What elements of your life have economic value? Your family photos? Your casual thoughts? The video you took of a stranger making a shameful fool of herself?

Our new social networks allow us to attempt to market everything in our lives for audience or follower consumption. Tim Challies applies an old analogy to it: when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

“Some experiences are too full to distill to 140 characters and too rich to capture in a photo,” he reflects. “Sharing such experiences through social media serves only to cheapen them. Do not allow yourself to ruin a beautiful moment by seeing it primarily as an opportunity to share it with strangers.”

They weren’t his people, and they wanted to make sure he knew that. Or maybe they were afraid of him, though they wouldn’t have admitted it. Alan Jacobs has written a story about a childhood experience in Birmingham in which he and his friends picked up stones to assault a black boy who walked through their neighborhood. Alan didn’t throw a stone or yell at this Other Person, but he did stand with his friends as the boy’s enemy.

Today, a couple of breakthroughs. I don’t think I’ve actually told our blog readership about my recent travails at work. Three weeks ago a catastrophic virus infestation was discovered in our computer network. It appears it all probably entered through my own office computer, because through some oversight I didn’t have antivirus protection. (I should have noticed that and asked questions. Noticing and asking questions aren’t things I’m good at.) So they took my box away physically, and our IT lady has been struggling to scrub it clean and save whatever files she can ever since.

She was so busy she never got around to telling me what was happening, or why I couldn’t have it back. So I’ve been twisting in the wind, trying to find things to do other than the things I ought to have been doing this summer.

On Monday somebody finally showed me how to access my work e-mail, so I was able to get my messages. Unfortunately one of them said I’d sold some used books through Amazon, and the order was now well overdue for shipment. I’ve apologized profusely to the buyer, but haven’t heard back whether he still wants the books or not.

Today, though, I got a substitute laptop to tide me over, which makes things much better. Sometime in August I get a new desktop.

In other news, I told you last Friday about the Miller Analogies Test I took, and how the laptop they assigned me shut down, and we weren’t sure whether my answers registered or not. Today I learned they hadn’t. But they’ve offered me a re-test, at no charge, so I’m going in again this Friday.

Although it’s a small inconvenience (especially with Highway 694 torn up), this is actually a good thing all in all. I’ve had the chance to preview the test for free, and I’ve gained some insight into the (diabolical) way it’s designed. A second try can’t hurt.

The proctor lady was very appreciative of my patience and good attitude. I’m always kind of surprised that anybody chooses to get shirty about things like this. She certainly didn’t cause the problem herself. There might be some momentary satisfaction in chewing someone out and putting them in their place, but in my experience that satisfaction lasts about twenty seconds, after which remorse and guilt set in. Who lives long enough for that?

I suppose some people walk away from scenes they’ve made with the warm satisfaction that comes of time well spent.

I do not understand those people.

I’ve been thinking about my earlier post on the contradictions between the ideas of “freedom” and “equality.”

Today I came up with a briefer version of what I’ve been trying to say, in epigrammatic form.

Below: Walker’s epigram on freedom and equality in political theory:

A man who loves freedom will wish to free the slaves.

A man who loves equality may wish to free the slaves, or he may wish to enslave the free. Either way will achieve his purpose.

I should have brought a camera on Sunday. Sunday was the annual Norway Day festival in Minnehaha Park. The Viking Age Club & Society does it every year, and aside from some rotation in personnel there isn’t usually much to distinguish one year from another.

But this year we’d added a new young man, so that we had four in all, plus another who’s young enough to play with them. Some of them had attended a reenactors’ event in Moorhead last month, and they’d learned some new Viking games. So in our quiet times, we had young guys playing silly, semi-violent, and sometimes rather crude games in our camp, to the amusement of all. This is exactly what a Viking camp should be like.

Except that we still have a shortage of thralls. Haven’t worked out a way to get forced labor out of the Irish yet. Still, boys make a reasonable substitute when it comes to the heavy set-up and take-down work.

The weather threatened in the morning, but it turned into quite a lovely summer day. I had a good time, but only sold three books. Lost all my fights except for the last one, against a young spearman who’d killed me a couple times previously. Before Samuel Colt, the spear made all men equal.

A little personal news tonight, because I know how you worry. Today, in the course of my application to graduate school, I went to Bethel University in St. Paul and took the Miller Analogies Test. The MAT is a multiple choice test in which you fill in the missing element from an analogy – as in, “Bureaucrat is to Integrity as Jack the Ripper is to ________.” (Correct answer: Feminism) It’s a deceptively hard test. I hope all the other test takers felt as confusticated as I did, because if they didn’t I’m a whole lot dumber than I think I am.
How did I do? I don’t know. I was supposed to go away with a preliminary score, but the laptop they gave me to use had some kind of power issue, and shut itself down in the course of the test – twice. The second time we couldn’t access the test again. I was very nearly done at that point; in fact I’d finished the test itself and was just reviewing my answers. But I don’t know – and neither does the proctor – whether my score actually registered at the other end or not. If it didn’t, I’ll have all the weary work to do again, one hopes at no further cost.
Last Saturday I drove down to Kenyon, my home town, for the funeral of my great-aunt Ordella, who passed away at the age of 103. She was the last surviving child of my great-grandfather, the only remaining pillar of her generation. I think I’m safe in saying that Aunt Ordella was a character. It’s not uncommon for people to lose their inhibitions as they age, but I don’t think Ordella ever had any inhibitions (I’m speaking of social interaction; I know of no sexual scandal in her life). Apparently all the chutzpah in the Walker family got funneled into her. I know nobody in my branch got any of it.
I don’t know what we’ll do without her. It was a beautiful day for a grave-side service in any case.
I wandered the town cemetery for a few minutes. It’s a fairly old cemetery over on the shady east end, where they buried the people with English names who settled back before the Norwegians flooded in. I looked in particular for those bronze “Grand Army of the Republic” stars, indicating Union Army veterans. Found one fellow who served in the First Minnesota “H.A.,” which a little research informs me means Heavy Artillery.
This weekend: Whiz-Bang Days in Robbinsdale! And I’ll be at Norway Day in Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, on Sunday.