Abel is dedicated in church; Samuel’s exactitude; weather; football; “E-learning”; ICE vs. Minnesotans

We dedicated Abel to the Lord this morning. Samuel and Daniel remained in the adults’ church service. Upon its conclusion, Samuel ran up to the pastor and scolded him for mentioning Duolingo, which is not discussed in the Bible. (The pastor, in his sermon on Acts 2, had joked about Duolingo’s provision of the ability to speak “in tongues.”)

I approve of Samuel’s zeal for the truth.

Yesterday I said “shoes” when I meant “boots,” and Samuel flew off the handle.

“I misspoke,” I acknowledged.

He was not appeased. “You and Mom say too many wrong things.”

“Do you think you speak better than your parents?” I asked him.

He does think so.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Across the nation it’s cold and blustery. Today I watched the Broncos and Pats fail to advance the ball in a Mile High snowstorm. The Pats survived, 10–7. (I’m not keen on any of the league’s semifinalists. The Broncos, Pats, Rams, and Seahawks all have terrible uniforms. Their uniforms were better in the early 1990s.)

It was cold enough on Friday that Samuel was kept home. He attended an “E-learning” session with his teacher and four other students who logged in. Daniel viewed the lesson, too, and greatly enjoyed it. He and Samuel fought on camera. Samuel must do “E-learning” again tomorrow. Karin has urged me to send Daniel to the basement to watch TV.

It has been cold in Minnesota, too, and much sadder. ICE agents murdered another civilian yesterday; at least, the videos sure make it look like murder. As awful as each attack has been, a certain implication is worse: that it could happen to anyone. (To any ordinary person, that is; those who live in gated communities probably are safe.) Even non-protestors have been attacked, people simply traveling from A to B.

If the perpetrators intend to terrify, then what they’re doing in Minnesota is terrorism. And maybe even if they don’t intend it.

Veronika of Austria; Bible reading; time capsules

Cows are smarter than people think, according to the BBC.

Despite about 10,000 years of humans living alongside cattle, this is the first time scientists have documented a cow using a tool.

The researchers say their discovery shows that cows are smarter than we think and that other cows could develop similar skills, given the chance.

I’m too tired to work out the details, but I suspect that trouble lurks here for Hume’s account of testimonial knowledge.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Bible reading report. I’m caught up reading Acts, but I’m three or four chapters behind in each of Genesis, Nehemiah, and Matthew. It’s not as dire as it sounds. Acts is by far the most thoroughly annotated of these books. The notes discuss every historical character (there’s a surprising amount of information about Sergius Paulus), every city that Paul visits, logistical reasons for travelers’ detours and delays, etc.

How, exactly, were worms involved in Herod Agrippa’s death? The possibilities are spelled out. (Bonus tidbit: the guy used to party with Caligula.)

Fascinating but long.

If I don’t begin reading before Abel wakes in the morning, I don’t finish by the end of the day.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Less demanding is my re-reading of Jay Bennett’s Deathman, Do Not Follow Me (1968). I read it in 1995, when I was 13 or 14. It seemed dated then. But now more years have gone since I first read it than between that reading and when it was first published. And the book feels, if anything, more fresh.

I had a similar feeling the other day, showing Steve McQueen’s Bullitt, also from 1968, to my family. That movie used to seem antediluvian. Now, its hospitals and airports remind me of my childhood; they look how hospitals and airports should look.

January’s poem

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Indiana, our Indiana

Indiana, we’re all for you

We will fight for

The cream and crimson

For the glory

Of old IU

Never daunted, we cannot falter

In the battle, we’re tried and true

Indiana, our Indiana

Indiana, we’re all for you

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Lyrics by Russell P. Harker. Tune based on Karl King’s “Viking March” – circus music.

Adrian Mole: The cappuccino years

At 10:00pm not-quite-four-year-old Daniel runs through the house like a madman, or a young cat. So he does most nights.

So Samuel used to do. But now he must rise for Kindergarten, and has conditioned himself to retire before eight o’clock.

Abel, at thirteen months, sleeps last. He has taken a turn toward ultraviolence.

Adrian Mole is in his fifth book. He is thirty years old. He has two sons. One of them, he recognizes as his son. The reader recognizes them both. Adrian isn’t the most self-aware diarist.

It’s the 1990s. Blair is the new Prime Minister. Adrian works as an offal chef at Hoi Polloi, a Tory restaurant. In his spare time he scripts an unsold radio serial, The Windsors, about the Royal Family. Princess Diana’s death scuttles Adrian’s plot. Adrian’s own life seems plotless, notwithstanding his acquisition of sons.

His parents also are chronic failures – after a livelier fashion (even what with Adrian’s father’s depression). The most impressive figure in this book is Adrian’s mother, who unexpectedly succeeds as a ghostwriter, spinkling pages with unsolicited references to Germaine Greer (author of The Female Eunuch).

“Philistines” always succeed where Adrian fails.

Adrian considers writing his vocation. Thus he wastes time agonizing over semicolons.

Pity. He is eloquent.

I sometimes wish I lived in pre-feminist times when if a man washed a teaspoon he was regarded as “a big Jessie.” It must have been great when women did all the work, and men just lolled about reading the paper.

I asked my father about those days when we were preparing the Brussels sprouts, the carrots and the potatoes, etc., etc. His eyes took on a faraway misty look. “It was a golden age,” he said, almost choking with emotion. “I’m only sorry that you never lived to see it as an adult man. I’d come home from work, my dinner would be on the table, my shirts ironed, my socks in balls. I didn’t know how to turn the stove on, let alone cook on the bleeding thing.” His eyes then narrowed, his voice became a hiss as he said, “That bloody Germaine Greer ruined my life. Your mother was never the same after reading that bleeding book.”

Bear in mind that Adrian is on the liberal end of the political spectrum.

I reflected on his feelings as I chopped vegetables for our “hobo’s stew.”

Bible reading

The bible I’m reading this year is the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible.

It’s available in these translations: NKJV, NIV, and – less easily obtained – NRSV.

I’m reading the NKJV because I’ve read NIV and NRSV bibles in recent years.

I’m trying to read all the notes. I’ve never done this with any bible.

There are a lot of notes. They’re interesting, but they don’t aim to redirect one’s life or improve one’s soul – except perhaps gradually and cumulatively, by shining tiny light-beams upon thousands of details of the divine portrait.

One reads about, e.g., ziggurats because the Babel tower probably was a ziggurat. One learns why ziggurats were built, how they differed from Egyptian pyramids, etc. Does this change one’s life? No. Does it change one’s understanding of the Babel story? Up to a point, yes: it turns out that the builders weren’t trying to climb up to the heavens but coaxing heaven-dwellers down to earth. (Other ancient sources tell us that this is what ziggurats were for, and this information is summarized in the notes.)

One learns how radical the Abrahamic covenant was. Abraham’s society assumed that gods were to be manipulated, not covenanted with. What is more, gods – at least, the ones whose favor people typically sought – were associated with particular groups and places. It was believed that their powers were limited to their localities. But Abraham’s God told him to leave his family and its lands and to trust Him in a new place, among strangers. God asked Abraham not to try to establish himself in his own people’s memory. And that was radical because remembrance of the dead was thought to sustain the dead in the next life (as in the Disney movie Coco) (this last comparison is not in the notes).

This bible is bulky. I can’t read it with Abel in my lap – a significant limitation, since Abel rests in my lap much of the day.

It takes a long time to read each day’s passages and notes.

Frankly, I’m struggling to follow the schedule. But I think it’ll be very rewarding if I do so.