ATDDTA(10) A Screaming Comes Across The Creek [294-295]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

        bekah:

        You're both suggesting that I'm being over-sensitive,  
        perhaps I  am. (I've been called worse.)

Perhaps you're being sensitive enough. Yes, somehow it's the whitest of the
whites, the honkiest of honkies that's been picked out of the lineup, but let's
not get too bedazzled by the local terrain as to lose sight of the central 
thread of Against the Day: Illumination. Our Beloved Author picks on the 
Finns for a variety of fine reasons, beginning with their close proximity to 
Iceland and to the main source of the Norse legends that pop up in AtD. 
Next, they are major players in OBA's explosive tales of miners and bosses. 
But I would also include their whiteness, near albino, and remind you all of 
Blicero and the North and Whiteness. And the fact that they're not really 
Christians, retaining a great deal of their culture from their shamanic roots. 
Even though they may be the whitest of the whites, they are still, culturally
speaking, the "other" and thus somehow remain eternally preterite.