Category Archives: Uncategorized

We Are the Best Obv. and Some Links

I’ve been reading Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and have not finished it, but I wanted to share some thoughts today. Blogging is designed for that, updates along the way.

The point almost from the beginning is that this engineer from 19th century America is an intellectual paragon among sixth century rubes. Their superstition and gullibility make them victims of every charlatan (usually of a religious or magical flavor) who comes into town. Hank the Yankee sees through all of them and will deliver them from all bondage, if he can devise a way to do it. I’m near the end of the book, and though luck has saved his neck many times, his progressive prowess has prepared him for that salvation just as often.

His progressive acumen is as good as magic, because Hank’s been able to create a telephone and telegraph network, school system, railroads, various consumer goods, and many kinds of explosives. He intends to create a thriving democracy in Camelot, if not all of England, and I’m wondering if that’s where Twain will leave it–19th century America triumphing overall. We see a little tension in the story here and there, because Hank is not brilliant and has been successful largely by force of plot and luck. So, I’ve wondered if the satire will turn back on him, and the story will end with everything crashing around him. Will the 19th century man be shown to be the greatest product of society, the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, the smartest and the best of all, or will his Social Darwinian hubris trip him up? I may find out later today.

What can I share with you today?

First, let me apologize for missing the Sunday Singing post last week. Circumstances disrupted by routine and by Sunday afternoon, I decided not to post it. I’ll get one up tomorrow, if I don’t fall a roof in the morning.

Boycotts: The SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, has the U.S. Army and defense contractors as sponsors and participants for years, but this year, helping Israel defend itself against the neighboring monsters is too much for some.

Publishing: A new publishing house formed by three experienced executives intends to forego advances and offer “authors a high percentage of a book’s profits—a model used by some other types of hybrid publishers.”

Food: What is corned beef? It’s an innovation of Irish-Americans who lived near Jewish Americans and took a shine to this kind of meat in Jewish delis.

Poetry: “Trash” by Lowell Jaeger.
“… in the old days there was no such thing as trash”

And slightly related to trash, this post on road kill and opossums.

Photo: Bomber gas station, Milwaukie, Oregon. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Avalsdnes Viking Farm

I was looking for another kind of video for tonight. Back when the Kristin Lavransdatter film was shot, I read somewhere that they were preserving the sets they used for Kristin’s father’s farm in the Gudbrandsdal, to have as a tourist attraction. But I can’t seem to find any mention of it, so it must have either never happened, or it failed to thrive.

Instead, I found this relatively new video, about the Viking farm at Avaldsnes. This is the place where I attended the Viking festival 2 years ago. It’s very familiar to me now, and brings back good memories.

Some of you might even be interested in visiting yourselves.

I’m still proud of making that walk twice a day, at my age. Not bad for a fat American. (Confession: I cheated and wore modern shoes.)

Kristin Lavransdatter clip

I think the clip above is not an official trailer for the 1995 Norwegian film, “Kristin Lavransdatter,” directed by Liv Ullman. It’s something somebody put together themselves. But I think it’s nicely done, and it explicates the plot pretty well. I wasn’t over the moon about the film, but this clip pleases me.

‘Kristin Lavransdatter: The Crown,’ by Sigrid Undset

And it had been awkward and strange for them to sit together in full view of everyone; they had had little to talk about because they had shared so many secrets. A slight fear began to stir inside her—faint and dim, but always present—that perhaps, in some way, it might be difficult for them when they were finally married, because they had been too close to each other in the beginning and then had been separated for far too long.

I’ve now finished the first book of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, The Crown, in Tina Nunnally’s translation. In spite of some criticisms I’ve expressed about the translation, I have to state for the record that I found the book extremely moving.

The story of Kristin Lavransdatter is pretty well known, and I’ve certainly described it here before. Kristin lives in Norway’s beautiful Gudbrandsdal valley. She is the daughter of a highborn man who, due to political misfortunes, has lost his prospects, and is now a big man in a small community. But he’s highly respected, and deserves it. He adores his daughters, especially his oldest, Kristin, who is very beautiful and whom he tends to spoil. He has betrothed her to a suitable young man, decent but somewhat dull.

Kristin loves her father and means well, but she’s headstrong and doesn’t understand the power she has over men. When she gets in a situation that ends in a young man’s death, her parents send her to spend a year in a nunnery, until the gossip dies down. There she meets the dashing Erlend Nikolausson, who is a bona fide knight, and very handsome. But he has a bad reputation, having had an affair – and fathered two children – with a married woman from whom he is now estranged. The two of them fall passionately in love, and vow to marry. Kristin sets out – through defiance and manipulation – to get her father to break her betrothal and give her to Erlend instead.

Here’s the great conflict of the book. Kristin’s father is a wise and caring man, and he senses immediately that Erlend, for all his glamor, is utterly lacking in character. He knows that if he gives Kristin to this man, her heart will be broken down the line. But Kristin’s willfulness – her fatal flaw – will defeat him in the end, to her own sorrow. That, however, is a tale for the subsequent books.

I have read this book as a young man, as a middle-aged man, and now as an old man. Like all great books, it speaks differently with each reading. This time out, I was impressed by the author’s understanding of character – especially of sin. (Frankly, it stung a bit.) There are people in the book who are known to be sinners and recognize themselves as such, but the “good” people are sinners too. They carry the seeds of their destruction inside them. Kristin means well, but she’s immature and spoiled, and heedless of her power over men. Erlend is gallant in theory – a knight tested in battle – but in his private affairs he’s a sneak and a coward. Even Kristin’s father, though a man of great character, hasn’t the sternness of heart he needs to protect Kristin from herself (though he seems to be in a no-win situation).

Another thing I remarked this time out was the book’s rich descriptions. Sigrid Undset had a lifelong fascination with botany. She names the trees of the forest and the flowers of the field as they come into the picture, and that enriches our imaginations, even if we can’t picture them precisely.

The medieval sexual morality of The Crown must be a puzzle to contemporary readers. No doubt many of them wonder what all the fuss is about. But I suspect that even they can’t help being compelled by the strong characters and their very human conflicts.

The Crown is a tremendous book.

American Sports and Were All Balls Made from Pigskins

It’s been a while since we posted something on sports, despite the clamoring of our many readers. When I meet people on the street, in the diner, on the subway, or in a hansom cab, they often recognize me from the blog, and after soliciting my investment in their creative livelihood or some sure deal they’ve hit upon, they ask me when Lars or I will compose another fun feature about the fascinating world of sports.

Eager readers, today’s your day. On this very screen, I intend to answer your burning queries on the topic of Amercian sports. Who’s Connor Bedard, you ask? What’s jazz got to do with Utah? Is Ty Cobb really the most hated man in baseball? Please. Let’s take up the serious questions, shall we?

What’s the oldest organized sport made in America? That would be Lacrosse, which Iroquois were seen playing by French missionaries in the 1600s. Players would pass a deer-skinned ball with sticks, some of which had deer-gut for netting. This game may be almost a thousand years old. It was organized as a sport in the 17th century.

Asking for the oldest organized sport puts certain parameters on the question. If we backed off the idea of organization and asked what the oldest sport made in America is, that would be surfing. Though Captain James Cook first brought the idea of wave riding to the English-speaking world in 1778 when he saw Tahitian surfers, Polynesians had been surfing for centuries then. With Hawaii’s annexation in 1898 and statehood in 1959, Hawaii’s history is grafted into America’s history, making surfing a old American sport. (Is that a stretch? I don’t know. Let’s move on.)

Football has roots in the Roman Empire, which should be enough of an explanation for why men would be thinking about it daily, but what we call football in the States was refined in England and civilized by American patriots. Football has been a word to describe kicking around a bloated pig’s bladder since the 14th century. The first college football game was between Princeton and Rutgers in November 1869. They first played on Rutgers’s field in New Brunswick, New Jersey and the game was a lot like soccer. A few days later, they played at Princeton by Princeton’s rules. That set a trend until 1876 when Walter Camp, a Yale man, would begin to revise the game into one we would recognize today.

The word pigskin was used to name leather made from a pig’s hide by 1855, according to records, and was slang for “a saddle.” By 1894, it became slang for “a football” too.

To close out, let me point you to Ted Kluck’s article on Sports Illustrated closing its doors for good.

It’s been years since I’ve received Sports Illustrated, and I kind of put it away, emotionally, when I started writing for its competitor, ESPN the Magazine, in the early 2000s. Both magazines really haven’t been any good for a decade, with most of SI’s online “stories” reading like long tweets. 

Photo by Rob Worsnop/Flickr

Blood won’t tell

Yet another reviewless night. I am currently reading a book that’s turned out to be just plain sclerotic. But it’s sort of a classic, so I’ll finish it and give it a review – though not one the author would care for, were he still alive. So you’ve got that to look forward to. As for tonight… free association blogging, I guess.

Looking to the right of my keyboard, I behold an object that’s been with me since my father died, in 2000. It’s a souvenir shop item, a porcelain coaster emblazoned with the Walker family crest.

Which is a joke.

In looking around the net for an illustration, I found a lot of sources happy to sell me family coat of arms merchandise. But they’re not all in agreement as to what the Walker coat of arms looks like. This doesn’t mean they’re making it up as they go. It’s because there are in fact several Walker families in Britain, not necessarily related to each other, and they have different crests. I found the one pictured above on Amazon, and it looks relatively – though not exactly – like the one on my coaster.

All these diverse Walker crests have one salient feature in common – they’ve got nothing whatever to do with my family.

My family, as I’ve told you more than is probably excusable, is Scandinavian on all sides, and my paternal great-grandfather (whose name you wouldn’t be able to pronounce) joined his brother, who’d emigrated before him, in commandeering the name Walker.

A name they couldn’t even pronounce, as Norwegians have trouble with the letter “W.”

So having any object with a Walker coat of arms on it is only excusable as an act of whimsy. I’d be ashamed to think anyone thought I took it seriously.

My real family heritage is, like all family heritages, mixed. In the genealogical research I’ve done, I’ve found long lines of people who thought they’d had a good year if they made it through the winter without any children dying. Farmers and fishermen, and the occasional sailor, scraping out an existence on the northern fringe of Europe. Lots of cold winters in my heritage.

The most socially prominent ancestor I’ve documented was a lensmann (bailiff), a little like a local sheriff. There’s some mention of descent from some rich guy, but I’ve never followed that line back. And (as I’ve mentioned before) a couple of my ancestors earned a footnote in the history of Haugean Pietism in Norway.

I know people who can trace their ancestry back to Charlemagne. That’s less impressive, though, when we note that historians say pretty much every European alive is descended from that virile monarch. We Scandinavians may not share in that entirely, being on the periphery of the gene pool and somewhat isolated, but I figure I can confidently assume descent from King Harald Fairhair, who is said to have had (at least) a dozen sons.

The historical practical joke that really bids pomp take physic (Shakespeare reference) is that genealogy is a game of converging cones. You’ve got the cone of your ancestors, who double in number with each generation as you go back in time – two parents, four grandparents, etc. Meanwhile you’ve got the demographic population cone, which goes exactly the opposite way – the population of the world (or Europe, in this case) decreases with every generation going back. At some point in the past, you’ve got more ancestors than there are people in the gene pool. How is that possible? Well, many of them do double, or triple or quadruple, duty. You’re descended from them in multiple lines.

It’s at that point that one’s proud genetic heritage gets absorbed, as in some pantheist afterlife, into a great, undifferentiated mass. Any talk of “the best  blood” is nonsense. We’ve all got the same blood. Go far enough back, and that uniformity encompasses all continents and racial groups.

If we seek distinction, blood is a pretty poor path to follow. Character is better. Truth and faith are best of all.

The city and the sea

Photo credit: Milad Fakurian. Unsplash license.

The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. (Rev. 21:16-17, ESV)

Amateur theology tonight. (“I’ve had a thought,” he said, as readers sighed in disappointment and scrolled on.)

Way back in 2010, I blogged about how the Book of Revelation (21:1) says that in the Kingdom of God, the sea will be no more. That always troubled me, because I like having the sea around. I come from a long line of sailors and fishermen, and I find the ocean beautiful and romantic.

But I’d learned that for the ancient Hebrews, the sea symbolized chaos, the depths of despair, the place where there was no safety or certainty. The opposite of God’s order. The Old Testament uses the sea as a metaphor for death and Hell (as in the Book of Jonah). So there’s a strong case to be made that when St. John says in Revelation that the sea will be no more, he’s talking about chaos and disorder being wiped out.

And it occurred to me today that the image used in the passage from Revelation at the top of this post, about the “city foursquare,” is in fact a contrasting image. They complement each other. The chaos (sea) has been taken away, and instead we have this huge, perfectly square city. Now, even though I was born to be a city boy, and I moved to the city as soon as I decently could in my life, the idea of a great big square city never appealed to me much. Sounds kind of Bauhaus, kind of Brutalist. Not much scope for green spaces. Most of us would have interior apartments, and one assumes the view and the ventilation wouldn’t be great.

But it occurred to me that, if the deletion of the ocean is metaphorical, that cube of a city is just as likely to be metaphorical. It means everything’s going to be squared away, put right.

This brings us into the realm of mystery. I think it’s beyond question that we are promised that at the very end of God’s story, all things will be made right. Sin and evil will be swept away. Wrongs will fixed. Injustices will be balanced. Tears will be wiped away. Nobody will have any reason to complain about the raw deal they got.

How that will work out, I have no idea. I absolutely reject Universalism. It’s a snare. But I do believe there will be Big Surprises.

A twist ending. That’s what you want in a good story. And as I’ve written here before, I think it’s all a good – no, a great — story.

Musings on ‘The Admirable Crichton,’ by a former Crichton

Tonight, it is your very great misfortune to be subjected to my reminiscences on one of the plays I did, back in my theater days. I found the movie version on Tubi last night, and watched it out of curiosity. As it has some historical/literary significance, I think I can be excused for rambling about it here, comparing it to my own experience.

“The Admirable Crichton” is a play first produced in 1902, by J. M. Barrie, who also wrote “Peter Pan” (like that play, it indulges his fetish for girls in boys’ clothing). The main character is the eponymous Crichton, a paragon among butlers, unquestionably the literary father to both Jeeves and Mervyn Bunter (“mere” valets though they were). He manages the stately home of his master, Lord Loam, with supreme exactitude. His master, a liberal, has vague ideas about social equality, of which Crichton strenuously disapproves. (“If my master were to be equal to me,” he explains at one point, “then I would be equal to the footman.” Or words to that effect.)

Then the family (Lord Loam and his three daughters, plus two suitors, a young gentleman and a clergyman included purely to keep things respectable), decide to take a cruise in the South Seas. Crichton, condescending to serve for the duration as Lord Loam’s valet, accompanies them, along with “Tweenie,” a housemaid.

When their ship is wrecked on a desert island, Nature begins asserting herself. It soon becomes plain that, as far as survival is concerned, Crichton is the only one among them qualified to either do practical things or to exercise leadership. Before long the social order is inverted. Crichton becomes the “Guv’nor,” and Lord Loam is his devoted personal servant. Crichton is a benign dictator to them all, admired and beloved. All the ladies long to be chosen as his wife. (The gentlemen, on the other hand, are vying for Tweenie’s attention.)

At last, after two years, Crichton realizes they’re not likely either to escape or be rescued. He announces that he will marry Lady Mary, the eldest daughter, who has become a sort of Diana, a wild huntress.

Then (spoiler alert), a ship appears on the horizon. Crichton, due to his profound sense of honor, lights the signal fire himself, summoning a boat to their rescue. He makes the decision to return to his servant’s status. Back in England, when he realizes his presence is an embarrassment to the family, he retires to run a pub, taking Tweenie as his wife. Lady Mary, who still loves him, is heartbroken.

Surely one of the finest productions ever done of Crichton must have been the one staged in March, 1993 by the Melbourne Civic Theater in Melbourne, Florida. (The fact that I played the lead role is purely coincidental to my mentioning it, of course. The local critic praised my performance: “It is said that acting is a series of choices, and Walker proves this saying with elegance.”) Having done several performances, I think I remember the play pretty well, and I was interested to watch the 1957 production, starring Gerald More (who was good, but no Walker).

The movie follows the play’s plot quite faithfully, but the dialogue is greatly altered. I guess this should be no surprise, as more than fifty years had passed since the play’s first opening. Times had changed. Still, I was surprised that Crichton’s initial moment of supreme self-abnegation, when he condescends to step down from the heights of butlerhood to serve as a mere valet (if only temporarily), was reduced to a couple lines and no serious struggle . And the play’s biggest boffo moment – a sight gag that always had the theater audience roaring with laughter (it involves a bucket), was completely omitted. There was also the business of a characteristic hand-washing gesture Crichton always performs as butler. He drops it entirely once he’s the Guv’nor, and the moment when he resumes servant status is marked by a resumption of the handwashing. This is also missing from the movie.

Nonetheless, the film worked pretty well on its own terms. Barrie was playing with some fairly radical social ideas here. The play could have been revolutionary (he pondered allowing Crichton to marry Lady Mary). But in the end he chose to give his audience an ending that preserved the status quo in action, while leaving them with a certain uneasiness of conscience. A sound business decision, no doubt.

After all these years, “The Admirable Crichton” remains an intriguing story, one that can be taken in more than one way.

Advent Singing: From Heaven Above to Earth I Come

Today’s advent hymn is not one I’ve sung before, but the video above recommends it well. The text is originally from the great Martin Luther (1483-1546), translated in 1855 by a woman who brought many German hymns into English, Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878). The Psalter Hymnal Handbook notes Luther wrote this “for his family’s Christmas Eve devotions,” and “intended that stanzas 1-7 be sung by a man dressed as an angel and stanzas 8-15 by children.”

The video has only five verses, but I’ve copied the text from the 1918 Evangelical Lutheran Hymn-book so you can get the full piece.

“And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12 RSV).

1 From heaven above to earth I come
To bear good news to every home;
Glad tidings of great joy I bring,
Whereof I now will say and sing.

2 To you this night is born a child
Of Mary, chosen virgin mild;
This little child, of lowly birth,
Shall be the joy of all the earth.

3 This is the Christ, our God and Lord,
Who in all need shall aid afford;
He will Himself your Savior be,
From all your sins to make you free.

4 He brings those blessing, long ago
Prepared by God for all below,
That in His heavenly Kingdom blest
You may with us forever rest.

5 These are the tokens ye shall mark;
The swaddling-clothes and manger dark;
There shall ye find the young child laid,
By whom the heavens and earth were made.

6 Now let us all with gladsome cheer,
Follow the shepherds, and draw near,
To see the wondrous gift of God,
Who hath His own dear Son bestowed.

Continue reading Advent Singing: From Heaven Above to Earth I Come

‘There’s Something In the Barn’

A Facebook friend alerted me to the movie trailer above. “There’s Something In the Barn.” It’s not one I worked on, nor have heard of it before. Not my kind of thing, really, but some of you might find it amusing. As I’ve often mentioned, I just don’t get horror. I think this springs from being a coward. It takes a braver person than I to enjoy being scared. Let alone to laugh about it.

The take on the “barn elf” here is an interesting one. One would never actually call them barn elves in Norway, I’m pretty sure. As mentioned in my novels, the Hidden Folk don’t like to be called by name. You call them the Good Neighbors, or the Little Old Men, or something like that. And, as the movie emphasizes, offending them is nothing to be undertaken lightly.

It’s basically a reversal on the sweet – but overly sentimental – picture offered in the classic commercial below, released by the Tine Dairy Products Company back in 2017:

You can make a good Christian argument that the horror version is more appropriate. The church traditionally has considered the Hidden Folk to be demons (probably).

There’s a theory that all horror is conservative. I’m not sure that’s true, but I think you can make a good case that Horror as a genre is conservative in its essence, if not in all its instantiations. (Instantiations is a lovely word I learned in Library School).

Got my tree decorated today. And I found a section in The Baldur Game that I think I’ll have to cut, or at least reduce to its bare bones. Like a victim in a horror story.