Q. What’s the common thread in this line-up? Michaelangelo, Charlie Peacock, Alexandre Dumas, George Washington Carver.

A. They were all loonies, suggest some psychologists.

Things are better tonight. I suspect several of you prayed for me, and it worked, thank you very much.

I happened to speak to my former boss, down the hill at Headquarters, this morning, and I told him my tale of woe. He said, “Why don’t you talk to _________________?” He was speaking of a fellow who does a lot of landscaping and handyman work around the school.

So I ran the guy down, and he said, yeah, he imagined he could do it in about six hours for thirty bucks an hour.

Yes. I can live with that.

He’ll be out to look at the tree on Monday, and he’ll probably take it down on Tuesday.

Be still, my heart. Be low, my blood pressure.

(You’re getting a little tired of reading me predicting the end of my personal world, only to say, “Never mind,” a day or two later, aren’t you?

Never mind.)

When I came home tonight I went out to the curb to take in my garbage containers. I saw several young guys unloading a trailer at the recently sold house across the street.

One of them greeted me. I told him my name, asked him if he was moving in.

He said (I’m pretty sure), “I’m ___________, and (pointing at the other guy) that’s ____________, my fiancé. There’s another couple here too, helping us move in.”

I didn’t say anything, partly because that’s not my way, but mostly because I was trying to work out, as I walked away, whether I’d actually heard what I thought I’d heard.

Looking through the window, I saw four guys over there. No women. (I did see a woman later, but I think she came in a different car afterwards.)

I may have misjudged them, but it looks like those people are moving in.

And you know what happens when those people discover a neighborhood.

Houses get makeovers. Chic boutiques and coffee shops spring up. Property values soar. I probably won’t be able to pay my taxes anymore, and I’ll have to sell out at an obscene profit.

What a nuisance.

Last night, as I was sitting in this very chair, composing my blog post, a fierce, short, little storm blew through. I had to get up and close the windows. I worried that the power might go off, but it didn’t, so all seemed well.

Just after I’d posted, I noticed a city vehicle with flashing lights going slowly up the street outside my house. I went out on the porch for a closer look, and saw that it was a front end loader.

And it was clearing tree branches out of the street in front of my neighbors’ house.

But it wasn’t their branches. It was the branches of my front-yard tree, which had split like an infinitive and dropped most of its greenery on their side of the driveway.

I knocked on my neighbors’ door. He was gone, but she was there, with a woman friend. I told them what had happened. Said I didn’t think anybody could get out of our shared driveway until the split section of trunk got cleared away.

The neighbor’s wife asked, “Did it hit T_____’s car?”

I asked, “You mean there’s a car under there?”

Sure enough, if you looked closely, you could see a newish Ford SUV, almost completely covered in foliage.

Then followed a stimulating evening of walking around in the yard, waiting for the car owner’s husband (who brought a friend with a chainsaw), and talking to my insurance company on their emergency line. We did get the driveway cleared at last.

I’ve spent much of today making calls, and waiting for calls.

I don’t know whether my carrier or the driver’s carrier will pay for the car damage (no glass broken, but substantial body injury. It drives, though). That decision depends on whether they conclude I was negligent in not cutting the miserable old tree down a year ago.

My carrier will do nothing to reimburse me for tree removal. If it had hit my house, it would have, but there was no actual damage to my property, so no check for me.

I’ve called a couple tree removal services. One got back to me and took a look at the tree. He wants $800 to take it down. I’m hoping I can find somebody cheaper (half the branchwork is already on the ground, for pete’s sake).

Maybe this is God’s way of telling me He doesn’t want me to own a house. I don’t see any alternative to sinking into credit card debt on this, hoping my mortgage interest tax credit in the spring will help me scramble out again.

If not, I guess I can always sell.

Still, as I drove home tonight, the sky was full of slate gray clouds, while the sun was shining brightly. That’s my favorite kind of sky. And a spectacular double rainbow had been drafted across it with a compass.

So I guess God doesn’t hate me.

I had a great idea for today’s post. I remember thinking about it as I heated the water for my tea at lunchtime. I think it had something to do with some correlation between storytelling and Christian theology. It would have been great.

But it flew out of my head, leaving no trace behind.

So instead of that, let’s meditate upon the aforementioned figure of speech, “It flew out of my head.”

I’ve read that in some cultures, people don’t think of themselves as using their heads for thinking. They believe that they think in their chests or their stomachs or something.

I don’t get that at all. As long as I can remember, I’ve “lived in my head,” and have been quite sure where the Brain-work Department is located. Top floor, the one with the view.

Does everyone feel the same way, though? Sometimes I wonder if those guys I’ve envied all my life—the big, athletic ones with the lightning reflexes and fast-twitch muscles—feel differently about their thinking. Maybe they rub their stomachs when they’re working out a problem.

A noted literary example of uncertainty concerning the seat of reason is a passage from Heimskringla, the Sagas of the Kings of Norway, by Snorri Sturlusson. I’ve mentioned this book often before. This particular story is found in other sources, but I have a copy of Heimskringla in the room here, so I’ll use it.

The story is the aftermath of the Battle of Hjorungavaag. This battle was the climax of an attempt to invade Norway by a group of free-lance Vikings called the Jomsvikings. Historians are uncertain whether the Jomsvikings ever actually existed, and if they did, how important they were. But they loom large in the sagas. They were an international brotherhood of warriors who operated out of a fortress of their own, probably someplace in northern Poland (yes, there were some Polish Vikings. “Viking” was a job description, not an ethnic designation, in those days).

The Jomsvikings had attended a feast given by King Svein of Denmark, in which they made a classic mistake—they allowed themselves to get in a bragging contest leading to competitive oaths after drinking too much. When they woke up (hung over) the next morning, they discovered that their leader had made a vow to conquer Norway. Their honor code left them no choice but to try to fulfill it.

After some initial success, they were met by a formidable Norwegian fleet at Hjorungavaag. The Norwegians, needless to say, cleaned their hourglasses. (Chances are Erling Skjalgsson was in that fleet, though he’s not mentioned in the text.)

It’s at this point that the famous scene occurs. The Jomsvikings are made to sit on some logs, with their legs tied to keep them from escaping. Then a man comes with an axe and begins to behead them, one at a time.

At this point, we join the text in progress:

Then one of them said, “Here I have a dagger in my hand, and I shall stick it in the ground if I am conscious when my head is chopped off.” He was beheaded, and the dagger dropped from his hand.

I suppose it helps, at moments like that, to have a scientific goal to distract you.

All right, all right. I’ll tell you how it ends.

One of the men, who has long, beautiful hair, expresses his concern that his ’do will get all bloody. So one of the Norwegians wraps his hands in the hair and holds it away from his head. When the axe comes down, the Jomsviking pulls himself back sharply, so that the Norwegian’s hands are severed.

Jarl Erik Haakonsson, the leader of the Norwegian army, is so delighted with this trick that he spares the Jomsviking’s life (you’ve got to admit he was a man who could take a joke. We aren’t told how the guy who lost his hands felt about it. I have to figure he was one of my ancestors).

Seeing this, the headsman, who has a personal grudge against a Jomsviking further down the line, runs toward that man, in order to kill him before any more pardons slip through. But another Jomsviking trips him, and his intended victim grabs the axe and kills him with it. This bit of performance art pleases Jarl Erik so much that he lets all the rest of them live.

And they dined out on the story, no doubt, for the rest of their lives.

Except for the guy with no hands. I suppose he just thought about it a lot.

And he couldn’t even rub his stomach to help him think.

Seasonal Color Inspiration: Autumn. Beautiful.

Gaius on Blue Crab Blvd. discusses an literary essay on the Iranian Madman’s appearance yesterday by Bret Stephens in Opinion Journal. Does it matter if anyone believes his arguments? Arguments lose their significance when they are backed with guns and bombs. When guns are drawn, the point of discussion drops entirely, and the only question remaining is who will control whom. We can tell the Iranian we respect his freedom, but he will reply that we can go to hell.

Which is just one reason we can’t elect Democrats to protect our country. Go with Thompson or Huckabee (or maybe both in a type of reverse 1992 ticket).

Covenant College, local to my area of Chattanooga, TN, is starting their Books and Coffee series at Rock Point Books tomorrow night with a discussion on The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo.

Saturday was interesting. My assignment was to drive down to the Mankato area (about two hours southwest of here). That didn’t seem like a major challenge. The road is Highway 169, which is easy to get to from here, and (as a bonus) provides one of my favorite drives in Minnesota. Much of it passes through a pretty valley. And the leaves were beginning (just beginning) to turn.

I gave a ride to a young fellow who’s just joined the Viking Age Club & Society. He showed up at the time appointed, and off we went.

What I didn’t anticipate was that the Renaissance would bar the way to the Viking Age.

The annual Minnesota Renaissance Festival is in Chanhassen, and Highway 169 is the major access route for most of those who attend. I hadn’t thought of that. But, frankly, even if I had I wouldn’t have expected it to be a problem. The festival opens in the morning, and we were going past in the early afternoon.

But it was nearly the last weekend for the event, and it was a beautiful day, and (apparently) everybody in Hennepin and Ramsey counties decided that this was the day to go. Traffic had backed up for miles and miles. We crawled for nearly two hours. When we finally passed the festival site, it appeared that every spot in the parking area was already filled. I don’t know what the people who suffered that sclerotic drive along with us did when they finally reached their destination.

So we arrived at the farm we were headed for a full hour late. Once we got going it went fine, and a guy who’d never used a sword before “killed” me repeatedly.

Sometimes even Harald Hardrada must have had days like that.

Then we all went out for burgers, and eventually we headed home.

Traffic near the festival was now clotted with people leaving, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as coming in.

On the other hand, nobody rear-ended me coming in.

The traffic had slowed to a stop, and suddenly we felt that familiar kick from behind. I got out and found a lady checking the front of her minivan. There was a parking ticket from an area theme park on her dash (Chanhassen is the entertainment nexus of our state, I guess), and I surmised that she’d taken her daughter (who was sitting in the passenger seat) out for a fun day, until the unthinkable had happened.

Actually the right word wasn’t “unthinkable” but “negligible.” Neither of us detected any noticeable damage, so we exchanged information and continued on our ways.

I rather like being the injured party. I do gracious pretty well. I’m not so good at “apologetic without actually saying you’re sorry, because the insurance people don’t like that.”

It was nearly 9:00 before we got home.

I think even Harald Hardrada would have told me it was a full day.

Though I think Harald would have taken a harder line with the other drivers.

This link takes you to a site where you can vote on a number of historical preservation projects up for grants in the Chicago area. Among them is “The Viking.”

“The Viking” was (I’m pretty sure) the first Viking ship replica ever sailed. It went from Norway to America in 1893 for the World’s Columbian Exhibition. Since that time it has languished in less-than-ideal storage conditions in various places, and it won’t be around much longer if a restoration isn’t done and suitable shelter found.

The deal here is that you can vote on which of several projects will get preservation grants. You don’t have to be a Chicagoan (I’m registered) and you can vote once a day until the deadline. As I understand it, it’s not winner-take-all, and the voting won’t be the only determining factor in the final decisions. But it can’t hurt.

The ship is doing pretty well in the race so far. It’s Number 3 in votes. If you’re at all interested (or if you’re interested in another of the projects), I encourage you to register and vote. “Early and often,” as they say.

If so, adding phrases like this to your vocabulary will help you appear as if you spent too much time in the classroom. “Dic mihi solum facta, domina.” Just the facts, ma’am. (via Amy’s old book blog)