Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Jun 15 2021
Communities And Community
One of the most dramatic yet widely unrecognized changes in American society, over the decades since 1950, has been the diminution and disappearance of communities as Americans knew them in the pre-World War II years. The neighborhoods are still there, but the neighborliness – the sense of community — is largely gone. Consider what …
Jun 14 2021
If You Like A Nice, Informative Diagram…
…and data-flow diagrams, use-case diagrams, state-transition diagrams, and the like haven’t yet made you turn into a rabid wolf at the merest mention of such things, have one, courtesy of Gateway Pundit, developed by three Oregon scholars to decloud what the SJWs mean when they invoke various of their cant phrases: Open in a …
Jun 13 2021
Christian Courage
This has already been a “big day” for me. I’m just back from Mass, which I attended in person for the first time in a year. I wasn’t absent from the pews out of fear, or laziness, but because my parish was enforcing a mask rule and was not distributing the Eucharist. But the …
Jun 11 2021
Another Novel Looms
I’ve just completed the first draft of In Vino, a sequel to The Wise and the Mad. And it was one hell of a tough slog. Blood everywhere. But failing a scathing report from my “alpha reader,” it will soon be available at Amazon. Anyway, I’m too exhausted to write something pithy and …
Jun 09 2021
Misplaced Pride And Its Consequences
Pride is one of the more controversial elements in the human psyche. Excessive pride, a.k.a. vanity, is one of the seven capital sins. However, just pride – i.e., a proportionate pride in one’s own accomplishments, is all right. In fact, it’s damned near impossible to suppress. But there’s also a foolish variety of …
Jun 08 2021
Thoughts After Rereading An Old Book
Uncle Frank never let that word “citizens” pass without a tirade. “We are not a government!” he always yelled. “We are not a government! We must not think like a government! We must not think in terms of duties and receipts and disbursements. We must think in terms of the old loyalties that bound …
Jun 07 2021
Dedication To Reality
Reality, it was once said, is all the stuff that, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. That’s as good a definition as any, considering that defining reality is essentially impossible. To define is to limit: to say that “an X is this and not that.” It is inherently exclusionary…but what can …
Jun 07 2021
Conversations
If you’re over the age of six, you’ve almost certainly heard someone use the phrase, “They say,” or “That’s what they say,” or “You know what they say.” (There may be other variants, but I think those will suffice.) Just this morning, the C.S.O. used one of those, which gave rise to the following …
Jun 06 2021
Corpus Christi
Today is Corpus Christi Sunday, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. It’s a day most significant to me, for reasons I delineated in this baseline essay. If you haven’t read it before this, I urge it upon you. And please, reflect upon the goodness of a God who, in contrast to …
Jun 05 2021
A Saturday Smorgasbord
I haven’t done a “grab-bag” piece in a while, and I have quite a few browser tabs to close, so here goes. *** 1. What’s The First Rule Of Holes? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t seem to know: “It is not acceptable for us to use jails as garbage bins for human beings. We …
Jun 04 2021
Everyday Humor
My friends (that’s what I call them; never mind what they call me) say I have “a weird sense of humor.” They may be right; at any rate, I laugh at things other people find puzzling…or even repellent. But I have a good time, so I try not to let their opinion of my …
Jun 04 2021
Asides: The Unwittingly Self-Undermining Extra Argument
(Yeah, yeah, I got tired of calling them “quickies.”) Via Weird Dave at AosHQ, we have this citation by Bari Weiss: Just ask Norman Wang. Last year, the University of Pittsburgh cardiologist was demoted by his department after he published a paper in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) analyzing …
Jun 04 2021
The Tactics Of Tyrants
They’re remarkably consistent – and the failure of common folk to notice the patterns is incredibly tragic. Good morning, Gentle Readers. No, I haven’t been posting much lately. I’m 90% finished with Novel #17 (soon to be ignored at an ebook vendor near you!) and have been flogging myself to stay focused on …
Jun 03 2021
Suspicions Confirmed
You knew there was something dodgy, as our English cousins would say, about the way the government and the media heaped endless plaudits on Anthony Fauci. You knew, from the way Big Tech defended Fauci’s pronouncements from contradiction, close scrutiny, or even analytical discussion, that there were reasons to question them—and him. You knew, …
Jun 01 2021
Concerning The Current Urban Anarcho-Tyranny
Twenty-seven years ago, a wise man named Samuel Francis, whom the “conservative elite” – Kurt Schlichter would call them “Conservatism, Inc.” – despised and routinely denigrated, wrote an essay that should have been read by everyone in America. It wasn’t: in part because it appeared in Chronicles, a publication “Conservatism, Inc.” has long despised …
May 31 2021
Experts: The Quintessential Tragedy
Good morning, Gentle Readers. I haven’t fallen deathly ill, taken a vow of inscripience (i.e., a vow not to write), or been kidnapped by the Scientologists. I’ve just been working feverishly on a novel you’ll soon be declining to purchase. At any rate, I trust you’ve all had pleasant weekends. Remember that today is …
May 28 2021
So Perhaps We Weren’t Crazy After All?
Say what you will about Fox News and its steady slide to the left, it continues to provide a platform to at least one honest, courageous reporter: The evidence will be hard to gather, and probably harder still to verify and collate. However,. given the Chinese ruling class’s undisguised intentions: To rise to …
May 26 2021
Unforced And Uncorrected Errors
In his book In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, one of Charles Murray’s arguments for the policies he advocates is that they watch the correct “dependent variables:” When the way we add up results is combined with the difficulties of operationalizing hard-to-reify constructs, the nature of what I call “the dependent variable …
May 25 2021
Demand, Supply, And The Indie Writer
No, this won’t be a plaint about how there are just too many of us. The world can never have too many storytellers. The stories are infinite, and all of them deserve to be told…whether or not anyone is listening. And even the most inept apprentice to the art can improve at it, with …
May 23 2021
A Call To Action
And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, they were all together in one place: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it …
Fran’s Recent Novels
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