{"id":2093,"date":"2008-10-17T19:43:58","date_gmt":"2008-10-17T23:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2093"},"modified":"2008-10-17T19:43:58","modified_gmt":"2008-10-17T23:43:58","slug":"agricultural-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2093","title":{"rendered":"Hoist up the John B.’s sail"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to be speaking up in Fargo, North Dakota<\/strong> next Saturday. I\u2019ll be giving a PowerPoint presentation to the annual meeting of the Georg Sverdrup Society. G. Sverdrup was a prominent Norwegian Lutheran educator around the turn of the 20th Century. He was the chief intellectual of the Lutheran Free Church movement, a (pretty small) movement to merge Lutheran theology with congregational church government.<\/p>\n

Only a small portion of his writings have been translated into English, and a major purpose of our little society is to translate his collected works. I\u2019m editor of the journal, and I\u2019ve been asked to do a talk on the subject, \u201cProblems in Translating Georg Sverdrup.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

I like to use a lot of pictures in my PowerPoints, and here\u2019s one I\u2019m using to illustrate a point I won\u2019t bore you with just now:
\n
\"John<\/a> <\/p>\n

This is John B. Johnson, one of my maternal great-grandfathers. He came (I\u2019m pretty sure) from northern Norway, and labored on the restoration of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. He was also a cook on a whaler, and is said to have once swum back to shore from a sinking ship, towing two men behind him. He was a man of prodigious appetites and vices, who liked to take a bite out of a porcelain plate when he was drunk, just to show he could do it.<\/p>\n

When I look at his face I can see something of my own appearance in it.<\/p>\n

This is not a good thing.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I\u2019m impressed with this picture. (I\u2019m not sure who the child he’s holding is\u2014one of his grandchildren, I suppose, but honestly he\/she\/it looks awfully blonde for that side of the family.) You\u2019ll note that even though he\u2019s on the farm, and seems to be dressed for work, he\u2019s wearing a homburg hat.<\/p>\n

Because, back in those days, a fellow didn\u2019t want to go around looking like a bum.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, men go out of their ways to look like bums. Chin stubble and a torn tee-shirt are supposed to be manly.<\/p>\n

In my opinion these new men manage to look a whole lot less masculine than old John B., even in his homburg.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to be speaking up in Fargo, North Dakota next Saturday. I\u2019ll be giving a PowerPoint presentation to the annual meeting of the Georg Sverdrup Society. G. Sverdrup was a prominent Norwegian Lutheran educator around the turn of the 20th Century. He was the chief intellectual of the Lutheran Free Church movement, a (pretty … Continue reading Hoist up the John B.’s sail<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}