For the reader's information, this 2009 Charles Coulombe article at Taki's Magazine gives an incisive and resonant account of the divide between "conservative," older paleoconservatives and their often "reconstructionist" younger counterparts. Coulombe, a Catholic monarchist born in 1960, spans the divide, and is an apt man to address the amusing subject, which has been on my mind since receiving the November 2011 issue of Chronicles magazine, whose cover proclaims, "Democracy is Tyranny." Does "democracy," I wonder, mean simply government by plebiscite, or does it include, in fact, all republics whose authority originates in the consent of the governed?

Before I leave the political realm, didja hear the remarkable news? Ron Paul is polling at 19% in Iowa! A single point behind receding frontrunner Herman Cain!!

*************

Sip is a new (and hopefully not passing) loose tea and coffee stop in downtown Northampton. As much a lover of tea as crisp-yet-corporate Coca-Cola, I had to try it out, and stopped by on a walk this afternoon. I can only give it my highest review. To be sure, the only beverage I downed was an Earl Grey tea, its flavor very good but not revelational. Like many dining establishments, Sip's greatest strength is its delectable selection of sides. My oatmeal raisin cookie, pumpkin spice tea bread, and microscopic block of Belgian chocolate were scrumptious. I did not buy these Belgian waffles, but as per pictures from another website they look good. I find the interior, though very modern, surprisingly nice, and very bright next to shady Starbucks. My favorite bit of décor is a wall printed with a wood of bare birch trees; it manages to look cutting edge with a new spin on realist forest frescoes. Best of all (though this can hardly be credited to the good management), one of the employees is a fair lady friend from high school who, as I admitted, had slipped into name-in-the-yearbook status over college. Given the bit of friendly conversation, Sip gave me the perfect atmosphere to complete my new sonnet, which I then read to my friend. She thought it beautiful.

Sonnet CLV- Three Seasons Joined Their Heavy Hands

In late October, t'was Year of Our Lord
Two Thousand and Eleven, trees aghast
To strip in summer's clime stayed verdant past
The midmonth, shrubberies in full accord.
But silksome winter, eager to extend
Her swanly wings on branches billowing,
Crashed early, donning leaves a pillowing
Straw-soft, and shattered branches loathe to bend.
It made a royal mess, and on the night
Three seasons joined their heavy hands the fall,
But little colored, stood there, that was all,
As their reunion wrestling tripped the light.
Exhausted, they turned from themselves instead
To where the stars in changeless ringlets sped.

Since an earlier sonnet commemorated the Great Ice Storm of 2008, I decided to describe the forceful storm of last month in a new poem. Fortunately, being in Northampton, our power was only out for an unprecedented but relatively short 32 hours, and we lost no food. But let me tell you, we here in Paradise City had some good clean fun! The only restaurant open downtown was Pinocchio's Pizza, an excellent, established eatery (which Catholics will praise for rejecting usurious credit cards and accepting cash only). Waiting in line fifteen or twenty minutes in line in a place lit only by dimming window light for an orangegreasy, doughy slice of pizza may not be everyone's cup of tea (that's Sip), but made many good memories!

I shall soon embark on an epic quest. On the Lord's Day after next, November 20, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword will hit stores across North America; to Atobe's chagrin, the game actually won't be released in Japan until November 23, three days later. But, given the predominantly Western settings for Link's recurring adventures, the earlier release here is fitting. Since my brother purchased a Wii + New Super Mario Bros. Wii a few days ago, my fiery passion for the mainstays of Nintendo, and especially the heroic Legend of Zelda (see here; I even thought of Zelda after my baptism). As it were, and as I mentioned over four years ago in the first linked post, gamers have a bad name among Traditional Catholics; in society at-large, gaming is nearly a synonym for apathy and narcissism. I have never understood how this came to be. Games like Zelda, where the player guides a sword-wielding hero as he rescues maidens and vanquishes the teeming minions of darkness, point to something greater than the mean lives most gamers seem to lead. Thinking of Link, I think of what Zarathustra said:

It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope. His soil is still rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow there. Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man -- and the string of his bow will have unlearned to launch!

The bow is yet supple and ready. The fighting spirit still can rise in man against intolerable evils. Yet, as Zelda enthralls me, I could was, again, put off by the results of this week's elections across the Nation. To be sure, here in Northampton, David Narcewicz, my candidate of choice, won by a landslide, but both he and his opponent, Michael Bardsley, whom I voted for the last time against the since-resigned incumbent Mary Clare Higgins, are Far Left Democrats who march in Paradise City's annual gay pride parade, but I definitely knew who the lesser of two evils was after the Rainbow Times endorsed Bardsley; and unlike his predecessor and Bardsley, Narkewicz is a heterosexual, married man with children, though I'm sure he would have a guilt trip if he knew I found that a political plus; if we hadn't elected him, it may have been decades before such a normal fellow occupied City Hall! And other than that, here, the two at-large city councillors I did not want elected won, and voters rejected a proposal to eliminate the Community Preservation Act, a tax used to fund affordable housing and other pet projects chosen by a committee.

The worst disappointment, though, as you can well imagine, was Mississippians' failure to approve Amendment 26. I had expected better from the Deep South state, but the voters certainly were subject to an endless, hateful campaign of deception, and made the vote much closer than it would have been in Massachusetts. As the sponsor of the question, Personhood USA, responds on its blog, "Personhood USA firmly believes that our campaign fell victim to the outright lies of our opposition, and because of their lies, children will continue to be murdered in Mississippi." However heavy the bombardment of liberal spin, it should remain common sense that Amendment 26 would not give personhood to a "fertilized egg", so to speak, because once an egg is fertilized, it is no longer an egg but an individual organism. This diction, present where most voters read about the question in papers or online, is wordplay intended to portray it as irrational. Admittedly, the language of "personhood" is a bit one-size-fits-all, but that is the fault of the legal system Personhood USA and pro-life legislators have to work with. As per the 14th Amendment, "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," the subjects of the protection of the laws are persons. In Catholic thought, while we do not know with certainly when the soul is infused, life is assumed to begin at conception, during which, science has informed us, the conceptus begins acting as an organism, has human life in some sense and is certainly not an appendage of a bigger being. To speak in terms of human beings (with the emphasis on beings, as in organic wholes) seems much clearer than to use the artificial term persons, which is subject to limitless definiton and redefinition by Kantian and utilitarian ethicists. So, we are at a disadvantage, but we needn't be bitter (though we might be, since the genocide of abortion has been reconfirmed by voters, many of them wary of losing their precious contraceptives and in-vitro fertilization) or give in: myself, as a creative reaction to the defeat at the hands of liberal propagandists, I am adding Personhood USA and the American Life League to my GoodSearch causes. The fight isn't over yet. Closer to home, it may be high time I sent my compadres at MassResistance a check.