Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Mar 20 2023
The First Day Of Spring 2023
Good morning, Gentle Reader. It’s been an interesting week already, yet it’s only Monday. I’m in a “bar the doors and clean all the guns” sort of mood, but to keep things peppy around here (and to avoid involuntary commitment) I think I’ll muse over a graphic I snagged just yesterday. As is so …
Mar 19 2023
The Pursuit Of Misery
The calendar makes this the fourth Sunday of Lent in the Year of Our Lord 2023. That makes this Laetare Sunday, which parallels in significance the third or Gaudete Sunday of Advent. These days are periods for a lightening of the mood that dominates the rest of the Lenten and Advent seasons. Coincidentally, March …
Mar 19 2023
Allegiances And Alliances
It takes a bit of investigation to puzzle it out, but the facts are there for anyone who makes the effort. The United States has only one set of treaty obligations at this time: those that arise from the North Atlantic Charter, which created NATO. There was once a comparable SEATO, which created an …
Mar 19 2023
Courage Or Opportunism?
At this point, I’m unable to take any mainstream “journalist” seriously. They strike me as a clique of toadies, ever willing to kowtow before power in the hope of ingratiating themselves and winning “access.” Thus, I entreat you to view the following: I don’t know the “reporter” who condemned Lori Lightfoot to her …
Mar 18 2023
Peak Lawlessness
According to this article, Donald Trump, the 45th president of these United States, expects to be arrested on Tuesday: Numerous leaks have reported Trump will be charged next week in New York City in the Stormy Daniels case where he has been accused of paying Daniels as part of a confidential settlement before …
Mar 18 2023
Social Deterioration In Real Time Dept.
As long as we’re looking at signs of the Apocalypse, have another: Walmart has taken the racist step of protecting their inventory. pic.twitter.com/eOXhFE4sJP — Dane (@UltraDane) March 16, 2023 Well, yes, she’s an idiot. The cloth mask is a dead giveaway. But not only is she mumbling through a completely unnecessary mask, she’s …
Mar 18 2023
Open War Is Upon Us
Whether we like it or not. Please click through and watch the video: An Irish literary archive treat for #StPatricksDay Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney encounters an ancient and mysterious pagan statue on Boa Island in Lough Erne and imagines what the old gods in Ireland were like, before the arrival of St Patrick. pic.twitter.com/5Y82cY6OAU …
Mar 17 2023
Something Beautiful For Your Friday Afternoon
Because there’s more than enough ugliness to go around: Enjoy.
Mar 17 2023
Right But Ignored
I was once given a gift subscription to a weekly periodical – one that arrived on pulp paper rather than as an email – that aggregated the writings of prominent conservative opinion writers. That started arriving in my mailbox in early 1990, if my memory is accurate. Among other things, it provided my introduction …
Mar 17 2023
Developments In Inter-Racial Relations
Have a look at this – and don’t cringe away from what you’ll see: More of This Please… pic.twitter.com/CfJrMANwel — 𝕰𝖒𝕲 (@Emilio2763) March 16, 2023 The black would-be murderer would not drop the knife he held – the knife with which he’d been trying to kill a defenseless white woman – even after …
Mar 16 2023
Day Off, Kinda-Sorta
Today will be another day of long drives, hospitals, surgery, and so forth, so there will likely be nothing from me until late today, if at all. Enjoy your day, Gentle Reader, and perhaps if the Spirit moves you, say a prayer for my wife. Till whenever.
Mar 15 2023
Personnel Policies
I’ve known a lot of people who were and are smarter than average. That comes from working in occupations that require that characteristic. Bluntly, if your duties will necessarily require careful thinking, distinguishing among things and ideas according to their inherent properties, you must be able to do so. Why else would your employer …
Mar 14 2023
Unforgivable Sin, Ineradicable Stain
Perhaps you’ve already read about this latest infamy against the well-being of the American people: The Department of Interior (DOI) initiated a rulemaking process to “establish maximum protection” for 13 million acres of land across the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. It was set aside by. Congress for resource development. Biden added …
Mar 13 2023
The Last Of The Absolute Monarchs
I’m a longtime baseball fan. I’ve loved the game from the very first pitch I ever saw – and let me tell you, that was some consequential pitch: it was the gopher ball Yankees’ pitcher Ralph Terry threw to Pirates’ second baseman Bill Mazeroski in the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh …
Mar 12 2023
Important Truth
Good morning, Gentle Reader. I had a terrible night – a lot of pain and no sleep – so if what follows seems to come out of the Bizarro dimension, please bear with me. The subject on my mind strikes me as important enough to risk it. *** At The Catholic Thing today, …
Mar 11 2023
Saturday Afternoon Music
I’d been thinking about the many changes that have come over my neighborhood since I moved in here, forty-four years ago. I expected few of them. Fewer still have struck me as improvements. But the only constant in life is change, until life ends and one changes no more. Dire Straits, in its …
Mar 11 2023
This Coin Called Freedom
No one can make a coin that has only one face. A coin will always have an obverse and a reverse. That property of coins has been used in rhetoric innumerable times. Yet among its implications is one that virtually no one has addressed: For all values of X: If you are free to …
Mar 10 2023
Happiness Is
I’m wiped out this morning. Yesterday was unusually strenuous, and my night’s sleep was less than satisfactory. But I want to post something every day if possible, so I turned to my Archives in search of something my Gentle Readers might find refreshing. Long, long ago, I knew a semipro editor …
Mar 09 2023
They Keep Trying
There’s never been a defensible rationale for censorship – of anything. Attempts to construct one have always run up against insuperable problems. Even many of those who ardently wish for some sort of restriction on what people may say, and when, where, and to whom, will tell you that it can’t be done without …
Mar 08 2023
When Life Improves On Art
There was once a British writer named John Brunner who was given to writing scathing novels about a fictional United States mired in one or another sort of crisis or calamity. His writing was excellent even if his vision was perverse. One of his novels, Stand On Zanzibar, won the Hugo Award at a …
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