A New Book: A Twenty-first Century Tree of Virtues

Oh man! (as Marty would say.)

Yes, there already is a book called The Tree of Virtues in the Saga, but that is fiction.

This one is titled A Twenty-first Century Tree of Virtues, and it is non-fiction, though I am happy to tell you that there IS a short story in it, with the Weaver triplets.

Oh yeah... but it is merely an introduction to the topic. The book studies the matter of organizing the entire realm of human actions - the VIRTUES - which includes the vast collection of disciplines, the Arts and the Sciences, the Crafts and the numerous branches of Engineering, as well as all those things usually considered Virtues. It contains a study of some dozen treatments over the last two millennia, and in particular a detailed study of the famous Generalis Divisio Virtutis in the Cursus Theologicus written by the Carmelites of Salamanca in the early 1600s...



famously photographed by my friend Andrew Poole of Loome Theological Booksellers.

That tree is augmented with the huge collection of inter-related disciplines which have branched forth in the last four hundred years. Alas, it still awaits an artist, but without this detailed study, the artwork will never occur.

Eventually, this new tree will give forth its fruit... perhaps in the form of the Ambrosian University...

Visit: here to order.

I Will Lift Up My Eyes: the Bill Grosjean stories

Just in time for the new school year there is now a NEW collection of short stories that happen at Howell College in Stirling, Pennsylvania... stories featuring Bill Grosjean as a young college student. Find out more about him and the mysteries of Old Main, and even the role played by Beta Theta Pi fraternity.

Visit here to order.

Here is the "blurb" from the back cover:

High in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania is a small town named Stirling. It is the site of Howell College, which was founded shortly after the Civil War. Howell is not a big college, but it is part of a Plan - a plan devised by a brilliant engineer named John Fisher, a complex and far-reaching plan to confront Evil and advance Good – a plan which had become all but lost in the passing of years, amid the wars and struggles and turmoils and changes of the 19th and 20th centuries.

And so Howell's hidden treasures awaited a future generation. Perhaps the greatest and least-known of those treasures was the Chandler Bells: a ring of nine bells made soon after the founding of the school. The bells were hung in the tower of Old Main at Howell, and they were never rung except in dire need – but when they were rung, remarkable things occurred.

However, by 1996 the very existence of those bells had been forgotten. Forgotten by the town. Forgotten by the college administration and by its faculty. Forgotten by the students, even by those students in certain organizations whose existence depends upon remembering, upon the passing on of minor local traditions in the style of a family – that is, forgotten even by the fraternities. It was a terrible thing to forget the bells, because there was dark evil at work, and more than anything else the enemy wanted to thwart Fisher’s Plan.

And then a young man named Bill Grosjean entered one of those fraternities, a very young man, a man with a most remarkable gift: the gift of a powerful and perfect memory. And so, just as it says in one of that fraternity’s songs:

With the help of brothers dear
And of God, we’ve naught to fear...

Was it all part of the Fisher Plan? Read on, and learn for yourself.

Announcing a new book on heraldry

I've been busy recently assisting a good friend with his own book (see here for details), and now that it is released, I was able to complete my own, far smaller work, which, strange to say, actually has some relevance to the first one.

The work is called An Introduction to Heraldry.

It is small, just a brief introduction, but it contains a good number of outlines for the reader to color, and a Chesterton-size serving of Chesterton quotes. In fact, it includes just about every excerpt I could find using AMBER which relates to heraldry and coats-of-arms; some of these are quite interesting, and it is handy to have them all in one place.

I have posted this announcement here with the Saga since the book also contains an appendix which discusses the use of heraldry in the creation of fiction, using five of my coats-of-arms from the Saga as examples. Those are discussed, and I give some background (though NO spoilers) about the underlying meanings of the arms, which are shown in full color on the front cover of the book.

Anybody need 800 billion primes?

If you do I have them. All the way from 2 to 25,000,000,000,013.

Some very cool stuff out there in the six-byte region of integers...

New non-fiction: The Problem With "Problem-Solving Skills"

Problems, my friend- I say we've got problems. Big, big problems. Right here. With a capital P that rhymes with C that stands for Computers.

So, knowing the "Little Red Hen" Principle as I do - that if one needs something done, one should do it one's self - I have started a new series, "Case Studies in Computer Science." After all, a doctorate and over thirty years of experience (not to mention a knowledge of GKC and an adventurous mind) ought to bear all sorts of interesting fruits!

So... I am now very happy to anounce that the first volume, called The Problem with "Problem-Solving Skills" is now ready for purchase. Strike up the band!

(Band? What band? Ah... I always think there's a band, kid.) Yep, Professor Harold Hill gets to play a part, as does a huge cast of characters - Winthrop Paroo, Aquinas, Henry of Langenstein, Robinson Crusoe, Hugh of St. Victor, Boethius, Milo (from The Phantom Tollbooth), Gauss, Jaki, Babbage, Captain (ahem, Admiral) Grace Hopper, Seymour Cray, Danny Dunn, Rovol of Norlamin, the Abominable Snow Monster of the North - and eight Russian dolls...

Very tech, very bizarre, and a pleasantly curious selection of strange problems and even stranger solutions. Now you will know some of the things you can add to your own toolbox of "problem-solving skills" even if you aren't a computer scientist.

See here for details, or my website, http://www.DeBellisStellarum.com.

A Public Exorcism, your Excellency!

It's quite amazing to read that a bishop in the Real World has performed a public exorcism, as reported by Father Zuhlsdorf.

You might wish to compare this with episodes like this and especially this and this.

Clearly we need to pray for our bishops, who ought to defend Truth as this one has done - and for all of us who are constantly beset by our powerful adversaries. We must also reassure each other, as Bernie did, that "we have allies who are far more powerful" than our enemies.

We us start, as our heroes, with the appropriate antiphon:
Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.
Qui fecit caelum et terram.

Our help is in the name of the Lord.
Who made heaven and earth.

(All Field Agents know what to do when the Dean rings the bells...)

About the College

Tiffany at Life of a Catholic Librarian has posted a "linkup" appeal, so I will add my own 2 bits. (Tech humor)

She asks several questions:

(1) How you got started in social media; (2) How you started your blog or podcast
I answer: I am a computer scientist and a Chestertonian, and it was through Nancy Brown at Flying Stars back in 2005; she's a Chestertonian and the great biographer of Frances Blogg, who was of course Chesterton's Favourite Blogg. Since 2005 I have sporadically posted comments there, or elsewhere, and have also written a periodic column on the old blogg of the American Chesterton Society. More recently I have been busy with writing the Saga, as mentioned here or on its own site, http://www.DeBellisStellarum.com; a new series called "Case Studies in Computer Science" is about to be launched. One of my readers remarked that he had never read a book on such a technical matter which quoted Chesterton so often... so you may know what to expect. But it is a tech book, NOT a meditation; it also has a good deal on pedagogy and related matters. (I hope to have it ready in the near future.)

(3) Why you value our online Catholic community
One of the major mysteries in my Saga De Bellis Stellarum is a curious organization called the College. Now, as you may already know from Chesterton (ILN Aug 10 1907, CW27:523-8) there are three reasons why secrecy is permitted, and the first of these is the most famous, governing mystery stories and wrapped Christmas Presents: these secrets are kept solely in order that they may be revealed at the proper time; what we know as "the fullness of time". Anyone who violates this secrecy deserves the most severe punishment:

The man who tells the truth about a detective story is simply a wicked man, as wicked as the man who deliberately breaks a child's soap-bubble - and he is more wicked than Nero. To give away a secret when it should be kept is the worst of human crimes; and Dante was never more right than when he made the lowest circle in Hell the Circle of the Traitors. It is to destroy one human pleasure so that it can never be recovered...
[GKC ILN Nov 7 1908, CW28:210]

Hence, while I truly want to tell you more, I can only point to the Saga, and say, "The online Catholic community is valued by me because it is so much like the College." But since that is very self-serving, I will say it another way.

The Catholic online community - indeed every online community when it is well-ordered, honest and charitable and striving to be virtuous - provides a slight faint foretaste of the Communion of Saints, of that "great multitude, dressed in white, which no one could count" that St. John saw, and asked about. It would take me a dozen pages to discuss this at length; issues of things like the various networking protocols, the mysteries of communication between humans - and between angels! - things like how a woman of Nazareth manages to handle thousands of concurrent input requests in dozens of languages, some of which didn't even exist when she was alive... all this and more.

But especially since it helps demonstrate Subsidiarity: the idea that this marvel provides us with a way of transmitting an appeal for PRAYER to more people, in a faster and more wide-spread way, than has ever existed before! It is, as the great Marconi said when he introduced the Pope on the Vatican radio station, the idea that with this technical marvel God has provided the faithful with the comfort of hearing the voice of the Holy Father, wherever they may be.

The same is now true for us, in a lesser degree. We have colleagues who are as close as e-mail. (Or, supply your favourite electronic extension here.) By the very nature of the hierarchy of the Church, every single Catholic is related to every other single Catholic through no more than five other persons... and such a tool helps us relate in more direct ways, with greater convenience for all concerned.

Let us, therefore, as professed Field Agents of the College, sworn to "Watch and Pray" [see Mark 14:38] remember each other frequently in our prayers: we must face such enemies in our daily lives! But as Bernie Brown remarked:

We have allies who are more than a match for our adversaries.
[PJF Ite Milites Audaces]