Charlotte Higgins, writing for The Guardian, put together as much of the story as can be known, working with another Ukranian author, Victoria Amelina.
“I never thought that my home village would become the epicentre of the rashist occupation,” wrote Vakulenko in the opening paragraphs of his diary. The word “rashist” is a now widespread Ukrainian portmanteau, a combination of “Russian” and “fascist”, not to be given the dignity of an initial capital. “For me, with my patriotic, pro-Ukrainian views, it was extremely dangerous to find myself surrounded by the enemy.” But, he wrote, he had little choice: moving his son seemed impossible. He added: “You can get used to anything; what matters is what sort of person you are left at the end of it.”
“The manuscript is now in the Kharkiv Literary Museum, and the text of the diary has been recently published in Ukraine, with a foreword by Amelina.”
An arrangement of the shape-note tune for “Oh, Glorious Hope” performed by Timothy Seaman on hammered dulcimer
Today’s hymn is by the great Charles Wesley (1707-1788). It speaks of the life to come in terms of the promised land. I don’t think it’s a popular hymn, and the tune performed in the video above is unfamiliar to me. If you know this one, please tell us of your experience with it.
“The reason why the world does not know us is that bit did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:1b-3 ESV).
1 Oh, glorious hope of perfect love! It lifts me up to things above; It bears on eagles’ wings. It gives my ravished soul a taste, And makes me for some moments feast With Jesus’ priests and kings.
2 Rejoicing now in earnest hope, I stand, and from the mountaintop See all the land below. Rivers of milk and honey rise, And all the fruits of paradise In endless plenty grow.
3 A land of corn, and wine, and oil; Favored with God’s peculiar smile, With ev’ry blessing blest; There dwells the Lord our Righteousness, And deeps His own in perfect peace, And everlasting rest.
4 Oh, that I might at once go up; No more on this side Jordan stop, But now the land possess; This moment end my legal years, Sorrows and sins, and doubts and fears, A howling wilderness!
I read one time that Hitchcock wasn’t going to end the movie Psycho the way he did, but his producer insisted he provide an explanation. The story couldn’t end with a wrap-up of the crime. It needed a psychiatrist to give the audience a reason for it. This is because Americans want to know why an evil thing occurred and how could it be prevented in the future.
I felt this need while listening to a couple crime stories this week. In one story, four boys in rural Vermont decided to break and enter a remote home. Two of them said they would murder anyone who happened to be home, and they all carried knives to help, if the need arose. It did, but only the original two attacked the mother and daughter they found. The story was mostly told by one of the two in police interviews. He was an emotionally distant Mormon kid who lacked friends and was beginning to explore gang activity.
In the other story, an elderly couple was kidnapped in an effort to rob them. He said he would kill them after he’d obtained all the money. The wife was able to tip off the cops, who located the man through his car. This culprit was a family man, described by a church member as a Christian who had it all. He had been even a church elder at some point. But along with all of this, he was also a constant manipulator.
If evil like this can come from both social outcasts and respected members, what can be done to foresee or prevent it? We need a healthy understanding of our common depravity, and that out of the heart these and other great sins come. We are not good people. Only the Lord can make us so.
What other things can we say today?
Great Musician: Tony Bennett died this week. Ted Gioia writes, “I probably own 30 or 40 of his albums, and his singing has been part of my life since childhood—when my Sicilian father played Tony Bennett records at our family home. At times, it almost felt like Bennett was a member of my extended family.
… “I could fill up an entire article just with stories of his acts of kindness. He radiated decency and generosity of heart. That showed up in his life and his music.”
New York City: “As for libraries, the sad truth is that, precisely because of the abandonment of broken-windows policing, those sheltered spaces are havens for the homeless and drug-addicted more than they are resources for the scholarly and intellectually curious.”
Found Music: The Kiffness takes internet videos and makes music with them. The one from July 15 seems appropriate to add here.
Photo: Christie’s Restaurant sign, Houston, Texas. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Duty is based on something more profound than hope, on faith that what is too wrong to endure will be made right, rectified by a system of justice that underlies all of nature, far beneath the subatomic level, a system that may right a wrong in a day or through the passage of time or outside of time. The schedule isn’t ours to protest or endorse. His duty is to act with all the skill and wisdom he possesses, not with hope but with conviction.
Rejoice! We have a new Dean Koontz book. He just keeps rolling them out – always good, sometimes exceptional. After Death is somewhat reminiscent of Koontz’ recent series of novellas about a character called Nameless. But it handles similar concepts in a different way.
Michael Mace was dead, and is alive again. It wasn’t a miracle in the religious sense, but it still may change the world. Michael was head of security at Beautification Research, a company that was ostensibly a cosmetics business but actually did top-secret genetic and nanotech research. When an accidental leak kills everyone in the building, Michael dies with all the rest. But then he wakes up. And now he’s changed. He has new powers that give him mental access to all the information on the internet. No firewall can stop him.
The first item on his agenda is to help a single mother named Nina Dozier and her son John. Michael’s best friend and co-worker Shelby was very fond of them, and probably would have courted her if he’d lived. They’re in danger from John’s natural father, a gang lord who’s decided it’s time to claim his son and make him his successor. Nina will have to be taught a lesson too, for dissing him.
But there’s a larger danger than that. It comes from the Internal Security Agency, the corrupt law enforcement body that supports the corrupt bureaucracy now running the country. Their chief agent is a psychopath named Duran Calaphas, an efficient killer but increasingly delusional. He takes Michael’s appearance as a personal sign for him, giving him a worthy foe he must destroy in order to achieve his grandiose personal destiny. Without loyalty to anyone or anything but himself, Calaphas will stop at nothing, destroy anything, to kill Michael Mace. And his companions.
Koontz hits every note precisely, manipulates the reader with the deft hand of a master. It’s beautiful to behold. Especially delightful (for me) was one amazing plot twist unlike anything I’d ever read before (it involves storytelling). A delightful moment.
My only quibble (spoiler alert) was that I thought the ending might have been too good to be true. But that’s no great failing in a book. No failing at all, actually. We’re allowed a happy ending from time to time.
Writing for Christianity Today, Adam Graber suggests problems with artificial-intelligence-driven Bible reading software.
“As a digital theology expert, I believe these kinds of ‘BibleGPTs’ will continue to advance, proliferate, and eventually become proprietary systems. And as this happens, the church and its leaders will be prompted to make some momentous decisions about the Christian canon. This will, in turn, influence how we interpret the Bible and impact the future of our faith and practice.”
He goes to describe how AI-driven research tools could become like the knowledgeable friend who always has a ready answer for any question but who isn’t grounded enough in the Word to answer wisely every time. It may become another easy way to quickly survey the Bible, thinking we understand more than we do.
If you read the whole article, it doesn’t end as sensationally as it begins. He concludes saying we need to understand the Bible for ourselves, but the tone of the whole leans too much on people’s laziness. That isn’t new. We’ve always been lazy. I doubt AI will usher in more lethargy than we already indulge with the Internet.
Above, an interview — a few years old — with author James Scott Bell. Among the topics touched on are whether writers are born or made, and if a series character can have a character arc.
He mentions his blog, Kill Zone, which I wasn’t aware of. You can find it here.
Allan Bloom warned us in The Closing of the American Mind that relativists are incipient authoritarians. If right and wrong aren’t universal but are merely personal or social constructs, there’s no criterion for judging one person’s case against another’s. The decision can only go to the party with the most power. Not on any kind of principle, but because nature abhors a vacuum, just as gravity abhors unsupported coyotes.
‘More and more, people tend to confuse “understanding” with “agreement”,’ he said, leaning forward in his chair, and resting his elbows on his knees. ‘If you say you understand something bad… like a racist or sexist comment, for example… then people accuse you of being racist or sexist. They deliberately confuse understanding with agreement….”
Two “gripping” novels in a row that were actually gripping. I’m on a roll, I guess. Up Close and Fatal, by Fergus McNeill, was a fascinating, sometimes creepy ride.
Tom Pritchard is an Englishman living in New York City. Once a successful journalist, his career is on the skids now. He’s divorced and guilty about neglecting his young son.
One day he gets an envelope in the mail. Inside the envelope is a numbered list. There are names next to some of the numbers, next to others are blank lines. There’s also a driver’s license belonging to a woman, one of the people named on the list. A quick web search shows that the woman is the victim of an unsolved murder. In fact, all the people named have been murdered, but in widely separated locations, and nobody seems to have guessed at a link.
Tom calls a police detective friend to tell him about it. The friend is intrigued, but says this material by itself isn’t enough to take to his superiors.
Soon Tom gets a phone call from the sender. This man, who call himself J, tells Tom he’s been killing these people, because the world is a better place without them. He’s read Tom’s work and was impressed by it. He wants to tell Tom his story, so he can write it the right way.
This gets Tom a meeting with the police, and they agree to give him protection and a tracking chip so he can be bait in their trap. But when he arrives at the rendezvous point, a remote spot upstate, J never appears. However, when Tom gets home he’s attacked, tazed, and dumped in a car trunk.
J still wants Tom to write his story. But he wants him to understand it from up close – through accompanying him on his pilgrimage of murder as he completes his list. And if Tom interferes, J has arranged for his son to be murdered.
It gets worse when they encounter an innocent witness. What will Tom do to prevent J killing her to shut her mouth?
Up Close and Fatal was a well-written book (American location, English orthography) that kept the dramatic tension dialed all the way up. The social awkwardness of enforced socialization with someone you despise, who can nevertheless be charming or even thoughtful at times, compelled my interest. Also, there was a great twist at the end. I was highly impressed.
The only oddity was when Tom and J are riding around in a big SUV and the author keeps talking about its trunk. What’s with that?
Music today. I wanted to share the video above, because I’d found it – and found it surprisingly beautiful.
There’s a story involved with the hymn, “Jesus, Din Søte Forening á Smake,” (Jesus, Thy Sweet Communion to Savor), which is called “Jesus, I Long For Thy Blessed Communion” in the English translation.
The story does not concern the writing of the hymn. I know nothing about the author, P. J. Hygom, and a quick web search indicates nobody else does either (I presume he was a Dane). The hymn itself is not one I grew up with. When I finally discovered it as an adult, I thought it rather dull. I never considered it beautiful until I heard Sissel’s rendition above. Now I’ve got it as an earworm.
But even its surprising beauty isn’t the point. My point is its historical significance.
I’ve written before here about the founder of the Lutheran… sect, or whatever you’d call it, in which I was raised. The Haugeans. Hans Nielsen Hauge, a poor farmer’s son, was plowing his father’s field on April 5 1796, singing this hymn for his own edification. Then something happened to him. He wrote in his autobiography:
“Now my mind was so uplifted to God that I became senseless, nor can I explain what happened in my soul, because I was completely outside myself. And the first thing I understood when I regained my senses was a feeling of grief that I had not served above all things this dear, good God, and that I now believed that nothing in this world was of any value. And my soul felt something supernatural, divine and blessed; it was a glory which no tongue can express.” (My translation)
So overwhelmed was Hauge by this experience that he devoted his life to sharing the gospel with his neighbors. This would lead him to prominence in Norway, and also to prison and premature death.
But his movement was a seed planted in the right place at the right time. Not only was there a powerful Christian revival in Norway, but society itself was changed.
Hauge’s followers were often called “the Readers.” That wasn’t a compliment. The term expresses the surprise felt by the upper classes when they saw commoners going around with books. This troubled them. Books gave the lower classes uppity ideas.
To this day, Norwegians are among the most literate people on earth, with a surprising number of newspapers per capita.
“There’s no in-person interaction anymore. Hardly anyone goes to church—at least around here. Hardly anyone belongs to leagues or social clubs, like our grandparents did. Work is the one place where people spend enough time together to actually get to know each other, and it’s the one place where developing a deep, meaningful relationship is forbidden. What kind of world is this?”
*
The boldly-colored tattoos on his milk-white arms made him look like a choirboy who’d fallen asleep on the subway and been vandalized.
Freddy Ferguson, hero of Kill Romeo, the second book in a series, is a former heavyweight boxer, former mob thug (reformed), and now a Washington, DC private eye. He’s in a small Virginia town doing a background check on a prospective political candidate. It’s a quick and easy job, and when it’s done he takes a walk in the woods. That’s when he discovers the body of a woman, dressed all in white, lying on a river bank. A storm is blowing up, the river is rising, and he tries to move the body to higher ground. The river pulls it away from him, and he barely gets out alive himself.
He reports the discovery (and loss) of the body to the local sheriff, but their department is overwhelmed in the storm’s aftermath. Also, there’s no local woman unaccounted for. Freddy feels bad about this, but it’s not his case. However, his local host, a cheerful busybody, uncovers a single clue. Since business is slow, Harry agrees to follow that clue up. Gradually, bit by bit, puzzle pieces are uncovered. They lead Freddy and his team to places he’d never have guessed, and to a crime with mob, big business, and international implications.
Meanwhile, there’s trouble at the office. Freddy and his partner have two employees, and are evaluating a new investigator, Claire. Freddy likes Claire – too much. Not only is she a really top-notch detective, she’s beautiful and extremely appealing. He can’t stop thinking about her, but he knows office romances are absolutely forbidden in this day and age. He’s going crazy over Claire, and is very much afraid he’s going to have to quit or else he’ll do something that could get him in big trouble.
For this reader, Kill Romeo genuinely fell into the over-used category of “gripping.” The mystery was interesting, and Freddy’s awkward, uncomfortable passion for Claire is both funny and compelling. The topic of romance in the age of political correctness is an awkward one for me, so my personal discomfort rendered the dramatic tension all the more agonizing.
Also, there was a one-sentence chapter, which is cute when not overused.
Pretty good book, and it struck some blows against PC. I might read the prequel and the sequel.
