The Gift of the Château de Rambouillet

Neither the dairy at Rambouillet nor the one at Trianon were for "playing milkmaid." Both Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette embraced the practical view of generating food, income, and employment by having dairies, as well as giving an example to other nobles of investing in agriculture. From France Today:

Back to Louis XVI and his desperation to bring Marie-Antoinette to the castle he loved so much. Along with an experimental farm, which he populated with merino sheep imported from Spain, and a nursery garden, in which he had exotic species planted following botanic exploration trips abroad, he wooed Marie-Antoinette with a rather astonishing gift. 

He ordered the construction of an ornamental creamery, which was designed for the sole purpose of tasting and enjoying dairy products, a fashionable hobby at the end of the 18th century. The king commissioned the best artists of the time: painter Hubert Robert and sculptor Pierre Julien, who crafted the building to resemble a Greek temple. A small zoo was also built just outside the creamery. The project was completed by 1787 and the king planned a spectacular unveiling for the queen who, despite the monumental grotto, finely sculpted detailing, mahogany furniture and finest porcelain set…still preferred Versailles’ Trianon palace! (Read more.)

Share

Biden Admin Issues New Title IX Ruling

 From The Easton Gazette:

On Friday, April 19, 2024 the Biden Administration issued its Title IX guidance and policy that will force school districts to investigate any and all sexual harassment complaints, even those that occur off school grounds. The ruling extends protections to LGBTQ students. The policy will go into effect in August 2024.

Key parts of the ruling are:

1. Training for all employees about the school's processes to address sex discrimination and how to report to the Title IX Coordinator.
2. Require schools to provide support to any complainant and respondent to any conduct that may constitute sex discrimination, including sexual violence and other forms of sex-based harassment.
3. Require schools to respond promptly and effectively to any and all complaints of sexual harassment in a fair, transparent, and unbiased way that include trained decisionmakers to evaluate all relevant and not otherwise impermissible evidence.

This policy will also require that Title IX Coordinators investigators, et al. may not have a conflict of interest or bias for or against complainant students.

According to the chair of House Education committee the ruling " undermines existing due process rights, placing students and institutions in legal jeopardy and again undermining the protections Title IX is intended to provide." She also stated that the inclusion of transgender students rolls back protections for women.

What is missing from this policy is the proposed rule concerning trans students' participation in sports. In 2023 the proposed rule would have addressed the controversial issue. However, the possibility elicited hundreds of thousands of comments from the public. Some claim that the unpopularity of this part of the law has caused the administration to push its implementation to after the 2024 election. The rules published today will take effect in August 2024. (Read more.)

Share

Lincoln Center Cancels Mozart

 From The New York Post:

When Black Lives Matter becomes a marketing strategy, facts offer little impediment to speaking “one’s truth.” Take the case of New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which banked its pandemic recovery on a narrative of its own abhorrence. In 2020, the center began promoting a story that a vibrant black community known as San Juan Hill had been deliberately snuffed out in the 1950s to make way for its creation.

“The displacement of Indigenous, Black, and Latinx families that took place prior to the construction of our campus is abhorrent,” declares the center’s “Message on Our Commitment to Change.”

“We may never know its full impact on those dispossessed of the land on which Lincoln Center sits. But only by acknowledging this history can we begin to confront the racism from which our institution has benefited.” (Read more.)

Share

The Face of Tragedy

Marie-Antoinette with Her Children

Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Dauphin, Madame Royale, and Princess Elisabeth are insulted by the mob on their road back to Paris after their interception at Varennes by the postmaster Drouet. Via Le Boudoir de Marie-Antoinette.

The Return from Varennes by Edward Matthew Ward

Share

Trump Supporters in Harlem

 

Share

Time and Christianity

 From Catholic Exchange:

In Confessions, Augustine provided a model of personal time that provides each person with a model of the individual experience of the life and significance of Christ that has little to do with formal chronologies, history, and public events. It depends upon the old Greek idea of the Logos as developed by Philo Judaeus of Alexandria and the Apostle John. Philo wrote of the Logos: God creates “at once, not merely by uttering a command, but by even thinking of it” (Philo, n.d., III.13). And John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1).

Logos simply exists at all times but by taking on flesh enters into time, interacts with time, bringing light into time, whereas before there was only darkness. Darkness, time, yields to lightness, eternity. Ignorance yields to knowledge. Time is darkness because we cannot see what lies ahead. The future is unknown, and the past a memory. The present is a brief momentary anticipation of what might be. But if light enters darkness, if timeless enters time, then the path forward is brightened, made aware to us, lighting the way in the darkness. The future, always dark, is opened to light, and complete ignorance gives way to some knowledge of what will be. Not what might be. Because the night implies ignorance, implies that we are still guessing based on experience. No, now we know what will be thanks to the light.

All cultures have struggled to know the Logos. Polytheistic peoples conceived of a divinity that was inherent in nature, controlling all things, encompassing past, present, and future. The Hebrews identified it as Yahweh. The Greeks as the mind, the infinite, the good—the Logos. Asian philosophy called it the Way, the source, the Brahma. Christianity offers a unique perspective, that of a Transcendent Being that acts in time without being confined by it, acting subtly upon the self, connecting the self to the transcendent—a direct physical and spiritual connection. (Read more.)

Share

"Those Who Love" by Sara Teasdale

Those who love the most,
Do not talk of their love,
Francesca, Guinevere,
Deirdre, Iseult, Heloise,
In the fragrant gardens of heaven
Are silent, or speak if at all
Of fragile inconsequent things.

And a woman I used to know
Who loved one man from her youth,
Against the strength of the fates
Fighting in somber pride
Never spoke of this thing,
But hearing his name by chance,
A light would pass over her face.

Share

Former Philadelphia Judge of Elections Convicted of Conspiring to Violate Civil Rights and Bribery

 From the DOJ:

A former Judge of Elections has been convicted for his role in accepting bribes to cast fraudulent ballots and certifying false voting results during the 2014, 2015, and 2016 primary elections in Philadelphia. Domenick J. Demuro, 73, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty during a sealed proceeding on March 16, 2020, before U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond to conspiring to deprive persons of civil rights, and using interstate facilities in aid of bribery. The court unsealed the matter today. Sentencing is scheduled for June 30, 2020.

During his guilty plea hearing, Demuro admitted that while serving as an elected municipal Judge of Elections, he accepted bribes in the form of money and other things of value in exchange for adding ballots to increase the vote totals for certain candidates on the voting machines in his jurisdiction and for certifying tallies of all the ballots, including the fraudulent ballots. Demuro further admitted that a local political consultant gave him directions and paid him money to add votes for candidates supported by the consultant, including candidates for judicial office whose campaigns actually hired the consultant, and other candidates for various federal, state and local elective offices preferred by that consultant for a variety of reasons. Demuro also admitted that the votes he added in exchange for payments by the political consultant increased the number of votes fraudulently recorded and tallied for the consultant’s clients and preferred candidates, thereby diluting the ballots cast by actual voters.

“This defendant abused his office by engaging in election fraud for profit,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Today’s conviction makes it clear that the Department of Justice will do all in its power to protect the integrity of elections and maintain public confidence in all levels of elected government.” (Read more.)

Share