Petrushka

Stravinky's 0riginal costume design for Petrushka


Original 1911 set design for Petrushka

When I was a child my grandmother gave us a record with stories from famous ballets, including musical excerpts from Petrushka. We were entranced by it; my sister and I tried dancing to Petrushka when we were very small; from what I have read since, we were not alone in being swept up into the drama. Composed by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, Petrushka debuted in 1911 at the Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris. The mysterious, magical tale of love and revenge unfolds at a Russian Shrovetide fair, centering around a puppet called "Petrushka," who in Pinocchio-style comes to life. To summarize:

Petrushka ("Petey") is the story of three puppets - the forlorn and homely Petrushka, a beautiful ballerina, and a mysterious and gaudily dressed Moor - brought to life by their showman master at a Russian Shrovetide fair. Petrushka tries to express his love for the ballerina, but she has eyes only for the Moor. The frustrated Petrushka is subdued by the scimitar-wielding Moor, but the puppet's ghost has the last laugh by thumbing his nose at everyone. All this takes place within the context of the fair, full of dances by nannies, coachmen, masqueraders, crowds and even a dancing bear.

In Russian culture, the puppet character of "Petrushka" was rather like "Punch," a rude, comic Everyman, the butt of every joke. Stravinsky endows him with human feelings; as Petrushka attempts to rise from his baseness, his strivings lead to his destruction, only to gain immortality in the end.
Stravinsky's music captures the carnival atmosphere of Maslenitsa, the Russian version of Mardi Gras, with all its color and passion. As one commentator describes:

Subject and music appear to reflect the Russian nature. Gogol and Mussorgsky are there. Everything is reflected in the score with a sure and reckless mastery —the movement and tumult of the crowd; the gait and aspect of each leading figure; and the grotesque agonies of the helpless one. A shriek of...trumpets in different keys is the motto of Petrouchka's protest. The composition is permeated with Russian folk-melodies and also street songs marvelously treated.

"Fair"

In his day, Stravinsky was considered avant-garde since his music was a bit different from what had gone before. His work was part of the explosion of creativity that brightened the last days of imperial Russia, called the "Silver Age." On one level, Petrushka is an echo of a time that is gone; on another, it conveys the spirit of the Russian people which Communism was not able to destroy. I enjoy listening to Petrushka more than ever, especially during Shrovetide. 

Listen HERE.

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Minneapolis: America's Destruction Lab

 From Candeloro's Substack:

To understand the fire, meet the arsonist.

Saul Alinsky wasn’t merely a “community organizer” — that label functioned as cover for an architect of modern political guerrilla warfare. In Rules for Radicals, he laid out a worldview that now plays out on American streets: morality is disposable; the only real objective is POWER.

Minneapolis isn’t an accident. It’s the manual in operation.

Forget “spontaneous outrage.” What you’re watching is calibrated social engineering: a provocation, a verdict delivered before the investigation, emotional hysteria replacing evidence. The goal is to force institutions to violate their own rules under the banner of “compassion.” Once they yield, the violation becomes precedent. When they resist, the pressure escalates. Compromise doesn’t resolve it — it accelerates it.

Look at the post-2020 policing climate: in many major cities, proactive enforcement pulled back — not because crime vanished, but because the political cost of doing the job exploded. Officers don’t act from duty; they operate under the threat of professional annihilation. Exactly as Alinsky prescribed: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.”

And who runs this laboratory?

Tim Walz, Minnesota’s governor — the same figure Kamala Harris tapped as her running mate in 2024. During the George Floyd unrest, Walz signed an order activating the National Guard on May 28, 2020 — yet the core criticism was never “did he sign a paper,” but whether the response matched the speed and scale of the collapse on the ground.

Jacob Frey, Minneapolis’ mayor, provided the city’s most revealing image: publicly kneeling and weeping at George Floyd’s casket while precincts burned and civic authority disintegrated.

This wasn’t mere incompetence.

It looked like managed permissiveness — a posture where the state hesitates just long enough for chaos to rewrite the rules. (Read more.)

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Should Queen Isabella I of Castile be Canonized?

 From The Catholic Herald:

Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, Archbishop of Mexico City and Primate of Mexico, has publicly defended the cause for the beatification of Queen Isabella I of Castile during a formal visit to Spain.

Speaking in Valladolid during a meeting with the diocesan commission overseeing the cause, Cardinal Aguiar said that sustained historical and spiritual study had led him to a firm conviction about the personal sanctity of the Spanish queen and the importance of making her legacy better understood. “We want the essential facts of her life and spirituality to be known,” he said, stressing that the process required time, seriousness and balance rather than polemic or nostalgia.

The Mexican cardinal highlighted in particular Isabella’s Royal Decree of 1503, which stated that the indigenous peoples of the newly encountered territories in the Americas were to enjoy the same rights as subjects of the Spanish Crown. He described the decree as “an extraordinary position for its time”, arguing that it reflected a deeper moral vision rooted in Christian anthropology rather than political expediency.

The meeting in Valladolid brought together senior figures from the Spanish and Mexican Churches. Cardinal Aguiar was received by Archbishop Luis Argüello García, who is also president of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference, alongside members of the commission for Isabella’s cause. The gathering was held at the Archdiocese of Valladolid’s spirituality centre and was described by participants as both cordial and substantive.

Archbishop Argüello said that Isabella’s life was marked by fidelity to Christ and the Church’s missionary mandate, which in turn shaped her political vision and her concern for unity rooted in shared faith. The Valladolid visit also formed part of the Intercontinental Guadalupan Novena, an initiative launched in 2022 to promote devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe while encouraging renewed reflection on evangelisation and social renewal across the Ibero-American world. (Read more.)

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"A Woman Determined to Protect Her Family"

 From Amy at Novels Alive:

A woman determined to protect her family must make calculated decisions amid turmoil in 17th-century England.

Author Elena Maria Vidal delivers a compelling look at Queen Henrietta-Maria in Generalissima, marking the second installment of the Henrietta of France Trilogy.

The author applies a layer of historical fiction to enhance the challenges faced by the royal family, most notably the civil wars. Through historical detail, the author recreates a time period of unrest, not limited to the anti-Catholic movement.

As the second in a series, it is challenging to fully appreciate the author’s work without reading it in sequence. Queen Henrietta appears to be a sympathetic character, especially pertaining to her children. The scene involving Mary’s wedding night at age 9 is only one example.

Generalissima expounds upon the complexity of Queen Henrietta-Maria and the mark she leaves behind. (Read more.)

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Senator Kennedy on Who Really Controls the Democrat Party

 From The Vigilant Fox:

Kennedy argues that moderate Democrats are no longer in charge but are being controlled by the radical “Karen” wing of the party.

The Gateway Pundit reported that in January, the House of Representatives voted 220-207 to pass a Department of Homeland funding bill, which funds the TSA and ICE.

Fox News reported that the seven Democrats who voted with Republicans did so “despite opposition from their own leadership over unmet demands for additional guardrails on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.”

The DHS bill will be bundled alongside three other spending bills, totaling a combined $1.2 trillion in federal spending. The entire package’s passing is a significant step toward averting a government shutdown come Jan. 30.

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives voted on two separate packages on Thursday afternoon. One groups together three spending bills to fund the departments of War, Education, Labor, Transportation and Health and Human Services. The second is a standalone bill funding DHS, which includes ICE.

Jacqui Heinrich asked Kennedy about Democrats who opposed leadership, including Congressman Tom Suozzi (D-NY), after sharing a clip of Suozzi being heckled at a town hall by an anti-ICE activist.

“So, Tom Suozzi was one of seven Democrats who voted with Republicans, and that’s the reception he’s getting at home. What does that tell you?” Heinrich asked.

Senator Kennedy replied, “It tells me that the Karen wing, the Loon wing, Bolshevik wing, whatever you want to call it, Jackie, is firmly in control of the Democratic Party.”

“And whether we ever pass a bill, a budget for the Department of Homeland Security will require our Democratic leadership to embrace adulthood, because that’s what this discussion is all about.”

“It’s not, as it should be, a discussion of the efficient use of taxpayer money and funding ICE and DHS. It’s just the Karen wing of the Democratic Party wants to defund ICE.”

“They believe in open borders.”

“They also wanted to defund the cops, defund police.”

“We know how that vampire movie turned out. Now they’ve moved on to defunding ICE, and the Democrats, the leadership anyway, not people like John Fetterman, but the Democrats are scared of them.” (Read more.)

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Is Romance Dead or Delayed?

Courtship was once an almost ritualized part of society. It enabled romance to flourish while protecting virtue. Our young people now have nothing. From Public Discourse:

This gap between desire and ability points to a deeper issue, I believe: one that goes beyond individual willpower and speaks to the zeitgeist of 2026 and how we learn (or don’t learn) about relationships in the first place. According to social learning theory, we develop behaviors by observing and imitating others. But what happens when the examples we see are few and often unhealthy? Many young adults today have grown up without witnessing strong, enduring relationships, leaving them with no blueprint for how to sustain loving, intimate ones themselves. Add social messages that prioritize careers over connection (especially in the college and postgrad years), the influence of the digital age where it’s easier to DM than to initiate a real-life conversation, and choice overload that makes it feel like there’s always someone better just a swipe away, and it’s no wonder that young adults feel anxious when it comes to love, romance, and relationship formation.  

Are we surprised then, by the rise of “situationships” and hook-ups (words our grandparents never heard of)? In a culture that views dependence as weakness, no one wants to ask, “What are we?” for fear of seeming too needy or serious. So casually engaging in one-night stands and having “stayovers” without commitment has become the norm for many young adults. The problem? When we just show up in our bodies, we are dodging vulnerability and visibility; authentic intimacy requires that we show up with our whole selves.  (Read more.)

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Virgin of the Rose Bower

The enclosed garden: “Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee.”

 From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

The painting by Stefan Lochner is among the most concentrated visual expressions of the western iconographic prototype we call the “hortus conclusus”. The phrase is drawn from the Bible’s Song of Songs that begins, “A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse…” It has always functioned in Christian spiritual theology as a Marian title, signifying virginity, purity and the inviolate womb in which the Incarnation took place.

In the later Middle Ages, the hortus conclusus prototype was increasingly visualised using the forms of fashionable private pleasure gardens familiar to the aristocracy and urban elite. This convergence allowed Marian images to appropriate the language of cultivated leisure: enclosure, refinement, ordered nature, while reorienting it toward chastity, contemplation and sacred presence.

Our word “paradise” derives from the Old Persian pairidaeza, meaning an enclosed garden or walled park, a term that entered Greek as paradeisos and then Latin as paradisus. Originally denoting royal pleasure gardens, the word was adopted in the Septuagint to translate the Garden of Eden, permanently linking enclosure, order, and cultivated beauty with the biblical vision of divine dwelling. (Read more.)

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10 Great Justice Alito Quotes

 From The Federalist:

During an interview with the Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson last year, Alito affirmed that it’s the duty of all judges to ignore the politics of the day and instead focus on properly adhering to the Constitution — even if doing so may yield an unpopular result.

“We are not supposed to do what is popular, we’re supposed to do what is right. We’re supposed to interpret the Constitution and figure out what it means and then apply the Constitution,” Alito said. “We’re basically a democratic country, but the framers want to put some restraint on things that people might do during a particular area because they’re caught up in the emotions that are triggered by the events of the day. So, we have to stand firm on this, and I think we have done a pretty good job on it, but we have to keep it up because challenges will … continue to come.”

When the Supreme Court dismissed a legal challenge to the Biden administration’s collusion with Big Tech to censor Americans in Murthy v. Missouri (2024), it was Alito who offered a full-throated defense of these challengers’ free speech rights. (Read more.)

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When Sex is Detached from Love, Life, and Responsibility

 From Elizabeth Stone at The Feminist Turned Housewife:

Every single culture all throughout time has built itself around assumptions it no longer questions.

In Ancient Rome it was assumed that some humans were just naturally meant to be owned. During the Aztec empire it was just assumed that the gods required human sacrifice. In medieval Europe social hierarchy wasn’t questioned, etc…

And in our times, one of those givens we don’t question anymore is that sex is primarily suppose to be about pleasure. Everything else is optional.

And this assumption is so embedded that I’ve probably upset some of you for simply mentioning this in the tone that makes it seem like I disagree.

Which btw, I do.

But I am here to explain why this assumption is not only wrong, but has also opened the doors to some of the greatest moral evils of our times.

Zoom out for one minute, and honestly take a look at the cultural landscape all around. Pornography is everywhere, commitment is low, children are treated as accidents, and abortion is framed as healthcare. Something clearly is not right.

And I argue, that all of this has come about because we have separated sex from its core purposes.

Sex has never been historically understood as a one purpose act. Sex carries three inseparable meanings, it bonded two people, it was open to creating life, and it was pleasurable. None of these things should be seen as competing goods, but remove one from the three and the entire house collapses.

So how did we get here?

It all began, when we started elevating autonomy above all else. (Read more.)

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Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice

In March of 1966, my great grandfather Dr. Fergus O’Connor received the medal of the Holy Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice from Pope Paul VI in recognition of his contributions to medicine for over sixty years. The papal nuncio came to the house at 193 Earl Street in Kingston, Ontario to bestow the medal, due to the advanced age of the recipient, celebrating Mass there as well. In March of 2008, when my late Aunt Mary's belongings were being distributed among the relatives, I happened to come across the certificate that accompanied the medal from the pope. (See photo above.) According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice was instituted by Pope Leo XIII (17 July, 1888, "Quod Singulari") in memory of his golden sacerdotal jubilee, and bestowed on those women and men who had merited well by aiding and promoting, and by other excellent ways and means assisted in making the jubilee and the Vatican Exposition successful. This decoration was made a permanent distinction only in October, 1898 (Giobbio, see below). Its object is to reward those who in a general way deserve well of the pope on account of services done for the Church and its head. The medal is of gold, silver or bronze. The decoration is not subject to chancery fees. The medal is a cross made octangular in form by fleurs-de-lis fixed in the angles of the cross in a special manner. The extremities of the cross are of a slightly patonce form. In the centre of the cross is a small medal with an image of its founder, and encircling the image are the words LEO XIII P. M. ANNO X (tenth year of his pontificate). On the obverse side are the papal emblems in the centre, and in the circle surrounding the emblems the motto PRO DEO ET PONTIFICE is stamped. On the obverse surface of the branches of the cross are comets — which with the fleurs-de-lis form the coat of arms of the Pecci family. On the reverse side are stamped the words, PRIDIE (left branch); KAL. (top branch); JANUAR. (right branch); 1888 (at the foot). The ribbon is purple, with delicate lines of white and yellow on each border. The decoration is worn on the right side of breast.

Fergus Joseph O'Connor was the son of Charles and Emily O'Connor of Long Point Farm, born on April 1, 1879, Easter Sunday. As Fergus' second son and namesake wrote of him: "It's hard to describe a man with such integrity of character. He was the perfect son to his parents -- the brother to his only sister and complete support to his family." (Dr. Fergus James O'Connor, Because You asked For It)

Fergus loved horses and wanted to become a jockey, for which he was suited due to his stocky stature. His mother, however, encouraged him to seek as much education as possible. He went to high school in Athens, Ontario, and then went to the “Normal School” for teachers' training in Ottawa. It was around that time that he decided to study medicine. His father had wanted Fergus to help him maintain the homestead, but accepted his decision to become a doctor. He taught school to earn his tuition for medical school at Queen's University in Kingston. In his third year, he missed classes the first term because his funds had run out and he had to teach school again to make more money, but his roommate took notes for him, so he was able to pass anyway. He did not have much recreation, and only went to one football game all the time he was at Queen's.

In the summer of 1902, when Fergus first registered at Queen’s he rode his bicycle the 32 miles into Kingston. After finishing his business at the university, he became lost. He drove past three young ladies playing croquet on the front lawn and asked them for directions. One of them was Frances Keating. Frances Margaret Keating was of Norman-Irish stock on her father’s side; her mother was an O’Neill. Fergus and Frank were married at the dawn Mass at Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Kingston on September 3, 1907. The Mass was followed by a simple wedding breakfast. The new Dr. and Mrs. O’Connor moved to Gananoque in the Thousand Islands area where Fergus set up a practice and built a house.

Fergus' practice involved house calls, as was the custom in those days. He was often called out at night to deliver a baby, and often had to travel unlit roads into remote areas. It was vital for a country doctor to have a reliable horse so as to get him to his patients; my great grandfather had many stories about horse traders. After tending to a patient in the countryside, he could doze in the buggy or sleigh, since the horse knew the way home.

In December of 1916, Fergus was elected mayor of Gananoque. His election was a tribute to the respect generated by his professional dedication and personal integrity. It was remarkable given the local history of conflict between the few Irish Catholics settlers and the Protestant majority, especially the Irish Protestants, called “Orangeman.” Fergus, without compromising any of his beliefs and principles, was able to overcome a great deal of anti-Catholic prejudice, and became the popular “little mayor.”

In 1918, my great-grandparents moved to 193 Earl Street in Kingston, Ontario, with seven of their soon-to-be eight children. They decided to move into Kingston so that their children could go to the Catholic schools available there. A white rose bush from the original that old Daniel had brought over from Ireland was planted outside the front door. Fergus slowly built up a new practice. He taught medicine at Queen’s University, and continued on the faculty for forty years. His close friend, Monsignor J.G. Hanley said of him:

His concern for his students was not limited to their professional development. Working in an area fraught with deep moral implications, he instilled in future obstetricians sound ethical principles to guide them in making crucial decisions which would crucially affect the lives of their patients. Moreover, he was not merely a professor to his students; they all regarded him as a personal friend, and so he was.

By the late 1930’s he was delivering one third of all the babies in Kingston. He had many poor patients who could not pay, but to Fergus being a doctor was a vocation, not a career. However, he would gratefully accept an offering such as a bag of potatoes in the place of money, so that he could feed his family. He eventually became Chief of Obstetrics at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston and remained so for almost half a century. He delivered his last baby at age eighty-four.

Fergus was also active in the community and the church. He was on the Separate School Board for many years, as well as being a city alderman. He belonged to the Knights of Columbus and in 1945 founded the Queen’s chapter of the Newman Club.

Fergus died on April 21, 1971. I am grateful for the few memories I have of this wonderful man, a true patriarch. I recall how approachable he was, how kindly and gentle with small children. A Kingston newspaper article described him in his nineties as being “still active and spry…his eyes twinkling….with short quick steps“ and that is exactly as he appears in my memory. One of the main characters in The Paradise Tree is based upon him.
 

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'Obergefell' Has Harmed Children

 From The Federalist:

Justice Anthony Kennedy, author of the Obergefell majority opinion, wrote that same-sex couples needed to be afforded the “constellation of benefits” that marriage provided. The last 10 years have proved that children are among those so-called “benefits.” Thus, in the name of constitutional rights, the law had to accomplish what biology prohibits: making two same-sex adults the parents of a child. That legal mandate has reshaped family law in sweeping ways: parenthood statutes have been stripped of sexed terms, regarding mothers and fathers as interchangeable “parents;” infertility has been reclassified so that same-sex couples can deliberately produce motherless or fatherless children with the help of insurance subsidies; birth certificates have been altered to legally exclude a child’s biological parent; new parentage pathways have been created that bypass both biological and adoptive safeguards; genetic parenthood has been downgraded as just one option among many; procreation has been stripped of its unique social value within adult partnerships.

 Obergefell did not merely extend legal recognition to same-sex couples, it was a legal change that is incongruent with any familial distinctions that had, for centuries, grounded marriage and parenthood in both common law and biological reality. These are not mere academic shifts. They are foundational changes in how the law and culture understand the human family, with real consequences for children. When familial distinctions are erased, children become items to be awarded by state-enforced contract. (Read more.)

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The Internal Politics of the Islamic Revolution Behind the Seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Iran

 From It Can Always Get Worse:

The 4 November 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy by the “Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line” (MSFIL) is often said to have been provoked by President Jimmy Carter allowing Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah of Iran, into the U.S. for medical treatment on 22 October, and this is criticised as a misstep by the U.S. that destroyed the possibility of salvaging relations with Iran under the new revolutionary government. The problem with this narrative on its face is the date: while it works in a superficial sense for the Embassy crisis a fortnight later, the more important antecedent question is why the Shah, who had needed treatment for more than half-a-year, was only granted access to it at that point.

The answer is that Carter, having contributed to the Shah’s political demise with his staggering incompetence and shameful refusal to properly support a loyal ally throughout the 1978 crisis, had then betrayed the Shah even after he had fallen. Carter told the Shah via the U.S. Embassy in December 1978 that he “would be welcome to come to the United States”, and then withdrew the offer in March 1979. Carter’s motive was to avoid antagonising those who had conquered Iran from the Shah, the gang of terrorists who were openly pledged to an anti-American program and were already at that moment slaughtering the men and women who had served the U.S.-allied Imperial Government. Carter’s behaviour was so disgraceful in forcing the Shah to wander the earth—from Morocco to the Bahamas to Mexico—in search of a place to die with a modicum of dignity that it made Henry Kissinger the humanitarian of the situation. Kissinger used his political leverage, threatening to withhold public support for Carter’s ludicrous SALT II agreement with the Soviets, to have Carter relent on the Shah getting medical treatment in America.

That context understood, it casts doubt on the whole premise that it was the U.S. that sabotaged relations with Revolutionary Iran by being too unwavering in its commitment to the Shah. And, indeed, on inspection, the reality is the reverse.

For one thing, the U.S. Embassy had already been stormed by the Islamic Revolution, on 14 February 1979, three days after the Islamist-Communist coup that had brought down the Interim Government left behind when the Shah departed the country on 16 January.1 On that occasion the “students” had withdrawn in short order, but clearly the revolutionary regime had the idea for an attack on the Embassy right from the start. The overarching motive for the second Islamist attack on the U.S.’s Iran Embassy in November 1979 was not that the Americans were being too hostile to Revolutionary Iran, but that progress towards some sort of Iranian-American accord was going too well. (Read more.)

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