Happily Never After

 From Of Home and Womanhood:

When Sex and the City first aired, it was marketed as revolutionary, four women, unapologetically single, talking about sex like men. It was supposed to be the end of repression, the dawn of honesty. Finally women being liberated to do and become exactly whoever they wanted to be, finally women were free to become truly happy.

**Spoiler. It didn’t work.**

It wasn’t a story about women finding freedom. It was a story about women mistaking disconnection for independence, while trying to convince themselves it’s empowerment.

The show baptized feminism’s third act: the one where the revolution no longer had a goal, only momentum. Where “liberation” meant endless autonomy, endless choice, endless self-focus. The finish line had finally been reached. Feminism had conquered and women finally could be themselves. It took the feminist script reject tradition, reject dependence, reject limits, and tried to convince all of us how this meant a life of luxury and accomplishments.

Carrie Bradshaw became the ideal post-feminist woman: romantic but cynical, independent, sexually liberated but spiritually lost. Her life was a carousel of pursuit without arrival, intimacy without union, reflection without growth. She wasn’t building anything; she was collecting experiences. She was feminism’s perfect consumer, always searching, never satisfied. (Read more.)

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The Years That the Locust Hath Eaten

  

From Lane Scott at Matriarch:

From 2009 to 2017 we battled through what both of us now recognize as the biggest mistake of our marriage, the purchase of our first fixer: a old 1850s ranch house, with multiple outbuildings, a 1960s mobile home (do not even try to get a traditional loan on a place with one of those anywhere in sight), and seven acres.

I guess my dad and several older friends knew it to be a mistake at the time: which, looking back, if you consult the opinion of older, experienced people who have built houses and remodeled things in the same location you are about to try doing that, perhaps it makes sense to listen to them when they tell you things like “I wouldn’t ever buy a house with post and pier foundation again.” (the link above carries this fabulous description: Imagine your house doing a balancing act on a series of concrete or wooden stilts. That’s basically a post and pier foundation.) Indeed.

But we knew better than all of those experienced people, obviously. We knew we could take this very rundown, post-housing market crash, dawn of the Great Recession “deal” and turn it into a beautiful home.

When I think back to the cause or reason why two people in their twenties thought they knew better or thought they could do what most experienced people knew could not be done, I conclude that we knew better than our elders because we lacked practical wisdom, for one, because we had little understanding of the value of time, especially of one’s youth, and because we only had two young children.

We hadn’t yet reached the point of parenthood when the kids sort of force you to realize that life is about them and you’re just the support staff. We were still in main character phase, and so we bought this run down ranch on a private note, at 7% with a ten year term. (Do not do that).

It’s important to note that anybody buying anything in post-crash 2008 made money. But when we closed on this place it was a bit like that scene in Ghostbusters when Ray shows up with “everybody can relax; I found the car!” We found this cool place with a windmill and artesian well and seven acres and a barn and a cool old house and a rental for only 225k! It just needs an entirely new septic system (engineered, of course, because the county saw us fools coming a mile away) a new well because the old one is contaminated with E. coli from grazing cattle, obviously, fencing, grading, plumbing, a new foundation, and the whole house has knob and tube wiring. (Read more.)

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The Green Movement’s Red Roots

 From Direct Line News:

The modern Green movement likes to brand itself as the enlightened successor to the civil rights movement or the labor reforms of the 20th century. But scratch beneath the glossy “save the planet” slogans, and you find something much darker: the fingerprints of communism all over again, dressed up in green paint.

The left insists that radical environmentalism is about protecting the Earth for future generations. They say it’s “nonpartisan” and “based on science.” Yet, anyone who has studied history knows that totalitarian ideologies rarely march under their true banner. Yesterday it was red flags and hammers and sickles; today it’s wind turbines and solar panels. The end goal remains the same—control.

Communism has always thrived on manufacturing crises. Marx conjured up class struggle as the existential crisis of his age. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao built their regimes on the idea that only centralized planning could rescue humanity from economic ruin. The Green movement uses the same playbook—this time, the crisis is climate change. Their message is stark: surrender your freedom, your prosperity, and your choices—or the planet burns. Conveniently, their solution always requires more government power, more bureaucratic oversight, and fewer individual liberties.

Look no further than the policies championed by today’s climate radicals. Bans on gas stoves, forced transitions to electric vehicles, restrictions on farming, and the war on affordable energy are not acts of conservation—they’re acts of coercion. In practice, these policies strangle the middle class while enriching elites who invest in “green tech” companies subsidized by taxpayers. Who benefits most when America kneecaps its energy sector? China, the same regime that controls the global solar supply chain and most of the rare earth minerals needed for wind and battery production. (Read more.)

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St. Hildegard’s Divine Visions

 From US Catholic:

Hildegard of Bingen was a prolific figure, active throughout her long life as an influential church leader, theologian, mystic, visionary, poet, composer, and scientist. She was born the tenth child of a family in Germany, and her parents dedicated their daughter to the church. At age fourteen, she lived in a small room with a religious hermit named Jutta, who was six years her senior. Jutta became a confidant and mentor to Hildegard, and it was with Jutta that Hildegard shared one of her greatest secrets—that since a very young age, Hildegard had been receiving divine visions from heaven.

Hildegard kept this secret very private until, at the age of forty-two, she received a vision in which God unveiled understanding and wisdom about creation and the spiritual life. “The heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but warming” (Joe Staines, Th­e Rough Guide to Classical Music [London: Rough Guides LTD, 2010], 256). The vision instructed Hildegard to begin writing down what God had told her over the course of her life.

Hildegard began writing down all that had been revealed to her over a lifetime of visions. Her writings were extensive and covered a wide range of subjects, including botany, medicine, theology, and music. Her musical compositions are considered one of the origins of Western classical music. Hildegard believed that making music brought one closer to God. “Words symbolize the humanity of the son of God,” Hildegard wrote, “but music symbolizes his divinity” (“The Life and Works of Hildegard von Bingen [1098-1179],” Kenyon College). Hildegard collected her musical compositions into a large compendium, which she called the Symphonic Harmony of Celestial Revelations. (Read more.)

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The Journey (1959)

 

 I have always enjoyed films about journeys, in which a group of diverse individuals find themselves united in trying to reach a certain destination. Among my favorite journey pictures is The Journey of 1959, directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. Watching the film as a child, it was the first time I heard of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, which is the backdrop for the adventure. A group of travelers from various nations are fleeing the chaos which explodes as Hungarian patriots attempt to win their freedom from their Soviet "liberators." Yul Brynner plays Major Surov, the Russian officer who holds the travelers hostage at an inn in an isolated village. Deborah Kerr portrays Lady Diana Ashmore, the very embodiment of aristocratic refinement and decadence that earthy, hard-drinking Surov has been taught to despise.

Lady Diana finds herself in a predicament as she attempts to help her former lover, a Hungarian scientist, escape the Iron Curtain. Paul Kedes (Jason Robarbs) has been hideously tortured by the Soviets because of his past connection with Diana, adding to the several layers of guilt which weigh her down. Diana's guilt is compounded by the fact that she finds herself attracted to Major Surov, who is obviously smitten with her. Surov, a complicated soul, longs for friendship and conversation with his hostages, even as he brutally suppresses the Hungarian freedom fighters. He is disturbed by the lie he is living as the alleged "liberator" of the people whom he is persecuting on behalf of a totalitarian regime. Perhaps that is why he lashes out at Diana for the lies in her own life.

When Paul's identity as a fugitive from justice is discovered, Diana is pressured by the other travelers to offer herself to Surov in exchange for the party being allowed to leave Hungary. The confrontation between Surov and Diana is one of the most electric scenes ever shot; in spite of his passion, Surov sends her away. In the end, the Major risks everything in order to follow his conscience and by acting thus becomes free. He is no longer a Soviet drone but a man who can prove his love by making the ultimate sacrifice. As Diana slips across the rickety bridge into Austria and liberty, she knows that she will never again be so completely loved, even as she hears the shots ring out on the other side of the border.

Full movie, HERE.

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Violence as a Political Tool: A Dire Warning

 

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The Catholic World of Alice Meynell

 From The Catholic Herald:

Alice Meynell was born in 1847, the daughter of painter and pianist Christiana Thompson. The family were devout Anglicans until Alice began to read Newman and, aged 21, converted to Catholicism. Soon her entire family followed.

Meynell was already a recognised literary talent: when she described the interior change of conversion she inverted the usual image of the Church calling her soul. Instead, she wrote that it was "I who received the Church so that whatever she could unfold with time she would unfold it there where I had enclosed her, in my heart."

In 1876, Alice married writer, publisher and convert Wilfrid Meynell. The couple settled in Bayswater where they had eight children, edited and printed numerous periodicals (Merry England, The Pen, Weekly Register), and opened their house to writers both Catholic and non-Catholic: Francis Thompson, DH Lawrence, Aubrey de Vere, Coventry Patmore, George Meredith, GK Chesterton and Harriet Munroe.

They gathered to read aloud, edit each other's work, argue about style. Among them sat artists John Singer Sargeant, Sherril Schell and early photographers Walter Ernest Stoneman and EO Hoppé – all busy capturing portraits in order to record their historical moment, the fierce re-emergence of a British Catholic literary world after centuries of suppression.

Meynell herself was a celebrated poet (collections included The Flower of the Mind and A Father of Women). She also wrote volumes of short, elegant essays (The Spirit of Place, London Impressions, Hearts of Controversy) on topics both literary and common to daily life: rain, composure, solitude.

The essays widely read at the time emerged from Meynell's experience of foreign travel, her analysis of Greek myth, her observations of nature; they directed a lightly philosophical eye to the ordinary and particular. The essays are rarely bitter or argumentative, except for one, written after Guy Fawkes Day, in which she criticises the angry carnival of British idolatry: "mockery is the only animating impulse, and a loud incredulity the only intelligence". (Read more.)

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All This and Heaven, Too (1940)

Most books are better than their film renditions, with a few exceptions. I personally enjoy the movie based upon Rachel Field's All This and Heaven, Too more than I ever liked the original novel. Not that the book is dull; it is based upon a true event. Rachel's great uncle married the infamous Henriette Deluzy-Desportes. Mademoiselle Deluzy was accused of complicity in a murder which rocked France and ignited the Revolution of 1848. After her release from the Conciergerie she fled to America where she married the Protestant minister Mr. Field.

The film, however, brings all the characters and their vying passions to life far better than does the novel. Charles Boyer wavers on the brink of insanity as the honorable but tormented Duc de Choiseul-Praslin. Scion of an ancient but impoverished family, the Duc has married the nouvelle-riche Fanny Sebastiani, daughter of one of Napoleon's generals. Barbara O'Neill, who played Scarlett O'Hara's saintly and refined mother, demonstrates her range as the hysterical, paranoid, oversexed Fanny, dripping with venom and religiosity. She would have stolen the show from any other female actress but Bette Davis. Bette is the restrained Huguenot governess Mademoiselle Deluzy, who brings order and dignity into the chaotic household, winning the hearts of the Duc and his children, thus earning for herself the Fanny's hatred. Davis simmers along as Mademoiselle Deluzy, who must face the stigma of sins she did not commit for, as so often happens, people are more incensed by the platonic friendship between the Duc and the governess than they would have been by a full blown love affair. Perhaps it is because such romantic but chaste relationships are sometimes more intense and longer lasting than sexual flings.

At any rate, Henriette pays a high price for the Duc's admiration and devotion. It is a most bitter tragedy, made all the more so by the reality of the actual story. The family of the Duc de Praslin-Choiseul was destroyed by Fanny's violent murder. Henriette found peace in a faraway land, where she passed on the story which became an American novel and classic film. Share

The Hidden Hands Behind the "No Kings" Protests

 From Amuse on X:

At first glance, the No Kings movement appears to be a grassroots outpouring against the idea of unchecked executive power. Its slogans, hashtags, and glossy materials suggest a decentralized coalition of concerned citizens. Yet a closer look at its architecture reveals a well-oiled political machine, operating with precision and discipline that only substantial institutional backing can provide. Behind the chants of “No one is above the law” lies a coordinated effort to delegitimize the duly elected president and extend the influence of an elite ideological class that sees itself as the guardian of democracy.

The two figures at the center of this operation, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, are anything but amateurs. Greenberg’s career trajectory reads like a blueprint for manufacturing a domestic color revolution. Six years after earning her degree in international relations, she held an advisory position in the State Department. She was a Rosenthal Fellow, trained and groomed within a pipeline funded by the Bloombergs and Ford Foundation through the Partnership for Public Service. That same network of philanthropic influence has long been intertwined with the Rockefeller-originated Trilateral Commission. This is no coincidence. It represents the quiet integration of bureaucratic expertise with activist energy, converting public institutions into training grounds for political agitation.

Greenberg’s mentor, Tom Perriello, was not just a congressman but also an executive director at the Open Society Foundations. During their overlapping tenure at the State Department, Perriello served as Special Representative for the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, while Greenberg held an advisory post. The connection is critical: Perriello went on to run Open Society Foundations’ US operations, and Indivisible soon after received generous funding from that same network. Perriello’s shift from public office to private influence mirrored the very trajectory that defines the modern activist elite. What began as a movement of congressional aides opposing Trump has become a vehicle for a broader campaign to reshape the American political order. (Read more.)

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