Church Windows

"Son of St. Louis, ascend to Heaven!"

Depictions in stained glass of the martyrdoms of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette at the Church of La Boissière-de-Montaigu in the Vendée. We know that in reality the Queen wore white, and had no woman with her. Via Le Boudoir de Marie-Antoinette.

Marie-Antoinette ascends the scaffold

And below is portrayed the Royal Family in the Temple prison in Paris. Of course, the crown and scepter were not there, but they are symbols of the royal duties and responsibilities that Louis never forgot.

Louis XVI, Louis XVII, Marie-Antoinette, Madame Royale, and Madame Elisabeth

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Trump Distributes Supplies to Those Affected by Hurricane Helene

 From Legal Insurrection:

Oh, look. Former President Donald Trump is the first on the scene of a disaster. Not President Joe Biden. Not VP Kamala Harris. Trump is in Valdosta, GA, to meet with officials, distribute relief supplies, and address the media. (Read more.)

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The Orwellian Evolution of Banned Books Week

 From First Things:

The primary battleground is online, but censorship spills over into the retail book trade. Amazon, which controls more than half of the retail book industry in this country, famously decided to ban First Things author Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. It does, however, sell Let Harry Become Sally, Kelly Novak’s response. This is a trend. The bookshop I own sells new and used books on multiple platforms, including Amazon, and Amazon’s book bans have grown more frequent. This year, I have received twenty-four emails from Amazon informing me that they had removed listings of mine deemed “restricted content.” Some of these were absurdist computer ineptitude: I couldn’t sell an “Orchids in Bloom” journal because I had failed to designate it as a “seed or plant.” I can only conjecture that Hobbitus Ille, a Latin translation of The Hobbit, “violated community standards” due to the questionable quality of the Latin. Other bans are overtly political: Shame and Attachment Loss: The Practical Work of Reparative Therapy (a “gay conversion therapy” book); Hitler’s Table Talk; The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan; Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party; Judaism’s Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded; Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington; Islam Dismantled: The Mental Illness of Prophet Muhammad; and the antisemitic screed The Plot Against the Church.

These books are largely unsavory, and none are titles I would go out of my way to stock in my store. We used book dealers often acquire books by chance. But I am willing to bother with them if they are otherwise inaccessible. As the Freedom to Read Statement says: “Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the inoffensive.” In other words, I oppose book bans and am a supporter of banned books. “It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority.” (Read more.)

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