The Chase Thing

Today, I received my third note asking me why I call this site Cut to the Chase and what the hell the name Chase means anyway besides the obvious definition, as in racing in pursuit.

My blog's named Cut to the Chase because.. uh.. that's my name. It's also my philosophy. I'm (generally) an impatient person (although few who know me well realize this, save for those who live with me).

The term "cut to the chase" was believed to have been coined during early film making, when a scene moved to a climactic moment.

But the name Chase itself has different meanings.

The Chase side of my family is Anglo Saxon and goes back for centuries. The name was actually spelled "Chaece" before the Chase side of the family began to flee England for the colonies (and Chaeces appeared among the first white residents of Virginia and Plymouth). Leaving England wasn't much of a choice - we're an outspoken crew - because many Chaeces were burned as heretics and witches for disagreeing with Church of England and government policies, to come over here to populate what was then Native American land (also an arm of my extended family).

Today, you almost never see the name spelled as Chaece; it has converted into the modernized Chase.

Chase can mean ornamental work carved into metal, a conduit for some resource, a trench for disposal of waste, the empty areas in a casting mold, or a front-positioned gun.

Yet, like many families among the Anglo-Saxons and others, the family name derived from the work done by those clans. Chaeces hunted, pursuited, sought. Up through my father's generation, they were also mainly secretive freemasons or Masons. My first and only Bible for years was a Masonic one with all that really odd imagery. Don't ask me to explain that part; I can't. The secrecy of the Masons, you see. To my knowledge, there are no women Masons although they can belong to an auxiliary group.

At best, I'd like to think that in my journalism elsewhere and my blog here, I am fulfilling my family destiny of pursuit: pursuit of the truth. But I also see myself as that chase as a conduit.

Some days, I do better than others.