Here We Go Again: Since the Memphis-Shelby County (Tenn.) School District allows religious clubs to operate on school grounds, the Satanic Temple’s “After School Satan Club” has announced it’s opening a chapter at Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova. The district says that by law, it must allow them equal access. ASSC makes it clear they are not religious, do not indoctrinate children in any way, and simply “emphasize a scientific, rationalist, non-superstitious worldview.” Worse, “The Satanic Temple supports children to think for themselves.” Uh oh. While the organization doesn’t actually even believe in Satan, of course parents are sputtering. (See, for instance, The Hell You Say in True #1500.) “Let’s not be fooled by what we’ve seen,” urged Interim School Superintendent Toni Williams, “which is an agenda initiated to ensure that we cancel all faith-based organizations that partner with our school district.” (RC/WHBQ Memphis) ...A statement that actually says a lot more about the district’s agenda than ASSC’s.
Freedom of (Our Own) Religion II: When a religious display went up — with state permission — at the Iowa State Capitol, it met resistance. It featured the “seven fundamental tenets” of the organization that placed it: the Satanic Temple of Iowa. Although the organization is federally recognized as a nonprofit and non-theistic group, many are protesting the “Satanic” part. State Rep. Brad Sherman is calling for “clarifying legislation ... that prohibits satanic displays in our Capitol building and on all state owned property.” He’s also pushing legislation to display the Ten Commandments in all state buildings and public schools. And because of another response, you won’t be able to go see the display anymore: Michael Cassidy, 31, of Lauderdale, Miss., has been charged with criminal mischief after he allegedly destroyed the display beyond repair. “We ask that for safety, visitors travel together and use the 7 Tenets as a reminder for empathy, in the knowledge that justice is being pursued the correct way, through legal means,” the Satanic Temple posted on its Facebook page. (MS/KCCI Des Moines, Des Moines Register) ...At least one side is handling this with empathy — the way Jesus would have.
Don’t Mock Florida: Now that all other problems in Florida have been fixed, Florida politicians are turning their collective efforts to changing ...the Official State Bird. The current State Bird is the northern mockingbird, but it’s the Florida scrub jay that’s the only bird endemic to Florida, and that’s what legislators want. Or, wait: at least one Democrat has joined two Republicans to make the American flamingo the official avian, since it says “Florida” more than any other with its long legs and bright pink plumage ...although it’s not native to Florida, but rather the West Indies, South America, and the Yucatan Peninsula. The competing bills mark the seventh time in 25 years that legislators have moved to toss the mockingbird out of the top spot. (RC/Tallahassee Democrat) ...But we can still mock the legislators, right?
Police Activity? Bull: New Jersey Transit tweeted that its “rail service is subject to up to 45 minute delays between Newark Penn” Station and Penn Station, New York, because of “Police activity.” The tweet included a picture of the activity: a bovine — variously described as a bull or a steer — on the tracks at a train station. Passenger Ellie VandenBerg said travelers seemed annoyed rather than scared. Cops (VandenBerg saw one with a rope) attempted to corral the beast, but he ran off, said another observer, Javier Perez. “That bull should go right on my plate,” said Juan García, who was eating steak at a restaurant near Newark Penn. “He ran and got caught, so he lost the battle.” His brother, José, disagreed, calling for a “monument” to an animal that “was able to get away in a big city like Newark. It’s impressive.” Newark police said the animal was ultimately caught and shipped off to a sanctuary. The sanctuary said his name was Ricardo. (AC/New York Times, WABC New York) ...Now that he has a name, it’s harder to see him as meat.
She’s a Fireball: Florence Hackman of Deerfield Township, Ohio, enjoyed announcing what she was going to do on Saturday: watch TV coverage of her favorite football team, the Cincinnati Bengals, playing the Minnesota Vikings, while she sits with about 50 people, including local firefighters, and drinking Fireball Cinnamon Whisky. What’s the big deal? It was Flo’s (as she likes to be called) 105th birthday. The Vikings dominated during the first three quarters, but the Bengals made a big comeback in the 4th and won in overtime, 27–24. (RC/Cincinnati Enquirer) ...Which gives Flo a strong will to live at least through the playoffs.
Vroom
Florida Man Flings Object at Car, Whips out Sword
During Road Rage Fight over Revving Engine
WOFL Orlando headline
This Week’s Contributors: MS-Mike Straw, AC-Alexander Cohen, RC-Randy Cassingham.
Author’s Notes
Dropping Substack? I had already noticed a burst of cancellations of this Substack edition, and one of the departing readers clued me in as to why. Not that he didn’t like my content (he was upgrading to the full Premium edition to replace his subscription here), but rather he doesn’t like Substack due to its newly announced position. Specifically, he sent me this link to an article at The Verge: Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content.
In response to significant criticism, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie — who is who personally invited me to bring True to to this platform — announced that while “we [Substack] don’t like Nazis either,” he posits that “subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power.” I absolutely do believe that concept has some validity, but that’s not why such content is here. To provide a platform and a way to make money on such content certainly doesn’t “strip bad ideas of their power,” and I'm extremely uncomfortable in continuing to participate in the platform.
I have to give my reader kudos for also simply choosing to not participate in helping Substack make money — and to not even ask me to, let alone insist that I, move away from Substack. Hell, he didn’t even suggest it.
So what I did for him is provide a “rebate” for what he paid here in the form of a discount on his Premium subscription, especially since his Substack subscription renewed just last month. So if the situation disturbs you and you also want to move on, by all means do follow your conscience. If you would also like to switch to True’s regular paid version (“Premium”), let me know and I’ll send you a $10 coupon toward a year’s subscription; if you haven’t upgraded to paid here yet, I’ll send you a $5 coupon: send me a note from your Substack-registered address with the request. Bottom line is this is fair notice: over the next week or two I will be winding this edition down and leaving Substack.
I’m not demanding that Substack “do” anything, but rather I suggest that staying the course they are on will cost them a lot more money than it would have cost to draw a line and refuse to make money from that kind of content.
The Student Who Died from an overdose in the story “___ism” is another statistic in the ongoing opioid crisis. She — yes, female — was facetiming with a friend when she passed out. The concerned friend called 911, but she had stopped breathing well before they arrived.
Her fellow students at Justice High School were outraged enough by the principal’s tweet that they printed out copies and put them up on walls around the school. The dead girl has since been named as Madeline Valeria Moran Centeno, a 10th-grader. Narcisse (what a perfect name for the principal!) has apparently deleted her Twitter account. Good: she needs to focus on other things.
With Our Semi-Retirement delayed for a few months, Kit and I are s.l.o.w.l.y recovering from our hurried-up move and 8,000-mile farewell trip for friends and family. We’re even slowly catching up with writing articles for our new Residential Cruising web site. We had hoped by now to be posting photos of our adventures on our new RC Instagram and Facebook accounts, but that’s having to wait a few months. Ah well: good thing we starting this semi-retirement thing extra early! Just thought I’d mention those spots in case you want to add them to your Social “Likes” for the now-and-then posts in the meantime.
Bottom Blob
Ten Years Ago in True: Why is nothing changing in the realm of school shootings? Trigger Point.
The Lead Story this week is the Story of the Week (you’re welcome to share it), about religion in school, is posted on Telegram, Mastodon, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, and/or Threads (testing, not sure if it’s worth it), or grab from any of those to share elsewhere.
This Week’s Sunday Reading: The first time I visited a brothel, I took my wife with me. Really. The story and comments are eye-opening. Moonlite Bunny Ranch.
This Week’s Honorary Unsubscribe goes to Guy Stern. Born in Germany to a Jewish family, Stern loved to read. But as Nazis rose in power, his parents feared for his safety and arranged for him to live with an aunt and uncle in St. Louis, Mo. “You have to be like invisible ink,” his father told him. “You will leave traces of your existence when, in better times, the invisible ink will become visible again.” While waiting for the paperwork to clear, his parents pulled him out of high school, where he was being bullied for being Jewish, to study English with a tutor. He traveled to the U.S. alone: his parents couldn’t afford to go themselves, or even send his younger brother and sister.
In high school, a girlfriend suggested he change his given name; he dropped Günther for Guy. Once he graduated from high school in St. Louis, Stern worked to get funds to go to college, studying languages at Saint Louis University. But he interrupted his own education in 1942 to volunteer as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy. It rejected him: he wasn’t born in the U.S. He instead became a U.S. citizen and entered the U.S. Army, which recognized his potential: in 1944 they sent him to special training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland, becoming one of the “Ritchie Boys”, a group of around 20,000 soldiers fluent in foreign languages trained in frontline interrogation, battlefield intelligence, investigation, counter-intelligence, and other intelligence work. At least 2,200 of them were Jewish; around 200 were women. After training he was sent to Europe for D-Day as a member of Team 41, a six-man group Interrogators of Prisoners of War. Stern did well: he was promoted to head of his team, and prepared reports on what he had learned from prisoners, ranging from the German railroad system to German preparations for chemical warfare.
Stern and another German-born Ritchie Boy, Fred Howard, used a “good cop, bad cop” tactic that brought out more information, including about a German captain in the Battle of the Bulge who uncovered two Ritchie Boys there from IPW Team 154. The officer declared “Juden haben kein Recht, in Deutschland zu leben” (“Jews have no right to live in Germany”), ordered them to stand at attention, and had them shot in the back. That was a war crime: the captain, Curt Bruns, was the first German officer to be executed by the U.S. Army for World War II war crimes. Was that tough for Stern? “We were fighting an American war, and we were also fighting an intensely personal war,” he said in a 2005 interview. “We were in that war with every inch of our being.” Another tactic was to pretend to be a Russian Commissar, using a fake Russian accent he remembered from the Eddie Cantor comedy radio show. “We didn’t break everyone,” he wrote in his 2020 memoir, Invisible Ink. “Some of our captives may have reflected on the impossibility of transporting prisoners across half a continent to face the feared Russians. But mostly the stratagem worked.” Stern was awarded the Bronze Star for his intelligence activities, its citation crediting him with providing information of “inestimable value.”
After the war, Stern went to Hildesheim, his home town, to discover his family home had been taken by the Nazi government in 1938, and his family sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. He never saw them again. He returned to the U.S. and went back to school with the help of the G.I. Bill, culminating in a PhD at Columbia University. After several teaching positions he became a professor and department head for German language and literature at the University of Cincinnati, and then Wayne State University. After retirement Stern became the director of the Harry and Wanda Zekelman International Institute of the Righteous at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Mich., a position he held until his death. He was also named a Knight of the Legion of Honor for freeing France during the war, and recognized as an honorary citizen of Hildesheim. He appeared in the 2004 documentary, The Ritchie Boys, and was featured in the 2022 Ken Burns documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust. Dr. Stern, one of 25-30 surviving Ritchie Boys, died December 7 at a hospital in West Bloomfield, Mich. He was 101.
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