A COMPLETE first edition of John James Audubon’s Birds of America sold to an undisclosed buyer for almost $8 million at a Christie’s auction in New York today. The four volume set of three-foot tall hand-colored, etched and aquatint plates made from Audubon’s life-size watercolor drawings is one of 120 complete sets in the world, most of which are owned by museums, universities and libraries. This edition was purchased in England by the fourth Duke of Portland sometime after 1838, when the collection was completed.  The record for a first edition set is $11.5 million.

For excellent images of plates in the set, see Christie’s slide show here. There is also a brief, well-written account of Audubon’s life on the same page. At Butlers Birds, Laurence Butler continues his series, “Wednesdays with Audubon.”

I have a beautiful volume of 223 of Audubon’s plates published by American Heritage in 1966. I paid $7.50 for it at a book sale.

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  IF YOU have not had a chance to read Alan's report on Grover Cleveland High School in St. Louis, I recommend it. More images of the school, so different on the exterior from the prison-like schools of today, can be seen here. The building even has gargoyles. 

A PROPOSAL that would have added pull-ups to the Physical Fitness Test for female Marines (yes, there are female Marines) has been tabled indefinitely and women will continue to be accepted without proving they can do a single pull-up.

The Marine Corps Times reports that men currently score 100 points on the PFT when completing 20 pull-ups. The proposed change would have awarded 100 points to women who do six pull-ups. That, however, has been deemed too rigorous. Women are currently required to do a flexed-arm hang for a minimum of 60 seconds. According to the newspaper: (more…)

ENOUGH SAID
by Clark McAdams

St. Louis Dispatch [1912]

“Votes for women!”
was the cry
Reaching upward
to the sky
Crashing glass
and flashing eye
“Votes for women”
was the cry. (more…)

  SEE Michael D.'s comments on the character and motives of Trent Arsenault, the man who has "fathered" 14 children through sperm donation. He writes: Arsenault doesn’t realize that broadcasting his revolting behavior has nailed shut the door of opportunity once and for all — it is now certain he will never meet, date, romance, marry or father children with a woman. He is condemned to loneliness and misery. How long will it be before he realises his self-inflicted thankless tragedy comes without a prize? The devil has inspired him to wreck his life and take down society too.

  THE lead story at Drudge is this article by the Associated Press about Indiana's new license plate. The message is aimed at homosexual teens. Proceeds from sale of the plate will go to an organization that develops homosexual support groups in high schools. Maryland offers a similar plate, according to the AP. This would be shocking in California or Massachusetts, but in Indiana, it blows the mind. Homosexual activism grows more and more bullying by the day.

AT VFR, in a discussion of Newt Gingrich’s statement that unemployed blacks should seek work at low-level jobs, a commenter Paul K. writes:

I think you’ve hit upon one of the great conundrums of the current state of civil rights. (more…)

IN THE discussion of the men who reportedly left the sinking Costa Concordia without helping women and children, Jesse Powell explains why the behavior of men on the Titanic has received so much attention. He writes: 

There’s a reason why the heroic sacrifice of men on the Titanic became legendary and was celebrated far and wide for generations. It was the ultimate exemplar of chivalry; it was the strongest possible signal to womankind that they were safe and would be well cared for under the direction and authority of men.

As Jesse also notes:

Men must take care of women precisely to prevent women from feeling the need to take care of themselves; a woman who feels the need to take care of herself is exactly what a feminist is. (more…)

JAMES P. writes:

In this previous post, Michael D. wrote, apropos of donation to sperm banks,

Only a man who loathes himself, lacks dignity and self respect would consider doing such a thing, abandoning responsibility for any unknown children he sires with women who mean nothing to him… I cannot imagine the impact on a child when he learns that he was not intentionally conceived in love between his parents, but that his pathetic father was a compulsive masturbator who never even met his mother. (more…)

JOHN L. GRAHAM writes:

My father, Captain A. G. Graham, was a master mariner who sailed before the mast at age 16, graduated to steam ships, and worked his way up to a Master’s certificate, obtaining a degree in maritime law from Stanford University in the meantime. He retired from Farrell Lines as commodore of the fleet, the senior captain, with an enviable record of never having lost a ship, passenger, or crew member while under his command, even though he sailed through U-boat infested waters during World War II. (more…)

  ERIC writes: The recent cruise ship sinking highlights what happens to a man who has failed in his role as master/protector. I don't know if this man is truly guilty, but the public condemnation of Capt. Schettino's perceived failure is intense, as it should be.

   IN her 1792 book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of modern feminism, wrote about the need for a nationalized system of education. The good effects resulting from attention to private education will ever be very confined, and the parent who really puts his own hand to the plow, will always in some degree be disappointed, til education becomes a grand national concern. This documentary, "The Dark Intentions of Public Schooling," made by the libertarian organization Freedom Advocates, briefly examines the history of this grand national concern in America. The sentiments of the reformer Horace Mann were similar to those of the revolutionary Wollstonecraft: We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.

A GRATEFUL READER writes:

The following quote by Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos struck me as apt to many of the discussions at The Thinking Housewife. In order to create a healthy community, we must first heal ourselves. The text is taken from his little book Orthodox Spirituality, which is the Reader’s Digest version of his major tome Orthodox Psychotherapy. Among his other little books is The Illness and Cure of The Soul.

By occupying themselves with the purification of their own hearts and the healing of their own personalities, they offer great comfort to humanity. The regeneration of just one person has immense repercussions for the whole world… (more…)

JAMES H. writes:

I am currently reading Ilana Mercer’s “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” which is must reading for traditionalists. Mercer was an anti-apartheid activist who cut and ran from South Africa once her policies became law. She’s now a libertarian (simply a materialist utopian with a different set of materialist assumptions). But she’s written a harrowing account of the logical outcome of the cult of democracy. And though she hasn’t yet completely shed the last vestiges of her liberal world view, the book is superb. 

From the book:  (more…)

PASSENGERS of the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that sunk off an Italian island on Friday, told The Daily Mail that in the chaos after the ship was wrecked, men rushed for the lifeboats and gave no priority to women and children.

As she waited for a flight home from Rome, grandmother Sandra Rogers, 62, told the Daily Mail: ‘There was no “women and children first” policy. There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboats. It was disgusting.’

Modern women have no grounds for expecting deference. There is no reason why they should go first.

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  IN THE January/February issue of Touchstone magazine, Douglas Farrow, a professor at McGill University, has an outstanding article entitled "Why Fight Same-Sex Marriage?" Farrow explains how same-sex "marriage" renders the family a tool of the state. This has been said by many others. What distinguishes Farrow's piece is his final point. The natural distinctiveness of marriage was destroyed by "the acid of contraception." Marriage was de-naturalized when contraception was embraced by Christians and same-sex unions as a result make sense to many people today. Farrow writes: