Annual Chesterton Conference
The Spring Blitz continues. I’d give details, but suffice to say: When someone asks me if I want to do X or why I didn’t attend Y Optional Event, I want to strangle them. I still haven’t taken my life, but a bullet to the brain in preferable to this slavery of circumstances. I guess you might say I haven’t quite, not quite, digested Brother Lawrence’s little spirituality of the Presence of God.
Oh well. No time for blogging today, which is just as well: some recent petty heavy-handedness by the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota deserves publicity. First, the letter from Dale Ahlquist at the American Chesterton Society that just came out:
St. Thomas Security has taken over our conference. This is what we have to deal with this year:
1. Alcohol can only be served and consumed in the lobby of OShaugnessy Education Center. Glasses cannot be taken into the auditorium or outside.
2. The wine and beer has to be served by St. Thomas food service staff, for which we will be charged a fee.
3. The alcohol has to be served with food. Not just cheese and crackers. The food has to be ordered through Food Service. We can’t bring our own. They may make an exception for the wheel of Stilton cheese.
4. We have to serve other drinks as well. The other drinks have to be ordered through Food Service.
5. We can serve wine and beer only during the following hours during the conference: 7-10 Thursday, 1-4, Friday, and 1-4, Saturday
6. We can have an outdoor “afterglow” in Foley Plaza on Thurs, Fri., and Sat nights from 10:30 to Midnight. Again we have to have a food service staff member act as bartender with the last drink served not later than 11:45 pm. The plaza will be fenced off with one entrance and exit and everyone there has to wear a conference badge. We have to pay for the fence, too.
7. There will be a security officer present at all our events.
8. We had to get a special license to serve wine with the banquet on Saturday night.
The costs of these extra requirements will do a good job of eating up the costs saved by having Catholic Studies co-sponsor the event. So we’re back to the conference being a money-loser.
I think we’re done with St. Thomas, and I think the conference is changed forever.
This is frustrating. First, you know the person that has imposed these restrictions is a self-righteous little jackass that is probably chanting “liability” (see yesterday’s post). Second, the self-righteous little ass probably has very little, if any, exposure to the Annual Chesterton Conference and doesn’t know how this will kill the Conference. Third, you couldn’t explain it to the self-righteous little ass because all these changes affect the “intangibles”–the spirit, the little things, the unnoticed things, the “air”–and if you can’t show such a person in black-and-white how changes will screw things up, he won’t believe you. Most frustrating.
Some Chestertonians are fighting back. An enjoyable email from one of them:
Bookmark it: del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkListDearly Beloved Mailing List 1, and Bcc’s:
Please find below a forwarded copy of a sad and distressing email I received tonight from Dale, the reigning Czar of the American Chesterton Society. For those of you who are unaware, the American Chesterton Society has held its annual Conference at the University of St Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota, since June of 1997 (previously it had been hosted for nearly two decades in Milwaukee). Until last year, our Conference was a joyful, personalist, self-directed meeting of minds and hearts regarding all things Chesterton (and, therefore, Catholic and godly), but it appears that those pathetic, treasonous, squash-every-life-like-a-bug, Left-wing, sour, ruthless, joyless, little nimrod-minded, Obama-voting imps of the Fifth Pillar (hereafter referred to only as they) cannot stand the sounds of resounding laughter, singing and conversant chatter that are the ordinary hallmarks of a good, traditional Catholic party; they cannot tolerate the warm, sweet scent of cigar smoke wafting though the trees and, by GOD, they must not let us alone to, as responsible adults are sometimes wont to do on festal days, be allowed to imbibe anything stronger than Coca-Cola without wage-sucking chaperones and security. After all, they must tell themselves in the wee hours of the cold dark nights in the Caves [faculty housing], we evil Chestertonians might get a little loose in the head and begin planning the sacking and overthrow of all that is good and Marxist in a modern-day liberal “Catholic” house of education; we might even gang up as an unruly mob in the first night, storm the Caves, and run all the sad little tenured heretics off the premises with our pen-knives and holy-water-guns and (gasp!!!) raise the standard of the Papal household in the Quad before the dawn breaks! Eek-gads!
Here’s the deal: I didn’t spend all freaking year babying thirty gallons of prize merlot along just so I can turn around and have it measured out by the thimbleful, like so much poison, by some snot-nosed little Liberal-hack-without-a-clue because ol’ Archbishop Flynn has refused to grow a spine and let one of the most historic hallowed halls in American Catholic academics be turned into a den of Green Peace-worshiping, law-mongering, joy-sqwashing Commies. Sounds harsh? Too bad. It’s the bare truth.
We need help. Please!!! Send this communique to everyone you know–especially the media. St Thomas will invite every anti-Catholic, anti-Life, anti-Reason moron and hack to our campus to spread Modernist filth and lying propaganda, but we orthodox, faithful Chestertonians (with 10 solid years of peaceful, non-confrontational, trouble-free, self-directed, responsible assemblies under our proverbial belt–and not one single DUI) can’t be trusted to meet without Big Brother monitoring our every move??? O, puleeze…..
We need you to protest.
We need donations to find a new Conference home.
We need dynamite in the Church, as Peter Maurin put it–and you all are the fuse!
Please email Fr. Dennis Dease (DJDEASE@stthomas.edu) and tell him that this is a sophmoric, vengeful move on the part of the University of St Thomas. And if you are giving money to these idiots, please stop!
That’s all. Up until now, this has been the best three day party on the planet. Now, like everything else, the Libs are trying to destroy it. We alone can stop them.
In His Grace, miki
8 Responses to “Annual Chesterton Conference”
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June 4th, 2008 at 6:56 am
Out of curiosity, how many people came to this conference each year before the bad guys tried to deaden it.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Not sure, but I think recent conferences probably saw attendance in the 100-250 range. Some Chestertonian will log on here some time today or tomorrow. They can probably give a precise number.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I must say, the surfeit of pointless and restrictive alcohol laws and regulations is one of the worst things about this country of ours. Bonam fortunam in your quest to save some civility.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Looks like an effort to squelch the fun and conviviality.
I went last year & had a great time. Preregistration (mostly those like me from out of town that sign up to lodge at the college) was in the 125-150 range, if I recall correctly what I was told when I asked. At it’s peak, the attendance (which varied by day and speaker) was probably in the 450-500 range.
I’ll miss the conference this year: my daughter is marrying that weekend!
June 4th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Repeating what I posted on the Chesterton & Friends blog:
Maybe next year the ACS can have the conference at a REAL Catholic college named after St. Thomas Aquinas! Nice weather, too.
http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/
Just a suggestion… and in no way influenced by the fact that it’s located only 30 miles from where I live. *cough*cough*
June 5th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Gosh, do you Chestertonians wear sweatshirts with Greek letters sewn on the front? Maybe the Dean of Student Affairs missed the “con” in front of “fraternity” on the event application.
June 5th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I knew it!! When STU recently forbade a student from volunteering at Planned Parenthood, I couldn’t decide if it was because of STU’s Puritan future or Catholic heritage. Now I know.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:34 am
[...] The Annual Chesterton Conference will be leaving the University of St. Thomas, and at least one person suspects all the bogus restrictions are just UST’s disingenuous way to get rid of a group that doesn’t fit the UST’s liberal-minded agenda. Read about it here. Excerpt: And we are possessed of more importance to this world, to this society at large, than you give us credit for or can even imagine. And long after your sniveling little theories have whithered away, and the petty campaigns you have championed have dried to dust and nothingness with you in your sad, collapsed little anonymous graves, obliterated by countless centuries of muck and untended briars, the message of Gilbert Keith Chesterton will reverberate through the earth like a mighty thunder, and shimmer on every horizon like the stars at dawn. [...]