The Man Who Is Thursday

Years ago, I was invited to become one of the contributors to a blog called Chesterton and Friends.

The blog is devoted "G.K. Chesterton, his friends, and the writers he influenced: Belloc, Baring, Lewis, Tolkien, Dawson, Barfield, Knox, Muggeridge, and others."

There were several writers involved when I  joined - some quite prominent in Chesterton circles - and each of us was assigned a day. We were free to post on other days, but our day was the one for which each one of us was responsible for providing content.

I was assigned Thursday.

I was delighted at that - having enjoyed Chesterton's novel, The Man Who Was Thursday.

Alas, some of the regular writers drifted away, posting decreased, and the days were neglected. I continued to post, but not as regularly as I should - and certainly with no concern for making sure Thursday had some content each week.

I was thinking about this this morning. I am home - my wife had surgery and I'm out of school for two days to make sure she is doing okay, to make her cups of tea, and to say comforting things as she deals with post-operative pain and queasiness.

I brought school work with me. While she was in surgery yesterday, I was grading a set of student clerihews. As I made suggestions and comments, I thought of my own clerihews. I've been fortunate to have some of them published in Gilbert. One of my back-burner projects was to compile a collection of some of the better ones and to self-publish a chapbook. So this morning I went to a file where I had haphazardly compiled various poems - clerihews, limericks, and haiku mostly. I created a new file just for the clerihews and did some cutting and pasting. I then went through and culled some duplicates, weaker efforts, and those that are more topical in nature (about local elections, for example).

As I did so, I realized I was missing some. Since I'd posted a number of them on that blog, I went searching for them. I also read some old posts by myself and others. There were some good, enjoyable pieces posted there over the last eight years. We had a good set of writers and Chestertonians contributing. I hope those who are no longer active there are doing well.

As I was searching, I thought of Chesterton and the efforts to compile his works. People keep finding essays, reviews, letters, and poems by him - sometimes long forgotten or published in obscure places. He likely forgot about them; he was not noted for his organization when it came to such matters. I share that trait with him.

I now have a file with most of my better clerihews. There may be others I haven't found yet. There's about 40 that I deem worthy of including in my little book. I also found some that I had intended to submit to Gilbert, but never got around to doing so: Watch out Gilbert editors!

In addition, I've resolved to renew my commitment to posting at that blog on Thursdays. I also need to post more regularly here. I've done some cross-posting, and will continue to do so. (This post, for example, is substantially the same as one I posted there.)

I'll work on my clerihew collection for publishing later this year. I'm also going to compile a collection of my slug haiku (they all begin "a slug among weeds") - more on that later.

Maybe I'll talk about this other project next Thursday here and on Chesterton and Friends!

Pax et bonum