In which I fail to keep the customer satisfied

There was a fascinating new episode in my continuing dispute with the fellow who took offense at my e-mail reply to him, because it appeared in blue letters. Today I got another email from him, in which he demanded that I apologize for sending him a blue email.

The customer is always right, of course, so I immediately responded with an apology.

However, due to the way our email operates, the apology was in blue letters.

I expect he was not placated.

If this were a thriller novel, this would be the point at which I start to notice strangers following me, and to receive cryptic, threatening phone calls.

I realized long ago that I would never survive a thriller novel. I’d be one of the hapless bystanders mown down in a spray of blood by the psycho, on his way to the big showdown with Somebody Who Knows How to Handle Himself. My friend Ragnar, perhaps, or my friend Michael Z. Williamson.

Had an interesting phone call this evening. A fellow in California had seen my name and address in the Sons of Norway magazine (I’m Vice President of my lodge now), and called me to find out if I possibly knew a fellow he knew long, long ago, when he lived around here. He had a family memento he wanted to give the fellow, if he was still alive.

Alas, I didn’t. Nor did the better-acquainted district officer I checked with immediately afterward.

Too bad.

Aside from not being Somebody Who Knows How to Handle Himself, I’m also not much of a private investigator.

For the record.

0 thoughts on “In which I fail to keep the customer satisfied”

  1. Wish I’d known that a few years ago when we had a tempest over whether we were cooperating with a lodge/secret society by letting the Sons of Norway meet in our church.

  2. Sons of Norway did attempt to emulate the Masons in the early years, but for a long time now the “secrets” of our order have been pretty open.

  3. I was wondering…after seeing so many documentaries about our founding fathers and having Washington stand in his Mason’s apron… how many founding fathers were Sons of Norway? Any ideas?

  4. you mean to tell me that not one of those founding fathers had a little Viking in the closet?….

    PS.. I watched “The Wood-Wrights Shop” yesterday at 3PM here. Featured was a Welsh fellow who was a blacksmith-woodworker now living in Kentucky. His story was about a Viking ship found in a bog somewhere in, well……over there…. almost perfectly preserved in the peat.

    Inside the ship, under some planking was an oak tool box, FULL of Viking tools for woodworking, copper-smithing and black smithing. I’m assuming there was some work done on the box and tools as they looked like they just came out of Ace Hardware! But, they insisted they had done very little work on them as the peat and some tar preserved them all these years. The most interesting thing was the tools were so similar to our modern tools of the same uses.

    Sorry this is not the subject of this blog, but I just couldn’t hold it in any longer!!!

  5. It goes without saying they had Vikings in the closet. But by that standard pretty much everybody in northern Europe is Norwegian, which would make the term meaningless. We know, for instance, that George Washington was descended from William the Conqueror, which sends his ancestry back through Duke Rollo of Normandy to Ragnvald Mørejarl of Norway.

    I think the chest the chest the woodworker was describing must have been the Mastermyr chest. I made a similar chest of my own (cheating quite a lot) with my brother, and use it at Viking events, to keep my stuff in.

  6. I was also wondering…once I sat down and pondered some on what has been said here….

    Do the Sons of Norway have the various costumes and “get-ups” that the Masons do for their meetings? Do you participate in parades like the Shriners do? Do you have the secret signs and handshakes, etc??? (Really, these are serious, respectful questions here.)

    I assume the S of N is ok with the Lutheran church?

    My dad was never allowed to be a member of our Lutheran church as he was a part-time Mason. (I think our church was ALC or LCA synod…)

  7. There are “regalia” of various kinds which officers wear at meetings of some lodges, though I think it’s less and less common. My lodge doesn’t bother with it, and generally skips the ceremonial aspects of the meetings altogether. It varies from lodge to lodge. We have a secret sign of the Order and a secret password, but they are honored more in the breach than the observance nowadays (a phrase which has entirely altered its meaning from its origin in Hamlet).

    I’ve never heard of any church objecting to Sons of Norway membership. There may have been some objection at the beginning when the group was a Masonic wannabee, but that time is long gone.

  8. Thank you! You continue to be a font of knowledge and education for me. Domo arigato gozaimasu

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