Imagine being there in the golden summer of pre-war Europe, before 1914 and the slaughter of your generation. Quite a thing, and how different from the way we live now.
Beautiful buildings: Architecture reflects the spirit or soul of a culture, now unspeakable concrete and steel ugliness. Butchers, bakers, tailors, things made for you by real people. Communities, not today's ersatz online fellowships, but real people being with each other for good or ill because they met, in person, all the time. As opposed to our fake electronic equivalent.
In short, our quality of life has decreased. What we see, what we get, is worse than before, we've devolved. In 1910, a middle class family could afford servants and a house with ceilings higher than you could swing a cat in. Today? Good luck, maybe you can afford a two bedroom flat in outer London.
In the meanwhile, the people who would have been staff in a house, and by extension were part of the family, are now reduced to flipping burgers or stacking shelves at the local "don't give a dam about you" hypermarket.
You get the point. Was my town better or worse 120+ years ago? Worse. It was way less attractive, not being a truck route, way more prosperous, because it hadn't been asset-stripped, and was way more attractive, you know, to look at. It even had all these small shops selling meat, bread, produce and, doubtless, fake whiskey. Don't say Wesley Hardin.
See you at the Club,
LSP
3 comments:
Gaudete, Gaudete Christus est natus.
I love that song.
I can sing that song, well, at least the chorus.
And all those black cloaks with white crosses. When will we get our Orders Militant back?
Crusty Old TV Tech here. Up in New Waverly, TX, the Polish immigrants of the late 19th century saved, sawed, hewed, and built a magnificent church, St. Joseph's. No sail fawns, no electric lighting, no gas or diesel engines.
The current beautiful structure dates to 1905, where stood two smaller buildings erected in 1870 and 1892. And what Mass was said there? What we call nowadays the "Traditional Latin Mass", with its magnificent hymns and chant. All done in an age where the HE&WT steam engines that stopped at the nearby depot were the only artificial power in town, and lighting was by candles and "coal oil" lamps. What have we lost? The sense of awe, wonder, reverence...the sense of community, yes.
https://st-josephtx.org/about-us/
For all its faults, I've come to believe the period between say 1890 and 1914 was the peak of western civilization.
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