The Best Conversation Ever

Seeing what's going on below, and the fact that we have 78 comments (a record for us) and more than two people involved in the conversation led me to wonder: What's the Best Conversation Ever? This one is certainly our blog's best. For example, we have people asking intelligent questions, and a few old standard questions, and some sill questions, and then we also have some really intelligent, well-thought-out, given-lightly answers.

I've been really please to see that no one has steam coming out of their ears, no on seems to be reacting in haste, if offense seems possible, I've seen apologies. It's really hard to carry on this kind of conversation over a blog because you can't see when someone is laughing or grinning as they type, knowing in their own minds they are composing a joke. On the other end, it may look like a sneer or a put-down, so these things can often go awry.

But let's get back to the topic. In-person conversations are really best, when you can have them, and I was wondering if you can recall your Best Conversation Ever. What were the elements that made it so memorable? Was there laughter? Intelligent exchange? New insights? Conversion? Wine? Cigars? Cards or scrabble involved?

Some of my Best Conversations Ever have actually taken place at ChesterCons at meals. I recall serious exchange of ideas blended with wine, and with laughter, and give and take, and some shouting and an occasional pounding of canes or sword sticks. I've also had some great conversations right here on line.

Tell us about your Best Conversation Ever. Where was it? When? Whom? How? Why?

Get Smart Chestertonian Moment

After the recent issue of the old "Get Smart" TV show on DVD, we've been watching for family "movie" night.

Last night's episode was particularly Chestertonian.

86 and 99 are fighting off the bad guys in the toy department of a store. After discovering that they are out of real ammunition, they begin to use the ping pong ball shooter, the toy guns, stuffed animals, and finally, a toy exploding dirigible to fight off the enemy successfully.

When 99 wonders how they did it, Smart says, "Well, we had every toy made for children at our command; they only had real guns and bullets."

I liked that line a lot, and it seemed as if you might like it, too.

Dr. Thursday's Post: Glass

The Glory of Glass

As mentioned last time, I have lots of books nearby which help me do things. I thank God for my parents and teachers who taught me to read, and for the bounty God arranged for me to earn which has permitted me to buy and keep these wonderful treasures. Have you remembered to thank those responsible for your gifts?

One of them is somewhat dated two-volume set called Chemical Elements and Their Compounds, which I was reading in preparation for a large-scale poetry project. other things have gotten in the way, and I don't know when I will be able to get to... You want to know why a computer scientist is writing poems about elements? Perhaps you've forgotten this blogg is a CHESTERTONIAN blogg? There's no such thing as a different subject. [GKC, ILN Feb 17 1906 CW27:126] Remember, and write it in your notebook: "There is no such thing as an irrelevant thing in the universe; for all things in the universe are at least relevant to the universe."

Anyway, in this book from the 1950s I found the answer to that poor Vulcan's speculation - and so many others - on the idea of silicon-based life. People love to imagine that because silicon is so much like carbon, with its four bonds, there could be silicon-based life... maybe somewhere in the universe.

These people are not chemists; they don't know how the four bonds of silicon are different from the four bonds of carbon:

The idea that silicon has an organic chemistry of its own, rivalling that of carbon, is now realized to be untrue, owing to the instability of the Si-Si and Si-H links.
[Sidgwick, Chemical Elements and Their Compounds, I 555]

Sorry, it's not happening. However! I have chosen to begin today's journey into Orthodoxy with this bit from chemistry, not to abase silicon, but to exalt it. It is no insult to this wonderful and plentiful element to speak of its limitations - for we remember (all together): "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame." [CW1:243] Very good. (Are you starting to have some clue as to why I wanted to write poems about the elements? I thought so. Hee hee.)

And the glory of silicon - well, not of silicon itself, which is a rather odd substance, and rarely found outside the laboratory. (People persist in saying "silicone" which is something else, almost a kind of rubber - it is a polymer of the form -SiR₂O- where R is a group such as methyl.) The silicon in an integrated circuit (the "chip" of modern electronics) has been treated with a variety of "doping" agents (things which change how it conducts electricity) and then etched into a fantastic multi-layered mosaic...They are one of the genuine marvels of our day, and an extreme form of grand cooperation among very different fields of study. Again, all very interesting and worth spending time on, but not today.

No, as I started to say, the glory of silicon is in one very famous, and very ancient, compound - one in which silicon is combined with two atoms of oxygen - SiO₂ - one of the main constituents of the Earth's crust, commonly known as quartz, and worked by humans for over 5000 years. From common sand we get the wonderful and highly Chestertonian thing called GLASS.

Now, last week I pointed to the humorous aspects of frogs and dragons - I have at least one bit of that sort of humour this week too, so when you have finished your drink you can proceed, and then I will tell you more about glass.

Swallow, then click here.
As a computer scientist, and a lunatic Chestertonian who moreover has spoken at three Chesterton Conferences, I usually have to find something suitable to express this unusual truth. I found it, and it is quite good - unfortunately the first time I tried to use it in a speech, I laughed so hard I could not continue for a couple of minutes. It's from "The Crime of Gabriel Gale" in The Poet and the Lunatics (Ah, you are seeing some more about my plans, are you?) when our hero has been caught observing a storm, and he says:

"I often stare at windows."

Yes, GG - me too. Even if the windows are not the Gates kind, most of the modern user-interface methods use such a layered, multi-panel approach. Yes, OK - it's funny. Now, let's get back to glass. And please don't bring up that Father Brown story about the absence of Mr. Glass, or I will start laughing. Hee hee hee.

OK, (ahem!) now that we have both regained some control... Recall where we are. We have just introduced very Chestertonian ideas: (1) the importance of gratitude and (2) the "Doctrine of Conditional Joy".

First, Chesterton urges us to be thankful for all things, even the dull or trivial or commonplace; this is the correct and healthy view of reality, and provides a working basis for true contemplation, whether it be scientific, literary, or philosophical. We're given this world (the KOSMOS, or universe) - all of it. We do NOT deserve it at all, and yet we have it. Even if it is not obvious what good it is - a frog, a sea-dragon, a telegraph, a pane of glass - we need to be grateful it is that and not something else. (An aside: this gets into a very deep piece of philosophy: the ontological idea of the perfection of being. But that is a steep and dangerous path. We shall merely note its blazes, perhaps for a future hike, and move on.)

Second, Chesterton points out that this grand delight in the ALL comes with a little warning label. We have the ALL, but only on conditions - and those conditions most likely seem crazily unrelated to anything. Even after some lengthy consideration, there seems to be no good reason for the imposition of such conditions, as slight as they may seem. But then (GKC asks) what's the reason for the grand gift? That's the point. Conditional Joy. (If this is not clear, we're about to see some more.)

These two ideas are the substrate (the foundation, the building blocks) of many fairy tales - and even some stories which are hardly considered such. But let us hear GKC:

This is the tone of fairy tales, and it is certainly not lawlessness or even liberty, though men under a mean modern tyranny may think it liberty by comparison. People out of Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove that both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty. Fairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers. Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command - which might have come out of Brixton - that she should be back by twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.
[CW1:259-260]

Ah, recall some weeks ago I said we would hear more about glass? Here it is - or perhaps I should say here it comes. But let us consider what we've just read, and not skip the unfamiliar parts.

What is Portland Gaol? Well, "Gaol" is the English spelling for "jail" (both come from a Latin word cavea = a cavity or cage).

What is Fleet Street? A street in London, built on the long-vanished Fleet River. But the term is often used as a symbol more than as a geographic reference, as it was (and still is, I am told) the centre of what we now call "The Media" - the site of all the big newspapers - which is why GKC mentions "journalists" in oblique apposition to it. (SO when GKC says "Fleet Street" you can just about always read "The Media" and you'll have it - just remember it's also a real place that GKC walked along...)

Now that you know these terms, please look at this one line again:

"People out of Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove that both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty."

I think that is a grand line. It was anticipated in GKC's Browning where he says this deeply profound line:

we forget that free speech is a paradox.

We are bound to tradition if we wish to communicate, far more tightly bound than those kept in Portland Gaol. Even "liberals" (modern sense) from the Far Left bow in humble submission as deeply as conservatives (modern sense) when they speak and write - they may try to redefine "is" but don't dare take that method very far - especially when it comes to their paychecks! Any of us, from whatever point in the political spectrum, might bend the rules when we speak or write - but we writers risk losing our readers if we go too far. Free speech is indeed a paradox, and so is free writing. No wonder St. John's most grand line - the grandest of the whole Gospel - is this: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" - the line in the Last Gospel at which we genuflect, like in the English hobby of change-ringing of bells, where the great "tenor" bell is rung after all the others, as all the possible patterns are rung..., or the 01000111 pattern coming every 188 characters in an MPEG stream on cable TV - it keeps us in sync... Ahem. Sorry I was distracted; it is so thrilling to write about this. And someday, if you remind me, I will write something on what he means about fairies being the slaves of duty. But for now let us go back to GKC and glass.

Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on not doing something which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do. Now, the point here is that to me this did not seem unjust. If the miller's third son said to the fairy, "Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy palace," the other might fairly reply, "Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace." If Cinderella says, "How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?" her godmother might answer, "How is it that you are going there till twelve?" If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift. He must not look a winged horse in the mouth. And it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the towering trees.
[CW1:260]

Yes, indeed - in Egypt there are pieces of glass some three or more thousand years old. The wonder of glass... In another essay GKC points out a marvel which seems to be lost on many people these days, even intelligent ones, even computer people, lit'ry people, and philosophers. Here are the critical verses:

...behind all designs for specific windows stands eternally the essential idea of a window; and the essential idea of a window is a thing which admits light. A dark window cannot be a good window, though it may be an excellent picture. ... There is an almost infinite variety of meanings which can be expressed by windows and pillars and all other forms of artistic workmanship - but they have their indwelling limitations. They cannot express darkness in a window or a surrender in a column of stone.
["The Meaning of the Theatre" in Lunacy and Letters]

It is worth considering. How does that link? Because carbon is not silicon! (A window might be made of carbon in its form of diamond, but it won't be nearly as beautiful as it would be if it were cut into dozens of facets.) Because a frog is not a sea-dragon, nor a telegraph! (See my writing from last week.) There is a variety of things in Fairy Land - and in the real world - and they really are different, and not to be confused, even when they are mixed. A wizard does not tell the hero "wave the dragon over the wand and it will vanish" - it only sounds like drunken babble.

Yes, there are some other side paths here, but let us attend to the main trail. We are exploring this "Doctrine of Conditional Joy" - and I must stress something here. We are NOT talking about this abstractly! This "Doctrine" (though it may sound academic, or theoretical) is a real idea, and had its powerful effect on GKC... like this trail, it leads us onward to something more. Re-read how he rephrased it:

"...it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture."

Ah, you sigh. Now you grasp something deeper - and something unexpected - in that famous quote about the frame. Yes. And there's a reason GKC continually weaves, and re-weaves, and links, and re-links: Like a good mystery, like a good story, like a good computer program, like a good sweater or meal or family, like - like Reality - all things relate to all things - and to the ALL: "all things in the universe are at least relevant to the universe."

Recall, a few weeks ago, how I said something about GKC always dealing with vision? Like free speech, vision is a paradox too, with mystic and eccentric limitations. We must be grateful.

--Dr. Thursday
Thank you Dr. T. for this marvelous post.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Telegraphs, Dragons and Frogs (Oh my!)
GKC's "Doctrine of Conditional Joy"

Before you proceed, please finish your drinks and snacks. (Hey, why are you eating or drinking at the keyboard?) I warn you now, as you may find some of today's writing rather funny. I do.

In preparing to write these Thursday essays, I do a variety of mental tricks to get into the Chestertonian view of things. No drugs, no "virtual reality" gear - often not even a beer - I merely rely on the high tech device known as "books" and the physiology of sight. What a gift. I have a few hundred books nearby to help jumpstart me when necessary, and some are even by Chesterton. But some are not.

One of the curious books I have is the Roman Ritual, this edition printed in 1898, which has some fantastic multi-window graphics, such as our Lord being baptized by St. John (whose birthday we celebrated on Tuesday). I may deal with it more another time, because it has hints of explanation about certain things in Chesterton's writing - but today I shall tell you of one, quite apropos both because of John-the-Baptist and also the medium you are presently enjoying: there is a "Blessing of a Telegraph"! Yes. It is begun by the chanting of the Benedictus, the song of St. John's father and the great Morning Canticle of the Church (Lk 1:68-79). That is followed by Psalm 103 (104), with the antiphon "Blessed are You O Lord, Who makest the clouds thy chariot: who walkest upon the wings of the winds, Who makest thy angels spirits: and thy ministers a burning fire." [103:3-4] The allusion may perhaps be lost on the modern age, as most computing devices rely on 5 volts or less... in the old days things worked on somewhat higher voltages, and so there was a reason that the radio and telegraph people were called "Sparky"!!! Recall also that "angel" is a function, (a job description, if you will) - it means one who carries a message! The telegraph with its sparks is angelic - and thus the Church recalls this powerful image from the Psalms when her minister blesses such devices.

Does that seem just a bit childish? Yes, it does to me, too. Good. You see, as I had cause to state to someone in another context, God gets His hand into everything, unless we work to shut Him out. It's all due to that line in the Creed, per quem omnia facta sunt = "Through Him all things were made."

Yes - all things. Even telegraphs - and dragons.

Remember, I am not the first one to link these disparate thoughts. (Nor was GKC; he just said it more memorably.) I merely recall the famous line "I have often thanked God for the telephone" from GKC's 1910 book What's Wrong With the World (CW4:112). But in this thought - and in particular in that psalm - there is not simply a sense of awesome order, a sense of profound power, a sense of majesty, and a sense of deep and careful planning.

There is also something else. There is, as hard as it will be for you to believe, a sense of humor.
Click here to have laughter and more.

Yes, there is humor. And also something more beyond even that, which we shall hear more about as we proceed. But first the humor.

Consider - remembering the bishop (or priest) is blessing a telegraph, as the choir sings:

...Draco iste, quem formasti ad illudendum ei...

Yes, that says "draco" - Latin for "dragon", one of the north circumpolar constellations, and also the genus of a "small arboreal lizard of the East Indies"... But maybe here it means what you think it means - a big monster, probably aquatic, possibly fire-breathing. (His friends call him "Sparky"... hee hee)

Now, depending on what translation you have at your disposal, you may wish to read to the verse numbered 103(104):26. The Douay version gives this as "...This sea dragon which thou hast formed to play therein" [in the great sea]. The Jerusalem version is even funnier: "... and Leviathan whom You made to amuse You." ("Leviathan" is a crocodile or a whale - er what some call the dragon - I mean the dragon-like creature you and I know as "Sparky". Hee hee.)

Now, while you are pondering the mystic sense of God being entertained at watching these great sea creatures jumping and cavorting, as He claps and laughs like a child at their antics (see Job 38:7 but especially Proverbs 8:30-31) - you ought to recall some of our animal friends we have met previously on this journey, like the giraffe, or the turkey. Today we meet another, as GKC transcribes for us a boyhood riddle. I shall give you the context, because while the gem is important, the setting is far more so. Remember some weeks ago we heard "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame." [CW1:243] Yes, I think you wrote it down, it's quite important. Now you will begin to see how we apply such things. (But please finish your drink before proceeding. I've told you twice now.)

The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale. The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
There were, then, these two first feelings, indefensible and indisputable. The world was a shock, but it was not merely shocking; existence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise. In fact, all my first views were exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck in my brain from boyhood. The question was, "What did the first frog say?" And the answer was, "Lord, how you made me jump!" That says succinctly all that I am saying. God made the frog jump; but the frog prefers jumping.
[CW1:258]

I might as well explain here that this is the foundation motif of GKC's writing, and is of all things he wrote the most important, even transcending his work on humility and pride (though clearly coupled together, as you'd expect!) He was not just thankful for the exciting things - the candy and toys - but for the mundane that no one notices (like legs) or the exotic and dull human things (like the telephone!) Yes, indeed - and note he doesn't thank Parliament or the King or the phone company - but God.

How else can he say, "I have often thanked God for the telephone"?

Because God had His hand in that too. (No; I will not talk about Galvani, Ampere, Maxwell and the rest here; that's for another time.)

You see, unlike others who quarrel or complain, GKC saw (with a shock, like the frog) these things have their purpose. They have been called into existence, directly or indirectly, by divine arrangement, not just the obvious and necessary (the legs) and the pretty and delightful (flowers and candy) but even the strange exotic and curious (the sea monster/dragon, the telegraph, and so on.)

Whew. We are at a peak here, as you see. You sense that term - the "rapture of the heights" - in the sheer hilarity of the moment, which is simultaneously profundity. The silliest bit about a frog (or any animal you care to substitute) is directly connected with something as utterly important and foundational as thanksgiving - remember the very term used for the great Sacrifice of the Mass is "Eucharist" - Greek for "thanksgiving"... And so (I heave a sigh) as your guide I must now point to the next part of the trail. This curious meditation on how the strangeness of reality leads to the height of gratitude - but it leads onward as well, to something rather difficult. Come along.

But when these things are settled there enters the second great principle of the fairy philosophy. Any one can see it who will simply read "Grimm's Fairy Tales" or the fine collections of Mr. Andrew Lang.

[An aside: Grimm and Lang books are available from Dover.]

For the pleasure of pedantry I will call it the Doctrine of Conditional Joy.
Touchstone talked of much virtue in an "if"; according to elfin ethics all virtue is in an "if." The note of the fairy utterance always is, "You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the word 'cow'"; or "You may live happily with the King's daughter, if you do not show her an onion." The vision always hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden.
Mr. W. B. Yeats, in his exquisite and piercing elfin poetry, describes the elves as lawless; they plunge in innocent anarchy on the unbridled horses of the air -

Ride on the crest of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.

It is a dreadful thing to say that Mr. W. B. Yeats does not understand fairyland. But I do say it. He is an ironical Irishman, full of intellectual reactions. He is not stupid enough to understand fairyland. Fairies prefer people of the yokel type like myself; people who gape and grin and do as they are told. Mr. Yeats reads into elfland all the righteous insurrection of his own race. But the lawlessness of Ireland is a Christian lawlessness, founded on reason and justice. The Fenian is rebelling against something he understands only too well; but the true citizen of fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all. In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.
[CW1:258-9, emphasis added]

Do you see? Please read this again. You will find an important idea, and also two lit'ry allusions. I will handle them first so you can go past them to the important idea, which is not literary but computational. (hee hee)

GKC mentions "Touchstone" - at first I figured that this was some dull heretic, perhaps someone he missed dealing with in Heretics. But I looked around, with the power of AMBER, and found out that he is a clown - a character in a play called "As You Like It" - and in Act 5 Scene 4 you will find this:

I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an If, as, 'If you said so, then I said so;' and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your If is the only peacemaker; much virtue in If.

Then there is the quote from Yeats, which I am told is from his play called The Land of Heart's Desire.

Now, as a computer scientist, an "IF" is one of the foundational elements of software - it is the idea that a mechanical determination of the truth or falsity of something can be made, and from that determination, a change is made as to which path the future work of that machine will follow. This "conditional device" can be as simple as a thermostat sensing a temperature difference and switching on the heater (or cooler) - or it could be the more interesting determination of whether a given number is larger or smaller than another - and so on. You may be expecting me to quote a rock song, so I will: the very Tolkienesque "Stairway to Heaven" has this:

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There's still time to change the Road you're on.

Two paths and the Road - possibly hinting at Bilbo's Road (that goes ever on), and the debate between Gandalf and Aragorn about crossing the Misty Mountains - but I also hear our Lord saying "I am the Way" [Jn 14:6]... ah... I could also quote the song "Free Will" by Rush: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"... But (ahem!) I cannot lecture about conditional paths now, when I am trying to guide you to an understanding of "Conditional Joy"!

Please read this line again:

"In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition."

Do you not hear this:

And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it. And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat: But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.
[Genesis 2:15-17]

Sure you do. And just in case you overlooked it, GKC adds: "An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone." [CW1:259]

Yes, but now hear again my quote from last week:

"Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed." [The Defendant 3]

Fairyland.... We are there, even if you cannot quite see it.

But now you know.

Amazing, isn't it? Yes, weep if you must, but then dry your tears and laugh - and be refreshed.

This the sort of thing that happens when you visit the Elves. And you will find even more surprises as we proceed. You must learn to be grateful for them.

--Dr. Thursday.

Crying with the Chestertonians

I got this message from Dave Zach this am, and I cried when I read it. Because I was cursed and was not present except for my mind, heart and soul, which constantly flew to the conference, and wanted so badly to be there.

And now I raise my glass with you, and expecially to all you, who like me, longed to be there but couldn't:

The Toast to the American Chesterton Society

Dale asked me last night to give this toast, which sort of threw me into a slight panic because it takes me a lot of time to wrestle words to the ground so they'll do what I say. Probably the best proof of that is the fact that my favorite comments after my talk came from two of the Chesterteens (Katie and Sarah, actually) who quite excitedly came up after the talk, holding out their notebooks and said, "You can hear your semi-colons!" "You can hear your punctuation!"

And, I guess you can because I wrestle with the punctuation marks too. [The following bit did not happen, but after chatting with Eleanor Bourg Donlon, who has the same sort of love of language, I should have then and there toasted semi-colons and then toasted giggling teens who actually can spot a semi-colon from thirty paces. I regret this error.]

But I accepted the challenge, gave it a try and here it is:

First of all, I want to share with you one of my favorite drinking toasts:

We are all mortal until our first kiss and our second glass of wine. Eduardo Galeano said that.

And then I found this one this afternoon:

In Vino Veritas
In Cervesio Felicitas

(In Wine there is Wisdom
In Beer there is Joy.)

And this is my favorite romantic toast.

Won't you come into the garden?
I want my roses to see you.

Richard Brinsley Lord Sheridan said that one.

Of course, that's not really a romantic toast but it is a charming thing to say and and it is a romantic thing to say and one of the most important lessons we learned this weekend is that we must defend romance.

On Wednesday night we had a small dinner for the speakers and the Alhquist family. At the end of the dinner we all did toasts. As I was near the end of the line, I kept mine short. I've always loved the St. Cripins's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V, so I toasted, "We few, we happy few . . . "

And now, with apologies to Will Shakespeare, Joseph Pearce and, well, everyone one else in the room and, well, everyone else outside of the room,

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers & sisters & Sisters & Fathers,

For those today that have paid attention with Ross, committed suicide with Sean, went mad with Tom, did not go mad with James, were delighted by the romantic Father Dwight, were Shaken (and stirred) by Joseph, enchanted by our lovely Elfin Jen, hit the road with William, found sense & sensibility, but no pride or prejudice with Sara, united for the Trinity with Scott, laughed with Dale, laughed at Dale, and shed their tears with Geir,

They shall be our friends; be they Catholic or Protestant, or anyone else simply trying to find their way home,

These days here have gentled our condition;
And gentlefolk around the world now-sitting before a dull TV
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, and will hold cheap
their cell phones & laptops & teenaged major appliances
while Any speaks to tell the tale that they fought for
the permanent things with us upon St. Gilbert’s Day.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please raise your glass and toast the American Chesterton Society.

Thank you, Dave, from the bottom of my heart.

A Contemplation of Humor

The Circe Institute Conference has announced its speakers. If you live near Houston, you should attend.

GKC answers the latest Blog Meme

Here is GKC's answers to the latest meme blogg-game...
GKC was reading the "Blue Boar" blogg and saw that someone had tagged "Chestertonian" in one of those games. He sent us his answers. He wishes to tag Belloc, Shaw, Wells, his wife, and his brother - and YOU if you care to play.

GKC writes:

Ah, another game. It's been quite some time since I played one, and it shall be a delight to do so. Few writers have bored their readers with countless details about their lives as I have - so much so that I myself termed my Orthodoxy a "slovenly autobiography". [CW1:215] So perhaps you will enjoy this game as I have.

G. K. C.

Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.

1. I was nearly arrested by two excited policemen in a wood in Yorkshire. I was on a holiday, and was engaged in that rich and intricate mass of pleasures, duties, and discoveries which for the keeping off of the profane, we disguise by the esoteric name of Nothing. At the moment in question I was throwing a big Swedish knife at a tree, practicing (alas, without success) that useful trick of knife-throwing by which men murder each other in Stevenson's romances. Suddenly the forest was full of two policemen; there was something about their appearance in and relation to the greenwood that reminded me, I know not how, of some happy Elizabethan comedy. They asked what the knife was, who I was, why I was throwing it, what my address was, trade, religion, opinions on the Japanese war, name of favourite cat, and so on. They also said I was damaging the tree; which was, I am sorry to say, not true, because I could not hit it. The peculiar philosophical importance, however, of the incident was this. After some half-hour's animated conversation, the exhibition of an envelope, an unfinished poem, which was read with great care, and, I trust, with some profit, and one or two other subtle detective strokes, the elder of the two knights became convinced that I really was what I professed to be, that I was a journalist, that I was on the Daily News (this was the real stroke; they were shaken with a terror common to all tyrants), that I lived in a particular place as stated, and that I was stopping with particular people in Yorkshire, who happened to be wealthy and well-known in the neighbourhood.
In fact the leading constable became so genial and complimentary at last that he ended up by representing himself as a reader of my work. And when that was said, everything was settled. They acquitted me and let me pass.
["Some Policemen and a Moral" in Tremendous Trifles]

2. I once read a history of China (I need hardly say that I was paid to read it) and in this work there was an account of the Twenty-Four Types of Filial Piety. Of twenty-three of them I can now give no account. But one of them has stuck in my memory; he was an elderly statesman and Prime Minister of the Empire, or something of that description. And on his fiftieth birthday he dressed up as a child of four and danced gaily in front of his aged parents in order to soothe them with the illusion that they were still quite young. It would certainly be interesting if Mr. Balfour or Mr. Asquith would dress up as four-year-olds and dance before their gratified parents; but, upon the whole, I think this is carrying the principle of reminiscence and ritual unification a little too far, and requires at least a power of Oriental gravity which may not be completely at our command. But the principle involved is sound enough. Happy is he who not only knows the causes of things, but who has not lost touch with their beginnings. Happy is he who still loves something that he loved in the nursery: he has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and has saved not only his soul but his life. I can count a fair list of things I have always desired and still desire - sword-blades, the coloured angels of religious art, a kind of cake called jumbles, Grimm's "Fairy Tales" and a shilling paint-box. Some of these things I confess thankfully that I now have (though jumbles have died with a decaying civilisation), but I am more thankful still that the desire in these cases remains. For this is a great gift from God, to have things and still to desire them.
[ILN Sept 26 1908 CW28:186]

3. I once lectured before a congress of elementary schoolmasters, trying to persuade them to tolerate anything so human as Penny Dreadfuls or Dime Novels about Dick Turpin and Buffalo Bill. And I remember that the Chairman, with a refined and pained expression said, "I do not think Mr. Chesterton's brilliant paradoxes have persuaded us to put away our Alice in Wonderland and our" - something else, possibly The Vicar of Wakefield or Pilgrim's Progress. It never struck him that the nonsense tale is as much an escape from educational earnestness as the gallop after Buffalo Bill. For him it was simply a classic, and it went along with the other classics. And I thought to myself, with a sinking heart, "Poor, poor little Alice! She has not only been caught and made to do lessons; she has been forced to inflict lessons on others. Alice is now not only a schoolgirl but a schoolmistress. The holiday is over and Dodgson is again a don. There will be lots and lots of examination papers, with questions like:
(1) What do you know of the following; mime, mimble, haddock's eyes, treacle-wells, beautiful soup?
(2) Record all the moves in the chess game in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, and give diagram.
(3) Outline the practical policy of the White Knight for dealing with the social problem of green whiskers.
(4) Distinguish between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
["Lewis Carroll" in The New York Times 1932, printed in A Handful of Authors]


4. I once borrowed a corkscrew from [Mr. J. L.] Hammond and found myself trying to open my front-door with it, with my latch-key in the other hand. Few will believe my statement, but it is none the less true that the incident came before and not after the more appropriate use of the corkscrew. I was perfectly sober; probably I should have been more vigilant if I had been drunk.
[Autobiography CW16:152]

5. I once waited for rather more than two days in a palatial Prussian post-office for a common money order addressed to me; while the officials conducted an elaborate correspondence with an old lady of about ninety, whom I did not know, and whom they finally insisted should come in person to the post-office and swear to my identity. There is nothing particularly practical in this. Marble post-offices, however, palatial, are not the most profitable places in which to spend one's days. The oaths of dying German school-mistresses are not an indispensable condition of the transfer of two pounds of a man's own money to his own pocket. But, upon the whole, Germany is neither more nor less efficient than France or England, but its success is national and peculiar. The marble post-office pleases the national appetite as if it were something to eat; Teutons do not mind waiting if they can wait in a pleasant and impressive place. It is not the efficiency of Germans that produces their rules and regulations, their buttons and their notice-boards. It is their sentimentality; they like behaving in omnibuses and railway-stations as if they were in church. Germany does not manage better in the abstract. But Germany manages Germans better than even Napoleon could do when backed by the right reason of Europe; and so the sword of liberty was broken at Leipzig. That is the whole argument for nationalism.
[ILN July 1 1911 CW29:113]


6. Some time ago, seated at ease upon a summer evening and taking a serene review of an indefensibly fortunate and happy life, I calculated that I must have committed at least fifty-three murders, and been concerned with hiding about half a hundred corpses for the purpose of the concealment of crimes; hanging one corpse on a hat-peg, bundling another into a postman's bag, decapitating a third and providing it with somebody else's head, and so on through quite a large number of innocent artifices of the kind. It is true that I have enacted most of these atrocities on paper; and I strongly recommend the young student, except in extreme cases, to give expression to his criminal impulses in this form; and not run the risk of spoiling a beautiful and well-proportioned idea by bringing it down to the plane of brute material experiment, where it too often suffers the unforeseen imperfections and disappointments of this fallen world, and brings with it various unwelcome and unworthy social and legal consequences. I have explained elsewhere that I once drew up a scientific table of Twenty Ways of Killing a Wife and have managed to preserve them all in their undisturbed artistic completeness, so that it is possible for the artist, after a fashion, to have successfully murdered twenty wives and yet keep the original wife after all; an additional point which is in many cases, and especially my own, not without its advantages. Whereas, for the artist to sacrifice his wife and possibly his neck, for the mere vulgar and theatrical practical presentation of one of these ideal dramas, is to lose, not only this, but all the ideal enjoyment of the other nineteen. This being my strict principle, from which I have never wavered, there has been nothing to cut short the rich accumulation of imaginative corpses; and, as I say, I have already accumulated a good many. My name achieved a certain notoriety as that of a writer of these murderous short stories, commonly called detective stories; certain publishers and magazines have come to count on me for such trifles; and are still kind enough, from time to time, to write to me ordering a new batch of corpses; generally in consignments of eight at a time.
[Autobiography CW16:312]

Two bonus answers, in case you are still curious:
I can swim: I cannot ride. I can play chess: I cannot play bridge. I can scull: I cannot punt. I can read Greek lettering: I cannot read Arabic lettering. In this strong, sound, fundamental sense, I can write literature; whereas I could not write music. Or, if you like to put it so, I can't play the piano, but I can play the fool. But the distinction is decisive. I can do it; and therefore I am a trader and not a thief. And I would sooner call myself a journalist than an author; because a journalist is a journeyman. He has a real working human trade; he even has a trade-union.
[Preface to A Miscellany of Men]

There are some who complain of a man for doing nothing; there are some, still more mysterious and amazing, who complain of having nothing to do. When actually presented with some beautiful blank hours or days, they will grumble at their blankness. When given the gift of loneliness, which is the gift of liberty, they will cast it away; they will destroy it deliberately with some dreadful game with cards or a little ball. I speak only for myself, I know it takes all sorts to make a world; but I cannot repress a shudder when I see them throwing away their hard-won holidays by doing something. For my own part, I never can get enough Nothing to do. I feel as if I had never had leisure to unpack a tenth part of the luggage of my life and thoughts. I need not say that there is nothing particularly misanthropic in my desire for isolation; quite the other way. In my morbid boyhood, as I have said, I was sometimes, in quite a horrible sense, solitary in society. But in my manhood, I have never felt more sociable than I do in solitude.
[Autobiography CW16:202]

Clock Day

Clock Day
by
Dr. Thursday

Clock Day is coming and the Congressman is fat
Time is unimportant when the Senate goes to bat!
If you think our clocks should stay in sync with noon by the sun's view
Then write* a letter to your rep
And God bless you!

[* In the modern age, you can amend this line to:
Then send an e-mail to your rep...]

God bless you, citizen, God bless you!
So write a letter to your rep and God bless you!

Clock Day is coming and the people give a howl:
Congress gives an order, so now what was fair is foul.
Such power has corrupted them, in all they say and do!
So send an e-mail to your rep
And God bless you!

God bless you, citizen, God bless you!
So send an e-mail to your rep and God bless you!

and, from GKC:

Anomalies do matter very much, and do a great deal of harm; abstract illogicalities do matter a great deal, and do a great deal of harm. And this for a reason that anyone at all acquainted with human nature can see for himself. All injustice begins in the mind. And anomalies accustom the mind to the idea of unreason and untruth. Suppose I had by some pre-historic law the power of forcing every man in Battersea to nod his head three times before he got out of bed. The practical politicians might say that this power was a harmless anomaly; that it was not a grievance. It could do my subjects no harm; it could do me no good. The people of Battersea, they would say, might safely submit to it. But the people of Battersea could not safely submit to it, for all that. If I had nodded their heads for them for fifty years I could cut off their heads for them at the end of it with immeasurably greater ease. For there would have permanently sunk into every man's mind the notion that it was a natural thing for me to have a fantastic and irrational power. They would have grown accustomed to insanity. GKC ILN March 10 1906 CW 27:139

A Fun Conference

The Circe Institute sounds like an interesting organization. Especially when I heard about their conference, coming up in July of 2008.

“A Contemplation of Humor” is a gathering of school leaders, teachers, and home educators with a sense of humor (or who need one) who yearn to cultivate wisdom and virtue in their students and children - and in themselves.

Meet attendees from Florida and Michigan to Virginia and California for

∙Three Unforgettable days
∙ A bunch of ludicrous speakers
∙ Twenty-four playful workshops
∙ Twelve provocative colloquies
∙ Three refreshing evenings
∙ One elegant Paideia Prize banquet


All at one astonishing retreat!

Doesn't that sound like fun?

Gilbert Here: Conference Issue Rocks!

I spent the better part of yesterday immersed in my Gilbert, reliving the glory days of June 2007, the people I met, the conversations I had, the beer I tried...looking at all the glorious pictures and remembering the fun of it all.

If I have one regret, its that I mentioned that Dawn Eden stutters. Could you all forget I said that, please? I think I might have hurt her feelings. Sorry, Dawn. Your talk was fantastic. I guess the stutter took me by surprise, your pictures just exude this generous and zippy personality, which, of course, can go along with a stutter...oh dear, I feel I'm just digging my hole bigger and better stop. It's kind of like GKC, when people mention his voice, they recall how soft spoken and high pitched his voice was, and based on his looks, it just didn't go. That's the kind of Chestertonian comparison I wanted to make. And Dawn is just as wise and intelligent as Chesterton.

Front cover: I feel I must mention to anyone not in attendance at the closing banquet that the "Chestertones" were just a complete cover for Anne-Sophie Olsen to show off her tremendous violin talent. The rest of them were all hacks.

See the picture of Dawn? Doesn't she just look friendly? Don't you just wish she lived next door?

Aidan Mackey. What a gentleman. What a wealth of Chestertonian knowledge. It was so fun to be able to ask him "anything".

Dale Ahlquist. What a cut up. If you never heard him talk about Chesterton, you might wonder if he ever takes life seriously. But then, he's a true Chestertonian, and knows how to take things "lightly"--a wonderful quality.

More notes....when I return to you here on Monday.

Yippee! A New Kevin O'Brien Mini-Mystery!

From Dr. Thursday

Happy for more than a quarter of a billion miles

You can call it a year, or one solar orbit. If you calculate 365 days, each 24 hours long, with 60 minutes in each hour, and 60 seconds in each minute, you will get 31,536,000 seconds. But if you figure out the distance we have travelled during that time, you will get the even more gigantic figure of some 290 million miles, which is perhaps more easily phrased as "more than a quarter of a billion miles". This really adds up quick, when you multiply by your age... I've been flying for some 13 billion miles - too long to walk, but barely 1/2000 of the way to the nearest star. Whew.

As you might guess, I have had a major struggle to put this posting together, partly because of work, and partly because I wrote something else, quite long and emotional, which I have decided not to post. Instead you must be subjected to this posting, which (it is to be hoped) will induce a little laughter - or at least a few smiles.

In a previous post we recalled how "smiles" is the longest word of English (because there is a "mile" between the two S's!) and we looked at a few other long words, some of which were rather funny. Of course the synthesis of these two items (laughter and long words) leads to the famous modern magic fairy tale called "Mary Poppins" - where one hear nice long words (which I refuse to pronounce, or even spell!) - and one can see demonstrated with the full technicolor power of modern special-effects what happens when one takes one's self lightly... Hee hee. Tea parties on the ceiling, I ask you! Well, if Innocent Smith (of Manalive) can have a picnic on the roof, why not?

But let us proceed to something which links humor with the earth's orbit.

Perhaps you do not believe that the earth moves, not having seen proof... well, then why are you using the INTERNET, silly goose? You probably think this posting is about you - but it's not. (Hee hee.) It's about Chesterton, and his essay called "In Defence of Planets" and whatever else I can throw in in coordination and support of his ideas.

Now, there are two demonstrations for which we waited quite some time which tell us the truth of the motion of our earth - the first is called the parallax of the stars, and the other I omit for today. The idea of parallax is easily demonstrated, as you may know:

To Demonstrate Parallax:
1. Hold your arm out, with one finger raised.
2. Close one eye.
3. Look at the background of your room or office, or wherever you are, and note exactly where your finger is in relation to it.
4. Now for the "magic" - open the closed eye, and close the one which had been opened, and
5. You will see your finger "jump" against the background!

Alas, the even the closest stars are much further away than your finger - which is just at the end of your arm. And so it was not until 1837 that Bessel was able to measure the very tiny jump which just one star makes as we go from January to July - the equivalent of closing your left eye and opening your right eye.

But this is not funny - oh, no - but the idea of you sticking your hand out at work or school and blinking at it? Well, that is funny. But then these are the humiliations to which the true scientist will submit - for humility before the REAL WORLD is the first trademark of the Scientist. It is Jesus meek and humble of heart Who is also the storehouse of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (See Mt 11:29, Col 2:3)

Ah... but I said I was going to talk about Chesterton's essay. Well, after this depth, it may be too funny to turn to that, but here is a sample:

A book has at one time come under my notice called 'Terra Firma: the Earth not a Planet.' The author was a Mr. D. Wardlaw Scott, and he quoted very seriously the opinions of a large number of other persons, of whom we have never heard, but who are evidently very important. Mr. Beach of Southsea, for example, thinks that the world is flat; and in Southsea perhaps it is. It is no part of my present intention, however, to follow Mr. Scott's arguments in detail. On the lines of such arguments it may be shown that the earth is flat, and, for the matter of that, that it is triangular. A few examples will suffice: One of Mr. Scott's objections was that if a projectile is fired from a moving body there is a difference in the distance to which it carries according to the direction in which it is sent. But as in practice there is not the slightest difference whichever way the thing is done, in the case of the earth 'we have a forcible overthrow of all fancies relative to the motion of the earth, and a striking proof that the earth is not a globe.' This is altogether one of the quaintest arguments we have ever seen. It never seems to occur to the author, among other things, that when the firing and falling of the shot all take place upon the moving body, there is nothing whatever to compare them with. As a matter of fact, of course, a shot fired at an elephant does actually often travel towards the marksman, but much slower than the marksman travels. Mr. Scott probably would not like to contemplate the fact that the elephant, properly speaking, swings round and hits the bullet. To us it appears full of a rich cosmic humour.
[GKC, "In Defence of Planets", The Defendant]

Actually, this is by no means the funniest part - perhaps this is:

This sort of thing reduces my mind to a pulp. I can faintly resist when a man says that if the earth were a globe cats would not have four legs; but when he says that if the earth were a globe cats would not have have legs I am crushed.

But then, as GKC goes on to point out, he is not giving a technical study of physics - he has a somewhat larger, more comic purpose... (that is NOT a typo for cosmic! Hee hee)

it is not in the scientific aspect of this remarkable theory that I am for the moment interested. It is rather with the difference between the flat and the round worlds as conceptions in art and imagination that I am concerned. It is a very remarkable thing that none of us are really Copernicans in our actual outlook upon things. We are convinced intellectually that we inhabit a small provincial planet, but we do not feel in the least suburban. Men of science have quarrelled with the Bible because it is not based upon the true astronomical system, but it is certainly open to the orthodox to say that if it had been it would never have convinced anybody. If a single poem or a single story were really transfused with the Copernican idea, the thing would be a nightmare. Can we think of a solemn scene of mountain stillness in which some prophet is standing in a trance, and then realize that the whole scene is whizzing round like a zoetrope at the rate of nineteen miles a second? Could we tolerate the notion of a mighty King delivering a sublime fiat and then remember that for all practical purposes he is hanging head downwards in space? A strange fable might be written of a man who was blessed or cursed with the Copernican eye, and saw all men on the earth like tintacks clustering round a magnet.
[ibid.]

Well, perhaps if we, like the king, tried hanging upside down in space, we might begin to take ourselves lightly.

And then it would not just be "that Poppins woman" who would come in for tea. No, there will be other, rather more important guests, who call us to the good wine of the wedding feast [cf Jn2, Ap 19:9]: "If any one love me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him and we will come to him and will make our abode with him." [Jn14:23]

Happy they will be. So let us prepare well...

--Dr. Thursday