Good-bye, Laura!

Laura Ingalls Wilder with her fans

Laura Ingalls Wilder as a young lady

Young Laura

I have no words. From Fox News:

Laura Ingalls Wilder's name is set to be removed from a major children's book award after concerns were raised about the "Little House on the Prairie" author's depiction of certain races in the early-to-mid 20th century. The Association of Library Service to Children's (ALSC) board voted unanimously on Saturday to rename the "Laura Ingalls Wilder Award" as the "Children’s Literature Legacy Award."

The association, which took the vote at its board meeting in New Orleans, said the vote "was greeted by a standing ovation by the audience in attendance." Wilder is best known for her "Little House on the Prairie" novels, which the ALSC has stated "includes expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC's core values" based on Wilder's portrayal of black people and Native Americans. The first award was given to Wilder in 1954. The ALSC, which is based in Chicago, says her work continues to be published and read but her "legacy is complex" and "not universally embraced." (Read more.)

From The Guardian:

 Wilder was born in 1867 and died in 1957. She is best known for her eight Little House on the Prairie novels, about pioneer life in the American West, which were published between 1932 and 1943. In 2010, the British broadcaster Samira Ahmed wrote for the Guardian: “Wilder has a special status in American culture despite posthumous allegations of racism. The Osage nation, according to biographer Pamela Smith Hill, still condemns her work, which was based on their eviction.

“The novels are full of phrases that are unacceptable today. Even in her own lifetime Wilder apologised for her thoughtlessness and amended a line in Little House on the Prairie that said Kansas had ‘no people, only Indians’. It now reads, ‘no settlers, only Indians’.” (Read more.)

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The American Inquisition

From the Aspen Times:

"We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently and lawfully to become immigrants in this country."

So said Sen. Barack Obama in 2005.

For the past 30 years, candidates have campaigned with statements such as this, but now that we have a president who is actually walking the talk that got him elected, all that people writing in and to this paper know how to do is brand him as the new Hitler, Kirstjen Nielsen as the new Himmler, ICE as the new Gestapo, and Melania as the new Marie Antoinette. People like me, of course, constitute a "cult."

Surely some of us are smarter than this. Columnist Alison Margo, for example, regularly writes insightful, self-effacing, and wickedly funny commentary. But then periodically she slips a gear and slides into Trump-is-Hitler mode, claiming that motherhood and her Jewish heritage compel her to this conclusion — history and logic be damned.

Does she not recognize that if there's a new Kristallnacht underway, it's being conducted by throngs who cheer Robert DeNiro and condone Peter Fonda (for whom kidnapping and casting Barron Trump into a pit of pedophiles is the proper response to separating parents from children at the border), who want to see "pigs in a blanket, frying like bacon," who harass Republican officials outside of their homes and restaurants, where owners refuse to serve them?

Do not she and other exemplars of Godwin's Law (concerning the probability that a given discourse will compare someone to Hitler) recognize that Americans are polling as being more upbeat about "the way things are going" than at any time since 2005, when Sen. Obama made the above statement?

Whatever. Now we see Jimmy Fallon apologizing all over himself for having once mussed Donald Trump's hair and made him look human — lest Fallon find himself part of the first auto-da-fe'. Other heretics may not slip the noose or pyre so easily. See you at the Place de la Concorde. (Read more.)

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Making Oscar Wilde

During Oscar Wilde's 1882 American tour, he encountered prejudice...for being Irish. From The Guardian:

In January 1882, Oscar Wilde, an ambitious and highly educated young man with one terrible book of poems and a pretty much unstageable tragedy to his name, landed in America for a 50-date lecture tour. Sponsored by Richard D’Oyly Carte, whose production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera Patience was shortly to embark on a similarly long journey across the US, it would take in not only the smartest universities, but the midwest and the deep south, too: Americans everywhere would have the chance to see a real-life fop ahead of the production’s spirited send-up of the species (the opera ridiculed the cult of aestheticism with which Wilde was strongly associated). “Anything is better than virtuous obscurity,” Wilde noted on accepting this unlikely gig. Anything? It wouldn’t be long before he had cause to regret these words, their aphoristic pith now a good deal less comforting than the bulky sealskin coat that was his constant companion on the road. (Read more.)

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Holocaust by Bullets

Mass grave of 11,000 Jews in Ukraine

Holocaust by Bullets by Father Patrick Desbois is the odyssey of a French Roman Catholic priest who felt called by God to search for the lost graves of Holocaust victims in Eastern Europe. While the Nazi atrocities in Western Europe are well-documented, until the collapse of the former Soviet Union, there was little recorded about the murder of 1.5 million Jews in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. Fr. Desbois' book is not for the faint of heart. Father and his companions found and questioned peasants who witnessed the mass murders of their friends and neighbors. Those who saw the horrors were, of course, traumatized for life, especially when they had been forced to assist in the executions.

Stripping the victims naked even in the harshest weather was always a part of the dehumanization process. Young women and girls were routinely brutalized; the numbers of Jewish women who were violated during the Holocaust has never been adequately assessed. The victims were lined up and shot so that they fell into a pit, only to have another layer of victims thrown upon them. Witnesses repeatedly claim that the earth "moved" and "groaned" for days following the massacres, meaning large numbers had been buried alive. Such abominations occurred over and over again throughout the entire region.

Father Desbois uncovered many mass graves in his travels, giving the victims the most basic courtesy of prayers and a marker. He says he always found the local orthodox clergy to be helpful in his searches for mass graves and in his desire to honor the memory of the slain. His simple account brings home to me more than ever the extent of the horrors of the Holocaust. Reading the testimonies in which faces and names are given to the victims places the murders at a personal level which the mind can barely process. Only Sacred Scripture can adequately express the inexpressible.

Weeping, she hath wept in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: there is none to comfort her among all them that were dear to her: all her friends have despised her, and are become her enemies.

 Ghimel. Juda hath removed her dwelling place, because of her affliction, and the greatness of her bondage; she hath dwelt among the nations, and she hath found no rest; all her persecutors have taken her in the midst of straits.

 Daleth. The ways of Sion mourn, because there are none that come to the solemn feast: all her gates are broken down; her priests sigh; her virgins are in affliction; and she is oppressed with bitterness....

O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow. ~Lamentations 1: 2-4, 12

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"War between the Cross and the Crescent"

From The Rebel Media:

Radicalised asylum seekers have murdered or injured more than 1,000 people in terror attacks in Europe since 2014, a new report has revealed. In the past four years, 32 Islamist plots have involved those who had sought sanctuary – or 16 per cent. Three of the potential atrocities were in the UK, including Parson Green tube bomber Ahmed Hassan. An analysis by academics found 44 refugees had either carried out atrocities or been thwarted before they could bring bloodshed to the streets. The findings echo warnings by law enforcement chiefs that some so-called Islamic State fanatics who are bent on murder posed as refugees fleeing war and persecution. It was claimed they exploited the migrant crisis by pretending to be asylum seekers to sneak into Europe and cause carnage. (Read more.)

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Tolkien vs Hitler

From Open Culture:

As you'd expect from a man who had to create, in painstaking detail, all the races that populate Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien had little time for simple racism. He had especially little time for the highest-profile simple racism of his day, the wave of anti-Jewish sentiment on which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party rode straight into the Second World War. His first novel The Hobbit, predecessor to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, first appeared in 1937, a time when the situation in Europe had turned ominous indeed, and would get far uglier still. It didn't take long after the book's initial success for Berlin publisher Rütten & Loening to express their interest in putting out a German edition, but first — in observance, no doubt, of the Third Reich's dictates — they asked for proof of Tolkien's "Aryan descent." The author drafted two replies, the less civil of which reads as follows:

25 July 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and

remain yours faithfully,

J. R. R. Tolkien

(Read more.)

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Age Spots

From the Trianon Health and Beauty Blog:

Oil of Frankincense, lavender essential oil and rose geranium essential oil  are all helpful for fading age spots if used regularly. My night cream  has the oils of frankincense and lavender and the day cream has the rose  geranium oil and the lavender as well. The coconut oil in the creams acts as a carrier oil to render the oils more effective. (Read more.)

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When the ACLU Sued the Obama Administration

The ACLU sued the Obama administration over the treatment of migrants and their children. From The Washington Post:

Unaccompanied minors who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during a historic wave of migration earlier this decade were repeatedly beaten, sexually abused, and deprived of food and medical care by federal border agents, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report released Wednesday.

About 30,000 pages of documents obtained by the ACLU through an open-records lawsuit depict a gantlet of alleged mistreatment for the tens of thousands of children who arrived mainly from Central America between 2009 and 2014, during the Obama administration. Many were seeking asylum in the United States after fleeing death threats and violence in their homelands.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents allegedly used stun guns on the minors for amusement or punishment, kicked them and threatened to either rape or kill them. The ACLU report — which is based on emails, complaint forms and investigative reports — says agents routinely kept minors in detention cells with frigid temperatures, forcing them to sleep on concrete floors. (Read more.)

Visit the ACLU's report on their own website, HERE.
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Perfect Fish and Chips

Now I know where to eat when in Shetland. From The Spectator:

I was in Shetland on my summer holiday and one extraordinary day it stopped raining and the sun came out. We went swimming in 4mm wetsuits in the loch in the morning and then went to the Agricultural Show at Voe where we saw sheep with curly wurly horns and Shetland ponies in competition. We also bought shortbread and marvelled at giant onions which had won a first prize red rosette.

After viewing all the fun and hoopla, and taking pictures of three people dressed up as Vikings in the car park, we drove a little further to Brae, to visit Frankie’s, Britain’s best and most northerly fish and chip shop. Frankie’s was voted the country’s Best Takeaway at the National Fish and Chips Awards in 2015. It’s walls are decorated with many other accolades. It is an establishment dedicated to spanking fresh quality and sustainability. The shop runs a fish course for school children to teach them about fish stocks, species and seasonalities and is involved with several local charities. This summer Frankie’s owner, Valerie Johnson, was awarded the MBE for services to the food and drink industry in the Queens Birthday Honours List.

Frankie’s is a little bit perfect. Family-run, founded in 2008, open seven days a week. Inside an unprepossessing industrial unit exterior, the restaurant is clean and modern and efficiently designed. There is a takeaway counter in front of an open kitchen and a separate café area. An LCD screen displays the specials; often deep fried crab claws, sometimes cullen skink or lemon sole panko breaded goujons. Almost all of their fish comes from local waters. Their salad greens are homegrown, the coleslaw and Marie Rose sauce are homemade, there are ‘Bairn’s Boxes’ like Happy Meals, and crayons and paper place mats for kids. There is a whole menu and separate fryer for gluten-free deep frying. (Read more.)

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