Big day. Put my clothes in the wash. Went to the gym. And when I got back from my grueling workout, I found translating work waiting for me. A nice large job, too. Better still, it’s a project about something that interests me – can’t tell you what, of course. Still, that means all my big plans for a wild Friday night on the town had to be put on hold. But my immunization will mature on Monday, and then all this pent-up social energy will burst forth upon the world. Look out, Robbinsdale.
Another gorgeous day, it was. Not as warm as some days we’ve had, but it was nice – the little time I spent outside. On the way home from the gym, I actually had the presence of mind to stop at the drug store and pick up the prescription that’s been waiting a couple days. At my age, that’s what they call, “He’s having one of his good days.”
I had a plan to call a guy to inquire about printing up a paper version of The Year of the Warrior (I have the rights for that), but I’ve been too busy translating to look into the details. I’ll keep you posted if it happens.
Today was a rainy day. Not snowy, rainy. This is not unheard-of in March in Minnesota, but it’s far from the norm. My front yard is entirely free of snow – there’s a little left in back, where the stuff gets piled up at the northeast corner of the house, but even that may be gone now. I haven’t looked out there in a few hours.
The rain has been slow, drippy stuff through most of the day, but I’m hearing thunder now.
A wild surmise begins to burgeon in my heart – we may have seen the last of this winter. The forecast doesn’t show any cold weather or snow for a couple weeks. Of course, we can still get snow even in April, and often do. But the sunshine seems to have gained the upper hand at this point. If we get any more snow, it’s unlikely to establish a beachhead.
Work goes slowly on the new Erling book, but it does go. I’m mostly adding stuff at this point. I’ve got the armature of a book, but it needs fleshing out.
Just wrote a scene (meant to be funny) about haggis, because Macbeth is in the story. This sort of thing is a tad self-indulgent, and if I were a purer artist, I’d probably consider it beneath me. But in my experience, very little is beneath me.
Temperature around 50 today. This pleases me. I left the house three times – to the gym, to the grocery store, and to pick up pizza. All the trips were satisfactory, except for the grocery store, because I forgot to get pizza. Which isn’t so bad, because I’d planned to get carryout today anyway. I can get a large Domino’s for about nine bucks with a coupon, and I get four meals out of it. Which turns an indulgence into an economy.
Something about that scheme doesn’t seem right, though. I’m still waiting for the universe to rain justice down on me, for my hubris.
Watched an amusing old English movie this afternoon. Castle In the Air, from 1952. Based on a stage play. It’s slightly Wodehousian, in having a mix of classes, romantic misunderstandings, and competing prevarications.
The Earl of Locharne is played by David Tomlinson, who seems to American eyes a strange choice for a romantic lead (he’s best remembered for a later role, as the father in Mary Poppins). I have an idea that the British film industry was slightly short on talent in those days, and had to cast less-than-beautiful people just to fill the roles. The same is true – to an extent – of Helen Cherry (Mrs. Trevor Howard), who plays “Boss” Trent, the earl’s assistant and love interest. She’s just slightly less than beautiful, but I can easily imagine falling in love with her anyway.
In any case, the earl’s great cross to bear in life is the ownership of Locharne Castle, which is falling apart faster than he can afford to fix it. He operates it as a residential hotel, for tenants who constantly complain about the cold drafts and the lack of hot water. And oh yes – there’s a ghost, a beautiful phantom named Ermyntrude, who is actually good-natured and helpful. (Filmmakers loved superimposing ghost images in movies back then. It was a special effect that was easy, cheap, and didn’t look cheesy.)
A man from the National Coal Board arrives to assess the property. The board is considering acquiring the castle (by requisition, not purchase), so everyone is doing their best to impress him with the castle’s ruinous condition and unsuitability for habitation. But when a rich and beautiful American divorcee shows up, pondering buying the place for good money, he has to talk it up to her. Meanwhile, a genealogist with Jacobite sympathies (played by Margaret Rutherford) is on site, working out charts to prove that the earl is the rightful king of Scotland.
All very silly, and pleasant, and the ending’s happy. Enjoyable fluff, in the tradition of… did I mention Wodehouse? Cautions for sometimes incomprehensible Scottish accents.
False spring is what we call it. At least I think so. I’m not actually sure I’ve ever heard anyone say “false spring.” But if that’s not what they call it, they ought to. I’ll take full credit. Registered trademark.
Anyway, the sun shone, and the temperature got into the upper 40s (farenheit, for our European readers). The snow is more than half gone from my neighbors’ lawn to the east. It seems barely diminished on my neighbor’s lawn to the west. And I’m kind of in the middle. I supposed the inequity has to do with the angle of the sun. Or systemic sexism – but in that case, it favors the woman.
Anyway, it was so nice out I decided to go on the back porch this afternoon and work on the new Erling book. I’d been stalled in my revision; a timeline problem that overwhelmed me one evening a month ago. Since then I’ve been spooked about it, sure it was beyond my powers to solve. I decided I was in a rut and needed to change my writing environment, so I sat on the porch, rolled my pants up to get some sunlight, and gave it another look.
I think I solved the problem – which means there’s probably a couple loose threads I’ll still need to fix in a later revision. But anyway, I’m on the job again.
James Lileks complained (sort of) about this warm spell a few days back. He noted that it won’t last, that we’ll get more snow and all this warmth and sunlight will have been but a cruel tease.
I sympathize keenly with that sentiment. If there’s one thing I’m all about, it’s looking at the dark (and cold) side. But you know, the knowledge that more snow is coming doesn’t make today less sweet. The air was no less mild. The photons my legs absorbed were no less Vitamin D-incentive.
It’s not just about false spring, either. You’ve got to think that way every day, when you get to my age.
Why is it taking me so long to finish this book I’m reading? I haven’t been that busy – just some volunteer translation. And the book’s interesting enough. And yet I’m proceeding at a very slow pace. I could finish it tonight and then offer up a late review, but my Kindle tells me there’s 2 hours of reading left.
So what to write instead? Post a YouTube video? Did that last night. Writing advice? The night before that. Report on my afternoon movie viewing? Today it was one of the Renfrew of the Mounted Police series, and it wasn’t memorable for anything except the original concept that a group of thieves at an airfield would kill their enemies by sabotaging their own airplanes – an expensive modus operandi, that one.
Today the weather was beautiful, and I didn’t get out in it at all. Should have, but the sidewalks are still icy, and I need to remember I’m an old man with hips made in China (I assume that’s where they were made – everything else is). When I was younger I had other excuses for not going for a walk, but this one should last me the rest of my life.
My volunteer translation project is moving along. I figure it’s better to take the tortoise strategy – I do one page a day, every day, rather than wearing myself out on a long, obsessive session one day, then being too tired of it the next day to do anything. I’m better than half-way through, so steady as she goes. That’s how I write novels too. When I write them at all.
Personal note: Like so many American men, I’ve gone about a year without a haircut. I’ve now reached the point where I can tie my mane up in a queue and it doesn’t all work itself out in floating strands over the course of the day. I remember a time, back during the tumultuous ‘70s, when I facetiously told my dad I was thinking of growing a bicentennial queue for 1776. He was not amused.
It’s not a ponytail, by the way. It’s tied low, at the nape of the neck. In my world, a ponytail sits high on the back of the head, and resembles the south end of a north-bound horse. Girls have ponytails. I have a queue.
One advantage is that when they come to take us away to the re-education camps, I might be able to sneak away through the crowd, disguised as an old member of the Weather Underground.
Captain Kidd buries his treasure, by the great Howard Pyle. William Kidd looked nothing like this. Of course, he looked nothing like Charles Laughton either.
Today the temperature soared to near 40˚ Farenheit. Spring-like. It won’t last, of course, but we feel as if we deserve it. Or if not, we’ll take it and hope whoever monitors these things doesn’t add it to our bill.
The big activity today was a visit from my friendly plumber, who extracted a clog from my bathroom sink drain (must have been some clog, judging from the time it took), and then extracted a wad of my substance from my credit card. Even with the loyalty club discount, it seemed excessive. But I suppose the man who has no power snake must be servant to the man who does.
Kids, go into plumbing as a career. You’ll love the sense of power.
Then I watched the old 1945 film, Captain Kidd, starring Charles Laughton and Randolph Scott. Ahoy, mates – yonder be cheese! Laughton has a high reputation as an actor, but I never liked him much. In this one he marlin-spikes the overacting meter pretty constantly. And Randolph Scott is convincing neither as a sailor nor as an Englishman. Barbara Britton was lovely, though. Wikipedia says this was one of Stalin’s favorite films, according to Khrushchev.
Captain Kidd himself is an interesting, and rather pathetic, historical character. Opinions of his career vary. Some historians say he was innocent and should not have hanged, others say he was guilty and deserved it by the standards of the time. All agree he was nothing like the fearsome figure he cuts in legend and fiction.
He was, in fact, pretty bad at being a pirate. He set out to hunt pirates, had no luck, and seems to have allowed his crew to pressure him into marginal activities. Rather than a psychopathic monster, he seems to have been an incompetent commander – the kind who let discipline drift until he finally blew a fuse and killed a man. Hanging seems a heavy price to pay for poor management skills, but the British admiralty was not a merciful institution, and the killing did complicate it all – even if he only brained the guy with a bucket.
When I was a kid, I was a fan of Robert Lawson’s juvenile historical novels about the pets of great historical figures. One was Captain Kidd’s Cat – a strange story to include in an essentially lighthearted series, considering that the main character hangs in the end. Lawson’s take on Captain Kidd seems to have been influenced by the story of the pirate Stede Bonnet, who claimed he took to freebooting to get away from a nagging wife. In the book, William Kidd is a henpecked husband whose wife sends him on his voyage with strict instructions to bring her home a Turkey Carpet (the same thing as a Persian carpet, I assume). His whole tragedy springs from his successive, blundering attempts to secure that rug.
Why did Captain Kidd go into legend as a monstrous sea wolf? Probably because of his connections to New York City, and the rumor that he left a treasure buried on nearby Gardner’s Island. The legend of that treasure sparked a lot of imaginations in old Gotham.
The Prophet Jeremiah, by Leonard Gaultier. This man never lived in Minnesota in winter.
Welcome to winter. Not only is it cold up here in wind chill country, but I understand much of the nation is enjoying the opportunity to bask in the same hibernal pleasures we Minnesotans get to savor every winter.
Needless to say, I hate it, with a fiery passion which, though inadequate to warm the house, is nonetheless remorseless. One of the nice things about being retired is that there are sometimes days – like this one – when there is no mortal reason to leave the house at all. Except I had to take the garbage out. But I managed it without damage, in spite of some really icy spots on my driveway (have I mentioned my driveway slopes?).
I figure this is the worst part of winter, unless we get a major snowstorm later and the power goes out. And that thought puts me in a winter mood.
I’ve been trying to think of subjects to write about for the American Spectator Online. I’ve got several ideas. But the problem is, I don’t want to write – and nobody wants to read – an article as winter-bleak as my thoughts around now.
I remember reading a book about Thomas Jefferson when I was a kid. It was above my reading level, but one thing in there stuck with me – Jefferson’s belief about freedom of speech. The faith that if everybody gets their say, the truth will naturally win out because it’s stronger than lies. The answer to bad speech is good speech.
But when I appeal to that principle today, nobody even knows what I’m talking about. The Left has not only renounced that faith, they pretend they never affirmed it at all.
Somebody said, a while back, that the future had turned out not to be Orwell’s, but Huxley’s.
But it appears now that the future came in stages. Huxley first, immediately followed by Orwell.
So all I can think of to say, when I talk about current events, is something along the lines of Jeremiah.
At this point there’s always somebody to say, “Don’t you have faith in Christ? Don’t you believe that God will take care of us?”
Sure, just the way He took care of Jeremiah. Who was carried off against his will into exile, and then murdered by his countrymen.
When we say that God will take care of us, that does not necessarily rule out martyrdom.
Could be a reeducation camp, of course. Which would probably get awful cold here in Minnesota.
I think it’s fair for you to assume that you’re going to read a lot here about the Atlantic Crossing miniseries (coming to PBS Masterpiece beginning April 4), one of my proudest projects as a translator.
“I don’t think anybody knew how long lockdowns were going to happen,” [Executive Producer Susanne] Simpson said. “Atlantic Crossing” was something she’d known about for six months prior to the outbreak, but she’d never pursued it because it was a Norwegian production. “Once I was able to see the show it wasn’t a very hard decision,” she said. “Atlantic Crossing” tells the story of the relationship between Crown Princess Marta (Sofia Helin) of Sweden and Norway and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Kyle MacLachlan).
For some reason, my indespensible contibutions as a translator are not mentioned in the article, but it does talk about the writers, Alexander Eik and Linda May Kallestein. Linda May, I think it’s OK to tell you, is my boss. Aside from her fine screen writing, she is a top Norwegian-to-English script translator, and the person who got me into the business.
You probably don’t know about this because I’ve been so discreet on the subject, but I did a whole lot of translation on the Norwegian miniseries, Atlantic Crossing (teaser above). It’s also possible I may have mentioned that it will be broadcast for the US on PBS Masterpiece this spring.
I promised to let you know when we learned the actual broadcast date. The premiere date has been revealed at last — Sunday, April 4, 9:00 p.m. Eastern, 8:00 Central (all the rest of you are expected to do math). The official announcement is here.
Today was an eventful one by the standards of my life. I had my annual appointment with the tax preparer. It’s a new preparer this year. My old preparer died. A couple days ago. She wasn’t a robust person, but still, a shocker. (Not Covid)
I also had to do some actual physical work. It snowed overnight, and my neighbor who usually takes care of snowblowing, couldn’t, because the his snowblower broke down. And, oh yes, he has a concussion.
I am surrounded by devastation.
I was able to tell the ladies at the tax place about Atlantic Crossing, though. I doubt it makes up for a death on staff, but it was the best I could do. Aside from paying their exorbitant fee.
I don’t like February much. Maybe April will be better.
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