Friday, June 13, 2008

Opera, persecution, and geometry

The jumbled thoughts of GilbertGirl and Ria after a busy day at Chestercon:

Meeting new Chestertonian teenagers, listening to entertaining and enlightening talks, delving deep into Chesterton's stunningly simple masterpiece Orthodoxy, and best of all, eating Stilton cheese while conversing with internet acquaintances are a few of the intellectual pleasures we've been enjoying these last two days.


The whole thing got off to a splendid start with Dale Ahlquist's "In defense of everything else," an introduction to Chesterton's introduction.

David Zach gave us a spirited, rousing talk (trying to keep us awake late Thursday night) all about Chesterton as a futurist, based off the chapter "The Eternal Revolution". Begginning by defining futurist, he showed how Chesterton thought about and invested in the future, emphasizing children and incorporating a slight thread of The Ethics of Elfland.

Tom Martin woke us up Friday morning with his electrically captivating "the maniac: Especially, Nietzsche". Supremely satisfying arguments concerning reason, faith, heresy, and other juicy subjects were displayed in a scholarly and Chestertonian style.

Unfortunately, we were absent for a great deal of Sean Dailey's talk regarding The Suicide of Thought. ): So despite the fact 'tis GilbertGirl's favorite chapter, and one of my favorites, we have nothing to report.

The clock stuck twelve long ago, and the princesses are late for bed, so we'll continue our summary tomorrow with Jennifer Overkamp's Fairy Tale talk.

P.s. If you're wondering about the three nouns comprising the subject, although they have not yet entered the narrative, they are what our heads are full of:)

3 comments:

Clare said...

Oh, I'm so envious of all of you there at the conference! I really need to make it out there one year.

In the meantime, I'm glad that those at home have you there reporting!

The Magician said...

I'm looking forward to reading the thoughts about the Conference.

Racoon said...

Hey, I'm back! I must say that I had never had such a good time in almost my whole life, that it's been an amazing time, that I'll try to repeat next year (let's pray for it), that I've loved absolutely every moment since the airplane landed in America, that everyone was so 'encantador' (charming) and a long etcetera.

I'll try to put some order in my thoughts later. Now, have my prayers and blessings, and I'm looking forward to keeping in touch with you all (The Flying Inns !!!).