Gilmerton House

From Country Life:

Gilmerton House, Lothian
— the seat of Sir David Kinloch Bt — is a handsome 18th-century house that's been developed by the same family for the past four centuries. And it has an unexpectedly dramatic story to tell, as John Goodall explains; photographs by Paul Highnam for Country Life.

At 10am on Monday June 29, 1795, Sir Archibald Gordon Kinloch appeared in the dock of the High Court in Edinburgh, dressed entirely in black, to stand trial for the murder of his elder brother. The fatal incident had taken place nearly two months previously at the family seat of Gilmerton to the east of the city in the early hours of the morning. It enjoyed sufficient notoriety for the full court proceedings to be immediately published and the depositions made to the court offer a fascinating vignette of the life of the house and its owning family.

The history of Gilmerton House can be traced back to the 17th century, when, in 1655, an Edinburgh merchant and Lord Provost of the city, Francis Kinloch, purchased an estate in East Lothian incorporating the village of Athelstaneford. Joan Blaeu’s Atlas of Scotland (1654) marks ‘Gilmortoun’ nearby, implying the pre-existence of a substantial residence here and, when Francis was created a baronet of Nova Scotia by James II on September 16, 1686, he adopted it as his seat. The house has descended within his family to the present day.

Nothing is known of the form of this building before the mid 18th century, when it was completely recast. The Buildings of Scotland: Lothian (1978 and 2024) attributes this work to the mason John Aitken and to the patronage of David Kinloch, the future 5th Baronet, in the 1750s. It’s not clear what the documentary basis for this assertion is but it’s plausible: David made an advantageous match in 1746 to Harriet Cockburn, a granddaughter of the Earl of Breadlalbane. The following year, his father died and David took control of the estate in place of his absentee elder brother James, 4th Baronet, who spent much of his life on the Continent and died in Switzerland in 1778. At that point, the baronetcy passed to David. (Read more.)

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Commercial Foreclosures Increase 97%

 From Just the News:

Commercial real estate foreclosures in the U.S. increased 97% in January 2024 compared to last year, reaching a high that has not been seen in nearly a decade, according to new data. With 635 commercial foreclosures in January 2024, foreclosures increased 17% from December 2023 and 97% from January 2023, according to a report last week from property data analyst ATTOM. The last time that commercial foreclosures were this high was in May 2015, per agency data.

"This uptick signifies not just a return to pre-pandemic activity levels but also underscores the ongoing adjustments within the commercial real estate sector as it navigates through a landscape transformed by evolving business practices and consumer behaviors," ATTOM CEO Rob Barber said. (Read more.)

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Words, Words, Words

 From Andrew Klavan at New Jerusalem:

My Daily Wire colleague Matt Walsh scored a well-deserved success with his comic documentary What is a Woman? Matt traveled from place to place asking the title question of expert, activist, and passerby alike. The respondents’ embarrassing inability to answer him was a sad and hilarious commentary on how transgender ideology has poisoned our culture. But the sorrow and hilarity of the film did not derive from the fact that there is an answer to the question What is a woman? They arose from the fact that we don’t need an answer. We simply know.

Of course, you can construct material definitions for the word sibling or woman or mother. A sibling is the offspring of your same mother; a mother is a woman who has carried or is carrying a child; a woman is an adult human who, when physically complete and healthy, has the potential to become a mother. But these definitions do not really tell you what these people are any more than a material definition of a Lamborghini tells you what it is like to drive one. Primary words like sibling, mother, woman convey not just a set of biological facts but an entire relational reality that is an essential part of our inner lives.

The post-modern idea that words do not adhere to these meanings is nonsense. The late hipster comedian George Carlin had a famous routine called “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.” In it, he repeated a string of obscenities over and over to make the point that the prohibition against them was irrational. It’s a funny routine, but misguided. Just as I can say the words pine tree and communicate the idea of a pine tree, I can use a four-letter word to convey a materialist dehumanization of the act of love. This is why wise women don’t curse. They pay a far greater price for dehumanizing the body than men do and therefore have a far greater investment in preventing it. Think about the modern prevalence of foul-mouthed females and then think about the podcast Whatever, where foolish women defend their right to degrade themselves sexually. These two phenomena are not unrelated.

Now obviously human reality is not God’s reality, and so our experience is somewhat fluid. Some truths are variable. They are of their culture and of their time. What is becoming modesty in a woman may be different in New York than it is in Abu Dhabi. But there are greater truths that are true always. Modesty in a woman is a virtue because of the essential relational experience of being women and men. (Read more.)

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The Most Perfect Small Estate in Scotland

From House and Garden:

Inchyra House is a beautiful Regency mansion overlooking the Ochil Hills outside Perth. I am sitting in the kitchen with Caroline Inchyra, her husband James, and her brother Tim. It is this enterprising trio whose energy is behind the renovation of the Byre, a magnificent farm building on the Inchyra estate, and the setting for some of the most romantic weddings in Scotland. It is also the location for the Inchyra Arts Club, which is rapidly gathering a reputation as a venue for music, comedy and theatre. The final third of the Inchyra enterprises is made up by Inchyra Designs, a range of uniquely aged linen that Caroline and James began producing before the Byre and Arts Club were born in 2014.

It was in the Fifties that James's grandfather, Frederick Hoyer Millar, bought Inchyra, then described in Country Life as, 'the most perfect small estate in Scotland'. Following a distinguished diplomatic career that included being in charge of the British Sector of Germany after the Second World War, and later in the Foreign Office, he was awarded one of the last hereditary peerages. He took the name of Inchyra for his peerage. After he retired, he set about improving the estate, planting thousands of trees andestablishing parterre gardens, and playing host to politicians including Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden.

The estate was passed over to James in 2001 and, a year later, he, Caroline and their three children left London, where James was working as the finance director for a record company, and moved to Scotland. In 2010, Caroline's brother Tim, his wife Belinda, and their young children moved from Somerset to live on the estate, too. Tim, who had previously worked for the Countryside Alliance, became the estate manager. He is, according to Caroline, 'essential to the running of the place, often going for weeks without leaving. He's also a dab hand with a power tool'.

Today, Inchyra is a family home with a collection of horses, ponies and deerhounds that has grown relentlessly over the years. But it is a far cry from the days when, as Caroline says, 'it was assumed that there would always be staff in the house to open the front door for you, so there was no keyhole on the outside'.

Never one to stand still for long, Caroline had set up an antiques business in 2005, which over the next few years fuelled one of her abiding passions. 'I have always particularly loved old fabrics and I became obsessed with the idea of recreating the look and feel of old linens.' A fortuitous meeting with Angus Nicol, the managing director of Peter Greig & Co in Kirkcaldy, the last major linen mill in Britain, gave her the 'in' she needed. Working with printers in Cheshire and finish-ers in Lancashire, Caroline has developed a range of uniquely aged fabrics that sit perfectly in period properties. It was named Inchyra Designs, and the first range was shown at Decorex in 2011. (Read more.)

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Tucker Carlson Poses an Unexpected COVID Vaccine Question

 From The Vigilant Fox:

For every 800 injections administered, Rancourt and his colleagues concluded in their 180-page paper that one vaccine-related death occurred. This 1-in-800 number becomes even more alarming when you consider how many doses were given. At the time of Rancourt and colleagues’ report, 13.5 billion COVID-19 injections were administered. Divide that number by 800, and you end up with approximately 17 million COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths.

Click here to read the full report.

This contextual information sets the stage for a recent dialogue between Tucker Carlson and Steve Kirsch, a notable critic of the COVID-19 vaccine and the founder of the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund (CETF). Tucker Carlson presented the Silicon Valley entrepreneur with a query about the COVID shots that seemed to catch him off guard. (Read more.)

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Renouncing the “High-Value Man”

 From Crisis:

The more I looked into it, the more I stumbled upon platforms and influencers essentially getting to the same thing: high-value men make loads of money and get girls. He’s the player that everyone loves because he’s so darn charming and has financial status. 

When I was growing up, this man was the bad boy—the guy who could smoothly talk, had the girls fawning over him as he struggled to remember their names, and yet, somehow, charmed everyone.

Now the player we had hoped matured and put aside childish things is lauded for his bad-boy status; we just call it “high-value.” 

Even female speakers have affirmed this disturbing definition. Pearl Davis, who considers herself “traditional,” has stated on multiple occasions that high-value men cheat. According to Pearl, if you want to marry a high-value man, you might expect some infidelity because a.) men “need” sex and b.) it’s readily handed out to these chaps.  (Read more.)

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Broken

 Broken is the autobiography of Shy Keenan, whose courage and persistence eventually led to the arrest of a ring of pedophiles in Merseyside, at whose hands she suffered inhumanly from the age of 4, one of the perpetrators being her own stepfather. I think most people reading the book are shocked not only by the cruelty but that the authorities did nothing to rescue the child victims, even in the face of overwhelming physical evidence and witness testimony. I realize it is difficult for most sane people to comprehend such evil, yet in this case to ignore the evidence was absolutely criminal. It is also horrific that pictures of the victims being abused, particularly of the author herself, are still circulating on the internet, giving enjoyment to another generation of perverts. From an old article in The Guardian:

Sexually abused from the age of four, sold to paedophiles for £15, Shy Keenan has managed to turn the tables, testifying against her abusers and building a new life as mother and children's campaigner. Here, she explains how she was saved by a 'tiny ray of light.'

Shy Keenan's book, Broken, opens with the line, 'Hello, my name is Shy Keenan. I was born and broken in Birkenhead, and was abused from infancy by a network of every kind of pervert from 'thinks it's love' to 'show it hurts', all the way through to 'smile for the camera'. In the next sentence she tells us that she was beaten, sold, swapped, photographed, filmed, left for dead, betrayed, ignored and then 'booted into adulthood' and deserted.

It is Shy the adult I am to see today, more than 40 years later, given that the rape and abuse by her stepfather, Stanley Claridge, began when she was four. He adopted Shy and her two sisters when Shy was six and soon for Shy, who tried whenever possible to take her younger sister's 'turn' with Claridge, almost every basic human need - food, drink, sleep, clothes - came at a sexual price. Outside the house, she was sold to other paedophiles for fags and booze. The most Claridge ever got for hauling her out of bed in the middle of the night and dropping her off in a strange man's house was £15. As she writes: 'I hated what the faces were doing to me, it hurt so much. I couldn't physically stop them. I tried struggling, I tried screaming, I tried to run away, but nothing I knew of worked. Once I'd tried all that, I would just close my eyes and cry, but even that didn't help: it just made some of the faces angrier, open my eyes and look at the paranoid cammer [sic], yelling at me for spoiling their pictures.'

It seems amazing to me that Shy Keenan is not dead. How can the soul survive such manipulation, betrayal and depravity? She did almost die, sometimes from the violence of the abuse, but also from the compulsion to end it all herself. When she was a teenager, for example, she was talked down from a Liverpool tower block clutching a suicide note reading 'Dear Sir/Madmen, F ...k off and leave me alone.' (Years later, in a horrible mirror of this event, another of Claridge's new generation of victims, a young man, committed suicide by throwing himself off a bridge).

But somehow Shy Keenan survived. She is 45 years old now, with a husband and a family, although I have no idea who they are, how old they are, how many of them there are, or what they do. This is because Shy will not speak or write of them at all for fear of losing them to the paedophile community, which she meets head-on with her campaigning child-protection website Phoenix Survivors. She set it up with Sara Payne, the mother of Sarah Payne, murdered in 2000, to lobby for better care and support for what she calls 'her kind'. Only days before, she'd been up in London having a meeting with Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, about the funding of a special retreat for those who might otherwise be failed by the system. (Read more.)

More HERE, HERE, and HERE.

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AGENDA 47 & PROJECT 2025

 From Tierney's Real News:

Many people engage in pointless arguments about politics and candidates because they're not familiar with President Trump's comprehensive platform for America, AGENDA 47, and his detailed plan to clean out the Deep State, called PROJECT 2025.

Please study it, bookmark it and share it often. Use it to educate yourself and debate with your friends, neighbors, co-workers and family about why President Trump and the Republican Party are what our country needs right now to Make America Great Again. Here's what you're voting for!

AGENDA 47

Agenda47 | Donald J. Trump (donaldjtrump.com)

Free Speech Initiative: Dismantle the censorship regime and return free speech.

Total Ban on Taxpayer Dollars Used to Free Illegal Aliens: Ban on using taxpayer dollars to free illegal aliens — and criminal penalties for administrative noncompliance.

End Welfare for Illegal Aliens: Like automatic citizenship for children of illegal aliens, welfare is a gigantic magnet drawing people from all over the world. They want to come to the United States. They want to feast off the sweat and savings of the American taxpayer. It's not fair. It's not just. We're not going to let it happen. I will end it all immediately.

End Veteran Homelessness in America: Cut off the massive spigot of funding for shelter and transport of illegal aliens and redirect those savings to provide shelter and treatment for homeless American Veterans.

Declaration of War on Cartels: Official US policy will be to take down the epidemic of criminal cartels - just like ISIS.

Probe into Intelligence Community: Investigate and reform Intel's role in censorship & manipulation of Big Tech & false flags.

Stop China from owning America: Restore American independence and security with aggressive new restrictions on Chinese ownership of any vital infrastructure in the United States.

Protect Medicare and Social Security: Fix the budget by making massive cuts to bureaucratic spending in Washington rather than punishing senior citizens.

Save American Education, Protect Students from Communists and Restore Parental Rights: Remove Marxism, racism, and other Extremist agendas from classrooms & girls sports, and a new credentialing body for teachers.

Protect Children from Extremist gender ideology: A comprehensive plan to protect minor children from sexual abuse and mutilation.

Call for Immediate Peace: Fast De-escalation of Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Ending Drug Addiction: A detailed plan to end the drug cartels, and the overdose epidemic.

Addressing the rise of Childhood illnesses and Big Pharma Abuses: Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to treat these new chronic problems we'll finally investigate what's causing them.

Using Impoundment to cut waste, Stop Inflation and Crush the Deep State: Squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy. Provides immediate Tax reductions, Stop Inflation, and slash the deficit.

Fair and Reciprocal Trade Act: Other countries will either eliminate tariffs on us or pay us in kind, resulting in the US making a fortune.

Fight Big Pharma and End Global Freeloading: Forces Big Pharma to raise prices on foreign countries and substantially reduce prices for American patients.

Rebuilding Depleted Military: Restores the proud culture and honor of our Armed Forces.

New Missile Defense Shield: State of the art defense system to protect America and allies from modern threats.

Stop Chinese Espionage: Kick Chinese intelligence operations out of the country and force China to give up any U.S. holdings that put national security at risk.

Restore Energy Independence: Eliminates regulations that hamper domestic energy production.

End Crime and Restore Law & Order: Restore over-run cities, return to common sense policing measures, remove radical Communist prosecutors, and more.

Save the Auto Industry: End all of Biden's job & industry killing policies, end subsidies to foreign companies, and Restore Energy Independence.

Death Penalty for Human Traffickers: Ending the scourge of both adult & child trafficking.

Fix Pharmaceutical Manufacturing and End Shortages: Bring production of essential medicines back to the U.S.

Stop Warmongering Globalists: A peace-through-power approach that removes warmongers from senior ranks of the security industrial complex and prevent WW3.

Protect Americans from Radical Left ESG Investments: Ban insidious “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) investments in order to protect Americans' hard-earned savings and investments from woke financial scams.

Support the Creation of Strong, Healthy American families in every way

Investigate Discrimination and Persecution against Christians and fight anti-Christian bias

The Trump administration will always stand proudly with our friend and ally, the State of Israel: If you want to abolish Israel, we don’t want you in this country. (Read more.)

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Dead Man Walking in Lent

 From The Catholic Thing:

One was discovering that the phrase had been used by the English poet and novelist, Thomas Hardy.  His poem, “The Dead Man Walking,” was published in 1909 (though probably written in 1890).  Many commentators claim the poem is autobiographical.  Because of his biting attacks on class, religion, and social mores in his time, Hardy’s reception as a novelist was mixed – certainly not as positive as Hardy thought his work deserved.  If this gloomy poem is from 1890, it reflects a more personal woe.

Hardy’s life was something of a mess, especially in his marriage, which seems to have become something like a living death:

They hail me as one living
but don’t they know
that I have died of late years
untombed although?”

But a second insight into the phrase came in a sermon by my pastor and TCT contributor, Fr. Paul Scalia.  The Gospel of the Sunday just before Lent featured Jesus’s healing a leper.  As Scalia observed, leprosy was a kind of living death, perhaps more accurately a living dying.  A leper’s body, although animate, is already decomposing.  It’s why in Scripture, Scalia noted, physical leprosy is a symbol of the spiritual leprosy of sin.  One may still be walking physically, but is morally dead inside.

This, of course, is no reason to discriminate against real-life lepers: the easy, one-on-one correspondence of the earlier Old Testament between sin and suffering (already under stress in the Book of Job) is not Christian theology (see John 9:2-3).  But it is also not Christian theology to see no relationship between suffering and sin. (Read more.)

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Charles II: The Great Fire of London’s Forgotten Hero

From History Answers:

In the small hours of Sunday 2 September 1666, Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Navy, was roused from his bed with news of a fire burning several streets away. He went to a window of his house close by London’s east wall and looked out over the city. There was, indeed, a conflagration over towards Billingsgate, but these outbreaks were quite common in the narrow streets and timber-framed houses of the capital. Pepys decided that there was nothing to worry about and returned to bed. He needed his sleep. He – and England – had enough problems to worry about without a little fire in overcrowded London city. 

After all, the nation was divided and discontented and the existing government was highly unpopular. More than six years had passed since the return of Charles II from exile in Europe and the restoration of the monarchy after the republican rule of Oliver Cromwell. The myth of England being delivered from gloomy, oppressive Puritan rule by the ‘Merry Monarch’ is well ensconced in popular perception but it is a myth. It did not take long for the mood of the capital and the country to change as the policies of the new government were implemented. 

If a week is a long time in politics, six years may seem like an eternity. Throughout the country people had seen royalist landowners settling scores with neighbours and tenants who had sided with the parliamentarians in the Civil War. The bishops, now installed or re-installed in their dioceses, rigorously enforced the new religious settlement and, as a result, 2,000 clergy who could not accept the ‘high church’ doctrines and ceremonies of the new regime were turfed out of office. Charles, who had learned his politics the hard way, was not totally behind the policies of the Restoration Parliament. He knew the importance of toleration. The French, among whom he spent most of his adult life, had a saying: ‘ne reveillez pas le chien qui dort’ – ‘don’t rouse the sleeping dog’ – and it expressed a philosophy close to Charles’ heart. However, too many of his followers were set on revenge. (Read more.)

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Live From Planet Chaos with Mel K & Rob

 Great show. There is a lot about the legal details of how they are trying to destroy Trump. Can they really confiscate Trump Tower? We forget all the private property Communists confiscated in the last century.

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Maryland Once Again Votes Against Parental Rights

 From The Easton Gazette:

It's becoming a daily occurrence in the Maryland State Legislature. Bills are proposed that support parental rights and they barely make it out of committee. Bills are proposed that demolish parental rights and they are overwhelmingly passed along party lines, proving once again that the Democrat majority in the House and Senate do NOT support the rights of parents to have a say in the lives and education of their children.

The usual suspects are always the ones at the forefront against parents. Vanessa Atterbeary, Democrat from Howard County, seems to have designated herself as "she who will be obeyed." She and her cohorts view the issue of parental rights as more of a power play than anything else. After all, she keeps reminding us that she has children too, and that she understands what parents go through. But, she keeps demanding that parents must defer to the state when it comes to raising and educating their children. She wants the State, and people like her, to have all the power.

She's a hypocrite. Vanessa Atterbeary will never have to fight for the right to direct the upbringing or education of HER children regardless of the law. No school, no teacher would ever go up against a powerful State Delegate. Only the average citizen will have to deal with that and, according to the state, lose every time.

But, like most Marxist Progressives, being a hypocrite is fine with her as long as she gets to be in charge. (Read more.)

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Why You Should Get Married

 I will never regret getting married. From The Free Press:

How about emotional riches?

Well, no one calls their lives happier and more meaningful than men and women who are married, according to the 2022 General Social Survey (GSS). Women ages 18–55 who are married are almost twice as likely to be “very happy” with their lives (37 percent), compared to their single peers (19 percent). Married men ages 18–55 are also more likely to be “very happy” (34 percent) than their peers who are not married (13 percent). Meanwhile, 23 percent of unmarried women ages 18–55 say they are “not too happy” with their lives, compared to 13 percent of married women.

And no, just living together doesn’t cut it. That’s because cohabitation is less committed, more unstable, and generally less happy than marriage.

In fact, marriage is a better predictor of happiness than education, work, money, frequent sex, or regular religious attendance. And despite what Pearl Davis claims, most marriages don’t end in divorce. Only about 40 percent do. 

Many people who spoke to me for my new book, Get Married, echoed these feelings.

Katherine, a 40-year-old woman in Virginia, told me that “being married has given me [financial] stability, a deeper sense of meaning in the world, and confidence.” Even though her life is more “messy,” with two young kids in the mix, than it was when she was single, she said marriage and family life make her “happy in a more profound way.” 

By contrast, a woman I will call Taylor prioritized a career in digital marketing in her twenties over finding the one, and is now in her mid-thirties and regretting that strategy. If she could go back in time, she told me, “I would actually focus on finding a husband a little bit earlier.”

Meanwhile, a man I’ll call Scott, 34, who is unmarried and living in the outer suburbs of Washington, D.C., has an engaging career as a military contractor, a house of his own, and a six-figure salary. But he said these educational and professional accomplishments are not enough to satisfy him.

“You know, I’ve got degrees on my wall, I’ve got accomplishments and certificates, but it doesn’t mean anything in the end,” he told me. Many days, Scott said he feels alone and at sea. “I have to get up every day and look in the mirror and realize I’m alone. I have nobody.” (Read more.)

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Understanding the Rococo Style

 From ArchDaily:

Any historiography of architecture is inherently implicated and incomplete by definition: implicated because it demonstrates the interpretation and curation of examples by the one who writes it, and incomplete because, in this selection, divergent examples often fall outside the "official" timeline. However, the ability to trace forms, their application, and repetition over historical periods separated by centuries is always a good indication of genealogy. This lineage situates examples and broadens repertoire.

A historiography of architecture can bridge past-century elements and movements considered 'outdated' with contemporary forms and applications, establishing a nexus of relationships that offer conceptual and design insights. By categorizing specific styles, notable features are emphasized, often resonating with present-day scenarios as suggested by bibliographical sources, which holds even for seemingly distant connections, as exemplified by the Rococo. (Read more.)

 

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Desecration at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

From First Things:

 And that is where the irony becomes tragedy. As a number of individuals associated with the funeral commented to the press, Jesus did not turn people away and even welcomed prostitutes. That is true. But the key thing to remember is that he did not offer them affirmation. He offered them the possibility of forgiveness and grace and liberation from the self-destruction to which they were in bondage. Affirmation of such self-destruction and of rebellion against God is neither loving nor kind. And it too is a form of desecration—the desecration of man, man denied the opportunity to live freely as God intended. Billy Porter might use the word “grace,” but upon his lips it is an empty cypher that connotes nothing but feckless sentimentalism and impotence in the face of an overwhelming reality—death—to which he has no response. And, most tragically of all, he and his friends seem to think that is something to celebrate. Desecrating the cathedral is not the only thing they should be ashamed of. (Read more.)

From The Catholic Thing:

Father James Martin, SJ, to no one’s great surprise, had been invited to serve as ringmaster for that circus but, conveniently for him, he was on the other coast for the congress. It’s a pity the organizers didn’t think to invite Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, who might have found some suitable passages from his theo-erotic book Mystical Passion to read at the Gentili funeral, the deceased being described enthusiastically by one eulogist as the “mother of all whores.” A touch of cardinalitial erotic accompaniment would have fit it quite nicely.

About the funeral, plenty of comment has been offered elsewhere, with the flamboyant entourage of the deceased now disgruntled to have learned that instead of a funeral Mass, they got a simple Liturgy of the Word before the casket and congregation were hurried out the door. At the time, no one seemed to notice the difference, their liturgical piety apparently having become rather attenuated.

Meanwhile, back at the congress on the left coast, Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego was on hand to accuse those who oppose the papally-approved blessings for same-sex couples – but not same-sex unions! – to be driven by anti-gay “animus.” Be that as it may, what caught my attention was the response when Cardinal McElroy was asked whether synodality will outlive Pope Francis. (Read more.)

 

From American Thinker:

The playbook of the French Revolution has come to New York City.  Once again, we are seeing the attempted destruction of an existing class system, and with it the Catholic Church. Those who recall Kathy Griffin’s photo of a decapitated Donald Trump will recognize the parallels to the beheading of Louis XVI of as the symbolic and real beheading of the French aristocracy.  

For the revolutionists of New York City, the person they see as the king of capitalism must die, and along with him the moral foundations of the rule of law as formerly known and undergirded by the Christian church. The old capitalist aristocracy will be beheaded, first by the confiscation of its wealth and properties, as Attorney General Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron (who resembles an aged Maximilien Robespierre) have decreed.  

The lawfare of the Left will enable the destruction and eventual reconstruction of major societal institutions, including the Catholic Church. Trump has seen the desire of the Left to tear down Christianity’s foundations, protesting their desire to remove the symbol of the cross. Doubtless, he and others opposed to the Left’s most current outrages have observed the recent attack by trans activists on the Catholic cathedral of St. Patrick’s in New York City.

There, a celebratory ritual invented by leaders of New York’s trans cult defiled the liturgy of the Catholic mass. The revolutionaries’ ceremony celebrated the tenets of the transgender faith, the occasion essentially being turned into a beatification ceremony for Cecilia Gentili, a trans activist. (Read more.)

From The Federalist:

As it turns out, the trans activists who recently held a sacrilegious funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City for one of their peers likely committed a hate crime. Writing in a letter to New York Attorney General Letitia James, Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote, a leading Catholic advocacy group, called for an “investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding the recent use of St.Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City by transgender activists to deceptively gain access and advance ideas and beliefs hostile to doctrines of the Catholic Church, while openly mocking these beliefs.” (Read more.)

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Orichalcum

 I don't know how true this is but it sounds interesting. From Archaeology World:

Orichalcum, the lost metal of Atlantis, may have been found in a shipwreck off Sicily. MYSTERIOUS metal ingots linked to the mythical civilisation of Atlantis have been recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Sicily. Archaeologists last month recovered a wealth of ingots of an unusual golden alloy from the wreck sitting in about 3m of water, 300m off the coast of Gela in southern Sicily. Also recovered from the wreck, which sank some 2600 years ago, were two Corinthian war helmets and containers once used to hold precious, scented oils. But it is the rough lumps of metal still shining with red and gold hues after two millennia on the sea floor that has excited the archaeological world. (Read more.)

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A Georgian Country House

From House and Garden:

In a village? On the outskirts? Or total isolation? How near are the schools? How far from London?’ This litany of questions must be familiar to many Londoners looking for a home in the country. It took three years for the owner of this Georgian house in a peaceful part of Hampshire to find her ideal place. Built on the side of a gentle hill, it looks down over meadows to its sister hill opposite, which is crowned with a wood. When it came to finding the ideal interior designer, however, the owner did not need to search far. Henriette von Stockhausen, of VSP Interiors, has helped her with houses in London and Switzerland over the past 18 years – they work well together.

The house, as the owner found it, was in need of some updating, and there had been various additions tacked on over the years. Adam Architecture was first called in to replace these with a handsome extension to match the rest of the house. The ground floor of this huge new space is taken up by a breakfast room and kitchen, the design of which was a collaborative effort involving Henriette, the owner and bespoke specialists Artichoke, who made it. (Read more.)

 

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Fighting the Fifth Column

 Mel K interviews Kash Patel.

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Reverence for Our Eucharistic Lord

 From Controversiam:

The blasé attitude about the Eucharist, for instance, is abundantly clear when you witness a communion line marching up with their casual clothes and their hands stretched out in front of them, or when watching a huge number of people receive Our Lord and walk right out of the church without a second thought. If for some reason you are not convinced this is a major issue, I commend to you this study showing that two thirds of Catholics in the United States do not believe in the True Presence, down from nearly 90% in 1950.

What should be done about this problem? The answer that is often put forth is that we need more catechesis. However, though learning the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist through catechesis is a worthy and necessary goal, it is not enough to learn it in a classroom or religious education program.

I often wonder if an atheist walked into a Catholic Church, would he witness what is happening and think “these people believe something special is going on”? Or is the way we handle the Eucharist more akin to handling a dinner roll at a restaurant? After all, Catechesis by liturgy is more potent and formative than learning in a classroom or lecture hall—a “catechesis by doing”, if you will.

If you truly believe something, it should be reflected in your outward actions. Catholicism is imbued with this principle, where a small symbol or gesture calls to mind a greater truth of the faith. No one disagrees with this principle when it comes to saluting superiors in the military, proposing down on your knee with a diamond ring, or dressing in your best suit for an important meeting. The outward signs clearly matter.

This is why genuflecting before the Eucharist is so important: first, it gives to God the reverence and honor which is due Him. Second, the outward action of bending your knee before what seems to be a piece of bread informs your interior disposition and belief that there is more there than meets the eye. This exemplifies the timeless Catholic principle of lex orandi lex credendi.

For these reasons, and as an effort to combat the irreverence which is the impetus for my letter, I humbly offer three simple suggestions on how to encourage your parishioners (and fellow priests) to approach Our Lord and form their interior disposition through their exterior posture and actions. (Read more.)

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Sèvres Cup and Saucer of Madame de Tourzel, 1826

Portrait of the Duchess of Angoulême when Dauphine of France between 1834-1830

Coat of Arms of Madame la Dauphine

Madame la Duchesse de Tourzel was the last royal governess before the Revolution. From Le Boudoir:

Rare AB-shaped cup and saucer in hard porcelain, with a beautiful blue background, decorated in gold and platinum with foliage friezes including a frieze of oak leaves on the upper border, the center of the saucer decorated with a fleur-de-lis rosette, the cup with polychrome decoration in the center in a medallion of a bust portrait of Marie-Thérèse of France, Duchess of Angoulême (1778-1851), daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, after an original by François Villiers -Huet (1772-1813) circa 1810, framed with burnished gold palmettes at the corners, flanked on each side by her coat of arms as Dauphine of France in a beribboned lily wreath, the handle and interior entirely gilded (good state). Preserved in their original box in the form sheathed in gilded green morocco with roulette friezes (wear), interior in cream silk...This cup and its saucer were purchased for 350 francs and delivered on December 17, 1826 to Madame la Duchesse de Tourzel, born Louise Élisabeth de Croÿ d'Havré (1749-1832), last governess of the children of France and therefore of the Duchess of Angoulême (Archives of Sèvres, Vz4, 239 v°). (Read more.)

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Neoliberalism Bites The Dust in Afghanistan

 This 2021 article explains how the myth of Joe Biden's competence was destroyed in Kabul. From Emerald Robinson:

Each day, the Biden Administration seemed to ask itself: what’s the dumbest thing we can possibly do over there? And then they did it. We abandoned the airport first, and then called an evacuation! We left behind $84 billion worth of military-grade weapons for the Taliban! We flew home 100,000 bacha bazi enthusiasts but abandoned our own citizens there! This week’s debacle was so absurd that it was almost diabolical: our very own State Department was busy blocking Americans from evacuating that hell-hole on private flights they had chartered themselves.

How could anyone keep up with all the defeats and debacles and dark jokes that were on us? It was only last week that we discovered that half the population of Afghanistan was pretending to be enlisted in the Afghan Army to be on the CIA payroll. (That particular joke lasted twenty years.) Our military leaders had been reassuring the Biden Administration that Afghanistan’s security forces would hold off the Taliban for awhile if we finally left the country and then —poof! — they all quit over the weekend once the Taliban called.

A day or two later, they all showed up together at the Kabul airport pretending to be interpreters in order to get airlifted to America. (Read more.)

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Seeking Truth through Wonder

 From Peach Smith:

Jacques Maritain was a Catholic philosopher and one of the principal modern Thomists. In opposition to contemporary educational philosophers such as John Dewey, Maritain argued that it is impossible to properly educate a human being without religion. In Maritain’s penetrating words, “Education ought to teach us how to be in love always and what to be in love with” (1943, 23). Dewey, among many other Pragmatists, viewed Maritain’s proposal as a return to the proverbial Dark Ages where the realms of the spiritual and theology were supposedly of greater importance than scientific truths. Maritain boldly argued against the mainstream that truth is not relative, and does not change as a consequence of studies or polls. He viewed that “intellectual understanding, moral development, aesthetic cultivation, and religious formation” could only happen through the” inculcation of perennial truths and values” (1959, 166). The Pragmatists responded that human intelligence and understanding are social constructs, while Maritain maintained that there is an absolute truth that human beings have an inherent desire to seek, and as such deserve teachers who will ultimately guide them to that Truth. Maritain dismissed the Pragmatist’s view as one which reduced human existence to the empirically observable and verifiable. Children do not create Truth, they discover it, and teachers should develop their lessons in such as way as to help guide students in that discovery of Truth. (Read more.)

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Devizes Castle

 From Exploring GB:

It was previously in royal ownership for 500 years and it was owned by generations of royals. Famously, it was owned by Henry VIII, who gifted it to his wife Catherine of Aragon and then reclaimed it after their divorce. It was also used as a prison by Henry II and Henry III. The property recently went on the market with Savills, a national estate agent, for £3.25 million. Devizes Castle took its name from the Medieval Latin castrum ad divisas, meaning ‘the castle at the boundaries’, because it stood at the central point of three Manors. Many records state that the first castle was built on the site by Bishop Osmund of Salisbury in approximately 1080. It was burnt down and re-built in stone during the reign of King Henry I. From this point onwards, the Castle became a popular residence for the Monarchy and described as ‘the most gorgeous in Christendom’. (Read more.)

 

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There Will be a Reckoning

 

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A Parent's Nightmare

 From Jan Greenhawk at The Easton Gazette:

When you meet Lisa G. your first impression is that of a strong, determined woman who will fight for the things she believes in. As you get to know her, you realize that her dogged determination is much more than just talk. She never gives up.

It's truly a gift that she doesn't give up, because Lisa has had to face one of the most difficult things a parent would ever have to face; the mental problems of a child and a school system that does do nothing to help. Worse than that, they seem to be encouraging much of it.

It's enough to make a lesser person throw up her hands and go curl up in a corner. Not Lisa.

I was going to write Lisa's story, but then I found a video clip of her speaking on behalf of Delegate Lauren Arikan's bill, HB 722-Gender and Sex Transition Procedures. (Read more.)

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Lost Women Novelists

Some great ones mentioned here. I hope the authors are aware of all the living Catholic women novelists who currently belong to the Catholic Writers Guild and are in danger of becoming lost as well. From First Things:

Houselander viewed artistic production as a divine activity. No one, she said, “should ever make anything except in the spirit in which a woman bears a child, in the spirit in which Christ was formed in Mary’s womb, in the love with which God created the world.” Even so, among the lost women writers, Houselander was perhaps the most at home in the secular world in which she moved. English Catholics of her generation were often critical of modernity, but to her, “the modernist writers are not the contemptible egoists which they are too often supposed to be.” The Dry Wood is perhaps the most pious among the works of the Catholic literary revival, but in executing it Houselander drew upon the technical innovations developed by modernist literary peers and their experiments with time, place, and multivocalism.

Each chapter of The Dry Wood follows a different character in a London docklands parish. This narrative strategy was being deployed in the first decades of the twentieth century by modernist writers—Woolf, Joyce, Sommerfield—and was a reaction against the Protestant bourgeois novel of the nineteenth century, which focused on the individual moral arcs of characters linked by a network of relationships and overseen by an omniscient narrative voice. Twentieth-century literary modernism was critical of the bourgeois novel’s trust in individual consciousness; it was also critical of the omniscient voice and its providential orchestration of human relationships into a narratively harmonious order. In rejecting these conventions, modernist (often atheist) writers questioned literature’s investment in a totalizing moral, social, or religious order.

In The Dry Wood, Houselander was likewise reacting against the providentialism of the nineteenth-century Protestant novel, but unlike her atheist peers she did so by amplifying the mysterious operations of the divine presence. All her characters struggle on their own, separated from each other by strife and by the novel’s chapter arrangement, but their lives are ultimately drawn together into the final Mass, in an expertly constructed scene in which we see the great communal prayer of the Church depicted in all its earthly and heavenly dimensions. The novel’s structure reveals that no life is merely parallel. Even if the characters can’t see it, even if they continue to feel isolated, they are in fact part of one unified vision held in the eye of the omniscient maker.

The novels of Waugh and Greene often focus on the solitary figure of a priest or layman in spiritual combat with the world around him. By contrast, the lost novels of Catholic women are usually situated in families and parishes and in the institutional communities in which the writers themselves first encountered the faith: schools, convents, or convent schools. Rumer Godden wrote three convent novels, unsentimental depictions of communal religious life that nonetheless describe that life as a source of human fulfillment and divine grace for the women who choose it. Kate O’Brien’s Land of Spices (1941), set in an Irish convent school, follows the spiritual development of the prioress and the youngest student: a pair of women at either end of life who are bound to each other as mutual agents of grace. (Read more.)

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Knole

 From House and Garden:

The Sackville family has lived at Knole, one of Britain’s great treasure houses, for more than four hundred years. Throughout its history, Knole has lured generations of heirs with the promise of an ancestral place, an aristocratic life, a sense of unearned esteem and belonging. Many of these Sackvilles have revelled in the opportunity. But others, once seduced, have found such a huge inheritance hard to manage. The place has ground them down, becoming a curse, a burden, rather than a privilege or a glory. I am the thirteenth generation to live here, and—after this personal tour of the “calendar house” with its legendary 365 rooms, fifty-two staircases, and seven courtyards, which sprawl over four acres—I invite you to form your own opinion of our challenge.

Knole has always excited a range of different reactions, and not just among members of the Sackville family. It’s a love-it-or-loathe-it sort of place. King Henry VIII liked it so much that he forced Thomas Cranmer, his Archbishop of Canterbury, to hand it to him in 1538. And yet, in the following century, the diarist John Evelyn was so depressed by the greyness of this “greate old fashion’d house” that he scuttled out into the sunshine. Knole was built and then furnished to impress, and it has been a show house ever since Thomas Sackville acquired it in 1604 (the year after James I, the first Stuart monarch, ascended to the throne). It is precisely this that can make it so impenetrable, such a difficult place to understand. Some people are put off by its sheer size. (Read more.)

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Surviving Divorce: A Guide for Catholics

 Some advice from two devout Catholic ladies.

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Election 2024: 10 Points That MUST Be Addressed

 From The Gateway Pundit:

Joe Biden doesn’t even campaign! He has no visible support. Democrats are running this senile old man anyway. That should be the first red flag that they are secure in their voter fraud operation that brought them success in 2020. Why would they change anything when it worked so well in stealing the election from Donald Trump four days after the people voted?

Here are a few questions that Lara and the RNC need to answer if they REALLY are wanting to secure the election. 

1. What are Republicans doing about the Democrat Party’s ballot registration fraud operations in 2024?

In August 2023, The Gateway Pundit exclusively reported on police reports that emerged from the City of Muskegon Michigan and from the Michigan State Police that documented 8,000-12,000 suspicious voter registration applications turned into City of Muskegon Clerk Ann Meisch by GBI Strategies. Meisch called police after noticing that thousands of the fake ballot registrations were fraudulent.

GBI Strategies employee ‘Brianna Hawkins’ was later questioned by an official with the Michigan Attorney General’s office and the Michigan police.

Hawkins told the Michigan officials that it was impossible for big cities and major metro areas to catch the fake voter registrations.

These previous reports by The Gateway Pundit, prove that there was widespread, systemic, ongoing voter registration fraud in Michigan in the 2020 election, and that major Democrat officials knew this.  Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel buried the reporting.

The Gateway Pundit knows that Democrat groups are already being paid and organizing ballot registration groups like GBI Strategies for their services in 2024.  We know this is taking place.

What is the RNC plan to stop this massive voter fraud operation from taking place in 2024?

2.   Bloated Voter Rolls lead to massive voter fraud.

Why do Democrat officials ALWAYS push back on cleaning up the voter rolls?

In 2020, Wisconsin had  7.1 million in their voter database but only 3.68 million were eligible to vote. Even dead voters are not separated out. County clerks showed only 2 clicks can make voters active again. Other investigations show data missing in required fields, thousands of identical 1918 birth dates, illegible text entries, missing last names or addresses, up to 25 Voter ID’s for one registration, and other inexcusable issues. Charging $13,500 for voter data helped hide these atrocities. (Read more.)

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Amazonian Agriculturalists Created ‘Terra Preta’ Thousands of Years Ago

 From  Ancient Origins:

A fascinating body of research has revealed how intimately our ancestors were connected to the earth – specifically, ancient Amazonians, who intentionally created a fertile dark earth or ‘terra preta’. The study has found that despite the highly acidic and low nutritional content of the Amazonian soil for agricultural purposes, ancient humans intentionally modified the environment around former human settlements to allow their expansion. This study published in Sciences Advances, was led by researchers at MIT, the University of Florida, and institutions in Brazil. In the past, while conducting research in a region of the Amazon inhabited by the Kuikuro people, a team of researchers led by anthropologist Michael Heckenberger from the University of Florida, alongside Morgan Schmidt, who was a graduate student at the time, discovered that these communities utilize sophisticated agricultural methods. One such technique involves the establishment of centralized middens—accumulations of waste that break down over time, enriching the soil, which in turn supports crop cultivation. The researchers essentially helped address a longstanding debate about intentionality – was this dark earth, known as ‘terra preta’, an inadvertent byproduct of certain practices, or very intentional? This study helped confirm that these practices were very much intentional. (Read more.)

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A 17th-Century French Manor in Normandy

 

  From Elle Decor:

Couturier calls it destiny that the perfect summer place for him—a 17th-century manor in Normandy, France, modest by the usual standards with just three bedrooms and a few surrounding acres—was in the same area as a former family home he knew as a child. “I only discovered after buying it that a house of my grandmother’s was a few miles away,” he says. It was an easy thing to miss—Couturier’s grandmother had inherited the building from her father, but with only one daughter and several other residences between her and her husband, it made little sense to keep it. Couturier was five when he last visited.

 The newly acquired abode is the crowning achievement of a decades-long career. Originally owned by a family of Huguenots before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes forced them to relocate, it is undeniably grand and yet still surprisingly livable. “It was the first house I came across when I began my search,” Couturier says. “I looked at the picture and said, ‘Oh wow, this is manageable.’” The high-born family who built it in the 1640s followed the orderly style expected of aristocratic architecture of the time. Lofty public rooms comprise most of the main floor, with bedrooms above at a smaller scale. (Read more.)

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