It was a late summer afternoon in Minneapolis. The year was 1980. Business had been quiet at the Hiawatha Motel (not its real name). I was working the afternoon shift. Motel clerking was a good job for a student. The money wasn’t great, but it was only a short distance from my apartment, and I could sit at the desk and just read a book with a clear conscience. I’d have to do my end-of-shift report in a few minutes.

The door buzzer went off and a young man came in. He wore jeans and a tee-shirt, and a short jacket. I couldn’t see his eyes well because he was wearing a blue bucket hat pulled down, but the rest of his face was long. Kind of horsey.

He stepped up to the counter, pulled a semi-automatic pistol (about a .38, I thought), and said, “Open the door.”

This was where I nearly got myself killed. I thought he said, “Open the drawer,” meaning the cash drawer under the counter. I realized later, when it was all over, that he could have easily thought I was going for a gun, and plugged me right there. But when I pulled the drawer open, he repeated himself. “Open the door!” Then I heard his friend rattling the knob of the office door to my left.

I opened the door for him and stepped back, my hands up. Both young men came in, and the guy with the gun said, “We want money and drugs. Give us all you got.”

“There’s no drugs here,” I said. “The money’s there.” I pointed to the open cash drawer.

The sidekick went for the money, while the gunman repeated, “Where’s the drugs?”

“There’s no drugs here.”

At that point someone else stepped into the office. It was my relief, the guy on the next shift. Another student, somewhat younger than me. He raised his hands too, and the gunman gestured us back into the unoccupied manager’s apartment behind the office.

“Get down on your faces,” he said. We did, side by side on the carpet. The gunman told his sidekick to find something to tie us up with.

While waiting, the gunman said, “We just want money and drugs. Nobody needs to get hurt.”

I told him there weren’t any drugs, but otherwise didn’t argue.

His friend came back after a minute with a couple power cords from electrical devices. They tied our hands, and the guy with the gun held it to each of our heads in turn, asking one last time for drugs. I said once again that there weren’t any drugs there. “Let’s kill ‘em,” said the sidekick.

“Nah,” said the gunman. “They’ll be good. You guys’ll be good, won’t you?”

We said we’d be good.

They twisted my high school class ring off my finger, and took my relief guy’s watch. “You stay here for half an hour,” the gunman said. “We’ll be watching. If you get up before half an hour we’ll kill you.”

Then they left.

We lay there not saying much for a few minutes.

“I think we can get up now,” I said. “Can you help me get untied?”

“I’ve got some friends coming in a few minutes,” the relief guy said. “They’ll untie us.”

I got up and looked around in the office. The relief guy stayed where he was. I struggled with my bonds, but couldn’t get loose. Shortly the relief guy’s friends did show up, and they untied us and I called the police. And the owner.

After that, cops, and telling the story. Finally I went home. Didn’t sleep well. I was pretty shaken for a few weeks. Felt like a target. I loaded up my replica Civil War Navy Colt and wore it under a sport coat for a couple weeks when I went to work. I’m pretty sure that was illegal, but the wisdom of the saying, “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six” had taken on new meaning for me.

And never – never – for one split second did I waver in my support for the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Trevin Wax draws out four points from The Intellectual Life, by A.G. Sertillanges, which may resonate with you.

1. Recognize the Intellectual Life as a Calling.
2. Submit Your Intellectual Pursuits to Truth.
3. Understand the Intellectual Life Requires Considerable Discipline.
4. Remember the Goal of the Intellectual Life is Virtuous Character.

Read his thoughts on these points here.

The fate of the Greenlanders has long interested me, in a melancholy sort of way. If you’re not familiar with the story, the place was settled by Erik the Red around 986, and prospered for a time as an exporter of valuable merchandise like walrus hides and narwhal ivory. Eventually, after Norway become a province of Denmark in the 14th Century, interest in the far-off colony waned, and the last ship sent to check on them, after a long period of neglect, found the settlement deserted.

There’ve been many theories over the years about what happened to them, most of them pretty depressing. Some thought they assimilated with the Inuit and lost their identity (unfortunately there’s no evidence for this). Others thought they succumbed to the Black Death or some other disease, or just starved due to the increasingly cold weather. Some historians pointed a finger at Portuguese or English pirates, suggesting they kidnapped all the Icelanders and sold them as slaves. (I particularly hated that theory.)

Now there’s a theory being touted as new (though I’m pretty sure I read something very like it in a book years back). It’s suggests that the Icelanders got sick of having nothing but seal to eat, and went back to Iceland and Norway. They seem to have some evidence. This article doesn’t mention it, but I’ve read elsewhere that they suggest that land was opening up in Iceland and Norway at the time, and the Greenlanders just went back there.

I’m all for this theory. Maybe some of the dozen or so people I’ve met in my life who informed me they were direct descendents of Leif Eriksson were right. Right by accident, but right nevertheless.

Tip: Archaeology in Europe.

In other news about frigid places where nobody wants to live, somebody over at Threedonia mentioned the Minnesota state flag in comments today:

Continue reading Cold news →

You know what bugs me about the president’s public relations event today? (Aside from the fact that I’m a “Nazi” NRA member, and thus an enemy of the people. Plus the fact that the Bill of Rights has somehow become suspicious.) It’s the use of the kids.

He brings out these kids who apparently wrote letters to the White House asking him to do something about gun violence.

Does anybody really believe these kids wrote those letters on their own initiative? That they pondered the options and decided they were morally obligated to bring their concerns to the highest office in the land?

No. You and I both know they were assigned to write these letters in school classes. After a class discussion, carefully orchestrated by the teacher to come to the approved conclusion, they were assigned to write letters, which the teacher then posted for them.

For some reason that sort of moral exploitation really offends me.

It offends me on our side too, by the way. There’s a pro-life organization around here that puts up billboards along the highways. It also runs radio ads. And the ads consist of little kids reciting lines written for them by adults, like, “My mommy says that I could suck my thumb before I was even bo-orn!”

It’s cute, I suppose. And the organization does a good work (the billboards, in my opinion, are less manipulative.) But the point of the radio ads seems to be that these are children speaking simple truth out of their innocent hearts. When it’s nothing of the kind.

Just like the presidential show today.

By the way, a lot of Sunday Schools and parochial schools have sent letters to the president over the years (40 years now), protesting abortion. I’m eagerly awaiting the press event where the president brings those kids out for the cameras.

So here’s the trailer for the upcoming History Channel series, Vikings.

On the basis of this trailer, and what I’ve read, I’m not as sad as I have been that I don’t have cable and won’t be able to watch it. I suppose I’m hypercritical. The first thing reenactors look for is always costumes, and these seem… weird. Instead of dressing people as we’re pretty sure they actually dressed, they’ve allowed their costumers to get “creative,” especially with leather. And what’s with the guy (I think he’s the star, playing the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok) with the sides of his head shaved?

Also they have a woman warrior. You know how I feel about this. I don’t deny that Viking women could fight. But I’ve never seen any account, from sagas or the chronicles of the Vikings’ victims, that mention women being a regular part of armies.

Maybe it’ll be OK. But I won’t order cable to see it. Maybe it’ll show up on Netflix.

Anyway, I think the people who made the trailer borrowed ideas from my book trailer.

Addendum: Re:the filth. One of the things we know for sure about the Vikings is that they were notably fastidious for the times. We have an Anglo-Saxon document complaining that the Vikings were stealing all the English women through their effeminate habit of bathing once a week.

“Cognitive dissonance” is a useful term, especially in my life. I first learned it – it will surprise none of you to learn – from a counselor, and he wasn’t talking about himself. But during this winter of our discontent, I find myself even more dissonant than is my wont.

On the macro level, I see no hope at all. I can’t conceive a scenario by which conservatives and Christians, and conservative Christians, can possibly come back from the losses we’ve suffered. I fear the future, not only because I see persecution (if relatively light by global standards), but because I love my country. I have this crazy idea that you can’t sow scoundrelism and reap integrity, and that you can’t borrow your way out of debt.

I know that God is in charge. I’ll stipulate to that. He was also in charge during the Diocletian persecution.

So that gets me down.

On the other hand, it’s beginning to look very much as if 2013 may be the year when things turn around for me personally. I’ve got the translation work, and there’s some publishing news coming up, and things look pretty good from here. I’m particularly pleased that it should happen in a year ending in “13,” as I decry all forms of divination, and telling the future by numbers counts as that.

I can imagine Noah having a neighbor who came over his house yelling, “Hey! Good news! My big deal came through! What do you mean boat ride? I haven’t got time for a boat ride –”