Longing for a quieter life, an adventurous French couple left it all behind and followed their dreams to Château de Dirac, a charming castle in eastern France....The castle, surrounded by breathtaking woods and green meadows, has a storied history. Of the four original towers, two remain—one from the twelfth century and the other from the fifteenth century. The main building, situated between the towers, and the farmhouse date from the nineteenth century. (Read more.)
When I was pregnant, I tried to make a SuperBaby. I did not realize I was doing this. I believed I’d long ago shed the theory that a body could be made perfect. But looking back, my goal was clear. I ate 100 grams of protein a day. I swallowed capsules of mercury-free DHA. I gave up wheat for reasons I forget. I kept my cell phone an arm’s length away from my belly to avoid damaging my SuperBaby with electromagnetic waves. I did not own a microwave. I shopped at Whole Foods, bought all organic, sometimes racked up bills of $300 a week. I never let a kernel of GMO corn touch my estrogen-laden tongue. I spoke to my SuperBaby, welcoming it into my body so that it would feel loved and supported. I avoided finding out my SuperBaby’s sex so I wouldn’t project gender roles onto her/him/them. I slept on my left side because I’d read it was best for my baby’s and my circulation. In the last months, I never once reclined on a sofa because I’d heard the position could put a baby posterior. Instead, I always leaned forward, elbows propped on my spread knees like I was forever on the verge of imparting a proverb.Share
Lastly, I prepared meticulously for an unmedicated birth. In the final months of pregnancy, I ended each hip-aching day by popping earbuds into my ears, closing my eyes, and listening to Hypnobabies, a natural-birthing program that guided me through self-hypnosis.
My baby will be born healthy and at the perfect time, a woman’s voice uttered as I descended into a dreamy soup of electronica chords and affirmations. My body is made to give birth nice and easy. I look forward to giving birth with happiness. My baby is developing normally and is healthy and strong. The words were supposed to become lodged into my subconscious. I see my bubble of peace around me at all times now. I focus on all going right…
After thirty-six hours of labor, the last five of which can best be described as an apocalypse at the very base of me, I pushed my baby out and into the warm waters of a hospital tub. My midwife dangled a slippery, bloody thing above me. Without my glasses my SuperBaby looked like a bean-shaped blur.
“What a little peanut!” the midwife cried. And that was the kindest thing any medical professional would say about my newborn’s body.
Abruptly, her tone changed. “Cut the cord!” she barked.
“But we were going to wait until the cord stops…” my husband said. Cutting a cord prematurely could rob SuperBaby of vital nutrients and…
“Cut it now!” the midwife commanded.
My husband snipped, and the midwife whisked the bean-shaped blur away.
I moved to a bed and prepared to birth the placenta. A nurse sat beside me. I asked, “Is my baby okay?”
She said nothing. (Read more.)
There’s an enemy at the gates, it has been slowly infiltrating our olive oil market and corrupting one of the products that we all know is a healthy, sustainable option and one of Europe’s secrets to longevity. That’s right, 7 of the biggest olive oil manufacturers in the US have been cutting their products with cheaper, inferior oils (such as sunflower oil or canola oil) in order to minimize the cost of production, but it has come at a huge cost to everyone who invests in this healthy alternative.Share
And this is not too dissimilar to 2008, when over 400 Italian police officers participated in a major crackdown called “Operation Golden Oil.” This resulted in the seizure of 85 oil farms who were adding certain percentages of chlorophyll to sunflower and canola oil and selling it on as extra virgin olive oil. The oil is mixed, perfumed, coloured and then flavoured before being sold to the producer as “extra virgin.” These busts prompted the Australian government to investigate their own olive oil market, and indeed, after testing all of its brands’ “extra virgin olive oils” in their laboratories, none were given the 2012 certification for being a pure olive oil. All of these scams prompted the University of California to carry out studies on 124 imported brands of extra virgin olive oil, and they found that over 70% of the samples failed the test. (Read more.)
After the stillness of a long winter, spring somehow manages to catch us by surprise. Suffused with light, the garden bursts forth—revealing new growth in a shifting kaleidoscope of blossoms. Greet this treasured season with an alfresco gathering where a profusion of florals sets the tone for a glorious celebration...Hibiscus tea, an infusion made from the subtropical roselle bloom, adds tartness to the airy dessert filling in our decadent Chocolate Mousse in Chocolate Cups. Raspberries, edible flowers, and a dusting of confectioners’ sugar draw attention to these artful treats. (Read more.)
It is three years now since Boko Haram declared a caliphate in the areas of Nigeria it controlled. One eyewitness recently described to me how in the years before the caliphate was proclaimed several Afghans appeared in the area of Maiduguri. Over the ensuing months more and more foreigners appeared – from Somalia, Mali and also Arabs. They began to train at night and recruit young locals. “When the caliphate came” is how Nigeria’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) often begin their stories. When the caliphate came, the names of Christians were already on a list. Some were tipped off and most managed to get out in time. Hundreds who did not were slaughtered.Share
The rest of the Christian community walked in a great exodus across the mountainous borders, into Cameroon and back around into safer areas of Nigeria. More than one and a half million people from one state alone – Borno – are now displaced from their homes, and you can meet them at IDP camps across the country.
Boko Haram’s seizure of 300 Chibok schoolgirls in 2014 was one of the few times that the plight of Nigeria’s Christians has broken through to international headlines. The government continues to maintain that it is doing everything possible to solve the plight of the abducted girls. But whether through complicity, corruption, incompetence or all these, the girls remain missing.
Stories of their conversion to Islam and forced marriages filter back. But for the Christians of Nigeria the Chibok case raises daily questions. Not least because what happened in 2014 is merely a large-scale version of something that occurs all the time. (Read more.)
In her latest novel, Sarah Dunant returns to the Borgias, that flamboyant family of 15th-century clerics and cutthroats, a larger-than-life clan that includes Pope Alexander VI, also known as Rodrigo; his son Cesare, a reluctant cardinal turned conqueror; and the infamous Lucrezia, whose reputation Dunant has done much to restore. In Dunant’s view, Lucrezia isn’t nearly as bad as, say, Victor Hugo or Alexander Dumas led us to believe — or Donizetti in his opera. And historians now agree, having dismissed as gossip the notion of Lucrezia as a murderer with a love of poison.
To a degree, “In the Name of the Family” has less excitement than its predecessor, “Blood and Beauty,” in which Dunant followed the rise of Rodrigo as pontiff, describing his galvanic lust for attention, for women, for power, and his willingness to make use of his helpless daughter, who becomes a pawn in his machinations, forced to marry men who would advance her father’s worldly kingdom. To compensate, Dunant has added another character, Niccolò Machiavelli, author of “The Prince,” who provides us, at the outset, with a snapshot of the Italy of his time, a boot whose surface has been “discolored by the vicissitudes of history.” This is a reminder that the action will take place centuries before unification, that the Italy of the period is still a loose collection of city-states, each with its own internal tensions, its own rivals and potential invaders. In the midst of all this, the Borgias have risen, a family with a talent for conquest — just the sort of people to captivate Machiavelli, the master of expediency. It’s material that, in the hands of a gifted storyteller like Dunant, will captivate readers. (Read more.)Share
Gardening can be relaxing work, but sometimes tracking down the right tools, having the right space to prep in, and keeping it all tidy can bring lots of fuss to otherwise fancy-free afternoons. So Birmingham-based designer Troy Rhone came up with this clever potting shed. A built-in shelf keeps his stacks of clay pots at hand but also neatly out of the way. The large counter below offers plenty of work space, while pullout drawers and hidden compartments below provide storage for soil, mulch, and tools like trowels and weeding buckets. “It’s really practical, yet it’s attractive,” Troy says. (Read more.)
When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attended the Paris Summit in 1989 that celebrated the Bicentenaire of the French Revolution, reporters flocked around the “Iron Lady” to get her opinion of that tumultuous event.Share
“I think it resulted in a lot of headless bodies and a tyrant,” Mrs. Thatcher coolly responded. Shocked, reporters asked if she could not concede, at minimum, that the French Revolution initiated the West’s proclamation of human rights. “Certainly not,” she retorted, “human rights were proclaimed in Magna Carta!”
Indeed. And Magna Carta began with recognizing the rights of the Christian church. All of that seems adjourned now in light of the French Socialist government’s new attack on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and liberty of conscience. French President Francois Hollande is so unpopular he dared not seek a second term. But that that did not deter his discredited government from attacking pro-life websites that offer women an alternative to abortion.
The French government seems blasé about its own actions, and one report on the vote blandly claimed that the opinions France is outlawing are merely those of “right wing politicians and Catholics.” As if right-wing citizens and Catholics can have their civil rights cut off without recourse in a nation that calls itself a democracy. (Read more.)
It is very simple. Before He was conceived in Mary and born in Bethlehem, He existed from all eternity as God—the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He chose His mother—it is as simple as that. But don’t forget, she chose Him also.Share
But doesn’t that make her unlike every other person? How did she have a choice if He made her that way?
She definitely had a choice. When the angel appeared to her and told her of God’s plan for her, all of creation in a sense, and certainly all of the heavenly hosts, waited with breath held for her answer. She could have said no, but she said yes. We call that her fiat. Adam and Eve also had a choice. They were not forced to say no… they chose freely. Their temptation was not so that they would choose sin, but so that their choice of God would be free. Where Eve said no, Mary said yes. Both existed without Original Sin at their moment of decision. No difference! (Read more.)
