A River Monster and a Future Catholic Sister

 From Stephanie Mann at A Song of Joy:

Sister Frances Margaret (Fanny) Allen of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph died on Sept. 10, 1819, in Montreal at the Hotel-Dieu, the hospital and convent founded by Venerable Jerome Le Royer, Venerable Marie de la Ferre, and Jeanne Mance. She was a Vermonter in Canada, the first woman from New England to become a Catholic religious, and the daughter of deist, rationalist and American Revolutionary hero, Ethan Allen.

Fanny Allen was born on Nov. 13, 1784. Her father died when she was 4 years old and her mother, also named Fanny, remarried (to Dr. Jabez Penniman). Neither the Allen nor the Penniman household was particularly religious. In the midst of the great religious revivals in the British colonies and the post-revolutionary period, Ethan Allen had written and self-published Reason: The Only Oracle of Man (1785). So few copies sold that the printer demanded more money to cover his losses. Fanny laughed through her baptism ceremony when she was an adult. Her mother insisted she be baptized by an Episcopalian minister in 1805 before she went to Catholic Montreal to study French. The minister, Daniel Barber, did not appreciate her mirth. (Read more.)

Share

Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales

 From The Marginalian:

Selected and retold by the American author Eleanore Myers Jewett, Wonder Tales from Tibet (public library | public domain) appeared in 1922, collecting “tales of wonder and magic” that had traveled orally from India to Tibet centuries earlier, then continued their migration to become “as familiar to Kalmuck and Mongolian children as St. George and his dragons are to us.” When European travelers first reached Tibet, these wonder-tales captured their imagination and followed them home, until in 1866 a German scholar published a pamphlet of the stories. They were eventually translated into English and made their way to the young Jewett in New York. When she told the tales to a small group of local boys and girls “one hot, happy summer,” she was moved by the lively enchantment the tales cast upon the children and set out to make that enchantment available to every child. (Read more.)

Share

Biden DHS Pulls Agents Off Child Trafficking

 From The Post Millennial:

"Are there HSI special agents who are currently at the border having them pulled away from other cases?" Senator Josh Hawley asked DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during a senate hearing on Tuesday.

"Combatting the fight against fentanyl, yes," Mayorkas said. Hawley, however, had spoken to a whistleblower involved in law enforcement at the border who had a different view.

 "How many agents are currently at the border having been pulled off their other cases?" Hawley asked.

"To fight the scourge of fentanyl?" Mayorkas said, "I'd be very pleased to provide you with that data."

 "That's not what the special agent is alleging, that's not what she said," Hawley continued, bringing receipts. "She said that they're being taken off fentanyl interdiction, off of child exploitation cases, off of their other investigations into criminals to make sandwiches. That's her quote. You're saying this is a lie? That she's wrong?"

Maoyorkas gave a broad statement. "Senator, we have a number of law enforcement priorities."

"Is making sandwiches one of them?" Hawley asked. (Read more.)

Share

Writing Systems of the World Explained

 From Open Culture:

The Korean alphabet, hangul, is “the most scientific writing system.” One often hears that in South Korea, a society that has taken to heart Asia scholar Edwin O. Reischauer’s description of hangul as “perhaps the most scientific system of writing in general use in any country.” But whatever their scientific credentials, all the other writing systems in use (and indeed out of use) have fascinating qualities of their own, a range of which are explained in the UsefulCharts video above on the writing systems of the world — not just the alphabets of the world, mind you, but also the abjads, the syllabaries, the logo-syllabaries, and the abugidas.

The symbols used in an abjad, like that of Hebrew or Arabic (or ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs), represent only consonants; as for vowels, “the readers are expected to add them in on their own, based on context.” In a syllabary, like the hiragana and katakana used in Japanese, each character represents a syllable: に for “ni,” ほ for “ho,” ん for “n” (though linguists no doubt argue about whether that last should really count as a syllable). (Read more.)

Share

American Troops Go Unpaid

 From The Federalist:

On Friday, Military.com reported that the military has failed to compensate roughly 9,000 National Guardsmen “the bonuses they were promised for signing up” to serve, with some payments having “been missing for years.” According to the report, the Guard is also “tracking an additional 3,900 soldiers who completed their service and left the military without getting any bonus payment, though some may have lost eligibility.”

As noted by the outlet, these bonuses, which can total as high as $20,000, are divvied up over the course of soldiers’ enlistment contracts, with the first half to be distributed after an enlistee completes initial service training. Meanwhile, the second half is “disbursed halfway through soldiers’ first contracts.”

Guard officials claim the usual waiting period to receive the first bonus is six months, although enlistees and their families have indicated “it can take years” to receive the payments.

“I was really relying on this money to help with moving into a new place with my wife,” one soldier told Military.com. “I did my end of things, and this is a really bad introduction to the Army, not taking care of people.”

The main cause of the issue appears to stem from understaffing and mismanagement of a “payment-processing system that has faced multiple long-term catastrophic outages.” According to the outlet, the system’s routine failures have resulted in staffers having to “repeatedly track and process payments manually” for years, prompting delays in payments to Guardsmen.

Despite honorably serving their country, these soldiers’ financial plights are at the bottom of the Biden Pentagon’s to-do list. A day before Military.com dropped its bombshell report, the Defense Department announced it was shipping another multi-million-dollar aid package to Ukraine. Totaling $150 million, the package includes an array of weapons, ammunition, and defense capabilities purportedly aimed at helping Kyiv continue its fight against Moscow.

While Congress and the Biden administration committed more than $113 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars to Ukraine in 2022 alone, that hasn’t stopped the White House from bullying Congress into authorizing even more aid for the Eastern European nation. A little over a week ago, the Biden administration proposed a $105 billion spending package that would force Congress to ship billions more to Ukraine as a package deal with U.S. aid to Israel. In essence, the Biden administration is using Hamas’ attack on Israel to coerce House Republicans into dumping more money into Kyiv’s coffers.

It’s not just subsidizing Ukraine that takes priority over paying U.S. service members, however. The Pentagon is also busy at work bankrolling abortions for its female employees. In February, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the agency would financially cover abortion-related travel expenses for service members and their dependents. This prompted Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville to launch a protest of the policy the following month. Using his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tuberville has been slow-walking military promotions requiring Senate confirmation. (Read more.)

Share

The Precious Individuality of Cows

 From The Examined Life:

I loved watching the cows climb the tractor, but what gripped me most was the fear they might fall. Our love for animals is closely entwined with our love for humans. A biological fixture of brain processing that programs us not merely to notice but to care about all living things. 

Hewn from the same heart fibers that brought us Doris Lessing's triptych of essays on the feline companions to Mary Oliver's melodies of love for her canine soulmates is Rosamund Young's genial The Secret Life of Cows. Stories sopped from the rich overflow of emotional life in a herd: love, jealousy, anger, and everything in between. Young's anecdotes "weave in and out of one another to form narratives" of friendship, family, and richly developed characters of the bovine variety. (Read more.)

Share

A Lavish Collection

From Observer:

The eclectic collection of Guerrand-Hermès, who died in 2016 at age 75, reflects his wide-ranging spectrum of passions. In addition to joining the management team of Hermès after studying at the Ecole Superieure de Commerce, he was a foreign trade advisor to the French government and president of the World Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit focused on the restoration of artistic monuments. He was also an avid hunter and wrote a 1995 book on the sport that is still considered a reference for the field, according to Sotheby’s.

A member of a fashion dynasty himself, Guerrand-Hermès was interested in the historical collections of aristocrats from France and beyond. He was particularly fascinated by Marie-Caroline de Bourbon, Duchess of Berry and the daughter-in-law of French king Charles X. A rebellious arts patron who died in the late 19th Century, her possessions could be found in every room of Guerrand-Hermès’ Parisian home and will make up around 500 lots at the Sotheby’s sales. In addition to a porcelain set, portraits and even her handkerchiefs, Guerrand-Hermès collected 200 books of fiction, travel, history and science previously owned by the Duchess. In 2007, he loaned numerous works to an exhibition dedicated to her and organized by the Musee de L’Ile-de-France. (Read more.)

 Caroline de Berry is a major character in the novel Madame Royale.

Share

Human Butchers

 From Jewish Journal:

What do you do when a cause you deeply cherish betrays you?

What do you do when you spend a lifetime fighting for the Palestinian cause, and then, overnight, it becomes associated with the butchering, beheading, raping and mutilating of 1400 people, including  infants, babies, women, rave dancers, families and the elderly?

How do you spin that?

You might try to deny and downplay, but with all the graphic and gruesome videos out there, that’s not easy. And as much as you’d love to erase the word Palestinian next to the word Hamas, you know the connection is a fact.

No, the only real option is to make so much noise that you drown out the horrible news about the mass murder of Jews.

That’s why immediately after October 7, we saw global protests against Israel and in support of Palestinians. This was before Israel launched its counterattacks. And naturally, when Israel did go after Hamas, the attacks against Jews have only accelerated. On streets around the world and across college campuses, Jew haters are now out in full force. The slaughtering of 1400 Jews is all but forgotten; now it’s all about Israel’s reaction to the massacres.

Whether it’s the media jumping to (falsely) blame Israel for the bombing of a Gaza hospital, or the global cries for a “ceasefire” before Israel has even entered Gaza to eliminate the terrorists and deter future attacks, the world is doing all it can to downplay the narrative of “Palestinians as butchers.”

The world’s most popular victims, after all, cannot be allowed to be butchers.

For half a century, Palestinians have managed to charm the global elite with the seductive narrative of glorious, helpless victimhood. In a world that worships the oppressed, especially when they’re not white or western,  Palestinians became the forever oppressed.

The influential Palestinian scholar-activist Edward Said’s 1978 book, “Orientalism,” which portrayed the West’s view of the East as demeaning and ignorant, helped shape and popularize the Palestinian narrative. As a revisionist movement began to associate the West strictly with the sins of colonialism, imperialism, racism and capitalist abuse, Palestinians became the Swiss army knife of causes for the virtue signaling set. Accurate or not, they had it all.

Amazingly, Palestinians have managed to hold on to their elite victim status despite decades of terror attacks against Israel. No matter how many Jews they killed, victimhood has defined them. You could have millions of genocide victims somewhere in Africa, or millions of oppressed slaves in China, or millions of refugees in Syria– no group of victims has been able to dislodge the Palestinians from the top of the victim food chain.

Of course, the Palestinians have always had an ace in the hole: the Jews. As long as their enemy was Jewish, Palestinians knew they would continue to have the world’s undivided attention. Have you noticed that we rarely hear about those millions of other Palestinians who live in much worse conditions in Jordan and Lebanon? Why should we? There are no Jews involved.

The world’s oldest hatred, in short, has fueled the remarkable run of the world’s most coddled victims.

October 7 introduced 1400 complications.

Suddenly, for one gruesome day, Jews were the oppressed and Palestinians were the oppressors. This was no garden variety Palestinian attack where a few Jews get killed, or a few hundred Hamas rockets are neutralized by Iron Dome and bomb shelters. We’ve gotten used to those. No, this was the mass slaughter of Jews by Palestinians in the most barbaric way possible. This was evil in concentrated form.

Put it this way: In Israel, when one Jew dies from a terror attack, the whole nation mourns that one life.

Now go to October 7 and do the math. (Read more.)

Share

“I Don’t Look Cuddly…”

 From British Vogue:

“It’s to do with looks, isn’t it? I don’t look cuddly. I don’t look sweet and nice.” Harriet Walter is reflecting, in that inimitable aristocratic-sounding voice of hers, on why she has, of late, made a name as being one of the very best at playing some of the very worst mothers.

Consider the distinctly unsympathetic Nicole De Carrouges in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel (2021). Or perhaps you’ve seen her double Emmy-nominated turn as the emotionally distant Deborah in Ted Lasso. Neither, though, are a match for Lady Caroline Collingwood, a mother so aloof she’s practically floating, who helped raise (or not, as the case may be) three of the most dysfunctional children in recent TV history: Succession’s Roy siblings.

Now, the 73-year-old is readying herself to take on one of the most tyrannical matriarchs in the canon when she arrives at the National Theatre next month to star in Federico García Lorca’s 1936 tragedy The House of Bernarda Alba. Set in the stifling Spanish heat, the all-women play opens on the funeral of Alba’s husband and the new widow’s decision to enforce a period of mourning on her daughters so strict they’re forbidden to leave their claustrophobic casa for eight years. And so they sit inside and sew and stew, growing increasingly frustrated by the promise of men, sex and life that sits just beyond their front door.

“The patriarchy is, occasionally, very well run by matriarchs,” says Walter of the play, which, written just before the start of the Spanish Civil War and Lorca’s own violent death at the hands of Nationalists, is often read as a critique of the country’s then fascist forces. “Bernarda is sort of a lieutenant of the patriarchy. And so the house itself is a model of a society that is run on repression and fear.”

“I think, basically, fear is the root of all evil,” Walter continues. “And I think when I have to play somebody unpleasant I usually deal with what’s making them frightened. And she’s frightened of chaos, of sexuality.”

She doesn’t look fearful today, with hair the colour of thunder clouds, elegant in a simple sleeveless tank dress, even on an unusually sweltering morning for Chiswick in the early autumn. We have convened close to the home Walter shares with her husband of 12 years, the American actor Guy Paul, at the universally acknowledged meeting point of the middle classes (Gail’s), from where we walk to Walter’s favoured café for a couple of iced coffees. It is apparent she is nowhere near as stern nor cynical as her characters might have you believe. She has a mischievous wit, is warm, direct, generous with her thoughts and opinions. “I do look more angry than I feel,” she admits, sucking on a straw, but promises that “inside, I’m smiling”.(Read more.)

Share