FROM Rural Hours (1850) by Susan Fenimore Cooper, daughter of James Fenimore Cooper:

But to return to the “store;” there are half a dozen of these on quite a large scale. It is amusing to note the variety within their walls. Barrels, ploughs, stoves, brooms, rakes and pitch forks; muslins, flannels, laces and shawls; sometimes in winter, a dead porker is hung up by the heels at the door; frequently, frozen fowls, turkeys and geese, garnish the entrance. The shelves are filled with a thousand things required by civilized man, in the long list of his wants. Here you see a display of glass and crockery, imported, perhaps, directly by this inland firm from the European manufacturer; there you observe a pile of silks and satins; this is a roll of carpeting, that a box of artificial flowers. At the same counter you may buy kid gloves and a spade; a lace veil and a jug of molasses; a satin dress and a broom, looking-glasses, grass-seed, fire-irons, Valenciennes lace, butter and eggs, embroidery, blankets, candles, cheese, and a fancy fan.

And yet, in addition to this medley, there are regular milliners’ shops and groceries in the place, and of a superior class too. But so long as a village retains its rural character, so long will the country “store” be found there; it is only when it has become a young city that the shop and warehouse take the place of the convenient store where so many wants are supplied on the same spot.

It is amusing once in a while to look on as the different customers come and go. Some people like shopping in a large town, where all sorts of pretty novelties are spread out on the counters to tempt purchasers; but there is much more real interest connected with such matters in a large country store, whatever fine ladies tossing about laces and gauzes at Beck’s or Stewart’s may fancy. (more…)

THE legal descendants of the Jewish court that sentenced Christ to death have published an open letter to Donald Trump, congratulating him on his divine mission and urging him to help establish a one world religious court under Jewish rule. The court will not recognize the existence of Jesus Christ. From the letter:

You have been elected, as Cyrus was in his time, to fulfill a heavenly mission: (more…)

"WE can be sure of one thing: the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe appears to be a carefully planned catastrophe, not an unfortunate accident. It has been on the cards for decades, ever since Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894–1972), an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat whose mother was Japanese, arrived on the scene in the early 1920s and established the Pan European Union, the prototype for the United States of Europe. "This was to be a multicultural superstate populated by mongrelized Europeans, according to the Count, who was himself a mongrel. Moreover, it was to be under Jewish rule—or rather, under a mandarinate of elite Jews and enlightened support groups of non-Jewish philosemitic foot soldiers who believed as passionately as the Jews did in tikkun olam and the establishment of a one-world government." More here.  

"WE ARE sojourners upon this earth; we are exiles and captives in Babylon, that city which plots our ruin. If we love our country, — if we long to return to it, — we must be proof against the lying allurements of this strange land, and refuse the cup she proffers us, and with which she maddens so many of our fellow captives. She invites us to join in her feasts and her songs; but we must unstring our harps, and hang them on the willows that grow on her river’s bank, till the signal be given for our return to Jerusalem. (Psalm 115) She will ask us to sing’ to her the melodies of our dear Sion: but, how shall we, who are so far from home, have heart to sing the Song of the Lord in a strange Land ? (Psalm 136) No, — there must be no sign that we are content to be in bondage, or we shall deserve to be slaves for ever. "These are the sentiments wherewith the Church would inspire us, during the penitential Season, which we are now beginning. She wishes us to reflect on the dangers that beset us, — dangers which arise from our own selves, and from creatures. During the rest of the year, she loves to hear us chant the song of heaven, the sweet Alleluia! — but now, she bids us close our lips to this word of…

SOME wisdom pertaining to romantic love on this day after St. Valentine’s Day from Frank Sheed’s book Sanity and Society (Sheed and Ward, 1953):

Sex is a power of the whole man, one power among many: and man is not an isolated unit, but bound to his fellows in society: and his life on earth is not the whole of life, but only a beginning. To use the power of sex successfully we must use it in balance with the rest of our powers, for the service of the whole personality, within a social order, with eternity to come. And all this is too complex a matter to be left to instinct or chance, to desire or mood or the heat of the blood or the line of least resistance. It calls for hard thinking.

A summons to think about sex will be met with no enthusiasm. Men are not much given to thought about sex; as we have noted, they expect no fun from thought and are not much inclined to it or good at it: whereas they expect a great deal of fun from sex and persist in thinking (in the face of the evidence) that they are good at it. Not only that. They feel that there is something rather repellent, almost improper, in the association of sex and thinking. A man must be cold-blooded, they say, to use his reason on sex. The taunt of cold-bloodedness is one that we can bear with fortitude. To the man with fever, a normal temperature seems cold-blooded—but vitality goes with normal temperature, not with fever. And modern sex life is not, even by its own standards, very vital. Too many men who have reached middle life have to admit that for themselves sex has not lived up to its promise—that on balance their life has been rather more begloomed by sex than delighted by it. They have had plenty of glowing anticipation, a handful of glowing experiences, a mass of half-satisfactions and whole frustrations—with the horizon drawing in, and the worried feeling that the splendour has somehow eluded them. (more…)

“IMAGINE that a group of people break into your house every night, go into your kitchen and use your food, appliances and electricity to prepare meals. Then they take those meals and sell them on their food truck. Compared to other food trucks, the ones breaking into your house have no overhead and no risk. Everything they make is pure profit. Then they use that money to buy things, to send money back home, to drive up costs and scarcity and drive down profits for other food trucks – who have their market share diminished by them.

“This is the scam of illegal invader labor. There’s no benefit to the citizen to have them here. NONE. Every single thing they are able to do, get, have is at the expense of someone who belongs here. (more…)

FAKENUKES PHIL makes some funny observations about political partisanship, including his commentary on Elon Musk's five-year-old son laughing hilariously at the people. Phil is apparently a working class guy. He's done a good job of exposing some media hoaxes.  

[Reposted]

WHEN I was growing up there was a television soap opera (I can’t remember the name) that I watched occasionally. One of its characters was a middle class housewife who always appeared in scenes in her kitchen.

Her kitchen was small and modest by today’s standards, especially by Hollywood’s standards, and she was not glamorous, unlike many soap opera characters today. I remember her wearing plaid blouses and skirts, and very little make-up. Everything in her kitchen was neat and orderly and she was never in a rush. During the course of the show, someone — a neighbor, friend or relative — would drop by to visit her. She always had the time to stop what she was doing and talk.

She would usually sit down at her table with the visitor and they would discuss some interpersonal drama, this being a soap opera. As they were talking, her face would register all the appropriate emotions, but mostly empathy and concern. I can’t recall who the actress was, but she was very good at it. This housewife was never angry or depressed or hysterical. Her tranquil empathy seemed a sort of filter through which the conflicts of this fictitious community beyond her kitchen passed. Nothing was truly solved in her kitchen, but worries and disappointments were cleansed by her attentive listening and wise suggestions. (more…)

"SOME think they are merciful when they are bitterly unmerciful; think that they are kind to their children when they let them behave as they please. That is not mercy. Mercy is not idle sympathy in an emotional sense, feeling kindly towards someone. Mercy sometimes has to be severe, strong. The hands of a nurse dealing with her patient are merciful hands, not less merciful because they are firm! The poison may have to be pressed out of the wound. Then it is not mercy not to hurt the patient. That is not merciful. That is unmerciful. It looks unkind; it seems unkind; he winces under her action. The body quivers because she will not let him go. She presses the wound to expel the unclean matter. It must be expelled, by strong pressure if there be no other way. To be tender, compassionate, full of mercy is the very profession of the nurse. Yet that must not undo her firmness. A doctor, again has strong hands, and merciful, because of the very strength of them. His cutting of human flesh is mercy. Mercy must be wise." --- Bede Jarrett, O.P., Our Lady of Lourdes, 1954  

"NO paths, no streets, no sidewalks, no light, no roads, no guests, no calls, no teams, no hacks, no trains, no moon, no meat, no milk, no paper, no mails, no news, no thing — but snow. — Bellows Falls Gazette on the Great Blizzard of 1888  

  

TWO posts from 2017, here and here, examine some of the desecration of Lourdes, France, by the Vatican II Church, which insists on humanistic fun and fellowship over sublimity, awe and reverence.

I especially recommend these perceptive comments by a reader — and, by the way, I have included another photo of St. Bernadette in this post because I think her face speaks volumes about her interior state. It reveals the conviction and simplicity that enabled this uneducated girl to resist everyone around her — her parents, her teachers, the police and all the most smart people of her day. This same solemnity helped her turn away later from the status of a celebrity and endure illness. She was even more beautiful in death.

From the reader’s comments:

The clip you feature with its prancing priests trying to be all things to all men by placing fun and frivolity and childishness at the heart of what is afterall an event personally commanded by Our Lady, (“Go, tell the priests to come here in procession and to build a chapel here” – March 2nd, 1858), is at odds with the reality of what happened at Lourdes in 1858. How so?

Consider that Our Lady took care to appear arrayed in very dignified garb. Her manner of speaking to Bernadette was always dignified and courteous and formal.

Consider that Bernadette was but a child herself in 1858 but Our Lady nevertheless made no concession to childishness by seeking to indulge or amuse her. On the contrary she granted Bernadette the compliment of addressing her as a young woman – with agency. Indeed, it is important that on her first few appearances nothing at all was said but instead they prayed together silently honoring God through the rosary. (more…)

[Reposted and revised.]

TODAY is the anniversary of the day in 1858 that a 14-year-old peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, had the first of numerous visions in a grotto in Lourdes, France in the Pyrenees mountains. A beautiful young woman appeared to her.

“Her face was oval in shape, and ‘of an incomparable grace,’ her yes were blue, her voice ‘Oh, so sweet!'”

Bernadette’s recollection are described in the book by Abbe Francois Trochu, Saint Bernadette Soubirous, first published in France in 1954:

“I had hardly begun to take off my stocking when I heard the sound of wind, as in a storm. I turned towards the meadow, and I saw that the trees were not moving at all. I had half-noticed, but without paying any particular heed, that the branches and brambles were waving beside the grotto.

I went on taking my stockings off, and was putting one foot into the water, when I heard the same sound in front of me. I looked up and saw a cluster of branches and brambles underneath the topmost opening in the grotto tossing and swaying to and fro, though nothing else stirred all around.

Behind these branches and within the opening, I saw immediately afterwards a girl in white, no bigger than myself, who greeted me with a slight bow of the head; at the same time, she stretched out her arms slightly away from her body, opening her hands, as in pictures of Our Lady; over her right arm hung a rosary.

I was afraid. I stepped back. I wanted to call the two little girls; I hadn’t the courage to do so. I rubbed my eyes again and again: I thought I must be mistaken.

Raising my eyes again, I saw the girl smiling at me most graciously and seeming to invite me to come nearer. But I was still afraid. It was not however a fear such as I have had at other times, for I would have stayed there for ever looking at her: whereas, when you are afraid, you run away quickly.

The lady or “girl” would return and communicate with Bernadette 16 times in the ensuing months. She is now known as Our Lady of Lourdes. Her timing was apt. Convulsed by the revolutions of 1848, the 19th-century was undergoing great changes.

Bernadette faced intense opposition from her parents, her teachers, her neighbors, the clergy and the local police, who threatened her with arrest. Her parents initially forbade her to return to the grotto. Many were converted to the view that she was telling the truth when they saw her experience one of her apparitions, so transfixed and transformed was this small, humble child. Twenty thousand people came to watch during the 14th apparition. But no one else saw what she saw or experienced the same incomparable ecstasy. (more…)

FROM Abbé François Trochu's Saint Bernadette Soubirous, (1844-1879): At St. John's Club, conversation on the subject had just taken a livelier turn. Its members used to meet in a room of the Café Français near the church -- and here were to be found the notables of the town, independent gentlemen, doctors, lawyers, magistrates, officials of all ranks. The frequenters of St.John's Club were not anti-clericals: not one of them would have passed the parish priest without greeting him or, on occasion, shaking hands with him. Moreover, no one in authority could have taken any exception to their convictions or their conduct. At this period, the Imperial government showed itself favourable to Catholics: The Revolution had not as yet had time to 'recapture Napolean III' on the morrow of his attempted assassination  by Orsini on January 14th of this same year, 1858. Nevertheless, in spite of its name and possibly without its members being fully conscious of the fact, there was at St. John's Club a certain Voltarianism in the air. On the tables of the Café Français lay the two Paris dailies, La Presse and Le Siecle, which — to quote Montalembert — ‘have three times as many subscribers as all the other newspapers put together and contain almost daily attacks on religion and the clergy.’ Among the registered members of the club, the big Catholic daily, the Univers, counted but one solitary subscriber, Pailhasson, the chemist. The others no…

“THE Faith and the use of the intelligence are inextricably bound up. The use of reason is the main part -- or rather the foundation -- of all inquiry into the highest things.” --- Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies  

A MESSAGE from Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz:

 Terry Morris writes: Who among us in fake and gay 2025 America can even imagine a superbowl halftime show featuring the likes of "the sounds of Dixie," or of "Waiting on the Robert E. Lee?" Or of failure to add "Marching Through Georgia" to such a Playlist for that matter. "When Nazis ruled America," amirite?! How sad!