Here’s another Sissel song for your Christmas delectation. It’s an old German hymn, but I’m not sure she’s singing it in German here. I’m not sure what language she’s singing. I don’t think it’s Norwegian. Pay no attention to the closed captioning, which is in Spanish and no help at all.
But it’s nice.
Once again, the eyes of the nation are fixed on Minnesota. Something strange, almost unprecedented, is going on here.
It’s cold out.
The rest of you know nothing of such things, so I thought I’d bring you up to date.
Tonight, as I was checking out at the grocery store, a guy at the end of the conveyer asked me, “Paper or plastic?”
In Minnesota (oddly, I can’t recall how it was in Florida) our major grocery chains all (by which I mean “both”) have “self-service” bagging. This was supposed to save us money back in my youth when it was introduced, but now it’s The Way Things Are Done, and anybody who suggests change is just a troublemaker. So I was confused to have somebody offer to bag my groceries for me. I told him plastic.
“Are you going to want a tip?” I asked, in my best Scrooge voice (and face), as he packed the sacks.
“No,” he said.
“Do you represent some organization?”
He gave the name of the youth group of a Lutheran church I wasn’t familiar with. By an odd coincidence, though, there was a table with a tip jar near the exit, and I felt obligated to drop a buck in as I left. (Which I could have technically avoided, since these people are supposed to ask first. “Would you like me to bag your groceries?” Not, “Paper or plastic?”)
I bet he’s a salesman. I bet he does well at it.
I bet he has no friends.
Anyway, I figure that, statistically, the church I gave the buck to is probably part of The Very Large Lutheran Body That Shall Remain Nameless.
So my money probably went to send the kids to a Transgender Sensitivity Camp or a Jihad Understanding Conference.
Humbug.
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Today is St. Thomas’ Day, and is the 980th anniversary of the death in battle of Erling Skjalgsson, hero of my novel, The Year of the Warrior.
This evening they are holding a commemorative concert at Sola Church, near Stavanger. Wish I could be there.
On an entirely unrelated note, I’ve complained about Earthlink customer service enough times that justice demands I should make it public that I actually had a good experience with them last night, when I finally had to call about my connection problems. I only spent about a minute in call waiting, and the customer service rep got me connected again in about five minutes.
Tonight, because I care (and because I don’t have any thoughts) I offer another Christmas song sung by the incandescent Sissel Kyrkjebø. On top of it being one of my favorite Christmas songs (“What Child Is This?”) this clip also shows the singer at her loveliest.
Sissel has a blog of her own, over here (discovered by Phil, to my eternal shame). But it’s pretty dull. Just irregular posts about where she’s done concerts and how nice everybody is, and pictures of her and her friends. Where, I ask you, are The Things the Public Craves? The interesting and instructive anecdotes of childhood abuse? Long disquisitions on Viking history and Norwegian folklore? The film clips of sword fights? Panegyrics on Andrew Klavan?
No, I have to do all that stuff myself. Because I care. Because I’m determined to make Sissel a star.
No need to thank me, Sissel. The work is its own reward.
But if you insist, I have a few suggestions.
The title of this post comes courtesy of my late father. It was the name he gave to a concoction he sometimes put together for our lunch, when Mom’s job had turned him into a sort of farmer/househusband. He’d clear all the leftovers out of the refrigerator, stir them together in a frying pan, and call it Slumgullion.
Now that I’ve typed it, it occurs to me that I’ve never written that word down in my life before.
Anyway, the idea is that this is a disjointed post, composed of random events out of a random day.
I note with pride that my next door neighbor is grilling his supper out by the garage right now. After the below zero temperatures we’ve endured this week, today’s 20° high felt positively tropical, and he is responding in a manner typical of the bulldog (or bull seal) Minnesota breed.
I’d do the same thing myself, only I don’t happen to own a grill. Otherwise I’d be out there just like him. You betcha. Continue reading Slumgullion
Thanks to Will Duquette over at The View From the Foothills, for tipping me off to Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.
The discovery of this blog raises two questions in my mind:
a) Why didn’t I know about this before? and
b) How can I go on blogging, knowing the competition is doing stuff this brilliant?
What’s it like? Sort of like one of those Monty Python animations, only you read it.
In weather like this, you pretty much have to blog about the snow and cold. But how to do it? Tell harrowing stories of my near-death experiences shoveling my driveway, or fighting traffic on Teflon streets? Fortunately I avoided both those activities today. Employ quirky and creative similes and metaphors, like James Lileks? I could try a weak emulation, but it’s late and I want to get to my Christmas cards. Casual wit takes a lot of hard work.
So I’ll talk about my Grandpa, Clarence Walker. I thought of him as I unloaded my groceries in the cold wind tonight. I remembered that Grandma Walker once told me that he had saved his brother’s (or brother-in-law’s) life, when they both got caught in a snowstorm in the woods. It was one of those classic situations where one guy wants to sit down and rest, and the other guy says, “No, you’ve gotta keep walking. If you fall asleep, you’ll die.” (I understand that’s not entirely true. You can sleep just fine in the snow if you’re well bundled up, especially if you let the snow drift on top of you like a blanket, as long as you’re not physically exhausted. It’s the exhaustion that kills you. I have to assume they were both exhausted that night).
This is Grandpa and Grandma Walker, with (reading left to right) my brother Moloch and me. Must have been around 1953. It was taken in the house in town to which they retired after Dad got married.
Continue reading The Saga of Clarence
Mike S. Adams writes a powerful and paradoxical column today over at Town Hall, on the problem of evil.
A Christmas hymn from Sissel on top of the story! And that’s just what Santa’s got in his bag, because you’ve been good little boys and girls!
It seems somehow appropriate to the day, in some obscure way I can’t quite put my finger on. Mainly because my finger’s lost all feeling.
The winter shoe has now officially dropped. Or has been flung, rather, like an Iraqi journalist’s.
The mighty Andrew Klavan is telling a Christmas ghost story in serial form over at Dirty Harry’s Place. Chapter One is here.
What could be better?