You can’t say this isn’t cool. A tornado team films a funnel cloud turned away from them so that they can film down its spout.

Friday and Saturday were the days for Story City, Iowa (just off Highway 35, south of, oh, I don’t know–Clear Lake and Mason City, by about an hour).

We were in the lot by the Sons of Norway hall as before, but a reconfiguration put Denny and me (the only members of our group who came–the lodge got a discount) behind Sam the Viking and his beautiful Viking boat. The weather wasn’t bad on Friday, but the convection of the crowd currents didn’t bring many people back to us. We were able to spread knowledge to a few young guys who wandered in, but didn’t see a lot of traffic. Continue reading Weekend report, plus exclusive tunic photo! →

When asked to specify what “climate disaster” will be avoided by enacting emissions reduction policies, three experts testifying before congress gave an unclear answer. There’s uncertainty region to region, they said. Perhaps real world results are not what climatologists deal with.

In other news, the forecast for this year’s hurricane season is “unexceptional.” No doubt, we’ll all be dead by the end of it.

I heard a great interview on the Mars Hill Audio Journal with David Smith on his book, Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy, which deals with the subject he writes about here. Is the National Endowment for the Arts for the purpose of granting artists a bit of freedom or livelihood to create new art or is it to promote community involvement in the arts? According to Mr. Smith, Lyndon Johnson and the congress who voted for the NEA’s creation didn’t really know what they were doing or how contentious artists are.

Poet Donald Hall asked sculptor Henry Moore about the secret of life. Here’s his answer, posted for your comment: “The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is—it must be something you cannot possibly do!”

Early morning on June 4, 1989, the Chinese government murdered many of its citizens because they cried out too loudly for democracy. In 2009, the current U.S. administration cared more for Chinese action on environmental issues than accountability on human rights.

“If the United States really wants to keep its status as a stronger power, they cannot just make friends with the Chinese government but also make friends with the Chinese people,” said a Tiananmen Square leader this week.

Here’s the tunic now:

Looks kind of like Mr. Spock’s shirt, doesn’t it? (That is, if Mr. Spock had gained about 300 lbs.)

It will look less logical (I hope) once I add the trim around the neck piece. That’s a job that’s beyond my skill to do with the machine. I’ll be sitting with needle and thread tonight, so the thing will be ready for the weekend.

Tomorrow I drive down to Story City, Iowa for their Scandinavian Days festival. It’s a small Viking encampment; no fighting will be done. But Story City is the town where my angelic grandmother was born, and also (interestingly) where the grandfather of my publisher, Jerry Nordskog, was born a few years earlier.

Clearly all this was fated from before the foundations of the earth.

So don’t blame me that I won’t be able to post anything tomorrow.