Sci fi author John C. Wright talks about what happened when he decided not to go along with the sexual revolution no more...

The other day I wrote a thing for Lifesite about the cost of conversion, even conversion from sexual libertinism to sexual continence, that often involves alienation from family and friends and can end or drastically alter career paths...

I was 41 years old when I heard an argument that convinced me to no longer to support the pro-homosexual position. Logic forced me, very much against my inclinations, to adopt the pro-chastity position. I was not a Christian at the time, nor was I destined to become a Christian for quite some time. But I had mightily offended Christianity’s main rival religion in America, which is a death cult called Secular Progressivism. And Progressivism is a jealous God. A pro-chastity atheist is not welcome there.

...
I told one amateur reporter from one amateur school newspaper about my conversion, and in a moment every webpage that mentioned my name now was aflame with hatred and contumely because I was a humble, meek, and mild follower of Christ, and I had vowed no longer to hurt or hate my enemies, but to love them.

This is one of the opening-day offerings from my old bloggie buddy Steve Skojec's new project, 1 Peter 5.

Go. Read. You won't be sorry.



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Allie explains what depression is like

"...

as I grew older, it became harder and harder to access that expansive imaginary space that made my toys fun. I remember looking at them and feeling sort of frustrated and confused that things weren't the same.

"I played out all the same story lines that had been fun before, but the meaning had disappeared. Horse's Big Space Adventure transformed into holding a plastic horse in the air, hoping it would somehow be enjoyable for me. Prehistoric Crazy-Bus Death Ride was just smashing a toy bus full of dinosaurs into the wall while feeling sort of bored and unfulfilled. I could no longer connect to my toys in a way that allowed me to participate in the experience."

Depression feels almost exactly like that, except about everything.

Welcome back, btw. We've all missed you.

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Another one

Weird but interesting.

Dead Birds.



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Three blogs

Another Anglo living abroad because the Home Country has become just too damn frightening and insane. I hear you, brother.

And a fascinating blog that examines modern realist paintings and illustration according to the classical rules of composition. Very interesting page on the Golden Section/Golden Ratio. Everything is Math.

Drawing OWU is for students of drawing at Ohio Wesleyan University. Check out the galleries there if you want to see how far it's possible to go with drawing as an art form of its own. Some of it boggles the mind.

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Also, once again, researchers find out that modern people just aren't constituted for marriage. Modern, Newfangled people just don't know how to order their lives. Thanks, Hippies, for doing such a good job of destroying any last shreds of hope that we can put back together the civilisation you've destroyed.

"The more a man does in the home, the higher the divorce rate," Thomas Hansen, co-author of the study entitled "Equality in the Home", told AFP.

Researchers found no, or very little, cause-and-effect. Rather, they saw in the correlation a sign of "modern" attitudes.

"Modern couples are just that, both in the way they divide up the chores and in their perception of marriage" as being less sacred, Hansen said, stressing it was all about values.

"In these modern couples, women also have a high level of education and a well-paid job, which makes them less dependent on their spouse financially. They can manage much easier if they divorce," he said.

I'm pretty sure if I were married, I would never allow my husband to touch anything at home. No way he'll do it right. Whenever I've had roommates, I don't want to let them do the housework, or if they do, I usually sneak around after, to do it again properly.



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Ateliers, painters, writers and teachers about art, the world and The Real

Camie Davis - no longer posting or teaching, but lots of great pics at her site. Studied at the Grand Central Academy, she is into something called "classical narrative painting" which is that old Academic style of painting scenes from famous mythical or biblical stories. V. big in the 19th century.

The mind of James Howard Kunstler - an interesting thinker who believes, oddly, that beauty is better than ugliness and that old stuff is better than new stuff. He also paints a bit.

Helen Frost - Metadrawer Many videos and pictures of her drawing and an especially good anatomy section, particularly on how to get started when you're feeling overwhelmed.

An interview with Juliette Aristides, the Seattle instructor and author of the Classical Drawing Atelier and Lessons in Classical Drawing, which are becoming the standard beginning texts. And her studio has a blog.

Artbooklook - A multipurpose blog about classical realist and representational art books.

David Clayton - an Englishman who studied at the Florence Academy and has a great paying gig teaching art Thomas More College of Liberal Arts and painting icons. He's a very friendly fellow who helped put me in touch with some local painters and instructors when I was looking for a place to study a few years ago.

A romantic at heart, the lovely watercolours of Jean William Hanoteau.

Hein Academy blog.



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New 'blogs: the male perspective

Dr. Helen: mostly about how sucky the feminist world is. She's written a book about how the hyper-feminized culture has excluded and systematically discriminated against men, particularly in matters pertaining to marriage, childrearing and divorce. I'd like to review it.

I'm starting a list of blogs by and about men and their view on the world, sexuality and other big issues. Some years ago, I started understanding how much damage feminism has done to men, how it has excluded them from domestic life and from the authority they should have in the home.

Apparently, there are not a few men who have noticed it as well, and the "Manosphere" is the result. There are many manifestations of this, with a wide variety of political opinion, but they seem mainly to be of either conservative or libertarian point of view in the American political sense, and among the latter, that is, libertarian end, to hold not only feminism but women in utter contempt. I think this trend, along with the execrable section of it of "Game" players - men who have dedicated their lives to a materialistic form of hedonism and the luring and using of women for short-term sexual gratification - appears to have been an offshoot of the sexual/feminist revolution in which men have said, "Fine, you want us to throw off our protective role? You've got it, honey."

There is a lot of anger in their writing at the wholesale emasculation of men and the hardening of women, which I can certainly understand, but their hatred of family and marriage seems like a dying patient hating and fearing the cure. A great many of them come across as being as childish and self-centred as the brainwashed women they criticise. Nevertheless, I think their observations about what feminism is doing both to men and to women, and to our societies as a whole, are worth reading. Food for thought, at any rate.

There are a lot of others, like our new friends Joffre the Giant and the Ignorant Redneck, who have taken a less self-harming mode. These more balanced characters seem to have one thing in common that the more angry and embittered men's writers do not; Christianity of a serious, intellectual and strongly devotional stripe.

I am still reading and collecting data about them, but as a whole, the men's bloggers are a very interesting internet phenomenon. They are very much akin, I think, to the early Catholic Traditionalist movement, who found each other and developed a network in cyberspace that helped us understand what was going on in the Church and the world. I should have been reading them for a long time, and don't know how I could have missed them until now. I'll pass on the more interesting bits to you lot and we shall see what we can make of it all.

The Private Man

The Rational Male

Alpha Game

The Spearhead



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Redneck alert!

New blog:

Redneck Reflections



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Church Militant TV blog

Michael and the gang have decided to join the argument.

I'm a pretty regular viewer of the Vortex. I skip some of the ones about US politics because I don't follow it closely enough to get some of the jokes. But lately their theological ones are improving, gaining a little more depth, and losing some of their previous NovusOrdoist tendencies.

Go over and give him a little poke for me.



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My new favourite blog

Joffre the Giant on buxom wifely obedience.

Highlights...

Mansome: "Real men don't 'Tweet'" This reminded me powerfully of my stepfather, Graham, who though very troubled in life, was certainly a real man, and being a marine engineer, also smelled of diesel fuel.

It also brings to mind a recent conversation with a male friend about Jane Austen (which he had, of course, read). We were discussing the relative merits of Willoughby and Col. Brandon.

"As a guy, of course, I hated Willoughby instantly."

Good manly instincts there, I think.

~ * ~

Lately I've been getting very annoyed by the response of the churches and prelates to the "gay marriage" thing. They go on and on about how wonderful marriage is and never, ever talk about what needs to be talked about. They're afraid. Not a very manly thing.

"Homosexuality among Christians: not a gift, but a deep wound."


"International Women's Day Meditation: feminism is bad for people"

And I think there's a big something missing in the whole discussion. Women are not going to believe this until men tell them. It's part of our nature. We need to be guided and protected by men, and as long as men don't tell women that feminism is bad, and doing bad things to them, they will keep hurting themselves, and men and children and the whole world with it.

Women are not constitutionally disposed to believe other women. Men need to say it.

Use your authority, given by God, and tell us the truth.



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Fellow enthusiasts

I've been trying to get back to Euclid all week, but what with one thing and another...

Ugh...

But at least my post about it has made an impression. Katherine of Pie and Palestrina complains about exactly the same thing I experienced in school.

In nearly every class and school I've attended, the teachers and students have approached learning as a necessary evil, and one that you "have" to get through in order to get a job. From then on, however, your reward is to never have to learn anything again. You can spend your leisure time watching hours and hours of television. The idea of knowledge for its own sake is ignored, and most teachers instruct their students to learn the barest of facts about disjointed chunks of our world without making any connections at all.

Lawdy, but how I hated school! And this is why.

Haaaate-ed It!!!

Why oh why didn't Mum homeschool me?! Why did she send me to those mind-numbing child-holding tanks for all those wasted hours when we could have been doing Euclid and combing the beach for invertebrates? It's not like she had a job or anything...

Dang.



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Another truly awesome classical realist student blog

Julie Beck, Paintings in Progress.

She's quite a bit further along than I am, and seems to also be quite a bit more disciplined, doing a "mandatory" half hour every day and working on anatomy.

I can only offer the excuse of having a job that takes precedence over drawing (but it's a crappy excuse since I can sometimes go for weeks without picking up a pencil, and there's all that time futzing about on the internet, watching kitten videos and posting Shatner videos to Facebook...)



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Dorothy has a go

at what I like to call the "Confessional Frump look" that is so popular with "conservative Catholics" in the US and Canada that seems to be fixated on the shapeless plaid jumper, white t-shirt and ankle socks paired with practical shoes, usually sneakers.

Money quotes:

I suppose girls and women don these things as a sort of modesty uniform, a sartorial placard reading "I am a chaste and modest woman who would not have shoddy, unthinkable affairs with local tradesmen while you are at work."

"Modesty is a good and noble thing, but it is all the sweeter when it is subtle. The virgin who reminds people constantly that she is a virgin is not as modest as the virgin who keep her mouth shut on such a personal subject."

...

"If a man wants back all the beauty, romance and fittingness of the Mass before 1963, he might very well want back all the beauty, romance and fittingness of men's fashion before 1963. And if he is that interested in men's fashion before 1963, imagine how he thinks women should dress. The Well Dressed Woman of 1948 was not wearing what Americans call a jumper, people.

You should not be thinking Laura Ingalls Wilder; you should be thinking Veronica Lake."

OK ladies, claws out; harpy-screech at the ready...

GO GET HER!



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Happy Birthday to Yoooooo

Dorothy's birthday is this weekend. She would like it to be known that her birthday is the whole weekend and not just a little part of it.

Go send her a nice note.

Hurrah for you, nice girly.



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Someone's mad at me

for being... well... me.

I have been saving this little gem for a rainy blog day. You remember the other day when I was musing briefly about isolation and what it does to you. The context, I believe, was the weird spectacle of the "official" mourning activities being filmed and enforced in the world's most isolated state, North Korea. I was thinking about it because I had also been musing on what sort of conditions one has to have to ensure that an entire nation of 33 million people have ex-ACT-ly the same opinions on the usual range of, shall we say, reproductive issues.

Canada, you will remember, has a press and broadcast media that is almost entirely state-run or state-vetted. The CRTC ensures that nothing in broadcasts from radio or TV comes with anything other than the officially approved editorial position. Nearly every newspaper in the country is owned by the same company, that is a heavy funder of the Canadian Liberal Party, and of course, we can count on academia and film to do its bit in making sure that everyone adheres in lock-step to the Frankfurt-school, feminist, neo-marxist, Planned Parenthood, Our Bodies Our Selves marching orders. There really is no place in Canada where you can get away from this, it is a self-contained media bubble, or was until the internet came in.

I pondered this once many years ago. Canada seems to have an ideal situation to be used as a guinea pig in a big experiment on how to change a deeply conservative country into a nation of whiney welfare-state addicted leftists. Part of it is the low population to land mass ratio. Canada has the second largest landmass in the world, but a tiny population. The population centres, moreover, are very far-flung indeed. If you grow up in, say the Gaspe, you will without a doubt have to move to somewhere larger and more densely populated like Montreal to get a job and start your life. This trend tends to isolate individuals, separating them often by thousands of miles from their family and their communities of origin.

By rigid control of the media, by creating an atomised population who have only the official state-controlled line for information and no other sources of moral or social stability but the state, you have a population that is ripe for brainwashing.

How do you shift an entire nation to the left? Look at what has been done in Canada.

I was thinking about all this because of an interesting email from a young man whose prodigious skills as a Classical Realist painter had caught my attention. You may recall that I linked to David Gluck's blog, Painting Stuff to Look Like Stuff.

Delighted that I had found more Classical Realists to play with, who moreover live in Duncan BC not an hour from my birth place, you can imagine that I wasted no time in giving them a little extra boost. It never would have occurred to me that I was not worthy in their eyes to dare to link to their page.

I received one friendly commbox note from Mr. Gluck and then, honestly, more or less forgot about him.

What with getting the news that I am much less likely to die of cancer, dealing with the long-term side effects of chemotherapy, recovering from major abdominal surgery, dealing with the emotional and physical stresses of surgically induced premature menopause and suddenly finding myself in contact with a father whom I had assumed had forgotten all about me and from whom I had not heard since the early 1980s, ... oh, and trying to get back to work...you can imagine that Mr. Gluck was not prominent in my mind.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I received the following little note by email.

From: David Gluck
To: quicustodiet66@yahoo.ca
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 12:20:52 PM
Subject: please remove our link

Please remove the link of my blog from your blog. I must say at first I was excited to find a fellow BC Canadian realist who was supportive of what my wife and I were doing, but quite frankly after reading your blog, I am turned off. I cannot accept intolerance of gays, transgender individuals, woman's rights, etc. I also found it in very poor taste you are trying to draw a parallel between abortion and the holocaust (especially since many of my family members were wiped out in it). You seem like a very angry individual, and we do not want your followers bringing that sort of hatred to our our blog. Thank you.

David Gluck

ps. You may also want to consider removing Sadie Valerie as well considering she is a huge supporter of gay rights and marriage. In addition, I am friends with most of the artists on your links section and I cannot say they would approve of your blog either.

(emphasis added)

A pariah in the Classical Realist world! Dear me. Having other things on my mind, I responded somewhat tersely,

I'll do whatever you like, but I'm disappointed that a fellow adherent to the Classical Realist revival is so narrow minded as to be unable to disagree on politics in a civil way.

I'm always shocked at the ingrained intolerance of the left.

Very disappointed.

H. White

He replied,

"On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 10:13 AM, David Gluck wrote:
Trust me when I say this is me being as civil as humanly possible. I sent you a personal message as opposed to posting anything on your blog that was negative and I was very polite in the manner in which I did it. By the way, I find it a stretch to call someone who is accepting of people for who they are "narrow-minded."

Yesterday, I found out that he must be lurking about here because I received the following, "I asked you very politely to take me off of your blog. Please take me off the links section immediately. Thank you."

I thought of all sorts of replies, (like, Good grief boy, I've really got other things to think about...) but then I thought I would put it to my readers what my response ought to be. (I also considered "friending" him on Facebook, but worried that his little head would explode.)

I have thought about writing back to explain that in the world of grown-ups it is possible not only to disagree civilly on political matters, but to remain close friends with people for many years who differ radically on such issues. It is often difficult, but with the application of charity, forbearance, kindness and forgiveness, and a habit of keeping one's own faults and failings firmly before one's eyes, (I realise these are rare traits in the lefty world, but I have met them there) it is possible greatly to benefit by maintaining contact with people outside one's own political bubble.

Faithful chorus, please discuss.

(I ask only that you do not bother the poor fellow at home. No emails please or commbox messages at his place please.)



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Crazy-State

The only way to really go as crazy as it's possible for 24 million people to collectively go is isolation. No one and nothing, no new idea, gets in and certainly no one gets out. I don't know if isolation is enough to make you nuts by itself, but I think it is clearly a requirement to really let it go as far as it will go.

I've had a few Thoughts about the subject of philosophical isolation in the last few hours, and I will share them shortly.

Meantime, I'd like to thank Binky the Webelf for the plug.

Say a prayer for our Nova Scotian Anglican friend if you please. He's not been well.

(Really Binks, I think you would find blogging much easier just to do a bit at a time like the rest of us do. It's no wonder you find it exhausting with these huge posts. Just put up one or two little things every now and then. You will find it much easier and the rest of us won't miss you so much.)



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The NICE Catholic bloggers

I'm glad I'm not the only one with serious reservations about Patheos, the home of the Nice Catholic Bloggers.

Dymphna has mentioned it too, and in reference to a friend of ours here at O's P.

I can't stand Patheos. It's like the Borg on Star Trek. It takes fun bloggers and turns them into drones. Being with Patheos has completely ruined the once delightful Anchoress and I just hope that Crescat doesn't change.

Cat is in my baddest of bad books right now after she wrote this piece of drooling, self-congratulatory, politically correct drivel. It was certainly a sign to me that the Patheos spirit of NewChurch compromise has her brain in its death claw.

But she's still someone I respect and like a lot and I've told her many times that her move to Patheos was going to be a disaster.

So I'm going to reiterate my long-time list of Rules To Live By in NewChurch and Modernity, primary among which is

Never join anything.

followed in no particular order by

Abolish everything.

Never found, start, organise or volunteer for anything.

Never trust anything Catholic that is less than 500 years old.

You can't kill people to solve your problems.

Only the real counts.

Reality is conservative. (Thanks Mrs. Thatcher)

No temptation is so great that it can't be resisted by running away.

Old things are better than new things.

Contrary to what everyone thinks, it actually is sometimes too late.

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Another contemporary realist blogs

Stapleton Kearns studied with R.H. Ives Gammell, a major link in the great chain of the classical realist revival movement.

It is very difficult and takes a lot of determination to learn to do the art thing without the direct in-the-flesh help of a competent instructor, but it is not impossible. Recently, there have been a number of books published, either old books renewed by such outfits as Dover, or new books on old subjects by contemporary instructors like Juliette Aristides.

It may sound a bit silly, but there is also YouTube that has a great vast panorama of videos showing speed drawings and some giving pretty good instruction on the basics, things like how to handle charcoal, basic stuff about values and the use of various media.

There is also an increasing number of working and teaching artists who blog and who make videos, like Sadie Valeri (I really wish she would do more videos) and Scott Waddell, some of whom I have found and looked at and used myself and who are featured on the sidebar.


A big part of what you have to overcome is your fear. It can be very difficult for adults to endure being bad at something long enough to get better at it. As y'all know, a huge part of my process has been to overcome my fear of being really crummy at first. But this fear is the biggest obstacle to making progress.

That and sheer laze, of course.

But the thing that can really help is success. Even a little success. A little sketch that turns out looking like the thing. Even a little part of a drawing that you particularly like. When I did my first still life in charcoal, the silver tea pot on a linen drapery, I had a really hard time, struggling with learning how charcoal works and how to make the grey scale toned paper take up some of the slack in the values. All issues I am still working on. But in that drawing there is one little bit, the part where the little feet of the tea pot sit on the cloth and the shadow goes out behind them. I love that bit, and it really encouraged me to try another one.

I think I wrote about how I have this mean bully in my head that was constantly barking at me about this whole thing being a waste of time, that I'm no good at it and ought not to bother, that I'll never be as good at it as I want to be, and how I ought to just pay attention to things I already know I'm good at, like words.

This inner bully, I refer to as the Talking Brain. Drawing Brain doesn't really communicate in words and abstract things like symbol systems, so it is easy for it to be silenced by the mean schoolyard bully Talking Brain. Fortunately, I have The Will, which I liken to the nice teacher who runs blockage for the bully, encourages the quiet kid to just get on with it and see how things turn out.

I am also learning that Fury can be a great help. Fury comes in when I can't get it right. I become so furious that I keep doggedly trying and trying until I get it right. But I think this system is somewhat inefficient.

What to do about Sheer Laze, I have not yet figured out.



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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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Welcome Kathy's minions

Gazillions of minions.

Update:

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



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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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