Barrie Air Show: Skill, Strength and Beauty

Over Kempenfelt Bay

Minimalist Art and the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial: Reclaming Our Monuments

Minimalist Art and the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial
Elaboration on the unpublished article
Article posted on Reclaiming Beauty Articles: June 7. 2011

War memorials are an integral part of civilizations and their histories. One just has to look at the resplendent and grandiose Arc de Triomphe standing tall, at the center of a star-shaped street structure in Paris, to see how it affects the city and the people around it. The more dignified Trafalgar Square holds its distinction with lions, fountains and Nelson on the pedestal, and its vast public esplanade.

War memorials have always been about honoring their dead. And it isn’t false honor, since the mere dedication of a sculpture or a square is indicative of some outstanding effort that was made, whether it be winning a battle, holding a front, or just staying the course for so long.

This is why the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is such a disappointment. History is slowly exposing the real costs and gains behind that war, including the ultimate winners and losers. And the balance lies more on the American side. Yet, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is all about expiation and loss.

on a college project for a funerary design when she submitted her winning entry,

There was fierce opposition to the memorial from the start, where statesmen, veterans and the general public demanded that a more heroic symbol be built. One of the most poignant outrages was that nowhere on the monument is the word Vietnam carved, as though the place never existed, and the soldiers fought a non-existent war.

This controversy precipitated the erection of another monument. Sculptor Frederick Hart, whose base-reliefs adorn the great Washington National Cathedral, constructed a three-man composition which he called The Three Soldiers, clearly Vietnam soldiers standing in their combat gear and rifles. Lin was displeased by this new addition, and demanded that it be placed as far away from her contribution as possible. And no flag to render her area like a golf course, she declared. A flagpole was nonetheless placed near the The Three Soldiers with the fitting inscription: “This flag represents the services rendered to our country by the veterans of the Vietnam War.”



What eventually happened was that the memorial garnered popularity as a focus for grief. Even Lin acknowledges her subtle coercion when she says: “I actually feel like I controlled it a little too much… I knew that one's first immediate reaction… could very well be that you were going to cry.” Her design was to create a repository for unappeasable mourning, and in the end, that is what became of the granite wall.

Lin continues in the art world with sporadic contributions as an abstract, minimalist sculptor, and architect of a few lackluster buildings. She was one of the jury for the 911 memorial competition, and a strong promoter for the design that won. Once again, the winning design was a commemoration to insatiable grief as symbolized by two 30-feet deep holes at the spots where the towers stood. The contending design was more serene and spiritual, evoking enveloping clouds and sparkling lights. It is still hard for Lin to leave the black wall of death. Her original idea describing the wall: “I had a general idea that I wanted to describe a journey...a journey that would make you experience death…” holds to this day.


Maya Lin's collaboration with fashion designer Phillip Lim, in 2016.
The event took place in a pier warehouse-e where Lin's mounds of dirt fit well with Lim's postmodern androgyny

“I needed a raw, large venue to create this work...the Pier was the first place we saw, and the scale and rawness of the space was perfect,” Ms. Lin told the Observer.

But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, or the wall, as the case may be. More recent memorials are giving credence to their lost heroes. The Korean War Veterans Memorial, unveiled in 1995, is a triangular field of 19 stone soldiers with a clear dedication to the veterans. And the National World War II Memorial, which opened in 2004, also includes a wall with symbolic stars representing the fallen soldiers.

Frederick Hart, on meeting Lin, confidently told her, “My statue is going to improve your memorial.“ Time has already proven him correct. The collection of photographs at the veteran-ran The Wall USA website emphasizes the Three Soldiers statue more than the wall, and uses the granite wall many times as a backdrop to reflect this.

The original memorial celebrated its 25th anniversary this November, and it already looks quite different from its initial granite wall concept. Lin’s minimalist abstraction, which only succeeded in making the wall an empty repository for grief, is slowly being improved by more concrete and tangible elements. A Women’s Memorial was added, and a new plaque commemorating the veterans who died after the war lies near the Three Soldiers. There is not much to be proud about war, but there is pride and honor due to the soldiers who fight in them.


Iwo Jima Memorial, Arlington Virgina

Victoria Day

What does Victoria Day mean anymore in Canada?

The Government of Canada website explains thus:

Sovereign's birthday

The Sovereign's birthday has been celebrated in Canada since the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901).

May 24, Queen Victoria's birthday, was declared a holiday by the Legislature of the Province of Canada in 1845.

After Confederation, the Queen's birthday was celebrated every year on May 24 unless that date was a Sunday, in which case a proclamation was issued providing for the celebration on May 25.

After the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, an Act was passed by the Parliament of Canada establishing a legal holiday on May 24 in each year (or May 25 if May 24 fell on a Sunday) under the name Victoria Day.

The birthday of King Edward VII, who was born on November 9, was by yearly proclamation during his reign (1901-1910) celebrated on Victoria Day.

It was not an innovation to celebrate the birthday of the reigning sovereign on the anniversary of the birth of a predecessor. In Great Britain, the birthdays of George IV (1820-1830) and William IV (1830-1837) were celebrated on June 4, birthday of George III (1760-1820).

The birthday of King George V, who reigned from 1910 to 1935, was celebrated on the actual date, June 3 or, when that was a Sunday, by proclamation on June 4.

The one birthday of King Edward VIII, who reigned in 1936, was also celebrated on the actual date, June 23.

King George VI's birthday, which fell on December 14, was officially celebrated in the United Kingdom on a Thursday early in June. Up to 1947 Canada proclaimed the same day but in 1948 and further years settled on the Monday of the week in which the United Kingdom celebration took place. George VI reigned from 1936 to 1952.

The first birthday of Queen Elizabeth II, in 1952, was also celebrated in June.

Meanwhile, Canada continued to observe Victoria Day. An amendment to the Statutes of Canada in 1952 established the celebration of Victoria Day on the Monday preceding May 25.

From 1953 to 1956, the Queen's birthday was celebrated in Canada on Victoria Day, by proclamation of the Governor General, with Her Majesty's approval. In 1957, Victoria Day was permanently appointed as the Queen's birthday in Canada. In the United Kingdom, the Queen's birthday is celebrated in June.

The Royal Union Flag, commonly known as the "Union Jack" where physical arrangements allow, is flown along with the National Flag at federal buildings, airports, military bases and other federal buildings and establishments within Canada, from sunrise to sunset, to mark this day.

Physical arrangements means the existence of at least two flag poles; the Canadian flag always takes precedence and is never replaced by the Union Jack. Where only one pole exists, no special steps should be taken to erect an additional pole to fly the Union Jack for this special day.

Attached is a list giving the dates of the observance in Canada of the Sovereign's birthday since Queen Victoria.

Almost all other official websites (commercial or governmental) tell us what shops are closed or open, and some inform us of fireworks locations.

This formidable queen is fighting for her memory in absentia. But it is a battle she will not win. Soon, there will no longer be a Victoria Day, being deemed "too British" for this multicultural land.

Happy Easter

The Resurrection of Christ
Raphael
1499-1502
Oil on panel

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John 11:25-26

25 ...I am the resurrection, and the life:

he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die...

[First posted on Movement for the Reclamation of Western Beauty (then simply Reclaiming Beauty)
on April 5 , 2015]

"Who Will Wipe This Blood Off Us?"

Prophet, 1912
Emil Nolde
Woodcut

From Camera Lucida, April 19th 2011:

There is a timely discussion going on at the View From the Right (VFR). The topic on Rand and conservatism weaves through race, Athena and Zeus, Christianity, American Protestantism, the nature of individuality, heroes, the objective good, God, and ends with this comment by Lawrence Auster quoting Nietzsche's madman from The Gay Science:

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers....

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?... Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

At her Camera Lucida blog, Kidist Paulos Asrat quotes that passage and adds:

Nietzsche’s ambiguous, ambivalent relationship with the God he perceives as greater than anything he can conceive of, yet deigns to have him killed to supplant him, is surely part of our Easter story.

I like that. Just as Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, then rose into eternal life, the nihilistic modern world has (in its distorted imagination) killed and buried God. But God still lives.

The conversation at VFR continues here.

Palm Sunday

[Photo By: KPA]

Palmesel (German for palm donkey)

Date: 15th century
Geography: Made in Franconia, Germany
Culture: German
Medium: Limewood with paint
Dimensions: Overall (w/ base): 61 1/2 x 23 3/4 x 54 1/2 in., 182lb. (156.2 x 60.3 x 138.4 cm, 82554.7g)
Classification: Sculpture-Wood
Credit Line: Thand e Cloisters Collection, 1955

During Lent, about a week before Easter, Trump ordered that Tomahawk missiles be launched at the Syrian government's Shayrat air base, This was in response to the chemical weapons with which Assad allegedly struck his own people. Many image and photography experts have deemed the images of chemical weapons on Syrian civilians to be manufactured. Besides these physical evidence of falsehood, there is also the logical implausibility: Why would Assad attack his own civilians?



The Lenten Rose

Before Lent

Irish Coffee at Failte's

[Photo By: KPA]

Happy Valentine's

Here is a post from 2014:

#valentineheartthrob



No I'm not on twitter. But my yahoo mail has a red Valentine's heart on the top corner, and it throbs!

I thought it was cute.

But all cuteness aside, a day of lighthearted celebration of love is a good thing. The problem is when people take it so seriously that it means everything (or nothing). Red hearts all over the place are a nice burst of color, in this dark depths of winter, and after the festivities of Christmas and New Year, it brings a holiday mood into February. Our next holiday is Easter, and that is as late as March or April.

I was recently watching You've Got Mail with Meg Ryan (as Kathleen Kelly) and Tom Hanks (as Joe Fox). Kathleen sends herself a dozen red roses for Valentine's. She says to Joe that she does it for the possibility of love.

That is how we should all live: for the possibility of love, for the possibility of goodness, for the possibility of beauty, for the possibility of summer.

So many possibility, it gives us quite a busy schedule!

Here is a simple menu:

- Plate of sweet potato fries
- Glass of Cabernet Sauvignon Vista Point from California

Wine description from the menu:

Intense blackberry and currant, a smooth easy drinking wine for any occasion.

I don't know why the wine is described as "intense" but it is more flavorful than intense.

Here's one moresite (pdf) with this brief description of the wine: "pleasant, semi-dry, smooth."

My evaluation is that the wine's fruity notes makes it a great match with the sweet potatoes.

Happy (belated) Valentine's to all!

A Nation of Grinches: The real result of defining a society as “diverse”

A Nation of Grinches
Lawrence Auster
View From the Right
December 10 2006

A Hassidic rabbi “asked” the Seattle-Tacoma airport to place an eight-foot-high menorah next to the highest of the nine “holiday trees” in the airport’s international arrival hall, as reported in the Seattle Times. The airport felt that if they had a menorah, they would have to have symbols for every religion, and the “staff didn’t have time to play cultural anthropologists.” As the negotiations went on, the rabbi’s attorney, Harvey Grad, threatened to sue the airport. At that point the airport decided to take down the holiday trees—which had been a familiar, decades-old tradition at the airport—so as to avoid the issue altogether. This got a lot of people upset. The rabbi, Elazar Bogomilsky, says he is “appalled” at the airport’s response to his “simple” request. His attorney Grad complains: “They’ve darkened the hall instead of turning the lights up. There is a concern here that the Jewish community will be portrayed as the Grinch.” Isn’t that rich? These Jews make the trouble, they threaten to sue, they virtually force the airport to take down the trees, and now they’re whining that Jews are being unfairly blamed.

The trees are a non-denominational expression of our common culture, derived from Christianity, but not specifically Christian. Bogomilsky wanted a Jewish symbol. The airport was right that this would soon mean every religion under the sun would have to be represented. But Bogomilsky didn’t care about that. He wanted his religion represented in the airport.

I don’t blame Bogomilsky so much as I blame the majority culture which has given minorities the message that the fundamental meaning of America is diversity, and that minorities should expect as a right the public representation of their cultures and religions. The real result of defining a society as “diverse” is not that you end up with the “riches of diversity.” It’s that you end up in an empty space, with the once-cheerful lights turned out.

* * *
Rabbi Bogomilsky had even more chuztpah than I originally realized. According to the website of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the rabbi didn’t just want an eight-foot high menorah installed next to the highest of the nine holiday tree, he wanted a menorah lighting ceremony:

Holiday Tree Removal: The Port of Seattle is an organization that works with and respects cultures from around the world. The decision to remove the holiday trees was made to avoid litigation with a local religious organization which wanted to install a menorah and hold a lighting ceremony. The airport is not a traditional public forum and it would not be appropriate for such a ceremony, so we made the decision to remove the trees to allow the airport staff to focus on the busy travel season.

Also, Rabbi Lapin of Toward Tradition is urging Jews (including the litigious rabbi who started the whole mess) to sign a petition urging the airport to reinstall the Christmas trees. But Lapin left out a key element for this to work. If the Bogomilsky does not join the petitioners, and does not commit to drop his lawsuit, why should the airport put back the trees, since he might just start up his suit again?
And here’s another angle on this. Who the heck ever heard of a Hassidic Jew caring about what is going on in America’s mainstream culture and secular spaces? Since when do Hasids care about competing with Christians over public symbols? Since when do Hasids care about Hanukah, which is not important as a religious holiday and is more a Jewish national holiday (and not a very important one at that, until in 20th century America it was built up to turn it into an equivalent of Christmas)? By the way, Rabbi Lapin refers to him as his friend.

Leonard K. writes:

I don’t share your indulgence to the rabbi, and below is the e-mail I sent him. I agree with your conclusion regarding the liberal majority culture, but that doesn’t make the rabbi’s behavior, with the threat of law suit, etc., less disgusting.

To: rabbi@chaiseattle.com
Dear Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky:

I would like to “thank you” (sarcastically) for getting Christmas trees removed from the Seattle airport. With your threat of law suit, you succeeded in destroying a historic American tradition, and in poisoning the relations between the Christians and the Jews. You add fuel and ammunition to the Jew haters’ arsenal, and you are a disgrace for the Jewish people.

Do not accuse me of anti-Semitism; unlike you, I love the Jewish people and am Jewish myself.

No regards,
Leonard K.

Sam B. writes:

I’d like to think that most rational Jews—of which I am one—deplore this nut job of a “rabbi.” He’s probably a Reform—i.e., liberal. He’s an embarrassment to the Jewish community. As if we need more anti-Semitic hostility. The anti-Semites will chortle with glee. That’s expected. What bothers is that many well-meaning Christians, and evangelicals, ordinarily Jews’ best friends, may be toppled from a very fragile fence—into hostility. Thus the “good works” this “rabbi” has rendered. He’s a (Jewish) mirror image of some of those imams.

LA writes:

Rabbi Daniel Lapin knows and likes Rabbi Bogomilsky, the Grinch Who Stole the Christmas Trees. Michael Medved (no link at the moment) also knows and likes Bogomilsky, and he strives mightily to show that the removal of the Christmas trees from the Seattle-Tacoma airport was not the rabbi’s fault, but that of the airport authorities, who decided to remove the trees in response to … uh, now what was that in response to again? Oh, yes, it was in response to—and there’s the little fact at the center of this saga which Medved takes many paragraphs to admit: the rabbi and his lawyer threatened a federal civil lawsuit over the Christmas trees. Medved calls this a “mistake.” He declines to identify it for what it is—the smoking gun that destroys any claim, on Bogomilsky’s part, on his lawyers’s part, and on Medved’s part, that Bogomilsky was acting on good will.

Christmas Wreath

Allan Gardens Conservatory, Toronto, 2011
[Photo By: KPA]

The Swarovski Crystal Wish Tree

The Swarovski Crystal Wish Tree at the Eaton Centre, Toronto
Beautiful but empty
[Photo By: KPA, 2011]

Once again...political correctness and multicultural censoring is on display in Toronto. The Eaton Centre website calls the tree the "Swarovski Crystal Wish Tree." Eaton's, along with Swarovski, will donate $100,000 to the Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada.

A Christmas tree becomes a "Wish Tree" and Santa's absence is bought with $100,000. I wonder when there finally will be no "Wish Tree" since it has too strong a resemblance to Christmas? Perhaps next year, we will just be left with the ungainly reindeer that are hanging over the banisters, with Santa still conspicuously absent. [Quote from Camera Lucida, 2011]

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Why “Secular Christmas” Cannot Save Us
By Jane Clark Scharl

As the rift in Western culture between secular traditions and sacred traditions grows wider, the scramble to explain ourselves, to sublimate our experiences and give them meaning, becomes increasingly frantic…

My husband and I couldn’t do family Christmas gifts this year, so instead we decided to write thoughtful notes to each family member reflecting on the year. But when we went out to get cards at 3:30 p.m. on December 24, we were dismayed to find that the Christmas materials had been relegated to a dwindling stock in the corner, and the main “holiday” aisle was dedicated to (you guessed it) Valentine’s Day. We could get pink M&Ms or heart-shaped Russell Stover’s boxes, but it was lean pickings for Christmas cards and the holiday hadn’t even officially begun.

It’s a stark reminder that the traditions of secular Christmas are a dry well. Every child knows the sinking feeling of the day after Christmas, when the daily routine settles in again and everything goes back to normal. Our day-to-day existence often feels like standing on the edge of the unknown, and without a larger narrative—a myth—to tie ourselves to, that uncertainty can crush us. Traditions link our day-to-day lives to a myth. They are tangible activities that involve our bodies, not simply our minds, and remind us body and soul of what is important and true.

Ever since the secular and the sacred calendars fell into alignment at the dawn of Christendom, traditional holidays like Christmas have borne a double burden. They have to fulfill our sense of connection to the state and society as well as our spiritual longings. But today, as society drifts further and further from even acknowledging spiritual longings, secular Christmas can’t stave off the malaise of the mundane. In the whirlwind of the holidays and the letdown we feel afterwards, we have to make a conscious choice about which Christmas we’re going to celebrate: the secular one that seeks to sublimate reality, or the sacred one that promises to save it.

Rousseau Can’t Save Us

Sublimation was originally an alchemical term. It was the action of purifying a thing by vaporizing it, to eliminate all impurities, and then allowing it to cool. Despite alchemy’s promise that it could transform a compound into a different compound (most famously iron into gold), sublimation does not actually change the nature of the thing. It simply clarifies what already exists. Impurities can still adhere to the compound, and further working with the thing will simply reintroduce the flaws.

The eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau loved the idea of sublimation and applied it liberally to his theories of society and education. The original meaning of “refinement” narrowed to a more specific meaning of “exaltation,” by which Rousseau meant attributing universal meaning to a mundane experience to elevate and validate it. Rousseau believed that societies had to sublimate certain experiences in order to survive, because otherwise there was no meaningful explanation of day-to-day life.

Rousseau’s sublimation is the best we can hope for from secular traditions. Secular Christmas music, even the best, exemplifies this attempt to sublimate experienced feelings—of loneliness (“I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”), nostalgia (“White Christmas”), or love (“Let It Snow”)—beyond their context in ordinary life and elevate them to the level of the sublime. A sublime experience is a universal experience, one that has meaning outside of itself that both clarifies and validates it. This is the purest impulse of secular Christmas: to elevate our experiences to the level of the universal, and in so doing, to create a myth of Christmas to validate the feelings that punctuate our lives, even if just for one day.

We all hold an ideal of secular Christmas in our imaginations, even though for most of us it has never happened: cottages covered in snow, lanes fretted with sleigh tracks, children laughing, clear voices singing in a village square lit by lamps. Countless sugar cookies made by a smiling family while a perfect tree gleams in the corner and orphans smile at the feet of Santa Claus. It’s the Gospel according to Thomas Kinkade. But in this picture, the light illumines only itself, reflecting endlessly. It doesn’t illumine—or transform—the things of the world.

Cards, songs, gifts, family, masterful dinners, days off work—these are all beautiful parts of being human. But as a friend posted, poignantly, on Facebook, “[My son] is not interested in presents he has opened but in those he has yet to open”: The best these things can do is distract briefly from reality.

A tradition is only as good as the myth it connects us to. There is no single event in the American calendar as jammed with traditions as Christmas; it’s a complex blend of the religious and the secular, the community sphere and the commercial sphere, the ancient and the tinsel-shiny new. It’s one of the few times when Americans openly and unashamedly seek to infuse our cultural experience with shared transcendent meaning. The foment of “holiday spirit” that starts before Thanksgiving promises us that for one day we’ll be joyful, free from worry, with the peace that eludes us the rest of the year.

But before the day has even begun, the stores are full of the next thing, because deep down inside we know that at the end of Christmas Day, we’ll be right back where we started: tired and worried and afraid. The idyll offered by secular Christmas isn’t real, any more than Thomas Kinkade’s landscapes are real. And it cannot save us.

Another Tradition

But there is another tradition of Christmas, another anchor linking us to a myth. This is the one we see in Rembrandt’s unforgettable Nativity. Here the light doesn’t simply hover around the Christ or cling to the clustered figures; it bubbles up like water from a spring and illumines them, igniting in them a light that before had never burned. This painting is not a crystallization of a moment that is cleansed and contemplated, like the image of a lit cottage covered in snow; it is a record of a fundamental change in reality, one that transforms the way we think about all human experiences before and after.

When I was young there were no Valentine’s decorations in the stores before Christmas. But as the rift in Western culture between secular traditions and sacred traditions grows wider, the scramble to explain ourselves, to sublimate our experiences and give them meaning, becomes increasingly frantic. The sacred traditions stand out more starkly: a midnight Mass in candlelight, voices singing “Joy to the World!” around tears of that same joy, silent prayer under the stars. We need the wisdom of Mary more than ever as she, in the midst of a whirlwind of miracles, “treasured up all these things in her heart,” because, no matter what the stores may say, Christmas is not over. It is the restoration of all things, and it has just begun.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

[Photo By: KPA
The Allan Gardens Toronto, Christmas decorations]

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Below is a post from my Camera Lucida blog from December 2005!

One of my favorite carols (too many to choose from). -------------------------------------------------------- The Twelve Days of Christmas On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me A Partridge in a Pear Tree On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Eight Maids a Milking Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Nine Ladies Dancing Eight Maids a Milking Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the tenth day of Christmas my true love sent to me Ten Lords a Leaping Nine Ladies Dancing Eight Maids a Milking Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me Eleven Pipers Piping Ten Lords a Leaping Nine Ladies Dancing Eight Maids a Milking Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me 12 Drummers Drumming Eleven Pipers Piping Ten Lords a Leaping Nine Ladies Dancing Eight Maids a Milking Seven Swans a Swimming Six Geese a Laying Five Golden Rings Four Calling Birds Three French Hens Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

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Thanksgiving Wishes to my American Friends

From a Reclaiming Beauty Post in 2014:


Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Freedom From Want
1943

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Here are Thanksgiving wishes from my two favorite American posters:

From Laura Wood's The Thinking Housewife:

Unity, Not Division


Fruit in a Basket, James Peale

THANKSGIVING is a day for unity, not division. What are the things that unite us, whatever our political persuasions? The conditions of existence unite us. Here are three:

1. We were born; created, not self-begotten.

2. We will die.

3. Our souls will live forever.

None of us differ in any of these conditions. The innate longing for unity is fulfilled. We are on the same boat. We are in the same vessel. We sail on the sea of time. We will sail on the sea of eternity.

The immortality of the soul can be established with the use of simple logic. You don’t have to get a degree in philosophy to see it. The soul is immaterial. It is not physical. It does not partake of physical death.

Put away political thoughts. They will be there when you wake up tomorrow. Put away political knives. Cut the turkey instead. We are alike more than we are different. Gratitude is a universal need.

We have such a beautiful country, which none of us deserve. We can be united in gratitude that we are so much united. We can be united as the collective recipients of undeserved gifts.

Let the mountains receive peace for the people: and the hills justice. (Psalm 72:3)

Happy Thanksgiving!

The editorial board and maintenance staff of The Thinking Housewife extends her wish for many blessings to you, whatever your beliefs.



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From Gallia Watch:

Thanksgiving 2016



Thanks to zazie for the beautiful card. It's a long holiday week-end in America, my favorite holiday, and posting will be a bit slow. While we have much to be thankful for this year, the suddenness with which the situation changed leaves me breathless, wondering "What next?" Events that seemed not only unlikely but frankly out of the question are happening both in America and France. Amazing how the two countries are influenced by each other. Now I wonder who will be ambassador to France.

Below, a short passage from The Heritage Foundation, on the proclamation of Thanksgiving day:

Following a resolution of Congress, President George Washington proclaimed Thursday the 26th of November 1789 a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer” devoted to “the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” Reflecting American religious practice, Presidents and Congresses from the beginning of the republic have from time to time designated days of fasting and thanksgiving (the Thanksgiving holiday we continue to celebrate in November was established by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and made into law by Congress in 1941).

In setting aside a day for Thanksgiving, Washington established a non-sectarian tone for these devotions and stressed political, moral, and intellectual blessings that make self-government possible, in addition to personal and national repentance. Although the First Amendment prevents Congress from establishing a religion or prohibiting its free exercise, Presidents, as well as Congress, have always recognized the American regard for sacred practices and beliefs. Thus, throughout American history, Presidents have offered non-sectarian prayers for the victory of the military and in the wake of catastrophes. Transcending passionate quarrels over the proper role of religion in politics, the Thanksgiving Proclamation reminds us how natural their relationship has been. While church and state are separate, religion and politics, in their American refinement, prop each other up.

The full text of George Washington's October 3, 1789 proclamation is on the same web page (link above).

Happy Easter!

The Resurrection of Christ
Raphael
1499-1502
Oil on panel
20.47 in × 17.32 in
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John 11:25-26

25 ...I am the resurrection, and the life:

he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die...

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Posted By Kidist P. Asrat

Good Friday

Crucifix
Date: ca. 1150–1200
Geography: Made in Palencia, Castile-León, Spain
Medium:
- Corpus: white oak and pine with polychromy, gilding, and applied stones
- Cross: red pine, polychromy
Dimensions: Overall (cross): 102 1/2 x 81 3/4 in
Location: Fuentiduena Chapel, in the Cloisters Museum, New York

Matthew 27:35-37

And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.

And sitting down they watched him there;

And set up over his head his accusation written, This Is Jesus The King Of The Jews.

Matthew 27:45-53

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.

And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.

The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.

Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.

And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,

And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Mahdi Returns

Billboard showing the Muslim Jesus behind Imam Mahdi in the Vali-Asr Square in Tehran, completed in 2014

(I photoshopped in the clouds on the right, since the only version of this image I could find had large Persian script across. But, I find these sprawling clouds I added mimic the banners, adding more drama to the image, and to the event.)

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In this time of sorrow, when we are left without our God, here is Jesus as our existential enemies would like it: humiliated, head bent, following the Imam Mahdi who has his averted head, as the devil will always present himself with his face (and identity) hidden from us.

Even these Muslim artists, the Iranian Muslims who painted this billboard in Tehran, know what is real and what is false. The true Jesus shows us the truth, through his true, open presence.

The Iranian leader, on the coming of Mahdi-Jesus, said at the UN Council in 2012:

Creating peace and lasting security with decent life for all, although a great and a historic mission can be accomplished. The Almighty God has not left us alone in this mission and has said that it will surely happen. If it doesn't, then it will be contradictory to his wisdom.

-God Almighty has promised us a man of kindness, a man who loves people and loves absolute justice, a man who is a perfect human being and is named Imam A1-Mahdi, a man who will come in the company of Jesus Christ (PBUH) and the righteous. By using the inherent potential of all the worthy men and women of all nations and I repeat, the inherent potential of "all the worthy men and women of all nations" he will lead humanity into achieving its glorious and eternal ideals.

-The arrival of the Ultimate Savior will mark a new beginning, a rebirth and a resurrection. It will be the beginning of peace, lasting security and genuine life.

-His arrival will be the end of oppression, immorality, poverty, discrimination and the beginning of justice, love and empathy.

-He will come and he will cut through ignorance, superstition, prejudice by opening the gates of science and knowledge. He will establish a world brimful of prudence and he will prepare the ground for the collective, active and constructive participation of all in the global management.

-He will come to grant kindness, hope, freedom and dignity to all humanity as a girl.

-He will come so mankind will taste the pleasure of being human and being in the company of other humans.

-He will come so that hands will be joined, hearts will be filled with love and thoughts will be purified to be at service of security, welfare and happiness for all.

-He will come to return all children of Adam irrespective of their skin colors to their innate origin after a long history of separation and division linking them to eternal happiness.

-The arrival of the Ultimate Savior, Jesus Christ and the Righteous will bring about an eternally bright future for mankind, not by force or waging wars but through thought awakening and developing kindness in everyone. Their arrival will breathe a new life in the cold and frozen body of the world. He will bless humanity with a spring that puts an end to our winter of ignorance, poverty and war with the tidings of a season of blooming.

-Now we can sense the sweet scent and the soulful breeze of the spring, a spring that has just begun and doesn't belong to a specific race, ethnicity, nation or a region, a spring that will soon reach all the territories in Asia, Europe, Africa and the US.

-He will be the spring of all the justice-seekers, freedom-lovers and the followers of heavenly prophets. He will be the spring of humanity and the greenery of all ages.

-Let us join hands and clear the way for his eventual arrival with empathy and cooperation, in harmony and unity. Let us march on this path to salvation for the thirsty souls of humanity to taste immortal joy and grace.
Long live this spring, long live this spring and long live this spring.[Full trascript here]

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

May Perpetual Light Shine on Lawrence Auster

May Perpetual Light Shine on Lawrence Auster
By: Laura Wood (The Thinking Housewife)
Sunday, March 29, 2015


The tomb of the Count of Urgell at The Cloisters Museum

“JOURNEY” is a much abused and over-used word. So much so that it is almost impossible to use it today without conjuring a New-Agey binge of self worship. But, on the second anniversary of the death of the formidable writer Lawrence Auster, I am drawn to think of his journey.

He was born in New Jersey in 1949. He was born at the right time and at the wrong time. He was constantly at odds with his surroundings. He had a happy childhood, he said, but then plainly didn’t quite fit in anywhere. Hence he was on a constant journey. He left Columbia University after a year and went to Colorado. Later, after graduating from the University of Colorado with a degree in English, he discarded the idea of becoming an academic despite his love of English literature and his obvious skill in analyzing it. He thought being a professor would destroy his love of literature. He returned to New York, a wayfarer still.

For awhile he attended law school in New York and objected to the whole mentality of it. He felt law could be practiced in such a way that it wasn’t so careerist. In other words, the true end and object of legal studies should be justice, not the career.

He deplored the impersonal quality of modern life, which is why he left Columbia as an undergraduate and one reason he could never find a career. He wrote in his journal that he would love to work in some family business that had been run for generations. In other words, he would love to work in some business that wasn’t motivated just by business, but by the preservation of a small, human society.

He decried the lack of manners he saw everywhere, absurdly and unreasonably expecting civility and gentlemanliness in a 21st century city. At the same time, he could be rude himself in that aggressive, New York way.

He was walking down a street in New York one day, when like a bolt of lightning it struck him that European America was dying and being replaced by a modern, polyglot Tower of Babel. He journeyed through poverty, loneliness, lacerating self-criticism and the self-disgust any reasonable person in our world would feel for writing about one of the most sensitive of topics: Race in America. His objection to modern racial egalitarianism flowed naturally from his objection to the impersonal qualities of modern life. Destroy a man’s people, perpetuate the myth of rootlessness, and modern man is truly alone. He is even alienated from God. Mr. Auster was his own harshest critic at times and did not delight in the hard truths. His many readers at his website View from the Right would say he was born at the right time.

“This was the height of Western Civilization!” he said once, with outspread arms on a visit to The Cloisters, the famous museum of medieval art on the Hudson. So you see: He really was an outsider. He admired the tombs of the ancient knights, with their effigies of warriors at rest. He said that the art of no other age expressed the same vivid sense of transcendence.

A child of the sixties, he journeyed theologically, through his childhood as a Jew, astrology, the works of the Indian guru, Meher Baba; Anglicanism and finally, on Palm Sunday two years ago, with an Easter lily on his hospital tray, he formally converted to Roman Catholicism, a few days before he died and after much serious consideration of the issue. He said it was the most important day of his life. I like to think that he was formally initiated into that society of knights, his warrior qualities finding their most appropriate setting.

I hope you will join with me today, on Palm Sunday, which marks the entry of that most miraculous God-Man and Jew into Jerusalem, in praying for the eternal rest of Lawrence Auster. His journey is over. Let us be glad that he never fit into this world. Let us be thankful that it was always alien to him, as it should be to all of us. Let us pray for him and imagine him in heaven, poor no more, but with a golden and bejeweled sword always by his side.

[Note: Friends of Lawrence Auster will be gathering soon for a visit to his grave and lunch to commemorate the second anniversary of his death. This will take place near the cemetery where he is buried in suburban Philadelphia. If you would like to join us, please let me know.]
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Palm Sunday

Giotto di Bondone - known commonly as Giotto (c. 1266 – 1337)
Christ Entering Jerusalem. 1304-1306
78 x 72 inches
Fresco: Capella degli Scrovegni, Padua, Italy
(Here is a view of the chapel's interior)

Image posted at Tiberge's Galliawatch

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Tip of an Irish Hat, And a Happy St. Patrick's!

An Irish Hat
[Photo By: KPA]

I went early to my local Irish pub, Failte's, thinking it would be quiet, and there would be just the decorations. I was wrong. However strange it may sound, there was a St. Patrick's party for children (in a pub) at this particular Failte's. I went in the back and watched the merriment.

The place was a little cheesyly decorated, cardboard hats, glittery leprechauns, and green beer. But why not? Festivals are hard to come by these days where everything is political correctly sterilized. St. Patrick's hasn't got that "inclusive" poison yet. All the patrons were refreshingly Irish-looking, and the music wonderfully Irish (as far as I could tell).

"I'm not Irish," I told the waitress. "But can you still get me a hat and some lucky clover?"

I now have a hat, and a necklace of sparkly beads with a large three-leaf piece of luck. I'll hang on to the luck of the Irish!

I also asked for a "small" (I think that means a 1/2 pint) of Harp beer.

On a more serious note, here is a post of mine on Failte, my humble take on the Irish, Yeats' poetry, and memories of Larry Auster and his serious work to keep his beloved America from turning into a Babylon.

I posted this poem, posted by Larry at the View From the Right:

THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE

THE TREES are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

This is the illustration he posted at the end of the poem, in his entry "Update":



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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat