IN ONE one moment of history, all human longing was answered. And the depths, they were beautiful. Reflections on Advent:

“Many evils may attend the neglect or careless conduct of our earthly affairs, but temporal calamities are rarely irremediable or utterly barren of good. There is scarcely any earthly calamity which can not either be repaired or soon forgotten. You may win back lost possessions, or gain still larger ones. Other and better friends may take the place of those whose loss you mourn; and the most delicate health may be restored. All temporal things may be given back to man, or he can console himself for their loss with the hope of higher possessions in the future. But if, through indifference, your soul is once lost, all is lost–And Lost Forever! Nothing can compensate you for this loss or misery. Not a single moment of the time wasted in any other occupation than in the care of our souls, will be given back to us a second time. He who has not saved his soul for everlasting life in the short span allotted to him, is cast out into exterior darkness. He is a branch cut off from the vine to be thrust into the fire. Like the foolish virgins, he stands without a nuptial chamber whose door shall never open to him. As in the case of the unprofitable servant, the talent buried by him, is delivered into the hand of another. Is there any other care on which such momentous interests depend?”

— First Sunday of Advent: “Solicitude for Eternal Salvation,” Bishop Ehrler, 1891

See also: Reflections on the end of the world.

 

COMPOSED BY JOHN WILLIAMS, the soundtrack for the movie The Patriot is terrific. I’ve never seen the movie so I’m not making an endorsement, but the music is wonderful — great Thanksgiving weekend fare.

NOTRE DAME, the formerly Catholic university, is under pressure by religious fanatics.

A group of activists so militantly adores the chimera of racial equality, making of non-whites idols instead of human beings, that it wants half of the books in the curriculum to be chosen by purely racial criteria, excluding white authorship.

End Hate at ND (clever name!) states: “Cultural competence is key in building empathy for marginalized folks. No course or program of study should have a view limited to white, western, and/or male voices. We demand that people who are of Color, Indigenous, Black, queer or not male are represented in the authorship of at least half course and major required readings.”

Can you imagine what it’s like in your budding youth, your mind aflame for knowledge, to come across the strident and deadeningly dull imperatives of people who judge the merit of a thinker primarily by the race (or sexual anomalies) he represents? I think it would be much, much better to work in a convenience store.

James Murphy has more about these haters-of-hatred at New American.

It’s not surprising to see this fanaticism at Notre Dame. When Catholic worship became man-centered, a fixation on non-Western man was bound to follow. For human beings naturally crave a God that possesses otherness. Lawrence Auster makes this fascinating point in his book, Our Borders, Ourselves: American in the Age of Multiculturalism.

“THEME AND VARIATIONS on ‘Red River Valley,'” a chamber piece by David Amram, is performed here by the New York Chamber Orchestra.

I hope this beautiful music inspires you on this Thanksgiving Day. I hope it inspires you to love America — and to keep gratitude in your heart for all this country has been given.

Akim Aliu

KIDIST PALOUS ASRAT writes:

You might be hearing about the Calgary Flames head coach’s firing due to anecdotal accusations of “racism.”

Apparently, a “Nigerian Ukrainian” hockey player with a Nigerian Muslim name, Akim Aliu, was yelled at by the coach for listening to hip-hop music in the locker rooms — ten years ago!

Hockey is a fast and furious game. Even the players cannot contain their aggression, and fights on the ice have to be broken up by referees regularly. Coaches have to be equally fierce to reign in their players, on and off ice.

You can see the quote here as recalled by Aliu. Admittedly it was crude, but isn’t that common in locker rooms? The coach, Bill Peters, yelled at the player, but he never called him, Aliu, the “N” word, but rather referred to the music Aliu was listening to with that term (which is used by blacks also sometimes).  It must be disconcerting to these majority white players and coaches to hear this unexpected black culture in their midst. Read More »

“EVERYONE with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass acceptance and mass approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses’ attention and interest. This attitude towards the masses is so exclusive, so devout, that one is reminded of the troglodytic monster described by Plato, and the assiduous crowd at the entrance to its cave, trying obsequiously to placate it and win its favor, trying to interpret its inarticulate noises, trying to find out what it wants, and eagerly offering it all sorts of things that they think might strike its fancy.

“The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one’s doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.”

— Albert Jay Nock, “Isaiah’s Job,” Atlantic Monthly, 1936

PIE LOVERS unite!! Some wish to fetishize pie. Others wish to demonize it. Some say it can only be made with the most precious of ingredients. Others make the claim that store-bought pies, which may be the best we can do at times, are just as good as homemade. Some say it is too fattening. Others say it’s okay to have any time.

Reject extremes. Love pie as the traditional and exceptional delicacy it is, unhealthy to eat every day or often, but so woven into our cultural history that to live entirely without pie is to live as a permanent exile, adrift and cut off from your own civilization with an existential hunger that cannot be satisfied. Pie is soul food, but don’t put it on a pedestal. Please, don’t ever be afraid to make it yourself! Lock yourself in a room with butter, shortening (or lard) and flour if you must. But make it!!

Baking expert Abby Dodge explains in this excellent video how to use the French technique called fraisage to make a flaky pie crust. It’s important to move quickly when doing this so the butter doesn’t get too soft or start to melt from the heat of your hands.

(Note: Wrap dough in wax paper rather than plastic wrap as she suggests.)

A Young Scholar, Jean-Honoré Fragonard

“EVERY AGE is not as good as every other, but all ages are Christian ages, and there is one which for us, and in practice, surpasses them all: our own. In view of it, are our inborn resources, our graces of to-day and to-morrow, and consequently the efforts that we must make in order to correspond with them.

“Let us not be like those people who always seem to be pallbearers at the funeral of the past. Let us utilize, by living, the qualities of the dead. Truth is ever new. Like the grass of morning moist with glistening dew, all the old virtues are waiting to spring up afresh. God does not grow old. We must help our God to renew, not the buried past and the chronicles of a vanished world, but the eternal face of the earth.”

—- A.D. Sertillanges, O.P., The Intellectual Life

By Ferdinand Bernhard Vietz. 1804 Biodiversity Heritage Library

SO MUCH has changed — but not pumpkin pie. The basic recipe, which is essentially pudding in a crust, was used by colonists in Early America. It is very easy to make. There are literally thousands of recipes online, most of them following the basic formula. (I prefer to bake the crust partially before filling and baking again.) The Library of Congress has a history by Ellen Terrell.

And here’s an ode to pumpkin pie by the fiery abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, who writes,

When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before,
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie? Read More »

JFK in Dealey Plaza moments before he was shot on Nov. 22, 1963

ALAN writes:

This essay began as a reminiscence I wrote for my 8^th-grade classmates.

There was grey overcast with light rain in St. Louis on that Friday in November 1963. My classmates and I were seated in our classroom on the second floor of the “new” St. Anthony of Padua school building, just down the street from Behrmann’s Tavern. It was early afternoon when our teacher, Sister Rita Bernard, told us something we never imagined we would hear.

At that same time, my mother was shopping at the Sears-Roebuck department store, less than a mile away. She was on the second floor when she saw people walking over to the area where television sets were on display. So she followed them to find out why so many people were congregating there. That is how she learned that President Kennedy had been shot.

Those who fawned over the Kennedy Family and those who demonized them left me equally unimpressed. Had I been old enough in those years to understand such things, I would have opposed certain ideas and policies promoted by the Kennedy administration. But that does not alter the horror of that weekend or its effect on American life. Regardless of one’s estimate of John Kennedy, his family, or his administration, a political murder had been committed, in response to which the federal government staged a pretend “investigation” and the “independent, watchdog press” revealed an astounding degree of incuriosity. Read More »

Just Moved, Henry Mosler

FOR BETTER OR WORSE, much of this practical advice from a 19th-century housewife is outdated, but the spirit of frugality and domestic care it represents remain as important as ever.

IF you would avoid waste in your family, attend to the following rules, and do not despise them because they appear so unimportant: ‘many a little makes a mickle.’

ROGER DEVLIN has written a piece about Our Borders, Ourselves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism by the late Lawrence Auster. You can find it at VDare.

Devlin’s thoughtful summary of the book is well worth reading. (One correction: There were small publishers interested in this book. Their ideological positions were too incompatible with Mr. Auster’s.)

Revolutionary regimes define themselves by endlessly demonizing the regime they have deposed. Under its Communist government, China used to stage lavish theatrical productions in which the stock figure of the piggish capitalist landlord served as a hate object that legitimized the regime. The landlords played this important symbolic role even though they no longer existed, having all been exterminated. In a similar fashion, we can expect that multicultural America will continue to demonize the white man and his works long after whites have been pushed aside.

— Lawrence Auster, Our Borders, Ourselves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism

Clifford Hugh Douglas

“I AM fairly confident that the persecution which was the lot of Christianity in its earliest years was by no means because it was concerned with something purely transcendental— something that we call the world to come. Taking the merely material implications in it, I have little doubt that what was recognised and persecuted in early Christianity was the economic implications of its philosophy. Only when Christianity became, as it did, purely transcendentalist, was it felt to be fairly respectable and fairly safe.”

— C.H. Douglas

I’VE never been to the Dahlia Bakery in Seattle, but I have the cookbook produced by Tom Douglas, the owner. The recipes are mostly versions of traditional American cakes, pies and cookies — and the ones I have tried are all very good.

The recipe for Hot Buttered Rum Apple Pie is especially good and it is a great option for Thanksgiving. You can find it online here. This is one of the best recipes I have ever made.

This recipe is definitely more work than ordinary apple pies. The apples are cooked ahead of time on top of the stove in two separate pans so it not only takes more time, it creates more dirty dishes. The crust calls for pastry flour and all-purpose flour. “Cake flour” is basically the same thing. If you use lard instead of the shortening called for in the recipe, the crust will be even better tasting, but this is already a very rich pie and it obviously will not be healthier to use lard.

Making pies can be frustrating. The recipe is often not an accurate guide to how much water you should use in the crust. The dough should be wet enough to come together throughout while remaining just on the verge of crumbling apart. It should not be so wet that it becomes a solid chunk. The flakiness depends on the right quantity of water and how much you handle the dough.

Don’t worry, it only takes about 30 years to become expert at it. The more you do it, the better you get.

By the way, you can make this pie without the final baking and put it in the freezer so that all you have to do on Thanksgiving is take it out and put it directly in the oven. I have found that freezing fruit pies ahead of time makes them even better. Make sure you wrap the pie in freezer paper so the pastry does not pick up odors in the freezer.

The Repentant Mary Magdalene, Domenico Fetti; 1617

“A COMPREHENSIVE Examination of Conscience based on Twelve Virtues” by Rev. Donald F. Miller C.SS.R, is a very helpful and systematic list of mortal and venial sins, along with reflections and prayers.

It’s not easy to get to heaven. But it sure beats the alternative.

Please read the introduction first. (There’s an especial warning there for people who are scrupulous and doubt God’s mercy and love. Those who fall into despair or obsessive regret over their sins are lacking in confidence in God.)

THE often-reported increase in bullying by children, especially on social media, is connected to their sexualization at an early age. Pauly Fongemie makes this brilliant observation in a 2014 article titled “Empathy: the Destruction of the Latency Period in Children and the Rise of Bullying.”

Fongemie contends exposure to sexual topics — the sort of exposure that is common in most schools today — “short-circuits” development of the higher faculties in a child, particularly the faculty of empathy. Children cannot easily grow in compassion and understanding of others when their attention is diverted to sex:

A lack of empathy or a reduced sense of compassion is always accompanied by a loss of innocence that is magnified by sexualization, even prior to engaging in acts that belong only in marriage.

Those well-meaning professionals who want to see an end to bullying, for instance, will cite the social media, etc. Rather than the cause, these communication outlets are more easily used to corrupt because a priori the lack of a good conscience is already absent or so malformed, that the person is predisposed to play the bully. Social media makes bullying more enticing and available, but it is not the cause in of itself. The focus on “sex education” between the years of 7 and 12, rather than defuse childhood sensuality and its perils, stirs them up because at this age the child is only starting to develop competence and self-mastery which includes conscience and empathy.  [emphasis added]

Adults wonder at the rise of feral behavior and expect children to be civilized and kind to their peers. At the same time, they think nothing of children being exposed to loud, sexually explicit songs in every retail store. Read More »