LOST DAYS ---- Dante Gabriel Rossetti The lost days of my life until to-day, What were they, could I see them on the street Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat Sown once for food but trodden into clay? Or golden coins squandered and still to pay? Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet? Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat The throats of men in Hell, who thirst alway? I do not see them here; but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. ‘I am thyself, — what hast thou done to me?’ ‘And I — and I — thyself,’ (lo! each one saith,) ‘And thou thyself to all eternity!’
In 1967 a Soviet adventure TV series Operation Trust (Операция “Трест”) was created.
STEVE writes:
Americans, especially white, middle-aged con-servatives, have an insatiable appetite to be conned, deceived and betrayed! They are the utter personification … and perfection of ‘golem.’
A good example — but there are legions — is this article in Breitbart last September, urging conservatives to take the vax so they can “Own the Libs.” These controlled-opposition groups couldn’t possibly be any more blatant, and utterly pathetic. Yet so many keep falling for it.
Operation Trust (операция “Трест”[1]) was a counterintelligence operation of the State Political Directorate (GPU) of the Soviet Union. The operation, which was set up by GPU’s predecessor Cheka, ran from 1921 to 1926, set up a fake anti-Bolshevik resistance organization, “Monarchist Union of Central Russia”, MUCR (Монархическое объединение Центральной России, МОЦР), in order to help the OGPU identify real monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks.[2] The created front company was called the Moscow Municipal Credit Association.[3] (more…)
ALAN writes: I've decided to partake of the World Economic Forum's "Fourth Industrial Revolution." I am now working from home. Here are two snapshots to prove it. In the first, you will see that I am hard at work in my unmentionables as I arrange books by the Dewey Decimal System. Afterward I was exhausted from reading all those names and numbers. So I took a nap. When I awoke, still in my jammies (second picture), I had a brilliant inspiration for my next work project: A Deep Research essay on the Interdimensional Intersectionality of Higher Learning, Advanced Gullibility, and Modern Advertising Slogans when correlated with phases of the moon and the paramount question: How many times can Feminist TV Anchors say “Awesome!” in a single newscast? An alternate idea that occurred to me is a study of correlations between Fauci's bank accounts, multiple levels of no-account bureaucrats, and the astronomical increase in Americans' gullibility over the last forty years. I aim to publish my Deep Research in the Journal of Psycholinguistic Imponderables or the Journal of Nescience, Nonsense, Non-Knowledge, and Non-Entities (whichever pays more). For breaks during working hours, I watch Looney Tunes. For even better laughs, I listen to Fauci-the-Carnival Barker’s latest medical advice in each day’s new episode of Follow the Flim-Flam Artist. It is imperative for Comrades like us to pursue such Deep Drivel…..er, I mean Deep Research…..in opposition to Dissenters who must be Debunked, Demeaned, Defamed, Denounced, Derailed, Deplored, Deplatformed, Deconstructed,…
"WHAT we most need in our day are men conscientiously and invincibly attached to principle, — God-fearing, self-respecting, nobly independent while reverencing the rights of others, — incapable of betraying their conscience, their trust, or their honor; men uniting to the vigor of body inherited from chaste and temperate ancestors and sustained by personal virtue, to the strength of soul which true piety begets, that dignified and gentle courtesy which is only the flower and perfume of Christian charity." --- True Men as We Need Them: A Book of Instruction for Men in the World, Fr. Bernard O'Reilly, 1878
CANADIANS in Salmon Arm, British Columbia lined the streets today as the "Freedom Convoy" of truckers resisting vaccine mandates passed by. Below is a scene from yesterday in Abbotsford. This controversy is a major test of the trucking industries in both the U.S. and Canada. Their independence could ensure our future food supply.
FROM Notes on Nursingby Florence Nightingale (Harrison, bookseller to the Queen, 1859; p. 23)
“We must not forget what, in ordinary language, is called “Infection;”*** – a thing of which people are generally so afraid that they frequently follow the very practice in regard to it which they ought to avoid. Nothing used to be considered so infectious or contagious as small-pox; and people not very long ago used to cover up patients with heavy bed clothes, while they kept up large fires and shut the windows. Small-pox, of course, under this regime, is very “infectious.” (more…)
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A FLORIDA speech therapist says she has seen dramatic spikes in developmental delays in young children, especially in language abilities. She blames the use of face masks. “We are seeing a lot of things that look like autism. They’re not making any word attempts. And not communicating at all with their family,” explained [Jaclyn] Theek. “It’s very important that kids do see your face to learn, so they’re watching your mouth,” added the pathologist.
A LIGHTING store a few miles away from us is permanently closing next month.
It has been in business for 72 years. It’s an independent, small business, not part of a chain, and sells all kinds of lamps, light fixtures and the accessories that go with them, including shades, harps, bulbs, sockets and that little thing at the top of a lamp that keeps it all together. Everything electricity has engendered in the way of illuminating human existence, it has sold.
During the last couple of months, I visited the store a few times. I was one of the vultures picking over its stock, all of which has been deeply discounted.
On one visit, I picked out a reading floor lamp as a Christmas gift. It was 50 percent off.
I asked the salesman — a stocky, black man with neatly-tied dreadlocks and bulging eyes — for the lamp with the dark finish. I recognized him from previous visits. After he had carried the box out from the stockroom, I asked — though I felt bad — if I could have the one with the silver finish instead.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“I guess you’re used to people changing their mind,” I said, smiling apologetically.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, without skipping a beat.
And when he turned to go back to the storeroom with uncomplaining fortitude, I saw — as if in a vision — the throngs of nerve-wracking, indecisive, neurotic, uninformed and sometimes grateful and pleasant customers he had served over his many years in this brilliant showroom of lights. He had mastered the ability to overcome irritation with courtesy. He was a retail warrior who had learned a thing or two about human nature.
With regard to your thought-provoking observation about Covid’s apparent respect for billionaire longevity, from a Forbes article on billionaire deaths in 2020, we have this: “In a year that will likely be remembered around the world for the devastation and loss of life caused by the coronavirus pandemic, 17 billionaires passed away in 2o20–but, as best as we can tell, none did so after contracting Covid-19. That compares to 23 billionaires who died in 2019.”
Then in 2021, Forbes tells us 27 billionaires shuffled off their mortal coils. Again, apparently not a single one from Covid. (more…)
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THE wealth of the world's billionaires increased more during the fake pandemic than in the previous 14 years combined, according to a report from Oxfam. While income fell for 99 percent of the world's population, the ten richest men doubled their fortunes. This is all pure coincidence, of course. "Billionaires have had a terrific pandemic. Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom," Oxfam International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher said in a statement Monday accompanying the latest report. Bucher added that if the 10 richest men in the world were to lose 99% of their wealth, they would still be richer than 99% of all the people on this planet. Interestingly, none of these billionaires died of "Covid." This is a medical miracle. Deadly germs don't like the rich, but more study must be done to understand this phenomenon. Read more at ABC News.
Lafayette Elementary School in south St. Louis, from which my father graduated in 1927.
ALAN writes:
One day in 1988 my father thought about holding a re-union of his grade school classmates. Then he acted on that idea and organized the first in a series of such re-unions that would continue for 25 years.
He had fond memories of some of the teachers in the public elementary school that he attended in the 1920s. He and all of his classmates walked to and from school.
At one such reunion, I met a woman named Marjorie who taught in St. Louis public grade schools for decades, as did her twin sister Margaret. They worked in years when the schools in St. Louis were vastly different from what they are now (meaning: much better). (more…)
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“What has gone on in the United States during the past two generations is full of lessons and warnings for the rest of the world. The American housewife of an earlier day was famous for her unremitting diligence. She not only cooked, washed and ironed; she also made shift to master such more complex arts as spinning, baking and brewing. Her expertness, perhaps, never reached a high level, but at all events she made a gallant effort. But that was long, long ago, before the new enlightenment rescued her. (more…)
THE liturgical season of Christmas continues. You probably have had it with red and green, but you may still tolerate this sublime carol by a fifteenth-century English monk who was both deaf and blind. It is set to music by the composer John Rutter. There is a flower sprung of a tree, The root thereof is called Jesse, A flower of price, There is none such in paradise. This flower is fair and fresh of hue, It fadeth never, but ever is new; The blessed branch this flower on grew Was Mary mild that bare Jesu, A flower of grace; Against all sorrow it is solace.
GOD'S GRANDEUR --- Gerard Manley Hopkins The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
ON THE morning of December 13, 1799, when it was snowing heavily and about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, George Washington toured his estate at Mount Vernon, Virginia on horseback. He was sixty-seven years old and in good health at that time, well enough to perform this daily ride and to supervise five farms. He had recently retired from politics, complaining that politicians had regard for “neither truth nor decency.”
The day before, he had also gone out in the wet snow. He returned home in damp clothes and, not wanting to detain guests, sat down to dinner without changing.
At dinner on the 13th, he was reportedly in good spirits but stated that his throat was sore. His secretary was concerned and suggested he take some medicine. Washington, as recounted in George Washington: A Life by Willard Sterne Randall (Henry Holt & Co, 1997), responded
“No, you know I never take anything for a cold. Let it go as it came.”
Unfortunately, Washington and his doctors, as the night and next day progressed, did not follow this non-invasive approach. If they had, the president may have lived into the 19th century. Instead, concerned about the extreme inflammation of the president’s throat, they resorted to the medical wisdom of the time. Before long, close to half the blood in Washington’s body had been drained by leeches and he was administered mercury, known now to be highly toxic, as well as other substances.
Three doctors were by his bedside, the youngest of whom, Elisha Cullen Dick, advised at one point an immediate tracheotomy to allow Washington, already considerably weakened by bloodletting, to breathe. The other doctors rejected this proposal and Dick pleaded with them to stop bleeding the president:
“He needs all his strength — bleeding will diminish it.” (more…)
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This is the what I like to term ‘Beggar Culture’ – every tragedy, every calamity, ever sick pet, sick kid, person with no health insurance, any excuse you can find now requires its own ‘Go Fund Me’ page. (more…)
