Moonrise

In honor of the super moon tonight, I am posting some of the pictures I have been collecting on East of the Sun, West of the Moon. More HERE and HERE.

Audrey Hepburn singing "Moon River" in Breakfast at Tiffany's

 

English Translation of "Song to the Moon" 

 Moon, high and deep in the sky
Your light sees far,
You travel around the wide world,
and see into people's homes.
Moon, stand still a while
and tell me where is my dear.
Tell him, silvery moon,
that I am embracing him.
For at least momentarily
let him recall of dreaming of me.
Illuminate him far away,
and tell him, tell him who is waiting for him!
If his human soul is in fact dreaming of me,
may the memory awaken him!
Moonlight, don't disappear, disappear!

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One Disaster at a Time

 From the Rand Paul Review:

As the death toll from Hurricane Helene climbs to 227, many wonder how much higher it will climb as the federal government has not yet accessed most disaster-struck areas yet. Reports of donation and volunteer sabotage are running rampant, and the Biden administration is struggling to control the narrative. Hundreds of people have taken to social media to show exactly how little the government is doing to help them in the wake of the disaster. Many small towns are totally without power, fresh water, or medical care. The Biden administration is still sending money directly to Ukraine.

Do they think Americans aren’t watching? 

Since the war in Ukraine started, the US has sent over $176 billion dollars in aid to Ukraine. Just 10 days ago, the Biden administration approved nearly $8 billion to be sent to Ukraine in support of the ongoing war against Russia. The day before, Biden had authorized a $375 million auxiliary package, also to Ukraine.  That same day, the west coast of Florida through North Carolina were decimated by Hurricane Helene.

Not ten days later, another major hurricane is slated for the same parts of Florida that are still reeling from the catastrophic Helene. With the pot already empty, many fret that there will be no relief from the first disaster, let alone the second. FEMA says it has run out of money following an additional transfer of money from their coffers to support the surge of illegal immigrants at the border. That money has gone to everything from a welcome center for migrants, to healthcare, to helping the convicted felons from South America find their way into our country. The US doesn’t need the human tidal wave to continue as real waves destroy American communities.  (Read more.)

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An Old Lithium Mine

 From Leo's Newsletter:

The United States is moving aggressively to bolster its national battery supply chain as globalists seek to force consumers into more expensive and less practical electric cars as part of their so-called Net Zero climate agenda.

In order to produce EVs, you need lithium for the batteries. Lots of lithium.

China is a top-3 global producer of lithium along with Chile and Australia. But U.S.-China relations are coming apart at the seams over Taiwan, Ukraine, and other issues, so the U.S. cannot depend on future lithium imports from China.

Even the World Economic Forum has gone on the record highlighting the need for more lithium heading into the digital age and the globalists’ penchant for electrification of everything. Not just cars and trucks but lawn equipment, stoves, water heaters, you name it, they want it to run on electricity instead of coal, oil or gas.

Against this backdrop, the U.S. government is looking inward for more sources of lithium. That’s where North Carolina enters the scene.

The federal government is pressuring a small town in North Carolina to allow an old lithium mine to be reopened, despite local backlash against the corporation seeking a permit. (Read more.)

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Death of Marie-Antoinette

Here also on the 16th of October, 1793 fell a once beauteous head- now whitened by sorrow not by age- and venerable for the angelic purity and patience, the royal courage and Christian submission with which it had exchanged the most brilliant crown of the world for a crown of thorns, and that again for the crown of martyrdom. Here died the QUEEN- one of the noblest and the purest, and yet, if human judgments be alone weighed, the most unfortunate of women- tried in almost every possible agony of affliction- except a guilty conscience- and in that exception finding the consolation for all. She arrived at this scene of her last and greatest triumph, jolted in a common cart, and ascended the scaffold amidst the vociferations of a crowd of furies, whom we hesitate to acknowledge as of her own sex. Never in that gorgeous palace, on which she now cast a last calm look, did she appear more glorious- never was she so really admirable as she was at that supreme moment of her earthly release. ~from History of the guillotine. Revised from the 'Quarterly review.' By John Wilson Croker

On reaching the scaffold she inadvertently trod on the executioner's foot. "Pardon me," she said, courteously. She knelt for an instant and uttered a half-audible prayer; then rising and glancing towards the towers of the Temple, "Adieu, once again, my children," she said. "I go to rejoin your father."--LAMARTINE (Quoted in Madame Campan's Memoirs)

I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long.~ Marie-Antoinette

Last letter of Marie-Antoinette.

Her last Holy Communion.

Her Sacrifice.

Her Forgiveness.
Madame Campan's account.
Transcript of her Trial. (Via Versailles and More)
The Mother.
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Why Veterans Are Voting for Trump

 From Daniel McCarthy at Chronicles:

The kind of institutions that pay top-dollar for Hillary Clinton don’t expect to hear anything different from a speaker like Milley, and he knows it. If veterans are a bedrock of Trump’s support, swamp things like Milley are a core constituency for Harris.

Trump is running against them as much as against her, and veterans are well aware of it—yet they’re with Trump, not the Swamp. The top brass long misled America about the war in Afghanistan, which they insisted we were winning, and it was the troops who paid the price.

The fact that Harris has the backing of Washington’s foreign policy establishment is for many voters a compelling reason to reject her. Voters across the swing states trust Trump over Harris in matters of war and peace.

Fully 50 percent of those voters say Trump is better suited to handle the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with only 39 percent expressing more confidence in Harris, according to polling by The Wall Street Journal. Trump holds an even bigger lead when it comes to which candidate battleground voters trust to handle the Israel-Hamas war: 48 percent say Trump, just 33 percent say Harris.

Every year, the Biden-Harris administration has delivered a foreign policy disaster—the lethally botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Hamas massacre of more than a thousand Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, and the extension of the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East throughout 2024. No wonder voters in the states most likely to decide the election want Trump’s foreign policy, not more of what President Joe Biden and Harris have given us these last four years. (Read more.)

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The Best Medieval Crime Novels

 Mine is not included although it should be since they made a movie out of it. From CrimeReads:

“Books give delight to the very marrow of one’s bones,” said Petrarch. For me, that goes double for any novel set in the Middle Ages, those liminal centuries when ancient magic mixed with new religion, when love and war, feast and famine, walked hand in hand. This contradictory and chaotic period provides fertile ground for tales of crime.

Before toxicology reports or formal forensic analysis, and in the midst of omnipresent superstition, medieval detectives crack the case with the power of their own original logic. The stakes are always high; those in power kill quickly and with immunity, church law criminalizes autopsy, and individuals deemed “too clever” may find themselves accused of witchcraft.

Despite all this, the medieval detective is not grim and stoic: the so-called Dark Ages were also full of love and laughter. We see this in the bawdy writings of Chaucer and Boccaccio, in the Limbourg brothers’ delicate illumination of the month of August, where peasants swim as nobles in absolutely fabulous hats trot by on their tasseled ponies. Thus, when faced with Death, our detective greets him with an excellent joke. (Read more.)

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Cinderella

The noble's daughter was set to do all the drudgery of the house, to attend the kitchen fire, and had naught to sleep on but the heap of cinder raked out in the scullery; and that is why they called her Cinder Maid.

~from "The Cinder Maid" by Joseph Jacobs

Cinderella is perhaps the most universal of fairy tales, one that has variations in many cultures over the course of several centuries. The experience of having a stepmother was not uncommon in the days when women sometimes died in childbirth and so the story of the "Cinder Maid" resonated deeply with past generations. Today, with the high rate of divorce and remarriage, young people often find themselves living in the same house with a step-parent, which even in the best situations can offer challenges for everyone involved.

On the most basic level, Cinderella is a tale of injustice and suffering inflicted upon an innocent by an older person whose job should have been to nurture and protect. The innocent is aided by forces from beyond this world, leading to final vindication; in this manner the story fulfills the very natural hope of those who have endured any type of material misery or abuse. As is the case with other fairy tales, the older versions are darker and much, more violent, with the triumph of the heroine being the result of struggle, not merely handed to her on a platter. The wicked stepsisters are grotesquely punished in the older tales whereas in the newer renditions they are shown mercy. According to Heidi Anne Heiner of Sur La Lune:

Although a reference to the story exists in 16th century German literature, the next written version of the story comes from Charles Perrault in his Contes de ma Mere L'Oye in 1697. From this version, we received the fairy godmother, the pumpkin carriage, the animal servants, and the glass slippers. Perrault recorded the story that was told to him by storytellers while adding these touches for literary effect. Some scholars think Perrault confused "vair" (French for "ermine or fur") with "verre" (French for "glass") to account for Cinderella's admittedly uncomfortable footwear. This theory has been widely discredited now. Most scholars believe Perrault intended glass slippers as Cinderella's footwear. Perrault's version has a more humane ending than many versions of the tale with Cinderella finding husbands for her sisters. The sisters are left poor, blind, maimed, or even dead in many versions of the tale.

The Grimm Brothers' German version, known as Aschenputtel, or Ash Girl, does not have a fairy godmother. The heroine plants a tree on her mother's grave from which all of the magical help appears in the form of a white dove and gifts. At the end, the stepsisters' eyes are pecked by birds from the tree to punish them for their cruelty. Perrault's version is considerably more forgiving than this version.

The concept of having a fairy godmother calls to mind good friends who have intervened in times of serious need in my own life. In Cinderella the maiden's helper, be it the fairy godmother or the tree on her mother's grave, always has supernatural connotations, suggesting the Divine intervention behind the scenes. Among the many films that have been made based upon the Cinderella fairy tale, my two favorites are the Czech version made in the 70's, and The Glass Slipper starring Leslie Caron.

(Artwork from Art Passions) Share

Perfect Answers

 

From The Daily Wire:

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) slammed ABC News host Martha Raddatz during an interview over the weekend for down playing the seriousness of illegal alien crime in the U.S. The exchange happened Sunday on the network’s “This Week” show when Raddatz suggested that it was not a big deal that a “a handful of apartment complexes” were taken over by criminal illegal alien gangs from Venezuela.

“Senator Vance, I’m going to stop you because I know exactly what happened,” Raddatz claimed. “I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes and the mayor said our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns. A handful of problems.”

Vance fired back: “Martha, do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem, and not Kamala Harris’s open border?”

“Americans are so fed up with what’s going on and they have every right to be and I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting because you seem to be more focused with nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs,” he continued. (Read more.)

 

From The Western Journal:

GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance would not take the bait when a New York Times journalist continually pressed him to answer whether former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

“In the debate, you were asked to clarify if you believe Trump lost the 2020 election. Do you believe he lost the 2020 election?” Lulu Garcia-Navarro, host of “The Interview” podcast, asked in a clip posted on Friday.

“I think that Donald Trump and I have both raised a number of issues with the 2020 election, but we’re focused on the future. I think there’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020. I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020,” Vance answered, bringing up the Biden administration’s open border and inflationary policies. (Read more.)

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