THE FITNESS obsession in women is part of their overall loss of identity in the modern world. At her blog, Lydia Sherman explains why women don’t need expensive health clubs or time-consuming physical regimens. Staying fit involves mind and spirit. When a woman is oriented toward higher goods, she is healthier too. The home is a fitness club. Mrs. Sherman writes:

I have been collecting some ideas and techniques for the non-Olympic women who want to be fit but still look feminine. I discovered through viewing 19th century photographs and paintings that women were quite active in golf, tennis, swimming, bike riding, hand ball, hiking and walking. (more…)

FROM The Revelation of St. John the Divine, 11:19 – 12:6:

And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: (more…)

PORTIA writes:

I saw your post on hiring married women, and the film example reminded me of a novel in which the then-common horror of divorce is central to the story, the first novel I read that made it clear to me on a gut level just how unthinkable divorce was once considered in polite society. The novel was Jane of Lantern Hill, by L.M. Montgomery (author of the well-known Anne novels).

Jane is brought up believing that her father is dead, but eventually learns that her parents are separated. Not divorced: Jane is eleven years old and has to ask what the word ‘divorce’ means. (more…)

CONSTANCE FOSTER writes:

I saw this photo of Mrs. Reagan and Mrs. Obama at a White House luncheon and was struck by the difference in their style of dress. Mrs. Reagan’s formal blouse, jacket, and earrings look elegant and authoritative. Mrs. Obama’s choice of two different patterns for a T-shirt and cardigan look far too casual for the event and would be more appropriate on a middle school teacher than the First Lady! I thought you would find this portrait of contrasts interesting given your previous attention to the decline of formality among public officials.

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KATHLENE M. writes:

  SEE this very funny cartoon at The Onion. The same could be said of today's Olympic boxers.

HERE IS another example of fraktur, the Pennsylvania German folk art that included colorful, handmade renditions of important documents, usually marriage and birth certificates, house blessings and bookplates. This is a “Reward of Merit” given to a student by a teacher in about 1830.

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A READER sent the photos below, one of herself when, as she put it, she was divorced and accepted feminist views of life, and the other when she was pregnant, married and had come to reject her former opinions. There is a striking difference, aside from the obvious change in her hair. The second photo lacks the hard edge and toughness of the first.

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FITZGERALD writes:

I happened to watch a few old movies this weekend, and after having watched My Man Godfrey, which I highly recommend, I was intrigued to see Carole Lombard in a not-quite-so inane role. Consequently, I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith with her, Robert Montgomery, Jack Carson and a few others. Interestingly, this movie, a fairly decent but unconventional romantic comedy, was directed by Alfred Hitchcock apparently as a favor to Carole Lombard as the original director abandoned the project. Nonetheless, it’s definitely not standard “Hitch” movie, although he does appear briefly typical fashion in a scene directed by Miss Lombard. (more…)

KIDIST PAULOS ASRAT writes:

I read a little while ago your post on a feminist ranting against feminine beauty.

Beauty is a hard concept to “analyze” and to “deconstruct” as leftists love to do. It is an ethereal presence. We react to beauty rather than coldly observe it. We have to admit it is there in some things, probably not in us, and thus we realize it is some kind of favored state (it is clear that beautiful people, and babies, are treated better than ordinary people). At our best, we are humbled by beauty.

This hierarchy of beauty is what grates liberals and leftists.

I’ve written several (many) blogs on beauty, and I’ve noticed that there is an even more vicious war going on against beauty than when I started my blog a few years ago. This time, I think people are well-versed on how to attack beauty, and how to make beautiful people, things, etc. feel they’re  wrong (and evil). Decades (even centuries, if you look back at the origins of modernism) have made such people adept attackers of beauty.

I wrote this post on Miuccia Prada’s really ugly clothes after I saw the exhibition “Schiaparelli & Prada, Impossible Conversations” at the Metropolitan Museum. (more…)

WHAT DOES the promotion of an open lesbian to the higher ranks of the Army say about our nation?

Tammy Smith was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General in the U.S. Army last week and received her stars from her “wife,” Tracey Hepner, in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. She is the highest-ranking open homosexual in the Army.

Tracey and Tammy look like sisters, or perhaps brothers. They are not sisters or brothers, but two unrelated women who admit to all the world that they engage in perverted acts in private and that they reject men as suitable mates. And they are applauded as mavericks for these personal failings. Unsurprisingly, Hepner is heavily involved in homosexual activism. (more…)

THE OLYMPIC GAMES are not, as Pope Benedict XVI recently said, “the greatest sporting event in the world.”  They are an irredeemably vulgar and totalitarian spectacle. I have no intention of watching the closing ceremonies when they are broadcast here tonight. They couldn’t have come too soon. Judging from the photos, they were every bit as chilling as the opening ceremonies, with their bedazzling, techno-babble chaos, their pantomimes of patriotism, their flashes of demonic imagery, all under the Royal Family’s adoring gaze. It was about as enjoyable as being stunned with a Taser. Whatever residue of warm feeling I had toward the Olympics has been extinguished.

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  AT VFR, Philip M. writes: Britain as I knew it has gone, all anyone can reasonably hope now is that this turns out to be an act of creative destruction from which smashed fragments may be reformed into something new.

KATHLENE M. writes:

Today’s news that the Department of Homeland Security is accused of mistreating male employees seems to follow our discussion yesterday about misanthropic feminists. According to the New York Daily News:

A blistering federal discrimination suit accuses agency honcho Janet Napolitano of turning the department into a female-run “frat house” where male staffers were banished to the bathrooms and routinely humiliated.

James Hayes Jr., who now is New York’s top Homeland Security cop, claims Napolitano filled top spots in Washington, D.C., with two of her gal pals who were bent on tormenting male employees. (more…)

AT Public Discourse, Robert Oscar Lopez, an assistant professor of English at California State University, writes movingly of his childhood in “Growing Up with Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View.” Lopez’s mother became a lesbian and he spent much of his childhood with her and her female partner. It is not entirely true that he lived with “two moms” as he spent a significant portion of his time during the week with only his mother but these two women were the parental figures in his life and his weekends were with them. (more…)

  VINCENT C. writes: After reading this piece at CNS News, I was reminded of what Konrad Adenauer, the former prime minister of (West) Germany, and a deeply religious Catholic, once said: How improvident of the Almighty to limit man's intelligence without limiting his stupidity. I am scheduled to attend a Romney bus stop visit in Virginia on Saturday, and I shall inquire if it is indeed true that Romney believes the Boy Scouts should admit homosexuals as Scout leaders. If it is, the presumptive heir to the GOP presidential nomination has lost vital support from those whom Speaker Boehner is known to refer to as "knuckledraggers." I am ineluctably drawn to the conclusion that to believe that Romney is a "conservative" other than a fiscal one is also to believe in the tooth fairy. All "conservatives of faith" know that Romney is a cipher on social issues, but this support of homosexual leaders in the Boy Scouts is, to cite the military reference, "one bridge too far."

BUCK writes:

 This story is a hoot! It’s not from The Onion, and I don’t think that it’s supposed to be funny (maybe it’s me). But the dry way that the two report it, intentional or not, made me laugh. The two female officers “happen to be” homosexuals. What a coincidence!　

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The controversy over Chick-Fil-A may now have impacted the Dallas Police Department.

CBS 11 has learned a Dallas Police Sergeant brought a sandwich from the embattled restaurant chain to work with him last Wednesday, August 1, a day known around the country as Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day.

When the Sergeant arrived at his post at the Southeast patrol, words were exchanged between himself and two female officers. (more…)

 DANIEL O. writes:

I do not know whether you have seen the film Idiocracy, and I do not know whether you will appreciate the film. Yet, the term ”idiocracy” accurately covers the situation in which an upcoming British queen consort is cheering for a muscular black woman to beat up a Chinese woman in the boxing ring, as reported by The Daily Mail. At any rate, at least the Duchess of Cambridge was watching the beating up ”stylish” — a word expressly used by The Daily Mail.

The term “‘ochlocracy″ also comes to mind. Increasingly, I am wondering whether the modernist ”nobility” should still be addressed with their official titles by traditionalist men and women. If the nobility is as vulgar as an ochlocratic mob, then it is an ochlocracy, and should be addressed as such. However, this would mean that traditionalist men and women lose this part of their decorum, since the use of titles to address someone is a good custom. What is your take on this? What is their due?

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