Chestertonian Blogs

After quitting my job as a school teacher in 2010 to become a full-time organic farmer, I was left with a dilemma. I was quite certain that I could grow high quality produce, but what was I going to do with it?

One of the great myths of the subprime mortgage bubble was that it was brought about because of government regulation. Most of that activity was refinancing existing mortgages or home equity mortgages, and most was done in a way that was almost entirely unregulated.

What was I thinking?!?
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation apologized for cutting off funding from Planned Parenthood.
Yes that's right APOLOGIZED.
"Screw the facts, the statistics, and screw the body count. We are sorry. Please continue to send your money don't worry about how we spend it. And we really need to be loved by Mayor Bloomberg and his friends. Really we won't make the mistake of being right again."

And so it begins: The Komen Foundation no longer is sending money to Planned Parenthood. Of course they are not doing this because of the documented connection between breast cancer and abortion or that PP does not provide mammograms, which Komen admits, but because PP is under investagation for financial misconduct. (Shocked I say Shocked!) A spokeswoman for the the Komen Foundation, Leslie Aun, explained that the cutoff was a result of the charity's newly-adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state, or federal authorities.They need that rule because common sense is too diiiiiiifficult to understand.

There's a lot going on, as usual, and of course I'm spending a lot of time in late December of 2016 so I can't pay a lot of attention to what most of you call the "present" - but hopefully that will be done soon.

I'm also getting to play with some very interesting mathematics, which involves the solution of intersecting hyperbolae. It's a delight since it seems to unite in one place all of computer science, mathematics, and literature - what DOES the Doctor mean by intersecting hyperbolae anyway? A sort of star-crossed exaggeration? Hee hee! More on that soon, maybe - it has some very cool diagrams, and the math is fun - so I hope I can give you the proper lit'ry effect too.

But there was another little project which loomed up in my thought, since someone (I forget where, maybe at Love-to-Learn) was trying to collect titles of books for young people to read. This is a good idea, and I think I ought to try to do that myself.

So, while I have a brief moment, I will give you some of the titles I would recommend for inclusion in any good library.

Hmm, hmm, a difficult topic... there are so many good books. Well, let's start with the obvious ones, and we can always come back. I will put them into order by title so there won't be any debate about silly things like rank. Not all orders are TOTAL orders, and there are relations which aren't orders at all... but we must not get technical about that here, Doctor. aHEM! All right.

Admiral of Ocean Sea by Morison
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Carroll
Around the World in 80 Days by Verne
Ben-Hur by Wallace
The Brave Little Toaster by Disch (and its sequel, The Brave Little Toaster Goes To Mars)
A Christmas Carol by Dickens
The Dawn of All by Benson
The Everlasting Man by Chesterton (the cover of my paperback copy says: "More thrilling than any novel"!)
Ex-Cub Fitzie by Boyton
Father Brown stories by Chesterton
From the Earth to the Moon by Verne (it has a sequel too)
The Haunted Bookstore by Morley (and its prequel, Parnassus on Wheels)
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Verne
Kim by Kipling (also The Jungle Books)
Life of Christ by Ricciotti (and his History of Israel, Acts of the Apostles, Life of St. Paul, The Age of Martyrs)
Little Women by Alcott (and sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys)
The Lord of the World by Benson
The Mad Scientists' Club by Brinley (also their New Adventures, The Big Kerplop! and The Big Chunk of Ice)
The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton
Manalive by Chesterton
The Miracle of the Bells by Janney
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by Chesterton
The Neverending Story by Ende
The Nine Tailors by Sayers (and the other Lord Peter stories)
Orthodoxy by Chesterton
The Phantom Tollbooth by Juster
Robinson Crusoe by Defoe
Secret Agents Four by Sobol
Sherlock Holmes stories by Doyle
Sinbad and Me by Kin Platt
Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss
The Thirty-Nine Steps by Buchan
Treasure Island by Stevenson
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Verne (and The Mysterious Island which is a sort of sequel)
Who Is Bugs Potter? by Korman (and many of his other works)

All right, whoa! That's almost 50, quite enough for a start. Yeah, there are a couple non-fiction titles in there, but they're excellent and ought not be neglected. You can also add the books of the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Tom Swift series, and the dozen or so in the "Danny Dunn" series.

(There are also the Nero Wolfe mysteries, and those by John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie, and others of the great age of detective fiction, and others like the adventures of Alistair MacLean, though I hesitate to glob all those together; these require some discrimination - yet I should mention their names.)

Though some of these are a bit dated, they are all worth reading. (Yes, I have intentionally omitted Tolkien, but I have no time to elaborate on that today. The same with Wells.) Eventually I ought to do reviews, or at least add something to explain a little about their importance, but I can't do that today either. And maybe eventually I will provide a list of essential Reference Works.

Oh yes, one more item. If it was actually available, I would mention that huge thing the author calls the "Saga" - De Bellis Stellarum, but... oh, yeah, that's by me. Oh my. Maybe it will be done soon, and MAYBE some part of it will appear in some real, regular place where it can be bought! See, if I wasn't spending time writing this, I could be writing that. I'm not like Caesar or Aquinas or Chesterton who could write multiple productions at once. Wow, like textual counterpoint, or a verbal fugue, maybe? Intense! No, though I do come kinda close with my code generation, but (ahem) I'm not supposed to reveal such szekrets on a blogg. This will attract spies.

And if you would like to read some additional discussion about this topic, you can go here.

The ends of Dickens and Capra are the same. They are both opposed to the errors of the economists, to the rabid individualism and "enlightened" self-interest which supposedly make society better, but in reality produce the family under the bridge.

One can certainly find a nearly universal practical neglect of the question of usury, but one looks in vain to find that the Church ever retracted, abrogated, or substantially altered her teaching on usury.

Those in the red caps is our group

It’s been said that the reason the Government Media Complex does not cover the March for Life is that, “Since it happens each year it is not news.” I would like purpose that since it does happen every year makes it news.” and here is another good reason why they stay away. Also the numbers that go is growing. Last year it was estimated that 400,000 people were there this year they are saying it is close to a half million. I don't know if that is true but I do know that we filled our bus this year and when we tried to take a break at a truck stop outside of DC we were told that there was no room for our bus. None of that has happened before.

I took my youth group to The March for Life in DC again this year. Yes it rained, it was cold, and we were tired from the red eye bus trip, but they knew why they were there why they had to be there. A couple of my kids smiled when one of the politicians said, "If only we had a republican president and control over both houses we could end this!" These kids knew the history. We had that and still nothing was done. Most of the Marchers know that the ruling class has no intention of seriously battling Planned Parenthood, NARAL and the like, they are learning what Chesterton meant when he said “....Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.” It is easy to feel discouraged and that the situation won't change. However many of us are encouraged. We can't expect someone else to do the heavy lifting for us anymore. Maybe this is an inadvertent positive change the current occupant gave us.

When he says stuff like this, “I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose and this fundamental constitutional right.” we know he is full of crap.

Solidarism, as Pesch intends, is the understanding that man is an individual person and a member of the community. For Pesch, man is not solely an individual and not only a cog in a machine; he is the composite or an integration of the two.

New Year'sby Dana Gioia
Let other mornings honor the miraculous.Eternity has festivals enough.This is the feast of our mortality,The most mundane and human holiday.
On other days we misinterpret time,Pretending that we live the present moment.But can this blur, this smudgy in-between,This tiny fissure where the future drips
Into the past, this flyspeck we call nowBe our true habitat? The present isThe leaky palm of water that we skimFrom the swift, silent river slipping by.
The new year always brings us what we wantSimply by bringing us along—to seeA calendar with every day uncrossed,A field of snow without a single footprint.

I was reading a recently published collection of the best Chesterton essays when I thought of a local Chinese restaurant.
I wasn't thinking of Chesterton's dining habits. Indeed, I have doubts that Chesterton ever ate what we think of as Chinese food - though I don't know that for certain. Maybe he did enjoy an egg roll or some chow mein at some point.
The restaurant in question serves meals, but the bulk of its business is its buffet. It has four rows of various Chinese and non-Chinese foods - pizza?? - with heated pans and heat lights. Most diners just grab plates and wander up and down the rows taking a little bit of this and a little bit of that, though there are always some individuals who grab a lot of this and a lot of that until their plates are piled so high one wonders how much of the food will actually make it to their tables.
Once while eating in this restaurant I began to reflect on differing styles of enjoying a buffet of this sort. I observed some people who would go to one row, fill their plates from that row only, and then head back to their seats to eat. When they finished their first plate they would then go back and load up from the second row, and so on, in order until they had visited each row. Did some of them methodically take a little bit of everything? Perhaps.
Then there are those who circulated among the rows, taking this from this row and that from that row. When they went back, they continued the pattern. Perhaps they had favorites and only ate those foods. Perhaps they were afraid to try new things. Or perhaps they were like me, vegetarians who avoid meat dishes.
Recalling this restaurant got me to musing about reading styles when approaching collections of any sort.
There are some people who seem to enjoy by sampling pieces in various sections of the book. Perhaps they seek out particular topics or writers, or maybe they just trust to luck and read whatever they come to that captures their interest.
There are some collections that lend themselves to this sort of sampling.
Then there are those people who methodically work their way through the collection from preface to index.
There are some collections that lend themselves to this approach.
Both methods have their pluses and minuses.
The sampling method ensures that one will enjoy what one reads for such readers tend to gravitate toward those things for which they already have an interest.
But in doing so, such readers might miss out on gems that just didn't happen to catch their attention.
The methodical readers take in everything the collection contains, good and bad, and thus might have a complete understanding of the organizing principle behind the collection, and along the way perhaps discover unknown treasures and nuggets of information they might otherwise never have encountered.
On the other hand, they might also run into a patch of less interesting pieces that might lead them to stop reading.
When it comes to Chesterton, either approach is acceptable. You can just plunge in and sample as the spirit moves you. Or you can work your way through from beginning to end, knowing that because it is Chesterton there won't be any less interesting pieces to get you questioning whether or not to go on.
When it comes to the restaurant - and many collections - I tend to be a sampler.
With this collection of Chesterton, I'm going the cover-to-cover route.
Either way works well when accompanied by a nice cup of tea.

I've been busy with school work - and the sickness that now has me on antibiotics. But I did manage to squeeze in some good reading.
First up was Exiles, by Ron Hansen, and interesting account of Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins and the five nuns that became the inspiration for his poem, "The Wreck of the Deutschland." I've always enjoyed historical "fiction," and this gave me some insights into his life. Good read.

I also just finished (while sitting in the doctor's waiting room) The Man Who Invented Christmas, by Les Standiford. It's an account of Dickens' writing A Christmas Carol, and the effects it had on his career and how the book helped to revive the celebration of Christmas. Also a good read - especially for fans of Dickens and Christmas (like me).
Two thumbs up.
Now, back to those Chesterton essays.

John Médaille fait ainsi ressortir le fait que le capitalisme libéral et le libre marché sont… incompatibles. Selon lui, en effet, l’histoire montre que la croissance du capitalisme et du gouvernement vont de pairs.

Although most people focus on dissent from dogmatic truths and in certain areas of moral theology, such as contraception or abortion, the social doctrine of the Church is another area in which Catholics have failed to espouse the Church's teaching.

Since both Distributism and Capitalism operate on the basis of private ownership of productive capital, we need to look beyond this one common root and realize that neither of these economic systems is wholly defined by it.

Just as our grandfathers once faced hard choices, let us be remembered as the men and women who resurrected the economy of “many small places and many local heroes.”

Many people today are worried, justifiably, about major devastating events that could seriously alter our way of life. Yet, intertwined with those legitimate fears are vehicles that may or may not be legitimate, which do little more than stoke fear or evoke a collective sense of worry, unsubstantiated by the facts.

Announcing:

De Bellis Stellarum
A multi-part Saga
by Dr. Thursday

"It is between light and darkness, and everyone must choose his side."
-- the last words of G. K. Chesterton.
[Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 650]


On a cold day in November of 1845, a young engineer named John Fisher, an English-born descendent of Catholic recusants and now an American citizen, rescued a young woman from a collapsing bridge. Five years later, he chanced to encounter the formation of a great power of evil - and he swore he would do anything in his power to fight that rising darkness. His plans were laid, and over the next century and a half, the Battle of Light and Darkness went on.

And so - as the 21st century began, and the last of those entrusted with Fisher's Plan died, the responsibility for the Battle fell upon a handful of young men.

These went through a series of amazing adventures, culminating in the re-founding of an ancient order of chivalry, the restoration of a stolen and long-hidden treasure, and an unbelievable journey with an even more unbelievable companion to resolve a war that reached beyond our world.

Are you interested yet?

Well - stay tuned for more information. The Knights will come again.


* * *

I am sure you are wondering why I wrote this now, and not give a link to Amazon or at least to Loome Books. (Gulp!) It's to remind me of what's at stake, as I am about to embark on the most critical episode of the Saga, and I need your prayers if it's to be completed. And yes, I hope to arrange to have some part of it available in the near future - God willing.

Because, as Mark Weaver told his brothers, "Someone has to do the hard jobs."

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, that is. Born this day in 1892. Coincidentally, I just finished reading The Hobbit in the wee hours of this morning. I rang in his birthday in style, without even knowing it. Join me in toasting him at 9:00 pm, with the traditional toast of the J.R.R. Tolkien society: "The professor!" Tim Jones

Although Tito broke with the USSR and although his score of, for example, priests put to death and students imprisoned is not as high as those of other Communist dictators, this does not make him a leader to admire.