I got to keep the babies this week.  Sweet little things.  They are so sweet when they are young.  They have the tenderest little smiles and looks and kisses and hugs.  "I love you, Dammuvver," and they really do.  I don't know why.  I feel like all I ever do is correct them and say "No", so I don't know why they love me.  I would be tempted to say they are merely scared, but I don't think they could fake those first-thing-in-the-morning kisses and hugs...

I sometimes wonder if we lose that along the way through overbearingness and arbitrariness, but some of the most interfering, controlling and plain dam' mean people I know still have the love and respect of their adult children, so I think that isn't it.  I don't know what anyone can do except to do their best...ultimately, you will be at the mercy of someone else either because you have nothing or because you don't want to hurt them...But babies are wonderful and right.  I wonder why people are so niggardly regarding procreation...there ought always to be room for the little ones...

Exactly, Sir---Exactly.

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

---Richard II by William Shakespeare.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November...

I probably couldn't have raised my children without the help of Dr. Marian T. Horvat. This is something like saying I probably couldn't have raised my children without Shakespeare--I don't mean that she came over and tutored.  Her article on Guy Fawkes Day can be found at
http://www.traditioninaction.org/History/A_022_GuyFawkes.htm
 .  If you care about liberty, and history, and not repeating it, please at least read the Horvat article.

I do, in fact encourage a modified celebration on November 5, because, as the old rhyme says, I know no reason the "gunpowder treason" should ever be forgot.  We ought to remember the oppression that forced men to act.  We should pray for their souls and honor their memory.  I dislike burning anyone in effigy, even a tyrant, but I do love a bonfire, and although the movie "V" is horribly flawed, it also contains a great deal of truth regarding tyranny, and the response thereto...

St. Hubert and Sam

Yesterday, our friend Sam got a lovely buck---with a BOW, no less, and I think it's tremendous that it corresponds with November 3, the Feast of St. Hubert!

November 3: Feast of Saint Hubert

Born in the 8^th Century, St. Hubert is the patron of hunters, and is a saint greatly honored in France and Belgium. Saint Hubert lived a full life. He became bishop of Tongres and traveled through his huge diocese on horseback and by boat, preaching and building churches to the glory of God. He was the friend of the great of his day--Pepin of Heristal and Charles Martel among them--and also of the poor. In particular his heart went out to prisoners, and he would secretly place food for them before their dungeon windows. As he died he said to those about him, "Stretch the pallium over my mouth for I am now going to give back to God the soul I received from Him." In parts of France and Belgium there has long been a custom of holding stag hunts on Saint Hubert's Day, and the hunters gather before the chase for Mass and the blessing of men and horses and dogs. After the hunt is over, those taking part gather for a bountiful breakfast consisting of fish, meat, salad, cheese, and dessert.

So,  well done, Sam!  as a Catholic, I think there is no way you could better have served Our Lord and honored his Saint! 

America, the High and the Mighty

In the wake of the LAX shooting and other examples of our declining civilization, I watched one of my favorite movies again---“The High and the Mighty”, starring the incomparable John Wayne.  It has never moved me more.

Perhaps it now falls into the realm of ancient myth, but, for me, it is a world I remember.  I was a babe in arms when the film was released, and yes, people really did behave that way, and in my lifetime, and I am 60, not 600, years old.  America didn't change suddenly from civilized and civil place where people put their best foot forward and expected as much of others.   It happened over time and whether the dividing line was World War II and the ensuing decadence, or Kennedy-Johnson and the ensuing madness of apologizing for being successful doesn't really matter.

The High and the Mighty, and perhaps the title is almost too appropriate, was the America of my childhood.  We hear a lot about “Self-esteem” today, but back then we had “Self Respect”.   As someone said, self-esteem is what you think; self-respect is what you do.  There are plenty of people today, pumped full of self-esteem and thinking themselves very good indeed who haven’t the self-respect to work for a living or cover their shame, or wash their car, or wipe their child’s nose.   People spoke to each other civilly.  I say this with the most profound shame, for I am one of the worst offenders:  We did not pour forth rivers of sewage from the same lips that kissed our parents, children and sweethearts.  I can think of all kinds of excuses—I've used them.  But they are foolish and ridiculous.  The fact is that we no longer have any self-respect.   We strove for cordiality in our encounters with others, not because we cared what they thought of us, but because of who we were.  We strove to control ourselves, emotionally and physically, in public, not only because of who we were but because we felt an obligation to others.  We were kind even to, probably especially to, those beneath us.  Yes, regardless of what strata of society we occupied, we were aware that some people were “beneath” us, and we felt an obligation toward them.  We tended to associate most strongly with people who were most like us in their upbringing, their principles and their Faith.  We were not interested in “expanding our minds”.   In those days hard work, a basic dedication to sobriety , honoring our elders, and fearing God, worked.   We didn't go around shooting random strangers, and everybody had firearms.

Men used to respect women.  Not all men, certainly, and a woman could certainly opt out of the arrangement, but overall, chivalry was still in force.  Women, as a whole, still respected themselves and their special place in creation.  Men responded favorably.  Feminism is a lie from hell.

This was the America that produced my husband of blessed memory, and it is the America which he never stopped believing in, despite all evidence to the contrary.  In spite of working in an atmosphere alive with tension over not “offending” his female coworkers, he continued to honor and respect women.  He was honest, humble, masculine and noble.  He cherished his appearance---not because he wanted to impress people but because he respected himself.  After his death, one of his little dialysis nurses told me “Your husband always smelled so good!”

 

He died February 7, 2013, when most of us had long since given up on America.  Most of us knew by then that the America he loved was gone forever, long since given over to the ignorant and the idle, those with no respect for themselves or others, who elected a president who knows nothing and takes no responsibility and thinks the job of president means living in the big house and spending other people’s money—getting while the getting is good.   But it was becoming too clear even for a starry eyed patriot like my husband—did I say he built things that saved thousands of American soldiers’ lives?  Well, he did.   He had suffered so much physically from his failed kidneys, and he never gave up.  He died 20 minutes after he got off the phone with his last conference call…I think Our Lord decided he had suffered enough and removed him from the heartache of seeing his country lost. 

I hope you’ll watch The High and the Mighty.  If you've seen it, I hope you’ll see it again.  I hope you will mourn for America, when it was a Christian civilization, before we gave it over to heathens and freeloaders and self appointed victims and to the illegals flooding across our borders.  I hope you’ll grieve for a time when a nanny state was not to be tolerated, and we cared more about our duty to ourselves than our entitlements from others, and we didn't have TSO’s getting murdered because we knew how to behave at the airport and in other public venues and we didn't NEED the TSA.    I hope you will weep for a time when we were the most decent of people and not human garbage, a time when being “tolerant” was not all that was required of life, a time when being an American made one proud and grateful and gracious and full of hope.

Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate: Happy 175th Birthday, Texas

Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate: Happy 175th Birthday, Texas

GK Chesterton wrote of his father: "...His den or study was piled high with the stratified layers of about ten or twelve creative amusements; water-colour painting and modelling and photography and stained glass and fretwork and magic lanterns and mediaeval illumination...He never dreamed of turning any of these plastic talents to any mercenary account , or of using them for anything but his own private pleasure and ours.  To us he appeared to be indeed the Man with the Golden Key, a magician opening the gates of goblin castles or the sepulchres of dead heroes; and there was no incongruity in calling his lantern a magic-lantern...In everything that matters, the inside is much larger than the outside..."

I think, for me at least, and perhaps I am merely insecure, the last hope of being something better than a very average and un-notable mother was that my children would remember with some fondness, if not a small thrill, the many varied projects that so frequently interrupted our lives...I did try not to interrupt rudely, and I did try to embrace things that would enchant them...their reaction was, as I remember it, very polite...I suppose I thought it would someday be remembered a bit more warmly...Now I find that there is simply a great deal of "stuff" which is unwanted and in the way, and apparently the object of not a little derision  and aggravation. No fond memories, apparently were generated...

I think some people are really not intended to be liked and ought to be satisfied to see satisfactory results from their primary endeavor, which, for me, was raising children.  It isn't really important for them to remember me at all as long as they pray for my soul...I wish I were a better person.