When we talk about race and American citizenship, we must ask whether the currently fashionable standoffishness characteristic of much elite thinking about blacks’ relationship to the “American project” — as exemplified, for example, by the New York Times’ 1619 Project — truly serves the interests, rightly understood, of black Americans. I think not. Indeed, I think a case can be made for unabashed black patriotism, for a forthright embrace of American nationalism by black people. The “America ain’t all it’s cracked-up to be” posture that one hears so much of these days is, in my view, a sophomoric indulgence for blacks at this late date. In fact, our birthright citizenship in what is arguably history’s greatest republic is an inheritance of immense value.
He makes these four points, which you can read on 1176unites.com.
The founding of the United States (1776) was vastly more significant for world history than the first arrival in America of African slaves (1619).
The Civil War has a significant freedom legacy.
Black Americans have been transformed and marvelously transformed themselves in the 20th century.
Consider what achieving “true equality” for black Americans actually entails, an immeasurable amount of work.
All good things must end, and Season 7, we are told, is the final series of Bosch, a superior adaptation of the bestselling novels by Michael Connelly. I just finished the last episode.
Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch has a motto: “Everybody counts or nobody counts.” This leads him to go the extra mile for the forgotten victims – the poor, the marginalized, the powerless.
In this adventure, Harry pursues a gang lord who ordered an apartment house firebombed, to send a message. In the ensuing fire, innocent people died, including a ten-year-old girl. Bosch is ordered to back off. His superiors tell him it’s for the greater good, but Bosch isn’t buying it.
Meanwhile, his partner, Jerry Edgar, is off his game, overwhelmed with guilt because of an act he committed last season. And Lt. Billets, their boss, is fighting sexual harassment from some of her subordinates.
It’s hard to find fault with the production. The writing is top-notch, though heavily adapted from the original stories due to a major time shift to the present. Everyone who has read the books is aware of the character changes that were made – certain characters altering not only their races, but their whole personalities. One of those, however, Commissioner Irving, swerves back closer to his literary roots this season.
So it’s really good, and gets my coveted approval. My problems with it are purely in the realm of my opinions, and do not necessarily resemble the opinions of real people, living or dead. WARNING: The following paragraphs include minor spoilers.
Bosch’s daughter Maddie expresses interest in becoming a cop. This is a common thing in cop shows nowadays (I was especially disappointed at the end of Longmire, when Walt suggests that his daughter Cady run for sheriff. This was obvious pandering to the feminists, as Cady had up to that point showed no aptitude for, or interest in, law enforcement. Quite the opposite). I honestly can’t recall whether Maddie Bosch becomes a cop in the books or not. She might have (at least she’d get some training before hitting the mean streets). I’m a fossil, I know. I still think it’s wrong to hit a woman, and (by extension) wrong to put a woman in harm’s way. And I plan to hang on to that opinion until they send me to the reeducation camp.
Also, although I admire Bosch’s principles, I wonder about the real-world consequences of his lone wolf actions. It seems to me there are always tradeoffs when you’re dealing with life or death. I’m not sure Bosch’s principled actions in this series might not cost more lives in the long run than compromise would. And is this the first time Harry has seen this kind of deal made? Never made one himself? Why dig his heels in now and not before? Has he just had his fill of compromise at last?
However that may be, Bosch is a superior cop series, and I do recommend it highly. Cautions for pretty much everything.
It was a beautiful day today in Minneapolis. Not too hot, and we had some afternoon showers, which makes three days in a row with rain. We needed the rain.
I also need my car back, but that’s not happened yet. Tomorrow is the day they said they’d get the cables; but I’ve already known so much disappointment in that regard that I’ve kind of resigned myself to a life of perpetual longing and disappointment, not unlike my erstwhile dreams of marriage.
So I’m giving you the music above – a piece from Grieg that I’m quite fond of. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson wrote a play called “Sigurd Jorsalfar” about King Sigurd the Crusader of Norway. Edvard Grieg wrote the incidental music. This is the most famous of those pieces, the “Tribute March.” I seem to recall Garrison Keillor was fond of using it for parody purposes.
Sigurd is one of the most renowned kings in Norwegian history. He was remembered not only for leading a crusade to the Holy Land (he was the first European king to lead a crusade), but for being part of the last relatively peaceful reign in Norway in the Middle Ages.
The ancient laws of Norway made all of a king’s sons – legitimate or not – eligible for the crown. In Sigurd’s case, he himself shared the monarchy with two brothers with no violence, outliving them both. But after him came a string of pretenders whose claims carried varying credibility. All they needed was a story that their mothers had slept with a king of Norway, and a willingness to undergo the Iron Ordeal (you read about it in The Year of the Warrior) in some form. The result was a long period of civil wars, picturesque in their bloodshed and cruelty.
At the end of his life, King Sigurd (according to the saga) began to lose his mental faculties. He shocked the country by asking the bishop of Bergen to give him a divorce from his queen, who was much beloved by the people, so he could marry a younger woman. The bishop of Bergen refused – painfully aware that the king was sometimes losing control these days, and could kill him. The king did not kill him, however, but did an end run on him by establishing a new diocese in Stavanger and installing a new bishop there, an Englishman named Reinald. Reinald was happy to do the king a favor in return for a large monetary contribution. The bishop paid for his simony in the end, however – King Harald Gille hanged him in 1135 on suspicion of withholding royal treasure.
“And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:16-18 ESV).
Encourage one another with the truth that those who die in faith will rise in faith. They have not been lost because they died before Christ’s return. These believers (including Paul, I presume) did not imagine it would be at least a couple thousand years before that return. Christ had ascended in their lifetime; why wouldn’t he come back in just a few years? Not matter when it happens, Christ’s physical resurrection and ascension is the reason we believe the dead in Christ will physically rise again.
The question for some of us is what state the body should be in for the resurrection. I heard a pastor on the radio this weekend claim the faithful would be raised from their graves as is. Of course, he said, God can reassemble any body from any state of decay, but why force him to do more than he needs to do. Why usher along the decay by cremating a family member? He asked, do you know Christ will not return a few days after your death? What if he does and there you are, a pile of ashes?
I can understand personal arguments for burial over cremation. Christian tradition leans that way. I’ve read that Christianized countries tend to bury the dead, and countries will little Christian influence tend to cremate. That’s not what we have here. The Bible does not imply we will be raised like zombies in whatever nasty state our bodies are in. Most of us (99.999% of us) will have no bodies in our graves, if we still have graves. Within a month of our interment, the best of us will not be presentable.
The Bible does tell us to respect our bodies. Our funeral services should be exercises in hope that honor the one who departed and those left behind. And since the Bible does not command Christians to bury the dead, some of us are asking whether the economic choice of cremation would show the proper respect.
That’s what it comes down to for me. In the past, burial would have been the cheapest, most natural option. Years ago when we talked to someone about buying grave plots, it was several thousands of dollars to be buried but only a few thousand, maybe only several hundred, to be cremated. I can understand how funeral and burial costs add up. When I buried my parents, I helped reduce those costs by buying caskets online. The cemetery part was already covered.
Covering a couple burials myself worries me a bit. It’s the kind of thing you can’t look up online because they won’t tell you the costs up front. You have to talk to a salesman. Hiding the price before you talk to a salesman is how they tell you it costs more than you want. They want a chance at talking you into it.
To the guy who thinks the Lord will raise the dead like zombies, come on. Even Lazarus came out of the tomb in better shape than his body had been that morning.
What do you think about burial and cremation for low-income believers?
No one believes he is living by lies. We think a particular disagreement is inconsequential or that it isn’t our issue. We think we aren’t the ones to speak out, because reasons.
There was a time when we dared not rustle a whisper. But now we write and read samizdat [banned literature distributed in secret] and, congregating in the smoking rooms of research institutes, heartily complain to each other of all theyare muddling up, of all theyare dragging us into! There’s that unnecessary bravado around our ventures into space, against the backdrop of ruin and poverty at home; and the buttressing of distant savage regimes; and the kindling of civil wars; and the ill-thought-out cultivation of Mao Zedong (at our expense to boot)—in the end we’ll be the ones sent out against him, and we’ll have to go, what other option will there be? And they put whomever they want on trial, and brand the healthy as mentally ill—and it is always “they,” while weare—helpless.
This is how Solzhenitsyn begins “Live Not by Lies,” which he released the day he was arrested, a day before his exile. “We are approaching the brink,” he says, “already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble:
‘But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.’”
He says maybe civil disobedience is beyond us. Maybe how the Czechs stood up to their government is too much. What we can do, at the very least, is to reject lies.
“Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!”
Painting of the Battle of Stiklestad by Peter Nikolai Arbo
I must be working on the novel, because I’m not progressing very fast in my reading of Caimh McDonnell’s latest book (which is great, by the way; it’s not for lack of interest). In case you’re losing sleep over my car repair problems, I learned today that the ETA for the replacement part is now June 30. This was, as you might expect, no surprise to me at all at this point.
What shall I write about? How about something I learned from John Marsden’s Harald Hardrada book (favorably reviewed a few inches down)?
It has to do with King Olaf Haraldsson, Saint Olaf (or Olav) of Norway. He appeared in my latest book, The Elder King, and also has a major role in the one I’m working on, King of Rogaland.
I do not like this man. He emerges as a recognizable character in the sagas, and although those sagas are generally intended to promote his sainthood, the writers often had the insight to “paint him warts and all.” And this was a guy with a lot of warts.
Marsden’s book includes an interesting discussion of the date of the Battle of Stiklestad, where Olaf was killed. (Incidentally, I recently learned that one of my great-grandfathers was born on the island of Ytterøy, which is located in a fjord and almost in walking distance of the battlefield [once you get out of the water]).
There’s an anomaly in the standard accounts of the battle. The very first skaldic poems celebrating it (written by Sigvat the Skald, who also appears in The Elder King), tell how a solar eclipse occurred in the very midst of the battle. The problem is, the traditional date for the battle is July 29, but the eclipse occurred August 31. I’ve always inclined to the view that people remembered the battle and the eclipse as extraordinary events, and eventually conflated them. But Marsden points out that Sigvat (who wasn’t in the battle; he was on a pilgrimage to Rome at the time) would have been well-informed about the battle at a very early date. Also, the time of day given for the eclipse in the sagas is spot on.
Marsden passes on a possible explanation, suggested by “the editor of a long-respected English translation of Olaf the Saint’s saga.” This theory involves an error in interpreting a theoretical lost document (which I always consider a tenuous stratagem for scholars), but it works out quite neatly. If the original text of this X Document said that the battle occurred “1029 years and two-hundred and nine days since Christ’s birth,” and you reckon hundreds in the customary way, figuring January 1 as the first day of the year, you get July 29.
However – the Vikings counted in what are called “long hundreds.” When they said 100, they actually meant 120. All figures in the sagas need to be adjusted for that.
If you convert “1029 years and two-hundred and nine days” to long hundreds, and start your count at December 25 (a common date for figuring New Year’s Day at the time), you get the precise date of August 31.
That’s pretty neat, it seems to me. My plan, if I live so long, is to write a book about Olaf and Stiklestad a couple books from now, as a sort of sequel to Erling’s Saga. I think I’ll use this date for it, because that eclipse is a really cool bit of atmospheric staging.
Jackson Crawford and Simon Roper tackle this question and talk for an hour about languages at a far deeper level than I can follow. Believing our readers will take interest in this, I share it in ignorance.
No book to review tonight. So, you’re stuck with my deep thoughts. “I got a million of ‘em,” as Jimmy Durante (or somebody) used to say.
Back on Memorial Day I was talking about how young men are (usually) risk-takers. I got to wondering, “What’s the survival value of youthful risk-taking?” Its value would seem to be the opposite of survival.
(I don’t want to get into the Creation vs. Evolution thing here. I think survival value is a real thing, created by God. It’s just the way He designed things to work.)
One would assume that Nature (whether intelligently designed or not) would want young people to stay safe until they grew up. So they’d go on to produce further offspring.
But in fact, Nature drives young men (typically) to go out and try to kill themselves. Drag-racing. Sky diving. Rock climbing. Joining gangs or (sometimes more responsibly) armies. Experimenting with drugs. Asking cheerleaders out on dates.
(I, of course, never did any of these things myself. But there were consequences to playing it safe.)
The point, I think, is that Nature is wise, and under God’s governance. As I’ve mentioned before, I believe that God is a storyteller. His book of Nature is not an equation or formula. It’s partly about science, but it’s also about love and hate and ideals and passions. And one of the things storytelling tells us is that safety is not first. “Who dares wins.” “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.” “Do not take counsel of your fears.”
Both in the spiritual and the physical worlds, too much caution is fatal, at least in the aggregate. Cowardice would appear to have survival value, but it doesn’t. Cowardly communities do not thrive. Courage kills off some of its acolytes, but those who survive end up running things and making progress.
I think churches often work too hard to produce guys like me. The Kingdom is for risk-takers – “Men of violence take it by force.” (Matthew 11:12) In a feminizing world, we need to provide a place where risks can still be taken, wounds bound up, and locker room speeches delivered. To young men with skinned knees and black eyes.
The Danish Road Safety Council has come up with a very clever commercial to promote the use of bike helmets. I’m not sure I agree with the safety uber alles fetish of the helmet purists, but the commercial is fun. And, as somebody said, probably the most interesting Viking film made since the 1960s.
Also, it pokes subtle fun at the History Channel series, it seems to me.
As for me, I am up to my aventail in translation work right now. For a while I thought I’d promised to deliver it sooner than I ought to, but now I think it will be OK.
I’m reading a book right now that I’m enjoying very much. But it’s long. Looooooooong. So the stream of consciousness blogging must continue, regardless of the cost in pain and suffering to our audience.
On the automobile front, my car, Miss Ingebretsen, yet languishes in durance vile, in the transmission shop. I learned today that the transmission itself is all right. It’s the shifter that’s broken. They’re trying to find me a used shifter, and I guess those things must be harder to find than you’d expect. Maybe tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll have to use Door Dash for groceries again.
If you skipped the video above, take a minute to watch it. It’s not much longer than that. It’s the Dragon Harald Fairhair, the big Viking ship I hoped to see in Duluth a few years back, but was disappointed. Seriously, was anything ever more romantic than that graceful ship cutting through a stormy sea? That (or the idea of it, anyway) was what surprised me by joy nearly 60 years ago, making me a lifelong Viking nut, and pointing me to my destiny, as a highly peripheral figure in the world of Norwegian history, literature, and entertainment. And, oh yes, a novelist.
I can report that I’m still working on the new Erling book, King of Rogaland. Its current status hovers in a weird space where the book is essentially written, but far from finished. We speak of “polishing” a manuscript, and that’s what it is. Very like sanding wood. Going over the same surface again and again, smoothing out the rough spots. I’ve got a few passages where I’ve left out place names I still need to select, with a map. And there are joints that aren’t tight. Once this current pass is finished, working onscreen, I think I need to print the next draft out, and labor over it on paper. Some things work better with a red pen and notes and swoopy arrows. Especially when you need to hunt through the pages multiple times.
Also, I’ve never gotten a splinter polishing a manuscript.
