First in war, with a shield

They tell me that, Dennis Prager’s curmudgeoning to the contrary, today is not legally President’s Day, but Washington’s Birthday. “Presidents Day” is just what the stores call it. I’m not sure why. “Washington’s” is twelve letters, if you count the apostrophe, and “Presidents” is ten letters (eleven if you add an apostrophe, which isn’t strictly necessary), and that’s not going to make much difference to your ad copy column inches costs.

Let’s see, what do I know about Washington that doesn’t call for a lot of research on a holiday that’s mostly already over as I write?

Washington’s ideal—the model that inspired him—was the farmer-statesmen of the Roman republic. Those guys who reluctantly left their fields to shoulder the burden of civic responsibility for a time, then joyfully laid it down again to go back to their real lives. You can see echoes of that pattern everywhere in the great man’s career.

Even the architecture at Mount Vernon was a statement of this ideal. In contrast to the Greek Revival architecture favored by Jefferson and his crowd, Mount Vernon is Roman to the foundations.

He wasn’t a fun guy, Mr. President Washington. He was “on” all the time, playing the role, conscious that he was setting a benchmark by which his successors would be expected to measure themselves.

It definitely helped.

For a while, anyway.

I spent my weekend working on my new Viking shields for live steel.

Here’s how far I got:

Shields: Stage 1

I’ve got three rounds like this now, and I drilled holes in the two bosses (the boss is the bowl-like metal thing there). One round will be a spare, for when one gets shattered (which will definitely happen).

The great challenge was getting a 4×8’ sheet of 3/8” plywood home from Home Depot. First I drove around trying to find an auto parts store that sold clamp-on car top carriers. Turns out nobody carries them anymore.

Then I figured, well, if you take an old blanket to protect Mrs. Hermanson’s roof, you can just buy some tie-downs at the store and strap ‘er on and drive home that way.

Which is what I did, but it took a while. We had a stiff wind (pretty cold too) that wanted to blow the blanket off, so I had to bungee that down first. Then I got the plywood sheet up and discovered that Mrs. Hermanson, being one of those SUV’s built without a top rack, is specially designed for the frou-frou set, having no projections or inlets of any kind to which a conventional tie-down may be attached. I finally got the tie-downs hooked into the window channels, but only in the same way that you can chin yourself up on the molding on your living room wall.

I was also concerned that the front of the panel would get lifted by the wind as I drove. I was just starting to unfasten everything and see if I couldn’t fit the thing inside Mrs. Hermanson, at an angle with a bend, when a Home Depot employee came to help me. The inside-the-vehicle experiment didn’t work, but he helped me load it back up on top, and suggested running a strap down the center in front, hooking it on the hood to hold the leading edge down. Wish I’d thought of that.

Wish I’d thought to tip him too.

Once at home I set to work with a keyhole hand saw (I don’t own an electric saw) and managed to get what you see done by Sunday night.

Next step: painting.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress, when there is some more to report.

Because I know it matters to you.

Oh, the Outrage! The Horror!!

From our Much Ado About Nothing desk: The Higher Power of Lucky is a Newbery Award winning children’s book with at least one word to provoke dissent. This looks like the kind of thing I would not know disturbed readers if I hadn’t heard about it before reading it. You can read the details at The Publishing Contrarian.

William Wilberforce in Book and Film

There’s certainly not the build up to Amazing Grace, the movie on William Wilberforce, as there was to The Passion, but I note one similarity. Author John Piper wrote a companion book to both films. You can read Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce in PDF at desiringgod.org.

If you know about Wilberforce, you know he still speaks for our day.

The fatal habit of considering Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines insensibly gained strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity went more and more out of sight, and as might naturally have been expected, the moral system itself also began to wither and decay, being robbed of that which should have supplied it with life and nutriment.

If you don’t know about Wilberforce (1759-1833), he is remembered for having “the grand object of [his] parliamentary existence” as the abolition of the slave trade. “If it please God to know me so far may I be the instrument of stopping such a course of wickedness and cruelty as never before disgraced a Christian country” (quoted from the preface of Piper’s book).

President’s Day

The Presidential Prayer Team has been organizing prayer for today. They have almost 4,000 people enrolled so far.

I saw a headline this morning which raised a question for me. If you could declare another U.S. president for honoring on this day or another President’s Day holiday, who would you recommend? I ask this despite my reluctance to recommend any of them. I like many of our presidents, but making holidays isn’t something I want to think about. So, I blogged it instead.

I see a new president for 2009 has already been declared.

President's Day

The Presidential Prayer Team has been organizing prayer for today. They have almost 4,000 people enrolled so far.

I saw a headline this morning which raised a question for me. If you could declare another U.S. president for honoring on this day or another President’s Day holiday, who would you recommend? I ask this despite my reluctance to recommend any of them. I like many of our presidents, but making holidays isn’t something I want to think about. So, I blogged it instead.

I see a new president for 2009 has already been declared.

Book Sales Figures Are Inflated

How many copies did Sahara actually sell? As many as the publisher says it did, according to the LA Times. “Publishers are notoriously reluctant to divulge sales numbers, and the complex, arcane nature of bookselling makes it hard to determine how well or badly a title is doing,” writes Josh Getlin. “Publishers routinely withhold full sales figures, saying the information is proprietary. The only people legally entitled to know those numbers are authors and their agents.”

Apparently, most books don’t sell well, even losing money for the publisher, so insiders keep real sales figures, if they can be known, to themselves. If an author claims his book sold 100,000, you have to trust him. There’s no public record to verify it.

Judge Not Lest . . .

Here’s a book for those who think they understand Jesus’ intent behind his command to avoid judging others lest we fall under condemnation. Making Judgments Without Being Judgmental: Nurturing a Clear Mind and a Generous Heart, by Terry D. Cooper.

Out of Egypt on the Lutheran Confession

Presbyterian blogger Donovan praises some Lutheran doctrines and criticizes others. He writes, “. . . though I love the first part of the section on Election (and think that the best Calvinist practice is in line with its cautions), find the second part (which teaches the doctrine of resistable grace) to be in conflict with the FoC’s own teaching earlier on, in the section on Free Will. And not in a paradoxical sort of way either, just an out-and-out contradictory sort of way.”

You don’t have to thank me for bringing this to your attention. I blog because I care.

All Ten Best as Chosen by Writers

I’m late to point out another of Frank’s interesting reviews (Books, Inq. is a top ten litblog anyway, so you probably should read him first and scan this one when you have the time.) He reviews J. Peder Zane’s The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, in which the ten favorite books taken from the submissions of 125 writers are revealed. Anna Karenina tops them all.

Strange also, to me at least, is the omission of Austen. I think the inclusion of Lolita and Gatsby is odd, too. Nothing wrong with either, mind you. Both are bona-fide masterpieces. . . . Paging through the 125 individual lists, what proves interesting is how many of the books chosen were written in the 20th century, and often pretty late in the century – which only reinforces the impression that these are books the writers have learned from.

Frank offers his own list here and links to a great list from a Master of Arts program. Further, J. Peder Zane has a book site with reader contributions.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture