SPELLCHECK

hose history I do not know. I do know I’ve been e-upbraided for my fast and loose spelling of Woden, the god whose last worshipper must have slipped under the sod during the medieval period, somewhere in the 10th century—imagine those bog-soaked desperate sickbed prayers. (Just put out of mind the Alt-Right’s current co-opting that archaic royal presence, his reputation narrowed, almost destroyed via their sick devotions.) And though that more recent deity Spellcheck, made to keep the world on track, alerted me dead wrong on the laptop screen, it refused to save me. “No spelling suggestions,” it archly stated, i.e.: not even going to try. Machines can be so callow. They adolescent-shrug with the best of them. It happens that I have rather a crush on Woden, the only ancient god who (I’m told by a medievalist I