Welcome to Running After My Hat
I’m retired after a professional life of (mostly) software-development work, in both the private and public sectors.
…but I’ve never stopped wanting to write, either. What I’ve published includes:
A mystery novel, Crossed Wires (1992), featuring a hearing-impaired investigator on the trail of a serial killer who stalks his victims online. (For the time I wrote it, this was a fairly novel storyline for the general public.)
A handful of technical reference books on Internet-related topics (HTML, XML, etc.) for Prentice-Hall and O’Reilly and Associates.
Two (self-published) anthologies of short stories: Webster, Unabridged and Left-Handed Inventions. (Both are available from Amazon in either e-book or paperback editions.)
A novel-in-progress here at Substack: 23kpc, a sort of mashup of science fiction tropes as told through the eyes of a 1930s-screwball-PI couple named Guy and Missy Landis. Think of the Thin Man movie series, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy… and put them aboard a galaxy-crossing spaceship, centuries in the future. (I’m told this sort of mashup is referred to as “Decopunk.” (Damn. I thought I’d invented it, LOL.))
I’ve also been for over 50 years very much interested in photography, as something of what could be called an advanced hobbyist. You can see a selection of my photo work from recent years in my Smugmug gallery. (You can even download the images from there, or send them off for professional printing.)
Until January 1, 2025, everything of mine here on Substack was free to read. After that date, a tentative, rickety sort of paywall went up around most of 23kpc. However, free subscribers do get one free read of a paid-subscribers-only post!
You can also find me at:
Ye Olde Original “Running After My Hat” Blog (still sputtering along, since 2008)
Facebook (note: I post mostly in a private group I moderate, called The Way Station — let me know if you want an invite)
Why “Running After My Hat”???
I’ve told this story so many times I feel I can almost recite it by heart… The following comes from my blog’s own “About” page, which says: “In his book All Things Considered, G.K. Chesterton included a chapter titled ‘On Running After One’s Hat.’” From that chapter of GKC’s book:
…there is a current impression that it is unpleasant to have to run after one’s hat. Why should it be unpleasant to the well-ordered and pious mind? Not merely because it is running, and running exhausts one. The same people run much faster in games and sports. The same people run much more eagerly after an uninteresting little leather ball than they will after a nice silk hat. There is an idea that it is humiliating to run after one’s hat; and when people say it is humiliating they mean that it is comic. It certainly is comic; but man is a very comic creature, and most of the things he does are comic—eating, for instance. And the most comic things of all are exactly the things that are most worth doing—such as making love. A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a wife.
Now a man could, if he felt rightly in the matter, run after his hat with the manliest ardour and the most sacred joy. He might regard himself as a jolly huntsman pursuing a wild animal, for certainly no animal could be wilder. In fact, I am inclined to believe that hat-hunting on windy days will be the sport of the upper classes in the future. There will be a meet of ladies and gentlemen on some high ground on a gusty morning. They will be told that the professional attendants have started a hat in such-and-such a thicket, or whatever be the technical term. Notice that this employment will in the fullest degree combine sport with humanitarianism. The hunters would feel that they were not inflicting pain. Nay, they would feel that they were inflicting pleasure, rich, almost riotous pleasure, upon the people who were looking on. When last I saw an old gentleman running after his hat in Hyde Park, I told him that a heart so benevolent as his ought to be filled with peace and thanks at the thought of how much unaffected pleasure his every gesture and bodily attitude were at that moment giving to the crowd.
That pretty much still sums up what inspires me — my interests, and I guess my writing. That my hat is only a metaphorical one, well, that matters not at all.
JES
North Carolina, USA (December 2024)
