There was snow on the ground when I got up on Sunday, and more snow this morning. It hasn’t completely disappeared as of posting time, and will probably last the night. Is this the beginning of a long, long winter? Probably not, but it could happen. This is Minnesota.

My cold is much better, thanks for asking, though not entirely gone. The swelling has receded on my hand and the bruising has lightened, but I still have a substantial goose-egg on the back, and only about 70% use of it. That will take a while to come back, I expect.

I would have liked to have spent the weekend recuperating, but I was pretty booked. Friday night was a Sons of Norway meeting, which I’d promised to attend (can’t remember why).

Saturday morning my dance card was clear, so I was able to buy a few shirts I’d been meaning to buy. I also called in to two local radio talk shows, both times in connection with the general hilarity surrounding Nobel Peace Prize award. I told the David Strom Show my theory about the reason for the award—that Oslo is a B List city socially, and they just wanted the world’s greatest celebrity to visit so they could get his autograph. I called the First Team of the Northern Alliance Radio Network to explain how to pronounce “ø.” (Answer: Say “er,” but quit before you get to the hard “r” on the end.)

At noon, I had the annual meeting of the Georg Sverdrup Society, at which I was scheduled to read my new translation of one of Sverdrup’s articles. It went pretty well, as far as I could tell. Then there was the business meeting, and then the board meeting, and eventually I got home to wash my clothes.

Sunday I treated like a sick day, even though I wasn’t all that sick anymore. I figured I had a rest day coming. You know, the Bible never actually says you have to go to church on the sabbath. What it does say is you have to rest. It’s one of those points where I enjoy being legalistic.

It’s Friday (in case you haven’t been paying attention), and I made it through the week. My cold is getting better, as is my hand (but more slowly).

I have a meeting tonight, and a meeting tomorrow. All in all, I’d far rather lie on the couch.

From an anonymous source: The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form. I don’t see how that can possibly be improved on.

Made contact today (through Facebook), for the first time in about forty years, with a former college roommate, now a retired military chaplain. He says he still tells the story of how I helped him find assurance of salvation (he’d been one of those who kept going back to the altar to be converted, again and again) by taking him through 1 Peter 1:3-12.

I’d forgotten about the incident entirely. As with most of my relationships, I’d remembered mainly the mistakes I’d made and dumb things I’d said.

If I weren’t me, I’d probably feel some satisfaction in that. I’m grateful to him for telling me about it, in any case.

Novelist D.J. Taylor complains that the men of letters seen in several literary works over the years can’t make a living today. There are several reasons, of course. I think lack of imagination on the part of media owners is a good reason, but you can’t blame folks for lacking imagination. (via The Literary Saloon)

Jeffrey Herf writes about the new totalitarian movement in the world:

In the last decades of the Cold War, no one was surprised that many American liberals frowned on sharp and vocal criticism of communist regimes and communist ideology. But there is a surprising irony in contemporary Western political and intellectual life. Many liberals, including the Democratic Party leadership, have been reluctant to acknowledge that radical Islam has more in common with fascism than it does with the attack on liberal democracy from the radical Left. Like the fascists from earlier times, radical Islamists attack every component of the liberal tradition: the Enlightenment, the great democratic revolutions, the principle of the separation of religion and state, full equality for women and, in recent decades, for homosexuals, and yes, of course, opposition to anti-Semitism. How strange that Franklin Roosevelt’s armed anti-fascism should live on so strongly in mainstream American conservatism but find few advocates among his American liberal successors.