Nicolas Gombert's Missa Media Vita in Morte Sumus ("In the Middle of Life We Are Already Dead Mass") Sung by The Hilliard Ensemble

"Unidentified Girl" Identified After 35 Years

Found murdered in a Caledonia, New York in 1979, the Floridian girl buried locally under a gravestone marked "Unidentified Girl" has finally been identified — 'A huge, huge day for Tammy Jo'.


Former Livingston County Sheriff John M. York, whom we learn "continued to visit Alexander’s grave on her birthday each year and left flowers," said

It’s somebody’s child. She deserved better. We always knew we would it, we had it. We always knew the Internet would help. We had flooded the Florida area ... but nobody cared. It was so important to at least give her the name and the decency of a human being. Obviously, her parents never gave her that.

A moving article on the locals who performed Corporal Works of Mercy for this unidentified girl by giving her a decent, Christian burial and making annual pilgrimages to her grave — They never stopped caring for Tammy Jo.


"We’re going to engrave her name on the stone,” said York. Our Christian civilization cares for its dead. Rest in peace, Tammy Jo.

Billy Bragg Performs ""Handyman Blues," "I Ain't Got No Home," "Sexuality," & "No One Knows Nothing Anymore"

Back in the XX^th Century driving with my kid sister drove across the entire Burned-Over District to Saratoga Springs, New York to see this Englishman headline an Earth Day concert, we learned that changing a flat tire is both hilarious and really hard when you're stoned out of your mind.

Billy Bragg Performs "New England"

Multikulti England

"Honor killings, forced marriage, people trafficking, slavery, violent exorcism, clitoral mutilation, child grooming, and masked jihadists wishing to slit our throats—you name it, it’s part of our much-lauded, colorful cultural mix," laments the Mother Country's James Jackson — Multicultural Meltdown.

Jacobite New York (1682-1688)

"Neither the Dutch nor English were pleased when the Duke of York converted to Roman Catholicism in 1672," we read in The Catholic Church in Colonial America by Dr. Marian T. Horvat. In 1882, Thomas Dongan, 2nd Earl of Limerick, was appointed Governor of the Province of New York by then-Duke of York and future James II of England, the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1917) entry on Thomas Dongan details the Irishman's enlightened governorship and the profound impact it would have on the political history of the English-speaking world:

In 1682 the Duke of York, the Lord Proprietor, selected Dongan to govern the Province of New York, then bankrupt and in a state of rebellion. In this office Dongan proved himself an able lawgiver, and left an indelible mark on political and constitutional history. He convened the first representative assembly of New York Province on 14 Oct., 1683, at Fort James within the present boundaries of the city of New York. This assembly, under the wise supervision of Dongan, passed an act entitled "A Charter of Liberties"; decreed that the supreme legislative power under the Duke of York shall reside in a governor, council, and the people convened in general assembly; conferred upon the members of the assembly rights and privileges making them a body coequal to and independent of the British Parliament; established town, county, and general courts of justice; solemnly proclaimed the right of religious liberty; and passed acts enunciating certain constitutional liberties, e.g. no taxation without representation; taxes could be levied only by the people met in general assembly; right of suffrage; no martial law or quartering of the soldiers without the consent of the inhabitants; election by majority of votes; and the English law of real property.

Thus to Dongan's term as governor can be dated the Magna Charta of American constitutional liberties, for his system of government became the programme of continuous political agitation by the colonists of New York Province during the eighteenth century. It developed naturally into the present state government, and many of its principles passed into the framework of the Federal Government. Moreover, a rare tribute to his genius, the government imposed by him on New York Province, 1683, was adopted by England after the American War of Independence as the framework of her colonial policy, and constitutes the present form of government in Canada, Australia, and the Transvaal.

He also was also a man of peace. He "established the boundary lines of the province by settling disputes with Connecticut on the East, with the French Governor of Canada on the North, with Pennsylvania on the South, thus marking out the present limits of New York State," and "outlined the masterly Indian policy which kept the Five Nations friends of England." After his ouster, he "refused command of a regiment with the rank of major-general, [and] retired to his estate on Staten Island."

Ironically, this enlightened leader who had "solemnly proclaimed the right of religious liberty" "was obliged to flee for safety in the religious persecution aroused by Lesler in 1689."

The encyclopedist concludes, "In spite the brief term of five years as Governor of New York Province, by virtue of the magnitude, of the enduring and far-reaching character of his achievements, he stands forth as one of the greatest constructive statesmen ever sent out by England for the government of any of her American colonial possessions."

[Reprinted from The Western Confucian.]

Downstate Tyranny

"I do believe that emphatically, that it is a New York City position," said a downstate politico about the race to replace the disgraced New York State Assembly Speaker — A Bronx Cheer for Rochester in the Assembly. That was before our man bowed out — Morelle withdraws from Assembly speaker race.

The governorship is also "a New York City position," or at least it has been for more than a century.More ammunition to support Upstate NY Secede.

World War Two and Woodstock

"As we head toward the middle of the 21st century, Woodstock is beginning to look like a belated victory celebration by the English-speaking nations that ruled the world" — Exhortation and Megalomania. I'm not sure what Steve Sailer was smoking when he came to that concluding sentence, but I want some.

"Such a Stoic"

A philosopher who "was a celebrated rhetorician, a satirist, the author of several books of natural history, and a playwright" and "also what today might be called an ethicist" — The Man to Know in Ancient Rome.

The Female Form

"A study that seeks an evolutionary explanation for the shape of the female body raises as many questions as it answers" — Curvology: the Origins and Power of Female Body Shape by David Bainbridge, review: 'strange and sometimes worrying'.

P.C. Jumps the Shark

"A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas" — Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say. Arethey referring to manginas?

Bobby Bare Jr. Performs "Don't Wanna Know," "The Big Time," & " Visit Me In Music City "

From Nashville, Tennessee.

Dr. Joseph Mercola explains "that the type of fiber in your diet, as well as your gut health, play a major role in harnessing fiber’s health potential while avoiding its potential pitfalls" — High-Fiber Diet Linked to Disease Prevention and Lower Mortality.

Nicolas Gombert's Quam Pulchra Es Sung by The Hilliard Ensemble

John Dunstaple's even more ancient rendition (XV^th as opposed to XVI^th Century) of this motet was sung at Saint Michael's Church, where the homily referenced both Dr. Seuss's "The Zoad In The Road" and William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Rochester's Electric Interurban Railway

It operated a century ago — Retrofitting Rochester: Exchange Street Interurban Station. What it did:

Though only two streetcar lines — the Rochester and Sodus Bay and the Rochester and Eastern Rapid Railway — departed from this location, the station nevertheless served as a nexus connecting the far reaches of the Genesee country.

From 1908 to 1927, as many as 19 trolleys a day set off from the depot, transporting commuters to suburban sites like Webster and Pittsford, and towing travelers to the waterfront destinations of Lake Ontario and Geneva.

Boosters from both ends of the trolley line fueled streetcar revenues. Promoters from the Finger Lakes region invited Rochesterians to revel in the beauty of Seneca Lake and its expansive vineyards, while Rochester's publicists attracted travelers by expounding the thrills of the "big city" and the "mini-Coney Island" at Charlotte.

In addition to accommodating the droves of urbanites and townsfolk prompted by such pitches, the station was often abuzz with sports fans and theater-goers.

Though baseball was quite popular in Rochester at the turn of the century, no ballparks resided within city limits at that time. Downtowners thus boarded trains at Court and Exchange to sites like Sheehan's Field in Twelve Corners to cheer on the Maltops, the Niagaras and the streetcar-inspired Rochester and Eastern team.

It was not uncommon for such sports enthusiasts to rub shoulders with theater buffs at the depot. The interurban lines ran a special "theater train" every weeknight to and from the city. Passengers from the suburbs and beyond could purchase show tickets in advance at the station before walking over to one the lavish movie palaces or playhouses along the "Great White Way" of Clinton Avenue. After the last performance of the evening, a late night train awaited audience members back at the depot.

Though an invaluable transportation system at the turn of the century, the interurban railway gradually fell out of favor as an increasing number of train riders opted for the convenience of cars.

The Dutchess and the Duke Perform "Scorpio," "Out Of Time," & "Mary Never Had A Chance"

The Dutchess and the Duke, from Seattle, have "been compared to the raw garage rock of the early 1960s" and appear to have reunited.

Don't Support the Troops

Future of Freedom Foundation's Jacob G. Hornberger tells us why — The Troops Are Destroying Our Country. "In the process of 'keeping us safe' from the terrorist threat that the troops have created through their killing and maiming people over there, U.S. officials embarked on a program that destroys the freedom, privacy, and well-being of the American people."

The Art of Napping

Robbie Gonzalez explains "how to nap like a professional, nap-taking machine" — The Secrets Of Highly Efficient Napping.

Asian Hair

It's best cut by Asians, the missus learned today at Thanh's Hair Design.

Cabinet Perform "Caroline/Dirt"

From across the border in Scranton, Pennsylvania comes this band (and Joe Biden) whom we are off to see perform tonight and about whose guitarist The Bluegrass Situation quotes as describing his band's musc as "Bluegrass by a bunch of guys who don’t know what bluegrass is" — Pennsylvania's Cabinet Give Rise to Slamgrass.

Actually, we're off to see the opening act, whose fiddler is also our daughter's violin teacher at the Rochester Contemporary School of Music.

"The Snap of a Dominatrix’s Whip"

So described is the prose of the subject of this biography, who rightly noted. "Anybody who’s not paranoid is not in full possession of the facts" — Michael Mewshaw’s ‘Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal’.

The Limit of Science?

A look at "the boundary not just of what we currently know, but of what science could ever explain" — Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?

Cattle Rustling

I had no idea it was happening still, much less near here — Seneca County man accused of stealing livestock.

I did know, however, from listening to last week's edition of Afropop Worldwide, that it was still an issue (I think they used the work "scourge") among the Malagasy.

Anglican State

Exposed is the "pathologically ambitious 'ruffian' [who] sent hundreds to the chopping block and destroyed England's religious and artistic heritage" — Thomas Cromwell was the Islamic State of his day.

The Only President with a Ph.D.

David Stockman's "humble thesis tonight is that the entire 20th Century was a giant mistake" and "put[s] the blame for this monumental error squarely on... a megalomaniacal madman who was the very worst President in American history" — The Epochal Consequences Of Woodrow Wilson’s War.

Rubblebucket Perform "Carousel Ride," "On The Ground," & "Sound Of Erasing"

From a town downstate called Brooklyn.

Harvard Man, Davos Man

This interview with Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics at Harvard University and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, illustrates the frightening lack of intelligence of the elites that rule over us — At Davos, U.S. Economic Recovery Widely Lauded.

After saying, "Ah, consensus among economists - you're asking a tall order," this bozo goes on to assert, "Certainly, what the Federal Reserve did, everybody agrees was great," and "[E]veryone admires how the U.S. economy has managed to take this huge punch and manage to come back and now is really something of the envy of the world" [emphasis mine].

"Davos Man" "is a neologism referring to the global elite of wealthy (predominantly) men, whose members view themselves as completely 'international.'"

Bill Kauffman on the All-American Politics of Donna Reed

At some point in post-World War II America, the Middle West and all its Middle American manifestations became inexplicable. Take Donna Reed, without question the most beautifully American-looking actress of the Cold War era. Donna was an Iowa girl, a tomboy who grew up playing baseball with her brothers on the farm — watch her hurl that rock at the window of the old Granville place in “It’s a Wonderful Life”; what a wonderful arm! She was an Iowa Republican who was for her fellow Iowan Henry Wallace in 1948, for Barry Goldwater in 1964 because the Kennedy-Johnson Democrats offended her Iowa isolationism, and for Eugene McCarthy in 1968 for the same reason. Viewed through old-fashioned American glasses, Reed’s politics make perfect sense as the expression of a girl who attended the one-room schoolhouse in Nishnabotna, Iowa, and won a blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair for the whole-wheat yeast rolls she made for the Nimble Fingers 4-H Club. It is only in the funhouse mirror of postwar American politics that the Donna Reeds are contorted and the Arnold Schwarzeneggers look normal.

A conservative blog for peace quotes The Sage of Batavia — America's golden era: Ladies and gentlemen, "left" and right.

Lisa Hannigan Performs "O Sleep"

A lullaby to accompany Dr. Joseph Mercola's latest — Bad Things Happen When You're Sleep Deprived.

Lisa Hannigan Performs "Knots," "Little Bird" and "Passenger"

"Exuding both musical and personal warmth, the Irish singer mesmerized at the NPR Music offices." Also, this, perhaps my favorite-ever of the Tiny Desk Concerts provides some needed counterpoint to some of this blog's more recent posts.

Long Live Medina!

The town decides to stay alive — Medina voters reject dissolution.

(Medina, New York, not the Medina where the false prophet Muhammad, may God have mercy on his soul, massacred the Banu Qurayza Jews.)

Signs of Life in Christendom

Despite resistance from cops and mobs — Big German police presence cuts attendance at anti-Islam rally and 'Anti-fascist' mob rampages in Leipzig.

Man Up

[M]asculinity should be idealized among dissidents who are attempting to counter the now dominant narrative. This includes strength and the broader category of fitness, but it should also include traditional masculine qualities like courage, self-confidence and resolution. It should also be accompanied by admiration for traditional masculine virtues like chivalry and honor.

Thus spake Dan Phillips, MD., in his article noting what "may signal the emergence of a promising trend" in the "opposition to political liberalism and resistance to politically correct orthodoxy" — Strength and the Emerging Counterculture Identity.

Le Butcherettes Perform"I'm Getting Sick Of You" & "Henry Don't Got Love"

Teri Gender Bender's wearing the same dress and stockings, with the addition of a blood-stained apron, and performing two of the same songs she did in yesterday's posting, but she's gone electric here, or rather, she went acoustic there. Garage punk from Guadalajara!

Teri Gender Bender Performs "I'm Getting Sick Of You," "Henry Don't Got Love," & "New York"

Holy moly! Guadalajara-based Le Butcherettes' misnamed singer is something else!

My bubba Perform "Gone," "Dogs Laying Around Playing," "Poem Found in the Pocket of an Amazon," & "Wild & You"

KEXP must be watching me. I was just searching for something new from these Reykjavík gals, who have appeared on these pages before*, yesterday to no avail, and now this video was just posted a few hours ago.

*My bubba & Mi Perform "Banana Samba," "Steemengeene," "BBQ Bob," & "Through & Through"; My bubba Perform "Really Really," "Poem Found in the Pocket of an Amazon," "Dogs Laying Around Playing," "East Cave," "Going Home," "Island," "Our Water Hours," "Knitting," "Sexual Healing"; My bubba & Mi Perform "Fuck The Pain Away," "Banana Samba," "Steemengeene," "BBQ Bob," "How It's Done in Italy," "My bubba & Mi Ice Cream Face Cream" and "Through & Through".

Principled Opposition to the Civil Rights Movement

John Beeler finds it "easy to sympathize with him and his marchers," but notes that "all principled American conservatives in the golden era opposed the civil-rights movement, I think simply because constitutionally it didn't have a leg to stand on" — Martin Luther King. Tolle, lege.

Big Pharma Exposed

LewRockwell.com has two articles today — The Forgotten History of Vaccinations You Need to Be Aware Of and Vitamin D Helps Fight Cancer, Study Says. Big Pharma Is Outraged..

Jessica Lea Mayfield Performs "Do I Have The Time," "Standing In The Sun," "No Fun," & "I Wanna Love You"

More from the gal from Kent, Ohio.

"The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" (1960)

Binghamton, New York's Rod Serling's "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" is as powerful an indictment of 'merican mobocracy as was Brighton, New York's Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" or Harlem's Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

The New Pornographers "Brill Bruisers," "Dancehall Domine," "Fantasy Fools," & "Spidyr"

Sans Neko Case, but the Vancouver band still sounds good.

"Do Atheists Pray?”

I have been contemplating deleting from this blog's sidebar the "hard left" CounterPunch, a source I more often vehemently disagree with and only sometimes reluctantly agree with, until I read this short but moving piece — On Praying. Atheist Missy Beattie, God bless her, prayed the way I often do, from specific to general.

God Preserve Raif Badawi

Two from CounterPunch on the latest horror story perpetrated by "our Saudi allies" — “Flogging for Blogging” & Intolerance, Saudi-Style.

"Raif Badawi will be flogged every Friday for the next 19 weeks," explains Medea Benjamin, who also notes the "Congressional legislation being introduced to declassify a 28-page section of the 9/11 Senate report which allegedly exposes the direct role of the Saudi government in the Twin Tower attacks on 9/11."

In my line of work, I meet a lot of young Saudis, the majority of whom, like most young people, are pretty wonderful. I remember one young man telling me during Ramadan that he was making iftar dinner for his friends and then saying, "But actually, I'm not a Muslim. I'm an atheist. But don't tell anyone." He was without a doubt the most unannoying atheist I have ever met!

"American Orwell"

On my reading list I will have to put "our most thrilling dissident, a socialist with conservative cultural sympathies, a scything polemicist capable of the most tender, patient literary explication" — ‘A Voice Still Heard: Selected Essays of Irving Howe’.

Neko Case Performs "Local Girl" (Two Versions)

It might be an exaggeration to say she put Tacoma, Washington on the map, but the "Honourary Canadian" (for her work with The New Pornographers) did that for me, and it's no exaggeration to say that her album The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You is probably the best piece of vinyl in my small but growing collection.

Local Party Girl Sandra Doorley

A local girl's logical move — DA Sandra Doorley confirms switch to GOP.

Why logical? Echoing that now-classic Wayne's World, "If she were a president, she'd be Babe-raham Lincoln," minus the habeas corpus suspension and total war prosecution, one would hope. The milf's a Neko Case lookalike!

The End of Physics?

Bryan Appleyard on the growing opinion "that the wild claims of theoretical physicists are threatening the authority of science itself" — Physics: Superstitions and Allegories?

So when did it all go so horribly wrong? The critics would say in 1984 when a new idea – superstrings – suddenly seemed to offer physicists an escape from a dead end left behind by Einstein.

I heard so much from students and colleagues while working at the prestigious Pohang University of Science and Technology, from a Korean Ph.D. student arguing that string theory was theology, or rather a-theology, and an American colleague who when asked about the idea of a multiverse responded, "I hate it."

Mr. Appleyard cites as most "damagingly, the idea that the human mind, unaided except by mathematics, can encompass the universe has downgraded nature and deluded us into thinking we can do anything."

Tweedy Performs "Wait For Love," "New Moon," "Low Key," & "You Are Not Alone"

"There's something heartwarming about a family making music together," says the blurbist of this set of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy et fils, from Belleville, Illinois, a beautiful town, home to the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, where we stayed when our daughter needed follow-up medical care at the St. Louis Children's Hospital.

Wilco Perform "Dawned On Me," "Whole Love," "Born Alone," & "War On War"

A Chicago-based band, first recommended to me by a blog commenter, that I have finally gotten around to listen to and am listening to a lot, especially the album from which three-quarters of the above songs come.

Analogy by Alternative History

Steve Sailer suggests that "the enormous success of the Arabs in conquering much of the civilized world following the Muhammad’s death meant that what was considered advanced thought in 7th Century Arabia was imposed on the more sophisticated civilizations of Babylon, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Carthage and still intermittently retains some of its charisma" — The Law West of Mecca. His analogy and alternative history:

It’s kind of like if Chief Tecumseh and his brother The Prophet [pictuted at the top of this post, painted by George Catlin] had defeated Gen. William Henry Harrison in 1811 at the Battle of Tippecanoe and gone on to conquer the United States, and our culture in 2015 was organized around The Prophet’s visions. Sure most of the time we’d just be focused on making money and who is going to the Super Bowl of the National Lacrosse League, but still, there’d be an imprint on our values. We wouldn’t live like American Indians of 200 years ago, but we’d feel a little guilty about our backsliding, and we’d respect young men who embody the courage and ferocity of the braves of old.

Had that occurred, the National Lacrosse League's Rochester Knighthawks, a team whose roster is one-quarter Iroquois, would be headed for their fourth consecutive Super Bowl [Champion's Cup in the real world] victory this year, something my hometown Buffalo Bills once tried and, well, failed.

High Cholesterol?

High schmolesterol — Did the Doctor Say You Have High Cholesterol? Dr. Joseph Mercola gives you "7 reasons you should push back."

Valerie June Performs "Dust Of The Dirty," "Rambler," "Twined & Twisted," "Somebody To Love," "Workin' Woman Blues," "Raindance," "Rollin' and Tumblin'," & "Goodnight Irene"

Alynda Lee Segarra in this blog's last musical post* announces herself a big fan of the songstress from Memphis, Tennessee.

* Hurray For The Riff Raff Perform "The New SF Bay Blues," "Blue Ridge Mountain," "Instrumental Jam / Look Out Mama," "I Know It's Wrong (But That's Alright)," "The Body Electric," & "Little Black Star"

Another Victimization Myth Exposed

So much for that "persistent story in a lot of American families that their last name was changed at Ellis Island, garbled by an agent who simply wrote it down incorrectly" — No, Your Family's Name Was Not Changed At Ellis Island.

My family name goes back to XVIII^th Century America, and was self-Anglicized (rather than translated to "Tailor") by the Dutchmen or Germans (same difference) who bore it, and the Ellis Islander Kovácses who much later married into it had already rightly translated theirs themselves to "Smith."

Sadly, false knowledge is not uncommon. Mick quadroon though I may be, I have no truck for this nonsense — "No Irish Need Apply": A Myth of Victimization. Also, there are no first-hand accounts of this — Spitting on returning Vietnam vets. And here are two false etymologies exposed — Origin of the Word 'Picnic' and The "Rule of Thumb for Wife-Beating" Hoax.

What's the common theme here? "[M]ost of us want to believe that history is a steady march of progress towards enlightenment," and "[t]he further we go back, the stupider, cruder and more brutal we want to think people were" — 6 Ridiculous History Myths (You Probably Think Are True).

I'm an Alien, I'm an Illegal Alien...

Neither citizens nor lawful permanent residents are those intended to "receive discounts on prescriptions, land free one-year memberships at museums, concert halls, and zoos, and more," with this new card — Registration Now Open For IDNYC. The commie mayor has managed to make his city jump the shark.

Hurray For The Riff Raff Perform "The New SF Bay Blues," "Blue Ridge Mountain," "Instrumental Jam / Look Out Mama," "I Know It's Wrong (But That's Alright)," "The Body Electric," & "Little Black Star"

La Nouvelle-Orléans is home to this band led by a Nuyorican lass whose "music and the soul behind it feels so authentic and weary that dust an inch deep has settled in the room after I've finished listening," "with a transgender fiddle player and a lead singer who confesses to feeling out of place here, [who] quietly celebrates a queer image," and who topped our local music critic's list (and mine) for last year — Jeff Spevak's 10 picks for year's best albums.

America's First Gay President?

"Lindsey Graham is considering running for the Republican nomination," we learn from Thomas DiLorenzo, who learned it from "one of the FOX News info-babes [who] breathlessly announce[d it] this morning" — Remember the Restaurant Orgasm Scene in “When Harry Met Sally?”

The Jayhawks Perform "Tailspin," "Sound of Lies," "Somewhere In Ohio," "Save It For A Rainy Day," & "Ain't No End

More music from the Great State of Minnesota, whose "founding population was so overwhelmingly of New England origins that the state was dubbed 'The New England of the West.'"

Neocons Hate Emerson

The Weekly Standard argues "that we close the book on the Emerson Revival" — Where’s Waldo?

Not surprising that the welfare-warfare statists are threatened by the author of "Self-Reliance," words they fear Americans might want to apply to the State of Israel, which, by the way could have ended up here in the Burned-Over District on Grand Island, New York, as Ararat city, had Mordecai Manuel Noah's vision come true.

Herbert Waters' "The White Mountains of New Hampshire" (1952)

Something seasonal from the Print Club of Rochester.

Sarah Jarosz Performs Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells"

Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
’Cross the valleys and streams
For they’re deep and they’re wide
And the world’s on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride

Ring them bells St. Peter
Where the four winds blow
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know
For it’s rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow

Ring them bells Sweet Martha
For the poor man’s son
Ring them bells so the world will know
That our God is one
For the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled
With lost sheep

Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf
Ring them bells for all of us who are left
Ring them bells for the chosen few
Who will judge the many
When the game is through
Ring them bells, for the time that flies
For the child that cries
When innocence dies

Ring them bells St. Catherine
From the top of the room
Ring them from the fortress
For the lilies that bloom
For the lines are long
And the fighting is strong
And they’re breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong

Our Lady, Charlie Hebdo, and Charles Martel

The assassinated cartoonists, as wrongly anti-Catholic as they were rightly anti-Islamic, were remembered at one of Christendom's greatest monuments, in what was perhaps the most meaningful moment to emerge from this atrocity — Notre Dame Bells Mark Moment of Silence in France.

Is this a sign of the complete secularization of Europe, an empty ritual of mere symbolic pop-cultural, post-cultural mourning? Or it is a sign of the true mourning of the Eldest Daughter of the Church, both for the wayward sons to whom she gave their freedom of expression, and for the civilization she built that is being lost to the same invaders Charles Martel held back? Or might this yet be a sign of the first stirrings of cultural renewal and reclamation of the only true civilization to have emerged in the world?

Jessica Lea Mayfield Performs "Standing In The Sun," "Party Drugs," & "Seein* Starz"

From not-so-far-from-here Kent, Ohio come the "wistful voice against her shimmering guitar" and "that cotton-candy hair and all the glitter." Hikimayu doesn't do that much for me, but pink tights and Chuck Taylor All-Stars sure do.

Taki's Apologia

"Although an acknowledged sinner for most of my adult life – I chase women non-stop, drink to excess, smoke and gamble – I have never left the easy foothills of faith, a Catholic faith imbued in me by my father, raised a Jesuit," begins the Greek shipping magnate, in one of the best short defenses of the Faith I've ever read — Turn the Other Cheek.

Tom Toles on Charlie Hebdo

[Cartoonist Tom Toles is a former colleague of mine. We had the pleasure of working together on two newspapers, the Buffalo Courier-Express (once edited by Samuel Langhorne Clemens) and The Buffalo News, in the early '80s; I delivered his cartoons on a daily basis to many homes over a number of years. The cartoonist is also an alum of my alma mater.]

Justin Townes Earle Performs "Look The Other Way," "Am I That Lonely Tonight?," "Memphis In The Rain," "Nothing's Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now," "Halfway To Jackson," "Unfortunately, Anna," "Walk Out," & "Movin' On

Justin Townes Earle Performs "Burning Pictures," "When The One You Love Loses Faith In You," & "White Gardenias"

I somehow missed out on the career of Steve Earle until recent years; I won't make the same mistake with his son, with whom his father should be well pleased.

Free to Sled in Monroe Country

"Rosebud," laments the proprieter of the Inn at the End of the World in linking to this, sad, sad news — Nanny State: Sledding faces limits over liability concerns. Ours, by the Grace of God, is not among the "cities [that] have banned or limited sledding, [a] list [that] grows every year."

Rather, local columnist Leo Roth recently celebrated the fact that "Monroe County is one of the few park systems that allow sledding" — Skiing, skating, sledding and more in Monroe Co. Parks. He quotes Larry Staub, Jr., "the affable Monroe County Parks director," as wisely recognizing, "People have been sledding probably since there was snow. It's a losing proposition to prevent people from doing it."

Seventy miles to the west of here is the sled hill I grew up on, a visit to which two years ago prompted a post on how local governments can, in fact, aid and abet the "pursuit of happiness" — Localism Trumps Libertarianism.

Sam Amidon & Bill Frisell Perform "Blue Mountains," "Pat Do This, Pat Do That," & "Short Life"

From across the border in Brattleboro, Vermont is the young multi-instrumentalist genius who "takes traditional music and makes it his own."

He might begin with a traditional murder ballad and then morph it into something of his own, fueled by Bill Frisell's languidly atmospheric guitar, Shahzad Ismaily's minimal but essential percussion and Amidon's own yearning voice. At other times, Amidon weaves his own new tunes into worn, weary, seemingly ageless sagas.

Silicon Valley's Appalling Lack of Diversity

"White male nerds need to recognise that other people had traumatic upbringings, too - and that's different from structural oppression," writes the felicitously-named Laurie Penny — On Nerd Entitlement.

I confess to not having read Miss Penny's article, much less having needed to read it; we've all read recently about the appalling lack of "diversity" in Silicon Valley. (Asians, it seems, by virtue of their success, are no longer diverse.) The article's headline did, however, lead to an interesting quick Internet search.

Neither Computer Science nor Software Engineering, much less any STEM field outside of Biomedical Science, appear on either of these lists* — Most Popular College Majors For Women and Top 10 Majors Held By African-American Degree Holders.

SJWs would better serve their constituencies by helping them analyze and learn from the results of this research — Study Shows White Males Choose Better College Majors.

*Also interesting was that both of these "articles" appear in picture format, a sign of our post-literate future.

Regional Reads

Cassandra Palmyra reviews a "book [that] is effectively a romance novel that takes place on a farm and also happens to be a memoir" about the "movement of educated, principled, hard-working people who are going back to the farm and reimagining the enterprise for the 21^st century" — The Call of the Farm: Wanna-be Farmer Digs Dudes in Muck Boots.

Bill Chaisson reviews a book that "draws a circle with a 50-mile radius around Utica and discusses breweries in 18 towns and cities" and "notes that they’re or have been 62 beermakers over the last 200 years in this area" — CNY Brew History Subject of Shumway Book.

Islamic State

There already has been one for some time — US Ally, Saudi Arabia Beheads 87 In 2014, Up Over 10% From 2013. Offences that will cost you your head in the Magic Kingdom include "drug offenses, apostasy, sorcery and witchcraft."

Bob Mould Performs "The War," "I Don't Know You Anymore," "Hey Mr. Grey," & "Makes No Sense At All"

A fellow silverback! "Is the former frontman of Hüsker Dü, from Saint Paul, Minnesota, the only figure from the 1980s Hardcore Punk scene to have maintained his dignity and not to have descended into self-parody or irrelevance?" I asked the last time I posted his music — Bob Mould Performs "The Act We Act," "A Good Idea," "Hoover Dam," "Star Machine," "The Descent," "Steam of Hercules," "Flip Your Wig," "Hate Paper Doll," & "Makes No Sense At All".

And so far, 2015 seems to the year of Minnesota on these pages, starting with a Bob Dylan song, followed by two sets of Trampled by Turtles, and now this. Makes sense. The state was settled by people from around here. The connection remains with the Rochester Red Wings serving as a farm team for the Minnesota Twins.

Mario Cuomo, R.I.P.

News that the more interesting of the Governor Cuomos has passed — Mario Cuomo, Governor, Governor’s Father and an Eloquent Liberal Beacon, Dies at 82.

Upstate and the rest of the country could have been spared his "expansive and affirmative view of government and… message of compassion, tinged by the Roman Catholicism that was central to Mr. Cuomo’s identity," (Don’t immanentize the eschaton, Mr. Governor} were it not for a bad pitch:

It was baseball, not politics, that first engaged him, and he proved as aggressive in one as in the other. After graduating from St. John’s Preparatory School in Queens in 1949, he played on the freshman baseball team at St. John’s University.

A strapping six feet tall, 190 pounds at age 19, he signed a contract to play center field for the Class D Brunswick Pirates in Georgia in 1952, reportedly receiving a $2,000 signing bonus, sizable for that time. Mr. Cuomo “plays hard” and “will run over you if you get in his way,” a Pirates scout wrote.

His baseball career was short-lived. Knocked in the head with a 3-and-2 fastball that summer, he was left blind for a week and forced to give up the game — leaving with a .244 batting average.

Of the game, the only game, he said:

It is a community activity. You need all nine people helping one another. I love bunt plays. I love the idea of the bunt. I love the idea of the sacrifice. Even the word is good. Giving yourself up for the good of the whole. That's Jeremiah. That's thousands of years of wisdom. You find your own good in the good of the whole. You find your own individual fulfillment in the success of the community — the Bible tried to do that and didn't teach you. Baseball did.

Double blasphemy that!

Conservatives, apparently the target of this quote, would have done well to have given these words heed thirty years ago: "The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday they might force their beliefs on us." Amen. NY SAFE Act, upstaters? Same-sex marriage anyone? Two reasons among thousands why libertarianism and are the way forward.

A President's Letter to a Prophet

"To Brother Handsome Lake" from Thomas Jefferson:

I have received the message in writing which you sent me through Captain Irvine, our confidential agent, placed near you for the purpose of communicating and transacting between us, whatever may be useful for both nations. I am happy to learn you have been so far favored by the Divine spirit as to be made sensible of those things which are for your good and that of your people, and of those which are hurtful to you; and particularly that you and they see the ruinous effects which the abuse of spirituous liquors have produced upon them. It has weakened their bodies, enervated their minds, exposed them to hunger, cold, nakedness, and poverty, kept them in perpetual broils, and reduced their population. I do not wonder then, brother, at your censures, not only on your own people, who have voluntarily gone into these fatal habits, but on all the nations of white people who have supplied their calls for this article. But these nations have done to you only what they do among themselves. They have sold what individuals wish to buy, leaving to every one to be the guardian of his own health and happiness. Spirituous liquors are not in themselves bad, they are often found to be an excellent medicine for the sick; it is the improper and intemperate use of them, by those in health, which makes them injurious. But as you find that your people cannot refrain from an ill use of them, I greatly applaud your resolution not to use them at all. We have too affectionate a concern for your happiness to place the paltry gain on the sale of these articles in competition with the injury they do you. And as it is the desire of your nation, that no spirits should be sent among them, I am authorized by the great council of the United States to prohibit them. I will sincerely cooperate with your wise men in any proper measures for this purpose, which shall be agreeable to them.

You remind me, brother, of what I said to you, when you visited me the last winter, that the lands you then held would remain yours, and shall never go from you but when you should be disposed to sell. This I now repeat, and will ever abide by. We, indeed, are always ready to buy land; but we will never ask but when you wish to sell; and our laws, in order to protect you against imposition, have forbidden individuals to purchase lands from you; and have rendered it necessary, when you desire to sell, even to a State, that an agent from the United States should attend the sale, see that your consent is freely given, a satisfactory price paid, and report to us what has been done, for our approbation. This was done in the late case of which you complain. The deputies of your nation came forward, in all the forms which we have been used to consider as evidence of the will of your nation. They proposed to sell to the State of New York certain parcels of land, of small extent, and detached from the body of your other lands; the State of New York was desirous to buy. I sent an agent, in whom we could trust, to see that your consent was free, and the sale fair. All was reported to be free and fair. The lands were your property. The right to sell is one of the rights of property. To forbid you the exercise of that right would be a wrong to your nation. Nor do I think, brother, that the sale of lands is, under all circumstances, injurious to your people. While they depended on hunting, the more extensive the forest around them, the more game they would yield. But going into a state of agriculture, it may be as advantageous to a society, as it is to an individual, who has more land than he can improve, to sell a part, and lay out the money in stocks and implements of agriculture, for the better improvement of the residue. A little land well stocked and improved, will yield more than a great deal without stock or improvement. I hope, therefore, that on further reflection, you will see this transaction in a more favorable light, both as it concerns the interest of your nation, and the exercise of that superintending care which I am sincerely anxious to employ for their subsistence and happiness. Go on then, brother, in the great reformation you have undertaken. Persuade our red brethren then to be sober, and to cultivate their lands; and their women to spin and weave for their families. You will soon see your women and children well fed and clothed, your men living happily in peace and plenty, and your numbers increasing from year to year. It will be a great glory to you to have been the instrument of so happy a change, and your children's children, from generation to generation, will repeat your name with love and gratitude forever. In all your enterprises for the good of your people, you may count with confidence on the aid and protection of the United States, and on the sincerity and zeal with which I am myself animated in the furthering of this humane work. You are our brethren of the same land; we wish your prosperity as brethren should do. Farewell.

Trampled By Turtles Perform "Come Back Home," "Winners," & "Lucy"

Trampled By Turtles Perform "Ghosts," "Repetition," & "Nobody Knows," & "Wild Animals"

Fellows from a fellow Rust Belt town, Duluth, Minnesota, a town a now-octogenarian limey friend of mine from my days in what had once been British Malaya had been fascinated with as a kid, much as a young character in a José Donoso novel, which I read as a student in that author's home country, had been fascinated by the city of Omsk.

For me, the city was Irkutsk, having been a Cold War kid and short wave nerd whose QSL card to Radio Moscow earned him lots of Intourist brochures and most likely a place on some C.I.A. list.

Goin' Whole Hog in '15

"Rethinking Meat" was the title of a post that documented the circumstances leading to the most surprising and wonderful thing that happened to me in 2014, my return to Vegetarianism. Well, about a week ago the thought occurred to me that I should give Veganism a shot.

While I have no ethical objections to dairy or meat per se, avoiding them are the easiest way in this modern world to "walk softly upon the earth," as that most clichéd of American Indian proverbs tell us to do. [The pro-Indian Little Big Man (1970) pointed out the garbage dumps real Indians left behind a century before fake Indians like Iron Eyes Cody came along.]

Closer to home, the unhealthiest foods I indulge, like pizza and pierogies, all have cheese as a common main ingredient. Lacking willpower, I need an ethos to guide me. A lucky coincidence is that this lifestyle suits my phenotype as described in the Blood Type Diet.

Finally, while this at first might seem like "a sign of weakness to other men — like you've left the club —" there is "something very masculine about following a vegan diet," said one carnivorous gal quoted in this story — For These Vegans, Masculinity Means Protecting The Planet.

Viva Rachacha!

"The corks have popped, the ball has fallen and a new year dawns on a city that is too often taken for granted by those who call it home" — 10 reasons it’s a happy new year in Rochester. All ten are true, and not mentioned are our city's being home to the Genesee Brewing Company and proximity to Finger Lakes Wine Country.

This blogger doesn't take his adopted hometown for granted. I can think of no better city. She's got it all: maybe not as much of it as other cities, but just the right amount. She's well within the 500,000-limit proposed by E. F. Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful, and, despite our downstate overlords' best efforts, still within the range of Steve Sailer's "Affordable Family Formation" theory.

"Do We Need the C.I.A.?”

"I want to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds," said John F. Kennedy of his future murderers, quoted by James W. Douglass in his tome, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.

Fifty-one years later and after the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, welcome news from the Future of Freedom Foundation's Jacob G. Hornberger that finally being raised is "a question that ordinarily would be found mainly on libertarian websites" — A Radical Question About the CIA in the Mainstream Press.

The article made me aware of the fact hat the Empire State's own "Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan [had] introduced bills in 1991 and 1995 to abolish the Central Intelligence Agency and transfer its powers to the State Department." He shared a chapter titled "Two Independent Catholic Liberals Diverged in a Wood" in Look Homeward America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals by Bill Kauffman, whjo called interning in Washington for the senator "an anarchist-making experience."

From Holy Mother Russia With Love

I've been reading Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov)'s Everyday Saints and Other Stories, a gift from a Russian Orthodox friend and colleague for Christmas (ours, not hers). An excerpt from the last pages I read in 2014:

It is only through mysterious humility incomprehensible to the world, that a true Christian comes to one of the two greatest revelations in life. The first of these revelations is that one must discover the truth about oneself, and see oneself as one truly is. You must meet your own self. And believe me it’s the most important acquaintance. A vast number of people live their lives never even bothering to discover themselves at all. Sometimes we only have the vaguest notions or fantasies of who we are, and so depending upon our own vanity, pride, resentments, and ambitions we see nothing. But the truth, however bitter it might seem to us, is that WE are the “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” mentioned in the Scriptures…. Remember that verse from Revelation? And this truth only comes to us through scriptural and ruthlessly honest examination of oneself. Through true humility. True humility does not humiliate a man. On the contrary, anyone who survives this ordeal, this bitterest and harshest of truths becomes a saint. It is only those who are humble who can peer into the future, who can become prophets and miracle workers, wondered at by all of you.

… You know the second revelation not one bit less than I. It is the truth that our Church patiently reminds us of in every single Divine Service without exception: “May Christ, our true God, through the intercessions of His most pure Mother and of all the saints, have mercy on us and save us, for He is good and lovest mankind.”

This book earns a place on my shelf next to the Philokalia, The Way of a Pilgrim, and Christ the Eternal Tao.

"The Pittsford Perennialist" No More

With the new year comes a new name, gone is the lovely image above, from just down the road, and so is the "Quotebar" preserved below, to be replaced by quotes and images of some regional luminaries:

Quotebar

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." — Benjamin Franklin

"I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give." — Thomas Jefferson

"This used to be a hell of a good country." — George Hanson played by Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider (1969)

"Those old songs are my lexicon and prayer book. All my beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from 'Let Me Rest On That Peaceful Mountain' to 'Keep On The Sunny Side.' You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. I believe in a God of time and space, but if you ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back towards those songs." — Bob Dylan

The focus will be the same, with a continued focus on the Burned-Over District in which I grew up and its water's influence on how I observe the country and the world.

O.C.M.S. on Upstate New York

A lot of the old time music we didn't hear.... The generation we grew up in was Top 40 Country. It kind of took us moving to Upstate New York to actually find Southern music. People up there went South and found it in the '70s and kind of preserved it. It was a funny way we learned our music from the South. We had to go out of state to find it.

Thus spake the Virginians quoted in an update to this post — Old Crow Medicine Show Perform "O Cumberland River," "Brushy Mountain Conjugal Trailer," "8 Dogs 8 Banjos," & "Sweet Amarillo".

John Prine & Garth Hudson Perform Bob Dylan and the Band's "When I Paint My Masterpiece"

WRUR reminds us on New Year's Day that this song "looks forward, rather than backwards."