I often slough off my responsibilities on Fridays by posting videos, just as high school teachers used to wheel out the film projectors when they were too hung-over to teach that day. Tonight, for some reason, a short film about the Fantoft Stave Church, near Bergen, Norway. In winter, because it’s winter now.
This is a polite little film, clearly intended not to offend.
Because there’s a small detail the video leaves out. They tell you it burned down in 1992, and was rebuilt. True as far as it goes.
They do not tell you how it burned. It was not an accident.
A heathen burned it down, on purpose, to strike a blow against Christian oppression.
I saw the building during its reconstruction. My first trip to Norway was in 1995, along with my dad. While we were visiting a cousin in Bergen, he took us to see the building as it stood at the time.
Not much to see then. I remember black plastic sheeting covering the roof.
Photo: La Rochelle, France. Credit: Rafael Garcin nimbus_vulpis. Unsplash license.
There is no reason whatever why you should be interested in Norwegian New Year’s customs, but it’s something I’ve got at hand (in the form of Sverre Østen’s book Hva Dagene Vet [What the Days Know]), published 1988 by Ernst G. Mortensens Forlag, and I haven’t got any other ideas. I translate from his account:
The day is dedicated to Saint Sylvester, who was pope from 314—35, and bore the responsibility of leading the church from the period of persecution to the new period of peace.
On the last day of the year people ate oatmeal and herring, as they believed their ancestors had done. The oats symbolized gold and the herring silver; which is to say, wealth.
Many believed that empty pockets and cupboards today portended poverty, which may have been the reason many did a great deal of shopping in the last few days.
It seems to have been particularly common to throw shoes: They would sit on a stool at the door with their backs to the living room. Grabbed their left earlobes with their right hands, and tossed a shoe with their left hand over their right shoulder. If the toe of the shoe landed pointing toward the door, they would quit and find a new job. But if the toe pointed inward, they would continue there until the next “moving day.” [It was the custom in old times for all farm workers to move to a new farm, if they chose to change jobs, on one single day of the year. I can’t remember which day it was. lw]
New Year’s Eve is haunted, but one can scare off ghosts by strewing beans around the house during the day and saying this: “With these beans I redeem myself and mine.” The spirits will then pick up the beans and not bother the family over the coming 12 months.
New Year’s Eve was often a dangerous evening; all kinds of witchcraft was about. To keep witchcraft away, they fired shot after shot over the house roofs. In later times it became the custom to “shoot in” the new year.
And on New Year’s Day?
One custom was to keep the door shut to make sure the first person across the threshold in the new year was not a woman. That would be bad luck. The best thing would be a dark-haired man. He would bring good fortune.
A few days back somebody mentioned on Facebook that they’d watched La Palma. And I said, “Wait a minute, is this La Palma, the Norwegian movie I did script translation on?” (Actually, I had the idea it was a miniseries. Maybe it was, when I worked on it.) A little research revealed that it had indeed debuted on Netflix this month.
I don’t subscribe to Netflix at this point, so I can’t review it for you. In fact, I probably shouldn’t review it at all, under the terms of my non-disclosure agreement.
You have to understand, I’m completely out of the loop anymore. I agreed in the NDA not to tell anyone I’d worked on any particular project until it was released. But nobody announces the releases to me. I get no memos.
The script as it exists now may very well have been altered considerably since the last time I saw it. The script I saw was based on an (unproven) theory that human activity activates geological instability, causing earthquakes. And earthquakes cause tsunamis. And that’s the cue for a disaster movie.
I might also mention that the story involves a lesbian couple.
Beyond that, you’ll have to make your own judgments.
It is either inevitable or compulsory – I can’t remember which – for aging bloggers to do at least one nostalgia post during the Christmas (properly the Advent) season. Memories of childhood, of Christmas in a bygone age, when life was simpler and purer and our societal values were probably better.
Anyway, I haven’t yet finished the book I’m reading for review, and I posted a song last night. So tonight it’s nostalgia. After a brief report on my day.
I had a moment of satisfaction this morning, when I finally got my first Christmas cards ready to mail. (Yes, I’m one of about three people – all of us senescent – still sending Christmas cards. See above, under “bygone age.”).
I always have trouble remembering how to generate mailing labels with Microsoft Word. I only do it once a year, after all. This year was worse, because I had to get my database files from my old laptop to my new laptop, and for some reason nothing I saved – even to Dropbox – on the old computer can be accessed anywhere else. So I had to email them to myself, and when it didn’t work at first, I thought some further incompatibilities were involved, probably beyond my expertise. But I succeeded at last.
Anyway, the Norwegian cards go out first, of course – farther to travel – and now they’re in the hands of the swift appointed couriers.
Where was I going? Nostalgia, oh yes.
I wanted to talk to you about the artist whose work is re-posted above. Probably means nothing to you – he’s a midwestern thing. But he was part of Christmas for me back in the day.
His name was Lee Mero (1885-1977). He was born in Ortonville, Minnesota and studied art at the Minneapolis School of Art and the Chase School of Art in New York City. He distinguished himself in his youth by rescuing a girl from drowning in a boat accident on Lake Minnetonka in Minneapolis, and by being arrested in New York City for drawing a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge (the Great War was going on; he might have been a German spy). He tried his hand at fine art for a while, doing some controversial Cubist stuff, but finally settled down in commercial art. He worked for, among other clients, Coca Cola.
But he was most famous in these parts for Christmas cards and his work for Augsburg Publishing House, the company that provided Sunday School curricula, church bulletins, and other goods to the churches of my (then) denomination. I spent many hours in church studying Mero’s drawings in various contexts.
I wanted to be an artist back then (eventually I would discover I’m better with words), so I paid attention to art. Lee Mero’s style was not one I was interested in emulating; it was rather old-fashioned and often stylized. But he was a master of composition, and every line was precisely placed.
But I remember him best for the Augsburg Christmas annuals, always entitled, simply, “Christmas.” These annuals evolved from “calendars” that used to be published by Norwegian Christian groups at Christmas time, often to raise money for missions. They featured inspirational articles, specially commissioned art, the lyrics to Christmas carols, and anything else that might serve to increase festivity and turn hearts Heaven-ward in a season that’s too often pretty material.
Lee Mero used to contribute several pages of a sort of comic strip. The ones I remember were nostalgic, reminiscing on how Christmas was in his boyhood, in the late 19th Century. He drew men in frock coats and top hats, and ladies with bustles, and horse-drawn cabs and potbellied stoves and oil lamps, evoking the unchanging excitement of a child in any generation. (His work very much inspired my Christmas chapter in Troll Valley.)
Lee Mero is not much remembered anymore. So I raise my (metaphorical) glass of eggnog to him now.
How do I start this post without indulging my self-righteousness?
Probably impossible. I’m a pretty self-righteous guy when it comes down to it.
Let’s try this – I’m sure there are lots of principled leftists out there who are not reveling in the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Health Group.
But there sure seem to be a lot of them – and loud ones – playing Madame DeFarge right now. Reinforcing my unjust, unChristian prejudice that says that if you scratch a leftist, you’ll find Robespierre.
I know nothing of Brian Thompson’s personal life, beyond what Wikipedia tells me. He may have been a man I would not have liked. He may have been a man I despised.
He did not deserve to be murdered.
But that point is an obvious one, and not really the object of this post.
I was taken aback when I discovered Brian Thompson’s point of origin.
He was born in Ames, Iowa, but he grew up in Jewell Junction, better known to those familiar with it as just Jewell. He attended South Hamilton High School and the University of Iowa.
Distant bells rang in my long-term memory. I know Jewell, Iowa.
I had two roommates during my first year of college. One of them came from Jewell. I visited his home. Sang in a choir concert in his church. He used to talk about good old South Hamilton High.
But my connections go further than that. That part of Iowa is, in a sense, a homeland for me.
I’ve written here before (long ago; there’s no reason you should remember) about a collateral ancestor of mine. His name was Wier Weeks and he was a pioneer in the Norwegian immigrant community around Lisbon, Illinois. Lisbon became one of the centers where Norwegian newcomers settled in the mid-19th Century.
Eventually, the land filled up with Norwegians. (People doubtless sickened and died from the sheer social dullness.) So they got together, held a meeting or something, and decided to create a satellite colony. They sent out spies to find a likely place, and settled on an area in central Iowa. This area comprises such towns as Story City, Radcliffe, and Jewell. And it was there that my father’s parents’ families came in the 1880s. My grandfather Walker was born near Radcliffe, my grandmother near Story City. Both families moved north to Kenyon, Minnesota in the early 20th Century.
If you’re wondering what lesson I mean to draw – I guess it’s this. People from small towns in the center of Iowa are not the elite. They are not Mayflower descendants. They’re not even strictly WASPS, being (to a large degree) Scandinavian rather than Anglo-Saxon.
Thompson’s alleged murderer, on the other hand, was born to an affluent family in Maryland, and attended the exclusive Gilman School in Baltimore.
In other words, this was an act of “revolutionary” violence visited upon a member of the middle class (one who got above his station) by a member of the elite.
Which is, it seems to me, emblematic of revolution in the modern world.
Writing/publishing update: I’ve worked my way through The Year of the Warrior to prepare a paper version for Kindle Direct Publishing. (Note: This is a very long book. If sheer mass of paper is gauge of literary greatness, I’m on a level with Sigrid Undset and Tolkien and Tolstoy.) I’ve tried to clean it up, fix automatically generated punctuation problems, add a comma here and there where I thought it would aid reader comprehension.
So tomorrow I figure I’ll try to upload it. I anticipate that this will not work. This book is different from the others, because Baen Books still publishes the e-book (at my request). Will the Amazon system accept a paper version from somebody else? I expect there will be problems with that.
Amazon’s customer service has actually worked well for me in the past. I just figure there’ll be hoops to jump through. I’ll keep you posted.
Above, a sweet little video from NRK, the Norwegian state broadcasting service, with one of Norway’s favorite Christmas songs, Å Jul Med Din Glede.
The first verse means something like this (literal; no attempt at versification):
O Christmas with your happiness, oh childlike desire, We all bid you welcome. We all greet you with jubilant voices, Ten-thousand times welcome! We clap our hands, we sing and we laugh, So glad we are, so glad we are. We swing around in a circle and curtsey – and bow.
I don’t talk about politics much anymore on this blog – times have changed. Blogs are no longer a big thing for political discussion (nor for discussing books, come to think of it, but I think they’re better suited to books). The more immediate, shorter-form media like X are bigger today – though I can’t honestly say the level of discourse has improved.
But that’s beside my point. My point is that I want to touch on politics today – but not, I hope, in an inflammatory manner.
Though what I’m saying might work out more offensive (for some) than the kind of plain insult you see on X or Facebook.
Here’s what I have in mind. It’s no surprise, I imagine, that I’m pleased by the results of the recent presidential election.
But it’s not so much because I’m over the moon about the man we elected.
It’s about the fact that – it seems to me – we may be seeing at last the beginning of the end of Boomer ascendency.
I’ll grant that Donald J. Trump is a Boomer himself. (I’ll even grant, for the sake of argument, that I’m a Boomer too.)
But the leadership team he’s bringing in seems to be mostly younger people. Millennials and Gen X and… I forget what they call them all. They’re all whippersnappers to me.
I put much hope in whippersnappers these days.
The new leadership team that’s coming in never put flowers in their hair and went to San Francisco. They never dreamed of Woodstock. They never tuned in, turned on and dropped out.
In my opinion, we’ve had plenty of that.
The Greatest Generation raised us. They’d been through the Great Depression and World War II. They’d been deprived. They’d suffered. They’d tightened belts and watered down the soup through many long years.
After the War, they came home and vowed to give their kids everything they never had.
We got spoiled.
As we Boomers grew up, we were told over and over (I was there, I remember) that we were the smartest, best-educated generation the world had ever seen. We would change the world.
And boy, did we change the world.
We turned it into a hellscape. We started one war after another. We fostered radicalism and terrorism. We did our best to eradicate classical wisdom and undermine liberal democracy.
I think we’ve changed the world enough.
Maybe the kids can salvage something from the wreck.
Every few years, I like to perform the public service of providing my mother’s pumpkin pie recipe, which is now known in the family as “my” pumpkin pie recipe. But I don’t mind taking false credit, since I’m pretty sure Mom got it from somebody else in the first place.
I took time from my busy work schedule and madcap whirl of social obligations this morning to make pies for our family gathering tomorrow, at an undisclosed location. The picture above is not those pies; it’s a picture I took of a long-departed pie pair from a bygone year. But they are enough, they will suffice; I did not make any notable innovations.
The thing about this recipe – WHICH IS REALLY SIMPLE – is that it produces a more nuanced pie. There are people out there, I understand, who like the traditional pies with their in-your-face, extreme, street-level pumpkin spice flavor. If you’re one of those, God bless you. Enjoy your gustatory shock.
But if you like things a little more gentle, here’s what you do:
Follow all the instructions on the can of pumpkin pie filling. All brands work equally well, in my experience.
Instead of the two eggs called for in the recipe, make it seven (7). YES! SEVEN EGGS! DEFY CONVENTION!
Pour the resulting mixture into two (2) deep dish pie crusts.
Bake as instructed.
What you get is two (2) delicately flavored, custardy pies.
Enjoy.
And if you think of it, pray for whatever long-dead lady in Kenyon, Minnesota Mom lifted this recipe from.
I have been, for the last couple weeks, a very dull boy (that’s what the journalists call a “dog bites man story”). My life has consisted of translating, reading, and some noodling on the internet for a break now and then. OK, I do sleep. I go to the gym 3 or 4 times a week, and I get up early to work on my novel-formatting 6 days a week. But basically, not much variety.
This morning I was looking for my Amazon Fire tablet. Couldn’t find it anywhere. I was going out to lunch (Perkins) and I wanted to read while eating, as is my wont. Well, I also have a Kindle reader, which I keep for emergencies (and for the inevitable day when the Fire burns out, because they never last long), so I pulled my book (the third volume of Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset) up on the Kindle. But I stopped at the gym on the way to Perkins, to see if I’d left the Fire there. They didn’t have it.
Long story short, at the restaurant I came up with a vague memory of putting the Fire down among the junk on the dining room table this morning. And behold, when I got home, there it sat, like a friend left off the guest list.
Which provoked thoughts about growing old and forgetful.
So let’s suppress that thought. How about an excursion into my murky past? I mentioned my college musical group a while back and somebody (I don’t think there was more than one) asked how our music could be heard. I answered – with some relief – that our stuff has been mercifully lost in the detritus of the analogue recording age.
And then one of my old friends posted the YouTube video above. Somebody – for some reason – has acquired our two albums and posted one song from each. The other one is disqualified for my purposes because I neither wrote it nor sing in it.
The song I posted above, “Elizabeth to Me,” is not characteristic of our output, being not religious, but a plain love song. The melody was written by my friend Chuck Pedersen. He asked me to give it lyrics. He wanted to have it addressed to his girlfriend Beth (who later joined the group and, even later, married him). The lead vocalist on this recording is yours truly. I don’t like it much – my voice seems to me uneven and weak. However, the song as a whole is, I think, not much worse than a lot of songs that became big hits in those fuzzy-minded days.
Anyway, you wanted one of our songs; here it is. You asked for it, as the judge said to the man sentenced to hang for attempted suicide.
I offer the two pictures above for your perusal and ponderation.
The top one is one of my favorite personal snaps, which I used as my desktop wallpaper for many years. It’s from my first Norway cruise (2001, I think). As I recall, I took it from the aft deck, on the Aurlandsfjord, at breakfast on my birthday, which is in July.
The second picture is one I generated the other day using my bete noir, Artificial Intelligence. My new laptop includes the Paint app, which has a brand new AI feature. I tried a few experiments with it in odd moments, and one time I asked it to show me a Norwegian fjord.
It gave me three options, of which the one above was one. I thought it looked familiar.
I wonder if the gnomes of the interwebs incorporated my image into their “fjord” database.
Of course, how many possible combinations of mountains and water can there be? My photo pleased me because it was sort of an ideal of a fjord. The resemblance therefore, could easily be coincidental.
[Not only do I hate AI, but I fear it. I cannot bring myself to openly accuse it of plagiarism. What grim vengeance might it take?]
As an aside, I might mention that my attempt to restore curly single quotation marks, in the draft of The Year of the Warrior that I’m preparing for Amazon paperback, was wholly successful. It worked. It worked at once. It worked better than I dared hope.
