Some nights I can’t think what to write. Other nights I have to make a list to be sure I don’t forget anything.

First of all, for those of you interested in Things Norwegian, a new blog has been begun by Bård Titlestad of Saga Publishers. He’s the son of Prof. Torgrim Titlestad, author of Viking Norway, which I reviewed here. The blog is devoted to Norwegian-American issues. Which is perfect timing, as I just declared Norwegian-American culture dead, dead, dead a few days ago.

Well, I could be wrong.



Secondly, thanks to our friend Loren Eaton for his flattering review of The Year of the Warrior over at I Saw Lighting Fall.

In a related matter, a friend over at Facebook told me that new copies of TYOTW are selling for $40 over at Amazon.com. I turned aside to see this marvel, and found that the forty buck copy was the cheap one. Some entrepreneur is offering it at the optimistic price of $104.00. Continue reading Long, disjointed post on many subjects →

Scott Lamb at World Magazine Blog commemorates the 25th anniversary of the death of Francis Schaeffer today.

Sunday is Syttende Mai, the Norwegian Constitution Day holiday. I was sure you’d want to know about that.



I’m thinking about Facebook today. I joined the online social networking community with some dread (anything with the word “social” in it, from “socialism” to “social disease,” scares me), but I’ve been gratified by the number of people interested in being my “friends” on Facebook. Several of them have been students at our Bible school, which is frankly incomprehensible. I’ve never spoken to most of these students, and the ones I have spoken to I’ve usually just told to take their cell phones out of the library. Yet they’re interested, and they join my Facebook group. I can only assume that they’re sadder and lonelier people than I ever dreamed, and I should have been kinder to them. (That’s a JOKE! A JOKE!)

What’s the deal with Facebook groups, anyway? I’ve been involved in forums before. When I was on AOL, I participated in several discussion groups about Norway, Vikings, C. S. Lewis, and the Avengers. We had vibrant (and sometimes nasty) discussions. I’ve been involved with a Viking reenactors’ discussion board, elsewhere from Facebook, for years now. It ebbs and flows, but the posts keep coming, and sometimes it’s hot and heavy.

But Facebook groups just sit there. People join—some have hundreds or thousands of members—but in all the groups I’m involved with, the members seem to feel that they’ve “voted” by joining, and that’s the end of their obligation. One of the most active groups I’ve joined, oddly, is the Avoidant Personality Disorder group, which is populated solely by people pursuing a lifestyle in emulation of Harpo Marx.

I’m one of the most verbal and outgoing members of two or three groups I belong to. That’s just wrong.

From the American Spectator Online:

On the other hand, I could come up with hundreds or thousands of homicidal maniacs who were anything but quiet and who seldom kept to themselves. Jesse James was rowdy. Charlie Manson charismatic. Al Capone a celebrity. I remember reading Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Of the two killers in that book, only one (Perry Smith) might be called moody or somewhat introverted. The other, Dick Hickock, was a high-living, woman-loving rambler. Few homicidal maniacs were creepier than John Wayne Gacy, and yet here is how Gacy is described by his biographer Martin Gilman Wolcott: “John Wayne Gacy was never a loner, never someone who kept a low profile and lived a secluded, quiet life.”

About time somebody said it.