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Winter tales

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I had this really epic picture to share with you. I got it from someone who lives in northern Minnesota, and it showed his outdoor thermometer at 8:00 a.m. this morning. The thermometer goes down to -40° F., and it basically had no mercury visible.

Unfortunately, although I could open it on my computer at work, it won’t open for me at home. So you’ll have to be content with my renowned descriptive skills, to get the sense of the thing.

Here’s a story from Norway, about a kid who found himself facing four hungry wolves, and fought back with a ruthless application of pop culture:

“I was afraid they would attack me,” Walter told the Norwegian tabloid VG, describing the incident, which took place on Monday. But he didn’t let his fear show. Remembering his parents’ advice, Walter pulled the earphones out of his mobile phone, turned the volume all the way up and blasted heavy metal music over its miniature speakers. At the same time, he yelled as loud as he could while flailing his arms about wildly to scare off the pack of wild animals.

(Someone commented on a radio show this morning that the band whose music he was playing, Creed, is a Christian heavy metal band. Their Wikipedia page says they’re not an explicitly Christian group, though their music carries some Christian themes.)

Sadly, the boy’s ordeal is far from over, I fear. Having subjected wolves to the cruelty of Heavy Metal music, he can now expect attacks from animal rights activists that’ll make him wistful for the courtesy and compassion of the wolf.

Authors

Strange Things My Authors Do

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I have to wonder if all of these little facts have anything to do with writing strategy. Passion for words outweighs most of these. 20 Acclaimed Authors and Their Unique Writing Rituals

Did you watch the first Tim Keller interview and hear him say that, when his wife was a child, she received four letters from C.S. Lewis? Wow.

Authors, Religion

Tim Keller Interview with DG (Part 2)

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Desiring God has the second of their 45 minute interviews with author and pastor Tim Keller. This one is stirring, talking about social justice and a Christian obligation to help the poor and reject a middle class mentality.

I listened to this tonight after having a difficult day for multiple reasons, one of which was my grief over the circumstances of a homeless, jobless man I know. I don’t want to pay for one night’s hotel room, because that doesn’t help him stand on his own, but what do you do when a man tells you he has no where to stay and he’s afraid he’ll freeze to death? I called around to ask for help and got a good answer from a friend in my church, but that wasn’t the answer my homeless buddy took.

I hope I don’t hear from him tomorrow, but if I do, I know what I will say. I respect him as a man made in God’s image, and I want to help him overcome his current struggles, but I can’t enable him to live in a twisted type of freedom. There’s another man he needs to go see who will develop him, a man he needs to give another chance.

I need to stop thinking about this. The Lord is far more capable than I have ever been to handle a life of hard knocks.

Bookselling, Religion

The blog post that was Thursday

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My interview with Tom Roten of WVHU radio in Huntington, West Virginia this morning went just fine, thank you. I’m racked with self-doubt about the quality of my performance, of course, but I’ve learned to sort of disregard that reflexive reaction. It’s sort of an emotional tax I pay for existing at all.

Tom says he’ll soon have a podcast of the interview available for download at the station site. Just click on his name in the box over to the right, and keep coming back till it shows up.

My only real disappointment was that he didn’t ask me what the weather was like up here. I was all prepared with a boffo response—“It’s so cold, you have to carry an ax around to chop your way out of your own breath.”

And it is cold. Traditionally we have a January thaw at some point this month, but it hasn’t shown up this year. We’re in the odd situation of having both an unusually cold month, and an unusually snowy one, running concurrently. Usually you get one or the other.

Here’s an interesting article from Fox News about Christianity in China. It’s possible that Christianity may be the wild card that changes the whole game in that country.

If China interests you, I would refer you to this blog, Seeing Red in China, written by an American teacher who’s been living there for several years. I find the blog interesting for its own sake (things over there aren’t always what I expect), but it doesn’t hurt that the author is my nephew-in-law, husband to my niece. They’re on furlough in the U.S. right now, but going back before long.

Fiction, Reviews

I, Sniper, by Stephen Hunter

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I, Sniper

Yet another Bob Lee Swagger novel from Stephen Hunter, and let me tell you, this one’s a dandy. I, Sniper ought to please most any fan, unless he’s a liberal. (I suppose there could be liberal Hunter fans.)

The last couple of Sniper books seemed to be attempts to mix things up a little. The 47th Samurai, a tour de force of pure storytelling in the teeth of probability, took Bob Lee completely out of the shooting world, and into the world of the sword. Still perhaps my favorite in the series, it’s nevertheless a jog down a side road.

Night of Thunder was fun, but lightweight.

I, Sniper is plain, unadulterated Bob Lee Swagger, a mainline fix of pure sharpshooting goodness. It’s mainly about snipers, and even the non-sniping story line concerns shooting. Guns are central at every point, and Bob Lee shows the virtues of the wise old warrior—he may be a fraction of a second slower than the youngsters, but he’s three moves ahead of them at almost every point. Continue reading I, Sniper, by Stephen Hunter →

Religion

My theory, what it is. And whose it is.

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Harald Finehair
King Harald Finehair (standing) from a a saga manuscript.
Fair warning—we shall trudge a good distance into the deep Viking grass in this post. I’m going to propose a new paradigm for thinking about the Vikings, which will surely change Scandinavian studies forever. So if you come to this blog in spite of my Viking stuff, you’ll probably want to skip what follows.
I’ve written about some of these ideas before, but my surviving brain cells recently sparked across a couple gaps, and came up with Walker’s New Theory of Viking Norway.
It all starts with the origins of the Viking Age. The most common explanation for the sudden violence, quoted to this day in most books on the Vikings, is Overpopulation. The theory is that the Norse had so many babies that Scandinavia ran out of food and arable land. So hungry younger sons had to sail abroad to make their fortunes by the sword.
The problem with this theory is that there is not a scrap of evidence, either in archeology, the sagas, or outside accounts, for any food shortage at that time. This was in fact during the Medieval Warm Period, and life seems to have actually been pretty good. The popularity of the theory seems to arise solely from the fact that it harmonizes with Marxist ideology. Continue reading My theory, what it is. And whose it is. →

Bookselling

The power of the airwaves

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Just to remind you, if you live in the Huntington, West Virginia area, I’ll be interviewed on Thursday, January 20, on the Tom Roten Show on WVHU Radio, 800 AM. The time will be 8:35 a.m. eastern time.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture