Today’s hymn is adapted from a poem by the American Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. In that poem, “The Brewing of Soma,” Whittier describes a Hindu drinking ceremony over several verses before contrasting it with Christian repentance. “Our foolish ways” are both old pagan practices and the Christianized versions we may have replaced them with. Instead, may we hear the quiet voice of the Living God speaking through Scripture and natural disaster.
“For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, ‵In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.‵ But you were unwilling . . . ” (Isaiah 30:15 ESV)
1 Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways! Re-clothe us in our rightful mind, in purer lives thy service find, in deeper rev’rence praise, in deeper rev’rence praise.
2 In simple trust like theirs who heard beside the Syrian sea, the gracious calling of the Lord, let us, like them, without a word rise up and follow thee, rise up and follow thee.
3 O Sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above, where Jesus knelt to share with thee the silence of eternity, interpreted by love! Interpreted by love!
4 Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease; take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace, the beauty of thy peace.
5 Breathe through the heats of our desire thy coolness and thy balm; let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak through the earthquake, wind and fire, O still small voice of calm! O still small voice of calm!
Peter Hitchens blogged about memory a couple months ago, noting Orwell’s 1984 naturally, pointing out “Orwell’s description of the sort of things people actually do remember: ‘A million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister’s face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago.'”
He spent half of the post on the former Communist novelist Arthur Koestler (1905-1983). He said at one point everyone with a decent education on world affairs knew about Koestler and the novel Darkness at Noon. “It was perhaps the most devastating literary blow ever aimed at Communist tyranny,” Hitchens said. Important because it exposed truths the world didn’t want to believe. In WWII, Stalin joined the Allied forces, and people wanted to forget any crimes he may have committed before that. Others wanted to believe Marxism was a force for good in the world, so they waved away evidence to the contrary.
“For a large part of my life,” Hitchens wrote, “this potent political novel, and its accompanying volume Scum of the Earth were vital parts of human knowledge and understanding.” Those who had read them were “the undeceived, and the hard-to-deceive.” Where are those people now?
Rings of Power: In far more trivial news, reviewer Erik Kain argues that defending Amazon’s ‘Rings Of Power’ by claiming Tolkien had no canon “would make Sauron proud.” A professor with ties to the show has said, “Tolkien’s ideas were ever evolving,” meaning all of his notes and drafts demonstrate none of his ideas, even the published ones, are fixed.
Chariots of Fire: The story of Eric Liddell’s race in the classic movie Chariots of Fire took place at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. The Scottish runner won gold in the 400-meter, breaking Olympic and world records with 47.6 seconds. World’s Paul Butler talked about it on Friday’s podcast of The World and Everything in It. I listened to a tape of the movie soundtrack during my fruitful, cassette-tape-buying years. Here’s a nice tribute to the movie and music.
The Facts Fudged: Bill Steigerwald talks about the work he put into his book dividing fact from fiction in John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. “Taking on the great Steinbeck and challenging the existing narrative about his iconic book was no big deal. I was used to being an outsider, whether it was when covering a KKK cross-burning or attending a conference of public transit officials. The process of reporting and researching Steinbeck’s travels and book was no different from what I had done in a hundred big Sunday newspaper features, just a lot bigger and on my own dime.”
Photo: Elks Lodge, Tacoma, Washington. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
I’ve got a busy day today, so let me start by sharing a little light verse.
You live a few days then you die And sometimes you ask yourself why. What could bring relief? The next season’s release. Go watch and the time will fly by.
They’re calling to all of the sheep To occupy Ivy League Street Don’t think of the issues Just bring down your tissues And cry, yell, scream, chant, and repeat.
Scotland: From the land of the free and the home of the brave comes this tale of Black Agnes, who held Castle Dunbar against the English for several months in 1338, saying among other things”
‘Of Scotland’s King I haud my house, He pays me meat and fee, And I will keep my gude auld house, While my house will keep me.’
A New Review: John Wilson imagines a Christian review periodical and what it’s pushback would sound like: “We’re beset on every hand by attacks on our core convictions, by enemies of our faith, and you are whining about book reviews?”
Of publishers it may be said that like the English as a race they are incapable of philosophy. They deal in particulars and adhere easily to Sydney Smith’s dictum that one should take short views, hope for the best, and trust God.
William Jovanovich, Now, Barabbas
Photo: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Point: Few people buy books that aren’t celebrity aligned. Britney Spears’s autobiography, released October 24, 2023, is currently #1 in Kindle, #10 in hardcover on Amazon. Aside of these, publishing houses stay afloat through backlist sales: Bibles, coloring books, and Don Quixote.
“Someone from a prestige big 5 imprint whose books are often award-contenders and bestsellers once told me any book that sold less than 25,000 in print was a failure for them. OTOH, when I was in an MFA program—where many of the professors wrote experimental literary novels and such—I was told anything more than 5,000 sales was a success. Some small press editors might be happy with 1,000 sales.”
Topping Amazon’s fiction list for most sold this week are The Women, by Kristin Hannah (12 weeks on the list) and The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese (33 weeks).
As booklovers, we may want many more people to join us in reading, sharing, and enjoying the written or recorded word, but I don’t think the sky is falling yet.
Poetry: On April 26, 1336, a great poet climbed into the Alps just for the thrill of it, which people didn’t do in those days. Petrarch climbed to the top of Mont Ventoux (which is much higher today because of inflation) and read from Augustine’s Confessions, “Where I fixed my eyes first, it was written: ‘And men go to admire the high mountains, the vast floods of the sea, the huge streams of the rivers, the circumference of the ocean and the revolutions of the stars – and desert themselves.’ . . .”
Music: Ted Gioia writes western music isn’t what we think it is. “Just stop and think for a moment about the importance of Venice in the history of music. Everything from madrigals to operas found their home in that bustling port city—a key connecting point between West and East in the modern imagination.”
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.
Matthew Arnold, “Growing Old”
Matthew Arnold captures something in his 1867 poem “Growing Old.” I don’t know what is exactly. Seems a bit obtuse to a spry Gen-Xer like me. But I was thinking of old things today, because I’ve caught wind of many recent archeological finds and thought I’d share them with you today.
Vikings: Let’s start with the unearthing of over a couple thousand fragments of combs and brooches, some “carved from the antlers of red deer, and a few were made of bones from animals like whales.”
Ice Skating: Archeologists with the Comenius Museum in Přerov, the Czech Republic’s Moravia region, discovered a 1,000-year-old ice skate. “It dates back to the time when there was a very important fortress in the area of the Upper Square. It served as a stronghold for Polish King Boleslav the Brave, who occupied Moravia at the time and had his soldiers stationed there.”
Greeks and Romans: Pompeii got even more impressive with the discovery of gorgeous frescos depicting Helen of Troy and Cassandra
🚨NEW 🚨
I was on site at Pompeii shortly after they made the stunning discovery of exquisite frescoes of figures from the Trojan War in a newly uncovered winter dining room.
And researchers working in the area of Rome’s Colosseum have uncovered a home with an exceptional mural showing “weapons and musical instruments as well as ships and tridents.” The director general of museums at the Italian culture ministry said, “There is nothing else like it from this period in Rome. There is nothing like it even at Pompeii.”
Swedish Longsword: And finally, the grave of a tall Swedish man with an impressive longsword was violated by the Halland Cultural Environment in their unrestrained excavations of the Franciscan friary in Halmstad. I fear for the townspeople who will be troubled by his vengeful ghost.
Tonight, because such exercises please me, I wish to discuss (which means I write, you read) the history of a name. The name is Oscar. Not a terribly common name, but it shows up now and then in unexpected places. Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple. Eddie Murphy’s character in Beverly Hills Cop. Sylvester Stallone did a film called Oscar. And of course – speaking of films – there’s the famous statuette of the Academy Awards – said to have been informally named by Academy librarian and historian Margaret Herrick, who remarked that it reminded her of her uncle Oscar.
Also Oscar the Grouch.
The book I reviewed yesterday, Armored, featured a Mexican character named Oscar. But I think of it primarily as a Scandinavian name. So I wondered, where did it come from and what does it mean?
My finely honed librarian’s skills led me to an arcane scholarly source known to insiders as Wikipedia. There I learned the story of the name, which is not without points of interest.
What does Oscar mean? It actually comes (purely by chance) from two different languages. In Old English, it means “Spear of the Gods” (cognate with the Norse name Asgeir).
But its modern use springs from Old Irish, where it means “One Who Loves Deer.”
The name was one of those indigenous ones that turned out insufficiently popular to survive the coming of Christianity, with its multitude of saints’ names to hang on babies. So it went out of use and was largely forgotten.
Then along came a man named James MacPherson (1736-1796), a Scottish writer, politician, and all-around scoundrel. Though he sprang from an old Jacobite (Stuart-supporting) family, he jumped wholeheartedly over to the Hanoverians (the English conquerors) and profited thereby. He also participated in the Highland Clearances, evicting poor cotters from their homes so their lands could be repurposed for sheep grazing. Countless Scots were made homeless by this treacherous betrayal of ancient trust.
But McPherson is best remembered for a series of poems called the Ossian Cycle, which he claimed he collected from ancient Scottish lays he learned from simple bards. Most scholars and critics have long agreed that McPherson wrote them himself, throwing in a few borrowings from Scottish and Irish folklore.
Whatever their source, the published poems were a huge success with the reading public. The Romantic Movement was blossoming just then, and people were hungry for tales of high adventure in ancient times – tales that came from somewhere further north than Rome or Athens. I’ve written here before about the popularity of Tegner’s Saga of Frithjof. The Lay of the Nibelungs and the Icelandic sagas were also objects of fascination. The Ossian Cycle fit right in.
Three of the main characters in the Ossian poems are Fingal, the great hero, Ossian, his son, who is supposed to be the poet, and his son Oscar, now dead.
Among McPherson’s many admirers was no less a figure than Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France. He hung the name on his godson, Joseph Bernadotte, son of his marshal Charles Jean Bernadotte. Charles Jean would go on to become king of Sweden (later of Norway too), and Joseph was eventually crowned King Oscar I. Thus did Oscar become a popular name with Scandinavians.
So hail to you, if your name is Oscar. Or if you live in Ossian, Iowa (nice town; I’ ve been there).
Earlier this year, my oldest daughter told me she had published a book of her poetry. She didn’t ask me about it ahead of time. She didn’t come to me with an idea and say she understood I’ve looked into writing and publishing for years so maybe I would have some thoughts. No. She just made it happen behind my back.
As you would expect, I reacted as gently and affirmingly as could be imagined. I think I yelled at her. I tried to keep a level head and ask questions like, “What do you mean?!” and “Are you kidding me?”
But this is the world we have. Little girls can earn their own money and pay for publishing services, not unlike those which have employed me in the past, and get their words in print on actual pages and physical books–without their father’s involvement.
Her book is Silent Beauty Speaks. It’s a collection of nature poems, efforts at capturing the sunrise or a night’s calm.
The gentle swell of airy song, The lullaby of breath belongs To quiet winds that round the ear, Whispering softly, "Do not fear."
That’s a stanza from “Lilac Night.” Here’s her opening poem, “A Marbled Sky.”
When first I rose, and laid my eyes Upon the marbled sunrise, The moving clouds of dark and gold, I saw a story yet untold The expectation of the day A light to hold, to hope, and pray May I find grace enough today
I’d love to hear your thoughts on her work, not that I would share them. I’m too critical on my own. Any criticism you have will stay between us. But if you say you’ve been moved to invest in the future of humanity, I might pass that on.
I’ve been reading Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and have not finished it, but I wanted to share some thoughts today. Blogging is designed for that, updates along the way.
The point almost from the beginning is that this engineer from 19th century America is an intellectual paragon among sixth century rubes. Their superstition and gullibility make them victims of every charlatan (usually of a religious or magical flavor) who comes into town. Hank the Yankee sees through all of them and will deliver them from all bondage, if he can devise a way to do it. I’m near the end of the book, and though luck has saved his neck many times, his progressive prowess has prepared him for that salvation just as often.
His progressive acumen is as good as magic, because Hank’s been able to create a telephone and telegraph network, school system, railroads, various consumer goods, and many kinds of explosives. He intends to create a thriving democracy in Camelot, if not all of England, and I’m wondering if that’s where Twain will leave it–19th century America triumphing overall. We see a little tension in the story here and there, because Hank is not brilliant and has been successful largely by force of plot and luck. So, I’ve wondered if the satire will turn back on him, and the story will end with everything crashing around him. Will the 19th century man be shown to be the greatest product of society, the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, the smartest and the best of all, or will his Social Darwinian hubris trip him up? I may find out later today.
What can I share with you today?
First, let me apologize for missing the Sunday Singing post last week. Circumstances disrupted by routine and by Sunday afternoon, I decided not to post it. I’ll get one up tomorrow, if I don’t fall a roof in the morning.
Boycotts: The SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, has the U.S. Army and defense contractors as sponsors and participants for years, but this year, helping Israel defend itself against the neighboring monsters is too much for some.
Publishing: A new publishing house formed by three experienced executives intends to forego advances and offer “authors a high percentage of a book’s profits—a model used by some other types of hybrid publishers.”
Food: What is corned beef? It’s an innovation of Irish-Americans who lived near Jewish Americans and took a shine to this kind of meat in Jewish delis.
Photo: Bomber gas station, Milwaukie, Oregon. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
I didn’t make any progress on The Road this week. (Perhaps I should write about it before I finish, make two posts.) I’ve been reading other books too, which is new for me. Last year, I bought a few books to challenge myself and have picked up more since then, so now I’m reading four at once sorta kinda. Saying it that way doesn’t sound right, because I’m not reading four books together. I just have books I intend to but have yet to finish.
In talking about the concept of conversion, she notes a reader of Pride and Prejudice who remarked that Mr. Collins doesn’t appear to be a Christian at all. How could he be a minister? He could be a minister, she says, because the state church made political appointments to these positions. This was the context of the Great Awakening. She writes that evangelicals emphasize reaching the lost among those in the world or of other faiths, so there’s a bit of irony in the development of evangelicalism from a society that claimed to be Christian on the whole. How we imagine the conversion experience shapes our faith and influences how we teach others, especially children, to think about their commitment to Christ.
That’s the kind of thing Prior gets into in that book. I’ll write about it again another time.
Christian Nationalism: Hunter Baker reviews a couple books on the Christian Nationalism debate for Modern Age. “For Wolfe, the answer is to become a transgressor against the boundaries of church and state that today appear to be so firmly drawn by the liberal regime. . . . You can’t fight the something of secular progressivism with the nothing of a disarmed faith that lives in the confining pen made for it by modernity, so set forth a vision of the nation as one that is unashamed to call itself and its people Christian.”
I sit within My Father’s house, with changeless face to see The shames and sins that turned away My Father’s face from Me; Be not amazed for all these things, I bore them long ago That am from everlasting God, and was and shall be so.
Humanities: The good people at The New Criterion had abandoned the annual Modern Language Association conference, saying, “we felt that, like Macbeth, we had ‘supped full with horrors’ and resolved to leave those annual exhibitions of narcissistic nullity to others.” But this year, they looked back again and found a curiosity or two.
Photo: Norwest Bank terra cotta detail, Owatonna, Minnesota, 1988. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
