A FLORIDA speech therapist says she has seen dramatic spikes in developmental delays in young children, especially in language abilities. She blames the use of face masks.

“We are seeing a lot of things that look like autism. They’re not making any word attempts. And not communicating at all with their family,” explained [Jaclyn] Theek. 

“It’s very important that kids do see your face to learn, so they’re watching your mouth,” added the pathologist. 

THE tree has been taken down. The red ribbon on the wreath outside is an embarrassment. When you come across a box of decorations in July, you will think, “What was that all about?”

You are leaving Bethlehem.

You are leaving your own childhood and all childhood.

But don’t go without taking some of that peace and simplicity with you. If anything disturb you, remember that sacred circle of intimacy. Remember the music the shepherds heard, the star that drew kings.

Simplicity and peace are only foolishness to the world.

Bethlehem, of noblest cities
None can once with thee compare;
Thou alone the Lord from heaven
Didst for us Incarnate bear.

Fairer than the sun at morning
Was the star that told his birth;
To the lands their God announcing,
Hid beneath a form of earth. Read More »

A LIGHTING store a few miles away from us is permanently closing next month.

It has been in business for 72 years. It’s an independent, small business, not part of a chain, and sells all kinds of lamps, light fixtures and the accessories that go with them, including shades, harps, bulbs, sockets and that little thing at the top of a lamp that keeps it all together. Everything electricity has engendered in the way of illuminating human existence, it has sold.

During the last couple of months, I visited the store a few times. I was one of the vultures picking over its stock, all of which has been deeply discounted.

On one visit, I picked out a reading floor lamp as a Christmas gift. It was 50 percent off.

I asked the salesman — a stocky, black man with neatly-tied dreadlocks and bulging eyes — for the lamp with the dark finish. I recognized him from previous visits. After he had carried the box out from the stockroom, I asked — though I felt bad — if I could have the one with the silver finish instead.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“I guess you’re used to people changing their mind,” I said, smiling apologetically.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, without skipping a beat.

And when he turned to go back to the storeroom with uncomplaining fortitude, I saw — as if in a vision — the throngs of  nerve-wracking, indecisive, neurotic, uninformed and sometimes grateful and pleasant customers he had served over his many years in this brilliant showroom of lights. He had mastered the ability to overcome irritation with courtesy. He was a retail warrior who had learned a thing or two about human nature.

Read More »

MARK A.I. writes:

With regard to your thought-provoking observation about Covid’s apparent respect for billionaire longevity, from a Forbes article on billionaire deaths in 2020, we have this: “In a year that will likely be remembered around the world for the devastation and loss of life caused by the coronavirus pandemic, 17 billionaires passed away in 2o20–but, as best as we can tell, none did so after contracting Covid-19. That compares to 23 billionaires who died in 2019.”

Then in 2021, Forbes tells us 27 billionaires shuffled off their mortal coils. Again, apparently not a single one from Covid. Read More »

THE wealth of the world’s billionaires increased more during the fake pandemic than in the previous 14 years combined, according to a report from Oxfam. While income fell for 99 percent of the world’s population, the ten richest men doubled their fortunes.

This is all pure coincidence, of course.

“Billionaires have had a terrific pandemic. Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom,” Oxfam International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher said in a statement Monday accompanying the latest report.

Bucher added that if the 10 richest men in the world were to lose 99% of their wealth, they would still be richer than 99% of all the people on this planet.

Interestingly, none of these billionaires died of “Covid.” This is a medical miracle. Deadly germs don’t like the rich, but more study must be done to understand this phenomenon.

Read more at ABC News.

Lafayette Elementary School in south St. Louis, from which my father graduated in 1927.

ALAN writes:

One day in 1988 my father thought about holding a re-union of his grade school classmates.  Then he acted on that idea and organized the first in a series of such re-unions that would continue for 25 years.

He had fond memories of some of the teachers in the public elementary school that he attended in the 1920s.  He and all of his classmates walked to and from school.

At one such reunion, I met a woman named Marjorie who taught in St. Louis public grade schools for decades, as did her twin sister Margaret. They worked in years when the schools in St. Louis were vastly different from what they are now (meaning: much better). Read More »

The Emancipated Housewife
— H.L. Mencken (from In Defense of Women, 1918)

“What has gone on in the United States during the past two generations is full of lessons and warnings for the rest of the world. The American housewife of an earlier day was famous for her unremitting diligence. She not only cooked, washed and ironed; she also made shift to master such more complex arts as spinning, baking and brewing. Her expertness, perhaps, never reached a high level, but at all events she made a gallant effort. But that was long, long ago, before the new enlightenment rescued her. Read More »

THE liturgical season of Christmas continues. You probably have had it with red and green, but you may still tolerate this sublime carol by a fifteenth-century English monk who was both deaf and blind. It is set to music by the composer John Rutter.

There is a flower sprung of a tree,
The root thereof is called Jesse,
A flower of price,
There is none such in paradise.

This flower is fair and fresh of hue,
It fadeth never, but ever is new;
The blessed branch this flower on grew
Was Mary mild that bare Jesu,
A flower of grace;
Against all sorrow it is solace.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

GOD’S GRANDEUR
— Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

DISTURBING similarities between the landowning peasants in the Soviet Union and today’s “unvaccinated” are described here.

Junius Brutus Stearns/Dayton Art Institute

ON THE morning of December 13, 1799, when it was snowing heavily and about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, George Washington toured his estate at Mount Vernon, Virginia on horseback. He was sixty-seven years old and in good health at that time, well enough to perform this daily ride and to supervise five farms. He had recently retired from politics, complaining that politicians had regard for “neither truth nor decency.”

The day before, he had also gone out in the wet snow. He returned home in damp clothes and, not wanting to detain guests, sat down to dinner without changing.

At dinner on the 13th, he was reportedly in good spirits but stated that his throat was sore. His secretary was concerned and suggested he take some medicine. Washington, as recounted in George Washington: A Life by Willard Sterne Randall (Henry Holt & Co, 1997), responded

“No, you know I never take anything for a cold. Let it go as it came.”

Unfortunately, Washington and his doctors, as the night and next day progressed, did not follow this non-invasive approach. If they had, the president may have lived into the 19th century. Instead, concerned about the extreme inflammation of the president’s throat, they resorted to the medical wisdom of the time. Before long, close to half the blood in Washington’s body had been drained by leeches and he was administered mercury, known now to be highly toxic, as well as other substances.

Three doctors were by his bedside, the youngest of whom, Elisha Cullen Dick, advised at one point an immediate tracheotomy to allow Washington, already considerably weakened by bloodletting, to breathe. The other doctors rejected this proposal and Dick pleaded with them to stop bleeding the president:

“He needs all his strength — bleeding will diminish it.” Read More »

PENELOPE writes:

The story of the 13-year-old boy in New Jersey who died on New Year’s Eve leads me to comment on something tangential, albeit very indicative of our society.

This is the what I like to term ‘Beggar Culture’ – every tragedy, every calamity, ever sick pet, sick kid, person with no health insurance, any excuse you can find now requires its own ‘Go Fund Me’ page. Read More »

Carlo Maratti, Holy Family: St Joseph with the Christ Child –

“O Almighty God, who hast given unto me my father and mother, and made them to be an image of Thy authority, and love, and tender watchfulness, and hast commanded me to love, and honor, and obey them in all things; give me grace cheerfully and with my whole heart to keep this Thy law. Help me to love them fervently, to honor them truly, to yield a ready obedience to all their commands, to comply with all their wishes, to study their happiness in every thing, and to bear with patience and humility all their rebukes. Deliver me, O God, from pride, rebellion, and wilfulness, from passion and stubbornness, from sloth and carelessness. Make me diligent in all my duties and studies, and patient in all my trials; that so living, I may deserve to be Thy child, who art our Father in heaven, through Jesus Christ, Thine only Son our Lord. Amen.”

Source

The Cold, Norman Rockwell

PEOPLE say there is no cure for the common cold.

But, I believe the cure was found ages ago, in distant history, and people just don’t want to accept it. They want drugs. They want something “scientific.” They want a quick fix that doesn’t disrupt their lives. And that’s why they have not found the best response to sore throats, coughs and stuffed noses.

The cure is rest. A pillow, a bed or soft couch, a glass of water nearby, maybe something light and entertaining to read or watch — that’s all that is needed.

A friend told me that she turned on the TV the other day and an “expert” was telling people to go to the hospital if they get “Covid” — a term of quackery for all kinds of respiratory conditions, including the common cold. What nonsense. Covid is pure invention, the re-branding of colds, flus, pneumonias and other illnesses for the purposes of social engineering on a global scale. Imagine all those who have needlessly and perhaps disastrously run to the hospital. (NOTE: Obviously some have needed acute care. I am not saying here that no one has gotten seriously ill or died.)

Getting back to the cure: resting at the very first sign of a cold, avoiding all stress and work for at least 24 hours when symptoms are still mild, will invariably, I have found, shorten the length and severity of a cold, except in those who are suffering from especially poor health, which is often the case today. Serious rest at any stage is good, but if delayed it will have less immediate benefits. The demands of life unfortunately make it impossible for some people to take this cure and they may end up with illness that lasts for weeks.

I am no expert so you can disregard what I say. At least I’m not selling you anything. I’m not seeking to control you. I don’t get a sick thrill out of decimating your creative energies for the sake of power. Years of observation and trial-and-error have simply taught me this cure, which has ZERO harmful side effects. Did you read that? No harmful side effects. Read the warning labels on your Tylenol and Sudafed or some of the outrageous treatments being proffered today for colds, even in the alternative media, and consider the difference. The cold, being very common and profitable, has spawned an empire of sales gimmicks, all of them costly failures.

Again, rest is the cure. Not rest for an hour. But sustained rest and avoidance of all mental and physical activity that is in any way taxing or stimulating. (Working in bed or watching a thriller while in bed do NOT count as rest. Trying to solve personal problems on the phone while in bed does NOT count as rest.) What a mind-blowing, radical idea. Hell will freeze over before the World Health Organization, which couldn’t care less about your health, tells you the importance of rest. That’s a lesson that has no benefits for its sponsors — for governments or “philanthropists” or major pharmaceutical companies.

The psychology of a cold is an interesting, related subject. A cold can be made worse by a dread of slowing down and doing nothing, but also by the neurotic belief that a cold is a bad thing, that it is an interference or an unnatural occurrence. Dread and anxiety can be self-fulfilling.

Colds, though unpleasant, are necessary to the sustenance of existence. They detoxify the body, the respiratory organs being used for excretion. It makes sense that rest would aid this work. So intelligently are our bodies designed that they possess different processes of elimination. The sneeze, the cough, the runny nose — they are synergistic reactions to our environment and the substances we absorb, some of which we must expel in order to survive. Our bodies are eliminating what they don’t need and what could be harmful. Sadly many people resent their own bodies and are disastrously alienated from them, believing they are machines that should “function” at all times. So they are ticked off when they get colds. In the history of the human race, people have probably never embraced this mechanistic and ungrateful view of the body as completely or enthusiastically as they do now.

Colds are cyclical, happening more often in the darkness of winter, which makes sense because then the crops are harvested and human beings can afford to expend some effort to throw off a build-up of wastes. Like trees shedding their leaves at the same time, people living under the same conditions get colds at the same time. They are eating and breathing in the same things. They are experiencing the same light and the same air, the same fabrics and the same detergents, the same chemtrails and electromagnetic waves. If they all got sick at different times, these recuperative processes of elimination would be much more disruptive of society.

We don’t live in spite of colds. We live because of colds. A cold is the road to health. If we accept its demands with rest and light, proper nutrition (another subject), we will find ourselves only stronger after it is gone. Read More »

Madonna of Loreto, Raphael Workshop; 1509

“O FATHER of mankind, who hast given unto me these my children, and committed them to my charge to bring them up for Thee, and to prepare them for everlasting life; assist me with Thy heavenly grace, that I may be able to fulfill this most sacred duty and stewardship. Read More »

PLEASE put this in your “It’s Okay to Be Happy” file.

Thanks.