An entry, posted late, requiring every ounce of strength to type

Notable World Cup “tuneup” results:

• Ecuador 1, Morocco 1 (cracker of a game)
• Brazil 1, France 2 (France dominant)
• England 1, Uruguay 1 (tedious)
• Colombia 1, Croatia 2 (dunno)
• South Korea 0, Ivory Coast 4 (look out for the “Elephants”)
• USA 2, Belgium 5 (too soon to gloat, alas)

Tomorrow promises to be grueling; today already was. Lily, Karin’s sister, will be married tomorrow afternoon. It’s the childcare that vexes. Samuel, at least, is accounted for. He’ll bear the rings. He successfully brought the cushion down the aisle during today’s rehearsal. Abel and Daniel are another matter. The last thing the ceremony needs is a chorus of squawking. I scouted the building today for possible retreating-places. There aren’t many.

Today, before I chased around and, ocassionally, strong-armed Abel and Daniel, I’d already tired myself loading a humungous, old brush pile – which had plagued our backyard since we bought the property in 2021 – into our pastor’s trailer. Pastor Josh and I took the debris to the church and tossed it into the forest next to the parking lot. It’s not every day you get to dump stuff in a forest.

This has been a grueling entry to type, too, because my “shift” key has been sticking.

Preview: Irish reading

Here is my list of Irish people to read in 2026–2027. (And afterward.)

Who’m I overlooking?

• John Banville, a.k.a. Benjamin Black
• Samuel Beckett
• Elizabeth Bowen
• Anna Burns
• Joyce Cary
• Erskine Childers (Mayfair-born)
• Roddy Doyle
• Maria Edgeworth
• J. G. Farrell
• Tara French
• Seamus Heaney
• James Joyce
• Claire Keegan
• C. S. Lewis
• Brian Moore
• Iris Murdoch
• Edna O’Brien
• Flann O’Brien
• Sally Rooney
• George Bernard Shaw
• Jonathan Swift
• J. M. Synge
• William Trevor
• Oscar Wilde
• Cecil Woodham-Smith (Welsh-born, Irish-sired)
• William Butler Yeats

I’ve read, or at least tried to read, all of these people but Bowen, Cary, Heaney, Edna O’Brien, Synge, and Trevor. I wouldn’t mind trying out everybody on the list.

I’m leaving Franks McCourt and O’Connor off the list. For now.

I also want to read a history book, The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland. (Woodham-Smith’s Great Famine also is a work of history.)

My mother-in-law also has scheduled various Irish books to read this year. Amazingly, nothing on her list is on mine.

The idea for this project came from viewing Atom Egoyan’s excellent, unsettling Felicia’s Journey (1999) and reflecting that the source novel’s author, William Trevor, has been pretty well off my radar all my life.

Prolongation of woe

I.e., puking. Only Abel has been spared. We’ve brought the TV upstairs so as to get to the toilet promptly. Karin gallantly has been letting the children use the toilet first. She makes due in the hallway with her bucket.

Daniel, poor boy, is on his second cycle with this bug, having been symptomless one glorious week.

I’m well enough right now. I dread the second cycle.

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I’m teaching Samuel how footnotes work, using Barbara Holland’s Hail to the Chiefs. He’ll grow up thinking that studying history is fun.

Other reading:

• François Mauriac, A Kiss for the Leper (a mini-book)
• Voltaire, Candide (a re-read; a mini-book)
• N. T. Wright, God’s Big Picture Bible Storybook
• books, as yet unfinished, mentioned in previous entries

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R.I.P. Chuck Norris, aged eighty-six. And Robert Mueller.

Body-text fonts, pt. 49: ITC Garamond

The Iranians are trying to have their World Cup games moved from the U.S. to Mexico.

Good. Luck.

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Six-year-old Samuel, whom we don’t allow to use social media, has been talking about giving up social media for a week. 🙄

Not for Lent’s sake. For a Klondike bar. (“What would you do for a Klondike bar?”)

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Chubby ITC Garamond is this month’s typeface. (This link is to the darker version, and this link is to the lighter version.)

My children are less “Charlie Bucket,” more “Mike Teavee.”

Oscars

Viewing the ceremony – not comprehensively – after a multi-year hiatus. (Oscar-cast doubles as storm alerter tonight.)

I’m old enough now to be less concerned with the living than with the honored dead:

• Robert Duvall
• Graham Greene
• Diane Keaton
• Val Kilmer
• Robert Redford
• Rob Reiner
• Terence Stamp, etc.

(Some heavy hitters.)

Of the nominated movies, I’ve seen Sinners. Delroy Lindo, who plays a tragicomical virtuouso drunk (Cat Ballou’s Lee Marvin, anyone?), lost his contest to Sean Penn but would have been a worthy laureate.

And I’ve seen KPop Demon Hunters: unworthy but, tonight, triumphant.

Paul Thomas Anderson will win, one year or another (probably this year); and so will Jessie Buckley, who’s too good to feature in what gets made nowadays. She’s acted with Olivia Colman, which yields dividends, Oscar-wise. I’d like to see Jessie win for something schlocky like Beast or Men. (Or for a Richard Linklater adaptation of Mary Midgley’s Beast and Man.) Not for a prestige picture about one of Shakespeare’s love interests (everybody wins for that).

It’s been a grueling weekend. Daniel puked, I puked, and now Samuel has just puked. Three of us down, two of us to go.