The Consolations of Philosopy arrived from alibris.com. I’ve never had this problem before with anything purchased through alibris, but the volume is so revoltingly permeated with the odor of cigarette smoke that I can’t turn the pages without gagging.
There’s definitely something to be said for purchasing brand new books. I am returning Consolations with a loud squawk of complaint.
In the meantime, two other non-stinky volumes arrived in the mail: Betty Friedan’s The Second Stage and Dale Ahlquist’s GK Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense.
I was introduced to Chesterton via C.S. Lewis, who attributed his conversion from atheism to Christianity to Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. I figured that must be some book or some writer and was curious to know more. Lo and behold, it seems Chesterton was some writer—prolific as all get out, with something to say on just about everything under the sun and quite a way with words. The only thing by Chesterton himself that I have read thus far is his biography of St. Francis of Assissi. Dahlquist’s book is an excellent warm-up to the workout of reading Chesterton’s own texts.
What made me think fate was toying with me was that Chesterton and Betty Friedan arrived in my mailbox on the same day. You could not find two people with more diametrically opposed views on life, illustrated, for example, by their views on motherhood.
One would be inclined to think that Friedan had a better grasp of the subject, having been a mother herself, but I find myself resolutely on the side of Chesterton in the matter. Friedan complained vociferously about frittering her life away as a housewife and mother. We know the story.
Some half a century before The Feminine Mystique, Chesterton had a few words to say on this notion of “frittering”.
When people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult, but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the world. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless, and of small import to the soul [my emphasis], then as I say, I give up. . .How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone. No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
Of small import to the soul. There you have it. There is the gist of the matter. One’s very soul depends on the manner in which we “drudge”. With a nod to Friedan, no doubt having an educated choice in the matter makes a difference, as does the role having evolved from being a "woman's function" to a "parent's function."
But while I give Friedan a grudging respect, Chesterton has won the fondness of my heart. To read him is to recognize a good soul. Even better, to read him is to be moved to action.
Last night Kipp and I took out his National Geographic 3-D Space Projector and transformed the office into “an amazing 3-D universe” just like the box said. (The box left out the part about 'headache-inducing'.) We took a trip through our solar system and beyond, to the Andromeda Galaxy, while listening to the “Journey into Space CD Audio Tour”. Mrs. Jones should have had such a gadget—though she probably had the night sky. We have that too. Just not for any length of time on a sub-zero winter night in Minnesota.
We listened to “space music” afterwards, lying on the floor, looking up at Andromeda. Kipp asked me what happens to astronauts in orange suits when their spaceship blows up.
There was no CD in the box to help with that one; I told him what I knew.
9:58:38 AM 
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