A Monarch butterfly being tagged in Cape May, New Jersey last week.

WOULDN’T it be nice to fly away? Maybe to a mountain in Mexico where you could spend the upcoming Corona winter?

I envy the migrating species, the butterflies and the birds who travel hundreds of miles at this time of year. There they go — without fear, without masks, without passports, without even a car or plane. Just wings.

Two weeks ago, I heard a tapping on one of our car windows while I was working outside. A catbird had flown into the car. He was flinging himself against the rear window. He couldn’t figure how to get out the one open window. I got the keys and opened all the windows. He was thrilled, in his own way. He had no use for this vehicle at all.

He is probably gone now for the winter.

Flying at night while we are asleep, using the stars and the earth’s magnetic field for navigation, he will probably arrive any day now in Florida.

Last week, we saw Monarch butterflies at a bird-and-butterfly rest stop near the Atlantic Ocean in Cape May, New Jersey. The butterflies, looking for nectar in the shore vegetation, were on their way to a mountain in Mexico for the season. They weigh about 1/400th of an ounce — they are as light and flimsy as paper envelopes — and yet they survive winds at 1,000 feet or so above the ground to get to their destination. Many of them will arrive intact.

We also saw four bald eagles circling overhead, riding a warm thermal with their famous, dramatic wings held in place. They probably were migrating too and had traveled from farther north. They usually migrate in groups, spread about half a mile apart from each other, taking up as much as twenty to thirty miles altogether with their eagle caravans. They travel about 30 miles an hour, which isn’t bad, considering.

I can’t imagine what they are thinking when they look down at our highways except that they are glad to be eagles and not Jeep Wranglers and Ford Explorers.

The eagles and Monarchs are just as beautiful in person as they are in photos and on logos. They are celebrities of the airways. So beloved are the delicate, orange-and-black wings of the Monarchs and the majestic glare of the eagles that their numbers are meticulously tallied every year and armies of fans travel to see them.

In addition to eagles, we saw American Kestrels, Merlins and Sharp-shinned Hawks from a platform where bird watchers were aiming their binoculars like guns at the skies and calling out the names of the raptors they saw. Not all birds are worthy of being watched. The swans who have taken over a nearby pond are despised and nobody but the lowest of amateurs even looks at them.

A naturalist in a pavilion nearby had a Monarch in a little breathable envelope. She took it out, scraped off some of the velvety scales from one of its wings and affixed a small sticker with a tracking number, like putting a stamp on a letter. Did you know you can “adopt” a Monarch who is traveling south? He won’t know who you are, but you can know his number and if he arrives — and someone in Mexico catches him — you will be contacted and informed — phew! — that he has safely completed his journey. They say they are dwindling in numbers and so you may worry.

At night you can lie in your bed and think of your butterfly.

You can think of the eagles swooping down from their aeronautic highways to catch fish and the little catbirds who escaped from cars in time.

This burst of autumnal energy continues without interruption year after year. It’s never canceled due to bad weather or virus mania.

Even the smartest ornithologists with all their charts and high-tech scopes cannot fully understand it. How birds and butterflies manage to do it remains partly mysterious.

If the thought of all this flapping and soaring, gliding and whirling in the golden light of fall does not lift you up — metaphorically speaking, I mean — then probably nothing can.

FROM an article by Russ Winter at Winter Watch (the comments section):

Many right-wingers would have you believe that such acts are orchestrated – or at the very least rather cynically exploited – as a pretext for passing further gun-control legislation. The government wants to scare the people into giving up their right to bear arms, or so the thinking goes. And there is reason to believe that this could well be a goal.

It is not, however, the only – or even the primary – goal, but rather a secondary one at best. Read More »

Renoir, Young Mother with Child

THE feminist mother loves her children always. The Christian mother loves her children too. But the feminist and Christian represent two different cultural institutions. Their approaches to motherhood, their forms of love, are very different. They cannot be reconciled.

The feminist mother always has good qualities, traits perhaps superior to individual Christians. But essential differences exist between her and her Christian counterpart.

Here is an incomplete list:

The feminist mother has children because they make her happy. The Christian mother has children to please God.

The feminist mother believes the happiness and success of her children are supreme. The Christian mother believes the happiness and success of her children are important, but not paramount.

The feminist mother seeks first for her children contentment in this world. The Christian mother seeks contentment in the next world first. Read More »

A HEALTHY one-year-old boy in Florida died two days later. A 16-year-old boy died while taking a math class on Zoom. A 16-year-old girl died of a heart attack nine days later.

Brief descriptions of some of the children who have died soon after reading Covid shots can be found here. They are among the more than 16,310 people reported to have died of the “vaccines” on the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, as of October 1.

Whatever happened to “First Do No Harm?”

Link here.

 
Link here.

Link here.

FROM an article at Health Impact News by Dr. David Stewart, Ph.d.:

In Dr. Robert Mendelsohn’s book, Confessions of a Medical Heretic, he describes medicine as a practice of religion rather than a practice of science. Doctors practice what they believe, not what they can substantiate by valid science. According to Mendelsohn, in the religion of medicine, physicians are the high priests and their ecclesiastical robes are their white coats. Hospitals are the temples where many holy waters are dispensed in the form of drugs, antibiotics, and vaccines. People tithe to the church of medicine by dutifully paying their insurance premiums. The word “prescription” is very close to the term “prescriptural,” thus implying a scriptural basis for their use. The Holy Bible containing the scriptures of medicine is the Pharmaceutical PDR. For millions of people, their faith and confidence in the religion of medicine is far greater than their belief in the institutions of worship they may attend. In a crisis, they would sooner call 911 than call upon God in prayer. Read More »

THOUGH 21 states so far have banned “vaccine passports,” the majority of states have not and everywhere the general public has been conditioned to the idea of passports for internal domestic travel.

This idea is remarkably similar to the internal passports mandated by the Soviet Politburo in 1932.

The purpose of the passports was to track “anti-social” elements and dissidents, ultimately aiding the processing of millions of executions and deportations to Siberia. Between March and July of 1933, roughly 86,000 people in Moscow alone were arrested for failure to have passports.

An interesting video asks, “Is the Vaccine Passport Based on the Bolshevik Passport System?”

“THE middle-class lifestyle from 50 years ago is now worth a million bucks, and two income earners can no longer achieve the lifestyle that one wage once provided.”

The departure of women from the home was due to the looting of the American economy — and feminist propaganda made women think it was all good.

Read more here.

Angels, Benozzo Gozzoli

NOTHING is sadder than the sight of a young child in a face mask. You can see them in our area, standing waiting for the bus, their parents sometimes beside them without masks themselves. The children’s faces are obliterated and they all look like sinister surgeons at the operating table, their identities erased, their breath restricted and their minds — that’s the worst part. Their minds are conditioned to fear. They are walking mannequins, a new species cut off from nature. We are living in a science fiction movie and can’t get out.

No words are adequate to describe this depressing phenomenon. Every time I see it, I am shocked and brought down. I have no patience for those who say, “Children can get used to anything” or “They’ll be fine” or “It doesn’t really bother him.” The parents of these children will each and every one of them face God someday, possibly very soon. And they will have no mask to hide their own faces. It doesn’t matter how much they feel for their children. He will most certainly exact justice for His little ones. Many of these parents will be “drowned in the depth of the sea.”

But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)

Stealing the innocence of the souls God has entrusted to their care, they have no excuse.

The guardian angels await divine justice too. I know it’s not cool or popular to talk about these supernatural beings who are so much more sensitive than we are, but they too must be saddened to see the faces of those they tenderly love erased. They themselves have been cheated and deprived of what rightfully belongs to them — the facial expressions of children. How can we know a child without his face? How can they?

God had, from the beginning, allotted to pure spirits their labors; to some, that of seeking the general good of mankind; to others, that of watching each over one soul.*

Of these latter I was one. On the advent of a soul whom God alone saw in the future, my ministry was to commence. At what time, in what place, under what auspices was she to appear ? I knew not.

Without having seen her, I loved her already, and my affection did not cease to grow in proportion as the wished-for term drew near.

When an infant was born on earth, I flew to the throne of God, and, like each one of my brothers, I hastened to say to Him, ” Will it be I, Lord, who shall have the honor of guiding it on its pilgrimage? 

[Memoirs of a Guardian Angel, M. L Abbé G. Chardon; 1871]

Whenever you see a child in a mask, say a prayer to his guardian angel.

 At all times, and in every place, they are ready to help us, and to provide for our wants. They walk with us in all our ways; going out and coming in, they follow us still, anxiously considering whether we live piously and purely in the midst of a wicked world. They assist those who labor; they guard those who rest; they encourage those who light; they crown those who conquer; they rejoice with the joyful, and sympathize with the suffering. When we do well, the angels are glad, but the devils are sad. When we sin, the devils rejoice, but the angels are cheated of their joy.

— St. Augustine

Fill your heart and mind with prayer for the children of the world. There is nothing better you can do. Mere human beings, we cannot fight this incalculable evil on our own.

— Comments —

Helena writes from Canada:

You wrote a beautiful piece today.

I realized a while back that children, with masks, seem to have an attraction to me. This is not vanity on my part.

It is simply that I do not, and have never, worn a mask in public. I will put one on just as I stand before cashiers, simply to keep them calm, as a courtesy gesture, if you will, but immediately take it off when I leave their booths.

No-one has bothered me. I am the only one in the various locations – mall, grocery store, hardware store – with no mask. I tell the patrol police that I am unable to wear a mask. I don’t elaborate, I don’t go into medical records, I don’t promise to bring a doctor’s notice of exemption.

Once, when a young security guard was especially irritating, I told him that this whole thing is illegal, and that I would get my lawyer on the store he’s patrolling. I don’t have a lawyer, but I could get one in a flash, I’m sure. It was my scare tactic. It worked. I’m sure he told the area’s patrol office, since once in a while, some security guard will give me a brief smile (of encouragement?).

Almost every day, I notice a young child noticing me, curious, interested, and not at all intimidated. I have a full face!

I usually wave, and I always smile. They wave back, and smile back – I can see their eyes crinkling above their strapped faces.

I don’t know what will happen. All I hope is that they remember that they saw a full face, with a full smile, and a friendly (complicit) wave. They don’t say anything, and their busy, anxious, brain-washed, and dare I say callously inattentive parents, don’t see this tiny transaction. “Just between you and me” I try to tell them. I hope they remember this much later on, when they realize what they had to go through, and start to understand the deceptions, that someone with a full face gave them a full smile.

ALAN writes:

“More men should teach the young….  At present 76 per cent of the teachers are women and many boys go through school without coming in contact with a man. The result of too much woman is that the boy becomes ‘sissified’ and domesticated. Boys are petted too much. They should have rough house and boisterousness. That begets aggressiveness and not timidity, as the system now does.”

       — Stanley Hall, President of Clark University, quoted in “Too Much Woman in the Schools, Declares Hall”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 6, 1908, p. 10.

Imagine what Hall would say if he were here today. He also wrote:

“The degenerate textbooks of today will give away something strong and inspiring. The textbook has decayed alarmingly in 10 years.

 “Moral education should be the paramount object.  There is little of it now in the schools and as a result juvenile crime is increasing at a tremendous rate…..”

Imagine if he were here today and could see (a) the extent of juvenile crime, (b) the degenerate public schools, and (c) textbooks that are far more degenerate than those of 1908.  Today there is no moral education at all in public schools and very little elsewhere. Read More »

TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, Fr. Gordon J. MacRae was sentenced in New Hampshire to 67 years in prison for what he has always maintained is a completely false charge of sexual assault. He could have spent two years in jail under a plea bargain, which was offered him more than once, but he refused to plead guilty, firmly maintaining his innocence.

At his website, Beyond These Stone Walls, Fr. MacRae reflects from his prison cell on this week’s feast of St. Michael the Archangel:

Our troubles and struggles in this world are not always simple anxieties over material discomforts, painful relationships, or the tragedies that occur in our lives. They are also manifestations of spiritual battle, and should be seen and resisted as such. People of deep faith recognize the spiritual battles within themselves and their environments, and rely on faith and spiritual allies to defend against them.

Fr. MacRae is one of hundreds of Catholic priests, both dead and alive, who have been falsely accused or convicted of sexual crimes, turning their lives into a daily nightmare. According to the FBI agent supervisor who reviewed Fr. MacRae’s case, “In my three years of investigation of this case, I have found no evidence that MacRae committed these crimes, or any crimes.” The Wall Street Journal concluded he was wrongfully convicted: “Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to believe that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents.” Fr. MacRae’s accuser, who had a record of violence, theft and drug use, discovered his alleged abuse through “repressed memories.” Huge financial incentives exist for fraud given that many clearly false charges of abuse have been awarded handsome pay-outs and his accuser received $200,000 from the diocese.

The fact that a very small number priests committed truly heinous crimes against the young does not lessen the grave injustice of cases such as that of Fr. MacRae nor the vicious campaign of defamation of the Catholic Church, instigated by very powerful forces, as an asylum of perverts.

A believer in the modernist revolution and the wretched “New Mass,” Fr. MacRae is limited in his understanding of events in the Church and the world. His example, his courage and his fortitude are still inspiring. He describes a dream he had a few years ago on Oct. 2, a day also traditionally reserved to honor angels:

I said, “I only see the prison lights.” “Look beyond the prison lights,” said the mysterious man. Then in the dream my vision suddenly changed. I was able to see far, far away into the vast darkness, and there in the center of my field of view I saw a constellation, a triangle of three stars. Within the triangle, the stars were joined by streams of glowing light. “It looks like neon,” I said in the dream. Then the companion said, “Michael dwells within the light.”

Juan de la Abadia; The Archangel Michael c. 1490

ALMIGHTY and eternal God, who in thy own marvellous goodness and pity didst, for the common salvation of man, choose the glorious Archangel Michael to be the Prince of thy Church; make us worthy, we pray Thee, to be delivered by his beneficent protection from all our enemies, that at the hour of our death no one of them may approach to harm us, and that by the same Archangel Michael we may be introduced into the presence of thy high and heavenly Majesty. Through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

— From Devotions to St. Michael the Archangel. The Feast of the Dedication of St. Michael is today, September 29.

THEY MAY be a last line of protection against medical tyranny.

Some sheriffs say they will never arrest citizens who decline inoculation.

St. Joseph’s Home for Boys, 1945

[Part One of this essay can be found here.]

ALAN writes:

I remember listening on peaceful Sunday afternoons to baseball announcer Jack Buck on KMOX Radio broadcasts of Cardinals’ doubleheaders…..and standing at our kitchen sink early one evening while listening to Jack Buck interview retired Cardinals’ pitcher Lindy McDaniel, another of my boyhood baseball heroes whose baseball cards my classmates and I carried in our pockets in those golden summers of 1958-’59.

Two blocks from where we lived was a building that Bohemians built in 1903 as a gymnastic and cultural club.  They were there until 1956, at which time it became a VFW Post.

I remember walking countless times to and across a pedestrian walkway above Highway 55 to a bus stop on Broadway in the years when I worked downtown.  Behind me as I stood there waiting for my bus were two houses that dated from the 1850s and overlooked the Mississippi River.  In the early 1900s, passenger trains stopped behind one of those houses.  The trains and the houses are long gone.

As I walked up the steps leading to the walkway, I walked past an ordinary house that was always occupied and in good condition.

In some years I would get home from my job at or around midnight.  Then I would read the two daily newspapers, and perhaps a book or magazine, and fall asleep around 3 a.m. to the wonderful voice of John McCormick on KMOX Radio.  I remember reading Arthur Koestler’s book The Ghost in the Machine in that setting in 1968.

I remember walking along the streets around our house many times late at night with no need whatever for concern about safety.  That began to change in the late 1980s and reached bottom when the liars and frauds who call themselves “The Law” did nothing to stop thugs and parasites from converting that neighborhood and others around it into combat zones.

I remember Elisabeth’s thoughtfulness in visiting my mother in the last years of her life, and in exchanging cards and notes with me for years afterward.  Her mother lived the last years in her long life in a nursing home overlooking the river, the same location where my grandfather died in 1969.

When we were in grade school, my classmate Tony and his family lived two blocks from Pennsylvania Avenue.  (They were from Germany, too.)  But in the middle of those years, their house was demolished when the highway was built through that area.

St. Hedwig’s Catholic Church was built for Polish Catholics.  Baseball’s Hall of Fame sportswriter Bob Broeg was born in the kitchen of a house just down the street from the church and school.  The school closed in 1970, the church closed in 2005, and the parish was dissolved after 101 years.  Here is a picture of the St. Hedwig class of 1962:

Read More »