Journalism 101-part Four

Chesterton:
"In Monday's issue of the same paper appeared a letter from the same
culprit. He ingenuously confessed that the line did not belong to
Shakespeare, but to a poet whom he called Grey. Which was another
cropper - or whopper. This strange and illiterate outbreak was printed
by the editor with the justly scornful title, " Mr. Chesterton
'Explains'?"
Any man reading the paper at breakfast saw at once the
meaning of the sarcastic quotation marks. They meant, of course,
"Here is a man who doesn't know Gray from Shakespeare; he tries to
patch it up and he can't even spell Gray. And that is what he calls an
Explanation."
That is the perfectly natural inference of the reader
from the letter, the mistake, and the headline - as seen from the
outside. The falsehood was serious; the editorial rebuke was serious.
The stern editor and the sombre, baffled contributor confront
each other as the curtain falls."

Editors can be frustrating, especially when they attempt to read the minds of the writers. And I speak from experience, because I edit things, too, on occasion, and there can be time contraints to verifying things, so you just go with what you think best at the time.

It seems Chesterton is a bit more frustrated than usual in the paragraph, but then, he was personally involved, having someone try to read his thoughts (fool, who can do that?!)

Gilbert has arrived...

...the rest of the day is on hold so I can read it (just taking these few moments, I've lost my momentum. My daughter asked to read it and how can I refuse her? Should our house get two copies so we can read and comment simultaneously?!).
Briefly, it's late, it's the Christmas issue, but they knew it would be late and reason that this is still the Christmas season (which it really is, for a few more day--the magazine is in just by the skin of its teeth, for all I know [wink*Furor]) however, I already see a great Editorial, a good number of Chesterton essays, and a mediocre (Spellchecker wants me to put "motocar" in here...so I'm not getting any help with the spelling of it, sorry!) Flying Stars.

Have you read it yet? What was the most important thing you read?

Journalism 101-part three

Chesterton writes:

"In this document Chesterton darkly, deliberately, and not having the fear of God before his eyes, asserted
that Shakespeare wrote the line "that wreathes its old fantastic roots so high."

This he said because he had been kept in ignorance by Priests; or, perhaps, because he thought craftily that none of his
dupes could discover a curious and forgotten rhyme called Elegy in a Country Churchyard.

Anyhow, that orthodox gentleman made a howling error; and received some twenty-five letters and post-cards
from kind correspondents who pointed out the mistake.

But the odd thing is that scarcely any of them could conceive that it
was a mistake. The first wrote in the tone of one wearied of epigrams,
and cried, "What is the joke ?" Another professed (and
practised, for all I know, God help him) that he had read through all
Shakespeare and failed to find the line. A third wrote in a sort of
moral distress, asking, as in confidence, if Gray was really a
plagiarist. They were a noble collection; but they all subtly
assumed an element of leisure and exactitude in the recipient's
profession and character which is far from the truth. Let us pass on to
the next act of the external tragedy."

Having been the recipient of such mail for similar type "howling errors", I can fully sympathize with Gilbert. I'll bet our Gilbert editor Sean Dailey can, as well. People who jump on the tiniest infraction of a misquote or a misspelled word, and fail to engage in the argument of which the writer most likely put a lot of effort. I know of one Chestertonian who reads over his posts three times before pushing the "Send" button. How nice it would be if writers would just read their scribblings over once...and that readers would forgive much quicker the minor errors in grammar or quotations taken from memory...

Journalism 101-part two

"I will give an instance (merely to illustrate my thesis of unreality)
from the paper that I know best. Here is a simple story, a little
episode in the life of a journalist, which may be amusing and
instructive: the tale of how I made a great mistake in quotation. There
are really two stories: the story as seen from the outside, by a man
reading the paper; and the story seen from the inside, by the
journalists shouting and telephoning and taking notes in shorthand
through the night.

This is the outside story; and it reads like a dreadful quarrel. The
notorious G. K. Chesterton, a reactionary Torquemada whose one
gloomy pleasure was in the defence of orthodoxy and the pursuit of
heretics, long calculated and at last launched a denunciation of a
brilliant leader of the New Theology which he hated with all the
furnace of his fanatic soul." GKC

Sounds more like a description of (then) Cardinal Ratzinger, doesn't it??!!

Chesterton on the Pope's New Encyclical

Didn't know he had commented!

Journalism 101-part one

Speaking of editing, here is a funny essay of Chesterton's on journalism. I'm going to piece it out, we can discuss it bit by bit.

"Our age which has boasted of realism will fail chiefly through lack of
reality.

Never, I fancy, has there been so grave and startling a divorce
between the real way a thing is done and the look of it when it is
done.

I take the nearest and most topical instance to hand - a
newspaper.

Nothing looks more neat and regular than a newspaper,
with its parallel columns, its mechanical printing, its detailed facts
and figures, its responsible, polysyllabic leading articles. Nothing, as
a matter of fact, goes every night through more agonies of adventure,
more hairbreadth escapes, desperate expedients, crucial councils,
random compromises, or barely averted catastrophes.

Seen from the outside, it seems to come round as automatically as the clock and as
silently as the dawn. Seen from the inside, it gives all its organisers a
gasp of relief every morning to see that it has come out at all;
that it has come out without the leading article upside down or the
Pope congratulated on discovering the North Pole."

Francis + Thomas = Chesterton

It seems to me as if the Ignatius combined St. Thomas/St Francis books of Chesterton's is a great marriage of the two important saints in Chesterton's life, although, naturally, only paradoxically.

Chesterton knew and studied about St. Francis all his life, starting from when his father read him a story at his knee as a boy. St. Thomas, well, there is no record of him studying the saint, yet when he wrote his biography, there sure seemed to be a good knowledge of him anyway.

Joseph Pearce, in his introduction to the second book in the Ignatius duo, has a fascinating comment about Chesterton being a synthesis of Francis and Thomas, laughter and humility, playing and praying. Laughter and humility, says Pearce, lead to gratitude. And gratitude was what Chesterton lived each day.

Mothers and Sundays

"Sit down!" said Sunday in a voice he used once or twice in his life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords."

I've used that voice a little more than once or twice in my life (probably leading to it's lack of effect in helping the children drop their swords, a fact I need to keep in mind) and I know that voice. It is the voice of a mother, trying to get her children all at the table at the same time so the meal (getting cold) can start.

I vividly recall just such a time, when the four of us were all talking and my mother wanted us to pray and eat.

"Shut up!" she shouted. (We all thought she had sworn. We were not allowed to use this kind of vocabulary in our house.) It was completely effective, and that was the only time she ever said that. And the shock of it still hasn't worn off.

People Need Ideals

One of the great things about Chesterton is that he reminds us that we need ideals to live by, to strive for, to have as a goal. We frequently speak of teens and young people as being "idealistic" and then, somehow, that sort of wears off as we grow older. Why? Why should young people have the corner on ideals? We *all* need ideals.

A few years back, I had a minor revelation in my faith life. I discovered that if you just live your life telling yourself you are "ok" as you are, that you really are just giving in to all your sin. Yep, it's true that Jesus loves us just as we are, but then he calls us to become "like him." Jesus is a great ideal to try to live up to. And you don't become like him merely by trying *not* to sin, as good as that sounds. You have to "put on" the virtues, as St. Paul tells us.

Then, I suddenly became very interested in virtues. Which are really ideals. Which all leads me back to Chesterton.

25th Annual Chesterton Conference

Who-hoo!
Check here and plan your time accordingly.
I'm already excited! Hope to see a lot of ACS Blogsters there.

Chesterton and Taxes

Did Chesterton have anything to say about taxes?
Do people in England pay taxes?

Chesterton and Children

I guess I haven't done a good enough job yet of evangelizing my own friends.

They've heard me talking about Chesterton for years.

So last night, at our homeschool meeting, I asked if I could run through a speech I'm giving at the end of this month to another group, so my friends could be a "friendly" audience, give me feedback, and so forth.

The first "feedback" was that I should start by explaining who Chesterton is.

I never thought I'd have to do that! I figured these people my friends, all already knew who Chesterton was! Heck, I figured ALL homeschoolers already know who Chesterton is! I found out I was wrong.

I hereby declare that I will give this talk, titled Chesterton and Children to any and all homeschool groups. Contact me at the link there on the left. The first thing I will tell you is who Chesterton is. Then I will tell you why everyone should be reading him. And then I'll tell your group the secret of why I'm a Chestertonian.

Artists Who Read Chesterton

Don't you think it would be cool to have a comic strip using Chesterton as the main character? Show him forgetting where to go, having Frances straighten his clothes, wield his swordstick here and there...I think it would be quite fun.

Now, we just need an artist who thinks so, too.

Blog Bugs at Firey Firefox

I should write a peom about this.
Somehow when making a template change, I inadvertently left out an important piece, not realizing its import.
The piece looked like this:
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and I thought it was some sort of arrow, which made me think of King Alfred fighting on the hills under the White Horse, which reminded me of rocking horses, and my nursery, and then I was off to get a glass of milk, and the whole thing just cleared right out of my mind.

A very kind soul with the unlikely name of Publius wrote to my kind assistant and I do believe the whole matter is straightened out.

And you would only know about this problem is you were using something fiery called Firefox or Foxfire or something like that, which reminds me of Flambeau and a story I once wrote about Father Brown, which reminds me of cigars...

Thank you very much.
Carry on.

Those who don't like Chesterton...

...don't like the truth.
Those who don't like Chesterton don't like life.
And as Chesterton himself would say, there's so much of him to like! And he loved life more than most people, because there was more of him that was alive than most! (Found the two above quotes in "Chesterton as Seen by His Contemporaries" by Cyril Clemens.

I guess I just like the truth, and I sure do like life.
Because I sure do like Chesterton.

Being Polite

Did you ever wonder if parents are teaching their children to be polite these days?

Or is teaching them to be polite like this knucklehead says, a form of abuse? (Hawkins would have us believe we can teach our children only his kind of dogmas, instead of the kind of dogmas we would like to choose for ourselves. To me this means Dawkins would have us be less free rather than more free. He needs a large dose of logical, Chestertonian thinking, don't you think?)

I was reflecting just now on how polite Gilbert Chesterton was, so polite that people often mentioned how polite he was, which means it made an impact.

I recently re-watched the film Harvey and the one thing I noticed particularly with this viewing, was how incredibly polite "Elwood" (Jimmy Stewart's character) was. Incredibly polite.

I think politeness-training alone would improve the world a tremendous amount, and I know that even I can learn a lesson from Elwood and Gilbert.

When did you discover Chesterton?

I read Orthodoxy in college. Didn't get it.
Read it again at about age 35.
Totally loved it, said, about every other line, "Right on, brother, preach it, dude!" (or something like that).
Haven't stopped reading him, don't think I ever will. Even if I ever get to read everything he ever wrote, I could still start over again and it would be fresh the second or third time.

How about you? When did you first read/discover Chesterton?

Chesterton Day by Day

I once went through an e-Bay/Chestertonian purchase phase, where I was buying lots of old things, any old things that had the word "Chesterton" on them. I got some fine things, and some not so fine. I found out there was an author, way back, who didn't like Chesterton, and wrote a book about that, which amazed me. I was naively under the impression that Chesterton was universally loved.

Anyway, one such acquisition was Chesterton Day by Day a sort of perpetual calendar, with a new quote from Chesterton for each day. There is something like this on-line, too.

Anyway, today's quote is this:

"Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It obviates the crude requirements of polygamy. If you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem." From the Daily News.

Now what, do you imagine, is Chesterton saying?

Politically Correct Titanic: "Persons and Children First"

I read this funny article today on a lady in California attempting to be politically correct in her statement where she tries to say that children will be better served when their "deadbeat parent" starts paying his share so that "women and children" aren't left for poor. The commentator was laughing at the half and half use of politically correct terminology and suggested that the California lady should have said "persons and children" aren't left for poor, in order to be perfectly fair.

Fairy Tales

The current Chesterton Review (link above) is totally dedicated to Fairy Tales and Fantasy Literature. There is even an article by one of my favorite authors, Regina Doman, who was interviewed in Gilbert Magazine (and the interview is available on line at the Gilbert web site). Regina talks about how she came to write her teen novels, which is fascinating, because at the Brown household, we are big fans of her writing. So, to read this "How I Came to Write My Novels" article is like getting the DVD Extras when you purchase a favorite movie.

Another favorite writer, Stratford Caldecott has and article titled, "Tolkien's Elvish England" and his wife Leonie has two articles, "Surprised by Joy: Children's Literature and the Search for Meaning" (I can't wait to read that!) and "Transcending the Cave: Fantasy Film as Philosophical and Spiritual Reflection." (The PCers would say "transcending the Prehistoric" instead I suppose.)

It's a great feeling when a magazine like this arrives, and you can't wait to read every article, and you know each one will bring new insights and mind boggling ideas. Ahhh, contentment. I guess heaven for me is just going to be stacks and stacks of Chesterton magazines, huh?!

What we need is a big dose of "Average Sense"

I'm reading this book on giving speeches, and it gives the politically correct way to speak in the back. One of the funnier things is that you are supposed to replace "common man" with "average person" and somehow, that seems quite humorous to me.

Here are more:

Instead of:
mankind use humanity
caveman use prehistoric people (I was thinking Chesterton's chapter would have to be called "The God in the Prehistoric Place")
man and wife use husband and wife
bachelor and spinster use single man and woman
stewardess use flight attendant
lady doctor use doctor

And it also informs us that unless a woman has given us permission to call her "Mrs." or "Miss" it would be safe and wise to call her "Ms" so as not to upset her. So says the politically correct guide to speeches.

Consumerism

(From Dale Ahlquist) Part of the idea of what people refer to as "The American Way of Life," is wrapped up in the whole notion of our "Standard of Living." The "Living Standard" is a measure of consumer spending. It is concerned with how many things we can buy, how expensively we are able to live, what luxuries we might afford. For many (perhaps most) Americans, the purpose of work is to earn a wage or salary in order to support the level of consuming that we believe is right for us and will make us happy.

Americans will say they reject these materialistic ideals. Yet they might find it difficult to explain how their vision of work and leisure differs from the "getting and spending" syndrome that plagues our society.

Chesterton's writings offer a ready cure for this disease. He will remind us that work is or should be a vocation and that it is really more fun to produce than to consume. He will remind us that the end purpose of work is a product, not a wage, and that all the exchanges in which people exploit one another, both socially and financially, are also opportunities for people to dignify one another.

Chesterton lamented that "the spotlight of social importance" had passed from workmanship to salesmanship and from thrift to indebtedness. He regretted that "the tricks of every trade are tricks of selling things rather than tricks of making them." He knew that the getting and spending lifestyle is no road to any kind of happiness. Chesterton called his alternative "Distributism," and those who dismiss it as "impractical" have nothing to offer us but materialistic dreams of avarice and clutter.

Thanks, Dale. I agree. It is much more humanly pleasurable to be working for the reward of making something useful or beautiful than it is to be working for money, which there never, no matter how much, seems to be enough.

Da Vinci Code

I thought with the movie coming out soon, I should finally break down and read the book.

All just so when people say, after I've made some critical remark or another, "Have you read the book?" I could finally say "Yes" and not be criticized for being critical of a book I never read. (Most people have never read "Mein Kampt" either but have no trouble criticizing its author or its contents.)

But I can't bring myself to do it. I refused to buy it, so I got one from the library. But it's too....disgusting to even try to read. How CAN so many people WANT to read this, how can people recommend it, how can anyone believe this stuff?

I sure wish Gilbert Chesterton were here now to write a column for ILN (Illustrated London News) on this book, or the movie. I feel sure he'd write some clear-headed words and I'd feel much better about the whole thing. What would he say about it, do you think?

12 working men...

may they rest in peace.
Their poor families, let's pray for them.

Looking for Truth--Part II

OK, the lawyer is still fighting for his relativism.

Here's the gist of his response:

"As a lawyer I am trained to think independently and critically. I read text, evaluate it (even research it if necessary), and then form an opinion on it. It does not matter to me if the text is written by Aquinas or Greeley - I do not take the words or the meaning as they are plainly written on the page. I need to exercise some thought control on what is being written.

I would hope we all do this - we are not marionettes to just follow along blindly. I think our Lord would probably be upset with us if we did."

This is his defense of my "all roads don't lead to truth, some go to dead ends" comments.

Some people just want to go down the dead ends themselves, don't they? Some people don't want to learn from others and avoid the long detours. But to me, and tell me if I'm wrong here, this is where Chesterton's "democracy of the dead" and learning from history come in. I can get farther in my journey towards truth and God (or get there faster) if I listen to the wisdom of trusted others and bypass those deadends and long winding detours. But some people want to see if the scenery is pretty there, I guess.

I don't know. How do I answer the "that's what God gave me a mind for" argument?

Chesterton on Your iPod

The Scandal of Father Brown (Unabridged) 5:28:45 G.K. Chesterton $15.95

You can purchase the Scandal audio file for $15.95 and the run time is listed above. Put that on your iPod and beebop around town!


Go here and then click on Launch Music Store, and then search on Chesterton.

There are tons of titles available, including The Man Who Was Thursday (unabridged) which was just published in 2006.
Our Mr. Chesterton moves into the 21st Century!

Challenging the Quotemeister

I am not quite sure who the "Quotemeister" is, but if you wonder about a quote, or only know half of it, you can usually find out the rest, or if it is even a Chesterton quote, by using the service of the American Chesterton Society's "Challenge the Quotemeister". The most frequently asked questions are listed there on the left. It's fun just reading through those.

Here are some headlines:

Who was the Chesterton's model for the character of Father Brown?

"Angels fly because they take themselves lightly."

"When a man stops believing in God, he doesn't believe in nothing, he believes in anything."
(This one was just featured at First Things)

"A thing worth doing is worth doing badly."

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

"Tradition is the democracy of the dead."

"Saying 'My country, right or wrong,' is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"