To all you southerners who are sharing this delightful cold snap with us, let me just say, “Welcome to our world!” And let me remind you that Global Warming Is Your Friend. Burn some wood tonight. Take an unnecessary trip in an SUV. Stock up on incandescent light bulbs. If we all work together, we can make this a better—and more temperate—world.

It’s supposed to be warmer tomorrow, though. And above freezing by the weekend.

See, it’s working!



I was going to tell you about my niftiest Christmas present. My brother Baal, from boyhood, has had a remarkable gift for finding good presents for people. I can only attribute this to his actually paying attention to other people’s wants and tastes. This has always made me suspect he was adopted.

This is what he gave me this year. I knew what it was the moment I opened the package, and my heart leaped up, because I’d wanted one of these for some time:

“>

It’s a Viking padlock, based (according to my internet research) on an archaeological find from Ireland. They came in much more elaborate styles, but this bare-bones model is fairly easy to explain. In the picture above, it’s locked. You can see the key, with its square-holed business end, resting on top of the locking arm.

This is how it looks opened:

As you can see, the lock actually has three parts. The locking pin engages with the end of the locking arm, and the spring holds the pin in place. The key is pushed over the pin (as shown above), and compresses the spring to unlock it and allow the pin to be removed. Simple, and secure enough for general purposes.

It was made by a friend of Baal’s, who blacksmiths as a hobby. I hope to have him make me a new latch for my Viking chest, to go with this lock, if I find I can afford it.

Teachout quotes Ogden Nash on the new year.

Since I’ve written on political topics lately, let me link to this post on Giuliani’s article in City Journal. Harrison Scott Key argues that Giuliani has been the most forward-speaking candidate on the platform, telling us what we will or should do when problems come. “Government should harness the inherent strength of the American people and the private sector,” Giuliani writes, “in order to build a society that may bend-but not break-if catastrophe does strike. The American people are ready, willing, and able to take a more active role in our civil defense.”

I spent today in bed, in a dim room. This would make sense if I’d been celebrating last night, lapping up champagne and jitterbugging past the Magic Hour and on to morning, like a character from Wodehouse. But I did none of those things. I stayed up till midnight, reading a book, and then went to bed. I just don’t feel very well today, and chose to rest up so I’ll be ready to go back to work tomorrow. That’s my life—all the discomfort of a hangover without having any fun.

I’ll make a few bold predictions for 2008:

Liberal political candidates who support gay marriage, abortion on demand, surrender in Iraq, gun confiscation and higher taxes will promise to “bring us all together.”

Liberals will continue to insist that they’ve been muzzled, since “the media are dominated by the conservatives.” When challenged on this contention they will cite the mere existence of Rush Limbaugh.

Hollywood will make more movies attacking America, or Christianity, or both. When asked why, they’ll say that this is what the public wants.

Whatever the weather in 2008 is like, it will be used as evidence of… well, you know.

The rich will get richer. The poor will get a little richer, but not enough to stop them envying the rich.

The Left will continue to insist that Christian fundamentalists are not different in any way from Muslim terrorists.

There will be a new Third Party. If it’s not called “The Conspiracy Theory Party,” it should be.

Fred Thompson has a blog post on Redstate which responds to an article claiming he doesn’t care much about running for president. Thompson writes:

It is clear that there are those in the media who will exact a high price for candor and from those whom they consider to be insufficiently ambitious. But it is with increasing amazement that we see that those who are willing to slant or leave out important parts of a story to make their point.

If a candidate succumbs to this he will be reduced to nothing more than a sound bite machine.

He reproduces a transcript, that I first saw over here, which states his desire to serve as president and his belief that he has the experience to do so. He paints himself as a citizen candidate, not ambitious for political power, but willing to serve the country. This is the man who declined to run for the senate again because he had agreed to the principle of term limits, meaning he would serve only two terms. He says:

I’m saying that I have the background, the capability and concern to do this and do it for the right reasons. I’m not particularly interested in running for president, but I think I’d make a good president.

Nowadays, the process has become much more important than it used to be.

I don’t know that they ever asked George Washington a question like this. I don’t know that they ever asked Dwight D. Eisenhower a question like this. But nowadays, it’s all about fire in the belly.

Also, Thompson answers several questions in this Q&A.

“The critics said it couldn’t be done, but the vision and determination of General David Petraeus have brought greater security and cause for optimism to the people of Iraq. He is The Sunday Telegraph’s Person of the Year.” This British newspaper has better perspective, at least on this subject, than some stateside magazines.

Since the Walkers are doing Christmas this Saturday, I haven’t actually gotten much in the way of presents yet (special thanks, though, are due to Cousin Trygve in Norway, who sent a chocolate Santa from the inimitable Freya Company). One gift I have gotten was a fifty dollar grocery store card from the dominant local chain.

Since I have to get ready for Saturday, I figured I’d use the card to get what I needed, and do some stocking up, too. I mean, fifty bucks! I’ve never spent fifty bucks at the grocery store in my life. The very idea of spending that much seemed to me an all but impossible task. Do they make grocery carts that big, I wondered.

So when I went through the check-out line with my laden cart, imagine my surprise when the total came to more than a hundred dollars.

I was able to pay the balance. That’s not a problem. And I wasn’t throwing away money on non-essentials, by and large. Mainly I was stocking up on my usual staples.

And I realize that, when I deduct the value of the card, I got a really good deal.

It’s just that I’m not used to spending money at the grocery store the same way you folks with families do. I’m not used to shopping at that… altitude.

The oxygen’s a little thin up there, isn’t it?

I missed this news from several months ago and heard it again today as part of an immigration discussion. Bob Clark, the director of the popular holiday film A Christmas Story (as well as a variety of silly or stupid movies), was killed by an illegal immigrant who was driving drunk on April 4. I’m not one to call for rounding up all illegal immigrants and kicking them out, but it seems to me basic access points should be enforced. No one here illegally should be allowed to drive, and transportation workers, meaning truck drivers from other countries, should be properly trained on the rules of the road in both countries. Is that not common sense?

I suppose it wasn’t my first Christmas. I would have been about five months old then. And almost certainly not my second either. But it’s one of my earliest memories. A dark winter morning. My father woke me and carried me down the stairs into the living room. And there was a tree decorated with colored lights and glittering ornaments. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. In fact, I’m pretty sure that that was the moment when the category “beautiful” entered my conceptual world. The tree was wonderful in itself. But then he showed me that there were brightly wrapped packages under the tree. Presents! Toys for me! My joy was total, unmarred by philosophy or irony or trauma or experience.

And someday—and fewer years are left between today and that day than now have passed since that first remembered Christmas—my Father will take me, not down the stairs, but up the stairs, through the dark into a place full of lights and color and beauty. And there will be gifts there too, wonderful enough to make me forget all the wrong lessons I’ve learned in the course of sabotaging my own life.

“I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) We often say that Christmas is for children, but we forget that we are all to be children, when it comes to receiving the Gift.

Merry Christmas.

Once again I share a Chesterton poem for Christmas. Unfortunately, this year it’s the same poem as last year. This is because of something I learned last night.

I have DVDs of three of the movie versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I have the Sim version (of course), the George C. Scott version, and the musical “Scrooge” with Albert Finney (a little silly, but that’s the function of musicals). It’s my practice to view all three during the Christmas season.

Last night I watched the Scott version, and because it’s relatively faithful to the text, I followed along with my copy of The Annotated Christmas Carol, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn. In Stave Three, there’s a passage that goes, “All this time the chesnuts (sic) and the jug went round and round; and by and bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim….” Hearn says in a footnote here, “Apparently Dickens had no specific carol in mind; no such song has been found in Sandys’ or any other collection. G. K. Chesterton apparently realized this omission; in his Poems (1926) he included a verse, ‘A Child of the Snows,’ which might stand for Tiny Tim’s song until another might be found.”



It goes like this:

A Child of the Snows

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,

And never before or again,

When the nights are strong with a darkness long,

And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,

The place where the great fires are,

That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth

And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn

Where the child in the frost is furled,

We follow the feet where all souls meet

At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,

For the flame of the sun is flown,

The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,

And a Child comes forth alone.



Merry Christmas. Glade Jul.