Conservationist 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿
Joined August 2008
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Catherine Semcer retweeted
It's an interesting thing that, pretty much everywhere, new builds are horrendously ugly. They look like trashcans, boxes, distribution centers. Even those made at immense cost look like they'll be demolished in 50 years, not stand for centuries
Why?
Because the men who build them don't expect to be remembered, don't care to be, and indeed don't care about much at all. Perhaps they care about money in that they like having it. Generally they enjoy frivolous pleasures. But legacy? Greatness? Setting a societal tone? No, not at all.
Only men who think in centuries, and who think their ancestors will be there centuries on, build cathedrals and country houses. Those with spreedsheet-brain build what pencils out over the next budget cycle (and the drab boxes they put up are usually more expensive to keep up than the beautiful buildings they replaced)
Beauty is a choice. It ought be chosen again
Catherine Semcer retweeted
Some Saturday Morning Wisdom from America’s 30th president:
“We do not need more material development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen." - Calvin Coolidge
Catherine Semcer retweeted
The aim of classical education is not to produce useful workers, but free human beings.
A proper education once meant:
— Reading difficult books
— Writing long essays
— Learning history
— Studying philosophy
— Training memory
— Arguing clearly
Now it means:
— Career prep
— Standardized testing
— Group projects
— Slide decks
— Credential collection
Somewhere along the way, education became workforce training.
Catherine Semcer retweeted
Happy birthday to the man, the myth, the legend.
Teddy Roosevelt established 5 national parks, 18 national monuments, 150 national forests and countless other public lands.
Americans are still enjoying the places he helped conserve.
Photo at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
ALT Sunrise casting golden light over rolling green hills with scattered trees and morning mist.
Catherine Semcer retweeted
David Starkey saying something that I, and many others have stated upon observing and living within modern society.
Catherine Semcer retweeted
That the Communist hammer and sickle isn’t commonly regarded as evil and offensive as the Nazi swastika is a failure of education.
“Dear Italian students, who today take to the streets carrying flags with the hammer and sickle and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with ‘CCCP’,” began an open letter in Italian by Lithuanian expat Neringa Budryt.
“I would like to ask you a question: do you truly know what the symbols you carry represent? And do you know what would have happened to many of you had you openly demonstrated in countries living under the oppression of communist regimes?
Let me tell you something. It is easy to display a red flag when, for you, communism is merely an abstract idea of equality, social justice, and rebellion against the system. It is easy to wear a T-shirt with "CCCP" on it when you have never experienced the reality of a communist regime.
We come from that part of Europe where communism was not a T-shirt, a symbol of rebellion, or a romanticized notion of equality. It was the system in which we lived—a system we never chose.
We know the history of Soviet repression, Stalinist purges, the Gulags, and mass deportations. Above all, we know the word "Siberia"—a place to which thousands of innocent people were forcibly deported, simply for thinking differently.
In Siberia—amidst freezing cold, starvation, and forced labor—many lost their lives; those who survived carried the scars of that experience forever. Entire families were torn apart, and generations were denied the chance to live freely in their own homeland.
In the countries of the Soviet bloc, censorship, political police, surveillance, and the suppression of dissent drastically curtailed individual freedoms.
We grew up in a system where state control permeated even our daily lives. At school, we were required to wear the red necktie of the "Pioneers." We were monitored; they tracked where we went and even whether we attended church. Even faith—a choice that should belong to an individual’s own conscience—could become a cause for suspicion.
We used to celebrate Christmas with our windows blacked out, to ensure no one would see us and report us. Because it was forbidden—just like so many other things: jeans, rock music, and all the symbols of a Western lifestyle. My mother returned from a Soviet labor camp. And do you know what happened to her? She was barred from continuing her education because she had been labeled an enemy of communism.
Under a communist regime, you could not protest. You risked arrest, imprisonment, interrogation, persecution—and, in certain historical contexts, even death. In the Soviet Union and other communist regimes, political dissent could cost you your freedom and your life.
Demonstrations independent of the authorities were not a guaranteed right; they were often suppressed by force.
That is why it strikes me to see young Italians proudly displaying the hammer and sickle—symbols associated with regimes that persecuted and imprisoned millions of people.
Today, you are free to take to the streets, shout against the government, criticize institutions, and wave your flags precisely because you live in a democracy that grants you these freedoms. Under an authoritarian regime of that kind, protesting against those in power could have landed you in prison.
This is not about denying the existence of social injustices, inequalities, or the right to fight for a better world. You are free to take to the streets to demand a more just society—but you should not idealize a system that denied so many people the very things you are free to exercise today: the right to choose, to believe, to speak, and to dissent. Before wearing a T-shirt with "CCCP" on it, listen to those who experienced that world. Talk to the deportees and their descendants; read the accounts of those who endured the gulags and forced exile to Siberia. Learn what it meant to be stripped of your freedom, your home, your loved ones—and even any prospect of a normal life—simply because of your background or your beliefs.
Before waving the hammer and sickle, please, study history thoroughly.”
Catherine Semcer retweeted
NEW VIDEO: The loss of manners destroyed society
“Manners Makyth Man” is the famous motto established at New College, Oxford, in 1380 by its founder, William of Wyckham. Manners not only maketh man, but they make a whole society. Beyond mere etiquette, manners may actually be an important part of our morality and liberty.
Compare the aesthetic of the surrounding buildings vs these proposed new additions. The latter are little more than 3 dimensional graffiti marring the city’s beauty, history, & genius loci. That related drainage issues may harm the surrounding buildings only adds to the insult.
Zohran Mamdani’s administration has unveiled new sidewalk shed designs for NYC in an effort to bring better-designed sidewalks to all five boroughs.
The administration has also reduced the number of sidewalk sheds by 1,200 across the city — a decrease of over 15% in 10 months.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The displayed coverings was developed under former Mayor Eric Adams' 'Get Sheds Down' campaign.
Mamdani has continued the work of removing unnecessary sidewalk sheds and tightening rules for property owners, but it was not his administration that presented these designs.
nyc.gov/mayors-office/…
nyc.gov/mayors-office/…
Catherine Semcer retweeted
Sabine Hall, seat of the Carter family of Virginia, is one of the few old Virginia plantation homes to remain in family hands from colonial times into the present day.
"The manor-house of Sabine Hall, named presumably for the noted villa of Horace at Tivoli, is built on early Georgian lines, and was erected by King Carter for his son in 1730, since when it has passed direct from father to son. A clearly emphasized fact is that throughout its existence the plantation has remained in the possession of the original line of Carters; which is particularly gratifying, as in only too many beautiful old homesteads some stranger fills the Stuarts' throne."
-Manors of Virginia in Colonial Times by Edith Tunis Sale
Catherine Semcer retweeted
In New Bern, where the Trent and Neuse rivers meet, a single building once held both the daily machinery of colonial government and the visible weight of royal authority.
The Tryon Palace was described in its time as “the finest government house in the colonies.” Governor William Tryon and his family occupied it for little more than a year before he left for New York; his successor, Josiah Martin fled the building in 1775 as the Revolution approached. Patriots then used the same rooms as the seat of the new state government, and four early state governors lived and worked there until the capital moved to Raleigh in 1794.
The first floor was devoted to the “business of rule”. The large Council Chamber hosted meetings between the governor and his senior advisors and served the upper house of the legislature. Visitors conducted official business in adjoining rooms while the second floor remained private quarters for the governor’s family.
The building’s beauty carried a cost that many in the colony resented. Taxes levied to pay for construction deepened existing grievances. One 1768 petition from Orange County stated “We are determined not to pay the Tax for the next three years, for the Edifice or Governor’s House. We want no such House, nor will we pay for it.”
In this way the palace concentrated both the practical functions of government and the symbols of distant authority under one roof until fire destroyed the main structure in 1798.
Tryon Palace, New Bern, North Carolina
The original palace was built from 1767–1770. It was the first permanent capitol of colonial North Carolina and home of the royal governor. Although it burned down in 1798 this is an exact replica on the original foundations, using architect John Hawks surviving plans.
Walk the dogs; put the decoys out before first light; bake the pies; sing the songs; celebrate the holidays; protect the land. Tend your roots……..because all rootless things whither and die.
Your culture is dying somewhere on a riverbank.
That is the title of a piece we just published at The Bully Pulpit, @ACC_National's blog about building the conservative environmental movement. You'll like it.
Do me a favor and please subscribe for free: substack.com/@bullypulpitacc
Catherine Semcer retweeted
DC needs to stop with the presumption that America's farmers and ranchers should be in unfettered price competition with the rest of the planet for their own home market 👇
6 years ago, a group of sheep producers reached out after the closing of a major US packing plant. At that time I sent a letter to former Vice President Mike Pence outlining the situation and asking for intervention. Cheap meat from other countries caused the lost revenue...in turn the shuttering of the plant.
3 years ago, again a group of us producers got together to make another run at this cheap imported meat. Hundreds of calls and thousands of hours later.... Yesterday was a culmination of the last 6 years.
We spent all day in a hearing room at the International Trade Commission in Washington DC. Making our arguments. 13 countries plus the EU filed to oppose the US Sheep Producers in our plea to slow the flow of this cheap product that is damaging our food supply.
Sheep ranchers from across the country on one side of the room.... and dozens of high priced attorneys, forign officials, Ivy league economists and corporate CEOs on the other.....
In 1999, 30% of the lamb in the US came from imports. Today, 79% of the lamb consumed in the US comes from imports.
The argument was injury.... how much forign pressure on a market constitutes injury to an industry. 20%, 30%, 50%, 79%..... When does injury begin.
I will say the case went well we believe.... but that said. I had a stunning realization as we say there....
US farmers and Ranchers.... sitting in a room.... full of folks from other countries.... arguing over who gets access to OUR own market first! For far too long our trade policy has been.... make sure Americans get "a fair shake" at their own market. Instead of America First and forign imports can fill whats left. This is the trade policy we want to see and the only safe future for our country. A country that canot feed itself, can't stay a sovereign nation. Food security is national security and we had better start giving it the attention it deserves.
Catherine Semcer retweeted
America used to have giant log cabin bars all over the country. Prime rib specials & salad bars - these were fixtures in your grandfather’s America.
The Boomers traded these legacy family-run establishments for corporatized, efficient & scaleable restaurants like Olive Garden.
Catherine Semcer retweeted
On April 30, 2026, King Charles III stood in the ancient Blue Ridge Mountains of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and did something that no British monarch had ever done before on American soil, and the reason why he chose that particular place, on that particular final afternoon, is a story so geological, so personal and so staggeringly beautiful that it makes everything else about the visit feel like a prologue.
Just two days earlier, standing before a joint meeting of Congress in Washington DC, the King had delivered a line that silenced the chamber before bringing it to its feet. He told the assembled lawmakers of both parties that millennia before either of their nations existed, before any border was drawn upon any map, the mountains of Scotland and the mountains of Appalachia were one, a single, continuous range forged in the ancient collision of continents, separated only when the land that would become Britain and the land that would become America slowly, over hundreds of millions of years, drifted apart.
And then, on the final afternoon of his State Visit, he came to those mountains himself and unveiled two commemorative stones marking a brand new formal partnership between Shenandoah National Park and the Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands, two landscapes that share the same prehistoric origin, the same ancient rock, the same geological memory of a world before countries, before kings, before any of the politics and ceremony that had filled the previous four days. Shenandoah itself was established in 1926 by Act of Congress, opened to the public in 1935 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and its oldest rocks were formed over one billion years ago.
The King has championed environmental conservation for more than fifty years, long before it was fashionable, long before the world caught up with what he was saying. Standing in those mountains, he was not just a visiting monarch closing out a State Visit. He was a man coming home to something older than every border ever drawn between his country and this one, and the mountains, one billion years old and utterly indifferent to the passage of kings, received him in silence and in splendour.
Catherine Semcer retweeted
People are keen to blame anyone but themselves for the fact that recreational reading is in its death throes. The awful truth is that we were born into the most literate era in history, we had access to all the world's knowledge, and we willingly gave it up.
Everyone blames screens for the decline of reading.
Nobody blames the consolidated corporate publishing industry that made books pricier, more generic, and harder to find. jacobin.com/2026/10/books-pu…
Catherine Semcer retweeted
John Keble (1792–1866) was an English Anglican priest, theologian and poet, and a founding figure of the Oxford Movement 🏴
His 1833 sermon, "National Apostasy", helped launch a movement dedicated to defending the Church of England's apostolic heritage, historic liturgy and independence from state interference.
A staunch High Church Anglican, Keble defended apostolic succession, sacramental worship and the teachings of the early Church Fathers.
In 1827, he published "The Christian Year", an influential collection of religious poetry following the Anglican calendar.
Despite his considerable influence, Keble remained devoted to parish ministry, serving as Vicar of Hursley in Hampshire for nearly 30 years until his death in 1866.
Keble College, Oxford, was founded in his memory in 1870 🏴
