Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Listen in …
… Episode 317 – Frederic Tuten – The Virtual Memories Show.
“I told Jerome Charyn, ‘You escaped the Bronx by writing about it. I escaped by never going back.'”
Living faith …
… The Catholic Woman - Your Weirdness is Welcome Here. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
St. Gregory of Nazianzus describes his friendship with St. Basil the Great as being like “one soul in two bodies.” Their friendship, in which they rejoiced in one another’s progress in the spiritual life, drew each of them closer to Christ as well as to one another. St. Frances of Rome had an even more obviously life-shaping partnership with her sister-in-law Vannozza, who went to Mass with her, prayed with her in a secret chapel, and served the poor and imprisoned alongside her. Contemporary Christians—including many gay and lesbian believers—are reviving old Christian practices like covenants or blessings for friendship, finding ways to let their love of someone of the same sex be a pathway to Christ and not a barrier to following Him.
Blogging note …
I am doing what I often do these days, accompanying my wife a medical appointment, in this case PT for Parkinson’s disease. I had expected to be in a waiting room, but I am actually in the place where the PT takes place. I will blog as best I cam.
Hmm …
… How Sexism and Machismo Shaped the Iowa Writers’ Workshop | The New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Aggression’s first chapter focuses on a woman: Flannery O’Connor, the Workshop’s most famous graduate. A college graduate from Milledgeville, Georgia, and a devout Catholic, O’Connor, who enrolled in the Workshop in 1945, was “the brilliant misfit” in a class full of ex-GIs, men whom a classmate remembered as “a pretty riotous bunch, very hard-living people.” She dreaded reading her work in class and often asked a male classmate to read for her. When she did read aloud from what would become her first novel, Wise Blood, Engle was shocked at her description of a sexual seduction. Aiming to correct what he saw as inaccuracies—stemming from what he supposed was “a lovely lack of knowledge”—he called her into his office, then suggested they adjourn to his car, where she might feel more comfortable speaking about her own sexual history. O’Connor went with him, but said nothing about her own sex life, nor did she revise her fiction. She went on to win the O. Henry Award three times and the National Book Award for fiction in 1972.A lot of the “boys” described herein sound like tough-guy-wannabes. Genuine tough guys — I’ve known a few — don’t advertise. They just get going when the going gets tough.
Focusing the mind …
…Sportswriting on Deadline: The Underappreciated Art - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
And they were on deadline! We’re all on deadline, of course, at all times and in all places. The last judgment, as Kafka pointed out, “is a summary court in perpetual session.” But a print deadline—the galloping clock, the smell of the editor—is a particular concentration of mortal tension. The brain on deadline does whatever it can: It improvises, it compresses, it contrives, it uses the language and the ideas that are at hand. Inspiration comes or it doesn’t. Here the writer is an athlete—performing under pressure and, if he or she is good, delivering on demand.
Something to think on …
As this world becomes increasingly ugly, callous and materialistic it needs to be reminded that the old fairy stories are rooted in truth, that imagination is of value, that happy endings do, in fact, occur, and that the blue spring mist that make an ugly street look beautiful is just as real a thing as the street itself.
— Elizabeth Goudge, born on this date in 1900
The new Puritanism …
… Barcelona school removes 200 sexist children's books | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
How sad …
… Charity Tillemann-Dick, R.I.P. | About Last Night. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Eternal rest grant unto her, O lord.
A way with words …
… RT’s Marginalia : Literature — a definition within a sonnet.
Actually, today is the date of the Bard's death.
Actually, today is the date of the Bard's death.
A love of writing …
… On Editing Oliver Sacks After He Was Gone | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In our initial cut, our first question was not what one might expect. We didn’t ask ourselves, What would Oliver want? After all, how could we really know (even though we three knew him and his work best)? But also, there was this: Oliver had a deep respect for editors, whose role is to make judgments, to offer critical comments, to say if something doesn’t work—whether a point, a passage, or an entire piece—or if it unequivocally does.
Hatchet job …
… Roger Scruton Smear: Trumped Up Racism Claims Dishonest | National Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The 75-year-old Roger Scruton gave his candor and trust to George Eaton because he is deputy editor of the New Statesman. Eaton used those civilized and liberal instincts against Scruton, dishonestly edited his remarks in order to smear Scruton as fearful and bigoted toward Chinese people in order to drum up a mini-Twitter outrage, and got him fired from an honorary position, in which he was advising the government on how to build more beautiful housing.
Something to think on …
Like all great rationalists you believed in things that were twice as incredible as theology.
— Hálldor Laxness, born on this date in 1902
Henrik Ibsen, Part 2 - Commentary
… Henrik Ibsen, Part 2 - Commentary.
Ibsen is still the best known of all 19th-century playwrights, and he continues to be regarded as a literary giant. In America, though, he is a shrinking giant, one whose plays are being staged less and less often than used to be the case. A Doll’s House was last mounted on Broadway 21 years ago, and for all its historic significance, I have never seen it professionally produced anywhere in America. It is more than likely that most of the many people who have seen Hnath’s sequel were either largely or completely unfamiliar with the original play on which it is based.It is the later plays, starting with Rosmersolm that deserve attention now, especially The Master Builder and When We Dead Awaken. Ibsen continued to grow as an artist.
Listen in …
… The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale: James Pollock on Honest Reviewing, Anthologies and the Power of Poetry.
James Pollock is the author of Sailing to Babylon, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award in Poetry, and You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada, a finalist for the ForeWord Review's Book of the Year Award for a collection of essays. He is also the editor of The Essential Daryl Hine, which made The Partisan's list of the best books of 2015. His poems have been published in The Paris Review, AGNI, Poetry Daily, the National Post, and other journals in the U.S. and Canada.
Monday, April 22, 2019
Hard questions …
… RT’s Marginalia : Literature: what is it? why read it?
I’ll have to think about this. My own reading has been pretty unsystematic.
Blogging note …
I have to be out and about again today. Will try to fit some bloging from time to time, but that may also have to wait untilI return.
Sounds about right …
… Robert Caro: ‘The more facts you collect, the closer you come to the truth’ | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip. Dave Lull.)
He doesn’t worry about the future of biography, though it seems clear that he is the last of the last in terms of producing multiple volume lives. His main concern is that people do not forget that the quality of the prose in the writing of history and biography is as important as it is in fiction. “I have no trouble in understanding why [Edward] Gibbon endures,” he says. “Look at the writing! He is great.”Caro’s own prose makes me think of waves: in the paragraphs roll, grandiose as anything, crashing against the shore as he winds them up with a last, very short sentence. “Well, that’s from Paradise, um…” He shakes his head. “I don’t compare myself with Milton, but great works can be models. He [Milton] has these long lines about Satan falling and falling and then, suddenly, the rhythm changes. I try to do things with rhythm. In the second volume, Johnson is campaigning in Texas in a helicopter, and he’s so desperate. I wrote on an index card: is there desperation on this page? I meant in the rhythm. I want to reinforce the reader’s understanding with that rhythm.” What about facts? Does he fear for those in the age of Trump? The truth no longer seems to matter to some. “Of course it’s dangerous. People who believe there aren’t facts… it’s irrational. There are facts, and the more of them you collect, the closer you come to whatever the truth is.”
Literary pilgrimage …
… To Montreux — and Forever More: On Visiting the Nabokovs’ Last Home - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It had been 10 years since my last visit to Montreux. Back then, in late November 2002, my wife and I arrived in a blizzard on the evening express from Milan. This time, the weather was exceptional: transparent, sunny, windless. On such days Vladimir Nabokov, who had returned to Europe on the wings of Lolita’s stardom and lived in Montreux from 1961 until his death in 1977, liked to stroll on the promenade with a notepad in hand and a bundle of newspapers folded under his arm like a thermometer of history.
Something to think on …
Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.— Vladimir Nabokov, born on this date in 1899
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Looking back …
… A poet remembers her impulsive trip into a civil war. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Until the publication of this memoir, Forché’s experiences in El Salvador — seven “extended stays” between 1978 and 1980 — have mostly stayed distilled in her poetry. The Colonel, collected in The Country Between Us (1981), begins with an elegant dinner at a colonel’s home (rack of lamb, green mangoes) and ends with him emptying a grocery sack full of human ears onto the table — ghastly trophies from a dirty war.
Envoi …
… The Dying Light by Chris Moss | Poetry Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
With his last book, The Flame, Cohen blows out the candle on a career that has been long, wavering, intermittently brilliant. Despite publishing around a dozen poetry collections and two novels, he was never able to commit to words without music. In the foreword, his son, Adam, writes, “My father, before he was anything else, was a poet. He regarded this vocation, as he records in his notebooks, as some ‘mission from G-d.’” (The dash echoes the Jewish use of the vowelless YHWH.) Adam quotes Cohen’s confession that “nothing gets me high and offers relief from the suffering like blackening pages, writing,” and believes his father regretted sacrificing so much of his time to folk song and the fame it brought him.
In case you wondered …
… Book Review: The Never-Ending Question - Jewish Exponent. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
To take the Jewish literary tradition as seriously as one takes that belonging to others is to take Judaism as seriously as others take their own lives. There are lots of people and ideas that don’t want Jews to acknowledge, live or practice Judaism, he wrote. “We don’t escape that danger,” he said, “by clamoring to eliminate ourselves.”
Of a sort …
… RT’s Marginalia : Revelation.
But, as Meister Eckhart said, “God is at home, it's we who have gone out for a walk.”
Amen, amen …
… Easter & Good Friday Meditation | National Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Simon of Cyrene, recruited by grace and some Roman to lug Jesus’ cross, is my paradigm in this. He had, it would seem, no previous experience for the work. No moral credentials that we hear about. Just a man “who passed by, coming out of the country.” To trade, to sightsee, to window-shop: another tourist in the Big Fig. And, all at once, he is absorbed by that rubbernecking mob. Elbow to the front — what have we here? And it’s you, yes you. Bozo, pack that wood. We know nothing about Simon, except that his children, Rufus and Alexander, became Christians. On Good Friday, Simon was what we all are, a passerby. And shanghaied by the Holy Spirit. I take comfort in this thought, whose life otherwise does not much recommend itself to God. That I may be granted, through His fierce randomness and my mere availability, a walk-on moment of redemption.
Something to think on …
God often works more by the life of the illiterate seeking the things that are God's, than by the ability of the learned seeking the things that are their own.
— Anselm of Canterbury, who died on this date in 1109
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Huh …
… Student newspaper editorial board endorses nonwhite segregated housing | The College Fix.
So much for de-segregation.
So much for de-segregation.
Extraordinary gentleman …
… Was there no end to John Buchan’s talents? | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Buchan thought better of his historical novels (just as Conan Doyle preferred Sir Nigel and The White Company to Sherlock Holmes). I think highly of them, too, especially of Witch Wood; but even it is not quite as good as the best of his beloved Scott or Stevenson. His biographies of Scott, Montrose and Augustus are admirable, but biographies are usually superseded. His history of the Great War, published in monthly installments by Nelson’s, was a remarkable achievement, but inevitably long outdated. Yet almost everything he wrote remains readable, partly because he has an unmistakable personal voice. This makes him easy to parody, but few books survive without such individuality.
The miracle of Spring …
… First Known When Lost: Petals.
We live in a World in which, each spring, the gutters of the streets are filled with the fallen petals of cherry blossoms.
Mr. Eliot …
… Robert Crawford reviews ‘The Letters of T.S. Eliot, Volume VIII’ edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden — LRB 18 April 2019.
Very few people will read through all these thousands of pages, and their publication risks making Eliot seem more daunting than ever. While this vast hoard offers scholars all sorts of opportunities, the problem for most common readers is to work out what that word ‘Eliot’ now means. Is ‘Eliot’ still the slim volume of poetry that can be slipped inside a coat pocket? Or does the name now unavoidably bring with it this vast body of letters, plays, poems and prose that can be transported only by fork-lift truck and accessed in full only via a computer in addition to a printed library?
Starts today …
PHILLY POETRY DAY – April 20 – May 31, 2019 – Celebrating Walt Whitman
What Is Philly Poetry Day?
People say you can attend a poetry reading
on every single day in the Philadelphia area.
This is likely true and awesome. Philly Poetry
Day is a manifestation and further demonstration
of the abundance and enthusiasm for poetry in
Philadelphia. It is also an attempt to bring poetry
to a larger and not typical audience. On past Philly
Poetry Days poetry has been read in pizza shops,
cemeteries, supermarkets, farmers markets, subways,
midnight readings, and written in chalk on sidewalks.
The idea is that poetry will be everywhere. In 2019,
to honor Walt Whitman, Philly Poetry Day will begin
on Saturday, April 20 and end on May 31 – Walt
Whitman’s 200th Birthday. So you will have a lot
of time to participate.
How can you participate?
1. Read a poem, a Whitman poem or any poem
to a child – or to anyone. This initiative is
presented in association with
100,000 Poets For Peace And Social Change.
2. Write a line of a Walt Whitman poem, or any poem,
on your sidewalk in chalk. Recommended from Whitman’s
Song Of Myself:
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.
Philly Poetry Day 2019 is presented by:
P O E T R Y IN C O M M O N &
WHITMAN AT 200: Art and Democracy
What Is Philly Poetry Day?
People say you can attend a poetry reading
on every single day in the Philadelphia area.
This is likely true and awesome. Philly Poetry
Day is a manifestation and further demonstration
of the abundance and enthusiasm for poetry in
Philadelphia. It is also an attempt to bring poetry
to a larger and not typical audience. On past Philly
Poetry Days poetry has been read in pizza shops,
cemeteries, supermarkets, farmers markets, subways,
midnight readings, and written in chalk on sidewalks.
The idea is that poetry will be everywhere. In 2019,
to honor Walt Whitman, Philly Poetry Day will begin
on Saturday, April 20 and end on May 31 – Walt
Whitman’s 200th Birthday. So you will have a lot
of time to participate.
How can you participate?
1. Read a poem, a Whitman poem or any poem
to a child – or to anyone. This initiative is
presented in association with
100,000 Poets For Peace And Social Change.
2. Write a line of a Walt Whitman poem, or any poem,
on your sidewalk in chalk. Recommended from Whitman’s
Song Of Myself:
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.
Philly Poetry Day 2019 is presented by:
P O E T R Y IN C O M M O N &
WHITMAN AT 200: Art and Democracy
Something to think on …
Unless you are willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous. When you have God, you don’t have to know everything about it; you just do it.
— Mother Angelica, born on this date in 1923
Friday, April 19, 2019
Hmm …
… The Wild Visionary at the Heart of Early Christianity | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… there was no theology until Paul came along. (Most scholars agree that only six or seven of the thirteen letters attributed to Paul were actually his; the others were “school of Paul,” and they often work against the radical Paul, subverting his ideas to make the apostle seem more patriarchal and restrictive.) In essence, Paul formulated the key ideas about Christianity that we now take for granted, and he did so on the fly, so to speak—in impromptu sermons and letters.
Hear, hear …
… Opinion | Oliver Sacks: The Healing Power of Gardens - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I cannot say exactly how nature exerts its calming and organizing effects on our brains, but I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically. In many cases, gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.
My city garden is very small, but even a small garden takes a lot of work to maintain. It is work that I love and I have been doing a lot of it lately. By next week I hope to have all the spring cleaning done and all the plants in.
FYI …
… 2019 Best Communities For Music Education Districts | NAMM Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Rus informs me that 92 Pennsylvania districts are on the list. Nice to know. Philadelphia does not appear to among them.
Rus informs me that 92 Pennsylvania districts are on the list. Nice to know. Philadelphia does not appear to among them.
Something to think on …
Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply.
— Stanley Fish, born on this date in 1938
Thursday, April 18, 2019
In memoriam …
… How the love of a child led to a Bible collection for the ages | PhillyVoice.
Susan "Kimmy" Dunleavy was killed in an auto accident in 1977. A year later, The Susan Dunleavy Collection of Biblical Literature at LaSalle University was established by her parents, Francis J. Dunleavy, President of ITT, and his wife, Albina, to honor her.
Wonderful …
… Bruce Jay Friedman's 'Holiday Fable,' for Tablet Original Fiction – Tablet Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A fine rendition …
… of a fine poem: Zadie Smith Reads Frank O’Hara’s Love Poem to Time via an Old-Fashioned Telephone Line – Brain Pickings. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Life imitates art …
… Unseen Kafka works may soon be revealed after Kafkaesque trial | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
“The absurdity of the [legal process] is that it was over an estate that nobody knew what it contained. This will hopefully finally resolve these questions,” said Benjamin Balint, a research fellow at Jerusalem’s Van Leer Institute and the author of Kafka’s Last Trial, which chronicles the affair.
Placed in perspective …
… The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Art (1460–1921) – The Public Domain Review. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Something to think on …
Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.
— Samuel P. Huntington, born on this date in 1927
Missing the point …
…Ice cold by Anthony Daniels | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The phenomenon of schadenfreude is a fascinating and important one, of course, well worth examination. But since it is usually subtle, undeclared, and often unacknowledged, even by he who experiences it, it requires some finesse to dissect it, which unfortunately the author, Tiffany Watt Smith, does not possess. Even the subtitle of her book is misleading: schadenfreude in its English meaning is surely not the joy, but rather the secret or surreptitious pleasure or satisfaction in another’s misfortune. But the error is a warning that proper distinctions, so necessary to this field, are about not to be made.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
RIP …
… Jesuit Fr. James V. Schall dies--Aleteia. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him.
The way it is …
… Uncensored John Simon: Old. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As Bette Davis noted, old age ain’t for sissies.
Voice of dissent …
… The moral folly of slavery reparations | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
No one has gained more from my ancestors’ enslavement than I. The displacement and bondage my ancestors endured led directly to my birth. Afro-descendants have thus accrued the most substantial benefits from slavery. They should regard the negative consequences of slavery, and any benefits accruing to Europeans and their descendants as comparatively insignificant.
Clearing the record …
… The Great Myths 5: The Destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria - History for Atheists. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The story of the destruction of the Great Library is a positivist fairy tale, cobbled together from disparate elements and bearing almost no relationship to accurate history. The library was not a secular establishment, it was not as large as is claimed, it was not a particular centre of science and it was not a wellspring of wondrous technology. Most importantly, it was not destroyed by a crazed Christian mob intent on the destruction of rationally-based knowledge.Read the whole thing. It is quite fascinating.
Yes …
… Snapshot: Blossom Dearie sings Blossom Dearie | About Last Night.
Debbie and I saw Blossom Dearie perform in New York once. Even got to chat with her. Cool lady.
Getting to know him …
… Getting Acquainted with Wallace Stevens - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Richardson concludes: “By reading through Stevens’s body of work, we learn to become pragmatists,” which is to say, we learn to meditate on the workings of the mind. This claim underlines the power but also the potential impediments to Richardson’s pedagogical project. Recalling that the pragmatist method was originally designed to show “how to make our ideas clear,” she argues that true clarity is achieved by attending “to the many possible shades of meaning in the words we use.” To be “clear,” according to this counterintuitive definition, is to hold open a variety of interpretive possibilities; it is to suspend rather than to establish certainty. Any perplexity generated by the multiplication of meanings is precisely the point: from the pragmatist’s perspective, the experience of disorientation is far more valuable than easy glosses or directives. In short, thinking pragmatically sounds a lot like thinking poetically, with pragmatic criticism venturing to loosen and multiply rather than fix and authorize the many personalized paths this thinking might travel.The book sounds interesting, though I'm not sure the thesis is altogether sound. I read Stevens's Collected Poems pretty regularly and the impression I have arrived at over the years is that they represent a steady search for faith. I have read that, whenever he visited New York City, Stevens always made a point of spending some time just sitting in St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Something to think on …
Faith is a never-ending pool of clarity, reaching far beyond the margins of consciousness. We all know more than we know we know.
— Thornton Wilder, born on this date in 1897
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Bearing witness …
… No Words: In Paris, as Notre Dame burned | City Journal,
Medieval cathedrals are designed for the illiterate; everything in them, however seemingly trivial, is meant to aid the memory. The cruciform shape, the statues, the altars and reliquaries, the chapels and windows, the asps and the gargoyles, the Stations of the Cross—cathedrals are memory-palaces, every detail meant to allow everyone who sees them, everyone, to understand and remember the story they tell. The medievals’ assumptions about the human mind and memory are the opposite of the principles that rule the Internet. Yet they work extremely well. I can’t stop remembering everything in the cathedral.
Strange …
… Aphantasia: Ex-Pixar chief Ed Catmull says 'my mind's eye is blind' - BBC News. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Most people can close their eyes and conjure up images inside their head such as counting sheep or imagining the face of a loved one.
But Ed Catmull, 74, has the condition aphantasia, in which people cannot visualise mental images at all.
Good Lord …
… Man with Down's Syndrome's 'cruel and horrific' death after 19 days without food - Mirror Online.
Not the best advertisement for socialized medicine.
And the winners are …
… 2019 French Voices Grand Prizes Unveiled | French Culture.
This year, 13 titles were selected by the committee. For the first time ever, French Voices will give out Grand Prizes to two of these 15 titles, one in fiction, and one in non-fiction. The Grand Prizes will receive $10,000 while other titles will receive $6,000 each. The award will be distributed among the publisher and translator.
Just deserts …
… What the College-Admissions Scandal Reveals - The Atlantic.
I just about got an ulcer sitting in that office listening to rich people complaining bitterly about an “unfair” or a “rigged” system. Sometimes they would say things so outlandish that I would just stare at them, trying to beam into their mind the question, Can you hear yourself? That so many of them were (literal) limousine liberals lent the meetings an element of radical chic. They were down for the revolution, but there was no way their kid was going to settle for Lehigh.
Bravo UArts admninstraion …
… jeers to certain dim-bulbed students: UArts students protest professor Camille Paglia for comments on transgender people, sexual assault survivors.
How dare anyone openly express views these know-it-all studes don't share? If you don't want to learn anything, kids, get the hell out of school. You're taking up space others could use.
How dare anyone openly express views these know-it-all studes don't share? If you don't want to learn anything, kids, get the hell out of school. You're taking up space others could use.
Something to think on …
Politics is a thing that only the unsophisticated can really go for.
— Kingsley Amis, born on this date in 1922
Marauders …
… Things Strange and Admirable | The Russell Kirk Center. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The name Viking (from Old Norse víkingr, marauder or pirate), according to Shippey, was not an ethnicity—Vikings strictly speaking were Scandinavian—but as he says, “a job description.” Raiding, looting, raping, and killing summed up the requirements. Especially killing. In dealing out death the Vikings were superlative. If Danes or Norwegians were farmers or fisherman rather than warriors and pillagers, then they were not Vikings. This distinction is quite useful particularly at the various intersections of literature and history in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and England during the Viking Age (roughly 793 to 1066 A.D.).
Cold case …
… BOOK REVIEW: 'The Last Stone' by Mark Bowden - Washington Times.
He told detectives that he saw two girls who fit the description talking to an older man in the mall. He was given a lie detector test and failed. He then admitted that he lied to the police. The cops probably sized him up as a knucklehead who was high, and they kicked him loose after lecturing him about lying to the police.
“After that, the department didn’t give Lloyd Welch a second thought,” Mr. Bowden writes. “Not for thirty-eight years.”
Grounds for reflection …
… Notre Dame Fire: A Sign For Our Time | The American Conservative.
Like James Poulos above, I cannot see this as anything other than a sign. The only church in all of Western civilization more important than Notre Dame de Paris is St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The consuming fire is likely to have been started from a construction accident. I hope that is the case; if this was terrorism, then France is in for unimaginable spasms of violence. Nevertheless, if this was an accident, it still symbolizes what we in the West have allowed to happen to our religious and cultural patrimony. What happened in Paris today has been happening across our civilization.It is surely worth noting that it happened at the start of Holy Week.
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