I remained in great desolation when I felt myself parted from my aunt; I did not know what had become of her, and no one would tell me. I passed a very cruel night: and yet, though I was very uneasy about her fate, I was far from thinking I should lose her in a few hours. Sometimes I persuaded myself that they would send her out of France; then, when I recalled the manner in which they had taken her away, my fears revived.Share
From The Federalist:
The reason is simple: Republicans were told that supporting same-sex marriage meant supporting their gay brother, daughter, coworker, or friend. They were told that opposing it meant they hated gay people, and many bought it. If supporting same-sex marriage was simply the price of treating loved ones with dignity and respect, they were willing to pay it.
What they were not told was that same-sex marriage would victimize kids. No sooner had gay marriage been achieved on the grounds that marriage had nothing to do with children than activists, judges, and lawmakers turned around and demanded parenthood too.
Republicans have no interest in persecuting their gay friends and family members. What they reject is the claim that adult equality requires making children lose their mother or father. And after a decade of watching the consequences unfold, it has become obvious that “equal marriage” was never just about adult “rights.” It was about parenthood and children. (Read more.)
From Archaeology News:
The study appeared in the journal Manuscript Studies. Researchers examined 91 parchment manuscripts preserved at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The collection included religious texts, scrolls, legal records, fragments, and manuscripts written in several languages. The documents came from England, different parts of Europe, the Middle East, and northeastern Africa.
For more than a thousand years, parchment served as the main writing material across Europe and much of the Mediterranean region. Unlike paper, parchment came from animal hides, usually sheep, goats, or cattle. Millions of parchment documents still survive in libraries and museums today. Researchers involved in the study describe those collections as a large biological archive preserved across centuries.
Scientists faced a major obstacle for years. Traditional ancient DNA studies often require researchers to cut, scrape, or drill into material samples. Archivists and conservation experts rarely allow such methods on rare manuscripts because even small damage matters when dealing with cultural heritage objects.
The team used a different technique. Researchers gently rubbed the parchment with small cytology brushes, the same type often used in medical testing. The brushes collected tiny traces of cells from the surface without leaving visible damage.
After sampling, scientists extracted DNA from the brushes and analyzed the material with next-generation sequencing technology. These sequencing methods work well with old and fragmented DNA, which often survives in poor condition inside ancient material. (Read more.)
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| The Dauphin Louis-Charles (Louis XVII) and his sister Madame Royale. |
By the time Marie-Thérèse was released in December 1795, rumors had already begun about the fate of Louis XVII. In what has been dubbed “the fauxdauphinomanie of the early nineteenth century,” dozens of fraudsters attempted to adopt the identity of the lost dauphin over the coming decades. While some of their stories were ludicrous, the hounding she suffered must have been unbearable.
The most successful amongst them was Jean-Marie Hervagault, who, inspired by a book published in 1800 entitled Le Cimetière de la Madeleine , copied the plot and claimed to be the lost boy-king rescued from the Temple. Meanwhile, Karl Wilhelm Naundorff claimed to have been smuggled out in a basket. His tomb in Delft was inscribed Louis XVII, roi de France et de Navarre . There were even allegations that the young king had been rescued during a royalist plot and was living in the New World. To that end Reverend Eleazer Williams, a missionary of Native American descent in Wisconsin, somehow convinced several people that he was in fact the lost king. (Read more.)
When Louis XVII died in the Temple Prison, there was no public funeral and his body was not publicly displayed. Not even his sister, who was kept in the same prison, was allowed to see him. From History:
“There is no real and legal certainty that the son of Louis XVI is dead,” wrote the Austrian diplomat, Baron von Thugut. “His death, up to now, has no other proof than the announcement in the Moniteur, along with a report drawn up on the orders of the brigands of the Convention and by people whose deposition is based on the fact that they were presented with the body of a dead child who they were told was the son of Louis Capet.”
According to Cadbury, the mystery surrounding the “orphan of the tower” led to 500 books on the subject and an Edwardian-era monthly journal. The first book, a fictional account called The Cemetery of Madeline, about Louis-Charles’s supposed escape from the tower, came out only a few years after his death. Memoirs were also written by claimants themselves, including the Historical Account of the Life of Louis XVII, dictated by an illiterate, drunken vagabond named Charles de Navarre. Even Mark Twain got into the act, writing of a transient pretending to be “the little boy dolphin” in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The first claimant appeared in Châlons-sur-Marne only three years after the Dauphin’s death. The charming, handsome teenager had been found wandering the countryside and put in the local prison. For months he refused to say who he was, and then said he was a member of a non-existent ducal house. Enamored villagers became convinced the seemingly aristocratic young man was Louis-Charles, and the teen did not disabuse them of this notion. (Read more.)
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From Welcome to Absurdistan:
ShareWhat we are looking at on the streets of Europe, the U.K. and in the Republic of Ireland, is a revival of the culture that was deliberately replaced by a fully evil ideology. It is my opinion that this will not result in violence. Important as the rallies and protests are, what is happening is a massive cultural retrenchment based on the founding of America.
It is why there are American flags at the marches, and why so many wear a MAGA hat. MAGA is world-wide now, it will take over the entire world, including China, including Russia. Going forward in the next few years, there may be scraps on the U.K. streets with Muslim gangs but if - as Muslims did last week in England - go hunting British men with baseball bats, they will swiftly learn how Britain conquered the known world with muskets. There is simply no force on earth that can fight it. The ferocity is based in the thousand-year heritage of the northern clans and it has no match on earth, in this or any other century.
And it transferred to America slowly, relentlessly, during the 18th century, as the British oligarchs and their bankers - essentially the same vicious bastards as the ones exploiting us today - sent off all their unwanted to the colonies. These men, their character marked by their ancestral memory, formed the base of the American army and the American economy today. It is they that all the skanks and skunks, the army of migrants, “legal” immigrants, filthy Marxists, and our wretched socialist/globalist intelligentsia, who have never earned an honest dollar, are stealing from. How much? Estimated by Scott Bessent to be $1 trillion annually.
And now, today, they, we know it. We know we are human cattle being farmed by the worst people on earth, all of whom are fully, without mitigation, evil.
But they overplayed their chaos monkey hand. We are sick of violence and emotionality. They, these kids coming up, want stern common sense. They want God. They want their lives to have meaning. They want their time to be sacred again. (Read more.)
From The Seventeenth Century Lady:
Not a Chronos title, but reviewing Gerard Fitzgibbon’s Kingdom Overthrown: Ireland and the Battle for Europe 1688–1691 for the Irish Examiner also profoundly broadened my understanding of the 1600s, revealing it as an era of international conflict, sectarian violence, and colonial ambition. Through accounts of the Williamite-Jacobite wars in Ireland, one witnesses how Catholic and Protestant divisions were not theological disagreements at all, but a means to determine land ownership, political rights, loyalty, and often life itself. To a budding novelist, the story created a rich framework for writing about conflict. Accounts of the battles of the Boyne, Aughrim, and Limerick reveal not heroic romantic warfare but exhaustion, famine, mud, terror, and brutality. Fitzgibbon’s descriptions of soldiers dying slowly from musket wounds, starvation spreading after scorched-earth campaigns, and divided leadership among the Jacobites all help strip away modern romanticism about war which I strive to bring to the novel.
Recurring truths about the 17th century kept popping up. Reputation could destroy lives. Religion shaped identity and loyalty. War was brutal and constant. Empire displaced entire populations. Survival depended on adaptability. People feared God, plague, famine, and political betrayal. Honour mattered. Bloodlines mattered. Religious identity mattered. Death was common and often sudden.
Having been provided with the building blocks of a believable historical world, dynastic ambition, war, exile, colonial expansion, and survival inside brutally unstable political systems, slowly my novel started taking shape. The sensory details contained within works I’d read were equally valuable to help me write about the texture of daily life… velvet gowns, sweat beneath brocade, banquets, candle wax. (Read more.)
The assassination of Buckingham in 1628 saved the marriage. Charles and Henrietta Maria found solace together and eight children were born between 1629 and 1644, a family famously celebrated in the portraits of Van Dyck. She developed into a discerning patron of the arts, an enthusiastic developer of houses and gardens, a confident participant in court politics and a committed patron of the Catholic cause in England. King and queen commissioned and participated in court masques that held up their mutual love as a model for the harmony of a wise king and his ordered realm. As tensions grew over Charles’s religious and fiscal policies across his three kingdoms, tensions that would lead in 1637 into a revolt in Scotland, his more anxious subjects saw in such productions evidence not of harmony, but of papist conspiracy at the heart of the court and of the queen at its head. Her elaborate baroque chapel, built by Inigo Jones at Somerset House, her cultivation of continental sacred music, her squad of French Capuchin priests, her encouragement of noble lady converts to Rome and her welcome to papal agents at court all fitted the picture.
As Charles turned reluctantly to his English Parliament to resolve the deepening crisis, criticism of the queen mounted. It was in part fear for her safety that led them to leave London in January 1642 and soon afterwards she crossed to Holland. She was both escorting her daughter to a marriage into the House of Orange and looking for support for her husband’s cause. Early in 1643, she sailed to Bridlington and set herself up at York, helping to direct the royal armies in the north, but her aim was always to re-join the king, who had made Oxford his base and Christ Church his home. Already in February she was writing to him, ‘I am in the greatest impatience in the world to join you’.
By mid-March 1643, rooms at Merton were being prepared for the queen and a route cleared between their host colleges so that king and queen could readily meet. She finally arrived on 14 July, entering the city by coach. There were speeches of welcome and the university authorities presented the queen with gloves and books of poems. Then she walked with Charles from Christ Church through one of the Canon’s gardens and ‘Corpus Christi backeside’ to Merton, where she settled into the Warden’s Lodgings at the junction of Front Quad and Fellows’ Quad. These were conveniently vacant as the Warden, Nathaniel Brent, had fled to London and sided with Parliament, which was by then busy trying to impeach the queen as well as to besiege her husband.
Henrietta Maria already knew Oxford. When she and Charles visited in August 1636, four-year-old Anthony Wood, the great chronicler of 17th-century Oxford who grew up in Postmasters Hall, saw them and remembered it for the rest of his life. Indeed, she already knew Merton, for Warden Brent had entertained the royal couple in 1629. Welcomed to the College with an oration by James Marsh, a long-serving fellow, they spent an hour in the long gallery that stretched from Brent’s lodgings along the top of Fellows’ Quad, enjoying afternoon sweetmeats.
She made her bedroom in Brent’s dining room, now the Breakfast Room, accessible from the stately carved staircase that Brent had just had built, while her entourage occupied the Queen’s Room over the Fitzjames Arch and adjoining areas. They included several servants who died at Oxford and were buried in the College Chapel – Richard North, Ellis Roberts, Mary Skevington – and the widows of aristocratic royalist captains, such as Lady Cobham and the Countess of Northampton. The Chapel hosted her Catholic services and at least one fellow, Dr John Greaves, the Savilian Professor of Astronomy, was later accused of spending far too much time with her Capuchin confessors. (Read more.)
From the BBC:
A rare large gold coin from the reign of Charles I has fetched £54,560 at auction. The coin, known as the Triple Unite, was minted in Oxford in 1643 during the English Civil War and had the value of 60 shillings, or three pounds. It depicts the King holding a sword and an olive branch, possibly signifying his desire for peace. It sold earlier at auction house Dix Noonan Webb as part of the Micheal Gietzelt Collection. (Read more.)
From AND Magazine:
ShareWe have imposed a naval blockade of Iran. In the wake of the imposition of that blockade, Pakistan announced the opening of six land routes into Iran from its territory. Vessels now dock in Pakistan, and containers are offloaded there for overland transit into Iran. It’s a bit more tedious and labor-intensive than simply sailing into a port on the Persian Gulf, and overland transport does not substitute for super tankers when it comes to oil.
For pretty much anything else you want to send to Iran, it works just fine. We here at AND have documented time and again how the Chinese are continuing to provide the Iranians with everything they need to build drones and missiles. Are we sure they would not use the same mechanism to help the Iranians across the finish line to nuclear weapons capability?
In April 2026, Gwadar Port in Pakistan processed around 11,000 standard shipping containers. For context, the same port handled roughly 8,300 containers throughout all of 2025. A large proportion of these containers came from China. Gwadar sits roughly 400 kilometers from the Strait of Hormuz. It has a deepwater port that allows large cargo vessels to dock. Anything could come from China via Gwadar and then be trucked into Iran. We have done nothing to interdict any of the major overland routes.
Even if we think Beijing is too sober-minded to arm Iran with nuclear weapons, are we sure North Korea would not? What about Pakistan, or for that matter, some cabal of radical Islamic Pakistan generals in Islamabad?
North Korea has a well-documented history of assisting Iran, primarily in ballistic missile technology and related military cooperation, dating back to the 1980s. This relationship is supported by U.S. intelligence assessments, UN reports, congressional research, and open-source analyses.
North Korea operates sophisticated, long-standing transnational networks for smuggling weapons, dual-use technology, and related materiel to evade UN sanctions and generate revenue. These networks rely on front companies, diplomats, intelligence operatives, ship-to-ship transfers, and third-country facilitators. (Read more.)
From The Collector:
In his short 24-year life, Baldwin IV celebrated many victories against his long-standing rival, Saladin. But his victory at the Battle of Montgisard is undoubtedly his most famous victory. Still recalled by witnesses 80 years later, Baldwin faced impossible odds. Yet his courage and fortitude ensured the 16-year-old Leper King delivered a crushing blow to his opponent.
King Baldwin IV came to the throne in 1174, a mere 13-year-old boy following the death of his father, King Amalric. Like the other Crusader States, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was a frontier kingdom, surrounded by hostile Muslim enemies. Warfare and conflict were a fundamental part of life, and kings were required to lead their troops into battle regularly.
King Amalric had offered the kingdom strong leadership and had been, in many ways, an ideal king. The accession of a boy untested in warfare was a huge blow to the kingdom. But youth was not the only hindrance to Baldwin’s reign. Shortly after his coronation, Baldwin was diagnosed with leprosy, his illness discovered by his tutor and friend, the chronicler William, Archbishop of Tyre. (Read more.)
The Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Also from The Collector:
ShareCrippled by leprosy since his teens, Baldwin IV had been a surprisingly effective king. His illness elicited compassion from his subjects, and their loyalty to their sick king was a key factor in the success of his kingship. In 1185, Baldwin finally succumbed to his illness and died. He was buried close to his father in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Within two years of Baldwin’s death, the kingdom he had striven so hard to defend had fallen into the hands of his longstanding Muslim rival, Saladin. Events leading up to the Leper King’s death help explain why, after his passing, the kingdom fell, and the city was lost to Christendom forever.
Baldwin IV, the Leper King who defied a death sentence, was diagnosed shortly after his coronation in 1174. It was understood that he would not father any children to succeed him. His elder sister, Sybilla, and his younger half-sister, Isabella, were therefore central to the succession.
Sybilla married William of Montferrat in 1177, and by him she bore a son named Baldwin. Montferrat died shortly before the child’s birth, and Sybilla later married a second husband, Guy of Lusignan. By 1183, Baldwin became too ill to rule and needed a regent to govern alongside him. Guy, as his brother-in-law and the husband of the heiress to the kingdom, was the natural choice. Guy proved to be a poor military commander whom the nobles refused to follow, and Baldwin removed him from his post within weeks of his appointment.
Guy’s unpopularity meant that the prospect of him succeeding to his brother-in-law’s throne was deeply contentious. Most vocal amongst those in opposition to Guy was Raymond III of Tripoli, a cousin of Baldwin IV and a man who served as his regent on several occasions. To ensure Guy would not succeed him and thus tear the kingdom apart, Baldwin attempted to have Guy’s marriage to Sybilla annulled. But Guy’s disobedience, along with Sybilla’s refusal to leave the husband she loved, thwarted Baldwin’s plans. (Read more.)
The hands of DivinityShare
Louis, sends you the crown
The scepter, the sword, the law gives to you
But it is your virtues and your kindness
Which assures you the throne in our hearts.
From Todd Starnes:
ShareFour Republican senators joined Democrats to kill the bill – Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine. Tuberville blasted his colleagues on social media. He said it is beyond embarrassing. He said the four rogue Republicans betrayed their constituents and they are accomplices in the Democrat Party’s Illegals First agenda. It’s not the first time this week that Republicans have gone rogue in the Senate or the House.Eighteen Republicans broke with President Trump and sided with Democrats to pass a massive Ukraine spending bill.
The legislation would provide more than $1 billion in security and reconstruction aid. And it would authorize loans of up to $8 billion for Ukraine’s defense operations. That’s your tax money. Every single penny.
That money could’ve been used to make sure your neigbhorhood is safe. They could’ve used that cash to stop the mobs of teenagers from looting your small business. Instead, the Republicans gave your hard-earned tax money to Kiev. And just a few days ago House Republicans colluded with Democrats to pass a symbolic measure to stop President Trump from taking further military action in Iran.
Recent polling data has the congressional approval rating hovering around 13 percent to 27 percent. I’m not a big polling guy – but it would be stupid not to pay at least a little attention to the mood of the electorate. (Read more.)
From Andrea Zuvich:
ShareMy husband surprised me with a trip to Blenheim Palace last Saturday, May 30th 2026. Now, for those of you who are new to this blog, it is a very special place for me. I hadn’t been to Blenheim since 2023, and the iconic front of the building is currently heavily scaffolded, which is likely necessary, but there were still some disappointed tourists. Vanbrugh 300 The Blueprints of Power Exhibition from Saturday, 14th February 2026- 31 May 2026, is part of Vanbrugh 300, commemorating the life of the incredible Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), who was not only a brilliant architect, but a playwright of notable Restoration works, ‘The Relapse’ from 1696 and ‘The Provoked Wife’ from 1697. Vanbrugh 300 is being recognised by several historic venues, including Blenheim Palace, Castle Howard, Grimsthorpe Castle, Kimbolton Castle, Seaton Delaval Hall, and Stowe Hall.
The Great Hall is currently being worked on, so the ceiling is not visible due to scaffolding, but they have added a fake copy of that ceiling, so it still looks good. This room had lots of information about the making of Blenheim and displays of the kinds of tools which were used, including this mid-to-late-17th-century folding rule: (Read more.)
From OSV:
ShareA French blockbuster is coming to theatres in the U.S. just in time for the consecration of the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and premieres for U.S. audiences in June.
Released in France on Oct. 1, 2025, the docudrama “Sacré Coeur,” subtitled “His Reign Will Have No End” focuses on the apparitions of Jesus Christ to a French Visitation religious sister, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, showing his heart to her between 1673 and 1675, in Paray-le-Monial, in the French region of Burgundy.
“Sacré Coeur” will be shown in theaters June 9-11 and June 14 via KREA Film-Makers, Saje Distribution and Fathom Entertainment. Tickets and theater information is at sacredheartfilm.us. (Read more.)
From Man of Steele:
Yesterday I published my own piece on Henry Nowak, arguing that white guilt has created a racial double standard in Western justice. Daily Mail then asked me to write about the case for a UK audience, and I took the opportunity. The tragedy here for me is that if race had never been woven into policing practices as a form of social justice, we almost certainly would not be in this position. Instead, years of “anti-racism” training and race‑action plans have raised a deeper question: why would anyone want a society in which race shapes how individuals are treated, especially when it is the state doing the treating? The police officers should have listened to Henry, treated him as the individual he was, and used those critical moments to try to save him, not to handcuff him.
From Nature:
This paper tracks long-distance migration on the Pacific coast that began no later than the thirteenth century AD. Genome-wide data for 21 sampled individuals from the lower and middle Chincha Valley of southern Peru show shared ancestry with groups 700 km to the north. A large-scale polity known as the Chincha Kingdom controlled the Chincha Valley from the thirteenth century until the fifteenth century, when it fell to the Inca Empire. The earliest migrants have unadmixed ancestry, whereas in subsequent generations, intermarriage resulted in admixtures from neighboring coastal areas. Relatives buried together in a family ossuary practiced consanguineous endogamy. We build a generation-scale Bayesian model informed by an aDNA-based family tree and individual calibration curves for estimated proportions of marine diet, addressing long-standing difficulties with temporal precision on the Pacific coast due to the marine reservoir effect and uncertainty inherent in estimating marine consumption based on δ15N. These data demonstrate population continuity from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, coinciding with persistent traditions of cranial modification and postmortem red pigment application. We reveal close-knit and far-reaching coastal interaction networks that shaped the sociopolitical landscape encountered by Inca emissaries before they integrated these communities into their empire. (Read more.)
From The War for Christendom:
In 1264, Pope Urban IV issued the Papal Bull Transiturus de Hoc Mundo, promulgating to the Latin Rite the Solemn Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, to be celebrated on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday. Around this same time, Rudolf the eighth Count of Hapsburg aided and protected a priest bringing the Viaticum to a dying farmer, giving the priest his horse and guiding him across a raging torrent, walking bareheaded. The priest then prophesied that the humble Count and his descendents would receive the Imperium of the Holy Roman Empire.
This veneration of the Holy Eucharist was continued by all the descendants of the Noble House, and the Feast of Corpus Christi in the Hapsburg realms became second only to the Solemn Feasts of Easter and Christmas. The Family indeed owed all to Rudolf’s great devotion to the Holy Eucharist, and the special Eucharist blessing bestowed on him, thus it was most fitting that the Feast of Christ’s Body should become the greatest feast of the Empire. So long as the Family remained devoted to the Cross and the Eucharist, God would bless and protect them (and He still does, even though they have been cast from the throne).
First in the great procession in the Imperial City of Vienna came three priests in splendid vestments like heralds to the city. Then came the Court officials in full Court dress, and the Court Clergy vested in gold and white vestments, followed by dignitaries of every rank. Before the gilded canopy marched the Archdukes of the House, carrying candles, and the acolytes carrying forward the Cross, the golden banners swaying in the wind, the swinging thuribles sending into the air clouds of incense, and the ever ringing bells. The great canopy itself was carried by four noble chamberlains in Imperial livery, upheld over the Hofburg Parish Priest who held up in benediction the golden Monstrance with radiating rays like the sun, in which resided the truly present Most Sacred Body of the Son of God, while the Emperor of Christendom walked behind bareheaded and flanked by the Imperial Guard, humbly worshiping his Divine King. (Read more.)
From Daniel McCarthy at the New York Post:
ShareA hoax costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and incites arson attacks against dozens of churches. This time, however, it’s not the latest headline out of Minnesota — look a little further north. In 2021, at a time when media throughout the western world were still in a state of high agitation after the killing of George Floyd, Canadian outlets picked up on a story too sensational not to be true:
Hundreds of indigenous First Nations children had been buried in unmarked graves at residential schools run by the Catholic Church in British Columbia. The Kamloops Indian Band sent around a press release that “confirmed” it. The statement claimed the remains of 215 children had been found with the help of an expert using ground-penetrating radar.
“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify,” said the band’s chief, Rosanne Casimir.
“Some were as young as three years old,” she continued, asserting that “the final resting place of these children” was in the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Only it wasn’t — no human remains have been found at Kamloops.
And the media that fanned the flames of the story is finally admitting it.
Even now Canada’s biggest daily paper, The Globe and Mail, phrases its retraction in cagey terms.
“There has been no public confirmation of the discovery of any human remains,” the paper conceded on Saturday.
Yet that funny phrasing leaves one wondering, is there private confirmation of human remains — another “knowing,” perhaps?
The Globe and Mail editorial, titled “There is no reconciliation without truth,” is a masterpiece of embarrassed equivocation, lamenting conditions at Canada’s residential schools of First Nations children and even insisting that the absence of bodies “does not mean children did not die there” before finally, eight paragraphs into the story, taking a smidgen of responsibility.
“The media, including the The Globe and Mail, did not initially scrutinize, much less challenge” the story.
“The initial headlines and stories in the media simply stated as fact that the remains of 215 children had been found. Many of those early stories, including in this newspaper, made references to ‘mass graves’,” a phrase that went beyond even Chief Casimir’s claims.
Yet right after the admission of its failures, the paper’s editorialists wistfully speculate, “Perhaps it will be proven, some day, that there are hundreds of unmarked graves at Kamloops” — as if the error here was just in being a little too hasty to declare what will sooner or later turn out to be true. (Read more.)
From The Conversation:
ShareCurating Living by the Rule: Contemporary Meets Medieval, we were aware that the idea of “living by the rule” might sound off-putting to some visitors – too close to simply doing what you’re told. It also sits uneasily with the individualism of our age, in which meaning is often framed in terms of personal fulfilment or even “optimisation”. Rules, by contrast, point to our dependence on others and the obligations that come with it.
It is important, though, not to confuse Benedict’s “Rule” with modern laws or regulations. The term comes from the Greek kanon, via the Latin regula, meaning a pattern, model or yardstick: something to guide judgment rather than dictate behaviour. Unlike modern faith in impersonal rules, Benedict’s approach is strikingly flexible. Nothing is so fixed that it cannot be adapted, or even set aside, in light of different people and circumstances.
Translating these ideas into an exhibition was far from straightforward. (Read more.)
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| From Laura (1944) |
From CrimeReads:
When I first heard Sting’s lyrics to “Every Breath You Take,” the song’s chilling, threatening tone made me genuinely uneasy. Was someone watching me? Should I be looking over my shoulder? It seemed he had written a definitive stalker’s anthem. And yet, as unsettling as it was, the song was the sole number one hit for The Police and won a Grammy award for Song of the Year in 1984.
Are we obsessed with obsession? Possibly. Obsessive characters abound in creative works, and as I thought about it, several of my favorite films immediately came to mind. Characters with unrelenting fixations drive the disturbing plots of the following classic noir or noir-ish films, all craftily adapted from popular novels.
I recall reading Daphne du Maurier’s suspenseful masterpiece, Rebecca, in high school. I became immediately intrigued by the tangled tale of “the first Mrs. de Winter,” the beautiful and captivating Rebecca. Presumed to have died in a tragic boating accident near Manderley, her husband’s family’s estate on the southern shore of England, she reaches out from her watery grave to extend a forceful hold on the lives of those who loved or hated her. Her former temperamental husband Maxim, the naively insecure “second Mrs. de Winter,” and Manderley’s sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, are all trapped, unable to escape from Rebecca’s manipulative grasp, as if she were stalking and haunting them from the afterlife.
And Mrs. Danvers, a name that has become synonymous with wickedness in film lore, is especially vulnerable. “Danny” professes that she would do anything for her former mistress, and her unrelenting obsession ultimately leads to devastation and her own demise. Hitchcock’s Gothic film noir adaptation, riveting and true to du Maurier’s novel, won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Cinemaphotography (Black and White). (Read more.)
From Creative Destruction Media:
Over a century ago, Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, openly stating then that the goals were to “reduce the birth rates of black and brown babies as well as defectives.” Those goals were erased from the organization’s history long ago, but that was the original intent. For decades, abortion was under the jurisdiction of state laws, until it wasn’t.
In the early 1970’s, a case (Roe v Wade) came before the Supreme Court regarding the right of a woman to have an abortion. The court found that a woman had a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th amendment, up until fetus viability. The ruling overturned state laws governing abortion and nationalized the issue. The ruling supercharged Planned Parenthood and other resources as abortion services greatly expanded across the country.
In 2022, the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs v Jackson opinion, concluding that the US Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. The ruling found that state governments had the authority to regulate any aspect of abortion not preempted by federal law, as “direct control of medical practice in the states is beyond the power of the federal government.” In effect, the Supreme Court found it had no jurisdiction on the matter of abortion. (Read more.)
From Sister Armelle:
ShareIcons speak to faith.
How?
They are theology in lines and colors.
It is not for “entertainment” or emotional support.
Icons are “dogmatic” before being esthetic (even though the esthetic part is important because truth is beautiful).
They show the dogmas of the faith visually and contemplatively. It is why an iconographer should be a theologian more than an artist. It is why also an icon is built on tradition more than creativity.
Iconography uses the langage of symbols to convey and mediates the truths of faith.
It is a symbolic art and not a realistic art, because it represents spiritual realities beyond the natural world.
Like Jesus when he was explaining the mystery of the Kingdom of God through parables and allegories.
Because the “Sacred”, the “Holy”, the “Spiritual’ is beyond our natural grasp, we need symbols to bridge the gap, to reveal and at the same times conceal them.
To reveal and conceal. To make present, represent, but also to separate, to distinguish, to set apart from what is natural and visible. To keep the transcendant aspect when revealing the immanent gift.
Iconography is primarily a spiritual art, a contemplative art that demands and foster a deep spiritual life. (Read more.)
From Only Natural Diamonds:
ShareAccording to Daughters, the Danish Crown Jewels came very close to taking the top spot because they are among the clearest examples of uninterrupted monarchical continuity in Europe. The collection remains remarkably intact and exceptionally well preserved, offering a rare glimpse into how royal regalia can survive centuries of political and cultural change while remaining deeply tied to national identity.
Daughters notes that the Danish Crown Jewels are especially significant because of their extraordinary continuity and preservation. “The British and Danish crown jewels are perhaps the strongest examples of monarchical continuity in Europe,” he says. While Britain’s regalia reflects both continuity and reinvention following the destruction of the original Crown Jewels during the English Civil War, Denmark’s collection “has remained almost entirely intact,” creating what he describes as “a rare sense of unbroken cultural identity.”
He also explained that Denmark’s regalia functions differently than many other royal collections in Europe. “In Denmark, the regalia feels more closely tied to national heritage and cultural continuity, serving as an enduring public symbol of Danish history,” he says. That connection between the monarchy and national identity has helped transform the jewels from historical treasures into living cultural artefacts still woven into modern royal life. (Read more.)
From Tierney's Real News:
SharePresident Trump has endorsed Steve Hilton and Hilton asked Bianco to drop out so that a Republican can advance to the general. He is refusing. The latest polls show there is NO WAY for Bianco to win yet he refuses to drop out and support Hilton so that he CAN!
Why Bianco won’t drop out is the real question. He trails badly and has no path to win, yet he stays in and splits conservative votes — exactly what Democrats need for their “doomsday scenario” to play out.
Why? Because Bianco is another Koch Libertarian 3rd party ringer - a Democrat in disguise - who wants to split the vote and help Democrats win! His actions PROVE THAT. Bianco is on camera stating he’s for amnesty! There’s no denying it!
BIANCO: “California is one of the largest immigrant populations in the country and illegal immigrant populations in the country. But we have to address it. We have to make it right. Whether they came across illegally into the country — legally or not — is irrelevant, because we allowed it to happen. So now we just have to fix it. Secure our borders. Don’t let it happen again. And now we have to give a path to citizenship to the ones that are here.” (Read more.)
From Chronicles:
ShareOne day in the 1960s, in a forest in Tanzania, a 26-year-old British ethologist watched a chimpanzee she had nicknamed “David Greybeard” digging termites out of a mound with a stick. Birds had long been known to use “tools”—Egyptian vultures drop stones onto eggs to crack them open, and Darwin had seen finches on the Galapagos Islands using cactus spines to pry insects out of wood. But Jane Goodall was astounded to see a mammal doing something similar. It strengthened in her mind something that had often been surmised—that chimpanzees were proto-humans, us as we used to be millions of years before we diverged into Australopithecus, Neanderthal, and, finally, Sapiens.
Humans have always been fascinated by primates. African animists worshipped gorillas as gods, the Dayaks of Borneo saw orangutans as near-kin (“orangutan” means “people of the forest”), and Westerners encountering primates after the 16th century embraced them as pets and circus animals. We would later derive endless entertainment from the likes of King Kong, Tarzan, Planet of the Apes, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Linnaean taxonomy and Darwinian evolution can even be seen as systematizations of an ancient obsession with the “wild men” of legends—hirsute forest-dwellers both disconcertingly familiar and dangerously fey.
Goodall had been a student of the paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, originator of the “out of Africa” theory of human evolution, who was likewise fascinated by the great apes. Other 20th-century influencers famously interested in apes included Robert Yerkes, the once-celebrated psychologist who devised intelligence tests for the U.S. Army, and whose 1925 book Almost Human recounted his delight in the company of Prince Chim, an “intellectual genius” of a bonobo, with whom he shared his New Hampshire home.
Growing liberalization and secularization of thought over the 20th century would encourage new ways of viewing ourselves and animals. By 1965, Goodall was on the cover of National Geographic, celebrating the chimpanzee as an almost-person—no mere bundle of Brownian instincts, but a distant cousin, whose obvious skeletal similarities were mirrored by humanlike behavioral traits. (Goodall herself was careful never to read too much into chimpanzees’ apparent “emotions,” however.) (Read more.)
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| Madame Elisabeth, Dauphin Louis-Charles, Marie-Antoinette, Louis XVI and Madame Royale assisting at Mass at the Tuileries |
Such dislike, though, would be a mistake, because June has a much older and worthier title: the Month of the Sacred Heart. Not well known outside Catholic circles, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is in one sense as old as Christianity, when St. Longinus’ lance pierced it and out flowed blood and water, prefiguring Baptism and the Eucharist. In the Patristic and medieval eras, saints and mystics wrote of it, and of the salvific nature of the wounds and precious blood of Christ. In the latter period, these were ever more bound up with the growth of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament (and miracles arising therefrom) and the stories of the Holy Grail. It was under the banner of the Five Wounds that the Pilgrimage of Grace marched out against Henry VIII in defence of the Old Religion.
Our current version, though, dates back to the 17th century, with the revelations of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. While bound up with making reparation to the Saviour who loves us so much, and suffered death to redeem us, the devotion from the beginning has had a social aspect. One of the requests made to St. Margaret Mary by Jesus was that Louis XIV consecrate his kingdom to the Sacred Heart and place the emblem on his flags and battle colours. This he did not do. But the devotion was taken up by many other royals: Queen Henriette Marie, consort of England’s Charles I; her daughter-in-law, Marie of Modena, James II’s queen; King Augustus I of Poland; King Philip V of Spain; Louis XV’s consort, Queen Marie Leczinska; her father, King Stanislaus of Poland, and her son, the Dauphin Louis; King Augustus III of Poland; Elector Maximilian III of Bavaria; SG Madame Elisabeth of France; her brother, King Louis XVI, who consecrated France privately to the Sacred Heart, and vowed to so publicly if he regained his throne; Maria, Queen of Portugal; King Charles X of France; Henri V, de jure king of France; SG King Francesco II of the Two Sicilies; Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie; Bl. Emperor-King Karl of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, SG Zita; King Alfonso XIII of Spain; Albert I, King of the Belgians; Carlist heir Alfonso Carlos I; and a host of others down to the present.
Such counterrevolutionaries as the Vendeens, the Tiroleans under Andreas Hofer, the Spanish Carlists, and the Mexican Cristeros adopted it as their special badge. Garcia Moreno, president of Ecuador, consecrated his country to the Sacred Heart with its bishops in 1873. Following this, several Latin American countries began performing this national consecration: El Salvador (1874), Venezuela (1900), Colombia (1902), Nicaragua (1920), Costa Rica (1921), Brazil (1922), and Bolivia (1925). In Europe, Ireland’s bishops followed suit in 1873, Spain in 1919, and Poland in 1920. Across Europe and the world, shrines were dedicated in honour of the Sacred Heart—most notably that of Montmartre in Paris. In architecture alone, the Sacred Heart devotion has given the world a priceless treasure to be proud of, to say nothing of the stalwart folk who rallied around the emblem in defence of Christendom’s soul. (Read more.)
Once again, we try to make it clear that Marie-Antoinette never made a comment about cake, brioche, etc. And she was not a spendthrift but probably spent less than other queens, and definitely less than all the mistresses. From All That's Interesting:
ShareSome historians have suggested that revolutionaries caught wind of the quote “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” from Rousseau’s writings, then falsely credited it to their despised queen as a form of propaganda. But even this does not hold up to modern scrutiny.
The earliest known source that connected the phrase to Marie Antoinette was the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. In an 1843 issue of the journal Les Guêpes, Karr wrote that he found the quote originally in a “book dated 1760,” which he said meant that the rumor about Marie Antoinette must have been false, as she’d have been about five years old at the time the book was published. So, it’s very possible that the French citizens were indeed circulating the propaganda against the queen, though clearly not everyone was buying it.
Why, then, has the misquote carried on for nearly 300 years?
“It did not come to be misattributed to Marie Antoinette during the 18th century, but during the Third French Republic starting in 1870, when a careful program of reconstructing the historical past took place,” Denise Maior-Barron, an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University in California, told Live Science.
While the French Revolution of 1789 is considered to be the major revolution in France’s history, it is not the only time the French people rose up against their government.
Towards the end of the 19th century, France saw another major shift in power when members of the Third French Republic dethroned Napoleon III following his failed war against Prussia. Those same republicans then sought to effectively rewrite bits of France’s history to paint key figures in a different light — particularly, the disfavored queen Marie Antoinette.
“The masterminds of the French Revolution destroyed the French monarchy by continually attacking, and eventually destroying, its most important symbols: the king and the queen of France,” Maior-Barron said. “For this reason the ‘Let them eat cake’ type of clichés persist.” (Read more.)
From Chronicles:
In a nocturnal video posted to his office’s YouTube channel, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani greeted this year’s April 15 tax day by announcing, “I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today we’re taxing the rich.” Mamdani, who won the mayoralty by an absolute majority last November, recorded his video on Central Park South, one of the city’s poshest streets, in front of hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s apartment building as music that sounded vaguely like the soundtrack to HBO’s Succession played in the background. Mamdani chose the location with purpose: Griffin represents, to him, “the richest of the rich,” and therefore a source of revenue to fund his social programs via a “pied-à-terre tax.” The new levy will tax second homes owned in New York by non-residents valued at $5 million or more.
Griffin responded in a CNBC interview, saying he may reconsider a $6 billion construction project that would create an estimated 15,000 permanent jobs in New York and instead focus on future projects in Miami, where he resides. Quoted in the Wall Street Journal describing Mamdani’s video as “creepy and weird,” Griffin added that Mamdani’s singling him out “put me in harm’s way.” President Trump has weighed in, telling radio host Sid Rosenberg that any city’s mayor should “cherish” business leaders and “convince them not to leave” rather than drive them away.
According to the New York Post, Mamdani has reached out to Griffin to ease the tensions but received no response. If Mamdani needs more evidence that he might be in the wrong, however, he should look across the pond to the United Kingdom, whose Labour Party, in office since 2024, has raised taxes and abolished its so-called “non-domicile” (“non-dom”) tax exemption for the non-UK income of foreign nationals who reside in Britain. (Britain, like almost all countries except the United States, does not tax its own citizens’ foreign-earned income).
The results have been a disaster. According to figures cited by the Daily Telegraph, some 10,800 millionaires expatriated from the UK in 2024 alone, an average of one every 45 minutes. More jarring evidence came on May 15, just days after Griffin’s CNBC interview, when the Times of London released its 38th annual “Rich List,” a compendium of the country’s richest 350 individuals, including UK citizens worldwide and foreign citizens residing in Britain. (Read more.)
From The Collector:
Euripides’ Cyclops is the only satyr play that has survived intact. We do not know anything about the performance history of this play, or why or even when exactly it was written. The plot borrows from well-known versions of Odysseus’ encounter with the cyclops Polyphemus. The plot is simple and brutal, but with comic elements provided by Silenus and the satyrs. The play is perhaps easy to dismiss, but Euripides raises some interesting questions about power and brutality.
The three main characters in the play are Polyphemus, a cyclops; Odysseus, the cunning Homeric hero; and Silenus, the former companion and tutor of Dionysus. There are also a number of satyrs, described as Silenus’ sons, that act as the chorus. Odysseus’ shipwrecked crew is present, but none have speaking roles and were probably not depicted on stage.
Silenus has a few guises in Greek mythology. Sometimes he is depicted as a drunken man and other times as a satyr-like creature. In Euripides’ Cyclops, he is depicted as an old man. In the play, Silenus is toadying, coarse, sly, and greedy. He is there for comic effect, as are his sons, the satyrs. Odysseus is the same character we see in the Odyssey. He uses his cunning to outsmart the cyclops and escape. However, in Euripides’ play, we do not see all of the tricks Odysseus uses in Homer’s story.
Polyphemus is a cyclops. He lives on an island with his cyclops brothers. They are referenced but not seen. Cyclopes are solitary creatures and self-sufficient. Polyphemus lives off the sheep, which he forces the satyrs to look after. They were captured and enslaved after becoming shipwrecked on the island. Polyphemus is brutish but not unintelligent. He believes himself to be superior to the gods by virtue of his brute strength. (Read more.)
