ALAN writes:

“Nature’s verities offer certainty and tranquility,” Ozark farmer, nature writer, conservationist, and St. Louis newspaper columnist Leonard Hall wrote more than thirty years ago.

There is much truth in those words. Lawrence Auster wrote about the beauty of an autumn day in New York.  Laura Wood has written about the beauty of flowers, the splendor of the night sky, and the astonishing occurrence of a bird knocking at her door.

Those things reminded me of a story told by Louise Dickinson Rich. She lived in the deep woods of Maine and wrote at length about their beauty and challenges. There was a big Russian fellow there who worked as a lumberjack.  He worked alone because he liked it that way and it was said that he was impossible to get along with.  One day while walking through the woods, she saw him sitting alone except for a group of chickadees that surrounded him.  She wrote:

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  FIFTEEN women comprised the first female group to go through infantry training for the Marines. Four passed the course and one of them ended up with debilitating stress fractures, probably from carrying heavy equipment. Read the comments about it all at Marine Times for a nauseating glimpse of those who view this as a great milestone for women and who pay no attention to the high failure rate. You would think war was a game.

      I am closing in on my goal. Please donate here. Thank you for your support.

FROM Novus Ordo Watch:

The Vatican is now officially and openly “gay-friendly.” On Saturday, November 16, 2013, an openly homosexual Maryland high school student by the name of Jack Andraka received an award at the Vatican for his work in cancer research, having discovered a way to test for pancreatic cancer in its early stages.

While his scientific contribution is no doubt very laudable, the idea of the Vatican, which is supposed to be the highest moral authority on earth, granting an award to an open sodomite is beyond appalling. The prize itself is called the International Giuseppe Sciacca Award and has very specific significance. In fact, it is given to (supposed) role models that promote human dignity, justice, and the upholding of the moral natural law:

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THE Catholic blogger Mundabor describes Obama as a “thoroughly secular man, very probably as atheist as Stalin, with a cultural predilection for the religion in which he grew up (Islam, of course), and just that ridiculously thin varnish of Christianity that is necessary to become President in the USA.”

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BUCK writes:

Three “Knock Out” attacks have been reported in the Philadelphia area. From CBS Philly:

The attackers are calling their crimes a game, the goal being to knock out the victim with one punch.

Mark Cumberland is a victim of a “Knockout” assault.

“Someone asked me for a cigarette and by the time I got my hands out my pocket I was getting hit by four kids.”

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THE OTHER day, I was very down. As my husband can tell you, for much of the entire day before I sat grimly staring out the window. I thought I might not have the resources to continue the regular work I do here. I was like Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, standing on the bridge in the cold, contemplating the worst. I was not contemplating real suicide of course, but a form of blogger suicide. Or blog-icide.

But things are going well with my fundraiser thanks to the great generosity of readers. If I can meet my goal, I will be ecstatic. In any event, I have received such encouragement from readers that I feel like Bailey when he went home and all the people in the neighborhood appeared and threw some of their hard-earned savings on his living room table. That’s exactly how I feel. Whatever happens, I truly have wonderful friends. That was the problem with George Bailey when he stood on the bridge. He didn’t realize how many friends he had.

Here are some of the notes from readers I have received:

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DANIEL S. writes:

The neo-Druidic church of the nation formerly known as England has elected to allow women bishops. One of the female “chaplains” involved told her compatriots that they should allow female bishops so as to cease being “weird.” So there you have it, the “Church” of “England” will have female bishops not for Biblical or advanced theological reasons, but because they want to be cool.

By the way, former archbishop of Canterbury Lord George Carey said that the Church of England could be extinct in a generation. Considering recent trends, I cannot find myself to share in Lord Carey’s lament.

For an idea of the latest in Protestant clerical fashion, the photo above is of Lutheran bishops and the one below is of Episcopal bishops.

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REPRESENTATIVES of major pizza chains have contacted me today to say they have heard that I am not accepting advertising. They have also noticed that I have not yet made my fundraising goal. They think it’s a big mistake to reject ads at this crucial juncture. They say studies show that my readers are part of the cheap mozzarella demographic and would benefit from seeing photos of pepperoni, sausage and white rubber while lamenting the downfall of civilization. Hard to believe, I say, as the two activities seem intrinsically opposed. But they say that I just don’t understand the psychology of advertising. Pizza photos satisfy deep human yearnings. Everyone benefits from seeing melted cheese. Everyone.

But wouldn’t I be violating cherished principles? Wouldn’t I be selling my soul if I took ads from Little Caesars or Hungry Howie’s Pizza and Subs? Astute readers might even accuse me of hypocrisy. It’s a terrible ethical dilemma. Aristotle said we must do things at the right time, in the right way, and for the right purpose. Easy for him to say. Sometimes principles are so darn expensive.

If you would rather not see this site become a part of the Pizza-Industrial Complex, please donate. I have made great progress toward my goal of keeping this site alive.

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A recent Army press release describes with expert bureaucratic evasion the phony progress being made to integrate women into combat:

Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III said the changes won’t — and shouldn’t — happen overnight, but rather, they should be deliberate and incremental.

“The first and largest obstacle the Army must overcome for integration is the culture,” Chandler said. “There is still a perception in some parts of the Army that female Soldiers won’t be able to do the same things as their male counterparts, or that we won’t be as successful if we have them in combat arms organizations. I think the people saying these things are a vocal minority.”

Even in a calculated piece of propaganda riddled with absurdities about preserving standards and lies about the physical capabilities of women, it’s impossible for the Army to disguise the facts. Equality means changing the entire military culture. Those who perceive the obvious are the disturbingly and mystifyingly “vocal minority.” Strange, that so few people want to be part of this minority. Golly, why don’t more people want to find themselves exiled from polite society and out of a job? (more…)

  [thermometer height=250] QUITE a few people would like to see this site continue at its current level of activity. I have gotten a lot closer to my goal today. Thank you for your generous contributions. Please see the previous post for the gruesome and shocking details of this site's income. These figures may make you question my sanity if you have any idea how much time I have spent at this. As an added incentive, I will be mailing a homemade Pizza Civitavecchia right before Christmas to anyone who donates $75 or more tonight (by midnight EST). Pizza Civitavecchia is rooted in a time before the Pizza-Industrial Revolution. It's an Italian sweet bread that is often made for Easter, but is fantastic at Christmas time too. The ingredients include ricotta, rum, anise seeds, cinnamon, lemon zest, butter and a yeast sponge. It makes unbelievably good French toast. I don't mean to knock fruitcake -- you know, the stuff with lurid-colored candied fruit that Jane S. makes every year, but this is a great alternative.

THANK YOU very much to readers who have generously sent donations and supportive notes in response to my last post about scaling back. Here is a relevant message from a reader:

Michael writes:

Regarding efforts to raise funds for the website, why not put up one of those thermometers on the side indicating the goal to be reached and where you stand with funds raised? As it is, we cannot tell how much is needed, ballpark at least, to maintain the site. If not a thermometer, it could be any device indicating funds needed. Let the peeps know what you need and see if they step up.

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THANK YOU to the small number of readers who have responded to my latest fundraising appeal. I am grateful for your support and especially for the support now and in the past of some who have given repeatedly. There are those who understandably cannot give anything.

A free press is never really free. There are always serious costs, mostly in labor and time, to producing any kind of ongoing publication. For magazines, the cost of the paper and mailing are small compared to the cost of labor. One of the hallmarks of anything done well is that it appears effortless. I like to think that is the reason so few readers help to sustain this particular garden of ideas. They mistakenly believe it doesn’t require great personal sacrifice on this end. (more…)

MONTHS ago, I informed readers that I was involved in an effort to start the American Traditionalist Society. Serious progress has been made on this project. One of the main purposes of the society is to bring together in various ways those who share many of the views expressed here. Unfortunately, I have to put aside my own involvement in this effort for now. I apologize for not being able to make this a reality yet. Organizing people is not one of my strengths. Others have great abilities in that area that I do not possess. Also, in some ways, I do not conform to the commonly agreed-upon definition of traditionalism.

Even so, if I were wealthy, I would buy an island off the northern coast of Maine and establish the headquarters of the American Traditionalist Society immediately. There would be no seminars, fancy conference rooms or PowerPoint demonstrations on this island. Our meetings would be strictly anti-modern in form and even the gulls, normally undiscriminating, would decline pizza. Instead, people would come in small numbers to walk and listen to the ancient vespers of the sea. (more…)

HERE is a terrific post by the blogger Matt Walsh on the “hook-up culture.” He writes:

Casual sex has liberated us, yet casual sex produces so many regrets. The landscape is rife with people who have felt the sting of our “hook-up culture.” (more…)

LAST YEAR, Thomas F. Bertonneau posted an excellent series of essays on the disintegration of modern education at The Orthosphere. With his generous permission, I will be posting all four of the essays, which focus on T.S. Eliot’s writings on the subject. The first essay is below.

           T. S. Eliot, Culture, and Higher Education, Part I

Thomas F. Bertonneau

In the fall semester of 2012, beginning in September, my longstanding interest in what I call modern non-modern dissentient discourse found its articulation in a senior-level seminar on six authors whose work centrally constitutes the critique of modernity in the twentieth century.  These are, Nicolas Berdyaev, T. S. Eliot, René Girard, René Guénon, José Ortega-y-Gasset, and Eric Voegelin – thinker-writers whom contemporary college students likely never have encountered.  The main aims of the seminar were several: To alert students to the existence of the coherent, two-century-old tradition of dissent from the liberal-materialist worldview that they take almost entirely for granted and that the higher education establishment actively discourages them from questioning; thereby to introduce into their curriculum and, as I hope, into their education, actual intellectual diversity; and to demonstrate that the prose of criticism can be philosophically rigorous and spiritually challenging without relying on neologisms, the tropes of “transgression,” or hortatory phrases that, despite their intoxicating hyperbole, really amount to no more than slogans for rousing the rabble.  (more…)

  ANTHROPOLOGY LIFE magazine reports an exciting and potentially ground-breaking discovery. Scientists have come across a remote South American tribe that has never eaten, or been exposed to, pizza. The Zuga-Zuga of the Amazon rainforest are believed to be the last people on earth to remain untouched by the Pizza-Industrial Complex. Tribe members have never even seen a stuffed mozzarella stick. Scientists view this as a rare opportunity to study the effects of pizza consumption. Over the next two years, the Zuga-Zuga will be slowly introduced to a pizza diet. The tribe, which will be trained to use cell phones for quick delivery, will be divided into three groups. One will eat Domino's, another Papa John's and the third Giordano's Tropical Delight Stuffed Pizza with Canadian Bacon and Pineapple. If after two years, tribe members demonstrate some of the same thickening of brain cells and midriffs common among American pizza-eaters, there is the distinct possibility that Obamacare will provide three hot meals a day in a three-star French restaurant to anyone addicted to pizza. If not, the Amazonian tribe members will be given a lifetime's supply of coupons for the brand that wins out in a phone survey of their preferences. Scientists have spent years looking for anyone on earth who has not had a slice. This thrilling discovery is the talk of deliverymen everywhere.

JEWEL writes:

This piece by Randy Engel is perhaps the definitive, most exhaustive case against the normalization of sexual perversion. Enough with using the word “gay” or even “homosexual.” It’s perversion, period.

Interestingly, a number of other Catholics have denounced Engel for all the usual reasons for her criticism of Pope Francis, calling her slanderous and histrionic. My reading of this document is that she is on sound territory. My own experience with lesbians is that they are violent. They are angry, bitter and violent. I really think that it comes from not being with men in traditional marriage. I will give you an example.

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