THE discussion of obituaries in an age of divorce and egregious narcissism continues. It’s a fascinating subject. I’ve always thought kindergarten teachers and police detectives know more about basic human nature than most people. Now, I believe those who put together obituaries in the local newspapers do too. In the latest entry, Alexandra, a former obituary journalist, tells of the confusion that resulted when a deceased man’s two families could not agree on a single obituary.

Thus, the next day featured two obituaries of the same man, one by his second wife and her children, one by his first wife and her children. Their accounts were radically different. Each left out the other spouse and children. Who knows which came closer to the truth of the gentleman’s beliefs and values? I was appalled by the spectacle, and it reminded me that the carnage of divorce doesn’t heal itself. (The second marriage had lasted for 25 years.) The consequences go on and on, without end.

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THE average life span of American white women without college degrees has fallen by a stunning four years in just two decades, according to researchers. (The life expectancy for blacks and Hispanics at the same level rose although blacks continue to have a shorter life span.) For those without a high school degree, it has fallen by five years.

According to The New York Times,

The five-year decline for white women rivals the catastrophic seven-year drop for Russian men in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, said Michael Marmot, director of the Institute of Health Equity in London.

Could it be that white women on the bottom rungs exist in a moral and physical wasteland? Just asking.

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CHICK-fil-A has refuted claims by Chicago politicians that its charitable foundation will stop giving donations to organizations that oppose same-sex “marriage.” However, the organization also made it emphatically clear that it takes no position as an institution against same-sex “marriage.”

“Our intent is not to support political or social agendas,” a company statement released yesterday said.

So much for the company’s bold Christian principles.

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  THE VICTORIAN artist Joseph Crawhall of Northumberland specialized in painting animals and birds; his pictures include this remarkably vivid rooster.

CYNDI writes:

It isn’t only in cases of divorce and remarriage that a family obituary writer exhibits some serious prejudice. I always thought that the purpose of an obituary was to describe the important aspects of the deceased’s life regardless of whether you liked that person or not. Well, can you beat this:

The mother of a longtime female acquaintance of mine (Lisa) died. I hate to call her a “friend.” Lisa didn’t like her father particularly, who had died a dozen years earlier while married to her mother. Lisa’s dad wasn’t a criminal or a wife- or childbeater. (more…)

THE Daily Mail reports:

A British soldier who did not know she was pregnant has given birth on the frontline.

The woman had a son in Camp Bastion on Tuesday – just days after the Taliban launched a deadly attack on the UK’s main base in Helmand.

The baby was born five weeks premature. Last night both mother and child were said to be doing well.

A ‘specialist paediatric retrieval team’ from the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford will travel to Afghanistan in the next few days to provide care for the soldier and her son on their RAF flight home.

What was the response of the British military brass? Do they suddenly realize in a flash how deeply immoral it is to have women as soldiers? No. They instead conclude that it may be necessary that all female soldiers have pregnancy testing before they are deployed. Add one more costly intervention to support the radical, inhuman project of an egalitarian military. How long before we see soldiers with baby carriers? A senior “Army insider” was quoted as saying:

The baby’s successful delivery is a wonderful testament to the outstanding job the medics do here. It shows how they can use their extraordinary skills to turn their hands from saving lives to delivering babies.

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Jeanette V. writes:

Here’s the perfect baby sling for that female warrior.

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THE fast food company has announced it will re-evaluate its donations to organizations that are against same-sex marriage and that it will include “sexual orientation” in its anti-discrimination hiring policy. Read about it here.

If you’ve developed a taste for fried chicken patties, get over it.

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FITZGERALD writes:

I came upon this recent Forbes piece by a Meghan Casserly who covers “the juggle of work, life and play for smart, ambitious women.” It’s about smart, ambitious women dropping out of the workforce to be smart, ambitious mothers. From the piece:

“No feminist voice can or should make a woman feel bad for the decision to choose family over career.”

Feel bad? Oh my, that’s terrible. Are women that shallow and impressionable that they must have society endorse all of their whims and fantasies and not make them “feel bad” for their precious choices? (more…)

THE Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights has launched a campaign promoting sensitivity toward the transgendered, “the first government-sponsored campaign in the country to focus on the treatment of transgender and gender non-conforming communities,” according to the New York Daily News. 

The print ads portray “gender non-conforming communities,” or the sad and perverted process of pretending to be the opposite sex, as cool and exciting, and caution people to treat the transgendered with “courtesy and respect.”

At the same time, the school district of Cranston, Rhode Island has decided to prohibit its father-daughter dances.  A single mother complained through the ACLU that the events were discriminatory because not every child has a father to attend.

Under liberalism, the low must be exalted and the high debased. And the distinctiveness of the sexes must be constantly denied. We are all part of a gender non-conforming community now.

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CARDINAL TIMOTHY DOLAN’s appearance Friday at Fordham University with the comedian Stephen Colbert was one more public humiliation of the Church by the grovelingly buffoonish Archbishop of New York. You know it was bad when the New York Times describes the event as “the most successful Roman Catholic youth evangelization event since Pope John Paul II last appeared at World Youth Day.”

Colbert, who calls himself Catholic, said to the Cardinal at one point: “So many Christian leaders spread hatred, especially of homosexuals. How can you maintain your joy?”

According to the Times,“Cardinal Dolan responded with two meandering anecdotes — one about having met this week with Muslim leaders, and another about encountering demonstrators outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”

Laurie Goldstein reports, “Mr. Colbert’s response was quick and unequivocal. ‘If someone spreads hate,’ he said, ‘then they’re not your religious leader.'”

At the Remnant, Christopher A Ferrara has a blistering appraisal of the Cardinal’s invitation to Barack Obama to the Al Smith Dinner on Oct. 18. The invitation, he writes, “demonstrates the total surrender of the Catholic Church to the Zeitgeist and the powers that be in America.”

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Brad C. writes:

No reference to Cardinal Dolan is complete without an accompanying photo of the “Cheesehead” vestments.

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DANIEL S. writes:

Ufology has long been a favorite topic of mine. In my teenager years I had a near obsession with the subject, devouring every book and TV documentary I could find on UFOs, abductions, and conspiracy theories. I read everything from Whitley Strieber’s famous book Communion to William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse (in which he offers the theory of an alien takeover of Earth in league with the Illuminati, which he later rejected declaring the notion of an alien takeover a false flag for the New World Order). In my own time I have witnessed UFOs, though I always shied away from specifically defining what I had seen, not knowing whether I had seen something natural or supernatural in the night sky.

In recent years I had left the topic on the back burner of my spiritual and intellectual pursuits, but a year or so back had my interest renewed after reading Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future by Father Seraphim Rose and The System of the Antichrist by Charles Upton, a disciple of the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon. (more…)

ROBERT FROST’S 1916 poem “Out, Out” is the sad and moving story of the death of a farm boy. It was based on a real life occurrence. According to Jay Parini’s biography, Robert Frost, A Life, the following obituary appeared in the Littleton Courier on March 31, 1910. The boy was a neighbor of Frost’s in New Hampshire:

Raymond Tracy Fitzgerald, one of the twin sons of Michael G. and Margaret Fitzgerald of Bethlehem, died at his home Thursday afternoon, March 24, as a result of an accident by which one of his hands was badly hurt in a sawing machine. The young man was assisting in sawing up some wood in his own dooryard with a sawing machine and accidentally hit the loose pulley, causing the saw to descend upon his hand, cutting and lacerating it badly. Raymond was taken into the house and a physician was immediately summoned, but he died very suddenly from the effects of shock, which produced heart failure.

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