Virginia Clemm Poe; Thomas Sully

IN 1835, at the age of 27, Edgar Allan Poe, who was orphaned as a toddler, married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. The author was devoted to her. Seven years later, she became seriously ill with tuberculosis, and was ill for five more years before her death in 1847.

Poe, a heavy drinker, never found lasting love after his wife’s death but had many romantic friendships with women.

Barbara Wells Sarudy at It’s About Time tells the story of Poe’s love life with portrait paintings. Read More »

LIFE has been overwhelming the last few days. So I haven’t blogged for good reason.

Our 28-year-old older son got engaged to be married on Saturday. We knew of his proposal — and probable acceptance — in advance and had planned a big party for about 60 guests. On Friday night, while we were running around preparing for the party, I got on a step stool to get some light bulbs stored high up on top of a cabinet. Something went wrong — not quite sure — and I flew off the stool and landed on the floor on my left wrist, which broke. After a couple of hours in the emergency room and no sleep due to pain, I returned to party preparations on Saturday, with help. Somehow it all came off. It was a happy event with eating, drinking, gabbing, singing to the piano and children running around in the dark playing hide-and-seek. Things would have been better if I had two hands to use and wasn’t feeling lousy, but many guests offered help and my sister washed a lot of dishes. We only wished my parents could have been there. They are both ailing and my mother is in the hospital.

We are very fond of our future daughter-in-law, who is beautiful, both inside and out; I think it was okay to have broken a limb on her behalf.

A word of advice: Do not get on stools or ladders when preparing for parties. The nurses in the emergency room said they see injuries like this all the time.

Baby in a Chair, 1825

ALMOST all of us at some point believe — or act as if we believe — that we can hide from God. It’s as if we think or assume that God has other things to do than be with us. Seven billion people, and many more in production — God couldn’t have time to focus on everyone. We assume God’s indifference or distraction. He doesn’t really see us. He doesn’t really know what we just thought or said. We look at the throngs on city streets, the seas of traffic, the soaring population statistics and we think, “He couldn’t care about us all. What an absurd idea.”

When we go about ordinary life as if God were not aware of every single thing we do, we are hiding from God — but out in the open. Did you ever play hide-and-seek with a little child who thought that he could not be seen when he closed his eyes? Hiding from God is sort of like that. We think that because we are oblivious or blind to God’s presence, He cannot see us.

But He can. God is everywhere, closer to each one of us than anyone else. He is within us and without. He is not constrained by time or number or space. His attention span is infinite. Add a few more billion of his creatures, he would fit each one in. He knows everything: our thoughts, our actions, our intentions, our successes, our failures. There is nowhere in the world where we can go and hide from Him. He is the most benevolent and loving of spies. He is our Father.

So much of what Jesus said makes no sense unless He is with us, each one of us, constantly. For instance when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” who knows whether someone is poor in spirit if not Jesus Himself?

When a person goes about as if God were not aware of every single thing he does — and we have all done it — he is trying to hide from God. He is attempting the impossible.

We cannot hide from Him, and once we realize this truth, and truly take it in, we have uncovered one of the greatest secrets of existence and the foundation of a happy (in the non-sentimental sense of the word) life. Come out in the open. You are known.

You are known by Someone with high expectations.

I was recently hiking in the New Hampshire mountains with my husband when we came to a waterfall, a plunging precipice situated above two smaller falls. A little girl of about eight years old had somehow jumped across the rocks in the pool below the first waterfall and ended up stranded on the other side, too frightened to go back. She was part of a large Orthodox Jewish family and everyone was caught up in rescuing her (except the mother, who walked away nearly in tears and said, “I can’t watch this” and a few of her older brothers who took advantage of the emergency to play unsupervised.)

The father was confidently and calmly leading the rescue. He went over to the other side and was showing the girl how to step back over the pool via the rocks. All the time, the father had a baby boy of about eight months strapped to his back. The baby was back-to-back with his father. He was facing outward, looking up at the sky and trees. As the water was roaring around them and the father was coaxing his daughter over the wet rocks, the baby’s lids grew heavy. He had been chewing on something, but the movements of his jaws slowed. As the father stepped over the rocks, inches away from possible disaster, and held out his hands for his daughter to jump toward him, the baby opened his mouth one more time — and then fell asleep. He just conked out. It was as if he were a tired commuter on a train at the end of a long day. He was oblivious to danger on the slippery rocks or in the deep water below. It would have been comical if the situation had not been so alarming.

That’s how we should be — like the sleeping baby, who knew his father was there even though he could not see him. We can no more hide from God than a baby can hide from his loving parents. God sees us. He knows us. He watches us. We should strive to be aware of His presence as a baby who relies on his parents for everything is aware of their presence. We should pause frequently — and notice Him, converse with Him, admire Him.

And we should know that it is precisely because of His presence that all danger is ultimately not true danger if we trust in Him, just as all was well for that little girl, who finally walked through the pool (instead of on the rocks), and for her brother, who slept while dangling over rushing water.

There is only one true danger on the slippery precipices that we encounter in life  — and that is forgetting the presence of the Father who loves us, who sees us every single moment of the day and from whom we can never hide. Read More »

ALAN writes:

“When I was seventeen, it was a very good year,” Frank Sinatra sang in the best song in his classic 1965 album “September of My Years.”

It dawned on me one day recently while sorting through old papers and letters that fifty years have now gone by since I acquired those things.

When I was seventeen, in 1967, it was indeed a very good year in some ways. Merely to be young and alive was cause for celebration. I was a spoiled brat but didn’t know it. It was hard to tell because there were millions of others like me. I found I was part of a species unknown in world history until Americans invented it only a few decades earlier: The Teenager. I lived in a limbo state between childhood and adulthood. I hated it.

The older generation did not see it quite that way: They looked upon the younger generation as beneficiaries of the highest material standards of living in history.  That judgment was valid, but it was only half the picture. The other half was the moral-philosophical framework whose transmission to the younger generation is the perennial responsibility of the elder, but at which (to put it charitably) the elder generation in the 1950s-‘60s did not excel.

I had no awareness of such things in 1967, or that a cultural revolution was going on. Current events were too vivid and I was too young to be able to evaluate them properly.

So as I look back fifty years, what do I see?  Is life today better than it was in 1967? How could anyone doubt it?  Americans today have bigger TV screens and bigger, faster, and louder motor vehicles. Isn’t that proof? Read More »

Conductor Matthew Halls

CONDUCTOR Matthew Halls was fired from the Oregon Bach Festival when he amiably joked with a black singer in a Southern accent.

Desire to Return writes:

The woman who created this bizarre situation probably thinks of this as a defining moment of her life, the time she stood up to the evil racists. Reporting Halls to the authorities was, for her, most likely, a means of asserting personal power in an increasingly impersonal society.  Getting Halls canned might have been one of the few times in her life where she felt real efficacy.

Of course, that’s all speculation. She could just as easily be a person who has done this sort of thing repeatedly, a person addicted to the frisson of righteous indignation springing from accusing the guilty and seeing them punished. For all we know, this woman is a decorated veteran in the war to stamp out dangerous jokes. Read More »

TEN YEARS ago, Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson said the official version of 9/11 is a lie. Why aren’t more Catholic priests speaking up? Wherever objective truth is under attack, “man is trying to take the place of God.” This is an excellent sermon. Bishop Williamson links the denial of the physical realities of the World Trade Center attacks to the general denial of truth by modernists in the Church and in the world at large.

A READER sent this reminiscence of the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926:

When my Dad was little, the family moved to Coral Gables one week before the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926.  He had just celebrated his seventh birthday on September 10 on the boat that brought them. George Merrick hired my grandfather, a civil engineer, to oversee the building of the roads and bridges of the first planned city. While in the eye, the landlord asked my grandfather to help him repair the roof.  It wasn’t long before the ladder had blown away and  my poor grandmother thought my grandfather had, too.  She had sheets of water pouring into the house and two kids burning up with scarlet fever.  Read More »

SEE statements at Patriots Question 9/11 by military officers who have publicly spoken out against the official version of 9/11, including Lt. Col. Guy S. Razer, MS, who said in 2007:

“After 4+ years of research since retirement in 2002, I am 100% convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned, organized, and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government.  It is now time to take our country back.

The “collapse” of WTC Building 7 shows beyond any doubt that the demolitions were pre-planned.  There is simply no way to demolish a 47-story building (on fire) over a coffee break.  It is also impossible to report the building’s collapse before it happened, as BBC News did, unless it was pre-planned.  Further damning evidence is Larry Silverstein’s video taped confessionin which he states “they made that decision to pull [WTC 7] and we watched the building collapse.” [Editor’s note: WTC Building 7 was 610 feet tall, 47 stories.  It would have been the tallest building in 33 states.  Although it was not hit by an airplane, it completely collapsed into a pile of rubble in less than 7 seconds at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11, seven hours after the collapses of the Twin Towers.  However, no mention of its collapse appears in the 9/11 Commission’s “full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.”  Watch the collapse video here.  And six years after 9/11, the Federal government has yet to publish its promised final report that explains the cause of its collapse.]

We cannot let the pursuit of justice fail.  Those of us in the military took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”.  Just because we have retired does not make that oath invalid, so it is not just our responsibility, it is our duty to expose the real perpetrators of 9/11 and bring them to justice, no matter how hard it is, how long it takes, or how much we have to suffer to do it.

We owe it to those who have gone before us who executed that same oath, and who are doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan right now.  Those of us who joined the military and faithfully executed orders that were given us had to trust our leaders.  The violation and abuse of that trust is not only heinous, but ultimately the most accurate definition of treason!”

LET’S HONOR the dead of 9/11 today on the 16th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks — not just those who died on that devastating day but the hundreds of thousands who have perished in the resulting carnage. Let’s honor them now and in the days ahead by speaking up for three things:

1. The return of our troops home, and a close to the fraudulent War on Terror

2. The end of the National Security State and its massive, unconstitutional security measures since 9/11

3. Criminal charges against the true perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Center and their accomplices.

Come home, America. Come home to sanity and peace.

The war machine is Goliath, we are David. But lies are inherently weak and the truth is strong.

Ashley Edens’ husband, Spc. Jason Edens, was killed in Afghanistan in 2012

Mike King of The Anti-New York Times summarizes the fruits of 9/11:

“1. The War in Afghanistan: – still ongoing! — 2500 dead Americans, 20,000 injured / Afghanis: 300,000 indirect and direct deaths

2. Iraq War II: 5000 dead Americans, 31,000 injured / Iraqis: 1,000,000 indirect and direct deaths

3. Libya: Libya under Qaddafi was a stable country and an obstacle to migrant invasions into Europe. Now it is ruined, destabilized, and open to Africans making their way to boats, docked at the Libyan shore, destined for Italy / EU.

4. Syria: 100’s of 1000’s dead, cities in ruins, Women taken hostage and held as sex slaves by “ISIS.” President Assad was finally saved by Putin and Iran.

5. The Surveillance State: Americans now accept the monitoring of their personal activities and information — without a warrant — as “the new normal.”

6. Homeland Security / TSA Abuse: Americans now accept improper bodily searches & illegal seizure of possessions at the airport as “the new normal.”

7. $6 Trillion Wasted: The staggering direct costs of the wars which grew out of 9/11 were effectively added to National Debt and now accruing permanent interest costs.

8. $700 Billion Military: The regular military budget before 9/11 was $300 Billion. It now stands at $700 Billion.

9. Dead and Dying First Responders: New York City firemen, policemen, EMT’s and other “first responders” to the 9/11 attacks have a 25% higher rate of cancer than others who were not at the site. Hundreds have died, thousands are ill, and new cases are still being diagnosed every month.

10. Desensitization to War and Death: Prior to 9/11, all past wars and military operations required a mass propaganda sales job in order for the American people to line up behind the government. Ever since 9/11, US Presidents, in the name of “national security” TM, have been able to decree and do whatever they want militarily, without having to “sell” the mission-of-the-day to the desensitized public.”

I would add one more thing: The participation of ordinary Americans in lies, undermining their consciences and probity.

jamesperloff.com

Come home, America. If your roots are at all in rebellion against tyranny then the cause of 9/11 truth should command your attention. In his book, The War on Terror: The Plot to Rule the Middle East, Christopher Bollyn writes on the parties to treason:

It needs to be made crystal clear that the controlled media, which is complicit in the 9/11 cover-up, has shown that it is part of a criminal conspiracy by going on the offensive against the 9/11 truth movement. The truth movement is, after all, comprised of responsible, courageous, and patriotic citizens who stand by the sensible and logical demand to see the evidence before assigning blame and rushing to war. The people in the 9/11 truth movement have no reason to be ashamed, while those in the government and media who have supported the criminal cover-up of 9/11 are guilty of no less than treason.

Treason is specifically defined in the U.S. Constitution: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

“Levying War” is defined as:

The Assembling of a body of men for the purpose of effecting by force a treasonable object; and all who perform any part, however minute, or however remote from the scene of action, and who are leagued in the general conspiracy, are considered as engaged in levying war, within the meaning of the constitution. — A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States, John Bouvier (1856)

The U.S. Government declared the 9/11 attacks to be “an act of war,” which means the people “who are leagued in the  general conspiracy” have engage din levying War against the United States.

Those not familiar with the main reasons why the official account of 9/11 cannot be true can find lots of information at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. This article by David Ray Griffin, a retired professor of religion and one of the earliest and most prolific authors on the subject, is also a good place to start. See also Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, especially its Toronto Hearings.

THIS IS Lynn Yaeger, one of America’s most influential fashion experts.

Bad is good, false is true and ugly is beautiful in mentally ill America. Below is a photo of Catherine McManus, the Vogue fashion editor in 1950, when Catholic ideals of womanly dignity remained, mostly a superficial level, in American culture. The deeper principles had long since been lost, laying the foundation for the current Age of  Freaks.

Read More »

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AN INTERESTING POST from The National Weather Service on the 1928 Hurricane, in which 372 people died:

By September, 1926, the population of Dade County and the young City of Miami had blossomed to well over 100,000 (more than doubling from the census figure of 42,753 in 1920) and construction was everywhere.  Smaller nearby settlements of Lemon City, Cocoanut Grove, and Little River were absorbed as Miami swelled with new residents; optimistic, speculative, and woefully under-educated about hurricanes.  New buildings were constantly starting on Miami Beach, which had been built across Biscayne Bay on a series of barrier islands, bulldozed from their mangrove beginnings.

[…]

In those days, storm warnings were centralized in Washington, DC, and disseminated to field offices like Miami.  However, as late as the morning of September 17, less than 24 hours before the category 4 storm’s effects would begin in South Florida, no warnings had been issued.  At noon, the Miami Weather Bureau Office was authorized to post storm warnings (one step below hurricane, or winds of 48 to 55 knots).  It was only as the barometer began a precipitous fall, around 11 PM the night of September 17, that Gray hoisted hurricane warnings.

The story of what happened over the next 12 hours is best told by those who lived through it at the Weather Bureau Office. Click on the links below to read the official record written by Official-in-Charge Richard Gray of the Miami Weather Bureau Office.

Weather Bureau Record Part 1
Weather Bureau Record Part 2
Weather Bureau Record Part 3

Gray describes the moments on September 18 when the eye of the Hurricane passed through Miami and many people, assuming the storm was over, left shelter only to be caught up in the devastating winds a short time later.

People even began returning to the mainland from Miami Beach.  The lull lasted only about 35 minutes, according to Gray, during which the streets became “crowded with people”.  The worst part of the hurricane, with onshore southeasterly winds bringing a 10 foot storm surge onto Miami Beach and the barrier islands, began around 7 AM and continued the rest of the morning.  At the height of the storm surge, the water from the Atlantic extended all the way across Miami Beach and Biscayne Bay into the City of Miami for several city blocks.

Coloman Helmschmid and Agnes Breu, Jorg Breu the Elder; 1505

FROM a 2008 article by Michael J. Rayes:

Once upon a time, Boyfriend and Girlfriend had a lot of fun together. Their time together was filled with mutual activities that were fun for them both. Girlfriend looked up to Boyfriend, and Boyfriend thought Girlfriend was a lot of fun. So they got married and became Husband and Wife.

Now, Husband and Wife spend time together bickering about the bills. They don’t spend a lot of time with each other, but when they are together, they only talk about what is stressful because they have responsibilities. Husband tells Wife what she isn’t doing right. Wife nags Husband about all the things he should be doing. When they want to have fun, they do it with “the guys” or “the gals” or they go off alone for “alone time.”

Boyfriend and Girlfriend liked each other and then they fell in love. Husband and Wife love each other, but they don’t like each other. They didn’t fall out of love, but they fell out of like.

Men and women form emotional attachments to members of the opposite sex with whom they spend enjoyable time together.[11] In other words, your tennis partner should be your spouse, not someone else. As the Catholic psychologist Rudolph Allers put it,”Marriage is life companionship. Therefore an education for marriage is an education for companionship in general.”[12]

It is ludicrous to divorce someone you really enjoy being with. No one ever says, “We really liked each other, so we divorced.” Find a mutually agreeable hobby or activity and enjoy it together. Think about it: you have some form of legitimate and wholesome escape that you rely on to mitigate the stress of life. A problem may be that the recreational escape is done alone, without nurturing the marriage. For all practical purposes, this means that Husband and Wife only spend stressful time together. Fun time is spent away from the spouse.

Change your recreational habits and come to a mutual understanding of each other through a rewarding activity. You’ll rediscover your spouse and will be well on your way to reawakening the love and respect your marriage once enjoyed.

IF ignorance was not considered a virtue and thinking was not obsolete, this would be a highly revealing post to many Americans.

I WAS IN a hospital emergency room today with my mother (it’s been a busy week) when a young woman came walking out of the triage room. She was wearing a tank top, slacks and a backpack. She was obviously there for some medical reason.

The arresting thing was, her arms and neck were covered with large, scribbly, black tattoos. It was as if a child had taken a black marker and scribbled all over her or a graffiti “artist” had used her as a canvas. Even in this age of tattoos, it was shocking how disfigured this young woman was. If she was there because of her tattoos, undergoing an emergency tattoo-removal by a concerned physician, that would seem right. But she was apparently there for some involuntary disorder and people were just acting as if it was all perfectly normal.

She reminded me of another woman I saw recently in a very different setting, on a beautiful lake beach in New Hampshire. She was about 20. Her hair was dyed black, she was wearing black-red lipstick and a black tank top. Her body also was covered with black tattoos. One of her arms was entirely blackened. It appeared to be an ink sleeve. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. All in all, she looked like a restless spirit who had risen up from the nether world to haunt children in the sand and rob them of their innocence.

When I returned home from the hospital (my mother is fortunately doing much better), I found a note from this blogger, Desire to Return, recommending his post on woman and tattoos. He writes:

These days, it’s rare to see a young woman in public who doesn’t have some ink on display, or who hasn’t added some metal adornment to her face via an additional hole.

I’m not crazy about tattoos on men either. But, they’re worse on women. Tattoos suggest toughness, pain, grittiness. However bad tattoos look on men they at least emphasize traits that are not at odds with the central nature of the masculine.

Not so with tattoos on women. A woman with a tattoo is declaring herself to be at odds with the essential nature of her own femininity. She has marked herself with a sign that says, “Look at me! I’m hard!”  The decoration on her skin suggests a distortion in her soul. It suggests that she does not see feminine modesty, elegance and reserve as valuable or worth cultivating. Read More »

POPE PIUS XII strongly warned against the dangers of television for children in 1957. It’s hard to imagine how deep his alarm would be today.

May God give us a true pope soon to protect childhood innocence from the pedophile in the livingroom — pornographic, predatory TV.

FROM OATHKEEPERS last Friday:

Let this sink in for a minute…Hundreds and hundreds of small boats pulled by countless pickups and SUVs from across the South are headed for Houston. Almost all of them driven by men. They’re using their own property, sacrificing their own time, spending their own money, and risking their own lives for one reason: to help total strangers in desperate need.

Most of them are by themselves. Most are dressed like the redneck duck hunters and bass fisherman they are. Many are veterans. Most are wearing well-used gimme-hats, t-shirts, and jeans; and there’s a preponderance of camo. Most are probably gun owners, and most probably voted for Trump.

These are the people the Left loves to hate, the ones Maddow mocks. The ones Maher and Olbermann just know they’re so much better than.

These are The Quiet Ones. They don’t wear masks and tear down statues. They don’t, as a rule, march and demonstrate. And most have probably never been in a Whole Foods.

But they’ll spend the next several days wading in cold, dirty water; dodging gators and water moccasins and fire ants; eating whatever meager rations are available; and sleeping wherever they can in dirty, damp clothes. Their reward is the tears and the hugs and the smiles from the terrified people they help. They’ll deliver one boatload, and then go back for more.

When disaster strikes, it’s what men do. Real men. Heroic men. American men. And then they’ll knock back a few shots, or a few beers with like-minded men they’ve never met before, and talk about fish, or ten-point bucks, or the benefits of hollow-point ammo, or their F-150.

And the next time they hear someone talk about “the patriarchy”, or “male privilege”, they’ll snort, turn off the TV and go to bed.

In the meantime, they’ll likely be up again before dawn. To do it again. Until the helpless are rescued. And the work’s done.