I am bubbling with opinions on public issues in my state today, so I’ve decided to express none of them. I’m painfully aware that I’m actually fairly ignorant of a lot of things that have me upset, so I’ll do you (and my soul) the courtesy of just stifling myself. For the present, anyway.
Instead, I post the old American hymn, “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.” Oddly, most of the videos of the hymn available on YouTube use the tune “Repton,” which the English churches prefer. But I like the American tune I’ve always sung, a tune called “Rest,” by Frederick Charles Maker.
The text is a superior one because, unlike so many hymn writers, its author, John Greenleaf Whittier, was an actual poet, and a good one. He was also a Quaker. The text is in fact an excerpt from a longer work called “The Brewing of Soma,” a poem about an ancient Indian custom of brewing a drink called Soma, on which worshippers got drunk in an effort to make contact with the divine. Whittier goes on to tell the reader that we ought to seek God through higher methods – peace and patience and rest in faith.
I’m not a great admirer of Quaker theology, but they have something to tell me.
Recently, it’s been my habit, during my morning writing sessions, to tune my TV to some kind of classical music collection from out of the great variety available on YouTube.
Edvard Grieg is always a good choice for me, and I’ve found a couple really weird Grieg collections lately. One of them is posted above. The quotations it features seem dubious to me, and the art was obviously created by AI. Yet the resulting dreamlike concoction seems to suit my so-called creative process.
If you take the time to watch this video, you’ll notice a couple odd images featuring large frogs. I did some web searches about “Grieg’s frog,” and discovered that the composer did, in fact, have a frog, which he kept in his pocket. It was (I was relieved to learn) not a living frog, but a toy frog (rubber, apparently). It was his good luck charm, and he liked to rub it before performing in public.
I learned of that fact in this article, which goes on to tell a truly bizarre story – one that seems to me absolutely too good to be true. I can’t find it mentioned anywhere else online, so I reserve the right to doubt it. But it goes like this (excerpted as published):
Once, the great Norwegian composer was giving a splendid concert in Oslo. In the beginning, he decided to make a programme including only his own compositions, but then he changed his mind and replaced the finishing number with a composition by Beethoven.
As it was usual, the following day, the concert reviews were published in newspapers. It should be remembered that Edvard Grieg, as many talented people, had a lot of ill-wising critics. And one of them, he had an especially strong dislike for Edvard Grieg’s music, wrote a humiliating critic article about the composer’s concert. The number which drew particular attention of the critic was the last one, he disliked that the most. The critic mentioned venomously that the composition was simply ridiculous and absolutely unacceptable.
Having read the critical article, Edvard Grieg called the critic on the phone and said: – This is Beethoven’s spirit disturbing you. I should tell you that it was me who had composed the finishing composition of Edvard Grieg’s concert!
The disgraced critic felt far too awful as it was, and the joke became the last drop, he died from a heart attack. (Credit: CMuse)
It’s always sad when anyone dies, of course, but I don’t think any artist can help feeling a little wistful as he reads that anecdote.
The world of her fiction was our world in every respect, but it was made better and more interesting by her perspective on it. There was much honest sentiment in her work but no sentimentality, compassion without the indignity of pity, forgiveness that required penitence, righteous indignation but not acidic anger regarding those who were foolish or ignorant.
The passage above, from Dean Koontz’s The Friend of the Family, just released, describes the work of a character in the story, but applies pretty well to this book too. I wonder how many other people experience Koontz the way I do. If a man can’t (as the philosopher said) enter the same river twice, certainly no two men ever enter the same river at all, and no two people ever read the same book. All Koontz’s books don’t work the same way for me. The books he writes that deal with abused children are the ones that really get me – because that’s a subject he knows personally, and I share that knowledge. Maybe these books don’t touch more fortunate people the same way.
In any case, The Friend of the Family is that kind of book, and I found it not only moving but heartbreakingly beautiful. This is one of my favorites of his works – right up there with the Odd Thomas novels – and I’m sure I’ll return to it again and again.
Addie is a “freak” in a sideshow act. She feels rather fortunate in her manager, or owner, or whatever he is, because he feeds her, doesn’t beat her, and steals books for her to read. But he subjects her to daily humiliation through displaying her nearly naked to crowds, showcasing her deformities (which are not actually described till late in the story).
Then one day Franklin and Loretta Fairchild show up to rescue her. Frank and Loretta are a couple of the decent people in Hollywood (such creatures do exist). They live in a mansion, and already have three children. But Addie is welcomed to join them as a full family member, and Frank and Loretta adopt her. She enters into a magical life, full of love and fun and creativity.
But all along, Addie is having prophetic dreams. They warn her of a dark enemy approaching to threaten her and these people she loves. A housemaid’s warning sticks with Addie – to enjoy her life, but to “stay alert.”
I was, frankly, expecting more darkness and violence than actually showed up in The Friend of the Family. The darkness and violence were there, but most of this story is about the magical life of a blissfully happy family. I wish it were 300 pages longer.
I give The Friend of the Family my highest recommendation. It made me laugh and cry. Kudos to Dean Koontz.
Progress report, January 21, 2026: Nothing. I accomplished zilch today.
This was, more or less, by choice. Last night I found myself feeling boneless and a-weary around 8:00 p.m. I said to myself, “I’m flagging earlier than usual tonight. I think I’m getting sick. I’d better go to bed.”
Which I did.
I woke up this morning around my usual time, but felt justified in not getting up for my usual sunrise writing session. I turned over and went back to sleep. Just be safe. Then I read quietly in bed (I’ve got Dean Koontz’s latest novel, and it’s a honey). Finally I got up for lunch, more or less okay, as far as I could tell. I felt I’d gotten permission to loaf, and loaf I proceeded to do.
Except for going out for a few minutes to bumble around on my license plate. My license plate story is as inconsequential as it is tedious, so I’ll share it with you.
When I acquired Gudrid the Far-traveled, my Toyota Rav-4, I tried to install the new Minnesota license plates the law required me to buy. I found that most of the little screw-holes meant for plate attachment were full of – something. Some hard substance. Probably the rusted remains of old screws. When I took Gudrid in to the shop for all the ruinous work that turned out to be necessary on her, I asked the mechanic if they could attach the plates. The guy said they’d be glad to do it, and they didn’t charge me for that.
Turns out that was a good thing, because they did a lousy job. Last week I discovered the front plate had disappeared entirely. (Well, they never claimed to be body guys.)
Yesterday I went in to the nearest license office (which is, fortunately, about a block from my house), and asked about it. I needed to get an entire new set of plates, and they charged me about $16.00. I paid that and took the stuff home. Then I discovered I was missing one of the year stickers that goes in the lower right-hand corner. I went back to the license people, who chided me for my carelessness and told me I had to pay for the whole thing all over again.
I then went home and tried to attach the plates, and soon realized that those little screw holes in the front license bracket are still blocked.
Today I went out with my drill, to drill my own holes. This felt radical and reckless (I imagined drilling into some obscure fuel line that had been run [for some insane reason] through the front bumper and causing an explosion, which would either end my life in agony or leave me permanently scarred, a horror to all who beheld me.
(Note: people who know as little about cars as I do probably shouldn’t apply drills to any part of them.)
But I found the screws I’d tightened yesterday very difficult to loosen today, so I figured maybe they’d be okay. I added the pressure of a great big binder clip I happened to have around. Down the line, when I have some money to spend, I aspire to taking the car to a real body shop and asking them to fix the whole monstrosity.
So let this day go down, in Abou Ben Adhem’s book, as one in which Lars Walker got nothing done.
Reno Davis, hero of Stanley Ellin’s House of Cards, is an expatriate American in Paris. He was a boxer for a while, and now works as a bouncer at a nightclub. One night he handles a bad situation with considerable tact, and as a result gets offered a kind of dream job. He’s to be a tutor for a young boy, scion of one of France’s most prestigious families. The boy’s father was a war hero. His mother recently got out of a mental hospital, but she’s also stunningly beautiful. The job seems too good to be true, which – of course – it is.
Reno likes the boy, a sensitive child who’s been through a lot and mostly needs a little toughening up. But he soon realizes that almost everything he’s been told about the boy’s family is a lie. Only with time will he learn that there are lies beneath the lies, sinister and dangerous lies that threaten not only the boy and his mother, but Reno himself and even the post-war political status quo.
Robert Mitchum would have been a good choice to play Reno Davis in a movie of House of Cards. Reno’s a good character – most of the other characters didn’t impress me as particularly original. There was plenty of dramatic tension and a fair amount of violence, but I thought the book a little slow and implausible, and it could have been shorter. Also, it showcased the standard assumption that all political danger springs from the right. I was ready for the book to be over long before it actually ended, but I did see it through to the conclusion.
I suggested a new state anthem for Minnesota (lost to the internet now, alas) some years back. But that was in the quaint, distant, antebellum past. Today, as an embattled sovereign jurisdiction, we face circumstances calling for something a little more bellicose.
I posted about the popular southern song of the Civil War, “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” the other day.
I must have been off my game, because it didn’t occur to me at the time that our new, much-vaunted, progressive state flag (shown at the top) is indeed, a bonnie blue flag, bearing a single star.
It was for me the work of but a few hours to come up with the following new anthem for my beloved state, to which I vow eternal loyalty:
We are a band of siblings, we live on stolen soil, And when it starts to freeze outside, our blood begins to boil; So when our graft was threatened, we rallied to Omar, Hooray for the Bonnie Blue Flag, that bears a single star.
Hurrah! Hurrah! For Gopher graft hurrah! Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!
As long as good old Uncle Sam looked off the other way, Cheap labor and big money grants made public service pay. But now that pesky auditors have rushed in from afar We hoist on high the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!
Hurrah! Hurrah! For Gopher graft hurrah! Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!
Apparently I now live in a state that no longer recognizes the priority of federal law. I post the song above out of a sense of prudence, so that I won’t be considered a traitor by my secessionist neighbors.
The lyrics to the song “The Bonnie Blue Flag” were written in 1861, by an entertainer named Harry McCarthy. The tune, like so many of our best tunes, was stolen from the Irish — the original song was called “The Irish Jaunting Car.”
The music in this clip comes from the 2003 movie, “Gods and Generals.” The visuals are a montage.
In tonight’s episode, a sad story about a book, plus some writing advice.
I won’t name the book or the author. At the start he showed some promise as a writer of Christian fantasy. His prose wasn’t professional, but it interested me. He made a good first impression. I was rooting for him, in spite of his often-clumsy style.
But he lost me when he started using demons as point of view characters. That’s a dangerous experiment, and not advised for newbies. I don’t think I’d try it myself. We’re talking about a whole different level of intelligence here; it doesn’t work (in my view) to portray suprenatural beings thinking like human villains, even very smart ones.
“But what” (you may ask) “about The Screwtape Letters?” The Screwtape Letters (in my opinion) is spiritual satire, not intended as the kind of fiction where the reader suspends disbelief. The Screwtape Letters is more about exploring ideas than characters.
But setting aside the issue of demons, I asked myself, “What writing advice would I give this author, if he were to ask me for guidance” (based on my own tremendous success, of course)?
Here’s the exercise I’d set him – based on an exercise in a correspondence course I took once, back in ancient times when people took correspondence courses.
The Exercise (note that this is not intended to make the piece of work you’ll tackle suitable for publication. It’s just intended to give your writing muscles a workout):
Take a piece of your own writing. Preferably at least a page long.
Check the word count.
Now, cut it to 50% of that.
Cut unnecessary verbiage. Cut adjectives and adverbs, replacing them with more vivid nouns and verbs. Find precise individual words to replace longer phrases. Interrogate each sentence and phrase to make it justify its existence. If it’s just decorative, excise it.
What you get in the end may not be anything like publishable prose. Or anything like the writing you want to produce. But it will teach you how to trim. You’ll be surprised what you can accomplish along those lines.
The final, mature style you adopt for yourself may be nothing so Hemingway-esque. But the exercise will do you good, like a workout in a gym.
“The fact is that Kate is bigger than anything she owns. It’s a subtle point, but if you strain you’ll begin to get it. She’s bigger than her furs, or her car, or her pretty house on Nicholas Street, or anything else she holds title to. She herself is the big thing. She’s an accepted artist who’s doing good and will do better, and she can say, ‘I’m big, and therefore I have these things,’ not, ‘I have these things, and therefore I’m big.’ It’s only little people without any real meat to them who have to say, ‘Don’t look at me, look at what I own.’”
I’ve enjoyed Stanley Ellin’s novels recently, but I wasn’t really prepared for The Key to Nicholas Street (set in 1951). Dorothy Sayers called Gaudy Night “a love story with detective interruptions,” and Nicholas Street is a sort of domestic drama with detective interruptions. It’s also kind of a Rashomon story, where we observe events from various points of view.
The story is set in a fictional, wealthy neighborhood in one of those communities where professionals commute to New York City. We see it first through the (pretty superficial) eyes of the housemaid, who sees everything in movie and magazine terms. She’s the one who discovers the body of the neighbor – a successful, beautiful commercial artist – at the bottom of the cellar steps in her home.
Then we get the perspective of her employer, an autocratic matron who’s been disappointed by the business failures of the rich man she married. She is a judgmental woman, obsessed with social status. She strongly disapproved of the late neighbor, and makes a plausible murder suspect.
But everybody’s a plausible suspect. There’s the matron’s husband, a man without much character, who’s having an affair. Her daughter, who’s dating a man her mother doesn’t approve of, a man who has been involved with the victim and might have been jealous. Also the son, going through an awkward adolescence.
I thought at one point that this was the kind of book that justifies adultery, but it’s more complicated than that. In the end, we find a surprising hero and a strong affirmation of moral truths.
I have to say I figured out whodunnit, but only for authorial structural reasons, not because I deduced it from the clues.
The Key to Nicholas Street wasn’t exactly my kind of book, but it was pretty good.
Above, a hymn much better known in England than on this side of the pond (though I doubt it’s sung much in schools there anymore), “Jerusalem,” a musical setting of William Blake’s poem. It’s been called England’s second national anthem.
It’s based on the legend (how ancient the legend is seems uncertain) that claims that the first Christian in Britain was none other than Joseph of Arimathea, the character from the gospels who gave up his tomb for Christ’s burial. According to the legend, Joseph was involved in the tin trade, with connections in Britain. Supposedly he was also Jesus’s uncle, and took Him along on one of his business trips to the barbarian island. Later, after the resurrection, he is supposed to have gone there as a missionary, founded the church at Glastonbury, and thrust his staff into the earth, where it budded to become the famous Glastonbury Thorn (which was, according to my reading, in fact a Middle Eastern variety of tree). We Protestants cut it down during the Reformation, but cuttings have been taken, and some survive.
(Another legend, by the way, says Aristobulus, St. Paul’s associate mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans, was the first missionary to Britain.)
I’m studying Glastonbury right now, because it will play a part in my Haakon the Good book. It’s a matter of record that King Athelstan raised a number of foreign princes at his court; this is one of the facts that make the story of Haakon’s fosterage with Athelstan plausible.
And Athelstan was a strong patron of Glastonbury Abbey, promoting it as a center of learning. Among the clerics educated there was the famous St. Dunstan – whom I intend to incorporate into the story.
I also had a strange, stray thought this morning, which I managed to snag with my little metaphorical net before it flew away. I thought of a way to suggest that a character is an angel, without actually saying he is an angel. I think it’s kind of clever, though it will probably pass over most readers’ heads.
Now I’ll have to figure out a place for an angel in the story.
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