ALAN writes:

Not long ago I learned of the death last year of a woman whom we met in 1965.  She, her husband and her parents owned a four-family flat on Pennsylvania Avenue in south St. Louis.  All of them lived there.  We moved there in August 1965.  It turned out that we could not have chosen a residence owned and cared for by better people.  They were German, and they exemplified the spirit and determination of the “Scrubby Dutch” of south St. Louis.

Pennsylvania Avenue is a brick street.  It was a clean, safe neighborhood in 1965 and for years after.  We would never have moved there had it not been.  It was within walking distance of schools, churches, parks, and stores.  It was one block from the building that had been Maryville College.

Our years in that house left many priceless memories.

The woman who died was the last of the four. Elisabeth and her husband, Hans, had a son whom I remember from those years as being a few years younger than me. (more…)

  TO PROTEST against vaccine passports, French eat on the ground outside restaurants requiring them.  

JUSTIN TRUDEAU, puppet dictator of Communist Canada, wades through constituents in British Columbia. Listen to the comments. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Trudeau is a snake slithering through the grass. He reads a script every day and fulfills plans that have been in place for many years.  

READ the latest entry requirements for concerts of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra here. (more…)

IT’S BEEN a while since we visited Chester.

You remember Chester — the small industrial city on the rat-gray Delaware River, the city in Pennsylvania where my husband grew up back in the day when America had small industrial cities.

I haven’t been able to go there lately — I don’t mean physically, but mentally. I feel almost ashamed to go there.

For all their faults, and Chesterites had many faults, they were not all that afraid of death. I don’t think they would have identified with a war against an invisible enemy. I don’t think they would have identified with a war against the common cold.

You might even say they courted death. They tempted it with cigarettes and beer and bad food and toothless grins.

Take the neighbor next door, Mrs. Weiry (pronounced “Weery”) — to mention one minor example.

She played on the train tracks when she was a girl. She lost her legs doing it. Both of them, below the knees. She had two wooden legs for the rest of her life. All for a day of fun on the train tracks. (more…)

EVERY day, at this time of year, hummingbirds appear in our backyard — just a few ruby-throated hummingbirds, not the hordes this blackberry farmer attracted to his fields.

Hummingbirds are extremely popular creatures, but we don’t entice them to our yard with feeders. They just appear, spending less than a minute at a time but coming many times during the course of the day, whirring and hovering, drilling with their fantastic, needle-shaped beaks into the tubular salvia blossoms and other flowers, taking away with their speedy, trademark sips the nectar that sustains them or grabbing a few barely visible insects.

For many years the hummingbirds were afraid of us and as soon as we walked out the back door they would fly away in a flash. Now we can stand a few inches away and they don’t flee. I don’t know why this is. I assume different birds come each year, but then hummingbirds can live as long as nine years, so perhaps it is possible, after traveling thousands of miles from Central America in the spring, they come back to the same yard — and have gotten used to us. I don’t know whether this is possible. I only know I can now stand close to them, look right into their jet black eyes, see the details of their emerald backs and iridescent, red or white throats — and hear the whirring of their wings, which move so fast they cannot be seen by the human eye and make the birds appear as if suspended in air. When I’m weeding, I sometimes hear the tiny, humming motors passing very close to my ears. They don’t seem to mind my presence. Maybe some hummingbirds are just not as fearful as others. (more…)

JEFF GREEN analyzes a recent piece in the news that advocates forcing the "unvaccinated" to pay for damages. This is a rant, but a good one.  

WHEN I WAS in my thirties, I began to read books differently. I felt a bit guilty about doing things this way, but, what the heck, no one was looking over my shoulders. I didn’t have anyone to please when it came to reading but myself.

I would pick up a book and check out the title page. Then, as long as it was non-fiction, I would go right to the end. I would read some of the very last chapter, usually a few paragraphs or, if interested, a few pages.

I would then go to the middle of the book, and read a few pages or paragraphs. After that, I would read the table of contents and scan the entire book quickly, with my thumb on the edge of the pages, and stop here and there, looking at chapter headings and random paragraphs. Maybe I would stop for a while in one place.

Finally, I would read some of the beginning. If the book seemed worth reading, I would later start from the very beginning and read the book in the conventional way, from start to finish.

To this day, I start many books at the end, whether they are digital or hard versions.

This method is very similar to one described by the late Mortimer Adler in his book How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, which I later encountered and which made me realize that it was okay to do things this way with certain types of books. (more…)

EVER since my hosting company updated some of its software, the archives on this site have not been working well. If you search for posts using keywords or subjects, you may not find them. The problem is that the "theme," or framework, for this site cannot be updated by me and it has not been updated in a while. I am hoping to resolve these problems in the next few weeks, either by updating the theme or transferring the content to a new one. In the meantime, you may have difficulty finding past posts. You can always write to me and I will try to find them for you.  

CONFITEOR DEO writes from Paris: A few weeks ago in France, the retired General Dominique Delawarde appeared on CNews, a supposedly conservative news TV station, where he was pressed to reply to the question, "Who controls the media?" The aggressive, kosher journalist, who looks like a clone of Leon Trotsky, pressed him with the word "Qui?" (Translation: "Who?") and even if the General didn't reply exactly, his response was enough to get the interview shut down and motivate the interviewer into attacking the terrible behavior of the General, who will never be invited on CNews again. Of course the General is facing a charge of anti-semitism, but this isn't the end of the story. The word "Qui" is now being brandished quite often in the anti-Covid demonstrations. The government is working to introduce a pass that will prevent the "unvaccinated" from entering businesses. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets. On Saturday, the 7th of August, Cassandre Fristot demonstrated in the city of Metz with a placard asking "Qui?" and listing 11 names. The media hysteria is quite something and Cassandre Fristot was identified and arrested yesterday morning. So today, in France, the question "Qui?" (Who?) is now officially a crime. We need to remember Cassandre Fristot, who is Catholic, in our prayers. She has been on the right side of truth for many years.