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Of Japan, and other things

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Itsukushima Shrine, Hatsukaichi-shi, Japan. Photo credit: Nicki Eliza Schinownicki_schinow. Unsplash license.

Tonight, for lack of any better topic, I’m going to tell you about some of my recent trains of thought. There’s no reason I can think of for you to read on, but here it is if you want it.

On Veterans’ Day I posted about my dad, who served in the Occupation forces in Japan, post-World War II. He never made a big deal of it. In fact, he rarely mentioned it. It was, for him, a blip in his life, a brief detour from his chosen career as a small farmer. Dad was not a man of ambition. He kept his sights low.

Thinking about Japan put me in mind of the other major presence that country once held in my life. In college, I fell in love (unrequited, of course) with a lovely young woman who grew up as a missionary kid in Japan. She was my first date, when I was 23 years old. (An early bloomer I was not. Nor was I a late bloomer, come to think of it. I didn’t bloom at all.)

Anyway, especially after she returned to Japan, I thought about that country a lot. And, of course, I thought about her. I continue to do so from time to time. I know who she married and where she lives. (She’s a grandmother now.) Is it shameful to admit that I sometimes do a web search for her? There’s rarely anything to learn. She seems to have lived a happy life, and happy lives are low-profile ones, by and large.

One day, a while back, it occurred to me to do a search for her father. I knew he was a missionary in Japan, and I knew his name and who commissioned him. I did a search, and came upon something that amazed me. An archivist from his denomination had posted a video of his family on the field in the early 1950s. It shows them with their Japanese congregation, and socializing with other missionaries. And it shows the young parents pushing a little baby girl in a carriage. That baby is certainly the girl I would eventually fall for, who is an old woman now.

There is no lesson in this. It was just strange to watch. And to contemplate.

And no, I’m not going to link to the video. I embarrassed her enough by falling for her in the 1970s; I’m not going to disturb her peace, even remotely, now.

I can think of no natural transition to my third point, except that it has to do with my past. A relative in my home town recently sent me an article from the local newspaper. It was about a place called Crosswind Farms. It seems to be a diversified, organic agricultural operation, and it has a retail side, with a shop and scheduled tours.

This is in fact the very farm where I grew up. Our 160 acres of one-time swamp, drained by my great-grandfather.

I had no idea of this. When I alerted my brothers, they both knew about it already. Why didn’t I? I can only assume somebody did tell me about it, and I forgot.

I wish the Crosswind people well. It’s tough running a small farm in today’s economy. They seem to be entrepreneurial and creative.

I will also say nothing of the shattered dreams of my youth, dreams that that farm would be the site of the Lars Walker Childhood Home Museum, where people could take tours of the beloved author’s one-time house, barn, and sheds.

Of course, any chance of that has been dashed, not only by my failure (so far) to become a world-renowned author, but also by the fact that the house burned down spectacularly one night in December, 1986, and most of our buildings have since been demolished and replaced.

Maybe I can get them to sell my books in their shop….

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Washashore,’ by Christopher Mirabile

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Silas Lopez, hero of Christopher Mirabile’s The Washashore, grew up living the cowboy life in the American West, then became a cop in Salt Lake City. Some trouble sent him out job-hunting, and now he’s about as far east as he can get, working as the new police chief of the small coastal town of Provincetown, Massachusetts. One night a body is found in a street, apparently an automotive hit and run, but the injuries are unusually severe. Si puts his team to work on the seemingly impossible job of finding out what happened on a deserted street, in the middle of the night, in a neighborhood apparently without security cameras. But Si sees the case as an opportunity too – his team needs seasoning and guidance.

In the course of all this investigation, he meets Wren Bradford, a local social worker and photographer. He begins a very tentative flirtation with her, because in areas of the heart, he’s the one who needs seasoning and guidance.

The more the cops investigate, the more the case opens out, and before long they all know they’re dealing with something far bigger than an isolated pedestrian death.

The Washashore is a debut novel, and this reader found it promising. The prose was pretty decent, and the plot kept me interested, though I think the book could have been kept shorter.

One way it might have been streamlined would have been by cutting some of Si’s dialogue. He’s an intriguing, colorful character, a cowboy in a New England fishing town, but he lays on the ten-gallon metaphors and aphorisms to the point where it grows comic:

“Folks, I know it’s temptin’ to feel lower than a snake’s belly at this point…. Truth is, I’ve seen tumbleweed on a still day with more forward momentum than what we’ve got goin’ on now.”

There’s a whole lot that kind of talk. A lighter application would have been just as effective, and less unintentionally comic.

The author takes pains to establish his right-thinking liberal credentials, without making it too ham-handed. I was annoyed, though, by a conversation between the hero and his girlfriend, where he expresses confusion over today’s dating standards. The woman explains cheerfully that they’ve transcended old sexual roles, and that the modern rule is simply to pay attention to the other person’s feelings. This is, in my opinion, bunk. What it actually means is that the man is kept constantly off-balance, with the woman positioned to shoot him down whenever her mood alters.

The principle also contrasts with good police procedure, as Si explains it to his cop team, where adherence to strict protocols prevents errors and often saves lives.

Still, I enjoyed the book overall. And it didn’t end the way I expected, so that’s a point for the author.

Moderately recommended.

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My dad, G.I.

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It’s Veterans’ Day (for a few hours yet as I write). I’ve written about my father more than once here – he was a veteran, but saw no combat and never made a big deal out of it.

The video clip above shows the brighter side of the American occupation of Japan. That’s where my dad served. I don’t know if he ever gave candy to any children.

He never had much good to say about the army. He’d been drafted near the end of the war. Before that he’d been deferred, as his parents’ sole support. Like many another young man, he trained for the invasion of Japan, but the atomic bombs made that unnecessary. Very likely I wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the bombs. (Dad once took a train trip to see Hiroshima during his hitch.)

I have a nickel-plated cigarette case that he got over there. As I recall the story, there was a Greek guy who hung around the soldiers (maybe he was a soldier himself; some sort of scrounger) and he offered to get Dad a nice cigarette case cheap. Dad gave him the money, but was not pleased when he found the Greek had gotten both their names engraved on it in big letters.

He mentioned seeing (or hearing about) stacks of samurai swords piled up like brushwood and set on fire, part of the forced disarmament of the population. Some guys, I understand, smuggled such swords home with them, but Dad wasn’t like that. He did bring home a little Rising Sun flag. It’s in a box down in my basement.

Dad’s only decoration was a sharpshooter’s medal – he was a farm boy, after all, and knew his way around a rifle. Other than that, he came home with no distinction and went right back to the tractors and the cows.

But he was a veteran, and technically a veteran of war. And since I’m not, I owe him (posthumous) tribute on this day

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Baltic,’ by Alan Palmer

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Earlier visitors… had anglicized Helsingør’s name to Elsinore. Twice a troupe of English actors came to entertain the Danish court there, and the players’ tales of the richly furbished Renaissance castle above the Sound gave Shakespeare his setting for Hamlet; Elsinore’s lasting fame was assured.

I have long been an advocate of a maritime perspective on the Viking Age. We look at maps and see the Scandinavian peninsula (Norway and Sweden) separated by a waterway from Denmark, which sticks up from the continent like a thumb. We wonder what united them as “Scandinavians.” We do this, at least, if we don’t understand the sea. The sea did not separate the Scandinavians – it united them. The sea was their grand highway, the Baltic straits their crossroads.

But I know less about the Baltic. I’ll confess, than I ought to know. I’ve kept out of that tideless sea through most of my Erling novels (except the first and last), because it fell largely in the Swedish sphere of influence. However, The Baltic, by Alan Palmer, recently showed up at a very tempting price. I figured it was time I improved my education. And the book did indeed broaden my perspective.

The Baltic is, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, a very long book. It has to be; it covers the history of a large geographical region, home to many nations, Germans, Slavs, Finno-Ugrics, Scandinavians, and others, from prehistoric times to after the fall of the Soviet Union. And I’m happy to report that it’s not dry at all. Author Palmer understands that personalities make history fascinating, and he offers a string of vivid sketches of one great figure after another, from Vikings like Harald Bluetooth through modern statesmen like Winston Churchill and Lech Walensa, brief but colorful and full of action.

One judges a book of history through measuring its content against previous knowledge, and I’m sad to say that when it comes to Vikings, my own bailiwick, the author makes at least one error (or I think he does). He states that the Swedish king Anund Jakob (who is mentioned in my last two Erling books) converted to Christianity but later apostatized. I had never heard of this, and a web search shows no information about it. I think it’s a mistake; I wish I knew the author’s source.

But taken all in all, I found The Baltic one of the most interesting works of history I’ve ever read. I do recommend it, with cautions for its considerable length.

Reviews

Watching ‘The Jesus Revolution,’ and remembering

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This post, just to give you fair warning, will begin as a movie review and then wander off into byways of personal reminiscence. Because I’m old enough now to comment on historical films from a survivor’s perspective.

First of all, I think it’s well-established by now that The Jesus Revolution is a pretty good movie. I was looking for something to watch on Sunday afternoon, and it popped up on Amazon Prime. I put it on partly out of a sense of duty; I anticipated that it might rouse bittersweet memories (which it did). I intended to use it as background white noise while I did something else, but it compelled my attention.

Many of you have already seen it, so you understand. I’m still surprised to be impressed with Christian movies – I grew up on Billy Graham’s World Wide Pictures, which were heartfelt but ham-handed. This is cinema on an entirely different level. Kelsey Grammer does an admirable job as Pastor Chuck Smith, whose struggling congregation is suddenly invaded by an influx of hippie inquirers, led by Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), and suddenly they’re in the midst of a Movement. Meanwhile, we follow the life of Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney), child of a dysfunctional home, who tries to find himself in drugs, rock ‘n roll, and rebellion, but nearly crashes and burns before finding his way to Smith’s and Frisbee’s church (and to love and marriage as well).

The movie is excellently cast, effectively written, and a provides a pretty good evocation of the place and time. I myself was far from the center of things, back here in Iowa and Minnesota then, but my friends and I were part of the movement, and the songs (as well as the jargon) were very familiar.

And pretty emotional, for me. So many memories. Especially of people, some of whom were the closest friends I’ll probably ever have – many of whom are no longer friends at all. Small but intense adventures with those friends. Moments of delight and victory… and of disappointment.

The end of the movie describes the Jesus Movement as perhaps the largest Christian revival this country ever saw. And yet – as I see it – it left almost no footprint in the culture, except for the creation of a couple new denominations (as if we didn’t have enough of those).

From my perspective, the great tragedy of the Jesus Movement is that, out of so many converts, so few persisted. When I got into the Science Fiction/Fantasy world back before the turn of the century, it depressed me to note what a large percentage of SF writers seemed to be embittered former Jesus Freaks. I ran into them everywhere (or so it seemed), people who’d “tried that whole Jesus thing,” but found it ultimately unsatisfying. (A lot of people, I think, claimed to believe just to go along with the fad. Many of the others were poorly discipled, or fell into the clutches of spiritual wolves, of which there were many.)

The upshot of it all is that when I think of the Jesus Movement, I end up depressed.

Secondly, there was the issue of music. A large part of the story deals with Pastor Smith’s efforts to provide a worship environment welcoming to the young people. I myself was part of a group that performed contemporary Christian songs (many of which we wrote ourselves) in churches. We got some opposition from old fuddy-duddies in the congregations, which I didn’t understand at the time. I understand now. I swear I never had any intention of killing off traditional worship, but that seems to be what the long-term result was, at least in my church. The congregation I attend began a contemporary service in the wake of the Jesus Movement, and conservative members were assured that nothing would happen to the traditional service. This year, they abolished the traditional service. And the contemporary service into which we’re all now shoehorned (called a blended service because it includes a couple hymns) affects me like fingernails on a chalkboard. I know it means something to those who like it (and they are many), but I find it raucous and irreverent.

Then – just to top off the memories – I got a text message while I was watching the movie. An old friend from those days informed me that another friend, my roommate for two years, had died in a mental institution in California.

Poor B*****. I don’t blame the Jesus Movement for his initial slight craziness. He was a little crazy before he became a Christian, as I can testify from personal observation. And he was not among those who turned their backs on Jesus. He followed Him faithfully, according to his own lights – he became a Russian Orthodox monk. Nor do I blame his final descent into madness on the Jesus Freaks – as I understand it, it probably had an organic cause.

But it seemed to me he was an emblem of those times and those people, fading away into history, in a degenerated California, his legacy known only to God.

Religion, The Press

An anonymous prayer, misattributed

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Francis Preaching to the Birds by Master of Saint Francis (c. 1260–1280) (Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons)

Happy Friday. Tonight, in the spirit of the (political) season, I have decided to mercilessly shatter one of your dearest illusions.

The magazine, “Religion & Liberty” has the honor of having published me on a couple occasions. (The fact that my friend Anthony Sacramone is Editor-in-Chief may possibly have something to do with that fact.) The latest (Fall) issue features an article on St. Francis of Assisi which astonished me with the following paragraph concerning the well-known “Prayer of St. Francis,” which begins, “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace…”:

Eleven years before the publication of Chesterton’s St. Francis of Assisi in 1923, a small Catholic magazine in France, La Clochette, published an anonymous prayer with the title Belle prière à faire pendant la Messe (A Beautiful Prayer to Say During Mass). An abridged version of this prayer was published by the Quaker magazine Friends’ Intelligencer in 1927 with the title “A Prayer of St. Francis of Assissi” [sic]:

So that’s where the prayer came from. It has nothing to do with the revered 13th Century Italian friar who preached to birds, ministered to the poor, and considered bathing a sin.

This fact doesn’t make it a bad prayer. Not at all.

I may pray it myself tonight. Seems like a good time to do something like that.

Have a good weekend.

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The phenomenon of Rienzi

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Last scene of act 3 of Rienzi at the Théâtre Lyrique, 1869

Still toiling away at my big history book. I don’t mean to disparage it – I’m reading it with some fascination, though it does seem like it’s progressing in real time. But that throws me back on my wits (which seem to be a non-renewable resource) when it comes to blogging fodder.

Well, I nudged myself yesterday. I mentioned the name Rienzi (it’s Italian, so I assume it’s pronounced Ree-EN-zee). Once a familiar name throughout the western world, it’s all but forgotten today.

I first noticed the name when reading about the Civil War. There was a famous episode from the 1864 Shenandoah campaign, where Union Gen. Philip Sheridan rode 20 miles in about two hours, from Winchester, Virginia to his headquarters, to rally his forces to meet a Confederate attack. His timely appearance prevented a disaster, and “Sheridan’s Ride” was widely reported, and celebrated in a popular poem by Thomas Buchanan Read.

When I read accounts of Sheridan’s ride, his horse’s name was given as “Rienzi.” (The horse’s name was later changed to Winchester, and after a long life in horse years, he died and was stuffed. The Smithsonian has him now.)

“Who,” I wondered, “was Rienzi?” (I believe the name showed up somewhere else too, but I forget where. There’s a town called Rienzi in Mississippi. Maybe that was it.)

This was in ancient times, before the internet. I could have consulted an encyclopedia, but I wasn’t that interested. But eventually Joe Biden provided an information superhighway, and I checked it out in an idle moment.

Nicola “Cola” Rienzi (1313-1354) was an Italian politician. He claimed to be the illegitimate son of the Holy Roman Emperor, but actually came from humble origins in Rome. He acquired a good education, though, and grew enamored of the glories of ancient Rome. He despised the Rome of his own day, ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor and dominated by dissolute nobles. (Credit where credit’s due: I’m condensing all this information from Wikipedia. This material isn’t in my own wheelhouse at all.)

Continue reading The phenomenon of Rienzi →
Reading, Uncategorized

The phenomenon of Mazepa

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Currier and Ives illustration for the 1846 edition of Byron’s poem.

No politics tonight, I promise. At least no contemporary politics. I’ve had enough of that for a while, I think. The battle goes on, of course, and as the sailors used to say (according to Richard Henry Dana in Two Years Before the Mast), “Never say die while there’s a shot in the locker.” But I need time to regroup.

I don’t think I’ve done much politics in this space for a while, anyway. (Perhaps, as is so often the case, I delude myself.)

So what shall I write about? I’m reading a long book of history at the moment, so it will be a few days before my next review. This book I’m reading is about the history of the Baltic region, and the author, in his description of the Russian empire, refers to a man named Ivan Mazepa. Mazepa is a name (like Rienzi, about whom I need to write someday), that used to be quite well known in the U.S. as that of a foreign hero. We even have a town in Minnesota named after him, though we added a second “p” to the spelling.

Ivan Mazepa (1639-1709) was a hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks, and a devoted and honored commander under Tsar Peter the Great. However, in the last year of his life, he learned that the tsar was planning to replace him, and so he defected to the side of Peter’s great opponent, King Charles XII of Sweden. He has been considered a traitor by the Russians ever since, but he had many defenders as well. The Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him, but the Greek Orthodox did not. I believe he’s quite popular in Ukraine today.

What made him famous in the west was that Lord Byron wrote a poem about him. That poem led to a play, called “Mazepa, or the Tartar Horse,” which packed them in in England and then crossed the sea to America, where it was also a hit.

The centerpiece of the play was not the drama with Tsar Peter, which happened when Mazepa was an old man. It was a dubious anecdote about Mazepa’s youth, culled from a biography of Charles XII. That colorful story claimed that as a boy in Poland, Mazepa had an affair with a nobleman’s wife. When the couple were discovered together, the nobleman punished the young man by tying him naked to a wild horse and setting it running across the plains. Somehow, Mazepa survived, and made his way to the Russians, under whom he took military service.

The play, “Mazepa,” became a theatrical staple in the U.S. A melodramatic version appeared later, which featured a live horse running on a treadmill on the stage, a pretty good technical effect for the times.

But what really made the show a hit was when they cast a woman as young Mazepa. The actress was named Adah Isaacs Menken, and she insisted on riding the horse personally (instead of using a dummy), clad only a flesh-colored body stocking. Audiences were scandalized and delighted. The play toured the American West for years, and made pots of money.

As a final note, there’s an old movie called “Heller in Pink Tights,” starring Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren. It’s based on Louis L’Amour’s novel, Heller With a Gun, and was inspired by the adventures of the traveling “Mazepa” troupe.

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Erling Skjalgsson’s resting stones

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Yes, I voted. I even posted a picture of myself rocking my “I Voted” sticker, on Facebook. (I’ll spare you that shocking image.) I voted at a very lefty church (not of the Lutheran denomination I usually gripe about), and it was festooned with banners and signs about peace and LGBTQ and Hate Has No Home Here (Unless it’s hatred for Trump. And Israel). But I made my way in and out without being discovered as a heretic.

The video above is a small treat for those who’ve read my Erling Skjalgsson books. You may recall from The Baldur Game how the hero’s corpse was carried down the peninsula, with the local freedmen raising memorial stones at each camping spot. This video (unfortunately it’s in Norwegian without English captions) shows you two of those stones, which are still standing. And it ends at Sola Church (a stone church which had not yet been built in Erling’s day).

Fiction, Reviews

‘To Kill a Saint,’ by Michael Swiger

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Every time I take a chance on a Christian novel, I journey, you might say, in hope. In most cases, that journey is in vain. Sadly, To Kill a Saint, by Michael Swiger, was no exception. The book was not without virtues, but it demonstrated a considerable lack of craftsmanship.

A prosecuting attorney in Cleveland is called out to a grisly murder in a church sanctuary. A young woman has been raped, tortured, and stabbed to death. The police immediately arrest the pastor, who is found on the floor of his office, scratched and covered in blood.

Hunter St. James is a young attorney working for a big, prestigious firm. He has high ambitions, which are threatened by public memories of the failure of his lawyer father, who was convicted of corruption and died by suicide. He has, however, a good friend in the firm who’s got his back. Hunter is surprised – and annoyed – to be selected as pro bono attorney for the accused pastor. Hunter is an atheist and not favorably disposed toward this man – though the things he says about God trouble his long-held assumptions. He’s also angry at his socialite girlfriend, who recently got pregnant, broke up with him, and aborted their baby.

Meanwhile, his work brings him into contact with a different woman, who offers everything he’s looking for in a partner. But as his career starts falling to pieces, he wonders whether he has anything to offer her.

I’d say that the strongest element in To Kill a Saint is the plotting. The story follows the proper story structure for a mystery/thriller, every beat delivered on cue.

But the book falls down in several areas. First of all, it reads like a Christian novel. There’s too much God-talk, and the Christians inevitably win the arguments (a common failure in Evangelical lit). Even as one character is contemplating suicide, he is still rehashing an argument about the existence of God. (As a long-time depressive, I can state that this isn’t how extreme depression works. In those circumstances, one doesn’t ponder whether God loves one. One just rails at Him.)

The writing was also weak. The author tries – I’ll give him that. But his prose is clumsy, and the harder he works for an effect, the clumsier it gets. Some selected lines go: “Her words stabbed his soul.” “The exquisite line of her lips summoned him.” And, “The smell of dead fish soured his face.”

He also commits the cardinal sin of using exclamation marks to inform us when we’re supposed to be excited.

The book involved a conspiracy by a secret society, a trope that has always annoyed me. No doubt it could be done well, but that’s not the case here.

It also annoyed me that jackboots (which play an important part in the story) are described as having laces. Jackboots do not have laces.

So, all in all, I can’t recommend To Kill a Saint. Cautions are also in order for some fairly disturbing descriptions of the occult and blood ceremonies.