The tree had always been her husband’s thing. They had fewer ornaments now — glass orbs shattered, some shards still on the floor. But his lights still twinkled.
“We haven’t seen Randall in so long. How’s he doing?”
He died December 2020, before putting up the tree, and she couldn’t manage it herself. But as rigor mortis set in, she realized she could have both tree and man. She made her traditional cookies, set out pine-scented candles, and there was Randall with ornaments, lights, and Santa hat topping — her forever tree.
She gave her standard reply. “He doesn’t get out much.”
Today’s hymn is another old one that’s has been revived by the great John Rutter into the piece performed in the video above. “What Sweeter Music” or Herrick’s Carol was originally written by Englishman Robert Herrick (1591-1674), who is better known for the poetic line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
“When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.’” (Luke 2:15 ESV)
1. What sweeter music can we bring Than a bright carol, for to sing The birth of this, our heavenly King? Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Refrain: We see him come and know him ours, Who with his sunshine and his showers Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
2. Dark and dull night, fly hence away, And give the honor to this day, Which sees December turned to May; If we may ask the reason, say: [Refrain]
3. The darling of the world is come, And fit it is we find a room To welcome him. The nobler part Of all the house, here is the heart: [Refrain]
4. Thus we will give him and bequeath This holly and this ivy wreath To do him honor, who’s our King And Lord of all this revelling: [Refrain]
I think I’ve reached an age where I’m just going to start avoiding thrillers, unless they’re particularly recommended by some dear and trusted friend. Because it seems there’s a kind of arms race going on among thriller writers, to see how implausibly horrible they can make their heroes’ (and heroines’) plights as they weave their ever-tightening plot nooses. How much punishment can the human body – and mind – suffer without actually killing your hero or wearing out your readers?
Rutherford Barnes, the hero of Adam Lyndon’s The Chalk Man does not actually rip an IV needle from his arm and walk out of an emergency ward with bullet wounds and a concussion (my personal most hated thriller trope), but he and his friends certainly endure a lot more than I found plausible.
Detective Barnes is a policeman in Eastbourne, on the Sussex coast of England. In previous books in this series he apparently suffered the loss of his wife in an auto accident, which he is convinced was caused by a particular crime boss. He managed to get that crime boss sent to prison, and during that incarceration the criminal’s family was killed. He blames Barnes personally and has vowed revenge when he gets out.
When a deadly gas is released in downtown Eastbourne during the height of the Christmas shopping season, it brings all personnel out on full alert. Which means there’s nobody paying much attention when Barnes reports his eight-year-old stepdaughter missing. He certainly gets no help from his supervisor, who hates his guts. So Barnes is on the case alone, his only helpers an Inspector friend (who tends to go missing unexpectedly) and a sympathetic civilian data analyst. And that’s only the beginning of an orchestrated plot that will have Barnes fighting to save his new family and his own life, and to prevent an act of terrorism.
For this reader, it was all a bit much. There was nothing really wrong with The Chalk Man. The writing was good, the dialogue believable, the characters adequate – except for their superhuman resilience. Especially in the case of the two main female characters, who were (as one would expect) spunky and absolutely not to be intimidated. Like all the others nowadays.
Anyway, the book was fine, and may be just what you want for an exciting read. It made me tired.
It is either inevitable or compulsory – I can’t remember which – for aging bloggers to do at least one nostalgia post during the Christmas (properly the Advent) season. Memories of childhood, of Christmas in a bygone age, when life was simpler and purer and our societal values were probably better.
Anyway, I haven’t yet finished the book I’m reading for review, and I posted a song last night. So tonight it’s nostalgia. After a brief report on my day.
I had a moment of satisfaction this morning, when I finally got my first Christmas cards ready to mail. (Yes, I’m one of about three people – all of us senescent – still sending Christmas cards. See above, under “bygone age.”).
I always have trouble remembering how to generate mailing labels with Microsoft Word. I only do it once a year, after all. This year was worse, because I had to get my database files from my old laptop to my new laptop, and for some reason nothing I saved – even to Dropbox – on the old computer can be accessed anywhere else. So I had to email them to myself, and when it didn’t work at first, I thought some further incompatibilities were involved, probably beyond my expertise. But I succeeded at last.
Anyway, the Norwegian cards go out first, of course – farther to travel – and now they’re in the hands of the swift appointed couriers.
Where was I going? Nostalgia, oh yes.
I wanted to talk to you about the artist whose work is re-posted above. Probably means nothing to you – he’s a midwestern thing. But he was part of Christmas for me back in the day.
His name was Lee Mero (1885-1977). He was born in Ortonville, Minnesota and studied art at the Minneapolis School of Art and the Chase School of Art in New York City. He distinguished himself in his youth by rescuing a girl from drowning in a boat accident on Lake Minnetonka in Minneapolis, and by being arrested in New York City for drawing a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge (the Great War was going on; he might have been a German spy). He tried his hand at fine art for a while, doing some controversial Cubist stuff, but finally settled down in commercial art. He worked for, among other clients, Coca Cola.
But he was most famous in these parts for Christmas cards and his work for Augsburg Publishing House, the company that provided Sunday School curricula, church bulletins, and other goods to the churches of my (then) denomination. I spent many hours in church studying Mero’s drawings in various contexts.
I wanted to be an artist back then (eventually I would discover I’m better with words), so I paid attention to art. Lee Mero’s style was not one I was interested in emulating; it was rather old-fashioned and often stylized. But he was a master of composition, and every line was precisely placed.
But I remember him best for the Augsburg Christmas annuals, always entitled, simply, “Christmas.” These annuals evolved from “calendars” that used to be published by Norwegian Christian groups at Christmas time, often to raise money for missions. They featured inspirational articles, specially commissioned art, the lyrics to Christmas carols, and anything else that might serve to increase festivity and turn hearts Heaven-ward in a season that’s too often pretty material.
Lee Mero used to contribute several pages of a sort of comic strip. The ones I remember were nostalgic, reminiscing on how Christmas was in his boyhood, in the late 19th Century. He drew men in frock coats and top hats, and ladies with bustles, and horse-drawn cabs and potbellied stoves and oil lamps, evoking the unchanging excitement of a child in any generation. (His work very much inspired my Christmas chapter in Troll Valley.)
Lee Mero is not much remembered anymore. So I raise my (metaphorical) glass of eggnog to him now.
It’s Advent season, coming up on Christmas. I have my Christmas tree lit, and some candles are burning away like the billy-o, and I’m going to share another Sissel Christmas clip, because that’s what I do.
I believe Sissel has said this is her favorite song out of all her repertoire. I especially like the arranger’s hat tip to Grieg in the instrumentation.
How do I start this post without indulging my self-righteousness?
Probably impossible. I’m a pretty self-righteous guy when it comes down to it.
Let’s try this – I’m sure there are lots of principled leftists out there who are not reveling in the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Health Group.
But there sure seem to be a lot of them – and loud ones – playing Madame DeFarge right now. Reinforcing my unjust, unChristian prejudice that says that if you scratch a leftist, you’ll find Robespierre.
I know nothing of Brian Thompson’s personal life, beyond what Wikipedia tells me. He may have been a man I would not have liked. He may have been a man I despised.
He did not deserve to be murdered.
But that point is an obvious one, and not really the object of this post.
I was taken aback when I discovered Brian Thompson’s point of origin.
He was born in Ames, Iowa, but he grew up in Jewell Junction, better known to those familiar with it as just Jewell. He attended South Hamilton High School and the University of Iowa.
Distant bells rang in my long-term memory. I know Jewell, Iowa.
I had two roommates during my first year of college. One of them came from Jewell. I visited his home. Sang in a choir concert in his church. He used to talk about good old South Hamilton High.
But my connections go further than that. That part of Iowa is, in a sense, a homeland for me.
I’ve written here before (long ago; there’s no reason you should remember) about a collateral ancestor of mine. His name was Wier Weeks and he was a pioneer in the Norwegian immigrant community around Lisbon, Illinois. Lisbon became one of the centers where Norwegian newcomers settled in the mid-19th Century.
Eventually, the land filled up with Norwegians. (People doubtless sickened and died from the sheer social dullness.) So they got together, held a meeting or something, and decided to create a satellite colony. They sent out spies to find a likely place, and settled on an area in central Iowa. This area comprises such towns as Story City, Radcliffe, and Jewell. And it was there that my father’s parents’ families came in the 1880s. My grandfather Walker was born near Radcliffe, my grandmother near Story City. Both families moved north to Kenyon, Minnesota in the early 20th Century.
If you’re wondering what lesson I mean to draw – I guess it’s this. People from small towns in the center of Iowa are not the elite. They are not Mayflower descendants. They’re not even strictly WASPS, being (to a large degree) Scandinavian rather than Anglo-Saxon.
Thompson’s alleged murderer, on the other hand, was born to an affluent family in Maryland, and attended the exclusive Gilman School in Baltimore.
In other words, this was an act of “revolutionary” violence visited upon a member of the middle class (one who got above his station) by a member of the elite.
Which is, it seems to me, emblematic of revolution in the modern world.
Today the whole world is discussing the fall of Assad in Syria, the arrest of the Brian Thompson killer, and the verdict in the Daniel Penny trial.
It is a busy news day.
Which is rather sad from my point of view, because otherwise I’m confident everybody would be talking about the release, this weekend, of The Year of the Warrior in paperback on Amazon.
You realize what that means, don’t you?
It means that you can now own the whole series of Erling Skjalgsson books, all the same size, lined up on your favorite bookshelf, to the envy and amazement of all your most most sophisticated and insufferable friends.
Just make sure to leave a space for The Baldur Game (coming soon).
I started this business of formatting books for Amazon (if I remember correctly, though I have an idea I may be mistaken on some points) while setting up The Baldur Game. I watched how-to videos on YouTube that took me through the process of making a Microsoft Word document into something you could humbly submit to the gatekeepers of the great publishing leviathan.
I was terrified to do it, frankly. I am an old man, what they call a “digital immigrant,” someone who’ll never be quite at ease with all the ones and zeros. And yet I worked at it to the point where I’m actually relatively at ease uploading books now.
So I figured I might as well go ahead and make all my Erling books manifest. One after the other, I worked my magic, and behold, they did appear, and I held them in my hand, like the treasures of far Cathay.
And I cannot lie – there’s a thrill to holding your book that just doesn’t happen seeing it appear on a Kindle. Like holding your baby rather than looking at his picture. (But with less diaper changing and mineral oil.)
I even think I’ve developed a minor flare for design. I think the paper books I’ve created possess a sort of simple elegance. They look good to me. I am not ashamed of them.
This 1774 hymn was noted in the earliest record as a Christmas hymn by Robert Robinson (1735-1790) of Norfolk, England, and it shows how the first coming of the Lord is often blurred with his second coming. The original music for the hymn was lost, but what’s that to any hymn?
“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.
“And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14 ESV)
1 Mighty God, while angels bless thee, May an infant lisp thy name? Lord of men as well as angels, Thou art every creature’s theme.
2 Lord of every land and nation, Ancient of eternal days; Sounded through the wide creation Be thy just and lawful praise.
3 For the grandeur of thy nature, Grand beyond a seraph’s thought, For created works of power, Works with skill and kindness wrought.
4 For thy providence that governs Thro’ thine empire’s wide domain; Wings an angel, guides a sparrow, Blessed be thy gentle reign.
5 But thy rich, thy free redemption, Dark thro’ brightness all along; Thought is poor, and poor expression, Who dare sing that awful song?
6 Brightness of the father’s glory, Shall thy praise unutter’d lie? Fly my tongue such guilty silence! Sing the Lord who came to die.
7 Did Arch-angels sing thy coming? Did the shepherds learn their lays? Shame would cover me ungrateful, Should my tongue refuse to praise.
8 From the highest throne in glory, To the cross of deepest woe; All to ransom guilty captives, Flow my praise, for ever flow.
9 Go return immortal Saviour, Leave thy footstool, take thy throne; Thence return, and reign for ever, Be the kingdom all thine own. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Amen.
A Christian professor of fiction published a piece “To the Christian Writer” in which he recommends good art as a thing separate from Christian faith.
He begins by saying, “there’s no such thing as Christian art.” If someone wants to be a Christian, he should pursue it wholeheartedly, but “bad art comes out when you compromise art-making with some other intent.” Some other intent like Christian morals.
“If your fiction feels like it’s veering toward a moral conclusion, stop.”
I want to understand this professor’s argument and view it charitably, and I agree moralistic fiction is often shallow and ugly. I’m sure if I ever gain the courage to pick up Sheldon’s In His Steps, the novel that gave us the question “What Would Jesus Do?” I’ll regret it. I couldn’t make it past chapter one of The Shack. But separating Christian devotion from art sounds post-modern to me in all the wrong ways. What is art if it cannot be pursued as an expression of Christian truth?
I’m not sure he’s actually saying that, because he also says, “As a Christian person, would you not say it’s a joy to follow God? So follow him through your work. Quit telling him where to stand and how to speak.” That’s good. It calls back to moralistic work which may sound Christian while being far from it. That’s not good art.
“Preconceived moralizing jacketed in fiction aims for the head and the heart. If you want to be a good writer, aim elsewhere.” What does that mean? Aim for the spleen? What is good art if it doesn’t move the heart or elevate the affections (thinking of Jonathan Edwards’s language)? What makes the work of Margaret Atwood, Jack Kerouac, Barbara Kingsolver, Haruki Murakami, Annie Proulx, or Salman Rushdie objectively good that he recommends them over Lewis, Chesterton, and O’Connor?
Could it be we’re actually wrestling over cultural respectability — that our work would find approval in the New York Times Review of Books or Harper’s Magazine?
I think art is its own virtue, like planting and tending a tree, and artistic choices are also moral choices. Some choices are going to be more accessible to the public than others. Some will require greater levels of skill to succeed. In all of these choices, the best ones (though maybe not the most popular) will be true, real, and good. Isn’t that what Christian art is all about?
Always reliable. That’s the great thing about Bruce Beckham’s Inspector Skelgill novels, set in England’s lake district, not far from the Scottish border. The setting is as is expected – the fell country where Skelgill loves to fish and run. Dan Skelgill is a police detective, assisted by his (also reliable) sergeants – transplanted Londoner Sgt. Leyton, and attractive local Sgt. Emma Jones.
One of the great traditions in their neighborhood is the Bob Graham Round, a grueling fell running race. Skelgill has come up with an idea for a new variation, one that takes the same route but incorporates lake fishing. He’s taking some vacation time to test the concept out when he learns of the death of a local runner, killed by a hit and run driver, with no witnesses. Although he can’t take an active part in the investigation because he’s on holiday, he keeps in touch with Leyton and Jones as they investigate. That’s the premise of Murder in the Round.
Skelgill is (I think I’ve said this before) almost the opposite of Sherlock Holmes. Logical deduction is not his forte. He’s more like a hominid from the hunter-gatherer period, operating mostly by his senses, getting messages from the scents in the air and the tracks on the ground.
I used to wonder how long his low-key flirtation with Sgt. Jones would go on, but I’ve come to accept that Dan Skelgill lives in one of those fictional universes where no one ever grows older. They’ll both be young and smoldering as long as author Beckham goes on writing.
