THIS IS Howard Pyle’s illustration, The Rush from the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 18, 1873. It appeared in Scribner’s Magazine in July, 1895. Pyle, who lived from 1853 to 1911, was one of America’s most popular illustrators. His works were featured in Harper’s Monthly, Collier’s Weekly, St. Nicholas, and Scribner’s. He also illustrated works of myth and fiction, including books by Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain. He wrote his own fictional works for children, such as Men of Iron and The Wonder Clock.

Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother, “Do you know an American magazine Harpers Monthly? There are wonderful sketches in it … which strike me dumb with admiration … by Howard Pyle.” November 9 is the hundredth anniversary of Pyle’s death. A major exhibit of his works opens at the Delaware Art Museum on November 12.

THE NORTHEAST storm I wrote about earlier this week was unquestionably one of the most unusual weather events in recorded history of the region. As a reader describes here, some people have been without power for the entire week. The heavy snow destroyed or damaged many trees.

A.M. writes:

It seems impossible to be genuinely traditionalist without attacking that to which contemporary society gives unanimous assent. For instance, we often hear of some “pro-family” organization protesting a television show. That television can be anything but anti-family is a farce; it has been known as a “vast wasteland” for over a half century, yet these clowns go on owning sets and vainly trying to sanitize their content. They buy a viper and then have the audacity to complain that it has a venomous bite.

I am reminded of a personal episode, where I was not truly friends with anyone around me; I started to ask, “what is wrong with me?” Of course, I could’ve very well been to blame. But as soon as I changed my choice of company, I began to make friends. As long as I had remained, however, I felt bizarre and odd. As with your comment about parades, we live in a society where we must pay tribute to the macabre, and disdain the good and the beautiful. If we don’t, we are, mongoloids, philistines, or fascists. Read More »

ANN COULTER’S column on the controversy over Herman Cain is very entertaining. She writes:

To have been accused of sexual harassment in the 1990s is like having been accused of molesting children at preschools in the 1980s or accused of being a witch in Massachusetts in the 1690s. Read More »

Lisa Miller, the former lesbian, and Janet Jenkins, who has been awarded custody of Miller’s child

WHAT CAN one say about a society in which a “family” court seriously entertains a child custody dispute between two women and then grants sole custody of the child to the non-mother, thus inciting the mother to flee with her daughter to a foreign country, risking arrest for kidnapping her own child and causing the Christian missionary who arranged her flight to be arrested as a kidnapper too? Such is the tyranny of state institutions over the family.

The mainstreaming of lesbianism inevitably results in the mainstreaming of ugly lesbian battles.

Howard Pyle at Rehoboth Beach (Delaware Art Museum)

HERE is the famous American illustrator Howard Pyle on the beach with his children in 1897. I will be featuring more of his illustrations in the next few days in honor of the hundredth anniversary of his death on Nov. 9.

MR. T. writes:

I have been reading your delightful blog for many months, but this is my first comment.

Your post and thread on small houses resonated deeply with me. I grew up in the U.S.A., in a medium-sized house, but have lived most of my adult life in Hong Kong. Property here is expensive in a way only people in the ritziest environs of Manhattan can imagine. My wife, daughter and I live in a flat that’s listed at about 900 square feet, but all Hong Kong people know that’s a fiction. The ‘building area’ for a Hong Kong flat includes a share of the elevator lobby, windowsills, walls, and other unusable space. Our actual living area is closer to 600 square feet.

In this space, which might well fit in toto within a McMansion’s living room, we have a kitchen, two bathrooms, a living room and three bedrooms. As you can imagine, none of these rooms is very big, and a couple of our bedrooms would be derided as inadequate as closets in the U.S.A. Read More »

MARY K. writes:

When my husband and I were ready to purchase our first house two years ago, we deliberately looked for a “small” house, exactly for the benefits you describe. We could have easily gotten a bigger and cheaper house, and many people tried to persuade us to do just that. No regrets here, even when we have family flooding in for Thanksgiving and camping out in the only bathroom! Read More »

LAWRENCE AUSTER writes on the vanity of female politicians:

If you have a society in which men are running things and enforcing male standards of conduct in the public sphere, you can have an occasional woman in high public office and it will not harm the society. But once the appointment of women to conspicuous political positions becomes routine and expected, and once female standards of public conduct become normalized, thus pushing aside male standards, then you have things like this.

I would add two points. One, a woman in power has more incentive to flaunt her physical assets precisely because they may be all she has left of her femininity. This is why we see more and more cleavage. The essence has vanished with the pursuit of power.

Second, a society’s understanding of authority also weakens when a significant number of women enter elective public office. Eileen Behr, pictured below, is running for sheriff in suburban Philadelphia. She seems like a perfectly nice, competent woman, but her face changes the very definition of the office. She looks too nice to write a parking ticket.

Read More »

THE STANDARDS for what constitutes a normal family house have changed dramatically in recent decades. The average home size in the United States was slightly over 2,400 square feet in 2009. This figure, down slightly from the year before, is more than twice that of the ranches and Cape Cods of the 1950s, such as those built in the Levittown developments of New York and Pennsylvania. Ironically, we have smaller families to fit in our houses.

The suburban house has swelled to the detriment of the family. With bigger houses has come more pressure on women to work. More square footage has meant a loss of family intimacy and less ease in supervising children. Our population growth rate has declined, jeopardizing future prosperity, while our lives have gotten lonelier.

The fifties-style ranch house or Cape Cod is often viewed with sneering derision unless it has undergone a fantastic architectural makeover, complete with granite counter tops and cathedral ceilings. And yet it has much to commend it. (I should know. I have raised my children in one of these houses.) Peter Bacon Hales, of the University of Illinois, wrote of the Levittown Cape Cod house: Read More »

Timothy Miller with his family

IN THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT in a child custody case that will either go down in the history of American jurisprudence for its flagrant violation of parental rights or represent a radical shift in the legal defintion of parenthood, federal prosecutors last week dropped kidnapping charges against Timothy Miller, the Mennonite missionary who helped Lisa Miller flee the country with her daughter in 2009 after a Vermont judge ordered her to hand over the child to her former lesbian lover.

According to The Rutland Herald, U.S. Attorney for Vermont Tristram Coffin, in a motion to dismiss the charges against Timothy Miller, stated that Miller agreed to appear as a possible witness in the future. Timothy Miller, who is no relation to Lisa, works as a missionary in Nicaragua. He has been unable to leave the United States since his arrest last April. The Timo Miller Support Network was collecting financial support for him.

Interestingly, the story of the charges against the missionary has been virtually ignored. Read More »

A tailor in the documentary O'Mast

A.M. writes:

As style is a recurring topic at your salon, and traditionalism the dominant one, the documentary O’Mast may be of interest. If the trailer is any guide, there is much to admire in it. The video raises my doubt in the notion of America as relatively ‘conservative,’ and the nations of Europe as relatively ‘progressive.’ Not that the film is representative of anything but its niche subject, but, as a general matter, Europe seems abler at preserving the beauty of generations past, and perhaps even at cultivating it for the present and future. Read More »

MICHAEL D. writes:

If there are any lingering doubts that “Conservative” Prime Minister David Cameron is indeed a conservative, then let them now be dispelled without further ado. His proposal to change the law of succession to reflect his liberal tastes is foolish, insensible and potentially harmful. The succession cannot be changed simply because David Cameron, or anybody else for that matter, doesn’t like it. They don’t have to like it. 

However, I was not surprised at the total absence of opposition to this proposal to do away with male primogeniture at the Commonwealth Heads of Governments meeting here in Australia. Our own hard-left, unmarried, barren, feminist prime minister was not about to complain. Neither were the spineless political leaders of other nations, who are mostly elites eager to prove their “diversity and equality” credentials at the expense of their culture and their peoples’ long-term interests. It would not have been difficult to bury this risible proposal with an effective counter argument, but no Commonwealth political leader even tried.  Read More »

THE FOLLOWING flyer was sent a few days ago to the faculty of Valencia College in Osceola, Florida by its Office of Marketing and Strategic Communications:

MTV Film Crew at the Osceola Campus on Monday

You may notice an MTV film crew at the Osceola Campus on Monday as they tape a new season of the reality show 16 and Pregnant.  Their current story is about a young woman, now 17, who has had her baby and whose mom told her that if she didn’t go to college, she’d be out on her own. Read More »

FITZGERALD writes:

The mother of Steve Jobs chose to put his sister and him up for adoption when they were infants. What if he had been aborted? Jobs had an enormously influential role in the creation and transformation of several industries. How many other potential innovators, business leaders, architects, and artists have met an untimely end in the womb? Is it any wonder our civilization is waning. We destroy it’s most important element in the scores every year: people.

Read More »

Winter Scene in New Haven. Connecticut, George Henry Durrie (1858)

ALMOST everyone would like the last month of winter to be more like the first month of spring or maybe the last month of summer to be more like the first month of fall. But no one wants to see the first full month of autumn become more like mid-winter. 

The snowstorm that hit our area this weekend was an unprecedented event. Some trees had still not changed color. The sight of an oak tree with green leaves and snow is disorienting. Leaves are part of a tree’s periodic immaturity. A tree that is juvenile in June is ancient in November. By early winter, a tree becomes wise and wizened, mature enough to handle the tribulations of cold and ice. Many a tree in October is no more prepared for snow than a teenager is ready for mortgage payments.

By last night, leaves that were still green or gold were loaded with snow that was so heavy, massive branches drooped to the ground. Many snapped instantly. The roads were littered with downed limbs and many people lost power. The party was broken up. The authorities came and told everyone who was enjoying autumn to go home.

Normally, the first snowstorm is exciting, but this wasn’t exciting, it was strange. It was a premature end to the season. The flames of fall were doused with buckets of ice.

Read More »

THE EMPLOYMENT rate among American men reached its lowest level in 63 years this summer. Not since 1948 had so relatively few men held jobs. But the news was already bad. The median annual earnings of all men 30 to 50 years old, including those who did not work, fell 27 percent from 1969 to 2009. 

When men are underemployed as a group, the consequences for society at large are far more dire than when women are unemployed in high numbers.

In fact, when women are unemployed, as history clearly shows us, the consequences are good. Society functions better when women are not working outside the home and are raising the workers of tomorrow. When men are unemployed at high levels, marriage declines, illegitimacy increases, crime increases, and overall social dysfunction follows.

We live in a world of fantastic denial of these facts, a world in which intractable differences in work motivations and performance between men and women are also categorically rejected. As we speak, companies continue to be hauled into court for the offense of employing men over women. Immense resources and vast sums of money are devoted to improving the confidence and work performance of women. 

Is it any surprise the figures are so grim? In August, Mike Dorning of Bloomberg Businessweek wrote: Read More »