My husband and I at Stowe Pinnacle after a sweaty climb on the Fourth of July

I HAVE returned from a great trip to Vermont. I had intended to post while I was away and to wish readers a Happy Fourth of July, but as it turned out I only logged in to the computer once. (Unfortunately, I cannot announce I am away from home.)

It was a beautiful week of hiking and just plain walking with my husband and son in the Green Mountains, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire too. Nothing else seemed important in comparison to the woods, waterfalls and rocky summits of this marvelous region, about which I hope to say more.

America truly is beautiful. I hope you saw that in some way this July Fourth and had some time to celebrate. I love this country — for many reasons. But its natural grandeur is high on the list of reasons. On a July day on the top of one of America’s many mountains, we can see God’s love for us. In the distance, we can see this exhilarating fullness. He overwhelms us. He gives us more than we can absorb. He is much more patriotic than we are.

I am back to regular posting today. Thank you very much to those who sent notes.

[Reposted from August 8, 2020]

Those who vilify Kate Smith could not create one one-thousandth of the happiness that she imparted to her audiences. They can only destroy. Their goal is pure destruction: Of America and Christendom.

Orwell could not have dreamed of a better example of Thought Crime than the “racism” today’s arrogant young know-it-alls imagine they have “discovered” in songs composed decades before they were born.  Fools, all of them.  They play the role of useful idiots for Communist-trained agitators and provocateurs.  Do not underestimate such people or their sponsors. They mean to destroy every vestige of American identity, heritage, and achievement.

***

ALAN writes:

It must have been in 1953 or ’54 that I first became aware of Kate Smith when my grandmother watched “The Kate Smith Hour” on afternoon television.  I was four years old. Doubtless my grandmother remembered Kate Smith from her radio programs in the 1930s-‘40s.

The name Kate Smith never occurred in conversations in my family or among friends. There was no reason why it should.  Throughout all the years when I grew up and afterwards, Kate Smith was “just there:” A part of American radio history, a frequent guest on television variety shows, a wonderful singer who came to be known as the “Songbird of the South,” an all-American patriot, and the woman whose 1938 recording of “God Bless America” was an inspiration for countless Americans.

It went without saying in my family that Kate Smith was all those things.

On many Sunday nights in the 1960s-‘70s, I listened to KXOK Radio in St. Louis because they played “oldies but goodies”.  Kate Smith’s recording of “God Bless America” was played at the close of that program, which was also the end of their broadcast day.  That is when and where I came fully to appreciate it.  I remember the uplift I felt upon hearing that recording in the darkness of night, followed by silence when the station went off the air.  It was a most effective setting for the recording to linger in my awareness for moments afterward and for me to think about it, as I did.  I imagine my father and his Army Air Corps colleagues in the South Pacific during World War II must have been equally impressed if they were lucky enough to hear Kate Smith sing “God Bless America” on an Armed Forces Radio broadcast.

On hearing that recording in 1983, librarian Efrem Sepulveda wrote:

           “I thought about how soaring it was to the spirit….and that it was something to remind us of the beauty we have lost…..”

        [“Killing Kate Smith,” The Imaginative Conservative, May 20, 2019]

I agree, except for the word “lost.” I suggest Americans did not lose it but gave it away, through their gullibility, moral cowardice, and boundless capacity for self-immolation. Read More »

AN OLD woman in the mining region of Central Pennsylvania describes her troubles in this ballad by Felix O’Hare, The Shoofly colliery failed to offer miners work in the 1870s, and already in debt to her neighbors the woman foresees the worst.  This is from the George Korson Recordings of Pennsylvania Coal Miners Collection at the Library of Congress. Daniel Walsh sings beautifully in this recording of 1946.

This ballad articulates the thoughts of the miners in the depression of the early ’70’s. In 1871 the little mine patch of Valley Furnace received a blow from which it never recovered: the mine gave out. Normally the miners might have found jobs at the Shoofly, a nearby colliery. There, however, a bad seam had been struck and men were being laid off. The only alternative to starvation was to gather meager belongings, leave old associations, and trek across the Broad Mountain in to the Mahanoy Valley then being opened to mining. [Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miners, Recorded and Edited by George Korson, 1947 ]

THE SHOOFLY

As I went a-walking one fine summer’s morning,
It was down by the Furnace I chanced for to stroll.
I espied an old lady, I’ll swear she was eighty,
At the foot of the dirt banks a-rooting for coal;
And when I drew nigh her she sat on her hunkers
For to fill up her scuttle she just had begin
And to herself she was singing a ditty,
And these are the words the old lady did sing: Read More »

STEPHEN FOSTER’S “Old Folks at Home,” also known as “Way Down upon the Swanee River,” is a famous American song that was written in 1851 for a minstrel show. The words to the original were about a slave yearning for “de old plantation.” They were altered, lest anyone think a slave could be momentarily happy. Here is the shocking, unexpurgated version:

Way down upon de Swanee Ribber,
Far, far away,
Dere’s wha my heart is turning ebber,
Dere’s wha de old folks stay.

All up and down de whole creation
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home.

Chorus
All de world am sad and dreary,
Eb-rywhere I roam;
Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!

All round de little farm I wandered
When I was young,
Den many happy days I squandered,
Many de songs I sung.
When I was playing wid my brudder
Happy was I;
Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!
Dere let me live and die.

One little hut among de bushes,
One dat I love
Still sadly to my memory rushes,
No matter where I rove.
When will I see de bees a-humming
All round de comb?
When will I hear de banjo strumming,
Down in my good old home?

Foster was born on July Fourth in 1826 in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania. According to the Library of Congress, “Foster revealed an early interest in music but received little formal training. Primarily self-taught, Foster displayed an affinity for ‘Ethiopian’ and minstrel songs (he performed in minstrel shows as a boy), yet he also incorporated characteristics of Irish melodies, German songs, and Italian operas in his compositions. He was eighteen when his first song was published, ‘Open Thy Lattice, Love’ (1844), set to a poem by George P. Morris; however, its title page erroneously credited the composer as ‘L. C. Foster.’ Subsequently, Foster served as both composer and lyricist to his songs, which numbered over two hundred.”

Foster never made much money from his songs, though they are among the most popular in American history. If he were alive today, he would not only be poor, he’d probably be on the FBI’s domestic terrorist list. NPR’s Terri Gross had a typically Jewish take on Foster; his music, she said, was “hateful.”

BASED on a poem by George P. Morris which appeared in the New York Mirror magazine in 1830, “Woodman, Spare that Tree,” composed by Henry P. Russell, expresses a simple, patriotic love and gratitude. It was sung here by Derek P. Scott in 1980.

Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I’ll protect it now.
‘Twas my forefather’s hand
That placed it near his cot:
There, woodman, let it stand,
Thy axe shall harm it not!

Read More »

LATE FILMMAKER Aaron Russo described a conversation with David Rockefeller in this clip from a famous video made before his death in 2007.

“THE people is the same everywhere. At times it seems to show extreme generosity without understanding a thing, while at other times it behaves ferociously for no apparent reason; sensitive to the point of silliness at times, even when there is no reason to be moved, at other times it remains impassive or even acts cynically when it ought to react or even become enraged so as not to be shamed. The people is what certain elements would like it to be. Such elements crown the people, as they know full well that sovereignty will always rest in their own hands.”

— Leon de Poncins, Emmanuel Malynski, The Occult War

Also of interest by Baldwin: “Is Israel Planning to Relocate to Ukraine?”

Crucifixion of St. Peter, Caravaggio; 1660

“THE Apostle, having reached the spot and come up to the instrument of death, implored of his executioners to set him thereon, not in the usual way, but head downwards, in order, said he, that the servant be not seen in the same position once taken by the Master. His request was granted; and Christian tradition, in all ages, renders testimony to this fact which adds further evidence to the deep humility of so great an Apostle. Peter, with outstretched arms, prayed for the city, prayed for the whole world, the while his blood flowed down upon that Roman soil the conquest of which he had just achieved. At this moment Rome became forever the new Jerusalem. When the apostle had gone through the whole round of his sufferings, he expired; but he was to live again in each one of his Successors, unto the end of time.”

— Dom Prosper Gueranger, “Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul,” The Liturgical Year

Hymn for the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul (English translation)

Lo! beauteous Light Eternal floods, with sacred fires, this golden day which crowns the Princes of Apostles and opens out unto the guilty a free path to Heaven.

The Teacher of the whole earth, as well as the Doorkeeper of Heaven, both of them Fathers of Rome, and Judges of nations, each a victor of death, the one by the sword, the other by the cross, laurel-crowned, both take their seats in the Senate of Eternal Life. Read More »

“OH GOD, to how many and what great dangers are my children exposed, and how insufficient is the protection that I can afford them. Yes, O Lord, I watch in vain over them if Thou does not watch with me. But when they abide under Thy protection how sure may I not be. I recommend then my children to Thy powerful and loving care. Keep graciously far from them all that may be hurtful and dangerous to their life; let them enjoy the blessing of health; but, above all, protect them in the dangers of their souls. Drive away from them with Thy powerful hand whatever may have an injurious influence upon their yet tender and youthful hearts and become for them an occasion of wickedness and sin. Send Thy holy angels, that they may ‘bear them up in their hands, lest they should dash their feet against a stone.’ Almighty Father, lead my children through the dangers and storms of this life so they may arrive one day at the haven of salvation. Amen.”

— From “The Christian Mother,” by the Rev. W. Cramer (Benziger Bros, 1880)

AS JEWISH organizations protest the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it’s worth remembering the work of Bernard Nathanson, the Jewish doctor who was a major figure in legalizing abortion and who performed, by his estimate, 5,000 abortions and presided over more than 60,000 by other doctors. He later recanted his position and became an outspoken opponent of abortion. Read more here.

Robert P. George wrote in an article on Nathanson:

In the mid-1960s, with the sexual revolution roaring after Alfred Kinsey’s fraudulent but influential “scientific” studies of sex and sexuality in America, Hugh Hefner’s aggressive campaign to legitimize pornography and, perhaps above all, the wide distribution of the anovulant birth control pill, Nathanson became a leader in the movement to overturn laws prohibiting abortion. He co-founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), which later became the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and is now NARAL Pro-Choice America. Its goal was to remove the cultural stigma on abortion, eliminate all meaningful legal restraints on it, and make it as widely available as possible across the nation and, indeed, the globe.

To achieve these goals, Nathanson would later reveal, he and fellow abortion crusaders pursued dubious and in some cases straightforwardly dishonest strategies.

First, they promoted the idea that abortion is a medical issue, not a moral one. This required persuading people of the rather obvious falsehood that a normal pregnancy is a natural and healthy condition if the mother wants her baby, and a disease if she does not. The point of medicine, to maintain and restore health, had to be recast as giving health care consumers what they happen to want; and the Hippocratic Oath’s explicit prohibition of abortion had to be removed. In the end, Nathanson and his collaborators succeeded in selling this propaganda to a small but extraordinarily powerful group of men: in the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, seven Supreme Court justices led by Harry Blackmun, former counsel to the American Medical Association, invalidated virtually all state laws providing meaningful protection for unborn children on the ground that abortion is a “private choice” to be made by women and their doctors.

Second, Nathanson and his friends lied—relentlessly and spectacularly—about the number of women who died each year from illegal abortions.

FROM Lifesite News:

Abortion is now virtually illegal or sharply restricted in at least 10 states, most of which have implemented what are known as “trigger” laws designed to take effect immediately upon the reversal of Roe v. Wade and criminalize abortion throughout pregnancy.

The newly-enforceable bans are a devastating blow to the abortion industry: Since Friday morning, clinics have ceased abortions in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Abortions initially stopped in Utah and Louisiana but have resumed this week due to recent court orders.

More than 100,000 abortions took place in those states in 2019, according to CDC data.

In Texas and Alabama, those performing an abortion can face felony charges equivalent to rape or attempted murder and in Louisiana, anyone aborting the child of a minor may face up to 50 years in prison.

So much selfless effort by anti-abortion activists for many years has truly paid off. They will save many lives.

See a complete rundown of the latest developments in the post linked above.

WHEN POLITICS is everything to people, they become aggressive and cruel when they don’t get their way.

This fanatical nastiness, with the happy end of Roe v. Wade, is now more obvious than ever. Some thoughts on this phenomenon from Eddie Scarry, written before last week:

Even when Democrats emerged victorious from the suffocating bonfire of 2020, having control of the White House and all of Congress for two years, has their mood change? No. It’s only gotten worse.

They may have traded their pussy hats for Fauci prayer candles, but the attitude has never been angrier or more spiteful. Vengeance has animated them each and every day.

There are scores of studies, surveys, reports and data to back up that truism.

Spoiled brats are everywhere. And mostly they’re grown adults. Stay away. There’s nothing to gain from engaging them in any political conversation.

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