Sub Tuum Praesidium

 We fly to thy protection, O Holy Mother of God! Despise not our petitions in our necessities but deliver us always from all dangers, O ever glorious and blessed Virgin!

From Catholic Pop:

Written originally in Greek, it was used in the 3rd century Coptic Orthodox Christmas liturgy. Amazingly, it is still used today in the Coptic liturgy, as well as the Byzantine, Ambrosian, and Roman liturgies. Regarding the dating, note that the A.D. 250 origin date is simply the earliest point to which we can date this prayer. That doesn’t mean this prayer didn’t exist earlier, and it doesn’t mean there weren’t other Marian devotions in use. But what this shows is that explicit Marian devotion has existed at least since A.D. 250. Also note that the A.D. 250 origin date puts the practice of Marian devotion two decades before Emperor Constantine (b. 272, made emperor in 306) was even born, let alone made emperor. That should put to rest the tired trope that Marian devotion was the result of Constantine bringing pagan ideas and practices into the Church. (Read more.)

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Trump's Parlous Gambit

 From James Howard Kunstler:

While Jake Tapper leads the Mea Culpa Chorus singing Kumbaya in a minor key, absolutely nobody is fooled that the grotesque psychotic deformities of US politics can be reduced to a few White House factotums lying to the news media about “Joe Biden’s” cognitive abilities. For one thing, the news media was not lied to. The news media (including Jake) lied to the nation, consistently, flagrantly, mendaciously, for years, and most of all they lied about the gigantic racketeering operation that government had become in the age of Anything Goes and Nothing Matters.

Cases-in-point, as reported by Alex Krainer, the $93-billion barfed out of the Department of Energy between the November election and January 20 to scores of hastily-formed NGO gangs with no business model or record of competency. . . and the staggering $375 billion spread around similarly out of the EPA from a slush fund run by John Podesta (as Senior Adviser to the President for International Climate Policy and Clean Energy Innovation).

That was pure grift, you understand, and it was how the Democratic Party kept its activist troops of the so-called “marginalized” paid and happy. As it happened, the “marginalized” who dwell on the edge of society — and also just beyond the set of agreements that define reality — are out-numbered by the rest of us, who voted against the tyranny of the margin and their hallucinations. And so now, the country goes through a convulsion attempting to readjust to reality — for instance, the unhappy fact that all that money was unreal, mere bookkeeping entries by dishonest accountants. (Read more.)

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Bring on the Board Games

 From DailyJSTOR:

In their study of gaming and education in the long nineteenth century, David Wallace Adams and Victor Edmonds called out a few contributing factors, with increasing secularism near the top of the list. Colonial America and its antecedents may have been driven by religious ideas of propriety and success, but as the 1800s marched on, core American Protestantism had to stand up to individualism and a cultural hunger for self-made success. Quoting Richard M. Huber, who wrote on the American idea of success, they note that it wasn’t “not simply being rich or famous. It means attaining riches or achieving fame.” In this way morality came to be attached to success, foreshadowing the prosperity gospel and muscular Christianity. “A virtuous life, then,” write Adams and Edmonds, “was the path to a successful life.”

For a culture occupied with ideas of success and virtue, and whether they were both necessary in tandem, education operated as a means of cultural transmission, writes Jennifer Lynn Peterson. With childhood increasingly recognized as a distinct stage of life and education in the later nineteenth century, school texts and children’s books were one way to suggest to children a certain sort of morality and social grounding. (Read more.)

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The Trial of St. Joan

Here is link to the first interrogation of St. Joan's trial, with the other sessions following. She was tormented and betrayed by those who should have been her spiritual fathers. She answered firmly and boldly, even as had her beloved St. Catherine of Alexandria before her. As another excellent article says:

The story of her prison life is a record of shame to her goalers. Chained, mocked at, threatened, and insulted, her serenity never failed. She was in God's hand, and she bowed to His will.

Months of suffering and anxiety passed over her before her captors made up their minds as to the course they would take to bring about her death under the semblance of legal execution. If she could be convicted by an ecclesiastical court of crimes against the faith, her condemnation would redound to the fair fame of England and of the pious House of Lancaster, while covering the French and their sovereign with confusion as the allies and associates of a minister of hell. (3).... ( The House of Lancaster was fervently orthodox. Persecution of heretics begins with Henry IV. The "Cardinal of England" (Beaufort Bishop of Winchester) was the malicious attacker of heretics at home and abroad. He spoke against the Hussites at the Council of Basle, and he planned Crusades against both heretics and "Saracens.")

Pliant churchmen were at hand to give countenance and help in this undertaking bishops full of zeal and loyalty for our sovereign lord Henry VI, by the grace of God King of France and England.

The worst of these servile churchmen was the wretched Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon. Many other prelates were Caesar's friends, but he sits exalted in solitary infamy. He came to the Burgundian camp and claimed his victim in the name of Bedford, Regent of France for the English King. Had Jeanne been detained by the Burgundians, it is impossible to believe that Charles VII would not have procured her release. Had she been held as a prisoner of war by the English, it is very likely that the shame of holding a woman captive in their hands would have made it possible to arrange for her ransom. But once charged with heresy and taken out of the hands of the Burgundians such hopes and chances were closed. Still, as an ecclesiastical prisoner she would have been entitled to counsel and guidance by religious persons, the Church offering admonition before preferring grave charges of rebellion against any of her children. But this would render her punishment uncertain. Grave doctors of the law and eminent churchmen had at Poitiers, after long inquiry, declared her worthy of trust and they might do so again.

Therefore it was determined that she should be held in a lay prison though charged with an ecclesiastical offense. Cut off in this way from all spiritual help and instruction, she was to be brought, when the process was ripe, before a well-chosen court bent on her destruction, and ready to entangle her in questions which might entrap her into erroneous or heretical statements.

And once more we are confronted, if we try to rationalize her life and put away all belief in inspiration, with the amazing problem as to where and how this untutored girl drew her stores of logic, law, and theology.

Hallowed Ground has some rare images of St. Joan and her beatification.


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Stay the Course

 From Tierney's Real News:

An obscure federal court, that virtually nobody has ever heard of, ruled that President Trump does not have the authority to impose tariffs. In fact, the judges said an injunction wasn't enough — the United States Court of International Trade (USCIT) issued a summary judgment invalidating and blocking almost all of Trump's tariffs to date. Tariffs were already generating significant revenue for the US — almost $23 BILLION so far this month.

Senator John Kennedy responded: “I know that President Trump has the authority to tariff because Congress gave it to him.”

President Trump invoked several laws to justify his authority over trade policies, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), Section 232, Section 301, and Section 122 Balance of Payments Authority.

The IEEPA of 1977, which had never been used to impose tariffs before, was invoked to declare a national emergency and impose tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, citing national security concerns.

Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 allows the president to impose tariffs if imports threaten national security.

Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 grants the president authority to take action against foreign countries that violate U.S. trade laws.

Section 122 Balance of Payments Authority provides the president with the power to impose tariffs to address balance of payments issues. Section 122 allows the president to impose up to 15 percent tariffs for 150 days.

However, the obscure federal court ruled on May 28, 2025 that President Trump does not have the authority within the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to initiate emergency trade tariffs. They gave him 10 days to end those tariffs and return the over $23 BILLION we’ve collected so far! He appealed. Tariffs imposed under a different legal authority called Section 232 — including on imports of autos, steel and aluminum — are unaffected by the ruling. (Read more.)

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When Singing Was a Crime

 From JSTOR Daily

In 1542, Protestant reformers including John Calvin himself took power in the city of Geneva, turning it into a center of the Reformation. As musicologist Melinda Latour writes, one priority for the government over the decade that followed was stamping out illicit singing.

Latour writes that Calvin deeply respected the power of music, describing singing as a kind of public prayer capable of moving people’s hearts to zealously praise God. But that same power could feed evil thoughts and deeds.

“Just as wine is cast into a vessel through the funnel, so also venom and corruption are dropped down into the depths of the heart through melody,” Calvin wrote.

Yet singing was a common pastime for all sorts of people in Geneva, and many popular songs were deemed “indecent,” “dissolute,” or “outrageous.” And so, between 1542 and 1552, the city’s hybrid civic-religious court, the Consistory, judged more than one hundred cases involving singing. These included a gentleman singing with his manservant on Mardi Gras, seven apprentices of a ribbon maker singing together, and a woman charged for singing while working in her house and yard, among many others. While in most cases the specific song was not recorded, when it was, it often had lyrics with sexual contents or innuendo. Songs were also frequently flagged as dance music—while authorities viewed singing as having a proper place in praising God, dancing was totally forbidden as a gateway to fornication. (Read more.)

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The Political Power of Marie-Antoinette's Hair

The Queen's hair

From Jstor Daily:

With the help of a French hairdresser, Marie Antoinette embarked on what initially appeared to be a happily fated alliance between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. But trouble was brewing, and that trouble too manifested itself in the new queen consort’s hair. Marie had a taste for the extravagant, from 72-layered powdered creations to allegorical hairstyles adorned with charms and figurines that represented political themes. One hairstyle even featured a model ship designed to celebrate a French naval victory.

The over-the-top styles were victories for Marie and her hairdresser, Léonard, too—Léonard because they elevated him to superstardom, Marie because they allowed her to exert some control over her life. But not everyone was pleased. The queen was soon being pilloried for her extravagance even as she was copied by women throughout France. “The conflict between fashion and the queen’s dignity quickly assumed social and financial ramifications,” writes Hosford.

Marie Antoinette’s hair did not keep its epic proportions for long—her hairdresser famously cut her hair short after she gave birth for the first time, to give the by-then damaged locks a “clean start” —but its significance still loomed large. As the queen abandoned fancy clothing for a less extravagant style, she was criticized for supposedly triggering the fall of French industries in fabric, ribbons and other accessories. When the queen appeared in a portrait with a simple hairstyle, writes Hosford, it “was readily perceived as a blatant act of disrespect for French propriety concerning the external manifestation of royal dignity, a subversive rejection of queenly representation, and a national degradation.” (Read more.)

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Truth About OBBB

 From Tierney's Real News:

I’ve also seen claims the bill increases the deficit. This lie is based on a CBO accounting gimmick. Income tax rates from the 2017 tax cut are set to expire in September. They were always planned to be permanent. CBO says maintaining *current* rates adds to the deficit, but by definition leaving these income tax rates unchanged cannot add one penny to the deficit. The bill’s spending cuts REDUCE the deficit against the current law baseline, which is the only correct baseline to use.

Another fantastically false claim is that the bill spends trillions of dollars. This is just completely invented out of whole cloth. This is not a ten year budget bill—it doesn’t “fund” almost any operations of government, which are funded in the annual budget bills (which this is not).

In other words, if this bill passed, but the annual budget bill did not, there would be no government funding. Under the math that critics are using, if we passed a one paragraph reconciliation bill that cut simply 50 billion in food stamp spending, they would say the bill “added” trillions in spending and debt because they are counting ALL the projected federal spending that exists entirely outside the scope of this legislation, which is of course preposterous. (Read more.)

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Our Elites Have Failed Us

 From The National Post:

The conservative tradition has always accepted hierarchy as a fact of life — and often a necessary good. There will always be leaders and followers, the cultivated and the crude, the strong and the weak. The question is not whether hierarchies exist, but whether they are just and capable.

Since the French Revolution, the West has been haunted by the spectre of egalitarianism elevated to a fanatic creed. The guillotine didn’t merely decapitate a king — it aimed to destroy the very concept of natural order. In its place came Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s naive worship of the “general will,” a cult of popular sovereignty that mistook numbers for wisdom and emotion for truth.

But crowds do not think. They react. They surge, scream and stampede. As the crowd grows, the mind shrinks. That is the enduring lesson of the revolution: when the mob is sovereign, civilization burns.

The conservative does not idolize the mob. He fears it. He respects the people but insists they deserve more than flattery. They deserve leadership. Real leadership — wise, learned, prudent and self-restrained. The kind that builds cathedrals rather than chasing hashtags. The kind that governs with duty rather than ruling for applause. (Read more.)

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Deciphering the Queen's Letters

Russian portrait miniature of Marie-Antoinette

Fabien Pottier decrypts a letter of Marie-Antoinette

 A few scribbled passages in eight of Marie-Antoinette's letters to Count Axel von Fersen have been recently decrypted with the help of x-rays. Let us look at a typical news article on the topic and then examine it from a historical point of view. From Malay Mail:

Love letters between the ill-fated French queen Marie-Antoinette and her lover, which contain key passages rendered illegible by censor marks, have been deciphered using new techniques, the French National Archives said yesterday. The revealed passages are further confirmation of the steamy relationship between Marie-Antoinette and Count de Fersen, who were writing to each other two years after the 1789 French revolution. At the time, the queen and King Louis XVI were living under surveillance in the Parisian Tuileries palace and had just failed to escape their house arrest. Much of the lovers' correspondence had already been brought to light, but redacted lines remained illegible. Until now.

“For the first time we can read Fersen's writing using unambiguous sentences on his feelings for the queen, which had been carefully hidden,” said the REX project's leaders in a statement. “Marie-Antoinette and Fersen express themselves using the terminology of love, even if the majority of the content of the letters is political,” the statement added.

The 95-day project used a two-year-old scanning technique — the X-ray fluorescence system (XRS) — to analyse the composition of the inks used.

“The principal conclusion of the REX project is less about sensational revelations on the relationship between Marie-Antoinette and Fersen, and more about the expression of feelings of hope, worry, confidence and terror, in a particular context of forced separation and imprisonment,” said the statement. Similarities between the ink used by the count and the ink of redaction suggest Fersen may have censored his own letters. Out of the 15 redacted letters written by Marie-Antoinette and Fersen, only the content of 8 was brought to light. For the others, the ink used to write and to censor was the same, rendering the task of revealing the redacted content impossible. (Read more.) [Bold text is mine.]

The first paragraph is full of falsehoods. Fersen has not been proven to have been Marie-Antoinette's "lover" in the full sense of the word, and the letters are not "steamy" but overwhelmingly political. It is indeed irresponsible and misleading to refer to them as "lovers." The Swedish nobleman was in the service of his sovereign King Gustavus III and Count Fersen’s presence at the French court needs to be seen in the light of that capacity. The Swedish King was a devoted friend of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette and Gustavus, even more than the Queen’s Austrian relatives, worked to aid the King and Queen of France in their time of trouble. Fersen was the go-between in the various top secret plans to help Louis XVI regain control of his kingdom and escape from the clutches of his political enemies. In fact, by late 1791, when the letters in question were written, Fersen had already helped the Royal Family escape, only to have them disastrously recaptured at Varennes in June of the same year. Fersen saw his failure as not only endangering the lives of his dear friends, but also the destruction of what would have been the glory of his career, to have been the one responsible for the rescue of the French royal family.

Although Marie-Antoinette might have been in love with Count Axel von Fersen at some point, there is no evidence of an extramarital affair, and to over-speculate on the Queen's personal feelings is to violate the sanctuary of the human heart. Whatever her sentiments, they did not interfere with her duties as wife, mother, and queen. Adultery for a queen of France was high treason and if any of her many enemies at court discovered such a situation, had it existed, Louis XVI would have been forced to take her children away from her and banish her to a convent. Even the most basic knowledge of her temperament suggests that she was devoted to her children and would never have risked being separated from them. What people need to understand is that the Queen stood in the way of those who wanted to destroy the Altar and the Throne in France, so every aspect of her life, every relationship, her friendships, her marriage, her motherhood, were smeared by those who wished to destroy her reputation and her influence. Marie-Antoinette stood in the way of the triumph of the Revolution and so she had to be obliterated. Fersen was scrupulous in excising anything in his correspondence with her that might be in the least compromising. But many of the redacted lines of the Queen's letters, those which are in her own hand, have been found to be of the same ink as the originals and therefore scribbled out by herself, as people often had to do when writing by hand and without whiteout.

 In her determination to save the lives of her family, restore the royal authority, and preserve the throne for her son, Marie-Antoinette wrote hundreds of letters, not only to Count Fersen, but to her relatives in Austria and Italy, to Comte Mercy the Austrian ambassador, to the Vatican, to fellow monarchs such as the Queens of Spain and Portugal, and to moderate revolutionaries such as Barnave. One must remember that from any careful study of her correspondence it appears that the Queen was balancing precipitously between opposing parties as she attempted to manipulate Fersen, Barnave, and Mercy into doing what she needed them to do. Apparently there are huge portions of the Queen's correspondence missing and so people tend to fill in the gaps with romance. They forget that the first person on her mind was not Axel von Fersen but the Dauphin Louis-Charles and saving the throne for him. 

Many of the letters were written in cipher, that is, in a secret code, which could be broken only by using certain key words. The complexity of the ciphers should destroy forever the myth that Marie-Antoinette was not intelligent; indeed, she must have been clever in order to adroitly master so many puzzles. Writing in code could be challenging. As Marie Antoinette wrote to the Comte de Provence: "At length I have succeeded in deciphering your letter, my dear Brother, but it was not without difficulty. There were so many mistakes [in the use of the cipher]. Still, it is not surprising, seeing that you are a beginner and that your letter was a long one...." (O. G. Heidenstam, ed. The Letters of Marie Antoinette, Fersen and Barnave, 1926, p.51, reprint at Google) Sometimes white or invisible ink was also used, about which the Queen complained, saying: "Little accustomed to writing in this manner, my writing will be indecipherable." (Marie-Antoinette to Mercy, 14 May 1791, Feuillet de Conches¹, Vol.2, p.54)

The Queen burned most of the letters she received but many of those she sent to others have been preserved. The relatives of Axel von Fersen  saved some original manuscripts of the letters from the Queen to Fersen, although not always in her hand-writing but in Fersen's after he had decoded it. Below is a letter of October 19, 1791 in the Queen's hand with parts scribbled out by Fersen. Newly deciphered, in English it roughly says: "It is my biggest occupation here and several endeavors have been made only to ensure the freedom to see us but for that it is also necessary to spare the others my God I wish I was right now." It is impossible to discern exactly what she means without the context of the entire letter, which I hope will be available when the researchers publish their book. One can only guess that it has to do with the conditions at the Tuileries where the Royal Family, and especially the Queen, were constantly watched by guards.

The deciphered text: «cest ma plus grand occupation icy et plusieures de mes demarches nont ete faite que pour nous assurer la liberte de nous voir mais pour cela il faut aussi menager les autres mon dieu que je voudrois etre a ce moment»

 The words are those of a woman in danger writing to the only person capable of rescuing her and her family, as he had done before but failed. As Isabelle Aristide-Hastir, archivist-paleographer, general curator of heritage at the National Archives, has commented:

You see, we are not at all in erotic vocabulary. Not at all. It is not simply because they are in different social conditions, she is the queen and he is a Swedish count, because we can see from their letters, even if there is a lot of respect one towards the other, that they are extremely united in thoughts, that is to say that they exchange in a very fluid way and even if they use the vocabulary of the time, of the 18th century, which is all quite charming, there is no stiffness in their correspondence. (Translated by Tea at Trianon.)

 It must be remembered that Marie-Antoinette had a passionate and exaggerated manner of writing to all of her friends and family. To her friend Madame de Polignac her words were as loving as any to Fersen, calling her "mon cher coeur" that is "my dear heart" and saying such things as "je vous embrasse très fort" which means "I kiss you hard." Such was her manner of expression with those of whom she was fond. It must also be kept in mind that Marie-Antoinette absolutely needed the help for the royal cause that only Fersen could give in the outside world; it should not be surprising if her words to him were especially tender. As a friend wrote to me: "It is the vocabulary of devotion, not of eroticism....as if they were heroes of chivalry...To me, it is the proof they never were actual lovers." I agree.

It should perhaps be pointed out that around the same time as Fersen was writing to the Queen he was having a passionate affair with an Italian lady named Eleonore Sullivan. Madame Sullivan was married to an Irishman but as of 1790 was the mistress of a Scotsman named Quintin Crawford. She was kept by Monsieur Crawford in an elegant house in Paris, where she had a hideaway for Fersen in the attic. It should also be remembered that after the deaths of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, Fersen wrote to their orphaned daughter Marie-Thérèse Charlotte of France asking for recompense of the money spent on the aborted escape attempt in June 1791. Chivalry obviously had its limits as far as Fersen was concerned.
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A Nation Reclaims Its Identity

 From The Vigilant Fox:

On Monday, President Donald Trump led the 157th National Memorial Day Observance at Arlington National Cemetery, joined by Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The ceremony began with a powerful moment of silence as the three leaders laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, honoring those who gave their lives for freedom.

With the national anthem and TAPS echoing across the cemetery, they stood saluting in solemn tribute. Trump then delivered a speech praising fallen service members as “America’s best and bravest,” setting a tone of reverence, strength, and renewed national purpose.

Then came the words that gave weight to the moment. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stepped up to the mic and didn’t bother with formalities. His message cut straight to the heart of the day: freedom isn’t free, and it’s only preserved through strength.

“We owe a duty to those who have fallen in war,” Hegseth said. “They have paid a debt we can never repay.”

“The duty we owe these men is peace, which only can be achieved through strength,” he added. “Because we strive for peace, we must prepare for war.”

Hegseth made it clear that peace isn’t something we can take for granted. It’s fragile. And unless we’re willing to protect it, we risk losing everything those men died for.

“We owe these men nothing less—our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

He closed by pointing to the headstones around him, a silent army of heroes, and challenged Americans to live lives worthy of their sacrifice.

“We stand on the shoulders of great men—and on the shoulders of those great men in those graves. May we live worthy of it.” (Read more.)

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Scientific Literacy

 From Mater et Magistra:

Science naturally fits into a framework: young learners absorb foundational knowledge, older students analyze and question, and advanced learners articulate and defend ideas. Classical education uses the Trivium and Quadrivium in forming students to seek truth systematically. Science, when rightly taught, directs students toward wonder and inquiry, reinforcing their understanding of divine order.

As St. Augustine wrote in De Magistro, teaching must engage the intellect and lead the soul toward truth. Scientific literacy, approached through the lens of faith and reason, aligns with this pursuit. Psalm 111:2 (Knox) reminds us, "Great are the works of the Lord; let all who delight in them make search." The Church has always valued reason as a means of knowing God more deeply.

St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed that theology is the highest science because it orders all other knowledge toward God. Yet he also emphasized that natural philosophy (science) is essential, as it reveals God through His creation (Summa Theologica, I, Q. 1, Art. 6). (Read more.)

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Marie-Antoinette with a Portrait of Her Mother

Marie-Antoinette with a portrait of her mother Empress Maria Theresa, via Vive la Reine. The  portrait is being held by a female figure known as "Eugenia" or "Nobility" to whom the Queen of France is offering a statue of Minerva, the Roman goddess of Wisdom. "Eugenia" is holding a shield with the Habsburg imperial eagle. The Queen is wearing a crown of roses. It is interesting that there is a legend of a St. Eugenia who disguised herself as a man in order to join a monastery, similar to the Pope Joan story. But I do not know if any connection with St. Eugenia is intended by the female personage garbed as a soldier. The print is dated 1780, the year of the death of the great Maria Theresa, who had to assume the responsibilities of a male ruler throughout her adult life.

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The War on Us

 From James Howard Kunstler:

This Memorial Day, for a change, the USA is not actively at war in some distant land, only against ourselves. One faction in this as yet cold civil war seeks to Make America Great Again (MAGA), and the other side seeks what. . . ? To do the opposite of that? Make America Disintegrate (MAD). It’s hard to come to another conclusion.

MAGA is led, of course, by Mr. Trump, president again after the strangest executive interregnum in our history. At its plainest, MAGA means returning to an economy based on producing things of value. To many, this might conjure up the image of humming factories, good pay for honest work, and a well-ordered, content, patriotic populace grateful for their prosperity, in other words, something like the America of 1958, when Mr. Trump was entering puberty.

It’s a comforting vision. Parts of it seem possible to achieve. Maybe we can rebuild an industrial infrastructure of up-to-date factories. Didn’t we voluntarily deep-six all the old ones only a few decades ago? And for what reason? So that faraway nations rising out of darkness could make all the stuff we wanted at a fraction of the cost? Turned out to be a bad bargain based on supremely foolish short-term thinking.

It also came with a set of very corrosive financial arrangements based on the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. These are pretty abstruse, but suffice it to say they enabled us to rack up phenomenal debt that we will never be able to pay off. We even fooled ourselves into thinking that we could replace that old economy of factory production with financial games based on jiggering interest rates and innovating ever more complex swindles. That merely produced a fantastic divide between the financial gamesters raking in billions while the former factory workers were left broke, demoralized, sick, and strung-out on drugs.

As a basic proposition, it’s doubtful that we can return to anything like a 1958 disposition of things based on rising continental-scale enterprise, as in the Big Three automakers and General Foods. It all seemed like a good idea at the time, and the zeitgeist pushed it, but we can see where it landed us: in the ghastly suburban sprawl clusterfuck and the overall ill health of the people. Also the scale of things is done rising; is, in fact, contracting. (Read more.)

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Jewelry: How and When to Wear It

 From Southern Living:

Southern women often get thrown into a trope of being over-the-top, but for as long as I can remember, that is what has made my grandmother the most effortlessly fashionable person I've ever met. The opposite of subtle, she dazzles with layers of jewelry and a loud personality. Turns out, there's much to be learned from someone who isn't afraid to be confident; and while it goes much beyond aesthetics, she especially taught me about her favorite accessory: jewelry.

From how and when to wear it to old-school tricks you'd only learn from a seasoned Southern woman, here are 5 indispensable things my grandmother taught me about jewelry. (Read more.)

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Two Family Miniatures by Dumont

 
 

 

From East of the Sun and West of the Moon via Vive la Reine:

A comparison between details of two Marie-Antoinette family miniatures by Dumont, with the top being Marie-Thérèse and Joseph, and the bottom being Marie-Thérèse and Louis-Charles.

The first miniature is formal and informal at the same time... Marie Antoinette is embracing and being embraced by her child in an informal manner, but he's dressed to showcase his regal status, while his sister Marie-Thérèse gestures toward him. The backdrop of the miniature is regal and formal.

The second miniature is about as informal as it could get, with both children enjoying their mother's embrace without the same type of stiff, formal deference that Marie-Thérèse was painted in with the first miniature. The setting is the Trianon, sitting on the grass, hardly the stiff formal palace interior of the first miniature.

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The Next Pandemic Is Already Funded

From The Vigilant Fox:

The real reason pandemics never end?

Pandemics = money. They're business models.

Every “threat” justifies more power for public health agencies, more funding for Big Pharma, and more clicks for the fear-driven media.

The cures rarely work, but the money always flows.

Behind it all sits the biodefense industry—a twisted empire that creates the very disasters it's funded to prevent.

It conducts gain-of-function research and engineers deadly pathogens.

And when a leak happens? They call you a conspiracy theorist for noticing and asking questions. (Read more.)

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Time to Boycott Nike?

 From Right Flank:

So long as Nike bankrolls the medical abuse of minors, there’s no reason for a single American to give them money. Effective immediately, there needs to be a halt on any purchases of the company’s shoes, attire, or other products. Investors who have Nike shares should also dump them right away.

If Nike doesn’t see any tangible consequences for their actions, zero changes will take place. They’ll continue to throw their money behind increasingly dangerous studies that harm both children and society at large.

So far, there’s been no thought for the futures of boys being experimented upon. What happens when their natural development is neutered as a result of these hormones? Who will be responsible for the psychological and emotional impacts later resulting from this?

Not Nike, at least if they get their way.

Americans should also be asking what kinds of parents would offer their kids up to be experimented on in this way. Nike may be throwing their money behind this, but they’re not the sole perpetrator. (Read more.)

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The Removal of Louis XVII

The little king is taken away from his mother. (From Vive la Reine.) In the words of Madame Royale:

On the 3d of July, they read us a decree of the Convention ordering that my brother be separated from us and lodged in a more secure room in the Tower. Hardly had he heard it when he flung himself into his mother’s arms uttering loud cries, and imploring not to be parted from her. My mother, on her side, was struck down by the cruel order; she would not give up her son, and defended, against the municipals, the bed on which she placed him.They, absolutely determined to have him, threatened to employ violence and to call up the guard. My mother told them they would have to kill her before they could tear her child from her.

An hour passed in resistance on her part, in threats and insults from the municipals, in tears and efforts from all of us. At last they threatened my mother so positively to kill him and us also that she had to yield for love of us. We rose, my aunt and I, for my poor mother no longer had any strength, but after we had dressed him she took him and gave him into the hands of the municipals herself, bathing him with tears and foreboding that she would never see him again. The poor little boy kissed us all very tenderly and went away in tears with the municipals. (Read more.)

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Trump’s Nuclear Moonshot

From Amuse on X:

The rationale behind this bold move is both pragmatic and philosophical. Pragmatic, because the exponential growth of AI, machine learning, and data centers threatens to swamp our antiquated and overstretched electrical grid. Philosophical, because energy independence and abundance are preconditions for national sovereignty, economic vitality, and technological supremacy. A free republic cannot remain free if it is energy-starved and dependent on geopolitical rivals.

The numbers speak for themselves. A single gigawatt can power roughly one million homes. Trump’s proposal to quadruple the current 100 gigawatt nuclear capacity to 400 by 2050 signals a historic realignment of strategic priorities. If achieved, this would place the United States as the single largest producer of nuclear energy in the world by a wide margin, accounting for over 40% of global nuclear capacity, based on today’s figures. This is not a green fantasy or a bureaucratic platitude. It is a deliberate act of national engineering, designed to position the US as the premier energy power of the 21st century. At its core lies a brilliant recognition: energy abundance is the currency of geopolitical dominance in an AI-driven world.

What enables this initiative is an executive-led reformation of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), long a bastion of bureaucratic inertia. Trump’s orders instruct the NRC to embrace a technology-inclusive licensing framework, shifting from rigid prescriptive rules to performance-based evaluations. This might sound like a minor procedural tweak, but it represents a philosophical transformation. It moves the federal government from an attitude of technocratic distrust to one of principled enablement. It trusts American engineers to build what they know they can build. (Read more.)

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Defending the Christian Character of England

 From First Things (Via Supremacy and Survival):

While I would recommend Omrani’s book without hesitation, his treatment of the Reformation irked me a little. Omrani at one point refers to the “trauma” of the Reformation, alongside that of the English Civil War. This feels a lopsided term for how the English now see the Reformation, and even for how they saw it by the end of the sixteenth century, when Elizabethan England was a confident Protestant nation set self-consciously against its Catholic foes. Chapter 4 focuses on the history of religious art in England, with much lament over Reformation iconoclasm. Whatever one thinks of it, that iconoclasm and the resultant restrained aesthetic of most Anglican churches is now a part of Christianity’s formation of English identity, a fact Omrani doesn’t really acknowledge.

Furthermore, chapter 8, which outlines the English Reformation’s legacy of political liberty, contains two notable flaws. First, and somewhat pedantically: Omrani suggests that “the foundations were being laid for the divine right of kings” when Henry VIII argued that the fifth commandment (“Honor thy father and mother”) entailed obedience to the governing authorities. Yet this interpretation was novel neither to Henry nor even the Reformation. One can easily find it in Thomas Aquinas.

Second, Omrani fails to moderate his otherwise commendable account of Protestant political liberty with the English Reformation’s particular emphasis on conservatism and good order. One should never criticize an author for the book he didn’t write, but I was surprised that this chapter, and the book as a whole, made no mention of Richard Hooker. Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity not only provided the theological scaffolding for the Anglican theological tradition, but was foundational for all post-Reformation Anglophone political thought. Hooker bridged the gap between medieval scholasticism and early modern political thought with his work on natural law, and in a tumultuous time articulated the need for “orderly public judgment to prevail over private judgment” (to quote my friend Brad Littlejohn). This omission surprised me all the more since Omrani is based at the University of Exeter (where I was an undergrad): I imagine that he has enjoyed a Cornish pasty on a sunny day on the green of Exeter Cathedral, where there sits an imposing statue of Hooker, his Laws open upon his knee.

These criticisms aside, Omrani’s history is rich, lively, and coherent overall, as is the briefer second section on what Christianity still has to offer England. Blessedly, he articulates this without framing Christianity in terms of the bland Blairite “British values,” a term which Omrani repudiates. His account of Britain’s secularization rejects the idea of rationalism leading inevitably to godlessness, focusing more on “new technologies and concomitant new ideas about human psychology.” TV, the vinyl LP, pirate radio, and cars led to new forms of association, displacing the church’s prominence in the social lives of young people; meanwhile, psychoanalysts and educators championed self-expression and the welfare state ballooned. This is a shrewd analysis, although it could do with a dose of the “Great Man” theory of history. British secularization was the agenda of the political elite as much as anything, forged with cunning intent in the 1960s by the likes of Labour home secretary Roy Jenkins. (Read more.)

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The Marie-Thérèse Pink

I did not know of this gem when I chose pink to be the color of the paperback edition of the novel Madame Royale. From Christie's:

This is a diamond with a history as striking as its beauty. The 10.38 carat stone is believed to date to the mid-18th century and was once owned by Duchess Marie-Thérèse d’Angoulême, the only surviving child of Queen Marie Antoinette.

According to royal tradition, the queen entrusted her jewels to her loyal coiffeur before her failed escape from Paris in 1791. Many of those jewels were later passed to Marie-Thérèse. While uncertain if this specific diamond was among the storied cache, what is known is that the jewel belonged to Marie-Thérèse, who bequeathed it to her niece, Duchess Marie-Thérèse de Chambord, and was later acquired by Queen Marie Theresa of Bavaria, who referred to it in her will as ‘a pink solitaire diamond from Aunt Chambord.’

It remained part of the royal family’s own storied collection and was henceforth passed down for generations until it sold in 1996. Later, the current owner tapped legendary jewellery designer Joel Arthur Rosenthal, known as JAR, to design a new setting for the diamond as the centrepiece of a stunning ring. (Read more.)

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Stumblebum's Legacy

 From James Howard Kunstler:

Sad as it was, “Joe Biden,” the figment president, was merely one manifestation of a nation made mad by power-seeking demons, real-live, ill-intentioned human beings driving a runaway political machine, the party of hoaxes, hustles, and hatred. The country is just now struggling to exit a convulsion of mass mental illness. The demons are still there, though, and still hard at work trying to drag you all back into mass formation.

A central mystery is how the news media made itself the enemy of the people, and this conundrum is not at all explained by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson in their book Original Sin. It’s actually just another hustle with overtones of hoax, like everything else in the evil cavalcade of narratives spun out in the news media’s war on reality. Tapper and Thompson want you to believe that a faceless collective they call “the White House” managed to conceal “Joe Biden’s” well-advanced disintegration from the voting public, and that was. . . that. The media wuz fooled! Goll-lee!

Of course, that fails to explain a whole lot — such as: how come anybody watching daily video clips of “Joe Biden” in action, could not fail to see the broken old puppet he is. Alex Thompson, receiving his “award for excellence” from the White House Correspondents’ Association weeks ago said, “We just missed it.” Yeah, sure. . . . They also apparently missed the programmatic devastation to American society that was carried out in the old stumblebum’s name. (Read more.)

From Direct Line:

Let me be upfront: I did not read Jake Tapper’s Original Sin cover to cover. I skimmed it—like a responsible college student skimming The Communist Manifesto for a Political Theory class he regrets taking. I read enough to understand the vibe, which is somewhere between a B-grade Tom Clancy plot and a fever dream Nancy Pelosi might have after one too many Napa Valley chardonnays.

Tapper’s latest work of “fiction” (I use that word generously—though ironically it’s more believable than his actual reporting) is set in the familiar world of D.C. political chaos, a world Tapper claims to know intimately. And why wouldn’t he? He’s been a permanent fixture at CNN, otherwise known as the emotional support channel for people who still wear double masks alone in their Prius.

The premise of Original Sin is simple: people in Washington are corrupt. I know, hold the presses. This literary revelation puts Jake Tapper just one psychic vision short of being Miss Cleo. What makes Tapper’s take so precious is that he writes about D.C. like he’s not part of the problem. You almost expect the book jacket to read: “By Jake Tapper—courageously exposing the corruption of a city that pays his salary and boosts his book tour.”

Now, Tapper likes to think of himself as the love child of Woodward and Bernstein, but with the storytelling skill of Dan Brown and the smugness of Rachel Maddow on a soy cleanse. He builds suspense like a guy who once read the Wikipedia article on narrative arcs. Characters are either virtuous crusaders for democracy (read: thinly veiled Democratic operatives) or nefarious right-wing monsters who, if the book went on long enough, would probably storm a school board meeting while waving copies of Atlas Shrugged. (Read more.)

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Exit From Africa

 From Haaretz:

Arabia isn't what it used to be. Long ago, that barren peninsula was lush, crossed by rivers and dotted with lakes. In fact, it turns out the Sahara and Arabia have a history of swinging between aridity and abundance for millions of years.

How many millions of years? When were the Sahara and by extension– the Arabian Desert – created, forming a barrier to the terrestrial movement of species between Africa and Eurasia? Different studies suggested wildly different answers for the giant desert's inception, from 2.6 million years to 7 million years. In 2022 a paper proposed that the Sahara barrier developed as much as 11 million years ago, but added that the region had experienced wet-dry cycles. (Read more.)

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Flower Crowns

Madame de Lamballe

From Reading Treasure:

"Surrounded outdoors by the untamed, natural beauty of the jardin anglais, and indoors by the charming floral woodwork that adorned the villa’s walls, the Trianon ladies’ “professed ambition was to resemble wildflowers.”

-Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

Flower crowns were a hit long before filters and photo apps; they can be found in particular abundance in portraits and paintings of the 18th centuries. Allegorical portraits of women in as goddesses or mythological figures often feature flower crowns; but as the century wore on, they even became fashion statements in their own right. 

In the late 1770s and early 1780s, Marie Antoinette herself adopted the fashion trend that incorporated the beauty of nature. Or rather, the beauty of carefully chosen fresh blooms to compliment the less court-like gowns worn by the Petit Trianon clique. As a fashion statement, flowers were a representation of natural beauty--as opposed to the man-made beauty of traditional courtly accessories--as well as innocence and youth. Crowns of flowers, rather than crowns of diamonds or gold, were the ultimate "natural" adornment for the discerning lady. (Read more.)

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The Toxic Collapse of America’s Health

 From Overton News:

The report lays out the full scope of that epidemic in unforgiving detail.

Here are some of the many alarming health revelations uncovered in the report:

1. Nearly half of American children now have a chronic illness.

That includes asthma, ADHD, diabetes, obesity, autoimmune diseases, and more. In places like West Virginia, over half of all children on Medicaid or CHIP are dealing with at least one of these issues.

2. Autism rates have exploded—from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 31.

In parts of New Jersey, the rate is as high as 1 in 19 boys. The trend is accelerating, and for the first time, someone in government is publicly asking: why?

3. Childhood cancer is up more than 40% since the 1970s.

We’ve spent trillions on healthcare, but more kids are getting sick—and no one seems interested in investigating the causes.

4. Ultra-processed food now accounts for 70% of the calories kids eat.

That includes school lunches filled with lab-made, shelf-stable junk. It’s fueling an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and early metabolic dysfunction.

5. Teen antidepressant use is up 1,400%.

Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for teenagers. Instead of fixing the root causes, we’re medicating the symptoms.

6. Toxic chemicals are showing up in breast milk, baby food, and even umbilical cord blood.

From hormone disruptors to known carcinogens, babies are being exposed before they’re even born.

7. ADHD medications rose 250% in just a decade—antipsychotics are up 800%.

But there’s no improvement in learning or behavior outcomes. The report calls it a “medical overreaction to a societal crisis.”

8. Food stamp programs are contributing to childhood obesity.

States like Nebraska and Indiana are banning soda and junk food from SNAP purchases—and others are following their lead.

9. Teens now spend nine hours a day on screens.

That, combined with chronic sleep deprivation, is driving up anxiety, depression, and developmental delays.

10. Our health agencies have been compromised.

The FDA, CDC, and NIH all take money from the industries they’re supposed to regulate. The MAHA report calls it a “systemic failure.” (Read more.)

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On the Birthday of Sigrid Undset

 From The Catholic Thing:

Fran Maier recently expressed concern about Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Odyssey, which jettisons the familiar grand summoning of the muse to “sing” for something more casual: “Tell me about a complicated man.” This attempt to translate in our own image is nothing new, and not always bad. Seamus Heaney chose to translate hwaet, the opening word of Beowulf (essentially a call to attention, formerly rendered as something like “listen,” “lo,” or the admittedly antiquated “hark”) as “So, the Spear-Danes in days gone by. . . .” Indeed, where the reader once may have heard an Anglo-Saxon scop calling across the centuries, he now hears the Dublin or Boston Irishman at the bar in mid-story: “So, there was this guy by my cah. . . .”

Past generations seemed not to need such condescension.  A 1937 Book-of-the-Month Club promotional for Kristin Lavransdatter claims that, in the ten years since the club’s founding, Undset’s story has remained the enduring favorite: “This remarkable trilogy has been more deeply enjoyed by the real booklovers of the nation than any novel published in the past decade.” Calling the story “as modern and as ancient as the passions of humankind,” the ad echoes what the Archer translation was able to communicate to hundreds of thousands of average readers: “Years pass, long years, and do their work. This is a book, in short, that leaves you rich in memories, as Time does itself.”

Kristin Lavransdatter is, in the Archer translation, quite simply a book that sings. It sang out to Dorothy Day and her friend Frieda, whose “beach house remained unswept, her husband and son unfed” while she devoured it. It sang out to Catholic converts like Deal Hudson, whose lives it transformed. It sang out to Southern Agrarian Andrew Lytle, who, in his nineties, wrote one final work, an homage to the novel simply entitled Kristin. And so it sings to me of a life spent striving. (Read more.)

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A Wild History in Jewels

 

 

From Artnet:

Toussaint’s bestiary emerged from a new postwar sensibility. The house’s earlier years had been dominated by Art Deco and frequent references to historic design details from 18th Century France, as well as global techniques and forms. But this imaginative dive into the animal kingdom was in keeping with Cartier’s enduring drive to surprise and innovate. What could be more captivating than a jewel-encrusted panther?

In 1940, Cartier created the flamboyant Flamingo brooch—an early signal of the house’s turn toward the animal kingdom. Its plume of ruby, emerald, and sapphire feathers introduced a new sense of play and color, one that would soon evolve into a full bestiary. The piece stands as a vivid precursor to the bold, expressive spirit that defines the maison’s animal creations.

Cartier’s big cats quickly became status symbols—objects of obsession for the era’s most glamorous women, from Hollywood and beyond. Film stars and society icons alike were known to phone the Rue de la Paix boutique late at night to request bespoke designs. Tigers, snakes, and crocodiles ranked among the most coveted forms, often finished with enamel details in meaningful palettes. Something in the coupling of feline power and elusiveness, wrapped in hundreds of perfectly set gems, made them irresistible.

Cartier’s animal jewelry has evolved—refreshed and reimagined—over the decades. The idea of speed and agility was abstractly conveyed in the golden links of the Panthère watch, launched in 1983, while a 1991 collar distilled the essence of the big cat into a band of precious stones. (Read more.)

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Trump's AI Diplomacy Is America First

 From Amuse on X:

The criticisms are familiar, almost rehearsed. Congressman Ro Khanna, one of the Democratic Party's reliable progressives, recently asked why President Trump would approve the construction of major AI data centers and research hubs in the United Arab Emirates, rather than planting those high-paying jobs on American soil. "What about Ohio? What about Pennsylvania?" he asked, implying that Trump had traded Rust Belt prosperity for Gulf petro-dollars. At first glance, the critique appeals to patriotic instinct. But its logic is superficial, and its conclusions are wrong.

Trump's AI strategy, particularly his deal with the UAE, is not a betrayal of "America First," but a shrewd fulfillment of it. If we seek American technological dominance, global standards set by US companies, and the marginalization of China's growing AI imperialism, this is the only play.

Let us begin where the critics do: the location of the data centers. While the Abu Dhabi complex has captured headlines, it is not a substitute for domestic investment, but a complement to it. Indeed, Amazon Web Services is investing $1 billion into new AI infrastructure in Ohio. OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, is actively scouting Pennsylvania, Texas, Oregon, and Wisconsin for sites. Plans are even underway to revive Pennsylvania's shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant, which could soon power data centers throughout the Mid-Atlantic. In other words, these are not either-or decisions. They are both-and. Trump is doing what any good strategist would do: establishing beachheads at home and abroad. (Read more.)

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The Cyclops of Kozani, Greece: Myth, Mystery, and a Forgotten Discovery

 From The Greek Reporter:

The legend of the Cyclops — the towering, one-eyed giants of Greek mythology — has long captured the imagination of philosophers, storytellers, and adventurers alike. Found in ancient myths scattered across the Greek landscape, these beings remain symbols of a lost, supernatural past. But in February 1931, myth and reality seemed to blur in the mountains of Western Macedonia.

Two quiet villages in the Kozani region, Eratyra and Trapezitsa, became the epicenter of a sensational discovery. Following heavy rainfall and landslides, locals stumbled upon a marble tomb of colossal proportions.

A telegram from the prefect of the region to government authorities reported something extraordinary: the unearthing of an enormous human skeleton, its skull bearing a single eye socket in the middle of the forehead. (Read more.)

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Madame Elisabeth on the Way to Execution

Madame Élisabeth of France and her companions leave the Conciergerie for the final journey to the guillotine on May 10, 1794. Madame Élisabeth was the last to die, which means she had to watch all the others decapitated before her. They each begged for her blessing before approaching the scaffold. From This is Versailles:

Once the condemned were removed, Madame Élisabeth once again exerted herself to the comfort of her fellow-condemned. She had always been a fervently religious woman and now she encouraged those who were to die with her. She chose to rejoice in the fact that the Tribunal had not asked them to renounce their faith "only their miserable lives".

There appears to be some conjecture about when Madame Élisabeth was definitely informed of the death of Marie Antoinette. Later, Marie Thérèse would recall that they had heard her mother's sentence being cried out from the people walking beneath their windows but that they had refused to believe it. One account claims that Élisabeth had asked to see her sister-in-law after her sentencing only to be told that she had suffered the same fate. Another claims that it was only at the foot of the guillotine that she overheard a callous remark. Once it was noticed that the condemned bowed to her before their deaths, a spectator allegedly remarked that that they could "make their salaams to her all they wanted, she will share the fate of the Austrian". (Read more.)

 

From European Royal History:

She reportedly successfully comforted and strengthened the morale of her fellow prisoners before their impending execution with religious arguments, and by her own example of calmness.

Élisabeth was executed along with the 23 men and women who had been tried and condemned at the same time as she, and reportedly conversed with Mme de Senozan and Mme de Crussol on the way. In the cart taking them to their execution, and while waiting her turn, she helped several of them through the ordeal, encouraging them and reciting the De profundis until her time came. Near the Pont Neuf, the white kerchief which covered her head was blown off, and thus being the only person with bare head, she attracted special attention by the spectators, and witnesses attested that she was calm during the whole process.

 At the foot of the guillotine, there was a bench for the condemned who were to depart the cart and wait on the bench before their execution. Élisabeth departed the cart first, refusing the help of the executioner, but was to be the last to be called upon, which resulted in her witnessing the death of all the others.

Reportedly, she considerably strengthened the morale of her fellow prisoners, who all behaved with courage. When the last person before her, a man, gave her his bow, she said, “courage, and faith in the mercy of God!” and then rose to be ready for her own turn. While she was being strapped to the board, her fichu (a sort of shawl) fell off, exposing her shoulders, and she cried to the executioner “Au nom de votre mère, monsieur, couvrez-moi. (In the name of your mother, sir, cover me)”

Reportedly, her execution caused some emotion by the bystanders, who did not cry “Vive la Republique” at this occasion, which was otherwise common. The respect Élisabeth had enjoyed among the public caused concern with Robespierre, who had never wished to have her executed and who “dreaded the effect” of her death.

Her body was buried in a common grave at the Errancis Cemetery in Paris. At the time of the Restoration, her brother, Louis-Stanislas, Comte de Provence, now King Louis XVIII of France and Navarre, searched for her remains, only to discover that the bodies interred there had decomposed to a state where they could no longer be identified. Élisabeth’s remains, with that of other victims of the guillotine (including Robespierre, also buried at the Errancis Cemetery) were later placed in the Catacombs of Paris. A medallion represents her at the Basilica of Saint Denis.

Beatification

The Cause of Beatification of Élisabeth was introduced in 1924, but has not yet been completed. In 1953, she was declared a Servant of God, and in 2016, her Cause was re-opened. (Read more.)

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