FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

The annual first day of school ritual came on us this year with added significance. The last of our children would start school today. This would leave my wife alone, all day, for the first time in eleven years. We both had that 'oh my god we have no more babies' look on our face. We tried not to let it show, because this was their day. We went about our routine with the parental mask of joy loosely strapped to our heads.


My wife was tying and untying my youngest pigtails working to get them just right while my daughter was trying, unsuccessfully, not to fidget. I was making a big breakfast of eggs, homemade biscuits, and slices of honey dew melon. I did this knowing all but mine would go partially uneaten.


My oldest daughter was being very cool, this being her fifth first day. Cool or not, she still was up before dawn and dressed when we got down stairs. In about a month we will need a bullhorn to rouse her from bed. She helped me set the table and put a chewable vitamin next to each plate carefully choosing who got which cartoon character. I got the rabbit. My son followed her around and switched them all just too annoy her. His clip-on tie had come undone and held on only by the tie clasp, it was hanging down and out like a cows tongue.

"Fix your tie, put your shoes on and leave your sister alone.", I said trying not to sound agitated. My peaceful summer mornings were officially at an end. He went off to another room and began to bounce a ball; I told him to stop that too.

The thinly veiled excitement was building to a level that our cats, Gladys and Bob were getting skittish. I put them out.

The pig tales were now just right and tied with yellow ribbons. My wife had to convince my youngest that 'no, she could not wear makeup. That almost brought on tears form the both of them but for very different reasons. We made a deal with her; no makeup but she could bring her stuffed monkey to school. She agreed with the deal. I only had to break up one other fight before it was time to leave and wait for the bus.

In the semidarkness, by our front door, we took pictures of the children in their uniforms. They were holding onto their lunch boxes, but losing their grips on their composure. We took a few more snapshots by the stone wall they "helped" me build and a few by the garden with the sun flowers looming over them. I wanted to take a few more but the kids told us to stop.

We waited for the bus by the edge of the road. My wife and I took turns holding our 'baby', (holding back time) until she squirmed down from us to stand with the "big" kids. My son silently slipped his hand into mine. My eldest was holding Bob while Gladys did figure eights around our legs. The bus was due any minute. We fell into silence as we all stared down the street watching the other cars pass by. We could just see the bus rounding the corner and I told my wife to ready the camera to get the picture of them bordering the bus.

She knew the routine and told me so.


The bus was just one stop away when we heard a sound similar to dropping a basketball that lacks air. Out of the corner of my eye there was a black and white blur. Gladys got hit and was now fifteen feet down the road. I thought I was the only one to see it but our baby saw it to and screamed. She started to run for the cat and I told her to stay with her mother. Our eldest was working very hard not to cry. My son kept looking at my wife and me, his earlier cockiness suddenly washed away. All including myself were wondering what to do until my wife whispered to me,"Get Gladys out-a-here. Quick!"

I scooped up the cat and took her to the back of the house. They all had their backs to the road when the bus pulled up. I heard the bus horn sound and then pull away.

I went back out as my wife came toward me and she said "Is she dead?"

"No"

"Will she be all right?"

"I don't know. I don't think so"

"Well go see."

"Did the kids get on the bus all right?"

"Yes! Now go see to the cat."

I went back to Gladys. She had not moved. She was breathing but not well. Her eyes were two black holes that looked like they were eaten out by insects. There was a little blood on the corner of her mouth. I just stared at her and both prayed to and cursed God.

My fathers voice, long since silenced by cancer, spoke to me: "When the time comes, a man must kill his own dog."

I knew the cat was suffering. I also knew that unlike my Dad, I did not own a gun. I thought I could just smash its head with a rock and then dismissed that thought. I decided to strangle her.

Putting my hands around its neck I slowly squeezed through the fur; amazed at how thin her neck really was. I felt my grip wasn't right so I started over; this time squeezing harder. When I felt the true circumference of her neck and her hard wind pipe I couldn't squeeze any more.

"It was her time. Just get a new grip and do it, brother! A man has to kill his own dog”. I was saying all this to myself as I took a new grip. I was squeezing harder this time and I could begin to feel the flesh of the neck fold around my fingers and then that cat coughed.

I let go and stood up, went into the house and told my wife I was taking Gladys to the Vets maybe, just maybe, she wasn't hurt that bad.

"What about work" my wife asked.

"Call them. Tell them I'll be late."

"Should I tell them why"

"Uh no. Tell them its car trouble . . . No wait. Tell them the truth."

"I'll call the Vet first to meet you. They don't normally open till nine."

"Thank you"

"Let me know right away, if she's ok, so I can go tell the kids."

" Yes. Yes. Of course. But what if . . ."

"Just go."

I took our old picnic blanket and wrapped up Gladys and gently carried her to the car. I talked to her all the way. I talked to her as I carried her into the Vets, and as I told the Vet what had happened I was looking at her. Struggling not to say; “Don't worry baby it will be OK. I don't want to tell the kids you are dead. I don't want you to be dead." Instead I looked at the Vet and said "Do what you can."

Wanting to but not asking how much this would cost.

All right, so, I couldn't kill my "own dog.". But, hey dad, they're other things a man has to do. Like sit in his recliner on a Saturday afternoon and watch old movies on TV with his family while listening to the familiar music of our new baby nursing. Also to have the joy of a fat black and white cat named Gladys take a nap in his lap. Now that she will no longer venture far from the house I have all that.

Blood Money

See the review from the media nun Sr. Helena Burns.

World Cup Goes To Middle Earth

Dialoging with the deaf at ground zero

While Muslims have every legal right to build a mosque near Ground Zero, this initiative carries the unmistakable odor of Islamic triumphalism. More importantly, Abdul Rauf's dubious background and associations give reason to worry that his center will spread Islamist ideology. Therefore, it should be barred from opening.

Many are asking for dialog with the Cordova Project in an effort to ease tensions, you know, so we can just get along. The question remains how do you dialog with a group who not only does not believe in compromise but views any compromise as defeat? They use dialog as either a stall or to wear down the opposition until they get exactly what they wanted in the first place. Book after book has been written on leaving no mystery of what they want-World Conquest for Allah.

'In July 2010, journalist Andrew McCarthy revealed that What's Right with Islam originally had been published in Malaysia under a different title: A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. What's Right with Islam was a “special, non-commercial edition” of the book and was produced after the original, with Feisal’s cooperation, by the Islamic Society of North America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought. Both of those organizations are American tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood. McCarthy explains the meaning of the term dawa, from the book's title:'

"Dawa, whether done from the rubble of the World Trade Center or elsewhere, is the missionary work by which Islam is spread.... [D]awa is proselytism... "The purpose of dawa, like the purpose of jihad, is to implement, spread, and defend sharia. Scholar Robert Spencer incisively refers to dawa practices as 'stealth jihad,' the advancement of the sharia agenda through means other than violence and agents other than terrorists. These include extortion, cultivation of sympathizers in the media and the universities, exploitation of our legal system and tradition of religious liberty, infiltration of our political system, and fundraising. This is why Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and the world’s most influential Islamic cleric, boldly promises that Islam will 'conquer America' and 'conquer Europe' through dawa."

Also check out “Islam Will Not Be the Loser” by JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J. where he quotes extensively from Belloc and Chesterton.

Some Grizzlys eat thier young

Remember the up roar over Tim Tebow’s pro-life super bowl commercial that caused the death coalition to go apoplectic?

Well now Shara Palin’s Mama Grizzly speech has fired up EMILY’s list. EMILY’s list is a group of women infatuated with death and raises funds for pro-abort women candidates who have now come out against Shara Palin's mama grizzly persona. (Ohtay, Ohtay, Shara Palin, I know, she chose to be a political celebrity instead of a political contender. What amazes me about her is the ginormous hate the left is heaping on her especially on pro-life issues).

EMILY’s list now says that a mama grizzly has a right to protect her children or kill them as the mood fits, and to protect the right of her children to kill their children. They equate this right with unemployment insurance and education.

Mark Shea said it best,”Sin makes you stupid.”





The Susan B. Anthony list supports pro-life women canidates - has a measured response and at the same time shows how out of touch EMILY's List is with reality.


"By the Babe Unborn"
by G.K. Chesterton

If trees were tall and grasses short,
As in some crazy tale,
If here and there a sea were blue
Beyond the breaking pale,

If a fixed fire hung in the air
To warm me one day through,
If deep green hair grew on great hills,
I know what I should do.

In dark I lie; dreaming that there
Are great eyes cold or kind,
And twisted streets and silent doors,
And living men behind.

Let storm clouds come: better an hour,
And leave to weep and fight,
Than all the ages I have ruled
The empires of the night.

I think that if they gave me leave
Within the world to stand,
I would be good through all the day
I spent in fairyland.

They should not hear a word from me
Of selfishness or scorn,
If only I could find the door,
If only I were born.

"As summer lurches to an end, the hallucinatory carnival that is America continues to spin like a carousel set to "liquefy":"

So begins John Zmiark's article Summer Hedonism

Followed by
An Ideological Map
How can we build a “good society”? Four evolving strands of progressive thought and the guiding spirits behind them assessed. In which Belloc gets a nod.

Oh Boy

Came across this supposed new ad for the republican party for this up coming election cycle.

Many accused the Dems for playing up the Messia angle and rightly so. Now the Repubs are going to play up the crusades angle to rid our "holy" country of these infidels. I was sure at the end it was going to say, "God wills it!"

This vid is as close to the top without going over I've seen in awhile. OK it is over the top.

I have little to no faith in our two parties. The dems support abortion and turn a blind eye to torture while the repubs support torture and turn a blind eye to abortion.

The repubs will not repeal the health care mess or cut off the TRAP spigot the best we can hope for is they might, maybe, perhaps, possibly slow the current occupant down a little.

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types--the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine." - GKC

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." GKC

Yes, even John Paul the Great used this logic.

Chesterton Sighting

Searching for a Bach piece by the Swingle Singers I came across this:

"Redlegs"
an adaptation of GK Chesterton's "The Disadvantage of Having Two Heads"

You just never know where Uncle Gilbert will show up.

Random Thursday Thoughts

One judge overturns a majority vote in California, the current occupant sues Arizona for rightly enacting a law the people support, Missouri votes NO to federal health care and the occupant plans to ignore that vote - are we moving from majority rule to minority rule?

"We are back to an oligarchy pretending to be a republic pretending to be a democracy." Ed Henry
--------------------------------------------------
The power of our right to freedom of speech is in the protection of speech we don’t like. The same is true for the freedom of religion. We cannot deny the building of a new mosque
at ground zero on the site of the Burlington Coat Factory because they are unreasonable or even if many know the building of this mosque is the planting of a flag on a victory.
But it begs the question why is New York denying the Greek Orthodox Church that was destroyed at ground zero to be REBUILT.

"The opponents of Christianity would believe anything except Christianity." GKC
----------------------------------------------------------
Why is the teacher’s union asking for a federal bail out to help local schools pay teachers when they have millions to spend on lobbying and political campaigns?

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." Frederic Bastiat

It's Tough All Over

Will a bailout for criminals be far behind?

"Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before." gkc

but that no longer is enough:

'Young men bought flashy clothes and got sharp haircuts and always paid in cash. But no longer. The economy is now so bad in Camden that even the criminals are struggling and going short.

"Even the guys who got money from illegal means really don't want to spend it," said Richard Gains, a local businessman.'

Education is tradition, and tradition (as its name implies) can be treason. This first truth is frankly banal; but it is so perpetually ignored in our political prosing that it must be made plain. ... It is quaint that people talk of separating dogma from education. Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It is education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.

G. K. Chesterton, (from What’s Wrong with the World, 1910)

"the Catholic university that conserves its own identity, as was delineated in Ex Corde, truly has a future and will contribute to the good of society," while seeking to be an interlocutor between cultures and a force for progress.

More On Public Art

In John M. Grondelski article on Decorating Naked Public Squares he states, "The late Richard John Neuhaus described the banishment of religion from public life (and public view) as the phenomenon of the "naked public square." Advocates of this approach hold that religion has no place in public life. Public life should be hermetically sealed off from religion -- de facto agnostic. Secularists deem this arrangement "democratic" in a religiously pluralistic world. The corollary of that position, however, is that believers, even if they form a cultural majority, must strip themselves of their religious convictions when they enter public life. The good citizen is either irreligious or someone who doesn't take his religion too seriously. ...

There is also a shorter-range lesson. We as private citizens can go about reclothing the naked public squares of America, putting religion back in the public eye. How? Many Catholics in the United States have the resources to fund new religious art. Just as the Church hierarchy used to support Europe's artists, perhaps it is now time for lay Catholics in this country to take on the important work of patronage."
(emphasis mine)

An excellent idea. We should encourage those with the heart, spirit and funds to bring religious art back into the public square.

Oh yea, he is not talking about Bathtub Madonna or Lady of the Side Yard.


Chesterton on how public religious art can change our view of things:

Even when I thought, with most other well-informed, though unscholarly, people, that Buddhism and Christianity were alike, there was one thing about them that always perplexed me; I mean the startling difference in their type of religious art. I do not mean in its technical style of representation, but in the things that it was manifestly meant to represent. No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The mediaeval saint's body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. There cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards. The Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue steadily we shall find some interesting things.

What Anne has wrought . Good news to some.

It's What's for Dinner

The recent news brought back one of my strongest memories of grad school. I was sitting with a few friends on my stoop demolishing a case of beer.

It was a beautiful early spring evening and the conversation was good. We were comparing and contrasting Louisiana politics with our home states when one of my friends, who had recently immigrated from Vietnam, blurted out, “ I love this country! Dinner comes right to your door!” Two of us did a spit take.

We then spent some time trying to convince him that, as good as they are, dogs and cats in this country are not be considered as a food source for your family.

I do not know if he ever followed that advice but from that time on, when my wife and I were invited to his place for dinner, I always asked what was on the menu.

potbelly hill

The word evolution seems to get attached to everything even things and ideas. Truth can not evolve nor change we can only discover what was always there or come to a better understanding. This is the work of the Church and should be the work of science. Both of those entities come together at Gobekle Tepe.

The Church tells us God was here at the Beginning science tells us God is/was a product of evolution. Science and history tells us Religion is a product of culture but Gobekli Tepe show us religion was the cause of culture.

This site isn't just old it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago - a staggering 7,000 years before the great Pyramid, and 6,000 years before Stonehenge.

Klaus Schmidt, the archeologist credited with the discovery, says, "Many people think that this changes everything...It overturns the whole apple cart. All theories were wrong."
Maybe that's why so few people have heard of this or why the text books have not been changed - the "brights" have once again been proven wrong.

The temples thus offer proof that mankind emerged from the 140,000-year reign of hunter-gathers with a ready vocabulary of spiritual imagery, and capale of huge logistical, economic, and political efforts.

Schmidt's thesis is simple: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.

Genetic mapping shows that the first domestication of wheat and pigs was in the immediate area.

Schmidt concludes that man's first house was a house of worship.

The other interesting thing of this site is that the people did not just abandon this site or die off. They took the time to bury it, a feat as great as the building of it. Why this happened we do not know. But they did discover at some point the worshipers here turned to human sacrifice.

Some are putting forward that is the site of Eden but as Scmidt says, 'Gobekli Tepe is not the Garden of Eden: it is a temple in Eden.'

"Maybe it was interred as a kind of penance: a sacrifice to the angry gods, who had cast the hunters out of paradise. Perhaps it was for shame at the violence and bloodshed that the stone-worship had helped provoke."


Chesterton tells us:
We have of course seen just lately the most dramatic exit of great material scientists from the camp of Materialism. It was Eddington I think, who used the phrase that the universe seems to be more like a great thought than a great machine: and Dr. Whitney as reported, has declared that there is no rational description of the ultimate cosmic motion except the Will of God. But it is the perishing of the other things, at least as much as the persistence of the one thing, that has left us at last face to face with the ancient religion of our fathers. The thing once called free thought has come finally to threaten everything that is free. It denies personal freedom in denying free will and the human power of choice. It threatens civic freedom with a plague of hygienic and psychological quackeries; spreading over the land such a network of pseudo-scientific nonsense as free citizens have never yet endured in history. It is quite likely to reverse religious freedom, in the name of some barbarous nostrum or other, such as constitutes the crude and ill-cultured creed of Russia. It is perfectly capable of imposing silence and impotence from without. But there is no doubt whatever that it imposes silence and impotence from within. The whole trend of it, which began as a drive and has ended in a drift, is towards some form of the theory that a man cannot help himself; that a man cannot mend himself; above all, that a man cannot free himself. In all its novels and most of its newspaper articles it takes for granted that men are stamped and fixed in certain types of abnormality of anarchical weakness; that they are pinned and labeled in a museum of morality or immorality; or of that sort of unmorality which is more priggish than the one and more hoggish than the other. We are practically told that we might as well ask a fossil to reform itself. We are told that we are asking a stuffed bird to repent. We are all dead, and the only comfort is that we are all classified. For by this philosophy, which is the same as that of the blackest of Puritan heresies, we all died before we were born. But as it is Kismet without Allah, so also it is Calvinism without God.

This Just In : Civilization Ends

In The Ethics Aristotle wrote, "men start revolutionary changes for reasons connected with their private lives."

Marriage: a 'hang up' or God's plan?
Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted telling it like it is.

"What is at stake here is cultural sanity and viability. Defending the clear nature and purpose of marriage is not discrimination against homosexual persons. Why did God create both men and women, not just one sex? Is it merely accidental that one is born either a woman or a man? Is femininity or masculinity of little import? Does it not matter if a child grows up with no mother but two fathers? Does the pandemic of cultural ills born of fatherlessness in so many of our homes teach us nothing? Is it really all that difficult to fathom that God had a plan for marriage, which He wove into the very fabric of human nature? This plan is so deeply embedded in our human nature that every culture in history has recognized it and enshrined and protected it in law and custom. Marriage being exclusively between a man and a woman was not an idea created by these cultures but, rather, a truth received by them as something handed down from a higher authority.

Is ours an enlightened age that is wiser than previous ones? Are activist judges helping us finally to rise up and overthrow the “hang ups” of billions of people who have gone before us and to free us from the shackles of religion?"


"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." Chesterton goes on to say: "Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father."

Random Tuesday Thoughts

The current occupant promised “change”. Is the change he has delivered more in the way of speed instead of direction?
“All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.” - GKC

Since the powers that be believe in Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory (in a literal sense) why do they insist on putting warning labels on everything?
“But the point was that the fittest did not need to struggle against the unfit. The survivor had nothing to do except to survive, when the others could not survive. He survived because he alone had the features and organs necessary for survival. And, whatever be the truth about mammoths or monkeys, that is the exact truth about the present survival of religion. It is surviving because nothing else can survive.” - GKC

The Capitalists tell us ‘all boats rise with the tide’ but capitalism is the roller coaster manic depressive approach to life of booms and busts. Socialism is a slower smoother ride but it’s direction is down hill.
Time to reconsider Distributionism

Public Art

My youngest and her gaggle of gal pals are always busy, “Playing as children mean playing is the most serious thing in the world.”

They have a limited set of yards to explore each day since but, for them, these places are never the same from day to day. One day it is a ball field the next a dark wood of dragons and elfs sometimes a classroom other times a kitchen. Some days all the above.

When I got home on Friday my back yard was an industrial art studio with papers, crayons and water colors everywhere. Upon completion of their days work they processed around town and taped up their work on each pole they past.

The best example of Guerilla Art I’ve encountered. Better than the ones I participated in during my more down-with-the-man days.

As cars past these master pieces it made those, who looked, smile and point. Beautiful.

At this point I wanted to quote Chesterton form an essay that appeared in Gilbert magazine several years ago on public art. Well, for the life of me I cannot find that issue.
I know better than to quote from memory with this crowd so I will give you the gist of the essay. Public art that the public does not like is not public art but private art exhibited in public. The people need to have a say in what is displayed.

monkey love

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously told Americans that they would have to wait until Congress passed ObamaCare to see what was in it. Well know you have the opportunity to see exactly what is in this new 2,562 page law. Where do you fit in this tangled web of red tape. See the small star in the lower right hand corner.


This is the best schematic of seven monkeys trying to fornicate a football I’ve seen.

Of Course we need to get good quality Heath Care for all or as Bishop William F. Murphy said, "Genuine health care reform that protects the life and dignity of all is a moral imperative and a vital national obligation"

But right now this legislation is a mess but do not be discouraged because as Uncle Gilbert said, "It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on."

new book

A new book by Father John McCloskey.
Any one get this yet? Reviews welcome.

Charming

Josh Ritter gives us puppets, an interesting twist on an old story, good music.

the puppets were done by the drummer of the band, Liam Hurley.

E pluribus unum - NOT

"It is our expectation that, when the law takes effect on December 31st, the Department of Education will announce that TUSD is to have ten percent of its entire budget withheld, until it complies with H.B. 2281. At that time, you will have the right to appeal to an administrative law judge. If you agree to this video tape, it will be helpful evidence to the administrative law judge. If you refuse, we will offer that refusal as evidence to the administrative law judge that the school district has deliberately hidden facts that would show that the district is in non-compliance with H.B. 2281."


Read the letter about this course here

As if you needed another reason to home school.

Make The Call

Ground-breaking Bill Would Ban Tax-Funded Abortions — For Good

OK people make the call or email to your representatives and tell them to support this bill.
Most of them will not do right on thier own they won't do anything unless they think there job is in jeopardy.

go ahead flood the lines

Even NPR has noticed the feeding frenzy.

Toleration is not enough YOU MUST APPROVE

There have always been times in history when it seemed that the lions were winning. It is easy to feel that we are now in such a time.
Today the lions are political correction beasts dressed in pink.

Lee brought to our attention the story of the counseling student, Julea Ward, expelled for upholding her Christian life view.
Ward’s attorneys claim the university told her she would only be allowed to remain in the program if she went through a “remediation” program so that she could “see the error of her ways” and change her belief system about homosexuality.

There is also a similar case with Jennifer Keeton.

Professor is fired for stating what the Church teaches. Then rehires him.

Campus Christian groups cannot "discriminate" against non-Christians from joining their clubs or from becoming officers of that group.

John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, said, "The Supreme Court has now enshrined political correctness as a central tenet in American society and in American university life. This decision is yet another broadsided attack on the First Amendment, especially religious freedom.

"It will force well-meaning groups to abandon the tenets of their faith in order to be granted the same privileges and freedoms afforded to other campus groups and organizations. If not, they will face discrimination."

Or as Groucho Marx once said, "I have a good mind of joining a club and beating you over the head with it."

Now the University of California won't admit students that graduate from a Christian High Schools.
"Essentially what's happening is the UC has to pre-approve courses taught in high school," Tyler said. "It's pretty shocking, because in depositions UC reps made it clear: whether it be English, history or science, the addition of a religious viewpoint makes it unacceptable."

It's hard not to get depressed or upset that God's hand moves soooo slowly but "Fear is useless what is needed is trust." JC

"The early Christian martyrs talked of death with a horrible happiness. They blasphemed the beautiful duties of the body: they smelt the grave afar off like a field of flowers. All this has seemed to many the very poetry of pessimism. Yet there is the stake at the crossroads to show what Christianity thought of the pessimist." GKC.

Or from another great writer:
The message of the cross is complete absurdity to those who are headed for ruin,
but to us who are experiencing salvation it is the power of God. Scripture says, “I
will destroy the wisdom of the wise and thwart the cleverness of the clever.”
Where is the wise person to be found? Where the scribe? Where is the debater of
this age? Has not God turned the wisdom of this world into folly? Since in the
wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it pleased
God to save those who believe through the absurdity of the preaching of the gospel.
(1 Cor 1:18-21)

Fur Real

"All the human things are more dangerous than anything that affects the beasts - sex, poetry, property, religion. The real case against drunkenness is not that it calls up the beast, but that it calls up the Devil. It does not call up the beast, and if it did it would not matter much, as a rule; the beast is a harmless and rather amiable creature, as anybody can see by watching cattle. There is nothing bestial about intoxication; and certainly there is nothing intoxicating or even particularly lively about beasts. Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink. " GKC


When I first heard of this I thought someone was talking about a scene from a Will Ferrell movie.
But it is true. The strongest beer in the world packaged inside stuffed woodland creatures.

Yes Grasshopper, they combined Chesterton's 'animal with drink' in a literal way.

This immediately brought three questions to my mind, How drunk do you have to be to think that:
1.) this is a good idea?
2.) that in the cold light of the next day it is still a good idea?
3.) people will pay $725.00 a bottle?

Of course, if I were rich, I have the personality that would buy a few for the drink and the laughs.

Magic clean up

Not to minimize the Oil Spill in the Gulf, it is/was a disaster. But now many are wondering where the oil is. They are saying that Mother Nature is doing her job and cleaning it up. Early on this was something the CEO of BP said would happen. He was pilloried and sent to Siberia for telling the truth.

Everyone is all agog that Mother Nature can clean up the "worst oil spill like ever".

“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.” GKC

But she can't clean up global warming?!?! Because "they" think she is a solemn mother who rewards and punishes without rationality.

There is another man-made disaster in my area at Grand Lake St. Mary's. The water has become life threateningly toxic. People are warned not even to touch it. If people or pets drink from it they could die.

We are not talking about Pelicans but cats, dogs and children.

This is a man-made disaster through local large farm run off of manure and fertilizer. And one columnist is blaming those who like to Bar-B-Que pork or like eggs for breakfast for this disaster.
I do not think he is being tongue-in-cheek.

I do not recall anyone blaming those who like to drive for the gulf spill. But I am sure someone did.

There is no company to extort a super fund to help those businesses and people effected. But it was caused by big factory farming. This why I and others fight CAFO's whenever they try to move into our area.

If they manage to clean this up it will be done with tax dollars, dollars our state does not have.

Mother Nature will not clean this one up alone.

Please pray for those in the Grand Lake St. Mary's area.

Anne Rice Leaves Home

I once wrote clerihew about Anne Rice's rediscovery of her Christian faith:

Anne Rice
found a pearl of great price.
But she had to make money first
dwelling on an unnatural thirst.

I was skeptical. Sure enough, she recently rejected Christianity, declaring:

"In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian."

A few years back she wrote about her return to Christianity in Called Out of Darkness.

I guess she's heading back into the darkness.

Christian booted from counseling program

This is a case where a Christian student in a counseling program was assigned a homosexual client. The client wanted his/her lifestyle to be accepted; the counseling was for another reason.

The student did not deny the homosexual treatment. She simple referred the person to another counselor because she did not feel as a Christian she could condone the individual's actions. The person would have gotten what he/she wanted from another counselor - yet the university felt this Christian needed remediation (i.e. indoctrination) or to be dismissed.

Christians face persecution across the word, including in the U.SA.

Judge rules against Christian banned from Eastern Michigan counseling program :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Canadian Anglicans vote to unite with Rome

I'm not sure of the numbers who will really come home, but this is just another sign of what's happening.

Canadian Anglican Catholic group votes to unite with Rome :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Leaping Lizards It's Hilly On The Air

One of our local public radio stations has a little feature called, Conrad's Corner. Where Conrad Balliet reads a few poems with a quick bio of the poet. Usually he reads from the works of local poets with occasional readings from the world famous both short and long dead.

This week I got a pleasant surprise when I heard him introduce our friend Hillaire Belloc.

Conrad read three poems of Belloc's, the first was this:

The Frog

Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As "Slimy skin," or "Polly-wog,"
Or likewise "Ugly James,"
Or "Gap-a-grin," or "Toad-gone-wrong,"
Or "Bill Bandy-knees":
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.

No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare).

All That Jazz

Uncle Gilbert and I part ways on how we feel about the art of the early twentieth century. I like it and he moved a lot of ink against it. Yet I often use his "negative" view point quotes (a lot to choose from there) to describe the art of the later half of the twentieth century to today. So he was right about it I just think he was premature. Can you say prophet?

One would think his attitude of modern visual arts would map over to the other modern arts - but not so fast white boy. True he did not particularity like Jazz:

“I have formed a very strong impression about jazz. It does express something; and what it expresses is Slavery. That is why the same sort of thrill can be obtained by the throb of savage tom-toms, in music or drama connected with the great slave land of Africa. Jazz is the very reverse of an expression of liberty, or even an excessive expression of liberty or even an expression of license. It is the expression of the pessimist idea that nature never gets beyond nature, that life never rises above life, that man always finds himself back where he was at the beginning, that there is no revolt, no redemption, no escape for the slave of the earth and of the desires of the earth. There is any amount of pessimistic poetry on that theme that is thrilling enough in its own way; and doubtless the music on that theme can be thrilling also. But it cannot be liberating, or even loosening; it does not escape as a common or vulgar melody can escape. It is the song of the treadmill.”

GKC might not have loved the actuality of Jazz but he liked it's idea, as he uses the word in a positive way in many of his essays.

But he loved modern dance. I use the word love because his writings on modern dance were in the form of poetry and poetry is the language of love.

Although possible, I do not know if Chesterton ever saw Isadora Duncan or Ruth St. Dennis perform but he must have seen their influences.

Nick posted one of theses poems here THE JAZZ

My favorite line is: "She looks nearly as pretty as when she is not dancing..."

They should have known something was up when he pinstriped his buggy.

What Were They Thinking Department

Fund Raising idea gone bad.

It's not like anyone was using it anyway.

The sauna idea was good because it can get hot in there.

Bentley's Clerihews - found a copy

I just received a copy of the 1981 Oxford University Press edition of The Complete Clerihews of E. Clerihew Bentley. (It's out of print, but I found a like-new copy on line).

Ahhh.

It includes the illustrations that Chesterton did for a number of the early poems. It also contains some poems that I either hadn't seen before, or read so long ago I didn't remember them.

There's a nice introductions by Gavin Ewart that includes a few clerihews by some other poets.

I've already read through the book, and will continue to dive back in.

A nice find.

Edgar Allan Poe
Was passionatley fond of roe.
He always liked to chew some
When writing anything gruesome.

(From the back cover)

To Vacate

Going camping for a week with my daughters and the grandkids. Long ago my bride admitted she is not a roughing-type-of-gal but me and the kids love it - camp smoke in the cloths and everything, we will miss her.........

Very low tech week. Swimming, hiking, fishing, reading and bacon.

Until I return here is a little camp song.

In and Out of the Cave

"The common sense of the child could confine itself to learning from the facts what the facts have to teach; and the pictures in the cave are very nearly all the facts there are. So far as that evidence goes, the child would be justified in assuming that a man had represented animals with rock and red ochre for the same reason as he himself was in the habit of trying to represent animals with charcoal and red chalk. The man had drawn a stag just as the child had drawn a horse; because it was fun. The man had drawn a stag with his head turned as the child had drawn a pig with his eyes shut; because it was difficult. The child and the man, being both human, would be united by the brotherhood of men; and the brotherhood of men is even nobler when it bridges the abyss of ages than when it bridges only the chasm of class. But anyhow he would see no evidence of the cave man of crude evolutionism; because there is none to be seen. If somebody told him that the pictures had all been drawn by St. Francis of Assisi out of pure and saintly love of animals, there would be nothing in the cave to contradict it. " GKC Everlasting Man

When Picasso first saw the cave paintings at Lascaux it is reported he said, "We have learned nothing."

When teaching my Humanities class I often quote from Everlasting man. Last year when archeologists found a flute that was 30,000 plus years old I was in the throws of such a presentation. Man has always been in search of the higher things. The only way to express those things is through the arts.

We can recreate that flute from the same type of bone using the same type of tolls used by the caveman and learn what kind of sound was made by that flute BUT we will never know what kind of music was played by those early seekers.

Then again, in the future, someone may wonder what kind of music was played on a 3 string guitar and an old wooden box? And they will come across Seasick Steve. CaveMan blues.

When you evangelize timing is everything

A little boy was waiting for his mother to come out of the grocery Store.
As he waited, he was approached by a man who asked,
"Son, can you tell me where the Post Office is?"

The little boy replied, "Sure! Just go straight down this street a coupla blocks
and turn to your right."

The man thanked the boy kindly and said, "I'm the new pastor in town.
I'd like for you to come to church on Sunday. I'll show you how to get to Heaven."

The little boy replied with a chuckle. "Awww, come on...
You don't even know the way to the Post Office."

a CATHOLIC politician? whod a thunk it

"Human law is law only in virtue of its accordance with right reason: and thus it is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in such case it is not law at all, but rather a species of violence..." [Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II Q93 A3 ad 2]

"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." GKC

Most politicians are the modern types of reformers and their visionary powers can not see past tomorrow's headlines.

However Chris Christie, the Gov. of New Jersey, is looking past that headline. He may be the only politician who not only says he is against abortion but knows that the state should not be in the killing business. He is cutting Planed Parenthood from the state budget. He also is embracing the concept of subsidiary.

Could distributionism be far behind. Maybe, if he survives the the political fist of PP.

While at the same time the Current Occupant, always deviating from right reason, is increasing funds to the death mills.

$25 million fund established by the new health care law to assist pregnant women. $250 million to Planned Parenthood.

The State Rights Boogie

Since the founding of this country there has always been a push and tug between states rights and federal authority. Beginning with the whiskey rebellion of 1794 to these two interesting cases.

In Boston they declare federal law null and void where 'Judge Joseph L. Tauro ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage law violates the Constitutional right of married same-sex couples to equal protection under the law and upends the federal government’s long history of allowing states to set their own marriage laws.'

"This court has determined that it is clearly within the authority of the Commonwealth to recognize same-sex marriages among its residents, and to afford those individuals in same-sex marriages any benefits, rights, and privileges to which they are entitled by virtue of their marital status," Tauro wrote. "The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state."

If this holds up could Utah legalize polygamy?

In Arizona the federal government declare a state law, that mirrors federal law, null and void where The Obama administration asked the court to review the Arizona employment law and has indicated it will sue to block enforcement of the state's broader immigration law, scheduled to take effect July 29.

If this Arizona law holds up will other states do the same. Will San Fransisco boycott all those states?

Just cause we did it before.....

Dad29 left a comment on my post "The Sanger Parade Marches On":

"Yah, well.

In the early 1900's, the Progressives in Wisconsin called for mandatory sterilization of the "feebleminded."

At that time, the Progressives were all Republicans. The Catholic Bishops rallied the troops--and since then, the Democrat party has dominated Wisconsin elective offices. "

True, forced Sterilization of the of the mentally disabled happened in more that half of the states in this country up to the early-mid sixties. The rest at least thought about it or did it without anyone knowing.

Not sure why he mentioned Democrats and Republicans the split is pretty even in the states that practiced this act. Heavy on the Democrat side in the South.

One public service article entitled:

North Carolina Law, little used, makes small dent in problem: Public information is vital to success of Eugenics.

It tried to inform the public this was a good idea with such quotes as:

"An animal breeder, if he took the time to study our technique in perperuating the race, would likely shudder and use strong language. He knows better that to permit his scrub stock to out breed his best blood lines on a two-to-one basis.
In the past we have made (and still making some half-hearted stabs at correcting the imbalance in our birth rates. The use of contraceptives has been urged to help bring the birth rates into balance. Yet contraceptives have back-fired on us. Generally speaking, they have been accepted only among the class of persons who represent our best mental stock." (emphasis mine)

The last quote was the basis for the movie Idiocracy

North Carolina's rules were simple:

The Eugenics Board will order an operation:

1. Where it is to the best interest of the patient, mentally, morally, or physically.

2. When the operation is for the public good.

3. Where the operation has been requested by the guardian of a mental case.

4. Where the patient "would be likely, unless operated on, to procreate a child or children who would have a tendency to serious physical, mental or nervous disease or deficiency."

Oh yes they also call on the founding fathers to back them up:

"When William Penn observed, "Menare generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children," his readers smiled and nodded, "How true! How true!" In the past two centuries we have come to learn just how true this observation is. We continue to quote William Penn and nod our heads but we no longer can afford to smile."

The important point in Dad29's comment was that the Bishop's did rally the troops and ended this practice, at least by state law. As they recently did in Louisianan and are continually working to end abortion both in and out of our two party system.

Dad29 pick up a copy of G.K. Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils.

Improving Chances for Success

When my eldest son wanted to join the military, each branch of service courted him with hefty sign-on bonuses and no entrance exams. They were hungry for warm bodies.

My son joined the Air Force because they gave him the best deal.

Now that my youngest son is considering the same move he asked the recruiter about sign-on bonuses.

The Sargent told us that the because of the current economy there is no need for monetary incentives to get people to join. And he would have pass an exam. It is the only job out there right now that doesn't lay people off.

Schools have seen this trend and are adjusting the curriculum accordingly.

What's Right With The World

Good article by Gerald J. Russello

Little Emperors

"We can always convict such people of sentimentalism by their weakness for euphemism. The phrase they use is always softened and suited for journalistic appeals. They talk of free love when they mean something quite different, better defined as free lust. But being sentimentalists they feel bound to simper and coo over the word "love." They insist on talking about Birth Control when they mean less birth and no control. We could smash them to atoms, if we could be as indecent in our language as they are immoral in their conclusions." (GKC: "Obstinate Orthodoxy" The Thing)

An interesting series of essays and articles about China's one child policy from an unexpected source.

The essays from the the the Little Emperors themselves are the most heart wrenching.

You know those times when you find a jug of milk in the back of the refrigerator that you KNOW has gone bad but you smell it anyway?

The Mike Wallace interview with Margaret Sanger is like that.

Sanger begins with: "I was what I would call a born humanitarian."

Later she says, " I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world--that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin -- that people can -- can commit.."

full transcript here

The Sanger Parade Marches On

When Barbara Harris began her story on how she adopted her children I paid attention because it was a similar story of our path to adoption. We both received children from drug addicts who knew they were incapable to raise that child. I soon found that we both reacted differently from this similar experience.

Where as when we found out the birth mother was pregnant again we located another family seeking to adopt. A word of mouth network began and several children of women in trouble have been adopted. We are no longer in the loop but referrals are still happening - no web site needed.

Now Barb took a different tact. She thinks these types of women should not breed. She has set up an organization to pay these women (and men) to be sterilized.

"Hey Girls, just say yes to this little procedure and we will give you $300.00" Her business is death and business is booming. Now she exporting, starting in the UK

"More children for the fit, less from the unfit - that is the chief aim of birth control." Margaret Sanger 1919

In that same vien a Louisiana State Rep., John LaBruzzo is putting together another program to help society: "What I'm really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generation welfare," he said.
He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid gender discrimination, vasectomies for men. This program would pay the volunteers $1,000.00.
It could also include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.

Fortunately the state legislature put the kibosh on that - for now.

Final thought:
"This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so that you and your children may live." Deut. 30-19

Cinematic Bookends

It has been argued that Fellini's Satyricon does not fit well in his body of work. Some call it his best and others laugh at that notion. But all agree that this film was not your typical sandal and spear roman epic and is still the best presentation of the pre-christian world ever put to film.

Fellini really captured that time in history that Chesterton labels; "Pan was nothing but panic. Venus was nothing but venereal vice."

The film shows a life devoted to sensation and personal freedom devoid of any transcendent meaning.

This is why GKC also reminds us "Pagans were wiser that paganism; that is why the pagans became Christians."

It took about 1200 years to cleans us of the pagan era as outlined in Chesterton's book on Saint Francis. ushering in the Christian era.

Now, today, many are saying, we are beginning the postchristian era. This I have been trying to deny to no avail because the evidence is so overwhelming. Thus brings us Terry Zwigoff's film, Art School Confidential. Again critics were divided on to whether this is a good film or not but it is an excellent example of the post-christian era (something they do not even notice) and as such it is just as unsettling as Satyricon.

Again, a film that shows a life devoted to sensation and personal freedom coupled with a pursuit of fame and fortune at any cost all devoid of any transcendent meaning. This film also shows the art world today in all its empty chaos. The artists today are still trying to deconstruct something that has been deconstructed a hundred and fifty years ago. They are deconstructing with out any philosophy, understanding or sense of beauty.

The sixties brought us a back-to-nature "pagan" way of life, it's "high point" was Woodstock and then it went ugly very fast. As GKC said, "Whatever natural religion may have had to do with their beginnings, nothing but fiends now inhabited those hollow shrines."

I think both movies should be seen but I warn you it will not be a feel good evening of cinema.
Also Felline is a better film maker and much is lost on the small screen where as Art School Confidential works just as well on the small screen because postchristian ideas and ideals are small.

What would Gene Autry say?

Chesterton, spoke poetically about cheese;

Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour
And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby;
England has need of thee, and so have I--
She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour,
League after grassy league from Lincoln tower
To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen.
Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men,
Like a tall green volcano rose in power.
Plain living and long drinking are no more,
And pure religion reading "Household Words",
And sturdy manhood sitting still all day
Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core;
While my digestion, like the House of Lords,
The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.

Yet curiously silent about Harmonicas.
I think this would have gotten his attention.

A New Friend Found

Leafing through my new yard sale How-To-Build-Furniture book my Bride said to me, "You know I would Like some chairs to put under our big maple in the back yard."

"There are some plans for Adirondack chairs in here."

"Well, I saw, on a show, the other night where they used Arts and Crafts style chairs outside and it looked real nice."

For those of you not married let me translate that statement: 'I want Arts and Crafts chairs and nothing else will do.' There were no Arts and Crafts style chairs in this book. Another twentyfive cents wasted.

At times I really believe that HGTV is a tool of the devil.

"Stickley or Morris style?" I asked.

"You pick."

My research got waylaid when I found an entry that couples William Morris with G.K.C. and there I found a kindred spirit, Jennifer Pierce. She writes a very interesting series called GKC 15 Minutes at a time. It begins here.

Jennifer has a respectful love of Chesterton and the series is a wonderful read as she weaves modern art, theater, and pop culture through the lens of a Chesterton world view, quoting him liberally.

The down side is her site has an annoying pop-up that keeps asking you to register. You can hit cancel and keep reading.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

“There can be comparatively little question that the place ordinarily occupied by dreams in literature is peculiarly unreal and unsatisfying. When the hero tells us that “last night he dreamed a dream,” we are quite certain from the perfect and decorative character of the dream that he made it up at breakfast…….Dreams have a kind of hellish ingenuity and energy in the pursuit of the inappropriate; the most omniscient and cunning artist never took so much trouble or achieved such success in finding exactly the word that was right or exactly the action that was significant, as this midnight lord of misrule can do in finding exactly the word that is wrong and exactly the action that is meaningless.” GKC

Why I highlighted that particular phrase is because last night I had a powerful dream. In this dream I came up with an invention for a train car that would be able to transport fruits and vegetables, from California to parts east, without spoiling. In it I saw many schematics, innovative insulation techniques, and I was able to see and solve the previous problems that others did not.

When I awoke I gave this dream some thought and decided it would work. I got up in search of a pencil and then remembered that this “thing” had already been invented and was working fine, they call it a refrigerator car.

It was then I recalled Chesterton’s essay on dreams.

Sometimes it is better to wake up and know you are a fool as opposed to finding out later in the day.

A Merton Clerihew

In his early life Thomas Merton
was often uncertain.
He ended his consternation
through contemplation.

This Looks Like Fun

Uncle Chestnut's Table Gype

In his autobiography G.K.C. mentions "the well-known and widespread national game of Gype".

Specifically, Chesterton mentions, "I myself cut out and coloured pieces of cardboard of mysterious and significant shapes, the instruments of Table Gype; a game for the little ones."

Almost 100 years later, Eternal Revolution has published Table Gype as an abstract strategy game with a random element.


If you have this game I'd love a review.

Maybe a Gype Tournament at the Chesterton Conference. with muffins as a prize for the winners

Chesterton Sightings

This past weekend our town held its annual community wide yard sale, otherwise known as ‘the great transference of junk’. It is also a good time to wander around town and meet with our neighbors. All my kids come home for this event.

At one of our stops I was staring down upon a table, that was calling my name, and internalizing that age old debate, “Do I need any more hand tools vs. “Can you have too many tools?” when my youngest daughter came up to me and said, “Look Papa, a picture of your friend.”

In her pudgy little hands was a magazine with a drawing of Gilbert on its cover. I gave her praise and a dime telling her to go buy it. And I bought a two foot wooded level.

As my wife and pregnant middle daughter were negotiating the price of a baby crib I looked at the magazine article, by our friend by John C. Chalberg, reviewing William Oddie’s Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy The making of GKC, 1874-1908. Being written by “Chuck” it was an enthusiastic review beginning with this paragraph:
“Somewhere on virtually everyone's list of the 100 most important books of the last century is G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. A "sort of slovenly autobiography" by its author's own reckoning, this thin volume packed a huge wallop when it first appeared in 1908. It still does today, whether it's being read for the first or fifth time.”

He also states that Oddie wrote an excellent companion work for GKC’s Orthodoxy. In it Oddie challenges what he terms an “academic embargo” against Chesterton. Something we have all noticed.

A few stops later we spotted a table of books. There was no debate here because you just can not have enough books. Unfortunately this table was mostly full of romance novels, a few How-To books and several children’s books. I grabbed up a couple of furniture building books and moved to the kid’s books. One I picked up was Coraline by Neil Gaiman, my daughter and I liked the movie so she might like me to read the book to her. The book begins with this quote:
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” G. K. Chesterton.

And yes, that was a surprise.

At the end of the day we had a lot of stuff most of which we were wondering why we bought. Maybe next year I will hold a yard sale to sell all the stuff we have bought from yard sales.

Belloc: Islam is a Christian heresy

In his book The Great Christian Heresies, Hilaire Belloc described Islam as a threat to the West - and counted it as a Christian heresy.

"Millions of modern people of the white civilization-that is, the civilization of Europe and America- have forgotten all about Islam. They never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past."

Certainly the extreme forms of Islam have become a world-wide threat in the last few decades. Belloc proved prophetic in that.

But I also find his argument that Islam is a Christian heresy interesting.

According to Belloc, what Mohammad "taught was in the main Catholic doctrine, oversimplified. It was the great Catholic world - on the frontiers of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose territories he had known by travel-which inspired his convictions."

Belloc argued that "the very foundation of his teaching was that prime Catholic doctrine, the unity and omnipotence of God."

"But the central point where his new heresy struck home with a mortal blow against Catholic tradition was a full denial of the Incarnation."

"He taught that our Lord was the greatest of all the prophets, but still only a prophet; a man like other men. He eliminated the Trinity altogether."

An intriguing line of argument.

Happy Birthday GKC

Happy 136th birthday.

for mom

I have recently come across the life and writings of Cardinal Mindszenty. A very interesting and holy life.

In his writings you can hear the similar tones and melodies Gilbert expressed, especially when talking of motherhood. Another similarity between the Cardinal and Gilbert is that Alec Guinness played the Cardinal in The Prisoner (loosely based on Mindszenty’s imprisonment) and he played GKC’s Father Brown.

I know we are a few days past Mothers day but then again any day is a good day to honor Mother. Here is the preface of Cardinal Mindszenty’s book Motherhood:

The Most Important Person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral-a dwelling for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby's body…The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. They cannot share in God's creative miracle to bring new saints to Heaven. Only a human mother can. Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creature; God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation…What on God's good earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother?

-Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty

Stimulus dollars at work

National Poetry Month

With the support of this $1 million National Leadership Grant, Poets House will partner with five zoos and four public libraries to create poetry installations and programs... …collaborating with wildlife biologists and exhibit designers to curate zoo installations with poems that celebrate the natural world and the connection between species.

I the GKC poem below would be a worthy entry that shows that species are only connected in the physical, like comparative religion. “.. it is so much a matter of degree and distance and difference that it is only comparatively successful when it tries to compare. When we come to look at it closely we find it comparing things that are really quite incomparable.”

Triolet Poem
G.K. Chesterton

I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs;
Of all the things I wish to wish
I wish I were a jellyfish
That hasn't any cares
And doesn't even have to wish'
I wish I were a jellyfish
That cannot fall downstairs.'

Cheat the Prophet

Earth Day Predictions, 1970

"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

"We have about five more years at the outside to do something."
Kenneth Watt, ecologist

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."
George Wald, Harvard Biologist

"We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation."
Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

"Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction."
New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years."
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

"By...[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s."
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation."
Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

"Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions....By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine."
Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

"Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support...the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution...by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...."
Life Magazine, January 1970

"At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable."
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

"Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone."
Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

"By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate...that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, `I am very sorry, there isn't any.'"
Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

"Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
Sen. Gaylord Nelson

Tax Day - Oh Joy

"A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter." G.K.C.
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T. Coleman Andrews was an IRS Commissioner for 3 years. He had the following things to say about income taxes after resigning.
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"Congress went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion."

"The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds."

"The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men."

"The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die."

"As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well."

"The income tax is bad because it is oppressive to all and discriminates particularly against those people who prove themselves most adept at keeping the wheels of business turning and creating maximum employment and a high standard of living for their fellow men."
"I believe that a better way to raise revenue not only can be found but must be found because I am convinced that the present system is leading us right back to the very tyranny from which those, who established this land of freedom, risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to forever free themselves..."

When the culture of death meets “I don’t think so”.

Dr. Boris Veysman is my new hero.

"Life is precious and irreplaceable. Even severe incurable illness can often be temporarily fixed, moderated, or controlled, and most discomfort can be made tolerable or even pleasant with simple drugs. In chess, to resign is to give up the game with pieces and options remaining. My version of DNR is "Do Not Resign." Don’t give up on me if I can still think, communicate, create, and enjoy life. When taking care of me, take care of yourself as well, to make sure you don’t burn out by the time I need your optimism the most.

My DNI? It means "Do Not Ignore" early signs of trouble when my failing body and mind need support so I can continue to function in ways that matter. And Do Not Ignore my needs for companionship, stimulation, and purpose, as these, too, make life worth living. To leave me in the hospital bed alone staring at the TV is torture. (My overarching orders at all times: "Do Not Torture.") Surround me with people; bring the kids so I can teach and talk to them. Discuss the news with me. Let me use my e-mail. Treat my depression, dehydration, malnutrition, muscle wasting, and pain with potent pills, infusions, tubes, and hormones. I don’t aspire to play for the Yankees, so throw in some anabolic steroids if that might contribute to wellness. I choose high-quality life, and I agree to chance adverse effects in doing so. …

It’s so easy to let someone die, but it takes effort, determination, and stamina to help someone stay and feel alive. Only after you made every effort to let me be happy and human, ask me again if my life is worth living. Then, listen, and comply. At that point, if I wish to die, let me die. But until that happens, none of us realize what I can accomplish with another day, another week, another month. So do it all for me. Then ask someone to do it all for you."

Read entire essay here.

More War Crimes

Closing arguments begin today in a trial that could be a landmark case against the Boy Scouts of America, which is accused of covering up alleged sexual abuse of several of its Boy Scouts for years.

North American Man/Boy Love Association stating that the Boy Scouts and Big Brothers were perfect recruiting grounds for victims.

If only Scout Masters could marry.

Seriously?!?

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) In London last Friday, a high ranking United Nations (UN) jurist called on the British government to detain Pope Benedict XVI during his upcoming visit to Britain, and send him to trial in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “crimes against humanity.”

like Chesterton said this sound is recognizable it is “a hiss out of hell.”

Mark has a good answer

why not try it at home

"There was a time when you and I and all of us were all very close to God; so that even now the color of a pebble (or a paint), the smell of a flower (or a firework), comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and certainty; as if they were fragments of a muddled message, or features of a forgotten face. To pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life is the only real aim of education; and closest to the child comes the woman --- she understands. To say what she understands is beyond me; save only this, that it is not a solemnity. Rather it is a towering levity, an uproarious amateurishness of the universe, such as we felt when we were little, and would as soon sing as garden, as soon paint as run. To smatter the tongues of men and angels, to dabble in the dreadful sciences, to juggle with pillars and pyramids and toss up the planets like balls, this is that inner audacity and indifference which the human soul, like a conjurer catching oranges, must keep up forever. This is that insanely frivolous thing we call sanity. ... "

GKC What's Wrong With The World