There are a few things I’ve been meaning to mention lately, and hadn’t gotten around to, largely because of my Missouri trip.
The day I left, The American Spectator published Smoker’s Pride, a little parable I wrote. The comments were amusing, but troubling. It appears that a large percentage of the readers couldn’t take the story beyond its literal meaning. Hint: It’s not actually about smoking.
Bryan Preston at The PJ Tatler gave Troll Valley a nice plug in a post on What’s On My Kindle App.
And finally, one more memory from Ravensborg. One of the meats featured at this year’s Viking feast (though no real Viking ever ate it) was raccoon. And yes, I ate some. Fatty and stringy, in my opinion. Many said it tasted like beef, but I thought it was more like pork, with high notes of… yes, chicken.
Hey, if you were surrounded by Vikings and somebody asked you if you wanted to try raccoon meat, would you wimp out?
I wimped out. I told Sam “I don’t eat no varmints.”
Though I would try beaver if I had the chance.
Another no-wimp challenge was sipping some “white lightning” moonshine whiskey. Now, remember this was in Missouri. I will admit that it literally took my breath away. Whenever I tried to breathe, the fumes from my mouth would close up my windpipe. I survived by breathing in through my nose, and out through my mouth. But, it actually tasted good! So, each of the next couple sips were easier to tolerate. But I quit after three, thinking about what the morrow might bring.
The smoking parable comments take me back to an axiom my seminary counseling professor gave us, “The stated issue is very rarely the real issue.” Reading the article after Lars’s warning that it was not about smoking, I found it totally obvious what it was about. Lars warned us that the commentators didn’t get it, so I expected that. But what surprised me was how tenaciously they didn’t get it.
I tremble to think that this may represent the state of conservative intellect in America.
For the record (and in case any of my employers read this), I didn’t take the white lightning challenge.
I thought the White Lightning was lemonade. That’s what it tasted like to me.
Speaking of Troll Valley, I’ve been wanting to buy a copy, but as near as I can tell, it is only available in electronic formats, instead of hard copy. Is that right?
That’s true, unless you can find a used copy. If you’d like, contact me at lars (at) larswalker.com and I can sell you a copy from my own stock, at the publisher’s price.
Oops. Correction–Troll Valley is available only as an e-book at this time. Sorry.