My parents were both profoundly affected by the Great Depression. My father, graduating from high school, saw his hopes for college and a medical career disappear. My mother, whose family had been relatively well-to-do, was a child, her family reduced to a father hunting for food, her mother scrubbing floors in movie theaters, and days when there was nothing to eat in the house. You don’t “get over” an experience like that; you can come to terms with it, deal with it, and overcome it, but it leaves a deep impression. At the Coolidge Review, Alexander Field writes that the Great Depression did have a hidden economic miracle that almost no one realized at the time.
Most of us watched or read about the testimony of Dr. Anthony Facui before a Senate committee on Wednesday. Or the non-testimony. My own Missouri senator asked if Dr. Fauci could tell them the color of his tie or of the rug in the room. Both questions were met with Fauci pleading the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. The fact is, he was caught. Even with the pardon he received from former President Joe Biden, answering any question truthfully about the COVID-19 issue would be setting off multiple grenades, including for his own reputation. The general news media, almost on cue, circled the wagons; they’re as culpable as Dr. Fauci is, and the insistence that he “did the right thing” is almost beyond belief. Reporters who dared to question the received wisdom paid the price. By the way, Racket News has unlocked all its articles on Dr. Fauci; it’s providing the coverage that our mainstream media should be.
The mayor of New York City released the names of all the properties the city was defining as “second homes” which would result in an additional annual property tax. Except the list was never quality-checked or, apparently, reality-checked. It turns out that a lot of the listings are not what the city thought they were, as a reporter for The Free Press discovered when his 81-year-old mother was socked with an additional $55,000 assessment on her house. It’s not a second home. She owns no second home. But someone in the city decided her property qualified. But never fear; there’s an appeal process – dense, opaque, and all online, almost especially designed to mystify elderly people. She navigated it, or actually, her son did it for her (article unlocked).
More Good Reads
Writing and Literature
Old-Souled Stories – Scott Bradford at Story Warren.
Narnia: There is no “Problem” of Susan – Jeremy Rios.
The Good Death of Kate Montclair – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.
Life and Culture
A Liturgy with a Pause – for the Killing – George Sinclair at The Gospel Coalition Canada.
Who Benefits the Most from AI Data Centers? – Georgia Tech at Futurity.
25 Movies That Actually Reflect the American Spirit – Around the Parnassus Campfire.
Twenty-One Years, by the Numbers – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.
America 250
Samuel Brady: A Future Legend Goes to War – Eric Sterner at Journal of the American Revolution.
The Southern Pivot and the Battle of Camden in the Revolutionary War – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.
The Tombstone Edition that Helped Galvanize American Independence – Neely Tucker at Library of Congress Blogs.
American Stuff
Katherine Lee Bates and the American Mythos – Tim Milosch at Front Porch Republic.
America’s Museum Erased Christianity – Lauren Cooley at the Institute for Faith & Culture.
Music
How Antonio Vivaldi Died in Obscurity and Conquered the World Two Centuries Later – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.
Poetry
“My Dearest Dust,” poem by Lady Catherine Dyer – Katie Hartsock and Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
“Narcissus and Adonis,” Sonnet 3 by William Shakespeare – K.S. Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.
The Outsider’s Blessing – poem by Jack Baumgartner at The School for the Transfer of Energy.
“Upon Julia’s Clothes,” poem by Robert Herrick – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
Falling Slowly – Glen Hansard (1970-2026) and Marketa Irglova
Illustration: The Book Hunters (1907) by Gordon Grant (1875-1962), printed in Collier’s Magazine in 1909.
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