Today’s hymn comes from the great English hymnist Isaac Watts (1674-1748). It was published in 1707, while Dr. Watts was pastor of Independent Church of London. The tune is a familiar Irish melody called St. Columba. (And since I found it, let me share this organ prelude to St. Columba. You’ll want headphones for both recordings to catch the subtleties.)
“Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” (Luke 14:15 ESV)
1 How sweet and awful is the place with Christ within the doors, while everlasting love displays the choicest of her stores.
2 While all our hearts and all our songs join to admire the feast, each of us cries, with thankful tongue, “Lord, why was I a guest?
3 “Why was I made to hear Thy voice, and enter while there’s room, when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come?”
4 ‘Twas the same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in; else we had still refused to taste, and perished in our sin.
5 Pity the nations, O our God, constrain the earth to come; send Thy victorious Word abroad, and bring the strangers home.
6 We long to see Thy churches full, that all the chosen race may, with one voice and heart and soul, sing Thy redeeming grace.
Summer in America means baseball, even if you aren’t a fan. The clip above is an artistic moment from a great baseball film, The Natural. I saw a clip from a Japanese game yesterday that showed a right fielder rifle the ball to the catcher at home plate, getting a runner out. The speed of that throw was thrilling–a little like the pitching portrayed above.
What else is going on this week?
Memorials: This week we honored the 80th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy. Of the 2,403 Americans killed on D-Day, 20 of them were from Bedford, Virginia, a community of 3,200. Over 40 Bedford residents were serving during the war, most in the Virginia National Guard. Their fallen were subsequently called the Bedford Boys.
War Correspondents: There’s a bed-and-breakfast in Chateau Vouilly, France, 20 minutes from Omaha Beach, that once housed the reporters who wrote the stories of the Allied troops advance. In 1944, it was a good, out-of-the-way spot, not too far from the action—for at least two months.
Every night, the hostess served the press corp milk and cookies. “On the tougher days, Hamel served glasses of Calvados, the famed local spirit made from distilled apple and pear cider. Reporters called it the ‘breakfast of champions.'”
Reading: About what novel did author Robert Louis Stevenson say this, “Many find it dull: Henry James could not finish it: all I can say is, it nearly finished me.”
My great-grandfather Lars Swelland and his wife Martha, in happier times.
I didn’t post anything in remembrance of the 80th anniversary of D-Day yesterday, for which I apologize. It’s not that I wasn’t thinking of the observance. I flew the flag at my house. It’s just that I didn’t know what to say about it – and still don’t. The scope of the sacrifice overwhelms me. It’s not enough to say that we need to be worthy of it all – the fact is, we’re not worthy, and as a civilization we’ve stopped trying to be. If those boys (most were just boys), European and American, could have seen what their children and grandchildren would do with the world they saved for us, they’d have turned back in disgust.
Instead, purely for the sake of my sanity, I’ll turn to smaller-scale matters. I’ve often written here of the occupation of Norway. It ended in 1945 – there’s a year yet to go before they celebrate the 80th anniversary of their liberation. Which they’ll do on May 8, 2025.
My own family has little to report (that I know of) in the whole story of the war. My dad served in the Japan occupation forces, and saw no action. One uncle on my mother’s side was a Marine in the Pacific — I know nothing about his service. One of Dad’s cousins was killed in the war (more about that later), but I never heard much about him. I believe one of my cousins on Karmøy Island was a War Sailor, a merchantman under military command. If you saw the miniseries War Sailor (which I helped translate), you know about that perilous service.
And then there was my great-grandfather Lars Swelland, of whom I’ve written here before – but that was in the days of the old blog host, and the post seems to have disappeared when we migrated. I’ll just recap his story briefly; perhaps I’ll flesh it out at another time.
In brief, Great-grandfather Lars lost his heart for America after his wife died and the Great Depression hit. Having missed one mortgage payment on his farm, and getting a single dunning letter from the company holding the note, he packed up, boarded a train, and traveled to New York, where he got on a ship back to Norway, ignoring all telegraphic pleas from his family and the mortgage company, who tried to tell him it wasn’t as bad as he thought. (The family lost the farm.) In Norway he did not return to his home farm, but settled in another town – Tysness, near Bergen, to live the rest of his life in poverty. He died during the war, out of communication with his children. I have a letter his landlady sent to my grandmother once the war was over, and I’ve translated it thus:
Tvedt, 6 February, 1946
Dear Sofie!
[I] can easily understand that you will wonder who is sending you this letter. It was here at my home that your father Lars Svelland lived. I have thought so often about sending you a letter, but somehow it never happened. As you have probably heard from your sister Millie, your father is dead. He died 14 August, at 1:00 midday, 1942. He asked me to greet you all, but we were caught up in all the worst of wartime, and were unable to send letters.
Your father died of a stroke, bleeding on the brain. He lay [in bed] 3 weeks, and was very sick, but he was so thankful; never a complaining word. It was his right side that was completely paralyzed, and he had so much trouble speaking. But after he had lain there 2 weeks, it happened that he got his voice again, and I was so happy, believing he had come back again, but God had other ideas.
And I thank God that he got his voice again. Then he was able to thank Jesus, and then he prayed the Our Father, the Lord’s prayer, and that is the holiest prayer we can pray. He had several times when he felt poorly, when he was plagued by the spirit of doubt, but at the end he was quite all right.
But in 1940 he [had] had a hemorrhage; it came on so suddenly. He spit up a great mass of blood. He recovered somewhat after that turn, so that he was up [and about], but never got his strength [back]. But remarkably, his weakness got better after he’d had the hemorrhage, so that he could eat more ordinary food.
The day he had his fatal attack he had been out fishing a little, and he ate so well at supper with fresh fish.
But Sofie, you would never believe how glad I am that God ordained it so that he was able to come home again and die at home, so that I could care for him. It would have been so terrible to think of if he had fallen into the sea. Now God was so kind that he came home again, and [I] was able to hear him thank Jesus, so that if you are not able to see your father again in this life, you will meet him at home with Jesus.
And he lived as a Christian and died in faith in the completed work that Jesus has done for all who receive Him in faith.
Your father sang so often the song, “I Know a Rest So Fair and Long in David’s city afar; there I will rest from the press of time, and shine myself like a star.” Yes, now he has [gone?; hard to translate] out, and he is shining like a star.
Sofie, I have found a letter which you sent your father, dated 1934, and that letter was so beautifully written that I wept happy tears, and among other things, you ask whether he has forgotten you [all]. But he thought much about all of you, so you were not forgotten by him, and especially when the war broke out with America, you were even more in his thoughts. As long as there was a radio in the parish, he walked a long way to hear how it was going. But then the Germans came and everyone had to turn their radios in. Yes, that was a hard time, when the war was going on, a hard time for Norway, but like a miracle it is over. But now it has come about that we have gotten more food, so the people are so thankful. The Germans took everything from us, so that if the war had been any longer, there would have been genuine famine, and not a little of it. You can judge whether we were in want. People around the countryside are directed to use [oil] lamps. This past winter we got 1 liter of oil per month. There was nothing for lighting; now we get 25 liters, and before the war people could get as much oil as they wanted. Yes, it was cruel to be without any light [over] the long winter nights.
But in 3 years there will be electric light here, and also for cooking. But it has been a difficult time. That can be forgotten, but what the many prisoners have had to endure, that is completely horrible; [they] were tortured to death and the poor mothers who grieve the loss of their boys. It is only God who can comfort the many who sit longing for their loved ones. I see from Millie’s letter that your sister has lost her boy; may God give comfort and help her in her sorrow. Your father always believed that the young sons of his children would have to go out, and spoke and thought so [much] about them; now he was not able to live to see the peace for which he longed so much. It would have been so precious if he had lived, but the Lord’s ways are not ours.
[I] hope you are able to understand my letter, even if it is not so well written.
[I] enclose a little picture which is a passport photo we all had to have when the war came.
British police procedurals tend to be a tad more sedate than American ones. More brain work than gunplay. Author Neil Lancaster breaks that rule as much as possible in The Devil You Know, part of a series set in Edinburgh, Scotland, starring police detective Max Craigie and his mysterious friend Bruce Ferguson. They are both former military snipers. Bruce gives justice a nudge now and then by eliminating the occasional very bad criminal. Max is uncomfortable with this, but they owe each other their lives, and he can’t help sympathizing.
An incarcerated felon, heir to an important crime family, has come forward offering to provide the police with explosive information – information that will bring down a major political figure. In return he wants a transfer to a more comfortable prison – he also stipulates that Max Craigie must not be involved in any way. When the police attempt to carry out the deal, it goes spectacularly wrong. And then Max and his colleagues are in it full-bore, running down leads, hacking computers, and doing surveillance with drones. A lot of bullets will be fired and blood spilled, as well as dark secrets uncovered, before it’s all over.
What I liked best about The Devil You Know was the characters. Author Lancaster is good at painting vivid personalities. There’s quite a lot of cop humor here, which is not all that common in British crime novels – though the c.h. generally takes the form of simple insult, taken affectionately. The weakest aspect of the dialogue is the occasional awkward info dump. The author hasn’t quite mastered that.
An important plot turn involves the heroes’ lives being saved by pure coincidence. That’s a weakness in plotting.
Still, all in all, I found The Devil You Know an entertaining and suspenseful novel. The relationship between Max and Bruce, which is advertised as central to the series, actually plays very little role in this story.
I wonder about the increasing popularity of vigilante characters in contemporary crime fiction. Does it indicate a sense among the public – one too subversive to be plainly stated – that our justice system isn’t really doing its job?
I’m feeling better today, thanks for asking, so let’s think about death, shall we?
The short Tolkien clip above resonated with me. I forget where I saw it first – probably on Facebook, where I waste too much time.
I’m not sure what I’d have thought about that statement, that great books are all about death, before I started working on The Baldur Game (not to say I’m claiming it’s a great book). If you’ve been following the Erling Saga, you know that this will be the last book in the series. And that can only mean one thing. We’re going to be saying goodbye to at least one important character.
A weird, semi-intentional chronological harmony has followed my Erling books. The first novel, The Year of the Warrior, came out in 2000. That’s precisely 1,000 years after the events described, which culminate in the Battle of Svold, usually dated to the millennium year. That’s what the title means – the Latin numeral for 1,000 is M. And (according to one of my characters) M also stands for Miles, which is Latin for soldier or warrior.
The books have loosely kept pace with the millennial anniversaries since then. If I were following the pattern strictly, I’d have left The Baldur Game’s release to 2030, because it ends in 1030. But the book begins in 1024, and I figure that’s close enough for my purposes. It would be hubristic to assume I’ll still be alive in 2030. I won’t give you my precise age, but I’ll be a little surprised if I live that long. (Though it’s looking more likely as it approaches, which astonishes me.)
And yes, the book is about death. I realized that as I was constructing it. There are recurring images of the sea, of chaos, which in the Old Testament evoked death.
And of course Norse sagas are always about death. There may be numerous other themes – honor, love, freedom, loyalty – but in the end they’re about how the characters faced their deaths.
Like all men, I’ve mostly tried to avoid thinking about my own death – though I’ve made an effort to prepare for it as a Christian. But old age tends to concentrate the mind, as Dr. Johnson said about the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight.
One of the values of literature, I think (and I think Tolkien would agree) is that it prepares us to face the things that must be faced.
Maybe we authors can help ourselves too.
(And before you ask – my health is fine, as far as I know. My chief malady, from my youth, has been melancholy.)
I just received a postcard. It was mailed to me from Spring Grove, Minnesota (in the southeastern corner of the state) on May 17 last, and it arrived here in Robbinsdale today. That’s nearly three weeks to travel 161 miles. I could wax indignant about the way the mail service has deteriorated, harkening back to the gilded days of my youth when such a missive would have arrived the following day, or at most in two days.
But at this point, I just sympathize with the postal service. It must be feeling pretty much like I was feeling after this weekend.
Don’t get me wrong. It was a good weekend. Met a number of nice people, and sold a reasonable amount of my books.
But it was hard on me. This was one of those watershed moments in a man’s life (if it’s a man; sometimes it’s a woman but I know nothing about that. I only assume their experience is similar) when he’s forced to face the fact that he’s gotten bloody old. I drove home Sunday afternoon, left all my Viking junk in my car, and collapsed on the sofa. I spent Monday recovering; I accomplished nothing except for posting a book review. I had “run out of sand,” to employ a metaphor from my green years.
Having rested up now and thought it over, I realize the situation may not be as bad as I thought. This weekend was unusual in that it involved two consecutive Viking events on two consecutive days. That meant two setups and two teardowns, plus packing and unpacking my car. That’s a lot of barges toted and bales lifted. Thank God for the young people in our group – we’ve had a gratifying influx of promising youngsters recently, and they are generous in helping me lift and carry and strap things down. I couldn’t manage without them.
But I think I probably need to cut back a little. I’m considering selling my Viking tent. I can get by with a sun shade/awning, as I used to, which is a lot lighter. I said goodbye to steel combat a few years ago, and now I think I may need to say goodbye to the care and feeding of my tent. I stand before the crowd like Lou Gehrig in “Pride of the Yankees,” and say I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
Lugging my Viking chest in and out of my house (it involves steps) is the single hardest part of managing my reenactment impedimenta, though. I think I’m going to experiment with just leaving the blasted thing in my car all summer. Heat may be an issue in the sunshine, but the only thing I can think of inside the chest that’s likely to melt is a little lump of beeswax in my leather sewing kit. And that’s in a plastic container, so I think it’ll be all right.
I’ll be thinking more about efficiency and downsizing. That’s part of the aging process generally. I must resign myself, I think, to being prized for my wisdom rather than my strong back.
Come to think of it, I was never much prized for my strong back. If I was considered wiser than I was strong, that was mostly because I wasn’t very strong.
What, you ask, were these two exhausting events? Saturday was the annual Nordic Music Fest in Burnsville, Minnesota. It’s held at Buck Hill, a commercial ski hill that’s been around forever, right next to the highway. In the non-snow months, they host other events, of which this was one. The day started rainy (not predicted by the weather man), then turned sunny and humid. The featured music was an ABBA cover band, and our young Vikings did a couple combat shows. I had several interesting conversations with people who came by my sales table, and I sold a fair number of books. It was comparable to last year.
Sunday was Danish Day at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis, something our group participates in every year. The weather was nice, though it was starting to spit rain by the time we tore the camp down. Attendance was better than it’s been in a while – I had to wait in line a long time to buy my food. (I got aebelskivers – a spherical Danish pancake served with strawberry jam and powdered sugar, a Danish hot dog, and layer cake.) My book sales were small, but they always are at Danish Day – I sold three books, which is actually good for that event. I don’t know why the Danes seem to be less interested in books than Norwegians – possibly it has to do with the fact that my books are Norway-oriented.
One of our new members has a pair of Norwegian Elk Hounds, named Odin and Freya, which he brought. They are astonishingly mellow and easygoing – I joked with the owner that the dog treats he fed them must be CBD gummies. (This breed is not usually known for its placidity. They’re strong dogs, and generally they like to romp.)
It was a good weekend.
But it seemed to me it was no country for old men. Or so I felt Sunday evening.
Sam Archer, hero of One Way, is a New York City policeman, formerly a London policeman (it’s complicated). He’s on the counterterrorism squad, and in his last adventure (One Way is Book 5 in the series) he got injured badly enough to put him out of action for a while. It’s the last day before his much-anticipated return to work, and he’s relaxing on a park bench when he sees what he quickly identifies as a team of bodyguards moving a protected person. The protected person is a little girl, nine years old. Suddenly Sam spies a hit team attacking them, and he shouts a warning. Soon bullets are flying, one bodyguard (they’re federal marshals) is wounded, and Sam has no choice but to join the marshals in their escaping car. They end up taking cover in a 22-floor high rise building, whose ground floor is soon occupied by the attackers. The bad guys successfully cut off communications, and the little group of marshals, plus Sam and the protectee, are trying to find a safe hiding place – as the attackers begin hunting them down from room to room.
We’re operating generally on the Die Hard model here. Our intrepid hero, outgunned (joined here by a kick-butt female sidekick, for the sake of diversity), faces increasingly long odds, as their opponents turn out to be a lot better prepared than you’d expect – and to have surprising backup resources. Secrets are revealed, only to be topped by deeper, darker secrets. Betrayals are disclosed and further betrayals perpetrated. It all culminates in a rooftop showdown, with a bomb ticking in the basement.
For me, it was all a little much.
I’ve bellyached about the Cinematic Thriller Formula before. This formula dictates that the novel must work like a contemporary action movie – the drama has to ratchet up constantly (nothing wrong with that), and the limits of human physical endurance (as well as the laws of physics) can be generally ignored. Each narrow escape may be plausible in itself, but cumulatively they defy credulity. The strategy is to keep the audience so excited they don’t have time to engage their critical brains.
The problem with that is that novels are, by nature, a slower medium than movies. Most readers can, and do, pause for a break frequently. When we pause, some of us ponder – which conflicts with the author’s purpose.
Also, a movie usually doesn’t last much more than two hours. But a novel can take many hours to read. Being old and weak of heart, I dislike being kept in a state of fight or flight for ten hours straight. It wearies me, and I had a rough weekend.
For all that, I can’t deny that One Way did its job effectively. It was a little odd to read an American story written with English spelling and orthography – “kerb” for “curb,” for instance. But the author did a good job. His prose could use some pruning, but it worked.
Over the past week, I watched the first three original Planet of the Apes movies. I didn’t know the stories. I knew only what anyone familiar with sci-fi over the years would know, a plot point even the sequel spoils in its own trailer. But the whole movie doesn’t turn on that revelation. It was just an interesting surprise to 1968 moviegoers–no doubt part of what made it a successful movie.
You’ve heard that the original Star Wars and Jaws movies were blockbusters that changed moviemaking ever since. You probably know parts of the score from those movies. They have a tone of adventure that feels like a movie. Planet of the Apes leans into the strange and alien. This trailer captures that tone with minimal spoilers. The score invokes the wild unknown of 1960s sci-fi. It isn’t the music of adventure but of survival.
The director, Franklin J. Schaffner, wants us to experience the space crew’s voyage and their crash landing in a sea. We see water breaking through ship’s seems as if in the crew cabin ourselves. The three-man crew drag themselves to shore, and the first real cynicism comes for Taylor (Charlton Heston) laughing loudly at his earnest crewmate planting a pocket-sized US flag next to the water. The crew treks through a canyon wilderness, afraid that, though the air is fine, there may be no drinkable water or living plant life.
The first 30 minutes follows this track. Will they survive or won’t they? This kind of story tension gets me scratching my head, because if you tell viewers upfront the apes rule the planet, how long will they tolerate the main characters scrambling along on their own? Maybe if we were learning about the crew as well-rounded men, it would be more interesting. But we only get the wilderness and three men looking for water.
On the other hand, Richard Schickel wrote in Life Magazine, May 10, 1968, it was the best American movie he’d seen that year–“faint praise,” he says, “considering the competition,” but still he and his four-year-old daughter loved it.
I had thought the first film was going to focus on racial tolerance or bigotry, but it’s really an anti-war movie. The ape society is governed by religious zealots who won’t tolerate evolutionary theories and stamp out any hints of civilization beyond their own. God made apes in his own image, they say. Humans are just mute wildlife. Most of the hostility is in apes treating humans as non-sentient animals, and the story is driven by the threat Taylor poses to their carefully managed social order. The overarching theme, which starts with questions from the crew after they abandon ship and resumes with chimpanzee Cornelius revealing his exploration of ancient human ruins, is the question of what happened to humanity. The authorities won’t tolerate open discussion of humans once having civilization or being anything more than they are today. For viewers, though, if humans were more on this planet, what happened to them?
That’s what the famous scene at the movie’s end hammers home. Taylor realizes he didn’t crash on another planet. He returned to Earth 2000 years later, long after mankind had destroyed civilization through endless warmongering and the A-bomb.
Planet of the Apes (1968) is good period sci-fi. There are things to complain about (like the fact the humans are described as being unable to speak but in fact they are completely mute —they never make a sound), but it’s a good story. I laughed at the scene of government leaders being confronted with facts and ideas they rejected.
“My Faith Has Found a Resting Place,” performed by Danielle Franklyn & Waneisha Denny
This month, our theme will be faith, which will gather in popular song this one from Lidie H. Edmunds (1851-1920). Edmunds, a native Philadelphian, was home-bound for many years. In order to use her time well, she studied literature and wrote hymns.
“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 ESV).
1 My faith has found a resting place, from guilt my soul is freed; I trust the ever-living One, his wounds for me shall plead.
Refrain: I need no other argument, I need no other plea, it is enough that Jesus died, and that he died for me.
2 Enough for me that Jesus saves, this ends my fear and doubt; a sinful soul, I come to him, he’ll never cast me out. [Refrain]
3 My heart is leaning on the Word, the written Word of God, salvation by my Savior’s name, salvation thro’ his blood. [Refrain]
4 My great Physician heals the sick, the lost he came to save; for me his precious blood he shed, for me his life he gave. [Refrain]
Music and culture writer Ted Gioia talked on camera with David Perell of the podcast “How I Write” to talk about his life of reading and writing. I just watched it, and it’s marvelous.
Ted, who has been writing on Substack for three and a half years, shared the interview with a short excerpt about musicians getting inspiration from dreams. In the almost two-hour interview, he discusses becoming a well-read man over many years, reading books for content or style, chasing publishing trends, writing honestly for yourself first and then for readers, and how our worldview as well as social pressure presses us toward select kinds of inspiration.
It’s well worth your time. Many good thoughts were shared. You’ll note some that I didn’t, so feel free to comment on it here.
