One of the things I like to do is walk around and explore this bucolic rural haven in North Central Texas. But, to be honest, after 12 years there's not much you haven't seen. Not so fast, so-called "LSP." And I saw something new today, a new street I hadn't walked before, a street of shacks.
The adventure began after yet another meeting with a banker, which went well. We were opening a new account with some of the Mission's newly unfrozen funds, and the First National Bank of Texas were friendly. All well and good. After the meeting, I said goodbye to our Treasurer, "Debbie, thanks for that, I will now stroll to the pawnshop."
She paused, "What? You're walking?" I thought about that for a moment and answered, "Yes, Ma'am, I am. I have a ministry to the town's Pawns. A few years ago I buried Miss Dale, who ran the Gold Nugget. She used to ask me for Holy Water and I'd deliver, by the gallon. She claimed the customers needed it and I believed her."
A few moments later I found myself walking with purpose towards the pawn and suddenly it struck me, I've never been here before. Yes, it was sinister, somehow threatenning. There was a boarded up "assisted living" complex, residents gone, not even a crack commune inhabiting the vinyl floors and broken windows. I gazed at it in wonder. Why have I never seen this? It was like the Twilight Zone.
And so was the next street, a street of shacks. All new, I'd never seen them before, but they reminded me of the year or so the SPC stayed. As I drove him to High School to make sure he went, I'd point out a random shack, "Play your cards right, fella, and you too could live in one of those." Hey, he rose to the game and, let's not be proud, there but by the grace of God.
All too soon, Shack Street ended and there was a machine shop, flying a Come And Take It flag. That filled me with hope. All hail Texas.
That in mind, let's rebuild our towns and make them the communities they should be, as opposed to asset-stripped slums, gutted by transnational elite oligarchs who hide under a veneer of Millionaire, sorry, Billionaire Socialism.
Your Pal,
LSP
Utter disaster. Try putting your handheld computing device on the hood of the rig and cleverly driving away, forgetting about the miracle of technology resting on the bonnet. Thirty minutes later, by the Lake and Stations of the Cross, you ask yourself, where's the dam phone?
It was lying, smashed, in the middle of a crossroads near the Compound, and I picked it up after a devil in the detail drive home. There you are, fella, welcome back. But the mini computer was irretrievably busted and smashed, so I went to T Mobile for a replacement.
The TM persynn asked me what I wanted to buy, and I figured a brand new, up to the minute Samsung phone. Time to upgrade and spend some money. Salesguy sensibly said no, save your money, get the same thing without the brand at way less cost. In fact, why not buy my old phone?
What? How much? 200 bucks, same phone we're selling for 400. Yours, for cash. I couldn't say no to an obvious deal. But had to ask, "Don't you lose on commission, I mean, you just lost a sale." He replied, "We only get 5 dollars a sale, so so what. I hate corporate, in fact, I want to join the Army, get into IT." We talked about that, and phones.
Your Pal,
LSP
Repentance, contrition, and apology can come from the most unlikely sources, as can virtue itself. In this case, from Compound News and the appalling Piers Morgan.
Long vilified by our fearless reporters as an "Illuminati dupe sycophant" and the "Dark Lord" of British journalism, Piers Morgan was held up to ridicule and scorn by the Compound's newsroom. More than that, we lent our weight to the popular grass roots movement to remove Morgan from America and send him back, harming no one in the exit.
It was a successful campaign. Piers, hated everywhere in the US for his absurd NWO mandated hatred of 2nd Amendment freedom, fled to the UK, where he reestablished himself as a journalist. On probation.
It surprises us, and it may surprise you, but Piers has passed this test. He called out the money-grubbing, D-List, faux celeb, fake princess Meghan Markle on Monday's Good Morning Britain, accusing the Millionaire Socialist climber of lying.
No, said popular Piers, Meghan wasn't victimized by the Royal family on account of racism, but just because she was and is faked-up, #MillSoc rubbish. He doubled down today. Here's the erstwhile loathsome Morgan on social media:
On Monday, I said I didn’t believe Meghan Markle in her Oprah interview. I’ve had time to reflect on this opinion, and I still don’t. If you did, OK. Freedom of speech is a hill I’m happy to die on. Thanks for all the love, and hate. I’m off to spend more time with my opinions.
Well said, Piers, all is forgiven. In fact, we've always loved you, except Meghan, who might sue you to get even moar money because she's so racistly oppressed by being a millionaire socialist person of color married to one of the richest family's in Europe. Which, when you think on it, ain't bad for a two-bit, D-List Hollywood grifter.
Your Friend,
LSP
What can we say, win some, lose some. That in mind, the Peoples Crypto's soaring into .06land. Well done, pup.
Will the playful Shiba hit MOON? Let's wait and see and remember, the market's a way of transferring money from the impatient to the patient.
Your Fiduciary Pal,
LSP
If you follow the newfangled lectionary, you'll have heard St. John's account of Christ driving the money changers and associated cattle out of the Temple. Picture the scene.
There's the forecourt of the Temple turned into a cattle market, replete with FX grifters exchanging secular currency for Temple coin, and making a nice profit to boot. Why? Because the Jews had to buy animals to sacrifice and the Temple didn't accept secular money. Enter Christ.
Zeal for his Father's house consumed him as he drove the beasts out with a whip, overturning the cattle market casino which had turned the Temple, the holiest place on earth, the focus of atonement as it then was, into a "den of thieves."
The Temple was defiled and Christ couldn't stand for it, hungering and thirsting for righteousness he drove it out, and the message, on the face of it, is clear. No corruption, grift, skulduggery and malfeasance in the Holy Church of God. But there's more.
Sensing something deeper, bystanders ask for a sign, they want to know what our Lord's actions signify, and he tells them, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." Of course they're confused, but we're not.
Jesus' cleansing of the Temple is a prophetic act which points to his death and resurrection, to his atoning sacrifice and its attendant victory. He will be the new Temple and its Sacrifice, as one. So Christ drives the animals and the moneylenders out of the Temple. Their time is done.
We're the beneficiaries of this, the blood of the Paschal Lamb is on the lintel of our souls, such that the Angel of Death passes over us. As living stones in the spiritual temple of Christ's Body, the Church, his sacrifice is operative within us, which brings us back to the wicked money changers.
For sure, the Church writ large must cleanse herself of corruption, but what about us, as persons, the Church writ small? Surely the same applies. We're Temples of the Spirit, says the Apostle, and so we are. Message to market?
Repent. Drive those knavish thieves, the world, the flesh and the Devil out of the temple of our souls so that we, clean, may find union with the Cross and the life which flows from it. Therein lies sanctification and beatitude, and herein endeth the Lesson.
Your Old Friend,
LSP
You can read all kinds of commentaries on the information superhighway, but here at the Compound we think this infovid captures the spirit of it all. Feel free to disagree.
LSP
At 4 o’clock on the morning of March 6, 1836, Santa Anna advanced his men to within 200 yards of the Alamo’s walls. Just as dawn was breaking, the Mexican bloodcurdling bugle call of the Deguello echoed the meaning of the scarlet flag above San Fernando: no quarter. It was Captain Juan Seguin’s Tejanos, the native-born Mexicans fighting in the Texan army, who interpreted the chilling music for the other defenders.
Santa Anna’s first charge was repulsed, as was the second, by the deadly fire of Travis’ artillery. At the third charge, one Mexican column attacked near a breach in the north wall, another in the area of the chapel, and a third, the Toluca Battalion, commenced to scale the walls. All suffered severely. Out of 800 men in the Toluca Battalion, only 130 were left alive. Fighting was hand to hand with knives, pistols, clubbed rifles, lances, pikes, knees and fists. The dead lay everywhere. Blood spilled in the convent, the barracks, the entrance to the church, and finally in the rubble-strewn church interior itself. Ninety minutes after it began, it was over.
All the Texans died. Santa Anna’s loss was 1,544 men.
LSP
A long distance shooter friend, JF, sent this in today, from the journalist and former Communist, Whittaker Chambers:
It seemed to me that I had a more important task to do, one that was peculiarly mine. It was not to attack Communism frontally. It was to clarify on the basis of the news, the religious and moral position that made Communism evil. I had been trying to make a negative point. Now I had to state the positive position, and it was a much more formidable task than attack. It meant explaining simply and readably for millions the reasons why the great secular faith of this age is wrong and the religious faith of the ages is right; why, in the words of the Song of Roland, the Christians are right and the heathen are wrong.
I'd say there's a lesson to be drawn from that and a good one, but I'll spare you the sermon. Instead, consider the Song of Roland, the great, epic, 11th century chivalric poem. Betrayal, heroism, faith, the battle of good versus evil, all that and far more. It's also bloody.
Here's Archbishop Turpin in action against Corsablix at the battle of Roncevaux, in which Roland and the ferocious if saintly prelate ultimately die:
To strike that king by virtue great goes he,The hauberk all unfastens, breaks the shield,Thrusts his great spear in through the carcass clean,Pins it so well he shakes it in its seat,Dead in the road he's flung it from his spear.Looks on the ground, that glutton lying sees,Nor leaves him yet, they say, but rather speaks:"Culvert pagan, you lied now in your teeth,Charles my lord our warrant is indeed;None of our Franks hath any mind to flee.Your companions all on this spot we'll keep,I tell you news; death shall ye suffer here.Strike on, the Franks! Fail none of you at need!Ours the first blow, to God the glory be!""Monjoie!" he cries, for all the camp to hear.
Come on afoot a thousand Sarrazens,And on horseback some forty thousand men.But well I know, to approach they never dare;Lances and spears they poise to hurl at them,Arrows, barbs, darts and javelins in the air.With the first flight they've slain our Gualtier;Turpin of Reims has all his shield broken,And cracked his helm; he's wounded in the head,From his hauberk the woven mail they tear,In his body four spear-wounds doth he bear;Beneath him too his charger's fallen dead.Great grief it was, when that Archbishop fell.Turpin of Reims hath felt himself undone,Since that four spears have through his body come;Nimble and bold upon his feet he jumps;Looks for Rollant, and then towards him runs,Saying this word: "I am not overcome.While life remains, no good vassal gives up."He's drawn Almace, whose steel was brown and rough,Through the great press a thousand blows he's struck:As Charles said, quarter he gave to none;He found him there, four hundred else among,Wounded the most, speared through the middle some,Also there were from whom the heads he'd cut:So tells the tale, he that was there says thus,The brave Saint Giles, whom God made marvellous,Who charters wrote for th' Minster at Loum;Nothing he's heard that does not know this much.
Wow, and you can and should read the whole thing here before it's banned by the rainbow Maoists and better still, in the original, which rings.
Chanson in mind, it's said that William the Conqueror's minstrel went into the Battle of Hastings singing the Song of Roland, and most certainly, Bishop Adhemar de Monteil carried arms in the First Crusade. A mace, perhaps.
What a far cry from the Church of the West as it is today, cowering from a sickness with a 99.8% survival rate, as it cravenly parrots the faddish shibboleths of our corporate sponsored, oligarch, leftist elite establishment and their billionaire CCP heathen patrons.
Draw the moral as you like, but what would Olifant say?
Monjoie,
LSP
