The painting was commissioned around 1639 by Captain Banninck Cocq and seventeen members of his Kloveniers (civic militia guards). Eighteen names appear on a shield, painted circa 1715, in the center-right background, as the hired drummer was added to the painting for free.
Schutterij refers to a voluntary city guard or citizen militia in the medieval and early modern Netherlands, intended to protect the town or city from attack and act in case of revolt or fire.
They also patrolled the streets at night to keep the city safe,
but according to Grok did not arrest criminals.
Did the Schutterij Arrest Criminals? No, the Schutterij did not have a primary or dedicated role in arresting criminals.
Criminal apprehension and prosecution were handled by the schout (sheriff or bailiff), a judicial official appointed by local lords or city councils.
The schout's duties explicitly included:
Investigating crimes.
Apprehending suspects.
Presenting them to magistrates for trial.
Enforcing sentences (e.g., executions).
In contrast:
Schutterij members, as part-time volunteers, occasionally supported these efforts indirectly—such as aiding in crowd control during disturbances or guarding prisoners—but this was not their core function.
and like many groups, their civic duties gradually were replaced by professionals and the groups became a social club.
By the 18th century, the schutterij had largely become ceremonial and ineffective for active policing, leading to its replacement by professional forces under King William I in the 19th century
Rembrandt's famous The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, better known as The Night Watch (1642), was an ambitious and not entirely successful attempt to show a group in action, setting out for a patrol or parade
and here is a video lecture about the actual painting.
Nicknamed the "Grand Old Man of Philippine Art,"[2] he was the first-ever to be recognized as a National Artist of the Philippines.[3] He was recognized as such for his "pioneering use of impressionistic technique" as well as his skill in the use of lighting and backlighting in his paintings, "significant not only in the development of Philippine art but also in the formation of Filipino notions of self and identity."
in a world that despises the weak, Andrew Wyeth commemorated a woman who lived her life despite her weakness. Ah but do you know the story behind the picture?
The woman in the painting is Anna Christina Olson (May 3, 1893 – January 27, 1968). Anna had a degenerative muscular disorder, possibly polio or Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorder, which left her unable to walk.[1] She was firmly against using a wheelchair, so would crawl everywhere. Wyeth was inspired to create the painting when he saw her crawling across a field while he was watching from a window in the house
In the days when the self proclaimed liturgists were pushing poorly written hymns on the American church, I used to have a criteria if a hymn was good: If you heard the drunks singing it on the way home from the bar, it was a good hymn.
so can anyone sing along with this music if they were drunk? How about if they were sober?
But the elites who push bad art, bad architecture, and badly written books on you are giving this lady a Pulitzer prize.
And since she is a FilAm, it is being lauded in our local news papers.
here is a video from a few years ago about her music:
So why did she get the Pulitzer prize for this atonal music with no melody, and no rhythm, sort of like a poor imitation of Stravinski (i.e. not original) that no one except the elitist can or world listen to?
The explanation under the YOUTUBE video explains:
June 17, 2021 — Asia Society Triennial artist, composer, and percussionist Susie Ibarra's Fragility Etudes are studies into a world of sound that reflect humanity's interdependence and mutual existence alongside the natural environment. Ibarra’s dynamic score explores this interconnectedness through polyrhythms and concepts from the physics of glass.
Whatever.
but can anyone listen to it?
compare and contrast: the hot hits here:
Yes I know: I am a Philistine, and actually prefer Glen Miller to the Red hot chili peppers.
this is a followup of the previous post on the famous Japanese painting (actually a print) of the Wave.
a few videos on how the Japanese woodblock printing of the Edo period made picture books.
the YOUTUBE video has this explanation:
Master printer Keizaburo Matsuzaki visited the Art Gallery of New South Wales in March 2010 in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Hymn to beauty: the art of Utamaro’. He brought the woodblocks to create a print of ‘Takashima Ohisa, the teahouse waitress’, designed by Kitagawa Utamaro (1754–1806) in the 1790s. Matsuzaki hails from Arakawa-ku in Tokyo and has been a printer since he was fifteen years old.
Gallery visitors were amazed to witness Matsuzaki's deft touch as he applied 17 colours with perfect alignment. Each colour was rubbed with the printer's most precious tool, the baren. The final touch was a dusting of mica.
another series on how to make a woodblock print: LINK
and a summary here:
Instructables has a written tutorial of this method but only of a one tone design.
The MetropolitanMuseum has an article on the history of the commercial side of woodblock printing.
each print required the collaboration of four experts: the designer, the engraver, the printer, and the publisher...Polychrome prints were made using a separate carved block for each color, which could number up to twenty. To print with precision using numerous blocks on a single paper sheet, a system of placing two cuts on the edge of each block to serve as alignment guides was employed. Paper made from the inner bark of mulberry trees was favored, as it was strong enough to withstand numerous rubbings on the various woodblocks and sufficiently absorbent to take up the ink and pigments. Reproductions, sometimes numbering in the thousands, could be made until the carvings on the woodblocks became worn.
The history of Manga discusses this in the beginning of the film.
what I found interesting was that one of the pioneers for pamphlets of drawings and watercolours of ordinary life was the same one who became famous as the artist behind the WAVE.
Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849). Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei), ca. 1830–32. Japan, Edo period (1615–1868). Polychrome woodblock print; ink and color on paper,
the Met Museum has an essay on the technical aspects of this iconic woodcut.
This is strikingly evident in the towering wave that breaks over the leftmost boat. When Eijudo's anonymous printing masters laid down the outlines of the design, they printed the dark vertical stripes first, using a mixture of Prussian blue and indigo to create a dark gunmetal blue. Then they printed the hollow of the wave, applying a pure Prussian blue over the initially printed stripes, and filling the white spaces left between them.
The transition—from the deep blue, produced by the double printing, to the bright and saturated pure Prussian blue—animates the surface of the wave, adding visual depth and movement. This simple technique allows for a more suggestive, three-dimensional rendering of the wave and heightens the impact of the print.
ArtInContext article about the artist: and how western art and pigments influenced his art, but also how his woodblock art influenced the west. Many of his scetches are on that site
The British museumhowever notes his wood prints went beyond influencing high art:
The vast phenomenon of popular manga publishing in Tokyo, as we enter the Reiwa era (from 1 May 2019) of new Emperor Naruhito, is startlingly reminiscent of the vast phenomenon of popular print and illustrated books published in Edo in the late 1700s and early 1800s....
Between the ages of 16 and 19, Hokusai was training to cut the woodblocks used to print popular books and prints. He's famously supposed to have cut the last six pages of text for a novel about the Edo brothel district, Yoshiwara, published in 1775. From about the age of 20 he switched to being a print artist, and quite a few of his early designs of kabuki actors have survived.
The point is that Hokusai knew the popular print industry inside out – as a block cutter, author and artist. In the 1780s and 1790s he was regularly designing illustrations for the so-called 'yellow cover' or kibyōshi genre of popular comic fiction; and sometimes writing the stories for them too. In the Manga exhibition catalogue, scholar Adam Kern calls these 'comic books'...
Hokusai was an incredibly inventive artist, always trying different genres and subjects, sometimes creating new ones. In the early 1800s, he collaborated with the leading author of long adventure stories, Bakin, to develop the wildly popular genre of popular fiction known as yomihon (literally, 'books for reading'). Hokusai developed a new style of action-packed illustrations that were filled, often literally, with explosive drama.
In the 1810s, Hokusai was particularly busy producing 'picture manuals' (e-dehon), commercially printed drawing manuals full of pictures to copy, that spread his style widely in the general population throughout Japan, not just in Edo (Tokyo). The most famous of these, was Hokusai manga (15 volumes, 1814 – 1878).
The preface to volume one makes it clear that this title was suggested by Hokusai himself, a still unusual use of the word manga, which can playfully be translated as 'brush running away with itself'...
Lolo loved to take me dancing, but alas I am two left feet and not good at it. I remember one time we went to a hospital party and he ended up dancing with all the nurses and I was happy sitting with their husbands talking about football instead.
I took a dance class in college so was able to dance, but I wonder how many people take dance classes nowadays?
Step One: Get a tutor
Step two: Practice.
Here is the famous scene from the King and I:
You probably know about the American movie with Richard Geer,
but have you seen the original Japanese film it was based on? The elderly lady who runs the dance studio says that she got interested in ballroom dancing by watching the King and I...
the oh so politically correct are defending the pornographic last supper of the Olympics because in today's world, accepting those who freely chose to ridicule the good is the latest fashion.
We are told it is inclusivity, but I always remember Gresham's law: That bad money drives out good money.
So when a person sees today's institutions pushing inclusivity, one knows that this means that you are welcome only if you bow to the gods of the latest thing, which in this day and age is to deny that modesty, respect, pietas, and the ten commandments are good. And with a pope who refuses to openly refuse to defend the beliefs of what used to be called normal but are now called weird, it is ironic that it is left to the agnostics like Jordan Peterson or JK Rowlings, to say that the Emperor has no clothing (hmm... sort of like the green naked man in the Paris celebration, where his nakedness with a child nearby in the tableau was normal, and only you bigots (aka normals) are weird to notice.)
Now, if you really wanted an inclusive Good Supper, could I suggest this one by Philippine artist Joey Velasco?
It is Jesus with the street kids of Manila: the kids ignored by the rich in the gated communities, the kids exploited by the sex tourists, and the kids who are vulnerable to be seduced into petty crime and using drugs to get a little pleasure in life.
so how do we help them? Not just by giving gifts, but by supporting the churches outreach to help them, not just by rescuing the kids but by encouraging behavior that strengthens the family... and our businesses are providing rural jobs so people don't have to move away from their villages to try to find work in the cities, where often poverty destroys the family.
more about the painting and why it is considered a masterpiece:
PhysOrg has an article about the technique behind the painting:
New research has revealed that Rembrandt impregnated the canvas for his famous 1642 militia painting "The Night Watch" with a lead-containing substance even before applying the first ground layer.
.... it was a way to protect the painting from moisture.. the large canvas was intended for a damp outer wall of the great hall of the Kloveniersdoelen (musketeers' shooting range) in Amsterdam.
It had been reported that under humid conditions the common method of preparing the canvas using animal glue could fail. A contemporary source on painting techniques written by Théodore de Mayerne suggested impregnation with lead-rich oil as an alternative. This may have inspired Rembrandt for his unusual impregnation procedure to improve the durability of his masterpiece.
the original picture darkened with age, but restoration has given it a rebirth to show it's original colour.
The museum tapped its senior scientist, Rob Erdmann, to head the effort using three primary tools: the remaining preserved section of the original painting, a 17th-century copy of the original painting attributed to Gerrit Lundens that had been made before the cuts, and AI technology.
Wikipedia has a history of the painting including it's many travels and the UKGuardian tells the story of how it was hidden from the Nazi art thieves, and about it's restoration after the war and the repair of areas damaged by time or previous restorations.
so why it is this painting so important? Aside from it's artistic value I mean:
This UKGuardian article from 10 years ago points out that the picture is a symbol of Dutch democracy. Notice the clothes worn are not uniform? Notice the faces are all different?...
The Night Watch was painted in the 17th century as a group portrait of a militia company led by one Frans Banning Cocq. Companies of urban militia were part of the everyday life of the Dutch Republic,...
The human, all too human company stand together against encroaching shadows. A soft, enfolding fog of night surrounds them. The light that illuminates them is a flash in the dark. They are all the more heroic for being so vulnerable, flawed and eccentric. Most of all, they stand together, as a human community...
While these ordinary people stand guard, we feel a bit safer in our collective defiance of the dark.
I read Ann Althouse mainly to see what the inteligencia are doing. Usually I don't read the entire article because simply I don't care: it is not my society, and has little to do with the patients I cared for, and like many peasants who look askance at the elite for lamenting their troubles, I remember what my oldest adopted son said about one such book: Mom why is she complaining? She always had enough to eat.
And today, like in many days, some of the articles Ms Althouse links to have the underlying theme as freedom vs society.
Nearly three in five teenage girls reported feeling 'persistent sadness' in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the highest ratio in a decade. Whichever susceptibilities they are born into and whatever pain they’re feeling in the world, girls clearly seem to be taking it out on themselves. We need to ask very seriously why."
a lot of them are depressed because their parents are messed up or divorced, or sometimes because the parents pressure them to be perfect, and anorexia (and suicide) is one way to retain that control.
This is not limited to American society of course: medieval virgins went bonkers, saw visions and starved themselves to death, and toward the end of the Tale of the Gengi, one of the characters starves herself to death to appease the gods so her father will be saved from Buddhist hell (her excuse, but inreality it is so she won't be forced into a loveless marriage).
And don't forget raging hormones of teenagers and the chemicals in the envoronment (lead, heavy metals, prozac, birth control pills, and of course phytoestrogens).
But again the idea behind the article seems to be bad society (we have to destroy all the rules and make it more inclusive etc. and then these girls will be okay)
His films are known for their eccentricity and unique visual and narrative styles. They often contain themes of grief, loss of innocence, and dysfunctional families. Cited by some critics as a modern-day example of the work of an auteur, three of Anderson's films have appeared in BBC Culture's 2016 poll of the greatest films since 2000.
You know, I've heard about most of his films but didn't watch any: They seem to be about the "Belly button gazing" narcissistic type films that I find boring but win oodles of awards. And if Wikipedia is to be believed, a lot of the audiences who didn't rush to see them agree with me.
then there is an article discussing if one works for meaning and creativity. Sounds interesting, but a lot of folks work because they are supporting their family.
(I) felt that was imposed on us, which, for me, never felt authentic. And I don’t think I’m the only one thinking that.... It’s just nice to explore something that exists in me but I had never explored on the ice before."
I am reminded of the line in Out of Africa, where Blixen finds her husband decided to grow coffee instead of what she had planned: The next time you decide to do something, do it with your own money.
She wants to express herself? Fine. Do it with your own money, and stop trying to destroy the beauty of dance on ice (where most ordinary folks love to watch dance, since classical dance is not found much in modern culture). Nor, of course, is her idea original: A couple films touted the same gender destroying ideas, but they were boring and I can't be bothered looking up their names.
Is she wanting to express herself, or is she looking for approval by the woke, or is she just want join the PC movement to ridicule those non bohemians in the audience who still believe male and females pair bond via courtship rituals like dancing, and the go on to marry and start families?
the phrase "go woke, get broke" is real.
And having another girl lift you up you are risking the broke part if she drops you... unless she is a he who decided he is a girl of course, then they still have muscles and the strength to do this.
Sorry: I am being snotty.
Then Althouse links to an article by Charles Blow, about creativity... All I know about Blow is that he is an intellectual and that he is a big shot in intellectual urban circles ...Blow writes:
I want freedom in all things: thinking, working, loving and living. That’s one reason I look forward to becoming one of those men with the quirky suspenders, bow ties and orange socks. I’ve often been delighted by how older men lean into sartorial whimsy.... They return to that magic that we all enjoyed as children.
and Althouse comments:
I don't really understand it. If you "want freedom in all things: thinking, working, loving and living," why wait to express yourself? It sounds as though you want the cover of age. What's the freedom in doing something only when you think other people will think that what you do doesn't matter?
Again, this assumes that destroying rules leads to freedom, but it also assumes that art if about destroying rules and destroying normality.
In most of the societies where I have worked, people are not seen as isolated individuals who should be free of all restraints, but as part of society and part of the family. And your actions are limited by internal rules: what in the Philippines is called Hiya, customs and rules that enable you to live together, because in poor countries, if you are alone, you will literally die of starvation.
Ironically, even our baclas and tomboys and sex workers are still part of the family if they follow these cultural rules, whereas if you add drugs into the stresses of a changing society, you get collapse, because drug seeking behavior becomes stronger than your conscience. Hence, the phrase Walan Hiya for those without shame.
Ironically, despite all the calls to destroy the rules because "multiculturalism", a lot of these rules (in various variations) are the norm all over the world, at least in areas where people live, not in those who pretend to speak for their own native culture while instead spouting cliches of leftist intellectuals.
In contrast to most cultures, where family is important and where denying your own wishes so that the family can survive, American culture stresses individual freedom over cooperation and traditional rules.
Uh, you need both, and one of the problems of cancel culture is that you no longer are allowed to say that.
Cancel culture posits a dualism that you either have to chose their rejection of the norm, i.e. anarchy/no rules or end up in a rigid society with no freedom and being called a nazi or racist or whatever.
Nonsense.
this film that questions that idea, which was what we were taught in college in the 1960s. Ironically, the film was made by Chuck Jones, whose film creations are part of culture and watched by a lot more people than Anderson who is touted above. (hint: BeepBeep).
,,,,
for a deeper intellectual discussion of this issue:
this all started 100 plus years ago with the pre WWI avant garde, who rejected the vocation of the artist was to show beauty, and changed to the idea that the vocation of the artist was to destroy normality.
It says a lot that Roger Scruton got canceled by the UK for his ideas, and his classic BBC special on why beauty matters is hard to find on the internet but you can still find it on Vimeo:
no, duck stamps are not used for postage, but required for hunting permits.
But like a lot of stamps, stamp collectors buy them, and some people buy them because the money used to buy the stamps is used to buy land for wildlife habitat:
They explain: because of overhunting, diversion of wetlands to farming, etc. migratory birds were being threatened, so the government decided to step in and preserve some land for them. The problem? How to fund these purchases.
Voila: Make hunters pay for it by requiring a stamp on their hunting permits.
they are not merely stamps: They have become a collectors item and there is competition to get your design on the stamp.
for movie trivia buffs, you might have run across duck stamps in the movie Fargo:
,,,(in) the 1996 crime-film classic Fargo, you may have noticed a minor stamp-related subplot: Norm Gunderson, husband of main character Marge Gunderson, is hard at work on a painting that he’ll enter into a stamp design competition (he comes in second place).
We like to watch older movies at Christmas, because alas, too often today's Chrismas movies rarely have a nativity scene in them, let alone have their people actually go into a church to celebrate the birth of God who came to earth as a baby.
William Morris: adoration of the Magi
I'm not sure if ignoring the religious idea behind Christmas is done so as to not upset nonbelievers who might not watch their film, or if it is because the writers/directors etc really don't believe that there is a God and see the religious aspect as a naive myth, or, alas in a world where half the USA backs a political party that sees killing an unborn child up to and shortly after birth is a good thing, that too many media elites just don't want to celebrate the idea that when the God of the universe decided to live as a human being, he chose to do so in a working class family who was temporarily homeless due to the political mechanations of the Roman emperor.
Or maybe the religionless Christmas movie is because they prefer to push the religion of consumerism that stresses buying gifts, and they dislike being reminded that maybe a baby is God's gift to it's parents, even if the child is born in a poor family, or to remind one that even an imperfect child is a gift of God.
And presumably the MSM also will publish oodles of articles assuring people that Christianity is false or that Christians will be a minority soon (ignoring that many of those illegally migrating to the USA are Christian), or insisting that Christians really don't believe in Christ anymore. Nyah Nyah Nyah to you deplorables.
True, many of these people behind this anti religion onslaught are good folk and give money to helpful causes, but they do have a blind spot: in their hearts they don't recognize how most of us see the story of Christmas through the eyes of ordinary life.
Its most famous line opens the song, and lodges in my cranium without asking permission: “And so this is Christmas/And what have you done?” Those ten words have enough hubris to inflate the Hindenburg.
It’s as if ordinary folk somehow should justify themselves to a 1960s–1970s rock star....the easy response from normal people... can be imagined as follows, perhaps from a single mom: “Oh, I don’t know, John — I’ve been raising three kids, caring for my aged Mom, and working double-shifts at the coffee shop to pay the bills. You?”
Other responses to imagine: From a Second World War veteran: “I fought my way on to Omaha Beach and survived D-Day — and the rest of the war, but many of my friends did not. We beat the Nazis, which is what mattered even more despite the sacrifices.”
Or imagine the response from a steelworker, miner, or farmer: “Endured another grinding day at the foundry/shaft/farm, this to afford the mortgage and Christmas presents.”
Ordinary folk serve God in the duties of their daily life, and the good emphasis on going good deeds is fine, as long as, as Jordan Peterson reminds young men: First clean your room before you remake the world.
So caring for family and friends is more important than flashy altruism, especially at a time when many folks all over the world face financial problems in making ends meet. And this idea is why many ordinary folk accept that child who unexpectedly arrives or who is imperfect: because they trust in God's plan and accept that child as a blessing,
One can of course sympathize and in one's secret heart agree with a couple who chooses to end their child's life before birth rather than to watch their baby die slowly of heart disease.
But as anecdotal stories out of Canada show: Once death is seen as a quick (and cheap) answer to suffering, it is hard to draw the line at when to stop.
As a doc, I have no answer to the problem of pain and suffering, but as one of our wiser teachers in medical school noted: Few physicians are deeply into formal religion, but most believe in God, and believe there is a reason behind all that we see: because we see people who logically should live a good long life who nevertheless suffer and die. But we also see people who logically should die recover and live. And unless we believe there is an ultimate plan behind each and every life, then our profession has no meaning.
It is our duty to help those in need, but it starts with caring for those in our own family: something that the 48 million caregivers in the US are doing all the time, with little fanfare.
The same thing goes for accepting with love every child who is born.
A mother has the most important job in the world: To birth a human being who will live in this world and in eternity.
Joey Velasco
That is why a child born in a stable or (as above) in a garage at SmokeyMountain, or a thatched hut in rural areas of the world, is just as important to God as is the child of a billionaire with perfect genes and the money to develop their talent.
And maybe it is in caring for these imperfect chilren that we learn the lesson to turn our tears into wisdom:
Author Pearl S Buck said, in a book, of her child who was born mentally handicapped as a result of the metabolic condition called PKU:
“[by] this most sorrowful way I was compelled to tread, I learned respect and reverence for every human mind. It was my child who taught me to understand so clearly that all people are equal in their humanity and that all have the same human rights. None is to be considered less, as a human being, than any other, and each must be given his place and a safety in the world. I might never have learned this in any other way. I might’ve gone on in the arrogance of my own intolerance for those less able than myself. My child taught me humanity.”
This film is typical of western films about that tragedy: emphasizes the cathedral is part of art and culture... no, no god here, no mary and especially not a symbol of Catholic belief....
...
An older film about the cathedral is here:
this is a recent French film about the fire:<
and Netflix has a planned miniseries based on the story of the firefighters.
as best I can find, over 400 firefighters were involved, three were injured but none died fighting the fire.
...
the UKGuardian notes that the French film showed the rescue of the relics, scoffing that these were merely medieval fakes so why are people busy risking their lives rescuing nonsense instead of figuring out who started the fire.
....except of course, those rescuing the relics are not exactly experts in forensic science of fires... as Bones would say: I'm a doctor mere Catholic believer, not a member of the CSI team.
......
as for those medieval relics Here is a PBS segment about it:
......
Ironically, the attempt to dechristianize culture has resulted in more interest in the numinous/supernatural, (which can be religious or occultic) GetReligion discusses this phenomenum here.LINK
.....................
A lot of Korean dramas include their folk beliefs in ghosts, nine tailed foxes, etc. and the idea that those in a coma might have their soul becoming a ghost like pesence or even enter into a historical figure is common... Ironically, our Objbwe patients had a similar belief about the souls of those in a coma . more HERE
And of course here in the Philippines, although the elite are into either Protestantism or New age practices, here in the country, we still have shrines of Mama Mary all over, pray the rosary at night, put flowers and candles on the graves, etc. because it is part of the cultural belief system...
there are a lot of ghost stories that are believed. No, the reason we go to a restaurant after attending a funeral is because we're hungry, not because we want to confuse the ghost and keep him from following us home.
One of the sculptures by Ai Wei Wei stolen from a gallery in Hamburg.COURTESY HAMBURG POLICE
this sculpture is about the environmental degradation.
Khan academy discusses his works protesting mass culture, and protesting corruption leading to shoddy school construction that resulted in the deaths of several thousand children when their schools collapsed:
Perhaps the work that contributed most to Weiwei’s current imprisonment and the destruction of his studio was his investigation of corruption in the construction of the schools that collapsed during the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China.
He was inspired by this depiction on a tapestry: where Joseph is on the side bringing in wood to warm the mother and child, but who is easily overlooked by those viewing the scene.
Sibley write:
What struck me was that Joseph was left out of the central action of the scene: was on the periphery of the tableau: an attendant, but minor, figure in the drama.
So began my slow discovery that, again and again, in images from great art to all manner of popular depictions – including nativity plays and Christmas cards – Joseph's fate is almost always on the fringes of an event of cataclysmic timelessness...
You know, the Vatican has proclaimed last year the year of Joseph, but since covid restrictions limited the number who could go inside, (and I was unwilling to stand outside in the parking lot to listen to the service) I have no idea what this was about. No pondering about it on the Catholic blogosphere, which seems to be more interested in debating the mites in their brother's eye instead of the plank in their own.
So who was Joseph? The protector of Jesus and Mary. Who when the paranoid Herod sent soldiers to kill the child, fled with him to Egypt, probably to Alexandria, which had a huge Jewish population where he could find family and a job to support him.
The point is that he took responsibility for his family. And he was a carpenter, which in those days meant not just making furniture, but yokes for oxen, and building houses (some speculate he worked in the nearby Greek city of Sepphoris as what we would call a construction worker).
In a modern world, where masculine virtues are being attacked daily by the PC and where promiscuity without responsibility is pushed as normal and good, one wonders why no one is talking about Joseph, who did take responsibility and protect those under his care.
Ironically, the best film depiction of Joseph is in Anne Rice (Yes, that Anne Rice) story the Young Messiah, which is based on the ancient but non biblical stories of Jesus as a child.
Many theological problems with the movie, but the characters were believable, (without the schizoid like staring eyes that film makers usually show in their characters as if schizophrenia was a sign of holiness)...
but you know, I usually shudder at "religious" movies, and this one I actually liked: Because it shows one view of the Holy Family as ordinary people, by an author who likes Him. (Rice once claimed when doing her research she noticed that most of the modern biblical scholars seemed to hate Jesus, which says a lot about modern Biblical scholarship).
Childbirth in a stable. Not the poetic stuff of most picture: but at least it was private and clean straw was available for Mary.
I've delivered lots of babies as a GP, and each birth is a miracle: when after the pain the child comes out and starts to cry.
as an antidote to all those Hallmark movies on line, let Linus remind you what Christmas is really about.
Every child is a sign of hope: And the greatest sin in the USA (and one that horrifies people in African and Asian villages) is the propaganda that sees the child not as a symbol of hope, but as an enemy to be eliminated in the name of freedom.
Sigh.
And behind that lie is the lie that men have nothing to do with the children they beget, and that the sexual act has no moral dimension to it.
Sigh.
Jesus was born in a stable because the rich world had no place for him and his parents.
Sound familiar?
But for refugees, and the third world homeless, the modern equivalent might not be a stable but a garage, as painted by Joey Velasco:
Sigh.
say a prayer and maybe send a donation to help those made homeless by the latest typhoon here in the Philippines.
In the Catholic blogosphere, there is a minor civil war going on about the Pope trying to cancel the Latin mass for good.
The reason, according to Cardinal Cupich, is that this is standing in the way of securing the legacy of Vatican II.
Why yes: but like the "racism"claim about anything that the wokes want to eliminate, this claim is only superficially true.
The Latin Mass community is the tip of the iceberg by lay folks who are tired of the PC hymns, bad sermons, abuse coverups, the pushing of the trendy green agenda while overlooking the concerns of ordinary people, and the elimination of the idea of transcendence, truth, and beauty by the PC reformers who run the church in many areas of the USA and west.
And a lot of laypeople (not just white folks: my AmerIndian patients said the same thing) objected when the reformers destroyed the beauty of churches by whitewashing the walls and removing the statues, and replaced the boring but pious worship of God with a service that too often is about me me ME, and that guy next to me who wants a quick feel under the guise of the sign of peace.
The Latin mass was often jabbered quickly to a congregation that didn't understand and didn't care, goes the argument.
True. I remember those days. But not always. Because maybe we didn't say the same prayers, but the reverence of the mass allowed us to lift up our minds and hearts to God, helped by the atmosphere of holiness, and the idea that God was coming to us in the sacrament.
And that is the point: The old pre Vatican II mass emphasized God and the transcendence.
And the Latin mass has a depth to it that too often is missing in the modern masses: it has roots in history:
In the UK region, where Catholicism was persecuted for centuries, it was said on the Mass rocks of Ireland and in secret in English houses which often contained priest holes to hide the priest from the inquisitors.
Following the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI to replace the Tridentine Mass in 1969–1970, a petition was sent to the Pope asking that the Tridentine form of the Roman Rite be permitted to continue for those who wished in England and Wales.
...the petition noted the exceptional artistic and cultural heritage of the Tridentine liturgy, and was signed by many prominent non-Catholic figures in British society, including Agatha Christie, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kenneth Clark, Robert Graves, F. R. Leavis, Cecil Day-Lewis, Nancy Mitford, Iris Murdoch, Yehudi Menuhin, Joan Sutherland and two Anglican bishops, those of Exeter and of Ripon.
Cardinal John Heenan approached Pope Paul VI with the petition and asked that use of the Tridentine Mass be permitted. On 5 November 1971, the Pope granted the request. Supposedly Paul had read the letter and exclaimed "Ah Agatha Christie!" and so decided to grant the request; giving the indult its nickname.
Because beauty matters: until modern times, the artist felt they had a mission to proclaim truth and beauty: not just in art and music, but in architecture, in ceremony, and in the beauty of the language used to express ourself.
I was going to report the wonderful BBC Documentary with Roger Scuton: Why beauty matters, but it's been canceled by youtube or the BBC or someone else.
but it is still available at Internet archives: LINK or
DailyArtMagazine has an article with lots of lovely photos about Monet's garden LINK
one of the videos we brought with us to the Philippines was the lovely series Garden of the world, with Audrey Hepburn: no longer on youtube, except these short snips of the film, and alas it is low pixel since like the VHS video it was made for older tvs.
Renaissance man Brian Sibley had a blog post remembering his work on the 1981 BBC radio version of Lord of the Rings.
and, being the generous man with an interest in the arts, his blog post is not about himself, but about the artist Eric Frazer who did the art work on the cover of the BBC magazine RadioTimes, and how Sibley obtained some of the prints for his collection of graphic art.
The essay includes many example of Frazer's art work both for LOTR and his commercial work.
I am familiar with Sibley's 1981 radio version of LOTR because years ago, when it was re released, I bought the CD set of that radio version.
interesting factoid: The reason that Ian Holmes was cast by Peter Jackson as Bilbo was because he played Frodo in the BBC radio version many years before.
And last year, Mr. Sibley discussed the various interpretations/adaptions of Tolkien's works:
