Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Oct 30 2022
Early Morning Thought
Edgar Allan Poe used a Greek-mythology-inspired way of expressing the comforts of home, hearth, and spouse: Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, …
Oct 29 2022
Some Music
Sometimes a song about the loss of love can be a soothing thing: I doubt that there’s anyone of my age who hasn’t suffered at least one such loss. Don’t forget it or try to gloss it over. There’s value in there…as painful as the extraction can be.
Oct 29 2022
Rising Stars
It’s occurred to me recently that political ascension has come to require physical attractiveness, just as has pop stardom. We have a number of examples before us: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Kari Lake, Herschel Walker, and Ron DeSantis come to mind at once. But while comeliness seems to have become necessary, it is …
Oct 29 2022
Conversations
Life really is getting too complicated for the average schlump: FWP: Say, you know those fancy plug-‘em-in massage chairs? The kind that cost three of four thousand dollars? CSO: Yeah… FWP: What do you do if yours breaks down? CSO: Hm. FWP: Do you think there’s an industry of massage chair repairers? CSO: I …
Oct 29 2022
Early Morning Thought
Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things …
Oct 28 2022
A Digital Transformation, Or Merely More Of The Same?
Yesterday’s closing of the deal, whereby Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter, was announced to its user base thus: I wanted to reach out personally to share my motivation in acquiring Twitter. There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising. Most of it has …
Oct 27 2022
Desperation On The Anti-Free-Speech Front
This conference has raised something of a row: There’s mounting faculty opposition to an invitation-only, no-media-allowed academic freedom conference scheduled for next week at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. The conference, headlined by libertarian tech billionaire Peter Thiel and organized by the business school’s Classical Liberalism Initiative, has been criticized as pre-emptively …
Oct 27 2022
The Further Desiccation Of The Desiccated Remains
The late, great Clarence Carson wrote the following in 1964: [W]e are told that there is no need to fear the concentration of power in government so long as that power is checked by the electoral process. We are urged to believe that so long as we can express our disagreement in words, …
Oct 27 2022
Fall Guys
No, there are no words nor punctuation marks missing from the title. If it were a recognized industry listed on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, the “Get Your Fall Guys Here” industry would be one of the fastest growing in America. Everyone wants someone or something to blame for his …
Oct 26 2022
Establishment Politicians Want You Not To Read This
Courtesy of the esteemed Mike Hendrix, we have this highly significant story from Big Country Expat: Now here in the Untied Staatz, we still pretend that elections matter. In truth, the only elections that actually -do- matter are the local ones…school board (need to fire ALL of them fuckers nationwide IMO, Jes’ Sayin’) …
Oct 26 2022
A New Time For Choosing
Jim Caviezel, of The Passion of the Christ and Person of Interest, has sounded the clarion: I can’t add a single syllable to that.
Oct 26 2022
What Should We Expect On November 8?
If the hate-filled legions of the Left are willing to do this to a pre-election canvasser: A volunteer for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was brutally attacked while canvassing for the campaign in Hialeah, Florida, leaving him with a broken jaw and internal bleeding. According to the senator, who is facing off against …
Oct 24 2022
This Was Supposed To Be A Day Off…
…and it will return to that status after I get this off my chest. I just paid $5.18 per gallon for a tankful of home heating oil. That’s roughly $1.00 per gallon more than the gasoline that fuels my car. New York winters aren’t the worst in the country by a long …
Oct 24 2022
Day Off
I’m coming off a rather rugged weekend, and other obligations are demanding my attention, so I’ll be taking today off from the site. Back tomorrow, I hope.
Oct 23 2022
Looking Forward
For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. – 2 Timothy 4:6-7 “You came to see a race today. To see someone win. It happened to be me. …
Oct 22 2022
Conservatism And The Present Age
Among the things that are absolutely essential to progress – regardless of what sort of progress we’re talking about — the recognition and correction of mistakes is paramount. Human knowledge is like a single vector in a disordered field. To arrive at it involves eliminating all the alternatives to that one true magnitude and …
Oct 21 2022
The Muffling
Does anyone here remember a mediocre horror movie from a few years back titled The Howling? It was a werewolf movie, notable mainly for having Dee Wallace as its leading lady, which was a role infrequently offered to her. Well, after watching that movie – no, it wasn’t my idea – my initial reaction …
Oct 21 2022
A Blast From…The Present?
All the yammering about “conspiracy theories” and “denialism” that emanates from the Left has triggered a memory of a half-humorous, ultimately serious piece I wrote long ago. It first appeared back at the old Palace of Reason, on May 14, 2004. I reproduce it here for your consideration. *** Bytes Of Contempt When your …
Oct 20 2022
Trends In Conscience-Numbing
Over time, one who is surrounded by horrors will become desensitized to them. The effect is magnified by the interleaving of those horrors with the rhythms and practices of “normal life.” It’s difficult to understand why that should be, but the effect has been confirmed by experience. My experience, at any rate. When …
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