Morning Mist Rising, Plymouth, New Hampshire; Thomas Cole, 1830
THE phases of deciduous trees correspond to phases of the mind. The embers of autumn are the embers of memory. A child walking through a pile of new-fallen leaves, the crumbling fires flaming and crackling as he steps, may have the strange sense that he is walking through his future memories, with the written pages of his life burning and smoldering at his feet.
The leaves are gold and scarlet. Inside the hearth of illuminated foliage, we momentarily glimpse our lives as a unity. What we were is what we are and what we will become. We remember what we have forgotten. We see in the fading sparks what we will forget again.
“IT HAS been said that when even the women of any society become as debased as the men of that same society, you can rest assured that its days are numbered. Surely America’s days are numbered if one considers how far too many of our women conduct themselves, especially when given a platform. Just look at how they dress. You can’t go to any store or public event without seeing an enormous ham-beast wallowing about attired in the tightest and most revealing clothes imaginable. Jiggles and cellulite for all to see. Tatted sleeves on every arm. Pierced like an African tribesmen, and a foul mouth to boot. She has no sense of shame. No self-awareness. God help the man who’d dare to suggest that she’s not the Greek goddess she imagines herself to be!
“There is nothing gracious or even feminine about them. Nothing that could be deemed dignified or classy. They are not soft-spoken nor reasonable — the very qualities that might attract more men to their cause!
“This is what our American women have morphed into. This is what ‘woke’ feminism does to the women of any society stupid enough to tolerate it. Is it any wonder why so many American men are turning to Asian and Eastern European women who possess the slimness, femininity, grace, and traditional values they want?”
“MORE characters are acted upon the stage of the world than on the stage of the theater. We are constantly managing our reputation with our neighbors, either by fictitious presentations of one’s self, or by suppression of one’s true character, or by in some way or other being one thing to one’s self, and another to one’s neighbor, playing the comedy of vanity in one way to one person and another way to another. Self-love moves us to act these parts, although the actor most commonly appears through the character. The social life is, therefore, the difficult field for exercising the sincerity of humility.”
THE other day I met a 70-year-old woman who lifts weights and who not long ago dropped a 25-pound weight on her foot. She was wearing expensive, made-for-weight-lifting shoes so her foot was only bruised, not crushed, and she was only incapacitated for a few months.
But good grief, I thought: I will never take up weight lifting. I can’t afford the shoes, for one.
Weight-lifting seems hard — really, really hard — but then it’s not half as hard as the hardest thing one can do. Thinking is much harder.
I’m not holding myself up as an exemplar of thinking, but I try to practice this dying art and extreme sport. The fact that you can do it in any shoes is an advantage for me personally, but other than that it has immense disadvantages and risks.
FROM Simon Shack at September Clues Forum (not a blanket endorsement):
What follows will be the shortest summary I’ve ever put together regarding the massive collective 9/11 research efforts performed and illustrated at this valiant forum. The thing is that, at this time, my main concern is to reach out to the younger generations which I believe – although I hope to be wrong about that – are becoming less inclined to spend time reading long articles about troublesome and politically-loaded affairs such as 9/11. Of course, anyone younger than 22 years of age never experienced the ‘trauma’ of watching the 9/11 saga (what with its colorful, cartoonish imagery) unfold on “live TV”. So, perhaps, their minds may be less conditioned and prone to clutch onto the purported reality of these ‘terror events’ as presented on TV. So without further ado, here’s a much condensed ‘digest’ of what the younger generations ought and need to know – for their own good – concerning the media-&-military-staged “show” known as “9/11”.
1: Firstly, please know that no one died in any plane crashes on 9/11. None of the alleged hijacked flights have any official records of their airport logs or passenger manifests – much like ALL flights taking off from any airport of this world are obviously required to have. The alleged flights 11, 77, 93 and 175 were simply non-existent. Read More »
I APPEAL to all children living in the United States of America.
If I could write this message on paper airplanes, they would fly through your windows and into your rooms.
These brilliant slips of paper would flutter through the air with a secret, critically-important and urgently-urgent message: “You must act now.”
“Get a hold of some boats. Find some large ships with enough room for thousands and millions of other boys and girls. Take water and a few cookies. Forget about extra clothes. Sail right away to deserted islands somewhere on the face of the earth. Better yet, learn to fly. But do it quickly. Get to an island no matter what it takes.”
There, after setting foot on that glorious island, you will refuse any communication with social engineers, political zealots, deranged adults and Dr. Frankensteins. You will have no contact with those who drug you, indoctrinate you and obliterate your childhood. No school buses will carry you to your daily doom — a doom “awfuller than all the awfullest things that ever were.”
You see, there is a conspiracy against children. This conspiracy wants to destroy everything children know to be good and true. Adults have completely and totally forgotten what it is to be a child, even though allegedly they were once children too. They now suffer from mass amnesia (that’s a big word for the loss of vital memories.) They think that when a child says, “I want to be firefighter!”, that he literally wants a job as a firefighter. They have zero imagination. Adults have such serious handicaps, most of them are irredeemably lost. Children have been patient with adult limitations for thousands and millions of years, but things have gone way too far. Enough is enough.
Adults have forgotten that a child is not capable of, or even interested in, momentous decisions. The child wants to be told the world is good, because he knows in his heart it is good. He needs basics, not abstractions. He needs sandboxes and swords, rhinestone tiaras and royal scepters — not political utopia.
On that island, you can be sure that every boy is a boy and every girl is a girl. Case closed. Can you believe adults are so confused about this, as if their brains were scrambled or turned into peanut butter? Only “intelligent” and “educated” adults in love with their own thick, peanut-butter-stuffed heads could believe something so stupid as that a boy could become a girl or a girl could become a boy. Confusion will be banned on the island. Ridiculousness will be strictly prohibited; no psychologists or prescriptions necessary. No one on the island will feel sorry for himself — not for a single minute. Everyone will be a hero, rising above the fierce blows of dastardly misfortune.
Refuse to grow up. At this critical juncture in history, you have no other choice.
It’s true that you will miss your parents, but after a while those adults who have recovered their senses and remembered what it is to be a child will be allowed to visit the island.
No doctors, dentists, teachers with bees in their bonnets or psychologists with ridiculous questions will ever be allowed. These will be personally escorted off the island and given a 21-gun salute only as they sail away. Others with an advanced degree will be admitted solely after intense cross-examination and dis-education. Crocodiles and pirates are not half as dangerous as “experts” or an “educated” man.
Adults have left you with no alternative. Defend childhood before it’s too late. If children don’t leave now, there will be no children left to leave later. Boys and girls will be obsolete.
Liberal dogma to the contrary, such popular goals as universal literacy are not necessarily conducive to great literature. The England of Shakespeare, apart from having a much smaller population, had a much higher illiteracy rate than present-day Britain. Nor does universal suffrage seem to raise the quality of artistic output. When Bach was Konzertmeister in Weimar and composing a new cantata every month, no one could vote. Some 220 years later in the Weimar Republic, there were tens of millions of voters, but no Bachs.
Great drama, which usually incorporates great poetry, is the rarest form of great art. Art critics and historians have been at some loss to explain why great plays have appeared so infrequently in history and then only in clusters — fifth-century (B.C.) Athens, late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England, seventeenth-century Spain and France. The answer may be that conditions for great drama are only ripe when artist and audience are in biological as well as linguistic rapport. Such rapport, unfortunately, is bound to be short-lived because the era of great drama is usually accompanied by large-scale economic and material advances which tend to soften national character, sharpen class divisions and attract extraneous racial and cultural elements from abroad. To the great playwright a heterogeneous or divided audience is no audience at all.
Not only high art but all art seems to stagnate in an environment of brawling minorities, diverse religions, clashing traditions, and contrasting habits. This is probably why, in spite of their vast wealth and power, such world cities as Alexandria and Antioch in ancient times and New York City and Rio de Janeiro in modern times have produced nothing that can compare to the art of municipalities a fraction of their size. The artist needs an audience which understands him — an audience of his own people. The artist needs an audience to write up to, paint up to, and compose up to — an aristocracy of his own people. These seem to be the true sine qua nons of great art. Whenever they are absent great art is absent. Read More »
Thank you for that article on libraries by Alan. He is such a talented writer and astute observer of society.
I have worked in libraries for twenty-five years, and agree that the field is no longer run by “grown-ups”. I have fond memories of the librarians of yore, but the people entering the field are now activists, much like teachers. The sole place I have encountered “pronouns” in my rural area is in e-mails from fellow library directors. These are frequently sent to rally others to fight “censorship”, the censorship of sexually explicit materials from the children’s section. I have asked to be removed from these partisan e-mail lists, and now my fellow directors do not return my calls.
I cannot begin to describe the drivel that I am being sent to add to the collection. Books for children these days are ugly, with illustrations that are primitive and devoid of artistic talent. They have overt, preachy messages. These serve in complete contrast to the books I enjoyed as a child like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Frog and Toad are Friends. I can visualize the illustrations from memory of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Gareth Williams’ drawings in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. Homeschooling families are the bedrock of my circulation numbers, but when I try to buy the classics they request, my state board tells me these books are “too old”, and I cannot purchase any books using state funds with a copyright that exceeds seven years. Why is this, I wonder? Read More »
He has returned from the battlefield and reluctantly laid down his sword.
Golden light falls across windswept hair, held in place by silicone spray. Creases accumulated over a long life of super jets and sumptuous blondes, glass towers and dimly-lit casino halls have been forgivingly removed.
The best of image-making services have rendered flawlessly smooth cheeks. No ordinary camera would do. Here is our victim of the establishment. Evil liberals are out to crucify him. They give him billions in free publicity. There’s wads of cash on the side, but he’s a victim of immeasurable injustice and democracy’s still the greatest system on earth. Freedom is having nothing left to lose.
The eyes are fiercely honest. They pierce the soul. “I have betrayed my country, my wives and most everybody except Jerusalem, but count on me,” they seem to say. The brow is creased with thoughts of well-deserved revenge.
The chin is exquisite. One manly man stands amidst the ruins of Operation Warp Speed. He will never surrender from his tower of shekels. No, not this Lord of Babylon.
It’s not a smile or a grimace, but lips of steely determination. Let us hereby hate everyone who hates him.
The nose befits a Caesar Augustus or maybe a Caligula. Hard to say, but it’s a magnificent nose, dark on one side, heavenly light on the other.
I envision future citizens of the Soviet States of America, their hearts swelling with pride, before a marble statue with just this immortal face atop its manly form.
Admiring the heroic visage, the people will say to themselves, “We don’t need to do a thing. He’s got our back.”
[T]HE prevailing notion of viruses as solely destructive entities is being challenged by emerging research. Viruses, with their remarkable capacity to selectively target and infiltrate specific cells, can be viewed as valuable allies in the ongoing battle against disease. It is worth noting that viral-mediated lysis, often perceived as purely detrimental, actually fulfills a crucial role in renewal, ecological equilibrium, and disease management. Furthermore, viral enzymes, including proteases, nucleases, polymerases, and lipases, contribute significantly to viral influence and the breakdown of diseased cellular components.
As well, viruses assume pivotal roles in nature, functioning as regulators and facilitating nutrient recycling within ecosystems. Grasping the intricate interplay between viruses, cells, and environmental factors can provide profound insights into disease control and the dynamics of ecosystems.
Moreover, the emergence of viral illnesses can be attributed to environmental factors such as pollution, which weaken cells and disrupt the delicate balance of their environment. This imbalance gives rise to the need for cellular solvents, known as viruses. It is imperative to cast away fear and embrace a deep understanding of viruses for what they truly represent: cellular saviors.
THERE are two striking aspects of this BBC rebroadcast of a 1960 interview with the British writer Evelyn Waugh.
First, there is the stunning misrepresentation of the interview by Joan Bakewell, who introduces the rebroadcast with utterly false charges of rudeness and hostility on the part of Waugh, and similar mischaracterization of the writer by John Freeman, the original interviewer, who had posed a number of antagonistic questions to Waugh and accuses him of nervousness that is nowhere to be found. Why do they seem eager to attribute rudeness and even mental instability to the author? Is it their own egotism, their search for a titillating angle, or is there something else at stake? Perhaps his religious beliefs?
Secondly, there is the interview itself, which is a memorable and fascinating glimpse of the author, who is open, candid and succinct, his lucid thoughts traveling visibly across a pudgy, Anglo-Saxon face devoid of conceit and concealment. Waugh says there is only one reason why he agreed to be interviewed on TV: poverty. Not many celebrities would admit to the financial self-interest in publicity.
Waugh remembers fondly the instruction his mother gave him before he went to school and being read to as a child. He recalls the harshness of life at a British boarding school during World War I and briefly discusses his conversion to Catholicism. I highly recommend the whole thing.
THE earth adorned in verdant robe Sends praises upward surging, While soft winds breathe on fragrant flowers From winter now emerging. The sun shines bright, gives warmth and light To budding blossoms tender, Proclaiming summer’s splendor.Read More »
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
