MY HUSBAND had lunch with an old friend yesterday.

They sat on a park bench next to a river and ate greasy sandwiches.

My husband’s friend had a daughter who was in her early thirties. He was very fond of her. She died a year and a half ago under tragic circumstances.

He mentioned, matter-of-factly, to my husband as they were chatting on the bench on a beautiful fall day that every morning he wakes up with tears rolling down his cheeks. Every morning, he cries again.

Sometimes one person’s sadness is so powerful — and understandably so — that it seems to engulf the world in flames.

We who are relatively happy — we live on this burning globe.

I’D RATHER bake biscuits than be a Supreme Court judge.

“IT’s a beautiful tradition of getting family together,” [Anthony Fauci] told Yahoo News on Thursday during a live Q&A. “I think we need to realize things might be different this year, particularly if you want to have people who are going to be flying in from a place that has a lot of infection – you’re going to an airport that might be crowded, you’re on a plane, and then to come in — unless you absolutely know you’re not infected — there are many people who are not going to want to take that risk.”

“Fauci said his own children, three daughters who live in different states, have decided against coming to see him this year.” [Source]

That’s sad. Perhaps they know.

I, on the other hand, strongly support Fauci receiving visitors. In jail.

ST. TERESA of Ávila, Spain was a sixteenth-century mystic whose writings are filled not just with highly challenging concepts but with wise practical advice. She founded cloistered convents where extreme poverty and discipline were the rule and counseled her sisters for the sake of their spiritual advancement and to maintain community life in harmony and peace.

St. Teresa emphatically warned against indulging health fears and the aches and pains of life. She said this was one of the most important messages she had to convey to those women under her instruction.

Her advice: Don’t talk about it (unless you are seriously ill, and even then patience was paramount). Keep your headaches and fatigue, muscle pains and sore throats, nausea and indigestion to your self.

“For this body of ours has one fault: the more you indulge it, the more things it discovers to be essential to it.”

Needless to say, this inspiring woman who was herself sick for years, once so seriously that a grave was dug for her well before her death, and who is the patron saint of headache sufferers, would be disappointed by the world we live in. Read More »

ZENO writes:

Regarding your latest posts, a few brief observations:

Since Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, etc., seem to have benefitted enormously from Corona lockdowns, isn’t it obvious that it makes them interested in promoting “Corona” panic?

Bezos in particular has become the greatest “Corona King“, as locking people inside their homes and destroying small shops has benefited him enormously. He is also the owner of the Washington Post, which keeps publishing news about “corona panic.” Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Or are we supposed to think that it is just a coincidence, and not ask, “Cui bono”?

Regarding the elderly in the care homes, that breaks my heart. ““I’d rather die of Covid than loneliness.” What could be more sad than that? Read More »

THE NEW YORK TIMES has run more than 20,000 stories on (or referring to) George Floyd.

Not a single one on Chase Meola.

The New York Times is an ongoing hate crime.

AMY CONEY BARRETT is guilty of complicity in a lie.

She has clearly demonstrated, as we can see here, her lack of respect for the truth. A public official has much greater responsibility than the ordinary person.

The brutal truth is, no one in government is on our side. The black mask fits our leaders. They’re just highway robbers.

By the way, has the virus even been proven to exist?

Jon Rappoport writes:

The CDC document is titled, “CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel.” It is dated July 13, 2020.

Buried deep in the document, on page 39, in a section titled, “Performance Characteristics,” we have this: “Since no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available, assays [diagnostic tests] designed for detection of the 2019-nCoV RNA were tested with characterized stocks of in vitro transcribed full length RNA…”

The key phrase there is: “Since no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available…”

Every object that exists can be quantified, which is to say, measured. The use of the term “quantified” in that phrase means: the CDC has no measurable amount of the virus, because it is unavailable. THE CDC HAS NO VIRUS. Read More »

NO WONDER the most fervent feminists have been Jewish. There’s nothing even remotely comparable to this in Christianity.

Greeley Tribune

RESIDENTS of a Colorado nursing home gathered outside last Thursday to protest ongoing lockdown of their facility. The Greeley Tribune reports:

“Enough is enough. Set us free,” Fairacres Manor resident Josie Sanchez said through a microphone Thursday afternoon while parked in her wheelchair on 16th Street across from North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley.

Sanchez, 76 years old, was one of organizers of the protest. She was joined by approximately 19 of her fellow Fairacres residents as they sat in their wheelchairs on the sidewalk in front of the medical-center parking garage for two hours while the 16th Street traffic passed by with some drivers honking their horns.

The residents held signs and some waved to the motorists. One of the signs read: “We want families back.” The theme of the signs was the same and they were all directed at state officials: let us hug our families.

One woman held a sign saying, “I’d rather die of Covid than loneliness.”

What governments have done to the elderly in the last six months is a crime against humanity. Removing the restrictions is not enough. Criminal trials and long prison sentences are in order.

FROM CNBC:

Billionaire wealth jumped by more than a quarter during the height of the coronavirus crisis, according to new research, with a rally in stock markets helping the wealth of the world’s richest surpass the $10 trillion mark for the first time.

The “Riding the storm” study, published on Wednesday by Swiss bank UBS and accounting firm PwC, found that global billionaire wealth climbed to $10.2 trillion between April and July this year, up from $8 trillion at the start of April.

That reflected an increase in wealth of 27.5% and exceeded the previous peak of $8.9 trillion recorded at the end of 2017. The number of billionaires worldwide also reached a new high of 2,189, compared to the previous record of 2,158 in 2017.

‘EVERY best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. Every emanation of splendor overflowing from the divine goodness upon man, reacts in him as a principle of spiritual simplification and of heavenly union; and by its own power leads him back towards the sovereign unity and godlike simplicity of the Father. For all things come from God, and return to God.

“By the very fact that things exist, inanimate objects partake of God, who by the sublimity of His Essence, is the being of all that is….”

— St. Dionysius

Still Life with Apples and a Glass, Paul Cezanne

IF I were a photographer, I would take a photograph of one of the apples I bought yesterday. Since I can’t take a decent picture, I will try a snapshot in words.

I went to a roadside stand far from the supermarket. Instead of pristine apples from 200 hundred miles away in plastic bags, they were all jumbled together, entirely naked in bins, separated by variety and pestered by a few bees. They were 39 cents a pound.

A Jonagold, this apple has tiny brown varicose veins or scribbles along the top, a small black spot where a worm or fungus had a meal, and skin that is pinkish red and dusky yellow. It is not shiny or shellacked. The hostile action of the wind and rain seem visible on its dulled skin. The spot suggests hardship too. This apple has been through some stuff.

Did you know that an apple has a soul? The apple’s musky golden-ness is all the proof you need. It is like no other apple you’ve seen and like every apple you’ve seen. Plato would say it’s an expression of the ideal apple.

An apple has a soul, but not an immortal soul.

Artists have spent much time and effort painting bowls or piles of fruit on tables not because they were hungry or in the advertising business for apple growers but because they were trying to capture the evanescent soul of fruit.

When I looked at all those naked apples piled in the farm bins, I saw the tedium of the farm workers who picked them. When those farmers or field hands put their heads on their pillows, golden apples must have filled their dreams, the souls of fruit and man.

The best apples reflect their own small part in the world’s suffering. Suffering imparts beauty. Artificiality is un-beautiful. A lack of suffering is false. 

While the apple itself is not greater than me, its beauty is. I am not wise, but I can love wisdom. I am not beautiful, but I can love beauty. I am not good, but I can love goodness. The faculty of admiration survives the apple. Thus the apple partakes of immortality. This small thing reminds me that we have everything we need.

KIT Knightly writes at Off Guardian (ignore warning; it is not dangerous to access this site):

The World Health Organization has finally confirmed what we (and many experts and studies) have been saying for months – the coronavirus is no more deadly or dangerous than seasonal flu.

The WHO’s top brass made this announcement during a special session of the WHO’s 34-member executive board on Monday October 5th, it’s just nobody seemed to really understand it.

In fact, they didn’t seem to completely understand it themselves. Read More »

FROM Chuck Baldwin’s article, “Another Phony Conservative Judge Nominated To The Supreme Court:”

As with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, Barrett is just another Big Government, Police State ideologue who will continue the assault against our constitutionally protected liberties and who will do nothing to overturn Roe.

Here is what Constitutional attorney Robert Barnes says about Barrett:

Barrett sided with the government on almost every civil rights case, every big employer case, every criminal case, while also siding with the government on the lockdowns, on uncompensated takings, on excusing First Amendment infringements & Fourth Amendment violations.

Barrett exclaimed the benefits of Jacobson, the decision that green-lit forced vaccines & carved out an emergency exception to Constitutional protection in “public health” or “emergency” cases used to justify forced sterilizations & detention camps. Read More »

MARK CRISPIN MILLER made the mistake of introducing live propaganda to his college students.

Speaking of propaganda, this clip below is from an event in Doylestown, Pennsylvania in which Governor Tom Wolf and PA State Rep Wendy Ullman “chat about removing their masks to speak. Ullman says she is going to play ‘political theater’ and wait to get her mask removal ‘on camera.’ They laugh. Gov. Wolf responds ‘okay, that’s good.'”

SATIRE from The Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C—President Donald Trump is once again under fire from the media for recklessly downplaying the danger of COVID by refusing to die. As the president begins to show signs of recovery, many worry that this sends the wrong message about the seriousness of the global pandemic.

“Every hour that he lives is another hour that the severity of this virus is undermined!” said reporter Sara Grace Major for CNN. “Why won’t he just DIE and show the American people how deadly this virus truly is?” Read More »

TO LEAVE this world at the age of 95 is no great tragedy.

But to spend one’s last months in intense loneliness — for no good reason — is a great tragedy.

Shame on all those people, including our presidential contenders, who have let many thousands die this way because of a flu that has killed about 10,000 people who were not already seriously sick.

By the way, I was in a restaurant yesterday and saw a sad sight. An elderly man walking down a ramp with a mask on fell to the ground. Fortunately, he was able to get to his feet and walk away. But he was very shaken.

Whether he fell because his vision was impeded by the mask, I don’t know, but I do know other people, not all of them old, have fallen because of masks. We see with our faces.