March 17, 2023
Irish Lullaby (To-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral)
Music and lyrics: James Royce [Shannon] (1881-1946).
Over in Killarney
Many years ago,
Me Mither sang a song to me
In tones so sweet and low.
Just a simple little ditty,
In her good ould Irish way,
And l’d give the world if she could sing
That song to me this day. Read More »
March 17, 2023
From
“MY NAME IS PATRICK. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburniae. His home was near there, and that is where I was taken prisoner. I was about sixteen at the time. At that time, I did not know the true God. I was taken into captivity in Ireland, along with thousands of others. We deserved this, because we had gone away from God, and did not keep his commandments. We would not listen to our priests, who advised us about how we could be saved. The Lord brought his strong anger upon us, and scattered us among many nations even to the ends of the earth. It was among foreigners that it was seen how little I was.
“It was there that the Lord opened up my awareness of my lack of faith. Even though it came about late, I recognised my failings. So I turned with all my heart to the Lord my God, and he looked down on my lowliness and had mercy on my youthful ignorance. He guarded me before I knew him, and before I came to wisdom and could distinguish between good and evil. He protected me and consoled me as a father does for his son.
“That is why I cannot be silent – nor would it be good to do so – about such great blessings and such a gift that the Lord so kindly bestowed in the land of my captivity. This is how we can repay such blessings, when our lives change and we come to know God, to praise and bear witness to his great wonders before every nation under heaven. Read More »
March 16, 2023
“BUT let us obtain a clear idea of the nature of temptations. It seems an obvious thing to say that in the first place they are not sins; yet in nine cases out of ten our unhappiness comes from not discerning this fact. Some defilement seems to come from the touch of a mere temptation; and at the same time it reveals to us, as nothing else does, our extreme feebleness and constant need of grace and of very great grace. We are like men who do not know how sore their bruises are until they are pressed, and then we exaggerate the evil. So when temptation presses our fallen and infirm nature, the tenderness is so sensible and so acute that it gives us at once the feeling of a wound or a disease. Yet we must be careful always to distinguish between a sin and a temptation.
“Temptations are either in ourselves, or outside of us, or partly the one and partly the other. Those from within ourselves arise, either from our senses, which are free and undisciplined, or from our passions which are wild and uncorrected. Those which are outside assail us, either by delighting us, as riches, honours, attachments and distractions, or by attacking us as the demons do; and those which partake of the nature of both possess the attractions of both. In one sense, however, all temptations consist in an alliance between what is within us, and what is without us. As I have said before, we must not put too much upon the devil; yet neither on the other hand must we be without fear of him, or without a true and scriptural estimate of his awful and malignant office. He goes about seeking whom he may devour. He is a roaring lion, when the roar will affright us, and a noiseless serpent when success is to be ensured by secrecy. He has reduced the possibilities and probabilities of our destruction to a science which he applies with the most unrelenting vigour, the most masterly intelligence, almost unfailing power, and with the most ubiquitous variety. If it were not for the thought of grace, its abundance and its sovereignty, we should not dare to contemplate the ways and means of the Satanic kingdom.
“Yet nowhere is it a mere fight between man and the devil. Wherever temptation is, there God is also. There is not one which His will has not permitted, and there is not a permission which is not an act of love as well. He has given His whole wisdom to each temptation. He has calculated its effects, and often diminishes its power. He has weighed and measured each by the infirmity of each tempted soul.”
— Fr. Frederick William Faber, Growth in Holiness, or the Progress of the Spiritual Life, p. 277-8
March 16, 2023
Cooperstown, New York, where Susan Fenimore Cooper lived and shopped.
FROM Rural Hours (1850) by Susan Fenimore Cooper, daughter of James Fenimore Cooper:
But to return to the “store;” there are half a dozen of these on quite a large scale. It is amusing to note the variety within their walls. Barrels, ploughs, stoves, brooms, rakes and pitch forks; muslins, flannels, laces and shawls; sometimes in winter, a dead porker is hung up by the heels at the door; frequently, frozen fowls, turkeys and geese, garnish the entrance. The shelves are filled with a thousand things required by civilized man, in the long list of his wants. Here you see a display of glass and crockery, imported, perhaps, directly by this inland firm from the European manufacturer; there you observe a pile of silks and satins; this is a roll of carpeting, that a box of artificial flowers. At the same counter you may buy kid gloves and a spade; a lace veil and a jug of molasses; a satin dress and a broom, looking-glasses, grass-seed, fire-irons, Valenciennes lace, butter and eggs, embroidery, blankets, candles, cheese, and a fancy fan.
And yet, in addition to this medley, there are regular milliners’ shops and groceries in the place, and of a superior class too. But so long as a village retains its rural character, so long will the country “store” be found there; it is only when it has become a young city that the shop and warehouse take the place of the convenient store where so many wants are supplied on the same spot.
It is amusing once in a while to look on as the different customers come and go. Some people like shopping in a large town, where all sorts of pretty novelties are spread out on the counters to tempt purchasers; but there is much more real interest connected with such matters in a large country store, whatever fine ladies tossing about laces and gauzes at Beck’s or Stewart’s may fancy. Read More »
March 15, 2023
FROM “The Suicide of Thought” by G.K. Chesterton:
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race—because he is so human. As the other extreme, we may take the acrid realist, who has deliberately killed in himself all human pleasure in happy tales or in the healing of the heart. Torquemada tortured people physically for the sake of moral truth. Zola tortured people morally for the sake of physical truth. But in Torquemada’s time there was at least a system that could to some extent make righteousness and peace kiss each other. Now they do not even bow. But a much stronger case than these two of truth and pity can be found in the remarkable case of the dislocation of humility. Read More »
March 15, 2023
DR. WILLIAM MAKIS reports:
Hirofumi Yanagase is a Japanese politician who is a member of the House of Councillors of Japan.
VIDEO: Mr. Hirofumi, Yanagase speaks out: “Compared to 2021, the number of deaths has increased by more than 140,000. Compared to 2020, the number of deaths has increased by 210,000…the highest number since World War II”
“Japan has been flooded with people complaining of feeling ill after receiving the COVID vaccine”
“Amazingly, even though more than 2000 people have died after vaccination, more than 99% of these deaths cannot be evaluated”
“According to our calculations, the percentage of reported deaths after COVID vaccine is more than 38 times higher in comparison with the flu vaccine”
Out of more than 2000 deaths after COVID-19 vaccination, on March 10, 2023 a Japanese Ministry of Health panel made the first of a causal link between the death of a 42 year old woman and the COVID-19 vaccine (click here) cont….
Yanagese can be seen speaking before the House of Councillors here.
March 14, 2023
“WESTERN Man towers over the rest of the world in ways so large as to be almost inexpressible. It’s Western exploration, science, and conquest that have revealed the world to itself.
“Other races feel like subjects of Western power long after colonialism, imperialism, and slavery have disappeared.
“The charge of racism puzzles Whites who feel not hostility, but only baffled goodwill, because they don’t grasp what it really means: humiliation.
“The White man presents an image of superiority even when he isn’t conscious of it. And superiority excites envy. Destroying White civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call ‘minorities’.”
March 14, 2023
After 28 years of failure in South Africa, this black woman now realises that, without white people running the government, her country has no future. Reminds me of the crowds of black farm workers cheering the return of white farmers in Zimbabwe. pic.twitter.com/LdciwMbhTF
— Way of the World (@wayotworld) March 12, 2023
“Let the power go back to the White people. We, as black people, we just have to accept that we failed dismally. For 28 years, we were given chance to prove ourselves, and we failed dismally.
“This thing of voting, one black person after the other, it won’t help us with anything. Let power go back to White people.
“When White people were governing this country — irrespective of whatever that they were doing — but our parents were working, kids used to get passes to go to universities, the town used to be clean.
“There was jobs everywhere. You apply you get a job. Even if you didn’t have qualifications, you could work in hotels — you could work wherever. You could even work in the farms — there were farms where people could work. Read More »
March 8, 2023
“OUR sanctification is an edifice built up of grains of sand and drops of water. For example, it consists of trifles at a glance repressed, a word held back, a smile checked, a line unfinished, a souvenir stifled, a welcome letter read only once and that rapidly, a natural reaction boldly restrained, a wearisome bore politely endured, an outburst of irritation suppressed at once, refraining from a useless purchase, overcoming fits of depression, tempering nature’s transports with thoughts of God’s Presence in us, overcoming repugnances: what is all this? Just insignificant trifles in the eyes of men who may not see them, but wonderfully clear to him who dwells within us. Here is what we have to watch closely. Here are both the smallest and the greatest proofs of fidelity that will draw down torrents of grace upon the soul.”
— Mgr. Louis Gaston Adrien de Ségur (quoted here)
March 7, 2023
“Truth does not depend on what one thinks but on the existence of things.”
— St. Thomas Aquinas (On Truth, 1.2ad3)
March 7, 2023
“THE first thing to see is that this enormous normality is like a mountain; and one that is capable of being a volcano. Every abnormality that is now opposed to it is like a mole-hill; and the earnest sociological organisers of it are exceedingly like moles. But the mountain is a volcano in another sense also; as suggested in that tradition of the southern fields fertilised by larva. It has a creative as well as a destructive side; and it only remains, in this part of the analysis, to note the political effect of this extra-political institution, and the political ideals of which it has been the champion; and perhaps the only permanent champion.
“The ideal for which it stands in the state is liberty. It stands for liberty for the very simple reason with which this rough analysis started. It is the only one of these institutions that is at once necessary and voluntary. Read More »
March 6, 2023
The Apostles in Prayer, Metropolitan Museum of Art
“THE best crosses are the heaviest, and the heaviest are those which arouse our greatest repugnance, those which we do not choose, the crosses we find in the streets, and better still those we find at home. These are to be preferred to hair-shirts, disciplines, fasts, and all other practices of austerity. There is always something of overnicety in the crosses we choose; because there is something of self in them, they are less crucifying. Humble yourself, therefore, and accept those which are imposed upon you against your will.”
— St. Francis de Sales
March 6, 2023
J.M.W. Turner; Snow Storm
THE MONK BY THE SEA*
—- by Mark Anthony Signorelli
There lived a monk by the sea —
He walked along the sand,
He wandered silently
Without a friend at hand,
And when the last gray swatch
Of day hung in the sky,
He’d wander there and watch
The ships go sailing by;
And sometimes it would happen
When winter storms would blow,
Some rash and foolish captain
Would bring his ship to woe;
And the monk would see the boat
That floundered in the tide,
And he would hear the shout
The desperate sailors cried, Read More »
March 5, 2023
“[T]he efficacy of contrition does not simply consist in ceasing to sin, or in resolving to begin, or having actually begun a new life; it supposes first of all a hatred of one’s ill-spent life and a desire of atoning for past transgressions.
“…. The word means the breaking of an object into small parts by means of a stone or some harder substance; and here it is used metaphorically, to signify that our hearts, hardened by pride, are beaten and broken by penance. Hence no other sorrow, not even that which is felt for the death of parents, or children, is called contrition. The word is exclusively employed to express the sorrow with which we are overwhelmed by the forfeiture of the grace of God and of our own innocence.
“… for as ulcers are lanced with a knife in order to allow the escape of the poisonous matter accumulated within, so the heart, as it were, is pierced with the lance of contrition, to enable it to emit the deadly poison of sin.”
— Catechism of the Council of Trent, Transl. by John McHugh and Charles Callan, 1923
March 3, 2023
Flamingo, John James Audubon
Susan Bell,
Chair of the Board
National Audubon Society
Dear Mrs. Bell,
I am an ordinary bird lover who recently visited the society’s museum in Audubon, Pennsylvania. I am also a longtime admirer of the society’s namesake, John James Audubon, one of the greatest artists who ever lived.
I am writing in response to news that the board is considering removing Audubon’s name from the title of your organization, as have several chapters, and that it has already taken major steps to distance itself from him.
Audubon, as you well know, has been accused of “racism.” In an exhibit at the museum, on my recent visit, his life was described as, in part, “despicable.”
I do not believe Audubon, who wrote so movingly of the virtues and nobility of the American Indians he met in the wilderness, was “racist.” Not at all. Even so, I would like to join with those requesting his name be erased and his legacy officially canceled.
Please remove his name and disassociate his great works from your “non-profit” corporation. I only offer this suggestion because your organization has solicited advice.
The truth is, Audubon doesn’t belong anymore.
A quixotic genius and self-taught explorer who experienced poverty and other hardships in his project to render the birds of America, Audubon wasn’t impressed with the Puritanical zealotry of certain 19th-century abolitionists. He would have even more so, I strongly believe, disavowed the fanatical Puritans of today, the zealots, killjoys and thought cops who rule “non-profit” corporations such as yours and who are imposing a variety of political guilt trips on every visit to the woods, mountains or wetlands.
Certainly Audubon would not have approved of the society’s use of political buzzwords such as “equity, inclusion and diversity.” He knew almost anyone with two legs could walk into the backwoods and anyone with ears could listen to birdsong. He well knew that birds are universally accessible, the most “inclusive” of creatures.
He was also a family man to the end, through great sacrifice. He wouldn’t have approved of your perverse promotion of drag queens and “queers.” Audubon loved nature. He was not at war with it, except in minor practicalities. As for your organization’s political obsession with “climate change,” there too he doesn’t belong. He fought with weather on his exhausting excursions to capture and view birds, not against it in a cosmic political project that just so happens to coincide with the totalitarian objectives of a world state, which he certainly would have abhorred, valuing freedom and the wilderness as he did.
Audubon was a self-made man — not a crybaby or a whiner. He worked against extraordinary odds. He wasn’t anything like the pseudo-scientific technocrats, political victimologists or social engineers the Audubon Society promotes today. Audubon wasn’t even, first and foremost, a scientist.
He brought incalculable joy and wonder to humanity. His dramatic prints of birds are even better than real birds, such is the mystery of true art. Please let him be. Let him fall into obscurity.
Let those of us who love birds and beauty, who are proud of all that Americans of the past did to expand the knowledge of birds, cherish Audubon’s works without any trace of guilt. No offense, but we don’t need you as we continue to hold his legacy close to our hearts. I don’t mean this as a personal attack, but your organization has become a boring, scolding, obscene, sex-mad, equality-addled, over-funded, ornithological super-nanny, a monstrous threat to any genuine love of nature. Please let him rest in peace.
Sincerely,
Laura Wood
March 2, 2023
Cows in a marshy landscape, Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot
A March Calf
Right from the start he is dressed in his best – his blacks and his whites
Little Fauntleroy – quiffed and glossy,
A Sunday suit, a wedding natty get-up,
Standing in dunged straw
Under cobwebby beams, near the mud wall,
Half of him legs,
Shining-eyed, requiring nothing more
But that mother’s milk come back often.
Everything else is in order, just as it is.
Let the summer skies hold off, for the moment.
This is just as he wants it.
A little at a time, of each new thing, is best.
Too much and too sudden is too frightening –
When I block the light, a bulk from space,
To let him in to his mother for a suck,
He bolts a yard or two, then freezes,
Staring from every hair in all directions,
Ready for the worst, shut up in his hopeful religion,
A little syllogism
With a wet blue-reddish muzzle, for God’s thumb.
You see all his hopes bustling
As he reaches between the worn rails towards
The topheavy oven of his mother.
He trembles to grow, stretching his curl-tip tongue –
What did cattle ever find here
To make this dear little fellow
So eager to prepare himself?
He is already in the race, and quivering to win –
His new purpled eyeball swivel-jerks
In the elbowing push of his plans.
Hungry people are getting hungrier,
Butchers developing expertise and markets,
But he just wobbles his tail – and glistens
Within his dapper profile
Unaware of how his whole lineage
Has been tied up.
He shivers for feel of the world licking his side.
He is like an ember – one glow
Of lighting himself up
With the fuel of himself, breathing and brightening.
Soon he’ll plunge out, to scatter his seething joy,
To be present at the grass,
To be free on the surface of such a wideness,
To find himself himself. To stand. To moo.
— Ted Hughes