The Sanity Ranch--Musings of a Philosopher Queen

Past the Bounds of Time POST 6

2011-05-01T12:59:00.000-06:00

No doubt somewhere in this room were letters from Flora Deacon as well. These letters have been found nowhere else, certainly not among his Everest effects (or if they have been found, they’ve either been hidden or destroyed). Flora noted in her diary that he wrote to her, and she to him, at least once or twice a week throughout their relationship, which lasted for almost four years, from the summer of 1920 until their deaths in June 1924. She claimed to have kept his, and this stash too may one day come to light.

For children to remain sheltered from war is of course a very good thing, but by the time of the wartime Newbold stays, by the time of the room filled with “war regalia,” Sandy, Hugh and Evelyn were no longer small children. Hugh was fifteen, and no doubt Lilian and Willie were already at least concerned that he would one day go to war, which he would eventually do. The feel of this does not come through in any surviving Irvine stories, however, and one is left with the idyllic picture of wealthy children on constant holiday in the north of England, rambling carelessly among the hills. It cannot, of course, have been like this; the war must have been very much on everyone’s minds. However, in utterly typical Irvine fashion, it would appear that any fears were looked upon as emotions that needed to be hidden rather than aired and spoken about.

Julie Summers wrote: “There were no newspapers at the house [Newbold] and all of them apart from Hugh were completely oblivious of the war until Uncle Tom took them to Beeston Castle….On the way they saw cars with flags on them and heard talk of fierce battles being fought in France.” This smacks of disingenuousness and special pleading. The children were extremely aware of the war, newspapers or not. It was in the conservatory at Newbold that Evelyn knitted her khaki comforters, something she’d hardly have done if she’d been “oblivious” of the war. Hugh and Sandy, far from being ignorant of the war, seem constantly to have been playing at it, mimicking their inner thoughts and fears in play. Sandy’s fascination with battleships expanded to include all things martial while he was at Newbold. Evidence that the war was in fact foremost in their minds can be seen in the fact that Sandy would submit two patent applications, both of them for improvements to weaponry, by the time he was fifteen. Oblivious, the Irvine children were decidedly not.

In 1914, though, those patent applications were still three years in the future, and the twelve year old was having far too much fun coming into adolescence while his parents’ attention, or at least their actual persons, were miles away for much of the time. He was too busy playing war, and he had at his disposal an entire country estate full of deadly weapons.

Sandy and Hugh hurled spears from the towers of Newbold. These spears, called assegais, were slim hardwood weapons, tipped with iron, that came from southern Africa. Julie Summers insisted the spears were homemade , but if they were indeed assegais as Alec—who was at Newbold at the time and saw the spears firsthand—claimed , then the likelihood of their being made by a fifteen and a twelve year old is certainly remote. There’s no record of Sandy or Hugh ever actually hitting anyone, but one can’t help wondering whether the younger children or the servants were occasional targets.

How Hugh endured being up on the rooftops of Newbold is a mystery, as he was absolutely notorious for his deathly fear of heights. At some stage in their lives, Sandy and Evelyn were repainting a ceiling, and Hugh was the victim of their merciless teasing regarding this fear. They each stood on top of a stepladder and rubbed their heads in the wet paint, proudly displaying their white heads to their eldest brother, then dared him to repeat their exploit. Hugh was so afraid of heights that he refused to even step on the first rung of the ladder.

Alec recounted yet another incident involving the misuse of weaponry, saying that Sandy would fill their uncle’s cannon at Newbold with a deadly mixture of gravel and gunpowder, shooting this off at sundry wildlife in the gardens.

Youngest brother Tur would eventually pay for Sandy’s capricious experimentations with explosives by partially but permanently losing some of his ability to hear. The incident occurred when Sandy was fourteen, so Tur would have been around three at the time. Members of the family have called Tur Sandy’s “stooge,” and on this particular occasion Sandy had decided to perform an experiment using his youngest brother as a human guinea pig. He wanted to see if he could fire off a projectile using his homemade gunpowder, and as an aid to this experiment he placed a cast-iron coal-hole grate on top of four large bricks in the gardens (whether at Park Road South or Newbold isn’t recorded). He poured his gunpowder in the circle of bricks, stood his little brother on top of the grate and lit the powder, himself retreating to a safe distance. Tur was blown into the air, and his wife would one day claim that his hearing never completely recovered from this, that his eardrums had been permanently damaged. Alec remembered also being blown up that day, and recalled that Tur hadn’t been very happy with the whole idea in the first place. Sandy told them that “they were taking part in a scientific experiment in which he would establish whether gunpowder exploded upwards or sideways.” He obviously didn’t inform them beforehand that he also wanted to launch them as projectiles.

During the Edwardian era it was entirely common for children to be brought up by the servants. It was not only the norm, it was expected of wealthy households such as Willie Irvine’s. Mother and Father normally left the rearing of their children to a full domestic staff. Regardless of this, servants knew their place, but even so the Irvine children at Newbold had an astonishing degree of freedom. Beyond doubt, the dangers the children placed themselves in should have caused some concern. Why the absentee uncle was either not informed that his nephews were hurling iron-tipped spears from his roof and playing with gunpowder and cannons, or did not care, raises at least a few questions. The Irvine offspring were very lucky children indeed, insofar as they all escaped serious injury or death. That Alec, in later years, remembered all of this as great fun is perhaps merely a reflection of the hero-worship with which he regarded Sandy, defending his elder brother’s actions throughout his life. Boys will be boys, yes, but these boys could so easily have been killed or killed one another while at Newbold, and not one adult lifted an eyebrow, let alone tried to stop any of this activity.

Sandy garnered a reputation as a wild boy who would dare anything, and his cousins loved him for it. Flora despaired of this more than once in her diary. It was something he began actively to try to live up to, and it was ultimately detrimental to his self-esteem. Julie Summers tellingly admitted that Sandy “came to believe that if he were special then others would take notice of him, and the way this manifested itself was by doing unusual or daring things.” He craved attention, in other words, and didn’t mind if the attention came at the expense of his own well-being. Nobody had ever told him to stop doing whatever he was doing; the bachelor uncle certainly didn’t lock up the gunpowder, the cannons or the African spears. Only Flora Deacon and Geoff Milling (and, later, George Mallory) would ever have a calming influence on him. Sandy’s bright and rapid intelligence could so easily have become almost manic, given his repressive upbringing and his need for attention. At eight, he had felt he wasn’t “good enough;” by the time he was twelve in 1914 he felt people would only notice and like him if he was playing the clown.

After the idylls of Newbold came the far stricter world of Shrewsbury School. Sandy entered the school in 1916, at the age of fourteen, following Hugh there. The school at the time had a reputation for harshness, something that must have appealed to Willie and Lilian, although Julie Summers wrote that of Willie’s reasons to send his sons to Shrewsbury the primary incentive was that “it was on the excellent train line from Birkenhead and Chester.” She also wrote that Sandy “flourished in the congenial public school atmosphere” once “released from the formal and rigorous upbringing to which Lilian had subjected all her children.” I think “subjected” is a telling word here, and find it hard to believe that the atmosphere at the school was as completely pleasant as she said. Audrey Salkeld and Tom Holzel wrote that conditions at Shrewsbury were so bad while Sandy was there “that a story circulated of one unfortunate boy cleft in two when the icicle fell from the standpipe under which they were obliged to wash.” Hardly a “congenial” environment.

The English public school, specifically the masculine version, is something quite foreign to Americans. England has long been a country that thinks highly of its young men, and for centuries they have been closeted away in the rarefied air of the public school. (In the United States, a private or parochial school is the closest equivalent of the English public school.) Douglas Sutherland, in a very tongue-in-cheek book called The English Gentleman, parodied upper class English life brilliantly. Of the public school, he wrote: “The greatest fear that gentlemen suffer when they send their sons to gentlemanly schools is that they will not live up to the traditions with which they themselves were indoctrinated. To play for the first eleven, to win the cross-country run or to have whacked more boys than any of their contemporaries are all laudable achievements.” Sandy himself would participate in cross-country running at Shrewsbury; whether he “whacked” any boys at all is unknown.

For anyone who has read the novels of P.G. Wodehouse or seen the brilliant Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry television adaptation of those novels will have a fairly good picture of the sort of man these schools produce. Bertie Wooster tossing buns into ceiling lamps at his club the Drones is a perfect specimen.

Schools such as Shrewsbury were not known for gentleness, and a well-rounded education always included denying oneself many comforts. A fine, upstanding young gentleman was the goal, and strict measures were regularly taken to assure production of this scion of society. Making schoolboys wash outside under a standpipe fits right in with this ethic.

Sandy Irvine would not, ultimately, turn out to be much of a Bertie Wooster-ish fellow, being far more interested in motorcars and rowing and tinkering than in anything else. It’s impossible to picture him as a 1920s dandy, cigarette in hand in a smoke-filled club with a gin fizz at his elbow (though he did actually drink gin fizzes). It must be said that in one respect he was very much a public school product, in that he was ever gallant and charming to the fairer sex. The moment one pictures him thus, however, he veers off, taking only one girl as his own and ignoring the rest, though remaining gallant and charming to them. A 1920s womanizer he was not, but Flora often called him a “devil,” a “charmer,” a “gad-about,” and certainly Marjory Summers fell heavily under his spell even while helping him and Flora find secret hideaways for their trysts. Sandy was a wild boy who craved adventure, and would not be molded as the upper class society to which he belonged demanded.

Shrewsbury, set amid lush, green hills, was founded by royal charter in 1552, during the very brief reign of King Edward VI, only son of Henry VIII. The school was always wildly successful, with 266 boys enrolled by the end of 1562, with an additional 663 enrolling within the following eight years. One of its most illustrious alumni was Sir Philip Sidney, a young man who achieved incredible fame as a poet during the reign of Elizabeth I. The author of the “Arcadia,” he would become doubly famous for his heroic battlefield death. Legend has it that, gravely wounded, he refused the water offered him and ordered that it be given instead to another wounded soldier. He himself then heroically died. Sidney was idolized by generations of Britons, and his funeral even inspired a series of paintings depicting the procession. Other notable Old Salopians include Charles Darwin and Monty Python’s intrepid world traveler Michael Palin.

Sandy would meet Richard (Dick, or Dickie as Sandy often called him) Summers here, and form a lifelong bond often mistaken by the Irvine family as deep friendship. This is of course understandable, as Dick Summers would marry into their ranks and was Julie Steele’s grandfather. Dick was wealthy, but his family money came from trade, and Dick himself was forever on the lookout for a way to better his station. At Shrewsbury, he found one in the Irvine family. By marrying Sandy’s sister, he would eventually (but only after Sandy’s death cleared the decks for him) achieve the societal standing for which he’d longed. James Irvine had made his fortune in trade as well, but by the 1920s his descendants were rubbing elbows with the very cream of English society.

Sandy wrote angrily to Evelyn when he heard Dick had proposed to her that he thought Dick had made a very good bargain for himself. “I suppose I should congratulate you—but I think it is Dick that needs the congratulations more than you…” Significantly, in quoting from this letter Julie Summers replaces part of one quite telling sentence with ellipses. The unedited sentence actually reads: “Dick certainly has done awfully well for himself but I must admit I don’t feel atall happy.” Sandy went on to say that Evelyn would “have to make a real man of him before I’ll feel really happy about it,” and Julie Summers admitted that this “was one of the fundamental problems for Sandy: Dick was not in his opinion a real man….Sandy feared that it would be Evelyn’s role in the marriage to wear the pants.” Sandy wrote to Dick Summers that he “was quite naturally very bowled over when I heard—My first thoughts were naturally I think a. You were too young to think of marrying b. E [Evelyn] had not met enough men as she has always been tied to Mother’s apron strings,” and advised Dick to have “a good night’s sleep, a cold bath, read your morning paper and think twice, then again…” These are not the words of a man eager to welcome Dick Summers into the family fold. Given the fact of his nearly four year relationship with Flora, a relationship that ended only with his death, I find it highly unlikely that Sandy’s problem with Dick was jealousy, as Julie Summers suggested: “Perhaps he saw now…that Evelyn had found real love, something which had eluded him in his life,” though leeway must be given to Julie as these were, after all, her grandparents.

It would be cars that brought Sandy and Dick together, not a mutual admiration for one another. Dick later wrote (the year is not given in Julie Summers’ book, and I wonder whether this was written after Sandy’s death): “We had very much in common, both being mechanically minded and interested in cars, and both having the same ideas and ideals.” Dick’s family manse, Cornist Hall, “boasted garages with gleaming cars,” and Dick gave Sandy an introduction to a mechanic at one of the Summers garages in 1918. Sandy quickly became a fixture at this garage, pestering the mechanic, Harry Ham, with “endless questions and tinkering with anything Harry would let him get his hands on.”

Sandy did refer to Dick frequently as his “best friend,” but it was always exclusively in the context of apologizing to Dick or Evelyn for some perceived slight, most notably his own back-pedaling over the angry letters he’d fired off when he heard of their engagement. “I like him more than any man I’ve ever met,” he wrote to Evelyn when apologizing for his outburst; “I’m always your best & truest friend though there may have been times when I haven’t shown it outwardly,” he wrote to Dick to apologize for the same outburst. The apology letters followed swift on the heels of the angry ones, a mere week separating them, and Sandy had realized in the intervening time that he had best make nice if he wanted to keep Evelyn’s affection. It would not do, after all, to make a mortal enemy out of one’s future brother-in-law, especially considering Sandy’s lifelong closeness to Evelyn.

Past the Bounds of Time POST 5

2011-05-01T12:57:00.002-06:00

Of English prep schools Mark Hichens wrote: “One schoolboy later wrote that at his Prep School corporal punishment was not so much a punishment as a way of life. Another from a distinguished family wrote that his parents might as well have had him educated at a brothel for flagellants.” It can only be hoped that Sandy did not have to deal with beatings at school along with emotional lashings at home.

In 1912, the magnificent luxury liner Titanic was scheduled to be launched out of Liverpool on her ultimately fatal maiden voyage, and the Irvine family, living as they did across the Mersey from Liverpool, must have been swept up in the excitement, even though the ship would eventually actually sail from Southampton. Willie Irvine may very well have taken his children to Southampton to see the ship launched. By the age of twelve, Sandy had developed a passionate interest in the sea, in boats and all things nautical, and his interest would later expand to building model boats out of spare materials he found lying around the family’s garage. It would continue into adolescence and adulthood when he pursued a rowing career. Titanic sank just days after Sandy’s tenth birthday, and cannot fail to have impacted his life in some fashion.

Sandy was eleven when, in February 1913, the world learned the fate of Robert Falcon Scott and his doomed Antarctic polar party. The frozen bodies of Scott, Birdie Bowers and Edward Wilson were found in their tent on November 12, 1912 (they had been dead for at least seven months), but because the Terra Nova had already sailed for New Zealand it was too late to alert anyone outside Antarctica of the tragedy. The ship was the only means of contact. By the time the story finally broke, it “was rendered even more piquant because Scott’s widow, Kathleen, was then sailing to New Zealand to be reunited, or so she thought, with her husband, unaware, as the newspapers were quick to point out, that she had been a widow for nearly a year. Neither was she aware of the great memorial service held in St Paul’s Cathedral on 14 February…” Two bodies were never recovered, those of Edgar Evans and Captain Oates. England descended into a paroxysm of grief, and the dead men became instant heroes. Ironically, a similar memorial service would be held for Sandy and George Mallory on October 17, 1924, at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Sandy, eleven in 1913, would have heard the tales, and would have believed, like most boys of the time, in Scott’s unquestioned heroism. He could never have guessed that his own death would prove to cause one last gasp of maudlin British romanticism.

Sandy went from Birkenhead Preparatory to the “Big School,” Birkenhead School in 1914. Willie had attended this school, and presumably all of his sons did as well. Before he started there, Sandy went for a vacation to Glasgow to visit his aunt Helen McNair, and while there ran straight into the now-burgeoning preparations for war.

The twelve year old treated his experience as something almost run of the mill, almost ordinary. (All punctuation, spelling and grammar have been left intact wherever I quote from his actual writings.) “I am having a splendid time one day we went fore an eight hour voyage down the Clyde and round Bute we saw on the Clyde…Cruisers and 15 Torpedo Destroyers being built,” he wrote, “and a Light Cruisers seemed to be garding the mouth; Bute was awfuly nice…We are going to have a game of golf after dinner. Everybody is telling you second or third hand about the Russians. Archy said his scoutmaster had told him he had seen them, it is a very good thing it was all true.” Archy was apparently a cousin. At the time, reliable people all over England were seeing Russian soldiers passing through on their way to war who were reported to have snow still clinging to their boots. It’s generally accepted today that the sightings were hoaxes, but Sandy was especially impressed with the stories. He wrote to Lilian, “Tell Sarah that everybody up here knows about the Russians.” His letter is decorated with drawings of battleships.

Incidentally, it was while on this vacation that his cousins dubbed him “Sandy,” a nickname resulting from his fair coloring and which he adored. He announced to his family that he wished to be known by this nickname alone. Julie Summers thought it “typical of him, even at that age, to seize upon something that appealed to him, to take it seriously…” She uses the phrase “at that age” a great deal, and always in connection with Sandy’s extreme seriousness. A twelve year old is hardly a child any longer, and for a twelve year old to attach to a nickname and demand to be known thereby is not surprising, and is in fact pretty typical of most pre-teens. What is typical of Sandy that is not so of most pre-teens is the seriousness. Apologies and excuses are made today by his family for Sandy’s repressed outlook, and blame is never laid upon his parents. The same uber-serious five year old who supposedly struck a pose for Lilian’s benefit is reflected quite sadly in the uber-serious twelve year old’s first timid bid at individuality.

Sandy attended Birkenhead School for a little over a year. Of his academic experience before his entry to this school, Julie Summers wrote: “He was not particularly academic and did not shine…” This assessment is for his performance between the ages of eight and twelve, and is a judgment of Sandy’s character (that he was not very bright) that is unfortunately still pervasive to this day. I believe that one reason for this, though certainly not the only one, is the desire to place blame on his shoulders for his own and George Mallory’s deaths in 1924. Criticism of George Mallory, then and now, is met with violent opposition, and has spawned more than one verbal war on internet forums. Ever the shining Galahad, Mallory can do no wrong. He himself, incidentally, would not have welcomed this fawning appraisal of his character.

While researching this book, I was left with the impression of three very different Sandy Irvines: the reserved and painfully quiet family son and Everest mountaineer, the devilish charmer who fell in love with a quite dangerous girl, and the athlete for whom the passion for sport was all-consuming. None of these include Sandy the Obtuse (if not outright stupid). He was diffident and inhibited among most company because that’s the way he was raised, forced to swallow every emotion stillborn (which likely resulted in his odd, silent laugh). He was, at times, far more comfortable inside his own skull than anywhere else.

Julie Summers wrote, of Sandy’s application to Magdalene College Oxford: “His academic record was found wanting….Even in the days when academic brilliance was not the only requirement for securing a place at the university, the Master, Sir Herbert Warren, felt unable to offer him a place.” Regarding that academic record, I was left with the feeling that Sandy was bored at school, unchallenged. I can only reiterate that the notes in his physics notebook are in ink, with no cross-outs, and are intensely neat and legible. Not the notebook of a dim or brainless youth. And Julie herself did admit, rather tellingly, that Sandy “had succeeded in passing his Higher Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics” for the Magdalene application. Hardly subjects that would be excelled at by the dim-witted, especially assuming “higher” means more difficult than a lower class on the subjects in question.

Of Birkenhead Prep which Sandy entered at eight, of his awareness that his parents wanted him to get high marks, Julie Summers wrote: “This led to him being insecure and sometimes worried that he was not good enough and he made a point of writing to his mother, when his place in the form order was announced, hoping that she was pleased with his performance.” The drive to please was already large, and one can only imagine the inner turmoil he experienced. Perhaps his stomach troubles began here. All children wish to please their parents, but Sandy worried, at just eight years of age, “that he wasn’t good enough.” Good enough for what, at eight years old? It’s not surprising that Sandy’s intellectual pursuits were carried out introspectively, within the privacy of his own mind where nobody could tease or laugh or punish.

I wondered whether he ever succeeded in gaining true self-confidence until I read Flora Deacon’s diary. With Flora, he was able to fully explore his thoughts and ideas with no fear whatever of ridicule. She appears to be one of a handful of people who accepted Sandy for himself, who did not demand that he perform to some unattainable standard, and as a result it’s not surprising that she knew Sandy’s “reams” very well indeed. The only other people who came across this way were Geoffrey Milling and Antony Viscount Knebworth. Significantly, all three of these people were in one way or another deliberately excised from Sandy’s life after his death. Geoffrey was literally deleted entirely from a photograph of he and Sandy at Spitsbergen (thus making Sandy’s arm, around which Geoffrey’s was casually draped, appear malformed in the currently circulated version of the photograph), and Tony Knebworth is credited by the family as “other” in photographs. Of Flora there remains only an unidentified sketch and the single letter “F.”

World War I, the Great War, began in 1914 when Sandy was twelve years old. The only mention Alec Irvine made of the outbreak of one of the most horrendous wars humanity has ever seen was that his father interrupted the children’s schoolroom dinner one evening with the words, “We shan’t be going to the Isle of Man, children. England is at war with Germany.” This isn’t surprising, really, when the Irvine hatred of emotions is taken into account. An announcement of war, a war which would leave Kenneth with a festering open wound that would never heal , could have been nothing but dry and detached, at least not in this particular family. This casual announcement, made to sound as if the family vacation had been deliberately spoiled by the British government, must have sounded strange even to the ears of the youngest of the siblings, who were eight, three and one at the time.

The Irvines had been to the Isle of Man before, in the summer of 1913. They’d gone yachting that summer, a typically upper-class Edwardian thing to do, and Sandy, at eleven, had made a passable wooden model of the yacht they’d used, the Genista. A friend of one of the maids helped him, and the little model yacht is still in existence today.

With the war at last officially begun, Lilian and Willie sent their three eldest children—Hugh, Evelyn and Sandy—to the Davies-Colley estate outside Chester. Newbold was then in the possession of Thomas Davies-Colley, Lilian’s bachelor brother, and the children were consigned to his care. All holidays for the Irvine children would be spent now with their Uncle Tom at Newbold where, Alec remembered, they were “ridden with a very light rein, being looked after mainly by the housekeeper and the groom.” Newbold “is a large brick mansion with a turreted tower at the front and a further, slightly lower octagonal tower at the back overlooking the gardens.” It was apparently part of a much larger estate, as Alec Irvine noted that it was “a large and imposing property on the family estate at Bruera…” Again, this was not a family living in anything other than wealthy, extremely comfortable conditions.

Tom Davies-Colley spent the week in Manchester and came home to Newbold on weekends. The children were left in the care of the servants, servants who, as employees of a bachelor, were unaccustomed to looking after children, never mind teenagers. Hugh was fifteen in 1914, Evelyn fourteen and Sandy twelve, and various cousins of all ages joined them at times. A houseful of emotionally repressed teenagers at last let free of the rigorous constraints of home could only have been an almost impossible situation for those servants.

For Sandy, the freedom was utter bliss. He had escaped the ever-watchful eyes of his strict parents, and was allowed by Newbold’s domestic staff and his bachelor uncle to roam freely and at will over the surrounding countryside. He took to the outdoors eagerly, and showed an affinity for climbing, although the climbing was mainly limited to “a scramble on the rocks…” Nonetheless, he was allowed to do pretty much as he pleased, and for the developing athlete the terrain provided endless challenges and possibilities. Climbing was a very big deal indeed in Britain then, and “scrambling” an accepted and highly-touted activity. The Alpine Club and, eventually, the Ladies Alpine Club, welcomed more and more members every year, and the scrambles over rocks that marked the beginning of every climber’s—or alpinist’s—career were duly noted in the Clubs’ annals. Members graduated rapidly to real Alpine climbing, with trips to Europe in search of fresh ascents to officially bag also duly noted. George Mallory was an exceptional scrambler and shared his adventures with close friends such as Geoffrey Winthrop Young, Cottie Sanders, and Geoffrey Keynes (brother of Maynard) who, as one of George’s early climbing partners, accompanied him frequently to Wales and the Lake District.

Edwardian children of all classes spent as much time as possible outdoors, even during wintertime, and their inventiveness was endless. Besides the classic game of kick-the-can, Sandy and his brothers would have smoothed some dirt to make a marbles pitch, fished, cycled and in general been very free little boys, at least while on holiday at Newbold. Newbold must have been absolutely intoxicating for the repressed Irvine children. Evelyn must have joined Sandy in his games, and when they were older it was Evelyn who tramped with him over hill and dale.

Jane Pettigrew wrote (quoting another author): “After they reached school-going age, the boys no longer played with the girls, but found themselves a separate pitch on which to play….Or they would hunt in couples along the hedgerows, shooting at birds with their catapults, climbing trees, or looking for birds’ nests, mushrooms, or chestnuts, according to the season.” Hugh, at fifteen, possessed a shotgun , so if the Irvine children and cousins went on bird-hunts there must have been an extra dimension of thrills for the boys and terror for the girls.

All of this activity wasn’t easy on clothing, and no doubt the nursemaids were very busy indeed with laundering and mending. Sandy, however, wasn’t actually terribly hard on clothing, something which shocked his mother. Lilian wrote to Hugh in 1914 that she was “busy turning up the cuffs of a new suit for Sandy. At last he has finished out your old garden suit. He has not done badly at all in clothes though he is such a smut.” This care for his possessions would be a trait of Sandy’s all his life, and although he was known for being disorderly and generally messy, he was never disorganized or careless. Flora Deacon wrote in despair in her diary that he was “always so meticulous with his intelligence, so careful to guard his thoughts, and such an impossible mess with his things.” Following his death on Everest, there was some discussion as to whether or not he and Mallory had been slipshod or neglectful with their supplies, thus leading to their deaths. Mallory was known for misplacing and losing crucial expedition equipment. Given Sandy’s repressed upbringing it makes sense that he would come to “guard his thoughts” so carefully, and perhaps even to hide his intelligence in a world that demanded a certain what-ho idiocy of its young men (Bertie Wooster springs to mind).

At Newbold, Sandy developed the beginnings of a lifelong love of tinkering. On Everest, his teammates remembered him constantly tinkering with one thing or another, be it trying to improve faulty oxygen canisters or creating new spikes for crampons (metal spikes that attach to boots to better grip rock and ice when climbing). This enthusiasm eventually led him to take up engineering as his subject at Merton College, and he was actively pursuing an engineering degree at the time of his death. At Newbold was a particular room that held Sandy’s interest, filled with “war regalia…telescopes and microscopes, gyroscopes and all sorts of other unidentifiable things with wires, wheels and whirring parts.” Sandy could usually be found somewhere among the shelves full of books in this room, reading away happily. When not reading the books, he was messing about with the gadgets and machinery.

This room had a counterpart in the house at Park Road South that opened off of the laundry. Sandy filled the room in Birkenhead with various inventions and drawings, and was fiercely protective of its sanctity. Only one other person, the laundress Mrs. Killan, was entrusted with the key. Sandy wrote anxiously to Lilian in 1914, probably from Newbold: “Tell Mrs. Killen…not to let anyone into my room…” One wonders what Lilian thought of these instructions, but for whatever reason Sandy’s treasured room was left alone. Willie would find bits of an oxygen apparatus in this room after Sandy’s death, so the room remained Sandy’s hideaway for much of his life. I would be willing to wager that it contained at least some of the notebooks in which he so feverishly scribbled his thoughts and ideas, if not the entire trunk.

Past the Bounds of Time POST 4

2011-05-01T12:53:00.002-06:00

Evelyn knew this side of her brother better than anyone except Flora Deacon, and was Sandy’s match in many ways. In one photograph, formally posed, she gazes into the distance, her back straight, her hands resting lightly on the back of a chair. Her eyes, almost identical to Sandy’s, are full of a mischief that even the formality of the pose cannot hide. She would be the recipient of most of Sandy’s emotions, including love and anger, and her life after his death must have had a great gap in it, a gap made wider by emotions she would have been forbidden to show. She looked a great deal like Sandy, and in one group photograph she is standing next to him, their heads tilted at the same angle, their smiles identical. She was known to carry a Mauser handgun in her purse, and she would later teach one of her sons to drive with one hand so that he could hold a girl with the other. This offers one small glimpse into Sandy’s character as well, since this girl was the one person he regularly chose to formally escort to public functions throughout his life.

To raise one child or perhaps two in the strict and puritanically religious atmosphere at Birkenhead, and have them conform as desired, is of course possible. However, it’s obvious that no household containing six children (with the occasional addition of cousins and friends and at least one child who stayed for an extremely lengthy visit) can ever be entirely contained. Willie and Lilian, even though they employed several maids, must have been severely tried at times in attempting to maintain a balance between pious discipline and normal childhood antics. That all six children would appear to have achieved adulthood with level heads and a keen sense of fair play is remarkable.

Lilian’s correspondence leaves us with the impression of a woman who would have had a fainting couch had she lived a half-century earlier, even with a full domestic staff. She would appear to have always been on her knees praying, and would write to her eldest son Hugh that she “never had any regrets or questionings about the right or wrong of letting Sandy go up Everest—it must be the answer to our prayers when we prayed earnestly about our decision to give him permission.” The permission was not technically needed as Sandy was an adult at the time, over twenty-one, but the letter gives us a glimpse into Lilian’s mind. “We prayed” seems to indicate that there was some sort of familial prayer over the decision, and shows clearly that this was a woman (and a family) who prayed about nearly everything. Most parents would sit down with their adult child and reason the expedition out, weighing pros and cons and determining whether that child was in fact serious and capable enough for the climb. The Irvines added “earnest” prayer to the mix. The date of this letter is not indicated, but from the wording it seems to have been written after Sandy’s death, and thus would further hold an element of self-justification, of Lilian reassuring herself that she had done the right thing. This would be the Lilian who lit candles in windows after her son’s death, in a show of vain hope and not a little regret that she hadn’t been emotionally closer to him. Turning to God and claiming that prayer led to a decision is certainly one way to soothe guilt.

Sandy and Evelyn were the most enterprising and inventive of the siblings, and the rest of the children were more their victims than anything else. There is precious little evidence of a “mature and composed” Evelyn here. Even elder brother Hugh did not escape, as they teased him mercilessly over his fear of heights. The teasing they themselves loathed was passed along. Anger, when spread, breeds nothing but more anger, and teasing—bullying—spreads from child to child even today when we are more conscious of the effects of this behavior upon others. Behavior learned from parents is insidious, passing from one generation to the next for good or for ill.

Practical jokes were a large feature of Sandy and Evelyn’s repertoire, and one can’t help wondering how they managed to get away with any of it. Punishment must have figured large in their lives, though no record remains of its nature. It’s quite likely, given Lilian’s personality, that verbal lashings and enforced repentance would have played large parts. Willie and Lilian were anything but physically demonstrative in any way, so corporal punishment would likely have been extremely rare. When Willie wanted to show displeasure at the state of Evelyn’s bedroom, for instance, he simply walked past it making retching sounds. Evelyn must have been humiliated. That sort of punishment is calculated to wither a child’s self-esteem, and would have gone hand in hand with the parental teasing to which Lilian complained that Sandy was “oversensitive” and may have been a cause of his “mood swings,” of which she also despaired.

Evelyn, as the only daughter, was expected to play maid to her five brothers—even though the family employed servants—up to and including folding their clothing and cleaning up their messes. It’s interesting that Willie did not retch his way past his sons’ bedrooms, and it’s hard to imagine that Evelyn’s bedroom was in worse state than any of theirs. It’s also not surprising that she had no time to tidy her own things. She didn’t always accept her fate with a smile, and no doubt gritted her teeth often. According to Alec, during World War I at the age of fourteen she “knitted endless yards of khaki comforters in the conservatory, and cursed Fate that made her a girl.” Cursed Fate not because she couldn’t join the fighting, though that may have crossed her mind, but because she was the unpaid maid and no doubt ached to be allowed out of the house. Sandy would one day write that he “always looked on her more as a boy than a girl” and it was always in Sandy’s company that her wilder side came out to the full. Evelyn once remarked aloud that she hated every one of her brothers. She was punished (it’s not known how) and the entire family, unsurprisingly, then said prayers for her forgiveness. The strict Evelyn who would force her own children to remain inside until a Psalm was perfectly recited was not the Evelyn Sandy had known. It was only after her brother’s death, after she married the stodgy Dick Summers (whom Sandy openly regarded as an incomplete man ) that the Lilian-like Evelyn emerged.

The boys’ education was of primary concern within the family, with very little mention ever being made regarding Evelyn’s scholastic life before the age of fourteen. The boys, most of whom would eventually excel in one sport or another, were quite obviously the lights of the family, and great hopes rested upon them. The early 1900s saw heightening global tensions as World War I approached with ever increasing speed, and the nations of Europe looked to their sons to uphold the values and safety of their countries. Girls were necessary to any war effort, but only in the sense that they were the home-based cheerleaders and supporters of the men in uniform, or else were nurses. Evelyn’s knitting of comforters was completely in character for the role she, as a wealthy young woman, was expected to play, even though she was only fourteen when the war began. It’s hard to picture a girl of fourteen knitting “endless” comforters, but for Evelyn to do anything else would have been unthinkable and seen as letting the side down.

In the early years of the twentieth century emphasis was always placed on a boy’s education rather than a girl’s, and most books and magazines reflected that strongly held bias. Adventure tales for boys were huge sellers, in particular “the adventure stories of George Alfred Henty, set during colonial campaigns and full of the deeds of young heroes.” Young British heroes, of course, and Sandy’s head must have been full of these tales as a young boy.

Also popular were such authors as Arthur Conan Doyle, James Barrie and H. Rider Haggard. Boys’ magazines did a flourishing business, and “Blood and Thunders,” the former Penny Dreadful pulp magazines of the Victorian age, sold rapidly. Attempts were made at wholesome entertainment as well, with magazines such as “Boys Own Paper” and “The Boys’ Friend.” These were loaded with morality tales, adventure stories and craft-making instructions. “Chums” “was another good, wholesome and well-illustrated journal that was thought by many to be the best available. It stressed the merits of outdoor activities and incorporated good, solid middle-class values into its stories. Heroes were upright and manly and always triumphant over rotters and cads.” “Punch” and “The Strand” were also hugely popular, and most homes that could afford to do so subscribed to both.

Sandy must have relished these magazines, and no doubt devoured the craft pages. Most boys’ journals carried detailed plans and instructions for creating a wide range of masculine toys, and with Sandy’s love of tinkering he must have had quite a collection.

Evelyn, and Flora Deacon, until a journal called “Girls’ Own Paper” came along, would have had very little apart from novels to read, as for girls “all that was available were trashy novelettes, full of silly love stories about aristocrats in their mansion.” And even then, “Girls’ Own Paper” “was meant for older girls and young wives and contained love stories.” Evelyn, although a tomboy, must have longed for more feminine things to read, things comparable to the journals and dreadfuls her brothers were reading. For novels, of course, girls like Evelyn and Flora had Frances Hodgson Burnett’s tales of young girls succeeding against all odds, and the fairy-tales of George Macdonald and E. Nesbit. And they would have had their scrapbooks.

The making of scrapbooks was all the rage among girls in Edwardian England, and publishers put out bound journals made especially for this hobby. Girls would drag out boxes filled with greeting cards and “sheets of special pages of colourful scraps that could be bought in newspaper and toy shops…” Pictures were carefully cut out and pasted artfully and skillfully into the scrapbook’s pages.

Collecting was also a big children’s hobby. All sorts of things were collected, and publishers and businesses deliberately catered to this obsession. Sandy would have had his pick among stamps, postcards, scrap sheets, and cigarette cards. These last were wildly popular, and collecting old cigarette cards is a huge hobby today.

Tobacco companies in America were the first to put collectible cards inside packets of cigarettes, and the craze soon swept to England. Jane Pettigrew noted that, by the turn of the century, “collecting [cigarette cards] was a very popular hobby, and the range [of things depicted on the cards] was extended further to include cars, motor bicycles, military uniforms and equipment, sports and sporting personalities,…beautiful women, famous explorers,…Scottish clans, ships, wireless telegraphy,…and characters from literature….Children stuck the cards into albums or special books that were printed by the card companies and which gave information on each page about the pictures…” It’s easy to picture Sandy carefully pasting the cards into albums. Players cigarettes were the most famous distributor of the cards, and Sandy couldn’t have known that, in 1925, his own image would appear in a Players cigarette card set. This set of 25 cards, devoted entirely to the 1924 Everest expedition, is highly sought after by today’s collectors, fetching today upwards of $400 US for a near-fine set.

Sandy and his siblings were taught their basic numbers and letters in the nursery. Children of their station were handed into Nanny’s care as soon as they were weaned, and remained under the watchful eyes of nursemaids until they were sent away to school at seven or eight. By five years old, “infants left the nursery and Nanny’s lessons to join the older children and the governess or tutor in the schoolroom.” It was while they were in this schoolroom that Willie Irvine came to tell the children about the outbreak of World War I. “After the first few years of lessons…in the schoolroom at home, wealthy little boys were sent away to ‘prep’ school at the age of seven, while their sisters continued their education with the governess at home, or were sent to private schools ‘for the daughters of gentlemen.’” I see no reason this wouldn’t have held true for the Irvine family as well as for Flora Deacon.

In between lessons in the nursery and schoolroom, wealthy families took holidays, and the Irvine family seems to have been perpetually on holiday while the children were little. Most of these vacations were spent in Snowdonia and surrounding areas in Wales. Willie rented places to stay during these trips, and they must have been fairly large places as the family traveled with their maids. During these holidays, Lilian forced her children, and any children staying with the family, to pay close attention to the scenery around them, flying off the handle at them if they were so careless as to speak amongst themselves instead. It’s difficult to believe that enforced enjoyment of the scenery could have resulted in any appreciation of that scenery whatsoever. One wonders what the maids thought of this, and there may very well have been a high turnaround among the Irvines’ domestics.

When he was ten, Sandy and his siblings stayed with relatives for Easter, and during that vacation he discovered what would become a lifelong love of writing. Flora Deacon, the only girlfriend Sandy would ever have, noted in her diary that he had written “reams” of things during his lifetime, apparently filling notebooks and journals, even trying his hand at fiction. He kept a journal during this holiday, and at first was completely unenthusiastic, but this didn’t last. Sandy wrote quickly all his life, ignoring the rules of grammar and almost all punctuation, and seems to have been always in a hurry to fill pages with his thoughts and experiences. Writing came easily to him, and his love of words spilled out passionately onto the page. When writing for publication—all expedition diaries and journals at the time were written for publication—he became more cautious, choosing his words and expressions carefully, hiding a letter back home to Flora (whom he always called “Effie” ) with the simple notation that he’d written to “F.” His voluminous letters, however, show a Sandy brimming over with the desire to get life down on paper, and caution was tossed to the winds. It’s a huge loss that no one today knows where those “reams” of his are, an even greater loss if their location is known but the writings themselves hidden from public sight.

Sandy’s education really began when he entered Birkenhead Preparatory School in 1910 at the age of eight. No mention is made of where his sister was educated as a small child, but all five Irvine sons would attend this school. A certain Miss Cox was the headmistress there. Sandy must have proven quite a handful, as he had to be “licked into tolerable shape” by Miss Cox’s “formidable band of colleagues.” Judging by Sandy’s escapades later in life, one can only imagine the behavior displayed at eight years of age that would have required licking into shape. It’s entirely possible, even likely, that Sandy didn’t really know how to act among other children than his siblings, and ended by behaving badly. His upbringing to that point would hardly have prepared him for a world where other children had been allowed to be simply that, children. Emotionally repressed at home, punished with disgust and prayer, the eight year old probably acted out those emotions at school.

Past the Bounds of Time POST 3

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Lilian was a rigid, staunch woman, very Victorian in many ways. Children were to be tolerated and endured. Whenever her children got into scrapes, hugs were not given by Lilian but by nursemaids. Emotion was never, never to be shown in any outward or open way. Even deathbeds were, in the Irvine family, scenes of stoic fortitude; even then, emotion was absolutely forbidden.

Lilian possessed a cruel streak, one of which she seemed to be rather proud. She teased people mercilessly, especially children, and it didn’t matter if those children were her own or someone else’s. Julie Summers wrote in Fearless on Everest that nephews and nieces “found Uncle Willie and Aunt Lilian rather severe and did not like the way they made fun of children.” For this facet of her character to be so universally noted, Lilian must have had quite a habit of laughing at children. Sandy naturally didn’t escape this scathing teasing, and Julie Summers wrote that Lilian “was frequently frustrated by his mood swings and his oversensitive reaction to her teasing.” It’s difficult to imagine the sort of child who would or could welcome that kind of parental attention, much less imagine the sort of parent who could find their fun in constantly belittling children. Lilian firmly “maintained her physical and emotional distance” from all of her offspring, and Sandy would always be careful to inquire after her health before imparting his own news. The sort of woman, in other words, who always saw to it that she came first.

Willie Irvine was a social butterfly who loved to surround himself with his vivacious circle of friends. He seems to have, like his wife, regarded children as a necessary evil, but rather than disparage them as Lilian chose to do, he seems simply to have ignored them as much as possible. He has been called a “benevolent authoritarian,” and his visits to the nursery “were so infrequent as to be events of considerable note and worthy of comment.” He liked his children much better when they reached adolescence.

Willie frequently hosted dinner parties for eight or more, but he himself had an unnamed digestive problem from which Sandy also suffered, and for which Willie developed a certain fixed mealtime regime of custard, stewed apples, and a glass of whisky and soda. Since Willie lived well into his eighties, and since Sandy never followed any such set menu, it’s entirely possible that their ailment was nothing more than nerves. The atmosphere at Park Road South was a stifling, stultifying one, and it’s hardly surprising that more than one family member suffered from some form of digestive upset. Sandy and his father probably had ulcers.

Willie himself was raised in an environment of strict religious observance, which is at odds with the fact that his father, James, was an adventurer and wanderer at heart. Perhaps it was Willie’s mother, Edith Hickson Irvine, who first instilled these things in an Irvine household. Certainly, by the time Edith died, when Willie was only eleven, the ethics of puritanical religious adherence and suppressed emotions were firmly in place. As children generally do live what they learn, it’s perhaps not so surprising that Willie was so rigid an adult.

This would be mirrored years later, when Willie’s daughter Evelyn was on her deathbed. One of her brothers would be remembered as walking away with dry eyes, showing no emotion whatsoever. Grief over Sandy’s death must have been made all the greater by the fact that the siblings would have been counseled to keep any emotion tightly reined. Keeping a stiff upper lip in public is one thing; maintaining that kind of emotional enforcement in private is quite another.

Willie’s rigid puritanical attitude found its way into every aspect of his children’s lives. They were forbidden to make a single sound until after eight o’clock every morning. Evelyn, who in adulthood would be far stiffer than she’d been as a child and a teen, would forbid her own offspring to go out to play in the mornings until they had recited, from memory, a different Psalm each day. It’s entirely possible that she learned this routine from her own mother, and that it had gone hand in hand with the morning silence. Mistakes in recitation were not permitted; if one of Evelyn’s children made a mistake, the Psalm must be started again. Only after meeting these requirements could the children go out to play.

Willie and Lilian’s children dealt with their upbringing in vastly different ways. Hugh and Kenneth followed the path that society expected of them, going into the armed forces in World War I and becoming a brilliant medical doctor respectively.

Alec and Tur, the two youngest, lived intensely quiet, withdrawn lives. Alec only came out of his self-imposed shell of anonymity in the 1970s when Herbert Carr was writing The Irvine Diaries, contributing the brief tale of Sandy’s brief life that is included in the book. Several people accused him of “dining out on Uncle Sandy,” and he surfaced again only when Audrey Salkeld tracked him down to interview him for The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine in the 1980s.

Alec was certainly the most vocal of the siblings when it came to discussing Sandy, but that isn’t anything much to go by as the other siblings were utterly silent. A few pages of text from Alec was a thousand-page book compared to what the other siblings contributed. Alec’s natural reticence and desire for anonymity competed with his desire to tell Sandy’s story. This trait is distinctly Irvine, this need to close ranks and assume a position of silence, as I myself discovered.

Sandy Irvine became a public figure the moment he signed on for the 1924 Everest expedition (he himself knew that his expedition diaries were ultimately being written for publication, and he took great care to disguise certain people on the diary pages), and yet his family persist in the belief that they alone have any claim upon him. Any of their own number not authorized by the family to do so who speak of or write about Sandy are “dining out” on his memory. Alec, only thirteen when his brother died in Tibet, regarded Sandy with hero worship. He was fiercely protective of Sandy’s memory, to the point of lambasting others in defense of him, so to be accused of deliberately using Sandy’s name to garner money or acclaim must have been deeply hurtful to him. And in the end, the only effect this stoic silence has is to make one wonder precisely what it is the Irvine family are so desperate to hide, even at a remove of more than eighty years.

Despite the staunch emotional and religious strictures, the Irvine family was and is a tightly-knit unit. The circling of the wagons shows a need for mutual support and a level of fear, whether or not they ever admitted as much even to themselves. This is still reflected in the way their descendants shut out the world from their affairs. Emotional outpouring was forbidden, but was undoubtedly felt within each individual’s thoughts and prayers. They were, and are, reserved, cautious and remote from the world. The conflict between emotional remoteness and deeply felt familial unity is only one of many paradoxes that surfaced during my research. The Irvines were and are both collectively and individually complex and they are difficult to understand.

Sandy himself comes across as the proverbial black sheep of the family, a wild boy whose exploits have been deliberately hidden and whitewashed for decades. Herein lies the strong dichotomy that was Andrew Comyn Irvine. He was raised in a household that alternately ignored its children, mocked its children, and forced its children to obey inflexible rules. In family stories (the authorized ones, at any rate), Sandy is the happy-go-lucky child who romps gaily through one harmless adventure after another. The photographs of childhood outings tell a considerably different tale, for in them he is a stodgy, unsmiling little boy who looks very much as if he’d rather be somewhere else. Julie Summers saw something else in these photos: “At that age [five], Sandy was stocky, very blonde [sic] and had a solemn, thoughtful air about him….I rather suspect he and Evelyn cultivated this air for the benefit of their mother who was the chief photographer.” It’s unlikely that, at five years of age, Sandy was this clever. There’s no cultivated air here; there’s just a little boy who isn’t having any fun at all. If he’s doing anything at all for Lilian’s benefit, it’s staunchly holding in emotion, and with this photographic evidence in mind we can know that even when they were very small, the Irvine children followed this dictum.

Sandy is remembered in the official tales as a bounding child, ever springing hither and yon, yet the photographs give us a glimpse of a different reality. Only as an adolescent, only when he left home for school in the fall of 1916, did any of the effervescence begin to shine through. Only after the age of fourteen, when he was finally on his own and away from constant parental watchfulness, mockery and strictness, did he begin to blossom. Only then would be born the smiling Sandy of the later photographs, the grinning and slightly bemused Sandy of the Spitsbergen and Murren and Everest photographs.

Sandy spent most of his life in solitary pursuits, with few close friends (Geoffrey Milling and Antony Viscount Knebworth were among those few and were the two most frequently seen with him in photographs), and the only sibling with whom he had anything like a truly close relationship was his sister Evelyn. The family once claimed that he had bevies of girlfriends; I found evidence of only one, Flora Deacon. It’s true, however, that flocks of young women would, after his death, claim in print to have been his lover or even fiancée. One woman (the “gossipy girl” previously mentioned) wrote me and claimed that her mother had been Sandy’s child, but internal evidence within her correspondence easily disproved her claim.
Against the family’s claims of dozens of girlfriends we can turn again to photographic evidence, and there is no extant photograph of him with a girlfriend. I will deal with Marjory Summers later, but I will say here that she was most certainly not Sandy’s paramour, though I have no doubt that she wanted to be. (Nor is she the woman Sandy sketched in profile on his way to Norway in 1923 as Julie Summers claimed ; the sketch is unidentified—I have seen it myself—and could be any female, but I have very good reason to suspect that it is in fact the only known representation of Flora Deacon.) In pictures taken at functions, the woman Sandy is squiring is inevitably Evelyn. Sandy was characteristically coy, and kept the one girlfriend I have been able to verify a complete secret (though if her diary is anything to go by, there was a very good reason for this). This coyness would come back to haunt his family, as after his death claims were also made that he’d been a homosexual. The homosexual stories still circulate, specifically in relation to George Mallory’s well-known bisexuality.

Sandy and his siblings differed from one another widely, and the range in ages separated the six children into two groups, with Hugh, Evelyn and Sandy in the older group, and Kenneth, Alec and Tur in the younger. Hugh was reclusive to a degree, not really joining in with his siblings, and was fairly delicate and sickly for much of his life. Kenneth achieved fame and an Order of the British Empire for his central role in the creation of an anti-tuberculosis vaccine. Tur became involved in the church, and is listed on a family tree as “the Very Reverend.” Evelyn married and had children, though her choice of marital partner sent Sandy into fits of explosive and angry letter-writing from Tibet. He thought Dickie Summers (who was decidedly not, despite claims to the contrary, Sandy’s best friend) was beneath Evelyn’s station, and said so in no uncertain terms. He continued in this opinion to the day of his death. Dick was the stepson of the woman—Marjory—named by his granddaughter Julie as Sandy’s lover. That Sandy was so very conscious of social station is one reason among many to seriously doubt that he himself would have become involved with a married ex-chorus girl. That the married ex-chorus girl was the stepmother of the man he most definitely did not want marrying Evelyn is yet another reason for doubting the Marjory/Sandy story, however popular chorus-girl/wealthy nobleman romance novels may be.

Sandy was an intelligent, reserved man, and liked nothing better than to be left alone to tinker and to work out problems. He spent more hours secluded in his tent on Everest, tinkering with things mechanical, than he did socializing with his climbing mates. He was not unfriendly, but was remembered by members of the 1924 expedition as quiet and withdrawn. He had a laugh that proved disconcerting to some, as it was almost silent, his body shaking with mirth while very little sound escaped his lips. This was undoubtedly a result of his upbringing, this need to show happiness as silently as possible, and it’s highly likely that some of his siblings laughed in the same fashion. He rarely spoke on Everest, waiting instead to be drawn into conversation, which may have come from simple respect for his elders, as he was by far the youngest member of the 1924 Everest party, George Mallory’s junior by some sixteen years.

Sandy’s intelligence has been called into question more than once, and I believe this is a result of his intensely quiet manner. I held his physics notebooks in my hands in 1999, and they were written in ink, with no markings-out, hardly the work of an unintelligent boy. He was pursuing a degree in engineering when he died, and had in his lifetime applied for and nearly received two patents for modifications to weaponry, one a design he’d made for a contraption that would allow machine gunners to fire between the spinning propeller blades of a plane and the other a “gyroscopic stabilizer for aircraft.” In a colossal understatement, Julie Summers wrote that the War Office “had been sent many proposals during the course of the war but it was most unusual for such an accomplished design to be submitted by a fifteen-year-old schoolboy.”

Unintelligent, Sandy Irvine was most definitely not, though his own family, for some reason, seems to have thought him so. Julie Summers wrote that Sandy’s uncanny “ability to find solutions to problems was so wholly accepted within the family that no one considered his achievements as particularly remarkable.” This is a sad statement. No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried or the accomplishments he made, it was never enough for his family. On Everest, when George Mallory wanted one last go at the summit, it’s quite easy to imagine Sandy being equally eager, if only as an unquestionable way to finally prove himself within the ranks of his own family.

George Mallory (himself no lightweight among intellects) famously remarked that Sandy was “sensible and not at all highly strung he’ll be one to depend on, for everything perhaps except conversation,” and this observation, according to Julie Summers, “has been used further to underline the fact that Sandy was inarticulate and lacking in intellectual strength.” (Why a quiet man should therefore be called inarticulate is uncertain.) She goes on to say that the “latter claim contains some truth” while the former would have been the result of shyness. His own family thought him unintelligent, and still does, despite having custody of boxes full of proof to the contrary, including his physics notebook and his designs for modifications to the oxygen apparatus used on Everest. Why this should be so is bewildering, unless they are once again attempting to hide some facet of his life for reasons of their own. One is left with the image of the stereotypical hulking blond idiot of 1950s beach movies, which is hardly a service to Sandy’s memory or achievements, and this is one image of the man that I wish to dispel.

The withdrawn shyness among his elders on Everest stands in marked contrast to the outspokenness of his personal correspondence. It also stands in contrast to the way he behaved when among his peers. Photographs of the older Sandy show him playing tennis, picnicking, hiking, skiing, or sitting atop castle walls (Harlech castle, specifically, whose outside he had just scaled in hard-soled shoes wearing woolen pants and a thick woolen jacket). Always, in these pictures, there’s a smile, wide and full. There’s a challenge in his clear eyes, a glinting glance that dares the observer to join in. This attitude is palpably apparent also in the Everest pictures, where even the drudgery of repairing broken or inoperative oxygen canisters couldn’t dampen the grin on his face. George Binney, with whom he went to Spitsbergen in 1923, remembered Sandy as “lion-hearted, stalwart, and laughter-loving.”

Past the Bounds of Time POST 2

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Flora Deacon herself proved to be rather elusive. The diary ends with a mention of Sandy’s death, and the letter accompanying the journal told me that Flora had died very soon after, within months. In attempting to establish contact with the sender, I was unsuccessful, but I am hopeful that this book will bring that relative back into the open. The letter was written in what appears to be a rather aged hand, so it’s possible that the sender has since passed on, but hopefully someone in their family will read this and come forward to claim their property. Until that time, the diary is in extremely safe hands.

Flora was a fringe member (albeit a very young one) of George Mallory’s Bloomsbury set, and was likely related directly to the Laura Deacon who’d been the mistress of Lord Lytton of Knebworth House in the mid-1800s, perhaps a great-granddaughter. Audrey Salkeld, in an e-mail to me, wondered whether Flora and Sandy might have met through Antony Viscount Knebworth, a young man who was the glowing light of the Lytton family and one of Sandy’s closest friends, and this scenario is by far the likeliest for their meeting.

Edward Bulwer Lytton, perhaps best remembered for being the novelist who penned the immortal words “It was a dark and stormy night,” was married when he began a decades-long affair with Laura Deacon. They met when Laura was the mistress of a neighbor of Lytton’s, and she was living with Lytton by 1836. The couple had at least three illegitimate children, and all of Laura Deacon’s children were remembered in Lytton’s will.

Laura used many aliases, among them “Mrs. Grant,” “Mrs. Sellars,” “Mrs. Beaumont,” and even “the Vicomtesse d’Azzimart.” Lytton’s three wills are extremely confusing documents, as he switched between Laura’s aliases from will to will. He also left money to various “Vansittarts, de Rossets, Grants and Sherwoods” who according to his biographer Leslie Mitchell “were not servants or estate workers, because such people are mentioned elsewhere in the will. It is quite probable that they were all illegitimate children. Indeed the list may not be exhaustive.” And so we have Lord Lytton’s many illegitimate offspring, several of them from his favorite mistress, any of whom could have borne Laura’s surname “Deacon” and been Flora’s grandfather or grandmother. The fact that Flora says in her diary that she was an intimate of Antony Viscount Knebworth goes a long way toward proving this.

Flora was thus, even as an illegitimate great-grandchild of Lord Lytton, very much a part of the same wealthy social circle as the Irvines, if not in a slightly more rarefied strata than theirs. She was decidedly not of the same class as the girls who would, after his death, claim they’d known Sandy intimately, and was of a far higher social station (even given her descent from an illegitimate line) than ex-chorus girl Marjory Thomson Summers, whom the Irvines claim held Sandy’s affection (or at least his lust).

I recently came across a book about a 1960s CIA mission to plant a spy device on top of Nanda Devi. There are two quotes in this book that are apropos to the journey I have been on. From Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses: “In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.” And from Gordon Livingston’s Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: “There are no maps to guide our most important searches; we must rely on hope, chance, intuition, and a willingness to be surprised.” I was undoubtedly cured of my sentiments, cured of the dream, slapped hard with the reality. The world did indeed lie in wait for me, with sharpened claws and dripping fangs. And then came, finally, like sun after a chill winter squall, hope and energy and determination. I regained my intuitive senses, I was more than willing to be at last surprised, and I once again took up my “searches.” And Flora Deacon’s diary was unquestionably a surprise.

When I began my journey, I was disappointed that Sandy’s name was inextricably linked not only to Everest but to George Mallory. It struck me as unfair that he should basically be remembered as half of a duo, like Gilbert and Sullivan or Bertie and Jeeves. Mallory-and-Irvine, always, for eternity. However, they were a team, and they headed for the summit as a team. George had specifically picked Sandy for that ill-fated summit attempt, and I suppose Sandy could have refused. He didn’t refuse, and was in fact overjoyed to have been chosen. The two men had become close friends on the trek. They made themselves a team, and to try to pry them apart would, in the end, be doing them both a disservice.

The further I delved into my research, the more I realized that the amount of literature available on Everest itself is absolutely staggering. It’s a job to wade through everything currently in print, and once you begin on the out-of-print volumes (available through the glories of interlibrary loan), you start to feel like you’ll never make your way through. The internet only adds to the feeling. I don’t know of any other place in the annals of exploration except Antarctica that comes even remotely near the sheer weight of print that Everest can boast. Even at that, I was able to find little gems of Everest information hidden within books whose subject matter was strictly Antarctica or even Africa.

With Everest, you read, you devour, you scrutinize, you analyze, and you take more notes than you took in four years of college. You become a friend of maps, and you see Everest in your mind’s eye all decked out in red and blue and black and green dotted lines leading to the summit. You can’t speak the languages, but you know Everest’s Tibetan and Nepalese names. You don’t speak Welsh, but by golly you know what a cwm is.

Everest is an addiction, pure and simple. It clamors inside your head, it snakes its way through your bloodstream, and it’s under your feet as you walk to the corner store. You start to see all mountains differently. You rapidly acquire all the lingo associated with this addiction. You could craft a 3D model of Everest in your sleep, complete with routes fully mapped out. And you crave more.

You actively search out like-minded folk, and are immensely gratified when you find a really great group of people on the internet. They share your addiction. You’re all Everest junkies, and you all know it, and there’s no way you ever want to be cured.

It’s no wonder, then, really, that all those decades ago men became smitten with Everest.

For George Mallory, the drug of Everest would prove not only addictive, but fatally so. Was Sandy likewise obsessed with Everest? No. Would he have become obsessed in later years, as George did after a brief trip back to the reality of everyday life? I doubt it, to be honest. Sandy had fallen in love with exploration in general, and not mountaineering, while he was in the Arctic as a handyman on the Oxford Spitsbergen expedition in 1923. He had no plans to settle down to a nice, quiet life, that much is certain, and in fact there is evidence that he intended to move to Canada, Flora in tow, when he returned from Tibet. He wasn’t made for the life of a chartered accountant any more than George Mallory was.

And that fact alone may have been enough to kill them both.

The Irvine family has always bred adventurous types. The family came from Lowland Scots and Welsh stock, and the name Irvine may derive from the Welsh “yr afon,” meaning “holy green river,” or from the Welsh name Iorwyn, which means “pure, handsome lord.”

Until Sandy Irvine achieved unlooked-for fame in 1924, the most illustrious member of the Irvine clan was James Irvine, Sandy’s grandfather. Family legend had it that around the age of fifteen James “took off his best (or only) pair of boots and walked barefoot southwards until he reckoned that he was cleverer than the local inhabitants. And he had to foot it as far south as Merseyside before he was satisfied that his specification could be met.”

James became a merchant in Liverpool and traveled to Africa, meeting Richard Burton (well known in exploration circles) in 1861. By 1881, Irvine was the owner of the Guinea Coast Gold Mining Company; he then employed Burton to survey each mine in order to prepare reports that would lure wealthy investors. Irvine would eventually become the go-between for his employee, carrying messages from Burton in Africa to Burton’s wife Isabel in England, and back again. Wrote Burton biographer Mary Lovell: “All communications went through James Irvine because the only ships regularly visiting the region [in Africa] were out of Liverpool.” Sir Richard Burton would dedicate his To the Gold Coast for Gold “To our excellent friend James Irvine….we inscribe these pages as a token of our appreciation and admiration for his courage and energy in opening and working the golden lands of western Africa.”

Irvine was above all else a shrewd businessman, if not always a strictly honest one, and was a man whose character was equal mix businessman and romantic, a combination of traits certain to prove fatal to any financial undertaking. He would lose everything when rumors sprang up among investors that a “200 ft gold reef” found by Burton would not pay out. With the equipment available to Irvine at the time, removing the ore was almost impossible.

Over time, the family would come to forget that their entrepreneurial relation had known Sir Richard Burton, let alone been the employer of that renowned and intrepid explorer. James Irvine would be remembered by his family mainly as a man who “could never command the requisite capital to be really successful and he seemed always to be backing lost causes…” This is a disservice to him, as he was frequently successful, albeit not very good at hanging on to any small fortunes that came his way, including one he made by exporting home-grown coffee plants. It cannot be denied that he made a name for himself.

James adored the other explorer in his life, his grandson Sandy, whom he outlived by two years, and Sandy returned the affection. Before Sandy sailed out of Liverpool in February 1924, his grandfather led him to believe that shipboard life would be filled with joyous singing. Sandy wryly wrote to his mother Lilian that in fact “people look more like a burial service than singing!” Since James Irvine had had lots of experience aboard ships throughout his various careers, he must have enjoyed the fun he had at his grandson’s expense.

It was this grandfather Sandy referred to when he wrote from Everest of a photograph he’d snapped in a Buddhist temple: “Looking from the Temple through the heavy wooden doorway to the Holy of Holies. The big Buddha cannot be seen as it stands about 20 feet above and behind. Taken while worshipping at the prayer rail about 5 steps below the altar in the pitch dark Temple! Don’t tell grandfather!!” Poignantly visible in the picture is Sandy’s kata, or prayer scarf, given him by the Lama of the monastery. “Grandfather will never own me as a grandson again,” Sandy wrote to his mother, “because I bowed down before a colossal Buddha...”

James Irvine’s mother was Christian Common, whose family were descendants of the Red Comyn, murdered by Robert the Bruce hundreds of years before in a power struggle for the Scottish throne. Sandy’s middle name was Comyn, reflecting the family pride in this descent.

On his mother’s side, Sandy was descended from the Colleys, a name common in English records at least as far back as the eleventh century. The Colleys appear to have been mainly a border family, raising sheep and probably fighting in the interminable border skirmishes of the Middle Ages. A Gertrude Davies-Colley was a traveling companion of Alice Bailey, noted for claiming to be possessed by a Tibetan monk. Gertrude may or may not have been a relation, but the Davies-Colley name was fairly well known, and the connection to Tibet is interesting. Sandy’s mother Lilian was the daughter of a successful Manchester solicitor, Thomas Davies-Colley. The Davies-Colley family owned a house called Newbold, which would eventually come into the possession of Sandy’s bachelor uncle Thomas. Sandy spent countless vacations on this estate as a child and youth.

Sandy was born in the town of Birkenhead on 8 April 1902 to William and Lilian Irvine, and George Mallory’s own family lived in the same town from 1904 onward. Birkenhead, whose history can be traced to the founding of Birchen Head Priory in 1150, was a boomtown by the Victorian era. The priory, ruined by Henry VIII, has been restored and is used today for concerts. Birkenhead Park, the world’s first municipal park, deeply influenced Frederick Lane Olmsted’s design for New York’s own Central Park. The town played host in 1917 to Wales’ National Eisteddfod, an event the fifteen year old Sandy may very well have attended.

In 1860, William Lord Hesketh established his Lever soap company in Birkenhead, and in that same year Europe’s first street tramway was founded in the town. The tram was electrified a year before Sandy’s birth, and was still in use in the 1930s. A rejuvenated tram system runs in Birkenhead today, using the color scheme from the original trams. Birkenhead is also home to a large collection of battleships from all eras, something that would have fascinated the young Sandy.

The world’s first Boy Scout troop was begun in Birkenhead in 1906 on Park Road West. Sandy’s childhood home was located at 56 Park Road South, and he might have been drawn to the Scouts as a child, though there is no record of his ever having joined them.

Judging by descriptions of the Park Road house left by Alec Irvine, it was a fairly large estate, with a large back yard, gardens, a detached garage, a croquet field, an orchard and a tennis court. The family had expanded their grounds by purchasing the gardens of their neighbors, and surrounded themselves with hedgerows and brick walls. Today, the family downplays the amount of money that the Irvines possessed at the time of Sandy’s birth in 1902, but the fact remains that paupers would hardly have owned this amount of property. I have a collection of recent photographs, given me by a dear friend who traveled to Birkenhead a few years ago, and can attest to the immensity of the house.

The upper classes of Edwardian England, which included the Irvines, had a world of privilege at their fingertips. Jane Pettigrew, author of An Edwardian Childhood, described the era as “a short-lived wedding party that lasted one brief decade,” and only a handful of England’s population were wedding guests. It was a time that saw dizzying advances in all areas of life, including the first airplanes, votes for women, refrigeration, photography as a hobby, a better understanding of illnesses and their causes and cures, electricity in homes, and telephones. For the first time thought was given to the general health and well-being of children. Of course, this only included wealthier children; England’s impoverished majority were still sending their offspring to hard toil by the time a child was nine or ten, and sometimes younger. Special dispensations were given at school for children who needed to go to work.

Sandy Irvine was one of the lucky few. He grew up in a home large enough to contain an upper-floor classroom and nursery, and from the moment of his birth he was surrounded by nannies and maidservants. Most comfortable homes of the period had several floors that held dozens of rooms, although the main focus of the small Irvine children was the nursery floor. They would have taken their meals here until they were old enough to join the adults at table downstairs, around the age of fourteen.

Sandy’s day as a small child was spent with either a nanny or maidservants, and this would hold true until he was sent away to boarding school at eight. According to Jane Pettigrew, “it was Nanny who dried tears, bathed and bandaged cut knees,…washed, dressed, scolded, supervised and fed. She organized games and outings, she read stories, taught the alphabet and numbers, instructed in good manners, undressed and bathed, and then when evening prayers had been carefully recited, she popped her little charges into bed.”

As a small child, therefore, Sandy probably saw very little of his parents. Popular magazines with titles like “Crèche News” and “Baby—The Mother’s Magazine” were written with mothers in mind, but were devoured as well by nannies and nursemaids who, Jane Pettigrew wrote, were expected to fill “the role of nurse, mother, teacher and friend.” Edwardian parents such as Lilian and Willie Irvine were generally not troubled by common childhood things such as teething or bad dreams; Nanny dealt with all of that. It would have been Nanny, not Lilian, who patched up Sandy’s scrapes and bruises and dried his tears.

Lilian Irvine and her husband had already had two children, Hugh Colley and Evelyn Victoria, by the time they moved to Birkenhead from Liverpool. Sandy was the first of four sons to be born in Birkenhead. Kenneth Neville (born in 1906), Alexander Scott (Alec, born in 1911) and Thomas Thurston (known as Tur, born in 1913), would complete the family.

Past the Bounds of Time POST 1

2011-04-30T11:34:00.001-06:00

Past the Bounds of Time: A Biography of Andrew Irvine
Copyright 1998-2011 by Salena Kay Odom Moffat

Brave heart at peace--youth’s splendour scarce begun
Far above earth encompassed by the sky
Thy joy to mount, the goal was all but won
God and the stars alone could see thee die.

Thou and thy comrade scaled the untrodden steep
Where none had ever ventured yet to climb
Wrapt in heroic dreams lie both asleep
Their souls still struggling upward past the bounds of time.

Till God’s clear clarion rends the last morn
Sleep on! We mourn not for ’tis God knows best
Then rise to greet the glad eternal dawn
Flooding with flame the peaks of Everest.
Freddie Prior, former master of Shrewsbury
Written in honor of Sandy Irvine, 1924

On May 16th, 1998, I fell hopelessly in love with a dead man.

All right, nothing that dramatic or gothic actually happened. But the fact remains that on that day I looked into a pair of eyes that had been dead for seventy-four years. And once I looked, I was hooked.

Earlier that day my husband and I had gone to see the now-famous IMAX film of the disastrous 1996 Everest expedition, showing at the Museum of Natural History in Denver. In the museum’s gift shop, I bought a paperback copy of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, and I devoured half the book that day. Everest had claimed me, an ordinary wife and mom, and its hold was powerful.

I was blissfully unaware just how powerful that hold would prove to be.
I went to my local library the same day in search of more. I’d been particularly intrigued by Krakauer’s account of the 1924 Everest expedition on which Andrew “Sandy” Irvine and George Leigh Mallory had vanished. I’m a huge fan of the mysterious, and I was determined to read everything I could find about that ages-past disappearance.

“All I could find” turned out to be, to my immense surprise, precisely one book. And although that book, The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine by Tom Holzel and Audrey Salkeld, was wonderful, it was ultimately unsatisfying. It dealt mainly with the life of George Mallory, a colorful member of the Bloomsbury crowd that had put London on its ear in the 1920s.

Mallory was well known in the various sets in which he traveled. He was, by all accounts, a sensitive, poetic, talented man, friend, husband, and father. His reputation as a mountaineer and climber was generally a good one, though opinions on that score tended to vary widely among his contemporary peers. As with many historical personages, Mallory’s memory has today received a high gloss of varnish that would astonish even him.

Now, for those eyes I mentioned. Within the pages of the Holzel/Salkeld book was a black and white photograph of a dashing blond man with haunting eyes that grabbed me and haven’t let me go. They belonged to Sandy Irvine, the man with whom George Mallory died.

And Everest’s hold tightened.

I burrowed further into various library catalogues and databases, eagerly searching for more about the doomed 1924 expedition. And I found…
…precisely one other book, The Irvine Diaries by Herbert Carr. It wasn’t a biography, but rather consisted in the main of transcriptions of Sandy’s Everest diary. A brief account of his life by his much-younger brother Alec was included. Rather than satisfying me, this slim 1970s-era book just left me wanting more.
I found myself only further intrigued, my usual response to being thwarted. Sandy Irvine’s story was clouded, hidden, and therefore, to me, a challenge. I wondered why, where George Mallory had several published biographies of his life, Sandy had, at the time, nothing. The Everest literature generally included his name, naturally, but not much else.

I quickly realized that the only way I’d ever know more about Sandy’s life was if I dug in and researched him myself. Sometime in the first two weeks of June 1998, I decided to write what would be the first in-depth biography of him. After all, I reasoned, no one had cared enough about Sandy’s life in the seventy-four years since his death to write a full-length biography. Why not me?

Everest’s hold was now permanent.

I wrote dozens of letters around the world and received gratifying responses. I was put in touch with Audrey Salkeld, who was encouragement personified. Her e-mails were full of information and support.

Audrey advised me to write to a woman called Julie Steele (she uses “Julie Summers” as her professional name when writing, and in the pages that follow I will use “Summers” when referencing her printed work, and “Steele” when referring to her personally). Julie, it transpired, was Sandy Irvine’s great-niece, the granddaughter of his sister Evelyn. I liked her immediately from her friendly e-mails, and she seemed eager to help me with my book.

By this time, 1998 was drawing to a close. My research went on apace, and I was deeply steeped in Everestiana. However, I would still need the family’s help for information regarding Sandy’s short life. Since his death in 1924 at the age of twenty-two, his family had closed ranks around their famous relation, and very little substantial information was allowed out. This only served to deepen the mysteriousness of it all, making Sandy a reclusively romantic figure, and making any would-be biographer’s job a maddeningly tough one.

It should have served not as a warning bell but as a warning claxon.

Julie promised all the help she could, and graciously asked family members to speak with me.

And then, in February 1999, Julie phoned me and told me I absolutely had to get to England in March. Much was happening. An expedition specifically to find the bodies of Sandy Irvine and George Mallory was to be attempted that spring. It would mark the 75th anniversary of the 1924 tragedy. A conference was to be held at Shrewsbury School on March 12th, a school Sandy had attended as a teenager, to which several important people were invited. The list of invitees included, much to my gratification, my own name.

I was genuinely glad to be invited to this conference. It gave me a thrill to read, in a warm e-mail from Stephen Holroyd, one of Shrewsbury’s housemasters, my name on the itinerary as “Biographer of Sandy Irvine.” As Audrey said in her e-mail urging me to find a way to get to England, “Exciting times, eh?” For an ordinary wife and mom, and an American at that, who’d set her sights on rather extraordinary things, they were “exciting times” indeed!

I managed to arrange the trip, and landed at Gatwick airport on March 10th full of excitement. Julie picked me up at the train station near her home and installed me in her warm, comfortable house for the next six days. I was in England, the first time I’d ever set foot in a foreign country other than Canada.
The days flew by. Julie was a generous, gracious hostess, and I felt very much a part of the family. I even bonded with her three delightful young sons, and learned more about Nintendo than I’d thought possible.

The conference at Shrewsbury was nothing less than magical. The school, with its mellow red brick buildings, is set among rolling hills on the Severn River. You can see into Wales from Shrewsbury’s riverbanks.

At the conference, I finally met Audrey face to face and was quite enchanted by her. She had a great deal of energy and enthusiasm, albeit masked beneath a quiet and unassuming demeanor. I also met Peter Firstbrook of the BBC, and Graham Hoyland, who were to be part of the planned spring expedition. Sandy’s life was discussed in detail, and Stephen Holroyd proudly displayed the school’s collection of photographs of Sandy.

Audrey gave me photocopies of most of the material she possessed regarding Sandy, and to this collection would be added photocopies from a visit to the Alpine Club library and the Royal Geographical Society. I accumulated reams of documents, and Julie herself added to the mounting pile with photos of Sandy and copies of a great many of his letters. She even made me some business cards, something I had never even thought of doing.

A highlight of my trip was the visit to Merton College, Oxford, the college Sandy had been attending before his death. Julie and I visited the library there, and Sandy’s journals and diaries were laid before me at a timeworn table. With the mandatory white gloves on my hands, I flipped through the penciled pages, and for hours was lost in his account of his Everest experience.

At Merton College, in an intensely quiet, secluded little courtyard, stands a stone monument to Sandy’s memory. It was twilight when we sought out this memorial, and the air was clear, crisp and cool.

The monument is inaccessible without walking across the grass, and the grass itself is lush, soft, and springs beneath your feet as you approach the marker. It’s tall, this marker, and crowned with a carved stone flame. Ancient windows frame the courtyard, and trees and bushes deepen the feeling of seclusion. Hushed and withdrawn from the world, this small spot doesn’t really reflect the type of person Sandy Irvine was. Only the flame captures the essence of his spirit that the cloistered spot fails to honor.

Departure time eventually came. Before I left, Julie announced that the family considered me to be Sandy’s official biographer. Her father, whom I’d interviewed on tape, told me the family had every confidence in me before he hugged me goodbye.
After my return to the States, I was contacted by the PBS television show NOVA. The expedition in search of Sandy and Mallory’s bodies was on the mountain. NOVA wanted me to be “on call” for an interview should Sandy’s body be found.

Work on the book was going smoothly. Mountaineer’s Books in Seattle expressed interest.

And then Mallory’s body was found, and my world came crashing down.

The blow fell with a single phone call from Julie. Sandy’s relatives were upset (to put it extremely mildly) over the way the discovery of Mallory’s body had been handled. They had no desire for Sandy’s body, should it be found, to receive the same intense publicity Mallory had received. Julie told me that the family had decided she would be the only one writing any biography, and that she thought a phone call would be better than simply telling me, and I quote, “to fuck off.” To this day, I am uncertain what one has to do with the other—did the family assume I would desecrate Sandy’s body with my biography? Did they think that I was somehow going to publish pictures of Sandy’s dead body (never mind that as of this writing—April 2011, over a decade after Mallory’s body was found—Sandy has not been found let alone photographed), as had been done in British tabloids with Mallory’s? And, regardless, what had happened to the family who had welcomed me with open arms and seen me off at the station with a hug? It was baffling behavior.

To add insult to injury, a friend told me in an e-mail in July 2002 that if she remembered aright “Nicholas Hellen [a reporter for the London Sunday Times] had been going to co-write the biography with Julie Summers.” Nicholas Hellen had, just six days prior to this e-mail, e-mailed me himself without a single hint that he and Julie had possibly been undermining me all along. I had by this time e-mailed Julie and told her that I had some interesting new information; I had heard unconfirmed rumors that Sandy had fathered a love-child, and a woman claiming to be his granddaughter had contacted me. (I did not reveal another and far more astonishing piece of information that had by then fallen into my hands regarding Sandy’s love life.) In her reply, Julie told me that there was a “journalist in London who would love to talk to your gossipy girl about being Sandy’s granddaughter. Can I put him in touch with you via email? He’s been chasing this story for months. Lots of love, Julie.” I of course told her yes, and then e-mailed Hellen. The possibility that Julie (“lots of love”) was baiting me for information is galling.

In retrospect, knowing what I now know about Nicholas Hellen, I am extremely grateful that I did not, in the end, give him any information at all. He stopped e-mailing me, and I did not—luckily for me—pursue it. Hellen attempted to blackmail a London-based blogger—via e-mail, of all things—in August 2006. The blogger, whom I will continue to refer to as Abby Lee (her chosen nom de plume, though Hellen did in fact publish her real identity), writes a blog called “Girl With a One-Track Mind.” She valued her anonymity, especially considering the subject matter of her well-written blog. He told Ms. Lee that he possessed unflattering photos of her, that he knew her mother’s place of residence and profession, and that he would publish his article outing her true name unless she agreed to a photo-shoot and interview. She reacted by posting his e-mail on her blog for the world to see, and the whole thing unleashed a firestorm that continues to some degree today. The blogging community saw to it that when the name “Nicholas Hellen” is placed into the Google search bar, the first things that come up still are all articles dealing with his attempted blackmail of Ms. Lee.

Hellen has been called a “glorified royal correspondent” who “enjoys tormenting junior staff, screaming down the phone and trying to cover up his own errors by blaming others.” Blogger Madame Arcati wrote of Hellen that people “who deal with him describe him variously as a ‘psychopath’ or a ‘loony’, a ‘bully’ or just ‘a plain nasty piece of work’.” This is the man who may very well have been given a large role in Julie Steele’s biography in a collaboration that could easily have begun while I was staying under Julie’s roof. How Nicholas Hellen, a man of whom Madame Arcati said that “there can be few people so morally unpleasant and self-seeking,” would have better handled Sandy’s body in a biography than I would have is another thing that remains unclear to me.

It’s been twelve years since then, and though I am thanked in Julie’s book, Fearless on Everest, in the last paragraph but one on the last page of acknowledgments, I must admit that the experience was a bitter blow that left deep wounds.
Audrey urged me, after I sent her a despairing e-mail, to write my book anyway. The time has come, more than a decade on, to acknowledge Everest’s hold on me. To acknowledge Sandy’s hold on me. I’m only sorry that it’s taken me so long to follow Audrey’s sound advice.

An additional spur to finishing the book I’d begun was my receipt, in 2001, of a diary purportedly written by Sandy’s girlfriend, a girl named Flora Louise Deacon. This is the piece of rather explosive material I did not reveal to Julie Steele or Nicholas Hellen. Three years before this unlooked-for information had been sent to me, I had been unceremoniously fired by phone, and therefore owed the Irvine family nothing further. To Nicholas Hellen, I had never owed anything in the first place. The diary was sent to me by one of Flora Deacon’s relatives, and proved to contain a wealth of information. The girl writing the journal had known Sandy Irvine, that much became very clear as I read her words. Could I trust that she was who she claimed to be, Sandy’s only love? Weighing the diary in one side of the balance, and what I knew of Sandy’s life and character in the other, I came to the conclusion that the diary was in all likelihood quite genuine. There is not one word in it that doesn’t meld perfectly with what is known of Andrew Irvine.

Past the Bounds of Time

2011-04-30T11:33:00.004-06:00

I am going to begin posting bits of my unpublished biography of Andrew "Sandy" Irvine who disappeared on Everest in 1924. I welcome any comments! The original manuscript is heavily footnoted with extensive references, and if anyone would like a specific reference please feel free to post a comment requesting the information. ALL MATERIAL IS COPYRIGHT 2011 by SALENA KAY ODOM MOFFAT.

Change of blog purpose :)

2011-04-05T10:55:00.004-06:00

Yes, once again, I'm back, LOL. This blog is changing now from one about politics to one about paranormal research (though one could easily argue that they're sometimes the same thing).

I'd like first of all to give a shout-out to some of my besties, Lisa Hoskinson, Kelly Neff, Melissa Burk, Maggie Spikberg, Sharon Marks Gluck, Nancy Ratliff, Kristi Will-Handley, Robyn Sweetroll Ramsey, Charli Nichols, Sofia Nornsater, and Mike Roberts. You guys are wonderful, and I'm deeply grateful to have all of you in my life!

Okay, on to the paranormal.... First of all, I'm finally reading The Amityville Horror (yes, I'm slightly behind the times, LOL!) and I've got to say it's one of the funniest books I've ever read. People, if you are in tight financial straits and you want to make money by faking a haunting, here's my tip: leave off the pigs, marching bands in the living room, and green Jello on the walls. Seriously.

Hello again, world!

2010-09-01T16:48:00.000-06:00

Back yet again, and this time I am determined to revitalize my blog! Much has been happening in my life of late, and I want very badly to return to writing. And so, hello once more, world! :)

From the Abyss

2010-04-21T12:22:00.000-06:00

It's been forever since I've posted anything, and I'm determined to begin again on at least a semi-regular basis. Lately I have come to have a much deeper understanding of my faith, and simultaneously I am being bombarded with unimagineable negativity. Just goes to show that when you choose to follow God more closely, the Devil will surely notice you and be right at your heels within micro-seconds.

I just finished reading an amazing book called A Crime So Monstrous by E. Benjamin Skinner, and I cannot recommed this book highly enough. It deals with modern-day human trafficking and slavery, and is absolutely horrific. It has certainly re-awakened the social conscience I had in college, which is a pretty cool feeling.

The Culture of Death

2008-08-22T15:36:00.000-06:00

Okay, so a new rant from me for the first time in yonks. I just received my eldest daughter's senior year yearbook from Pomona High School, Arvada CO. I am at the moment shaking as I write this post. The yearbook, cover to cover, bears a font which would be perfect on a slasher-flick poster. It's a Halloween font, with every single letter dripping black blood. Every page, every header, and to cap it off every single child's name in the baby picture section. MY child's name, right there above her angelic smiling toddler face, dripping black blood.

This is the result of a generation of children raised with time-outs. This is the result of a teenaged yearbook staff allowed to run the entire process without adult supervision. This is the result of a generation of kids being raised in what has been described as a culture of death.

Names above baby pictures, dripping blood.

The kind of thing people like Michael Schiavo, and nearly the entire nation of Denmark and the state of Oregon, might just approve of.

Traumatized, shocked, appalled. And thinking quite seriously of litigation.

My daughter's senior memories, dripping black blood.

Oh you have GOT to be kidding

2008-04-03T10:12:00.000-06:00

This from Reuters: "BEIJING (Reuters) - China urged the United States to understand the true nature of the Dalai Lama clique, which it blames for stirring up last month's violence in Tibet, and support China's "just position," state media said on Thursday." The entire article is from this link and is also pasted below in its entirety because things tend to disappear off of Yahoo after astonishingly short periods of time. All credit given to Reuters, of course. As a woman who loves Tibet, who adores the gentle and peaceful and utterly amazing Dalai Lama, this just makes me sick.

Article:

China urges U.S. to see "true nature" of Dalai Lama
Wed Apr 2, 11:21 PM ET

China urged the United States to understand the true nature of the Dalai Lama clique, which it blames for stirring up last month's violence in Tibet, and support China's "just position," state media said on Thursday.

China blames Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, whom it labels a separatist, for stirring up the Lhasa violence in which it says 19 people died. The Tibet government-in-exile says around 140 people died.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi "explained the truth of the Lhasa riots, and expounded the stance of the Chinese government" in talks with visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the China Daily said.

"He stressed that the measures taken by the Chinese government according to law had not only gained support from the Chinese people, but also won understanding and support from majority of the countries in the world."

U.S. President George W. Bush awarded the Dalai Lama one of the highest U.S. honors, the Congressional Gold Medal, in October and called on China to open talks with him.

Paulson met President Hu Jintao, Vice Premier Wang Qishan and Yang, among other officials. He is due to meet Premier Wen Jiabao on Thursday.

Paulson declined to say whether he had raised the issue of Chinese treatment of Tibetan protesters directly with Hu.

"I talked about this in an appropriate way. I'm not talking about what message I had for any particular leader," Paulson told reporters, but added he had expressed U.S. regret at the violence.

Chinese leaders accuse the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the wave of demonstrations from his home in exile in India, where he has lived since a failed 1959 uprising against Communist rule.

China says his intent is to disrupt the Beijing Olympics, which run from August 8-24, and to ultimately win independence for the remote, mountain region.

The Dalai Lama's representatives deny the charges and the 72-year-old has repeated that he is seeking greater autonomy for Tibet, not independence.

(Reporting by Nick Macfie and Glenn Somerville; Editing by Valerie Lee)
Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Traherne--Chapter Three

2008-04-03T07:17:00.004-06:00

Traherne--Chapter Three

I began this meditative journey expecting, I think, to find myself agreeing with Traherne on almost every point. I arrive at Chapter Three finding myself disagreeing in some respects with some of his views. This is, of course, only to be expected, and is actually a positive thing. To agree 100 percent with anybody is a dangerous thing, and can lead only to your own heartbreak.

Do I think Traherne was a heretic? No, I don’t. I’m not sure if perhaps the editor occasionally goofed, or if the views are pure Traherne as Traherne meant them. I wrote my final bits for Chapter Two while feeling quite under the weather with fibromyalgia and while dealing with some internal demons of my own regarding several situations about which I am--or at least feel--powerless. Thus, I read with a mind already more than a little distracted with my own problems. This obviously colors how I saw everything, including Traherne. I saw his views as almost heretical, the idea that one human can know God’s thoughts--after all, this is precisely what the serpent offered, that our eyes would be opened and we would know…I am certain that Traherne cannot have meant it this way! It just seemed a bit off to me yesterday, that’s all.

I caught the reference to the stars and thought of astrology, or rather of what astrology was when it began, an attempt to scientifically understand the influences of the heavens upon the human body and mind. Astrology today has become so much dross. When men like John Dee were alive under Elizabeth I, it was a science to be reckoned with. This is the astrology that would have been much closer to Traherne’s stars. Just a passing thought about history on my part here, nothing really to say.

I also liked the reference to the non-importance of tennis balls. A direct reference, if I am not much mistaken, to the speech Henry V gives in Shakespeare’s play regarding the gift sent him by the king of France of tennis balls. They are meant as an insult, and Henry takes them as such. Man cannot be pleased though he possess millions, says Traherne, as those millions “are no more than so many tennis balls in comparison of the greatness and highness of his soul.”

Man strives after the wind, Traherne says. And he will reap only vanity by so doing. This put me in mind of Hosea 8:7--”When they sow the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind.” Hosea in verse 4 of the same chapter says that the men of Israel “with their silver and gold…made idols for themselves, to their own destruction.” Traherne must be referring to this biblical passage for he is speaking again of the utter vanity of striving for material goods to the exclusion of God.

I thought immediately of Blake’s grain of sand when I read “You never see the world aright until you see how a sand exhibits the wisdom and power of God…” Pretty powerful stuff, this. And Traherne is saying that until we recognize God in the very small, we cannot see God’s presence or hand in the very large. This is something today’s physicists have recognized, and they take the search for meaning (whether they use the word ‘God’ or not) to the level of the quantum, to the level of the astronomically small.

We finally see the phrase “waking up in heaven” in this chapter. “Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in heaven, see yourself in your father’s palace, and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys…as if you were among the angels. The bride of a monarch in her husband’s chamber has no such causes of delight as you.”

Traherne asks so very much of us, and I am certain he realized this when writing to his friend. It is virtually impossible to maintain this level of adoration and wonder in an everyday context. The world invades, slowly and insidiously, our every waking moment. We cannot escape it. Most mornings now I awaken in pain, and do not think first of God, nor even second or third or tenth. I have children, I have three books I am writing, I have bills to pay, I have breakfast to see to, I have….No, in this modern world it’s almost impossible to awake in heaven. I wish quite frequently for a simpler world, for a simpler existence, but in my personal everyday existence that’s just not going to happen. I long to be able to escape to the mountains, to dress as I wish to dress (this may sound silly to most, but I am deeply disaffected by the jeans and tees and sneakers that I wear, and I really want to dress more as I would have had I been alive in, say, the 1920s, in tweeds and twin-sets and such…I know that it could be done, but finding the time, not to mention the clothes at a reasonable price, leads only to headache), to write my books in peace and quiet without interruption, to be able to read Traherne’s magnificent book as it deserves to be read with full and undivided attention. Not gonna happen, and I am not so naïve as to think that it will. Only if I joined a convent, I think, would such things be allowed me.

Traherne goes on to speak of the “riches of darkness.” Traherne says that we “invent ways” to make ourselves miserable “in the presence of riches,” by which he means God’s riches. He then goes on to say that we follow instead after Satan and his riches, the riches of darkness. And we do so deliberately, willingly, even gladly. We invent ways to follow Satan rather than God. The truth of this can be seen in every war mankind has ever fought, in the face of every human allowed to starve to death, in the silent screams of every human neglected and allowed to die alone and friendless. “The works of darkness are repining, envy, malice, covetousness, fraud, oppression, discontent, and violence,” writes Traherne. He again urges us to look at the glowing stars rather than at the diamonds on our fingers.

Everything Traherne says makes sense, yet he offers no real advice thus far on how, exactly, to achieve this wondrous admiration of God’s works. He says we must do so, we must focus all of our energies on this, but he doesn’t tell us how. Again, we come up against the modern world that did not exist when Traherne was writing, a world he could not have imagined. “We need nothing but open eyes,” he writes, which was an easier thing to possess in the world in which he wrote. Short of entering a cloistered religious order, the noise of today’s world will impede on your life, on your prayers, on your meditations. I found myself wishing for a how-to manual by the middle of Chapter Three, and this alone shows how we think today. We want a DIY fix, and we want it now. We don’t want to have to sit there uncomfortably and think “yeah, Mr. Traherne, great, super, but look, buddy, show me the way already!” We don’t want to be alone with our own thoughts even so far as to work out a feasible way for ourselves.

Which brings me up against something else about Traherne and the world in which he wrote. Because, of course, none of his open-eyed seeing of God’s treasures would have been available to the lower classes. A hardscrabble life does not give itself easily to meditation or to the understanding that there are riches worth far more than money. To watch child after child die, to watch harvest after harvest wither, to watch a young girl become a wizened hag in mere years rather than decades…none of this would have given itself to seeing God in a grain of sand. The sand was just sand. The only hope of “waking up in heaven” that most people had was just that, an afterlife with God rather than an everyday experience while still alive. Traherne’s ease of noticing God’s greatness was an ease that would have been available to a select few. His words were addressed only to those who could read, and thus only to those who were educated. I cannot help but wonder if his flock heard these words at sermons, and what they thought of them if they did. I am not calling Traherne an elitist by any stretch, merely pointing out an historical reality. It would have been extremely difficult for the lowest classes to realize about the world that “all things in it are so perfectly yours that you cannot desire them any other way” while they themselves starved for want of a loaf of bread. Traherne was writing to the friend of a friend, a woman whose soul he wished to help on the way to the perfection of the angels, and so his words to ordinary people may have been very different, but those are not the words we are here studying. The biographical blip on the book’s end fold reminds us that Traherne was educated at Oxford, was a parish priest for a time, and was then the personal chaplain to Charles II’s Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Hardly a difficult life, or a poor one. The court of Charles II was not known for simplicity or religious thinking. Traherne wrote Centuries of Meditation to be read by one woman, not by a multitude, and that woman must have been wealthy and educated. To assume otherwise is naïve. Again, I am not bashing Traherne, merely saying that everyday people alive in the late 17th century would have had as difficult a time focusing on the glories of God’s riches as we do today.

Traherne--rest of Chapter Two

2008-04-02T10:13:00.002-06:00

Traherne--Chapter Two Continued

God’s Thoughts

I had a bit of trouble with this part, mainly because it seems to me that even to strive to know God’s thoughts is dangerously close to heresy. Overreaction, yes, I know. Traherne says that in God’s revealed Word, we have his thoughts, but I wonder whether is so. We have a glimpse of God’s thoughts, yes, but a glimpse only, enough to tantalize and make us ache for more. I believe it’s John who says that there was so much more that Jesus did and said that it would take volumes upon volumes to get across. We do not have all of God’s thoughts. Period. To desire to know all things as God knows them, to see all things as God sees them, is natural, and good. But I cannot agree with Traherne that such knowledge, such sight, is possible while we yet draw breath. Saint Paul clearly states in Corinthians that we don’t know, we don’t see, only when we are in heaven will any of that be revealed to us in its full glory. “How shall we be led by his divine spirit till we have his mind?” Traherne asks, and I agree with the question. But I think we cannot know God’s mind just yet. This bit smacked slightly of the serpent in the garden, and perhaps that’s just my fibromyalgia and exhaustion (2 hours sleep from which I awakened in incredible pain) talking, but there it is…

Prizing Things

Also, slight trouble here, and it may be with the translation. I don’t possess a copy of the original text. God made only one to enjoy the world, Adam, and “not a multitude,” says Traherne, and therefore the world is meant for only one. I get the meaning here, and in the next section, that the individual must be the one who truly enjoys the world, who sees God in the skies and the rivers and the fruits and the animals. I get it. But I also know that God made more than one originally by making Eve to be Adam’s companion, and therefore God must have meant us to enjoy his creation together, as couples, as groups, as parents teaching children, as children caring for parents. I don’t believe God meant for us to become hermits (nor do I think that this is what Traherne is saying). Solitary meditation is a delight and a necessity, but I think that congregating is also essential. I do not, like Traherne, think that each individual in their enjoyment of creation “are made to enjoy it for my further advancement,” though as I said, I do get the point that Traherne is trying to make.

Everything Points in the Same Direction

I loved this paragraph. Very rich and affirming and glorious! A contrast to the slightly off-putting verbiage of the previous two sections, this section is very clear and concise. Enjoy what God gave you, realize that you are his “heir, child, and bride.”

God Delights in Giving

“To know God is life eternal,” says Traherne, and this is a sublime way to recap the entire Bible into one small sentence. We must ever strive to know God, with the caveat that we understand that we cannot know everything just yet. The striving to know God pleases him, and we can begin to know some of God’s thoughts by loving the universe he gave us. As Traherne points out in the next section, this planet of ours is just a speck compared to the rest of creation, and we need to realize that, to take this vastness into account when we think about God. God didn’t just give us the earth--he gave us all of creation. He gave us “infinite and eternal treasures that are to abide forever after the Day of Judgment.” This is no small thing, but a thing to be marveled at, to be wondered at, of which to be in absolute and profound awe.

God’s Presence and Eternity are our Companions

“The omnipresence and eternity of God are your fellows and companions. And all that is in them ought to be made your familiar treasures,” says Traherne. Our guides on the road are the only guides we should ever want or need. To be bounded by eternity is to see oneself surrounded by all of creation, to see oneself almost as floating amongst the stars, with God himself beside us. What an incredible vision this is! Look beyond, Traherne is shouting at us, look beyond and up and around and look within too, and find the infinite treasure that is God’s eternity. Quite a powerful thought, that. And one that is all to easy to forget in the hurly-burly of everyday life, when we are bogged down in the decision whether to buy the new strawberry Chex or the Mini-Wheats.

Loving God with all the Powers of Your Soul

If you love God, you will necessarily love his laws, his ways, because you will understand that his laws are “commentaries” on his works. God’s laws are not made to break us, but to bear us up, to show us the way. God’s laws “command you to love all that is good, and when you see well, you enjoy what you love.” God is far from unreasonable. “You will feed with pleasure upon everything that is his. So that the world shall be a grand jewel of delight unto you: a very paradise and the gate of heaven. It is indeed the beautiful frontispiece of eternity; the temple of God and the palace of his children.” When you unreservedly give love, you will receive love in return, and thereby see the very gates of heaven.

26 March 2008--Traherne

2008-03-27T07:26:00.001-06:00

26 March 2008--Traherne

I have recently, in just the past few days, found my path shifting and changing, becoming both something intensely new and frighteningly familiar. It’s a path I have been on before, and I found the experience then to be both uplifting and almost completely destructive. I have no idea what the outcome will be this go-round.

In the light of this, my study of Thomas Traherne has suffered. I have not picked up the book nor indeed given it a thought for days now. I don’t actually feel badly about this, as there are many ways to meditate. My experiences on this particular path can be viewed as meditative, for they have taken me quite deeply within myself. Nine years ago, these experiences took me to the brink of suicide. You cannot go deeper within yourself than to be on the edge of actually killing yourself, and then pulling back at the last possible moment.

I won’t bore with details--those are being spelled out as clearly as possible in another format than an online journal--but I will say that I never wish to experience that kind of pain again. I was betrayed, and I was stolen from. Not stolen from physically, in the sense of losing material things, but stolen from intellectually. My mind was raped, savaged on an international scale, and no, I am not being overly dramatic, believe it or not. I sank into despair. My dark night of the soul had begun, and only now do I realize that it didn’t begin to show hints of dawn until perhaps four months ago.

I felt there was no need, no purpose for my continued existence. I wanted to die. I sank into depression that was left untreated--I have always been far too proud to seek help. The path that had, in late 1998, seemed so glorious and full of promise had become, by mid-1999, a slough of despair.

I have only this minute realized something truly astonishing. The path, the expedition if you will, upon which I’d launched myself mirrored another expedition perfectly. Beginning in hope and clarity and bright ambition and ending in the chill grip of an icy death. I feel no need to explain further here, but there are those out there who will know exactly what I mean.

And now I am on that same path again, but I am following a quite different route to the summit, if you will. I am beginning that same journey anew, with fresh eyes, with a new heart, with a friend I didn’t have when I began this journey ten years ago, and with a love who though impossibly distant from me is still within reach of my loving thoughts. I write this on his birthday. At the outset here, I say thank you to my friend, whom I love deeply. Without her, I wouldn’t be writing this entry tonight. Her compassion and forgiveness and love have shown me the way to courage. Have shown me that against all odds, goodness can and does win.

And so, Traherne, in the midst of this. Traherne as another companion on this journey:

Enjoying the World--Chapter Two

This section began with words that I found particularly apropos to my situation. Ten years ago, I failed to enjoy the world. I failed to see the glories that were all around me. I failed to see that I had been a victim, yes, but also a trailblazer. I failed to see, simply failed to see. “To think well is to serve God in the interior court,” says Traherne, and I have a great need right now to think well. A great need to both find that interior court and serve as I am meant to serve. To stop being so focused on the wrongs done me--and they were legion--and to focus instead on healing the hurt inside, focus on finding the Grace to go on. On finding “the goodness and wisdom of God so manifest” in the created world around me. When we are at our lowest point, that’s precisely when we begin to do two things--1. Hate and blame God; 2. Fail to see God’s hand in everything around us, even in our pain.

The Reason we were Created--Chapter Two

“Love is deeper than at first it can be thought.” I was slightly disappointed that Traherne didn’t really expand on this, but instead re-iterated the importance of seeing the wonder of God’s creation. For love is far deeper than can ever be known, and is one of the most mysterious--most bizarre, sometimes--forces in the universe. Without love we cannot be expected to acknowledge the hand of God in anything at all. Without love, we cannot know fully and eternally that someone thousands of miles away loves us in return. Without love’s deepness, we could never rise to love’s heights. We would never forgive, never seek the benefit of others, never apologize. We would be selfish children, spoilt and screaming. And of course, Traherne’s point must be that if we can hardly enjoy God’s world if we’re busy throwing temper tantrums of loathing. We must love, or we cannot see.

Prizing all Things--Chapter Two

“Can you be holy without accomplishing the end for which you are created? Can you be divine unless you be holy?” There are steps, in other words, to reaching the goal of unity with God. This may be very difficult for some, as Westerners are basically a culture of instant gratification. We want unity with God, but we want it now if not sooner, and we do not under any circumstances want to work for it. We do not want to be told that we were created to accomplish something--we want the rewards without the effort. As Billy Connolly said in a Hothouse Flowers song, “Everybody’s born to do a certain thing, and if you’re dead jamming you find it. We’re here to make babies and look after the place, you know?” Dead jamming means lucky, I think. We all have a purpose, we all have something only we can do, and we have to find that something or, again, we will fail to see. And, says Traherne, we cannot hope to be holy, let alone divine, if we refuse to accomplish our work.

And with that in mind, I will close for the night, because my fibromyalgia kept me up all night last night and I’m simply tired. I will say that I have found the work I am meant to do, and though I failed signally at finishing it a decade ago, my life is far different now. I will not fail twice. I will accomplish what I am meant to accomplish. I will reach the summit.

Traherne--Chapter Two--Think Well

2008-03-18T10:03:00.001-06:00

Traherne--Think Well

The next many meditations will be choppy in the sense that they will be broken into several pieces over many days. I was over-ambitious to think that I could “do” a chapter every 3 to 4 days. We silly humans…

“Think Well.” That struck me rather powerfully all by itself, for we so very rarely think at all, let alone well. When Traherne asks, in the second paragraph, “What is more easy and sweet than meditation?” he is coming from a background where meditation could be accomplished without distraction by many people. This is simply not the case in the modern world, however, and we have to deliberately school ourselves into a meditative state. The world today is crammed full of distractions, and finding the time to meditate is exquisitely difficult, as it has been for me the past several days. We are constantly on the go, constantly focusing our energies on the hustle and bustle of the world around us.

In Traherne’s first paragraph, “Two Worlds,” he makes a brilliant observation. We are meant to love and enjoy the physical world, made by God to do just that, yet we get swept up so easily in the frills and the pomp and the money and the car-pool, and the 8-minute lunch break at Mickey D’s, and the price of gas and the downward-spiraling world/domestic economy. This is precisely the world we must condemn, and we must learn to focus our thoughts and our energies on the natural beauty surrounding us, on family, on humanitarian causes, on keeping this planet livable for the next seven generations (if I may borrow an analogy from my own Native American heritage).

Centuries ago, a group of people known as the Cathars became followers of what was known as the Albigensian heresy. They believed that all matter was inherently evil and that the God of the Old Testament was, in fact, the bad guy. The serpent, they argued, was the one telling the truth. This heresy was an extreme one, and resulted in a great deal of bloodshed, wherein the Cathars were exterminated (an Archbishop famously said to his crusaders of the Cathars: “Kill them all. Let God sort them out.”) but the heresy itself still exists in the modern neo-gnostic movement and among followers of the fiction of Dan Brown.

I use the Cathars here as a lesson, one I think Traherne would very much agree with. The world around us isn’t the problem; the world around us was given to us by God as a place of beauty and love and hope and peace. It is we who make it otherwise. It is we, not God, who make the planet unbearable. And it is we who then fall on our knees and worship the unbearableness we ourselves have created.

I disagree with Traherne that it is easier to think good thoughts than evil ones, because the history of Earth has proven beyond doubt that it is very, very easy indeed to be evil. It’s far simpler to toss the Mickey D’s wrapper on the ground than to walk the extra (and backbreaking, I would assume) ten steps to the trash receptacle. It’s easier to slaughter twelve million people in concentration camps (yes, twelve million. People do not remember any longer that Hitler killed twelve million, not six. Six million were Jewish, the other six million were a mixed bag of gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gays, lesbians, and anyone else who disagreed with the Third Reich.) than it is to save them. It’s easier to slap a child who is misbehaving than it is to sit the child down and listen to them, to discipline them with a time-out or take away a privilege. It’s easier to begin a war than to end one (isn’t it, Mr. Bush?) Far easier to trash the planet than to clean it up (just ask China, which has five months to clean their air before the Olympics. Not gonna happen, is my guess, and we’re going to see athletes in gas masks).

I like very much the way Traherne says that we should try to retain the beauty of the planet in our minds, to reflect on the glory around us. Again, I think back to Terry Pratchett and his character Death, who is utterly gob smacked by the human ability to be bored when the entire universe is there for us to gaze upon with astonishment.

Trials and Tribulations

2008-03-14T10:23:00.001-06:00

This has been a trying week for yours truly, and I feel fortunate to even be writing this entry. The week really began when I took my youngest daughter to the emergency room with abdominal pain on Sunday night. Thankfully, it was not appendicitis. On the other hand, they have no idea what caused (and continues to cause) the pain, even after an ultrasound. And so we are relying rather heavily on the healing powers of Motrin, and waiting to see if the problem persists.

And then my bank account went into the red through (partially only) my own negligence and bad record keeping (hey, I’ve been rather on edge of late, so a lapse in accounting may perhaps be excused) and I will therefore likely end up with my website suspended, and therefore I am posting everything on Blogger as well.

In the middle of all of this, I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and last night the pain was so severe it brought me to tears.

And so, I have not been keeping up with the Traherne. But then again, don’t my (albeit self-inflicted in some aspects) trials and tribulations prove that I should be meditating? It’s when we are attempting to become spiritually whole that the devil flits about our lives like a biting fly, isn’t it? And yes, I do believe in Satan’s existence.

All of which is a rather long intro to today’s post, but I wanted to get stuff off my chest. The Chapter Two post will be a many-parter, because I found myself pausing frequently to ponder and then ponder yet more (all while crying and basically freaking out in a small, quiet way). I will post my own thoughts over the next few days.

Traherne--Chapter One

2008-03-14T10:16:00.004-06:00

Thomas Traherne–Chapter One–Consider Secret Influences on Your Soul

Traherne begins his Centuries by thanking someone for the gift of a blank journal. This sounds so very familiar to modern readers, for we tend to think that we invented “journaling.” There is a huge demand for blank journals–go inside any Barnes and Noble and there is generally an entire section of blank books, with prices and quality ranging from the relatively inexpensive Moleskins so beloved of Ernest Hemingway to tooled leather-bound volumes from Italy. Blank journals, awaiting an author’s pen or pastel chalks or glued-in travel tickets and mementoes. I found myself wondering precisely what sort of journal Traherne was given, bearing in mind that books in the 17th century were very valuable things indeed, and not the $6 Harlequin romances we buy to read on the airplane and then bin the moment we reach our destination. Books were treasured things, and did not come cheaply, though they were far more readily available to Traherne’s generation than they were to Marlowe’s and Sidney’s.

And so this anonymous friend gave Thomas Traherne a blank journal, and he wrote a dedication to the friend (Mrs. Hopgood, his dear friend?) promising to fill it with things that the friend already loved without knowing it yet. And this caught my full attention, because we are today so obsessed with physical proofs, with having to hold things in our hands before we will accept their existence, and here is Traherne promising to fill the journal “with those truths you love without knowing them.” We are served notice immediately that we are reading the words of a true mystic. We are in the presence of a man who is confidently asserting his ability to reveal inner truths that we ourselves cannot yet see.

And along with this goes the statement that the friend (and by extension, ourselves as readers of these intimate words) already loves the truths that are hidden within. This is a beautiful way of putting into words the inner human drive for truth. The inner need for truth. We don’t know quite what the truth may be, but be most assuredly know that it’s there and that we already love it, we already yearn for it. Most importantly, though, we already possess it. In today’s world, this goes hand in hand with trying to find the still, small voice of God. We clutter our lives and our thoughts with so much noise, noise that just doesn’t matter when all is said and done, and somewhere along the way we lost the voice, we lost the knowledge that we already hold beloved truths within ourselves. But a part of us longs for those truths, a part of us is aware that they are there somewhere, if only we could access them. And so we turn to fortune tellers and horoscopes and we arrange our furniture the feng shui way and we work out at the gym until we drop, all in the hope of making our lives richer and better, when we might be better served by going into a church (or the woods, or our own back garden) and simply being quiet for a few minutes a day. Simply stopping to listen for the quiet voice of God, and for the quiet voice of truths we love without knowing quite what they are.

Traherne states this beautifully: “…I have found that things unknown have a secret influence on the soul, and like the center of the earth unseen violently attract it. We love we know not what, and therefore everything allures us.” We are drawn away by every whim, every fancy, in search of these secret influences. It’s why we bought Dan Brown’s wildly inaccurate novel and made him a millionaire a dozen times over. It’s why Sylvia Brown is so successful. It’s why Dr. Phil is so successful. It’s why internet chat rooms and “social networking” pages draw in our children by the thousands. The violent urge to find what we love, to find answers. We are all looking for “the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.” According to the late and much-missed Douglas Adams, that question is so vast, so all-encompassing, that it can have only one possible answer–42. The ultimate answer to the ultimate question, Adams tells us, is quite simply 42. No, it doesn’t make sense, and isn’t meant to. It’s an enigmatic answer for a question that has no logical answer. “The X-Files” paid quiet tribute to this by making Fox Mulder’s apartment number 42–there has rarely been a fictional character so bent on finding answers as Fox Mulder, whose stated motto was “I want to believe.”

We are all looking for 42, Traherne is saying. It pulls us, it exerts a gravitational force that is “violent” and that cannot be ignored. “Do you not feel yourself drawn by the expectation and desire of some great thing?” he asks. Once we see the truths we love but are unaware of, we will each become, Traherne says, “possessor of the whole world.” We will become aware of those truths we have always loved, we will see the sublime in the ordinary, we will see “things strange, yet common; incredible, yet known; most high, yet plain; infinitely profitable, but not esteemed.” We will see the diamond in the rough, as it were–the intensely beautiful, sparkling light hidden beneath the dusty and ordinary grey exterior.

Jesus once said that he came not to bring peace, but the sword. By this, I do not think somehow (insert “duh” here) that he meant that violence and warfare was the answer. I think he meant that his mission, his words, would divide and sunder people, both from one another as they clashed over ideals and beliefs, and from ourselves, internally, the division wrought by this inner battle to find the truths we love. Divisions that can either make us grow, or destroy us. Traherne says that he himself, in his Centuries, “will not by the noise of bloody wars and the dethroning of kings” show his reader the way, but rather “by the gentle ways of peace and love.” Love must be a healing balm, he says, a tender thing that seeks only to help the object of affection. Saint Paul’s letters to the Corinthians express this beautifully, of course, but Paul’s words regarding the kindness and patience of Love have become so known to us that they are almost a cliché, something trite and very Sunday School-ish, Those words of Paul, and here of Traherne, are nonetheless so desperately important to the entire gospel (which let us not forget means merely “good news”) of Christ, that we forget them or wave them aside at our own peril. Again, we become lost in the noise, and forget that “love is patient, love is kind” is in fact not a cliché but rather an eternal and immutable Truth. A healing Truth. The sort of Truth that heals the divisions brought about by the sword of Christ, the sword wielded solely in order that we might see where and how we have wounded ourselves, see where and how we are ourselves divided, and thereby to make all things right.

Traherne’s goal is to show his reader the clear pathway to the throne of God. In a sentence very reminiscent of Henry V’s speech at the battle of Agincourt wherein he says that men abed in England would count their lives meaningless for not having been on that battlefield in France, Traherne says that the end of this journey will “be so glorious that angels dare not hope for so great a one till they had seen it.” Angels, in other words, can only hope to see God and creation in such a glorious light as the one Traherne is giving to his reader. We are in the presence, with the Centuries of Meditation, of a great man, of a man who aches only to show others the glories he himself has seen.

Traherne--Embarkation

2008-03-14T10:10:00.003-06:00

Thomas Traherne–Embarkation–Preface and Introduction

I began reading Waking Up in Heaven and was immediately struck by the editor’s voice. I felt like I had picked up the journal of an old friend, filled with chatty news and insights. I was very glad to find that the editor’s voice was so distinct, and very far from the decidedly preachy tone used by many religious/spiritual writers.

As I said, I came to Thomas Traherne via Phil Rickman’s atmospheric mystery Wine of Angels. The novel does not dwell on Traherne, and in fact only mentions him briefly and in passing. But it is a spiritual (not religious–there is a difference) novel nonetheless, and one guaranteed to leave goosebumps. I couldn’t help but wonder about the background of the story, which is set partially in modern-day Herefordshire and partly in the Herefordshire of Traherne’s time, the 17th century. I am myself a writer, and I love doing research. I find it’s one of the purest pleasures of my life. And I tend to almost immediately become swept up in new interests, which always leads, inevitably, to months of glorious research. Traherne caught my interest enough to send me off to Amazon with my debit card.

And so I began reading Waking Up in Heaven with delicious expectations and joy. I felt a new world was about to open up to me, and I have not been disappointed yet. The editor, David Buresh, in his Preface, lays out a series of questions he says Traherne posed, and I think those questions would be a wonderful reminder throughout this Traherne journey:

–How do we change our thinking and understand our desires?

–How can we talk with Jesus?

–How can we enjoy the world and every person in it?

–How can we love people the way Jesus does?

–How can we see all the treasures God has given us in creation?

–How can we overcome our sins and be restored?

–How can we fill our lives with joy and beauty?

That list sounds like a really decent guidepost. We are all very earthbound, very focused on the here-and-now, on the getting-and-spending, on being sure the contract goes through, the Starbucks is consumed, or the P.T.A. thinks we’re the best parent on the planet or a host of other things that keep us all so terribly busy. We are not in charge of our own thinking. Not even remotely. We allow ourselves to be bombarded by car ads, by supermodels and their too-perfect bodies, by the promise Suze Orman gives that we can all be rich just like she is if only we fork over $35 to hear every one of her valuable secrets. (I suspect the secret is simple–write a self-help book and charge $35 for it, and then you too can be as wealthy as she is, and everyone else like her who preys on the gullible and the lonely and the desperate. Dr. Phil didn’t get his mansion without hundreds of desperate people paying his mortgage for him, did he?)

There is too much noise, and we not only let it consume us, we actively encourage it, plugging our ears with iPods and Bluetooths (Blueteeth?) and rushing rushing rushing, always rushing. Heaven forfend that we should hear nothing for five minutes, that we should allow silence to fill even a nanosecond of our lives. I suspect that the truth here is both simple and painful–if we allow the silence, then we allow time for contemplation, time for those thoughts we keep at bay to gather round us like biting insects. Without the constant noise, we would be able to hear our own thoughts, our own fears, and our own darkest secrets. God, however, is in that silence. God is in “the still, small voice” experienced by the prophets. God is not in the noise. Therefore, we surround ourselves with this Not-God, we surround ourselves with our own abdication from all responsibility. Because if we let in the silence, we will hear God’s “still, small voice” and it will tell us something we don’t want to hear.

And so at the beginning of this journey, Buresh makes a point from Traherne, that we must change our thinking. It won’t be easy to do, and it won’t be painless. In fact, I think it will be a trial by fire, so to speak, a process that brings pain and tears but will also lead ultimately to great joy. From the refusal to allow the still, small voice, we cannot see the world as God sees it, we cannot love people the way Jesus does, and we most certainly cannot fill our lives with joy and beauty. There is (seemingly) precious little beauty in the world as it is, and I cannot help but wonder what the world could be like if people would just stop and hear the voice of God. Thomas Traherne did just that, and I am eager to walk awhile in his company.

Buresh uses C.S. Lewis as a bit of a game, he says, ever searching for references to Traherne in Lewis’s works. I think he missed one rather important reference in his own Preface when he says that, in Traherne, “seemingly common peasants turn out to be kings and queens.” I was reminded immediately of Narnia, of the four Pevensie children from Finchley receiving their own immortal crowns of glory. Lucy Pevensie stopped and listened quite carefully to the still, small voice, and it led her (and, eventually, her siblings) straight to the throne room of Heaven. The Pevensie children awoke one day in Narnia and were rewarded for their courage and their strength and their honor. They were rewarded for listening to the voice of God, for cutting through the noise of wartime England and hearing the quiet voice of Aslan. They awoke in Heaven.

I was transfixed at Buresh’s idea that a reader of Traherne’s Centuries of Meditation was in reality being gently guided down a path. The way Buresh describes it, this pathway is overgrown and we have in Traherne a guide through the brambles. The end will be to emerge into the world we already know, with the sublime difference that we will now see that world as Traherne saw it, in a completely new and spiritually enlightened way. And once we arrive at this new understanding, at this new view, Buresh tells us that “there is no return.” Once our eyes have been opened, they will stay that way, and we will forever see creation as Traherne did. This is both a comforting thing to contemplate, and a slightly unsettling one. We like to think we always have a way “out,” an escape route should things become uncomfortable; Buresh tells us that, with Traherne, there is no such thing. Once we arrive, we arrive, period. No going back. Today’s gospel (I am writing this on Sunday 2 March) dealt with the tale of the blind man, of his cure by Jesus Christ, and I found this oddly apropos to my reading of Buresh/Traherne. I wonder, did the blind man ever wish that Jesus had just left him alone? Did he ever wish that he couldn’t suddenly see? Did he ever long for the comfort of the darkness to which he was, after all, accustomed? And how did he put into context any of what he saw, giving the fact that he had never seen anything at all before? I think I may face this myself as I journey down Traherne’s overgrown path.

The review my dear friend sent me contains a wealth of information on Thomas Traherne, and serves as a really good springboard for Waking Up in Heaven. Today, we tend to either discount book reviews entirely, or place far too much store in them. The art of a good book review is, I fear, becoming a lost one. This particular review is impressive in its scope, and I found it to be quite informative. It gives a context for the figure of Dobell, mentioned in a quote from C.S. Lewis in Buresh’s introduction, for instance, wherein Lewis says that his Dobell edition has “lovely paper.”

As I write this, and look back on 3 solid pages of word processor text, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that 3 to 4 days is simply not enough time to devote to a chapter, and so I am probably going to go with a week between chapters.

Ratty Ponderings

2008-03-14T10:09:00.003-06:00

Wow, LONG time since I posted! And a really long time since I moderated pending comments. I’ve got to wonder if I LOOK like a blogger who needs super-hot Asian chicks or and extra-long thingy…And then I have to ask myself–do these idiots actually think they’ll get approved for posting?

Anyway, welcome one and all to the Year of the Rat, which is already forecasted to be a depressing, dismal, and possibly catastrophic year. Yay. Yippee.

And with a New Year come thoughts of a new path for yours truly. I’ve been wandering down many different spiritual paths, and have been having a truly wonderful learning experience whilst so doing. I’ve found the writings of Thomas Traherne, a 17th-century Englishman, and have been giving myself over to the cadence of his voice, to the peace and power of his words. A truly great man, sadly virtually unknown in America.

And so my blog, like me, will be taking a different tack. Heretofore, I’ve been outright political, and I will still focus on political issues, but I also think I need some “me” time, some time to sort out my own noggin and my own inner searcher.

I wonder–do we humans ever reach a limit on learning, on searching? I hope not. In the movie “Hogfather”, the character of Death is stunned that humanity can ever, EVER be bored. After all, we live in a pretty amazing universe…

Companions on the Journey

2008-03-14T10:00:00.001-06:00

I am sitting here today with an amazing book in my hands. It’s a modern “translation” of a work by the great 17th-century religious mystic Thomas Traherne, entitled Waking Up in Heaven. This posting is an invitation for folks to join me as I read this book, to read it along with me and leave comments, etc. The ISBN of the book is 0-9721602-1-3 and it can be purchased from Amazon by following this link .

I discovered Traherne in a rather unusual manner, via a horror novel. The novel, the first in a series chronicling the adventures of a female vicar-exorcist named Merrily Watkins, is by Phil Rickman, and is entitled The Wine of Angels. (The ISBN for this book is 0-330-34268-1, Amazon information at this link ) In the novel, Ms. Watkins and her daughter move into the vicarage of a little Herefordshire U.K. town called Ledwardine, and as Merrily is the local exorcist (her bosses prefer the term “deliverance” expert) as well as the vicar, strange and disturbing things begin happening literally in her backyard. She delves into the life of a 17th-century vicar of Ledwardine, Will Williams, who had been a good friend of Traherne. The town and the character of Williams are fictional, but Rickman does a splendid job intriguing his readers about Thomas Traherne.

And so, my invitation to come along on my little journey. Comments are welcome, and I would love to hear if others have already found Traherne, etc.

Thank God for Idiots

2007-08-20T13:40:00.000-06:00

From a group I subscribe to, this little gem (all names/links/identifiers have been removed, obviously):

"I received an email at my website from a family coming to visit my area. Their son, who's going to turn 16 just had a change of heart concerning his life's choice of career. Seems he went from engineering to conservation. They have asked me if I could help them find some volunteer work here while they'll be here." (Italics added by me)

Wow. Um, when I read this, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to laugh or cry. I belong to several liberal-leaning groups (finger on the pulse...), and this one is, as you can tell from context I'm sure, devoted to global warming. A 16 year old boy, his life before him, makes the decision to switch from engineering to ceonservation. What a sane decision. So glad his parents think he's doing the right thing with his life. I hope they're ready, of course, to accept the consequences of said decision. Such as paying for their grandkids to go to school. And helping Junior out with rent, for the rest of his life, assuming he doesn't live with them anyway.

Anything to save Planet Earth, I guess. I know a teenaged girl who fully (and vocally) believes that animal life is vastly more important than human life. She would willingly give her life for the lives of animals. Literally. Hell, she'd willingly give my life, and yours, for the sake of animals. Hey, maybe I should e-mail this ex-engineer's parents, try to set these two kids up with each other! Whaddya think?

Oh, and in case you think switching from engineering to conservation is a great idea, let's just take a quick peek at the financial ramifications, shall we? Click here to see what Engineers earn per hour starting pay. And I tried finding out what conservationists earn, I really did. Try googling it yourself and see what you come up with. I googled "what do conservationists earn" (just as I googled "what do engineers earn") and was met with page after page of conservationists earning honors. Or going fishing. Or papers written by some conservationist named Earn. No starting salaries. No job openings. Just honors.

Try paying for an apartment with an honor. This 16 year old future welfare recipient is headed in the right direction for sure. He'll make a spectacular volunteer someday.

Of the new political war

2007-08-17T10:54:00.000-06:00

Okay, first of all, Geraldo Rivera, if you can hear me, you can go eff yourself.

That off my chest, I will now rant about illegal immigrants. The recent murders in New Jersey, committed by an illegal who was not (obviously) deported for his previous crime (the rape of a 5-year-old child), have left this country stunned, and shown what the new political hot-button issue is. It isn't abortion any longer, it's illegal immigration.

In my opinion, as a tax-paying American citizen, all illegal immigrants should either become citizens the right way, through channels, or should be sent packing. Period. I do not care that they risked life and limb to hide in a van coming across the border. I do not care how many children they have managed to birth on American soil. They should become citizens or leave.

Yeah, I can hear the argument already--"but we're ALL immigrants!" Duh. No freaking kidding. Thank you, Captain Obvious. But my ancestors did not sneak across the border from Mexico. They came through channels, they emigrated to this country, they were not--and I cannot stress this enough--THEY WERE NOT ILLEGALS!

Geraldo Rivera thinks all illegals should be given every right we can hand out. Not hard to see why he's biased in this direction, now is it?

And notice--you don't see Canadians sneaking across the borders, now do you? No, they come legally, they go through the legal process. Just as my own ancestors did.

I fail to see why America must pay for the fact that the Mexican government cannot take care of its own people. I fail to see why we should be forced to accept people who cannot stand up for themselves and change their own government. Seems to me if Mexico wants freedom and dignity and a decent health care system, they should try cleaning up their own back yard rather than demanding that we rescue them.

And as for that sick twisted bastard of a killer--I sincerely hope he doesn't fall through the cracks in our legal system again. I hope he finally gets what's coming to him. And yeah, I know, the killer's from Peru, not Mexico. My point still stands, and I completely agree with Michelle Malkin on this one.

Been a while

2007-08-07T20:15:00.000-06:00

Okay, been a while since I've been on this Blogger blog of mine! And in the interim, my interests, my opinions, my life, have all pretty radically changed. In my opinion, it takes a pretty big person to admit they've changed, and with that in mind I hereby admit changes, LOL. As you can see, I've got a website as well, and have posted a few of the website posts here. Not sure why, really--probably out of a desire to keep my Blogger current.

Now, those changes I mentioned--in recent months I have grown a much thicker skin than I once had, and this new skin of mine feels pretty damned good. I have re-evaluated so much of my life, and so many of my previously-held beliefs and ideas and opinions, that it sometimes seems as if I am once again the person I was in my youth--headstrong, opinionated, and more than willing to stick up for myself. Feels pretty good, actually.

What this means--my political loyalties are no longer set in stone; my religious beliefs are open to exploration; my intellectual life is once more strong and hungry. I have newfound determination (based as I mentioned on the determination I had as a twenty-something), and this will, I believe, lead only to good things.

Lest I be accused of a desire to live in the past, or of a middle-aged hunger for my wild days, I will state that nothing could be further from the truth. I have no desire to re-live my life, nor to be one of those sad, aging women who refuse to believe they're now in their 40s. I have regained the idealism I once had, regained the lust for life I once had, and that, coupled with the experience of a maturing woman, can only be good.

A novel way to make a bomb

2006-09-02T12:06:00.000-06:00

FrontpageMag has this article detailing a novel new use for dead Muslims. I'll bet you never thought of Muslims booby-trapping their own dead, did you?

And in local news...

2006-09-02T11:57:00.000-06:00

I had almost forgotten about this case! In recent weeks, the focus here in Colorado has been, once again, on the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. I haven't even been following my Yankees with my customary fervor at this time of year (World Series right around the corner!) At any rate, I had shamefully forgotten about the poor woman held as a sex slave here by a no-doubt-peaceful Muslim man and his wife. Click the above link for details of the couples' sentencing.

Hey, libs, all your dreams have come true in a faux documentary

2006-09-01T11:57:00.000-06:00

Click here to read the MSNBC article on a new British faux documentary that depicts the "assassination" of President George W. Bush. Sickening. Horrifying. If someone made a mockumentary about the "assassination" of the President of Iran, or of former President Bill Clinton, the liberal world would be enraged and screaming for it to be blocked from the airwaves. Wonder how many libs will be appalled by the mockumentary about W's "death." Used to be a time this kind of thing would have been considered completely out-of-bounds. Not anymore, I guess. Hey, Cindy Sheehan, maybe you could get a copy and enjoy watching your every dream, your every sick fantasy, come true, right before your eyes. Liberalporn.

Stop "honor" killings

2006-09-01T11:37:00.000-06:00

I am also adding this link to my rather extensive list o'links on the left. Please visit this site. You will be appalled at the things being done right now, in the 21st. century, in the name of "honor."

Stop Honour Killings

Top 10 reasons Islam may not be a peaceful religion

2006-09-01T11:31:00.000-06:00

Don Feder has written an excellent article, some of which I'll post here. Click here to read the entire article.

Top 10 Reasons Islam Might Not Be a Religion of Peace -->Written by Don FederThursday, August 31, 2006

A passenger revolt occurred on a Malaga-Manchester flight. Vacationing Brits refused to fly with two Arabic-speaking men. This came in the wake of arrests of 21 British-born Muslims who were plotting to blow up as many as 11 trans-Atlantic flights.

A spokesman for Britain’s opposition Tory party said the passengers panicked into “behaving irrationally.” Fancy that, not wanting to fly with members of a faith whose adherents keep trying to blow things up. Oh, how irrational!

Within days of this incident, a Lebanese student was arrested for trying to plant bombs on German trains. In India, meanwhile, a group with alleged ties to al-Qaeda threatened to blow up the 17th century Taj Mahal.

If Muslims make travelers nervous, it’s not without cause.

Would you be more likely to have an anxiety attack at 20,000 feet if the passenger seated next to you was: A) An Irish nun saying the Rosary? B) A Mormon missionary in regulation white shirt and narrow, black tie? C) A Hari Krishna in a standard-issue saffron robe? or D) A bearded bloke of Middle Eastern complexion holding a well-thumbed Koran?

Christians are being bludgeoned in Uzbekistan

2006-09-01T11:27:00.000-06:00

Ukrainian Baptist apprehended and beaten in Uzbekistan
30.08.2006 09:58 msk
Media reports

Christian Megaportal in Uzbekistan reports with references to anonymous local sources that the police broke up a Evangelic Seminar in Termez and arrested everyone present.

According to Invictory.org, police officers bludgeoned the believers - adults and children alike. Some of them were soon released with the order to remain within reach of the law enforcement agencies, but six were left in the detention cell. One of the arrested believers is a Ukrainian on a visit to Uzbekistan. Cases were opened against all arrestees. They remain in custody in Termez and get regularly beaten, their families say.

The Ukrainian is one Yuri Stefanko, born in 1983, resident of Kiev where he attends the Baptist Church. Stefanko flew to Uzbekistan to meet with his friends on August 14.

Click here for story.

Muslim women, be warned--let him have as many wives as he wants

2006-09-01T11:25:00.000-06:00

Hyderabad, India - Indian authorities have arrested a man who locked his wife in a room for three years and made her drink her own urine, after she opposed him taking a second wife, police said on Thursday.

Asha Begum, wife of construction foreman Mohammed Shadulla, was chained and held captive in a windowless room in their home in a suburb of Hyderabad, capital of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

Local police inspector Subbarami Reddy said that Shadulla had brought home a new wife in February 2003, but when Begum protested he had locked her up.

Read the entire story at this link.

Iran jetliner crash

2006-09-01T11:19:00.000-06:00

May God bless the victims and their families in the tragic plane crash in Iran.

Nine years...

2006-08-31T11:03:00.000-06:00

Casual Di!
Originally uploaded by Diana Forever!.

A portrait taken in 1986, twenty years ago. Today marks the ninth anniversary of the death of Diana Frances Spencer, Princess of Wales...

Terrorist rock and roll

2006-08-30T17:32:00.000-06:00

Hysterical, and terrifying at the same time. Click here for the song "Hawk of Lebanon," all about how wonderful Hezbollah is and how awesome it is to be a terrorist rock star at a wedding. Sickening stuff, folks...

Yet more "peaceful" stuff out of Lebanon

2006-08-30T17:18:00.000-06:00

Lebanon refuses to even think about a peace deal with Israel. Ever. Period. For any reason. Unless, of course, Israel gives Jerusalem to the Muslims. Then Lebanon might, just might, be willing to talk peace. Until then, says Lebanon, they will be the absolute last country to ever, ever, ever sign a deal with Israel. So much for peace.

Jerusalem. Yerushalayim. Founded by King David. A Jewish man, if I'm not much mistaken. Well, okay, founded in actuality by the Canaanites, but I don't think they're still laying claim. I hope.

"According to Midrash, Jerusalem was founded by Shem and Eber, ancestors of Abraham. Further, the Bible mentions that the city was controlled by the Jebusites until its conquest by David, at a date subsequently placed at about 1000 BCE." (Wikipedia)

Seems to me that just because some guy had a weird dream in which he traveled to Jerusalem shouldn't really be the basis for an actual claim. If that were to hold up in court, I myself could personally lay claim to Buckingham Palace, Honolulu, and Brad Pitt.

Frankenstein's Monster--an e-mail I sent to Mary Lacy

2006-08-30T10:40:00.000-06:00

Every time I think of JonBenet for the rest of my life, I will see Karr's perverted, smirking face. I will hear his words, hear his insane, cruel voice. I will see, in oh-so-graphic detail, every murderous thing he said he did to her in that moldy basement room. I will never again be able to see just JonBenet's innocence, without Karr's sickening descriptions entering my mind. He has forever tainted JonBenet, marked her as his own as surely as if he had been convicted of her slaying.

And you, Mary Lacy--you, who are not embarrassed; you, who are only embarrassed on behalf of us morons who dared to believe your lies--you had a hand in this. Every person who has followed this case, every person who has ever felt pain at the death of this sweet child, will forever link her name with Karr's. Because of you. Because you decided that his e-mails, unlike every other e-mail confession (Lin Wood said there have been many e-mail confessions, did you know that?), deserved your attention. Because you decided that the safety of a Thai child mattered more--oh, so much more--than the safety of every child in America.

John Mark Karr will get out of jail within months. He will be free to roam this country at will, thanks to you and you alone. He won't roam, though, Mary Lacy, be sure of that. John Mark Karr will come back. His obsession with JonBenet guarantees that much. He will come back to you, Mary Lacy. And by the time he does, can you guarantee that he will not, by then, have escalated beyond all hope? Can you guarantee that your own personal Frankenstein's Monster will not return to you with genuine blood on his hands?

Blood on his hands...Blood on your head. Congratulations, Mary Lacy, on maintaining the sort of Boulder justice that Alex Hunter would be proud of. The DNA didn't match, and may even have had nothing to do with the murder, but you let Karr go. You cannot account for his whereabouts from December 23 1996 to January 2 1997, but you let Karr go. His accounts are mixed, contradictory (did you even once think he may be confusing several crimes into one?), and so you let Karr go. A trained professional warned you that he was on an escalating road to God-knows-where, so you brought him in to keep one Thai child safe...and then you let Karr go.

Fake but accurate Katie suddenly "loses" weight

2006-08-30T10:22:00.000-06:00

The "fake but accurate" standard at CBS is intact as of this writing, in case anyone was worried. In a recent promotional pic of Katie Couric, the actress--ooops, sorry, the serious reporter Couric--appears to have lost quite a bit of weight. It's all thanks to airbrushing that got out of hand. And I was so worried that Katie wouldn't live up to Dan Rather's ideals...Good thing there are still those in the CBS house who are willing to go out on a limb for their anchors, no?

NEW YORK - No, Katie Couric didn't suddenly lose 20 pounds. The incoming "CBS Evening News" anchor appears significantly thinner in a network promotional magazine photo thanks to digital airbrushing.

The touched-up photo of Couric dressed in a striped business suit appears on the inside of the September issue of Watch! which is distributed at CBS stations and on American Airlines flights.
CBS News President Sean McManus said he was "obviously surprised and disappointed when I heard about it."

The original picture was snapped in May and was widely circulated to the media as an official photo of Couric.

Couric, 49, said she hadn't known about the digitally reworked version until she saw the issue. The former NBC "Today" show host told the Daily News, "I liked the first picture better because there's more of me to love."

Gil Schwartz, executive vice president of communications for CBS Corp., said Wednesday in a phone interview the photo alteration was done by someone in the CBS photo department who "got a little zealous."

Click here for the whole article. Journalistic fraud, alive and well... I wonder if there's a class on how to alter a photo? Or if I could just buy Photoshop and have at it. Of course, there are those who will say that this isn't really fraud. It isn't misleading, not in a harmful way. But come on, she hasn't even officially hit the airwaves yet, and already we're being tricked into thinking she's something she's not. Where will it end?

Lest we forget...

2006-08-29T12:35:00.000-06:00

JonBenet 4
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

Boulder DA Alex Hunter was well-known for allowing murderers to either go completely free, as in the case of the man who murdered the boyfriend of Robert Redford's daughter, or else letting them get off with tiny sentences. A man who murdered his wife in her sleep got 3 years under Alex Hunter.

Boulder is known for its extremely liberal views, and I honestly wonder if JonBenet's confessed murderer has gotten away with it (and no, I do not mean Patsy Ramsey). Current Boulder DA Mary Lacy threw herself into the recent "ohmigawd, the entire football team at the University of Colorado are rapists even though we can't prove it and the judge threw out the case for lack of evidence" scene a couple of years ago. She's desperate for recognition, and she could have had it. She could have been renowned as the woman who caught JonBenet's killer.

Lest we forget, a picture here of a beautiful little girl, sans makeup, sans fancy outfits, just an innocent bow in her hair. A little girl who deserves the justice Boulder will never be able to give her.

John Mark Karr's e-mails and arrest warrant

2006-08-29T11:50:00.000-06:00

This link will take you directly to a .pdf file of every single e-mail exchanged between John Mark Karr, accused and then un-accused of murdering JonBenet Ramsey, and his pal Michael Tracey, Journalism Prof at Boulder's infamous University of Colorado. WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING!!!!! The .pdf file linked contains explicit details of John Karr's inner fantasy life, as well as explicit details of the way he believes he murdered JonBenet Ramsey. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

This link will take you to the now-unsealed arrest warrant for John Mark Karr. THE SAME WARNING APPLIES HERE!!!! EXPLICIT CONTENT!!!!

Fire-Alarm Mary

2006-08-29T11:20:00.000-06:00

As I write, the press conference regarding John Mark Karr's release has just ended in Boulder. It was held, ironically enough, in the jury selection room. A few minutes into the conference, right when it became apparent that Boulder DA Mary Lacy would have to face some difficult questions in regard to her arrest and subsequent release of John Mark Karr, a fire alarm went off. Mary Lacy immediately said that perhaps the conference would have to be cancelled, and reconvened as soon as possible. Unfortunately for darling Mary Lacy, the alarm was soon dealt with, and she had to face those difficult questions after all. The above link should take you to the MSNBC video of the conference.

And reporters did ask some really brutal questions, most of which Lacy skirted rather hastily. If she couldn't skirt them, she pawned them off on her subordinates. The difficult questions must have come as quite a shock to Lacy, as she deliberately tried to seed the news pool with friendly faces, excluding such people as our local talk radio hosts Dan Caplis, Craig Silverman, and Peter Boyles, all of whom would have been distinctly unfriendly toward dear Mary Lacy. She did, however, admit complete responsibility for this major snafu in the history of the Boulder justice system. The MSNBC text story can be found here.

Yesterday, I posted Mary Lacy's e-mail address, and I will post here the e-mail I sent to her.

Mary Lacy, you have perverted justice. You have made Colorado the laughing-stock of this country. Of the world. RESIGN. You do not belong in the DA's office. You do not belong in law enforcement anywhere for any reason at any time. Go away. Oh, and thanks for helping release a pervert onto the streets of America. Thanks for the safekeeping. Next time, maybe try not to keep us so safe.

The sky darkened

2006-08-28T16:56:00.000-06:00

The sky darkened. Literally. The expected rain is on its way, and the first clouds covered the sun at the exact moment it was announced that there is no DNA match to John Mark Karr in the JonBenet murder case here in Colorado. The sky darkened as it was announced that no charges will be filed. The sky darkened as it was announced that John Mark Karr was released from the custody of the Boulder Police.

We were wrong. He didn't do it. We wanted so badly for this to be it, for this to be real, that we fell for the lie. We believed that no DA in their right mind would extradite this pervert from Bangkok on suspicion of murdering JonBenet without the forensics to back up the charges. And the forensics definitely do not back up the suspicion.

John Mark Karr, thank God, will be detained after all, awaiting extradition back to California where he is wanted on child porn charges from which he fled in 2001. He will serve time, hopefully, but probably not a lot. And then, thanks to Boulder DA Mary Lacy, he will be set free on the streets of this country. He will be free to prey on children. On your children. On the children of your friends. On your grandchildren. On children yet unborn.

Mary Lacy must resign. She is a bumbling moron without the sense God gave a gnat, and she must resign from office immediately. For too long, Boulder has been in the limelight as a butt of jokes, and this will make national news for weeks. Probably for decades, as the crimes of this perverted, twisted animal John Karr continue to escalate. God willing, he will not actually escalate to murder, though that is the progression, often, in cases such as his. And by the way, the link highlighting her name is the link to her official webpage. Feel free to e-mail her. I assume it's safe to urge you to do this, as she has clearly posted her e-mail address on said webpage (or at least it's posted there as of 5:00 p.m. August 28, 2006). Just in case the contact info vanishes, however, I will post it here: mailto:boulder.da@co.boulder.co.us

God help America. We are a nation of idiots. I can say this at least insofar as Homeland Security helping this woman extradite Karr from Thailand were idiots for having done so. The Boulder DA's office are idiots. But mostly, the true idiots are those of us who dared to believe, to hope, to pray that maybe, just maybe, justice had finally come for a slaughtered little girl.

Pray

2006-08-28T11:38:00.000-06:00

Today will mark the first Colorado court appearance of John Mark Karr, accused of murdering JonBenet Ramsey. Pray it goes well. Pray that justice may at last be coming to fruition.

"Peaceful" my Aunt Fanny

2006-08-28T11:33:00.000-06:00

The kidnapped FoxNews journalists "converted" to Islam. They were forced to. At gunpoint. By Muslim men who dressed the journalists in Muslim robes and forced them--yes, I keep repeating myself--at gunpoint to convert to Islam. I guess this is actually good news, because it means that in order to gain new members from the outside world, Muslims must give people a choice--convert or die.

And the lunacy continues

2006-08-23T12:51:00.000-06:00

John Mark Karr, arrested, as everyone knows by now, for the Christmas 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, has a very loving family. Never mind that his mother tried to kill him when he was an infant, never mind that his second ex-child-wife reportedly hates his guts, his family are now looking to make money on the sordid tale. They want, you see, to hire some big-guns lawyers to defend their little fella. They've hired a publicist as well. This publicist, an actor named Garrison, claims the family has a photo that "proves" Karr was with them during Christmas of 1996. Garrison, as you'll note in the linked article, declined to say what that photo showed.

Here's the "proof" that Karr was with his loving family that Christmas--a picture of his three sons. Not a picture of him. His ex-wife cannot locate a single picture that shows Karr with his adoring family that Christmas. If that's all the proof they have, they'd better hope their actor/publicist gets them a sweet deal, all inked and put to bed, before book companies realize what they've signed. (And small wonder that Garrison is unwilling to disclose what the picture shows.)

And yet, when the Ramseys hired a publicist there was no end to the backlash against them...

Hey, maybe Kaavya Viswanathan is looking for work--she could certainly do justice to the story of John Mark Karr's twisted life of lies and fantasies. Although I think Kaavya would balk at helping a murderer or his family tell their tale, actually...

"Doomsday" avoided, but...

2006-08-23T12:03:00.000-06:00

We managed to--phew!--avoid the August 22 Doomsday yesterday. And yet, according to CNN's Christiane Amanpour, we may yet be in for the ride of our lives. Or, at least, ten million of us may be...

Michael Scheuer, who once headed the CIA's bin Laden unit, says bin Laden has been given permission by a young cleric in Saudi Arabia authorizing al Qaeda to "use nuclear weapons against the United States ... capping the casualties at 10 million."

"He's had an approval, a religious approval for 10 million deaths?" I asked him.

"Yes," Scheuer responded.

click here for full story

And for anyone interested in reading further about the "peaceful" religion of Islam, please see the website devoted to tracking interesting news items dealing with that topic:

The Religion of Peace

Ramblings of the day

2006-08-23T10:39:00.000-06:00

Well, Tom Cruise's insane chickens are finally coming home to roost. He's been fired by Paramount, though of course Tom says he wasn't fired, he quit. Yeah, right, Tommy-boy, like anyone outside of your weird cult believes a word you say anymore.

Here at home, a lunatic of the first order may finally be brought to justice for the murder of JonBenet Ramsey in 1996. As I posted when the news broke, I feel deeply sorry for the things I felt about Patsy Ramsey. I am embarrassed that in Colorado, radio talk show hosts such as Peter Boyles continue to rant that Patsy must have killed her daughter. Whether she did or did not, she has died, and has been judged. Let it go, Peter, let it go. Chances are slim, as I see it now, that anyone in the Ramsey family had anything at all to do with JonBenet's death, regardless of the fact that, yes, every damn one of them acted as guilty as sin for the past decade. Again, these musings on the death of a tiny, innocent child are basically just restatements of the posting I put up days ago.

Oh, and the big news of the day, almost forgot! The Democrats are literally aborting themselves out of existence. A call has gone out to liberals far and wide to please, please reproduce, before the world is overrun with conservatives. Of course, gay marriage doesn't help the Dems' numbers either, I'm sure. Love it.

The bravery of one woman

2006-08-21T11:14:00.000-06:00

I will admit a fairly abysmal ignorance of just why Theo Van Gogh was so brutally murdered. Or, rather, a fairly abysmal ignorance of the circumstances surrounding his death. Until, that is, I tuned in to last night's "60 Minutes" broadcast, and sat there, stunned and horrified, watching one woman try to fight the injustices she sees in the religion of Islam.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose Wikipedia entry can be found by clicking here, amazed me with her erudite description of the horrors committed against women in the name of the Koran. Those injustices were the subject of her film "Submission", a film which cost Theo Van Gogh his life.

Of course, all of this is old news by now, but I am continually stunned by the blindness of those who would defend Islam as a "peaceful" religion. Yes, I will catch hell for this, and no, believe it or not, I am not a religious bigot. I support the right of anyone to worship as they see fit. I do think a line should be drawn, however, on the "right" of an Islamic man to slaughter his wife (or daughter, or sister) if she dares to step a toe out of line. When the "peaceful" Muslims mutilate a director in the streets, as happened to Theo Van Gogh, someone must stand up for the simple right to life.

This includes, today, Hezbollah, who seem hell-bent on destroying Israel--as is, indeed, their publically stated goal--all in the name of that "peaceful" Koran. The men who committed 9/11 were not Buddhists. They were not Mormons. They were not Jewish. They were not Hindu. They were Muslims.

Thus, I am all for profiling. I am all for the government listening in on my pizza orders. To paraphrase Dennis Miller, the government can bug my behind if it'll keep me and my kids safe.

All of which is off the topic of the courageous and wonderful Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Islamic women should have the right to life, shouldn't they? This is basic stuff. When Scott Peterson slaughtered his wife and unborn son in California, he was incarcerated and given the death penalty.

He should have converted to Islam, taken Laci to Iran, and cut her head off there.

He'd have been a hero.

Justice, prayers, and an apology

2006-08-17T12:54:00.000-06:00

Patsy Ramsey at JonBenet's grave
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

Living in Colorado, I have naturally been immersed from the beginning in the JonBenet Ramsey murder story. Yesterday, as everyone knows, a John Mark Karr was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, for the murder of this beautiful child. His confessions have been chilling, to say the least.

I, like many people, always assumed Patsy Ramsey to be the culprit. She acted as if she were guilty, so those who believed her to be guilty can perhaps be forgiven a little bit. I am sorry, Patsy, for the assumptions I made, for the thoughts I held about you. May you find peace at last, and may God forever hold you and your darling child in His loving arms...

Jill Carroll

2006-08-16T11:57:00.000-06:00

Jill Carroll 3
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

Not sure what I think about Jill Carroll, following her recent television appearances and the articles currently appearing in newspapers around the country.

Not sure I believe a single solitary word she says. And boy, does she ever say a lot of them. In rapid-fire spurts of frenetic speech.

Good to know that at least she's finally admitting that those "tears", the hysterical sobbing that just looked fake from the get-go, were in fact fake tears. "Forced" to cry to save her life.

That must have been so horrible for her, forced to cry on cue, forced to watch Oprah (hey, that would be torture enough for anyone). Forced to eat chicken and bread. Forced to hang out with her kidnappers and help them make dinner. Forced to pal around with her kidnappers' kids. The inhumanity of it all is just indescribable...

And yes, I fully expect hate-comments for this post. I don't care. Women have been kidnapped in Iraq and beheaded. Beheaded. Dead. In a filthy, grotty basement or some dank cellar. Beheaded without a bite of chicken first, and without the torture of having to decide what to watch on the telly.

Reuters pulls all Adnan Hajj pics

2006-08-13T13:36:00.000-06:00

Reuters has yanked every single one of Adnan Hajj's pics in the wake of the scandal over his obviously Photoshopped photos of Beirut. Reuters' full statement:

Reuters has withdrawn from its database all photographs taken by Beirut-based freelance Adnan Hajj after establishing that he had altered two images since the start of the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese Hizbollah group.

The news and information agency also said it had put in place a tighter editing procedure for images of the Middle East conflict to ensure that no photograph from the region would be transmitted to subscribers without review by the most senior editor on the Reuters Global Pictures Desk.

"There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image", said Tom Szlukovenyi, Reuters Global Picture Editor. "Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict and unalterable policy".

Reuters terminated its relationship with Hajj on Sunday after a review of a photograph he had taken of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on suburban Beirut the previous day found it had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more and darker smoke rising from buildings.

An immediate enquiry began into Hajj's other work. It found on Monday that a second photograph, of an Israeli F-16 fighter over Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon and dated Aug 2, had been doctored to increase the number of flares dropped by the plane from one to three.

"Manipulating photographs in this way is entirely unacceptable and contrary to all the principles consistently held by Reuters throughout its long and distinguished history. It undermines not only our reputation but also the good name of all our photographers," Szlukovenyi said.

He added that the mere fact that Hajj had altered two of his photographs meant none of his work for Reuters could be trusted either by the news service or its users.

"This doesn't mean that every one of his 920 photographs in our database was altered. We know that not to be the case from the majority of images we have looked at so far but we need to act swiftly and in a precautionary manner," Szlukovenyi said.

The two altered photographs were among 43 that Hajj had filed directly to the Global Pictures Desk since the start of the conflict on July 12 rather than through an editor in Beirut, as was the case with the great majority of his images. Filing drills have been tightened in Lebanon and only senior staff will now edit pictures from the Middle East on the Global Pictures Desk, with the final check undertaken by the Editor-in-Charge.

Hajj worked for Reuters as a non-staff contributing photographer from 1993 until 2003 and again since April 2005.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Full text of United Nations' cease-fire resolution

2006-08-13T13:29:00.000-06:00

Here's the entire text of the United Nations' cease-fire resolution, as found on MSNBC.com:

Text of U.N. resolution on Lebanon cease-fire
Plan adopted unanimously by U.N. Security Council aims to end fighting
Reuters
Updated: 7:05 p.m. MT Aug 11, 2006

UNITED NATIONS - Following is the text of the operative provisions of a resolution adopted Friday The preambular provisions have been omitted for reasons of length.

THE SECURITY COUNCIL, ...
Determining that the situation in Lebanon constitutes a threat to international peace and security;

1. Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations;

2. Upon full cessation of hostilities, calls upon the government of Lebanon and UNIFIL (The U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon) as authorized by paragraph 11 to deploy their forces together throughout the south and calls upon the government of Israel, as that deployment begins, to withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon in parallel;

3. Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of Lebanon;

4. Reiterates its strong support for full respect for the Blue Line (separating Israel and Lebanon);

5. Also reiterates its strong support, as recalled in all its previous relevant resolutions, for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized borders, as contemplated by the Israeli-Lebanese General Armistice Agreement of 23 March 1949;

6. Calls on the international community to take immediate steps to extend its financial and humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese people, including through facilitating the safe return of displaced persons and, under the authority of the government of Lebanon, reopening airports and harbors, consistent with paragraphs 14 and 15, and calls on it also to consider further assistance in the future to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Lebanon;

7. Affirms that all parties are responsible for ensuring that no action is taken contrary to paragraph 1 that might adversely affect the search for a long-term solution, humanitarian access to civilian populations, including safe passage for humanitarian convoys, or the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons, and calls on all parties to comply with this responsibility and to cooperate with the Security Council;

8. Calls for Israel and Lebanon to support a permanent cease-fire and a long-term solution based on the following principles and elements:

— full respect for the Blue Line by both parties,

— security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani River of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL as authorized in paragraph 11, deployed in this area,

— full implementation of the relevant provisions of theTaif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state,

— no foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its government,

— no sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government,

— provision to the United Nations of all remaining maps of land mines in Lebanon in Israel's possession;

9. Invites the Secretary-General (Kofi Annan) to support efforts to secure as soon as possible agreements in principle from the government of Lebanon and the government of Israel to the principles and elements for a long-term solution as set forth in paragraph 8, and expresses its intention to be actively involved;

10. Requests the secretary-general to develop, in liaison with relevant international actors and the concerned parties, proposals to implement the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), including disarmament, and for delineation of the international borders of Lebanon, especially in those areas where the border is disputed or uncertain, including by dealing with the Shebaa farms area, and to present to the Security Council those proposals within thirty days;

11. Decides, in order to supplement and enhance the force in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operations, to authorize an increase in the force strength of UNIFIL to a maximum of 15,000 troops, and that the force shall, in addition to carrying out its mandate under resolutions 425 and 426 (1978):

a. Monitor the cessation of hostilities;

b. Accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the south, including along the Blue Line, as Israel withdraws its armed forces from Lebanon as provided in paragraph 2;

c. Coordinate its activities related to paragraph 11 (b) with the government of Lebanon and the government of Israel;

d. Extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons;

e. Assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment of the area as referred to in paragraph 8;

f. Assist the government of Lebanon, at its request, to implement paragraph 14;

12. Acting in support of a request from the government of Lebanon to deploy an international force to assist it to exercise its authority throughout the territory, authorizes UNIFIL to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind, to resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council, and to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, ensure the security and freedom of movement of United Nations personnel, humanitarian workers, and, without prejudice to the responsibility of the government of Lebanon, to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence;

13. Requests the secretary general urgently to put in place measures to ensure UNIFIL is able to carry out the functions envisaged in this resolution, urges member states to consider making appropriate contributions to UNIFIL and to respond positively to requests for assistance from the force, and expresses its strong appreciation to those who have contributed to UNIFIL in the past;

14. Calls upon the government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel and requests UNIFIL as authorized in paragraph 11 to assist the government of Lebanon at its request;

15. Decides further that all states shall take the necessary measures to prevent, by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or aircraft,

(a) the sale or supply to any entity or individual in Lebanon of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, whether or not originating in their territories, and

(b) the provision to any entity or individual in Lebanon of any technical training or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of the items listed in subparagraph (a) above, except that these prohibitions shall not apply to arms, related material, training or assistance authorized by the government of Lebanon or by UNIFIL as authorized in paragraph 11;

16. Decides to extend the mandate of UNIFIL until 31 August 2007, and expresses its intention to consider in a later resolution further enhancements to the mandate and other steps to contribute to the implementation of a permanent cease-fire and a long-term solution;

17. Requests the secretary-general to report to the council within one week on the implementation of this resolution and subsequently on a regular basis;

18. Stresses the importance of, and the need to achieve, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, based on all its relevant resolutions including its resolutions 242(1967) of 22 November 1967 and 338 (1973) of 22 October 1973;

19. Decides to remain actively seized of the matter.

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
© 2006 MSNBC.com

Prayer

2006-08-13T12:47:00.000-06:00

Often in life, we're confronted with the battle between Good and Evil, whether or not we choose to use those terms. Especially during times of war (although it seems that we are never out of a state of war...) In such times, we may feel drawn to prayer, and I have decided to post here one of the most powerful and beautiful prayers I have ever known. It's rather longish, but I love the words, I love the way they flow from my tongue, I love how protected I feel when I am praying what is known as the Lorica (or Breastplate) of Saint Patrick:

Lorica of Saint Patrick

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In preachings of the apostles,
In faiths of confessors,
In innocence of virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea,
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From every one who desires me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone or in a mulitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and evil,
Against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of women and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that reward may come to me in abundance.

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

Saint Patrick (ca. 377)

Unhinged

2006-08-11T12:04:00.000-06:00

Buy this book. Unhinged, by Michelle Malkin. Errata for this book are pasted below, in case you do purchase it.

Unhinged Errata

page 52: Due to a printer error, the last seven words of chapter 2 were cut off. The final sentence should read, "Karl Rove and his all-powerful Republican Dirty Tricks team sure work in mysterious ways."

page 119: Due to a formatting error, the following paragraph, which I wrote, appears to be an e-mail from an unhinged liberal reader:

The kindergarten ridicule of my maiden/legal name demonstrates just how nuts the lefties have become. On the one hand, they accuse me of exploiting my ethnicity to get ahead. On the other hand, they attack me for “hiding my ethnic heritage” by taking my husband’s name professionally when I got married more than a decade ago. Why can’t they get their ad hominem attacks straight? They can’t make up their minds because they’ve completely lost them.

A good cause

2006-08-11T11:33:00.000-06:00

Heather t-shirt
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

I thought I'd blog this because it's a really good cause. The pic is copyright 2005 by Heather Mills McCartney. I doubt she'd mind my blogging this, as it supports something extremely dear to her heart. Please visit the link indicated on the pic.

David Beckham

2006-08-11T11:21:00.000-06:00

David Beckham
Originally uploaded by Erich van der Vaart.

Yet another reason to smile...

A bit of fun in a world of fear

2006-08-11T10:58:00.000-06:00

Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide

View Current Signatures - Sign the Petition

To: Major governments all around the world.

This petition is for the complete ban of Dihydrogen monoxide. Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.

Dihydrogen monoxide:
- is the major component of acid rain
- contributes to the "greenhouse effect"
- it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
- contributes to erosion
- accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals
- may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes
- has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

Despite the dangers, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:
- as an industrial solvent and coolant.
- in nuclear power plants.
- in the production of styrofoam.
- as a fire retardant.
- in many forms of cruel animal research.
- as an additive in certain "junk-foods" and other food products.

Companies dump waste DHMO into rivers and the ocean, and nothing can be done to stop them because this practice is still legal. The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its "importance to the economic health of this nation." In fact, the navy and other military organizations are conducting experiments with DHMO, and designing multi-billion dollar devices to control and utilize it during warfare situations. Hundreds of military research facilities receive tons of it through a highly sophisticated underground distribution network. Many store large quantities for later use.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

View Current Signatures

The above is taken entire from this website.

Saint Clare

2006-08-11T09:19:00.000-06:00

Today is the feast day of Saint Clare, beloved of Saint Francis, and one of the most beloved of Catholic saints. She is the patron saint of the Eucharist, and is one of the most intriguing saints to read about. The following is taken from AmericanCatholic.org.

One of the more sugary movies made about Francis of Assisi pictures Clare as a golden-haired beauty floating through sun-drenched fields, a sort of one-girl counterpart to the new Franciscan Order.

The beginning of her religious life was indeed movie material. Having refused to marry at 15, she was moved by the dynamic preaching of Francis. He became her lifelong friend and spiritual guide.

At 18, she escaped one night from her father’s home, was met on the road by friars carrying torches, and in the poor little chapel called the Portiuncula received a rough woolen habit, exchanged her jeweled belt for a common rope with knots in it, and sacrificed the long tresses to Francis’ scissors. He placed her in a Benedictine convent which her father and uncles immediately stormed in rage. She clung to the altar of the church, threw aside her veil to show her cropped hair and remained adamant.

End of movie material. Sixteen days later her sister Agnes joined her. Others came. They lived a simple life of great poverty, austerity and complete seclusion from the world, according to a Rule which Francis gave them as a Second Order (Poor Clares). Francis obliged her under obedience at age 21 to accept the office of abbess, one she exercised until her death.

The nuns went barefoot, slept on the ground, ate no meat and observed almost complete silence. (Later Clare, like Francis, persuaded her sisters to moderate this rigor: “Our bodies are not made of brass.”) The greatest emphasis, of course, was on gospel poverty. They possessed no property, even in common, subsisting on daily contributions. When even the pope tried to persuade her to mitigate this practice, she showed her characteristic firmness: “I need to be absolved from my sins, but I do not wish to be absolved from the obligation of following Jesus Christ.”

Contemporary accounts glow with admiration of her life in the convent of San Damiano in Assisi. She served the sick, waited on table, washed the feet of the begging nuns. She came from prayer, it was said, with her face so shining it dazzled those about her. She suffered serious illness for the last 27 years of her life. Her influence was such that popes, cardinals and bishops often came to consult her—she never left the walls of San Damiano.

Francis always remained her great friend and inspiration. She was always obedient to his will and to the great ideal of gospel life which he was making real.

A well-known story concerns her prayer and trust. She had the Blessed Sacrament placed on the walls of the convent when it faced attack by invading Saracens. “Does it please you, O God, to deliver into the hands of these beasts the defenseless children I have nourished with your love? I beseech you, dear Lord, protect these whom I am now unable to protect.” To her sisters she said, “Don’t be afraid. Trust in Jesus.” The Saracens fled.

The world we live in

2006-08-10T11:12:00.000-06:00

The world we live in
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

In case you forgot that this is a post-9/11 world, there's today's reminder that we are all still very, very vulnerable. This is an AP photo, copyright 2006 by Matt Rourke, of various everyday items that are now forbidden on airplanes. Terrorists were planning to use such containers, filled with liquid explosives, to murder hundreds of people in-flight. Damned scary thought...Thank God for British vigilance.

Original AP/MSNBC caption: Items prohibited for air travel are seen collected before they are discarded at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, Thursday, Aug. 10, 2006. Airports ratcheted up security and delayed flights in the wake of a terror plot discovery in Britain.
12:02 p.m. ET, 8/10/06

Fake but Accurate, redux

2006-08-10T10:44:00.000-06:00

Picture Kill order Reuters August 2006
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

This is the altered photo that Reuters pulled, taken by fauxtographer Adnan Hajj. Please visit Little Green Footballs for a really in-depth view of this story.

Good for her

2006-08-09T13:30:00.000-06:00

Heather Mills 5
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

Heather Mills has hired Princess Diana's divorce lawyer. Personally, my view of Heather has changed gradually over the past weeks until I am now finding myself in full support of her. Paul locking her out of their house, and firing off a ranting letter over two bottles of cleanser, that's just too much... Whatever happened to "all you need is love"?

Nagasaki 61

2006-08-09T12:22:00.000-06:00

Nagasaki 61
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

61 years ago today...

No Nukes Declaration, Japan

2006-08-07T11:29:00.000-06:00

No nukes (re-re-repost)
Originally uploaded by nofrills.

I'm posting this picture here both because the photographer feels it's so important, and because this week marks the 61st. anniversary of the atrocities committed against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Please click on the picture's caption.

Peace

2006-08-07T11:19:00.000-06:00

Cute messanger @ Shin-Osaka Station
Originally uploaded by - ♥ 14.2.1 ♥ -.

This photo really says it all...

Hiroshima 61

2006-08-07T11:01:00.000-06:00

Hiroshima 61
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

I meant to blog about this yesterday, and simply ran out of time. I found this picture on Yahoo, and the picture's full caption gives the photo credit.

Hiroshima. Nagasaki. The evil that fell upon them sixty-one years ago must never, never be allowed to fall upon anyone else. Ever.

Pope Benedict pleads for peace

2006-08-07T10:52:00.000-06:00

The following is copied entire from Catholic.org

Benedict renews cease-fire appeal, calls for peace in martyred Mideast region
8/7/2006
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (Catholic Online) – Pope Benedict XVI expressed dismay that calls for Israel and Hezbollah to end hostilities in the Middle East have gone unheeded, appealing again for an immediate cease-fire and renewed commitment for a just and lasting peace on a day that U.N. diplomatic efforts seemed to fail.

Faced with the “bitter consternation that so far voices calling for an immediate ceasefire in this martyred region have been ignored,” the pope said he felt “the urgency to renew my pressing appeal about this, asking everyone to make their active contribution to the construction of a just and lasting peace,” reported the Catholic news agency AsiaNews.

Benedict made the remarks to thousands of pilgrims in his reflection before the reciting of the Aug. 6 Transfiguration feast day Angelus from his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, a town just south of Rome.

Noting that “peace is above all a gift of God,” Pope Benedict urged both prayer and the commitment of people of good will to “obtain peace for the peoples of the Middle East overwhelmed by fratricidal conflict.”

“Let none,” he said, “shrink from this duty.”

The pope has repeatedly called on both sides to lay down their arms since fighting erupted on July 12 after Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

Hezbollah killed 12 Israeli soldiers and three civilians on Aug. 6 in its deadliest rocket strike yet and Israeli bombs killed 19 Lebanese civilians as Lebanon rejected a draft U.N. resolution to end the 26-day-old war.

Sunday's deaths brought to 93 the number of Israelis killed, including 45 soldiers, the 12 reservists and 36 civilians. Israel's attacks on Lebanon through Aug. 6 have killed at least 606 people, including 524 civilians, 29 Lebanese soldiers and at least 53 Hezbollah guerrillas, according to the Associated Press.

Israeli warplanes repeatedly bombed Beirut's southern suburbs and Lebanon's southern and eastern regions on Aug. 7, killing at least 15 people, according to press reports, as both sides in the conflict sought to improve its position before a cease-fire resolution is voted upon by the U.N. Security Council.

Entrusting his renewed appeal for peace “to the intercession of the most blessed virgin,” Pope Benedict tied the meaning of the transfiguration of Jesus to the events of the day.

“On the transfigured face of Jesus shone a ray of the divine light that he guarded within. This very light radiates on the face of Christ on the day of the Resurrection,” he said. “With the risen Christ, truth and love triumph over deceit and sin. In Him, the light of God now illuminates the life of men and the path of history permanently.”

In his Aug. 2 general audience, Pope Benedict again appealed for an immediate cease-fire in the Middle East, saying nothing justifies the shedding of innocent blood, especially from so many children of the region.

"Our eyes are filled with the chilling images of people's bodies – especially children's – torn apart. I am thinking particularly of Qana in Lebanon," the pope said. "I want to repeat that nothing can justify the spilling of innocent blood, no matter which side does it."

He urged the international community "and those most directly involved in this tragedy" to move immediately to a "definite political solution of the crisis," one "able to give a more serene and secure future to the generations to come."

At the previous Sunday’s Angelus recitation, the pope said that violence is not the answer to establish justice, to build a new order and to create a lasting peace.

"In the name of God, I address to all those responsible for this spiral of violence that all sides immediately lay down their arms," the pope said.

“To political leaders and international institutions, I ask that no effort be spared in order to obtain the necessary cessation of hostilities,” the pope said, “and thus to build, through dialogue, a lasting and stable coexistence of all the people of the Middle East.”

Pope Benedict pointed to the “hundreds of dead, many injured, a vast mass of homeless and displaced people, cities and infrastructures destroyed, while hatred and thirst for revenge seem to be growing in the hearts of many.”

"These facts clearly demonstrate that it is not possible to re-establish justice, create a new order and build real peace when there is recourse to... violence.”

He said that the events of the last three weeks show “the church's voice is at once prophetic and realistic when, in the face of war and conflicts of all kinds.”

“This,” he added, “is the path that humanity today must also follow in order to achieve the desired good of real peace."

Katie Holmes conspiracy theories

2006-08-05T11:44:00.000-06:00

Katie Holmes conspiracy theories
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

For those out there who are wondering, like me, if Suri Cruise even exists... Also, Katie, at a recent business meeting, was acting dazed and confused, and was unable to make decisions. Considering Scientology and all that's known about it, make of all of this what you will...

Japanese Dream

2006-08-04T11:07:00.000-06:00

japanese dream
Originally uploaded by geishaboy500.

No clue what this actually says, so if anybody out there can translate it for me I'd be grateful. (If it's nasty, I'll pull the post.) I just thought this pic, being so bright and cheerful, would be a good thing to share.

Vanishing beauty

2006-08-04T10:40:00.000-06:00

Vanishing beauty
Originally uploaded by Airchild.

The poem below was written by the person whose pic this is. I just thought it said so much in so few words...

The irony of beauty
in this world
is in its fleeting nature
Only through temporary beauty
do we realize there is Truth
and Eternity
in the Core
Unseen

~Airchild

Authors beg for Harry Potter's life

2006-08-03T12:41:00.000-06:00

This is just too cool (though I know Rowling won't listen...):

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two of America's top authors, John Irving and Stephen King, made a plea to J.K. Rowling on Tuesday not to kill the fictional boy wizard Harry Potter in the final book of the series, but Rowling made no promises.

"My fingers are crossed for Harry," Irving said at a joint news conference before a charity reading by the three writers at New York's Radio City Music Hall.

The author of "The World According to Garp" and a string of other bestsellers said he and King felt like "warm-up bands" for Rowling, who is working on the seventh and last book in the Harry Potter series, and who has said two characters will die.

King, who shot to fame in 1974 with "Carrie," said he had confidence that Rowling would be "fair" to her hero.

"I don't want him to go over the Reichenbach Falls," King said in a reference to Arthur Conan Doyle's effort to kill off the character of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Pressure from fans eventually led Conan Doyle to resurrect Holmes, who was found in a later story to have survived.

Rowling, a Briton whose books have sold 300 million copies worldwide according to her publishers, said she was well into the process of writing the final book.

"I feel quite liberated," she said.

"I can resolve the story now and it's fun in a way it wasn't before because finally I've reached my resolution, and I think some people will loathe it and some people will love it, but that's how it should be."

"We're working towards the end I always planned but a couple of characters I expected to survive have died and one character got a reprieve," she said, declining to elaborate.

Asked about the wisdom of killing off fictional characters, Rowling said she didn't enjoy killing the major character who died in book six -- for the sake of those who haven't read it yet she avoided naming the victim -- but she said the conventions of the genre demanded the hero go on alone.

"I understand why an author would kill a character from the point of view of not allowing others to continue writing after the original author is dead," she added, leaving the door open to the worst fears of some fans -- that Harry could die.

King recalled that when he had a character kick a dog to death in his novel "Dead Zone" he received more letters of complaint than ever, to his surprise.

"You want to be nice and say 'I'm sorry you didn't like that,' but I'm thinking to myself number one, he was a dog not a person, and number two, the dog wasn't even real," he said.

"I made that dog up, it was a fake dog, it was a fictional dog, but people get very, very involved," King said.

Rowling noted that Irving had killed off many more characters than she had.

"When fans accuse me of sadism, which doesn't happen that often, I feel I'm toughening them up to go on and read John and Stephen's books," she said. "I think they've got to be toughened up somehow. It's a cruel literary world out there."

Mel Gibson complete statement

2006-08-02T11:20:00.000-06:00

Mel mugshot 2006
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge.

I am a public person, and when I say something, either articulated and thought out, or blurted out in a moment of insanity, my words carry weight in the public arena. As a result, I must assume personal responsibility for my words and apologize directly to those who have been hurt and offended by those words.

The tenets of what I profess to believe necessitate that I exercise charity and tolerance as a way of life. Every human being is God's child, and if I wish to honor my God I have to honor his children. But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.

I'm not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one on one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.

I have begun an ongoing program of recovery and what I am now realizing is that I cannot do it alone. I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display, and I am asking the Jewish community, whom I have personally offended, to help me on my journey through recovery. Again, I am reaching out to the Jewish community for its help. I know there will be many in that community who will want nothing to do with me, and that would be understandable. But I pray that that door is not forever closed.

This is not about a film. Nor is it about artistic license. This is about real life and recognizing the consequences hurtful words can have. It's about existing in harmony in a world that seems to have gone mad.

Today's Saint

2006-08-01T10:28:00.000-06:00

I took this from AmericanCatholic.org, a truly wonderful website. Please visit them!

August 1, 2006
St. Alphonsus Liguori
(1696-1787)

Moral theology, Vatican II said, should be more thoroughly nourished by Scripture, and show the nobility of the Christian vocation of the faithful and their obligation to bring forth fruit in charity for the life of the world. Alphonsus, declared patron of moral theologians by Pius XII in 1950, would rejoice in that statement. In his day, he fought for the liberation of moral theology from the rigidity of Jansenism. His moral theology, which went through 60 editions in the century following him, concentrated on the practical and concrete problems of pastors and confessors. If a certain legalism and minimalism crept into moral theology, it should not be attributed to this model of moderation and gentleness.

At the University of Naples he received, at the age of 16, a doctorate in both canon and civil law by acclamation, but soon gave up the practice of law for apostolic activity. He was ordained a priest and concentrated his pastoral efforts on popular (parish) missions, hearing confessions, forming Christian groups.

He founded the Redemptorist congregation in 1732. It was an association of priests and brothers living a common life, dedicated to the imitation of Christ, and working mainly in popular missions for peasants in rural areas. Almost as an omen of what was to come later, he found himself deserted, after a while, by all his original companions except one lay brother. But the congregation managed to survive and was formally approved 17 years later, though its troubles were not over.

Alphonsus’ great pastoral reforms were in the pulpit and confessional—replacing the pompous oratory of the time with simplicity, and the rigorism of Jansenism with kindness. His great fame as a writer has somewhat eclipsed the fact that for 26 years he traveled up and down the Kingdom of Naples, preaching popular missions.

He was made bishop (after trying to reject the honor) at 66 and at once instituted a thorough reform of his diocese.

His greatest sorrow came toward the end of his life. The Redemptorists, precariously continuing after the suppression of the Jesuits, had difficulty in getting their Rule approved by the Kingdom of Naples. Alphonsus acceded to the condition that they possess no property in common, but a royal official, with the connivance of a high Redemptorist official, changed the Rule substantially. Alphonsus, old, crippled and with very bad sight, signed the document, unaware that he had been betrayed. The Redemptorists in the Papal States then put themselves under the pope, who withdrew those in Naples from the jurisdiction of Alphonsus. It was only after his death that the branches were united.

At 71 he was afflicted with rheumatic pains which left incurable bending of his neck; until it was straightened a little, the pressure of his chin caused a raw wound on his chest. He suffered a final 18 months of “dark night” scruples, fears, temptations against every article of faith and every virtue, interspersed with intervals of light and relief, when ecstasies were frequent.

Alphonsus is best known for his moral theology, but he also wrote well in the field of spiritual and dogmatic theology. His Glories of Mary is one of the great works on that subject, and his book Visits to the Blessed Sacrament went through 40 editions in his lifetime, greatly influencing the practice of this devotion in the Church.

To fit my mood

2006-07-31T11:56:00.000-06:00

Cryptia's aunt
Originally uploaded by Cryptia.

This just so accurately matches the mood I was in a few days ago that I had to blog it!

Saint Ignatius of Loyola

2006-07-31T11:25:00.000-06:00

Saint Ignatius of Loyola
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

Today is the feast day of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. This link is his Wikipedia entry.

Mandy

2006-07-29T11:31:00.000-06:00

Mandy
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

Mandy Stavik, about whom I wrote in the last post...

Serial killer

2006-07-29T11:19:00.000-06:00

It seems possibly the worst serial killer in US history is currently in prison in my back yard. This man, Robert Browne, is truly sick and twisted, and the story, should you click this link , is gruesome. He has 7 confirmed murders to his credit, with another 41 that he's claiming proudly. Those 41 deaths are now being investigated with an eye to this man's confessions.

When I lived in Washington State, an 18 year old girl named Mandy Stavik was abducted, raped, and brutally murdered. I cannot help but wonder if Robert Browne's claim to have murdered someone in Washington might be Mandy. Her murder was never solved. I will be following all of this with great interest, as Mandy has haunted me for many years...Of course, if you yourself have any information regarding Mandy herself, please click here. This link is directly to the webpage of the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office.

Remembered Angels.

Wodehouse

2006-07-29T10:20:00.000-06:00

Smoky Illustions
Originally uploaded by normavalentine.

I am admittedly obsessed with the 1920s, and this postcard just screams Bertie Wooster and Madeline Bassett !

Victoria and Veronica

2006-07-27T10:51:00.000-06:00

Victoria and Veronica
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

The heck with it. I need to post something cheerful. These are my babies, taken some years ago, and is one of all-time favorite photos.

Mood

2006-07-27T10:22:00.000-06:00

Okay, I'm in a mood. So much for posting nice, pretty pictures in order to try to regain some calmness in my own life. I want today to comment on thoughtlessness, on the forgetting that a human being is on the other side of the computer keyboard. On sending messages that say "may God give you peace" when what is really being implied is quite the opposite.

I have tried, over the years, to be a level and forgiving and supportive person, but there are times when such resolve has been deeply tested. Yesterday being a case in point, and yesterday being, in point of fact, the very last time I am prepared to put up with certain things. I had a friend, a woman I've considered a sister, and this woman, yesterday, sent me the very last e-mail I will ever read from her. She was searching for a shoulder to cry on, as she has gotten herself into a tremendously tight spot. I pointed out, as gently as I was able to, that she got herself into this mess, but that as always I would pray for her, support her. In return, I received an e-mail saying "thanks for blaming the victim" and a wish that God's peace would be upon me.

Well, pardon me for believing that when you willingly sign a mortgage in your name for well over $1,000,000 it's your own fault when it turns out you haven't the money to pay for it. I will not post further details, because I'm really not trying to be vindictive, but honestly...

I was also called judgmental.

This woman claims to be walking a path of peace, of love, of gentleness and nature and all things good and bright and holy. I have never failed to support her, not once. I have never failed to listen to her problems. I have been, in short, a very good friend. My last e-mail to her told her that if all she wants is platitudes and "oh poor you" then perhaps I am not the friend for her. I pointed out some home truths, and was taken to task for doing so. This is not a friendship. To realize that after seven years is a bitter, bitter blow to me.

Of course, I have my own problems, my own melodramas, as do we all. But I do not expect constant and unending hand-holding. I do not try to blame my adult mistakes on others. I do not treat friends as unpaid psychologists who have nothing better to do than tell me how it's all Daddy's fault, or Mommy's fault, or current-boyfriend's fault.

Sad ending to a good friendship. I mourn the loss, but I also have far better things to do with my time and my energies. Goodbye, God be with you, you know who you are though your name shall, from my end, remain absolutely anonymous. If you choose to respond to this post with your name, that's your choice. God bless you, and may He bring you peace, and I honestly mean that.

Norma Jean

2006-07-26T12:49:00.000-06:00

****Marilyn****
Originally uploaded by *sugar*.

Just too cool a picture NOT to blog.

Autumn Orchard

2006-07-25T11:01:00.000-06:00

Autumn Orchard
Originally uploaded by Dunottar.

Another wonderful Flickr pic...

My mood today

2006-07-25T10:59:00.000-06:00

martini
Originally uploaded by seanhfoto.

I love this pic. Fits my mood today perfectly. Maybe I need a really good martini...

Buy Vintage

2006-07-16T14:12:00.000-06:00

Buy Vintage
Originally uploaded by normavalentine.

The caption on this pic on Flickr says "Please steal and blog this" so I'm only obeying a command, LOL!

NOT RAIN,BUT...

2006-07-15T11:14:00.000-06:00

NOT RAIN,BUT...
Originally uploaded by nightflyer1001.

Such a beautiful pic, I couldn't resist posting it! The colors are sublime in this photo.

Gothica

2006-07-12T10:58:00.000-06:00

Gothica
Originally uploaded by BrightAngel.

I'll begin my sillier posts with this "paper doll" created online by my youngest daughter. I love this one!

Choices

2006-07-12T10:56:00.000-06:00

Over recent weeks, as I ponder the world around me, I've come to realize that I have a deep and growing need to find something peaceful to do. A new focus, softer, calmer, more non-threatening than a deep involvement in politics and scandals. This may be a phase that I will eventually pass through, but for the nonce my choice has to stand. I need relief from the constant and unending tensions around me, and this includes things other than politics, of course.

And so, for the next little while, I think I'm going to be posting light things, trivial things, goofy and silly and smile-making things.

I belong to Flickr, a photo-sharing website, and have found tons of wonderful pics posted by tons of wonderful people. I will be posting many of their pics here, with full links to them and full credit to them of course. If you see a pic of yours here, and don't want me to post it, just send me an e-mail and I will remove it.

God bless, everyone!

Chayce Grey Miller, 1989-2006

2006-06-21T11:30:00.000-06:00

Chayce_Miller_1
Originally uploaded by SanityRanch.

Chayce Grey Miller, born October 2, 1989, stolen from us by a drunk driver May 13, 2006. This is a self-portrait of him. Rest in peace...

Speaking of Michael Schiavo

2005-12-08T05:26:00.000-07:00

This is interesting:

AP Shills for Michael Schiavo
Posted by Lisa Fabrizio on December 7, 2005 - 18:03.

Months after her death, the Associated Press has reopened the tragic story of Terri Schiavo, this time giving its huge audience the big news that her husband has launched a Political Action Committee:

Michael Schiavo, whose effort to end life support for his brain-damaged wife divided a nation, is launching a political action committee that will challenge candidates based on where they stand on government's reach in private lives.

In rehashing the story, the AP continues just as it left off, lying. Terri Schiavo was no more on “life support” than is an infant child who cannot feed itself. But just to keep the ball rolling--in an AP-ish sort of way--they couldn’t resist jabbing you know who:

Schiavo described himself as a lifelong Republican "before Republicans pushed the power of government into my private family decisions."

For those of you who are remotely interested in why a man who--with the assistance of the right-to-death crowd via the U.S. judicial system--had his wife starved to death, and who claimed to hate the spotlight, would start a PAC, I give you this from his website:

The sanctity of marriage and personal privacy – the right to make life’s most personal decisions for ourselves and our families free from government interference – are fundamental freedoms and American beliefs that I hold dear.

We need to elect leaders with true, traditional American values and some backbone to stand up for them – who respect the sanctity of marriage and put our fundamental right to privacy before political opportunism.

In case anyone has forgotten (the AP apparently has), this paragon of matrimonial sanctity had two children out of wedlock with a woman he lived with during the years of Terri’s infirmity.

But why should that matter to the AP as long as it furthers their political agenda?

The original source for this post: AP Shills for Michael Schiavo NewsBusters.org

Whither Canada?

2005-12-08T04:56:00.000-07:00

I have never heard of Stephen Lewis, but apparently he's causing a big stink north of the border. He received an award from a "Catholic" hospital in Canada, and is so liberal he must make people like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry positively green with jealousy, eh?

Again, the snippets below are from LifeSiteNews.

First snippet--ST. BONIFACE, Manitoba, December 6, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The St. Boniface General Hospital last week awarded one of the world’s more prominent promoters of the eugenic population control and anti-Catholic movements in international health care. Stephen Lewis, despite protests by Catholics and pro-life groups, both to the hospital and the local bishop, was duly granted a prestigious award for “international humanitarian work in health care.”

Second snippet--Stephen Lewis so "liberated" he even chose sperm donor to inseminate lesbian daughter
REAL Women says "pompous, arrogant" Lewis "an ideal UN bureaucrat"
By Stephen Jalsevac

OTTAWA, December 5, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - REAL Women of Canada, a group that has extensively lobbied at the United Nations on behalf of the family, has written a scorching piece in its Nov/Dec 2005 newsletter about the socialist antics of Canada's Stephen Lewis at the UN.
Gwendolyn Landolt, REAL Women's national vice-president, writes in the article that, "The UN and Mr. Lewis were a perfect match. Mr. Lewis's pompous, arrogant posturing fitted perfectly into the UN style and made him an ideal UN bureaucrat." Landolt goes on to relate the deadly anti-life, anti-family and anti-Christian agenda pursued by Lewis during his heady years in senior roles at the UN.

"The problem with Mr. Lewis, however," writes Landolt, "is that he does not seem to have any original thoughts, nor does he seem capable of grappling with concepts outside the socialist box which challenge the concept of absolute sexual liberation. In fact, Mr. Lewis is so 'liberated' that he even chose the sperm donor to inseminate his lesbian daughter, Ilana."

** See the complete article republished today as a LifeSiteNews Special Report
The Tiny Mind of Stephen Lewis http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/dec/051206a.html

Not really surprising

2005-12-08T04:50:00.000-07:00

I get the daily dispatches from LifeSiteNews (their ticker can be found at the bottom of this blog), and usually find myself outraged by what I read there. Christmas is from the very Christian, very Catholic, words "Christ Mass," and yet people will still insist that it's nothing more than a secular "let's shop until we're bankrupt" time of year. More and more, worldwide, Christians are being actively discriminated against, and I have only the absolute highest praise for the girl in the story below who refused to remove her crucifix.

Sikh Sacred Band OK but Crucifix No Way says UK School
Hanukkah Songs Permitted but Christmas Carols Forbidden in Wisconsin
By Terry Vanderheyden and John-Henry Westen

LONDON, December 6, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A British schoolgirl was sent home yesterday for refusing to remove a crucifix she has worn regularly for three years.
Sam Morris, 16, was told to go home Monday after a school official failed to convince her to remove the religious article; the same school allows Sikh children to wear a Kara, a bracelet worn by Sikh males.

Deputy head teacher Howard Jones of Sinfin Community School in Derby said, “There was a long period of persuasion with her and she was given time. It was only at the end of that that I reluctantly had to exclude her for a day,” according to the Drudge Report. “I met with her mother today and readmitted her daughter.” Jones said the strict jewellery prohibition was for student’s safety.

He argued that “As a Christian I don't have to wear a crucifix but Sikhs don’t have that option and we have to be understanding. We live in a multi-faith society.”

The girl’s mother, Debra Saunders, described her daughter’s treatment as “unfair.” “Sam has worn this necklace for more than three years and it is of great sentimental value to her. No-one has told her to take it off before and she doesn't want to. She thinks it is very unfair when other people are allowed to wear religious symbols and it just ends up creating a divide between the pupils when everyone is told they should be living in unity.”

Meanwhile in Wisconsin, the Glendale-River Hills School District has expressly prohibited any song close to the Christmas holiday from having any religious “motive or theme.” While banning Christian Christmas songs, the district permits secular holiday songs as well as songs celebrating Hanukkah.

Mathew D. Staver, President and General Counsel of Liberty Counsel, which is representing the mother of a child in the school district stated: “The intent of the school district’s policy is clear – “Frosty the Snowman” is in, “My Dreidel” is in, “Silent Night” is out. How much more ridiculous can it get when 96% of Americans celebrate Christmas, but the school district pretends like Christmas is merely a ghost of Christmas past.”

Pray for Haleigh

2005-12-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

Here we go again, only this time the killer of the female in a "persistent vegetative state" has actually been charged with a crime, unlike Michael Schiavo, who quite literally got away with murder. Seems that beating the tar out of someone can indeed leave the victim in a "persistent vegetative state," even though Michael Schiavo managed to conceal the ultimately fatal beatings he administered to his wife Terri Schindler. The idiot in the story below wasn't quite as lucky as our old pal Schiavo, though. Strickland, the man in question, beat his 11-year-old adopted daughter Haleigh into a coma, and is now trying to get the state of Massachusetts to keep her on life support in order to avoid being charged with her murder.

He should have taken Haleigh to Florida before he tried to kill her. He'd probably have gotten a parade, although Florida would yank the life support, which is, ironically, the very thing Strickland doesn't want to happen.

I am posting this nearly in its entirety, and the whole gruesome and heartbreaking story can be read at this CBS link.

(CBS/AP) Lawyers for the stepfather of an 11-year-old girl tried to convince Massachusetts' highest court on Tuesday that he should have a say on whether his stepdaughter is removed from life support. If the girl dies, he could face a murder charge for allegedly taking part in the beating that left her comatose.

Jason Strickland is asking the Supreme Judicial Court to overturn a juvenile court judge's decision allowing the state to remove Haleigh Poutre from her ventilator and feeding tube.

Haleigh Poutre was hospitalized in September after her stepfather and adoptive mother kicked her and beat her nearly to death with a baseball bat.

Within two weeks of being charged with assault and battery, the adoptive mother, who was also Haleigh's aunt, was found dead alongside her grandmother in a possible murder-suicide.

Strickland is free on bail while awaiting trial on assault charges.

CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi reports that the girl's biological mother, Allison Avrett, gave up her parental rights years ago and now she has no say in what happens to Halleigh – but she wants life support to be removed.

"I want her to rest," Avrett told Alfonsi. "Being kept alive like that, it's not a life."

The state Department of Social Services has custody of the girl and wants to remove her from life support, citing opinions from her doctors that the girl is in a permanent vegetative state. Strickland appealed, and could face a murder charge if she dies.

Strickland's lawyer argued that he should be designated as the girl's de facto parent because he lived with her for four years.

But that argument didn't fly with Chief Justice Margaret Marshall. "That's not going to cut it," she said.

Marshall said de facto parenthood is typically reserved for someone being prevented from having a relationship with a child by the child's biological parent.

ther justices expressed concern that Strickland is charged with abusing Haleigh. "Who would we put in here? Mr. Strickland, who is charged with injuring the child?" said Justice John Greaney.

Strickland's lawyers say that while the state has pushed for removal of Haleigh's life support, no one has argued that the girl should live.

CBS News Strange Twist In Right-To-Die Case December 6, 2005 21:30:07

Terri's Grave

2005-10-25T05:47:00.000-06:00

I just got this e-mail, posted here in its entirety, from Father Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life:

Blessing the Grave

I recently had the privilege of blessing the grave of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, who was murdered on March 31, 2005 by dehydration. Her grave is not far from the place where she died, and where people from around the world had gathered to protest and pray.

Those who visit the gravestone, however, will notice something highly unusual. While on most graves there is an inscription of two dates - when the person was born and when he or she died - on Terri's there are three. Here's exactly what the grave says:

Born December 3, 1963

Departed this Earth February 25, 1990

At Peace March 31, 2005

The whole world knows that she died on March 31, 2005. National and global media were present at the scene for days, covering every detail. Media were present again when I preached at her funeral mass. We know when she died.

But her gravestone has become a pulpit for the euthanasia movement. Those who killed her are now using her grave as a platform for their twisted ideology. What they are trying to say is that once her brain was injured in 1990 and she was no longer functioning like most of us, she wasn’t one of us anymore. She "departed this earth."

This is actually a variation on an ancient heresy, which says that we are really spirits inhabiting a body. Terri couldn't communicate normally. So, her "spirit" must have left her. The body was just a shell left behind. Those who believe she really "departed this earth" in 1990 can therefore pretend it was OK to kill her in 2005. After all, it wasn't really her. She was already gone.

This is heresy, because Christianity teaches that we are a unity of body and soul, not simply a soul "using" a body. The body matters. What we do to the body, we do to the person.

Moreover, the gravestone inscription is a deep insult to all who are disabled, and to all those who love and care for them. Should they be considered already dead, too? Are we just wasting our time caring for them? Euthanasia advocates would have us think so.

A recent news story about a disabled unborn child quoted one as saying, "There's no human life there." Isn't that the same idea? They think the baby has already "departed this earth," so they don't hesitate to abort the body.

As I blessed Terri's grave, I also prayed that God's people would be kept safe from this falsehood. And I recalled being in Terri's room the day she died. I remembered her face, dehydrated from not having had a drop of water in two weeks. I recalled seeing the flowers, inches away, on her night table. They were immersed in water. And as I left the grave, I gave a final glance to the vase of flowers that was standing by the stone. [Note: Personal notes of condolence for Terri's family can be forwarded to Terri@priestsforlife.org, and Fr. Frank will deliver them.]

This column can be found online at: www.priestsforlife.org/columns/columns2005/05-10-24blessinggrave.htm

Remember to support our work at http://www.priestsforlife.org/donate/

Hitler's Pope?

2005-10-15T06:51:00.000-06:00

I saw an eye-opening program last night on EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network. The show was Raymond Arroyo's "The World Over Live," and the guest was a Rabbi who has written a book about Pope Pius XII. The book is called The Myth of Hitler's Pope, and it answers quite neatly all of the liberal anti-Catholic claims that Pius XII was a silent pope who stood by and did nothing while millions of Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis.

Apparently, Pius was not only not silent, but himself saved thousands of Jews from certain death, to the point of hiding many at his personal villa at Castel Gandolfo.

Of course, libs and Catholic-haters don't want to hear that, and I have no doubt that this book will receive scathing reviews in the New York Times, but for everyone who wants a fair and balanced view of this pope, I'd say this book is essential reading. The fact that it was written by a Rabbi speaks volumes, and the fact that this Rabbi is himself a professor at a Catholic college adds substantial weight to his arguments. He points out that such Jewish notables as Golda Meir and Albert Einstein expressed high praise for Pope Pius XII, and Einstein did so in Time magazine, one of liberalism's bibles.

Oh, and one more thing. Rabbi Dalin points out that Hitler did indeed have a more than willing accomplice in religious circles--a Muslim leader, no less, named Hajj Amin al-Husseini. The lengthy Wikipedia article on this shining light of the Muslim world can be found at this link.

Warning to all parents of daughters! American Girl--deep ties to pro-abortion

2005-10-13T16:53:00.000-06:00

I found this disturbing, to say the least. My own daughters love the American Girl doll line. I am posting this here in its entirety, so please visit the Pro-Life Action League for more information.

American Girl Doll Company Helps Fund Pro-Abortion Group

The Pro-Life Action League is alerting parents that a seemingly innocent self-esteem campaign launched by the popular American Girl doll company is helping to support the pro-abortion, pro-lesbian agenda of Girls Incorporated.

In August, American Girl launched the "I Can" campaign, which involves a pledge and the purchase of a special bracelet. Seventy cents of each one-dollar bracelet sold will be donated to Girls Inc. American Girl is also donating an additional $50,000 to Girls Inc.

"Parents need to know that this effort to promote self-esteem among girls is not as innocent as it seems," commented League Executive Director Ann Scheidler. "While Girls Inc. has some good programs, they also support abortion, oppose abstinence-only education for girls, and condone lesbianism."

The Anti-Family Agenda of Girls Inc.

Excerpts from the Girls Inc. advocacy statement on girls' health makes their anti-family agenda clear (emphasis added):

"Girls Incorporated supports a woman's freedom of choice, a constitutional right established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 in Roe vs. Wade."

"To make responsible decisions about sexuality, pregnancy and parenthood, girls need and have a right to sensitive, truthful sexuality education; convenient access to safe, effective methods of contraception and protection from disease; and referral to comprehensive information, counseling, clinical and other services that support their responsible decisions."

"Girls have a right to positive, supportive environments and linkages to community resources for dealing with issues of sexual orientation."

In addition, Girls Inc.'s list [PDF] of "Sexuality Resources for Girls" includes books promoting premarital sex, birth control, contraception and abortion. And while Girls Inc. says they promote abstinence, their program for pregnancy prevention depends on providing birth control, and Girls Inc. opposed additional funding for abstinence education in the U.S. Senate.

League Urges Parents To Contact American Girl

The League is urging parents, grandparents and other family members to write and call American Girl President Ellen L. Brothers to object to the company's support for Girls Inc. Letters, phone calls and e-mails should be directed to:
Ellen L. Brothers, PresidentAmerican Girl8400 Fairway PlaceMiddleton, WI 53562
Tel: 1-800-845-0005Fax: 608-828-4790E-Mail: ellen.brothers@americangirl.com

Scheidler and the League hope American Girl will sever ties with Girls Inc. before the League calls for a boycott of American Girl products and launches a picketing campaign at the American Girl Place retail stores in Chicago and New York.

Hollywood, biased? Surely you're joking!

2005-10-12T08:49:00.000-06:00

Well, they're finally handing out stars in Hollywood to honor mediocre B-movie-level actresses. Of course, said crappy actresses are both flaming liberals, so why am I surprised that the star-bedecked sidewalk will now contain the names of Kirsten Dunst and Charlize Theron?

(Those links, by the way, are to the HTML version of a .pdf file, and you need only search for those illustrious actress' names at the link to see their campaign contributions to John Kerry. If you want the original .pdf file, either google, without the quotes, "Kirsten Dunst John Kerry" and then scroll down, or e-mail me and I'll gladly send it to you.)

If anyone disagress with me that the lovely Charlize and the lovely Kirsten are no more than B-movie (at best) talents, feel free to go out and rent "The Devil's Advocate" (with a bonus for you fellas out there--Charlize is naked for much of the flick! Complete with whip-marks from her encounter with the son of Satan!) or "Wimbledon." Or try "Bring It On" (Dunst) or "Reindeer Games" (Theron), for truly sparkling examples of these actresses' work. ("Reindeer Games" also showcases an Oscar-worthy performance by Ben Affleck, by the way. And I hope the heavy sarcasm in that last sentence comes through clearly.)

Rich people and rich people cures

2005-10-07T19:41:00.000-06:00

After Christopher Reeve (remember him? The sainted liberal poster boy who was crippled playing polo and whose medical bills--in the millions--were payed for by his Hollywood friends?), I had begun to hope that maybe we had heard the last (at least for a while) of wealthy people receiving groundbreaking surgeries that only wealthy people can afford or have access to. I was, sadly, wrong. Seems Stevie Wonder may be able to see again. Wow! The world can rest easy tonight knowing that a wealthy blind guy may see again! Of course, that doesn't do diddly for the blind of this planet who can't afford mega-bucks surgery, but who cares? What's really important is that Stevie Wonder may see again!

I have to wonder when the libs--those caring, socially conscious folks who weep such large crocodile tears--are going to start defending the paraplegics and blind people who don't have enough money to get through the week, let alone the cash for surgery. My brother had no health insurance, and when he had a massive heart attack, the bills were well over $100,000. His death did not, needless to say, stop the collection agencies.

But who cares? Stevie Wonder may see again!

GOP Harriet Miers e-mail

2005-10-07T17:32:00.000-06:00

This is the entire text of the e-mail I received today from the GOP regarding Harriet Miers. I've signed the online petition already, so please, if you support the President's choice, follow the link and sign the petition as well.

Dear Salena,

On Monday President George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the United States Supreme Court.

Harriet Miers has a long and distinguished career as one of the foremost lawyers in the country which makes her exceptionally well qualified to serve on the United States Supreme Court. As a Justice on the Supreme Court, she will strictly interpret the Constitution and laws of the United States, not legislate from the bench.The President has once again nominated someone to the federal bench who stand strong for our shared principles. Like Chief Justice John Roberts, Harriet Miers will bring to the Supreme Court modesty, humility, and a conservative judicial philosophy.

In recent days, many conservative leaders are rallying to support her nomination.
Dr. James Dobson:"We welcome the president's nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. He pledged emphatically during his campaign to appoint judges who will interpret the law rather than create it. He also promised to select competent judges who will 'not use the bench to write social policy. To this point, President Bush's appointments to the federal bench appear to have been remarkably consistent with that stated philosophy."

David N. O'Steen, Executive Director - National Right to Life Committee:"President Bush has an excellent record of appointing judges who recognize the proper role of the courts, which is to interpret the law according to its actual text, and not to legislate from the bench. We believe that Harriet Miers is another nominee who will abide by the text and history of the Constitution."

Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel - American Center for Law and Justice:"At a time when the High Court is facing some of the most critical issues of the day - including a number of cases dealing directly with abortion and life issues - the person who replaces Justice O'Connor is critical. She [Harriet Miers] is bright, thoughtful, and a consummate professional and I enthusiastically endorse her nomination. Once again, President Bush showed exceptional judgment in naming Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court to replace Justice O'Connor"

Roberta Combs, President - Christian Coalition of America: "She [Harriet Miers] was the first woman to be elected the Texas State Bar Association President and the first woman to be hired in her law firm and to become President of the law firm. I trust that she will be an excellent addition to the High Court and all Americans will be proud of her."

Dr. Richard Land:"I'm supporting her because I know this president. There is no issue he is more committed to than turning around the role of judges in this culture and his commitment to strict-constructionist, original- intent jurists. There is no promise he has kept more faithfully."

Take Action! Sign our petition in support of Harriet Miers

Take Action! Let us know why you are supporting President Bush and his nomination of Harriet Miers. Email faithandvalues@gop.com and let us know why you are supporting her nomination.

Sincerely,
David Rexrode
Director of Conservative Development

Without a trace of bias

2005-10-06T21:23:00.000-06:00

Tonight's episode of "Without a Trace" (carried, naturally, by the network that brought you Dan Blather) featured a poor, defenseless little kid being beaten by huge, merciless bullies.

What set off these bullies, these thugs, you ask? Well, I'll tell you--it seems the sweet, tiny, angelic, golden-haired boy dared to say that the government of these United States isn't protecting its citizens, and that said government was more than a little to blame for 9/11. For this crime, the sweet little boy was beaten by the immense and highly-muscled schoolroom bullies.

I didn't watch the entire episode, preferring by a wide margin to focus my energies instead on rooting for the Astros (they lost), so I have no idea how the episode ends. Nor do I care. (Oh, and I forgot to add that the angelic golden-haired little liberal pipsqueak, who reminded me sharply of a time-machined Joe Biden, was being raised by a brave and valiant single mother, who held two jobs.) Will I sleep better tonight knowing that short angelic liberal brats are out there defending the terrorists who want to kill me and my family? Not likely...

Hillary for the Supreme Court

2005-10-05T21:38:00.000-06:00

I have an idea. President Bush is being criticized for nominating a lawyer who has never worn judicial robes (never mind that Rehnquist never did either, before his confirmation) for a spot on the Supreme Court. Fine, so here's my idea, and I think it's a really funny one--he should nominate Hillary Clinton instead. She's a lawyer, she's a she (until someone can actually prove otherwise), and she's the left's poster girl.

And then, since you know darned well that the Dems would have no choice but to confirm her to the Supreme Court (and since the Republicans would get the joke, she'd win unanimously!), we could watch them all implode, every single Democrat in the Senate. They would have to approve a Bush nominee, who would then be out of the running for the White House for the forseeable future.

I am, of course, kidding, but wouldn't it be fun?

Harriet Miers

2005-10-03T12:08:00.000-06:00

As everyone now knows, Harriet Miers has been nominated to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Also, today marks Chief Justice Roberts' first official day on the job.

What sort of woman is Harriet Miers? She isn't a judge, but she definitely comes fully loaded with qualifications. She is the current head of Texas' State Bar. Something that will cause liberals everywhere to lose sleep, however, is the fact that Miers lobbied against abortion:

As president of the Texas State Bar in 1993, Harriet Miers urged the national American Bar Association to put the abortion issue to a referendum of the group's full membership. She questioned at the time whether the ABA should "be trying to speak for the entire legal community" on an issue that she said "has brought on tremendous divisiveness" within the ABA. from this link.

Libs can apparently draw courage (can't you just hear Dan Rather mournfully mouthing that word?) from the fact that in the 1980s, Miers donated to the Democratic Party:

Picking through the background of newly minted Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, there are some political activities that may irritate the president's conservative base -- she donated campaign cash to a handful of Democrats, including Al Gore.

In her defense, the donations date back to the 1980s. For example, Miers gave $1,000 to Gore, then a senator from Tennessee, during his 1988 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to Political Moneyline -- the best site on the Web to track money and politics.

During that same cycle, Miers donated $1,000 each to Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) and the Democratic National Committee.

Of course, I found that at Chris Cillizza's blog, which touts that tonmorrow's entries will include "another blow to Republicans," so I am quoting from a left-biased source, but still, the fact remains that Miers did indeed make those donations. Of course, over a 20-year period, anyone can change their minds and switch party affiliation. Anyone can be cured of liberalism, and hopefully, judging by her stance on abortion, Harriet Miers has indeed been cured.

For those interested, some of the choicer comments left on the above-cited blog (with my comments in parentheses after--and the original comments are unedited by me):

It seems as if Bush really blew it. He totally undercut the last group that was hanging with him - his base. (He totally undercut his base? Wow! Really? Why hasn't that made the news?)

I am so glad that you are writing The Fix. A talented journalist like yourself is a treasure to the pack journalists that roam this town. (Talented journalist? I found no talent whatsoever in the sparse paragraphs that this "treasure" jotted down in his blog.)

I just can't figure Bush out, he seems to think for himself every once in a while and it throws us all threw a loop. (Aww, sweetie, I'll just bet it does, because you're all so convinced Bush is a moron, and it really confuses you when you have to admit he can actually think for himself. Maybe we can provide barf-bags for that loopy ride you're on.)

just like when W selected Roberts, The far right and far left didnt approve. So maybe W is the guenus in disguise. (Well, we certainly know who isn't a genius in disguise...)

My concern isn't that Miers never was a judge or that she's been plucked from the dark Republican cave of Bush's Whitehouse but rather that she's SIXTY and has never been married. Perhaps it's her Halloween-style make-up or that her face is more wrinkled than a Texan raisen, or perhaps it's somethign else. Maybe she's looking to date Souter? Or, more likely, with the way Bush's second term is going, Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Most Jewish women experiment with lesbianism at some point in their lives. Usually it's sophmore year after a bowl of Humbolt. But never say never and Ginsburg is kind of hot. I'm sure we'll learn more during the hearings... (I'm not even certain this one was meant seriously. I certainly hope it wasn't...Regardless, it reveals something about the sort of people who commented on the "talented journalism" of the "treasure" writing the blog.)

Go ahead and fight abortion for yourself and in your family and in your church, but leave the rest of our society the hell alone. I don't believe that an undifferentiated mass of protoplasm at 3 or 6 months is any more a "baby" than a puppy fetus, a kitty fetus, or a hamster fetus. While I would treasure it myself and do everything possible to protect and sustain it, I cannot and would not force my will on anybody else. (So a woman who is 6 months pregnant is not carrying a baby, but is carrying an "undifferentiated mass of protoplasm?" There is so much wrong with this bizarre statement that I don't know where to start, so I'll just leave it as its own commentary, and end my post.)

One for the good guys

2005-09-29T13:20:00.000-06:00

Moments ago, John Roberts was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with President Bush looking tired but pleased at his side. I must say, I wish Mrs. Roberts had shown more emotion, but she looked a bit tired herself, of course.

God bless you, Justice Roberts, and may your life be a long and prosperous one. And on a personal note, may you always, always, annoy those who would pigeonhole you...