IN THE 19th-century, women did not especially denigrate femininity. They did not seek masculinity in all things or think modesty embarrassing. They were not, till the latter years of the century, infected with feminist-style self-loathing. Though Victorian society was not perfect at all, nor even the ideal, women were not plagued by envy of men.

The rich tradition of doll-playing of that era illustrates these historic attitudes. The doll was highly valued as a plaything for the young girl. Godey’s Lady’s Book of 1869, quoting Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, wrote of this approval, overstating a bit the case for the doll: “A doll is one of the most imperious wants, and at the same time one of the most delicious instincts, of feminine childhood… The first child is a continuation of the last doll. A little girl without a doll is nearly as unhappy and quite as impossible as a wife without children.”

After the Civil War, many well-to-do American homes spared no expense in providing daughters with dolls that came with elaborate wardrobes, including not just ornate dresses, but tiny gloves, lorgnettes, purses, earrings, bracelets, petticoats and even toothbrushes. These were the American Girl dolls of the day.  A current exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum titled “Little Ladies: Victorian Fashion Dolls and the Feminine Ideal,” running until March 3, displays samples of the best dolls from that era. Standing in plexiglass cases surrounded by their miniature accessories and adorned in highly-ornate and colorful silks, linens, furs, and wools, they are captivating objects.

It was interesting to note in the textual commentary of the exhibit and in remarks by visitors and the curator, the cognitive dissonance such an exhibit, with what one reviewer called its “darker implications,” causes in women today. No one could deny the beauty of these clothes, with such rich colors and ornamentation, or the very high level of craftsmanship.

But they represent oppressive patriarchy. They represent “indoctrination.” How then can they be enjoyed, even on a purely aesthetic level?

The answer is to take in the aesthetic experience while shaking your head, snickering and condescendingly reminding yourself that things are much better today. (more…)

JOSEPH H. writes:

I came across two tweets this morning that deserve mention. First, an old standard:

12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Ephesians 6:12 King James Version (KJV)

What we are witnessing today is nothing less than the titanic age-old struggle of Good vs. Evil and until and unless one recognizes this one does not possess the cognitive tools to begin to apprehend the nature of our current travails.  (more…)

PLANNED PARENTHOOD aborted 332,757 children last year and received $564 million from taxpayers. On this, the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, some important history of what led to the decriminalization of murder from Dr. Thomas Droleskey at Christ or Chaos:

Roe v. Wade did not “start” the genocide of the preborn in this country that has taken over fifty million innocent human lives since 1965. The move for the decriminalization of surgical baby-killing began at the state level (so much for demigod of states’ rights) as pro-abortion leaders such as Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a founder of the National Repeal of Abortion Laws (now called NARAL-Pro Choice), and Lawrence Lader and William Baird, among others used the existence of various “exceptions” in abortion legislation then on the books as the means of “liberalizing” “access” to baby-killing for all women in all circumstances. The move for decriminalized baby-killing under cover of law started at the state level, moving into the Federal court system only when pro-death advocates believed that it was propitious for them to challenge the laws of those states which prohibited or restricted “access” to baby-killing.

It is useful to review some of the history of decriminalizing surgical baby-killing under cover of civil law prior to Roe v. Wade. Those who contend that the “people” in the various states have the “right” to determine whether to permit or prohibit surgical baby-killing would have no problem with the pre-Roe legislation, nor would they be bothered by the fact that many states have “trigger laws” in effect to “protect” baby-killing in the event that Roe v. Wade is reversed at some point by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. (more…)

  NO ONE believes in the Greek gods anymore. Gaia, the earth mother who gave birth to Uranus, the sky deity with whom she later conceived the Titans and a whole pantheon of passionately warring and amorous divinities -- any adult today who accepted this as true history or theology would not be taken seriously. Can you imagine a student at Princeton, say, seriously maintaining that Zeus is real? Agreement is universal: these gods do not govern our world. According to Hesiod, the famous ancient poet and chronicler of the gods: [Gaia] lay with Heaven and bore deep swirling Oceanus, Coeus, and Crius and Hyperion and Ipateus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronos (Cronus) the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire. The stories of the Greek gods contain psychological insights and intuitions about the creation of the universe, the immortality of man and the existence of warring supernatural beings. But no one worships these gods anymore or appeals to them for assistance. It's interesting to speculate as to what the Greeks of ancient times would think of us, if they could come back to life. What would they think of our creation story? In the Greek stories, supernatural beings created man and gave him a soul. In other words, something created something. In the Darwinian account, which is the reigning creation story, nothing created something. The idea that Zeus sent Prometheus to earth…

  I WAS recently talking to a woman in her thirties. Bright, talented, pretty and friendly, she has a beautiful, three-year-old son -- a little boy with an angelic glow that attracts everyone in the room. She has a husband who makes a good living and adores her. Her successful career she has interrupted but she could resume it at any time. I asked her if she was hoping to have more children. She said without hesitation that no, she was not. She was done and would be returning to full-time employment this fall. She would have no more children. She had never been enthusiastic about becoming a mother, she said, and only had one child reluctantly. (You would never know this by her affectionate behavior toward her son.) Even when she was a girl, she said, she knew she wasn't cut out for motherhood. It wasn't for her. Now for a college-miseducated woman who lives in a big city today to say she is not cut out for motherhood --- that's almost like a person raised in a tribe in the Amazon rainforest saying he was never cut out to be a software engineer. I was not surprised at her statement. "You know, you don't have to like motherhood in order to be a mother,"  I said. "You can even be a good mother and not like it. It's a job." She was taken aback. "Oh, I never heard that before,"…

  "TODAY'S governments, more than just big, have taken on the overbearing configuration of Behemoth Government, over-bloated, top-heavy, inefficient, unapproachable, unaccountable, inhumane and cruelly unjust. Unaccountable, that is, to the people it governs but not to the hidden powers that secretly control it. This trend is the product of the prevailing attitude, itself based on the slippery footing of modern principles, which have men automatically turning to the highest and most distant reaches of authority to do for them what they are able and morally obliged to either do for themselves or to commission the smallest and most localized institutions to do for them. The Church looks upon this attitude -- and the criminal system it has spawned -- with profound disfavor. 'Just as it is wrong to withdraw from the individual and commit to the community at large what private enterprise and industry can accomplish, so too it is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance or right order for a larger and higher organization to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies.'" [Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno]  --- Hugh Akins

  WHAT magic is there in the rule of six that compels the snowflake to conform so rigidly to its laws? Here is a gem bestrewn realm of nature possessing the charm of mystery, of the unknown, sure richly to reward the investigator. These are the words of Wilson A. Bentley, a self-taught Vermont farmer who from early childhood was fascinated by the crystalline structure of snow and was the first person to photograph the snowflake. Born in 1865 and educated by his mother, he taught himself the craft of microphotography so that he could document the snow crystals that fell outside his home in the rural town of Jericho, which typically received about 120 inches of snowfall a year. Bentley would gather snow on a black wooden tray, removing the excess with a feather duster. He then separated the crystals with the filament of a broom. Having attached a microscope, his only serious piece of scientific equipment, to a bellows camera, he glued the snowflakes to microscopic slides and photographed them inside in an unheated room, with light from a window for illumination. He washed his negatives in a nearby brook. He eventually amassed more than 5,000 microphotographs, starting with his first, made in 1885 when he was 20 years old. They appeared along with his explanatory articles in journals and in a book, Snow Crystals, published the year of his death in 1931. He wrote in his later years: For something over a quarter of a century I have been studying [the snow crystal] and the work has proved to be wonderfully fascinating, for each favorable snowfall,…

BORN TO poor Jewish parents who emigrated from London to New York City and Boston in his childhood, David Goldstein (1870-1958) is a fascinating and little-known figure in American letters whom you will never, for sure, read about in today’s mainstream publications. He described his early life thus:

 Poverty was the lot of my father and mother. This they struggled through with courage, with devoted love for each other and the children. My parents and their four children had to be supported on the meagre earnings my father obtained from long hours of toil at the bench, making cigars. Though born of strictly Orthodox Jewish parents, they like most Jews who attend the synagogue were Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Jews. Thus, my father and mother, during my boyhood days, attended synagogue services on those two leading Jewish holidays, “if only for the children’s sake,” as Jewish fathers and mothers often say. [Wikipedia]

Goldstein became a socialist as a teenager and entered politics. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Boston when he was 27. He lost his political will, however, when he became disenchanted with socialism and Marxism. He realized the degree to which both opposed normal and healthy family life. Socialist “free love” deeply offended someone so conscious of his own indebtedness to family constancy and intimacy. He unsuccessfully sought to get the Massachusetts Socialist convention in 1902 to disavow free love and attacks against religion. He co-authored a book Socialism: The Nation of Fatherless Children in 1903. He was, of course, entirely correct and prophetic about the implications of socialism for the family. He also grew tired of class enmity:

It took some time to understand — being sympathetic with Socialism — that Socialists succeed in making ‘Socialist minds’ mainly by constantly picturing the misery of the poor and the greed of the rich; by continually condemning all things which meet with dissatisfaction in the minds of toilers, whether the discontent be rational or ridiculous; by increasing disapproval or condemnation of the character, work or proposals of officials in trade unions who have to meet practical issues and the responsibilities of the conflicts of labor organizations. At the same time, Socialists press forward their abstract propositions attract those idealists whose pictures are ephemeral and fall into confusion, like a baby’s house made of blocks, when the common sense touch of the actual world of strife and strain is applied to them; for human nature is what it is and not what Socialist idealists conjure it up to be in their sickly sentimental thoughts.” [Wikipedia]

Not long after his disillusionment with socialism, Goldstein, through the mysterious workings of grace,  converted to Catholicism. He then set about his most important intellectual work — doing battle with prejudices and misconceptions of the Church. For ten years, he wrote a weekly column for the Boston Pilot, a newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese. A sample of his learned and elegant columns, in many cases actual letters to various public individuals — truly remarkable for their literary quality, especially by today’s standards — can be found at catholictradition.org.

Goldstein also traveled around the country as a sidewalk apologist, speaking in streets, squares and parks. He took his duty to propagate the Faith with unabashed seriousness and courage. He explained why he possessed such extraordinary zeal: (more…)

  SOCIAL CREDIT, a body of economic ideas introduced by Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, is a provocative challenge to today's financial system. It is not a realistic alternative at this point, but it is well worth considering. From a website devoted to Douglas's work: Clifford Hugh Douglas was a household name throughout the English-speaking world during the so-called inter-war years of the twentieth century. His work, like that of so many of his contemporaries, has been ignored by mainstream studies of political economy. Here you can read how he influenced his contemporaries and discover what happened in Alberta. Shortly before his death in 1952 Clifford Hugh Douglas surveyed the landscape near Aberfeldy in Scotland, turned to a close colleague and said: “You know, T.J., I think the time is approaching when we shall have to challenge this monstrous and fantastic overgrowth of industrial expansion – fundamentally. Really, you know, I personally can see nothing particularly sinful about a small dynamo; but this thing we’ve got is past a joke. If it isn’t a joke, it is Satanic.” More interesting articles on Social Credit can be found here.

  BP. DONALD SANBORN writes: Common sense, what in philosophy we call the first principles of reason, knows that from nothing, nothing comes. It is impossible, in other words, that being come from nothing. This same common sense tells us that the cause of anything must have a perfection more than the effect has it. For example, a young pine tree cannot reproduce itself, since it does not yet have the perfection of its nature. When it achieves maturity, it is able to produce pine cones and reproduce the species. So the nature of pine must be more perfect in the mature tree than in the seedling which it reproduces. This is true of all living things. Reproduction occurs when the nature achieves perfection. In children, for example, the nature is not yet perfect, and unable, therefore, to reproduce. In old age, the nature is declining and unable to reproduce. Evolution requires that something higher come from something lower. The gorilla becomes a man. They attribute this to mutations caused by cosmic rays. While it is true that accidental mutations may occur within a species (change in color, for example), it is impossible that a higher species evolve from a lower one, since this would mean that something more is produced from something less, or that something comes from nothing.

  THIS BLOG has been idle for a few days while I set up a new computer. Thanks to donations from readers, I was able to buy a new laptop and am making the transition from a nine-year-old machine. I am very grateful for your support. I  also have a new e-mail account with encrypted messaging, which also took some time to set up. I can be reached at laurawood@thinkinghousewife.net. Readers can be assured that all correspondence with me is confidential (to the limits of modern technology). I will also be receiving messages at my old address for now. Regular blogging should resume by tomorrow or later today.

THOUGH the divorce rate in Africa is not increasing dramatically, women are becoming much more enthusiastic about leaving their husbands, according to a recent article on the phenomenon in West Africa. The New York Times makes interesting references to some of the causes of this shift:

Across West Africa, people are pouring into cities from the countryside, leaving behind parents and local traditions. The push for women’s rights has expanded, with more nations signing on to international commitments to gender equality. Governments have passed laws against domestic abuse and discrimination against women, and many nations now have ministries of women’s affairs. (more…)

BRANDON SMITH argues that engineered financial downturn is imminent and conservatives will take the fall:

The con game is to get liberty advocates to invest themselves fully in Trump, to the point that we end up owning every mistake he makes, and every disaster that is pinned on him. There is a concerted propaganda campaign targeting the liberty movement which is telling us that Trump is playing “4D Chess;” that Trump is planning a “coup” against the banking elites, that Trump is planning to bring down the Fed as a means to save the U.S., and even that Trump is working with Jerome Powell to crash the globalist system as a means to “restore the Republic.”

While Trump throws a bone to conservatives at times, including promises of a border wall, or a pull-out in Syria, there is no evidence to support the fantasy that Trump is some kind of ingenious tactician battling the the forces of evil using his wits while inside the system. But, there is considerable evidence as I have linked above supporting my position that Trump is controlled opposition working with the globalists to initiate a collapse that will be blamed on conservative ideals and limited government liberty activists. We shall see in due course. It is unfortunate though how many otherwise very intelligent people within the liberty movement have bought into Trump as a hero on a white horse.

The activists and alternative media are the real heroes. They are the people that pushed liberty philosophy into the mainstream. Trump merely rode the wave that they created. Even if he was a legitimate conservative and constitutionalist (which he is not), the movement doesn’t need his leadership. It never did. The globalists know this and hope to chain us to Trump as he sinks into historical oblivion, destroying us all in the process.

Don’t miss the comments! (more…)

“THIS FEAST was kept in the East from the third century and its observance spread to the West towards the end of the fourth. The word Epiphany means manifestation, and just as at Christmas, it is the mystery of God appearing in visible form; only no longer does He show Himself to the Jews alone but “on this day” it is to the Gentiles that God reveals His Son.” (St. Andrew’s Missal)

O God, who on this day by the leading of a star didst manifest Thine only begotten Son to the Gentiles; mercifully grant that we who know Thee now by faith, may be brought to the contemplation of the beauty of Thy majesty. {From the Collect for the Mass of the Epiphany of Our Lord}

THE WISE MEN
—- G.K. Chesterton

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And served the mad gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity. (more…)

YAIR ROSENBERG, writing in the Jewish Tablet, recently accused black poet Alice Walker of vicious anti-Semitism because of her poem on the Talmud. Jeepers, you know things are bad when even a star like Walker needs to be ripped to shreds.

Michael Hofffman replies to the accusations. He writes:

Mockery is a stratagem that the Talmudic mentality puts forth as a substitute for truth.  That’s one “answer” — mocking Alice Walker as a myopic blunderer so sloppy she is seduced by tiresome and hateful libels. How do we know they are libels? The media tells us so. If we doubt the media, then we are cast as demons inhabiting an anti-Semitic hell. (more…)

  A HUNGRY GOD rules our world. Rapacious, bottomless, never-ending, his appetite sends hot, roaring winds across the planet. Every day, every hour, he demands sacrifices to his glory. His cravings are widely known and obeyed. He wants male and female to come to him in long avenues. He consumes these willing victims and belches out an indigestible residue to spread across the androgynous world. He wants the young seized from the womb and placed in his arms. He delights even more in infants who have never been conceived. He wants that nothingness laid at his feet. He seeks the absent babe with a greedy desire. He wants whole nations, or at least their identities, placed into a roiling cauldron in his temple, the distinctiveness of each melded and melted down so that he can gorge on a rich stew. He wants particular races ground into dust and the dust offered to him in silver bowls, and then the love of extended kinship will be replaced with the love of him. He wants joy beneath bright shining skyscrapers pointing upward. He insists on smiles, hugs, music with pumping rhythms and groaning. He wants quiet to end. He wants packed sports arenas cheering his praises. He wants you. He wants you to come and reverently offer him your individuality, to participate in sacred, cathartic orgies and to exchange your useless prayers for political slogans. He promises you happiness in this life always. But…

HAPPY NEW YEAR to readers of this site. May the upcoming year bring you many good things, and may you continue to take part in the happiness and holiness of the Christmas season.

We have a tradition here to celebrate this day by listening to selections from the Vienna Philharmonic’s famous annual New Year’s Day concert. The orchestra has held a concert each New Year’s Day since 1941. (Here is information about this year’s concert.)

During its 160-year history, the Wiener Philharmoniker, with its characteristic “Viennese Sound,” has been led by many of the greatest conductors and praised by famous composers such as Wagner, Bruckner, Brahms, Mahler (who conducted it from 1898 to 1901)  and Richard Strauss. The waiting period for weekend ticket subscriptions is 13 years. The New Year’s concert, which always features Strauss waltzes and ends with this rousing version of Johann Strauss’s Radetzky March under the chandeliers of the Musikverein, decorated in recent years with huge displays of flowers from Vienna’s gardens and shops, is especially popular and is broadcast on PBS in this country.

Members of the orchestra have openly stated in the recent past that the ideal member of their ensemble is a Central European man. They have even gone so far as to state that the orchestra’s sound can only be achieved by musicians who possess the appropriate cultural “soul.”

The Philharmonic did not allow women to become full members until 1997. Between 1997 and 2010, a period during which many other orchestras became heavily female, it hired only three women. Paul Fürst, a violist, once stated in a documentary on women conductors:

There is no ban on women musicians playing here but the Vienna Philharmonic is by tradition an all-male orchestra. Our profession makes family life extremely difficult, so for a woman it’s almost impossible. There are so many orchestras with women members so why shouldn’t there be – for how long I don’t know – an orchestra with no women in it … A woman shouldn’t play like a man but like a woman, but an all-male orchestra is bound to have a special tone. [Wikipedia]

Perhaps when listening to this rousing march, you will agree that though it can be enjoyed by men and women, it is made for an all-male orchestra. Is that because women are “inferior” to men? What a ridiculous idea! Top musicians typically succeed partly because of the devotion, support and musical insight of their mothers and wives. Men have been inspired to play and create beautiful music by women. No, it is because men and women are different. Let us rejoice this year and always in the true diversity — not the multicultural, feminist glop — that God in His great wisdom gave us. Let us this year and always reject the modern campaign to impose a sterile homogeneity on mankind. (more…)

CHANTICLEER performs a French 18th-century shepherds’ carol set to music from John Gay’s Beggars Opera of 1778. The shepherds express wonder at the lovely fragrance of the angels. This is from Chanticleer’s outstanding 1994 CD, Sing We Christmas.

Quelle Est Cette Odeur Agréable

Quelle est cette odeur agréable,
Bergers, qui ravit tous nos sens?
S’exhale-t-il rien de semblable
Au milieu des fleurs du printemps?
Quelle est cette odeur agréable
Bergers, qui ravit tous nos sens?

Mais quelle éclatante lumière
Dans la nuit vient frapper nos yeux
L’astre de jour, dans sa carrière,
Fut-il jamais si radieux!
Mais quelle éclatante lumière
Dans la nuit vient frapper nos yeux. (more…)