This is appalling. I should just face my failure and give up on blogging now.

I’ve reached the bottom. The absolute sludge-in-the-Worcestershire-bottle of blogdom. I’m going to do a post about my health.

I’m sorry. So very sorry. I’ll try to do better in the future.

First of all, I probably won’t be posting on Monday. Nothing serious. I’ve agreed to participate in a long-term medical study, and it involves undergoing a certain test which I won’t specify, because you may be one of those who (like me) eat at the keyboard. But it involves being sedated, and I may not be up to posting.

If I do post, you’ll know it went better than I expected.

I also saw my doctor today, on an unrelated matter (getting a prescription changed for insurance purposes, if you have to know).

It’s always dangerous to see a doctor, needless to say. 90% of all people who die of lingering diseases have seen a doctor recently.

It’s especially dangerous to see a new doctor. I had to change horses because my previous Galen, a man who believed in doing as little as possible as long as the patient wasn’t actually in debilitating pain, has retired. The new fellow is more energetic, brimming with fresh ideas for improving my life.

He thinks I ought to be sleep tested, to see if I need one of those C-PAP machines.

I’ve lived in fear of those devices for most of my adult life. In my mind, C-PAPs are for old, fat men.

The fact that I am in fact an old, fat man is of no comfort to me. (Thank you so much for bringing it up.)

On the other hand, the doctor speaks seductive words about improved mood, lower cholesterol and a reduction in acid reflux.

I think I see a face mask and a plastic tube in my future. I’ll keep you posted.

No need to thank me.

Winter again.

I know. It’s been winter for months. But our snow cover is spotty, and temperatures have been teasing the freezing point for weeks—sometimes above, sometimes below. Weather as cold as that would have seemed awful back in October, but in January it’s not so bad.

Today the bottom dropped out. And by “the bottom dropped out,” I don’t actually mean record-breaking low temperatures. I just mean the playing field has moved south to zero-to-fifteen Farenheit territory, wind chills down below zero.

And it feels miserable.

Later, sometime in February, it won’t seem so bad either.

I don’t handle the cold well. I’m fairly sure I’ve told you that. When hardier souls are clapping their unmittened hands and saying, “Ah, this is good! This is bracing!” I’m trying to find another sweater, and calculating whether I can conserve more body heat by jamming my hands in my pockets or using them to cover my ears.

Cold induces physical pain in me, quickly following exposure. My ears hurt. My fingers hurt. My brother Moloch informs me (relentlessly) that it’s all psychological. It’s a failure of my character. If I had a better attitude, he says, I’d enjoy the cold as much as he does.

I’m not convinced. I think I know as much about bad attitudes as anyone, and although I spend enough time in Depressionville to qualify for resident status there, I’ve never been able to make a bad mood deliver actual, physical pain.

And where does Moloch get off talking about character, anyway? He lives in Iowa. It’s practically tropical down there.

Today is a good day. A day that will live in my yellowed book of memories, for reasons I’ll explain below.

Dave Lull sent me this link, about how it looks like some Norwegians served in the Roman legions.

Archaeological findings have strengthened notions amongst scholars that quite a few Norwegians, from the farthermost north of Europe, in all likelihood served as soldiers in the Roman legions.

You may or may not know that it was the practice of the Romans to station “auxiliaries” (that is, legions made up of “barbarians” from the provinces) in corners of the empire farthest from their original homes, so as to prevent them growing sympathetic to local insurgents. A large number of the soldiers who served in Palestine came from Germany. Assuming that the Norwegians would have been lumped together with the Germans, some of my ancestors (my great-grandfather was born at Avaldsnes) might have been witnesses to the life, death and even resurrection of Christ.

Might have scourged Christ personally, as a matter of fact. Though I prefer to imagine virtuous centurions.

Anyway, the good thing that happened today was that I came home to a package from Norway in the mail (you thought I was writing about your package, weren’t you, Phil? Well, your package was great too. Thanks again). This was from Cousin Trygve in Hardanger, and it was the CD De Beste, by Sissel Kyrkjebø (sorry, no picture there).

As is to be expected in a “Best of” album, a lot of it is stuff I already have (as if I can ever have enough copies of Sissel’s songs). But it includes some cuts from the very beginning of her career, when she was a girl soloist on a Norwegian TV show called “Syng Med Oss” (“Sing With Us”). One of them is a song that was on an album the show’s cast did for the Norwegian National Cancer Foundation, which I once borrowed from a friend and of which I made an illegal copy, one of my treasured possessions to this day. (No, I don’t condone illegal copying, but this was an album absolutely impossible to acquire by legal means. That’s not an excuse, just an explanation.)

The song was Sissel doing the Japanese international hit “Sukiyaki.” I know it sounds ridiculous—a Japanese song sung in Norwegian by a Norwegian. But it’s heartbreakingly beautiful. Sissel was born to sing that song. According to the liner notes, I’m not the only person who’s been dreaming of a re-release of that cut. They’ve been getting requests from all over the world (Sissel is actually very big in Japan). And now it’s here. And I have it.

If I never post again, it’ll because I’ve died of joy. Life can only go downhill from here.

Update: In case anyone should be thinking of ordering the De Beste album (and I do recommend it), I should give one warning. What I’ve heard so far has been almost uniformly great, with some wonderful surprises, but one big disappointment. One of the cuts on the second disk is Sissel’s “duet” with the rapper Warren G, over the music to Borodin’s “Prince Igor.” It’s a very odd mix, with Borodin’s lovely music and Sissel’s transcendent voice backing up Warren G’s hostile and frankly dirty rap lyrics. There’s a lot of profanity in it, and it sits like a cowpie in the middle of a cathedral. I understand the song did well commercially, but I wish Sissel had turned it down. So be warned.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but I’m hosting my brothers and their families for Thanksgiving (no doubt there will be much slapstick to report once the smoke has cleared).

Anyway, tonight I’m baking pumpkin pie, using the Sacred Walker Recipe. I shall share this recipe with you now, for the betterment of the commonwealth.

I learned it from my mom, who for all her faults was a pretty good cook. It’s also really simple. If you can make a pie from canned filling, you can make this adjustment.

Here’s the secret:

However many eggs your recipe calls for, increase the quantity to 7 (seven).

Otherwise do everything the same, except that the makings will have to go into two deep dish pie pans. Bake as instructed.

That’s it. The result is two lovely, delicate, custardy pumpkin pies. Your family will love them, unless they’re jaded or Swedish or something.

Expect this post to be a mess. Several things to write about, without any unifying theme of which I’m aware.

The project of cataloging our archives continues apace in the library. We’re into the B’s. (We catalog the old books by authors’ names.) But lots of books have been mislabeled, since previous librarians have lacked my magisterial knowledge of Norwegian.

One such book I looked at today was a compendium of Lutheran theology, translated from German, printed in Stavanger in 1856. That nearly took my breath away. Publishing in Norway doesn’t go back much farther than that. It was increased literacy, largely sparked by the pietist movement with which I still identify, that made such things possible in that poor country, at the time a province of Sweden.

Another was a book from the 1860s, a small collection of poems by Peder Dass, a pastor-poet who worked in the north of Norway in the 17th Century and became a genuinely mythical figure, endowed with magical powers in the eyes of the common folk. He wasn’t a magician, but he was a pretty good poet.

I also looked at a bundle of much more recent books sent by one of our pastors. One is the highly disjointed autobiography of a pastor who used to be prominent in youth ministry in a Lutheran church body that no longer exists. When I saw the name of the church he served for many years, I began to wonder if I knew this man. Then I saw a picture of him with his “collection of pictures of John the Baptist,” and I knew it was the same guy.

Flash back to the summer of 1970. The Christian musical group for which I was lyricist was traveling around the east coast region. We were three guys and three girls. I’d made the major mistake, months before, of falling—well, I won’t say falling in love, because once I got some distance on the thing I realized my motivation had originated about a foot and a half south of my heart—developing a crush on one of the girls in the group. A few weeks before I’d made the further mistake of telling her how I felt (which she already knew all about, needless to say). I’d gotten the response I knew in my heart I’d get.

In retrospect it was a good thing she turned me down. She was a fairly neurotic girl, and between our mutual dysfunctions we’d have made a marriage that would have lasted, at best, about half an hour if she’d been insane enough to encourage me. But at the time my world was landfill. I became a walking shadow, a memento mori in flare jeans. Since I’m no hogshead of laughs at the best of times, I think I probably served as a negative witness for Christ that summer.

Finally we came to that pastor’s church. Well, most of us came. Our group leader, fed up to here with me, and with the couple in the group who had gotten together (and who spent quite a lot of time making out), announced that he had business to tend to at home and left us on our own that particular week.

So we showed up at the church of this prominent pastor, one who (we learned later) was in a position to do much good or much harm to our sponsoring organization’s reputation with his denomination. We were missing a leader. We had one couple with hands all over each other, and another couple who barely spoke to each other. And me with a rain cloud over my head, like Joe Bfxztplk (I’m not sure of the spelling) in the old Li’l Abner comic.

I was going to reminisce some more about that week, but you know… I’d just rather not.

Good news—the guy who looked at my rental room yesterday says he’ll move in. Probably this weekend. I’m saved, financially.

Cloud gone, for now.

I took a half day off work today, so I could go to the airport and meet my brother Moloch, returning from Tanzania.

I waited two hours and he never came out of the gate. He didn’t answer a page, and a call to Customs let me know they weren’t holding him in durance vile there.

One assumes he missed his connection in Amsterdam. Either that or he’s fallen into one of those missing persons mysteries along with Ambrose Bierce and Judge Crater.

I’ll keep you posted.

Update: Moloch is stuck in Dar es Salaam.

I think my evening will be free.

Can it get worse after yesterday?

You bet it can.

I found out I have another Church Constitution meeting tonight.

I knew about it already, actually. It was right there in my date book (which records “dates” in the sense of “calendar dates,” needless to say, not dates in the sense of “I’ll pick you up at 7:00 for dinner and a movie.”). But I had the idea that it was a tentative scheduling, likely to be cancelled due to conflict. No such luck.

If I were a Catholic I’d cry out to some minor saint, “HOW MUCH CAN ONE MAN BE EXPECTED TO ENDURE?”

Not a major saint, of course. I’d be embarrassed to bother a big saint with a little gripe like this one.

Some minor, mostly forgotten saint. Somebody like St. Olaf, who was patron saint to a country that went Protestant out from under him.

Of course St. Olaf might not like me because I write books about Erling Skjalgsson, his lifelong enemy.

But I figure he’s probably so neglected these days that he appreciates any attention he can get.

Then again, from what I read of his life, I figure he’s probably not really a saint anyway. He’s probably still in Purgatory.

Wait, I don’t believe in Purgatory either.

Never mind.

I have a meeting to go to.