Rosenbush Cafe

From 1969, a new song by Blind Faith. Well it was new then and I still have the original album with the naked girl so young she could get the record label in trouble today. Us oldies know that did happen and the LP was re-released with cover art of the group, but for me nothing says more about the sixties than that girl holding that surreal silver plane. Hope you all find your way.

By Henry B. Rosenbush

2nd annivesary Friday and all the veggies you can eat for free.

Wow. Unfathomable that the laid back - well, OK lazy - Henry B. is still operating a digital version of the southern cafe that my late, great Uncle Edwin owned and operated starting in the 1920s until his death in 1968. With myriad concepts of what might be interesting to Internet reads with the millions of existing sites already available I took a metaphorical leap into the realm of uncertainty and wrote one paragraph which has since be revised slightly and the cafe re-opened its doors on November 28, 2006: First post of Rosenbush Cafe

With my mother in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and me as her caregiver, I knew this Cafe with be operated sans staff and basically for free. There would not be Cara Bell cooking steaks and hamburgers or a Florence Speed managing the restaurant; they were both deceased. Edwin was gone, my dad, who inherited the cafe and managed, with Florence, Cara Bell, Cora and a couple of other women, to keep the eatery going until 1971 when the doors closed forever.

When I first began the arduous task of creating a website from my subconscious it was almost a lark; I would have to pay some fees to get it designed, purchase a web domain and then without any staff become the proprietor of a virtual world where the leitmotif was a restaurant but where the menu would be esoteric; cats would play an important role, my love of cinema would allow me to review films and television and eventually my tiny real estate company could be promoted.

With the help of another blogger, who had been a journalist, but unlike my brief stint in the Fourth Estate (1977-85) was still in the game I began learning the codes and gibberish that was the Movable Type Platform. Earlier this year, my site was re-tooled when it was moved from Movable to WordPress and another server and then updated to a new WordPress and moved again to another server.

The blogger, Wilson, had lived as a tenant in my apartments in the early 1990s and introduced me to the early days of the Web with his Mac while I was using a PB 500 and deep into the word processing techniques I’d learned on an Amstrad in 1987 and earlier on an Apple. I never dreamed that years later I’d see Wilson again when he was heading through Tuscaloosa to DC and was working for the New York Times. A few years later we connected again and began urging me to “quite taking all those damned notes.”

You see, as a former journo, I was constantly writing on notepads and anything else that could absorb ink and leave a traceable outline of my thoughts for later. Well, as any procrastinator knows later just becomes even later and all I had were miles of streams of consciousness dictated to myself and stored in drawers, paper bags and grocery bags before finding themselves unceremoniously slipped into folders with titles like: Nilhist Thoughts, 1985 Part 2 or worse, lost in the miasma of cardboard boxes in closets or the basement.

Funny how we can immortalize aspects of our lives that in retrospect are painful and perhaps masochistic to reveal to a world of strangers let alone admit to oneself: my uncle never approved of my dad marrying, tolerated my mother, you see Edwin was a confirmed and happy bachelor and said more than once how I should never had been born!

I should advise that I heard him while sitting in a cavernous restaurant dining hall off the main cafeteria, well it seemed huge for a six year old kid.

As a child it was a frightening revelation, but I am eternally grateful and appreciate his honesty; Edwin was not one to mince words, as the cliché goes, and better metaphor for a man who spent many years purchasing, preparing and sometimes cooking, or supervising the chef, in myriad dishes that today would only make one melancholy for the truest example of the old days.

His words became a mind-opening experience for me and I began exploring the conception of the never having been born and what that meant. I would not learn the terminology of existentialism and nilhism until junior high by talking to college students at our apartments and learning, especially 1968-72 that the world was a leaping big place.

It was as a child that I pursued the fantasy world where I could day dream - and night dreaming, too -of nothingness and the idea that what if? What if the universe did not exist and by extension what exactly, was, and is the universe? We named it that so other people could boringly reply, “Oh, yeah…the un-i-versssssssse; Big place.”

Imagine a child more interested in the galaxies beyond intellectual capacity than playing army or cowboys and Indians, and yes I tried, but as I learned in my youth, I was interested in hunting, fishing, hiking or scout. And yes, again, I tried the cubs for about six weeks; never finished a belt, no badges, find with me, still.

I was what was once called a sissy, but only by the virtue of not caring as much about rough and violent-themed role playing, rather than what I later learned a sissy really was: one in the long lines of insulting words the English language shuffles into the ever changing linguistic flashcard set.

You can judge for yourself, as I did when I realized I wanted to and could possibly one day write something. I was around five when I told day I wanted to be a newspaperman. From college journalism at Southern Miss from 1972-76 and 1977-85 I got to be a member of the Fourth Estate.

I wanted to be a writer, an author and bestselling author, hey they make movies from bestselling authors, don’t they? I wanted so badly to succeed and get a shot at being on television interviewed by Edward Murrow or in the late sixties meet Dean Martin’s Gold-diggers!

Uh-huh. Great to still be a kid, but I had my own variety show, naturally in my head, where I had a segment to allow Popeye the Sailor to teach other men to respect women somewhich which, he and especially the misogynist, Bluto, were not very good at and if Sheri Lewis and Lamb chops were in the area - we broadcasted from WBIQ Columbus, Mississippi -perhaps she come over and entertain.

Of course none of this happened, but it did continue my writing and for awhile I was asked in Temple Sunday School to tell stories to my mates. I did but it was year’s later before I learned most of the other kids laughed at me.

No worries, mates and kates; at the time it was fun standing in front of thirty or forty people making stuff up on the moment and I didn’t even know yet it was called stream of consciousness!

Oy vay boy howdy, was I proud when I had oral surgery to correct an embarrassing speech impediment during the third grade. You have probably surmised correctly much of the laughter was based on a lisp and inability to pronounce certain words, which made Hebrew language learning as impossible as any language which required many throat-clearing raspy sounds for that alphabet.

An obstacle overcome is no longer funny to them as for the first time in my life I stood and said “Table Three (not, Tay-bill through-reeee!), all present.”

It would be a typically non-productive level of writing for class until junior and senior high and man was I bad. I admitted that long ago, so again, not a care claire. Aside from that haunted iron ore mine story I wrote for Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1965 - I was 12 - most was thematically lacking but I was a great speller. Can hardly wait to edit and correct this lengthy self-inflective jibber jabber.

College was more the journalistic writing and my creative writing was still not very good; I wrote a hitman story with a dope dealing student killed in his dorm room for ripping off the wrong people on a pot shipment and it was roundly criticized, but to show I could take it, or at least make them think I could, my next story, my first college attempt at the difficult dadaist leitmotif, called “Under the Oak Tree” by the author of Contract, was even more despised and rightfully; imagine Luis Buñuel directing Andy Warhol’s Trash with Joe Dallesandro played by Wally Cox and the Holly Woodlawn character played by my former girl friend.

It all ends with bad prose in the rain and a male character hanging from that oak tree of the title and my surreal descriptions making Edgar Allen Poe’s morbitity seem like an Alice Cooper stage act.

How kind was that to compare my first girlfriend, who had just cruelly broken my heart in front of her parents in a hospital emergency to a transvestite-actor/actress? I got over her like most guys; drank and smoked and cursed out how misunderstood I was.

Ladies, guys are as clueless to their inadequacies as chipmunks in flight. We only admit we’re wrong to make whoopie. Better say that than what we really said. Pigs, and not Pink Floyd’s 3, different ones.

Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - I review the DVD of the documentary, Gonzo, this week -had a profound impact on my writing and I read it in one night.

Kurt Vonnegut was cool and I really dug Henry Daivd Thoreau. I enjoyed Afro-American Lit, although I took a D in the graduate class; I know somewhere the caged bird isn’t singing for me.

My writing would get better over the years, especially towards my end of college when I was fortunate enough to have two graduate level classes by Pulitizer Winning author Michael (The Killer Angels) Sharra, who actually was complimentary of a electricity-based science fiction novel I was writing.

Sharra was quite a guy and indeed loved to write, read his writing and ours, talk about writing and great authors and have a dram while chatting up coeds.

Well, I never attained that status; no Henry groupies but I did realize that my writing would get better if I wrote creativity when not journalistically.

As has been discussed under the category Cool Side of the Pillow, I continue today the long in process writing of dREaMbantitS that started with a very short story at UAB in the early eighties and morphed to become solace while caregiving my mother, who died last year of Alzheimer’s disease.

This isn’t Crime and Punishment, Proust’s Masterworks or Metamorphorsis, but if Doestyevsky, Proust and Kafka met for tea with Salvador Dali and Simome de Beauvoir and Alice in Wonderland catering provided the tea (heh-heh) while Thompson went Gonzo in the red shark looking for spinal fluid, as a chaser, then I might find an audience.

Others, beware.

Rosenbush Cafe give me the opportunity to continue writing and explore my inner child’s learning to go somewhere out there, but unlike coasttocoastam I am far from finished. Death cannot phase me as I’ll be in the cosmos as my character, Henri, finds himself thoughout the novel.

Much thanks to my muses; Natalie, Kalliope, my late mother, father and uncle and aunt Frances, Bernie, Edwin and Virginia and for Wilson who gave me the means to learn the codes of the internet to introduce an old-style eatery to my personal lexicon of surreal, but serene madness.

Ciao.

By Henry B. Rosenbush
BCS Standings, AP, USATODAY Polls included

Twelve wins in a row and eight wins in a row and the wait is nearly over for Number 1 Alabama (12-0, 8-0) and Number 2 (AP; 4th, USAToday) Florida (11-1, 7-1) when they meet Saturday, for the SEC title game with the BCS National Championship Game as both team’s ultimate goal.

Could there be more at stake than Alabama going from a 7-6 team in 2007 to the top ranked team in America in one year when most everyone who follows college football predicted another mediocre season?

Perhaps after the over-hyped pre-season analysis from sports experts and basement bloggers of where Alabama would fit into the always unpredictable SEC was hatred, jealousy or ignorance, Coach Nick Saban took a 24th ranked team and guided them through a season of growth and maturity that rekindled the glory years of Crimson Tide football when Alabama was feared, respected and taken seriously.

Many of these same experts either have continuously ignored or downplayed the Crimson Tide’s resurgence as a power in the Southeastern Conference all season. Even as the Tide broke the November losing streak and defeated last year’s national champions LSU, broke the offensive touchdown drought against Mississippi State and ended six years of bragging rights with Auburn the televised games have had one unsettling scenario replayed ad nauseum:

Florida is the hottest team in America; Florida 60 points, they scored 70m points, last year’s Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Tim Tebow is the best quarterback. While they made deserve all these accolades and Tebow is a great QB and will probably draft higher in the than Alabama’s John Parker Wilson Florida was expected to be powerful and started the season ranked 5th in AP and USAToday’s polls with Alabama at 24 in AP and unranked in the coaches rankings.

This would also be a year where Alabama defeated three teams, and perhaps for if Auburn’s Tommy Tuberville’s tenure ends after their 5-7 season, whose coaches were replaced; Clemson’s Bobby Bowden was let go, Tennessee’ Phil Fulmer - the coach so reviled by many Alabama fans and alumni as the man who brought attention to the NCAA that led to the football program being in the death zone - retired - maybe resigned if he gets a job at South Carolina. Isn’t that where Steve Spurrier coaches? Mississippi State’s Sylvester Croom resigned less than 24 hours after the embarrassing season ending loss to in-state rival Ole Miss, who blanked them 45-0 on Friday.

While it is not the opinion of this writer that these coaches jobs ended because Alabama defeated their teams, there were problems at these schools already, but in a year when one team returned to prominence after a decade of being the SEC whipping post for a number of teams that tide turned.

After last night’s game I listened to a dozen conversations between Alabama and Auburn fans I joined for tailgating to hear “I never dreamed it would be like that,” from an Alabama fan to a young former Auburn student, now in anothe school - not Alabama - who congratulated me, saying, “That is the best team I have ever seen and Auburn knew it.”

A number of fans swooned, trying to recall a year, since the l992 championship season when Alabama was not only undefeated but left them all smiling for all home games! It was actually profound to see a number of fans for both teams still acting like civilized people rather than the more drunken chanting heard in the campus housing zones nearby.

As a University of Southern Mississippi alumni I’m glad the Golden Eagles ended 6-6, especially after the unceremonious and embarrassing end to Coach Jeff Bowers’ career. He coached Brett Farve and everyone knows how he turned out. Too bad they lost to Auburn when was ranked 9th in week two of the season.

A breakdown of Alabama and Florida with the seemingly endless statistics of college football games and seasons:

Starting with Alabama, team leaders were: Quarterback John Parker Wilson who completed 157 of 268 passes for 1909 yards 9 TDs 5 INTs, and breaking all the major QB records; Glen Coffee rushed 199 times for 1,235 yards and a 6.2 average with 9 TDs; Mark Ingram (127 rushes, 681 yards, 5.4, 11 TDs); leading receiver first year player Julio Jones had 46 receptions for 723 yards, a 15.7 yard average and 4 TDs followed by Nick Walker (26/262, 10.1, 2 TDs).

The Tide offense averaged 201.5 rushing and 169.3 passing per game for an average of 370.8 while the team averaged 32.1 points per game while allowing 11.5 and winning by 20.6 points.

Florida’s team leaders were:

QB Tim Tebow (246/160, 2,299 yds, 25 TDs); rushing, Chris Rainey (82 rushes 654, 8.0, 4 TDs) and Percy Harvin (61/538, 8.8, 9 TDs); receivers, P. Harvin (35/595, 17.0, 7 TDs) and Louis Murphy (32/525, 16.4, 6 TDs).

Florida’s offsence averaged 237.1 rushing, 212.3 passing for 449.4 per game average and scored an average of 46.3 points per game, allowed a 12.3-point average and margin of victor, 34.1 points.

CONFERENCE
8-0 ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE
7-1 FLORIDA GATORS

OVERALL
12-0
11-1

POINTS SCORED
385
556

POINTS ALLOWED
138
147

HOME RECORD
7-0
6-1

ROAD RECORD
5-0
5-0

Alabama’s 2008 Schedule and Results
8/30 @ No. 9 Clemson 1-0 (0-0) W 34-10
9/06 Tulane 2-0 (0-0) W 20-6
9/13 Western Kentucky 3-0 (0-0) W 41-7
9/20 @ Arkansas 4-0 (1-0) W 49-14
9/27 @ No. 3 Georgia 5-0 (2-0) W 41-30
10/04 Kentucky 6-0 (3-0) W 17-14
10/18 Mississippi 7-0 (4-0) W 24-20
10/25 @ Tennessee 8-0 (5-0) W 29-9
11/01 Arkansas State 9-0 (5-0) W 35-0
11/08 @ No. 16 LSU 10-0 (6-0) W 27-21 OT
11/15 Mississippi State 11-0 (7-0) W 32-7
11/29 Auburn 12-0 (8-0) W 36-0

Florida’s 2008 Schedule and Results
8/30 Hawaii 1-0 (0-0) W 56-10
9/06 Miami (FL) 2-0 (0-0) W 26-3
9/20 @ Tennessee 3-0 (1-0) W 30-6
9/27 Mississippi 3-1 (1-1) L 31-30
10/04 @ Arkansas 4-1 (2-1) W 38-7
10/11 No. 4 LSU 5-1 (3-1) W 51-21
10/25 Kentucky 6-1 (4-1) W 63-5
11/01 @ No. 6 Georgia 7-1 (5-1) W 49-10
11/08 @ Vanderbilt 8-1 (6-1) W 42-14
11/15 No. 25 So Carolina 9-1 (7-1) W 56-6
11/22 Citadel 10-1 (7-1) W 70-19
11/29 @ No. 20 FSU 11-1 (7-1) W 45-15

AP Top 25
1. Alabama (62) 12-0 1,620
2. Florida (3) 11-1 1,516
3. Texas 11-1 1,488
4. Oklahoma 11-1 1,480
5. USC 10-1 1,355
6. Penn State 11-1 1,257
7. Utah 12-0 1,216
8. Texas Tech 11-1 1,197
9. Boise State 12-0 1,103
10. Ohio State 10-2 1,069
11. TCU 10-2 885
12. Ball State 12-0 834
13. Cincinnati 10-2 824
14. Oklahoma State 9-3 798
15. Georgia Tech 8-3 708
16. Oregon 9-3 630
17. Georgia 9-3 495
18. Boston College 9-3 482
19. Missouri 9-3 479
20. Brigham Young 10-2 385
21. Michigan State 9-3 312
22. Mississippi 8-4 280
23. Pittsburgh 8-3 241
24. Northwestern 9-3 190
25. Oregon State 8-4 122
Others Receiving Votes: Iowa 66, Virginia Tech 47, Tulsa 13, Florida State 12, California 7, West Virginia 4, Rice 3, Connecticut 3, Nebraska 3, North Carolina 1. Dropped From Rankings: Florida State 23.

USA Today Poll
1. Alabama (58) 12-0 1,521
2. Oklahoma (2) 11-1 1,397
3. Texas 11-1 1,396
4. Florida (1) 11-1 1,385
5. USC 10-1 1,298
6. Penn State 11-1 1,176
7. Utah 12-0 1,153
8. Texas Tech 11-1 1,116
9. Boise State 12-0 1,044
10. Ohio State 10-2 999
11. TCU 10-2 836
12. Cincinnati 10-2 770
13. Ball State 12-0 765
14. Oregon 9-3 658
15. Oklahoma State 9-3 613
16. Georgia Tech 8-3 590
17. Missouri 9-3 470
18. Brigham Young 10-2 461
19. Georgia 9-3 440
20. Boston College 9-3 435
21. Michigan State 9-3 414
22. Northwestern 9-3 333
23. Pittsburgh 8-3 154
24. Oregon State 8-4 127
25. Mississippi 8-4 126
Others Receiving Votes: Virginia Tech 41, Iowa 31, Tulsa 21, Florida State 15, Nebraska 11, Kansas 10, Connecticut 5, North Carolina 5, Rice 5, California 4. Dropped From Rankings: Florida State 24, West Virginia 25.

BCS Standings
1. Alabama 12-0
2. Oklahoma 11-1
3. Texas 11-1
4. Florida 11-1
5. USC 10-1
6. Utah 12-0
7. Texas Tech 11-1
8. Penn State 11-1
9. Boise State 12-0
10. Ohio State 10-2
11. TCU 10-2
12. Ball State 12-0
13. Cincinnati 10-2
14. Oklahoma State 9-3
15. Georgia Tech 8-3
16. Georgia 9-3
17. Boston College 9-3
18. BYU 10-2
19. Oregon 9-3
20. Missouri 9-3
21. Michigan State 9-3
22. Northwestern 9-3
23. Pitt 8-3

By Henry B. Rosenbush

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Coffee rushed 20 times for 144 yards and Mark Ingram scored two touchdowns as Alabama routed in-state rival, the Auburn Tigers, 36-0. The six game winning streak by Auburn came to a soggy end in a place they had never lost.

The impressive shutout was also the largest margin of victory in the Iron Bowl in 46 years.

Number 1 Alabama finished the season 12-0, 8-0 and will meet Florida in the SEC Championship against the #4 Florida Gators on December 6. Florida defeated #20 Florida State (8-4, 5-3), 45-15 in stormy conditions.

Auburn ended the season 5-7, 2-6 and 4th in the SEC West behind LSU (7-5, 3-5) two teams preseason experts picked to be respectively 1 and 2 with Alabama predicted as a 6-6 team. Auburn lost six of their last seven games. Ole Miss ended second behind Alabama at 8-4, 5-3.

Backup quarterback Greg McElroyew a 34 yard TD pass to Marquis Maze to end the scoring but it all began on Alabama’s second drive with a field goal. The first scoring drive, came the second time Alabama had the ball and started on the Tide 5 but stalled on the Auburn 20 with a 37 yard field goal by Leigh Tiffin giving Alabama a 3-0 score as time expired in the first quarter. It capped an 11 play 76 yard drive in 7:11.

Alabama was cooking on all cylinders like a well-tooled machine, outgaining Auburn 412 to 170. John Parker Wilson threw one touchdown and left the game with 6 minutes to go and ended his season regular season 8/16 134 yards. McElroy finished 2-2 for 44 yards the the one score, his first.

Ingrams scored his second touchdown on a 14 yard run in the third quarter as Alabama had built their lead to 29-0 and it came courtesy of three second half fumbles that ended Auburn’s six game winning streak over Alabama. It was Alabama’s first win in Tuscaloosa against Auburn and since 2001.

Terrance Cody dropped on the second turnover in the third quarter and on the next possession Alabama moved down the field for their third TD by running back Mark Ingram rwho ran for a 1 yard score opening up 22-0 lead.

The first turnover, on the previous Auburn drive, and Alabama first’s play afterwards was a 39 yard Touchdown pass to Nikita Stover, his first of the season, on a 1 play 39 yard play. It came off Brad Lester’s fumble and recovery by Rolando McCain with Alabama already ahead 16-0 early in the 3rd Quarter but the extra point was blocked.

As expected, the foggy and rainy weather made the first quarter a field position game with Alabama pinned deep by Auburn punter Clinton Durst, twice inside the 10 yard line, but on the second possession Alabama finished the with the field goal clearing the uprights to end the first quarter.

At the 10:28 minute mark Crimson Tide running back Glen Coffee ran 41 yards for a touchdown to give the number one ranked Tide a 10-0 lead finishing a quick 4 plays 65 yards in 1:38.

Coffee, at the 6:09 mark had already rushed for 99 yards on 11 carries to Auburn’s 44 as a team but left the game with an undisclosed right ankle injury. He returned for the first play of the third quarter and never looked back.

Nick Saban took an opportunity to change momentum that worked perfectly. With 5 seconds in the first half he called a time out just before AU place kicker Morgan Hull’s first attempt was good which would have given Auburn its first points on the game. The second 39 yard attempt was blocked by Brandon Deaderick blocked Hull’s second attempt that was recovered in the end zone by Javier Arenas. That would be the closest the Tigers were come to scoring.

Alabama’s 19-point third quarter was when the defense took control of the game limiting Auburn QB Kodi Burns to 9/23 and 113 yards.

Terrance Cody feel on the second turnover, a Kodi fumble, in the third quarter and on the next possession Alabama moved down the field for their third TD by running back Mark Ingram opening up a 22-0 lead.

The first turnover, a fumble on the previous Auburn drive by Brad Lester, that was recovered by Rolando McCain when Alabama was already leading 16-0, led to a 1 play 39 yard TD pass from Wilson to Nikita Stover, his first of the season.

The first scoring drive, came the second time Alabama had the ball and started on the Tide 5 and ended at the Auburn 20 and Leigh Tiffin kicks a 37 yard field goal to give Alabama a 3-0 score as time expired in the first quarter, capping an 11 play 76 yard drive in 7:11. As expected, the foggy and rainy weather made the first quarter a field position game with Alabama pinned deep by Auburn punter Clinton Durst, twice inside the 10 yard line, but on the third possession Alabama finished the first quarter with the field goal that cleared the uprights to end the first quarter.

At the 10:28 minute mark Crimson Tide running back Glen Coffee ran 41 yards for a touchdown to give the number one ranked Tide a 10-0 lead finishing a quick 4 plays 65 yards in 1:38.

The matchup between Alabama and Florida will feature one of he highest scoring offenses in the Gators against one of the best defenses in the country. Florida has outscored opponents 556-147 while the Crimson Tide has given up 138 points while scoring 385.

By Henry B. Rosenbush

When I look back over the two years since Rosenbush Cafe became a reality much has happened that has changed my life in ways I never considered. Starting a website was never something I expected and certainly not one based on a restaurant that my uncle started in Livingston, AL in the 1920s. I wanted to celebrate the anniversary today, knowing Saturday I would be caught up in the miasma that is the Iron Bowl Classic which pits Alabama against Auburn in football, but no matter how many times I tried to reflect on what I have accomplished the only thing that came to mind were the horrific terrorist attacks in India.

We all like to think of ourselves as important, and to a degree, we probably are worthwhile within the context of the grand scheme of life.

The truth is that many of us are more savage that our ancestors and on a daily basis, rather than rise above the brutality we embraced it, condone it and in the end do nothing to stop it.

On Thanksgiving Day, an 84 year old woman in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, which ironically was the location of my final newspaper assignment, was rescued by Department of Children and Families and Volusia County Sheriff’s Deputies, from a form of abuse that boggles my mind. I’ll get back to this story momentarilly, but should advise readers the following paragraphs are disturbing.

In Oshawa, Ontario Canada, police are searching for a sadistic murderer of cats, who tortured, dismembered and display gruesome remains of two cats in highly public places frequented by children. As an a man who has rescued over a dozen cats and because I wasn’t proactive (how I hate that word) enough to find them homes became their guardians and now have three cats in my office and at my home, well let’s just say counting the feral and neighborhood cats that come by for food and safety, over a dozen. That doesn’t include a family of three raccoons and a family of three opossums who nightly arrive for sustenance.

I care about animals and I care about humans, but as the darkness of mankind; note I did not say humankind because it is mainly men who commit the atrocities and mayhem that makes our ancestors far less brutal than their modern descendants, I care more for a tiny community of mishpoca - a Jewish word for extended family - than the remaining billions overrunning this once beautiful blue green orb.

After September 11, 2001, an Alabama football game was postponed so the next week when the tailgaters arrived for a home game here in Tuscaloosa the topic was more about the events in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania than college football. I was standing with about ten people discussing where our world was headed when someone asked me what I thought could make our world a better place and without cogitating I replied:

“A comet.”

There was silence as those nearest looked at me in astonishment. Someone asked what I meant and without blinking I said that it would wipe out the entirety of humans and give another life form the opportunity to rule the planet earth.

There was silence and some nervous laughter before the crowd dissipated and individuals began talking about football.

I was then, and still am today, serious, perhaps more than ever.

With over 160 people murdered in India and the Taj Hotel smoldering as I write I realize there is no hope for us. Maybe there never was and as many people subscribe to the belief that the world will end in 2012 I’m here to tell you that civilization (another word I find deplorable) began declining long ago.

It was just the Holocaust in World War II when a sick little man with an ugly face and tiny mustache murdered 6 million Jews, some of whom were my relatives for me to make this claim. The list of killers is endless; Stalin, Napoleon, Saddam, the Roman Empire….

The continuous death and destruction is paraded in the media daily between commercials for erectile dysfunctions, cars and beer. Whenever I hear someone talk about primitive cultures I figure they must be from the 22nd Century talking about us, but alas it is 21st Century man insulting their own relatives. When man sat around the fire and grunted about those dots of light in the sky I know they were not considering which one was the home of E.T.

Whenever I recall that once people thought the earth was flat, the center of the universe was here and that the sun revolved around the earth I don’t think of them as illiterate. When we look at what science has accomplished, especially in the areas of medicine and space science I can see someone years down the road saying, “You know people in the early part of the 21st Century couldn’t feed their neighbors but were willing to spend billions on exploring Mars. They wanted to move there.”

Sure, Mars. How about Pluto? Only a race as insensitive as ours would dare decide whether Pluto is a planet or not. How dare us. Is earth a planet or, as Huxley once claimed, “another planet’s hell”?

So what does this have to do with an elderly woman in Florida, cowardly terrorists in India and a sadist killing cats in Canada? It is us. For every person I’ve met who was kind and caring and wonderful there were a multitude of others who were bigoted bullies with beer guts and IQs just shy of the average body temperature.

The elderly woman was forced, by her own daughter, Mary Bosket, 54, to live in a home, against her will, without proper plumbing, no heat and only animals to keep her warm. Although I mentioned earlier that it usually men who are guilty this story made me ill.

Police arrested Bosket, who is a year younger than me, and charged her with neglect of the elderly.

I sacrificed much of my assets care giving for me mother, who died last year of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 93. My mother suffered greatly due to her illness, but never went without food, water, shelter, heat or air conditioning. She certainly never had to coax over 60 cats unto her bed for warmth from the feline’s body heat to keep warm as Bosket’s mother was forced to endure.

This house had 66 cats, 15 turkeys, 20 ducks, 13 gerbils and a dog living in her house. Where was the daughter on Thanksgiving? Certainly not with her mother. Another example of neglect and abuse and on a day that celebrates death of American Indians and turkeys.

Before you start cursing me for defiling yesterday’s holiday check your history, or better than that read the post that Kalliope Amorphous wrote yesterday at Musecatcher:
Thanksgivinglessness
It should clarify some historical facts that should make some of us less likely to ever look at a turkey or the 27th of November the same again.

Want to know what Thanksgiving is about? Here is an excerpt from the news release about the woman, who fortunately, was taking in by the DCF:

“The details in the news release about the South Glencoe Road home include:

The only toilet in the house was not working, and the sinks wouldn’t drain.

Phillips was using a faulty oxygen tank, and said she suffers from congestive heart problems.

A duck was living in one bedroom in an empty children’s pool, while the turkeys were in cages in another bedroom, except one that was wandering freely.

Two dead cats were found in the freezer.”

In Oshawa, the mutilated cats were found in Greenbriar Park and Whitehall Park and I will not give you nightmares describing what I read but suffice to say even though I am not a violent person I would not feel the slightest guilty about the sick evil person suffering a fate even worse than what was done to the cats. Naturally, police have no leads and do not even know who the cat owners are.

Even Black Friday lived up to a darker level when, in Neew York, a Wal-Mart greeter was trambled to death by over two hundred people whose only concern was rushing into a store for sales on Christmas items.

Sigh.

Finally, India. I received an email from the Birmingham Jewish Federation that Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg were killed at the Chabad House in the Mumbai terror attacks. Chabad of Alabama Rabbi Yossi Friedman asked for Shabbat candles to be lit at 4:22 p.m. CST, but alas I was not online until after 7 p.m., but to honor their memories and those of the 160 know dead, even those who were not Jewsih, I lit the memorial candle I keep for the Yarhzeits of my deceased family. I silently said the Mourners Kaddish and realized the second anniversary of my website was the least important post I could blog about.

So, dear friends, another group of well organized evil human beings decide to take the lives of other human beings; all ages, with no regard for gender or faith. I heard some expert on CNN make an ascertion about “holy wars” and the usual excuses for why all this happens while another one on FOX made reference to how President-elect Obama would deal with it.

In closing, I must admit that I am no longer surprised by the steady and overwhelming violence permeating this world. I sincerely hope Obama succeeds, but will not lie when I say he cannot control the world of evil men.

Before I left South Carolina earlier this week, I watched a newscast on the CBS Channel where the first seven new stories were all about corruption, violence against the elderly and a Viet Nam vet freezing to death mere feet from his own home. Then there was weather and sports and I turned off the teevee and cried.

Primitive man is unfortunately alive and living right now.

So where the hell is my comet?

I can only hope the next inheritors of Earth do better than us for we have failed.

Rosenbush Café is two years old….