ASHLEY and Derek tell the painful story of their twin boys’ sudden decline after receiving high doses of the Hepatitis B shots.

Rubens Peale, 1856

FROM “Home Whispers to Husbands and Wives” by Melva (American Female Guardian Society, 1859):

“OH dear! what did I ever marry for?” sighed a weary wife and mother. “It’s nothing but care, trouble, disappointment and vexation, sick and crying children, miserable, shiftless domestics, overtaxed energies, feeble health, and more than all, a cross, selfish, exacting husband. Oh! I wish I was dead and at rest in the grave.”

The wife lowered her complaining tones a little as she said this, for she knew it was wrong to cherish such thoughts, and when they took form and expression, they startled her with their harshness and sinfulness. But the clouds were dark overspreading all her sky that day, and the winds that blew over the plain of her life were chill and dreary, sweeping rudely and harshly over the chords of her soul. It was often so. Harmonies were the exceptions in her mournful chant of life-discords the rule. Hers was a vexed and sore-tried, a disappointed and overburdened life. It had for her no rest, no recreation nor sustaining sympathy, none of the sunshine of congenial love and confidence; and her soul had not yet learned to arise from the low grounds of its disquietudes and sorrows, and to enter into its “rest.” Read More »

“FITS of anger, vexation, and bitterness against ourselves tend to pride, and they spring from no other source than self-love, which is disturbed and upset at seeing that it is imperfect.”

— St. Francis de Sales

Van Gogh’s White Roses, National Gallery of Art

THE GREATEST fault among those who have a good will is that they wish to be something they cannot be, and do not wish to be what they necessarily must be. They conceive desires to do great things for which, perhaps, no opportunity may ever come to them, and meantime neglect the small which the Lord puts into their hands. There are a thousand little acts of virtue, such as bearing with the importunities and imperfections of our neighbors, not resenting an unpleasant word or a trifling injury, restraining an emotion of anger, mortifying some little affection, some ill-regulated desire to speak or to listen, excusing an indiscretion, or yielding to another in trifles. These are things to be done by all; why not practice them? The occasions for great gains come but rarely, but of little gains many can be made each day; and by managing these little gains with judgment, there are some who grow rich.

—- St. Francis de Sales

THE lawyer Lee Gaulman, a former constitutional conservative who goes by “Legalman,” supports secession in general, but says the Texas succession movement is a “total waste of time.” Constitutional conservatism is a “grift,” meant to keep people on the “tax plantation.”

“The people have been taught a pack of lies about the ‘founding’ of the country, the idea that the ‘people’ are in charge and that the constitution somehow actually limits the govt. It’s lies, guys. All lies to control you.”

“JUST three weeks after 49 people were supposedly killed at The Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Fl. [in 2016], Orange County authorities and the Orlando P.D. released this P.S.A. video announcement. (Yes, this a Public Service Announcement.) They must have been celebrating deceiving the gullible public by producing another D.H.S.-mandated, scheduled active shooter drill that went live in the media as more gun control propaganda. They pulled one over on the public, and they insult your intelligence by making their own dance video. How many more of these gungrab sh**shows does it take before you get the message that you’ve been had by Homeland Security??”

From Mowac on Gab

“MAY you never be numbered among those whose house is peaceful, quiet and free from care; those on whom the Lord’s chastisement does not descend; those who live out their days in prosperity, and in the twinkling of an eye will go down to hell.”

— St. Raymond of Peñafort

IN ANOTHER interview at Children’s Health Defense, Ginny Rodriguez describes the death of her 66-year-old mother, who was treated in a hospital in September 2021 for 53 days as a COVID patient.

Many other interviews are available here.

The reading room at the St. Louis Public Library

[Originally posted May 23, 2014]

ALAN writes:

Culture lovers will be pleased to learn that this week is “Hip-Hop Appreciation Week” at the central St. Louis Public Library.  This is the same library about which I wrote about four years ago and which re-opened two years ago after a big, expensive renovation.

An article afterward noted that visitors to the renovated building ooh-ed and aah-ed.  This is an example of what you once called “the superstitious veneration of technology.” Everything about the renovated building screams New, Now, High-Tech, The Latest, Cutting-Edge Movies and Music. If I were a cynic (which I am), I might ask:  Do those things make Shakespeare better?  Do they improve Aristotle, Milton, Aquinas, Burke, Franklin, Jefferson, Bronte, Browning, Carlyle, Scott, Dickens and Twain? Are language, philosophy, religion, history, and science made better by being shelved amid all that bright, shiny, high-tech décor?

The building is situated between a Christian home for vagrants and a Christian church that caters to them.  People who live downtown are sick and tired of the vagrants and want them out of the area.  One morning last week one of the vagrants knifed and killed another on a sidewalk between the library and the church.

Read More »

In dulci jubilo
Let us our homage shew:
Our heart’s joy reclineth
In praesepio;
And like a bright star shineth
Matris in gremio,
Alpha es et O!

O Jesu parvule,
My heart is sore for Thee!
Hear me, I beseech Thee,
O puer optime;
My praying let it reach Thee,
O princeps gloriae.
Trahe me post te.

O patris caritas!
O Nati lenitas!
Deeply were we stained.
Per nostra crimina:
But Thou for us hast gained
Coelorum gaudia,
Qualis gloria!

Ubi sunt gaudia,
If that they be not there?
There are Angels singing
Nova cantica;
And there the bells are ringing
In Regis curia.
O that we were there!

Regarding the Nova Scotia fire, CTV News reports:

The charges stem from the Barrington Lake wildfire, which first broke out on May 26, 2023, and was finally brought under control on June 13 and extinguished on July 26.

The fire grew to 23,379 hectares, the largest recorded in the province’s history.

It forced more than 6,000 people from their homes and destroyed 60 houses and cottages, as well as 150 other structures.

It was the last in a string of spring wildfires in the province to be tamed.

“It’s a relief to see the justice system working for the people of the area that was put out of place, put out by the wildfires,” says Eddie Nickerson, warden for Barrington district 4. “It was pretty devastating for the area. We have never experienced anything like that, as you know. It was the biggest wildfire in the history of the province.”

See here and here.

The Snow
Composer : Edward William Elgar
Librettist : Caroline Alice Elgar

O snow, which sinks so light,
Brown earth is hid from sight,
O soul, be thou as white,
O soul, be thou as white as snow,

O snow, which falls so slow,
Dear earth quite warm below;
O heart, so keep thy glow,
Beneath the snow.

O snow, in thy soft grave,
Sad flowers the winter brave;
O heart, so soothe and save, as does the snow.

The snow must melt, must go,
Fast as water flow.
Not thus, my soul, O sow,
Thy gifts to fade like snow.

O snow, thou’rt white no more,
Thy sparkling too, is o’er;
O soul, be as before, was bright the snow.

Then as the snow all pure,
O heart be, but endure;
Through all the years full sure,
Not as the snow.

AMERICA‘s “first public park” is now one of its ugliest parks (which is saying a lot):

A new monument honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King, was unveiled in Boston Friday, ahead of Monday’s national holiday honoring the civil rights icon.

The 22-foot tall sculpture, named ‘The Embrace,’ represents the hug between Dr. King and Coretta after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

The $10 million bronze statue, designed by Hank Willis Thomas and MASS Design Group, now stands in the Freedom Plaza of the Boston Common, America’s first public park.

Source

A renowned philanderer and liar who died in the company of prostitutes — and the civil rights movement in general — have been given an appropriate tribute.

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Sure on this shining night
English source: James Agee

Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder
Wandering far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

FROM The lives of the Fathers of the Eastern Deserts, or, The wonders of God in the wilderness by Richard Challoner:

“AFTER this, being desirous of advancing still more in Christian perfection, he took a resolution of retiring into the desert, and of withdrawing himself altogether from the conversation of men. This resolution he communicated to the old monk his friend, of whom we spoke above, proposing that he should accompany him; but the old man excused himself, alleging his advanced age, and the novelty of such an enterprise. Antony, however, no way discouraged, set out upon his journey towards the heart of the wilderness, at that time utterly uninhabited, arid lying at a very great distance from any town or village. As he walked along, he saw a large dish of silver with which the enemy sought to interrupt his journey, lying on the ground; but he easily discovered the artifice, and cried: ‘This is a trick of thine, Satan; thou shalt not divert me from my resolution; keep thy silver to thyself, and let it perish with thee.’ Read More »