And now for something completely different: The Keep Calm Gallery, where one may buy all manner of things to calm oneself among other things.
R.I.P. "Elmer"
I sat down to watch the local news on TV last night, and learned that one of my oldest friends is dead.
I’ve written about him here before, calling him “Elmer.” Since I don’t know how his family would react to my reminiscences (though I have no reason to think they’d be offended), I’ll continue to use that name.
Elmer and I met in elementary school, back in Kenyon. As our class’s social hierarchy evolved, the two of us found ourselves thrown together more and more, not because of similar interests or personalities, but as partial outsiders, boys who didn’t play well with others. A sturdy, black-haired kid, Elmer was not in the least diffident, and if he possessed any sense of shame I never saw a sign of it. He loved to say and do provocative things, just to get a reaction. Continue reading R.I.P. "Elmer"
Not Iocane Power
Jane Austen died in 1817 at age 41, but how is a bit of a mystery. Now, Author Lindsay Ashford is arguing she may have died of arsenic poisoning.
George Smiley Is the Anti-Bond
James Parker writes about author John le Carré’s spy, George Smiley, and the coming film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Smiley drops no one-liners, romances no tarot-card readers, roars no speedboats through the Bayou. Bond has his ultraviolence and his irresistibility, his famous “comma of black hair”; Smiley has his glasses, his habit of cleaning them with the fat end of his tie, and not much else. There is a cultivated blandness to him, a deliberate vagueness of outline that at times recalls G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown—the little priest’s alertness to sin replaced, in Smiley’s case, by an extraordinary memory and a profound knowledge of “tradecraft.”
(via Mark Bertrand)
Iago: "I Should Have Been a Clown"
Jeremy Webb wrote his play for high schoolers, but it’s gained legs for a broader audience. “I think that it’s great for adults because it breaks all the rules,” said Webb. The one-act comedy has Shakespeare’s characters accusing their playwright of various injustices. (via ProfShakespeare)
What Does God Want For You?
Joel Miller writes about the natural flow of suffering in our lives.
Visit rural Uganda and tell me with straight face that God wants us to experience a life of ease and wealth, that he’s concerned about what kind of car we drive. It’s offensive to contemplate. More offensive to contemplate: say it in the face of the martyrs’ families in Nigeria who don’t even pray that their persecutors would stop, only that they would be able stand when their time comes. We’re not even worthy to suffer for Christ like that.
Joel is the author of The Revolutionary Paul Revere
Film report: "The Viking" (1928)
This isn’t exactly a review, because I try to limit reviews, as such, to things our readers can actually buy or rent. The only place I know of where you can access the 1928 movie, The Viking, is on the web site where the friend who lent me the DVD he’d burned found it—and I won’t link to that site because it’s, frankly, mostly porn.
The Viking isn’t porn, though. What it is, is an interesting artifact of movie history—if I understand it right (the explanations on web sites are a little confusing), the first full technicolor movie with a sound track. Mind you, it’s not a dialogue sound track. Just music—the old black dialogue cards tell you what people are saying. Although MGM distributed it, it was actually made by the Technicolor Company, in order to demonstrate their new process (did you know there was technicolor before there were talkies? I didn’t). The color process hasn’t been perfected yet—the yellows and greens aren’t right—but it must have been pretty impressive at the time.
The story is about Leif Eriksson (spelled Ericsson here), very loosely based on the Icelandic Vinland sagas. Leif (played by Donald Crisp, who would eventually become one of Hollywood’s most successful and long-lived character actors) seems to be the lead character, although (somewhat awkwardly for the plot) he doesn’t get the girl. Continue reading Film report: "The Viking" (1928)
On Handwriting, Words, and Landscaping
Former President George W. Bush was presented with the Book of Revelation hand-copied by prisoners in a Chinese labor camp. Twenty men wrote out the entire Bible while in prison and smuggled it out the day before their meeting was exposed to officials.
A friend copied an admonition from Trollope on how boring preachers can be, while still tolerated, and what caution young preachers should take from it.
No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling audiences to sit silent, and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, (sic) and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips. . . . Yes, my too self-confident juvenile friend, I do believe in those mysteries, which are so common in your mouth; I do believe in the unadulterated word which you hold there in your hand; but you must pardon me if, in some things, I doubt your interpretation.
Anne M. Doe Overstreet writes beautifully about working, “ankle-deep in glory and dust,” as a landscaper.
I can do this, I thought, recalling long summers weeding the massive vegetable gardens my parents had. It’ll provide solitude, exercise, and mental space to work on poetry. Mostly true, resoundingly true, and not so much true.
Eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month
On April 15, 1918, Jack was ordered to advance his troops behind a barrage of British shells fired by big guns far behind the lines…. Jack ordered his men over the top of the trench parapet and led them straight towards the enemy as the barrage of high explosives riddled with shrapnel landed ahead of them, blasting the German trenches and soldiers. Then, suddenly, as they advanced with bayonets at the ready, the barrage stopped advancing and began to come back toward them. Soon Jack and his men were being bombarded by their own artillery from far behind them, and to his helpless fury Jack watched his men being blown to pieces in the constant roar of their own artillery support. Suddenly Jack saw a blinding light, everything went completely silent, and then the ground came up slowly and hit him in the face. Jack had been hit by both the concussion and shrapnel from a British shell. His trusted sergeant had been between Jack and the shell when it exploded and was blown to bits. Apart from his own efforts to escape, Jack remembered nothing more of the battle.
(Douglas Gresham’s account of his stepfather C. S. Lewis’s wounding in World War I, from his book, Jack’s Life.)
Today is Veteran’s Day, the commemoration that used to be called Armistice Day, back when everyone fondly hoped that the last war had been fought. A hearty thank you to all military veterans who read this post. I’m flying a flag for you.
Someone asked on Facebook today, “What one historical event would you change, if you could go back in history?” My answer was, “I’d stop the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo.” Continue reading Eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month
Setting Fantasy in America
Author N.D. Wilson says he used to think you had to be in England to have a magical adventure like finding a forest inside a wardrobe. He is writing his Ashtown Burials series to invite readers into a fantasy that “connects global mythology to everyday Americana, with its roadside diners, truck stops and waffle irons.” He was interviewed by NPR’s Guy Raz, which aired several hours ago.