RESPONDING to this post on cultural attitudes toward pregnancy, Sarah writes:

I agree with Mr. McNeill that pregnancy ought to be accorded honor. However, I do not think that maternity bikinis are the way to recapture its lost honor.

In the 1950s, pregnant women wouldn’t dream of baring their midriffs or conducting nude photo shoots. They wore modest clothing, and generally eschewed the word “pregnant” in favor of the more ambiguous “expecting.” And yet, the world treated them with great deference and respect.

Today, on the other hand, one sees pregnant women exposing themselves on magazine covers, talk shows, or Facebook. And now the world treats them with absolute wretchedness. Read More »

CONTINUING the posts on my Easter menu, I offer this excellent recipe for French rolls by Fine Cooking magazine. It is the best recipe for rolls I have made (and I have made quite a few.)

First a few words about the all-important, pressing subjects of cookbooks, cooking magazines and culinary knowledge. As I say below:

 My own personal philosophy of cooking is that the purpose of any given culinary effort is not the immediate meal. It is the knowledge and closeness gained. Regardless of the outcome of cooking efforts, every experience in the kitchen results in knowledge – knowledge of our materials – and an intimacy with these materials, which are the intriguing and unassuming products of nature and human artifice. The cook is scientist, craftsman and lover of woods, fields and factory. Also, a cooking experience is a thinking experience. Though Plato had insulting things to say about cooks, contending they could never attain philosophical excellence, we do in our own way possess the philosopher’s gift of time for meditation. The hands work in concert with the mind.

Read More »

GEORGE S. writes:

Economist Bryan Caplan has written a book called Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. This is pro fertility by a college professor.  Actually one of his reasons for more kids is to produce a libertarian baby juggernaut. He says he wants to,

3. Increase the frequency of libertarian genes – and the long-run prospects for liberty.  Genes have a strong effect on political views.  So assuming libertarians are right about policy, increasing the frequency of libertarian genes is good for the world.  It will take a few centuries, but libertarian natalism is one of the least unrealistic paths to liberty we’ve got.

Laura writes:

Libertarians will not create any baby boom. They lack the philosophical premises, Caplan’s arguments aside. Read More »

IN 2007, the Welsh singer Cerys Matthews performed this lovely version to harp accompaniment of the traditional Welsh hymn Calon Lân. Here is an English translation:

I don’t ask for a luxurious life,
the world’s gold or its fine pearls,
I ask for a happy heart,
an honest heart, a pure heart. Read More »

A MALE READER writes:

I was introduced to your blog a year ago by View From the Right.  I  wanted to commend for your ability and willingness to stand against  the tide of today’s society.

I wanted to relay an experience that I believe is relevant to many of  your postings.

I am military officer and over the course of my career I have had three women work under my command.  During that time, I gave orders to  those women as I would anybody else.  Read More »

Donkey and Sheep in a Meadow, Thomas Sidney Cooper, 1880

HERE is the first of my recipes for the Easter menu featured in the previous entry: Roast leg of lamb. This traditional dish has great symbolic significance. It represents ceaseless joy and imperishable love. It links us to the eternal sacrifice and one moment in history. We celebrate the springtime of our spiritual condition:

For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come, Read More »

JILL FARRIS writes:

I agree that it is a lack of bonding that leads to these tragedies, such as the mother who left her baby in the car. I remember a close relative who had a baby (a “wanted and planned” baby) in her mid-thirties and was not prepared for how hard it would be to leave her baby with her well-paid nanny to go back to work. I spoke to her the week she was done with her maternity pay and she sobbed over the phone about how much she was going to miss her baby. Read More »

IN A NEW ad for J.Crew, the company’s president and creative director Jenna Lyons paints her son’s toenails pink. She says, “Lucky for me I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.” A majority of FOX News Twitter users polled on the story said they did not disapprove.

Notice the boy’s hair too, part of the latest preference for girlish styles in boys. My son’s barber told me of a horrible incident in which a mother came in with her son, who was about nine, and insisted he keep his hair long despite the boy’s tearful protests.                                                Read More »

HERE IS another one of those cases of fatal distraction, similar to ones discussed here before. A Puerto Rican doctor was on her way to work when she forgot that her baby was in the car. She returned to her parked vehicle hours later to discover the baby dead.

This mother is to be pitied. She must pay the ultimate penalty for accepting an artificial way of life that is approved of and celebrated everywhere.

Read More »

MRS. H. writes:

Related to your and your readers’ complaints of modern dress is the topic of grooming. People, either out of laziness, ignorance, or for shock, do not groom themselves. I’m not against beards (my own husband has a fine one), but you should trim it. There are undergarments ladies can wear to better fit their clothes. And a lot of people could familiarize themselves with hairbrushes.

Here are two photos of the actors and actresses of the cable show “Mad Men,” in their modern appearance and in their costumes. Read More »

JESSE POWELL writes:

There has been so much talk of the federal budget and the deficit due to the threatened government shutdown that I thought your readers might be interested in some historical background on these issues.

In fiscal year 1930, before the Great Depression gathered momentum, the federal government ran a budget surplus of 0.8 percent of GDP (Gross Domestic Product); it took in 4.2 percent of GDP in taxes and spent 3.4 percent of GDP. At the depth of the Great Depression, in fiscal year 1934, the government ran a deficit of 5.9 percent of GDP (4.8 percent of GDP in taxes and 10.7 percent of GDP in spending). The government ran huge budget deficits during World War II, peaking at 30.3 percent of GDP in 1943, but by 1947 the government’s budget was in surplus and the debt from World War II started to shrink in relation to the size of the economy. Read More »

KAREN I. writes:

The adults shown in the pictures in your post may be “unintentionally naked” but they should have had a clue that their outfits could cause them to be exposed. The truly “unintentionally naked” are little girls whose mothers dress them in the revealing trash that is for sale in most popular stores these days. 

Most of the clothes for little girls is awful, and it starts with babies. To illustrate my point, I am sending a picture of one of Old Navy’s current offerings for infants, which is a ruffled polka dot bikini. I have seen babies in these things at the beach and it is sad. Not only is way too much of their delicate skin exposed, their little bellies stick out and their diapers show.

VISHAL MEHRA writes:

Regarding the recent discussion of the shamefulness of being pregnant, it is useful to read C.S. Lewis’s “Introduction to Paradise Lost,” in which he talks about how Milton handled pre-Fall sexuality.

Now by Christian doctrine, bodily shame is excluded pre-Fall but per Lewis, a certain bashfulness is not excluded and is entirely appropriate. This is the bashfulness we feel when we are praised or when a lover seeks us. C.S. Lewis says this feeling appears whenever a subject is made into an object.

So a pregnant woman may be expected to feel bashful, which is appropriate, and the family would be appropriately protective of the modesty. However, shame would be an incorrect attitude, both on the part of pregnant lady and the family. By the way, Lewis thought that Milton was not too successful in describing pre-Fall sexuality. His Adam is altogether lacking in modesty while Eve is too coy.

Read More »

THERE is a thin line between the state of dress and the state of undress, as this New York Daily News slide show of celebrities in short skirts and low-cut gowns demonstrates. People argue that today’s clothes are more comfortable than the less revealing clothes of the past. Are they?

Read More »

The Artist's Palette, John Fitz Marshall (1886)

BELOW  is a suggested Easter menu. I will be posting the recipes, which are all tried and true, over the next few days. Read More »

Twilight, Sussex; Arthur Hughes

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

                          William Butler Yeats

I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
 
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air. Read More »