I PREVIOUSLY wrote of a bird who knocked insistently at our front door just when we happened to be talking about him.

We see birds fly by our windows all the time. They live their busy lives parallel to ours. They peck and forage at the ground outside. But they occasionally appear — perhaps this is just projection — to tire of the great outdoors. They want in.

Is it possible that just as we wish we could fly, they wish they could sit in a chair? You know, the grass is always greener …

In fact, a little, chirping wren walked right in our back door a few months ago. After flying through the living room and up the stairs, into the bathroom and around the bed where my husband was peacefully snoring, he clearly had had enough and wanted to leave. The indoors might look intriguing from the other side of the window, but perhaps aren’t that interesting, from an avian perspective. Maybe the same thing would happen if we could soar through the sky. I don’t know, but I would like to try.

Here is the touching story of a cardinal who knocked at someone’s window. Robert Barrow writes:

As we removed the final assortment of clutter, preparing to lock the door for the last time and depart, I walked into the living room where my sister had died with the assistance of Hospice months ago — checking one more time — and my attention was suddenly beckoned to a large window on this breezy fall afternoon.

Sharing his efforts between the branches of a tree on which he perched off and on and the air in which he flapped about, pecking repeatedly at the glass, was a beautiful male cardinal, his reds and blacks amply displayed on his chubby, feathered bird body.

I called out to other family members, and one snapped a few photos (one is displayed here) as the bird seemingly attempted to enter the house, frustrated in its imminent failure.  Never had we witnessed this bird and his obvious desperation to gain entry — or, some would suggest, to deliver a message.

Bird psychology is not fully understood. Perhaps the cardinal wanted to sing a tune to cheer up this sad family.

Here is one for you — and for tender-hearted cardinals everywhere.

“AN elderly Canadian woman was killed by her doctor because she would rather be dead than go through another COVID lockdown. When it looked like she would have to be confined to her room for two weeks, she asked for — and received — the lethal jab due to declining mental health and vitality.”

— Wesley J. Smith, The National Review

 

OUR governments aren’t legitimate anymore. They have proclaimed war on humanity.

AUSTRIAN MP Michael Schnedlitz tested a glass of cola for COVID. The test was positive. I don’t have an English translation of his comments, but you get the idea. Papaya and water have also tested positive, proving something that has been widely known — the PCR test, which is the foundation of the COVID restrictions, is a fraud.

Remember this the next time you hear of the hundreds of thousands who have died of the virus.

IN PENNSYLVANIA, you can’t have dinner in a restaurant.

But you can participate in an orgy —- as long as you follow protocols supplied by Dr. Richard (aka “Rachel”) Levine, the state’s “health” commissar.

It’s amazing what a little hand sanitizer can do.

FROM an outstanding article at the American Institute for Economic Research by Daniel J. Boudreaux:

Tyranny, again, doesn’t happen to us. We, after all, are complying voluntarily with our leaders’ commands, knowing that these are for our own good. If we were suffering the oppression of tyrants, we’d resist. We are, don’t forget, a proud people. We are enlightened, democratic, and free. And so because the vast majority of us are not resisting our leaders’ current rule, this rule cannot possibly be tyrannical. Q.E.D.

Our leaders, in short, aren’t tyrants. They’re public servants who we must trust if we are to be saved.

Or, so all who are tyrannized conclude. Read More »

Two figures in the Vatican Nativity Scene, 2020

THE brutalist, post-modern Nativity scene erected in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome this year has created quite a stir. The outcry is the only good thing about it. At least, ugliness still causes pain. This is a scene of such grotesqueries that some are calling it an “anti-nativity.”

The most noticeable thing about this freakish display is that the figures don’t look human. They are monsters, robots, and depersonalized, vacant-eyed matryoshka dolls. It’s a fitting tribute then not to the sublime mysteries of Bethlehem, where human nature was elevated, but to the ugly, dehumanizing effects of totalitarianism, 2020-style.

Judge for yourself. Here’s a video of the unveiling of the scene and  photos, as well as a news round-up. Italian art historian Andrea Cionci wrote in an Italian daily (translation here):

“Forget the sweet face of the Madonna, the tender, luminous incarnation of the Child Jesus, the paternal sweetness of St. Joseph and the devout wonder of the shepherds. For the first time in the middle of Bernini’s colonnade, the Vatican has erected a brutally postmodern work dating back to the sixties.” It includes “a Muslim imam, a Jewish rabbi, an astronaut and even an executioner (as a symbol of protest against the death penalty) but only some of them have been exhibited.” Read More »

The Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi (detail), 16th century; New Cathedral, Salamanca

“O KING, whom our hearts desire, Lord Jesus Christ, come, we beseech thee, cleanse us as a furnace of fire from the dross of our sins, and make us like gold that is pure, and like silver that is without alloy. Inflame our hearts, by thy inspiration, that they seek thee unceasingly: so may our desires long with all ardour after thee,  and pant with all eagerness to be united with thee. Amen.”

— The Mozarabic Breviary, Friday of the second week of Advent, Capitula

“COMMUNISM is both a system of governance designed for micromanaging every aspect of society via massive centralization and police state, and a political scam designed to bamboozle plebs into killing who[m]ever their current elites are and putting the globalist kabbal in power.”

— SP Fan Account

SAMUEL added our order up on an old, battery-operated calculator. He wore a serious, business-like expression, as if to say, “I’m used to these money transactions.” Samuel was only 13. Surely, this must still be new to him.

That was the first time we went to his family’s farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to buy meat, milk, cheese and a few other things. We’ve been there a number of times since Lockdown America began, but yesterday was only the second-time that we were waited on by Samuel. He again pulled the calculator out of a drawer in the battered, metal desk and performed his accounting.

“I’ve seen you before,” he said, now less the businessman and more just a curious, skinny, brown-haired boy in muddy boots and pants. He walked with us out to the gravel parking lot.

“Would you like to see the animals?”

We said we would love to see them. Samuel then began an impromptu tour of his kingdom of fields still green in December and shabby, well-used buildings. Here was a kingdom so far from shuttered businesses, hand sanitizer dispensers, stolen elections and even inventions like the automobile as to seem on another planet.

Samuel is Amish and his father prides himself on not running a large, factory farm. There is no electricity or tractors. The cows are grass-fed and free-roaming. There are also chickens, pigs, rabbits and ducks. Goats, sheep, camel and water buffalo — all adding to the products sold here — are raised nearby. Lush vegetable gardens surround the large farm house in season. We passed a pony named “Glider” in a field and one of the family dogs. We headed to the pig barn.

If you have ever thought pigs do not richly deserve their reputation for being — well, pigs, I advise you to visit a small-scale farm like this. About 15 adult pigs were in a pen outside the barn, wallowing in thick, black mud and grunting loudly. You would think they were in a bed of liquid chocolate, not dirt, so happy and busy did they seem in their brown puddle. Samuel explained that they actually eat the mud. And some were indeed pushing the mud around with their huge snouts and shoveling it into their mouths. So this is what makes bacon taste so good.

I asked him if they ever were aggressive with each other. They sure looked scary and he said, yes, pigs do fight and sometimes kill each other. Ah, so Charlotte’s Webb does not tell the whole story. I never want to meet a pig in a back alley.

We went into the actual pig barn where there were at least 100 more pigs, the full grown ones separated from the small ones. The smell was overwhelming — argument enough, I would think, for the faint of heart to be vegan. I asked Samuel if he got used to the smell, and he just said matter-of-factly and without complaint, “Not really.”

Read More »

“SUPPOSE that you are worried that you might have a rare disease. You decide to get tested, and suppose that the testing methods for this disease are correct 99 percent of the time.

“Suppose this disease is actually quite rare, occurring randomly in the general population in only one of every 10,000 people. If your test results come back POSITIVE, what are your chances that you actually have the disease? LESS THAN 1% chance that you have the disease!

“The basic reason we get such a surprising result is because the disease is so rare that the number of false positives greatly outnumbers the people who truly have the disease.

“Say mass testing of the contagious virus was done to 1 million people. In that million, 100 will really have the disease, 99 will be correctly diagnosed as having it. 999,900 of the million will not have the disease, but of those about 9,999 will be false positives!”

Read more about the mathematical theorem of Thomas Bayes @RobinMonotti.

JON RAPPOPORT has a balanced article at his site about the situation.

MANY recent protests in Europe have not been covered in the American mainstream news.

Here residents of Venice take off their masks and chant, “Libertà! Libertà! Libertà!”

This is extremely naughty.

They will be much healthier — without their bacteria-collecting masks —  but that’s beside the point.

A WONDERFUL and unusual version of this carol by the men’s choir Chor Leoni of Vancouver with accompaniment on the hammered dulcimer.