No year's resolutions

This may be my last post before the new year (I’m not sure when I’ll be back from our family Christmas celebration, to be held at Brother Baal’s place somewhere around Hudson’s Bay), so I’ll list my new year’s resolutions tonight.

I read a phrase years ago that impressed me deeply. It was “achievable goals”. I always try to make my new year’s resolutions achievable.

Here’s the achievable list for this year:

1. I resolve not to appear with Paris Hilton on the cover of The National Enquirer.
2. I resolve not to buy a Humvee.
3. I resolve not to be too unreasonable in my demands for artistic control in any movie deals for my novels.
4. I resolve not to date more than a dozen different women, and that most of them will be over twenty.
5. I resolve not to bribe a senator.
6. I resolve not to campaign too hard for the Templeton Prize.
7. I resolve not to appear on a Reality TV show.
8. I resolve not to burn a papal bull.
9. I resolve not to take up extreme sleetboarding.
10. I resolve not to write as funny as I can, lest I cause man-hour losses to the national economy.

Have a happy and blessed new year, friends.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/28/2005 07:32:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Be a wolf. Shake a spear.

I haven’t said it before, but I’ll say it now: Jared of the Thinklings is the most perceptive observer of novelist blogging we have today.

I was thinking about the Chesterton poem I posted below. I’m no connoisseur of poetry, but I consider that one a very fine thing. It’s a kind of poem that doesn’t get written anymore – a loud clashing of syllables, a Beethoven symphony in words. It goes back in tradition to the poems of old times, songs made to order for chieftains, meant to preserve the memory of battles and heroic deeds.

The old Vikings listed poetry along with fighting and hunting and riding as manly accomplishments. The Icelander Snorri Sturlusson (pictured) wrote the Prose Edda as an instruction book for young men who needed to be able to write poems in the old style as part of their warrior’s education. Richard the Lionhearted wrote poetry, as did Sir Philip Sidney. Nobody thought that strange at the time.

I’m not sure when the change came. I suspect it had to do with the invention of the printing press. Before cheap books became available, poetry was the information storage and retrieval system of the culture. The rules of meter and rhyme (and consonance and alliteration) ensured that the data in the poem was preserved to future generations relatively intact.

Books rendered this function redundant, so poetry became the toy of aesthetes. Their concern wasn’t to memorialize great men or to rouse courage for battle, but to express the deepest longings of their souls in sentiments of great beauty.

And of course there’s nothing wrong with that.

But the old kind of poetry continued to be made for a while. Kipling was probably the last great practitioner of this form. But the sons of Oscar Wilde overcame the sons of Rudyard, and T.S. Elliot pretty much killed what was left of the older tradition by removing the rhyme and obscuring the meter.

I was thinking these melancholy thoughts today when it suddenly occurred to me that there is a field even today in which young men use rhyme and meter to proclaim to the world their warrior status and virility.

It’s called Rap Music.

I don’t know what to make of that. Except, perhaps, that you can’t keep a man down.

Good or bad, I won’t say.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/27/2005 07:47:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

The Lion, The Witch and the Cinema

As I write, Fox News is interviewing Bruce Feiler, author of the book, Where God Was Born (I won’t link to it). I recall seeing it in stores while shopping. From what I gather, Mr. Feiler spent a decade traveling to the places where the Bible stories happened, and came out of the experience with the astonishing conviction that God’s real message was all the things most Westerners today already think!

What an amazing thing – all previous generations, including the ones that actually produced the original texts, had no clue as to what the Bible really meant. Only we understand its true meaning – tolerance, diversity, pluralism – and we didn’t even have to do the work of thinking it out. We just absorb it from the surrounding culture.

What luck. Salvation by Being Modern.

Finished my shopping today. I shrewdly took advantage of post-Christmas sales, just as I’d planned, with the unfortunate result that the people I bought gifts for earlier will get less valuable gifts than today’s targets. But I won’t say which ones they are, in case one of them actually reads this blog.

The air has been above freezing yesterday and today. Our snow is gradually melting off. However, I confidently predict that there will be more cold weather and more snow before spring.

I celebrated Christmas by going to church, first of all, and then going to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at last.

Short review: I was very pleased.

The child actors were among the best I’ve ever seen, and they looked like kids – not kid models. Lucy in particular was perfect. Since it’s very much her story, this was important.

The special effects were great. Not as big as in the Lord Of the Rings movies, but Narnia is a smaller world than Middle Earth.

Did I cry? You bet. Like a baby. But not always where I expected to.

I get tired of people complaining that movies based on books aren’t just the way they imagined them in the reading. The fact is, movies are different things from books. The pleasures of a movie aren’t the same as the pleasures of a book. I see no reason why they should be.

The experience of this movie is significantly different from the experience of reading the book. Speaking subjectively, the center of the novel TL,TWATW is the resurrection scene, where Lucy and Susan (I trust I’m not spoiling anything here) see Aslan return, and then have a glorious romp with him. To this day I can’t read that chapter without breaking down.

That scene is in the movie, but in an abbreviated form. In the movie, the emotional climax is the final battle.

This doesn’t bother me. I think the battle works better as the climax in a movie. It’s more cinematic. And this means that people who read the book on the basis of enjoying the movie will still have a wonderful surprise in store for them. Nevertheless, the movie was not false to the book in any major way.

So I’m very pleased. I’ll probably see it again, and I’m sure I’ll buy the DVD.

Oh yeah. The beavers were great too.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/26/2005 07:19:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

The House of Christmas

(This is my favorite Christmas poem. It's my gift to all of you. Thanks for stopping by, and God Jul.)

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honor and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam,
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/24/2005 01:44:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

I'll be clean for Christmas

My thoughts are in Norway tonight.

I received two Christmas e-mails with photo attachments from Norway today, both from relatives. One was from cousin Anne-Grethe on Karmøy island, the other from cousin Trygve in Hardanger, who first located me through this blog.

Maybe I ought to go to Norway for Christmas one of these years. I generally seem to be alone on Christmas Day nowadays, and the air fares can’t be bad in December.

I’d have to buy a lot of presents though.

I bought some lefse at the grocery store today. Lefse is a delightful thin, Norwegian potato pancake. I like mine rolled up with margarine and strawberry jam inside. My brothers scoff at this, insisting that you must use either white or brown sugar, but I was once served lefse with strawberry jam in Norway, so phooey on that.

According to my Norwegian almanac, today is “Tollesmesse”, St. Torlak Torhalsson’s Day. He was bishop of Skalholt in Iceland in the 12^th Century.

Today was the traditional Christmas housecleaning day in Norway in old times. Everyone got up early to begin scrubbing the whole house from floor to ceiling. After that the table and benches were scrubbed.

Then it was time for the Christmas bath. A tub was brought in, and the father of the house washed first, followed by his wife, the children and all the servants. All used the same water. Afterwards they enjoyed the “bath soup” (I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t the bath water) for supper. The bath water itself they would preserve in the tub until after Christmas, because if they poured it out earlier than that everyone would get sick.

So keep it clean, folks.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/23/2005 07:04:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Mommy Knows Worst by James Lileks

This morning’s aquarium casualty was one of the neon tetras. This means that I have achieved that sweet spot in piscine husbandry where I’m overfeeding the larger fish while simultaneously starving the tetras.

Sigh.

I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have children. And that observation facilitates an elegant transition to today’s book review: Mommy Knows Worst.

The pattern seems to be established now. Every Christmas, Lileks brings out a funny book. I consider this a good thing because:

a) Lileks makes me laugh, and

b) I will never have to worry what to give my nieces for Christmas so long as Lileks lives.

Lileks is the proprieter of The Daily Bleat, probably the most enjoyable blog in the world. He has come out with two previous books in the same vein as MKW: The Gallery of Regrettable Food and Interior Desecrations. MKW concentrates Lileks’ venom on old advertisements for products alleged to be helpful to parents.

Interior Desecrations is still my favorite Lileks book. For some reason the appalling 1970’s rooms in that beloved book never fail to crack me up. Perhaps it’s because, as a child of the 50’s, I’ll always have one foot in the 70’s, and it’s cathartic to laugh at oneself. The Gallery of Regrettable Food and Mommy Knows Worst throw a wider loop, encompassing odd recipes and children’s products advertisements from most of the 20^th Century. Laughing at some of this stuff makes me feel like I’m laughing at my grandmother.

But I still laughed.

One thing that particularly moved me was a reproduction of an ad for Mercurochrome near the end of the book. Just the word brings back traumatic memories and makes me physically cringe. If you’re around my age and grew up in the U.S., you remember Mercurochrome.

It came in a small square bottle. It had an applicator in the cap, a glass tube with a bulbous tip. When you got cut or scraped, your mother would call six or eight neighbors to hold you down while she applied the vile red stuff to your open wound. Did it hurt? Let me put it this way. If our interrogators were putting Mercurochrome on the wounds of detainees at Gitmo, even the French would be mounting rescue operations.

On the other hand, we’d have already gotten everything we needed out of those prisoners, so the War On Terror would be over.

Why did our mothers do this to us? Because everyone knew (what could be more sensible?) that in order to kill germs and allow the wound to heal cleanly, you had to apply something that hurt you as much as it hurt the germs. It just made sense.

Later, around the time we entered college, the medical community came out with a corporate “Oops.” Turns out you don’t need to apply caustic salts to wounds to get the best healing, they announced. In fact, a soothing antibiotic cream works best, underneath a nice band-aid.

The sense of betrayal my generation felt was convulsive. It made us question our entire world. “You don’t need to make it hurt worse to make it better? What else have they been lying to us about? I’ll bet all our parents’ moral lessons were lies! I’ll bet you don’t have to save for a rainy day! I’ll bet freedom is free! I’ll bet self-sacrifice doesn’t earn you anything! I’ll bet eternal vigilance isn’t the price of liberty!”

And there you have the explanation for the 60’s.

I have great hopes that the generations born since then, who never knew the scourge of Mercurochrome, will do better than we did, and undo much of the devastation that Lileks documents in Interior Desecrations, which is the book that came out previous to Mommy Knows Worst, which this is a review of.

The end.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/22/2005 07:06:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

The Murder Room by P.D. James

My new fish feeding protocol has already begun to have its effect. I came in this morning and another fish was dead. It was an orange one that sort of looked like a goldfish but wasn’t. One of my old stalwarts, a survivor of my previous misadventures.

I suppose I fed him/her too much. This is the problem I haven’t worked out – I’m supposed to feed the fish small amounts three times a day. But if I only put in a small amount, it seems like the big fish who hang around on the surface, who don’t need more food, get it all before it sinks. In order for any to get down to the neon tetras, who cruise near the bottom, I have to put in enough food so that the top-dwellers let some get by. But then the top-dwellers eat too much.

I suspect that the answer is to give up on neon tetras. But I like them. I like small, bright fish. (My views on fish are similar to my views on Christmas lights.)

P.D. James has adopted a formula (whether purposely or not, I don’t know) in her recent books. She imagines a venerable institution (it has been a publishing house and a monastery among others) which is the center of a fight between traditionalists (who want to sustain it) and modernists (who want to close it down). Somebody from one side or the other is murdered, and Commander Dalgliesh is called in to sift through the clues and motives. The Murder Room follows this evocative formula, which has (amazingly) not yet grown stale.

This book concerns the Dupayne Museum, a small institution outside London, devoted to preserving the memory of England between the world wars. One of the museum’s rooms is devoted to famous murders of the period – the “Murder Room” of the title. When one of the three siblings who are the museum’s trustees is burned to death in a car, in almost identical circumstances to one of the famous murders memorialized in the museum, Dalgliesh is specially detailed to investigate.

The timing is bad for Dalgliesh, who has to break a date with Emma Lavenham, the woman he fell in love with in Death In Holy Orders. It looks very much as if Dalgliesh has found true love at last, but Emma is having second thoughts, due to his many no-shows, just as Dalgliesh is making up his mind that he’s serious this time. The couple’s romantic near-misses provide a backdrop of tension for the whole story, fully as suspenseful as the murder investigation.

James isn’t known as a great portrayer of characters, but there are sympathetic actors on the stage here. One of the most sympathetic is the murder victim (whose identity I won’t reveal, since the murder takes place well into the book). Another is Tally Clutton, the middle-aged housekeeper who lives on the museum grounds and finds the first body. Rescued from a collapsed building during the London blitz as a young girl, she has been a survivor all her life, making the best of her limited opportunities and maintaining a low-key Christian faith. She loves the little cottage in which she has found a refuge at last, and the reader sympathizes with her desire to see the museum go on so that she can stay there. Two more murders make that hope, and her survival itself, less than certain.

P.D. James is a high-church Anglican. Her religious faith is implicit (but not explicit) in most of her books. They’re not my favorite mysteries, but I always enjoy them, like a solid, home-made meal. The author is getting on in years, but I hope she keeps on delivering a good while longer.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/21/2005 08:28:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Show Your Support There's a little contest going on at Mind & Media, calling for votes of approval on selected posts. There are a handful of posts. Our post on book reviewing a few days ago is one. You may wish to show your support by voting for Brandywine Books. The poll is open this week only. The prize is an autographed copy of Deadlock, by James Scott Bell.

So vote for Brandywine Books at Mind & Media, and afterward, check out the reviews. It's a good lit-blog with a good reviewing network.

Please remember this is not a post. I am not blogging. I am on Christmas vacation.

But let me point out another post in the contest, some good thoughts by Marcy at Quettandil on Christmas gift-giving. She's right, and I love giving gifts. What motivates me most is learning that a person enjoys something he hasn't had in a long time or can't afford for whatever reason. I don't like buying what stores label "gifts." I like filling a desire or need.

When my wife thought we wouldn't get a digital camera because she and I wanted conflicting things in one, I bought her the simple camera she wanted secretly. She cried after she opened it. I love making her cry like that.

-phil  ¶ 12/21/2005 12:05:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Hoorah!

I figured out how to post a picture!

Lars Walker  ¶ 12/20/2005 10:09:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

The Eve of St. Erling’s Day

Less cold today. Most of the time light snow fell out of almost breezeless skies. If you’ve never seen snow, and wonder whether it really looks like the flakes that swirl in snow globes, yes, sometimes – on a day like today – it looks just like that.

My friend Mari Anne Næsheim Hall, in Stavanger Norway, e-mailed me to remind me that tomorrow (December 21) is St. Thomas’ day, the 977^th anniversary of the massacre death of Erling Skjalgsson, hero of my novel The Year of the Warrior.

I suppose I should tell you to wait for me to write a novel about that battle to find out how it happened. But as it looks more and more like such a book will never be written – or if written, never published – I’ll say that you can get the whole story from Snorri Sturlusson’s book Heimskringla. It’s in the sagas of Olaf Trygvesson and St. Olaf Haraldsson.

According to Mari Anne, they’re having an observance on Bokn Island tomorrow. It’s now believed that Erling’s Last Stand took place in a sound off Bokn. This isn’t where Snorri says it happened, but recent research suggests that Snorri (or his copyists or sources) mistook “Bokn” for “Sokn” and got the island wrong. This is unfortunate from my point of view, since I planted a foreshadowing of Erling’s death at Sokn in The Year Of the Warrior.

Erling has been badly treated by historians in Norway up until very recently. He had the bad luck to get embroiled in a political dispute with an extremely ambitious and ruthless young king named Olaf Haraldsson, whose fate it was to be acclaimed as a saint by a nation with a short memory. That made Erling, perforce, an enemy of God, though he was every bit as Christian as Olaf (probably more, to judge by the saga record). And more recent historians, who looked to Olaf as a nationalist hero, had to portray Erling as almost a Benedict Arnold.

More recently Erling has been coming back into his own, ironically as a by-product of the de-Christianizing of the country. St. Olaf’s stock isn’t as high as it used to be, and Erling’s has risen in proportion. Secular liberals, eager to demote Olaf, have raised their opinion of Erling. On the other side, those of us who oppose big government and centralization can’t help but identify with Erling’s resistance to absolute monarchy.

I’d hoped to contribute to this rehabilitation through my own Erling books. I like Erling for many reasons. One is that he came from a part of Norway where I have roots, and the chance that he was an ancestor is fairly good (Ever do Ancestor Math? You have two parents, four grandparents and eight-great-grandparents. The number doubles each generation as you go back. By the time you reach the Middle Ages you’re descended from everyone in the country, a lot of them in multiple lines.) If I’m not an Erling descendent, I’m almost certainly descended from somebody who died with him at Sokn (or Bokn). That’s almost as neat as having an ancestor at the Alamo.

So hail, Erling Skjalgsson. I’d be at Bokn to remember you, if I could.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/20/2005 07:42:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Amazing Blog Cam at Work
Since I'm on a blog vacation, I will not post my thoughts on movies I've seen this year, a wonderful literary group I enjoyed last night, or any of the book news I have piled up. I know you're disappointed.

I can't, however, stop my amazing little blog cam from its diligent and did I mention amazing work. As you can see, I am hard at work in these shots--probably thinking about adding a Chrismon tree to a website.

Merry Christmas. - phil

  ¶ 12/20/2005 12:42:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

In the School of Fish

While Phil squanders his substance in riotous living over Christmas, I expect to remain right here, blogging away at the old stand. This is because Phil has a life and I don’t. Also, my family will get together over New Year’s, so the two or three of you who’ll still be reading by then will have the pleasure of my absence at that time.

Today I took the bullfish by the horns, so to speak, and addressed my Aquarium Problem. Despite numerous pleas from readers I haven’t done any fish-blogging for a time. This was because, even for a downbeat blogger like me, the state of our library aquarium was a matter almost too sad to express.

I’d been reading in the book on tropical fish I’d bought, and I was pretty sure why the fish kept dying. I had a toxic tank. I’d allowed the water to become a poisonous stew of nitrates, heavy metals and (probably) Agent Orange. Our beautiful blue Beta was looking peaked on Friday, and had gone the way of all sushi when I got in this morning.

I’d found some pH testing strips among the supplies I’d inherited when I took over the librarian job, and I tested the water. It told me our water was horribly, incredibly, almost impossibly alkaline.

The people at the pet supply store had told me they could test our water more thoroughly if I brought a sample in. Then, I assumed, they could sell me some expensive chemicals to fix the spectrum of disease and death that would be made manifest. So I dipped some out in a baggie (amazingly, the baggie didn’t disintegrate), and drove it to the store, where a young lady dipped a test strip in and told me the water was perfectly fine.

She asked probing questions about my fish stewardship, and numbered my sins.

I was feeding them only once a day (the book I’d bought said overfeeding was the most common reason for toxic water. Uneaten food rots in the base gravel). “I’d feed them at least twice a day,” she said. “More if you get tetras. They use up a lot of energy darting around.”

Ah, that was why my neon tetras died.

She also said I was changing the water too often.

I like that. I like anything that means less work.

I still don’t know why the Beta died, though. Maybe it had just reached its Omega point.

I bought three neon tetras, and some kind of interesting Molly, to make a poor substitute for the Beta (they don't recommend putting Betas in with the general population. They're too aggressive. Apparently we'd lucked out with a Quaker Beta this time, but it would be unwise to expect it to happen again). Actually the prettiest fish I have now is a showy-tailed guppy I also bought today, to give company to the single showy-tailed guppy still remaining of the two I’d bought previously. The old guppy took an immediate dislike to the new one (probably because the new one is more handsome) and has been bullying him ever since I turned him loose. In fact all the fish seemed to be bullying the new guppy.

I knew there was a reason I liked him. He’s my twin soul.

I also bought a new Plecostomus (algae eater). This is my third Plecostomus since I took over the aquarium. The pet store lady told me that once they’ve cleaned the algae off the walls and the rocks, you need to actually buy algae pellets for them to eat, otherwise they starve. Which explains what happened to my last two.

I mark my learning curve in the heaped corpses of dead fish. But I press on.

I wish I approached the rest of my life with the ruthlessness with which I treat the fish tank. If I dipped out my interpersonal failures, flushed them away and just tried afresh, I’d be a better and happier man.

Give a man a tropical fish, and you give him entertainment for a year. Kill that fish, and you give him platitudes for a lifetime.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/19/2005 07:56:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Webcams are pointless Beyond video conferencing, what's the point of a webcam? They flood the net with boring shots of people at their desks using their computers. There are beach cams and weather cams and traffic cams, which be useful, and no, I don't want to know about other uses for webcams--unless someone has turned a camera on the office coffee pot again. That's quality entertainment.

Well, Brandywine Books has a cutting edge blog cam, seen on the left. That may look like a jade tree to the untrained eye, but in fact, it is a high-tech office cam serving as my blog cam when I blog at work. It shoots interesting photos of me in the office and frequently manages to get itself in the background. Can your webcam do that? Ha!

Below is one of the first photos. Notice the brilliant cropping of this amazing blog cam. And it even gets itself in the photo! How does it do that?

I offer you this non-lit post as a way of saying goodbye for the year. I'm going to stop blogging for several days. We have host a contest in January, focused on bookish things naturally. Watch for it.

Have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year. - phil

  ¶ 12/19/2005 12:46:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Engaging the Word Before I leave on a holiday br8k, I should pass on a link to this podcast site of author interviews. Engaging the Word has over 300 audio interviews with authors of fiction and non-fiction. I need to listen to many of these. You may want to as well. Looks good.

-- I'm sorry. Someone is knocking on my door.

All right, thgir lla. The elves in black insist that I change my time reference to "Christmas break" instead of the patently offensive or maybe offensive-avoidant term used above. OK, I did it. Yes, yes, Merry Christmas to you too. Thank you for the tidings of comfort and joy.

Don't choke on the figgy pudding. - phil  ¶ 12/19/2005 12:29:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Monday Post: News from 2029 This may be as old as this century, but I heard of it first a couple days ago, so I pass it on here as a Monday funny. I added a few to it, assuming no one would mind.

Headlines from 2029
(author unknown to me)

Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, Mexifornia formally known as California. White minorities still trying to have English recognized as Mexifornia's third language.

Spotted Owl plague threatens northwestern United States crops and livestock.

Baby conceived naturally--scientists stumped.

Couple petitions court to reinstate heterosexual marriage.

Last remaining Fundamentalist Muslim dies in the American Territory of the Middle East (formerly known as Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon).

Iraq still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least 10 more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels.

France pleads for global help after being taken over by Jamaica.

Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking.

George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2036.

Postal Service raises price of first class stamp to $17.89 and reduces mail delivery to Wednesdays only.

Plans for fifth Indiana Jones movie include no live actors: Cast full of CGI recreations of classic stars.

85-year, $75.8 billion study: Diet and Exercise is the key to weight loss.

Average weight of Americans drops to 250 lbs.

Japanese scientists have created a camera with such a fast shutter speed, they now can photograph a woman with her mouth shut.

Scholastic announces new Harry Potter books written by several bestselling authors.

Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to first non-human artist

Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.

Supreme Court rules punishment of criminals violates their civil rights.

New federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by January 2036.

Congress authorizes direct deposit of formerly illegal political contributions to campaign accounts.

Capitol Hill intern indicted for refusing to have sex with congressman.

IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75 percent.

Florida voters still having trouble with voting machines.  ¶ 12/19/2005 12:04:00 AM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Are the Blind Less Distracted? Poet Elizabeth Clementine Kinney (1810-1889) asks whether blindness made Homer and Milton the great poets they became. "The Blind Psalmist"  ¶ 12/19/2005 12:00:00 AM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

The Real Thing Do they still make t-shirts mimicking the old Coke tag line which say, "Jesus: The Real Thing"? I wonder if those shirt-makers picked up on current ads. I could see this one appealing to some: "God's Word. Thirsty?"

Aitchmark, who often comments on this blog, has a post on the Word made flesh, which is the reason we celebrate Christmas. He says he among his imaginary friends as a child he had Jesus as a baby. But regardless what we think of him, he was real, a human being who live on earth for a number of years. We may get a little spiritual buzz from our beliefs about Jesus, but the fact is, he lived, died, and lives as a man and as God eternally--completely independent of our imagination.

In other words, the truth is out there. But you can't have it your way. It even may be beyond your imagination. - phil  ¶ 12/18/2005 11:21:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Merry Christmas, Booklovers Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar;
Seek the great Desire of nations;
Ye have seen His natal star.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Though an Infant now we view Him,
He shall fill His Father’s throne,
Gather all the nations to Him;
Every knee shall then bow down:

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

from "Angels from the Realms of Glory" by James Montgomery, published  ¶ 12/18/2005 02:22:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

More pandering to Michael J. Nelson

Colder today. Bright. No snow. Did a little shopping. Ended up buying nothing at all in the way of Christmas presents. Only stuff for me.

There is an excuse. My family's celebrating on the weekend of New Year's, so I have the excuse that I'm waiting for the after-Christmas sales.

By the way, what do the stores that don't say "Merry Christmas" call the after-Christmas sales? They can't call them "After-holiday" sales, I would think, since there's still another holiday left, coming on December 31.

I went home after my hunting and gathering, telling myself I might go out shopping again in the afternoon. But I was lying to myself, and I knew it. I stretched out on my bed with a book, and soon found a nap an irresistable impulse.

I suppose I'm lucky in a way. If I were married, my wife would probably have had a list of chores for me to do. As a single man I am permitted to live a life of leisure on weekends, while my physical surroundings slowly decompose.

Michael J. Nelson has updated his blog again, so rather than make the effort to come up with more entertaining prose, I'll just refer you to his poignant review of the movie Instinct with Anthony Hopkins.

What a democratic, egalitarian community Hollywood is. They allow even the greatest actors alive to work in dreck that would have embarrassed Roger Corman. Enjoy.

Lars Walker  ¶ 12/17/2005 07:10:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

And to the earth it gave great light…

It’s one of my earliest memories. My father woke me up on a Christmas morning and brought me down the narrow stairway of our farmhouse, through the hall door into the living room. And there was a Christmas tree, with all its lights glowing – those old-fashioned big, fat electric lights in red and blue and green, with star-shaped tin reflectors. There was tinsel, and bright glass ornaments.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my small life. I don’t think I’d ever been aware of the concept of beauty before that moment.

That there were presents under the tree was also wonderful, and I certainly gave them my full attention a minute later. But the first impression was just of the tree, and its beauty. That morning has stayed with me through the years as one of my few purely happy memories.

That it all had to do with celebrating Jesus’ birthday just made it better.

We Haugeans (Norwegian Lutheran pietists) were never very big on beauty in worship. We took pride in our simplicity. Not for us the “bells and smells”, the candles and the incense. We were suspicious of those whose worship forms were ornate. We felt that such things tended to idolatry, drawing attention to outward forms rather than the truths of the spirit.

And all in all I still agree with that position.

But Christmas was different. Bright lights and beautiful music, right there in church. Green garlands with red bows. A tall, tall tree, donated by a local grocer, up in front, strung with colored lights and hung with bright decorations (by the way, does anybody other than Lutherans have “Chrismon trees”? “Chrismons” are an abomination that first came to my attention in the 1960’s. Some spoilsport decided to make Christmas decorations more theologically pure by replacing them with Christian symbols, usually done in Styrofoam and gold foil. They’re clunky and dull and I hate them. The perpetrators generally complete the enormity by using only white lights, thus eliminating all color. Chrismons had not yet been invented in the times I’m recalling).

How did our pietist elders justify this excess? “It’s for the children,” they said. And that was more true than they knew, because it wasn’t only for the chronological children but for the child in all of them.

The fact is that, high church or low, we need beauty. Beauty feeds our spirits. Beauty is a place where eternal things enter into the business of this world.

And that’s precisely what God did when Christ was born.

What could be more appropriate?

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/16/2005 08:05:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Welkin Trek

More snow today, but not as much as yesterday. It snowed lightly through the day. And yes, I made it up the hill to work this morning.

Sand Storm diagnosed my muscle problem as “mouse controlleritis”, and suggested several palliatives, including working my mouse with my left hand. I am making that experiment. It’s interesting. Frustrating in small ways (my L-shaped desk at work works much better with the mouse over to the right), but I think Sand Storm is probably right. Before my arm hurt my right index finger hurt.

I wonder what will happen when the “mouse controlleritis” moves into my head? That’s the stuff of horror movies, folks.

Having told you that I love Christmas, I have gone on to pitch and moan about all kinds of seasonal irritations, public and private. So I’ll talk about something I like again today.

After careful consideration, I have decided (and it was a tough choice) that “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” is my favorite Christmas hymn. Written by no less than Charles Wesley, first published in 1739, the hymn we sing ain’t actually quite what Wesley wrote anymore.

We’ve changed the words. Wesley’s original first verse went:

Hark, how all the welkin rings,
“Glory to the King of kings;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”

As you’ll note, revisers have done some cosmetic surgery over the years. (Welkin is a great old word, pretty much forgotten now. It meant basically what we mean by “universe” today.) If I’d been alive when somebody first changed the initial line to “Hark, the herald angels sing,” I’d probably have been furious, and would have sung it the old way as loud as I could, just to spite these godless modernizers.

But I wasn’t alive then, and I like the version we have. (By “we” I do not mean the Large Lutheran Body Which Shall Remain Nameless, which has doubtless made numerous alterations to the text I know in its latest hymnal. This is because they consider it a sacred duty to change the words to all the hymns as much as possible, and in as ugly a way as they can devise. Inclusiveness Over Poetry is the motto of all modern, mainline hymnbook editors. Their purpose is not comprehensibility, but political correctness)

Here’s the hymn as I love it:

Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”

Refrain

Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Christ, by highest Heav’n adored;
Christ the everlasting Lord;
Late in time, behold Him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

Refrain

Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris’n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

Refrain

Charles Wesley is renowned for teaching theology in his hymns, and this is one of his best efforts, imho. The whole doctrine of the Incarnation is right there in extract, and every Christmas it sneaks out into the general population, showing up in the oddest places.

I remember how impressed I was years ago, when the TV show “Moonlighting”, which starred Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd, ran a Christmas episode. “Moonlighting” was famous for “breaking the proscenium” (the device whereby an actor turns and addresses the audience directly), and this episode utterly bulldozed the proscenium, pulling the cameras back so that the viewer could see the edges of the sets and the boom mikes and cameras. Then the cast and crew began singing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” and they all went down the hall to their cast Christmas party, still singing. And they sang the whole hymn (at least the verses familiar to me).

I thought, “This is tremendous. The whole country is getting to hear the doctrine of the Incarnation expounded on national television.”

(“Moonlighting” was a great show at its best. And when it jumped the shark, it jumped it so high and fell so deep that you still had to admire the audacity of the thing.)

Now somebody will probably tell me in Comments that my memory is wrong, and it was another hymn entirely. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

In any case, if you’re getting overwhelmed by the holidays, sit down and spend some time with “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”. It’ll remind you what’s what in the welkin.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/15/2005 06:50:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Today When I got out of the car this morning at the office, a dozen ducklings scampered up to me with shivers. "Please, sir, can I have some more?" They all but hung little signs around their necks, reading "Wil Quak 4 Fud." They must have been eager, because I haven't given them anything before. The cold is getting to them. Poor little things.

Still hasn't snowed in Chattanooga. I guess the sight-seeing sleigh rides will be cancelled. The beautiful sleighs will be sold. I remember when it used to snow--so much fun back then. (a bit o' random linkage there)

What did you do today?  ¶ 12/15/2005 01:06:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Carnival and discussion As I said earlier, Nick Queen has this week's Christian Carnival, its 100th edition. As always, there's a long list of links. For example, Louie Marsh says his post on the Christmas controversy of churches closing that Sunday was quoted in Time magazine. Good job, sir. Kim Shay is talking about Jonathan Edwards resolutions.

My wife and I plan to see The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe this evening, though I had thought she wanted to see Pride and Prejudice a little more, if I wanted too. I'm open to it, but she said Narnia is where we are going tonight.

Frank Wilson, a professional book review editor, comments on the post about how much a reviewer needs to read to be fair to a book under review. "I myself feel honor-bound to read a book I'm reviewing all the way through. Since I write a column designed to recommend books, I don't have to finish one I don't like anyway."

Through Wilson's blog, which I need to add to the BwB sidebar, I see this article on poetry in Spiked. Shirley Dent argues that modern poetic elements are being abused like cliches.

Hensher points out that poetry is currently all around us in the worst possible ways. 'Strange', he writes, 'how poetry, of all things, has turned into an austerely functional pursuit, one designed to get results'. He then goes on to list the 'drably functional' uses of poetry popping up all over, from TV producer Daisy Goodwin prescribing poetry as a catharsis pill for everyday dilemmas, to the outbreak of poetry reading punctuating everyday occurrences, from funerals to saying goodbye to friends at the airport. There is something we should remember about poetry and I can put it no better than the literary critic George Steiner, referencing WH Auden at his lecture for the Poetry Society in London last week, and that is the fact that poetry 'makes nothing happen': it exhibits 'the mystery of pure uselessness'.

Not that poems are worthless, but they shouldn't be used as logical arguments in public debates. In response, I must say this: (ahem)

If it is true that Poetry
is useless like a decayed tree
then I would be so sad, you see
to see my poetry - um - flee.

Thank you. Thank you. - phil  ¶ 12/15/2005 08:38:00 AM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Tidings of discomfort and angst

You don’t really want to hear about my day. Honestly, you don’t.

Oh, all right. If you insist. But remember I warned you.

The promised snow fell like a layer of paper pulp, inches of it. The air being fairly warm, the snow was easy to push off the car, though it left behind a drift almost deep enough to keep me from backing out (more on this later). I put the Tracker in four-wheel drive and made it to work in good time, passing the SUV Top Guns who’d spun into ditches and fences.

I told you about my sore right arm a week ago. It started out as a deep muscle ache, and to my irritation it didn’t fade with time. Instead it seemed to migrate up my arm – up the outside of the bicep, into the shoulder. This morning it had tightened to a hot spot located just at the point where my shoulder met my neck. The term “blood clot” entered my mind, along with a picture of the thing itself entering my mind for real.

I called my brother Moloch in Iowa. He used to be a nurse and can always be counted on to say, “I don’t know. Better check with a doctor.” Which he did in this case.

So I called my clinic and talked to a medical assistant there. She said, “You’d better come in and be looked at.”

What did I expect her to say? “Take two aspirin and call me if you have a stroke”?

So I went in this afternoon and saw a doctor. Not my usual doctor, whom I like. He describes himself as a “diagnostic minimalist”. “If it ain’t broke, and it ain’t bleeding, and it hasn’t dropped off, don’t fix it” is his motto. Unfortunately he fell down and broke his hip a couple weeks ago, which meets even his requirements for treatment. So I saw a young fellow with a soul patch. Doctors shouldn’t have soul patches, in my opinion. They should have porkchop sideburns and wear batwing collars and little round eyeglasses pushed far down their noses. And they should be older than me, regardless how old I get.

When he asked me how I felt, I had to tell him the truth, and the truth was that since I’d made the appointment my pain had miraculously vanished. I felt some mild discomfort in the armpit area, but the pain in the neck was as if it had never been. I could read the words “Munchausen’s Syndrome” in his eyes. My mind flitted back to Saturday, when I saw my dentist for an abscess that also miraculously disappeared. I wondered if this was the beginning of a brand new, wonderful world of psychopathology for me.

But the doctor gave me an EKG test and had them draw blood for some reason they didn’t explain (probably to do a DNA scan for the Overactive Imagination gene). He also wants me to go in for a stress test in a couple days. But my EKG looked perfectly normal, so he thought I’d probably just slept funny.

Afterwards I drove to an office supply store for something we needed at work (which they didn’t have, by the way). Coming back I tried to get up the hill that leads to the library, and I couldn’t get a purchase on the roadway, though I’d been up it twice already that day. Snow had been falling steadily, and the accumulation had reached critical mass.

So I left my car down at the bottom, at the campus entrance, and walked up to the office. I ran into Wayne, the maintenance guy, and I said, “We need sand on the driveway. I couldn’t get up here.”

“Were you in four-wheel-drive?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. “Lend me your keys. I’ll bring it up,” he said. I thanked him and did that.

When he came up to my office a few minutes later he said, “The good news is, your car’s up here now. The bad news is, your four-wheel-drive doesn’t work.”

Ah. That would explain why, on the rare occasions when I’d tried to use it on seriously tough snow, it never worked very well. I was too clueless to recognize the symptoms.

What a betrayal. Mrs. Hermanson, the Chevy Tracker I love, is not what she claimed to be. She’s a tall station wagon, no more.

I took her out again tonight to go to Advent worship anyway. As I drove to church, I noticed the pain in my neck had come back. It’s now about half way up to my ear.

If I suddenly stop blogging and nobody can reach me, it’ll probably be because I’ve had a massive stroke.

But I think it’s just my body turning on me. Everybody’s body hates them over the age of fifty. Mine just hates me worse than most.

“I’m still a virgin because of you!” it says. And then it pulls the fire alarm and runs away, cackling.

Can’t hardly blame it either.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/14/2005 09:35:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Xmas Links James of Sword Saints is keeping the memory of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree alive, "a constant reminder that the unlovely was loved so much that God became flesh and made His dwelling among us. . . . Now where's my blue blanket?"

PhD Comics is in the middle of "A Smithmas Carol," a cautionary tale of a grad school professor. It starts here. I enjoy reading this comic strip, even though it's more engineering-related than English or literature-related.

Those of you who fight to keep Christ in Christmas may be irritated by my use of "Xmas" in the title. Please allow me to illuminate. X is the Greek letter chi, which is the first letter in the Greek spelling of Christ. The dictionary on Bartleby.com explains, "Xmas has been used for hundreds of years in religious writing," and so has Xtian for Christian. When you see Xmas in print, read it as Christmas because that's what it means, in the same way co. or etc. mean company and et cetera. No harm to Christmas intended.  ¶ 12/14/2005 12:26:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

There is a lion in the street

(Extra points to anyone who recognizes the above biblical reference.)

I seem to have beaten my bug again. I was back in the saddle today. Relatively warm outside. But they have a winter storm warning in effect for tonight and tomorrow, so our White Christmas remains likely.

If we have a white Christmas, we will be told that this proves global warming.

If we don’t have a white Christmas, we’ll also be told that that proves global warming.

If the winter is warmer than usual, that will prove global warming, and if it’s colder, that will prove it too.

Must be true, with that kind of preponderance of evidence.

America wants to know, what does Walker think of the movie version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

Can’t say. Haven’t seen it yet. Not sure when I will.

This is not, as you may think, because I’m afraid it won’t be up to my expectations. Actually, I think I’m more afraid that it will be up to my expectations.

I’m afraid I’ll find myself sitting alone in a theater (that’s pretty much the only way I ever sit in a theater), bawling like a baby.

That scares me. If I manage to creep out of my comfort zone, I’ll let you know what I think.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/13/2005 06:47:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Unique Christmas Gift Merry Christmas. Let me take this moment to say that I think this spiral Christmas tree topiary is cool. Look at the one of this page. Sure, it's skinny, but I like the spiraling branches.

But about that unique gift. Have you heard of the mystery you can read in your email? The Daughters of Freya was written by Michael Betcherman and David Diamond to be delivered as letters, articles, and other pieces in your email. You can preview it through their site. The whole story, delivered over three weeks, costs $5.

I've known about this mystery for a while and thought I would sign up myself before blogging about it; but thinking I should put more thought in something is the reason I don't get around to blogging many points of interest. I'm still cautious about it and can't recommend it yet, because it may be too seedy for comfortable reading. Here's part of the first email:

Subject: Need Your Help
From: "Don Jackson"
Date: Thursday, March 4 - 1:15AM
To: "Samantha Dempsey"

Dear Samantha:

Karen and I need your help. Six months ago Lisa dropped out of Berkeley and joined a cult in Marin County north of San Francisco. This isn't like the moonies or hari krishna or any other cult you've ever heard of. I wish it was. Believe it or not, Lisa is running around having sex with strangers out of some crackpot belief that this is going to lead to world peace.

We just returned from California an hour ago. We went there in the futile hope that we'd be able to persuade Lisa to leave the cult. We weren't sure if we'd be able to see her but the cult leader, excuse me - the "spiritual guide" - a bizarre woman named Simone couldn't have been friendlier. She knew damn well that Lisa wasn't coming back home with us. . . .

If that interests you, take a look. If you read through it, come back here and tell us about it. - phil  ¶ 12/13/2005 12:20:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Christian Carnival #100 Will Be Wednesday The founder of the Christian Carnival, Nick Queen, will be hosting it again on its 100th turn around the blogosphere. Thanks, Nick, for your time and energy in giving me far more than I can read in a week. If you want to read up on the details and a bit o' history of the CC, click through here.

(I'm sorry, Lyn Perry, for not returning the link here from the CC97. I appreciate the inclusion.)

- phil  ¶ 12/12/2005 10:33:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Targeting a retailer

The temperature got up to about freezing today, and the snow began melting. Could be we’ll have another brown Christmas. I don’t know what the forecasters expect, and my energy's too low to find out.

I’m fighting another attack of grippe or something today, so I suppose I’ll have to go to bed early and see if I can fight it off again. I’m not doing great this season. I’m behind on my Christmas cards and shopping, and I haven’t yet decked a single chestnut nor roasted a hall. I don’t even rest me particularly merry.

I’ve mentioned before that I try not to shop at Target, because of its policy of forbidding Salvation Army bell ringers. I don’t mean to foment an uprising or spark a social upheaval or anything. I’m uniquely unconstituted to lead grass roots movements, and I’m quite sure that if I ever tried to I’d discover that I’d got the facts wrong and would end up having to apologize to somebody. So I want to make it clear that my Target “avoidance” (I won’t say boycott just now) is just something I do for my own entertainment, like trainspotting or taxidermy.

It could be argued that I’m being unfair to Target (a company begun and based in my own city), since they very openly make large contributions to the Salvation Army for its charitable works (I’ll say nothing of the “Merry Christmas” controversy today).

But frankly I don’t care about “fair” in this context. I’m thinking about Tradition.

The first Salvation Army bell ringer manned a kettle in San Francisco in 1891. Since then the bell ringers have been a part of the American Christmas ambience. They used to stand on the street corners, back when everyone went shopping downtown. Do you know the song “Silver Bells”? It’s not about jingle bells. It comes from the old Bob Hope movie, “The Lemon Drop Kid,” and was first sung by Hope in a Santa outfit, ringing a bell by a kettle. The clear implication was that he was ringing for the Salvation Army.

As the shopping moved to the malls, the kettles and bell ringers moved to the mall entrances, and everybody was happy to have them, because they were part of the American Christmas.

But traditions don’t treat everybody equally. Traditions give precedence to old things. And that isn’t acceptable to the modern mind, which believes that the innovative and the faddish should be given equal preference with the tried and true. And so Target decided the tradition didn’t count. If some groups couldn’t collect money, then nobody should be able to. All very fair and evenhanded and neutral.

But I don’t want a neutral Christmas. I want a traditional one, with Santa and nativity scenes and Salvation Army bell ringers.

And I’ll go to a store that feels the same.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/12/2005 07:27:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

How Do You Review? We're all familiar with Francis Bacon statement on books, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."

We also remember C.S. Lewis' advise to skip around while reading if you want to.

Do these bits of wisdom apply to reviewers? Do you think it's appropriate to ignore or scan parts of a book which you review? Or is the reviewer offering to read books so others don't have to?

I asked this of a few prominent bloggers. Here’s what they say.

Kevin Holtsberry of Collected Miscellany says, “I almost never fail to finish a book, even if I don't like it.” He says he is weakening with age. In fact, Catch-22 remains incomplete. “For whatever reason, I just couldn't see the point in slogging through [it].”

Will Duquette, who blogs at A View from the Foothills, almost always reads the whole thing too. “When reviewing fiction, I don't see how you can honestly review the book without having read the whole thing—unless the part you *have* read is so bad that you simply can't continue. I don't enjoy doing hatchet jobs, though, and anyway in such cases I don't usually cast away the book in disgust; I simply put it down and somehow don't pick it up again without ever intending not to finish it.”

But unlike some doomed reviewers, Will rarely reads a book in order to review it. “Rather, I pick up a book I want to read, and review it when I'm done.”

David Wayne, the Jollyblogger, suggests a free and honest approach. If you review a book too dull to finish, say so.

“If it doesn't look worth your time, why waste your time?" he asks. "I remember that a couple of folks reviewed a book awhile back for Mind & Media and thought it was so bad they couldn't finish it. They wrote that in their reviews. The problem you would run into with this is that you may miss something in the book which deals with a point you are making in your review. So yeah, I think you should probably read the whole thing if you are planning on doing a review.”

Bill Wallo, who reviews media of all types at Wallo World and Cinema Veritas, believes some less-thorough reading is natural. “By its very nature, I think fiction is less dense than non-fiction. In general, you can skim a paragraph or page of description without missing much of the story. With nonfiction, it is often necessary to read more deeply because otherwise you may miss an essential point.

“I think that some amount of skimming happens in reading naturally; I don't know that reviewers can necessarily avoid that tendency to skip ahead a few lines or a paragraph or two in a narrative.”

“Of course,” Kevin says, “in graduate school I wrote papers about books I hadn't read
in their entirity. We called that ‘graduate reading.’"

As you can guess, my question comes out of a time/speed problem. Reviewers who can take in 400 pages in a few days probably don’t think about skipping what appears to be a redundant chapter. I remember reading a day-after review of the sixth Harry Potter book which barely got around to describing the book, but since the article was printed, I guess it didn’t need to. And if the review consists of a brief description and a thumbs-up, how thorough does the reading need to be?

Brandywine Books Author-in-Residence Lars Walker told me he wants to see that the reviewer understands the novel, regardless what he thinks of it. That’s a sound goal to me: To understand and relate to would-be readers. Of course, that should answer the fundamental question of a review--should someone buy the book. - phil  ¶ 12/12/2005 12:56:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Marla asks about Lamplighter In case you don't see Marla's request on her blog, which is currently named "Always Thristy," she asks if anyone has a recommendation or comment on Lamplighter Books. I don't know anything other than they look cool.

Wow. I just noticed this ringing recommendation from Ronald Reagan on a book I've never heard of: "That book, That Printer of Udell's, had an impact I shall always remember… The term 'role model' was not a familiar term in that time and place. But I realize I found a role model in that traveling printer whom Harold Bell Wright had brought to life. He set me on a course I've tried to follow even unto this day. I shall always be grateful."

What wonderful praise for any book and its author. - phil  ¶ 12/12/2005 12:03:00 AM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Scary Ghost Story, etc. for Monday What do you do when an author becomes wildly popular and makes a pile of cash? You accuse him of being a front for a ghostwriter. Pastor Shaun points out an article which quotes a film director, a Norwegian as a matter of fact, believes J.K. Rowling doesn't exist. "Can a person be so productive and commercially successful in a media industry where nothing is left to coincidence?"

That's the formula for conspiracy, isn't it. How can it happen in a place or a time where "nothing is left to coincidence?" I wonder if this film director believes in the Big Bang.

And that's today's Monday Post. Now for news you can use, "Coffee and tea may help people who are at risk for liver disease," according to researchers. That is, it may help you, but unnamed researchers are not sure yet. Tell the news we think this might work, but really we don't know yet. Coca-Cola isn't waiting for the final results to release a new beverage which blends coffee and Coke. Coca-Cola Blak is said to be a "unique Coke refreshment with the true essence of coffee and has a rich smooth texture and has a coffee-like froth when poured [and makes you write grammatically challenging press releases and other, unspecified enjoyments as well which were sure will thrill you also]."

Coke's VP of Global Core Brands called this "an adult product in a carbonated beverage – and a whole new drinking experience." I thought we already had a adult product like this with rum and Coke.

You know, when I drink Coke and coffee close together I commute to the men's room for the afternoon. I hope they work that little benefit out of their Blak formula. [photo found on a beverage discussion board]  ¶ 12/12/2005 12:00:00 AM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Thank you. Thank you. Read Sherry's Semicolon blog for notable literary births, but I must point out two born today as well. Christian author of romance and fantasy George MacDonald was born today in 1824.

We must do the thing we must
Before the thing we may;
We are unfit for any trust
Till we can and do obey.

Great American poet Emily Dickinson was also born on this day in 1830. Sherry has a cutesy Dickinson Christmas poem today. That Emily--what a kidder. From another of her poems, good advice for Christian blogger and author alike:

The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.

- phil  ¶ 12/10/2005 09:32:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye

I went to the dentist today. Emergency stuff. The old familiar sensitivities, to pressure and heat, had once again tiptoed into the no-man’s-land that is my mouth. (I’ve had four previous root canals.) Usually I wait until you can actually see those little lightning bolts, the ones advertising artists used to draw, radiating from my jaw before calling the dentist, but I thought, “Let’s just do it the easy way this time. Let’s go in earlier rather than later.”

So my dentist made me some time this morning and in I went, bringing along my checkbook and my personal banker. The dentist had prescribed some antibiotics for me, and I’d started taking them yesterday evening. I steeled myself for the inevitable. Somehow in the Monopoly Game of life I’d drawn a whole pile of tickets that said, “You need a root canal. Pay the bank $1500.00.”

But when the dentist asked me to bite down on a stick I got nothing from the nerve that had been complaining like a mugged intellectual the night before. The X-Ray he took showed nothing for certain. So we shook our heads and I left undrilled. Maybe the antibiotics knocked out whatever’d been bothering me.

But I’ll bet it comes back. I’ll keep you posted.

Did some Christmas shopping (the church set-up I wrote about yesterday is scheduled for this evening). On the way home, in Maple Grove, I saw one of those left-wing bumper stickers that showcases the kind of logic that can only be nurtured in a rich soil of marijuana smoke, hallucinogens and fair trade coffee. It said, “If We Were All Blind, Nobody Would Know Who To Hate.”

Even leaving to one side the fact that it should be “Whom To Hate,” this slogan is so simpleminded that I hardly know where to begin deconstructing it.

Are you saying, dear loving leftist, that no blind people are ever bigots?

It’s my impression (and experience) that homosexuals (to take one example), unless they are raving queens, are not generally identifiable by their appearance. Does that mean that you’ll stop calling me a bigot for disagreeing with their agenda?

Somehow I doubt it.

How do you feel about conservative bloggers, dear loving liberal? Have you never felt a moment of hate for, say, the Powerline guys or Bryan Preston, even though you’ve never seen their faces?

Would it be a better world if we surgically removed everybody’s eyes?

I can see it as a science fiction book, actually. A future world where electronic sensing devices have rendered plain old eyesight unnecessary. I can see the future equivalent of the Democratic Party advocating universal eye removal, “for the sake of the children.”

Nobody needs eyes in the modern world, they’d say.

If it saves one life, it will be worth it.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/10/2005 03:37:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Happy Christmas Boycott Thank you, Lars, for pointing out research on the origins of Christmas celebration. I never quite understood why believers would object to celebrating Christ's birth, and they don't really. They just object to how other people celebrate Christmas or something the others call Christmas or The Happy Holiday^TM. I guess I understand that, but has the flak over "the reason for the season" gotten out of hand this year?

For example, The Evangelical Underground points out a report by PrestoPundit Greg Ransom that Sears says "Merry Christmas," even if The Committee to Save Christmas doesn't buy it yet. The report complains that Bill O'Reilly spreads this news, and the L.A. Times has fallaciously said he has organized a boycott of Sears and other stores. But the point is, Sears already says "Merry Christmas" and allows its employees to say it. Why the boycott?

The American Family Association is encouraging a boycott of Target for this reason. They spell out their point of contention on their site: "Do you use the term 'Christmas' in your in-store promotions developed by Target (not products you have for sale) and do you include the term 'Christmas' in your retail advertising?" Are we straining at a gnat here? Are we honoring Christ by using legal force to press retailers to use the right words in their advertising?

Let me clarify. I do believe secularists are trying to smooth out Christmas distinctions of all kinds. They are trying to make an all-purpose club of their pet phrase, "separation of church and state." Journalist John Gibson's book The War on Christmas describes it.

In this October interview with National Review Online, Gibson explains that in his book, "I expose how that casual, accepted anti-Christian bias shows up once a year around Christmas when people in positions of petty power, such as school administrators, or municipal-hall managers, will suddenly pop up saying things like 'We can't have that Christmas tree in here because it's too Christian.' I had a long discussion with a city human-resources manager who said precisely that. What I find shocking is that people like that man do not hear the sound of their voices. Substitute any other religion for the word "Christian" and these very people would be up in arms with the cry of prejudice and bias, but if the bias is directed at Christians, it is perfectly acceptable."

So this year we hear about Boston relabeling their white spruce, received as a gift from Nova Scotia, a holiday tree set for a holiday tree lighting. Signage accompanying the Christmas tree was changed at the state or city border. When the man who cut the tree learned of this, he asked for the tree to be returned so he could run it through his chipper. Other outrage sprang up, and Boston rescinded its stupid holiday idea. Perhaps as a result, the town council of Oxford, Nova Scotia, voted to use no word but "Christmas" to describe this season.

Many blogs are pointing out foolishness and weak-kneed decisions, and Blogs4God.com has a long list of links. And it can happen to the best of us. My governor in Atlanta, Georgia, had an email sent to the media to announce a "holiday tree" lighting at the governor's mansion. Within the hour, he followed up with another email blaming a "politically correct staff brain-freeze" for misnaming the Christmas trees. Here's the corrected announcement.

In Tennessee, a public library which made shelf space available to the community for displays denied a Methodist church the option to put up a full nativity set with their Christmas program announcement. Take out Mary, Joseph, the angel, and the Child Who Must Not Be Named, and the rest can stay. (This is a paramount offense to me, being from a shepherding family, because the livestock and shepherds weren't offensive enough to secularists to be removed from the display. Haven't shepherds suffered enough over the years? We are important people too!!)

The ACLU and like-minded liberals are out to separate faith from all expression in public, and it's ultimately a losing battle. I hope their foolishness is becoming evident to all who are paying attention. As you can see in this NY Times editorial, "Christian displays on public property and Christian prayer in public schools" are not steps toward a theocracy. They are part of the freedom of religion we have in this country.

We don't help defend that freedom by taking Christmas programs out of context. In Milwaukee, a school is doing a program, "The Little Tree's Christmas Gift," in which secular ("different" may be more accurate) words are sung to the tune of "Silent Night." The Liberty Council doesn't like it and is threatening legal action.

"They're discriminating based upon a religious viewpoint,'' Mat Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, said. "It sends a tremendous disconnect to a young person when you're familiar with the song 'Silent Night' and tune and all of sudden you learn the same tune with totally secular words.''

A school administrator explained, "Somebody totally misunderstood and had the belief that one of our teachers took it upon herself to rewrite the words to 'Silent Night.'''

What's wrong with that? Could we fight real battles please?

I urge Christians and sound-minded individuals to celebrate Christmas joyfully everywhere you go. We can say "Happy Holidays" because we are not taking Christ out of Christmas, and we don't need to call for boycotts when advertisers don't print Merry Christmas signs. I suggest the Lord would have us honor the reason for the season by being patient with store workers, helping others while we shop, and taking our strength from the joy of the Lord when everyone else is frazzled.

Rejoice, pray, and be patient. Then wish the world a Merry Christmas, and perhaps the Lord will turn someone's heart to seek Him as the wise men did.  ¶ 12/10/2005 03:00:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Pooh Without Christopher Robin The Disney Channel is working up a 3d computer animated series of Winnie the Pooh and his Hundred Acre Woods friends to be released in 2007, but the kid with the imagination won't be there. Next year, A. A. Milne's wonderful little characters will be 80 years old, and folks at Disney seem to think they need updating. So along with the 3d animation and other modifications, Christopher Robin will be at school (or somewhere else) and in his place, a 6-year-old rough-n-tumble girl.

Lesley Milne, the window of the author's son, Christopher Robin Milne, said, "He hated the character Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh and Disney. He detested the whole set-up so much that I don't think he would have minded the loss."

This surprises me, but it may not matter that much. Disney's latest adventures with Pooh & Our Gang are so light-weight and silly compared to the rich, fun stuff in Milne's stories that having a C. Robin-type girl or an Anti-Robin character won't bring it down any further. The characters are already unlike themselves. They are just caricatures.

Mamas Ink summarizes the story in two words: "New Coke." - phil  ¶ 12/09/2005 09:15:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Go ahead and Shoot that Santa Illustrator Vitriolica, who lives in Portugal, doesn't take kindly to short men dressed as Father Christmas who, um, climb buildings . . . for advertising. What in the . . . She wants to shoot them, but doesn't think they would take kindly to it.

But we don't all warm to, um, decent, level-headed holiday traditions . . . like this. Take The Little Drummer Boy, a wonderful, old hymn of the faith. Sherry of Semicolon loves it, and so does Lars. According to Wikipedia, it was written in 1958 by Harry Simeone Chorale and is his most enduring song. Everyone loved it once Bing Crosby sang it with David Bowie, adding words about peace on earth and good will to men. It's been recorded and performed many times, including a duet by Simpsons, Jessica and Ashlee.

Well, any song can land on hard times.

But what other song could bring Bing and Bowie together in 1977 like this? I mean, really. That was nice and, um, seasonal. Like a little Santa, you know, climbing without his reindeer.  ¶ 12/09/2005 08:23:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

For pity’s sake, Mary, don’t nod!

If Walden Media were to offer me a couple million tomorrow to make The Year Of the Warrior into a movie, one of my first actions would be to give my church a big chunk of change for the building of a new sanctuary.

This is not primarily due to my faithful devotion to my worship community, though I trust my devotion isn’t too far below standard. No, I’d do it mostly to get out of work.

My church started a little Christian academy years and years ago, so that the members could have an inexpensive alternative to the public school system. Over the years the school has blossomed to the point where it completely dwarfs the church. The school (expensive and exclusive now) is housed in a large new facility in an upscale suburb, and our congregation meets each Sunday in its gymnasium. That means that each Saturday a group of men has to gather to roll out protective tarps, set up a stage, altar and chairs, and assemble the sound system. We have five teams on a rotating schedule, and this is my weekend again.

It’s not that the work is all that hard. Lazy as I am, I’ve done harder work than set-up. And the guys on my team are congenial.

But I’ve always preferred giving money to actually working.

Shall I name another Christmas tradition that puts me off? I hate The Little Drummer Boy.

It’s a cutesy song. It’s a Precious Moments figurine in musical form. It makes me grind what's left of my teeth.

My dad liked it. One of the disappointments of my life, as I grew up, was discovering what really awful taste Dad had. Dad was a great guy, and I miss him terribly, but he was the kind of person who likes polka music and black velvet paintings of kids with hyperthyroid eyes.

I ask you, those of you who have given birth, regardless of class affinity, gender or economic preference, how open would you have been, while you were in delivery, to the prospect of having some six-year-old with ADD banging a drum in your ear?

You notice the kid never asked Joseph for permission to play. I’ll bet he waited for Joseph to step outside for a cigarette break before taking advantage of Mary’s weakened condition.

Actually, I’ll bet there wasn’t any drum.

Just a feeling I have.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/09/2005 07:52:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Goodbye, Symbol of London The Routemaster, London's double-decker buses, have run their last route today ("London says goodbye to the Routemaster" in The Times.). Their service lasted about 50 years.I'm sure there's a decent reason for closing them, though London's mayor said, four years ago, "only some ghastly, dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster." Perhaps, he misspoke since he is decommissioning them now. A few will be kept for heritage tours. - phil  ¶ 12/09/2005 04:03:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

News Flash: Christmas is a Christian festival!

This won’t satisfy those among the faithful who believe that Christ came for the purpose of eradicating all fun and beauty from the world, but it’s a relief to me.

From the current World Magazine:

According to conventional wisdom, Christmas had its origin in a pagan winter solstice festival, which the church co-opted to promote the new religion…. But this view is apparently a historical myth….

William J. Tighe, a history professor at Muhlenberg College, gives a different account in his article, “Calculating Christmas,” published in the December 2003 Touchstone Magazine. He points out that the ancient Roman religions had no winter solstice festival.

It would appear that a short-lived Roman attempt to establish a winter festival in the third century was actually an effort to counter an already-existing Christian holiday.

There was a belief, it seems, in the early church that great saints and prophets always died on the same day when they were born or conceived. Fairly early along the majority opinion came to be that Christ was conceived on March 25 (the supposed day of His crucifixion). Figure nine months forward from that date and you get December 25.

So celebrate in good conscience.

This message was brought to you as a public service by Brandywine Books.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/08/2005 07:15:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Didn't Know Narnia Had a Big Following Coming Soon! has an interview with Skandar Keynes and Tilda Swinton, who play Edmund and The White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie. Swinton calls herself an infidel for being "the only living person who did not read this as a child."

Keynes said, "I read it, and I was never really aware that it had such a big following and now I've noticed that it does."

They realized they were in a big movie when "1500 people turned up for lunch every day."

In other news, movie makers are starting work on adapting Lewis' The Great Divorce (link and scroll). Ted Baehr of MovieGuide.org is the source. This doesn't sound like a good idea to me. The Great Divorce is a great little story, but I don't see it working as a film without profound alteration.

Update: Since my comments are independent of my posts (which is good anti-spam), let me pull out some of what has been said below about a potential movie based on The Great Divorce. Jared said the movie could become something like Robin Williams' What Dreams May Come. Derringdo believes the movie would have to make the narrator one of heaven's new arrivals and focus on his story of transformation.

I agree. The movie must do something like this, because the book is basically unfilmable, a series of conversations with splashes of fascinating elements. People used to complain that Chekov's plays didn't show anything, only talked about it all; but this would be the same and much worse. If filmmakers stick to the book, it won't work. So, what could they do with this story? How about this: After several minutes of heaven and soul-confrontation, demons who have stowed away on the bus burst into heaven for a coup d'etat. The souls in heaven and the bus people must use the real weapons of heaven to fight the demons before they open a permanent riff in the sky and allow everyone in hell up to paradise.

Ha! I can see it now--well, not that I would watch a stupid movie like this, but I can see Hollywood making it. Maybe Aslan could make an appearance.  ¶ 12/08/2005 08:17:00 AM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Today: Snow We have a threat of snow in Chattanooga today. Some are already racing to the store for milk and bread. It probably won't even flurry, but I loved the irony of hearing "Let It Snow" when my radio alarm activated this morning. Because I'm taking my two older daughters to the Nutcracker Ballet this morning, I put the alarm to sleep and snuggled back into the warm blankets. Then my two-year-old began singing "Frere Jacques" loudly from the next room. Within the four or five verses she belted out, I don't think she actually sang, "Are you sleeping?" but she communicated it. I wanted to shout back, "Yes, I'm sleeping. Hush!" But how long does a two-year-old have to shout songs in the dark from her little bed? Barely enough time to hear them.

She's roaring like a lion now. That means, "Back off! I am big."

Life is so short. Thankfully eternity is unending.  ¶ 12/08/2005 07:59:00 AM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

It’s An Extraordinary Life

The temperature shot up to a volcanic 14º today. It felt positively… not terrible. Mild. It was a relief. I didn’t need gloves, on a short run.

Tonight I feel an ache in my right shoulder. Not the kind of damaged-muscle ache you get when you do something dumb with your body (like playing any sport after the age of… oh, twelve), but a deep ache that usually indicates tension. But it’s only on one side.

Probably the onset of Muscular Dystrophy or something.

You might assume, from the title of this post, that I’m about to follow up my appreciation of A Christmas Carol with an appreciation of Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. Unfortunately you’d be wrong. I’m going to discuss IAWL as one of those holiday traditions that somehow don’t work for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not denouncing the movie, or calling for a boycott or anything. It’s a nice, harmless film that gives people a lot of pleasure and contains no obscenity or profanity (though its theology, such as it is, would seem to be works-based). If you enjoy it, God bless you. I just can’t share your pleasure.

The problem with It’s A Wonderful Life, for me, is that the moviemakers seem to expect me to translate George Bailey’s situation to my own life. But the translation doesn’t work. I don’t see how it follows that, just because George Bailey has a wonderful life, I should assume my life is wonderful too.

George Bailey saved his brother’s life. I’ve never done that.

George Bailey saved several people’s homes and businesses. I’ve never done that.

George Bailey married a woman who would have been an old maid without him. If there’s a woman out there who’d have been an old maid but for me, all I can do is apologize to her. I missed my connection somehow.

The problem with the movie, in my opinion, is that George Bailey has an Extraordinary Life. I’m happy for the hundreds of thousands of people who've identified with that life and felt better about their own, but I can’t do the trick.

But you young folks, you go have a good time. Don’t mind me.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/07/2005 09:22:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Can't Stand Atheist Reviews Bekki of the United Kingdom who blogs and comments under the label "Pig Wot Flies," expresses her distaste for reviews like the one in The Guardian, which we discussed a couple days ago.

Aaargh! I'm sick of reading Narnia reviews by atheists! Every single one goes on and on about heavy-handed Christian imagery or misogyny. They always seem to bring in the fact that Susan is missing from the friends of Narnia by The Last Battle. The last one I read saw her as condemned for liking trivial things like nylons and lipstick and yet couldn't understand why Edmund should be forgiven for his betrayal. I suppose we shouldn't really be surprised that people who aren't Christians or who are actively opposed to Christianity don't like Lewis, but it feels like such lazy journalism. I suppose being a Guardian reader I should know what to expect from them by now, but I'm fed up of hearing the same old line with no one speaking from the other side.

The post in question brings up other points made in the Toynbee article, including what's called racism in Lewis' description of the Calormen, who are darker skinned than Narnians, somewhat arabesque, and generally the bad guys. Wikipedia describes them: "Calormene culture is strongly derived from Turkish, Persian, and Indian culture and civilization, presented somewhat in the tradition of the medieval literature the Arabian Nights. Flowing robes, turbans, and wooden shoes with an upturned point at the toe are common items of clothing, and the preferred weapon is the scimitar."

Tolkien briefly describes men from lands far south of Gondor who fight for Mordor, and I always thought they resembled Calormen folk, even Muslims. Is that racist? I don't think so. Are the bad guys in a story supposed to be from your side of the fence to be non-racist? Are bad guys supposed to have no cultural distinction? I think the racism charge reflects only a discomfort with having dark-skinned bad guys. Reverse the skin-tones, and no charge will be made.

I also think the Calormen reflect the period of time in which the Chronicles were written. I have no idea what Lewis thought of his Narnian enemies, but it felt right to him to make them this way just as it felt right for Roddenberry to make the Klingons in the original Star Trek look like greasy Cubans. (At least, that's what I remember from watching reruns in the 70s. Looking back now, almost all of the characters looked greasy at some point.)  ¶ 12/07/2005 12:18:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

An Alistair Simulation

Watched the Alistair Sim Scrooge on the American Movie Channel this weekend. This was the original, black and white version, rather than the colorized-and-truncated version so commonly broadcast these days, and that’s all to the good. I don’t object to the colorization so much (colorizing works pretty well with this movie), but I like the Director's Cut, not the sponsor's.

I’ve always enjoyed A Christmas Carol, although I rarely saw it as a kid. My dad would always turn it off. I’d get about a minute of interesting period costumes and a hint of ghosts to come, and then Dad would turn the channel to Lawrence Welk or something. I think he found ghost stories questionable. If I remember right, I was in college before I saw the Sim version all the way through. And I read it before I saw it in any form (if my memory serves, which it doesn’t always).

Which movie version is my favorite? I guess it’s a toss-up between the Sim version and the more recent television production starring George C. Scott, which you don’t see much anymore. I remember a year, back in the early 80’s, when for copyright reasons the Sim Scrooge was unavailable for broadcast on television and a lot of very obscure, sometimes very odd productions showed up in its place. I enjoyed them all, which is not the same thing as saying I thought them all good.

Which is the worst version? I tried to watch the Patrick Stewart hash they threw together a few years back, but Stewart (who is talented enough to do better) played him just like Captain Pickard, and I could not stand it. I thought that was the bottom, until I saw the Kelsey Grammar musical version televised last year (or the year before; I forget). That was genuinely painful. Had to turn it off or turn to drink.

I think I like A Christmas Carol because Ebenezer Scrooge is (I suspect) one of the great literary Avoidants. For those of you who haven’t yet read my whinings about my emotional disorder, Avoidant Personality Disorder is a form of extreme shyness, in which the person, while desiring human relationships, chooses to live alone instead because of his irrational fear of rejection.

Scrooge seems a pretty classic Avoidant to me. Raised in a home where he was denied affection, trained by his distant father to believe that only making money can give you any security in the world, he devotes himself to gaining wealth in the vain hope of earning his father’s love. When his fiancée breaks off their engagement due to his obsession with profit, he doubtless sees this as proof of his father’s principles – if he’d been rich enough he wouldn’t have been rejected. Doesn’t she see that he’s just trying to win them some security in a cold world?

I don’t suppose I’ll ever get three ghosts, myself. That’s the weak point in fantasy. God rarely throws these redemptive sabots into the machinery of our real lives, or at least He rarely does it in so explicit a way. He throws them, but we (I) don’t recognize them for what they are.

God comes to us and we don’t recognize Him. Sounds vaguely familiar…

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/06/2005 06:52:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Four Corners of Night by Craig Holden

Seriously cold today. The high was +9°. I’ve seen much colder weather, but this is plenty for early December. Shortly after I started my drive to work, my windshield painted itself white with frozen mist on the inside, in spite of my defroster blowing at full throat. I suppose I should have pulled off the street to wait for it to clear, but I felt making a turn would be more dangerous than continuing to move with the traffic. I could see well enough to make out the taillights of other cars. Any kids darting out in front of me were on their own, though.

I decided to try reading Scott Turow again a couple weeks ago. I read Pleading Guilty, and then started Personal Injuries. I couldn’t recall why I’d stopped reading him years back. I think I remember now. Pleading Guilty was a fascinating read since the narrator was someone I could identify with (“I’m honest,” he tells his girlfriend. “You’re self-deprecating,” she replies. “There’s a difference.”). When I began Personal Injuries I read a short while and then asked myself, “Do I really want to finish this?” And the answer was “No.” Turow is a Calvinist without a gospel, a man who sees all his fellow men as corrupt, and takes comfort in the numerical advantage.

I picked up Craig Holden’s Four Corners of Night cold (quite literally) at a local used bookstore. I knew nothing about him, but I’m glad I found the book. It was a welcome change from Turow.

Not that Four Corners is a cheery book. Quite the contrary. It’s stuffed like a body bag with pain, moral ambiguity and personal guilt. But it finds a pony in the manure.

The narrator is Mack Steiner, a policeman in an unnamed Ohio city, but the story centers on his friend “Bank” Arbaugh. Bank is a hero to Mack and to the city – even to the criminal element. He’s a Vietnam veteran and a decorated cop, bearing scars from the rescue of a young man from a burning car. Since they were kids Mack, less athletic and more bookish, has sort of followed in Bank’s shadow. He even became a cop because of Bank.

The narrative alternates between two major (and a few minor) strands, dealing with different periods in the main characters’ lives. The main strand (told in the present tense) deals with the kidnapping of a young girl. Bank goes all out in his investigation, to an extent that frightens Mack and their superiors. The reason for his obsession is explained in the second strand (past tense) which tells how Bank’s own stepdaughter disappeared several years before, an event that nearly took his career and his sanity, and did destroy his marriage.

As both plot lines play themselves out we are presented with one surprise after another. Things don’t shake out as Mack expects. Was the missing girl kidnapped, or was she “rescued” by a secret organization that takes children out of abusive situations? Is she dead or alive? Is Bank’s daughter dead or alive?

But there are even bigger mysteries, and bigger shocks. Holden understands, like Solzhenitsyn, that the line between good and evil runs through the heart of each human being. His heroes are deeply flawed, yet the heroism is real, sometimes surprising. I found the book inspiring in a strange sort of way.

Language and violence cautions apply, it almost goes without saying, and there are a couple sexual scenes where Holden told me more than I really cared to know. But all in all I was very pleased. References to Christianity and religion in general are mostly positive. I’m glad I read Four Corners of Night, and I’ll look for more of Holden’s books.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/05/2005 07:46:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

In a Winter Wonderland Have you ever wondered why Parson Brown asked the couple walking in a winter wonderland if they were married? I mean, what were they doing out there? (I should keep thoughts like this to myself.)

And another thing--does anyone tell scary ghost stories or tales of the glories of Christmases long time ago? I've never heard ghost stories at Christmastime. - phil  ¶ 12/05/2005 02:20:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Should Aslan Have Been a Donkey? Today in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, Polly Toynbee airs her disgust with Lewis’ Narnia series and Disney’s movie in Britain. She says most British children don’t know the Bible, so they won’t notice any symbolism in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe; but the movie may cause them to ask “embarrassing questions.”

After a long, dark night of the soul and women's weeping, the lion is suddenly alive again. Why? How?, my children used to ask. Well, it is hard to say why. It does not make any more sense in CS Lewis's tale than in the gospels. Ah, Aslan explains, it is the "deep magic", where pure sacrifice alone vanquishes death.

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus' holy head every day that you don't eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion's breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged.

Though she doesn’t understand why the Lord Jesus had to die in order to make us acceptable to God the Father, our final judge, or why a Christ figure would do something similar in a fictional context, she does believe she understands the character of Jesus. He would not have appeared in a fantasy world as a lion, but as a lamb, “representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight.” John Derbyshire agreed, saying in his November diary that he thought a donkey would be a better symbol, “which teaches humility and patience in suffering. There's nothing very humble about lions, is there?”

Perhaps a lion isn’t very humble, though I remember Aslan being fairly subdued and meek throughout the Chronicles. These writers appear to forget that Jesus taught vigorously against sin and wrong-headed religious leaders. He didn’t approach the Pharisees with a brotherly attitude, trying to steer the slightly misguided back on track. He called them a brood a vipers and took a whip to them in the temple. Why? Because they pretended to love the Lord when they actually loved themselves.

Jesus teaches his followers to be meek—that’s true. He urges us to submit to God the Father and turn the other cheek when personally wronged. But Jesus Himself does not perpetually turn His cheek. When He returns to the earth, He will come as a conqueror, as the Lord of the universe, and every knee will bow because no one will be able to deny who is the true master. I remember J. Vernon McGee saying it was “the meek and lowly Jesus” who taught us the most about eternal damnation.

Sure, it’s offensive, Toynbee. It’s even humiliating. The Lord is the only One who will be praised in the end. None of us will, not matter what we do.

“See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed,” says one of the heavenly elders. And when we look at that Lion, we will see the Lamb Whom some of us thought did not fight.  ¶ 12/05/2005 01:23:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Book Drive for Hurricane-Hit Libraries [by way of Stacy Price] "Students at Salem Middle School in Apex are donating thousands of books to help re-build school libraries in Pass Christian, Mississippi," according ABC News in Raleigh-Durham, NC. The students have written notes to place inside the books. They aimed to collect 6000 books to send to Pass Christan, where all but one of the schools were destroyed by the hurricane. Over 7000 books have been donated so far.

Megan Gravley donated 40 books all stories to inspire and stories to ease the pain. "Certain books here are fantasy and they can take them to another world and that's what they need right now."

Good thinking, Megan. - phil  ¶ 12/05/2005 12:06:00 AM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Dirty Fish-Slappers So, like, a man with a fish walks up to a guy in the park and asks, "Do you want to kiss my fish?" The guy ignores him and continues walking. The man says, "You answer me the next time I ask you to kiss a fish," and slaps him in the face with the fish.

True and recent story from Scotland. The man must have been a Ninevite, the dirty fish-slapper.  ¶ 12/05/2005 12:01:00 AM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Snow, hats and sycophancy

Christmas card weather today. Assuming, of course, that you live in a rustic cabin in the great woods, or even in an ordinary house in the small town where I was born. The effect is somewhat degraded when you live in a shabby apartment building in a relatively shabby inner-ring suburb, but it's still pretty. It's especially nice if you act sensibly and stay indoors, sipping cocoa and waiting for the roads to be cleared before going out to do battle with traffic.

I, of course went out and did b. Things gotta be done, and I have no wife to bully into running my errands for me (just kidding, just kidding). One of the joys of winter in Minnesota is observing, every year, how bad we are at driving on snow. We laugh at the people in the south and mid-south whose cities close down if they get a quarter of an inch, but the plain fact is that every summer we forget, ourselves, how to navigate in the white stuff. We tell people, with patient smugness, "Don't spin your tires if you're stuck. Rock the car." But when we get stuck we spin our tires just like other mortals. You can't just sit there, after all, running your car from Forward to Reverse over and over, like a doofus. People laugh at you. They think you're from Ohio.

I didn't actually have any problem in the snow, other than dropping a glove at the gas station and having to drive back to retrieve it out of the snow by the pump, and having a guy nearly back into me in the restaurant parking lot. But I survived those challenges unscathed, banners flying.

We'll see whether I make it back alive from my journey to south Minneapolis tonight for the Viking Age Club's annual Yule feast.

In my ongoing effort to suck up to Michael J. Nelson, I note that he has updated his blog once again, this time with a post about appalling "hats".

The aforementioned headgear is indeed appalling. What saddens me is the use of the word "hat" to describe these abortions. This is yet another sign of cultural decay in the West. Not one of these items of headgear can properly be called a hat.

And for that we should all be grateful.

A hat, children, is a piece of headgear that has a brim going all the way around. A cowboy hat is a hat. A derby is a hat. George Washington's tricorn was a hat.

Other things that go on top of your head, tasteful or not, are properly called "caps". Baseball caps (which should only be worn with the brim forward, to shade your eyes from the sun, unless you're a catcher actually involved in a game), stocking caps, engineer caps, etc., etc. They're all right in their place, and their place is in that moldy cultural cellar where berets with red stars belong.

If you can't wear a hat, at least give them the respect they deserve.

Except for you, Michael J. Nelson. You can call them anything you want, Sir.

Have your people call my people.

Lars Walker  ¶ 12/03/2005 04:14:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Are the Thinklings Emerging? By way of See Life Differently, I scrolled through this illustrated post at Purgatorio entitled, "You Might Be Emerging If . . ." Imagine my shock when the post seemed to implicate the Thinklings as oriented toward the Emerging Church. I mean, look at the post. The Thinklings are white American males who know Bono and have discussed The Divine Conspiracy before. Sure, some of the details go against them being labeled emerging, not the least of which could be their violent opposition to it; but despite that, the post may be a wake up call for them. I'm just as surprised as anyone, let me tell you.

Speaking of this, I don't readily claim to be a postmodern Christian because I think it would communicate more than I intend, but I do believe I am one. As I understand it, modernists believe men can distill the world into understandable, controllable elements which they could then manipulate to achieve their conception of paradise on earth. When scientists announced a new scientific fact, you could build on it without question. Men would rule the world, given enough time to study it. Postmodernists, in short, believe the world is irreducibly complex, that a man's perspective clouds his judgment thereby preventing him from learning the truth. In fact, the truth probably isn't out there anyway, and everything we believe to be true is merely personal belief.

As a 21st century Christian, I am closer to postmodernism than modernism, because I don't believe you and I can verifiably discern the truth on our own. There are plenty of things we can agree to be factual; but by factual, we must mean that they appear to be true beyond reasonable doubt. Something on our list may actually be false, but our sources and our observations confirm it to be true now so we believe it to be true until new information comes along. We cannot know the world with certainty. We can only know it with confidence, beyond reasonable doubt, because no man can verify another man's observations. We need someone other or higher than man. That's where we get all of our truth, the only source of verified truth: the Lord God, creator and sustainer of the universe.

That's why I think I could legitimately be labeled a postmodern Christian. I believe the Bible is our only source of verified truth. There are many observations we can bank on for daily living; but they may be wrong. We have to hold most ideas about the world with an open hand; but the Word of God is fully true. As the Lord said, it is the rock on which we can build our entire lives, strong enough to weather any storm. - phil  ¶ 12/03/2005 03:51:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Essentials of Autobiography "The three essentials for an autobiography are that its compiler shall have an eccentric father, a miserable misunderstood childhood, and a hell of a time at his public school." -- P. G. Wodehouse (see here in The Independent Online)  ¶ 12/03/2005 12:00:00 AM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Memes, the last refuge of the brain-dead

Michael at The Euphemist did this meme the other day, and I’m borrowing it without asking permission or nothin’.

Have you ever...:

Smoked a cigarette or tried it:: In a couple plays I did. One in particular, “Write Me a Murder” by Frederick Knott, required my character (a major plot point hung on it) to smoke several cigarettes per performance. I got to where I was beginning to enjoy sucking that smoke down into my lungs. If the play had gone about a week longer, I might have had trouble quitting again.

Crashed a friend's car:: Put one in a ditch once. Cold day. Icy roads. No damage, and I paid for the tow.

Stolen a car:: Never wanted a car that bad.

Been dumped:: You need to be picked up before you can be dumped.

Shoplifted:: No.

Been fired /laid off:: This is my customary way of leaving a job. I can think of one job that I left voluntarily in my lifetime. I’m not a quitter – I’m redundant.

Been in a fist fight:: Not since I was a kid.

Snuck out of your parent's house:: Nope.

Been arrested:: Not yet. If the Antichrist appears, all bets are off.

Gone on a blind date:: Nope. I don’t trust my friends that much.

Lied to a friend:: Yes, to spare someone’s feelings. Not something I’m proud of.

Skipped school:: Skipped classes in college sometimes. I don’t think that’s what you mean.

Seen someone die:: No.

Been to Canada:: Several times.

Been to Mexico:: I may have been conceived there, although (judging from my birth date in relation to my parents’ wedding date) I was probably conceived in Rochester, Minnesota, where they spent their first night. They then proceeded to Mexico for their honeymoon, so I suppose I was there in vitro.

Eaten Sushi:: A thousand times no.

Met someone in person from the internet:: Yes, a couple people. Nice folks, both of them.

Taken pain-killers:: Sure, after operations and broken bones.

Had a tea party:: Not exactly my style.

Cheated while playing a game:: Not that I recall.

Fallen asleep at work:: I can’t even fall asleep in my own bed half the time.

Used a fake ID: : It is to laugh.

Felt an earthquake: : I slept through one once, the summer I spent in Alaska.

Touched a snake:: I expect I have. Not something I’d notice enough to remember.

Been robbed: : Oh yes. I was night clerking at a motel in Minneapolis during radio broadcast school. Two young men came in one night, and one of them pulled a gun. I ended up tied up on the floor while they cleaned out the cash drawer. They took my class ring too.

Petted a reindeer/goat:: I’m sure I’ve petted a goat (we had some on the farm in Missouri where I lived for a year). I have a reindeer skin that I use in Viking reenactment. Does a skin count? In any case I've seen them in the wild, in Norway.

Won a contest:: Twice. I won a TV in a television drawing in the early ‘80’s, and I won a car (really!) in a supermarket drawing in Florida. An ’85 Ford Escort wagon. Red. Probably the only new car I’ll ever own.

Been suspended from school:: No.

Been in a car accident:: Yes, twice. Both in Florida, oddly enough. One of them resulted in my breaking my arm (I only learned it was broken the next day, when I went in for a belated X-ray). This was just before my first trip to Norway, so I had to go with a cast on my arm.

Had braces:: No.

Eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night:: Probably.

Witnessed a crime:: Not beyond the one I was the victim of.

Swam in the ocean:: Yes. Again, in Florida.

Sung karaoke: : Yes, with a group from the local theater in Florida. They gave me a tape of my performance afterwards, and when I played it I was appalled at how flat I sang. I gradually gave up singing in public after that.

Paid for a meal with only coins:: Not to my recollection.

Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose:: I don’t recall that happening.

Been kissed under mistletoe:: No (sigh).

Crashed a party:: You’re kidding, right?

Worn pearls:: Ah, no.

Jumped off a bridge:: Afraid of heights.

Ate dog/cat food:: I don’t even like most human food.

Kissed a mirror:: I don’t think so.

Glued your hand to something:: Probably, with super glue.

Done a one-handed cartwheel:: Haven’t done a cartwheel of any sort.

Talked on the phone for more than 6 hours:: No.

Didn't take a shower for a week:: Yes, on one of my excursions to Canada, a week-long canoe trip in Ontario with my brothers (otherwise known as “My Week In Hades”).

Picked and ate an apple right off the tree:: Sure. We had our own orchard on the farm where I grew up.

Been told by a complete stranger that you're hot: Told that I was cute. I’ve blogged about this.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/02/2005 07:33:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

The Southerner Is Leaving the Building Folks in Cary, NC, joke that their town is an acronym meaning "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees," according to AP Reporter Allen Breed. He reports on an AP-Ipsos poll on what it means to be a Southerner. Apparently, most see the Southerner as slow, rural fellow, to which some add conservative politics.

For novelist Cassandra King, who grew up on a southern Alabama peanut farm, the South will always be "the agrarian South of the hard-working, reddened-neck farm family."

"Southern identity," she says, "comes from the red clay or white sand or black dirt which produces our peanuts and corn and okra and field peas and sweet potatoes."

John Shelton Reed, author of numerous books about the region, says the South has stopped being "the regional odd man out" in some important ways. In terms of income, literacy and the racial attitudes of whites, "the differences between Southerners and other Americans have now become so small, by historical standards, that they hardly matter at all," he says.

"We have exported country music, NASCAR, and the Southern Baptist Convention so successfully," he says, "that they may not be 'Southern' institutions much longer."

Some of us, by which I mean Southerners, are working to remove some of those distinctions. Erica Tobolski (is that a Polish last name?) teaching voice and diction at the University of South Carolina. The AP reports, "Tobolski's class is all about getting rid of accents, mostly Southern ones in the heart of the former Confederacy, and replacing them with Standard American Dialect, the uninflected tone of TV news anchors that oozes authority and refinement. 'We sort of avoid talking about class in this country, but clearly class is indicated by how we speak,' she said."

Hmm, the accent which oozes authority and refinement, eh? I probably speak with that accent on the whole more than a Southern one, but somehow this description of it makes me balk. I am proud to be Southern, perhaps in the same way these men and women do. I want to be described as a Southern author, if I become an author at all. It's a great part of our country, despite historic political problems.  ¶ 12/02/2005 04:54:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

G. R. R. Martin = J. R. R. Tolkien? Time magazine calls fantasy author George R.R. Martin an "American Tolkien." (Link: though article is now premium content.) Time opens:

George R.R. Martin is fond of sudden reversals. The tasty but poisoned dish, the false god who abruptly proves all too real, the unsalvageable rogue who strikes a hidden vein of decency when we--and he--least expect it. Martin is also partial to sacked castles, bear pits, disastrous battles, cynical betrayals, public executions, assassinations, ill luck, duels to the death, ambushes in forests and corpses left rotting in green hedgerows. The world Martin writes about may bear a passing resemblance to Olde Englande, but it is not a Merrie one.

In this interview on The SF Site, Martin says Tolkien has been a significant influence on him and he didn't want to follow his pattern directly.

Wayne MacLaurin: One thing I have noticed [in Martin's work] is the deliberate constraints. Not so much the good vs. evil but more the contrast between perception and reality. The knights, the concepts of the Wall and "taking the black," the concept of nobility vs. the ugliness.

Martin: Sure, with a number of the aspects of what you mentioned, to some extent, I was writing in reaction to other fantasies. It's always the question of the good vs. evil. Tolkien started it and did it quite masterfully, but others who followed didn't do as well. I think the battle between good and evil is certainly a valid one, but I think that the battle is much more interesting in real life than in fantasy. I am particularly irritated by fantasy where you can always tell the bad guys because they are ugly and wear black. That's why I deliberately pulled a twist on that with my Night's Watch. Sure they are criminal scum but they are also heroes and they wear black and I wanted to play with the convention a little. As for the knights, sure, I think it's an interesting question too. It not only affects fantasy but our history, too. We've always had a class of "protectors." The church divided us into knights and those the knights were suppose to protect, with the church praying for both. The worker, the prayer and the fighter. Of course, the way it often worked out is the people the peasants often needed the most protection from were their own protectors. I think there is a powerful story in that. The ideals of knighthood embody some of the finest ideals the human race has ever come up with. The reality was somewhat less than that, and often horribly so. Of course, that is true in the Seven Kingdoms as well.

  ¶ 12/02/2005 01:49:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Author Notices Here are a few details from articles about authors in the news this week.

British Author Tom Sharpe spends most of the year in Llafranc, Costa Brava, which is a little north of Barcelona, in a house he bought before that part of Spain became a luxury destination. "If I'd stayed in England, I'd be dead by now," he told the Times.

Sharpe spends most of his time in his large, sunlit study on the first floor, sitting at a broad wooden desk, hammering out manuscripts on an old typewriter or re-reading favourite authors such as P G Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh. Noise is not a problem: outside the holiday season he is one of the few people in residence on his cul-de-sac. "I call myself the porter, as I'm the only one whose lights are always on."

In this Wanganui, Australia article, author Marina Lewycka is said to enjoy writing in bed, "with her laptop balanced on a beanbag table she bought from the city’s Salvation Army second-hand shop. Her St John’s Hill house has a high bedroom with four windows and great views. She can spend up to eight hours a day on her writing, producing and fine-tuning 1500 words. She’s not sure where the novel is going, but is enjoying its unexpectedness."

Lewycka is "the first woman to win the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction." She won this year with her first published novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian.


Earlier this week, Opinion Journal pointed out a book signing with low attendance. Is that news, you ask? Well, someone thinks it is when the author, being Cindy Sheehan, complains that news photographers should not have taken pictures and talked about a low turn out. This kind of story makes me think Sheehan can manipulate the media pretty well. Even a low turnout gain publicity by complaining the right way.  ¶ 12/01/2005 11:09:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Our Present Time I'm late to point out a photo series assembled by Flickr user "Kokogiak" which illustrates changes made to the Richard Scarry Best Word Book Ever from its 1963 edition. The publishers took out the Wild West section and changed various professions to be less male oriented. Jared describes it here. Some changes are noted as meaningless, to which I suggest they are merely artistic alterations. No motive by the editors, unless maybe a perception of accuracy. Taking F.D. off the fire engine and changing the fireman's helmet may be something the artist did without a strong editorial motive. He just made that decision.

I think our copy of What Do People Do All Day? is relatively free from these changes. It has Wild Bill Hiccup in one story, and identifies a "laundress" and "saleslady." How offensive!

By following back links on this story, I found this post at Althouse about a trend to blame anger and rudeness on hunger. "I'm sorry. I was hungry," said to communicate, "Get over it. I did it out of physical weakness." Thinking of someone saying this to me reminds me of an exchange Winston Churchill had with a lady whom he apparently disrespected.

"Winston," she said, "you're drunk."

"Bessie," he replied, "you're ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober, and you will still be ugly."

I see that some have disputed this anecdote, but The Churchill Centre reports that a truthful man witnessed the scene and heard every word. Read the account here.  ¶ 12/01/2005 10:09:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Sandstorm

An anonymous, aspiring novelist who operates a blog called Sandstorm let me know he'd linked to my Fezziwig post. I thought it only polite to acknowledge that.

Lars Walker  ¶ 12/01/2005 09:56:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Today A chilled red maple
Called me through the office window.
I ran to answer.  ¶ 12/01/2005 09:34:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel

Here’s a story that would have made no sense to my grandfather: Jewish Group Defends “Merry Christmas” Greeting.

I heard the comedian Jackie Mason, one of the Christmas defenders, on Fox News this evening. I had to stop and swallow. It made me want to cry.

“Philosemitic” would be a word to describe me, I think (though there are many who’d contend that my theology makes me by definition an antisemite). An act of kindness and understanding like this, coming from people who have plenty of historical justification for acting differently, goes straight to my tear ducts.

I suspect that my attachment to the Jewish people can be traced to my childhood, and is not a thing I can congratulate myself on. If I’d grown up in an urban environment where there was a Jewish community down the street, I’d probably have felt differently. There’d have been bad blood between us and them, and I’d have grown up getting into fistfights with their kids. I’d have heard my parents complaining about business practices. I’d have had lots of history with individual Jews, and lots of anger and guilt.

But I grew up in a small town where there were no Jews. The only Jews I knew were in the Bible. My picture of them was formed by Sunday School pictures of Abraham and King David. When my great-aunt informed me that according to family tradition some of our ancestors were Jewish, I took great pride in it. It never occurred me to think otherwise.

Nothing in theology troubles me like the whole question of the fate of the Jews. I can’t abandon the centrality of Christ and His cross in theology. If there is a way to God through the old Law, then Christ’s sacrifice was a complete waste of time and Christ Himself was either a failure or a fool.

But my heart aches for the Jews. And moments like this, where Jews treat us with decency we haven’t always deserved, move me to the soul.

Well, I said I’d try to match Phil’s classical music list. My list is a pretty narrow one, as I don’t listen to a lot of composers. My musical education is limited. I’ve found a few composers I like a lot, and I tend to stick to them (it’s a little like my approach to food).

Favorite classical pieces:

1. Tribute March from Sigurd Jorsalfar, by Edvard Grieg.
2. Pier Gynt Suite by Edvard Grieg.
3. Olav Trygveson, op. 50, by Grieg.
4. Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner.
5. Brandenburg Concertos by Bach.
6. 9^th Symphony by Beethoven.
7. 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky.

I can remember when we used to call all that “long-hair” music, because orchestra conductors were about the only guys you’d ever see with hair over the tops of their ears.

Sometimes I think I must have been born in another century.

Wait. I was.

Lars Walker

  ¶ 12/01/2005 07:41:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |

Christmas Children and Seven Favorites "Christmas children hunger for Christmas morning
Christmas day's a wonder to behold
Young ones' dreams come true
Not so young ones too
I believe that story we've been told
Christmas is for children young and old"

I love this song. It's probably the melody, since the words aren't profound, but maybe there's a heart tug in the stories of the singers. It's sung by children and Bob Cratchitt in the musical Scrooge. Tiny Tim has a line about a big feast. Cratchitt sings something about the feeling of wealth despite their poverty. Gives me warm-fuzzies.

Speaking of music, I saw this Number Seven meme in a few places and noticed it doesn't ask for classical music favorites. Do people pass around classical music memes? Do we talk about the musical classics anymore? I searched for "classical music meme" and came up with this funny non-meme, but what about asking "What are seven classical music works you love?"

Thank you for asking. I would say:

1. Dvorak's "9th Symphony 'New World'" is my all-time favorite
2. Saint-Saens' "3rd Symphony 'Organ'" is lots of fun
3. Barber's "Overture for 'The School for Scandal'" is enchanting
4. Waughan Williams' "Fantasia on Greensleeves" is beautiful and a seasonal favorite
5. Speaking of Christmas favorites, John Williams' "Star of Bethlehem" is very nice
6. I love Bach's "Brandenburg Concerto No 3." I should buy or borrow all the Brandenburg Concertos sometime soon and listen to them all. I wonder when I'll be able to take my small, sweet, fidgety children to Chattanooga symphony concerts. Of course, I have to walk outside my comfortable little box to do that even if I don't take the entirely too cute children. Oh, the hang-ups of the introvert.
7. And I love Rimsky-Korsakov's Procession of the Nobles from "Mlada"
   

  ¶ 12/01/2005 12:40:00 PM ;   Criticize, Remark, Praise |