The King's Pearl

Charles I as Prince of Wales

History of a pearl earring. In the 17th century men often wore jewelry. Above is the portrait of Charles which Henrietta Maria received as a betrothal gift. She kept it at her bedside until her death. To quote:

Today pearls are among the most common of precious "jewels." But before the development of cultured pearls and farming in the early 20th c., all pearls were natural pearls. These rare treasures could be discovered only by accident and at considerable peril. Natural pearls had great mystique and luminous beauty as well as value, which made them favorites of queens – and kings.

One of the most famous pearls of the 17th c. belonged to King Charles I of England (1600-1649). While the origins of this single pearl earring are unknown, Charles is first shown wearing it in a miniature...as the fifteen-year-old Prince of Wales. The pearl soon became what fashion-folk today call a "statement piece", and one that he was seldom without.

Charles's large teardrop-shaped pearl – an especially rare and desired shape –was made into a single dangling earring with a tiny gold crown as the cap, topped with an orb and cross that was most fitting for a future king. Since Queen Elizabeth's reign, fashionable English gentlemen had worn single earrings as a sign of courtly swagger and bravado, qualities that the young prince was woefully lacking: Charles was slight and short (only 5'3"), he limped from childhood rickets, he stammered, and he suffered from acute shyness. Perhaps the sizable jewel gave him the confidence that nature had not.

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Pfizer and the CIA Privately Cited High Population Immunity in May 2020

 From Brownstone Insights:

The Santa Clara study from April 2020 by Jay Bhattacharya found a 2.8% seroprevalence level. It was far higher than the existing estimates. He was denounced and hounded for daring to say what we know now: the infection fatality rate was very low and prevalence was very high. The implication: we would get through this with no great disruption necessary.

The attacks on the study were brutal but he was just doing science at a time when few others were making sense. Even BuzzFeed, a reliable venue for deep-state actors, slammed Jay and insinuated corruption.

Now, in this new release, we find Gottlieb telling the CIA that the virus spread is far higher than most anyone believed at the time. If the R-naught is 3, that means every one person would infect three more, which, according to the math, would mean a herd immunity level of 67 percent. At that rate of spread and resulting immunity, pandemic conditions would turn endemic in a matter of weeks, certainly by the end of summer if not sooner, all else equal. (Read more.)

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Forgotten Catholics of the Civil War South

 From Sensus Fidelium:

Irish immigrants marched in gray uniforms. French Creoles filled the pews of New Orleans. German Catholics worshipped across Texas. Jesuit priests served as chaplains. Religious sisters staffed hospitals. Bishops struggled to shepherd their flocks through one of the darkest periods in American history. Although Catholics remained a minority in most of the South, they were far from insignificant. Their story has too often been overlooked.

One of the best modern studies of Southern Catholic life during the Civil War is historian Gracjan Kraszewski’s Catholic Confederates: Faith and Duty in the Civil War South. Kraszewski argues that many Southern Catholics did not see themselves as outsiders living within the Confederacy. Instead, they identified deeply with their states and communities, viewing their Catholic faith and their Southern loyalties as compatible. He describes this process as the “Confederatization” of Southern Catholics—a perspective that helps explain why Catholic clergy, religious, and laypeople participated so fully in Confederate society. His work challenges the common assumption that the Civil War was solely a Protestant story. (Read more.)

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Madame Elisabeth: A Consoling Angel

From Detroit Catholic:

Called a "consoling angel," the sister of King Louis XVI decided to stay on the side of her family even when death was imminent for doing so in the midst of the horrors of the French Revolution. On the 230th anniversary of her death under the guillotine on May 10, 1794, "Madame Elisabeth" is one step closer to beatification as the historical commission for her sainthood cause wrapped up its work May 2. The diocesan phase of her sainthood cause was reopened in 2017. Since then, Fr. Xavier Snoëk, the postulator, has spared no effort to raise awareness of the noble lady.

She was "an original and very modern young woman … pious and exuberant at the same time," Father Snoëk told OSV News. "She read a lot while being passionate about science and mathematics. She was also very athletic. She loved the outdoors and was an excellent horseback rider." (Read more.)

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The Falling Man

 From Tierney's Real News:

One of the most famous photographs in human history became an unmarked grave, and the man buried inside its frame—the Falling Man—became the Unknown Soldier in a war whose END we have not yet seen.

Never forget that 19 radical Islamic terrorists, funded by the Globalist NWO, the Global Communist Party, the Muslim Brotherhood & the terror state of Iran, did something we never thought possible on US soil. They slaughtered 3,000 innocent Americans and maimed 20,000 more.

9/11 was perpetrated by the same evil cabal behind the GREAT RESET and the RED-GREEN axis - who today are trying to finish the job, enslave us & overthrow us through fear and scare us into submission!

Since September 11, 2001, America has suffered hundreds more Jihadi attacks and Communist false flags and thousands more have died. Their atheist, Communist, Islamist & Satanist partners in America are kneeling before false idols, rioting in our streets, mocking our God, burning our flag and looting, torching & destroying our traditions and our country. That's what evil does - kills, burns, loots & destroys.

The fake news media and Globalist Islamo-Communist pirates who hate America want you to blame yourself, not the terrorists. They want you to replace the memory of 9/11 with January 6th - a phony 'insurrection' and military coup they engineered themselves to hurt America and remove Trump from office. Our enemies want you to forget the truth, and rewrite the past. (Read more.)

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Ancient Cave Art Discovery

 From BBC:

Researchers believe the first known humans to set foot on Ireland thousands of years ago were most likely from Wales, following the "exciting" discovery of ancient cave art.

During the most recent Ice Age, when much of the British Isles were beneath a vast continental glacier, the depleted sea levels opened a "lost land bridge" between modern-day Pembrokeshire and the south-east tip of Ireland, around Rosslare.

According to rock expert Dr George Nash, from Liverpool University, the opportunities presented by this pathway would have been too good for hunter gatherers to ignore.

Now, alongside an international team of experts, Nash has located eight cave sites in south-west Ireland featuring rock art dating back from at least 15,000 years ago, around 5,000 years before the previous oldest example of humans in Ireland.

Nash, who coordinated the Lost Land Bridge Project, said there would have been a forested and grassland plateau around 46 miles (76 km) coast-to-coast.

With summertime temperatures typically -10°C to -20°C, Nash said the pathway would have supported wild horses, mammoth, bison, reindeer and other large herbivores, which fed off the hardy sedges, mosses and lichens growing through the fertile, but near-frozen soil. (Read more.)

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A Guide to the Children of James VI and I and Anne of Denmark

The first Prince of Wales from the House of Stuart was named for his grandfather, Lord Darnley. (Yes, the Lord Darnley.) To quote author Linda Root:

Many historians wrongly refer to Henry Frederick Stuart as the Prince of Wales from the time he arrived in England in 1603.  This is incorrect.  He was not invested with that title until 1610.  His predecessor was Edward Tudor, the boy king Edward VI (1537-1553)  Upon Henry Frederick's  birth in Scotland he was given the customary title of a male Scottish heir apparent, Duke of Rothesay, as well as several lesser grants appropriate to the Scottish heir. However, when he arrived in England he was also conferred the English title Duke of Cornwall.  He had to wait seven more years to become Prince of Wales.  Referring to him as Prince of Wales during his early childhood should be a cause of embarrassment to a any historian or historical novelist who refers to him as Wales prior to 1610 and yet, it is a common mistake.  It is the way he is most often remembered although he only lived two years to enjoy the title. (Read more.)

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U.S Median Income: $90K. Canadian? $60K.

 From Welcome to Absurdistan:

Canadians tug their forelocks and intone: Carney will fixit. No, idiots, he won’t. He broke us in 2008. He’s behind the ten bankrupting years of the stinking Trudeau clown. He broke the Bank of England, he drove Britain into the disaster it is now. He is the Undertaker of Prosperity. He is extracting our wealth and shoveling it to his investors. Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s former chief economist, and Andy Burnham’s chief adviser, now advises both men. On what? How to get out of the catastrophic bet they made on Net Zero, ESG and DEI.

Carney was point man on carbon capture/climate mitigation. He inveigled half of Europe and Asia into his fund. He has to make his investors whole. He needs a climate deal - he needs those taxes, he needs those (failed) green energy pension investments, he needs the $20 billion in climate mitigation funding for the only infrastructure project he has approved.

Like his best friend, Andy Burnham and North Sea Oil, the British and Canadian taxpayers are paying for their mistakes. Andy Burnham’s first order of business was to open Britain’s North Sea oil. The immediate benefit was to the funds who are heavily invested in climate mitigation. Like Canada’s pipeline, the only people who will profit are Carney’s investors. The British and Canadian taxpayers will make them whole. I’d put money on Carney placing carbon costs on the Keystone. A lot of money. (Read more.)

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Inverted Morality

 I always disliked the changes Disney made to the delightful fairy-tale The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. From Classical Ideals:

The story of The Snow Queen (1844) by Hans Christian Andersen begins with an evil mirror, crafted by the devil himself. Its deviousness lies in the fact that it shows things the opposite of what they are. Good looks evil, beauty looks ugly and conversely, evil looks virtuous and ugliness looks good.

At the beginning of the story, while the devils carry this mirror up and up to heaven in order to laugh at God Himself by inverting His reflection, they drop it and it breaks into a trillions of pieces. Some of these pieces land on earth and pierce the eyes of people to invert their vision, and into their hearts to invert their sense of morality. Though this story was written nearly two hundred years ago, well before the internet and its devices captured society so profoundly, its message feels urgently relevant. So many of society’s ideas about morality, heroism and virtue seem not merely wrong, but completely inverted. 

One of the most egregious examples of this, ironically, is in Disney’s retelling of the Snow Queen, Frozen (2013). The villain of the Snow Queen becomes the heroine in Frozen as Elsa, a misunderstood princess with superpowers she “just hasn’t learned to control yet”. Frozen shows selfishness as freedom, permissiveness as love.

(Read more.)

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