Busy

No posts for a few days boys and girls.

Busy.

UPDATE:
Close of day two. I've had one batch of cytotoxins, with two more to go. The really nasty one, Taxol or Paclitaxel, is for tomorrow morning, but there has been a complication and things have not gone as easily as hoped.

On the first cycle, it was determined that I have "difficult" veins. They poked around in the back of my hand and arm five times to try to get an IV in there but failed (with lots of lovely bruises to show for it) so it was decided that I would have a PICC line. At first, I think they expected not to do a third cycle of chemo, so it was assumed that the PICC would only have to be in place for a month, which is the normal limit. But it has been there now for over two months, and this extension has probably added to the problem.

The first day is always a whole load of saline solution mixed with anti-histamines, vitamins, minerals and various drugs to protect my insides while the vicious cytotoxins go in later and start destroying every fast-growing cell in my body. If I just had the chemo drugs alone, I would be having liver and kidney failure and might have a violent reaction to the drugs, which can result in seizures or coma. So they are very careful, filling you up with anti-emetics and other protective things.

But the inflammation, with some pain, started about half way through the prophylactic stage. I had an ultrasound to rule out veinous thrombosis, but by the time I'd finished it the first cytotoxin, Cisplatin, was causing a lot of pain and some of it refusing to go in but dripping out, soaking the bandage and running down my arm...and these are some pretty expensive drugs!

They're worried about having the same problem with the Taxol, which is extremely toxic, so much that you are not supposed to get any of it on your skin. So they're getting a PICC specialist to see me tomorrow. It seems that my veins are just tired of having all that tubing stuck up them and then having all these toxic chemicals poured in on top. Understandable, I think. I feel the same way.

So there we are. That was the first two days. If all goes well, I'll be here for another day and a half, more if there are more problems. Keep your fingers crossed (if you're a pagan. If you're a Christian, I suppose you could pray.)

Feeling OK in general though, in my head at least, but somewhat delicate. I explained that I didn't want any dinner by roughly saying, "eating is vomiting," "mangiare e vomitare," which is terrible Italian but seemed to get the message across. They have me on a drug that is meant to protect my brain from the chemo so it's kind of important. It was being given in the form of a big tablet that dissolved in water which you drink, (a big fave of Italians with all sorts of drugs) but after two today, I had to tell them that if I had one more, it was going to bounce out of my stomach like it was hitting a trampoline. We've switched to shots instead and I've discovered that pain is greatly to be preferred to nausea. Pain is small, localised and short-lived. Nausea takes over your whole world.

Played cards all afternoon, re-learning after about 30 years how to play Gin Rummy. Got pants whipped by a slip of a girl.

More later.

UPDATE 2:

Well, they came in this morning and said the PICC just isn't working any more and gave me a new IV in my left arm, which is now more or less immobilised. Can't bend the elbow more than an inch or two (so am typing with one hand). That will keep things going for the morning, but before they start the next batch of cytotoxins, I have to have a new PICC line installed surgically, a rather unpleasant but short procedure that will make the rest of thing go much more smoothly.


UPDATE 3:

Home. All tubes removed.

V. v. sick, but home.

Home is best.



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No one is paying any attention to anything I'm saying

I thought I made it clear.

I don't want to go to the hospital.

I don't want to go to the hospital.

I. Don't. Want. To. Go. To. The. HOSPITAL!

...

Why isn't anyone listening?


UPDATE:

Aaaaaand right on cue...my fridge died last night.



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Artist against The Real

You know how I'm always saying that you can tell modern art (sic) is crap because everyone hates it?

Well, one can take that too far the other way.

It is never to be forgotten that this ... err... person... is the most popular artist in the world.

Particularly with Evangelical Christians.

Simcha Fisher gives a hint to why the latter might be. Prots have no concept of sacramentality and, having abandoned the reasoning behind their beliefs, are left, for the most part, with nothing but the ersatz spirituality of their deeply felt feelings:

Kinkade isn’t content with shying away from ugliness: He sees nothing beautiful in the world the way it is. He thinks it needs polishing. He loves the world in the same way that a pageant mom thinks her child is just adorable—or will be, after she loses ten pounds, dyes and curls her hair, gets implants, and makes herself almost unrecognizable with a thick layer of make-up. Normal people recoil from such extreme artifice—not because they hate beauty, but because they love it.

Kinkade-style light doesn’t show an affection for natural beauty—it shows his disdain for it. His light doesn’t reveal, it distorts. His paintings aren’t merely trivial, they’re a statement of contempt for the world.

His vision of the world isn’t just tacky, it’s anti-Incarnational.

I thought, simply, that if one is interested in presenting an idealised view of the real world, one must at least make one's starting point the actual real world.

Which is why I love the idealised realism of, say, a Maxfield Parrish or a William Bouguereau, and despise the gloppy sentimentalism of Thomas Kinkade.



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Irene

Dreamed I was holed up in a big house in North Carolina with a bunch of friends.

In waking life, they're keeping us updated on FB. So far so good. House still attached to the ground, roof still on top and even electricity still running.

Andrew in New York reports that he made it safely down to the pub.

So far, no reports of anyone standing on top of their houses yelling for help, beating each other up in the local stadium, looting flat screen tvs or shooting at rescue workers.

Update:
Latest news from Jacksonville NC. Gusts down to 70 mph and dropping. All friends + dogs accounted for.



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Weather's changing

It's supposed to drop down about ten degrees tomorrow...

which means its only going to be 90 F.



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Bloody hell

Four more days.

No wonder I can't sleep.



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Tuns on Jack

Paul Tuns was the guy who first told me what a blog was and suggested I start one.

He's been watching the Canadian political scene all his life.

Read him.

Here he is on St. Jack:

I was at Our Toronto Free Press in the late 1990s and I interviewed him about some youth who were squatting on private property and whose actions he was defending. I asked him about the condoms that were strewn on the floor of their trailers and tents and which some of the youth were sleeping on. He said it was very important for young people to have access to condoms, just as important as food. I sarcastically asked if the poor, dirty, malnourished teens who were illegally on other people's property could eat condoms or clean up with condoms and he huffed that "condoms are a human right." Such were Layton's priorities just 13 or 14 years ago. It takes a certain worldview to believe that condoms are as important to street youth as food and that they are, in fact, a human right.

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A Mole

You be the judge: Kate and Leopold, was it written by someone who is working on the inside to undermine the feminist stranglehold on the entertainment industry?

Just re-watched it tonight and it's suspiciously anti-agenda.

Only drawback? Good grief! What is with Meg Ryan's haystack-meets-machete hair?



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'Nother contest

Don't usually link to Huffpo, but this is too good to miss: a brief history of Canada's language law.

And the contest is for our American and European readers (so Canuckstanis, shush.)

In the early days of this country most people spoke French; then after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, most people in Canada spoke English.

And that's the way things stayed until the late 1960s when former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau enacted the "Official Languages Act."

This was an historic law which gave Canadians the legal right to get all huffy and indignant and threaten lawsuits, whenever a federal civil servant in places like Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan or Kippers Flippers, Newfoundland didn't start a conversation with the word: "Bonjour."

Which town name is made up and which one is real?

Canada: used to be good, now just funny.



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New Rule

Gah!! A thousand hits a day?!

What the heck?

I've been toodling along for years with my nice friendly little 350-odd daily tea party, just me and a few friends goofing off and futzing about. But then I tweaked the Vatican's tail a little and now all these people are crowding in, dropping crumbs on the carpet, using cups that don't match the saucers and dipping their wet spoons into the sugar basin.

Where have you all come from? Who invited you? Don't y'all have jobs or something?

I realise that I've had a Kathy link and that always means that I have to start saying things like women shouldn't be allowed to vote or wear trousers to make all her little minions go away. But really it's been growing like crazy since May. And I can't spend all my time insulting people.

So, new rule: If you'd never read me before, say, March this year,

go away. You're not allowed to read this blog.

I hate new people.



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Let's play a game!

Caption contest.


What is this a statue of and where is it?

Mine: New statue commissioned for Los Angeles Cathedral gardens.



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Further to our discussion below...

this picture more or less illustrates what most people in North America think living in Europe is like.

And the breathing under water thing.



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Welcome Kathy's minions

Gazillions of minions.

Update:

Wait, I take it back. See new rule above.



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Aestiva Latinitas Romae

A friend of mine here in Rome decided there wasn't enough Latin being spoken in this town.

Well, who can argue with that? So he founded a new school.

The mornings are spent at the St. John's University campus reading poetry and prose and commenting on the texts in Latin; the afternoons are spent doing the same thing at various sites of literary or archaeological significance. If you vacationed in Italy this June, you might have seen us standing around the Ara Pacis on a scorcher, offering competing Latin orations on the pax Augustana.

...

We descended into the Sybil's cave at Cumae to reel off the pertinent hundred lines of Virgil. We drew stares in the Forum as we declaimed latine (adv.: "in Latin") on the various points of interest. (One elderly Italian gentleman, several sheets to the wind, stuck with us for some time, offering applause and exclamations of "bravi" whenever he thought appropriate.) We stooped into the Catacombs of Priscilla or the bowels of the Basilica San Clemente, where a troupe of friendly Bulgarians listened to our Latinisms on the subject of Saint Cyril.

Sign up.



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"Last one out turn off the lights."

I read a piece today in the NYT about the death of active religious orders in the US.

Some of it is pretty poignant with this standing out:

Sister Mary Jean’s order has dwindled to about 100 from a peak of more than 500. Most moved out of their convent last year and into a retirement and nursing home. There has not been an initiate for 25 years, and several years ago the sisters reluctantly stopped looking.

“It was painful,” Sister Mary Jean said in an interview in her modest apartment, “but I think it was also courageous to say we’re just not going to recruit any more. Let’s just live out the rest of our lives to the fullest that we possibly can and thank God for what we’ve been able to do. And when the time comes, as they say, the last person turn the lights out.”

But the thought occured, why haven't they had a vocation in 25 years? What could it be? Sunspots?


Well, here they are, in all their reformed glory. And we've got to love their courageous stand "that bottled water, however convenient to tote around, is environmentally, economically and politically wrong".

We commit ourselves to:

* promote the sacredness of life through all its stages and expressions
* support legislation to curtail the availability of weapons
* oppose military aggression and the continued build-up of nuclear weapons and promote economic conversion
* support legislation and other advocacy efforts which provide protection, safety, financial assistance to survivors of domestic violence and child abuse
* speak out against the use and glorification of violence in our media and culture
* work for just and human solutions in criminal justice and oppose the death penalty
* reverse the waste and destruction of our natural environment

Any more questions?

Well, yes, actually. I have a couple.

The NYT solemnly rings the bell for religious orders administering Catholic health care in the US, asking "Why did they disappear?"

But I have a slightly different question: "Why were they in administration in the first place? Is that what they were founded for?"

I have spent a few years studying the history and development of the active religious life in the US and Canada (almost wrote a book) and came to a few unorthodox conclusions.

When they came to the US in the 1870s, these ladies, pictured at the top, took care of the sick in their own homes, "sheltered single mothers-to-be, protected young working women and embraced the care of orphans".

Then comes the slide. "As years passed, the sisters increased their knowledge and skills, developed technology and established institutions."

This was the same story with nearly all the active religious I looked at. They started with a few saintly pioneers who braved nearly everything the 19th century had to throw at them, from cholera to Wild Indians to Know-nothing anti-Catholic bigotry to lawless gunmen. They always started small and ended up after 70 or 80 years with huge establishments with hundreds of lay employees in gigantic hospitals around the country. It was argued in one book I read that the entire establishment of institutionalised health care in the US was the result of the work of Catholic sisters.

And that was when it all fell apart for them. The sisters, even when they were still in the habits, had turned to the work of maintaining this institutionalised health system, leading them inexorably into administrative work that became the sole focus of the communities' efforts.

But I ask, aren't nuns supposed to be religious specialists? Isn't it their focus in life to be religious? We all know the story of how the communities started focusing too much on the works and not enough on their own religious lives. The un-reformed constitutions of more than one of these groups stated that the first purpose of the community was the sanctification of its members in prayer, penance and the practice of the sacramental life. Only secondarily was it to perform (mainly corporal) works of mercy. We all know by now that the downfall of these orders was to abandon this primary purpose, to invert and eventually completely pervert the reason for their existence.

And of course, in these times, as the "progressive" sisters will always tell you, no woman in our modern enlightened world needs to join a religious community in order to get an education or enter a profession. So the question that should have been asked, "What do we have to offer as religious experts within the modern, secularised health care institutions?" was replaced with "How can we become 'relevant' in this world in which religion is getting squeezed out of health care?"

But what if instead of abandoning religion, the sisters had instead said, "It's OK that we can't keep up with the secularisation of the institutions because that really wasn't our main purpose anyway. Why don't we go back to the founding charism of our commmunity and start offering our religious, our spiritual expertise to the sick and needy?"

When I was in the hospital for the first chemo, I was expertly cared for physically by a team of highly trained professionals and I felt quite safe and looked-after. But everyone who was doing the medical work was far too busy to sit with me, to stop and pray a Rosary with me for 20 minutes. That work was left largely to my little band of friends (and a fine job they did). I asked for a visit from the chaplaincy and in due course, was visited by three Franciscan priests (in habits) who blessed me, heard my confession and brought me Holy Communion.

People in hospital are often frightened and depressed, or confused or simply bored and lonely. Wouldn't it have been lovely if there were someone there whose job it was to offer spiritual solace? To just sit and chat, pray the Rosary, listen to fears and lift depression. Sisters in habit who would come to see you each day, when friends couldn't be there, to wheel you into the chapel for a visit or a Rosary.

Wouldn't it have been lovely if these sisters above, instead of focusing on gathering professional credentials, on going to conferences, on establishing themselves as big-time professional players (with seven digit salaries) in the American Health Care Industry, had focused instead on their religious contribution.

What would the world have looked like then, I wonder.



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Americanism

Not a lot of people out there (other than the Trads) are willing to breathe the word "Americanism".

Interesting.

I wonder if we took a poll how many Catholics out there would ever have heard the term.

Though in my own experience, the British Catholics are much worse about the things Michael is mentioning.



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I might have put it differently

John Allen is writing interesting stuff about the Zapatero government in Spain.

He says, "In Catholic conversation on the Old Continent, Zapatero has become an almost mythic figure, the avatar par excellence of secularism on steroids."

I think I might have said that he is the embodiment of secularism on hallucinogenic mushrooms.



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He said she said

As I said elsewhere this morning, there is one problem with consciously dedicating yourself to the pursuit of The Real. Eventually you get to the point where you look around the modern world and realise it has gone totally bonko-screaming-nuts.

As Kathy pointed out, newspapers used to have to at least pretend to be about reality. Now they go along with this bizarre mass delusion that your "gender" (the correct word is "sex", though the strangely puritanical world of pansexualism doesn't like to use that word) can be changed by cutting off your bits and dosing yourself up with drugs. Now, they have to call a man who's had his bits cut off "her" and "she". Why? Did anyone tell them to? I wonder who that might have been. And why the newspapers didn't just laugh and give them the number of a reputable shrink.

What the hell happened in 1973 to make the entire medical establishment go insane?

Even this guy, who was there at the time, doesn't seem to know.

When the practice of sex-change surgery first emerged back in the early 1970s, I would often remind its advocating psychiatrists that with other patients, alcoholics in particular, they would quote the Serenity Prayer, “God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Where did they get the idea that our sexual identity (“gender” was the term they preferred) as men or women was in the category of things that could be changed?

...

The post-surgical subjects struck me as caricatures of women. They wore high heels, copious makeup, and flamboyant clothing; they spoke about how they found themselves able to give vent to their natural inclinations for peace, domesticity, and gentleness—but their large hands, prominent Adam’s apples, and thick facial features were incongruous (and would become more so as they aged). Women psychiatrists whom I sent to talk with them would intuitively see through the disguise and the exaggerated postures. “Gals know gals,” one said to me, “and that’s a guy.”

Did absolutely no one pay attention in grade ten biology class? Did everyone else miss the bit where we were told that your sex is determined at the moment when the two sets of genes from mummy and daddy meshed together? Oh yes, of course. If we acknowledged that, we would have to admit that you are who you are from that moment too, which would force millions more public funding to be spent by the abortion industry convincing the world that it's OK to murder inconvenient people.

There is not one part of this story that does not make me cringe in horror and sadness:

- the man who divorced and became mentally ill, who was encouraged to embrace his delusions by the trendy medical establishment to the point of allowing them to cut his parts off and poison him with hormones. Who then changed his mind and found himself mutilated and deformed and unable to have children;

- the girl who hated herself so much she could not eat and almost died;

- the fact that no one in their lives has cautioned them about their decision because now the only thing anyone is allowed to say to anyone else, no matter what bat-sh__ crazy thing they want to do, is "I'll support you whatever decision you make".

I don't know, maybe it's not totally hopeless...

He is currently seeking funding for a documentary titled The Sex Change Delusion[Good luck with that...].

"Based on my own experiences, I believe sex-change operations should not be allowed, and certainly not on the NHS.

"People who think they are a woman trapped in a male body are, in my opinion, completely deluded. I certainly was. I needed counselling, not a sex-change operation.

"In many ways I see myself a victim of the medical profession. Even with the glamour of Samantha Kane and the £100,000 I spent on myself, I had people shouting abuse at me and builders throwing stones at me from rooftops," he says.

"I became a woman. [No, you didn't. That's why construction workers threw things at you in the streets.] It didn’t work for me. [It doesn't work for anyone.] I changed my mind. It’s only a fool that doesn’t change their mind when they know they are wrong. It took tremendous courage to say: “No, sorry, I will change back.”

If only he could, the poor fellow. But judging from the little delicate tap-dance the two of them performed around the details of their "sex life," it seems that the newly reconstructed bits don't do what they're supposed to do. (I note that the Catholic Church would not be able to recognise this man's marriage, since permanent impotence makes it impossible for a man to contract a valid marriage.)

Boy catastrophically screwed up person meets girl other catastrophically screwed up person. I do actually hope they'll be OK, but really, what are the odds?

It's pretty easy for us shake our heads when looking at cases of this cultural insanity that are so outrageous that they attract the attention of the Daily Mail. But we all grew up in the midst of this sexually revolutionised world. Nearly all the kids I went to school with had divorced parents by the time I was twelve. Everyone has been spoonfed these ideas since the early 1970s. We're all brainwashed with it.

How can any of us expect to make happy marriages? How can we have a society that will work when nearly everyone is the walking wounded?



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Update:

John Sonnen already has a new camera.

So, double sucks to be you, Anonymous-Jerkface.

Hah!



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This makes me mad

You get a bit of this if you live in Europe. A lot of people in N. America still think Europe is some amazing magic place like Narnia where the animals can talk and you can breathe under water and all you do all day is eat ice cream and drink champagne and swan around on yachts with beautiful women.

Yeah, it's a bit like that if you're here on holiday.

If you live here, it's a place where you work, commute, go grocery shopping and take out the trash exactly like everywhere else in the world... oh, except the people are all weird, you often can't get the things you're used to or go to the movies, the rules are totally different and everyone speaks another language. You can't, in other words, live a normal life... which can be a little hard to take if you have to do it for five or six years. There's a reason ex-pats have much higher rates of stress-related illness than the general population.

But I guess people don't think much about this. They're too busy being envious in the commbox.

John Sonnen, of the ridiculously popular and famous Orbis Catholicus Secundus photo blog, that gets about 3000 hits a day, has had his camera stolen while in Madrid. If you had paid me a million bucks I wouldn't have gone to World Youth Day, (well, I might have said I would, taken your money and then gone off somewhere very very quiet and solitary to spend it), but John has gone to Madrid to shepherd around a bunch of screaming teenagers... for free.

In return for this, some bastard waiter has stolen his camera, the fabulous camera that was donated to him by a kind friend in the States so he could keep blogging. He has put up a post asking if there is anyone out there who might be willing to buy him a new one.

Naturally, someone without enough imagination to live an interesting life of his own has decided to be a jerk about it in the commbox...

Anonymous said...

You are a grown, married man and you always requesting money when life throws you a curve ball. Why don't you save your own money and buy your own camera when you have enough to do so? What makes you feel entitled to ask people to send you hard earned money in this economy to assist you whenever some problem comes up or you need extra money? It's not dignified. Most people don't get to travel to Spain, Russia, Poland, England, France in a life time, yet poor man that you are has been to these places numerous times. Seems like you are doing pretty good to me.

I am so mad at this idiot that I am posting my response just in case John, who is much nicer than I, decides not to post it.

Oh, and hey Jerkface "Anonymous"!

John works his ass off all year as a tour guide in Rome, which is incredibly hard work, as well as keeping up his studies. He does this blog as a happy hobby and as a serious apostolate that is appreciated by as many as 3000 people a day. It's positive. It's uplifting. It's Catholic-friendly and a needed response to people like me who are always talking about how awful the world is.

John only had that camera because a kind reader, fan and friend who could afford it, bought it for him so he could carry on with this work that is such a help to others. He can't possibly afford to replace it.

Also, as a person who has never been to Europe, you obviously don't know that it costs next to nothing to fly/train and or/boat around Europe. The ferry fare to Tunis for example, (when it was a place anyone wanted to go) is about 25 Euros. It's incredibly expensive to fly across the Atlantic, but once you're here, it can be as little as 10 Euros to go to places like Dublin, Paris, London, etc. Everyone, and I mean EVERYone in Europe flies all over the place all the freaking time. You know why? Because it's ridiculously tiny. I could walk to Austria from here in a few days. If you can stay with friends or friends of friends, you can travel around Europe all you like for no more than it would cost to commute from the burbs to your crappy down-town North American city job for a week.

The other way he, and any one of the rest of us who wants to, gets to go places is because other people are kind and good, friendly and helpful and want to see other people having a nice time.

Envy is an ugly sin, mate. It's the only one that Thomas Aquinas said creates misery for those who indulge in it and gives absolutely nothing in return.

I'm sorry if your crap life sucks and you hate North America and have never been anywhere. But you know what? It's not that hard really, you just have to buy a ticket and go.

Oh, and on top of that, it helps a lot if you are a decent soul who's nice enough and friendly enough for other people to want to be nice to back.

So, sucks to be you, I guess.

(And hey, way to be a manly man there, lobbing insults and vitriol behind anonymity.)

~

Aw man...

How come I never find anything this good?

I need to go for more walks.



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Why has this money been wasted...?

"While He was in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper, and reclining at the table, there came a woman with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume of pure nard; and she broke the vial and poured it over His head. But some were indignantly remarking to one another, 'Why has this perfume been wasted? For this perfume might have been sold for over three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor'."

The priests, along with dozens of left-leaning groups demanding a secular state and young people who occupied many of Spain’s main squares for months to protest the government’s handling of the economy, are planning at least one major protest march on Wednesday.

Though, to be perfectly accurate, I'm sure they should have said "...along with dozens of other left-leaning groups..."



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Kind readers

Well, I send out many vibes of thanks to the mysterious personages who sent along the book Beauty and Being: Thomistic Perspectives, and the Maddy Prior CD.

Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't give me any clew as to the identity of the sender when books arrive in the office, so it will have to be a generic thank-you (though I can hazard a guess in both cases).

I made a rare trip into Rome today and managed to stop by the office and there was a large stack of mail, some of which had been sitting there waiting for some time. I hadn't realised it had been so long, since May I think, since I'd been there.

The doctors have ordered a set of blood tests, scheduled for August 14th. Not sure if anyone bothered to look at the calendar when putting the dates down on the paper because the 14th was a Sunday and the following week is Ferragosto. They want to see how my various inward bits are reacting to the chemo, so the tests are supposed to be checking liver, kidney function etc. It is a long list of tests and looked as though it was going to be too much for the little local S. Marinella diagnostic clinic to handle, so with it being the holidays, I thought Gemelli would be the best bet. So, off we went this morning to catch the 7 am train into town (Gemelli's diagnostic clinic only takes you between 8 and ten in the morning).

Well, got there and found out that you're just not supposed to be sick or in need of any medical attention whatsoever during the Italian national summer holiday.

Lovely.

Am now going back to bed.



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Definitions please, Mr. Cameron

Dave is talking loudly in the House about "restoring morality" to Britain.

This is the man who said that because of his own experiences raising his beloved disabled son Ivan, he would never dream of taking away the right of women to murder abort a disabled "foetus".

I'm just wondering, therefore, what exactly Dave means by the term "morality" and who he intends to put on the (inevitable) public morals committee. A female Anglican ministrix, perhaps? And naturally a representative or two from the "moderate" end of the Islamic community. And of course, we can't have a public morals committee without someone there from the Equalities commission. I wonder who +Vincent is going to volunteer. Perhaps Fr. Seed?



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Another fine point...

It has also been noted that during the entire hullabaloo, the only people the police actually stopped in the act were the EDL groups who went out on the streets to stop the rioters.

Yep. They stood around and watched the hoodies break in shop windows and lob burning jars of gasoline at businesses and homes. But as soon as the politically incorrect English Defence League came out to put a stop to the destruction, police turned out in the hundreds to stop them patrolling the streets.

"Local people standing watching all this divided into two distinct groups. The first insisted these were local Eltham men come out to "defend our community" from would-be rioters, and on the whole these people seemed pretty angry at the vast police presence which seemed to have been mounted to prevent them doing the police's job."

No such action was taken against the Sikhs who lined up in front of their temple with baseball bats and swords.

Brendan O'Neill comments on Spiked that the one thing that the political elites of Britain fear most is the white working class:

The moral assaults on the Enfield ‘vigilantes’ confirms that the cultural elite fears the white working classes more than it does riotous youth.

That some of ‘these people’ dared to patrol their streets, to set up miniature citizen armies to see off the chancers and tricksters of the looting lobby, has been treated as the No.1 threat now facing Britain. They are a ‘white mob’, we are told, who could precipitate a ‘race war’. According to the deputy mayor of London, Kit Malthouse, their community-protection antics are ‘deeply undesirable’. Come on Kit, you can say it: you think these people are ‘undesirables’.

Most of the arrests of the actual looters and rioters have happened after the fact. A police chief in Manchester said that police would be examining CCTV reels and would be tracking down the perpetrators. The same perpetrators who were kicking in store windows right in front of their eyes two days ago.

This is a force so paralysed by risk-aversion, so witlessly scared of provoking controversy, that this week it effectively stood back and allowed young people to loot shops, burn cars and destroy homes.

It seems that in the morally inverted world of the modern police, such destruction is a price worth paying if it means their own officers don’t get a graze or PTSD. Upon what moral authority is the Met now telling working people not to patrol their communities? Cops bussed into a suburb might consider it acceptable to allow youth to smash things up in the hope that they’ll eventually tire, but for the people who live in those suburbs, who have a moral, emotional and economic attachment to them, that really isn’t an option. It takes brazenness to a brand new level for a state which failed to police the streets to libel those citizens who decided to do it for themselves.

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Causes

Everyone's talking about what "caused" the riots.

Obviously the riots were caused by a large number of young people rioting. And looting. Let us not forget to face the simplest facts.

But if we are to indulge in the popular journalistic pastime of looking for "underlying causes," I believe Dorothy has just neatly summed it up.

She says,

"The riots were caused by premarital sex. Not only because premarital sex created all these young, fatherless boys, but because the culture of premarital sex has taught them that they can have something for absolutely nothing."

Yep.



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About sums it up...

English rioters left bookstores alone.

And the first things to get broken into were sportswear and mobile phone shops.



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Slapped in the face with the wet fish of reality

As Dorothy has said, we've been doing little in the last couple of days but read about, talk about and think about the English riots.

I've been raking through the editorials and news accounts to try to put some thoughts together, and have concluded that there is little point in my trying to re-create editorial opinions that are being said much better by others. So I thought I would simply give you a compilation of the most interesting things being said.

I note only a few things. First, it is clear that absolutely no one is any longer buying the standard liberal trope: "The poor, oppressed members of the underclass have at last lashed out in frustration at their lot. The riots are the result of Tory cuts to benefits. If only these disaffected youth/victims were given more comprehensive government services, all would be well."

I have had some ridiculous Facebook conversations with people from Canada whose kneejerk reaction to anything of this kind is to start moaning about the evil right wing government holding the poor and downtrodden under their boot. I think it is usually expressed something like,

"I would never condone violence of course, but it is sad to see that these young people have no other outlet for their frustration and anger..."

What anger? We've all watched the Youtube videos of these smiling, laughing, happy sociopaths as they break into High Street shops and come out with their bundles.

But in Britain, it is no longer possible to lie about these poor little oppressed darlings. You don't have to go to the internet to see what is really going on. People are seeing it first hand out their sitting room windows. They are watching as their homes and businesses burn down, leaving them with nothing. They have seen these mobs of track-suited teenagers kicking in windows, stealing and burning, all with a cheerfully smug two fingers up to anyone who might stand in their way.

And they have lived for decades with these violent and dangerous creatures, "feral youth," all around them. British people live in fear of their own youth, and have done for some time.

It has finally become undeniable, to everyone, that these are not "oppressed," they are not "deprived," at least in the way the Guardian usually uses the term. Not materially deprived. It has come home to nearly everyone in Britain (except, notably the political class who continue to mouth the same idiotic platitudes) that these kids, without conscience, without restraint on their whims, without any kind of internal or external control of their behaviour, are the product of a society, in its school system, court and criminal justice system and media, that tells them they can do no wrong, that other people don't matter and that there should be no barriers between them and whatever they want. And that their worst behaviour will never, ever, be punished.

Kids can no longer be disciplined in schools by teachers or by their parents. The erasure of any social stigma against out-of-wedlock childbirth has created an entire underclass of children raised by children, sometimes for three and four generations. The answer to the cry, "But where are their parents," is that the "parents" that have raised these monsters are themselves also children, and of exactly the same kind.

The fact that even the Guardian does not dare (for now) trot out the usual malign set of leftist lies, is very telling indeed. It seems that the left in Britain has been well and truly mugged by reality. Slapped into momentary consciousness. I wonder how long it will last.

Another point is that the riots have opened up a floodgate of anger and resentment, not from the poor, downtrodden underclass, but from the middle class, the working class, shop owners, older people, working families, school teachers and policemen, the regular joes of British society. The sight of looters breaking down shop windows and helping themselves while the police stood by looking on, has finally broken the dam.

No one is going to listen to a politician utter their absurd liberal blither with a patient ear again. When some nitwit like Theresa May says, "We don't use water canon in British policing; we use consensus," the people who have had their shops burned to the ground will conclude, quite rightly, that the government does not have any serious intention of doing anything and will organise their own, local community protection; and they will use baseball bats. These have been the first steps to a truly lawless, anarchic Britain.

Ordinary people, people who live in The Real, have always known what until now the media has never dared to breathe, that Britain's badly behaved young people and children, who are never meaningfully punished, have become monsters. They know that the child-centred, self-esteem oriented schooling, police-as-social-workers, ASBOs and community service sentencing, have created a generation of uncontrollable sociopaths.

The social policies in place since the 1970s and 80s, have created an unsustainable situation, a society that is absolutely certain to fall into violent anarchy. Everyone, except, apparently, the politicians, social workers and Guardian columnists, has known for a very long time that this was coming.

This week, the sociopaths themselves have woken to the reality that there aren't enough police - or political will - in the country to stop them doing whatever they want to do.

It is also interesting to note that it was, in general, not the white, aboriginal British who first realised that the police could not or would not do anything meaningful to stop it. I listened to a police chief in Manchester tell a press conference that they police would be carefully examining the CCTV reels to identify the offenders and would round them up and arrest them.

In other words, police said they will do nothing whatever to stop the violence, arson and theft while it was actually happening. Instead, they are going to wait until it was all over, and go to the kids' homes and arrest them after the fact. Miles of footage show police in riot gear standing and watching as kids broke into shops.

The first court cases have been heard against those arrested in the first couple of days, and the news is not much better than you'd expect. One "youth" arrested for theft was discharged and told by the avuncular judge that his two days in the lock-up had been punishment enough, and warmly assured the little morlock that he has a "bright future" ahead of him. Others have been fined and others given suspended sentences.

I have read white, middle class columnists write that they are terrified, and demanding to know where are the police. One said he was accosted by a mob of youths who knocked him off his bike and roughed him up. His reaction? He called 999, and was told that nothing would be done. Didn't he know what was going on? It was clear that it had never in his life occurred to him that he might be required to defend himself.

Meanwhile, the thugs were descending on the East London Mosque, with quite different results. The Muslims were just coming out from evening prayers, took one look at the hooded yobs, and, if local accounts are to be trusted, pelted off down the road after them.

In one part of London, a Sikh temple organised an entire neighbourhood for self defence, posting VERY large guards on the front steps, holding baseball bats and swords. These images have, apparently, put a little heart into the emasculated British, and inspired groups of locals to start patrolling their own streets. Police, with reduced manpower and no permission to act from their political leash-holders, have done little to stop vigilantism, and have in some areas endorsed it.

Men from countries like India, Pakistan, Syria and Somalia, know that public safety is a rare commodity in the world, and that it is unwise to stay home dialling 999.

I hear that Dave and his pals have licked their fingers and stuck them up into the wind and are starting to re-think a few of the previous statements of various officials. Now, apparently, a more "robust" response is being considered, including water canon and rubber bullets. Too little, too late? We'll see.



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What would a women's ordination conference be

without

Creepy Giant Puppets?!!!?

LOVE those! They're my very most favourite lefty-Catholic thing in the whole wide world.

Other than that, I got nothin'. The rest of it, women's rights...blah blah blah...

same old thing.

H/T Fr. Zed



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Pillaging and looting

Dorothy is quite miffed. She is in the kitchen frying zucchini flowers and imagining that they are looters. She is also worried about the chavs who inhabit the area near her beautiful home in Scotland. Apparently they are burning things down in London, Liverpool and Birmingham and the arson and vandalism is spreading.

Inspector Gadget is liveblogging and is having a fine time, grimly saying "I told you so" through his gritted teeth.

London fire fighter pulled off her motorcycle, punched in the face and threatened with a gun in Clapham last night on her way in.

...

Many people are becoming very angry that we refuse to move our lines and baton charge the rioters. I have run around like a blue arsed fly trying to understand why we are being ordered to stay static; the only explanation I can find is that Gold Command are concerned about the sensitivity of the target group. [Concerned, in other words, about what the newspapers will say. Well, I have news for them "Cops beat up blacks in racist clashes" isn't going to look as bad to the British public as "Cops stand by while spoiled over-indulged welfare-dependents torch London landmarks".]

The scenes in front of us give a physical proof of everything we have ever said on this Blog about lack of consequences, weak criminal justice systems, nonsensical diversity policies which give ‘victim status’ to the mob and silly, target obsessed politically driven ACPO leadership. I never thought I’d see the results of all that actually burned on to the streets in front of me.

ASBOs all round?

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I have only one word to say about looters, rioters and people who break down shop windows and help themselves:

"Caning".

Me as imaginary judge in England (picture big wig) with a noisome chav in the dock:

Me: "I find you guilty of looting. For sentencing, I will give you a choice: five years in prison or public flogging."

N.C: "I'll take the five years."

Me: "Actually, I was only kidding about the prison choice."

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Update:
Dorothy has just remembered, and wants to let the world know, that the gardener at Historical House has a rifle. He uses it to shoot rabbits every Tuesday morning. And everyone in town knows this.

She says she would also like to have a rifle or a shotgun herself, and will later be looking up on the appropriate websites how one goes about acquiring one legally.



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Oh dear, oh dear...

I really am quite a bad blogger. I'm sorry.

It's just that while it is true that I am really doing nothing but lying around, and that blogging, when done on a nice lightweight Mac, can certainly be done on one's back, most of the time that I'm lying on my back, which is indeed most of the time, I'm asleep. It is well documented that it is very difficult to blog whilst asleep.

I also fear that this situation will continue for an indefinite time, and all the lovely readers who came flocking to my site after I became "That-impertinent-girl-who-thumbed her nose-at-the-Vatican," will stop reading me, having discovered that I was never all that impertinent really, and will drift off to read more interesting people. (What a long sentence!)

Still, it can't be helped. Blogging takes energy and interest and just at the moment, it's very difficult to generate either. Also, after a harrowing ordeal (THREE hours waiting...would have been faster to take the train to Civi and go to the emergency room! gah!) I saw the doctor yesterday and have adjusted the pain medication. Adjusted it up, that is. I have been informed that pain medication these days goes to eleven, and we are only at about five or six.

I told him that the little teeny bottles of Contramal that comes in gocce (drops, see? I'm learning Italian) are so teeny that I go through them in three days. Ordinary analgesics won't do anything at all for neural pain, (pain caused by the chemo drugs eating my nerve endings) and I have moved up to opioids (not made from opium, despite the name) which do work, but leave me loopy.

You can't get Contramal without a prescription and getting a prescription means leaving the house, getting wheeled down to the doctor's office for their very short office hours and waiting (see above re: three-hour wait... did I mention we waited THREE HOURS?). Doing this every three days was too much to be faced.

We hit a crisis when I ran out after the three am dose. I had some in flaconi that had been given to me in the Civitavecchia hospital the last time we went there, but they have to be injected and that means getting the on-call nurse (actually a professor of nursing at La Sapienza who is wonderfully nice, but quite busy) to come and give me an injection. Since I have to have four a day, one of which is at three in the morning, this was only a temporary solution.

The doctor, however, said that Contramal drops were only the beginning of the pain control pathway, and that we can do other things. So he has given me a prescription for Contramal compresse which are 200 mg each, to be taken twice a day. If I have breakthrough pain, I can use the gocce as backup in between compresse. Capito?

But since the compresse are 200 mg each, and the largest single dose of Contramal drops I have had so far has been 100 mg, which leaves me stoned as a hippie on the last day of a music festival, I am anticipating having even less energy for and interest in blogging than before. Alas.

Indeed, I am anticipating being so loopy as to not be able to type. Which is annoying since one of the symptoms of neuropathy, that the Contramal is supposed to fix, is that it hurts to type. I have taken my first 200 mg tablet, and am typing this quickly, while waiting to become loopy.

The neuropathy is really the problem, not the chemo directly. Although it is listed as a common side effect of Taxol, not everyone gets all the possible side effects with any given chemo regimen. I just happen to be one of the lucky ones. And I'm actually doing much better this time. The first time, I was not warned that I might get that as a side effect. So when I started losing the feeling in my hands and feet and was in pain all the time, I didn't know what was happening and got to add Freaking Out to my list of side effects.

I'm still mad that they didn't warn me, and that they gave me nothing but paracetomol (Tylenol) for it. I did the reading and it clearly says on Wiki that neural pain is very difficult to treat and that it does not respond at all to non-steroidal analgesics. When I started having pain in the hospital, they told me there was "nothing in the protocol" for pain. After I had asked four times for an anti-dolorifico, they brought me paracetomol. It was not until spending the first ten days at home being miserable that we finally went to Civitavecchia emergency and the oncologist there knew all about it and bumped me up the line to opioids.

When I brought up the issue of pain control during the second round of chemo at the Gemelli, the doctor again said that all I would need was paracetomol, but reluctantly said Contramal was OK, but only to take 15 drops twice or three times a day. When I woke up on Sunday night at one in the morning screaming in pain, (apart from the weird blooms of pain in the arms and legs, it makes your fingertips feel like they're going to explode) we called a friend in the US, a pain doctor, who said to take 30-40 drops four to six times a day. Since then, it's been fine and I've been pain free (though slightly loopy).

Aaaanyway...

Water under the bridge, and a lesson that one has to be the person in charge sometimes, and not just lie around being miserable.

All of this is to say that I'm likely to be even more loopy for a while, and that this will probably last at least another week. The we have Chemo 3 starting on the 29th, and we get to start it all over again.

In the meantime, Dorothy is here, bustling about doing a top-notch Mary Poppins impression, being very authoritative and blogging like mad every little detail of our adventures. You can read these here and here, and even get a recipe for what we had for lunch yesterday, if you are really keen to recreate the experience at home.

Today I'm going to teach her how to put photos up on her blog, so she will be entering a new phase of her blogging career. And yes, there is one of me in my pink silk headscarf being wheeled off to the beach.

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Oh, and a gardening tip.

I've figured out what to do about the aphids on my hibiscus. I have a really lovely hibiscus but did not realise what delicate beings hibiscus plants are. The first thing it did when I brought it home was drop all its leaves and refuse to flower. Then the leaves grew back and it deigned to flower a bit, and we hit a frost in January (in Santa Marinella! remember the snow?!) and it reacted like a vampire to sunlight. I brought it inside for the rest of the winter and it recovered.

Now it's aphids.

If it weren't a producer of such gorgeous flowers, I might have got fed up. But in case you also have a touchy prima donna hibiscus, apparently they need quite an acidic soil. Too low a PH and the aphids come flocking in. So I am emptying the tea leaves from the tea egg onto the soil. No more aphids.

See y'all later.



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Ambushed

I was seriously not looking around for cancer-related things to scare myself with. I was looking at a cartoon about something completely different. Then I thought, Well, that was funny, I'll just click "next" and see if there's another funny cartoon. And there was this thing about recurrence.

Yeah. I read all that stuff about recurrence and did all the research and stuff and that's pretty much it. They don't really tell you, but really, recurrence = death. With the type and stage of cancer I have, the good news is that the five-year survival rate is really good. The numbers on the internet said between 85 and 90%. Professor Scambia said more like 95%.

The bad news is that the recurrence numbers are incredibly dismal. If it comes back, and if I'm willing to go through some absolutely fricking unspeakable, barbaric and horrifying things, (and these don't include the chemo and radiation) I've got about a 5 to 12% chance of survival.

And that's only if I do the horror-show surgeries, and if these are medically indicated (which they often aren't). Frankly, the total exenteration surgery is so horrifying that I think I would be relieved if they said I was not clinically indicated for them. I know I'm supposed to be all gung-ho pro-lifery, but seriously, there are some conditions I'd rather not live in.

Anyway, I've been ambushed by a fricking cartoon for pete sake, and now I'm all kind of... I don't know...

kind of...

Ugh.

Never mind.

I'd really like to make it to my first oil painting in my course.

At least that.



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Yep, pretty much...

"Nothing was ever achieved by violence..."

...except everything.

"Civilised man... must feel that he belongs somewhere in space and time. That he consciously looks forward and looks back. And for this he needs a minimum of stability. Which was in Western Europe, first achieved here in France, or as it then was, the kingdom of the Franks.

It was achieved by fighting. All the great civilisations in their early stages are based on success in war.

...

One sometimes feels that the 7th and 8th centuries were like a prolonged Western, and the resemblance is made more vivid by the presence already in the 8th century of our old friends the Sherrif and the Marshal. But it was really far more horrible because unredeemed by any trace of sentiment or chivalry.

But, fighting was necessary."

Sir Kenneth Clark, Civilisation.



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Upon my word, Miss White, but you're terribly dull...

Sorry chaps, just don't have any energy and don't have a thing to say about anything to tell the truth.

I'm getting a bit better. Can walk about a bit easier, especially in the mornings after a night's sleep. Pain's under control now that we've learned not to approach the anti-dolorifico like it was asprin for a headache. (With chronic severe pain you have to have a schedule and stick to it carefully, not wait until it hurts a lot and then take a dose.) Nausea has passed, as they said it would, after about four days. Taking masses of vitamins to correct the neuropathy. That started right away and was much worse. I'm therefore pretty (more) clutzy (than usual) and it kind of hurts to touch anything hard like a pencil or turn a key in a lock. Hurts to type. I get attacks of sudden exhaustion where I can do nothing but crawl to the nearest flat surface and fall asleep. Sleeping, in fact, about 13-16 hours a day.

My hair has started showing signs of coming back in, but as we have just had round two last weekend, it will all go again, presumably including the little bit of fuzz left on top, by the end of next week. Then there will be round three. I've still got most of my eyebrows and eyelashes, though there are gaps.

But other than the cancer-stuff, things are... well... just a bit dull really. Quiet. Nice. The weather has been remarkably mild, with temps staying below thirty for the last few weeks (v. odd) and the breeze off the Med keeping things very pleasant. The flowers on the balcony are blooming and we spend a lot of time out there having tea and reading books.

The wheelchair has been fun and it certainly has been better to have it than being housebound the way I was last time. Dorothy has come for a visit and she has taken me out for a push several times. She has written about it in her usual charming and engaging blog style. Yesterday we went to the doctor's office, then took a nice little roll down the beach promenade early in the morning and had an ice cream at the beach bar.

Dorothy is madly studying Italian, and I'm reading a book about how Dante invented it.

I'm informed that it is National Book Week in Canada, and we are to post up on Facebook or whatever the following:

Grab the closest book to you. Go to page 56. Copy the 5th sentence as your status. Don't mention the book. Post these rules as part of your status.

I got:
"Upon my word, I have some difficulty in bridling the pen".

Really, just not much to report. Having a lovely time. Wish y'all were here.

H



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It is NOT Woodstock!

A friend pointed out the other day that before every World Youth Day, Catholic apologists - the "conservative" kind who like to defend altar girls and turn their noses up at women wearing mantillas - invariably come out and decry the "Catholic Woodstock" label the event inevitably gains from the MSM.

If you have to say, every time, that it's "not Catholic Woodstock," it probably is.



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A little word of warning

Sorry there haven't been too many posts lately. I'm adjusting to the medications and it's taking a little bit out of me and leaving me not in a mood to read or write or do much of anything except watch Jeeves and Wooster. I'm sure I'll perk up soon though.

Again, thanks to all the people who kindly donated $$$ to the cancer fund. This has made it possible to have two friends come here to cover Hilary-sitting duties for the whole month of August, a benefit that became much more sorely needed when they told me I would be having a third round of chemo.

I must give a little note of caution, however, to people who still wish to throw a few sheckels into the tip jar. It has twice happened now that kind readers have sent money to the wrong email address and it is impossible for me to retrieve it. If you are using the email address associated with this blog to send money to my PayPal account, you are doing it wrong. I don't have a PayPal account associated with that email address and your money will disappear.

Today I received another kind donation from a reader. This donation, however, did not go into my PayPal account and can't be sent there or retrieved by me. The money, in other words, has vanished into the mysterious ether of the internet. However, the notice I received said that if I just left it for 30 days, it would automatically revert back to the sender, so that's OK.

For purposes of the cancer fund, I have for the moment closed the tip jar and removed the button leading to my actual, functioning PayPal account. The final total was more than enough to cover all expenses, including air fares, plus the upcoming costs of MRI and CT scans, myriad blood tests and drugs. As we are going for round 3, and the schedule is therefore being pushed back a month, I expect that necessity will once again pop up its head and I will be passing the hat round again.

But for now, we're all good. I have been able to pay some of my impoverished friends back money they have put up for all manner of things lately. And been able to charge up my phone to last a good month.

If, however, you really can't resist the urge to give me money, please send me an email and I will give you the correct details to get money into my PayPal account. I will likely try to put you off, since I feel funny about the whole donation thing anyway.

Thanks again to all who have been so supportive. I'm doing OK.



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