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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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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

Ishiguro photographed in an English countryside.
[Photo credit: Andrew Testa]

Here is a tweeter who writes:

[R]umour has it that @SalmanRushdie was hiding post fatwa in this house in Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire.

and a tweet reply:

@wodekszemberg @SalmanRushdie is there supposed to be any significance in this being next to a graveyard?

Ishiguro has a daughter Naomi with his English wife. Here is photo of her with a school friend from 2008.

As luck would have it, the mansion in front of which Ishiguro is posing is in Camden. So we can conclude that Ishiguro lived in Camden, and is now a Londoner according to his Wikipedia entry.

That is a strange coincidence that he lived n the same region in England as where Rushdie was rumored to have stayed during his fatwa. Or maybe not. Possibly, Ishiguro arranged Rushdie's secret accommodations.
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Here is more on the location of the photograph in the beautiful Cotswalds made to look like some abandoned barren land:

Kazuo Ishiguro, a novelist, in Chipping Campden, England, Jan. 26, 2015. Ishiguro’s new novel, “The Buried Giant,” is the riskiest and most ambitious venture of his celebrated career, a return to his hallmark themes of memory and loss, set in a ogre- and pixie-populated ancient England. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Ishiguro said. “Will readers follow me into this?” (Andrew Testa/The New York Times) - XNYT109

Below, I have posted and artcle I wrote at Camera Lucida in 2005 (!) where I clearly understood the perils of "diversity:" Diversity in Writers

Update (December 22, 2016) on Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro:
Smith continues with her theme of race/multi-race/mixed-race/ and some sociopolitical commentary about racial divides and biases often subtly elevating the "black" side of her own mixed-race "heritage." Here latest book is Swingtime which I have reviewed and will post soon.

Ishiguro abandoned the silent Butler narrator of a very real British household a while ago and started to write science fiction, not C.S. Lewis' Christian-based allegories, nor Tolkien's adventure sagas (also religious allegories) but dystopia fantasies of the world, or lives, falling apart. Although should add that The Butler had this creepy ghost-like aura. Ishiguro's latests, The Buried Giant:

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel in a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge and war. [Source]

As wrote (full post below):

[If] you don’t have your full emotions invested in a place, how can you write positive things about it? Like Rushdie, Smith and Ishiguro, who seem to deny a possibility for a future in their books, and press on with their circular exaggerations trying to find meanings for themselves.

Non-allegorical, dystopian science fiction fits that creative void.
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Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Diversity in Writers
Will the Real Jeeves Please Stand?

England has witnessed several years of non-English authors who keep winning literary prizes, or just literary acclaim. Zadie Smith was recently in the headlines, Salman Rushdie has managed to outlive his fatwa, and another less famous but prolific writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, has written yet another book from those fair British Isles.

I’ve read books by all three, even tried more than one of each. And all leave me less than enthralled, slightly confused, and struck by a lack of authenticity. I find their characters to be caricatures. Both Rushdie and Smith go for hyperbole, while Ishiguro goes for exactly the opposite.

I’m beginning to wonder if non-British writers, however much they were born on the Island, can really capture the spirit of the land.

“Remains of the Day” by Ishiguro has a gloomy, undecipherable, remorseful butler try to recapture something of what he’s lost during all those years of selfless service. Actually, I recant my observation about Ishiguro’s understatement. What could be more of a hyperbole than this?

Then there is P.G. Wodehouse, with the inimitable Jeeves. His adroit butler who really always does save the day, after a lot of scampers and near-disasters along the way. And he does get to have his day at the sea-side also, and quite frequently.

I think Wodehouse captured his character with affection as a butler who certainly is not going to be bossed around by any Lord! No remains for him to collect.

Sometimes I wonder; if you don’t have your full emotions invested in a place, how can you write positive things about it? Like Rushdie, Smith and Ishiguro, who seem to deny a possibility for a future in their books, and press on with their circular exaggerations trying to find meanings for themselves.

Ishiguro’s 2001 book “When we were orphans” is about an Englishman who mysteriously lost his parents as a young boy in Shanghai. He returns as a professional detective to solve that ultimate mystery. It reminds me of these writers, trying to find clues about their past by digging into words.

Ishiguro’s latest book forfeited the unapproachable Far East, and his ancestral home, for something even more alien. It seems like he’s completely given up on ‘his’ England. “Never let me go” is about a Utopia (or a dystopia) on cloning. No more real people, real places or real stories for Ishiguro in the advent of the 21st century.

Why doesn’t this progression of his thoughts and stories not surprise me?

Quote from an interview with Ishiguro on "When we were Orphans":

There's a certain kind of branded, packaged atmosphere of Shanghai: this exotic, mysterious, decadent place. The same in Remains of the Day. It was a case of manipulating certain stereotypical images of a certain kind of classical England. Butlers and tea and scones: it's not really about describing a world that you know well and firsthand. It's about describing stereotypes that exist in people's heads all around the world and manipulating them engagingly.

I am so glad the someone agrees with me!!!

Kevin Michael Grace writes about Zadie Smith:

Too funny. There are many fine woman novelists, but #ZadieSmith is not one of them. She's laughably bad.

I scoured the Internet to find a "critique" on Smith's latest book. It didn't have to be harsh, just a standard analysis.

Nothing. Not even by James Wood who coined the category "hysterical realism"  after her book White Teeth in 20 - (which later became a grimy BBC series which gave up watching ) although Wood capitulated with Smith's 2012 NW http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/books-of-the-year

Here is what Wikipeda managed to say in one concise paragraph (which is as accurate as I can remember)

White Teeth consists of four self-contained short-stories, focusing on a major male character as he encounters a turning point in his life, with background cameos from other characters.[1] The series spans 20 years of three cultures, chronicling the interlinked stories of three families over three generations in a multicultural area of north-west London[2] from 1974 to 1992.[3]

And of course the focus of the film's derision (and I assume the novel's also) is a white male described as:


The four-hour saga also features leaps back to the Second World War, where Samad and Archie served together, and even further back to the 1857 Indian Mutiny.[4]

So much for modern - modernist - literary critiques. They settle, or perhaps they just have no principles.

It isn't much of a surprise that Wood has kept quiet on Swingtime because his initial horror has been justified.

After ept Swngtme around for about one wee readng parts of t gong through pages

rarely do ths and eep even "bad" boos that 've bought.


http://cameralucid.blogspot.ca/2005/10/zadie-smiths-on-beauty.html














http://societyforreclaimingwesternbeauty.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-desecration-of-rembrandt-gentle-men.html

The Great no-longer-so-White North

Below (with an introduction) is an email letter I received from a blog correspondent which I left as a draft when I first thought of publishing it in June 2015.

Now it is more relevant than ever. Note the reader's contempt for the "Trudeau Liberals" by which he meant Trudeau Sr., not the Justin cavorting around as a politician now.

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The Great no-longer-so-White North

This letter below is from a correspondent, who describes the Toronto of the 1970s (and into the early 80s).

The history of the Loyalists shows how different Canada and the United States are, which is how it should be despite all this Free Trade lingo, which puts us together with Third World Mexico! The anti-Americanism which the Canadian media (aka CBC), the stooge of the liberals and the Liberal Party, loves to spout is taken on in a healthy way by the ordinary Canadians, who love their flag, their foods (however few there are that are different from the Americans'), their holidays (next week is Canada Day, yes a reaction to Fourth of July, but still celebrated with gusto), and so on.

But, there is a unity with the US when it comes to the European heritage. And I strongly believe that this multicultural fetish is a "white guilt" thing.

He is very astutely observes that this "hate" or rather this identification of difference is projected into Quebec, and the endless wrangles we have with that Province. And I am actually a proponent of "freeing" Quebec. Let them deal with NAFTA, terrorism, the vacillating currency, maintaining a First World way of life, WITHOUT dipping into the Canadian coffers. Let them do it alone. Cut off ALL the strings. VIVE LE QUEBEC LIBRE!

One more thing.

Question: Who are the HABS?!! (Confession: Sin of all Canadian Sins. I don't watch hockey!!)

Answer: Habs is an abbreviation of "les habitants," the informal name given to the original settlers of New France, dating back to the 17th Century. So it's a natural fit for the The Montreal Canadiens, established in 1909 and marketed as a French-Canadian hockey team.

Yep, even in hockey, there is the Quebec Narrative. So, my correspondent is insightful to view these hockey games as war-like rivalry to release those ancestral tensions.

Here is the email/letter:

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Dear Kidist,

Good luck with the Hildebrand project. You're doing good work, even (especially) if the thought-police don't approve!

Mississauga really has changed. My father spent the last 10+ years of his career in Toronto (living in the City of Toronto itself from 1972 to 1983), and -- as a landed immigrant, not an illegal alien --- I worked a lot of temp jobs in Toronto during school and university days. I got to know greater Toronto pretty well.

At the time Mississauga was a blue-collar to white-collar Canadian suburb, which is [to] say the inhabitants were Canadians. Friends of ours who lived there had been in Ontario from its beginnings: United Empire Loyalists who went north from New York after the American Revolution made New York an uncomfortable place for loyalists to live. We haven't been in touch with them for many years, but I suspect they have long since white-flown Mississauga for somewhere much farther out.

Toronto proper at that time had immigrant pockets, some (European; I remember particularly a Portuguese enclave) of fairly long standing, but was still preeminently a Canadian city, united by belief in the Leafs and hatred of the Habs. There was, however, a growing West Indian area which, perhaps coincidentally, was considered the most sketchy part of town.

I hope the Canadians wake up in time to salvage some Canadian Canada. But when I look at what Americans are accepting, and remember it was a Canadian government (Trudeau's Liberals from 1968 through the early '80s; not that Mulroney's Tories did anything to undo Liberal sabotage when they got in) that introduced the world to official multiculturalism and mandated racial and sexual diversity, it's hard to be too hopeful. So far, from what I see, Canadians have swallowed almost all of it without a peep, and tell themselves it's all a Good Thing. The only outlet English Canadians allow themselves is to be annoyed at the Quebecois - to go any further would be racist...

Please keep up your good work in the Great no-longer-so-White North!

Best regards.

Going Back to Books: Part II

Jane Austen's desk in her Cottage in Chawton, Hampshire
where she lived for eight years,
and worked on 'Emma', 'Persuasion' & 'Mansfield Park'
c. 1809

Chawton Cottage was a household of ladies - Mrs Austen, her daughters and their friend Martha Lloyd - all taking part in the work of the house and garden. But Jane was allowed private time. Having no room of her own, she established herself near the little-used front door, and here "she wrote upon small sheets of paper which could easily be put away, or covered with a piece of blotting paper". A creaking swing door gave her warning when anyone was coming, and she refused to have the creak remedied.[Source]

I am happy to say that I have a few of Jane Austen's book:

Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
and Emma

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Below are my recent purchases (within the past three or four months).

I haven't read all of them (actually the majority). Perhaps I am waiting to win the lottery to go to some island repose where all I do is read (and contemplate - the important and often neglected part that goes with reading).

Reading is a tough call these days. The home television is on all the time (imagine trying to read with a CNN report with "HILLARY.....TRUMP.....SYRIA....!!!!" interjecting, or with The Price is Right's audience screaming its enthusiasm.

I often wonder how Jane Austen wrote her books in the midst of the bustle of family life. But in her time, the sounds of the home were the clutter of her mother and sisters taking care of the home - preparing meals, sweeping and dusting, writing notes to friends and neighbors. And "talking" didn't come from some gadget but through quiet conversations with family members and visitors. The radio or the gramophone were not invented yet (or available for public use) so music and discourse were presented during evening socials by family members and guests. Sound had its time and place, and its (reduced) volume. There was none of that 24-hour schedule we have for everything now.

The modern world is making us more stupid, more narcissistic and more callous. It is a capitulation to unGodly schedules and impulses. It is the grip of the Devil.

Still, I get a couple of hours in the late afternoon and now I have started to get up at 5am (4:45) where I have my morning coffee and a chapter to get through. Of course this competes with my writing time, so I guard these hours jealously.

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Here is my current list of books, in no particular order:

- Words Overflown By Stars: Creative Writing Instruction and Insight From the Vermont College of Fine Arts M.F.A. Program: Edited by David Jauss

- Religion and the Rise of Western Culture: The Classic Study of Medieval Civilization: Christopher Dawson

- The B Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song: Ben Yagoda

- Who is that Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan: David Dalton

- Someday, Someday, Maybe: Lauren Graham

- Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between): Lauren Graham

- Sunshne Sketches of a Little Town: Stephen Leacock

- Little House on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder

- A Good Day's Work: In Pursuit of a Disappearing Canada: John DeMont

- The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories form 125 Writers and Artists - Famous and Obscure: Edited by Larry Smith

- Designs for a Happy Home: Matthew Reynolds

- Scent of Triumph: A Novel of Perfume and Passion : Jan Moran

- Sydney and Violet: Their Life with T.S. Eliot, Proust, Joyce, and the Excruciatingly Irascible Wyndham Lewis: Stephen Kladman

And the book that started this flurry of purchases:

- How to Write a Memoir in 30 Days: Step-by-Step instructions for Creating and Publishing Your Personal Story: Roberta Temes, PhD

The "30 days" are long gone but I found these two bits of wisdom which have shaped my "drafts" ever since I got this book:

A memoir is not an autobiography. An autobiography is strictly factual and chronologically covers your life from birth until today. It is accurate and full of facts and explanations. An autobiography states facts, whereas a memoir describes your reactions to those facts. For example, an autobiography might discuss social and political ideas of the times, but your memoir would discuss your emotional responses to those ideas. Your autobiography s a photograph a picture, showing precise detail. Your memoir, on the other hand, is an impressionistic painting - a canvass conveying a general impressions using free brushstrokes to create a general feeling.

My next question of course was: Should I write a work of fiction as had Lauren Graham before she delved into her memories? Or as this author says was the source of many novels:

The Self as Object in Modernist Fiction: James, Joyce, Hemingway (but am NOT a "Modernist"!)

I like the idea of a memoir. Afterall, that is what my blogs have been in some way: a record of the things I saw, observed, and was attracted to, not necessarily on an intellectual level but often on a visceral one.

Perhaps I should simply publish my blogs!!! (There are many online advisors out there showing just how to do that!).

Another important advice I got from Dr. Temes was to find a category for the memoir:

Memoirs fall into different categories. Perhaps you already know in what category your memoir belongs. It might be:

(and here is a list including - a relationship memoir, an animal memoir(?), an illness memoir - etc..)

I think mine fits well with: A Call to Action Memoir. After all, I have called my blog Reclaiming Beauty: Saving Our Western Civilization.

One final insight from Dr. Temes inadvertently showed me this:

A memoir is not a confessional! Everyone has some harrowing story to tell (some much worse than others) but I really don't think people like to read some psychologically difficult or traumatic premise of anyone's life. It is now the norm or the trend to find such kinds of memories publicly discussed. We are in the era of Oprah after all. Bookstores will happily cater to such clientele with these quick-read books to fill their shelves (as opposed to say a Hemingway) and publishers will be glad of their busy schedules with "writers" seeking their services (they charge steep prices too!). But how lasting, how important and how insightful are such "memoirs?" What do they really have to say?

So this Dr. Temes discouraged me from this personalized confessional and challenged me to write something "bigger" than myself!

It is all coming together!

Going Back to Books: Part I

I am reposting an article I wrote in 2013, three and half years ago. I titled it Book Project: Writing although Book Project: Reading wold have been more appropriate. I wrote about my attempts to find good contemporary books and how difficult that was. Nonetheless I managed to find a few which is what I was describing in the post below. I have a corresponding post here where I list the books I recently bought mostly at my local Chapters/Indigo (through various discounts "point bonuses," sales and occasionally fully-priced purchases). I am so glad to find that I can find books that may enjoy reading.

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Book Project: Writing


Bookshelf at Kennedy's in New York
[Photo by KPA]

I've been away from books. It used to be that I would have a couple of books on the works, usually one fiction and another cultural/art/biographical book. At school, I would find a quiet place to read a chapter, or half a chapter, before returning to school projects. My favorite place as a young girl was the seat of a tree-trunk. At work, I would use my lunch breaks, or coffee breaks, to read. At home, I would reduce the number of hours sitting in front of the television to resume a chapter I had to leave to return to other pressing matters.

In the past few years, it could be that I became disappointed with the selection of new books available these days, or that I had read enough of the classics that I wanted something modern and fresh. Yet almost all the modern books disappointed me, and I stopped buying books. I left off re-reading the classics. I started to spend more time on short on-line articles on the internet. And I started watching movies, and literary adaptations on television. I read fewer and fewer books.

Recently, I have gone back to books. I sit at a restaurant, or a coffee house, and bring my books, often two at a time, as I explained earlier my reading habits: Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, Brian Morton's Starting Out in the Evening (a contemporary book which nonetheless won me over with its writing), Edith Hamilton's Mythology, Candice Bushnell's One Fifth Avenue (a witty contemporary book whose writer is of Sex and City fame), Roger Scruton's Beauty, Ron Chernow's Washington, and Nancy Berner's and Susan Lowry's Garden Guide: New York City.

I bought all but one of these books within the last year, so there's hope yet, except for Hemingway's which is an old edition which I bought at my undergraduate university's used book store (the bookstore's stamp - Paper Back Junction - is still on it, as well as an inscription by a reader dated '71, who wasn't a fan of the book, but I do disagree!).

It looks like I went into a flurry of buying, and reading, to make up for lost time, these past couple of years.

People seem to have some respect for books, and book readers. At the coffee house or restaurant which I visit more frequently (just a drink at both, and occasionally a meal at the restaurant), the owners/waiters/managers don't seem to mind that I choose a seat in the back, and that I could be there for an hour or more with just a coffee refill, or a plate of french fries, reading a book or taking and making notes. They seem to think I bring prestige to their place, and are kind and serviceable towards me.

Well, I did tell them something else, partly to alert them toward my long sit-times. "I am in the process of writing a book." I told one manager. I told him I come there to refresh my ideas, sometimes by reading another book, and other times by going over the notes I've made.

Since then, if he's not busy, he takes me to the quiet back area himself. And waiters (who desire to be writers?), actually sit down to chat with me. One in particular is too polite to ask direct questions, so I fill him in on the latest, if I can, and if I want to.

I wondered about this attention.

I think people are interested in those who do things, or who say they do things. And since I am coming into their premises to do something creative, they seem to want to make that as easy as possible for me.

I am often touched and surprised by their attention.

But, there is something else. I think there is a great deal of prestige given to writers. A writer, whether a fiction writer, a biographer, a political/social/cultural writer, invents something new through the sheer determination of his mind. It is creativity at the cerebral level, using the imagination of the writer and the reader to bring the work to life.

It is perhaps like the Bible. We have our created world, yet, in order to make sense of it, to analyze it, to make it a reality, God then created the Word. But the Bible is not just simply a descriptive account of the world around us. Its words create a myriad of things, from a literary masterpiece, a daily guideline, a family saga, a message bearer, a sin-identifier. Without this ability of the written word to convey so much, our Bible would be just another artifact, a prolonged magazine article, convincing no-one it is worthy to spend years to decipher its alphabets and words in order to read it, understand it, and make sense of our world through it.

I think that is what books are trying to do. And in a modest way, that is what I am trying to do.

Winter

Jubilee Garden Mississauga
[Photo by KPA]

Free Jinger's Kidist Discussions

There is a gossipy forum titled Freejinger where I have been a subject of discussion for a couple of years (sporadically). I often laugh out loud reading it.

There is also a whole topic under my name with 40 entries. Even funnier.

Forum member C. Potter-Pirbright has provded a summary which I've posted below.

Now C. Potter-Pirbright is a pseudonym somewhat sophisticated for this site of a character from Jeeves the stoic butler in P. G. Wodehouse's series of books. That alone is enough to take a look through C. Potter-Pirbright's entries.

Freejnger summary by C. Potter-Pirbright:

Kidist Paulos Asrat or Kidist P. Asrat as she likes to be known in her professional ventures, is the blogger behind cameralucid.blogspot.com and kidistpaulosasratartcles.blogspot.com, beautyforbodymindandspirit.blogspot.ca and has contributed to the American Thinker.

Kidist was born in Ethiopia and identifies herself with the Amhara people and considers herself to be Caucasian. Kidist and her family fled Ethiopia around 1974 after the fall of Emperor Haile Salassie...[T]he family moved first Paris and then London, and the United States after which they finally settled in Canada. Today Kidist lives in the multi-cultural hub of Toronto, a fact in itself that is baffling with her views.

Kidist works at a clothing store; however there is speculation that she must have family money or support to fund her lifestyle and travels (mainly to NYC).

Kidist is a firm believer in belief that her blog is an intellectual treasure trove, dealing with high-class fashion, architecture, art and social issues affecting North America (Canada & The United States). Not only is her work of a very high quality but greatly appreciated.

However her blog reads far more as her own personal diatribe against, Gays, Muslims, Liberals, Women, Asians, interracial couples and immigrants. Kidist is all for equal opportunity hating.

Kidist's Greatest Hits[...]

As a child Kidit presented flowers to the Emperor, this memory is clearly very important to her and has possibly allowed her to build up her elite status in her mind now that she lives in a world far from that of her childhood.

cameralucid.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/flower-for-emperor.html

Kidist is not of the opinion that Asian's can understand or play classical music or dance in the ballet. Her expertise in the matter is the fact that she has studied, violin, piano and sung in classical choirs in her youth. The fact that the National Ballet had Chinese principal ballerina, performing in 'white roles' appears to cause her much rage.

cameralucid.blogspot.com/2012/01/music-is-about-bringing-us-all-together.html

Kidist is creepily obsessed with the child of her neighbors, a young white couple they have a child who is approximately three years old. This little boy has a Chinese caretaker/Nanny. Kidist is not pleased by this arrangement and is constantly spying on the child and caretaker, and approaching the parents to 'warn' them. She is also very worried that the caretaker is attempting to lure the child into accepting other races to the point where he will marry an Asian woman.

cameralucid.blogspot.com/2011/07/young-beautiful-white-boy-tall-handsome.html

Not understanding the presence of Native American's in the Thanksgiving Parade.

cameralucid.blogspot.com/2012/11/raining-on-parade.html


Immigrants of the Asian/ Muslim persuasion

Kidist has a lot of pent up rage for immigrants, these range from delightful complaints that they are spending more money that herself to the fact that they bring their own language and culture to Canada. Women who dress in their native attire and speak their own language trying to ruin the real Canada (not the native Canadian's mind you). Immigrants ruin the prices of homes and bring with them their own food and scents changing the landscape. Multi -cultural Canada will be the death of Kidist.

http://cameralucid.blogspot.ca/2013/01/daily-episodes-of-icompatability-of.html

Kidist enjoys attacking the Obamas (everyone including Bo is fair game), apparently The President is incapable etc and Michelle and the girls have appalling clothing choices.

cameralucid.blogspot.com/2013/01/hypocrite-in-chief-part-ii.html

Kidist occasionally ventures an opinion on movies and award shows. Popular Movies = bad, especially if they have a tinge of race to them. Oh and Tina Fey has a potty mouth.

Kidist is friends with Lawrence Auster and Laura Wood (The Thinking Housewife), and keeps in touch not only by email but has visited them. She treats their words and thoughts as high intellect and quotes them regularly.

cameralucid.blogspot.com/2012/12/we-are-normal-ones.html

Kidist also goes out of her way to not only stare and complain about interracial couples to people serving her in restaurants but does the same for Gay couples. The lack of response she receives from others is perceived by her to be agreement and she appears to be convinced that Canada is full of people who like her are appalled by interracial couples, gays and immigrants but are too cowardly to say so publically and need her to speak out.

Kidist doesn't allow comments on her blog. While you can email her, she is very quick to threaten to report you to the HRC ,the dissonance is strong with this one. You are however encouraged to contribute to her endeavors at publish a book.

Notable Kidist threads include.

http://freejinger.org/forums/viewtopic. ... st#p469746

http://freejinger.org/forums/viewtopic. ... st#p460765

http://freejinger.org/forums/viewtopic. ... st#p171601

http://freejinger.org/forums/viewtopic. ... st#p200416

I wrote in my last post A Basic Guide to Liberalism and Conservatism, Part I: From the Orthosphere:

I have made a major decision in the way I am to approach recent events. And as my last few posts show, I am getting a shower of support! Is this a sign from God :).

Well here's another one from The Federalist:

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What Life Is Like For Artists In The Time Of Trump
By: Maureen Mullarkey

Donald Trump’s victory has affected even the artists’ listserv I belong to. A December 3 broadcast touted an ‘action plan’ to stop Trump.

“I am an artist, you know. It’s my right to tell you what to think. I’m chosen. You’re not.” That is the nutshell version of a long-standing effort to wrest art away from bourgeois aesthetic concerns and onto political ones. This tug is at work in every branch of the arts. But for economy’s sake, I will keep to the words art and artist as shorthand for the range of disciplines.

Today’s arts culture—the segment of it that appeals to museum curators, faculty hiring committees, and awards panels—mimics the intellectual fray of the 1960s, itself an imitation of contests begun in the 1910s and ‘20s. From the 1909 Futurist Manifesto, through assorted utopian declarations of the 1960s, on to the hectoring of Mike Pence by the cast of “Hamiliton,” artists have been on a steady, determined march toward ideological preachment.



“The truth of art,” wrote Herbert Marcuse, “lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality to define what is real.” What is taken as real by graduates of university art departments are the biases that flatter the university’s view of itself as a progressive institution. Coloring that view is the old myth of the artist’s divine spark, a tradition fuelling the mystique of an avant garde.

It is a heady brew. It repudiates inherited models of aesthetic worth, dismissing hard-won mastery as technical hokum. At the same time, it seduces art majors—novel creatures, historically—to see themselves as an intellectual class commissioned to awaken audiences from acceptance of the status quo. The ultimate aim of the contemporary artist’s training is not facility, not ease with one’s métier, but the political or social message. Since there is no end to things to be anguished about, Hope ‘n’ Change can last forever.

I Thought Artists Were Against Censorship

Right now, the art-and-culture bubble is iridescent with gloom. Election Day was an alarm to mobilize combatants in the culture war to lift the yoke of our oppression. Here in my inbox is a “Dear Colleague” letter from the board of the U.S. chapter of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), a nongovernmental organization founded in 1950 by the newly formed United Nations:

We’re getting in touch to let you know it is time to renew your membership. But first we’d like to say how deeply troubled and saddened we are by the responses of hatred that we’ve been seeing and hearing about following the results of our presidential election. One of AICA’s founding principles was a statement against censorship. As art critics and writers, we are committed to contribute to mutual understanding of visual aesthetics across cultural boundaries, and to defend impartially freedom of expression and thought and oppose arbitrary censorship. We can’t know what 2017 will be like, but with your renewed membership, AICA-USA will work to redouble our commitment to these values as we head into uncertain times.

Who is doing the hating? Perhaps the board missed Matt Welch’s column in Reason last March: “During her October 2015 testimony in front of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, she [Hillary Clinton] issued the remarkable claim that the murdered cartoonists of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo ‘sparked’ their own assassinations by drawing caricatures of Mohammed—the free expression equivalent of blaming rape victims for wearing short skirts.”

Someone forgot to tell the board of directors that their preferred candidate thought there ought to be a law, with federal penalties attached, against controversial entertainment—including movies that criticize a politician named Hillary Clinton. This same board stood proud when AICA held its annual international congress this past October at the Museo de Belle Artes in Havana, where freedom of thought and expression are non-issues.

The eminent College Art Association (CAA) encourages attendance at its 2017 Annual Conference with this: “Given the political climate in the United States right now, CAA knows it is of utmost importance to address issues at the intersections of race and contemporary art, colonialism in art history, and the Black Lives Matter movement at the 2017 Annual Conference.”

Conference highlights include a discussion on “Public Art in the Era of Black Lives Matter;” “Picturing Social Movements from Emancipation to Black Lives Matter,” a panel titled “Post-Black and Liquid Blackness” in contemporary African American art; and a talk by Evie Terrano, PhD, an art historian whose topics include challenging the authority of the Confederate flag.

Brushes Aside! We Have Politics to Do

Trump’s victory has affected even the artists’ listserv I belong to. The list began as a handy way to circulate useful information among visual artists in and around New York City. It affirms Picasso’s contention that only critics natter about form and content. When artists get together, they just want to talk about “where to buy cheap turpentine.”

Postings usually keep to methods and materials, the cookery of things. (“If your umbers are drying too quickly, try a little clove oil.”) Subscribers help each other out with the vital questions: Who has the name of a low-cost art mover? What are they paying studio models these days? Can anyone recommend a plumber?

But since Election Day, politics has been gaining ground. This is every cultural worker’s hour to repudiate formalist hocus pocus and encourage solidarity in the arts in service to the noble cause of building . . . no, not communism. Just left-leaning liberalism epitomized by the First Woman not-yet-President.

A December 3 broadcast touted an “action plan” to stop Trump. Remember, he still has not been elected. That happens in the Electoral College on December 19. There were only 16 days left.

Innocuous ornaments like the easel-picture could wait. Better to sign and distribute an Electoral College petition to make Hillary president. Initiate individual contact with specific electors. Keep this Change.org petition in the public’s consciousness by contacting TV stations, reporters, and bloggers. Organize and direct grassroots action; man phone banks; write letters. Promote protests in state capitals on December 19.

A fabric artist—whose hand-stitched work eyeballs the worldwide immigrant crisis, gun violence, health care, and marriage equality—stepped forward to offer her own efforts to the new cause:

Because of the election of Donald Trump I am planning on periodically posting information of events that are in reaction to Trump’s presidency. These events could be demonstrations, teach ins, lectures, study groups, art exhibits, calls for art, readings and performances. If you know of any events that you would like to share on this list and if you would like to receive this list please contact me at . . . .

Westbeth, an affordable housing complex for artists on the former site of Bell Laboratories, jumped into the ring to promote “Write Now: A Participatory Installation” assembled to address a world suddenly “in upheaval” by giving artists and visitors to Westbeth Gallery an opportunity to address their feelings. Participants receive Post-It notes in four different colors. They can use as many notes as needed to express their pensées. They can draw, collage, paint, write, or sculpt on them before sticking them on gallery walls.

In addition, participants are encouraged to donate to four recommended charities. The character of Westbeth’s policy preferences is clear in their selected endorsements: Planned Parenthood; the Ali Forney Center for gay and transgender teens; God’s Love We Deliver, a service for HIV/AIDS patients; Cabrini Immigrant Services, a boon companion to illegal aliens seeking social services.

You’re Fueling Trump Again, People

Dark times are upon us. Now more than ever, artists are needed to save us from the snare and the pit. An excerpt from one painter’s lengthy morning-after listserv reflection illustrates the current sense of mission:

I have a responsibility to engage in our communities. In fact, I must admit I feel artists might even bear more responsibility than the general public, as we have special gifts to offer. . . . We offer personal strengths unique to us as artists. I’ve noticed that the anti-fracking community is composed of an inordinate number of artists, and often wondered why. My sense is that because artists are well-educated, more able than most to think ‘outside the box,’ accustomed to taking chances in their art and risks in their lives, artists are among the first to recognize a societal problem, and among the first to search for solutions. . . . Artists perform every type of role imaginable, and have been critical to any of the successes we’ve had. . . .
Now it is time for each of us to act in whatever way feels right to us as individuals and as artists, but definitely to act.

Here is a pitch-perfect sample of the elitist self-regard that contributed to Trump’s victory. The writer, a painter, takes for granted his own rectitude. He also assumes his audience is equally offended by an election that went against the grain of worthier preferences. Worthiness, you see, is a natural result of intellectual superiority. It comes with those special gifts and unique strengths unavailable to lesser sorts.

It never occurs to the arts community that it has no more political insight or civic savvy than its neighbors. Like the “anti-fracking community,” the fraternity might have less. Its image of itself as occupying a privileged place in the moral universe is a distorting lens through which self-congratulation looks easily like discernment.

Your ‘Education’ Consists of Indoctrination

Stay for a moment with that term better educated. There is humor in that. Since the post-World War II era, when art training began to shift in earnest from the atelier to the campus, artists have breathed the same infantilizing culture that infects academia.

Consider the University of Delaware’s current pitch for its master of fine arts program. Second-year MFA students are invited to a 9-day frolic dubbed “Barefeet and Birthday Suits: MFA in Berlin.” Tuition is free for this “unique international experience partially funded by private charitable donations.” (Any wonder why millennials went for Bernie Sanders?)

Imagine a program for medical or law students hawked in terms more suggestive of a nudist colony than professional expertise. But then, expertise is an outmoded concept in an area of activity to which the word discipline is hard to apply. Painters, sculptors, and gifted craftsmen still exist. But they are outnumbered by contemporary artists adrift in a sea of undifferentiated “practices,” a portmanteau word for holding whatever posture an MFA drops into it.

By their Post-It notes you will know them.

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Maureen Mullarkey is an artist who writes on art and culture. She keeps the weblog Studio Matters. Follow her on Twitter, @mmletters.

Photo Photo by Maxwell Leung for CAA
Photo William Murphy / Flickr

A Basic Guide to Liberalism and Conservatism, Part I: From the Orthosphere

I have made a major decision in the way I am to approach recent events. And as my last few posts show, I am getting a shower of support! Is this a sign from God :).

Here is a formidable article from the Orthosphere by Alan Roebuck which he has re-edited to clarify some points.

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A Basic Guide to Liberalism and Conservatism, Part I
By Alan Roebuck
We could use a catechism of liberalism and conservatism (i.e., anti-liberalism.) Young people won’t know about reality unless someone teaches them. They may sense it, but they won’t know it unless someone teaches them.

Update 12/13/16: In response to useful criticism, I have added text to clarify my position...

Part I: Introduction

Liberalism begins with the deliberate violation of the laws of God, the laws of nature, and human tradition. If this blasphemy excites you, you’re prone to become a liberal. If you’re a normal person, it disgusts you, and you will not become a liberal unless it disguises itself as something good.
Everybody knows something’s wrong with the world. As Christians, we know that the ultimate malady is sin, but sin manifests itself in countless ways. We need a more tangible and organized explanation.

A big part of the current problem is liberalism. It’s everywhere, it’s dominant, and it’s perverted. So we all need to defend ourselves against it.

That word “liberalism” is the usual name for the way of thinking that now rules Western civilization, America included. It’s more than just fashionable opinion; liberalism is an organized system. Its ideas are mostly consistent with one another, so they work together like a well-trained sports team. And there are countless organizations which teach liberalism and enforce its morality. Liberalism rules the West, so the people mostly believe it. And even if they don’t believe it, they usually go along with it.

Some intellectuals want another name for what I’ve called liberalism. Or they say that it’s really many separate movements which should not be grouped together under one name. There is some truth to that. But there is one well-defined system of thought that now rules America. And its most common name is “liberalism.”

There is no need here to give a precise definition of liberalism. Like the famous quip about pornography, we know it when we see it. In a sense, everyone knows what it is. Liberalism is legitimizing deviant sex. It’s confiscating guns. It’s exalting nonwhites over whites. It’s rebelling against authority. It’s denying traditional religion. And so on. Everyone (in the Western world, at any rate) has an intuitive sense of the phenomena generally labelled “liberalism.” We also know liberalism because its message is everywhere. Liberalism is what our most honored authorities say you’re supposed to believe. And there is no agreement about the exact definition or essence of liberalism. It’s far easier to prove the falsity of specific liberal beliefs than to identify its essence and then debunk that essence.

A precise definition is also not necessary because this is just Part I. We will have more to say about the essence of liberalism later.

Understand also that liberalism is a collection of doctrines, but liberals are people who affirm these doctrines for the most part. Every liberal has some non-liberal beliefs, so we cannot understand liberalism by looking only at liberals: they, like all mankind, hold contradictory beliefs. Christian beliefs, for example, can coexist in the same person with liberal beliefs, beliefs that are ultimately based on the rejection of the God of the Bible. This does not mean that the acceptance or rejection of Christianity is irrelevant to liberalism, only that people are inconsistent.
*
Liberalism is the official message of the current age. Therefore you might think it’s is true. Not necessarily. When the Communists ruled Russia the Russians heard the Communist message everywhere. But it wasn’t true. When the Nazis ruled Germany the Germans heard the Nazi message everywhere. But it wasn’t true. Sometimes leaders don’t tell the truth.

Conservatism
Liberalism leads to conservatism, the political meaning of which is: any opposition to liberalism. Since it’s defined by what it isn’t, conservatism is much less unified than liberalism. Libertarians, Bible-believing Christians, Nazis, monarchists, and the atheistic followers of Ayn Rand, among others, are all likely to be called “conservatives.”

Notice that not all conservatism (anti-liberalism) is good. We must become the right kind of conservatives.

The word “conservative” was applied because the first conservatives wanted to conserve. They noticed that the traditional way of life of their people was under attack by liberals and their natural—and honorable—response was to defend what was under attack. They wanted to conserve what was good in the traditions of their people.

But that was the past. Liberalism is now victorious. According to our leaders, we’re all supposed to be liberals. Opposition to liberalism still exists but it has unofficial status. Officially we’re all supposed to celebrate diversity, tolerance, compassion, multiculturalism, and so on. Not only that, but these are taken to be the fundamental social goods, before which all other social goods must give way. Thus we are to honor sexual perversion, give away our places to nonwhites, welcome all the Moslems who want to immigrate, and so on.

No doubt diversity, tolerance, compassion and multiculturalism can all be goods in some circumstances, and if they are understood rightly. But the liberal makes the liberal versions of them absolute, and therefore the liberal imperative to honor them becomes a form of tyranny.

The conservatives have failed to conserve the good. Therefore many honorable anti-liberals have contempt for conservatism.

But despite this undeniable fact, “conservatism” is still the generally-accepted word for anti-liberalism. And since anti-liberalism is good, we stick to the traditional terminology. We speak of liberalism versus conservatism.

There’s a lot of finger-pointing on the Right. Some conservatives accuse some supposedly-conservative groups of actually supporting liberalism. Yes, we’re all tainted with liberalism to a certain extent, and guarding against it is an important and never-ending activity. But this author holds that anyone who has awakened to the menace of liberalism is at least a minimal ally. Conservatives should be encouraged to continue to repent more than they should be scolded for their remaining sins.

What’s wrong with liberalism?
It promises good things but it mostly delivers bad things. And the good it delivers is mostly pleasant distractions that occur before the evil that is liberalism’s real consequence develops fully.

For example, the diversity that liberals love results in, among other things, mass immigration by non-white peoples whose ways of life are radically incompatible with our traditional American way of life. The immediate results include lots of ethnic food and music, which are pleasant diversions for many people. But the long-term result is hostility and conflict, as incompatible people fight over resources and how society should be organized and governed.

Liberals imagine a beautiful future when war, poverty, racism and similar evils have been abolished. But to abolish these evils they try to remake mankind, at gunpoint if necessary. The ideal world they imagine never occurs, so liberals must continue to persecute people in a futile attempt to make the human race behave as liberalism says it should.

For example, liberalism says that nobody should be a racist. Racists are to be harassed out of existence, for then mankind will finally be happy. But the harassment of racists is only carried out against white racists. Nonwhite racists are excused because (so they say) they are only responding to centuries of oppression by white people and therefore it’s not really their fault. And whites are punished not just when they’re mean to nonwhite people, but even when they just act like normal people everywhere have always behaved until approximately the middle of the Twentieth Century: Preferring to associate mostly with their own kind and wishing that their nation would not be transformed into a radically multicultural pseudo-empire.
*
Since it’s poisonous and false, liberalism must be supported by endless propaganda. Therefore the man in the street generally goes along with liberalism. He doesn’t imagine that there could be another way and, like most people in the West, the average American is materially well-off. So why would he want to rock the boat? Our leaders must know what they’re doing, right?

Not necessarily. Under a democratic system our leaders must be popular even if it means maintaining popular lies. If there were something fundamentally wrong with the system of thought that rules our nation, democracy would be unable to correct the problem. Politicians who rely on the votes of the people to stay in power cannot afford to deliver that sort of bad news.
*
So why does liberalism fail to deliver the good it promises?

Because liberalism rejects the God of the Bible, a rejection which always leads to a false understanding of how reality operates. Since God is the Supreme Being and the ultimate Author of all that exists, rejecting God causes man fundamentally to misunderstand all of reality.

Although some liberals don’t acknowledge it, liberalism denies the God of the Bible, the traditional God of our people and the one true and living God. Although there is no Bible or Pope of liberalism to make official pronouncements of what is and is not liberal belief, the tenets of contemporary liberalism must deny that God exists as He is described in the Bible, traditionally interpreted. That’s because traditional Christianity denies most of the basic tenets of liberalism. Therefore liberalism must deny God’s existence or His knowability. Or perhaps it must portray God as the Great Liberal in the Sky, weeping over racist police and global warming, and pleading with us to be more tolerant and inclusive. Redefining God can be just as effective as outright denial.

With God denied or demoted, man becomes the de facto Supreme Being. That is, under liberalism in its current form, basic laws of ethics and social order originate from man rather than from a divine source. And the basic laws of nature, including metaphysical laws, must be discovered by man rather than received from God’s Word. Much of nature can be known without explicit reference to God, but the most basic truths, such as that the world has a regular order because it is the product of an orderly divine Mind, become unknowable.

This does not immediately lead to disaster, though. Atheistic man (anyone who sees man as the measure of all things is de facto atheistic) can still be skilled in science and technology. He can still have a basically accurate understanding of the physical world. But without acknowledging God, atheistic man cannot know the true purposes of things, nor can he know their ultimate causes. He cannot know, for example why the human race is divided into man and woman, or the correct way for men and women to relate to one another.

True purposes and ultimate causes cannot be known by scientific investigation because they are non-physical, and science can only study the physical. Under atheism, true purposes and ultimate causes cannot be known because science for the liberal is the only source of certain knowledge. Therefore liberalism regards proper purposes and ultimate causes as opinions rather than facts.

And if they are opinions then they constantly change. That’s why liberals are always fighting to change the way we live: No-fault divorce. Same-sex marriage. Transgender rights. Open borders. Reducing our carbon footprint. What was the right way to do things yesterday is not necessarily the right way today, and who knows what it will be tomorrow?

Under liberalism, there is no such thing as a social order that is relatively stable because the people are in agreement about the basic nature of things. Social orders do change over time, but in the present age the change is speeded up by orders of magnitude. Not just that, but according to liberalism social change becomes one of the basic goods of society. “Change agent” is a liberal title of respect. The natural result is perpetual chaos.

But a human society can only work if the people are in basic agreement about the true purposes and the ultimate causes of things, and about how society ought to be ordered. That way they can trust one another and believe that life makes sense. Stripped of this trust and belief, liberal society eventually and inevitably descends into conflict and chaos. And in contemporary America we have the added pressure of mass immigration which is Balkanizing us into mutually hostile tribes.

Let us therefore oppose liberalism and understand the world as it really is. That is the purpose of this series of posts.

Made in Canada: Fashion to Eternity

Images arranged and Photoshoped by KPA from Mode-Ste

Mode-ste may appear to be a niche-focused brand, but it’s a very big niche. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, according to the Pew Research Center. Data from advisory firm DinarStandard shows Muslims spent US$230 billion on clothing in 2014.

But Chtourou is looking beyond her Muslim customer base. She says Mode-ste is “for every women of all statures, all cultures. Our goal is to make our clothing mainstream.”
[Quote from CTV News video below]

I wrote on Muslim fashion a few years ago here and here. The Muslim fashion industry in Canada has come a long way since, with a Made in Canada factory working out of Montreal to provide clothing that Muslim girls and their infidel friends can enjoy. Of course, Mode-ste has a larger vision that would lead from Fashion to Eternity for All.

Hate and Hateful Hatreds: Wisdom From The Orthosphere

and this is my united states of whatever


Hate and Hateful Hatreds
By: JS Smith

I have been preoccupied with soi-disant enemies of Hate, those men and women who are on fire to abolish what cooler heads must recognize as a highly ambiguous sentiment. Hate is an ambiguous sentiment because it is always joined to love, like follow and lead in a partner dance. Thus a world without hate would be a loveless world, an apotheosis of apathy, a United States of Whatever.

Hate is the emotion one naturally feels towards that which threatens to harm, is harming, or has harmed something one loves. When the harm is prospective, hate steels the heart to prevent it. When the harm is in progress, hate strengthens the arm to stop it. When the harm is accomplished, hate feeds the resolve to revenge it.

This is why a man can say that he “hates hate” without contradiction. But what he means is that he hates what he believes to be a disordered hate. Disordered hate is hatred directed at an object that does not deserve to be hated, or at least hated to the degree it is hated. Disordered hatred is a species of injustice.

Disordered hate is the always partnered in a dance with disordered love, which is love directed at an object that does not deserve to be loved, or at least loved to the degree that it is loved. This too is a species of injustice.

Thus beneath all the sound and furry about Hate lie questions about the proper order, and principal disorders, of the human heart. It appears to me that there are four varieties of disordered hate: wrathful hate, hysterical hate, fanatical hate, and satanic hate.

Wrathful hate is hate that has broken its tether to love. It is no longer directed to the prevention, cessation, or vengeance of harm, but has swollen to mere madness. Wrathful hate is what used to be known as a passion, back when we understood that passion was not a good thing. Rage is another name for wrathful hate, and is almost always transitory.

Hysterical hate is hate aroused by misplaced fears. It is directed at chimerical threats and imaginary dangers. It is sometimes called a “moral panic” because it forecasts harms that will not come. “Homophobia” and “Islamophobia” are, for instance, charges of hysterical hate because (it is claimed) homosexuals and Muslims pose no danger to anything. Those who think that they do are in the grip of hysteria.

Fanatical hate is hate aroused by misplaced love. In this case the threats and dangers may be real enough, but the thing that is threatened or endangered does not deserve protection from harm, or at least protection of the ferocity the fanatic is ready to offer. As the name implies, the prototype for this is hatred of men who desecrate the temple (fanum) of a false god, although today such hatred is more often seen among ideologues of one stripe or another. Touch the idol of a fanatic with unclean hands, and watch the molten hate erupt.

There is, to be sure, a grey zone between hysterical hate and fanatical hate, but most cases are easy to classify as one or the other.

Satanic hate is simple hatred of the good, the prototype being, of course, Satan’s hatred of God. Satanic hatred is hatred for everything that is loved by a heart that is properly ordered, which is to say everything that is good, beautiful and true. I suspect that envy lies at the heart of satanic hatred, for a man in the grip of satanic hatred feels humiliated rather than exalted in the presence of anything greater than himself. The well-ordered heart honors and reveres things that are greater than itself; the heart disordered by satanic hatred burns to tear such things down.

A well-ordered heart is not a heart without hate, for to be well ordered it must burn with hatred for hateful hatreds. To do so is a simple matter of justice.

The question, of course, is which hatreds are truly hateful, and which are perfectly just. No thoughtful man is an enemy of Hate, but only of what he believes to be disordered or unjust hates directed against things that are not truly hateful.

But most of the soi-disant enemies of Hate are not, so far as I can see, remarkable for thought.

Grammar and Civilization

“The decline and fall of a civilization is barely noticed by most of its citizens." Captain James Cook

After I posted my article early this morning: Moving Forward in Multi-Culti Mississauga where I write: "Fascinating, the language of the modern liberal era" I found the article How Can Studying Grammar Save Our Culture? at The Imaginative Conservative.

I've posted the full article How Can Studying Grammar Save Our Culture? below:

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How Can Studying Grammar Save Our Culture?
By Thaddeus Kozinski

There is tremendous need for conscious and vigorous action to shape and reshape our behavior in accordance with virtue, the common good, and God’s Law. What could studying grammar have to do with saving our culture..?

In his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell sounds an almost despairing note:

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it…. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

In his 2016 essay, “Exercises in Unreality,” Anthony Esolen echoes Orwell:

The writing of most students is irreparable in the way that aphasia is…. The students make grammatical errors for which there are no names. Their experience of the written language has been formed by junk fiction in school, text messages, blog posts, blather on the airwaves, and the bureaucratic sludge that they are taught for ‘formal’ writing, and that George Orwell identified and skewered seventy years ago. The best of them are bad writers of English; the others write no language known to man.

Certainly between 1946 and 2016, the English language has suffered, and most college students do not know even basic grammar. But is it true that “we cannot by conscious action do anything about it?” Or is language truly “an instrument which we shape for our own purposes?”

Wyoming Catholic College has been consciously acting to shape our rapidly degenerating discourse for almost a decade now by a sequence of courses called the Trivium, Latin for the “three ways” of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In the words of the great trivium Master, Sister Miriam Joseph: “Grammar prescribes how to combine words so as to form sentences correctly. Logic prescribes how to combine concepts into judgments and judgments into syllogisms and chains of reasoning so as to achieve truth. Rhetoric prescribes how to combine sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into a whole composition having unity, coherence, and the desired emphasis, as well as clarity, force, and beauty.”

We have heard much about the moral, political, and spiritual corruption of American culture, and certainly there is tremendous need for conscious and vigorous action to shape and reshape our behavior in accordance with virtue, the common good, and God’s Law. What could studying grammar have to do with saving our culture? Well, we are told in John’s Gospel that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Does this passage indicate an intimate connection between language and God, and thus between our words and our spiritual health? As Orwell argued at the end of World War II, the ubiquitous corruption of language in the West was not simply an effect of moral and political corruption, but was, in a profound sense, a cause of it.

In the twelfth century, John of Salisbury wrote that “Those to whom the Trivium has disclosed the significance of all words…do not need the help of a teacher in order to understand the meaning of books and to find the solutions to questions.” What is this “significance”? Literally, words are signs of reality. But perhaps what Salisbury means to convey is that things themselves, though quite real, are also, and ultimately, multiple signs of Reality. For, is not the created universe an imitation of the uncreated Divine Simplicity of the Father in and through the Son, the eternal Word, the Logos?

Why does Salisbury claim that graduates of the trivium no longer need a human teacher? Of course, humility dictates always sitting at the feet of the wise, but perhaps the profound grasp of and adept use of words that a trivium education provides will enable one to complete anything essential to one’s learning on his own, remaining, of course, until death and after, at the feet of the Incarnate Word.

In our day, when Great Books lie unopened and clicking through ephemera on screens is all but compulsory, when heartfelt questions about existence, God, and the meaning of life are supplanted by the banal curiosities of celebrity romance, money-making schemes, and therapeutic elixirs, we desperately need leaders with a command of logos, who think clearly, rigorously, and creatively, and who write and speak forcefully and elegantly. A Wyoming Catholic College trivium education results in apprentices of the teacher, the Logos, who alone has the words of everlasting life, full of spirit and truth.

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Books on the topic of this essay may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore. Republished with gracious permission from Wyoming Catholic College’s Weekly Bulletin (September 2016).

Mozart: Genius in Three Notes

How Mozart Summed Up the Universe in Three Notes

The link above is to a discussion on Mozart's genius by classical musician, composer, conductor, and music commentator Robert Kapilow.

Here are my modest takes on Mozart:

I will start with a quote from my 2013 post on his birthday:

I can never have enough praise for Mozart. You could say that I am a Mozartphile. I am forever surprised, astounded, delighted and intrigued by his music. Recently, I have been listening to Dvorak and Sibelius, and they surprise and astound, but they never really delight like Mozart.

The incredible thing about Mozart is how accessible he is, without losing any of his musical complexity. I think he does this by keeping his essential melody (often enchantingly beautiful) always within the listener's reach (more at the post).

Several short posts I've made over the years of blogging:

Preserving this West

Two Hundred and Fifty Years: January 27th, Mozart's Birthday (2006)

Mozart's Birthday (2013)

Vladimir Horowitz Plays Mozart; Who Does Bach Justice?

Kenneth Clark's Civilization: Mozart's Symmetry

An Idiot Playing at Genius

Moving Forward in Multi-Culti Mississauga

I received an email recently with the phrase "moving forward" in the concluding paragraph.

It is a variation on "going forward" which I have never really understood. Moving forward/going forward toward what? With what? An agreement? A dissolution (of a partnership or a relationship)? Is it good this going forward? Is it a bad thing? Who is doing the forward moving, the one who declares it or the one who receives the invitation? It sounds less of an invitation and more like a threat. What if the invitee doesn't want to move forward in the same direction, or at all?

Fascinating, the language of the modern liberal era.

In any case, it is some kind of jargon which now crops up in all kinds of places and with a faint aura of a threat behind it: "Moving forward, or else." (I typed "ora" in my online dictionary as in oratory, spoken word etc. but no results. I then simply googled "ora" and found this!)

Besides the initial humor (incredulity is a better word) at least that I found with the whole thing - the cops were involved as the email sent to me was cc'd to the Mississauga Square One Security Office, which is linked to the Peel Regional Police - I realized that this is all dead serious. There is a war that has been waged, and the sooner we on the "other side" acknowledge this, the better.)

Here is someone who feels the say way I do about this "inane" phrase:

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Going forward, let's consign this inane phrase to history
By: Mark Seacombe

Superfluous, meaningless but ubiquitous, it arrived from corporate America and now permeates every area of our lives


Barack Obama does it, David Cameron does it; film stars and advertising people do it; even national newspaper editors do it. But let's not do it. Going forward, let's not utter or write the superfluous, meaningless, ubiquitous "going forward".

It is impossible to get through a meeting today without being verbally assaulted by this inanity. And it nearly always is verbal; you have to be truly unthinking to commit it to paper. When I hear those two words it is my signal to switch off and think about something more interesting, such as Preston North End's prospects going forward. See how easy it is to lapse into this vacuousness.

It is sometimes deployed as an add-on – a kind of burp – at the end of a sentence; sometimes, as with "like" or "you know", it seems to serve as punctuation. But it is especially infuriating when used with the word plan. I heard somebody say a few days ago: "Going forward, the plan is … " How can a plan be about anything but the future? Planning the past would be a remarkable facility.

Why do people speak like this? The online Urban Dictionary offers two possible explanations: the first defines "going forward" as "a phrase that business people use to mean someone completely [messed up] big time but we don't want to dwell on whose fault it was; instead can we all just adopt an optimistic outlook and please can we all start thinking about the future, not the shithole of a present that we're in?"

The other, less scatalogical definition is: "Going forward is purported to mean 'in the future' or 'somewhere down the road' when in fact it is an attempt to dodge the use of these words, which generally indicate 'I don't know'. A newer development in corporate doublespeak, in most companies it is grounds for dismissal to release a press release without mentioning something 'going forward'. Going forward, you will likely see this turning up everywhere: 'Our company expects to make a profit going forward'; 'We don't expect any layoffs going forward'."

I blame the businessmen and women of America – still the undisputed world leader in abusing the English language. It is difficult to pinpoint the birth of "going forward". But my former colleague at the Financial Times, Lucy Kellaway, has accused the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Given the mess that American capitalism is in, we should not be surprised to learn that the body that regulates the nation's stock exchanges, among other things, specialises in obfuscation. Kellaway has fought a valiant but ultimately doomed campaign against "going forward".

Another attempt was made by a British website, the Institution of Silly and Meaningless Sayings (isms), which kept a "going-forward-ometer" until the people running it gave up, exasperated, nine months later, after recording hundreds of instances.

It cites nonsenses such as: "He's coming back to help going forward"; "We cannot back down, going forward"; "Problems for England's backs, going forward"; "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, going forward." The last one was a joke, of course: Abraham Lincoln would never have perpetrated such a solecism.

While it may have started in corporate America, "going forward" has now penetrated every area of British life. It even came from the mouth of the multilingual Emily Maitlis on Newsnight the other evening. Comically, her interviewee shot back with a "going forward".

You would think that Formula 1 was an organisation that, self-evidently, did not need to underline the direction in which it was moving. But when F1 in the US appointed Steve Sexton as president it announced: "He will be a tremendous asset to our operation going forward."

I want to know, guys, about your races going backwards.

Pizza Party with the Devil

"Pizza Party" By An Dy exhibited at the Living Arts Centre Gallery, Mississauga

There's an instinctive awareness of evil these days. That means that people are reacting to evil as though it were some common occurrence. People used to shy away from evil, concocting all kinds of ways to deter it, or keep it away from them. Now, they court it.

I wrote to a friend in April 2015:

I think the devil is really rearing his head...

Look at this horrendous, ghoulish, un-artistic piece of "pizza" which this useless creature has produced as art. What lows we have reached.

I went to the Living Arts Centre Gallery a little while ago, not that I thought I would find anything exceptional, but to see what's "cooking."

And I found the Pizza Party. Unbelievable.

December 9th 2016 update:

Here is what I found at Dy's Facebook page which I missed at my last "visit":


Quinn in my mouth (2015)
Oil on paper