Last Letter of Alexandra Feodorovna

The last diary entry of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia. A few hours after penning those lines, the Empress was shot with the Tsar and their five children.

Her last entry:

Yekaterinburg 3/16 July
[Niece] Irina’s 23d birthday.
Gray morning, later lovely sunshine. Baby [Alexei] has a slight cold. All went out  1/2-hour in the morning. Olga and I arrange our medicines [code word for jewellery and other valuables being hidden from the guards]. Tatiana read spiritual readings.
They went out. Tatiana stayed with me and we read: The Book of the prophet Amos and prophet Obadiah.
Every morning the commandant comes to our rooms: at last after a week brought eggs again for Baby.
8: Supper.
Suddenly Lenka Sednev [the kitchen boy] was fetched to go and see his uncle and flew off -wonder whether it’s true and we shall see the boy back again! Played bezique [a card game] with N.
10:30 to bed. 15 degrees.

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How Commnuism Came Into Vogue

From The Epoch Times:

Communism was not popularized in the West under the direct banner of communism. Instead, it came largely under the banner of postmodernism, and aimed to transform the values and beliefs of our societies through its Marxist idea that knowledge and truth are social constructs. Under it, a new wave of skepticism and distrust was applied to philosophy, culture, history, and all beliefs and institutions at the foundations of Western society.

The postmodern philosophy “came into vogue” in the 1970s, according to Jordan Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, “after classic Marxism, especially of the economic type, had been so thoroughly discredited that no one but an absolute reprobate could support it publicly.” Peterson said it’s not possible to understand our current society without considering the role postmodernism plays within it, “because postmodernism, in many ways—especially as it’s played out politically—is the new skin that the old Marxism now inhabits.”

“Even the French intellectuals had to admit that communism was a bad deal by the end of the 1960s,” he said. From there, the communists played a “sleight of hand game, in some sense,” and rebranded their ideology “under a postmodern guise.”

“That’s where identity politics came from,” he said. And from there, it “spread like wildfire” from France, to the United States through the English department at Yale University, “and then everywhere.”Marxism preached that the natural and economic landscape is a battle between the so-called proletariat and the bourgeois. It claimed that economic systems were going to enslave people and keep them down, Peterson said. In practice, however, communism repeatedly showed it made things worse. It was put into place in many parts of the world throughout the 20th century “with absolutely murderous results,” Peterson said. “It was the most destructive economic and political doctrine I think that has ever been invented by mankind,” surpassing even the terror seen under Adolf Hitler, with its system of murder that would kill over 100 million people in less than a century.

Peterson said the “full breadth of that catastrophe” of communism is something students rarely learn in school. “The students I teach usually know nothing at all about what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin and Lenin between 1919 and 1959. They have no idea that millions, tens of millions, of people were killed and far more tortured and brutalized by that particular regime—to say nothing of Mao.”

By the end of the 1960s, he said, even French intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre had to admit that the communist experiment—whether under Marxism, Stalinism, Maoism, or any other variant—was “an absolute, catastrophic failure.” (Read more.)

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Helicopter Parents

It is certainly a challenge for parents to resist the urge to be overprotective. From The Huffington Post:

Helicopter parents don't want their kids to get hurt. They want to soften every blow and cushion every fall. The problem is that these over-protected kids never learn how to deal with loss, failure or disappointment -- inevitable aspects of everyone's life. Over-protection makes it nearly impossible for these young people to develop frustration tolerance. Without this important psychological attribute, young people enter the workforce at a great disadvantage.

Helicopter parents do too much for their kids, so their kids grow up lacking a healthy work ethic, as well as basic skills. Without this work ethic and these necessary skills, the young person won't be able to accomplish many of the workplace tasks expected of them. Helicopter parents over-protect their kids and deprive them of any meaningful consequences for their actions. As a result, they miss out on the opportunity to learn valuable life lessons from the mistakes they make; life-lessons that would contribute to their emotional intelligence. Helicopter parents protect their kids from any conflicts they might have with their peers. When these kids grow up, they don't know how to resolve difficulties between themselves and a colleague or supervisor. (Read more.)

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French Road Trip

From The Guardian:

Perpignan is the most Spanish of French cities. With its ginger-pink facades, lines of palm trees and packed fiesta calendar, it’s an attractive, passionate city, ideal for a beach holiday or to visit the caves and castles of ancient Roussillon. Spend a day exploring the Palace of the Kings of Majorca, visit the Hotel Pams and the Gothic La Loge de Mer. Heading south towards Alénya, the Domaine Mas Bazan is a great place to stay, set among vineyards, orchards and a pool (doubles from €48 B&B), where there are also gites and chalets to rent. (Read more.)

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Cardinal Sarah and His Critics

From The Catholic Herald:

It is indeed remarkable that Sarah has suffered this hail of abuse with such grace. In his newly published book The Power of Silence, we hear his stifled cry of anguish:

I painfully experienced assassination by gossip, slander and public humiliation, and I learned that when a person has decided to destroy you, he has no lack of words, spite and hypocrisy; falsehood has an immense capacity for constructing arguments, proofs and truths out of sand. When this is the behaviour of men of the Church, and in particular of bishops, the pain is still deeper. But … we must remain calm and silent, asking for the grace never to give in to rancour, hatred and feelings of worthlessness. Let us stand firm in our love for God and for his Church, in humility.

Despite it all, Sarah is a man unbowed. His book reiterates his call for Mass ad orientem and the rest of the “reform of the reform”: “God willing, when he wills and as he wills, the reform of the reform will take place in the liturgy. Despite the gnashing of teeth, it will happen, for the future of the Church is at stake.”
If Sarah has refused to make himself pleasing to those who run Rome, he is not about to serve any other party either. In this wonderfully individual book, he tells old Islamic folktales, dotes on the suffering and weak, and decries military intervention: “How can we not be scandalised and horrified by the action of American and Western governments in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria?” Sarah views these as idolatrous outpourings of blood “in the name of the goddess Democracy” and “in the name of Liberty, another Western goddess”. He opposes the effort to build “a religion without borders and a new global ethics”. (Read more.)

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The Ancient History of Salt

From Vintage News:

Salt was of high value to the Hebrews, Greeks, the Chinese, Hittites and other peoples of antiquity. Aside from being a contributing factor in the development of civilization, salt was also used in the military practice of salting the earth by various peoples, beginning with the Assyrians. In the early years of the Roman Republic, with the growth of the city of Rome, roads were built to make transportation of salt to the capital city easier. An example was the Via Salaria (originally a Sabine trail), leading from Rome to the Adriatic Sea. The Adriatic, having a higher salinity due to its shallow depth, had more productive solar ponds compared with those of the Tyrrhenian Sea, much closer to Rome. (Read more.)

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Monogram of the Queen

A plate with Marie-Antoinette's monogram. Share

A Trisomy Baby Story

From Life Site:

Alexander had Trisomy 18, a condition where there are three copies of chromosome 18 instead of the normal two. The condition often disrupts the baby’s normal pattern of development, often causing life-threatening problems including defects in the heart, lungs, kidneys as well as other developmental problems. A large majority of babies with this condition die within the first year.

As she sat now in the Des Moines hospital room listening to the doctor, Katie was having trouble taking it all in. Words became jumbled. It was all too surreal. She asked the doctor to wait until her husband arrived to finish what he had to say. 

When Ryan arrived, he found his wife totally distraught. Katie pleaded with him to go with the doctor into another room to discuss Alexander’s condition. When Ryan asked the doctor if he could record what he was about to hear so that his wife could listen to it once she had calmed down, the doctor consented.  (Read more.)

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