Why Can't Everyone Have Courts Like This?

Last month the Court of Cassation Italy's highest appeal Court banned a couple from naming their son Friday - Venerdi - because the name "could expose the boy to ridicule".

The court said the name was derived from the manservant in Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe, and was therefore associated with "subservience and inferiority". The judges ordered the boy to be renamed Gregorio, after the saint's day on which he was born.

Times Online, December 1, 2008

[via Orwell's Picnic]

Aside from it being assigned to a boy, I'm not opposed to 'Friday' as a name. After all, we do have a major saint who bore that name...

NOTE: I am told that St Paraskeva, like the Martyr Sophia and her daughters Faith, Hope and Love, was a pious analogy that became personified over the centuries. Edward, if you are reading this, please provide an explanation =P

Georgian Christian Mothers

...of whom Ketevan Geladze (Joseph Stalin's mother) was a perfect example.

N. Kipshidze, a doctor who treated her in her old age, recalled a visit by the Soviet leader to his mother in 1935, when she was very ill:

He asked,
"Why did you beat me so hard?"
"That's why you turned out so well."

After a pause, she asked him,
"Joseph - who exactly are you now?"
"Remember the tsar? Well, I'm like a tsar."
"You'd have done better to have become a priest!"

Cheating at Confession

"This was my mother, when she was growing up, her experience of confession.

Small town Pennsylvania - Pennsylvania has lots of small towns - and she was born in the 20s, so this was probably in the 30s - the 1930s - and at that time people went to communion and confession once a year; they went during Great Lent.

So in that little town that had lots of kids of Russian immigrants, had a church - the Russian church, that was called so anyway. Those kids got out of school early that Friday afternoon because they were all going to communion the next day, on Saturday. So that Friday afternoon, they were dismissed early, they all went up to the church and got in line for confession. Problem was, the priest was not English-speaking and the kids didn't know how to speak Russian because at home they spoke a dialect, like from the Ukraine and Poland and so on. So you have a communication problem.

So they put one of the older girls first, who understood Russian - who really understood Russian - and they would listen to her answers. So the priest would say, did you this, did you do this, did you do this, and they were listening.

"Da, da, nyet, da, da, nyet."

So they eavesdropped and they go back and send it to each person in the line, "2 das and a nyet. 2 das and a nyet!"

So everybody memorised the answers to confession."

Mother Christophora, abbess of the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, speaking at the Orthodox Christian Women’s conference in Montreal in March 2008.

Turning 9 on 9.09.08

С Днём Рождения Вика!!!

Who Would You Marry?

Two unedited excerpts from two conversations with two girls (one of whom I'm currently seeing, and the other whom friends tried to set me up with) recently:

A) Another reason why i shouldn't marry or have kids. They only serve as irritating accessories that bog down my mobility and freedom of choice.

B) ya kids are the best!!! they are so sincere, they just do what they realy want and tell what they realy think

Children in Church

From Russian photography blog, Photo Polygon, Elena Devyashina gives us this touching photo-story:

NOTE: The original article was translated, with much help, for the benefit of readers who do not read Russian. I take no credit whatsoever for its content.

Children are children.
Children are children wherever it may be. Children will be children anywhere: be it at school, in the sandbox, hospital or church. They can be jolly or tired, busy with their stuff or listen attentively. They can be everything, yet, they are far more natural than us adults.

Children in church are not an isolated species, succumbed to its own milieu - not at all. They are no different from any normal children we see every now and then, anywhere around us.

10th February 2008
Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, Seversk
Darya in Sunday school

The process of dialogue in Sunday school flows freely and quietly, like a stream, as children busily engage in drawing and reading while listening to the priest. This photo-story, however, is not about Sunday school, but rather simply about children in church.

Church of St Sergius of Radonezh, Tomsk
The girls, a little tired from a long service, take a seat

Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, Seversk
Palm Sunday

Church of St Sergius of Radonezh, Tomsk
Little sisters





Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, Seversk
Before Holy Communion

Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, Seversk
Palm Sunday: Darya smiled, posed and presented me with a willow

War of the Babies

Many friends look upon my little fixation with the Kosovo issue the same way they see my other obsessions: with utter bewilderment. Unless one is of Slavic extraction or of the Orthodox faith, one would be apprehensive about confronting the tangled knot of ancient history and warring ethnicities that is the Balkans. And of course, this blogger doesn't make it any easier for the average person when he tries to explain. What, with all the esoteric terms I use and the unheard-of events I reference.

Recently, I was asked how the supposedly weaker Albanians "conquered" the ancient heartland of a people who spent centuries holding off the Turkish incursion into Europe. I know the answer, but I won't say it - you know what happens if I do.

Instead, I will allow Gary Brecher - the War Nerd - to do so. If you are an "average" reader of Memoirs or one of many friends unable to understand me, I implore you now to read on. The War Nerd is nowhere as incomprehensible as many make me out to be.

In this piece, aptly named War of the Babies, he details the Albanian "conquest":

To succeed in the post-1918 world, the world Woodrow Wilson dreamed up where "small nations" have rights even if they can't defend them, you need to use slower, less obviously military methods, like birthrate and immigration. The classic example of this kind of slow conquest is Kosovo. The Serbs could always defeat the Albanians on the battlefield, even when outnumbered, but the Albanians had a huge advantage in the most important military production of all -- babies. According to the BBC, the birthrate of Kosovo Albanians 50 years ago was an amazing 8.5 children per woman.

The Serb/Albanian conflict offers damn near perfect lab conditions to prove my case that birth rate trumps military prowess these days, because the Serbs always beat the Albanians in battle, yet they’ve lost their homeland, Kosovo. Here again, we can blame Woodrow Wilson and his talk about "rights". In places where tribes hate each other, a tribe that outbreeds its rival will become the majority, even if it can’t fight. So, after generations of skulking at home making babies, letting the Serbs do the fighting, the Albanians finally became the majority in Kosovo and therefore the official "good guys", being oppressed by the official "bad guys", the Serbs. At least that’s the way the nave American Wilsonian types like Clinton saw it. So when the Serbs fought back against an Albanian rebellion in Kosovo, and dared to beat the Albanians, Clinton decided to bomb the Serbs into letting go of Kosovo, the ancient heartland of a Christian nation that had spent its blood holding off the Turks for hundreds of years.

The Kosovo Albanians proved that military skill doesn’t matter, because they tried and failed to conquer Kosovo the old-fashioned way: armed rebellion by the Kosovo Liberation Army. It was a wipeout: local Serb militias, a bunch of tired middle-aged part-timers and cops, crushed the KLA. What happened next is a beautiful illustration of the way losers win these days: the Albanians took the bodies of KLA men who’d been killed in battle, stripped all weapons and ammo from them, and showed them to gullible Western reporters as victims of a Serb "massacre". It was a massacre, all right, but only because the KLA couldn’t fight worth a damn. Alive and armed, they were a joke; dead and disarmed, they helped win Kosovo by making their side the "victims", which led directly to U.S. military intervention.

To win the way the Albanians won in Kosovo, you need to make a lot of babies. It’s that simple. And to see how it works, you have to drop the namby-pamby liberal idea that people only have babies out of "love". In lots of places on this planet, baby-making is a form of weapons production.

Peter G. Peterson wrote in his book, Will America Grow Up Before It Grows Old?, "demographics is destiny". No matter what others say to convince you otherwise, one doesn't have to look very far to see that war being fought and lost. With many first world governments seemingly consulting Planned Parenthood on sustaining society, and birth control easily available, many nations face a demographic débâcle unprecedented in world history. Who continues to heed God's first command to our first parents, "Be fruitful and multiply"?

The answer, I'm afraid, is frighteningly obvious.

More "Tolerance" from America

"Mom and Dad" as well as "husband and wife" have been banned from California schools under a bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who with his signature also ordered public schools to allow boys to use girls restrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa, if they choose.

- WorldNetDaily, October 13, 2007

I am surprised - Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, should know better!

"Shame on Schwarzenegger and the Democrat politicians for ensuring that every California school becomes a homosexual-bisexual-transsexual indoctrination center," (Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families), said.

This demand for "tolerance" and "acceptance" is quickly evolving into a new mood of aggressive intolerance against accepted values. Perhaps this is what those who clamoured for "tolerance" wanted in the first place.

A Remarkable Story

NOTE: The following article was pieced together from the original Russian with an online translator and my crummy Russian. Apologies for any mistakes!

Almost three years ago, the event shook the entire country: an 11 year old student become pregnant! She has now given birth; the father of the child is a young Tajik named Habib.

Now 14 year old Valya Isayeva continues her studies in seventh grade, while bringing up little Amina.

"I study in the day, coming home at five. I do my homework, play with Amina and then I make supper." says Valya.

Habib now works in construction, and contributes to the upbringing of his daughter. He lives in a working hostel, but visits regularly. He plans to marry Valya as soon as it is legally possible.

Valya diligently works on her assignments.

The young parents with Amina as Valya's grandmother, Antonina Aleksandrova, looks on.

Little Amina is now 2 years and 2 months old.

- Komsomolskaya Pravda, 19th September 2007

Now, this story strikes me as remarkable not because of the young age at which this girl has become a mother, but rather, how this story has unfolded. I do not find a young mother particularly shocking - bear in mind that girls in times past would be married early on to far older men and would probably conceive before the age of 18.

In any other society, most men who impregnate a girl of that age (or any other age for that matter) outside marriage would probably either vanish completely, or cough some money for an abortion before deciding whether to leave or stay. Habib, on the other hand, has decided to act responsibly - by earning for his little family, and seeing them as much as time permits.

That the couple is probably Muslim, and, owing to their culture (especially in parts of the former Soviet Union), have primitive ways is beside the point, however.

For all our "civilised" ways in the West (and societies aping the West, i.e. Singapore), how many of us are willing to display similar maturity and responsibility in the face of such an event?