Medieval Lepers

 From Archaeology Magazine:

Phys.org reports that Elena Fiorin of Sapienza University of Rome and her colleagues looked for mercury in samples of dental calculus taken from the remains of people buried at two medieval lepers’ hospitals, or leprosaria—Peterborough Abbey in England, which was founded in 1125, and Saint-Thomas-d’Aizier, built in the late eleventh century in Normandy, France. During the medieval period, the toxic metal was used to treat syphilis and leprosy in the form of ointments that were rubbed onto the skin. Samples of bones, teeth, and hair are usually used to test mercury levels in human remains. “Dental calculus offers a new and complementary perspective,” Fiorin said. “Because it forms in the mouth during life, it can capture substances that enter the body more directly, including medical treatments applied in or around the mouth,” she explained. The researchers also tested soil from the graves to see if mercury could have entered the dental calculus after burial, and analyzed the dental calculus of people who had been buried in non-leprosaria cemeteries in England and France. “Individuals buried in leprosaria show significantly higher mercury levels than those from other cemeteries, and our analyses indicate that this mercury was incorporated during life rather from the soil,” Fiorin said. “In addition, there is no evidence of local environmental sources, such as mining, that could explain these patterns.” Mercury detected in the soil at the leprosaria likely leached from contaminated bodies, since the levels of mercury in the dental calculus tended to be higher than those in the soil samples. The highest levels of mercury were found in the remains of two individuals who had been buried in a leprosarium chapel, perhaps indicating that they were elites with access to more medical treatment. Read the original scholarly article about this research in the Journal of Archaeological Science. To read more about chemical sampling of soil around burials, go to "Secrets of Life in the Soil." (Read more.)

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Boring but Helpful Advice

From Of Home and Womanhood:

1. Go to bed early
   

Seriously, stop scrolling, stop distracting yourself with mindless unimportant things and go to bed. It is such painfully boring advice which is reason why nobody wants to hear it, but an embarrassing amount of human suffering is made worse simply because you are tired. Parents, how many times do you not see your child extra fussy, crying, throwing an extra fit and you say “they are just tired”, and you think you’re that different? No my dear friend, you are not, you don’t just need a snickers for your hanger, you need a nap and an early bedtime.

Going to bed early will not solve every problem in your life, but it will make you more capable of facing them like a sane person. When you are well rested you can think more clearly, regulate yourself better, have more patience, make better decisions, and are much less likely to spiral over things. Lots of people are not failing at life, we are just tired, overstimulated, and staying awake for way too long.

2. Touch some grass

Seriously, go touch some grass, if you happen to live out in the desert like me don’t touch some cactus, touch some dirt, get outside, get in the sun, go sit in the breeze, go out listen to the birds, breathe in some fresh air, quite literally touch some grass.

And I know this sounds so stupid because it is so simple, but it works and it works because it is so simple. We live under artificial lights, inside climate-controlled boxes, staring at glowing rectangles, consuming thoughts, opinions, anxieties, tragedies and all the nonsense of people we will never meet, and yet we wonder why we feel insane. Your body and your mind my dear friend were not meant to spend all of their time indoors marinating on wifi and a constant stream of bad news.

Sunlight alone affects our bodies more than people realize, morning light helps regulate circadian rhythm which means better sleep at night, better energy for the day and stable mood. Vast majority of people are severely deficient in vitamin D, which is directly linked to mood and immune function. Being outside especially around trees and natural environments has been shown to lower cortisol levels, which if you do not know cortisol is our stress hormone, being outside reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression. Even something as simple as looking outside and admiring natural landscapes has been shown to improve function and reduce mental fatigue, our brains literally reset when we aren’t staring at screens.

And there is also the added obvious bonus which is — movement. When you go outside you usually end up walking, standing, moving, getting your blood flowing, that alone improves our mood, our focus and energy in ways we now try to replicate by coffee and energy drinks. The problem is that we have built a life that is completely out of sync with how our bodies are meant to function, you don’t need a fancy spiritual retreat and thousands of dollars on spiritual gurus and supplements, you quite literally just need to go touch some grass. (Read more.)

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A Generation Praised for Toughness

 From Indian Defence Review:

A generation praised for toughness may have been shaped by something far less comforting: the everyday absence adults rarely admit mattered. They were the kids who walked to school alone, settled their own playground disputes, and heard “be back by dinner” as the only rule. That kind of childhood has largely vanished, replaced by a world where parents can track their children’s location down to the driveway. Now a comprehensive meta-analysis published in Development and Psychopathology has put hard numbers behind what many have suspected: when parents hover too closely, their children’s mental health may pay a price. The study, led by Qi Zhang at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wongeun Ji at Handong Global University, examined 52 separate research articles spanning tens of thousands of participants. The researchers found small but statistically significant links between overparenting and depression, anxiety, and broader internalizing symptoms. The average age of participants was roughly 20 years old, meaning the findings largely reflect the mental health of teens and young adults. (Read more.)

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Do GOP Voters Recognize How Trump Saved Them From Trans Barbarism?

 From Chronicles:

Two years after the Biden-Harris Administration hijacked Easter Sunday to push transgender ideology, President Donald J. Trump delivered a decisive blow against one of the most destructive social and political experiments in modern American history.

The Biden-Harris agenda wrought indescribable harm, but this Easter season, the nation witnessed not just policy reversals but also the forceful, unapologetic reclamation of sanity. Trump ended the Democrats’ “Transgender for Everybody” agenda that treated biological sex as optional, children as experiments, and women’s rights as collateral damage.

Trump banned federal funding, sponsorship, or promotion of the chemical and surgical mutilation of minors. He protected children from irreversible physical and psychological damage, ordering agencies to cut funds from institutions involved in these practices.

More than three dozen health systems, including Kaiser Permanente, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Children’s Minnesota, Denver Health, Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Stanford Medicine, and NYU Langone, then announced they would stop or suspend child mutilation programs.

These concrete results followed directly from executive resolve. If returned to power, Democrats will undo every one of them. Their woke base demands it. Republicans cannot afford to forget this reality as the midterms approach.

Trump further dismantled indoctrination in schools.

His administration terminated federal support for transgender ideology and its attendant so-called equity curricula. States now face clear notice: remove such content or lose funding. Parents regained ground against an un-American, and arguably inhuman, assault on their rights and their children’s minds.

This action exposed the galling hypocrisy of Democrats who claimed to champion families while funding confusion and erasure of biological truth. (Read more.)

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Something Dark Is Going On

 From Chet Nagel:

Seven of those dead scientists were working for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) or organizations to which it provides funding. AFRL develops the most sensitive technologies in the American defense arsenal.

1. Monica Jacinto Reza disappeared in the Angeles National Forest in California on 22 June 2025. Hiking with friends, she was last seen waving to a fellow hiker 30 feet behind the group. Her body was never found despite an intensive search involving drones, helicopters and canine units. The only items of hers that were found were a cap and lip balm.

Reza, 60 years old at the time of her disappearance, was an aerospace engineer and Technical Fellow at Aerojet Rocketdyne who later moved to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was the co-inventor of the Monel alloy. The Monel family of nickel-based superalloys was developed by Aerojet Rocketdyne to withstand oxygen-rich environments and extreme heat in rocket engines.

Reza’s mentor and co-inventor of the Monel alloy, Dallis Hardwick, died on 5 January 2014, seemingly of natural causes.

She worked closely with Air Force Major General William “Neil” McCasland who commanded the AFRL from 2011 to 2013 and oversaw funding for her Monel alloy research program. (Read more.)

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The Sacrament of Easter

Making all Sundays holy to the Lord. From Seton Magazine:

If Christians in the midst of the world are to keep alive a Christian culture and the spirit of Easter throughout the year, it is essential to truly live Sunday as “the Day of the Lord.” Man is an image of God, and God is a community of persons (the Blessed Trinity). By gathering as a parish family to celebrate and receive the Holy Eucharist each Sunday and then “resting in the Lord” as a family for the remainder of the day, we become practically what we are in truth, an image of the triune God Who is love.

Certainly there are obstacles in our contemporary culture to living Sunday as a day of worship and rest. Saint John Paul II noted in 1998 that, “Until quite recently, it was easier in Christian countries to keep Sunday holy because it was an almost universal practice and because, even in the organization of civil society, Sunday rest was considered a fixed part of the work schedule…"

Unfortunately, when Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes merely part of a ‘weekend,’ it can happen that people stay locked within a horizon so limited that they can no longer see ‘the heavens.’ Hence, though ready to celebrate, they are really incapable of doing so. The disciples of Christ, however, are asked to avoid any confusion between the celebration of Sunday, which should truly be a way of keeping the Lord’s Day holy, and the ‘weekend,’ understood as a time of simple rest and relaxation” (DD, 4). (Read more.)

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Republicans Can Win on Health Care Affordability

 From AMAC:

For most of the last 40 years, pollsters have asked voters: Which party do you trust more on health care? The answer has been pretty much the same over this whole period. Voters trust Democrats more, sometimes by a two-to-one margin.

When I’ve asked my Republican politicos why that is, the answer I typically receive is: Our party doesn’t do health care. Then they crouch in the fetal position.

Well, the GOP certainly better start “doing health care,” because the issue of medical care access and affordability is front and center for American families.

The Republican promise to voters should be better health care at half the cost.

Here are five easy pieces to this saner and higher-quality health care system.

First, follow President Donald Trump’s lead from his State of the Union: “I want to stop all payments to big insurance companies and give that money to the people.” That’s you and me.

This “patient power” approach is a direct assault on Washington’s long-held allegiance to hospital oligopolies, insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers. The medical care dollars should follow the patients, and that means a range of options in how that money is spent to improve health.

One of those options should be the expansion of health savings accounts, which will incentivize patients to shop around for the best price they can find for health services. Another option should be low-premium catastrophic coverage plans that cover major, but not routine, costs. This is supported by 78% of voters. (Read more.)

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The Unsettling Brain Impact of Screen Time in Kids

 From The Vigilant Fox:

Researchers scanned the brains of 60 preschool-aged children—and what they discovered about screens was “truly shocking.”

“Interactive screen time causes a LOSS of white matter in the brain.”

In simple terms, Prof. Mike Nagel calls it a measure of “BRAIN DAMAGE.”

What is white matter?

White matter is the part of the brain made up of insulated nerve fibers that help different areas of the brain communicate quickly and efficiently.

It acts like the brain’s wiring system, carrying signals from one region to another so thinking, movement, emotion, and learning can work smoothly.

“So if we’re seeing deficits in myelin production early in life, we’re probably seeing deficits in neural connectivity,” Prof. Nagel warns.

“The study shows the more screen time a child is exposed to, the greater the loss of white matter.”

But it’s not just loss of white matter we have to worry about. When you understand how screens rewire dopamine in developing brains, the story gets even darker. (Read more.)

 

Outsourcing our children. From Claremont Review of Books:

The culture quickly changed, however, with the arrival of a career-oriented feminist movement. Feminists successfully propagated the message that homemaking and childrearing were second-class endeavors, which prevented women from achieving the personal fulfillment and social status secured by participation in the paid work force. Our society, in particular the media and academia, wholeheartedly endorsed this feminist ideology, and homemakers were consistently disparaged and their social and economic security were fatally undermined by the enactment in all 50 states of no-fault divorce laws that warned mothers it was unsafe to devote themselves to raising children. The result was an unprecedented influx of mothers into the workplace so that, by 1985, the majority of mothers with children under six were working outside the home.

In her wonderfully insightful and eminently sensible book, Mary Eberstadt, a mother of four children who works from home for the Hoover Institution, sets forth evidence of the harm done to children by the maternal exodus responsible for the “Home-Alone America” she rightly deplores. Discussing many facets of children’s lives, she may tell us what we already know, but she analyzes the subject with a fresh insight. She recognizes that her book violates a major taboo today about any discussion of “whether and just how much children need their parents—especially their mothers.” This taboo seeks to protect working mothers from feeling guilty, and Eberstadt sensibly concludes her book by observing that those who “cannot choose otherwise,” such as single parents, “have nothing to feel guilty about.” As for those who do have a choice, perhaps the “continuing complaints about the guilt felt by absent mothers” may be “further proof of a social experiment run amok.”

This social experiment is, of course, the mother-child separation required by the feminist notion that a woman’s personal fulfillment requires her energetic participation in the workplace. Eberstadt calls defenders of this conceit “separationists”: those who believe that women’s freedom to work in the paid marketplace justifies separation from their children, and who refuse to consider whether the children and adolescents left behind by the adult exodus have suffered. She challenges a society, which only seems concerned with making it easier and cheaper for women to “combine work and family,” to consider how small children actually experience being in daycare all day. She makes the very sensible point that the daycare debate is never about what it feels like for the infant and children in day care, but always about what the outcomes are in terms of personality development and cognitive ability. “The daycare proof,” separationists believe, “is in the achievement pudding.” Separationists, however, are often not around children, who, in their lives, have been made “someone else’s problem.” (Read more.)

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Roundup

 From Tierney's Real News:

In simple terms, spraying glyphosate at the end of the season works like a chemical “off switch” to kill the crop and help it dry down more quickly so it can be harvested on schedule. This practice is called pre‑harvest application. It is used on some wheat acres, especially in cooler or wetter northern climates, but it is not universal on all U.S. wheat.

Why do farmers do this?

• In cold or wet years, wheat can stay green and “wet” too long. Killing the plant helps it dry faster so the farmer can harvest before rain, frost, or snow.

• Sometimes part of a field is ripe while another part is still green. Spraying helps the entire field reach a similar dryness so the combine doesn’t plug with green stems.

• Late‑season green weeds can tangle in machinery and slow everything down. A pre‑harvest spray helps “burn down” those weeds and smooths out harvest.

Farmers wait until the wheat is mature – meaning the grain is fully formed and the moisture in the kernels has dropped to around 30% or less. A common “thumbnail test” is pressing a fingernail into a kernel; if the dent stays, the grain is mature enough for a pre‑harvest treatment.

At that point, a sprayer applies either true desiccants like diquat or systemic herbicides like glyphosate over the field. Contact desiccants kill green growth very quickly and dry the crop in a few days; glyphosate works more slowly and is technically labeled for weed control, but in practice it also helps the crop finish drying and ripening in bad conditions.

Once the plants are brown and brittle and grain moisture is down near storage levels (around 14%), the combine goes in and harvests.

Glyphosate has been around since the mid‑1970s, but its use as a late‑season tool became more common in the late 1980s and 1990s and expanded in the 2000s in places like Canada, the northern U.S., and the U.K., where early cold and wet weather can shut down the season fast. (Read more.)

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The Big Stink

 From Direct Line News:

The Potomac River, the central artery of our region, is now contaminated with E. coli, MRSA, and other dangerous pathogens after the failure of the Potomac Interceptor. This is not a minor spill. It is a public health catastrophe that experts compare with the Exxon Valdez and BP Deepwater Horizon disasters when measured by raw pollutant volume and impact area. What happened to the nation’s capital is not an unavoidable act of nature. It is a failure of leadership.

And to understand how we got here, it helps to remember that this is not the first time Gadis has been connected to a water system in crisis.

Before taking charge at DC Water, Gadis held a senior executive position at Veolia North America, the consulting firm hired by Flint in 2015 to assess its drinking water system. Flint residents had already been complaining about foul odors, discoloration, and illness. Veolia’s review was supposed to identify problems and recommend solutions. Instead, the firm delivered an assessment that failed to warn the public about lead contamination in their homes. This failure later became the focus of lawsuits filed by Flint families and by the State of Michigan. The Attorney General accused Veolia of professional negligence. Veolia defended itself in court, but the record speaks clearly. The firm did not sound the alarm that Flint desperately needed.

Now the Washington region is living through its own version of that nightmare. Under Gadis, DC Water allowed the Potomac Interceptor to weaken and collapse. The result was the release of millions of gallons of untreated wastewater into the river that serves as the drinking water source for large parts of the region. Because the spill was not contained quickly, it spread downstream, threatening communities from Georgetown to Northern Virginia to the Maryland suburbs. (Read more.)

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Bathing and Hygiene in the Middle Ages

 From Medieval History:

In wealthy households, bathing was carefully staged rather than casually undertaken. Servants prepared wooden tubs filled with heated water, hung tapestries for warmth and privacy, and supplied scented sponges, oils, and cloths. Bathing here was as much ceremony as hygiene. Monasteries also maintained bath facilities, though monks generally bathed infrequently, often only on feast days or for medical reasons.

For most people, bathing was simpler and more practical. Peasants washed in rivers during the warmer months or used basins at home when water could be spared. Heated baths were rare luxuries. Only nobles and prosperous townspeople enjoyed them regularly. Even so, kings were not exempt from the need to wash. King John travelled with his own bathtub, while Edward III installed hot and cold running water at Westminster Palace.

Across the Alps, bathing culture was even more deeply rooted. In Italy, long-standing spa traditions endured. A fourteenth-century physician, Pietro de Tussignano, laid down strict rules for visitors to an Alpine bath: bathers were to arrive fasting and shaved, swim daily, and abstain from sex in order to purge bodily impurities. Soldiers on campaign sometimes carried portable tubs, while retired clergy in France occasionally installed private baths of their own. The familiar image of a universally filthy Middle Ages becomes difficult to sustain when set beside such scenes of steaming water and scented herbs. (Read more.)

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Congress Should Enact Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan Now

 From Amuse on X:

The American healthcare system presents a familiar puzzle. It absorbs nearly $5T each year, yet ordinary patients rarely know what care will cost, why prices differ so wildly, or who is accountable when costs rise without corresponding improvements in outcomes. Conservatives have long diagnosed the problem correctly. It is not that Americans spend too little on healthcare. It is that spending is insulated from market discipline, obscured by intermediaries, and structured to protect incumbents rather than patients. President Donald J Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan is best understood as a systematic attempt to reverse those distortions by restoring agency to patients and accountability to providers, insurers, and drug manufacturers.

 Begin with prescription drugs. Americans pay more for the same medications than patients in other developed countries. This is not an accident of chemistry or logistics. It is the predictable result of a pricing system in which the largest buyer in the world, the US government, refuses to negotiate as aggressively as smaller foreign systems and allows manufacturers to segment markets to maximize revenue. Trump’s Most-Favored-Nation framework cuts directly through this structure. The principle is simple. Americans should not subsidize lower prices abroad. If a drug company is willing to sell a medication for a given price in Germany or Japan, it can sell it for that price here.

 Critics often respond that such an approach risks innovation. But this objection confuses incentives. Innovation depends on expected returns across global markets, not on extracting monopoly rents from one population while offering discounts to another. By anchoring US prices to verified international benchmarks, the Great Healthcare Plan forces manufacturers to compete on efficiency and value rather than political leverage. The experience of Trump’s first term insulin reforms and the Administration’s recent voluntary negotiations confirms the point. Prices fell. Access expanded. Innovation did not collapse. (Read more.)

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Health of Empress Alexandra

 

 

From Nicholas II:

During her life, Alexandra carried much grief, worry and sorrow on her shoulders, all of which began at an early age. She lost her brother Friedrich to haemophilia in May 1873; her sister Marie died of diphtheria in November 1878; and the following month, her beloved mother Princess Alice also died of diphtheria in December 1878.

After her mother and sister’s deaths, Alix became more reserved and withdrawn. She described her childhood before her mother and sister’s death as “unclouded, happy babyhood, of perpetual sunshine, then of a great cloud.”

In March 1892, her father Grand Duke Louis IV, died of a heart attack. According to Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, Alix regarded the death of her father as perhaps “the greatest sorrow of her life”. Buxhoeveden recalled in her 1928 biography [The Life and Tragedy of Alexandra Feodorovna] that “for years she could not speak of him, and long after when she was in Russia, anything that reminded her of him would bring her to the verge of tears”. This loss was probably so much greater for Alix because Grand Duke Louis IV had been Alix’s only remaining parent since she was six years of age. (Read more.)

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Pathologizing Ourselves

 From What Would Jess Say?:

This industry wants us to think we have mental health issues. The more of us are using the system, the more money they make.

The more acceptable the language becomes, the easier it is for people to identify with it, internalise it, and ultimately adopt psychiatric frameworks voluntarily. Not because the evidence has improved, and not because the science has evolved, but because the vocabulary has been redesigned to feel less threatening, less stigmatising, and more aligned with everyday human experiences.

The end result? Millions of people now describe themselves using psychiatric terminology, often casually, often inaccurately, and often in ways that encourage self-pathologisation. Everything from ‘my depression’ through to ‘I’m a bit psycho.’ Psychiatry wormed its way in, and now everyone is using the language - but let me ask you something?

Would you consider yourself insane? A lunatic? Would you call yourself sick in the head? Are you deranged? Are you abnormal? Disordered?

Or would you prefer to say that you have ‘mental health’?

Mmmhmmm. (Read more.)

 

The limits of expertise. From The Public Discourse:

When speaking with parents about the potential negative effects of social media on youth mental health, it would have been easy to present them with all the same graphs and social scientific studies Haidt shared. For instance, it would be easy to tell them that, on average, more than three hours a day on social media is statistically associated with a higher likelihood of depression among adolescents. This has been empirically demonstrated as more common for girls than boys, and for time spent on platforms such as TikTok (passive reception of videos) as opposed to Reddit (active engagement with words). The former Surgeon General’s advisory on the topic, another touchstone in the movement, is full of such evidence from the social sciences.  

And yet herein lies immense irony. The highly technical collection and sharing of this evidence is predicated on the basic assumption that individual parents are otherwise ill-equipped to discern when their child’s engagement on social media has made them depressed (including the factors—age, sex, content—that make them most depressed). At the most extreme, studies that produce the “three hours” statistic presume parents don’t know their children at all and, further, that they must make decisions for their children based on the outcome of some statistical analysis based on data from kids that, paradoxically, are also unknown to them.  

As I have experienced it, when one talks to actual parents, most (perhaps all) know that their child—this child, the one in front of their eyes daily, the one that they have intimately observed since their birth—is addicted to social media, and that it is bad for their mental health (among other parts of their life). Because it is their child, they know what their behavior and mood were like before they signed up for TikTok, and they can see firsthand the changes to their behavior and mood afterwards. There is no need for statistical controls or sophisticated computational models to help them discern this difference. Jonathan Haidt and company, while helpful, are not required. What is required, rather, is the courage and patience to look.  

Further, from all the focus groups I’ve participated in, discussions about why this is happening to their child and what to do about it are best done with other parents going through the same experiences, as opposed to fully delegating this work to a remote social scientist who has no direct connection with the families reading his work. When these parents I’ve spoken with were allowed to openly discuss what social media were doing to their kids, the basic situation was quickly discerned, and some practical, ground-up solutions were often identified. No “evidence-based recommendations” are needed. Further, the kinds of solutions identified are rarely limited to mere “risk management practices,” (e.g., cut off TikTok after three hours) but tended toward environmental reform—the kinds of practices, policies, and cultural habits that can be changed to reduce the risk of this harm for those vulnerable to otherwise inhabiting a world constantly subjected to it (e.g., several neighborhood groups are bringing back landlines). The best part of any presentation I’ve given was when my presentation on “the evidence” stopped, and discussion between parents and teachers—the messy work of politics—began. I’ve seen it happen many times. (Read more.)

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Learning to Advent

 From Under the Peach Tree:

The eve of Advent comes with the reading from Isaiah that reminds us of the child to be born to us, the Prince of Peace, who would go on to remind us to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” That is all that matters.

The Advent promise is one of hope and faith, that God will provide, and he will fill in the gaps, and He will show us the way. I am clearly a slow learner, but it seems that this Advent, God is reminding me of this truth. It is simple to say, and so hard for me to do in practice.

The Pieper passage that opens this message has long been a favorite, but I focused on the first part more than the final line on seeing the world as a whole. My world at present means including and embracing the reality that this treatment is exhausting and time-consuming even as it is healing. While I can see progress, the end is not yet reached, and I must remember to seek the Wisdom more often that shows me what I can and cannot do, where those boundaries must be drawn, and where I must say, “I can’t.” (Read more.)

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Medieval Healing

 

From the Book of Hours of the Duc de Berry

Astronomical Clock in Padua

If you ever wondered why zodiac signs often appear in old missals and breviaries (books of hours), in medieval art and on Renaissance clocks, it is because, while the Church bans divination and fortune-telling, it has never banned what is called "natural astrology" which, for most of the history of the world, was counted among the sciences. It is why many saints such as St. Hildegard, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Albert the Great, whose feast is today, and other holy persons, referred to the zodiac in their medical writings and "scientific" treatises. From Marina Marchione at Darkstar Mythology:

For much of history, the study of the stars was not a mystical art, but a science. The same doctors who tended the sick and studied anatomy also charted the movements of the moon and planets. To a medieval physician, the heavens and the body were woven together in one great pattern of divine design. Understanding that pattern was seen as an act of reverence for the Creator, not a defiance of Him.

In the great universities of the Middle Ages — Paris, Bologna, Oxford — medical students learned both astronomy and astrology. Astronomy meant the measurement and geometry of the heavens: how the moon moved, how eclipses worked, and how to calculate the calendar. Astrology meant understanding how those heavenly rhythms affected life on earth — weather, crops, tides, and the human body.

The body itself was believed to reflect the cosmos. Medieval manuscripts often show the “Zodiac Man,” a figure mapped from head to foot with the twelve signs: Aries ruling the head, Taurus the neck, Leo the heart, Pisces the feet.

The moon’s monthly journey through those signs guided physicians in their timing of treatments. They believed that when the moon was passing through the sign that governed a particular part of the body, that area was more “sensitive” — so operations or bloodletting were best avoided then.

This was not superstition to them, but science — an attempt to work with the rhythms of nature rather than against them. Their calendars of moon phases and star signs were tools for health, just as stethoscopes are today. (Read more.)

 Illuminated manuscript on parchment, c. 11th century. Collection: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

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Lilith (1964)

I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful-- a faery's child.
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

~from "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by John Keats

One July, when I lived in Pennsylvania, Turner Classic Movies ran Lilith, oddly coinciding with our parish summer festival. Not that our summer festival was anything like the one shown in Lilith. Based upon the novel by J.R. Salamanca, Lilith depicts a young woman afflicted with schizophrenia and the dangerous spell she casts on those around her. Keats' poem about the "beautiful lady without pity" figures prominently in the book, which explores the mystery of mental illness in far greater depth than does the film. The film is also heavy with nihilism as opposed to the pure tragedy of the novel. Although I must say that Jean Seberg was perfectly cast as the dangerous and beguiling Lilith, possessing the right balance of spritely charm and flaky malevolence needed for such a role.

Both book and film take place in Rockville, Maryland, just down the road from where I grew up. The movie was filmed on location in Rockville; it is fascinating to see what the town looked like before it became a parking lot for Washington, D.C. commuters. The festival scene was shot at an actual parish picnic, that of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Barnesville, Maryland, which is also the site for the drama of the novel. I used to attend that particular picnic in the early 80's and once helped with serving the chicken dinner. There is still a "Fair" there every summer, according to the parish bulletin.

When Lilith was last on, I watched for the glimpse of my friend Joanie's mother, who was caught on film, standing under a tree watching the jousting tournament with some other local people. Jousting is the official state sport of Maryland and figures prominently in the plot of Lilith. It is amid the wholesomeness of the picnic that Lilith's depravity is first exposed, but Vincent, the protagonist played by Warren Beatty, is too smitten to notice, and soon after falls under her thrall.

Most of action of book and film takes place at Chestnut Lodge, a famous clinic for the mentally ill and a landmark in Rockville. The character Vincent is a young Korean War veteran who goes to work as an aid at the clinic. Although he has no formal training, Vincent sincerely wants to help the patients, and his concern and empathy win him the trust of the doctors. He is permitted to take the seriously ill Lilith on outings, and she appears at first to be making progress in his care.

Unfortunately, the doctors and Vincent himself underestimate Lilith's bewitching and seductive charm. They are disarmed by her childlike and innocent manner. So is the viewer/reader likewise deceived, even to the extent that one begins to question if she is really insane at all. Lilith, however, is genuinely psychotic. Vincent betrays his trust and becomes sexually involved with her. Once Vincent becomes her lover, he also becomes her slave, which means playing into her derangement rather than foiling it. The more she indulges her whims, the more divorced she becomes from reality, dragging others along with her into the pit.

What is remarkable about the story is that Lilith's various aberrant behaviors, which in 1964 were considered quite shocking and indicative of her madness, are things which now certain segments of society are trying to convince us are normal. Her narcissism, her self-deification, her lack of boundaries (especially where sexuality is concerned) are traits which, when combined, once put someone in the mental hospital. Today such conduct is regarded by some as part of having a free spirit. It raises the question as to whether an entire society can degenerate into psychosis. If so, then increased self-indulgence is clearly not the path to healing.... Share

Parenting In Three Phases

 

From Lane Scott at Matriarch Goals:

One of the most difficult things about early childhood is the constant feeling that it’s all going by too quickly, it’s the cutest the kids will ever be, you’ll miss it desperately when it’s all over, and also it’s impossible and you cannot wait until they grow out of it. All of these things are true, and as far as I can see, there is no way to wrestle yourself out of any one of these feelings.

The years you have small children in your home are unlike any other time: they bring more charm but also more bodily suffering than any other phase. The biggest temptation of this phase is to lean waaaaaaaay out and outsource as much of the childcare as possible, simply because it is so exhausting, and you have no idea what you’re doing. The second temptation of this phase is to begin all the schooling and intellectual development that is really proper to middle childhood early, putting them in school as soon as possible, racing through preschool curriculum like a Tiger Mom, and giving every advantage so that they don’t “fall behind.”

Assuming you have your marriage together and a safe home to live in, with food and necessities for survival, the most important thing to secure in the early years is a rough concept of home, or real home life, with the children at the center of home activities.

I do not mean your life should be child-centric, or ordered to the wants of the children. There is a subtle distinction between ordering a household to serve the selfish desires and random impulses of a small child vs. setting up a household to serve the child’s best interests, as judged and ordered by the parents.

From ages 0-5, the child’s best interests are stability, safety, and freedom enough to move around within the confines of the house. As babies turn to toddlers their sphere of freedom can expand to the outside of the house, and by the time they are entering middle childhood they have both the mobile dexterity to handle their physical environment and also, and most importantly, the discipline to move around safely and with some awareness of the existence of others. A big caveat: do not make the mistake of allowing the baby to believe she can walk wherever she wants and get into whatever she pleases as soon as she is mobile. The goal is to eventually open up the entire world to the child’s wandering ways, but when a baby is first learning to walk you’ll make yourself crazy if you do not provide physical boundaries for her safety and your sanity, as well as teach the child to check in with you before venturing beyond her everyday space. (Read more.)

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It’s Time to Recover Emotion in Religion

It should be pointed out that part of the spiritual journey of serious Christians involves periods of aridity and dryness in which they feel little or no devotion and yet continue to pray and fulfill their temporal duties. Also, we live in an Anglo-Saxon culture in which my Irish ancestors were scolded for public displays of emotion. From Word on Fire:

It strikes me as ironic that oftentimes—especially among the crowd that champions an almost ecstatic, at times emotional, love of good academia—there exists an attitude of disregard for the role of emotion in religious expression. Being moved to tears while reading Dante is fine, but being moved to tears in prayer is immature. If we want to make a gesture of gratitude at a supra feast, accompanied by tears or raucous laughter, then raising our glass with gusto is commended. But if we dare to raise our hands in praise during the eucharistic feast, we are called at worst irreverent and at best poorly formed. Either way, we are made to feel that we ought to be ashamed for our spontaneous acts of love toward God. There is a place for the heights and depths of human emotion in academia, it seems, but when it comes to the thing that academia points to—Christ—we are told to sober up, to put our emotions in a box and shelve them. This seems not only logically fallacious but also dangerous. 

One way to reveal this double standard is to look again at the example of teaching. Imagine if a student shared that they had cried while reading a passage of Shakespeare. In response, the teacher looked at them with a sober expression and replied, “Well, that’s fine. Most people have that experience when they are still young in their literary life. But just remember, the important thing isn’t to feel like you love it. The important thing is just to read it.” Any teacher would (rightly so) laugh at the idiocy of such a response. A good teacher would be thrilled to hear that a student was profoundly touched by an assigned book! More importantly, they would look at the emotional response as valid proof of a genuine encounter with beauty. They wouldn’t disparage or discourage it. So why is it seen as acceptable to disparage or discourage emotions in the realm of religious experience? (Read more.)

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Surviving the Left’s Shame Storm

 The Left-wing campaigns against innocent people have destroyed many lives. From Mark Judge at Chronicles:

My own shame storm was on a considerably larger scale than the one Rittelmeyer describes, though I’m sure hers was no less keenly felt. In 2018, I became briefly famous for my involvement in the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Kavanaugh, a high school friend, was falsely accused of sexual assault by a women named Christine Blasey Ford. Ford claimed I was in the room when the alleged assault took place in 1982 when we were in high school. My world was turned upside down. Reporters told lie after lie about me. People stared at me in public or, uninvited, felt entitled to walk up and talk to me about my private life. My entire past was examined, and I was declared a villain. Protestors on Capitol Hill demanded I be subpoenaed and that every inch of my life—whether it was my past drinking, dating life, and writing—be exposed so that I and Brett be made to feel shame (and, of course, that he would thereby not be confirmed to the Court).

Intense shame is a difficult thing to navigate. Kavanaugh and I had been raised in an Irish Catholic community that recognizes shame as a sometimes powerful and healthy thing. After all, shame is part of a well-formed conscience and it is invoked to prevent you from hurting others. Yet a person’s life is not meant to be ruled by shame—especially a false shame.

During one of the worse parts of the Kavanaugh nightmare my friend and book editor Adam Bellow called me. “So,” he said, “how does it feel to have the entire liberal world projecting their shadow onto you?” He was using Jungian terminology, and it fit—as is so often the case with the left, when they are guilty of crimes I would never even imagine, they were shaming me for the “crime” of enjoying crime fiction and attractive women. (Read more.)

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