Sex and the North Wind (Revisited)
February 27, 2012
Given the recent chill and threats of snow, I decided to revisit “Sex and the North Wind,” one of the blog’s most popular posts. If you haven’t read it yet, I hope you will. And if you liked it a year ago, you might like to read it again. New post coming soon.
Lately, Alice has been forcing herself to read books that feature devout Christian women trapped on remote homesteads during Dakota blizzards in the 1800s. Frost thick as cake icing covers every window. A handsome but forbidden male stumbles in from somewhere, shakes the snow off his boots and settles in. The North wind blasts through chinks in the walls in search of a meager fire to startle into wild, flaring activity and then abandon, leaving behind a heap of flickering embers.
Any reasonable character in such circumstances would go mad with cold and dread of more cold, but these women are easily distracted by envy, greed, lust (usually) and other sins that require an explanatory prayer every ten or so pages (as if the Lord may have lost track of the plot). A typical prayer goes something like this:
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Crime and Chocolate
February 20, 2012
In 1924, when Alice was nine years old, she found herself in front of the jailhouse at the edge of a mob calling for a hanging.
Like this:
At First Sight
February 14, 2012
In 1937, when my father was nineteen, he moved with his parents from their bankrupt Dakota ranch into Bismarck. This was during the Great Depression, and he was lucky to get a job with the WPA doing payroll. One day as he sat at his desk, a girl wearing a blue coat walked briskly past his window. Read the rest of this entry »
Like this:
Happy Days
February 7, 2012
Why is this woman dancing? Read the rest of this entry »
