The Spell of Posey Rings

Mary of Great Britain and Ireland

From Country Life:

Gold rings with poesies (‘little poems’) — poésie being the Old French for ‘poetry’ — quickly became the single most popular type of jewellery in the country. They were exchanged by lovers, would-be lovers, family members and best friends, but their most common use was as a betrothal or wedding ring. Henry VIII gave a posy ring to Anne of Cleves inscribed: ‘God send me well to kepe.’ William of Orange gave one to Princess Mary inscribed: ‘I’le win and wear you if I can.’ Jewellers used to keep a stock of blank rings, and booksellers promoted inspirational handbooks, such as Loves Garland or Poſies for Rings, which was published in 1624.

I was still in my teens when a friend of my mother’s showed me his collection of posy rings. I was transfixed by their beauty — the soft, almost pure yellow gold, the finely wrought decoration (flowers, leaves, hearts and other symbols) and the elegant script, but what really fascinated me were the inscriptions. ‘I like my choyce.’ ‘True love appears/In midst of tears.’ ‘God has brought to pass that which unlikely was.’ It was as if I were listening to the voices of the long-dead givers and receivers. 

The physical appearance of posy rings changed over time. Lombardic script was replaced by Gothic script, which, in turn, gave way to Roman capitals and then italics. Earlier rings carried much more decoration, too. Niello — a hard black paste — was used to fill in the letters and the costlier rings were enamelled in bright colours. The language of courtly love was, of course, Norman French (‘sans de partier’ or ‘without parting’) although some poesies were in Latin (‘Non Auri Sed Amor’ or ‘not gold but love’) and others in a sort of proto-franglais (‘Autre ne wile and evere you best’, which hardly needs translating). Later, they were almost all in English. (Read more.)

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FBI Internal Emails Reveal Biden White House Coordinated with DOJ on Mar-a-Lago Raid

 From The Gateway Pundit:

Fox News on Friday obtained internal FBI emails proving that the Biden White House coordinated with the Justice Department to raid Mar-a-Lago. Biden’s FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in 2022 and seized boxes of records from Trump’s Florida estate. More than 3 dozen machine-gun-toting agents descended on Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, and by November, Biden’s DOJ appointed a special counsel to investigate the documents stored at the Florida residence.

The raid came after the National Archives (NARA) visited Mar-a-Lago in early 2022 and demanded documents from Trump. Court documents revealed that Biden’s FBI authorized the use of deadly force during their raid on Mar-a-Lago, which was authorized by US Attorney General Merrick Garland. Corrupt FBI agents released staged photos of the ‘classified’ documents laid out on the floor of Mar-a-Lago. (Read more.)

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Roundup

 From Tierney's Real News:

In simple terms, spraying glyphosate at the end of the season works like a chemical “off switch” to kill the crop and help it dry down more quickly so it can be harvested on schedule. This practice is called pre‑harvest application. It is used on some wheat acres, especially in cooler or wetter northern climates, but it is not universal on all U.S. wheat.

Why do farmers do this?

• In cold or wet years, wheat can stay green and “wet” too long. Killing the plant helps it dry faster so the farmer can harvest before rain, frost, or snow.

• Sometimes part of a field is ripe while another part is still green. Spraying helps the entire field reach a similar dryness so the combine doesn’t plug with green stems.

• Late‑season green weeds can tangle in machinery and slow everything down. A pre‑harvest spray helps “burn down” those weeds and smooths out harvest.

Farmers wait until the wheat is mature – meaning the grain is fully formed and the moisture in the kernels has dropped to around 30% or less. A common “thumbnail test” is pressing a fingernail into a kernel; if the dent stays, the grain is mature enough for a pre‑harvest treatment.

At that point, a sprayer applies either true desiccants like diquat or systemic herbicides like glyphosate over the field. Contact desiccants kill green growth very quickly and dry the crop in a few days; glyphosate works more slowly and is technically labeled for weed control, but in practice it also helps the crop finish drying and ripening in bad conditions.

Once the plants are brown and brittle and grain moisture is down near storage levels (around 14%), the combine goes in and harvests.

Glyphosate has been around since the mid‑1970s, but its use as a late‑season tool became more common in the late 1980s and 1990s and expanded in the 2000s in places like Canada, the northern U.S., and the U.K., where early cold and wet weather can shut down the season fast. (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette's Journey of Faith

I have always felt that Maxime de la Rocheterie's description of Marie-Antoinette is one of the best:

She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr. (The Life of Marie-Antoinette by M. de la Rocheterie, 1893)

Marie-Antoinette spent the first fourteen years of her life in Austria, worshiping in Rococo churches and listening to the music of Haydn and the Italian composers. Architecture and music in that time and place celebrated the glory of God in the beauty of His creation. As Queen, her desire to promote beauty around her, especially in the lives of those whom she loved, was an outgrowth of the culture in which she was raised. She loved theater, acting, opera, ballet, painting, gardens and everything that enhanced the loveliness of the natural order. Hers was a piety that was loving, gentle and courteous, but real and unflinching nevertheless. Antoinette's approach to faith was joyful and non-judgmental, free from the rigorist approach of Jansenism that so tainted a great deal of French piety in the years preceding the Revolution. Nevertheless, even as a young bride, she had the moral courage to defy the king in regard to Madame du Barry.

Antoinette was the fifteenth child in a family of sixteen. It is known that the young Archduchess Antonia was not an outstandingly pious child, but she was carefully taught her faith. Her mother, Empress Maria Teresa of Austria was a deeply observant Roman Catholic, who prayed novenas with her children and took them on pilgrimages. She instilled in her daughters the importance of being faithful wives and staying at their husbands' sides, no matter what.

The Empress also taught young Antoinette how to play cards before sending her to France, knowing that at the French court just like the Austrian court, gambling was rife and if a princess did not know the ropes she would lose all her money. Antoinette's mother's devotion to God did not blind her to the realities of life as a royal for which she tried to prepare her daughter, although many say that Antoinette's youth and naïveté made the task difficult. Unfortunately, the teenage Antoinette became addicted to gambling, a passion that she later overcame with her husband's help.

When I look back at my own youth I cannot be too hard on the imprudences of Antoinette as a girl. Whatever mistakes she made, she later paid for, bitterly. Her faith was practical and manifested itself in her extensive charities, including a home for unwed mothers. While her generosity to the poor is famous, it is not as widely known that she was a patroness of the Carmelite order, and visited the monastery where her husband's aunt was a nun, once a year. She made many personal sacrifices on behalf of the poor and encouraged her children to do so. She assisted at daily Mass, confessing and receiving Holy Communion on a regular basis,and lived, to all appearances, as a Roman Catholic in good standing.

After the death of her mother and loss of two of her children in the 1780's, Antoinette became more noticeably devout, growing closer to her pious sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth of France. While under house arrest at the Tuileries palace, the two connived at getting non-juring priests, (i.e., those who were faithful to the Pope), into the chateau for secret Masses and confessions. It is supposedly the time when a few historians claim she had a romantic rendez-vous with Count Axel von Fersen. I think not. The atmosphere at the Tuileries was more like the catacombs than Dangerous Liaisons.

Before her death, when her children had been taken from her, her little son abused and her husband slain, the queen again sought prayer, the sacraments of the Church, and affirmed in writing her loyalty to the "Catholic, Roman and Apostolic religion." The priest who received her last confession in the Conciergerie later publicly affirmed these facts.

The more I continue to discover about Antoinette, for history is a gradual voyage of discovery, I do not regret having painted her as I did in Trianon. If I could write it again, there is more that I would wish to add about her goodness, courage, nobility, love for God and the people of France. My fear is that perhaps I did not do justice to a very great but much maligned Queen. As historian John Wilson Croker expressed it:

We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with-- if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves-- something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny-- that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings. (History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844)

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The Big Stink

 From Direct Line News:

The Potomac River, the central artery of our region, is now contaminated with E. coli, MRSA, and other dangerous pathogens after the failure of the Potomac Interceptor. This is not a minor spill. It is a public health catastrophe that experts compare with the Exxon Valdez and BP Deepwater Horizon disasters when measured by raw pollutant volume and impact area. What happened to the nation’s capital is not an unavoidable act of nature. It is a failure of leadership.

And to understand how we got here, it helps to remember that this is not the first time Gadis has been connected to a water system in crisis.

Before taking charge at DC Water, Gadis held a senior executive position at Veolia North America, the consulting firm hired by Flint in 2015 to assess its drinking water system. Flint residents had already been complaining about foul odors, discoloration, and illness. Veolia’s review was supposed to identify problems and recommend solutions. Instead, the firm delivered an assessment that failed to warn the public about lead contamination in their homes. This failure later became the focus of lawsuits filed by Flint families and by the State of Michigan. The Attorney General accused Veolia of professional negligence. Veolia defended itself in court, but the record speaks clearly. The firm did not sound the alarm that Flint desperately needed.

Now the Washington region is living through its own version of that nightmare. Under Gadis, DC Water allowed the Potomac Interceptor to weaken and collapse. The result was the release of millions of gallons of untreated wastewater into the river that serves as the drinking water source for large parts of the region. Because the spill was not contained quickly, it spread downstream, threatening communities from Georgetown to Northern Virginia to the Maryland suburbs. (Read more.)

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“This Cursed Phenomenon We’re Experiencing”

 From The European Conservative:

Bothelford’s Gone, Edward McLaren’s recently published novel, proves the struggle is ongoing. While not outright banned, this novel examining Britain’s twenty-first-century national shame has thus far been suppressed in all the standard ways. Though Amazon is known for endeavoring to sell everything, the book is unavailable from Amazon UK (though the American parent company sells it in the U.S.). As of this writing, Oldspeak Bookshop in Suffolk is the novel’s only confirmed UK retailer. Thus, an American writer is reviewing a British book, on a British topic, published by a small American publisher.

This is not a fictional account of the Rotherham crimes. The plot extends to the present day. It names the 2014 Jay Report and Rotherham itself. The fictional Bothelford, then, portrays the ongoing failures of late-stage liberal Britain, the malignant society that endures after its authorities did precious little to address Rotherham. 

McLaren illustrates numerous defects of this society, perhaps to his detriment. We encounter attitudes to Tucker Carlson and Brexit, COVID lockdowns, and creeping technology. The narrator alludes to President Trump without naming him. A transgender-identifying character plays an unexpected role. McLaren accurately captures UK polite society, if this reviewer’s interactions with the British professional-managerial class are any indication. However, any readers from the ‘respectability’ camp—if they are willing to approach the grooming-gang subject in good faith—likely won’t read until the end. 

Bothelford probably would have benefited from a first-person narrator. Too often, especially in the first half, the narrator tells rather than shows. We might give McLaren the benefit of the doubt. Do Western readers have a reference point for grooming-gang Britain without being told? Official narratives have insisted it is conspiratorial or extremist to talk about the subject. (“Tell me why The Financial Times isn’t talking about it, if it’s such an issue?”) 

Can an author like Michel Houellebecq more easily employ a first-person narrator because readers can better comprehend his atomized, sexually depraved subjects? After all, McLaren argues pornography desensitizes young British minds to the crimes occurring in their midst. “He had been subjected to the mulching of manhood such that the English women, the little girls, would have no defence from the likes of him. It was deliberate. It must have been deliberate, all along.”

The novel gathers momentum in the second half. Bothelford’s corrupted criminal-justice, education, and local-government ecosystems are especially resonant, even if accounts of the crimes and resultant suffering are less so. The protagonists are born into Houellebecquian emptiness, not complicit in it. (Read more.)

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Louis XVI: A King Maligned

Some biographers, in seeking to change public opinion about Marie-Antoinette, attempt to redeem her at the expense of her husband, King Louis XVI. Louis-Auguste is portrayed as a repressed, impotent, dull-witted, indifferent husband, who drove his wife to gambling, dancing and spending exorbitant amounts of money as an outlet for her thwarted impulses. Stefan Zweig, a disciple of Sigmund Freud, was one of the first to impart to the public the image of the sexually frustrated teenage princess, which successive authors continue to promote to this day. 

The drawback of the Freudian theory is that it does not explain why others at the French court, who were enjoying unmitigated pleasures of the flesh, were spending much more money than eighteen year old Marie-Antoinette. In vindicating Marie-Antoinette, still falsely perceived as the queen who took lovers and who danced while the people starved, it is necessary to gain a true perspective of her spouse, beyond the archetype of the fat, indolent husband, spoiling a wife he could not satisfy. One must look behind the myths, deliberately propagated and perpetuated in order to sell books and movies about alleged extramarital love affairs, as well as to justify the excesses of the French Revolution. The reality about this tragic royal couple may not be as sensational as some biographies tell it, but it is as exciting, heart-rending and beautiful as any make-believe romance.

Louis XVI is systematically shown as being ugly, obese, smelly, and stupid. By contemporary standards, however, he was considered handsome, with his aquiline nose, deep set blue-grey eyes, and full sensual mouth. As a youth he was tall and thin, the tallest man at Court, and enjoyed intense physical exercise, such as hunting and hammering at his forge (he was a locksmith by hobby.) His physical strength was legendary; he could lift a shovel to shoulder height with a young boy standing on the end of it. Possessing the hardy Bourbon appetite, he developed a paunch as he approached his thirties. He was awkward and shy in his manner although not without dignity in his bearing. The efforts of his detractors to make him unattractive and therefore unlovable serves the purpose of giving his wife an "excuse" for chronic infidelity, another highly-popularized myth. 

Likewise, Louis is presented as being dirty and malodorous. Granted that he was an active man, not a powdered and pampered courtier, and working with metal was not clean work; neither was his daily riding and hunting, as anyone who has ever been around horses will agree. However, he had two tubs of which he made daily use, one for washing and one for rinsing. 

As for his intellect, all one has to do is read anything he wrote to see that Louis XVI was an intelligent man. He could read and speak several foreign languages, knew Latin as well as his native tongue, was a skilled amateur cartographer, enjoyed the tragedies of Shakespeare as well as of the great French dramatists Corneille and Racine. He was fascinated with scientific inventions, which he encouraged, and with geography, outfitting a sea voyage of discovery in the Pacific ocean. He would read his mail as his ministers delivered their reports, without missing a word of what his ministers said. He subscribed to several international newspapers, as a means of keeping informed of events and of the opinions of others.

Louis XVI is always portrayed as politically inept and indifferent, and yet he built up the French navy and army so that Great Britain was defeated in the war for American independence. The ships and soldiers outfitted by King Louis were later used by Napoleon Bonaparte to conquer Europe. During the Revolution, he tried to avoid bloodshed at all costs and would not escape because he did not want to abandon his people to the fanatic minority which had seized power. His calm in the face of the calamities is usually interpreted as phlegmatic indifference, but by remaining composed, he was often able to regain control of situations where the mob was thirsting for blood. 

Louis was a dedicated Roman Catholic, keeping track of his regular Confession and Communion days in his journal. After the French revolutionary government seized control of the Church, he eventually refused to receive Communion from a priest not in union with Rome. He also vetoed the law forcing priests to be deported for not denying the papal supremacy, even though it brought the angry populace upon the palace in June 1792. As Simon Schama points out in his book Citizens, Louis XVI was more and more torn between his duties as father of his people and father of his family. He tried early in the Revolution to try to persuade the queen to escape with their children, but she refused to leave his side, much to her credit.

Since so many books have speculated about the details of Louis' intimate relations with his wife, I did not touch upon it in my novel, wanting to respect the sacred privacy which should exist between spouses. However, because of the misunderstandings which continue to circulate in books, films and articles I have found it necessary to clarify matters on this blog. Let it be made clear that Louis was not impotent, nor did he have any physical defects which would have prevented him from consummating his marriage, according to the court medical records and affirmed by scholars Bernard Faÿ, Vincent Cronin, and Simone Bertière.

Another rehashed error is that Louis XVI was sexually indifferent and refused to consummate his marriage for seven years. In the beginning of the marriage, as I said above, Marie-Antoinette looked as if she were twelve. Louis should be praised for not wanting to rush upon a child. 

Furthermore, Louis belonged to the political clique at Versailles that had been against the Austrian alliance. Austria was the traditional enemy of France, and had leveled a humiliating defeat upon the Bourbons in the Seven Years War. The defeat was blamed upon the mistress of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour, who had also been behind arranging the marriage with the Habsburg Archduchess Antonia. Louis' aunt and godmother, the feisty old maid Madame Adélaïde, daughter of Louis XV, never let him forget that his bride was not only an enemy of France, but that she had been brought over by a courtesan, Madame de Pompadour, who also had reddish hair and was named "Antoinette." With visions in his mind of the notorious Pompadour, who had led both his grandfather and his country astray, Louis approached his Austrian bride with caution and reserve. (See Vincent Cronin's Louis and Antoinette.) 

Since his bride was fourteen years old but looked as if she were twelve, I think it speaks well for Louis that he did not wish to deflower a child. According to the letters written by the Queen to her mother the Empress Maria Theresa, the young couple began to attempt to consummate the marriage as early as 1773, when Marie-Antoinette was seventeen and Louis eighteen. Author Simone Bertiere, in her superb biography L'Insoumise, maintains that Marie-Antoinette had a "narrowness of passage" which made consummating the marriage difficult and painful. 

Louis waited for his wife to mature and their first child was born when Antoinette was twenty-two, the first of four, including some miscarriages. Louis XVI was a devoted husband and father, who mingled tears of joy and sorrow with his wife at the births and deaths of their children. Their marriage had problems just like any marriage, but they strove for it to work, and it did work. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were forged into a devoted couple who would be separated only by death.

Sources:

Bertière, Simone. Marie-Antoinette l'insoumise. Paris: Editions de Fallois, 2002.

Cronin, Vincent. Louis and Antoinette. New York: Morrow, 1974

Faÿ, Bernard. Louis XVI ou la fin d'un Monde. Paris: Perrin, 1966.

(Artwork)

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Cash For Havana

 From AND Magazine:

Times are tough in Havana. Trump has cut off Venezuelan oil. The Mexicans have made some reassuring noises, but don’t seem inclined to fill the gap. The Chinese and Russians have no appetite for trying to break an American embargo in the face of U.S. naval forces. So, the Cubans have gone begging. Their friends in America are pushing the equivalent of a GoFundMe page for Communism on our soil.

Trump’s fuel blockade is starving Cuba of power, crippling hospitals and schools, and attempting to induce a famine.

We are rushing solar generators and panels to our neighbors 90 miles away so that hospitals can keep their doors open and their lights on. Your donation helps ensure patients receive the essential care they need.

This crisis does not have to exist. It was created by the Trump Administration and should be reversed immediately.

Until these cruel policies end, as neighbors, we must act and send aid.

Help us stop the Trump Administration from creating famine in Cuba.

Donate now. Send power. Save lives.

People’s Forum

Yes, this is the same People’s Forum run by Neville Roy Singham, the Chinese agent who operates out of Shanghai and bankrolls a wide variety of anti-American groups on U.S. soil. Why he is allowed to continue to do so remains a question only the FBI and DOJ can answer.

The focus on solar panels here is an interesting touch. It pays homage to the climate change narrative that is an accepted mantra in leftist circles, while at the same time nicely ignoring the fact that any money raised will go to the Cubans to spend as they wish. Interestingly, in the instructions for donors is this guidance. “Please do not write ‘Cuba’ in donation comments or on the memo line of checks. Simply write ‘Urgent Aid.’”

Those interested in sending hard copy checks are in fact, simply directed to mail the checks to the People’s Forum in Manhattan.

Most instructive of all, however, is the list of sponsors of this panhandling exercise. They include the usual lost souls, actors Ed Harris, Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, and Jane Fonda among them, but also a number of radical Marxist organizations dedicated to the destruction of the republic: The 50501 organization, the ANSWER Coalition, CODEPINK, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), and the National Network on Cuba. Probably every one of those organizations should have been shut down long ago. (Read more.)

 

Also from AND Magazine:

We wrote recently about the ongoing effort by Marxists in the United States to raise money on behalf of the Communist government in Cuba. That effort continues. Meanwhile, the same folks, in league with a whole raft of other radical leftist groups, are also working on sending a “flotilla” to Havana’s aid. 

A growing coalition of international organizations, including Progressive International, The People’s Forum, CODEPINK, and allied movements across the Americas and beyond is coming together to launch the Nuestra América Flotilla to Cuba in March, 2026, a humanitarian and solidarity mission to the island at a moment of deep crisis.

As U.S. policies continue to suffocate the island’s access to fuel, medicine, and essential goods, we believe this is the moment to act. We are organizing a people-powered mission to break the blockade and deliver aid as well as a powerful message: the people of Cuba are not alone.

The Nuestra América Flotilla will sail toward Cuba, carrying humanitarian aid and representing a united front of organizations committed to peace, sovereignty, and cooperation across borders.

We invite organizations, networks, and individuals committed to international solidarity and humanitarian action to join this historic initiative.

Code Pink – One of the many Marxist organizations inside the United States affiliated with Neville Roy Singham’s CCP-aligned network. (Read more.)

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Our Low Agency Elite

 From Becoming Noble:

There is no shortage of challenges over which conservative elites should be asserting agency: the collapse in birthrates and faith, a disappearance of standards in aesthetics and etiquette, obesity and pornography crises, and the ceding of patronage and control over the high arts to liberals.

The resolution of these challenges can’t just rely on donations to think tanks and political entities to outsource change. It requires mounting powerful, detailed, iterative, personal interventions in their own communities and localities. Subsidiarity is effective.

Conservative elites are usually wealthy precisely because they are high agency. Most are first-generation wealth and have demonstrated entrepreneurialism and determination. But agency can be a far narrower quality than is generally recognized. An individual can be highly agentic within specific domains and completely inert in others.

The most important factor for building and maintaining agency is positive feedback, which reaffirms personal efficacy. From Albert Bandura’s seminal paper ‘Toward a Psychology of Human Agency’:

Among the mechanisms of human agency, none is more central or pervasive than belief of personal efficacy. This core belief is the foundation of human agency.

Belief in one’s efficacy is a key personal resource in personal development and change. It operates through its impact on cognitive, motivational, affective, and decisional processes. Efficacy beliefs affect whether individuals think optimistically or pessimistically, in self-enhancing or self-debilitating ways. Such beliefs affect people’s goals and aspirations, how well they motivate themselves, and their perseverance in the face of difficulties and adversity. Efficacy beliefs also shape people’s outcome expectations—whether they expect their efforts to produce favorable outcomes or adverse ones.…

…efficacy beliefs determine the choices people make at important decisional points. A factor that influences choice behavior can profoundly affect the courses lives take.

One of capitalism’s great strengths is that it has a clear reward function (wealth). The directness of this reward is ideal for fostering agency. The target is clear, the possibility of success is evident, one is encouraged to pursue it, tools are available, and momentum is felt as success builds. Personal efficacy is reified. (Read more.)

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