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!  

Regarding the Nova Scotia fire, CTV News reports: 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.” See here and here.  

 The Snow Composer : Edward William Elgar Librettist : Caroline Alice Elgar O snow, which sinks so light, Brown earth is hid from sight, O soul, be thou as white, O soul, be thou as white as snow, O snow, which falls so slow, Dear earth quite warm below; O heart, so keep thy glow, Beneath the snow. O snow, in thy soft grave, Sad flowers the winter brave; O heart, so soothe and save, as does the snow. The snow must melt, must go, Fast as water flow. Not thus, my soul, O sow, Thy gifts to fade like snow. O snow, thou'rt white no more, Thy sparkling too, is o'er; O soul, be as before, was bright the snow. Then as the snow all pure, O heart be, but endure; Through all the years full sure, Not as the snow.  

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.

Source

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.

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 Sure on this shining night English source: James Agee Sure on this shining night Of starmade shadows round, Kindness must watch for me This side the ground. The late year lies down the north. All is healed, all is health. High summer holds the earth. Hearts all whole. Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder Wandering far alone Of shadows on the stars.  

"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…

Source: Thuletide

[Reposted]

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.” (more…)

  

FROM Thuletide: 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. Source: The Distribution of Income and Fiscal Incidence by Age and Gender: Some Evidence from New Zealand (2013)  

FROM The Broadstone of Honor or, The true sense and practice of chivalry: by Kenelm Henry Digby (1876): 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…

Bethlehem, of noblest cities None can once with thee compare; Thou alone the Lord from heaven Didst for us Incarnate bear. Fairer than the sun at morning Was the star that told his birth; To the lands their God announcing, Hid beneath a form of earth. By its lambent beauty guided, See, the Eastern Kings appear; See them bend, their gifts to offer, Gifts of incense, gold, and myrrh. Offerings of mystick meaning! Incense doth the God disclose; Gold a Royal child proclaimeth; Myrrh a future tomb foreshows. Holy Jesu! in thy brightness To the Gentile world display’d! With the Father, and the Spirit, Endless praise to Thee be paid.   

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 [Reposted] HOW IS it that middle class families have gone in the last five decades from being sustainable on one income to requiring two in many cases? Why in the same period has household debt grown ever higher? You would think we would have less debt, not more. This 2019 video discussion between two Australians, Will Waite and Chas Pinwill, explains why working mothers (war and high immigration too) are a necessity in a debt-based, central banking economy and why personal indebtedness only grows worse. Everything they say about Australia is relevant to the U.S. They discuss the "social credit" alternative (not to be confused with Chinese social credit scoring) in which every adult receives a national dividend, similar to workers in profit-sharing companies. The dividend would offset the lack of money in circulation despite growths in productivity in a high-tech age and would provide enough to support families and individuals. "We've gone from a situation of single income to double income but we're not any richer, because all the second income ... goes to paying the mortgage. So the banks have done bloody well. They've got us in a deeper grip than ever. And we think we're getting richer because house prices are going up but they're only going up because they're lending money to everybody to bid against each other," says Pinwill, a cattleman who brings earthy wisdom to the subject. Major banks and large corporations push feminism,…

A READER writes: I used the living wage calculator for my city. With two adults, one working, three children, I barely make the living wage with my job ~$84k (wage calculator says $83,416). This requires me to work offshore and be away from my family half the year. I also have baby number four on the way next week so even though I make good money I still will not be making a living wage. The one big category I noticed that was absent from the typical expenses, which are pretty spot on, was savings. Try and save for retirement or an emergency fund and your money goes by even quicker. This is also with having no car notes and comparatively low credit card debt. We still find expenses tight sometimes especially with hospital bills for the new baby coming up. I barely manage to stay afloat I’m not sure how everyone else is doing it when I know they make considerably less than me even with both parents working. Through high taxes, usury, offshoring, greedflation, our society really is the worst.