The Third Man

The Gilbert Magazine came yesterday! and today I read a very interesting article, The Third Man. The 'third man' was Maurice Baring, a close friend of GKC. The reason he is called the third man is because of a painting of three men. Two of them are easily recognized as Hillaire Belloc and GKC, but the third is less easily recognized, he is, as you probably guessed, Maurice Baring. He was, like Chesterton, a Catholic convert but he converted 13 years earlier, in 1909. When Chesterton converted in 1922 Maurice Baring sent him a letter of which there is an excerpt in the Gilbert Magazine and I will give you an excerpt of that excerpt:

I have hardly ever entered a church without putting up a candle to Our lady or to St. Joseph or St. Anthony for you, And both this year and last year in Lent I made a Novena for you. I know of many other people, better people far than I, who did the same. Many Masses were said for you and prayers all over England and Scotland in centres of Holiness. I will show you some day a letter from some Nuns on the subject. A great friend of mine one of the greatest saints I have known, Sister Mary Annuncitiation of the Convent Orphanage, [would] always pray for you.

Isn't that neat? And here is another interesting quote from the same source.

People used to conceal their ignorance decently. No longer. This is due to the spread of what is called Education. More people are taught things, but they are taught less. In fact, they are taught hardly anything;in former times they were taught little, but that little they learnt.

Well that's all for now, but I will hopefully be posting on the Gilbert magazine this week, but I can't be sure, school is starting soon and I am going to be busy.

The Man Who Was Thursday Discussion 1

A discussion on the Man Who Was Thursday was discovered by Lewis the editor here. But sadly it was closed. Therefore I am going to start one here.

Now the only topic for discussion I could think of was the last chapter, so this is my question:

Was Syme's adventure all a dream, or did it only seem like a dream, or does it matter?

Any thoughts, answers or additions to the question??? Please comment.
Oh, and any ideas for the next topic?????

"The Man Who Was Thursday" Discussion

I found this interesting blog recently, called "Veritatis Visio", where a discussion of The Man Who Was Thursday has just finished. There was also a discussion of A Tale of Two Cities which I enjoyed reading very much.

Plymouth Rock and Chickens

I recently listened to the talk enititled 'Chesterton and De Toqueville' by Kurt Griffen, it was very interesting and entertaining. It was about (obviously) GKC and De Toqueville but more specifically about their trips to America. Since this was the subject, the books most talked about were (not surprisingly) What I Saw in America by GKC and Democracy in America by De Toqueville. I was interested by some of the things I heard from this talk about What I Saw in America so today (partly because I was interested and partly because I needed to post here) I picked it up. I browsed through the index and decided to try chapter 14: Lincoln and Lost Causes. I was greeted on the first page by this hilarious quote:

It would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that Plymouth Rock is a chicken. Any English person keeping chickens and chiefly interested in Plymouth Rocks considered as chickens, would nevertheless have a hazy sensation of having seen the word somewhere before. He would feel subconsciously that the Plymouth Rock had not always been a chicken. Indeed the name connotes something not only solid but antiquated; and it is not therefore a very tactful name for a chicken. There would rise up before him something memorable in the haze that he calls his history; and he would see the history books of his boyhood and old engravings of men in steeple- crowned hats struggling with sea-waves or Red Indians. The whole thing would sudenly become clear to him (by a simple reform) the chickens were called Pilgrim Fathers.

What I was initially looking for (although I was not successful) was the part quoted in the afore-mentioned talk about the sameness of Hotels. How everything was the same, not only were all hotel floors the same, all hotels were the same. This in turn led to the ridiculous names frequently bestowed upon these hotels, well actually 'Inns', The Ramada Inn, The Relax Inn and the Comfort Inn. I must add to this one of the 'Inns' that my brother stayed at while on a trip, The Sleep Inn. Well there is obviously much more to be read in What I Saw in America but that's all for now. I just had share that (and I also had to post:).

More Chesterton Sites

My mom found these two sites today, I'm glad she did. I've got some things to add to my wishlist.

Click here and here to see these sites.
My brother and I really like this, an old dramatized The Man Who Was Thursday, from 1938 to be exact. Have Fun.

ChesterTeens reading list

This is the reading list my mom has started for, well, ChesterTeens.
Suggestions are very welcome.

What would Chesterton do...

... if this was coming to his neighborhood?

The "service" is going to be a concert and talk given by the co-president of The Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Please share your own thoughts; I'll post mine tomorrow.

A Eulogy for GK.Chesterton

I read this eulogy in a book called Pastoral and Occasional Sermons by Monsignor Ronald Knox, edited by Philip Caraman, S.J.
It was a very good eulogy, showing how Chesterton went against the ways of the times to say what is right. And how even though Chesterton did not convert until much later in life, he always defended Catholicism.
The dedication poem for The Man Who Was Thursday is quoted:

But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms-
God and the good Republic came riding back in arms;
We have seen the city of Mansoul even as it rocked, relieved-
Blessed are they who have not seen, but, being blind believed.

I really liked it and I hope I can find it on the internet somewhere, in which case I will post a link. If you're interested in buying the book you can here, it's half price right now.

Future ChesterTeen...

.... at least I hope so. Click here for a picture of this young Chestertonian.

Chesterton's Marriage Proposal

I was browsing The American Chesterton Society website which led me to "Quotemeister" which led me to this.
Enjoy.

Dorm Decor

As I mentioned in the last post many of us were gone at retreat last week. Gilbert Girl, another friend and I roomed together, and we had alot of fun decorating. I brought some post-it notes and we wrote some of our favorite quotes on them and stuck them all over the walls, here are the quotes we used:

"Daybreak is never ending glory, Getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance."

"There is no such thing as an unintesting subject, the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."

"The men of the east may spell the stars,
and times and triumphs mark;
But the men signed with the Cross of Christ,
Go gaily in the dark."

"Journalism consists largely in saying 'Lord James is Dead' to people who never knew Lord James was alive."

"The Optimist is the person who thinks all the world is good except the pessimist
and the pessimist is the person who thinks all the world is bad except himself."

"Angels fly because they can take themselves lightly.''

By the way I'm sorry about the scanty posting, our family computer is broken so I haven't had as much time on the computer.

A Little Downtime on ChesterTeens

Almost all the contributors here will be at a retreat this week. So things wll be a little quieter this week than usual.

Please Pray.

Regina Doman, the author of The Shadow of the Bear which got many of us into Chesterton, lost her four year old son, Joshua Michael, in a car accident last week.
Please pray for her and her grieving family. May he rest in peace.

Chesterton and the Da Vinci Code

I absolutely LOVED this talk. Carl Olson is sooooo funny! He was cracking jokes through almost the whole talk, it was hilarious. I was supposed to clean my room for twenty minutes and so I decided to listen to part of his talk, I was in my room for at least an hour.
He began by asking how many people had read and/or watched The Da Vinci Code, he then remarked for those peoples benifit that there would be confessions later on.
He also read a review by Barnes and Noble on this book, The Da Vinci Hoax. They seem to think that since The Da Vinci Code is "just fiction" that it's not dangerous.
On the contrary I think it is more dangerous in the form of novel because people are more likely to be interested in reading a novel than a non-fiction book.

He continued througout the talk to summarize the inconsistencies in Dan Brown's novel. The absurdness of these, plus Carl Olson's sarcasim made for a absolutely hilarious talk. My brother and I had a great time.

"Abandon All Hopelessness Ye Who Enter Here"

We just got the set of ChesterCon CDs. I have finished Dale Ahlquist's and Carl Olsen's, and I really like them both. I am going to blog about Dale Ahlquist's first and then do Carl Olsen's.
Dale Ahlquist's was really good, it was really funny too. He read the last paragraph of the Charles Dickens book, which talks mostly about eternity. Then he said"That may be the end of the book but it is not the end of this talk, you are just beginning to learn the meaning of eternity."(:
And then of course there are the actual Chesterton quotes that are always hilarious. Like this one:

The strength of Cromwell was that he cared for religion, but the strength of relgion was that it did not care for Cromwell.

But it wasn't all laughter, he was explaining to us about hope. That hope isn't pessimism or optimism but that it is a the happy medium between these extremes. Of course he had many great Chesterton quotes to go with it and I'll try do my best to remember them.

The optimist is the person who thinks all the world is good except the pessimist and the pessimist is the person who thinks that all the world is bad except himself.

(to be continued) (hopefully:)