In the Heart of Hampstead

 From Country Life:

Oh, for a crystal ball. It would have helped to see the future in 1993, when Grade II-listed Cloth Hill, on The Mount in Hampstead, came to the market. By the end of October, it had been sold by Savills for ‘slightly less than the asking price of £1 million,’ as Country Life reported at the time.

Now, it is for sale — with Savills again, and also this time Marcus Parfitt — at a rather more robust £18 million. And no, the price rise isn't all down to inflation: £1 million from 1993 would be little more than £2.1 million in today’s money. This house has outpaced inflation nine-fold. Stratospheric rises aside, there is much to commend this Queen Anne house, thought to be the second oldest surviving in Hampstead — not least its history. Cloth Hill owes its name to Tudor laundry: some say the spot was where the Court launderers did their washing, others that, there, ‘the virgin heath was white with drying linen’. Much later in the same century, George Romney, his health declining fast, sought Hampstead’s fresh air. Having moved in 1796, he just about managed to knock down Cloth Hill’s stables and coach house to build himself a new home (with painting room and gallery), when he became so ill that he decided to head back to Cumbria and his wife — whom he had otherwise neglected for more than 30 years. Cloth Hill passed into the hands of Thomas Rundell, most likely a scion of the goldsmith dynasty. When living there, his wife, Maria, published the culinary bestseller of the time, A New System of Domestic Cookery. (Read more.)

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Trump's Tariffs

 From Sharyl's Substack:

The benefit will be felt by American agricultural exporters of products like tree nuts, soybean meal, and apples, which previously faced tariffs of 10-20% in Israel. The move will save U.S. exporters millions, and boost U.S. producers of those products, who will now have better market opportunities in Israel.

Reciprocal tariffs could have hit Israeli products hard, including diamonds, pharmaceuticals, and integrated circuits, impacting sale of foreign jewelry, medications, and electronics in the U.S.

Tariffs have deep roots in the U.S., dating back to the Tariff Act of 1789, one of the first laws passed by the new Congress, aimed at raising revenue for the federal government and protecting American industries. For much of the 19th century, tariffs were a primary source of federal income, often sparking debates over free trade versus protectionism. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which raised tariffs to record levels, is widely blamed for worsening the Great Depression by stifling global trade.

Simply put, a tariff is a government-imposed charge on imported goods, collected at the border as the products enter the country. And the media is full of reporters and commentators voicing various opinions and analyses on the Trump plans.

Yet polls consistently show many Americans don’t understand and cannot accurately describe tariffs.

This article will explore the practical aspects of Trump’s tariffs. Who really pays them? What are the best and worst case scenarios for impact to U.S. taxpayers? And how will the tariffs play out with real products from countries like Mexico, Canada, and beyond?

Read on for details. (Read more.)

 

I have a political podcast, HERE, mostly about Maryland, but other things, too. The latest episode is HERE. Please do subscribe.

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Why Do the Clocks Go Forward in Spring?

 From Country Life:

The idea of using different time during the summer is actually an ancient one, and Founding Father of the US Benjamin Franklin was among those. But a dual system of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in the winter and BST in the summer was first mooted by William Willett, in a pamphlet published in 1907, entitled The Waste of Daylight. Willett wasn’t a scientist, but a builder — and also, as it happens, great-great grandfather of Coldplay’s frontman, Chris Martin.

He was also a keen golfer, and it was this that prompted his idea: he resented the fact that the early onset of dusk curtailed his game. He was successful in lobbying Liberal MP Robert Pearce to introduce the Daylight Saving Bill in 1908. The bill, though, was rejected by the House of Commons and Willett, who died of influenza in 1915, was to miss out on seeing his dream come true by one year.

Ultimately, daylight saving was introduced in Britain in 1916 to conserve energy and help the war effort rather than to appease frustrated golfers. Taking their lead from the Germans, the British moved their clocks forward by one hour between May 21 and October 1. The move was so popular that BST has remained to this day, although the start and end dates — the last Sundays in March and October respectively — were only aligned across the European Union from October 22, 1995.

At the end of summer 1940, once more to conserve energy, clocks were not turned back. When the clocks were moved an hour forward in spring 1941, Britain operated a British Double Summer Time and continued to do so until the winter clock was realigned once more with GMT in the autumn of 1947. More radically, between February 1968 and November 1971, BST was adopted the whole year round on a trial basis. Due to its unpopularity, though, particularly among the farming community, the government abandoned the exercise in 1972 and reinstated the dual system. (Read more.)

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The Farewell of Madame Elisabeth to Madame Royale

The day before her execution the sister of Louis XVI, Madame Elisabeth of France, was taken from the Temple prison to the Conciergerie. Madame Royale describes the sad moment in her Memoirs. (Via Vive la Reine.) To quote:

My aunt kissed me and told me to be calm for she would soon return. “No, citoyenne, you will not return,” they said to her; “take your cap and come down.” They loaded her then with insults and coarse speeches; she bore it all with patience, took her cap; kissed me again, and told me to have courage and firmness, to hope always in God, to practice the good principles of religion given me by my parents, and not to fail in the last instructions given to me by my father and by my mother.

–from the account of Marie-Thérèse Charlotte of France, on the departure of her aunt Elisabeth from the Temple, May 9th 1794 Share

Reforming US Public Health under RFK

 From James Howard Kunstler:

Dr. Chris Martenson, is an economic researcher and futurist specializing in energy and resource depletion, finance and banking, and the science and politics surrounding the Covid-19 affair. Before founding PeakProsperity.com, where he provides analysis, commentary, and actionable advice, Martenson worked as a Vice President at a Fortune 300 company and spent over a decade in corporate finance and strategic consulting. His academic background includes a PhD in neurotoxicology from Duke University and a post-doctoral program in the same field, followed by an MBA in Finance from Cornell University. (Read more.)

 

From The Vigilant Fox:

Calley Means just dropped a series of truth bombs at Politico’s Health Care Summit—and anti-MAHA lobbyists weren’t ready for it. Lighting up the stage, Means ripped into the federal health agencies and the medical establishment, calling them out for being captured by industry lobbyists. He said these agencies have “utterly failed” and blamed them for overseeing a decades-long decline in American health. The election of President Trump, he argued, wasn’t just political—it was a clear message from voters demanding deep reform at every level of these broken institutions.

When it came to food policy, Means didn’t hold back in calling out how lobbyists have corrupted the system. “One thing Bobby Kennedy is not going to do,” he told Politico’s Dasha Burns, “is entertain comments from food lobbyists using food prices as an excuse to continue poisoning children. That’s not going to work… We have 10,000 chemicals in our food that are not allowed in any other country.” (Read more.)

 

From Keto Mojo:

 Although research is still in its early stages, several small studies suggest that ketogenic diets may lead to promising outcomes in several mental health disorders.

Depression and anxiety:

• • A 2023 systematic review of case reports and observational studies concluded that ketogenic diets may provide benefits for individuals with mood and anxiety disorders, although further study is needed. (8)
  • In a case series, three patients with major depression and generalized anxiety disorder who followed an animal-based ketogenic diet for 7 to 12 weeks  experienced complete remission from their condition, along with improvements in quality of life, body composition, and metabolic health markers. In addition, the two patients with binge-eating disorder reported that they no longer binged or felt the urge to binge within days of starting ketogenic metabolic therapy. (9)

Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia:

• • Researchers conducted a 6-8 week pilot study of a ketogenic diet in 26 euthymic individuals with bipolar disorder.  Among the 20 participants who completed the trial, 91% of blood ketone (beta-hydroxybutyrate) measurements fell within the nutritional ketosis range, and the diet was generally well-tolerated with minimal side effects. (10) Daily beta-hydroxybutyrate levels were positively correlated with self-rated mood and energy levels and inversely associated with impulsivity and anxiety. (11) In addition, participants lost an average of 9.2 lbs (4.2 kg).
  • A retrospective analysis explored the effects of a ketogenic diet in 28 inpatient adults with treatment-resistant severe mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. All patients experienced improvement in symptoms, with nearly half achieving remission, and 64% were able to reduce or discontinue their psychotropic medications. (12)
  • In a pilot study, 23 individuals with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and metabolic abnormalities followed a ketogenic diet for four months. Schizophrenia patients saw a 32% reduction in symptoms, and 69% of those with bipolar disorder showed significant clinical improvement. Additionally, none of the participants met the criteria for metabolic syndrome by the end of the study, with adherent individuals experiencing significant reductions in waist circumference, insulin resistance, and triglyceride levels. (13)

Currently, several trials exploring the impact of KMT on mental health disorders are recruiting or already in progress. (Read more.)

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Rare Merlin and King Arthur Text Found

 From Popular Science:

Variations on the classic Merlin and King Arthur legends span hundreds, if not thousands, of retellings. Many are documented within handwritten medieval manuscripts dating back over a millenia—but some editions are far rarer than others. For example, less than 40 copies are known to exist of a once-popular sequel series, the Suite Vulgate du Merlin. In 2019, researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered fragments of one more copy in their collections, tucked inside the recycled binding of a wealthy family’s property record from the 16th century. But at the time of discovery, the text was impossible to read. Now after years of painstaking collaborative work with the university’s Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory (CHIL), archivists have finally been able to peer inside the obscured texts—without ever needing to physically handle the long-lost pages. (Read more.)

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Pets in Prison

Madame Royale in the Garden of the Temple Prison

From History Today:

The humanity with which Richard and his wife had behaved towards the queen during her first month at the Conciergerie, and the suspicion of their having collaborated in the Carnation Affair, had led to their being suspended. By the time they were reinstated in November 1793, Made Antoinette had perished on the guillotine. Given their previous acts of kindness they may well have taken pity on her pug, a breed to which she was famously attached. Whether this dog was the original Thisbee or the pet of another victim which she had adopted is impossible to gage.

The reticence of Madame Royale on the subject of her mother's dog at the Temple also applies to her own spaniel, Mignon, which her brother, the Dauphin, gave her before being finally separated from his sister on October 7th, 1793. In all probability he retained some of his earlier ambivalence towards dogs. The existence of Mignon is well documented: the eye-witness Hue, refers to 'a dog which was long the sole witness of her sorrows', and the dog features in many engravings of Madame Royale after her release on December 19th, 1795. When Mignon died in 1801, having fallen from a balcony of the Poniatowski Palace in Warsaw, Louis XVIII wrote to the poet Jacques Delille, then in England, asking for some lines to inscribe on the dog's tomb. In Malheur et Pitie, Delille incorporated an elegy to Mignon:

Be then the subject and the honour of my poems, Oh you! who consoling your royal mistress, Until your last breath proved to her your kindness, Who beguiled her misfortunes, enlivened her prison; Oh of the last farewell of a brother, unique and tragic gift ...

 If the Dauphin was wary of dogs, he was unequivocal in his liking for birds. At the Tuileries in 1792 he took care of the aviary and of the ducks in the pond, he also raised rabbits. At the Temple in 1795, in response to the boy's entreaties, one of the towers was transformed into a pigeonry and his gaoler, Simon, had a birdcage built in one of the window-recesses, even removing a plank from the hoarded-up casement-window 'in order to provide the birds with light'. Bills for supplying 'bird-seed for the little Capet's pigeons' are still in evidence. The Commune baulked, how- ever, when presented with a demand for 300 livres from a clock-maker, Bourdier, whom Simon had commissioned to repair a very beautiful bird- cage which he had found in the furniture-repository of the Prince de Conti, the former proprietor of the Temple. Simon had undertaken to pay this sum out of his own pocket but, by the time the work was completed, he too had been guillotined. (Read entire post.)

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St. John Paul II on the Personhood of Women

 It never occurred to me that there was any question about the personhood of women but it seems that in some circles there are. From Dr. Angela Franks in Church Life Journal:

Let us connect the dots. By the fact of their human nature, shared with men, women are also conscious, rational, creative, and free persons. Like all persons, they are structured to flourish through self-possession and self-governance, which leads to their self-formation through freely chosen virtuous action. Attempting to outsource this responsible and intelligent activity to someone else, even one’s husband, is not only bound to lead to disintegration, even mental illness. Such outsourcing is also impossible, because personhood is incommunicable. A human person cannot in fact uproot her self-determining personal structure.

This personal structure allows for and is perfected in the virtue of obedience, which is owed by all human beings to God and to legitimate human authorities. Yet a totalitarian imposition of arbitrariness or a denial of a person’s rationality, done in the name of hierarchical “obedience,” will taint the whole community. Such poorly conceived “obedience” leads to malformation and abuse, as too many recent examples in religious life testify. Indeed, a healthy community—explicitly including the family, as Wojtyła notes when speaking of parents—must allow for moments of healthy opposition.[16] A rigid conformism is not virtuous self-denial but instead rooted in the desire to avoid uncomfortable conflict; it actually selfish.

Right-wing power fetishists try to claim certain basic human actions as prerogatives of the male sex, such as thinking and arguing about the good, acting freely and creatively in moving toward that good, and possessing and governing oneself. Such actions, they argue, pertain properly only to the leadership and strength of men, and furthermore the wife is owned by the husband.[17] As a result, a wife should defer to her husband on all intellectual and practical matters. As one book’s chapter titles state, “The Basics: Do Whatever He Tells You,” which also means “Wear What He Likes, Do What He Likes.” On Wojtyła’s terms, this denial of the personalistic structure of women amounts to their dehumanization.

It should not need to be said that this is not how Jesus interacted with women, nor how he relates to his bride the Church, for whom he died: “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:25). Paul does not exhort husbands to rule over their wives or discipline them as though they were children. Rather, he insists that their primary job is not ruling at all but instead love:

In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the Church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the Church. Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband (Eph 5:28-33).

The wife can only be loved like the body of the husband (echoes of the Church once more), and a husband can only love himself by loving his wife, if they are both equally and fully human. For Karol Wojtyła, the creative drama of the relations between the sexes requires nothing less. (Read more.)

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Life in the Temple Prison

In August 1792, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, their children, and Louis' sister Madame Elisabeth were incarcerated in the Temple Prison. Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte later described their experiences in her Memoirs:

The following is the way our family passed their days.

My father rose at seven, and was employed in his devotions till eight. Afterwards he dressed himself and my brother, and at nine came to breakfast with my mother. After breakfast, my father taught my brother his lessons till eleven. The child then played till twelve, at which hour the whole family was obliged to walk in the garden, whatever the weather might be; because the guard, which was relieved at the time, wished to see all the prisoners, and satisfy themselves that we were safe. The walk lasted till dinner, which was at two o'clock. After dinner my father and mother played at tric-trac or piquet, or, to speak more truly, pretended to play, that they might have an opportunity of saying a few words to one another. At four o'clock, my mother and we went up stairs and took my brother with us, as my father was accustomed to sleep a little at this hour. At six my brother went down again to my father to say his lessons, and to play till supper-time. After supper, at nine o'clock, my mother undressed him quickly, and put him to bed. We then went up to our own apartment again, and the King did not go to bed till eleven. My mother worked a good deal of tapestry: she directed my studies, and often made me read aloud. My aunt was frequently in prayer, and read every morning the divine service of the day. She read a good many religious books, and sometimes, at the Queen's request, would read aloud.

~ Private Memoirs, by Madame Royale, Duchess of Angoulême, translated by John Wilson Croker. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1823, pp.183-185

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