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| My mother wrote what I told her. |
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| Art by Josh Howard |
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| Image copyright Phillip MacArthur |
Aitkin-born 1930s movie star Warren William’s childhood home is up for sale! I won’t say which house it is for the sake of privacy of the current owner, (you can find out in the book Warren William: Magnificent Scoundrel of Pre-Code Hollywood by John Stangeland, available at the depot museum) but I hope whoever buys it knows what a treasure they’re getting!
It’s incredible how many deer there are. Seeing one used to be a rare occurrence. Until last year, I had never seen a buck. Now I see groups of deer, often including a spike buck, at least twice a day! Well, deer season is coming. The autumn coolness heralding it might be more enjoyable were it not so wet. Still, the fall mood reigns as leaves suffuse with red and football season is underway. It’s great that the Gobblers are undefeated as of my first draft … I’m leaving a space for once I know the results of the Stump game … and alas, we lost.
Football may be declining in popularity as you have, on one side, the NFL alienating many by political waffling; on another, growing opinion that injuries risked in school football cannot possibly be worth it. As culture becomes more utilitarian, it’s assumed that nothing is worth the risk of material suffering. But some practice of physical risk seems integral to development of healthy masculinity. A husband, a father needs to be ready to risk his life to protect his children.
On that note, concerning coming elections, I remind readers that not only does Tina Smith support abortion, she was vice president of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Planned Parenthood is the biggest abortion provider in the country, receives billions in federal funding and donates hundreds of thousands to Democrat politicians. They killed 323,999 unborn children in 2014 alone.
Non-Christian Leftists frequently demand how Christians can support President Trump because he calls people nasty names. Leaving aside the fact that Christians worship someone who called His enemies nasty names, the alternative is supporting the ripping apart of human infants. That is far more incompatible with Christianity than namecalling is.
I continue to be astounded by all Trump is accomplishing in the economy, regarding North Korea, against illegal immigration and human trafficking, and much more. I feel something I never before felt, never believed I would feel: loyalty to a government personage.
For years, Democrat politicians veered further into international socialism and support of public perversion, while Republican politicians did not veer the other way but instead tried to appease people who would never vote for them anyway. This didn’t stop the Left from calling them extreme and comparing them to Hitler. Now we have a leader who is actually implementing some nationalist, anti-socialist policies and in response, several on the Left call for and even descend into violence. But the familiar accusations of racist, sexist, homophobe are losing their teeth for those willing to risk material suffering by standing up for traditional Western Civilization.
By the way, this will be my last column for the Aitkin Independent Age. I’m departing to pursue my illustration career full-time. In a year or so, if you like comics, fantasy or steampunk, I hope you may remember to look for Clockwork Dancer by Jon Del Arroz and other graphic novels drawn by me that have yet to be announced!
Unfortunately, the Senate seat did go to Tina Smith, and Minnesota is further disgraced by this woman with blood on her hands.To the Age staff and readers, my gratitude for the past and best wishes for the future. God bless America. Viva Christo Rey.
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| Drew this in 2004, a symbolic rendition of a Sunfish, which goes with my column: |
As corruption and contention fill or are revealed to have filled church, state, and entertainment with global degeneracy, let us cherish what is local, familial, and wholesome. Like fishing! Let’s tell fish stories.
I’m not a very serious fisherwoman but I go at least a couple times every year. Crappies and sunfish are the target, destined for frying. Once I was fishing off my grandparents’ dock on Cedar. I swung my rod back for a cast and let fly. The line felt heavier and thus flew further than normal. With a splash in the water out in front of the dock appeared a blaze orange baseball cap. I looked back; I had hooked the hat right off my grandfather’s head! Everyone was laughing as I reeled it in and he nonchalantly plopped it back on, still wet.
I’ve only been ice fishing twice; the latter time we caught nothing, the other time was back in the ’90s, in my grandfather’s home-built fish house plated with dented sheet metal and heated by wood stove. That time we encouraged the fish by – but I’ll get to that. Have you ever talked about ice fishing with people who have never been in the north? Amazingly, some of them don’t believe such an activity could exist.Read the rest here.
Recently, every single Catholic bishop in Chile resigned after the extent of sexual abuse there and the apparent cover-up thereof was exposed. Here in America, the archbishop of Washington D.C., Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has been accused of sexual misconduct going back decades: sexual harassment, coercion and assault of young men studying for the priesthood under his authority.
At the same time, shades of perversion haunt Hollywood. It appears likely that Harvey Weinstein wasn’t the only one and adult women were not the only victims. Actor Kevin Spacey and director Bryan Singer have been accused of sexually assaulting young men. Actor Corey Feldman has been claiming for years that Hollywood is rife with pedophiles, but he won’t name names. Still, information is beginning to come out.
Director James Gunn was fired from Disney after attention was drawn to a multitude of Tweets he made, going back several years, joking about himself sexually molesting children. Comedian Sarah Silverman has also come under scrutiny for Tweets joking about herself as a child molester. These “jokes” are not criminal or proof of crime. But what kind of person thinks about the idea of sexually abusing children, broadcasts those thoughts to the entire world, and thinks it’s funny?
As a young Catholic when the priest sex abuse scandals first broke at the turn of the century, I didn’t want to believe it was symptomatic of a larger phenomenon in the church; I thought it was just a few bad priests taking advantage of their station. Predators go where the prey is and instances of sexual abuse by priests are much lower in number than those committed by public school teachers.
While that remains true in principle, I can now see it is not just a few bad eggs. The extent of complicity and cover-ups suggests an organized infiltration. Going back decades, there are stories from the seminaries of students being required to watch homosexual pornography and being expelled for believing in traditional morality. After the wave of sex abuse scandals in the early 2000s, Pope Benedict XVI decreed that no man with deep-seated homosexual tendencies should be allowed into the priesthood. Now that idea has been waved away with the famous “Who I am to judge?” and there is a new wave of scandal.Read the rest here.
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| Art by Phillip MacArthur |
Absolutely beautiful,To which I replied:
I am capturing some of this for my blog with the due credits harvard
That is funny, since your earlier use of my work was to portray as “stigma” my statement that sacrilege against the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is wrong, and you did not see fit to inform me then.After which, she edited her comment so that it changed to being anonymous. Then, she used my work again, without credit, on this post, which, though it is quite incoherent, seems to be attacking the idea of the Blessed Sacrament as the Source and Summit of the Christian life.
My family spent many summer afternoons at Connie Lueck field, watching our cousins play baseball. Loads of fun, it was one of the inspirations for my brother Phillip MacArthur’s book, Summer, Broken, illustrated by my sister Anna. It’s a young adult story about a boy named Kenny who just wants to play baseball but gets embroiled in haunted houses, disguises and magic in a whimsical and nostalgic summer adventure. It can be found on Lulu.com by searching for the title and author name. [Or by going here.]
The homeschooled children of an English professor and an art teacher, my siblings and I have always been interested in creative storytelling.Read the rest here.
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| First art I ever posted on this blog, a Corpus Christi oekaki |
The Kasperite heresy, proposed by many bishops and supported by Pope Francis, is very, very wrong. Perhaps one of the worst things that people could be led to believe.In another essay, I compared a scene in a story where the hero shields his beloved from an explosion with his body to the reception of Holy Communion, the beloved being like the communicant and the hero being like Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. I would also like to point out that at that time in the story, said hero was also suffering great grief and betrayal, and that beloved girl was the only person able to bring him any comfort. This too can be analogous. While Our Lord is most likely being desecrated all over the world, let us make our communions acts of consoling Him.
See, the premise is not: "Sexual relations in a 'marriage' after prior divorce is not a sin." What has been said is rather, "Let us allow sexually active remarried-after-divorce people to receive Communion." It has been framed as a "path" to... repentance? No, they don't say repentance. They're very vague about what it's a path to, but they never deny that they are proposing reception of the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin. They just don't use that language, because it would hurt peoples' feelings.Instead of hurting people's feelings, they opt to hurt, to kill, peoples' souls, and to kill Our Lord Jesus Christ.Kill Christ? What?I don't just mean how sins caused Christ to die on the Cross, I mean actual new actions of literally physically killing Him in time, now. How is this possible?
The Eucharist is the living Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, the entire His Own Self of Jesus Christ, God the Son. It's Him. Right there. In the ciborium, on your tongue, (please not in your hands...) stuck to the roof of your mouth, down your throat. Living. In you. Physically. Now, what if you're in a state of mortal sin? Well, my Baltimore catechism said about the state of mortal sin "Christ is dead in us." So, it logically follows that receiving the Blessed Sacrament in a state of mortal sin is, in the most direct way possible, killing Christ.
I know, He died once for all and He dies no more. And of course He yet lives, off in Heaven (must be a physical place somewhere because He still has His human Body) and as the Blessed Sacrament in all the tabernacles of the world, including people in a state of grace. But still, I think that the act of receiving the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin can indeed be described this way, as taking Him in, and killing Him.
When the priest displays Him and says, "Behold the Lamb of God," it recalls not just John the Baptist, but also Pilate: "Behold the Man," displaying Him to the people and having them choose whether to kill Him or not. Letting them vote. Thus, when we are then invited to Communion, we are given that same choice. Let Him live in us or let Him die in us. Thus I think it may be argued that receiving the Eucharist while in a state of mortal sin is one of the worst things one can possibly do.
The story’s hero, Kenny, joins a baseball team for the summer, but soon becomes convinced that the opposing team is cheating by use of magic. No one else believes him except for one of his team mates who can’t speak English. Kenny is determined, though, and investigates occurrences of sorcery in the town. This leads him to a connection between the haunted house and the baseball field, and finds out that the witch living in the haunted house is connected to the opposing baseball team! Summer, Broken features magic, ghouls, investigation suspense, a deadly virus called the Cooties, an impossibly large fish, baseball, a great amount of running, and all sorts of summer fun. Kenny learns that doing the right thing is more important than becoming famous, and that although his parents’ rules might be strict, they just want to ensure his safety.Buy it here!
Last time, I wrote about the extreme nostalgia possessed by, or possessing, Millennials as shown in marketing directed at them and how it might be explained by the increasing instability of the family in the past few decades. Now I wish to write that this is but a particular instance of a universal longing.
For myself, the nostalgia for childhood is colored with memories of summers here in Aitkin, fun on Cedar Lake and in town at Ben Franklin, Butler’s, the bakery and the Rialto – only one of those businesses remains. My father is a professor, so we could spend almost the whole summer up here. There are many difficulties in the teaching profession, but one glorious perk is the continuance of summer vacation into adulthood. Those of us who aren’t teachers must make do with weekends and days off. Still, summer is something longed for and treasured, even more so because of long winters like this one. But I also now know that Aitkin isn’t the perfect paradise my 6-year-old eyes saw it as. Everywhere on earth has its troubles and disappointments. Still one feels a sort of homesickness for a place one has never been, a place to be truly happy.
G.K. Chesterton wrote that “the finest line in English literature” is, “Over the hills and far away."Read the rest here.
