Chesterton gets Clerihewed

G. K. Chesterton
would sometimes sit in the sun.
His wife appreciated the cool glade
his shadow made.

A prophetic clerihew

Ezekiel
was full of prophetic zeal.
He was only wrong when it came to bets
on the Browns and the Mets.

An alternative this election year - The American Solidarity Party

This is a tough year for us politically when it comes to the Presidential campaign. Many of us find the candidates of the major political parties objectionable, and so I hear a lot of people saying they will likely vote for the lesser of two evils, once they determine which is less evil. (I often rejoin, "Voting for the lesser of two evils means you are still voting for evil!)

The truth is, though, for most of us how we vote really doesn't matter.

You see, the election will be decided by the electoral college vote, not the popular vote, and for most states you can pretty much predict right now which party's candidate will carry the state and get the electoral votes. In New York, for example, the Democratic candidate has won the state every election since 1988, and only once in those 7 elections has the Democratic margin of victory fallen below a million votes. This year is likely to be no different. Unless the Democratic candidate does eventually get indicted!

There are a few (5-7) swing states that really decide the election - that's why the pundits and pollsters obsess about such states as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

So for voters in New York, and in most states, it's safe to vote third party.

This year, there is an alternative that might be of interest to Chestertonians. The American Solidarity Party's platform is very much based on Catholic Social teachings, with elements of Distributism.

The party has for the first time nominated its own candidates for president and vice president,  Mike Maturen and Juan Munoz. (Chesterton might appreciate that Maturen is also a magician!)

Go to the website to find out more about them and the party's platform.

The party has Facebook and Twitter accounts as well.

Just imagine, voting, and actually feeling good about for whom you're voting!

If you live on one of the states where your vote might not count, or even if you live in one of the states where your vote might count, but you simply can't vote for one of the main party's candidates, consider the Maturen and Munoz ticket.

A Tolkien Clerihew

There was a side of J.R.R. Tolkien
that was seldom seen.
When he was by himself
he'd sometimes dress as an elf.

A Clerihew (Pope Pius)

Pope Pius
is a victim of bias.
Only a closed-minded dope
still thinks of him as "Hitler's pope."

Another political clerihew (Trump)

Donald Trump
on the stump
will almost always spout a platitude
or something rude.

A Ben Carson/Politico Clerihew

Ben Carson
never claimed he committed arson.
That didn't stop Politico
from reporting, "He may have, you know."

Planned Parenthood scandal clerihews

Dr. Mary Gatter
was coy and even joked amid the chatter,
but her haggling over the price of a baby's heart or liver
made me shiver.

Dr. Mary Gatter
treated it as a laughing matter,
but sell enough baby parts, even that teenie,
and you might afford a Lamborghini.

The Atlantic touts Saint Chesterton

There is in the April issue of The Atlantic a wonderful piece ("A Most Unlikely Saint") about the effort to have G. K. Chesterton declared a saint. It begins:

If the Catholic Church makes G. K. Chesterton a saint—as an influential group of Catholics is proposing it should—the story of his enormous coffin may become rather significant. Symbolic, even parabolic. Chesterton’s coffin was too huge, you see, to be carried down the stairs of his house in Beaconsfield, its occupant being legendarily overweight at the time of his death, in 1936. So it went out a second-floor window. Very Chestertonian: gravity, meet levity. Hagiographers might pursue the biblical resonance here, citing the Gospel passages in which a paralyzed man, unable to penetrate the crowds surrounding the house in Capernaum where Jesus was staying, is lowered in through a hole in the roof. Or they might simply declare that Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s was a spirit too large to go out through the conventional narrow door of death—that it had to be received, as it were, directly into the sky.

It's a well-written piece, and a good introduction to Chesterton and the sainthood cause for those who were not aware of him or it. Even for those of us who were familiar, well worth reading if for no other reason than it will make us smile.

Marquis de Sade/50 Shades clerihew

A somber Marquis de Sade
said with a knowing nod,
"The wickedness of all my work fades
before that woman's 50 Shades.

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.

Hochhuth clerihew

In attacking Pope Pius Rolf Hochhuth
penned a play full of untruth.
Sadly, many an ignorant dope
now believes the myth of "Hitler's pope."

C. S.Lewis - Poet? (and his legacy)

To mark the 50th anniversary of his death, C. S. Lewis has been honored with a memorial stone in the Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey.

To be honest, I've never thought of Lewis as a poet. I love him for his theological works and his fiction. (Sort of like my thoughts about Chesterton.) I don't think I even own a collection of Lewis's poetry. (I own several volumes of Chesterton's - and have enjoyed them.)

I do remember one self-deprecating poem of Lewis's:

A Confession

I am so coarse, the things the poets see
Are obstinately invisible to me.
For twenty years I’ve stared my level best
To see if evening–any evening–would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn’t able.
To me each evening looked far more
Like the departure from a silent, yet a crowded, shore
Of a ship whose freight was everything, leaving behind
Gracefully, finally, without farewells, marooned mankind.

Red dawn behind a hedgerow in the east
Never, for me, resembled in the least
A chilblain on a cocktail-shaker’s nose;
Waterfalls don’t remind me of torn underclothes,
Nor glaciers of tin-cans. I’ve never known
The moon look like a hump-backed crone–
Rather, a prodigy, even now
Not naturalized, a riddle glaring from the Cyclops’ brow
Of the cold world, reminding me on what a place
I crawl and cling, a planet with no bulwarks, out in space.

Never the white sun of the wintriest day
Struck me as un crachat d’estaminet.
I’m like that odd man Wordsworth knew, to whom
A primrose was a yellow primrose, one whose doom
Keeps him forever in the list of dunces,
Compelled to live on stock responses,
Making the poor best that I can
Of dull things . . . peacocks, honey, the Great Wall, Aldebaran,
Silver weirs, new-cut grass, wave on the beach, hard gem,
The shapes of horse and woman, Athens, Troy, Jerusalem.

I need to dig out more of his poems.

Today is also the anniversary of the death of John Kennedy, whose tragic death overshadowed that of Lewis.

While both men had an impact on the world, I think Lewis's influence will ultimately be greater.

Kennedy's legacy is based on his incomplete term as President. The record was mixed - but his assassination and the emotional impact of his death overwhelmed objectivity in assessing that record. He's a martyr, a romantic tragic figure. I suspect that when the dust of history settles he will be judged somewhere in the second tier of presidents (in the 14/15 range). One has to wonder  what he would have achieved had he finished out his term - and, as I suspect he would have - served out a second term.

But Lewis has only grown in stature since his death. His Mere Christianity is ranked as one of the spiritual classics of the 20th Century. His Chronicles of Narnia books and The Screwtape Letters also rank high. They -  and a number of his other books - continue to sell briskly and to influence people. Many people have discovered or rediscovered faith through his works, and, through the case of Narnia, the movies made from them.

I suspect years from now people will still be reading and cherishing Lewis's writings.

Long after Kennedy's achievements are relegated to the history books.

But I'm still not certain how Lewis's poetry will be remembered.

Chesterton ad

Ah, the great one keeps showing up in different places.

Up here in Western New York a local car company quotes Chesterton in an ad:

http://www.thatsmyvision.com/custom/vision-tv/

The ad begins with Chesterton saying "The greatest for of giving is Thanks-Giving."

The company says it will donate to a local charity during November, so maybe Chesterton would object to his name being linked to commercial venture.