Blue Ridge Style & Beyond
I was told to get there early. It’s a popular spot. So I did. And it was worth it.
Here you’ll find arches, spires, and a large concentration of narrow rock walls called “fins.” Fins form when rainwater erodes parallel fractures caused by the uplift of salt deposits below the surface. Fins eventually erode and give way to the formation of arches like Landscape Arch, the crown jewel of Devils Garden.
But first, lets explore Tunnel and Pine Tree Arch.
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God’s Beauty
According to St Matthew’s Gospel, after hearing from the wise men of the birth of Jesus, King Herod ordered that all children in Bethlehem under the age of two be murdered. Bruegel set the story as a contemporary Flemish atrocity so that the soldiers wear the distinctive clothing of the Spanish army and their German mercenaries.
The artist also drew upon his experience of the exceptionally severe winter of 1564-5 to describe a village covered in snow, with icicles hanging from the rooftops and the pond in the foreground thickly frozen over.
Bruegel’s Massacre of the Innocents was a popular image, repeated numerous times mainly by the artist and by his son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger.
Source: Royal Collection Trust (UK)
Toward the end of his life, however, Herod became increasingly paranoid about potential coups and had several of his sons and his most beloved wife, Mariamne, executed to forestall what he feared were attempts to overthrow him. At one point, Augustus ironically remarked that he would rather be Herod’s pig (which a Jew would not kill) than his son (whom Herod would kill). Although recorded in Latin, the remark probably preserves a play on words in Greek because of the similarity between hus (pig) and huios (son). Thus, although there is no independent confirmation of the story in Matt 2:16 of Herod ordering the massacre of the young children of Bethlehem, the account is entirely in keeping with his character and actions at the end of his time in office.
Craig L. Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey, 2nd Edition. p 21–22. [emphasis mine]
When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: 18 “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” (NRSV)
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An unexpected concession by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) reveals dishonesty in the American gender-medicine establishment.
Yet another important Leor Sapir article.
One of the main public relations strategies of “gender-affirming care” advocates is to deny that the model of treatment being used in American clinics differs in any significant way with the one now used in European clinics. Over the past two years, and following systematic reviews of evidence, health authorities in Sweden, Finland, and the U.K. have agreed that no evidence exists that the benefits of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones outweigh the risks. All three countries have since imposed measures to reduce drastically the accessibility of these drugs to teenagers.
Just two weeks ago, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)—a U.S.-based promoter of “gender affirmation” that now recognizes “eunuch” as a valid childhood “gender identity”—was still insisting that Europe’s only change was a decision by health authorities to conduct “more studies” and gather data. But with evidence of the actual changes increasingly hard to deny, WPATH has now finally had to reckon with reality. On November 25, it chose to air its grievances—and tacitly concede its previous disinformation campaign—about Europe’s change of direction when it criticized England’s National Health Service.
Back in October, the NHS released draft guidance based on a February report by the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. In that report, physician Hilary Cass noted the “affirmative” model, which “originated in the USA,” as likely responsible for insufficient child “safeguarding” at the now-discontinued Tavistock clinic gender service. Tavistock staff, Cass wrote, “have told us that they feel pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.” The NHS’s draft guidance calls for a restoration of careful and lengthy mental-health assessments before prescribing drugs.
In its November 25 statement, WPATH condemned the NHS in terms that reveal the organization’s strong preference for the affirmative model. The NHS, it complained, is emphasizing “careful exploration of a child or young person’s co-existing mental health, neuro-developmental and/or family or social complexities,” which WPATH deemed an “alarming” practice of “outdated gatekeeping.”
[emphasis mine]
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Institutional Decay