My second day after eye surgery. (It was a detached retina, I might as well admit.) I have no reason to complain. I can go about my life moderately well (though my depth perception, never the best, is pretty poor right now). I am in very minor discomfort, not pain. Just enough to make me grumpy, if I took the trouble to be around people to be grumpy at. Give it time.
The little two-hymn medley above from a young Sissel Kyrkjebø is included on her classic Christmas album, Glade Jul, which sold almost as many copies as there are people in Norway. The first one is Det Kimer Nå Til Julefest ([Bells] Ring Now for the Christmas Celebration). The lyrics are by the Danish preacher and author N.F.S. Grundtvig. The second is Jeg Synger Julekvad (I Sing a Christmas Song), which is, I believe, more of a folk hymn. Both hymns are offered with subtitles, apparently done by AI and not always to be relied upon.
A skeleton crew (from 1778 military usage) is a term meaning the smallest team needed to do a job or keep the ship running. That and the pirate-vibe skeletons have may be the reason the new Disney+ series has its title. Maybe the four kids teamed with a pirate and pirate-themed droid will accomplish a big job for their civilization; hopefully, the final episode won’t have someone saying, “Look what they accomplished — and with a skeleton crew no less.” Or worse: “We’re a real team now. The galaxy will feel the power of …”
So far, four episodes have been released, and the show isn’t bad. The main actors, who are 13-14 years old, are stretching their skills and performing well. The fast-talking biker girl and the reckless boy who seems to forget their clear and present danger in seconds do get tiring, but unlike many other series, the show has only touched those tropes lightly.
Watch the trailer to see exactly the tone and direction of this show. There’s a moment I enjoyed from the second ep (not in the trailer, but close) where they ask their droid to take them home. The droid doesn’t know of their planet, so he points out the capsule window at thousands of stars and says, “Okay, which one is it?”
At the end of that episode, the kids have been locked up with none of their goods confiscated. They meet Jude Law, the pirate, and he helps them escape. They get through a crowded space port with people who probably would have recognized them from the scuffle that happened an hour or so ago, but hey, are you checking a list of details? Let this one slide. In episode three, they go to a new planet, learn something, and get into a slight scrape with professional space pilots. In episode four, they go to another planet, get into a much bigger scrape, and learn something else. It’s not a bad pattern, but thinking of the sci-fi TV shows of yesteryear, the pattern could be cleaner.
It’s a good show. So far, nothing has been wasted. I haven’t noticed any turn of events that negates or undermines everything that comes before it. The main question many people have asked it whether it’s a Star Wars story, and I wouldn’t say it is. It’s a fun, side story that doesn’t clash with the Star Wars saga as I know it, except maybe in its use of alien lifeforms. Whenever I see a Hammerhead type walking around like an average citizen, I think that kind of alien should probably be reserved as one of the bad guys. There are many like that. But if Star Wars is essentially about rebels fighting the Galactic Empire or Jedis resisting the Sith, Skeleton Crew isn’t one of those stories. It’s an adventure with kids in space.
[Since I know you’ve been waiting for news, I’ll just interject a short status report on my surgery, and then move on. I’m always willing to hear about people’s ills, but I’d rather not know the details.
My surgery went by the numbers. Everything seems to be on track. (Special thanks to my friend Mark, who drove me there and back.) The first 24 hours involved certain restrictions on my movements that were annoying, but that has passed. I have blurred vision in one eye and some minor irritation. But I seem on track for a complete recovery – though not a full and useful life – it’s a little late for that.]
I shall review yet another mystery novel here – The Vanishing Kin, by Thomas Fincham. I am given to understand it’s part of an ongoing series about a detective named Lee Callaway. In this story Callaway is contacted by an old man whose son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren disappeared suddenly about 15 years ago. No trace of them has ever been found.
There’s a parallel plot about a female police officer investigating the death of a video blogger who posted short films about living in a van on the road, who has been discovered beaten to death near her van.
I am a longsuffering man. Sometimes I pick up a story that could be better written, but the author seems to be able to tell a good story at a basic level, even if they lack style. I am almost never happy I did that. I wasn’t this time either.
Years ago I took some kind of correspondence writing course where one of our exercises was to cut a long passage down to a short passage. It’s amazing how much any piece of writing can be compressed if you search out shorter words and phrases, more active verbs, fewer descriptors. This author should have taken that course. He’s always piling the information on, to try to make sure we understand his points:
Callaway wasn’t going to tell Joely what he thought. That’s not what a friend would do at a time like this. They wouldn’t try to put salt on an open wound. That would only make the matter worse. And plus, it wouldn’t bring either Rosie or the money back.
Look at that paragraph. Now cut out all but the first two sentences. Would the reader lose anything?
The Vanishing Kin is not a very good job of writing, and I can’t account for all the positive reviews it has gotten on Amazon.
Author M. R. James (1862–1936) is known for his ghost stories. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, where he was director for fifteen years, called him “the originator of the ‘antiquarian ghost story.'” In doing so, he updated such stories for a new generation. He told these stories to friends and students at King’s and Eton Colleges on Christmas Eve, and since we’ve told our own stories in like manner, allow me to share this wonderful video of Christopher Lee performing “A Warning to the Curious” in a setting akin to James’ Christmas Eve parties.
First of all, I feel I should warn you (the horror!) that it’s possible I may not be posting tomorrow. I am scheduled for minor surgery involving my vision, and will just have to see whether I’m in shape to work a computer or not.
I would appreciate your prayers if you think of it, but they assure me it’s a common procedure and the risks are low. (At least that’s how I choose to interpret it.)
So, tonight – another Christmas carol. Not Sissel, I’m afraid. She doesn’t seem to have done this one. There are performances by the Heretic Tabernacle Choir, but I don’t want to give them more business than I already have done. There are English choir versions, but the English sing it to the wrong tune (I believe that was a major reason for the unpleasantness of 1776).
At last I found a nice one by the Hillsdale College Choir. That will do.
I remember that when I was a kid, my first favorite Christmas hymn was “Away in the Manger” (erroneously believed, at the time, to have been written by Martin Luther). It’s a kid’s carol, and one of the first songs I ever learned by heart.
Then, some years later, I remember, I decided I preferred “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
I’ve gone on to other favorite Christmas hymns since that time, but I still favor the Little Town, in a general way.
It was written by Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), an Episcopal priest who eventually became bishop of Massachusetts. (According to Wikipedia, he introduced Helen Keller to both Christianity and Annie Sullivan.) He said he wrote it after visiting the Holy Land, and Bethlehem on Christmas night. I recall reading an anecdote that after his death, a little girl in his congregation is supposed to have said, “How happy the angels will be to have him in Heaven!”
It happens occasionally that I discover that a movie I worked on as a script translator is now available in this country. In the case of Gold Run, the movie has in fact been out for a couple years and I hadn’t noticed it. So I watched it over the weekend.
I think what I did on this one was actually an editing job. If I remember right, the script had been translated by AI, but back then the production people were still willing to run it past actual human beings, to avoid major incoherence. I think I worked the whole script, and I thought it was a pretty good one.
Viewing it did not disappoint. This is a solid, exciting film.
Movie fans interested in the subject have been able, in the past few years, to get a pretty good education about the Norwegian response to the German invasion in 1940 . The King’s Choice (which I didn’t work on) and Atlantic Crossing (which I did) told the story of the royal family, on the crown prince’s and crown princess’ sides respectively. Narvik (which I also worked on) told the story of the doomed military defense. And now Gold Run follows another important facet of the story – the (genuinely) amazing story of how the Norwegian government managed to get its entire gold reserve to the coast and off to England, with the Germans on their heels.
The unlikely hero of the story is Fredrik Haslund (Jon Øigarden), a financial secretary for the Norwegian Labor Party. As the bigwigs (Labor is in power) rush to get out of Oslo, they dump the job of evacuating the gold onto Fredrik’s narrow shoulders. Somehow, with the help of an exasperated army officer and his troops, he manages to get the boxes of gold onto trucks to transport to Lillehammer, where they think it will be safe. But the Germans keep coming, so it all has to be put on a train for transportation to the coast. Fredrik is an OCD type, and there’s dark humor in the way he insists on checking every box off his inventory before it can be transferred (multiple times) from one place to another – even with German fighter planes overhead.
For a more assertive – if secondary – protagonist, we also have Fredrik’s sister Nini, who is, we are told, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and whom I suspect to be entirely fictional, added solely for purposes of inclusivity. Also there’s the poet Nordahl Grieg, who did exist (though he didn’t look like this). His Wikipedia page says he was on the gold ship, though I don’t know if he was actually as much involved in the gold run as this movie makes him. Grieg was a committed Communist and a stalwart supporter of Stalin, by the way.
There’s also a nice subplot about a nerdy bank teller and a rugged truck driver thrown together by chance or fate, who learn to respect each other through shared dangers.
And dangers there are. The closer they get to the coast, the closer the German planes are, until we see Fredrik and Nini breaking into a bank in Ålesund with a battering ram as the city burns around them.
This is the first time I’ve seen a film I’ve translated that was exactly like the script I worked on. And it’s quite a good script. This is a very solid, exciting war movie.
My only disappointment was a personal issue I’d forgotten. At the end, Nordahl Grieg reads one of his own poems, about the feeling of being conquered, and vowing to come back again someday. When I translated the script, I composed a lyrical translation of that poem which I thought was quite good. I had the whisper of a dream that when the film was made, somebody would notice how good my translation was and use my words in the subtitles.
Alas, as I pretty much expected, it was not to be. The lyrics they use are a literal translation (and flat wrong in one line).
Ah well.
I do recommend Gold Run. I saw it on Amazon Prime, where I had to pay a rental fee.
The tree had always been her husband’s thing. They had fewer ornaments now — glass orbs shattered, some shards still on the floor. But his lights still twinkled.
“We haven’t seen Randall in so long. How’s he doing?”
He died December 2020, before putting up the tree, and she couldn’t manage it herself. But as rigor mortis set in, she realized she could have both tree and man. She made her traditional cookies, set out pine-scented candles, and there was Randall with ornaments, lights, and Santa hat topping — her forever tree.
She gave her standard reply. “He doesn’t get out much.”
Today’s hymn is another old one that’s has been revived by the great John Rutter into the piece performed in the video above. “What Sweeter Music” or Herrick’s Carol was originally written by Englishman Robert Herrick (1591-1674), who is better known for the poetic line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
“When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.’” (Luke 2:15 ESV)
1. What sweeter music can we bring Than a bright carol, for to sing The birth of this, our heavenly King? Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Refrain: We see him come and know him ours, Who with his sunshine and his showers Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
2. Dark and dull night, fly hence away, And give the honor to this day, Which sees December turned to May; If we may ask the reason, say: [Refrain]
3. The darling of the world is come, And fit it is we find a room To welcome him. The nobler part Of all the house, here is the heart: [Refrain]
4. Thus we will give him and bequeath This holly and this ivy wreath To do him honor, who’s our King And Lord of all this revelling: [Refrain]
I think I’ve reached an age where I’m just going to start avoiding thrillers, unless they’re particularly recommended by some dear and trusted friend. Because it seems there’s a kind of arms race going on among thriller writers, to see how implausibly horrible they can make their heroes’ (and heroines’) plights as they weave their ever-tightening plot nooses. How much punishment can the human body – and mind – suffer without actually killing your hero or wearing out your readers?
Rutherford Barnes, the hero of Adam Lyndon’s The Chalk Man does not actually rip an IV needle from his arm and walk out of an emergency ward with bullet wounds and a concussion (my personal most hated thriller trope), but he and his friends certainly endure a lot more than I found plausible.
Detective Barnes is a policeman in Eastbourne, on the Sussex coast of England. In previous books in this series he apparently suffered the loss of his wife in an auto accident, which he is convinced was caused by a particular crime boss. He managed to get that crime boss sent to prison, and during that incarceration the criminal’s family was killed. He blames Barnes personally and has vowed revenge when he gets out.
When a deadly gas is released in downtown Eastbourne during the height of the Christmas shopping season, it brings all personnel out on full alert. Which means there’s nobody paying much attention when Barnes reports his eight-year-old stepdaughter missing. He certainly gets no help from his supervisor, who hates his guts. So Barnes is on the case alone, his only helpers an Inspector friend (who tends to go missing unexpectedly) and a sympathetic civilian data analyst. And that’s only the beginning of an orchestrated plot that will have Barnes fighting to save his new family and his own life, and to prevent an act of terrorism.
For this reader, it was all a bit much. There was nothing really wrong with The Chalk Man. The writing was good, the dialogue believable, the characters adequate – except for their superhuman resilience. Especially in the case of the two main female characters, who were (as one would expect) spunky and absolutely not to be intimidated. Like all the others nowadays.
Anyway, the book was fine, and may be just what you want for an exciting read. It made me tired.
It is either inevitable or compulsory – I can’t remember which – for aging bloggers to do at least one nostalgia post during the Christmas (properly the Advent) season. Memories of childhood, of Christmas in a bygone age, when life was simpler and purer and our societal values were probably better.
Anyway, I haven’t yet finished the book I’m reading for review, and I posted a song last night. So tonight it’s nostalgia. After a brief report on my day.
I had a moment of satisfaction this morning, when I finally got my first Christmas cards ready to mail. (Yes, I’m one of about three people – all of us senescent – still sending Christmas cards. See above, under “bygone age.”).
I always have trouble remembering how to generate mailing labels with Microsoft Word. I only do it once a year, after all. This year was worse, because I had to get my database files from my old laptop to my new laptop, and for some reason nothing I saved – even to Dropbox – on the old computer can be accessed anywhere else. So I had to email them to myself, and when it didn’t work at first, I thought some further incompatibilities were involved, probably beyond my expertise. But I succeeded at last.
Anyway, the Norwegian cards go out first, of course – farther to travel – and now they’re in the hands of the swift appointed couriers.
Where was I going? Nostalgia, oh yes.
I wanted to talk to you about the artist whose work is re-posted above. Probably means nothing to you – he’s a midwestern thing. But he was part of Christmas for me back in the day.
His name was Lee Mero (1885-1977). He was born in Ortonville, Minnesota and studied art at the Minneapolis School of Art and the Chase School of Art in New York City. He distinguished himself in his youth by rescuing a girl from drowning in a boat accident on Lake Minnetonka in Minneapolis, and by being arrested in New York City for drawing a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge (the Great War was going on; he might have been a German spy). He tried his hand at fine art for a while, doing some controversial Cubist stuff, but finally settled down in commercial art. He worked for, among other clients, Coca Cola.
But he was most famous in these parts for Christmas cards and his work for Augsburg Publishing House, the company that provided Sunday School curricula, church bulletins, and other goods to the churches of my (then) denomination. I spent many hours in church studying Mero’s drawings in various contexts.
I wanted to be an artist back then (eventually I would discover I’m better with words), so I paid attention to art. Lee Mero’s style was not one I was interested in emulating; it was rather old-fashioned and often stylized. But he was a master of composition, and every line was precisely placed.
But I remember him best for the Augsburg Christmas annuals, always entitled, simply, “Christmas.” These annuals evolved from “calendars” that used to be published by Norwegian Christian groups at Christmas time, often to raise money for missions. They featured inspirational articles, specially commissioned art, the lyrics to Christmas carols, and anything else that might serve to increase festivity and turn hearts Heaven-ward in a season that’s too often pretty material.
Lee Mero used to contribute several pages of a sort of comic strip. The ones I remember were nostalgic, reminiscing on how Christmas was in his boyhood, in the late 19th Century. He drew men in frock coats and top hats, and ladies with bustles, and horse-drawn cabs and potbellied stoves and oil lamps, evoking the unchanging excitement of a child in any generation. (His work very much inspired my Christmas chapter in Troll Valley.)
Lee Mero is not much remembered anymore. So I raise my (metaphorical) glass of eggnog to him now.
