HERE is a wonderful painting, Vegetable Market in Amsterdam (c. 1661-1662) by the Dutch painter Gabrielle Metsu. It reminds me of a passage in Virginia Woolf’s feminist lecture series, A Room of One’s Own. While describing her meal in the dining hall of a women’s college, a meal which is greatly inferior to the glorious repast at a nearby men’s college, Woolf writes:

Dinner was being served in the great dining-hall. Far from being spring it was in fact an evening in October. Everybody was assembled in the big dining-room. Dinner was ready. Here was the soup. It was a plain gravy soup. There was nothing to stir the fancy in that. One could have seen through the transparent liquid any pattern that there might have been on the plate itself. But there was no pattern. The plate was plain. Next came beef with its attendant greens and potatoes — a homely trinity, suggesting the rumps of cattle in a muddy market, and sprouts curled and yellowed at the edge, and bargaining and cheapening and women with string bags on Monday morning.

Notice that to Woolf, marketing is “cheapening.” This painting suggests that marketing, even at its lowest, can be elevating. The women to the left in the canvas do seem to be cheapened by the experience of bargaining, assuming that is what they are engaged in at the moment. But the woman to the right possesses a calm and tranquility that transcends her surroundings. She seems untouched by the argument and the disorder. And that is because of her inner qualities, the artist suggests. Furthermore, the rooster and the cabbage leaves and the overarching tree make this excursion to buy food an encounter with nature in the middle of the city. It is a merging of country and city so that one imagines the woman returning to her city dwelling with the earth and the fields and the open skies clinging to her cabbage and onions. In comparison, the rummaging among words that must have filled the days of an intellectual like Woolf seems cheapening.

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  PAUL T. writes: From the Toronto-based National Post, regarding a decision of the Vancouver [British Columbia] school board: "...the school board forged ahead, even deciding to adopt new pronouns for those who would rather pick no gender at all. A last-minute amendment mandated that “xe, xem and xyr” may be used in place of “he/she” or “him/her.” These are “sex-neutral third-person” terms used to repair the failure of the English language to allow for 21st century gender sensitivities...In addition to new pronouns, the Vancouver board also goes to considerable length to protect “privacy,” including, it would seem, keeping the student’s chosen new gender a secret from his/her or xyr parents." The right to self-definition being, as we know, sacred, it seems to me that a student should also be allowed to choose 'all of the above' and thereby be all-gendered, and that the use of the terms "thlee, thlem and thlyr" should therefore be insisted upon. Other possibilities may be thought of and proposed, in hopes that the system will collapse through its own unworkability and absurdity.

SHEILA writes:

Just thought of you and your posts about parenting when reading this at The Daily Mail. Here we have an American-born “British” mother and husband who blithely take their three year-old daughter to sea for the first phase of a planned three-year trip around the world, and they are shocked to discover that the “lack of routine, unpredictability of sailing, and inability to have control over daily events” would leave their daughter angry and defiant (note she doesn’t mention confused or frightened, which the child obviously was).

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DON VINCENZO writes:

IT’S not surprising that the newspaper that promotes sodomy and abortion views motherhood as a form of mental illness. A two-part series (here and here) in The New York Times looks at maternal mental illness and suggests that more women seek professional treatment and that the government screen new or pregnant mothers for “depression.” In New Jersey, screening of mothers for post partum mental illness is already mandatory.

According to Pam Belluck, motherhood is amenable to scientific and political control.

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FATHER’S DAY brings to mind a father whom I never knew but who nevertheless had a major influence on my life. My father-in-law, Frank Wood, was dead — and had been dead for ten years — by the time I married my husband 27 years ago.

Though I never met my father-in-law, it’s not as if I don’t know him. I think I know him pretty well and if he walked in the front door today, I would probably recognize him and know exactly what to offer him to eat and drink. However, I don’t think he would walk in the door if he were alive. He was a man bound to his home and his neighborhood for all but two weeks of the year.

I have a vivid image of him, sitting at the kitchen table on a Sunday evening, having spent a weekend of leisure both at home and at the Eagle Club nearby, and announcing to the assembled at dinner, “Well, the ball game’s over now.” He has told his last story and retold his last joke. He has read his last detective story and flipped the pages of his last adventure magazine. He is approaching his final bites of “rope beef.” Those words on Sunday night signaled that his extended time at home was over and the new week, when he would return to the shipyard where he worked as a machinist, had begun.

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THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

I would like to second Alan’s comment concerning taverns and bars. Another word for a tavern or bar is “public house,” which Englishmen shortened to “pub,” probably in the eighteenth century. The un-foreshortened form tells us something important: A tavern or bar is a meeting-place of the local people, mainly the adult men, but it is not a public facility in the same way that a city park is or the public roads are. It is a private affair, run partly for profit, and partly for the pleasure of it, by its “publican”; it admits is customers by discretion and reserves the right not to serve them. It serves them by offering refreshment, but also and perhaps more importantly, by being the forum of informal but serious conversation. The pub brings men together informally in a face-to-face way that fosters friendship, heightens the sense of community, and makes way for frankness by excluding women.  Women might be present in a pub, but it is usually as waitresses. The job of the waitress is to know the customer and to add the charm of femininity to the environment decoratively and without obtruding it.

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BARON BODISSEY at The Gates of Vienna reports:

A Muslim imam invited to participate in last weekend’s “prayer for peace” event at the Vatican went off-script and asked Allah to help him gain victory over the unbelievers. To Counterjihad activists this news is no big surprise. Anyone who has delved into Islamic theology and liturgical practice knows that Muslims always insert a call for Allah to defeat the infidel into their prayers. It’s as much a part of praying as “Amen” is to a Christian.

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EDDIE writes:

A very good day to you and greetings from Malaysia. I am seeking your advice on my problems with my wife who is turning cold towards me. I am 59 years of age and my wife is 54.

My problem started two years ago after my hip replacement surgery. Before I went in for the operation I was earning a good income and my contract was not renewed due to my disability now as my left leg is shorter then the right. You see, in Malaysia the disabled are a disadvantaged group. Coming back to my wife, she started to be cold towards me after I lost my job as she has to bear with the household expenses. (more…)

IN THIS previous entry, I discussed a few of the ways in which suburban life seems to lack an organic quality and has the feel of a thing artificially created. To expand a bit on this point, below is a long quote from E. Michael Jones’s book The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing, in which he discusses the role of the federal government in clearing cheap housing in the cities, in this case Philadelphia, and destroying cohesive residential pockets in which various groups — the Irish, Italians, Poles, blacks — once lived both separate and close to one another. On September 1, 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the United States Housing Act, which gave the federal government, acting in concert with local housing authorities, the authority to clear “slums,” which often included dwellings owned, not rented, by their inhabitants, and to provide low-rent housing in its place. The creation of public housing is similar in many ways to the story of Obamacare and so many other instances of the expansion of state power in the name of freeing the people from want. In the end it was decided by an assertion of “raw judicial power.”

The constitutionality of the government’s entry into the housing market was challenged almost immediately, but on June 30, 1938, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania handed down its decision in favor of the PHA [Philadelphia Housing Authority]. (more…)

ALL Catholics are enjoined to pray for Muslims and Jews. But praying with Muslims and Jews is strictly forbidden and quite impossible given their false beliefs and rejection of God’s Revelation and the Divinity of Christ. Antipope Francis’s ecumenical prayer service today with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Vatican Garden (see more here) is yet another act of apostasy by this deceiver and killer of souls.  This terrible act takes place on Pentecost Sunday, the day when we commemorate the descent of the Holy Ghost, an event which Jews and Muslims utterly deny. Instead, this service represents an anti-Pentecost and the descent of an evil spirit on the Vatican. While the Holy Ghost enlightened the Apostles after Christ’s departure, this evil spirit blinds its followers and propagates lies, particularly the lie that such a prayer service will bring “peace.” It will bring no peace to the world. It can only bring disharmony and woe, as it signals surrender to the organized enemies of the Church.

However, this is really a prayer service with no Catholic present among its three major participants. It isn’t so ecumenical after all. At Christ or Chaos, Thomas Droleskey writes:

The apostates who occupy the Vatican at this time have now welcomed into the Vatican Garden itself the very people who were defeated by Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary in the Battle of Lepanto and at the Gates of Vienna on September 12, 1683. What was unthinkable has become commonplace. What is blasphemous is applauded by Catholics and non-Catholics alike as advancing “peace.”

If you do not want to see this for it is, I am afraid that you will never do so. (more…)

DOUGLAS writes:

While I was exiting my building at the end of the workday yesterday, I saw this sign on the door. I went back in the building and saw these signs posted on all the bathroom doors and all the exit doors. I retired from the military in 2000. Despite Clinton’s best attempts, he did not get close to the destruction this anti-American president has caused. It sickens me. I can’t even bring myself to say the pledge of allegiance or stand for the National Anthem. I am leaving my good job with the government because I can no longer work in support of something that disgusts me.

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  KARL D. writes: As I am sure you know, today is the remembrance and 70th anniversary of the D-Day landing in Normandy. In keeping with the dumbing down and the never ending march of pop culture, this year's remembrance of that solemn day included a troupe of dancers, actors and singers in an event more akin to the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. After all, we must always be entertained, mustn’t we? I understand military singers singing certain hymns or the national anthem and songs. I can even understand re-enactments to a certain degree. But this is just too much.

THE American suburbs include many lovely, leafy communities that are ideal in many ways for family life. With organized activities for children, backyards for playing, abundant schools, safe streets, and businesses that cater to families, the suburbs are highly welcoming to couples raising children. The fact that most families, given the choice, do prefer the suburbs is further evidence that they are.

However, despite these amenities and the enormous population shift to the suburbs in the 20th century, which was in many ways orchestrated by social engineers, the overall landscape of family life in the suburbs is not so rosy. In many ways, the suburbs — admittedly a general term that encompasses various types of communities without the density of the cities — are inimical to family formation. They are not truly designed with the interests of families in mind. The low birthrate and poorer health of the family attest to this.

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READ the fascinating story of Bella Dodd, who was a member of the Communist Party of America in the 1930s and 1940s and later became an outspoken anti-Communist and Catholic here. An excerpt from the article by Eleonore Villarrubia follows:

In 1950, Bella was called before the Tydings Committee of the United States Senate to testify as to whether or not she knew Owen Lattimore, who had been accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy of being a Soviet agent within the American government. She had not known Lattimore and as far as she knew, he was not a member of the American Communist Party. She stated those facts; however, as she thought about the duplicity of the Party and how it had deceived her and thousands of others, she found herself revealing those facts as well. It was the first time that she had spoken out publicly against the Party. She began to see how the Russians had used the Spanish Civil War as a preview of the Red Revolution to come in western countries; she thought of the Koreans killing each other in the name of Communism and the Americans dying in the cause; she saw how the godless Communists used well-meaning Americans against their own country. (more…)

  GALLIAWATCH has posted an interview with Marine Le Pen, of the Front National Party, which has changed the landscape of French politics with its recent election victories. In the interview, Le Pen states: The EU is deeply harmful, it is an anti-democratic monster. I want to prevent it from becoming fatter, from continuing to breathe, from grabbing everything with its paws and from extending its tentacles into all areas of our legislation. In our glorious history, millions have died to ensure that our country remains free. Today, we are simply allowing our right to self-determination to be stolen from us.