Sure, you found the body of your employer lodged uncomfortably in the copier and a threat to your co-workers smeared on the wall in toner power. It’d make a powerful story, but sometimes a crime novel isn’t just about the crime.
Writing to See
Anecdotal Evidence has some good writing quotes from John McGahern. “Writing is an instinct. I’d say that I write to see. I suspect that unless there’s a sense of excitement and discovery for the writer, the reader will not have much sense of excitement or discovery either.”
A parable
Q: What is so rare as a day in June?
A: February 29.
(That’s not my gag. Walt Kelly used it in Pogo about eight or nine leap years ago.)
Today, a parable.
Once upon a time there was a land where only children lived. It was a happy land of flowers and sunshine and gentle, playful animals.
The only problem in all of the happy land was the Mean Boys. There weren’t a lot of mean boys, but everybody was afraid of them. The teased. They pushed ahead in line. If they got really mad, sometimes they beat up the smaller kids.
Some of the children went to Maddy, the Smartest Girl. “What are we going to do about the Mean Boys?” the asked, crying.
Maddy said, “This isn’t as big a problem as you think. The Mean Boys aren’t all that powerful.”
“But they’re big!” said one little boy. “And when you try to stand up for yourself, they just laugh at you and take your stuff.”
“Yes, they’re big,” said Maddy. “But you know what? They may be bigger than you are, but they’re not bigger than all of us are.”
“What does that mean?” asked a girl.
“It means that if we all work together, we can beat them. They aren’t strong enough to fight all of us.”
“You mean we gang up on them?”
“Yes,” said Maddy. “When they get mean, we all have to fight them together. Soon they’ll learn that they can’t beat the power of all of us working together.”
“But we can’t be together all the time,” said the little boy. “What if they catch one of us alone?”
“We have to make sure we’re never alone,” said Maddy. “From now on we all stay in groups all the time. I’ll organize the groups, and you’ll have to stay with your group all day and all night. Never leave the group.”
“Sometimes I like to be alone,” said a Smart Boy (not smarter than Maddy, but pretty smart).
“You want to get beat up?” asked Maddy.
The Smart Boy was about to say something, but then decided not to.
And so it was done. All the children organized into groups, and they stayed together all the time, and whenever the Mean Boys picked on someone, the whole group gathered around them and beat them up.
And after the Mean Boys had stopped beating kids up, Maddy announced that the Mean Boys wouldn’t be allowed to tease anyone anymore either. And the Mean Boys had to go along with it.
And everyone agreed that Maddy should be the queen, because she’d figured out how to make life perfect for everyone. And everybody did what Maddy said.
And Maddy got to have the nicest room, and the nicest toys, and nobody disagreed with her, because all the others would beat them up.
And sometimes Maddy teased the Mean Boys, or even kids who weren’t actually mean or boys, if she didn’t like them. And everybody agreed that that was OK, because Maddy had done so much for all of them.
And sometimes, when Maddy got really angry with somebody, she’d tell the group to beat them up. And of course they did that, too.
But all in all things went very well in the happy land.
Until one day some cars came over the hill.
Teenagers got out of the cars.
And they had guns.
(Now that I’ve written this out, it isn’t as profound as I thought it was. But it’s written, and I’m not going to find another subject tonight. Have a good weekend.)
Jesus Would Have Had a Small Church
Today’s Thinklings Quote of the Day lines up with this video post from yesterday. The quote is from A. W. Tozer: “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are not worthy of Him.” In the post, a pastor reveals his struggle with the challenge Jesus lays before us. He said that a year or two ago he was struggling with his role as a pastor and his intimacy with the Lord. He turned to his wife and said, “If Jesus had a church in Simi Valley, I betcha mine would be bigger.” Because he didn’t challenge his congregation like the Lord challenges us.
What Would You Do?
“Britain’s defense chief decided Friday to immediately pull Prince Harry out of Afghanistan after news of his deployment was leaked on the U.S. Web site the Drudge Report,” according to this morning’s AP report.
The ministry asked the media not to speculate on Harry’s location — or how and when he would return — until he was back in Britain. . . . The ministry deplored the leak by “elements of the foreign media.”
The ministry knew this was a problem, so they had plans for keeping Harry safe. But if you were a newsman with a strong website or paper like The Drudge Report, would you report the prince’s secret location? Do the people have a right to know something like this?
I laughed, I cried
Jared points to the painfully hilarious concept of Jon Arbuckle’s life without Garfield. Help us.
Safe in harbor once again
Late and short tonight, for I have fared through perils and straits that have left me a shadow of my Former’s elf. (I don’t know what that means, but it’s a pun, which counts as humor in some quarters.)
I told you recently about my trip to my tax preparer’s new location, and my problems finding the place in the trackless wilderness of Maple Grove, Minnesota. Tonight I went to pick up the forms (and incidentally to pay for them), and I found the place just fine. Tonight, the problem was the weather.
We got about an inch of snow today. That’s not a big deal, especially for hardy arctic types like we’ve all become by now. But the snow fell at just that temperature, right around freezing, where it does the most effective possible job of turning the road surfaces to Teflon.
I was about half way there when I admitted to myself that it would have been better to wait till tomorrow night. But by then I was (to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Macbeth), in snow stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.
So I made the full trip, carefully making allowances for the limitations of my car (which are many), and I got home safe and sound.
So how shall I think about this? Shall I consider myself a brilliant driver, because I made it home without a fender-bender? Or shall I consider myself an idiot for making the trip at all on a night like this?
Yeah, like I have a choice about that.
Mark Steyn Threatened by Liberals
Liberalism undermines the freedoms which enable it by opposing those truths which should be self-evident. Case in point: Mark Steyn is being challenged before The Canadian Human Rights Commission for an excerpt from his book, America Alone, printed in the Canadian magazine Maclean’s. The Canadian Islamic Congress didn’t like Steyn’s arguments against Islam and have charged him with hate speech.
Here’s the excerpt. Steyn points out that many other publications have reprinted portions of his book, labeling them “alarmist.” In response, Steyn asks, “So what would it take to alarm you?” If what Steyn has written is over the top, cultural changes or specific acts should rational people be alarmed by?
It’s hard to deliver a wake-up call for a civilization so determined to smother the alarm clock in the soft fluffy pillow of multiculturalism and sleep in for another 10 years. The folks who call my book “alarmist” accept that the Western world is growing more Muslim (Canada’s Muslim population has doubled in the last 10 years), but they deny that this population trend has any significant societal consequences. Sharia mortgages? Sure. Polygamy? Whatever. Honour killings? Well, okay, but only a few.
(via Cranach)
Handel’s Messiah Adapted for Ballet
The Pennsylvania Ballet will be performing The Messiah in dance March 5-9. The ballet has been well-received for several years. “Weiss says Carolina’s performances were sold out for five years running, and a 2003 concert in Hungary played to overwhelmingly enthusiastic crowds,” reports Susan Lewis.
Incredible
Roger Kimball asks why anyone believes the NY Times about anything. He quotes fellow blogger Bob Owens to summarize:
[T]he bizarre emphasis of the New York Times upon veteran violence without the provision of context can be understood by remembering that Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the Times, once said during the Vietnam War that if a North Vietnamese soldier ran into an American soldier, he’d rather see the American soldier shot.