Author: thewriterinblack

I have a daughter.  She’s bright (in her school’s “high ability” program”.  She’s an excellent shot.  And she’s utterly adorable. (Don’t challenge me on that.  Just…don’t.)

Unfortunately, she’s in public school and there’s not a lot I can do about that.  As much as I’d love to homeschool, I’ve got to keep working to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.  And my wife can’t do it because while I bring home the bigger paycheck, it’s at a very small company and my wife’s job does things like provide health insurance. (And with my various problems–I’d say it’s a shame we’ve got to get old, but when you consider the alternative…–we really need that insurance.)

So, she’s in public school.

A few years ago she brought back a school report which had an item “The purpose of government is to provide services that individuals can’t pay for.”

What?

So I ask her about it.  She tells me that the example they gave was street cleaning.  Someone has to clean the streets and that’s the purpose of government. (I’ll have a bit to say on this subject somewhat later.)

Again, what?  Yes, to a certain extent that may be a role of government but the role?  Don’t think so.

Obviously, the school and I disagreed on this subject.  This wasn’t a matter of there being an objectively “right” answer but rather presenting something that’s a matter of philosophy and values as though it did have an objective correct answer.

Now, I could have gone into the school and raised a fuss, insist that they teach my philosophy and values on the rest of the class.  Instead, I took the time, generally when driving my daughter to school in the morning, to discuss the issue with her.  I started with the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

And, so that the purpose of government is to secure our rights and that the basic rights include Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.

Once she had that, we went on to the Constitution, the three branches of government: Legislature which makes the law, Executive which carries out (executes) the law, and Judicial which tries cases under the law.  We went over the Bill of Rights.

And, so, I made sure that my daughter understood my philosophy of government because that’s my responsibility.

And it’s not just matters of value and philosophy.  The schools, or at least the teachers, have been known to be wrong on matters of fact.  And this is nothing new.  Sometimes it’s outdated information.  For instance, when I was in grade school mountain building was described as being caused as follows:

When it was formed the Earth was much hotter than it is now.  As it cooled it contracted, as cooling things are wont to do.  This caused the crust, the “skin” to wrinkle like a withered apple.  These wrinkles are mountains.

This was at least a decade after plate tectonics had become widely accepted as the cause of such things as mountain building.

Other examples include a fourth grade teacher telling me that all radioactive rocks contain Uranium. (I could see in the book that Uranium was given as an example of something in radioactive rocks, not an exhaustive listing.) And a Sixth grade teacher telling me that the Curies discovered radioactive elements (as in discovering radioactive elements existed rather than the accurate statement that they discovered particular radioactive elements).  And so on.

And sometimes it’s not the teacher.  Sometimes it’s the book.  The encyclopedia I grew up with described stellar evolution thusly:

Stars start as large gas clouds.  They start to contract.  As they contract, they heat. (So far, so good, in an oversimplified way.  But now it goes off the rails) At a certain point they are hot enough to glow as Red Giant stars.  They continue to contract, getting hotter, and proceed through “yellow giant” “white giant” and “blue giant” Eventually contracting to a “blue dwarf”.  Once they reach blue dwarf stage, they gradually start to cool, going back through the spectrum until they reach red dwarf and finally extinguish.

That theory was superseded in the 1920’s.  Yet there it was, presented as Gospel Truth in a respected encyclopedia forty years later and being taught in our schools.

More recently I came across another particularly egregious example where a child got in trouble for correcting a teacher who said that a kilometer was longer than a mile. In the note sent back to the parents, it admitted that the child was right about the kilometer but was wrong for challenging the teacher’s authority.  In this case it wasn’t about right or wrong but about enforcing the hierarchy.  Now, I’m not going to say that this is deliberate, but if you really wanted to enforce a hierarchy, insisting that people claim that something demonstrably and provably wrong is right and to do so from a young age would be the way to do it. (There!  Are!  Four!  Lights!) No, I don’t think they put errors in deliberately.  Everybody makes mistakes, even teachers and textbook writers.  But by insisting that these errors be accepted as “right” substitutes submission to authority for reason and learning.

Sometimes the teacher is wrong.  Sometimes the book is wrong.  You, as an individual, have to be ready to question the book, question the teacher, and make sure your children do so as well. (And make sure you question yourself as well–yes, sometimes you are the one who is wrong.)

And, now, I’m going to digress a bit on something brought up above simply because I think it’s interesting. I mentioned street cleaning and that I’d have a bit to say on that somewhat later.  Well, it’s somewhat later.

Folk have argued, with some justice, that public good activities such as street cleaning are among the legitimate functions of government.  And, in at least some instances, they make a compelling case.  Michael Z. Williamson in his Libertarian paean Freehold goes into this a bit.  There is a scene involving heavy, road blocking snow.  The libertarian government of Grainne (the eponymous freehold) has no services for things like snow removal.  Thus, it is up to each individual business or property owner to clear the road in front of his own business/property.  And if the guy next door doesn’t do it, well, then it doesn’t get done unless you do it yourself.  The residents of Grainne, almost rabid on the subject of individual liberty, are willing to accept that.  Other folk may not find that an acceptable trade.  One, however, has to be careful with that because Government is Force, including deadly force.  Matters of public sanitation, with the spread of disease and encouragement of vermin, may justify that force.  Other things do not.

A little bit late today compared to when I usually post–not that there’s a set schedule.  Had to pick up my wife and daughter from the airport.

On another Social Media platform (I saw it on FaceBook, but it was copied from elsewhere) the claim was made:

The F-35 fighter jet budget is set to exceed a total of $406 billion.  Remember that when they say single-payer is too expensive.

Let’s run with that, shall we?  First off, that budget is over ten years.  So that would be $40.6 billion a year on average.  Population of the US, as of this writing is estimated (US Census Bureau) at 325,428,250 (it will be higher by the time you look at it, if you do).  Let’s just say 325 million.  That means the F-35 budget, if the project were completely abandoned and all the money shifted to health care, would be worth $125/year per person.  How much health care do you think that would buy?  One, two office visits?

Just because something sounds like a lot of money does not mean it is a lot of money when it’s applied to every man, woman, and child in the US.

Let’s work that from the other end.  The average health care spending, per person, in the US is $10,345.  That’s the total of government, insurance, and individual expenditures.  All of it.  So, the total expenditure over the entire US is just under $3.4 trillion.

The 2016 Federal Budget, the whole thing, was $3.85 trillion

Having the government pay for health care would be almost as big as the entire rest of the government combined.

This, of course, is the part where someone claims that it will be so much more efficient and cheaper to have the government do it.

Don’t make me laugh.  The government is never more efficient than the private sector and it’s never cheaper.  Yes, you can point to foreign nations that get their drugs cheaper but they can only do that because, frankly we subsidize them.  The cost of getting new drugs and treatments approved and brought to market is enormous.  Then there are the ones that never do make it to market, where some problem is found along the way and the drug/treatment is never approved.  Those costs have to be recouped as well.  On balance, pharmaceutical companies make a gross profit in line with the risks.  The total revenue is high, yes, but the total cost is high as well.  Nobody’s going to invest a billion dollars in new medicines unless they’re going to make a reasonable margin on it.

As it stands now, the US is paying those costs.  Am I happy with subsidizing the rest of the world this way?  No.  I’m not.  But if that’s the cost of continued medical progress, I’ll pay it.

One might propose instead of businesses investing and developing medicines for profit and let government handle it.  Well, that would mean that you’d need to fund that cost publicly as well, and that’s hardly an argument that government will reduce cost of healthcare.  And if they did that, well, I’ve discussed the issue of profit motive vs. socialized medicine before.  As things stand now the US is #1 in things like Nobel Prizes in medicine, in new treatments and medicines, #1 in cancer survival rates.  There is a reason for that.  And even medical countries based in countries with various forms of socialized medicine can still make profits so long as there’s someplace (like, say, here) they can sell to make that profit.  If you want to see what will likely happen if that profit motive is taken away and it’s all government controlled, look at the rate of medical developments coming from places where that is the case.  The old Soviet Union would be a good example.

So, no, going to “single payer” would not reduce the cost of health care except at a very high price indeed.  No, the only way they would reduce cost is by reducing care.

And if we stop paying for the new develoments, who’s left who will?  Progress slows to a near standstill.

That’s what “government reducing costs” would mean.

But to get back to the original point, people like to try to compare a single number that seems large with a much smaller number that applies to lots and lots and lots of people.  Another example is CEO compensation.

Let’s take a popular case.  The CEO of Walmart has a total annual compensation of $22.4 million.  That sounds like an enormous amount.  Why, if he took less, he could give all those employees a big raise, right?  Wrong.  Walmart employs 2.3 million people worldwide.  So if the CEO took nothing as pay and bonuses, worked purely out of the goodness of his heart because, I don’t know, he found it fun or something, the money saved would allow him to pay those people a raise.  Of just under $10.  A year.

But wait.  That’s worldwide.  Suppose we say just forget those damn foreigners and only use that money for Americans!  Why that would mean they’d only have to split that raise among 1.4 million people.  That CEO compensation divided among them would give them a raise of…$16.  Per year.

This is just simple math.  People compare some “big ticket” item with “small ticket” items and don’t mention how the very large numbers of those small ticket items add up, or how very little the large ticket item would really stretch among the many to whom those small ticket items apply.

So when someone says “if we can afford X, then surely Y isn’t too expensive” take a closer look.  Just how much of those “Y” do we have to buy and how much is the total cost?

Math.  It’s not just for breakfast any more.

 

Back when I was assigned to Fort Meade I had a motorcycle, a little Suzuki GS400 that was about 10 years old then. Great bike until a Yugo pulled out in front of me without looking and…well, you should have seen the other guy, but the bike was totaled.   And me, I was on crutches (right knee between my fuel tank and his fender) and dizzy for days (impact head first with the pavement but…helmets save lives).

But that’s not the story I’m talking about today.

Fairly early in my ownership of that bike I ran down to one of the local malls. Now, the bike has this lock on the side of the seat where you can hang your helmet. The “D” rings that are used to secure the strap when you’re wearing it hang on a latch and the lock secures it in place.

I come out of the mall sometime later and…no helmet. I see the D rings hanging from the latch but the helmet is gone. Apparently someone cut the strap and absconded with the helmet. Of course, by cutting the strap they rendered the helmet useless since it would come right off in an accident. They just basically stole themselves an oversize and cumbersome paperweight. So they weren’t even getting any benefit from the theft, ending up with a worthless piece of plastic.

Why do people do things like that?

I had recently gotten contacts and couldn’t drive back without something to shield my eyes from the wind. I ended up buying a cheap pair of sunglasses. And once I got back to the dorm I had a spare helmet so I was good to go for the future.

Of course, I do know why people do things like that. Some people are just…broken. They’ll steal something just because they can, whether or not they actually get any return from it or not. Probably stuck on a shelf somewhere as some kind of “coup marker” until later forgotten about and thrown out.  The other possibility is that someone thought he could pawn the helmet for the price of his next fix and didn’t realize by cutting that strap he was rendering the helmet worthless.  But that’s just a different form of broken.

Another incident, later (after the motorcycle was totaled) I was doing my shopping trip by bicycle.  On the way back to post I was hit by a car.  I have no memory of the incident.  I remember waking up first in the hospital at Fort Meade–Kimborough Army Hospital.  Then, later, I woke up again at Walter Reed.  Broken collarbone, concussion (duh, I was rendered unconscious).  Some cuts on my face.  And something happened to my other knee this time.  My clothes had been cut off so when I was returned to post it was wearing hospital scrubs.  Well, since my clothes at the time consisted of a bicycling jersey and shorts and I wasn’t going to be riding for some time (never did learn what happened to my bike–or what was left of it) it wasn’t a great loss.

From the injuries, it looks as though I was struck from the left, probably by an overtaking car, and then knocked to the right where I hit the pavement.

Okay, it was an accident.  These things happen except I’ve managed to avoid them happening every other place I’ve ever been. (If I have to offer any driving advice it’s “Stay away from Laurel, MD.”) The weird part was when I tried to track down what happened.  My first stop was the NCOOD–that’s the NCO (Non Commissioned Officer) Of the Day.  That’s a slot that has someone all duty on all times to, well, among the duties is to field calls like the one from the police about my being in an accident and transported to the hospital.

The NCOOD report was very brief.  It said I’d been in an accident and transported by ambulance to Kimborough.  That’s it.  It didn’t name any officers, refer to any actual police reports, or even name which police department made the call.

So, I start calling the various police departments.  There was the Laurel police, since I was going to Laurel to pick up things.  Some of what I was going to pick up was my “pick list” of comics from a comic store.  I was able to confirm that I had picked them up and, therefore, had been on my way back to post when I was in the accident.

Laurel police had no record of the incident.

So next I try the Prince Georges County police.  Laurel is in Prince Georges County.  No report.

Anne Arundel County police.  Fort Meade is in Anne Arundel County.  No report.

State Police.  No report.

That covered every department whose jurisdiction I could have gone through.

Nobody had any report that a serviceman had been hit by a car and taken to the hospital.

I was never able to find out what happened.  I didn’t remember the incident.  I was never able to learn who hit me because I was clearly hit by a car.  There’s no way a “single vehicle accident” could have led to the injuries I had, not on that route.  And there really was only one route as well.

So I was always left to wonder:  was the car in the incident owned or driven by somebody with the clout to squash the report.  This was in the Baltimore/Washington corridor after all?  Or was this simply incompetence/laziness on the part of the civilian police, not bothering to do paperwork once they passed me back to the Army, figuring I was their problem then.  I don’t know.  Never will know.

Maybe if I’d been able to find out who hit me I could have won a substantial settlement which would have…dramatically changed how my life went after leaving the military a month later.  Again, that’s in the “we’ll never know” category.

One thing I have learned from these incidents, however:  Stay away from that part of Maryland.

Okay, the name is a little silly but it’s a tasty dish.  The problem with most beef stews for me is the potatoes are high in carbohydrates and actually spike my blood sugar something fierce.  I’ve done beef stews using broccoli and cauliflower instead of potatoes and carrots with reasonable results.  The one downside is if you save it to reheat, the vegetables go to mush.

This was something I tried using stuff I mostly had to hand.

• 4-5 lb beef chuck, cut into chunks
• 2 tbsp xantham gum
• 2 16 oz jars of salsa
• 1 4 oz can green chilies
• 1 14 oz can beef stock.
• Salt and pepper to taste

Put the beef into a 5 quart slow cooker.  Sprinkle the xantham gum over it.

Add the remaining ingredients except salt and pepper on top.

Cook 8-10 hours.  Basically, you want the meat to fall apart when you stir it.

Stir.  Season to taste.  Truth is, with the other ingredients I need very little at this point for my taste.

When I last made this I used “Chi Chi’s Hot” salsa but the final result was actually quite mild.  The other ingredients and the cooking moderated the heat considerably.   That’s part of why I called it a stew rather than a chili–the result was more savory than spicy.  Still quite tasty.

Nothing really grabbed me today as a blog topic so I go to my old fallback:  a snippet from a work in progress.  This is an urban fantasy tentatively titled “Alchemy of Shadows”.

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I pressed the doorbell.  A musical chime sounded inside.  The door opened and a wizened man, my client Nobuto Tanaka, stood facing me.

The man stood about five foot six and weighed maybe one hundred thirty pounds.  Grey salted his short-cropped hair, neither thinning nor receding.  He wore a dress shirt and slacks, tie loosened but not yet removed.  Mirrored sunglasses perched on his nose and concealed his eyes.

“Mr Schmidt?”

I nodded, still looking at the sunglasses.

He must have noticed my stare.  He waved in the direction of his face.

“Dilated.  Eye doctor this morning.  It’s why I was free to meet you.  Please.  Come in.”  He stepped back.

I passed through the doorway into the lower level of a two floor apartment.  A kitchen on my left opened into a dining and living area.

Tanaka pressed himself flat to the closet door to my right to allow me room to pass.  I suspected the closet storage space extended underneath the stairs to my right that led up to the loft/bedroom.

Three torchiers illuminated the living and dining area and an LED bulb in a decorative ceiling fixture this short hallway.  Heavy blackout curtains concealed the sliding doors that opened onto the balcony.  A single futon and a small coffee table were the only other furniture visible.

“I don’t know what you expect from me,” I said as Tanaka closed the door behind me.  Normally I work with remodlers, or even architects when people are building.  If you’re just wanting decorating, I can give you the names of some good people who charge less than I…”

“No,” Tanaka’s voice came as little more than a whisper.  “You’re the one we want.”

I froze, then slowly turned. “We?”

Tanaka reached out to a switch on the wall.  His fingers slid down, flipping the toggle.  The apartment went dark.

“We.”

I backed away.  By the dim light spilling around the edges of the blackout curtain I saw Tanaka remove the sunglasses.  Two centuries earlier, or even one, I might have imagined the black pools that filled his eye sockets.  Now I knew better.

Scientists say that darkness is simply the absence of light.  It’s not a thing in itself.  They are wrong.  Oh, how they are wrong.  Darkness extruded from Tanaka’s eyes, reached for me.

I scrambled backwards.  One of the tendrils lashed out and struck my right hand.  My hand went dead, frozen from elbow to fingertips.  It did not hurt.  The pain, I knew, would come later.  If I lived that long.

Another tendril lashed.  I fell backward in a roll, avoiding it, barely.  Something tapped the sole of my left shoe.  My foot went numb.

My roll brought me next to the coffee table, a lightweight decorative piece, not the solid wood of my own day.  I grabbed it with my left hand and hurled it in Tanaka’s direction.  That bought me enough time to push myself unsteadily to my feet.  I could not feel my foot but it held my weight so long as I did not rely on it for balance.

My right arm still was not functioning, hanging as dead weight from the elbow down.  With my left I removed my LED flashlight from its holder on my belt.  I pressed the button on the end.

Nothing happened.

Tanaka, or the thing in his place, cackled.

“You belong to us now.”

I backed up another step, coming to a stop as my back pressed the curtains into the closed sliding door.

I smiled.

Reaching up, I took a firm grip on the curtain and dropped, bringing my full weight onto the fabric, onto the rod mounted above the door.

The rod tore loose from its mounting and the curtain cascaded around me.  Light, the diffuse light of the afternoon sky, but light, flooded the room.

The thing screamed, throwing an arm over the space where Tanaka’s eyes would be.  It retreated back into the shadows of the hallway.

I untangled myself from the curtains.

Light, welcome light, my one weapon against these creatures.

The creature cackled again. “You are trapped ‘Schmidt” and we are patient.  You have assaulted me in my home.  The police will come.  And you will have nowhere to run when we come to take you at last.”

I looked left, then right.  No exits.  Up.  The loft?  No.  I knew the floorplan of these apartments.  I’d reviewed it before accepting Tanaka’s request for a consult.  No exit up there.

Working behind me, I slid open the door.  I backed onto the patio.  Fire escape?

Mounting brackets but no ladder.

I glanced over the railing.  Fourteen stories.  That was a long way down.

“You have lost.  You are ours at last.”

“Will you shut up?”  I fumbled in the inside breast pocket of my jacket for my emergency vial.  I held the cap in my teeth and spun the vial under it.  Once it opened I spat out the cap and poured the liquid within the vial down my throat.

I turned and backed to the doorway.  I dashed forward and leaped.

“This…”

I got my good foot on the rail of the balcony.

“…is going…”

I propelled myself out into space.

“…to hurt.”

It takes just under three seconds to fall fourteen stories.  You hit the ground at just under sixty five miles per hour.  Even for me that could, probably would, be fatal.  If I missed the pool.  Even if I hit it, it would not be deep enough for what amounted to urban cliff diving.

Three seconds does not sound like much but it’s a long time when you are falling it.  I twisted in the air.  I hit the pool feet first.  The water slowed me.  Then I hit the bottom.

The bones in both legs shattered, tibia, fibula, femur, not to mention the splinters the impact made of the smaller bones in my feet.  My left warm twisted, dislocating my shoulder.  two ribs broke.  One drove deep into my lungs.  Just enough energy remained when my head struck the cement, face first, to break my nose and knock loose two teeth.

Then the elixer began to work.  Bones realigned and knit.  Torn muscle wove together.  Marrow burned as it poured new blood cells into my veins.  I stood, gasping.  My right arm still hung limp, my left foot remained a nerveless lump at the end of my leg but of the damage from the fall, only the pain remained.

Coughing as my lungs expelled water, I staggered to the shallow end of the pool and rolled onto the deck.

Above, I could see people at windows and on balconies.  Pointing.  Shouting.  There would be calls to for the police, for an ambulance.  I had to get out of here.

I struggled to my feet and looked, spotting the gate.  Limping heavily on my numb foot, I stumbled toward it.

Time for Johann Schmidt to disappear.

The shadows had found me again.

I am more than a little pissed off about this incident.

I speak of young Charlie Gard, the boy in England who has a mitochondrial disorder for which the National Health Service has no treatment, much less a cure.

Charlie’s parents raised nearly 2 million dollars to cover the cost of bringing Charlie to the US where an experimental treatment offers hope of significantly extending young Charlie’s life, however the government-controlled hospital has refused to release Charlie to his parents, going so far as to go to court to terminate their parental rights to facilitate the hospital’s plans to place Charlie on the Liverpool Care Pathway, a supposed palliative care protocol that in function is used to hasten the death of problem patients.

Let me repeat that.  The government run hospitals can’t help him.  They propose to put him into a facility which basically drugs him into “comfort” while he dies.  The parents have raised money on their own and want to take him to where he might be able to get a highly experimental treatment that, if successful, will allow him to live longer.  It’s not a cure, so stipulated.  It’s a palliative that might extend his life.

The hospital said “no”.  They weren’t going to release him to his parents so they could take him for treatment and, as pointed out above, went to court to terminate their parental rights.

The hospital went to court for the “right” to let Charlie die rather than allow his parents, at their own expense, to seek an experimental treatment.

I have written in the past on profit motive vs. socialized medicine and how the former despite what “theory” might suggest, leads to better and more available care.  But his case just highlights how utterly evil socialized medicine is.  A profit centered system can only say “we’re not going to treat” or “we’re not going to pay for that”.  This still leaves the individual with the ability to seek other options or funding–and people have done so, as these parents in the UK have done.  Government run “socialized” systems, however, can shut you right down with force, as the NHS in the UK have done here.

Now, it happens from time to time that medical professionals and the government will interfere with parents’ rights over their children but usually it’s the other way around–when the parents for whatever reason refuse life-saving treatment for their children the law steps in to ensure the child gets the necessary treatment.

That’s bad enough, but the arguments I’ve seen justifying this atrocity (and it is an atrocity) are what really boil my blood.  One example that’s just so horrifying that I’m loathe to name the person who made it because…well, look:

Even if the experimental treatment was successful, it is unlikely to undo any brain damage, and this poor child will become little more than an emotional and financial burden on the family, while simultaneously being of academic interest to scientists and medical professionals.

I am not a parent, so I can’t relate at all to the pain and love Charlie’s family experiences… But I am one of 7.3 billion people and one less human won’t lead us to extinction.

That language could have come right out of the early 20th century Eugenics movement, not the “selective breeding” part but the culling portion–the “euthanizing” of undesireables of people who are a “burden” on society.

I’m avoiding using a particular term here but with something so blatant it’s really difficult.

Maybe there’s little chance of this treatment helping.  Maybe there’s little chance of his being approved for the treatment.  Maybe it will all be for nothing.

But here’s the thing:  That’s not your nor my call to make.  The boy has parents who love him and want what they believe is best for him.  And some faceless bureaucrat is overriding that.  That might be understandable if the bureaucrat was choosing life for the boy, but when choosing death?  In cold calculus, if choosing life is a mistake one can always change their mind later.  Death is irrevocable.  Thus, if given a choice, I’d rather err on the side of choosing life.

Apparently the British NHS is staffed by Klingons:

KRAS: What do Earth men offer you? What have you obtained from them in the past? Powders and liquids for the sick? We Klingons believe as you do. The sick should die. Only the strong should live. (Star Trek episode “Friday’s Child”)

This is just…vile.

Norse Magic, prophecy, goddesses, and a revenge denied…or is it?

THE SPAEWIFE
by
David L. Burkhead

The Norns speak to me.  Not the great Norns, not Verthandi, Urd, and Skuld.  No, I have never been to Urd’s Well, not even in vision.  The lesser Norns speak to me, the Norns that follow each man, woman and child and dictate their fate.

The Norns speak to me and they tell me terrible things.  I give thanks to the gods that I do not understand most of the things they tell me, for what I do understand is awful enough.

The oiled skin in the window glowed with the light of early morning as I kneaded the sourdough into fresh barley dough.  My son, Asbjorn, had gone to the creek to see what fish our traps had caught and my daughter, Drifa still slept in the loft.

I formed the dough into mounds and placed it on the tray.  I placed a fist-sized piece of the dough into a clay pot and set it aside to use for the next batch.

The latch on our cottage door rattled as Sveinna fumbled home after a long night at the Jarl’s longhouse with the other men.

The door open and Sveinna stepped in. “Woman!  Where is my breakfast?”

His words were harsh but I saw the smile in his eyes.  I felt warmth grow upward from my stomach and my own smile pulled at my lips.

Then I saw the Norn behind him.  Her smile held nothing of joy or cheer.  Her eyes narrowed.

Sveinna could not see her, nor could he hear as she looked at me and said, “Soon.”

The smile forming on my own face at Sveinna’s appearance froze.

I turned and put the tray of bread to rise by the hearth, still warmed with the banked fire.  By the time I turned back to Sveinna, the smile was back on my face.

“Welcome home, my husband.”

“Welcome home is it?” He grabbed me and pressed me to him.  Then, he let go and clutched his head. “Oh, the night was long indeed.  There was too much talking, too much singing, and far too much ale.”

I swept up my mixing spoon in my hand and tapped him on the head. “And too many pretty thralls eager to keep you company?”

“There were thralls enough, goodwife,” he said.

“Comely ones?”

“Comely enough,” Sveinna said.  From the first day we’d met, he had never lied to me. “And they would have kept me company had I wished.  But what I wished was to be here with you.  I have not tired of you yet, woman.”

With that he pulled me to him again and we tumbled to the straw-strewn floor.

#

“Ageirr claimed the field just east of ours,” Sveinna said around a mouthful of bread, “but he has not worked it, not in four summers.  Kvigr said that he had strong sons who would work the land.  After much talk, we agreed to cede the land to Kvigr, but he has to give half of the first harvest from it to Ageirr.”

I nodded and refil[d1] led his cup.  Sveinna always told me about the Thing and the decisions made. “So Kvigr will be our neighbor?”

“Not Kvigr,” Sveinna said. “His sons.” He frowned and looked toward the door. “Speaking of sons, what is keeping that boy?”

“Momma?”

I looked up.  Drifa peered down at me from the loft.

“Hey, little girl,” I said.  My gaze flicked past her to the Norn who stood behind her but I could read nothing in its face. “You ready for breakfast.”

“Make water,” she said and began to climb down the ladder from the loft.

“Asbjorn!” Sveinna called behind me as he stepped out the door.

I took Drifa by the hand and draped her cloak over her shoulders against the morning chill.

“Momma!  Now!”

“Patience, sweetling.” I grabbed my own cloak and frowned.  Something was not right.

With Drifa in tow, I went out the door.

Sveinna stood just outside the door, unmoving, his hands spread slightly from his sides.  His Norn looked at me, a broad grin on her face, then looked back the other way.  I followed her gaze.

At the edge of the clearing around the house, where the path led to the river, stood five, no, six men.  One of them held Asbjorn, who struggled in his grip and against the hand clamped over his mouth.  Another stood next to him, his dagger hovering just in front of Asbjorn’s exposed throat.

“What do you wish with my son?” Sveinna’s voice was soft, like the low growl of a wolf before it leaps.

“Your son?” One of the men laughed. “I want nothing with your son.  No, it’s her I want.” He pointed at me.

I pushed Drifa behind me. “Inside, sweetie,” I whispered.

Sveinna took a step toward the woodpile, toward the axe that the men across the field would be unable to see from where they stood. “And what do you want with my wife?”

Inside I screamed.  Sveinna’s Norn?  Was this the time?  No.  Please, no.

“She is a witch that tells the future,” the man, the leader I supposed, raised his open hand toward me. “I would have her tell it for me.”

“I tell when the rain will come, or the frost; when is best to plant and when to harvest,” I said. “Nothing more.”

“No?” The man gestured and the other pressed the dagger up against Asbjorn’s throat. “I think you can tell much more.  Who lives.  Who dies.  What I must do to win battles.”

I shook my head.  I had never spoken of the Norn’s words to me, ever.  They frightened me.  They told of wars where more people died in a single day of battle than lived in all our village, in all the Northlands even.  Men would think me mad were I to tell such tales.  I spoke instead as I had said, of weather, of harvest, of planting.  No more than that. “I have never told more than those things.”

“But you can, can you not.  What you have told, and what you can tell, are not the same.”  He raised a hand. “Gefvaldr!”

The man holding the knife pressed it harder against Asbjorn’s throat.  A trickle of blood ran along the blade.

“Yes!” I cried. “I can.  Do not hurt him!  My son!”

The man lowered his hand.  The other, the one with the knife, removed it from Asbjorn’s throat.  I could not look away from the line of red on his throat from which blood dripped.

“You!” The man pointed at Sveinna who now stood next to the woodpile. “Move no further.” He raised a hand again and two of the men raised spears, poised to hurl at Sveinna.

“Sveinna, my husband, please,” I whispered.  I glanced at his Norn and turned my eyes from the look of glee on her face. “Anger them not.”

Sveinna stood straight, looked at me, and nodded.

“You will come with me,” the man said. “You will tell the future as I bid, when I bid.  And in turn, I will leave these others in peace.” His voice grew hard. “And if you do not, I will kill them all and take you anyway.”

I closed my eyes and bowed my head.  I had no choice.  I took one step toward the man, then another.  Numbly, I walked across the clearing to him.

“Hnaki, take her,” the man said.  One of his companions, Hnaki, grabbed me by the arms from behind.

The man who had been speaking all this time raised a hand and pointed at Sveinna.

“No!” I screamed, but I was too late.  The two men with poised spears hurled them.  One buried itself in Sveinna’s stomach, the other in his chest.  As I struggled in Hnaki’s arms, Sveinna sank to his knees.  His right hand stretched out toward the axe, grasped the handle, raised it.

I could not turn away.  Sveinna lifted the axe overhead, and then his hand opened.  The axe fell.  Sveinna tumbled to the cold ground.

“The girl is inside,” the man, the leader of these bandits, said. “Get her.  Then burn the place.”

“The Jarl will not let you live,” I said, still staring at Sveinna’s body.

The man laughed. “The Jarl?  He removed a bag from where it hung at his belt.  He opened it and reached inside.

At the sight of the Jarl’s head, I fainted.

---

What can a spaewife do, when even the gods are against her and the future she foresees is full of horrors?

For years Katla Gudmarsdottir told no one of the things the Norns, controllers of fate, told her were coming. She shared forecastings of when to plant and when to harvest and other simple things, but not the dread visions the Norns gave her.

Now Ulfarr, the Foul one, has kidnapped her and holds her children hostage for her foretelling.

And alone, forsaken even by the Norns, Katla must save herself, her children and her people.

Updated version of a post I made several years ago.

I am not a Christian. I describe as an “Asatru leaning agnostic” or maybe “a practitioner, if not a believer, in Asatru”. Still, I’d I have to say that Christians make far better neighbors than many another group. Yeah, they have their bad apples but the comparison between Christians as a group, at least in the Western world, and Isis or the Taliban is beyond ridiculous. Part of that is simply a matter of civilization. People simply behave better in the civilized world than they do in the more barbaric regions. However Christians in the civilized world try to spread civilization. Groups like Isis and the Taliban try to spread barbarism. Apples and dark matter they have so little in common.

I have yet to meet a Christian who believes I must die for being asatruar (well, leaning that way anyway). They may try to convince me of their belief. They may be concerned for my immortal soul. But they do not say I should be killed for not believing in “the god of the book.” How have ISIS and the Taliban weighed in on that? Is, perhaps, the choice they offer Islam, Dhimmitude (for Christians and Jews–“people of the book”), or death?

The Crusades you say? Well, leave aside that the Crusades were quite a few centuries ago, you might want to look more deeply into the history behind them. It was a lot more complicated than simply wanting to kill the infidel in the name of Christianity.

As for folk like the abortion clinic murderers and the like that are often paraded about as examples of how “Christians are just as bad”, you might want to consider the religious leanings of the people who investigated those crimes, the people who caught the culprits, the people who tried them, the people who convicted them, and the people who punished them. Simple statistics suggests that the majority of them were some flavor of Christian.

How about ISIS or the Taliban? Same thing going on there? Violence in the name of their religion being punished by their religious peers? No?  Sure some other Islamic nations are fighting them but not because they’re attacking Christians or other Infidels, but because Isis and the Taliban are attacking these other Islamic nations for not being Islamic enough.  It’s not the crimes of ISIS and the Taliban they oppose.  It’s who their targets are. “You aren’t supposed to attack us!”

Now, this is where some folk will scream about how racist I’m being and how I hate Muslims and…

First off, I never said “all Muslims”.  I called out specifically ISIS and the Taliban and I’d expand that to other extremist groups as well.  Some folk say that the problem is endemic to Islam, that the religion itself calls for that kind of extremism in its very principles and a read of its doctrinal documents combined with the doctrine of abrogation (that which came later–such as the more violent portions of the Quran written once Mohammed and his followers gained military power–supersedes that which was written earlier–the more peaceful and conciliatory passages written while they were few and powerless) would indicate that it is.  But even if so, that still does not mean “every Muslim.”  Just as there are Christians, many of them in fact, who do not follow every aspect of Christ’s teachings, so too will there be at least nominal Muslims who do not follow every aspect of Mohammed’s.

But even that does not make them equivalent.  People tend to be people–some peaceful, some not.  But ideologies are not all the same.  And its not the peaceful lambs who are drawn to groups like ISIS.

And so I wish people would stop with the false comparison.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

I’m getting ready to leave for LibertyCon in Chattanooga tomorrow.  No time to write up a blog post (and don’t expect much until next week).  So here’s one of my older ones with a little updating with a few additional thoughts interspersed.

Wayland (Völund) the Smith.

Wayland is a character in Germanic and Norse myth.  He was a smith of remarkable, even magical, skill.  In one version of the story he and two brothers lived with three valkyries.  Some say they were wedded to the valkyries but that’s not particularly important to the story.  In other versions they were swan maidens, not valkyries.  That too, is not particularly important to the story.

After nine years the valkyries left, never to return.  Wayland’s two brothers left as well, hoping to find the valkyries and they, too, never returned. Wayland retained a ring left to him by “his” valkyrie.

Some time later, the king Niðhad discovered Wayland and lusted after the many fine things Wayland had made on his forge and captured and imprisoned him.  To prevent any possibility of Wayland’s escape, the king had Wayland hamstrung.  For those who don’t know, this involves cutting the two large hamstring tendons in the back of the knee (and remember that this would have been in the iron age where no anesthetic was available).  He would have had to heal from that with no pain killer other than alcohol and nothing but luck and a strong constitution to stave off infection (no germ theory of disease, let alone modern antisepsis and antibiotics).  The tendons themselves would never heal and a person thus hamstrung would be unable to walk properly forever more.

Thus crippled, Wayland was forced to forge for the king.  However, far from being helpless, Wayland plotted revenge.  Over the course of it he seduced (or raped in some versions) and impregnated the King’s daughter, killed his two sons, and made drinking vessels from their skulls, jewels from their eyes, and a brooch from their teeth.  He sent these items to the king and queen who used them without knowing their gruesome origin.  And, finally, he made his escape using wings he fashioned in his smithy.

To modern Western sensibilities this seems utterly horrid.  Revenge against the king himself is one thing, but taking it out on the children who were presumably innocent of the crime?  To modern Western mind’s that’s beyond the pale.

Some have argued that the starkness of Germanic literature is a reflection of the harshness of the climate from which the Germanic people sprang, but I am dubious.  If you dig into it you find equally reprehensible (by modern Western standards) behavior by Greek heroes and others from much more “pleasant” climes.  One could simply say that life was held cheaply in the past, and “corruption of blood” (later generations held accountable for the crimes of their forebears) and there’s more than a little truth to that.   But, again, I don’t think that truly explains the tale of Wayland.

I think one of the important lessons in the tale of Wayland is that of Wyrd, or “fate.” Wyrd, also rendered as “Urd” is the name of one of the Norns that dictate the fates of men and gods.

Back when I first started investigating Asatru (and make no mistake, I am still investigating it), one of the books I read talked about Wyrd.  Extrapolating that description (and it’s my own extrapolation—I’ve lost the particular book and can’t say if I’m accurately representing the views of the author or not) “fate” is not something declared into being by any Gods or Goddesses, not even the Norns, but simply revealed by them.  It’s not a case of “it is because they say it” but rather “they say it because it is.” Instead, what creates the “fate”, the Wyrd, is the weight of events and choices made up to the moment.  That “weight of events and choices” is termed örlogg (again, if I remember correctly).  You create your own örlogg by the choices you make over life.  But örlogg isn’t just defined by your choices, but by all the choices behind you, including those of your parents and their parents and so on to the dawn of time.  The closer to you and to your “now” the greater the effect, but all of it affects your Wyrd.

With that context, the tale of Wayland becomes a cautionary one.  When the king enslaved and mutilated Wayland he added heavily on the negative side to his örlogg—and to that of those close to him including his wife and his children.  Wayland’s revenge, then, becomes in part a working out of the Wyrd of that örlogg.  He represents here simply the uncaring forces of nature reflecting evil back on evil in a shower that falls on the guilty and innocent alike.

And so the cautionary tale becomes to be careful what you do and who you harm because the harm reflects not just back on you, but on those around you that you care about, not because any deity delights in harming the innocent but simply because that is what harm does.

---

If the Asatru idea of fate and the Norns interests you, you might like my story The Spaewife.

What can a spaewife do, when even the gods are against her and the future she foresees is full of horrors?

For years Katla Gudmarsdottir told no one of the things the Norns, controllers of fate, told her were coming. She shared forecastings of when to plant and when to harvest and other simple things, but not the dread visions the Norns gave her.

Now Ulfarr, the Foul one, has kidnapped her and holds her children hostage for her foretelling.

And alone, forsaken even by the Norns, Katla must save herself, her children and her people.