Blogger and scholar Stuart Buck has a book on American education coming out this month. Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation
Rod Dreher of BeliefNet has a three part interview with Stuart starting here, continuing here, and concluding here (these links will help when the navigation on BeliefNet is challenging). I will review Acting White for BwB later this month.
I caught a few minutes of a BBC dramatization of one of the Kurt Wallander mysteries this season, but I was distracted and don’t even remember which story it was (it might even have been this one, the first novel of the series). Still, I’ve decided I need to acquaint myself with the booming Scandinavian mystery scene, and so I picked up Faceless Killers
The hero is Detective Kurt Wallander, a policeman in the rural town of Ystad (pronounced EE-stad), Sweden. Wallander is no McGarrett, no supercop. He’s barely keeping it together, in his personal life and his profession. His wife recently left him, which spun him into depression and heavy drinking. His adult daughter simply disappeared from his life, though she makes occasional contact. His artist father is sliding into dementia. Meanwhile at work, it’s his bad luck to be the senior detective on the squad (his superior is on holiday) when an elderly farm couple is brutally murdered in their home. A whispered statement by the female victim suggests a “foreigner” was responsible. Somehow the word gets out, and there are reprisals against local refugee camps.
Wallander manages to do his job creditably, but sometimes it’s touch and go, thanks in particular to exhaustion and imprudent drinking. Leads are followed until they play out, and Wallander manages to get himself pretty severely beaten up more than once. There’s even an almost-comic car chase, in which Wallander follows a suspect driving a stolen car, in a commandeered horse van.
The story lost some steam toward the end, though I had no trouble sticking with it. As a conservative American, I had mixed responses to the ethos of the story. Wallander is surprisingly conservative (it seems to me) for a Swedish cop. Although heartily anti-racist, he has serious doubts about Sweden’s open borders policy, a sentiment which sat pretty well with me. On the other hand, as a typical Swedish civil servant, the idea of a right to bear arms is entirely foreign to his universe. I had a hard time, puritanical American that I am, swallowing his guilt-free pursuit of another man’s wife.
Still, it was an interesting story, and not quite what I expected. I may read more Henning Mankell.
A note on the translation—it could have been a lot better. The translator opted too often for literalism over idiom, and the story suffered for it. I need to get into the translation business. It would appear they need me.
Responding to a new Gallup poll, 45% said moral values in the U.S. are poor. Democrats are a little more optimistic than Republicans or independents. The results are the most negative Gallup has gotten for this question in several years.
“Reformed Theology? There’s an App for That.”
This is only slightly less awesome than the potato warmer app I designed.
I am not familiar with this term: Morton’s Fork
“A situation involving choice between two equally undesirable outcomes
“ETYMOLOGY: After John Morton (c. 1420-1500), archbishop of Canterbury, who was tax collector for the English King Henry VII. To him is attributed Morton’s fork, a neat argument for collecting taxes from everyone: those living in luxury obviously had money to spare and those living frugally must have accumulated savings to be able to pay.” (via Wordsmith.org)
I took this picture of the town of Olden, Norway from the cruise ship in 2005. It’s the jumping off point to visit the Briksdalsbreen glacier.
As mentioned below, today is Norwegian Constitution Day. In spite of what is often said (even in a book I reviewed recently), it’s not Norwegian Independence Day. The Norwegians adopted their constitution in 1814, in an abortive attempt to achieve independence. The Swedes marched in to nip that idea in the bud, but (being Swedish) they were nice enough to let them keep their constitution, with a few editorial changes. For almost a century after that, the Norwegians celebrated Constitution Day (often in defiance of the law), to keep the fires of independence burning. By the time they managed to get loose in 1901 (through the most passive-aggressive revolution in history) the tradition of Constitution Day as the great patriotic holiday was firmly established, and so it remains to this day, even though there’s a genuine independence day (June 7) to celebrate too. Plus Liberation Day (May 8) if you’re in a party mood.
I love Norway for many reasons. For all its progressivism and secularism and social democracy, it hasn’t yet joined the European Union and has not adopted the Euro (a decision that looks better and better every day). It ain’t easy for a country with three independence days to give up its sovereignty. Norway has the largest (though still vestigial) evangelical Christian population in Scandinavia. It possesses (imho) the greatest concentration of natural beauty in the world. And it’s full of really wonderful people, several of whom are my friends, or (lucky them) related to me.
So, God Syttende Mai (again) to our Norwegian readers. Of course our Norwegian readers are mostly in bed by now, and won’t see this until tomorrow morning their time, when we’ll be in bed ourselves.
But then it’s light in Norway till around 11:00 p.m. this time of the year, so maybe we’ll catch some of the hard partiers.
Chris Pash reports the phrase at the end of the day “is the most popular cliche in journalism globally. It is all-pervasive.” Headline writers also love “Man Bites Dog” in some fashion. For example:
In the spirit of this award, I proudly claim the honor of Best Blog by a Heretic as voted on my the reader of The Crescat blog. That’s “heretic” as defined by Roman Catholics (some of them anyway). Get the run down here. As Luther might have said on an occasion like this, “This fear or horror is sufficient in itself [when reading this blog] to constitute the pain of purgatory, since it approaches very closely to the horror of despair.”
Do we aim to please? We sure do. Thank you to everyone for your wonderful outpouring of support for the unsung heroes write this blog. At the end of the day, it’s all about you.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to press candidates for high U.S. courts on their opinions of most of the amendments and clauses in the Constitution. Elena Kagan favors censorship, no doubt of only those ideas she disapproves. What other unconstitutional ideas does she support?
Today is Syttende Mai, Norwegian Constitution Day, the chief national holiday in the beautiful country of my ancestors. Congratulations to all our Norwegian readers.
My Norwegian flag is flying.
Photo credit: Getty Images.