Patum Peperium

"Speaight"

Ex Ossibus
Father M.

A female British (Isalmofascist) Muslim, dressed to resemble Yasser Arafat's tea cosy, protests the Pope's speech at Regensburg University on the grounds of Westminster Cathedral in London, 2006.

ot so very long ago, when the very first Virginia leaves were turning yellow but it was still very warm outside, I had the opportunity to meet Dawn Eden for a cup of coffee at the little sidewalk cafe next door to the church. Fresh from her lecture tour in England and Ireland, she had the opportunity to rootle around through some Dublin bookstalls and found a great treasure: The Life of Hilaire Belloc by Robert Speaight. Simply knows as "Speaight" among the Bellocian cognoscenti, it is considered the best biography around on this famous apologist. The book, published in 1957, was not one I had ever seen before and when she manifested it from her bag I felt much like my family's black Labrador Retriever when a slab of Virginia ham, unexpectedly and felicitously fell to the floor. Had I a tail to wag, a tongue to hang out and ears to perk, I can tell you that such would have been my reaction. If that weren't enough, included in the book is Monsignor Ronald Knox's Requiem Mass homily for Belloc's like more comestible treasure for the black Lab; spilled Cabernet to lap up with the Virginia ham. Miss Eden graciously gifted me with the good-sized volume and in so doing provided me with more than a book, she provided me with a travel companion.

Hilaire Belloc

This is not my first Belloc biography. Like hearing different stories about the same teacher from a variety of pupils each biography has its own nuances. My most recent Hillaire-eous (forgive me) read was called, Sailing with Mr. Belloc, by Durmund McCarthy. Among his many talents, Belloc was also an accomplished yachtsman and one of his fellow sailors put his reminiscences down for posterity. I chose Mr. Belloc as a travel companion not for the sea but for the air.

If you ever have the chance to go to Korea (14 hours nonstop Washington to Seoul) by all means, go. Even if the voyage must be undertaken in a coach-class seat on Korean Air. I believe that there was to be held, somewhere on the Korean Peninsula, a Screaming Toddler Convention, and that all the participants were on my flight making themselves known, like soccer fans en route to the final game of the World Cup. Thanks to this delightful and informative biography I had tolerably good flight. A book like this reminds me why I love the genre of biography so much more than fiction. The fascinating life of this great Edwardian Catholic gentleman is as interesting as any yarn an active imagination could spin, from his earliest days in France, his marriage to his true love, life-long friendship with G. K. Chesterton and his grousing with George Bernard Shaw. For good measure he enjoyed a brief stint in Parliament, shared journalistic endeavors in Abyssinia with Evelyn Waugh and held, above all, a true love for the Holy Roman Church.

Among his many gifts Belloc was also a bit of a bit of a prophet. When everyone else believed that the Middle East was little more than a loose confederation of sleepy Bedouin carpet merchants, he saw, quite clearly the problems and the conflicts with Christianity that would soon morph into the Islamofascism with which we are currently embroiled. Despite the fact that the majority of the Arab world was under European colonial rule at the time, Belloc still saw the greater vision of much of the Islamic world was the annihilation of Christianity and the West. In 1937 Belloc wrote a book entitled The Crusades: The World's Debate which vehemently stated his sentiments on the topic of how a more positive outcome for the crusades for the Christians would have been a far more positive outcome for the world today. The following year Belloc wrote, The Great Heresies which parsed out several of the differences which separate Catholicism from Islam and the threat which the latter poses to the former.

The solutions offered by the wise Mr. Belloc to problems personal or international are still as relevant today as they were when he was a student at John Henry Newman's Oratory School: Faith and prayer. The Faith, for instance, of Catholics that will band us together so that we may not be intimidated by such events as the kidnapping and murder of the Bishop of Mosul and the fervent prayer that the infidel may also come to believe in the One True Church.

Pope Benedict XVI baptizes Italy's most prominent Muslim, Magdi Allam, in St. Peter's Basilica during the Easter Vigil 2008.

"...On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy..." -Magdi Allam

*The captions and photos were the work of the Editor. Either email complaints to our lawyers or better yet, go on another peace-loving rampage. Burn down their offices and this blog in effigy.

The Easter Egg

The Easter Egg
by Saki (H. H. Munro)

It was distinctly hard lines for Lady Barbara, who came of good fighting stock, and was one of the bravest women of her generation, that her son should be so undisguisedly a coward. Whatever good qualities Lester Slaggby may have possessed, and he was in some respects charming, courage could certainly never he imputed to him. As a child he had suffered from childish timidity, as a boy from unboyish funk, and as a youth he had exchanged unreasoning fears for others which were more formidable from the fact of having a carefully thought-out basis. He was frankly afraid of animals, nervous with firearms, and never crossed the Channel without mentally comparing the numerical proportion of lifebelts to passengers. On horseback he seemed to require as many hands as a Hindu god, at least four for clutching the reins, and two more for patting the horse soothingly on the neck. Lady Barbara no longer pretended not to see her son's prevailing weakness, with her usual courage she faced the knowledge of it squarely, and, mother-like, loved him none the less.

Continental travel, anywhere away from the great tourist tracks, was a favoured hobby with Lady Barbara, and Lester joined her as often as possible. Eastertide usually found her at Knobaltheim, an upland township in one of those small princedoms that make inconspicuous freckles on the map of Central Europe.

A long-standing acquaintanceship with the reigning family made her a personage of due importance in the eyes of her old friend the Burgomaster, and she was anxiously consulted by that worthy on the momentous occasion when the Prince made known his intention of coming in person to open a sanatorium outside the town. All the usual items in a programme of welcome, some of them fatuous and commonplace, others quaint and charming, had been arranged for, but the Burgomaster hoped that the resourceful English lady might have something new and tasteful to suggest in the way of loyal greeting. The Prince was known to the outside world, if at all, as an old-fashioned reactionary, combating modern progress, as it were, with a wooden sword; to his own people he was known as a kindly old gentleman with a certain endearing stateliness which had nothing of standoffishness about it. Knobaltheim was anxious to do its best. Lady Barbara discussed the matter with Lester and one or two acquaintances in her little hotel, but ideas were difficult to come by.

"Might I suggest something to the Gnädige Frau?" asked a sallow high-cheek-boned lady to whom the Englishwoman had spoken once or twice, and whom she had set down in her mind as probably a Southern Slav.

"Might I suggest something for the Reception Fest?" she went on, with a certain shy eagerness. "Our little child here, our baby, we will dress him in little white coat, with small wings, as an Easter angel, and he will carry a large white Easter egg, and inside shall be a basket of plover eggs, of which the Prince is so fond, and he shall give it to his Highness as Easter offering. It is so pretty an idea we have seen it done once in Styria."

Lady Barbara looked dubiously at the proposed Easter angel, a fair, wooden-faced child of about four years old. She had noticed it the day before in the hotel, and wondered rather how such a towheaded child could belong to such a dark-visaged couple as the woman and her husband; probably, she thought, an adopted baby, especially as the couple were not young.

"Of course Gnädige Frau will escort the little child up to the Prince," pursued the woman; but he will be quite good, and do as he is told."

"We haf some pluffers' eggs shall come fresh from Wien," said the husband.

The small child and Lady Barbara seemed equally unenthusiastic about the pretty idea; Lester was openly discouraging, but when the Burgomaster heard of it he was enchanted. The combination of sentiment and plovers' eggs appealed strongly to his Teutonic mind.

On the eventful day the Easter angel, really quite prettily and quaintly dressed, was a centre of kindly interest to the gala crowd marshalled to receive his Highness. The mother was unobtrusive and less fussy than most parents would have been under the circumstances, merely stipulating that she should place the Easter egg herself in the arms that had been carefully schooled how to hold the precious burden. Then Lady Barbara moved forward, the child marching stolidly and with grim determination at her side. It had been promised cakes and sweeties galore if it gave the egg well and truly to the kind old gentleman who was waiting to receive it. Lester had tried to convey to it privately that horrible smackings would attend any failure in its share of the proceedings, but it is doubtful if his German caused more than an immediate distress. Lady Barbara had thoughtfully provided herself with an emergency supply of chocolate sweetmeats; children may sometimes be time-servers, but they do not encourage long accounts. As they approached nearer to the princely daïs Lady Barbara stood discreetly aside, and the stolid-faced infant walked forward alone, with staggering but steadfast gait, encouraged by a murmur of elderly approval. Lester, standing in the front row of the onlookers, turned to scan the crowd for the beaming faces of the happy parents. In a side-road which led to the railway station he saw a cab; entering the cab with every appearance of furtive haste were the dark-visaged couple who had been so plausibly eager for the "pretty idea." The sharpened instinct of cowardice lit up the situation to him in one swift flash. The blood roared and surged to his head as though thousands of floodgates had been opened in his veins and arteries, and his brain was the common sluice in which all the torrents met. He saw nothing but a blur around him. Then the blood ebbed away in quick waves, till his very heart seemed drained and empty, and he stood nervelessly, helplessly, dumbly watching the child, bearing its accursed burden with slow, relentless steps nearer and nearer to the group that waited sheep-like to receive him. A fascinated curiosity compelled Lester to turn his head towards the fugitives; the cab had started at hot pace in the direction of the station.

The next moment Lester was running, running faster than any of those present had ever seen a man run, and--he was not running away. For that stray fraction of his life some unwonted impulse beset him, some hint of the stock he came from, and he ran unflinchingly towards danger. He stooped and clutched at the Easter egg as one tries to scoop up the ball in Rugby football. What he meant to do with it he had not considered, the thing was to get it. But the child had been promised cakes and sweetmeats if it safely gave the egg into the hands of the kindly old gentleman; it uttered no scream, but it held to its charge with limpet grip. Lester sank to his knees, tugging savagely at the tightly clasped burden, and angry cries rose from the scandalized onlookers. A questioning, threatening ring formed round him, then shrank back in recoil as he shrieked out one hideous word. Lady Barbara heard the word and saw the crowd race away like scattered sheep, saw the Prince forcibly hustled away by his attendants; also she saw her son lying prone in an agony of overmastering terror, his spasm of daring shattered by the child's unexpected resistance, still clutching frantically, as though for safety, at that white-satin gew-gaw, unable to crawl even from its deadly neighbourhood, able only to scream and scream and scream. In her brain she was dimly conscious of balancing, or striving to balance, the abject shame which had him now in thrall against the one compelling act of courage which had flung him grandly and madly on to the point of danger. It was only for the fraction of a minute that she stood watching the two entangled figures, the infant with its woodenly obstinate face and body tense with dogged resistance, and the boy limp and already nearly dead with a terror that almost stifled his screams; and over them the long gala streamers flapping gaily in the sunshine. She never forgot the scene; but then, it was the last she ever saw.

Lady Barbara carries her scarred face with its sightless eyes as bravely as ever in the world, but at Eastertide her friends are careful to keep from her ears any mention of the children's Easter symbol.

Patum Peperium is officially closed for the Easter holidays. We shall re-open Tuesday March 25, 2008.

Rest In Peace

The body of the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho was found buried in a shallow grave late last week. The Archbishop had been abducted two weeks earlier by gunmen.

Remembering John Profumo

The Eccentric Observer
Old Dominion Tory

John Profumo, CBE

On Wednesday, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned from office in response to the revelation that, for at least a decade, he had indulged in high-priced prostitutes. While listening to Mr. Spitzer’s curt statement, I thought of another man whose time in public life was cut short by sexual scandal: John Profumo.

In the spring of 1963, John Profumo was at the top of his game. He was the United Kingdom ’s Secretary of State for War; he held a fine record as parliamentarian and a soldier; and, he was the husband of the stage and film actress Valerie Hobson. He did, however, have a secret: in 1961, he had carried on an affair with a fetching young demi-mondaine, Christine Keeler.

In March 1963, a Labour MP asked the government if Profumo was involved with the by-then somewhat notorious Miss Keeler. Profumo denied the allegations in private and in public, but, soon, information confirming the affair reached Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the Leader of the Opposition, Harold Wilson. On June 5, 1963, Profumo—who had confessed his infidelity to his wife, who, in turn, urged him to admit the affair—announced that the rumors were true and immediately resigned from his high offices and left Parliament.

If John Profumo was a contemporary American public figure, he would follow a well-worn path to rehabilitation. He would make a public “apology,” issued with his stoic wife standing by; admit to some sort of psychological malady, essentially, an attempt to absolve himself from any fault; contract a lucrative book deal; and, the crowning moment in our culture, make an appearance on “Oprah” (again, with his stoic wife standing by).

John Profumo was a better sort of man.

Not long after his ignominious exit from public life—which, as today, featured politicians, satirists, and the press baying loudly behind him—Mr. Profumo appeared unannounced at Toynbee Hall, a charitable organization in London’s East End dedicated to aiding the poor, and volunteered to help. At first, he dedicated himself to menial tasks—such as washing dishes and mopping floors—and helped with children’s playgroups. Later, the charity’s leadership persuaded him to lend his considerable talents to fundraising and organization. Ultimately, Mr. Profumo became the charity’s chairman. His work had a salutary effect on Toynbee Hall, helping it become, according to Profumo’s obituary in the Daily Telegraph, “a national institution.”

However, what makes John Profumo truly worthy of note and emulation is how he carried out this exemplary work and otherwise bore his public disgrace. As the Telegraph’s obituary writer described it, “[f]illed with remorse, Profumo never sought to justify himself or seek public sympathy.” Mr. Profumo was honored for his charitable work (in which his wife had joined him almost immediately) by being made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1975. Toward the end of his life, according to the Telegraph, Margaret Thatcher hailed him as “one of our national heroes” and the journalist, author, and historian, Peter Hennessy “’described him as "one of the nicest and most exemplary people I have met in public or political life.’” Perhaps, however, the highest praise came from one of his fellow workers at Toynbee Hall who said of him, “We think he's a bloody saint."

John Profumo was a good man who made a ghastly error (infidelity) and compounded it with another one (lying about it). However, he bore his disgrace with a quiet and immense dignity and spent the remainder of his life in truly humble service to his fellow man and, thus, to God.

Transhumance Is In The Air

Madame's Nightshirt
Mrs. Peperium

Are humans what they eat? Liberals would say Yes, Abso-bloody-lutely and Tootle-pip! Well, that's not true. Liberals would never say tootle-pip. But they would say, particularly those liberals posing as Christians, that not only are humans what they eat, but sipping green tea heals souls, dining on ethically-raised vegetables in a room lit by radioactive energy-saving lightbulbs makes humans even more moral, and humans that drive a hybrid will reduce their carbon footprint from a size 9BB Hush Puppie slip-on pleather loafer to a size 2AA Manolo Blahnik patent leather stiletto heel. But that's bosh. Humans aren't what they eat because, unfortunately for liberals and their Hellish ideas, humans were created by God to be moral. However, just because humans were made to be moral doesn't mean they are moral. In fact God, who has a much more developed sense of reality than any of His creations, accepted that fact thousands of years ago. In fact, He accepted that humans are lousy at being moral and has been busy making provisions ever since.

Animals (many think) are luckier than humans. They were created by God to not to be moral. They were created by God to look pretty, procreate, and then be eaten. Eaten by animals higher on the food chain or, even better, eaten by us. Because they were not made to be moral, they can never be moral. What's even better is that animals don't go around like liberals, especially those liberals posing as Christians, pretending to be moral. Instead they go around looking pretty and constantly making the one of the two decisions they can make. The first decision is do I need to eat that? The second is do is I need to have sex with that? To make these decisions, animals rely on their strong, God-given instincts.

Some animals, most often of the domesticated varieties, can be taught how to reside among humans. But teaching animals how to reside among humans doesn't make them moral even though liberals think it will. As a result, accidents do happen. Accidents like the one with Montecore, the Siberian white tiger and the famous tiger whisperer, Roy Horn of the old Vegas act, Siegfried and Roy. One night, Montecore was feeling a bit peckish, in need of a snack which was perfectly natural feeling for a Siberian tiger to have. Across the dimly-lit stage, his eye caught Ray Horn, done up to a perfect shade of Butterball turkey bronze. Montecore said (to himself naturally) "Splendid! Cornish game hen! and proceeded to gnaw Roy down to the bone, much to the disappointment of the assembled audience. Who can blame the audience? Well, Siegfried and Roy's lawyers and PR people tried to. More specifically, they tried to blame Montecore's lack of table manners on the beehive hairdo of one pensioner in the audience. A pensioner who had paid top Las Vegas dollar to see Montecore jump through flaming hoops, not dine on a flamer, I might add. But Montecore had simply tucked into Roy because he could. He had no clue he had done anything wrong.

So, because animals are not moral they actually are what they eat. While sipping green tea will not heal anyone's soul, it will, if enough of it is sipped over the course of an animal's lifetime, alter the way they taste. So whatever you do, don't give the animals you plan to eat green tea. Instead give them good things to eat. In fact, give them the most delicious things you can afford. Because the better they've eaten while they're alive, the better they will taste when they are dead. What proves beyond a reasonable doubt that we've already got a much more generous God than any stupid liberal could dream up is that the dietary practice of feeding animals well also works in our benefit while animals are still alive. A better diet makes better animal output, so to speak. Animal output like milk, butter, and cheese. What other kind of animal output did you imagine I was talking about?

I select my animal output, excuse me, cheeses like the way I select my men : I go in for the big, strong, wonderfully fragant in a most earthy way, totally complex, yet simple and nutty types. In other words I adore mountain cheeses or cheeses that have been brought forth out of the thousands of years old (ie; Catholic) practice of tranhumance. Transhumance is simply the of moving of herds (cows, sheep, or goats) from lower (and warmer) grazing pastures during the winter months to much higher mountain grazing pastures during the summer months (think Heidi). The mountain cheeses ones I prefer most hail from the French Alps (though the the Spanish ones run a very close second) that are made with 'summer milk'. I go with 'summer milk' because during the summer the animals have roamed freely grazing not only on the clean high mountain meadow grasses but also on the wild flowers and wild herbs that grow in and among the grasses. In the winter the animals are dining on all that stuff femermenting in the corn crib. Quite a difference, don't you agree? Your cheesemonger, if she's worth her butterfat, will know if the mountain cheeses she's hawking are from summer milk or winter milk. They tend to be made in very large wheels (because the larger the wheel, the more the flavour). Once the mountain cheeses are formed, they are put on a cool shelf to ripen and completely ignore the demands of the Free Market. These cheeses just sit there, intensifying and deepening in flavour for more than 2 years. Like a splendid man is worth his weight in gold so are these mountain cheeses. No one understands this reality better than your cheesemonger. She will charge you a day's wage for a thick wedge of mountain cheese made from summer milk. But you will quickly find, like woman who has married splendid man, you have not only chosen well, you are most satisfied too.

To be continued...

The Funny Old Uncle Up In The Attic

Madame's Nightshirt
Mrs. Peperium

Uncle Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Back in the days when England was Catholic and confession was most sincerely believed by devout Englishmen to be a necessary sacrament for salvation, this meant all Englishmen (when I say Englishmen women and children are obviously included in that description because in the West that was once the accepted understanding but this was before the exceptionally-educated precious and prissy liberal, conservative or muslim fundamentalists decided to take over the Church, the bible, the schools and the law and ruin things) including the King of England himself went to confession. Imagine that? The King of England going to confession. Admittedly his confessional booth was much nicer than the confessionals down in Bath and Wells but so be it, he was the King and all that Divine Right blah, blah entitled him to gold-plated confessionals if he so desired. Not only did the King have a nicer confessional, the King had his own private confessor. More than that it was an accepted practice to make his private confessor the Lord Chancellor (Get it? Lord is actually in the title, again imagine that?) The Lord Chancellor posish came with great perks too. Sure it could get you killed but, usually, it made you the - and there's that word again - Lord Keeper of the Seal. (Keeper of Basil Seal is a completely different posish with completely different perks -like better shoe polish for instance) Also, Lord Chancellor usually meant that you were the King's Conscience. Which was good because most Kings don't have those.

Anyhoo, as England developed, it became less and less uncommon to have some of these assorted Lords titles bundled together with another big posterior English title, the title of Archbishop of Canterbury - see Shakespeare, William, Englishman, 1564–1616 oh ye of little faith. This meant over time the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King as England naturally became as thick as thieves as the entire world, including the Roman Catholic Church, eventually found out the hard way. In fact, it was, when the Roman Catholic Church would not play ball with old Hank the VIII and Annie "I'm too sexy for my pantaloons" Bedlyn, that Hank appointed the first (I believe) non-ecclesiastic to the posish of Lord Chancellor and King's Conscience. Unfortunately for those two star-crossed and already transmitting STDs lovers, Hank and Annie, Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More possessed more (pun intended) conscience that many of the Archbishops of Canterbury/Lord Chancellors had, and, Hank VIII had to finally order the offing of Sir Thomas' head.

So, it was at the time of the English Reformation, that the Archbishop of Canterbury really began losing his influence with the King of Enlgand. But fear not, Hank the VIII made up for that loss of influence the old-fashioned way; he gave the Archbishop of Canterbury an even bigger posterior title - Primate of All England after Hank made himself the Supreme Governor of the Church of England ensuring to England's demise that the true role of the Archbishop of Canterbury was chief water carrier of the Royal Family. And no one has understood that fact better than the recusant Catholic families of England as well as the Catholic priests and nuns that had to live behind the fireplaces of better recusant Catholic homes for the next hundred years or so.

But it appears since the English Reformation that the Archbishop of Canterbury role of Chief Water Carrier has devolved to The Fellow-In-The-Dog-Collar-That-No-One-In-The-Royal Family-Pays-Attention-To, or even give's the old head's up to. Unless of course, they need The Fellow-In-The-Dog-Collar-That-No-One-In-The-Royal Family-Pays-Attention-To to prevent a constitutional crisis by cleaning up 30 years of adultery with his Apostolic Succession blessing (what a laugh) on the unholy matrimony of Prince Charles and his consort, the Princess Camilla. This is most obviously the case because if the Archbishop of Canterbury actually was respected by or consulted with the Royals or, at the very least, had a clue as to what was really going on in their private lives, he would have known Prince Harry was in Afghanistan under his grandmother's (HM Queen Elizabeth II) orders to kill Islamofascists or, at the very least wing them. If the Archbishop of Canterbury had known this about Prince Harry then that would have naturally given him great pause to give his speech as well as the telly interviews where the Archbishop suggested England find "constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law..." Pause for concern because if it was learned by Muslim fanactics that the Church of England as well as the Crown of England was being as two-faced as they have been for about last 500 years, by suggesting accommodation on one hand, and, on the other hand ordering Prince Harry to shoot away at them, well then the muslim fanatics could have turned their collective wrath, which we have all learned the hard way Muslim fanatics are filled to the brim with, on the much softer target than Buckingham Palace called Prince Harry and his fellow British soldiers in Afghanistan. No Archbishop of Canterbury would ever be so reckless with the lives of common British soldiers or the third in the line to the English throne, would he?

Oh, ye of little faith...

I Married A Man. There, I Said It.

Madame's Nightshirt
Mrs. Peperium

MIDWESTERN LOVE
The second in our series.
I Married a Man. There, I Said It.
By Mrs. Peperium

IT was happening again. I was at a garden party on the East Coast. The hosts were people I wished I had never met, people I never wanted to become friends with and I was drinking straight vodka just to get through it when an exceptionally-educated, bony, flat-chested, prune-faced, dead ringer for a female Episcopalian bishop said, "Oh...next door!...he's...a..." she paused and lowered her voice, "...Man."

Immediately hearing her words, all the other exceptionally-educated, bony, flat-chested, prune-faced dead ringers for female Episcopalian bishops at the party immediately grimaced. Their husbands, sensing their cues, grimaced too. A few of the more purebred ones went as far to wrinkle up their noses as if two or more of the exceptionally-educated, bony, flat-chested, prune-faced dead ringers for a female Episcopalian bishop had just passed gas in their vicinity. The conversation quickly turned from which organic wines were on sale that week at Whole Foods to complaints about the man next door. Before long the scope of their wrath had expanded from bashing him to bashing all men.

I stood there nodding, keeping my secret totally secret. The secret to how I kept the bounce in my step, the blood coursing through my veins, and my desire to remain attractive even though the ship of youth had sailed and was set to run aground on the Rocks of Age in the oncoming years.

A woman I never wanted to see again looked at me with big paranoid eyes and shook her close-cropped head. Her sterling silver and turquoise peace sign dangle earrings gave a little dance not unlike one they might have given, had they ever been allowed the pleasure of experiencing an orgasm. She said "Can you imagine? A man right next door!"

"No? Not next door!" I said, pretending to be completely aghast and evincing only the slighest of shudders. I understood the pleasure of experiencing an orgasm and never had a desire to fake one whatsoever.

Not only could I imagine a man as my neighbor, I could imagine one in my bed. Every night. You see I’m a woman who is married to a...Man.

Thank God.

And I am not just an average woman. I lean way, way feminine. The all-girl's college on the North Shore of Boston I attended didn't even glance at my SAT scores; They just looked at my father's salary and called his broker. Once safely nestled in there with my college trousseau put away in the drawers, hung on the hangers, and placed in the shoe racks, I studied art, never taking a math or science course again. There, my feminist professors (both male and female) instructed me daily that I was everything a man was and, most of the time, much more. After graduation I went to art school in Boston. Though it was co-ed there were no men around. Lots of pretty guys named Scooter, Chad, and John-John though. Again the lessons in the equality of men and women continued unabated except for a timeout during figure drawing classes. Unfortunately our professor had been unable to find hermaphrodites among Boston's available pool of nude models. After graduation, I found the door held open for me, (figuratively) because I was an ambitious young woman with talent and those were all the rage (literally) back then. I went to work in Boston's finest ad firm which was well-known for employing only attractive and well-dressed women. It took only a few months among those women before 'the something more than men' about me reared its beautiful head. All my underthings were now silk, French-made, and came from a boutique on Newbury Street. My shoes, all heels and all Italian came from another boutique 3 doors down. My last love before Mr. P, if you could call him a love, (lovey certainly) was an antique dealer from a long line of antique dealers. He grew up summering at the old family place in Provincetown. He was so in touch with his feminine side, his underthings, all Hessian-made with Battenburg lace embellishments, made me look androgynous.

On my first date with Mr. P over oysters and ales, I ranted about how it was perfectly acceptable for men to get manicures and even eyebrow waxes if they felt they needed a more well-defined arch. I did, however, draw the line at bikini waxes.

"Wow," he said. "You’re passionate."

If Mr. P had said, "Wow, you must be a woman," would I have ended our date? Maybe. I had never had an actual relationship with a man before. Men scared me. I didn't trust myself alone with one. Who knew what would happen? Wisely, Mr. P did not confess to being a man that night. But after a few more dates where I ranted some more, I had a strange feeling that he might just be different.

"You’re a man, aren't you?" I asked him.

Mr P has a gorgeous face. Right then he leaned his face right into mine and said: "I like women. A lot. More than that, I like my women to look like women. I like them to smell of perfume made from real extracts of real flowers, herbs, and spices. Nothing chemical for them. I like to hold the door open for them, pull their chairs out for them and buy them big bouquets of flowers and big boxes of imported bon-bons with those little gold tongs so they can recline on their sofas enjoying their sweets without having to move. I like my women to speak so softly so I have to get real close to hear them. And I like to hold them really tight when I kiss them. But, only if they want me to."

"Really?" I said. I didn’t know anyone who did that. I remember thinking when I met Mr. P soon after my career had moved me out to the midwest, that he, even though he was midwestern, was a good person, a fair person, even a better person than I, with my inconsistent values derived from my inconsistent East Coast upbringing. But I soon learned Mr. P was something more. He was something an East Coast girl had only read about in novels published before the 20th century. Mr. P was a man. East Coast girls had to turn to 19th century novels (and earlier) to learn what a man was because the exceptionally-educated, bony, flat-chested, prune-faces who had come of age at the turn of the 20th century and been unable to land a man, had, as their spinsterhood advanced, turned bitter. So behaving like the bitter, frustrated spinsters they were, and, borrowing a page from the indians that had come before them, they made men the target of their collective wrath. They killed them off. Remember the Deerfield Massacre? Well those old flat-chested prune faces did the indians at Deerfield one better. They made Deerfield Academy co-ed and, eventually, all-girls. A few men did survive here and there, usually in public school system or in the sanctuary of Catholic Churches. However, as the end of the 20th century drew to a close, men on the East Coast had become nearly as extinct as the dodo bird.

Here's how manly Mr. P was: in the 80's, Mr. P, attended an East Coast mental institution posing as an institution for high learning (I'm privy to the amounts of prescription meds the *student body* at the the *school* consumes on a daily basis as well as the amount of free psychological counseling alloted to each *student*. Trust me, the joint is a posh sanatorium for the troubled youth of the educated set). Mr. P decided he didn't require their treatment so he transferred to a midwestern university. There, he arranged dates with girls who would show up for his poetry readings wearing black berets, black nail polish, and black opaque tights. Afterwards, he took them back to his dorm room (one at a time, I think). He baked them chocolate chip slice-n-bake cookies in his toaster oven and served the cookies while still warm with ice-cold milk from his little refrigerator. But here is how open-minded Mr. P has always been: It didn't matter to him one bit if the girls fell for his lines or not. (lines of poetry that is).

Whatever Mr. P's current estrogen levels were, it was too late: I had already fallen in love with his combination of steadfastness and kindness, his ability to bench press, (pressing me to the bench as well as using me as a barbell), his scent by the end of the day, and his dusty library. It didn't even matter that I was allergic to dust. After we were engaged, he gave me a duster made from real turkey feathers.

What can I say? They say love can sidetrack a person. In my case, I was derailed. I wanted to marry this man so badly, I not only agreed to live in the midwest with him but bear his children too. His midwestern children. Still, it did not feel good when I told myself: I love a man. It felt, in fact, like I was betraying someone. Or something. Had absolutely no clue what. Most of the time, I didn't care.

Slowly, my close friends from out East met my new husband. And slowly, one by one, they took me aside. "Mrs. P," they would hiss, "he’s a man."

"Don't you think I know that?" I would say, affecting a tired, almost exasperated tone, "Why he reminds me of that every day, usually 4 times. The man is killing me. He's insatiable. "But," I would say, "there's still hope for him yet. He loves flowers, dining out, and silk stockings as much as I do." I did neglect to tell my friends that Mr. P liked me to wear the silk stockings, me to receive the flowers and order my meal for me when we dined out.

"It's your funeral," they would say, shaking their heads and feeling sorry for me.

At the time, blackened salmon with orange beurre blanc was all the rage at seafood restaurants on the East Coast. Our first dinner party as a married couple with Mr. P's three oldest friends and their wives as our guests, I prepared them the dish. Imagine my surprise when, instead of raving about the culinary prowess of the chef who invented blackened salmon, Paul Prudhomme, or the sublety of Auguste Escoffier's orange beurre blanc, the men raved about their homemade salmon jerky? Who could love homemade salmon jerky, much less rave about it? Well, I put my fork down and mused to myself. I guess if you caught, cleaned, and hung the fish in the smoker yourself and, then, changed the wood chips religiously, what was there not to love?

Everyone I knew felt optimistic about the sexes back then. True gender equality was just around the corner. But Mr. P didn't believe this. Neither did his friends. They saw a brave new world hurtling uncontrollably towards us where a man had no idea what a woman was. And vice-versa. A world where there would be no gender at all. I stared at their faces, faces I knew I would have to see for the rest of my life. They fell from medium manly to very manly — all of them masculine. How had I ended up here?

"You told me you were friends with women." I said to Mr. P later.

"I am," he answered. "They just happen to be married to men."

Angry with him for being a man and more angry with myself for loving a man, I began to argue with him while I dressed for work and he, already showered, dressed, and shaved, ate the breakfast I had prepared him and read the morning paper I had retrieved from the front walk for him. It wasn't long before I ran all my silk stockings by yanking them up in anger. When I destroyed my last pair, I did the only thing I could do. I cried. Mr. P did not scold me for being so careless with my possessions. He quietly went out and bought me more silk stockings. Lots more. Boxes and boxes of them. I loved receiving them too. But was this enough? Yes, dammit, it sure as hell was.

I quit my job the next day and never pulled another silk stocking up in anger again.

Whenever we were with friends, I would silently tally who was wearing silk stockings and who was not. Inevitably it was always my friends wearing the knee-highs underneath their pant suits and the wives of Mr. P's friends wearing silk stockings underneath their dresses and skirts. Almost without exception, his friends loved silk stockings, and my friends did not.

Tired of holding my tongue at dinner when his friends debated which was better; walleye, perch, or whitefish or did corn-fed beef have a more developed flavour than Black Angus and who would ever feed a cow beer and give it a massage to marble the fat? — I began to fight back. One night, during an endless dinner at a country club, I argued Atlantic bluefish baked in a true Dijon mustard sauce was delicious, that Long Island Bluepoints poached just until their edges curled and served on toast with a Pernod-scented cream were not only delightful, but deeply satisfying, and Block Island swordfish cut in 1 1/2'' thick steaks, sauteed in butter and finished off with a Madeira demi-glace and morel mushrooms was indiscernible from beef, corn-fed, Black Angus, Kobe or not. Then, I cringed at their typical mid western responses of "How could anyone eat a bottom feeder? Fish taste like beef? Pshaw!!" What was far, far worse, I saw genuine pity for me in all of their eyes. At least Mr. P isn’t as midwestern as these people, I told myself. But that offered little solace until we got home. There, in the privacy of our first little home, Mr. P reminded how very midwestern he really was. Again I became happy, so very happy he was so midwestern.

Then it came time for me to host to my monthly Oprah's Book Club meeting. A friend who was a member had agreed to help me. She thought it might be fun to allow Mr. P and her husband to forage for the nuts and berries at the green grocer's to accompany the wines, cheeses, and pate we had already selected.

"They could discuss the book and gather their thoughts together for the meeting", she said.

I swallowed hard. "Mr. P doesn't read Oprah's books."

"Is he too busy with work?" she asked, her face so innocent, so open and so very empty.

I shook my head, avoiding her eyes. "No. He reads for the other team." I managed.

"Huh?"

"He doesn't lift his pinkie when he raises his teacup?" I tried.

Now she was frowning at me. I had no choice. "He's not like your husband. At all. He’s not in touch with his feminine side...he's only in touch with my feminine side." There, I finally said it. It was nicer, I thought, than telling her the truth. I was married to a man and she wasn't. Even so, my pussyfooting around her husband's true status had rendered her speechless. Our friendship changed.

The day of the Oprah's Book Club meeting at our home, Mr. P and I had an argument about whether he could go curling. "How can you expect me to tell them where you are?" I asked, imagining me trying to explain to everyone how he was not only strong enough to heave a 40 pound stone of polished Canadian granite with porcellian embellishments down the ice but heave it with amazing precision. Mr. P did end up going curling. During the Oprah Book Club meeting, I kept quiet about Mr. P's development into a champion curler on both sides of the Detroit River by hiding all of his trophies in the guest room shower. Maybe, only maybe, I imagined the looks of non-genuine pity my fellow Oprahites had in their eyes for me? Or had they all been peeking in the shower?

At the end of our Oprah Book Club meeting, we decided our next book would be Al Gore's 'Earth in the Balance'. In the next few weeks I poured over the pages absorbing Al Gore's pure mental genius. Then it happened. On page 14,765, I discovered Al Gore believed the internal combustion engine was our greatest threat to civilisation. A-ha I thought. Finally Mr. P would see the error of being a man. Rather than gloat, I decided to forgive him at once. I pointed to page 14,765 and asked him to read it. When he finished it, I said "Now that we know that this-..." but my eye saw his bulging forearm clearly distinguishable beneath his Egyptian cotton pajamas (he had just finished his nightly bench pressing of me about 15 minutes earlier) and stopped. "You're still going to keep driving the International Harvester Scout aren't you?”

"Hell yes." he drawled, "with 10lbs out of each tire so I can use more up more gas each time I drive it. Now move a little closer..."

As luck would have it, we had dinner the next night with a group of his old friends. His friends had always seemed to be warm and caring. But whenever we discussed things like automobile manufacturing, they suddenly became insane, rabid, and even, unreasonable. That night they all agreed the Big Three needed to build cars people wanted to drive if the Big Three hoped to survive all the new global competition. But then I heard myself screaming at them, "Who cares about global competition? It's the globe I care about. Detroit shouldn't build cars people want to drive! People don't know what's good for the environment. Detroit should be building cars that get 85, 95, even 105 miles per gallon! If they refuse to do this, we need to pass laws to force them do this. Who's our senator? I'll call his office right now and leave a message on his machine."

Now I knew I was the insane, rabid, and unreasonable one. If a rift was going to happen in our marriage, it was not Mr. P who was going to cause it, it would be me.

On the way home, I vowed to myself to stop treating Mr. P's friends so horribly. They were good and decent people. So was Mr. P. As we sped through our big midwestern state, I looked at over at him. The dashboard lights showed his big strong and solid arms firmly grasped to the steering wheel. Mr. P was a man. I was a woman. We were not the same. I now knew the truth : We never could be the same no matter what they had tried to teach me at school. We were different and that difference was a real barrier. Could our marriage survive such a barrier? How many heterosexual couples had I known? Absolutely none. Except for Mr. P's friends. And they were lovely couples.

Suddenly, I knew what I wanted right then for the rest of my life. I asked Mr. P to pull over. He did. I spoke, "Mr. P, I want to be a lovely couple like your friends are. I'm sorry. They don't teach those things out East anymore. I don't know how to be a lovely couple."

Mr. P smiled. "It's ok bun, I'll teach you. Now move a little closer and let's let class begin."

"Right here? Right now?"

"I'm a man. You're a woman. We are married."

"You are so smart. Did I ever tell you how much I admire your intelligence?" I said moving much closer to him.

"Telling me is very nice but it would be lovely of you to show me."

"Sure thing, Teach."

While there may be a barrier between the two sexes, men have always known how to penetrate it.

Thank God.

This was a most deliberate mocking of both the New York Times' article "I Married A Republican, There I Said It" and the illiberal mindset of the woman who wrote it.

We Have Two Kings

Madame's Nightshirt
Mrs. Peperium

My dear readers,

Our visit to Bermuda was filled with great pleasure. Mr. P rested and relaxed which was one of his two desires. I returned with no tan lines which was his other desire. ODT, Father M., and Christine, we were delighted to hear our cards and little parcels had made their way to their intended destinations. I do so like it when the Royal Mail behaves like it used to.

It was amusing to return from holidaying among the monarchists to learn we not only had but one, but two new reigning monarchs at Patum Peperium. Fido Castro cashed in his political chips making Mario Mandingo and The Maximum Leader winners of Patum Peperium's Ghoul Pool. This entitles them both to be King for the day here (on different days), royal proclamations (2 or 3), and maybe, just maybe, if I can get the my mind out of vacation mode, which may prove impossible as this vacation really did adjust my attitude, a little something from the kitchens of Patum Peperium. Though the kitchens of Patum Peperium did not do anything for our previous monarch, Christine the Good, so it might be wrong if the kitchens began passing out treats now.

Our new leaders have been alerted to their win. They both were under the charming impression that they did not win because Fido had not actually died. It is at times like this when Patum Peperium proves just how in touch with reality it is. It is true that Fido Castro did not die. But that was only because Fido cheated. Imagine that one? Fido cheating. Positively astonishing isn't it? Fido cheated when he was on his deathbed last summer. He did not call in a Cuban doctor to cure what ailed him. Instead he called in a fleet of Spanish specialists to cure what ailed him (physically, not mentally as the ship carrying his sanity sailed more than 50 years ago). It is considered cheating because Fido would never allow any Cuban who was feeling a bit under the weather the freedom to do the same thing. Fido has always said (most fervently too) and that Oscar and Cannes-winning filmmaker twit, Michael Moore has agreed with him (most fervently too) that the Cuban medical system is the finest in the world. Yet when on death's door, Fido did not avail himself of the medical establishment he created. Adding insult to injury to the Cuban doctors, the Spanish doctors showed up in Hermes ties, belts, and loafers because unlike the Cuban doctors, Fido had to pay the Spanish doctors. And pay them well. Therefore those doctors can afford to dress well, unlike Cuban doctors. Though the Cuban doctors can take comfort in knowing that wearing Hermes is not considered dressing well. It is considered dressing like the mafia.

Because Fido Castro did not die, he revolutionized the role of ghouls worldwide. Ghouls, before they hand in their feedbags, make peaceful transitions of power that warm the cold, cruel hearts collected around the horsehoe table at the U.N. I understand when peaceful transfer of power in Cuba was announced, the collective exhales in the faculty rooms of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Oxford was not only strong enough to blow out the marijuana cigarettes but extinguish the bongs as well.

So, since the days have passed of ghouls staying in power until death removed them, and since the CIA isn't allowed to do their job and snuff them out, The Ghoul Pool must adapt to the new world realities or it too will die. Ghouls no longer need to die. He/she/it just needs to hand over the reins of ill-gotten power. Since Mandingo and Maxy have won, this means everyone who wants to play is allowed to pick a new ghoul or stay with the one they have (record yours in the comment thread, even if you are keeping the same ghoul).

I am going with the one ghoul left who is a ghoul of the old school. She will depart her stolen throne feet first, HM Queen Elizabeth II. The mesmeric, myopic monarchists that inhabit these gentle waters will say of course, this is because she is truly regal. No, my mesmeric, myopic monarchist friends, this is because she is truly German and never gives up. Remember the Third Reich and their carpet chewer? In his final days, he sent out 12 year-olds in lederhosen armed with sticks to defend Berlin from the advancing Soviet tanks. However, I will grant the mesmeric, myopic monarchists the fact that HM has done a fairly good job of pretending to be regal, particularly with her choices of pocketbooks and the breeding of such slow children. Any of you are free to choose HM as well, because like the Europe of old, there's always much fun to be had when lots of Kings and Queens are roaming around Patum Peperium kicking the cats, wiping their hands on the dogs, and tripping over their coronation gowns.

Though if you want to win, choosing Chavez may be the wiser choice this morning.

Proving my grandfather was right when he told me things always happen in 3's, there were two other deaths during our absence. First, William F. Buckley. We were not personal friends with Mr. Buckely. But our friends were. They miss him already. We will miss him too.

On a much, much happier note, Hillary Rotten Clinton died. Though I told you she had died in January. Admit it now, most of you doubted me then, some of you even questioned my sanctity and others of you went so far to call me at home to question my sanity. And I know most of you are now saying "Mrs. P, she's not dead! She's alive! More than than, she's standing right behind you with a big butcher's knife!" No, she's not. She may technically be alive. Alive in the same technical sense Castro is, which is a Hell of a life, I might add, now that his power has been transferred. Hillary Clinton is as dead as Castro is, politically. For her to win the White House she needs her husband to call up his *friends* and get them to get the dead, as well as abandoned parking lots, stray cats, dogs and parakeets to cast their votes for her. So, this primary season has established beyond a reasonable doubt that the world's smartest woman and leading feminist, Hillary Clinton only rose as high as she did by marrying the sleaze she did. (Don't you just adore the First Amendment?) More than that, Hillary, to get the chance to run for president (and promptly fall flat on her face) had to sacrifice her feminist principals, relinquish her dignity as a woman, and take all of her husband's abuse publicly for more than 2 decades while saying she loved him. What makes her death (or transfer of power) all so much more delicious is that she is being beaten by a carbon-copy airhead candidate of her husband, complete with the angry, Ivy League-educated wife. So we cheer the dead woman walking, Hillary Rotten Clinton, on as she will now, once again for the 2,345,725 time, go back on her principals and try to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates so that she can finally take the sack full of wet sand to the back of Obama's head at the Democratic National Convention. As the ladies at NOW are so fond of screeching "You go girl!"

Castro the Cheater is dead!

Long Live Mario Mandingo and The Maximum Leader!

Here wishing Babalu Aye to come to the people of Cuba, as the Clintons were fond of saying, sooner rather than later:

Desi is my favorite Cuban after Father M, of course.