By Burton Raffel (d. 2015).

1984 book for the ages. Brilliant explication for, say, willing undergraduate-level reader like me, using old and new, familiar and not familiar poems.

Please, for your sake, find and borrow or buy this 260-pager p.b. which fits (barely) in my saddlebag (cargo pants) pocket.

More later, I hope, about this book, but I have made that more-later promise and broken it so often, I am almost (not quite) ashamed to say it again . . .

While I’m at about books to read, a plug for fellow Wed. Journal contributor and swimmer at the Y, Tom Holmes, WHO HAS A BOOK COMING, as he says here on Facebook:

Tom Holmes

September 2 at 12:04pm · 

I got a proof copy of my latest book on the diversity of religion in Oak Park called THE SOUL OF A LIBERAL VILLAGE. It will be in book stores in the fall.

He’s also formerly of the cloth, as am I. Buy this book, sight unseen. It’s a liberal village, all right. Something of a hothouse in that respect! (Heh)

In any case, it’s been called off for now.

Maybe next year.

Regnery Publisher explaining why they are cutting ties with NYTimes best seller lists because it’s unfair to conservative books:

“I ask you to consider this: We are often told it’s foolish to bite the hand that feeds you,” Marji Ross, president and publisher of Regnery, said in a letter to its authors. “I say it’s just as foolish to feed the hand that bites you.”

That lady is well placed in this world.

In his end-around Congress in re: the DREAM act, which Congress rejected, then Obama declared the law of the land.

If President Trump decides to let the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) lapse or end it outright, it will be a deserved end to a magnet for illegal immigration based on an unconstitutional executive order by President Barack Hussein Obama who was frustrated that Congress failed to pass it as legislation named the DREAM Act. As syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer observed on Fox News’ Special Report at the time:

You can have executive orders that implement already existing laws. What Obama has done in the DREAM Act, which is exactly what you’ve talked about. Essentially he passed a law by executive order that the Congress had rejected, wouldn’t pass, that is unbelievably unconstitutional. It’s as if a Republican ran and said I don’t like the capital gains tax, Congress rejects an abolition of that tax and then he orders the IRS not to collect it. People would be up in arms and would be impeaching. He’s doing that over and over again on immigration

Even President Obama said he didn’t have the authority to do what he eventually did — enact the Congressionally rejected DREAM Act through executive order: . . .

What a crap artist.

. . . more a scalp-hunter.

The special counsel has reportedly been cooperating with New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, which could ensnare former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in a pardon-proof trap, because presidential pardons don’t cover state crimes.

Giving new meaning to “gotcha.” (Him and his Democrat staffers.)

And a few other matters, all about “guard rails” of democracy.

Covers a lot of bases, catches Charles at his less than best, even not so good, especially in re: l’affaire Charlottesville.

Which is yet another chapter in shooting down of our president’s performances.

Oh if he only wouldn’t be so Donald Trump-like.

As reported in the London, England-based Catholic Herald:

Two elite private Jesuit schools in Australia have cautiously endorsed same-sex marriage, citing the teaching of Pope Francis.

In a message to parents, staff and students, St Ignatius’s College in Sydney and Xavier College in Melbourne, while not explicitly endorsing a “yes” vote, urged parents to reflect on Pope Francis’s teaching on love, mercy and non-judgmentalism.

And why not? The young have spoken:

As Australia prepares for a referendum on the issue, the Sydney Morning Herald reports Fr Chris Middleton, rector of Xavier College, said young people overwhelmingly backed same-sex marriage.

“In my experience, there is almost total unanimity amongst the young in favour of same-sex marriage, and arguments against it have almost no impact on them,” Fr Middleton wrote.

“They are driven by a strong emotional commitment to equality, and this is surely something to respect and admire. They are idealistic in the value they ascribe to love, the primary gospel value.”

Or it’s the Francis Effect.

As for graying and gaying, the phrase is from a book for which I declined to be interviewed some years back, Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits, by Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi, and elsewhere.

I declined because I had my own book — inside me, germinating — Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968,  which came forth ten years later — in which I cited the McDonough-Bianchi book as attributing rise in numbers of aging and same-sex-attracted Jesuits to the exodus from Jesuit ranks beginning in the ’60s.

. . . Not to worry. Bistro manager can explain everything.

“We can’t support this brand,” said Todd Feinberg, general manager of Bistro Campagne, 4518 N. Lincoln Ave.

Hollis Bulleit’s allegations, detailed in a recent Washington Post article, were brought to Feinberg’s attention by the restaurant’s front-of-house manager.

Acknowledging that Bulleit’s assertions — which have been disputed by the distiller’s parent company, Diageo — amount to “he said, she said,” Feinberg said he opted to err on the side of caution.

It’s an approved object of caution, apparently — in favor of the accuser but not the accused.

“I can’t in good conscience support a product that even has this possibility” of discrimination, Feinberg said.

Gosh no. “This possibility”? But heavens, where does this possibility not exist?

In July the Vatican’s divine worship executive made a strong pitch for ad orientem masses (priest facing same direction as people) in a speech in England, was promptly countermanded by a higher-than-he at the Pope’s behest and  was called in by the Pope himself.

What was that all about, including the prelate’s being summoned to the papal carpet before being shot down? Well the prelate, Cardinal Robert Sarah, had “touched an ecclesial third rail,” Christian Browne wrote at the time in Crisis Magazine:

It seems that churchmen at the highest levels do not wish anyone to notice that certain practices associated with the Novus Ordo—Mass facing the people, Communion in the hand while standing, the use of laymen to distribute Holy Communion—have no grounding in the Missal of Paul VI, let alone in the mandate for liturgical reform set forth at the Second Vatican Council.

Rather, these practices sprouted up throughout the 1970s as a result of devastating anti-traditional fads that even the radical post-Council crafters of the 1969 Missal never envisioned.

Done with many a wink, many a nod. For the best of reasons, to be sure.