Thank you to everyone who was so kind to my family and me as we went through our bereavement at the loss of my dad. (Complete aside here – people often get confused at when to use ‘and I’ versus ‘and me.’ A simple way to know just from your ear what is proper is to eliminate the previous clause entirely. You would not say ‘so kind to I,’ so the compound phrase cannot be ‘my family and I.’ When I was young I would get confused on this, but once I learned this rule, I have been proper ever since. I make my mistakes in other ways.) So many of you sent notes of encouragement and condolence via email and via snail mail. My brother told me some enclosed some money – and told me he would use it for the carving on the headstone.

In an emotionally charged situation I am very good at hiding my emotions – including from myself. I generally don’t know how I feel about something until the moment has passed and everyone else is settled.

I encapsulated how I felt about Dad in my Memoriam to him. Other things have come to the fore though. I am now the oldest living member of my immediate family. It is bracing to go from the on-deck circle into the batter’s box. There is now no living person in contact with us who remembers me as a baby. The only living person who remembers me as a toddler is me. I have an aunt a few years older than me, but she is from my dad’s side of the family and didn’t get to know me until I was about four years old. That is a little strange to me. I started doing serious political work while I was still in my teens. Throughout my 20’s and 30’s, most of my friends and colleagues were 20 to 30 years older than me. I spent a long time being the youngest guy in the room. Those days are long gone…though now a lot of my friends are 20 to 30 years younger than me. It’s strange but also kind of cool. I have become a sort of living archive of several generations I was contemporary with. But this archive isn’t full yet, so I reckon it is time to carry on.

*********

This Friday I will completely delete my account at GAB. I will post no more at that site, period. I have occasionally been disturbed by the seeming strain of anti-semitism that crops up there too often, but previously I had chalked it up to a genuinely principled commitment to freedom of speech. Last week I got a blast email from Andrew Torba, owner of the site, defending Kanye West’s anti-semitic rants on the merits. It is clear to me now that Torba’s brand of Christianity is hostile to Jews, probably Catholics and all denominations which are not his own. I am not interested in participating in that – or being yoked to those that do.

*********

I read a short story once that had one of the greatest lines ever. I don’t even remember what the story was about, but boy, do I remember this line. The author told of a tornado that ripped through town and was so ferocious that the only thing left standing was the milk bottles down at the carnival. That was one ferocious storm.

After an unexpected layoff, there is so much to write about I scarcely know where to start. Could the country and the world be more cockamamie? I guess time will tell.

We know with near certainty that Joe Biden is the “big guy” in  Hunter’s laptop, thus we know that the man most call president has sold influence from the offices he has held for millions of dollars to foreign entities. He is one of the biggest crooks in American history. We know that Biden has weaponized the intelligence agencies and justice department to target ordinary people who dare disagree with him and his “party.” (I hate calling the Democrats a “party” because, in my lifetime, they were once an honorable organization committed to God and country. Now they are just a criminal oligarchy committed to absolute power.) We know that Hunter cavorted naked with pubescent – and perhaps pre-pubescent – girls on videotape. We know that Democrats coordinated with social media outlets to silence dissent and prevent sound information from getting out to the public.

In the Church we know that the Pope knowingly received an offering to a pagan goddess on the altar of Christ. I thought – and hoped – that it was just a mistake, that he didn’t know what the offering to Pachamama was, but he clarified within days that he knew exactly what it was and considered it fitting and proper to receive it. I considered it the abomination which makes desolate. Sure enough, within a few months, the vastly overblown Covid “pandemic” was mounted to force altars throughout the world to shut down. Desolation, indeed! The Pope abandoned Catholics – and their orthodox prelates – in China and calls it diplomacy. The Pope occasionally gives lip service to orthodoxy, but it is heterodox Priests and Bishops he promotes. Every orthodox Bishop in the world knows he has risen as far in the hierarchy as he can so long as Francis is Pope. Three members of the Pontifical Academy for Life are now pro-abortion advocates. This Pope has made the world more unjust, his flock less safe, and attempted to trash even the clearest dictates of Christ and His original Apostles. I pray for the Pope’s conversion while often hearing myself groan, “How long, O Lord?”

The world is weary from wars and rumors of wars. We pray that Europeans don’t freeze to death in this bitter oncoming winter in which their leader and ours have shut down the means of keeping warm. Josef Stalin forced the starvation of millions in Ukraine while food was otherwise plentiful. Now western “leaders” force the shivering impoverishment of tens of millions while energy is plentiful. Doctors and public authorities force people into experimental therapies with frequent, massive, and often deadly side effects to protect them from an intense flu-like virus that has a minimal fatality rate – all while banning or trash-talking effective and common therapies that are saving lives everywhere they are used. After the overblown “pandemic,” confidence in public health authorities and doctors is so decimated that one has to worry whether we would even pay attention if a real pandemic hit until it was too late.

We are in the midst of a storm that is in the process of flattening all the institutions we have always relied on. As corrupted as they have become, I don’t much care that they call their own destruction down upon themselves.

At CORAC we are not so much building something new right now as we are working together to preserve what has been good and true in American culture and western civilization. What has been good and true are faith, family and freedom. There will be time for building anew after the storm has exhausted itself. But for now I am less interested in building than in gathering people of goodwill together – that we may be as solid as the milk bottles at the carnival for the duration of the storm.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on Twitter at @Charlie62394802