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Blogs, Socials, Religion, Uncategorized

Toward a More Reasonable Faith and Words Written or Generated

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My all-time favorite song is Michael Card’s “God’s Own Fool,” published in 1985 on the Scandalon album. That may have been the first album I bought with my own money. It’s a song about Jesus being misunderstood during his earthly ministry. The last lines are:

So, surrender the hunger to say you must know;
Have the courage to say, "I believe." 
Let the power of paradox open your eyes
And blind those who say they can see.

I could understand if someone took lines like this to encourage blind faith, a faith that doesn’t question what we read in Scripture or what our ministers teach, but Christian faith isn’t blind. It’s reasonable and fits the real world He created.

When Jesus tells Peter to check the mouth of a fish for a coin to pay their taxes, Peter believes Him and checks the fish’s mouth. When Jesus tells a couple of His men to go into town, find a donkey and colt tied up, bring them to him, and if anyone asks what they’re doing, say that the Lord needs them, they go into town expecting to find exactly what He has said. That’s a reasonable faith. It’s one that recognizes the limits of our knowledge, not one that denies knowledge altogether.

But what else do we have today?

Art & Literature: David Platzer writes about a Paris exhibit on Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. “Edmund Wilson—who was generally sympathetic to her work and compared it to Yeats, Proust, and Eliot—noted in a 1923 Vanity Fair article that her word-portraits of Matisse and Picasso published in Camera Work made it ‘evident that Gertrude Stein had abandoned the intelligible altogether.'”

Words: If you or someone you know have shown symptoms of being a witcracker, call the number on your screen. You are not alone.

American Words: American pioneers had to make up words for a new world. Rosemarie Ostler writes, “Often these simply combined a noun with an adjective: backcountry, backwoods (and backwoodsman), back settlement, pine barrens, canebrake, salt lick, foothill, underbrush, bottomland, cold snap.” “Yankee is also almost certainly a Dutch contribution. Various theories have been suggested for the word’s origin (for instance, that it’s a Native American mispronunciation of English), but the most likely one derives the word from Janke (pronounced ‘yan-kuh’), a diminutive of John that translates as something like ‘little John.'” (via ArtsJournal)

Artificial Intelligence: Tech companies are hiring writers and poets to compose somewhat refined work, particularly in Hindi and Japanese. “It is a sign that AI developers have flagged fluency in poetic forms as a priority, while refining their generative writing products.” To what end? (via ArtsJournal)

Photo: Fairyland Cottages Minnesota, 1980. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Music, Poetry, Uncategorized

Remembering 9/11 and What Little Security We Have Today

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Everyone knows, I hope, that actions speak louder than words, which is a saying my old book of proverbs seems to derive from similar, older maxims such as this one from the French: Le fait juge l’homme or the deed proves the man. (Phrase Finder points to a 1693 sermon for the specific wording.) Words reveal our intentions, how we frame a problem, and if our actions give proof to our words, people believe us. They attest our integrity. If our actions work against our words, then our hearers have every reason to say we’re full hot air.

Politicians have historically low trustworthiness, according to polls, because their job is to overpromise and underdeliver, especially congressmen. They can’t do all they say they will do, because they have to work with a crowd of others who promised to do other things—some of which should not be done. Since Nixon shattered American confidence, the highest average percentage of people “who say they trust the government to do what is right just about always/most of the time,” according to the Pew Research Center, is 54%. That was on October 25, 2001.

On Monday, we will mark the 22nd anniversary of the hijacking of four commercial aircraft in an effort to punish the United States for crimes against Islam. Many politicians and civil servants have learned nothing in that time, judging by their actions. They want to be judged by their words alone, and not all of their words. Only the current ones. Why dig up the past by rehearsing old lies when the current lie is all we need? If they say we’re safe, secure, prepared–that’s all the proof we should need.

This being the third year of the Biden administration, and our country is weaker than we were in 2001. Yes, it’s Biden’s fault, but any of the recent Liberal/Progressive crop would have done the same. Progressivism undermines its own goals. If the optics are good, the goal has been achieved.

They give money to Iran and say it can’t be used for nuclear weapons development, so it’s safe. They open the southern boarder to allow thousands of who knows who to cross every day but claim it’s secure, so no worries. They spend from the FEMA fund on non-emergencies and are caught short when wildfires catch Hawaii responders off-guard. Oh, but the optics were good on that one, so maybe the president can hand out some money, tell a story about almost losing his house and car, and that will smooth over hurt feelings.

If it doesn’t, you can shut up, because Progressives don’t want your words unless you agree with them. Disagreement on some subjects is violence.

If 9/11 were to happen under this administration, they would be give the same speeches they give today about bravery, American unity, and how the president knows from personal experience how hard something like this can be. But nothing responsible would be done.

Subtle Sounds: The Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, has a 93-foot tower with forty wind chimes for the forty passengers and crew who died while opposing their hijackers. It’s called the Tower of Voices. The National Park Service has a good description and many photos. This video has captures the sound better than others I’ve found.

Antiquities: In other news, detectorists win again! A Norwegian man named Erlend Bore found a “cache comprised nine gold medallions and gold pearls that once formed an opulent necklace, as well as three gold rings” dating from 500 AD. (via Prufrock)

Poetry: A few thoughts on mirrors, “Witness,/ Mimic, tyrant of the departed years”

Music: And finally, this piece about the resurrection.

(Photo by BEERTA MAINI on Unsplash)

Reading, Uncategorized, Writing

The Battle of Holy River, YouTube, and ‘Seraffyn’s European Adventure’

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There’s a sort of a book review hidden in this rambling post, somewhere further on, but to start with I just want to bellyache a little about how much I’m suffering my art. Which is writing novels, in case you’ve forgotten due to all the time I take between publications.

I’m happy to say that, to my own surprise, I’ve been keeping up my new regimen of getting up at 6:30 a.m. to write. My goal, nothing superhuman, is 1,000 words a day, and most days I do at least that much.

But right now I’ve been slowed down a little. From time to time my story runs up against actual historical events and real locations, and that calls for research. Stuck in the 20th Century though I am in spirit, I have to admit that the internet provides opportunities that weren’t available back when I wrote The Year of the Warrior (which, if you don’t recall, was only about twenty years after the events in the story).

My challenge is to describe a voyage by Erling Skjalgsson, under the leadership of King Knut of Denmark/England, to the Baltic Sea to attack King Olaf Haraldsson (St. Olaf) of Norway. I have to get them through the Skagerrak and the Kattegat, the entrances to the Baltic, and into the Limfjord, where the saga says Knut gathered his fleet. And then over to present-day Sweden (the border of Skåne, which was Danish at the time) to fight the Battle of Helge å (Holy River). There Olaf pulls off a clever (but slightly confusing) stratagem that I’ll have to work out too. I might mention that historians disagree about the actual location of the battle – there are two Holy Rivers in Sweden, and a third site has also been proposed (purely, I think, out of meanness). I believe I’m going to stay with the traditional site unless somebody makes a strong argument to change my mind.

Anyway, the great thing I’ve “discovered” (and by discovered I mean figured out long after all the other writers did) is YouTube videos. The best resource I found is a series of videos called Sailing Magic Carpet (Episode 1 above), produced by a young couple (I think they might actually be married, which is nice) taking a sailboat into the Baltic. They sail the Limfjord the wrong way for my purposes (it had no western mouth during the Viking Age), but they still provide a lot of vicarious experience with sailing conditions and topography. Unfortunately, they sail up the wrong coast of Sweden for my purposes, but still the videos were useful.

They also recommended a book called Seraffyn’s European Adventure, by Lin and Larry Pardey. This book describes a similar voyage made back in the late 1970s by the Pardeys, in a pilot boat built by Larry himself. Lin was a very good writer, and she does an excellent job describing a simpler – but more dangerous – voyage, back before satellite navigation. Recommended.

I think I may be able to get back to 1,000 words a day tomorrow.

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On to Brainerd

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I may or may not be posting here tomorrow night, contingent on circumstances. I’ll again be in beautiful, scenic Brainerd, Minnesota for the Crow Wing County Viking Festival. Last year’s local news report on the festival is posted about — though reluctantly, as their cameraman completely blew the opportunity to capture the excitement of my presence.

If you’re in the area, here’s the web site. The festival is held at the Crow Wing County fairgrounds and begins 9:30 a.m. Saturday.

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Stevne report

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Me with two of the Five Foolish Virgins bauta stones in Haugesund, Norway, a year ago. This is one of the photos I used in my lecture.

Sorry about not posting last night. I got back from Moorhead pretty late, having burned both gasoline and élan vital.

My “new” car ran just fine – wait a minute, I don’t think I’ve written about the new car here. It’s a 2005 Subaru Forester XT. Burgundy in color. Been wanting a red car for a long time, and the word on the street is these are pretty reliable. Which will make for a nice change. Also lots of room for Viking impedimenta. Anyway, she ran fine. I call her Sigrid the Haughty.

Fargo-Moorhead is about a four-hour drive from here. Although my speaking engagement was in Moorhead, Minnesota (which we like to call the Soviet Zone), I’d made a motel reservation in Fargo, North Dakota (the American Zone), just across the state border. Because I just sleep better knowing the taxes are lower. I had no complaints about the motel room until 2:00 a.m., which my phone rang. The clerk said my neighbors were complaining about the noise. This confused me, as I was asleep, and alone. It only occurred to me later that they might have been talking about my snoring. Naw, what are the chances of that?

The bygdelags are a Norwegian-American institution. Originally, as I understand it, they were organizations allowing people who came from particular regions of the old country to maintain contact over here. Nowadays they concentrate more on genealogy and keeping traditions alive. They meet for annual gatherings known as stevnes. I’d lectured to the Tre (Three) Lag Stevne twice in the past. This year a couple more lags had joined in, so it became the Flere (Several) Lag Stevne, and we were meeting in Moorhead.

I arrived in plenty of time for my 10:45 time slot, and set up my book table. When the room cleared after the previous speaker, I hurried in to set up, only to encounter something I’d never experienced before when lecturing –

Everything worked. The first time.

I plugged my laptop into the projector line and there was my image on the screen. No problem. You have to understand, I always bring my own projector in case of technical emergencies – because in my experience, something always goes wrong with projection systems. Belt and suspenders is my motto.

But they’d been running the stevne for two days already, and they had everything taped down, ready to plug and play. It was too good to be true, I thought. Surely I was being set up by fate for disaster.

But no, there was no disaster. My lecture went great. The room was nearly full. The audience was attentive, and they laughed in the right places. My talk was basically a condensed version of the account of my trip to Norway I posted here a little more than a year ago. I was worried it might be self-indulgent, too much like a neighbor’s home movies.

But you can tell when your audience is with you, and I had this bunch, apparently, at God dag. The only thing that bothered me was a distinguished-looking gentleman in the front row who seemed to be dozing off. But he came to me afterwards, when I was selling books, and told me he’d attended both my previous lectures and was a big fan. Said he enjoyed my talk very much. We discussed Haugeanism.

I figure he probably just dozed off because somebody kept him awake with their snoring in the next room the night before.

Another audience member told me that what made my lecture enjoyable was that I supplemented my photographs with stories and history. Stories make all the difference. That makes sense to me.

Anyway, it was a good day, and I sold a reasonable number of books. I’m very grateful to the Flere Lag Stevne.

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Lag-rolling

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Your humble correspondent is at loose ends tonight. Haven’t finished reading my next book for reviewing. Tomorrow I’m driving up to Fargo, so I can speak to the Flere Lag Stevne (Several Society Gathering). It’s an assembly of bygdelags, which are organizations of descendants of immigrants from particular regions of Norway. They do genealogy and try to preserve traditions. Every lag holds a stevne annually, but some now pitch in and do their stevnes together. This group used to be the Tre (Three) Lag Stevne, but others have joined in this year, so now it’s the Flere Lag Stevne. And I’ll be giving a lecture on my trip to Norway last year to visit the Hafrsfjord Jubilee. It’s the third time I’ve lectured for them.

And, oh yes, I’ll be selling books.

Actually, I’ve just been hired as the editor of the magazine of the Valdres Samband – which is a lag, but not one of the lags at this particular stevne. But I expect I’ll be attending their stevne in the future. They’re the oldest lag in America. Being their editor won’t make me rich but it pays a little, and it’s work I believe I can do decently.

Above, a short video showcasing the work of the Norwegian painter Adolph Tidemand (1814-1876), who is famed for romanticizing the lives of Norwegian peasants. It seems a little sentimental to us today, but at the time it was a social breakthrough – poor people were acquiring some dignity in the eyes of the world. The Haugean movement, of which I wrote recently, had a lot to do with that.

Tidemand’s most famous painting is the one in this video where a man stands on a stool, preaching to a group in a house. It’s called “The Haugeans,” and the preacher seems to be Hauge himself.

You’ll note several paintings featuring young women in bunads (national folk costumes) with golden crowns. These are bridal crowns, a Norwegian tradition. Every bride got to be a queen for a day in Norway.

Probably less so for the remainder of her life.

Blogs, Socials, Religion, Uncategorized

They Need an Explanation to Feel a Level of Control

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I read one time that Hitchcock wasn’t going to end the movie Psycho the way he did, but his producer insisted he provide an explanation. The story couldn’t end with a wrap-up of the crime. It needed a psychiatrist to give the audience a reason for it. This is because Americans want to know why an evil thing occurred and how could it be prevented in the future.

I felt this need while listening to a couple crime stories this week. In one story, four boys in rural Vermont decided to break and enter a remote home. Two of them said they would murder anyone who happened to be home, and they all carried knives to help, if the need arose. It did, but only the original two attacked the mother and daughter they found. The story was mostly told by one of the two in police interviews. He was an emotionally distant Mormon kid who lacked friends and was beginning to explore gang activity.

In the other story, an elderly couple was kidnapped in an effort to rob them. He said he would kill them after he’d obtained all the money. The wife was able to tip off the cops, who located the man through his car. This culprit was a family man, described by a church member as a Christian who had it all. He had been even a church elder at some point. But along with all of this, he was also a constant manipulator.

If evil like this can come from both social outcasts and respected members, what can be done to foresee or prevent it? We need a healthy understanding of our common depravity, and that out of the heart these and other great sins come. We are not good people. Only the Lord can make us so.

What other things can we say today?

Great Musician: Tony Bennett died this week. Ted Gioia writes, “I probably own 30 or 40 of his albums, and his singing has been part of my life since childhood—when my Sicilian father played Tony Bennett records at our family home. At times, it almost felt like Bennett was a member of my extended family.

… “I could fill up an entire article just with stories of his acts of kindness. He radiated decency and generosity of heart. That showed up in his life and his music.”

Against Apathy: “Artists endure who attend to the world. Details are precious. Art is collecting and arranging them.”

New York City: “As for libraries, the sad truth is that, precisely because of the abandonment of broken-windows policing, those sheltered spaces are havens for the homeless and drug-addicted more than they are resources for the scholarly and intellectually curious.”

Found Music: The Kiffness takes internet videos and makes music with them. The one from July 15 seems appropriate to add here.

Photo: Christie’s Restaurant sign, Houston, Texas. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

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‘Kill Romeo,’ by Andrew Diamond

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“There’s no in-person interaction anymore. Hardly anyone goes to church—at least around here. Hardly anyone belongs to leagues or social clubs, like our grandparents did. Work is the one place where people spend enough time together to actually get to know each other, and it’s the one place where developing a deep, meaningful relationship is forbidden. What kind of world is this?”

*

The boldly-colored tattoos on his milk-white arms made him look like a choirboy who’d fallen asleep on the subway and been vandalized.

Freddy Ferguson, hero of Kill Romeo, the second book in a series, is a former heavyweight boxer, former mob thug (reformed), and now a Washington, DC private eye. He’s in a small Virginia town doing a background check on a prospective political candidate. It’s a quick and easy job, and when it’s done he takes a walk in the woods. That’s when he discovers the body of a woman, dressed all in white, lying on a river bank. A storm is blowing up, the river is rising, and he tries to move the body to higher ground. The river pulls it away from him, and he barely gets out alive himself.

He reports the discovery (and loss) of the body to the local sheriff, but their department is overwhelmed in the storm’s aftermath. Also, there’s no local woman unaccounted for. Freddy feels bad about this, but it’s not his case. However, his local host, a cheerful busybody, uncovers a single clue. Since business is slow, Harry agrees to follow that clue up. Gradually, bit by bit, puzzle pieces are uncovered. They lead Freddy and his team to places he’d never have guessed, and to a crime with mob, big business, and international implications.

Meanwhile, there’s trouble at the office. Freddy and his partner have two employees, and are evaluating a new investigator, Claire. Freddy likes Claire – too much. Not only is she a really top-notch detective, she’s beautiful and extremely appealing. He can’t stop thinking about her, but he knows office romances are absolutely forbidden in this day and age. He’s going crazy over Claire, and is very much afraid he’s going to have to quit or else he’ll do something that could get him in big trouble.

For this reader, Kill Romeo genuinely fell into the over-used category of “gripping.” The mystery was interesting, and Freddy’s awkward, uncomfortable passion for Claire is both funny and compelling. The topic of romance in the age of political correctness is an awkward one for me, so my personal discomfort rendered the dramatic tension all the more agonizing.

Also, there was a one-sentence chapter, which is cute when not overused.

Pretty good book, and it struck some blows against PC. I might read the prequel and the sequel.

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The Moster Play, and other matters

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I did something today I never do. I quit a book I actually liked. I’ve outgrown the idea that you have to finish every book you start reading. Life’s too short, especially at my age. So if I think a book is badly written, or if it offends me, I’ll just remove its download from my Kindle.

But why would I drop a book whose values please me, and which I find well-written?

Because I’m a wimp. Which will not surprise our regular readers.

I should at least give the author credit. He’s one of my favorites, James Scott Bell. The book is Can’t Stop Me. It’s about an ordinary guy, a lawyer and family man, who is suddenly targeted by an old college acquaintance who seems to have no purpose other than to force himself into his life. The stalker employs innuendo and suggestion to threaten the hero, always keeping within legal limits. The worst thing is, he happens to know the hero’s oldest and darkest secret.

This is an old book of Bell’s which he’s revised slightly for re-release. It shows some signs of being early work, but is overall very well written.

And it gave me the willies. This kind of story – the kind where ordinary people face dangers they’re not prepared for, really bothers me. I suppose it’s because I know I wouldn’t survive ten minutes in such a situation.

A writer ought to have thicker skin.

Anyway, if you’re braver than I am, I recommend it, even though I chickened out a third of the way through.

In other news, I remembered today that I need to renew my passport. I’d put it away with the unpaid bills so I wouldn’t forget it, and got so used to seeing it there that I forgot it. I should have done it earlier – now I’ll be passportless for a short while. Not that I expect to need it. I tend to use a passport one time before it expires. This one I’ll probably never use at all.

But I like to have one. I’m an international man of affairs, after all. I never know when I’m going to be summoned to receive a medal from the king of Norway.

But 130 bucks for a passport? I’m pretty sure my first one, back in the ’80s, cost $40.

Speaking of Norway, I mentioned Mosterøy in Norway in yesterday’s post, and said not to confuse it with Moster on Bomlø. I visited that Moster last summer too. It was the home of the mother of King Haakon the Good (who was related to Erling Skjalgsson’s family). They do a historical play in an amphitheater there every year (video above). My two guides, Tore-Ravn and Einar (the two on the left in the photo below, with the historic Moster Stone), are extras in the play, and take great pride in it.

Religion, Uncategorized

Hodnefjell on Mosteroy

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Tonight’s post is probably of limited interest, but I’m between books again. I found this drone video of Hodnefjell farm on the island of Mosterøy, (not to be confused with Moster on Bomlø, where St. Olaf instituted Christian law in Norway) a place where some of my ancestors on my dad’s side lived. These were the most historically significant ancestors I’ve heard about. I’m sure I’ve written about this before.

According to Sigve Bø, my guide last year, the Hodnefjell family (if I remember correctly) had converted to Moravianism in the early 19th Century, a serious matter in state church Norway. But they heard about the lay evangelist Hans Nielsen Hauge and wrote to him, inviting him to visit them. He came and stayed with them on their farm. They were so impressed with his teaching that they converted back to Lutheranism and became “friends of Hauge.”

They had a neighbor named John Haugvaldstad who also became a Haugean. He disliked farming and left for Stavanger (leaving his incompatible wife, who’d never much liked him either. They lived separate lives but never divorced). There he became a successful businessman and the de facto leader of the Haugeans after Hauge’s imprisonment.

The Haugean circle in Stavanger had much to do with arranging the first organized party of emigrants to leave Norway for America. This group sailed in 1825 on the sloop “Restaurasjon.” The party was made up of Quakers and Haugeans, all looking for greater religious freedom in the US.