Roy, Gilbert!, and GKC

Roy F. Moore, Gilbert Magazine, and GKC in The Phoenix yesterday:

“Ever get that feeling like you just kicked Lucifer in the face and got away with it?!” Roy F. Moore of Woburn grimaces in triumph against the broad afternoon light. “That’s the feeling I get from that movie.”

We’re outside the Fresh Pond 10 — most desolate of Cambridge’s multi-screens, wedged in the southeast corner of the Fresh Pond Mall between a boarded-up acupuncture center and the railroad track. It’s one of the four places in Massachusetts where you can see the anti-Darwin documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It was just the two of us in the theater, and having observed the affirmative nature of Mr. Moore’s reactions — his gasps, guffaws, fist-shakings, and signs-of-the-cross — I introduced myself. Mr. Moore (somewhat unexpectedly) is a columnist for Gilbert Magazine, the official publication of the American Chesterton Society, so we talk about that roly-poly old Catholic apologist G.K. Chesterton. We talk about the Tridentine Mass, and punk rock, and Mr. Moore quotes approvingly from the Dead Kennedys’ “A Child and His Lawnmower”: “You know some people don’t take no sh!t/Maybe if they did, they’d have half a brain left!” And we talk about Ben Stein.

Margaret Sanger clerihew

Margret Sanger
Eugenicist haranguer
Thought with certain groups it would be good
To strongly “encourage” Planned Barrenhood.

Dont want to mention here.......

.......but its bugging me to see just how poor Hilary Clinton's (aka Lady McBeth) rhetoric is.

The whole thing with Hilary being the most qualified to take the 3 am phone call in particular just leaves me dumbfounded.

If Hilary got the call, I have no doubt that no decision would be made until dawn, her first communications are going to be to her media relations staff, her pollsters, and probably some attorneys. I do trust Obama to take action, albeit action I would likely disagree with. McCain? Well for gosh sakes, most men his age are up at that time to use the bathroom anyhow, so he would probably be the freshest to take the call.

Have a great week!!

Helen Steiner Rice Clerihew

Critics of Helen Steiner Rice
say her poems are just too sweet and nice.
But I suspect those poems will be read
long after those critics are dead.

Super Duper

There has been a lot of talk these days about Super Delegates. A concept I pretty much found amusing- you know a group of politicians creating a legal program to ignore the wishes of the people, (like the witches in Macbeth). It is not that they think the people ignorant it’s just that you and I don’t know what’s good for us. The other thing that has sparked my interest in that group is that I have a Super Delegate living close by me, her name is Enid Goubeaux. I have seen her at the grocery store! Now really how cool is that.

Anyway, the popular vote in the Democratic primary of Ohio went to the Madonna loving Hillary but Enid has cast her support for Barack Hussein Obama.
Because:

“I am endorsing Sen. Obama because his message, ‘yes we can’ has inspired so many voters, especially younger voters, to take part in shaping our country's future.

“I believe that Sen. Obama will end politics as usual which divides the nation and prevents us from confronting our most serious problems.”

With well thought out, reasoned and insightful comments like those she certainly has shown others the error of their voting.

Reminds me of the story of a boy coming home and announcing that he is going to major in philosophy. His father asks, “What are you going to do with that?”
The boy answers “Open up a shop and sell ideas.”

Barack supporters opened a shop and are selling platitudes and people are buying.

Chesterton Conference

The latest issue of Gilbert reminds me of a sad reality,

The back cover has an ad promoting the 27th Annual G.K. Chesterton Conference, June 12-14.

In red.

So you can't miss it.

Alas, I will miss it. Again.

You see, every year they schedule these conferences for June.

I am a principal and a teacher.

June is final exams and graduation.

I'd have a hard time justifying to the trustees suddenly taking off for four days or so right in the midst of all that.

A death in the family. Surgery. Okay. But I only have so many relatives and body parts I could use as an excuse.

("How many grandmothers do you have?")

Uncle Gilbert .... Hmm.

Anyway, once again, I can't be there.

It would be nice if the organizers could occasionally rotate the date. I realize that consistency is nice, and that no matter when they scheduled it someone would be inconvenienced. But it would be nice if we educators could catch a break once in a while.

And I don't want to wait until I retire. Some of my fundamentalist friends tell me the Rapture will happen before then. Should they be right, I suspect most of the regular conference attendees will get called home, cancelling the conference anyway.

So have fun everyone. I'll be thinking of you as I grade exams and fill in report cards.

One question for organizers - should any of you visit this site.

I have been known to scribble clerihews. I know there is an annual contest at the conference. Do you have to be there to enter? Or can you e-mail entries in? Or send them along with someone who is attending?

Tonight......

For those of you on night shift, or tend to be owls. Br. Guy Consolmagno, of the Vatican Observatory, is going to be on Coast to Coast AM tonight.

.......and some of us have ugly sisters

Title is regarding that post about nature. The following may be of interest to homeschoolers, or anybody interested in science. The technical issues involved here are impressive. Other than that, little connection to Chesterton besides that Chesterton is cool, and so are GIANT SQUID.

A Sister’s Surprise

“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.”

Within every small town or neighborhood where there is tillable dirt you will find a lady whose garden is the envy of all others. A garden where people slow down as they drive by to look at or walk the long way home so they can stroll pass her flowers. This lady is always generous with giving or trading cuttings and bulbs. She will always listen to your garden stories and advise when necessary. She has dirt under her nails all summer dancing with her “younger sister.

In our town that lady is my wife.

She has set it up so that every two weeks or so the garden changes color. Slow waves of yellow to purple to blue to red back to yellow then burnt orange and gold all moving within an undercurrent of all the hues of green. She knows all the names of the flowers both the common and the Latin. She can do this whether the plant is in full bloom or just a half inch out of the ground. When she and I wander around the garden in summer I ask her to tell me the Latin names of each one we pass. Not that I have forgotten from the last time she told me it is just that to hear the sound of Latin spoken in a soft Kentucky accent is beautifully lyrical. It is the voice of angels or at least the voice of the elves of Arda.

My function in this garden is to do the heavy lifting and provide patience. The later is most important this time of year. This past weekend as I was turning and adding compost to some dirt for our beets and lettuce she exclaimed, “I want to uncover the beds!”

“It is to soon. Next week will be safer.” I tell her and she knows I’m right.

So she walked around behind me and gentling moved away some leaf matter to take a peek. “Daisys?” she wondered “What are they doing over here? I thought I had those contained.”

I laughed and told her, “You can’t contain daisy’s.” and then said, “It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.’ Do it again He says and our sister obeys. A nice surprise for us huh? ”

Oh yea the garden is also a place I can quote Chesterton where my wife does not roll her eyes at me.