How to Fend Off a Shark, from the guys who wrote the guide to surviving worst case scenarios. In short, hit the shark back.

Yesterday, my wife and I saw Pixar’s Ratatouille on a digital screen at the Rave Theater in East Ridge. It was fantastic, hilarious, and heartening. The director describes it as a story about achieving impossible dreams, and maybe that’s the idea I was smiling so much about afterward, but I worded it differently. A food critic says that though everyone cannot be a great artist, a great artist can come from anywhere. As the story’s featured cookbook claims, “Anyone can cook.” That means you, especially if you see our society or select industries against you.

Dream your impossible dream. Work on it no matter what the chances of success, and do it all to the glory of your Lord and Savior. You may be a great artist–no matter who you are. You won’t find out unless you try.

Just about a perfect day today. The temperature was precisely right for my personal comfort—which means it would probably be a little warm for most people. I’m a cold-blooded beast. The thermometer usually reads about 98.2 when the nurse pulls it from my mouth and reads it. I blame this condition for my inability to endure cold. When my brothers are thumping their chests and saying, “Isn’t this great? It’s so bracing!” I’m cupping my hands over my ears to keep them warm (cupping them very carefully, though. Touching them too forcefully might shatter them like cheap plastic cups from a convenience store pop machine).

We could use some rain, but if it were raining it wouldn’t be a perfect day, would it? “Seek not contrary pleasures,” said Dr. Johnson.

One disappointment I’ve suffered during my afternoon walks down to Crystal Lake and back has been the lack of girls in bikinis sunning themselves along the shore. Crystal Lake has been sorely deficient in the sunbathing girls department. More often the shore has been encircled by an unbroken ring of Hmong people, all of them with fishing poles, pulling sunfish 2 centimeters long out of the water for supper.

But today that was remedied. I didn’t get an ideal look at the girl (no doubt that was her intention) as she was lying on a fairly steep slope that runs down from the street to the water’s edge, but she seemed to be not ugly, and she was in a bikini.

Maybe it’ll be a good weekend.

There was another form of beauty too—butterflies. I suppose it’s unmanly of me, but I love butterflies. They seem to me an entirely useless addition to the environment. I’m sure their ecological niche could have been filled by something brown that looked like one of the more undistinguished moths. But God gave us flowers that flew, just as a treat.

That’s how I think of butterflies. They’re a gift. A grace note. A cherry on top of the sundae of summer.

Have a good weekend.

Roy Jacobsen, over at Dispatches from Outland, Dispatches from Outland, Dispatches from Outland (I repeat it three times in penance for getting it wrong last night) succumbed to my passive-aggressive hint and posted the pictures of me this morning, here.

He mentioned it in the comments on my last post, but I’m saying it out here in the sunlight to make sure YOU NOTICE IT.

Man, I love attention. That might surprise some people, because I make a fetish of not calling attention to myself or promoting myself, but all the time I’m trying to find oblique ways to get that notice, either by some achievement or other, or by passive aggression.

So thanks, Roy, for being my enabler.

(The blog is called Dispatches from Outland.)

So, the immigration bill went down in flames.

I never knew what to think about that issue. Most of the talk shows are against it, but when Michael Medved came on to defend it, I thought he made a lot of sense too. So I was utterly at sea, and not sure enough of any position to badger my senator.

But here’s what I do think.

I think there’s a movement (not a conspiracy. No council of plutocrats is strategizing in a secret room. It’s more of a state of mind abroad in the land) that wants America to be anything but what it has been in the past.

The people who hold this view love America, but they love it in their own way. They love America the way parents love a drug-addicted teenager—“You’ll always be our son and we’ll always love you, but you have to clean up your act.”

These people don’t love America’s origins. They don’t love its history. They don’t love its traditions (especially its religion).

What they love about America is what they see as its potential to become something they could be proud of.

Because they hate America’s history and traditions, they see no reason why anyone should be expected to go through a regularized naturalization process, to learn about America. Why learn about something we’re going to erase anyway?

Because they hate America’s culture, they don’t want immigrants to assimilate. They want to see Balcanization—a country built up of thousands of ethnic enclaves, peopled by folks who can’t communicate with one another, because there’s no common language.

Because they’re ashamed of America’s history, they want to enable (not cause, but open the door to) the partition of America, so that the Old Southwest either goes back to Mexico or becomes an independent Hispanic nation.

I think they lost a fight today, but they win a little by carrying on the status quo too. So I’m not celebrating.

You know what I see for the future (putting on my prophet’s hat here)? I see—certainly in Europe and very possibly in America—ethnic conflict on a scale never before seen in history. Bloodbaths, deportations, genocide and terrorism.

Until somebody charismatic and ruthless rides in on a white horse to impose order.

And I don’t like the thought of him either.

I’m really milking this weekend for material. It wasn’t spectacularly eventful, but it was more memorable than my mental activity has been in the days since. So I’ll squeeze out a few more notes, because I know how you all live vicariously through me.

I made a marvelous discovery during my (roughly) eight hours of driving. Or I think I did. It appears (I haven’t proved it to the level of scientific demonstration, but it looks promising) that my vehicle is one of those that actually get better mileage with the windows shut and the air conditioning on, than with the A/C off and the windows open. This is wonderful. Not only is it more comfortable to drive that way, but I can actually hear my Sissel CDs.

I had a visit in the Viking encampment from Roy Jacobsen of Writing, Clear and Simple and Dispatches from Outland. He took a picture, but so far it hasn’t appeared on either of his blogs.

On the other hand, when I see it I may be sorry I brought it up. I keep forgetting I’m old and fat now.

A woman who’d bought a couple of my books the last time I was at the Hjemkomst Festival came by to tell me she’d enjoyed them very much, and she wants me to speak at a Scandinavian cultural conference in Wisconsin next winter. She said they’d pay me and everything.

Almost the most beautiful words in the English language.

Here’s an interesting article. It appears they’ve found an Incan skeleton in a Norwegian grave dated to 1,000 AD (that’s Erling Skjalgsson’s period). (Hat tip: Mirabilis)

If that’s not a mistake, it’s earthshaking. The Incans lived in Peru, which is on the whole other side of South America. Man, there’s a novel in that. I wrote an (unpublished) book about Erling in which he went to Vinland, but I didn’t have the nerve to send him further south than somewhere around Connecticut.

Update: I have corrected the name of Roy Jacobsen’s 2nd blog, “Dispatches From Outland.” The error was due to a brain charleyhorse, an increasingly common problem for me. ljw

Speaking of Britain, there’s a story of a little girl born in the last few days with an unusual name. I’m glad I can copy-n-paste this. Her name is Autumn Sullivan Corbett Fitzsimmons Jeffries Hart Burns Johnson Willard Dempsey Tunney Schmeling Sharkey Carnera Baer Braddock Louis Charles Walcott Marciano Patterson Johansson Liston Clay Frazier Foreman Brown. For real.

But not as for real as the proposed name of a New Zealand baby. His parents want to name him “4Real.”

Someone save us.

A strenuous weekend (by my effete standards), but a pretty good one, all in all.

In Moorhead, Minnesota there is a museum dedicated to the Hjemkomst (Homecoming), a replica Viking ship that sailed to Norway in 1984. Each year they hold a Scandinavian festival there, and sometimes they invite the Viking Age Club & Society. This was one of our years.

We were blessed with pretty good weather in our encampment. It got warm, but we had a breeze most of the time, and that makes all the difference if you’ve got some shade. I sold a few books. We did two combat shows on Friday and three on Saturday (Roy Jacobsen of Writing, Clear and Simple posted this link to a Fargo Forum newspaper photo in the comments below, but I give you the link again, so you can be suitably impressed. Much as it may surprise you, that’s not a screen capture from ‘300.’ It’s yours truly, terrible in his wrath, defending himself heroically against a base attack by those scoundrels, the Andersons.

The photographer must have had a camera with a fast shutter, because this battle lasted about 3/8 of a second.

You’ll note, if you look closely, that there are holes in my shield. Here’s a picture of the shield today:

It’s on its way out, but I think I’ll use it a while longer. Those holes can actually be an advantage, if you’re fast (which, unfortunately, I’m not). You can catch your enemy’s weapon in them, give the shield a twist, and disarm him.

I packed up Saturday afternoon and drove home. Sunday morning I drove down to Kenyon, my home town, for the annual historical service at my home congregation’s Old Stone Church, pictured here:

I wasn’t aware (or hadn’t paid attention) but this was a special service of dedication at the end of a major refurbishing project. They had tuck-pointed the stonework and completely re-done the interior, replacing the crumbling plaster walls with concrete colored to look like the originals. Some private grant money and a lot of volunteer work went into the job.

Here’s a close-up of the old altar.

It’s a very Haugean altar (the Haugeans are the pietistic Lutheran group which formed my religious outlook). On either side are the tables of the Law. Haugeans are always aware of the Law. We’re not the kind of people who think the Law is of no further interest to those who are in Christ.

But the Cross is in the center, lifted high above the Law. The Cross puts the Law in perspective. The Cross rules over the Law.

And under the Cross is a painting of the Lord’s Supper, a central means by which the grace of the Cross is mediated to the worshipers kneeling at the altar.

The verse on the plaque is John 3:16.

I came in costume (not Viking but 19th Century), since it’s my belief that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. I’d been asked to give a historical talk. I suppose they had in mind a synopsis of the story of the congregation and the building. Being me, I did it my own way.

I didn’t want to do just names and dates. I wanted to tell a story, to convey the romance (and it was a romance) of Norwegian immigration and evangelism in the new world. I figured there’d be children there (there were) and I wanted to tell them things they might remember.

So I told the stories of two men—Elling Eielsen, the Norwegian evangelist who planted Haugeanism in America, and Østen Hanson, Eielsen’s disciple who broke with him and became the president of the Hauge Synod, pastor of our church (and its sister congregation) for 37 years.

I’ll post the text of my talk tomorrow, because I promised some people I would. The rest of you might find it interesting too, as a case study if nothing else.

Perhaps by doing the work of Truth and Goodness, which too many people reject out of hand.

Well, that was self-indulgent, wasn’t it?

I figure I owe you about a year of cheerful posts after that last one (not that you’ll get anything of the sort). I find myself getting all mooky pretty much every June, on the anniversary of… well, I’ve said enough about that.

Events have overtaken me again, it seems. Last week The American Spectator Online published a column by me in which I imagined a female mainline bishop rationalizing her attraction to Islam. Now comes this story, about a female Episcopal priest who has openly converted to Islam, without leaving her present job, and nobody seems to be interested in disciplining her.

Which goes to show that you have to run as fast as you can to keep up with the future nowadays. I’m working on another Pastoral Letter, and hope to turn it into a series. I think I’ve got a few surprises up my sleeve, but this priest has stolen some of my wind, no question.

OK—something happy. Here’s a photo I got yesterday, from my distant cousin Trygve in Norway:

He was married on June 2 at historic Ullensvang church in Hardanger (unfortunately he went into the hospital right afterwards, which is why I didn’t hear about it till now. He’s feeling some better, he says). His bride is Denae, an American of Norwegian descent. I had the pleasure of meeting her last summer, when Trygve was over here visiting.

The striking gray-bearded gentleman in back is wearing a bunad, a Norwegian national costume. The lady on the far right is also wearing one, as is the woman in back, between them, though you can’t see much of hers. Every region in Norway has its own characteristic bunads, male and female.

The reception was held at the Hotel Ullensvang, a historic institution in the area, founded originally by one of Trygve’s ancestors (not my side of the family). The composer Edvard Grieg was a friend of that founder, and the little cabin they built on the grounds, for Grieg to compose in, is still standing.

Best wishes to the couple.