Frog Hospital, Dickens, Chesterton And "Violence As A Language Problem"

Dear Fred,

Thanks for Frog Hospital.

I felt its absence and am delighted by Frog's return.

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I too am eager to read each of your family history updates.

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You also illuminate the great goodness of "snail mail" and the corresponding ephemerality of Facebook and email. 

(But why, I wonder, do you ask people to write you at an address other than the one in your "tag line?")

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Just last week I mentioned to someone that my friend Fred is completely engaged by Dickens.

"The thing about reading Dickens is that there is no possible better use of your time." 

High praise indeed! So high I will follow your suit.

But why not Martin Chuzzlewit?

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Have you read any of Chesterton's "biographies" - a sizable body of work notable for its lack of biographical information.

On the other hand, he expresses a person's soul insuperably well - which is, no doubt, why his bios are still read.

In the end, we are more interested in essence than circumstance.

Among Chesterton's best biographies are "Dickens" (whom he argues is, at heart, a Catholic), along with "George Bernard Shaw" and the Irish rebel "William Cobbett."

Notably, Shaw and Chesterton were bosom friends, so much so that they debated one another in a two-man road show, and when Shaw fell on hard times, GK supported him monetarily.

The dedicatory note to The Jolly Giant's Shaw biography reads: "Most people either say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or hat they do not understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and I do not agree with him." 

What is this thing we might call "argumentative friendship?"

Said Chesterton: "People generally quarrel because they cannot argue."

My sister Janet -- who taught 33 years at the inner city Rochester New York elementary school with The Worst Socio-Economic Profile -- observed that "Violence is a language problem. If you don't know how to navigate conflict with words, the only thing to do after somebody says "Fuck your momma" is to pick up a gun or a knife." 

 And what is violence but end-state "quarrel" in the absence of honorable argument? 

Once people have "pulled up chairs" for a proper argument, they either reach resolution, keep on arguing, or decide that sleep is preferable to stalemate.

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"Chesterton's Best Single Source Webpage": http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/gk-chesterton-best-single-web-source.html

And here is my personal collection of Chesterton quotations: http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/12/chesterton-quotations.html

Happy Father's Day!

Pax tecum

Alan

PS It seems fitting to insert Shaw's splendid epitomization of the daily press: "Newspapers seem unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization." Is this abandonment of perspective/proportion what people do when determined to quarrel, bypassing argument altogether.

PPS I encourage you to check out Ted Radio Hour's investigation of a bullied child, now grown into a good poet. I am reminded of the intergalactic gap between actual living circumstances (and how easily they determine a life's outcome) and the American conservative view of "personal responsibility" whereby everyone is presumed to be in total control of his destiny and there is, therefore, no need for compassion, mercy or forgiveness. Just the everlasting Trinity of vengeance, vindictiveness and retribution. Shane Koyczan's "What It's Like To Be Bullied"  http://www.npr.org/2013/12/20/255814090/what-s-it-like-to-be-young-and-bullied

On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 2:17 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:

FROG HOSPITAL -- June 15, 2014

By Fred Owens

At the Beach in Santa Barbara

I was stymied on how to proceed with the newsletter. I sent out two editions in March celebrating the Fishtown Woods Massacre of 1988. This heartfelt and well-researched story met with widespread and rather definite indifference.

And then I thought -- "Geez, I'm in Santa Barbara three years now, and I'm getting out of touch with the Pacific Northwest, and I just can't sell another Fishtown story. Their not mine to tell anymore."

So I dropped it. I put the files back in the box and put the box back in the attic. Let it gather dust with the rest of the archives.

I plunged right into another project which has kept me occupied these past two months -- and those two months, if you may have noticed, did not get you any more Frog Hospitals.

Instead I composed a family story -- about my Uncle Ted and my Granpa and my great-Grandfather. I had lots of photos and documents, and I spun it into a story -- rather than a history. With a story you can just make stuff up to fill in the gaps -- it saves you a lot of painstaking research.

Anyway, most of this "Uncle Ted" story was posted on Facebook in daily doses, like a publication in a serial format. And a lot of people liked it -- mainly my cousins.  I really enjoyed getting back in touch with some cousins I haven't heard from in 20 years.

My cousin Florence, for instance. She married Uncle Ted's boy Dick in 1951 and they moved to Wisconsin and we didn't see them much after that. But I got her phone number from her daughter and I called her one Sunday afternoon. Florence and I haven't had a chat in almost 50 years, but she was right there. I just said hello, this is Fred Owens, and she laughed and said "What a surprise!" And right away we got talking.

Cousinhood does not expire, I realized. Friends may fade away, but cousins are forever.

The photo. Three cousins and one sister, in 1962.

Charles Dickens. I'm reading Charles Dickens this year, all of Dickens and nothing of non-Dickens. Not literally all -- I doubt I will read Martin Chuzzlewit, but I will read Little Dorrit and the Old Curiosity Shop, and am reading Oliver Twist right now, and did finish the Pickwick Papers last week, with an intervening plan to read two Sherlock Holmes short stories between each Dickens novel. This will keep me literarily occupied for 2014.

The thing about reading Dickens is that there is no possible better use of your time. 

Writing Letters. I began to miss writing letters, so I have began doing that again. Paper, pen, envelopes, stamps, the post office -- the whole shebang. Send me your address, and I might write to you.

Or send me a letter and I will write back. Write to Fred Owens 1105 Veronica Springs Road, Santa Barbara, Ca 93105

This is a revolutionary and highly subversive activity, because I am sticking it to Facebook and Gmail and the NSA. I am tired of those people and their "free" services. Facebook is mining my data. Gmail has saved and will never forget any email I ever wrote on their program. The NSA snoops on everyone. To hell with them.

Besides that, the mail works just as good as it ever does. Think of what you have to say, and realize that almost everything you have to say can wait for the time it takes to deliver a letter. "Instant" communication is rarely necessary or helpful.

Thank you very much and Happy Father's Day to everyone

--

Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens

My writing blog is Frog Hospital

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001