A Return to Normalcy

This post was a “sticky” feature, first posted last Monday, and was on top throughout fundraising week. Scroll down for more recent items, including the killing of Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, a Swedish municipal bus used as a mosque, an essay on Björn Höcke and the AfD, Onan driving a Swedish bus, two reports on the sword murder in Stuttgart, the latest on Matteo Salvini, and last night’s news feed.

Summer Fundraiser 2019, Day Six

Saturday’s update

OK, folks we’ve arrived at the weekend. The Summer fundraiser is almost over, and normal programming will soon resume.

Tip jarThe theme of this week’s bleg is the return to normalcy, that is, to routine. During any given fundraising week, donations from Texas, California, Michigan, Illinois, and Australia are routine. But three of yesterday’s locations definitely are not part of the routine: Israel, New Zealand, and Newfoundland. We get a few donors here and there from the first two — just a few — but as far as I know, we only get one from up there by the Grand Banks.

So here’s to the outliers! Thank you for making the donation statistics that much more variegated and entertaining.

For those of you who are just joining us: this is how I keep this blog alive. When Dymphna was still with us, she would share posting chores with me, regaling potential donors on alternate mornings with her wit and whimsy to persuade them to hit the tip cup on the sidebar (or this link) and contribute to the upkeep of the site — and to keep its proprietors from going hungry for another quarter.

Now there’s just one proprietor, but I still need your help to stay out of the bread line.

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Gates of Vienna has its own weekly rhythm, its own pattern of routine. Or, rather, it used to.

In the early years of this website I was working in Richmond. I would drive down there during the week and come home on weekends. During those few days I spent at home I had the luxury of writing posts and participating in the blog to an extent that I couldn’t match during the week.

Back in those days, I designated Saturday as either Ranting Day or Poetry Day, depending on my mood. If it was time to rant, I could include a graphic of the Ranting Man, as seen here on the left. I love the Ranting Man, and I reserve him for special occasions, not wanting to squander him gratuitously (as I have just now done).

But this Saturday is Poetry Day. And, in honor of the first fundraiser without Dymphna, I’ll feature one of her poems.

Dymphna was an accomplished poet. She only had a few published, in local newspapers and college magazines, but she left behind a rich legacy of unpublished work.

The poem below tells a true story. She wrote it almost a quarter-century ago, shortly after the events it describes. We had somehow acquired a rooster, as a favor to a friend. His harem of hens had been attritted to nothing, and we agreed to give the sorrowful fellow a home. For a while.

He turned out to be an annoyingly violent #$&#!?%! as a guest. Those spurs on his legs were vicious — one time he cut a long slash in my pants leg. So we only kept him for a while; we passed him on to an elderly country woman who had lengthy experience with roosters, and knew how to keep them in line.

I’ll let Dymphna tell the rest of the story:

Rooster Lessons

by Dymphna

He was quintessential pride:
Quick, iridescent and verbose.
His auburn head cocked to look
At me, his comb trembling,
The rumble of his song,
The macho tilt of his tail feathers—
I was enchanted.

Never trust a rooster
Who’s been deposed.
He has problems with attachment,
And the angry edginess
Gives way to bilious melancholy,
As befits a man bereft
Of his women and position.
There is no cure.

How much his chicken brain
Retained of his former life
Is hard to say.
To be unchosen is lonely enough;
To be deposed is a worse fate:
The shame of losing face, place,
With no one to crow for…
An autarch cannot live so.

Our rooster didn’t even try.
He crowed despairingly at odd hours.
He left the cat alone,
But the rest of us were targets
For his rage and loneliness.
Going outside, however stealthily,
Brought him running sideways,
Wings spread, spurs ready.
He gouged a neighbor’s dog.

Held hostage by a rooster.
We eyed each other:
Him on the porch,
Me behind the storm door.
He in rage,
Me in speculation.
How to douse this feathered fire?

Ah, modern medicine:
I waited for him to wander off
And mixed a batch of wheat germ —
His favorite grain —
With a healthy dose of Klonopin
And quickly spread it on the porch floor

Dumb bird ate it all,
Brown and pink fragments
Disappearing down his greedy beak.
Becalmed, he let himself be led
To start another life,
Penned in with guinea fowl.
I hope he finds some solace there.

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Friday’s gifts came in from:

Stateside: Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, and New Hampshire

Far Abroad: Israel, New Zealand, and the UK

Canada: Newfoundland

Australia: New South Wales

Friday’s update

The action in the tip cup (or at this link) really livened up yesterday after Western Rifle Shooters posted a link to this week’s bleg.

Tip jarA WRSA link often causes a sudden, distinct surge of donations. I can sometimes deduce what’s happening even before I see the post over there — I can tell by the fact that most of the new gifts come in from Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, North Dakota, and other locations out there on the Wild Frontier.

So thank you, WRSA. And a special thank-you to WRSA readers who came over here.

The issue of the right to keep and bear arms is looming large in American culture and politics right now, due to the recent mass shootings. Such events always induce a mad rush towards gun control, even among Republicans. When that happens, devotees of the Second Amendment hurry out to buy more guns and ammo before the next anti-gun law is passed.

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The theme of this week’s fundraiser is the return to normalcy. I’ve talked about personal normalcy — that is, my finding a new routine in the midst of grieving — and I’ve talked about the lunacy that passes as the new “normal” in 21st-century politics.

This morning I’ll cover normalcy as it applies to Gates of Vienna. Long-time readers have already heard about the routine workflow at this website, so they can skip this overview if they wish. But newcomers may be interested.

Besides the news feed, there are three principal functions that I strive to perform here: (1) Posting original articles and essays on Counterjihad matters and other topics of interest; (2) Posting translated articles and essays that might otherwise not be available in English; and (3) Creating translated and subtitled videos.

1. Original articles and essays

Over the past fifteen years a number of contributors and correspondents have stepped up to supply material that covers political and cultural affairs throughout the world. I can’t list them all, but our regular contributors include Fjordman (Norway), Seneca III (England), H. Numan (Thailand and The Netherlands), El Inglés (England), Paul Weston (England), Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff (Austria), and Henrik Clausen (Denmark). There are more contributors in the roster at the “Authors” tab in the menu bar at the top of this page.

I consider it important to present information and opinion that is not drawn from the legacy media, and that is not necessarily written by professionals. To get a sense of what’s happening, we need to hear from people who might otherwise remain voiceless. I like to quote Walt Whitman on the topic (from “Leaves of Grass”):

I do not say these things for a dollar, or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat;
It is you talking just as much as myself — I act as the tongue of you;
Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen’d.

2. Translated articles

The routine on translated articles is somewhat ad-hoc. Regular translators may choose a piece, translate it, and send it to me. JLH, for example, often does this with German-language material. The translators know I will edit and post virtually anything they send.

But I sometimes receive tips about items in foreign languages without having a translation in hand. That’s when I look at the list of translators (or ask Vlad to look at his list) and email a translator to request a translation, which I then edit and post. After more than a decade of specializing in translations, Vlad and I can usually find someone to translate all the major languages, and quite a few of the minor ones.

3. Translated and subtitled videos

The workflow for videos is slightly different. Since Vlad is the Video Man, he usually initiates the process. He finds (or is tipped to) a particular video, and then contacts a translator. If he doesn’t have one at that point for that particular language, he’ll ask for my help. The translator creates a timed transcript of the translation and sends it back to one or both of us. Normally Vlad has me edit the text and create the final subtitle file. However, if I’m unavailable (usually asleep), he’ll go ahead and subtitle the video, and then pass the text file on to me so that I’ll have the transcript.

I always copy-edit the transcripts, even if the video has already been subtitled. Everything that gets posted here is edited by me. No one escapes!

It’s important to remember that everyone involved in the processes I described above is a volunteer. Nobody gets paid, except by voluntary donations from readers, as in this current fundraiser. And the translators don’t get paid at all. Every now and then Vlad or I will hear from someone who needs a translation and is willing to pay for it, and we then refer a translator to the party in question. But Vlad and I can’t pay them ourselves — we can barely keep body and soul together as it is.

We owe a HUGE debt of gratitude to our Translator Corps. They are a large part of what makes Gates of Vienna (and Vlad Tepes) distinct in the world of Internet Deplorables. I used to try and list all the translators here when thanking them, but there are now so many of them that I just can’t do it. So all I can say is: Thank you, translators. You know who you are.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what constitutes normalcy at Gates of Vienna.

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Thursday’s generosity rolled in from:

Stateside: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Dakota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming

Far Abroad: Czech Republic and the UK

Canada: Alberta and Ontario

Thursday’s update

All right, everybody, we’re over the hump now, entering the fourth day of Gates of Vienna’s Summer Beg-A-Thon.

And I, personally, am over the hill, but don’t let that influence your judgment when you stroll on over to the sidebar (or click this link) and drop a coin into the cup.

I rarely check our traffic stats these days, so I don’t know whether our readership has declined since Dymphna died. The level of donations this fundraiser has been down slightly so far, but that could simply be the result of stochastic flux, as is often the case. A sort of Brownian motion of reader’s donations. Besides, we frequently get stragglers who wander in well after the official fundraising week is over. So I’m not particularly concerned.

And I know Dymphna’s fans are still checking in here, because they’ve been leaving notes with their donations that say “in memory of Dymphna”, and similar sentiments.

Boy, she sure did have a lot of fans.

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Yesterday morning I headed my update with a poster for the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), but then I forgot to talk about them.

The Wobblies were one of the early socialist organizations in the United States, founded in 1905, if I remember correctly, and they’re still around — or they have a website, at least. Although they had connections with communists and anarchists, they predated the dominance of the Communist Party, and were never absorbed by it. They engaged in a series of violent (and deadly) encounters with industrial bosses, hired goons, police, vigilantes, and military troops in the early years of the 20th century.

The Democratic Socialists of America, whom I featured here yesterday, could be considered the rightful heirs of the Wobblies. But what a different crop of comrades! One of last night’s news feed items referred to them as “Democratic Soycialists”, which is a particularly appropriate portmanteau phrase.

The video below shows a discussion by the “Right Angle” trio — Bill Whittle, Stephen Green, and Scott Ott — about last weekend’s clown show in Atlanta:

Mr. Whittle has a point: these comrades aren’t going to be of much use come the revolution, because they’re triggered by loud noises, and revolutions tend to be quite noisy.

However, the earnest DSA cadres are backed by the real power of the coming revolution, the shock troops of Antifa. The black-masked crowd don’t mind loud noises, and they don’t get triggered. And, as Mr. Green points out, they (or thugs of similar ilk) will be the ones liquidating the exquisitely-gendered soy-boy SJWs when the real revolutionaries take over.

By the way — I have to hat tip Dymphna for that video, because she subscribed to Bill Whittle’s channel. I check her email accounts every day, and that’s how I found the link for it.

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Wednesday’s donations came in from the following places:

Stateside: Michigan, New York, Texas, Virginia, and Washington

Far Abroad: Finland, Hungary, and the Netherlands

Australia: Australian Capital Territory

Wednesday’s update

Here we are at Day 3, not yet at the midpoint of this week’s fundraiser, and already I’m worn out! But it’s been great to see the generosity flow in, and read the kind notes accompanying in-memoriam donations for Dymphna. The weariness is worth it.

For newbies: This is what we — or rather, I — do to maintain this website and keep body and soul together. If you like what I do here, please drop a tanner or two into the tip cup on the sidebar (or use this link) .

It costs quite a bit to pay for hosting at this level — I have to have extra capacity to handle surges in traffic, which sometimes can be surprisingly large. And then there’s the firewall that protects the site from DDoS attacks; that’s an absolute necessity. Various and sundry other less costly things are required to keep the blog up and running.

I’m fortunate to have the volunteer technical help of Henrik Clausen, who understands virtual servers and the inner gizmos that make WordPress work, which are a mystery to me. Hiring someone to do that stuff would add yet another layer of costs, and he has mercifully spared me all that. So a big thank-you goes out to Henrik.

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As promised yesterday, I’ll talk about the “normalcy” that now rules in politics, particularly American politics. To a geezer like me, the new normal in 2019 is so abnormal that it scarcely makes sense to me. Some sort of collective madness seems to be abroad in the land, especially among people whose political inclinations lean towards the Left.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was going to be paying more attention to current events in the USA, since that had been Dymphna’s primary focus for more than a decade. She subscribed to dozens of email lists, and was always up-to-date on the latest videos, some of which she would post. She would have run across those videos from the Democratic Socialists of America a long time before I did. Nevertheless, I have been keeping an eye on American events, with the help of Doug Ross, Power Line, WRSA, and Conservative Tree House. Those four help me find most things I need to know. And Vlad can usually point out anything I miss.

That Democratic Socialist stuff is absolutely NUTS. Yet that’s the new normal for the Left, which means it’s the new normal for most of the Legacy Media. It reminds me of those African tribes who insert metal ornaments into their lips and earlobes to enlarge them gradually to a grotesquely enormous size. 21st-century leftists have done something analogous with their minds, inserting larger and larger Marxist and PoMo ideas until their thinking is grotesquely distorted.

At least that’s what it looks like to someone peering in from the outside.

It’s sometimes hilarious, as various moments in those videos from Atlanta were. But it’s a ghastly kind of hilarity, because underneath all the guffaws is the persistent thought that these triggered and woke Social Justice Warriors may be running the country in the not-so-distant future. Maybe not in 2020, but 2024 is a distinct possibility. Especially with the help of all those illegal aliens they’re busily importing to ensure themselves of a Democrat majority for the indefinite future.

Yikes! I’ve gone and scared myself, thinking about all that stuff. Time to unbind myself from the wheel of politics and think about other things.

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Yesterday’s kind gifts flowed in from:

Stateside: Alaska, Arizona, California, New York, Virginia, and Wyoming

Far Abroad: Brazil, Germany, Israel, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Sweden, Thailand, and the UK

Canada: Saskatchewan

I wish I could say that Dymphna will be back for tomorrow’s update, but alas, she won’t. There’s just the one hand on the tiller now.

Tuesday’s update

We’re into the second day of this summer’s week-long bleg. In case you’re a new arrival: this is how Gates of Vienna keeps going — readers who appreciate what they find here use the tip cup on the sidebar (or this link) to contribute to its upkeep as the spirit moves them.

As I mentioned yesterday, my inclination immediately after Dymphna’s death was to skip this fundraiser entirely and just hold one in the autumn. However, when the car — her car — decided to join its owner in the hereafter, I was forced to buy another vehicle. So I decided to pull myself together and go ahead with the summer bleg, albeit a month late.

In honor of Dymphna’s venerable and much-missed luxury car, I’ve dusted off the photo of Geronimo’s Locomobile to include at the top of this update.

A form of normalcy is slowly returning to this house. It’s a new normal, not like the one I had before. I have to get used to being by myself all the time. Elements of my new routine are the same as the old — I was by myself a lot of the time back then, working up here in the Eyrie even when Dymphna was well enough to be up and about. But there was always the pleasure of coming downstairs and sitting next to the bed, or at the kitchen table while she was cooking, to talk about all the insane and absurd things that turned in the news. I treasured the time I would spend eating a meal with her, either at the table or sitting in the chair next to the bed. Now that particular joy is gone, and it’s very difficult. Especially with all of her things around the house — her books, her handwriting on everything, her cooking equipment, her hats, her knick-knacks. All of that is comforting, but at the same time profoundly sad.

Some of the time I’m able to get fully up to speed and function like I used to, and fortunately those occasions are becoming more frequent. At other times my mind is like molasses, and I wander around in daze, unable to keep in mind what I’m trying to do for more than a minute or two. Anyone who has been widowed after decades of marriage to a spouse he or she was devoted to knows what I mean.

It’s hard to stop saying “our house”, “our car”, etc. And it’s hard to get used to referring to my wife in the past tense.

This is all so gloomy and maudlin, and not at all appropriate for a fundraising effort, which should be buoyant and upbeat. But I needed to report on the new normal, which is still in its early stages, and the above is the truth of it. In three months’ time, when I open the autumn fundraiser, normal may have shifted into a different stage. If so, I’ll tell you about it then.

And maybe tomorrow I can talk about normalcy as it applies to the current political situation. Which is more accurately abnormalcy — I can’t remember a political climate as bizarre and demented as the current one, on either side of the Atlantic.

But more on that later.

One more thing: as Dymphna mentioned in the excerpt from 2011 that I opened this fundraiser with, back then we tithed from the gifts we received to Vlad Tepes. It was true then, and it’s true now: Vlad gets 10%. If you appreciate Vlad’s video work (which in my opinion is of inestimable value), you can go over to his place and use his donate button to augment the amount.

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Yesterday’s gifts arrived from:

Stateside: California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia

Far Abroad: Germany, Israel, and the UK

Canada: Ontario

Australia: Victoria

Monday’s original post

The theme of this week’s fundraiser is “A Return to Normalcy”; that is, the process of returning Gates of Vienna to more or less normal functioning after Dymphna’s death. And what could be more normal than to hold a fundraiser?

Actually, I had originally planned to skip the summer fundraiser, after the reader-initiated GoFundMe effort (and also normal PayPal donations) to cover the funeral expenses. Y’all did it; the expenses were covered. There were several hundred dollars left over, which, as I promised, I wrote a check for to a charitable organization that helps victims of sexual violence, including children.

Ah — but the same day I did that was the day that my car died. Dymphna’s car, really. As the future Baron said, it was her version of “My Grandfather’s Clock”. I drove into town to deliver the check in person to the charity (I prefer to do things that way), and then I went to the supermarket, and then I drove home. Just before I got home, the transmission on the car gave out. Given how old it was, it meant the car was dead.

So the next day I had to go out and buy a new (well, used) car. That just about cleaned me out, so here I am once again, banging the tip cup against the railing, asking readers to help me out.

Only this time I’m doing it by myself, which is very difficult. Up until now, during every fundraiser Dymphna and I shared the onus of writing the seven posts (or updates) of fundraiser week. Now it’s just me, and I’m not as good at it as she was. But it will have to do: please clink the tip cup on the sidebar (or, if you prefer, you can use this link) if you like what you read here, and want to see it continue.

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Since the week following Dymphna’s death, every Monday I have posted one of Dymphna’s Greatest Hits in honor of her. Since this is Monday, I’ll include part of the fundraising post she wrote more than eight years ago, so you can enjoy her wit and erudition once again.

In subsequent posts I’ll elaborate on what “normalcy” means for me now. It’s a work in progress, so I’m not entirely sure, but at least I can give you some early impressions. And I’ll also report on the far-flung places from which donations arrive, just like I always do.

Who’s Looking Out for You?

by Dymphna, May 15, 2011

And so here we are, Sunday night, Day One of our bleg, and it’s Saint Dymphna’s feast day. Long-time readers can skip her story; they’ve all heard it before. But those who don’t know about her can read up on her life and its relationship to Gates of Vienna here. Be sure to check the comments to get the varied & sundry list of those under her protection. Perhaps during this bleg I’ll have an opportunity to find the pictures one of our readers sent from Gheel, Belgium. He stopped by there on purpose to take some pictures he thought I’d enjoy seeing; pictures of the town and of the hospital that used to be run under her name.

I chose this date and this story to begin our bleg because Saint Dymphna is an exemplar of a strong woman. That’s not to say she didn’t make a big mistake; her inexperience cost her life and that of her protector, Gerebemus. But what draws me to her is that unmistakable determination to live her life in service to others, and under her own terms. I wonder if Ann Barnhardt has heard of my patron? Both of them drew a line in the sand; both were willing to pay for their convictions.

Usually the week before our bleg begins I spend time thinking about the theme. Sometimes it develops on its own, a kind of synchronous response to the events here at Gates of Vienna. But this past week was taken up with getting the Baron out the door and getting some plants into their summer home in our garden, plus the usual slings and arrows that arrive over the wall.

As an example of the arrows, I knew the wonderful illustration by Kurt Westergaard was going to be removed from our sidebar and the project was being killed off. The Baron said there were conflicts but that until he had an explanation of why this fine idea was going down the memory hole, the image would stay up. Period. He said that to simply remove it without comment would be an insult to our readers. By the time he left, no explanation was forthcoming so the image stayed. It loomed large in my mind, though: another sad example of a worthy idea run off the tracks by conflict and feelings of betrayal.

I meditated yet again on the theme of betrayals: how absolutely certain they are, yet how each of them is a wound anew, as though it were the very first arrow. We never get used to them, do we? Not entirely. Now, after so many of them right here in cyberspace, I move through the experience more quickly than I did that very first time, when Charles Johnson [NB: of Little Green Footballs — BB] so thoroughly deflowered Gates of Vienna. We are sadder and wiser now. Definitely wiser! And the sadness dissipates as we learn, here and there, of Chazzer’s slow sinking into the quicksand of his own devising.

Now, it’s different. Depending on how much we admired the person or trusted his integrity, on that depends how quickly we move through the inevitable betrayal. For those who aren’t close, who aren’t a depository of our admiration or trust, their duplicity earns a brief shrug, a “c’est la guerre” and a shuffle on to the next issue in the queue. The closer ones cause an initial quick intake of breath at the first moment of realization: “Oh, no. Not him”… And then one of us recalls stories of his betrayal of others and we say, “Well, of course. What? We expected roses from the man who has specialized in stink bomb bouquets for others? Why should we be exempt?”

And then there is the final category: those who have proved to us and to others that they don’t betray their colleagues. How do they prove that? Simply by living their lives with integrity, by being the same person to everyone they meet, by keeping their word. The path behind them is not strewn with their victims. There is no bus under which are hidden all their failures to play well with others.

Here’s one such person. He’s become a treasure to the Baron. They’ve worked on projects together, they bless one another with laughter at their own (dumb) jokes. This man performs valuable services for the Counterjihad and he does it the same way we do: by scraping together what he needs to keep his blog going and his videos up and running.

I consider Vlad a partner in what we do. His videos have slowly become an essential part of our blog and a necessary component of the European, American, and Canadian Counterjihad. In fact, many people in Tennessee asked to be remembered to Vlad the next time the Baron talked to him.

Getting the videos up and running is becoming expensive. Vlad will explain to you himself the business end of it at some point during this fundraiser. However, for the moment, let me say that at least ten percent of any monies raised in this quarter — from here to September — will be turned over to Vlad for his video expenses. Earlier this week I sent him the first installment. From now on, he will be our junior partner. Wait… that’s too ‘cute’. Our partner? Nope, too much of a business model vocabulary. How about associate?

Welcome to the first day of the second bleg of 2011. I hope it will be a successful one, but above all, I hope it will be fun. We already have donations from New Jersey, Australia, and the mystery subscriber whom I’m not able to thank because his email bounces.

Blegs are interactive affairs. Donors suggest things, or the week’s events intrude their own strange reality, so who knows how this one will play out thematically?

Buckle up, y’all. Time for take-off. Don’t worry, Saint Dymphna’s got your back (she’s gained experience over the centuries).

The tip jar in the text above is just for decoration. To donate, click the tin cup (or the donate button) on the sidebar of our main page. If you prefer a monthly subscription, click the “subscribe” button.

18 thoughts on “A Return to Normalcy

  1. Reminding me of the old Charles Tindley hymn: “We’ll Understand It Better By and By”
    I really don’t know why, but I do know the feeling. Be well. And I’ll miss seeing those Dymphna notes throughout on the blog.

  2. I am amazed there are no replies to this moving post.

    I just want to say thank you for all you did as a couple over the years, and for continuing the work alone now. Gates of Vienna was my gateway off the plantation.

  3. My donation will arrive as usual, by check, perhaps a day or two after the drive ends, and will be memo’d : “In memory of Dymphna and her lifelong work”.

  4. while i am not a fan of Joe Biden politically,he has said one thing that i liked .
    After losing his wife and one son in car accident,was asked a few years later how he handled it. His reply was”you know you’re getting better when a smile comes to the lips before the tear comes to the eye.” It took 2 yrs for me.best of luck.
    bruce

  5. ‘As promised yesterday, I’ll talk about the “normalcy” that now rules in politics, particularly American politics. To a geezer like me, the new normal in 2019 is so abnormal that it scarcely makes sense to me. Some sort of collective madness seems to be abroad in the land, especially among people whose political inclinations lean towards the Left.’

    I’ve had similar thoughts.
    I wasn’t alive during the late 1960s. But I’ve read about it–the assassinations, the protests, the riots, the shocking crimes (e.g. Charles Manson).
    The level of domestic unrest we have today is at the highest level since the late 1960s.

    The Left is going bat[guano] crazy because they sense that their agenda to transform America can fail. There is progress on the Border Wall. Trump is doing the best he can, in surprisingly creative ways sometimes, in opposing illegal immigration. It has been estimated that by the end of Trump’s first term, 30 percent of Federal judges would be Trump appointees. A US-UK trade deal will help the UK in their transition out of the EU. A UK that does well outside the EU would further undermine the globalist EU.

  6. I need thank you too, for your and Dymphna’s work these many years. It has been educational, high caliber, with intelligent, polite commenters too, and rewarding, in keeping abreast with other parts of the world, in a, to me, granular way.

    A year ago, I lost my residence unexpectedly, of more than a decade, which had been located in perfection to me. Am temporary residenced for a time. Worse, lost my chief companion service dog, of 17 years, same time, coincidently. Not unexpected, reality shock was tears for weeks, memory for months, memory came back much in 6 months, memory mostly in a year, memory still improving the last bit. Nearly 80, writing book(s). Am well, healthy now. Casual friends, and even strangers supportive, except dems, who tend to be hostile, (Constitutional, esp. 1A, 2A, deplorable, Trumpista, & Christian).

    Never depressed, due to vegetarian diet, mostly, I think. Maybe the well exampled childhood, who knows. Purpose driven, my writing.

      • Thanks, Mark H But my purpose is, from this and other losses, that I empathize with what the Baron is going through, like most of us here. Kind of acutely, but knowing it will calm down, eventually. That “emptiness”, is a chasm in the beginning.

        I’ll mention that, a dog that is at least half Border Collie, can be an amazing companion, to care for and be caring. Hoping to find such again, before long. Can be trained to get things, take things, etc. Tend to be long lived too. Border Collies can live up to 25 years, (if kept healthy thin), according to the web. Females tend to be more tractable, companion like. They, especially BC dogs, tend to pack up with the alpha, which is an amazing experience, if lucky to create it.

        Maybe has something to do with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-kxdyJs6y8

  7. Fortunately, for us, I think the DSA (or coms) has all they can do to “deescalate” themselves enough for any real productive purpose. So far at least. Whittle is on to something. It does blend in with the new-normalcy of it all. Frankly, it is sort of amazing they achieved what organizing they have in the US, but thanks to their institutional assist.

  8. “and I’ve talked about the lunacy that passes as the new “normal” in 21st-century politics.”

    Time for a new word perhaps…”normalunacy”.

  9. Dymphna’s poetic power: vivid and spellbinding! What a great poem about something that most of us would dispose of in a sentence, never seeing the humor and drama she drew from it.

  10. Just clicked on the tip cup and left a token of my appreciation. There didn’t seem to be a place for comments this time (on PayPal) so just wanted to say how much I value GoV. It’s a daily read for me, and although I don’t comment as often as I should, I often mull over what I’ve read here. It’s a sobering thought to realize just how much I wouldn’t know if I limited myself to reading only the mainstream media.

    Dymphna’s talent shines through her writing and I look forward to reading many re-runs of her work.

    Thanks for all you do.

  11. Lovely to see the Friedrich- one of my favourite artists.

    His paintings are full of religious symbolism; sometimes it’s obvious, like when he plants a crucufix on a mountain or a cathedral in a forest; in this case the people on the boats represent souls going to the next world.

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