Mob Rule Demands in Higher Education

"The people that hate this country, people that despise it, people who grew up being taught what a rotten place this was all the way back in the sixties through today are running the country now." – Rush

I’ve always suspected that in higher education football was king and liberal arts programs were more about socialist indoctrination than about education.  There are exceptions in science majors which prepare students with college degrees to be meaningful contributors to society and tomorrow’s inventors.

I’ve watched several college presidents dance to the tune of rich alumni who influenced the donation purse based on the collegiate sports performance and listing themselves as successful based on how many new buildings they left behind and how much they’ve improved the athletic programs and infrastructure, including the football stadium. Top coaches are often the highest paid staff members of any college, even more than the president.

It became glaringly obvious at the University of Missouri, where the college president was forced to resign over a debacle involving alleged social injustices and alleged racism, that the football revenue was far more important than the academic excellence of its students. When the football team threatened to boycott the upcoming football games, then the ball started rolling and the president resigned.

The community organizing mob rule has taken over this university and it is likely to repeat itself across the country. Nobody bothered to fact-check the outrageous allegations made by various students, stoked by outsiders who came to the campus to cause chaos, and certain faculty members who were down right abusive in their behavior.

It is certainly an element of pride to have winning football, baseball, or basketball teams. To cave education standards to the demands of lunatics who make up non-existent problems on campus, and to demand that the president apologizes for his manufactured “white privilege” is an element of shame. The demands made resemble the fascistic activism of post-Weimar Republic in Germany and the activism of the communist agitators in Stalinist era.

Colleges are supposed to be inclusive, diverse, multicultural, and tolerant, a place to exchange divergent ideas and philosophies. But tolerance ends the moment you disagree with liberals and their progressive agenda of “its’ my communist way, or the highway.”

A college has become a very expensive place where Christianity, conservatism, the American flag, and the Constitution of the United States of America are not welcome anymore but Islam, atheism, communism, and environmentalism are invited with open arms.

Colleges have become places where faculty members agree with students that the Constitution is a threat, should be banned from libraries, banned from campus altogether, and shredded.

Colleges are no longer the vaunted place of learning; they are just a lucrative business that turns out the next generation of indoctrinated young people with worthless degrees that cost their parents thousands of dollars. Nobody questions the out of control tuition that pays the inflated salaries of college professors like Melissa Click, mass media associate professor at University of Missouri, who bullied a student on campus who was exercising his freedom of speech and of assembly. She called for “muscle” to throw this student off campus. She has since resigned her position. http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/10/student-bullied-by-mizzou-professor-says-she-needs-to-go/

The football team had threatened to boycott the upcoming games in support of students who demanded president Tim Wolfe’s resignation because he had not done enough to address invented racism on his campus, following alleged incidents that turned out to be entirely fabricated.

Why the president chose to resign instead of suspend the football players who refused to do what they were given scholarships, shelter, and food for, remains a mystery. It appears that the worship of collegiate sports is a larger mission of a university than actually educating our youth to become productive citizens.

Athletic programs spend so much money tutoring football players to make sure they pass their classes in order to remain in the game. There is a pool of well-paid tutors who earn money helping at risk-of-failing or failing football players to study or guiding them to write assignments and papers.

Interestingly, all the student agitation, indoctrination, and hatred come from liberal arts professors who teach outrageous subjects. The curriculum would be laughable if it was not so expensive to pursue these insane majors. The fluff and ridiculous classes have a large audience and customers who are willing to pay good money to be taught women’s studies, racial studies, receiving worthless degrees that will not garner the awardees a job for the next few centuries.

These are students who cannot pass serious courses, and avoid them like the plague. They comprise the dumbed-down segment of the American educated youth with a diploma on the wall that is not worth the beautiful paper that is printed on by the craft of artisans who probably never set foot in a university but are more talented and skilled than thousands and thousands of college graduates who receive these glossy pieces of paper after they expended no real effort.

I am familiar with the verbal abuse, threats, fear of failing a class, and fear of liberal professors lording over grades that students must endure if they have the temerity to show their patriotism, Christianity, libertarianism, or conservatism in class.

I am also familiar with accusation of racism lobbed at professors if minority students who miss class a lot, do not do the minimum class work required, are disruptive in class by being late, talkative, obnoxious, eating or drinking in class, using cell phones, or are just unprepared to put in the effort necessary to succeed in a more challenging curriculum.

We are now a country where adults cave in to malcontents. We have raised generations of sheltered kids who are afraid of their own shadows but speak loudly on issues they do not understand or know nothing about, and vote massively each time for their own demise. They are ignorant of the world around them and of the issues involved but are easily manipulated by the community organizers with a communist agenda, the liberal media, their liberal college professors, the comedians pretending to be journalists, and their equally uninformed friends.

American young people are the product of an exaggerated self-esteem inculcated by parents and schools. Precious Johnny can do no wrong; it might hurt his feelings if he does not get a trophy for walking across the stage without tripping or for participation.

Students are asking for “safe spaces“ on campus where they can be protected from reality, from life, from failure, from people who disagree with them, from symbols and negative comments that upset them or hurt their feelings, from jokes they don’t like, from anything that might destroy their kumbaya view of the world.

Rush called them cowards. “They're just scared to death of reality.  They're scared to death of life.  And they have been raised and educated to believe that it is legitimately possible to shield yourself from anything that's upsetting. And if somebody gets through that shield and succeeds in upsetting you, then they have to go.” http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/11/10/mizzou_a_generation_of_sheltered_kids_and_the_adults_who_cave_to_them

Such mental weakness leaves these young collegians ripe for picking by very clever ultra-leftist community organizers like Black Lives Matter or Occupy Wall Street, and vulnerable to the next snake-oil salesman.

 

 

Global Governance to Subvert our Sovereignty through Mayors

Another program/initiative will be implemented quietly around the country in 2016 while American citizens are blissfully unaware.  The United States Council of Mayors (USCM) has announced in March 2015 that they are supporting the Global Parliament of Mayors.

The announcement seems innocuous enough. We have global partnerships springing up all the time now. Our children are being indoctrinated in public and private schools to become global citizens, with no allegiance to their own country; they belong to the globe, with United Nations at the helm. Many institutions of higher learning and k-12 advertise proudly the preparation of the global citizens.

The role of the U.S. Council of Mayors is to create a forum for mayors to exchange ideas, strengthening leadership and management tools, to ensure that federal policy meets urban needs, to strengthen federal-city relationships, and to promote the development of effective national urban/suburban policy. The mayor of Baltimore, the famous Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, is the current president of the USCM. http://www.globalparliamentofmayors.org/partners/4588430924

According to its website, “The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) is the official non-partisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. There are 1,400 such cities in the country today. Each city is represented in the Conference by its chief elected official, the mayor.”

Among international advisors of USCM noted on the website are former mega cities mayors, the Earth Institute, former prime ministers, the Center for Urban Research, Barclays Capital, Brookings Institute, professors from Columbia University, the London School of Economics, and New York University, and the C40 (the Cities Climate Leadership Group composed of 78 member cities around the world united to fight greenhouse gas emissions).

What is the Global Parliament of Mayors (GPM) and why would USMC be a perfect partner? GPM is a project, a “political and civic institution by, for, and of cities.” The problem with this organization is that it is another phantom layer of government that was not elected by the people, for the people, and does not necessarily act in the best interests of the American people.  Mayors are elected by the people to represent their local interests, not the global interests as dictated by the United Nations Agenda 2030, the U.N. Agenda 21 on steroids.

American mayors are not elected to “identify and pursue in common the public goods of urban cities around the world through a new global governance platform deploying collective urban political power that manifests the right of cities to govern themselves, and their responsibility to do so by contributing viable cross-border solutions to global challenges that are also municipal challenges. In an era of interdependence, where nation states have become dysfunctional and cities are rising everywhere, it is time to take the visionary leap from effective local governance to true global governance.” American mayors are elected to represent the interests of the residents in their city, not a global entity.

I am not sure American citizens have agreed to this global governance, they want to govern themselves through elected officials. Dragging our cities into a compact that would result in spreading the wealth of our successful cities to the strife-ridden tribal societies is not how American citizens and their cities want to spend taxpayer dollars. Nor do American citizens want to bend over to the collective urban political power of the elites who have made such decision for them.

Who came up with this idea that “nation states and international organizations are finding it ever more difficult to respond to the global challenges facing humanity, from climate change and immigration, to terrorism and pandemic disease, from spreading inequality and global markets to new technology and religious conflict?”

Poor Hispanics, victims of economic inequality of their own governments, are flooding our country through the southern border. Muslim “refugees” are spreading religious chaos, violence, and conflict in their own countries and the countries they invade.

Climate has been changing for millennia without any interference from humans and the Vostock ice core sample demonstrate so. The global warming hoax has been proven a fraud, time and time again. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant; it is the gas of plant life. But the climate change industry is not giving up their agenda because it is a veritable cash cow.

According to the GPM website, the Global Parliament of Mayors is the work of Dr. Benjamin Barber, political theorist and author, and his research presented in his book, “If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities,” published in 2013 by Yale University Press.

The Global Parliament of Mayors is a “new beacon for global governance on climate change and other critical issues in what is becoming a year of extraordinary promise and a season of hope for humankind.” http://www.globalparliamentofmayors.org/home/4589660128

Since Americans have not voted at the polls for global governance, this is a stealth effort to install elected politicians and unelected bureaucrats to control cities around the world.

Why exactly must we take “the visionary leap from effective local governance to true global governance?” If we have effective local governance, why must we bow to globalists, to bureaucrat elitists who want to control us?

If cities are successfully governing themselves, they don’t need a layer of ghost government from abroad telling them how to run their cities or spend their taxpayer dollars, and I am not sure Americans will be too pleased when learning about this new attempt to subvert our sovereignty.

U.N. Agenda 21 has already infiltrated itself across the U.S. through the board of supervisors with membership in ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, renamed Local Governments for Sustainability), regionalism, and zoning regulations which have transformed parts of the cities into high rise, high density, mixed-use buildings, and have taken citizens out of their cars via excessive tolls and narrowing roads into light rail, buses, and bikes.

Agricultural land was taken out of use through conservation easements with the help of visioning committees that promoted smart/green growth. There is no government organization left that does not have a sustainable development plan in place, the lynchpin of U.N.’s Agenda 21. Now the U.N. elites are going to gain access into the mayors’ offices across the globe.

 

 

 

 

 

Should Illegal Aliens Not Get to the Back of the Line?

Millions and millions of legal aliens past and present must feel pretty betrayed and foolish that they have followed the law, spent endless hours filling out paperwork, paid expensive fees, waited and waited, traveled to immigration offices sometimes in faraway places at great cost to them, subjected themselves to interrogations, fingerprinting, medical tests to prove that they were healthy, undergoing financial cross-examination to make sure they would not become a burden to American society, in order to legally immigrate to the United States as resident aliens.

They want a chance at the American dream. But this American dream has been destroyed by the lawlessness that permits illegal aliens to break our laws and demand citizenship and rights that previously were reserved for law-abiding people either born in this country or naturalized, people who wanted to make America better through their contributions once they were given the opportunity to live in a formerly free country.

Now we reward law breakers, no questions asked, with every possible financial incentives an American citizen has and they are not satisfied. They demand American citizenship, free health care, birth certificates even though most were not born in this country, and they demand their own Bill of Rights. This document was just released by United We Stay, a group comprised of illegal aliens, first generation Americans, and liberal human rights activists. In addition to their 10-point demands, they object to the term “illegal” and “alien” because they are “dehumanizing.” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/5/illegal-immigrants-release-bill-rights/

At the same time, illegal alien groups had no hesitation releasing a vile video with very young children using profane language and gestures that cannot be played on screen without blocking the profanity, a message addressed to presidential candidate Donald Trump and to any law-abiding American who  supports him. A majority of Americans reject criminality and such behavior unbecoming of adults but especially young children.

If this group was looking for sympathy and acceptance from Americans, this ill-conceived video certainly back-fired. Americans were outraged and disgusted that young children could be used in such a repulsive way by their own parents and other adults.

We are not racists or bigoted because we like the rule of law. You disrespected our country and broke our laws when you decided to sneak across the southern border without proper papers and authorizations.  

Americans don’t want to raise their children around your children if these are the values, the vile language,  and despicable behaviors that you teach your young children – no respect for the rule of law, for authority, and for the potentially future president of the United States. This video shows in glaring detail your mal-educated youth in action.

We don’t care that you “work hard” and that you do jobs that “Americans won’t do.” Americans and legal immigrants work hard too and pay heavy taxes so that you can have your anchor babies in the United States at taxpayer expense and free emergency healthcare in any hospital in the U.S.  Anchor baby is not an offensive term, it is how you anchor yourselves by blood lines to eventual legal residence in the U.S.

Americans in whose faces you spit, whose flags you burn, whom you mock with obscene gestures and call lewd names are paying for your EBT cards, your WIC benefits, your child’s Medicaid, your housing, your food, your unearned income tax credits, your children’s free education, your ESL lessons, school lunch meals for your kids, housing, furniture, and other benefits that poor Americans may or may not receive. You demand your “entitlements” you did not pay a dime into simply because you are human beings. It is not our obligation to take care of you, we must first take care of our elderly and needy citizens.

After the publication of this video and the recent wave of crimes committed by illegal aliens, more Americans realize that presidential candidate Donald Trump, heavily vilified by the main stream media and by progressive groups, was right. A certain segment of the illegal immigrant population are criminals, rapists, and bring in drugs as mules when they don’t have the fee to pay the coyote to guide them across the border illegally in the dead of night.

Unlike illegal aliens already in the U.S., flaunting, demonstrating, and financially benefitting from their illegal status, over four million legal immigrants are quietly awaiting the dispensation of their immigration status application, following the law and waiting patiently in their countries, unable nor willing to jump the border, with no desire to transform America into the third world socialist dictatorship they hope to escape.

Should illegal aliens not get to the back of the line?

 

Engineered Migration and Demographic Suicide

As the engineered tide of illegal immigrants is flooding Europe and North America, small countries are overwhelmed and have made inefficient and weak attempts to stem this deluge and to close the Schengen zone borders.

Griff Witte wrote on November 3, 2015 on the front page of the Washington Post, “As migrant tide reaches a new high, pressure builds for Europe to seal its borders.” As they are “tempted to close the doors” of the “cherished continent open borders for good,” the big white elephant in the room questions are, why would westerners destroy their nations on purpose by allowing in jihadists disguised as “refugees,” and, why is it necessary to bring in unskilled and often illiterate labor from third world nations?

As Michael Savage wrote so aptly in his recent book, with Government  Zero you have “zero borders, zero language, and zero culture,” you have a nation in shambles.

I wrote about western demographic suicide long time ago in my book, Liberty on Life Support, but it bears repeating that a senescent Europe is not having enough babies to replace its dying population. http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Support-Ileana-Johnson-Paugh-ebook/dp/B008CL3G3M/ref=sr_1_3_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405352347&sr=1-3&keywords=Liberty+on+Life+Support

Author George Weigel described how Europe is committing “demographic suicide” by failing to “create the human future in the most elemental sense, by creating a next generation.” http://eppc.org/publications/christophobia-afflicts-europe/

Most western European nations produce less than the necessary replacement value of 2.1 children per family for many reasons: birth control, abortion, unproductive and unemployed young people who live longer in their parents’ homes, pursuing careers, exploring and following immoral and perverted lifestyles, making selfish choices, and occupations that do not require a large family to support the farm. The solution has been to import immigrants to fill the demographic and no-skill employment needs.

The historian Neagu Djuvara found fault with the lack of ideals, morality and blatant debauchery among civilized society, especially young people. Europeans and Americans alike lack ambitions, he said, and have stopped having children. The West has thus created a vacuum which third world counties are more than happy to fill with their fertility rate of 8.1 children per family.

Legal and illegal immigration has been facilitated by generous welfare programs in nations like Sweden, Finland, Norway, U.K., France, Belgium, and Denmark.  Ghettoes were formed, countries within a country, where immigrants rejected integration, producing sub-cultures that clashed with western civilization in every way.

Refusing to learn the language, the immigrants promised the destruction of the very country they occupied. As they received welfare and free housing, they vowed to remake Europe into a new world order Caliphate.

Bruce Bawer aptly named his book, “While Europe Slept,” describing the Muslim takeover of many European countries as inevitable and enabled by appeasement, self-censorship disguised as political correctness and hate speech, apologies, and across the board accusations of “Islamophobia.”

The “guest workers,” “refugees,” “asylum seekers,” or “family reunification” claimants deliberately destroyed their papers in route to the country of destination, knowing that they would evade detection if they were terrorists. They came from very poor, remote villages, and were highly hostile to Western values and history, and are not likely to accept them.

They are very dishonest, corrupt, and adept at taking advantage of the generous welfare system: unemployment, public assistance, relief payments, child payments, disability, cash support, and rent allowance. Welfare is based on the honor system in some Nordic countries, but Islamic law gives them advice to abuse the infidels’ system, “to cheat and lie to the countries that harbor them.” The monetary benefits are considered “jizya,” a tribute that infidels in Muslim-controlled countries must pay in order to stay alive.

In line with this administration’s plans, young “refugees” are being settled around the country in small and conservative communities who have no idea how to deal with them, where they came from, and who they are. These young men of military age who hate western civilization and our way of life, are supposed to fill the vacuum and replace childless Americans.

People in the U.S. have various opinions why Americans are not having enough babies and why men and women in the civilized world are afraid of marriage and commitment. Dr. Savage dedicated part of one show to this very question.

The opinions of middle-aged men and women are varied:

 

-          Culture has changed,  one no longer needs kids to care for their parents in old age, and women work on careers full-time, leaving less time and resources for raising children

-          People are more selfish and are looking for that perfect wife from Hollywood, genetically perfect, plastically beautiful, smart, famous, and petite

-          Because men don’t commit to marriage, young women are pushing around strollers with dogs and cats

-          Young people play the field, can have sex every day with a different person, pornography is available everywhere, or they already live together without commitment

-          Birth control and abortions are readily available and cheap when compared to raising a child

-          Public schools and environmentalism have brainwashed students that there are already too many humans on the planet and are negatively affecting the health of Mother Earth

-          Out of wedlock kids are raised by welfare government-daddy

-          Morals have decayed and families have broken down by high rates of divorce and by government laws redefining marriage

-          The young have been raised to become the selfish “me and only me” generation

-          Economics dictated that children were an asset in agrarian societies but they are a liability in an industrial society; they live longer and without shame with their parents because they are looking for the perfect dream job

-          Young generation have such high and entitled opinion of themselves, they want high salaries right away, no effort involved, they are a gift to the world, and become depressed when reality hits

-          Helicopters parents have raised them with a false sense of self, they were told they were special and received trophies for participation, with no understanding of failing and starting over

-          If you did not marry someone in the village, you were a failure and had no one to care for you in old age; now you have mobility and accepted immorality, divorce is no longer shameful or a sin; you can tap into the whole world with the Internet, you bring a person from the other side of the world to marry; you are never satisfied and ads confuse you constantly thus exacerbating your narcissism

-          Television and Hollywood created a false sense of yourself, you are waiting for Mr. or Mrs. Perfect because you have plenty of time and  there is always something better out there; you want to be in the one percenters without effort or education, just overnight success

-          Ads projected the white father as the bumbling idiot and Hollywood portrays stupid parents who have to defray to the wisdom of their children, of their little brats who know better than they do

-          Women’s liberation and women working outside of home have destroyed the family unit, there is no more social pressure to get married while men are looking for “bad girls” because that is how the media portrays the beautiful and the desirable

The opinions of young males and females are:

 

-          Women’s liberation is to blame - once women decided to educate themselves, men felt less of an obligation to get married and take care of them

-          Millennials put off being adults because their parents coddle them and allow them to live in their homes indefinitely

-          People live longer thus they can delay maturity and marriage

-          Women and men with morals and religious beliefs are hard to find

-          If women show themselves more independent, men feel less obligated to provide

-          Children are more expensive and the economy is bad

-          Women are sexual objects and men do not respect them

-          The Internet facilitates pornography - men don’t feel the need to be monogamous

-          Definition of marriage has changed, marriage is no longer a religious covenant, it is a social contract and the law says you can now marry anyone and eventually anything

-          Divorce, alimony, and child support are expensive

-          Forced marriages don’t exist anymore because having kids out of wedlock is no longer shameful or scorned by society or by religion

-          Cheating is so prevalent that both men and women want to make sure they marry the right person in order to avoid an expensive and painful divorce

-          For Europeans, housing is so expensive, many potential couples cannot afford married housing or the wait list is so long that they delay marriage and live with their parents

Michael Savage asked pointedly why young men are terrified of the responsibility to have children, why would they allow family lines to die out with them, why commit cultural suicide while taking care of millions of illegal aliens’ children via tax-driven welfare. It is certainly difficult to find moral values in a bar, in a predominantly drinking and partying culture.

Men are afraid of commitment and cite economics as an important reason. But, was it ever inexpensive or easy to have children? “People had babies during the Black Plague and even in concentration camps during the Nazi regime,” Savage said.  Non-western cultures have no problem having lots of babies.

Is the culprit the “chickification” of men driven by the feminist “man-hating movement” that ridicules and infantilizes men, especially white males, and the lack of teaching manhood and responsibility? Is it rap music that glorifies violence against women and utter disrespect for life?

Is it the “hardening of women,” the tough females, who intimidate, scare, and drive off many men? Is it the government daddy that created generations of irresponsible young men who reproduce and abandon their offspring and the responsibility to raise and teach the child they created?

While young men and women keep searching for the perfect mate that does not exist, how is it, asked Savage that arranged marriages work well in other cultures that have no problem with fertility? Why do some women lie to have control of their exes, holding their children hostage to this manipulation?

Will the massive engineered migration from third world countries, the demographic suicide of the west, the overall degradation of western society, and the mental disorder of liberalism eventually doom western civilization?

Voting in Prince William County, Northern Virginia

Photo: Ileana Johnson in Prince William Co.

Voters who showed up at 6 a.m. on November 3, 2015 to vote in Prince William County, northern Virginia, were greeted at the Leesylvania Elementary School Precinct by a closed door with the sign, “Polls Closed, (sic) at the moment until computer problems are solved! Sorry!”

When they asked for paper ballots, voters were told that they would not be available as it was impossible to verify online if the people were actually registered to vote.

A certain number of the would-be voters left for work, but a few decided to wait. Most were not sure if they would be able to return before the 7 p.m. poll closing time since they worked in the district and the commute is absolutely atrocious on any day but especially on Tuesdays. I decided to go back around 1 p.m. to try and vote again. This time, the polls were open. I asked the precinct captain what happened.  

“We had connection issues, we could not get our computers up and running. That affected one third of the precincts in the county. It wasn’t just us. We couldn’t open or allow people to vote until we had the issue solved.”

What kind of connection problem you experienced, I asked.  

“The computers would not talk to each other  within the whole county. Because when someone signs in, the county is aware of it. Without that, we could not ask people to vote.” He continued, “at the time, we did not know it was a county-wide issue, but we found out later on.”

He went outside and told the crowd, “Folks we are having connection issues, we are working on the problem as fast as we can and as soon as we can solve it, we would let you know. About 15 people left.  I could not turn anybody away, they just left;  they had to go to work. Some people stayed, most of them left. We could not tell how long it would last because we did not know. We got up and running at 6:30 a.m. and we’ve been up and running ever since.”

When asked if the voting polls would close 30 minutes later to make up for the shortage of time, the precinct captain answered that he did not know.

I showed my I.D., stated my full name and address, and voted by filling in blocks with a pen by candidates’ name on a paper ballot. I was then directed to feed the double-sided sheet myself into a scanner and an attendant let me know from the other side of the machine when my vote was electronically cast. I was a bit puzzled that the scanner could read both sides of the sheet at the same time. And this is how we voted or not in northern Virginia in a predominantly Democrat county.

A Visit to Ca'D'Zan and to the Ringling Brothers Museum

Ca'D'Zan Photo: Ileana Johnson Oct. 2015

On a beautiful October day, we finally experienced Ca’D’Zan, the House of John, the 1920s Venetian Gothic palace on Sarasota Bay, home of John and Mable Ringling, their Museum of Art, and the beautiful gardens decorated with replicas of Italian statues. Located in Sarasota, Florida, the property was bequeathed to the state of Florida in 1936.

In 1927, John Ringling moved the winter quarters of the Ringling show from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Sarasota County where it remained for over 60 years. The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus now rehearses their new show in Tampa.

P.T. Barnum (1810-1891) chose Bridgeport, Connecticut, as his home where he built three mansions, Iranistan, Waldemere, and Marina. Iranistan was modeled after George IV’s Royal Pavilion in Brighton, England, with furniture made expressly for every room. It burned to the ground in 1857 during renovations.  Waldemere (1868) was a Victorian-style structure overlooking the Long Island Sound in which he lived for 20 years, surrounded by treasures collected from around the world.  He built Marina next to Waldemere three years before his death.

P.T. Barnum built a highly successful circus that grossed $400,000 in its first year and was proclaimed in 1872 “The Greatest Show on Earth.” He partnered in 1888 with James A. Bailey to form the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Ca'D'Zan courtyard Photo: Ileana Johnson Oct. 2015

 

This visit was a fascinating incursion into the secrets of the circus of long time ago. There is a starry-eyed child in each of us who loved the circus growing up and remembered with fondness the big top acrobats, elephants, tigers, the daredevils, the tight rope performers, and perhaps clowns. People have fantasized about running away with the circus, to see the world through their lifestyle, and some did.

Calliope Photo: Ileana Johnson Oct. 2015

The circus dates back to the period of 2000-1750 B.C. in many cultures, showcasing unusual skills and abilities of the human body.  Jugglers appear on the wall of a 4000-year old Egyptian tomb.

Traveling groups and later troubadours brought with them music, poetry, jugglers, news, acrobats, dancing bears, trained dogs, the strange wonders of the world, and exciting shows from outside of their small world.

Country fairs in the 16^th century England and the 18^th century Commedia dell’Arte in Italy with its Harlequin dressed in multi-colored patched costumes would set the stage for the modern circus (1750-1840).

“In 1768, a retired British cavalry officer, Phillip Astley (1742-1814) joined together feats of horsemanship with acrobatics, balancing, juggling, and comic acts and the modern circus was born.” Astley performed in London at the Royal Amphitheater of the Arts where shows were lit by three great chandeliers with five hundred candles. (Museum Archives)

The father of modern clowning is Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837). Born in London, Grimaldi gave clowns the nickname of “Joey.” His character, “Clown,” was a mischievous and malevolent trickster.

Isaac Van Amburgh (1808-1865), a New Yorker, was the greatest animal trainer of his day.  He entered a cage of lions and tigers dressed as a Roman gladiator and was said to have been the first man who put his head in a lion’s mouth.

Circus wagon Photo: Ileana Johnson Oct. 2015

The period of 1870-1938 is considered the Golden Age of the American Circus. It reached the greatest size under a tent and it capitalized on the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad to move faster across the country.

Traveling up to 15,000 miles and performing in 150 towns, the show needed 1,300 workers and artists, 800 animals, equipment, human food for 3,900 meals a day and grain, meat, and vegetables for all the animals in the menagerie.

At the turn of the 20^th century, there was a Circus Day in every town, an annual tradition that often closed schools and factories to allow everyone to enjoy a few moments of escape from the everyday drudgery.

The excited crowds were treated to the sights, sounds, and smells of the circus, with the whistle of the calliope, the ticket sellers, concession booths with popcorn, hot dogs, cotton candy, soft serve ice cream and soda, pennants, dolls, live lizards to wear on your sleeve, and the colorful wagons with whimsical drawings of animals and fantastic characters.

Sword swallowers, Fire Proof Man, the Human Pin Cushion, dancers, Tiny Town performers lured the public to purchase tickets. For just a few cents, tickets were sold to side shows called “ballyhoo.”

Entrance to the Ringling property Photo: Ileana Johnson Oct. 2015

 

The circus was the first place where many Americans saw animals from other continents. The menagerie had elephants, lions, zebras, hippopotami, giraffes, orangutans, macaws, kangaroos, and polar bears. The cage wagons were beautifully and intricately carved with decorative figures and scrollwork. Panels would cover the bars to protect animals during travel.

Goliath, the giant sea elephant, weighing in a three and a quarter tons, was the main attraction, traveling in his specially-built water tank and consuming 150 pounds of fish per day.  P.T. Barnum had an elephant called “Jumbo,” who was 10 feet 10 inches tall. Zebras were occasionally seen in circuses but were much harder to train than horses. Asian elephants have been part of Ringling Bros. for 141 years.

Clyde Beatty worked with large cats, lions and tigers. He “styled” them and trained them to do certain tricks but, as he said often, one can never tame them completely.

The domesticated animals such as dogs and cats were usually adopted from the pound. Horses and other hooved animals had their own blacksmiths. Four hundred baggage horses pulled wagons and heavy canvas and helped raise and tear down the tents.

The centerpiece of the circus was the Big Top. Raised in less than four hours, with six center poles, 74 quarter poles, 122 sidewall poles, 550 stakes, and 26,000 yards of canvas, the centerpiece of the circus was ready to enchant thousands of spectators each day.

 “In 1926 the program for each Ringling show lasted two and a half hours, without intermission, and included more than 800 artists performing in 22 displays.” The show ran concurrently in the three rings, on the four stages, around the hippodrome track or in the air above the rings. Seating could accommodate 15,000 people but, if all seats were sold, straw was spread in the front to make extra room for children in the “straw house.” (Museum Archives)

Museum of Art courtyard Photo: Ileana Johnson Oct. 2015

 

The performers spent their time before and between performances in the backyard and in their own tents. The more famous the star, the more amenities from home they commanded.

The circus was set up on empty lots adjacent to train stations and, on Circus Day, most towns doubled their population. More than 150 wagons had to fit on flatcars and it was the trainmaster’s duty to use the space properly. Before the show ended, the Flying Squadron was already on its way to the next stop where the circus was to perform. The logistics was so intricate that even the military watched them closely to copy their complex organizational skills.

Agile acrobats, fearless flyers, tumblers, foot jugglers, Russian bar acrobats, trick cyclers and teeterboard pushed the boundaries of athletic ability, timing, execution, spectacular charisma, and skill. Lillian Leitzel performed a record 249 one-arm “planges” high above the center ring before she fell to her death in 1931 in Copenhagen.

Italian statuary in the museum gardens Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

Nik Wallenda, seventh generation member of the famous Wallenda family, set the Guinness world record in 2008 for the longest distance and greatest height ever traveled by bicycle on a high wire.  His achievements include:  walking across the Allegheny River in 2009, walking over Niagara Falls in 2012 and in 2013, and crossing the Colorado River Gorge near the Grand Canyon on a two-inch steel cable, 1,500 feet above the river.

The leotard is named after Jules Leotard, the first to perform the flying trapeze. Brian was the first human arrow to launch from a self-made crossbow. In the 1920s Con Colleano was famous for his dancing and forward somersaults on the wire.

Hugo Zacchini, the Human Cannonball, flew more than 200 feet from a cannon. It is one of the most dangerous stunts at the circus. Daredevils use weighted projectiles to test their equipment before performance.

An empty lot was magically transformed in a few hours into a wonderland of color and spectacular showmanship, but, as soon as it arrived, it disappeared with all its clowns, props, tents, trapeze artists, and animals, and the lot became vacant once again.

The famous clown Irvin Feld (1918-1984) founded in 1968 the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College to preserve the art of clowning. A year later, Reggie Montgomery (1948-2002), the first black clown, graduated from said college. Michael “Coco” Poliakovs (1923-2009) helped create in 1963 the famous fast food mascot, Ronald McDonald. Pinto Colvig made his television debut in 1948 as “Bozo the Clown.”  Emmett Kelly’s “Weary Willie” character became the mascot for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956. Otto Griebling (1896-1972) and Emmett Kelly (1899-1979) portrayed hobo characters, surviving the difficulties faced by many Americans in the Great Depression. (Museum Archives)

Clowns could be scary to some, but their circus characters exaggerated the quirks and foibles of everyday people, a grandma, a country bumpkin, a rube, a policeman, a hobo, or a tramp/wanderer. More than 1300 clown graduated from the RBBB “Clown College.”

Interestingly, “electric light appeared in a circus big top in 1879, the same year Thomas Edison developed his incandescent bulb.”

Parallel with the circus, the “Wild West” shows traveled the country and the world, re-enacting daring rescues, heroic battles, Native American dances, and runaway stagecoaches. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, Pawnee Bill, and The Miller Bros. 101 Ranch fascinated audiences far and wide. These shows were uniquely American, romanticizing life on the Western Frontier based on James Fenimore Cooper’s five novels and the real life hunter and scout William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody. The stereotyped life in these shows was later picked up by the motion picture industry.

Howard Tibbals Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015 from Museum Archives

 

Howard Tibbals created the most accurate replica of the canvas city called the Howard Bros. Circus, modeled after the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus. He used historic photographs and measurements from existing equipment. The 3,800 square foot model depicts the American tented circus from the 1919-1938 period of the Golden Age.

Section of Tibbals' miniature Photo: Ileana Johnson Oct. 2015

 

Howard Tibbals began work in 1956 on his Howard Bros. Circus model in the basement of his Tennessee home, using photographs he had collected.  In 1958, Tibbals met Harold Dunn, a skilled model builder whose miniature circus was displayed around the country. Tibbals built his miniature circus working at least 20 hours weekly for fifty years. He continued to add elements to his masterpiece even after the completion of the installation in 2005.

The Howard Bros. Circus miniature made its premiere in 1982 at the World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. Howard Tibbals began the installation of his miniature in November 2004 in the Circus Museum’s Tibbals Learning Center and it took him over a year to finish his labor of love.

Cirque du Soleil, founded in 1984 in Quebec, the Big Apple Circus, founded in 1977, and Kenneth Feld’s Ringling Circus empire, delight audiences with masterpiece extravaganzas. The circus is still very much part of the American pop culture to this day, with performances under tents, in arenas, and in theaters.  As long as there are children who are dazzled by the magic, the lights, the costumes, the pageantry, and the breathtaking aerial acrobatics, the circus will live on.

 

 

The Continuing Saga of Smart Meters

For those of you who have just heard of smart meters, or  have had one placed on your home knowingly or unknowingly, or for those who think that said smart meters are a new development around the world to make it cheaper and easier for you to get electricity, gas and water via the smart grid, think again.

Rationing and control of your usage of electricity, water, and gas,  and a constant incursion into your privacy, are better descriptors of what smart meters are intended to do. A good friend sent me this story about her bizarre problem with experimental smart meters of long ago.

Dominion Virginia Power started a program in the late 1980s. Carol signed their home onto a package which installed a device in their hot water heater. It was promoted as an electricity-saving gadget and it did not cost them anything, on the contrary, they received a $4 a month credit. The device turned the water heater off during peak usage, usually during summer months when demand for air conditioning was highest. This was implemented in order to save the electric company the trouble of having more electricity stored in excess-capacity facilities which are expensive to build.

The Dominion Virginia Power cancelled the program in 1997 because, according to Carol, the device caused innumerable problems and, when these gadgets broke, a regular plumber or electrician could not fix them.  Although the program was terminated long ago, she still received that $4 credit per month because, “if they eliminated said credit, it would be like they were raising our rates because their technology didn’t work. Crazy!”

Carol’s water heater finally broke in October 2015. After a plumber and electrician were called to their home and neither one could fix the problem, her household was out $220 just to have the plumber step in the door. The plumber did come twice, did not charge for the second visit but cautioned that, if he had to come back, the regular $110 service call would apply.

Left with the only option, Carol called the Dominion Virginia Power expert but he could not fix the problem either. The only Dominion Virginia Power repairman who is the expert at fixing this particular gadget issue was busy in Virginia Beach, three and half hours away. By the end of the week, he did make a service call to their house and now Carol and her family have hot water again.

In spite of their ordeal, having to do without hot water for a few days pales by comparison with my experience under the inept communism of my childhood and young adult years when we did not have hot water all summer long and only a couple of hours in the very early morning every day for the rest of the year.  You had to get up at 4 a.m. if you wanted to bathe or wash your clothes or dishes. Worse yet, we did not have any water at all during the day whenever the government decided that we could have it and they could not deliver it. And we did pay our bills on time, we had to, everything was withheld from the paycheck before the working class received meager wages for their labor. But then again, village folks or suburbia did not have any plumbing and running water and many still don’t have it to this day.

Given the trouble and the cost they had to incur, Carol’s family believes that “most of the Virginia power credit $$$ we’ve saved over the years, we spent this weekend to fix the problem this device caused.” The only ray of sunshine for Carol was finding out from the expert that they did not have the new-style smart meter, just its less controllable cousin. Just imagine what other problems the far more sophisticated and expensive new-style smart meter could have caused!

Many people have willingly accepted the smart meter installation because of the sign-on bonuses of $40-$100 offered and the promise of cheaper electricity. As the promises soured, electricity costs skyrocketed even though consumption in many cases declined, and smart meters caused home fires, customers in California have turned to class action lawsuits.

Of course, there is always the “opt-out” option which is available in most states. Utilities are obligated to offer customers this choice. However, it can be expensive in many states, should one decide to keep traditional meters in order to preserve health, privacy, and the ability to purchase truly cheaper electricity.