Writing ‘Behold!’–in the Heat

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The Glass Bridge (Bell Mountain, #7) by Lee Duigon

Oy vay, it’s hot today! But if I want to keep on writing Behold!, I’ve got to take the heat. What I wouldn’t give, though, to be out on that boat with Gurun, with cold water splashing my face.

Unexpectedly, it seems the wine of Durmurot will have a role in moving my plot forward. My wife has developed a taste for the golden wine of Durmurot, but you can’t get it around here. Heck, we can’t even get American-grown parsley, these days.

We had a couple of cooler days last week, and that left us unprepared to face the return of the perishingly hot weather. I’ve just been out there finishing up a chapter, and I’m knackered. Time for an enormous glass of iced tea.

Elijah Holsten’s sister, Faith, 12 years old, has asked me for some writing tips. In the spirit of today’s weather, Tip No. 1 is simple: Just keep at it. If your work that day isn’t all it could be, you can always smarten it up later. That’s why my first draft is always written longhand, on a legal pad. Keep the story moving. Stylistic niceties I add when I move on to the typed draft I’ll submit to my editor.

Thank God for air conditioning!

They’re Still Rioting

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This past weekend the “Black Lives Matter” wing of the Democrat Party invaded residential neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon, to press for the abolition of police (great idea during a riot!) and to–not exactly “demand,” but “ask” isn’t strong enough–that homeowners open their homes to them as places of refuge (https://georivista.com/2020/08/23/portland-blm-revolutionaries-bring-guillotine-into-suburbs-where-they-burn-american-flags-fling-poo-and-demand-shelter/).

They also trotted out a model guillotine. Uh, do you see that as kind of a threatening gesture? Like, “Give us what we want or we’ll be killin’ people!” They cut off the head of a teddy bear–representing whom or what, we aren’t sure–and burned it; and also burned several American flags.

Elsewhere in the city, Antifa Democrats rioted and threw feces at pro-police marchers.

Somehow this is supposed to hand the White House and Congress to the Democrats in November. Somehow they’re going to get the American people to believe this is all President Donald Trump’s fault and it’ll stop if Doddering Joe Biden is elected. Honest, it’ll stop right away!

What needs to be stopped is the Democrat Party. Its history needs to come to an end on this Election Day.

We really can’t afford a political party that encourages and sponsors riots.

A Lame Excuse for a Literary Lapse

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michael_gothard_archive | Ivanhoe: screencaps

Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe will last forever as a literary classic. Even so, there’s one little clinker in it that makes you wonder if Scott was quite sane at the time.

To show the futility of any dream of ousting the Normans and putting a Saxon noble on the throne of England, Scott gives us a lout named Athelstane as the last remaining repository of that hope. Although descended from Saxon royalty, Athelstane’s main interest in life is eating. You could put him in a stall with a feed-bag, and he’d be happy.

Toward the end of the story, Athelstane gets killed in a battle. The larders of England breathe a collective sigh of relief. The reader promptly forgets there was ever such a character as Athelstane–

Until, in Chapter XLII, Sir Walter Scott brings him back to life.

Now, this was not like Conan Doyle being forced by public outrage to bring back Sherlock Holmes after drowning him in the Reichenbach Falls. Why bring back Athelstane, a clod? Let’s let Sir Walter himself answer that question, in his own footnotes to Ivanhoe.

“59. The resuscitation of Athelstane has been much criticised, as too violent a breach of probability, even for a work of such fantastic character. It was a ‘tour-de-force,’ to which the author was compelled to have recourse, by the vehement entreaties of his friend and printer, who was inconsolable on the Saxon being conveyed to the tomb.”

That’s his excuse–an inconsolable printer? Well, it’s feeble enough to be true. What a soft-hearted fellow Sir Walter must have been! The return of Athelstane was unnecessary, unwanted, and preposterous; and you wonder how a literary giant could have taken such a fall. It’s like Hamlet’s pants splitting with an audible riiiip! in the middle of “To be or not to be.”

Note to aspiring authors: Don’t think you’ll ever get away with a honker like this.

Doggie Cones for People (no joke)

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The governor of Maine–Democrat, of course–has ordered restaurant staff to wear doggie cones as an anti-COVID-19 measure. ‘Cause you gotta direct your breath up instead of down (https://www.corona-stocks.com/maine-governor-orders-restaurant-staff-to-wear-covid-visors-like-dog-cones/).

Can you say “symbol of submission”? Maybe they’ll put people on leashes next.

It’s the same damned thing as all those UN wallahs trying to get regular people to eat bugs.

Tyrants govern by eroding people’s self-respect. Go ahead, try to get taken seriously while wearing a doggie cone.

Turning America into one gigantic collidge kampus…

‘Britain’s New Breed of Girly Men'(2016)

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They hate their history, as they hate themselves.

In 1940-41 Britain stood alone against the mighty of Nazi Germany. Her cities endured daily and nightly bombings. The RAF’s “so few” went up against the Luftwaffe–and won.

Now Britain rejects her history.

Britain’s New Breed of Girly Men

If they’d had back then the kind of men they have today, Hitler would’ve conquered them in two or three days.

Everywhere we look, wicked fools are trying to “fundamentally transform” their countries into wretched failures. This is satanic in its origin, disguised as a quest for utopia.

‘A Mighty Fortress’ (with Lyrics)

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I could hardly believe my ears, the first time I heard this, Martin Luther’s hymn, being played on the bells of St. Francis’ Church, across the street from me: A Mighty Fortress is Our God. Pope Benedict XVI had some good ideas, and allowing this hymn to be played was one of them.

Your Favorite Hymns continues–please feel free to add to the list.

Jealous Dogs

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Big dogs, little dogs… jealous dogs. They just can’t stand it if you pet or kiss anybody else. None of my lizards ever did that, although I have had jealous cats. But these dogs really take the cake.

‘You Are My Sunshine’ (Joshua & Jeremy)

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Let’s see if I can sing this without starting to cry. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are grey…” Nope. No can do.

When I was a very little boy with fantods in the night, my father would get up and pick me up, and sing this song to me. How well I remember that. “You’ll never know dear, how much I love you, please don’t take my sunshine away.” And he meant every word of it. That’s why it moves me so.

Anyway, here are our own Swanson brothers, Joshua and Jeremy, with their rendition of the songs. Nice work, guys! Got me all sappy. But that’s OK.

Scotland Yard Investigates (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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Somewhere along the plot line, a runaway locomotive was sucked under the wading pool in the vicar’s back yard. It has proved quite difficult to get author Violet Crepuscular to remember this incident, which I believe is pivotal to an understanding of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney. But she returns to it in Chapter CCCLXXV.

All of Scurveyshire is agog (don’t you love that word?) over the arrival of Detective Chief Inspector Frank “Chipper” Magog of Scotland Yard, to investigate the disappearance of the locomotive. After a confidential consultation with Constable Chumley, D.C.I. Magog concludes that Lord Jeremy Coldsore has stolen it.

“What did you tell him that for?” demands Lord Jeremy. “I didn’t steal any perishin’ locomotive!”

The constable shrugs eloquently. “Tis a feerthy croop, m’lord!” he exclaims. “I nippher graned a switter yam,” he adds. (“I was going to say ‘resignedly’,” Violet confides to the reader, “but I decided it made the whole thing sound too much like a Tom Swift episode.”) We are at liberty to wonder just what the inspector thought the constable had told him.

“Chipper” earned his nickname by his willingness to use torture to extract witness testimony, which is why Lord Jeremy has climbed the tallest tree on his estate and refuses to come down. Magog decides to wend his way to The Lying Tart and interrogate the bearded barmaid. We can leave him to it.

“As you can see by this chapter,” writes Ms. Crepuscular, “I do not forget important elements of my story! This is a vile canard put out by those mean-spirited scribblers who are competing with me for a Pulitzer.”

Defending My Thesis

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I may be the only person in America who can say this–but defending my thesis was fun!

Say what? Well, back in college, I was chosen for the Henry Rutgers honors program, which gave me lot of credits but for which I had to produce a thesis–just as if I were going for a master’s degree, or a Ph. D. Spend a whole year researching it, then write it up, present it to the Political Science Dept., and defend it before a panel of professors. And by the way, it was in the age of carbon paper, a technology which many of you have never seen or heard of. But I am not going to get nostalgic for carbon paper.

Now, I had a big advantage over the panel of professors: none of them had any knowledge of the subject! Anytime you can swing that, go for it. My title was “A Systems Analysis of the Viking Age,” featuring the likes of Harald Bluetooth, Eric Bloodaxe, Ragnar Hairy-Pants (I try not to think of Spongebob), and a cast of colorful supporting characters. The professors sat there marveling. Well, we were in New Jersey. People in New Jersey have a certain fascination for men with funny nicknames whose enemies wind up face-down in a landfill.

Once I freely admitted that of course you could study the Viking Age just using plain old history, but that the “systems” part would work very well with history, they’d complement each other–having done that, I was home free. Most of it was me telling Viking stories to the profs. All we needed was beer and pretzels. Everybody had a very pleasant time.

College used to offer experiences like this. It was called scholarship. You didn’t have to worry about pronouns. You didn’t have to be woke.

There is something to be said for scholarship as an end in itself. It can preserve the collectively accumulated knowledge of mankind. Deciding that everybody has to go to college has just about destroyed scholarship, even as it has virtually destroyed the university itself.

Someday we’ll realize what we’ve lost. But I don’t know that we can ever get it back.