In weather like this, you pretty much have to blog about the snow and cold. But how to do it? Tell harrowing stories of my near-death experiences shoveling my driveway, or fighting traffic on Teflon streets? Fortunately I avoided both those activities today. Employ quirky and creative similes and metaphors, like James Lileks? I could try a weak emulation, but it’s late and I want to get to my Christmas cards. Casual wit takes a lot of hard work.

So I’ll talk about my Grandpa, Clarence Walker. I thought of him as I unloaded my groceries in the cold wind tonight. I remembered that Grandma Walker once told me that he had saved his brother’s (or brother-in-law’s) life, when they both got caught in a snowstorm in the woods. It was one of those classic situations where one guy wants to sit down and rest, and the other guy says, “No, you’ve gotta keep walking. If you fall asleep, you’ll die.” (I understand that’s not entirely true. You can sleep just fine in the snow if you’re well bundled up, especially if you let the snow drift on top of you like a blanket, as long as you’re not physically exhausted. It’s the exhaustion that kills you. I have to assume they were both exhausted that night).

This is Grandpa and Grandma Walker, with (reading left to right) my brother Moloch and me. Must have been around 1953. It was taken in the house in town to which they retired after Dad got married.

Continue reading The Saga of Clarence →

Just to let you know, I’m having connection problems on my home computer, and depending on how long I spend in Customer Service Purgatory, I may or may not get a real post up tonight. Or tomorrow. Or this week, or year.

Update: My connection miraculously regenerated itself while I was gone at work. This does not make me complacent. I know well that once a connection starts acting this way, complete breakdown will follow as night the day. But for now, I’m in business.

I had a bizarre dream last night. Bizarre enough to tell you about.

Like most dreams, it was sparked by an incident during the preceding day. I had checked my mailbox and found it completely empty, even of junk mail. Which is a fairly uncommon thing, especially this time of year.

In my dream, I went out to check the mailbox again, and found it full of stuff. Not only mail, but packages. And there were packages, some of them Christmas wrapped, lying on my front step.

So I gathered what I could, took them inside, and went out to get the rest.

And there was Santa Claus, standing just outside the front awning. This was a huge Santa Claus, maybe twelve feet tall. I couldn’t actually see his face, but I recognized him from his outfit.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but these packages were meant for another address.”

So I went in to bring them out again, and that’s when I woke up.

I got a note today from an acquaintance who is a European and is involved in a sort of rear-guard action to attempt to salvage some scraps of European culture out of the ongoing slow deluge.

Thinking about that noble, perhaps quixotic, effort, I had an epiphany. I think I know why European intellectuals hate the U.S.

(I’m not saying that all Europeans hate us. I believe [on the basis of limited personal contact and some reading] that most Europeans like us just fine, at least as individuals. A lot of them probably believe our country is the root of all evil, but they don’t mean us to take it personally.)

It occurred to me that the “native” European is under tremendous cultural pressure. The orthodoxy of our time proclaims that all evil in the world—without exception—is the fault of old Christian civilization. Which essentially means Europe. Therefore the conscientious European feels obligated to despise himself.

Well, what does a person do when he’s full of self-hate?

He looks for a scapegoat.

America is the scapegoat. When the European intellectual feels at his worst, his most sinful and guilt-ridden, he still has the satisfaction of pointing at America and saying, “Well, we may be evil, but we’re not as evil as that!”

This concludes my epiphany.

Note to aspiring criminal masterminds:

If you intend to embark on a career of larceny which may require you to assume a fictitious identity for a while, it’s probably not a great idea to have your real name tattooed on your neck.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by Brandywine Books.

Over at Culture 11, Nicola Karras has written an outstanding essay on how she moved from the liberalism she absorbed as a child to a conservative world-view.

From Nietzsche, from René Girard, from history, I had taken an important lesson about the darkness at the heart of Man. The human race is not, at its core, nice. For every worthy urge, there are a dozen unworthy ones: violence, lust, anger, greed, ressentiment… Society’s job is then to teach us to be better. Plato thought that once we knew the Good, we would have no choice but to follow it, but he was wrong.

She doesn’t say much about religious faith, but it may be implied, or perhaps she’s still on that journey.

The article’s a little highbrow for those of us whose philosophy reading is spotty, but well worth the effort.