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Olsen letter #2b

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[I hadn’t intended to post the rest of the second Olsen letter right away, but again I’ve got no clever ideas tonight, so here it is. By the way, there probably won’t be a post from me tomorrow night, as I’ll be driving up to Fargo in order to be on the spot for my 10:00 a.m. speech on Saturday. lw]

[Attached page:]

I must also tell you that here in Kvalevaag there will certainly be many weddings this summer. Anne Sirine and E. E. Ylveland the shoemaker will be newlyweds this next Thursday, that is July 9, and the wedding will be at the Mollene home. And Daarte Andresen will marry again now, and the banns have been pronounced; she will marry Ole Svehaugen Ylveland. Also there will probably be a wedding in our house this fall, according to what I hear, for Berthe. She will marry a widower. He has 3 children. The oldest is in confirmation. He is an engineer [i.e., operates a motorized boat], and makes good money, and he is said to be a nice man, so they say, and so he seems to be; I can say no more about that so far. So it looks as if we will see her married, if we weren’t able to see any of you who are in America married. You can tell your wife Lava that I will soon go and visit her family, and then I will write soon to you that I have been down south there, for I will take the opportunity to go to Stavanger and see about a net boat for us, for the net must and shall go out, if I live so long.

Ja, now I’d better close for this time of writing to you, for if my writing has taken time, I have done a good job of telling this and that. I must tell you that old Grandfather is still living, but is now very poorly and awaits death each day. Grandmother is now a little better than he. Continue reading Olsen letter #2b →

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Olsen letter #2

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[Having no useful thoughts to share this evening, I turn to the second installment in my translations of a series of letters from my great-great-grandfather in Norway to my great-grandfather in America.lw]

Letter addressed to: Mr. John Walker, Millington, Po., Ills., Kendall Co., North Amerika.

Kvalevaag, the 30 June, 1891.

Mr. Jan H. Olson

Dear children,

Having received your lively letter, for which I am very thankful, and say thank you for, and from which we can see and hear both of and from you, that everything is well and good with all of you in every respect, ja, it is precious to hear from one’s dear ones that everything is fine in every way, for which we must thank the Lord, who upholds us each day. Ja, it is grace upon grace for our part that He does not turn His back on us also, as so many others have done in our misery, and at an inconvenient time. Ja, thanks and praise to His holy name for all good both for soul and body. Ja, I can also tell you today that we are all sustained in life by God thus far, although in many infirmities, so that we aren’t always so brisk in health, we who are now old. Mother especially has [been] and is so very poorly, and so she has been for a long time now. She spent no little time in bed, but now in Pentecost she has been in bed most of the time. But what shall we say? We have to suffer through anything. We endure much evil and hard work every day, for we haven’t much help in our old age.

I myself have been sick a while, but now, thank God, I am better again; and it’s a good thing, because I haven’t had much of anyone to help me with the farm work this year. There’s me and Marte [sister] and the mare—we are the ones who have done the farm work this year. I myself have plowed every furrow this year. I haven’t hired a day-laborer this spring, but now I am going to have hired help with me in the peat bog, for you have to have people for that, and I was ready, although I was alone, as soon as the others. And for that I can thank the Lord, who has strengthened and helped me, and He is a good helper to have with you in everything.

Ja, it is certainly hard to think that we, who have brought up so many as we have, are now alone in our old age. Ja, it is sorrowful to think of, that we should have two sons in America, and [they] go and work for day wages, with nothing of their own to hold on to, and will not be at home in their own home and country. Ja, it is amazing how a person can be, ja, I often wonder about it when I think of you, that you could forsake your dear home, and live in that America. Ja, it is certainly said of America, this time by me, “for I would not live there, although I got gold and green forests.” Ja, I know that for sure. Continue reading Olsen letter #2 →

Bookselling, Publishing

Does It Matter What It Costs?

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Sarah Palin has a memoir coming out next month, Going Rogue: An American Life. You can pre-order it from Amazon for $9–the same at Walmart. Buy it at Books-a-Million for $15.65.

I very well may buy this book, but should I go for the $9 or the $15 price? Why are deep discounters able to discount some books so deeply? Should I care about paying too little for a book, or should I let the publishers figure out their stupid business models by themselves?

In related news, political pundit Bernie Quigley talks about the messages within the titles of Palin’s and Mitt Romney’s upcoming books. Romney’s book, to be released in March, is called No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. Quigley says that title focuses on the past.

“There is hubris and a kind of conspicuous arrogance to it, which he asks us to wear with our chests out. Romney’s title suggests a full endorsement of the Bush II paradigm without a moment’s introspection,” he says. “Going Rogue, however, suggests a new direction, a new adventure, something just ahead there in the great unknown. It is a very good title and speaks in essence to the frontier spirit of those who venture beyond the Hudson River or the Beltway.”

Non-fiction, Reviews

Vampires, Burial, and Death by Paul Barber

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I made some comments about vampires in this space a while back, and a friend lent me a copy of Paul Barber’s Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality so I could have the real skinny.

I know much more now. I’m not sure I’m happier for it.

And—especially for the sake of those of you with weak stomachs—I’ll pass the gist of it on to you, so you won’t have to read this often entertaining, but generally depressing and unappetizing, book. Continue reading Vampires, Burial, and Death by Paul Barber →

Authors, Poetry

The Poetic Muse

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Robert Roper writes, “Contemporary psychologists have unearthed strong associations between poetry and introspection, between introspection and depression, and between depression and self-destructiveness. Not all poets are depressives, but there is a statistical connection. If that child of yours is writing a poem at this moment, go into his bedroom right now and stop him!”

Ahem.

“I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;”

And if it landed in your heart,

I hope you die, you little tart.

Gasp–I’m so depressed now.

Fiction

Sea-ing the grove for the trees

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I meant to do a number of things this weekend, and accomplished a few of them, mostly shopping- and computer-related. But I’m only firing on a couple cylinders. Either my cold is still hanging on, or I’m in the process of succumbing to a second malady, possibly H1N1 or the King’s Evil. I hope that’s not the case, because I’d hate to cancel my appearance for the Chesterton Society in Fargo on Saturday.

I just picked up some Airborne®, which some of the Vikings recommend. Just like the Fizzies we used to enjoy when I was a kid, except less sweet and they’re supposed to be good for you.

Again I spent Sunday at home (I was beginning to fear I was contagious), and I ended the day as has been my custom recently, watching one of the Inspector Lewis mysteries on PBS.

Inspector Lewis (as all Mystery aficionados know), is the former Sergeant Lewis who played sidekick for so many years to Inspector Morse in the splendid series based on Colin Dexter’s whodunits. Lewis has had an interesting character arc. In the original mystery in the series, as written in the book Last Bus to Woodstock, Inspector Morse had two sergeants assisting him. One was named Lewis, and was described as short and stocky. The other (whose name I’ve forgotten) was tall and thin. When the series was televised, the producers conflated the two sergeants and gave us a tall, thin officer named Lewis. In the books that followed, the author just rode the wave. He made Lewis the regular assistant, and never (as far as I noticed) described him again, so the reader was free to think of him as looking like Kevin Whately, who still portrays him on television.

There’s an interesting religious subtext in the new Inspector Lewis series (Dexter killed off Inspector Morse with a heart attack in The Remorseful Day in 1999). Lewis had been (though inconsistently) portrayed as a churchgoer in the Inspector Morse stories. Now we’re told that his wife has been killed in a senseless traffic accident, and that he has become an atheist. His assisting sergeant, however, is a former seminarian who still believes to some extent. The question of God’s existence intrudes regularly in the stories, as it did in this week’s episode, which involved an Oxford don who writes bestselling books, Richard Dawkins-style, about atheism.

But what struck me most in this episode was the presence of the actress Jenny Seagrove. My heart knew a nameless dread when I saw her name on the credits at the beginning. “What have the years done to Jenny?” I asked myself. “Will she be a skin-tightened, botoxed android, like so many other actresses her age?” Continue reading Sea-ing the grove for the trees →

Book Reviews, Creative Culture