THE Guadalupe River rose about 26 feet in 45 minutes with no advance warning. Details about the tragic flooding in Texas hill country can be found here. To think of families and young children swept away during a holiday weekend like this is beyond sad.  

By changing frames at hyper-speed and using all the techno-gimmicks modern technology makes available to them, techno-shysters will seize the viewer’s mind, bounce it around, distort it, erase it, restore it, insult it, flatter it, tease it, and anesthetize it. They will dice-it-and-slice-it by means of multiple frames within the frame … None of it is there by chance. All of it is meticulously planned and engineered by people who hate you if you have a functioning mind. 

ALAN writes:

Decades have gone by since I stopped “watching television”.  To be sure, I had my share of favorite programs in the years 1954-’65, before I reached an age of intellectual-philosophical awareness. But in the late 1960s I began to notice changes in and about television that did not impress me favorably. From then onward, I spent very little time “watching television”. I thought most of it was appalling — then and now.  All the shows that were all the rage meant nothing to me. I got the impression that there was an inverse correlation between the moral-philosophical content of TV programming and advancements in TV technology. The more sophisticated the latter became, the more degenerate the former became.

Until recently and by intent, I had not seen or listened to any TV commercial in more than twenty years. I am old enough to remember TV commercials from the 1950s-’60s that are now called “classic”; advertisements for shampoo, cereal, soup, cake mix, cigarettes, Anacin, Geritol, Speedy Alka-Seltzer, Rice-a-Roni, Mr. Clean, Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix, the Gillette Bluebird, and the Doublemint Twins.

Upon seeing what TV commercials are like today, my only reaction was unqualified revulsion. How, I thought to myself, could any grown-ups worthy of that name agree to sit through, watch, and listen to such adolescent-witted, razzle-dazzle hype?  

I have long been a credits-reader. I like to read the credits listed after a movie or TV show. It was possible to do that with 1950s programs like “Perry Mason” and “Leave it to Beaver”, in which the closing credits were clearly readable and sensibly paced. Today it seems that credits are shown at hyper-fast pace, doubtless to move on as quickly as possible to the next razzle-dazzle spectacle, but perhaps also because many TV viewers cannot read well, if at all.

Another development in television that did not impress me was its bag of technical tricks, in which a scene is made to appear or disappear in a white flash, altered repeatedly, and presented in hyper-fast-cut edits within the span of a few minutes. All pretentious nonsense, I thought.

Compared with such high-tech hype, TV advertisements in the 1950s were models of restraint, form, and mannerliness.  For an example, see the advertisements for Kodak film and cameras in 1950s episodes of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” TV show. (more…)

NOT long ago, I bought two salvia coccinea plants. I knew from experience that the tubular, scarlet-red flowers are very attractive to hummingbirds.

I have had this variety before, but never ones so breathtakingly gorgeous. The blossoms on the vertical stems were so huge they weighed down the slender, green supports. They were deep red. I imagined a whole summer with these superior specimens and with happy hummingbirds. I put the plants in a new wooden planter and fertilized them. Then, I thought, “Maybe just a little more.”

I wanted so eagerly that these heavenly plants retain their spectacular blooms — and so I did it. I used more fertilizer than I normally would.

Since then, those first flowers have expired, replaced by ones that are shriveled, have tiny black spots and do not open. And these are usually such easy plants to grow!

I blew it. I loved them too much. (more…)

"THE peace which the Blood has made to reign in the high places as well as in the low; the impetus of its wave bearing back the sons of Adam from the yawning gulf, purified, renewed, and dazzling white in the radiance of their heavenly apparel; the Sacred Table outspread before them, on the waters' brink, and the Chalice brimful of inebriation; all this preparation and display would be objectless, all these splendours would be incomprehensible, if man were not brought to see therein the wooings of a love that could never endure its advances to be outdone by the pretensions of any other." --- "Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ," Dom Prosper Guéranger  

Prayer to Venerate With Solemn Worship The Price of Our Salvation Almighty, and everlasting God, who hast appointed thine only- begotten Son to be the Redeemer of the world, and hast been pleased to be reconciled unto us by His Blood, grant us, we beseech Thee, so to venerate with solemn worship the price of our salvation, that the power thereof may here on earth keep us from all things hurtful, and the fruit of the same may gladden us for ever hereafter in heaven Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen (An Indulgence of 5 Years --Roman Missal) Prayers and Devotions to the Precious Blood  

"IGNORANCE of God is the first and greatest insult one can offer to Him, as if God and His revelation were superfluities. Thus religion, which joins man to God, depends first and foremost on true knowledge of the true God. Moreover, any love which is not guided by true faith is more than misguided charity; it is quite simply false charity. The first love is the love of truth, and to set out to love God without accepting His revelation is an offense against the truth of God." -- One Hundred Rears of Modernism, Dominique Bourmaud  

MY husband and I stopped at a farm store recently. A white peacock was in a fenced area next to the store. The bird displayed his stunning plumage, as if on cue, and my husband put it to music.  

"THE Sacred Heart of Jesus was the instrument of a human soul, which contained in it all the perfections, natural and supernatural, of which the human soul is capable. It was the ideal of which the soul, even of the greatest of the saints, was but an utterly inadequate realization. Its sweetness, its gentleness, its power to attract, its Divine beauty were unbounded and almost infinite. Let us contemplate that Sacred Heart, radiant with glory and splendor, and adore it with grateful love. --- Rev. R.F. Clarke, S.J., Meditations on the Sacred Heart  

"ONE day I saw the Son of God, holding in His Hand His own Heart, which appeared more brilliant than the sun and which was casting rays of light on every side; then, this amiable Saviour gave me to understand that all the graces which God unceasingly pours forth on men, according to the capacity of each, come from the plenitude of the Divine Heart." -- St. Mechtilde  

"HE desires us to avoid the slightest faults, but He does not wish us to worry too much even about the great ones. He decrees that joy, liberty and peace of heart shall be the eternal inheritance of all those who love Him truly." --- The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Fr. John Croiset, S.J. (1959)  

 THIS review makes me glad I don't watch many movies made after 1960.  

"GOD does not command us to conquer; he only insists that we fight." --- Bishop Charles-Émile Freppel, (1827-1891)  

[Reposted; The Thinking Housewife, 2022] I ONCE interviewed a widow who lived on a traffic island. I was a newspaper reporter in New Jersey and did a feature story about her.

Her plight was comical and absurd, but also inspiring.

Over the years, commercial development had isolated her modest, Cape Cod-style house. Strip malls had sprung up around her and new lanes were added to the highway. A river of ferocious, non-stop traffic rushed past her house. She refused, however, to abandon the property.

So she lived on a median strip.

Northbound traffic passed her front door and southbound traffic passed her back door.

The interesting thing was that she continued to shower attention on her home, which included a few shade trees and a small garden. It could have been a cottage in the country overlooking hills and meadows for all the affection she expended on it. Geraniums and impatiens grew in the garden. Homemade curtains adorned the windows and an artificial floral wreath hung on the front door. Feminine knick knacks decorated the shelves.

Since then, I’ve seen other homes like hers, though not in as extreme a situation. They are islands of civility. They affirm the truism that you can truly make a home anywhere if you really want to, though it may cost you many compromises and much hard work.

Expensive homes sometimes are much less homey than these oases in forlorn neighborhoods. Those who bring life and modest beauty to a depressing area perform acts of charity as well as work for their own pleasure and comfort.

Most importantly, they are exercising the virtue of hope. (more…)

"THAT kingdom of God which is within us, consists in our willing whatever God wills, always, in everything, and without reservation; and thus His kingdom comes; for His will is then done as it is in Heaven, since we will nothing but what is dictated by His sovereign pleasure. We will whatever He wills; what He does not will, we do not; we attach our feeble wills to that all-powerful one that regulates everything. Thus nothing can ever come to pass against our wishes; for nothing can happen contrary to the will of God, and we find in His good pleasure an inexhaustible source of peace and consolation. There are no longer any evils; for even the most terrible that come upon us, work together for good, as St. Paul says, to those that love God. (Rom. viii. 28.)" --- Archbishop François Fénelon (1715)    

"FOR what are words but words? They fly through the air, but they bruise no stone. And wherefore do such trivial matters go to thine heart, except that thou art yet carnal, and regardest men more than thou oughtest?" --- Thomas a Kempis  

"Q: Is it not so that, surely, in the United States, constituted as it is on democracy, the wealth of this country has always been more widespread among its people than is the case in other countries? "A: The disproportion is even more blatant in the United States, where it is calculated that in 1892 there were in existence 31,850 individuals who together possessed 191 billions, which is to say three fifths of the national fortune at that time." --- Americanism and the Anti-Christian Conspiracy, Msgr. Henri Delassus  

"THE revolutions of the year, and the dispositions of the stars, The natures of living creatures, and rage of wild beasts, the force of winds, and reasonings of men, the diversities of plants, and the virtues of roots. "And all such things as are hid and not foreseen, I have learned: for wisdom, which is the worker of all things, taught me. "For in her is the spirit of understanding: holy, one, manifold, subtile, eloquent, active, undefiled, sure, sweet, loving that which is good, quick, which nothing hindereth, beneficent, "Gentle, kind, steadfast, assured, secure, having all power, overseeing all things, and containing all spirits, intelligible, pure, subtile. "For wisdom is more active than all active things: and reacheth everywhere by reason of her purity. "For she is a vapour of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God: and therefore no defiled thing cometh into her." --- Wisdom, 7:19-25  

ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES — Trump Posts on 𝕏 (@trump_repost) June 24, 2025 Image Credit