Any readers living in the Bemidji, Minnesota area may be interested to learn that I will be lecturing on Viking Legacy to the local Sons of Norway lodge this Sunday, Feb. 26 at 2:00 p.m. The location will be Calvary Lutheran Church, 2508 Washington Ave. SE.
Today I was interviewed on a local radio station, KB101 FM. Through the magic of modern technology, you can enjoy the interview right here, even if you’re not privileged to live in the Bemidji area.
‘The shoreline is the perfect metaphor. It shifts moment by moment, wave by wave, grain by grain. People used to ask why I was always photographing the same places but I never was. Living here, I’ve seen more sunrises than most people do in their whole lives but I’ve never seen two the same.’
D. C. Smith, retired detective from the police force in the fictional city of Kings Lake, Norfolk, is enjoying his quiet retirement on the coast, living with his partner Jo, a true crime writer, and their dog. But he’s allowed himself to be recruited by the private investigation firm of Diver and Diver. However, he’s in a position to turn down most of the cases they offer. Now, though, in The Camera Man, they’ve got something that piques his interest.
Gerald Fitch had been the owner of a struggling marine equipment business. One day five years ago he disappeared, leaving an estranged daughter and his second wife, generally believed to be a gold digger. Now the gold digger wants him declared dead so she can liquidate his property. But an insurance company underwrote a large policy on Gerald’s life, and they want Diver and Diver to look for proof of death – or life – before they pay out.
Smith agrees to look into it, and encounters a rather sad story about a man not really cut out for business who tried his best to be responsible but got out of his depth. Did he kill himself? Did he run away to a new life? Or – and this looks increasingly likely when Smith learns who the wife’s family is (they are “well known to the police” as they say over there) – was he murdered?
The D.C. Smith books are low-key, atmospheric and cerebral. Character is always at the heart of the story, and it’s Smith’s broad and humane sympathy that serves him as his best investigative tool. It’s a challenge poking into people’s lives without the authority of the law at his back, but that just makes it more interesting.
I profoundly enjoy all the D. C. Smith mysteries. Author Peter Grainger has branched out with other books about the younger detectives Smith trained as they carry on at Kings Lake, but there’s nobody like Smith for this reader. The Camera Man is a fine, rewarding book and I recommend it highly.
Many couples, even in the Ukranian conflict of the past year, marry quickly before going to war. It’s an optimistic casting of what bread they have to the wind, the hope of a surer foundation than they fear.
Connie Ruzich had blogged about poetry in the context of WWI, and in an August 2018 post, she dwells on a woman who wrote about enduring the wait with a reference to Odysseus’s wife, Penelope.
In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.
— Dorothy Parker
A Facebook friend alerted me to this article in Christianity Today by Philip Yancey, in which he announces his diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease.
I have to admit I don’t think I’ve read any of Yancey’s books — which makes me nearly unique, I think, in my generation of Christians. But I know nothing but good of him, and I know he’s been a tremendous blessing to many over the years. He’s one of the good guys, not afraid to face the hard questions. And he does not disappoint us in his article:
In my writing career, I have interviewed US presidents, rock stars, professional athletes, actors, and other celebrities. I have also profiled leprosy patients in India, pastors imprisoned for their faith in China, women rescued from sex trafficking, parents of children with rare genetic disorders, and many who suffer from diseases far more debilitating than Parkinson’s.
Reflecting on the two groups, here’s what stands out: With some exceptions, those who live with pain and failure tend to be better stewards of their life circumstances than those who live with success and pleasure. Pain redeemed impresses me much more than pain removed.
Today has been quiet for me – in a sense – and busy in another sense. I’ve not stirred abroad nor moved from my habitation this day, even to go to the gym. The gym is, in fact, closed, but I didn’t plan to go there anyway. We’re enduring the Great Blizzard of ’23 – or so the Chickens Little of the media would have us believe. What it’s been doing, in actual fact, is snowing. The winds haven’t been all that strong in Minneapolis, nor the snow especially heavy (thus far). What this storm is, is long. It started the night before last, and is supposed to drag on till late tomorrow.
But I have enough food to get me through, and I had some work to do, which brightens any day. I wish I could tell you about the latest project, which I just turned in. It contains elements that please me. I can’t say more than that. But it helped to warm the winter in my aged heart.
Above, a little video about George Washington’s face – since it’s still Washington’s birthday for a few hours as I write. The near-apotheosis of Washington in our early Republic was probably a political necessity, but it’s regrettable that the reaction to it – which has become malignant paranoia in recent years – has turned many people against him. Washington was (according to my reading) in fact a fascinating, complex man who worked hard at appearing one-dimensional.
I love historical reconstructions like the ones in the video above. But I happen to know that even this one is glamorized. The real Washington was (like a large percentage of his contemporaries) heavily scarred by smallpox. (Andrew Jackson was the same.) Blemishes as common as that were, I suppose, generally overlooked. Smooth complexions were much admired – especially in women, who made it a point to stay out of the sun – but you couldn’t insist on them.
Washington was also – or so I’ve read – very vain about his “figure.” He (like me, I must confess, though I’m not nearly as tall) was built rather broad at the hips. But he refused to believe it, despite what his mirror, and his tailor, told him. He insisted that his breeches be cut to the width he believed they ought to be, rather than what they were. Kind of like reverse anorexia. Thus his pants were always tight and uncomfortable.
But he had a purpose in concentrating on his appearance, in always being “in character,” in never relaxing in public. He felt he was setting a precedent for his nation. Nobody knew how the elected leader of a republic was supposed to comport himself. Washington had to make it up as he went along. As a schoolteacher makes it a point to be very strict during the first few weeks, to set a tone for the class that he can ease up on later, Washington established precedents for the presidency. Later chief executives, like Lincoln, were able to ease up on the dignity a bit, because Washington had left behind such a weight of reverence.
I fear the reverence is about gone now – it’s not all the fault of the present incumbent, either – but Washington did a pretty good job in his time.
I’ve got translation work today (loud cheers from the gallery!), so I’m going to just drop this semi-review of True Conviction, a book I didn’t complete. I quit reading before the end because it annoyed me in a number of ways, and I figure I ought to warn you against it. But I won’t post the cover because I don’t want to rub it in. The thing is, trashing a book I didn’t like can be an exercise in self-righteousness (even when the author’s way more successful than I am).
Here’s the setup – Adrian Hell (that’s his name) is a professional hit man and (we are told) a legend in the field. He is (he claims) an ethical assassin. He’ll only kill bad guys.
And yet, the first job he takes at the beginning of True Conviction is to kill a businessman who backed out on a land deal with a Nevada mob boss – the guy may be corrupt, but does that deserve death? Then Adrian gets in a fight with his employer and ends up on the run, and he meets an attractive female assassin, and… I lost interest.
First of all, I didn’t believe the Adrian Hell character. He’s always talking about how tough he is. That’s a sure sign – in literature, anyway – that he’s not as tough as he wants you to think. (In real life, I suspect it may be quite common for really tough guys to be loudmouths, but in literature we’ve learned that it’s cool reserve that earns the reader’s respect.)
Secondly, the book was overwritten. The author doesn’t trust the reader to figure out what he’s saying, so he explains EVERYTHING. Including his little jokes – which might work as little jokes if he didn’t inflate them to the bursting point.
Maybe you’d like True Conviction better than I did. Apparently they sell a lot of copies.
I’ll say at the outset that I do not love the Roper-Hooley detective series, set in London. I don’t hate the books; I just have no problem putting them down. But I bought a set of four (got them for free, actually), they are readable, and times are tough, so I’m reading them.
In The Case of the Dirty Bomb, brilliant autistic detective Jonathan Roper is back at headquarters, having completed his time with a national security agency. But his partner Brian Hooley is concerned about him. He seems to have lost his way; he’s having trouble analyzing information and is worried he’s “losing it.”
With Hooley’s help, he changes his approach and soon realizes the reason he’s been having trouble. They’re facing an unprecedented problem. Someone is gathering fissionable nuclear material cached in secret locations across Europe and smuggling it into England to set up the extortion scheme to end all extortion schemes.
There’s nothing all that wrong with these books; they simply don’t ring my bells very loudly. The autistic character, Jonathan Roper, is really the most interesting one here. I guess that’s not surprising; he is the “exotic.” But the others could have been made more colorful, in my view. I didn’t find myself caring about them a lot.
Toward the end, the author takes an opportunity to make a dig at anti-Communists, but the political side wasn’t really intrusive. One Russian character’s name was inconsistently spelled. The book was okay, though, though I thought the plot a little far-fetched. Maybe you’ll like it better than I did.
Many people today believe we are not being told the whole truth about current or historical events. Some say our history is whitewashed (using a broad definition for that word), and a recent survey found half of Americans believe the national news media is actually lying to us.
At the same time, the Ronald Dahl estate wants to edit their popular novels to avoid repelling new readers with details like these from an AV Club article on Saturday:
But it hasn’t stopped fans of Dahl’s books from passing around excerpts today of new versions of his work in which Matilda is no longer a fan of Joseph Conrad or Rudyard Kipling, or a version of The Witches that goes to pains to remind you that there are lots of good reasons for a woman to wear a wig that have nothing to do with her being a monster with an insatiable desire to murder children.
As one commenter on that article said, this kind of rewriting will encourage further sanitizing of history. I wonder if this means complaints about the age inappropriateness of some content is no longer book banning. That reminds me I want to buy some good editions of Longfellow before they get erased.
The great John Newton (1725-1807) wrote “Let us love, and sing, and wonder” in 1774 with six verses. It doesn’t appear to be a very popular hymn, but it struck a chord with me when I heard a modern arrangement of it several years ago. It’s a marvelous praise song that doesn’t focus on our devotion or what I’m doing to worship the Lord. It focuses on the awesome work of Christ.
1 Let us love and sing and wonder,
let us praise the Savior’s name!
He has hushed the law’s loud thunder,
he has quenched Mount Sinai’s flame:
he has washed us with his blood,
he has brought us nigh to God.
2 Let us love the Lord who bought us,
pitied us when enemies,
called us by his grace and taught us,
gave us ears and gave us eyes:
he has washed us with his blood,
he presents our souls to God.
3 Let us sing, though fierce temptation
threaten hard to bear us down!
For the Lord, our strong salvation,
holds in view the conqu’ror’s crown:
he who washed us with his blood
soon will bring us home to God.
4 Let us wonder; grace and justice
join and point to mercy’s store;
when thro’ grace in Christ our trust is,
justice smiles and asks no more:
he who washed us with his blood
has secured our way to God.
5 Let us praise, and join the chorus
of the saints enthroned on high;
here they trusted him before us,
now their praises fill the sky:
“You have washed us with your blood;
you are worthy, Lamb of God!”
6. Hark! the name of Jesus, sounded
Loud, from golden harps above!
Lord, we blush, and are confounded,
Faint our praises, cold our love!
Wash our souls and songs with blood,
For by Thee we come to God.
It’s been cold this week. We even had a bit of wintery precipitation, which we call snow around here, but you probably have real snow in your area and would laugh at us for using the same word to refer to whatever that was in the air a minute ago. It’s winter here. With current events as they are, it feels like winter everywhere.
Contemporary Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan wrote in his poem, “A bridge used to be there, someone recalled,” these lines about muddling through.
He recalled the city he’d escaped from, the scorched terrain he searched by hand. He recalled a weeping man saved by the squad. Life will be quiet, not terrifying. He should have returned a while ago. What could happen to him, exactly? What could happen? The patrol will let him through, and god will forgive. God’s got other things to do.
Winter can feel like that. Quiet enough to allow you to push back both real and imagined terrors, worries that the world is leaning into the curse, that God has other things to do. But such feelings belie the hope we have in Christ. As Christina Rossetti wrote in “A Better Resurrection“:
My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk: Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring; O Jesus, rise in me.
What else to we have today?
Bookstores: Focusing on a new store in Concord, N.C., called Goldberry Books, World magazine reports on the return of small booksellers. “In the last decade, the American Booksellers Association (ABA), a trade organization for independent bookstores, has actually seen steady growth. In 2022, its members operated more than 2,500 locations—up more than 50 percent since 2009.”
Libraries: The Vermont State Colleges System intends to divest itself of printed books and offer only digital access by July 1, 2023. Joel Miller talks through how bad that could be. The faculty of three colleges in the state system have pushed back, calling the board of trustees’ decision “reckless.”
Fathers: Ted Kluck talks about his friends’ fathers, who are coming to the end of their lives. “They taught us how to goof off and bust chops and work hard and be generous and stay married. . . . Do they make dads like these anymore?”
Remembering: Joseph Conrad wrote, “The dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality of the life imparted to them by the living.” Patrick Kurp reflects on this as well as Thelonious Monk’s love of the hymn “Abide with Me.”
