The Dauphine Marie-Antoinette, 1771

By Pierre Pasquier. Share

Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner

A wicked man has left the world, leaving much evil behind him. From Ross Douthat at the New York Times:

Hef was the grinning pimp of the sexual revolution, with quaaludes for the ladies and Viagra for himself — a father of smut addictions and eating disorders, abortions and divorce and syphilis, a pretentious huckster who published Updike stories no one read while doing flesh procurement for celebrities, a revolutionary whose revolution chiefly benefited men much like himself. The arc of his life vindicated his moral critics, conservative and feminist: What began with talk of jazz and Picasso and other signifiers of good taste ended in a sleazy decrepitude that would have been pitiable if it wasn’t still so exploitative. Early Hef had a pipe and suit and a highbrow reference for every occasion; he even claimed to have a philosophy, that final refuge of the scoundrel. But late Hef was a lecherous, low-brow Peter Pan, playing at perpetual boyhood — ice cream for breakfast, pajamas all day — while bodyguards shooed male celebrities away from his paid harem and the skull grinned beneath his papery skin. (Read more.)

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The Voice of Tolkien

He sounds like Gandalf. From Brain Pickings:

In the summer of 1952, sixty-year-old J.R.R. Tolkien (January 3, 1892–September 2, 1973) encountered a tape recorder for the first time, which resulted in some wonderful archival audio of the beloved author reading from The Hobbit. So enchanted was Tolkien with this novel technology that he proceeded to record himself reading much of his work over the years to come. (Read more.)

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The Curse of Pooh Bear

I guess every worldly success has its dark side. From the BBC:

Over the course of his lifetime, Milne wrote seven novels, five nonfiction books and 34 plays, along with numerous stories and articles. He worked as editor of Granta and assistant editor of Punch. His self-stated aim: to write whatever he wished. As a young writer, when Punch finally accepted one of his pieces, he had been elated. “I had proved that I could earn a living by writing. I would be editor of Punch one day. I was the happiest man in London,” he wrote in his 1939 autobiography – tellingly titled It’s Too Late Now.

Of course, Milne would also write the four children’s books that made up the Winnie the Pooh series as well as two poetry collections, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. The children’s books added up to just 70,000 words, the length of an average novel. But their enormous fame erased the memory of all the work he’d already done. (Read more.)

To quote from a review of the new film Good-bye, Christopher Robyn from Slant:

Goodbye Christopher Robin spends its opening act belaboring Milne's inability to write while barely delving into the psychological damage that triggered his writer's block. Milne's wartime trauma is reduced to a few brief flashbacks and glimpses of his recurring habit of twitching or jumping at any loud sound. And though the film sees Milne as a fierce pacifist with a resolute desire to write an antiwar novel (he would eventually publish the nonfiction Peace with Honour in 1934), it's too timid to explore his inner demons with much depth. The filmmakers instead shift the focus onto Milne's wife, Daphne (Margot Robbie), and her frustration with her husband's artistic stagnancy, as well as to Christopher, or “Billy Moon,” who eventually broke through his father's harsh exterior and inspired him to write the Winnie the Pooh poems and stories with the help of illustrator E.H. Shepard (Stephen Campbell Moore).

Although it features a handful of touching moments between Christopher and both his father and nanny, Nou (Kelly MacDonald), mostly due to a surprisingly assured, emotionally rich performance by Tilston, the film unfortunately lingers on the tedious build up to the release of 1926's Winnie-the-Pooh, only to rush through the more intriguing story of Christopher Robin's brush with fame and the resultant fallout. Christopher was flooded with fan mail and, against the advice of his beloved Nou, was also forced to spend hours every day giving interviews and making public appearances. Over the years, the strain of his accidental fame leads Christopher, now 18 and played Alex Lawther, to hold a grudge against his parents and to curse the fictional namesake that cast an unrelenting shadow over his life, leading to his being bullied and eventually enlisting in the army so as to seek anonymity. (Read more.)

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The Hidden Causes of Obesity

From Return to Order:

To look at the obesity crisis through this lens invariably means looking at our vulnerabilities and what we crave for the most but cannot achieve. Going deeper into the problem, we see that it is order that we desire, but death and its meaning brings disorder to our lives. The absurdity of life eventually stares us all in the face and so, to remain sane, writes the aforementioned Becker, we must refuse to acknowledge that we die. This of course flies in the face of reality because (some soon, others later) the undeniable truth is that we all will die.

For an irreligious person, this conclusion is pure insanity. Although certain, we spend very little time thinking about death, and yet death is one thing we should make sure to get right, because there is no second chance. However, our culture discourages such conversations since it is viewed as kind of dark and not uplifting.

There are two major arguments supporting death as an important conversation for dealing with reality and even with obesity. First, the denial of death shapes the way we live and has led us to a hatred of children and life. This taints our entire society. (Read more.)

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The Streets of Paris in the Age of Louis XIV

From Undark:

The filth of Paris was inescapable. It attached itself ruthlessly to clothes, the sides of buildings, and the insides of nostrils. “Paris is always dirty,” a British visitor observed. “By perpetual motion dirt is beaten into such a thick black unctuous oil, that where it sticks, no art can wash it off. … Besides the stain this dirt leaves, it gives also so strong a scent, that it may be smelt many miles off.” Although King Louis XIV had set his sights on building Versailles, his finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert pushed for new efforts to clean up the country’s capital. It was time, Colbert argued, to “purge the city of what was causing its disorders.”

In the fall of 1666, a group of 16 men streamed into the palatial home of Pierre Séguier, the royal chancellor, on the Rue de Grenelle for the first meeting of the committee. They gathered in the immense second-floor gallery, which boasted some of the most elaborate architectural detailing in Europe. One side of the meeting hall was lined with soaring windows topped with colorful midcentury frescoes in elegant plaster frames called gypseries. A long table covered with rich purple felt dominated the center of the room. Colbert sat at the head of the table, Séguier at the other end. Colbert’s uncle, the irascible Henri Pussort, was at the finance minister’s side. Thirteen other committee members, handpicked by Colbert and Séguier, filled the remaining seats at the table. The men quickly settled on the major areas of concern: gun violence, access to drinking water, price gouging on essential provisions (bread, meat, and of course, wine), brothels and prostitution, and prison conditions. But one problem took precedence over all else: the city’s notorious, stinking mud.

For centuries, royal edicts attempted to cajole residents to take better care of shared public thoroughfares. In 1563, Charles IX had ordered that “with no exception,” every property owner must tidy up in front of his own residence at precisely six o’clock every morning and again at three in the afternoon. Homeowners were to amass all “mud, trash, and other filth” against the wall of the building or in a basket until the trash collector arrived. The edict also forbade inhabitants to throw any household or human waste out the window and into the street. This, too, should be neatly swept toward the walls or kept in a basket. Citizens were alerted to the edicts by postings in public squares and announcements throughout the city by town criers. Violators would be fined. (Read more.)

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The Wonders of Essential Oils

From the Trianon Health and Beauty Blog:

Women are under more stress than ever before and stress causes early aging unless healthy measures are taken. My face creams are a natural way of restoring to the skin the vitamins drained out of it by the craziness of modern living. While the creams help, any health and beauty regimen should be accompanied by eating well, taking vitamins, exercise and drinking lots of water.

Although I have long used lavender essential oil as a sleep aid, I only recently discovered that it also has anti-aging properties. Lavender oil as well as the essential oils of frankincense, rose, orange blossom and rose geranium are used in my Trianon Bouquet Beauty Creams.(Read more.)

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Was Dr. Seuss a Racist?

I honestly thought it was a joke at first. I would never have guessed that the Dr. Seuss books would be singled out as racist literature. Then I read the nasty, sarcastic letter from a left-wing librarian to the First Lady of the United States, in response to Mrs. Trump's gift of Dr. Seuss books. The haughty condescending tone of the librarian, written by someone who is overawed by her own perceived brilliance, is almost unreadable. What a bad example to children. I am glad I was taught to respond to gifts with gratitude. Here is the letter, published in the disappointing publication The Horn Book. It is interesting that Dr. Seuss books were not considered racist when Mrs. Obama chose to read them to children. To quote from The Boston Herald:

Hey, Liz Phipps Soeiro, the Grinch who stole Christmas has got nothing on you. Can you imagine, the first lady of the United States picks your public elementary school as the only one in the entire state to get a nice gift of a Dr. Seuss classic, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” And your only response is to refuse it and then post a snotty letter to Melania Trump virtue-signaling your moral superiority. Liz gives the first lady a list of 10 of her favorite children’s books “that I hope will offer you a window into the lives of the many children affected by the policies of your husband’s administration.”

Hey, Liz, Yertle the Turtle just told me to tell you to shut up. Horton Hears, not a Who, but some real PC BS here. I loved Dr. Seuss as a kid, still do as a matter of fact, and so does Melania Trump, which you can tell by how she informs your students that the book is one she and Barron “have read over and over again, and one that we want to share with all of you.”

Here is a selection of Liz’s descriptions of the children’s books that the People’s Republic considers more appropriate:

“… a Chinese-African-Cuban girl … Lahore, Pakistan … he uses a wheelchair … Haitian American Saya’s mother is incarcerated because she has no papers … the segregated reality of Mexican Americans … refugee children who emigrate from Central America …. the experience of a child refugee.”

So in effect this librarian is lecturing an immigrant — a legal immigrant — on her lack of empathy for …. illegal immigrants. How Cambridge is it? Until she deleted her Twitter account, Liz probably thought she was up for a Profiles in Courage Award. But it turns out, Dr. Seuss has a lot of fans beyond those deplorable Trump voters who revel in “the minstrel characteristics and trope nature of Seuss’s characters,” whatever that means.

Here’s a proclamation from March 2016 by Barack Obama lauding “one of America’s revered wordsmiths.”

“Theodor Seuss Geisel — or Dr. Seuss — used his incredible talent to instill in his most impressionable readers universal values we all hold dear.” In other words, Obama is saying, if you like your Dr. Seuss, you can keep your Dr. Seuss.
(Read more.)

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Activist Mystics

From The Plough:

Along with other thirteenth-century Beguines and former Beguines, such as Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch of Antwerp,4 and Beatrice of Nazareth, Porete wrote in a variety of literary genres. These women developed a theological aesthetics grounded in love. Their mystical writings, like the Song of Songs, depict a spirituality of the bridal chamber. Theirs is a spirituality of complete abandonment: love serves as both their way of knowing and their way of acting. This love appears in the world as care for the poor. They understand God by forsaking understanding. They transcend the idea of ascent to God by degrees, instead uniting themselves to him directly through love. They take Augustine’s “Love God and do what you will” seriously – which is what alarmed the ecclesiastical authorities of their times. As Hans Urs von Balthasar observes, “Lovers are the ones who know most about God; the theologian must listen to them.”5 Unfortunately, the theologians of the medieval period did not tend to be big listeners, especially with regard to women. (Read more.)

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