NOTE: This essay was intended for Mother’s Day, 2020. But, like so much of life this spring, it was sabotaged.

ALAN writes:

When the motion picture “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was made in 1961, it was as hip as could be. That must have been why it did not impress me favorably when I first saw it by chance one evening many years afterward.

Recently I decided to watch it again, but still it did not impress me: Not the story, not the glamorized depravity, not the incidental party scenes, not the 1960s-hip sound of bongo drums (a sound I never could tolerate), and not the too-glib, too-fast speech given to Audrey Hepburn’s character.  I thought Buddy Ebsen and the cat were the two best characters in the story.  It is noteworthy also for having been made at a time when American libraries were still using card catalogs (shown in one scene).

But amid such dross, it may be possible to find an element of merit.  For me, that element was the song “Moon River.”

My mother enjoyed watching “The Andy Williams Show” on early-1960s television and I knew that he adopted “Moon River” as a theme song.  But I never paid much attention to that program in those years.  It was not his recording of “Moon River” (splendid though it was) but the romantic, wistful recording by Henry Mancini’s orchestra and chorus that lodged most agreeably in my memory.  I distinctly remember sitting on our living room floor in 1962 and listening to that record.  At age 12, I had no idea what a “moon river” might be and I made no attempt to make sense of the lyrics, but I thought the song was enchanting.

Words that meant little to me in 1962 now overflowed with meaning:

           “Two drifters…off to see the world, There’s such a lot of world to see..…”

Fifty-eight years later, those words by Johnny Mercer, the loping tempo at which they are sung by the chorus, and the slightly-melancholy sound in the melody at that point now conjured up memories of years when a vast, unexplored territory called Life lay entirely in front of me.  I was too young then to realize how my mother must have enjoyed guiding me through “such a lot of world to see” and thereby reliving that adventure through the eyes of her young son. (more…)

MURDER RATES and gun violence have increased significantly in major American cities. The New York Times reports: And as The New York Times reported recently: “It has been nearly a quarter century since New York City experienced as much gun violence in the month of June as it has seen this year.” (On Sunday, there were at least nine killings in the city.) An additional 11 cities provide year-to-date murder data. Murder is up 21.8 percent in all 36 cities with 2020 data through at least May, with 29 of those cities seeing an increase this year relative to last year. The Times piece is a classic example of lying by omission. Nowhere does it mention that the overwhelming majority of victims are blacks, who've been killed by other blacks. Six children, all of them black, were killed in shootings in various cities over the July Fourth weekend, including 11-year-old Davon MacNeal. The group of five men who "began shooting" in his vicinity Saturday night were most certainly not "white supremacists:" News stories about the rise in crime often speak of it as mysterious and perplexing, or attribute it to the virus shutdown alone, rather than the open promotion of criminality by the government, media and corporations in their support for the corporate-and-foundation funded, Communist insurrection group, Black Lives Matter. What’s driving the rise? No one really knows yet, and short-term swings can turn out to be blips. “This is such a weird year in so many…

IN DECEMBER of 2018, I wrote of Meredith, one of my oldest friends who was diagnosed five years ago at the age of 57 with “Early-Onset” Alzheimer’s Disease.

Since Meredith became sick, we spent many happy times together, walking in the woods, traveling once together to Charleston, South Carolina (where we pretended we were real Southern ladies) for a vacation, window shopping, having lunch and just sitting quietly listening to music or talking, mostly about the people she loved. We had little mishaps and adventures, such as the time I started to take off her jacket in a restaurant because she was warm and discovered she was wearing nothing underneath or the time she collapsed on a busy sidewalk and kind people appeared out of nowhere to help me get her back to my house or the time I lost her at a busy public garden at Christmas. She used to refer to her disease jokingly as “WISE-enheimer’s” and I would say that she was giving it to me. Getting her into the passenger seat of the car was sometimes an adventure in itself because she was easily disoriented spatially. So if she couldn’t drop into the seat, we would circle around the car and approach it again, like a plane coming in for a rough landing. If she still couldn’t make that scary drop, we would stop and circle around again until she had a sense of where she was.

She was extremely affectionate and openly grateful for the little things we did together. Every day, she experienced moments of intense sadness and anguish, but the clouds would pass. This photo of her was taken in March.

Like everyone else, Meredith lived in crushing social isolation during the last four months. Not “alone together,” but alone apart. The isolation was worse, I think, for someone like her because she could not talk on the phone or use the computer or participate in the arithmetical thrills of a wildly exaggerated pandemic. Zoom or online cultural events could not have possibly met her great need for human contact. As her mind declined, nothing mattered to her, but people — the real thing. I remember once she walked up to a man in our favorite consignment store, looked him straight in the face with blazing astonishment and said, “You are beautiful! I want to marry you!” He burst out laughing,. “I bet women tell you that all the time,” I said. I cannot conceive of her navigating a sea of masks. It’s too horrible to contemplate. Like small children, she looked you straight in the eye with all-encompassing absorption. She was avid for faces. And like small children, she saw, with piercing discernment, beauty in faces others couldn’t see.

Starting in March, she was confined to her home, seeing only her warm, devoted husband and an aide, no visitors allowed. She deteriorated dramatically and during the last three weeks was unable to walk much or eat solid food. She died Sunday after a heart attack in her living room and after days of “inconsolable anguish.” On the very same day she died, her first grandchild was born — in a hospital where visitors were prohibited, the generations passing in the night in a hyper-sterile, depopulated landscape.

I could not have asked for a more precious friend. (more…)

  'I GIVE all to my country, because I owe all to it. My country was first in giving. To its soil, to its sky I owe the bread which nourishes my body, and the wine which gladdens my heart, the azure sky and the dreams which have delighted my soul. In the language of my homeland I lisped the first words which faltered on my infant tongue, and named all the objects which charmed my youth. In the fields and woods of my native land, along the shores of its lakes and rivers, I gathered flowers which lent fragrance to my childhood. My own heart was molded on the heart of my country. In it and through it my home exists together with its treasures, sweet memories and rich traditions. To defend, save, and perpetuate all this, to the end that every family will be able to continue to expand itself in a shielded, intact and flourishing country I am ready to work, to struggle, and, if necessary, to die. "I must be prepared for this in peace as well as in war, in sorrow as well as in joy. The moment the welfare of my country is at stake and my personal cooperation is demanded, nothing will justify my lack of loyalty. My personal misfortunes, my most secret heartbreaks, should not prevent the placing of my abilities and skill at the disposal of the fatherland." ---- Marguerite Duportal, A…

FROM a 2017 article by Cliff Kincaid at Tradition in Action: One of my duties at Accuracy in Media (AIM) has been to expose left-wingers in the media and Congress who were soft on the old Soviet Union and are now acting like hard-liners on Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It is a fascinating topic that exposes the duplicity of the left-wing obsession with Russia. These people, who were soft on the Soviet Union and now hard on Russia, are the worst kind of hypocrites. Their hypocrisy is further demonstrated by the abundant evidence that the global warming or climate change theory, which they now embrace, was conceived by Soviet communists as a means by which to destroy the industrial base in the United States. This disinformation theme has been embraced by the liberals now claiming to be tough on Russia. Don’t take my word for it. When Natalie Grant Wraga died in 2002 at the age of 101, The Washington Post recognized her expertise as a Soviet expert, noting that she was “born in czarist Russia, saw great upheaval in her native land and became an expert in unmasking Soviet deception methods for the State Department…” But the Post would not admit that fact in today’s political climate. The liberal Economist magazine wrote, “She was perhaps the only person alive in the West who could claim such an intimate knowledge of Russian political thinking, from tsarist times to the collapse of the Soviet Union.” She commented, “Many people are…

VLADIMIR PUTIN has signed an executive order allowing him to be president until 2036. Preparing the way for him to become a world dictator?

It’s staggering that many American patriots consider a man who is actively working for the destabilization of this country to be a Christian figure superior to American leaders. (more…)

IN HIS book “The Secret Destiny of America,” Manly P. Hall (1901-1990), a writer and mystic deeply sympathetic to ideas of American exceptionalism and the work of secret societies in creating a utopian nation dedicated to the perfection of man, claimed an unknown man — an angel? — motivated the Signers of the Declaration of Independence on July 4,1776 to overcome their fears and sign the document. Hall described at length the words of the angel in his book The Secret Destiny of America.

The problem is, this story has no basis in the historical record. Anna Berkes writes:

This story is a work of historical fiction. It appeared in George Lippard’s Washington and His Generals; Or, Legends of the Revolution.1 According to American National Biography, Lippard “wrote many semifanciful ‘legends’ of American history, mythologizing the founding fathers and retelling key moments of the American Revolution so vividly that several of the legends…became part of American folklore.”2

Still, it’s interesting as a legend, an example of national myth-making and the religious reverence given to the cause of the American Revolution. Ronald Reagan even reportedly promoted the story in a commencement speech in California. Here is Hall’s account:

On July 4, 1776, in the old State House in Philadelphia, a group of patriotic men were gathered for the solemn purpose of proclaiming the liberty of the American colonies. From the letters of Thomas Jefferson which are preserved in the Library of Congress, I have been able to gather considerable data concerning this portentous session.

In reconstructing the scene, it is well to remember that if the Revolutionary War failed every man who had signed the parchment then lying on the table would be subject to the penalty of death for high treason. It should also be remembered that the delegates representing the various colonies were not entirely of one mind as to the policies which should dominate the new nation. (more…)

  FROM "The American Revolution, Part II: Who Wrote the Declaration of Independence?" James Perloff: I once heard a pastor preach a sermon on the Fourth of July. He quoted the beginning of the Declaration, laying emphasis on certain words in an effort to authenticate that America’s Founding Fathers were Christians: When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . . . As the phrases “Nature’s God” and “Creator” were quoted, congregation members were oohing and aahing in a sort of mental swoon. But I knew the writer was [Thomas] Paine, a self-proclaimed enemy of Christianity. Here are Paine quotes that demonstrate what he really meant by “Nature’s God” and “Creator”: When, therefore, we look through nature up to nature’s God, we are in the right road of happiness, but when we trust to books as the Word of God, and confide in them as revealed religion, we are afloat on the ocean of uncertainty, and shatter…

"TWELVE monks, benighted on the road, observed that their guide was going astray. This, for fear of breaking their rule of silence, they forbore to notice, thinking within themselves that at daybreak he would see his mistake and put them in the right road. Accordingly, the guide discovering his error, with much confusion, was making many apologies; when the monks being now at liberty to speak, only said, with the greatest good humour: ‘Friend, we saw very well that you went out of your road; but we were then bound to silence.’ The man was struck with astonishment, and very much edified at this answer expressive of such patience and strictness of observance.” --- From the Life of St. Sisoes, Anchoret of Egypt  

  ALL OVER America, people have been shamed, ridiculed, defamed, shunned, bullied, fired, deliberately misrepresented and even arrested for resisting Covid tyranny and the real systemic racism. This man says he was fired from his job as a school teacher for politely pointing out the inconsistencies in the government's virus rules. He has discovered something important: The truth is worth dying for. Join him. Speak up. You have everything to lose. Except your soul. I know I had to go... my river overflowed I had to lose them blues comin' from the cold side of the moon I had to see the deep dark sea come crashing over me But nothing's taking me down Nothing's taking me down Something Good is Always around Something Good is coming around I'm gonna find that Gold that keeps a man from growing old I'm gonna give it away just as long as I got days So I'll try not to cry when it comes my time to die Soon I'll be on the moon and the rock will roll away from the tomb Today I get to stay... I'm so happy I can say: That nothing's taking me down Nothing's taking me down Something Good is Always around Something Good is coming around  

  SEEK not to be like evil men, neither desire to be with them: Because their mind studieth robberies, and their lips speak deceits. By wisdom the house shall be built, and by prudence it shall be strengthened. By instruction the storerooms shall be filled with all precious and most beautiful wealth. A wise man is strong: and a knowing man, stout and valiant. --- Proverbs 24, 1-5  

  THE Covid operation is a form of systematic mass torture, Amazing Polly argues --- and I entirely agree. We are not locked up in a prison or concentration camp, but we have been manipulated, confined and made to suffer physically, mentally and economically by our torturers. Our humanity is under attack in an effort to bring about blind submission. The New Normal is the New Subnormal.