Finally got in a walk tonight. What with bad weather and uneven health, I haven’t been able to do that for a month.

I spent the morning with a salesman for the company that provides our library cataloging software. We’re essentially in the Bronze Age in our technology, and it’s going to have to be upgraded. Unfortunately, I fear we won’t be able to go with these guys anymore, because I suspect our schools won’t spring for the price tag.

But it was an enjoyable few hours. The salesman was an Englishman, transplanted to America, and in the dead spaces caused by some wireless connection problems we found that we have shared enthusiasms for Norway, Monty Python and Patrick O’Brien.

It’s a rare pleasure for me to spend time with someone who wants something from me, and so is forced to act if I were good company.

Here’s a story the Sons of Norway won’t be highlighting anytime soon. One of the noted Norwegian-Americans we don’t talk about much was an Indiana farm woman named Belle Gunness. She was a celebrity in her time—one of America’s first known serial killers, and an example of the rare female variety at that. The University of Indianapolis has exhumed the body identified as hers after her house mysteriously burned down in 1908 (evidence is strong that it was another woman Belle murdered to fake her own death), along with Belle’s children (named Sorensen and Gunness due to multiple marriages), whom Belle probably poisoned to death before setting the fire. They’re going to do DNA tests to see if they’re all related or not.

Belle’s modus operandi was to take out lonely hearts ads in newspapers, describing herself as a comely widow looking for a man of means to marry. She asked the respondents who caught her fancy to come and visit her, bringing proof of their prosperity in the form of money and deeds to property. One after another, these men disappeared and were never heard from again. Amazingly, there seems to have been little suspicion for some time. Then, once relatives of the victims started asking questions, there was a terrible fire one night, and the bodies of Belle’s children were found in the ruins, along with an adult female corpse. Some thought it was Belle’s corpse, except that it was headless and seemed to have been several inches shorter than she. Rumors circulated for years that she’d been seen here or there, but nothing was ever proved.

The DNA should settle part of the mystery.

Hmm. Maybe I won’t take out that Match.com ad after all.