The National Book Critics Circle gave out awards last weekend. See their list here and their posts on each category here. John Leonard, book critic and former editor-in chief of the New York Times Book Review, received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, he made this interesting observation:

The books we love, love us back. In gratitude, we should promise not to cheat on them — not to pretend we’re better than they are; not to use them as target practice, agit-prop, trampolines, photo ops or stalking horses; not to sell out scruple to that scratch-and-sniff info-tainment racket in which we posture in front of experience instead of engaging it, and fidget in our cynical opportunism for an angle, a spin, or a take, instead of consulting compass points of principle, and strike attitudes like matches, to admire our wiseguy profiles in the mirrors of the slicks.

Yes, but isn’t the point of our critique to get to the praise from our peers on the otherside? We want to hear how clever we are, how sharp-eyed we are, that nothing can stand before our scrutiny. Our peers may not bother to read and actually judge our critique, and why should they? We are right, are we not? Oh, the books we could write if only we had the time.

I’ve wondered why Disney hasn’t developed a princess story with a black character before, but I assumed they satisfied their multi-ethnic impulses with their forays into Arabian, Chinese, and Early American cultures. I doesn’t matter really. I haven’t cared to see any Disney cartoon since The Lion King, even though I have suffered through Pocahontas and Mulan and I hear Tarzan is worth seeing.

Now, Disney is telling a story in New Orleans called “The Frog Princess.” I believe her name is Maddy, and she appears to be a black American. Hopefully, this will be a good story, ala Beauty & the Beast.

Anthony Esolen, in a post at Touchstone Magazine, shares a poem that contains these lines:

When your mother has grown older,

And you have grown older,

When what used to be easy and effortless

Now becomes a burden,

When her dear loyal eyes

Do not look out into life as before,

When her legs have grown tired

And do not want to carry her any more–

Then give her your arm for support…

It was written by a very famous man. Read the article and be troubled.

Christians, I think, have a leg up in thinking about things like this, because we believe in Original Sin. If you aren’t a Christian and don’t understand what I mean, feel free to ask.

In the room where I slept during my sleep study they had a TV with cable. I hadn’t watched cable in a while. I clicked through the stations, and noticed there was a show about fishermen, and I gathered from the narration that it had to do with crab fishing in the Bering Sea.

This caught my interest, for reasons I’ll explain, but I decided not to watch it because I assumed it wouldn’t relate much to my own experiences.

How wrong I was.

The latest issue of the Sons of Norway’s magazine, Viking, carries an article about that series (“The Deadliest Catch” on the Discovery Channel), and it connects to me in a couple ways.

First of all, the featured fishermen, Sig, Edgar and Norman Hansen of Seattle, are Norwegian-Americans. Not only that, but their parents and two of the brothers’ wives (one is single) were born on Karmøy Island, the birthplace of my great-grandfather Walker and one of my favorite places in the world.

Secondly, I spent a summer of my own life processing Bering Sea crab. I wasn’t doing the dangerous work, fishing with a crew, but it was a memorable experience.

My musical group (we spent nine years together) were still in college when our leader said “My cousin just spent this past summer working at a crab meat packing plant in Alaska. He put in a lot of overtime and came home with a pile of money. I think we should do the same thing, and finance a concert tour.”

Although the thought of lots of overtime gave me pause, I went along with the plan. The idea of going to Alaska sounded adventurous (and indeed I’ve found it one of my few sure-fire conversation sparks ever since). So we bought tickets to Anchorage, and from there we took a bush air service to Sand Point (that’s on Popof Island in the Shumagins. The Hansens sail out of Dutch Harbor, which is in the same general area [we touched down there on the flight]. I understand the plant where we worked was closed down long ago).

Popof Island is less than 40 square miles and had, at the time. about three miles of gravel road. It was a frontier place, and we learned something about frontier living. The most important thing about frontier living is that it’s generally, really, really boring. There’s nothing to do when you’re not working your glutes off, which helps explain the popularity of drinking and fighting in such places. Once a month we had to help unload the supply freighter, and the largest single commodity we moved was alcohol. Never was so much booze consumed by so few.

We lived in a “dormitory,” a large house that had once been a hospital, located at the top of a hill. I forget the precise number of steps that went up to it, but I believe it was closer to 100 than fifty.

On Fourth of July morning (a day off, of course) we found a drunk passed out in the basement.

He had a cast on his leg.

Somehow he’d scaled all those steps with his leg in a cast.

There was a desperate emptiness in the place, a feeling of being at the end of the world in a couple senses. Nowhere to go from here. If things don’t work here, drown in the sea or drink yourself to death.

We had a short summer in Sand Point. The crab fishermen went on strike and we didn’t get the expected overtime. We went home earlier than planned, with some money but less than we’d hoped.

I’ve never read a Western quite the same way since then.

I’m lost without Hugh Hewitt.

He’s on vacation right now, as many of you are aware, and while he’s gone this time he’s chosen to set aside his usual practice of bringing in guest hosts. Instead, he’s replaying a rogue’s gallery of his least pleasant, most hostile interviews. Harsh words are spoken, cutting remarks made. In a few notable cases, people hang up on him.

In other words, he’s turned his show into Michael Medved’s.

Believe me—the last thing I need after three hours of Medved on Disagreement Day is three more hours of Medved.

(Please understand, I like Michael Medved personally, so far as I can determine from listening to his program. I’d very much enjoy having dinner with him, or making small talk over cigars at Lileks’ place [hint, hint]. But only as long as there wasn’t an argument going on.)

I hate arguments. I am to arguments what John Murtha is to any conceivable use of American military force.

Bring back the guest hosts, Hugh! If you can’t find enough people willing to do your show, I’ll take a day. I’ve done radio. I’m a famous pundit.

Just as long as I don’t have to argue with anybody, of course.

Report on my first night with CPAP (for those who care): It went OK. I managed to keep the thing on all night, which many people can’t do at first. I did wake up more often than usual, probably because of the succubus on my face, but I always went back to sleep quickly, which is a rare pleasure of late.

I overslept, having forgotten to set my alarm clock in my concern to set up the CPAP right.

But my energy was good. Better, I think, than it’s been for a while. I ran out of gas in the early afternoon, but one can’t expect miracles right away.

Or maybe it’s all the placebo effect.

What’s that, Phil? You think I should blog about something the readers are actually interested in, now and then?

Phil! Where did you learn words like that?

First of all, welcome to any new readers who may have come in by way of the link at The American Spectator. I promise you that I don’t always blog about my physical health.

Sometimes, for variety, I blog about my emotional health.

“How did my sleep study go?” a breathless nation asks. Well, it was different from what I expected in terms of details, but pretty much exactly what I expected in the essentials.

The ambiance was less clinical than I had foreseen, and the bed in the room they gave me (furnished to look like a small motel room) was more comfortable than I expected.

That benefit is lost, though, when you’re trying to sleep with two straps fastened around your body and you have to lie on top of various tubes and wires. For a guy who can be kept awake at night by the sound of a fly walking on the ceiling, it wasn’t promising (by the way, they tell you that the gunk they use to stick the electrodes on in your hair shampoos right out. Consumer report: No. No, it doesn’t).

According to their records, I slept more than I thought I did, but their definition of sleep and mine aren’t entirely congruent. I did get into deep sleep (REM sleep) for a couple of periods. And I had some incidences of apnea (where your throat closes up and you stop breathing).

The thing is, I’m apparently on the low end of the apnea scale. This is a fact that speaks to the paranoid in me. They gave me a CPAP machine and sent me home with it, with the idea that I’d go back to see them in a month and we’d decide whether I’d stay with it or not. However, the doctor also told me it might take six weeks or longer to really see much benefit.

So I can’t help suspecting that my own doctor (who’s actually just a Physician’s Assistant) is getting a kickback from the clinic for sending anybody who remotely resembles a sleep apnea patient to them. And they, in turn, prescribe the machines to anybody who snorts a few times a night.

On the other hand, I do feel tired a lot, and I’d like to have more energy and a better attitude. They tell me this might help.

I have no idea what to do about it.

I went back in to work for the afternoon half-day. I had plenty on my desk, but I took time to give blood at the annual blood drive, because it’s not like they’ll be back next month.

You know that informational notice they make you read beforehand? The one that started out as one sheet, then became two, then three pages? It’s about eight pages now.

I worry that the blood bank people (who do a fine work) are getting safety measured out business.

Imagine giving blood ten years from now. It will probably involve reading 300 pages of closely spaced information and informed consent contracts. It will require taking a whole day off from work and submitting to a strip search, a CAT scan and a rectal examination. You’ll have to fill out a form detailing whom you’ve had sexual relations with, whom you’ve had lunch with, and whom you’ve stood next to in the Men’s Room, along with the social security numbers and sexual histories of all such persons.

And I can see the story on the TV news. “Blood stocks are down again, for the eightieth month in a row. Officials are at a loss to account for the drop in volunteer blood donors.”

And that will be before the HIV activists win the court case recognizing their constitutional right to donate infected blood without being discriminated against.

Tonight I shall not sleep in my own bed. I shall sleep in a bed in a sleep center, with electrodes stuck to my skull, to see if a CPAP machine will improve what is laughingly known as my quality of life.

Knowing me as well as you do by now, you understand that I’m worried about this. I have a hard time getting to sleep most nights in my own familiar bed, even if I’m tired. How I’ll sleep in a strange bed with an electronic snood hooked up to me I can’t quite comprehend.

I figure the technicians will wait in the next room behind a two-way mirror, cracking jokes about me in low voices, a green light from the control panel illuminating their pasty complexions (sleep technicians never see the light of day, after all). One of them—the muscular broad with the shaved head and the tattoos, will keep saying, “I hate this guy. Look at him. What a lump. What a loser.”

And the other one will say, “If he’d just fall asleep, we could catch that late movie on Lifetime.”

And the M.B. will say, “This one? He’s never gonna fall asleep. He’s gonna lie there all night, like the loser he is.”

And the other one will say, “Well, we could always use the Sleep Inducer.”

And the M.B. will say, “Sure. If any moron ever deserved the Sleep Inducer, it’s this creep.”

So she sneaks into the room very quietly, holding a great big mallet behind her back, and she smashes me over the head with it like Bugs Bunny in a cartoon.

And in the morning they’ll ask me how I slept, and I’ll say, “Great. I’m really surprised. But I’ve got this awful headache.”

And the doctor will nod and say, “That’s a common side effect.”

Tonight I shall not sleep in my own bed. I shall sleep in a bed in a sleep center, with electrodes stuck to my skull, to see if a CPAP machine will improve what is laughingly known as my quality of life.

Knowing me as well as you do by now, you understand that I’m worried about this. I have a hard time getting to sleep most nights in my own familiar bed, even if I’m tired. How I’ll sleep in a strange bed with an electronic snood hooked up to me I can’t quite comprehend.

I figure the technicians will wait in the next room behind a two-way mirror, cracking jokes about me in low voices, a green light from the control panel illuminating their pasty complexions (sleep technicians never see the light of day, after all). One of them—the muscular broad with the shaved head and the tattoos, will keep saying, “I hate this guy. Look at him. What a lump. What a loser.”

And the other one will say, “If he’d just fall asleep, we could catch that late movie on Lifetime.”

And the M.B. will say, “This one? He’s never gonna fall asleep. He’s gonna lie there all night, like the loser he is.”

And the other one will say, “Well, we could always use the Sleep Inducer.”

And the M.B. will say, “Sure. If any moron ever deserved the Sleep Inducer, it’s this creep.”

So she sneaks into the room very quietly, holding a great big mallet behind her back, and she smashes me over the head with it like Bugs Bunny in a cartoon.

And in the morning they’ll ask me how I slept, and I’ll say, “Great. I’m really surprised. But I’ve got this awful headache.”

And the doctor will nod and say, “That’s a common side effect.”

I have to pass these on this morning, in case you haven’t seen them already.

1. Prime Time America conducted an hour-long interview with Ayaan Hirshi Ali, author of Infidel, a memoir on her life in and out of Islam. Ayann is an intelligent woman telling a moving story about rejecting the principles of radical Islam.

2. I heard another interview last week, one with Mark Steyn, who has written America Alone on the threat of Islamic revolution and how liberals undermine their own freedom. I don’t like thinking about current events anymore. It makes me pray harder.

3. On the lighter side, two popular children’s books and movies are reviving the toy train market. Can you guess which books have done this?

I am the man. I’m half horse and half alligator. When I roar, mighty beasts flee.

After a white collar guy like me does a job of work like I did today (and last night), he’s entitled to beat his chest a bit, I think. Because that’s all the reward he’s likely to get.

Picking up last night’s enthralling narrative, not long after I posted yesterday evening I got a call from the school’s dean, saying they were canceling classes tomorrow (that is, today) due to the snow.

I went to bed earlier than usual, needing the rest pretty badly. I didn’t set my alarm clock.

I got up around 7:30, ate my breakfast, and went out to face the day and the evil thereof.

We’d had more snow overnight, and high winds as well, so there was a lot of drifting. I was tempted to think that all my work of the previous night had been wasted, but I think it would have been harder without it.

I had the idea that if I set up my rope-tourniquet differently, I could get a tighter hold and hold a seal on the snowblower tire.

I found that my rope wasn’t strong enough to do what I wanted it to do. It snapped.

So I reverted to Plan B, and took up the shovel again.

Briefly put, it took a long time. I rested frequently, and more often as time went on.

My neighbor’s wife came back from work around 10:00, because her office had closed too. She joined me when I was about half way down the driveway, and together we finished it up.

This is how it looks in my back yard today:

It’s snowed some more since, but I don’t think it’s going to interfere with me when I drive to Hutchinson for a Viking Age Society event tomorrow. It’ll be indoors, in a mall, but we’ll do live steel, so I’ll be able to try out my new shield(s):

I apologize for the egregious ugliness of the rawhide edging on the finished shield in the picture. It was the first time I’d worked with rawhide, and I went far astray.

I made a point of showing the back of one shield so you could see the handle. This handle construction is (I believe) my own invention, and I predict it will be a major success with live steel fighters, bringing me… nothing at all.

Archaeology tells us that Viking shields (which were made out of boards laid side-by-side, not plywood like these fakes) usually had handles made of wood. But sometimes the wood handles were covered by a gutter-shaped iron covering, making them stronger.

When I bought the wood molding (it has a precise name, but I’ve forgotten it) for my handles, I worried that it wouldn’t be sturdy enough. Finally I decided to buy some thin steel bar stock in a 1” width. I drilled holes for my fastening bolts through both steel and wood, and came up with a fairly light, pretty strong handle, based on the Viking principle.

I’ll see how it works tomorrow.

If I’m able to move after all this shoveling.

I never stop to wonder why I left the farm. I left the farm for many reasons, all of which I remember vividly.

But if I had forgotten why I became an urban drone, dwelling in a ticky-tacky house, this evening would have reminded me.

The storm we’d been told to expect began as promised, and it ain’t over yet. It started last night. I was worried that I’d need to dig out before going to work, but it had only snowed a couple inches, and I drove out. Then I spent all day at work worrying that I wouldn’t be able to get back home.

I did get in, though, and then I set to work with my master plan to get my neighbor’s snowblower (which, as you know if you’ve been following the last few episodes, he keeps in my garage in return for clearing the shared driveway) going. As you doubtless recall, a tire on the blower was flat last weekend, when he tried to use it. He took it someplace and got some kind of wrench that allows you to squoosh the tire down so that the bead seals, so you can pump it up again. He refilled the tire, but it went flat again. Probably a puncture.

And then he left town on business.

But I figured I could do the same squooshing thing with a length of rope and a tourniquet. And I have an air compressor of my own.

Story in short—it was tougher than I thought. I gave up at last. I took up my shovel and went to work. It took two hours, but I got it done.

And the snow was already beginning to accumulate behind me.

But I hope I can get out to go to work tomorrow, and then I’ll have the evening to repeat the process. We’re supposed to get up to ten inches more before it finally relents sometime tomorrow.

I could have taken a picture while the light lasted, to show you how much deeper the snow is, but I wanted to get to work before I lost the light.

I was also going to share a picture of my completed shield, which I finished last night, but Photobucket is down.

So you’ll have to settle for this.

It’s winter. We all have to make sacrifices.

Or if you don’t, I want you to feel guilty.