Mariss Jansons conducting the Vienna Philharmonic

THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC’S New Year’s Day concert scored record television ratings this week. As I wrote here, the Austrian orchestra has resisted the multicultural and feminist changes embraced by most of the Western music world. Read More »

HERE is another example of Pennsylvania German fraktur, in this case a house blessing, or haussegen. It is written on behalf of the head of the household. The translated inscription [it appears to be a rough translation] reads: Read More »

BRENDA writes:

Your grandfather’s letter was truly beautiful. For some reason it makes me think of a scene in National Treasure, where Abigail Chase is talking to Ben Gates about the language of the Declaration of Independence. She says to him, “People don’t talk that way anymore.” Ben replies, “No, but they think that way.”  Read More »

KAREN I. writes:

Below is an excerpt from an article in Redbook magazine in which a working mother admits that she left her 18-month-old child in the care of someone whose last name she didn’t know so she could get to work when her nanny called in sick! Read More »

DIANA writes:

May I suggest your readers take some time to read about the Student Non-Discrimination Act. Under the benign language of “non-discrimination,” the federal government will be able to force schools to accept the behavior of flamboyant, gender-nonconforming kids as normal. Read More »

ROGER G. writes:

Donald Trump said on the Sean Hannity Show yesterday that the once mighty Kodak has gone bankrupt because they didn’t get the U.S. government to protect them from Fuji. Trump argued that Fuji destroyed Kodak by selling below manufacturing costs.

Kristor, please address this. Read More »

JEREMY writes:

You may have seen the news about Penn State’s post-scandal memos. Frankly, it’s everything I expected — but why was reading it so sickening to me? Read More »

MSN reports five reasons to buy a small house, including reasons discussed in previous posts on the subject here, such as the benefit of not hoarding large quantities of unused possessions. The report does not mention another important psychological benefit. Dwellers of small homes know each other. They are more likely, in my unprofessional opinion, to learn to manage the petty slights and annoyances that are part of communal living.

Small houses create interior castles. The bloating of the American house at a time when family size has declined is a cause and result of spiritual shrinkage.

WHY did Michele Bachmann do so poorly among women voters? According to polls in December, she had less than 8 percent of the female vote in Iowa.

The answer to this question perhaps can be found by looking at Sarah Palin’s popularity. Though Palin withdrew, it’s safe to assume she would have done much better among women voters. Read More »

THIS SATURDAY is the 61st anniversary of the death of my maternal grandfather, whom I obviously never met. Reading through family papers this week, I came across once again this eloquent letter he wrote to his mother from the front lines in France during World War I. And, I thought I might share it with readers.

My grandfather was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He volunteered for the British Expeditionary Force in early 1917, before America entered World War I. He became one of several hundred physicians loaned to the British Army for the duration of the war. He had the rank of lieutenant and spent two years tending to the wounded on the front lines.  After the war was over, he married, fathered seven children and ran a busy medical practice. Exposure to mustard gas during the war caused his health eventually to fail. He became seriously ill in his late fifties and died at the age of 62.

His mother, who had eight children, was widowed in her forties. My grandfather’s sisters worked as secretaries and teachers to put him through medical school at Georgetown University before the war. Here is his letter home on May 11, 1918 on the occasion of Mother’s Day.

Dearest Mother,

I happened to see in the Paris paper that Sunday, the 12th is Mother’s Day and that we might celebrate by writing to our Mothers, such letters to receive special consideration in the mails. So these are my thoughts to you Mother mine.

Read More »

HERE is another handmade Pennsylvania German birth certificate in the fraktur style. It records the birth of Elias Nicholas in 1823 and was created by a young woman named Elizabeth Borneman Dieterly. The inscription records the names of the infant’s parents and godparents, the date and location of his birth, and a few other important details. It also includes this message:

Scarcely born into the world, it is only a short measured pace from the first step to the cool grave in the earth. O with every moment! Our strength diminishes, and with every year we grow more ripe for the bier. Read More »

ART from Texas writes:

My parents are not very conservative and my mother is somewhat liberal though she is a churchgoer now. Nevertheless, they homeschooled me and as a result I was not subjected to the indoctrination of the school system. I was exposed to both Asimov and C.S. Lewis. I read God in the Dock when I was a small boy. In general society, I was exposed to viewpoints outside the liberal vein. All this was a benefit to my education. This is part of the reason why feminists want to keep parents away from children.

Read More »

JEANETTE V. writes:

This is a fine example of just how degraded we have become as a culture. A television commercial portrays a man dressed as a woman in a woman’s restroom. He is applying make-up in a mirror next to a woman. They compete for a feminine look until finally the woman pulls out a tampon and the cross-dressing man walks away in a huff.

The idiocy of the resulting scandal is even worse. The mentally confused and disturbed are decrying the ad not because of its disgusting portrayal of a cross-dressing man but because it is “transphobic.” The media is reporting this as if it is “news.”  Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

The Economist recently featured a special report titled “Women and Work.” (November 26, 2011) What struck me the most about all of the articles in the report was their anti-human utopianism. The central theme was that we are moving towards a better world of equality but that we aren’t there yet and that there are still many pesky differences between men and women in the workplace that we should try to overcome with changes in cultural practices and attitudes and perhaps with outright government mandated quotas.

There was some acceptance by the authors that there are differences between the sexes, that men and women might have different temperaments and different preferences regarding the focus on work versus the focus on the family but even when these differences were pointed out there was a tendency to blame things on discrimination and cultural stereotypes; to suggest true inborn differences between men and women was condemned as “biological determinism.” Read More »

THIS 1788 American baptismal certificate is a an example of fraktur, religious folk art by the Pennsylvania Germans (also known as Pennsylvania Dutch) which was comprised of elaborate calligraphy and colorful drawings of birds, tulips, hearts and other elements of nature. Fraktur included baptismal certificates, marriage and household blessings, illustrated words of wisdom, and book plates. This Taufschein, or baptismal certificate, would have been a cherished family possession. Over the Christmas holiday, I saw a small exhibit of fraktur and was struck by their remarkable beauty and reverence for family life and children.

ALMOST FIFTEEN years ago, feminists in California and New York picketed the Vienna Philharmonic in protest of its refusal to hire women musicians. The protests were influential and the orchestra hired its first full-time female member at that time. The protests did not, however, lead to the rapid change that has occurred elsewhere. The Vienna Philharmonic, one of the world’s premier orchestras, remains remarkably and refreshingly traditional, stubbornly resistant to both feminism and multiculturalism despite concessions to both.

See this shocking group photo which depicts a nearly all-male, all-white ensemble.  Though it appointed its first female concertmaster last year, the Philharmonic still has only six full-time female members. Its concerts are reminiscent of a relatively recent era, when you would not have seen a heavily pregnant concertmaster, as I did at a recent performance of an American orchestra, or women in the front row playing violin in pants, their legs spread-eagled before the audience, or a significant Asian presence. It is difficult to imagine Marin Alsop, the openly lesbian conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, conducting for this venerated institution in her scarlet-accented high heels.

During its 160-year history, the Wiener Philharmoniker, with its characteristic “Viennese Sound,” has been led by many of the greatest conductors and praised by famous composers such as Wagner, Bruckner, Brahms, Mahler (who conducted it from 1898 to 1901)  and Richard Strauss. The waiting period for weekend ticket subscriptions is 13 years. At this time of year, the orchestra’s New Year’s Day concert, which features Strauss waltzes and ends with a rousing version of The Radetzky March under the chandeliers of the Musikverein, is especially popular and is broadcast on PBS in this country. (See yesterday’s performance of the Radetzky March, conducted by Mariss Jansons, here.) The orchestra has held a concert each New Year’s Day since 1941.

Members of the orchestra have openly stated in the recent past that the ideal member is a Central European man. They have even gone so far as to state that the orchestra’s sound can only be achieved by musicians who possess the appropriate cultural “soul.”

The Philharmonic did not allow women to become full members until 1997. Between 1997 and 2010, a period during which many other orchestras became heavily female, it hired only three women. Paul Fürst, a violist, once stated in a documentary on women conductors:

There is no ban on women musicians playing here but the Vienna Philharmonic is by tradition an all-male orchestra. Our profession makes family life extremely difficult, so for a woman it’s almost impossible. There are so many orchestras with women members so why shouldn’t there be – for how long I don’t know – an orchestra with no women in it … A woman shouldn’t play like a man but like a woman, but an all-male orchestra is bound to have a special tone. [Wikipedia] Read More »

The Circumcision, Fra Filippo Lippi (1460-65)

TODAY is the eighth day of Christmas, the day the Church traditionally marks the historic event of the circumcision of Christ.

At that time, after eight days were accomplished that the Child should be circumcised; His name was called Jesus, which was called by the Angel before He was conceived in the womb. (Luke, 2. 21)

A male Jew officially became a member of his sacred community with the rite of circumcision. Christ was born a Jew and all humanity became the chosen people upon his death and resurrection.

LAURENCE BUTLER, who has contributed excellent commentary to this site from time to time, married earlier this year. He and his wife, Maria, are birders, and they received as a wedding gift a copy of John J. Audubon’s journals, published in 1897. At his blog, Butlers Birds and Things, which features stunning photography, Laurence is writing about Audubon’s personal history every other week (additional entries are here, here, here and here.) If you are new to Audubon’s fascinating story, this is a good place to become acquainted with it. In his first entry, Laurence wrote:

John J. Audubon’s life began rather inauspiciously, on an unknown day, in an unknown year, on the French island of Santo Domingo (modern Dominican Republic). Audubon’s mother was killed in a slave insurrection soon after his birth, and his father resettled in Nantes, France, were he remarried. Read More »