ALAN writes:

One evening many years ago, I was watching the 1942 B-Western Sunset on the Desert. One of its highlights was Roy Rogers’ singing of a song composed by his friend Bob Nolan. It was called “Remember Me.”

One sunny day in 1988, my father took a picture of an old, two-story, red-brick building that was home to a business offering “Vintage Clothing Costume Rental.” The name of the business appeared on a blue awning: Remember Me.

Indeed. How could I ever forget?  How many times have I sat here remembering the days and nights I spent with my father in that old neighborhood of south St. Louis, so much of which has since been willfully destroyed?

Cold and windy winter days in 1969-’70 when he and I stood waiting for a bus outside a corner drug store; winter nights when he and I sat there in the warmth of his kitchen in his modest apartment; and summer days when a pleasant breeze came in through the open window looking out on the back yard.

There were days when we climbed a steep and narrow flight of wooden stairs up to the clean, uncluttered attic to look through one of the few boxes he kept there; and days when we sat on the wooden steps of the back porch, not talking much about anything; casual hours in his life and mine, moments to which I never gave a thought in those years but that now loom in memory as reminders of his unswerving modesty and decency, qualities I took for granted when I was a boy because I had so seldom come in contact with grown-ups who were not that way.

I remember the screen door, the sink in the corner, the radio on the kitchen table, and a picture he kept on a wall showing his brother with his teammates on an amateur baseball team in 1930.  I remember the nights we sat there with a glass of orange juice and a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

I remember the black telephone on the wall and always a stack of daily newspapers on a chair.  A woman who grew up in that neighborhood in the 1940s told me she remembered seeing my father walking many times along those streets and always with a newspaper in his hand.

Between 2000 and 2012, I went back several times to that old neighborhood.  I walked for blocks and blocks along those old familiar streets, pausing here and there to take a picture of some house or building or sign or streetscape that struck my interest because I knew they had been significant to my father.

Most of that neighborhood was demolished in the early 1960s, a work of genius perpetrated by city planners and other do-gooders.  As a boy at that time, I could not imagine what that demolition must have meant to the thousands of people who lived there. (more…)

“THE Creator of the heavens obeys a carpenter; the God of eternal glory listens to a poor virgin. Has anyone ever witnessed anything comparable to this? Let the philosopher no longer disdain from listening to the common laborer; the wise, to the simple; the educated, to the illiterate; a child of a prince, to a peasant.” – St. Anthony of Padua

  WOULD YOU like to replicate in your own home the chutzpah and crowd-pleasing bombast of the man who falsely claims to be pope of the Roman Catholic Church? Would you like to dish out impressive statements such as: To find what the Lord asks of his Church today, we must lend an ear to the debates of our time and perceive the “fragrance” of the men of this age, so as to be permeated with their joys and hopes, with their griefs and anxieties. (Address, October 4, 2014) Would you like to perfect the art of heresy: Our species, like others, will be extinguished, but the light of God, that will not be extinguished, which in the end will invade all souls and then everything will be in all. (Interview with Eugenio Scalfari on September 24, 2013, published on October 1 in La Repubblica) Or would you like to relativize boldly: Every form of sexual submission must be clearly rejected. This includes all improper interpretations of the passage in the Letter to the Ephesians where Paul tells women to “be subject to your husbands” (Eph 5:22). This passage mirrors the cultural categories of the time, but our concern is not with its cultural matrix but with the revealed message that it conveys. (Amoris Laetitia) Impress your friends with this simple recipe: BERGOGLIAN STEW 1 cup Teilhard de Chardin 1/2 cup Darwinian fables 1/4 cup Swami Vivekanda 8 cups Kabbalah 3 cups hot…

A READER recommends this engaging series of videos by David Richins on the perils of Capitalism. Episode 1 can be found here, but this second video is a good introduction too.

IF by capitalism is meant, not diffused ownership of property, but monopolistic capitalism in which capital bids for labor on a market, and concentrates wealth in the hands of a few, then from an economic point of view alone, the Church is just as much opposed to capitalism as it is to communism. Communism emphasizes social use to the exclusion of personal rights, and capitalism emphasizes personal rights to the exclusion of social use. The Church says both are wrong, for though the right to property is personal, the use is social. .... Capitalistic economy is godless; communism makes economics God. -- Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1948) See the continuing discussion in this entry.

KIDIST PAULOS ASRAT, an Ethiopian by birth, writes of the deep sense of displacement among many immigrants from Africa and Asia: Wherever Third World foreigners congregate in large enough numbers, there is a sense of emptiness. There is no attempt to develop their neighbourhoods, with flowers and gardens, trees on the sidewalks, etc. An Indian restaurant next to an Ethiopian coffee house does not add diversity and interest, but rather a hodgepodge of unrelated elements with no aesthetic cohesiveness. A Third World foreigner, although he comes to stay, is always referring to his native country. His activities, his choices, his lifestyle, deeply reflect this native country. He may have come to find better shores but his heart and his imagination are with the homeland he left behind. He has no desire to reconstruct and to rebuild a new home, and instead lives in perpetual upheaval with his suitcase, metaphorically, left unpacked even after decades and generations of habitation. This temporality continues down the generations. Immigrants' children and grandchildren have a nostalgia for the country their families left. This manifests itself with their persistent references and adhesions to this far-away land: through their cultural choices, their earnest attempts to meld their cultural and personal lives with the country left behind, and eventually with their loyalties in politics and other social ties given to those which best represent this homeland. They have never really left home. And they have a latent anger, unfocused…

TV and movies initiate us into the satanic cult which is modern society. A satanic cult controls and exploits its members by making them sick. Because television and movies were my reference point, I was dysfunctional until almost 50. I was obsessed with relationships and sex as a panacea. I didn't know how to be a man. I idealized women and called it love.  There were no models of true masculinity. When dysfunctional sick people are your role models, you become dysfunctional.  Arrested development. Immaturity.  Three failed marriages. Confusion. Periods of depression. (I do take responsibility for being so trusting and gullible.)  Why are there so few positive role models on TV? Why so few examples of healthy, happy life?  My rehabilitation started when I started to question the messages I was getting and listened to my own instincts instead.  Liberals like to think the social trends of the last 50 years represent spontaneous social change. Rather, we were being degraded and inducted into a satanic cult. The Illuminati bankers are waging a diabolical war on us, and we don't even know it.  -- Henry Makow, "TV's Subversive Message: Sick is Healthy"

FROM A review of Hilaire Belloc’s Economics for Helen by Dr. Peter Chojnowski at The Distributist Review:

There are several aspects of this text, which open up new vistas for those seeking an alternative to the materialistic determinism of both the Marxists and the Economic Liberals. All of these insights, on the part of Belloc, into the very fiber of the economic life of man, point to the fact that economics is grounded in two realities, both of which the Capitalists and the Socialists have overlooked: the divinely ordained goal-orientation of human nature and the freedom of choice originating in the spiritual principle of man, which is his soul.

What these two facts indicate is that economics is grounded in the psychological, spiritual, and intellectual life of man to such an extent that the orientations and demands of this life create economic facts and laws that cannot be circumvented. One mentioned by Belloc is the idea of “subsistence.” According to Belloc, “subsistence” is “the worth while of labor.” By this, he means that if a certain standard of living were not provided to the worker, on account of his work, labor itself would no longer be thought to be worthwhile and, hence, would not be engaged in. Belloc identifies this as an economic law, rather than a moral law. Here we see the advancing of a concrete example of an “economic law” which all nations and economic concerns must adhere to if they are to maintain a healthy economic life. Moreover, Belloc implicitly refutes his accusers who charge him with collapsing economic law into moral law. If a nation does not provide its people, in their generality and in their individuality, with work that can sustain a man and his family at levels acceptable within the context of the national culture, men will not work and the nation will not prosper. Of course, it is the obligation of the State to ensure that companies and enterprises uninterested in providing subsistence wages do not simply locate their factories in foreign countries and export their products to the “job-free zones” of the “developed” countries. (more…)

ADDING comments to the previous post, I came upon these truly wonderful versions of three songs by Stephen Foster: Old Black Joe, Some Folks Do, and Beautiful Dreamer. The Roger Wagner Chorale sings. The alternation of male and female voices is a particularly nice touch, but in general these singers are outstanding. Here is what the choral leader Roger Wagner (1914-1992) said of his singers: "Following one of our performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, a well-known local critic asked me, "What is this hypnotic power you wield over your singers? And why did you form the Chorale?" The first question is indeed flattering; however, just the opposite is true. Singers hypnotize me, especially when they are good. The second question can best be answered, I think, by telling something about the Chorale. Every Monday evening 200 singers converge on the Chorale studios to do one thing...sing. They sing choral masterworks, large and small, and find the experience good. School teachers, salesmen, housewives, executives, factory workers, students, professional musicians and others from all walks of life and from distances up to a hundred miles, come with one aim of trying to produce fine choral singing. Each has had some musical training, can read music and loves to sing. To them the Chorale is an ideal, as it is to me, and they dedicate themselves to it with an almost unbelievable devotion. (source) (He then went onto make the obligatory "creeds and…

STEPHEN FOSTER’S famous Some Folks Do is sung here by Charles Szabo.

Long live the merry, merry heart
That laughs by night and day
Like the Queen of Mirth, No matter what some folks say
 

“Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as “the father of American music”, was an American songwriter primarily known for his parlor and minstrel music. Foster wrote over 200 songs; among his best-known are “Oh! Susanna”, “Camptown Races”, “Old Folks at Home”, “My Old Kentucky Home”, “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”, “Old Black Joe”, and “Beautiful Dreamer”. Many of his compositions remain popular more than 150 years after he wrote them. His compositions are thought to be autobiographical. He has been identified as “the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century”, and may be the most recognizable American composer in other countries.” (from Wikipedia) (more…)

  HENRY CLAY WORK (1832-1884) wrote his hit single Grandfather's Clock in 1876. It has been translated and sung around the world. In watching its pendulum swing to and fro, Many hours he spent as a boy. And in childhood and manhood the clock seemed to know And to share both his grief and his joy. For it struck twenty-four when he entered at the door, With a blooming and beautiful bride; But it stopped short — never to go again — When the old man died.

JAMES N. writes:

My Dad, who was born in 1923, passed away on June 13. This song is said by some to be the most popular song of 1923. (more…)

GAIL A. writes: Thank you for posting that haunting music, accompanied by paintings and views of the serenity of the Hudson river and upstate New York, where I was born and raised. Having spent my formative years there and in neighboring Vermont from where my mother hailed, this was especially meaningful to me. I believe I became one of your indolent women in summer, however, as I sat transfixed before my computer while listening and viewing, taking away time from my duties of food prep for a cookout today. Music and art like this are so beautiful and sublime that they cause a magnificent sense of pain in a way that I am somewhat at a loss to describe. I also came down with a hell of a case of homesickness. Thanks anyway, and God bless you on this, our nation's birthday!

On April 13, 1930, William Schuman, a business student at New York University's School of Commerce, went to a Carnegie Hall concert of the New York Philharmonic with his sister, Audrey. "I was astounded at seeing the sea of stringed instruments, and everybody bowing together. The visual thing alone was astonishing. But the sound! I was overwhelmed. I had never heard anything like it. The very next day, I decided to become a composer," he later recounted. He fulfilled his desires. He left behind six symphonies, numerous other works for orchestra and choral/vocal pieces, including Mail Order Madrigals (1972), based on texts from the 1897 Sears Roebuck catalog. He chose three melodies from the early American Composer William Billings and arranged them for orchestra. These three works, "Be Glad then America," "When Jesus Wept," and "Chester," formed his New England Triptych. Shuman was Jewish and yet composed this explicitly Christian work, performed here by the United States Marine Band. Schuman (1910-1992) was president of Julliard and appeared on the game show What's My Line?

THE INDIANAPOLIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA performs 20th century composer Thomas Canning's Fantasy on a Hymn Tune by Justin Morgan. Justin Morgan (1747-1798) was an American composer who was also a farmer, horse breeder, singing instructor and municipal clerk in Randolph, Vermont. He owned a stallion who sired the Morgan horse breed. Canning (1911-1989) was a professor of composition at the Eastman school and composer-in-residence at West Virginia University. He wrote this beautiful interpretation of one of Morgan's hymns, "Amanda," a tribute to Morgan's wife, Martha Day, who died ten days after giving birth to their youngest daughter. The work accompanies in this video paintings by the Hudson River School painters.

SELECTIONS of American music will be the theme here over the next 48 hours in celebration for July Fourth, and I am starting with the early 20th-century stage tune Goodbye, My Lady Love, performed here by William Bolcolm and Joan Morris. The song was composed in 1904 by Joseph E. Howard, a Broadway songwriter of Tin Pan Alley fame.

According to Wikipedia:

Joseph Howard was born on February 12, 1878, in New York City. He grew up in a gang-terrorized part of the city and was frequently beaten by his father. His mother died when he was 8 years old, and he ran away to a Catholic orphanage, serving as an altar boy and singing in the choir. Avoiding his father, who had discovered the boy’s place of refuge, he rode a freight train to Kansas City, Missouri. There he sang in a saloon and sold newspapers. It was in Kansas City that he was discovered by George Walker of Williams and Walker who arranged for Howard to receive voice training. From Kansas City, he went to St. Louis, Missouri, where he had his first taste of the theater.^[1

Howard composed a number of popular stage hits, including “I don’t Like Your Family” and “A Boy’s Best Friend Is His Mother.” He died on stage while singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” on May 19, 1961. What a way to go!

 Goodbye, My Lady Love

So you’re going away
Because your heart has gone astray
And you promised me
That you would always faithful be

Go to him you love
And be as true as stars above
But your heart will yearn
And then some day you will return (more…)

  IN THIS fantastic video snippet of a 1984 interview, KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov explains why Communists were (and probably still are) interested in encouraging yoga among Americans. It creates an easily manipulated populace. (H/T Fitzpatrick Informer)

  “The thing that makes Judaism dangerous to everybody, to every race, to every nation, to every idea is that we smash things that aren’t true. We don’t believe in the boundaries of nation-state, we don’t believe in the ideas of these individual gods that, you know, protect individual groups of people. These are all artificial constructions and Judaism really teaches us how to see that. In a sense our detractors have us right in that we are a corrosive force. We are breaking down the false gods of all nations and all people because they are not real. And that is very upsetting to people.” --- Douglas Rushkoff, Jewish author of Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism