I just found a blog with MP3 of stories, called Stories to Go. Here’s a link to “The Unstrung Harp,” by Edward Gorey.
Mark Bretrand on Moody’s Prime Time America
I hope you trust I don’t lie to you for whatever perceived gain I could get. I have no idea how I could gain from false claims on a blog, but you and I are honest with each other, right? Good. So I’m not lying when I say that yesterday I thought about writing Prime Time America to ask about doing book reviews, mostly of Christian fiction, and maybe they could also interview Mark Bertrand about his new book, Rethinking Worldview. I didn’t, and yet Mark will be on the radio today during the first hour of Prime Time America. I’ll be listening.
Global dampening
Somehow I seem to have been transported, all unbeknownst to me, to Seattle, Washington. Or Bergen, Norway (not that that’s a bad thing). It was raining when I left for Minot, and it was raining when I got back, and it’s raining still. We’re sopping around here. I keep flashing back to the Marx Brothers movie, “The Coconuts.” This was one of the first sound movies, and (I believe) the first fully sound-equipped musical ever filmed. They discovered paper was a problem. Paper crinkled loudly in the mikes whenever anybody picked it up, and the sound technicians (whose experience had generally begun that morning) couldn’t figure out what to do about it. So they just soaked all the paper in water. Every piece of paper in the movie looks like something lifted out of a washing machine, mid-cycle.
That’s how pretty much everything feels in Minnesota today. I heard on the radio this morning that we’re about 1/8” away from the record for the rainiest fall in history, the previous champ being 1902 or something.
This, we are sure to be told, is the fault of anthropogenic global warming.
This summer it was dry. That, apparently, was global warming too.
My question to global warming alarmists is this: “Is there any possible weather pattern that could conceivably occur that wouldn’t prove global warming to you?”
Of course not. If the weather every day next year were identical to the weather every day this year, that would be taken as proof of global warming too.
This reinforces my belief that global warming theory is, in essence, a religion. Just as there is no possible event, pleasant or unpleasant, that Christians can’t work into a general theory of the Providence of God, so there’s no conceivable weather cycle that the GW believer can’t harmonize with his doctrine.
The difference, I think, is that I admit my belief system is a religion.
And I don’t accuse people who disagree about it of being paid stooges of greedy corporations, who apparently think a planet laid waste and depopulated will present excellent marketing prospects.
Olasky Asks for More Salt
Marvin Olasky has an interesting column in light of our recent discussion of modern Christian fiction, both here and elsewhere. He says we need more salt than sugar in our Christian novels.
. . . contemporary Christian fiction [are stereotyped] as the marriage of tract and melodrama, homilies decked out in purple prose. Some Christian authors, rebelling against that, have moved toward literary fiction, with some good results and more dull ones. But we still have a long way to go to develop popular fiction—action-adventure, mystery, romance—that isn’t poorly written and sometimes downright embarrassing.
I think Christian fiction will need a master, some bestselling or otherwise popular author who writes un-embarrassing stories, in order for this opinion of the whole industry/genre to be put down–or will even that be enough? Not that it matters, I suppose. We can write great stories without the support of current public opinion.
New Seminary Web-bookstore
Westminster Seminary has a new site for its online store, reports a source close to the store. Good work.
The sweepings of the day
Tonight when I got home from work I noticed one of my credit cards was missing. After looking in the likely places, I called the service number to replace it.
When the female person I’d been talking to had canceled it and promised me a new one, she said, “I see that your payment record with us is wonderful, and I wonder if you’d be interested in…” and then she tried to sell me a credit protection plan.
I said no thank you, but my heart was strangely warmed by her praise of my payment record. When you’re me, you have to take your strokes where you can get them.
A few minutes later I found the card, and I called back to see if I could cancel the cancellation.
They don’t let you do that.
I suppose it’s best, all considered. Now I feel like a doofus again, and the universe is back in balance.
Kevin Holtsberry at Collected Miscellany has moved his blog back to its earlier address, and is rather sad that he isn’t getting more traffic as a result. Check it out. It’s an excellent blog, mostly about books.
Via Mirabilis: A site called Library Thing which allows you to list the books you own and make contact with people who enjoy the same books. What a great concept! I’d use it myself if I didn’t hate everyone in the world, except Sissel and you.
Kasporov and the Struggling, Unawarded Winners
Opinion Journal has a list of people who would have done more to earn a Nobel Peace prize than this year’s recipient, such as “Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin’s slide toward authoritarian rule” and “Britain’s Tony Blair, Ireland’s Bertie Ahern and the voters of Northern Ireland, who in March were able to set aside decades of hatred to establish joint Catholic-Protestant rule in Northern Ireland.”
Speaking of Kasparov, he has a new book called, How Life Imitates Chess. Business Week experts the book in which he applies chess principles to politics. He says, “Litvinenko’s murder came on the heels of the Moscow killing of the well-known investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya . . . The killings have turned a spotlight on what the West had assumed was the autocratic but stable Putin regime. Suddenly the foreign media is realizing what we in the Russian opposition have been saying for years—the Kremlin is ever closer to dictatorship than democracy and yet is not stable at all.”
Reading in the Out of the Way
Stephen King has been seen reading at a baseball game, so Mickey Mclean asks, “Where’s the strangest place you’ve seen someone pull out a book?”
I’ve wanted to take my book or magazine into the shower with me, but I have a stronger grip on reality than that. I wish I could read while walking, but I have taken to audiobooks for that. Now I just want to write another sentence which ends with that. Success!
Speaking of grip on reality, Athol Dickson points to an essay John Piper wrote about imagination and the fact that God is not boring.
Debating “What’s So Great About Christianity?”
File this under Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone. Authors Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza will debate the merits of the Christian faith at The King’s College next week. The debate, coming October 22 at 7:30pm, will be moderated by World magazine Editor-in-Chief Marvin Olasky.
On D’Souza’s website, Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, is quoted saying, “As an unbeliever, I passionately disagree with Dinesh D’Souza on some of his positions. But he is a first-rate scholar whom I feel absolutely compelled to read.” D’Souza’s book, What’s So Great About Christianity, comes out this week.
Review: Sissel concert, Oct. 13, 2007, Minot, ND
I had a wonderful time at the Sissel concert, and was completely satisfied personally, but it must have been a tough experience for her and her entourage. I also thought some improvements could have been made in view of the venue.
From what I hear, she and her crew only arrived at the hall an hour or two before the show was scheduled. Passport problems had delayed them. The festival canceled the usual noontime color ceremonies in order to allow them to set up and do sound tests.
Høstfest had decided to book Sissel for two concerts this year (I went to the early one at 1:00 p.m.). I applaud the sentiment of giving her two shows, but it was probably a mistake. Sissel deserves two concerts and more, but she’s just not a big name in America, and it’s the big names that the Høstfest attendees come to see. The first night was Ann-Margret and Tony Orlando. Also scheduled were Charlie Pride, Ronnie Milsap and Bill Cosby, among others. None of these are as talented as Sissel, in my opinion (except perhaps for Cosby, in his own way), but they are famous to the ordinary Midwesterners who come to the festival. Sissel they don’t know. As it turned out, the festival wasn’t able to move all the tickets, and ended up giving a lot of them away to servicepeople at the nearby Air Force base.
Whoever planned Sissel’s concert could have tailored it better to the crowd. The program began with three extremely sophisticated pieces in the classical vein (including a vocal arrangement of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures At an Exhibition”). This would have been great in Chicago, or in Minneapolis. But in Minot, they would have done better to start with something like “Marry Me.” If they’d done that at the start, the crowd would have been eating out of her hand, and she could have done anything she liked afterward.
As it was, a few people walked out at the beginning (Philistines!).
Which was too bad, because the music got more popular as she went on. I can’t recall all the numbers, but I remember that she did her lullaby, “Sarah’s Song,” which I consider pretty saccharine, but which the crowd liked. She also sang “Bruremarsj” (Wedding March), which always goes over well in any language, since it has no actual words. She got a standing ovation in the end, and came back with “Koppången” (oddly enough in an English translation) and “Going Home,” which I’d never heard her do before. Lovely.
She was accompanied by a six-person ensemble of Norwegian musicians, all top-notch and worthy of their material.
Great concert, and I clapped my hands raw. But it was a rocky production.