O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassion’d stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.
America! America!
God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.
That’s the verse we should be singing today, though the first verse is good too.
Here’s Red Skelton’s tribute to our country and the Pledge of Allegiance.
I’m in no position to tell you what to do, but I’d like to go on record as saying I’m flying my flag today. And if you’re an American, I urge you to do the same. Dennis Prager’s column on the need for an “American seder” pretty much sums up my views.
Someone recently sent me a quotation I’ve read before, and like very much. It’s attributed to a scholar named Sir Alex Fraser, and it goes like this:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”
An excellent sentiment and (I think) indisputably true. Unfortunately, according to both Snopes.com and truthorfiction.com, the statement cannot be found in any of Sir Alexander Fraser (Tyler)’s writings.
Which is very odd. It would appear that somebody came up with this extremely perceptive statement, and instead of taking credit for it himself, distributed it under the name of a long-dead scholar. Which shows admirable humility, but doesn’t really do much to promote his purposes, since once the false attribution is known, the whole thing loses credibility.
Or maybe somebody just remembered wrong.
I’ll leave that puzzle in its knot, and close with one of my favorite quotations from John Adams, our second president and one of our most brilliant and amusing, if not the most likeable:
“We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” (Address to the military, Oct. 11, 1798)
Which is essentially the same point, I think.
Will this work? I have my doubts. I’ve had the kind of afternoon where every time I reach for something I knock something over, and every time I pick something up I drop it (I’m exaggerating, but it feels like that). So I figure either my computer will crash or Bloo will go down just about the time I’m ready to post. But I shall make the effort.
I bought Faye Kellerman’s The Ritual Bath (first in a series of mysteries involving Det. Peter Decker and widow Rina Lazarus) on the strength of my fondness for her husband Jonathan’s Alex Delaware novels. I had misgivings. Generally I don’t care for mysteries written by women (I’m not weighing in on our discussion, some time back, of whether men write the best mysteries or not. I find men usually write the best mysteries for me, which is a very different matter).
I was very pleasantly surprised. The Ritual Bath is both a satisfying crime story and a sensitive examination of the conflicts and stresses involved in being seriously religious in a secular society.
Rina Lazarus lives at an orthodox yeshiva (Torah school) in a run-down section of Los Angeles. Ordinarily an unmarried woman wouldn’t live at an all-male yeshiva, but her late husband was a student, and the school gave her a job and a home so that she could take care of her two young sons. Her job involves cleaning and caring for the mikvah (ritual bath), used monthly by students’ wives.
The night the novel begins, a young woman is attacked and raped outside the mikvah. Detective Peter Decker and his partner arrive to investigate.
There is immediate chemistry between the tall, red-haired detective and the tiny Jewish widow. But though Decker pursues her singlemindedly throughout the book, Rina has to explain, again and again, that there is no way she could possibly date a goy. As the likelihood grows that the rapist (who keeps coming back) may be someone inside the yeshiva, there are numerous opportunities for personal and professional missteps and misunderstandings.
The picture of life in an Orthodox community appears (so far as I can tell) to be pretty accurate. At least it’s credible. The constant nuisance of concern for ritual cleanliness is not glossed over, but neither are the joys of deep belief and genuine community life. (As a sideline, it made me more aware than ever of Paul’s statement that “the letter of the law kills,” and reminded me how grateful I ought to be that Christians are free of such.)
Another pleasure was Kellerman’s portrayal of Detective Decker. I suspect that one reason so many female writers have a hard time with male characters is that they find it both difficult and repellant to try to get into our heads. I found no false notes in Peter Decker. He struck me as a very believable decent guy, at once strongly aroused by Rina and making an honest effort to keep his hormones suppressed.
Another thing that made the book interesting (and problematic) from a Christian point of view was the fact that Det. Decker is increasingly attracted to the Jewish religion itself, as well as to a particular Jew, as the story goes on. We are told that he was raised a Baptist but is nothing in particular now. Question: If a secular person is drawn to Judaism, does that bring him closer to, or farther away from, Jesus Christ?
Another thing that struck me was how similar the book was to a lot of Christian Booksellers Association fiction. The tall, strong, unbeliever is drawn to the beautiful believer, and as love grows he is attracted to her faith as well.
Only Kellerman does it better. Her writing is on a higher level (not perfect, but far superior to most CBA, so far as I’ve read any), her characters more rounded and believable. Also the book is earthier. There are intense situations. There is bad language. Those things might disqualify a book from CBA, but they also increase realism, giving the story greater credibility.
I’ll read more of these.
Dr. Judith Hardanger-Hansen writes again, in another column by me over at the American Spectator Online today.
We got a little rain today (and that’s a good thing), but it was just a little. When I got home, the evidence suggested that we’d gotten a little more right here. Even better. And the skies were full of dark clouds. I took my afternoon walk on the theory that my vulnerability would prove an irresistible temptation to the heavens, but it didn’t work (could it be that the universe isn’t specifically engineered to frustrate me? This could crush my entire paradigm!).
But when I sat down to start this post it was raining again. A tentative, Avoidant rain, unsure of its welcome. I didn’t have much hope of it, but lo, it continues, even unto this minute.
The weekend went OK. I didn’t have anyplace to go, so I washed and waxed Mrs. Hermanson and did some repair and staining on the latticework underneath my screen porch.
My treat was the arrival of this object:
This is a Viking saex, hand-made for me by author and knifemaker Michael Z. Williamson. If you’re wondering why a guy who’s been hinting at financial constraints throws away money on things like this, the answer is that I ordered and paid for it a couple years ago, when I was flush, and it’s been delayed for various reasons. So this was a long-awaited pleasure.
I posted about saexes (or seaxes, or saxes, or saekses, ad infinitum) a while back, when I made a sheath for the back-up saex I’d bought for live steel. This knife is not for live steel. This one is fully sharp. Even Crocodile Dundee, I believe, would concede that this is a knife. It’s 16 ½” long.
If you look closely you can see Viking runes inlaid in the side of the blade. These spell out (in Old Norse) a line from the poem, Bjarkamál: “Breast to breast the eagles shall claw each other.” The Bjarkamál was a very popular war poem in the Viking Age. One of King (St.) Olaf’s poets sang it before the Battle of Stiklestad, and this particular line was nearly the last words of Erling Skjalgsson, hero of The Year of the Warrior.
The saex was one of the most common, and prized, weapons in the Dark Ages, and continued to be so long after the Viking Age had passed. It has been suggested that possession of this weapon was restricted to free men, and was a mark of freedom—the Saxons took their name from the weapon. Most men couldn’t afford to invest valuable steel in swords which had no practical use outside of warfare. But every free man had one of these, useable as a machete, a butcher knife and an offensive weapon.
It’s still raining, very lightly. This would be perfect if it just lingered and lingered. I don’t think that’s in the forecast, though. But we’ll take what we can get.
Point out the weaknesses in some, maybe most, praise music sung in churches today and what happens? A long rant-fest.
“‘Lord to give you up I’d be a fool’ almost literally gag-making”
“the lyrics of praise music is meaningless pop gestures”
“As the character in the Simpsons said, you can turn praise music into a love song merely by changing ‘Jesus’ to ‘Baby.'”
“Most “praise music” stinks. Use the Psalter or use the psalms of David in meter.”
“I remember the whole ‘rock music is evil’ debate. The same debate happens every time a new music genre enters the Christian space”
How to Fend Off a Shark, from the guys who wrote the guide to surviving worst case scenarios. In short, hit the shark back.
Yesterday, my wife and I saw Pixar’s Ratatouille on a digital screen at the Rave Theater in East Ridge. It was fantastic, hilarious, and heartening. The director describes it as a story about achieving impossible dreams, and maybe that’s the idea I was smiling so much about afterward, but I worded it differently. A food critic says that though everyone cannot be a great artist, a great artist can come from anywhere. As the story’s featured cookbook claims, “Anyone can cook.” That means you, especially if you see our society or select industries against you.
I heard an interview this week with a woman who said that while studying drama at Harvard in the ’70s she was encouraged to pursue children’s theater, “because women can’t direct theater.” Neither she nor the NPR interviewer wanted to believe such an idea was common at Harvard in those days. But that idea is everywhere, is it not? Someone may tell you that being the type of person you are prevents you from accomplishing your goal, but it ain’t necessarily so.
Dream your impossible dream. Work on it no matter what the chances of success, and do it all to the glory of your Lord and Savior. You may be a great artist–no matter who you are. You won’t find out unless you try.
Just about a perfect day today. The temperature was precisely right for my personal comfort—which means it would probably be a little warm for most people. I’m a cold-blooded beast. The thermometer usually reads about 98.2 when the nurse pulls it from my mouth and reads it. I blame this condition for my inability to endure cold. When my brothers are thumping their chests and saying, “Isn’t this great? It’s so bracing!” I’m cupping my hands over my ears to keep them warm (cupping them very carefully, though. Touching them too forcefully might shatter them like cheap plastic cups from a convenience store pop machine).
We could use some rain, but if it were raining it wouldn’t be a perfect day, would it? “Seek not contrary pleasures,” said Dr. Johnson.
One disappointment I’ve suffered during my afternoon walks down to Crystal Lake and back has been the lack of girls in bikinis sunning themselves along the shore. Crystal Lake has been sorely deficient in the sunbathing girls department. More often the shore has been encircled by an unbroken ring of Hmong people, all of them with fishing poles, pulling sunfish 2 centimeters long out of the water for supper.
But today that was remedied. I didn’t get an ideal look at the girl (no doubt that was her intention) as she was lying on a fairly steep slope that runs down from the street to the water’s edge, but she seemed to be not ugly, and she was in a bikini.
Maybe it’ll be a good weekend.
There was another form of beauty too—butterflies. I suppose it’s unmanly of me, but I love butterflies. They seem to me an entirely useless addition to the environment. I’m sure their ecological niche could have been filled by something brown that looked like one of the more undistinguished moths. But God gave us flowers that flew, just as a treat.
That’s how I think of butterflies. They’re a gift. A grace note. A cherry on top of the sundae of summer.
Have a good weekend.