Wicked Prey, by John Sandford

Minnesota author John Sandford (real name John Camp) has established a nice little franchise with his Lucas Davenport Prey novels. Davenport is a Minnesota state cop who also happens to be a millionaire. He enjoys driving his Porsche fast with the siren on. As skillful as the character’s handling of his car has been the author’s own steering of the series, keeping out of both the left and the right ditches on a pretty winding road.

The early Davenport books portrayed a cop who was also a designer of computer games. He used the same skills he employed in game design to out-think the most devious and insane of criminals, and more than once he applied a little private justice in cases where he was confident the courts would let a dangerous killer back on the streets. In that period, Davenport seemed to be gradually losing his own grip on sanity, torn between duty to the job and his personal commitment to protecting the public.

Sandford deftly saved Davenport’s sanity by having him meet and marry a female surgeon. As Davenport acquired not only a wife, but a foster daughter and a baby son, he grew happier and more stable. Unfortunately, he ran the risk of getting a little dull. The old edge seemed to be going.

With Wicked Prey, Sandford has found a solution to that problem too, bringing in another legal corner-cutter, close enough to Davenport to make his world perhaps even more dangerous and morally ambiguous than before. Continue reading Wicked Prey, by John Sandford

Tivoli report, 2010

Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa this year was good. Exhausting, as always, for an old man like me, but good. I have no complaints.
I didn’t take any pictures. I took my camera, but did nothing with it. There are plenty of pictures, taken by others, on Facebook, but I myself didn’t see much that was different from last year, so the pictures in my report from a year ago ought to serve adequately.
Our first activity was a “Viking wedding.” A couple already married legally (or soon to be married; I didn’t ask) were given a heathen ceremony next to the replica Viking House. I attended out of politeness, and wished them well, and was relieved to learn that the celebration wasn’t going to be so authentic as to require three solid days of drunken feasting.
One of the most important questions in planning any event is “What will I forget to bring this year?” The answer for 2010: my sleeping bag. Once again I was using a borrowed club Viking tent, and I had an inflatable mattress to sleep on. I always keep a waterproof tarp in my car, so I tried using that for warmth. By the middle of the night I found it inadequate, and so I put on the shirt I’d worn the day before. Shortly before I got up, I had the thought, “You idiot. You brought two cloaks. What do you think a cloak is for?”
Saturday was well organized. We had group battles (seven men per side) scheduled for 12:30, 3:00 and 6:00. Lots of fun. I think I was left standing once, but only because I’d been (theoretically) badly wounded in the right arm, and so fell back, out of the fight.
We had the same Scottish cook as last year, and the food was good, plentiful and (relatively) authentic. Once again there was a haggis—a “beef haggis” (somebody said such things are acceptable in a pinch), and I thought it better than last year’s. The evening was given over to conversation, ranging from the scholarly to the scatological. I had the great pleasure of having a conversation with an Englishman (who bought one of my books). His opinions weren’t at all the sort that I expect from Englishmen nowadays, but maybe that explains why he lives in Iowa now. He’d studied history and archaeology, and been a Saxon reenactor, in his homeland, and I like to think I was able to talk to him on something approaching an equal level. He did disappoint me, however, by informing me that my proper Anglo-Saxon pronunciation of the name of the Venerable Bede (Bae-deh) was pretty much a waste of time, because everybody pronounces it “Bead” over there, just like over here (on the rare occasions anyone ever talks about him at all over here).
Afterwards, another delightful fireworks display, marred only by the fact that a couple fires started in the launching area. This engendered considerable mirth among us Vikings, and several guys speculated about the fate of “One-eyed Bob and his crew of four-fingered pyrotechnicians” who (they were certain) were in charge of everything. The volunteer fire department came in to douse the fires, but in fact left one of them smoldering, and it flared up again. But then I went to bed, and apparently no disaster followed.
Sunday we were incited, by bloody-minded festival organizers, to stand along the edges of the street and harass bicyclists participating in the official festival bike ride. There were no casualties. Later I went up to the fire department to enjoy the all-you-can-eat aebelskiver breakfast (an aebelskiver is a sort of Danish pancake, fried in balls rather than flat. Wonderful eating). I did not taunt the firemen on their shoddy performance the night before.
We didn’t do any big battles on Sunday, but the Skjaldborg guys from Omaha gave my group some training in areas in live steel combat where we’d picked up bad habits. It all made sense, and I was grateful for the correction. They also showed us how to fight with an axe, and one of them presented us with our first club fighting (blunt) axe. If anybody from Skjaldborg reads this, much thanks.
Tivoli wouldn’t be Tivoli without rain, but the rain that came on Sunday afternoon was pretty light, so we didn’t have to take wet tents home. I drove down and back with a young member of our group, a new fellow, and having company (especially a C.S. Lewis fan) made the journey a whole lot shorter.
But no less exhausting.
Still, the dream I had Saturday night, of encountering a skidding, out-of-control semi-trailer truck on the highway, did not come true. I am not a prophet, and all things considered, I’m glad of that.

It's June, Sweetheart

To My Dear and Loving Husband

by Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me ye women if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.

Thy love is such I can no way repay;

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,

That when we live no more we may live ever.

Is Black Achievement in School "Acting White"?


You might think any kid who can excel in school would have a few fans cheering him on, but for many black students across the country, academic achievement is equivalent to community betrayal. “[Other students] feel they’re supposed to be cool, and cool is not supposed to be making good grades in school,” reports a Norfolk, Virginia newspaper article from 2006, quoting Courtney Smith, who became a journalism major at Norfolk State. She didn’t care that the other students said she thought she was white and better than them. She just wanted to excel, but what does “acting white” have to do with that?
This idea, that some black students believe they have better things to do than to study hard, is the subject of Stuart Buck’s book, Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation, released this week from Yale University Press. The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming, and studies back it up. The idea of “acting white” abounds within evenly integrated schools. Where students are mostly white or mostly black, Buck says they are more-or-less forced to get along, but in schools with black vs. white student ratios that are close to even, black students tend to define themselves against the academic achievers.
Buck’s presentation of the groupthink dynamic makes the book for me. It’s fascinating to read how group psychology can emerge wherever young people can be divided, regardless the meaning of the groups. Instinctively, people will favor their group over other groups, even when there’s no intrinsic strength in their group. It’s us vs. them, whoever they are. That’s the dynamic at play when black students accuse other black students of “acting white.” Humans are tribal, Buck observes, and homophily or friendship with those like you is strong within races and ethnicity groups. I think it’s fairly strong among political parties too. Continue reading Is Black Achievement in School "Acting White"?

Off to Iowa

Field of Corn Plants

I’m off to Elk Horn, Iowa this morning to do the Viking thing, because that’s the kind of guy I am. You’ll have to be content with this for a post from me. Phil, I assume, will fill the void with wonder and merriment, as is his wont.

And remember, all you burglars out there, my renter will still be in the house. He’s got a new shotgun, and he’s just itching to try it out.

Photo credit: Corbis.

Art Linkletter, 1912-2010

I didn’t even realize Art Linkletter was still alive, and now he’s dead.

You young folks probably don’t even know who Art Linkletter was. But in his time, when I was a kid, he was a genuine phenomenon. On television and radio, in books, even in a couple movies, he combined personal charm and wit with a master pitchman’s instincts, to make himself one of the most recognized—and loved—personalities in America. He was like Oprah, except without pretension.

Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, he was abandoned by his natural parents when a few weeks old, and raised by an evangelical pastor, named Linkletter, and his wife. The family moved to California. He gravitated to radio, and from there to television. His popular quiz show, “People Are Funny,” made the transition to TV very successfully, and his afternoon TV program, “Art Linkletter’s House Party” became an institution, especially the segment where he interviewed young children, skillfully fishing for funny (but never humiliating) responses.

I know a fellow who told me he was once one of those kids. I was tremendously impressed.

This guy was everywhere in those days. He had two shows on TV. He had a radio show. He did guest appearances. He must have worked twenty hours a day.

In his later years, after the death of his daughter by suicide (a suicide he attributed to LSD use), Linkletter became an anti-drug activist. This, of course, made him a figure of fun to the left (because, after all, what’s funnier than a grieving father?).

I don’t know what his religious beliefs were. I saw an anti-drug film he did back around 1970, and in it he said that, in spite of being raised by a pastor, he’d never held any faith in religion until he’d observed the success of faith-based programs like Teen Challenge in dealing with drug addiction.

When I think back on the vacation days in the 1950s, when my brothers and I used to watch his programs, I remember a time that was kinder in many ways, a time when we all shared values and you could relax with the TV on, not worrying something would come on you didn’t want the kids to see. Art Linkletter outlived the world he belonged in. I miss them both.

Topic salad

I decided that gunny sacks would be just the things to tote some of my Viking gear around in. So I dropped in at my local hardware store tonight. A young female employee asked me if I needed help. I asked if they had any gunny sacks.

She said, “Any what?”

She had never heard of a gunny sack in her life.

What strange world is this I find myself in, where there are people who don’t know what a gunny sack is?

Then I was thinking about how we speak about time. In Norwegian, if it’s, say, 9:55, or five minutes before 10:00, you call it “fem på ti.” Which literally means, “five on ten.”

And I remembered something I used to hear people say when I was a kid. My parents and folks around my home town would have called that time, “five of ten.”

So I’m wondering, do people say that anywhere else in the country, or is it an Americanized version of the Norwegian idiom, exclusive to areas where Scandinavians settled in large numbers?



Penn Jillette,
the magician and showman, had sort of grudging praise for religious Americans in an appearance on Lopez Tonight on the TBS television network.

…I’ve got to say it was actually a shock doing the show, the religious communities in the United States of America are the most tolerant people worldwide. I mean, we did really aggressive stuff we believe strongly, and mostly got letters from Christians and Catholics saying we really like how passionately and clearly you put out your ideas. Very few nut cases.

I don’t follow Jillette’s work closely, and I’ll confess he’s offended me occasionally when I’ve tried. But I have the impression that he’s a man of rare integrity in our day, someone who refuses to tell lies just because they’ll support his views. He has my respect.

Mark Twain's fight with God

Mark Twain

Phil linked to a story yesterday, about the impending release of the first volume of Mark Twain’s Memoirs, withheld from publication, at the author’s request, since his death in 1910. People speculate that the reason for the embargo was that Twain (Sam Clemens) didn’t feel the world was ready for his freethinking ideas.

I think they’re probably right. I suspect he figured mankind would be rid of this Christianity nonsense by 2010.

My own history with Mark Twain has been complicated. I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in school, as pretty much all kids did in my day. And somewhere in my high school years, somebody gave me a copy of The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain for Christmas (I got the old hardcover Doubleday edition; you can get the current version in paperback here). At the beginning, my delight was great. Here were hilarious stories, crafted in masterful English (only P.G. Wodehouse has ever impressed me so with his ability to wring hilarity out of simple word choice), that made me laugh out loud, stories I had to read to my long-suffering brothers. Continue reading Mark Twain's fight with God

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