“This Groundhog Was Special”

HAVE you ever seen a groundhog? Up close?

I have. And I will never forget it. He was just a few inches away. I had seen them many times from afar. But never so close.

I can assure you, they are the most hideous animals — all waddling, distended stomach and long, sharp, threatening claws. Shockingly ugly and destructive, that’s a groundhog for you. They are so unpopular there is no record at all of human affection for them. No one keeps a groundhog for a pet, even in this age of fanaticism. Many amateur methods of killing these creatures have been devised. Some peaceful souls learn to use a gun for the sole purpose of killing groundhogs.

Groundhog Day is an obscene joke. It makes about as much sense as “Vulture Day” or “Black Widow Spider Day.” When life is stripped of meaningful ritual and festivity, people come up with some truly sick ideas. Anyone who gathers in a group with excitement, waiting to see a disgusting, ravenous groundhog emerge from a hole, is, well, in serious need of better things to do. (more…)

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A Candlemas Miracle in Old England

"WHILE Dunstan's mother was pregnant with her holy unborn child, the feast of the Purification of the blessed ever-virgin Mary shone forth. People from all the surrounding area flocked to the church dedicated to the Virgin in Glastonbury, to render the service of devotion at this great festival to Christ, the King of Kings. The boy's father Heorstan went with his wife, Cynethryth, to be present with their lighted candles at the Mass. During the service, it began to be read how the child Jesus was brought by his parents to the temple. And suddenly the glory of the Lord appeared in the temple: all the lights were extinguished, and the whole building was plunged into darkness by a thick mist. A cold fear crept through the congregation, their hair stood on end, their knees knocked together; they stood paralysed and stupefied by fear. But - so that all that the Lord intended should be made clear - suddenly a light from heaven blazed forth in the temple, and lit the candle which the pregnant woman bore in her hand. If they had marvelled at the loss of light, now they marvelled still more at its appearance!" The Clerk of Oxford tells more about these strange events on Candlemas in tenth century England.

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The Feast of the Purification

[Revised and reposted]

IT’S Groundhog Day in America and Crepe Day in France. These empty customs fill the void where the beautiful and uplifting Feast of the Purification of Mary, also known as Candlemas Day, the liturgical end to the Christmas season, once was — and still is to the few.

“All the mysteries of the Man-God have for their object the purifying of our hearts,” said the renowned Dom Prosper Guéranger. And so it is with Candlemas. It’s “a day of purification, renewal, hope, an honoring of obedience, and light.”

A young couple and their infant, turtle doves, an ornate temple and two wizened figures filled with mystical fervor.

These are the vital elements of this day. “The most pure and beautiful Virgin, in obedience to the law, presented the child Jesus in the temple, offering a couple of turtle-doves for her purification, and five sicles as a ransom for her first-born, Jesus,” wrote Guéranger.

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“Freedom” and the Inner Life

FROM Fr. James F. Wathen's The Great Sacrilege: ... The Revolution cannot tolerate the solitary man, the self-possessed man, the contemplative, the man who does not need to be forced to conform. The Revolution incessantly repeats the word 'freedom.' What it means by this word is that every man should free himself from the laws and self-preserving instincts of his own nature, that he should dispossess himself of all inner strength, restraint, and virtue, to say nothing of the inner dominance of Christ by His truth and grace. The purpose of corrupting a person is to put him at the disposal of his fallen nature; the purpose of destroying his faith and of dispossessing him of all certainty is that he will have to be controlled from without. The Revolution means to unshackle a man interiorly, that it may have the excuse of encircling him with the mindless mob (which the 'Community' is), of regimenting him, binding him, and putting him under guard. Despising virtue, which is man’s mastery of himself by the power of Christ, even being unable to comprehend it, the Revolution cannot conceive a community of truly free men, nor the idea of peace through the rule of the Spirit of God. The true Revolutionary cannot stand to be alone, to be in silence, to be inactive. In such a condition he would either go mad or find God. Because of his own spiritual vacuity and restlessness, and because…

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Our Fake Money System

THE issue neither presidential candidate will ever discuss is explained in this podcast by Legalman, who loses his cool a couple of times unfortunately but does a good job explaining the basics.

The fake money system is at the root of all the fakery.

“The system is there to enslave you and it works.” (more…)

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Staged Opposition in Texas?

PEGGY HALL rightfully expresses skepticism about the “Take Back Our Border” Convoy heading to Texas.

As I see it, this ruckus at the border serves to drum up support for that heinous traitor, Donald Trump, and for election-time drama between two heinous traitors, one of whom will be our next oppressor-in-chief.

“Keep ’em fighting so they don’t look at how we’re ripping them all off.”

That’s the game plan of the organized crime syndicate that is the federal government. (more…)

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‘Twins Disabled by Hepatitis Shot’

ASHLEY and Derek tell the painful story of their twin boys' sudden decline after receiving high doses of the Hepatitis B shots.  

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Domestic Trials

Rubens Peale, 1856

FROM Home Whispers to Husbands and Wives” by Melva (American Female Guardian Society, 1859):

“OH dear! what did I ever marry for?” sighed a weary wife and mother. “It’s nothing but care, trouble, disappointment and vexation, sick and crying children, miserable, shiftless domestics, overtaxed energies, feeble health, and more than all, a cross, selfish, exacting husband. Oh! I wish I was dead and at rest in the grave.”

The wife lowered her complaining tones a little as she said this, for she knew it was wrong to cherish such thoughts, and when they took form and expression, they startled her with their harshness and sinfulness. But the clouds were dark overspreading all her sky that day, and the winds that blew over the plain of her life were chill and dreary, sweeping rudely and harshly over the chords of her soul. It was often so. Harmonies were the exceptions in her mournful chant of life-discords the rule. Hers was a vexed and sore-tried, a disappointed and overburdened life. It had for her no rest, no recreation nor sustaining sympathy, none of the sunshine of congenial love and confidence; and her soul had not yet learned to arise from the low grounds of its disquietudes and sorrows, and to enter into its “rest.” (more…)

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The Texas Secession Movement

THE lawyer Lee Gaulman, a former constitutional conservative who goes by "Legalman," supports secession in general, but says the Texas succession movement is a "total waste of time." Constitutional conservatism is a "grift," meant to keep people on the "tax plantation." "The people have been taught a pack of lies about the 'founding' of the country, the idea that the 'people' are in charge and that the constitution somehow actually limits the govt. It's lies, guys. All lies to control you."  

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How to Celebrate a “Mass Shooting”

 "JUST three weeks after 49 people were supposedly killed at The Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Fl. [in 2016], Orange County authorities and the Orlando P.D. released this P.S.A. video announcement. (Yes, this a Public Service Announcement.) They must have been celebrating deceiving the gullible public by producing another D.H.S.-mandated, scheduled active shooter drill that went live in the media as more gun control propaganda. They pulled one over on the public, and they insult your intelligence by making their own dance video. How many more of these gungrab sh**shows does it take before you get the message that you've been had by Homeland Security??" From Mowac on Gab  

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Free from Care

"MAY you never be numbered among those whose house is peaceful, quiet and free from care; those on whom the Lord’s chastisement does not descend; those who live out their days in prosperity, and in the twinkling of an eye will go down to hell." --- St. Raymond of Peñafort  

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Her Mother Was Treated for COVID

IN ANOTHER interview at Children's Health Defense, Ginny Rodriguez describes the death of her 66-year-old mother, who was treated in a hospital in September 2021 for 53 days as a COVID patient. Many other interviews are available here.  

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The Modern Library — Enemy of Reflection

A new reading room
The reading room at the St. Louis Public Library

[Originally posted May 23, 2014]

ALAN writes:

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.

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