Alice's Restaurant - Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving Thoughts From Chesterton

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.


There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.


The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.


When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.


You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.


When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

Scarlet Letter Clerihews

While it's true Hester Prynne
committed a serious sin
the Reverend Dimmesdale
was guilty of the greater fail.

Roger Chillingworth
thought he'd reserved a berth,
then vengefully sought to save face
when someone usurped his place.

The vices of ISIS (clerihew)

One of the aims of ISIS
is eradicating Western sins and vices,
except, of course, for a select few
that they themselves like to do.

Putin-Rasputin - sure as shootin' (clerihew)

There are rumors that Vladimir Putin
somehow has ties to Rasputin.
So it makes sense his followers shiver
when Vlad takes a dip in a river.

A new Chesterton Academy

St. John Bosco Schools in Rochester (East Rochester, actually) NY has announced plans to expand next year, adding a ninth grade and calling the high school program Chesterton Academy.

The school currently offers a traditional curriculum - none of the common core nonsense - in an orthodox Catholic environment. The high school program will be more of the same.

This is an exciting development. It could even inspire me to leave my current job if they need to hire any new teachers.

I already have Chesterton Academy sweatshirt from the Chesterton Society!

The following quote is now my standard answer to the Chesterton critics that have never actually read Chesterton, (it's called the The Dunning Kruger Effect )

"...the dumber you are, the more confident you are that you’re not actually dumb. And when you get invested in being aggressively dumb…well, the last thing you want to encounter are experts who disagree with you, and so you dismiss them in order to maintain your unreasonably high opinion of yourself. "

The above came from The Death of Expertise and is worth a read it can be found here.