Ted Gioia writes about the types of papers college professors want to see and what a writer must do to actually write well. It’s a good overview of part of his college career and the aftermath in the workplace.
“A writer must be curious, because the readers are. A writer must seek inspiration and mind-expanding experiences, because the readers do. A writer must try to find wisdom, because that’s what readers are after.”
With today’s hymn, we have the opportunity to note a common habit in hymn singing among earlier generations. Hymn texts were separated from their melodies, and congregations would sing words to melodies they already knew. At least for a portion of history, believers would learn several common tunes that they would use to sing many more hymn lyrics.
“Join All the Glorious Names” was written in 1707 by the great Englishman Isaac Watts (1674-1748). The tune is the same one used by our hymn two weeks ago, “Rejoice, the Lord is King!” English poet John Darwall (1731-1789) wrote the tune in 1770. In the Trinity Hymnal, five hymns are set to it, including “We Come, O Christ, to You” and “Thy Works, Not Mine, O Christ” (which we may return to next month).
1 Join all the glorious names
of wisdom, love, and pow’r,
that ever mortals knew,
that angels ever bore:
all are too poor to speak his worth,
too poor to set my Savior forth.
2 Great Prophet of my God,
my tongue would bless thy name:
by thee the joyful news
of our salvation came,
the joyful news of sins forgiv’n,
of hell subdued and peace with heav’n.
3 Jesus, my great High Priest,
offered his blood and died;
my guilty conscience seeks
no sacrifice beside:
his pow’rful blood did once atone
and now it pleads before the throne.
4 Thou art my Counselor,
my pattern, and my Guide,
and thou my Shepherd art;
O keep me near thy side;
nor let my feet e’er turn astray
to wander in the crooked way.
5 My Savior and my Lord,
my Conqu’ror and my King,
thy scepter and thy sword,
thy reigning grace, I sing:
thine is the pow’r; behold I sit
in willing bonds beneath thy feet.
Ukraine: February 24, 2022, was the day Russia invaded Ukraine. Yesterday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki five lessons Western countries should take into the coming years.
The distance from Kiev must not be used to appease our conscience. I am sometimes afraid that the West is indeed populated by many for whom having a lunch in a favourite caffe or watching a Netflix series is more important than the lives and deaths of thousands of Ukrainians. We can all see the war happening. No one will be able to claim that they did not know about the genocide in Bucha. We are all watching the atrocities being committed by the Russian army. This is why we must not be indifferent. Russia’s imperial plans go beyond Ukraine. This war concerns us all.
Art-Intel: Lincoln Michel notes ChatGPT doesn’t have to generate good writing to cause problems for writers. The sci-fi/fantasy magazine Clarkesworld stopped taking submissions this week after receiving a glut of AI-written submissions. They shared a graph on Twitter of the number of users they’ve banned from submitting since 2019. Just eyeballing it, they seem to have averaged only a handful per month. This month, they banned over 500.
Art-Intel: Amazon is selling AI-written shlock on its Kindle store, books that may or may not acknowledge ChatGPT as an author. Reuters describes one YouTuber who is selling his e-book for $1. “In the video, White says anyone with the wherewithal and time could create 300 such books a year, all using AI.”
In completely unrelated news, the U.S. Copyright Office has decided it won’t copyright AI-generated images. “To justify the decision, the Copyright Office cites previous cases where people weren’t able to copyright words or songs that listed “non-human spiritual beings” or the Holy Spirit as the author — as well as the infamous incident where a selfie was taken by a monkey.”
Publishing: Roald Dahl’s publisher has announced it will also publish the author’s original text in a new Classic Collection after publishing its bowdlerized one (HT to Lars for reminding me of the word “bowdlerized”).
Reading: Is it better to have a reading plan, like the great classics starting with Homer, or to read as chance would have it? “My reading has always been happily chaotic, governed more by whim than central planning.”
Any readers living in the Bemidji, Minnesota area may be interested to learn that I will be lecturing on Viking Legacy to the local Sons of Norway lodge this Sunday, Feb. 26 at 2:00 p.m. The location will be Calvary Lutheran Church, 2508 Washington Ave. SE.
Today I was interviewed on a local radio station, KB101 FM. Through the magic of modern technology, you can enjoy the interview right here, even if you’re not privileged to live in the Bemidji area.
‘The shoreline is the perfect metaphor. It shifts moment by moment, wave by wave, grain by grain. People used to ask why I was always photographing the same places but I never was. Living here, I’ve seen more sunrises than most people do in their whole lives but I’ve never seen two the same.’
D. C. Smith, retired detective from the police force in the fictional city of Kings Lake, Norfolk, is enjoying his quiet retirement on the coast, living with his partner Jo, a true crime writer, and their dog. But he’s allowed himself to be recruited by the private investigation firm of Diver and Diver. However, he’s in a position to turn down most of the cases they offer. Now, though, in The Camera Man, they’ve got something that piques his interest.
Gerald Fitch had been the owner of a struggling marine equipment business. One day five years ago he disappeared, leaving an estranged daughter and his second wife, generally believed to be a gold digger. Now the gold digger wants him declared dead so she can liquidate his property. But an insurance company underwrote a large policy on Gerald’s life, and they want Diver and Diver to look for proof of death – or life – before they pay out.
Smith agrees to look into it, and encounters a rather sad story about a man not really cut out for business who tried his best to be responsible but got out of his depth. Did he kill himself? Did he run away to a new life? Or – and this looks increasingly likely when Smith learns who the wife’s family is (they are “well known to the police” as they say over there) – was he murdered?
The D.C. Smith books are low-key, atmospheric and cerebral. Character is always at the heart of the story, and it’s Smith’s broad and humane sympathy that serves him as his best investigative tool. It’s a challenge poking into people’s lives without the authority of the law at his back, but that just makes it more interesting.
I profoundly enjoy all the D. C. Smith mysteries. Author Peter Grainger has branched out with other books about the younger detectives Smith trained as they carry on at Kings Lake, but there’s nobody like Smith for this reader. The Camera Man is a fine, rewarding book and I recommend it highly.
Many couples, even in the Ukranian conflict of the past year, marry quickly before going to war. It’s an optimistic casting of what bread they have to the wind, the hope of a surer foundation than they fear.
Connie Ruzich had blogged about poetry in the context of WWI, and in an August 2018 post, she dwells on a woman who wrote about enduring the wait with a reference to Odysseus’s wife, Penelope.
In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.
— Dorothy Parker
A Facebook friend alerted me to this article in Christianity Today by Philip Yancey, in which he announces his diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease.
I have to admit I don’t think I’ve read any of Yancey’s books — which makes me nearly unique, I think, in my generation of Christians. But I know nothing but good of him, and I know he’s been a tremendous blessing to many over the years. He’s one of the good guys, not afraid to face the hard questions. And he does not disappoint us in his article:
In my writing career, I have interviewed US presidents, rock stars, professional athletes, actors, and other celebrities. I have also profiled leprosy patients in India, pastors imprisoned for their faith in China, women rescued from sex trafficking, parents of children with rare genetic disorders, and many who suffer from diseases far more debilitating than Parkinson’s.
Reflecting on the two groups, here’s what stands out: With some exceptions, those who live with pain and failure tend to be better stewards of their life circumstances than those who live with success and pleasure. Pain redeemed impresses me much more than pain removed.
Today has been quiet for me – in a sense – and busy in another sense. I’ve not stirred abroad nor moved from my habitation this day, even to go to the gym. The gym is, in fact, closed, but I didn’t plan to go there anyway. We’re enduring the Great Blizzard of ’23 – or so the Chickens Little of the media would have us believe. What it’s been doing, in actual fact, is snowing. The winds haven’t been all that strong in Minneapolis, nor the snow especially heavy (thus far). What this storm is, is long. It started the night before last, and is supposed to drag on till late tomorrow.
But I have enough food to get me through, and I had some work to do, which brightens any day. I wish I could tell you about the latest project, which I just turned in. It contains elements that please me. I can’t say more than that. But it helped to warm the winter in my aged heart.
Above, a little video about George Washington’s face – since it’s still Washington’s birthday for a few hours as I write. The near-apotheosis of Washington in our early Republic was probably a political necessity, but it’s regrettable that the reaction to it – which has become malignant paranoia in recent years – has turned many people against him. Washington was (according to my reading) in fact a fascinating, complex man who worked hard at appearing one-dimensional.
I love historical reconstructions like the ones in the video above. But I happen to know that even this one is glamorized. The real Washington was (like a large percentage of his contemporaries) heavily scarred by smallpox. (Andrew Jackson was the same.) Blemishes as common as that were, I suppose, generally overlooked. Smooth complexions were much admired – especially in women, who made it a point to stay out of the sun – but you couldn’t insist on them.
Washington was also – or so I’ve read – very vain about his “figure.” He (like me, I must confess, though I’m not nearly as tall) was built rather broad at the hips. But he refused to believe it, despite what his mirror, and his tailor, told him. He insisted that his breeches be cut to the width he believed they ought to be, rather than what they were. Kind of like reverse anorexia. Thus his pants were always tight and uncomfortable.
But he had a purpose in concentrating on his appearance, in always being “in character,” in never relaxing in public. He felt he was setting a precedent for his nation. Nobody knew how the elected leader of a republic was supposed to comport himself. Washington had to make it up as he went along. As a schoolteacher makes it a point to be very strict during the first few weeks, to set a tone for the class that he can ease up on later, Washington established precedents for the presidency. Later chief executives, like Lincoln, were able to ease up on the dignity a bit, because Washington had left behind such a weight of reverence.
I fear the reverence is about gone now – it’s not all the fault of the present incumbent, either – but Washington did a pretty good job in his time.
I’ve got translation work today (loud cheers from the gallery!), so I’m going to just drop this semi-review of True Conviction, a book I didn’t complete. I quit reading before the end because it annoyed me in a number of ways, and I figure I ought to warn you against it. But I won’t post the cover because I don’t want to rub it in. The thing is, trashing a book I didn’t like can be an exercise in self-righteousness (even when the author’s way more successful than I am).
Here’s the setup – Adrian Hell (that’s his name) is a professional hit man and (we are told) a legend in the field. He is (he claims) an ethical assassin. He’ll only kill bad guys.
And yet, the first job he takes at the beginning of True Conviction is to kill a businessman who backed out on a land deal with a Nevada mob boss – the guy may be corrupt, but does that deserve death? Then Adrian gets in a fight with his employer and ends up on the run, and he meets an attractive female assassin, and… I lost interest.
First of all, I didn’t believe the Adrian Hell character. He’s always talking about how tough he is. That’s a sure sign – in literature, anyway – that he’s not as tough as he wants you to think. (In real life, I suspect it may be quite common for really tough guys to be loudmouths, but in literature we’ve learned that it’s cool reserve that earns the reader’s respect.)
Secondly, the book was overwritten. The author doesn’t trust the reader to figure out what he’s saying, so he explains EVERYTHING. Including his little jokes – which might work as little jokes if he didn’t inflate them to the bursting point.
Maybe you’d like True Conviction better than I did. Apparently they sell a lot of copies.
I’ll say at the outset that I do not love the Roper-Hooley detective series, set in London. I don’t hate the books; I just have no problem putting them down. But I bought a set of four (got them for free, actually), they are readable, and times are tough, so I’m reading them.
In The Case of the Dirty Bomb, brilliant autistic detective Jonathan Roper is back at headquarters, having completed his time with a national security agency. But his partner Brian Hooley is concerned about him. He seems to have lost his way; he’s having trouble analyzing information and is worried he’s “losing it.”
With Hooley’s help, he changes his approach and soon realizes the reason he’s been having trouble. They’re facing an unprecedented problem. Someone is gathering fissionable nuclear material cached in secret locations across Europe and smuggling it into England to set up the extortion scheme to end all extortion schemes.
There’s nothing all that wrong with these books; they simply don’t ring my bells very loudly. The autistic character, Jonathan Roper, is really the most interesting one here. I guess that’s not surprising; he is the “exotic.” But the others could have been made more colorful, in my view. I didn’t find myself caring about them a lot.
Toward the end, the author takes an opportunity to make a dig at anti-Communists, but the political side wasn’t really intrusive. One Russian character’s name was inconsistently spelled. The book was okay, though, though I thought the plot a little far-fetched. Maybe you’ll like it better than I did.