Right now I’m reading another of my free Kindle downloads; an American biographical work that I’ll review when I’ve finished it.

The story itself is pretty interesting. The manner of the telling, not so much.

The author, according to his Wikipedia entry, was an estimable man. A Christian clergyman, he devoted his life to the production of uplifting literature.

The man can barely stand to go a paragraph without pausing to direct the reader’s attention to the moral lesson. He wants to make very certain that we are never in doubt when he himself disapproves of his subject’s words or actions.

He also shows very little critical sense. He moves from fairly reliable source material to pure fantasy, and doesn’t seem to notice that his subject’s character and manner of speech have changed radically from one source to the other.

In short, he doesn’t really care about the facts. He only cares about imparting moral lessons. Like the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland, he can’t stop saying, “And the moral of that is…”

And it occurred to me, how is that different from the writings of the postmodernists, in most any discipline? For them as well, facts are irrelevant. The point is the narrative. Since truth (they believe) is relative, whatever you say is true, provided it promotes your personal truth.

The only difference is the goal. The old moralist sought to serve an absolute morality.

The new moralist seeks to serve his own private vision, which for him overrides all other considerations.

But in their methods they are identical.

I thought it a nuisance that I’d had a fairly energetic (by my standards) weekend planned, not after, but just before, the day of my liberation from my hand splint. It was irritating in the sense that I kept thinking how much easier all of this would have been if delayed a day or two. But I also thought there was some benefit in spending the last two days of bondage busy, rather than sitting around wishing the time away.

(The splint is gone now, by the way. Free at last! Oh the joy of having ten (OK, nine—one needs a little work) fingers to use again!)

Saturday I did a lecture for a Sons of Norway lodge in Minneapolis. They were an excellent, attentive audience, they paid me a nice honorarium, and they bought books way out of proportion to their numbers. That’s pretty much my definition of a good lecture day.

Sunday was Svenskarnasdag (Swedish Day) at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis. I brought the minimum of my equipment, and sat trying to sell books all day, letting others (mostly younger) do the fighting. Which is probably as it should be. The weather was iffy and the crowds thin, but I got my RDA of Vitamin D from the sunshine that came and went.

A friend who owns a big, powerful PC let me load up my book trailer movie project on his machine. It was exhilarating to finally run it in on something that could handle the file sizes, rather than my laptop. On the downside, better equipment made several problems apparent. My big challenge is sound. I’m fairly certain I should have done the project in some other program than Windows Live Movie Maker (even the old Windows Movie Maker), because I could really use some functionalities this stripped down software lacks. I’m reluctant to start from scratch again, though.

I think I could fix it up with recordings and overdubs. But that’s a further problem. Using the mike I’ve got, I have to be right on top of it to get a decent sound level, and that generates popping and wind noise.

Anybody know any cheap cheats for making a filter at home? I’m really not able to spring for a professional microphone at this point in my career.

A little late in the day (it’s almost tomorrow in Norway as I write), but today is Sissel Kyrkjebø’s birthday. Here she is doing a modern arrangement of a Norwegian bridal march. I think you’ll understand the words. I heard her do the same number the first time I saw her in concert in Minot (pray for Minot!). Her hair was about the same length then, the longest it’s been since the early ’90s, so this must have been broadcast around the same time.

At the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse site, an outstanding article by Anthony Esolen on the importance of marriage, and the poverty of the sexual revolution.

Have a good weekend. My splint comes off Monday morning!

I went to church Sunday, for the first time in about a month. I’ve been out of town, for various reasons, several weekends in a row.

Frankly, I’d have been inclined to skip it, if I didn’t have absences to make up. I prefer to skip Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in church, for personal reasons. Please understand that I don’t object to the honoring of parents, just because I myself chose my mother poorly, and have not achieved fatherhood. Heaven preserve me from the kind of people who run around being all outraged all the time, because everything doesn’t include them.

But I prefer to let other people alone in their observances. I’d rather stay home in the bosom of my own bosom.

(Also, I think it would have been nice if Trinity Sunday had gotten at least equal billing. Just sayin’.)

But I went, and it was as uncomfortable as I feared. All the men were given numbered tickets as they came in, and then at a point in the service we were all asked to come forward. It wasn’t just fathers, but all men, so it was inclusive and all that. I stayed in my seat anyway, because I didn’t want to presume to patriarch status, whatever they said.

After congratulations and a prayer, they drew two ticket numbers and announced the winners of the Father’s Day drawing. I think the prizes were restaurant gift certificates.

In the cases of both winners, though, the claims came, not from the men up front, but from their wives back in the pews. Both winners had given the tickets to their wives to hold.

I think there’s some kind of profound lesson, or caution, there.

Don’t know what it is, though.

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