Culture lovers will be pleased to learn that this week is “Hip-Hop Appreciation Week” at the central St. Louis Public Library. This is the same library about which I wrote about four years ago and which re-opened two years ago after a big, expensive renovation.
An article afterward noted that visitors to the renovated building ooh-ed and aah-ed. This is an example of what you once called “the superstitious veneration of technology.” Everything about the renovated building screams New, Now, High-Tech, The Latest, Cutting-Edge Movies and Music. If I were a cynic (which I am), I might ask: Do those things make Shakespeare better? Do they improve Aristotle, Milton, Aquinas, Burke, Franklin, Jefferson, Bronte, Browning, Carlyle, Scott, Dickens and Twain? Are language, philosophy, religion, history, and science made better by being shelved amid all that bright, shiny, high-tech décor?
The building is situated between a Christian home for vagrants and a Christian church that caters to them. People who live downtown are sick and tired of the vagrants and want them out of the area. One morning last week one of the vagrants knifed and killed another on a sidewalk between the library and the church.
In dulci jubilo Let us our homage shew: Our heart’s joy reclineth In praesepio; And like a bright star shineth Matris in gremio, Alpha es et O!
O Jesu parvule, My heart is sore for Thee! Hear me, I beseech Thee, O puer optime; My praying let it reach Thee, O princeps gloriae. Trahe me post te.
O patris caritas! O Nati lenitas! Deeply were we stained. Per nostra crimina: But Thou for us hast gained Coelorum gaudia, Qualis gloria!
Ubi sunt gaudia, If that they be not there? There are Angels singing Nova cantica; And there the bells are ringing In Regis curia. O that we were there!
The charges stem from the Barrington Lake wildfire, which first broke out on May 26, 2023, and was finally brought under control on June 13 and extinguished on July 26.
The fire grew to 23,379 hectares, the largest recorded in the province’s history.
It forced more than 6,000 people from their homes and destroyed 60 houses and cottages, as well as 150 other structures.
It was the last in a string of spring wildfires in the province to be tamed.
“It’s a relief to see the justice system working for the people of the area that was put out of place, put out by the wildfires,” says Eddie Nickerson, warden for Barrington district 4. “It was pretty devastating for the area. We have never experienced anything like that, as you know. It was the biggest wildfire in the history of the province.”
“YOU have heard, Reader, that there are very few elect. Here now the root of this truth. The reason why so many are lost eternally is that they convince themselves that there is a third way that the Gospel does not teach. The testimony of Truth Himself is that there is one broad way that leads to perdition and one narrow way that leads to life, and yet we seek a middle path: we do not consent to lead a life of enormous crimes but neither are we ready to embark on the narrow path of holiness, so instead we enter on a path that is neither too broad nor too narrow. But surely it is just as perilous to imagine a third way as to suppose a third possible destination when for adults in the long run only two exist. For it is written in Matthew XXV that the others shall go into eternal punishment but the just into eternal life. And this third track dreamed up by the lukewarm is the same we are warned of in Proverbs XIV: There is a way that seemeth right to a man, but the ends thereof leadeth to death.”
— Dominican theologian Vincent Contenson O.P. (1641-74)
AMERICA‘s “first public park” is now one of its ugliest parks (which is saying a lot):
A new monument honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King, was unveiled in Boston Friday, ahead of Monday’s national holiday honoring the civil rights icon.
The 22-foot tall sculpture, named ‘The Embrace,’ represents the hug between Dr. King and Coretta after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
The $10 million bronze statue, designed by Hank Willis Thomas and MASS Design Group, now stands in the Freedom Plaza of the Boston Common, America’s first public park.
A renowned philanderer and liar who died in the company of prostitutes — and the civil rights movement in general — have been given an appropriate tribute.
“AFTER this, being desirous of advancing still more in Christian perfection, he took a resolution of retiring into the desert, and of withdrawing himself altogether from the conversation of men. This resolution he communicated to the old monk his friend, of whom we spoke above, proposing that he should accompany him; but the old man excused himself, alleging his advanced age, and the novelty of such an enterprise. Antony, however, no way discouraged, set out upon his journey towards the heart of the wilderness, at that time utterly uninhabited, arid lying at a very great distance from any town or village. As he walked along, he saw a large dish of silver with which the enemy sought to interrupt his journey, lying on the ground; but he easily discovered the artifice, and cried: ‘This is a trick of thine, Satan; thou shalt not divert me from my resolution; keep thy silver to thyself, and let it perish with thee.’ Read More »
“A South African academic named Sarita Pillay Gonzalez noticed the aesthetic in Cape Town in the late 2010s, when she was working there at an urbanism research organisation. Gonzalez saw it as a form of gentrification, or even an echo of colonialism in a postcolonial country. Generically minimalist coffee shops were popping up on Kloof Street in Cape Town. When we spoke, Gonzalez identified them by their “long wooden tables, wrought-iron finishings, those lightbulbs that hang, hanging plants”. The aesthetic itself was spreading into different venues as well: beer halls, gastropubs, art galleries, Airbnbs. She had noticed a similar transformation in north-east Minneapolis while she was living there in 2016, where warehouse buildings were turned into coffee shops, microbreweries, and co-working offices – all common indicators of a gentrifying neighbourhood.
“According to Gonzalez, the style marked ‘a globally accessible space. You’re able to hop from Bangkok to New York to London to South Africa to Mumbai and you can find that same feel. You can ease into that space because it’s such a familiar space.’ The homogeneity contrasted with the overall hipster philosophy of the 2010s, namely, that by consuming certain products and cultural artefacts you could proclaim your own uniqueness apart from the mainstream crowd – in this case a particular coffee shop rather than an obscure band or clothing brand. ‘The irony of it all is that these spaces are supposed to represent spaces of individuality, but they’re incredibly monotonous,’ Gonzalez said.”
IN 1994, black journalist Elizabeth Wright examined the story of the late-nineteenth century Chicago caterer, Charles Smiley. He was so successful that in 1893 he constructed a large, three-story stone mansion (below) to house his business, complete with a dining room and ballroom. Smiley was a head of the Chicago chapter of the National Negro Business League, founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900 with financing by Andrew Carnegie.
According to Wright, black businessmen like Smiley were held back not so much by legal discrimination as by black leaders who refused to encourage a separate black economy and looked down upon manual labor:
Take Chicago in the late 19th century, for instance, where the doctrine of self-help was vigorously promoted by black businessmen. While such men emphasized the importance of business enterprise as the path to increased affluence and self-respect, other prominent blacks just as vigorously discouraged the creation of any black institutions.
Among the city’s most successful entrepreneurs was Charles Smiley, who owned the dominant catering business in Chicago and its suburbs. So respected was he for his outstanding professionalism that the demand for his services reached even into the adjacent states of Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan.
Smiley was actually following in the footsteps of many black men throughout the country who made fortunes through their skillful management and promotion of the catering trade. When he arrived in Chicago as a young man, in 1881, with little formal education and 50 cents in his pocket, he took a job as a janitor, and used his spare time to hire himself out as a waiter at catered dinners and parties. As he developed contacts among wealthy Chicagoans, he saw the possibility of these people becoming clients of his own catering business.
Well-disciplined from a youth spent as a laborer, Smiley began his business on a shoestring. Booker T. Washington was to later say about this period in Smiley’s life, “He possessed, however, several assets more valuable than mere money. He had a resolute character, good powers of observation, ambition, and brains.” Read More »
Third World immigrants make a net-negative lifetime financial contribution in the West (see here), but so do women, even though their workforce participation rate is only slightly lower than men’s.
“The positive net fiscal impact women make from 45-59 never outweighs the prior negative net fiscal impacts.”
The Girlboss Industrial Complex has achieved nothing other than halving men’s wages, taking women away from their children, and preventing people from starting families.
NOW, the religion of chivalry was altogether the religion of motives and of the heart. It was love, faith, hope, gratitude, joy, fidelity, honour, mercy; it was a devotion of mind and strength, of the whole man, of his soul and body, to the discharge of duty, and to the sacrifice of every selfish and dishonourable feeling that was contrary; it was to obey a commandment which was in unison with all the elevated sentiments of nature, and calculated most effectually to develop every quality that was the object of esteem and reverence. The knights of old had neither the inclination nor the ingenuity to determine the minimum of love which was compatible with the faith of Christ. They were not like men who regard it sufficient if they love God at any time before death, or on the festivals; or if they keep the commandments and do not hate God; or who imagine that this burdensome obligation of loving him was part of the Mosaic law, which is dispensed with by the religion of nature and the Gospel.
They had not learned to reason with the sophist of old, saying that religion “is a gracious and an excellent thing when moderately pursued in youth; but if afterwards it be loved overmuch, it is the ruin of men.” They had not subsided into that state of profound indifference to the truths of religion which the eloquent Massillon has compared to the condition of Lazarus, when the disciples said, “Lord, if he sleeps he will do well’; and were undeceived when Jesus said unto them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead.” But their affections were warm, their gratitude was sincere; and though their understanding on the doctrines of religion might sometimes fail them, their hearts did not. They were thankful under every circumstance of life; and like the prophet of old, it was their boast, “The fig-tree shall not blossom, and there shall be no spring in the vines; the labour of the olive-tree shall fail, and the fields shall yield no food; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; but I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will rejoice in God my Jesus.”
They were slain in battle, they were cut off in the flower of their youth, they were shut up in dark prisons from the light of the sun and from the solace of friendship; yet they could exult in the words of the Psalm, “Quid enim mihi est in coelo? et a te quid volui super terram? Deficit caro mea et cor meum: Deus cordis mei, et pars mea Deus in geternum.”
“Thenne,’ said Bors, “hit is more than yere and an half that I ne lay ten tymes where men dwelled, but in wylde forestes and in mountains, but God was ever my comforte.”
How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!
— Matthew VII, 14
“The doctrine which naturally emerges from Our Lord’s words, that the majority of men follow the path of perdition may seem harsh and discouraging; there is no shortage of thoughtful minds who try to escape the conclusions which appear to flow from it …. Our Lord tells us that the immense influence of the majority of the men we live among is added to our own weakness and to our evil inclinations to lead us on. We shall always have the crowd against us: the example of the crowd has always held back, and continues to hold back, many souls in the pursuit of perfection. It is the example of the multitude among Catholics which ever provides a pretext for those outside her fold not to enter it. It is the example of the multitude of so-called Christians that closes the hearts of millions of unbelievers to the evidence of the Gospel.”
But as your worke is woven all above,/with woodbynd flowers and fragrant Eglantine:/so sweet your prison you in time shall prove,/with many deare delights bedecked fine.
- Edmund Spenser, Amoretti (71.9-12)
“We must remember that if all the manifestly good men were on one side and all the manifestly bad men on the other, there would be no danger of anyone, least of all the elect, being deceived by lying wonders. It is the good men, good once, we must hope good still, who are to do the work of Anti-Christ and so sadly to crucify the Lord afresh…. Bear in mind this feature of the last days, that this deceitfulness arises from good men being on the wrong side.”
----Fr. Frederick Faber, 1861
