Phoebe asked for this one, The Holly and the Ivy, by the Robert Shaw Chorale. This was supposed to have lyrics, but I can’t find any. I think the little girl in the picture must have put them away somewhere, trying to be helpful.
Our Christmas Carol Contest continues!
Can it possibly be true–there are dinosaurs gallumphing around in New Guinea?
You know what the problem is with cryptozoology? The moment cryptozoologists find a critter they were looking for, it ceases to be cryptozoology and instantly becomes zoology.
I wonder how many people actually see Lake Murray, during the course of a year.
Loch Ness is a lot easier to visit.
G’day, mates! Break out those party hats and noisemakers, because today is Ina’s birthday! She lives in Scotland, so it’s a bit tricky for her to come to the party we’re throwing for her, here on Rottnest Island–but we’re totally sure she’s here in spirit.
Well, everybody, what’re you waiting for? Whoop it up!
I have no idea who’s singing this gorgeous old carol. All I know is, this arrangement is by Elaine Hagenberg. I first heard The Sussex Carol as just a little snippet in the background in the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol. I never forgot it, and I was so pleased when I finally heard the whole thing.
You’ve got to be Dr. Doolittle to figure out what some of these little characters are doing. I’d understand that parrot’s display if he were a lizard, but he isn’t, so I don’t. And then there’s the cat who discovers he can fly. And the household where the pets are a bunny and… I think it’s a fox.
There’s a lot of good stuff on the Chalcedon website today, and I hope some of you will visit it. But I’d like to highlight this message Mark Rushdoony wrote, the day after Thanksgiving.
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/the-certainty-of-gods-will
“Without a belief in the certainty of God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven, we could become very discouraged,” Mark writes. That’s putting it mildly. Even the martyred saints in paradise find it hard to wait for that. If you don’t have a Bible handy, here’s the verses:
…I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? (Revelation 6:9-10)
We have to be faithful, we have to be patient.
God will do everything that He has said He will do, in His own time.
We have His promise. And we have His Son.
Cute and cuddly, happy puppies!
Some countries in the Free World aren’t as free as they ought to be. Germany springs immediately to mind. It seems they just can’t kick their old authoritarian habit.
Germany already has a harsh “hate speech” law, enacted last year. But Chancellor Angela Merkel sounds like she wants to make it even more harsh (https://townhall.com/columnists/ianhaworth/2019/12/02/angela-merkel-and-german-freedom-of-speech-n2557309). In a speech she gave last week, she said, “Expressing an opinion does not come with zero cost.”
In fact, under Germany’s hate speech law, the cost is a fine of up to 50 million euros. A small price to pay if the government is going to “oppose extreme speech.”
Free speech has to have limits, Merkel says. “Those limits begin where hatred is spread.” Not allowed to hate. “They begin where the dignity of other people is violated.”
Uh-huh. And here’s the catch: In Merkel’s little utopia, the government gets to decide what speech is “hateful” and what speech isn’t. Don’t tell me you don’t trust the government to do that.
American liberals see this and lick their chops with envy. Oh, if we could only do that here! Confound that pesky First Amendment! Dash it all, we’re already doing this on all our college campuses! Why can’t we do it everywhere?
Freedom is not something that our self-anointed big shots like us to have. That’s why we have to protect it, day in, day out. Because otherwise some shadowy characters in Facebook, with the enthusiastic support of Democrats, will censor everybody who isn’t them.
This is America, not Germany. Let’s keep it that way.
Notice! Entering Official Chick-fil-A Grovel Zone.
Christians were shocked when Chick-fil-A last month caved in to Organized Sodomy and discontinued its charitable donations to the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes–tarred by Big Sodomy as “anti-gay.”
But in point of fact, Chick-fil-A has been playing footsie with the dark side for years.
In 2014 the owner died, his widow died in 2015, and whoever’s in charge now wound up hiring this creepy little leftist to manage the Chick-fil-A Foundation–where he proceeded to funnel Chick-fil-A’s money to more Far Left groups than you can shake a stick at (https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/chick-fil-put-obama-and-hillary-supporter-charge-daniel-greenfield/). We wonder, in fact, if there was any Far Left outfit that Chick-fil-A didn’t donate to. Daniel Greenfield has assembled a partial list.
In doing so, Greenfield writes for Frontpage Mag, Chick-fil-A has become “just another corporate leftist charity that lavishes cash on organizations linked to local Democrats and assorted diversity causes.” They’re going to keep it up, he predictcs, and “Then, before you know it, there will be a Chick-fil-A ad campaign about toxic masculinity.”
Bound to happen, for as long as Obama and Clinton donor Rodney Bullard is in the Chick-fil-A Foundation driver’s seat. He needs to be fired, and his works torn down and undone. Otherwise we must take Chick-fil-A’s betrayal of American Christians as a purposeful act, and find someone else to sell us fast food.
We have also learned to be extremely leery of any entity labeled a “foundation.” It seems they’re all up to no good.
We are learning that the Swamp is wider than D.C. and as deep as the pit. Far Left loonies have crept into everything, turning our institutions against us.
We didn’t know that, prior to the arrival of Donald Trump to the White House. But we know it now.
Draining the Swamp, after it’s had decades to strengthen itself at our expense, will be a long, hard, often frustrating job. But it would be hard to find a more important one.
We pray the Lord will equip us for the work.
Requested by Laura: words by Charles Wesley, sung by Fernando Ortega, to the glorious Welsh melody we also know as “Hyfrydol”–Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus. Honestly, does it get any better than that!
Repeat the chant–Oh-wah, ta-goo, Siam!
This post was blessed with some thoughtful comments when I ran it before; maybe it can spark some more.
Here in Stupidville, NJ, we let atheists take away our 100-year-old Christmas parade–now it’s a “winter festival”: what could be more shameful?–and we make sure we consult our animal spirit guides for any important decisions we might have to make.
I think the Soros Climbit Change gang in the town next door has faded away. People may be more gullible than they used to be; but they’re not so gullible as to believe in that.