In which Mr. Morley disagrees with Mr. Chesterton

From The Haunted Bookshop--"Chesterton has written a very savage poem against cocoa,"said Roger,"which you will find in The Flying Inn; but for my part I find it the ideal evening drink. It lets the mind down gently, and paves the way for slumber. I have often noticed that the most terrific philosophical agonies can be allayed by three cups of Mrs. Mifflin's cocoa."

The Chesterton poem in question is this (in part)
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast;
Cocoa is a dull, disloyal,
Lying, crawling cad and clown,
And may very well be grateful
To the fool who takes him down.

I'm afraid I agree with Mr. Morley on this one. After all he wrote the definitive ode to cocoa!

Animal Crackers by Christopher Morley

Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink,
That is the finest of suppers, I think;
When I', grown up and can have what I please
I think I shall always insist upon these.

What do you choose when you're offered a treat?
When Mother says, "What would you like best to eat?"
Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast?
It's cocoa and animals that I love the most!

The kitchen's the cosiest place that I know;
The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow,
And there in the twilight, how jolly to see
The cocoa and animals waiting for me.

Daddy and Mother dine later in state,
With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait;
But they don't have nearly as much fun as I
Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by;
And Daddy once said he would like to be me
Having Cocoa and animals once more for tea!

Comfort Reading

I've been re-reading Christopher Morley's The Haunted Bookshop. It is a sequel to Parnassus on Wheels which the book cover blurb calls The whimsical adventure classic of a madcap spinster, a Yankee tinker, and their rolling bookshop. Which sums it up nicely. In The Haunted Bookshop our tinker and spinster have been married for a couple of years and have settled down in Brooklyn (just after WW I) living in the back of their used bookshop. It's a philosophic romp through anarchists, Bolsheviks (and Bolshevixens)and of course a love story. I was first introduced to these books by my daughter's piano teacher and it was love at first sight. Here is our erstwhile bookseller on dish washing--"I used to regard dish-washing merely as an ignoble chore, a kind of hateful discipline which had to be undergone with knitted brow and brazen fortitude. When my wife went away for the first time, I erected a reading stand and an electric light over the sink, and used to read while my hands went automatically through base gestures of purification. I made the great spirits of literature partners of my sorrow, and learned by heart a good deal of Paradise Lost and of Walt Mason, while I soused and wallowed among the pots and pans. I used to comfort myself with tow lines of Keats: "The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores"
Then a new conception of the matter struck me. It is intolerable for a human being to go on doing any task as a penance, under duress. No matter what the work is, one must spiritualize it in some way.....I tell you I have evolved a whole kitchen philosophy of my own. I find the kitchen the shrine of our civilization, the focus of all that is comely in life.....The stars never look so bright as they do from the kitchen door after the ice-box pan is emptied and the whole place is "redd up" as the Scotch say."
It has been a great read for these dark November days.

More Lake Effect

Still shoveling....

Lake Effect

We have been shoveling!

Bug...

We were attacked by a stomach bug last weekend. It spread into the week and we are just now starting to put things right. Seven loads of laundry, clean sheets and bedding for everyone, new tooth brushes. I hope we have this thing beaten. Sam had his usual luck coming down with it during the one free space in his schedule--work closed for Veteran's Day, classes cancelled, didn't even miss the appointment with his college adviser. The rest of us are getting some color back in our cheeks and I spent a couple of days laying around noticing all the cobwebs and dust. Let the holiday cleaning commence!

We're in for a wild ride

Well, the results are in and Barack Obama is the president elect. I can think of nothing more fitting than this quote from Chesterton's Orthodoxy: "It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom--that would indeed have been simple.It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls; only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect."

So, we continue to fight the good fight. Hang on tight!