Remembering the Past in Restoration France: An Expiatory Chapel for Marie-Antoinette

The recreated prison cell of the Queen

The actual prison cell of the Queen

 From Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide:

After its restoration, the Conciergerie in Paris w­­­­­as reopened to the public in 1989, the year of the "Bicentenaire" celebrating the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution.[1] The new historical museum of the Conciergerie, formerly the most famous prison in France, offers visitors an almost authentic look at the conditions of living—or rather dying—during the revolutionary Terreur, the period of violence and mass executions that started in September 1793 and ended in July 1794 with the "Thermidorian Reaction." Visiting the Conciergerie today, one enters the gloomy atmosphere of 18th-century crime, grim with punishment and death, reminiscent of Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors. Visitors are faced with life-sized figures of incarcerated men in small dark cells recalling some well-known and, in addition, thousands of nameless victims of the Terror. The representation of one of the most famous inmates of the Conciergerie is especially striking. Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France, spent the final two months of her life in this prison, before her execution on October 16th, 1793. Her figure, which can only be seen from behind, is shown sitting in a cell at a small wooden desk, guarded by a member of the National Guard (fig. 1). Contrary to its appearance, this scene is not set in the cell in which the queen was actually imprisoned, but is only meant to be an accurate reconstruction.[2] The cell in which Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned still exists, but not as a cell. In 1816, during the French Restoration era, it was transformed into a chapelle expiatoire—expiatory chapel (fig. 2). Unchanged during the Conciergerie's restoration before its reopening in 1989, it can still be visited within the prison complex. This small chapel that the newly restored Bourbon monarchy built in honor of Marie-Antoinette confronts the visitor with a staging of history that differs considerably from that of the reconstructed cell. Marie-Antoinette's chapelle expiatoire is in fact a true chapel. It consists of a very small room painted entirely in dark blue, a colored glass window reminding one of ordinary church windows, a cenotaph on one side of the room, and an altar on the other. Here we see the queen again, this time not "in person," but appearing on three paintings representing memorable events of her last days.

In the Conciergerie, the fate of Marie-Antoinette is therefore recalled in two very different ways. On the one hand, we are confronted with a setting that seems to be authentic when in fact it is not; on the other hand, the original queen's cell has been so radically changed that it no longer appears as an authentic historical site. The commemoration of the queen within the prison complex of the Conciergerie is hence somewhat contradictory: the lines between authenticity and historical falsity, between fact and fiction are not as clear as they seem to be at first glance. This deliberate delusion especially draws one's attention to the queen's expiatory chapel of 1816, which is the main subject of this article. This slightly kitsch memorial raises questions that not only concern the construction, political context, and iconography of the chapel, but also consider the notion of authenticity and the ways in which history has been staged and commemorated throughout the ages. Therefore, the focus of my article is twofold: first, I will put the queen's expiatory chapel in the political and cultural context of its creation and discuss its iconography and propaganda content. In doing so, I will also consider some other expiatory monuments of the Restoration era. Then, I will focus on the queen's chapel as a memorial and historical site. I will especially raise the question as to whether notions of authenticity had been accounted for by the authorities and artists who were involved in the chapel's construction. With this twofold approach I particularly want to broaden the art-history research perspective which until now has been focused on the iconography and political relevance of the Restoration's expiatory monuments.[3] (Read more.)

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Americans, Learn From the UK’s Grooming Gang Scandal

 From AMAC:

A grooming scandal that has been discussed for years in London is finally getting attention.

MPs and London Assembly members are demanding an urgent investigation into grooming gangs in the city. They say authorities have failed to act on reports from survivors about the systematic abuse and exploitation of girls as young as 14.

This comes after a BBC investigation uncovered stories of young women being drugged, assaulted by multiple men, and forced into sex work to pay off drug debts. These cases are similar to those in Rotherham and Rochdale, where thousands of girls were abused over many years.

The letter, signed by figures such as Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp and former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, was sent to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. It calls for the national inquiry into grooming gangs to focus on London.

Khan has been criticized for saying there were “no reports and no indication” of organized abuse in the city and for not addressing questions about whether Muslim rape gangs have operated there. Critics now accuse him of ignoring the issue.

The Metropolitan Police are reviewing 9,000 child sexual exploitation cases, with estimates suggesting that 2,000 to 3,000 involve grooming gangs. As in earlier scandals, most suspects are men of Pakistani heritage accused of targeting white English non-Muslim girls.

Grooming gangs have operated for decades and have faced little interference, with group-based child exploitation dating back to at least the mid-1970s. Authorities often overlooked these crimes while focusing on other types of child abuse. The problem became widely known in the 1990s and 2000s, but institutional failures allowed it to continue.

Nearly 100 trials and convictions have occurred in over 40 towns and cities across the U.K., including Rotherham, where more than 1,400 victims were identified between 1997 and 2013, as well as in Rochdale, Oxford, Telford, and Huddersfield.

Despite this, London’s mayor has said there are no such cases, or none on the same scale, in the capital. This has led to public anger, especially as the Metropolitan Police review thousands of old cases. (Read more.)

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How American Sexuality Was Ruined

 Disturbing. Read with discernment. From Welcome to Absurdistan:

Kinsey’s conclusion, promoted like wild fire for fifty years, relentless and geopathic by the Rockefeller-guided press, has embedded itself in our consciences, like the Rockefeller-promoted Paul Erlich and his every-word-a-lie-population bomb, climate change and the Sixth Great Extinction, all lies. Reissman’s keystone, necessary work traces that, and it is instructive to remember that Time Inc., where I was trained, is located in Rockefeller Centre. Time’s stable of magazines slowly, over time, promoted sexual libertinage as normal and the Rockefellers acted like censors on the rest of the media, stamping out anyone who objected. Reisman herself was the victim of a $50,000 a month PR campaign meant to ruin her and malign her research.

Alfred Kinsey was a barely talented biologist focused on a subspecies of wasp before the Rockefellers picked him up, almost certainly because he was part of the underground cult of people who sexually abuse children. He showed no promise otherwise. He was a sado-masochist whose family films found in the attic after his death showed him sexually and physically abusing his children. He literally masturbated himself to death - orchitis - which is associated with sado-masochistic trauma and venereal disease.

According to Reisman who made his work a life-long study, he did not complete his medical degree. He was an obsessed eugenicist, an atheist, adulterous misogynist, committed racist, a reckless bi/homosexual, addicted masturbator, masochist, pornography producer and performer, and mass pedosadist. (Read more.)

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The Queen's Agony

Her neck never stopped aching from the vise-like grip with which his short arms had locked around her, refusing to let go, as the commissaries began to drag him from her arms. His cries of "Maman! Maman!" echoed within her still. Her heart was not broken, it was gone. ~from Trianon by Elena Maria Vidal, Chapter Seven: "The Sacrifice"

On July 3, 1793, eight year old Louis XVII was forcibly removed from his mother the Queen. His sister Madame Royale later described the scene thus:

On the 3d of July, they read to us a decree of the Convention, that my brother should be separated from us, and placed in the most secure apartment of the tower. As p223soon as he heard this sentence pronounced, he threw himself into the arms of my mother, and entreated, with violent cries, than to be separated from her. My mother was stricken to the earth by this cruel order; she would not part with her son, and she actually defended, against the efforts of the officers, the bed in which she had placed him. But these men would have him, and threatened to call up the guard, and use violence. My mother exclaimed, that they had better kill her than tear the child from her. An hour was spent in resistance on her part, and in prayers and tears on the part of all of us.

At last they threatened even the lives of both him and me, and my mother's maternal tenderness at length forced her to this sacrifice. My aunt and I dressed the child, for my poor mother had no longer strength for any thing. Nevertheless, when he was dressed, she took him and delivered him herself into the hands of the officers, bathing him with her tears, foreseeing that she was never to see him again. The poor little fellow embraced us all tenderly, and was carried off in a flood of tears. My mother charged the officers to ask the council-general for permission to see her son, were it only at meals. They engaged to do so. She was overwhelmed with the sorrow of parting with him, but her horror was extreme when she heard that one Simon62 (a shoemaker by trade, whom she had seen as a municipal officer in the Temple), was the person to whom her unhappy child was confided. She asked continually to be allowed to see him, but in vain. He, on his side, cried for two whole days, and begged without intermission to be permitted to see us.

~Private Memoirs, by Madame Royale, Duchess of Angoulême, translated by John Wilson Croker. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1823, pp 223-225.

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Outrage Hypocrisy: America’s Accidental Tragedy vs. Iran’s Deliberate Atrocities

 From AMAC:

The recent U.S. Tomahawk missile strike in Iran, which reportedly killed 170 school children, has ignited a firestorm of outrage from anti-war critics. Former Clinton White House staffer Keith Boykin used the unintentional tragedy, under investigation by the Pentagon, to write off the three-week-old Iran war as “a disaster for the 170 school children” and “an unmitigated disaster for the world.”

Apart from the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Iranian protesters killed early this year, consider Iran’s intentional history of using its children during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. To repel Saddam Hussein’s invasion, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini mobilized child soldiers — boys as young as 9 or 12 — from poor families to serve as human minesweepers. Children were promised martyrdom and given “keys to paradise” to wear around their necks. Iranian commanders sent waves of them, often tied them together with ropes to prevent retreat. They marched onto minefields and detonated explosives with their bodies, clearing paths for tanks and adult troops.

Estimates suggest as many as 500,000 children were used in this way, with tens of thousands blown to pieces or mowed down by Iraqi machine guns. Some sources suggest some 100,000 died to clear the field for tanks and soldiers. Survivors recount the horror — bound together, facing withering fire, their small bodies exploding on mines. Iran’s leaders glorified it as holy duty.

The depravity is staggering. Iran treats its own children like disposable tools, exploiting their poverty and brainwashing them with visions of post-death paradise.

What would Iran do with a nuclear bomb?

Imagine the mullahs, who chant “Death to America” and fund proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas, armed with nukes and missiles. They would not hesitate to threaten Israel, Saudi Arabia, Europe and America. Iran, since the state of this war, has launched strikes against over a dozen countries, including “neutral” gulf states. (Read more.)

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The Furnished Soul

 From Becoming Noble:

Consider, by contrast, the experience of walking into a home that has been ordered around conviction. One feels it immediately, before a word is spoken: a warmth, a seriousness, a coherence. The objects communicate.

A crucifix above the door, a portrait of a grandfather on the staircase, a kneeler in the corner of a bedroom — together they compose something like a creed in material form. To enter such a house is to be consoled, even if you cannot articulate why.

The foundation of this consolation is metaphysical. Christianity, and the natural law tradition which it inherits and perfects, holds that the material world is not a blank canvas upon which we impose arbitrary meaning. It is already saturated with meaning.

Every created thing, by virtue of its existence, participates in and points toward the God who made it. Thomas Aquinas called these the vestigia Dei — the traces or footprints of God in creation. They are everywhere. In the grain of wood and the weight of stone, in the behavior of light through glass, in the structure of the human body and the rhythm of the seasons.

There are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see.

This is what makes a sacramental vision of the world possible. A sacramental world is one in which things really mean things, and it is only when this is the case that we can use them as a symbolic language to speak to one another through form, image, and metaphor.

The medieval cosmos was one in which everything was intentional and meaningful, ordered by a Creator who does nothing without purpose. The modern cosmos is one in which everything is accidental and inert, and meaning is a projection of temporary will. The difference between these two visions is perceptible in every room we inhabit.

“For since the creation of the world,” St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” (Read more.)

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The First Spring Day

I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
Sing, robin, sing!
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.

I wonder if the spring-tide of this year
Will bring another Spring both lost and dear;
If heart and spirit will find out their Spring,
Or if the world alone will bud and sing:
Sing, hope, to me!
Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.

The sap will surely quicken soon or late,
The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;
So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,
Or in this world, or in the world to come:
Sing, voice of Spring!
Till I too blossom and rejoice and sing.

By Christina Rossetti

(Artwork "The First Buds of Spring" by Lionel Percy Smythe, courtesy of Hermes.) Share

The Radical Left is the Enemy From Within

 From Right Flank:

For years, Democrats have assumed complete, covert ownership of mainstream news outlets. It’s for this very reason that pundits will NEVER admit the truth about political polarization in our country. As leftists got more extreme and unglued from reality, the news ran stories about the so called “far right.” In their eyes, exercising common sense and supporting our Constitution is “far right.” This label has been so thoroughly abused that it’s now lost ALL meaning. As an American, if you (in any way!) oppose medically mutilating children, killing unborn babies in the womb, or having the government censor what’s said on social media, you’re deemed “far right.”

Even after this study from the Royal Society, we shouldn’t expect Democrats to suddenly have a change of heart. If Democrats really cared about this country, they’d look at the Royal Society’s findings and change their behavior. Instead, they’re just LYING about what the study reported, pretending as if the facts aren’t clear. Across social media, propaganda campaigns are already in full swing. Leftists’ most common talking points? The study “misrepresents” key points, the data was “cherry picked,” and “biases” colored the findings reported upon.

Unfortunately, this is quite typical for Democrats. Whenever they see a report, opinion, or social media post they don’t like, the attacks on credibility always come next. They’re INCAPABLE of self reflecting or paying attention to what matters most in our country. (Read more.)

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At the Edge of the Abyss: Euthanasia and the Fight For Human Dignity.

 From Gavin Ashenden:

Those of us who hold to a Catholic understanding of the human person — seeing each life as sacred because it is made in the image of God — have, for decades now, found ourselves resisting a growing secular pressure to legalise euthanasia.

The arguments are by now familiar. On the one hand, we hear appeals to autonomy, freedom of choice, and the understandable desire to avoid suffering. On the other, there remains a deep moral conviction that life and death are not ours to dispose of at will — and that once the boundary is crossed, the consequences are neither contained nor benign.

Experience bears this out. In Canada, there are now documented cases of disabled individuals being offered euthanasia because it is cheaper than providing basic support such as accessible housing. In the Netherlands, even teenagers suffering from depression have been granted euthanasia. What were once presented as tightly safeguarded exceptions have, in practice, expanded in ways that place the most vulnerable at risk.

The argument, therefore, is no longer theoretical. It is grounded in real examples of systems in which safeguards have failed, and where the logic of euthanasia has begun to erode the dignity it was supposed to protect.

In this conversation, I speak with Professor David Jones, Professor of Bioethics at St Mary’s University, London, and one of the central figures in the campaign against euthanasia in the United Kingdom.

Together we explore what has just taken place in the Scottish Parliament, why the proposed legislation was defeated, and what this may mean for the future of similar efforts at Westminster — where time is running short and the outcome remains finely balanced, both procedurally and in the court of public opinion. (Read more.)

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"The Vision of St. Joseph" by James Tissot

What a wonderful angel! Via East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

"I am poor, and in labors from my youth and being exalted, I was humbled and troubled." Psalm 87:16

Joseph of Nazareth

On a joiner's bench

You ply your trade.

Hands calloused

Fingers nimble.

Wood chips and shavings

At your feet.

Sawdust

In your beard.

You sing

The song of your people

Longing

For the Face

Of Him

Who is to come.

Joseph of Nazareth

Of David's line

You sing

The wedding song.

"My sister, my spouse

Is a garden

Enclosed..."

Virgin husband

Of the Daughter of Sion

You prepare a

Dwelling

For the Stainless One.

Joseph of Nazareth

In sweat of anguish

You ponder

Another Joseph

Thrown in the cistern.

Your song

Becomes sad.

"Save me

O God

For the waters

Are come in

Even unto

My soul..."

You sing

Then fall silent.

Sleep comes

With the breeze

That stirs

The curls of wood...

And then

The voice: 

"Joseph, Son of David,

Fear not...."

By a Carmelite tertiary Share

Moral Clarity Is Not Optional

 From Unlicensed Punditry:

I’ve been listening to Democrats and the No War in Iran crowd demand ridiculous things. They want public announcements of timelines, strategic plans, budgets, manpower, reports on readiness, and briefings that will be immediately leaked. They want down to the minute accounts of what Trump knew and when he knew it and what he plans to do and what he will rule out, all the while knowing that releasing all this information would mean disaster for any military move.

I recognize all of it is just an attempt to stop American leadership from ending a half-century of threats, the funding of death around the world, and a risk of nuclear war. That the opposition to President Trump’s decisions have no moral standing is a symptom of a complete erosion of moral certitude.

I’ve studied some of great Western leaders – Reagan, Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, George Washington, even FDR and Truman’s wartime leadership—and it appears to me that great leadership requires many traits—competence, discipline, patience—but above all, it requires moral clarity. Even our American Founding Fathers chose moral clarity in separating from England to form a new nation. (Read more.)

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Anti-Motherhood Rhetoric

From Word on Fire:

When I finally read the much-discussed piece from The Cut “I Regret Having Children,” which shares the experiences of three women, I expected my reaction to be indignation. After all, how can someone look at her children and regret their existence? But as I read their experiences, I realized that they had been profoundly failed by a society that sees child-rearing not as a normal phase of adulthood but as an opt-in only choice. Given that secular (and even some religious) culture understands being a mother as a step in one’s quest for self-fulfillment, it is consistent that these women would view any limitations to their freedom that accompany motherhood as wholly negative. While this broken understanding of human freedom certainly plays a part in their experiences, that’s a conversation for another day. 

The three women who shared their stories in The Cut described a sense of shock at how brutally difficult motherhood is. They felt tricked by sunny stereotypes of parenting—only to find a reality of exhaustion, overwhelming mental and emotional demands, loss of identity, and a sense of crippling loneliness. And as the piece notes, they are not alone. Many women think that they were sold a story that motherhood would be magical and fulfilling but end up feeling unprepared for the challenges and lacking the support they need to thrive. 

What should be validated in these women’s experiences is that the infant and toddler years can be relentlessly difficult and exhausting. Sleep deprivation is used as a torture method for a reason: It decimates your mental health. I remember being three months postpartum with my autistic child, who couldn’t sleep more than forty-five minutes at a time. An older mom who noticed the dark circles under my eyes as she washed her hands next to me in the office bathroom said, “They start sleeping better around six months.” I remember thinking, “If I have to wait three more months for a night of sleep, I’ll never make it.” I fully believed that the sleep deprivation would kill me. Unreasonable? Perhaps. But it seemed very, very real and, honestly, devastating in the moment. (Read more.)

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At the Tuileries

Among the many out-of-print books that are now online is Imbert de Saint-Amand's Marie-Antoinette at the Tuileries (1893). In spite of the panegyrics, there are many quotes from original letters as well as day-by-day accounts of the life of the royal family during their life under virtual house arrest from October of 1789 until the end of 1791. The following passages describe the tightening of security around the family after their escape attempt in June 1791. The queen, especially, was closely guarded (as anyone can see, it would have been impossible for her to have entertained Count Fersen, as some authors claim.)

It had been resolved that [the queen] should have no personal attendant except the lady's maid who had acted as a spy before the journey to Varennes. A portrait of this person was placed at the foot of the staircase leading to the Queen's rooms so that the sentinel should permit no other woman to enter. Louis XVI was obliged to appeal to Lafayette in order to have this spy turned out of the palace where her presence was an outrage on Marie Antoinette. This espionage and inquisition pursued the unfortunate Queen even into her bedroom. The guards were instructed not to lose sight of her by night or day. They took note of her slightest gestures, listened to her slightest words. Stationed in the room adjoining hers they kept the communicating door always open so that they could see the august captive at all times. (pp223-224)

The family continued to assist at daily Mass, albeit with difficulty.

The precautions taken were so rigorous that it was forbidden to say Mass in the palace chapel because the distance between it and the apartments of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette was thought too great. A corner of the Gallery of Diana, where a wooden altar was erected, bearing an ebony crucifix and a few vases of flowers became the only spot where the son of Saint Louis, the Most Christian King, could hear Mass. (pp.225-226)

However, their fortitude was admirable.

The royal family endured their captivity with admirable sweetness and resignation and concerned themselves less about their own fate than that of the persons compromised by the Varennes journey, who were now incarcerated....Louis XVI, instead of indulging in recriminations against men and things, offered his humiliations and sufferings to God. He prayed, he read, he meditated. Next to his prayer book his favorite reading was the life of Charles I either because he sought, in studying history, to find a way of escaping an end like that of the unfortunate monarch, or because an analogy of sorrows and disasters had established a profound and mysterious sympathy between the king who had been beheaded, and the king who was soon to be so. (pp. 226-227)

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Why Did The Biden Administration Cover Up Intelligence On Chinese Interference With Our Elections?

 From AND Magazine:

Solomon’s report is based on a 7 April 2020 National Intelligence Council Assessment. That report reads in part:

“We assess that China and Russia are increasing their ability to analyze and manipulate large quantities of personal information in ways that will allow them to more effectively target and influence, or coerce, individuals and groups in the United States and allied countries. Their cyber espionage efforts have helped them acquire bulk data.”

“Adversaries almost certainly are already applying data-analysis techniques to hone their efforts against US targets.’

“Chinese intelligence officials analyzed multiple US states (redacted) election voter registration data…”

This is particularly troubling because the date of this report dovetails with the cover-up of the actions of the Chinese-affiliated election service company Konnech. In 2022, the election security firm True the Vote broke the story that a company called Konnech in Michigan was storing data on American election workers on servers in China. True the Vote leaders Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were, of course, ridiculed by the so-called mainstream press. Then, Los Angeles arrested the head of Konnech and charged him with violations of U.S. laws on the handling of personally identifiable information by storing it on servers in China.

The ridicule stopped. Even the New York Times had to issue a retraction.

Then more information came in, and the picture got a lot worse.

Konnech wasn’t just storing data in China. Konnech was using contractors inside China to do work in the United States on American election systems. This is the exact language in the criminal complaint filed by Los Angeles.

“On or about October 10, 2019, through October 4, 2022, Eugene Yu and other employees at Konnech, Inc. were providing these services to Los Angeles County using third-party contractors based in China.

“…Konnech employees known and unknown sent personal identifying information of Los Angeles County election workers to third-party software developers who assisted with creating and fixing Konnech’s internal ‘PollChief’ software.”

(Read more.)

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James Ellroy’s 'Red Sheet'

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

As if right on cue, the great author James Ellroy is publishing a new novel in June. Red Sheet is the latest offering from the fantastic creator of L.A. Confidential and American Tabloid. Like other books, it has to do with Los Angeles, cops, drugs, fringe characters, politics, and corruption. 

    It is also a bracingly anti-communist novel, perhaps the most anti-communist work of fiction I have read since Mickey Spillane’s One Lonely Night. Knopf, Ellroy’s publisher, was kind enough to send me an advanced review copy. Out of respect for Ellroy, I will save a detailed review until closer to publication date, but for now let me just say that Red Sheet is a brilliant, powerful novel that should be read by every American. Set in 1962, it opens with a quote from Whittaker Chambers, vindicates Richard Nixon, and makes it clear that the American anti-communists of the last century were right-on in their opposition to this evil pseudo-religious cult.  

    In fact, let me quote directly from James Ellroy’s official page:

Red Sheet is an anti-communist novel. It stands foursquare in the tainted tradition of Ayn Rand and Mickey Spillane. Ellroy is out to scramble your long-held perceptions and force you into a state of jumped-up disavowal.

Red Sheet scorns the mock-martyred Hollywood Ten and ballyhoos the Blacklist and the ’47-’48 HUAC hearings. Red Sheet forces you to live within the twisted and oddly tender soul of Richard M. Nixon. Red Sheet spotlights the Spanish Civil War and atrocities committed by the commie-infested International Brigade, heretofore held as heroic. Red Sheet lionizes name-naming kingpin Whittaker Chambers and bestows kudos on ratfinks Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg.

(Read more.)

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Colcannon

A staple in my novel The Paradise Tree. From Irish Central:

Colcannon with its unique and simple recipe has become popular around the world. It normally includes chopped kale or green cabbage mixed with hot, floury mashed potatoes. This simple recipe is an ideal one to make with the kids. The word colcannon is from the Gaelic "cal ceannann," which literally means "white-headed cabbage."

In the past, charms were mixed in with the colcannon. Depending on what charm you found it was seen as a portent for the future. A button meant you would remain a bachelor and a thimble meant you would remain a spinster for the coming year. A ring meant you would get married and a coin meant you would come into wealth. Others filled their socks with colcannon and hung them from the handle of the front door in the belief that the first man through the door would be their future husband. (Read more.)

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Without The Save Act, We are Living in a Slave State

 From Welcome to Absurdistan:

Did John Thune get a clench in his noble behind when eye-patch-pretend-pirate-guy lost his primary? Added to Trump’s relentless pressure Thune has, grindingly, consented to refer the Save Act to a vote, possibly next week.

Thune is, like most elected Republicans, pretendian MAGA counting the days when he can go back to playing defence and lining his pockets. The fact that voter fraud has deprived the Republicans of a clear unbreakable majority for THREE election cycles is clearly beyond him. He is functionally retarded. Or a shark committing treason.

John Solomon on Wednesday:

John Thune has scheduled a potential vote as early as next Thursday for the Save America Act…and it will be a flesh-it-out sort of moment for whomever is on board with a proposition that’s 85 percent popular in America… it’s really a roll call so that the grassroots efforts can then begin for the White House to target the people that should be in favor of this and aren’t.” Episode 5207, Bannon’s War Room, 3.11.26

Thanks to the 2020 steal, the grass roots is woken all the way up and targeting RINOs is their next step. They will enjoy it.

Therein lies the threat to established order. The obvious theft of 2020 and the Covid lying/bullying/cheating/stealing scam, the latter deliciously revealed by the White House on Thursday, activated the adults out in the Great Flyover. People who know the way the world actually works, saw how badly it wasn’t working. For decades they have been experiencing an almost imperceptible decline, where their lives and most particularly their childrens’ lives were being foreshortened by crooks. As is clear from the estimated $1 trillion a year stolen from all of us. (Read more.)

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Bards

It has always fascinated me how the telling of stories was held in high regard in Irish culture. Here is a little history:

In medieval Ireland, bards were one of two distinct groups of poets, the other being the fili. According to the Early Irish law text on status, Uraicecht Becc, bards were a lesser class of poets, not eligible for higher poetic roles as described above. However, it has also been argued that the distinction between filid (pl. of fili) and bards was a creation of Christian Ireland, and that the filid are were more associated with the church.^[3]

Irish bards formed a professional hereditary caste of highly trained, learned poets. The bards were steeped in the history and traditions of clan and country, as well as in the technical requirements of a verse technique that was syllabic and used assonance, half rhyme and alliteration, among other conventions. As officials of the court of king or chieftain, they performed a number of official roles. They were chroniclers and satirists whose job it was to praise their employers and damn those who crossed them. It was believed that a well-aimed bardic satire, glam dicenn, could raise boils on the face of its target.

The bardic schools were extinct by the mid 17th century in Ireland and by the early 18th century in Scotland.

The bards played an important role in preserving the traditions and legends of the Irish people, as well as their genealogical connections. Stories were passed on through poems, songs, ballads and the loricas. According to one article:

Bards are found in Celtic cultures (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Manx and Brittany) and a rough equivalent can be found in Norse culture, too, where they were known as "scops."

There is no real equivalent to the Celtic Bard in Anglo-Saxon England, however.

In Ireland and Scotland, the use of the word "Bard" apparently fell into some disrepute, as the records we have show that the Bard was simply a minor poet, while the "filidh" (seer) or the "ollave" (master poet) occupied the former status and functions of the Bard....

The word "Bard," in Wales, denoted a master-poet. In Ireland it meant a poet who was not an Ollave, one who had not taken all the formal training. Apparently even the lower-status Irish Bard was on a level with the Welsh Bard in knowledge and poetic education, however, and these were what I have termed "hedge-bards," above.

In the Celtic cultures, the Bard/Filidh/Ollave was inviolate. He could travel anywhere, say anything, and perform when and where he pleased. The reason for this was, of course, that he was the bearer of news and the carrier of messages, and, if he was harmed, then nobody found out what was happening over the next hill. In addition, he carried the Custom of the country as memorized verses...he could be consulted in cases of Customary (Common) Law. He was, therefore, quite a valuble repository of cultural information, news, and entertainment.

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Feminism vs. Feminine Mystery in Film

 

 I first saw Jessie Buckley in War and Peace as Princess Maria, whom she portrayed with depth and sincerity. And she has done well in other things I have seen her in, I have been really impressed. Such a shame she chose this vile film; she is probably being poorly advised. From Mark Judge at Chronicles:

Take the rage of modern feminism, the scourge of pornography, and add classic Hollywood movie musical and horror elements, overlap with an insane storyline, sew them all together, give the resulting monster a jolt of pointless modern violence, and you’ve got the new movie The Bride! It is, quite possibly, the worst film I’ve ever seen.

Here’s the plot—and no, this is not a joke. The Bride! is set in 1930s Chicago. Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale), or “Frank,” is living in the Windy City. Suffering from loneliness, he visits Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), a surgeon who specializes in reanimating the dead. Frank is matched with a recently murdered woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley). Ida, it turns out, was murdered shortly after she was possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelly, the original author of the novel Frankenstein. The resuscitated couple go on a Bonnie and Clyde-style road trip, committing crimes that attract the attention of Detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penelope Cruz). The couple gets caught, shot down—and then reanimated …  again. The Bride! is the kind of film where you sit in the theater, incredulous both about what you are watching and the fact that you are bothering to watch it.

The film is directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who, through this film, may be signaling that she needs professional help. The point of the movie, as far as I can tell, is that patriarchal society abuses women, kills them, and drives them mad. The only way to cope is to become a kind of punk rock mercenary (Buckley’s makeup and electroshock blonde hair is pure 1980s LA). The only acceptable male companion is an obedient monster who, like you, is an outsider—or “a non-compliant,” as Dr. Euphonious puts it. Gyllenhaal is a Hollywood A-Lister, so she was able to attract the best actors for her movie. Jessie Buckley switches between Ida, who has a Yonkers accent, to Mary Shelley, who was British, to the Bride, who falls somewhere in between. Buckley gives the performance her all. It’s just sad that her dynamic energy wasn’t put to use for something that makes sense. Ditto for Christian Bale.

There is something deeply disturbing at the heart of The Bride!, but it has nothing to do with the so-called patriarchy. It is more about the corrosive effects of our porn culture.

Every male character in the film has, in some way, abused a woman. The men in the 1930s nightclub at the beginning of the film are not the mannerly companions one might expect from that era, but leering, aggressive abusers with dirty minds and dirty mouths. The dialogue is pure 2026—I don’t think anyone during the Great Depression, for example, regularly used phrases like, “What the actual [expletive]!” Frank is a huge fan of the movie star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), but even Reed turns out to be a jerk. When Reed dismisses an emotional Frank with a quip about the monster “not being my type,” Frank implodes, crashing a chandelier and helping the Bride escape after she shoots a cop. Did I mention that this might be the worst film I have ever seen? 

The depressing takeaway from The Bride! is a theme that conservatives have been warning against for decades. Namely, that we now have multiple generations of young people who are so emotionally fragile that the smallest criticism becomes a mental health crisis and turns them into raging monsters. Take Ronnie Reed’s innocuous line about Frank not being his type. Reed is not even rejecting Frank outright, just offering an innocent quip. Yet it is somehow portrayed as an excuse for monstrous behavior. 

If America’s pornography culture really has corroded sexual relationships and men to the degree portrayed in this film—where they cannot be with women in any social situation, or any situation at all, without acting like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (Christian Bale’s true monster role)—then we do, indeed, have a crisis. But it’s worth noting that that crisis, like American Psycho itself, is about the gay culture’s hatred of women, and something that Hollywood will probably never confront honestly. If you want to see real toxic misogyny, gay Hollywood is where you’ll find it. (Read more.)

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Trump’s Epic Fury Strategy Is Working Even If Critics Cannot Yet See It

 From Amuse on X:

Public debate about military action often suffers from a simple problem. Many observers evaluate the present through the lens of the past. The United States fought long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those wars produced exhaustion among American voters and deep skepticism toward any new military engagement. This skepticism is understandable. It is also sometimes misleading. When people assume that every use of American military power will automatically lead to a generation long occupation, they may fail to see when a different strategy is unfolding.

That is the background against which Operation Epic Fury must be understood. A joint US and Israeli campaign has conducted one of the most effective air offensives in modern history. In roughly ten days more than 5,000 major targets inside Iran have been struck. Entire layers of Iran’s military leadership have been eliminated. The infrastructure that sustains the regime’s ability to threaten its neighbors is being dismantled piece by piece. Analysts across the defense community describe the speed and scale of the campaign as unprecedented.

The operation has been driven by unusually deep coordination between two highly capable militaries. American and Israeli forces are not merely cooperating in the loose sense typical of coalition warfare. Their command structures have been integrated to a remarkable degree. A US three star general and full staff operate inside Israeli headquarters, while an Israeli general and staff work inside US Central Command. Intelligence flows continuously between the two commands. Targeting information is shared in real time. Decisions that once required slow diplomatic coordination now occur within a unified operational framework.

The results speak for themselves. Iranian missile launchers, drone factories, underground weapons depots, transportation networks that move missile units, and command and control facilities have been systematically targeted. Hardened underground facilities have been penetrated. Launch infrastructure has been destroyed. Communications networks that coordinate attacks across the region have been degraded or eliminated. According to current assessments, more than 90% of Iran’s ability to conduct large retaliatory missile attacks has already been destroyed.

To understand what that means, consider the opening phase of the conflict. Iranian planners attempted to launch massive missile salvos designed to overwhelm defensive systems. Early waves involved 25 to 50 missiles fired in coordinated strikes aimed at Israel, US bases, and allied facilities. Such attacks depend on volume. If enough missiles arrive simultaneously, some will inevitably slip through.

That strategy has collapsed. Today Iran is often able to launch only two to five missiles at a time. Occasionally a volley of 10 to 12 missiles occurs, but even those are well within the capacity of layered US and Israeli missile defenses to defeat. The offensive capacity of the Iranian regime has not merely been reduced. It has been structurally crippled. (Read more.)

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Lorrha Stories: Irish Monasticism

 From The Abbey of Misrule:

St Ruadhán was one of the ‘twelve apostles of Ireland’, a collective of significant early Irish saints who studied under the legendary St Finian of Clonard. Ruadhán (whose name is pronounced ‘Rowan’, and means ‘red-haired’) was, like his fellow apostles, a monk of the Celtic tradition, which later came into conflict with Rome over various issues, like the date of Easter, the correct form of tonsure and other such theological details. In reality though, these issues were secondary to the real one, which was how much power Rome should have over monasteries in distant lands.

In early Ireland, Christianity was monastic, and it was Abbots rather than Bishops who called the shots. Irish monasticism had, for around 500 years, developed a specifically ‘Celtic’ character which seems to have been greatly influenced - and, I think, directly seeded - by Egyptian desert monks. This was the age of the round tower, the beehive hut and the small-scale, ascetic Christianity of the Wild Saints. It was the world of Patrick and Kevin, Colmcille and Bridget.

The Pontiff in Rome, however, wanted this scruffy, desert Christianity reined in under a hierarchy of Bishops answerable to him, and in Ireland, as in England a century before, the Normans would be his vessels. In 1066, the Norman king William the Conqueror (William the Bastard to his friends) had invaded England, killing its legitimate (and elected) King, Harold II, at the Battle of Hastings. He had done so under the Papal banner, which he had carried into battle, and on his victory he set about demolishing the old wooden Anglo-Saxon churches and building new, stone ‘Romanesque’ ones in their places. He also gave the green light to the continental monastic orders to move in and replace their indigenous counterparts. (Read more.)

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Pall Embroidered by Marie-Antoinette

From Sotheby's: "A silk chalice cover [pall] embroidered with gold and silver thread and beads; according to tradition it was embroidered by Marie Antoinette." The Sacred Heart of Jesus is shown with the Christogram IHS, symbolizing the Holy Name of Jesus. The color signifies it may have been used in the Mass of Laetare Sunday, or Rose Sunday,  that is, the 4th Sunday of Lent. Share

Accountability Is Not Dead—It’s Just Selective

 From Unlicensed Punditry:

One of the most common complaints about modern public life is the disappearance of accountability. Politicians are not accountable. The media is not accountable. Corporations are not accountable. Institutions that once claimed moral authority now seem able to operate without consequences.

The phrase “no one is ever held accountable anymore” has become almost a cliché.

We recently watched this play out in real time. Following an ISIS-inspired attempted bombing in New York, law enforcement reported that explosives had been thrown toward anti-Islam protesters during a confrontation near the mayor’s residence. Yet many “news” outlets quickly produced headlines and articles that gave the impression that there wasn’t really a terrorist attack at all—or that, if there was, it was somehow the fault of right-wing protesters.

At CNN, host Abby Phillip inaccurately described the attack as being directed at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Phillip later acknowledged the mistake and issued a correction on air, saying she had incorrectly described the target and apologized for the error. In other words, she eventually did the minimum professional standards require—she corrected the record. (Read more.)

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Chastity is How We See God

From Pondus Meum Amor Meus:

Chastity is vital. This much is clear. But I want us to understand how important it is to all of us at all times, whether you’re single, celibate, married, old, or young.

Chastity is a virtue, which means it’s a positive, life-giving presence infused into us. Chastity is not limited to only mortification and penance against our bodies. It is not exclusively negative, or defined by what we are trying to escape from. Of course, the spiritual life is disciplined and includes penance, meaning we make every effort to flee from sin. We strive to maintain custody of the eyes, and modesty, and to reject disordered desires.

But we get chastity wrong if we think of it only as a lack. A Christian is not someone who withdraws, who cedes the world to evil, who escapes. Quite the opposite. We are here to redeem the world, to replant paradise, to build the City of God. We are for the world. Virtue is not emptiness. It is plenitude, a joyful happiness so overwhelming that we hardly know how it can fit into this world. It spills out of us as if over the lip of a chalice and we feast in the presence of our enemies.

If being unchaste is defined by turning people and things into objects of lust, and if it is the debasement of our senses, then chastity is the virtue whereby we heal the senses and, instead of objectifying and selfish use of the created world, our chastened senses deliver us through the threshold of beauty into wholeness. The senses are lifted up and transfigured, unveiling intelligible forms that lead into the unity of God. (Read more.)

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Versailles Recreates Louis XVI's Private Bedroom

The King's State Bedroom, used for the lever and coucher rituals.

 From The Times:

A king might be expected to have rather an elaborate bedchamber. Louis XVI of France was no exception and had no fewer than three. Until now, visitors to the Palace of Versailles have only been able to view his grand public bedroom, where courtiers vied for the privilege of helping the king dress and undress as he rose in the morning and retired at night. His state bed was largely symbolic, used mainly for the lever and coucher rituals, which served as daily public reminders that all power, honours and favours were accorded by the monarch. However, the formal bedchamber was uncomfortable and cold in winter because it was too big to heat properly. Meanwhile, intimate moments with Marie Antoinette were reserved for the queen’s bedroom.

Instead, Louis XVI often slept alone in a separate and more modest bed in his private apartments that was also used by his grandfather before him, Louis XV. Conveniently, it had a stairway to the room of Louis XV’s official mistress, Madame du Barry, on the floor above. The four-poster bed in this room was destroyed during the French Revolution that toppled Louis XVI, who was guillotined in public in Place de la Révolution, now Place de la Concorde, in 1793. Restorers have spent years reconstructing it and the bed will go on public display at the palace next month. (Read more.)

 The private bedroom can be seen HERE.

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Reviving Gender Roles

 From The Catholic Herald:

Unmoored from Christianity, however, the belief that women ought to obey husbands will not help heal our broken culture. Advocating strict gender roles in reaction to wider culture runs the risk of fetishising the recovery of traditional roles. When we prize submission rather than common-sense dynamics, gender roles become exaggerated and unbalanced.

Indeed, bereft for at least a generation, if not more, of couples embracing traditional gender roles, some young people turn to online influencers as their guide. While we might occasionally find a drop of wisdom in the sea of online content, it requires a discerning scroller to separate the wheat from the chaff.

An affinity for Andrew Tate-inspired chauvinism must not be mistaken for authentic chivalry. Tate reduces women to biological function, stripped of dignity and respect. His vision of gender roles fuels a war of the sexes and does away with proper tradition: he supports women’s subservience, yet warns men against marriage. Tate’s pernicious but popular views epitomise the harm that comes with believing in women’s obedience when detached from a Christian theology underpinning the dynamics between the sexes. (Read more.)

A thoughtful environmentalism. From Word on Fire:

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII promulgated Rerum Novarum, an encyclical that would become the foundational document of Catholic social teaching. Right away, Leo condemns socialism as denying the natural right to private property. In his argument, he emphasizes property’s role in upholding the family: 

It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten; and, similarly, it is natural that he should wish that his children, who carry on, so to speak, and continue his personality, should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life. Now, in no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children by inheritance. 

Leo claims that, for the family to carry out its natural role, it requires not simply property but “productive property.” This statement critiques not only socialism but also modern capitalism. It implies that a family which lacks the ability to provide for itself through its own capital, whether that be a family business, a piece of land, or the tools and skills of craftsmanship, and must thereby rely solely on wage labor to support itself, will be hindered from fulfilling its natural responsibilities toward its children. (Read more.)

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The Case of Marko Rupnik: An Artist’s Perspective

 From Sisters of the Little Way:

The floor-to-ceiling mosaic chapel I walked into that day was designed by Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik. A former Jesuit, the priest now faces multiple accusations of sexual abuse from female religious, many of whom were involved in the creation of his artwork. After great public pressure to address the accusations of abuse, an independent tribunal at the Vatican has been set up to determine Rupnik’s fate.

Celebrated for many years, Rupnik and his team of artists at Centro Aletti sought to create contemporary liturgical art by blending Eastern and Western tradition. As an artist, I can understand why many were drawn to Rupnik’s work. His designs maintain an interesting consistency and coherence as well as a boldness in color and asymmetry that creates a sense of movement. Drawing the viewer into a cosmos of sacred symbols, his installations encompass entire environments. Scooping the viewer into a world of intentionality, his work reorients tradition in a way that feels authoritative and purposeful.

Centro Aletti, the community that assists in producing and installing Rupnik’s work, describes their artistic style by focusing on the themes of light, movement, and brightness. Their “new organic language” is free, they argue, from anything “gloomy, dark, oppressive, or depressing—it’s an explosion of light.” This aspect of his art always unsettled me; the abundance, brightness, and proliferation of his designs struck me as impersonal, more a product of capitalism’s influence on the Church than something sacred or precious. Overshadowed by revelations of abuse, the emphasis on explosive, bright light in Rupnik’s mosaics becomes not just uncomfortable but ironic. His artistic choices, unfortunately, make sense in terms of research on people who sexually abuse others, which often highlights the stage of “grooming” victims and communities by maintaining an image that comes across to others much like Rupnik’s icons—exceedingly “bright.” (Read more.)

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Pets in Prison

Madame Royale in the Garden of the Temple Prison

From History Today:

The humanity with which Richard and his wife had behaved towards the queen during her first month at the Conciergerie, and the suspicion of their having collaborated in the Carnation Affair, had led to their being suspended. By the time they were reinstated in November 1793, Made Antoinette had perished on the guillotine. Given their previous acts of kindness they may well have taken pity on her pug, a breed to which she was famously attached. Whether this dog was the original Thisbee or the pet of another victim which she had adopted is impossible to gage.

The reticence of Madame Royale on the subject of her mother's dog at the Temple also applies to her own spaniel, Mignon, which her brother, the Dauphin, gave her before being finally separated from his sister on October 7th, 1793. In all probability he retained some of his earlier ambivalence towards dogs. The existence of Mignon is well documented: the eye-witness Hue, refers to 'a dog which was long the sole witness of her sorrows', and the dog features in many engravings of Madame Royale after her release on December 19th, 1795. When Mignon died in 1801, having fallen from a balcony of the Poniatowski Palace in Warsaw, Louis XVIII wrote to the poet Jacques Delille, then in England, asking for some lines to inscribe on the dog's tomb. In Malheur et Pitie, Delille incorporated an elegy to Mignon:

Be then the subject and the honour of my poems, Oh you! who consoling your royal mistress, Until your last breath proved to her your kindness, Who beguiled her misfortunes, enlivened her prison; Oh of the last farewell of a brother, unique and tragic gift ...

 If the Dauphin was wary of dogs, he was unequivocal in his liking for birds. At the Tuileries in 1792 he took care of the aviary and of the ducks in the pond, he also raised rabbits. At the Temple in 1795, in response to the boy's entreaties, one of the towers was transformed into a pigeonry and his gaoler, Simon, had a birdcage built in one of the window-recesses, even removing a plank from the hoarded-up casement-window 'in order to provide the birds with light'. Bills for supplying 'bird-seed for the little Capet's pigeons' are still in evidence. The Commune baulked, how- ever, when presented with a demand for 300 livres from a clock-maker, Bourdier, whom Simon had commissioned to repair a very beautiful bird- cage which he had found in the furniture-repository of the Prince de Conti, the former proprietor of the Temple. Simon had undertaken to pay this sum out of his own pocket but, by the time the work was completed, he too had been guillotined. (Read entire post.)

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Who is Driving the Campaign Against the Order of Malta?

 From The Catholic Herald:

Somebody has got it in for the Order of Malta, the 900-year-old Catholic order which maintains hospitals and runs charitable activities all over the world. In Italy, a stream of very similar articles has been appearing, beginning with an attack last October in the left-wing newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, by a journalist writing as Thomas Mackinson. In recent weeks there has been an accelerating series of articles under different names, all of them repeating the same criticisms. People in the Order’s ambit are beginning to wonder who is putting them up to it and why.

The articles accuse the Order of betraying a reform intended by Pope Francis, who wanted to bring it more into line with the life of a full religious order. The criticisms highlight the role of the professed knights – those who take the traditional religious vows – and assert that these need to be made to live in community so as to be true religious. What the articles do not explain, however, and indeed seriously misrepresent, is how the Order came to be in its present position.

The background is the crisis precipitated among the knights by Pope Francis in January 2017, when he forced the Grand Master, the Englishman Matthew Festing, to resign. The result was effectively putting the Order into the hands of its German branch, under the Grand Chancellor (effectively prime minister of the Order) Albrecht von Boeselager. The German-backed faction consolidated their control in the five-yearly elections to the Order’s government held in 2019. Of the 18 names back by this camp, all but one were elected. (Read more.)

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Out on the Wily, Windy Moors...

One of the best reviews. From Charlotte Allen at Quillette:

It’s all R-rated sex and the characters keep their clothes on (their passion is too urgent for undressing), but Fennell makes up for that by having Heathcliff do quite a bit of licking—of Cathy’s face mostly, but also of her fingers after he catches her masturbating on the moors (which have undoubtedly seen worse over the millennia). It also rains constantly, drenching the lovers mid-coitus—another “primal” touch added by Fennell. The results are often risible. I enjoyed a good laugh when Heathcliff and Cathy sneak up to a hayloft and peep through the floorboards at two lusty young servants engaging in a bit of BDSM with the horse tack. And a reviewer for the Hollywood Reporter remarked that a shot of a shirtless, sweating Heathcliff stacking hay bales was “so close to gay farmer porn I giggled.” Just in case we haven’t got the idea, Fennel lays the sexual symbolism on extra thick during a scene in which Cathy cracks raw eggs onto Heathcliff’s bedsheets, and another in which we watch Cathy knead wet dough in slow-motion like she’s giving an erotic massage.

But for most of the film’s running time, I was bored. After about an hour, I began to wonder when, how, and if all of this was going to end. Part of the problem is that for all their strenuous exertions, there’s no chemistry between Elordi and Robbie at all. Elordi is good-looking and swarthy enough, but he doesn’t have the hammy charisma of, say, Laurence Olivier in William Wyler’s 1939 adaptation. It doesn’t help that, for the first third of Fennell’s movie before he makes his fortune and cleans himself up into Hot Mr. Darcy, Heathcliff resembles a stringy-haired, bushy-bearded hobo (like Charles Manson, but a lot taller). Whenever he kissed Margot Robbie, much less licked her fingers, I recoiled on her behalf.

And Margot Robbie is comically miscast as Cathy. She’s a rare blonde bombshell who can also act, and she’s a standout in spunky, high-spirited roles like Mrs Wolf of Wall Street, Tonya Harding, Sharon Tate, and Barbie. But she can’t do tragic period heroines well. Furthermore, Robbie was 34 when “Wuthering Heights” was shot, which is much too old to play the part of Cathy. In the novel, Cathy develops her crush on Heathcliff when she is fifteen, and dies aged just nineteen. This is not necessarily fatal to the adaptation—Merle Oberon was 27 when the Wyler version was shot—except that Robbie had just given birth to her son when filming began, and her postpartum-thickened waistline and maternal pheromones make it hard to take her moor-romping seriously.

Nor is Robbie well-served by the movie’s much-praised but actually ugly and unflattering costumes—the handiwork of Jacqueline Durran (who also designed the costumes for Barbie). Nearly every one of Robbie’s frocks features a tight-waisted bodice that makes her look like an opera coloratura instead of a Yorkshire ingenue, and a neckline (if it can be called that) cut to emphasise her heaving cleavage (I don’t know whether it was push-up bras or nursing, but Robbie isn’t that busty). On the Wuthering Heights farm, she sports a revealing Oktoberfest dirndl outfit that looks like it was copied from the St. Pauli Girl label. Once she marries into the conspicuously consuming Lintons, there must be a hundred different costume changes. But it’s all more of the same, except with even bigger puffed sleeves and skirts so voluminous that when Robbie is running across the moors in long shot, she looks like a bowling ball. A crimson bowling ball specifically, since Durran apparently decided that Cathy’s sensuality required her to almost always be dressed in red. Red garments with their bloody connotations seem to be de rigueur these days for the tempestuous heroines of female-directed movies (cf. Hamnet). 

There is no character development in Fennell’s film because there are hardly any characters. Fennell has ruthlessly stripped away most of the ones that Brontë created, including an entire second generation of Heathcliff’s and Cathy’s offspring (not by each other). She’s by no means the first Wuthering Heights adapter to lop off the novel’s second half; William Wyler did the same, as did many of those who followed him. After all, it’s not easy to make a movie version of a book work when the A-list female protagonist dies long before the story is over. But in Fennell’s version, the amputation means there’s hardly any story left at all. (Read more.)

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Essential Lavender

 

Meanwhile, in Frederick County... From Virginia at Chartreuse and Company:

Treasured Roots Farm is a multi-generational family farm right here in Frederick County, Maryland. Laura and her husband are building it with her parents and three young daughters. We bonded instantly over raising kids while building a business, homeschooling, and shared dreams of creating something lasting on family land. 

Laura, with her family and truffle-hunting puppy, on their farm in Frederick County, MD.

I have a deep love for design. Laura has a deep love for food. But at the heart of it, we share the same passion for family and creating beautiful things that invite people in. Things that feel like home. 

In addition to lavender, Treasured Roots Farm is also home to a young truffle orchard and honeybees. They have a vision to create products that are meant to be used and enjoyed, not saved for a special occasion. Elevated ingredients that are simple, honest, and really well done. (Read more.)

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