SEE Michael D.’s comments on the character and motives of Trent Arsenault, the man who has “fathered” 14 children through sperm donation. He writes:

Arsenault doesn’t realize that broadcasting his revolting behavior has nailed shut the door of opportunity once and for all — it is now certain he will never meet, date, romance, marry or father children with a woman. He is condemned to loneliness and misery. How long will it be before he realises his self-inflicted thankless tragedy comes without a prize? The devil has inspired him to wreck his life and take down society too.

AT VFR, in a discussion of Newt Gingrich’s statement that unemployed blacks should seek work at low-level jobs, a commenter Paul K. writes:

I think you’ve hit upon one of the great conundrums of the current state of civil rights. (Continued)

ALAN writes:

This is the story of a dead school in a decadent city.

Grover Cleveland High School was opened in St. Louis in 1915 in a building as massive and impressive as a castle. It was designed by renowned architect William B. Ittner. Today it stands closed and abandoned, a victim of decades of neglect and suicidal public policies.

My boyhood best friend’s family lived in a house just across the street from Cleveland High School. In the summers of 1958-’63, he and I roamed at boyish whim throughout that neighborhood, walking through city parks and past barber shops, corner markets, bakeries, confectionaries, and shoe repair shops, visiting other classmates, trading baseball cards, playing baseball, buying candy or ice cream in the dime stores and drug stores, and listening to Bobby Vee, Connie Francis, Neil Sedaka, Shelley Fabares, and Bobby Vinton on our plastic, pocket-size transistor radios – all without a fear in the world. No one ever bothered us. It was a pleasant neighborhood in which to play, attend school, and be an altar boy at morning Mass and a patrol boy after classes. 

Four photographs taken circa 1916 show dozens of people assembled on a bright, sunny morning in front of a house one block from Cleveland High School. They are taking part in a Catholic parish’s annual Corpus Christi Procession. The women wear attractive hats and ankle-length dresses. The men wear suits and straw hats. Altar boys are kneeling on the lawn.  The pictures convey a degree of civility and restraint unequalled by anything seen in that neighborhood today. In their place: “Security” bars, doors with entry codes, schools that push “diversity,” and the noise of rap “music” on the streets. (Continued)

JOHN L. GRAHAM writes:

My father, Captain A. G. Graham, was a master mariner who sailed before the mast at age 16, graduated to steam ships, and worked his way up to a Master’s certificate, obtaining a degree in maritime law from Stanford University in the meantime. He retired from Farrell Lines as commodore of the fleet, the senior captain, with an enviable record of never having lost a ship, passenger, or crew member while under his command, even though he sailed through U-boat infested waters during World War II. (Continued)

 IN her 1792 book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of modern feminism, wrote about the need for a nationalized system of education.

The good effects resulting from attention to private education will ever be very confined, and the parent who really puts his own hand to the plow, will always in some degree be disappointed, til education becomes a grand national concern.

This documentary, “The Dark Intentions of Public Schooling,” made by the libertarian organization Freedom Advocates, briefly examines the history of this grand national concern in America. The sentiments of the reformer Horace Mann were similar to those of the revolutionary Wollstonecraft:

We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.

A GRATEFUL READER writes:

The following quote by Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos struck me as apt to many of the discussions at The Thinking Housewife. In order to create a healthy community, we must first heal ourselves. The text is taken from his little book Orthodox Spirituality, which is the Reader’s Digest version of his major tome Orthodox Psychotherapy. Among his other little books is The Illness and Cure of The Soul.

By occupying themselves with the purification of their own hearts and the healing of their own personalities, they offer great comfort to humanity. The regeneration of just one person has immense repercussions for the whole world… (Continued)

PASSENGERS of the cruise ship that sunk off an Italian island on Friday told The Daily Mail that in the chaos after the ship was wrecked, men rushed for the lifeboats and gave no priority to women and children.

As she waited for a flight home from Rome, grandmother Sandra Rogers, 62, told the Daily Mail: ‘There was no “women and children first” policy. There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboats. It was disgusting.’

Modern women have no grounds for expecting deference. There is no reason why they should go first.

(Continued)