In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

As of this week, LA County has qualified to leave the California "red" tier of COVID restrictions, and as of Monday, April 5, it will be placed in the less restrictive "orange" tier. From the time Gov Newsom imposed the multi-colored COVID tiers last August 28, LA County had been in the most restrictive "purple" tier. Its performance during the late 2020 surge had been a virtual Mt Everest on the chart, as shown above. But for reasons that aren't completely clear, the county's numbers began a precipitous drop in mid-January 2021 and, contravening trends in places like Germany, Canada, and the US northeast, have continued to plummet. The county left the "purple" tier, where it had been for over seven months, just on March 14, when it was placed in the "red" tier. However, it has blown through the "red" tier in the minimum time it was required to wait there, three weeks, and yesterday the state declared that it qualifi...

In a bizarre and weepy statement to the media yesterday, Dr Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC, departed from her prepared statement and, close to tears, said I'm going to lose the script, and I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I'm scared. The first reaction I had was that leaders don't break into panic in prepared public remarks. Instead, leaders, even when things look bleak, outline a positive course of action. Think we shall fight on the beaches. But in fact, she's outlining no course of action at all, and indeed no serious understanding of the particular problem. And of course, if she thinks a spike in COVID "cases" is "impending doom", what word does she use for ebola or bubonic plague? I'll get to the over-the-top below. Like Dr Fauci yesterday, she looks at a national t...

Yesterday on Sunday talk, Dr Fauci said US COVID-19 cases were rising again "because of infectious coronavirus variants, people traveling more, and states easing restrictions too soon." More than 11 states have eased restrictions, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warning that "now is not the time." As far as I can tell, an uptick in US cases is due almost entirely to New York. Here's the New York chart: But here's California: New York's population is 18 million. California's population is 40 million. California's COVID statistics, with LA County a key factor, have actually been plummeting in recent weeks, as I noted here yesterday. But according to the New York Post, New York and New Jersey now have the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in the country. The Empire State has averaged 548 cases for every 100,000 residents over the past 14 days — only surpassed by the Garden State with 647 ...

I was surfing the COVID charts yesterday when I ran into the one above on the LA County health department site. The bottom line is that, as of a week ago, the 7-day average county COVID testing positivity rate was 1.60%. But putting this in the context of Gov Newsom's lockdown tiers, if the system were reimposed today with these statistics, the county would not be in the "red" tier, which is only a little less restrictive than the horrible "purple" tier. With a testing positivity rate of less than 2%, it would be in the lowest, "yellow" or "minimal" tier. As it is, the county is still in the three-week waiting period to move down from the red, "substantial" tier to the orange, "moderate" tier. I assume that once it reaches the orange tier in a week or so, the waiting clock in orange will restart, and we'll have to wait another three weeks to move from orange to yellow, when, however, masks, social distancing, and cap...

Via The Federalist , I learn that US District Judge Trevor McFadden ordered Washington, DC Mayor Bowser to cease enforcing a 250-person and 25 percent capacity restriction on church attendance. Via the graphic above, which is already out of date, this was the last jurisdiction to have imposed a "maximum x and y percent, whichever is lower" type restriction, which was extremely common as of late last year. This is a continuing indication of how quickly COVID restrictions are being lifted in the US. The suit was brought by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington. This is another indication that the successful US legal fight against limits on religious observance is being conducted entirely by Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and radical Protestant Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Main Line Protestantism is nowhere to be found, reflective of the trend Frederick Kinsman observed a century ago. It reflects similar developments among Jews. Quasi-Christian cults like Mormons, Jehovah...

A visitor sent me a heads-up to a story on Gavin Newsom that broke in local media yesterday, and it's developing only very slowly this morning. Here's the latest, still from California local media : Will the “worst-kept secret in Sacramento” blow into public view? It’s hard to say. The secret? That Gov. Gavin Newsom was engaged in multiple alleged extra-marital affairs over the course of 2020, a time where many of his orders shuttered nearly all personal and economic activity across the nation’s largest state. Sources on K Street and within the Capitol complex peppered The Sun with corroborating rumors of infidelity by Newsom during the pandemic year. One such instance allegedly occurred with a high-ranking official within his own office, K Street sources told The Sun. The original source the visitor sent me took me back to Newsom's past history. I've got to say I wasn't paying much attention at the time, simply because Newsom was the foreordained choi...

The chart above shows the trend in COVID "cases" for California since the start of the pandemic. As I noted yesterday, the authorities' response to this remarkable reversal of the disease has been extremely timid and bureaucratic, with counties moving very slowly from "tier" to "tier", each move giving very minimal relaxation: this month indoor dining at 25% capacity, masks, and social distance; next month (maybe) 50%, masks, and social distance. The most the state plan envisions for many sectors, including restaurants and churches, is under the "yellow" tier at 50% capacity, masks, and social distance. There's no threshold in the plan for ever leaving yellow. I guess we'll just have to be grateful for the 50% they'll let us have. By comparison, here's the same data over the same period for Texas. Although the trend in California is even more favorable than Texas, Texas is the one to say "we're done". No mas...

Above is the PSA that's still being put out on Facebook this morning by the US Department of Health and Human Services. It may as well be from a year ago -- the message hasn't changed. But in the last couple of months, the big issue for COVID has been vaccines, and the suggestion, which I quoted yesterday from the LA County health department, is that with only 10% of the population vaccinated, the statistics are plummeting. The health department in its latet update says this: Today, the State released updated numbers; L.A. County's adjusted case rate dropped from 4.1 new cases per 100,000 people to 3.7 new cases per 100,000 people. The test positivity rate dropped from 2.0% to 1.8%. If the County continues to maintain current levels or declines in the case rate and test positivity rate, it is possible in early April for the County to move into the orange tier. The County needs to remain in the red tier for three weeks prior to be assigned to the orange tier. These t...

On the heels of Dr Fauci telegraphing that the CDC may soon revise its guidelines over social distancing comes news that Minnesota has dropped all capacity restrictions for houses of worship, while maintaining that same social distancing requirement. As one headline put it, "Dominoes are falling." "The dominoes are falling in favor of abolishing the states’ limitations on church attendance," Thomas More Society Special Counsel Erick Kaardal said in a statement. "Minnesota has abolished its church attendance limitations. Next, our plan is to similarly abolish all the other states’ remaining limitations on church attendance, which have been occurring nationwide." The Thomas More Society was involved in a lawsuit that challenged coronavirus-related restrictions on religious services in Minnesota. The state relented last week, ending capacity restrictions while maintaining social distancing requirements. . . . "State-imposed limits on chur...

A story over the weekend gave an insight into how Dr Fauci's mind works (as a guy I once knew would say, "But who would want to have that?"): Anthony Fauci, a world-respected figure during the coronavirus crisis, said experts at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) were examining a Massachusetts study that found "no substantial difference" in COVID cases in schools observing six-foot and three-foot rules. Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" show whether that meant that a three-foot separation was sufficient, Fauci replied, "It does, indeed." "The CDC is very well aware that data are accumulating making it look more like three feet are OK under certain circumstances," Fauci added. While cautioning that the CDC was still weighing the data and conducting its own tests, he said its findings would come "soon." o be six feet of distance in the first place? But wait a moment. For the past year, we've been tol...

I see in this morning's news that yesterday there were protests across Europe and the UK against continued COVID lockdowns. A quick review of the situation indicates that, at least in the UK and Germany, some restrictions were briefly relaxed, but severe lockdowns have been reimposed in the UK, with the threat of the same in Germany. It's easy to be lulled by conditions in the US, where states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona have relaxed most or all restrictions, including mask requirements, while even in California, which has consistently been the strictest in the US, the lockdowns have eased, with indoor dining now resuming at 25% capacity in places like Los Angeles. On March 2, Texas lifted all COVID restrictions. More than two weeks later, cases there continue to decline, although the COVID moral entrepreneurs across the country insisted at the time that this was "reckless". US data continues to indicate that there is little correlation between sever...

A visitor found this brief note in the New York Times from May 1919 referring to news that was apparently generally known at the Episcopal Church annual meeting that Kinsman was planning to retire. (He was 50.) The most visible reason he gave for his wish to retire at that time was that he seemed unhappy with his role as bishop, but he also noted that there were "deeper reasons". It also appears that his father's health, which we may speculate based on remarks in Reveries of a Hermit must have been paralysis following a fairly recent stroke, was a secondary factor. I have a sense that oral history of how this event played out in the Episcopal Church at the time has been passed down, and I would be most interested to hear of any such accounts. The report suggests much of this was fairly well known and understood by Kinsman's colleagues at the time. However, Kinsman seems to have kept his main motivation for resigning confidential until his formal letter of resignati...

A few weeks ago I asked why Andrew Cuomo, of sll people, had suddenly fallen from grace amid MeToo allegations, most of them old and trivial, to the point that many New York Democrats have called for his resignation. That he ordered nursing homes to tale COVID patients. thereby spreading the disease among the most vulnerable, has been a distant also-ran in the case against him. But even there, similar allegations against Gov Whitmer of Michigan have gained little traction, much less than those against Cuomo. Why are the Democrats, enabled by media hysteria, eating their own? I've said here that Robert Barnes is among the most insightful commentators we now have. His difficulty is that he talks in two-hour YouTube interviews with several interlocutors, and the discussions are rambling and desultory, with no transcripts. I hope something can be done about this. The problem is that Barnes is a busy attorney, and I don't understand how he even takes so many hours out of his sched...

Above is a photo of the residence on Kinsman's Maine estate, Birchmere, which currently operates as a bed and breakfast . There are other photos at the link. You can rent the place for $490 per night. A Facebook post indicates the place had been vacant for some years prior to 1985, and its current condition reflects considerable renovation, so that very little of the interior would be how it was when Kinsman lived there. If I had the means, I'd certainly want to stay there now. At the time Kinsman lived there, the place could be reached only by boat across the pond. There is now a four-wheel-drive accessible road. Kinsman also built a tower on the property that later served as a mausoleum for him and his family. At this point, I can't locate any photos of the tower/mausoleum on the web. This appears to be where he did his studying and writing. Census data indicates that both of Kinsman's parents and his sister lived in the Wilmington, DE bishop's residenc...

This book is one of Kinsman's works that's available on line in downloadable form . Almost exactly a century after its 1926 publication, this is a tough book to parse, in part because the issues that seem to have started Kinsman's train of thought are in some ways now moot. The wave of Catholic immigraton that took place in the post-Civil War period ended in the 1920s, while the decline of Main Line Protestantism that Kinsman anticipated has largely taken place. However, I think the main force of his argument is still relevant, and even relevant to current circumstances. His concern, from the perspective of his recent conversion and sudden change of life from the peak of Protestant respectability to association with Catholic immigrant hordes, seems to have brought him to the question of how the hordes, and the Church that largely arrived with them, can integrate into Protestant American society. And let's keep in mind that he speaks quite consciously as someone whose...

The photo above is the second of two provided by a visitor of Kinsman from the St Paul's School website. It shows him as a master at St Paul's, which he was up to 1896, when he was ordained an Episcopal priest. Born in 1868, he would have been in his mid-20s at the time of the photo. A difficulty in tracking down biographical information on Frederick Joseph Kinsman is that both his father and grandfather were named Frederick Kinsman as well. Due to this problem, I erred in an earlier post here in saying that Frederick Joseph was the son of a Cleveland judge. Judge Frederick W Kinsman (1807-1884) was actually Frederick Joseph's grandfather, a prominent citizen of Warren, OH. In 1832, his father-in-law built him a house on "Millionaire's Row" in Warren as a wedding gift. The house is preserved as a historical exhibit . Kinsman's first wife died young, and their children all died in infancy. His second wife was Cornelia Pease Kinsman. Their children were...

A visitor found the photo above of Kinsman as a student at St Paul's School in Concord, NH. This is actually a key part of his background, as he makes clear in Salve Mater that the Kinsmans were a pominent Ohio family, There's a Kinsman Road and a Kinsman district in Cleveland. That Frederick would attend St Paul's School, one of the St Grottlesex group, and become an Episcopal bishop are indications of his and his family's high standing in society. Kinsman's literary product as a Catholic is complex, and with much of it available to me due to the generosity of a visitor, I'm finding it deserves detailed reading and reflection. Reveries of a Hermit is an example. About half of it is the closely reasoned apologetic I've discussed here, but there's a Part II which is about the same length but more difficult to parse. It sets out to be an essay on three saints connected with the ancient city of Ephesus, but in the middle, there's a chapter on Birc...

There's been a certain amount of background noise over recent generations, especially from commentators like Alan Dershowitz, that quotas persist in ivy League and similar elite schools, and although the schools insist that Jewish quotas are a thing of the past, quotas of all sorts have grown and become steadily more intricate. There may no longer be Jewish quotas per se, but admissions criteria that de-prioritize applicants from affluent suburbs have a similar effect, and these persist. The first impression I had, just days after arriving at Dartmouth, was that some of my clasmates were in effect flying coach, while others flew first class. This was at complete variance with the public narrative current at least in the 1950s and early 60s that the elite schools were highly selective based on grades, test scores, and extracurriculars, and those selected were the best and the brightest. This view was reflected in David Brooks's remarkably silly 2000 book, Bobos in Paradise, ...

The remarks I quoted from Frederick Kinsman yesterday on Anglo-Catholics, that among them "there was much exercise of private judgment, both in a chronic fastidiousnesss which spent its energy in pointing how everyone else was more or less wrong" go a long way for me in explaining what's happened in the North American ordinariate. A visitor comments, The “chronic fastidiousness” of which Kinsman speaks is a defining characteristic of the ordinariate. No doubt it is more difficult in the Catholic church to flout constituted authorities, at least where they have taken a position, but the mindset that “we have it right, and everyone else is wrong” is everywhere, and the “everyone” often means other ordinariate communities, not just benighted “Novus Ordo” parishes. After over four hundred comments on a video of the mass at St Timothy, Sykesville which revealed their use of women servers and guitar accompaniment, the administrator of the Anglican ordinariate ...

The section of Reveries of a Hermit most relevant to my purpose is the chapter on Anglicanism. He traces its origin to exclusively secular and political concerns: Change of religion in Englnd did not arise from a desire for revision such as Luther's, or for rediscovery such as Calvin's. It was the result of the policies of Tudor sovereigns. Four of these successively imposed on their subjects such religious establishment as seemed to them expedient. Henry VIII substituted Royal for Papal supremacy: Edward VI inaugurated changes aiming at English copying of Swiss models: Queen Mary, using Royal Supremacy to replace Papal, brought back Catholicism as far as she could: Queen Elizabeth adopted a series of compromises, intended to reduce to a minimum religious differences within her realm, and her policies have ever since largely prevailed in the English-speaknig world. (pp 122-123) I simply don't know what's taught now in Eng Lit, but up to the 1970s, this was regard...