Sweet teeth

For the longest time, Abel had just two teeth, and then this week four more broke through the top gum. How long he’ll keep them is anyone’s guess. We trunk-or-treated last night at the school where my brother Stephen teaches, and I was amazed that so many of the teachers tried to give Abel candy. (He’s only ten months old.) Afterward, as we waited in the McDonald’s drive-thru, Samuel told us that children get McDonald’s at school on their birthdays. I’m skeptical, but it’s within the realm of possibility. (For his upcoming birthday, he’s asked for McDonald’s, chocolate cake with icing, and a piñata.) Daniel ate sweet toast for breakfast today, like most days, and then asked for ice-cream. I held him off fairly comfortably by pointing out that he’d only eaten half of his toast.

Abel’s pediatrician told me that children’ll eat anything until they start eating sugar, and then that’s all they’ll want. She could be right.

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Karin uses Duolingo (an app, if you didn’t know) to practice Spanish, Welsh, math, chess, and sometimes piano. The sentences for practicing Spanish are like a high school/​Almodóvar melodrama.

No saldré con él si usa ropa anticuada (I won’t go out with him if his clothes are out of date).

Todas mis amigas son lesbianas (all of my woman friends are lesbians).

Some Welsh sentences, translated:

Owen is eating parsnips in the rain.

After the dragon had eaten Owen, it went to Cardiff.

See this compilation. A literature grad student ought to publish a paper about national stereotyping in Duolingo. But isn’t that what the app is for? When, really, will we have occasion to meaningfully use Icelandic or Korean? Isn’t tourism the point?

Hoyle

Someday I’ll explain why, a decade or so ago, I resolved never to learn another brand-new board or card game – indeed, why I came to loathe the very idea of new games.

Tonight’s post is about why despite (or perhaps because of) this loathing, I bought The New Complete Hoyle, Revised (1991) at Goodwill.

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The book’s subtitle is: “The Authoritative Guide to the Official Rules of All Popular Games of Skill and Chance.”

All popular games. Of skill and chance.

Is this a literally true description of the book? No.

Was it true in 1991? No. There were other popular games than those in Hoyle.

The pretense of officiality also goes too far. See, for example, this admission:

The rules of Go differ somewhat in China, Korea, and Japan. Unfortunately they have not been codified even in Japan, where, in 1928, a championship tournament was interrupted and suspended for a month by a dispute over rules. A commission appointed to clarify the Japanese rules proposed a code in 1933, but it has not been generally adopted.

One might deplore the book’s exaggeration. On the other hand, one might admire its determination to establish a canon of games.

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Which brings me to what canonization is for.

Walk down any Walmart games aisle, or visit a specialty shop: new games proliferate like Hydra’s heads. This, at best, is a distraction from the sustained pursuit of excellence. At worst, it’s postmodern absurdity.

One is tempted to commit one of two opposing mistakes. The first is to renounce all gaming. This is the Charybdis of asceticism. The second is to try to keep up with new gaming. This is the Scylla of … well, probably not asceticism’s starkest opposites, wantonness and incontinence. It’s more like an arms race. Or like keeping up with the Joneses.

The sensible middle course is to choose just a few games and to stick with them. Here a canon of games is invaluable. It’s less good to practice something with no stock of wisdom built up around it. (I’m sure Alasdair MacIntyre would agree.)

Adhering to the canon ensures that one is communing, not only with today’s gamers, but also with those of the past, e.g. the Japanese who debated the rules of Go in 1928.

Hoyle is steeped in history, or aspires to be.

(Indeed, its stated pedigree is almost blasphemous:

The only truly immortal being on record is an Englishman named Edmond Hoyle, who was born in 1672 and buried in 1769 but who has never really died.

I imagine my pious grandfather, who refused to play cards, disapproving.)

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Suppose that one is nauseated by the uselessness of gaming and decides that total abstention is, after all, the way to go. Hoyle still is invaluable. What better tool is there for understanding scenes of gaming in old books? I’ve never actually played bridge, but (in some moods) my favorite Christie novel is Cards on the Table. Identifying the murderer in that book depends on knowing about bridge. Then there are the James Bond novels (Casino Royale, Goldfinger  … ). Even Austen’s and Pepys’s people are card fiends. A confirmed teetotaller probably should know a little about boozing, if only for literature’s sake.

Body-text fonts, pt. 44: the Fell types

Abel now climbs stairs.

Too, too soon.

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Samuel has thought up a new Agatha Christie novel: Bossy (!).

“It’s about one man who kills another man in the Olden Days.”

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These fonts are available, gratis, from Google:

IM Fell Double Pica

IM Fell DW Pica

IM Fell English

IM Fell French Canon

IM Fell Great Primer

They’re digitizations, by Igino Marini, of types “bequeathed to the University of Oxford by John Fell in 1686.”

The fonts aren’t especially alike, nor do they work equally well for typesetting just any content. One must use them very judiciously. Their attraction is that they’re VENERABLE-LOOKING and ROUGH.

(DISTRESSED is another word that comes to mind, as in: “distressed blue jeans.”)

Even so, the fonts, when properly sized and spaced, are very legible.

Whenever I see them – or their doppelgängers (more on one doppelgänger in a moment) – it’s in some pretentious children’s book, e.g. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge by M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin.

(The story is charming; the pretentiousness is due to the number of pages.)

(Spurge, an elfin emissary to the goblin capital – and a spy – is hosted by a goblin scholar, Werfel, who tries his darnednest to be hospitable but can’t help committing faux pas.)

The font in this sample is actually a commercial font that looks like IM Fell Great Primer. It’s surprisingly OK as body text, isn’t it?

Just don’t go hog wild and use Fell fonts in all your documents.

Singing along

The Proclaimers, singing:

“My heart was broken / My heart was broken / Sorrow / Sorrow …”

Samuel: “My heart isn’t broken.”

John-Paul: “Oh, no? Why not?”

Samuel: “Because I always follow the rules of the road.”

Some of his interpretations are rather literal.

(The Proclaimers are wearing good pants.)

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Samuel has finished reading the Babar omnibus and is halfway through Little House in the Big Woods (which I first read only last year). Some days, he reads more than the required amount. He has caught the fire. His abuelo pays him $2 per completion.

He’s a good little (mercenary) book reader, but he’s too hard on the spines.

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Abel now stands.

Daniel sings along with my Spotify favorites. Most are wordless, so he has to sing the violin parts (for instance). He has a favorite Beethoven piece: the “Turkish March” from The Ruins of Athens. I’ve known it all my life but only just realized it was Beethoven’s.

The inner ring

It seems these days I have to read the New York Post for good news.

“Woman Rushed to Hospital with Appendicitis, Gets Shock of Her Life: ‘He Just Came Out of Nowhere’”

(She had a baby.)

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My kindergartener is trendier than I am.

At the library, Samuel started singing “Soda Pop” from Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters, and some middle schoolers joined in. Glances of mutual recognition passed between Samuel and the middle schoolers.

It was suddenly clear that I was “out” and they were “in.” It evoked a feeling described in C. S. Lewis’s “The Inner Ring” (which I happened to be reading).

I didn’t mind being “out,” but it was all too gratifying to see my child “in” with his betters.

He doesn’t care about being “out” or “in.” He just likes having friends.

He checked out this book because the girl on the jacket reminded him of a friend.

Karin met other friends of Samuel’s today. She took time off from work and joined his class on a field trip.

“It’s my mom!” Samuel told everyone. “And it’s her birthday!”

Happy birthday, Love.