The Viking Age Club at Minnehaha Park (artist’s conception)

Sunday was Norway Day at Minnehaha Park, so I went forth in my PT Cruiser, Miss Ingebretsen, and faced the challenge of human contact.

We’d had a Swedish Day too, about a month ago, in the same location, but it was rainy and dank and not very lively. This Sunday was beautiful; just about ideal. I did not do any fighting; my disability has me sidelined. It was kind of relaxing to watch the young guys bash each other.

I’d bought a wooden staff, and that’s what I use for support when I’m in Viking character. My experience is that staffs are mechanically inferior to canes in terms of support. I wonder why they were so popular for so long in history. Maybe it was because they double as pretty formidable weapons.

The other Vikings were all impressed with my “new” car. In fact, listening to their comments, I realized that they’d been concerned about my safety, driving around in the rattletrap that Mrs. Hermanson, my Chevy Tracker, had become. Which suggests to me that I made the right decision, if a little late.

They also noted that little black bugs were attracted to her, landing on her skin and just staying there, like yuppies in a Starbucks. I wonder if anyone’s ever done a biological study of the affinity of little black bugs for PT Cruisers.

Had some shocking news – two of my dearest friends are moving to another state. What was most shocking was the fact that I’d been informed about it some time back, and had completely forgotten about it. It was the first time – at least the first time I’m aware of – that I’d ever completely suppressed unwanted information. I’m as good at self-delusion as any man, but I usually don’t just block stuff out. I’m too pessimistic by nature.

Kind of disturbing.

I’d hate to think I’m becoming an optimist.

You catch more flies with PT Cruisers than with vinegar, after all.

This week’s issues of Life With Archie will include the main character’s death. Archie, who has had a 73-year run as one of America’s favorite comic book teens, will bite it this week by taking a bullet for his gay best friend. His publisher said it could have ended in other ways, but “metaphorically, by saving Kevin, a new Riverdale is born.”

Mike Duran points to the films of Dinesh D’Souza and Scott Derrickson this week to ask if these films are hitting their intended marks and attracting negative reviews because of that or are the reviews fair?

“My point here is not to endorse (or pan) either film, but to simply ask whether the artists’ beliefs or their film’s point-of-view make them unfair targets to critics,” Mike says.

I think there’s merit to this idea. Any work of art or entertainment gains attention or snores based on how its subject matter resonates with its audience. Even bad art gets praised because it resonates. In comments on the NPR review for Deliver Us From Evil, one person asks, “Will you lighten up? Why should this movie be seriously reviewed?” and another person says, “And J.J. Abrams ‘Star Trek’, MESS, got a 95% from ‘serious film critics’??!!”

I don’t think we’re talking about objective, humble film reviewing here. What is humble film reviewing, anyway? Critics aren’t the kind of people you give your daughters to marry. Am I right?

Andrew Furgeson writes about nationwide education reform and why we love it every time it returns:

Common Core was announced only eight years after President George W. Bush and Sen. Edward Kennedy introduced another revolutionary approach to learning in public schools, an expensive and ambitious program called No Child Left Behind. NCLB, as it’s referred to in the acronym-crazed world of education reform, forced states to raise their academic standards, which were considered too low, and to improve scores on standardized tests, which ditto.

NCLB itself came eight years after President Clinton thought up Goals 2000, a nationwide school reform program to enact “standards-based reforms” and thereby improve test scores. Goals 2000 was a reworking of a school reform plan called America 2000 that President George H.W. Bush launched in 1990 as a way of raising standards and getting better test scores out of America’s public schools. He wanted to be called “the education president,” President Bush did, and his approach, he said, was revolutionary.

And in 1983, only seven years before the ambitious launch of President Bush’s America 2000, the nation received an alarming report commissioned by President Reagan, who was troubled that test scores, along with standards, were too low among public school students. The report was called “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.” It concluded that higher standards were necessary to raise test scores. “A Nation at Risk” was written by a blue-ribbon commission in an attempt to end-run the Department of Education, which had been started in 1979. The department was Jimmy Carter’s idea. He worried that lax standards were destroying American public education. A federal department, he reasoned, might be able to oversee a revolutionary new approach that would set things right.

For nearly 40 years, it’s pretty much been all reform, all the time for the nation’s public school students, teachers, and parents.

(via Prufrock)

Hello. I’m back, at least now and then, for the next month or so.

I just finished my summer course in graduate school. The class was Music Cataloging, and it was kind of like studying law, but in an unfamiliar culture. My work was pretty lackluster, but I still came out with an A-minus grade, which is clear evidence of grade inflation. Or else I finally sighted that mythical “A for effort” I’ve been hearing about all my life.

Tonight after work I picked up a new (used) car – a 2002 Chrysler PT Cruiser. White, with woody panels (!). Yes, I finally parted company with Mrs. Hermanson, my ancient Chevy Tracker. I can’t deny an emotional tie, but she’s aged past my ability to maintain her in the manner to which she has become accustomed. I passed her on to an owner better qualified than I to minister to her aches and pains.

I’ve named the Cruiser Miss Ingebretsen, after my kindergarten teacher.

Coming up, a bunch of book reviews I’ve been piling up, plus deathless insights, madcap frolicking, and prophecies of doom. Fun for the whole family!

Most English speakers today learned it as a second language, so how will their habits, struggles, and primary languages change the English language? Prospero says it has already gotten simpler. It may continue down that path.

“For example, European Union bureaucrats are likely to use the English ‘control’ to mean ‘monitor’ or ‘verify’, because contrôler and kontrollieren have this meaning in French and German….

“What, then, can we predict English will lose if the process goes on? An easy choice seems to be ‘whom’. English was once heavily inflected; all nouns carried a suffix showing whether they were subjects, direct objects, indirect objects or played some other role in a sentence. Today, only the pronouns are inflected. And while any competent speaker can use I, me, my and mine correctly, even the most fluent can find whom (the object form of who) slippery. So whom might disappear completely, or perhaps only survive as a stylistic option in formal writing.”

The Starz network is developing Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for the small screen, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series was passed over earlier by HBO.

Gaiman is excited about it. He says, “The team at Starz has been quite certain that they wanted to give Shadow, Wednesday and Laura a home since they first heard that the book was out there. I can’t wait to see what they do to bring the story to the widest possible audience able to cope with it.”

I gather he anticipates haters.

“It is a loser’s game to try to appease the claims of those who despise one’s moral convictions, but nonetheless complain you aren’t applying them fastidiously enough.”

Here’s a quote from a friend on recent news. I wanted to say this yesterday, but didn’t give it enough thought.

Tove Jansson illustrated this for the Swedish edition of The Hobbit:

Brain Pickings has several illustrations from the British, Swedish, Japanese, and Russian editions. Mikhail Belomlinsky made this for the Russian edition printed in 1976: