Requiem for Mary

Here are the readings for Mary's church service.

"The souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God,
no torment shall ever touch them.
In the eyes of the unbelieving they appeared to die,
their going looked like a tragedy,
their leaving us, like a desolation;
but they are at peace.
If they experienced hardship as the worldly see it,
their hope was rich with eternal life;
slight was their affliction, but great their blessing will be.

God has put them to the test
and proven them worthy to be with him;
he has tested them like gold in a furnace,
and accepted them as a sacred offering.
They who trust in him will understand the truth,
those who are faithful will live with him forever, in love;
for grace and mercy await those whom he has chosen."

Wisdom 3:1-6, 9


"Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths.  Lead me in your truth, and teach me: for you are the God of my salvation; and I wait for you all the day.  Remember, O Lord, your tender mercies and loving kindness, as they have ever been of old."

Psalm 25:4-6


"Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I will say, rejoice;  show patience and consideration to all, for the Lord is always near.   Let nothing make you anxious; but with prayer, and by supplication, and with thanksgiving, let your needs be made known unto God; and the peace of the Lord, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds, in Christ Jesus."

Philippians 4:4-7


"But Mary treasured up all these things, and pondered them in her heart."

Luke 2:19

This recollection from her close friend Angie sums her all up:

"My favorite memory of Mary, which I will never forget, is when we were at the Bernardsville pool sitting in the chairs on the side of the baby pool. Stella was about 3. She was the only one in the pool. She kind of skipped across the pool with her back to us and had her arms kind of loose going up and down slowly in the water, seeming to be really happy.  Mary looked at me and smiled and said 'it makes it all worth it, doesn't it?'"

“What we would like to do is change the world— make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do.   And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute— the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words— we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.   We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world."

Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness


“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him.   We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now.   We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case."

John Henry Newman, Divine Calls


"Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.  Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake."

Garrison Keillor, The Prairie Home Companion

Every good thing I have ever had in my life came from her.

Need little - Want less - Love more.

And Peace At the Last - Early Thursday Morning

May the Lord support us all the day long,
until the shadows lengthen,
and the evening comes,
and the busy world is hushed,
and the fever of life is over,
and our work is done.

Then in your mercy,
grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest,
and peace at the last.

John Henry Newman

Out of the images and the shadows into the light.


The queen is in her last hours now. The night was difficult, but she is settling in and growing more quiet and peaceful.  She is a fighter to the end, surprising the nurses.  Her family and friends have gathered.

I will not be updating or answering emails for a little while.   Thank you for your kind wishes and your understanding.

P.S.  The queen has passed away peacefully in her sleep.

Eternal rest grant unto her O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her.

See you the week of September 11 perhaps.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Principalities and Powers

"Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshaling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it.  Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and savor of death.

Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us!  Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison...

He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you.  He bids you mount aloft.  He shows you how to become as gods.  Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Times of Antichrist


"Be sober, be vigilant. Your adversary, the devil, prowls the earth like a roaring lion, seeking those whom he may devour."

1 Peter 5:8


"But the Lord stood by me, and strengthened me, so that the message might be fully proclaimed that all the Gentiles might hear.  And I was delivered out of the lion's mouth."

2 Timothy 4:17


"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12

The option expiration on the Comex passed, with an undeniable flight to safety underway, as North Korea provocatively launched a missile over their traditional foe and US ally, the island nation of Japan.

Today the holders of the new contracts for those whose call options expired in the money were given the opportunity and perhaps some incentive to cash them in.  As I had said this is more of an issue for silver for the September contract holders than for gold.

The divergence between the quoted Kitco 'spot' gold price and the US futures continuous contract continues as I have previously noted.  This is because of the weight of the December contract in gold, and the method by which the 'spot' price is derived.  I mention this only to account for the slight price discrepancy you may find in my chart.

And so we see that gold has broken out, and set a new high for 2017.  The trick will be to hold this breakout level through the upcoming Non-Farm Payrolls report this Friday.  Not that the report will be of any particular significance, although much may or may not be made of it.  Rather, it is a cue to the price manipulators that they may have an opportunity to take the tourist investor to the cleaners for a quick wash and rinse, in one direction or another.

The queen abides.  She is only lightly responding to outside stimulus.  I suspect that she is being caught up already in the contemplation of eternity.  And after all, at that enormity, that overwhelming significance of all existence, what else matters?  The closing price of Apple?

People are so foolish.  They think they are winning, when they no longer even understand the nature of the game that they are playing.

In the end, the only real tragedy is not to have been a saint.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Non-Farm Payrolls and Comex Option Expiration Next Week

“We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.”

Francis of Assisi

There will be an option expiration on the Comex tomorrow, August 28th for the September contracts for gold and silver.

Silver is a more significantly active metal in the September contract.   The focus in gold trading now has shifted to October and December.

Gold is jammed into resistance at the $1300 level as can easily be seen in the price chart below.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls Report for the month of August on Friday, September 8.

Please remember the people of Texas who are suffering the adverse effects of a hurricane with very heavy flooding.

My son returned a week early from his Summer internship in Texas at my request. I was suddenly concerned about the queen and asked him to come home. His manager was very accommodating given the circumstances, and he drove back over a three day period. In doing so he missed all of the bad weather there, for which I am grateful.

The queen abides, growing quieter, and steadily a bit weaker, sleeping most of the time with Dolly at her side. I measure out the hours with patches and syringes, a tender touch of caring and a reassuring word, as I obtain similar consolations from my own angels of the moment, who bring a meal and a helping hand.

There is little fear and no pain. It is like watching a butterfly becoming.  God is making an angel.

These are His tender mercies.

Have a pleasant week ahead.   Hope to see you tomorrow.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Coiling

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Milan Kundera


“We cannot understand Fascism, but we can and must understand from where it springs, and we must be on our guard...because what happened can happen agai. For this reason, it is everyone's duty to reflect on what happened."

Primo Levi


"The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.

What is called 'fellow traveling' [collaboration] was primarily business interest: one pursues one’s own advantage before all else and, simply not to endanger oneself, does not talk too much. That is a general law of the status quo."

Theodor Adorno


"The perpetrators were scholars, doctors, nurses, justice officials, the police and the health and workers’ administration.   The victims were poor, desperate, rebellious or in need of help. They came from psychiatric clinics and childrens hospitals, from old age homes and welfare institutions, from military hospitals and internment camps."

Commemorative Tablet at Tiergartenstraße 4, Berlin


"Through his first year in Germany [1933], Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest. Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the [Hitler] regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger.

This lack of reaction arose partly because many in Germany and elsewhere chose to believe Hitler's claim that he had suppressed an imminent rebellion that would have caused far more bloodshed.   Evidence soon emerged, however, that showed that in fact Hitler's account was false.

The controlled press, not surprisingly, praised Hitler for his decisive behaviour. In a letter to Hull, Dodd forecast an even more terroristic regime. 'The people hardly notice this complete coup d'etat. It takes place in silence. I would swear that millions upon millions have no idea what a monstrous thing has occurred.'"

Erik Larson, The Garden of Beasts


"Communism and fascism or naziism, although poles apart in their intellectual content, are similar in this, that both have emotional appeal to the type of personality that takes pleasure in being submerged in a mass movement and submitting to superior authority."

James A. C. Brown


"There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past."

Ryszard Kapuscinski


"The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defense. Through this we can build, we must build, a defense against repetition. There is no denying that Hitler and Stalin are alive today. They are waiting for us to forget, because this is what makes possible the resurrection of these two monsters."

Simon Wiesenthal

Gold in particular is coiling, tighter and tighter.

It was hard to tell if the bounce in stocks today was something meaningful, a last ditch attempt to stave off a selling wave, or something else.

History seems to be coiling for a move, tighter and tighter, as well.

Have a pleasant evening.