Practical Distributism

Had an interesting conversation last night with a Chestertonian who wants to know how to put the principles of Distributism into practical action today.

I know you all are much more informed about distributism than I am, so tell me, how do we "do" distributism in this culture, in this world today?

Heard at the Art Fair...

Over the weekend, we were at an art fair (which is why I didn't post, being outdoors in the cold wet rain all weekend is not conducive to blogging) and one of our customers had a remarkable story.

Last year, she had told us that her dog had cancer. This is a precious dog. So, she was going through chemotherapy. For a dog. It was costing something like $4-7000 and of course, she had no doggy health insurance.

So, this year, I asked after the dog, knowing its importance to her, and she informed us that the dog had passed away.

But, she said, she had a grand send out. The dog had a full funeral, open casket, huge gravestone (with picture and the words "Mommy loves you very much") grave (in a human graveyard, with a section set aside for pets) and a minister who gave a eulogy. Price tag: somewhere around $6,000.

I didn't ask who attended the event, wondering what I would do if I ever was invited to such a thing.

It seems to me that something needs to be said about the increasing devotion and attention and money being spent on pets. I think it is a sign of our society's breakdown. When pets are given such high value, and families are neglected; when pets are given chemotherapy and children can't get health care; when pets are loved to such a degree over people; when money is spent on pets which might better be used to feed, clothe, shelter and care for humans; a society that has so much love to expend on pets, and so little to expend on other humans is a sick society. A person who says that their pet was worth more than most of the people she's ever met, is a person with sadly mislaid affections.

The other day, a hairball floated past me and onto a pathway that many people use for running, biking, and walking dogs. As I was walking behind a dog, it quite rapidly and disgustingly sniffed and then ate the hairball before I could react (which I would have tried to do, given time). Dogs are affectionate, but lacking in common sense because they aren't people. And they don't love back. If people mistake the affection of a dog for love, it tells a lot about what we haven't, as a society, learned about love.

Her Patronus is an Ibis: the Safe Middle Road

Nancy Brown's The Mystery of Harry Potter
Reviewed by Peter J. Floriani, Ph.D. (to whom I am grateful-Ed.)

J.K. Rowling's seven books of Harry Potter are complete. All its mysteries are now explained - or at least revealed, for sometimes even things in broad daylight remain mysterious: "The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid."[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:231]

In the end, of course, no one but God knows the design, the inner intentions of the author - she may not know herself. It may be, as Gandalf explained to Frodo about Bilbo's finding of the Ring, that the story was planned, and not by its author. Sometimes, in the writing of certain great stories, the true Author of the Story steps in and takes action, as GKC reveals in his play "The Surprise."

Yes, "by their fruits you will know them" [Mt 7:16] - but someone needs to taste the fruit. There are those who are curious about Harry, and wish to know the quality of Rowling's fruits. To assist these, Catholics and parents in particular, Nancy Brown has provided a short guide, The Mystery of Harry Potter: A Catholic Family Guide.

Brown's book takes a classical view of the HP sequence, the view Aquinas took of Aristotle: "I believe that there is a middle field of facts which are given by the senses to be the subject matter of the reason; and that in that field the reason has a right to rule, as the representative of God in Man. ...what man has done man may do; and if an antiquated old heathen called Aristotle can help me to do it I will thank him in all humility." [GKC, St. Thomas Aquinas CW2:429, emphasis added] Hence, Nancy Brown says: "if a fantasy of teenage children attending a school of magic can help reveal more about my faith and how I ought to live, I will use it, and be thankful."

It is quite clear that Brown does not urge this book as to supplant standard texts, nor even as an innovative augmentation. It is simply a popular story, by means of which significantly deeper, useful, and inspiring topics can be addressed. Any book might be so used - indeed, any book, no matter how holy its author, can contain complexities which can confuse or even misguide. One must take the safest approach, which is most often the middle ground. The saints often talked about "moderation in all things" - even the Romans had a epigram: "medio tutissimus ibis" which has nothing to do with the bird called "ibis" - it means "You will go more safely in the middle." Hence Chesterton pointed out "Unless that sagacious bird is allowed to be in the middle, there will be no place for the pelican of charity, the owl of wisdom, or the dove of peace." [GKC, ILN Jan 20 1912]

Ibis-like, Nancy Brown's book neither inordinately praises nor unthinkingly condemns the Potter saga. It has, like any compelling story, a danger of absorbing its reader and distracting from his duties, even from the truth. But because of its attractive treatment of real problems in an interesting and humourous setting, it provokes thought, and suggests contemplation of one's own actions - it can lead to renewed zeal, and the strengthening of the will against evil. True, these dangers and advantages are found in Doyle, in Verne, in Chesterton, in any book - but your child, your nephew, your cousin, you - want to know about Harry Potter now. Here is a place for you to learn - and without spoiling the clever detective-story surprises.

In reading MHP, as in reading HP, one has the sense of a much larger structure, a high and hidden framework. It is a curious coincidence that the author of the Harry Potter books, J. K. Rowling, lives in Edinburgh, about which GKC once said "it is sometimes difficult for a man to shake off the suggestion that each road is a bridge over the other roads, as if he were really rising by continual stages higher and higher through the air. He fancies he is on some open scaffolding of streets, scaling the sky.... The motto of Edinburgh, as you may still see it, I think, carved over the old Castle gate is, 'Sic Itur ad Astra': 'This Way to the Stars'." [GKC Lunacy and Letters 76] Such high bridges can be exceedingly useful as well as dangerous, and it is well to have a guide when facing them. Nancy Brown's book, which fittingly originated within her "Flying Stars" blog, reveals how the Harry Potter books, Edinburgh-like, can also scale the sky.

Feast Day: Assumption of Mary

Chesterton loved Mary, and wrote about her role in his conversion in this exerpt from "Mary and the Convert":

Now I can scarcely remember a time when the image of Our Lady did not stand up in my mind quite definitely, at the mention or the thought of all these things. I was quite distant from these things, and then doubtful about these things; and then disputing with the world for them, and with myself against them; for that is the condition before conversion. But whether the figure was distant, or was dark and mysterious, or was a scandal to my contemporaries, or was a challenge to myself----I never doubted that this figure was the figure of the Faith; that she embodied, as a complete human being still only human, all that this Thing had to say to humanity. The instant I remembered the Catholic Church, I remembered her; when I tried to forget the Catholic Church, I tried to forget her; when I finally saw what was nobler than my fate, the freest and the hardest of all my acts of freedom, it was in front of a gilded and very gaudy little image of her in the port of Brindisi, that I promised the thing that I would do, if I returned to my own land.

GK Chesterton: The Patron Saint of Working Writers?

Apparently, a Chestetonian is about to graduate and become a free lance writer, which seems Chestertonian.

God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science

I had a letter from Mr. James Hannam, and I'm passing along his request. Here is his note:

"My continuing efforts to find a publisher for God's Philosophers have taken a new turn. While many publishers think it's a good book, they are not convinced there is a market for a work, however assessible, on medieval science.

So, I want to prove them wrong. I've set up a new web site where you can download chapter one of God's Philosophers. If you like what you read, then please also use the new site to register your interest in purchasing a copy when it comes out. This doesn't commit you to anything, it just allows me to show that a market exists. The resulting database will only be used to send a single email when the book comes out. It won't be used for any other purpose although it's just posssible that publishers will want to send of a few emails to verify the list is bona fide.

Also, it would be fantastic if you could point any like-minded friends towards jameshannam.com. Nothing succeeds like word of mouth recommendations. So if you want to see the historic myth that Christianity blocked the progress of science debunked, we need to get this book out and read.

Thank you all of you who register!

Who is Roy F. Moore?

In a mysterious turn of events, a seret agent has informed the Blogmistress (me) of a thought-provoking mystery(?) in the latest Gilbert magazine. This agent believes the mistake might reveal a pseudonymoninous personage amonst the Gilbert writers.

After all, who is Roy F. Moore? Has anyone ever met him? At a conference, anywhere? Supposedly he wrote a column in this months issue about Distributism. (see page 34). But a careful reading of the Table of Contents either reveals an editing error, or.... (dah, dah, dah--sung in decending ominous-sounding tones) the truth.

I'm off to do laundry and I'll leave you to discuss.

A Great Piece of News for all Dover and Chesterton fans

Dover has reprinted GKC's Tremendous Trifles!!!

This is a great collection of essays which originally appeared in the London Daily News; they are not yet in the CW. Among them are such delights as "A Piece of Chalk" and "What I Found In My Pocket" and (for those studying fantasy) "The Dragon's Grandmother" - but each of the 39 essays is wonderful and has its own power and insights...

Thanks for the info, Dr. Thursday.

UPDATE: The American Chesterton Society has just received a shipment of these books, and will put them on their site shortly for your odering purposes. Thanks for supporting the ACS by buying the books from us. ;-)

A hot Friday night..

Someone suggested beer, but we've been loading up a truck with art to take early tomorrow morning to an art show, which is something we've done for 10 years, and this year, we've done one every weekend since the beginning of June, and continuing till the end of September. Art is our 4 arces and a cow. We keep a lot of frame, mat, glass and supplies people in business, too. And we pray for the people who buy our work, because they allow us to live this way, which is a good life.

Loading up a truck is hot work, and since we leave early in the morning, now I've got to be off to read to my daughter before she goes to sleep.

I hope you all enjoy this summer weekend.

It's Thursday

Again I must apologise for writing so briefly - though perhaps some of you who have read my voluminous postings elsewhere wish I was always more brief. But I am busy writing something a bit different, (hee hee) in a language where I use rather more semicolons than GKC did. Yes, that's one of the Great Sins committed by our favourite "second-rate" author of detective novels, dull theology, rhyming poems and such trash. But I assure you, it is only because I myself use the semicolon correctly that I can tell you GKC's average semicolon use was 14.2 semicolons per 1459.5 word essay which he wrote for the Illustrated London News. Put that in your next journal article and smoke it!

Ahem. Well, since I have been trying to explore some of the books GKC wrote about, or mentioned, which are still available from Dover Publications, I ought to resume - but I haven't written one. Also, when I asked our esteemed blogg-mistress about current efforts, she mentioned she was hoping to resume our consideration of The Poet and the Lunatics - which unfortunately is not yet available from Dover.

So I will cheat. I will give you an interesting quote from Chapter 2 "The Yellow Bird", and suggest a Dover book which I have, and which I think GKC would have enjoyed purusing. First, the quote:

this particular artist, whose name was Gabriel Gale, did not seem disposed even to look at the landscape, far less to paint it; but after taking a bite out of a ham sandwich, and a swig at somebody else's flask of claret, incontinently lay down on his back under a tree and stared up at the twilight of twinkling leaves; some believing him to be asleep, while others more generously supposed him to be composing poetry. ... "If you look up long enough, there isn't any more up or down, but a sort of green, dizzy dream; with birds that might as well be fishes."
[GKC, "The Yellow Bird", The Poet and the Lunatics]

Here we see one of GKC's usual "inversion" tricks, recalling the kernel axiom from "Cinderella" - the words once uttered by a young woman in another context: "exaltavit humiles = "He has lifted up the lowly." [See Orthodoxy CW1:253 quoting Mary in Lk 1:52] But there is also a very funny swipe at the absurd anti-logic of Nietzsche and other death-eaters, who said: "Good and evil, truth and falsehood, folly and wisdom are only aspects of the same upward movement of the universe." To which GKC (even at an early stage) replied: "Supposing there is no difference between good and bad, or between false and true, what is the difference between up and down?" [See GKC's Autobiography CW16:154]

Ah - the book. It was suggested by Gale's perception of birds as fishes, and is simply a very beautiful study called Hummingbirds. The pictures of these tiny birds hint at the power called discrimination - the ability to tell both similarities and differences correctly - which is strengthened by such fantastic tricks. A poet who looks up into the trees and seeing birds as fish swimming in a green sea will be better able to know both fish and birds correctly. In a more modern context, the fantasy that a boy waves a wooden stick and says "Lumos" shines a light on the more mundane but far more magical flashlight, the distillation of thousands of years of work and thousands of years of knowledge. Or, as Gabriel Gale says in another part of that same story:

What exactly is liberty? First and foremost, surely, it is the power of a thing to be itself.
[GKC, "The Yellow Bird", The Poet and the Lunatics]

Didn't know you were reading an ontology textbook here, did you? Hang on the ride might be bumpy in spots but it's well worth the admission price.

--Dr. Thursday

Back to Gilbert

One of the columnists I particularly enjoy reading is Kyro Lansberger. And this month's "Finding a New Horizon" was partiularly good.

I love hearing how people stumbled upon Chesterton, and this is one of those stories. Well educated, well read, summa cum laude in political science; found himself in a Yugoslavian village and discovered he didn't know nothing. Discovers Chesterton. Well, read the column to find out how that happened.

Suffice it to say, Chesterton is Kyro's "New Horizon" and he finds its been expanding ever since. Yep.

And now: The Bloggin' Editor: Sean Dailey!

Sean's new blog, go check it out.

Did this book ever get published?

Perhaps with a different title? This is new to me, yet the date is 2001.

Chesterton and Dorothy Day

Chesterton and Women at Home with their Children

This is an interesting article, making liberal use of a quote I particularly love of GKC's to make a good point about children needing their mothers when they are young. Now that my children are older, I wonder when "young" ends? They still seem to need me. ;-)

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

During the recent conference, there were break-out sessions, and I attended the Aidan Mackey talk, not knowing if he'd ever make it across the pond again. However, there was another talk that hour on Heraldry, given by Dr. Peter Floriani, and from what I heard, it was excellent. And that ties in with today's post. And now, Dr. Thursday.

I have heard (from people who have reason to know) that the seminar on heraldry at the recent Chesterton Conference proved to be of interest to those who attended. The topic of heraldry may seem a bit unusual for the typical Americans to express such an interest - but then that's just because it sounds ancient. As if someone were to say something crazy, "Hey, let's write software for a cable TV company, and put Latin quotes on the main screen!" Or for a mother to say to her daughters, "Today, let's have a picnic lunch on the floor in the playroom!" But then we're so very, very, very Chestertonian. (And I hope you are, too.)

Anyway, since I happened to be at that seminar, I can tell you that heraldry is actually very well known in America - though perhaps not by that name. There are those two yellow upside-down U shapes one sees at the side of the road - it makes one thing of clowns eating hamburgers. There is that little curvy check-mark seen on all kinds of clothing, which means one has paid money to a sneaker company in approval of their efforts. And so on. There are also what we might call the "inverse" forms, where people who know nothing of the laws of heraldry have broken them, and so have made their attempt at communication futile: like white trucks with yellow lettering. Or, even worse, a certain state license plate is a pale color, upon which the license numbers are printed in white - hence they are nearly unreadable, even from close-up.

But what is heraldry? Why does it matter to Chestertonians?Click here to discover more about heraldry.Heraldry is simply the art and the science of symbol, but particularly serving as an identifier of a person, and of a family. The "coat of arms" which is simply a decorated form of the old shield of a knight, told everyone - even those who could not read - who that person was, just as surely as the yellow U's or curvy check-marks indicate ... uh ... what they indicate. Remember, advertising is just a form of communication, and its first principle is identification. (See Romans 10:14-15 for a Biblical justification for advertising!)

Speaking as a computer scientist, the real delight in heraldry is that it comes with a very elegant and technical way of describing those decorations: what the heralds call the "blazon" - that is, the "code" which specifies the colors and shapes and arrangements of the design:

"A blazon, like a chemical formula, means one thing, and one thing only, hence, every heraldic artist can make a correct drawing from it..."
[Julian Franklyn, Heraldry, 41]

But what does heraldry have to do with Chesterton?

It would be possible to cite many illustrations from Chesterton's work about heraldry. He relates one of the most dramatic, and intricate, pieces of history in his book on Chaucer:

The fashionable world, as we should put it, was divided into enthusiastic factions over a quarrel which had arisen about the legitimacy of a coat of arms, which then seemed almost as thrilling as the legitimacy of a child or a last will and testament. The arms borne by the great Border family of Scrope, in popular language a blue shield with a gold band across it (I can say 'azure a bend or' quite as prettily as anybody else) was found to have been also adopted by a certain Sir Thomas Grosvenor, then presumably the newer name of the two. The trial was conducted with all the voluminous detail and seething excitement of a Society divorce case; reams and rolls of it, for all I know, remain, in the records of the heraldic office, for anybody to read if he likes; though I have my doubts even about garter King-at-Arms. But somewhere in that pile of records there is one little paragraph, for which alone, perhaps, the world would now turn them over at all. It merely states that among a long list of witnesses, one 'Geoffrey Chaucer, gentleman, armed twenty-seven years', had testified that he saw the Golden Bend displayed before Scrope's tent in the battlefield of France; and that long afterwards, he had stopped some people in the streets of London and pointed to the same escutcheon displayed as a tavern sign; whereon they had told him that it was not the coat of Scrope but of Grosvenor. This, he said, was the first time he had ever heard tell of the Grosvenors. Such small flashes of fact are so provocative, that I can almost fancy he smiled as he said the last words.
[GKC, Chaucer CW18:214-5]

But this is America, you say. Fine. Let's see what we can find there...

There is one of the United States called "Maryland", which has a very nice flag: red, white, yellow, and black - all kind of shredded into a curious pattern. But it is nothing more than a very elegant statement about a man and his family: a man named Cecilius Calvert, who became Lord Baltimore. His father's father had a coat of arms which is blazoned:

Paly of six, Or and sable; a bend counterchanged.

This means six stripes alternating yellow (gold) and black, with a diagonal stripe cutting through them which reverses the colors of the underlying stripes. And his father's mother, who was named Crossland, had a coat of arms which is blazoned:

Quarterly argent and gules a cross botonny counterchanged.

This means four squares, white above red, red above white, on which is imposed a cross with triple rounds at each end - and this cross reverses the colors of the underlying squares.

The Maryland flag is Lord Baltimore's which is blazoned: Quarterly Calvert and Crossland. Just so you don't struggle, here is what it looks like:
So now you know. And, if you would like more information, there are many books which will help, but for a start you can check out Heraldry in America by Eugene Zieber, available from Dover Publications.

Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis has people concerned

I've just heard from someone who has just heard from Dale, they are all OK. But let's continue to pray for all the families affected by yesterday's bridge collapse.

Chesterton Stuff on the Web

I wanted to let you know that Rich is putting up some GK's Weekly articles on his website for those interested in seeing some Chesterton that's nowhere else on the 'net. Here are the articles:

Wanted - More Homes
On Direct Action
An Excerpt From the Horror
More Hints On Free Speech
On Mr. Wells And Mr. Belloc
The Fortress of Property

Click on the link and scroll to the right side bar and down a ways, and you can read any of the above articles. Rich is also working on a book about Chesterton and distributism, doing research over at Christendom where the copies of GK's Weekly have a home.

Using Modern Technology...

The link above takes you to a slide show put together by the The ChesterBelloc Mandate Distributist Blog. Good job, guys.

The Perfect Child

Did you catch James G. "Gerry" Bruen Jr.'s story "The Perfect Child" in the latest Gilbert?

Ha, I wondered if it would end that way. The same way I've wondered how two beautifully in love deaf parents feel about having a "hearing" child, and how difficult that is for them, and yet...how wonderful, too.

A thoughtful story.

The Return of the Angels

There is a reprint of an article in the latest Gilbert magazine which hasn't been seen for 104 years, from the Daily News, March 14, 1903. Unless you happen to have an old copy of the Daily News, of course.

I loved it, and thought what an amazing time it must have been to be able to read Gilbert regularly in print, writing stuff like this 104 years ago! Such logic and clear thinking! It explains his whole conversion to the faith, even though he wouldn't officially convert until 1922. Still, this shows his acceptance of Christianity as true in 1903. He also discusses the faith of religion and the faith of scientism, evolution, rationalism and reason. You could have a whole High school level course just on this one essay.

And that's one of the things I love about Chesterton. If you haven't yet, hurry and get your membership with subscription (ask to start with June/July 2007 so you can read this Daily News article, worth the price in my mind) before the rates go up, which, I warn you as one who knows, it is going to soon.

Martin Responds

Martin Cothran responds to John Peterson's article on Chesterton the Answer Man.

Are You A Fan of GKC?

I hadn't really considered myself a "fan" of Chesterton's, since he's dead, the term didn't seem to apply in my mind. However, Chris Chan's essay in the current issue of Gilbert Magazine has me thinking I am. If there weren't this group, this "fandom" of Chesterton's, I think he would be quite obscure today.

So, are you a fan?

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

A Resounding Thwack with a Wooden Stick

There has been a lot of discussion recently about wands and wizards, about fairy tales and magic, about Chesterton and Harry Potter, about the uses of magic and fantasy and fiction.

Despite a very strong urge to delve into this topic, and a wish to write or at least to read a "Little Summa on the Story", some years ago my mother told me that I have other things to do. So I must proceed to do them.

But without violating my mother's directives, I want to help you, my dear cousins, to have a greater understanding of our dear Uncle Gilbert, and in my writing today I shall touch on a very strange and little-known piece of fantasy fiction which he delighted in.

It does serve as input to the larger discussion on fantasy, for after I read the book I shall consider today, I wondered whether it may have provided the source of the fist-fight of Ransom with the demonic being in Lewis's Perelandra

But that is not the mystery I refer to. Click here to discover more about magic.
I mean, simply, the mystery of Punch and Judy.

Punch? Whozzat?

Punch is a wooden hand puppet with a big nose, who appears in a popular street theater show - he does very little more than beat his wife, beat his baby, beat his dog, beat a physician, beat the policeman, beat the judge, beat the jailer, and beat the devil.

There are over 100 mentions of the name "Punch" in GKC's works, though a fair number of these refer to the famous magazine, and not to the famous street puppet. Like a number of other terms in GKC, "Punch" is something one feels one might understand - until one tries to explain what it is. It is a kind of miniature theater with hand-puppets, a form of street entertainment, which presented the same little show again and again, to cheers and delight of both children and adults. I am not going to give the complete details here - that is why I ordered the book! Nor am I going to try to explain it, or explain it away.

[Note: if you have ever seen the musical "Scrooge", there is a scene where Scrroge demands payment from a P&J puppetmaster... the ONLY time I am aware of ever having actually seen it!]

But "Punch" was something which GKC often took as a "given" - something known, as fundamental a reference to his readers as phrases like "Beam me up Scotty" or "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" and such are to us today. We "know" Dorothy Gale and Darth Vader; GKC "knew" Punch:

Dickens was a mythologist rather than a novelist; he was the last of the mythologists, and perhaps the greatest. He did not always manage to make his characters men, but he always managed, at the least, to make them gods. They are creatures like Punch or Father Christmas. They live statically, in a perpetual summer of being themselves.
[GKC Charles Dickens CW15:87-8]

Or consider this curious commentary on America:

America is a serious parody. America is an exaggeration not more comic, but more solemn, than its original. We are all acquainted with the ordinary notion of a caricature, in which certain features are treated more largely, but more lightly. Thus, let us say, a King is given an outrageously large crown, and he becomes a pantomime King. But we must try and imagine the reversal of this process: we must conceive, not something heavy taken lightly, but something originally light taken heavily and hugely. It is not that the King becomes a comic character by the enlargement of his crown; it is actually that Punch becomes a serious character by the further elongation of his nose. Ordinary people treat their institutions as jokes. American people treat jokes as institutions. Englishmen make a picture absurd by expanding it into a hoarding. America makes a sketch eternal by expanding it into a fresco.
[GKC, ILN Aug 15 1908 CW28:159]

(Oooh, an "English" term to examine! A "hoarding" is a fence of boards around a building used during erection or repairs, often used for posting bills; hence a billboard-like poster.)

I mentioned our infernal Enemy as being a main character in the saga of Punch and Judy. You may wonder why this is so - and wonder where P&J fits into the larger discussion of fantasy and fiction... but as you may expect, Chesterton already has an explanation:

Nothing so stamps the soul of Christendom as the strange subconscious gaiety which can make farces out of tragedies, which can turn instruments of torture into toys. So in the Catholic dramas the Devil was always the comic character; so in the great Protestant drama of Punch and Judy, the gallows and the coffin are the last and best of the jokes.
[GKC "The Fading Fireworks" in Alarms and Discursions]

I have no space to elaborate on this; there are numerous cross-references to be made here - OK, just two: he calls attention to the fact that the representations of Christian martyrs usually contain tokens of their torture... It is summarised in GKC's powerful epigram "The Cross cannot be defeated, for it is Defeat." [The Ball and the Cross] The other is the second-most-famous of all GKC quotes, to wit: "Satan fell by force of gravity." [Orthodoxy CW1:326]

But, as GKC liked to say how much more is the deeper mystery of these puppets which are made of wood! We hear the ancient chant from Good Friday:

Ecce lignum Crucis, in quo salus mundi pependit.

That is:

Behold, the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the world.

Remember that mundus = "world" is the usual translation for the Greek KOSMOS. We hear this same thought expressed even more powerfully in the Preface for the Holy Cross: "The Tree of Man's defeat has become his Tree of Victory!"

But we are speaking of Punch - or, I should say, GKC is:

I did like the toy theatre even when I knew it was a toy theatre. I did like the cardboard figures, even when I found they were of cardboard. The white light of wonder that shone on the whole business was not any sort of trick; indeed the things that now shine most in my memory were many of them mere technical accessories; such as the parallel sticks of white wood that held the scenery in place; a white wood that is still strangely mixed in my imaginative instincts with all the holy trade of the Carpenter. It was the same with any number of other games or pretences in which I took delight; as in the puppet-show of Punch and Judy. I not only knew that the figures were made of wood, but I wanted them to be made of wood. I could not imagine such a resounding thwack being given except by a wooden stick on a wooden head. But I took the sort of pleasure that a primitive man might have taken in a primitive craft, in seeing that they were carved and painted into a startling and grimacing caricature of humanity. I was pleased that the piece of wood was a face; but I was also pleased that the face was a piece of wood. That did not mean that the drama of wood, like the other drama of cardboard, did not reveal to me real ideas and imaginations, and give me glorious glimpses into the possibilities of existence.
[GKC Autobiography CW16:54-55]

For more on this wonderful English icon which so delighted our Uncle Chesterton, see Punch and Judy: A Short History with the Original Dialogue available from Dover Publications.

Editorial

This Gilbert is the Summer Movie Edition. The editorial is about "The Trouble with Hollywood" and mentions three movies, Sunrise, The Crowd and Street Angel as among the greatest films ever made.

I've never heard of any of them, nor seen them. Anyone else? I may have to take a trip to Blockbuster.

My new Gilbert arrived!

Prepare to discuss tomorrow.

St. Louis gets a blog of its own

Check it out here. Congratulations, St. Louis!

Back home...

And one thing I noticed while traveling: there is a real need for Chesterton out there. So we've got to keep on leading people to read his work, so that they--and we-- learn (or continue to learn) how to think.

So many of today's arguments aren't really arguments. They aren't reasoned responses to actual differences, they are opinions thrown left and right and no one listening to anybody else because they don't agree. And if one side can't "win" then frustration abounds.

An argument doesn't always mean that we'll get someone to come around to our point of view. An argument, first of all, is listening to what the other person has to say. Secondly, thinking about what that person has to say. Then responding to that person in a calm and peaceful way. "I understand that you are saying this....but have you ever thought about that?"

So many of today's arguments are just "You can't possibly be sane! Anyone who thinks that is crazy! This is the only way that anybody should think about x!" and reasonableness, we can see, is not employed.

Pardon my lack of presence here

I'm on the road at an art fair. The art fair hours are 9 to 9 each day. We had a tornado yesterday. (Everyone is ok and the art survived without damage.) I am doing 2-4 interviews a day, mostly on radio concerning my new book. Even now I await Portland Oregon to call and have me on the Victoria Taft show at 10:35pm my time (which is a balmy 7:35 their time, those lucky ducks!) and tomorrow am I will be on tv again, this time in Detroit at 9:15 EST on NBC (Local News 4).

May I please remind you to be kind on this blog while I'm away. Thank you.

Chesterton: The Answer Man

Can Chesterton answer all our questions? John sent me this previously published article in response to the combox writer in a previous argument down below.

“Chesterton as ‘The Answer Man’”
A Paper Prepared for the Chicago Chesterton Society in 1987 as reprinted in Midwest Chesterton News, December 10, 1990
John Peterson

Chesterton said more than once that he could start with any seemingly insignificant or random point and build his entire philosophy from that beginning. He says it quite clearly, for example, in his Illustrated London News column of February 17, 1906:

“A Philosophical connection there always is between any two items imaginable. This must be so, so long as we allow any harmony or unity in the cosmos at all. There must be a philosophical connection between any two things in the universe. If it is not so, we can only say there is no universe, and can be no philosophy.” [See CW, XXVII, p. 127]Continue reading.

He said this often, and he demonstrated it more often. You will think especially of his essay, “What I Found in My Pocket,” which Chesterton wrote for the London Daily News in that same year of 1906. It was later collected in the 1909 volume titled Tremendous Trifles. The essay describes how, on a long railway journey somewhere, he found ultimate lessons in a tram ticket, a box of matches, a piece of chalk, a pocketknife, and anything at all among the random litter as he searched through his pockets.

Some might say the whole meaning and charm of Tremendous Trifles is this Chestertonian ability to see the eternal in the trivial. You might as easily say it is the whole meaning and charm of all his journalism, his newspaper work—the Illustrated London News essays included. Why else would we meet here in Chicago Illinois in 1987 to discuss newspaper columns from London England of 1906? Why are we interested in Chesterton’s reaction to a series of childish pranks that occurred over eighty years ago in time, in a foreign country over four thousand miles away in geography?

I realize this is a fairly well worn path in Chesterton discussions and criticism. We all know that Chesterton finds eternal significance in cheese; or, to use the essay under discussion here, eternal significance in undergraduate mischief and student disturbances. But having said that, we have to ask one more question. Does Chesterton teach us the meaning of cheese or beer or student ragging and rioting? Or does he teach us how to see cheese and these other things in order that we ourselves may be able to find meaning in them? Does he give us meanings or does he show the way to find meanings?

Put another way, the question asks about using Chesterton’s Collected Works as a kind of dictionary or encyclopedia. What are we to think of beer? Look it up in Chesterton. What are we to think of student mischief? What are we to think of Charles Dickens? Or The Book of Job? Or Christianity? One can use Chesterton as a source of doctrine, and doubtless many do. But it is also possible to suggest that Chesterton’s lessons in how to think are more valuable than his lessons in what to think. His essay on “Undergraduate Ragging” offers us a chance to make and to study this distinction.

In this essay, Chesterton does not offer us a single point of view on student outbreaks and mischief. He offers us lessons in how to use student outbreaks in various ways to illustrate moral lessons—moral lessons of more than one kind. How are we to judge the students? On page 612 we are told that the moral test of student mischief rests on the answers to two questions. (One) are their victims also their friends? (Two) are their victims strong enough to defend themselves and to retaliate? If the answers are “no,” Chesterton says student ragging is mere cowardice.

My point is that after reading the essay we are much better informed about how Chesterton thought about these kinds of events but not so well informed about what he thought about them. The “what,” he leads us to understand, is not the issue.

Next, we have the medical students who attacked the “celebrated anti-vivisectionist monument” near Chesterton’s home in Battersea. On page 614 we find that “because the medical students were acting from philosophical or fanatical motives,” their case is “more interesting and valuable.” This leads Chesterton into an intriguing discussion of vivisection with which the column concludes.

Meanwhile, back on page 332 [the column of 11/24/06] we remember having heard of “the English schoolboy Allen who was arrested for having painted red” yet a different public monument—this time the statue of a Swiss general. About this student uprising, Chesterton says,

“The morals of a matter like this are exactly like the morals of anything else; they are concerned with mutual contract, or the rights of independent human lives. I have no right to paint the statue of Lord Salisbury red, just as I have no right to paint the face of Mr. Moberly Bell green, however much I think they might be improved by the transformation.”

This general statement of moral principle might have been applied to the medical students who attacked the anti-vivisectionist monument. Or it might have been applied to the undergraduate bullies who attacked the defenseless old maiden ladies.

Also, turning the discussion around the other way, the rules for student ragging which Chesterton formulated on page 613 might have been applied to the case of Master Allen who painted the Swiss general on page 332. It is evident, however, that Chesterton was not aiming at a universal “law of unruly students.”

We all probably fall into the habit of using Chesterton as an encyclopedia—asking for the great man to supply us with definitive answers to highly specific questions. The problem is, on any narrow question, Chesterton was likely to have had an assortment of opinions, the one to be used depending upon the controversy of the moment, the surrounding symbolism, or the weaponry to be found in the enemy camp.

We make Chesterton “The Answer Man” when we paraphrase him, or quote him in an inappropriate contexts, or otherwise use his authority when speaking on behalf of our own pet ideas. One suspects that the one-volume Quotable Chesterton is misused in this way: want to know what Chesterton thought about advertising or Zionism. Look it up, it’s in alphabetical order.

Scholars conduct serious arguments in the pages of The Chesterton Review over whether Chesterton would or would not have voted for Ronald Reagan.

Critics publish long volumes of summarization, as, for example, Chistopher Hollis’ The Mind of Chesterton, in which the author’s only evident purpose is to paraphrase Chesterton’s published books, boil the ideas down, and “explain” what he wrote, in the fashion of Cliff’s Notes.

When Chesterton said he could connect any two ideas in the universe, he might have had in mind the meanings of all the world’s separate, distinct, and individual things. He also might have had in mind the pathways between things, the secret but real ties which, he was confident, he could always discern connecting A to Z, soup to nuts, and undergraduate riots to the morality of vivisection.

Chesterton’s grandnephew, David Chesterton, wrote in 1982 that his uncle convinced him to be busy about searching for conclusions rather than forming conclusions. [See The Chesterton Review, February, 1982, pp. 51-56]

We know that David Chesterton went to the other extreme: he was an ideologue. More moderately though, a case can be made that Chesterton should be read less for the final word on passing events such as student riots, and more for fresh ways of thinking about student riots, or about any of the countless, random, passing news items that have colored daily journalism from Chesterton’s day to our own.

An atheist responds

Gerry Bruen sent me this response (written by someone else--Gerry just let me know about it) to a previous article in the Washington Post. He repsonds to the quote from Chesterton about Thor. Interesting reading.

A Powerful Tribute to Cheese--A Long-Awaited Poem

The intrepid poet at ChesterCon07 was Rob MacArthur. His poem: Ballade Against Cheesemongery. It shall appear in the next issue of Gilbert Magazine; but for those three of us who still read this blog, I present to you: Rob MacArthur.

Ballade Against Cheesemongery.

The grocer’s, for $6.95 per pound
Havarti sells, in blocks of creamy beige
Bespeckled with unthinkables (well ground
Or crushed) like nuts, or wine, or sage
And rosemary. At this I briefly rage
Then pass it o’er for cheap varieties
My unsophistic hungers to assuage.
I do desire no vanity in cheese.

I go, and madness does not fall behind:
In tubs on frigid shelves they sell a paste
Suffused with cherries, or with garlic rind,
Or bacon. And withal there goes to waste
The sweetest cream that e’er Galthea placed
Between pastoral palms of devotees
In Arcady, whose name is here disgraced,
And who desired no vanity in cheese.

And lo! What woe behold I though I rail
Against whatever fiend devised this thing
Called Pepperjack, to make the righteous quail
With wax to mock and capsicum to sting!
My muse leaves me. I can no longer sing
Upon this sacrilege! (The poet flees.
He snatches Mozzeralla on the wing,
For he desires no vanity in cheese.)

Prince, you offer pepper-corned Edam
With citron-oil essence. Remove it please:
Its power my gut to sour, your soul to damn!
I do desire no vanity in cheese.

News has it that this young poet has many more such wonderful poems up his sleeve, and future issues of Gilbert Magazine will carry his work. If you don't have a subscription, it would appear as if now would be the moment to secure such future poetry.

Chesterton in the News

At the end of this article on pacifism, HT David Zach.

And also, at the beginning of this article.

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

Another excellent post from Dr. Thursday, thanks so much for his Thursday work here.

Vice Squad

I am busy at present, and was unable to formulate an interesting commentary on another book in our serious of "Books GKC Read" which are available from Dover Publications. Don't worry there are plenty more to consider. But for today, since I have just seen an interesting post linking to a Chesterton quote about cigars, I thought you might enjoy this fragment of GKC, and also the story behind the story...

--Dr. Thursday

...numberless Americans smoke numberless cigars. But there does exist an extraordinary idea that ethics are involved in some way, and many who smoke really disapprove of smoking. I remember once receiving two American interviewers on the same afternoon; there was a box of cigars in front of me, and I offered one to each in turn. Their reaction (as they would probably call it) was very curious to watch. The first journalist stiffened suddenly and silently, and declined in a very cold voice. He could not have conveyed more plainly that I had attempted to corrupt an honourable man with a foul and infamous indulgence, as if I were the Old Man of the Mountain offering him the hashish that would turn him into an assassin. The second reaction was even more remarkable. The second journalist first looked doubtful; then looked sly; then seemed to glance about him nervously, as if wondering whether we were alone; and then said, with a sort of crestfallen and covert smile: "Well, Mr. Chesterton, I'm afraid I have the habit."

As I also have the habit, and have never been able to imagine how it could be connected with morality or immorality, I confess that I plunged with him deeply into an immoral life. In the course of our conversation I found he was otherwise perfectly sane, he was quite intelligent about economics or architecture, but his moral sense seemed to have entirely disappeared. He really thought it was rather wicked to smoke. He had no "standard of abstract right and wrong": in him it was not merely moribund, it was apparently dead.

The culture that is concerned here derives indirectly rather from New England than from Old America. It really does not seem to understand what is meant by a standard of right and wrong. It has a vague sentimental notion that certain habits were not suitable to the old log-cabin or the old home-town. It has a vague utilitarian notion that certain habits are not directly useful in the new amalgamated stores or the new financial gambling-hell. A man does not chop wood for the log-hut by smoking; and a man does not make dividends for the Big Boss by smoking; and therefore a smoke has a smell as of something sinful. Of what the great theologians and moral philosophers have meant by a sin, these people have no more idea than a child drinking milk has of a great toxicologist analysing poisons. It may be to the credit of their virtue to be thus vague about vice. The man who is silly enough to say, when offered a cigarette: "I have no vices," may not always deserve the rapier-thrust of the reply given by the Italian Cardinal: "It is not a vice, or doubtless you would have it." But at least a Cardinal knows it is not a vice; which assists the clarity of his mind. But the lack of clear standards among those who vaguely think of it as a vice may yet be the beginning of much peril and oppression.

[GKC ILN Feb 5 1927, CW34:250-252]

Now: Who is this Cardinal? Ah...

In The Master Diplomat subtitled "from the life of Leo XIII" by Rev. Robert Quardt (Alba House, 1964), page 105, is this:

For a time an artist was working in the Vatican who was an accomplished painter, but otherwise a rather irresponsible fellow. Leo knew this, but while he was watching the man at work one day, he became so enthused over hes capability that he wanted to reward him. This was done by offering him a sniff of snuff, which however, was declined by the artist with the very rude remark: "Holy Father, I really am not a victim of this vice." To this gauche remark Leo instantaneously retorted: "If this were a vice, you would have had it a long time ago."

Max and Gilbert

Denny has a wonderful post up about Max Beerbohm and GK Chesterton. The part that made a tiger of jealousy rise within me, though, was where Denny says he was "perusing the G.K. Chesterton folders in the British Museum a couple of years ago". This is a secret wish of mine, and Denny's already done it! Lucky guy. Go read his post, it's wonderful.

GKC Quoted at Opinion Journal

And of course, it's that quote again.

H/T David Zach. Thanks.

The Glow of the Conference

Well, the glow of the conference is wearing off for me, how about you? I was thinking, "What one thing did I take from the Chesterton conference this year?"

I think it is this: there are many roads which lead to Chesterton, and it is fascinating to hear about the different journeys.

I asked Dale if I could tell my tale at the banquet, and he said No, the banquet was supposed to be fun, silly, jokes and such, and my tale was a nightmare. But perhaps someday, you'll hear it and not think so. I think it is very funny.

So, what one thing did you take from the Chesterton Conference?

Does anyone besides me want to call the Chesterton Conference in 08 "ChesterFest"?

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

An American Poet

Over 200 times GKC invokes the name of Walt Whitman - in books from NNH to STA, from Browning to Chaucer, from Heretics to The Thing. An entire essay (ILN June 13, 1925, CW33:569) was about him, and it appears in Maisie Ward's biography of GKC over two dozen times, calling the discovery of his poems a "powerful influence in the direction of mental health" for the young GKC: "I shall never forget," Lucian Oldershaw writes, "reading to him ... in my bedroom at West Kensington. The seance lasted from two to three hours, and we were intoxicated with the excitement of the discovery." [Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 50]
Click here to discover more about Whitman.We who delighted in the thrills of ChesterCon 2007 saw how it provides a foretaste, a vague hint, of what GKC calls the "Inn at the End of the World" (in Dickens CW15:209 and NNH CW6:371) and which the Bible reveals in somewhat greater detail. Among our many researches, we must consider how Chesterton saw this in Whitman's works:

The whole point of Walt Whitman, right or wrong, is that the great heart of man should be an inn with a hundred doors standing open. It is that there should be a sort of everlasting bonfire of special rejoicing and festivity for all men that come and all things that happen; that nothing should be thought too trivial or too dull to be accepted by that gigantic hospitality of the heart. [GKC ILN June 13 1925 CW33:572]

Perhaps even more important for us is how Whitman played a role in GKC's philosophical and spiritual development. GKC gave us some insight into this difficult and personal matter:

I hung on to the remains of religion by one thin thread of thanks. I thanked whatever gods might be, not like Swinburne, because no life lived for ever, but because any life lived at all; not, like Henley for my unconquerable soul (for I have never been so optimistic about my own soul as all that) but for my own soul and my own body, even if they could be conquered. This way of looking at things, with a sort of mystical minimum of gratitude, was of course, to some extent assisted by those few of the fashionable writers who were not pessimists; especially by Walt Whitman, by Browning and by Stevenson; Browning's "God must be glad one loves his world so much", or Stevenson's "belief in the ultimate decency of things". But I do not think it is too much to say that I took it in a way of my own; even if it was a way I could not see clearly or make very clear.
[GKC, Autobiography CW16:97, emphasis added]

This phrase "one thin thread of thanks" is one of the most important of the great Chestertonian motifs. It may be that GKC has added to the famous "five proofs" for the existence of God by giving us "the argument from thanksgiving"... certainly it is worth investigation. And just as Aquinas accumulated references, both in support and in attack of each of his questions, so too we shall have to lok at Whitman if we want to understand more about the Chestertonian motif of thanskgiving. Perhaps someone from the "American Whitman Society" (if such exists) might give us some insight into this poem by GKC, which somehow summarizes this entire point:

"Eternities"

I cannot count the pebbles in the brook.
Well hath He spoken: 'Swear not by thy head,
Thou knowest not the hairs,' though He, we read,
Writes that wild number in His own strange book.

I cannot count the sands or search the seas,
Death cometh, and I leave so much untrod.
Grant my immortal aureole, O my God,
And I will name the leaves upon the trees.

In heaven I shall stand on gold and glass,
Still brooding earth's arithmetic to spell;
Or see the fading of the fires of hell
Ere I have thanked my God for all the grass.
[GKC, CW10:209]

I almost forgot! If you want to read some Whitman, you might check out Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition available from Dover Publications.

New SQPN Harry Potter Podcast

Cheese

I hope you are having lots of American food this 4th of July, to which I wish you a happy and safe holiday, including, but not limited to, cheese.

Speaking of cheese, --and how smoothly she throws that into this sentence, eh?--for those of you enamored with the poetry of our young man Rob at the closing banquet at the Chesterton Conference, a poem devoted to tales of cheese, and hoping to see or read that poem again, I have good news.

A member of our Society has been in direct contact with Rob and has ordered him to send his poem in for publication, which Gilbert magazine will directly publish. If you do not have a membership, which includes a subscription, now is the time for all good men (inclusive) to come to the aid of their Chesterton Society. Join. Read. Eat cheese. Thank you.

Only Chesterton...

"The plumber can find nothing wrong with our piano; so I suppose that my [husband] does love me."--GKC, ILN 9-28-1907

Only Chesterton can use a sentence like that to explain why science cannot explain the fall of man. I hadn't read that line before, Dr. Thursday tipped me off to it. It's a great sentence.

Getting Back to Poet and Lunatics

One of my prize gifts from the ChesterCon07 is this wonderful and helpful book, called G.K. Chesterton: The Critical Judgements. Before I go on discussing Poet & Lunatics, I wanted to see what the reviewers said about the book in its own time.

Here are some excerpts:

Gale, the poet and painter, who is the hero of these tales, often expresses his sense of well-being, and of the sanity of the world, by standing on his head...

Many of these stories deal with men who are mad or on the verge of madness; Gabriel Gale has a sympathy with these unfortunate people, because he knows what has sent them to the verge of beyond, and believes he knows how to bring them back. Gale knows the dangerous moment when a man fancies that he is not a creature, but a god; and in these episodes from his life Mr. Chesterton tells of his adventures in bringing such men to sanity, or discovering their crimes or preventing their excesses.

Gabriel Gale's old friend, Dr. Garth, figures in many of the stories, and is certainly one of the best Watsons ever invented...

I didn't realize Dr. Garth was a Watsonian figure, did you?

June 28th

The love of Chesterton and Blogg, 1901-2007

Today, Thursday, June 28, is a most important day to Chestertonians everywhere. And so we shall again interrupt our attempt to resume some kind of natural flow in our discussion of everything to discuss this most important and wonderful of days - and somehow such things are best discussed here, out in the E-cosmos, on a blogg. (All Chestertonians must spell it thus.)

For, if as some of us hope, one day both Gilbert and Frances are canonised, it might suitably be today rather than June 14, which would serve as their feast day. Yes, for today is their wedding anniverary, when Chesterton and Blogg became one in love and in the sight of God and Man.

(Another time I might comment on how useful that would be: a statue of the two together, books piled at GKC's feet, a pen in his hand, and a cigar in his mouth, but their hands joined and smiles on their faces. Useful, I say, both as a shock, and as an inspiration.)

But for today, let us listen to GKC's biographer, Maisie Ward, recall this loving couple, starting with just a little of our dear Uncle Gilbert's letter to our dear Aunt Frances, telling of how this momentous occasion was brought about...

One pleasant Saturday afternoon Lucian Oldershaw said to GKC, "I am going to take you to see the Bloggs."
"The what?" said the unhappy man.
"The Bloggs," said the other, darkly.
Naturally assuming that it was the name of a public-house GKC reluctantly followed his friend. He came to a small front-garden; if it was a public-house it was not a businesslike one. They raised the latch - they rang the bell (if the bell was not in the close time just then). No flower in the pots winked. No brick grinned. No sign in Heaven or earth warned him. The birds sang on in the trees. He went in.

The first time he spent an evening at the Bloggs there was no one there. That is to say there was a worn but fiery little lady in a grey dress who didn't approve of "catastrophic solutions of social problems." That, he understood, was Mrs. Blogg. There was a long, blonde, smiling young person who seemed to think him quite off his head and who was addressed as Ethel. There were two people whose meaning and status he couldn't imagine, one of whom had a big nose and the other hadn't.... Lastly, there was a Juno-like creature in a tremendous hat who eyed him all the time half wildly, like a shying horse, because he said he was quite happy....

But the second time he went there he was plumped down on a sofa beside a being of whom he had a vague impression that brown hair grew at intervals all down her like a caterpillar. Once in the course of conversation she looked straight at him and he said to himself as plainly as if he had read it in a book: "If I had anything to do with this girl I should go on my knees to her: if I spoke with her she would never deceive me: if I depended on her she would never deny me: if I loved her she would never play with me: if I trusted her she would never go back on me: if I remembered her she would never forget me. I may never see her again. Goodbye." It was all said in a flash: but it was all said.

Some time later he wrote to her:

... It is a mystic and refreshing thought that I shall never understand Bloggs.

That is the truth of it ... that this remarkable family atmosphere ... this temperament with its changing moods and its everlasting will, its divine trust in one's soul and its tremulous speculations as to one's "future," its sensitiveness like a tempered swords vibrating but never broken: its patience that can wait for Eternity and its impatience that cannot wait for tea, its power of bearing huge calamities, and its queer little moods that even those calamities can never overshadow or wipe out: its brusqueness that always pleases and its over-tactfulness that sometimes wounds: its terrific intensity of feeling, that sometimes paralyses the outsider with conversational responsibility its untranslatable humour of courage and poverty and its unfathomed epics of past tragedy and triumph - all this glorious confusion of family traits, which, in no exaggerative sense, make the Gentiles come to your light and the folk of the nations to the brightness of your house - is a thing so utterly outside my own temperamentthat I was formed by nature to admire and not understand it. God made me very simply - as he made a tree or a pig or an oyster to perform certain functions. The best thing he gave me was a perfect and unshakable trust in those I love.

It is well that we laugh in comparing God's making of GKC as he made an oyster, for humour played a role as well:
On his wedding morning, GKC stopped in a local store to buy and drink a glass of milk - which he explained in his autobiography as "a reminiscence of childhood. I stopped at that particular dairy because I had always drunk a glass of milk there when walking with my mother in my infancy. And it seemed to me a fitting ceremonial to unite the two great relations of a man's life." (CW16:44). He also stopped at another store to buy a revolver! He explained that too: "I did not buy the pistol to murder myself - or my wife; I never was really modern. I bought it because it was the great adventure of my youth, with a general notion of protecting her from the pirates doubtless infesting the Norfolk Broads, to which we were bound..." In a letter from that place he began: ""I have a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a knife: what more can any man want on a honeymoon." Of course he was anticipating his dictum in Orthodoxy: "The greatest of poems is an inventory." CW1:267.

Elsewhere, GKC writes about how Man and Woman are:

...two stubborn pieces of iron; if they are to be welded together, it must be while they are red-hot. Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish beast, because every man is a selfish beast by the standard of a woman. But let her find out the beast while they are both still in the story of "Beauty and the Beast". Every man has to find out that his wife is cross - that is to say, sensitive to the point of madness: for every woman is mad by the masculine standard. But let him find out that she is mad while her madness is more worth considering than anyone else's sanity.
[GKC, The Common Man 142-3]

So today let us recall that great day when the "selfish beast" called Gilbert Chesterton married the "madwoman" called Frances Blogg. Though the fruitfulness of their marriage was not to be in merely biological progeny, they have given forth a bountiful harvest in fruits of the spirit: fruits seen in their radical effect on people like their secretary Dorothy Collins, like the Nicholl family, and (more recently) like Aidan, Dale, Stratford, Martin, Frank and Ann Petta, Frances Farrell, Fr. Boyd, Fr. Jaki, Fr. Schall, and vast flocks of younger nieces and nephews. Fruitful, also, in inspiring converts like Joseph Pearce, Dawn Eden, Alec Guiness, and many others.

And thus the work of Gilbert and Frances goes on. What are you waiting for? Come join our family!

God made thee mightily, my love,
He stretched his hands out of his rest
And lit the star of east and west
Brooding o'er darkness like a dove.
God made thee mightily, my love.

God made thee patiently, my sweet,
Out of all stars he chose a star
He made it red with sunset bar
And green with greeting for thy feet.
God made thee mightily, my sweet.
[GKC to FBC CW10:351]

Tomorrow is an important day

It has to do with the marriage of Chesterton and a blogg...no, no, I mean a Blogg. And a birthday. Two birthdays, as it is also my father's birthday, and several other Chestertonians also have birthdays tomorrow.

UPDATE: Somehow the date was wrong on this post, the birthdays are June 28th (but happy birthday to Candlestring's father today!

More About Dawn Eden

I don't feel I did Dawn Eden justice. She was a great inspirational speaker, and what a gorgeous smile. She has one of those smiles that just won't quit, stretching all the way across her face and lighting up the room.

Dawn not only gave a great talk, but she also gave a quite memorable and hilarious toast at the closing banquet. Anyone who was there will never, I don't doubt, be able to hear the word "Bay-o-WOLF!" again without thinking of her wonderful toast and thoughts about drinking mead for the first time.

Dawn's wonderful story about the reading of The Man Who Was Thursday as a young innocent, and it's lasting effect on her as a book about rebellion really was profoundly moving, and also reminds us of how differently different things in Chesterton hit us at times in our lives when we need them.

I was very inspired by Dawn's talk, and hope if you're interested, you'll buy it.

Conference Coverage from a ChesterTeen

Read about it here.

Laughter

Here are Alicia and I proving that we were at the conference. ;-)

I was just telling some relatives over the weekend that one thing I noticed about the Chesterton Conference is that there is a lot of laughter. I told them I laugh more there in one day than at home usually in many weeks. And since laughter is good medicine, I feel the need to tell all of you planning to come next year, that the Chesterton Conference is good for your health. ;-)

Dawn Eden on the Conference

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

We have returned to the tempus per annum which some call "Ordinary Time" because the weeks are marked with ordinals (first, second, seventhy-ninth, ten-thousand-and-twenty-fifth, etc). This remarkable time, which is remarkable just as (for us Chestertonians!) the "common man" is remarkable, offers us the delights of anything and everything which is the one single subject of our interest.

But yes, perhaps I ought to say just a word or two about ChesterCon07 which has just ended - or I should say, has just completed... for it has not truly ended. It is just deferred. Someone has pointed out that these conferences are a tiny foretaste of "the Inn at the End of the World" - the one for which "the Good Wine has been Kept" - those of us who know about scripture remember that this coming banquet wil be a Wedding-Feast, and happy are those who are called to partake. I readily grant that, in our fallen state, we poor weak ones tend to make a mess of things, and even at a ChesterCon will find speed-bumps, and spilled wine or beer (or mead!), or talks we do not like, or talks we disagree with, and even, yes, even people who are bumpy or spilled or disagreeing or disagreeable. This reminds me of a very famous letter from GKC to his fiance:

11 Paternoster Buildings
(postmarked July 8, 1899)
... I am black but comely [See Canticle of Canticles 1:4] at this moment: because the cyclostyle has blacked me. Fear not. I shall wash myself. But I think it my duty to render an accurate account of my physical appearance every time I write: and shall be glad of any advice and assistance....
[GKC to Frances Blogg, quoted in Maisie Ward's Gilbert Keith Chesterton 108]

Hence, let us sincerely be sure to shall wash ourselves (cf. Rv. 7:14) before we get that invitation to the banquet.

So it might be useful for me to draw attention to one small matter.
Continue reading.
At least one speaker mentioned GKC's very important essay titled "If I Only Had One Sermon to Preach" which was printed in The Common Man, presently not in print - but can be found on line, and was also reprinted in On Lying in Bed and other Essays which is available from the ACS. I mention it because it is GKC's solemn sermon on Pride and Humility. I have just learned that the mere mention of GKC's sermon led to its being referred to in an actual sermon preached last Sunday. Clearly it has a very important lesson for all of us. Consider just this one excerpt:

Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making the truth the test. It is not pride to wish to do well, or even to look well, according to a real test. It is pride to think that a thing looks ill, because it does not look like something characteristic of oneself.

Yes, it can be easy to forget, amid all the verbal fireworks, the real reason for our meeting.

But all in all, it was a wonderful conference, and I met many friends there - some old, some new - some unfortunately not yet friends - nevertheless I will indeed pray for all of you, and hope that we shall all meet again, whether at a future ChesterCon, or at the Inn at the End of the World. Please likewise pray for me; I've used the cyclostyle.

Meanwhile, I shall resume my exploration of the books which GKC read, referred to, or commented on, and which are still available.

Today's book is Doré’s Illustrations for Ariosto’s "Orlando Furioso", available through Dover Publications. It is suggested by this quote:

...horse and man together making an image that is to him human and civilised, it will be easy, as it were, to lift horse and man together into something heroic or symbolical; like a vision of St. George in the clouds. The fable of the winged horse will not be wholly unnatural to him: and he will know why Ariosto set many a Christian hero in such an airy saddle, and made him the rider of the sky. For the horse has really been lifted up along with the man in the wildest fashion in the very word we use when we speak “chivalry.”
[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:148]

Ludovico (or Lodovico) Ariosto, (1474-1533) was an Italian poet and dramatist. His best known work is the chivalric epic poem Orlando Furioso, (Roland the Mad) a sequel to Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (Roland in Love); containing 50,000 lines of such things as magic, winged horses, evil Orcs, a trip to the moon on a hippogriff, and Christian knights, it is generally considered the most perfect poetic expression of the Italian Renaissance, and a principal model for Spenser's Faerie Queene.

In Orlando Furioso, the hero travels on a hippogriff, a mythological creature which is part eagle, part horse. There is also a flight to the moon in Elijah's chariot, which is drawn by winged horses. See pages 105 and 113 in the Dover edition. Here are some other suggestive GKC quotes:

The cow jumping over the moon is not only a fancy very suitable to children, it is a theme very worthy of poets. The lunar adventure may appear to some a lunatic adventure; but it is one round which the imagination of man has always revolved; especially the imagination of romantic figures like Ariosto and Cyrano de Bergerac.
[GKC, ILN Oct. 15, 1921 CW32:254]

We speak of the Renaissance as the birth of rationalism; it was in many ways the birth of irrationalism. It is true that the medieval School-men, who had produced the finest logic that the world has ever seen, had in later years produced more logic than the world can ever be expected to stand. They had loaded and lumbered up the world with libraries of mere logic; and some effort was bound to be made to free it from such endless chains of deduction. Therefore, there was in the Renaissance a wild touch of revolt, not against religion but against reason. Thus one of the very greatest of the sixteenth-century giants was almost as much of a nonsense writer as Edward Lear: Rabelais. So another of the very greatest wrote an Orlando Furioso which might sometimes be called Ariosto Furioso.
[GKC Chaucer CW18:328]

Let it be agreed, on the one hand, that the Renaissance poets had in one sense obtained a wider as well as a wilder range. But though they juggled with worlds, they had less real sense of how to balance a world. I am sorry that Chaucer "left half-told the story of Cambuscan bold" and I can imagine that that flying horse might have carried the hero into very golden skies of Greek or Asiatic romance; but I am prepared to agree that he would never have beaten Ariosto in anything like a voyage to the moon. On the other hand, even in Ariosto there is something symbolic, if only accidentally symbolic, in the fact that his poem is less tragic but more frantic than "The Song of Roland"; and deals not with Roland Dead but with Roland Mad.
[ibid CW18:330-331]

100 Years past TMWWT

ht: Joe

"A rather amusing thing was said by Father Knox on this point. He said that he should have regarded the book as entirely pantheist and as preaching that there was good in everything if it had not been for the introduction of the one real anarchist and pessimist. But he was prepared to wager that if [ The Man Who Was Thursday] survives for a hundred years - which it won't - they will say that the real anarchist was put in afterwards by the priests."

This is from Maisie Ward's biography,

Denny was there

and blogs about the experience. Sounds like I missed some great stuff Thursday and Friday.

Thanks for sharing your experiences, Denny, for those who couldn't attend to get a little idea of what it is like, and for those that did, to relive an experience they'll never forget.

Blog Readers who attended the conference...

Please let me know who you are. Leave a message in the comments, leave a link if you have your own blog. I'm just curious to know how many of you attended. Thanks

Today, Please Visit Joe

and read his blogging about the conference.

Back home...

I finished out the conference by attending the "AAA" meeting, "Ask Aidan Anything" to which he immediately told us that wasn't true, as he couldn't be asked to be married, for he already was. Aidan has a great sense of humor, I loved him. I'll talk more about him soon.

During that same time, other people attended a talk on a new Chesterton High School. I'll also tell you more about that soon.

Other people attended a wildly popular session on heraldry, given by Peter Floriani, to high acclaim. Peter has studied these things, and knows a great deal about the symbolism of heraldic shields and such.

There was a fourth session but my memory has just failed me as to what it was.

After that, there was an interesting talk on Chesterton and Marriage, and the speaker, Steve, sat at my table for dinner and was a very interesting person to talk to, despite the fact that he's a lawyer. ;-)

After that, we had Mass in the Chapel, and then the banquet.

The table I sat at, well, I would have loved for it to have about 12 more chairs, as I wanted to sit with everyone I'd met over the weekend. As it was, I sat with Peter Floriani--a PhD computer scientist, David Deavel, some sort of doctoral candidate at Fordam University who writes articles on Harry Potter with his wife, Steve the lawyer, Judy, who has a sacred art gallery in Minneapolis, and Lily, a native of South America living in River Falls, Wisconsin, who also homeschools her children and helps her husband run a family business. An eclectic group, as only Chesterton could gather.

The food was great, but then began the entertainment. First, they had a sort of band, made up of Chestertonians on the guitar, mouth harp, banjo, violin and mandolin. Most of them weren't any good. I suspect the whole thing was done just so that we could be amazed at the talents of the young violinist. She was the daughter of one of the Chestertonians (the banjo player of all things, you would think his daughter would play the dulcimer or something) and although she looked to be about 9 or 10, she could play better than any of them, and didn't appear to need the sheets music as much as the older ones, who squinted dramatically during the performance, I suppose to evoke our sympathy; which it did not. ;-)

There was a very fine reading of a new poem about cheese by Rob, a very talented, and--pay attention young female Chestertonians--handsome writer of amazingly good and funny poetry.

There were more musical things, but then....my cell phone announced that Cinderella had to leave the ball. My children were ready to see their mother again, and be tucked into bed. So, sadly, I had to leave during the middle of it all, without saying goodbye to anyone. Hugs to everyone!

More soon.

Hi-light from Geir

Sigrid Undset --Kristin Lavrenstatter--is a "good cry".

Report from Dr. Thursday

I just checked my e-mail and saw I had this report from Dr. Thursday for the part of the conference I missed:

There are lots of great used books for sale. Very interesting stuff here.

On Thursday night:

1. Dale gave the opening talk on Thursday and GKC - how vital his work is today, even more than when he first wrote.

2. Then GKC himself spoke - (Chuck Chalberg in disguise, who does GKC on the EWTN show) - using The New Jerusalem he told of Islam, of his trip to the Holy Land, and a number of timely comments about this important topic.

Then we sang Happy Birthday to Dale and had cake.

This morning:

1. a talk by this lunatic computer scientist - there were all kinds of technical difficulties - "Science, you see, is NOT infallible!" he told us, quoting GKC. But most of his talk seemed to be about dragons and long words and The Phantom Tollbooth.

2. Due to circumstances, I missed some of this talk, about GKC and jogging past lamp-posts, and how the light from the street lamp gives a clue to GKC's view of reality.

Time is flying, and I must go. Thanks for your prayers...

--Dr. Thursday

Here at ChesterCon07

I'm blogging, right now, this very moment, from the lobby of the Brady Educational Building, where, at this moment, the Chesterton Conference is going on. David Zach and Peter Floriani are having a very deep and serious discussion near me about coffee mugs. Laura Ahlquist is doing the detail work for which she is known. Other people are milling about trying to decide which Chestertonian t-shirt they should buy. The conference t-shirt has the logo of this year's conference on it in bright yellow, very attractive, with the The Man Who Was Thursday quote on the back, "Chaos is dull" in very large print. Nice.

Well, how did I make it? We went to Milwaukee yesterday morning, got to the Lakefront show, and prayed. But we were rejected, so it must be God's plan that I should make it up here. We then drove to Minneapolis and the four of us set up the tent for the Stone Arch art show up here (our backup choice, and one we would have easily cancelled if we had gotten into Lakefront.) Then, Mike and the girls dropped me at the conference.

I immediately came into this lobby, teeming with Chestertonians waiting for dinner. I first met Peter Floriani, who shouted with joy that I was able to come. He and Dale gave me welcome hugs. I hugged Geir, Sean Dailey, and met Beatriz and her brother Alejandro, from Mexico City; Beatriz has been reading this blog and her husband gave her this trip as a birthday present. She and her brother are the first people from Mexico to attend the American Chesterton Society meeting, although her brother lives in McAllen so technically, he's from here, still he was born there. They were introduced to Chesterton by finding a Chesterton book on their father's book shelf many years ago.

I then met David Zach, who's been reading the blog. He's a professional speaker who has some great ideas for Chestertonian coffee mugs, magnets, pins and other ways to make Chesterton more known. He's also been putting Chesterton Conference brochures up in coffee shops across Milwaukee, where he lives, which is wonderful.

Frank and Ann Petta are here. I have yet to meet Aidan Mackey, but plan to attend his talk this afternoon.

Last night, I attended Dawn Eden's talk, and met her. She is tremendously nice, sweet, and although she gets nervous and has a bit of a stutter, she had a great story to tell and told it well. I hope to get to talk more with her today.

But before Dawn's talk, we had a treat. A surprise. Jacinta VanHecke, age 14, recited the first book of The Ballad of the White Horse. I don't know how long it took (15 or 20 minutes) but I was fine until she got to the part where Mary is talking to Alfred, and says,

"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

"Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?"

when I totally teared up and cried. Peter was next to me wiping tears, too. It was really amazing to hear this young lady recite. Wow. She received a well-deserved standing ovation, and lengthy applause.

Then came Joseph Pearce, who is always interesing, mainly because I love accents, and he has a great one. He spoke about his new book Small is Still Beautiful which sounded quite interesting.

This morning, we got up, went over to the art fair, set up all the pictures and got things ready there. Then came back (let the girls sleep a little bit longer), got ready, and they dropped me off here. I regret to say I've already missed the first speech, but I did hear something funny about it from Jaime, who shared breakfast with me.

But I'm terrible at relating funny stories, so I will wait for Jaime to send it to me so I can get the story right. But it had to do with the fact that some thin men do a better job of letting their "fat man" struggle out than others. I think. ;-)

Now, I must get to Geir's talk.

I'm either heading for the conference today...

...or I'm not.

What a life! So uncertain. Everything else is, too, but this seems particularly so.

Meanwhile, check out what's happening today here.

I can't remember...

who said they'd be blogging from the conference. If you are, let us know and send me your blog's link.

Thanks.

Meanwhile, if you seach Google under "Blogs" and put in "Chesterton Conference 2007" you get some great links to people planning on going, planning on speaking, or planning on buying the tapes. If you can't go, you can get a taste of it this way.

This report in from Dr. Thursday...

Once again I am on the campus of the University of St. Thomas - on a Thursday, in the Year Who Was Thursday - just before the beginning of ChesterCon07.

Geir Hasnes is here, typing away on another terminal.

Aidan Mackey is here - he was looking for a cup of tea.

Joseph Pearce is on campus; I understand he is giving a talk to another organisation.

Luke Seaber is here; he had just finished checking his own e-mail.

Dale and the Ahlquists (G.K.'s back-up band) will be here shortly to set up and begin the excitement.

It is rather warm, but the sky is blue, and in the distance I can hear a street organ playing. (Well, if it isn't, there should be.) It gives an excitement which is not like any other....

For those of us not there....don't you wish you were there?

Across the Nation, they travel...

...ready to converge at St. Thomas University in St. Paul.

Let us pray for safe journeys. I hope to see you there. You can pray for that, too ;-)

Let ChesterCon07 begin!

NYTimes quotes Chesterton

Here.

Neat Coincidence Discovered by Chestertonian Detective Joe

H/T: Joe

This past Thursday, I had a little epiphany about the significance this year of the liturgical calendar as it lines up with the Conference schedule. It's a neat little coincidence, you might want to say something about on the ACS blog. I posted my own reflection on my own site: http://joegrabowski.blogspot.com/

The oddity is this: that Chesterton died on June 14, the Sunday in the Octave of Corpus Christi (a Thursday in England); and the conference will begin June 14, a Thursday withing the Octave of Corpus Christi (which we celebrate today, Sunday.)

I can imagine GKC and Aquinas having quite a chuckle together over the fittingness of it all: and when the conference itself is all about the relations between Thursday and Sunday!

My Other Life

As some of you know, and probably most of you don't know, I've written a book. And it's coming out soon. It's about Harry Potter.

Now many of you might think this has nothing to do with Chesterton, but it does. A lot.

Besides the fact that Chesterton reading helped me figure out the whole Harry Potter story, I also managed to sneak in a whole bunch of Chesterton into the book. Namely, comparing the battle for good over evil in the Harry Potter series to the battle of Lepanto.

Wow, you probably think that's quite a stretch, and you're scratching your head wondering how I came up with such an idea, right?

Well, I was writing my book months ago, looking for some theme or idea I could connect to every chapter; a running bit, if you will. For whatever reason, I looked down, and I happened to have my Lepanto t-shirt on that day. The back of the shirt has the lines, "Dim drums throbbing on the hills half heard..." and suddenly, it all dawned on me.

There were times I thought I couldn't make it work, times my editor thought I was nuts to try it (before he read it and saw what I did with it), but ultimately, I think it's cool, if I do say so myself. At the very least, I hope to introduce Chesterton to a whole lot of new readers.

So, if you're interested, you can find out more about this book here.

Not About Me, but...

This blog is not about me, but I wanted to fill you in on something.

I *was* going to speak at the Chesterton Conference. I was going to do a great job speaking about Frances Chesterton.

But...

My husband became a full time artist about 18 months ago when his "real" job laid him and about 4,000 others off.

Yes, so anyway, the weekend of the conference: I wanted to attend, and planned to attend. But, there's this art show in Milwaukee, a big one. Lakefront Festival of the Arts. One of the top ten shows in the nation. We're on the wait list for it. And we could get called as late as the Friday morning before the show. The Friday, yes, that I was supposed to speak.

If we don't get into Lakefront, our backup show is Stone Arch, which, if you're from the Twin Cities area, you know, is in the Twin Cities. I *could* still show up at the conference Saturday, but it is totally all up in the air.

Peter Floriani will be speaking in my place, and I know he'll give a great talk, so attend that for sure.

Still hoping to see you there....

Nancy

Uncle Dr. Thursday

Strong Meat

I am quite busy just now, both with my usual employment, and with preparations for ChesterCon07. So I shall not write today, but rather give you a piece of "strong meat" from the pen of GKC. It is quite a bit different in tone - and you may find it surprising, or even shocking. You may be inspired to comment, or to prepare a talk for a future ChesterCon. It is good to recall such things, because we must always remember our dear Uncle Gilbert wielded a mighty weapon - his pen - in defence of truth and good and light.

We are called to that same war - for those of us who are baptised, we are vowed to it!

Please pray for me and all Chestertonians who will meet in St. Paul next week. I hope to report as I find time to do so.

Paradoxically yours,
Uncle Thursday.

Suppose we were at war, like the Children of Israel, with a Phoenician State vowed to the worship of Moloch, and practising infanticide by flinging babies into the fire. If we used strong words about smiting such enemies hip and thigh, I think it would be unreasonable in essence, though it might sound reasonable in form, for some sage to say to us: "Are there no good Phoenicians? Do not Phoenician widows mourn for their warriors? Is it probable that even Phoenician mothers are born without any motherly instincts?" The answer is that all this misses the main fact; which is a very extraordinary fact. The wonder is not that some Phoenician mothers love their babies, but that most Phoenician mothers burn their babies. That some mothers revolt against it is most probable; that many mothers have so many feelings urging them to revolt against it is almost certain. But Moloch is stronger than the mothers - that is the prodigious fact for the spectator, and the practical menace for the world. When Moloch's image is fallen, and his Land laid waste; when his worship has passed into history and remains only as a riddle of humanity - then indeed it may be well worth while to analyse the mixed motives, to reconstruct in romance or criticism the inconsistencies of cruelty and kindness. But Moloch is not fallen; Moloch is in his high place, and his furnaces consume mankind; his armies overrun the earth, and his ships threaten our own island. The question on the lips of any living man is not whether some who burn their children may nevertheless love their children, it is whether those who burn their children shall conquer those who don't. The parallel is practically quite justifiable; what we are fighting has all the regularity of a horrible religion. We are not at war with regrettable incidents or sad exceptions, but with a system like the system of sacrificing babies; a system of drowning neutrals, a system of enslaving civilians, a system of attacking hospital services, a system of exterminating chivalry. We do not say there are no exceptions; on the contrary, we say there are exceptions: it is our whole point that they are exceptions. But it is an almost creepy kind of frivolity that we should be speculating on the good exceptions at a moment when we ourselves are in peril of falling under the evil rule.
[GKC, ILN July 20 1918 CW31:333-334]

Home Brew Report

From Chestertonian:

here is some news on my homebrew: I bottled it a week ago, Thursday, May 24, finally finishing the arduous chore at 1 a.m. the following morning. It is yellow-orange in color and will be about 4 to 5 percent alcohol by volume. Homebrew is flat up to this point. When yeast reacts with fermentable sugars in the wort, it gives off alcohol and carbon dioxide. All the carbon dioxide is allowed to escape during the first and secondary fermentations by means of an airlock that you affix to the fermenters.

The carbonation takes place in the bottles (or in the keg, if you keg your beer). Just prior to bottling, you add "priming sugar" to the fermented, flat beer by removing a small portion, boiling it with the sugar for about 15 minutes to let the sugar dissolve and also to kill any impurities that may be in the sugar. Then you add the solution back to the rest of the beer, mixing it well. This disolved priming sugar initiates another fermemtation with yeast still in suspension in the beer and once you seal the beer in bottles, it carbonates, or "conditions." Bottle conditioning is still used by smaller, craft brewers to carbonate their beer (most notably, Sierra Nevada of California and Bell's Beer of Michigan). Bottle conditioning leaves a small layer of sedimented yeast at the bottom of each bottle. This is especially evident with Bell's.

This makes homebrew especially healthy, as yeast is an excellent source of vitamin B complex (attention ladies!).

It takes roughly three weeks of conditioning for beer to be ready to drink. I tried one last night after just a week and, while it was definitely carbonated, it was still very rough, needing more time to round itself out.

Interesting report, Chestertonian. I hope some folks here will get to try this brew when they come to the conference.

Padre Brown: Detective

Ht: David Zach

Dress Code at a Chesterton Conference

I had an e-mail asking about dress code at the conference. Some folks who've never attended wondering if they need to rent tuxes or bring the burmuda shorts.

During the conference itself, people are everything from casual, to business casual, to suit and tie. It depends on what you are comfortable wearing while sitting in an auditorium for hours listening to exciting speakers. Most people dress modestly and tend toward the business casual, keeping in mind that it can get quite warm inside the hall where there are books, and quite cool in the auditorium itself. I usually dress lightly, and bring a sweater or light jacket to put on in the auditorium, which I find is usually quite cool.

For the closing banquet, however, most people dress up. Suits and dresses seem to be the norm there.

If I've left any information out or missed anything, people who've attended, please chime in and help me out.

Chesterton: Lewis to the Zillionth Power

"There's a lot of Eastern stuff that gets taught to you as an actor, relaxation techniques and so on. I began reading about Buddhism, and it was great, but when I picked up Christian writers, I found that they take it to another level. I always felt that Eastern spirituality goes in a circle, whereas Christianity breaks through it -- like a Cross, infinity in both directions."

Concretely, Dobbins said the books of C.S. Lewis were his point of departure, but what sealed the deal was reading Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton -- whose work Dobbins described as "Lewis to the zillionth power."