Blogs, Socials

Numbering the dead

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New estimates, based on U.S. Census data from 1870, strongly suggest that Civil War casualties totaled somewhere from 750-850,000, rather than the 600,000-plus figure used in history books for the last century and a half. According to this New York Times article:

The difference between the two estimates is large enough to change the way we look at the war. The new estimate suggests that more men died as a result of the Civil War than from all other American wars combined. Approximately 1 in 10 white men of military age in 1860 died from the conflict, a substantial increase from the 1 in 13 implied by the traditional estimate. The death toll is also one of our most important measures of the war’s social and economic costs. A higher death toll, for example, implies that more women were widowed and more children were orphaned as a result of the war than has long been suspected.

In other words, the war touched more lives and communities more deeply than we thought, and thus shaped the course of the ensuing decades of American history in ways we have not yet fully grasped. True, the war was terrible in either case. But just how terrible, and just how extensive its consequences, can only be known when we have a better count of the Civil War dead.

It should always be remembered that most of the casualties of the Civil War did not come from death on the battlefield, but from the inherent dangers of army life of the day. Accidents, illness, infections. “Just being in the army in 1861,” Bruce Catton said somewhere, “was more dangerous than almost anything we know about today.”

Tip: Grim’s Hall.



Turning to an entirely different matter, if you own a Kindle, you might want to check out Free Kindle Books and Tips, a weekday blog that offers books, games, and apps, usually free. I’ve found a few things worth reading there.

Religion

Is the Intellectual Life Worth Anything?

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B.B. Warfield“Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. ‘What!’ is the appropriate response, ‘than ten hours over your books, on your knees?’ Why should you turn from God when you turn to your books, or feel that you must turn from your books in order to turn to God? If learning and devotion are as antagonistic as that, then the intellectual life is in itself accursed.” – B.B. Warfield (The Spiritual Life of Theological Students). (via Tabletalk Magazine)

Uncategorized

For the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been, the Mystery Viking

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“Hi! Where are you from?”



I hate the “Mystery Viking.”



The Mystery Viking is an ancient tradition at the annual Norsk Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota.

The idea is that when you’ve got a bunch of Scandinavians all together, there’s likely to be little or no actual social interaction going on, unless money is to be had.

So somebody is designated “the Mystery Viking.” This unidentified volunteer wanders the halls, waiting for someone to walk up to him (or her) and say, “Hi! Where are you from?” Those are the magic words. The Mystery Viking is authorized to award this person 100 dollars.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.

But in fact, of course, since you’re dealing with Scandinavians, comprehension comes slowly, if at all. People hear about the “Mystery Viking” and think, “I need to go up to someone dressed as a Viking, and ask him where he’s from.” So we Vikings get approached by scores of strangers every day, drawn to us solely by their keen love of… money.

This is only one of the soul-searing trials that face me as I venture out to Høstfest again this year. I’ll be gone all next week. I’ll be doing limited posts, if any, depending on how the WiFi’s working in Copenhagen Hall.

We don’t know how the festival will go this year, in the wake of the devastating flooding the city has seen. A friend who lives in Minot told me the people are pretty exhausted, but he also thinks they need some diversion. Accommodations look to be a challenge (though we Vikings are taken care of).

So if you’re in the area, stop in and say hello. Just remember not to ask where I’m from.

I’m generally armed when playing Viking at Høstfest.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

Book Reviews from The Christian Manifesto

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We got a bit of praise on Twitter today when The Christian Manifesto (tagline “Jesus. Culture. Sarcasm.”) asked its over 1,400 followers where they would go to read honest reviews of Christian materials, if they didn’t have The Christian Manifesto to read? Thank you very much, Tim Motte and Dr. Hunter Baker, for recommending us.

I hadn’t heard of The Christian Manifesto before, and they appear to have a number of music, film, and book reviews. Take for example this negative double-take on Dekker and Lee’s joint novel, Forbidden. “For those of you who thought that Ted Dekker could do no wrong, I urge you to stay away from this book. Live in your land of bliss and read the other countless books he’s put out. If you are a fan of fantasy fiction, this message goes double for you,” one reviewer writes. The second reviewer observes, “Telling but not showing was a problem throughout this novel. I was told Saric was evil, but I didn’t feel his evil. The people lived in fear, but they didn’t seem to be motivated by that fear.”

Here’s another double-take on Robert Whitlow’s Water’s Edge. Sara says, “I have mixed feelings about this book. For the most part, it was very well written. The characters developed at a good pace, with only one major exception.” Fernando notes, “It’s a fairly solid mystery premise, hindered some by having too many uninteresting characters and embracing melodrama too often. It doesn’t help that it chooses the wrong things to be melodramatic about.”

This site appears to be another good reading resource. I should add it to our sidebar.

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Publishing

Ripping Yarns in Highgate

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Here’s a nice review with photos of Ripping Yarns, a bookshop of the type every city should have. Jen Campbell, the shop manager, is the one with that book, you know, that book about things folks say in shops like her’s. It’s not yet available in the States, but I’m sure President Obama will work out that diplomatic offense.

Reading

Elocution lesson from Mr. Silver

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As noted by Phil below, today is Talk Like a Pirate Day.

But if you want to do your yarnin’ ship-shape, you need to go back to the source material. Here’s Long John Silver himself, from Treasure Island, as ever was, in the parley scene, which has always, for some reason, delighted me.

“Now,” resumed Silver, “here it is. You give us the chart to get the treasure by, and drop shooting poor seamen and stoving of their heads in while asleep. You do that, and we’ll offer you a choice. Either you come aboard along of us, once the treasure shipped, and then I’ll give you my affy-davy, upon my word of honour, to clap you somewhere safe ashore. Or if that ain’t to your fancy, some of my hands being rough and having old scores on account of hazing, then you can stay here, you can. We’ll divide stores with you, man for man; and I’ll give my affy-davy, as before to speak the first ship I sight, and send ’em here to pick you up. Now, you’ll own that’s talking. Handsomer you couldn’t look to get, now you. And I hope” — raising his voice — “that all hands in this here block house will overhaul my words, for what is spoke to one is spoke to all.”

When I think back over a lifetime of reading, I can recall very few books that delivered more sheer pleasure of reading to me than Treasure Island. Nearly a perfect adventure story.

Music

Innerst I Sjelen

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Today, dear readers, is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, which I’m sure you have been celebrating since midnight. Because ruthless pirates are truly misunderstood dreamers who have poorly chosen ways to work out their pain over dashed hopes, I post the following beautiful Norwegian song by a little known but incredibly gorgeous singer (do we know who this is?) as a way of soothing the savage pirate in us all.

Writing

Writing, Creating Through the Fear

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“The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it,” writes Steven Pressfield. This is one of the thoughts noted in this list of five principles on fear in the creative process.

Fiction

Guess These First Lines

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Here’s a list of opening lines from various novels. The potential titles follow. There will be no prize, except the satisfaction of a job well done. I will suggest that I would score well on a quiz like this, but I’m not taking it, am I?

  1. “Who is John Galt?” The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bum’s face.
  2. “I have been here before,” I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were white with fool’s-parsley and meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendor, such as our climate affords once or twice a year, when leaf and flower and bird and sun-lit stone and shadow seem all to proclaim the glory of God; and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, is was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.
  3. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
  4. Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car. The train was racing through tree tops that fell away at intervals and showed the sun standing, very red, on the edge of the farthest woods.
  5. It was Wang Lung’s marriage day. At first, opening his eyes in the blackness of the curtains about his bed, he could not think why the dawn seemed different from any other. The house was still except for the faint, gasping cough of his old father, who room was opposite to his own across the middle room.

Choose from these titles:

  • Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
  • Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
  • Absalom, Absalom, by William Faulkner
  • 1984, by George Orwell
  • The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck
  • Wise Blood, by Flannery O’Connor
  • Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh