Saturday

The primary reason I’m going to Maine this coming week is to honor my oldest granddaughter with my presence on the occasion of her High School graduation. This rite of passage demands something dressier than my normal jeans-tee shirt-boat shoes-with-no-socks, and military-baseball-cap attire. So, I went over to the Big(ger) City^TM yesterday to “shop” for new clothes, something I haven’t done in a couple of years. I do have “dress-up” clothes…when I retired I kept two suits (one light gray, one dark blue) for formal occasions such as weddings and funerals. Anastasia’s graduation is neither, to my way of thinking it’s a “business casual” kind of affair. Sport coat, semi-dressy shirt (and maybe, just maybe, a tie), “nice” slacks, yadda, yadda, yadda. I have all of these items in my current wardrobe, but they are, shall we say, “dated.” I was thinking something newer and, God Forgive me, more stylish might be in order.

Alas, I came away empty-handed. Nothing, and I mean nothing, appealed to me, and it wasn’t for lack of looking, either. Perhaps it’s where I live and the general lack of choice when it comes to shopping. Or perhaps it’s what’s being foisted off on the American male in the name of “fashion.” Or maybe it’s just me. I strongly suspect it’s the latter. Be that as it may, I’m still stuck with my aging wardrobe. In other words: Stress.

Why I Worry, Part LXVII: Ever so often I’ll go off on a rant about liberal indoctrination in The Academy. I haven’t done so lately, so I guess it’s time. Via Bookworm, here’s a tale that simply boggles the mind. In essence, it’s sort of a Ward Churchill tale in reverse: a conservative professor who was suspended and then cashiered by DePaul University for…thought crime.

Klocek has lost his teaching position and school-paid health insurance benefits, and faces a bleak future due to his chronic health problems. He is guilty of a thought-crime, challenging the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel mindset which has come to dominate the DePaul campus. Klocek’s challenge to this new campus orthodoxy occurred in a cafeteria during a student activities fair last September. For 15-20 minutes, Klocek, who is Catholic, not Jewish, confronted a group of 8 students manning two tables for the groups Students for Justice in Palestine, and United Muslims Moving Ahead. Klocek says he argued that the materials the groups were disseminating were one-sided. On this, he is indisputably correct. Neither group pretends to provide balanced information on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. That of course, is perfectly understandable and acceptable. These are advocacy groups.

Klocek says the discussion was heated at times, and he admits to raising his voice. He says he told the students that Palestinians were Arabs who lived in the West Bank and Gaza – that they had no unique national historical identity. He challenged one student’s assertion that Israel was behaving like the Nazis. He stated that while most Muslims were not terrorists, pretty much all terrorists these days were Muslim. This statement had originally been made by the manager of an Arab news channel, and had recently been quoted in the Chicago Sun Times. It has the incidental merit of being true.

The whole story is here.

There is good news, though. Professor Klocek will get his day in court. He is suing DePaul University, its president, and (the aptly named) Susanne Dumbleton, Dean of the School of New Learning (Klocek’s immediate supervisor), for defamation. The suit seeks damages against DePaul for maligning Klocek’s integrity and professional competence.

It’s so very ironic that Professor Churchill continues on in his position at Colorado while DePaul fired Professor Klocek almost immediately. Draw you own conclusions about that. As far as I know, Klocek isn’t guilty of plagiarism, either. He just seems to be politically incorrect. And that’s a serious offense to the Liberal Academy.

I was treated to a magnificent spectacle last evening from around sunset until about 8:30. I was out and about during that time and witnessed the beauty and power of God’s Own Light Show. There were massive, and I mean huge, thunderstorms just to the south-southwest of P-Town. When you combine the powerful effect of towering thunderheads, brilliant and frequent, jagged, cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning with a New Mexico sunset, you get something to write home about. It’s too bad I didn’t have the camera with me. You’ll just have to take me at my word that the sight was breathtaking. It was the highlight of my day. No rain in Portales, however. Just sound and fury…and supernatural beauty.