THE AMERICAN crooner John Gary signed his first contract with RCA records just before the Beatles came to America. His success came at the end of an era and was quickly overwhelmed. He never made it to the pop charts. The dreamy songs of romance and love that were his speciality and that he sang with such moving intensity lost favor. But the sentiments he expressed and his remarkable artistry had a timeless quality. He was one of the great voices of 20th century popular culture.

Born in 1932, Gary was known for his astounding vocal range, which varied from a sustained falsetto to a rich baritone. He often sang to lush, velvety orchestral accompaniment, which contrasted well with his highly controlled voice  (he once held a record for underwater breathing endurance) and was sometimes cloying. His version of “I’ll Be Seeing You,” one of my favorite of his songs, is available for 99 cents from Amazon. You can listen to two Gary songs — “Tammy” and “Stranger in Paradise” — at the website for his fans. Notice how he articulates the words, “I hear the cottonwood whispering above” in “Tammy.” That’s classic John Gary.

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M. MATTECK writes:

There are two words that we use in the English language that do a much better job of describing “the Left” and their mindset. One is the word “sinister,” used in heraldry to describe the left side, and the other is the French word for left which is “gauche.” I consider both of these words to describe precisely the liberals who seek to promote their perverted agenda in our society. “Left” is too innocuous.

Thank you again for your “adroit” wit, and “dexterous” use of logic and reason on your blog! May you be blessed in your right-mindedness!

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AT RICOCHET, Paul A. Rahe has a very powerful piece on the latest controversy between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration. First he points out that while protesting the provision in Obamacare requiring Catholic institutions to cover abortion drugs and contraceptives in their health plans, Church leaders have not protested the fact that individual business owners, including Catholics, will be forced to do the same thing. A compromise on the Church’s behalf is no help to these individuals.

Rahe then explains the roots of the present day crisis. The Church’s enthusiastic acceptance of liberalism on other issues has brought about a disastrous decline in its moral authority and virtually assured that abortion funding would ultimately be government-mandated. He writes:

In the 1930s, the majority of the bishops, priests, and nuns sold their souls to the devil, and they did so with the best of intentions. In their concern for the suffering of those out of work and destitute, they wholeheartedly embraced the New Deal. They gloried in the fact that Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Frances Perkins – a devout Anglo-Catholic laywoman who belonged to the Episcopalian Church but retreated on occasion to a Catholic convent – Secretary of Labor and the first member of her sex to be awarded a cabinet post. And they welcomed Social Security – which was her handiwork. They did not stop to ponder whether public provision in this regard would subvert the moral principle that children are responsible for the well-being of their parents. They did not stop to consider whether this measure would reduce the incentives for procreation and nourish the temptation to think of sexual intercourse as an indoor sport. They did not stop to think. (more…)

JANE writes:

I want to share with you my catch of the day while out surfing the net. I was reading about the economy and global shipping when I came upon a comment (buried in the comments section) referring to why the Exxon Valdez happened. (more…)

  MICHAEL writes: Last night, I read Jill Farris's comment regarding "six more children" and found it to be one of most moving comments I have ever read.

SEBASTIAN writes:

The couple featured on the Macy’s Valentine’s Day catalogue, the same one that shows a wedding cake with two grooms on top, is mixed. As expected, she is white and he is … not white, though not black either. I suppose the inference is dark Hispanic. I found a paper version today on a park bench and asked a friend who works in the industry about the couple. She was pretty sure it was a first for Macy’s, which is more middle class/conservative than the edgy, more expensive stores. Not something to boycott over, of course, but since you were on the subject I pass it on. (more…)

MICHAEL S. writes:

This is really annoying. I get my shirts at Penney’s and my trousers at Macy’s. I’m on the “set it and forget it” clothing plan.

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PAULA BLANCHARD wrote the following e-mail to the corporate office of J.C. Penney today to protest the hiring of the lesbian Ellen DeGeneres as the company’s official spokeswoman. See the family retailer’s response to Mrs. Blanchard below.

To J.C. Penney:

I am NOT a member of One Million Moms. I have shopped J.C. Penney for many years, however, and am very disturbed by your new spokesperson. Ellen started out by criticizing a huge customer base. In my experience, many of your customers are traditional families with traditional values. I do not appreciate having Ellen’s “Gayness” thrown in my face every time I see a J.C. Penney ad. (more…)

  THIS COPY of Raphael's Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn (1506) does not do justice to its incomparable depth and beauty. The colors are not here. But the painting is magnificent even in a lesser form. The portrait went under many restorations and evaluations over the years before it was conclusively determined in 1927 to be the work of Raphael. It is believed to have been inspired by the Mona Lisa and the subject - the noblewoman Maddalena Doni - shows the same captivating psychological integration. Soul, intellect and affections are in perfect harmony. There is such calm watchfulness in her eyes. She is child and woman all at once. The unicorn is a medieval symbol of purity. Thus we must conclude that a portrait of a modern woman with a unicorn in her lap would be most inappropriate. In her Story of Painting, Sister Wendy wrote: Raphael is one of the most acute of all portraitists, effortlessly cleaving through the external defense of his sitter, yet courteously colluding with whatever image the ego would seek to have portrayed. This duality, looking beneath the surface and yet remaining wholly respectful of the surface, gives an additional layer of meaning to all his portraits. We see, and we know things that we do not see; we are helped to encounter rather than evaluate.

IN RESPONSE to yesterday’s announcement that the Pentagon will place more women near the front lines as military police, radio operators, intelligence analysts and support staff, a reader shares her experience as a military police woman.

PAULA BLANCHARD writes:

THE organization One Million Moms is mobilizing resistance to the middle class department chains for their public approval of homosexuality. J.C. Penney’s has chosen the openly lesbian Ellen DeGeneres as its spokeswoman. And Macy’s recent catalogue featured an ad with two grooms on a wedding cake.

Ellen DeGeneres yesterday called the organization’s members “haters.”

According to a release by One Million Moms:

OMM began contacting JC Penney after the store announced that comedian Ellen Degeneres (sic) would become the company’s new spokesperson. (more…)

MIKE ADAMS has a piece at Townhall relevant to the recent discussions here about the “reproductive freedoms” of college women.  I disagree with his point that university students in America should be fighting for women’s rights in Islamic countries, but his other points about the deliberate corruption of students by Women’s Resource Centers are excellent. The piece is titled “Hannah and Her Blisters.” He writes:

Dear Concerned Grandparent:

I am so sorry to hear that your granddaughter has dropped out of school less than halfway through her course of study in English Literature at a public university supported by your tax dollars. I am especially sorry to hear that she has contracted herpes and that, just before Christmas, she spoke of ending her life. (more…)

JILL FARRIS writes:

My husband and I are Protestants. Twenty years ago, we were the proud parents of two children; a girl and a boy. Our family was “complete.” We were against abortion, involved in Right to Life and volunteering at pregnancy centers. Then we were loaned a book called The Way Home by Mary Pride, whose hard-hitting writing educated us in the history of birth control and “planned barrenhood.” To our dismay (and discomfort), we learned that the Catholic church had not stood alone against birth control for centuries. No, indeed, both Protestant and Roman Catholics had wisely understood that choosing to control the timing of pregnancy was a dangerous (and ungodly) choice and would quickly lead to the widespread acceptance of abortion.

After much heated discussion,we humbly (and, admittedly, with fear and trembling) repented of our use of birth control and told God we were willing to raise up many children if He chose to send them to us. We were blessed with six more children.

How can I describe or explain the awe and wonder we have experienced as we look at the children we could have missed? (more…)

TOM B. writes:

Thank you for your blog. My wife and I both “survived” the divorce holocaust of the seventies. We are now ten years married, and homeschooling our four children, ages 8,7,6,6.

We live in Silicon Valley, and sometimes feel like partisans in an insidious ideological war. Our life experiences made us conservative; having children compounded the effect. (more…)

  JOSH F. writes: Just imagine that at the same time those decrepit old slobs in Congress and professional sports officials RAIL INCESSANTLY about athletes using PEDs (performance enhancement drugs, particularly artificial hormones) and claiming  the poor example it sets for our children, we have "American"  universities and society at large practically shoving artificial  hormones down the throats of our daughters from the very start of  puberty well into their twenties. Our daughters are taking steroids to  overstimulate their reproductive systems in order to render their reproductive capabilities non-functioning. All the while these  "elite" stuff their faces with Viagra, Xanax, Prozac and the like -  all considered performance enhancement drugs by anyone with some intellectual honesty.

PENTAGON officials announced today – with a perfectly straight face, as if they were talking about serious military affairs instead of an immense public folly – that 14,000 combat-related positions will be formally opened to women this summer, pending approval by Congress. According to the LA Times, women will “serve in non-infantry battalion jobs, such as radio operators, intelligence analysts, medics, radar operators and tank mechanics. They could be placed together with combat forces, such as supply convoys in areas of fighting.”

The move, which makes a less formal arrangement to that effect official, was not greeted warmly by representatives of female advocacy groups. But then have these martinets ever greeted anything or anyone warmly? Imagine the burden of trying to accomplish what no country serious about defending itself has ever accomplished. No wonder they are grim. They said the Pentagon should open all combat positions to women. As is typical, they did not offer a single substantial reason why women in combat would help the military better fulfill its mission. Sure, women in the military have helped soldiers frisk women in burqas but that is no reason to open tens of thousands positions to them.

No one wants a soldier for a mother. That’s something they also never mention. Nor do they mention how the very appearance of a female soldier, however capable she may be, is one of the most depressing and demoralizing sights in the world, tangible evidence if there ever was any that the spirit of feminine nurture has been trashed.

Reader Henry McCulloch writes: (more…)