffee clubs in Ohio that mobilized to fight Obama and get out the vote for McCain/Palin, posted on Nov. 3, 2008, by Patricia Melton. (Caution: dryness-and-choking hazard-rated PFNFODWR, i.e., “pee first, no food or drink while reading.”)
Also a treat: “Barack Obama on ‘The View’ ” by Patricia Melton’s on HillBuzz — timeless reading here, also rated PFNFODWR.
I received the following report this morning, Friday the 13th, on the dating scene in Manhattan from Cuban Diva BFF, who is straight and annoyed:
I’ve been stood up … again!
Well, maybe not exactly stood up, but close enough.
I was supposed to go on a blind date today, remember?
I was really excited, a date, out of nowhere, HE called ME and
invited me out on Friday night.
HE — called, was nice, polite, cheerful, made plans, asked if the cell was were I wanted to be reached, said he would call later in the week to firm things up.
ME — got all primped up, colored my hair, planned ahead-got a manicure and pedicure (at discount Mon.-Wed. prices), shaved my legs, planned what to wear (fun, not corporate, or boring), stocked up on dessert and coffee — just in case he was nice enough to invite in after the successful date.
NOW — Friday morning. No confirmation. No call. Got a text message on 9:32 PM Wednesday, “hi !how was your day?” I hate text messaging. I hate scrolling through the numeric keypad in search of the right letter, which I inevitably scroll past, so I have to scroll even more times. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Besides, responding to him would mean that I would write ONE word — “Fine” — and it would cost 20 cents to send because I don’t have text messaging services on my phone.
So I did the next best thing — I researched how to send a message from my computer to his phone.
My response:
My day was good. And yours?
I don’t ever respond to text messages, but since you don’t know that,
I don’t want to seem like I’m ignoring you.
I’m at home and awake if you want to chat (initial redacted)
He calls, and instead of firming up plans for Friday, we spend 10 minutes discussing how I figured out how to send a text message from my computer.
My life is so, so sad. I will be dateless on a Friday night because I am text-messagingly-challenged.
Sigh.
Update: Clueless Man called Cuban Diva BFF at 8:48 pm tonight and did NOT leave a message. On account of having self-respect and a list of the qualities she wants in a beau — and since she is straight and has the privilege of marriage, what she wants in a husband — since THAT kind of treatment is not on the list, she did NOT pick up that phone.
And I, as a lesbian, applaud her fabulousness and standards, because if you are interested in someone and worth your salt, gosh darnit, you do all the simple things that go into making a good first impression, starting with calling and making your plans at least a few days in advance and then showing up at the appointed hour freshly bathed and wearing clean clothes and a pleasant smile. It is not too much ask. And anyone who cannot manage those simple things is an entire field of red flags.
I’m reading Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism now and have been appalled at finding from his book, for the first time, that socially conservative Christians resist Darwin’s theory of evolution because they don’t want people to get the notion that ideas also can evolve, say, for example, interpretation of the Bible.
This is news to my father and me. And that is a big deal because that’s my father’s book I showcase in my Amazon widget on the right side of the page, entitled Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life by Hubert P. Yockey.
So I asked my father to keep me company this afternoon while I was preparing dinner and explaining this to him. A few minutes into our chat I was surprised when he laughed and said, “I am a cannibal to God.”
Our conversation had turned his mind to his childhood when one of his brothers came home from school and told their mother, “I am a cannibal to God.”
It turned out that the teacher had said, “I am accountable to God.”
Dad couldn’t remember whether his brother had heard the expression in public school or Sunday school. The Darwin conversation didn’t go much farther after that. But isn’t it funny how what we hear is really a combination of what we already know how to hear and what we want to hear?
Since Kathy Shaidle posted my threat last night to change my tagline from, “A Newly Conservative Lesbian, ” to “A Newly Conservative Lesbian with Really Big Breasts,” — I’ll explain soon, I promise — I couldn’t resist teasing you with the headline.
My “Beau” is my darling Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, III, who is named after the Southern beau, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, Jr., from the movie Auntie Mame, who rescues Mame and marries her after she has lost all her money in the Obama stock market crash. No, wait, the stock market crash of 1929, the one that was broadcast to Joe Biden’s television.
I rescued Beauregard and his two brothers and sister around Thanksgiving 1996 as feral kittens (and got their mother spayed). The 1958 film version of Auntie Mame with Rosalyn Russell was being played a lot that December and Margaret and I must have watched it every time. When Beau, played by Forrest Tucker, finally finds Mame on Christmas Eve after becoming charmed by her when she sold him skates for children in an orphanage, he said, “Why, it’s a miracle. It’s a good old-fashioned Christmas miracle, that’s what it is!”
So when MY dear Beau gave his first sign of crossing the line from feral to tame, which was exploding into a purr as I stroked his ear, I said, “Why, it’s a miracle! It’s a good old-fashioned Christmas miracle, that’s what it is!” And then I realized that he was dressed in Confederate gray and so incredibly handsome that the only logical name for his was “Beauregard.”
And last night, he wanted to sleep with me. So, that is how I slept with my Beau last night.
Beauregard
Beau played an important role in my starting this blog. I got a cancerous tumor removed from his left cheek last August — note to animal lovers, a bald spot on your cat’s cheek is a bad sign — and found another bare spot at near the old spot on his lip in December. I started this blog in the wild hope that I could make money with it promptly and pay for his surgery. Stop laughing! So far, no money, although I’m working on changing that, and I borrowed the money for Beau’s surgery. Good news! This lump was benign and his good looks are pretty much intact now that he’s healed up.
“Mr. Applewhite, what are you doing in that hole with Mr. Gutterman? … Mr. Whitterman, there’s no such place as San Francisco!”
(Give credit where credit is due: while Mame was a social liberal, she was fiscally conservative enough to get a job as soon as she’d lost her fortune.)
I originally planned this post on the unchanging Bible and homosexuality to be about Dr. Laura and her flip from Orthodox Judaism to evangelical Christianity, but the pertinent quote from Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer is too heavy and needs its own post. Also, today I came across a post by dear Stacy McCain railing against gay marriage and gay rights on Biblical grounds, so I am administering this medicine to him as my reply.
Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes.com could not determine the identity of the author of the letter to Dr. Laura below, which has been circulating since around May 2000:
Dear Dr. Laura,
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.
a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?
e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?
g) Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?
i) I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev 24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.
It was a balmy, sunny day at Rehobeth Beach, Delaware, and Stacy McCain was walking on the sparkling beach when he spied a dark metal handle of something that looked like a gravy boat sticking up out of the sand. He pulled it out for closer examination.
As Stacy brushed off the sand and rubbed it to reveal the intricate designs chased into its sides, suddenly there was a clap of thunder and a cloud of smoke came pouring out of the ornately designed object. The smoke formed into a genie, who was the spitting image of Barbara Eden, clad in diaphanous harem pants and a skimpy bikini top that barely contained her ginormous breasts.
Once she had completely materialized, the genie quickly got her bearings and fixed her gaze on Stacy’s eyes, although I can’t say he returned the compliment by looking back at hers. Nevertheless, in a kindly voice she said to Stacy, “You have freed me from the lamp where I have been trapped for a thousand years. To thank you, I will grant you three wishes.”
“Genie,” he said, “I want every man to envy me.”
The genie crossed her arms and bobbed her head — it’s amazing how accurately “I Dream of Jeannie” depicted this phenomenon — and instantly Stacy was dressed head-to-toe in Armani and seated in a brand-new red Lamborghini Murciélago LP640. [Cultural note: gay men envy the clothes, straight men envy the car.]
Stacy is an ambitious and prudent man and did not have to think twice about his second wish. “Genie,” he said, “make me such a successful writer that I have a multi-billion dollar portfolio in tax-free bonds, real estate and gold. No stocks, please, because Obama hasn’t finished destroying the U.S. economy.”
Once more, the voluptuous genie crossed her arms and bobbed her head and poof!, all the documentation of Stacy’s new wealth and fame appeared appeared in his hands in a gold-embossed, leather portfolio.
After examining the portfolio’s contents for several minutes with great satisfaction, Stacy knew there was only one more thing he could desire to make his happiness complete.
“What is your final wish?,” the buxom genie asked, crouching a little in hopes of meeting Stacy’s eyes with her own.
“I want you to make me irresistible to women,” Stacy replied complacently.
The beautiful genie grinned, folded her arms in front of her ginormous breasts and gave her head the magic bob, and then poof! turned Stacy into a box of chocolates.
Clarification: The beautiful genie turned our dear studly Stacie into Godiva’s LARGEST AND FINEST box of chocolates, the 140-piece gold ballotin, available here.
Update: Welcome, Instapundit readers! I am all aflutter — my first Instalanche! Glenn said at CPAC he is seeking lesbians and gays with a closet full of assault rifles — I’m still looking for my junior NRA certificate proving I earned my Expert Sharpshooter medal, the second highest level in the program, and I hope that will do for a start!
Update: Welcome, The Other McCain readers! My first shellacking from Stacy McCain! Really, I just want to thank all the little people who made this possible!
Update: Welcome, Little Miss Attila readers! Please help me out — I have a question about her observation here, “I accept that traditionalist Christian belief that gay men and lesbians are called to celibacy, though deep down I cannot quite get myself to agree.” Does this mean that girl-on-girl porn should only performed by straight women according to the Bible? Or is it OK if it’s just lesbians kissing?
I was apprehensive about attending CPAC in Washington, D.C., Feb. 26 to 28, and was thinking about just coming on Saturday on an exhibit hall pass when what should tip the scales to signing up for the whole shebang but an invitation to coffee from Little Miss Attila!
Cynthia Yockey with Joy McCann, Little Miss Attila, after Rush's speech at CPAC
My standard for imagining how I would be treated came from my experiences with smaller-scale conventions, meetings, Gay Pride Day and Pride and pro-choice marches in the lesbian and gay communities (yes, plural). So I was expecting demeaning remarks from speakers and panelists, and anything from tirades to full-blown psychotic rants to punches from individuals I would meet. Mostly I’m talking about how I’ve been treated by other lesbians, but some of the nasty experiences were from people who felt called by God to threaten us during Gay Pride marches.
That’s what I braced for, but I placed my trust in the courtesy of conservatives and was rewarded beyond my wildest dreams.
As I’ve explained in an earlier post, a panelist for Conservatism 2.0 — I think it was Andrew Klavan — specifically called on conservatives to welcome lesbians and gays and I took the opportunity to speak. My remarks were very well received and for the rest of the conference strangers complimented me on my contribution. After the meeting, AlonZo Rachel, aka MachoSauce (see his video here for why we felt a kinship over my observations that victim groups like blacks and lesbians enslave their constituents), came up to talk to me! Joe the Plumber told me he liked what I said! (Later, when I came to his booth to buy his book, he remembered me and made a special point of finding a copy he hadn’t yet autographed to custom autograph my copy!)
Cynthia Yockey with AlonZo Rachel, of MachoSauce Productions and commentator for Pajamas Media TV, after Conservatism 2.0 on Thursday, 2/26/09Cynthia with Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka "Joe the Plumber," after the Conservatism 2.0 meeting on Thursday, 2/26/09. Yo, liberals! Joe's doing his homework, he has important things to say and he's NOT going away!Cynthia with Andrea Shea King, aka "Radio Patriot," at Bloggers Row at CPAC
I also got a kind reception at Bloggers Row, not only from Little Miss Attila, who is every bit as charming and intelligent as her blog leads you to expect, but also especially from Ed Morrissey of Hot Air, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs — who I think is one of the bravest persons ever born, Andrea Shea King (Radio Patriot) and Dr. Melissa Clouthier. Little Miss Attila and I ran into Stacy McCain on our way to dinner after Rush’s speech, and he was nice, too, although not here, which I will deal with in my next couple of posts.
Cynthia with Stacy McCain, aka The Other McCain, after Little Miss Attila introduced us at CPAC -- Stacy's post on how to generate a million hits in a year mentioned Little Miss Attila and led me to write a post about her and comment on her blog, which led me to CPAC, so I am very grateful to Stacy.
A couple more things about conservatives impressed me at CPAC. First, the racial and ethnic diversity of the people attending CPAC — as well the presence of another minority dear to my heart, people in wheelchairs (thanks to my late life partner, who was quadriplegic due to MS for the last 10 years of her life — even though I know from taking Margaret to a conference at the Omni Shoreham that it is difficult to navigate in a wheelchair).
Second, I experienced a very subtle detail that showed how well conservatives walk their talk on inclusiveness. Here’s the story: the Conservatism 2.0 conference on Saturday meeting room couldn’t fit everyone who wanted in. When the organizers offered those of us waiting in line the remaining box lunches if we would go get them, I begged an organizer to bring me a lunch so I wouldn’t have to lose my place in line since I was only second or third. When she did, I was initially disappointed to find it was a vegetarian lunch — sauteed green peppers in a pita pocket, a brownie and lettuce. I’d been envisioning tuna. Then the woman minding the door explained how much thought had gone into providing the lunches, including the vegetarian ones, and asked me how I liked mine. I remembered my manners and told her it was nice and I was grateful, which I was. Later I realized how much that vegetarian lunch meant in terms of inclusiveness, and then I was glad I got the vegetarian lunch instead of the one I’d hoped for.
As all these kind experiences added up, I fell in love with the conservative movement at CPAC — not any particular person — and I think what finally captured my heart was the final panel of Conservatism 2.0, which featured Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Scott Ott (ScrappleFace), AlonZo Rachel (MachoSauce) and Stephen Green (VodkaPundit) talking about three of the most divisive issues to conservatives — gay marriage, illegal immigration and abortion. What I loved was the civility of the discussion and the speakers’ indications that, while their beliefs and opinions are firm, they will give different ones a fair hearing. Well, that and Glenn saying he’s looking for lesbians and gays with closets full of assault weapons. I am a junior NRA expert sharpshooter.
Other kindnesses: I purchased books by columnist and author Jerome Corsi and Roger Simon, screenwriter and founder of Pajamas Media, at the conference. By coincidence, each man had to be somewhere else urgently when I asked for his autograph, and yet each graciously took the time to sign my books.
All of which made me think, “I am going to like it here.”
Which brought the following tune from Flower Drum Song into my head (ignore the last three verses, see above, “not any particular person”):
Music by Richard Rogers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II:
I’m going to like it here.
There is something about the place,
An encouraging atmosphere,
Like a smile on a friendly face.
There is something about the place,
So caressing and warm it is.
Like a smile on a friendly face,
Like a port in a storm it is.
So caressing and warm it is.
All the people are so sincere.
Like a port in a storm it is.
I am going to like here.
All the people are so sincere.
There’s especially one I like.
I am going to like here.
It’s the father’s first son I like.
There’s especially one I like.
There is something about his face.
It’s the father’s first son I like.
He’s the reason I love the place.
There is something about his face.
I would follow him anywhere.
If he goes to another place,
I am going to like it there.
Raymond J. Dombrowski, high school band director, before the August 2006 Bel Air High School Band Reunion Concert in his honorOn March 11, 2007, the Gold Medal of Polish Armed Forces was awarded to Commander Raymond J. Dombrowski (pictured above, left), Polish Legion of American Veterans - General Casimir Pulaski Post 209, by Brigadier General Kazimierz Sikorski (at right), Military Attaché at the Embassy of Poland. Dombrowski was recognized for fostering and growing fraternal relations between Poland and America by preserving and promoting their shared military traditions and history. (Click on photo for source of photo and caption.)The Harford County Council honored Raymond and Esther Dombrowski by proclaiming them Harford Living Treasures on April 2, 2002. Esther is holding the Proclamation and Ray is next to her on the left. Photo by Leo Heppner.
Today, March 8, the Bel Air Community Band will play a concert to raise money for the Raymond J. Dombrowski Scholarship Fund at 3 pm at the C. Milton Wright High School in Bel Air, Maryland. Admission is free and donations will be accepted.
The Bel Air Community Band is one of the largest and best community bands in the U.S., thanks in no small part to Mr. Dombrowski, who was my high school band director. The BACB is filled with many of his former students and is directed by C. Scott Sharnetzka, who began his career as a music teacher at Bel Air High School in 1972 and credits the mentoring and support he received from Mr. Dombrowski as the foundation of his own successful career as a band director.
You might expect that a high school band director who taught from 1953 to 1985 would be a faded memory, but one of Mr. D’s former students is Phyllis Fowler, a woman possessed of amazing organizing powers and energy, to say nothing of her great intelligence and vast heart, who thought it would be a great idea to have a reunion of Bel Air High School band alumni in 2003 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Mr. D’s coming to teach band at Bel Air High School. I’m pretty sure she had this idea while she was still in high school.
Well, Phyllis applied her mad skillz starting in 2001 and in August 2003 about 100 of us gathered from over 20 states and played a concert at C. Milton Wright High School. It was a freakin’ blast! Phyllis organized a bassoon for me — it’s the most expensive instrument in a concert band and I’d sold my Puchner in college — and I managed to get some decent reeds and started playing again just three days before the concert. (The alumna who played principal first bassoon is a professional bassoonist and the principal second was a music teacher, so bassoon-wise, we were covered.)
The 2003 reunion was so much fun that we had another one in 2006. We were preparing for one in 2008 when Mr. Dombrowski’s pancreatic cancer recurred. He died on August 25, 2008, and is survived by his wife, Esther.
Mr. Dombrowski helped to plan today’s program and it includes three of his own compositions, the Bel Air Bobcat fight song, Hooray for Bobcats, the marching band drum cadence, and Wendellwood Drive, a rock-and-roll piece for concert band. The sound file for the drum cadence and Hooray for Bobcats is at the end of this post along with whatever I can find on YouTube for Meditations from Thaïs, which we will play today because Mr. D’s primary instrument was the violin and it was one of his favorites.
I wrote the following appreciation of Mr. Dombrowski on 9/1/08 and submitted it to National Public Radio, which rejected it and I’m going to say that was because it is well outside their word limit. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)
An appreciation of Raymond J. Dombrowski
Of all the subjects you take in high school, the only ones where you are likely to be working with the same teacher all four years are band and orchestra. Because you put your heart into playing a musical instrument maybe a little more than you might into calculating the area of a polygon, your band teacher can make you or break you more than any other. During my high school years of 1967 to 1971, I was one of the lucky ones. I played the bassoon and had Raymond J. Dombrowski for band. With affection, we called him Mr. D.
Born to Polish immigrant parents in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and raised in New Castle, Pennsylvania, Ray Dombrowski took to the violin and piano at age four and began to play the clarinet and saxophone in high school so he could play in dance bands to earn money. He graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1951, then enlisted in the Army where he played in the 2nd Army Band at Fort Meade, Maryland. He was honorably discharged as a sergeant in 1953 and landed the job of music teacher at Bel Air High School in Bel Air, Maryland.
Among Mr. Dombrowski’s fellow teachers was a young woman from a local family, the school librarian, Esther Everitt, whom he quickly recognized as the love of his life. They married in 1956. While Mr. D led the Bel Air Bobcats marching band, Mrs. D led what has come to be known as the band front. In the 1950s and 60s the band front was comprised of girls carrying the band’s banner and majorettes twirling batons, but by the 1970s band fronts expanded to include performers doing routines with flags and pompons, so between the two of them they were coordinating pre-game, half-time and parade performances of almost 200 teenagers.
Mrs. D retired in 1984. Mr. D retired in 1985 after leading the band, orchestra and jazz band at Bel Air High School for 32 years. Among the students who graduated after me is a flute player named Phyllis Bollinger, now Phyllis Fowler. Phyllis continued to play the flute after graduation and has been the principal flutist of the Bel Air Community Band for many years. She had the idea for organizing a reunion band to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Mr. Dombrowski’s first year as a music teacher even before he retired and kept in touch with the Dombrowskis after graduating. Being a brilliant and determined organizer, using the Internet, old yearbooks and all her wiles, starting in January 2002, Phyllis contacted everyone who had ever had band with Mr. Dombrowski to get together for a weekend in August 2003 for a Bel Air High School Reunion Band to be led by Mr. Dombrowski one more time. With our love for Mr. Dombrowski, this was an easy sell. We wound up with 100 band members from 26 states and ranging in age from 35 to 65. So many of Mr. D’s former students wanted to take part and play for him again that we had a reunion jazz band and string ensemble as well.
I badly wanted to join, but I’d sold my bassoon in college and did not have money for another one. Not to worry, Phyllis organized a bassoon for me. So, in August of 2003, I found myself playing bassoon again in a band room full of Bel Air High alumni with Mr. Dombrowski on the podium. I have to tell you, I was not the only person in the room who had just started to play again to honor Mr. D and celebrate all he taught us and thank him. Thus it was that we began to play and soon seriously messed up. Mr. D tapped his baton for silence. You could have heard a mallet drop. I swear, each and every one of us in that room was 16 again and blushing with remorse that we had disappointed Mr. D. But, being a kind and brilliant teacher, Mr. D quickly figured out how to break the difficult passage up and rehearsed us through it.
So we had a blast and rocked our 2003 reunion concert. However, there was a big fly in our ointment. Mrs. D could not attend the concert and banquet because she was hospitalized with a virus. Plus, we didn’t get to play the pieces written by Mr. D that I had looked forward to playing the most – our drum cadence and fight song, Hooray for Bobcats. The music for them had been lost, so Mr. D asked another composer to arrange the tune for us. We played the new version, and it had a stateliness suited for us as adults in a concert hall, but we missed the one that brought bleachers full of people to their feet to sing and cheer on our Bobcats at football games.
Well, Phyllis organized another reunion band for August 2006 and we were joyful that this time Mrs. D was in good health. At one of the rehearsals Mr. D was very dapper in a white tuxedo because he had come straight from playing a wedding with his band. But after we played the new arrangement of Hooray for Bobcats, he looked pensive and I couldn’t resist piping up to ask him why we couldn’t play the real cadence and fight song. He replied, “The music has been lost.” Then, with one voice, almost everyone in the band answered, “No problem! We remember it!” And immediately the percussion section launched into the cadence, which is what a marching band’s percussion section plays during parades to keep the band in step in-between playing marches. When they finished, to Mr. D’s obvious astonishment and delight, from memory we played his original Hooray for Bobcats.
The last time I saw Mr. Dombrowski was on Memorial Day this year (2008) when he and Mrs. D came to hear the speeches, see the ceremony of the laying of the wreaths in honor of members of the armed services and hear the Bel Air Community Band play in honor of the occasion. After the reunion band in 2003, Phyllis had recruited me to the community band, which is one of the largest and best in the U.S., so we were both there and spotted Ray and Esther before the concert and went flying off the band shell stage to greet them and hug them. Perhaps that mild sparkling day on the grass in front of a small town band shell best epitomized Mr. Dombrowski’s life – he was there with Esther, the love of his life, his wife of 52 years and partner in all his achievements; he was among the veterans being honored; and he was watching the performance of the community band that not only was filled with musicians he had trained but also led by a man who cheerfully credits being mentored by Mr. D in his first teaching job as being the foundation of his own successful career as a much-loved Harford county music teacher, Scott Sharnetzska.
Mr. Dombrowski died on Monday, August 25, 2008, at the age of 79 of pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed not long after our 2006 reunion. He did so well in 2007 that at the beginning of 2008, Phyllis began to recruit us for another reunion and had a sizable group before Mr. D found that his cancer was no longer in remission.
Because Mr. Dombrowski was so modest and gracious about all his talents and accomplishments, and always ready for others to flourish in his presence, which in my book is the very definition of majesty of soul, until I came to Mr. Dombrowski’s viewing and saw him in his casket adorned with medals and surrounded by large certificates honoring him, I had no idea about his work on behalf of veterans and Polish culture. In addition to serving on the Harford County Veterans Commission and Maryland Veterans Commission, he founded the Baltimore chapter of the Polish Legion of American Veterans. Mr. D’s brother, Andy, told me his gold medal was awarded by the Polish Army in recognition of Mr. D’s work in making Americans aware of the struggle of the Polish people for freedom, and that Mr. D was the only person in the U.S. to be awarded this medal at the gold level. Mr. Dombrowski’s other medal was the Knight Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, which was awarded by the Polish government in recognition of his involvement and achievements in cultural projects in the Polish-American community.
The night before Mr. Dombrowski’s funeral, Mrs. D told Phyllis that she would love for the reunion band to get together again. In minutes, Phyllis had lined up Scott Sharnetzka to conduct and snagged a slot in next year’s Bel Air Summer Concert Series for August 2 for us to perform under our new name, the Raymond J. Dombrowski Memorial Reunion Band. I plan to be there in the bassoon section. Mr. Dombrowski composed many pieces of music throughout his career, and I expect we’ll play several of them to celebrate his life, but I believe the two we’ll play that will most invoke his spirit in our hearts are the ones that, without fail, make us all feel 16 again, sitting in the bleachers of the football field on a chilly Friday night, bringing the crowd to its feet to cheer and sing while we play our marching cadence and fight song, Hooray for Bobcats:
Hooray for Bobcats! Hooray for Bobcats!
Someone’s in the grandstands yelling, ‘Hooray for Bobcats!’
One, two, three, four, who you gonna yell for?
Bobcats! Hooray! Rah! Rah! Rah!
Hooray for Bobcats! Hooray for Bobcats!
Someone’s in the grandstands yelling, ‘Hooray for Bobcats!’
One, two, three, four, who you gonna yell for?
Bobcats! Hooray! Rah! Rah! Rah!
Hooray for Bobcats! Hooray for Bobcats!
Someone’s in the grandstands yelling, ‘Hooray for Bobcats!’
One, two, three, four, who you gonna yell for?
Bobcats! Hooray!
