And now for something completely different: two diplomats discussing a territory disagreement.

Muslims are claiming England for Islam. Send more Christian missionaries.

Alisa Harris points to some good comments and quotes on thrift, which some people are returning to lately. I was thinking The Art of Manliness blog had a Ben Franklin post on thrift, but I found only this list of posts related to thrift instead. Could be great weekend reading–lots of T. Roosevelt in there and the virtues of the Samurai.

In facing the future and in striving, each according to the measure of his individual capacity, to work out the salvation of our land, we should be neither timid pessimists nor foolish optimists. We should recognize the dangers that exist and that threaten us: we should neither overestimate them nor shrink from them, but steadily fronting them should set to work to overcome and beat them down. Grave perils are yet to be encountered in the stormy course of the Republic – perils from political corruption, perils from individual laziness, indolence and timidity, perils springing from the greed of the unscrupulous rich, and from the anarchic violence of the thriftless and turbulent poor. There is every reason why we should recognize them, but there is no reason why we should fear them or doubt our capacity to overcome them, if only each will, according to the measure of his ability, do his full duty, and endeavor so to live as to deserve the high praise of being called a good American citizen. – Teddy Roosevelt

Here’s an interesting list from Lists Unlimited: Top Ten Myths About the Middle Ages. It’s pretty good.

I dislike the modern definition of “myth” to mean “false belief,” but I guess that ship has long sailed.

One point I’d modify is the one about bathing in the Middle Ages. The term “Middle Ages” covers a whole lot of territory, and is used in different ways by different historians. My particular period of interest, the Viking Age, used to be considered part of “The Dark Ages.” The Dark Ages were reckoned to cover (more or less) that part of European History commencing with the fall of Rome and ending with the Norman Conquest of England. The designation was not, technically, meant as a moral judgment, but just a reflection of the fact that records from the period were sparse. Rulers tended to just do stuff, without bothering about writing it down, or if they did, those records were likely to have gotten lost or destroyed. So the history was dark in terms of being hard to see.

Nowadays the term “Dark Ages” has gone out of fashion. Historians now generally call it “The Early Middle Ages.” There’s some justification for this, as new discoveries, especially in the field of archaeology (where they’re now able to learn amazing stuff through the use of modern technology) have shed a lot of light on the period.

But if the Dark Ages is considered part of the Middle Ages now, I know for a fact that bathing was not, in fact, common in England during that period. Gwyn Jones, in his A History of the Vikings, says: Continue reading No soap, please, we’re British →

I’m reduced to stream-of-consciousness tonight, no ideas at all, so who knows what the harvest will be.

My Christmas tree is unlighted tonight. Yesterday was the Feast of the Epiphany, the last day of Christmas, so now I’m done. In the last few years I’ve moved from my parents’ Christmas tree tradition (in which you light it every night until New Year’s) to a church calendar approach, letting my little light(s) shine through January 6.

This is the worst time of the year, in my world. Up through Christmas, you’ve got the celebration and the lights to bear your spirits up. Now there’s just the Long March through Jan, Feb and Mar, and frequently Apr, and sometimes parts of May in Minnesota. The days are getting longer, it’s true, but the impotent winter sun has no effective influence, like a freshman Republican congressman.

Speaking of legislators, this winter is given added piquancy by the fact that it looks very much as if Al Franken is going to be my senator when all’s said and done. Wherever I surf in the conservative blogosphere, commentators are saying essentially the same thing—“What the h****? What are they smoking up in that state? Have I been transferred to some alternate universe where failed comedy writers with drug histories are presumed to Be In Touch With the Gods, and are therefore chosen as tribal elders, like peyote-addled Navajo medicine men?”

I’ve talked about the history of Minnesota liberalism in this space before (our Democratic party is officially called The Democratic Farmer-Labor Party), but it’s enough to say that most Minnesotans have liberal instincts and believe that Baby Jesus cries whenever a Republican vote is cast. Give them a Democratic landslide year, and they transform into lemmings (lemmings are a Norwegian animal, by the way. I saw one once). In that frame of mind, Minnesotans will (to quote Mitch Berg of Shot In the Dark) “elect a set of wind-up chattering teeth if the DFL nominated it.”

In Minnesota politics, you have to work pretty hard to achieve hyperbole.