Good for GKC

The story is told of GK Chesterton delivering proofs, late, to his editor. The office was deserted, with just one person, from the accounts department, to take delivery of the great man's work. When Chesterton produced from his bag not only his corrected pages but a bottle of port and a glass, the terrified clerk confessed he was teetotal. 'Good heavens,' Chesterton squeaked in dismay. 'Give me back my proofs!'

Yes we remember

As I was going through some of the old war photos of my Dad’s I was struck by the obvious fact that these soldiers were just boys. Or rather they were in that space between boy and man. I also read the letters he sent home to Mom in hopes to find some insight on battles and life on the front but what I found was a series of love letters with no mention of war at all. Then again the war was, at its heart, about love - love of liberty and freedom, love of hearth and home.


“A real soldier does not fight because he has something that he hates in front of him. He fights because he has something that he loves behind his back.”
G. K.C.


A good read for this weekend.

Katy Bar the Door

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
-- G K Chesterton, Illustrated London News (April 19, 1930)

The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.
-- G K Chesterton, Illustrated London News (October 28, 1922)


I find the recent ruling by the California Supreme court that same sex couples have a “right” to marry interesting on several levels; first they are telling us that our votes don’t matter - that pesky will of the people thing is soooo 10 min. ago. Secondly San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told us that, "As California goes, so goes the nation." But where are they going? Does it mean we are all going down the drain? Does that mean that from now on the minority rules? Is this the ideal future ACLU, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and the Gay Mafia want us to attain? Is this making things better?

Money buys power, power buys influence, influence drives the society toward what ever end money wants and our kid’s future required reading list will now include Heather Has Two Mommies.

The question remains for us now as it did for Chesterton’s time, can this train be stopped and turned and who will stop it? The answer to this lies within the Catholic Church and the who is us.

As Uncle Gilbert tells us:
"Everyone is interested in making things better. But what does "better" mean? Nature cannot answer this question, for nature accepts things as they are without making value judgments. Nor does the mere passage of time guarantee progress. Any meaningful sense of progress must come from a definite vision of how things should be, a point toward which we can move . . . A belief in the inevitability of progress is the best reason not to be progressive. For in that case we need do nothing at all. The best reason for being progressive is that things tend to get worse . . . Christianity answers these three challenges of progress. 1. It fixed the ideal before the foundation of the world. 2. It can give us the complex picture of life toward which we should move. 3. And its doctrine of original sin alerts us to the need to work toward that ideal."

It has been said that the first millennium belonged to the Bishops, the second belonged to the Popes and the third belongs to the laity. It is up to us to say enough! And preach the Good News for as Cicero said, (I know he has been quoted many times whenever something stupid like this happens but truth is still truth - in or out of fashion).

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the carrier of the plague. You have unbarred the gates of Rome to him."

let's kick him out and bar the door, because this is what is next.

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?